cacoethes scribendi:

maria of the moon

2011-12-28T21:59:00.001-05:00

how many sides does the moon have?
we divide it into two,
one for light, one for dark,
but i see a dim side
that hopeless color gray
like your eyes & cigarette ash,
& sparrow's wings,

this is the remote place
where the souls of everything
that burned down go,
sitting crosslegged with knees pulled up
gazing wistfully down on the earth
from the edges of huge, dry seas
reputedly made up of tears -
but how would tears get to the moon,
unless when we cried them
they went up
like tiny liquid balloons
that never pop -

this existence, most argue
is totally meaningless
without a thought for love
or destination
so i will light a lantern &
at the end of my life & escape
silently
hoping no one notices

& i will meet you there
with hands & pockets
full of the love i never believed in,
melting helplessly like icecubes
in the summer sun,
apologizing with my atlantic eyes
while we watch stars
nearer than they ever have been
streak across outerspace
& extinguish themselves violently
in a shower of sparks
like a cigarette
flung to the asphalt -

i hope we will dance
on this undiscovered third side of the moon,
i hope we will swim
in its gray sealess seas
& that we will kiss
for as long as forever lasts,
since we don't need to breathe
anymore -

i have confidence our souls
will be safe on this satellite
until the fidgeting hands of time
decide to dismantle it
& we float instead
hand in hand
through a new place
that has no end -

fragments

2011-12-28T15:04:00.001-05:00

1.
he had an 88-key piano tattooed on his back and confided drunkenly to anyone who would listen that his deepest wish was to have a lover play Chopin on him during a thunderstorm.

2.
the dog with one eye knew nothing but pretended it knew everything. its owner named it Sibyl and every bark was treated like a prophecy.

one day the roof fell in

3.
rain on a Saturday. he sat in the window and lit matches, one after the other, timing how long he could hold them

4.
dogcatcher idle behind the steering wheel, chain-smoking. thunderstorm in his eyes and a caustic pain in his gut from all the coffee. in the back, the sound of claws against metal.

in the evening he stops by the playground and leers at the empty swings, the gold band on his finger chafing.

5.
ersatz moon over Menlo park! the spaces between the inventor’s idle hands crackle with the bated-breath leaping of electrons

outside, a set of flickering lovers waltz and then disappear

6.
he fell in love with a tornado and chased it across the country. wrote a hundred desperate letters and, when he got close enough, delivered them all by hand.

two counties over, as the sirens yelp, his wife weeps for something lost

7.
one day he starts collecting doorknobs, spends hours sitting at his desk, turning them

a lightbulb burns out with a startling snap and sizzles in the suddenly cyanotic dark

8.
a company of twelve, full-throated and laughing, buzzing with wine and good humor. one of them makes a joke about killing time and another smashes the clock on the wall to the floor.

“it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he confesses, later. when he rolls up his sleeves, the detective notices the ten wristwatches he’s lashed to his arms, like phylacteries

9.
the veil lifts and everyone in the world is abruptly treated to the truth of their resurrections, can remember each life they’ve lived

the Mnemnosynarians build a church in the middle of the desert and murmur prayers consisting entirely of every name they’ve ever had

10.
when he showed up at the bar he announced that he’d scripted everything he was going to say that night and everyone thought he was insane until, at last call, he pulled out the pages and showed them what they’d said all night

11.

in the living room

2011-12-28T09:16:00.000-05:00

the first time he bared his shoulders,
his father knew he was a hero.

or was it that he knew
his father was a hero.

the wail from a nearby speaker
neither confirmed one
nor disproved both of these things.

and when i am tired
it's my mind
having a conversation
with my body
saying over & over

time to dream

gilead

2011-12-16T03:17:00.000-05:00

at dawn,
the sky opens its
treacherous mouth,
& chokes on
the poisonous fruit
of the sun -

let its gargled,
inarticulate prose
fill the ears
of those too hungover
to sense anything
other than static's roar -

let the juice
of that dawn
drip down the chins
of those still waking,
eyes glassy with hope
& throats seared by
the thoughts of those
futures which,
one night prior,
inflamed their hearts
with insane promise -

with those words which
could not provide balm
to their abraded souls -

& yet,
hear,
flesh
soughing
regretfully
over bone -

hear
the heave & sway
like a becalmed vessel
in a familiar harbour -
the yaw & creak
of something submerged
in the realm of memory -

like that ship,
rocking, pleasantly,
to & fro, tidally,
in the graying waves
of yesterday

post-war, desolation

2011-11-30T19:03:00.001-05:00

the divine general
is kicked back at his holy desk
helmet tipped down over his eyes
snoring

on the wall behind him
a map of the universe
yellowed and faded,
curling at the corners

someone has written in Sharpie
on the general's helmet
“God is Dead”
then crept out of the room
snickering

and, below,
the spavined old women
clutching wooden beads
in shivering hands
bend their bonneted heads
murmuring like a newsreel
the songs of Heaven

and the burnished-eyed,
spring-young men,
chins thrust forward,
resolutely march
forever through fields
toward a many-handed,
million-named enemy
with only philosophy
to protect them -

this year the trees shall
unburden themselves of pages
in place of leaves
and shrink themselves
in the process,
turn to wizened old men,
stooping over graves
and clucking their tongues

and
in the encroaching dark
as the sun goes out
with a mutter, and
as the stars begin to
sizzle in the skillet
of the sky,

the gloating sound of
the dead rises
from the horizon
like an orchestra warming up,

then,
wind,
and nothing further

but the cruel wink
of the moon
over the empty churchyards

triptych

2011-11-24T07:36:00.001-05:00

first,
rage -
a quiet, invidious force -
a cold wind seeping into
the cracks
of the teeth,
a gathering knot
of electricity,
seething in the veins.

its partner is sadness,
trailing behind,
mournfully,
yet dutifully,
tightening the strings...

then,
the third,
unnamed,
with scissors -

& last,
gray-cowled regret,
oscillating between
what is now &
what once was,
somehow inveterately
shuddering
caught in a trap
whose jaws
open, close,
and open again
without words

Eigengrau

2011-11-17T14:59:00.001-05:00

the sudden saccade
of the eye
from one dark
to another
& the lip jerks
to reveal bared incisor

the embyronic shadows
conceal still
the cowled demon
of nightmare,
huddled, unbreathing,
diamond-bright eyes
fixed on the bed

the hiss of dream,
departing -
a crack in the window
through which a
trysting lover is going
psst
psst

the bedside lamp allows
only a quaver of littoral light -
the bulb may burn out,
pulses weakly
in electric thrust
& does not
dispel the demon

there is no one
at the window.
there is no one
in the corner.
there is no one
in the bed.

the room is empty
and the light is on,

and yet, hear:
the snap and pop
of sinews tightening, and
the cavernous yawn
of something still waking

the dogcatcher: scene

2011-11-17T12:29:00.001-05:00

1
weirding hour -
raining again.

headlights in
the desultory dusk,
questing up fog-laden streets

cold in the cracks of my teeth
shaky fingertips
hurried, arrhythmic steps

spindly trees
flailing and moaning
like flagellants
unable to reach the whip

stoplights sag, sway,
blinking
in confusion -
red, red, red

and the streetlights reflect
in the mirror-wet asphalt
like an eldritch arena

waiting for some
awful battle
to begin -

2
father's waiting at home
with a handgun
nestled in his arms
he murmurs to it
as if to reassure,
but his eyes keep flicking
to the door

his index finger runs
down the barrel,
slowly
outlines the trigger

the crescent moon of his smile
trembles over the
horizon of his lips
and sets again
as if afraid to rise

the rocking-chair creaks
in supplication
and he ignores it

3
my heart is
squirming around
inside my ribcage
like a child held
too tightly,
as i slide the key
into the lock

the door is heavier
than usual,
as if complicit in
some awful crime -
the hinges
squeal

inside,
the shadows flock
like disrupted birds
worrying at one another -
they splay themselves
over the white waste
of the walls
as if furtively,
guiltily,
hiding something -

4
the van parked
down the street
idles,
sighs -

in the back,
a horde of muzzled dogs
whine,
pawing at their snouts
eyes murderous,
sinews taut

in the front seat,
the dogcatcher taps fingers
in an ostinato
on the wheel
one two three four
five
one two three four
five

prosopagnosia II: en route

2011-11-14T14:46:00.001-05:00

In the black car with a sunroof.

Or the Ford F-150 pickup truck.

Neither of these; sitting on the side of the road, sign in hand.

Borrowed cigarette hanging out of the mouth.

Acrid smoke singeing the throat.

I cough three times.

The black car with a sunroof went by an hour ago, then it went by again. And again.

Hard to tell if it's the same car or if they just appear the same.

The driver reminds me of someone I know.

Today the heat is so intense it can almost be seen, and seen through. Its clear, diamond-tipped presence actually somehow makes the day a little more transparent.

The roof of the world is bluer, somehow.

Nothing else has changed.

The trees are full green, no stop.

We are in the throat of summer.

The inside of my nostril itches and I scratch it with a fingernail.

The driver of the black car is my friend Freddie.

It's entirely possible that it isn't.

Though he looks somewhat like him.

Not-Freddie is wearing

a green Celtics jersey with white outlines

a black baseball hat (brim forward)
dark sunglasses

He has tattoos.

He drives by too fast for me to see the detail.

Perhaps he is driving by because he knows I am there.

He can't know that I'm there.

He's driving by too fast.

It's entirely possible that it isn't Freddie.

There's that story about the farmer who goes to the market and sees Death.

Death makes a threatening gesture.

So the farmer runs away to Samarra.

The farmer's neighbor goes to the market and sees Death and says, “Why the threatening gesture?”

Death says, “That wasn't threatening, it was surprise. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad, because I'm supposed to see him tonight in Samarra.”

That story hinges on Death's gesture.

The Ford F-150's gone by a few times too.

Brown exterior.

Three different drivers.

I think.

One's a woman, one's a man.

The other one, I can't tell.

Though when I was a kid I jumped off the barn.

Cracked my skull.

That's when I started forgetting names.

Faces just don't stick in my head.

How some people say, I never forget a face, I'm the opposite.

The heat of the summer crowds in.

The highway steams, the asphalt is brand new and blacker than black.

The yellow lines are brighter than neon.

In the black car with the sunroof.

Someone is asking me if I'm all right.

Voice from the backseat.

Static interferes and is replaced by the sawing of an electric guitar.

Freddie Front-Seat is wriggling behind the wheel with his lips puffed out.

He does that when there's a song he likes.

Priscilla in the back is handing me a joint.

I know it's not just a joint.

Acrid smoke singeing my throat.

I cough twice.

We are going to the coast no we don't know which one.

I don't ask questions I just get in the car.

The things that are true provide a framework for life.

Without the things that are true life has no framework.

I light up a Pall Mall and it takes a full five minutes to spark the Zippo because I'm staring at the flame.

The rumble of the engine like a captive, simmering beast under the hood.

Its breath seeps out around the edges like paint thinner against the day.

The colors wobble and slide down the canvas of the world.

So hey I say this isn't happening huh some kind of dream.

Must be the drugs they exchange like a handshake with their eyes and burst out laughing like a sunshower.

It's Green Day on the radio.

Night, rain falls.

Boston-bound from Maine.

F-150 truck rattling over the bridge.

The city growing up from the bay in front of us.

My left ear abruptly goes deaf.

The driver is Anja, a blonde with a nose-piercing.

Too much mascara.

She's crying, that's how I can tell.

It's been a week since I've had a drink.

I am missing the fourth and fifth finger on my right hand.

It makes things difficult to grab.

For three days I have been coughing up black sputum.

Despite all the vitamin C.

I say hey baby don't cry this is just a dream passin by.

She doesn't even look at me like I'm not even there.

I look out the window.

It's not a dream, it's a music video I saw when I was twelve.

Hard to tell which one.

Once you realize it's a dream, it's so much easier.

Permeable world.

Walls you can walk through.

Must be the drugs. A sick bloom of laughter.

Laying flat on my back at the beach.

The surrsurrant roar of waves breaking.

A breathy noise from nearby.

The steady beam of the lighthouse, sweeping sternly around.

Up on the widow's walk we clash like armies.

Lips, teeth, tongue.

We are ocean-wet.

The salt dries on our skin, shrinks us together.

Lightning against the black, way out to sea.

God's Holy Camera.

I say hey baby don't cry this is just a dream passin by.

The smoke from something burning on the beach.

A few houses down.

Could be some madwoman with a grudge.

And an ax.

A can of gasoline and a cigarette.

Tomorrow's papers tell the story.

She walked out to sea and didn't come back.

This is the story I tell my friends at the bar in a froth of drunk.

The stories we tell our friends are lies.

The only thing holding the framework of the world together is lies.

The rivets in the girders of truth.

The only cigarette I have I bummed.

Funny how you smoke a bummed cigarette so much more delicately than any from your own pack.

All the way down to the filter.

I cough three times.

The cigarette I bummed was a Marlboro.

The tips of my fingers tingle.

When I was twelve I saw a drowned ghost in the river. It was all in black and wore a hood.

Everything in the world seemed to point to it.

Everything in the world turned gray around it.

It didn't make any threatening gestures.

I have this fear about the deeper dark.

The dark behind the dark.

The dark of the hallway and the dark behind the beds in the rooms in the hallway.

The dark you can't see.

No light escapes but the wobbly red LED lights of the digital alarm clock.

On my mother's side of the bed, on the nightstand.

Beyond them, the shades are drawn, but I know the woods behind the house are on fire.

I can see the flames reflected in my father's glasses.

When he turns around to face me, the reflection doesn't move.

When he grins, the fire moves closer.

Like a game of red-light-green-light.

And he won't turn back around.

Green light.

And Freddie Front-Seat is talking about his girl on the coast the one who left him three summers ago.

I ask him if she's the one and he says
She's one of the ones.

His grin is wolf-like.

He doesn't slaver though it seems like he could.

My selfish heart murmurs something to me.

In the black car with the sunroof.

Or the Ford F-150 pickup truck.

The murmur is the sound of the shadow in the river.

It got inside of me.

The sound of someone drowning.

At the beach.

On the widow's walk.

Laying flat on my back.

Fireworks overhead.

In the future, Nevada will be the new coast.

Nowhere Beach, NV: Come to Where the Water Is!

On every sign in the desert.

The highway crumbles into the water.

On the shoulders of the road, children make sand-castles crowned with asphalt diamonds.

I take a smoking spliff from a friend's hand and suck greedily on the tapered end.

I cough once.

If you think about the deeper dark you invoke it.

It comes rushing out of the blindness.

Like a car without headlights.

Turns them on at the last second.

Before it hits.

Or like a silent train.

And you're balancing down the trestle with headphones on.

Unfaithful husband vs. the Eumenides.

All kinds of horror come about when you're not looking.

When your back is turned.

When your eyes are closed.

Underneath a closed eye the eyeball moves herky-jerky.

As if struggling to see beyond a membrane.

Not-Freddie and Priscilla are the Grim Reaper and his gun-moll.

Freddie smiles at me, though he looks surprised to see me.

When they pull over.

In the black car with the sunroof.

We are driving full-throttle, no stop, towards a bloody horizon.

Where the sun settles on its haunches to lick its wounds.

Everything else is memory.

I am on the side of the road with my sign.

The sign reads Samarra.

prosopagnosia (with apologies to D. Markson)

2011-11-13T14:02:00.001-05:00

I've always wanted a brother.

This is a thought which propels me through life like an outboard motor; leaving a muttering, ruminant wake behind me.

Or perhaps it's a father. Hard to tell.

Regardless, some kind of masculine figure.

Like a statue at the foot of my bed.

Or a painting, one of those English Lords with their hounds, on the wall opposite my bed.

I don't really use my bed to sleep anymore.

My grandmother didn't either, after a time. She'd piled all the toys from each Happy Meal she'd bought over the last three weeks on top. Clothes in plastic, books, papers. A mound of ephemera.

Her bedroom always had a strange smell, and the shades were always pulled.

I have a few friends, though I would consider none of them brothers.

In fact, I get teary-eyed when I see a father-son moment on the television.

Even if it's only a commercial.

Sometimes I'll see a group of guys walking down the street and I become cancerous with envy.

They walk so easily in tandem and I, I trip over my own damn feet.

I am somewhat afraid that I will turn into my grandmother. She wandered through a kind of fog that only she could see, towards the end. And always worrying.

Maybe it's a family disease. A external locus of control. Nothing to do with me except for how I was put together. Faulty parts.

Car manufacturers usually recall those cars whose brakes are faulty.

When I drive, I like to drive very fast.

I remember I turned off my headlights one moonless night in the country.

Whipped around the curves like a frightened ingenue in a noir film.

Almost crashed.

I don't drive so much anymore, though I miss it.

I'm a pedestrian. I hate that word, and I love most words.

Borborygmia, for example.

Or anaphylaxis. Medical terms really are the best. Granuloma, dyskinesia, catatonia. Fomite, dendrite, neuropathy. Cortex, intravenous immunoglobulin. This last, I know, treats hypogammaglobulinemia, a primary immune deficiency, and inflammatory diseases like Kawasaki's disease.

They say you can't learn anything from television. I tell them, everything I learned from television, I verified on Wikipedia.

Just kidding. [citation needed]

And so in the waning days of November.

When does a month start to wane? I suppose it'd be right after the half-way mark.

Today is November 13th. So I suppose this is the gibbous days of November.

The sun is still near to us. Not as near but still near.

I wonder exactly how far it is.

Aphelion is a good word, too.

So is perihelion.

The closest approach of Pluto is called perihadion, and farthest is apohadion. -hadion from Hades, which is hell. I like to call the closest approach of Hell, when times are really bad, perihadion.

Everything is circles. I used to draw circles, endless amounts of tiny, inked-in circles whorling across the margins of every notebook page.

That was in middle school.

My teacher told me to “cut it out” and I took scissors to each page in defiance.

Or maybe I didn't, maybe I just wanted to.

This, as I write it, is kind of like a memoir and kind of also like a conversation I'm having with myself.

At least I can be guaranteed of an intelligent conversation.

I think that's one of the worst jokes ever created. Just as bad, if not as bad, as a diner in a restaurant holding up their empty plate to the busboy and saying

We didn't like it very much.

Oh you sly dogs. How clever you are.

But still you have to smile and laugh as if it is the first time you have heard it.

An amnesiac would make a better waiter than me.

Really only someone with retrograde amnesia.

Like that guy in that movie. Couldn't make new memories.

But then how would the waiter remember the drinks?

He could tattoo it on himself.

He does anyway, metaphorically.

And somehow it's easier to make friends when you lie, even if it's just a little one. Everyone lies, I think it's just easier for most people to gently elide over the truth with something fictional.

Novels exist because of this. So do movies, and television.

I spend a lot of time in front of the television.

I am usually biting my nails until they bleed.

I am usually also stoned.

I prefer to say “high” because stoned sounds so violent.

Giles Corey leaps to mind.

The farthest approach of a black hole is termed an apomelasma, and the nearest, perimelasma.

Perhaps that would be a more adequate descriptor of the bad days. The lonely days, when it feels like there's a great sucking thing at the foot of my bed.

Or at the other end of the couch, where I wake up.

In the hole where the statue would be.

Or the painting of the English lord.

Some days I feel like Colin, the puling, pathetic invalid from The Secret Garden, jealous of Dickon's wick.

No innuendo there, Frances Mary Hodgson.

If this were a play, I'd list out the people I know like a dramatis personae, so you'd be better acquainted with them.

I don't “know” many people.

Who does, really. We all just kind of hang around each other relative to each other's natural gravity.

Someone the other day was telling me that we don't know why gravity exists, we just know it does.

I met this someone in the great gray hallways of the Internet.

I imagine the Internet is full of the sound of doors, constantly opening and closing. Some of those doors have locks and deadbolts.

I met this person because all my life, I have wanted a brother.

I put the laptop at the other end of the couch and leaned back like I was just waking up and there he was.

Just his face, but he was smiling.

Through a beard.

I have always wanted a beard.

I'm almost to the place where I have a beard.

Though when I was buying cigarettes the other day, the guy at the register said he didn't recognize me, that I had more “fungus” on my face.

I haven't smoked in six months.

Three weeks ago, I started again.

That might be why.

Not that he said I had more “fungus” on my face, but that six months had gone by.

Why he didn't recognize me, that is.

When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize myself.

Not because of my beard.

Though that might be why I grew it.

To dysrecognize myself.

I don't think that's why, though it's a theory.

That could also be why I tried to kill myself.

So everyone else would dysrecognize me.

I don't think dysrecognize is a word.

And when I told you that the Hum was worse that day, I said it while making kind of this phrenological semaphore over my skull.

You said sometimes, you speak so dramatically.

I tried to pretend it didn't hurt but it did anyway.

When I was a kid, my teachers always said I was “sensitive.”

I imagined all of my nerve endings somehow closer to the surface of my skin, sometimes even sticking out of the pores, like invisible tendrils waving ethereally in the wind.

If someone got too close, I'd get shocked, like an overabundance of feeling would incapacitate my brain.

Kind of like a reverse jellyfish.

A therapist told me that I have an eidetic memory for negative things people say about me, so I tried to apply negative mnemonics to learning.

Flashcards, if I got them right on the first try, earned me one lash of the whip.

Just kidding.

Though in fourth grade, I did pretend to have epilepsy. I did it so convincingly that they scheduled an EEG for me. Electroencephalogram. I remember laying in the dark and hearing the scribble of those little pens over quadrille paper.

I remember thinking it looked like a seismograph and I wondered if they were looking for earthquakes inside of me.

I suppose, in a way, they were.

My grandmother, along with all of her other junk, had a silver can that, when shaken, continued to shake seemingly of its own accord. It was called Earthquake-in-a-Can.

Maybe that's where I got the Hum. Like the Bottle Imp. From the Can.

100% Genuine California Earthquake! The side of the thing read.

The things they teach kids.

I am of the opinion that you ingest what you learn and sometimes what you ingest can make you sick if it's not cooked properly.

The cooking properly comes from the teaching.

We don't have enough good teachers. There's only a small amount of people with the patience to cook, and even smaller amount of those who want to be paid a small amount to do it.

We all wish we could do something with our lives that didn't equal out to money, though we all do it anyway.

Money is the universal language. It's accented by different denominations, from different countries.

I would prefer to be dumb.

Or have my metaphorical tongue cut out.

Rather than speak money.

There's no grammar to money, no tense. It's all present tense. I have this amount of money. Now I do not have this amount.

Today I have to decide if I have enough nickels in the paper roll to buy lunch. I already know I don't.

I speak so dramatically.

And when I told you the Hum was worse today, I meant it, and I did everything I could to try to get you to understand, but I wasn't speaking the right language.

If I gave every person a hundred-dollar bill before I asked them if they understood what I meant, I bet every single one of them would say yes.

Though you really should account for that contingent of the honorable.

And of course, the wealthy. The wealthy look at the hundred-dollar bill like I look at a penny on the sidewalk.

A tails-up penny.

Of course you were concerned. You're always concerned. You should be.

And every week at the end of my session she asks me about my safety. It's a polite way of asking if I'm going to cut the cord.

Off myself.

Kick the bucket.

Jump off a bridge.

Take too many pills.

I say things like no, no. Absolutely not. I couldn't.

Truth is, I could.

But I won't.

Freud calls it Eros and Thanatos. The life-urge and the death-urge.

I prefer Libido and Destrudo, or Destrado.

I will, someday, write a book entitled Destrudo, or Destrado.

The death-urge.

Everything has an opposite.

Except for me.

Then of course there's the two sides to everything I think.

The Apollonian and the Dionysian.

The classic internal struggle.

Maybe I am a collection of multiples that each have their own opposite. A collection of multiples has no singular opposite, other than a collection of no multiples, which is essentially a black hole.

Perimelasma. Sounds like a type of cancer.

I suppose a black hole is a kind of cancer, like a tumor on the skin of space. Perimelanoma.

I am told that I catastrophize. That means I am always thinking about what will go wrong rather than what will go right.

During my session last week, the therapist asked me if I had been diagnosed in the past and if so with what.

In the mental hospital, they told me I had Borderline Personality Disorder. This means I have mood instability as well as idealization and devaluation episodes. It also means I have unstable interpersonal relationships.

I have started keeping this journal to chart my thought process. This is why it isn't the most reliable.

Nothing about me is reliable.

Some people say that the term Borderline Personality Disorder should be renamed to Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.

I think I like the first term more.

They diagnosed me within a half-hour. Opened up the DSM-IV and pointed to the entry. F60.31 in the ICD-10, where it says traits relating to BPD are influenced by genes.

Think they would've recalled me by now.

My attempts to recall myself ended badly.

Swiss physician Theophile Bonet used the French term “folie manico-melancolique.”

This basically transliterates to craziness of a manic and sad nature.

In 1946, Melanie Klein first used the term “projective identification” to describe the following feeling.

I see you feeling something and you can't feel it, so I feel it for you.

But I can never know how you are actually feeling, I'm just imagining that I know.

A kind of emotional contagion.

I have a very vivid imagination.

You are very catching.

All of you.

Or perhaps I'm the one who is sick.

Seems that way.

I find that alcohol is the best medicine for my brain but the worst for my heart.

The cigarettes don't help either.

I find that cigarettes are the best medicine for time but the worst for my lungs.

I miss cocaine.

I was trying to talk to one of you when I ended up in the hospital. I was trying to tell you how I felt and I think you were uninterested, or you had enough on your mind.

Years prior, at four in the morning, we sat on the curb outside your house and you said I could call you anytime.

You said you'd always answer.

You never did.

Proves to me that you shouldn't rely on things said at four in the morning.

Or past midnight.

Or at all.

Lately I've been drinking a lot of coffee (black) because I miss the rush and twitch of amphetamines. It helps me write. I am halfway through a novel that I'm afraid I won't finish and harbor this secret intimation that it's already dead in the water.

Floating corpses, mottled flesh, belly-up.

I think we drank a whole fifth of whiskey between the two of us that night.

Maybe a few shots of Dr. MacGillicuddy's, too.

And some beers.

What I had to say spewed out of me and hit the sidewalk with a sickening slap.

All I could hear was the racheting ricochet of billiard balls. The jaw-crack of stick hitting cue ball.

Your blank eyes.

I walked down the yellow lines the whole way home.

I stole six Xanax from my sleeping roommate and took a blade to my arms.

Maybe it was less than six.

Or more.

I remember the whorling police lights outside the window. Someone called the cops.

It was me.

Or it wasn't.

The ambulance ride to the hospital, about ten blocks away, cost $600.00 USD.

Six years later, I still haven't paid it.

Or maybe it was five.

Years later, that is.

It was the night before the fourth of July.

A blue piece of paper made it okay for them to bring me to the mental hospital.

Terrible name for a place like that.

Hospital, that is.

I woke up and wrote poetry with a pencil that I had sign a safety contract to get.

I wrote about a Holocaust victim whose name was Eva. I don't remember the poem now but it had to do with God.

In the hallways, a kid with a beard and holes in his socks walked endlessly around.

Peripatetic. Another good word.

With a Bible in his hand.

I asked a nurse what happened when he finished.

She said, he starts over again from the beginning.

She didn't know how many times he'd finished and then started over.

I didn't ask.

I met someone else there, too, and his name was Seth.

I tried to teach him how to solve a cryptogram.

He kept pulling his pants up because they wouldn't let us have belts.

When I left three days later, I left the cryptogram for him.

And my phone number.

When I left, I got in the van and the radio was playing “Doctor, Doctor” by Robert Palmer.

I thought that was weird.

When I got out of the van at my house, the radio was playing “Sick Sad Little World” by Incubus.

Or perhaps not, though I remember the song was appropriate.

I asked the driver if he had a tape in there, playing all these songs, like someone would play scary noises on Halloween.

He didn't.

And I didn't ask.

Though maybe I should have.

Fifteen minutes after I got home, one of you knocked on the door. You hugged me very tightly.

I remember that I was confused as to why you were hugging me.

We stood in the door at the bottom of the stairs where I had been dragged out by the paramedics.

Or maybe it was the police who hauled me out.

I wonder how the neighbors felt that night.

I moved out of that apartment years later and returned to it one drunken night.

With two guys.

They put porn on the TV and I said I had to leave.

I'm glad I did.

Though part of me wishes I'd stayed.

My old bedroom got turned into a game room.

There was a dartboard on the wall where my bed used to be.

I think I did drugs fifteen to twenty minutes after we stopped hugging.

We used to call it Diet Coke, because it was Adderall.

I was the one who made the joke first, though it became widely used and I was never credited.

At this time, I guess it doesn't matter.

You used to call it Orange Sunshine, but the pills weren't always orange.

We also did Concerta.

I remember one time we were on our way to Boston in Lindsay's car and I was separating the capsule to make sure none of the green, non-snortable bits were in the mix.

I loved that feeling. Utility. Functionality.

Having something to do is important to me.

They say sharks can't stop moving, or they die.

They even sleep while they've moving.

Violent sleepwalkers of the deep.

Although I guess you'd have to call them sleepswimmers.

Aquatic sonnambulocomotion, perhaps.

I never learned how to swim.

I almost drowned in an inground pool when I was six.

My mother doesn't know how to swim, either.

My uncle had to save me.

I am mildly hydrophobic as a result.

I have dreams of driving over a bridge when it collapses.

I could probably make it to shore if I tried.

How hard is it to keep yourself afloat?

Not speaking metaphorically, of course.

My therapist tells me not to let the anxiety get ahead of me, and I reply that it already has.

That's usually when she asks me about my relative safety.

I say no. No, of course I can't do that. I couldn't even if I wanted to.

She always appears unconvinced.

I think I might scare her a little.

I kind of hope I do.

I told my therapist about the Hum.

When I say I told her, I mean that she had me do a freewriting exercise and I wrote about it.

I wrote that the Hum is worse today.

That was the first sentence.

I may not have capitalized the h.

I wrote how my thoughts are like comets streaking across the sky.

Over the gray, tilled fields of my brain.

Caressing the fields with their hairy tails.

Lighting up everything with an eldritch luminescence.

Eldritch is a good word.

So is etiolate.

Though they mean two completely separate things.

At one-thirty in the afternoon, the sun is already going down.

I was so excited to discover I have $25.00 in my savings account.

I was disappointed when I discovered I couldn't withdraw it from the ATM.

T.S. Eliot's 'Rhapsody on a Windy Evening' is one of my favorite poems.

The last twist of the knife.

I was disappointed when I found out that it was the basis for the song “Memory” from Cats, the musical.

I generally like musicals.

Especially Sondheim.

A Little Night Music is my favorite.

Probably because I also like Ingmar Bergman.

It's not gloomy, it's profound.

La lune ne garde aucune rancune.

The loops are getting smaller, though there's more to say. Recursive iterations tighten the spiral each time.

The last twist of the knife.

T.S. Eliot says,

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

When I say I love you, I mean it.

Or I don't.

The heart speaks a language the tongue is deaf to.

All thuds and growls and sighs.

psychopomp

2011-11-10T12:00:00.001-05:00

How does any dream begin? A slow leading of the hand into the gray space between. There is always a space between. You can't be bothered by the way the world feels or how you're sitting in your chair or how you can't take your eyes off of that one thing that they see like a star in the gray. And just like looking at a star in the night sky you squint at it to see if it's moving very slowly across the sky if it's even a star at all. This is the way to enter dream. Your body is stilled and your breath is even - it has found a rhythm intrinsic, a primordial beat, and, craning its ear, bends in to listen and keep in time. Your heart follows suit, the muscle slowing in agreement with your your breathing, like an instrument in an orchestra being told legato, legato, pianississimo.

Then it is the jawbone. Teeth held together all day finally part wistful ways, the jawbone sinking rapidly until it hangs slack, opening the cave of the mouth. The jawbone is tied however it is to the muscle of the mind, and with its slow decline, something in the middle of your skull irises open. You are assembling images now in the cutting-room of your mind's eye, sitting cross-legged on the floor, arranging brilliantly alive photographs and holding them up to the light. Each one of these is a memory, a memory that beats with sound and light. You turn the memory one way and it refracts a brilliant flash at you; you turn it the other way, the same thing happens. You become dazzled by the memory, as if in a kind of shock, sink willingly into it.

And there you are, whoever you are. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, furrow-brow and smile, laying on your side in our bed. In the dishwater-yellow of the morning, floating there. I watch you fall asleep and more than often I watch you wake up. There are nights, sure, drunken nights when I fall into bed having gone to sleep a long time ago, but more than I often I am the last one to drift into the gray. I remember I said I was smoking again and you were so angry with me. I hurt you with something I did and it was something I said I couldn't control but something which I knew I could, if I tried hard enough. I think it was that which hurt you, and that which now hurts me. In the dream I have yet to hurt you, yet to lie or cover something up, even though I'm in the business of covering things up. We've only just met. I told myself I wanted a relationship because I write about relationships but only ever the end, and I found you. I don't trust people in the world, and so I turned to another world, and I found you. We talked online for months before we actually met, in that vast, disembodied hive-mind of the Internet. I imagined our meetings as taking place in your room. When I saw all four walls for the first time, I laughed, then peered at your computer screen as if hoping to see the wall of my room displayed on your screen still. Like looking through a wormhole.

