brendlewords

o expectiminimax tree

2011-12-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

1, Jeffries, Jr. and Sr.

When the phone rang, Jeffrey Jr. took extra care to play quietly in his room so his father could hear the person on the other end. When Jeffrey made a lot of noise, his dad couldn’t hear and sometimes phone calls were from very important people about very important things. Jeffrey did not think his stupid toys were more important than his father’s phone calls. He would not make a racket again. He understood.

“Hello?... Oh… What is it?... When?”

Jeffrey Jr. held his toys softly, a car that turned into a T-Rex in one hand and a yellow crane operated by a smiling, hard-hatted man in the other, racing them just above the ground so they wouldn’t make noise touching the carpet. He looked at the pupilless eyes of the dinocar and made it move back and forth over the ground, imagining it rumbling, roaring and speeding through his room. The man in the crane looked like a nice man. He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt, buttoned up the front, and blue jeans. His little cuffed hands gripped the levers of the crane, which, although Jeffrey Jr. couldn’t detach the hands from the levers, or even move the levers, cause of how it was built, being plastic and all, he imagined they swiveled the crane left and right, raised the arm up and down, dropped and retrieved the hook.

“Well-… I know it’s important.”

He placed the crane on the ground in front of him. He imagined the crane operator going to work every day with his hard hat and his metal lunchbox, to a skyscraper construction site, where, from the ground, the buildings rose up into the air so the tops couldn’t even be seen through the clouds.

“Fine… No, it’s fine… Thirty minutes… Yeah… Yeah.”

Jeffrey Jr. jolted as his dad tossed the cordless phone onto the counter.

“Kath!”
“…whaaat?”
“You need to watch him for a while. I have to go into work.”
“you what?”
“I’m going into to work.”
“when?”
“Right now. I’m going in right now. Jesus Christ. Just watch him.”

His dad rustled through the hall closet and coats sagged to the floor as they fell from their hangers. His dad roughly pulled out his brown work jacket. Jeffrey turned the crane slowly. The crane operator grabbed a giant iron girder from the ground and mightily lifted it into place. Jeffrey’s dad now picked through the fallen coats, trying to find his brown shoes. He pulled out the first brown shoe and tossed it behind him. He dug some more, pulled out a black shoe, threw the black shoe back into the closet, dug some more, pulled out the other brown shoe, stood, and slammed the closet shut. Jeffrey made his other toy, now in car form, drive around the crane, still well above the floor, as even though the phone had been hung up, he knew well enough that his dad worked very hard for him and his mother and that nobody appreciated him and that everyone should stay out of his way when he had work to do.

His dad left through the front door, slamming it behind him, and Jeffrey Jr. waited ten seconds after he heard the last footstep on the gravel before moving. He stood up, taking his toys with him. He entered his parents’ bedroom where his mom lay napping on the bed.

“Mom?”
“What is it?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to sleep.”
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Can I play in here?”
“Can you play quiet? I need to get some sleep.”
“All right.”
“…Play for a little minute, then go play outside. We played outside as kids, you know.”
“All right, mom.”

Jeffrey Jr. sat Indian style between his dad’s sweatshirt and a taped up cardboard box in the corner of the room by the hamper and put his toys down. The plastic clicked as he turned the pieces of the Dino-car so it vaguely resembled a T-Rex. He put the T-Rex down by the crane. Look out, crane guy, it’s a monster! Ahhhh! But the crane operator would swing the crane around and hit the T-Rex in the head with a girder. The T-Rex might try to bite the crane operator, but he was safe inside the steel cab and the T-Rex’s teeth would all break and fall out if he tried to bite him. The T-Rex didn’t stand a chance.

2, William and Jeffrey, Jrs.

“Dude, that crane sucks,” William Jr. said.
“It’s all right. I like it,” Jeffrey Jr. replied.
“Not as much as Dino-car.”
“No, not as much. Dino-car is awesome!”
“Yeah, the Dino-car is the best. Let me be him this time if you’re so big on the crane.”
“I wanna be him this time. I just got him and he’s mine so I should get him first.”
“Yeah, cause I gave him to you. Since I gave him to you, you should let me play with him whenever I want. You can take him home and stuff, but when we play I get to be him if I want.”
“That’s no fair! You said I could have him and so I should get to be him.”
“What am I supposed to be, the crane?”
“Why not?”
“Because, the crane sucks. I don’t even own one of those. I don’t want to be some stupid guy in a crane, especially against the Dino-car.”
“The guy in the crane could take the Dino-car…”
“Hahaha like how? T-Rex is the best dinosaur. A guy wouldn’t stand a chance. T-Rex would rip that guy in half.”
“Not in the crane.”
“Yes in the crane. T-Rex would rip the crane open like a tin can and gobble him up like in Jurassic Park.”
“No, the T-Rex would try to open the crane and break all his teeth on the steel. Then the guy would hit the T-Rex in the head with a giant metal beam.”
“No.”
“Yeah, he would.”
“I’m gonna be the T-Rex and the T-Rex wins against a crane.”
“Not against a spaceship.”
“You don’t have a spaceship.”
“It could be.”
“No, it’s a crane. It can’t change into a spaceship unless it really changes into a spaceship. That’s why Dino-car is so cool, dumbass.”
“If I’m going to be the crane, then the crane has to be able to win too.”
“Not against the Dino-car.”
“Then I don’t want to play.”
“Fine, then I don’t either.”
“Then I’m going home.”
“Well, gimme back the Dino-car then.”
“What? No way, you gave him to me.”
“I want it back. You’re so into crane guy anyway.”
“You can’t take it back now, Indian giver, he’s mine and you said I could take him home.”
“I changed my mind! Give him back!!”
“No way!”
“I’ll tell.”
“So?”
“So, I’ll tell my dad.”
“So?”
“So, my dad is the boss of your dad and your dad will be in trouble.”
“Nuh uh.”
“Yeah, I heard my dad say that he’s your dad’s boss.”
“So?”
“So, so that pretty much makes me the boss of you.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Are you going to give him back?”
“Come on, you gave him to me.”
“Are you?”
“Will…”
“Are you?”
“You gave him to me…”
“I only gave him to you because your Christmas presents always suck and I knew you’d cry if you didn’t get something cool.”
“My presents don’t suck.”
“Remember when you told me how much cooler my family was then yours when you came over yesterday?”
“Yeah but,”
“And how much better my house is?”
“Yeah, but”
“And how you wished we were brothers?”
“That’s not what-“
“Just give me back the Dino-car, Jeff. You got to play with him some, didn’t you?”
“I’m not giving him back!”
“Fine, then I’ll take him back.”
“Let go!”
“Got him!”
“Give me back the crane!”
“It’s my crane now. I’ll trade you for Dino-car.”
“Give me back the crane! It’s not yours!”
“Get off me! Let go!”
“Give it!”
“I don’t want this stupid thing anyway!”
“You broke it!”
“You broke it! Give me back the Dino-car!”
“No way!”
“Fine, but I’m telling!”
“Go ahead! My dad will beat your dad up and you!!”
“In your dreams!”

3, Williams, Sr. and Jr.

The smell of fresh blueberry scones wafted over William Sr. as he opened the front door of his house, the wreath tapping as it jostled, and stepped inside. His wife stood in the kitchen at the mixer, smiling at its consistent hum, her eyes lost in the slow revolutions of its blades. She yelled hello from where she stood and William greeted her happily. He removed his boots by the door, carefully brushing off the snow. He hung his new peacoat on the woodgrain wall-hanger and crossed the tile floor in his socks. He embraced his wife and kissed her on the neck, telling her that the scones smelled delicious. She told him how she had bagged blueberries from the farmer’s market and kept them in the garage freezer so she could bake with them in the winter. He appreciated her forethought and greatly anticipated reaping its rewards.

Finally! What he had been waiting for all day: his leather recliner. The gas fireplace already burned safely behind its glass, where Christmas cards of friends and neighbors perched above on the tinseled mantle. His wife brought him some coffee and told him it would be about twenty-five minutes for the scones. He nuzzled into the plush chair and looked at his Christmas tree, now without presents it was just the golden skirt hiding the metal stand of the synthetic tree. But it made him happy. It reminded him of yesterday morning. Just how lucky he and his family were! He always tried to feel the proper amount of awe and gratitude for the blessings he had received.

He asked his wife if William Jr. was home. She told him that Will had come home a few hours ago, but had been in his room. He had looked upset when he came home. Out with Jeffrey, she said. He looked at his wife with dissatisfaction. His son maintained an intermittent friendship with Jeffrey’s son and the last time they got into a fight, William Sr. had thought of forbidding their interaction. He relented, of course, to the pleas of his son and allowed them to be friends again with the strict understanding that they were not to quarrel – or at least to settle it themselves. He assumed from the expression on his wife’s face that they hadn’t, and that it would be up to him to deal with it. He was used to it, being where the buck stopped, and, to be perfectly honest with himself, he relished the role.

He knocked on his son’s door. The timbre of his son’s voice as he said ‘come in’ through the door clued him in to the severity of the fight. He stepped inside. The TV flashed with a Christmas movie next to an open box of peppermint sticks. Comics and toys were scattered on the floor. Will really needed to clean his room. His son lay on his bed, reading one of the new comic books he had gotten yesterday.

“You doing all right, buddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother said you were upset when you came home.”
“…Yeah, I guess.”
“Want to tell me about it?”

His son put down the comic book and paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

“Jeffrey Jr. stole my Dino-car! The one you gave me for Christmas.”
“We didn’t get you a… Oh, last Christmas. He stole it? That doesn’t sound like Jeff.”
“He has it right now!”
“And he stole it?”
“Well…”
“Accusing someone of stealing is a very serious thing, Will. If you’re lying about it, tell me the truth right now and you won’t be in trouble.”
“Okay, well, he didn’t steal it. I sort of… gave it to him yesterday.”
“You gave it to him?”
“Yeah, I mean, I thought I wanted to, on account of how he never gets anything good for Christmas. But then he wouldn’t let me play with it today. And since I gave it to him, I should be able to play with it whenever I want, right?”
“You can’t just give your toys away, Will.”
“Well I tried to get it back! But he wouldn’t give it back and he called me an Indian giver!”
“You shouldn’t have given it to him in the first place. I work hard so I can afford to buy you the toys you get for Christmas, the house you live in, the food you eat. Did you think about that before you just gave it away?”
“…I guess not…”
“Well you should have. What if I just gave away what my father gave to me, or his father to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“We wouldn’t have anything at all. Do you understand?”
“I guess so… Does this mean he gets to keep Dino-car?”
“…I’ll go over to Jeffery’s house and have a talk with his father. I’m sure he’ll understand the mix up and get your toy back. But I want to make sure this doesn’t happen again, so I’ve got to punish you too.”
“Daaad!”
“You made a mistake, buddy. It’s not a terrible one, and this time it won’t cost you anything real, but we need to make sure this is the last time you make it, okay?”
“… All right.”
“I’m going to hang on to your toy for a week, so you can think about what it would have been like if you had lost it for good. If we can make it through the next week without any more incidents, especially anything involving Jeffrey Jr., you can have it back. Sound fair?”
“Sounds fair, dad.”
“All right. Good talk.”

He stood and his son turned his attention back to the comic book. William Sr. felt very lucky indeed to have as well-behaved a son as he did, considering how kids were these days. He could have a talk with his son and work things out, tell the truth, and still be his friend while punishing him when he got out of line. He decided to go share their talk with his wife and then head back out into the snow right away to see Jeffrey Sr. for the second time today.

4, Jeffrey and William, Srs.

Women and kids don’t know what it means to work. Even women who work, most of em, don’t know, cause they got husbands who also work. And anyway working for them is some kind of pride thing, to prove they’re equal. No need to worry about that with Kath, of course. I’m lucky if the house is halfway clean half the time when I get home during the week. She can’t even look after the kid, which is supposed to be a woman’s bread and butter. She lets the guy wander outside doing who knows what and doesn’t think it’s strange that he keeps coming home in one piece. She doesn’t know what it’s like out there, is why.

My work is a tax on my life. It’s a condition of living, a price I pay to savor the few spare minutes in between when someone isn’t asking something of me or telling me what to do or upset because I'm doing something I actually enjoy. That’s not to say I don’t take pride in what I do. You better believe I do. I may not like it, and I might complain about it, but I do it well and I am proud that I provide for my family to the best of my ability, and sure, we don’t have too much, not like a lot of people do, but we get by, which a lot of people can’t.

I hadn’t even sat down for five minutes or cracked the beer I pulled out of the freezer before someone started knocking at the door.

“Kath! Someone’s at the door!”
“I can’t get it right now!”

No, of course not, not even this. Nope, not even this. So I got myself up, out of my chair, and opened the door. Now I fully acknowledge that I have a temper and that in some situations I can overreact, but when I saw Bill standing in my doorway, I thought my head was going to explode. The nerve of this guy, to call me in to work in the morning is enough; I mean, I almost went postal once already today. Now he comes by my house? The fucking nerve.

“What is it, Bill?”
“Hi Jeffrey, how are you?”
“All right. What can I do for you?”
“There seems to have been an issue- “
“No way. I double checked it. Everything was right when I left earlier.”
“…What I was going to say was that there seems to have been an issue with our boys.”
“Our boys?”
“That’s right. I’m awfully sorry to bother you here at home, but I thought it best to talk it over face to face.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Can I come in?”
“…All right.”

So I let Bill in, but stood there, waiting for him to get to his point. I let him in, it’s only common courtesy, even though I could gut the bastard, but still, I wasn’t offering him a beer, I wasn’t asking him to have a seat. God only knew what these little bastards got into and what Bill’s expecting me to do, but I swore by Christ if he was here to bilk me out of more money, I would end his life. Jail or not, the chair or not, I’d choke him out, sit down and drink my beer.

“So, what’s the problem?”
“Apparently, your son has one of Will’s toys.”
“You’re saying he stole it?”
“No, no, no, not at all. Not at all.”
“Well, what then?”
“In a… lapse of judgment, as kids often have, Will ‘gave’ one of his toys, one he’s rather fond of, to Jeff for Christmas.”
“And…?”
“And… He didn’t have permission to give his toys away. He made a mistake and I’m here to get the toy back.”

This guy called me in the day after Christmas, a holiday AND a weekend and he’s concerned with some fucking toy? Was he pulling my leg?

“Uh…”
“Look, Jeffrey, you and I know how it is. If the roles were reversed, I know you’d be in the same position that I am and it would be you standing in my living room right now, asking me.”
“…”
“Hopefully, I would understand that children don’t quite grasp the concept of property, of impulse, of hard work and so forth.”
“Is that so?”
“Jeffrey, I’m not looking to give you a hard time, to accuse anyone of anything, or to cause you or your son any trouble. In fact, it’s my son who made a mistake, and I would like to apologize to you and to Jeff Jr. on his behalf.”
“That’s all right.”
“No, I insist. It’s important to teach these kids about right and wrong, about acting responsibly, as you well know. I’m only trying to do my part as a father to look out after my son, as you no doubt do for yours.”
“All right. Let me get him. Jeffrey!”
“Thank you. Again, sorry for the trouble.”
“Yeah, like I said it’s no problem JEFF!”

“Yes?”
“You got one of Will Jr.’s toys?”
“He gave it to me! For Christmas!”
“Go get it.”
“But Dad, he…”
“Go get it now. Bill, I’d like to get this cleared up right away. I have some things to take care of tonight, so if you don’t mind, I’ll get you the toy and back about your business.”
“It’s no problem.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Hand it over.”
“But dad…”
“Now!”
“But dad, Will broke my crane, the one I got for Christmas!”
“Will didn’t say anything to me about that, Jeff. Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir! He broke it, trying to get back the Dino-car!”
“I don’t know anything about that, Jeffrey.”
“Yeah, me either. Anyway, give him back Will’s toy.”
“…All right.”
“Thank you. All right, Bill. Sorry for the trouble.”
“If you don’t mind, can I speak to young Jeff for a moment?”
“That’s not necessary, really.”
“I insist. Please, I told my son I would.”
“I guess it’s all right.”
“Jeff, thank you for giving Will back his toy. I want to apologize to you from him, because I know you thought the toy was yours. I’m punishing him for lying to you about it, because he was the one in the wrong here. Anyway, when you grow up and have your own kids, you’ll understand better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Bill. I really need to get back to it.”
“Of course. Thanks for your time. See you on Monday.”

I closed the door behind him, barely able to see straight. Brass fucking balls. Comes into MY house, tells MY kid what’s what? Sure I wanted to break his face. What am I gonna do? Beat him up? Which I could, easily. So easily. Maybe if we lived in the wild west when men could settle things between each other. But today, I’d just get thrown in jail, my family would starve, and he’d be back at work on Monday, wearing his bruises like a badge of courage! Fuck him and fuck this world. I’d have to take it nice and slow, wait until there wasn’t anything between us, until long after I quit, which I will someday, and won’t he be fucked then, but after I quit, some night, years later maybe, show up and just beat him to death on his driveway. I need that beer.

See, though, kids and women. Can’t even keep a brand new toy for one fucking day. It’s already broke.

“Jeff!”
“Yeah, dad?”
“How did the crane get broken?”
“Will broke it!”
“I don’t care who broke it! I just got that for you. Maybe if you cared more about the toys you already have, instead of the ones your little friends have, you’d still have an unbroken crane.”
“Yes, sir.”

Kids these days are spoiled to death. Think things just fall from the sky. Think they deserve something just cause it exists. Without working for it. Sweating for it. Day in and day out. Bill lecturing me about raising kids. He’s right, though, even if it isn’t his place to say. Well, by God, my son’s not growing up like that. He’s going to learn the value of a hard day’s work if it kills me.

questions of scale

2011-12-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

As I sat, entrenched in my business as usual, I thought I heard a faint buzzing from a distant corner of my office. I paid it little heed and continued my work. I can only with great difficulty express the importance of the work I do, and I can't even begin to put into words its details. In any case, the work must get done. Each day I begin anew, dutifully eking out the tasks assigned to me, carefully inspecting my work, double checking it even, to ensure its accuracy. Again, the buzzing. What a distraction! My work, this burden I carry, must get done, and I am distracted by a petty annoyance.

I decided it would be more efficient to deal with the buzzing now and work quickly in peace than to try and continue working with the buzzing distraction interrupting my thoughts. My cursory examination of the corner from which the buzzing seemed to come revealed nothing. However, the corner was in shadow and I could hardly make out its contents, if there were any.

It had been a long, long time since I had paid attention to this corner, or even this whole side of my office. My work demands my strict attention and I cannot be bothered with constant inspection of every inch of my domain. That said, upon returning to it now in pursuit of this miniscule bother, I found it a rather dull and desolate corner, bereft of that which made the remainder of my office not only tolerable, but enjoyable. Yet this corner existed, had existed, and lacked only my gaze upon it to come into the fore. But soon, without subsequent buzzing, I dismissed the corner, its indeterminate contents, and returned to my work.

Having hardly started at my work again in the comfort of my desk in the center of my office, the buzzing began again in earnest. This time, I jumped from my desk and raced to the corner. Staring intently, I attempted to make out the buzzing's source. Again: nothing. But as I stood there, hovering over the corner, bent in two, with my own shadow blocking the light by which I saw, I thought I noticed a very faint movement, the movement of a dark object within darkness, hardly reflecting the immense light that flooded the rest of the room. I knelt, which I hesitated doing without probable cause, as the joints of my knees give me trouble and bringing myself up to my full height once again would require a great deal of effort and perhaps even pain.

Sure enough, I had not knelt in vain. In the very deepest recesses of the corner, down in the rug fibers, fluttered an infinitesimally small fly. It moved in place, not flying, but flapping its tiny, fragile wings, twisting its body one direction, then another, producing the frustrating buzz that had plagued me this entire morning.

My first instinct was to strike it viciously and forever end its grotesque existence. But, as I watched it writhe absently, a mere speck to my eyes, I began to feel that perhaps crushing the life out of this fly was not the answer. I had killed many flies before, and other insects, had they wandered into my sight, and I would kill many more. But now, I only stared, watching in silence as this fly moved erratically in the darkness amid the chemically treated synthetic hairs of the carpet.

From where had this fly come? It lived in my office, but I couldn’t recall letting it in. It came from somewhere, obviously, but I didn’t remember where. What really puzzled me and stayed my hand from its murderous descent was why the fly behaved as it did.

My work demands logic, precision, clear causality, mathematics… This fly, beating its wings against itself, moved at random, with no purpose, with no obvious goal. Was it only a question of scale? Because the fly could fit into the tip of my little finger with room to spare, did it follow that I could not relate to its being? Or did the fly lack being, as I used the term, and only mechanically follow simple instinctual commands, this particular fly having had its circuits crossed or cut or tangled in a way that made his usually sensible programming go haywire? Neither of these hypotheses satisfied me, for if the fly lacked being, where did one draw the line between being and non-being? And if the fly had being, but operated strictly on instinct, what type of creature would that make? There would be no difference between a fly acting on base instinct and a rock traveling through space with a certain trajectory and speed. In that scenario, the line between being and non-being simply did not exist. I was sure that experts in some field knew the answer, or at least more details about how a fly worked, but I, being a lay person in these matters, struggled against my own ignorance, new hypotheses emerging by the second.

I observed this fly, questioning why I could observe this fly, think about it, reflect upon it, abstract it to the concept of A Fly, while its pathetic faculties could hardly utilize the minimal amount of information provided by its genetics, if that’s how it worked. How did the fly experience life? What did it mean to see the world through kaleidoscope eyes, to flap transparent wings, to stick the snout into a pile of excrement for sustenance, to buzz eclectic without hope of understanding, save an imperfect understanding by other flies, if indeed any could understand another?

And then why? Why exist as a fly? Perhaps the fly didn’t know it existed. It lacked the observed observer of higher intelligence. Or perhaps its experiences were so different from mine that I was incapable of understanding it on my terms. Perhaps time seemed to pass much more slowly to a fly. Each second ticked away as for me a year would pass. Perhaps undetectable attributes gave its life meaning and interest. Some alien system of signification, so far missed by me, scattered through its dingy microcosm, filled the fly’s world as the various expressions of my kind filled mine. Perhaps I projected my own feelings and thoughts onto this little speck, vicariously filling myself by filling it. The fly buzzed in agitation. What agitated it? Or was agitation my word, my experience, wholly foreign to this disgusting insect? It desperately buzzed, so quickly together did the pulses, that to my ears seemed a contiguous sound, come, that I ascribed desperation to its almost certainly meaningless flailing.

I had to turn away. I turned away in revulsion and horror. My urge to crush its existence returned. The buzzing had escalated from a minor annoyance to a pestilent intrusion, each individual click an expression of irrational and pointless being. I looked out the window of my office, where the light poured in from its source. But the buzzing in the darkness continued. My mind kept showing me the ill lit dance of the pathetic fly in the corner, lilting to and fro, its spindly legs turning deftly while its lidless eyes stared out in every direction.

Could it see me? Was the fly aware of my presence? If I swatted at it, it would dodge, but that only proved reflex to imminent danger. Did the fly recognize me as a continuous whole, a sentient creature, a separate entity? Or am I, as I see myself, wholly abstracted to the fly, who, because of insufficient mental powers, insufficient visual powers, insufficient comprehension, or any other limitation of its physical being, could not understand that I am a creature like it, save of a much higher order? When I hunched over it, looming above its entire universe, did it fear its death at my hand? When I stood, with difficulty, and retreated to my desk, did the fly feel relief? Did it know I had spared its life? Or did it conclude from its continued existence that I never was there to destroy it in the first place?

I could not focus on my work. I could not sit peacefully in my chair. My ears resounded with the buzzing of this fly and I wanted to crush it crush it crush it until silence once again prevailed. Silence, the natural order, brought me great happiness. This impertinent fly sought to steal my peace of mind, my comfort, my ability to continue my work, with its irrational noise! How dare it have the audacity to intrude on a superior creature like me with its meaningless existence? I could not leave my office. I could not abandon my work. I could not go on like this.

Then, an amazing thing happened. The fly left its corner and flew in a nearly straight line towards the window. At last, progress! This I could understand. Spending its whole life grappling with itself in a dark corner, it had finally decided to seek out the light and perhaps escape. I watched intently as the fly buzzed its way quickly over to the window pane. It buzzed frantically, desperately, to my ears, and flew up against the glass pane again and again. Ah, fly, could you only understand the transparency of glass… But it only continued its assault, drawn by the light, repeatedly flying into the window, buzzing, faster and faster, slamming itself into the glass, buzzing, louder and louder, trying different angles, different parts of the glass surface, buzzing, higher and higher, again and again and again SMASH into the glass pane, SMASH into the glass pane, SMASH into the glass pane, and to no avail at all. Could it not see the folly in this, its inability to affect, even in the slightest, its macroenvironment? I saw it all so clearly, the helplessness of this tiny, strange entity, smashing its foolish self against an immovable obstacle, all in the hopes of attaining a distant light that it could neither reach nor understand, a light that would immolate it in seconds with indifferent alacrity. It buzzed and buzzed and continued to buzz.

I should have opened the window, perhaps, though behind the glass was a screen, through which the fly could never have passed, and which I was unwilling to remove for its sake. Would not allowing it a touch of fresh air have been yet another torture it endured? It wasn’t my place, anyway, from what I could recall, to assist this creature in its futile struggle, nor would it have helped. And even if I did help this one fly, millions or billions or trillions more writhed elsewhere, pleading for succor that would never come.

With a final assault, the fly rammed itself into the glass pane, fluttered in the air for a moment, and fell lifeless to the floor. The buzzing ceased. Quiet filled the office. I gazed upon the inert remains of the fly, awkwardly lying on its side, and for all I knew, no longer troubled by its world, whatever that may have been. The fly corpse disgusted me, but I remained still, despite my urge to sufficiently pad my fingers with tissue and move its husk from my office floor to the trash can. I sat calmly, quietly in the calm and quiet.

I left my office, much work undone, sure that something would remove the fly from my floor before Monday. It had grown dark; I had stared at the fly for a very long time. I left my building and felt the cold, fresh air on my skin. Everything stood immobile and hushed. The quiet extended far out into the clear sky above, descended far down into the cracks of the icy sidewalk below my feet. I yawned loudly, stretching my arms outward, my elbows clicking as they popped, then yawned again. My neck craned towards the sky, and I was able to barely make out the wispy glow of the Milky Way against the surrounding blackness.

autosymptomatic

2011-04-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

furtive youth glossed and gone,
forsaken every forgone outcome.
rainwet concrete arch underpass,
laughter and echo and laughter again.

rollercoaster mornings misspent.
sunglasses, backpack, stockings, cap.
roller-skate hairdo, kitsch memories,
unfeeling, unneeded, unnecessities.

down on the pier or out in the surf.
eeridescent salvation army throwaways,
too cool for school, too hip to grip,
recording themselves reordering.

failure burn out bulb replacements.
hollow art school tenement basements.
scrawling slogans, corporate dreams,
on the hearts of every absenteen.

pieced together ceramic shards,
arranged without a plot or scheme.
montage, collage, bric-a-brac.
sampled random scrambled screams.

fractured fracture, splintered splint,
infection spread too far to cut.
someone call the fucking cops,
to pick up all the bleeding stumps.

