TEN
DAYS
STRAIGHT
by
Adam
Hines
A facsimile.
Uncorrected.
7th (and final) draft.
So
I guess you want to hear about my father. As you can imagine, I get that a lot.
To this, I’m afraid, I cannot offer you much more than my typical response of a
three-tiered script, an uncomplicated system developed by myself and perfected
over years by opportunistic abuse. The first such layer goes something like
this: Don’t worry, I’m not offended; I understand; I can certainly see how it
would be interesting. Though you have to appreciate how young I really was. I
was in preschool - not much older than an infant, really - so I don’t remember much
of the general time. Only a few specifics, blinking here and there, red or hazel
patched distinctions, tangles of thorns and shrubbery; I don’t even remember
first hearing what had happened. But I was told, of course, and the people are
still dead, and that is enough to remove any question.
So far so good? Are your expectations for
gossip appropriately diminished? OK, the second layer - and second by weight -
is mostly used for description, a narrative sprinkling, and, to start, a mild
corrective, an unfortunate necessity for the books of misrule. First off, he
wasn’t naked; he was wearing the same brown pants he always wore to work. He owned
five or six pairs of identical brown slacks, and he would wear one of them
until it got dirty, then switch. Rarely, but sometimes, he would use all in one
week and be forced out of habit into one of his blacks (but I think the
inconsistency annoyed him). Second: in regards to what he did beforehand, he most
assuredly was not watching The Most
Dangerous Game. I don’t know if he ever even saw that film, but it wasn’t in
our collection, and I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning it. He had an
enormous set of old movies he kept stored in the attic in irregularly large, square
plastic bins. One person, upon hearing this, drummed enough nerve to admit that
this point made his skin crawl to picture it; he said that surely such an odd
avocation must count as some signal to his trouble after facts; I never thought
of it that way, and, frankly, still don’t; for me it’s enough that he just
liked old movies.
The memories I have of my father are sparse,
unnaturally lit, and the clearest ones cracked, as if after his death the sight
stung from the leave, fell down off some stairs and broke all of its bones. He
was tall, maybe. He had light hair, or grey. And he was very old fashioned (I
know this for sure); most likely his job didn’t call for full suits, neck ties
with clips, longwing brogues, but I know that he wore them every day. His face
is, appropriately, an enigmatic mess– a universe shirking accountable care,
running newspapers, two twinkles in void. And the details of his character are
soft and muddled; I can make out hairy arms, strong riddled hands– but I can’t
draw his chin, or his brow. And photographs - believe me - are no help either;
I can recognize our feathers through some conscious effort, but even those make
him seem as an uncle or ‘relative’ (and all the expanse that that word
unseals), anything, really, but my own and bearing father. So I fill in the
blanks with more light further fictions, cloud bursts in dark seas, sights from
sailors’ mania. (For a short-told instance: when I have time to imagine, he has
a hanky in his pocket, but as far as I know he never owned or used one. Things
like that must come from the movies.)
My mother I can see as if she were standing
right in front of me. She is in a hallway– most likely our second floor entry
that connected my bedroom to theirs (our house was very plain, by the way, with
almost no point in describing it at all, but some people like to try and
picture it, so, for the sake of fulfillment, it was a foursquare with siding, yellow,
white trim, a green door, black roof; if you’ve never seen one, a foursquare house
looks like a box made of stones). She is wearing a t-shirt and shorts, so she was
probably cleaning. Long brown hair tied down to a bun, freckles on her hands and
neck. As for the rest of it: two eyes, two hands, two feet. It’s the defects
that give them their quality and I can’t exactly consider hers. But the
remembered scene is otherwise short: she places her left hand on her hip and
raises right to scratch an itch– and that is it, over and over, until another
marker awakens another sense. I have other memories of her but they are even
more mixed-up than the ones with my father, so I have to stir this one often to
keep fresh. She left one year before the shootings, almost to the day, and so
people, in their ways, have tried to bind the two events, either that she knew
something was wrong or that her leaving made it so; but I don’t think either of
those possibilities are true. Now, I can’t think of anything to give it a go,
but there are parts of my memory that run beyond trees to other mended notions
without texture to show them. Let’s see if I can briefly explain this to you
here: if the scene with my mother was a painting, this would be the room in
which the painting was hung, and the room’s faded wallpaper is telling me
something, and that something is my mother had nothing to do with what happened.
(The night she left there was a note on the
nightstand, a small scrap of paper with the words, ‘I’m tired.’ Something about
it to me seems worth mentioning.)
I used to be embarrassed by my connection to
him. When I was still in elementary (small, unfaceted) it wouldn’t come up, but
the adults would fall hushed, and whisper around me, and while development’s
fog clouds children to lies (at least when performed with an ounce of some cunning),
their peripheral range for public faux pas proportions precisely to a serpent’s
heat patterns; an older man would say something a little too loud or talk a
little too long, and a woman would clutch at my nearing approach, and that
would be it, and I would then know. This arena of interest that followed me dear
was a nuisance at first, then something to wield (in junior high, mostly– I’d act shy, be evasive and cold, a delicate touch
to hint at something unsaid); now I’m free and easy with the general tale, and
I don’t ever blame anyone for thinking to ask. (I add this part for my own
peace of mind as much for the theoretical listener at risk.) To tell you the
truth, though, I have very little else to say about him or my earlier childhood
that he surrounds– (I pause here a moment, to remember it whole. . .) of course, there is just one other
thing, another moment I can tell, of me walking into our living room and seeing
him sit there - folded to cushion, glass of water in hand - watching Mighty Joe Young on our old twenty six.
I had crawled under our couch and was casually spying on him. It was a late
part in the movie, when Joe had escaped to destroy the dumb club (if for some
strange reason you haven’t seen the film, Joe had been captured and forced to
entertain the happy-dance churn of a Hollywood disco, fittingly jungle themed, lions
in tow). And in this scene, from my memory’s vantage, crumpled, as it is,
amongst other recollections and the pervasive grayed darkness that borders
their march, there is an instant, quickly, only a handful of frames, where Joe’s
watching the lion, the lion’s staring at Joe, and my father’s a blurred shade or
fogged admonition or vanishing cloud at the edge of constraint; and this
picture, as reflected, and past through this moment, and past the event that
first snared your dry interest, summons me as if I am sorrowed in church, kneeling
black shouldered, waiting confession. Beyond that I remember him turning his
head - ever so slightly - either because he had noticed me or for some other
reason (I never can tell), and I watch myself through the disseverances of time
climb up to my feet, run out of the room, leap up the stairs and slam my large
door, hard and loud to cut like string the inexplicably shrill and carrying
guilt, the noise of which reverberates before a quick ceasing, a burst sounding
low as if deep underwater, or buried and dampened under many told miles of somewhat
curtained expression. And the track ends there except a few suburban what-not’s
about which you’d not care to hear.
For the third and last layer, the fattest by
far, I like to finish away from my father with something mercifully untouched
by the record of him, to remind the listener to whom they have listened, and to
remind myself I have history apart. To begin: my earliest memory is of me in my
crib; I don’t know how old I am, maybe two or three. It is the briefest of
suggestions, a porch light’s death flaring kennels and hills, moth
comprehensions dancing in trail, and in this quick flash there is clarity
there, but not for all things, and not all at once. It is night, that is known;
everyone else is asleep; I know I had at the time a marvelous stuffed elephant
delivered to me from my now-late grandfather, and this colonial creature sits
guarding my toys, gentian furred, on the opposite side; he is quietly speaking
in a hollow brook voice; clearly, this is a dream, perhaps the first of my
living, and is as such laying the beginnings of creation led enchantment and convinced
self deception that would rule a substantial quantity of my future and current
life. Today, after so many dreams, smothering layers of too cold blankets, one
upon the other to fade the lowest of their description, I cannot force the bulb
to illuminate his words, and so I cannot remember what exactly has been said;
this remains a great frustration in my day to day life.
The only real part left of the memory is morning:
I have since woken up, and my mother has placed me in my playpen downstairs. Her
image is much less distinct than past thoughts, and though it is difficult for
me to make out her nice face, the remembrance is otherwise good; a gleaming of
movement and strictness of shape, its motions plucked strings or clavier scales,
a familiar bridge that fastens larger moments, light and dependable (and not for
overuse), a serene normalcy made utterly sublime by its being so totally completely
out of reach: she sits in a chair in the kitchen, then stands, and I watch her
pace there in the front of the window, and then the sun rises, stills a bit, and
the light from the casement then eats out her body.
Anyways,
it was the first day, in the morning, and the last day of school before our
extended Spring Break. Briefly, and to get it over with: I live in a ten square
mile town called
(I’ll get to what this means for us, exactly, in
a moment, but I feel a strong need to sort of ease into things by reproducing
as best I can a quintessential weekday morning, paved over with events from my
usual days; consider this a real account made false by redaction.) It was a
Monday, breakfast, with my foster turned adoptives. I call them Tom and Kay
because that is their names.
“Did you finish your report?” Kay added two
plates of food to the six on the table. We’d been on a bit of a fruit kick
recently; something she’d read. “I heard you coming in late.”
I took a bite. “It wasn’t that late.”
“Eleven’s late enough. Did you finish it?”
“I finished it.”
“Good.”
She picked up her spoon. “Good, good. It was nice of your teacher to assign it
before break. Most would have given it to you to work on during. Now she has to work and you have off.”
“Yeah it was nice.” (I had made the mistake of
relaying to Kay my seared of enthusiasm teacher’s parched message that I was,
carelessly, ‘showing some promise’ in a particular subject, and if I was ever so
inclined she could back me for something– a program to be taken over summer, I’m sure. I
had no plans to follow up but had been letting Kay live in the vibrations that
came from an idea of me, that of being promising; what promises could be
satisfied no one yet knew, but the expectations were a gift to be opened every
morning by lingering thoughts and busy-bodied daydreaming. As a mother, even a
false one, it was her possession, and I wouldn’t take that from her; it would
only be cruel.)
“And today’s a half day, right?”
“Uh huh, half day. And it’s spiritual Friday.”
“What’s ‘spiritual
Friday?’”
“Because we have the rest of the week off, so.”
I looked up at her to see a face of clear incomprehension. “So it’s the end of
the week. Monday has the spirit of Friday, so . . . spiritual Friday.”
“Oh, good. Good.”
She cocked her head like a spaniel and laughed a little at the idea and took a
bit of cereal. She ate deliberately, as if in trying times, as I imagine a
pilgrim would.
Kay was a woman of faith but her true religion
was etiquette; business casual women’s department. She’d sit in a raft with an
ogre if she could compliment him on his necktie. It was a point of constant
irritation for Tom, as I understood it; this starved pursuance for proper
behavior had, I suspected, a dazzling blossom in my hand-wrung presence, the
sort of efflorescence that would take a man’s office and give it to a stranger
allowed in his home, and because he succeeded in never beating me senseless,
she would not only have to suffer his glares but his comments, as well; in any
real case he got the short end, certainly, but I would still always take to her
side of the fights (mostly just for the sport of it, really). Him and I weren’t
close, but it wasn’t a deep, blood-river, carved-rock detachment, like the
animalistic distance between a real father and son, that reptilian
contemplation humming hamsters eat their
young, no, this was co-workers who shared a small cubicle and yet never
found the time to go out for a drink; so very plain, and very not worth talking
about.
Tom glanced at me. “Meet still tonight?” He
was talking about the track meet. I’m in track.
“Yeah, still happening.”
“Who against?”
“Central.”
He made a little noise, confirmation that he
heard me. “Have any other meets coming up?”
“No.” This was a lie. We had one on Saturday,
but I wasn’t going to go. “Everyone is going to be on break then.”
He took a spoonful of oatmeal and a swig of his
orange juice. “Well better make this one count then.”
(I didn’t say anything.)
“Waffles!”
he screamed. There were no waffles. “Where are the waffles?!” This could go on
for hours.
“We’re going to be eating more fruit now,” Kay
said. “There’s watermelon and pineapple, and I cut up some banana for you.” He
ignored her: “Dad what are you eating?”
“Oatmeal,” Tom said. He hadn’t looked up yet.
“Wyatt what are you eating?”
“Cereal. And an apple.”
“Man.
I was so excited for waffles.” He sighed, tripling his chin on his chest. He
was always out of breath. He woke up out of breath. He sounded like a dying
animal just sitting there. “Do we have any pancakes?”
“There are some still in the freezer but I
don’t know if you have time.”
“Oh, I’ll make
time. Where are they?”
“Bottom shelf,” I said.
“You have your meet tonight right?” He had his
head in the freezer.
“Uh huh,” and that was the end of it; he
fished out his waffles, put them in the machine, and we all sat in gloom and
considered our day.
Now, I am not what you would call a classic ‘superstitious
person,’ but I will sometimes make wagers with myself or with the world, and
especially in the morning before anything has happened and the day could still
go in any which-way direction. If you do it like a child would, without condescension,
it can be fine brain labor to read your providence in entrails. And so, to this
point: I looked down at my plate and said to myself that if Bryan is the next
person to speak– and then he spoke, too quick to make an honest bet of it, so– I
let go of a breath and started over again and said if I look up to see the
clock on the wall, and the numbers add up to an even number, we - the soon to
be introduced group I mean - will be successful in our matters. I looked up;
the clock ticked seven twenty nine to seven thirty, an annoying half measure
that didn’t fully count. I’ll admit this instantly frustrated me. I darted
around the room to find a new determination, as if by bungling the gamble I had
started somehow a fabulous celestial crystallized egg timer, a large metallic
steam punk bird, crass and chirping, whirling and shaking - exhuming salmon tile,
spewing black fog - and the opportunity to see and to change my future self was
a man’s running moment to flee a burning house. Tom asked me a question, and by
the time I finished answering I knew my chance had been lost, my fate already
settled; the house had burned down, nothing was saved. If I was feeling
charitable I would have called it a draw. It reminded me (like a minor
enchantment, those early morning pins that fall over your eyes) that my father
gambled frequently, but never in large amounts; I can still recall my mother’s
slack disapproval. I sometimes wonder: would he ever plan his actions by similar
stakes, plotted interpretations of his common surroundings, deciphering his
day’s particulars as things to be deciphered, picking horses by traffic lights,
or just carefully walking across a river iced drive, seeing light skate the
windshield, and the coached messages gleaned from those supper time sparks.
But, it should be said, feelings are fleeting (and
so they flee, launching, divergent, splitting through crowds, breezes of
idolatry that speak great truths to you in briefly fashionable and torn paper
moments, shiny rocks in your stomach and head before crumbling, awkwardly, into
piles of short stones, those graying yellow ones picked air-headedly for a
garden, small and devoted and to enhance a specific bush, for the bush was
chosen to distract from the wall, behind which lays the ivory frame that
encases the history of a grown up person, egg shaped ovals of episodic
attachment, that stand, as a guard, before the southern most wall, that defends
from your vision the nighttime sky, and you sit there and you wait, listening
to herbs, listening to hear surely dedicated themes to our urgently commonplace
exile), and so the little machine said the pancakes were ready, and Bryan obediently
ate his pancakes.
This
played on like that for a while, going through the movements that every house went
through every working morning - too worn clothes frayed at the edges, an old
standard dried of any intrigue (you get the idea) - so while it plays on
forward lets skip back to the weekend so I can explain what Annabelle and Isaac
and I planned, and hopefully in the telling it will time out perfectly so when I
am finished I’ll have gotten to school, and we will have passed over the cold
march through Eisley woods, through unincorporated Norfolk, over the lot, the
same chart dragging hike that would define careers in professed education
better than a counselor could hope to portray.
In Westedge, as the snow recedes, the limits
of your willpower slowly extend, like eyelash bridges in more fantastical
fiction. An
With the parents far away, the availability of
the space made demands of our fancy, and past captivations fell to new pressing
order, like commissioning ancestral portraits to coronate a new hall; but we
couldn’t think of anything, so we pulled out old video games. (Maggie was in the
den; every two minutes there’d be an explosion of laughter. We had no idea what
she was doing.)
Annabelle put down the system’s controller,
tired of losing to the tank thing or whatever. “Will somebody please be Player 2?”
I looked up. “What do you want to do? One on
one?”
“Yeah but that mode where I’m Spectre and
you’re Minion in that town.”
“That’s not a mode it’s just something that Isaac
and I made up.”
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah.” She scooted back to hand me the second controller, and then mournfully
mooed like a cow.
During sophomore year I had begun to
separate myself from the friends I had carried in from junior high school, stuck
to me like barnacles on an eremitic hull; they were a safety net at the time, a
memory bank for calming relationships, but the contentment bred laziness, and then
soon wallowing, then eventual resentment for them holding me back. Too many
sit-ins in panel wood basements, doing nothing and then laughing about it. Some
of them had girlfriends, holdovers from grade school, the first girl they
flashed who had happened to like it; mated for life, like doves only pathetic.
As a whole, though, almost as pointed philosophy, their total disinterest in
the female sex and the atmosphere that bled from that lack of pursuit had
forced me - eventually - to abandon them, but thankfully I take pride in
communal integration; I can successfully infiltrate near any social circle.
It’s a very small town but a very big school, carting in students from all over
the district, and the means to change your station is wide and varied. Girls
are more inviting than boys at this age, eager as they are to quiet older
sisters’ warnings; if they don’t see you as a sexual threat they’ll let you tag
along to just about anything. Emily Higgins was the first such conveyance, to
the lunch room revenants and their subterranean closets; Anthony Fagel splintered
from them, and it tree-limbed from there to the garage band sycophants, passing
the sports nuts and other marginal groupings, branching in thick vines along
and away to the scheme I went: drama, and debate. Annabelle was actually somewhat
a part of this, but I only realized it later when I saw old cordons, people I
had been friends with for a month or two or so before picking up my bags and
moving on to better tables. It wasn’t as shallow as it sounds, trust me;
everyone knows everyone and just continues on. It’s less a system of roads than
a pond with lily pads; I mean, really–
where
are you going to go?
And I suppose I should confess here I
had a bit of a crush, though Annabelle I suspected was totally unaware of it; it
was, in truth, a pointless fascination. I had known her for a while then, and (as
these things go if you fail to distinguish yourself in any amount of time) her
perception of me had become firmly locked, if there was ever any jiggle room of
doubt to begin with. And she had always had boyfriends– gray, slumped vacuums dulling the space around
her. The last one broke off soon after he graduated sometime around near the
end of last year, and the split seemed to have left her shipwrecked. I didn’t,
at first, see it as something to take benefit - I had grown so accustomed to
the inlaid yearning as a Gordian knotted, tegumental twist of space, that it
was eventually merely an unconscious mole for which I nimbly avoided leaning on
anything sharp - but over the summer we had hung out in much greater frequency,
on and away from our shared respective groups, alone, just by ourselves, at the
park, in her room, outside of a party, in a parking lot, everywhere in shadows,
idly stalling curfews. To make things clear: there was no question to my
standings. But if there was anyone else there it was a palpable sensation that we were the structure to which they were the addition, and not in any
way an impactful change, or - to even dare think it - possible new totaling. And
she still, all year, never got a new boyfriend.
Taking a step away to a little crass
objectivity, I could understand why every guy wasn’t beating down her door. For
one thing, her eyes were just a little too far apart. And in junior high she
was fat; not scary huge, mind you, but still, big enough, and the fear that
she’d expound could lay eggs in your mind. She also wasn’t - you could say - at
all an easy mark, neither naïve like a fresh off the boat lower classman, nor
impressed by the athletics of the cast upper ranks. She was quick witted, and
could be abusive to strangers. And her voice, for some reason, sounded oddly
out of tune, perhaps a half quarter turn from its genuine pitch, wavering -
sometimes choking - through a prospector’s hack. Believe me, I say this not to
disparage her; far from it, the questionables of her appearance simply
fortified her charm. And I privately thought that cataloging her traits gave me
a solid leg up on any mounting competition; I had made them footnotes,
asterisks to her qualities; I had a year’s lead time to accept the whole
package. To put it more plain: I had seen her cry some countless times; I had
seen the long and the short hair
version; I had broken past the shell of the gym wall slant, through and on to
her actual self. No mysteries left now, except of course for what I cannot mention,
not without reducing to indelicacies.
Maggie trotted in; Quaker swiveled
in his chair to stay out of her sightlines. She kept towards the kitchen,
saying Paul had come over; who Paul was, I didn’t know, and the saddle stitch
outline filled blank and unprosperous.
Quaker seemed dubious. “Paul’s over? What’d he do, climb up through
the window?” She said the back door. “He’d still have to go up the stairs.
Funny.”
“I don’t know, you’re blind then,
what do you want me to say.” She was hollering from the kitchen now; I heard
the clinking of two beer bottles being excavated from the fridge, rescued by
someone young enough to appreciate the convenience. “With all the crazy shit
that happens in that movie the hardest thing to believe is Jimmie Walker as a
boxer.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.
She came back into the room, and I
first noticed her makeup, these raccoon-eyed tar pits, and if you want to ask
me it ruined everything about her face. She put the beer on the desk and
started popping them open - “What’s up with you guys?” - a question to which Annabelle could only
chirp like a squirrel. I said something like, “You’re looking at it, doll face,”
(but without the doll face), even raising one eyebrow in thoughtful performance
as if I had been somehow suckered into the evening’s itinerary. To tell you the
truth, though, I was perfectly happy, sitting there, tired, and playing that
game with Annabelle, of course, but the sudden appearance of the older, wiser,
world-wearier sibling made me suddenly self-conscious; she pulsated with
opinions, all the wondrous outlooks from a fertilizing college, and her ripe
relations changed the temperature of the room: the walls ran wet with heat
lines; everything over-bloomed, radiating speculation, filling the air thick with
her relentless observations. My inactions swelled questions - why was I not at
a party, doing drugs, fucking girls; why was I merely playing with Annabelle with tossed-off toys in a wood-wong
playhouse, and not pushing her against the wall, dragging her to the bedroom
(tugged by her hair), giving her stomach aches with my boundless charisma; why
was I interested in Annabelle at all;
I was her tired doorman, and sure to take a dive - to which the answers were
all clear to a wide-legged Maggie, I was absolutely sure of it (as sure as I
was that the woman in the jeep who sandwiched herself between me and the cement
mixer just a few nights before was a corpse reanimated to material assignments,
the imagery of which then demurely speared my thoughts, courting my despair to
Maggie’s dark presence, churning it – always! - to a tactile spread). She bore
witness to my sins of a quiet adolescence, my failures to capitulate to amorous
time, and instead of admiring my myriad scars found me disappointingly
jabbering, moon struck and dead, in off-campus, needle-headed word games.