You were always patient with me until suddenly you weren't anymore. Perhaps it's because I didn't change and you did. Do you remember when I told you I felt like I was cursed? You laughed at me, and then apologized when you realized I meant it, and then apologized again. That night in the parking lot outside of that restaurant. It had rained and the street-lights seemed to blaze through from underneath the asphalt, like some eldritch arena. Our brief pas-de-deux. Perhaps it's because I always said I was wrong but mostly felt like I was right. Maybe it was the day I decided not to talk until the sun set. Maybe it was both of these things, or none of them.

In the dream, I know suddenly that I will wake up from the dream and feel nostalgia for a memory that doesn't exist. Maybe isn't even mine. Probably culled by cryptomnesia from books, movies, songs, colors. In the dream, I know I will wake up from the dream and feel shame until the morning I wake up and feel wistful. In the dream, it is July and without, it is November. There are always storm-clouds threatening and outside, on the lawn, children are playing a game they've just made up. This is why I never wanted to get out of bed in the morning, I say to you in the dream, even though we've only just met. This is why I stay. Lingering on the threshhold like someone caught in a recursive loop of goodbyes, feet pointed horizon-ward but eyes pointed back. In the dream you frown and tug at my earlobe. There is something we're supposed to be doing and neither of us mention it because it has suddenly become the least important thing. We are bubbled off from the world, a closed system, a binary star.

The mind knows nothing lasts and the image shifts and you're gone and so am I. Perhaps this is just how the memory of a dream works - you only get moments. If the waking mind could remember the entire sequence of a dream, like a movie memorized, it would cease to function normally and live entirely within that dream. After this, I only remember pieces. Different seasons, different colors. Even faces of people I've lost to the years, to communication's halt. Non sum qualis eram. On the train, there are two of you ghosts, one I lost recently and another a long time ago. I feel intense guilt radiating on the inside of my ribcage, like I'm Claudius at the dinner-table and you're Banquo's ghost. One of you still wears the beard I last saw you with, and the same blue sweater. You have an enormous suitcase and you're fiddling with something very small on the top of it. You do not notice me and I do not draw attention to myself. You're either embarking on a long journey or returning from one, I can't tell.
The other one is someone I lost very recently, but I can't make out their face. They are badly burned and their flesh crisps away like bark on a burning log. They are blaming me and I apologize, but words are never enough. I want to go back, I don't know how I got on the train to begin with. This isn't any click-your-heels moment, there's no no place like home. If I just try to will myself back to you, it'll work, I'll be right back there in the morning-room and I'll have just met you and I'll have yet to lie or cover anything up and just let me go back there and the rattle of the train stops

a hagiography

2011-10-26T14:53:00.001-04:00

i knew him for a time.
we flew around
the room of the world
like crazed moths,
bumping into one another
more often than not,
knocking loose the dust
from our wings

i heard he changed his name –
funny, i did too. we made
pentimentos of ourselves,
scrawled over the names
we once called one another
with ink & with wax.

we were wildeyed,
two jongleurs of
an old &
sour tradition,
ghoulish and gabbling
under the scold
of the moon,
ghastly and garish
under the scald
of the sun -

we unravelled ourselves
then gleefully set to the strings
with our teeth,
sawing giddily
back and forth,
magnesium sparking
exothermically
in our bellies

then suddenly
i knew him differently,
like a book from childhood -
he acquired a dingy patina,
became covered in
something sticky
like spilled jelly -

i came to know how
he acquired clothing:
by osmosis -
something borrowed became
something his
just because of how he wore it.
that,
and the stink.

i came to hate hearing him play
“her majesty” on the guitar,
especially the whole
bellyful of wine bit,
came to loathe
both his wistfulness
& his ardor,
latenights,
by the bungalows, crooning,
while girls, swooning,
clutched at his threadbare sleeves

how the ragged fall apart!
years down the line
i think of him,
somewhere west,
past the heaving, sighing Rockies,
past the arid and
steaming deserts -
i think of him,
sitting high up in a redwood
amongst whispering,
adulatory leaves,
in a familiar jacket
pressing a looking-glass to his eye,
facing east -

i am not so high as you;
i am nestled snugly
in my harbour-town,
an island amongst islands,
one for every day of the year -
& i have always preferred
the hard sheen of the Atlantic
and you,
you’ve always preferred
to be pacific -

once,
i broke the string of your guitar
on purpose, and never told you,
viciously turned the knob
as easy as turning a key
in a greased lock –

i blamed it on the humidity -
these things happen, i said coyly,
when they’re pulled too taut –
they capitulate,
sing one desperate chord
and then

twang

like the zithering lash
of a downed power line.

my fingers thrilled
to the snap, yanked away
as though burned,
itched -
for days after.

i can still hear it,
that sound –
can still see your manic,
berserker eyes
over your manic,
berserker beard,

i can still hear you
galumphing through your
frustrated coitus,
grunting and moaning,
slapping and sighing,
as though wresting madly
at the lock on the door
where love is kept captive
secreted away
in a dark corner,
shying away from your
red-faced advances -

we battered at the world,
ran full-hearted at doom
heedless of warnings
and admonitions
from those who had run
the same path before,
grinding our teeth
while congratulating ourselves
on outwitting the slow men,
the low men,
the causers of this and that and thus,
removed ourselves,
turned frail and brittle,
cracked
in more than one place –

for me,
the thunder of our separation
still reverberates
through time’s
glassy echo chamber,
like an orchestra halted
at the point of climax,

for you,
it’s no more
than a whisper,
the susurrus of drug
still feathering
your heart,

no more than
a moth’s wing
against your face
in the dark,

no more than
the schuss of cars
going through puddles
in the night,
somewhere between
departure
& return

widdershins

2011-10-25T23:11:00.000-04:00

ed. note - this is a combination/revision of two poems found below. please excuse the repetition - they just seemed to work really well together.

and so today was a
slow itemization of things
that turned against me:

i woke from a dream-tossed sleep 
into a pellucid morning,
fear dripping into my veins 
from the invisible machine
of nightmare, 
had to turn the light on
and stare at the shadows 
until they melted back,

outside, 
the necessary cigarette
left me
as always 
unsatisfied  

and doing nothing 
was justified by  reducing it to 
small somethings,
like reshuffling the books
because the spine of The Idiot
is smaller than that of  The Devils, 
and i don't know, 
maybe i felt something 
a little like sympathy,  

and then
the cat hissed at me
though i had done nothing,
and i saw my fear
reflected in her eyes, 
a weird shimmer 
like the lake of heat 
you might see
over summer asphalt,  

for a damned second, 
heart pulpy in my mouth,
i stood staring at
the ridges of her palate,
thought how they looked like 
the marks the waves make
in the sand at the beach

i rubbed my tongue over my teeth
and prepared to hiss back, 
but the rumble and mutter of a truck
shoving by importantly 
on the street outside 
sent her fleeing
for the nearest couch.  

the sun went behind a cloud
and didn't come back -
amateur Houdini –
i am jealous
despite my scorn

then, 
now, 
this,  

and i say to myself
this is one of those days,
an exhausting pageantry of hours
whittling myself to a sharp point
& by the time i’m drunk
i jab at anyone
who comes close enough

& my friend says
i drive people away,
says through a froth of drunk
and pot,
and later we sit
on his couch,
like a couple of knives
rasping in a drawer.

by the end of it
we have dulled each other
and the window is repainting itself
with a fragile blue

& the birds are
going apeshit in the trees -

dissever

2011-10-25T23:07:00.000-04:00

and the blank-eyed men
are out again,
pious saints of discord with
melted-wax faces
& grasping fingers,
absently adjusting
the ties at their throats
& cracking their necks
from side to side –

they slip sideways between us,
nimble dancers with
poised, gleaming scissors,
murmuring snatches of song
culled from other lovers
they’ve dissevered –

we never see them
though they live in our house,
share our bed,
sit in the empty chairs
at suppertime,
gorging themselves on our silence -
while in the dark,
under the table,
the dog whirs & whines
with alarm

soon enough
sleep becomes a five-second shudder
between one & two in the morning
and we wake up at the same time
unable to look at one another,
afraid of what we might see

and outside, the wind is
shearing leaves from their branches
and the rain is pounding the roof
like a hundred thousand tiny fists
and the sea is going in and out
of the harbor
like murderer’s knives

we share invisible,
vibrating smiles,
hold hands
and watch as the lightning
blotches the face of the sky
like an incandescent rash,
our teeth
glued together
inside of our mouths

when the electricity finally fails
we are plunged into
bristling, barren black
extending all the way up to
the cosmos

and when you say
timidly
that you love me

all i hear is scissorblades
going
snip

ochre & umber

2011-10-18T09:55:00.003-04:00

Lord: it is time. The summer has been immense.
- Rilke

Exhaustion: a seep, a leak, a hiss, a sigh. Above, the fullness of the moon, pendulous in the sky, like a fat white berry about to drop from its invisible branch. You lick your lips self-consciously, flashing the barest sickle of tooth in a grin. You roll over onto your left side and study me in the dark. I have always looked better in the dark. Your eyes flash like garnets in a mine. Their glimmer is furtive, nimble, darting.

It is not yet cold, not thoroughly. Summer’s lungs still pump, though fall’s breath is coiling in her mouth. This is my favorite time of year, and you say it is yours, as well, though sometimes I am afraid that you lie just to make me smile. I don’t mind the lies, but I mistrust how you make my mouth behave. You’re murmuring something about the cats. I’m not really listening, and feel that brief twinge of guilt as I scramble to catch hold of the conversational thread. It’s another one of your banalities, catalogued as something meaningful in that teeming card catalogue within your skull. I’ve grown used to the little twist of introspection in your tone after we’ve had sex, how you look at me and then away, even as you’re talking about the grocery list, the pile of debris in the kitchen yet to be swept, or what needs to be done to the apartment in order to defend it from winter.

The lightest skirl of wind, dainty and mischievous, makes a whorl over your exposed shoulder and you immediately horripilate, shivering violently and yanking up your shirt as if to disengage from some invisible assailant. This will be the last time this season that we meet like this. For the next few weeks, it will be long walks, barely touching, coats knitted up to our throats and hats jammed on our heads. You dislike the cold and I say I dislike it too, though secretly one of my favorite things in the world is to come out of the cold and take my jacket off. Secretly, the cold makes more sense to me. I know what to wear in the winter. You make fun of me because I don’t wear shorts in the summer, and I’ve confessed once that I don’t understand why even though, in truth, I know.

We will get up from this place and rejoin the world. It still surprises me how much you like to be outside, when you seem at your most comfortable curled up on the couch in an afghan, buried in a book. You just finished a book on colour theory and are contemplating taking up painting. I encourage it. I think sometimes that I fall in love with images of you that I film in my head. I’ve seen you do things inside of my head that you’ve yet to do. I’ve always wanted to make a movie, but you hate to act and say you can’t. I have fifteen or so unfinished scripts with you as the main character. They gather dust and spiders in one of my desk drawers.

In fact, this whole thing could be one of my dreams. This whole thing with you and I could be nothing, could be nothing more than another scene in the movie I’m writing and will never film. I hear the soundtrack to it in my dreams at night. This morning I woke up with “Golden Brown” stuck in my head, and when I looked over at you, the images came rushing back … a subway, rocking and tilting, rocketing through the tunnels of some city. Probably Boston. The lights go on and off, intermittent and epileptic, spasming. You hold on to one of the bars with a white-knuckle deathgrip, but none of the fear in your hands registers in your eyes. You are determined to survive, though there is no immediate threat. That song on the loudspeaker, dim and crackling, though unmistakeable.

We will get up from this place and rejoin the world, secrets of summer buried deep within our bodies like seeds. We keep them dormant and savor them through the whole of winter.

You’ll go away, off to another city, and I will wander the autumn roads after you depart, kicking desultorily at the sodden leaves. It rains the entire week before you go, denuding the trees of their foliage. You call the wind Delilah and I confess I do need a haircut. You’ll laugh, but it’s nothing like your June laugh. This is your October sound, and it’s full but dry. I can taste the anger in it, that dull, thudding sound like a sluggish heartbeat. It’s tinged with wistfulness. I am used to the twist in your tone. As we draw nearer to your leavetaking, you become slightly distant. You look at me less. You are preparing.

I wake up one morning near Halloween and roll over to touch the space in the bed you used to occupy, now vacant. I am like a tongue aimlessly exploring the abscess left by an extracted tooth. You’ll come back – you always do – but I am always here. I’ll get up from the bed and pad to the desk, pull out the unfinished script, and stare out the window while the cats butt their heads against my calves and purr insistently, as if to tempt me with the spectre of their future pleasure. I want no part of them, and swat them away with an outstretched palm – they just push their small skulls into my hand and burr their pullulations even louder. They are both of ours, though they’ve always belonged to you.

There’s a heaviness in the air, though there is a distinct fragility, too, like eggs in a nest of swaddling cloth. I am sometimes afraid to walk outside without your hand in mine, and the eyes of strangers seem to know and understand that I am one-half of who I should be. Winter is a fractious mathematician – it leaves us all one-half of who we should be. Our steps become slower, more cautious, down city sidewalks. It takes twice as long to get anywhere. Lights come on earlier and leak out of the sides of blinded windows. I take to drinking, first just beers at home, six-packs of cheap lager. I sit in front of the television with a glass bowl in one hand and the can of beer sweating on the coffee table. I think of nothing and everything at the same time.

I’ve called you a couple of times now. You sound so distant, as though I’m calling the afterlife, and your spirit is annoyed at having been invoked. I make hesitant, tentative conversation about the city and our friends, and how, the other day, flakes of snow tumbled from the sky’s cotton-stuffed mouth. I make a bad joke and you laugh, but it’s polite and gray, like a deserted spiderweb. I am afraid you’ve found some robust someone in your city and you spend your cold nights with them, curled up on their couch, reading. I make a brief, coy allusion to our last night together and the silence is impassive, like a tomb’s door. I won’t give up hope – I know you will come back for a break, and then for the summer in the spring. This is how it has always been and how it will always be. I turn the conversation to you and you are evasive, vague, banal. In the long silence before I end the call, I suddenly find myself hating you. I remember the catlike flash of your eyes, your drunken pinwheels. It’s easy in these depths to freeze. I remember to breathe, and apologize for the call. You are quick to remind me that there’s no reason to be sorry, though I do it again, anyway. I don’t say “I love you” when I hang up, and you don’t either. You tell me to say hello to the city for you, and I will. I see myself standing at the Top of the World, up on the hill, arms outstretched, bellowing my salutation on your behalf.

I go the wrong way down one-way streets on purpose in my old Volvo, late nights, when I can’t sleep. I roll all the windows down and smoke American Spirits because I know you hate it when I do. I find myself wondering if I miss you at all, or if it’s only that I miss how I look when you look at me. I figure it’s probably the latter, though the former makes more sense to my viscera -- which, as of late, behaves like a contortionist at every memory. Perhaps you are why I have come to dislike summer.

I have become unmoored from time in a way that I find pleasing. I drift ceaselessly, become unconcerned with appointments, dates, times. Work is the only thing which provides structure, though I hate what I do and have never been able to find something that I enjoy. This year, you have taken more of yourself with you when you left than you ever have before.

It’s one night in the bar over an Irish coffee when I decide maybe it’d be a good idea to come visit you in your city. My limbs are jittering because I have a sensitivity to caffeine, though I could also chalk it up to anxiety. I go outside and lean heavily against the side of the building. A friend of mine is here. I admit that once I liked him like I like you, though not with the same heat. He’s always been cold to the touch, and you – you’re liquid fire, you’re pyroclastic, even when your voice is chilly. He has a new scar on the side of his face, under the trapper hat whose ear-flaps slap his cheeks in the wind. That night, I catch him in the men’s room, leaning with both palms on the porcelain sink, staring at his reflection and gritting his teeth like an athlete about to take on a rival. He pretends its nothing, says he was just fooling around. I don’t believe him, but we’re not as close as we used to be. Before, I would’ve put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed with all of my fingers, but now I just nod from the doorway and slip out sideways. I think he might be a little jealous of you.

I have decided to come visit you in your city. I swallow the last of my Irish coffee and it plummets into my stomach like an unexploded depth charge. I am bottomless, I am fearless, I am confident. It is the distance between us which is my rival, and I will defeat it with my stride. My friend is waiting outside when I leave, throwing my scarf around my neck like a hero in a movie. The sky has emptied of clouds and now is bare, bristling black all the way up to the cosmos. The wind is still and my boots crunch on the packed snow. He wants to talk about something, he says, and he refuses to look away from my eyes. His are shockingly blue, like the guts of a flame. He’s letting his beard grow out. He’s shorter than me, though wider in the shoulders. Tonight he’s in a flannel jacket, buttoned right up to his Adam’s apple, and the top button bobs when he swallows. He doesn’t own any scarves or gloves. He says he hates them, but I think it’s pride.

When I see him outside the bar, he’s smoking again. The last time I saw him, he hadn’t had a cigarette in over six months. I’d like to ask him what made him start again, but the look in his eyes makes me reconsider. He asks me where I’m going and I say home, he asks if he can walk with me. I don’t mind, though I’m wary. He seems invisibly crippled.

The walk isn’t a long one. My friend has a manner of speech that I’ve always found myself endeared to, halting and somewhat vague. It’s nothing like your cadence, which is maybe why I like it so much. He’s circuitous, coloring in the scene around the thing he needs to talk about before actually attacking it, like a dog mistrustful of his bed. He is much more direct with eyes than you’ll ever be. I’m not sure I like it. The whole time he is talking I am half-listening. I am preoccupied with the thud of my heart and the images of you from my dreams, on the subway in your city. Placing myself there next to you – we’re not even touching, we just stand and let the motion of the train rock us back and forth while the song plays. I find myself even in dream behind you, staring at your dark hair loose over your pea-coat. How your shoulders tense almost invisibly beneath it when the subway bangs around a corner and rattles through the tunnels like a teeth in an jaw gone slack.

He’s telling me about her, his you. He’s angry, but sad, and suddenly I imagine we’re oil and water – he’s the oil, and on fire – and I am refusing to help extinguish him. All at once, I put you out of my mind and stop walking. He stops too, a step or two away, and looks back at me. He is at once apologetic, and I tell him not to be. I look at him and tell him that things are going to be all right. I notice the scars again, and it’s obvious now that they’re from fingernails. When I ask, he says nothing, then curtly turns on a heel and mutters something about having deserved them. I walk alongside him for awhile in silence, our depths mirroring the bible-black empty of the sky over our heads.

We arrive at the back door of my apartment and I, as always, am immediately putting the key in the lock to turn it and allow ingress when his hand – cold, red-fleshed and white-knuckled – comes down to rest on mine. His eyes are the same color they’ve always been, though the blue of them has now frozen over and seems nearly Arctic. He confesses that he has something to confess and I take my hand from the doorknob to withdraw a cigarette from my pack. I notice that I have somehow unconsciously become distant, and I hope it doesn’t show in my outward demeanour. I offer him a smoke and he accepts both it and the flame from my lighter. I urge him to continue silently, but he takes a long, shuddering drag before he does.

He confesses that he hates himself and that he has for a long time. This is not surprising to me. Unbidden, my thoughts return to you. Perhaps it’s something about the crunch and hunch of his shoulders over the cigarette, or the way he won’t stop shivering. I feel a gentle derision for him sweep over me, like the loving loathing of an older brother or parent. In another time, I would have slapped him until he stiffened his spine and narrowed his eyes. I find myself hating myself for being unsure how to proceed. I listen. He is again stalking around the edges of the conversation. This is how he prepares himself. He is telling me how much he loved her, his you, but that things one day just grew wrong, went askew, like a tree being forced to split itself in two to grow around a boulder. He is in the middle of luridly describing the night they fell apart when I stop him and put my hand on his shoulder. My breath is moist, hot, and turns instantly to vapour when it encounters the air outside of my mouth. I suppose it’s my way of slapping him in the face. I do it as gently as possible; I ask him what’s wrong, what’s really wrong. He looks me in the eyes and breathes his first complete lungful of air since I’ve seen him and winces at the invading cold.

“It’s you,” he says, and stiffens his spine. He’s no longer abstruse about it, no longer darting or sneaking. It spills out of him like water from a ruptured pipe, gouting madly out of his mouth. His feelings, his thoughts. All those dull platitudes you never want said but secretly wish to hear. I can feel something exploding way down deep inside of me, fathoms into the pit of my stomach, and can hear your voice ringing like a cathedral bell in my skull. Again, the rattle of the subway car. Again, the haunting refrain.

He asks to come in, and I let him. We leave our boots by the door.

I wake up. There’s a moth in the room, an ugly brown-winged furry thing that keeps battering at my face. I wake up in a haze and it’s gone, but as soon as I close my eyes it’s back, rubbing and fluttering against my jawbone before disappearing again. I’m surprised it hasn’t woken you yet. You’ve ended up in my bed. We didn’t take our clothes off, though our hands have played cartographer for a number of hours before eventually capsizing like yawing sailboats in a tempestuous sea, folding beneath the waves of each other’s hair. They have migrated during the night’s hours to different locales – sandwiched between pillows, as a trivet for the heated head, at rest on the shoal of a shoulder, limp and disused in the crevasse between our bodies. As I wake, so do my hands, and they resurrect themselves, crawling out of their hideaways, blinking and startled in the morass of sheets.

Then the tidal bore of wakefulness, tinged with the rye-brown of drunk, a wave through the estuary and up the wide-mouthed river of sleep. You are there, towheaded and tousled, breath fluttering in and out of your mouth left ajar. There is no moth, I realize. You stir, soundlessly, and I remove myself from the bed. The heat's come on, and I am sopping through my clothes. The bathroom's anodyne light causes my eyes to rebel, and I stagger away from the mirror, muttering something unintelligible to myself, like a warding spell, before I realize it's your name - though which you, I am uncertain.
I have never been certain of much. It's always one thing, then the other, and then another on top of it. How life goes: an unending accumulation, like silt at a delta. We deposit and are deposited upon, a chain of transactions that leaves us somehow always with one more thing than with which we arrived. I wouldn't categorize you as a thing, either of you, nor myself. We are epistolary, all of us - fragments, spinning, like a shattered window in slow motion. I have told you that I do not believe in being whole, and you make your customary frown before launching into a tedious dissertation regarding fate and the like. I don't believe in such things, but sometimes I tell you I do and listen with rapt attention. Sometimes I can even convince myself that I do believe in your grandiose notions of how the world operates, as if on some invisible axis comprised of spirits and unearthly beings who take interest in our mortal affairs. It's easier than the brittle realism of cause and effect, easier still than the blank face of reason and logic, like a Greek god on its plinth, boring its eyeless, infinite stare across the centuries. Though I always catch myself, you decorate the hook well and I am constantly drawn to its spiralling glitter.

I used to call you by colors, both of you, and perhaps it'd be best if I revert to that now, for the sake of clarity. You are Ochre, the hue of your hair, the hue of red-clay earth. You are Umber, the raw brown of varnished wood. This makes it easy to tell the two of you apart, even though distance separates you. I am standing in front of the door, waiting for you to pass by, smoking a cigarette. A transient with gaps in his mouth asks me if I have fifty cents and I give him a penny out of spite. He throws it on the ground in front of me and curses me in some bile-inflected, spittly tongue. I am indifferent and blot him from my sight. He vanishes appropriately, though I am made nervous by his indictment and the memory of him lingers in my brain long after suppertime. I am poor, lately, too, and my pockets are fast becoming threadbare. I am always seen wearing the same pair of pants, and sometimes, the same pair of socks.

The sky above tumbles by, as if it is trying to get ahead of itself knowing it never can. The wind is loud and blustery, more befitting an April afternoon than a December evening. You've been working all day, chained to a desk by a headset, answering phone call after phone call. I imagine you in mechanical repose in front of your computer, inert until needed. A strange sense inside of me is awoken at this image. It has been days since I've thought of you. I've prepared a bottle of whiskey, which is to say, I've opened it and had a shot. The warmth of it is even now is metastasizing inside of me, spreading from organ to organ. I have my head tilted up, slightly, and am watching a fat bank of clouds shove itself imperiously along. I know that by midnight they will have usurped the heavens and will dump their accumulations on top of us, unceremoniously, and with little regard for our bared heads. A bus lets off and I watch the passengers shuffle their way out of the heaving vehicle's innards. Umber is a bad name for you, but it's what I've got. I might tell you tonight, though I don't think you'd appreciate it.

I'm playing music in my head, and the urge to throw myself at the bar is gargantuan, like a hand pressed firmly against the small of my back, goading me on. I know I might find you there. You've lost your phone and I don't even know where you live. I've told you to knock on my window, though for the past week the window has remained resolutely silent. My doorbell is broken, and I've tried to fix it, though only ended up with the frottage of an electrical shock for my pains. I know I might find you at the bar, though I am resolute in waiting.

The fifth of whiskey goes down smoother after the first three shots. I have forsaken a glass and have taken to drinking directly from the bottle, as classless and gauche as it is, taking great pleasure in swimming within its brown depths. I imagine myself in miniature, dancing like an angel on a pinhead, around the rim of the bottle, before teetering and falling in. I imagine a hand - yours - opening and closing, slowly, then quickly; as if asking for something, then begging, then demanding. My head is beginning to spin, wobbling on my spine like an unbalanced, greasy ball balanced precariously at the top of a tall pole. This delirium, I tell myself, is more comfortable than loneliness.

A man with dark-rimmed glasses and a white coat is leaning over me. He is fastidious but for his beard, whose gray coils spring from his chin like the innards of a broken pocket-watch. His brow is unevenly furrowed over wiry eyebrows and brooding, dark eyes. He has concern coming out of his mouth, but I am barely able to hear it through the booming tripartite throb of my heart. I hallucinate that I am lashed to a gurney on a subway, staring at your dark ochre hair. You never turn around, even in my dreams.

I wake up on my couch, unkempt and with vomit staining the corner of my mouth like an ill-advised brushstroke. You are laying in the bed, one shoe on and the other off, sock bunched up and dangling from the edge of your toes. There is a thick, musty stillness in the room which, after a moment or two, I realize is the smell of my own sick. I am immediately overcome by a surge of embarrassment. You are just as you were the last time you were here, laying in exactly the same position, lips parted exactly the same way, breath fluttering out of you in resigned, slow patterns. I imagine I can see it in the air; frosted iterations of gentle recrimination. I do not know what day it is, though the whiskey bottle sits not far away from me and still has a drop left in the bottom. My fingers are stained with the yellowing scent of just-smoked cigarettes. There is no clock in my room and I do not care what time it is.

I stumble up from the couch into the bathroom again, giggling slightly at the repetition. My mind sharply invokes the image of the transient, cursing and spitting, and I giggle a little harder. The laugh causes my stomach to cramp and I bend over the sink to eject more poison from my insides. It's only poison on its way back up, I think deliriously to myself, amid whorls of head-splitting pain.

Your hand comes to rest between my shoulderblades, and I hurl myself as far away from myself as possible, feeling a sudden collapse incipient. I sag at the knees and you curl your elbows beneath my armpits, hoisting me up. You're stronger than I thought you were. Your fists curl at the sides of my jaws and I notice that your fingernails are ragged - some are discolored with the ochre of dried blood.

episode 3: the snake & the pocket-watch

2011-10-18T09:53:00.001-04:00

He had always had a negligible relationship with time. Whether it was the malingering before school early in his life or whether it was the difficulty wrangling the space between one thing and another later in life, he had always found himself either uncomfortably early or uncomfortably late. Nothing he tried would fix it. It was as though he had, somewhere along the line, broken time's heart, and now time edged away from him every time he came into contact with it, preferring instead to avert itself, take subtle detours. The story of how this came to happen is presented below, as anecdotal evidence.

1.
Half-past-one in the afternoon, October 11th. Fifth grade recess overlapping by chance with sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade recess. A dangerous mixture, but one which the administration allowed due to some sort of catastrophe in the kitchen and, as a result, the compression of what should have been two waves of outdoor recreation into one. The activities were over-staffed as the students ran around in the sunlight, at their various games. There's an impromptu kickball game, watched over by the militant gaze of Mr. Hardwell and the stentorian vocals of Ms. (not Mrs.) Kravitz. There's the game of tag (not to take place on woodchips, and Mrs. Rathburn's intervention when it did); the various playground chatter, girls grouped on the grass in circles talking about horses and the Babysitter's Club books; the loners; the dirtbike kids; and, finally; the game of spies-in-the-bush.

2.
At approximately 1:45 P.M., the administration was largely satisfied with its policing. Three of the ten supervising teachers were allowed to return inside, to their lounge and their lunches, and the game of spies-in-the-bush intensified. Delineated below, for the purposes of dramatis personae, are those involved.

A. Nikos Kazanstakis, leader of the Rogue Snakes, age 10. Denim jacket embroided with Harley-Davidson patch. Terminal sneer on his littleboy's face.
B. Craig Wilcox, second-in-comannd of the Rogue Snakes, age 11, held back one year. Plans to oust Nikos not-quite-formulated.
C. Bruno and Toby Farragut, twins - though not identical, and perhaps not even fraternal. They stuck to their story despite the fact that almost no one believed them. Age 10.
D. Simon Eyvind, a freakishly large 11 year old, similarly held back. Of Norse descent. Considered "the muscle" of the Rogue Snakes.

The manifesto of the Rogue Eagles, crudely illustrated by Nikos' own hand, lived in the hollow of a tree just beyond the limits of the playground. The tree stood at an awkward angle, having shoved itself right up against a large, flat rock made up of schist, granite and mica. The namesake of the gang had been declared the day that Nikos stumbled upon a copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix, coiling in the cool shade of the rock. Nikos had not displayed any outward show of fear, but stood there, staring at the viper, unblinking, untwitching. Just in time, a teacher had investigated, and shrieked aloud at the sight. They had since been disallowed to congregate at their rock, but none of them had ever shown much regard for that particular edict. They had been in existence for two school years now, since the third grade.

There is also the rival gang, who exist nebulously around one young man whose parents enjoyed the largest house, up on the hill. His name was Kevin Bailey, age 10. His infamy was based around one mythological incident; it was said that he had mercilessly abandoned Dennis LaChance on the roof of the school and left him there for three whole days. Those three days, a record rainfall was set, and, once Dennis had been found by his fearful, quivering parents, the local sheriff, and the super-intendent of schools, he could not speak without his teeth chattering. It was rumored that Kevin had no reason for the cruelty. When asked, Harold Vernor (one of Kevin's "lieutenants") had shrugged and simply said, "He didn't like him."

There is also Dave Granger, and it is he whom this anecdote concerns.

2.5
Dave Granger always carried around a small, gold-plated pocket-watch that he had found in the basement of his house, in his father's old workbench, covered in sawdust within one of the drawers. When he found it, the gears were stopped and the device was silent. He had held it up to an ear, rattled it once, experimentally. He flicked it, once, with the index finger of his right hand, on its back. Sawdust swirled in minute, hesitant curls through the musty air of the basement, and the watch startled to life, the second hand resuming its staccato progress ever around the circle of hours. A wet paper towel or two later, and the glass face of it was clean, though scratched more than a few times. It possessed no chain, though the knob at the top was slightly sticky, and refused to wind. Incredibly, it still told time perfectly. On more than one occasion, Dave had intentions to open it and commit surgery on its insides, though he could never seem to pry the back off, even with a screwdriver and the claw-end of a small hammer.
His father had been gone from the house for years, departed in his own swirl of sawdust, like a magician's vanish gone wrong and with no audience to witness it. Echoes of him remained - his towering bookshelf, crammed with paperbacks of Alan Dean Foster and Piers Anthony, in contrast to his mother's neat rows of Danielle Steele and Phyllis E. Woodiwiss, bookended by photographs of lighthouses at sunset and leaves with their fall vestments on. Dave didn't know his father's face or voice, but had seen pictures. He had his hair. Once or twice, he found a piece of paper written by his father - a legal document here, signed in a completely illegible scribble. Technically, Dave Granger was David Granger Jr., though the Jr. was more or less negligible at this point.
His mother refused to speak about it. She walled herself off from the world, coming home from work with tired smiles and brief pats on the head, absented stirrings of the spaghetti sauce while the news blared behind her on the small kitchen TV. Dave entertained weird notions that his father's soul was in the pocket-watch, though never really believed it. He was no stranger to oddities and arcana - mornings, he lay awake, staring at the red LED of his clock, slamming his eyes shut and attempting to force time forward by the force of his will alone. This never happened, but it never kept him from trying.

3.
1:50 P.M., and Dave Granger, who had just finished reading My Brother Sam is Dead, decided to become a profiteer. This is where the trouble starts. He had long since known about the existence of the Rogue Snakes, and rode to school on the same bus as Nikos. They had never spoken to one another, though they both preferred to sit at the back of the bus and stare out the windows at the cars which trailed behind.
There is one encounter, during which Dave Granger established his own slight infamy. One Sean Walker, a seventh-grader, who boards the bus further down the route than Dave, decided to begin a turf-war with Dave over the back seat. It was a short-lived war of subtle intimidation. Sean sat in the seat in front of Dave, turning around to declare his intent one morning. Nikos had watched, but did not intervene. Sean put down the gauntlet, threatening to make Dave's life hell if he didn't get his "four-eyed, nerdy ass" out of that seat from then on. Dave had blinked once, pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, and remained silent.
The next morning, Sean Walker boarded the bus, and immediately swept his gaze to the back. There was Dave, sitting in his regular seat, backpack open next to him. Sean sat in the seat in front of him, and, when the bus pulled up in front of the school, began his second act of war. As the rest of the kids stood up and began clamoring, obscuring the driver's rearview gaze, Sean stood up, fist at the ready, warning between his teeth - and suddenly found his gaze blackened and his head slamming to one side.
As soon as he had seen Sean's fist curling, Dave had pulled the red-spined American Heritage Dictionary from out of his backpack and swung it through the air, savagely connecting with the side of the bully's face.