"be yourself," and "make some art."
steal the products from the shelves.
forget tv and hollywood stars
and sody pop and fancy cars.

skateboard, hat brim, sneakers, beer,
descend down from the wealthy blocks.
discover mounds of ancient waste.
detritus treasure restored to grace.

styrofoam headlines on plastic plaques.
steel heartbeats, souls of glass.
tear up the earth and reap the wind,
"Hieronimo is mad againe."

thirty minutes spent on hair,
loiter downtown by the shops.
collapsing infrastructure kids.
"these fags will never touch the heart."

sickarus flew out too far,
refused the sanctum of the sun.
immolation of a threadless shirt,
fell unnoticed behind the lens.

throwing bottles off crosstown bridge,
meandering river, drunk off spit.
murmurs guard the homeless shelter,
"fuck you all," and "fuck this shit."

mantras, fragments

2011-03-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

the first thing to go would be the eyes
exciting opportunities await
you'll love the feel of your hands on our sleek new body design
get free online assistance for your goals
you could be the ceo of general motors
if you feel an arm or other primary limb has withered
contact the proper authorities
we'll need your name, number, address, and occupation
a neighbor, brandishing a weapon in his garage
should you bring another life into this world
the 2011 model of the car you are currently driving is better
if you laid all your veins and arteries out end to end
it's always been that way
do you even own a suit
gentlemen's club
when the sidewalk hipsters laughed at you downtown
getting older
our global communications technology is bringing people together
no child left behind // rapture
open the redistributable package
budgeting
feral dogs roaming the streets of your suburban neighborhood
which season is best for replenishing yard mulch
sorry
i was a million miles away
from a cosmic perspective,
authorized personnel only
one foot in front of the other
the morning wager to try for another day
of energy, matter, and consciousness only one can be destroyed
or created
angry, aggressive driving
electronic prox card locks on every door
wall to wall computer monitors
backyard compost heap
the history of mercantilism
the next orgasm might feel better
a bathtub, too small
was man's mind ever whole
did it shatter with the death of the titans
when god swalked the earth
when fire-bringer brought fire
when it became man
just trying to get by
is wage slavery really slavery
imagine a world unexplored
the first footprint in the sand like Crusoe
imagine an ape crushing another ape's skull with a rock
feral dogs foaming at the mouth
clear, plastic braces
slipped on ice, dropped items
wide and welcoming gate
attend an informational seminar on your 401K
we spent a lot of money on this
don't let us down
corporate responsibility
space exploration canceled due to emptiness
insulated
should you check your waste before you flush
for blood or other anomalies
sea anomalies
under the ocean floor
a picture of a cancerous cell
virii spaceship depositing protein warhead
dress for success
dinner is almost ready, she says
new mexican silver bowl
contents: fake red rocks
childhood railroad tracks
dinner is ready, she says
headphones, computer monitor
exercise more
there is no right answer
rfid
hunched over a desk
will you be attending a co-workers goodbye party
sign here, initial here
static
it's just about time, see you tomorrow
check your clock
it could be fast
time is money
lay head to pillow
ashen aftermath of day
a human face telling its story without words

pretty little fetishes

2011-03-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

how many wandering souls
have fucked on this hotel mattress
and eked out their pleasure
from a core of desperation.

office building lights across the street
office busy workers in slacks, talking
on beige phones at metal desks
"my downtown corner office."

reading about the latest effort
for corporate responsibility
on the warm cup of coffee
bought for four dollars.

siphon the elusive essence
through a curly fun straw
and spit it up like gasoline
choking on its vapors.

the hands of the eyes reaching out
to behold.

walk the mall circuit, ironically
there are so many ghosts
queued at sbarro for
a quick slice of 'za.

a searchable and indexed
catalogue of eroded signs
painted on brick buildings
in the greater metro area.

lines in the streets for either
the latest gadget release
or the methadone clinic
smell the same in passing.

the hands of the eyes reaching out
to behold.

hipness through exclusion
pretty little fetishes
with little open mouths
rusted in mock affirmation.

yes yes she said yes
we really do have the
greatest deals on appliances
you've ever seen.

pages of empty sheet music
in the city landfill, or on a
barge in the harbor.
spoiled child bored of instrument.

alternative erotic bookstore
racks of zines and posters
of betty page somehow
empowering women sexually.

the hands of the eyes reaching out
to behold.

the disconnected life support,
the fantasy pleasure dome,
the consciousness in bed,
thinking, "i need to go to the store."

the failure of every hipster respirator.
the spiral of every rescued failure.
inky fractal infections
on calloused, weathered skin.

a full grown man playing games
with deadly seriousness
unasleep and careless with
his dress and facial hair.

monkeys ever bound to
obsolete technology
emptying out the ashtray
on a 23rd floor balcony.

stoned and defiled
howling into the alley
playing rock star god
away from home and work.

fell asleep after sex
hand and face still smell of
her cunt and you don't want
to shower before continental breakfast.

two girls

2011-03-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

two cold snow girls doorstep coming entreating dark
two snow girls
two cold girls
on doorstep, entreating
snow dark doorstep coming
two snow girls, cold, doorstep coming, entreating dark
made up in their best winter clothes
made up in their best winter warm
two beautiful young high school girls, snow hats, cold cheeks
knocking at the door
entreating you out
in the dark, cold, and snow
beautiful girls, cold and young
out in the snow
on the doorstep
streetlamp snowfall
streetlamp down
the silence the yellow streetlamp
the yellow streetlamp silence
smiling girls, young and beautiful, entreating you out
in the dark snow, cold, down the snowfall under streetlamp yellow
best winter clothes, warm, made up
knocking two girls coming dark
two girls coming dark on the doorstep
entreating you out
under the yellow streetlamp snowfall
cold cheeks, schoolgirls, high, young, beautiful, two
made up in their best
coming warm
on the snowfall down the yellow
under dark clothes
coming
two entreating girls coming up in their best beautiful and young
smiling, coming
entreating you down
dark girls out in the snow
beautiful coming
beautiful, coming
best dark yellow
knocking you out in their best yellow silence
beautiful and down, made up, down, coming dark, down
young young young young
two girls, out in the snow, entreating you out.

intersticial

2011-03-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

open up the envelope for a lovely little surprise.
blossom in the finest hour all yellows and particle haze.
i told your cousin the summer was a lovely time.

the unruly disorder solemn and blank.
empty out your pouring bucket.
in from the fields beyond the blue dark of hunger's evening.

unfurl out among the clouds into the blister of spring.
a childhood memory recalled while stoned.
we leapt in thunderbirds and camaros when long hair boys drove all the cool cars.

the desert between cities under the blanket overcast.
monuments and arches and towers and the absence of water in all directions.
the gray pamphlets falling from the sky in slow motion.

a concrete path through the green mown grass.
an empty duplex carport spot.
the haunting black dog in a poor man's backyard.

pattern is perception, reflection only thought.
the destinations reveal themselves spontaneously.
saturday morning drive out of town abruptly.

roll to the rhythm of the cracks in the freeway.
sorrow's empty ocean daydream.
in the smell of that rich kid's house.

paper men are easily torn.
we went to watch zozobra.
and play with flaming sticks from the firepit.
cherubs guarding the gates of eden.

the largest cross

2011-03-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

COME SEE

THE SECOND LARGEST CROSS

IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

PRAYER SERVICE

THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS

FAMILY FRIENDLY FUN

ONLY IN TEXAS

I
(scratch, scratch scratch)

Wiping the dust.
Wiping the dust from the thief.
Wiping the dust from the thief on His right.
The wind blow up fierce this morning. The wind blowing up. It blow up the dust and scatter it here, there, on me, in me. Wiping. I wiping off his face. I wiping the dust off his face. There more. There more dust. I wiping it off too, the more, and then there still more. Then there the other thief. Then there still more.

I clean both thieves and the Lord.
I clean them with this cloth.
I wipe the dust from their faces.
I wipe it with this cloth.

We in the shadow of the cross now. It spreading out across this field the way it does. It hot out too. In the shadow ain’t so hot. We in the shadow of the cross. The dust bad. They always saying the dust bad for you. It get in your lungs. The dust build up in your lungs. You breathe it. They say. Plenty a work in the office, they say. Plenty of work. Ain’t much for office work, I say Ain’t much for it. Rather it in the dust.

That one there, the one there, the one over there, he said, he said something like, he said something like ‘Lord don’t forget me when you go up into Your Kingdom.’ He wished it and was taken up and the other one sent below. It in the book. I read it.

-Rudy, Hey Rudy! he call out to me.

He walking up the platform now, blowing all over in the wind, like I must look. It a sight. I must a sight myself. I must. But him in them black robes or whatever he calls them and his starched white collar, blasted with the dust. It blowing on him, over him, same as me. Blasting him.

-Morning. I say.

-Morning there Rudy, how’s it going then? he say. Stations look real good, real good. Why don’t you come on inside for a bit and grab some breakfast. Everyone else is already inside.

I nod at him though I ain’t that hungry. I do not feel hungry. He looking at me now with those eyes he has. He looking at me now with those eyes. I haven’t finished cleaning up the statues yet. He looking at me now hard, real hard.

If it rain later on it’ll wash off all this anyway and it won’t have meant nothing to even bother. I ain’t quite that hungry, but I going anyway. It won’t have meant nothing. I ain’t hungry. I going anyway, down into the building. I going down anyway.

(scratch, scratch)

They already got breakfast all laid out and they all sitting there already eating, sitting and eating, sitting, eating. They got breakfast all laid out. No Mr. Day. No Ms. Bernice. The rest already there, sitting, eating.

Eggs. Grits. Potatoes. Sausage. Ham. Rolls. Toast. Orange Juice. Coffee.

I don’t drink coffee, though. I do not.

Long and them already all sitting there eating. Laughing bout something. Laughing. Sometimes he look at me with a meanness. Sometimes he look at me. Just look down and they go away. Just looking down. That look bred into a boy. Bred into him. Eggs. He that old Mr. Day’s boy. Been off to college and all I heard. It usually beat into them, but sometime it come about just through the blood. Potatoes. He heft stuff around here now though. Him and those old boys there, hefting it around all day and working on the truck. They move the stuff around all right. Ham. They move it around all right. Toast.

Orange juice.

Maureen pour the orange juice. It her hand on the pitcher and she smiling when she pour it. It poured into the glass from her arm, lifting it, and she smiling as she does it. She smile at me a bit. She pouring the orange juice. She smile at me. She Long’s wife. She his wife. She smile at me. She pour my orange juice.

-Morning there Rudy, she say. How ya doin’?

-All right, I suppose. I say. I got the stations mostly wiped down, though there a few I ain’t got, but I reckon if it rain later on it ain’t gonna matter to have bothered now. How ya’ll doing? I say. How little Molly doing? I say.
(scratch, scratch)

-We’re good. Molly’s good. she say.

(scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch)

She smile at me. Father Sal waiting for his orange juice. I smile or make to smile and turn away. She very nice.

There are three tables.
There are three tables in the office.
Long and the boys, that Si and that Don, got one of them.
LONG LOOKING AT ME
Sal got another but he got his bible out and he liable to be busy and not wanting any disturbing while he working out his sermon. He don’t want no bother.
The last table got that Doc Conroy on it with his bird eyes and bird nose and bird brow and looking through his book like he ain’t even here. I set down by him, quiet, and start to eat. I taste the food and I chew it. I ain’t that hungry.

-Rudolph. he say. He call me Rudolph.

-Doc. I say. I call him Doc. Most folk call him Doc.

He keep on reading.
I keep on eating.

The light looking a little strange. The light coming in from the window. The windows in the office are high up and wide. The light coming in from them a little strange.

I fixing to get up and put my plate away and in come that little Molly, running around like mad. She IT SCRATCHING running around and laughing and IT TREMBLING wearing a little
scratch
a little dress that Maureen
tremble
must have got her last time they gone into town.

She look awfully cute.

-Hey there, Miss Molly. I say.

LONG LOOKING AT ME (I feel the embers of his eyes in the thick of my neck and I scratch it like scratch it and scratch at it peeling off the itch of his stare)

-Hiya, Rudy! she say. Ya’ll already eat? she say.

I look at my empty plate and IT EMPTY
I HAVE EATEN IT ALL
nod and try to smile like
the way folks do

-Yes ma’am, just finished. You runnin’ a little late, ain’t you? I say.
(scratch, scratch
it’s in me it’s in me it’s in me it’s in me
scratch)

-Yeah, I was getting pretty. Mama bought me this dress and did up my hair so I was making sure it was perfect before presenting myself. she say.

LONG LOOKING
SHE GETTING PRETTY
getting pretty getting pretty getting pretty
did up her hair getting pretty
presenting herself getting pretty
getting pretty getting getting getting
pretty pretty
pretty

-Molly. he say from cross the room. LONG Molly, cmere. he say.
HE LOOKING AT ME
As he speak.
Not speaking to me but looking at me and looking at me but his words not for me but his eyes speak too and to me they speak and the itch of the embers of his eyes
SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH
SHE SKIPS AND DANCES OVER TO HIM

-What I tell you about being late? he say, finally looking at her and speaking to her and I feeling a drop of sweat now and I wiping it away. I wiping it off.

-You know better’n that. Can’t be running round here by yourself. It ain’t safe. he say.

-But Daddy, I know everybody here. she say.

-Don’t talk back. Do what I tell you. Your ma’ll worry if you’re by yourself. Long say.

-Listen to your Daddy, baby. Don’t be running round. Maureen say.

I listening and hearing the eyes and the voices and looking and trying not to look and to scratch the itch but I feel it and if it rain today it won’t be for nothing and it all set to a slow boil and coming up over the top and sides with this abundance

LOOK AWAY
GOD
LOOK AWAY

I on my feet and I don’t even know how I did and I feel the daggers of the embers of the eyes in my back and wish they could bleed me from all this bramble confusion like I was on the table and bled it all out and be just like new and start it again and GOD now I see Sal there and he looking at me, waiting like, and I don’t know what I should

-I said you need something, Rudy? he say.

-Uh. Sorry to bother you, Sal, just wanted to know what all you like me to do this morning. I say.

He close that Bible on that red bookmark and there all kinds of notes and highlighting and things inside it and I can’t make out his tiny crumped scrawl but I did see it in there around the block printed words of the Lord in that book and he push up his reading glasses on his nose and looking at me with the eyes of a kind I never did feel not like the embers and I am not burned here but he look at me all the same and I would almost want more the violent burning than his calm kindness

-We’re gonna have sermon at ten. It’s what, round eight now? I don’t reckon there’s much to be done before then. Take some time to yourself, if you want. he say.

time
to yourself

-All right then, thanks. I say.

-You can always read this. he say and hold up his bible.

I nod and inside hold down a laugh that bubble up and would come out a cry if it ever escaped but it never will as long as I live and the
(scratch, scratch)
and the derisive
I CAN HEAR IT
and the penitent
DEAFENING
and if it rain
won’t have mattered
none
anyway.

II
I like the feel of this book. There’s smoothness to the leather and a heavy texture to the pages that reinforce its weight. It’s not too big to be unwieldy but it ain’t so small you can’t read the words either. The gold tassel for marking pages broke off a while back, but I can still see the threads coming up out of the binding of where it used to be. Reminds me of how much use it’s got. The pages got this red color on the edges so when the book is closed it looks like all red. All blood red. It’s the blood, all right. It is that. The lettering is crisp and clear, easy to read. Nothing fancy, except maybe the gold text on the front but that’s only to be expected. His Words are all marked out in red too. I quite like the feel of this book.

Long is getting his blood up for something, just looking for what. If he wasn’t Mr. Day’s son, he woulda been sent on his way a while back. It’s too bad. For that little girl. She’s a sweet one. If I had a daughter I woulda liked her to be like Molly. Maureen ain’t a bad woman neither, but I gotta wonder about how she ever got messed up with Long in the first place.

Lord, grant me that I may use your Word through my tongue to get through to the people. I’ll do the best I can, in my meager capacity to get it through. There is forgiveness in every human heart. This I do believe.

He’s coming over here now, Rudy, that hangdog expression on his face, those scared little eyes set back a ways in his skull, shifting. He’s rubbing his hands together as he does often. He got one of them conditions, with those tics. He’s all ragged. Still, out there, rubbing down them statues... Lord, he’s a stubborn one. He walks real slow, shuffling sort of, up to my table. He ain’t quite looking at me with his little kid eyes in his old man head.

“Hey Rudy. You need something?” I say.

He ain’t saying nothing. He’s sort of looking past me, behind me at something, but there ain’t nothing there. Gives folks the creeps. But I like having him around though. I honestly do. God’s charity knows no bounds and giving it to them who are a bit touched is the best you can do with it, I suppose.

“I said, you need something Rudy?” I say again.

This time he looks me in the eye. I’ve noticed many a time how quickly Rudy’s eyes can change. He normally has that dazed, hangdog look on him. Sad eyes. Sometimes though he flashes a bit of smarts under them, makes you think about what goes on in that old man head of his.

“Uh. Sorry to bother you, Sal, just wanted to know what all you like me to do this morning,” he says.

He’s shifting around a bit. Rubbing his hands. Breaks my heart. I cannot know what kind of suffering this man has endured and Lord’s truth I don’t want to. Maybe that’s why he never speaks of it.

“We’re gonna have sermon at ten. It’s what, round eight now? I don’t reckon there’s much to be done before then. Take some time to yourself, if you want,” I say.

He has some books and things in his bunk. Ain’t much, but a man needs some time alone. I’ve seen him before, sitting on his little cot cause he leaves his door open at times, just sort of staring out. Thinking, I’d say, bout what though I would not dare to guess at. Can’t send him outside to work in this wind though. As he said, it might rain in a bit and wouldn’t make sense anyway.

“All right then. Thanks,” he says.

He starts shuffling off towards the door. His shoes scraping along the linoleum.

I wonder if he’s always been like this or if something happened to him to make him this way. When I asked him to stay here, I probed as I could, as I felt proper, but didn’t get nothing from him except that he was from Millington, Tennessee and did some odd jobs for his Pa after he finished high school. Either way, he’s been like this for some time, I would imagine, and it cannot make for an easy life.

“You can always read this,” I say and show him my Bible.

‘In his utmost extremity, a man can turn to the Lord and find his peace.’ But normal folks can take actions to ease the unknowable pain of a fellow traveler. He shuffles on out and I can hear the wind blowing hard when he opens the door. When it closes the noise dies out and the dust settles down around the threshold, still and quiet.

And that Long staring at him the whole time like a hollow.

III
The nails drive deep in the naked flesh. The sun burns down, scalding, parching, relentless. Surely this is as it should be, for I have forsaken the covenant of man unto man and having thus broken the law, submit to my humiliation, torment and punishment. I steel myself and prepare to jettison the flesh.

He sits in the office among the books and brochures. He holds a bible, closed, in his right hand. Closed are his eyes and he rubs his closed eyes with his left hand. He rakes his fingers back through his thinning hair. His hair is gray. He has mud on his shoes. The mud is caked and dry around the sides, but wet and leaving traces on the soles.

The office door opens.

The other one with me, he screams. His hands clench and unclench wildly. His eyes all rage, all hatred. He curses the soldiers. His mouth a rotting hole. Broken and crooked teeth. His lips crack, white and dust laden. Fear behind this mask of fury.

Long enters the office. Don and Si follow behind and close the door again. The door is now closed. They look down at Rudy with conspiracy.

-Howdy there, Rudy, Long says.

Long sits down on the bench next to Rudy and lays his arm out behind him. The other two stand there, immobile and silent. Don looks on expectantly, the cracking calm of his face betraying a seething desire. His swollen belly sits heavy in his overalls. Si is empty, distant. He looks up at the ceiling.

-Hiya, Long, Rudy says.

If a man steals and that man loses his hand and justice is meted and that be done for infringement on the natural rights of men, property included, warrants retribution of, if not equal to, then fitting the character of, and upon this stake of wood I am bared for my transgression of the laws of man and thus steel for the inevitable jettisoning of this flesh. They prepare to raise another. He writhes on the ground beneath me, as I have writhed, his confession etched above him as mine. The other beside me stares down at this newly arrived also, but with scorn. He tilts his head slowly toward mine, his eyes meet mine and he laughs with wild brutality.

-You know why they call me “Long,” Long asks, grinning.

Rudy remains silent.

Long laughs.

-You know my name’s Luke. That’s what folks call me who ain’t my friend, Long says.

-All right, Rudy says.

-Luke ain’t such a bad guy, Long says. Why, he’s a saint.

Don laughs.

-Working hard, then? Long asks.

-Sal said ain’t nothing to do ‘til after the sermon, Rudy says.

-Issat so? Well, did ya’ll hear that? Ain’t no work to do until after the sermon! Long says.

Don laughs and grunts. Si is silent, distant, but present and partial.

-That’s real strange, Rudy. Sally told us we gotta clean up the grounds and keep on at Conroy’s old truck ‘til it runs, sermon or no. We gotta do it now. You reckon we can wait then, Rudy, if there ain’t no work ‘til after the sermon? Long says.

-I don’t know, Long. Sal only told me what to do, Rudy says.

-Guess you must be special, Rudy. Sally must have a special place in his heart just for you. How about it? Are you special? Long says.

They raise this one up, in the middle, between me and the other. We both pivot our necks, with a crying out of strength, to see his face between us. I see his flesh, his hair, his sweat, his blood. I feel the violation of the metal through his body as it is in my own. I taste the arid lack in his mouth. I see across him, to the other, who cackles madly still, making crude insults to those below and watching with peculiar intensity this one in the middle, newly risen.

-He told me I could read my bible, Rudy said.

-He said you could read your bible? That’s mighty good, Rudy. How is that Bible? You get to any of the good parts yet? The ones where all them boys get their heads cut off and all the pretty girls get kidnapped and raped? Long asked.

Don laughs a deep, dark grunt. Si betrays an emotion on his face. He distances. Long smiles wide, his hand on Rudy’s shoulder. Rudy looks away, towards the floor, and says nothing. Long leans in close and Rudy can smell his breath.

-You ever make it with a girl, Rudy? Long asks.

The other and I read the sin of the one newly raised. But it is not a charge. It is a statement. It cannot be true. I do not understand. The other immediately laughs loud, coughing and spitting up blood. He says, “If that indictment is true, if you really are him, then why don’t you save yourself – and us!” He laughs again and spits upon the ground, the dryness of the soil soaking up his life and dissipating it into nothing.

-I asked you a question, son. C’mon now. You’re what, forty-five, fifty, I reckon. You a monk or something? You been laid, Rudy, don’t play around. I bet you been laid plenty. Old man like you. Shit. Or don’t you like girls, Long says.

Rudy says nothing, does nothing. Long leers at Rudy and grips his shoulder tightly. Rudy submits to the squeezing, to the leering. Don laughs again, his big belly shaking slowly, his deep voice echoing in the empty room. Si just stands there, watching, not quite looking away, but restrained and aloof, his hands in his pockets. For a moment there is no movement in the room except Long’s heavy breathing.

because if there is judgment then there is justice and there must be justice in order for us to go on for we cannot go on without order and there is no order without justice and there is no justice without judgment and who is to be the judge if not the men in the position to judge and condemn or set free? But this man with no crime on his head, is it justice, does he belong here on this hill with the endless rows of the dead hanging from the sky and dripping into the ground and disappearing and does the hot earth deserve to drink his blood with ours, commingling in the soil and bringing forth some nightmare fruit from the skull on which we are perched and the birds above circling for their share when the soldiers go away and they are the keepers of justice, but are men, and unjust, and how can there be order or justice or judgment by men who are above all disorderly, unjust and biased? Have I waited too long to separate from my flesh as the pain of the world burns into my lungs and wrists and I breathe in the death that will consume the little fire of my being and the other one there continues and continues his poison spitting over this man who has no crime on his head he has no crime to speak of and this cannot be justice for though I have stolen and am where I should be, who is this other to speak of the man in the middle with his caustic arrogance? No this cannot be right. This cannot be right. Then the man in the middle looks at me and his face becomes as sunfire, withering me to ashes.

Long throws a punch at Rudy’s face and stops inches short. Rudy flinches terribly. Long and Don laugh hysterically. Si smiles a bit but only with his mouth.

-Hell, Rudy, we’re just messing with you. You’re a good old boy. You’re like a little kid. A little brother I always wanted. Even if you are some kind of retard, Long says.

Long motions toward the door with his head. Si is out the door immediately. Don gives Rudy one last look, bares his teeth, and follows. Long goes to the door and has his hand on the knob when he turns back and stares at Rudy.

“Be quiet!” I say. “How can you mock a man sharing in your very own pain? Do you not fear? He shares our torment and not our crime,” I say. My heart burns. It may explode. My lungs have little left. My muscles are slack and waning. I cannot see but the sky. The man in the middle looks towards me, annihilating me with his gaze. I say to him, “Remember me when you go to your kingdom.”

-You stay the hell away from Molly, you hear me? And Maureen too. You creep me the hell out and I don’t want to see you talking or even looking at my girls. You got it? I’m serious now, you hear, Long says.

He doesn’t wait for Rudy to answer before leaving and slamming the door to the office behind him. Rudy stares at the floor, gripping his bible with shaking hands.

“Today,” he says, “you will be with me in paradise.”

IV
still I was glad I got Molly that dress and had her wear it today for the service even though he doesn’t like me to do it with his man fear not being able to accept something as simple as this without getting all ruffled feathers and making a big scene about it at breakfast in front of everyone like every time any little thing goes on he has to let everyone know he’s in charge all over again embarrassing himself and everyone else who has to watch it like they aren’t already used to the way he is the way he sits there even now with that bored look on his face like this is such a chore and he has better things to do than spend Sunday morning in church with his family

things a man can’t show in public feelings they aren’t supposed to feel but all of them do saving them up for the bedroom and letting them out like a crack in a dam spilling all over us when the lights get turned off and the warmth of our bodies wraps them up in the covers and they begin to speak those secret things that a woman might say out in the daylight but for a man are reserved for only those private times which is why none of them know really that he is a good man how could they know who Luke even is without spending those times with him like I have and hearing him talk in his quiet voice about those things he won’t admit to the rest of the world that knows him as Long and that’s how I know he’s a good man no matter what they might say and even if Sally stares over at him all day I’ll know that he’s a good man and a good father and that deep down he loves me and Molly and I know these things and I’ve heard them spoken from rough lips in the dark when only the truth is light enough to come out

“Thank you all for coming out this Sunday,” Father Sal says from the podium. “Real good to see all your faces. Today I’d like to talk about what I consider to be a cornerstone of our faith and tradition: forgiveness.”

Sally speaking directly to us to me to Luke trying to get through to us and yes I feel I feel the Lord but getting through to Luke making him understand and come around is going to take time but he will come around and he will understand Long who never forgave anyone long as I’ve known him man can keep a grudge but sometimes with men the blood gets to boiling and there’s no stopping it until it explodes and smashes against something like a runaway train or a crack in the dam exploding and exploding until the pressure’s all worked out and then they go right back to bottling it up again and we wait and wait and wait for the next time it gets to be too much and he’s always saying how he didn’t mean it and I know he didn’t mean it when he speaks to me in his quiet voice afterwards and the way he caresses me so gentle and tells me what a sorry son of a bitch he is and gets that look like a puppy that just don’t know any better looking at you again and again never meaning it but bottling and bottling and can’t help but blow over at times it’s the way of men hiding in the daylight

“-without sin cast the first stone.’ I ask you, fine ladies and gentlemen, who here could throw that stone?”

but he is a good father there’s that and he might be overprotective the way fathers are but he loves her as I do and wouldn’t hurt her he promised me that one time when he come back all hangdog he promised me it wouldn’t ever happen and he’s been good to his word because I know him deep down the way these others never could the way only a woman can know a man and anyway he’s working on it for me too he promised that the last time he’s working on it and he’ll find a way he promised after all, he is a good father there’s that and Molly’s such a good girl and so sweet she’s been raised right and I have to give him credit for that a lot of men can’t father can’t even abide children and Lord knows Luke ain’t perfect but she is going to grow up to be a good woman and I have to give him credit for that I have to give him that

“-men find the Lord not through purity, but through defilement. Men come to the light out of the darkness. Men have their sins washed away not because they are already clean, but because they are dirty,”

Sally looking over here real intent like he has a point looking at Luke looking down on him like all his words are just for him like he’s just the personal mouthpiece for the Lord come to speak right at Long to make him change his ways like it’s just that simple like you can just speak words to a man and hope for him to change like you can just skip over all the nights and feelings a woman puts in to help her man like he’s just going to see the light and change and Sal not even knowing him not even seeing Luke as Luke but more as Long more as that Long and the boys and not even liking him much the way most don’t on account of how he seems and I know he has a way with people and I guess if that’s all they know about him I can’t blame them much but that’s because a man is an iceberg and you only see that little part he intends to show unless you put in the years, night after night, raise their blood and listen to their quiet voice

“-you might want to think about it for a second. Think about that beam in your eye first. We got so much lumber we could build another church! But no matter how big our beam is, it’s always easy to see right past it and into the speck of another,”

comin out to his Daddy’s place like this asking him for work and doing things here and there that he wouldn’t get paid for anywhere else but by family and saying that he can provide for us and that it won’t be long fore we pick up and go somewhere else but it’s been a long long time

that poor Rudy standing alone in the back there by himself looking down like he’s listening but who knows if he can hear or grasp any of this and no I can’t abide the way Long treats him it ain’t right I know that I know it I know Long oughta leave him alone and I can see why Sally gets upset about it that Rudy ain’t much different from Molly when it comes down to it man barely speaks keeps to himself barely leaves the grounds he’s an older man now but he’s still someone’s son and some mother at some time felt about him how Luke feels about Molly but Long can’t see things that way not yet and why him and those other boys go about picking on him I just don’t know I don’t know what makes men do the things they do acting crazy at every occasion writing cruelties into the fabric of their experience where a woman can see the mother’s child through the present

except that Sally the way he treats Rudy took a shine to him right off like as pastor he’s mother and father but that Rudy that Rudy someone really has to do something someone really has to someone should really do something

the way it is with me and Luke we sort of have to balance out like Molly’s dress how I bought it and how I’ll buy her another one and how he got down on her for it and how he’ll get down on me for spending the money but I just have to keep him balanced out until he gets himself together and figures it all out because deep down I know he loves me I’ve seen him in the quiet in the dark felt his heartbeat and his touch which can be gentle so gentle like none would ever believe of the man they think they know though I’ve heard his soul speak to me in a whisper I could lose in the wind and I know God will forgive him and I pray to the Blessed Virgin he will come round and I know he will show them all how he can be the good man he is down deep where down deep he is a good man where down deep he does love me where down deep he does love Molly too where down deep he does the best he can the best he can the best he can

V
We need to fix a new axle on it. That’s all there is to it. I already told them that. We spent all that time trying to fix that one that’s on it now. But it’s all rusted out. Everybody knows it. Can’t be no good no more. Not when it’s all eat away like that. Where Doc Conroy got that truck, I don’t know. We been working on fixing it now for a while. The engine was near shot. Would have been faster to just replace it. Maybe cheaper too. I told them that at the time. Now we need that new axle. The man could afford a new truck.

