“White Walls”

“New American Century”

Life’s greatest joy is harmony through symmetry,

great epiphanies in every brain and doorway.

Somehow we’ll stay warm and have plenty,

even if life gets us down, even if the pockets be empty,

we’ll hold on for this New American Century.

Smile big and wide, come chill with me,

all we can ask for is our daydream nation,

and that’s what we get, from station to station,

believing in lines in place of liberty;

somehow now we’re a product of our accessories

because we got lost in the tunnels, with bombs in our hearts,

never stopping to wish for the old glow of sparks.

But,

one thing we do know:

this dream is forever ours, and it is ours to save,

only in the land of the somewhat free,

home of the sunny day brave.

“Of Rocket Ships and Roses” – the rough intro to a short story

Of Rocket Ships and Roses

 

Ocean Gaines lived over on Kingston Street which was known for only one reason: several of his elderly neighbors, and I mean really elderly, older than taxes, had whole fence lines lined with these big, beautiful rose bushes. They were a wonder for the entire small town, some four thousand strong, and each person in that town from the big to the really little lost all the air in their lungs when they passed those fence lines and walked that special sidewalk. Each house had a chain-link fence and on certain windy days the petals would escape through and OH: the whole sidewalk on both sides would be covered in little flakes of crimson. When he was a kid, probably no more than ten, Ocean would run up and down the street until he thought his little heart would explode in his chest, never once pausing to see the source of his amusement receive nourishment, the very trick to life itself, and besides that those neighbors scared him – wax skin and the eyes that have seen too much….old bones creaking as they poured water from the green plastic cans, an obsession with beauty masked as simple duty. Their discipline was a blur from the side, gone forever with every footstep crashing through crimson pools, gone forever except to bet met again each shining day. Sometimes he thought he’d just die right there on the sidewalk in front of those decrepit statues performing their watering rounds and they’d have to be the one to save him, this ambiguous shape laying in the petals that cushioned his falling body like a snowfield. They would carry him home, petals over the eyelashes, and his mother with the dark eyes would meet them at the door, his pallbearers before the funeral. It was for the better that he was too young to understand the poetic nature of that sort of death, but then again who is?? No use getting hung up on overly dramatic poetic imagery.

In the late 1990’s, which even then seemed like a fever dream of regimented prosperity to young Ocean, everyone had too many places to go and too many people to see as the old cliche goes and believe it it went, passed around, and true to society’s form mom and dad would constantly be on the go. Mom would sub at the school and Dad would pull shifts at the prison just outside of town.

Today the sidewalk wasn’t as extreme as Ocean would have liked: the rose petals on the sidewalk had clumped in to blotches of red every seven feet or so. The rose petals that just the other day were thrown in to the air by a particularly wild gust of wind and landed all over Mr. Gomez’s house, covering the roof and the yard and even the inside like red locusts were gone…Gomez considered cleaning them up, but he was a lazy man and he knew a wind would come tomorrow. He thought today would be the day but no, today it was just a bored, lonely wind that was desperately wanting to pick up but just couldn’t find the strength.

It was our temporary universal laziness, manifested in lonely gusts of wind. It was a laughable display of nature, not even enough to entertain a thirteen year old kid on a bike. Ocean defied it the only way he knew how – by laughing at it, mocking the meager chills that turned on goosebumps on to his arm, laughed at it’s strength of pride (only because he didn’t know any better), and went on, the only way to beat anything.

Don’t…go…to….the ponds. Do you understand?

Yes.

Good.

“Yeah mom. Bye.

And off he was gone, pedaling down the neighborhood and out of sight until later that afternoon. As he turned the corner on to his neighborhood, he began to peddle faster, slicing on to the sidewalk and nearly went flying head first to the concrete. He gripped hard on the handlebars and pulled up, flying off the curb at the very beginning of the western part of Kingston Street, deciding to take to the open street instead of the sidewalk, which was as pockmarked and scattered like certain pieces of his dreams. The wind was now starting to make a little more noise and he pictured himself cutting through it, a rocket ship that couldn’t be stopped. Just peddle as hard as you can straight for home. He began to laugh that famous laugh of his as the puddles of rose petals flew up and spun around his bicycle like miniature cyclones on parade unprepared to catch the shape moving through their area, hopelessly deciding at the last minute to spin around the boy on the bike. It was a miracle he even got the bike going rocket speed which is the desired speed always – now he was approaching home and could already see his mom out in the garden around the left side of their house trying to use the morning to get as much work as she could in.

