cellar of existentialism

Lonely Vikings part II. This was etched onto recycled paper last Fall, approximately 4:32 am on a Thursday. Part I was mistakenly erased in a frantic Nikolai Gogol moment after reading "Dead Souls", though both versions of 'Vikings' were similar in context if I remember correctly, written from the same shaky black desk, the same useless glowing keyboard, long lashes and the like, the delicate cast-iron pen of a madman, a gambler like my dead hero. You can also learn a lot from the shady dealing, Chichikov. 

The bulk of copper is in the basement, it's scintillating; bare bright number 1, they lay in battered coils among the forgotten suits of wool and the spider egg globes, a smelly gas canister with barely a gallon of the liquid gold, another tank with a mixture of oil and fuel, the petrol for a broken weed eater, a sober hedge clipper, starry patterns of mold and galaxies of coffin dust lay in ruin with the weathered boxes.

There are spotless hordes of unused tools and greasy well loved ones, the heavy red tool box that doesn't close properly, warped by years of abuse, grape juice and hardly a vineyard, the drizzle of rain never once yielding a single grape, the moist fence posts fat from the rain and comforted by the sodden leaves of remote grass.

Empty aerosol canisters stand like hopeless sentinels in brittle wooden apple crates, a raggedy vegetable cart and sack of rye, salvaged and starved fields of robust wire skin pollute the shelled cement floor in strange heaps and tin silo's, a crumb of fetid bread in the corner for the camel crickets and the decayed remnants of a frozen rat turd. Sweet-gum Cardboard boxes containing recycled paper garbage, spirals of telephone wire and broken circuit boards, old phlegmatic filters and the skeletal syrupy remains of an orchid grasshopper, an old Charlatan record for Jen, hidden gloved treasures, a sad oil-lamp with a holy Saki Monkey atop an imperial throne, the banana a tarnished gold and somehow majestic in the pallid calm of light.

On the wall there are cracked fruit jars and a cedar cigar box containing 200 year old stamps, a stray nail or two, feral caskets, mesh baskets and some curled latticework sections from an ugly abandoned house littered with ghosts.

The badly painted and wood-chipped door is slightly ajar, it looks chewed by a ravenous rodent and neglected for a thousand years. An ancient coke can lays on a bed of antique doll parts. There is a sincere Japanese paper lantern and a copper-chrome nozzle that doesn't fit any arc welder I have. There are small cut hoses and some old box fans. As a well-versed child , I pretended they were skyscrapers, I would stare into the hollow shadows of a small dying electric heater, my tiny elf ears reddened by the imagination and soothing heat of being fantastically poor, I pretended it was an industrial  furnace, I was cold.

There are bamboo stalks through the northern foggy-damp window, slick residue on the tanned glass, there is a small splinter imperfection on the sill and some distraught thumb-tacks. It looks like a miry Thailand jungle canopy outside especially when there are torturous downpours, scanning the ceiling canvas for cobwebs, eyes downward and it's at least ten degrees cooler, the melodic tools and the odd coal chip from outside, a wood chipper missing the choke and astringent cord, bleary-tarred work boots and a beaten hammer lay together like two bitter lovers.

Dog-eared classic novels in a bludgeoned shoe-box, write like Rembrandt, blind you with its sheer beauty, my beatific world of phosphorous chewing-gum maples and lightly shelled brick steps with slender black iron Israeli railing. This soft old day, a muddy glimpse into a dank basement and the toys of youth, I wanted to drink plant food as an infant, I loved the pristine blue liquid, the angelic globes and spheres above my pallet in the floor. My warm blanket of frost, I would daydream and pretend to ride with swords slashing, my horned helmet and animal skin suit, my loud rapturous yawp reverberating throughout the plagued countryside and poetic valley before the mountains.

There is a chewed pen in my hand, a pen I wrote insecure stories with, a colorless WWII panzer tank once wrapped with newspaper, still entombed in a glass-case- my treasured plastic toy model on an discombobulated shelf, the tank looks like it crawled to an end, it was hit by a Sherman, it sparked with vicious grease plumes of boiling smoke and waxen fire, it must have sat and burned for three days. I imagine some of the little soldiers were half torn and blown away, their little plastic bodies sheared from high caliber bullets from other glued toys with rifles. Some were melted, at the end of the day, War is God.  

Here they are..here's what I've been looking for. The Vikings, their red beards and ice boats, their swords somber and resting on the mantle of the fireplace. The caramel wood, there are stacks of silent books as well, abandoned photographs and lemon peels in an old metal crate. There is a cast iron wood stove and pieces of bronze shrapnel in a war-weary tin bucket, there are heavy Spanish coins I found on a horse carousel at Lakeshore, their strange plastic allure no longer alive but breathing in thick gasps and gushes as the blurs of the determined faces all go sailing by, it's one of my favorite sounds, I love when they gallop, it sounds like thunder when they gallop.