“Think about the beam in your eye first. We got so much lumber we could build another church!”

That would be nice work. Working on cars is good. Working with wood is better, I figure. I like it more. I built that barn addition with Pa that summer. Last time I cut wood. Wood don’t speak. Metal don’t speak. Makes easy work. I hope James got that work for me up in Amarillo. I could want more to build some houses now than work on that old junker another day in this damn heat. That Conroy, rather have us bustin’ our balls fixing that jalopy than buy hisself a new truck that he could buy no problem. Amarillo’s lookin’ real good.

“…one stray sheep. One sinner repenting. The greater the sin, the more befouled the sinner, the greater the glory in his redemption…”

Why Long gotta run up that old boy every chance he gets, I just don’t know. He is a weird dude, Rudy. No doubt about that. But it don’t mean he needs to be treated so rough, the way Long does it. I would say something but Long’s my friend and all. Better not to get in the middle. Long’s real good with the tools. He does a good job, usually. When he isn’t on the drink. I mean we drank a few beers when we worked outside, me and James, but not the hard stuff and not that much. But Long does good work, mostly. Like how he did with that gearbox that was all tore up. Work with him day in and day out. Wouldn’t stand to have some trouble tween us, working in such close corners. I’d rather just spend my time working on cars and trucks and the like. Building something when it needs building. Hands on the metal. Hands on the wood. Without much speaking at all.

“…which is easier, to say ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to entreat a crippled man to stand up and walk?”

Rudy reminds me of Clint. I ain’t never talked to Rudy none. So it might not be the same thing. If they can even figure out what that sort of thing is. I don’t think there’s any knowing the way people are. Especially if they ain’t right. I wouldn’t wanna be in his shoes. Not Clint’s neither. Always felt bad about feeling that, but it’s true all the same, Lord help me. It’s no kind of world to be less than a man. But what could I do?

Don still got my torque wrench. I’ll have to ask him about that after the service. I like that one quite a bit. It has a no-slip grip. It cranks real good. The fit for the bits is tight. It’s well made. But I reckon if I get that work in the city I won’t much need it. I’ll give it to Don anyway, most likely. I could take or leave Don, to be honest, but I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.

But I spent plenty of time around my brothers. Me and James and Clint, toolin’ around. Joined at the hip growing up. Before they sent Clint away. There wasn’t nothing wrong with him. I mean, he wasn’t bad or anything. He just had a way of not being able to show or tell anyone how or where he was. He had that empty look, same as Rudy. Just sort of sat there. Looking at you like you weren’t there. He wasn’t no good on the farm. Or with tools. His hands were slow. His body moved like it struggled with how he told it to do. He the one first called me Si. Hey Si, he said. Hey. If things go too far I reckon I’ll step in. It’s mostly teasing.

“..because ‘he who has been forgiven little, loves little.’ A man cannot love unless he has first wronged and then repented…”

I’d rather just work on the truck. If we never get it to run right I’ll be okay with just working to make it so day in and day out. Long is my friend anyway. With his wife and little girl running around he’s cautious about people. Says Rudy creeps him out. Says, ‘Si, if you were in my shoes, you’d know why.’ If he’s half on the nose with all he talks. Caution ain’t a bad idea. But sometimes he gets downright cruel. I would step in. I figure I would. But trouble’s trouble. I wonder if James would let me stay at his place. He’s got that extra bedroom. That Laura don’t like me much, but we’re brothers and James gotta let me stay, at least for a little while. We’re brothers after all.

VI
Oh and here comes Father Sal. Sal, Father Sal! That was a lovely sermon. It really spoke to me. I think the Word got out today.

Thank you, Bernice, he says. Always nice to hear. He’s a very kind man, if a little short with you after his sermons. But everyone always pulls at him from all sides and you can’t expect him to give you his attention for too long.

Maureen’s waiting on him, got an armful of folders for him. It’s always business with her. I know it’s her job but really, with a little girl like that and married to, to, to that man… she ought focus more on family. That’s what I did at her age and my sons are growed and have their own families now.

Oh and there’s Rudy, standing hunched over, rubbing his hands, looking at Sal like he’s gonna say something, but everyone’s pushing him out of the way to crowd Sal and shake his hand. I never had a problem with Rudy myself, mind you, but the way I hear it, is that he ain’t all put together. You know the type. He seems nice enough but most of them do, until they don’t, if you take my meaning. He’s harmless enough, I suppose. He sure takes his share from Long and the other boys though. That’s the way of things. When my boys were young they fought and fought. Meanness in them, ‘til it isn’t. My Ed, rest his soul, would have called Rudy a stub.

Look at him, just standing there, staring up into the sky like a statue. Why nothing’s up there but a rain cloud, boy. Well, someone might as well do something.

Rudy, I say, you all right? He looks at me like I woke him up and he smiles at me, nice enough, but a little off, and says Yes, Ms. Bernice, I okay, just thinkin’ it gonna rain. That’s a fact, I say and look up with him. The cross is way up there, standing tall and proud like the Lord himself, protecting all us down here. You can feel God’s own power coming down like off the mountain. Lord almighty, yes. But he’s just staring up at it, not saying anything, shuffling and fidgeting. Sal calls them his tics. You’re best not to acknowledge them, I suppose, but they are a bit distracting.

Rudy, why don’t you come by the den tonight and we’ll play some cards, I say. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring up there so I say it again. Times you have to tell him twice for him to hear. He looks at me this time, like a lost child, then smiles and says, Yes ma’am, that sound nice. Do you think you have some of them cookies? Well, I had to get another box the last time he came over. Yes Rudy, I have some. You don’t eat too many though okay, I say. He nods and looks up again.

I need to talk to Maureen about taking a few days; she can be a stickler for the paperwork, even if she’s a nice person. You want some time off you better let her know. I take the same time every year, it was my and Ed’s anniversary. I told her before it would be the same time. She says you can’t apply for vacation more than six months in advance.

She’s still talking to Sal so I lean back against the wall and wait, watching that little girl of hers run around, twirling and jumping. She is a darling; you ain’t seen none cuter or more full of life. Ed was always glad we never had a daughter, but if he saw this one running around like she does he might have changed his mind.

She goes over to where Rudy is, still looking up at the sky and she says Rudy, whatcha lookin at and he doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring up and she says again Rudy, Rudy, I said whatcha doin, whatcha lookin at? He doesn’t look down at her, but he says I just lookin up at the cross, Ms. Molly. Thinkin bout how big it is and how it must look from up in them clouds. Thinkin bout how the farther up you go, the smaller and smaller this cross would look, til you couldn’t even see it at all, he says. You oughtn’t say such things to a child. Molly looks up, puzzling out words she probably doesn’t even know and then says You sound awfully sad. Whatsa matter? Rudy finally looks at her with his odd, stone face and says I all right. Just the weather. You run along now, go find your mama and see if she need any help.

Good advice. He ain’t so bad or as dumb as people reckon. Most people aren’t, you know. Molly starts pointing over here and says She’s right over there. We’re goin back into town today, to the shops! I love the shops, don’t you? He scrunches up his brow and says I don’t go too often. Ain’t got much money and there ain’t nothin there for an old man anyways. But you all have a good time, okay. See if you can get some ice cream. Ice cream real good. He’s rubbing his hands real fast now, shuffling his feet, looking away and up. Sometimes they get nervous around young ones. I’ve seen it before.

Maureen, finished up with Sal, calls out Molly, Molly! and the girl comes running over, tugging Rudy’s sleeve along with her, pulling him over to stand right next to me. Sal is still flipping through the folders Maureen gave him so I just wait where I am, watching him and listening to Molly clamor on, only cause I’m standing right here of course. I’m no snoop.

Mama, Mama, she says, can old Rudy come with us to town? He sounds sad and needs the company, she says. Rudy makes to protest but she just goes on, tugging his sleeve and swinging his arm back and forth. So can he, Mama, can he? Maureen puts her arm around Molly and guides her arm off of Rudy’s sleeve. Hi Rudy, she says, you all right? He wipes his face. He’s sweating a bit, can’t blame him. It’s rather hot, considering the rainstorm that’s coming, but he can’t get it all, like his hands don’t know how to work his face. Ed, bless him, always said you should feel Jesus through kind works. I suppose I’ll just have to help this stub out a little bit. Sometimes you got to.

They finish talking and Molly runs off, dances off more like, happy, so I guess they convinced him to go with them out into town. I say Rudy, ya’ll goin into town with Maureen? and he says Yes Ma’am, Ms. Bernice, I suppose. Ain’t for goin into town much, but Ms. Molly and Ms. Maureen want it. He’s shifting from leg to leg, restless, and rubbing his hands together like you’ve never seen.

I say Well all right then, but come over here first, you’re sweaty as a pig and won’t do to go into town looking like a ranch hand. You leave that to them other boys. So I take his handkerchief and dab his face a bit, drying it off and he’s staring at the floor with his sad little eyes and making tiny circles in the dust with his foot. I dab him off and hand it back to him and say You all take care in town now. We’ll raincheck that card game, you hear. I’ll keep the cookies in supply.

He nods and shuffles off, looking up at the top of the cross. Dark clouds up there now, rain won’t be long, you can tell when you’ve seen enough storms. But Lord, I wish Ed was here to see this with me because he loved God and Jesus with his whole heart and I know he’d approve of any kindness to a stub like Rudy. I think he looks down on me from up there, you see. He watches over me in the bosom of the Lord and will take me into his arms when it’s my time to finally join him.

I guess I’ll talk to Maureen after she gets back, because I’m taking those days off one way or another. You can bet on that.

VII
Just look at the desolation here, Rudy. Half of these shops are empty and the other half might as well be. This town is finished. Dried up. Dead. It’s quiet out. IT IS SO QUIET. That’s right, rub your little hands, Rudy, rub, rub, rub. The way the dust blows across the sidewalk. DOESN’T IT REMIND YOU OF SOMETHING? Look at yourself in the rearview. Just take a look. LOOK AT YOURSELF.

They pull up into a parking space outside Chick’s Clothing Store. Maureen guides the pickup between the lines and sets it in park. Molly beams and looks anxiously at Rudy who clumsily opens the door lock, undoes his seatbelt and opens the door. He carefully steps out of the truck, feeling some pain in his left knee, and then helps Molly down out of the cab. Maureen gets out on the other side. He closes the door behind them.

LOOK

Stop trying to pretend. You’re in it just like everyone else. Buried in the shit and the piss and the filth. Crawling through it, writhing in it, empty inside and tearing at anything you can reach. Trapped inside. In the Earth just like just like JUST LIKE trapped inside. Hahahaha. She twirls and dances. She moves across the rotting wood patio. She can’t escape it, Rudy. You know that. SHE IS IN IT. She WILL BE. You can no more be other than you can stop. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you about that dry pain, that slow burn, the drinking of sand in an hour of fire and borne and buried into your breast forever. I WILL TELL YOU HOW IT BURNED.

-Well, come on Rudy, Maureen says, holding Molly on the shoulders.
-I gonna just set out here a bit, if ya’ll don’t mind. Take your time though, I gonna park it on this bench and watch the town a while, take in some town air, Rudy says, looking out into the empty street.
-All right. We’ll only be a bit. Molly’s gonna try on this dress and then we’ll be ready, Maureen says.
-Take your time. Take as long as you need, Rudy says.

Molly and Maureen enter the store. Rudy sits down on a swinging wooden bench and looks at the shops across the street.

Antique store. Do you remember the antique store you worked at? Do you remember the old man and the old woman who ran it? Remember they had that little porcelain lamb that was all white, unpainted? Little white lamb. Little white lamb. You didn’t buy it. You drank of the sand, acolyte of the sand, buried in the sand in your mouth, eyes and ears, buried alive BURIED ALIVE in the sand and burn, eternal, into the hollow.

Do not get so upset. When I burned upon the skull I saw many a man deceiving himself out of pain. It is not just you. With the metal in the flesh and the skin torn by wood and the sun blazing down and the burning in the chest there is no escape. Not for kings or false kings, not for thieves and not for any sinning creature, suffering his time upon the Earth. You can’t escape this. YOU ARE IN IT. Even the king dies upon the cross.

Rudy thinks about going into town, shopping, with a woman and a little girl. He had never done that before. He had never been married. He had never had children. He was out shopping on Main Street on a Sunday after church. It’s what folks do.

You just wanted to feel good. You just wanted to do good. He wanted good too. But he writhed and cried like any helpless man. His only kingdom was death, the kingdom with many kings. Everyone sits on the throne. And I saw the fear in his eyes as his soul left his body. I saw it in his face. IN THE BURNING there is naught but fear and in life there is naught but suffering and only fools pretend to more.

The door to the shop opens. Molly comes running out, her little shoes clacking against the wooden porch.

-Rudy, look at this dress! Isn’t it magnificent? Molly says, twirling around in front of him.

The bottom of the dress lifts up as she twirls and twirls around with her. She twirls around and around. She finally stops and looks up at him with her laughing little angel face.

-Well, ain’t it pretty? Ain’t it the prettiest dress you ever seen? she says.
-It beautiful. You beautiful, Ms. Molly.

YOU CANNOT CHANGE the world. It is a gauntlet of pain and desire, crushing hopes and bodies with relentless scorn and you know that misery reigns, you know that the heart of man is black and rotting, that the heart seeks its own temptation, that all is possible, all acceptable, that everything breaks down in the face of desire that NOTHING CHANGES. Men are monsters and monsters are real and even the king dies afraid.
Rudy’s hands tremble.

-Your daddy gonna like it, I bet, he says.
-You think so? Thanks, Rudy! I like it a lot too. It is beautiful, ain’t it? Molly says.

Embers hurled against the darkness. Desperate clawing against the tidal dune. Swallow whole the earth of men and digest its sand in gluttonous derision. Cracked keystones of falling arches and cities decimated with the wasting disease and into the blue of night rush the murderers to some hapless prey, themselves unaware, flailing to the indolent and arbitrary rotation of the fixed stars above. Hahaha.

Molly twirls again and leaps into the air, dancing her finest. She gives Rudy one last laughing glance and runs back into the store.

There is a festering wound in the corpse of the man, eaten out by maggots, green and black with decay, eating away, eating away and distending and the features are vague on the face pulled over the skull and the eyes say nothing and are the first devoured and behind their windows is only blackness and I have seen the king in his purple procession mount the skull and take his wooden throne and I have seen the king speak to his subjects of joining him in his kingdom and I have seen the blood run down his face and into the dust and I have seen the king’s burning death and tasted his fear at the moment of reunion. You know what you are. Now and ever. Unto the assimilation, unto the void.

The king is dead in burning death. Long live the king in burning life.

VIII
I got a vanilla with cherries. Mama got a lemon sore bay. Old Rudy got a vanilla cone. The ice cream is real good. I like coming to town. In town they have clothes and ice cream and all kinds of doodads and toys. I wonder if Rudy likes his ice cream. I sure like mine.

“Is your ice cream good, Rudy?” I say.

“Yess’m, it real good, for sure. How bout yours?” he says with a mouthful of ice cream. You ain’t supposed to talk when you got food in your mouth, but I guess Rudy can get away with it, being touched and all, like Mama says. Mama’s barely eating hers, but she’s always like that. Maybe she doesn’t like ice cream as much as me and Rudy. I hope I never stop liking it.

Mama usually buys me ice cream but this time Rudy bought it for me and Mama. That’s real nice of him. Daddy bought us ice cream one time, last summer and it was real nice. I liked it when Daddy came out here. But he’s real busy workin’ for grampa. One time he let me sit in Doc’s truck.

“Now, aren’t you glad you came out with us, Rudy?” Mama says. “You need to get out every once in a blue moon. It does you some good.”

“Yeah, ain’t you glad?” I say. Mama’s right. It’s good for Rudy to come with us. Mama says people need to be around people or they get sad. I like living at the cross cause there’s always people there. Not many other kids though.

Rudy nods, still munching on his ice cream cone. He might like ice cream even more than me. He’s been staring at his ice cream since he got it, not even looking up to talk to us.

“You know,” Mama says, “we don’t really know a whole lot about you, Rudy. You been workin’ at the cross since Luke and me showed up but we never really talked. You got family in Texas or something?”

Rudy stops eating his ice cream but keeps on looking at it like it’s gonna talk to him or something. But he’s smiling a little, so he must be happy.

“No ma’am, I ain’t had no family since I live with my Pa back in Tennessee.” Rudy says. “That a ways back. Stayed at home for a while after high school when I couldn’t find no work, then I pick up and move. Ain’t never been married or had no kids. On the road for a while, maybe ten years back, I reckon, then I come here and meet Father Sal and I working for him ever since. Don’t mind it though. Father Sal real nice and I like working there. I do all right.”

How come he never had no kids? Rudy’s older than Daddy by a lot and he ain’t had no kids or been married or nothing? I’m gonna get married as soon as I can and have lots of kids.

“Family’s a great thing,” Mama says, “There are ups and downs to be sure. Even in the best situations, it can be tough sometimes. Lord knows Luke and me don’t always see eye to eye.” Mama laughs and looks out the window a bit like she saw something out there.

“But we work it out, you know? And kids, kids are great. Molly here is the best thing that ever happened in my life. She’s my pride and joy,” Mama says.

Mama’s talkin’ about me. I’m gonna have my own pride and joys one day. I hope Rudy does too. I bet Rudy would be a good daddy.

“My family didn’t ever much work like that,” Rudy says.

IX
Rudy sat in his room back at the cross. He sat on the edge of his bed, quiet, looking into the small mirror above the dresser. He ran his hand through his thinning hair and across his bald spot. He wiped the rain off his face. He shivered. He looked into the mirror and tried to recognize the face that stared back at him.

Knees in the dust, pushed down by overbearing weight. This burden, this burden, O Father, I crumple beneath it like a leaf. I can see the hill, the path, the crosses coming up into the skyline. I feel it in me, ready to burst and You repeat that I must endure. If this is me, if this is for me, if this is what it must take, Thy will be done.

In the mirror was the person people talked to during the day. This old, gentle, timid man. When Molly laughed. When Maureen was kind. When Long was cruel. When Sal was compassionate. When Conroy was indifferent. When Ms. Bernice played cards. This person, this face, bore them all and reflected back to them what they expected to see.

For I have lived my life not by any written tenet, but by the law of my heart, inscribed by my Father, needing no interpretation from priests, requiring no tithe or donation, but only kindness, love, and truth. For I have discarded the laws of my people and torn the garments of their leaders. For I have felt in my own self the guilt of men and the weight of their contrition, bottled inside their souls like roaming ghosts, haunting their flesh until it withers away and they may be free. For I have taken it upon myself to die in their name, sharing in their guilt and burden with the compassionate love available to all people.

The man with this face could be married. He could have a family. This man could have children and go into town with his own family. He could go shopping for his little girl and buy her a dress. He could buy her ice cream. The man with this face could do anything at all. He could remain silent. He could be an idiot. He could let them assume about him and accept their condescension.

I have fallen and there are none about to assist me. These final moments I must spend alone and shoulder what hardships may come, alone. I take up my cross and walk into the field of my own death. My ghost trembles. Father, I approach.

Rudy smiled. He watched himself smile in the mirror. This kind of smile made people smile back. He thought of Molly twirling in her new dress.

Just spinning around and around and around.
Just spinning.
He pictured her spinning.
Around and around.
Twirling around in her new dress. Ain’t it the prettiest. Ain’t it.
Twirling around. Spinning around.
Around and around.
Around and around and around.

X
Hahahaha.
Now this should be good.
Look at him, standing there. Walking out into the slaughter. Dumb fuck.
Hahaha. I’m gonna enjoy the shit out of this. I nudge Si. He don’t look too thrilled. I wonder about him.

Long gonna whoop him good. Break him. Finally give the old retard what he’s been asking for. Like a cripple deer in the forest.

-Howdy, Rudy. Long says. He’s drunk. That’s all right. I’ll clean up for him if he can’t. I been waiting to get my hands on someone.

Rudy don’t say nothing, course. He knows what’s coming. Even a fuckup like him can smell this kind of trouble. He’s shaking and rubbing his goddamn hands together. He’s scared. Hell, he’s always scared. Put him out of his misery already.

-So, Maureen says ya’ll had a great time in town today. Went and did some shopping? Went and had a little ice cream? Long says.

-Do you like ice cream? I say.

-That sounds like a real good time, Rudy. Did you enjoy it? Long says. Long walks up to him now, standing face to face.

I feel the blood in my hands. I’m ready. I’m tired of this waiting. Long wants to toy with him but I’m ready to start the real fun. I wanna watch him bleed. Rudy still ain’t saying shit. Standing there like a statue, that stupid expression on his face. Doesn’t he know how it all works. It’s all so simple. So simple.

-He asked you a question, boy! I say. He jumps a little bit. Hahaha.

-Don’s right. I asked you if you had a good time. Did you or didn’t you go into town with my wife and my daughter? Long says. My head is pounding. It’s time to get this out. It’s been too long.

-I did, Long. We had a good time. Rudy says.

Now he’s done it. That’s about it. That’s gonna do it. It’s almost time. Long turning all red, grabbing Rudy’s collar and pulling him in close.

-WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, WEIRDO? Long says, screaming into his face. JUST WHO IN THE FUCK? Didn’t I tell you to stay the hell away from them? Just this morning? You goddamn retard. Creeping around into other people’s business. Did you think I was joking or that I wouldn’t know?

Long’s shaking him real good. He got his arms at his sides like a rag doll. He ain’t gonna fight back or even defend himself. That’s fine by me. Hahaha. I might even like it better. Just lay back and take what I got to give. That’s the way Don does it.

-You told me. I didn’t think you joking. I knew you know. Rudy says.

Long stops for a minute and I can tell this is it. It’s just about here. Time to teach this boy a lesson. Time for him to learn it. Hahaha. Time to break his bones. Time to spill his blood. Hahahaha. Can’t he see how simple it is?

I can feel it coming up. Long ready to burst. And the fear in that old boy’s face like a tremor. I can smell it. I can see right through into his coward’s heart. And it’s about time to rip it right out of his chest. Haha.

Long cocks back his fist and I can feel my own blood hammering in my head. Such a rush. Hahaha. Now crush this little cockroach. Show him the way of the world. Haha.

Crush him.

Hahahahaha. Hahahaha.
Hahaha.

XI
Now I have to hit him.
So I do. So I hit him right in his face. Hard as I can. He crumples like a little doll. Like paper mache.

I’M TIRED OF YOU.
I’M TIRED OF SEEING YOU AROUND HERE.
WEIRDO.

He’s spitting up blood now, getting on his hands and knees right where he belongs. None of them see it. Nobody else sees it, but I know there’s something wicked in him. I kick him as hard as I can in the ribs and I know how that feels and it takes the wind from him and he rolls on his back. Never felt so in the right.

YOU’RE HISTORY.
I WANT YOU GONE, UNDERSTAND? GONE.
I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE AROUND HERE NO MORE.

He’s lying on his back, blinking his eyes real quick like. Rain’s washing away some of the blood coming out of his mouth. He’s covered in mud. It’s what he had coming. Stupid, old fool. To hell with him and all the rest of them anyway.

TO HELL WITH YOU.
RIGHT TO HELL WITH YOU.
AND WITH ANYONE ELSE.
HAND ME THAT BOTTLE, DON.

The wet bottle in my hand. I tilt it back, empty it, then smash it down on a rock right next to his stupid, lying head. The glass explodes and blood starts dripping from the cuts in his face. I’m burning. It’s in me like the fire. Down my throat and into my chest and down and around, swirling, burning, and I could take this man’s life right now and something inside me says to do it to snuff him out right here on his knees in the mud like a dog. But they’re all watching. Don and Si are okay. That Doc Conroy. Not going to do nothing, like usual. Maureen. She best stay inside if she knows what’s good.

YOU GET GONE AND STAY GONE.

A door opens. Sally. Fuck. Musta heard the bottle smash. Once he sees what’s up it’ll be over. I should kill him. I should kill this old man right now. It almost ain’t even me saying it no more. It’s in me, more than me, pressing on me to do it now. There’s something in the earth that wants to drink up his black blood. Sally’s running. DO IT. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW.

But Sal’s already here.

-What in the hell is wrong with you, boy? he says to me.

NOTHING WRONG WITH ME, SALLY.
BUT THERE’S SURE AS SHIT SOMETHING WRONG WITH HIM.
I’M TELLING YOU.

-You’re drunk, Long. You’re drunk and you beat on this poor man. Look at him. How could you do this? How could you say these things? He’s a gentle man, a simple man. You’re a brute and a coward. He couldn’t even defend himself, Long! What… why…

And it’s like I can see what he’s saying, but at the same time that ain’t it at all. Sally never liked me anyway and I don’t give two fucks about that, but he always been biased against me for no reason, or maybe cause my daddy’s his boss, or maybe just cause he thinks I’m a degenerate, but he can’t see what’s right in front of his face with this shifty fool.

IT AIN’T LIKE THAT SALLY.

Then Maureen come up at me, hitting me on the chest and face, screamin at me.

-How could you? How could you? You animal! You evil bastard!

GO ON NOW.
GET BACK INSIDE.
THIS AIN’T ABOUT YOU.
GET BACK IN THE HOUSE NOW.

She moves toward him. To comfort him. The hell.

I SAID NOW.

She hesitates and then turns around and runs back to the house, cryin. I can still hear it calling me from down inside me. Like a man in my stomach hollering up through my own mouth to step on the neck while it’s down and crush the windpipe. DO IT. But when Maureen gets to the house and opens the door, out runs Molly, out in the rain, white socks in the mud, crying and crying and crying and the fire leaves me altogether at once and I look down and see this Rudy slowly rollin back and forth on his side, breathin hard.

-Molly! Maureen calls.

But Molly just keeps runnin. I aim to catch her, but she loses her footing and slips in the mud. I start over to her, but she stands right back up, okay, and keeps coming on, covered in mud and somehow slips out of my hand and runs over to Rudy, leaning over him.

Her face is all muddy and wet with rain and tears. Her hair all matted against her head. Then I see the blood. She got blood on her arm and her knees where the bottle glass cut her.

Rudy looks up at her, first time he’s moved since I knocked him down. He’s starin at her and she’s crying over him and he’s staring, wild eyed, white as a sheet.

XII
pretty pretty
it just happened
never no good with woodwork
couldn’t never level it
couldn’t make it right

she so pretty
so small
so light
just wanted it to feel good

never meant for it to
hurt
she smiled at me
walkin home from somewhere
getting dark out and the trees rustlin in the wind
the mulch and needles kickin up under my feet
shufflin back home from the antique store

All I wanted was a little white lamb.

so pretty
she smiled at me and the buzzing seemed a bit better
I remember it got a little quieter

LOSER
RETARD
FUCKUP
CAN’T EVEN GET A GIRL
TWENTY YEARS OLD

stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop stop stop
im sorry daddy
im so sorry daddy

and she smiled at me and I smiled back at her
she didn’t think I was so ugly
and she
so small and light
and I wanted to kiss her and she
WANTED
to kiss me back and she was
SHE STARTED SCREAMING
but I wanted to feel good
I wanted it to feel good
I wanted her to feel good
and the buzzing was so loud
my teeth scraping together
fit to burst inside my mouth
and I tell her no no no no no
it’s gonna be fine
and she tellin me no no no no no
DOESN’T IT FEEL GOOD
and no no no
don’t it
no no
then it
I never meant
but she
small
pretty
then she hardly moving
hardly talkin no more
and I knew what’d happened
she breathing strange
gasping
a goldfish on the floor
with some
blood
around her little round mouth
round little round little round mouth
so I pull her off into the trees
put her out of the way so no one wouldn’t see her
tried to protect her

went home
didn’t no one know
couldn’t no one know
I made it up best I could but
never no good with woodwork
so it ain’t square or level or what they say
and all the bugs and things
it wouldn’t keep em out
they’d get her
blood, silence

and I told her im sorry im sorry im sorry
I wish I coulda built it better
but I never no good with my hands
im real sorry
this bad trouble real bad
so I put her in it
and put in my pillow and blanket
and told her I was sorry
and I knew
when I dig up the dirt out there in the trees
all the bugs and what have you
I tried to keep em away
the wind so loud
I tried
I didn’t want to leave her there
but
but
so afraid
and I covering her up
hearin her rasp still
chokin like, gurglin
then
hearin it come from inside

scratch, scratch
scratch scratch scratch
scratch scratch scratch

and I cover my ears
sorry I couldn’t build it better

scratch scratch
scratch

couldn’t tell if it
things trying to get out
or
things trying to get in

got my hands over my ears
layin on the dirt, screamin
just screamin

but I still heard it
scratchin

and I knew they were
getting her

XIII
For anyone long engaged in the practice of observing human behavior, that which the majority of people most take for granted seems very strange and that which seems strange makes absolute sense.

For instance, observing a possibly handicapped older man beaten mercilessly in the street by an alcoholic, young never-do-well might encourage other people to actively intervene on his behalf. However, it is this very passion that incites these types of scenes to begin with. Intervene, do not intervene… All beginnings reach their conclusions regardless. The brief but bright explosions of violent emotion can never ultimately stand against the eternal inertia of matter, nor against the Unmovable Mover, nor against His transcendent light.

