When horses ran it always reminded me of the tall grass
swaying, or the light on the tall grass with an auburn hue, horses are brown,
and I would have liked to be the little man on their backs running with them.
Men sans expression gripping the little armrests,
sweating. 1pm whiskey drinker, not
really that kosher if you ask me. Placing
bets was my favorite part, and I’d always tell the nurse that the woman behind
the counter was mocking me with eyes that cut too deep. Like light penetrating everything around me
so that the light was all I could see even when I closed my eyes I’d see horses
in the distance like a road at night with a small sign.
Anyway,
I was holding hands with another teacher and watching Captain
Stormy run the laps as he got beat with a whip, back to the starting point I think
is what the man was saying. I guess encouragement
is good no matter which way you approach it, but I knew that I was feeling like
a bat on the cold ground staring into myself that I saw in the compacted
dirt-concrete stillness of the afternoon where flies live.
When they’d make it around the lap I’d break a hand, or a
seal, depending on which way you look at it, and stand up, like in a stoic way,
feeling the full weight of my legs underneath the desert but then sit back down
because I felt like the horse was just trying to be a horse and he couldn’t.
Exhaustion is pretty brutal, but I think it’s worse when the
exhaustion isn’t physical. Cause, you
know, I’d be standing with the pretty nurse frocked in cape and basketball gown
or something of the sort and have no idea what to say because I already thought
it all out or got all the words out and she’d just stand there trying not to
look uncomfortable.
I broke down crying one day at the track with nachos in
hand, trying to figure where the cut came from and if I did it to myself or if I
was just wailing under the moon too bright, too bright, giving everything I had
and then having it ripped away from me like ice silouhette on cold morning
where the frog hits the water in the pond.
Muscles aren’t engendered, I got freaked out and asked to be
hauled away in a gurney so that all of the tutors in there thought I was dead
or just on the verge of it. Couldn’t
give it enough, I kept telling myself that, and I think I was right. Everything felt pretty filthy at the time and
I kept thinking in absolutes which I don’t think is ever a good way to think.
When we got to the gas station down the road by the pyramid
of light, I got out of the gurney and walked over to the Pennsylvania dutch man
selling blueberries under straw-hat, like light of broken pixels-gray beard,
smile on face and big overalls touching the ground I think. The money I had wasn’t real and I thought
about confinement in cell and devices of an auburn nature, give me earth and
take me behind the station to take me out into the night so we can sing and
dance.
Going away from pyramid, I saw horses in the field gnawing
at grass in plain view out of the little window where my eyes were probably
fixed permanently in death or in motion.
My hair was so long and it was tickling my nose, I think horses have all
the sensations that humans do and walk around strutting tail in big ass hauling
all of their weight of guilt in incendiary way because nurse trudged me out
into the field buckled down through big patches of nothing as I stared out the
window and wondered if the horses knew by name at this point. I surely think that there is no other
possible way than this one right here in something that is like vision of self.