I heard a bomb go off; Annabelle had
killed my car.
She turned to me gleefully. “Mom and
Pop, they will fuck you up. Alright, switch.” Distracted from Maggie by
Annabelle’s turn, I played up my depression, sighing, sulking, adopting hang
dog, enhancing the snake bite to a favorable sorrow. Success: she observed that
I was now sad. “. . . or we can do something else if you want,” she said. Judging
by her approach, she thought I was miserable for boy related reasons far
outside her identifiable range. My mystery of mood was a misfire.
“No, no, let’s switch,” I said,
quickly pressing buttons, exiting to the menu.
Quaker studied his sister. “I still
think we would have seen Paul come inside.” Maggie grabbed her drinks.
“Whatever.” She lifted her head to me, brushing the hair away from her eyes
with her elbow. “There’s more beer in the fridge if you want them,” and then left,
waddle toddling up steps; everything soon returned to normal.
I’ll jump ahead here to the point of
all this: Isaac was still set on the computer screen, so I asked him what he
was looking at. Records, he said. Albums? World records. I asked what was
interesting and he paused to read: some kid had stayed awake for eleven days.
“I thought it was a woman in a
rocking chair contest.”
Annabelle turned slightly. “What’s a
rocking chair contest?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like.” “Doesn’t
sound like anything.”
Isaac turned his head. “It says here
it’s this kid.” Then I think he said he thought that we could do ten, and I honestly
for the life of me can’t remember the rest, and how we all ended up thinking
this was a sensible idea. I can recall our positions, and our positions in the
room, and the grumble of the voices all rising to defect, but in truth, there
and now, I was diverted down stream; the idea of staying awake that long had put
me in a cave; dark walls, grey clouds. I wandered a beach and thought of the
sky. I grew from the black through the plaits in my bed, years ago, when Tom
and Kay had just taken me in. It had been a new room, and new blankets of
course, and the shock of new loneliness - similar to the old in form and perspective,
but now brilliant in scope and variety of texture - made it difficult for me to
let sleep overtake. So I focused on the forms that swirled in the warm air,
illusions projected from my tired third eye, where storms of hue, rainbow
scurf, would rise and spread like ocean waves, rising to crash through the
darkened walls. I was a solitary companion to these passenger elements, these quick
darting birds of abstract collision, and from this throw I would drain to a bottle
(quiet, withdrawn, glass blown) that would tuft and contort to a story-told
visitor, hugely indifferent, with changing intention. I hadn’t thought of this
figure since I started high school, but he fell over me then as a shade from stray
clouds. He stood in the room a flickering ray, clutching a spear and drawing
his name. He wasn’t complete; I was not between dreams. And the screaming light
from a train shook the no-chandelier, shattered the no-vase and sent a no-table
to tip, and after it settled, the room was returned; I was returned; and they
chartered their plans.
Feeling the controller once again in
my hands, my car roared to life from behind a small house and magically froze
Annabelle’s black rattletrap. It was quite serene now; only a matter of time. “God
I fucking HATE using Minion! He’s so slow!” she screamed.
“He’s the end boss!” I yelled as I
killed her car. “I’m the one with the
disadvantage!”
“I’ll dis your vantage.” She smashed
the controller and put on a voice of some hick. “Oh ahm tha one wit’ t’ disservan’age!”
“Is that supposed to be me?”
“That is you,” she laughed. “You’re fucking retarded.”
Then the family dog hopped between
Quaker and I, spun in a circle three times and sat down. He wobbled back and
forth on the couch a bit first, getting situated for the pillowed and
unpredictable terrain, and then, very strictly, looked into the mirror, locking
onto his likeness in a dead heat stare. Quaker, in wistful and mild amusement,
tiredly pet him with long slow strokes, from the tip of his nose on up to his
muzzle, down over his shoulders through on to his tail, over and over, up and
down, repeatedly petting him in the same slow sequence; every time Quaker
reached his white feathered tip, he’d simply lift his hand again and start once
more, beginning anew in slow descent; over and over, falling and rising. It was
downright prehistoric, and hypnotizing in its motions. I remembered reading
somewhere that there are very few animals that can recognize themselves when
ably presented; dogs, unfortunately, are not one of them. I thought of this
then, watching this dog, who, in turn, was watching himself, and wondered what
the experience must have been like for him; perhaps a vague admiration for its
confusing effects, the feeling of a hand being moved to his fur, and seeing his
jumbled alternate being touched in the same manner, but without, it would seem,
the watery folds of a fully aware consciousness to collapse them together. To
see and feel a growing comprehension but be dismantled at every turn by your
natural limits; to grasp your involvement in your pottered days, but only as
tokens - as single bright elements - disparate and divided in your swamp river discernment;
to be unable, totally, to connect your life to a greater appreciation or
talented stroke; it all seemed to me such a terrible crudity and awful
treachery by biological fortune, as loathsome as deafness, but worse by its prudery.
I wondered if he struggled to reconcile it, this dog, or if he even considered
it really at all; he must, I thought. Even within his cozy boundaries, he must
sense his immense and troubled inhibition; it must enrage him, this constant
poking from tasks as impossible and frustrating as seeing your own eyes. To be
a forced participant in a game you can’t win; it must make him absolutely
furious.
I’ll
admit little happened in the first few days.
There was the track meet (footsteps accumulate;
I’m an adding machine; two by two by two, on up the lane. On the bus ride home
I welcomed the murk– silence wove with a thick carpet whirr punctuated with the
noise and sharp escalations of guzzling smoke, or gas, or someone mumbling and
writing bad things in the frost. I ignored the coach’s prophesying; his religion
meant nothing to me); we went to Epsilon (hear it, please, with a heavy laid sigh:
Epsilon is a restaurant on Scenicwood Ave, a road known mostly for its
billboards, speed traps, dog shelters, a confluence of everything gross and
ugly that is happily native to the rural Midwest; it’s a sickly red building
that made you depressed to just hear the door chime and slide into its booth. I
could forgive most of its character if this was a chain, all of its coarse
peculiarities mandates and pooled, but no, it was autonomous, and incredibly unchallenged,
and all of its failures were of its own stock devising. I was convinced if you
ate there long enough you’d gain the appearance of a square-faced acolyte,
react to good taste scornfully, gawk at rain drops with earnest confusion. My
peers thought this was an overreaction, but I would be quick to point out that
no one ever started out anywhere saying, let’s go to Epsilon; if you were
there, it meant you had given up entirely; you just couldn’t think of anything
worth doing), and during our stay (which was thankfully short) my thoughts strangely
glazed to a sentence I found at the time to be mysteriously impenetrable: I
had, to that point, seen two dead crows. (The first was two streets from my old
house on
Once outside, Natalie began committing an
agonizingly slow act of molestation upon her purse in trying in vain to find
the ‘blasted’ car keys, and, in the same still occurrence, two structures
meeting in striking rapport, Annabelle kindly reached over to light her lipped
roll. They knelt to the ground to avoid the stiff breeze, the wind causing
their hair to lovingly mingle. It was a common scene, this adolescent posture,
but its commonness had hit a determined tipping point, spilling to a profundity
- however so bargained - delineating asses in gasoline puddles, emblazoned by
street lamps, abruptly transformed into medieval icons, the original teenagers,
halcyon acheiropoieta; the pose deserved to be carved in Russian wood and set
adrift from some rich burning galiot. I was a dumbstruck witness to a
transcendence, I felt, but in that feeling was a pauper with courts, apart from
the ceremony, without their approval, and only just grateful he had been in
attendance.
We decided we’d go to my house and watch
movies until dawn, figuring it was best to get ‘Film Night’ out of the way
early so as to not risk falling asleep attempting it later, when it would be
harder to focus and too easy to relax. The last movie was de Toth’s Crime Wave; the end credits flickered. Isaac
began tying his shoes. Annabelle, empty of expression, said, “Crime doesn’t
pay,” then stood up solemnly and cracked her back. I looked out the window and
saw rows of black bags lining the street like lazy soldiers, the array casually
interspersed with a few green tubs, blue and grey and pale black bins. A
neighbor stood smoking in his yard, robe billowing, defiantly exposed. Garbage
day. I looked back into the slow brightening room. Annabelle continued popping
body parts in place after sitting too long in the same artless shape, then
started down the hall to the bathroom, sashaying to and fro, her subtle form fully
emerged from under her clothes, every curve now obvious in the new and rising light.
The dry slap of her feet, naked on the tile, gave the whole thing an intimacy I
wasn’t quite prepared for, and it dawned on me that if she were completely nude
the sound effect would remain exactly the same. And, in truth, or a sort of
near truth, that sound - detached, indefinable, floating - would be, in one
sense, as close as any person would ever be to her, and even someone who could
claim to know all of her secrets would still share this apex with me in my
darkness; there would really be nothing so personal left. Walking through the
hallway, her every slope shifting, folds crashing inward before smoothing out,
she looked beach-born, a tawny brown native, fluidly strolling, tempting weary
travelers with strange remote customs, comforting them with the knowledge that,
yes– this was the holy land they’d promised their king - let us have mixed
children; let us have new sacraments - the long exhausting voyage was finally
over.
I watched her close the bathroom door, heard the
faucet turn on, and thought, what is this creature doing here in my house, at
this early hour, while I have nothing to show for it, and nothing to offer her.
It
was the third day, Wednesday I think, late morning, sitting in Isaac’s small
burrow of a room, the tree lined window and sharp enclosed angles masquerading
(somewhat) as a tiny log cabin. Isaac put on Jawbreaker’s “Kiss the Bottle”,
and the distorted intro gave way to the apparent, as did his grandmother’s hollering
from the basement to turn down the heat, when, in fact, there wasn’t heat on:
we were not in a forest, and, even more, we were as far from the woods as we
could possibly get.
Isaac looked winded, but he could have been
acting; in the end, it didn’t matter; we all felt pretty good. The test was
intoxicating, and not just for the challenge– only we had seen everything the
day had to offer - the fully fattened day - with all the ancillary artifacts
and guerdons that chanced, and that simmering tickle of club membership (pleasant
indigestion) floated us through the unglamorous points. People who were asleep
were missing this then and now, and later, up ahead, and the continual amassing
of continual moments, each adding to the last in one continual unending, put us
farther and farther ahead of our neighbors in the continual contest to seek
pins of awareness, statues erected to merit their time, for how long would we
breathe without those sought pearls. It honestly felt that to sleep was to die,
to completely give up; and these people so truthfully had given up. They were not the verse heroes their fathers had
been, they were not mountain coal, not poor enough to pardon their soft-headed
misery, so coddled, so edited, so secluded from knapsacks. And we saw them,
watched them, in the halls of super markets, sitting in traffic, watering their
lawns, each perfunctory activity a post to stake out yet more wasted time
between wandering nothings. We thought: didn’t they know they’d be dead,
buried, in sixty, fifty, forty some years? In the race for meaning - meaning as
experience, experience as incidence - we were lapping them. I was downright
optimistic.
We got up groaning and walked down the hall,
and sat in the kitchen at a towering table (Isaac’s parents were surgeons,
rich, and often ‘on leave’); an art book so big it looked to take coins met on
the counter a basket of fruit, and its cover’s still life blended sweet with
the food. The area in space between the kitchen and lounge had a television
angled so the eaters could watch, but it was a weekday afternoon, so the order
of the day was cheap programming for housewives. Right then it was The Misfits; Clark Gable and Monroe’s
last movie, I think. (Maybe only for one of them.) In the scene that was on,
Marilyn sat in the front seat with some other guy driving, bumping, through the
desert. He kept saying things like, “You tell me to stop it and I will,
Rosalind, I’ll stop it,” and, “Give me a week to show you what I got, Rosalind.”
Then he started crying. Annabelle laughed wildly at every new word; she would
turn to me and dance, mouthing the script, falling over in angst, dramatically pulling
at her dress, teasing; she got up to get a drink from the refrigerator’s spout
and I heard her still laughing with her head in the door. I don’t really know
why, but it made me kind of sad; it’s not that I liked it - I only saw the
movie once, years ago, and had honestly forgotten most of it then - but I felt
we should afford it some silence, at least, like you would with a child, or any
flared innocent, carefully soaking their pirouette cries about whatever event
had briefly given them burden. I explained the plot to them just to get her to
shut up. She faked enthusiasm towards my summary, poor girl, but I think she
suspected what I was doing, because when the movie came back from a dog food commercial
she didn’t say anything, just drank her orange juice and flipped through a date
book.
(Our
unwritten itinerary drew words by ghost writers; I’ll move through these items
as quick as I can) We took the risk and took the car for a drive, just to see
what was where; the sky looked metal; “not a cloud in the sky,”; Isaac gunned through
the ramp; if he ever got a ticket he would still be ahead; I rolled down the
window and the wind broke through, floating Annabelle’s hair as if underwater. We
drove for miles, past the men on the roads, handkerchiefs over noses, fitted in
jumpsuits, collecting our trash. Gale and dust would fight them in play, carrying
every loose sheet, taking it away into the fenced empty fields; they’d stand
there, numbly watch the ballet, totems of their inelegant ineptitude. June
brings lean air, but then it was still March, and we took every advantage
before the moisture would drive us indoors or to pools, to the rabble of
birthdays and draconian attendants. There was a short gasp of time between cold
and swimming heat, and September brought ice showers; Spring had tornadoes, but
if God were to act we preferred He be devastating. The ground was still pale,
the aftereffects of February and twelve inches of ash. In July, the field
stalks would roll over to corn, and our Ground Hog’s Day of Summer was seeing
how high; less maize meant less Summer, and the staunch affirmation of a sudden
strict Fall. There was no scientific basis for this, of course, but it seemed
to work every new year, and each year it worked our compulsion grew.
We drove to Emerald Alley while it was still
light. The weather was brisk, but we parked on
The day had gone fast, the sun in descent, and
as it slowly sank, light would pierce tree leaves and hit a fence post,
gradually moving across the world, then shifting totally, absorbed by the weakened
and afternoon shade. It was a common sight, these runaway sun spots; one would
move across my bedroom wall in the morning, and I could track my tardiness by
its current position. Here they ran out freely as burglars on the lam, giving
the illusion they were unbound, or displaced, could continue on and on, carving
across the meadow, into the next town, across the ocean, the globe– but as the
sun plunged deeper the leaves cut their lines, and their sudden shuddering shook
me fiercely to the truth: they did, in fact, have a justified maker, and were
in so being sternly tethered to his arc.
Time continued to slowly escalate; we gained
sidelined cheerleaders and moved through the town sometimes a caravan,
sometimes a hunting party, wild, and hooting, and honking, and slathered with
the innards of invisible animals. The poor whiteness of day soon dwindled to
dusk; I was in a chair, then a park, then sitting in a yard. The scent of
traceable ever-more excursions had brought us to Michelle Breckman’s fenced-in
perimeter, dodging fireflies, and throwing bones to her three yapping dogs.
Everyone laid about, affecting miens of the inconsolable rich, practice while
we waited for our patents to go through. Sarah, unprovoked of anything, would
say we should do something to Tommy Kelso’s car, and I would ask why, and Sarah
and Michelle would look at each other then, and through a swift set change and pedestrian
witchcraft the wide patio would darken, their eyes transmitters, sounding a
beep-beep-beep-beep of feminine telegraphy - cartoon lightning bolts’ flash
over heads - an unspoken language right there in front me, pausing, for a
second, either to fabricate a story or simply relish the innocence and
stupidity of my question. And before they could fully crack their encoded messages
and with combined intel soar high into the air, to howl and laugh and to jab me
with forks, a screen door bang would signal Michelle’s younger brother running
outside with a soccer ball to join us, his brown curls a pastiche of comic
strip coils.
We eventually went there and moved the car
down the street with Rob and Matt Humphries but who cares, let’s move on; where
were we after? At the Food Shop and Pharmacy. Cardboard crowns and trash paper
armor; more hours went by; we had gamely kept up our marches and drum circles. (In
the past I had reacted to the idea of townsmanship - pride for the unique
sameness of local market geography - with laughing derision; something that
adults did to fill their tense silences and clap away boredom when trapped in
thin elevators– and the small town version of big city arrogance. But when
Giant Food World closed, I too felt a sting of cultural entropy; suddenly I was
talking in elevators about it. That grocery store was ours, stupid name and all;
it lived outside the needs of the regional economy. So what if a bigger Shnucks
opened five miles down road. Was everyone just going to abandon Giant Food,
with its scrumptious free samples and rare double coupons, and the check out
girl who wore that pink beanie that time? Well yes, yes they were, because a
Food Shop and Pharmacy now resided in the lot, master of none, servant to all. Kay
said it was more convenient since it sold both brands of grape juice that she
previously had to trek between two stores to retrieve; I said something about
it being the principle of something but it was tough to make a dent. Food Shop
was a very masculine store, insensitive and piggish. The workers were self
indulgent, negligent, aggressive; no chivalry at all. I thought perhaps part of
the house birds’ unaccountable attraction was how close the shopping experience
was to an extramarital affair. The store didn’t respect them, it merely
overpowered them, flattered them with its interest, treated them like the cheap
whores that they knew they could be; it didn’t need their perusal and rejected
scrutiny. And they ran over themselves to get inside.) It was Rob, Annabelle, Isaac
and I, each of us in shop carts, babes overgrown, tired of running our blacktop
boat races. Rob threw a rock into the parking lot void; “So what are we doing?”
I thought to myself we needed something to ruin, but did not actually say this
for fear of how it would sound. We decided to steal something. “No, it should
be bigger,” Annabelle said. “We should make a list of things to steal for each
of us, like a scavenger hunt.” “Yes, a scavenger hunt of thieving.” “Of thieeeeving.” “Of thieving.” (It’d
become a bit of a custom to repeat exotic words; better reduce them by redundancy
than miss them altogether.)
We went inside and bought a notepad and pen to
make the list of goods we intended to take, of which the delicious irony made
us laugh uncontrollably, shoving each other like brutish school girls. To make
the game fair we assigned to each other: Isaac had a board game; Rob, the tallest
- and with the far biggest coat - had fire logs; I had a book; and Annabelle,
the only woman and thus the least suspect, had to take condoms, which were
locked in a glass case and so had to be asked for. Some stores wouldn’t sell
them to you if you weren’t eighteen; Food Shop was luckily not one of them. (A
brief aside, quickly and hushed: I did not know this from experience. I have
never bought condoms. The only girl I had sex with up until that point claimed
she was on birth control and showed me the three fourths empty plastic
merry-go-round to prove it, though in hindsight I realized it could’ve belonged
to her sister, though I had no real reason to doubt her at the time, owing
mostly to her fallen nature - that shrugged pretense and masks - and her
family’s deep religiosity that made it impossible to lie about - even lie about
taking it - in the face of the overwhelming light and overwhelming consequence,
a falsehood rendered malevolent from its proximity to God– even to a confirmed
practicing agnostic like herself. We did it three times, like certain acts of
business, and then she broke it off for reasons I won’t get into right now.) It
didn’t take long for Annabelle; the fumbling sun-kissed counter boy was
neutered by age and unsteadying panic, and he didn’t really need this reminding
of it, so - to hear her tell it - he almost threw the party balloon package at
her and stormed off in a huff. Rob ducked into the pharmacy enclave. The plan
was to all walk out as a group (to only trip the alarm once), but Isaac took
his time, deciding which to choose, chatting up the mom in the wide toy aisle,
making up a story about his young brother’s birthday, a once a year matter he wouldn’t
dare disappoint. I picked up my book, a pulpy thriller paperback thick with
small type. Isaac walked past, clutching something where you crafted your
pieces out of mud; something, I expected, he would actually play. I meandered
to the jelly and peanut butter aisle and carefully picked up one of the
superior containers, meant for a large family with nation-sized children. The
three of them buzzed by the door, waiting, their eyes peering out from under
hoods and over their collars.
I made eye contact with Annabelle, who waved me
not to do it, but I still did it anyway.
The jar smashed when I was ten feet from the
door, the sprinkling glass heralding a blazing siren; I tell you chaps it was
biblical. I expected fiery horses, azure temptresses, to storm over the
swatches of mottling merchandise, booming plasma symphonies, rainbowed
destruction; I had heard this noise - this incredible noise - before, when it
was merely a small irritation, pointing out the mistakes of the red eye scanner,
improper measures of instrument treason; now, under sheets, it sounded the end
of the world. (When we were five hundred million miles away from the store I
looked back at a lone worker, sleepily languishing to the closing glass doors;
he stopped just outside, looked to every direction, then, just as sleepily,
returned to his berth.)
And that was the end of that. The running
pavement ran to a stilled and silent dark, and before I reached the end I had
tumbled somewhere else, distant and near, a vineyard growing thoughts to a marooned
placid sight. (A picture of a girl in a flower dress and jeans exposing herself
in an alley, if you must. She is kneeling next to a truck, hosed with spray
paint, the achene advertising cacophony lights.
So where was I then, and after? In the car. Annabelle
said “Padido” and kissed her fingers for amends. And after that, in the kitchen,
washing dishes, a brief respite from the group, time to recollect and visit the
family watchdogs. I dumped my day old cereal bowl into the sink and watched the
milk crust flakes break apart in the water, the swirling stomach split, pretend
candle wax, signs of future holdings, cheap flights to the future - or so I’ve
been told - but looking into the sink then I watched it form nothing but a coldly
fetid bath and further disintegrations.
Anyway, back to the lurching at hand: we
trudged later to Stahl Elementary; the bars of the jungle gym crisscrossed the
orange brick of the schoolyard proper. Black clouds quietly lumbered. All of it
was very private, painterly, dipped in a deep, rich, dark, imperfect fluid, and
nimbly exclaimed across the negative canvas. It was late and hard to see, as
there were no lights, and it was colder than we expected. I waited for
Annabelle to begin her dog’s shiver so I could give her my jacket, admittedly
less to keep her happy and warm than to see her enwrapped in something of mine.
We stepped from the grass to the stones of the playground, and from the
crunching of my footsteps flowed absurd impressions, memories of embarrassment,
triumph– and repulsion from living long enough to value such a mood. We sat on
the swings, sideways askance, looking out the fence at the roofs of the houses
which carried down the slope of the just-there
(My father hated school, I remember that
clearly. He said it wrecked his search for a more honest tedium.)