For one who does observe without active intervention does not derive pleasure from the viewing. Observation, in the strictest sense, is not voyeurism, nor the proverbial train wreck, but only a tragicomic banality with no impact on anyone or anything excepting the few fevered souls directly involved.

Father Salvatore hurries out to intervene. He is that type of man. When he arrived at the cross, I sought to ascertain his theological leanings and learned only that he carries a mace along with his Bible and often prefers to wield it rather than the book. This is not judgment. Men of action co-exist beside men of contemplation, the obverse of their coin, and in the final analysis, equilibrium is achieved. This is why a contemplative man need not step in. A man of action, that hurried blood, will always be drawn to the erupting constellations of vigorous passion.

One cannot be considered enlightened or educated if one moves through the narrative of one’s life without questioning one’s own motivations and asking one’s self difficult questions and giving one’s self honest answers. The true contemplative does not envy the active. To clarify, the contemplative does not wish to be active, but does recognize the substantial lack of validation he receives from the many who take the active man upon their shoulders so readily after any brave yet ill-conceived act. What they must know, subconsciously, yet refuse to admit into the milieu of their value system, is that for every man who runs into a burning building, there is a man, alone in a room with a book, using his God-given faculties to prevent the fire in the first place.

Now the girl has run out. Mr. Day said that he preferred to have his granddaughter live with him, out here in this arid compound. He loves children. He said that no divine revelation is possible without the continued presence of the true innocents. But does he consider the happiness of the child, bereft of peers, in a difficult parental situation? He is a good man, and deserving of love. But he is an eccentric and his opaque reasoning often calls his decisions into question.

“Hello Doc,” says a quiet, deep voice beside me. It is Mr. Day. This often happens, one thinks of him and he appears, though he is no devil.

I return his greeting with befitting cordiality.

“What happened here?” he asks calmly, almost rhetorically.

I inform him that his son, Luke, has put a beating on Rudolph. The details are unnecessary. Mr. Day is a big picture person. He nods as if he was just told that it is raining outside, but his face betrays such a wealth of compassion that one immediately forgives his apparent dismissal. Like many successful men, with whatever criteria one uses to judge success, Mr. Day has a face of great complexity. Each wrinkle earned through observation, reflection, empathy, concern, hard decision, and perhaps even misstep. He clasps me on the back with a friendly warmth.

“Please,” he says.

I clear my throat, certainly barely audible above the rain, but with enough gusto that it captures everyone’s attention. Luke stops in his tracks and looks up at his father with an instant humility. Salvatore, who was attending to Rudolph, gives up his gaze as well, still cradling the poor man in his arms. Maureen, who ran out to restrain Molly, looks up as well and the tension in her neck relaxes. Molly does not look up, still holding Rudolph’s hand and whispering softly in his ear. Rudolph too does not acknowledge the presence, though he may have slipped from consciousness. The situation has resolved itself.

Mr. Day looks out over them as the rain ceases. Could one entirely decipher the lines of the human face, would one be capable of withstanding their import? Many times I have asked myself if Mr. Day is a man of action or a man of contemplation. I have not decided.

What repercussions await those involved will come in their time and all things will continue on as before. There is shame in the faces of those who look up as their reason finally grasps their passionate excess of energy. Long reluctantly goes for a talk with his father. Salvatore continues to look after Rudolph, who seems to be coming around. Maureen has taken Molly inside. Don and Simon have fled back into the shadows to soak in their secret remorse. Everything returns to its place.

XIV
A star explodes. Light races out in a sphere whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere.

XV
Stinging on my cheek. It sting. On my arm too. In my gut.
Got all clean up last night. Hunch over the toilet.
Hunch over the toilet, vomiting.
Father Sal pat me on the back and say “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Cause of he seen Long kick me in the gut, I reckon.

Didn’t want me on my chores today. Didn’t want me out in the wind. It all muddy now and wet. The rain wash all the dirt off them statues, the one thief, the other one, and Jesus Lord.

Look in the mirror again. I look in it. Back there, looking out, a broken old man.
That what I heard Ms. Maureen say, I think. Broken old man, I think. How you beat on him, I think.
How you do it.

How you beat on a broken old man?

And Long all sputterin and tryin to explain.
And Molly (scratch, scratch) cryin all the while.
And Long starin at me. Speakin at me with his eyes.
He know.
He know all right.
I know and he know and between us we know.

Got to pray. Got to pray real hard.
I tell em all at breakfast I guess.
Decided to head down the road a ways I guess.
Where the eyes in the faces don’t burn so brightly and sear into the skin when they don’t see me.
They don’t see me.
They don’t.
BUT THEY LOOK AT ME

So I move on. I-40 stretch out a long way west where I never seen.
I-40 stretch out a long way west.
So I head on down it I guess.

Cause they all here. All the thieves and the Lords, all the Longs and the Sals, all the Docs and the Maureens, and all the Dons and the Sis, and all the Bernices, and Mr. Day and all the Mollys.

SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH

All the Mollys.

In their new dresses.
In their mud skin.
In the blood.
In the rain.

The bugs in the fields and the forests crawlin on the earth.
Diggin up the dirt.
Shufflin through the leaves.
They all here. Every hungry insect in the wood.
EVERY HUNGRY INSECT
In the blood, in the rain. I seen them. They all here.

The insects and the ghosts and their chains in parade with us up over the hills and into the horizon, into the west.
No past, no future, no present, infinite stillness, infinite hunger.
What Long see when he see it or how he know I don’t know. If it there to read, it read. If he seek, he find. The open ear against the earth will hear the scratchin of the curse
AND EVERY HUNGRY INSECT
scufflin through the dirt
scavengin for the blood
and the silence yet to be.

a disgruntled man crosses the street

2011-03-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey steps down off of the curb.

God lives in the swaying trees, like the voice calling out over the streets, like the garbage accumulating in the gutter. There is no God. There is nothing new in the invisible wind. There is. There is not. There is nothing new. The ants crawl over one another in a great pile in concrete sidewalk cracks. They CRAWL and CRAWL over each other, delicate leg upon leg, crawling, a black pile. Along the edges the strays wander aimlessly across the cement until they are crushed, or starved, or return, finally, to the crowd. The pile pulses like a black artery in a concrete body. There is organization and order and symmetry and poetry and God. There is no organization, nor order, nor symmetry, nor poetry, nor God.

Jeffrey, you look up now. You’ve been down too long. You look up. Look up. You, look up.

Shut up.

Mown grass stink. Piles and piles of the blades of the grass. The bodies move to and fro, passing and coming, silent. How do you explain the silence? How do you explain the SILENCE to the ones who hear music all the time, while you TURN and SCREAM and have nothing and see everything and press forward, one foot in front of the other, automatic, deathly, begging for a misstep. But no misstep comes.

Jeffrey, you are too careful for that. You would never fall. You’ll never fall.

JUST DAMPEN THE AWARENESS just turn down the brightness a little is all I ask and why are there piles of ants between the concrete blocks of the sidewalks and why do they crawl and why is it this shifting black mass in lines that I see and is otherwise ignored and just turn it down a little bit. Just a little bit.

Is that a tremor in your hand? Too much or too little caffeine or sugar. Too much or too little exercise. Nervous, anxious? Are you anxious, Jeffrey?

It’s nothing. I just need to get where I am going.

Swallow your voice like bile. There is nothing and no one to rebel against. You can file your grievances at the head office. Is that man laughing? Is he laughing at you? They walk by and you see in the lines of their faces your ceiling staring and always the silence and the separation.

After all, it’s such a tenuous grasp on experience. Indescribable, incommunicable. But is it really happening? Cut off at the stem, growing in the air with a last gasp. Photosynthesizing the energy of a perpetual stellar explosion in the shadow of your own death, the withering bud blossoming into irrelevancy.

Jeffrey, go lie down in that field and die. In the tall grass. You want to die.

What is the difference between life and death and what does it matter to those people who refuse to look down into the gaping chasm over which we hover? You only have to look down once and your gaze is fixed forever.

Jeffery do you wish you never knew that all the questions you've ever asked have gone unanswered? Do you wish you never even knew to ask them? Jeffrey?

Fundamental questions need be asked. Is it abnormal to ask one's self whether the macrocosmic differences trump the microcosmic similarities when putting on one's clothes in the morning, standing before a mirror, adjusting one's hair or inspecting one's figure? Am I abnormal? Is normalcy a mask we wear collectively to assuage our own fears through mutual validation?

Jeffrey, if you were to die in a field your body would be rent to pieces by creatures large and small. Fear the fragmentation of your own flesh. Jeffrey you would never let the birds and rodents eat your eyes. You would never.

Hahaha they call you crazy if you reach out and grab a stranger and shake them and yell in their face ISN'T IT HORRIBLE, ISN'T IT ALL SO TERRIBLE? even though it is and you know it and they know it but to acknowledge it is criminal, insane. I'm not insane. Just grab someone, anyone, let them feel the pressure of your grip, force them to acknowledge your existence as a discrete, sentient being, and demand they acknowledge the horror of everything we have ever known or of which we can even conceive. Haha.

Jeffrey, if you did that you would get arrested. They would put you away.

It isn't my fault that the ants crawl over each other in a black shifting pile. If we could see atoms, if we could see protons and neutrons and electrons, all we would see is a countless, swirling mass of particles, crossing in and out from each other, attracting, repelling, swirling like a black wind, forever. No people, no sidewalks, no ants, no trees, no grass, none of these arbitrary delineations we make with our macro vision would even occur to us. It would be unintelligible ebbs and flows, an ocean of matter swirling endlessly. There would be no life, no death, just the endless procession of atoms, transforming and flowing gracefully into each other. This is a picture of the world in which we live. We just can't see it. To hell with all this damnable whatness.

Jeffrey, what are you talking about?

I SPEAK OF A MASK OF GOD.

Jeffrey. There is no God. Jeffrey, there is no God.

A mask of somethingness over a face of nothingness. Every blade of grass subsists as a solar parasite. There is nothing that feeds on nothing. Every sun feeds off its own stomach. Self-devouring titans. Gnashing their teeth to better auto-cannibalize. The furnace roars until its fuel supply grows scant. Then its mask collapses on its own hollow and it explodes in every direction at the speed of light.

Every force attracts and repels. The mechanics of the universe don't fascinate me, only my ability to perceive them. Only my futile struggle to ascribe them in a universe of meaning. The difference between this universe and my perception of it is the infinite void of anxiety, despair, and hope. Only the unknown is precious. Monster of desire wormed into an apple heart. There's garbage along the concrete walls. A metal rail slides down the ramp, concrete, and there garbage rests, blown about, around, and scattered. Concrete. Metal. Plastic. Glass. Garbage.

Jeffrey, where are you going?

Forward, always, not from choice or even recognizable impetus, but caught in a current. Born into an undertow and dragged out to sea to flounder for my time and drown in empty obscurity. While around me cars drive back and forth, back and forth, buying groceries. Sitting water attracts swarms. Birthgrounds. Back and forth, going to the store. Grocery store aisles make me want to die. Too bright, too intense, SOMEONE turn down the horror of abundance. (no answer) Blunt my oversharp point on a diamond hard barrier. Forever compartmentalizing. Closing doors to never re-open them or scavenge about their ruinous contents. If every moment we've ever experienced is stored in our memory and only our recall is imperfect then we should be grateful not to experience the terrible perfection. Hail the virtue of forgetfulness and its Lethe to float down in an inner tube, sunglasses on, tolerating the present only through the fantasy shading of our lenses, without worry, without knowledge of the future, without DOUBT. And onward to nothingness in which we need not fear or question. Into the inanimate, the eternal, the uncaring, unconscious dispersion of our grotesque energy into the vast cosmos until we stretch so thin and mix so thoroughly that we reap the peaceful bounty of our annihilation.

You don't know death, Jeffrey. You are afraid.

I don't know death. I am afraid.

Jeffrey steps up onto the curb.

art school

2010-12-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

a single flower sits in a small, clear vase on the window sill in the kitchen. she picked it from her yard. she gardens, is a garden dilettante, out in the yard during the day, when the sun is out and her husband is at work in an office building just outside of downtown. she picked the flower herself. she brings the outside inside. she wants beauty to be by her as she moves through her day. she arranges it just so, facing it just the right direction so it catches the light in a certain way at a certain time of day when the window blinds are adjusted to a specific angle and the whole kitchen is bathed in diffused daylight. she stops and smells the flower. she has the time to stop and smell it. it smells good.

she eats a quiet breakfast of granola and yogurt in her husband's favorite chair. the television is off. on cold mornings, when the roofs are frosted over and the whole landscape glints with a thin layer of ice, in the early morning, before the mid-morning sun melts it away, she turns on the gas fireplace and watches it dance between spoonfuls. if there is any coffee left in the pot, she pours herself a cup. occasionally she will brew a new cup when the pot is empty. she takes milk in her coffee and a packet of artificial sweetener.

the shows she likes to watch come on and she sits down to watch them, petting the cat if he comes within petting distance. her cat's name is Magritte. she knows the shows she watches are silly and part of her enjoyment in watching them comes from laughing at their silliness. but still she watches them, sometimes surprising herself with an emotional response to some cliched plot line or character arc. she reminds herself to see them for what they are.

many years ago, before she got married the first time, she studied art history. she pored over the impressionists, the surrealists, the neo-realists, memorized their details, could easily distinguish a painting she had never seen before by school and sometimes by artist. she never put brush to canvas herself, but had a great respect for those who did. she admired the grace of a brush stroke, the curve of a back, or the angle of a tilted head. she had loved Picasso. she loved vibrant reds and golds. she remembers how a Pollack would explode with energy and how a Rothko would bottle the energy up within its tight geometry.

when her shows are over she begins her work. she starts with the dusting, wiping off each flat surface with a cloth, collecting each dust particle in her hand, each fragment of disuse, all evidence of untouched, unchanging stillness until it all looks new, pristine and new, without a trace of time's indifferent blanket. then onto the polish. she shines each piece of furniture until it gleams. the polish is hard on her hands, but she rubs the wood and leather thoroughly with their respective polishes and when she is done, washes her hands in the sink with a special moisturizing hand soap she bought at the grocery store.

from there she moves on to vacuuming. she methodically runs the vacuum cleaner in familiar patterns over the carpet, stopping to move furniture or return a cat toy to its bucket. Magritte is torn between fear and curiosity, suspiciously eying the noisy contraption from a safe distance. she knows the patterns well and her arm pushes and pulls almost automatically as her mind wanders. her favorite painter was de Chirico and she remembers being haunted in her youth by his empty agoras, solitary gazing statues, and shadows lengthened by an impossible sun. one painting she recalls particularly, that of a headless, limbless, truncated statue of a female body sunbathing next to a pile of ripe bananas on a stone dais in the foreground, while a series of hollow arches drag into the background where a brick wall obscures the passing of a distant train, its smokestack echoing cloudy trails across the sky. she enjoys the feeling of a freshly vacuumed carpet under her feet. of late she's taken to wearing slippers in the house, but she always removes them and walks gently across the living room when her vacuuming is done. she's careful to put all the furniture back in its place, setting each chair and table leg into its divot. she images all the dirt pulled up from the carpet whizzing through the intricate tubes of the vacuum, and watches the hairy clumps tumble out from the receptacle as she empties it into the trash. she's careful not to get dust on her clothes as she ties the handles of the trash bag together and takes it into the big trash bin in the garage.

she takes her lunch on the back porch. her house sits atop a hill and she looks out across the neighborhood and beyond to the farms and the vineyards, and beyond to the tree covered mountains. Magritte now blissfully lounges in his cat bed. her lunch consists of a turkey sandwich, dry, with a carrot. she drinks water with her lunch, never indulging in a glass of wine during the day. she has one with dinner sometimes, but gave up drinking before dinner many years ago. she enjoys sitting outside when the weather is nice and all is quiet except perhaps for the sound of a neighbor working on their yard, or the distant hum of heavy farm machinery, which sometimes kicks up dust clouds large enough to see. the view from her house is beautiful, the main reason she wanted the house. her husband agreed, but rarely sets foot on the unstained deck anymore. sometimes a glint in the mountains will catch her eye, a beam of sunlight reflected off of the window or antenna of some far away house on another hill and she wonders if someone else can see a gleam from her direction. she takes care not to stay too long outside. a few minutes with an empty plate and she returns indoors without a final look at the neighborhood, the farmland, the vineyards, or the tree covered mountains.

after lunch she begins the dishes. most of her dishes came as wedding gifts, some were her mother's, others purchased on short vacations. she washes each dish by hand before setting it in the dishwasher, scrubbing it with the brush under a stream of hot water until she's satisfied and then placing it in the dishwasher carefully. each dish, or type of dish, has a specific place in the dishwasher. she has learned through trial and error how to most effectively arrange the dishes. as she washes a heavy, white plate she is reminded of a Lichtenstein that shows a blond laying on a bed with gold rails, shooting an angry look at an alarm clock. she remembers how the yellow of the blond's hair flows into the bed rail on one side and into the alarm clock on the other. the comic image, blown up to ridiculous proportion, each dot visible, reveals the truth of its make-up and color. that is how she drops the plate, losing focus, thinking on this painting from her past. the plate falls quickly, hitting the wood floor of the kitchen on its side, shattering into several large fragments and many smaller ones. she gasps and steps backward. Magritte leaps in alarm.

she steps back at first, recoiling from the noise and the violent motion. instinctively, she begins to tip-toe through the shards, glad to be wearing slippers, and moves towards the dustpan and brush. she turns back to the shattered plate, already kneeling to clean it up, when the sun filters through the blinds in the kitchen window and strikes the flower in its vase and continues down onto the floor where it is reflected off the myriad plate shards. she sinks to her knees, but drops the dustpan and brush beside her. she gazes motionless, the hardwood pressing painfully against her kneecaps. she begins to cry.

her chest swells with laborious sobs and she cries viciously for several minutes. the scattered fragments of the plate remain inert on the floor, glinting with sunlight. the dishwasher door lays open, the bottom rack pulled out, half full, dripping water into the tray. when she gathers herself all is quiet. she looks again at the broken dish and suddenly stands up. she walks to the kitchen table and takes a bunch of bananas from the fruit dish. she sets them down among the shards of plate and sits back down on the floor. she smiles, then laughs. she laughs out loud. Magritte tilts his head to one side. she laughs again, admiring, basking, reveling in her scene. she quiets and rests. she sits comfortably on the floor, her back against the cabinets. here she watches as the shadow of the window blinds slowly moves across the floor, until finally the light changes and repeals its magic.

she stands up, grabs the bananas, and places them back in the fruit dish. she bends over carefully, takes the dustpan in her left hand, the brush in her right, and systematically cleans up the plate. she empties the dustpan into the trash. even though the trash bag is otherwise empty, she ties it up and takes it out into the garage. she puts a new bag in the bin. she finishes the dishes in the waning day light and glances at the clock regularly.

she hurries up the stairs and enters the bathroom. she splashes water onto her face. it feels cool and refreshing. she washes off her makeup, takes a quick glance at her natural face, her brown eyes, her thin eyebrows, her slightly sagging cheeks. she re-applies her makeup. this too she does precisely, automatically, until she looks just so.

she hears the garage door open just as she finishes. she hurries back down the stairs, careful not to trip over Magritte, who winds his way in and out of her path. she stands before the door to the garage, calming herself, slowing her heart rate. her soul swells with pensive anticipation, reminding her of Hopper's 'Hotel Room,' just as the door opens and he walks in.

he smiles at her and removes his coat. they kiss briefly on the lips. his face is haggard and his eyes are red and tired. his shoulders sit with a familiar slump.

"Welcome home," she says.
"Hi baby," he says.
"How was your day?" she asks.
"Long," he says. "I'm beat."

he does not ask about her day. she hangs his coat in the closet. he sits down in his favorite chair and removes his shoes. he rubs his temples and eyes. she stands by him. Magritte prances over and rubs against his leg and sniffs his shoes.

"Hey Mags," he says. "How are you, old boy?" he pets the cat on the neck and ears. it purrs at him, circles, and rests near his feet. she takes his shoes and puts them in the closet.

"What's for dinner, baby?" he asks. she closes the door to the closet, but does not turn to face him.

"What would you like?" she says. "We can have anything you like."

i ate an apple

2010-12-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

biting into the apple core I could feel the seeds in my mouth.
I split the apple seeds with my teeth and felt them fracture. I bit into the apple's core.
I gazed at the brown decay of the flesh of the apple. The flesh of the apple.
I plucked the stem from the apple and threw it into the gutter. The apple stem gutter.

The rain water flowed down the street into the gutter, collecting leaves, empty symbols, debris, trailing into the rusted grate of the gutter in the street, open with its whore's mouth to the rubbish on the street. I watched it and took another bite of my apple. Fucked, like a voice carrying across a parking lot in this torrent. I didn't watch the weather forecast. I never watch the weather forecast. I seen an umbrella get blown inside out and the holder of that umbrella no doubt felt a fool. It is a foolish enterprise, of course. That umbrella inside out with its wire skeleton wet and bent and roughly torn out of joint. The fool with the umbrella. His comic farce resembling the tarot card of same, zero arcana, minus the loyal animals. There were no loyal animals. Anyway, loyalty is a human concept/construct. They say dogs are loyal. Who knows what a dog does? No, only man can be loyal. Or a fool. And more are the latter. I don't buy into tarot, by the way, despite its uncanniness. A thunderclap. But I have never been one easily frightened by thunder or whatever gods' madness drives men to misery.

A tree grows out of the earth and from this tree is produced a fruit with a pleasant taste. How could this come to be? To spread the seeds. To spread its seeds. To seed out and among the earth so that the trees may grow everywhere and continue growing and continue seeding and continue spreading because it is the destiny of every living thing to replicate itself ad nauseum, even those sans sentience. I watched a machete cut into a rubber tree once, and saw the white rubber blood drip down the bark like semen, though ever more valuable. They cut the rubber tree in a tree pattern, ironically, so that the blood will drip down the branches and into the trunk where it can be more easily collected. They cut the bark, the flesh, of the rubber tree and extract its bright, white lifeforce with all the splendor of a Mayan sacrifice and all the ceremony of a pauper's grave. The flesh of the rubber tree cuts. I saw it happen, but I see so many tires on so many cars on so many streets that I can't possibly imagine all the machete cuts it took to make them. This too is a fool's enterprise.

I have never eaten an apple off a tree. Plucked it myself, plucked it out, and eaten it there in the wild like an animal or a man before the grocer. Fruit from a tree is strange, foreign, so abstracted are we from the reality of our sustenance. But the trees I've seen in the winter spread like fractals, leafless, against the overcast skies and the sidewalks beneath them are yellow or red or brown or black with the leaves, their essence sucked back into the trunk for winter. The stain of a wet leaf on cement like a nuclear shadow forever imprinted, black and smudged, burnt like a ghost. Fractal branches. There is math in nature, they say. The hexagon of a honeycomb or the geometrical unity of a swath of bacteria on an old window unit air conditioner in a boutique hotel in downtown Seattle. Staring at it. Wishing it was man-made. But it grows that way. Weird netting. Developed over millions of years for maximum efficiency. Same reason the apple tastes good.

texture dissolving, separating, fragmenting.
fit to a taste receptor
fit to taste
built with teeth to puncture its skin
skin, flesh, core
built with teeth
milton might say, the griding fang
gnashing endlessly, grinding ever down
into the purest substance
for sustenance
before it is expelled. waste.
this is no exegesis on excrement. this is no shit poem. but the flies, abuzz in the stale air, consume. endlessly.

All these things beyond the symbolic are happening all around us, everyday, without meaning, without context, just an endless happening. Some causal string plucked or self-plucked, the autoplucked strings of causality birthing a chicken/egg into the void and then locomotioning forever without meaning but with vicious efficiency like a machine, like a little servo whizzing away, unaware, unplagued by awareness, the fatal flaw. This apple is almost gone, or rather, its whatness is almost gone, I plucked it, not from a tree, but from its surroundings, I plucked its oneness and devoured it, assimilated it, and soon there will be no apple, only me and the gutter. Amassing energy. Parasitic. Energy thieves and sexed death and burning awareness and delicate, adroit fingers and hoarse, unintelligible voices. Vibrations in the air from an organ designed for that sole purpose, reach another organ designed to receive them not unlike no not unlike sex but still less intimate and without design for meaning only vibration each ear picking up only remnants of an original message already corrupted by its sender, originating in the invisible gray sea inside the head with its perennial lightning storm and limitless datastore and its incompetent petty governor proclaiming mastery over an impossible complexity. this ego, this ego, this I. If you seek narrative there is none. Narrative is like the apple, a thing among things plucked for its whatness and devoured and re-assimilated into the vast amalgam of things and just as farcical and just as futile, but still with a power to captivate our little governor, our little ego, and trick it into belief.

Words, like things, are taken for granted. Induced a pattern and now it is what it is, as they say, catalogued its behavior and memorized its pattern and its particulars are no longer needed. these silly, arbitrary scrawls. this organic, decaying matter. this denied, hidden void.

the voice, broken, the voice, broken like a
the broken voice, like a beam of light
trapped at the event horizon of a hidden void
a hidden voice
a causmic void, the secret of the universe
is in its emptiness. galaxies scattering from each other
shifting red, exploding
into the great gamma ray bursts of nonsense and misunderstanding and misspeaking
and these written records, shored against the belief that if nothing else, the symbol will endure
missives from the void, expelled with the force of our primal screams
can flee the gravity of an infinitely dense hollow
broken voice, hallowed hollow atman. broken.

The apple core tossed into the gutter.
The apple core in the gutter.
I was done with the apple, so I threw it into the gutter.
I watched the apple core fall into the gutter.
It was a good apple. Satisfying.
Until the next time.
Until next time.

o my son

2010-03-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

when I remember he came into the study and grabbed that book and his little hands wrapped around it and the book was so big in his little hands and he pulled it down and flesh of my flesh he wanted the book and I didn’t let him have the book but because he was so little and too little to understand but I didn’t read it to him when I could have read it to him anyway and even if he didn’t understand it I could have read it to him and then much later when he could have understood it he didn’t read it cause we both forgot but it was so long ago and it’s only now coming back and I remembered right away right when it was too late and my blood and too late now for anything and how can I go on now when my blood how can I go on

we did I think I say we did but we only know what we know and how much we know is only the parts and pieces that we know but we think I think we did the best we could we never always we tried we wanted to do the best we could there are times we could have done better but it all moves so slow until its over and I always told him I was proud I could have told him more often though and we never said I love you because it wasn’t our way but I know he knew I think he knew we only know what we know and I think he knew but now its too late and I can’t tell him and no one can tell him ever again and if she were here she would speak those words to his stone

but she’s gone and she’s been gone and truth be told o my blood I’m glad she is my love I’m glad she is gone because if she wasn’t this would be the end all over again and much worse much worse much worse because the cancer isn’t a candle in the wind to this and to see it all over again and now it’s too late for both of them and I am a man just a man who wanted to a man who wanted I thought I thought I knew but I can’t and if she were here I can’t even imagine the tears and the silence and it would be too much and even know just the thought of her being like me here after this is too much to bear far too much to bear and

how much of this scotch is left and I’ve drank so much and it’s sat in this decanter now for years even when he was young even when she was here I’ve had this here and now I drink it and assimilate it and soon it will be like he and her gone and too late and never again constituent and it’s gone and she’s gone and now he’s gone and how can I continue on after all of this and keep asking myself here in this library where the book he took off the shelf so many years ago calls my name from its place on the shelf and I should have read it to him I should have read it to him I should have

but he read so many of them and none of them were this one and all the ones he read weren’t this one or even if they were they weren’t this one because at that time I didn’t read it to him and now there are shelves of books and all shelves of books he won’t read either and the candle of the dust burns out or is that how it goes mostly I just read them here and there before bed even before the cancer in bed with a light reading here and there and something like the candle of the dust but probably not I don’t remember much except the candle of the dust and I thought of that too as soon as I heard and his little hand holding that book and when I told him no. but I couldn’t tell him yes at the time it seemed like the no was the yes for the long term and there were a lot of nos so I don’t know why this one but maybe one more yes or one more no but how could I have known then how could I know now there’s no knowing no more than the candle of the dust burns out or however it goes it was something like that though it was something like it

maybe she’s right the one he was with they had been together a while now I think maybe his longest one but I don’t know for sure which only proves what she said when she said it there with his body there and said it in front of all those people and cried and cried and she really did love him and she loved him with that burning love that people know is love but I loved him too in my way and maybe that’s not enough maybe it’s not right but I did love him no matter what she said or any of them said and maybe my love is a little colder maybe it’s cold but it’s love and no matter how cold it is it’s still love and when she told me that and I had to leave and I couldn’t stay but I could see she loved him and that’s why I left because she really did.

and the little one asking my son my other son my only son asking him why and asking him why and his cherub face asking the why of the void and my son my other son my only son telling him to shush to quiet down but I wanted to know too and I want to know now and Justin if I ever learn I will tell you my flesh too my only flesh the only line left to me now the only line left and I love you too Justin, in my way, I love you too and your father, in my way, in my way I love you.

it’s all mystery always shrouded inside this silence this absence this darkness and no answers no questions just this vague amorphous haze and these chest clenching longings for that which is taken and gone forever and always hopeless but still yearning onward like an animal like without experience of the grand event like still looking at his face motionless in the coffin or like him young and happy on our vacation to my mother’s house in North Carolina and him with his feet in the black sand asking about the piles of lumber by the mill and how I used to work there and him sitting and asking and wondering and being and now no more and me still here grey and here.

