Axiom

We are walking, talking

Laughing heartfelts

Tripping over wise words and

Wondering about our places.

Seneca

You've got a point there.

Tell you what

I'll trade you some bottles and pouches

To lighten my load

In return for your least favourite cane

And some piece of everyone's mind

So I can tell what's mine.

Misdirection

My Love,

What if this whole time,

I were really an owl,

Picking mice out from between,

The old church stones.

Would you find me then?

Jubilee, I Gave You Away

Flooded,

They broke in upon,

Our quiet campaign.

All rights and liberties,

Flushing your face so red.

Nigel

But - I asked him,

What about the house lights?

Will it always be just me?

He leaned across,

I made up constellations,

For the freckles on his forearm,

"If there's no one else,

Then we'll go by moonlight my friend."

An Inkling

We'll find out

That it was all just like

Plucking at the grass

Being & waiting to be.

Press Pass

We mentioned Newt

And probably inhaled

So many neon signs missing letters.

Big Sky

I remember

It was spiritual

I felt swallowed, scared

I felt it was best

To put one foot in front of the other

My place in this universe

So loveably small

Those two words meeting in my mind

For the first time

Like separated twins

Or Bartimaeus' first glimpses of Jericho

And I saw you.

Inundated, I fell away for a while.

Mesa

Settled down

In wanting red dust

He leaned on his shovel like some

Unwelcome scepter

The fence stretching back

Miles now

But they've had no reason to put the kettle on

Since the well ran dry.

That's your education,

When the well runs dry.

Equivalency

We try so hard,

To explain and package,

Everything that we are and feel,

And is happening right up to now,

The same as when I was little,

Alone in the upstairs closet,

Trying to put on all of my father's shirts and ties,

All at the same time,

Each foot in one shoe from each of his two pairs.

Quietly In Spirit, With No Alarm

We crawled out from under,

Quilts that our grandmothers slaved over,

With our bodies feeling like they do,

Right out on the edge - all open

Swirling air and toes gripping,

Cold flat rock,

Like some tiny amount of control,

Was already being redressed to the grave,

Drawn back through our shadows,

Barely the size of children,

We made eggs and opened the window,

And talked as the temperatures equalized,

About Caroline, and how living

Never gets done feeling new,

And if we had enough money to spring

To get a bigger freezer,

While Hugh mowed serpentine across his yard,

The green scent meandering gently around our noses.

Tomorrow's Monday

So concerned that I

Am drastically behind schedule

At being the person and everything I want to be.

People are dropping like flies out there.

Let the Meeting Begin

The gnats like shooting stars,

Diving at the underwater light,

I felt so small up there,

So quietly representative,

Before diving in,

Listening to the congregation of bubbles,

The glaze that moves with my hands,

Sweeping around itself,

So unconcerned, or entirely there,

All the secret voices,

But before I could respond,

Laughter.

Reverse Mortgage

I awoke to doublestopped time,

Dylan's glasses and bedeviled,

Impossible infinitesimals in the floorboard,

Instinctively I reached for my face,

To feel for a bearing on my age,

And found it full of hiding places,

Not even a majority occupied,

Drinking from Mímisbrunnr,

Was probably a mistake in hindsight.

What I Remember

She made the autumn leaves,

Into boats that sailed down the creek,

Where the old folks washed their clothes,

We should've stockpiled our innocence,

But we were abandoned to it,

Like Icarus,

She had difficulty understanding the word dream,

We wrote new stories in the dirt after every storm,

About Aeneas, and Heloise, and Jesus, and Wiglaf,

She made my heart beat so bad,

Every time she skipped ahead,

Her hands covered in the granules of the earth.

The Epilogue Always Contains a Wedding

Balcony,

You sit like

You're so full of volumes

Weighed down with thirty,

The future,

Your too tamed tongue

Carmine your dress

Lacks nothing.

Your luster keeps up with the times

Until the dark very morning

Where coffee is more stirred than enjoyed

Early Morning, Full of Gusto

I want to throw my fresh-legged twenties,

Into you with smirked, swelled veins,

To repurchase every hillock and hostel alike,

To dig our feet into sunset sands,

The only fitting memory we have rights to demand,

To become new fictions to fall asleep with,

Luminous in space and time,

As entropy works accentuated knuckles,

Around the stars we dine by.

As It Always Moves

Sleepless,

Feeling for the fresh, new calluses,

Like the ones father was given,

After he buried the hound dog,

And wouldn't say a word at dinner.

Still that child,

Without any brothers or sisters,

Walking out along the fenceline.

Family Farm

You are

The tall grass I

Spent the whole summer

Talking to God in

Gödel

Perhaps the incompleteness

Is where we're supposed to fit

Pascalian nostalgia for trying

To merge into us.

Other Impressions Than the First

Your face will forever

Rack me of all coherency

Like domesticated fusion

Being Small

I remember,

Leaning over ledges,

Looking up staircases,

Watching the tops of the trees,

Pass backwards through sunroofs.

I've seen meteor showers,

Barely keeping my eyes open it was so early,

And I've woken up outside.

I've looked down on highways from mountains,

Made forts under covers,

Cautiously peering out from under the edges,

At a foreign world.

Rain running down windows,

Still holds my attention,

And when I get groceries,

I always ride the carts,

Out to the parking lot.

Being small is,

The best thing that ever happened to us.

Unwelcome Projections

In my dreams, not the ones where we're in incredible places, but the ones where the months fly out from now like so many dealt cards, I sit on a bench with its best days behind it, I wonder who put it there, what age of civic engagement it must have been to put a bench by a lake so distant from anywhere else, in fact I can't remember where I am, only that it is peaceful and that you are somewhere. And I'm always holding something to give: a mess of papers, wrapped up poorly-prepared cookies, once a cactus. So I know you must be coming, but the there's not much sun left, and first I sit atop the bench, then lay down across it, then return to how I started, with my hands and whatever item in my lap. And I feel that where I am must be so hard to find, that I know you must be looking, but when it gets dark, but never so far along that there's absolutely no sun, I start to worry that you wanted to find me but had to give up, and it's just me and the lake and the bench still, but no longer peaceful, and I worry, and I wake up.

Where Your Hair Sticks To Your Forehead

In silence,

He held down her pointed shoulders,

Against the sharp intake of breath,

Leaning, one leg up on,

The bare wood panelling.

"It's balmy" she finally said,

And he thought of all the places,

He wished he could take her.

Wooden Bowls

Tepidly

We closed the church doors

And Later we regretted it

Over fowl and bread

Madame De Beauvoir, did you ever skinny-dip with someone you had a crush on?

Wise Beyond Our Years

Off down the way

From the railroad crossing we hid

Waiting for the train to come rumbling by

Your lips to come rumbling over mine

So much time to come rumbling after itself

Like the dirt falling from your red knees

As we stood when it was quiet again

For the rest of my life I would hear that train

A truer heartbeat than my own chest

Meting out the deeper tethers

Like they were the very rails it ran on

And towards the end

I stopped trying to see beyond its natural bend

Off down the way

From the railroad crossing we hid

Your hands felt like the answer to so many questions

I didn't know I had

Generation Gap

Our heads filled to the brim,

Minds like a rolling boil,

That when they finally cool,

And we skip buttons at last,

Our children won't know,

Looking into that still water,

If it's still too hot to touch

Hole in the Wall

My hand,

Confident on the small of your back,

As we listen to the harmonies keep,

The spaces between them perfect,

Like middle school dancers.

And we laughed at how odd it was,

For our bodies to briefly match our minds.

Dearest

I love you like you are the other half of everything I do,

Like you are the finish to my sentences

And the light when I turn on a lamp.

I love you as a culmination,

As if all of my senses were meant solely

To be aware of you,

My eyes to see you, hands to feel you,

Nose to breathe you,

Ears to listen and mind to think of you.