The night continued; far away lightning didn’t
bring likely thunder; Annabelle said the
world had held in a sneeze; I giggled stupidly at her comment and
unconventional thought process. I admired her so, and proceeded to follow her
neurotically on our sidewalk jaunts, echoing her gait with a shameless disquiet
before tripping on a step and losing her shade, and allowing another intruder
to swarm my blank thoughts; bear with me, please, as these are necessary statements:
a girl, of course, shorn hair, thick eyebrows, sprawled furry on a burgundy
couch, a bandage on her ankle, stains on her fingers; her sharp features were
grown somewhere above the equator, and I imagine if you traveled far enough in
her bloodline there’d be Viking ships, whale hunters, and crowns made of antlers.
She has a drugged out haze, a thick cloud of imperceptions, but there’s a poise
to her waves, maybe a holstering of refinement, like rations to be used in a
state of emergency. She ignores me, and I cannot do the same to her; let her
keep, let her keep; and I feel small and useless. I shimmy and regroup, and she
fades to porch lights; another siren gone. And I look to Annabelle, and my
freedom is subdued.
We walked like infantry. More rainy images.
Snails in shoes. An empty skate park. The dawn comes a sandstorm; we cry at its
vigor. More hours had passed and it was now late morning; we had run from
hissing geese (a story and joke). In every way we constructed our oral biographies,
facile as they were, and to repeat the events later would fit them with mythos.
Lots of Oh you should’ve been there’s
and the like. In our waking walking blindness we had somehow walked to
Clouds, unrestrained, turned to continents,
and a fog came through the gossamer tenements. It was late afternoon then; the
television on, bleeding sea weed, a nice patina coat,
Isaac put his hands in his pockets, a warning that
he was soon to (plotting to) speak. “Is Annabelle seeing anyone?”
I pretended to continue paging through the
book. “I don’t think so.”
“I thought maybe she was seeing that college
guy still?”
“No, they broke it off a little while ago.”
He shook his hair like a dog and then
scratched his neck. I picked up the book: ‘A 12 gauge shotgun can be made from
a gas pipe and fittings.’
We left shortly thereafter, aimlessly driving.
Annabelle and I switched seats, me in the back then, watching out the window to
the short houses and tall trees converging to a flip book of unfavorable color,
then crashing to another chatting, stumbling, debauched vision, flown freely
from my files as if by strong gust of wind (in my blinks, I viewed a girl,
standing on a bed, dancing in boy underwear and a man’s pink shirt, bopping to
music that wafted from the hall. She lights a cigarette, and the sunlight behind
her blooms through the blinds, doubling and tripling her shadow and smoke. She
pulls at her shirt, and shows her midriff and neckline. Her father pays no
attention, which she takes as endorsement, the gross tonnage entitlement of a
mercurial orphan, a traded aggravation, teaching lessons of insurance and satellite
stagnancy. Her Mediterranean hips hold a pass key and code. It turns late, the
room green, red curtains to the floor, and she kneels a ghoul to help piss out
the vodka, shadowed and screaming in the boardwalk blue corner, red wine
cackling at her friends taking photos; it is a deeply held fantasy to have this
much fun, but I lie away, and awake, and keep hold to the arm rest. The visitor
stirs, but I still shut him out; my mother displaces; I have no need for him yet).
The sun quickly left and it was nighttime again; the indistinct markers of time
had gone ridged, traipsing over themselves, or breaking entirely. None of us
could remember everything that had happened– and even if we could not in any
right assemblage. Whole hours hid from us. Afternoons vanished. But gifts are
ill-fitting, as these times were; if they weren’t we could attest to them with
absolute certainty. And, after all, it was still a young joke, as we were not
tired, as our chants would attest, as the contest had the thrust of some loud drunken
evening not one guest would allow to come close to an end, no matter how many
day rays scissored the shade, casually reminding us of our wounds and errands.
So we continued, testing our oriental knowledge;
Isaac hit seek, and the radio skipped. “Oh,
oh,” Annabelle hopped up and down in her seat. “It’s, it’s - shit, it’s - Buffalo Springfield, “Mr. Soul.” Isaac
sighed. “Mother trucker.”
“How are you getting these?”
She purred. “I’m just that good.” We hit seek
again. “Bruce Springsteen “The River!’” “Fuck, really?”
It took me a second. “You practice this at
home.”
(I’m fairly certain I’ve mentioned this before
- perhaps I haven’t - but Annabelle and Isaac had only recently become
acquainted, an odd pairing boosted initially, of course, by my relation to them,
and the effects of which whistled through my piping right then - that
subterranean system of aqueduct endings - a sharp chill shake from a thrumming wind;
spread a disguised mere from my river’s association, they had developed into an
unpampered rapport so naturally that no outsider could have guessed at their
relative strangeness. And, sitting there then in the front seat of her car,
watching this happen, watching this (I dared not say ‘relationship’, even to my
own thoughts) develop, I felt somewhere in the smoggy woodlands of nerves a
tiny crumpled up ball of tissue papered unpleasantness, of which each word
between them were thimbles of water, tipping, spilling, dripping upon it,
unfolding the crinkle to a yet wider growth, and soon, very soon, much better pilgarlic,
a sound I was grateful my mother had taught me when I was first learning the morals
of words. And I imagined an architect building his homes, skyscrapers to clouds,
only to watch others profit from his insight and touch.)
An hour - hours? - later, I had my final
visitor of the quartered epoch - mustered, and shambling, and lifted - while I
laid in the backseat in traveling sickness, feeling an apprentice to shadowy circumstance,
divided in spirit by fishing lights that ebbed thick bold monotony from a military
camel train, passing tracts of piety shunting eyesight to dimmer: a girl, naked,
leering in a snow drift, walking from a deep forest to greet me in notice; and
that is all of its particulars that can now be repeated. When I said earlier
that I could be satisfied - if not with the world than with my contact to
Annabelle - it was not really a lie, when I first thought it back then, or now;
but there, in the car, it was a lie newly rendered, my feelings on the matter
having rolled over a wagon, each spoke clicking life to new thoughts of poor
taste; the intensity of my thinking carved disfigures to notion; what shame she
would feel if I had the gift of projection. But if that was the price of being
in her stead (the phrasing of which seemed to paint her a horse), I would pay,
though not gladly, and not consider it cheap; it was fair, and bound, but that
was all, and no more.
What time was it then? Late. Or later. We had
climbed the back ladder to the top of a store, and had been surveying the lot
and its neighboring shops. Each roof was distinctly different; flat river hats
atop voluminous baggage, each of them indicators suggesting personalities. The
clouds had fled and the moon was bright, and Isaac and I sat smoking while
Annabelle danced on the roof’s worn edge, slowly spinning (she had taken ballet
for some time in grade school and had miraculously retained near most its
teachings, lizard therapy correcting her casual stance) and it took three full
warnings, increasingly stressed, for her to finally consent and back away with
a start. She quipped sarcastically but Isaac agreed: “Just do us a favor and
get away from the ledge.” More huffing (and now puffing), contemptuously dangling
her leg over, laughing. I grumbled– they want respect and a safe distance (no,
no, thank you, I can carry that, yes) but if we went to a concert and she
drifted too far, losing knowledge of me for even ten minutes, she’d feel rightfully
choked by the tin-headed crowd, and return to me, seething, a drowned tortured
cat, screeching and yelling, drumming up falsehoods and playgrounds of torture–
oh, it would be such an invidious
ploy to erase for herself (as much as for me) any lingering wish to admit to the
dread, the anxiety, the fear of being away on their own, away from those of us
that will tolerate farce, away from the lighthouses of people they know and the
lit maternity of that trusting glimmer, away from those of us that are broke to
dispassion, returned to the heaven of childhood’s death, that unending
confoundedness for all things grown up, it would go on and on this appalling
portrayal, and she has the nerve - the nerve! - to puff at my fear; let her
topple, I thought, let her trip and then plummet, and in her contemptible
falling think of me and my nagging, reverberating through space, echoing her
lament, too late to heed but sorry all the same.
She flopped down next to me with a needling
leer, her hair a chaos, and I suddenly forgot why I had gotten so angry; it is
true, they command us, as a general commands his traumatized troops, and as
dependent as he is upon them for strength; they wouldn’t be beautiful without
our dumb fancy. She sat down in front of me, back against knees, then drooped to
lie down– a car squared the lot and baptized us with westerns– “Hello Mary Sue,”
she said softly to no one, “Ol’ Ricky Nelson,” and my stomach turned stones. There
is a story in the telling, but whatever you can speak is surely dead in your
heart; this though, I guess, is enough to just say: I had never ever ever wanted
anything so deeply.
It
was the fifth day, early morning, and minutes after sunrise.
We were far out then, in the in-between
counties– nothing, it seemed, but ground and bract, and a far off ocean that encircled
the station. Eventually we saw a marker for
We parked where vacant and triumphantly got
out. It was Friday so I anticipated the hustlings and bustlings of ready
weekend campers, newly divorced fishermen, but no one was around, and it made
me uneasy. Also, I knew I had been there before but I couldn’t remember
anything about the park or the forest, and my lack of comprehension displayed as
drab strangeness; I thought I’d feel at home but instead seemed a guest. Space
filled; there were leaves and trees and rivets and branches and vines
everywhere, everywhere except where they had carved the dirt trail. We walked
casually, complacently, inspecting the environment, every few steps pausing to
comment on a bird, or squirrel, or wandering insect, and, when satisfied with
the entry, proceed on. We kept like this for a bit, windingly forward,
zigzagging this pale yellow vein, before growing bored of the too easy approach
and deciding to leave the intended route; I wouldn’t have done it if I had been
more mindful, but our quiet delirium followed the angles, enjoyed the subtle
then sudden dissolution of navigational tokens, the thrill of not doing what we
had been told, multiplying over, and then spilling over, determining our
motions past the tamed immature on and into the more honest forest.
We stumbled through the brush and came upon
open ground, and slightly further was a wall of rock, and from the rock cut in a
wide cave. The sun, free of trees - the leaves like swung hinges - blasted
through towering a column of light, and I picked up pace towards the expected
warmth, but, upon reaching it, was only made colder: in front of the cave’s
entrance, out of the wall’s shadow but still near enough by it to be protected
from rain, placed carefully in a patch of dead grass in the middle of the clearing
was a dark grey couch, constructed micro-fiber, large enough to seat at least four
people, disturbingly mannered by the sight’s contradiction, a sickening crown
for an underground giant. And this, if you can fathom, was not all there was to
it: to its sides sat leather chairs in mirrored position, to its front was a
wood table with a glass cut center, to its back was a mission desk (oak) with a
dragonfly desk lamp (amber lit) on top, and a few meters away sat a pine wood
rocking chair, every bit the ostracized elder. Vividly to scale, everything was
ornate, each piece placed as neatly and deliberately as the couch, each certainly
aware of their own spatial profession, a thoughtful arrangement meant to mimic
the grace of a living room judged by the coughing of sisters, but in the scenic
dominion in which they’d been found they tried the appearance of an elaborate
gravestone, a lumpy reminder of the process of bathing, scrubbing the dead, and
resolving our sores.
(Also: the pieces seemed indifferent yet
cautious to company, a chilly unblinking digesting reserve, and as we escaped
their purview by circling to sides, their stiffness of angles seemed purposed
and poised, like wary animals just letting us fade so as not to invite conflict
or violence.)
Annabelle approached. “Maybe they dumped them
here last night.” “Yeah, maybe.” Honestly, I didn’t know what I thought; the
premeditation and required planning, along with the pretense toward livability
gave me a terribly odd feeling. The cold dampened, and I slipped my arms into
my shirt. A large shadow flooded in and I instinctively looked up; the sky was
deranged with dirty clouds.
Isaac skipped a rock into the cave’s divide,
swatted the grass with a stick and looked bored. “I’m going to go check out the
cave,” he said, then asked if we wanted to join. Annabelle was uncaring; I was
unmoved. “OK,” he said, walking off, and then singing. “But I think it’ll be pretty cool.” I looked at Annabelle - shoveling hair into her mouth like an
infant - and measured my luck.
I patted down my pants, hunting for cigarettes,
but came up empty. Defeated, I sat in the nearest leather chair for
consolation; the feeling of a well made chair on my exasperated form erased all
apprehension I held for it’s being there. It had brass buttons trailing down
the stitch, and made that wonderful enveloping elephant tire rasp when you
settled into its corrugates, grinding your stretch to a paternal expansion. And
the world expanded devotedly with me, rolling past my partisan limits as if on
a tumbrel, carting any detachment I may have seized on to various equilateral
chambers, covered under tarpaulin to be dismissed and forgotten. The teasing
living room overflowed to fruition; brown wooden walls outgrew from the grass,
climbing upward like snaking vines; then window sills and porches and backyard
clotheslines; a half bore house assembled around us, its roof an open ceiling
to daylight’s adoption. Annabelle’s features feathered to the darkened blearing
of a moth’s fast wings, and merged in wonder with the sunshine’s bloom; she was
a new person now, extracted from my thoughts, carrying the softly beating,
dramatic hum of a nursery mum’s ever watchful eyes, and the affectionate carriage
of knowing autonomy. She was away from me now, and I could not reach her, and
though I saw her through the eyes of a child, felt old.
I looked to see if Annabelle - the real
Annabelle - had taken notice of my grandfatherly stature; she hadn’t. She was
several feet from me, separated from the furniture, lightly swaying from side
to side. (Two sanitary observations before I continue: first, that I faced her
back but had somehow felt - in that sort of flimsy certainty that fastens your
memoirs - her face was calm and her eyes were closed; and second, to point out there
was great space between us, but with Isaac gone it seemed secluded, and near.) After
a moment she stopped swaying, turned at the waist, both to remove her sandals
and show off her form. It was all very mechanical: strands of hair fell over
her face, her skirt lightly skimmed the grass. She pretended to untie
nonexistent shoelaces, daintily pulling at the invisible strings, plucking implied
knots like simple glass instruments. If she did this for my amusement, I
couldn’t rightly tell, but for a joke it seemed stone-faced, and very strangely
private, so much so that - for a half born second - I wondered if she’d
forgotten I was even still there. When finished, she placed her shoes in
ceremony next to each other on a spot of matted grass, stepped away, turned
more fully towards me, and somberly approached the fake living room set as if
to begin a performance. She stood ironing board straight, wobbly, and still,
taking long controlled breaths pushed down to her abdomen. Then she slowly
raised and lowered her arm as if to hold a baton (or to stretch, or to quiet
the audience), closing her eyes in a playful tension. (She opened one up to
make sure I was looking, and after its sanction shut quickly again to uphold
the facade of a nervous dancer, or tin marionette, or whatever the Hell it was she
was pretending to be.) The vague jumbling of actions was difficult to parse,
but the act entire had the sniff of some purpose, and I was anxious to see
where this game was going. After a moment - and perhaps beginning to sense some
impatience, of which, admittedly, there was none - she took two small steps
forward, opened her eyes bright and glazed, and began slowly sauntering,
keeping at all times her legs casually stilted, purposefully toy like, moving
through the set in a gawky, sundried, false-practiced routine; she danced
erratically, then gracefully, then most erratically again, fluctuating enfeebled
between zombie midwife and maybe with help someone’s soap opera nurse. Stopping
at a seemingly predetermined position, she paused, bent, and opened a cupboard.
“Darling, are we out of food?” She
had taken the tone of a Doris Day; it all became clear: house. (This girl.) We
were playing house.
“I guess so . . . dear.” I was spurting, and
unable to hide my surprise.
She stood up at an angle, hands on her hips.
“Well I declare!” A southern twang
now, but just as quickly discarded: “You always get drunk on scotch at Mr.
Percy’s and forget to bring home our dinner. Oh well.” She closed the
refrigerator. “Our Timmy got an F on his test today. Just what should we do about him?”
I thought. “He should get a spanking.”
“Spanking?” She put her hands on her face.
“He’s sixteen years old!”
“Well, he still needs to be taught a lesson.
Where is the young lad?”
“You know Timmy. Two tabs of Concerta and he’s
out on the town eating football player ass.”
“Oh.” I thought; she was better at this than
She tossed her hair and looked into the
distance. “Oh this and that. Martha Washington came over and we played bridge.”
She looked at me. “What did you do at work? Where is it you work again?”
I thought, and thought. And thought some more.
I felt myself getting warm while she stood, waiting. From the wet hot blur two
words finally cleared. “General Mills.”
“Yes,” she laughed, spinning around the living
room. “You invent cereal! Bun Flakes
and Cookie Cock were your last two, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, relaxing again. “Those didn’t
do too well. Actually today I found out I was laid off. Too many customer
complaints.”
“Oh dear.” She stopped short and her skirt
whipped her legs. “Maybe you should be the one to get spanked.”
“Maybe.” She had lowered her voice to a thick
whispered lust; it was part of the game; I still looked at the ground. “What
subject did Timmy get his F in?”
“Biology. He couldn’t find his dick.”
“Well like father like son.”
“What about last night?”
“Last night was a fluke. You had brought in
the flood lights.”
“Yes, the flood lights did help. And the metal
detector.”
“The metal detector!”
“Yes!” She threw back her head to show the bow
of her neck, and gave the sky a luminous smile. “Should I bring it out now? No
one’s at home.”
“I don’t know. The neighbors might hear the
screaming.”
“I can gag you.”
“I wasn’t talking about me, dear.”
“I don’t think the nanny wants to get called
in on a Friday.”
“I wasn’t talking about Rosetta either.”
“I think Martha’s too tired from this
afternoon.”
“Was bridge that exhausting?”
“No, after bridge. We went cunt to cunt with
her husband’s boat cortage.”
“Bob was involved? I thought we had an
agreement.”
“No, silly, he was getting waxed at Ching
Chong’s.” She twirled three times and plopped into my lap, putting one hand to
my ear and the other to her legs in one startlingly radiant motion. “You’re the
only man for me.”
The warmth was returning; I looked away from
her again.
She smirked. “Have you been smoking opium?”
“No, dear. I gave it up.”
“I just know how it makes you so very paranoid.”
“Only for you.”
“How sweet.” She brushed my hair.
“What, uh – did Joe fix the sink?”
“He fixed a
sink.”
“But not the one in the kitchen.”
She paused, looking at me, and gave the moment
its time. “I sent him away.”
Another pause. I looked at her. I didn’t know
what to do. The warmth intensified, so I looked at the ground, but my eyes
against me fell down to her crotch. I thought again, of something, anything to
say, anything to think, but all I could pull was my wanting her off. (And where
the fuck was Isaac? How long does it take to look at a damn cave?) She patted herself. “So should I bring out the
swing or the forcipes.”
She had dressed both hands just slack around
my neck now, and I could feel them adjusting, her fingers twirling– my sight’s
black rims around the throw of her clothes, her fragrance, her skin, every inch
dropped with sweat, clear of perfume (which is useless to her); my covered in
jeans and quick engorged member (around her I wrestled for fear of convulsing);
it was all just so terribly embarrassing. It was a game, simply, a child’s
delight, but this show had vigor beyond stock carnage, and I couldn’t help but
gauge me kissing her then, and imagine - flurried - the horrified reaction, her
pushing away from me falling in rage, shrieking and kicking dead leaves from
her feet, then standing, legs spread, exaggeratedly stretching her arm in a swab
to wipe the imprint from her stupefied mouth, the act writ large for the
balcony seats, standing now, one foot in front of the other - kindergarten
aggressive - screaming and cursing my callow impulse. But; I thought - of
course not, no - her touching amusement and darling eyes said. Of course she
wouldn’t do that. She was a friend (that jailhouse), and nice person to boot;
in truth she’d be gracious, small turn of the cheek, an embarrassed sly grin
and ideal apology, perhaps even further: an explanation, for help, making sure
I’m OK and was not too offended, and as polite consideration for myself and the
bid, lock it into the crypt to never speak of again. I frankly didn’t know
which rendition was worse. More twiddling her hands. I tried calming my heart;
I’m sure she felt it - that eruptive pace - and would know I was taking this much
too seriously. And, I must append (though adding more peels of hued humiliation
may permanently dye me a lamellar brown): more than any extension, more than wanting
her there, more than not wanting her
there, more than my soul and my pride wanting her to be off and for it to be
over and me to be free, what I wanted most of all was to want the endeavor, to take openings as this and to see them as chances,
not perfunctory teasing or musical interludes, the curtain drawn in between the
main show to loiter. These could be sexual apertures, roads to enjoyment, romantic
pleasure (would be for others), but
for me there was a wall, a malcontent cell, sticky damp encounters and
mishandled flukes. Couplings would never come from moments as these– and she
knew it as well, which was why she deemed it safe to even approach me like this;
I was nothing to her, a plot to try out; an empty net to slide through in all
ways unharmed in developing practice for actual men.
I continued looking down at the couch,
pretending to be occupied with fingering its stitch, every so often breaking
the silence with seconds of looking, smiling, sighing, giving any clear sign
that the game was now over and that I was tired, not anxious, no, never anxious
or nervous, but very simply tired, and very merely wishing to do something
else. It was a shameful display and transparent in its fumblings. She looked at
me then, and seemed quite sad; the moment slipped, the pressure had left. She
broke character, spoke in an almost whisper: “You can say anything. . .,” the tone
of which then was quietly protective, emotionally condescending (however
unintentional), anticipations libraried in stacks of green cases; if there’d
been a time, it had obviously passed; and she didn’t have the courtesy to even show
me disdain.
I have nothing else really to share with you
here, but I do wish to ease the transition to ether so as not to disturb you to
the point it did me (for, as it turned out, that was all I could take;
undoubtedly weakened by the lack of some sleep and the breaks from fair Annie
those slumbers supplied, I was led by this moment to shoot off a flare,
stranded on top of a desperate outcrop, this awful crescendo of womanly draw; I
felt chain release and a door swing open, and the cylindrical grindings of an
old penny flattener; my mother is there in an identical night, and the dream is
as dry as some red barren sands; it was not quite as plain as a quickened conflate
- I would not allow it to be so clear - but the dreariness abided, and the
query inflated, and my little model soldier walked out from my eyes right into
the dawn of my half-time impressions; the visitor - the question - the last
little question you fail to solve just again and again by the time you conk out
- was permitted by this endless resistance of rest to reform himself whole, and
find himself new, and keep on his path with fresh gumption and tools) so I’ll
finish like cousins come home from vacation showcasing their slides to the span
of some trip, with an up-to summary of synesthetic effects, collapsing and
wedding, before I shrugged off: Isaac came back; I sat down against a large
story book log, and feeling the grass form beneath my hands resisted the urge
to dislocate their blades; I saw my father stand up in the woods; shadows moved;
a bird chirped; Isaac squatted, then fell over comically; and I looked up
through shafts of curtaining daylight and heard them talk of a trip to Autauga,
where the tallow trees had leaves like popcorn but fell instead like drifting
snow. . .