I knew nothing at his age his frozen age his suspended youth but I knew nothing no it is no greatness to die young and immortalize yes I have lost some verve but all I have learned and seen and felt and he never but he had his life and remember he brought home girls but still just learning only beginning and my own blood and my pride and washed out rain water pulling me down under the door into the street and into the gutter and so much I never told him as was my duty but I always thought there would be time and child of my flesh who spoke in my voice who hated and loved me and missed his mother so many nights and trying to explain and justify and say that God works in his ways and speaking into the silence always without echo voice falling flat and empty words popping under the slightest touch like flitting fairy fragments and now gone forever and no more justification and no more lies and no more speech just these few pictures now and my frozen family forever.

but flesh why but blood why why I’ve asked myself many times many times and what could I have done but what could I have done and maybe if she hadn’t died if she had been here to give the love I couldn’t speak to speak the words I couldn’t feel if she had been here he would be here but I don’t know I just think but maybe even not and I haven’t been much a part of his life these last years and now it’s too late and we were distant and maybe have been for as long as he was a man which was so short he had so much time and now it’s too late and this scotch is almost dry and the book calls from the shelf and my blood my blood my flesh too late

threadbare

2010-01-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

0

It comes into the world with a fundamental scream. It clutches and grasps at the intangible threads of a collapsed non-existence. Its eyes blink open slowly, rapidly, asynchronously. The visible spectrum of light permeates the visible spectrum. It wrenches its neck wildly. There is no understanding. Just the overcast light nimbus, the unknowable loss, the inevitable acceptance, the gaping, abject silence. It comes into the world.

The unspeakable sinks down into the inaccessible depths, ascending to the fore in dreams and madness. The conscious interpretation of impulse failing, always failing, and the corrupted translation of an archaic inscription flees the throat with furtive conscientiousness, landing upon the foreign and the strange and taken for that which it is not. The blame of folly shouldered both by flailing tongues and wanton ears in the perennial carnival of symbolic relation.

The sphere is solid, mirrored, liquid yet impermeable. The spheres collide with the infintessimal separation of repulsive electron cloud layers, the thin electric atmosphere repulsing endlessly all contact. If it did not, matter would slide through matter and there would be no whatness of any thing or separation or dichotomy but only the sliding endlessly of this through that, the same fabric forever rewound into itself without pattern or reason. This is no way to live.

1

Peter, come up.
Peter, come up and join us.
Peter, come up and join us.
What are you doing, Peter?
What are you doing down there, by yourself?
Peter?
Come up, Peter.
Come up.

Hands reaching down, out, grasping. Fingers curling with multi-jointed fingers curling with intention, reaching down, touching, taking. I am Peter.

- Mother, I said, why am I Peter.
- You were named, she said, after your father.
- Yes, but why, I said.
- Because, she said. Because.

I felt my body and knew it was mine. I floated on downturned sheets and above rails and went out through myself, through the ceiling, and knew it was mine. I lie and look down at my toes and wiggle them, looking at them, wiggling them, looking at them wiggle, consciously wiggling them, sending the command to wiggle. But I think "Toes, wiggle." and they do not. I cannot think them to action. I cannot command them to wiggle. But I wiggle them and they wiggle as I will but not upon the thought, but upon something else, subterrainean, dark and secret, inaccessible to this voice of blackness, these eyes of light. But they do wiggle. I lie and watch them, knowing they are mine, that it is I who wiggle, yet cannot think wiggle and make it so.

Sometimes I go down there. It is there, so I go, sometimes. In the muddy, pungent depths. Down, step by step, down the old folding ladder, down into it. There is a black tarp laid over the floor. Beneath the tarp, I assume, is earth, heaving and rippling with the life of the earth, the chthonian energy or the many worms and beetles and spiders, burrowing blindly through the soil, digging down further into the warmth and compression, or climbing up, breaking through, sticking out into the muddy air and feeling the terror of unrestricted passage, but always rippling, always heaving, alive.

- You could have been thrown in a river, he said.
- Why would I have been thrown in a river, father, I said.
- You know what I gave up for you, he said, you know what I've sacrificed for you?
- Why a river, I said.
- You could sink. You could have sunk, he said. I could have tied you in a potato sack and thrown you out of the car window and nobody would have known. You couldn't have helped it. You would have struggled at first, but eventually grown tired. I could have tossed that potato sack out of the car window, driving at a leisurely pace, thrown it right out and into a river.
- Why would you have thrown me? Why, I said.
- You're more trouble than you're worth, he said.
- Am I so much trouble, I said.
- You and your mother both, he said. If I could dump the both of you in a river and just keep driving at a leisurely pace. If I could, you better believe it. You don't even know how good you got it. You have no idea what it's like out there.
- You wouldn't throw mother into a river, I said.
- You better believe it. Just keep on driving. Get me a couple of potato sacks and take a nice leisurely drive.
- But you wouldn't, I said.
- Just keep on driving, he said.

2

when he came out of me he came out of me he came out of me to think that he came out of me a part of me made of me of all i ate and drank and was and when he came out of me like a bursting like an amputation and i felt the vacuum of his loss and the hollow he left for me and the blood on the sheets and on the floor and his crying and crying and crying and screaming and constantly wanting wanting still taking from my body all i had and all i was and feeding from me but now outside of me now other than me now this thing i see and feel and hear always hear and when i said to Ted when i said to him to just put it in the trash can let's just put it in the trash can and walk away and erase all the crying and screaming and loss and hollow but i didn't mean it sweet sweet i didn't mean it no i never meant it but oh sweet one i never meant it no.

he wouldn't stop crying and we tried everything and even Ted was worried even he knew something was wrong and we could see it in his face and we didn't know what to do we just didn't know it wasn't our fault it wasn't how could we know what he wanted when he just screamed and screamed with his little hands clutching around him and i was crying and begging and just wanted it all to stop and we did everything we could and then when he was better all i could think was that i could lose him anytime that i walked this tightrope of attachment that any small thing could sever and i picked him up and held him close to me and promised that nothing would ever happen ever again and i would always be there to take care of him because of the shaking in my hands when he was so bad and i felt again that loss of the him in the outside-of-me and the regret of ever letting go no i never should have let go i never should have cut that tie and the scissors in the blood so sharp so quick like nothing ever mattered again and he cut it and we were ever more not what was but it was just like everything else outside-of-me and when he cried i didn't know what to do how could i?

he's down in there again by himself and i don't know how he keeps getting down there because i told Ted to keep it locked and i know he has even though he gritched about it when i told him but i know he would do it because he wouldn't ever want to hurt Peter that i am sure of at least no matter what he says but still i find him down in there in that dirty pit just down there and what is he doing i dont understand him and i havent understood him since he became he and no longer me but he's down there by himself and i worry for him so i do i am so worried and i wonder if he knows how it makes me feel when he goes off like that if he ever considers my feelings if he ever considers anything but himself like when i walked in on him doing it and the look on his face and the red hot in mine and the image of him doing it even though i thought he must and even though i know they do it to have seen it now and he's just another man just a small man soon to be like the others like all the others taking and taking and taking with that thing they have and never once considering how i feel because i do feel i do i have feelings i do and when he goes down there i just break and scatter i just lacerate and spill i just burst and burst with the agony of first separation.

3

THIS IS HOW YOU HOLD A FISHING ROD.
THE ANGLE THE WRISTS ARE VERY IMPORTANT.
YOU HOOK THE WORM.
YOU PIERCE IT.
IT WRIGGLES IN YOUR FINGERS.
I WANT TO SHOW YOU HOW TO FISH.
GET A WORM.
GET A FUCKING WORM.
PUT YOUR FUCKING HAND IN THE BUCKET AND GET A WORM.

The worm wriggled in his fingers and he's crying and not looking at it like a little baby and just holding it out as far as he can from his body, holding it with the very tips of his fingers.

SHE MADE HIM LIKE THIS.
SHE DRIVES A WEDGE.
SHE RUINS EVERYTHING.

her and her fucking bullshit.

JUST PUT THE FUCKING WORM ON THE HOOK.

He's crying and holding it out. Like it's going to eat him. A worm. I show him. I've showed him now a bunch. He won't do it.

- No, that's all right, I say. It's all right.
YOU PUSSY.
- You don't have to fish, Peter.
YOU LITTLE FAGGOT.
- It's not for everyone.
MAMA'S BOY.
- It's all right son. It's all all right.

I'm looking at the river current. Watching it carry things away.

4

After the storm, I go to the tree. The tree in our yard. It has no leaves. It smells like rain all around and I can see the earth like a fresh grave turn up all its secrets. There are worms in the soil. They crawl and flop across leaves, needles and dirt. The sick, slimy contraction and expansion of their bodies. Like the worm corpse in Biology with the formaldehyde stink, slowly split up the middle with little white parts and little black parts and strings and bulbous clumps and the rubbery skin. What was dead is live here.

To find, beneath the black tarp, the churning of life. In the soil. Down there, down the ladder, in the soil. To find it churning. The movement of many legs on my body like pinprick teasing. Returning, descending down, returning home. I can hold my hands out to the side and feel them go to sleep, my fingers spread out, waning into the blackness. I can feel it slip away. I can look at them like they don't belong to me. I can see them as part of this soil and remote from me. My sleeping hands descending into the soil, wet and dirty, absent and remote. I can hold my arms out. I can slowly dismember myself piece by piece, each sleeping, sleeping, as I descend. Until I am all eyes. Until the sound drowns out. Until the submersion. Down, down, down.

A shadow hunkers over the door, squatting low. It's all silhouette, all black. I'm lying on my back, down here. Not moving.

- Peter, come up and join us.

I say nothing. I do not move. The frequency of the soil rumbles in my ears and I hear it speaking to me out of the void. I see my hands from afar. I see my toes. I see.

- What are you doing, Peter?

In the dirt under my nails. In the ripping off of nails and the pulling out of hair. Of all these dead things. She sways, slowly, back and forth, back and forth, eating the light.

- What are you doing down there, by yourself?

Or our teeth. Grinding and grinding and grinding. Erosion. Not in the soil, in the soil, breathing the soil, feeling the soil. Truncated by suffocating earth. Filling the maws of existence. Filling the holes. All the while wriggling and rumbling and undulating with life. Always.

- Come up, Peter.

The threads I've torn from my skin, pulled out like a handmade doll. Button eyes falling apart. Staring, empty, out, across. All these threads I've torn. Empty staring at my threadbare being. Pulling out all the threads until I sink and descend to the final return. Falling to pieces. My hands sleep. My pieces sleep. I inventory them and tally them and pull the threads that stitch me together. See how I rend me. Piecemeal me. The earth pulling down on my back. The death inside me pushing down on my chest. My empty staring upwards and out, beyond, limitless and luminous. Shed these tattered fragments of soil. Erase this latticework awareness. Sleep, hands. Sleep and descend. Down, down, down. To the final return.

- Come up.

the sun burns behind the earth at night

2010-01-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

I

you watch the ocean roil and toss through the large window in your hotel room. she lies beside you asleep and breathing. you watch the ocean roil, your back to her. you sit upright in bed, your legs hanging over the sides and you look down at yourself with detached curiosity and your legs swing slightly back and forth and back again. the fireplace in the room has gone out. you think about turning it back on, turning the timer back to sixty so you have another hour of light and warmth. you do not as you have just thrown all the covers off of you, smothering. you watch the ocean roil and feel her behind you breathing under the covers.

the bottle of champagne is still half full and your glasses are by the sink and dirty. clothes are strewn across the floor, your suitcases are scattered and open. you can't seem to find your shoes. there is an instant coffee machine in the room. you think about making coffee. you do not. you watch the ocean roil and toss. the waves crash close on the beach and there are no people out this early on a Sunday. the cliffs are high and covered in mist and the rock is distant and immovable. the birds cry overhead and fly in the farthest sky. the indicator light on the hotel phone is dead and you do not expect any calls. you scratch your stomach. your mouth tastes like champagne and chocolate and you really might throw up. you do not.

you can hear her breathing behind you, asleep, unaware. you think about her pillow stain and acrid smell and the number of hours between then and now and the emptiness that will remain after checkout. her form fills the bed, under the sheets and you observe the topography of her presence without judgment, without emotion. it is quiet in the room. you hear the rain outside. you hear the ocean breaking on the sand. that is all.

II

impermanence of collusion haunts the wasted hours. indecision, apathy, the far aways and gone aways of days ago all spent alone. the lone sanctuary has been penetrated and the heart that longed to be free is institutionalized and scrapes against the ramparts it has surmounted for the comfort of the ingrained years. it scrapes across the metal and loses itself in microscopic serrated laceration, in destitute infrastructure, in the long dark of the unplanned ahead.

the reins have slipped and the rider's hands grasp for them futilely, but they have fallen beneath the horses and their legs pump so fast and reaching down the rider sees the furious eyes of his team and the earth trampled violently below.

to be the answer for the other and hold in each others hands the fragile, valuable vulnerable. it scrapes against the metal. beholden. beholden. beholden. it scrapes against the metal. the waning light on the horizon is the fatal essence of bygone illumination now dulled forever by the expected mediocrity, by the indistinct, inchoate shapes that float before unfocused eyes, by the gravel, by the rock salt.

it scrapes against the metal.

the blood can burn. but it can wither. deformation breeds in idle satisfaction. the degenerated desire withering in its own fulfillment. hands furiously grasping for the reins. scraping against the metal, breeding deformation, dissatisfaction, in the core. scraping against the insides, demanding to be released. in an anguished scream it's birthed into the world and none about to hear it for want of their own fulfillment or the defamation of their desire by its presence.

it's far too late for amputation, though the urge to dismember shocks the spine with immediate urgency. the powerstation protocol of nerves and endings cannot find the nerve for the ending, nor even know if an ending is what is ordered.

the orders in the disorder in the lack of self-knowledge.
without words, with words but disassociated from them.
the relationship between sign and signified tenuous and slipping and irrelevant.
the orders in the disorder cannot be comprehended. the self cannot be known. the days and weeks and the hours and minutes of obsessive sweating search, relentless, relentless.
the orders in the disorder.

in the canopy of facade the blooming. only in that shade can it bloom. the unfurling of many layered petals from the center too sweet to see. only in the shade, protected from the antagonizing illumination. it is a nightshade. it is a nocturne. the other removes the canopy. the other reveals. the other withers. atrophy continues from the moment of sacrifice. wasting away into complacent non-description.

the insoluble soul cannot be broken. but the feeble grasp can be loosened. the reins can be lost and though unbroken, the unfocused trampling of feet can damage. nothing is irreparable but the feeble knowledge of repair can be lost and though capable of repair, the old and decaying flesh can flail with an absent fury, directionless, pathetic and desperate.

it is.
it is the myriad image.
it is the unspeakable.
it is the fractal branching of a dead tree.
it is the rust of the abandoned granary.
it is the horse graveyard.
it is unseen, unspoken.
it is beyond the words.
it is the still, muddy water.
it is the distant blue mountains.
it is this.
it is incommunicable.

IT BURSTS into flame and falls through space
IT SCRAPES across the metal
jagged saw-teeth across the soft tissue
the LACERATION unspoken
the FLAME incommunicable
the unbreakable SELF
the IMMOVABLE spot
the LAUGHTER of penance
the fulfillment of DESIRE
the lack of lack
THE LACK
OF LACK

bursting into flame, scraping on the metal

inside.

III

You stood on the beach with her that night and held her in your arms. She looked at you and you knew. The questions in you impaled on the truth of immediacy. The present moment experienced through the connection of flesh to flesh and eyes to eyes, even in the dark, the distant rock a silhouette and the cry of birds above and around and the blowing of the wind cutting the shapes of your bodies in its wake. the ocean rolled and rumbled beside you and you knew it wouldn't last and you knew you couldn't hold on to it and you thought to yourself this will pass, this will pass. but for that fragile second your mind died and your lotus unfolded and you lived in the dream of the moment, truly feeling in your limbs that the impossible moment of now could be experienced instead of merely anticipated or reflected upon.

You held her around the waist she held you back and you rocked in the consuming wind and the clouds sailed overhead moving so fast you could see them flying and the moon behind them, oblong and shining down in the cracks and the immense blue of darkness all around you in an abyss of your choosing

in the quiet desolation, in the warm fulfillment, in the beating of a foreign heart, in the absence of expectation, in the beach breaking off into the sea, in the shells and the salvage, in the shadow of the future, in the prescience of loss, in the delicate embrace, in the center of the world

knowing

the sun burns behind the earth at night
the moon drifts slowly away
the wind erodes the sand
the birds land and sleep
the lotus curls up and hides
the dream dissipates
the skin sheds

knowing

the perennial malcontent, knowing

what you will feel, waking up tomorrow and seeing the ocean in the clear morning light with her asleep by your side.

sweet potato pancakes

2010-01-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

JAMES YOUR FATHER IS DEAD

It’s like that the day after it happens.

But before that voice there are a few minutes between sleep and awareness when it’s like it hasn’t even happened at all. When I can’t even think of what it was. Like it never happened.

But it did. That’s what you realize after you hear it. That the waking up the day after is a continuance of the day before and not a discrete time or space, no matter how much you might want it to be.

When you’re out
When you’re out hunting
Haven’t been out in a while.
When you’re out hunting,
If you slip a bit and maybe don’t get a kill shot but
You don’t get a kill shot. A kill shot. But it’s dying all the same only slow and painful. The blood seeps out from a narrow wound and trickles down onto the rocks, the twigs and needles, it trickles out onto the forest floor and like all blood cries out to you. It trickles out and cries out. Into the dirt. With the rocks and the twigs and the needles.

and it CRIES OUT

I went hunting with him, my father, I went hunting with him a long time ago. I been a lot since, and you have to. You have to put it down. If you’re out hunting and you don’t get a kill shot you know it’s dying all the same and you have to put it down and then it’s what’s called a mercy killing because you’re taking away the pain it’s in but you put that pain inside it to begin with.

I move the pain around. I take it out of me. I put it into it. I take the pain and put it inside it and then mercy kill it and kill the pain and put it down because I didn’t get that kill shot and when you’re out hunting (it has been a while) you might slip a bit.

Things are sliding away now and I was always worried my mind would be the first thing to slip. Things are sliding away now, things, not my mind. My mind is here and unslipped and settled and aware and how unfortunate that all is. But of all the things that slip away I never thought I’d lose them.

Because How Can Love Slip Away

You. To you. Cries out to you. Blood cries out to you. All blood cries out to you. The blood of this laceration, festering for almost 20 years now and finally dragging the corpse to the sawbones to amputate the gangrenous sores that have attached to the pink and the quick. An amputation nonetheless and now what with him gone (he is gone) now it’s even more on my own and my very own mother grieving with a loss I can’t even fathom for obviously I never knew love like theirs which blossomed even in late decay whereas my own has slid out in all directions from my center while I am only now fading from my prime. Yes, she will grieve and I reckon will not last long. Not without him. Because they knew love and that is price you pay for love, Lord knows, not me, I will probably live through this though my ears may shatter from the crying of the blood from the soil and not from my own amputation which, when cut off, will ooze forth only bile and pitch for all the blood burned out twenty years ago and it’s been cold and inert since but still hanging on still hanging on and she will grieve and soon be gone and then we will grieve and also soon be gone but first we get the gangrene cut because once it festers it poisons the whole

never knew love like theirs

It is gone though, whatever used to be there. I’m not one to try and say, after the fact, that a thing never was, when I would have swore just the same that it was, when it was, but once it isn’t that don’t mean it wasn’t and I won’t say that, no matter how much hate fills up this heart or Evelyn’s but maybe it wasn’t the same, it was a love, but maybe not Love with a capital L, but it was something that most people would take for love and I don’t know how the word fits in but I’m too old for that now and just want to feel what I felt, whatever it was, when I was with and not without and even the girls are going to get hurt in this whole process and there will be much crying and much slipping and if you’re out hunting and you don’t get a kill shot you can see the blood trickle onto the floor of the forest and with a second shot you can deliver mercy unto a

(Tonight I will read the gospels)

When I moved away from all the noise and the dirt (this is a dirty dirt, a grime, a film, another time my lack of gift with words leaves me blank, but a something far worse than the dust of the soil and the pungent manure) when I moved away from there, with the traffic and the suits and the rush and the quick and the little lighted hubs of humanity that are only so important when you’re in it and can’t see out like the fish in the ocean swimming around in circles or maybe a fish tank and they can see out but can’t process the information, I mean even if it were people and not fish. I’m trying to say, when I moved away from all that I thought I would find my peace. But (I’ve had a history of hunting) it’s not to be found, even out here. I could describe my ranch, I’ve memorized it and every detail and even the curve of the sky above and it’s strangely cold in Texas this time of year and things are just getting colder and colder and yesterday morning there was a frost on the ground and I said what will this bring?

carry me through this
carry me through this
I beg you carry me through this
make light this load as I bear it
there’s a. please carry me
through this

Each one blossomed in her own way and of course my son My Son my son he is My Son but each one of them blossomed in their own way and I know that this divorce is going to TRAMPLE ON THE FOREST FLOOR and each one of their blossoms like the needles in the brush will be broken but maybe they will know that I am thinking yes I am thinking even now and can a note here or there be the tendon tying a father’s love? For what of his love, he who is gone, he sent no notes but I felt his love I felt it like a piece of me and feel it still even though he is gone (not yet in the ground) I feel it still and can only think each of them will feel me the same, in them, and not poisoned yet by the cankerous disease finally to be severed and I don’t know but I can only think that they will be okay

in a rotted tree
if you scrape away
the bark
you can still find
a healthy root
that’s untouched
by the decay
in a rotted tree

The time will come to make arrangements. Everyone will look to me to lead the arrangements. I am the hand to move this forward now. My hands are the hands. They will look to me. All these suits I must still wear. All this bark I must scrape away. They will look to me to be untouched to amputate to shake and guide and moan and stand firmly, like a man, over a box as it’s put into the ground. Can I even mourn a man who knew love like that? Can I even mourn a man? Can I even mourn?

he lived to be
ninety-two

But he’s gone. Evelyn’s gone too. She’s been gone for some time but now it’s official and there will be much paperwork and much discussion and third parties and pens and signatures and seals and copies and things in triplicate like the tendril of the city creeping in through a back door left carelessly open and waiting to poison this well the same as ever and even when you thought you’d weaned yourself from it’s bitter fruit you find yourself back and suckling and gripping your hands and pressing out your pants. And the children will all say divorce and the blossoms, the needles, will all be under the hooves like those I remember back from the plank.

In a fluttering voice
my parents are divorced
my grandfather has died
These are things that will be said. And nothing but the abashed look away to the ground, to the dirt, to find the blood which seeks me out, ever and after, to cry out aloud for all the things that never will be.

The girls are like the needles in the forest and on the forest floor they lay and beasts come and beasts go trampling, trampling, trampling. One is a ladybug and another one is a squirrel and the other one is a caterpillar and they are all needles and broken needles at that already and when Evelyn wanted to split last year she got a place and moved away and thought that time apart would heal it all but all the needles are always trampled and all the needles are always trampled and you can’t fence in a beast that wants to run any more than the needles on the forest floor can withstand the rough, sooty hooves of rampaging creatures and there was a frost in this freak weather before I even knew yesterday that one more thing had slid away from my center. There are three girls and each one’s a bent little needle that has been run over and you can already hear the hoofbeats of all that’s on the horizon coming closer and closer and closer you can hear it you can

what has happened to my family?
has he set his house in order?
have I? can I?
I heard the rustle of the deer in the brush long before I ever saw him.

Swore I’d never wear a suit again. I shuffled off that coil a ways back and didn’t never plan on its return. But here I am and there are numbers to be discussed and now with all this with all this feeling we’ll push it all down, me and Evelyn and the girls and my son and pretend to deal strictly in business and say that we are sad and speak our emotions through a filter of untruth while the numbers are cold on the paper in front of us and yes, father, you did very well in your life. You did very well. And we’ll now squabble for the prizes and it is worthwhile, but still, and you want your children to have a bright future and a life without pain and worry and to do all the things they dream to do but still but still why is it purchased with the blood like the meat on the deer that I saw him skin when I missed with the kill shot and then gave unto it mercy and God’s bountiful bounty and the steaks in the freezer and all of our sustenance is built from the blood of that which has fallen by our hands and taken our pain and forgiven our cruelty and will they live with the guilt of the blood or are they so different, or maybe not, as I wear this suit, are they so different to not care that the blood has spilled in the forest and cries out while the numbers add up and speak to them of their dreams and father, I’ve done pretty well for myself you know. I’ve done pretty well for myself.

But I remember how he cut the hooves off and
For years afterwards
I saw
The hooves being cut off
And then sitting up on the plank
In the garage
The hooves
Cut off

But my mind hasn’t slipped and I can still read the Bible and my memories are intact of years ago with the children and Evelyn and morning sweet potato pancakes sweet and syrupy and us all sitting around the table and together when the children were children and a marriage was a marriage and my father was is and my wife was is and my children were here and now the is is is not and the here is there and the table is empty and it’s those moments after you hear it, thinking about how you will never see him again, never in a hospital for him again, never again, that you think about how you woke up alone again, near sixty years old and how the white hair on your knuckle shook from the heater that blew on you as you read the Bible to yourself and sent out letters to those you still love even if they don’t love you or don’t remember you but maybe they do and are too caught up in the numbers and the tendrils but deep down they love as they have always loved and

When you saw
The deer on the ground
Its neck rolled back and forth
Its eye spun around in its head
PUT IT DOWN
The blood from the wound trickled into the ground
The voice from above you saying PUT IT DOWN
It doesn’t even look at you as you steady your aim
The needles on the floor are crushed underfoot
It’s mercy, you say, it’s mercy.
It’s mercy, he says. It’s mercy.
IT’S MERCY he says, PUT IT OUT OF ITS PAIN he says.
Your finger is hot and cold and you tremble.

the jam

2009-12-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

EGGS AND MEAT
EGGS AND MEAT
EGGS AND MEAT

You’ve been wanting it all day. You wake up, you want it. You feel it inside you, gnawing at you, pulling you down into the concrete. When you’re standing in the square. When you’re standing up against the rail, looking out over the city through a thin drizzle. You want it. She’s with you. She’s been with you. She will be with you. But you’ve been wanting it all day. Hands in the pockets and still freezing wanting it. That kind of wanting it. Watching the wild-eyed homeless in their shaggy drags and shaking walks scurry across the morning like a plague. That kind of wanting it. Staring into their non-responsive faces and terrified of their self-satisfied smiles, smiles that ask all the questions you put out of your mind when you fuck.

That kind of wanting it.

“there’s this place,” she says.
“oh yeah,” you say.
“yeah, it’s a good place,” she says.
“oh yeah,” you say.
“yeah, it’s good,” she says.
“oh yeah,” you say.
“do you want to go there?” she says.
“yeah, sure,” you say.
“there could be a wait,” she says.
“i’m pretty hungry. i don’t want to wait long,” you say.
“it won’t be long,” she says.

That’s how it goes. Most times, that’s how it goes. You could. You could try. You could try to tell her. You could try to tell her how you’ve been wanting it. You could use a hundred thousand metaphors to describe the indescribable and still leave the lack of unknowing. You could try. You do not try.

You’re in your old jeans and your comfortable jacket and you feel good. You’re feeling good with yourself, or as good as you can. You’ve never been comfortable, but you’re pretty close. Sometimes pretty close is pretty good. You are wearing your old jeans and comfortable jacket. But. It’s cold outside. You saw your breath this morning, rising up through the air, effervescent evidence of your ephemeral existence. Is that how people write it? You don’t care. But you saw it, out for coffee. You saw it, at the ATM. You saw it, walking down the not-yet-busy streets downtown and watching the morning preterite warm themselves on the rain-soaked corners.

“you’ll like this place,” she says.
“do you like it?” you ask.
“yes, it’s like my favorite,” she says.
“then i’m sure i’ll like it,” you say.
“what do you want,” she says.
“i dunno,” you say. “eggs and meat.”
“sounds good,” she says.
“yeah,” you say.

It goes that way.

You pull up to this place, it was about fifteen minutes out. The drive was good, the car is warm. The car is hot. When you step out onto the curb the chill actually feels good, but the good passes quickly. She is smiling and looking at you. You smile back. You think you smile. You go through the motions of smiling. You do not feel a smile but it is close enough. You shove your hands into your pockets. It does little to help. You are cold. She goes inside and puts your names on the list. There are several names before you on the list. You know it could be long. You know it. But you say nothing. As usual, you say nothing and do nothing and just wait it out, wait for the hierophany of every moment, just as you always do. Knowing it will never come, just as you always know. She comes back outside.

“it should be about twenty minutes,” she says.
“cool,” you say.
“i’m going to smoke,” she says. You pause. It’s like a tingle in your body, a tangible dissatisfaction and it drills so much deeper than this ridiculous little habit and you can feel yourself tearing yourself you can feel yourself tearing yourself with the doubt and annoyance and impotency of jugular-popping screaming in the face of existential injustice.
“all right,” you say. You turn away and try to find the best place to stand out of the smoke.

