Out of the slammer, onto the streets

New Stars Arise / Mixed media on paper / 2018 / RCS

Out of the slammer, and onto the streets. First few hours, it all seems unreal. Then, you’re breathing easier. Squinting up at sunlight. Hearing the downtown traffic flow by sounding like waves out on the Gulf. Stopping at the first air-conditioned bar you come to on Central Ave. When you reach a point in time, you sometimes wish you could start your whole life all over again. Starting anew from first popping out into the world, or at a specific moment. As long as you knew you were you, and you could in fact do a do-over. Starting fresh, with every bit of life knowledge you’ve accumulated. If only you could tilt cause-effect sideways and make everything start again – like mornings, like sentences, like one foot in front of another. Whether you pick 16 or 25, wouldn’t it be something? As long as you’ve got your health, they always say. Scientists are working on Immortality Pills. You read about it in the National Enquirer in the County lockup’s library. When you’ve made enough mistakes to last two lifetimes, you wonder what’s kept you going. So often we’re prisoners of our own minds. Always getting ahead of ourselves. Listening to the wrongheaded inside voice. The way we recount a drowning before going for a swim. Trapped in replay after replay of past events and experiences. Long lists of if only things had happened differently jamming up your brain. How come we always see other’s lives more clearly than we see our own? Starting to relax into the cool and dark air-conditioned barroom after halfway finished with your second beer. Seeing the one couple in the corner booth whispering and smiling, and at the jukebox a skinny guy’s leaning over and reading the titles of songs. While standing up at the bar, you consider how paying and tipping feels so foreign. You start a list in your head – things you can’t do when you’re in lock-up. Outside in the sunshine, you walk to Tampa Bay, where you spot a seagull on top of a wooden pole. Muttering to himself. Wishing you had some junk food to feed him. Mr. Seagull is a part of this world and he completely owns a piece of the sky and the next flight pattern he’ll create, sailing through the air over the waves. How lucky he is.

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