I love you as a first response,

Like how I love the mountains and open lanes at night

And I love you with all the time that I have to give.

I love you regardless and with no hope of stopping.

I love you because pulling a book off the shelf,

I always want to see your face from the next aisle over.

(Tiny) Circular Logic

So many things,

Have to be said,

Across too small breakfast tables,

Over linoleum floors,

Under doors that don't keep the heat in,

So that they sink in,

So that you remember,

Everything, every bit,

Was done in the name of

Sunday crosswords,

Bad impressions,

Softly speaking hands,

Across a much too small breakfast table.

Rebroadcast

Subconsciously,

Thumb and forefinger pulling,

Nipping at the burgundy upholstery,

He thought:

I can feel my whiskers growing.

And:

Which of these demons can I deal with.

And:

Are any of them ghosts?

And:

My stomach is empty.

And:

This too shall pass.

As the fire flicked reminders off his barely four year old wedding ring.

How to Say

I keep coming back to this dream: You were asleep in the passenger seat, with the back adjusted to be as horizontal as possible, and you were wrapped in the thickest blanket we had brought. I drove us out of the campgrounds, and then I had the unstoppable feeling that both of us were perfectly content with that moment, and that that made all of the moments before then more vivid and unique. I counted the miles to the rise and fall of your shoulder, and drove in the complete opposite of my normal style to keep you asleep. That's how it ends, with more driving and those good feelings and you resting beside me in the early afternoon.

To [People]

You are honestly, despite whatever you may have tried in the past, be it any cream, ointment, surgery, or twin-switching, ridiculously weird. You are something different from me, but not at all separate. You are downright peculiar, and it shows. Loudly. And that is why I love you. This is something that once you come to understand it, will make you feel awesomer. We are all paste-eaters who were sick and tired of these uncomfortable shoes and just wanted it to be 5 pm and time for a snack already, in one way or another.

Certified Escapee

Here's to all the curfews

You never intended to keep.

Get them back by

taking leave of your nursing home

via the window.

Grandpa

If I happen to find myself 70 years old,

The vast majority of what I say had better be jokes.

Washington, the Evergreen State

I want to sit,

And be silent,

With you. More than anything,

With you.

I want the wood of the house to breathe,

In line with our breathing.

I want to mark time by the rising and falling

Of your chest.

I yearn for that evidence of another world

That you brought to me

Like so many precious things.

You are such a precious thing.

I want to meet a child,

Who has run ahead of his parents,

Chasing a creek under grateful shade,

And I want to tell him of the love of this world,

Using you as an example.

I want my first reaction when I wake,

To be to reach for you.

I want my first reaction deep in the night,

To be to reach for you.

I like that I always reach.

Listen: Cherish the people

That make time utterly irrelevant.

In the fall

We dried the tomatoes ourselves

And told stories of what our grandparents did

Waving from a Train Bound for Aveiro

It's little things,

Standing still,

Eyes closed,

Looking up,

Inhaling the rest of it,

That keep the priorities straight.

It's big things,

Midnights making schematics,

Losing speaking terms,

Taking sides,

Generation gaps,

That strengthen the heart.

It's beautiful things,

Dinners,

Holding hands,

First days,

First dates,

That keep the pages turning.

It's rare things,

Revelations,

Being smitten,

Laughing where you can't breathe,

Finding your centre,

That keep us young.

It's you,

It's you,

It's you

Minefields

Down the hall,

Our young bare feet scamper,

Lightly on the carpet on the wood,

Wondering what's supposed to happen,

Turning corners going straight,

Tangling up teens and twenties,

And sequences,

Doors serve to man a watch,

As our young bare feet scamper,

Up onto down on cotton on springs,

To finish books that have been bugging us,

For weeks now.

There's Going to Be a Lot of "I Told You So"

It will be big,

It will be massive,

It will blow every one of our minds,

It will be like a parade, but on steroids!

And everyone will know everyone there.

It will be full of motion, like dancing,

It will be one giant overdue airport reunion!

I honestly cannot wait,

To see every one of your beautiful faces there.

1953

Pretty, Caroline watched the flower basket twirl,

Canterbury bells peeking over like baby birds,

The houseboat was just right, she thought,

Maine was just right,

Ike was just right,

As if from some mental connection,

Which she secretly believed in and he secretly believed in,

But neither would mention it to the other,

For 52 years, which might as well have been forever,

He appeared behind her,

And the Canterbury bells spun,

And he touched her just right,

And that's how I was put here on this busy planet.

Who says there isn't a God!

Who could possibly be that blind?

Faintly, a piano

Whispered away while the children

Fought to keep their eyes open in their beds

How did that story end?

Well It Was Worth A Shot

A man, once,

No one remembers his name,

In the minutes before he died,

Thought up what, to him,

Seemed a very promising venture.

As he died,

As people were busy not knowing he was dying,

He queried his creator,

Who was busy creating other things,

Why he shouldn't perhaps live on?

The man had acquired a vast amount of knowledge,

More than anyone else on the planet,

And had contributed and advanced even more,

And would it not be a terrible crime,

To let such a prize dissolve right then and there?

His creator responded:

"But that's what's so impressive about death!

You live it all and then suddenly,

Wham! Zowwy! Poof!"

When Holy June Came

When holy June came,

We forgot what we had learned,

And stayed inside way too much.

Crowd Me

It all feels very,

[Hah. Feelings.]

Open, spacious, slow,

There's a perimeter and I don't know,

What could possibly be beyond it.

But it's flat where I am,

Yellow grass and moss,

And room for just one more person,

In all of this space,

We need so much more space than this life provides,

Room to thrash, ramble, pace, cartwheel,

Weep,

Leapfrog,

See how far we can spit.

It's incredible how much I want you here,

In this not big enough space with me.

Belgium

It would be a Thursday,

Because they're the best for surprises,

There would be pastries,

There would still be bits of flower on the counter,

I would make a drug reference,

You would put up with it,

My hands would rest lightly on your hips,

(The best part of the day)

I always think we fit perfectly,

One against the other,

There would be a window, curtains and a breeze,

There would be a park to get lost in,

There would be jobs patiently waiting for us on Monday,

And years to swallow us up,

And years and years.

The Other Side of the Coin

The jumpy eyes,

The searching, scattering, reassembling hands,

The mental fox hunt,

For hints of hope, what's more:

Happiness.

The things you don't see over the phone,

Desperate, determined, exhausted, and wanting,

Wantingwantingwanting,

To get it, to click, to see you smile,

Because of me again,

Fragile though it all may be.

I've lost the ability to say my chances, and I'm sure more than a few people are glad to see me finally on the receiving end of this thing.

Upon Observation

Differences:

Societies, languages, governments,

Governors, religions, rituals,

Skill sets, experiences, vacations.

Similarities:

You, Me.

The Autopsy

After they had made the proper incisions,

Inside they found no organs or vitals,

Save a note:

"I have no more use of it,

Adieu."

Sojourner

I have been out here for days,

In my head, searching, finding,

Excavating with all the blunt precision of an amateur,

Plumbing depths I cannot breathe in,

Dying, and seeing what I find there too.

River

When I am with you I am close to a river,

Deep and moving and only fools think controlled,

And I like nothing more than to sit at your banks,

And listen to all the life inside you.

Exuberance

Abounding, sounding and resounding!

I fly from here to there,

Though you think me forever in one place,

I am many and I am always,

And as such I shall be forgotten,

And as such I shall always love you!

In a Storm

In a storm with lightning all around,

There is no judgement,

There is no punishment and only the hope of reward,

[Is this life not enough?]

There is only you,

And others like you,

And what you carry and what they carry,

And the weapons you choose to make of them.