You start to feel it. You feel it in your feet, in your knees, up your thighs, in the weakness of your tired penis, in your abs and their layer of unsightly flab, in your chest, in your neck and behind your eyes. You feel it like the pat on the back of an old friend. That old self-loathing coming back again. It’s inside you. Just as much a part of you as your own blood. You can try to drain it but there are mechanisms inside you to endlessly generate more. Well, maybe not endlessly. You will die, or so they tell you. It seems as foreign as anything, as remote as any fantasy land or impossible dream. Like winning the lottery.

This is what the voices say:
It’s in the smoke.
It’s not the smoke, it’s IN the smoke.
It’s not her it’s YOU in her.
It’s not her smoking, it’s YOU IN her. It’s you.
That is what the voices say.

You bounce up and down on your calves, trying to keep warm. It’s getting ridiculous. You’re terribly cold and feeling like garbage and you stare at the approximation of a reflection in the window of the café and you look like garbage and you’re thankful that you can’t make out the many telling features on your face that you lack sleep, that you lack discipline, that you lack that you lack that you lack. You read the name of the café over your own shadowy body. The Jam.

“you okay?” she asks.
“yeah,” you say. She rubs your arm. She smiles at you. She searches your face trying to read you and you have never been very good at masking your contempt, your malice, your sadism, your dissatisfaction, your unhappiness, your pain, your sorrow, your self-pity, your self-importance, your arrogance or any of your arsenal of moods. You try to reassure her with [what might pass as] a casual smile or return of physical affection but you’re so cold and your whole body is so cold and you are so hungry YOU WANT IT. That kind of wanting it.

The Jam. And you’re instantly asking yourself why does that name strike you why does it mean something why can’t you just read the surface like the rest of the world and not make your bullshit associations with everything. It’s the key to wit, it’s the key to misery. You would like the scissors to sever all the associations you build unconsciously between mundane and mundane but you lack the scissors. You lack the scissors.

AND IT’S LIKE THE HARD WIRING OF SYNAPTIC PATHS

That is what the voices say. Because now you’re thinking about The Jam and what it means and how it’s what you feel and you want to say that you feel the jam and that you want to explain it and destroy the mystery and power of the association by expounding on it out loud but nobody would care or understand, perhaps a passing curiosity but never the kind of epiphianic interest that you yourself feel for it. It’s that kind of wanting it. Fingertips on it on the edge of a cliff wanting it.

The other couples.
The other couples wait.
The other couples wait outside the café, arm in arm, whispering to each other. You do this at times. With her. You know the meaningless, insignificant words that mean so much and signify so much. One girl has a tall blonde mohawk and jewelry in her face. She has dark eyeshadow and a fuck-me mouth with nicotine teeth. She twists her plump but attractive little legs into the cement, staring with boredom out across the street. You wonder about her. About her cunt. About her tits. About what stupid, ridiculous bullshit baggage she brings with her everywhere she goes. Her boyfriend is a skinny, tall guy with too much facial hair and glasses, wrapped in a dirty brown coat. Occasionally they embrace. The other couple are older, less attractive. The woman is overweight and the man is tired and wasted. You do not wonder about her. You do not care. They are before you on the list.

“i’ll go check the list,” she says.
“all right,” you say. She goes inside.

The Jam. The Jam. You’re in it. You want it so bad, more than wanting could ever express. You don’t even know what it is, you don’t even know who wants it. You don’t even know how to move from A to B or how to move your leg in drifting semi-circles across the pavement.

This. This is. This is when. This is when you. This is when you start. This is when you start to question.

IN THE ABSENCE OF THE OTHER
This is when you start to question. You are. You can feel it like a freight train inside your skull. Like a waking fever dream. Like the speed of consciousness is accelerating and you’re feeling the g-forces on your psyche. And it’s like this, in the absence of the other.

What if it’s not enough? This one no matter what. You expect it and you have no answer.

What if all love fades? You have no answer here either. There’s some comfort in it. Then it’s not your fault. Then you haven’t blown it. Then it’s inevitable.

What if it’s not love at all? It is. And you tell yourself it is and you explain all the reasons why it is and bring into memory those sensations that told you it is and after your mighty defense you hear it again: yes, but what if it’s not love at all?

What if you are never the person you want to be? Another old friend. What if you aren’t? So what? Fuck em. This is where you’ve gone with this question. Fuck them.

There are others. Always others. So many other questions but you don’t feel like it you don’t feel like answering you don’t feel like telling it that IN THE ABSENCE you don’t want to face it OF THE OTHER you don’t want to admit that THIS IS WHEN you might be weak YOU START TO QUESTION you might not have all the things you thought you have and then this is what happens:

Your hands are cold and you start to feel the bones of your fingers pressing together and what if you never get out of here and what if you never remove this onus and what if you never excise your soul and what if you never destroy the ghosts and what if you EGGS AND MEAT and what if you START TO QUESTION and what if you WANT IT LIKE THAT.

All the raincold mornings in the city and café sidewalk loitering and little green plastic chairs with rain puddles in the seats and the sweaty cups of outdoor coffee for your convenience and all the trucks in the street splashing their way somewhere else towards the city center or away into the country and all the rotting brick buildings and all the blonde mohawks and all the scruffy boyfriends and all the bored middle agers and all the names on the list and all the flexing of the calves and all the smoking of the cigarettes and all the doubt you feel in your foolish heart that makes it swell like the wood in this rain with the doubt in this rain with the doubt in this foolish heart with this wood in the rain, swelling with the all of all and the pull of want and the want of courage and the lack of satisfaction and the desire for completion and the lack of desire and the desire for lack and the satisfaction of lack and the logic of permutation and the look of her face in the cold when she smiles at you and you feel her love and you crush all the swelling when her little warm hand reaches out and grabs you and you look in her eyes and her desire is revealed and you are her other and you help her lack and you fill her desire and you bring her satisfaction and you are more than the sum of your ego and you swell when she tells you you swell when she tells you you swell when she tells you

“they called our name,” she says.
“okay,” you say. You go in.

You sit at a small table for two in the café. It’s warm inside but you are still cold. It will take time to warm up. There is art on the walls. It is bad art. It is for sale. You scan the art vaguely. You do not care about the art. You watch her face as she scans the menu and you scan the menu and is there something you want on the menu? The waiter takes your orders and you still feel it pulling you down, into the floor, you still feel it swelling inside you, you still feel yourself bursting and unfolding like water, like flowers, like a shit-stained steel rain gutter. Like the flotsam in the river. Like the wires on the bridge.

“i’m going to go to the restroom,” she says.
“all right,” you say. She stands, she walks back, toward the restroom.

You sit and watch the people. The people are people. The people look like people. The people do things like people. You feel set apart. You always felt set apart. And you’re waiting and waiting and waiting. You feel annoyed in the absence of the other. You feel WANT in the absence. Want in the absence.

Want in the absence.

The waiter brings the food. He sets down her plate. He sets down your plate. He sets down the plates. He leaves. You look at the table, the plates of food. Your food has arrived. You still feel the cold. You still feel the want. You still feel the lack. Your plate is crammed with eggs and meat and potatoes. Your plate is crammed full. You still feel. Eggs and meat. You want it like that, like the lean face of the man you ignored when he asked you to buy him food. Like the dogs in the city streets in the early morning. Like the alleyway garbage. Like the denizens of your city. Like the millions of souls. Like the eggs on the plate. Like the meat on the plate. The eggs and the meat. The want and the absence.

She comes back to the table and sits down. You look at her. She looks at you. She takes your hand with both her hands. She looks at the food on the table. You look at the food on the table.

“ready to eat?” she asks.
“yes, i’m ready. i’m starving,” you say. She smiles at you. You smile at her. You didn’t know you would, or could, but you did and you felt it and you know you felt it and she knows you felt it because her smile grows and a sliver of contentment creeps into her face and you suspect you pray you hope that a sliver slipped into yours as well. You take your first bite of breakfast and it is delicious.

fluorescents

2009-12-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

I

The fluorescent is buzzing. It buzzes. The overhead light has a steady hum. I hate it. I hate fluorescents. I told them I didn’t want to use it. I brought in my own lamp. The lamp sits on my desk. The lamp is not on. I cannot use the lamp. It is a fire hazard, I am told. It could cause electrical problems, I am told. I must use the overhead light, I am told. I hate it. Fluorescent lights are actually green. The light from fluorescents is green. Our eyes adjust to it, I am told. It gives me a headache. The hum and the green of the fluorescent lights give me a headache. We adjust to it, I am told.

I sit in my chair. It is like the other chairs. It is not comfortable. I have had this chair for years. Since I began. It is not comfortable. In front of the chair, in which I sit, is my desk. It is a nice desk. On the desk are the phone, the computer, the keyboard, the mouse, the inbox, the pen jar, the notepad. This is how I do my work.

Typically RING
The phone rings. The ring is loud. I cannot adjust the volume of the ringer. I cannot RING.

“Kram,” I say.
“Is it finished?” the voice asks. The voice belongs to my boss. My boss is like my chair. Only he sits on me.
“Almost,” I say.
“Listen, Kram, this project doesn’t mean shit to me, but MY BOSS wants it done. ASAP. So get on it. I want it this afternoon. Pronto. Shit,” he says.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll get it to you this afternoon. It’s almost done.”
He hangs up. I hang up. We hang up.

I have no idea what he was talking about. I have many projects. None of them are done. There are many projects. Each project has a deadline. There are many deadlines. Sometimes I know a deadline, but not the project. Other times, I know the project but not the deadline. It is kind of funny, isn’t it? Not really. It is like this for the others as well.

I want to succeed. I juggle the projects and the deadlines so I can succeed. I am told, that success is desirable. Success is inevitable. If you work hard enough. Do I work hard enough? I don’t work very hard. Who is to say that hard enough is very hard? I am not told how hard is very hard. I have a variable amount of projects. These projects have deadlines (they all have deadlines, please do not mistake my ignorance of the deadlines of certain projects with the absence of those deadlines. Similarly, each deadline has an associated project. The system works very well.) and when these deadlines are met, I have succeeded. When these KNOCK when these KNOCK KNOCK when these KNOCK

“Yes?” I say.
“Kraaaaaam,” the voice says. The voice belongs to Harrison, my coworker. My peer, as he is called.
“Yes, Harrison?” I ask.
“Kraaaahaaahaaam,” he says. I sigh.
“Harrison,” I say.
“Kram, listen up. What the FUCK are you up to tonight?” he asks.
“Nothing, really,” I say. I wanted to say something else. I have this thing. I cannot lie.
“Sweeeeeet. Check it. How about we go down to the hotel bar and get FUCKED UP?” he says.
“I don’t think so, Harrison,” I say.
“What the FUCK, Kram? You need to get out more, bitch! You’re going to work yourself to death, or worse, end up like dickless down the hall,” he says.
Dickless is my boss.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I still don’t think I’m going to make it. Thanks, though.”
“Shit. Fucking Kram. Well, whatever, bitch. If you change your mind, we’re going to be there from 5 to 7 probably. Drag your sorry ass down if you grow a pair,” he says.
“Will do,” I say.

He leaves. There is a small window in my office. There is a large tree in front of the window. The tree blocks out most of the light. The window is not large, to begin with, and the tree is large, and the tree blocks out most of the light. I would like to saw the tree in half. I would like to remove the tree. I would like to do that. Each Wednesday the grounds crew comes by, mows, rakes, blows, edges, whatever. They never remove the tree. I should ask them about it. I really should.

The small window in my office reminds me of my Biology class in high school. Sometimes I can still smell the formaldehyde when I think about it. I hated that class. The desk was smaller. The chair was still uncomfortable. But I could see out the window. I could see the mountains out the window. In the winter, the mountains were blue. And snow fell heavily and through the window, through the snow, I could see the blue mountains. I could RING I could RING RING I could

“Kram,” I say.
“Yes, hello Kram, This is Claire Van Damme, looking for a status update?” the voice says. The voice belongs to Claire Van Damme, my boss’s secretary.
“Uh, I just spoke with him. I’ll have it this afternoon?” I say.
“Yes, about that. Kram, the project has been re-prioritized and we are going to need it next week. Please have it ready by then,” she says.
“It will be done by next week,” I say.
“Great. Have a great weekend,” she says.
“Thanks, you too Claire,” I say, but she hung up immediately after she finished speaking.

It happens. Projects are constantly re-prioritized, reclassified, rehashed and reconfigured. I attend at least three meetings a week to discuss how best to make a project more efficient. It happens. This is how the system runs.

I lean back in my chair awkwardly, my back hurts, and stare at the humming, green (I am told) light on the ceiling. I was. I was thinking about. What was I thinking about. It was something. It was something. It was.

II

I place my hands on the keyboard.
I place my hands on the keyboard.
I place my hands on the keyboard and begin to type.

This is how I do my work. This is how it is done. This happens. This is how the project is completed. This is how I become successful. I have my hands on the keyboard and I operate the keys. I am a fast typist. I type very well. Typing is essential to my work. This is how I do my work.

my digits fly
my digits fly across the keyboard. The words on the screen become the words on the screen. First nothing, then the words. As my hands fly across the keyboard. As my fingers depress each key quickly. I am told I AM TOLD that each key sends a unique electrical signal to the computer which the computer interprets as a specific character. When I type a “f” the unique electrical signature for “f” is passed from the keyboard to the computer. The computer interprets this signature and imprints a specific visual representation of this signature on the screen. I read this signature as “f.”

THIS IS HOW I DO MY WORK.

When I think of how many characters I have typed on this keyboard. This old keyboard. When I think of how many. How very many. When I think of how many characters I have typed on this old keyboard, I realize. It seems to me that. It seems.

My hands on the keyboard. My fingers depress the keys. The signals are sent. I sit in my chair. MY hands on the keyboard. MY fingers depress the keys. The light in the window is usurped by the tree. To cut down the tree. To cut it down. Would the light come through my window if I cut down the tree? Would my hands on the keyboard the light in the window come through the tree if my fingers depress the signals sent in my chair? Would it cut? The tree signals sent cut down to the keys, the keyboard? Would I chair lost signals sent cut down tree keys keyboard depress light window would would would chair would lost would down would cut would depress would light light would light
Would light?
Would?

III

DICKLESS DOWN THE HALL

KRAM
Blurg, blurg, sir the project manifests in seething unconscious masses, the light.

DICKLESS
Shit, you truncated fuck. You protodildo.

KRAM
I saw the blue mountains and when I was young I saw them so clear and could fly out a window and reach them and touch them through the window through the snow like a dream like in flight like in dream flight, the blue mountains, sir, the blue mountains.

DICKLESS
Kram, you miserable fuck. You have been assigned to be a limp-dicked faggot by the system that be. You have been assigned a number and a place and a spot and you want to forego the system you dipshit? You ungrateful faggot?

HARRISON
WOOOOOOOOOOOO imbibe the drink imbibe the drink imbibe the drink. I’M ALICE. I’M ALICE. I’M ALICE. KRAM
CAN YOU HEAR ME KRAM
CAN YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING
KRAM KRAM KRAM KRAM KRAM Kram, imbibe.
We are all. We are all going. We are all going out. We are all going out after. WE’RE GONNA TAKE YOU OUT.

DICKLESS
HARRISON, SHUT IT.

KRAM
Before the fluorescent, before the hard chair, before the tree that steals all the light. Sir, I can’t remember. Sir. Please, sir. I can’t remember. My hands are so tired, sir. Before the
I remember the mountains. I remember the blue of the mountains and the fall of the snow and the snow on the mountains above the blue of the mountains and the snow on the ground and the snow in the air and it falling through the window and through the snow the mountains I remember it sir. I remember it. It was before the

HARRISON
Gag, Kram. Gag.

DICKLESS
(silence)

KRAM
(silence)

HARRISON
(silence)

IV

Sometimes.
Sometimes the noise.
Sometimes the noise gets so loud.
Sometimes the noise gets so loud I want.
Sometimes the noise gets so loud I want to scream.
Sometimes the noise gets so loud I want to scream and add.
Sometimes the noise gets so loud I want to scream and add my voice.

In the hum of a fluorescent light.
In the green of a fluorescent light.
In the hum of a fluorescent light.
In the green of a fluorescent light.

RING RING
RING RING
KNOCK KNOCK
KNOCK KNOCK

Sometimes the RING
Sometimes the KNOCK
Sometimes I scream
Sometimes I add
Sometimes my own voice.

The chair is hard, I sit in it.
The desk is nice, I work on it.
The window is small, I look through it.
The tree is large, I despise it.

These are the things that sometimes,
sometimes,
in the hum and the green
These are the things that sometimes,
sometimes.
sometimes if I were a sliver of energy
traveling across a copper field
a unique signature, a valid, coherent sign
traveling, traveling
across the copper field.
To a home where I am rendered
legible. Sometimes, to a home. Sometimes where I am rendered.
Sometimes legible.
Sometimes RING
Sometimes RING RING

“Kram,” I say.

noli me tangere

2009-12-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

He is in a room.

The room is not large. The room is not small. There is a metal table in the middle of the room. There is a body on the table. He stands over the body. On one wall is a large mirror. He is told it is a two-way mirror. He is told the analyst watches from behind the mirror. He is told not to worry about the analyst. To continue on as he normally would. On the opposite wall is the door. The door is closed. The door is locked. Next to the table is a large metal tray on a stand. The tray holds many implements. There are mirrors. There are scalpels. There are others. Also in the room is the woman. She stands next to the tray. She wears a green mask over her nose and mouth. He cannot see her nose and mouth. She wears a cover over her hair and body. He cannot see her hair or body. Her eyes stand out from the suit. He can see her eyes. She looks at him expectantly.

He is wearing a similar outfit to hers. His outfit is green. His hands are covered in green gloves. He is very clean. The room is very clean. The table is very clean. The mirror is very clean. The woman is very clean. He is told everything must be very clean in order to proceed. He is told the implements must be sterile before they can be used. He is told sterility is important. He is told cleanliness is important.

He looks from the woman to the mirror. He looks from the mirror to the table. There is a body on the table. The body appears to be that of a man. The man is older and has gray hair. The man is in decent shape, though has a bit of a gut. He is naked on the table. The man’s penis is flaccid. The man’s tongue protrudes slightly from his mouth. The man’s skin is pale and blue around the edges. The man’s veins show up against his skin. The man has no expression. The man’s eyes are closed. He cannot see the man’s eyes.

He looks from the body on the table back to the woman. The woman looks at him expectantly. He looks at the mirror. He sees himself in the mirror. He is told the analyst watches through the mirror. He does not see the analyst. He looks at himself in the mirror expectantly. He takes no action.

The woman shifts slightly to the left. She brings her left hand up towards her face and tightens her glove. She lowers her hand. She does not look at the body on the table. She does not look at the mirror. She does not look at the door. She looks alternately between him and herself. He rolls his eyes and scans the room again. There is the mirror, the table with the body, the door, the woman. He rolls his eyes again.

“Uh… what are we…” he says.
“Doctor, if you please,” she says. She makes no motions.
“Doctor… right... uh… what is this…patient’s… condition?” he asks her.
“The patient is ready for surgery,” she says.
“…Isn’t the patient dead?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says.
“Quite,” he says. He examines the tray next to the table. He examines the implements. His eyes linger on each tool one by one, down the line. He looks from the tray to the mirror. He sees himself in the mirror. He looks to the woman. She looks at him expectantly.

“Right,” he says. “Uh,”
“Yes, doctor?” she says.
“…Scalpel…?” he says.

She immediately reaches down at grabs the first scalpel and hands it to him handle first. He hesitates. He looks at the mirror. He cannot see the analyst. He looks at the woman. She looks at him expectantly. He looks at the body. He cannot see the man’s eyes. He takes the scalpel.

He holds the scalpel in his right hand. “Right,” he says. “Uh…” He places his left hand on the body’s stomach. He looks at his hand. He looks at the mirror. He looks at the woman.

“Well then,” he says. He moves his hand slowly around the body’s torso. He watches the woman while he does this. Her expression does not change. She looks at him expectantly.

“Right,” he says.

He lowers the scalpel to the body’s flesh. He checks the mirror again. He sees himself, holding the scalpel to the body’s flesh. He looks at her again. She looks at him expectantly. He looks back to his hand. He places the scalpel slightly below and to the right of the navel. He gently presses the blade of the scalpel into the flesh of the body. Blood immediately begins to seep out from the cut, down the side of the flesh and onto the metal table. The blood begins to pool on the table. The blood pools on the metal table.

“Uh…can you…do something… about the uh, blood?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She pulls a suction device out from beneath the tray and begins sucking the blood off of the table. Soon all the blood is gone and she holds it against the incision.

He looks at the mirror. He sees nothing. He can see nothing. He listens closely. He has made the first incision.

YOU MUST INCISE

He hears it, he thinks. It may have come from behind the mirror. Is it the voice of the analyst, he wonders. Perhaps, he answers. It is not the woman’s voice. The body is dead and cannot speak. It may be his own voice, he cannot be sure. He must incise.

He drags the scalpel down the abdomen and into the pubis. She sucks the blood. He has completed the first cut. He looks at the cut, the mirror, the woman, the body, the tray.

“…clamp?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She hands him the first clamp.

He slowly peels the skin back where he has cut it. He slowly peels the flap of skin back. He peels it back and can see beneath it the organs. He uses the clamp to hold the flap open.

“The blood?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She sucks the blood out.

He can see the organs now. He can see inside. The organs are wound inside tightly. The organs fit perfectly. Inside the torso cavity, the organs fit snugly against one another. There is much blood. She sucks the blood out.

YOU MUST REMOVE THE ORGANS

“Uh…” he says.
“Yes, doctor?” she says.
“I must remove the organs,” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She makes no motion.
“Right,” he says.

He reaches down into the torso and feels the first organ. It is the intestine. He feels the intestine through his glove. He can feel its texture. He can feel its weight. He holds the intestine and looks at the mirror. He sees himself holding the intestine. He cannot see the analyst. He looks at her. She looks at him expectantly. He looks at the body. The eyes are closed. The intestine is in his hand. He pulls.

YOU MUST REMOVE THE ORGANS

He pulls and pulls, he pulls and pulls.

“Something to uh put this in?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She pulls a large metal bucket out from under the table. He places the intestines in the bucket. He continues removing the organs. He places the organs inside the bucket.

“What… what exactly… what exactly are we doing here?” he says.
“Doctor?” she says.
“What exactly are we doing here? Are you going to uh measure these organs?” he says.
“No, doctor,” she says.
“Right,” he says. “Then, uh, why are we uh… are you taking notes on what we are doing?”
“No, doctor,” she says.
“Right,” he says. “The analyst must be taking notes.”
“The analyst, doctor?” she says.
“Uh… yeah… he’s uh, behind that mirror,” he says.
“Doctor, that is just a mirror. Behind the mirror is just a wall,” she says.

He stops removing the organs. He looks at his hands. They are covered in blood. He looks at the body. It is covered in blood. He looks at the table. It is covered in blood. He looks at the mirror. He sees himself (covered in blood). He looks at her. She looks at him expectantly.

“Then why…” he says.

YOU MUST REMOVE THE ORGANS
YOU MUST INCISE
YOU MUST REMOVE THE ORGANS

“Uh…” he says.

YOU MUST INCISE
“uh…”
YOU MUST INCISE
“uh…”

The door opens. An old man walks in. It is not the same old man on the table. He does not think it is the same old man that is on the table.

“What, uh, who are you?” he says.
“Young man. Young man. You know who I am,” the old man says.
“No… No, I don’t think we’ve met,” he says.

The old man laughs. The woman does not take notice of the old man. The woman looks at him expectantly. The woman is silent.

“You must incise, dear boy. You must. You must remove the insides. You must cut and clean and remove the organs. These are things that you must do. These are things that must happen, do you understand? Dear boy, dear, dear boy. You must cut into the flesh. You must roll back the flesh. You must clamp the flesh. You must incise. You must remove the organs. You must you must you must,” the old man says.

“Uh…” he says. “What?”

The woman looks at him. Her eyes are crazy and wild. She is unfocused. He looks at her. She opens her mouth.

“OH, I just got the LOVELIEST floor plant for my apartment. It is just DARLING. I got it on SPECIAL last weekend when I was out with the HUBBY. It is green and has BEAUTIFUL red flowers that are ALWAYS in bloom. We also got a NEW blender. It blends so NICELY. I saw it advertised on the TEEVEE. Hubby and I are SO HAPPY. We are really HOPING to have children SOON. We are really hoping. We really are. We really are,” she says.

He looks at her. He looks to the body. He looks to the old man.

“The heart has many valves. The valves push and generate pressure. The valves must pump. The pressure must be maintained. The valves cannot be incised. The heart cannot be removed. It is connected to the vascular network. It must be connected to the vascular network. The heart must pump blood (with the valves) through the vascular network in order to serve the rest of the body, do you understand, dear boy?” the old man says.

“No… uh, not really,” he says. “Can you get out of here? We’re uh, doing an operation or something, I think.”

The old man immediately turns and leaves. The old man closes the door. He looks back to the woman.

“No one behind the mirror, huh?” he says.

“No, doctor,” she says.

“Then who the hell was that? And what uh what was all that stuff about a floor plant?” he says.

“A floor plant, doctor? I don’t know what you mean,” she says.

“Right,” he says.

He looks back to the body. There is no cut in the flesh. There is no blood. There is no clamp. The tools are lined perfectly along the tray. The man is warm and pink. The man is breathing. The man’s eyes are closed. He cannot see the man’s eyes.

“This man is alive,” he says.

“Yes, doctor,” she says.

“Then the operation was a success!” he says.

“You have not operated yet, doctor,” she says.

“Quite… uh…” he says.

He looks to the mirror. He can almost make out a blinking red light behind the mirror. But he sees himself. He sees the woman. He sees the table. He sees the body. He sees the tray. In the mirror he sees these things. He can almost make out a blinking red light.

“Uh,” he says.
“Yes, doctor?” she says.
“What is the condition of the patient?” he says.
“He is ready for surgery,” she says.
“Right,” he says.

Must he incise? Must he remove the organs? He looks at the woman. She looks at him expectantly. He looks at the mirror. He sees the things, almost makes out a blinking red light. He looks at the body on the table. He looks at the tray. He looks at the tools on the tray.

Must he incise?

Must he remove the organs?

There is no answer.

“Uh… scalpel?” he says.
“Yes, doctor,” she says. She hands him the first scalpel on the table.
“Right,” he says.

He lowers the scalpel to the flesh. He touches the scalpel to the flesh.

Must he incise?

Must he remove the organs?

There is no answer.

He hesitates.

how to build a table

2009-12-10T07:00:00.001-08:00

He stands tall in the garage. In the garage are the tools. I do not touch the tools. The taboo of the tools covers them like a curtain. There are
blades and pincers and smashers and knobs and buttons and gauges and
the taboo of the tools
and he stands tall.
At times, after dinner, he goes into the garage. He stays there all night. At times. I hear the rhythmic pounding or scratching or sawing or
I hear the noises from the garage, when he’s in the garage. I do not watch him. He uses the tools. I can hear the sound of the tools when he uses them but I have not seen him use the tools. One time I GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE and that was that.

He eats his dinner with his elbows on the table. He eats his dinner with a cold grimace. The food is good, as far as I know it, and she has worked hard to prepare it. He eats it with a cold grimace and his elbows on the table. When he is finished he wipes his mouth hurriedly with his napkin and, at times, will go into the garage.

He always smells like wood. It is a good smell, as far as I know it, and it smells like the fire he makes in the winter when our breath comes out in small clouds as we lay in our beds. It is the smell of wood. He works with the wood. He works with the wood in the garage and he works with the wood at work. At work, he works with the wood. There is a large mill. There is a large lumber mill. There is a large lumber mill in our town. That is where he works. He goes there, in the mornings, after he eats his breakfast [cold grimace, elbows up] then takes his lunch pail
It is tin, it is metal, it is the lunch pail.
and goes out the door towards the mill. He walks. We do not have a car. Many do not have cars. Some have cars. We do not.
At the mill he works with the wood. I do not know what he does with the wood. I have not seen. I have heard the mill. Everyone hears the mill. I have smelled the wood. He smells like the wood.

At times he will talk about the mill. It is always bad. THIS JOB IS KILLING ME he spoons his potatoes into his mouth and EVER SINCE BILL HENNY LEFT I dabs his mouth with his napkin but WHAT THE HELL WOULD YOU KNOW and then he stands up and JESUS CHRIST he goes into the garage. He goes into the garage.
He goes into the garage and resumes his work.
He goes. I am trying to say, He goes, let’s look.
He goes to the mill. At the mill he works with the wood. After the mill he comes home and THE MILL IS GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL and then he goes into the garage and resumes his work with the wood. Do you see?
He goes from woodwork to woodwork he goes from. He goes STRAIGHT TO HELL, I TELL YOU into the garage.

He has asked me into the garage. COME HERE I WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING.