[OK
dear listener
here we are now
with a far away push in to black
swirling blank
cinematically shaped
our Last
Little Question Surrendered To Sleep
ris-es from the brains of some statue of
man
(and ‘rise’ is misspelled so you’ll
accent the word
in the now proper way
not how you would normally think of to
say) erupted from thought
to decorate answers that haven’t been
caught
just tanning his views with the padding
and sun
suburban mist spaces now creeping to run
with box tops adorned
fashioned
panned
this bright and blue visitor
skilled raconteur
that’s stretching right now in the
brightly green fields
a traveling spark for their notions and
tracts
and like the wood shields and waterspout
birds
there
in the woods
and forests and leaves
he strains for complexity’s con-cerning
curls
and doesn’t praise steps for their
giving him sores but just thanks them for duties
efforts and tasks
and is never that bored
and hungers for facts of a much purer
struggle
and takes no advice from the sake of his
labor and drinking enjoy from the same uddered sakes. Old Last
again: the name has a ring
sits dull while he polishes soap-armored
plates
and looks to the springs
far widened and green through to big
bluing purple
and exercised blank. Far grass. Far
wide. This is new
as ever
as everything is
but knows it’ll come
as everything does
up-swirling from blank
and tattered down sheets
from posited rock stones soon rolling to
mind
but now
for the moment
his mind
unrolled
sits perched on the trees in the
springer time spread
with solemn decrees
and foot-pathing trunks. Yes
he is new
and newly construct (I think this was
said) but old
really
he’s born every night
and heavy
with sweat
and made of large parts
sin-ew and muscle
and weight
but limber
a worker
in fact
born stubbornly so
and refuses steadfast to admire his
shapes without laughing and sneers just this side of revokes. He has shoelaces
thick
with splintering yarn. Tied brick. Cool
breeze. He smells flowers and grain. There is good in his work
and his work’s everything. But what is
the work? He must think on it so. And from the small strain
submissive
and calm
and quiet swings blow in the crippled doom
strokes
and shivering droves
a familiar
or
to be more precise: A Lightly Felt Headache From Something Or
Other, You’re Not Really Sure
up-grows
right here
out in front of our Little
forms
and spray
from tumbling hay
winded
flowered
but keen
and light
and oddly proportioned
it fashions
and dusts
and becomes our treowth Question
who stands up and looks at his yellow
reflection (and it’s so simple that it meets his direction
rising
naughty
to equal his level)
and Question
is tolerant
curious
then dull: to which the familiar stands
still
and waits
and then
just spaces a doll-headed friend.
Last Question thinks
whether’r not this is a game: the familiar says nothing
mostly by craft
as the hay and sunflowers do not make a
mouth
and the squareness presents inescapably
drawl
looks planned by a child
stupid
with really no curving at all past some
sloping math rule
or coat-draping barbs
hand speckled coin-sense
toy ships on a globe. It lacks eyes and all
show of a rightful display
but follows intent
now swiveling back
and counting his motions for miles of
day. And Question is slow to
discover its brace
as always
as now
and when its hay head makes no motion of
play
understanding his years or their seasonal
space
he is quick to frustrate
and plotting to mount. And the familiar
cutely
matches his steps
walking paces behind
soft-braiding his holes with its diligent
care: they prosper
a dance. It’s quite the romance. (To
whit: a gust carries thorns
he covers his eyes
and the familiar
happy
to copy
to be
propositions as well
by pulling its hay over flat-bottomed
squares
unraveling armpits
plodding wheat thighs.) The grass
continues to sweat and to grow. An eclipse races blue. Shadows emerge
flood watered
and huge. It is only the green
now tall
and bent
and the wind pulls the landscape down into
their trudge. Work remains good
and the hardship in stepping now makes
the walk strive: experience
he thinks
will be gained from the clomp
and Question
the passenger
wound to searchlights
throwing quarters to crutch
will wherever go needed by overtime
sights.
He
turns now to see if companion stills by
and so that he does
its head turned as well
but only to blank
and the multi-ply ends with that lilied refrain.
They
walk like this
in formation
ballet
slowly pressing on through the bright
field in quiet
their sounds are covered and smothered by
gale
past foot steps taken by pomp and parade
the flowing green sharp
lays smoothe over space
on over more ways
and red and blue yards
and sheep herders’ castles
soothing sun shade. They walk slow. They
march. Question puts his hand out
and light-touches the white
flowers even
odd
from leaping green seeds
bare-cupping the leaves
and letting them trail. He swims through
the green
and stomps through the yard. And the
familiar plays echo: it too
masked mimic
jumps in through the puddles
it too
in play
jump-stomps through the yard. It is
second hand now
to cleave
and to teethe. It touches the space
where the flower once was
and contents in the empty that fills
that fit sleeve.
A
wave of air brings breeze and stagecraft
and the scenery drifts
as does the long grass
floating up to patched heights
higher and higher
vertical beams that train straight as
green slacks
some strictness of slight
string-buffaloed flash. They sound as
arrows
and seem not to land
but leave the ground
and don’t ever come back. The green
floats
converge
and contrasts anew
and the ones that don’t
combine
travail
and– You
Know That Thought Process That Comes From Something Or A Movie You’d Seen Or
Just Remem-ber-ing That Is Now Just Enmeshed With Your Normal Day’s Thinks
create from the grass
and stomp and roar
and gallop
and stern. They are shaky
crashing
colorful things
and shed their parts freed
each thunderous movement heave hills of
lawn color on back to their bed sheets and fallen to soil. They mill
and hoist themselves up on hind legs
each acting as animals (pliant with
tides). And Question stands
thrilled. The sudden immensity breathes him to forms
his own toured shapes
and he cannot but help to be thimbled by
sight. The familiar
in turn
stops
and seeks thought
and shamming with care its beloved’s affects
(a drum being lowered in old mining pits to pig off the moss rocks from the gold
in the white). They stroll
and drift
and mountains hill fat
and soon the lawns leave
delivered from legs
roofless
and shaved
devotional pegs for the flat-topping sky
to the blank and light pool
bouncing and rippling and blue ocean waves
delusional clouds
and a gloom that draws fade and salls flow
over fray. And the Last Little Question plots
looks to the sun: it speaks back to him
for a moment
so clear
high above Sunday peaks
a tellurium bottle that’s brightening
still
he is newly constructed
yes
we have said
but the constructors enflamed from the
spots of fair light now create themselves known: All That Is Good In The World
and more
their nice carpentry has wood-fashioned
him here
he
but a ponder plucked out from their mind
a thought without strain that’s been
given a brain
for his own sunning needs
to carry aloud
and to better reflect on his makers in
time. For what is a question that breeds without goal: well we won’t see it now
for our Last Little Question knows that his sole task
it appears
there
a dropped questionnaire
is lashed
caged
and shrieking somewhere
a bird
so marked: Where Do Things Go When They Round A Long Bend and Abscond From Your
Sight and Perception’s Far Ends
just sits in a nest
quilled miracle blue
has hooks for its hands
or claws
I could guess
just glassy and glowing in shadowed
recess. It waits so askew from the view of this world
irresponsibly witching
whining
withdrew. It’s the only glared thing
that All That can’t contend
as it wasn’t created from what they hold
true
and swords
mirrors
shields
and such
grow out from the legs and long arms of Last’s form like the hair that stands
up when you’ve touched something warm.
Question
tardy
reaches expanse
a tundra in fact
filled ice and dry snow. He knows what
to call it
read beaming and gay the word once in a
book
and remembers it now
a commoner’s tongue
and it catches the sight that spreads
out by the sun. Little men
and women
walk over and through
wearing bright and dawning and primary
hues
and carrying tools
blue jeaned
large dressed
and he looks to his own and stock crayon
bright blue
and finds new affinity in this and its
mess. He stops
scratch-ing his satchel from his sides (he
has satchels right now) and turns there around to see following hay
the full-bodied familiar
still subsequent steps
and taking a drink
but in copying it turns to look out at
the blank
denying Last Question a view of its face
or
properly
a view of its front. Finding now sight
of the back of its head
Last
Question just frowns
and furrows his brow: a shadow is not a good
companion
he thinks.
Domestic
animals cross the white planes: they swipe with small children
front
and bark
and more odd born shapes are fed out
from the snow: it’s scruffy
disheveled
and ever much drained (just folks with mainspringing
looks in their work but without a good reading to full throat the phrase). A
boy
of silk
created alike
a question
like him
The
First Sunny Question With Waking and Light
comes out from production
bent from his service
kicking up dust
and so hungried exhaustion
stands by our Question and looks at him square: opportunities for these two
to meet have been sparse
I’m sure you could guess
but these are strange times
and our Question
Last
Little
gives moments their due
just as looking in pond scum for
ladylike rubies to buy up ten rooms without worry or care. They talk of their marks:
Sunny’s rain-bowed ostrich
its small
much smaller than Little’s in fact
but dartingly fast
That
Wondrous Breath After Speaking, Perhaps, To A Friend Honestly
for which First’s decided to give up the hunt
just focus on traps he has hope will
outlast the bird’s crowning resolve
so he’s building a mall
with merchanting spires
nice-looking and wired
with springs under hay to jolt snapped
when the day will eventually come when the bird will get tired
and choose to come sleep
and rest on its roof. It’ll be the tenth
bird that First Sunny has killed
a marveling list
including the likes of Just What Will The Algebra Test-Day Be Like
and Just Why Can’t I Shit On The Rug
Like The Dog (which was the bold first
and hardly concerned
he can barely remember its horrible
taste)
and Sunny
(Last Little takes notice of
here)
red-blooms
and stripes
and tends to spit seeds
lean orange withdrawals from a small
paper cup
and he leans his neck forward
to fess some regret
or so you’d suspect
like the reason he’s building a mall is
to lag
to have a good time
to buy shoulder bags
but continues to say over sounds of the
splint that that’s what they are building
all of them
here
not all of them questions but all
seeking birds
and for the birds too
and sonnets too soon for the land’s gone
arid
ghosted
displaced
with none of the uplift from real
redress
and Question
shuttered by the thought of this plot
carnations to numbering syllabary rune
ascribing the curves to some numbers of
draw
returning to dust under thick iron rot
of fierce elementals and natural law
not silly old houses and threadbare
saloons
but winds underwater the afternoon swoon: this
Sunny’s a dullard
it just must be said
his birds are all easy to see and to
catch
and he doesn’t even know what familiars
are for
to narrow your focus
and keep you to task
and his ridiculous plan to build some
kind of trap is insane in the most platypussying ways
and lazy
really
and arrogant too
to think he can skip putting work to his
shoes
and getting to fields
to track down the birds
but our blue plated partial sinks eyes
to a fear
of the sight of him folding right back to
this flock
that rotary rubble and heaving spill
dirt
and watching him flip
through pauses and blank
and being near forced by the tall of his
breath to admit to his make that he likes
the store ads
and butt riding bench
and the maps in the courtyard that muddle
his mind
and the false color trees in their elk
hunting pots
and the leering jeering adversarial
myths that all codd-ify that walled-in shop-market dispense. It’s a comfort to
him
as tits to a child (forgive the gross
page)
much-sweltered with corn
but graying to tomb
and awake to this curse he befuddles the
count
and the numbers and letters mud sugar
from rune.
Question
rustling
nerves over end
a basketball bouncing down carpeted
stairs
peers out at the fountain
silv-orbed in a dish
being carried by workers to centers of
board
spilling ruins of liquid to gardens unkempt
sees the world reflected
sure
unknown
unslept
glass eyed
and pearled
and twisted
reversed
almost strangled outright
and wonders what nature casts tropes for
effect. Thinking
he turns
and looks back to his friend: it of
course does the same
its form struggling to weigh the right
conduct to speak of such sleeping neglect
to just sit in the grass
there is grass once again (and plains of
red dirt
and sand
and dark
and stitched ocean seas: the ungodly
annoyance of pier shipping songs with their screeching and trumpets from moon
dusk and lung)
to sit and to think
in the spotted bark field
and to nourish himself with the simplest
of truths: he was
in fact
born the day before now
a temporal thought
of rasp and soft skull
whom we shouldn’t expect to know what
from his left.]
(“Dedicated
to the One I Love” was playing over head; I was cold from a draft; I noticed my
half eaten omelet and drink, then the star map etched into the wood flour
linoleum; a person pouring something awful - sewage, rotten milk, lumpy coffee–
a blend made more horrible and surreal by its plainness - from a container into
an empty mug at the table across.) And then Annabelle said something and I just
about had a heart attack. She laughed and looked at Isaac; “God, what is it?” and then expressed in
cattish what my eyes could now see: “I’ve been sitting right next to you this
whole entire time,” her knees coquettishly lettering cushion. I put my hand to
my chest and looked down at the table - our table, my plate (I struggled for a
second, flailing, flexing imaginary muscles, but the effort felt as though I
was turning a photo, crooking it angles to see past a tree: the moment had been
captured, the obstacles set; whatever my intent ‘twas obscured forever. . .) -
“Did I ask for this?” I asked. “Yeah,”
Isaac said (his tone rich with ridicule), “You’ve been eating it.” And then, to
pile rudeness, they both laughed a little more.
The yellow stained chess tile exclaimed Pepper
Pod, a diner off
I turned my attention to the people around us.
I didn’t know most of them but they all looked familiar. The elderly couple to
Isaac’s rear; I couldn’t see the man’s face but could tell by his wife’s that
he was moving his mouth in an embarrassing manner, and that this pattern of bad
chewing had greatly annoyed her. Over his shirt was an array of freckles,
tumultuous growths, and the harsh beginnings of leaked oil spots announcing to
mirrors an advancing age; I spent probably a full half-minute counting, then the
spider white hairs that splayed horridly from pores. He would chew, and cough,
and she would talk and blink, and look to the sky, this potato sack woman with
tumbleweed hair; she had pearls and rings inlaid with common memory; her dead
father’s fraternity, her dead grandmother’s three stone. They could be London
Mills, or next door, I didn’t know. (I wondered if in populations less than six
hundred it was actually hard not to marry your cousin; it probably was; everybody
looks the same out here.) Next to them was someone I actually knew. I met Mr.
Gardner a handful of times and knew one thing about him beyond the abstract: his
wife - a pretty young thing who liked swimming and sculpture - was long thought
to be cheating with another married man that (the nattering hens said) she had met
indiscreetly at Christ New Faith, some indirect time between song and collect. And
it was sort of nice to see Mr. Gardner sit there, very much as I’d picture: blue
jean coat, brown pants (weakly chained to a leather wallet), less shaven than
scraped, and mysteriously tan. The consistency was in some ways encouraging.
Over his shoulder were two girls and a boy, all younger than me, young enough
even to have self-assurance but old enough to know that that someday would
cease. Shopping fatigued, cavernous dwellers, baby pale, they made tactful
turns and kept hold to a whisper; I would catch a few words but they spoke
mostly in code; at my age, I couldn’t know any of it. They left before us, and
I shuddered at the politeness of their too large tip.
And I couldn’t help but think of my mother right
then; how sad it must have made her to live with these people.
It
was the fifth night.
The weather had warmed; the highway and
country routes opened themselves, and we partook, a sojourn (to even call it
that), to a nearby Jewel, for food and supplies, and I was hypnotized briefly
by a bottle of oil rolling end over end, suspended in the gutter of the check
out’s conveyor. (And not to too cruelly commingle the expressivity of the
bottle with the sturdy diction of some technical facts, but the tedium drinks
better with our mood of malaise–) Megan’s older brother Nick worked nights at
We were going to
The place was crowded, much more than
expected, even for a Friday, but I kept forgetting school was out and the kids
had their time. The bar stool was higher than the tables and chairs, so I was
forced to look out over everyone’s scalps, a bobbing winning carpet of buzz
cuts and spikes, overturned mops, birds’ nests buoyant on a sea of college
sweaters. And when these jackanapes turned to unsheathe their plum faces– everyone,
to some degree, looked self-satisfied, pleased with their abilities in bipedal
motion or the cleverness it takes to maneuver through doors. A lot of moving
and bumping, sitting and rustling, overweened actors backstage between gags. I
looked to see where Isaac stood in all this but failed to read him; he ignored
my poking and got us both water. I sipped mine, and really didn’t talk much
after, though I could tell Isaac wished I’d engage him in twaddle. But my
selfishness is small, clasping onto things it wants with simpleminded
intensity; I feed it privacies like this to keep it in good shape.
(And it was at this point I began to miss my
bed. I hadn’t realized until then that those periods of rest boxed up the
catastrophes of my catacomb living, these minor gestural failures of
sustaining, when I - slip, for a moment - and find myself bored. My father
spoke often of avoiding boredom– or so I’ve heard it said; he said modern
life’s frivolity was intended around it. I remember he gardened, and took to
decorating our home, and seemed to very much care for those phantoms of living,
the normality of décor, the ordinariness they induced. I suspect boredom - for
him - was a spiritual death, the awareness of time unceasing and plain, and his
life’s commonality kept the stench under wood. I understood, in a way, though
for me it was different: in bed I felt ordinary, in life, discussed; and I had
not been to bed in a very long time.) Megan swooped next to me in mid-conversation
(if it helps to picture: a short, Louise Brooks-esque flapper haircut, with silver
hoop earrings to help balance her head), with Annabelle next, laughing at
something. The bartender came over; Megan looked puzzled. “What should I–?”
“Two Irish coffees,” Annabelle finished. Isaac waved his hand. “No, not for
you.” “I’ll be fine. Deliciously fine.” She leaned and turned to Megan.
“And yours is on me.” “Why thank you dear.”
“Wait-wait-wait-wait what’s wrong with Megan? You
never pay for anything. In fact I want to tell you you’re not a very nice
person.”
“Megan’s been having a tough go of it
recently.”
I scooted closer to hear. “What’s going wrong?”
“I didn’t get that job.” Annabelle perked:
“No, not that.” “Oh,” she said, “And my grandfather died.”
In response to these words I involuntarily
bowed (for some strange, unrehearsed, and juddering reason), but caught myself before
I could get too far down, and Isaac stood up like she was leaving the room. Megan
curtsied a little, and looked to the walls, awkward from the interest and
sudden sincerity– but what she did next was really quite something: wanting to
display from her movements a neat unconcern - without cooling so much to seem completely
uncaring - she hopped herself up onto the seat like a child, crossed her legs
kittenish and stared at the ground; it was as delicate a balance to pour water
on scales, between the estimated act of a deflating adult, forging her sadness
and a falser constraint. She had never appeared so grown-up as right then.
After all this, she deflected the focus back
onto her mother, whose father it was who had passed. “She’s not taking it too
well?” I said, inanely repeating her (I sometimes fill the air with the sound of my voice;
I always regret it immediately.) “No,
not as such.” She then thought a bit. “She’s been putting more of his pictures
up around the house now. I think it helps her, but its having like the opposite
effect on me.” The drinks came; she took a gulp. “It’s really depressing
actually.”
“I can imagine.”
“I can’t,” Annabelle said, wiping the foam
from her mouth with her forearm. “I would want pictures up, the more pictures
the better.” Megan stood silent, forcing Annabelle to add: “But, you know . . .
everyone’s different.” She gave the bartender cash and put change in the jar.
“Wat if oy tawlked loyke dis al’ noyght?” “It would be really annoying.” “What
is that, Irish?” “Oy’m from Sussex Wales, guv’nah!” “
I’ll snip the middle and tie the ends: we eventually
discussed the ways we wanted to die - I rather fortunately cannot remember the
path that led there - and throughout the lengthening course of this entire
conversation I felt, apropos, that we’d been digging a hole, slow and immense,
just senselessly moving thick dirt over hills, and now, upon reaching the
obsidian core and finding no connective themes or correlations of kind, we had
nothing left to do but lamely crack our shovels against the black earth and
count the living grandparents among us. Most were half and half, and required
designation, but for me it was easy: Tom’s were all living, and Kay’s father
had died some four years ago. We all went to the funeral - the first I remember
- the only aspect of which I can readily recall is the sense of an unsettling
clerical stagnation, not that unlike the spinning bottle of oil, or, more
vastly, the most useful vision of a Grecian woodcart slowly, steadily, sinking
to swamp. Kay was tearful, and seemed very much moved, but was just as easily swayed
to a bottlenecked anger at her disappointment of a brother for missing the sermon.
I was detached, unfastened, and more detached still at the sight of her sentiment,
flitting to and fro like a hungry perch, disturbingly natured, and largely
unbothered by the climate of loss; I can remember hugging Kay, and kissing her forehead,
and yet feeling nothing, and allowing myself to exist in that state because she
had allowed herself anger at nothing. She scolded her brother at the luncheon
thereafter, and had carried enough worry for my color of socks to have taken
the unnecessarily vigilant precaution of cleaning and laying a black pair on my
bed, and even after she had watched what no longer looked like her father in any
truthful manner be lowered - brusquely - into the ground and subsumed by fallen
dirt, she still thought enough about the margins of decorum, the shade of my
foot, the tardiness of siblings, to make more comments revolving those
pointless endeavors than any concerning the event spun man for whom she had
just lost the chance to ever speak with again. I watched her then, and the
people around her, and felt very alone, and though these were merely the asides
of a much bigger day it still makes me sad to dwell on them.
(For the completionists: Nick went on, funny
as usual. He had a bit about one time after he slept with this girl he woke up
to her eating an entire honey baked ham right there in the bed, and how the
worst part was that she wouldn’t give him any. And another bit was about him
playing in a garage band and how awful the drummer was; he wanted a hydraulic
lift and a spinning cage and spent all of the band’s funds to acquire them, and
then during their debut performance he got stuck upside down. I was laughing,
at least. People kept talking through the whole set, though; guys sitting right
up in front with their dates just jabbering their faces off. Stuff like that just
drives me nuts.)
The line for the bathroom was much too long, so
Isaac and I left to where the lot met the brush, and the wild beyond, and a
spot I found closer to a corner of neighborhood; the bar was screened in with a
crossed metal wire that faced in hostility a shade wooded fence, a brown and
silver border to persuade re-direction; in between these two precincts -
protected as they were by posts and planks and poles and chain - was another
third area of manicured lawn that I wondered under whose jurisdiction belonged.