A(nother) Thought

Thumbing the entirety of pages,

After finishing a brick of a novel,

Sounds like applause to me.

Le Sigh

Sighs are the balloons we lose,

Or give away in parking lots,

In carnival crowds,

At foreign locations,

Drifting up, over, away,

Towards each other,

Containing whatever the air was meant to say.

Desire #5,832

I want to mark the seasons,

By the changing tones of your skin.

Waiting for a Show at Eleven

Maryn,

On the nape of my neck,

And I'm still thinking I'm thinking and thinking:

I should have gone out to that movie instead. 

Pine cones are just prime numbers.

So It Begins and So It Goes

The so it begins part:

My original intent was to have a separate blog for the more prose-y nonfictional things that germinate in my head, but a stubbornly uneditable picture of an amazingly happy orange picker has let me to scrap the dual blog idea and simply use my only trick of posting here. 

The so it goes part:

Hopefully obviously and sadly, "so it goes" is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, most memorably from Slaughterhouse-five, and it is used after people die or otherwise exit conscious humanity. I've adopted the phrase into my own views on the subject. This bears significance right now because a good friend of mine, though I think the degree of friendship is a bit unbalanced (dear readers this is not a one-likes-one-loves instance, I purely mean that I think I want to be stronger friends with her than she with me.) , told me today that among a list of things going on in her life, a friend from back home passed away/passed on/et cetera. She was our age I believe, and my friend was not in what I would call mourning, but just that stage where you find it hard to grasp, and I agree. 

I mean, it seems like a bit of of a crap time to die. I can understand dying when you're old or even just starting the tail-end of life. You've had time to do things, you've experienced a hell of a lot hopefully, and you can't really expect to beat all the odds. And I can understand people dying very young. You haven't had all of those experiences, and though it's still pretty cheap at least....I don't know.... you didn't know about them? I think dying young feels to us outsiders like a smaller rug is being ripped out from under the aforementioned deceased than dying when this girl did. Right in the middle of things. Right in the freaking middle. 

But I have trouble being very angry about it whenever I think beyond my initial emotions. I don't think there's a monstrously horrible room that you are transported to after you die so that you can have ample amounts of time to lament the circumstances of your death. I think caring about this life stops when this life stops, which is wonderful. I'm going to have to work how to remember people into that idea though. Into my little construct that keeps me sane/persevering amidst probably a plethora of falsities (see there "probably" was the lifeline. And I get to quote myself. Hoho). 

What I'm thinking this time is just how dividing it is. The same event is both stopping short so much and opening the biggest door I've ever heard of. No one knows for sure what's beyond this life. I for one think it will be good. I think that no matter what we've done here, that no punishment is eternal. Nothing in this life makes me think things are that far-reaching, both good deeds and bad eventually run their course. Maybe that's the budding economist in me, but if what you do right and wrong here eventually acts out and the Supreme Being has a choice, I believe God is good and that given infinity, He could warm up to us. Hell seems more rash than just. 

This whole spiel got very far away from a girl who died around age 18-19-20. A friend of a friend. God bless her. 

I have a macroeconomics test tomorrow, which is now today, and to the best of my knowledge I'm not going to find out what's behind that door between now and 9:05 am. I also thought of a few more things I'd like to write (fiction, don't worry, not another drab, almost stream-of-consciousness ramble such as this) as well. I think I shall mosey on back to my room and see if I can dream some of them out a ways.

Hoping all is well with you and yours

-b

Written On a Small Pane of Glass

In Case of Emergency,

Danger,

Whatever,

Break misgivings,

Chill. Enjoy.

Martyr Much? and Elsewhere and The Truth

If I bleed in the dark,

And don't want you to see,

It's only because it's fitting,

And very very manly.

~

In the snowfall,

I revealed my true self,

White as its surroundings,

I didn't tell a soul.

~

How do I tell you,

That I have no idea how to get to point B?

*

When I am old,

Unshaven,

Dying,

If my daughters are there,

May they be mine,

Unfettered,

And innocent of my past,

May they never think that I struggled for them,

May they think me a loafer!

Though I break nightly,

Doubt eternal,

A life spent doubled over on the floor in uncertainty,

And in striving,

Let them think I gave from abundance,

So that they owe me nothing,

Because they owe me nothing!

Because they are a blessing!

Lord I am old,

I ramble,

My endnotes on this life are too long.

If nothing else:

Protect my girls from the guilt of having!

May we be equal!

God receive us all or none!

Out of Date

And then it came into view. Just a tiny roof the colour of seagulls' wingtips, but as I came closer the house grew white walls, and a fence extended out from the right and terminated before it could enclose anything. Maybe to keep the wind off a garden, I thought, what with the usual calibre of coastal gusts in Scotland. I didn't hurry my pace when I saw the house. In five minutes time I had reached what could be considered their yard, though there was no land division between it and the countryside. 

Extending my hand to knock on the door, I stopped, and slowly put my knuckles against the old white wood. 

I had somehow forgotten that my armhair was white.

Whiskers chased up the digits of my right hand. My hair was white. My hat was out of style, yet another casualty of being a packrat. My suitcases felt heavier in my hands than they should. There were too many things.

I realized that knocking would, for once, be inappropriate. As my hand moved down the door, I slid my fingers around the knob, turning it slowly. The door opened loudly, its age greeting my own, and I looked inside.

Nicole was at a stove, and I wondered why I hadn't smelled anything before when a blast of breakfast scents-teas, sausage, potatoes-filled my mind. Inadvertently my tongue licked my lips.

"My sentiments exactly," Nicole said. Footsteps reached my ears and Anna came into view. It was just like I'd hoped I'd imagine it, though I never let myself. The second I did it wouldn't happen. That's just how they were. 

"You look well traveled. And I hope well-versed too," Anna said, her warm eyes registering my changes. The hair, the bags. Not the hat.

"I hope so too. Or else this whole wayward traveler thing will have been massively unprofitable."

"Ever the economist," her eyes closed as she savored the smells that had overwhelmed me earlier. Anna had last known me as an economist. As the late Kurt Vonnegut said of the Bokonist response to what was going through my head: busybusybusy.

"Yea, well. Some things don't shake out I guess." I thought of Marie. I couldn't help it.

"True statement," Nicole said.

"So I assume you are a devout censorship lawyer who would like nothing better than to mute mankind, and Nicole is a devout member of the Church now, right?" I looked from one to the other as I entered the hut. 

"Fuck that!" Nicole smiled, "Fuck the apostles, fuck-"

"Pontius Pilot," I interrupted.

"Yes!"

"Sedentary rock," I mused. Our histories intermingled in the present, and the words made sense and were all the more delicious knowing that, though everyone in the room knew what they meant, we were the only ones.

I pulled out a chair and sat at the table Anna had moved to. She asked how I'd found them. I told her that they were, in fact, listed in official government publications based on official government surveys that they had officially filled out. 

"I guess a better question is why did you find us?" Her voice reflected the waning patience she had for my taste for the literal. 

"Marie died," I said, because that as why.

"Who?" Nicole put a plate in front of me, and sat beside Anna, her arm resting on Anna's shoulder.

"I've been on a lot of trains lately, except I took a bus mostly to get here," I added helplessly.

"They have buses that run all the way out here?" Nicole asked.

"She was my daughter. And no. I walked the last few miles."

As quickly as they had followed me into transportation issues, they followed me back, and were silent. Anna reached out and covered my hand with hers. I put the fork, now useless to my trapped hand, down on the dark wood.

"And your wife?"

"Dead. Longer." More silence. I wished I could get to my pen so I could scribble.

"And you thought we could-"

"No no no. No. I just wanted to go somewhere. I've been to a lot of places actually, mostly Europe. I just wanted to see you two. See if you'd made it here like you always planned."