He asked. I have never seen. I have never. And. The taboo of the tools covers them like a curtain.
I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU HOW TO BUILD A TABLE stained jean overalls he wore them out painting when she said that the house needed painting and he I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU put them on he put on the overalls and took up the paint can and took up the brush and COME OVER HERE AND LOOK AT THIS

He has shaved. He always shaves. I’ve never seen him with a beard. DO YOU KNOW THE WOOD? He smells like cigarettes and he looks like cigarettes [it is something I would say again and again and again he had a face that looked like cigarettes] and THERE ARE ONLY TWO JOBS IN THIS TOWN his thin gray hair, greasy and matted and [IT’S WHAT A HARD DAY’S WORK LOOKS LIKE] he would THE MILL often take a AND THE TOBACCO FARMS small tin can from his back pocket and YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK THE FARMS
apply the
paste to
WITH THE NIGGERS
his hair.

NOW LISTEN
NOW LISTEN UP
His undershirt is dirty and stained. He wears the undershirt. He has the undershirt. It is dirty. It is stained. The undershirt HIS undershirt is dirty and stained. NOW LISTEN UP.

[the curtain is rising, general applause]

A TABLE IS A PLANE WITH FOUR LEGS DO YOU UNDERSTAND
the writhing the wriggling the worms on the hook he took you fishing he took you out to the bridge to the place to the river to the lake to the fishing he took you and he pierced the worm upon the hook and threw it down down into the river off the bridge and he took you but you remember the writhing the wriggling of the fish on the hook of the worm on the hook on the hook on the hook of when he took you on the hook
THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD A TABLE
cold of the snow on your feet without boots and the other children without boots and you played outside and the mud on your feet on the floor and the fire and the woodfire burning burning burning and the washing of the mud off the feet and the shivering the anticipating the knowing and not knowing when it snowed and you could smell the Christmas food cooking and cooking and burning and the snow on the ground in the white of the way out to the path where the dog on the stake froze that night when it snowed and the look on its face when you found
THIS IS HOW YOU OPERATE THE TABLE SAW DO YOU UNDERSTAND
the little coffin when he died and the knot in the wood that yes of course he built the coffin and there was a knot and he always threw out the knots but he left it on the plane on the side on the coffin the little coffin that she put his little body in when you were little too and nobody cried and you had heard that people should cry that there would be crying but there was no crying just the cold grimace and the knot in the wood as the little wood box was lowered into the little hole in the ground and the ground was still frozen and you wanted to stop it but he lowered the coffin into the ground and he lowered it into the ground
YOU MUST SAND THE WOOD SO IT IS SMOOTH
and after all that the one night with the nightmares and you couldn’t sleep and you couldn’t wait and all in your bed were the phantasms and the ghosts of the souls you had seen slip away and the empty mistakes and the ephemeral dust and you snuck down the hall in the hopes you could join them but you got to the hallway and heard something happening and you looked in their bedroom and saw something happening and you looked and you looked and you saw something happening you saw something happening you saw something you saw something you saw you saw saw saw saw

[the curtain lowers, general applause]

He put his hand around mine and said, “Son, this is how you use the handsaw. Be sure to have a firm grip. Be sure the wood is secured in the vice. Always pencil a line across the wood so you can have a straight cut. Make sure the teeth of the saw are sharp before you start and be sure to collect the sawdust for later, you never know when you’re going to need it.”

“Thanks, dad. I will,” I said. He smiled and patted me on the head. He stood so tall in the garage over me and I knew he built most of our furniture and that woodworking was his passion. It was a such a thrill to my little soul, I felt so alive and grown up and so much love for him. He took off his work gloves and hung them up on the high peg in the garage that I could not reach.

“Now don’t use any of my tools unless I say so and come out here with you. I’ll teach you all about them but there’s no rush. Now, I think I can smell your mother’s dinner cooking. What do you say we go in and get some dinner,” he said.

“Sounds great, dad. It sounds just great,” I said.

He patted me on the head again and we went inside.

He had shown me how to build a table. How to build a table. How to build a table. how to build a table how to build a table how to build a table HOW TO BUILD A TABLE HOW TO BUILD A TABLE HOW TO BUILD A TABLE

the beetles gnash and crawl

2009-12-10T06:59:00.001-08:00

I

The frost was on the chain link fence the day that father died. I was out walking. I was out walking behind the house, before I had heard the news. The ground felt cold and solid and I crushed the clumps of grass under my boots. I crushed them. I hopped the fence, before I had heard. I hopped the fence and continued on, walking, behind the house, the day that father died.

I have been [father, I have been]. I have been sorting. I have been sorting through his things. He kept many things. Many, many things. O collector, o antiquarian. Many, many things. Now I sort and inventory. Cataloging his things, his life, his body not yet in the ground [father, you will be buried].

He has many books. Father has many books. Father has many books of law. Law was his vocation. Law was father’s vocation. Father has many books of law. The vast library stands before me now on dusted shelves. Yellow books on dark wood, errant bookmarks to never be

resumed and

annotations to be read in curiosity or annoyance but never again as mnemonics. These external symbols. These symbols have had the table cloth pulled. The signified has disappeared and now nondescript script sprawls wantonly across yellowed, yellowed page. In father’s law books.

I sit now in father’s study [sorting, inventorying] looking at the rows of books along the wall. I sit, now, in my father’s study. I am here.

I AM HERE

Those warm college mornings come back with surprising alacrity, when feathery voices rippled out from behind podiums of the awakening of sexual agency in the male psyche following the death of the father.

It’s funny now. O Oedipus, O Zeus, must we ever thrive on the lack? It’s funny now. All these words on the winds and not knowing when I hopped that fence (the frost was on the fence) that everything could change so quickly. My father does not have Greek tragedy. My father does not have Freud or Jung or Lacan. He would laugh too. He would laugh. He would.

Out
in the field grows a stalk and by the stalk a concrete brick and a rusty faucet. The stalk still grows, I saw it there, walking back, towards the house, the day that father died. The frost was on the stalk that morning and the frost was on the concrete brick. The frost was on the rusted faucet. Father, I have seen the stalk sway in the wind, like words on the wind, this stalk that grows in the field. This stalk that grows in the field behind the house. This stalk that grows. This stalk that grows in the field behind the house blows in the wind like the words on the wind. This stalk that grows.
The frost was on the stalk. The stalk that grows.
Out behind the house
Out behind
Before I heard the news
[Father, flipping through your books, I see your penscrawl and I want to tell you I WANT TO TELL YOU about] the stalk that grows behind the house.
In the field
It grows there. In the field.
I want to tell you.
Before I jumped the fence I saw the stalk, before I jumped the fence, before I heard the news. I saw the stalk, the brick, the faucet, before I jumped the fence, before I heard the news. I saw the frost on the stalk. I saw the frost on the concrete brick. I saw the frost on the rusted faucet. Before I jumped the fence.
Before I heard
The news.

[still flipping, flipping, flipping
did you need to collect so many, father, did you need so many, so many? If I could show you the stalk that grows, I would show you the stalk.
In comes mother and her haggard face tired coffee stain face she says she says she says, GOD, father, she says as she has said she says
-how are you doing?
-I’m fine. How are you, mom?
-holding up.
She leaves. FATHER she says she’s holding up and the frost on the fence, which I saw, before I jumped and the stalk in the field behind the house before I heard and holding up father she says she’s and the concrete brick.]

II

In the field,
The beetles
The beetles in the field
The beetles in the field gnash
father, the beetles in the field gnash and FATHER the beetles in the field gnash
and
FATHER
The beetles eat the stalks
The beetles eat the stalks
The beetles eat the stalks
In the field, behind the house. I saw the beetles gnash and crawl.
Gnash and crawl.
THE BEETLES gnash and crawl through the field behind the house but the stalk still stands though covered in frost and the beetles on the brick and the beetles in the faucet and the FATHER beetles in the field and

FATHER

The beetles in the field GNASH and CRAWL in the field.
[I’m still sorting through your books, father, but if only I could show you, if only you could GNASH if only you CRAWL if only you
THE BEETLES IN THE FIELD
Father, if only I could show you.]

The ditch behind the field holds the still water still
There is the ditch behind the field.
There is the still water.
There is the still water, in the ditch, behind the field, still. IN the still water is the staub. You called it the staub. It is a fence post. It is a piece of wood. It is the staub. It is stuck in the still water.
[millions of mosquito babies hatch, father. Millions of mosquito babies]
and father, father, I saw the beetles gnash and crawl around the staub in the still water where the mosquito babies by the millions hatched and hatched. In the ditch. In the ditch behind the field. Around the staub, father [so many books] , around the staub. If only I could
show you.

III

mother
where
do
babies
come
from

mother

I have seen my own manhood stand proud and true. Throbbing with vitality
I AM HERE
Throbbing. I have seen it enter the sweetest mouth and glisten and felt the surge inside of possibility and illimitable energy and I HAVE FELT it. And I have seen the woman’s body and felt the woman’s skin and suckled on the erect nipples and smelled

The smell

Of the woman.

TODAY
I have entered the woman.
TODAY
I have penetrated her slick sickness with my [male agency]
With my
My
TODAY I have released inside her and felt her squeeze me and felt it all surge
surge
I have felt it.

Mother
Mother mother mother
Mother mother mother mother
Like a mother to the flame
Of desire
I have seen
Like a mother
I have seen the flames of desire
Where do babies MOTHER I have seen

Today I have seen.

I had seen/felt/smelt/tasted the woman’s body.
I had released.
I had.

And mother
To the flame
Mother, I
To the flame
MOTHER, I  TO THE FLAME

And
Today

I saw myself release inside the woman’s body.
I saw myself release inside the woman
I saw myself release inside
I saw myself release
I saw myself
I saw

The day that father died.

Medford 275

2009-12-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

Then, finally, the SLAM of the car door and you’re alone again. She’s walking away. Back up into that apartment where someone you don’t know lives. And she closes the door. She closes the door and she’s gone. It’s finally warming up. You’ve set the heater to high and you feel the air pushing against you and see the fog peeling off the windows and the echoing push of the air drowns out the album you’ve been listening to since you woke up.

Your mouth still tastes like the beer you drank. You put the car in drive and pull out into the quiet street. It is 1AM.

The streets are lined with apartments where people you don’t know live. Some have their lights on. Most do not. You stop at a stop sign. A go-nowhere kid in a hoodie goes nowhere across the street and he might have made eye contact with you. You sense hostility but you don’t know if it’s his hostility or your own
reflected back at you in the mirror of another’s face.

There’s not much traffic on this street at this time of the night. Your foot is like a weight against the pedal and you want to push it down with all you have and never let go. You want hairpin turns and black rural nights. Instead, you take the onramp to the well-lit freeway and merge with the flowing cars.

The freeway is never dead. The 5 purrs along like time ticking with enough cars to make it a hassle and you’re gripping the gearshift because
someone
is going too slow or too fast or has their brights on or doesn’t know where they are going. You grip the gearshift. The 5 purrs along.

The seat next to you smells like cigarettes and flowers. You swill your spit and want to throw up. The seat is still warm. This part of the freeway is a straight shot and you’re staring at the hair on your arm, slightly raised and thinking about cigarettes. And flowers.

You come up to the city. It’s lit up in urban glow and all the bridges are like languid fingers across the body of the water and downtown is pulsing silently with explosive emanations. Steel towers jut upwards and upwards and
you can even see the stars tonight through the haze.

Your mind flits from this to that.
Your mind flits.
Like that moth you saw on the dirty glass of a dim porchlight, outside an apartment where someone you don’t know lives. Where you kicked over the plastic flowerpot and knelt to pick up the flowers but found it was only full of cigarette butts. You set it back upright on the coarse and narrow concrete step and pretended not to see down into the abyss.
Your mind flits. Downtown is the most traffic. You watch the cars exit for the Rose Quarter. Your mind flits to images of backalley nighttime nightlife and the underbelly you’ve only heard of and dreamed of and read about and written about but never
seen in its filthy glory like the bodies in the rain on the street and the mat of a cheap wool coat damp and rotting and the dead eyes floating above in an ether of unforgiving down luck. You do not take the Rose Quarter exit and downtown blurs by with skyscraper nightlights and onramp downshifting brakelights and the pinpoints of the few stars penetrating the haze below to shine
for the ones awake and driving at 1AM.

The freeway veers left and right. It veers left. It veers right. The freeway veers. You follow it mechanically. It veers left and you follow it mechanically. It veers right and you follow it mechanically.
The freeway veers left and right and you follow it mechanically.
Your eyes are heavy and tired and your belly is full of a dinner you enjoyed and wish you hadn’t eaten and your mind flits with the thought that a full belly produces nothing but shit.

But

You still feel that hunger.
It’s that ash flake on your passenger side floormat.
It’s the unused road atlas in your back seat.
It’s the condom in your wallet.
It’s the faceless, nameless office buildings that line this part of the freeway.

Your foot drops down on the accelerator. You feel yourself speeding up and now
The hot is too hot.
You turn the heat down and you will turn the heat down until the cold that feels cold becomes too cold and you turn the heat back up until the hot that feels hot becomes too hot until until until

There’s a book on top of the atlas in your back seat. The book has a bookmark. You ask yourself why you’re reading that book and you have no answers for yourself except for the sly hiding smile that you will indeed continue to read it and the next one and the next one.

Your shirt feels tight over your belly and your hands still sting with chill. You should start working out again. You should watch what you eat. You should really
You should really do better.
You should but
The freeway blurs past you.

Then

You look up and you see the sick, green sign bathed in a dozen headlights

MEDFORD 275

You
You could
You could go
You could go there
You could go there tonight
You could go there tonight and be there by breakfast.

You’ve been to Medford before. Driving down, through the state, into Cali, down through Cali to where you used to live, through the cities and the farms and the hills and the waste. You’ve been there before. You stopped there. You stopped at that old gas station the first time you ever came into the state and when you tried to pump your own gas that crazy eyed old man ran out and yelled at you in his raspy voice with his jeans slack around his legs and his gaunt little face frightening in the moonlight. Medford is where you stopped at that diner and ate your first meal in the state you now call home. You could. You know.

Beyond Medford is the state line and Mount Shasta and you wonder about the life in the town of Mount Shasta and how many winter tire-chain nights it would take before you were out driving again and looking looking
As the freeway blurs past but
You could go there tonight.

You remember driving through the storm over Mount Shasta, coming through the torrents of rain, the rumbling semi trucks kicking up mud and puddles into your windshield until you couldn’t see shit but you kept driving, keeping that needle pointed at 65 because fuck em, that’s because why. But you came out on the other side and remember looking at the storm in your rearview as the sun of California blinded you through your windshield.

Your legs are sore or restless. You need either more or less exercise. You need to get out and stretch or lay down and sleep. You see a cop pass you on the right and you check your speed and mouth the word ‘pig’ and turn up the stereo just a bit, because its right at that part where the drums kick in to the song you love and maybe that’s what your looking for and maybe it’s further down the 5 somewhere past Medford but you’ve been all the way down to San Diego and you know what’s at the end of the freeway is the hot, dirty desert and nothing besides.

YOU SMELL THE CIGARETTE RESIDUE in the headrest of the passenger seat and your hand tightens around the steering wheel [you veer left, right, mechanically] and you look at your tired eyes in the rearview, thinking of the first time you ever drove a car and the first time you ever made out in a car and the first time you ever came in a car and the first time the first time the first time.
Your mind flits over the succession of firsts.
The freeway blurs. You veer mechanically.
MEDFORD 275.
MEDFORD 275.
You could go there tonight.

You could go to Medford. You could go to Mount Shasta. You could get breakfast at a truck stop diner and gas up and keep going for the next day and the next day. You could call in to work. You could take an unplanned vacation. You could buy a pack of cigarettes. You could go south and south until you ran out of south. You could blur the 5 until your body gave out. You could choke down cold hash browns in three-day-old clothes. You could BLUR you could FLIT you could VEER you could MEDFORD 275.

You could go there.

You turn on your right signal light. You hear the rhythmic tick-tock of the signal light. You begin to veer slowly, so slowly, you watch the needle drop to 55, to 50, to 45, to 40 and lower still as you veer right you veer right you veer right
YOU BLUR
YOU FLIT
YOU MEDFORD 275
YOU VEER RIGHT

Onto the exit that takes you home.

here is where things go

2009-12-10T06:57:00.002-08:00

A beam of light leaves its exploding home.

Let’s say there’s a reservoir.

[an immense concrete bowl-like superstructure carved out of the earth like a caldera]

and let’s say

inside this reservoir is water. Gallons of water. So much water. There is so much water. The water ripples across the expanse of the top of the reservoir. If one were to take a bird’s eye view (one cannot take a bird’s eye view) one would see the ripples moving on the face of the water.

There are steel towers along the rim of the reservoir. They are instruments. The steel towers measure. There is data to be measured. The data regards the water, the reservoir. There are many towers. Electricity courses through the towers. One cannot see the electricity.

There is the reservoir, there is the water, there are the towers. The reservoir dips like a caldera, the water shimmers across the surface of the water, the towers course with electricity. These are the.

Let’s say there are men. Many men. Many many men. Let’s say there are fifty men. These are the fifty men.

Forty of the men are in gray jumpsuits. They are hard and lean. The men in the gray jumpsuits, there are forty of them, are hard and lean. They stand in rows and columns. Rows of eight. Columns of five. They stand before the reservoir. The men stand. Before the reservoir [there were none].

There are five men in white suits. The five men in white suits stand at the head of the five columns. [The men are in formation, they move across the concrete like ripples across the water.] The men in the white suits face the men in the gray jumpsuits.

There are three men in black suits. They sit to the side in elementary school desks. The desks are brown and orange and smell of pencil shavings. Two of the men move their hands over the desk, carving strange characters into the surface of ragged paper. These men are in black suits. The men in the black suits look ridiculous in their little desks. They do not smile. They are plump and pour out onto the sides of the desk. Their plump, white faces are clean shaven and IN THE WRINKLES ON THEIR FACE they dab themselves with pristine white handkerchiefs. One man has an old blue typewriter in front of him with a sheet of paper loaded.

There is one man, he wears a purple robe over a slaves rags. He holds a scepter of pyrite and his eyes are glossy and unfocused. He stands on a dais above the other men, trembling with cold and fear. [the cold fear of fever dream nights shaking in the covers, we all know it know it know it well] he has an unkempt beard. His hair is wild and his cheeks are lean. He looks at nothing. He is on the dais. He raises his hands slowly up and down.

The final man is unseen.

These are the men.

THERE IS the reservoir, the water, the towers, the men. These are the. There are the wrinkles in the face. There are the ripples on the water. There are the currents of electricity. There are the cracks in the concrete.

HERE IS WHERE THINGS GO

A man in a black suit turns his pale, plump face to another man in a black suit with a pale, plump face. He licks his lips, blinks his eyes, gesticulates subtly. There is a mason’s code at work here. The third man in the black suit transcribes the code thus:

[Names Have Been Changed]

GORDON
Oh my. Oh my. Oh my, Sam. Things aren’t looking too hot, Sam. We’ve really got it this time, Sam. Things are on the edge, Sam. We’re right on the good goddamn edge.

SAM
There are enough digits to plug. There are enough digits. Gordon. Gordon, my boy. Gordy. You are always so… You are always so…

GORDON
But there are so many, Sam. So many, Sam. Sam, do you hear me, Sam? There are so many.

SAM
Gordon, my dear boy, do you see what I’m saying. The holes have… These holes have… We have the power, we alone have the power to stop them up. These men [here SAM gesticulates wildly toward the throng of gray jumpsuited men] these men are… these men are so…

GORDON
YES SAM, we have the power. YES SAM. And what about, okay Sam, but what about…

[GORDON’s eyes blink rapidly, the third man watches but does not transcribe the code. It is not for transcription. His eyes blink rapidly.]

SAM
Don’t worry about that either, Gordy. Don’t worry. Let’s get to work. Yes! Another day to take care of business.

[SAM laughs, it seems like laughter, it looks like laughter, if you polled a group of people they would say “he laughs” but but but but]

the third man halts transcription. He rests his hands a moment, then pulls a cigar out of his pocket. He looks at the cigar. He does NOT light it.

HERE IS WHERE THINGS

The Third Man Has No Fire

]

GORDON stands up and flaps his arms like a bird. The men in the white suits mimic his action. The men in the gray suits file slowly toward the wall of the reservoir. Each man takes his place, spread out across the wall.

SAM says something that sounds like ‘Cover the line, men! Cover the line!’ THE THIRD MAN holds an unlit cigar in his mouth. His hands do not move.

The men are spread across the wall. Each man in white has his company of eight grays. Each man in white walks back and forth inspecting the men in gray. The men in white are the inspectors.

The sun is in the middle of the sky. It is almost time.

HERE IS WHERE

SAM says something that sounds like ‘It is almost time. Prepare! Prepare!’ [GORDON has ceased flapping and is now touching the top of his head slowly, slowly. Slowly.

Let’s say that at this point in time, as the sun reaches its zenith, water slowly begins to drip from the tiny cracks in the concrete of the reservoir.

THE CONCRETE
IS INCOMPLETE

The men in white are the inspectors. The inspectors see the water. [There is so much water.] SAM looks at something. SAM looks at GORDON. GORDON raises his left sleeve and pulls a straight razor out from his right pocket. He lowers the blade to the top of his arm and cuts. The razor cuts the top of his arm and the blood drips slowly through the tiny cut in the flesh.

THE FLESH
IS INCOMPLETE

At the sign of the cut [the code is no longer transcribed, causal relation is assumed] the men in gray begin to plug the cracks in the concrete with their fingertips. The men in white walk up and down slowly, inspecting each man in gray. Occasionally a man will change fingers.

The men’s fingers are sometimes chapped, bruised, broken, nails are torn off, bleeding, cut, smashed, wrenched, yes, it is true, some men have lost fingers. We do not apologize for this. The glory of the job outweighs it. These men give their their their

The fingers plug the holes. GORDON bleeds. SAM is looking. THE THIRD MAN sits quietly, patting his jacket pockets for a cigar cutter [he knows he has no fire]. The men in white inspect. The men in gray have the fingers. The man in the robes stands on the dais and shivers. The final man CANNOT BE SEEN. There is the reservoir (concrete). There is the water (rippling on the face). There are the towers (sending their data through coursing electricity).

HERE IS

Let’s say this goes on for a time. Stars are born and die; gases coalesce and diffuse. A beam of light travels across the chasm. This is what happens. There is no data to measure the beams distance, width, path, composition, destination. There is no data.

Then, then, then something happens.

As the fifty men do their jobs, something happens. This is what happens.

[during this whole time, the men work on the reservoir in the background, moving furtively, signaling, arms flap, mouths form sounds, etc.]

An old man walks to the center of the space in front of the reservoir. He is old and tired, his hair is greasy and matted. He is dirty. He pulls behind him a small, steel cart. The old man pulls a folding lawn chair out of the cart and sets it up. He angles it carefully so that it gets the most sunlight. He sits in the lawn chair. He takes inventory of the cart.

Portable gas burner.
Metal tin.
Small tank of propane.
Half package of Jimmy Dean sausage.
Half block of cheddar cheese.
Quarter bottle of oil.
Half loaf of all American wonder bread.

The man nods to himself. [the background activity continues] The man takes out the tank of propane and sets it on the ground. He takes out the gas burner and hooks it up to the tank. He takes out the metal tin and sets it on top of the burner. He turns the burner on. He smiles as a low blue flame erupts from the nozzle. He pours the oil on the tin. He puts the sausage in the tin. The sausage begins to cook. He takes out a slice of wonder bread. He puts a piece of cheese on the wonder bread. He puts the cooked sausage on the wonder bread. He puts another slice of wonder bread on top. He turns off the burner. He sits back in his lawn chair. He sits back in his lawn chair and smiles.

HERE

The old man sits back in his lawn chair and smiles, the beams of light hitting his weathered face. He eats his midday meal.

mend i cant

2009-12-10T06:57:00.001-08:00

His eyes are the first thing you see.
His face is caked with dirt.
His dirty eyes are the first thing you see.
Then his teeth. Then you see his teeth. Then you see his dirty teeth.
He begs. He begs. He begs.

PRESENTLY in his lap is a small plastic bowl. The bowl is plastic.

INTO this bowl people throw coins, bills, trash, spit. He begs, you see. The people give him things. Coins. Bills. Trash. Spit. Sometimes they give him things, sometimes they do not. The ones who give him nothing do not look at him. He holds a small plastic bowl in his lap.

The women walk by. These are the women. The women walk by. These women are the women who walk by during working hours when male slaves with bulging guts and burned out hair and death rattle insides pull the levers and push the buttons. THESE ARE THE WOMEN who walk by during the hours when the slaves slave. The women walk by, they are many, they are women.

The women come in many flavors.
He begs
The women come in many flavors. This one is a flaxen-haired child of angels. This little nuggethead of the soulful hymn. OH nuggethead your golden, flaxen hair (they said flaxen) and your thoughts of gold and your golden eyes riveted into a golden gaze, you little nugget. You nuggethead.

BUT she is just one. One of many and not even one for she has no singularity. (Like the slaves who pull the levers) She is not INFINITELY DENSE but hollow and a hole in the strictest, pre-quantum definition of the word.

There are other women. These are the other women. One has dark hair. She wears white. Should the women who walk by during the hours when the slaves slave wear white? He is the dirty eyed beggar. This is where she opens her mouth:

-Do…you….uh….and…the…I…

He is missing many teeth and his mouth is black. He doesn’t need it. The beggar rarely eats. He holds a plastic bowl and sits on the concrete like an absentee dreamer levitating above the filthy pool of awareness. BECAUSE,

he says,

They are all dirty. They are. They are all dirty. So,

IN HIS LEFT HAND he holds a gem. It is red. The gem he holds in his left hand is red. He has pulled it from his breast. The red gem he holds in his left hand he has pulled from his breast. He has opened his chest (his chest sags, sways, is covered in gray hairs and you see the thin outline of a wan futile ribcage imploding in the gravity of years) and pulled out the gem. The gem is perfectly cut. He holds the gem up in his left hand.

IN HIS RIGHT HAND he holds the cancer. It is black and brown and green and a rainbow of biological flavor with thick strands of hair and veins and it drips and you wait for it to pulse and it is slick and cauliflowered exploding outward exploding exploding. He has pulled it from his head. He has opened his head (his head sinks on his frail neck, is covered in gray hairs and you see his skin stretched taut against his bird face like a dying man. The cancer is oblong and misshapen. It smells. He holds the cancer up in his right hand.

The women the women
The women the women
The women the whomen
(this must be the)

the women walk by in those hours a blackhead, a nuggethead, the occasional red haired SLUT. These fucking women. They move in slow motion and pause. They wear the dark sunglasses and stare at the sun and you watch as their mascara streaks down their hollow cheeks cruising a ride on their memory tears. THIS ONE was raped and THIS ONE was abused and THIS ONE was broken with a chain and THIS ONE took the belt and THIS ONE was kicked by a horse and THIS ONE had oil spilled on her chest and THIS ONE and THIS ONE and THIS ONE all these memory tears ruining the thirty-five dollar mascara, yes, thirty-five down at Sephora in the mall thirty-four ninety-nine. [she blinks her eyes coyly, she lifts her skirt a quarter centimeter, she opens her mouth slightly just slightly just slightly and you may have seen the tip of her pink little tongue inside the fetid snatch across her face.]

There are things on the sidewalk. The pavement moves things like a campground basement air hockey table, old papers, bottles, cigarette butts still smoldering. He sits. He begs. His eyes are the dirt. In his hands he holds the gem, the cancer. Like an offering to an ancient, defeated god, he prostrates himself across the sidewalk, stinking of wine like the good faithful and [Three Dollars a Bottle] drinks another one down in time, in time, but now he sits patiently and waits and watches and then

THE WOMEN WALK BY IN THOSE HOURS

The women are holes, the men pull the levers and push the buttons, he begs, you watch. This is how things are. He drinks the wine, the women drink the champagne in whirlpool baths in big houses out in the suburbs [there is a ring around the bottom of the bathtub where little by little it collects] and the men drink the whiskey in the bars where no women go in the dark bars, in the black bars, in the bars with watery drinks and watery music and tint on the windows, the bars that open at six AM and you’ve seen the men standing there waiting for them to open, standing out in the cold street like greek warriors in flannel and denim, stepping over the bodies of the fallen who hunker in doorways and backbuilding alcoves with the rats and the cats and the worms.

A nuggethead reaches out for the gem.
-oh baby … the … is … it … for … (a gurgling noise)
Her talons curve and her eyes are lit up like the cigarettes she smokes on the back porch but her clumsy innards tremble her wasted hand and she cuts herself on its perfect facet and she bleeds all the bathtub ring dirt from her thousand lifetimes like a sieve in the sewer only with half the soul. Her stupid clay shoes shatter TAKE THAT YOU BITCH he has probably hit her [but pulling the levers all day who can blame him] her stupid little shoes. Her stupid bathtub ring.
her
stupid
little
nugget
head

The plastic bowl remains empty.

