Da(vi)d from CH4
David woke from his grief one morning and took his mother's car to the overpass where the local homeless camped in the oleanders. Here loomed massive avant sculptures of broken appliances. He stepped over snakedens of wires, hoarded extension cords, ropes and punctured plastic tarps. Gas cans. Collected recyclables, sorted and unsorted, bulging out of cinched black garbage sacks.
Here was the opposite of death.
Where decay encroached, acid ate, rust and char asserted on the surfaces. Here was life against the margins of its antonym. He resented the syphilitic faces hung in the dank inverted tentflaps. The odd-angle ankle, afflicted with diabetic edema, paused in egress from a rancid sleeping bag.
The evidence of impending death and the sudden relativity of the word impending. Had his father had thoughts about these men? When he drove to work, did he judge them? Feel for them? Was there anything here to envy? A freedom, a relationship to time and government, infrastructure and ethics, capital(ism) and happiness. His father was not a quiet man, but David was having trouble remembering any one specific thing he'd said. His voice was all--a noise in the air, amid the other noises, a familiar crackle, like finding your song on the radio, picking it out from a slow-spun dial. Saying, David. David answering, Dad.