In my course of travel since Marie's death, some of the people who I encounter, when shown how lucky they are, avert their gaze as if ashamed of succeeding. Anna and Nicole keep themselves, and there is a quiet pride in the room. A room they had secured for themselves, god-dammit, come what may, and I love them for it. 

My hand is freed, and I finish my breakfast. They show me the best views from the cliffs ("their" cliffs"), and we talk until nightfall. Then Anna goes into another room and returns with some wine. We drink and talk. About college. About families. About man's ability to comprehend, or lack thereof, or degree to which. I mention fluxes, which I know nothing about, and they laugh. Some of the wine has gone to my head, but not like when I was younger, and I know I will be fine when I tell my two friends politely that I cannot spend the night with them, and that leaving at this point is not new to me.

They don't bicker too much, and let me go. I walk up near the cliffs, feeling the drop-off more than seeing it. The sound of the waves and the night together is even more intoxicating than the wine. I take out my pen and a scrap of paper with only a few scribbles on it. I scribble for a while, then turn the piece over. 

On the back I write this:

Everything shifts back and forth,

Flux,

A sensation warmly confusing, like

Darkness inside a house.

This is also flux:

The small noise behind my thoughts,

That grows into a voice and actions and lives,

Diminishing I find gray knuckles and heavy suitcases,

Where am I going?

The voice is a whisper, which is also a flux,

In and out of hearing. In and out of living.

Where am I going?

To the cliffs, and past them,

For the cliffs are not new,

The Darkness that sleeps over the cliffs,

Is not new either, but a vehicle,

To carry me through all night space,

Even perhaps through the darkness of time,

Though I am old, and have had much of that.

I slept, and felt the night move around me and take me far away. It took me to Marie, to Katherine, to my parents. I saw years in one night, and didn't see. I felt very human, but I felt it like a breeze.

It was certainly not the wine.

~

The Harrowing Adventure

Silence like a valentine to break your heart, Gun Girl.

And you, my dime-a-dozen waitress,

Will have from me no pity. 

Only pie crumbs and a blood-stained plate of juices. 

Thus spoke the knightly cab driver as he braved,

The city rain!

Wrong Aphrodite, Jupiter-man. 

Poznan 7

In a past life I think I was childhood friends with Maria Fallon. This time I met her in the only museum ever to be built in Poznan. It only had one permanent exhibit, and the rest of the rooms were converted into offices and a coffee bar after the governor decided no patron in their right mind would lend them anything worth looking at. There were numerous offers, but he always thought they were holding back the very best, so he refused everything. Some true lovers of art became so emphatic that what they had really was worth displaying that they gave the museum sculptures and paintings for free, asking only that the works be displayed. This offer only further convinced the governor that what the patrons were peddling was truly worthless. But another principle of the governor's life is never to turn down anything free, that it may be God's way of getting into your hands something that will be direly important later. 

Consequently, the bottom floor of the Poznan museum is the most ornate and beautiful section of the entire building, as well as the city. It is underground, and only accessible by an elevator, which was turned off as soon as the last worker had returned from hanging the last portrait. 

I was looking at the small collection of photographs in the permanent collection (all done by Timothy Holebrook - "Poznan's one stop for family portraits, business portfolio shots and important event memory making!"). The picture that seemed to hold my attention was a sepia print of two women, one the daughter of the other. The text to the right of the photo said their names were Josephine and Tamara Reed. The text also said that the photograph was taken to commemorate the leaving of Tamara's husband for a second tour of duty in the desert, which Mr. Holebrook had been commissioned to eternalize.

Tamara was visibly sad, but stood straight and wasn't weeping. Josephine had her left arm around her daughter's shoulders, and her expression was somehow off-putting. Mr. Holebrook had noticed this after developing the photograph, and purely from curiosity asked her what she was thinking about that afternoon. "My mother used to tell me about having to see her brothers go off to war. In Poland that was widely considered to be a death sentence. Three of her brothers went right away, but the other three went individually, once they had 'made right with God'. She told me that by the fifth brother, she had learned to almost lock herself off. She would put her arm around her baby sister and stay motionless until the train couldn't be heard anymore. I was thinking about that the day we saw Evan off. I realized what my mother meant, and then it was like all common feelings, feelings and reactions I'd had and used all my life, just fell out. And I was trying to think of what new feeling was forcing itself upon me then. It was the same train station, did you know that? Same platform and everything. Well, maybe not the same train, I guess they must've changed that out, for environmental reasons. Anyway, I was just trying to figure out what it was I was feeling, and then he was gone. Tamara said the train had been out of sight for almost two minutes, and that people were staring."

Mr. Holebrook couldn't remember the first two minutes after the picture. He'd been busy fiddling with dials on his camera, checking light and exposure rates. He asked Mrs. Reed if she'd figured out what the feeling was on the platform. "Nope," she said, "but I can still feel it a little. Every now and then I stop and try to think about it. But mostly I keep busy."

"It's her soul," Maria said, through God-given olive lips. I hadn't noticed someone beside me. She was still reading the block of text. 

"Is that what makes this picture so....disquieting?"

She straightened herself, and I promised myself something viciously alcoholic if I didn't make an ass of myself right there, for only her to see. She looked back at the photograph, at Josephine and Tamara.

"Yes. Her soul doesn't know what to do when another is departing - one it new so privately. It's trying to turn away, and she's trying to figure that out, but gets lost in trying because she doesn't see how a soul, particularly one's own, could will something without the person also willing it."

"Can the soul do that?"

"Look at the picture."

"That's a bit of a circular argument."

"Yes, well. Look at yourself then."

I looked her in the eyes.

My Captain My Captain.

Maria Fallon walked out of the room, then out of the museum and into the light and heat of Sol, ages and ages old.

Interludes

In darkness,

I questioned,

Existential, yes?

Yes. Quite.

In darkness,

I felt a naked other next to me,

And a difference like a vapor,

Short-lived between us.

We who are short-lived,

Roll and shout and quiet,

And loud and loud and LOUD,

Like vapors we tremble all the way up.

In darkness,

I wondered aloud,

To see if that would fill it,

You could talk like this for decades,

You could spend your entire life like this.

I wept, and I stayed, obligingly.

I visited wars and famines,

Prayers and harvests,

I played cowboys and indians in my head,

I played cops and robbers and used my fingers, 

Which I could not see, as guns. 

I had forgotten all about the other beside me,

The vapor a deceptive phenomenon indeed.

Indeed.

I fought pride, overcame it, and became prideful,

I wrote scores of books in my head, and imagined comfort,

But in darkness I could not sit down,

Letting go propelled me in the direction I wanted too far,

Until I was again straight,

So I abandoned comfort, intellect, safety in knowing,

And I wondered where the breaking point was.

Now try.

It bid me, or prodded me on,

Either way with strong hands I set out,

Until I could grasp what was not there,

And climb through illusions,

A mountain of transparent ideas,

I house of cards from a deck of jokers,

Near the top the vapor overcame my sight and mind,

But in my grasping, clawing I hit upon another,

Through the partition a reunion of sorts occurred,

And straining we reached the top,

And she turned to me, having just become she,

But I have always always always been me oh yes,

And she felt me and I felt her,

And she congratulated me, and told me that this,

At the height of all things is the greatest of tricks,

The final invention of mind,

The possibility of another amidst the darkness,

And the reaching beyond the boundaries of fingertips.

This is a right lie.

This is a good decision.

Rest in the home that you have envisioned, built, earned.

And I raised a hand in protest,

But could not see it,

So I began to speak,

But the past overwhelmed me.

