Not an Obsessive

Here I am.

Hallasan National Park.

Part of a group, but now going solo.

I’m going solo because I choose using drums as instruments and music.

Solely drums.

Drums.

Like an acapella.

An acapella that never stops singing.

An drumpella. If you will.

Anyway, I’m

In the forest, with forest animals as my audience. Animals nod along to music.

My music.

My drum music.

What an

Emotional take. The character is so far down the path of weirdness

The animals don’t respond.

They just bob their heads like they’re understanding.

But they don’t understand.

They aren’t people.

Some sniff the ground, others eat the grass growing like uncontrollable weeds.

But I keep to the beat of my own heart.

I don’t let nature ruin this for me.

I’m a solo artist.

Always have.

Always will.

I never really fit in with my bandmates.

I was rejected by my family.

I was always different from other people.

They always wore brown leather hats, coats and shirts.

I boasted denim shorts, flowery khakis that were as ugly as anything.

But I wore them.

I also sported a tang-top.

A neon green.

Or lime green.

Whichever you prefer.

But when I stepped out into that light blazing down on me,

On my hair

That was so highlighted with pink

A Sharpie Highlighter couldn’t do any better

But I rinsed it all out

After taking several showers

And then paying the high water bill

That poured out all the relief of never going back to

That stage again.

The money was poured out like my disinterest in rock bands.

I wasn’t.

Just like my parents weren’t interested in rocking out with me.

I always strived to get them to smile at me,

But I never achieved such a deed.

They had left before I got up.

I felt them looking at my sleeping corpse and then turning around.

Making me feel I had no care in the world whether I knew they left.

It wasn’t my fault.

I was sleeping.

But it wouldn’t really make a difference.

Besides, it’d be a waste of breath to even say ‘Goodbye’ or ‘See you!”

Such coldness, harsh iciness that not even the summer’s heat can melt.

My ice cream melts.

Or at least melted.

The animals and me.

The animals and I.

I don’t join them because they’re animals.

By no means.

I am with them because they’re not judgmental.

Each animal is different.

Each animal sniffs, barks, cries, calls, chirps, twitters or pounds its beak into the wood of a Redwood.

Or does it?

I look up to see a woodpecker, but I can only hear its repetition of drilling.

Like a drill bit.

But it’s not loud and obnoxious.

It’s nature.

It’s the animal’s way.

Way of life.

Accept it.

Agree with it.

Stop trying to jam it out.

That’s what I did with my guitar

Because I didn’t want to play it

Because I wasn’t a rock star

But I did it with my parents

But I wasn’t so I left.

I am free

Because I’m with my own drums.

I will live as a drummer

But my parents can live as someone who doesn’t see me.

He doesn’t agree

And she doesn’t say anything

Possibly out of fear of losing her husband.

But I speak my mind.

Bang!

Bum!

Boom!

The drum speaks.

Speaks to nature.

Speaks to the animals flittering and swooping around me.

Like I’m one with the forest.

But no—

I’m one with the drums.

No.

I am me.

Just a person banging on drums.

My parents would never approve.

Never understand why someone would want to waste their time banging on drums instead of…

Instead of what?

Instead of pound endlessly on a string of wire and a hunk of fancy metal?

Blaring sound radiating poisonously painful headaches, thirsty for Tylenol?

Free from that.

Free from being told what to do.

Free from forcing my poor head to endure such screaming.

Screaming of the noise.

Here, in the forest are sounds so peaceful they remind me of the lapping of a deer’s tongue

As its pinkness kisses the blueness of the water.

Such colors seem to pick me up and invite me over to them.

So I go over.

I stop banging.

Maybe I’m a hypocrite,

Not wanting such sounds to be made—too obnoxious,

But it has to be done sometimes.

The forest animals all gather to me.

I spot a deer in the forest with the light beaming down on it.

Its mouth moves, but no words are spoken.

Its wide baby doe eyes blink.

It looks over.

I smile.

I tear up and let the tears course down my cheeks.

The baby deer stumbles to its full height and then sloppily trots over to quench its thirst.

Its thirst seems to drive out my loneliness.

But then when it leaps about when it sees its mother,

It reminds me of the band I used to play in.

For thirty months.

Thirty years of regret.

I had nightmares of being on stage.

But I’m here, I need to remember.

I need to recall that the birds are chirping.

The trees’ leaves talk while the wind sings over them.

Messing with them.

Like a mother tangles with a child’s hair.

A child wanting to just frolic and inhale such sweet fresh air.

Not be rooted to the spot

To have her hair braided down.

The clacking of tiny fingernails on the linoleum of the bathroom counter

Irritate the mother.

“Stop!”

The child says she wants to leave.

The mother says, “Hold on.”

The child barely escapes before the mother hollers, “I need to put some ribbon to tie it up.”

Hope that pun wasn’t intended.

Tie it up.

Well, my past is all tied up.

And released.

I didn’t get it out in the band.

I released it in time in this forest.

Before I burned it all down.

Out of loneliness.

The dead animals’ corpses

Are nothing but consumed by the fire.

I didn’t smile.

I jerked awake, my bed springs groaning underneath as I get out of bed and take a drink of water in the kitchen of my old log cabin.

No, I’d never attack those innocent lives.

Innocence is already free.

But I am too.

Free.