Li Po/Tu Fu Book

I was chilling the camper behind my house tonight, listening to Hawkwind really loud, when I realized it was pretty damn late and I should probably go to bed to rest my head long enough to make the sunshine not burn a hole into my brain come morning time. As I was standing there waiting for "Silver Machine" to end, I scoped the books stacked sideways with a kink in the camper, and saw my Li Po and Tu Fu Penguin collection, which grabbed my attention like a cobra clutch. I pulled it out to throw in the truck for tomorrow, in case I end up stranded riverside for 9 hours, against my conscious will, and the book had a bend to the bottom corner from being stacked haphazardly, like I do my books, because they are there for using not saving. Well, I did that reverse shuffle thumb trick to bend it back in place like you do when shuffling cards, and a breezy flow of something, not really a chill but I guess that's how it'd be described, ran up my left arm, like a whole bunch of little tiny bugs descended up my arm all at once. Except there were no bugs. It was weird, but that is the flow of things. As I've gotten older, I've become more polluted and often times seem to be out of touch with it, but it was there for a minute.
Old Chinese poetry speaks at me in ways a lot of shit doesn't, and I have no idea why. I am the son of a chainsaw mechanic, one who always feels he has failed in his father's eyes, because I can't fix everything on fucking earth. But my father's dead, so why worry about it. Actually we were talking about my dad's funeral tonight, because for some reason I had called in sick to work the day he died... hahaha, like there was some mysterious reason. I have always called in sick regularly, so that was no shocking coincidence. But I was home that day, and I got a call he was headed to the hospital, and this is how we relayed it tonight over dinner, I was sitting down to put on boots, and I said, "This is it." My wife said, "What'd you say?" and I couldn't say it again, but before I could lace up my second boot, the phone rang again, because he was dead already.
At his funeral, I spoke, because my dad's wife's brother was a preacher from Wisconsin, and he did the graveside ceremony, which was all we had, and the preacher was shitty. But I had been plotting out what I would say, and didn't know entirely how it would shake it because I like to let those things shape themselves as they happen, and I remember crystal clearly, riding off of 15 south out of Farmville onto 460 towards Rice, and my dead uncle Ricky's old buddy Tony, who had settled down in amazing fashion and was a cop back home then, he was blocking traffic, and we rode by and I was thinking the things in my head that I might say, and I was crazy in the brain. The stepmother's brother did his stumbling with his little pocket Bible, and I spoke words that meant a lot to me, and came out good, and as much as my dad was a dick and put crooked kinks in my brain flow, he was still a good dude, and those words I spoke that day showed my love and respect for him more than anything else he probably ever saw. Shit, he most likely thought I was some sort of faggot, knowing the way his brain worked, at least through what he said.
His gravemarker actually has a chainsaw etched on it, and my uncle Ricky right beside him has a funny car doing a burnout on his. This has always bothered me because it makes me think if you shrunk my life down to a gravemarker made by the four people closest to me, what would be the image they used up insurance money to honor with me? I feel bad thinking it might be a five-in-one painter's tool, which is a tattoo I'm gonna get as soon as I'm done with painting, so that it looks like a five-in-one is sticking out my back pocket, tattooed down onto my ass cheek and sticking above my beltline. This gets dangerously close to a tramp stamp for a man, and though I dream of being a tramp ala that Otis Redding song with that Carla bitch, it will be no tramp stamp. Mostly I hope when they etch those digits into a marker for my about-to-be-buried ass, there's plenty of thangs tucked into that dash in between the Feb. 14, 1973 and the end time. I've done okay to this point, but I tend to get clogged up in myself at times. It is my nature. I observe, note, overthink, confuse, and frustrate, all to myself. The key to getting any writing out of it is to go mad with caffeine and motivation when the observe and note point is going on, squeeze some good tangents out of the overthink period, maybe throw in an alcoholic infusion to make the confuse part entertaining and a fresh read for my own eyes when others point out the funny parts later, and then hide from the frustration, which seems to fester for longer periods of time now that I'm getting older.
Anyways, the Li Po/Tu Fu collection blew fairy dust up my arm, so I started flipping through it, and I remembered how Tu Fu is one of my favorite rappers ever. Why stress? My life is dilapidated in corners, and cluttered in others, but I am what I'm supposed to be. Daily struggles are struggles, and sometimes have me contemplating headfirst dives off the tallest bridges within two tanks of gas from here, but I never lack for sleep once my head finally hits the pillow, alarm clock's lime green digits casting a fake aura on my brain, until I turn the baby monitor backwards and point its light against the alarm's, blocking them both out at each other, and waiting for the sun, which hopefully will trick itself into being two hours late. Our rooster actually crows nowadays, standing on their waterer, and you can hear it from the bedroom. It makes me feel good, laying there, hoping for a snooze button cycle with no kids flopping on my head or wife mentioning a bill that needs to be mailed out today or mind flusters wondering how much progress can be made with sandpaper and paintbrush in the next eight hours, for nine minutes of pure uncluttered sleep, half-deep since when on snooze button mode, you know it's about to BRRRP BRRRP BRRRP on your head right quick again at any moment. I mean, you know what moment, but if you sit there watching it, you don't get to use it right.
I don't know why I'm thinking about gravemarker etchings, because I'd hope, in a perfect world, they'd bury me right here in the field next to my dead goats when I die. I know you have 48 hours to do so in the state of Virginia, no formaldehyde, so hopefully my wife and mom can get it done, should I pass before them. Down in the field, and take my Dremel and fix the attachments, and carve my shit into a cinderblock. Or the big ass white quartz rock I snatched from George Washington National Forest when visiting Boogie Brown that one time. Etch my name, my pertinent dates, and where the dash is between birth date and death date, draw a rooster standing on top with a comic book talk bubble coming from his mouth, that says "Words was bonds."