My not so paranoid grievances: those tied at-the-laces tennis shoes draped over a
telephone line outside my house coupled with the movie, “The Woodsman,” Kevin
Bacon’s character, a newly released sex offender, an image of tennies tossed over a line
as opening credits rolled; awfully loud 4 by 4 trucks, iPods and radios blasting, motor-
cycles, skateboarders rolling by at midnight, waking me up---that never happened before;
huge, clamorous line of vehicles driving on H Street whenever I step out the door; people
across the street, mimicking my every word as I lay on my insomniac bed, talking to
myself, with lips closed, how can they hear me; a U.S government car, I saw the
Federal plates, a drunken-faced man pretending to nod off, trying to intimidate me; on
one-way streets, I’ve seen cars go wrong way, their way of symbolically hanging an
upside-down American flag, signaling distress, I their target, getting away with it
because the cops let them; there’s Dogface, a person with an attack dog, barking like a
wild jungle animal whenever he/she thinks I’m not paying attention as Netflix movies
play on my monitor; every time I hear sirens from cop cars/fire trucks speed past my
home on H Street, I’ve called 911, complaining they’re disturbing the neighborhood but,
in fact, they’re terrorizing me, and I shout out my open front door, “Al Qaeda needs
more haters, more improvised explosive devices planted, join them”; my next door
neighbor, The Pimp I call him, makes certain I hear him thudding ( thugging? ) my wall,
as well as speaking on an iPhone to persons unknown, FBI agents, I assume; my dentist,
as I sat in the waiting room, fiddled with an electronic gizmo plugged into a wall next to
me, and I have only seen him on his reclined chair, not in the waiting room before my
appointment; at the clinic once I had my blood pressure taken in a tiny, claustrophobic
room, the health care worker reaching my arm from the hall, the clinic’s electric power
source, coils and wires surrounding me, I scared of touching anything in this electro-
cution chamber, the staff setting me up for thousands of volts jittering through my body,
murdering me; prosecute me, stop persecuting me I yell at that Clicker, clicks coming
from my walls, computer, microwave, Venetian blinds, hoping I would be driven to
madness, overdosing myself with prescription drugs; I am the new Jew, new Roma, stop
the hysteria, think rationally like me…But remember, Citizen Arcata, Blackie’s come to
town, ordered from Amazon, a black and shining machete, and if I placed it in my
backpack, ambling through neighborhoods, perhaps stalking a person, observing their
vulnerabilities, their daily routine, I might just yank it from my pack, bloodying my
victim, chopping off appendages, geysers of blood spouting out in surprising amounts,
dead or alive, I am happy, then dropping Blackie, waiting for the SWAT team taking me
to jail, and the trail, then, before sentencing, I’ll explain how sane I am, I telling the truth
to people unaccustomed to anything but psychiatric delusions.
The surveillance continues, people now watching every keystroke, every eye blink,
they have made me colder in heated rooms, shivering in 60 degree days, sturm und drang
a necessary function before an assassin kicks in my door, emptying his revolver into me,
bullets screaming vilification.
George Sparling