Everyone's got a rumor connected to them. Dave's lingered in the hallways of the school for a good week before it was usurped by Fred Kessler's urinary incontinence in the cafeteria. It wasn't forgotten. Nikos had watched Dave swing the dictionary and approved of the violence, though he didn't like the kid that much - didn't trust him; never trusted a loner like that - though he did have respect for him. Nikos didn't need anyone else in his "gang," however.

4.
11:50 A.M., and Dave Granger was in possession of a secret. He spoke rarely, but he had a gift for listening. Class bored him, and his eyes roved around the room, around his fellow students. He always sat at the back of the class for this very reason, sat alone, in corners, in the lunchroom, usually reading. Once in awhile, someone would approach him, but he would only ever do the same thing he ever did - blink at them, somewhat owlishly, and nod, before returning to his book. The incident on the bus was the only thing anyone really knew, concretely, about Dave Granger. He did well at school, though never applied himself, and was the subject of much frustration between guidance counsellor and teacher alike. This day, being the last one to leave the room, Dave happened to notice a piece of folded-up notebook paper dangling out of Harold Vernor's desk. As he walked by, the note fell to the carpet. Somewhat absently, he picked it up, and without thinking, opened it and read the line therein:

TODAY AFTER RECESS WE GET THEM

Dave Granger was in a unique position to understand the contents of this note. He had known for awhile, that Kevin Bailey had decided to take down the Rogue Snakes. Kevin despised Nikos and every member of his "gang." He had called them dirty fuckers, having only just learned the word, and declaring that they should be "put down." Dave had overhead this conversation because he was in a habit of finding lonely, dim places to read his book where he wouldn't be bothered. This day, it was just behind the equipment shack beyond the baseball field. Dave had broken in (the lock was rusty and wouldn't snap to) a few days prior and had successfully established himself in what he liked to call the Lookout.
In a similar fashion, the Rogue Snakes had found a reason to exist beyond holding fake 'meetings' and discussing inanities. Dennis "LaChatter" LaChance had been inducted into their gang because his dad worked at the race-car track a town over and had promised them all tickets to the race the following week. His price? Revenge. Dave knew this because Dennis had told him in the cafeteria just two days prior. Dennis had to tell someone, and he didn't know anyone, so he sat down next to Dave and had the story out after a brief interval of awkward hellos and eye-twitching. In a way, Dave was curious about Dennis and felt pity for him, though in no way felt invested in the situation. He had looked up, blinked, and ... just once, nodded, as if to say he understood. The nod was all that Dennis had needed for verification, and had left Dave alone, confident that he wouldn't say anything to anyone.

5.
2:01 P.M. The recess bell has shrilled over the playground, and swarms of kids are migrating to the doors of the school. Teachers are busy herding them, making sure no one is left behind, standing sentinel by the building, scanning, squinting to see who is lagging at the edges. Mrs. Rathburn is pre-occupied with her impending divorce from her adulterous husband, and old Mr. Rubenstein can't see much beyond the tips of his fingers. The rest of the supervisors have been released to their classrooms.
The doors shut behind them as they usher the last of the students inside.

6.
1:55 P.M. Dave puts down his book in the Lookout and stares at the inside of the shack door. The woodgrain seems to be moving, though it isn't. He's just tired. Last night, his mother came home and forwent even her usual pat on his head, went right into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. All night he could hear her sobbing, and he still doesn't know why.
All at once, he stands up, exits the Lookout, and crosses the playground. He is not determined, he is not sure of purpose, he simply has committed to action. He knows the place he is walking, and it is right into the snakepit.
Nikos is holding court, though the business portion of their meeting has concluded. He doesn't say anything as Dave walks up, though Simon Eyvind steps in Dave's way and inquires as to his business with the group.
"I have information," Dave says, proferring a piece of notebook paper.

7.
5:15 P.M, and Dave's mother is just getting home from another day at work. There is a message on the answering machine, evidenced by the flicker of the red LED light on the console.
It is Dave's father, Dave Granger Sr. She does not listen to it beyond the words "Lee, it's Dave ..." preferring instead to wildly jab at the DELETE button with her index finger, over and over and over and over again, tears springing to her eyes.
Dave walks in just as she is closing the bedroom door. The evening whorls in like a flying saucer, darkening all of the town with its shadow. He stands in the front door's rigid embrace, staring at the clock on the opposite wall.
The phone will ring a great deal that night, and there will even be repeated knocks on the front door of the Granger house. It will be revealed that Nikos threw a snake - Agkistrodon contortrix - at Kevin Bailey, and that the two groups converged on one another like weather fronts in the aftermath. It will also be told that Kevin Bailey has been envenomed by the snake from a particularly nasty bite on his right hand. Even though Agkistrodon contortrix's venom isn't particularly fatal, Kevin - it turns out - is allergic to most reptile venom, and has gone into tachycardia on the playground. He is rushed to the hospital, where he remains for most of the night in critical condition before being downgraded to stable around six in the morning.
Dave Granger will not blame himself. He stood back from it all and watched the physical portion of the fight - the actual scuffle - happening between Kevin's gang and the other members of the Rogue Snakes. Nikos and Craig had held back until Nikos entered into the fracas with the snake in hand. Dave is possessed of a secret, wild elation. He sleeps until midnight, where he wakes in a sudden froth from a red-hued dream of a man with snakejaws. He gets out of bed and goes to the kitchen, crouches by the cabinet under the junk drawer and withdraws an old, dust-covered bottle of Popov vodka. Without hesitating, Dave tips the bottle back and takes his first swallow of alcohol. He promptly vomits it back up, retching, eyes filled with the bitterwater of tears. His mother still does not wake up, even over the retching. Dave is forced to clean up his sick on his own, alone on the linoleum with not even the cold moon to illuminate his progress.

8.
1:34 P.M., October 18th. It's a Tuesday. Kevin Bailey has been out of the hospital for a few days now, and this is his second day back in the classroom. As a result of the treatment with the antivenom CroFab, his skin is mottled with raised red rashes and he is cursed with an uncontrollable, tic-like itching motion. He has also acquired a nickname: Itchy. His fury is deep, and comes from a sinkhole that has collapsed somewhere inside of himself. His prior position, somewhat invulnerable, is completely decimated.
Kevin Bailey has been approached by Craig Wilcox, Nikos' second-in-command. Craig's mother is friends with the Baileys, though this is a somewhat new development. The Wilcox family has recently come into a bit of luck - they've won a substantially more than modest sum of money via the state lottery. Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox immediately summon the aid of Mrs. Evoria Bailey, Kevin's mother, also a real estate agent. They want to move higher up on the hill. They are invited to dinner, and this is how Craig comes to know Kevin. Their parents want them to be friends - why wouldn't they be? - and Mr. and Mrs. Bailey are concerned about the scuffle. Nikos has been suspended, and Craig sees this as a perfect time to begin his takeover.
This is how Kevin Bailey comes to know about Dave Granger. A certain piece of paper has exchanged hands for the second - no, third - time in a week. A certain piece of paper with one line on it. Kevin Bailey takes the note in his hand and folds it cleanly, obsessively, twice - four times - eight times - sixteen times, until the paper is a lump of pulp that won't bend further. Kevin Bailey scratches at the nape of his neck and Craig Wilcox wins an ally.

9.
1:45 P.M., and it's exactly one week after Kevin's been bit. His rashes are beginning to fade, though he still itches like a madman, uncontrollably. His fury is the path of an oncoming storm. Like leaves on a tree, the whole population of the school turns whitebellied and scatters. No one goes near the edge of the playground - not that they did anyway. Dave Granger's in the Lookout, reading, alone, but he can't keep his mind on the page. He reads the same sentence, over and over again, trying to latch his mind onto it. He tries to skip a page, but it doesn't work. The sentence is "They huddled in the dark, waiting for the threat outside to subside."
Abruptly, the door to the shack is thrown open and it becomes clear to Dave Granger why the day hasn't felt right. Everyone's eyes have slid off of him - and moreso than the usual, where no one used to look at him at all, even recognize his presence - today, today ... it's been different. They have noticed him. That's what he missed. They all - all of them - noticed him. But now it's too late. The door to the Lookout slams shut behind Kevin Bailey.

10.
6:30 P.M., and Dave Granger's mother still hasn't come home. Dave sits at the kitchen table, his sneakers muddy, his face a bas-relief map of bruises and blood seeping out of more than a few abrasions. He breathes heavily. On the table in front of him is his pocket-watch, mangled and in shards, the springs bleeding out of the back of it like miniature metal snakes. His eyes keep twitching, relentlessly, to the cabinet under the junk drawer, and then to the clock on the wall. For an unspecified reason, the pocket-watch has not ceased to tick, even though it has been eviscerated and smashed beneath Kevin Bailey's heel. Dave Granger's throat is also on fire, most likely from the gears and cogs that no longer reside in the pocket-watch but now sink in a sea of gastric acid within his stomach.
All at once, Dave gets up and limps over to the clock on the wall. He stands beneath it, staring up at the second hand as its zombielike progress continues, inexorably up the arc past the 9, scales to the 12, and begins its descent down (somehow seeming faster) toward the bottom of the circle. As it passes the 1, Dave Granger steps away, dragging a kitchen chair to the base of the wall. As the second hand hits the 4, he is extending his shaking hands to the sides of the clock on the wall. As the second hand hits the 6, Dave Granger's lifted the clock off of its nail and holds it above his hand. He does not know what number the second hand is on when it meets the linoleum in a satisfying, gibbering crash of glass and plastic. He stands there, staring at his ruin, when he notices the blinking number 1 on the answering machine across the room. For a moment, the ticking has stopped and the only sound he can hear is the schuss of his breath, rasping in and out past his blood-crusted lips. As he climbs down off of the chair, the sound resumes and Dave Granger winces involuntarily, though whether it is from his dismount or from the sound, he cannot tell.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

Dave Granger lights a cigarette and leans against the building. His head is muddy with beer and his legs are shaky. He is trying to remember the last time he ate anything substantial, though his mind keeps straying to a conversation he's had days earlier with his closest ally Tom. Dave's hair has grown out and his beard has grown in, though it is patchy and uneven. Some days he hates himself, though those days are full of quiet loathing, and Dave thinks of it as the muttering of a demon that lives somewhere in the Byzantine coils of his insides. Dave was a theology major for awhile, but that soon lost its lustre due to a professor more keen on inculcation rather than education. He tried English, but grammar bored him. He tried theater, but the incessant narcissism of every other student-major made him physically ill. For years, he frittered away time to small splinters, choosing to develop a friendship with a commuter student who grew marijuana up north. Dave lived on campus in the building where all the other undeclared students lived. He had been shunted in with a cocky freshman out of Duxbury, Mass. - a hockey player who had been granted scholarship and who would, nightly, have rendezvous with a girl named Michelle, oblivious to Dave's presence. He reminded Dave of someone he'd known a long time ago - but then, he found that most people did.
His friend the grower went by the unfunny (and perhaps unwise) nickname of Mr. Green, though Dave called him Tom. They would lay back in Tom's 1986 Buick Century station wagon and smoke endless amounts of dope, until, at times, they would fall asleep next to one another. Somehow they were never caught by campus police. Tom always parked his car next to the water tower, right in the thick of everything, unconcerned by passersby. In fact, he even claimed once, it helped his business. People knew where to find him. No one cared. Dave felt a peculiar sense of belonging, and even thrilled mildly at the risk. He experienced brief tingles in his fingertips as he sat in the car. Joe did most of the talking, and Dave Granger did most of the listening, which was about par for the course. Tom often mused on cosmic conversation, preferring to fill the void of silence with (sometimes completely erroneous) information gleaned from various websites on the Internet.
"Did you know," Tom had said lazily, propelling a caterpillar of smoke out of his mouth, "the Greeks divided time in two parts?" Dave didn't reply. He knew there was more. There's always more. "Yeah ... Chronos, and Kairos. Chronos is like, you know. The numbers on a clock, but like .. Kairos? Kairos is divine time. Kairos is like ... strike while the anvil's hot, you know?" Tom leaned back and closed his eyes, proferring the joint across the seats to Dave. "I wish I had a clock that told Kairos time, man. That'd be awesome."
Dave nodded and blinked, coughing out the smoke. "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." He finished the quote and passed the joint back. He had found that he was always the fastest one to take a hit - most people took their time, preferring to orate, or lapse into the television screen, joint burning down in their fingertips, while Dave Granger took it, smoked it, and passed it all in less than five seconds.
"Who's that?" Tom was used to Dave's quotes, but it was rare that he would be familiar with any of them.
Dave turned to the passenger side window. The sun was setting over the hills, as red as tomato soup, and the sky around it a virulent orange. "St. Augustine."
Tom nods, languidly, and exhales.
"Kairos time," Dave Granger repeats, a hint of color in his usual monochrome tone. "Huh."

The cigarette's gone out, and Dave's mouth is dry. He can tell by the way his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth - only slightly - and how the insides of his cheeks stick to the sides of his molars when he opens his jaws to yawn. This, of course, is due to dehydration, but Dave mistakes it for the need to return to his beer. He flicks his cigarette - Camel light - into the street, and returns inside.
The bar is familiar to him, a bit of a dive, the only place he feels entirely comfortable in the world. For months now, he's lived alone, and it's been like a bit of paradise, but even Adam got lonely and prayed for companionship. This is something he likes to say to excuse his frequent visitation to others ... and probably also by way of excusing his alcoholism to himself. It is also entirely possible that Dave Granger is not an alcoholic. The staff at the bar is familiar to him as well, though he keeps largely to himself and enjoys roughly the same position there as he did in middle school - at the edges of things, usually with his face in a book, though at times the alcohol would cause breaches in the social wall he had erected for himself.

dipso

2011-10-07T12:09:00.002-04:00

it wasn't that he had bad dreams.

like that's the way to start something by saying what it wasn't but it doesn't matter since that's how it goes. he was starting to have trouble discerning between what happened in memory and what happened in dream. this is probably due to the fact that he drinks way too much. this is because he does not know what else to do.

this is probably untrue but it doesn't matter since that's how it goes.

best of 2010.

2010-12-21T10:21:00.003-05:00

BEST 20 ALBUMS OF 2010:

20. frank (just frank) - the brutal wave

19. teebs - ardour

18. mark mcguire - living with yourself

17. inch-time - the floating world

16. goldmund - famous places

15. ólafur arnalds - ...and they have escaped the weight of darkness

14. clive tanaka y su orquesta - jet set siempre 1º

13. s. carey - all we grow

12. the wilderness of manitoba - when you left the fire

11. deer tick - the black dirt sessions

10. brown bird - the devil dancing

9. spoon - transference

8. wild nothing - gemini

7. local natives - gorilla manor

6. the arcade fire - the suburbs

5. four tet - there is love in you

4. surfer blood - astro coast

3. stornoway - beachcomber's windowsill

2. beach house - teen dream

1. joanna newsom - have one on me

battening

2010-09-17T17:58:00.003-04:00

1.
the sun is peeling
another layer from its face
again. turning whiter.
blanching. removing itself.
retreating.

2.
the wounded earth,
bombarded summer-long,
healing itself with patches
of frost

3.
brittle, brown leaves
drifting, somnolent,
from exhausted branches
indifferent to landings

4.
pumpkins on porches
going to slumped rot -
static curls of wind
frantically crackling
at newly cold ears.

5.
the violent season is ending,
the violent season is beginning

6.
yesterday we watched
a squirrel nervously
gathering acorns
in the yard. stared at us
as though we weren't quite
there.

later,
looking at each other
in the same way,
we gathered kernels of warmth
and buried them
in our bedsheets,
and together
closed all the windows
in the house

T, X, & Z.

2010-08-16T17:14:00.002-04:00

the bus south. the back of his head itches but he doesn’t remove his Celtics hat to scratch it. hours spent, music plugged into his ears, watching the terrible movies on the small TVs. wading in the shallow end of memory: the town he’s left, already acquiring a patina of crystallization, a light dusting of nostalgia, like cold dew. the faces of coworkers, of strangers, of friends, repeating like a crazed zoetrope behind his eyes. blink, reshuffle.

the landscape outside: gray. scrub. the charcoal blur of cars passing. the occasional backside of a factory or storage unit, cement scarred with lurid, cryptic graffiti. the music changes.

o

arrival, standing in the choked station, half-dazed & a little drunk. the weight of a backpack overstuffed with books, a notebook filled with attempted rhymes, and a hooded sweatshirt - his favorite, for years - slightly oversized at the hem & cuffs. he pulls it out and dons it, despite the humidity. takes comfort in the feeling of it, the familiarity.

the hum, roar & beep of his environs. the distant, bored sound of someone speaking informationese on a speaker down the concourse. for a distorted moment, he loses all bearing and

blink. reshuffle.

arrival, somewhat more disorienting than departure. the ordered, planned leaving of a place. the consolidation of possessions, the blueshift - now, here, at the axiomal center of Before and After … one could easily slip sidewise, disappear. with a gathered-up sigh, he plunges forward. can feel the rotation of everything under his sneakers.

in one of the five pockets of his jean shorts, there is a creased, college-ruled piece of notebook paper with an address on it. it’s in his own hand, crabbed & slanted. he’s been told that his penmanship belies an aggressive personality, that he is liable to strike out with the barest inclication of threat. that he is willful, chaotic, and, at times, insecure & creative. he doesn’t put much stock in “that shit” - which broadly & acerbically encompasses the fields of astrology, chiromancy, cartomancy, graphomancy & divination in any form. he’ll admit to the eerie accuracy of it, but decry any intrinsic value.

the address is given to the cabdriver. the fare is ten-fifty. he tips a dollar and steps out onto the sidewalk, shrugging on the backpack, jamming his hands in the pockets of his hooded sweater. disengages his earbuds & stares at the apartment building in front of him. he’s been told it’s not the “best part” of town, but it isn’t the worst. he doesn’t care. has lived in worse places. known worse people. been a worse person. that’s all in the Before. he is looking forward to the After.

o

X, as he prefers to be called (full name Xavier Theodore Dudelle) is standing against the wall, eyes closed & lungs full of marijuana. his thoughts are wandering in & out of closed loops, an unending segue. he never fully latches onto one before another bubbles up to the surface. sitting on the threadbare couch, he had become dizzy and needed to stand. he exhaled and it propelled him across the room to the wall, where he slammed his eyes shut and propped his body up with a sneakered foot. “fuck,” he says, coughing out a last tendril of smoke, “that’s good shit.”

he hasn’t heard the door open, hasn’t heard it close again, hasn’t seen the admittance of a new face. X opens his eyes. “shit. it’s you. motherfucker.”  “I got a fuckin’ name, yo.”  “Fuck you, dawg. I know you got a fuckin’ name. What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

he blinks. “this your place, ain’t it?”

X begins to laugh, doubling over, clutching his midsection. “you actually fuckin’ came. wow.” 

“that’s what she said.”

a moment balloons, where X squints at him, something akin to aggression brewing on his face. it breaks as quickly as it formed, replaced by a broad, white-toothed grin - followed by a flood of customary, ribald admonishments. he ushers him to the couch.

gem club - animals

2010-08-16T10:22:00.004-04:00

this is music that floats in the aether. a lover's finger down the ties of your spine, considerate, deliberate. perhaps it's the otherworldly collaboration of piano & cello, perhaps it's the twining of fragile voices. the union of both these things, describing the exterior of an egg. the egg is shivering & cracking, the new life inside straining to enter the world. this is wistful, this is ruminative. this is the delicate furrow of a brow, the disappointment in your mother's eyes when she catches you at terrible play. this is remembering that first time. this is looking at the last time. this is you, standing amidst the shards of mirror, staring into the empty frame. this is watching her disappear around the corner, hand still poised in the air, waving to someone either in front of her or to you, perpetually behind. this is eternal return, emotions etiolated to sugar glass on the point of breaking. it's so brittle when you hold it in your hands. just like memory. and just like memory, you end up with pieces.

"The Drinker's Dictionary," by Benjamin Franklin.

2010-07-16T11:00:00.003-04:00

Nothing more like a Fool than a drunken Man.
Poor Richard.

'Tis an old Remark, that Vice always endeavours to assume the Appearance of Virtue: Thus Covetousness calls itself Prudence; Prodigality would be thought Generosity; and so of others. This perhaps arises hence, that Mankind naturally and universally approve Virtue in their Hearts, and detest Vice; and therefore, whenever thro' Temptation they fall into a Practice of the latter, they would if possible conceal it from themselves as well as others, under some other Name than that which properly belongs to it.

But DRUNKENNESS is a very unfortunate Vice in this respect. It bears no kind of Similitude with any sort of Virtue, from which it might possibly borrow a Name; and is therefore reduc'd to the wretched Necessity of being express'd by distant round-about Phrases, and of perpetually varying those Phrases, as often as they come to be well understood to signify plainly that A MAN IS DRUNK.

Tho' every one may possibly recollect a Dozen at least of the Expressions us'd on this Occasion, yet I think no one who has not much frequented Taverns would imagine the number of them so great as it really is. It may therefore surprize as well as divert the sober Reader, to have the Sight of a new Piece, lately communicated to me, entitled

The DRINKERS DICTIONARY.

A
He is Addled,
He's casting up his Accounts,
He's Afflicted,
He's in his Airs.

B
He's Biggy,
Bewitch'd,
Block and Block,
Boozy,
Bowz'd,
Been at Barbadoes,
Piss'd in the Brook,
Drunk as a Wheel-Barrow,
Burdock'd,
Buskey,
Buzzey,
Has Stole a Manchet out of the Brewer's Basket,
His Head is full of Bees,
Has been in the Bibbing Plot,
Has drank more than he has bled,
He's Bungey,
As Drunk as a Beggar,
He sees the Bears,
He's kiss'd black Betty,
He's had a Thump over the Head with Sampson's Jawbone,
He's Bridgey.

C
He's Cat,
Cagrin'd,
Capable,
Cramp'd,
Cherubimical,
Cherry Merry,
Wamble Crop'd,
Crack'd,
Concern'd,
Half Way to Concord,
Has taken a Chirriping-Glass,
Got Corns in his Head,
A Cup to much,
Coguy,
Copey,
He's heat his Copper,
He's Crocus,
Catch'd,
He cuts his Capers,
He's been in the Cellar,
He's in his Cups,
Non Compos,
Cock'd,
Curv'd,
Cut,
Chipper,
Chickery,
Loaded his Cart,
He's been too free with the Creature,
Sir Richard has taken off his Considering Cap,
He's Chap-fallen,

D
He's Disguiz'd,
He's got a Dish,
Kill'd his Dog,
Took his Drops,
It is a Dark Day with him,
He's a Dead Man,
Has Dipp'd his Bill,
He's Dagg'd,
He's seen the Devil,

E
He's Prince Eugene,
Enter'd,
Wet both Eyes,
Cock Ey'd,
Got the Pole Evil,
Got a brass Eye,
Made an Example,
He's Eat a Toad & half for Breakfast.
In his Element,

F
He's Fishey,
Fox'd,
Fuddled,
Sore Footed,
Frozen,
Well in for't,
Owes no Man a Farthing,
Fears no Man,
Crump Footed,
Been to France,
Flush'd,
Froze his Mouth,
Fetter'd,
Been to a Funeral,
His Flag is out,
Fuzl'd,
Spoke with his Friend,
Been at an Indian Feast.

G
He's Glad,
Groatable,
Gold-headed,
Glaiz'd,
Generous,
Booz'd the Gage,
As Dizzy as a Goose,
Been before George,
Got the Gout,
Had a Kick in the Guts,
Been with Sir John Goa,
Been at Geneva,
Globular,
Got the Glanders.

H
Half and Half,
Hardy,
Top Heavy,
Got by the Head,
Hiddey,
Got on his little Hat,
Hammerish,
Loose in the Hilts,
Knows not the way Home,
Got the Hornson,
Haunted with Evil Spirits,
Has Taken Hippocrates grand Elixir,

I
He's Intoxicated,
Jolly,
Jagg'd,
Jambled,
Going to Jerusalem,
Jocular,
Been to Jerico,
Juicy.

K
He's a King,
Clips the King's English,
Seen the French King,
The King is his Cousin,
Got Kib'd Heels,
Knapt,
Het his Kettle.

L
He's in Liquor,
Lordly,
He makes Indentures with his Leggs,
Well to Live,
Light,
Lappy,
Limber,

M
He sees two Moons,
Merry,
Middling,
Moon-Ey'd,
Muddled,
Seen a Flock of Moons,
Maudlin,
Mountous,
Muddy,
Rais'd his Monuments,
Mellow,

N
He's eat the Cocoa Nut,
Nimptopsical,
Got the Night Mare,

O
He's Oil'd,
Eat Opium,
Smelt of an Onion,
Oxycrocium,
Overset,

P
He drank till he gave up his Half-Penny,
Pidgeon Ey'd,
Pungey,
Priddy,
As good conditioned as a Puppy,
Has scalt his Head Pan,
Been among the Philistines,
In his Prosperity,
He's been among the Philippians,
He's contending with Pharaoh,
Wasted his Paunch,
He's Polite,
Eat a Pudding Bagg,

Q
He's Quarrelsome,

R
He's Rocky,
Raddled,
Rich,
Religious,
Lost his Rudder,
Ragged,
Rais'd,
Been too free with Sir Richard,
Like a Rat in Trouble.

S
He's Stitch'd,
Seafaring,
In the Sudds,
Strong,
Been in the Sun,
As Drunk as David's Sow,
Swampt,
His Skin is full,
He's Steady,
He's Stiff,
He's burnt his Shoulder,
He's got his Top Gallant Sails out,
Seen the yellow Star,
As Stiff as a Ring-bolt,
Half Seas over,
His Shoe pinches him,
Staggerish,
It is Star-light with him,
He carries too much Sail,
Stew'd
Stubb'd,
Soak'd,
Soft,
Been too free with Sir John Strawberry,
He's right before the Wind with all his Studding Sails out,
Has Sold his Senses.

T
He's Top'd,
Tongue-ty'd,
Tann'd,
Tipium Grove,
Double Tongu'd,
Topsy Turvey,
Tipsey,
Has Swallow'd a Tavern Token,
He's Thaw'd,
He's in a Trance,
He's Trammel'd,

V
He makes Virginia Fence,
Valiant,
Got the Indian Vapours,

W
The Malt is above the Water,
He's Wise,
He's Wet,
He's been to the Salt Water,
He's Water-soaken,
He's very Weary,
Out of the Way.

The Phrases in this Dictionary are not (like most of our Terms of Art) borrow'd from Foreign Languages, neither are they collected from the Writings of the Learned in our own, but gather'd wholly from the modern Tavern-Conversation of Tiplers. I do not doubt but that there are many more in use; and I was even tempted to add a new one my self under the Letter B, to wit, Brutify'd: But upon Consideration, I fear'd being guilty of Injustice to the Brute Creation, if I represented Drunkenness as a beastly Vice, since, 'tis well-known, that the Brutes are in general a very sober sort of People.

The Pennsylvania Gazette, January 13, 1736/7

Elena

2010-07-15T11:56:00.004-04:00

She collected him. His moods, his tics. Hoping that by this accrual of fragments, she would have all of him, would come to know him as her favorite protagonist. In this way he became real to her, and then, slowly, became distasteful. She had gone through myriads of him, always the same patterns, the same path walked down to dirt & scuff. She tested him with poetry, would savagely grind against him over a choppy sea of sheets, whispering Verlaine into his ear:

Pour toi, j’ai fait, pour toi, cette chanson,
Cruelle et caline -

&: he would draw away from her, like a ferry tugging out of its slip, harbour & islandward. She would stand on the pier, stone-eyed & silent

or: she would subtly inflame him with embarrassment, until he became a wizened cinder, one ember of pure hate winking furiously & impotently in her direction.

the latter, occurring with more frequency than the former.

there were, of course, variables to her algorithms: there had been the liar, the pervert, the honey-tongued rake, et alis.

after some time, their names gracefully faded from her recollection, and so, in conversation, replaced them with colors - most often, the color of the shirt she last remembered him in. (took an inordinate amount of pleasure in assigning the hue “Buff” to one ex-flame who commonly went sans shirt)

(now), she was largely alone. read books. he had gone weeks before, and though his name was Theo, she already knew him as Red. a pile leaned like a familiar lover to her right. from bottom to top: Lautreamont, Barthes, Nin, Rousseau, de Sade, Bachelard, Flaubert, Proust (Swann’s Way, trans. Moncrieff), Pound, Nabokov, Pynchon, Auster, Albee, Woolf - &, placed deliberately at the top like a capstone, Justine, Durrell.

she dreamed of violence. of monsters with no faces & yet, possessing maws agape with wicked fangs. they existed around her with no interest in attacking or devouring. she was ineffectual, had no import or bearing. a distant lighthouse faltered & extinguished, plunging her (in the ocean, treading water) into utter black.

the second drink went down faster than the first. she saw him across the bar in a t-shirt whose color she was unable to discern - some shade of Gray - (she had, already, Gray-with-an-A & a Grey-with-an-E.) his eyes were fastened to a paperback. in front of him, a sweating pint of beer and an empty shotglass with a thimble of amber pooling in the bottom. she decided he was Shale. craned her neck (over her Tequila Sunrise) to see the title of the book. the letters swam in her vision like guppies in a bowl. there were multifold creases, cracks, in the spine of the book - she rises inside of herself, throat arid with expectation, but cannot make it out. he coughs, lightly, and turns a page as if the book is porcelain. she slams herself back down into her seat, spraying her desire with the pesticide of negative thought and horrible outcome. “Another crayon in the box,” she sighs, and chortles morbidly behind a hand at the image it conjures.

“What’s that?” the bartender is someone she knows - it’s good-old-Randy, of the churl’s smile & the fool’s mad grin. she supposes he’s an attractive guy. ruddy. rangy. going to seed a bit in the middle as a result of a fondness for malty, thick beers.

“Another crayon,” she repeats, absently, twining a strand of hair around her finger.

Randy’s put something on the bar in front of her that rattles like candy. At first, she thinks it is candy. “I think we lost Black awhile ago, and Green’s just a stub. Keep ‘em here for Deb’s kid.” He scratches his beard. “Don’t know what you’d need ‘em for.”

She blinks, and stares him full in the face. Laughter trickles out of the corners of her mouth and she sucks on the straw until the Sunrise fades noticeably in the pint glass. “Randy, you’re a peach. Got any paper?”

They spend the next half-hour scribbling contentedly, with no real images or goals in mind, her with Cobalt Blue, he with Burnt Sienna. She drinks another Sunrise away.

o

ELENA HARRIS
152 CHURCH ST
5C
CITY, STATE
ZIPCODE

No return address. She turns the envelope over & over in her hands as if trying to ascertain its contents by touch alone. She is unsuccessful - for the most part. It is a letter, and it has been written by one Elaine Harris, now deceased. The letter contains a great deal of hand-wringing & apology, as well as funeral instructions. It is the last missive from a mother who feels the Kublerian-Ross finality of regret & is straining for some sort of redemption from her daughter. Despite the commonality of their surname, Elena has never heard of Elaine. Her mother’s first name is Linda.

The telephone rings and, at the same time, a small bird flies directly into the window directly to Elena’s right. This is the first time this has ever happened, and she is startled, dropping the letter from Elaine Harris to the floor. A small smear of blood on the glass pane is hesitantly extending a downward pseudopod like a recalcitrant explorer. The window is nailed shut, she cannot open it to clean it. The bird is nowhere to be seen. She picks up the letter anew and sits heavily on the couch; opting for the stifling silence rather than turning on music, as is her usual habit upon entering the apartment. It is sweltering on the fifth floor, though she would never live on the ground floor - prefers vastly to have a sense of omniscience by looking down on things, to be able to look out and over and up. The evening is a great nothing stretching out ahead of her. She has no plans. A sigh leaves her body involuntarily, sneaks out & away before she can catch the errant breath. She unzips her bag and pulls out the day’s acquisition: it is Derrida, and a battered, bruised copy of Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen, in a translation she does not already have. (She has two, and they sit next to one another on her bookshelf)

At that very moment, S. calls.

They lay in bed - S. & E. - letting their fingers traipse over one another. It is the bliss of post-coitus, and the world is white-gold all over. everything around them seems basted with the night, soaking it all in. The dark is liquid, pliable. She sighs, gathering air into herself and allowing it exit with a carefully moderated exhalation. He lights a cigarette and muses through the smoke. She isn’t paying attention, lolling like a primate in the glow, tongue hanging loose, body unhinged, splayed and akimbo on the queen-sized bed - that is, until he asks

“If I die, will you make sure they bury me with headphones on?”

She almost snorts her derision at the ridiculous nature of the question. His name is already Royal (after Royal Blue) even though the shirt he was wearing is crumpled on the floor. “I thought you said you wanted to be cremated.”  He chewed the thought for a second, like a tough piece of gristle. “Well then make sure the photo they put in the funeral has me wearing headphones, okay? Music is important to me. I think I should be remembered with a symbol of listening to music. Or something. I don’t know.” He paused, as if immediately recriminate. “Am I making any sense at all?”

“You’re ruminating. It’s all right.” 

“I’m not being too … self-involved?”

