Particular Matter

harold returns to the window to stand silhouetted in the moonlight on the
carpet. to see the shadow of the smoke wisping into the sacred stillness,
sacred, except for the occasional sputtering cough. harold likens himself
to christ in times such as these, enjoying the utter ridiculousness of
blasphemy. blasphemy that is pointless once you designate yourself
consciously and purposely as heathen. blasphemy, another method of control,
another scare tactic. that is bad. ok? this is good. now, let’s sing
songs and we’re going to go home feeling content to know that we are good
people because someday our prince will come and sweep us away into that
perfect place that we’ve been waiting for desperately while blinding
ourselves to the squalor that is our daily news. signs of the apocalypse.
harold’s eyes glimmer, he imagines, in the darkness. pulling rather
eloquently on his pipe. it’s only a matter, watson, he says, of time.
because we all KNOW what is coming. but when? BAH. he spits a loogie that
sparkles as it flies on its way to the side of the trash can. TING. damn,
almost. it was a jolly good shot, in any case. harold eyes his lazyboy
with precocious eyes. precocious eyes, that’s what some teacher said to his
mum at an open house when he was in the third grade. He’s got such
Precocious Eyes. he didn’t know what it meant, but his ego inflated like an
aroused penis all the same. gobble, gobble. he’s always reminded himself
of his precocious eyes every time he’s around a particularly pleasing
specimen of female flesh. imagining that they are all whispering to each
other in delicate trills. My, what Precocious Eyes! knowing, of course,
all along, the utter ridiculousness.
once you have stepped outside, my boy, there is no going back. harold
thought about this one. he clasped his hands behind his back and paced like
a caged lion might pace if it was a suburban male that smoked too much weed.
he stepped outside of it all a long, long time ago. it might have been
third grade. it might have been the moment his eyes were wiped clean of
blood and opened and took in the sharp hospital fluorescence of reality. he
had stepped outside of his station and looked around. but the home he
returned to was not the same. his parents looked down at him in doubt, his
wife awoke and turned her back to him and subsequently farted in her sleep,
his children ran into lives of normalcy cut out and conditioned by
commercials. where was the warmth, the stillness, the nurturing care?
where were the smiling pictures of nostalgia, the shotgunned beers of the
past? harold sat down cross-legged on the floor, feeling suddenly heavy.
because of the weight of what he had managed to forget.
and who could blame anyone? how could he blame anyone for their blithe
songs of hopeful faith? how could he be blamed for his self-worshipping
degeneracy? for they know not what they do. everything solid casts a
shadow. and reflects the light.