Have You Ever Wanted To Live Within The Pages Of A Book?
By Matt Staff
I want to drink myself dry, exist one-night stand to one-night stand, hangover to anything but cold as an arctic stone sober alongside Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway – the terrific, booze, wine-infused trio we’d damn well be.
I want to love, bare my soul, and walk along freckle, pebbled beaches with a young, long, blonde shock-haired female out of a Nicholas Sparks novel – ‘cause, they’re all so fucking romantic aren’t they – Rachel McAdams, you’ll do.
I want to lay back, arms extended overhead, windswept fried fish smells with dried dusty grass – and gaze up at a barren, blackened, canvas.
A canvas void from a trace of a hint of a brushstroke, save for the sole glare, from a star’s flare.
Then hop on board a Douglas Adams imagined spacecraft, robot sidekick in tow, spewing incomprehensible, automated jargon, and sail. Fucking sail, sail outwards toward space, the unsolvable, Rubix cube that it is.
Pit stop, exchange pleasantries with the man on the moon, snap an insta-selfie, crouched in front of a long since struck, planted, American flag – #madeit.
Run, sprint ‘till the wheels fall off, childishly keeping stride with Usain Bolt.
The demi-god, Usain’s a lighting strike, on a track, appears, then vanishes faster than the mind can process a blindsided face smack.
Subsequent echoing booms of thunder, of course. Smack of his shoes, on the reddened clay, damn mere single digit breaths away from finishing that which was just begun.
Fools, they really race themselves tired against the bolt?
I want to rise with the sun, cock-a-doodle-doo before the adamant rooster, jump out of bed as if the bed were caught ‘a flame, refuge available outside the bedroom door.
Flood, flood a valley of twilight, midnight, blinding darkness with burnt-biscuit toned rays of wake-the-fuck-up, wipe the bleary from your eyes citizens, pour your sulfur-watered down coffees, act as if you, her, him, he, she, are all okay with removing yourselves from your caves.
I want to work under Captain Ahab’s supervision, suffer at the fins, undocumented mythological tusks of a big blue, Moby Dick, you might’ve heard of him.
Melville has, the incomprehensible, over-intellectual prick.
Helplessly tread water, swimming lessons were always overvalued, inevitably drown at sea, Ahab’s ship plundered, plastered , splintered past repair – lungs inhaling death, exhaling salt water, nothing else – and unconsciously receive rescue from Poseidon’s bastard son, half fin’s, half man, all golden virtue. His father was always quite the asshole, he’s hell-bent on carrying out a life, rife with acts that’ll make up for that which his father lacked in morality.
I want to hold eye contact, host a stare-down with the Eye of Sauron. Whimper, as my balls of melted, malleable steel shrivel, from moment’s first gaze onwards.
Follow Frodo off the beaten path, light off Gandalf’s prohibited stockpile of fantastical fireworks, then make with haste for the evil-encrusted hills of Mordor.
Study, commit to memory archery under Legolas – then grow, and let flow an elven inspired man bun, before I let fly an impeccably aimed arrow in, through, back out the other end of Smaug’s scaled, soul.
I want to follow T.S. Elliot, dutifully as a golden retriever named Betty Sue, through the witch’s wardrobe.
Stepping through a portal, to a land, where lion’s roar wisdom, and children are taught to tell stories, spared the essay-writing learning.
I want, a life in-throughout-n-out the pages.