Honea Express

Archive for the ‘Anger’ Category

And he found them not where they were supposed to be and doing the things they shouldn’t. He had left them alone among the molehills and found them perched upon the mountains.

They were laughing and full of fun and getting away with being young. They were silent and drained of joy and by all means busted.

He was tired. There were long days behind him and long nights ahead. His back, it burned with exhausted muscle and it erupted with spasms of stress and it resorted to a door frame to keep it remotely upward.

Ropes wind and they twirl and they roll nicely off the spool and one minute you’re tying knots and making swings from trees and old tires and the next your hands are empty and your metaphor is at its end.

Then they are sorry and they cry and they’ve said it all before, for instance, last night when he stood propped against the same tired door frame grown weak and weary beneath the burden of his weight. And the waiting still grows heavy.

Words were said louder than they needed to be. Threats were made that were never meant. Little feet scurried to where they should have been and behind them they left a trail of guilt like so many bread crumbs. Sweet, innocent, beautiful guilt, and they cried loudly as he closed the door in hopes that doing so will save them all.

The hallway is long and lonely and it only need be examined a dozen or so times before it is ingrained firmly upon his brain. Every footstep has purpose. Every crack is considered. Life is bends that do not break and behind the door there is only the sound of their heavy slumber.

Their bread crumbs are soft and smooth and shaped like plush piles of imagination. He picks them up one by one, carefully, quietly, and he carries them into the room and places them where they are supposed to be, in the arms of his affections. And his whispers are for forgiveness

My children are getting the better of me. They are my everything and then some. Nothing makes me happier than their happiness. Nothing fills me with more love than their love. And yet, they drive me crazy.

They are pushing it.

I hide in my office, in my work and behind fingers of bourbon. I hide from their screams and their need and the non-stop trips from bed for things that never mattered during their waking hours.

I hide from the demons that stir when their voices become fingernails across my blackboard.

My anger is a reflection. I am angrier at myself for being angry than I am with them. It is complicated in its simplicity.

Time is too valuable to waste on moments such as this. Theirs is but a moment against minutes. Theirs is a haiku pulled from the heart of a sonnet.

Mine is gruff and coarse and grown over with callous.

Each scream unheeded rolls into the next and they become one, sharpened upon the stone of my heart and tempered within the sea of their tears.

It is a battle that they wage and they are as unrelenting as I am unarmed.

Tomorrow the sun will rise and their smiles will pale the sunshine. I am ready for this, in fact I crave it. But I need this time. I need this night of solitude and a constant stream of thought uninterrupted. I need to hide, and just for a night I need to not be found.

In one hand was a glass of whisky. It had been there but minutes. It had been needed much longer.

The other hand was marked with streaks of black. It was soot. It was nothing. It hadn’t come from fighting forest fires or confusing arson for acts of passion. It had come from lighting candles and placing them at random around the room. The soot was stubborn and refused to leave, insisting instead that it be smeared across knuckles and up finger thick rivers to where they became a confluence- a mighty stream only to disappear beneath the tunnel of an unflattering shirt-sleeve.

It felt good to be dirty and sipping whisky. It made it feel like the fight was over. There is a clarity there, between harsh words and smooth bourbon, that few ever know. It is a moment and as moments go it is one of the better.

But the fight had not yet begun and the harsh words were unsure if they would ever escape, but waited anxious and uncomfortable as waves of whisky flowed past on heated screams, taunting and angry for having been caught.

The candles had curfews and places to be. They left the room suddenly and without regret. The words grew drunk and drowsy and the clarity began to fall into question.

One hand poured more moments from the bottle while the other held still the glass.

We all know the story. Man creates monster. Monster comes to life. Man loses control of monster. Man and monster do a show-stopping rendition of Putting on the Ritz. It’s classic storybook.

There is a monster in America and it isn’t singing. It’s screaming hate and the sound of its ignorance is echoing across the country. It is leaving fear in its wake.

McCain is many things, most of which I don’t agree with, but despite his lack of judgment and poorly chosen words I don’t think he is an agent of evil. An agent of the past, yes. A recipe for disaster, clearly, but evil? No. I don’t believe that.

The monster in this scenario isn’t covered in stitches and bolts. It isn’t being chased by a mob of angry villagers armed with torches and pitchforks. This monster? It is that mob.

There has been an alarming trend growing on the campaign trail and it is disgusting. People were told it was okay to distrust Barack Obama because he was different than them. People were encouraged to let their fear of the new be the common bond between them.

Then they began chanting racial epithets. They shouted chants of violence. They engaged in lies, and worse, they believed them.

They are out of control.

By no means do I believe this is the thought process of the typical McCain supporter, nor the majority, but the fact is that it is happening, it is alarming, and it is spreading. A mentality has been exposed that most of us, on both sides of the proverbial aisle and those independent of it, had thought, or at least hoped, was a dying whisper of generations past.

Racism is alive and well in America and McCain the campaign, if not McCain the man, has let it out. It is out of control. It is a monster and it is haunting us.

We can fear it or we can fight it. I hope we fight, regardless of our politics.

There are few things sweeter than taking the misguided words of a misguided man and turning them into a rallying cry for that which he opposes. This is how you own it:
Special thanks to Jason Avant and Barack Obama.