“No.”

“All right.” He sank contentedly back down into himself, resting his head more comfortably in the crooks of the arms folded behind his head. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself, like a cat in the birdcage, feathers sticking out of his mouth. She curled away from him, dissatisfaction staining her in the same way as wine stains teeth & tongue. He didn’t seem to notice.

o

She is discouraged. The world is this gigantic place she can only see one frame at a time, from the window of her screened-in porch. In grandiose moments, she refers to it as her solarium, replete with a moue of hand and mouth. she comes to smoke here in the early mornings, dredging herself out of sleep with a cup of english breakfast tea & a hand-rolled cigarette; curling on a settee found on the curb a block or so away. this morning, it is beginning to rain and it sounds dour to her. any other morning she would have elated in it, the insistent and tinny rhythm of the water on the roof and asphalt below, but this morning she is irritable and snappish, even at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her stomach is a weird sea of unease and her fingers are sticking to the cigarette. This is going to be a day where everything goes wrong, she decides, and stares down at the street below.

A man & a woman (call them Hannah and Brian … Livingston.) are hand-in-hand in leisurely promenade. Hannah is carrying a small purse, the color of which is offensively green, which offsets her offensively blonde hair. Brian is one of those perfectly cut-out specimens of masculinity, down to the tucked-in polo shirt and bermuda shorts. They go jogging together. They have separate lives but somehow always careen back into one another by evening. Hannah has dinner plans floating in her skull. She’ll cook that chicken breast in the freezer, season it with lemon & paprika, pan-fry it over some rotini and chop up some light vegetables. Some sort of vinaigrette. She knows Brian won’t be very hungry, but she knows she will be. A white wine for her - something of the chardonnay variety, and a Michelob Ultra for him.

Brian is thinking about his golf game, and the girl caddy with the brunette ponytail & white visor. Her name is Lola, and sometimes Brian finds himself humming the Kinks song of the same name as he’s teeing off. Watching and admiring her pert, round ass in her cream-colored miniskirt as she bends over to retrieve a ball. She has some Mexican blood in her.

Hannah is asking him a question. He hasn’t been paying attention, drifted, from her. He makes up a noncommittal answer and they pass out of sight, turning the corner.

She wrinkles her nose at them, unseen from her lofty perch, and turns away from the window. Dust catches in her throat and she gags involuntarily, swilling the last of the tea-gone-cold from the red & gold mug. This is going to be one of those days.

o

Around noon, the telephone rings. It’s an older-version cell phone, flip-phone, with no bells or whistles - the ring is seven long, impatient-sounding tones, in the style of an old receiver & cradle phone. She has to endure endless jokes & jibes at her expense when in mixed company, surrounded by a forest of people whose eyes are glued to their iPhones, or BlackBerries, or what-have-you. They make an alarming array of hoots and bleeps and she feels that the phones are having their own private conversation - moreso, even, than their owners. She has walked into a bar and seen the entirety of the clientele - all the way down the long bar to the bathrooms - with their faces turned down, illuminated by the eldritch blue of their devices. The tableau so chilled her that she immediately powered her own churlishly anachronistic telephone off and left it off until the next morning.

She doesn't answer it.

o

She waits with drink in hand for someone to leave, hovering near the first stool. There is a burly man occupying said seat, hands cupped around his pint of lager as if protecting it from possible spill. His hands are big enough to overlap around the backside of the glass. He wears a camouflaged trucker’s hat, sunglasses perched on the brim, a white t-shirt that’s seen better days, duck pants, and black workboots. Randy is tending the bar again, and it’s a busy night. She isn’t even entirely sure why she’s sojourned to the bar, with a half-full bottle of gin on the kitchen counter and a bottle of tonic in the fridge, but she’s here now and is determined to follow through.

(The day, as she had expected, was one disappointment after the next. She started to read, but found herself constantly distracted by minor irritants:

a strand of hair that wouldn’t lay quiescent (and so, deranged with a pair of dull scissors, chopped it right off), followed by

a persistent tickle in the rear of her throat, one that couldn’t even be dislodged by repeated coughing, followed by

the inability to find a comfortable position, even after re-arranging her body five major times and six minor times, while at the same time

scratching in vain the itch on the sinistral side of her lower scalp & consumed with the heat radiating from a tiny, cruel cut on the webbing between her dextral thumb & forefinger -

she had given up on comfort and threw herself out of the house without bothering to tuck her book under her arm)

The man in the camouflage hat shifted in his seat and emitted a rumbling belch, a low sound that he self-consciously muffled with the back of one hand before surreptitiously glancing around to see if anyone had taken offense. Elena was pleased despite herself at his furtiveness, declaring it an act of conscious chivalry, and when their gazes met, she smiled at him to communicate her approval. He nodded, somewhat awkwardly, and briefly touched the brim of his hat. She was again touched, and inclined her head in the same fashion.

Thunder, then, from somewhere in the stomach of the sky, and her neck twisted to give her vantage of the sidewalk and beyond. It had begun to rain, and unabashedly so, in heavy, full drops that splattered as they struck the concrete. When she turned back around, the man (she couldn’t call him White, she had one, and Whitey was out of the question … Camouflage wasn’t really a color so much as a color of colors - he had a dark beard, she could call him Blackbeard, but that’s breaking the rule - )

“Why don’t you have a seat,” he was saying gruffly, one hand attached to the underside of his chin, scratching.

She blinked at him. “Me?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Very kind of you,” she said, but did not sit down.

“I have to be goin’, in any case.” He clipped the end consonants from his words like someone clipping a cigar, and she found it delightful for the first time since Maroon had left her, well, marooned, for some Kentucky-fried up-and-coming country singer.

“Thank you.”

“I’m Jeff.” He extended his hand. She could see the topography of his palm was heavily callused, a square shape radiating evenly measured and distributed fingers. From her minute-long dalliance with chiromancy, she recalled that his Mount of Saturn seemed unusually prominent, but couldn’t remember what that entailed.

“Elena.” (She was going to have to come up with a color for him.)

“Really?”

She blinked again, and fell into her habit of re-assessing the physical situation. The empty chair sat between the two of them. His hand was still outstretched. She bit her lower lip & took it in her own. He had a firm grip, but not overly firm - but not so restrained as to display a concern for her fingers. In fact, it seemed he hadn’t really thought about it at all - he simply extended his hand and did what came naturally. They squeezed, shook, and disengaged. Elena was becoming more thrilled by the minute. “Oh - yes. Really,” she said, bewildered by her brain.

Jeff nodded. “Never met an Elena before.”

“First time for everything,” she came back, gamely. He smiled, an easy smile displaying two rows of teeth whiter than his shirt. He leaned in, one foot up on the bottom rung of the chair, folding his arms over his chest. That worried her - she’d read somewhere it was a defensive posture, but seconds after the thought traversed her mind, he unfolded them and stuck a hand in a pocket, letting the other rest on the back of the chair.

“Yep.”

The silence fell like doors being finally breached by a battering ram. They both reached for their drinks at the same time. On the jukebox, someone was playing “Baby, I’m Gonna Leave You.”

Thunder, once more. Over her shoulder, Elena heard someone telling a story

“Jacky told me they’ve been finding wolves around.”

“No way. Where? How many?”

“No one knows where they’re coming from. Jacky’s friend Victor’s brother works at the police station and he told Victor that they’ve had twenty-five calls in the past two nights about wolves in people’s front yards.”

“No shit.”

“I shit you not.”

“Have you seen any?”

“Not yet.”  and she felt a chill.

Jeff was fishing his wallet from his back pocket, settling up with Randy. Elena pinkened in the cheeks, averted her eyes. “Be careful,” she heard herself saying.

“What’s that?” Jeff turned around.

“There’s wolves.”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“I just … “ she was motioning over her shoulder when she realized confessing to eavesdropping wasn’t the most attractive trait - did she even want to seem attractive to him? - “I heard. Someone.”

“Wolves.” 

“Yeah. In … in the streets.”

He laughed, quietly, and she knew instinctively he wasn’t laughing at her but at the absurdity of the statement. “I’ll be careful.”

“Okay. Good … then. Please do.”

Jeff tipped his hat to her again and exited. She watched him go, admiring his gait, which was slow without being ponderous, deliberate but without pretense. “Thanks for the seat,” she called out, as if to trip him up, but he just waved over a shoulder & the door closed behind him.

and finally, the electric herald of lightning, God’s Holy Camera making a Kodak moment out of the rain-slick streets.

(around the corner, in a garbage-strewn alley, a brindled gray wolf slavers over the corpse of a small cat)

o

she wakes up alone, on the couch in the living room, dazed. feels the hangover brooding like a hurricane just off the coast of her frontal lobe, tracking a slow & painstaking path down behind her face. her mouth is dry and her palms are clammy. she isn’t quite sure how she made it home - can’t remember much after the fifth drink. she remembers the rain ceasing. something about a pregnant mother.

her dreams were vivid and made little sense: she had somehow made friends with a ball bearing, which had sentience, moved of its own accord, and rolled tenderly up and down her body at night. it lived in a small cup on a porch just outside her home, and one day, the cup was thrown senselessly away. her heart tightened as she recalled the dream-moment she discovered, heavy inside of herself with knowing, the absence of the cup, the ball-bearing’s home. some vicious personage had thrown it into the yard, which turned into a salvage lot, which was also somehow a beach. she became obsessed with finding her friend, and years passed with her crawling on her belly through the short grass, the tall grass, picking through the twisted, rusted metal of the junkyard, eventually beaching herself by the indifferent waves. a grain of sand, blown by the wind, tickling up her bare arm - a startle of joy, ecstasy, seizing her by the insides, recalling the sensation of her friend - but an arrogant gust of sea-wind tosses it callously away -

She is wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her right hand. The rain has stopped, but she can still hear fat, loner drops plunging from the trees’ broad leaves to the unforgiving asphalt below. Fog brushes its belly over the streets of the city. She hauls herself from the couch and prepares some tea. Goes through her morning ablutions, lost in a swirl of imagery. Stares at herself blankly in the bathroom mirror and doesn’t quite recognize the face looking back. She is expressionless but her eyes are red and the skin around them swollen as though needing the pinprick of a lancet.

Later, she sits down to breakfast, and a magazine from months ago.

Later still, she sits, smoking a damp cigarette made clumsily the night before, on her porch.

The possibilities of the day stretch out in front of her, coalescing in the same manner as the fog.

She is waiting for the sun to burn it away.

She is in the habit of making lists.

the drunk asked me what i was writing & i said "amores perros."

2010-07-13T08:06:00.004-04:00

she asked him politely to stop. he did not. she asked him again, and still he did not. a third time & the din & hum of the bar and its concourse. she fixed him in ice and he writhed within her constraints. almost enjoyed the bondage of it. when she eventually turns away (as they always do) he feels a deeper chill, one that ossifies the blood in his veins. he orders another beer & another shot of tequila. the scathe of the booze riots without recourse, metastasizing through the empire of his circulatory system -

an aubade

2010-07-06T23:36:00.005-04:00

i never liked it when you laughed. you had a horrible way of snorting that you weren’t ashamed of but which i was, for you. you said you didn’t mind, you thought it was cute. when you sang and went suddenly off-pitch i cringed and my eyes watered. these were things i could not control. i wrote about them in a journal that i kept online. i try to remember the things about you that i like but i keep coming back to the ones i don’t. you leave your clothes on the floor in the bathroom when you’re done with your shower & you always throw the empty tins of cat food in the sink. you’re in a rush on your way to work. you don’t like to talk in the morning but when you come home in the late afternoon you’re bursting with conversation like an overripe tomato, squirting rumor and the daily happenstances like juice. all i want to do is get high and listen to music, because the last thing in the world that i ever want to do is talk about work when i return from it. i learned to do this from my parents, who kept the two worlds of work & home disparate from one another and said it was for my benefit. it worked up until my mother got fired for blowing the whistle, which is the night she locked herself in her bedroom but i could still hear her crying.

you hate your hair and always want to cut it really short. you know i like it long. you confide to me that the day we break up is the day you cut it all off. i make some vague allusion to samson & delilah and you tease me with that term of endearment you know i hate.

we’ve been together now for long enough that we live together. you leave the top off of the jar of honey and sometimes i think you do it on purpose. i hate the feeling of sticky things and protest most uses of tape or glue. i prefer staples and paperclips, you like rubber cement & adhesive. i’ve tried to read into this but you say it isn’t true and giggle behind one hand whenever i bring it up.

we get high together and sometimes when silence falls i enter into the loquela and i start aiming questions at myself about you. i watch how you shift in the chair and chew at a fingernail, then jerk your head to the side when you hear someone on the street outside passing by loudly. our cat mimics you and flees the room with wide, panicked eyes. the way you sit, twisted on top of one leg, hand straddling the armrest as if ready to heave yourself out of the chair at a moment’s notice. i remark on it and you laugh uncomfortably, resettling in a different position. sometimes when i make my observations you look hurt - your eyes darken & you go somewhere just inside of yourself for a small while. you always make the effort to return, though, and smile sunnily as though it never happened.

i worry about you when you’re drinking. you can hold your liquor but any one thing can happen and send you flying, teetering, in a flurry of expressive nonsense punctuated by wild gesticulations and the occasional snorting laugh. you like to hug when you’re drunk, and it’s all right by me but i fear sometimes my irritation is on display. i’m not a very good liar, and you still don’t know this after all this time.

and then we’re someone, the two of us: we get referred to as a singularity, a meiotic cell stuck in metaphase. our hands are fastened together like old baucis & philemon’s trees, firmly, forever, and, like all men, i get nervous at the notion of eternity.

o

i’m changing my name & you’re all for it, enthusiastic & gung-ho. you even fight those little skirmishes for me when friends neglect to heed the shift in nomenclature, standing up like a stormcloud & reminding. there is usually a form of apology or honest recrimination: names are a hard thing for people to remember. once you are who you are, there’s no sideways motion. this morning i was reading about the sun & how it works when it began to rain, and you came in with a mug of coffee and the cat innocently obstructing your path. i could smell the tequila on your breath before you came into the room. i said something about how i felt like i experienced differential rotation even though i was matter and not plasma. you took me seriously for once & we talked about coronal ejections & the magnetic shield of the Earth; of the heliopause & its termination shock; and of the silent, electric whispers of the solar wind. we fell quiet & you laid your head on my shoulder. you have scars on your arm: raised, perfect cicatrices laid like railroad ties near up to the inside of your elbow. a tattoo does not hide them, as was your self-confessed intention, and instead draws attention to them. i kind of love seeing the reaction on strangers’ faces when they notice your handiwork.

sometimes i imagine you like a museum that i am leading a tour of. we are in the bar and you are by my side, drinking with great haste through a plastic straw a very stiff pint of something with bourbon. i am nursing a beer and watching you throw yourself to the conversational wolves again.

o

lately you drink bourbon and i drink gin. we go to the same bar every night, or every other night. you get drunk a lot lately and it makes you amorous. we clamber into bed and fall all over one another, unable to manage our breathing. there’s a lot of quick, flurried laughter that abates once we busy our mouths with each other's lips and tongue. in the hours toward the morning you tell me how you laughed at your aunt’s funeral and how your family hated you.

you think i’m overly aggressive sometimes. you say i can be an asshole and i like it. you like it too. you wear a goofy grin and punch me lightly in the shoulder by way of both admonishment and flirtation. i have conversations with other girls who are bombed on red bull & vodka, who teeter on their heels and ask for a light. explosions of chatter while they twitter on their iPhones and BlackBerries. take pictures of their martinis and post them on their FaceBook. i am making fun of them and they are too wasted to recognize it. you don’t approve, but you don’t disapprove.

& there is always something missing between the two of us. you think it’s dissatisfaction & i think it’s boredom. this town is too small to hold our interest. we make plans to go away, to leave for a proper city. we have been doing this for months now. sometimes you tell our friends that we’re leaving and they express polite surprise but know we’ll do otherwise.

a terrible thing happens somewhere in the world & you are heartsick at it. you volunteer to help in the relief effort and urge me to do the same. this, i fear, is the change that could wreck us. i do not have your level of empathy, but i respect it. i idle in circuitous forms of conversation regarding the terrible thing, i hypothesize on it. i do not have direct conversations regarding the facts, and beg off when it surfaces in the stream of conversation. it is the same with politics and religion. when pressed, i invoke an old scrivener’s paradigm: i would prefer not to. you make your disgusted face at me and ask my opinion: should you go? you explain you’ve never felt so strongly about something in your life - ever. i accept and understand, and everything tells me to tell you to go, go because you know it’s going to make you feel good about yourself and who couldn’t do with a little of that these days, right? but i don’t say that, i don’t tell you those things, i just shrug and say that it’s up to you. it’s your decision.

but it’s your decision too, you say, and your voice feels like an invisible fingertip pressing on my forehead. don’t you want me to stay?

of course i do, i am replying. of course i do.

then i will, you sigh.

you end up going, two weeks later. you leave a note on my pillow, like a movie. it’s brimming with apologies, thorny with your moral agony, and finally resolves itself with a firm dictum of stated intent. you’ve signed it with a heavy hand. at the terminus of the last looping L, the ballpoint of your pen (never pencil) has pierced the thin paper. it looks like you were writing it on your thigh.

you have a terrible habit of misspelling “enviroment”.

o

you are writing a screenplay about it, you are endlessly typing away in the next room. the weird plastic chatter of your laptop’s keyboard. i am watching the rockford files and drinking a Narragansett. while you were gone i had a fling with an old girlfriend and i am fat with the guilt of it. you are absorbed with the clippings of newspapers, your journal entries, the photographs. you talk about it constantly, what it was like, and all of our friends listen. some of us have heard it more than twice now. we allow it but it is wearing on us. or perhaps it is only me.

i lie in bed. you are typing. i pull out my laptop and type, too. to drown out the sound of you with my sound.

you are tired all the time now. you’ve cut coffee out of your diet and i hear constant remarks on how ‘subdued’ you seem. your sleep is at awkward hours, and never for very long. the bulb on the desk lamp has burnt out and been replaced. it was an old bulb. you come to bed at sunrise and seem physically wracked. some nights you sit on the edge of the bed and stare out the window at the world outside blinking its eyes and stretching.

you don’t talk about it anymore. you close the door when you go into the other room and i do not hear the sound of your keys. i go to the bar alone more than i used to. my friends urge me to ask you about it, to talk it through. i don’t know how to tell them i don’t know what to say. the cat and i have become better friends. it used to hate me.

o

you’ve finished your script. it’s terrible. i tell you otherwise. you tell all of our friends that you’ve finished and they congratulate you but when you continue talking about it they go slightly blank and have to maintain their smiles. you don’t know what to do next. i recommend a book i’ve just read and you say you don’t want to read anything right now. you take up painting for awhile. our house is filled with easels and canvases. they’re all violently blue - all you’ve bought for oils are deep prussian and viridian, cadmium white. you are uncontrollably painting the ocean, over and over, from near-benthic to littoral. i am surprised at how good they are. you leave your palette to one side, still smeared with the mix of hues. one morning over breakfast you tell me you’ve been dreaming of the ocean. you don’t know what it means and i tell you it doesn’t matter what it means, it matters how it makes you feel. you confess that it scares you.

reports are still coming in about the terrible thing, and you refuse to listen or hear about it. you shut off the television or walk out of the room or leave the table. you are unhappy inside, and it’s beginning to show.

o

i am talking to you across the kitchen table. you are pretending to be listening to NPR. the cat is nowhere to be found. the television and the radio are both on. i am talking to you about dinner plans. you tell me to stop and i do, but suddenly you start yelling. you snap in a million places. you are white-fisted fury & froth. i am afraid you might hit me and a part of me wants you to. i let you roil for as long as you need to. the bells in the Polish church down the street are ringing for Saturday Mass.

some spleen

2010-03-14T12:14:00.003-04:00

the night's sullen candor,
purpled & inveterate.

1.
irascible moon, high &
lofty, powdering its face
just to disdain its suitours.
how proud! how haughty!
she tilts her face to the sky,
uses it for a mirror -

2.
manic sun,
halitosic on the streets below.
teeth long since rotted out.
vibrates in the heat-static of the sky,
spits & convulses
like an apoplectic madman -

3.
the white capillaries
of lightning snake across
the gray cheeks
of the bulbous clouds;
thunder provides the soundtrack
to their rhexis

4.
the wind:
a hundred invisible strangers
rushing importantly by -
fearful, frustrated, unconcerned,
solipsistic -

& the philosopher-drunks
all imitating Diogenes,
frothing at the mouth,
inventing new dances
on their sojourns from one bar
to the next -
from tango to dervish

5.
and,
inevitably,
the brontolalia
of blood rushing in the ears,
the insistent rhythm of the heart
seizing dominion over the head -

(a coup de tete!)

- & again!
the vulcanized needle of lightning,
sewing up the skin of everything
with its effulgency,
disdaining the gray hush
of dusk & dim,
yet despite,

"luxe, calme, et volupté"
a half-second later.

a very brief story for a friend containing or circumlocuting the word "intrigue"

2010-03-09T14:48:00.003-05:00

the lonely walk home from the bar, the drunken stagger, the sudden recalculate & regroup as one foot bismehaves, slips right as if drawn to a sullen, clandestine magnet just behind that streetlight, that trashcan. tongue heavy in the cave of the mouth like a hibernating bear. eyes like fish in a foggy bowl. somewhere, deep in the recesses of the brain, there is a headache blooming like a bruised flower.

it is on the corner of Lux and Scorro that they meet. red light, imperious DO NOT WALK blazoning from across the asphalt, yet no cars. she comes up behind him, tilting slightly, waifish, giggling to her intertwined fingers held just before her mouth. he turns his bleary eyes over his shoulder and she lifts her gaze. she wears a hat just slightly askew on her head, a dress she's made herself, all patchwork & crazed sew. "d'you got a cigarette?" he asks - or thinks he does, she is fishing in her little clutch, withdrawing a battered pack of parliaments.

"i don't smoke," she says. the light has turned green and a single car whizzes by, too fast. "i don't know what these came from." she tilts her head like a dog listening for a distant, tinny sound. "where. they came from. here." she proffers the pack.

he accepts them even though he smokes camel filters. "thanks." returns his attention to the car-less boulevard. "guess we could go."

"no cars," she lists back and forth a little, whether on purpose or not he can't tell.

"are you drunk?" he demands to know, somewhat imperiously. the timbre of his voice spirals upwards like a minaret.

"no." she narrows her eyes at him. "are you?"

"no, i'm jeremy."

the silence acquires a patina of frost, which abruptly thaws with the sound of her laugh, a brittle thing that seems to spider out of her before growing louder and ceasing, altogether too abruptly. "i'm corie." she extends her hand, palm down, and he takes it in his. his palm is callused just above the mount of saturn, and encountering this with her forefinger she frowns and withdraws.

he scrutinizes her face. just under her right eye is a quick pale scar that seems to flicker beneath the skin like a minnow in the shallows, wriggles when she winks or smiles. she averts her gaze.

the light's gone red, the admonishment of DON'T WALK has turned to the beneficent white man's outline. they begin to walk, steadied by each other's presence. "do you live in the west?"

"depends on where we are now," she retorts with a crooked smile.

"almost west."

she nods, and they proceed. towering over them to the right is a hospital: every window is dim save for one, stained with the silhouette of some lonely patient looking east, waiting for the sun to rise. the driveway in is stippled white & red lambent by the neon proclaiming EMERGENCY. somewhere around the corner, a dog's collar & tags are jingling. "you didn't answer me," he says.

"yes," she pauses. he is a head taller than she. something about the fringe of his brown hair sweeping across his brow she doesn't trust. that and his hand. "on purpose."

"well, aren't you just the..." he trails off. "i got nothin."

she laughs despite herself and they continue until they part at the corner of Oyll and Vinniger. neither note the irony.

t.a. miercoles, fragment

2010-03-01T16:01:00.003-05:00

t.a. miercoles, born at the hiccup of midnight on a tuesday, was putting himself in order in front of the mirror. he averted his eyes from his own gaze, finding something particularly unnerving about the way he stared at himself. running a comb through his hair, he turned away and sighed. the phone rang and he ignored it. some music was playing on his computer that he wasn't familiar with, yet he didn't stop to ascertain the song.

he had long flirted with the idea of leaving the town, but somehow had stuck to it like a barnacle. he preferred to spend his time alone, though found himself from time to time besieged by the urge to integrate himself into the social continuum. these urges passed, though not without leaving a slimy track of self-loathing across his brain. he spent most of his time asleep, though not by design, and slept the longest when he fell into it accidentally, propped in a chair awkwardly before his desk. after midnight, if he had put sleeping clothes on and slid beneath the sheets, he would lay awake for what seemed like hours, eyes pinioned open, fixed on the ceiling, waiting for a dream to sneak up and ambush him. he wouldn't call it insomnia. he slept enough.

and when he slept, he dreamed: big huge dreams, vivid dreams that destroyed him, his loved ones, the world. he escaped from cataclysm as many times as he fell into its gaping maw, talked wordlessly to strangers he had met before. little girls with pink tongues danced slavishly around maypoles. buildings collapsed and triads of old women fumbled foolishly with knitting needles while pointing and laughing at his tireless effort to save someone from the rubble.

the waiter's monologue

2010-03-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

"hey guys, how are you today? anyone? okay. can i start you off with some beverages while you're looking at the menus? yeah? no, we don't have sam adams. no. we don't have any sam adams at all. miller lite? no - we have coors light and bud light. bud light, okay. for you, ma'am? hot tea? no - sorry, we have iced tea, but that's it for tea. just water? okay. and for you, sir? water with a lemon. oh, you want a lemon too? sure guys, i'll be right back with your drinks. let me know if there's anything else we don't have that i can't get for you."

sunday prompt: message

2010-02-08T09:48:00.004-05:00

every day she put a letter in the mailbox of the abandoned house. the look on her face: determined, deliberate. her stride, nonchalant, affected slightly, even in the hop up the steps to the front door. the kind of thing that you see when you have a window on the first floor. the passersby and their idiosyncrasies; the hasty gait of someone late to an appointment, the swagger of the youth, the hesitant, cramped dodder of the elderly. those walking dogs or hands fastened securely to children. and this, every day, mid-afternoon, the girl who puts mail in the mailbox of an abandoned house. gotta be crazy, right. one of those people kind of soft in the head who walk the same block three times talking to themselves or shouting obscenities at ghosts. but he's never seen her anywhere else, even in this little fist of a city. just the same time every afternoon.

he's only just moved into this apartment after a particularly nasty break-up that he swears isn't his fault but knows secretly inside, like a rotting fruit, that it was. he had become distant in the final months, felt his eyes and hands wandering. never committed an infidelity but dreamed he had. guilt stained his mouth and teeth. spent more hours in the studio, at the bar. bourbon after bourbon. then, tipsy and wilted, stagger back to the easel and the paints and the inks and outside, the night crashing down all around -

he had a tickle in the back of his throat. the girl was going away again, back down the street headed west. he drummed his fingers against the wall and pulled the curtain back. kept drumming. gnawed on his lower lip with his sinistral incisor, a nervous habit he had picked up only recently. something about the sensation of constantly biting into meat, maybe.

before he knew what he was doing, he had zipped on his sweater, his vest, was out the door, cigarette and lighter in hand. the cold rushed into him like a linebacker and he unconsciously grappled backward for the doorknob, slamming the door shut behind him. the wind was anxious, multi-directional, sweeping to and fro with a vengeance. god's broom, he thought idly, and was out the side gate with cigarette burning feverishly in his mouth.

the house had stood there, empty, for as long as he had lived in the town. there's always a house like it in every town, no matter how small. untenanted, condemned, landlord overseas. the kids don't even go in there to smoke weed and drink budweiser. the walls are curiously graffiti-less, you can see through the naked windows. it's almost as though the house occupies negative space, somehow escapes everyone's notice. everyone but her, of course. he climbs the steps one at a time, carefully, as though afraid the wrong foothold will cause the entire thing to come crashing down - or worse, fold into some sort of clichéd dimensional blip like the house in Poltergeist.

the mailbox was closed. a small metal box, black paint flaking off to reveal the mottled steel beneath. he opened it and looked inside. there was only one envelope, smallish, neatly creased. he had expected more, for the box to be overflowing with dead letters, and was surprised. he withdrew it from the box and let the lid clang shut. both sides were curiously blank, yet holding it up to the sun revealed there was, indeed, a letter inside. he hesitated, then left the house standing there, ducked down the steps two at a time and dashed back through the side gate. once in the lee of the house and the wind, he crouched over his find and stared at the back. could be anything in there. might not even be in English. he opened the envelope.

i hope you're getting these. i can get away from them for exactly the same amount of time at the same time every day but for no longer. you were right, they are watching me

love,
e

the wind whistled around the corner of the house and he jumped involuntarily, fumbling with the cigarette. it dropped to the ground and rolled away, winking like a villain, under the porch.
he stared after it for a long moment, then folded up the letter and returned to the house.

the cats were being affectionate when he re-entered, butting their heads against his shins and purring like twin jet engines. he bent down and kneaded their backs with his knuckles and they butted his fists with their jaws. they had been Rose's cats, but the apartment she was moving into didn't allow pets (landlord, childhood trauma, long story) and so, having had grown fond of at least one of them, took them with him. they had named them Fergus and Molly.

he absently gave the two some dry kibble, mind completely elsewhere. his phone was ringing, he could hear its insistent, childlike warble coming from the other room, but he didn't bother to answer it. the cats muscled their way into the bowls and began to crunch happily at their snack.

it had been Rose. of course. around that time of day, she gets lonely. gets bored. he knows her, knows her almost to the point of transparency, to the point of near-boredom. she's going to want to ask what he's doing tonight. does he want to go get a drink. does he want to just hang out and watch a movie? and all that everyone is talking about is how it's a season of breakups, always right before Valentine's Day, right? landlords must be making a killing, he can hear himself reply, rehearses the joke, knows she won't get it, will say it anyway.

so he doesn't call her back. not just yet. he knows himself, knows he'll get bored too. waiting for it to snow - it's supposed to. a right nasty blizzard tonight, coming in from the great white north. he's heard both the bum report and the weather stations. everyone is anxious, hand-wringing. he isn't worried. hasn't happened yet. the threat of a toothless dog, this winter, so far. has been the dominion of ice. lots of passersby on crutches this season, poking and staking their way down the narrow, root-heaved sidewalks. sun hasn't even gone under the trees yet. gets cold when it's dark, real cold.

he kicks off his shoes and sits down heavily at his desk, turning the letter from "e." over & over in his hands. he's already decided she's a crazy person, pirouetting in her room at her apartment at this very moment, mumbling to herself about Them and They and the constant, watching eyes. but that was just it. she didn't look like a crazy person. and why hadn't he ever seen her anywhere else? he leans back in his chair and sighs. feels like a detective. a weird, secret joy has blossomed in his brain. he grabs a pen and tears a corner-scrap from the huge pad of newsprint paper. writes

a cautionary tale

and stares at it for a long time. chews on the cap of the pen. drums a beat on the desk.

o

"so what if she's not crazy? what if this is a real thing?" the dialogue had gotten beyond the simple facts of the case to a drunken hatching of conspiracy theory. they had been talking for hours, beer and shot and shot for shot. listing like sailors on their barstools in the largely empty bar. the huge plasma TV was, as usual, showing the game, and Darren kept glancing at it, away from him and the conversation. someone was playing a lot of Foreigner on the jukebox.

"i don't know. it just doesn't seem ... i mean, how long has that house stood there?"

"it doesn't have to be about the house, though. haven't you ever read any Len Deighton, or, Tom Clancy, or any of those guys? haven't you ever seen a spy movie?"

"oh, so now you think she's a spy?"

"no - dude - i'm just saying. spies use abandoned locations for their mailboxes all the time. think about it. what better place to have a secret mailbox than a mailbox nobody ever uses?"

"well ... why not just e-mail? encrypt it or something."

"dude, you know that shit gets tracked," Darren said, slamming his hand on the bar as the game suddenly took a turn for the worse - "hacked, even," he added as an afterthought. "dude probably destroys the letters after he gets them."

"how do we know he's even getting them? i never see anybody else use it - and i've watched."

Darren shrugged, took another pull of his pabst. "just because you don't see something don't mean it's not happening."

"still."

"you don't think there's crazy shit happening out there in the world? people die, get hunted, fall down, break their skulls in their showers, get in car accidents, break up, divorce - " he cut himself off, slanting his eyes at him. "sorry dude. didn't mean - "

"it's fine. i'm not a wreck or anything over it."

"yeah. i noticed."

"she keeps calling. wants to hang out."

Darren shook his head, back and forth, solemnly, intoning, "women."

"yeah."

they lapsed into a silence, both with their eyes to the television. Darren's fist on the bar, again, and the startled eye of the bartender roving over in their direction. "maybe i should take a picture of her," he said, half-mumbling into his chin-rested fist.

"because watching her isn't creepy enough," Darren quipped.

"you would too."

"fuck yeah. you know i would. is she hot?"

he frowned. "yeah. i mean. yeah."

"maybe you should just go talk to her."

oddly enough, that hadn't occurred to him. "that hadn't occurred to me."

"dumbass," Darren said, affectionately, and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "did you forget you're single now?"

"dude. i don't want to ask her on a date or anything. i just want to know what's going on."

Darren laughed, a full, throaty sound that wriggled around his adam's apple and came easily out of his mouth. "then just keep watching, i guess. no help for it." he paused. "you could just keep stealing the letters."

he nodded. "it's just too weird, right?"