Three trees had been planted in a nice even row, and I crossed my eyes to
enlarge the middle, a trick of vision meant to budge the world to a slight and
wholesome pergola projection; what would be light green was now a dark blue,
and the shear of things - that public arena, the hem of contrivance - collided
and hooded the outside ferns, the posts, the fences (and homes just past), and
the lights flared out to varicose veins, streaking across my fair sections of
sight; I uncrossed, and the image would slowly revert; I crossed again, and it
enlarged again. (Flowers bloomed and died, petals fell, water rose, drank, and overcame,
and) I honestly grew tired just looking at it all. It’s hard to imagine on-and-on,
unceasing action and thoughtless procedure, that grandly elusive brilliant forever;
a red-yellow carpet that never finds wall. I try sometimes - snaps of running -
but you can never catch up when there’s no end coming. I looked down to see a
long centripetal-type creature crawling with purpose from the ground to my leg.
I jumped, dancing, in white blind panic, until realizing it was the shadow of
an arching tree limb, and not, in actuality, some profoundly long insect terrifyingly
ripped from the trade routes of
We went to the truck stop just down the street,
the four of us plus Nick, and while watching the girls stroll up on ahead I
divined that women cannot properly strut - lacking, to date, the compulsory
parts - but they are capable of performing their own distinct walk, a precarious
march thrust inward from hips (bringing to mind: a good-fortuned young doe,
prancing, unlabored, and gild garden path)– but anyways: we crashed in the
doors and fell into the place. It was noisy inside, with the vague smell of
cattle, and gas, and general work, that fantastic aftershave of a long day’s
detersion. People (men) haggled and smoked (and if they weren’t men, they looked
it; plaid-covered, chin whiskers). Through the saddle haze and cloud puffs of
low burping noise, organ music crested as if by salt measure; I whip panned the
room to find out its true source and saw a tin-can television hooked to a wall:
Carnival of Souls. Public access. Someone
bought air just to play this old movie. (It was near the beginning, soon after
the race, when the main girl was walking, drenched and dirty, emerged from the
lake where she had just died.) I watched a little until we all fell again,
shoved into a booth, while Megan went to the counter to order some food only to
soon be distracted by a neighboring stall. College kids, of course, that unwavering
age. We had noticed walking in amongst the beaters and trucks was a fresh off
the line, lime green four seater; more expensive than the others, it was just newly
cleaned with some soap washed dictums, marker drawn acronyms, bumper decals and
flags taped to the whip. It was obvious now to see who it belonged, and I was
thankful the room had an even more outwardly obnoxious show of sloppy
indulgence, each plodder oblivious to what a day of work meant. I could not really
pretend to be other than that but I tried to communicate in extrasensory waves that
I had sympathy, at least, for real men and their work; it had taken me a week
to learn stick shift and trailer, but I put in the time. I had credentials, I’d
say - experience like that of a bedless accoucheuse - which I proceeded to
broadcast the best that I could, twitching my eyebrows and cracking my neck, signals
and stretching smoke signals to sky, but then, all at once, through schemes of black
memory (those antemeridian fumes off moon gravity), I found myself unexpectedly
sitting there with them, this traveling grad troupe, dropped into the center of
a gasping conversation having been apparently dragged over by Megan’s sick
interest. Horrifyingly absorbed into their pasture and schedule, I wheeled to
sides, fanatically searching the workers’ rough faces - surely they’d marked me
a scavenging bore - but, even worse, to my gross humiliation, their paper bag
bodies expressed no betrayal. I had, in fact, made no impression at all. Two
men sat reposed; a woman ate soup. I was - we were - invisible. (Drive five
hours to Clarkesville and these same folksy billows of wearying clatter will
house sorrowful whispers, drunk on the ‘tragedy’ of
[Blackness
spun
but broke through a light
cracked
bled
by words often hummed
and spoke now aloud by who claim to be
friends
to his keepings and gully
and most to his time
but waste it so dully
stupid
shifted
sinking to mire
and bloated intrudes
he flares to voiced thoughts
different than theirs
less harsh and haggard
and tired from stairs
and pictures a girl dressed and holding
a lamp
in a cavern
and lodge
by sunflower lake
and feels an arm rise to push him to
road
where he blinks
and shutters
and spills to his make. (And our Little remembers
suggestive
with time
by the feel of pushing his way through a
mire
that brown colored bird
so sickly ensyruped in wet leaves and
rain
he hunted
so many past mindfuls from then
lit just by the flame of his tindered
arrows that embedded as branches into its soft frame
and lighting it up like a burning
staircase
it screamed
a bellow
but not from a pain
it was quite incapable of feeling such
things
but by its own and natural push to just
sing
and ruin our visionary reach for more
things
when we bucket our heads and spin
circles in rooms
all to get fairer glimpses of what’s
inside walls
to dissuade us of notions that we cannot
change
for we also will change
with eventual Spring
and ivying loss
when ideas of loves everlasting is
tossed
and Little
did learn
when he sat down to eat
and pick all the bones from its feathers
and meat
and just before blacking to cloud-bursts
of sleep
that takes him from dressing with merely
a blink
to wait
again
in rooms of unthink
before once again early hunts in the
streets
that this kind of bird
Will
the Air of My Room Ever Lose Its Malaise
has a very unfortunate languishing
taste.) And the quake comes again
shook
and split. From the split breaks light
again but now changed
and image deprave
our view of the scene
poor Last
Question’s face
quartered
hollowed
tripled
then shakes
transformed by the furred and so
hollering sweep
but only by sight and poor standing of day
the name of the lens
two eyes from his face
disassembled and broken by adjutant’s
slip
who was holding the camera from legs to its
base
though frankly too funny to see him descend.
He stands
and dusts
and preens
and looks: the space (it does scream) it
is a white space– large
and curved
festooned
adorned
the sort of great place where servants tray
smiles
and the bar is all fancy with galloping
friends
and tulip bulbs float in the outdoor
reprieve
and the pond is kept thoroughly washably
clean. But now
dear listener
the space is so pushed
its smooth warping bends
broken
to rough
and the pianos do play
and the curtains they sway
and vestments break dance
and long tables snap
and shedding its spirit of luxury mirth
it all seems too prodding
too careless
passé. Delicate etchings and cast models
crack. It is a loud circus: our fisher stays stood
(and with no need to fear) roots his
footing to wood
and planks himself fresh to the auburn
and clay. And the chandeliers sway in keen circles and play till the quake
flatly halts: the shaking does quit
the twirling absconds
how dour a word
as to sound like twin frogs catching
flies in a pond
a tiny glass bottle rolls off of a
bridge to here further exhibit the room’s sudden stop
and shatters
to tile
exploding to drops of the liquid it once
had contained in its keep
shallowed
and crystal
and unclouded drink.
Brush
off the rubble and look to your leave: it’s a ballroom (as said?)
and large (also said)
and precariously firm twixt a high
reaching floor of a preposterously tall and thus beautiful building
many told multiples of summed stories
high
so utterly towered he can see through
its holes
drafted
barred
cathedral windows (that separate gap
from its milk crusted walls)
the sky a cream citrine
orange to blonde
a growing old thickness and creamy
beyond. Radiant accents dot every expanse. Light fills the room: his margins
expand. Silver is everywhere. Marble is everywhere. Certainly a grand and
lavish expense. He is golden
enlarged
but means to stay caged: it all feels
rich
and so overdone
that the pressure of glamour smells
baked in a stew
though he could think heat
but did not wish to instill in the mind some
visions of guests holding noses and running
leaping
for coats and their dates
to escape the thick odor of rotten
fondue
and nothing in nearness does Last Question know but the floor is the
floor
he can breathe the cold air: facts
beyond that remain sparkling jewels
flashing and hidden in alleyway tubes
and nothing to catch unless smarts are
undone.
Brightly
brightening
his armor turns wax
fair
blanche
bouncing irised
jaune
splinter
burning his sight
railing tin tracks from the rainbowing
light and throwing cloud dust on his view of All
Good
now shadowed and summered and reasonings
fade
and seen through the prism of afternoon
shade
a sapling of dirt makes a mess in his
mind
and he stops
thinks
and hazards to port
a ship in the water of black numbing
time where he floated right next to the clothing store witch
who offered her words (meticulous
thorns) of plans to renounce to some distancing stone
flying through sky
thrown by who-knows
for an ill gotten promise of closer deservance.
But Little (how smart!) knows a
lie when well heard (he has trouble sometimes when they’re muffled
or dense
or
heaven help
slurred) and he vacations to ditty
a magical tune
that he hums to himself to keep himself
spurred and All That Is Good In The
World in his brain
but past the daft allies fell over on
swords
the rumbling tumble of tanks overheard
over sectioning walls and merciless
spread
light comes through
again and again.
Paper
emergent from wine drinking walls
a pastel woman
thin
and lithe
and lovingly arched
(and clearly unmarked)
unfurls to pour triplets of honey to jugs.
She is fair
like him
and quite unknown
her particulars dancing
corralled by the sun
burned
and toast
to paper doll curl. Behind her are books
placed in some even measures
sometimes haphazard on shelves of old oak.
Quotations float: the air becomes light: she is finely adorned
holds authorial swans
and while seems to tout might and the
strength of command
seems pleasant enough to approach (so he
does
bottled
croaked
throat-tightening nerve
hidden from others
obscured and unplanned). ‘Take off your
shoes'
she says without look. An apron appears
petaled
and white
and merry made brooks
drawn with green vines
and turns her face warm like a shy girl’s
deflect
but leaves just as quickly to milk and
shoe shine. Little
deterred
looks down at his feet. ‘I would
but'
he says
displaying his yarn
‘It’s just so much trouble to get them
back on. I assure you
madam
that they aren’t very foul'
The honey
falling
in still lapping waves
quivers her arms with its big rolling
weight. ‘Please'
she responds
‘I just recently cleaned'
And yes
sure enough
he can now see a mop
and a handle and broom and a bucket with
filth
and that the ground has been gleaming
with silvery dew. He bends down to untie and she says with a sigh
‘Thank you'
and brushes her hair back to tie: a
vacuum cleaner falls out of it. ‘It’s just that I’m leaving in a minute and I
have everything good (the sense of her parting comes new to his thoughts as a ringing
phone call somewhere in the dark). I hate coming back to a dirty old house'
‘No no
it’s fine
no need to explain'
He picks up his boots. ‘Now where should
these rest? '
‘By the table and sprouts
on the shag or the rug'
And so he walks like a bear
tip-toed
over wet
and places the boots on a cut oval mat
and as he performs looks to see if he’s
tracked any mud over wood in his fool-headed haste: he hasn’t
and is calmed by evading regret.
The
woman stops pouring and sits in the couch. She cleans her white apron
the
apron’s returned
and
takes off her glasses to clean and lay out.]
(Slow, then quickly) A sharp pain, and squint,
and rubbing my head; someone’s elbow had kicked into the notch of my skull; and
after, dreadfully, I began to process; I was still in the booth, sinking ennui;
these terrible stories and ridiculous tales. With my hood pulled over and
sullen expression I’m sure I looked like a fat grouchy infant; I didn’t care. Megan
finally cut into the college boys’ chatter. “So explain to me again what you
all are doing. Explain so they can hear. It sounds so cool.” She spoke to the tall one. (To give you an idea of how
crammed we all were, the booth had become so unconscionably busy that a few
fortunate outcasts were forced out to chairs; bringing in seats from other near
tables always feels like we’re breaking indissoluble laws, a rule of spaced
etiquette cast by lost elements or a thinly held fourth dimension lived in with
string.) The tall stranger laughed. “We’re racing cross country.” (He enjoyed
saying this out loud.) “They’re in teams,” Megan said, then turned back to him again.
“Tell them. You’re in teams, right? I’m forgetting what school.”
“It’s a bunch of schools, really. We’re all
from
And now here, I thought. (Coaxing the echo: the
movie’s organ music kept doubling over, and it is frustrating how easily I can
watch myself turning, angling my viewpoint to guess at which scene, but failing
then to place its meaning in memory.) Anyways: I did my best to not hear the
rest.
[So
they talk of his quest
changing
always
from point to point
now requested from bells he will seek to
the bird
Where
Do Things Go
that blue winged oh-bell-us
usually so tall in the rim of his
thoughts
but now
near a couch with the woman’s kind talk
it is shortened to gesture
a wave of a hand
just something to slight
and not carry to bed. She says to sit
down
kick his feet up and sleep
and asks him to eat
and tells of her spree to the store to
get food
the kind that he likes
milk
that bread
chocolate bar darks from the shop carts
beneath
so he’d feel at home and relaxed from
the trip
and her questions and tact gently shove
him to sit. The sofa
mirrored
to the kind woman’s own
is squat
and ditch
striped
and brown
with animal legs
and serving to height. Its cushions are
furred an exotic montage
bigheartedly soft
orange
hooped
with feathery stitch
and not with much prodding he settles to
warmth (like sunrays that curtain a roaming cyclone that kept men from work-ing
and ground-ed at their homes
with their care-giving wives who prefer their
men there
and not on the loud boat with the chance
for a storm).
Last hoists
his weight up and now over his head and then places it near him to feel at rest.
She asks if he’s bought himself any new clothes
asks if he’s made himself any new
friends
asks if he’s cleaned himself
fed himself fat
to which he responds with some light-sighing
moans
and cracking his fingers and rubbing his
toes
but in truth
dear listener
the grace of her woe
so casually delicate and masterfully
sewn
is cooling fresh water to long stinging welts
soothing his stress by the mare-neighing
voice that fills the bright room with wandering chests
and cabinets and blankets and bed sheets
affirm with the sound of Spring rain on the windows’ lucarne. He can see himself
cradled
quilts over head
flashlighted to read one more book
before bed
and the sound of a door creaking open to
see if he’s listened to her
and fallen asleep
and the care of that heed makes his face
go all bright
along with her voice
that high-singing air that gets under
his skin
that crackling worry that sees her within
a cabin with windows alit in the dark
a campfire night
and flapping deer skin
and waiting for him to return from his
work.]
It felt I had been trying - unsuccessfully
struggling - to simply lift my head from the table for hours. When I finally
surfaced, I asked too sharply, “Is this your only stop here?”– only to hope
that that sound of my voice and my immediate distaste for it would help me
afloat. Annabelle poked me; “They already said
yes.”
The tall one paused. “Well, we think. Maybe
not.” He turned back to his friends. Clearly they just didn’t want to offend by
seeming too eager to leave, so they pretended, badly, to have a few doubts. “We
think so, yeah.” They continued from here in an exhaustive report of their
plans and routes; it doesn’t much matter. I just continued talking,
interjecting here and there. Later, my friends would remark on the mood, how
bizarrely hostile the whole thing felt, and I’ll confess to you here there’s a
reason for that: I had, with a soon but unrealized purpose, grown steadily,
increasingly, unyieldingly furious,
and this untold belligerence sang under my words; eventually everyone pitched up
to accord. I looked at them from over my folded-in arms, and my flustering abhorrence
- flapping goose wings - cracked, and seeped, through stupidity’s case: I was
carrying for them a perception of hate– shallow, loose - jangling from mind a cheaply
bought charm - and it was, I assure you, as sad to note then as it is to say
now, that this was how I had learned myself hate, choosing limp-wristed
articles to fix on with ire like choosing to eat what is closest in reach. It
was harmful, I felt, to harbor such thoughts, when their pointlessness undoubtedly
covered by jungle the thickening vastness of a lifetime’s revulsion I could not,
would not, hold up to spot lights. (My concentration stayed, and then swiftly
fell; I turned to sudden noises but kept otherwise still. And I imagined a
submerged telephone book, its pages blank with running ink, waving like
seaweed, kale in ponds, then it up and out and splashing from seas, but still
deeply wet, heaving and fragile and now utterly useless.)
[Voices
of leaving come up from the wood. Last
Little’s seen to the woman’s packed bags
sees now to the watch and its brown
leather clasp: the periods after a sentence of meet
when the worry of lateness makes
frivoling lines
the room a clean sink
a finishing river that runs through her
nooks
her sleek face transfixed by the thought
of a wait
crumpled
uncertain
gartered
delayed
a puppet’s scrowned frunch and a
cleaning of teeth
confessed by the breath that is breathed
out a pain
and soft muttered drain
and murmuring prayer for new swiftness
of speech
perfuming and puffing from trespasser’s blame
manufactured for sure
but a needed appliance to spot the
retreat and the blank that floods into the space in-between. The woman’s to
catch a slick ship for a trip. He can stand to the thought of her leaving him
there
he doesn’t much care
but feels he should
as a tourist takes insult at basal purlieus
taken for granted
watering holes
avoided by locals and families upstairs.
Last Little shuffles
groused underweight
and picks up as many of the large truffle
bags and impassive luggage his blue frame can cart. Shaking
shivering
he walks
barefoot
past the marble statues
the shelved wooden globes
the fledged acroliths to the front door baroque.
Fanciful maps have been painted to walls
the largest one drawn past a following
bust that sits just off opposed to the white entrance stall. And he stands
tear-eyed
to tick off his walk. But its colors and
features cannot be so read: he blinks
and stares
and retreats to red fears of the apple’s
outreach
and geography’s death. After several awed
moments of blind searching look
he retires his effort
made dumb
and upset: the carved letter networks bewilder
him so
their largeness confusing
can’t stomach the slopes
the lines that can tell where you are
and how far
but not to this dope: he failed to chart
even his standings in profit.
He
turns
bothered
to see where she is (and whatever could be
possibly taking so long). All
stands in the annex of the house’s canteen
spinning the wheel of a rotary phone
pausing
thickly
every so often
to remember her unseen instructions and
notes. She flips through a calendar
tracing her days
ticking each box with a black fountain
pen
then returns to the phone
gaping
creased (clear to him missions are
fleeing the scene
her appointments gone grey
lost under cushions remotes and loose
change). Her sloth and stupidity loudly annoy (as whirling girls do) and soon
she is also disrupting her throat (she would call it a clear)
screaming her sneezes and coughing
hacking
grasping for strips
thinking to pee
dancing worry for uncertainty’s loom. He
lets the bags drop with a smack to
the floor: the woman looks up: ‘I’m coming
I’m coming!'
and running to him with her purse in her
hand
she picks up three bags
and walks out the door
with a sheepish look sorry that plants
past his form
seedlings of anguish that bud from his
sores
and they push on against to inside of his
shell: he scratches at this
a long broken arm
covered by cast
or so it could pass for his thoughts on
the stuff.
They
step through the fog to the city below: the under cloud streets torched a near
evening blue
in gathering contrast
physically told
visions keep shifting
colander dust
bricks and odd windows
gardens and gruff. Directly from
leaving’s a tiring street
long and exhaustive cobble stone streaks
of running
skipping
shrewd ochre leaves
dead as a minnow
and swimming
the same
off of long necking street lamps in
sewers and drains. There is a walk path of some boarded store fronts. And
before them erupts
from the anxious decay
sleeping
soundly
along with his myths
of gravestone adornments to champions’
reign
a very large tree
rooted through earth
graveled
and littered
and sending to breeze untold acorns and
nuts that the squirrels had just thrown with their songs of unrest
annoyed by his walk
an unsightly step
and the tipped over trolley’s engulfed
navy flame. It is certainly joyless
and cold
and damp
but the monotonous ease of its
discolored flush
smelt blue
and grease
holds a vagueness of beauty to Last Question’s eyes
who fails to mark it as something less
sweet than the trappings of wealth
that marble filled home that he just
rightly left: the world that All That Is
Good does prescribe is so like youthful heartbreak
but only when felt. And so he does feel
our dear and lit knave
past the great doom vines compulsions
collect: he leans to their words
and not to their reach
appropinquity’s con
too close to be true
so hear to the clouds and be robbed in
the dawn
with safety in numbers
look for police
lunch-time surroundings on quilts and on
lawn. It’s better to clean than prevent a small mess
to which he’d confess
he cannot predict. So he steps to the
curb and looks up to the sky: tangles of chords and more telephone wire
snaking web lines that connect to the
brown
mitten explosions (lightning!) the sky
blowing the roof tops and shaking the
ground. He turns to the woman who is walking head strong down a row of the
street
click clacking her heels that have grown
from her sneaks. ‘I have to just drop off my key to the mail'
She looks at him struggling a large
heavy bag. ‘That rolls
you know'
so he flips out the wheels.
More
fog
more steps
but quickly inside
a dirty tan basement
lullaby bricks
air born tubing
plastic and tin. Plates and banisters
and somewhat broad art
a togethering scheme by cobbled clung
belts
he thought a misstep
a swirling blue light sweating galvanic
pearls
beating in brilliance in an upside down
glass. It’s dark
pitch black
except for two lights: the cudgeling glow
this conductor creates
and a grisly array of stereopticon
slides
sparkling lozenges sloped long across
white.
The
empty now fills with another man’s shape
shadowed
then lit
and grasping suspenders with German
aplomb. He is smiling
and young: there aren’t illustrations bedecking
his face
crows of old age
no lines to his make. His head casts a
pumpkin
teeth over red. The woman approaches
gives him a hug
hands him a key (for the mail Last thinks)
and steps to where now there’s a
circular disc
and above
hanging an average arm’s length
is a short wooden bar attached triangle
knot
tied to thick rope
suspended
it seems
all the way to the top
and to see the fair woman give so lovely
touch
Question
stunned
broadened to mind
knows - all at once - the machine and
its use
a transporting cab for the woman’s long
cruise. Clouds form (bath)
soap suds
liquor: the basement opens to food frosting
steel
its variety shifting
electrical weather
to better imagine our Question’s exhale. And where Last Little stands it begins to mist
snow
and voices of leaving
that terrible song
stifled by pillows
incessancy’s honk
a donkey’s distress
when whipped by a boy
who can’t comprehend why the animal’d
cry
just sounds of subsistence with nothing
to state
rise up once again to surrender the play
to his armies’ of loathing and memory’s hold
chained up to the heater
bust radio. She goes to the platform
turns to give wave
and he sputters
frightened
to tell her to wait
but with a quick pull and a popcorning
sound
she is gone by a hum
the air a burnt crimson surrounding her
form
preceding a doubling
red and green smoke
and much hated vapor’s aggrieving
encroach. The nothingness words (illiterate wash) sea water sustain
poisoning still
having no use
they mix with tumult
just peppering claimants his misery’s
food. Imagine a bottle removed from some ice
and placed on a counter to thaw for good
use
and when picked up again leaving tears
of defrost
dribbling to rings of water
and stain
the mark that it leaves that you must
wipe away
this is what hung in the air on that
day: the woman’s depart left a ring overhead
a halo of grief
a cartoon balloon
with clouds of more water
and lightning
and crash
and ruining his armor
once a fair wax
to match with the woman he wished would
come back.]