And I looked up,

And beyond the darkness I saw....

~~~

The daughter of an ironworker,

Brown hair, about twenty two,

Was making shadow puppets on the wall,

Opposite the lamp behind us,

When I knew that I was alive.

Poznan 6

I did not yet know who Maria Fallon was. I did not yet know that she was on the same train as me, watching the black spheres fly.

I did not know that her mother had beaten her exquisite skin for losing her virginity to a member of the Hindu Untouchable class. I did not know that she loved blueberries. Muffins, pies, anything.

I did not know how she would leave this planet, or in what way her atoms would be reassigned to something other than Maria Fallon.

I tell you this now: Maria Fallon dies in World War Three.

And: I forgot to meet Laurel for brunch. Two restaurants were the same distance away.

May she stop getting shortchanged.

May her atoms rearrange exactly as she would like them to.

Unable to decide, I went straight to my hotel and sought refuge in the ground floor restaurant.

~

When I was of the age for passionate pursuit of just about anything (girls, money, peace, love, stamps) someone told me that I had to think certain thoughts and be absolutely sure of them, so that at the very end of it all my atoms could rearrange themselves back into me.

They assured me that after this I would never have to worry about anything ever again. Everyone who succeeded would have a White Christmas forever and ever.

Now that I'm here at the end of it all, I look around, and I can't see a single person having anything even close to Christmas.

Just firefirefire.

Hopefully they relocated. To the moon, or the Triangulum Galaxy.

Maria my love stay away! It's the same! It's the same! It's the same!

Poznan 5

From the time I woke up I could expect to be on the train another three hours. Laurel woke up shortly after, felt it customary to ask if I wanted breakfast ("not because we had sex, but because it's morning"), then remembered we were without necessary cooking equipment. 

We decided to have brunch at the nearest restaurant when we got off the train.

I told Laurel that I was going to step outside and walk around to help wake up, and that she could stay if she wanted.

Outside I saw the stewardess emerging from one of the last compartments. We could smell the night before on each other like kerosine. 

"How does it feel?" I asked

"How does it feel?" she mirrored.

"That's what I said."

"No, I'm asking you. How does it feel?"

I was silent.

"At least I'm professional about it," she pointed to my crotch. The zipper was open.

I apologized for my indecency. She laughed, turned around and went off to earn her keep.

A cannon fired somewhere. I know this because the smoke rose above the treeline, and because I've heard cannons fired in movies. 

Poznan was welcoming the train into its humble station. Poznan was sending little black spheres barreling from one side of the train to the other because the official representative of the Huambo Province in Angola was in a car containing none but himself and the quiet Maria Fallon further up the train. 

Laurel stuck her head out of my room. "It's the end of the world."

"Really?"

"No, but we Jews would really like to see it hurry up and get here. We're feeling a bit shortchanged."

"Oh."

I had wanted it to be true for all peoples, everywhere. 

May God bless His children!

~

Poznan-4

When I was a boy I remember visiting my grandfather in the nursing home he lated died in. I remember being entranced by the set of Communist ruler Russian dolls that sat from left to right, big to small on top of his dresser. One day he took them down and showed me how they worked.

"See? You pop old Adolf's top half off and here's Benito, the son of a gun! And you just cut him in half and here's Iosef! And you know who's at the heart of it all? The smallest little guy in here. Puny old Karl! Karl Marx! Don't let his size fool you! This guy had big plans!" And then my grandfather would laugh and laugh and laugh, and I would cover my ears it was so loud but then I'd take my hands away because without the sound I couldn't tell if he was laughing or yawning or screaming.

Poznan-3

We talked about war, about the necessity of body armor, about the benefits of train travel, about where all the dinner bells of the world had gone. 

We talked about necessity and superfluity. 

We talked about the possibility of World War Three. She said no one, impossible. I said just about anyone. 

She showed me from her purse a bear she's carried around for 17 years. I asked when we had stopped using buttons for eyes and were manufacturing fake eyes for stuffed bears. 

"Oh, a long time ago. Decades!" She beamed.

We made love in the little cube of the car that was mine all mine for the night. We pretended it was World War Three and the sounds of the tracks were endlessly marked off marches, locks, loads, firings. I wondered if the guns we were using in the desert still made those noises.

Like button eyes for stuffed bears. 

We fucked like rabbits.

~

Poznan-2

"Sir, would you like something to drink?"

I am Humphrey Bogart. The dame's sweet, but she hasn't got a bit of sense to her about things. 

"Double scotch please."

"Alcoholic beverages are five dollars each."

"I'm aware."

"I'll be right back then, with your scotch."

"Double."

Yes she says, halfway out of the compartment. Of course.

I love you, I say to the zig-zagging protracted door. Then I sit patiently, like a dog waiting for its treat or a child for communion, until the hostess returns. I take the short glass from her hand and remind her of my ardent passion. 

"That part comes after the drink, sir. In about two or three hours," she says playfully, all curves.

So there's some spirit in the young thing after all. She leaves, and I sip at the rim of the glass by the window, looking out at all that black.

Buckets and buckets of the stuff.

~

BlackBlackBlack.

Blackblackblack.

blaaaaaaaaaaack.

There's a black someone at my black door, just blacking there.

No. I have no idea what color this outsider is, but there definitely are silhouettes of feet at the base of the door, which is teal, not black. Whoever is outside shifts their weight from one foot to the other, the shadows deepening and rising one after the other. I thought about the hostess, if I had seen her shoes during our brief joining. Even if I hadn't, I think I'd be disappointed if they weren't sky blue, with white trim and all in order for the job. 

Still, it had only been 40 minutes, and those employed by the transport industry tend to be overly-punctual solely to heighten the wholesale failure of the actual train to ever take into account the existence of a clock, and to maintain the embarrassment we feel holding recently-emptied cups, inching the toes of our sneakers secretly onto the corrugated yellow strip.

That is to say:

She won't be early. She will be right on time. 

Satisfied to have eliminated at least one member of the collective trainship, I no longer found any sign of anyone in the half-inch space between door and carpet. 

I strode over empty space, and in expectation of needed pursuit, hopefully in the direction I assumed the diner car to be, refolded the door.

No more than five feet to my right stood a woman in front of the next cabin door, pressing her feet the exact same way. In the instant before she turned I could see boredom, curiosity, disconnect and a waiting switch that held behind it all sorts of activity. I remember thinking:

My God, she's such a child! Then:

My God, what a boring assessment of this person! Then:

My God, sorry for distracting You from whatever You were up to!

Then she turned, and the switch flipped.

"Hi!"

"Yo." I am the coolest motherfucker you will ever meet on this train.

"I've been going by every room all along this train, because all the magazines are in Italian and I have no books and no one to talk to because they've all gone back to their rooms I think. Though I can't imagine anyone sleeping on this thing, even in the rooms."

"But you didn't knock on my door."

"I haven't knocked on any of them, that's the problem. I come right up and stand here," She refitted her feet straight in front of the door, looking down and gesturing at them with magician assistant's hands, "but then I don't do anything. I also figure unless I really laid into it everyone inside would just think it was another noise from this God-forsaken rustic missile. Hey, did you know I was out here?"

"I saw your shoes."

We both looked at her shoes then, as if we had caught some errant schoolboy in the act of playing hooky. The shoes (dark red, with gold designs and no support, like dancing shoes) said nothing in defense. 

"Through the crack," I explained. 

"You must've been paying a lot of attention to the condition of your door."

"It's just folded board. And teal."

"I meant you must, you know, be able to tell when things are subtly different, even if everything looks the same. My name's Lauren, by the by."