"you're kind of a weird-magnet."

"thanks. dick."

"any time," Darren replied, cheerfully. "goddamnit!"

o

midnight, sloppy drunk. parted ways with Darren at the corner of Gray and K____, stumbling only once over a too-long step over an ice-slick. no falls though. he had begun to hiccough, and the wind was causing his eyes to water. he was half-thinking of a half-finished painting that had lain on the easel in his studio since he'd broken up with Rose. a girl on a staircase, hands clasped to her breasts, dark hair flying. something in her eyes. he felt guilty finishing it now. half of it remained pencil lines, smudged by the meat of his right hand. like a building with the scaffolding left on it.

in the house and wading through the feline miasma, he realized he had left the letter at the bar. could see it in his mind's eye, resting on the open envelope, right beside the emptying pint glass. "fuck," he said out loud, and sneezed violently, so hard he stepped backwards in the dark, much to the dismay of Fergus, who yowled in protest as he scampered out of the way, eyes luminous and mistrustful, flashing like warning signs on a wet highway. he fell into bed with his clothes on and regulated his breathing, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. rising, falling. rising, falling. his eyes went to the window, curtain still coyly masking the night.

he got up and listed toward it, pulling the side of it just far enough away that he could see into the windows of the house next door. nothing stirred. the sky was scaled with gray clouds, moving heavily and ponderously. the wind rattled bits of stray refuse - an empty bag of chips, a crushed soda can, a newspaper - down the street. a shadow within the window's frame. moving. he riveted his attention on the scene, hand fisting tightly around the curtain's edge, keeping it firmly in place despite his drunkenness. something was moving inside the abandoned house. he squinted. just kids, probably. but he'd never seen that before. but just because he doesn't see something doesn't mean it doesn't --

no. it's nothing. it doesn't repeat. all he has is this tiny thing. can't trust his senses. he pulls the curtain back in disgust and collapses back into the bed. snaps off the music, even. curls into the sheets still fully clothed and refuses consciousness.

o

she doesn't come back.

this is the seventh day now. she hasn't returned.

he has watched. he has developed a habit of checking the mailbox on his way home from work, on his way to work, when he smokes a cigarette. he is knotted up inside with worry that she has been caught. he knows it's his fault. gnaws on his lower lip until it bleeds. if he just hadn't left the letter at the bar. they found it.

no. that's crazy talk. there's no they.

he has moved his chair to the window. he sits there hours a day, watching. waiting. it had snowed the night after he lost her letter, snowed just like they all said it was going to. the landscape had gone from naked and icy to plump, voluminous hills of white, miles of blinding white expanse no matter which way you looked. there were no footsteps up the stairs to the abandoned house and its mailbox save for his, ever. perhaps she's only snowed in.

on this day, he is writing a letter:

dear e. (whoever you are)

i'm sorry. i hope you are okay. i hope this isn't my fault. there's no such thing as They

and crumpled it up and thrown it out and is writing a letter:

dear e.

i am receiving your mail - hope this finds you well

love to you

and crumpled it up and thrown it out and is writing a letter:

dear e. (whoever you are)

i live next door. i found your letter and i stole it and i lost it and i'm sorry. please forgive me.

yours,
J.

he stares at it, his crabbed, messy handwriting, and sighs. looks back out the window. watches til the sun goes down. the sudden, shattering ring of his cell phone. he ignores it. lets it ring until it, quite suddenly, doesn't anymore.

a poem in pieces (while intoxicated, on coasters)

2010-02-06T22:44:00.002-05:00

so this guy
& this girl
look

at each other
& laugh

at how drunk
they both are
then

write haikus
with vomit

sunday prompt: milestone

2010-02-01T13:20:00.003-05:00

the invention of a milestone:

in place of an albatross he wore a millstone
around his neck. suffered through
the blinding sun and the twisting highways
and the dusty backroads,
head hanging and back straining
a torrent of sweat cascading
between sharkfin shoulderblades

he has come to this place,
read the sign that says
WAY STATION
and has halted, unsure.

there is an old building,
falling down around itself.
the sun cackles and crackles
and ascends like a madman who
runs up and down the same stairs
every day,
gibbering.
he is deafened by its noise,
folds himself into the station
and sits in the dust
and in the dark.

he has come in search of
Away,
and has yet to find it
but knows he is closer
than he ever has been.

he has named his shadow,
has given it a name in order
to control its waspish tendencies to
stretch out in the direction
he has come,
to sneak inside the soles of his shoes
and hide.
he has called it Miles,
somewhat frivolously.

he talks to his shadow, addresses it.
scolds it through cracked, dry lips
and with a lumpen tongue -

at night, in the cold,
her ghost: a pale blue shiver
like a pilot light about to go out.
parts her lips to speak
or kiss
and is gone.

in the morning he is walking again,
struggling with the weight of his millstone.

at half-past noon,
he unknots the rope and hurls it
as far from him as he can.
it lands and lays
like the shatter of Ozymandias,
quiescent. still.

he walks away
and leaves it to be covered
by the shifting wind

sunday prompt: yes

2010-01-24T12:51:00.002-05:00

cold blue sky. naked trees and their sluggish blood. the careful step of pedestrians on ice-mottled sidewalks. two snowstorms that year, and now with trepidation, inching into February. even so, less than it has been. she remembers years with towering snowbanks, drifts up to the second story of houses. she mistrusts this memory, but sees the images with such perfect clarity that it's hard to remember otherwise.

she keeps her desk by the window. a small third-story apartment, looking down onto the street from a large gablefront house. a streetlight flanked her view and in the night provided a constant eldritch glow through her blinds. she slept to steve reich's 'music for 18 musicians,' lulled by the oscillations of tone. though it is a small town, no one knows her. she works alone in a silent bookstore with a silent owner and goes diligently home after every shift. she makes enough to live alone. doesn't even have a cat. goes back and forth to the refrigerator for a glass of milk. sits on the side of her bed and stares into the dark, not a thought in her head.

she writes at her desk. there is a small lamp that burns at 40 watts. there is a scattering of utensils, pens of many colors, pencils of varying lengths. looseleaf paper is piled in the left corner, written all over in her crabbed, furious hand.

she looks up. the snow is falling again, lazily, pinwheeling like performers through the limelight of the the streetlamp. she makes a note. lambent and then

0

oh moon
your sad face brings down
the whole sky:
he discolors his cheeks
with soot & ashes
for you

o

she taps the side of her face with the capped black pen. stares into the outside. across the street there is a fenced-in playground. the metal of the swingset pokes through the snowdrifts like the bones of a mammoth skeleton. she can feel a cold coming on. she feels unsettled and uneasy. the windows are ill-set in their frames and the wind sneaks in. she wears sweaters and blankets to bed but wakes up sweating, fighting with the tangle of sheet and leg. she dreams she is boiling in an Arctic sea. her eyes dart from wall to wall, finally settling on the closet door. dark leaks out around its edges.

it is four in the morning. she is far enough past the winter solstice that the days now elongate instead of contract. this is a source of relief for her. she feels relaxed, as though the hours of the day are rooms that get bigger with each sundown, giving her more room to stretch out. she feels comfortable in large spaces - so long as she is the only one occupying them.

o

she has discovered something. she likes to go for small walks. just around the block, down to the park by the water, then up the street again to her apartment. she is most frightened coming out of and coming back to her doorway. before she exits, she looks cautiously down the stairs, listens for the sound of the other tenants rustling around like badgers in their burrows. she can see the line of boots and sneakers outside - this is how she knows if they're home. counts the pairs. today - all of them, present. everyone is home. this means she runs down the steps quickly, trying to avoid the ones which squeak - bypassing the second floor, then tiptoeing down the second flight, peering at the last obstacle, and then flings herself out the front door, around and past the gate before the screen door slams threateningly behind her. once down the sidewalk, she lifts her eyes and tumbles her hood down, breathing in the sharp, cold air. the world around her bristles with white.

it is sunday, just around noon, and most people are either still at church or brunch. the streets lay as quiet as a holiday. she likes to think of this time as her church. the crunch of her footsteps on fragile ice-pools. the cold warmth of the sun. she tilts her head back and shades her eyes with a mittened hand. when she arrives at the water, she finds the solitary park-bench and leans against the back of it. the harbour glitters like a garrison, armed to the teeth. seagulls describe lazy, huge patterns over the trees, calling idly to one another as if gossiping. all around, the despoiled snow, marred with the long slashes of footpaths, the brown crud splashed up from the road. she knows what she will write about. it slides easily into her like a cat creeping into a room. she watches the idea prowl around inside of her skull. waits for it - then she is gone, fairly dashing along the sidewalks to get back to the house, inflamed with the idea, her whole body fevered with it. she shakes with it. the blocks go by quickly and before she knows it, she's standing in front of the gate again. staring up at her window. her heart is hammering - this is the other end of the walk, the time which sometimes makes her stay in bed in lieu of her sunday walk, if the stairs are too busy or the streets are occupied. she advances. stealthily.

the door opens with its requisite metal shriek. she hates it, wishes it death, thinks briefly of being possessed of some unnatural demonic strength and wrenching it off of its hinges, crunching it, twisting it. her hand lingers on the handle of the doorknob as she shuts it quietly behind her. she proceeds up the stairs, gripping the rail as she goes, passing the first door, heading up the way - fifth stair, sixth stair, seventh stair (there are eleven) - she feels she is shrinking with trepidation, as if she could hide behind the rise of the stairs if threatened - and, suddenly overwhelmed, bolts. she can hear the sound of someone behind apartment 2, rattling the knob, but she is safe, behind the corner, back pressed to the wall, chest heaving with fear. she looks around the corner, peers at the man who is exiting. he is lingering on the threshold, sliding into a pair of boots. is her age, she thinks. wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a winter hat. fingerless knit gloves. he is sniffling slightly - perhaps afflicted by the same germs she feels percolating inside of her own body. he laces his boots up and stands, glancing in her direction. she flattens herself against the wall anew and holds her breath, not releasing until she hears the sound of his tread down the stairs. the screen door's obligatory slam is her starting gun - she flees up to her door and unlocks it with trembling fingers, letting herself in and shutting it closed carefully behind her. she leans heavily against it, allowing her breath to slow, her eyes sewn shut against the world.

o

her desk is her refuge. she pulls the chair in close, tucks herself in, turns all the lights down but the 40 watt lamp. the day is getting dark, the hours winding down again. she feels the angry tectonics of her empty stomach and ignores them, instead picking up a pen and arranging a sheaf of paper in front of her. she chews on the cap unthinkingly. his face. his gloves and boots. she is imagining pieces of him. she writes broad, honest face

his name is max. he works part-time as a waiter in a small restaurant and he hates his job, but he's good at it. lately his hatred for his job has been bleeding into the rest of his life. he has been drinking alone, at home, sequestered in his room with a bottle of whiskey and endless repetition of Nick Drake on vinyl. he lives alone, prefers his own company to the company of others, but isn't above going out to the bar for a drink or two. he can be prompted by the urging of his friends, who are constantly egging him on to find a woman - even though they themselves are all single or in uncomfortable relationships. he is awkward, though not without his charm, and often blows a conversation with a woman just by lapsing into an introspective silence. he has a dog that he takes for walks every morning and every night. it's a golden named Danger, though the dog's disposition is largely only for frolic and play.

he lives below her, though they've never met. once he thought he saw her leaving the apartment from his window, watching her turn down the sidewalk. she looked mistrustful. sad. almost panicky, like a squirrel attempting to cross the road. he's always wondered about her.

she stops. scowls at the paper as if it were a mirror. her left hand flashes up, about to crumple it and lob it into the wastebasket - but she doesn't. she lingers on it. closes her eyes for a moment, then picks up her pen again

he is curious. doesn't even know her name - but knows a way he can find out. he waits behind his door, eye pressed to the peephole, watching her pick her tenuous way down the stairs. he waits for the sound of the door downstairs to slam closed, and then he makes his way down the stairs after her. it is cold in the hallway. the building is old and drafty. he can feel it runnelling up the arms of his sweater, up the cuffs of his pants. the row of mailboxes - he's never bothered to check the others. lifts the tongue of apartment 3 and squints at the name printed thereon -

her name is Yes Mayberry. he blinks and lets the box close, standing there for a long second that turns into a longer minute. whose parents name someone Yes? a weird urge coruscates through him to change his own name to No. he gets a thrill from the thought and can't help but suppress a light laugh. what a weird girl.

she stops again and shoves her chair back from the desk, biting into her lower lip like biting into an overripe fruit. a tiny scarlet thread of blood makes a rivulet down her chin, but she doesn't notice. she paces around the room, murmuring senseless words to herself, almost as an incantation to keep the crushing loneliness at bay.

she can hear the stairs, creaking again. the sound of a key in the lock. she rushes to her door, fitting her eye to the peephole. watches the motion of his shadow on the wall as he fumbles with his boots. hears each thud as he drops them to the side, and the sound of the door as it meets again with its jamb. the light in the hallway goes out. she does not move. breathes in dust. exhales Yes.

sunday prompt: the good old days

2010-01-19T09:25:00.003-05:00

black ash on the white snow. smoking an american spirit down to the tip of the wing and then carefully putting it out in the ashtray. sun's been gone for days. days and days. the weekend late-wakers saw snow slammed down like a white hand overnight, smothering the earth.

the din of gray and winter all around, a constant static. he thinks about his unfinished tractatus, ink-stained and beleaguered by scarlet marginalia. it is scattered now over his desk, which is a set of 2x4s propped up on milk crates. a simple lamp. a cigar box full of writing implements. an old inkwell with no quill. he is rather full of himself and spends most of his time alone. there is a small framed picture of Thomas Edison on his wall. beside the bookshelves - milk crates, again - stuffed to groaning - with kierkegaard and hume and hegel and freud and kant, et al. his facebook profile lists his occupation as Philosopher Errant. he thinks he knows Latin and speaks it floridly, with accompanying gesticulation. wears tweed jackets with suede patches at the elbow. has a tendency to become astoundingly and suddenly bland when confronted with someone who might know more about something than he does.

he retreats indoors, stomping his wingtips off on the mat outside before entering, fussily, a bit rather like an elderly gentlemen, brow creased and sniffling slightly in disdain for the whole process. once inside, he unlaces his shoes and leaves them properly by the door, pointing resolutely east. like vassals waiting the return of their lord. he pads back into his room and further into his studio, rubbing at his eyes and yawning. he is constantly aware of himself. as though there is an invisible camera floating around him at all times. it has a tendency to make him feel paranoid and egocentric. at times causes him to be spectacularly impotent.

he hasn't always been this way. he can remember another time. the halcyon days, he calls them. recalls fondly, goes through a whole litany of fondness. takes off his glasses, rubs at them with his omnipresent handkerchief, stares off distantly. the very height of pretension. he talks about his wayward youth, of his maturation from those things. he finishes off the telling with the same phrase every time. "ah - those were the good old days!" and those around him suppressing their laughter.

this is of course when he comes to the bar. every once in awhile he'll jaunt down to the local saloon - that's how he'll say it, "the local saloon," and "mingle with the commoners." airily. everyone knows he's hiding something. he knows he's hiding something. but nobody knows what it is. there's theories. he's one of those people that is easy to hate. he asks for it. begs for it. he can be arch and aloof. he tips well, but it's kind of the kind of benevolence that you hate because of the person behind it.

he does this tonight. plans on it all day. can taste the rough burn of the scotch he's going to drink all day. thinks idly about switching to a martini. or a manhattan. he knows that what he will drink will have to correspond with his manner of dress, and so he invests a lot of effort into the process. by sunset, he has donned a brown vest over a white shirt and a corduroy blazer with elbow patches, tilted a hat just-so over his eyes and picked up his meerschaum before lacing up his wingtips and exiting the apartment smartly. at seven minutes past the hour, he arrived, carrying a satchel of books he didn't intend to read but carried with him nonetheless.

as he walked into the bar, he couldn't help but notice his least favourite bartender standing in front of the array of bottles. the proper amount of disdain pasted itself on his face and he sat down properly, hands folded in front of him while his eyes darted around to see who was around to see him. just once, his nervous tongue flickered out to moisten his lips.

"what'll it be?" the man loomed over the bar, or seemed to. his sleeves were rolled, exposing a frenzied array of tattoos that coiled, snaked, exploded, or leered out of his skin. his eyes were hard and his jawline was harder. he always seemed to be cracking something - his neck, his knuckles. popping his jaw.

"glenlivet, neat, if you please." was the kind of guy that chose a poison and then learned everything they could about it. he could even tell you - and would, at length - about the battle of glenlivet. the drink arrived and he sat it in front of him, relishing the picture he imagined the omniscient camera was recording. the amber glint of the single malt, the oscurro of his silhouette against the lowlights of the bar.

there is a table tonight against the wall filled with three ruffians. they don't consider themselves ruffians. they lounge easy and lanky over their chairs. one picks at his teeth with a splinter of wood. their eyes rove endlessly around the place, sometimes colliding with someone else's. sometimes their conversation picks up and then falls off again. there is no real rhythm to them. they simply exist wherever they are and are completely unaware of it. from time to time, one blinks. they are all dressed in plaid button-down shirts and practical winter boots and plain knit winter hats. thermal shirts. one of them has a sister who recently died. his face doesn't show it, but he in fact is the reason they are congregated - he hasn't left his apartment in six days except to go to work and they are worried about him. they figure a night on the town - such as it is - is what he needs. unfortunately there are very few people here tonight. and then that guy walks in. you know that guy. there's one in every bar with their important looks and their expensive drink and their newspaper or textbook. the three ruffians have a small, match-sized fire of hate for that guy. they are drunk, but not enough. nate - the grieving brother - orders three shots of Bushmills. they quaff it in a disinterested hurry and nate stands up. now he is drunk enough. he sniffles. wipes his nose on his sleeve and approaches the bar.

"hey." he leans against the empty stool adjacent. "what you readin?"

he blinks at the interloper and then blinks again. re-places his glasses on his nose and squints through them. "do i know you?"

nate thinks about it for a second. "sure. remember?"

he blinks, then blinks again, then blinks a flurry. "no. what is your name?"

"c'mon man." nate is having a bit of japery. "we met a long time ago. surely you didnt forget?"

he scratches his head, then cautiously presses a well-worn but sturdy bookmark between the pages of his book, closing the cover with care. both hands lay on top of it, one over the other, as if protecting it. "how long ago?"

"i dunno man. a long time ago. c'mon, man. how could you forget me?"

"... the good old days," he mused, a hand lifting to his chin in the requisite manner of those reminiscing.

"yeah, man." nate is starting to slur slightly but keeps his game face on. he ups the ante, extends his hand. "the good old days. how could you forget your old friend Gus?"

a flicker of something riots through his eyes and his spine goes ramrod straight. "Gus! oh my goodness. i ... i did know a Gus, once ... but very briefly, and not for very long. a party ..."

"right! the ... party." the bartender slides "Gus" a bottle of beer and "Gus" nods his approval, flashing a thumbs-up. takes a hefty draught and leans in closer. "i knew i knew you. whass your name again, man?"

"August," he replies, then, slightly lamely, shoulders inclining, "... but back then they used to call me Augie."

"Augie! That's right! you old son-of-a-gun!" nate slaps August heartily on the back and August nearly chokes. "hows it been?"

August reassembles himself, eyes swirling around inside of their sockets like a shaken doll's. struggles to get a grip on his bearing. "fine, fine. just fine. working. a lot."

"thats right. you work a lot."

"yes. i am diligently completing my tractatus."

nate blinks and steps back. "your ... wha?"

"my tractatus," August says again, this time a bit stiffer, defensive engaged.

nate can't help it - he explodes into laughter, staggers backwards and claps his hand over his mouth as if to stuff the noise back inside. he's let up on his game now. he can hear the fellas in the corner laughing at his laughter. maybe he can get it back. "right ... your. sorry. i just - wow. whoo. oh wow." August is offended. if he had feathers, nate thinks idly, they'd be ruffled. "sorry man. just a funny word."

"it is the perfect word for my undertaking." he looks almost birdlike in the dim light of the bar. nate rights himself.

"right, right ... your undertaking. so. how have you been? mind if i - " nate gestures to the stool.

at first, he seems outraged, then seems to fold down and inside of himself and shrugs, gesturing broadly. "it is, after all, a free country," he adds as if by way of afterthought.

"thanks man. you're a sport." he claps August's back again. "do a shot with me, huh? for old time's sake?"

"a shot. oh, no. i don't think so. sorry, Gus."

"c'mon. it'll be fun. here - " the bartender had overheard and ambled over. "two shots of jager. for me and my friend Augie here."

an arched eyebrow and amused expression later, two small glass shots appeared in front of them and were filled with the dark, viscous liquor. nate clinked August's closer to him. "asses up, man."

August's eyes went back and forth, from shotglass to book, to bartender, to "Gus," to the shotglass, to nate's shotglass, to the bartender - who was walking away, towards the newest entrant, a pretty girl with blonde hair and a black shirt, covered in ink - and felt something drop out of the bottom of his stomach. he watched his hand extend forward, like an antenna, and pinch the shot awkwardly between forefinger and thumb. he held it up, staring at it, squinting at it. nate reached in and clinked his glass with August's and downed it in a flash. August took a moment, sniffed, wrinkled his nose, glanced back at "Gus," and drank it in a pained hurry. the cold seeped into him first, then the burn. he gagged, then coughed, grabbing his chest with one long-fingered hand. starting to double over, his other hand shot out to fumble at the nearest person. nate, in bewilderment, seized it and dragged him upright. weakly, August arranged his glasses and stared ahead, clearing his throat, gasping just once, like a fish newly out of its water -

"hey man - you ok?"

August nodded and retracted himself back into himself, hands fluttering at his pockets, withdrawing his pipe and tobacco. gingerly, he packed it. nate watched, a mixture of amusement and concern muddled in his eyes. "my. it has been a long time."

"a long time?"

"yes. well. those were the days before. the .. ah .. golden oldies. you know. you were there."

"before?" nate was losing ground. the jager had dulled him slightly and he felt his face turning gray.

"yes, of course," August said, rather impatiently. "before the accident."

"right ... " nate blinked, slurred, and confused time - "she was too young."

"she? to what are you referring to?"

"my ... sister."

"your sister?" August stood up, a bit unsteadily. coughed again. "my dear man. i have, quite frankly, no idea what you're talking about. i was speaking of something entirely different. perhaps we don't know each other at all." he was feeling a bit of fire. perhaps it was the shot. perhaps it was how pallid "Gus" had become. a triumph of reversal. "if you will excuse me. i am going to step outside for a brief puff." and exited fluidly, pulling his longcoat over his shoulders as he went.

nate blinked, slumped against the chair, staring blankly at the bottles. his eyes unfocused and then refocused. his hand came up as if of its own will and slammed down hard on his face, where it remained before sloughing off like skin from a molting snake and dangled, useless again, by his side. "c'mon nate. let's go." the fellas were punching at his shoulders, lightly, as if he were a punching bag. feigning being boxers. dancing back on their feet, laughing with one another. drunk as he was, if not worse. he was an angry whirl of remembered grief. didn't give voice to it. peeled himself from the chair and staggered at them. the three fell like bowling pins, scattered, motionless, on the floor. a second or two elapsed before their laughter - sick and wheezing, snaked out of them like air from a pin-holed balloon. then the shoving, the struggling, the mock-fighting - the at-last bartender finally hollering that they had to leave, the dubious faces, the shuffle to the door. the first white blast of snow and wind in their ruddy faces.

August leans against the side of the building, tucked in a small lee from the weather. he puffs on his pipe and watches them go, shambling like B-movie monsters into the snow. the fire in his stomach has increased, has stained his throat like soot stains a chimney. he has a terrible case of heartburn. nostalgia creeps up on him, ambushes him

"AUGIE! WHERE ARE YOU?" he is wandering around blindly, hair obscuring his vision. he's lost his glasses somewhere. they're broken, on the floor of someone's party house. his heart is clogged with something terrible. he can feel it thudding like a small giant inside of him. he is in an unfamiliar basement. there are cobwebs everywhere and they snag on his face and clothes. he shivers but can't tell if it's out of fear of spiders or being totally, eternally lost.

"AUGIE" the voice is strained, getting further away. the basement seems Byzantine, a weird gray labyrinth of filmy casement windows and raw concrete walls. he is spinning around, trying to re-orient himself. he bellows out but no voice comes out of him.

when he wakes up he is lying in a froth, contorted, screaming, in the back of an ambulance, strapped down, connected by plastic veins to plastic bags. he has become an octopus, a squid. he pisses his pants and passes out.

it had been laced with something. the pot. what a funny joke. Augie loves a good joke, they'd said. watch what happens. you'll see. it'll be fucking hysterical.

August smiled bitterly and tapped out the pipe. the three figures had long since vanished behind the veil of snow. the wind slapped him in the face as he stepped out of his cranny, as if reprimanding him. he sighed. stared off into the distance. returned inside, thoughts returning to his work, his brow strained by the passage of the slippery eel called memory, twining around and around in the murk of his skull.

sunday prompt: extreme

2010-01-11T15:09:00.003-05:00

unsurprisingly, he was wild. she always went for the wild. the caged. could see it in his eyes the night she met him. both of them, a tableau of lonely outside the theater, on either side of the entrance, smoking casually.

he wore a stained parka, one of those oversized puff jackets that ostensibly kept one warm in the winter. caused one to look like the michelin man. perched on his head, a lumpy winter hat, black, that somehow looked wrong on him. he wasn't small, but the way he hunched his shoulders and slouched slightly against the brick made him look smaller - younger. she couldn't help but look at him, pretending to look beyond him, at the darkened shopfronts and frosted streets with a variable number of slow-moving headlights. he either didn't care, or didn't notice. she was hoping it was the latter option, preferring to observe clandestinely.

it was going to snow. she could feel it in her left knee, the one damaged in a car accident years ago. a weird throb that felt like a muffled drumbeat and rioted all the way up her thigh and into her pelvis. upon slipping on a patch of ice earlier that evening, she had stumbled and gasped, experiencing a frisson of pain - and then, abruptly, pleasure. the feeling had remained with her the whole walk down to the movie, finally subduing to a grumpy murmur as she purchased her ticket.

he had been in the same cinema as she, sitting just a few rows back. she was in the habit of swivelling her head round to see who was around her. was in the habit of checking for all available exits and entrances. carried with her in her purse a small handbook of survival techniques - mostly for the wilderness, in the woods, but refused to leave the apartment without it. in idle times or waiting in lines, she would pull it out and leaf through the pages, lingering perhaps more on those describing knotwork and cordage. since the car accident she had darkened, slightly, charred around the edges. everyone had noticed but no one had said anything. a few of her good friends moved away and she had as of late been swallowing the bitter fruit of solitude. in an effort to shake it, she went to the movies.

he had sat a few rows back. had entered the theater with no trepidation whatsoever, walked right to a chosen spot and sat. didn't take off his jacket or his hat. the heavy thud of his workboots down the aisle had aroused her interest - or fear - and she had turned, ever so slightly, to watch him. he sat and fixed his eyes on the screen without a flicker of interest. his whole demeanour spoke of anomie. she toyed with the instinct to use the bathroom - or pretend to - just to walk past him and get a better glimpse. he fiddled with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, arranging them in his pockets. kept his hands in as the lights dimmed and the prerequisite admonitions flashed gaudily on the screen. no smoking. turn your cell phones off. no feet on the seats. a few dutiful patrons pulled out their glowing devices and switched them down. he did not. the trailers began.

the movie was terrible. she had felt herself distracted from the predictable and formulaic plot, only drawn in at the gory scenes. it was some horror film. she hadn't even bothered with the name, just saw the picture in the paper: some man's face, distorted and staticky, with lambent eyes. WRAITHE. that was the name of it. it didn't matter. she was only looking to be diverted. had even had a few shots before traipsing down, felt the whiskey burning in her stomach mid-way through the story.

"did you like it?" she asked, abruptly.

he blinked, turned, stared at her. "huh?" his voice was unnaturally high-pitched. she hadn't expected that. the way he walked. he seemed so tough.

"the ... movie."

"oh. uhh. yeah. sure."

"i thought it was shit."

it was like he couldn't speak the language. he blinked at her, uncomprehendingly. "want to get a drink?"

then it was she who experienced brief aphasia, caught in the limbo of inhale & exhale. "sure," she said, exhaling. "where?"

he jerked his head to one side. "round there."

she nodded. reflected briefly on the process of symbols they were using. recycled the notion. "let's go."

he nodded, too, dipping his head just slightly, reached up to fix his hat unsuccessfully, and they walked together, side by side by not at all the same gait. he fell behind almost immediately and she had to correct her stride to match his. he was pulling up the waist of his pants almost constantly, tripping over the cuffs just once. he walked wide, perhaps to compensate, and she almost laughed. "what's your name?" she asked, feeling bolder than usual.

"mal," he replied, turning his head to look at her. she took the opportunity to observe the sides of his face - he was unshaven and the black hairs stuck out short and straight like tiny quills. he was the kind of guy who didn't shave that often, or forgot.

"i'm gretchen," she said without waiting for him to ask. "what do you drink?" the words flew from her like migratory birds with no pattern, helter-skelter across the space between them.

he shrugged. "beer."

she nodded. "do you like whiskey?"

"i'll drink anything." he narrowed his eyes. "you buying?"

she snorted a laugh that sounded more condescending than it was meant. in an effort to mediate, she said - "sure."

they entered a dingy, run-down dive. loosened their tongues further. he sat beside her on a stool - he was carded, she was not - and drank, first in silence. he kept that slouch. halfway through the third round of Bud Light and Jameson, she said - "sit up straight."

he appeared noncommittal. "what are you, my mom?"

she shrugged and looked away. "just a suggestion." when she looked back, he had straightened his spine and sat taller. looked older than he was, with the scurf of mustache, and slight sheen on a malformed goatee. sitting closer to him, she was able to observe the rips and tears on his jacket. he struggled to maintain the pose and looked somewhat defeated when eventually he sank back to his default slouch. she laughed, but kindly this time. "so what do you do, mal?"

"what do you mean?" he countered with all the vim of someone who doesn't do too much.

"for ... work. i don't know. do you make art?"

"i rap," he said, shrugging, casting his gaze down the bar. at the end there were a couple of blonde girls, the kind to which she referred as Frosted Flakes.

"you do. that's something."

"yeah. i guess."

"what else?"

"what do you mean?" he turned back to her, clearly uncomfortable with the interrogation. "what's with all the questions?"

"just curious. can't a girl be curious about a guy?" inwardly, she was horrified by her discourse. she felt freer than usual. a strange sense of cruelty grew inside of her like a weed. took root in her stomach. she slugged the rest of her whiskey down and ordered another. the bartender gave her a glance, but nodded.

mal watched her empty her glass and did the same, pretending that he wasn't trying to catch up or stay in the race. pushed it aside a bit clumsily. it rattled like a warning on the bar. "i work. what about you?"

"me? li'l ol' me?" she slurred slightly. "i work. i rap, too."

he laughed, a mean sound that serrated against his teeth as it made egress from his mouth. "you? sure you do."

she bridled, even though she had lied. "what? you don't think i can?"

his eyes were bright, burnished and seemed slightly fevered. "no. i don't."

"well. i've never been so offended." she turned her back in mock-umbrage, waiting for him to recant. he didn't. eventually, she turned around, when the glass was filled again. "i work in a bookstore. shelve. books. you know."

he shrugged. gulped down some more beer greedily. "sounds boring."

"it ... " she stopped in her defense and mirrored his shrug. "... can be." took a slug of the whiskey. "so. you asked me for a drink. what's your deal?"

"what? can't a guy be curious about a girl?"

her breath snagged in her throat. "oh. clever. very fucking clever. using my own lines against me."

"fair game, in'it it?"

"you were curious about me."

"sure. saw you sitting alone in the movie. thought, what's a good-looking girl like that doing alone at a horror movie?"

"what - a girl can't go see a horror flick alone?"

"you got a boyfriend?"

she was again taken aback by his forcefulness. her eyes lingered, perhaps a bit too long, on the set of his shoulders. wondered what his body looked like underneath all the layers. she reached over and took his hat off. he swiped for it, but missed, and stood up, glaring at her. underneath his hat, his hair stuck up haphazardly, thin in places, uncombed for probably months. possibly unwashed. "it's polite," she said, taking the hat out of his reach, "to take your hat off inside."

he growled at her and sat down, keeping his eyes on her. they almost seemed black. feral. "and no," she replied, setting the hat down on the bar on her left side, away from him. "i don't." picked up the beer bottle by way of punctuation. by way of an airy dismissal.

"are you a lesbian?"

she choked on the sip of beer she had been taking. she'd tried. hadn't done anything. didn't much like girls. their tawdry talk. their squeals and giggles. their neediness. if anything, their neediness is what drove her back into the arms of Brandon, now her ex. he'd taken her back and then dropped her rather unceremoniously on New Year's Eve, twenty-two seconds before the ball did.

"no," she said.

"you look like a lesbian," he said, crassly and out of the corner of his mouth.

"well, you look like a fucking hobo."

"at least i don't munch carpet."

she stood up violently, knocking over her stool with a clatter. "fuck you," she breathed, hands fisting at her sides. "i - " she was dumbfounded. the bartender was standing in front of them. her attention swivelled.