And then, a melody, sudden and shrill; the
talkers rondoed: “Oh, and that guy–.” “That guy from here!” “That guy was from here.”
Nick folded his arms. “What guy was from here?”
“That shot up the park– he lived like just a
few miles away, right?”
The organs blared fittingly; I looked up at my
group: few had given care - really
given care - to the continuing conversation (one sided as it was), their loose
interest a result of the unguarded growth from the slow raising bramble of the
boys’ long speech; and if they had been
paying attention to the damp smelling huddle, it was surely not enough to take
their words and entreat them, to draft matching images, extract good thoughts, ejecting
good responses for a cooperative chat; no, instead we’d all become ever so gradually
isolated, with some of us tuning to the television’s purr, the further
surroundings, one ear to the game, and if we failed even that small courtesy of
nodding, we fled, like solar winds, to outer regions of daze; and if some of
them had been still following along,
genuinely, with honor (with charts and graphs and some trails of bread crumbs),
they still had left the story’s track quite some time ago, choosing, like Megan,
to instead just coast, ignoring the particulars that’d corrupt their own
fantasy, but lazily amassing the sensory comforts of imagining herself, a far
empty road, alone except friends, a map bought kitschily for its questionable
accuracy and the kineographic views of more blinking portiere panes. But now,
with this mention of my father’s caper (I describe it as such so as not to
curtail the importance his act surely holds to this town, but to join them in impetuous palaver), the hot air balloon
sank, our gliding had stopped, the air had been lost, and I felt Annabelle
abruptly seize and tense up, a reaction to the startling retrieval of interest,
an involuntary intensity as breaching through waves much-much too rapidly from after
a dive.
It took the rest a little longer to know what
was happening; I unfolded my arms as a gesture of ease.
“What
was his name?” He snapped his fingers, again and again, trying to ignite the
answer to sound. I watched him for a moment, then said my real name. “Right!”
he almost shouted; then quieter: “Right.” He looked down. “Crazy.”
The bearded one looked at us. “You would have
been too young to remember that, huh.” “We
can remember.” The first one jumped in: “I
can remember. It made the news in
“It made it here, too.” (I don’t know why I
said this.)
They laughed. “I would think so!” “Yeah, that
was nuts. We thought we knew the town
when we all drove through.”
Annabelle had since stayed locked in arrangement
- shoulders hunched, fingers braced - eyeing at me, but in such a way (I
imagine she thought) that I couldn’t right tell. I looked up, and listened to
the television’s voice; the main character was talking to a priest, I think:
“I’m a reasonable person,” the dead girl said. “I don’t know. Maybe I want to
satisfy myself that the place is nothing more than it appears to be.” (There
are brief flashing times - and this was now one of them - where I feel I have
been lying in a coma for years, unaware of my actions of any real size, wholly
dependent upon external incidence - these times, for whatever reason, always
juxtapose disappointment - and in these times I see no light, or magic, or
rushes of air or breath to my person, instead it is a rather stimulated scrambling,
of being carried away much faster and farther where no one would ever want to
be taken so soon; and in these quick, suffocating, blinding fast times, everything
around me is stripped of its shape, and its as if I am seeing right past the hues,
through to the orbs that trim us our way, and to think and muse on that
pitiable product. In these moments I am flailing, panicked, and very much
grateful when it is finally over. And I am left with a note, scribbled, and
short, profoundly inane, or inanely profound: the point of it all, in the end,
somehow, is to avoid the inconvenience of being
in the first place.)
Isaac pointed in my direction. “He’s his son.”
Annabelle screamed as if she’d been stabbed: “Isaac! What the FUCK?!” She raised her arms, ready for battle– “It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said, and -
surprising even me - it was the actual truth. (I suspected Isaac was in his own
slump, and this was his play to craft some excitement; that, or he had lost any
sense of good judgment; either way, I couldn’t lawfully blame him.) “It’s NOT fine!” she shouted, quickly turning
back to him: “What are you doing?! We
don’t even know these people. What
the fuck are you thinking?” “What?” he said. “We’ve talked about this before with other
people around.” “We’re never the ones
that bring it up first!” “They brought it up!” He now joined her in
shouting.
“God
you are so stupid. Just forget it,
shut up.”
Throughout all of this, the strangers stayed
still, desperately quiet. “Are you fucking with us?” one finally asked. The
leader talked over: “We’re sorry, we didn’t know.”
Annabelle waited for me to speak first, then
turned to them and spoke in a tone of authority befitting a person with
guardianship’s right. “Forget it.”
The third one looked at me. “Do you remember anything?”
and the first leaned over to scold him for this, but I cut off his parenting:
“He liked old movies.” I paused, then, and slowly turned over. “Actually, no– I
was too young.”
If
there is anything more depressing than seeing your name misspelled in junk
mail, I don’t want to know what it is. (This thought - envisioned now as a
fistful of sand finely cairned on a pale blue, folded-up tent - is the first I
can remember having that day - it was the sixth, I believe - though I cannot
tell you why, or for what purpose I held it. Perhaps the mail had been
unusually busy.)
Anyhow, we ended up taking an extra long walk,
east, to
We plodded on through, and slowly came to the
fence and incurious trees that gate Echo Point. Beyond the brier door is a thin
path of pavement, lined with wood chips and green leaves and furze, all of it
carefully planned and arrayed to expertly lead your eyes through the forest -
brief as it is - on to the sporting fields and park that recess before a big
running hill that protects the apartments that hide over view like a natural
drawbridge. This park is not close to my house or the school, but I have been
here so often it’s a scene of great certainty. My familiarity with it contrives
occult guides, and I feel, when here, as I imagine twins must, side-by-side
after miles of range, each on their own carrying a half share of memories and only
together can they tour whole stock. This bedevilment’s aided by my
stern-gripped belief that the park is one of the few spots in town that is not,
in fact, an elaborate ruse, cooked up and served us by unseen assessors (though
this may just be a delusion of imprinting).
My bobbing vision caught the bobbing sky, then
the crowd of small figures - a yellow toy army against a blue one - then the
ball sitting a little ways away from the windbreaker coach and cow grazing
parents, each tethered to their child by glares and hand motions. Isaac quickly
recognized Noah, his brother (and smaller edition of himself). We floated over
to the nearest tall tree and took a nice refuge under its shade. Up until this
point I have purposely avoided discussing at lengths the disturbingly myriad
physical effects that had begun to take hold, but let me pause here a moment
and be perfectly clear: it was the sixth day, and to look at our faces was to
think we’d survived some terrible storm; allegorical in scope, a nimrodding
maw, it had demolished our homes, our churches, our craft, had demolished - it
could be said - our sectarian living, and as people who had felt a grand trauma’s
effect, now every new encounter and each new event would be shelved and viewed
in relation to this - our life book’s thumbed page - behind a glass wall in an
anamnetic case, protective brass locks to discourage misuse. Sitting under that
tree I saw in their faces a heavy-lit space that’d been growing in weather
since at least our third morning, and possibly even still earlier than that.
Everything fell as pebbles and rocks into the river of this widening space;
nothing would divert our walking fatigue. (Helping, surely, our bedbug caviling:
I had almost killed us the night before, though it was hardly my fault. The
street that we took - Woodgrove Dr - was a ‘nighttime street’, the type of dark
road that gains Delphian charm the instant the sun can’t reveal its taste. To
drive through it leisurely, as we were then, was to travel in rhyme with the
speech of the town, and the talk of that dawn was the neighborhood drone, a
fluttering pitch that’d been cordial to me, as cordial as any of the town’s
people’s tongue, and my comfort in it - a worried headland - was that of a
scout’s, laid in a ditch, moments before the bombs overhead, calmed in knowing
the means of his death and the faithful portrayal of its capstone effect. My
eyes caught shape of something inroad: I slowed down slightly, but the object
emerged, much too quick to do something about it: a black horse rising from the
cold tar and gravel, its head turned toward me - caging headlights as bottle
jade lanterns - freckled, steady, awash, unafraid. I slammed to the brakes and
swerved over to miss - I may have even yelled out but I cannot be certain -
jumping the immediate curb and going so far as a neighbor’s front yard before
finally coming to rest. Annabelle and Isaac screamed out and hollered, but I
didn’t hear them; I flew open the car door and jumped to my feet, shaking,
delirious, eager to show them that sleek lunula face, but it blew away like
sand dust after only two blinks. It was a hole in space; there was no horse;
not even a good proximity.) We were a group, and as a group we wished sleep,
but our exhaustion was our own and private affair.
Now: the wind caught a strand of Annabelle’s
hair and gently laid it across her cheek; she moved slowly to sweep it away,
and by the time her hand was back to her side a second strand blew to the
first’s position. And this was, as viewed from fields away, perhaps, to most, a
plain graduation - simple enough to remember and tell, even simple enough to
not think to consider - but to see it close, with less understanding, the
freedom she had to touch her own face, was to have one country of disordered
thought assailed and held by another armed course; think of the day, and think
of its close, as that’s all, I must say, I could honestly think, imaging truths
would fly from that time to launder the posings of Annabelle’s way. I can say, now,
escaped from those doubts, of wondering futures, and what night would bring, to
render her there, near-sleep by the tree, (covered by mournings of days that
had left, another lace curl in meaningless fretwork doodadding doors to some
room I won’t leave), I say to myself that those codebooks are lost; there is
nothing since then that can clarify her, the decisions she’s made (I don’t even
know), and in truth my frustration
with what’s coming next (merging in doom with Annabelle’s face is her face
later on - of course attached still to her body and clothes - laying, frowned,
flat on her bed, but enough about that) urges me stop!– and pause– and divert to new streams.
For your own impersonal uncaring needs, know
that we’re now in Annabelle’s room; know that we’ve called our emergency
fourth, that contemptible wench, Sophie Wadell; know that the strength of the
afternoon sun had well done us in; know that, at some point, I heard a cassette
tape click, stop, and turn over sides (I turned to her then - “Are we listening to tape?” - but no one
responded, so I may have only thought this and not actually spoke), but I’ll
skip along here with my impulse and points: I rubbed my eyes and looked up to
the air, then past the air to the peach covert, the ceiling’s short beams, and
then to the walls that stretched and moved - alive and discomforted - her
plainly adorned, pink tricycle wallpaper (a relic from years that had never
changed out, and strange reminder that, yes, in fact, during some dead day,
this jezebel was a once human child) unfurled like a rug clear onto my face. A
car smashed through - the wall heaving brick, lampooning cartoon, dust, and
smoke - and into the room, and idled, putt-putt, near the end of the bed. No
one moved; I had plummeted inward.
Through the fogged windshield sitting in the
car was Annabelle and Wyatt parked at Four Corners; and even though we had
performed this activity hundreds of times before and since - polling
apparitions of half-hidden poses torn from a film strip charting our laze - I
could discern almost instantly which time had been carried by viewing my own
and mirroring face, sorely disgruntled, trying in vain to hide his distaste at
how the night’s doings so far had been dealt (a distaste, by the way, that’s
simply explained). For one thing, they weren’t, and had never really been,
entirely alone, as their group had included Peter Patton and cronies, old chums
from elementary that failed to transition, and Wyatt - following an ill-advised
moment of wandering reminiscence - was attempting, sadly, to reconnect lives.
He had actually planned a long evening of it when (in contrast, blessedly) Annabelle
called, and not wanting to miss an opportunity with her had decided to combine
engagements. And in case you don’t see where this is all going, I’ll cut to the
quick: Peter and his friends were loud and obnoxious, and in a drearily
fibrillating pubescent manner that dressed them flat, anxious, and completely uninteresting.
Wyatt (as being ravaged by poking sharp pencils) was to be made keenly aware of
all of their faults, faults when in private could be seen close to charming - the
terrain remarks of a sotted aunt - but now, so enlarged by the girl’s soft
presence, their childish jokes and clamoring commentary - a rising, sulfuric
tower of not-funny - it all just amounted to a loud clanging din he could
neither well juggle nor ably restrain. He tried to leverage their misspent
days, unproductively steering the conversation onto topics like their many
addictions, their sexual misadventures, their run-ins with the law, anything to
stir some sexual danger into the terrible soup; but Peter had captured a steady
girlfriend and was loathe to discuss such matters in front of her, and his few
missed shots were incognito, covered, as it was winter, by ratted denim. To a
tourist like Annabelle it just noised as tough talk.
While they attempted to balance on a bicycle
stand in an unfortunate game of King of the Spill, Wyatt and Annabelle sat in
her car, sarcastically making fun of adults and in what they deemed to take
interest. I watched her then turn, and sink in her seat, puffed like a
fledgling and clearly cold. (Her face would burn to vacancy’s crystal if she
turned from him even a smidge too far, as I had no memory of her concealed
angles; behind us, a null, snowed and forgotten in the wake of his view. I
could not change anything, force his hand or tell him what to say; it had, of
course, all already happened.) A commercial came on, and she turned to him
suddenly with a look of decree, stating she couldn’t really picture him ever
chewing gum. “Do you ever do that?” No, he said, he guessed, not really, and to
this she hmm’d, and he took this exchange (groundlessly, I’m sure) to be an
attest to some greater thinking of him, an admittance that she judges his
actions in play. She turned to him again and asked if he believed if it was
genuinely good to give things away. He said he did not fully understand the
question. “Like giving clothes,” she said. “Giving clothes to Salvation Army or
Oxfam.” He asked what was Oxfam, and she quickly talked over him; she thought
there was a difference between nice
and good and simply wanted the space
to sound her decision. “And Mike,” she continued (Mike was her ex); “Mike
cheated on me before we broke up. And he didn’t tell me at the time, and I
think now it was to try to be nice
about it. And I guess it was nice– but
was it good to not tell me?” She
thought. “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . He’s just a boy, though– I don’t want
to hate him for that.” He said he thought it fine for her to hate him for that.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t really think it is.” (She also spelled
‘wrong’ r-a-w-n-g, sharpening her mouth to a crooked triangle.)
Then she took this loose threading like a
child with a kite, ineptly attempting to link her thesis to a quantitative
difference between fine and important, with regards specifically to
artistic endeavors, and how claims to subjectivity cede everything to airs. She
held mall paintings in very high regard, and compared the night out to their
pleasing vapidity. In reply, he scoffed out a thickly laid thanks: “You called me.” She touched his hair. “Don’t get all fancy. No, but really,
it’s nice, this stuff.” He didn’t
really know, so she just pulled away, and thought for a second. “But whatever,
I don’t know what I’m talking about.” And then she thought a little more, again
pausing to speak. “There’s only a few things you can do in your life. You can
fuck, you can die. I just don’t know about the rest of it.” He said you can do
a few other things, too (without really believing this himself), and she said
maybe, but it doesn’t really matter; you know, “in the end.” And then she thrust her hands up to the car heater’s slits,
her eyes bird watching, in slow alternation between childishly wiggling her
fingers and holding them stiff, puffing out pants of frosty white air to fill
the car’s windows with wet-birthing chalk. Then she trapped her mouth shut and
held the air in, holding to cease even the movement of breath, so devoted to
the divinity of inertia was she; she coughed after what seemed like several
more minutes, rushing the air out and into her figure, sharply pulled her hands
back and - stammering - choked, coughing up garbage, a convulsing smoke stack.
She frowned, rubbed the pain from the heater
away; whatever test that had been, she appeared to have failed it. And for no
real reason, perhaps only to present himself as one who would abide by her
momentary interests, Wyatt asked what she would rather be doing right then.
“Drowning,” was her slow, and unpredicted response.
For now, two notes, and then moving on, of the
(endless, enduring) scene in the room (that’s all I can bear). First: to shrink
these thoughts to the back of my sort, I lifted my head from the sight of my
knees and forced myself to listen and speak. Annabelle’s voice came tripped
from the clouds: “I might want to lose five pounds during summer,” (and through
gritted teeth I blinked to a postcard I had for some reason seen sent as a
child - to persons unnamed - that conveyed fulgent forests and blue ridge
mountains and the sky orange setting of woodland Virginia, its deep clouds
deeper for birds that passed under. I have never been so far as east of
Kentucky, but I’ve seen moving pictures - a printed mirage of lucid assumption
- and while what I saw now was a sure deviation, with little overlap with the
recognized place, the locals would be at their own disadvantage; from lacuna
unknowing limned impossible oceans, blindingly bright, carving a beach into
Jefferson’s forests, and I, a trite figure, was washed up upon it, half-dead by
clichés, torn pants turned to shorts, released from the life of my green Echo
Point and the always known presence of Annabelle’s drum - that tittering hollow
- and where in nearness her hand was at rest to my own and numbed and
earth-pale limbs) and Sophie’s soon after, with an agreeable, “Uh-huh.” Without
thinking I said, “Why? You look fine.” She said it was needed, uncrossing her
legs and standing to show, grabbing pieces of stomach and stretching from skin.
“This? You see? This needs to go.” She walked to the mirror, lifting her shirt,
then arched her back and twisted her side, grunting often to flag disapproval.
“See?” I said. “Your ribcage is
showing. You look like one of those starving horses.” Sophie, ignoring me, said
they’d run track; Annabelle gave a widely birthed yawn, and, twisting more,
inspected her flaws. I rubbed my face, tired of this; I felt strangely,
diagonally, arithmetically oppressed,
one of many sure symptoms of notional illness, a disease of ideas, unique in
its spread, contracted when hearts are fueling new panic but ears are filled
with impressionless ease, usually involving lentiginous cheeks, or the curious
chattering of frolicking dogs. (This isn’t part of it, but I looked to the
drapes for a break from their games and was mildly shocked: a half moon poked
through the trees on Burr Ct - I hadn’t yet noticed the day had since left -
and this disease of nescience, disrupting my balance, forced me to brace
against any near fixture, soapily grasping for certainty’s angles, a black and
white bungler whose hat won’t stay on, lest I slide down the earth and crash in
through the window. Also: Isaac clinked his fork; “What is this I’m eating?”
Annabelle muttered, “Poutine, I think.” “Fucking French.” “It’s just fries with
shit on it.” “Well, it’s awful.” “Want croquette
de poulet?” Isaac looked blankly. “I said chicken nuggets.” His
expression didn’t change. “Oh just
forget it cunt hole, get your ball
skin to the kitchen if you want something else.” She grabbed the plate from him
- “And I didn’t even make this for you
anyway.” - and handed it to Sophie. And I say all this now to only remark that
I’m sparing you at least ten times as many ‘jokes.’)
Second: somewhere around the tape deck’s rolling
- an anagogic spinning of “Season of the Witch” - and only to remind of my own
soft triumphs, I said aloud I could play it on guitar. Annabelle seemed to take
this news and immediately dispose of it, letting the information roll
indiscriminately out from the back of her amiable head. She then began slowly
swaying to the music, gazing, crumpled, palms to the heavens, off and into the
space right in front of her. She put her hands on her hips: “I’m getting coffee.”
And after saying this, didn’t immediately depart, but only when she looked at
me with dashing question marks did I feel safe to say, “I will too,” and join
her in getting, so I did, and we went. We walked out the door, through the
hallway, and started on down the short-curving stairs. Annabelle’s greyhound
came up from behind, galloping, budding from its den (and set hovel),
sheepishly moving in animal ripples under our pathway to get to the kitchen -
first, as colleague and sacred affection - and better align with the needs of
its owner; it moved by her legs, and habit’s response made her paw the hand
rail, but after near tripping on the fourth guessing step she gripped to its
length like a raft in a storm. The hallway was dark but for a lamp at the
landing, and the sectioning flare tasted a compeller’s brumal (you could
picture the mother, sweating and rubbing, hands to her temples, watching her
husband twist cubes into place) and it whet the cream paper to pirate ship
bone. The dog reached the floor before our neat lumber, and its feet splashed
to wood like a bucket of nails; whirling upright, I copied Annabelle, clutched
to the rail, and drew to her back for a disciplined view, but the image -
trotting, too close for context - provided no help, and I shut my eyes closed to
avoid falling down. But fell I soon did, though not from the stairs; a trap
door opened right under my feet, with a net to drain only the pictoric person,
wrenched from me like a now dead evening skin: Wyatt, months young, emerged in
old clothes (combining, tussled, with Annabelle’s shirt, enveloped and splayed
against the gross light, a sour lit bonfire seen through a storm), he
salamander crawls from the Rt. 13 river, past stricken pine on down Hennepin,
where Wyatt (again) is running with them, a little behind, sliding and hopping
on twist wire fence, quickly making to meaning and catch: attractively profiled
against the brown night, the long shuttered ward, the crumbling, gothic, abandoned
Adventist.
“Where
did Matt and Natalie go?” (Annabelle spoke in a yelling whisper.) “I don’t know. Already inside?” (Wyatt
was clammy and tired from crouching.) He had held her hand as they crossed
under wood to bury their shadows by the bedtime patrol, but when they reached
deeper brush and the safety therein she had pulled, jerking, out from his grasp,
running ahead of the passing car lights, and the finesse of the act smeared him
useless and worn. When he met her again, knelt in a ditch, she grabbed his arms
quickly to reel him in, presenting herself as a virginal lass. It was a means
to say sorry for running away and to allow him to touch her and feel beloved;
upset at her coddling, I watched him go slack; he wasn’t her pet (he told
himself so) and for no real reason did not play along.
They went under, and in, and, finally inside,
stood, clapping the soot from their hands and torn bodies. They had heard it
was something like galleried dread: huge spider webs; hand prints on walls;
tabled equipment left whole, undisturbed; lonely wheelchairs spinning in wells.
Its nightmare excess seemed too fiercely deliberate, but the schoolyard’s
telling was not that far off (its qualities were perhaps even a mite undersold).
Thoughts of bled homeless, previous tenants of the lost mental ward, left
beggared, to sleep, and to most likely die, cornered from shadows and every
soft noise, and he was very much thankful to be there with friends. Natalie
came round; “This is so crazy.”
“Insane,” they repeated, and sought through the vault. Every third room was
sporadically crammed (mushrooms on bark), a rotten density with broken
utensils, gear, tackle, classroom tables, stacked (why?) and overturned chairs.