"I tend to notice things, I guess." I paused, then stuck a hand out. "Andrew."

"Can I come in?"

"What?"

"Your room. Well I guess a better question is do you want to talk? I don't know why I assumed that. Do you? Want to talk?"

I waited again before answering, thought about all the self-loathing and cursing and drinking I would miss, then answered "sure."

"Delightful."

"One second," I'd caught sight of the hostess emerging from one of the other compartments. "Another scotch please, when you have a chance?"

Her eyes lit on Laurel only for a second before snapping back to me and back to work. 

"Double, like last time?"

"Yeah."

"I'l be right back."

She looked hurt.

~

Poznan-1

Fact (n): 1. Something that exists; reality; truth.

2. Something known to exist or to have happened.

Fact #1: It is roughly 1500 kilometres by rail traveling from Florence to Poznan.

Fact #2: It can be almost unanimously agreed upon that everyone will die at some point. This is much more likely than being born in the first place.

Fact #3: I have taken the rail from Florence to Poznan. Most of the trip is at night. This is cruel because night is when most people sleep, and I have only seen one person able to sleep on the train that runs from Florence to Poznan, on tracks that must not have been too looked after since their laying in 1848. This is in the brochure by the door to each cabin compartment. A Jewess named Laurel has also ridden this train, its beginning and end already stated, at least once at the same time I have. 

(Final) Fact #4: If enough alcohol is present in my body not yet metabolized, I will mention my frequent dissatisfaction at having beaten the odds and been born, and been born at a time in history with trains from Florence to Poznan and Jewesses like Laurel. It is only due to the frequency of alcohol in my body that I feel I repeat myself often on this point. I also tell people that I'm on the run from something, and that I'm mysterious.

Look at me go.

Enter hostess with complimentary drinks, from the left.

~

So Much So Loud!

It's enough bombing to make you think,

It's enough bombing to make you wince,

It's enough bombing you strike up a conversation

With your little sister because she's easily excitable.

Sometimes I sleep on bare floors just to keep sane.

2 pm

Tired,

Smoke-ridden jacket weather,

Greets my derelict eyes,

Which glance at the shower stall,

The pale green tiles,

Their failing caulk,

Their unrelenting beg.

I should probably shave today,

/to the ceiling/

Surveyor

At the end,

If in wonderful pastoral harmony,

There are not certain people I have met,

Loved,

Dreamt,

Quit,

Precipitated, haunted, felt,

In formal finger finding,

I shall be disappointed Sir Boy Child,

For they have been for me,

Closer than I can say of you.

And if you find anger in that sentiment,

Then you are just as bellicose as the best of them,

Righteousness or no.

IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou all.

Take from me that,

Take it as a locket from my breast,

Show it,

As my last opinion of things.

Or trade it away,

It is not the world,

The world is not the world.

You are the world and everything bright in it.

[aside] Wouldn't you agree, Sir Boy Child?

Shep

I don't think it's possible,

To be all that sad about the future,

When you're about to die,

If given time to think about it,

I think I'll think of what a rest,

Everything will be,

And how wonderful it will feel,

To lie on the grass of an Irish field.

I think God could spare me that much,

Even if I don't deserve it.

Inundation

When I hear them talking,

It's like I can see light coming out,

Not in shafts or streams,

But little sparks and stars,

And they don't seem surprised,

But then I don't know if they know,

It's okay that way I think,

It's been okay for years,

And when it builds,

Like a pyramid or a  tidal wave,

I don't really try to respond,

And instead let the rip and throw,

Of how many people there are to love,

Run things for a while.

Secretary Of Pagan Relations

Eyes watched from the fire,

Conversed with it,

Read out stories in,

Blazing, selfish words

With mud on their faces,

Brown and staying wet,

With the sweat of their moving,

They bowed and bent

Burning,

Crying shrieks

It all comes down so fast,

The fire spoke through him,

Investing in his heart,

Curling herself like a vixen around

His beating heart,

That told him he was alive

Time,

Then the upward reach of concrete,

Windows stared back at windows,

Admiring the response time

Of shoes and slacks,

To deadlines and crease marks,

That come down so fast,

Upon the pillars of Prosperity and Future,

In glass high towers,

Drinks were poured at one

Inside they washed against,

The fire that bid him find,

The muddied girl in the alley,

Between Twenty-first and Madison,

Arching and toying,

With trains of thought

At night he took to,

Making love to the apparition,

Furious fits that drained,

Hollowed out the reserves he had put away,

For vacations and old age,

Sleep premature

Days he would spend,

Focused on the stillness of his hand,

The eternal black of her hair,

As she whispered some nights,

And he thought about the life that condensed on his ear,

When she told him about when she was a girl

Time,

Running by with our shadows,

Impersonates and tricks us,

As the fire pours out of our eyes,

And the last thing he saw,

You will see,

Burning fast,

Everything,

That bends and breaks beyond its means.

Which is to say everything.

And the fire left.

In the dark a smile,

Is my final thankful say on this world.

Objections to My Peace

I'm still not convinced

So much rests upon

a red wheel

barrow,

Mr. Williams.

A Common Mistake

At 82

He turned to the right,

The left.

In the middle of the road

Drops like Pinot Noir stains

Crowding his feet.

Tenses

I have left,

Hopefully heading up - the artist said,

Bones lie patient in a final marker.

But before I was at breakfast,

And you made a face,

When I mentioned the prime minister,

And I laughed,

For about five seconds,

And I kicked you lightly because I understand.

Thoughts on Hearing Oblivion (performed with modern instruments)

Greying,

Black then open again,

Less,

Earl Grey cooling on the table,

Less heat,

Fingers shift amongst themselves uncertainly,

Or like some childish drum beat,

Then black,

Filling with bits of home,

People faces fires places ridges the sea-

Foam white and blue.

But black,

Not thick,

All of this pulls back,

Was never here with me here,

Me?

Here?

In a thin film of abandon.

Me?

If I still had my ears I would listen for your heartbeat.

We Are Not Fathers

It is winter,

And he falls,

The son who survived,

Crystals hold fast on his brow,

The scavengers,

Terrorists,

Make themselves known on the rim,

In silence they watch,

The son who survived,

Crystals holding fast on his brow,

His father,

Comes sharply out of the wood,

Pickax slung over his shoulder,

His eyes look and think of the mines,

But his expression is what holds,

The cold in the lungs,

Only once before,

Only two years old,

Oh he had forgotten,

His father had gladly thrust them up,

Himself who survived and the daughter who did not,

Her hair spinning black,

(Oh that awful color haunts from the back of their eyes always!)

Strong hands gripped them both,

Strong hearts loved them all.

The clouds reminded,

Him who had survived,

Of the beauty in the barren,

And the ability to change,

The snow gradually wrapping,

Forgiveness on the one who survived,

And animals watching,

Feasting on the future in the white.

It is winter, 

And in the dark the women,

Nineteen and filling,

Bend and bounce and

Shake and sound and

Collapse in your arms and

Their muscles are not their own,

Not since their fathers disappeared,

In the cold riches of the earth,

As children the watched,

Pigtailed and playful,

One after another descend,

Pickax propped over their shoulders,

Broad and full of densely packed,

Tendons and solemnity.

So now they dance,

Pigtailed and playful,

Around the fires their fathers didn't start,

(They won't see will they?

Shhhh)

In the winter,

We are not the fathers,

We have been given too much,

"The fear of the Lord"

To be taken so lightly,

The warmth of a breast,

To be used so secularly,

The cold a dim reminder,

We flee each other's arms so quickly!

We were each babies ourselves!

Just yesterday Darling!

In the winter,

The cold breathes in and out with you,

Walks around with you,

Assesses your condition.

Warm your children lest they feel alone.

Group Breathing Activity

When I'm quiet,

It's because I want to say,

You

Are

Amazing

And I shake keeping it in,

The fissures breaking out in key places,

See my hands? My eyes?

And when I won't look you in the eyes,

It means,

You

Are

Wonderful

So much I can't bear the thought,

Of you ever being as far away,

As the very next room,

And when I leave unexpectedly,

