Laying Awake At Night

Laying awake at night unable to sleep,having drunk too much coffee,I remember tasting musty year old hardened dust crumbly shortbread cookies and mouth watery sweet orange cake Mom baked.Cake baked with orange peels when Mom had the patience.I remember the taste of gluey porridge smothered with brown sugar and drowned with watery Carnation Powdered Milk.I remember the penicillin green mouldy sawdusty muffins found in that weatherbeaten woodshed out behind our house where the old man was found already dead ten months.Eating them was like eating cotton.Greasy salty pig chops smelled good-tasted even better.I remember eating sweet clover and bitter bitter bayleaves.I savour the memory of so sour unripe grapes found near the rusted corpse of a car when we would wage the dandelion wars.I almost feel my tounge burning with a mouthful of apple pie fresh from the oven.The dirty plastic taste of grimy poker chips invades my memory but quickley dissipates as I remember smelling steaming new potatoes smothered in marjarine just before supper.I can nearly smell those musty damp old magazines found in the basement beside the water heater.Mostly Cosmopolitans Mom had collected for years and had forgotten.I remember choking on chalk dust clouds banged out of erasers after school.I held my nose.I also held my nose because of the heaping kitty litter ready to be changed-it stunk.I might roll over and happen to remember feeling the heartbeat of a kitten in my palm as I feel my heartbeat against the bed.If I scratch my head I remember rubbing my scalp after a crew-cut.It tingles.In the warmth of my bed I reflect upon the cold cold waters of Lake Ontario.I swam in it one April.My memory swings to the tantrum day.I tempermentally accidentally pierced my hand with six nails-ouch!Laying here on this soft bed with soft sheets beneath me I am thankful Gramma`s plastic sheet is not under them crinkling and sticking.Silence.Echoing in my mind is the sound of Grampa`s whistling resonating in every corner of the house-soothing.Heartwarming-kittens mewing for their mother`s breasts,purring when they finally suck.If I press my ear to the pillow I hear my brother loudly gulping milk from the jug before Mom catches him.Sitting up I swear I can hear the accordion of Harry Hibbs blaring on the Sears record player.Mom clanking in the kitchen.Laying awake as a boy I would allow air to escape from my mouth in(what I thought anyhow were)rythmic bursts that drove my brother crazy.If I stare at the ceiling long enough the jolting image of a dead boy laying in the street appears.He was ruined by some fast car late for dinner and all of us stood around looking for blood while his mother cried.If I press my hand against my eye the afterimage looks like the floating Great Pumpkin Moon on Hallowe`en.Hallowe`en makes me think of Christmas.Gifts from Santa under the tree for two weeks.I snuck down and opened them all,not just mine.If I hear a train in the distance I drift…drift into the memory of Mom and a sailor I thought was Steve Mqueen sipping something from a paper bag on the train bound for Winnipeg to watch Greatgrandmother die.Tubes in her nose and countless other spots on her poor withered frame.Her calling and calling and calling my Mom`s name until I was taken into the one-hundred-foot ceiling hallway.Thinking of death reminds me of acres of stinking crusted pools of animal fat baking in the July sun.I remember one July sun beating down on us making us sweat as the fifth kite in a row struggled helplessly on the roof of City Hall.Before the kites we would walk to the lake,at least two of my strides to equal one of Mom`s.Fast.Faster when dodging my brother`s well aimed beans.But I had the disc gun.More accurate and more shots per minute.He would resort to tougher measures before Mom intervened.One day both guns mysteriously disappeared.Some nights memories just won`t stop throwing themselves at me.I try to relax all of my muscles in order to clear my mind and go to sleep.Then I remember…