No rose bushes grew at his house. People driving down Kingston Street would notice the procession of rose bushes marching down the street except for that one house – it appeared to be trying its hardest to remain completely anonymous or at least it looked that way. And according to the neighbors: the Gaines family and their small, gray house with that ugly white trim were accomplishing just that, for the most part and they were doing a damn good of it! No one knows when the decision was made to drift to effortlessly in to suburban obscurity except for Mr. Duke Gaines, the leader of their clan of misfits. “No harm when there’s no foul,” he would say as he admired his suburban slice from the front porch. He loved the feeling of being a good, patriotic, anonymous American and it’s been the plan since day one to keep things going that way, rain or fucking shine. Just a bunch’ah bellyachin’ and bitchin’ as he always liked to say and his dad did before that.

 

 

And here we go…

once more a—a—round, round, round!…

one more time say yeah,

get me to a merry-go-round!

once more a—a—round, round, round

the merry go round!

 

 

“Ocean!”

Elizabeth Gaines had looked up from her job of trimming the hedges just in time to see her son and his bike come screeching to a halt at the beginning of the driveway. “How was your bike ride, honey?” As usual he says “good” and throws his helmet off, starts quickening his step bit by bit the closer he gets to the front door.

“Just okay?”

She had dropped what she was doing and moved out from around the house to get a closer look at her son. His hair was ruffled and slightly tangled near the front, a nice patch of scratches and dirt pasted like a collage to the right side of his face. Fresh grass stains marked his white tee-shirt and the knees of his blue jeans. Every time she saw him he was this way. He’s finally grown taller. Ocean, her little boy with eyes the color of the Pacific when it hits the lonely, gray Oregon coast had stopped and was now staring her down, breaking her heart with that blank glance, always studying and never dreaming past this neighborhood. On car-rides she had noticed those eyes pressed to the glass, looking to the source of the rain for why he was the way he was. His Uncle had sometimes done stuff like that – look up for something big to go flying ahead, a missile or something batshit like that, and it had never come, but still they look….he’s lonely because he’s let down and I don’t blame him. Could that be it?? She wanted to say something to him, to just shatter that scared shield when he wasn’t expecting it. Funny, she can’t, but only an idea is really needed in cases like Ocean.

She waited there for an answer, radiant smile brighter than usual.

“Did you have a good bike ride?” she asked.

“Yeah. It was fine.”

“Where’d you go to?”

“Just over to Todd’s and then the pond.”

“Oh….what’d you do at the pond?”

The pond had started last summer as a hot button around the Gaines house; by March, it was on the scale of the Desert Storm and now the second war, you know….the Big One, could begin any day now. Each side tried to play off the other, gearing up for the big, war-like debate, with Duke drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette and his brother, that loyal sidekick who he fought on a second front with, might join his side or play the role of village idiot, shaking his bottle of Pepsi and saying “this is mine! This soda is mine!” over and over, this land is my land and you better stay the fuck away from it. Have you ever tried to work with someone like that? It’s potent futility and you’ll go straight stupid, pure and unflinching. The horrible kind of stupid and pointless that puts you to sleep for days. So play this one lightly, which doesn’t work either – whatever he was about to say to her didn’t matter, because goddamnit, she knew just what he was about to do. She always knew and every day that got older came a new resentment for that talent.

These things he could obviously never understand. Or: maybe just not yet.

“Shot frogs. Todd and I.”

“Ocean!” Hands to the hips with the hate-eyes and the head craning to the side, not for theater but only for the outstanding windup. But the words didn’t come and the expected this is. Off-balance he shuffled his foot, thinking he had a really good game won but realizing very suddently that he didn’t have a battle plan. It was over before he said the word “frogs.”

“I didn’t go to the ponds!”

“Where then?”

Silence.

“The California Frown”

On Friday nights we go to our favorite spots get to disconnect the dots, stoned free kids completely read right, white and blue free. Our parents barely get by so we

write our own tunes faces buzzing like balloons left behind to live in an endless

summer, a full memory on rewind.

All the kids get down to The California Frown, it’s the brand new sensation. We made it

okay to live in this crooked nation by checking out for permanent vacations,

living and dying by radio stations lifting antennas up to God so drink it by the

beakers, it’s simple lovemaking to the speakers. You could turn on, turn in, we’ve

already burnt out.

Motto: live free and die even faster, our mark a pukestain on a dorm room wall told to all by the

internet, our best buddies spending years in the desert to come back as old vets. Now

we Kings and Queens living as young money royalty but we don’t want the crowns.