"i'm going to have to ask you to leave, please." the words came from him but she didn't hear them. all the whiskey blinded her as easily as a rainstorm blinds a motorist on the turnpike. she had turned deathly pale, but rummaged through her purse and slammed a wad of bills down on the bar before turning on a heel, snatching up her belongings, and exiting without a word of goodbye.

a block down the street, the tears came. she stumbled, listed, and leaned heavily against a lamppost, sobbing, uncaring who saw. minutes - maybe more - passed, and finally, she regained control of herself, wiping at her eyes, staring blankly at the deserted sidewalk. how was it that no one had stopped, she thought bitterly. the tears had frozen on her face. ''HEY!" she heard, dimly. "HEY YOU!"

she turned, and staggered again, falling heavily against a newspaper stand, flinging out both hands behind her to catch herself. it was mal, running bareheaded down the street after her, cheeks ruddy and stride gangly, one hand at his waist, tugging up his unbelted jeans. "you still have my fucking hat!"

he cut such a ridiculous, comedic figure, puffing and puffy, breathless and ruddy, struggling with his choice of wardrobe, that she burst into a gale of laughter that hurt her way more than it should have. clutching at her sides and her purse, she leaned, twisted, into the newspaper stand, staring at the headline of the last paper available. recognized a name or two. something about the weather. BLIZZARD IN MIDWEST. something something.

mal loped up to her, just as drunk, if not more, and leaned one palm against the lamppost. "give it back. it's fucking cold out."

"you'll have to find it," she said, between fits of giggles. that was when she felt his hands, cold and bare, against her, frenziedly tearing her purse away from her, rifling through it with grunts and snarls like a boar. "not in there," she wheezed, and he threw it from them, attacking her with his hands again. she felt him shove her, tear open her coat. she felt the pain in her knee flare up again and crazily thought it's going to snow and then the rush of winter against her skin. she had shoved it, perhaps without thinking, into the space between her breasts. she could feel the knit of it rubbing against her skin. he was invading her, ripping her, tearing her wholly asunder, and -- she was enjoying it. she was laughing. her neck flew back and her hair flew back and her tears kept coming and she was laughing and he was grunting and it felt so fucking good and yet horrible, awful, terrible, at the same time -

he ripped it out of her and she heard the snick of her bra strap coming undone. it fell off of her, out of her shirt, and landed on one of his boots. the pale pink of it like a newborn baby in the harsh street light. he stood back, stared at her. watched her insanely laughing. "you're a fucking loon," he muttered, but didn't move. perhaps didn't want to kick off the bra from his foot. "jesus christ."

she mumbled something, tried to collect herself, but collapsed in another fit of laughter. it was all boiling inside of her head. forgot to eat today - the horrible imagery of the movie they'd seen together, yet apart - the extreme nature of the moment, jarring and so, so present. him staring at her uncomprehendingly. dully. completely unaware of what to do. she thought of attacking him with her fingernails, with her teeth. of pummelling him. he was slouching again. she could get him - he wasn't bigger than she was. she could take off a heel, stab him in the eye with it. her fists clenched involuntarily, then relaxed. she closed her eyes. breathed.

when she opened them, he was gone. no sight of him. not even a sound. no underbrush rustling. no heavy thud of his tread on the street. a dark, huge sadness spread like an inkblot inside of her. she looked down. her purse was there, ajar, contents spilling out. still no one had walked by.

it wasn't until she stumbled to her front door that she realized - the bastard had taken her bra.

her whooping laughter echoed up and down the street. it sounded like a bird loosed from a cage, bouncing madly from rooftop to rooftop, cascading, intensifying, and finally, fading away.

doldrums

2010-01-05T23:03:00.004-05:00

nothing to do. while the white world outside lays still. tap fingers, move toes. crack neck and cough and swallow. drink orange gatorade. smoke a bowl of fine grape diesel. tick off seconds on the clock. what's next what's next. if you don't think too hard about it it'll happen. if you don't think. a watched pot does not boil. boils slower. seems to. anyway.

i get asked by this girl i work with. tell me a story, she says, and she doesn't want me to tell her a story like Tom Nero. she wants a funny, sick, perverse or entertaining tale. she wants a blockbuster and i want to tell arthouse. she asks me what i'm reading and i tell her it's Ulysses. she has never heard of it. i show her some and she shakes her head. her forehead abruptly furrows downward. she doesn't know. doesn't much care.

so there too. standing. wasting time while the people chew contentedly. chew and drink. masticate and gorge. margarita, glass of water. rocks - no salt. most people don't say rocks, but this one did. says it so quick it's like a little switchblade coming out of her mouth. her companion - middle-aged, barn coat, wisping white hair and aviator-frame bifocals - purses his jowls (or tries) and orders a non-alcoholic beer. she is agitated. fingers and toes, tapping. biting around her nails, the skin, tugging with first her dextral incisor, then the sinistral. her eyes lock on the old man. he is full of rheum and coughs like a bellows. i have the image of Stephen Dedalus and his room full of students in my head. discussing the Pyrrhic victory. it is not easy to read James Joyce in that room. i try anyway. once i even lay it out so that someone can see. this is vain and causes me to turn gray on the inside, just slightly, and later out of guilt tuck it away. ashamed.

a cigarette, every hour. more standing, close-mouthed, but at least i'm outside. i like the cold. relish it. the gradual numbing of my ungloved fingers, the sting of an impish wind lashing at my bare face. some people walk eyes down, neck bent, hooded and gloved. older folk do. walk slowly over grayed-out rises of ice and tamped-down snow, clutching to one another as though they were enduring their own private earthquake.

she laughs at me and tries to rile me up while we are in that stasis of customers. we lean against the station and keep our eyes on our tables. she tries to tickle me but i'm not ticklish. she whispers, low, menacing, in my ear, "fuck you." but i can't help it and i laugh. she could mean it. she could hate my guts. but it's unlikely. i drift into an alternate world where what i fear is real and unravel the consequences and ramifications. it is entertaining for a second but ultimately i abandon it.

they say only boring people get bored. i have heard that humans are the only thing to experience boredom. some people glamourize it and give it a stage name: "ennui," or "accidie." which makes it sound less banal, i think. a tinge of Keats in the sound. a fragile sigh.

it is a slow night and the bartender's been playing cannonball adderley for a while now. it's pleasant. there is a dull uproar which swells and falls like waves from the intoxicated crowd at the bar. they are all friends, or at least, they seem to be. the roar and thud and smash of the kitchen, a tumult of frenzied activity. i imagine it as a pit of wild dogs, all howling and snarling and raging against their short chains. i know that this is hyperbolic but i enjoy the image anyway. i am aware of every sound. when the hush of closing sweeps the floor, we carry out our duties. fill the sauces. called 'marrying' them. replace the napkins, switch the menus. i am tired and so is she. we can - both of us - taste the alcohol sparking in our mouths, feel it white-hot in our skulls.

we will turn the lights up and do one last sweep. sit in a makeshift counting-house, multiply and subtract and divide.

end up drunk and high and white-faced in the yellow wash of the desk light. enumerate all the things i could be doing but which i am not. not just in this one night, no. in my whole life. from now to finish. feel like an elastic band and can see one in my mind's eye, collapsing, tautening, collapsing again. then the deluge of exhaustion, tumbling down like Jericho. breath suddenly deeper, as though my body's pneumatics are forcing me to sleep, urging, inveigling. one more cigarette. standing. thinking. the muffled tick of my shitty watch, sharp and martinet-like in the dark. the stars above and their vague intimations. standing in the gray waste of days-old snow and thin, brittle tree-branches. count the bricks on the building in front of me. put the cigarette out. return indoors. sleep. always, at the end, sleep.

sunday prompt: new leaf

2010-01-04T00:03:00.003-05:00

they say this is how Tom Nero disappeared: he pulled a small length of string from his pocket and smiled sadly at nothing in particular. they had all been smoking cigarettes in front of the bar, mute, watching the wind whip up drifts of snow like shaving cream lather. they had all heard him say it before.

someday i am going to vanish. don't you ever just want to vanish? disappear? drop off the face of the earth? go off the map?

he had said it with varying degrees of self-loathing. had punctuated it differently each time, once with furious, drunken spittle. once with tears streaming over his cheekbones and runnelling down the natural lines of his face. they were all used to it by now. knew enough to nod and smile and stay away. he drank oceans worth of alcohol and vomited hurricanes.

it was shortly after the passing of the old year that Tom Nero disappeared. at first, no one noticed. then he didn't show up for his job and the requisite phonecalls were made. no answer on the other line. he was fired in absentia and rumors spread like the contagion of ice on a frozen pond. small town - people talk. they have nothing better to do. some had grudging respect for him. "He went and did it. Disappeared," they'd say. everyone knew how much of a drunk Tom Nero was. he had a reputation for anger and intolerance. was quick to judge but it pained him to be judged by anyone other than himself. he would explain at great gasbag length how fucked up he was to anyone who was fucked up enough to listen. he could be found sitting alone most nights with a pen and a notebook, dreaming up other realities he could live in for a time. his modus operandi was escape, escape, escape. he drank, he wrote, he smoked pot, he smoked cigarettes, he watched TV and movies unceasingly. rarely left the house except to go to the bar and to go to work.

"sometimes people just need a change," said Gary, a regular at the One Horse. "happens all the time. slip right through the cracks. though it's not like he killed himself or anything." he had paused, rubbed his chin, and laughed. "more like he killed what everyone knew of as himself!"

"took himself right out of the picture," mused Rebecca, a friend. "it doesn't surprise me, but i'm sad to see him go. he hated himself so much."

"how does someone hate themselves so much that they just disappear?"

Rebecca shrugged. "like spontaneous combustion or something. just need the right combination.... and boom."

Tom Nero left everything behind. a single tall bookshelf crammed so tightly with works that it was difficult to retrieve any one title without a struggle. his wallet and cell phone. his bottle of marijuana, his pipes. his sneakers and clothing. his laptop computer and external hard drive. his backpack, still occupied with notebooks and a copy of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. his savings, all in cash, totalling just about a grand.

"it's the right time of year for it," said Frank, another regular at the One Horse. "everybody's turning over new leaves. i always thought that meant leaves on a tree. Tom told me it was like turning a page in a book. That was called a leaf, too. Makes more sense when you think about it that way, doesn't it?"

efforts were made to track Tom Nero down, via every sort of technology possible. Facebook proved useless. he hadn't signed on in months. his roommate scoured his hard drive for details but found only endless documents of unfinished stories. characters who were miserable and who met characters more miserable. "he could've given me some notice," groused his roommate. "at least he left enough money to cover this month's rent." she reflected for a moment, then came back to her sentence. "i hope he's okay. wherever he is."

yes, wherever Tom Nero had gone to. wherever had he gone to.

the interest in his story died down after it became evident he wasn't going to return. it became another quirk of the small town, revived only in jokes or in side-stories about the past. Tom Nero became another ghost on memory's highway. the secret was how many envied him. the telling was in how much they drank the night after he was discovered gone. how fiercely they all spoke and clenched their bottles. the shots they swilled and the fights they got in. Tom Nero would have been proud to know he had such an effect on them. but Tom Nero never knew.

sunday prompt: delicious

2009-12-27T19:15:00.004-05:00

he never had much of a taste for anything before. it had only been recently that he had discovered vegetables - the crisp crunch of lettuce - romaine, red and green, cabbage, frisee, endive, escarole. he tried it all, became obsessed with peppers, one after the other, beginning with green bell and ending with the megalomaniacal scotch bonnet, the tiny, ancient-looking habañero. then the small bursts of grape tomatoes between his molars, novae of flavour that caused his eyes to racket closed.

truth was, he had never been much of one for eating, for nutrition, for taste. it was the least important of the senses, to him. he shunned his mouth, despised it. glued it shut for days and used his voice sparingly. even shaved around its borders with a marauding hand, no gel or cream, just dry. the tingling burn of each minute bristle torn savagely from its follicle caused some irritation for hours after, but he didn't cease his self-destructive pattern. he never brushed his teeth and had terrible halitosis. his gums bled, regularly. he was constantly tasting his own blood, coppery and sharp, testing their swollen hillocks with the point of his short tongue. it didn't help, he supposed, that he ground his teeth during sleep and woke up with a sore jaw, as though someone punched him savagely, over and over, in the side of his face.

his life was routine, with brief moments of dissociation. he worked a regular job - a line cook in a small restaurant, putting together salads by rote, flipping the fries in their cages, pounding and chopping and twisting at the waist. his hands were speckled with the wholly unintentional design of white scars and small, pink burns. and he was tired. he drank a lot - too much - preferring after every shift to lapse into the quiet, wooden comfort of a faraway bar, trudging through gray snow and avoiding ice-slick the whole way. the walk did him some good. he liked to clear his mind, hit the reset button, slump into a seat and rake his hair back from his oily forehead. minutes after establishing himself, he would go to the bathroom and splash water on his face, stare at himself in the filmy mirror. let his eyes flick, rove, to the graffiti - the endless cascades of multi-coloured graffiti crabbing the flake-paint walls. from witticisms to averring love, to mindless design and visual art. he had added one of his own, in a black sharpie filched from the kitchen, wrote it neatly and straight at eye level above the toilet:

MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN

he sees it now. it has faded, but no one has touched it. he zips up after a heinous-smelling urination and returns diligently to his seat at the bar. he is thirsty. orders a beer, a stout, and when it arrives in front of him, as opaque as midnight, he tilts to his lips and drinks it steadily, rhythmically, adam's apple bobbing in syncopation with his gulps. in less than a minute, he sets the empty glass down on its coaster, the insides of it striated with foam.

"thirsty, eh?" he looks up and sees the bartender - Ruth - staring at him, arms crossing her chest, one eyebrow arched smoothly. he nods, preferring not to speak. she knows this. knows the next act, too, and swiftly begins filling another from the tap. "long night? it's been quiet here. no one knows about the old One Horse. a travesty, really. heard we might be shutting down..."

he is used to her monologues. likes them. he tilts his head at the appropriate moments, nods, shifts in his seat. toys with a pack of cigarettes - Camels - and smiles gingerly from time to time. when he laughs, it's a silent ripple of shoulder and facial tic. he doesn't open his mouth. Ruth rambles on, the same old doomsayings, how the economy is bad, how everything is terrible, how business is slow. he tips her well, and accordingly. she smiles and winks and calls him sugar and when she does it makes his teeth ache.

suddenly he is hungry and formulates a mental picture of the pantry in his apartment. of the refrigerator. notes the presence of a few shriveled stalks of scallions. the box of chicken stock. the plastic box of miso paste jammed between a bottle of diced lemongrass and a plastic container of marinated, pickled garlic and roasted red peppers. he begins to salivate, and swallows it hurriedly, finishing off his second beer. that is usually his limit. routine dictates he places the empty glass beside the coaster instead of on top of it, as a sort of signal. he idly wonders if Ruth thinks he's a mute. has he even ever spoken a single word to her? he drifts, still with his hand wrapped around the empty glass, hovering over the coaster. with a melange of resolution and resignation, he places it on the coaster. "i need a shot of something," he says, finally, and the words creak out of his mouth like an old hobby-horse.

"shaking it up tonight, eh? what kind of shot? something ... delicious? something ... alcoholic?"

"all of the above," he says. "surprise me."

it's the most he's ever spoken in this bar. Ruth laughs. it's not an unattractive sound, but it verges on shrill. she talks to herself as she gathers ingredients, bottles clinking, ice rattling. "my speciality," she says, emphasizing the incorrect syllable in the word.

a sad old drunk is clinking quarters in the electronic jukebox. the first notes of paul simon's "kodachrome" fills the bar. "ah, i love this song," Ruth says, humming along as she pours, slaps, mixes. he can't even tell what she's putting in the tumbler. the bottles look old. liquor he is unfamiliar with. he tends to stick to his stout and, from time to time, whiskey - but only at home, later hours, sitting up in an overstuffed chair with ice cubes glinting at him like knowing eyes through the translucent brown, a Camel curling up gray to the ceiling like a snake charmer's cobra. it is a long walk home.

Ruth places the shotglass in front of him. it is a milky, reddish hue, like liquid garnet. "bon appetit," she proclaims, a calculatedly mysterious smile tinging her full lips. "enjoy."

he catches some of the contagion of her dramatics, and with a little flourish, empties the concoction into his mouth, parting his lips just slightly to imbibe. it is harsh - spiced and pungent, and burns down his esophagus like a trail of fire ants to his belly. his eyes widen and spark with tears that he lifts a hand to brush away. "do you like it? i call it Fire in the Hole."

"god," he gets out finally. "what is that?"

"secret recipe," she replies. "want a chaser?"

"some ... water," he says. his lungs are itching for a cigarette. "i need a smoke."

"i'll join you." she's already got one arm in a coat, and before he can protest, they are both out of doors, in the small culvert by the door, out of the sleepily increasing winter wind. he lights her cigarette out of impulse, notes that she smokes a parliament. she notes his glance and smiles. "recessed filter. that's why."

"you like that?" he surprises himself. "i always thought it was kind of weird. why do they do that?"

"they say it's so the filter doesn't touch your tongue. some marketing bullshit, i don't know." she flips her hair - long, curled and auburn - over a shoulder and shudders involuntarily. "fucking cold out."

"it's not as bad as it could be," he offers. "supposed to get worse."

"snow?"

"tomorrow, maybe. mostly freezing rain."

she nods, a bit absently. "so ... your tongue got loose."

"what?" he is surprised, meets her cool and nonchalant gaze.

"you know what i mean. you come in here practically every night and you haven't said more than a word. why tonight?"

why tonight indeed. he can still feel the lash of the Fire in the Hole on his tongue. he finds himself warming to her now that she is in front of the bar. "i didn't realize you had legs," he tries, and she laughs suddenly, with great gusto.

"yeah. never heard that one before, smokey. what's your name, anyway?"

he finagles for a good lie despite not knowing the reason for hiding his real name. "Colin." it's a lie and she knows it.

"good Irish name." she plays along.

he doesn't know where to go with any of this. the hunger he felt earlier rises up inside of him and he does another mental imaging of his cupboards. no bread. some eggs, maybe. pasta. no sauce. could make a vinaigrette. olive oil, cider vinegar, some mustard to hold the emulsification - some tuna, maybe. he feels his tongue wriggling around in his mouth like a dog on a leash, straining. "are you okay?" she asks. "did i kill you with that shot?"

"still alive," he strains the reply between his teeth.

she has turned coy in the silence. something in her stance has shifted. the air curls around her differently. "but seriously." she looks him up and down. she is just an inch or so taller than he is. her eyes glint like gimlets. "what's your name."

he shrugs, lamely. "Lionel." and a part of him inwardly collapses, like a pillar in the ruins of its parent building.

"that's a weird one. Lionel."

"and you're Ruth."

"Ruthless."

"ah, i get it."

she flicks her cigarette with a practiced gesture into the frozen black river of the street. above them, a light goes out on its high metal post, stuttering into a smouldery oblivion. a single car rattles by, exhaust pipe purling out weird gray curls. he can see the ember of her Parliament in the middle of the road, winking, blinking, and finally dying out. "hey," she asks finally, turning to him. "are you hungry? i could eat."

he nods, somewhat dumbly, and throws his cigarette into the street after hers. "let's go inside," he states, as if issuing an order. "when do you get off?"

"an hour or so. depending on how busy we get." the loping sarcasm is evident in her tone, then in the way she bares her teeth at him.

"you have some humor stuck in your teeth," he comments, and she laughs out-right, the same shrill sound as before. he feels as though it comes from a little shrew, hiding inside of her mouth, which pops out to issue its cry. it doesn't belong to her, somehow.

"c'mon." and they go in.

hours later: the taste of her in his mouth, fresh from where he has clamped his lips over her bare shoulder. they are in her bedroom, whose walls are adorned with posters of Kate Bush and various photographs of her, her friends, what he assumes is her family. she is cluttered, a mess, strewn clothes over the back of every chair. they'd had to swipe all the detritus from the twisted bedsheets before climbing in, each so involved with one another's bodies, groping blindly for a clean spot. he rolls over onto a box of colored pencils that rattle sharply at contact, which he promptly jettisons from the bed. she is giggling now, softly, hurriedly, a new laugh that takes the place of the old harpy call, like an amused child with a playtoy. he buries his face in her hair, and laughs silently, the same way, an undulation of his shoulders and chest.

"you know," she says, between fits of laughter and shallow breath, "you should really let that laugh out. no good to hold it in like that - !" and he dives in like a mad bomber to tickle her exposed ribcage, his fingers like a rush of feathers -

and still later, at her kitchen table. two plates. he has made them a salad with the half-wilted lettuce he has unearthed from her crisper and from which he has also discovered a pair of tomatoes and some cucumbers. he has made the vinaigrette he was imagining, but with the lack of dijon has settled for ordinary yellow mustard. she is not eating, though she pirouettes her fork on the greens like a multi-legged dancer, rocking it this way and then that, on the tines. she supports her chin with her other hand, tilting her head, gazing at him. "this is really gross, Lionel."

"yeah." he has been making a game effort of it, chewing when it was unnecessary to, when the limp leaves would have just slid down his throat. he puts his fork down and stares at her, seriously, then issues a sigh. "sorry."

"not your fault."

"well, the lettuces was pretty old."

"lettuces. did you just say --"

"no, i said -- "

"you totally said lettuces."

"lettuces." the word with its ersatz plural feels as weird in his mouth as the actual leaves did. "lettuces."

"fuck this," Ruth proclaims, shoving back from the table with a crash, rummaging in her pocket and withdrawing a Parliament. lights up. inhales and blows it at his face. he follows suit, but after a moment.

this, then, how they sit, her kicked back, rocking back and forth on the hind-legs of a protesting chair, he sitting with hunched shoulders, eyes darting from one place to the next like a bird unsure of which branch to alight upon. in silence. both unknowing of the irony that they both think of the same thing, which is: what next? and concurrently,

how do i get this godawful taste out of my mouth?

sunday prompt: dare

2009-12-20T16:50:00.002-05:00

nolan and his brother on the sidewalk. snow, but not the predicted blizzard - a light, fine dusting. bald patches of asphalt show through on the roads. the sun hides its face behind bandage-thick cloud. neither brother speaks - this is their sunday ritual, the morning thud of booze's clamor in their heads, cigarettes in and out of their mouths like lazy pistons. on their way to breakfast, a greasy spoon a few blocks away known for the classic rock on the stereo and shifty, grizzled clientele. besides being brothers they are also roommates, and the apartment they have left behind is littered with the detritus of a post last-call party. phalanxes of beer cans line the counter and tabletops, an exhausted army with deserters and wounded alike. cigarette butts crushed out in red plastic cups; the chrome bottom of the sink littered with the same. a cat - Melvin - prowls around and in and out of the rubble, nosing at these unfamiliar objects, ears pricked at the sound of the door antecedent to their exit.

they ease into adjacent stools and are given coffee without having to ask. neither take cream or sugar. they order. nolan drinks faster than his brother, and upon being refilled by the plump, arch-browed waitress, turns to his brother and says

"so what was her name?"

his brother doesn't respond immediately. takes his time with a slow draught of his mug. "angela." pauses. "or maybe marian."

nolan nods, then laughs, almost as an afterthought. "she left her number."

"where?"

"she left it on the fridge. used a magnet and everything."

"i didn't think we had any magnets."

"it was one of her own - one of those magnetic poetry ones."

"really."

"you don't remember?"

"no."

"she had them all over the fridge. i think she wrote you a poem. or you wrote her one. i don't know."

"that's gay."

"well she left you 'inferno'."

"on the note?"

"yeah."

the brothers' breakfast arrives. tabasco is applied to both plates - nolan's brother more liberally than he - and silverware is taken up like weaponry. brown one-ply napkins settle on right thighs. all these tiny moments, going unnoticed by the brothers - they are machine-like in their sunday devotional, eating with controlled gusto. following breakfast they will return to the apartment, sit on a couch with television and share a joint. a phone will eventually ring, and they will leave one another to their respective days. the sun sets, the lights come on. Melvin puts in an appearance and keeps a carefully disinterested company with whichever brother is left behind. the kitchen will go as it is for a day or so, with nolan's brother idly assembling the cans in neat arrays on the table. eventually nolan will take it upon himself to toss them into a bin in the closet, separated by bottles and cans.

on this sunday neither of their phones ring. this has happened, but it is rare. after the third hour of mindless television, nolan straightens up in his seat, eliciting a melisma of disgruntled noise from the newly-dislodged cat. "why don't you call her?"

as before, during breakfast, nolan's brother takes his time in replying. it is as though he frames and then re-frames the question in his mind before answering it, almost as though he's just a little dull, a little slow. he tilts his head to one side slightly, narrowing his eyes, and then shrugs. "dunno."

"she left her number."

"it's happened before."

"did you like her?"

nolan's brother shrugs again, or releases the previous shrug, and chuckles a little bit, rubbing his chin in the way he imagines people do when they're amused. "sure."

"then call her!" nolan is playing a part too - that of dutiful brother: coaxing, nudging, pushing. "you know you want to."

he sighs. "i was thinking about going to get a beer."

"ask her if she wants to."

"i don't know. she was kind of ... weird."

"weird how?" the television blares something about monster trucks, self-importantly.

"you know. i mean. magnetic poetry or something."

"so?"

"who brings that to a party?"

"maybe it was just in her backpack."

"maybe." nolan's brother is considering. the phrase 'why not' enters his head like a cold breeze from a door opened to the outside. "i don't even remember her name."

"maybe she never told you."

"i think she did."

"but you can't remember."

"right."

nolan shrugs and stands up, pacing idly. fixes a slightly crooked picture on the wall. it is a print of Dogs Playing Poker. "i dare you."

"don't. nolan."

"i double dare you."

"i hate this. you know i hate this."

"i double dog dare you. call her."

a different silence settles on them. something more electric, yet not excitable. it's a sad silence. nolan's brother loses the color in his eyes, bends his head and cracks his neck. refuses to meet nolan's pressuring stare. "fine." he pulls his phone out of his pocket and stands up, heading to the kitchen. there is the number, as related. he holds it in his hand and laughs to himself. written on the small slip is a number:

1-900-BLOW-ME

he can hear his brother's laughter coming from the living room.

colder

2009-10-13T10:04:00.003-04:00

lately everything's rushing. suddenly the house is ten degrees colder and the floorboards shrink. heaters switched on. winter comes down like a bomb in the sky, even though the colours of the trees are as bright as hell's flags still. and not even halloween yet.

a kind of battening-down process. i'm backing up all my data in case of another hard drive catastrophe. cleaned up and rearranged my room. books all in alpha-order. all things in their right places. burning data to hard copy. settling down again. like a dog in a circle before laying down with a great sigh. and the more i think about time, the more time thinks about me, and then i'm crushed under its momentary consideration of my existence.

met a right asshole in the bar the other night. rush, or raj. i'm going to bet the actual name was raj due to his accent and skin color but i'm going to call him rush because it seems more appropriate. half-cocked, going off, un poco triste, my little lemming-mind jumping off the glass cliff into an alcohol ocean. standing to one side, watching - and then the momentary victory. connection, and a good one, a male-female connection, and what electricity - her smile, her laugh. a fantastic conversation lasting through two - no, three! - cigarettes, and the eventual return to her glowering companion, rush, astride his barstool. i am inflamed, have been, all day - all week! - with the private correspondence of H. Miller and L. Durrell. have devoured The Colossus of Maroussi, have embarked on Prospero's Cell. obviously when one reads about the apotheosis of place such as Miller and Durrell made Greece (and surrounds), there is a longing that shows up. for travel. for the past. nostalgia for these things which have not yet happened or never will. i am going off, a roman candle with a fuse a mile long, how much i'd love to see Greece, the Mediterranean

and Rush, good old motherfucking Rush, barging in. this is where my memory gets hazy. where psychic damage sets in. his false impressions of me, his generalizations, his aggrandizement - all of it. so much and so virulent. i feel like i'm in the middle of a swarm of wasps. he gets up to use the bathroom and Maria is explaining that i am "doing the right thing, exactly as i should," as though i am winning a game. the scene is becoming drastically skewed, like a fucked-up dream. i imagine the floor to be collapsing. or the ceiling. Maria wants me to meet her friend. Kirsten. she likes me, i think, or is entertained by me, neither of which i mind at this point - she tells me to write my email down. my phone number. asks me to be discreet in some way, slip it to her by way of some complicated scheme that both of us are too drunk to execute - but then there is Polyphemus again, rounding the corner from the bathroom. perhaps neither Rush nor Raj is appropriate but a slightly different phonic: Rage. he sits again beside me and strikes up the same conversation as before - i have no doubt in my head that he is smarter than Maria is drunk and so i do not slip her the piece of paper. he would see right through my ruse.

this continues. for far too long. eventually i leave. taking too much of the drunkard's skewering "observations" to heart. the only way i can deal with it is pretending it doesn't matter. another drunken conversation. another bar. no - scratch that. the same fucking bar. one of the same.

so, another cold. the rain sluices down today. it's no longer that the wind is cold, but the air itself. the space around everything. shrinking. freezing.

more layers. insulate.

a list

2009-09-25T01:14:00.004-04:00

- hike a mountain

- write an album

- write a play

- write a novel

- invent something useful

- build a house (or a bookshelf)

- brew beer

- learn how to shoot a gun

- learn how to ride a horse

- learn how to deliver a baby

- survive the apocalypse

- conquer stupid fears

- publish poetry

- go spelunking

- visit Europe

- visit Antarctica

- learn how to swim

- learn how to deal with time

advice

2009-09-12T07:44:00.001-04:00

"chase it, and it'll chase you."

onset

2009-09-01T11:01:00.002-04:00

wild-eyed. flail. come to rest. wild-eyed. flail. come to rest.

shouting into gray. gray shouts into white. white listens. speaks with a black tongue.

in dream, i painted shadows with a brush. i moved faster than everyone else, faster than light, even. i myself did not have, did not need, a shadow. i worked for the light yet moved faster than it.

repeat myself. repeat myself.

woke up before the sun. stayed in sheets. slept again.

late for work, so late i should be fired. but the boss is foaming at the mouth at the top of a wooden ladder. hanging up chinese dragons by strings.

on way home, i walk like a drunk driver. through the evening's violent glow. past my apartment. all the way west. sit like an indian on the dying grass. watch the careful flicker of the airstrip. beyond the murmuring arterial of the interstate.

the first fall wind in the trees.