They couldn’t - or wouldn’t - walk into most rooms (the indefinite rubble hid
too many slips), so they’d glare as if pigeons tied down to a tram, a
carnival’s cheap and so charming attraction, flashing a light to enliven its dust.
This was the Fall still - wet, and cold - and they’d stop every so often and
huddle like mice (you’ll note that they never acted like beasts with brains any
larger than the smallest fruit seed), clutching their flashlights in such a
fine way to project their weird shapes to hysterical ceiling. They would stand
there, shaking, and talk and laugh, and from my far away view I could see how
we looked, our breaths slimly visible, even unlit, resembling disciples of an
uncherished cult, professing our sins in mechanical temples, dispensing in
reference to a radio culture that would baffle our elders (if they paid us some
mind). Annabelle periodically stood on her toes and breathed over glow to shaft
purposed effects, and I could not, even now, take my eyes off her neck; after
too many glances she caught to our leer, and I watched Wyatt turn, and pretend
to look elsewhere; I, of course, had no need for sidetracks.
Natalie exclaimed that someone could say
(ignoring the fact she was saying it now) that nothing and no one had ever been
cured for the cured always fail to continue as proof. In the moments by sunrise
in my own waking house, the space had a similar such sense of neglect. But (I
thought then, though I don’t anymore), it was three weeks out from a rained Halloween,
and such is the time for some frightening thoughts.
They kicked down the planks and the boards
that crossed up what must have been the physical therapy center, a hugely open
circular room with graphs and measurements painted to walls, the space of which
held a deranged empty pool - really a hole - immensely dug out from its
midpoint. (Annabelle walked to its edge and peered in: discarded bricks, pieces
of wood, a couple torn sheets, a weight or two– nothing, really, of consequence;
she turned away, content with it.) And in the corner of its hold was a winding
staircase - impossibly narrow, outwardly feudal - that led, skyward, through a gap
in the roof. Annabelle hopped over: “Let’s go upstairs!” (The greyhound in ‘present’
tense pushed past my leg - how quickly this scene was running to ends - and the
sensation flipped me off bountiful cliffs, this tumbling jalopy, to mummified
time, quickly unwrapping and horrified heaving to seize to my throat with
centurial coughs: I had returned to that miserable Homecoming night– Annabelle and I on the floor of her den, some
old and terrible board game between, well-mannered, top-hatted, black-dressed,
cross-legged, refusing the jocular crudeness of making an even half-hearted and
public appearance, contentedly choosing to just stay inside; she had planned
this decline of school time affairs - phrased as dignitaries keeping to castle
- dressed like tramps, the ones without dates– except for each other, but that
was the joke. Wyatt, happily, played along with; though I would not have
admitted it then if you asked, he liked
following. He used to go about the whole ‘fun’ thing all wrong, pressuring
himself to come up with ideas, feral adventures, things to impress, but very quickly
learned as understanding matured that instead of him wildly guessing her wants
it was better to button, and let her confess them. This method of silence had a
nice added touch of not exposing himself and his wants to be judged; not that his wants were anything more than a
wanting to be there when she obtained hers. No, he was never more at peace than
when he was able to searchingly volley her solicitous whims, keeping him free
to stitch up the comments, the scarcely visibles, the vanishing dew - all the
dropped symbols of unhurried tolerance - to form a more cormorant predictable
version that had no existence beyond his attention, and no scope at all beyond
kind thoughts of me. She needed a patron, and he could suffice, and was left to
imagine her in ways undeserving; what a
beautiful pact, he sometimes would think.) and this idea would lead not ten
minutes later to her face in angles, screaming at us.
To explain: Natalie and Matt had since left
the pair, candidly sharing this Wyatt’s desire to avoid at all possible
collapsing to pieces with the rusted worn death trap she demanded they venture,
that deliriously perilous staircase. Wyatt had said, “We’ll do it when we come
back,” without much thought - a courtesy reason, a trifling to plot the
conversation to exit - and had expected her reaction to be similarly tepid, if
any reaction was expected at all; but in the seconds just after, her hair-fell
eyes turned freshly horrible, a sudden expression of sibylline anger that
burned in exposure to such a degree as to almost tip him from rickety poise.
She yanked her hand out from under his grip for the night’s second time (he had
clung to her to keep her from climbing without him) and - pushing aside - stomped
off to the center of the cavernous room, shaking, twisted, a wrecked
marionette, before turning, bent, to scream at him: “What is your fucking problem?!” and, shook by her startling
fury, we yelled back: “What? What is
the big deal with going up the stairs? There is nothing up there! Give it a rest!” “You don’t know there’s
nothing up there! I can see light!” (She had claimed to be able to see the moon
through the widest slits of the roof top boards, but Wyatt - silently, and just
to himself - could only think it imaginative rattle.) He said he didn’t care. “I care!” she shouted. “I want to see
what’s up there! Why does no one else
want to do this with me!?” (A cloud
of birds flew into the hold, a delusion brought forth from colliding designs,
an entanglement of shadows that cleared by my presence - those fervent lights
from the kitchen pot rack, that pitiless greyhound appealing for treats - to
dust and stir the abominable set to something resembling unsullied ideas. On
the contrary, I thought: nothing of incident could rightly be salvaged; she
would leave, as before, a clumping, tramping, skirt-held debauchment scurrying
through the cracked and now clear haunted walls, under the laths and over the
glass to sit in Tom’s car - her face to the door - and they’d take a full week
before speaking again.) “Oh, and asshole,
we are never coming back here. And
you know it too, so don’t fucking lie to me or try to control anything.” Wyatt sighed, and said it wasn’t safe. “Who gives a shit!” she yelled. “It’s not safe, who cares. Chances are we’d be
fine. We’d be completely fine. And we’d
see some dumb shit and go and laugh at Natalie for missing the whole thing and
it would be our cool thing but you’ve
got to be such a pussy and ruin it.”
Numbed at this point and not knowing what to
do, he gave a cocked smile so wide, so wearily bemused, that it honestly made
me a little sick to observe, and threw up his arms in some mock of defeat.
“It’s just not worth it.” “Nothing’s
worth it,” and Wyatt - following the bouncing ball - asked her what that was even
supposed to mean now, but I knew already her chilly retort, spoken with all of the
aching restraint of a majestic, wincing, pink-bottomed child: “Life is completely pointless, Wyatt– don’t you
know that?”
And then Annabelle turned the kitchen radio on,
casually dancing to disco, blithely pouring my water to kettle.
[A
rush of wind under sheets unfold
thinly spread
then tucked
and in
a cellar with bottles
barrels
and sold
rotgut
fruits
spilling rotund
wrinkled hands
berries fall
somewhere two trees and a hammock is
swung
and a derivate symphony lights to its
face
this apple green leopard seen stalking
the halls. The spectacle’s gestures
shards of the scene
pierces of glass that fall on him rain
forming
in time
to whole and its worth
and Last
Little’s thoughts receive it as fog
a mist that inspirits suggested marquee:
at the top of his measure he notices feet
the animal’s cleat
clicking and clacking brunette
overboards
attached to the ladders that send to her
form
the square of her haunch
and draw of her spine
the fur that parades a caparison fro
tooing
twitching
and keeping from filth
which leads to the second perceptible
note
the animal’s health
cher strength of her back
enforested root
she lessens to ground to make sure she
hears sounds (Indians running up hills with their hounds
or whispers of lions awaiting on mounds)
a comical sight to our Last Question’s wit
since she’s in a school
with nothing to sniff but a children’s
brocade
departed tree shade
thick
and brown
with stationed street lamps
tiny rain coats (suspended on hooks)
bricks painted black
and even a pond he can see just outside
by a brummagem brook
which leads to the third
and lasting
portrayal
of the sleekness he watches while
flattened to walls
that the animal’s shy
knows not where she is
with head-turning bluster at noises of
hinge
and startles by doorways that joint
allows rent
to opening more of the underlet world
that is ever so close to the one she expects. A piano is practicing somewhere
down hall. She leaps to the top of a trophy fed case
and rests to her make
sitting
in wait
for an unpinning fleet
an intention of row
a folding of leaves
all the decorous signage that symbols
pitfall
of great hunters stalking
scavenging thieves. (She too hunts the
birds
he knows it
he thinks
though he somehow suspects that she
needn’t to eat.) And Last Little
swallows the phrase of this bound
consumes it like cake
this chary retreat
its dour and ease as perennial clouds
and see how she sleeps! this permanent
form
as perfect and certain as seconds uptick
with never a lapse
just mindfully still
licking her paws
twitching her tail: such natural beauty
must hold heavy truths
catechistically taught
he holds to his thoughts
agreeably felt
like gravity’s calm of a red southern
cliff
built up from the wind
and water’s withdrawal
like the sun changing shifts with the
suppertime sprawl
and other such candies that carol his
view
and cling as belief
that the world has its rules.]
“Are you going to want sugar?” she repeated,
thoughtfully.
(Though I would love nothing more than to keep
from this room, the setting as laid, the story as said, it wouldn’t be fair to
continue like this; I’ve dallied enough. You see) it had been an hour since she
had told me her news, dropped like a trifling in her bedroom with Sophie: she
had decided to attend the
I squinted, then fluttered, my eyes almost
closed for a quick break of nothing; “Who is this?” She turned on the gas and then
switched on the stove - “Donna Summer, man, c’mon.” - and smiled, grabbing my
hand to lift up my arm, did a small twirl, then broke away again to slowly pour
in the grounds. She spun to the cabinet to get the bagged sugar. “How much?” “One
spoonful I guess.” She reached for a spoon, hesitated– and then quickly just
dumped what she assumed was its portion. She turned to me again - still moving
to music - and reached to my sides to grab a small plate of cookies (“Are we
the same height?” I stood up from the counter. “No I’m taller.”); she popped
one in her mouth and just let her eyes wander. Annabelle was always so
comfortable at home; her confidence knit chain mail of perfect excuses,
alabaster snowflakes, a helmet of nerve (she turned away again; “You’re always
hunched over.”), and soon she was pouring our coffee in cups, a ceramic brown bear
and a mug for myself. We held up our drinks - pinkies aloft - for a
sophisticated second, then clinked them together. I began to sip when she
stopped me: “You have to hold watch or else it’s bad luck.” So we put our cups
together again and I forced myself to look at her, complete, unwavering, right
to the coronet of her shining perception, those wide shallow lakes of ice-death
opinion, as she stared back in me - smiles in her eyes curled slight from the
wear - and we drank, evenly, together. (And in that drink I filled more with
stilled time, not of the past, but of the present, and future; filled it in
with more summertime fancies, wasted, and dumb, of caliginous girls flying
quick to catch rides, and their just younger ditto’s, swooning round
dollhouses, preparing them as traps to collect their planned raptures and stand
as pink dungeons in aesthetic opposition to their brothers’ friends’ muddying,
green-bloodied foot soldiers.)
“So,” I said, finishing my gulp, “
We opened the screen the only way that you
can, by forcefully swinging it far and wide till it banged wet-warped against
the house panel parapets, giving it the loudly necessary force to then wobble
back in a jittery dance, back to its latch, just sweeping your shirt as you
flounced to outside, filing to smoke under patio lights. And on that ark, so
familiar to us, the suburban backyard’s quarter acre of earth, we talked a bit
more, or, rather, she spoke, the words from which fell she assumed I’d collect.
A faraway train traveled
[Question
corned
stands weird in the hold
the interlaced fingers of lyceum’s clasp
without even snacks
overtripping book bags
then opened
and out
his foot filled with stones
his cock gone acrook
he big-toes his boot to confirm to his
heel
and thinks as if filmed where to put his
bare hands
how to rest them at ease with the lengths
of his pants
has lost or misplaced his most natural
stance
when the school bell emits
a goat beating clang (he pictures the
hammer
and violent swing. . .)
and with it bursts forth the doors foaming
with kids
a short seething wave of some tangerine
limbs
flailing skin flags to distinguish from
them which student was which
and which was a mess
in white elbow socks
and checkerboard dress
afternoon clothes
pinafores
shirts
flying their kites and strong clutching
their books. Every so often their words would buck shot (‘Take it
and hands would slap backs
and laughter would sum. And Last Question watches them carry
downwind
their unfurling long tassels a fish
caudal fin. And this sight
to him: an expulsion of gas
hieratic heartburn
a tummy’s soft pat
a belch from All That Is Good In The World to escape from his mass the so-fresh
swallowed air that the leopard cast facts
The
Smell of Fresh Clothes
or Roasting
Marshmallows (But Not From Too Close)
or The
Moment You Learn of the Ocean’s Cold Touch
the feeling of which is still hung in
his ribs
like white draping laundry suspended
with pins.]
(Frightened of the scene I would surely create
if I flashed, sunk, and lost total sense, I committed a sort of controlled
mental burn to prevent a more willful inferno from flare; Annabelle, smoking,
stayed unawares. . .) The strip of my thoughts was cut to thin tape, and in its
clear place was pasted a house– Quaker’s, it looked, and inside its walls sat
Wyatt ensconced in the couch’s black truss, sitting meekly and plainly just
ever so bored in the casemented, leaf-warm, chestnut brown cubby, with
Annabelle floored, and Quaker laid out, while Maggie opened a pack of decked cards
with such girlish strokes as to speak to her mother’s connate devilry. She gave
him his fortune, tilting her head, parsing the tongue of the symbols’ strange
law, and though it is not at all meaningful to add to this song, the flipped
vouchers said that a dark haired woman would be his salvation and multiple
clubs means vague ‘communication.’ “Yeah, it’s saying shut up now and then.”
This here was Annie, and he jumped in fright at the touch of her breath; she
had moved, without sound, directly behind, and now rested her chin to the top
of his head, and even as far from the show as I was - from both them and my
past - my heartbeat still followed his quickening pulse; it gathered us whole (during
which to reflect Maggie gathered her cards, who then walked to her brother and
punched his fat chest, the act of which let out the pillowing rasp of a
corduroy cushion so battered by rods). Then Annabelle tipped, and lowered
herself, to drape her arms over in rearward embrace, then slowly receded, an elegant
pull, skating and drawing big shapes and nonsense, carving our chest, a small
figurine prancing light past our neck, till a final leap off (with a spin in
the air) to shake our head loose, and scruff up our hair with her cat-playing
paws. But when she then turned, off and away, along with spread arms, to go back
to her flump on the spot of rugged floor, leaving Wyatt to sit for some seconds
still more, to try and collect himself after her brush, knowing, when left,
that her touch was untamed, unsaddled by burdens or thoughts of intent, I - a
shadow - held to remain, bathed in the flash, encased in the sap of its sparkling
impression; I sat, played it out, her hands feeling me in the thinnest slow stretch
while I washed in delusions determining games, happy, just happy, for promises
stole, from its non-conclusions, her very small measures, its intimate loops.
Wyatt left, of course, as he must, as I had, as I knew that he would, cursing
the day when Annabelle formed to come here and tease him with vacuous gestures,
to let him discern by her casual splendor the span of potential he could not
fulfill, while I stayed, declining, the flickering beat now a foundered
submersion, a shivering pulse as seen under seas - a slowing, weakening, pelagian
throb - and in every vibration we glowed with light’s flood, our statues back
lit - a reddening swell - and I remembered in time to just grip to that feel, of
being so wanted, if only in pits, if only for fun, if only for moments as fast
as this one, while surrendering to memory’s churning black swill.
[And
there is a plate being cleared of its food
roughly
angrily
scraping its waste into plastic and
holes
and when this is done
and the plate is all clean
or clean as can seem
a noise sends a scare
and the plate is then dropped
and then cracks to misuse in the washing
machine. And upon this long scar taking hope from its face (though think of its
use as a character trait
a marked up utensil that brings to the
wares its own special gifts
and thrilling support
and set of plain skills
a Ruggles
or Gleason
or Barton MacLane
or a lesson of Beauty Is Hid Or Something. . .)
the plate is then gripped
and held for a time
allowing the bluster its time to remit
but when it does not
the plate is then launched to apartment
and wall
to explode with white star dust and thrower’s
loud scream. And with this great break and Olympian throw
a parcel is sent
an All
That Is Good In The World dropped collogue
crashing windows
or expertly hinted by glints from tree
leaves
falling from space with a whistling hum
till it lands in the pitch of our Last Little’s thoughts
usually a lesson awaited breath baited
to open its lace
and seek to the knowledge and clean the
debris from our dear Question’s
worry that Good doesn’t see that
he’s trying his best - his absolute best
- to hunt the blue bird
but the message is flung with such
ghastly brute force that it knocks his wind out (or almost at least). And
rising to knees he cuts open the trim
and looks to within
and sees the damped forests sogged heavy
with wet
and vision
and voice
that weighs with regret
that implores him from practice to keep
to himself
for the best of you halves in the
banding of two
and is tripled
quadrupled
when added up to a new group or scrapped
clique
with natterings pushing your spirit
constrained
or at best just detained
for you starve for the timbre of lullaby
mood
that chimerical pink that lays over you snoozed
the color of daylight behind our closed
lids
for your friends keep you up
with creations of trust
and drag you to bars and dull shopping mall
snuff
when you should be at home
or laid on the couch
and saving yourself from the fury and
fuss. And Last Little Question is
sad by the thought of his All That is
Good
their head a broad bowl
their gingering shambles kept masked by sheep
clouds
and after rain dew
before a leafed sky that now paintings
to blue
behind the big mountains that tear
overhead
and what they must see when they put him
to bed.]
(And one final sliver before I fell out: Annabelle,
through all of my idiotic swirling, did not leave my side, and when I could
hear - if not apprehend - the exterior world, I heard her dumb singing; “Take
It To the Limit;” I did not ask why; we were as bare as the night.)
I
roused to a drilling pain; I had been brushing my teeth for apparently so long
that when I spit it was mostly just blood. It opened my scope like a spreading
stain; I was in a bathroom - that much was for sure - but there was an immense
and stubbornly redolent island rutting with birds from the gaps in my skull
that hampered safe passage (and additional findings). I leaned on the sink, clasping
the counter to feel distinct, securely rigid by vanity’s stone, and my interior
self, now slowly in spin, began airing my head like a dusty old house, busily
opening doors and windows, letting in sense, clapping sleep’s powder from
standing stupor; cold stirring stimuli winded through drapes, and I learned
from the mixture of accreting details and unsurprised time that I wasn’t, as I had
thought, in Annabelle’s bathroom; those towels were mine, as were the pine sheets,
and Annabelle’s mother wouldn’t keep them so clean. Satisfied, at least, with
this conclusion of place, I turned on the water and drank it in gulps, then
dunked my head swimming complete in its bowl, holding it under to feel its
cold, then whipped myself backwards and kept my eyes shut, but not for too
long– the comfort of darkness risked years of more rest, and I opened from fear
of a total nose-dive. I looked to the mirror, and the mirror looked back, with
red stinging eyes and yellowing skin, anachronistically sick, with stuff surely
cured since the advent of trains; it looked to have been sailing for a very
long time; it looked sick from its life.
I walked from the bathroom and checked out the
hall; the immature sunlight played games on the rug; it was (to keep count) the
seventh new day. I couldn’t remember when Sophie had left (or when we had left,
or if she was here), so I stood still a moment to hear who was there. The ones
that lived here made their own unique clamor that paneled together to wainscot
the house with an always soft-trembling but untroubled tune, but the only heard
noise - a maladroit rustling through things in my room - was inept to its
setting, a foreigner’s song. I opened the door: it was Annabelle and Isaac just
playing some game; they chose to ignore my sudden appearance till the nerve of
that blindness had me waving my arms, and even at that Isaac didn’t look up.
“Hey.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Your folks? At work.”
“What time is it?”
“Like nine.”
“Where’s
“I don’t know.”
I rustled my hair and stood up in the frame, hands
on my hips, a small peevish child. “When did we get here?”
Annabelle laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“I know, that’s why I laughed in your face.”
“I can’t be the only one having these black
outs.”
“Well check your count cause I think that you
are.”
“You guys are seriously doing OK right now?”
“Yep.” “Pretty much.”
“And you haven’t slept at all?”
“Nope.” “We’ve been together the whole entire
time.”
I paused. “. . . not the whole entire time.”
“You think I’m sneaking naps? We’re apart for
like three minutes every damn day. You can ask my mom.”
“Your mom’s never home.”
“You can ask my brother then! I don’t know what
to tell you, I haven’t sle–oh c’mon. . . Oh, FUCK YOU, Annabelle! That
is such horseshit waiting in last
place so you get all the good items and then come bombing up the lane at the very
last second.” “What, that’s a legit
strategy!” “It’s cheating!” “It’s not cheating if it’s in the game! It’s there for a reason.” “You’re not a toddler
struggling to keep up! You and your rubber banding bullshit.”
I sat down on the couch, with Isaac and
Annabelle down on the floor, sprawled, enmeshed, in an array of grey games; they
had been at this a while. “When did Sophie leave?”
“She drove us here a few hours ago and then she
went home.” “You’ve only been in the bathroom for a few minutes.” Annabelle
turned to me; “You said you were gonna shower but I didn’t hear water.”
I thought - “I just brushed my teeth.” - and lifted
my shirt to my nose to smell - “I should probably shower.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
I stood up. “Don’t be the bigger guys, they
take too long to get going.”
“You said that too.”
They both laughed a little then, and it warmed
a few embers; if this was some joke, it was now turning cruel. “You really haven’t slept?”– an unintentional
whine; I was desperate for them to admit it, move on.
“Wye! I’m in it to win it!” “Ten days straight
mother fucker.”
“And you don’t feel like absolute shit right
now?”
“No.” Annabelle turned to me with shark’s eyes
smiling. “Do you?” Then both of them laughed a little more, chuckling crows on
chewed-up fence posts. (If you don’t understand, as I barely could, it was a
clear joke when she claimed she was fine; she was downright done in - a breath
from collapse - but this condition amused her like bondservant gags kept up between
slaves to keep themselves sane. But I hated this ploy to ignore our despair, to
bury our mood under mounds of forced laughs; I thought that to swear to your friends
you were full when plain starving by sights was insultingly stupid, and worse
than the stillness and calm of our grief because it was wrong, and visibly so, which brought to me hope that Annabelle felt
that her woe was so bare, so loaded to heap, that even its mention would tip it
to spill, and she’d fall from her horse, and join me, down here, in ministerial
sulk, a babbling monk that can’t seek to his aims.) I had no cause to break into
a fit - not really, at least - so I backed to the bathroom and into the shower.