What a vision to see the rich kids trading math and quick laughs with the bad kids

from a worse part of town. That’s one bar of The California Frown.

On Saturday nights we get lost on brew and pills, pot mountains and beats and drum fills looking

at a world lacking in hope sermons by bums with black teeth broadcasting nothing

but dope who knows where to go, we only pray our world lights up like a Christmas tree wrapped in snow.

We can’t describe our California Frown.

In these glory days we’re blessed by what we’re told we need best. I know a girl my age who happens to be an angel draped in a summer dress, she knows me best let me pause stop reflect on what me and her have been through: late night trial runs, the old traps of youth but she feels truly blessed a kind white light that gets rid of all my distresses – spirit of young freedom, my sunlight resurrected. She’s a note drifting above moonlit trees, a vision of beauty that finds me on my knees.

Sun goes down.

O how wonderful, I’ve got my California Frown.

Welcome to “The Joshua Davis”

So, the first thing: I am a bored, unemployed, twenty-one year old writer living in Eugene, OR. I have no immediate future because I’m bombing out of college, because: A)I’m restless and want to be a writer, talent be damned; B)I’ve never fallen in love with the idea of doing one thing for the rest of my life, which I’ve heard is a good and a bad thing, but oh well.

Moving on. I started this because maybe some random people who have never met me (lucky you) will stumble across this dark corner of the internet, bored as I usually am, and maybe they’ll find some kind of enjoyment. That’s the point of art, right? That and artistic self-fulfillment.

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting random, various things, and maybe you’ll love me or maybe you’ll hate me. We’ll just wait and see. Hope you enjoy.

 

Love,

Joshua

“The Cottonwoods”

I think of Grandpa Bill, a nickel tucked in a shoe,
westbound to California, run from the Irish wake blues.
His mother had just died. Relatives gathered ’round;
for three days he knew no sound, except the plucking of
heartstrings, and the dead, like lightning, finding a way to the ground.
Like clockwork his Pa had another round, not just one but two,
his soul buried in more than rot and sand. A misunderstood justice,
delivered from a gnarled hand.

Stories I heard, haunted by vibrations from just three days,
never again understanding evil people and their civil ways.
But I guess it pays to be young, and he heard the trains,
hellcats ripping through Virginia night, eyes blistering with
nervous moonlight. Then the Old Man, always right, that mad
dad full’a beer, playing his new performances of knocks
to an audience full of fright and good cheer.

They had an Irish Wake, like an heirloom on display,
spooked and ghostly, maybe the dead would wake front and center.
Storms were quelled and given life there in the living room,
if only for a few moments, you can’t hide a hidden temper.
Choruses, choruses, the fist and shotguns, relatives drinking
and spun like tops on tables, the telling of tall tales,
let’s add on to old Irish fables.
Leave it to the angels to be experts on sin.
There you go!

To California! To California!
Under that sky one could live off their own shoes.
To California! To sweet California!
Bless the train, bringer of glorious red, white, and blue.

I heard he was tall as a mountain, thin as a rail,
a voice clear to tremble might, an escape from a jail.
That is the sweet sad mark of old adventure.
On a train he found faith, wisdom, took a chance on truth,
on that rocket he found the key to youth: adventure.
He didn’t know how far it was to the west.
All he had on him was scorn, an old steel-stringed guitar,
and he still wore that funeral vest.

To California! To California!
Look at God and give his plan a big ol’ laugh!
To California! To California!
Only believe in the possibility of your nation.

Week later landing and running to Sacramento.
What a story, and how all the good ones go:
He married the first girl he spoke to, and it’s
never what you know but who you know. In his
life of grand escape, he watched Depression and saw
a nation bloom in to something more. Not that it meant
anything in the end, he was simple enough to enjoy his door.

To Destiny! To California!
May what lays ahead always set you free!
To California! To the western dream!
A road begins from here to Kentucky.

I remember the funeral, I was only three. First person
I knew to die; first march to surrender a funeral wreath .
Hank Williams played through the night,
the old Cottonwoods raged before the street,
a few weeks later I saw the train and recognized that old beat.
It is the twang of history, a precession of candlelight
Not even the rust can throw it off its tune, powered by song
and the wandering moonlight strolls to see its thunder:
To California, my heart for every wonder.

“To Such Great Heights”

To what great heights
we push up above our means
before shorting out
in front of the bright lights.

Spangled banners and common prose,
above all others, to the sun
we run and we rose
before shorting out again.

To look is to feel,
I hide behind a pen.
But if you cross me out
we fall from such great heights.