A blackhaired idiot reaches for the cancer.
-put it inside me… mellifluous…I have this really funny friend….i went to college in… when I was a little girl i…PUT THE CANCER INSIDE ME…I’m a very spiritual person…(a gurgling noise)
her muted fake fingertips slip on the cancer and it splinters off inside her like a vein pattern (if you’ve ever eviscerated an animal for study and seen the web of veins the web of veins the web of veins) it spreads out and Tangentially, it spreads out inside of her like the web of veins you stupid blackhaired idiot and the cancer eats away but starves she is already hollow and her doll face is just a movie set façade and daddy killed her soul long ago in those nightlight blazing bedroom nights TAKE THAT YOU BITCH but daddy worked all day and who
can
blame
him

The women walk by in the hours when the men pull the levers and the man sits and offers his cancer to an idol and the man sits and offers his gem to the powers and you sit and watch like the translucent voyeur but you’ve seen his eyes they are the first thing you see and you’ve seen the women walk by
And you’ve seen
And you’ve seen the women
And you’ve seen the women walk by.

“Oh, I’m just so bored these days. He hasn’t taken me out on the town in weeks and things in the bedroom just aren’t what they used to be. The kids are a handful and money is tight. I wish I had this new dress I saw down at the mall. We’re both going to get on this new diet and I’ll try to lose this chub but after two kids well, haha. I guess we’re all just getting older and I guess we’re all just getting older and I guess we’re all just getting older. Bye bye, come again soon baby.”

bye
bye
baby
come
again
soon
baby
come again soon.

section 7

2009-12-10T06:56:00.001-08:00

My job is to keep the systems up. I keep the systems up and running. My job is to keep the systems up and running efficiently. The systems are up and running efficiently. Barry collates the data. Barry does not talk. Barry sorts through the data. He organizes the data. Barry’s job is to sort and analyze the data. He does so without talking. There are others. They are of no importance.

What do the systems do? Always the same. What do the systems do? Always the same questions. I can tell you. I can tell you what I know. I don’t know much. My job is, after all, to keep the systems up. First of all, there are many shops like this one. I don’t know how many. There are many. They are like this one. I have never seen one. So we’re just a part. The systems we run are just part of the systems. The data we collate is just part of the data. There are others. Other shops of importance. Others in our shop of no importance. I keep the systems up. Barry sorts the data.

A while back, you want to know how long, I can tell you what I know and I don’t know much. It was a while. A while back we lost section 7. I don’t know exactly when we lost it. I don’t know what section 7 is. I don’t know why we lost it. The facts are all there. We have the data. We have the answers. The systems still function. We still sort the data SHUT UP BARRY we still sort the data all of this without section 7 but orders are orders and I’m just doing my job.

When we lost section 7 a number of other sections were established. I don’t know how many sections. I don’t know when they were established. I’ll tell you what I know. The purpose of these other sections? Always the same. The purpose. Always the same questions. I can tell you. The new sections were established not in order to replace section 7. Section 7 cannot be replaced. SHUT UP BARRY The new sections were established to locate and retrieve section 7.

Each section has a datacenter. You are in this datacenter. I keep the systems up in this data center. Barry collates the data in this datacenter. There are others. The datacenters do not have windows. Datacenters do not have windows. Who ever heard of a datacenter with a window? Barry is laughing at you. It’s okay, Barry, go ahead and laugh. Now look, I’ll tell you what I know. There aren’t any windows.

I already told you I don’t know anything about section 7 SHUT UP BARRY we don’t have any data on that SHUT UP BARRY but we know we need to retrieve it. These systems I keep up are to retrieve section 7. This data is used to retrieve section 7. That’s why it’s here. We’re here to make sure it happens. There are others. You won’t meet them.

This girl. Her job is to model the data. Barry collates the data. She models the data. She speaks with her hands. The girl who models the data speaks with her hands. We create. This all runs off of these systems. We create scenarios. We have these systems. I keep the systems up. Barry collates the data. The girl models the data. We create scenarios. Retrieval scenarios.

She speaks with her hands and when her ffffingers when her fingers bend it’s if we could show it how if we the scenarios show if her wrisssst when her wrist moves it’s as if she could show SHE’S TRYING TO SHOW YOU the retrieval scenarios. She saysss with her hands she says THE HANDS ARE MOVING

Let’s say hypothetically that we recovered section 7 it might be something like this: [she bends her two index fingers down]
Let’s say HYPOTHETICALLY that section 7 were in our possession right now. [her left wrist makes small circular motions, she opens and closes her right hand rhythmically]
These are the scenarios.
I’m not promising anything.
All this is hypothetical.
All this is scenario.
All this is not happening.
But what if it could? [she touches the tips of her index, ring and pinky fingers together] All this is not happening. [she smiles]

THE HANDS CEASE MOTION We all have our jobs. Each job is different. There are those who do the same job. The objective. I can tell you what I know. The objective is to retrieve section 7. When we lost section 7, I don’t know when, I don’t know what it was, I don’t know why we need to retrieve it, I don’t know how we lost it, when we lost it the other sections were established to handle its retrieval. Each section has its systems. Each system has its operator. Each system has its data. All data has a collator. All data has a modeler. There are others. They are not important.

SHUT UP BA-

his lips are wired shut his lips are chapped and white where dry skin slowly peels off and the wire is rusted and barbed his left eye blinks rapidly a trickle of blood comes down from his temple where the metal headbrace digs into his flesh his lips do not move his eye blinks rapidly rapidly the eye is unfocused he has an arm tremor he points with his right index finger he is missing his legs he is covered in scars

-RRY these systems do the work. I keep them up and running. You see they are up and running. The data is properly collated. The data is properly modeled. We have many scenarios. Many.

There are many variables. The variables make the calculations difficult. Difficult calculations call for complex systems. Do you see the linearity? Systems call for operators. Data calls for collators. Data calls for modelers. Everything makes sense. We have the most efficient systems. Our data analysis is superb. Our data modeling is unsurpassable. We will find section 7. SHUT UP BARRY SHUT. UP.

I do not know what will happen when we retrieve section 7. SHUT UP. We will if but were we to. SHUT UP. If we the scenarios. But.

If we were to retrieve section 7.

All these systems. We prove the efficiency of the systems. Success vindicates effort. I’ll tellllll you what I know. SHUT UP BARRY wrisssssts efficient systems prove successful invalidating systems need everything makes sense do you see the linearity we lost section 7 we established new sections SHES MOVING we set up the systems SHUT we operate the systems UP we collate the data BARRY we model the data SHES MOVING HER we create the scenarios fffffffffingerrrrrrrrs we utilize the scenarios we we we we retrieve section 7 SHES UP BARRY HER we retrieve section 7 and then and then and then and then

[A large red light begins blinking rapidly]

THE SYSTEMS ARE

HER HANDS MOVE

Imagine if you will that we had it back. [she bends her right elbow down, all fingers spread and straight out]
Imagine if you will that it was ours. [she bends her left elbow up, index and middle fingers straight and together, pointing up, other fingers curled]
Let’s say that we put section 7 back in place. [her wrist moves slightly]
Let’s say that the puzzle is completed. Let’s say. [her right hand mimics her left, index and middle fingers together, pointing down, other fingers curled.]

[she smiles]

THE SYSTEMS BARRY THE DATA he is rapidly unwinding the wire with broken fingers rapidly moving pushing wire up and down through flesh and the blood is going into his mouth and staining his teeth and it drips of his dirty chin and the wire is loosening we kept the systems running we created these scenarios the RED LIGHT IS BLINKING
Imagine if you will THE RED LIGHT IS BLINKING
[her third hand holds the drum]
the wire falls to the floor and his adam’s apple moves and the gurgling begins
we kept the systems
we kept the systems running
we kept the systems running efficiently
[her fourth hand holds the sword]
blood and pitch spew from his mouth and he is gurgling and gurgling and writhing the brace is digging into his skull
IMAGINE IF YOU WILL HYPOTHETICALLY LET’S SAY THAT [she smiiiiiiiles]
Her wrrrrrrrrrist.
BARRY BARRY SHUT UP
his tongue is writhing and spitting, his head lolls, he is trying to speak he is trying to speak
HE IS TRYING TO SPEAK

[her fifth hand holds the severed head]

she
speaks
with
her
hands

[the immoveable spot]

he gurgles forth the words
he gurgles forth the words through blood
he gurgles forth the words through blood and pitch

BARRY

There is nothing to fear.

[She smiles]

horses on the beach

2009-12-10T06:54:00.002-08:00

Remember the time (oh yes, I remember the time well) when was that? Many years ago and many years ago. Gnawing away, the hungry ghosts gnawing gnawing, insubstantial devouring substantial. Fuel for the fire of a thousand thousand lives since past and when was the time (oh yes, I remember the time well) the craven desire of this impulse like a simple scratching on the skin, away when I was young. Remember the time, oh yes, I remember the time well.

But it’s not all memory. It can’t be all memory. It can’t be all ghosts, no. I haven’t consigned my fire to the ghosts. Maybe in time. Maybe in time. But after so long there’s so much memory and everything reminds. This place, no, it’s this place, that’s why I came here. To remember. I remember. I still remember, even not being here, I remember. But being here I remember better, yes, I remember better being here. There’s a smell there are sounds there are things I remember well.

It’s changed since then. The sea is still the same of course the sea is always the same but many things have been built up since. Many things have been built up and many things have been taken down taken down. But in the middle is the same space spreading out in all directions. In the middle there is a space. What goes in this space? I don’t remember. Did I ask? I asked before and I can’t remember what it was. Was there something that goes here? What was it? What goes in the space?

There was that time. I remember it well. Oh yes. We came here. His name was what was it? It was, well I remember him. We came here and he said to me look at the ocean I remember he told me that. Look at the ocean and he said it that way and I looked, he said it and I looked. He smiled at me then and I can still remember it and the way it felt and was it that long ago but I still can think of it and smile too. I looked at the ocean (he said and I looked) and he kissed the back of my neck. And I closed my eyes and felt the sea breeze in my face and was it that long ago?

Things collected on the beach. There is the wood and there are the shells and wood and shells and things that have rolled in many things (so many things) but it comes together and on the beach it comes together it makes this picture and I remember the way it came together. The salt water covers all that collects there and the salt itself collects and salt-whitened (all is salt-whitened) the way I remember it and there is metal sometimes and the bright orange dissolution in the salt bath rotting like the driftwood on the sand rotting and dissolution and in this space is that what gathers (here in the middle) where the things are collected that’s what’s here. That is what was here.

Then (was it so long ago) there were others. There are others now but they are different. Or the others of then (I remember them well) became the others of now and the others and others but then I can see them there on the beach. Many. I can still remember what happened then and it’s happened before and it’s happened since but that time I can recall especially. But it gets difficult oh yes it gets difficult. Images and pieces and this and that and vaguely vaguely it comes into the clear.

There was a barrel. The barrel was almost full. The barrel had been filled nearly to the brim. There was a barrel. The barrel was filled with liquid. (What was it?) Was it clear or was it dark? It could have been clear or dark. But there was a barrel.

There was that and I can remember it well it was one of the first things I can think of and I remember it, but this was before. This was before all the rest.

Well, after he kissed my neck (he said, I looked, he kissed, I closed my eyes) I turned and looked at him. He had this look. The look I saw and have seen but hadn’t seen until I saw it then. He took my hand and we walked down to the beach. Yes I saw it all then (it lingers) and the salt decay did.

He stopped me short. He held my hand. He took my hand and stopped me short. It was then that I first saw them. (Oh yes, how the hungry ghosts devour.) They were brown and white and spotted and specked and I had never (my dear) I had never seen it or seen it yes it was a day of firsts of many firsts. They were big and loud and came forward quickly so quickly and he squeezed my hand and I looked at him and he said to me do you like horses and I said to him I don’t know. Yes I did and he laughed and I can see him laughing now like is he here he must be here no this was so long was it that long it was so long but I can still see him laughing.

There were the horses and they trotted along the shore there were brown ones and white ones. We took a spot up on the cliff and lay in the sand and we watched and he had my hand and we saw them trot along and the men led them down down toward the debris.

The horses had all lined up and the people were down there but we couldn’t see their faces, we were too far away but he squeezed my hand, yes I remember it well. He said and I can remember him saying there is a race and I said oh and he said yes there is a race and I said why is there a race. He laughed (we still held hands.)

It started (this was when it happened) the race started and horses began down the beach. They flew along the beach and it seemed impossible, ridiculous that their spindly legs could carry them but they bent and pushed and they moved so quickly so quickly. They went down the beach and right as they reached the turn (the insubstantial) he kissed me and I can remember it (the substantial.) It was the first kiss. The horses came back they were so close they were so fast and then (this is when it happened) then the one the brown one he was all brown he stepped in something it was a hole there was a hole. There are holes in the beach. He stepped and I saw his leg go in maybe down to the knee and he was going so fast and he flipped forward and the man on top got thrown and the horse fell over and I could hear the crack and my god my god I said and I still hear that crack I can still hear it.

The horse lay on the beach and writhed terribly. The man came running, this other man, I don’t know who he was, he came running so fast he knocked over that barrel and it busted when it hit the side and it was like this horse and it busted open and the thick liquid inside oozed out and down the sand slowly it was dark (it was dark it could have been clear, in the barrel, outside it was clearly dark.)

He held me then and told me not to look but I saw and I didn’t want to but I did want to and I did and he held me so close and I watched that horse it was so helpless I watched him. They helped the man the man who was thrown. Then they tried to help the horse but they couldn’t help him and something had happened and I saw the man shaking his head looking at the horse and I heard him say poor creature and I thought poor creature and he held me tightly and I said why and he did not laugh.

There was a time. Was it so long ago? I was just a girl then. Yes it was long. But I remember some things very well like that time then with that man. When I come here I try not to too often, but it happens. But that was many years ago, many years ago and the ghosts are never satisfied. The insubstantial demands the substantial and memory is so powerful. Maybe it comes with age and the blessings of a full life (it had been many years ago) but the demands of the past they demand and it’s a strong pull back into that space (what goes in that space, the space in the middle?) and the deluge of what was comes back with all the salt-white salt-decay and tangled wood and running wild and the kiss of that man (the first kiss) and it all blurs together like a torrent against my fire like the orange dissolution like the craven howling ghosts like the fragile tenuous barrel like the days and years between like the horses on the beach

shear

2009-12-10T06:54:00.001-08:00

I sweep. I sweep the hair. I sweep the hair he cuts. I sweep the hair he cuts off the floor. I have this broom. There’s a radio. Sometimes the radio is on. Sometimes the radio is not on. I sweep with this broom. The radio can play music. The radio can play the news. The hair piles up on the floor. I sweep it. The man cuts the hair. The man who cuts the hair. The man who cuts the hair’s name is uh. The man who cuts the hair, his name is uh. The man who cuts the hair, his name is Frank. I sweep the hair. The radio is off. Frank turns the radio off. When the radio is on, Frank has turned it on. Frank cuts the hair. Frank turns the radio on and Frank turns the radio off. I sweep the hair.

There are chairs. There are two chairs. The men sit in the chairs. The men have many names. The men with many names sit in the chairs and their hair is cut. Frank cuts their hair. Sometimes the other one cuts the hair. His name is uh. The other one who cuts the hair sometimes, other than Frank, his name is uh. Two people can sit in the two chairs. Two people can have their hair cut. Frank can only cut one man’s hair at a time. When the other, uh. When the other, uh. When the other one isn’t there, only one chair has a man. Sometimes Frank turns on the radio.

A man will sit in the chair. Frank will say something. He will say uh. He will say uh. He will say things. Sometimes Frank turns on the radio. I sweep up the hair. Sometimes Frank says things. Sometimes Frank turns on the radio. I sweep the hair. Frank does not talk to me. Frank has a guitar. Frank’s guitar is old. Frank’s radio is old. Frank is old. The chairs are old. The men in the chairs are old.

Frank has the scissors. Frank holds the scissors. The scissors. The scissors are. The scissors are sharp. The scissors are sharp and they cut. Frank says uh. Frank says uh. Frank says don’t uh. Don’t touch. Don’t touch the scissors. They cut the hair. I sweep the hair. Frank, using the scissors, cuts the hair. I sweep the hair. I use my broom. I, using my broom, sweep the hair that Frank cuts, using the scissors, off the floor. The floor is old.

There is a bowl. The bowl sits on a table. There is a table. The table is next to a bench. There is a bench. The bench is where the men sit. They sit on the bench before they sit in the chairs. In the bowl on the table next to the bench where the men sit before they sit in the chairs is candy. I like the candy. Frank does not like the candy. Frank refills the candy dish. I have seen it. I have seen him. I have seen him refill the candy dish. Sometimes the men take the candy. Sometimes the men eat the candy. Sometimes I take the candy. Sometimes I eat the candy. Sometimes Frank says uh. Sometimes Frank says uh. Sometimes Frank says I better not eat too much.

Frank plays the guitar. Sometimes. Sometimes Frank plays the guitar. When there are no men. When there are no men on the bench or in the chairs, sometimes, Frank plays his guitar. Frank doesn’t talk to me. I sweep the hair. Frank plays his guitar. I like Frank’s guitar. I do not play Frank’s guitar.

The broom is old. The bottom of the broom is old. I clean the bottom of the broom. The hair falls out of the bottom of the broom. I watch the hair fall out of the bottom of the broom. My grip on the broom is tight. I hold the broom tight. I hold on to the broom. I do not drop the broom.

I have three shirts. I wear three shirts. I will wear three shirts. I have a blue shirt. I have a white shirt. I have a red shirt. I will wear the blue shirt. I will wear the white shirt. I will wear the red shirt. Today I wear the red shirt. Frank has many shirts. Frank has a lot of shirts. The men wear different shirts. Everybody has a shirt. The hair gets on my shirt. The hair Frank cuts gets on my shirt. I wipe the hair off my shirt. I sweep the hair off the floor.

When it gets dark. When it gets dark. When it gets dark outside the men go home. I sweep the most when the men go home, when it gets dark. After it gets dark, after I sweep the most, I go home. I do not live at Frank’s. Frank does not live at Frank’s. There’s uh. There’s uh. That’s the uh. There’s. After it gets dark, there’s that. And that’s the.

II

One of the men has a dog. The dog. What the dog that. The dog is on the floor. The dog is old. The man with the dog is old. The man with the dog says something. I can’t. I don’t. The man with the dog says something. Frank says something. I can’t. I don’t. The thing is. The thing IS. It is. I. The dog has a long tongue. The dog wags his long tongue. The thing is. The dog lays on the floor. Look. I sweep the hair. The man still says. Frank still says. I can’t. I don’t. The thing is. I sweep the hair. Off the floor. Frank says. I sweep the hair. The man with dog says. Off the floor. Off the floor.

The piles and piles. The piles of hair. The piles and piles. Piles and piles. The hair I sweep in piles. The hair I sweep off the floor in piles. The hair I sweep off the floor in piles on the floor. The piles of hair I sweep on the floor. Off the floor. The piles. I sweep. The broom pushes the hair. The hair is from the men. The men sit in the chairs. Frank cuts the hair. The hair falls. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the hair fall. I’ve swept the hair. I’ve swept the hair that’s fallen. Swept it into the piles. There are piles and piles. The men come in. The men leave. The men come in. Frank cuts the hair. The men leave. They come. The scissors. Frank with the scissors. They leave. The men leave. The men were cut. The men were cut. The men were cut.

Frank says uh. Frank says uh. I can’t. I don’t. The thing is. THE THING IS. Frank has the scissors. I have the broom. Frank has the radio. Frank turns the radio on. Sometimes. Frank has the guitar. Frank plays the guitar. Sometimes. The radio, the guitar, the scissors. The bench, the chairs, the hair not cut. The broom, the hair cut. There are things. Frank says things. Sometimes. He says uh. The thing is.
Frank has the razor. Sometimes. I’ve seen the razor. I’ve seen it. The men. Some men. They sit in the chairs. Frank uses the razor. Frank cuts with the razor. Frank keeps the razor in his pocket. I’ve seen it. I’m not to touch the razor. There are. There are things. There are things I remember. Don’t touch the razor. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen Frank. He says uh. He says. The thing is. I. Frank sharpens the razor. Frank has a strap. The strap is brown. The strap. He touches the razor to the strap. He slides the razor across the strap. He runs the razor back and forth back and forth against the strap. It sounds. He folds the razor. He puts it in his pocket. I do not have pockets.

III

I am. I am trying. I am trying to. I am trying to tell. I am trying to tell you. I am trying to tell you something. What it is. What it is. It is. What it is. I. The thing is. I’ve heard. Frank says uh. Look.

I sweep the hair that he cuts off the floor.
I SWEEP the hair that he cuts off the floor.
I SWEEP THE HAIR that he cuts off the floor.

Look.

He cuts. He cuts. He cuts the hair. I sweep the hair. I am trying. He cuts. The thing is. I. LOOK. He cuts. I am trying. The hair. Off the floor look. What the thing. Is I. What it LOOK. The thing is. I remember things. He says. He says. Uh. Uh.

Uh.

LOOK

The thing is uh.

I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE cuts off the floor.
I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE CUTS off the floor
I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE CUTS OFF the floor
The floor the floor. Look.

I am trying to.

Look. The thing is. Uh. He cuts. The thing IS. He cuts. THE THING IS. He cuts.

Frank has said. Uh. Frank has said. Uh. I am trying. LOOK. The thing is. He cuts.

I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE CUTS OFF THE FLOOR
I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE CUTS OFF THE FLOOR
I SWEEP THE HAIR THAT HE CUTS OFF THE FLOOR

sine wave

2009-12-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

there's sand. maybe it's sawdust.
he moves it from one pile to another in his hotel room.
"what are you doing?" she says.
"it came out of the wall," he says.
he moves it from one pile to another. they are in the hotel pickwick.
"i want to go shopping," she says.
"well, go," he says.
she picks at her lips. she has lipstick on her finger.
he is moving the sand. or sawdust.
"let's go," she says.
"hold on," he says. he is digging now, into the pile. there's a root.
"where did that come from?" she says.
"how should i know?" he says.
"i don't know," she says.
"me either," he says.
"well, let's go out," she says.
"fine," he says.
he stands up and has sawdust or sand on his knees. she doesn't say anything.
he puts on his sport coat and opens the hotel room door.
the lock chicks out of place.
he briefly sees past the closing door of the room across the hall.
a thin, elegant blonde with the reddest lipstick he's ever seen is french kissing a brunette with pale skin in a black evening dress.
the door closes.
she follows him into the hall.
"what were you looking at?" she says.
"nothing." he says.

*

"the pickwick's right on union square," she says.
"no, the francis drake is on union square. this is near union square," he says.
there is traffic on the streets.
there is garbage on the streets.
they walk on the streets, across market street to the other sidewalk, past the steel rolling gate of a camera shop.
"it's not open yet," he says.
she says nothing. her heels clack on the ground. he looks at her hair in the streetlight.
it is not as blonde as he remembered.
"what do you want for dinner?" she says.
"i don't care," he says.
"you always make me do this," she says. "why do i always have to pick?"
"all right then, italian," he says.
she keeps walking.
there are homeless people sleeping in doorways, in the alleys between buildings.
"what were you doing in the room?" she says.
"i was moving it," he says.
"moving what?" she says.
"it was sand. maybe sawdust. it was in the walls," he says.
"maybe it's from the construction," she says. the pickwick is under construction.
"maybe," he says.
it is cold outside. they reach union square. there are many people.
"not here," he says.
they keep walking down market street.

*

"we're going to be at the wharf if you keep this up," she says.
"we're almost there," he says.
"my feet hurt," she says.
the walls are brick. piping and cabling run up and down the side.
there are stores on the bottom floor. apartments on the upper floors.
light from a window.
a middle aged man in a sleeveless shirt sits in a threadbare recliner. he is watching television.
he is in the light of the television.
"what are you looking at?" she says.
"nothing," he says.
they stop at an alley. a sign. it says something.
"cafe tiramisu," she says.
"yeah," he says.
"it sounds good," she says.
"yeah," he says.
she examines the menu behind the glass casing attached to the wall.
he looks at the fractured cement in the sidewalk, splintering into the curb. cars pass.
"let's go inside," she says.
"all right," he says.

*

they sit in a dark booth near the back of the restaurant.
she has a drink. he has a drink.
he drinks his drink.
she looks at him.
her glass has lipstick marks.
her lipstick is not very red.
"it's nice," she says.
"yeah," he says.
the booth is semi-circular. they sit in the middle. they look out at the restaurant.
there are many people. she lifts her glass.
her arm is not as elegant as before.
her arm is not as pale as before.
she drinks her drink.
she looks away.
"how is it," he says.
"it's all right," she says.
"good," he says.
"yes," she says.
the waiter comes. he has a mustache. his hair is shiny.
he does not like the waiter.
they order.
they wait.
"san francisco is a great town," she says.
"is it?" he says.
"it's better than los angeles," she says.
"is it?" he says.
"i think it is," she says.
he doesn't know. he doesn't miss los angeles.
he doesn't care for san francisco.
"doesn't it all seem the same," he says.
"not really," she says.
he sighs. he orders another drink.
he drinks his other drink.
they finish.
the waiter wants to know how the food was.
"it was fine," he says.
"very good," she says.
they pay the bill. he pays the bill.

*

he is buzzed but not drunk. he wanted to be drunk.
she only had one drink.
she holds his arm as they walk back down market street. it is very dark.
there is less traffic.
a sewer grate in the street is clogged with debris and garbage.
the streetlights hum. she clings to him.
he is annoyed.
he hates her. sometimes.
he has been hating her more and more.
it's the liquor talking.
"that was nice," she says.
he says nothing. they walk back, down market street.
they reach union square.
"let's look around the square. i bet it's nice at night," she says.
"okay," he says.
they go into the square.
it is quiet. it is late. people sleep in doorways. the construction is silent. they walk towards the middle of the square.
"the sir francis drake," she says. "you were right."
"yeah," he says.
they sit down on a bench.
he looks up. there are no stars. is it overcast? or the city lights. he cannot see them.
he would like to see them.
"there aren't any stars," he says.
she looks up.
"no, there aren't," she says.
"we can't see them in l.a. either," he says.
"so?" she says.
"i guess it doesn't matter," he says.
"you can see them sometimes," she says.
"i guess," he says.
a sine wave. what does that mean? it popped into his head. the words 'sine wave.'
"sine wave," he says.
"what?" she says.
"never mind," he says.
she holds his hand.
"let's go," he says.
they go.

*

the door across the hall is closed. he looks at it.
she looks at it.
she looks at him.
she looks at it again.
she looks at him again.
he looks away from it.
he opens their door.
she goes into the bathroom and closes the door.
he throws his coat on the floor.
he looks at the root protruding from the pile of sand.
there is no tree.
"there's no tree," he yells to her through the door.
no response.
he hears her running the water in the bathroom.
he takes his shoes off.
he picks up the ice bucket and takes off the plastic.
he pats his pockets.
he has the room key.
he leaves the room and walks down the hall.

*

the carpet smells.
the walls are beige. and hideous.
the ice machine is old. it says ICE on it. he pushes the bucket against the lever.
the machine rumbles.
ice falls into the bucket.
he watches the ice fall into the bucket.
his hand is cold.
he looks up and the blonde from across the hall is standing there.
she is wearing a silk robe.
her hair is made up and her make up is perfect.
her lips are red.
"hi," she says.
"hi," he says.
"you're across the hall, right?" she says.
"yeah," he says.
"where you from?" she says.
"l.a.," he says.
"oh, i love l.a.," she says. "i love hollywood."
he nods.
"what about you?" he says.
"i'm from back east," she says.
"back east," he says.
"back east," she says.
"what about your friend," he says. he saw them.
"she's from back east too," she says and smiles.
she knows he saw them. she smiles.
he smiles.
they smile.
she pushes her bucket against the ice dispenser.
the machine rumbles.
"what's your name," he says.
"why?" she says.
"i want to know," he says.
"if i tell you, you'll forget it," she says.
"no, i won't," he says.
"it's therese," she says.
"therese," he says.
she smiles.
he puts his hand on her shoulder.
she looks at it.
he leans in and kisses her.
she kisses him back.
he holds his ice bucket.
she holds her ice bucket.
they kiss.
he feels her breast with his empty hand.
she moans.
he reaches into her robe and puts his hand between her legs.
she is wet. she is shaven.
"therese," he says.
she moans.
he removes his hand. they kiss again.
"goodnight," she says.
"goodnight," he says.
she walks back to her room and the door closes behind her.
he stands in front of the ice machine holding his bucket.
the ice drips.

*

there is more sawdust on the floor.
or sand.
she lies in bed, her eyes open.
"where were you," she says.
"getting ice," he says.
she does not reply.
it smells like her lotion. or shampoo. or something.
he puts the ice down on the small table.
he takes one of the small plastic cups and scoops some ice out of the bucket.
he pours a bottled water into the cup.
she watches television.
he drinks the water.
she rolls over.
he chews the ice.
he crunches the ice in his teeth.
she cranes her head back towards him.
"can you not do that?" she says.
"what?" he says.
"that," she says. "chewing ice."
"sorry," he says.
he throws the cup in the trash.
he lays down next to her. she turns off the television.
it is dark. there is a sound coming through the walls.
a humming.
some kind of reverberation.
an industrial sound.
"what is that?" he says.
"what is what?" she says.
"can't you hear that?" he says.
"hear what?" she says.
"never mind," he says.
"where were you?" she says.
"getting ice," he says.
she does not reply.