प्रेत

2009-08-31T10:45:00.005-04:00

smoked myself so high that suddenly i was sitting next to myself. there was no chair beneath me. i hovered somehow. staring at myself. surprised to hear a familiar song. i & me reached out to touch it as it hung in the air. the front door opened and let someone into the house. my bedroom door was locked, i didn't care. the chill of the air sent my skin into minuscule undulations, all over the map of my body. or else there was a ghost in the room with i & me. possible, that. i reassured me like a child afraid of the lightning-storm. "sometimes people just get stuck," i said. i combed my hair back with my fingers. the words came out like a murmur, though i'd intended them to be louder.

later: the sun, just under the trees. snarling through the lacunae of their branches, frothy pink and red. our shadows fled us in fear. walking sidewalks until they ran out. i heard the sound of a drum, something wild - and growing wilder. the sky, folding & unfolding above us. we were side-by-side but not hand-in-hand.

the cemetery, then, newly manicured, each gravestone nervous with its exposure. the old tombs backed into the hillside. their names: Sawyer, Haggett, Longfellow, Hillborn. the darkness hung low between the trees like a trap. clouds assumed the guises of mountains on the long-away horizon. our shadows leapt into each other and stayed there.

i have discovered this new dark, this non-light, this thing i am a sun of.

and something inside of me (after) is newly mazed, is tightening its corridors like veins, constricts & contracts and then dilates with the all-too-short duration of each breath. and there is something running the maze, something i am terrified for. something that lied too much & too often and was imprisoned there as punishment. there is no solution to the maze.

and i woke up this morning thinking about how my left arm is laddered with scars, tiny scars. and i fell back asleep with my glasses on, leaning against the wall. face tilted north. the chill in the air made a sheet of itself and wrapped me in it. i re-woke, imagining adding rungs to the ladder. stared at myself for time immemorial and woke up again. maybe i was the ghost. the difference between ghosts & us is that they know when they dream.

and later i will hear that an old friend of mine has changed his name to Only, which will make me laugh so hard i fall to the floor. only, (from ME, from OE, 'having the form of (ly) one (on(e))). slide a labial in there. (l)only. he always was so lonly. overcompensated for it. grew another shadow. grew three. they died like unwatered hanging plants. crisped on the vine and flaked away from him until Only he was left. then paired off again, with a living shadow. trekked. used their feet and their mouths. used wild pantomime to speak and laughed silently, like devils, into the night-hours. and of course the past had put microphones in the trees. and of course he knew it and so they stayed silent.

the unavoidable. the inescapable. find a bottle and cause it to become empty. become devoured by an urge to empty every bottle you see. drink the oceans. in the morning, vomit hurricanes.

first person

2009-08-19T19:21:00.005-04:00

there is a goal. a tentative goal. better than nothing.

burning out, burned out. the dog days. i am positively canine. sweat constantly. thirst like a maniac. can't drink enough water. or beer. or water. committed a terrible deed but didn't realize til post hoc that it was a terrible thing. shooting off at the mouth. every day before i go to work or before i go to the bar i think to myself "this is going to be the time when i rein myself in." when i'm not such an asshole. when customers at tables tell me i'm a good man. or when they thank me for something effusively. i want to yell at them. that's not my hallmark. someone said the other day (the other week) "that's what i like about you. you don't care. you do what you want." how can they be so blind to the 304.80 that i so clearly exhibit? my polysubstance dependence.

quit my therapist. she wasn't helping. none of them do. you get what you pay for. you pay as you go. more about mindfulness. more pema chodron, more thich nat hanh. more about breathing. always questions about "do you think about suicide?" who doesn't. it's life. it has an opposite. how can you not think about the opposite? turn over every rock, investigate every cranny. shine a light on where light could be found.

working on writing. it's something largely continuous yet with no discernable plot. as always. as nauseam. the same character, unnamed. a slice of me. some turbulent idiot who goes around collecting observations that mean nothing, yet observations that i as the creator imbue with some sort of meaning. seems like an inverted attempt to get God to say "HI THIS IS WHAT THIS MEANS" in a booming voice. even through dream. c'mon. i'm waiting.

taken to bloody marys. ozzies call a virgin mary a bloody shame. so now do i. make my little jokes to the people at the tables. keep my jaw wired shut around the people i work with. still not over the shockwave of what my idiot mouth said, so i try to keep it shut. booze corrodes the wires. my jaw hangs open and stupid comes out. i used to be all about forward motion. but my mind is always running everything that happened over again. i live in dual-layered time. my left ear hears the present, my right ear hears only the past. i mix it up in the studio of my skull. sometimes things overlap. what did you just say a second from now? oh - you've just now said it. there's a third ear like a mutation in the folds of my brain. it hears the future. or thinks it does.

there are dependencies and then there are dependencies. who among us isn't dependent on something. rueful choice that my selection is poison. so many others have it so much worse. sometimes i feel like i'm watching myself through a spyglass. drowning in the ocean. i tell people i don't know how to swim like i tell people i've never had sex. it's become integral to my mythology. i can understand the irritation from those who've heard it before. do you think a monk ever gets tired of reading the Bible? (anecdote: in Spring Harbor, there was a bearded kid who shuffled the hallways, endlessly peripateic, in socks that wore through after a week, murmuring the Bible to himself. upon asking a nurse what happened when he reached the end, she shrugged and said "he starts all over again.")

trying to shake the habit. if you want to change your life, you have to start by changing the days. the hours. the seconds. you have to learn how to set up roadblocks in your brain. my thought is a careening, drunk driver who gets blasted & swerves over rain-slick roads. crashing from one tree to the next and somehow keeps going. scot-free. maybe a little bruised. sometimes it's a big tree. sometimes it's someone else's car. this is how anxiety works. pressing the brake pedal before you even see headlights. 300.02.

quit my therapist because i hated her. didn't give her much of a chance. they say that if you realize everyone else is just as scared as you are you could love just about anyone. she said i should focus on what i was doing. what the now was. jesus woman i said jesus woman now's already gone. stupid words from someone who knows all about the Importance of the Now.

hamartia, hubris, anagnorisis, nemesis. peripateia. catharsis. where on the weird list of the tragic scale am i now? have i jumped scales? should i begin a new hagiography? it's about time i did. that means a new language. or a new phonetics.

i will begin to watch objectively the motions of my mouth

ab morpheum

2009-07-06T04:11:00.000-04:00

1. philip glass - opening (from "glassworks")

2. the album leaf - the light (from "into the blue again")

3. kate simko - welcome to fermilab (from "music from the atom smashers")

4. glowworm - periphescence (from "the coachlight woods")

5. cliff martinez - we don't have to think like that anymore (from the solaris (soderbergh) OST)

6. ulrich schnauss - gone forever (from "a strangely distant place")

7. khale - working... (from "sleepworks")

8. the low anthem - charlie darwin (from "oh my god charlie darwin")

9. max richter - on the nature of daylight (from "the blue notebooks")

10. whitetree - koepenik (from "cloudland")

11. grizzly bear - colorado (from "yellow house")

12. steve reich - pulses (from "music for 18 musicians" (track 1))

13. whitetree - mercury sands (from "cloudland")

14. gregor samsa - abutting, dismantling (from "rest")

15. kings of convenience - singing softly to me (from "quiet is the new loud")

16. whitetree - other nature (from "cloudland")

17. kings of convenience - the weight of my words (from "quiet is the new loud")

sketch

2009-06-16T11:59:00.000-04:00

X & A & R & J, sprawled on the couches as though a bomb had gone off in the center of the room and they lay there, dizzily, stunned. the walls pulse with the reflected colors of the television, a noisy ghost shouting useless things. outside, the trees bend and quiver in obeisance to an invisible menace. it has rained for three days now and the city is beginning to feel it in their spines, right around the third vertebra, an aching that gets worse and worse as their shoulders sag, day after day, rising to see the sun and finding only that eldritch white-gray sky staring balefully back down at them. the clouds drop the rain as though unravelling themselves, like dispirited yarn-skeins.

eight hours earlier, X had curiously poked his index finger in the air, expecting it to tear through some sort of seam. everything sagged. they each ate a handful of psilocybe cubensis and chased them with miller lite. they'd gone through their ascent together, yet apart, each in a different quadrant of the room, gone through the period of hysterical laughter at anything anyone said, gone through the melting process, stared wildly into space, lost inside their heads as though in a vast cavern, staring, staring -

in the skinny hour before dawn, A falls asleep, his breath rasping against the back of his throat. the pre-cursor to some later-life apnea. R is bug-eyed, his long-fingered right hand clutching the armrest. the TV has taken on some form of life for him. J is in the process of calmly rolling a small joint, though he won't admit to having some difficulty. the small white pinner has developed an unfortunate twitch, a tail which flicks around and evades his fingers. he considers taking the lighter in his left hand and burning it as it lays on the table, but the thought is an ephemeral one, a fish in the muddy murk of his brain, a fish breaking the surface and then retreating again. his thoughts unravel like a burlesque reel, or a vaudeville. he is thinking of his various paraphilias. X finds his jaw clenching, feels the layers of his stomach writhing over the remnants of the mushrooms. he wonders: (is it still raining outside?) the curtains over the windows are thick and would not move easily. he has not smoked a cigarette in entirely too long, though sometimes when he trips he just doesn't. forgets to.

apostrophos

2009-05-27T16:32:00.000-04:00

i used to be good
at understanding this
mysterious language,
the alphabet of every day,
each hour
descending inevitably
towards Z,

but lately i slur,
trip over the consonants
& fall into the holes
of the vowels,
phrases tumbling
out of my pockets

(re) capitulation

2009-05-27T02:40:00.000-04:00

and so today was a
slow itemization of things
that turned against me:

i woke from a dreamless sleep
into a pellucid morning,

fear dripped into my veins
from the invisible machine
of nightmare,
had to turn the light on
and stare at the shadows
until they melted back,

then
the necessary cigarette
left me
as always
unsatisfied

and doing nothing
(a lot easier
than it sounds)
was justified by
reducing it to
small somethings,
like reshuffling the books
because the height of The Idiot
is smaller than that of
The Devils,
and i don't know
maybe i felt something
a little like sympathy,

and then
the cat hissed at me
though i had done nothing,
and i saw my fear
reflected in her eyes,
a weird shimmer
like the lake of heat
you might see
over summer asphalt,

for a damned second
heart pulpy in my mouth
like a bitter fruit
i stood staring at
the ridges of her palate,
thought how they looked like
the marks the waves make
in the sand at the beach.

i rubbed my tongue over my teeth
and prepared to hiss back,
but the rumble and mutter of a truck
shoving by importantly
on the street outside
sent her fleeing
for the nearest couch.

the sun went behind a cloud
and didn't come back.

then,
now,
this,

a shaky column of words,
a half of a pillar
in the rubble of the
ruins of the day

complaint

2009-05-10T04:36:00.000-04:00

& i am so
motherfucking
tired,

so tired i can feel
fissures developing
in my bones,
the bigger ones,
the one in my thigh and
the one in my chest
quaking like california
under tectonic duress -

and this is boring,
so motherfucking
boring,

so boring that i have
canned myself like
cling peaches,
filled up my insides
with syrup & even my brain
is yellowed,
sickly with it

and they say
no man is an island
and i'm calling bullshit
from my roof
howling at the dawn
every man
is islanded,
surrounded by the pelagic
nothingness,
the whirl & whorl of sea
& wind
the sound of a seagull
that i take to be mourning
but is actually
hunger

day #---

2009-05-10T04:34:00.000-04:00

the kind of morning
where i can’t get the temperature
of the shower right
and every other step i take
down the sidewalk
is a stumble

and i say to myself
this is going to be
one of those days,
an exhausting pageantry
of hours,
whittling myself to a sharp point
& by the time i’m drunk,
jabbing at anyone
who comes close enough

and my friend says
i drive people away,
says through a froth of drunk
and pot,
and later we sit
on his couch,
like a couple of knives
rasping in a drawer.
by the end of it
we have dulled each other
and the window is repainting itself
with a fragile blue

& the birds are
going apeshit in the trees -

white hole

2009-03-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

wes by night, in his room with a black sharpie, drawing Xs all over his body. the chart of them: inside left forearm, inside right thigh, left anklebone, slightly off-center forehead, left eyelid, right earlobe, the soft underbelly of his chin, in the hollow of his throat, and now the marker hovered over the ridge of an iliac crest - he stood naked in front of the mirror, eyes focused on his own eyes. he knew how stoned he was, felt his brain soggy with it. he ran his free hand through his hair and idly thought about shaving it all off. he’d done it before, in a drunken fit, taken the clippers to his scalp and watched with great zeal the way the follicles fell. he’d let it grow out of boredom, enjoyed the way women would touch it, exclaiming at the tight curls.

he was born with violence inchoate, in diametric opposition to his immediate family, who were as calm and settled as lambs in a pasture. his mother had been a kind woman, soft like a marshmallow and slightly dumb, preferring mass-marketed paperbacks to the science-fiction her husband devoured. he figured the violence came from his paternal grandfather, who was a wicked drunk, who lived alone in a dilapidated and messy house after his wife’s cancer had made an antecedent of her. figured it skipped a generation. a recessive trait. he only remembered a few family visits, and they had always ended badly, with the old man slurring into his Canadian Club, smile pasted poorly to his mouth as he spoke nasty truths that he perverted to suit the moment. he had used his fists on his wife, that much wes knew - he’d never asked his father, but the way his face tautened, the way his arms hung ready at his sides, (instead of nested in pockets as they usually were) versed him of a threat from the old man. it took wes’ father a good half hour to calm down, usually just as they hit the bridge over a perpetually muddy river. the silence broke easily, as though sliding aside. he would light his pipe and begin casual conversation as though they were driving back from the mall. as though his father didn’t exist. only once did wes bring the subject up, just as they passed over the bridge, and his father’s speech became terse, as though the words had to squirm to get past his clenched teeth.

music was playing, something low, something urgent. wes wasn’t listening to it, but it informed his heartbeat. the cold from outdoors leaked in through the old window, set badly in its frame. he drew a pair of black, fingerless gloves over his hands and flexed his fingers. tilted his head. all at once he felt ridiculous and flung the gloves from him. they crumpled in a corner like dead rodents. he put clothes on, not even bothering to note what they were, opting for a loose brown sweater, a white t-shirt and jeans. the girl kept invading his thoughts like an unanswered phonecall. the girl from the bookstore. their brief words, swallowed up by the spines of the books. his conflicting desire to walk with her to her destination (back the way he’d come) and his desire to find a bar and drown himself in whiskey. he had another girl on his mind that day. she called herself Charlie, short for Charlene. nice girl. he met her a month ago at the movies. walking out the door. lighting her cigarette. the flash of gratitude - and something else - in her eyes. the casual conversation leading to a drink in a dark pub. that drink leading to another. leading to karaoke - she sang, he didn’t - leading to her apartment and a drunken fumble in the hallway, sloppy movements leading to her slapping him across the face. the lacuna of horror as she realized what she’d done. dissolving into giggles which veered to shrieking as he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into her apartment. collapsing like buildings detonated from the foundation onto her couch, grappling with one another’s twisted wreckage. over the month, it had gotten worse. she confessed her rape fantasy to him and he obliged her. the rope burns on his palms. her helpless, contorted snarl still rang in his ears.

“what’s your name?”

“saskiya,” she said, staring at him unrelentingly. flicking her hair over a shoulder. narrowing her eyes. shading her gaze from the sun.

“that russian or something?”

she shrugged. “yeah. what’s yours?“

“viktor,” he lied, unsure why.

“that russian?” her lips curved like a saber unsheathing.

“da.”

“well, thanks for the smoke,” she said, and started to walk. he followed alongside.

“you walking this way?”

“sure.”

they walked like that together, smoking, silent. her phone rang and she answered it, holding a conversation with the other end while completely ignoring wes. he found he didn’t mind. eventually, she ended the call. “where are you going?” she asked offhandedly, as though the answer didn’t matter to her overmuch.

“down the street. you?”

“same place,” she said without missing a beat. “but seriously, where are you going?”

“just walking.”

“ah.”

again, silence intruded like a third wheel. a few daring birds had taken up perches in the still-bare trees. they made tremulous song. clouds passed over the sun and they both felt chilled. “well, viktor,” she said finally, “this is my stop. thanks again, for the smoke.”

“any time.”

and just like that, she turned. wes walked another block without thinking, then stopped in front of a run-down apartment complex, staring at a broken window. it had grown dark, and the sky was clotted with clouds like rhexic blisters. the thought passed him that he should follow her at a distance, but then Charlie’s gasping laughter came back to him and he crossed wires, imagining the rape of saskiya. he grew uncontrollable within himself, felt his muscles writhing over his skeleton. he lit another cigarette and headed home.

wes by night, staring into the mirror, suffused with smoke. the music had ended and he inhabited a limbo of action. felt like he was floating instead of standing stationary. closed his eyes and tried to feel himself further and further above his skull, lifting out of his body as though drawn out by a celestial hand. it only lasted a second, that vertiginous sensation, tipping over a precipice, before he was snatched back earthbound, rocking back on his heels. his eyes flew open like startled shutters. old, crusted hate shook itself loose from its cage and pissed acidly into his stomach. shook itself like a kenneled dog, ears flat, frothing at the corners of its mouth. wes turned away from the mirror, lowered himself to the hardwood, beginning a series of calisthenics to purge. he did this until sweat dripped from his brow and his abdomen quivered from the effort.

hours later, in the whirl of a padded booth in some bar. friends all around, crowding, jostling elbows, roaring with drink. enough alcohol on their breath to breathe fire if ignited. wes, jammed in the corner but fighting back, just as rowdy and boisterous if not more. he never knew what he was saying, but he knew it made the table shake with their laughter. had to remind himself of their names, sometimes, in foggy attempts to reinstate his hold on reality. lucas. norris. jake. the two girls from another table, coquettish in tone but garish in demeanor. jake’s hand on the blonde one’s thigh. running up her leg. her attempts to fend him off. her contradictory giggles. her burnished cheeks and darting eyes. drinking a cosmopolitan. the other, red-headed, gigantic breasts, amazonian. flirting dangerously with lucas. norris trying to horn in on the action, clueless to their intended targets. the bar tilted like a pinball machine, dislodging their coterie into the chilly grasp of the evening. it had rained. the sidewalks and streets were slick with it. just as always, they shouted and caterwauled the whole way back to wes’ apartment, where music played again. wes could see the faint marks of the sharpied Xs. he’d spent a good time rubbing the visible ones off, but if he looked hard enough, he could still see them.

three splayed out in the living room. someone turned on the television and there was a squealing fight, between the blonde and jake, over control of the remote. wes, in the kitchen, with norris, lines of coke on the table. norris had arranged them like a galaxy. they railed them at the same time, each taking an arm of the spiral. a small pile remained. “white hole,” said wes, randomly. they sat, spinning in their respective orbits, talking on topics neither of them knew shit about, expatiating like scholars on life and the universe. wes found himself talking about saskiya, said things he didn’t know he felt. found himself talking about Charlie. norris looked lost throughout the narrative, grayed-out by the alcohol and the cocaine, nodded his head irregularly. wes, angry, slammed his fist on the table, and norris’ eyes snapped open. they got up and went to the living room, norris falling once against the wall with a giant thud. books fell from a shelf, scattering across the floor; wes fell on his friend like a hungry mongrel, whaling on him even as he crumpled beneath the fury. the next thing: jake & lucas, tearing him from his prey. the next thing: alone, in the living room, the music still on, blasting. the next thing: the blonde girl, teetering out of the bathroom, eyes half-open, terror slathered on her face. she’d been crying: her cheeks ran ashy with mascara and her lips were smeared with shakily-applied paint. they stared at one another as two tourists gawking at respective disasters. “get out,” wes snarled, and she fled, one heel in her hand. the door slamming shut behind her. shaking the walls. the next thing: dark, and dream.

(it’s his house. it’s his parent’s bedroom. two bookshelves, facing each other like sentinels over the king-size bed. his father’s, crammed with paperbacks, seeming to lean. then fall. both fall, scattering their cargo over the bed and the floor, covering a body that lay on the sheets. the sound of a car backfiring, echoing. the acrid smell of smoke. a gray-white ghost of it in the air. the fan, turning, turning, faster, cracks in the ceiling spidering out from it. a graveyard with heaving headstones. the ground, undulating. cracks in the sky. trees planted upside-down in the mud, roots in the clouds. their weight is tearing out the sky.)

the bellicose growl of the bar behind him, wes standing outside. (wes is out cold on his couch) dazed by the temperature, feels afloat in the lukewarm air. the buildings around him seem unreal, permeable, like weird spongiforms grown up out of the asphalt. he has always prided himself on seeming less intoxicated than he actually is. a troupe of girls passes him, each of them engaged with their cellphones. he seems a blur of blued curves. feels himself swell up, primally, sizing them - but then they are gone & he watches them go, through the cloud of his cigarette smoke. wes plunges his hands into his back pockets and snarls silently at the stars.

as he lists slightly by the bar, dollar bills crammed into a fist, he overheads a woman talking. she is discussing her past with another man, who leans towards her on his stool as though about to fall on her with lust. she is confessing: she was a siamese twin, severed from a sister at birth. felt guilty every day that she lived. she paused, downed the rest of her pink, frothy drink. fixed her eyes on wes. "you know what i'm talkin about, don't you darlin? you know what its like - to lose somebody. someone close to you gets tore outta the world, you spend the rest of your goddamn life tryin to paste over the hole..."

"no," wes lied. "sorry."

she shrugs. gives him a nasty, irregular smile. "ever'body has. you, too - maybe you jus don't know it yet." with that, she turned back to her man, grabbing his thigh. wes ordered a double in her cloyingly perfumed wake. his chemistry boiling, he returned to the table feeling newly arrogant. swept his eyes over the tableaux of his friends and their girls. felt nothing for them.

wes had spent his time in college as a whirlwind passing through a small town. he enjoyed a sotto-voce notoriety among the women of their academic terrarium - that he was a violent fuck, an aggressor, despite his bland & limpid smiles. he was personable in society, yet, even to the ones who knew him best, seemed distant & aloof, as though constantly occupied with something burning intensely, in his brain. hed majored in business, though seemed largely unconcerned with his progress, enjoying a steadily average GPA. he knew none of his professors by name, and preferred it that way.

only once had he come afoul of campus law, when a high-strung girl - Christine - had shrilly invoked the police on him for attempted rape. it had come to a farce of a hearing, where the girl had broken down & admitted to having wanted it. he had walked into sunlight, arrogantly free & clear -

- how many times had he surfaced from blinding oblivion in the same place, pretzeled on his couch, head going nova? the familiar agony - no matter how frequent, never ceased to cause him new pain in a new place. this time, behind his eyeballs, under his fingernails. the mirror showed his face, messily bisected by a ruddy line of dried blood, from jawline, under the nose, to just below the eye. the same hue, flaky on the dull ridge of his knuckles -

saskiya had reached a modicum of homeostasis, arriving at wakefulness in her own bed. she felt at peace, lying inert as though paralyzed, eyes twitching to & fro in her skull. eventually, however, the exacting lassitude of sleep pooled in her muscles & she stretched, hearing joints pop & feeling herself extend like taffy on a pull. she yawned like a cat & turned her head to see Henry, still asleep, curled like a child around his pillow, tucked into a near-fetal ball.

kamera obscura

2009-03-06T23:33:00.000-05:00

saskiya reads a lot of nabokov. she tells anyone who asks that she has read his entire oeuvre. proudly announces her favorite: 'laughter in the dark.' privately, she imagines herself to be a version of the villainness, margot. she is flagrantly intemperate, and often petulant. sometimes she feels as though she is still a child, feels small within her skin; sometimes it is the opposite, she feels older than her twenty-odd years, expired somewhere inside of herself. this is a recent development, this secondary feeling, the creep of age. she becomes vain quickly, checking the mirror every morning, arranging herself as best she can. other days passion and impatience win out and she skips the reflection of herself entirely. heedlessly into the world she flies, often harried, biting her lower lip during any conversation with an acquaintance. on one of these days, as winter turns to grayish puddle and the sun strives through the thick blots of cloud, she is scarved and ambivalent, coffee quickening her towards the bookstore. she takes the same route she always does, secretly hoping she won't see henry on his way to or from the butchery he works at during the week. sometimes she passes there, stealing a glance through the front window. she can see him, aproned in white, sleeves rolled, hair hanging over his forehead. he wields a gargantuan cleaver, up and down, up and down. thrills run through her at the sight, but she allows herself no more than a scant minute, departing before he recognizes her looking.

the bookstore affords her a measure of relaxation. the man behind the counter resides in a haze of smoke, constantly perusing some paperback whose cover is hidden. he doesn't even look up when she enters, and this she's glad of. she slips quickly to the right and through the skinny passageways to the place she knows as Fiction, running her hands idly along the spines. she is immediate and ruthless with her judgement, which spines she plucks out - it's about the colors, which one looks riper, to her. like picking fruit or vegetable. sometimes the brighter the color, the more rotten the prose inside. she makes a face and returns it to its position, wriggling it back among all the others. such shifts of temperament come easily to her. after the judgemental phase passes, she feels maternal, holding such books as a tattered copy of Ibsen, or a Tolstoy, lovingly scarred with marginalia. these she wants to give a home on her shelf, already imagines where they'll fit in the ranks. she hardly ever buys hardcover. she has nothing in particular in mind today, no one book she seeks to acquire, and so lets her unconscious mind take control. she wanders back and forth in the aisle, roving over the selection. her eyes move slowly, then quickly, and fall on a title: HENRY, on a dusty, lined old spine the color of moss. the author's name is unreadable, smallish in print-size. her heart trips over itself and grabs for a hold on her breath. she grasps it and pulls it out. the front of it reads, in plain black font: "GHOST OF HAPPINESS" and the author, below, in italics; "JUNE HENRY." she smirks and replaces it, perhaps a bit more violently than she should have.

she leaves the bookstore a half-hour later, tucked under her arm a book of poetry by someone she has never heard of and The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. her head is clear, filled with effervescence. she rides high on the feeling, savoring it, lighting a cigarette as she walks down the street. she lets her free arm swing to and from, allows the wind to rake its invisible fingers through her hair. she takes a different route home, having to hurry across a crosswalk just as the light changed. she smiled and waves at the driver who was about to lay on his horn - until he sees her face and then grumpily waves her on. she feels no guilt, could care less about traffic. her thoughts unravel to henry at his job, the gleam of the cleaver and the glint of sweat on his brow. the creases in his collared shirt, sleeves rolled up, just-so, to the elbow. he is focused, but doesn't appear at all angry or irritated as some people do - he seems in his element, at peace, a supreme machinist of his own body, as ungainly and lanky as it was. he was the kind of person who would fold his pants after having taken them off. would lay them neatly on a chair. fold his shirt the same way, lay it in a pile on top of the folded pants. watching him do it from her side of the bed, she ground her teeth & wished she could fold him like he folded his shirt, fold him and put him in a drawer. she imagines she can, imagines he's really just a piece of paper. she folds him into origami. his blinking, bemused eye, on the side of a swan. tugs his tailfeathers gently and sees his neck curve.

she blinks, shakes her head, realizes that she has lost herself in her reverie, quite literally, having walked all this way without realizing where she'd been walking. she was somehow by the water, at the foot of the hill, by the wharves. their stench is what shook her, that, and the bleat of the boats in the harbor. she stops suddenly, on the corner of the end of the street, and stares at the buildings. there are further roads, all leading down to the edge of the docks, crammed against one another, seeming to hold each other up with their respective collapse. someday there will come a giant freighter ship whose horn shakes them all down to dust and rubble, of this she is sure. she remembers a bar down here, something divey and of ill-repute. she took henry there. she observed him as they sat side by side at the bar, the radio crackling out the "top songs of the 80s, 90s and today" while the seagulls cartwheeled and shrieked gleefully outside. it had been a gloomy, wet day, and the damp floorboards seemed to heave as they walked to the bar. the bartender stared salaciously at saskiya, asking crude questions and lounging in front of them, pretending to polish the glasses with a filthy rag. a cigarette hung out of his mouth in defiance of every state law. saskiya asked if she could smoke. found herself flirting with him. henry fumbled to light her cigarette, but the bartender was faster, flicking a dented Zippo marked with an Ace of Spades. saskiya smiled and breathed out. his name had been Gerry, short for Gerald. henry heard the rumbling amusement of the fisher-folk around, clad in jaundiced slickers and squeaky boots. saskiya noted the discomfort clouding his eyes, and felt satisfied and guilty simultaneously. when they left, neither spoke. they walked, separated from each other. eventually, turning to cross the road, she violently seized his hand and walked intentionally faster, as if daring him to keep up. he did, but still didn't speak. it was this way the whole way up the hill and into her apartment, where they fell onto her bed and made savage love to each other, his clothes falling in a heap on the floor. she noted this. her hips pistoned even faster upon seeing him in such a state of disrepair, one sock barely clinging to his foot, the other in defeat next to the rumple of his pants. his shirt, half-on and half off. hearing a seam rip in the armpit, she moaned out of sheer bliss.

she stared at the wharves for a dismal moment, watching the trail of gray smoke escape upward from a stove somewhere, then turned on a heel, dismissively, hiking back up the way she'd come. the notion of home was far from her mind. she had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. she flirted with the idea of sitting in the park at the foot of her hill and sketching the easterly ocean. the islands in the bay. the white sails against the slate sky. the one-dimensional joggers and their one-dimensional dogs on the pathway around the park. she knew eventually she'd just start drawing him, starting with an eye, a black, hollowed-out circle with her pencil, vicious motions, as if flaying the paper with her instrument. it would become his face. he would look sad. he would look concerned, but for something beyond her, through her. as though something were falling down behind her and she lay in anguish, dying, before it. as though he were more afraid for the occupants of the falling tower, though she lay bleeding before him. knowing this, she altered direction yet again, and found a pub she'd never been to. entered, sat, and drank whisky for the next hour, let it mull her thoughts and numb her brain. one turned into two turned into three. before she left, the sun was setting. she had distilled herself into mumbling sadness, and staggered off home. she knew henry would ring her soon. she peeled off a layer, half of another, and fell face-first into the bed, the books she'd bought fallen messily on their pages on the floor.

saskiya & henry

2009-03-06T01:07:00.000-05:00

saskiya needed something bad, but what she needed was bad for her. she wanted to unmake herself, undo herself. she stood out in the winter and let the wind blast her bared teeth. her stomach gurgled at her like a sewer clogged with storm. wine thrummed through her veins. across the park, she could see her lover climbing the hill. snow caught in her hair. she was unhappy with him. felt her muscles twisting & roiling like ropes of snakes, hissing at him silently. stared at his thin black form as he followed the cracked sidewalk. he wore his greatcoat, as always, head bare and chin burrowed into his scarf, hands thrust deep into pockets. she scowled at him, menacingly. pretended she was a feral predator high atop her hill, staring at the gazelle which loped amiably below. with one swipe of her claw. she lit a cigarette in the pale blue cave of her fingers, finding more than one attempt necessary in the face of the wind. once lit, she took an insane pleasure at inhaling just as it roared into her mouth, sucking the smoke down into her lungs so violently that she nearly choked on it. she contemplated going inside and locking the door. turning off her cell phone. later, pretend to have fallen asleep. he's waving. henry's waving. the idea turns to ash, and blows away. he's seen her. she grits her teeth & waves back, less friendlily. she could always run. just take off and leave the city behind. she's heard stories about people who do that. just start walking and end up somewhere else. when she thinks about those people, she imagines the instant of their departure. she imagines a girl with dark hair like hers, walking down the street. she imagines the girl tilting her head to one side, as though hearing some music she can't pinpoint the origin of. she can see a sudden dawning, an awakening, in the girl's eyes. she sees her stride change from an awkward, side-stepping gait to a stride of purpose, one foot in front of the other for as long as her body can go. until hunger devours her and she topples in the middle of some street far west of there. saskiya imagines a rural road, the faded lines of yellow on the asphalt. the way it winds through autumnal trees. the soft pelt of rain on the leaves. she sees the girl falter, take one step out of rhythm, and stop in the middle of everything, realizing that she is lost.

henry is closer now, and she sighs, taking another long, hard drag on the cigarette. she eyes the ember on the end of it. considers engaging an old habit, the old savagery of college days, exacting vengeance on her flesh. dismisses it. she is too old for such dramatics. she has a craving for vodka, the cold sharp flash of it in her mouth. her cigarette is damp, and in one of her irritable flicks, it breaks mushily in half. she swears under her breath and drops it in the snow. henry is warm. she likes that about him, even though he is all angles and bones, he is warm like a furnace. she hates how he talks. if he never opened his mouth, she figures she could be with him forever, but when he speaks, his tones are soft and rounded. he is amused by everything. nothing angers him, everything rolls off him like water. his armor is impenetrable. she has tried. she has been wicked with him, tossed him around, taunted him, drunkenly assaulted him with metaphor and with spite. still, he stays. he is warm. she likes that. she spits to one side.

"saskiya!" he is calling, gloved hands cupped around his mouth.

"henry," she replies, her call sinking like lead before it reaches halfway to him. she considers the hesitation in her voice. she wonders if it's because she didn't want him to hear her, afraid of the malice that could be present in her tone, or if it's something else. could be anything. millions of things. she puts the thought away. he is striding up the hill, red-faced but not out of breath, in fact, energized by the climb. she is jealous - can never make it up the incline without ending at the top breathing heavily and heart pounding like a frenzied tom-tom.

"saskiya," he says, arms open. "i'm so happy to see you." the wind almost bowls him over, and he stumbles towards her. she is stationary, but her eyes flicker to his sudden movement.

"you're always happy to see me," she remarks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"and you're not? happy to see me?"

"of course i am," she lies, and it's a smooth, honeyed lie, and she knows it will hit its mark. it always does.

"it's freezing out here. shall we go inside?" her lips tighten at his use of the word 'shall.'

"it's not that bad. bracing, really."

he turns, faces the ocean, inhales deeply. "the wind is pretty brutal. but you're right. it is kind of nice. besides, i should probably enjoy it before spring comes - and you know that'll be soon."

she grimaces. she hated spring, the mushy brown nonsense which made lakes of every lawn and every dip in the sidewalk. she hated the nascence of the season, how everything was puling and new, weak and golden. glazed with dish-detergent yellow. "soon. yes."

henry falls quiet and she sees him allow his eyes to ease closed. he seems meditative, as if allowing the world to pass through him. at the first sign of a creeping smile over his lips, she interrupts - "let's go in. i'm cold."

his eyes snap open and he lets the smile form fully, a nearly lascivious-looking thing in the lower third of his face. like a worm full of blood inching across his jawline. pulsing. "all right."

she turns and sets off inside. she does not hold the door for him - not at first - then immediately feels guilty and rushes back a step to grab it, causing an awkward bumble of their arms and torsos. "sorry," she mumbles. "it slipped."

"no worries," henry says, gallantly doffing an invisible hat. "after you."

he follows her up the stairs. she feels him at her back like a dog that you can't shake. a banally loyal dog. a dog whose tongue lolls out and whose bark is lazy. she wants to take henry by the collar and toss him out the front door. she feels she would get great satisfaction out of hearing his confused, betrayed whine.

two voices

2009-03-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

"lately i've been seeing myself in the city. just a glimpse, sometimes just enough to recognize my particular stride, my hunched back. i realize, after a dozen or so of these encounters, that i'm insane. that i'm projecting. i see myself, up ahead, turning the corner. not always walking. sometimes in the passenger seat of a familiar car. i am haunting myself."

"have you ever tried talking to them? i mean, you - one of you?"

"no - that's anoher thing. i freeze up, i become ... strangely inert."

"when do you - when does this happen?"

"all the time. at random. i could be anywhere. i see myself walk by the windows at work."

"do you ever see your face? are you sure it is you?"

"no, i'm not sure. but i know. i know it's me."

"maybe you're trying to tell yourself something."

"or i'm dreaming. or i'm losing my mind."

"i don't think you're dreaming."

"so i'm losing my mind. might as well be dreaming."

"well - what's so bad about it? why does seeing yourself cause you such panic?"

"wouldn't you?"

"panic? no... well,"

"you don't know how you'd feel. i swear, it's like i'm being haunted."

"some hauntings have been described as friendly. the ... hauntees, become acclimated to the presence."

"this is different. i feel ... threatened."

"by yourself?"

"yes - no, I - "

"it seems like you're saying that when you see these - apparitions, you feel as though you could be harmed."

