Garden-Hose

I was in a Volvo leaving something that I should have stayed for. I had a guitar and a set of knives that served as forks with sharp edges. They were called knorks. You could cut ravioli and tomatoes but they were advertised as something that could cut meat.

Qvc could not help this. This was my product. I tried to sell it and failed.

I pulled the car into a slow town in Louisiana in hopes of finding an easy take on the knorks. I found nothing but rain and a church. I found solitude with a water spout that was surrounded by a garden hose. I missed my family very much. It had been days since I had bathed in cleanliness and hope. I stopped there and stepped out and washed myself naked in the rain in hopes of being whole again. I was. The parking lot was empty in the back of the church, however, the gutters were full with free water. I was clean and resting in the backseat of the car that was full of beer cans, beef jerky packages and stolen hotel shampoo bottles. These, I used under the gutter to wash myself to sleep. It was like my own shower. I went back in the car after the nature bath. I fell asleep like coma patients waking up. Click through for more, it's worth it.



The sun came and started shining in my mirror. My radio had died and light was in my eyes. I stumbled across the street to a diner I had never been to with a handful of door to door items I hoped to trade for breakfast to no avail. I had them in my pocket. I ordered pancakes and solitude and left the waitress alone. This didn’t work because when the food came I was lost. I had seen this person before next to a swimming pool at a motel in Arizona. I was sure of it. She told me quick and clean that I was getting a ticket and towed. This was strange cause I had never been here before in my goddamn fucking life. It didn’t stop then.

My wallet and my clothes and my gun was in that in that car. I needed everything. She gave me access to nothing. I knew that what was happening was not an accident. The thing that I had been escaping from had finally caught up to me here in New Orleans. There were no more Mardi Gras or churches or green garden hoses or weather reports that could save me. I was good.

I traipsed back to that church and Volvo and thanked the rain. If I tipped my head back I would drown like poultry. I didn’t. I went into the back of the car and looked for an umbrella in order to maintain my dignity.

I broke a hole in the church window and went inside. I went into the bathroom and found the toilet paper and wrapped it around the handle. 3 or 5 times. Strung it to the door. Pissed all over it and closed the door and brought it to the top of the broken window.

Then ran like hell.

I ran down the street through an alley over an overpass through a bathroom to another window that I climbed in hoping I would get away. But again, I found myself back to that car in the church parking lot,later. It had my gun, my clothes and it was the place where it rained when I arrived. It was where all the answers were reconciled during a later date.

The roof of the church was nice. The garden hose could be a rope (or a noose). The church served as a venue. I fell into the past but stepped into the future. Delusion wasn't a nightmare but a dream of the same sort:

I went to the back and climbed up the set of steps with Eve's green shackles wrapped around my neck. And as I did, I stepped gingerly up the iron necklaces that kept me bound to the excuses that were you.

I knew that I wasn’t going to make it in that town. I knew I was going to fail. I had too many things in my pockets to sell to so many people that did not want to buy them. I gave up and…

I fell down those steps before I charged up them. I ran before I lost it. When I did, I swam up those steps and life to make sure that I went forward. Face forward. Into a pool without water. Into a pool without hope. Into a parking lot with a garden hose, drowned by the greenness of the rain that came from Jesus himself. I hung myself faster than I started to tie the knot.