Still life, with irony

It’s a warm Thursday night after the rain and I’m sitting on a concrete bench at the park, watching the tall illuminated Christmas tree in the distance from the opposite side of the lake. I’m holding my legs tight against my body, crossed over at the shins, waiting for the sweat to cool off my shirt before going home for dinner.

The bright Christmas lights flicker on and off and shift to a different color following a fixed pattern only to start again at the beginning: It goes from red to white to green, then to a myriad of variant pulsing abstract drawings shadowdancing in white, before going back to red again.

If you want me to be perfectly honest with you it’s pretty lame as far as Christmas trees go but I stay like that indefinitely anyhow and lose track of time altogether. There’s nothing going on in my mind and it just feels like touching something, somewhere else entirely as if plucking a piece off creation and hiding it in a box underneath god’s bed while he sleeps soundly, oblivious of myself: All my past tomorrows melt away into ensuing yesterdays— everything connecting then falling apart then re-connecting, etc— very, very limited in range and scope and wingspan and with this clear end in sight, dreadfully so— it kind of sucks in that aspect but not a lot, not really, no big news here right?— but I just shrug and choose to ignore everything because it’s not really making much sense and all in all that’s one cheap Christmas tree over there anyway.

Then there’s this deep voice booming from out of nowhere asking me if I plan on staying around here much longer. It goes something like this: “Do you plan on staying around here much longer?”
When I turn around I see a figure clad entirely in back— the security guard droning around nearby as far as short-lived metaphors go, telling me it’s well past ten and he needs to lock up the gate, and if I choose to stay I’ll end up having to climb over the fence in order to go home.
I frown for a split-second then tell him I’m pretty sure that gate isn’t usually locked before eleven. He says it’s his first day on the job.
“Hey congrats then, man” I tell him as I stand up and shake the dirt from the bench off my ass with a slap to my shorts, then bid him goodbye and trudge home for a shower and some dinner.


I’m quite positive there’s a message in all of this somewhere, somehow but just look at that tree again, will you? It’s so half-assed it just kills me, perish the thought.