"it's not like i'm afraid they're going to shoot me, or stab me, or... you know. there's just this horrible, nameless..."

"go on - "

"i - don't know how."

"you're shaking. should we... move on?"

"...no."

Pause.

"how many times has this happened to you?"

"i stopped keeping track."

"...at last count?"

"7. or 8."

"for how long?"

"i kept a tally on the back of my hand. in sharpie. then someone asked, and i stopped. it's been a few months since then."

"all summer. when did you first ... see one?"

"right at the end of spring. first really warm day, but still night pretty early. i was - well, i was drunk coming home from work and i walked past myself. i know what you'll say - i know, i was drunk - but you asked. for the first one. that was it. i felt it, turned around to look, but just - saw myself, the back of me, head down & hood up, walking the way i'd just come. only when it had turned the corner, only then, i turned & went home. ran home. said to myself i was just drunk & stupid. thought i saw something, drunk enough to have convinced myself it was real ... i forgot about it for a few weeks until i saw myself again, walking by the front of my house. even ran out after it, but stopped at the last step, staring after my own image, again, vanishing around the corner."

"that's twice you mentioned seeing it outside of your apartment. have you ever seen yourself indoors?"

"once, maybe twice. at the bar. once, returning home, i thought i was already there, asleep in my own bed, but i'd only left the lamp on. the window was open, though, and i didn't remember leaving it open. maybe i left before i came in. maybe someone's playing a joke on me. how can you tell when you're hallucinating?"

"you don't... it's the nature of it."

Pause.

"have you heard the story of the appointment in Samarra?"

"no."

"it's the story of ... well, this guy sends his slave to the market for something, and when the slave comes back, he's trembling and white with fear. the man asks his slave why he's so terrified, and the slave replies that he saw Death in the marketplace, and Death made a threatening gesture at him, looked at him weird or something. the man gives his slave his best horse, and the slave tears off to Samarra, which is far, far away. then the man goes to the market, finds Death, and asks about the threatening gesture. Death replies: 'it wasn't a threat, i was surprised to see him - you see, i have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.'"

Pause.

"seems to speak of ... inevitability. of powerlessness to Death. are you afraid to die?"

"who isn't?"

Pause.

"why did you tell me that story?"

"i don't know. i remembered it. that ... feeling you get. hearing it. that's how i feel when i see myself. dread."

"... implies a premonition of sorts, doesn't it? an omen?"

"i read all about Doppelgangers. i don't know. it's something ... else. almost doesn't feel real. like i'm the only one meant to see it. no one else does - well, they - how do you ask someone if they can see you walking down the street without coming off insane? you can't - that's how! do you know how i feel even telling you all of this? insane! that's how!"

"you're not insane. ... maybe we should move on."

"to what?"

"you're clearly experiencing a great deal of what seems to be stress - "

"... can we not use that word?"

"what word would you feel more comfortable using?"

"i just don't want to give the impression that i'm under some sort of ... pressure, that i'm ... imagining this."

"can you say for sure that you aren't?"

"well - not, not ... for sure."

"then don't discount it as a possibility so off-handedly. i'm not saying you're losing your mind, just - trying to cope with some as-yet undisclosed distress that your psyche can't handle."

"sure sounds like insanity to me."

"it isn't."

Pause.

"have you ever heard of something like this before?"

"specifically? personally - no, but that doesn't make it worse than anything i've ever seen anyone deal with before."

"maybe i need a priest. an exorcism."

"you don't think that's being ... a little dramatic?"

"i was joking."

"i see."

Pause.

"so... what else would you like to talk about?"

"i don't know."

"do you have any friends you've been able to talk to? about this?"

"no. well - i have friends, sure - but no, i haven't talked to them about this."

"what do you talk about?"

"um... books. music. movies. i don't know - stuff."

"do you like yourself?"

"which?"

"... sorry?"

"which myself?"

"well..."

"sorry. joking. again."

"oh. ...why do you think you - "

"defense mechanism."

"... let's try this again - "

"sorry."

"no need to apologize."

"i know. do it anyway."

"do you like who you are?"

"would if i knew who that was."

"are you sure?"

"that i'd like me if i knew who i was? no. guess not."

"how do you feel when you look in the mirror?"

"try not to."

"must be a hard thing to avoid. there's mirrors everywhere in our society."

"try to avoid that, too."

"...joking, again?"

"not really."

"so you tend to be a bit of a homebody, i take it. spend a lot of time by yourself?"

"yeah."

"and it sounds like you drink - how often?"

"don't know. enough."

"enough for what?"

"to knock a horse out." Pause. "sorry. kidding."

"were you?"

"well... how much would it take?"

"too much."

"hey - judge not, lest ye be..."

"why do you think it is that you drink?"

"to dispel ghosts. look - can we just ... i don't know, talk? i feel like i'm kinda being interrogated here."

"you're uncomfortable with being asked questions."

"- that was a question. you just said it like a statement."

"going to answer?"

"no."

"that's fine."

"of course it is. i'm paying. customer's always right."

"if that's how you want it."

"it is."

"we can sit in silence if you want. as you said - you're paying."

Long pause.

"we seem to have hit a wall."

"i thought i was paying for silence."

Pause.

"something tells me you're not."

"hour's almost up."

"does this feel like a good place to wrap up?"

"no."

"well, what else would you like to talk about?"

"have you ever been haunted?"

"no, i haven't."

"then we have no common ground."

"i don't think that's true."

"i'd like to request to talk to someone else."

"...it's certainly within your rights to do that."

"who here has been haunted?"

"... that's not something we keep on file."

"then trial & error. who do you think - "

"i really think this has gone far enough."

"...yes. you're right. i'm sorry."

"and i think our time's up."

"yes."

discoveries

2009-03-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

#1 - kimmy at the bar while i'm working. she seems stoned, or slightly dazed with drink. talks effusively of this new thing she's discovered - well, it isn't new, she admits, and then confesses to being a 'fucking hippie' before swiftly describing the dichotomy between 'fucking hippie' and 'fucking punk hippie' - it's that the energy you give to the world comes back to you, that if you put out nothing but good energy then the universe is somehow, inexplicably bound to reflect and reciprocate nothing but good energy back to you.

without calling bullshit, i agreed with her, because i do in a way, and only in certain moments. this leads me to believe that there are different values of this mysterious quanta called 'energy' ... not, simply, as believed prior, an absolute binary state.

#2 - same goes for happiness. i have been spending the same amount of time at the bar as i always have, yet now and lately i am more cogent of when i don't need another. perhaps this will change. despite the nascent alcoholism and the curtailing of such (unless i'm a total hypochondriac and this is normal behavior) i am content around the edges. this, as always, leads to a sort of spike in my heartrate - i at once begin to question the fabric of my daily life. the apartment i have lived in comfortably begins its second year, and almost directly at the outset of it i am driven by this odd impulse to make it live-able. before this anniversary, i had done small things - in fits, and spurts. i constantly add books to my collection. i acquired a desk. then i painted a chalkboard on the wall. most recently, i added a full-length mirror & a rug. my seemingly noble goal of becoming 'upwardly mobile' and 'forward-thinking' has disintegrated, i've left it behind, mingling with the desperate dust. so now i'm here, aren't i? i'm here at this place of happiness. i have a stable, respectable job. i am far from poverty. i have steady social contact. hell, i'm even proximally linked with most of that in social media! so it seems i should be content.

perhaps this is human. perhaps the reason i am dissatisfied with contentment is that i secretly am not. perhaps the reason all of us feel this vague dissatisfaction with our lives is because this isn't how we were meant to live. i can't shake the feeling that this, all of this that has grown up around us, all of these walls and cities around us and these roads paved through it all ... i can't help the feeling that it isn't how it should be. that i'm a stranger to this type of life. i feel protean. people i say hello to freely on the street one day become people that i avoid the next -- and not out of fear, or dislike, but rather a kind of laziness which causes me not to want to have to interact - at all! yet it is impossible to avoid that when you are out of your house. hell, it's even impossible in your house. always running into ghosts. i find myself often wishing i were invisible.

#3 - i've been writing a lot more, yet it's all nothing. natalie goldberg says "keep the hand moving." i do that. but it is always the same story. boy is lonely, neurotic, and possessed of some very bizarre idiosyncrasies. meets a crazy girl while drinking in a bar. then i never finish it. the other story i'm always writing is crazy boy walks down the street towards his home, drunk. i feel like i'm just jerking off with this shit, lately. putting what i wish would happen on the page, and then putting what always does. not a day goes by i don't think about calling the counselling center and signing up again for a new counsellor. which of course means paying them the debt i owe. again. i don't know why i just don't do it.

hesitation is my curse.

#4 - no, that's it.

the double speaks

2009-02-24T07:15:00.000-05:00

so, these are the last days of february. this year, it was four solid weeks of gray, beginning on a sunday and ending on a saturday. never seen the calendar so efficient or organized. would that every month were this way.

last night, drunk by seven, popped a little blue valium in the bathroom before graduating from cheap beer to sugary, viscous jagermeister. sinking slowly in a stool at the bar across the street. katie the bartender's comment: "i've never seen you so sedated before." a thrill, really, to hear something like that. barely remembering the walks to and from the bars, the volume on "heads will roll" (new yeah yeah yeahs song) as high as it could go. so high that when i took my headphones off everyone's voices were muted. greeted by trent in the first bar. the perfunctory hellos. he says he is doing better than he was last week. i say that better is always good until it turns to worse again. he seems nonplussed. on the walk, seeing chase. can't tell if he is stoned. he's going to kick it with JJ for awhile. then bowling. he tells me not to "hurt myself" drinking and we part ways. then the bar, and then trent's admission. i speak with my roommate & her friend erica for a moment. erica relates the story of her trip out of maine. she went skydiving. i tell her it sounds enticing but that it reminds me somehow of swimming, which i am terrified of. she agrees after a moment of thought that the two are somewhat similar.

so i come home early in the evening though it is the syrupy dark of a maine winter. i don't remember passing out, but i remember the dreams ... i remember the dreaming, i remember being at home - HOME - which will always refer to the HOUSE i grew up in, though it is inaccessible now. i am in my old room though it is my sister's room now. my old desk is there, the one that fits in the corner. it is crammed with books, all my old books, the ones i've lost, all of them, and i am telling my mother and my sister that i am taking them back, and i am taking back my 1990 powder blue ford mustang, even WITH the huge dent in the side, even WITH the ominous rattling under the hood, i am going to drive it back to maine and it will combust somewhere along I-95 and take me and all my books with it in some huge fiery crash.

as though anticipating my death-wish, i am rebuffed and so i take to stealing, slipping the books out of the house one by one, two by two, as many as i can beneath the seemingly impenetrable greatcoat i happen to be wearing. i happen to espy my mother talking worriedly to my ex-stepfather in bed. he lays on his stomach, naked, unmoving. she is talking to a corpse. then the house is full of life, crammed with relatives, visiting from everywhere, little children running around - cousins who i could care less for, aunts and uncles who aren't really asking about how life is in maine, what i am doing, and i lie, i lie like a bastard, i lie so much and so quickly that my face turns blue. they ask me if i'm cold and i say that i have a genetic predisposition to change skin color when i lie. they are confused and leave me like images on a television screen, just slide off the set, off stage left, take off their masks and costumes and try all over again in a new character.

i am startled to wakefulness around six in the morning, having slept the best i ever have in my life, despite the crazed zoetrope of dreaming. i am staring at this thing, this "queer & allied" writing project that is happening in the city in a week or two. i am supposed to submit something but the only thing i have is unfinished and really quite terrible.

ran into the past the other day. some folks from college who knew me then and think they still want to know me now. joke's on them - they never wanted to in the first place and now it's all about making the past closer to the present so they don't feel so confused. who are these strangers who profess to know me? i don't want to know them. leave me alone.

and so it goes. i get lonelier by divesting myself of people who profess to care about me. and words do nothing to salve the wound. in fact nothing does.

i'm a waiter now. i'm about to turn 26 and i wait tables in a local restaurant. i live in a comfortable room with a lot of things. i drink a lot. i like to trip on drugs. i don't read as much as i should. i spend too much time watching television and stuck in the internet. i am gaining weight in the middle, though it is a subtle gain, i can feel it. it's all the beer, they say. if this cold doesn't end soon. if this winter doesn't shudder to a halt. if all this continues and continues to continue.

i need to make sure i go back to therapy. i am losing myself again. things are spinning out of control.

parthenogenesis

2009-02-04T23:42:00.001-05:00

1.

... the doctor, yelling, the nurses murmuring, the white white walls flashing colors like a mad zoetrope. she feels delirious, like that time in college she tried acid in her dorm room - the ceiling elongating to cathedral heights, the walls pulsing in tripartite rhythm - the epidural is doing nothing for her. she feels pain inside of herself, a different pain than a burn or even the dentist’s awful drill - it is a mysterious tugging, as though God is making origami out of her insides - God screwing up the swan, unfolding, starting again, each fold creasing her, causing her flesh to become weaker and weaker until on the seventh or eighth try, she rips in two...

the shriek comes from her asshole - she feels like she’s taking the most gigantic shit in the universe, but it goes backwards, redlining its way all the way up her spinal cord, tickling her vagus nerve - she is flooded with sensation, feels it burbling in her nose as though she is drowning. her hand falls to the side of the bed, grasping for a mate that isn’t there. her fingers curl. nails dig into her palm. blood oozes to the surface of the skin as though it is emancipated finally from a term in prison - she is barking, now, like a feral dog, thrashing in the sheets, howling, even, her neck snapping to and from, sweat-soaked curls of dirty blonde hair lashing the pillows and the bedsheets ... the nurses flinching, the doctor swearing, then yelping - it is like a scene at the zoo - and with a colossal bellow, she falls back, face contorting, and delivers, with a horrible squelching sound, a child, into the eager doctor’s latex-gloved hands.

that is the first sensation Ezekiel feels as he falls into the world as from a great height, the slippery latex of the doctor’s gloves. the glint of anodyne light from the doctor’s wire-rimmed spectacles. the perspiration gleaming like diamonds in the furrows of his brow. the ridged & blue-masked mouth, like a mandrill’s face - this, and the second - the abrasively chemical smell of their fear - and the sweet persimmon of relief the moment he opens his mouth to bawl the news of his arrival.

2.

it is like this. the doctor remembers the clutch of her hand, empty-fisted, curling in on itself. the struggling quest for her first postpartum breath. the weak flutter of her eyelids in direct opposition to the unfettered spread of her lips into a smile. he likens the curve of her mouth to the satisfaction he sees his wife repeat after they make love. perhaps he is a narcissist that way. she is getting used to breathing again. her child is wailing unceasingly. there was a chance - more than a chance - that it wouldn’t survive. silver scissors separate the infant from its mother and the doctor gently holds it aloft. in the bed, the glop of placenta, left on the sheets, glistening wetly in the light. the mother’s arms are outstretched, pleading. her fingers wiggle like a child’s to a cookie jar at an unattainable height. he takes pity on her, knowing she’ll never see the baby again, and places it like a jigsaw piece between her breasts. her eyes are tumescent with tears. her arms wrap around her progeny, her chin ducks to her chest, and she croons tunelessly, brokenly, body wracked with a tempest of sorrow.

the doctor can hear a clamor rising in the hall. the nurses are fighting their way back into the room, slapping at hands which wriggle at them. the mother rocks to a steady, metronomic rhythm. the baby is weirdly silent, an ugly, bloody mess of flesh and eyes and mouth and fingers, toying with the soaked curls of its mother’s hair. the fracas in the waiting room is getting out of hand. even beatrice and the whole of the administrative staff can’t hold back the rising tide of on-lookers, worshippers, and paparazzi. the woman is lifting her head. her eyes - sodalite blue, cut across the hospital room to his chest, then lift, weakly, up to meet his gaze. “doctor,” she rasps, “i’ve changed my mind ... i want to keep him.”

the doctor pulls down his face-mask, and sighs heavily. it is his job to retrieve the infant and keep it in isolation until the proper authorities can see to its care. “you’ve signed the papers, Cherie.” she starts shaking her head back & forth as though repeating the violent throes of labor. “the money’s on its way to your account right now...”

“it’s not about the money...” but her thrashing & the clench of her jaw interrupts the words, so he can’t be sure that’s what she said. he nods to a nurse, who stands by the bedside, eyes dark & tumultuous with consternation & fear. he nods, tersely, in their direction, and Cherie begins to shriek anew, bloodlessly, clenching the baby to her chest. a needle slips into a vein. her jaw falls slack and her eyes roll into her skull. her muscles are loosened as though untied. Ezekiel, shrieking in slight discord to his mother’s own ululations, slips into the awkward arms of Caroline Peavey, R.N. Caroline has never had a child, let alone a serious boyfriend, and yet it feels right to her when the squalling infant falls into her embrace. she instinctively clutches it to her breast, knees buckling as though he is a much greater weight than six pounds, five ounces.

Eyvind/Simon: (Simon called Samuel)

2009-01-14T16:16:00.000-05:00

Months later: winter spills in from everywhere, like an overturned cup of liquid nitrogen. Simon struggled through it like everyone, head down and neck scarved to protect from the bitter, northeasterly wind. and yet still the inevitable draw to the maelstrom of the bars, even going it alone most nights. the bars he tended to frequent were smaller in comparison than most, at best dives with a maternal bartender & a disillusioned looking waitress plying the tables for whatever tip she could. he’d been floating lately, deviating from routines, trying to avoid the beaten path. the stampede, he felt, was coming. mid-january, the time when everyone loses their head to the snicker-snack of the winter wind and goes a little bonkers. some more than others.

in the squeal & shudder of a foreign intersection, snow-spittle clinging to his face, Simon sees the familiarity of a warm neon spilling its fluorescence on a snowbank. the name on the bar becomes apparent after a trudge through an unpaved section of sidewalk. Ghostly’s. It looks like an abandoned trailer, the windows possessing both horizontal blinds and what looks like curtains. The neon beacon is the comforting word: OPEN. Simon pulls back his hood and enters, shoving with his shoulder after the initial (and familiar) grudge of frame vs. door.

the juke is on, and it’s johnny cash. which song, he doesn’t know, but he knows the voice - who wouldn’t? - and the bar is empty. there’s an old man in a mackintosh and a driver’s cap sitting in a booth alone, drinking coffee. his hands shake, communicating the tremor to his whole body. from time to time, his bifocals slide down his nose and he shoves them up. Simon notices that there are band-aids on every other finger. some are peeling off. the sound of the coffee cup rattling against the saucer is a weird, skeletal accompaniment to johnny’s rough and pained quaver. the woman behind the bar is stout, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. her hair is permed, copper-coloured, like a tangle of wires attached anachronistically to a fleshy, obsolete machine. her eyes are artfully hidden behind stubby forests of mascara and the curve of eyeglasses. Simon pulls up a stool and smiles. “Hi.”

her mouth moves at the same time as an eyebrow - immaculately plucked - arches upward. “Out in this weather?”

He shrugs off his scarf and laughs a little. “This is nothing.”

“From Maine, are you?” She is polishing a pint glass.

“Not originally, no.”

“Further north?”

“You got it.”

She smiles, but it’s a weird smile - something not quite right about it. She is cannier than she lets on, Simon feels. “What’re you having?” She pronounces it “yew”.

“Jameson on the rocks, please.”

Before he even says it, she’s turning round, fluid motions. Not rushed, like some bars he’s frequented. She sets the glass down on the bar and languidly scoops a small collection of cubes into it. Next, the bottle, which doesn’t have a spout on it, and the whisky flows as if commanded, perfectly into the glass. He puts a twenty on the bar and thanks her, waving off an offer of change. She shrugs, and moves off, a look in her eyes that says she wants to check it for counterfeit, the way some people eye a coin and bite it to make sure it isn’t chocolate.

he’s feeling generous. he likes this place. there’s no television, just the juke, and after each play, the records inside halt & judder to their automated destinations. each song begins with a scratching, deathly sound. time slips by him almost without his notice. the old man gets up and goes, tugging his overcoat around him. his steps are aided by a scratched brown cane. two longshoremen enter, sit in a booth. they are quiet, fatigue discoloring each of their motions. a yawn passes between them, serving as conversation. Simon watches it snow, heavier and heavier. “Seems like we might be stuck in here,” he remarks casually to the bartender.

She shrugs and replies without looking at him. “Can think of worse places to be stuck in.” Her arm in motion, describing the gleaming bottles of liquor on the shelves behind her.

“Good point,” Simon concedes, rolling the glass between his hands. A beat passes, lugubrious and dusty. A fly, somehow stowaway from the summer, buzzes fatly in a corner. “So why’s this place called Ghostly’s?”

She laughs. “Because we’re a haunted bar. You didn’t know that?” The way she says it, he isn’t sure she’s joking or not.

“Sure I did,” he bluffs. “Just didn’t think it would be so obviously named is all.”

“So you know her.”

“Knew her,” Simon corrects. His glass is empty. She fills it without being asked. When he fumbles out another bill from his wallet, she waves it away with carnation-tipped nails.

“What’s your name?”

He pauses, then looks her in the eyes, trying to dig their color out from behind the makeup. He thinks he can catch a sliver of opaline blue in there, a startling color. “Samuel.”

She heaves a chuckle, something dredged up from way down inside the caves of herself. It sounds dusty, and causes her to cough, a rattle which descends into her, shivers in her papery lungs. “You can call me Delores.”

“Are you the sole owner and proprietor here?” He takes a sip of the Jameson, settling into the lie like a comfortable chair.

Delores looks to a corner before glancing back at him, cagily. “You know I’m not.”

He coughs into a fist. “Excuse me. Are you the sole corporeal owner & proprietor here?”

Delores nods appreciatively. Simon abruptly experiences that old sense of vertigo, when the lie threatens to take over, when the con-man suddenly doubts the veracity of his own belief - and taps his fingers in a staccato pattern on the bar. His eyes flit to an ashtray nearby. The crushed remainders of Virginia Slims. Mistys. Two of three of the long housewife-killers. “Are you married, Delores?”

“Just to m’job,” she proclaims, and shifts her bulk away from him suddenly, moving with a speed that Simon didn’t think possible, and disappears behind a curtain into a room he hadn’t noticed.

troum

2008-12-18T11:03:00.000-05:00

there were four of them, withered husks of human beings. jewish captives in my house, guarded day & night by nazis in crisp uniforms. one day the nazis went across the street for something. i & a friend had schemed - well, it was mostly him - to get the prisoners out. for whatever reason they were clad inappropriately. high heels - ridiculously high heels. i was shocked. can't run in those! tried to find the old woman some sneakers in her size, but she could barely speak. 5.5 is what i got out of her eventually. i was frustrated with their lack of motion. needless to say, the nazis came back. discovered our plot. i locked myself in my bedroom. also, there was a black man i was trying to help. he had returned for something he'd left behind. i hid him beneath my desk and began ripping the screen out of my bedroom window. they were there already, walking across the grass, tromping over my mother's bleeding hearts and enjoying a snigger at the inadvertent metaphor. they looked up and saw me trying to dismantle the window and escape, and pulled out their guns. no one escapes from the nazis. one of them jumped in through the broken screen and started firing at me. i dream-dodged most of the bullets. a few caught me. i felt the warmth of my own blood spill out, from the side of my throat, from a place below my clavicle. sticky on my skin, like maple syrup. one bullet i blocked with the gun & then i started firing at him. of course, i missed. swore i would do anything in my power to find him and kill him. when i found him, he was immaculately dressed in a sweater vest and combed hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, sipping tea in a green solarium. he was chortling, his head thrown back at someone's joke, when i, bloody and barefoot, aimed at his adam's apple and shot him through it.

2008-12-04T06:47:00.001-05:00

weird, brief dream. wandering the streets of portland (park ave, specifically, at the foot of the hill) in a dense fog so thick it is signifying the end of all things. i am walking with a device that doubles as searchlight (poor in the fog) & music-player. i am with two others. they eventually fade away into the fog. i hear the rumble of enormous doors sliding closed. i am trying to find my way home. there is (of course) something in the fog.

sunrise

2008-11-24T07:34:00.000-05:00

the bony trees scrape
their fingernails across the sky

the blood pools
on the horizon

oubliette

2008-11-24T03:13:00.000-05:00

and there,
outside the window,
the world sits,
unchanging,
staring eyelessly -

i inside have insulated myself
from it,
blacked out the windows
pinched the switch
on the lamp. took a hammer
to each clock.

the throaty roar of the heater
hoarse from its battle
with the insipid, creeping cold -

outside the window and
up,
the great woods. sharp
black forest. a tangle of
rustling and
silence.

the eye of a frightened deer -
glassy, wet.

in my small room
the hardwood floors
are unfinished.
i cover those places with dirt
and later,
snow.

soon the outside world grows in
around me. the sun worries a hole
in the black sheets i've strung up.
the walls fray & the wood
rots. the door
falls off its hinges, hammered
repeatedly
by the wind's invisible
battering ram -

& there
i am
sitting
in the middle
of the day
or night -
naked -
a needle in one hand
thread in the other
sewing my eyelids together -

HOT NEW BAND NEXT BIG THING!!

2008-11-23T14:57:00.000-05:00

1. using the random article function on wikipedia, construct a band name, an album name, and however many tracks you want. do the same for album art.

()()()()()

band: microaerophile
album: headbanging

001. north-south position
002. underline
003. Ioniko, Ilia
004. Radzanów
005. Sücka
006. education in Siberia
007. the children pay
008. Puget Sound
009. shatterday
010. Winter Hill Stakes
011. fail-safe

gato negro

2008-11-20T13:07:00.000-05:00

2008-11-16T10:18:00.000-05:00

the world seems shut down today.

Hi, Wes - good to hear from you

2008-11-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

everything i listen to lately has the shelf life of milk in the sun.

except the first movement of gorecki's third symphony.

i haven't been writing, though i tried to fool myself into believing i was. i get drunk and scrawl madly at the bar, hoping no one will bother me. hoping someone will bother me. i keep getting drunk and listening to other people's problems. their loneliness just bleeds out of their wounded mouths. what happens when i drink too much: i play bad 80s music on the jukebox and become increasingly violent towards myself.

so, nothing changes. i don't even like bad 80s music. i just play it because i know everyone else at the bar will love it. i rarely do anything for me. asked myself that on the porch yesterday morning, smoking a cigarette. what do i do for me that makes me happy?

i forgot to mention. i'm officially a waiter this coming Saturday. after two years and a handful of months, i'll be making good money and working a schedule which includes some day-time shifts. force me to get out of the house. to be awake & alive during the day.

and all the sad people are lonely & getting lonelier. the crush of winter is here, and we're all bending our backs, craning our necks, in anticipation of the first snow.

wrote an email to my mother. she's no longer with my stepdad. they broke it off. my mother moved out. then she bought a house a county over with my stepdad's friend, who is also her paramour. she recently retrieved all of our family's things from the basement. the weird assembly of nostalgia. mentioned she found a lot of my "old journals," which could be anything. asked me if i want them. she has hundreds upon hundreds of photographs in albums. documenting our lives.

here is something i wrote in the bar.

& where is she? there she is, in a dim spot, reading Anais Nin. she is throaty, guttural with it, chortling at the men & murmuring at the whores. her in the cold, buttoned up to the chin, scarved & mittened. the heat is broken, won't pipe into the house. she is drinking shitty red wine. it is coarse on her tongue. he can feel her sadness. she is a pulsar, throbbing like an untended wound. the bulb in her reading light is flickering. she doesn't notice. on her shoulder, a writhing mass of tattooed vines, seeming to hiss. when she smiles, it is faint... a wan shape that begs a crescent moon. her eyes move over the page like a cursor, blinking once, twice - a metronome - as if every blink is a swallowing, digestion of what she has consumed...

the din of self within self, a constant angry grappling. narrowed eyes in the mirror. reflection seems a fraction of a second behind the actuality. where hesitation lives. he leaves the house minutes after having armed himself.

twins, working the bar, bizarrely syncopated in every motion. they barely speak to one another, yet work in tandem. for them: anything. men lean over the bar, leering, & yet they remain chastely aloof - though not without occasional smiles which seem beatific. they float, yet are earthbound, which causes them to become attainable by any standard - yet like soap bubbles, evade the slightest semblance of a grasp.

these are three things which have everything to do with one another, yet it is completely unclear how.

2008-09-22T11:41:00.001-04:00

lately: ideas for stories, and yet, no writing. can't blame it on an input-output phase. hate it when people ask me "how the writing's coming." it's not something that happens constantly. idiots. it's not like i AM a writer, so that i can be constantly expected to have updates for you. james is a photographer - it's what he does. he takes pictures, always wishes he had his camera on him. gets up, goes places, takes pictures. you can ask him how his photography is coming. not me. but then, photos are more immediate. writing ... not so much.

"destrudo, or, destrado" is the title of a book that _____ _______ is working on. it is about a boy who, when lucid dreaming, commits suicide - nightly.

meanwhile

kfjdsa;flkajsdf;lkjsdf;lkajsdf;lkjsf

2008-09-17T11:55:00.001-04:00

had a dream i lost my job and that the propeller on my laptop stopped working.

it was one of those horrible sequences of events where your whole life changes and it's all because you fucked up.

.... i think i'm going to lay low this week-end.

2008-09-15T10:46:00.001-04:00

dreams about my father. what is he doing sending these increasingly psychotic postcards, signed Papa? what is this metaphor he keeps referencing about the Scarecrow?

i jump up & down on the bed to see if there's a fire in the woods, behind our house, or if it's the sun setting. it's the latter - for once.

feels like an airport novel. pre-kidnapping. chapter one. dread in my throat. when he shows up, he is ghastly. tears make a mess of his face. there is no roof on the house. i remember no wind, and no stars, but the smell of burning.

2008-09-15T03:09:00.001-04:00

"destrudo, or, destrado"

shadrach + meshach

2008-09-15T00:44:00.001-04:00

fog on the streets. the forecast on the weather channel says TODAY: N/A. the icon depicts a small, monochrome sun with the same letters inside of it.

i am working on a new idea for a novel. november is swift approaching. just found a great book that i hope to be inspired by on ebay.

also, david foster wallace is dead.

2008-09-14T05:02:00.001-04:00

they said they had a 30-min conversation regarding my taste. he said it was "uncanny" how my recommendations were always spot-on. i feel strange about this. like i should be both proud and humiliated by it. it's what i've always strived for. to hear that kind of feedback. now that i have it, i wish i didnt.

i'm not always right, you know.

2008-09-12T00:15:00.001-04:00

watching movies from childhood.

notes:

"super mario bros."

+ not as awesome as it should have been. but damn. fascist Koopa. right out of kafka.

+ god, john leguizamo. your accent is awful.

+

"little monsters"

+ fred savage, strutting down the hall, casually disaffected, reminds me of a very young john cusack, who was, at the time of this movie, starring in "say anything."

+ howie mandel, i wish i could time-travel. tell you not to make the deal. and while we're at it: did the character of maurice inspire any of johnny depp's jack sparrow?

+ howie mandel pulls down fred savage's pants with rubber arms! then the fat polka-dotted monster behind him says "nice ass!"

+ wow, with those sunglasses, fred savage.

2008-09-09T10:54:00.001-04:00

dreams: the cat being tugged upward by a huge spider in an enormous web.

being threatened by a gun in someone else's house.

2008-09-06T15:22:00.001-04:00

can we come back from identity politics? is it possible?

2008-09-06T01:22:00.000-04:00

called her a starfucker & she gave me this little smile. it was supposed to say "i have a secret" but instead it looked like she was going to vomit. she was drunk, so was i. we smoked weed in the tiny bathroom of the bar, tried to cover up the obvious smell by exhaling into paper towels. we were unsuccessful, and fled, giggling, out onto the street.

this is the wind from the hurricane. she makes a comment that touches on how everything is related and she forgets sometimes that this is so. i don't say much but nod wisely, like i know. thankfully this goes unnoticed. she rambles about the boys she's fucked, and that's how she says it: fucked. it's a litany of the upper echelon, boys whose names anyone would recognize from posters on telephone poles, from reviews in the local paper. she is proud of it. i find myself a little disgusted but don't let on. i am a terrible liar, even through omission, and my ears turn red. she is suspicious. we flick our cigarettes into the street and barge inside for another shot. this is when, post-tequila, i call her a starfucker & she smiles.

she is set upon by a gaggle of her friends, all martini-ed & immaculately dressed. i give her the slip while she is busy exclaiming! at her hot friends. this is the wind from the hurricane. down the street, a young fat guy is cradling his cell phone in his hands and staring at it with candor and love. the width of his pupils in the streetlight cause me to conclude mushrooms. when the phone rings suddenly, sharply, he starts and smashes it to bits on the sidewalk. he is a zoetrope of emotion at that moment, all regret, remorse, ecstasy, and emancipation exploding on his chubby face.

beyond that, the night is uneventful. there will be other starfuckers whom i won't be intoxicated enough to care to speak to. there will be other idiots crashing around with their mouths blaring, staggering like the noisy undead, filling the streets with their obscenity. i will shrug on the jacket of indifference & feel slight nausea at the superiority it grants me. i navigate towards home. i slip through the cigarette burns & slide off-screen. being the antagonist, this is available to me. the harsh, gaudy exit is unnecessary. belongs to someone else. the real hero of the story. the one she goes home with. who plays the guitar and never says he loves her.

2008-09-05T15:10:00.001-04:00

the more i think about it, the more i feel that thought is a curse.