It means,

You

Are Absolutely

Impossible to Talk to Right Now

And that could be because you say something stupid,

Or it could be I'm being quiet,

When I'm quiet,

See Above.

Supposes

I swear I'm not joking,

And I can understand where that would come from,

I do that a lot.

But in this light,

And surrounded in this weather,

I could stay here and stroke your head until we folded in,

To the tree and its roots and its branches,

Bare from the onset of winter.

Everything All At Once, Again

All the way,

From the burning,

Tip of my right ear,

My ear,

Right here.

I'm looking out of me,

Is that still selfish?

I'm feeling the heat,

And the speechtalkspeech,

Of God behind me,

And the streetlight,

And mountains beside me,

And the streetlight,

I'm right here.

So it all begins to elongate,

Stretching forward and my throat,

It catches cataclysmic intent,

And the most honest laugh I've ever had,

Sounds not at all like you'd expect,

But it sounds,

Baffled,

And leg after leg of it takes me,

Where I need to go.

May you grow old and with ancient paper hands grip the one you love as you spin on the dance floor.

Background

It sort of ended like this:

Everything went back,

Everyone reversed,

People that died came back,

And people who were born weren't.

It wasn't like a film in reverse,

Or maybe it was like that for God I don't know,

But for everyone here it just was,

It felt exactly like going forward,

But with a new righteous purpose,

A righting of wrongs we couldn't live with,

But we forgot what it had been,

The first Time we lived.

Still everything changed,

People who went to the carnival didn't,

(They felt like they already had)

Didn't meet their former friends,

Didn't get sick on caramel apples,

Got sick on bad shrimp instead.

Our brains tried to hold on though,

Righteousness is an opiate to them,

Poor things,

So many flashes and firings,

Desperate synapse connections,

Trying so hard to fix something we did.

Or made,

Forever ago.

I was lucky - when I went back,

I ended up right where it started,

And I could feel the forgetting,

Like an ink, dark and secret-kept,

Secreting from my senses,

But before it draped over me,

I was lucky - I just said "Hey."

She just said "Hey." with disinterest seeping,

Turning back around.

As we kept walking,

I was caught up in the sunrise assailing the ivied building,

And I felt everything getting better,

My heart began to shake,

So much I didn't know how much longer I would live,

But I'd already done it once,

So that was less of a threat,

And when I ended up living again,

I forgot everything I did,

But held on to that one morning,

When I fixed it,

When my brain rested while my body walked,

It sort of began like this:

"Hey."

"Hey."

Do you see?

Dream

In my dream,

I can see every word she speaks,

Roll off her lips like a syrup.

In my dream,

When something inside breaks,

Everyone knows and claps,

Because you're closer then.

In my dream,

I'm laced at the shoulder,

And we're one, brothers in sway,

And we're One against Many,

As the clouds roll in.

In my dream,

I don't have a bubble,

And everything flows,

So much I can't move.

In my dream,

The dark women dance,

With eyes that pull and dare,

Deep tanned calves slope and lead,

Both hands in the fire in the back of my head.

In my dream,

The bullet wound yells through my fingers,

And the sky finally answers when I look,

Unleashing a smile to beat everything you ever saw.

In my dream,

The mountains are almost here,

In the front window of our quiet car,

Everyone else asleep,

They whisper secrets I catch and keep,

In the dashboard compartment.

In my dream,

It's very black,

It's very thick,

But I'm very wrapped and warm,

And Benevolence pushes back,

Bringing the sleep of the innocent.

In my dream,

You're reading on the couch,

But I know you've just taken a shower,

Because you never dry your hair on weekends,

And the ways it feels just now,

Is why we're married.

In my dream,

It's an explosion,

And we're all firing through,

Always new and always more,

No one can really complain about anything,

We just laugh and laugh and laugh.

In my dream,

I can't spell,

I can't count,

I am of no use,

And someone picks me up,

And spins me around,

And I know love.

Ra

Simplistic,

Natural,

The rich brown of arms,

Dark Grecian hair,

Dark spiritual eyes.

Ra walked through the garden,

Children played at her feet,

Sensual calmness braided her hair,

Like a ladder towards heaven.

Hurry

Before the bomb hit the shelter,

Before everything was white,

Before everything was screaming,

Twelve years old he wrote,

In frantic unschooled hand,

And thought of the blonde girl he met,

In the brickyard behind the schoolhouse,

They played hide and seek,

He hid in the butcher's shop,

And watched with heart pounding as she passed by,

Cupping her hands to her eyes to see in,

He remembered her eyes then,

How he had forsook hiding to stare directly into them,

And how grey and full and knowing they had been,

Before the bomb hit he unknowingly wrote:

I miss you.

I miss you.

I miss you.

Then the white asked him how he felt,

And he told her of the grey eyes and the blonde girl he'd met,

And she listened.

Houses with Lights

Dominique shuffled down 4th street. Or up 4th street, or across 4th street. He hadn't been in the city for over a week yet and figured that was good enough reason not to know what direction he was currently walking. He just knew it was towards home. A house that would have lights on over the stoop and a lock that his key slid nicely into. He'd stopped making his foster parents uncomfortable by calling it a house rather than a home, and seeing the color drain out of their faces as their eyes dropped to the floor. They really were caring people, and who had that other kind of home anyway? It was just a thing some kids came up with because it made them sound rebellious and the girls who still regularly attended class were into that. The ones that put out anyway (followed by howling laughter from the rest of the boys, like jackals around the corner). Dominique went through that phase, and felt he'd come out pretty intact. He scaled the five wet red brick steps of the stoop in two bounds, fished the key out of his sweatshirt pocket and unlocked the door. While the lights outside were on, the rest of the house slept quietly on, welcoming and empty at the same time. He quietly maneuvered through the creaky floorboards as quietly as he could until he reached the plain white door leading to his room. He collapsed on the twin bed and tried not to think. He tried to first block out the past day, then the past week, then the whole past month. He pictured a miniature Dominique going through endless file cabinets in his brain, carefully examining each folder before tossing it onto the floor. Pretty soon he was dreaming, and it was no longer a miniature Dominique tossing out the files, but his hands and eyes thumbing through the tabs and looking at the labels. He found the file detailing his birth, and how the absence of a father was distinctly noted in thick red pen. He saw a note at the bottom of the file, referencing another file in another cabinet. Eventually he found the cabinet and file, and flipped through everything about his father he'd wanted to know, and one by one his fears came true. 

He was never wanted.

His father didn't even know he existed, didn't even remember his mother's name.

He was just there, product of biology and nature and cold scientific fact.

The ink began to run off the pages of the file, which seemed to grow thicker with every page he threw out. It ran up his forearms and under his shirt sleeves, tattooing him with the knowledge. He began to scream as the rest of the drawers began to slide free one by one, the files opening like hungry mouths...

Dominique woke up in a film of sweat. For a moment he hated his father, hated everything about him, but recognized that hot, dark feeling in his heart and quickly subdued it, falling back onto his bed. There wasn't a point. It didn't matter. He thought of Queen, and how nothing really mattered.

--

Jordan caught herself staring out the window above the kitchen sink at the sunset just about to really take on it's last gleam. She shook her head and finished with the dishes, then made some instant lemonade and went back out onto the whitewashed porch. 

The Lakeside Retirement Home was one of the better in Maine, one of the few that no one mistook for a modified detention center, and Jordan actually enjoyed her job. Most of the patients were nice enough, there were always the bitter ones but she figured she saw less here than Sheila did working night shifts at Denny's. It also gave her ample time and stimulus to think about the big things. She could almost here the existentialist conversations buzzing around in everyone's individual mind in the common room, and seemed to breathe it in until it buzzed inside her too.

