Landscaping/Up All Night
By: Matt Janeski
Tags: Writing, New Jersey, Lyricalfiction, Poetry

Landscaping

Is the natural history available with my face to the blacktop? If I stopped and went down stopped in the middle of the road would it speak like a river?

Always fearing death from above, our skin asunder but we never feared that which was looming and then finally here: depression, decline, breakdown so virulent and pervasive that it undid all we had built. Our beautiful kingdom in beige, undone. Time unbelievably passed. Now, my dry kingdom far from the coast:

Trees planted to block the view if they could see the native grass now making a return along the Chemlawn now as the summer comes up June.

You chucked that thing at my face and it killed me I sunk down into the water and then we dried off slept in the playhouse in the four pines dreaming of wrestlers.

The West: the national parks, timber, coastal roads, ranges and the breathtaking grandeur of the mess and destruction done by geology. There is no denying it, it is beautiful. I will never argue with you there, man. But:

This is our grandeur. How many times have my lungs been caught up in the surprise of these places? We don’t need a humbling grizzly or geyser, no, only the field cut and ended for acres and acres of progress and promise. This is where they put you, Californians! Welcome to the land of your first snowfall. Modelhouse, district, center and committee. There is no geography or regional dish to recommend us. But, to the dreamer willing to spend time detached in the afternoon hours, there is a new nature available.

Never more so obvious than now, now that our town has been mown of people and progress.

Hear my footfall as I move through this empty swimming pool without impediment. How many hours consumed by this monster? How many days running around in a ring from the parking garage to the cinema to the pickup car? Its glass heart moves no more. Who would it serve and where would it serve them to?

Now there is nothing coming soon. Empty is empty. The stores are shut for good the fixtures for sale sold. The fountain is dry, the coins collected.

Now I am emigrated to the dreamworld. As if at the ocean I had been folded under with lungfulls of salt that would never be unstoppered. No air to my lungs I see the vision which had been hinted at. Time stopped, streets empty of cars, doors unlocked and open, the woods reclaiming the lots. Time stopped and the rest is a silent gasp first kiss moment.

If I say so you wanna under the gravel shot light. Under the gravel shot street light got a cold but and she said that while you guys were dancing.

We left the basement to take a walk before I knew the word cul-de-sac. Coming to a loop (cul-de-sac) between the houses our township laid itself out under a cliff. I had not known there was any elevation to this had not felt a rise as we walked in the still hush of summer three o’clock. So, below us little princes were our people in their houses. Imagine them and surely our hopes and fortunes are out there in the sea somewhere. Surely our girlfriends and wives. Surely our sworn enemies a punch in the mouth. Surely an answerer comforter out there somewhere in the awe. I had not known there was elevation there nor have I seen it since. I cannot find our cliff, Billy. I cannot choose which of these ranches hides the view. Your house is empty but your yard still plays the floodcatcher. Birds have nested above your porch I cannot see us too clearly cannot see to where now.

Is this the soft post-apocalypse I had imagined? The first brother swallowed up the sea so he could walk out to shipwrecks. Have wanted more than anything. There is no traffic, most every one is gone, the air is clear.

Picture this or go see it yourself: They cleared the ground carefully flattened it and sloped up the edges of a football field length and width. Laid the whole thing over with gravel stone. On top covered it with chain link which we know is vertical but here was horizontal. So that when we found this place we walked out onto a fence between the stones and the sky. We had lighters, made some little fires.

Weird most of the time now, each day is deep in the summer, said by the choral buzz of the cicadas from the trees, even the shade of the weeping willow is invaded by the mug, the blanket, another wait.

Though I lined up nofilter tips, mixed with soda, as the true excerpts from the dawn, I’m leaving anyways. Miss the practice because you had two first times, both totallywasted and sick-as-a-dog, rolled up. That end time is all the same one day. Each evening homestead the same one place whether it be a party lawn or the bloodrun wet cut.

Rabbit run through the development on the hills. Rabbit rest in the weeds of the common area. A few holdouts dry echo the early pioneers, the first buy-in to the new real estate future. One unit cloned so the whole hillside is draped yes draped in grey wood. Million-dollar-homes. Will the sweep of the fortune hand touch us again on the cheek with the new telecable or another AT&T beautiful architecture? Will the baby bells breed a new idol to draw them from India again? From Gangee shores a new gang came. To fill these voided homes to name an address Singh Patel Tasker.

Last exit and past, around the warning guardrail into the pine barony. When I was born at Overlook the first promise was that this would be finished soon. We would be joined to the main artery by four lanes solid black that would take us to the city in body sprouted cars. These lanes would take a few of us, who would not reach the city or make it back but besides everything else, turned over, shorn and memorialized.

Each year undone uncompleted. Each map handling it differently, some leaving the space unbroken green some a dotted line some an anticipating line with (coming soon, to be built, proposed). They nearly made it, too. In the end the highway was less than a mile from its goal. Across the gap we stared at the German line or ran out into the last field which was supposed to be a highway by now but it was tall grass flowers edenic dust to dust.