As she carried the tray outside she caught sight of Mr. Avery and sighed. There were also tedious parts of the job that never really stopped being tedious. His sunglasses (the black plastic bigger-than-aviator kind they got shipped in bulk) had fallen off again and were resting on his lap. Resting defiantly, Jordan mused (after all, she was going to school to be an english major, it was only right to put a little flavor on her thoughts). Mr. Avery was more or less catatonic, less because all the doctors said it was by choice. He could very well respond if he wanted to, they said. Since coming to work at Lakeside Jordan felt the sorriest for Mr. Avery. He had no background other than what she could draw from his features. She guessed he had had some troubles as a young man, and made some choices that didn't mesh with the modern world and her unforgiving methodology. Sometimes she occupied herself coming up with pasts for Mr. Avery, though she never told him what they were. 

She gave the lemonade to the rest of the men and women sitting outside, and with two glasses left proceeded towards Mr. Avery at the end of the porch. She sat the tray on the banister, and reached down to grab the sunglasses. Jordan absentmindedly put the glasses back on Mr. Avery's eyes, already being drawn in again by the particularly magnificent sunset. What did finally bring her back was when Mr. Avery slapped the glasses off his face, sending them clattering across the porch and off the side of the house.

Tears poured down the edges of Mr. Avery's fully dilated eyes. His lips trembled and his hands shook against the arms of the rocking chair. Jordan quickly looked down the line of empty chairs and past the front door, but only fellow retirees moved passively back and forth. She felt the call for help rising in her throat when she realized his eyes were focused on her, his lips still trembling.

"Are you God?" he whispered.

In her head she told him to calm down. In her head she knew exactly what medicine to administer and what therapy to consider post-event. Her lips remained closed. Mr. Avery continued:

"I...had a son" he said passively, no longer looking more through her than at her now. "Maybe...He was beautiful. Was my son beautiful?"

"Yes." Jordan answered, having no idea who Mr. Avery's son was, and wondering if she should start taking medication. Still she felt something like that buzz in the commons room, some irresistible force coming from Mr. Avery and whatever he was seeing. 

"Are you God?"

His hand reached out (shaking, no tremoring) and grasped her smooth wrist. Jordan reached behind her with her free hand, and taking a glass of lemonade brought it around and offered it to Mr. Avery. He relaxed a bit, his other hand holding the glass without spilling a drop. He brought the purple bendy straw to his lips, and his hand slid from around her wrist. Jordan let out a sigh, grabbed the other glass and collapsed in the chair next to his. 

"I would've named him Stephen. I was scared," he said, tears still flowing.

Ignoring all the texts she had ever read, Jordan asked, "Is this the end, Mr. Avery?" He turned to her, a faint smile tracing his tired face.

"May just be, gotta ride it out though. So much."

"What do you feel?"

"It's leaving my legs, my hands now," he looked down. His hands lay motionless against the wood.

Jordan sipped at her lemonade and watched the sunset.

Eventually Mr. Avery looked out and asked, "Are you God?"

It was an easy burial. There was no family to notify.

A.N.- This is a really shortened, rough version of something I've had in my head for a bit but I think it goes into something much longer and bigger, particularly the last scene. Hope this version's acceptable too though, because I have no idea when the other one will come around.

Admittance #46

What it is to feel the same,

The exact same rapid pumping of blood,

In the veins striking out from your neck.

I'm afraid of forgetting.

Some Words to Get You Started

A.N.- I was asked to write something holistically happy and bright. This is what I gots.

See if you agree.

---

"There's somewhere I'm going to,"

The man said to the sea,

To the wood wide-spacing the pier,

To the white hairs on his head and forearms.

The bright yellow sunshine,

Fell on his unhindered blue eyes,

And the Blue of the ocean answered him,

In quiet sweeps,

A smile carving and running through the wrinkles,

Mapping his brown face.

~

The Answer,

The Future,

The humming of his mother rocking him to sleep.

~

His dark, deep pupils ran over,

Growing and expanding,

Taking it all in,

The Blue. the Sun.

~

The sting in his lungs at the end of the street and ooh it feels good!

His father head-bent at the telescope in their front lawn.

~

The waves drew back,

An indention forming in the water below the planks.

~

The velvet smell on her neck,

As she drew away

~

The Blue received him wholeheartedly back,

The Sun as witness.

-

In it he heard,

The laugh of a woman carefree in summer,

And he met Love.

And all the words he did not have to speak filled everyone else's heads like a fever. 

Flare

My blood's pumping,

That's a good indicator that you're alive right?

Because I feel like I could explode if only,

One thing would set it off,

So don't look at me again,

Do you know what you've got there?

How quick it would be?

Blue eyes set off a galaxy,

A collection of burning stars,

Their own death an assurance,

But their beauty unimaginable,

It was necessary,

To tell it to your face,

To flare up and give you a glimpse,

There in the corner of the moment,

Bathed in red ember light,

That's what you really are,

Now excuse me won't you?

I almost enjoy the cold letdown against my face.

To the Suburbanite Next Door

You know,

It would be nice if maybe,

You could, perhaps,

Leave my head for at least a few days,

So I could get some fucking work done up there.

-Bluez

Blue

They pound the street,

Together,

The rain and the black men,

In black glasses and cream hats,

They carry the music in their pockets,

In their shoes,

It is on their eyelids when they close,

And it is in the room when they open the door,

Adding its own flavor to the smoke that hovers,

Around the tables and instruments.

Calloused hands,

Trained fingers take hold,

Souls rise above their hosts,

Invisible unless you know the trick:

In the reflections inside the beads of sweat on the dance floor,

The Passions twist and swirl and blaze.

Do you see?

SpinningSwirlLove

The fiddle,

It brings that sweet nurtured drawl,

That rises from your throat,

And the acoustic bass,

Pulls and releases your hips to sway,

And the words,

Of your great-great-grandfather,

Cause your heart and mind to agree,

And to forget everything else in that unison,

In that spinning faded purple skirt,

Please Divine stay the tides of war,

Lest they find way into these hills,

And may the cider stay crisp and smart,

Off quiet, mindful tongues,

Mouthes with age to their shape and sound,

And may the women always dance like they do today,

While boots and bare feet tap along.

Delilah you were a hurricane blew into town that only I wanted to stay.

Monsters

They claw,

And the hands they scrape,

Push the dirt and sod up under the nails,

Blackening as they come up from under the earth,

Before they reach the pasture animals,

The farmhands,

The cities,

Cold Night slips a cool finger under their chins,

Bids them come and do her bidding,

And she promises them not the rest they have left,

Though they still seek it,

Not the satisfaction of the life the living hoard,

Though it runs down their lips and neck,

No she--cruel and seductive--yields up only one,

Dark gift they find no pleasure in receiving,

Namely more company to their ranks,

As they amass under her watch and instruction,

And dead eyes look to the sky-if they are really looking,

And the thoughts of the dead are few and simple.

Petty Complaints, Yours Truly

I hope today you,

Walked outside with a true confidence,

Since I'm not there to see you,

In fact I have no idea where I am in relation to you,

But we're still holding out hope,

Like a child over a crowd,

Of pressing immigrants,

Dirty fingers hooked through swinging fences,

I want to,

Believe you're there.

I want to,

With crossed fingers and quick glances,

Something pounding and something processing,

I am foreign,

I am an island in revolt,

Against it's only sacrificial god,

Scouting planes in the cloud cover cannot see,

Oh they do not see the flames begin to rise!

Outside everyone's cheering,

And I can't for the life of me remember anymore how good it is,

To revel in the safety and the element of the communion of saints.

Walking Tower

If it's there,

We're losing the signal,

After broadcasting full-length I'm,

Running dry on mind reserves,

Mental rigour,

Sparing the trigger finger,

Try to make eye contact,

before we cut to

static

fumbled preachers save your soul-ah

-end of transmission-