(OK, I’m showering - la-da-dee, la-da-daa - and while that I am, I’ll try to
explain a quick theory of mine before I get out and it all goes all wrong: for
a short while now - and this time is included - I’ve begun to think that there
is such a thing as maintaining an involuntary frothing of focus that films to
the top of your temperament’s bath whenever you find yourself near a space
picked by your apothegm mind - yourself after birth, but before you could keep
to the things you had learned with watchful designs - a commonplace space that
you saw everyday, but defined with a fear that’s not knowing the ways or the
shapes or the grace of this burgeoning world, and that its raw pieces were not
so supernal as to carry a nature beyond their tame math, and if we ignored them
they wouldn’t hold that; the upstairs bathroom - just to the left of the
carpeted stairs and in between Tom and Kay’s master bedroom and the short hall
that splits between Bryan’s and mine - is such a dark place of attention for
me. During the week, and in the morning when stirred, I am still too miserable
by the disgraceful reduction of hazardous waking to give it much care; and
later, mid-day, or especially near evening when people’s around, the keenness
of color is turned monochrome, its usual complexion dimmed by the augurs of our
upstairs-downstairs hollering roost; and later, at hours, when the house has
gone dim, you would think the attraction would thrive in the night, but the
shadows diffuse any mention at all, and when I run up the steps to go into my
room I pass by the spot like any inked street where I’d not turn my head, to
look or to see, because why on Earth should I– there’s just nothing there. But
on weekends, late morning, or early afternoon, when Bryan has left to do
whatever he does with whomever can bear him and Tom has gone on to an overly
varied electronics supply store or swap meet downtown and Kay - in faint wisdom
- has fled to the mall, that bathroom is an unquestionable monolithic attendance
standing in the attic of my daily experience. It is not a conscious thought, as
I think I have said; and it is not laid in memory for which I have route; but
that room is an egg, curled up in a place where I learned to clutch fear, and
it hatches, discretely, as a habitual yawn.) And when I got out (only weakly
invigorated), I heard the low buzz of the living room set - the rubbing effects
of a child distraught, and hard-stepping cobble stones sounding to be like the
click clop-clopping of a horse drawn buggy - so I listened, and heard from a
thick Irish accent, “Hello, Granny!” and knew, all at once: the television was
playing Reed’s Odd Man Out, and, I
must say, one of my favorite films.
Not that many people have seen it, I’m afraid,
or not that many people I have spoke to, at least; I think it’s a forgotten
classic, honestly, and I much prefer it to even The Third Man. If you haven’t seen it: James Mason plays the leader
of a filmic surrogate for the IRA in an unnamed city somewhere in North Ireland,
but as the title cards says, “It is not concerned with the struggle between the
law and an illegal organization, but only with the conflict in the hearts of
the people when they become unexpectedly involved.” I won’t spoil the plot but
it’s really quite good; I know it almost by heart.
I finished drying my hair, threw the towel
near the rack and nearly sprinted downstairs, cheerfully eager for the rare
opportunity to explain to Annabelle what movie this was - a movie I’m sure
they’d flipped on without care - but after hitting the floor and then passing
the clock, I was surprised to be greeted (politely, it seemed) by a serenely
collected and quite empty room. My friends were not there; no one was. (In
times like this of unexpected estrangement, I sometimes find myself looking for
clues, watery shoe spots or dusted handprints, the obvious directives
detectives relied on within their flat spheres of cartoonish offenders, but my
infantine searching, always short-lived, never failed for me to just widen the
gap.) I walked to the kitchen; they weren’t there either, with no indications
to lead me to think that they ever had been, but while away from the windows
the morning had grown, and it was bright now, shining, and I stood, for a
moment, to soak it all in. Then I looked out the glass of the patio doors
(thinking to see them, lounged in the lawn, exhausted, relinquished, barren. .
.); the back neighbor’s kids were there crafting a tent, and my telescoped
vision prostrated their figures upon the yard’s fence’s sharp ternion tips. I
shuttered the blinds and walked back to the hall.
I mechanically knew that they weren’t in the
basement so I went back upstairs, walking heavy this time to sound my
displeasure– this could have been Smee (Annie’s mean version of Hide and Go
Seek; impromptu, of course), though I wouldn’t think Isaac this tired would play,
but if it was, I’d white flag to end the charade. I reached the top level and
looked to take stock: they weren’t in Kay’s room (the door was wide open to see
all its slants), and they couldn’t fill
This was a ramping of evidence (I suddenly
thought), a collecting of data to strike the accused, but I couldn’t discern -
or refused to attempt - towards what shoaling crime would this all be for use. But
I knew that I didn’t want to open the door. I wanted it removed, not actually opened. I wanted to somehow erase it from being,
for opening it would be to reveal by acts that I wished it to open, an
admittance through base and such blunt motor skills I desired to see, to look,
to know, that I held desire at all anywhere, and its misty instructions were
enough to propel me to filter my moods into covetous forms. I wanted to merely delete
its wood grain. But I couldn’t do that. (And I still hadn’t moved.)
I had run away with myself, even I could see
that, even through the effects of no sleep I could see it, the abject
foolishness of standing deer still, locked in blue terror at the sight of a
door. I laughed to myself; then a little bit louder; not loud enough to wake
anyone behind buttressed walls, but still, loud enough. Then I clutched to my
hips and just waited for nothing. (Music came up from the downstairs set: I saw
them in the car headed out to the job– I thought that’s the scene. I could picture
his face, Mason sweaty from head aches, the camera’s Dutch tilting of fevered transport.)
I rubbed my big nose and looked queer at the knob; I blinked, but the house
remained somehow intact.
Determined to break from this deplorable
state, I took one pathetic step - a centimeter’s crawl, an inching toe’s worth
- then another, less cautious. Though I could not figure why I was worried at
all, I still felt it needed to cross over spots that I knew from days here
would deplore with my weight, that awful dead sound of a bassinet’s crunch. (To
be sure, I considered - with a logic in whirl - the possibility that they
weren’t even there in the room, but dismissed it from thought once I got to the
wall; its absence of sound was not a pure lack but the uncomfortable swell of a
pregnancy’s pull.) I ignored my awareness of what surely was a very unpleasant
disheartening sight, and pressed my head flush and against the broad door,
spreading my feet to the edge of its frame for fear of exposing my shadow to
sun. I knelt, slightly, and held my breath in; a wind fluttered drapes and I glared
them to rest (and then I would hear the soft strumming of blood, so leisurely
gliding their way through my taps, and I caught myself wishing that it’d stop
it as well). Finally, past ages, a tremor of noise: near to the floor there was
something that moved! The thrill of hearing anything through the postern obscured
by audacity the meaningless sound to a completely unintelligible hoary lacquer;
was it a desk chair, a bed sheet, someone’s tripped jeans? I had no idea. I
pressed to it harder, flattening my ear, willing by sorcery the door’s wee
assemblage to shift to something else between that of a sponge, or maybe a gas,
a microscopic conversance to let me determine to just what in Good Heaven I was
actively listening. A minute more passed - with that tick-tick-ticking of the
downstairs clock - but then, soon enough, came another fed sound, and this one
was much more explicitly uttered: the sanctified moan of a depressed box
spring.
I froze, and flashed dark; there were just a
few reasons why they’d be on my bed: sleep, and the other.
Now, you might think me at this point completely
unraveled, but give me some credit; I successfully (for a time) bit back the
implications and held fast to reason, even though what survived of this (what
you’d call reason) after days of ignoring its pleas for a break had led me to
marry my head to a door to ordain if my friends were in doing the deed - or any
semblance of deed - but in my senseless and ridiculous manic imaginings what
were the odds this was really the case? Not a chance, not a chance. They could
be doing anything, frankly. Sitting, smoking, reading a book. Anything at all. It
was an insult, really, to even call it a case; it was, as they say, completely
circumstantial. And in fact (I continued), that sound, that spring, that
specific bed fold, allowed me the certainty to openly think on the sheer
plausibility of what I was guessing, like an unbraided trace that presents to
the weaving and tangled absurdity of your flap-doodling thought. It was
absolute nonsense– (and on I went while I continued to listen - more for good
sport than some driven distrust, as I felt to frame it - and as I saluted my
clear mature calm–) the third accent came, equal in ease to the second rung
bell: Annabelle, plainly, the breath of her voice, caught up in activity,
hollow (lying down), an intoxicated fussing and whispering scene (as though I
could see), with depths of broad tune, and color, and shape, and sharpening at
times to a favoring lilt, then fussy once more, fidgety, turned, but always a
cadence of pleasant concern.
I listened till quiet (led by a shush? I
cannot be sure), quiet enough for a tension to hear, and was replaced by the
noise of incurious movements, of chairs and sheets and jeans being pulled,
their calloused ambivalence a purposeless numb that sank without struggle to bottoms
of sense.
Friends, I was frenzied.
I unreeled from the plank and retreated five
feet, and stood (not shaking, but admittedly near it), my vision now crushed to
the door’s wooden trim; it wasn’t a bulwark, as once had been thought, but a
standing walled symbol of purposed divorce. A basic annul would just not be
enough. If I wanted it gone I must rip the damned thing from its insolent hinges,
then crash those sprayed waves to their splintering spots, floating black
holes, then tear those divisions to their chemic beginnings of hazy, unfounded
and worthless creation. (I would use exclamations - could use them, really, from now to the end - but want to convey my
sword-swallowing force and dissuade you from thinking of madness outright -it
wasn’t like that, but rather like driving your car to your block and then taking
the seconds to recognize, slowly, the smoldering heap that was once your fair
house.) But before I could find a black hammer to start, some stronger ideas
soon bullied to view: I envisioned her there, and lying beneath him, naked but
just for the parts of effect, her shirt torn to fluster (pulled, perhaps, to
expose a neat breast), her face enforested, tangles of hair, pushed into my pillows
by shades of not-me. Isaac. (Ever so strange, I was oddly incensed to imagine
her smell soon left to my sheets, a shameful dessert of a thought to be held,
even as brief as I gripped to it then, but still not as brief as my swim in the
pool from my ears that enthused at my vagaries formed, that my fantasies dammed
had burst forth with a surge, and I inspired their searching, and journeys
inside, and how close the two waters would mix and combine; but the nearness of
her was a reaching success: the room had its dream, and I, the dreamer, had
been so expelled.) What chain of events could have led to this now? I’m sure,
thinking back, that any answer that seemed even close to correct would have
knocked me from off my precarious perch to a complete and utter imaginative dirge,
but in that current and terrible time I felt a tough need to catalogue cause,
and try my capacity - flailing - to know. (Her bent arm and twist, piercing her
lips; I should mention her face was not clear in my head– just the poke of a
chin or the flush of a cheek; it was far too ghastly to take in her eyes; it
felt abusive, to her and to me.)
(Up from the living room came a fatigued,
“We’re in trouble enough without asking for more,” and his friend to retort:
“For Heaven’s sake man she’ll give us a drink or something won’t she, and a
bite to eat too maybe.” Mason’s friends were deciding to hide in an old woman’s
house; I recited the next bit with them, a salve, and to say it out loud and
reclaim the warm air: “I don’t know. She’s tricky. I wouldn’t trust her.”)
I had spoken quietly but still waited to hear
for any nerved rustling reacting inside; no rustling came, and my temperature
rose at their insouciant show, but not for too long; black carrions’ humor
(secreted from the strewn unremarkable qualities of everyday hallways and everyday
doors that had caught in their holds this never-day occurrence of astonishing
difference) was smothering my trembling reaction to it. It had another effect,
too: standing in space (between doorways and halls, and so near to the held and
dread haunted bathroom), I could imagine her holding his junk in her hand with the
emotion and gall of a weighing technician, clasping the picture with steel and
prongs, reviewing it studied through light bending goggles; I could raise and
lower the tone of my anguish with fixed calculation and measuring ease, as
simply as pulling at flaps of broke skin, picking and scoring the finger for
blood. Pain was a toy in these quick early strokes, and I metered control through
a sort of caged play. I was falling, sure, in shock you could say, but like
seeing your legs ripped off by some trap, there lies a brief calm before gales
of tears, a wondrous amazement at life’s stray events and the awfulness that bears
from just trying your way. (I remembered when hearing my mother had left, and
the flakes of that telling fell onto me then; I was woken, I think, and so felt
still asleep when my father explained. There in the hallway, outside from the
door, I realized I had felt near asleep now for days, and so had been feeling
in loss now for days, at least until then when a sense of new loss would so somberly
merge with my thoughtful condition.) The carpet turned yellow - a passing white
cloud had proclaimed the sun’s post - and lit the kick of the door in the room;
I did not bend under to look if I’d see.
If you can believe it, I then went downstairs.
Not even to leave, but just sit on the couch. (I could not, and cannot,
remember the walk.) I felt, perhaps, I’d be able to hear Them, as if some part
of me dallied behind, moronically grafting his head to the door, a hand to a
cup that is tied to a string that travels the lengths of the house’s two
floors, but, of course, I heard nothing when left; I hadn’t informants at all
for deploy. So I sat, as motionless as I could maintain, every so often just pinching
my shirt, patting my pants, in clueless pantomime of what I’d be doing if theories
were gladly kept well and disrobed, if I had, to start, merely journeyed
downstairs, and seen the nice film, and sat down to watch, if I had not cared
at all where They were and what They were doing at any old time. (The movie
still played so I looked up to see: Mason stands up, crouched from the dark in
a small bomb shelter, hiding, wounded, pulling at the straps threadbare on his
coat, resigned to leave, to take his chances before he bleeds out. He stands,
totally, in weakened groundwork, bracing himself against the stone wall, but
before he can start a bad limp to the hatch, a young man appears, dark in the
way; the man looks around; he does not see Mason, and turns, instead, to wave
at another: “In here, come on.” Mason shrinks his means back to the farthest
black spot, and watches in pain as a young woman shows, and lingers in shadows
without coming in. The man sits down on the bench inside. “Somebody will see
us,” the young woman says. The man talks over; “What’s wrong?” he whispers. She
pauses, sad, and looks at the floor; he turns, ashamed; “You said that you
would.” She runs to sit next to him; “I’ve changed my mind.” Mason now
whimpers; the man lights a match; it’s a short confrontation before the two
leave. And Mason is left, alone once again.) On the street through the windows:
a boy with a ball, running down sidewalks, a bird over waves, hopping in
circles across the cracked grey, screaming to friends, pausing, and throw, and
skipping with glee from the pane out of view. His body left sight as a pointed
division; he had leapt, in full sprint, behind the wall’s crook, and to see it
as I was to watch in sick horror the boy be consumed by the cupboarding case.
By my angles of judgment he’d extinguished completely - a small thing of ice
being dropped on a stove - and the theology of day pushed a small-boned
connection, a little furred animal scampering in rooms.
(At first I couldn’t pass the physicality of
it; Their naked pink bodies just touching each other. I thought of nothing
else, and my considerations posed Them like dolls in vast space, brobdingnagian
figures, green curling vined softly amethyst statues, or maybe limestone, but carefully,
slowly, setting next to each other. I guided these shapings by guilty
perversion; it was an act - at first - a planned purposed parody of kidding obsession,
and I naively thought if I kept them in mind I’d be able to stop it whenever I
liked– these are the pleas of an addict, I know. And this - as I’m sure you’ve
already found out, as I’m equally sure you’re much smarter than me - did not strictly
happen, and my visions steamrolled from such reasonable manage; They turned
without charge, ignored my commands, and I saw every dogleg they wanted to
show, his hands upon her, her hands upon him, her mouth upon him, and every
other dreadful and desirable grade. And I wished myself too in that foul
geometry.) I had unwittingly sharpened these visions too fine in turning them
over, back and so forth, again and again, razing their surfeits to something by
real, so when the final fat shaving came off of the dream, the fashioned deceit
was so close to the truth that it pierced my slim ego - a run-thrusting stab -
and I jumped from the couch in a startling pain, ready to run up the steps,
scream out in the hall, open the front door, bang it to crack, twirl a cat
loudly yowling in hoops, anything to stop Them from blasphemous fucking (but
the television tensed to my impassioned approach, and coughed up by nervousness
violin flurries; Mason’s friends had gone hiding in the old woman’s house; they
impatiently pace in the living room fit; she runs from the entry and offers up
lies, saying cops have caught wind and are soon on their way. She moves to the
front door; one pulls a gun. “Oh stop
flashing those things, dear! Must I tell you what to do?” She looks out the
peephole to fake a concern, then opens the door and just pushes them out. “Out
you go now, bless you, run for it!” They burst through their cover to a crowd
of police. The smaller one laughs; “Oh right you are so! Come on!” And as
they’re gunned down we are shown the hag’s face, pressed to the door to hear
when it’s finished. It is a callous betrayal, and even though I know what and
right when it will happen, the scene can still usually awaken some anger. And to
my surprise, I felt flapped even then.) so I walked, instead, to the kitchen
again.
The kids by now had completed their tent, and
the mother had come to give jubilant snacks. Impressioned to me as a cardboard
extent, it heated and cast to a harquebus ball, small and lead, and - in the
mechanics of any good thoughts - stuck, grinding my gears down to fire and sparks.
It enraged me, this sight, past the placid fence posts, the physical totaling
of collected drear space– it seemed to awash in gravidity’s boor, the red cedar
stakes and disorderly children, annoyingly flat, and feet from my house. (Do
girls even really enjoy it this young? They’re too dumb, really, to know when
its good, and too shy to just take you and say when its not. And Isaac couldn’t
possibly know what she needs. And they’re both so exhausted; it can’t be that
great. . .) I listened for sounds, pressured from boards, and the sense of a
cup came sprinkled to grip; I held in my hand a large glass filled with water,
but couldn’t remember when pouring it full. I somehow resisted throwing the
thing, incensed at the guesswork defining my turns, steam trunk puffings of basket
case stress, the pages of movement I could not account. And the blocks began
building my chest once again. (Like choking down food that you think has some
use, I had tried to play dress up, to be an adult, and considered if Annabelle
wanted this, fine, good for her, get
her jollies, etc, etc., but a vulgarian’s thinking was not a good cure, and a
brother of peace disagreeably feigned was my ugly denial: my feelings were not
- as I wanted - so read as the decipherable ramblings of jealousy’s spoil. The
fucking was a point of contention, no doubt, but it was certainly not the whole
kit-and-caboodle– to borrow a phrase. I wanted them - simply - to be chewed up
by devils. It was just far too much. My quarrel was a garden, fantastically
dense, with hemorrhaging bounties of christening color, and roots that sunk
deep into crackling soil; two figures sat still in the dazzling sweep; they
drank tea, I think, and they turned to me then, their features wore off of seen
features or sense.) I slammed the glass down and went into the bathroom.
I turned on the faucet; didn’t look in the mirror,
and took my reflection’s mischievous blush but only in the rims of an obstinate
glimpse. I splashed my face wet but it made me burn sick, so I fell to the sink
and mouth-breathed for a bit, and waited impatiently for the feeling to pass, and
when it did not - or not quick enough yet - I banged open the toilet and knelt
down beside it, anticipating the sickness to rise, at last leave, but the sick
never came, so I decided to try and gulp water to force it (from the sink, not
the bowl); in admirable response the affection declined, and I rightfully
tallied it another defeat.
After waiting a few minutes I spread onto the floor;
I looked to the ceiling; it looked to me strange; I was - it did seem - a
traveler here. The two lovers upstairs, jack hammering away, now They were the
house’s more scrupulous tenants; how else would anyone honestly see it? (To
answer my question: the roof opened up and I saw to outside, but not to the day
- as it was, I am sure - but the fell hours sloop of an offered night sky, and
I drifted, chewed straw, and that snored city life, and felt not content but in
arms with this time. What I mean to say; this: that it felt so assured. As
assured as the world’s most magnanimous assurance and as obvious too, which
means - I should add - not obvious at all, like the obviousness of Africa
existing by seas, a fact you are told, and you think you can prove, by taking a
flight and just booking a room, but you cannot avoid the strict sense of a
play; just what if the land where the plane dropped you off was a countrified
fraud, and the people you saw were performers for you; no matter the cause,
your bequest leads to trust the world spins around you. You must believe what
they say, or else you’re called mad. That Annabelle and Isaac would be entwined
then; it made as much as sense as the world’s lands apart.) It felt appropriate
it was all in my room - a trapdoor shut in, a crypt among tombs - where my teenage
depressions had dripped to the sheets. It was inviting catharsis against my own
fort, opening the gates to allow the raunch come, to ravage my land, burn all
of my crops, kick over clay pots (spraying glistening water), and my church would
be pure, a post of rarefaction, and its survivors would carry their pain to their
texts, indite the impiety and the word’s stunning span. I had let them come in,
and had let them continue - it felt sacrificial - for the sake of narration
(and, in truth, for no other purpose than I was not so far gone as to neglect
the insanity of such a disruption; oh how fast the union would tighten against
me; “Get out!” she would scream as I opened the door, embarrassed at his ass
writhing naked in air; “Get out!” And They would be the ones who had taken my
room, and fail to see the sharp humor in that.) (I had left the door open to
hear Their approach but only the sounds of the movie came in: one of Mason’s old
friends is talking to tramps, and children at that; they have him surrounded,
asking for food in an unlimited cycle of practiced routines, and their injuring
magics run counterpanes under.) And if (I still thought) I then kicked the door
in - as I had wanted to do those long winters ago - nothing would happen, and
nothing would cease: splinters and pine would shatter and fly, thundering,
short, before freezing and floating as gravity quit, slowed to our sights a
cosmogonal stroke attacking my stammered, demanding complaint; and in this tined
cloud of full hanging debris, I would stand there, dumbly, without bold
expression, flexing and unflexing fastening fists; whatever could be possibly
said at that moment? A speech would useless, as I was quite sure; I would only
be able to speak in morphemes. And the setting would wrap in a now-nothing
light. (I snorted like a horse and then felt something slip - an apparatus,
perchanced, of small understanding - and fall - clinking, like something
bejeweled - from my process and thoughts to the floorboards beneath; and for a
momentary second I forgot who They were. An eight ball purchased from a mall magic
shop then flared to retention to impress its opinion, a rabbit ear flicker and cheap
light projection: stock footage of flights over fields of grass, appearing dark
blue, and swiftly escaping a far away sun. I blinked them to shutter, and
looked at the roof; the ceiling still cracked, and I dissolute; and the visible
stars and predictable worlds all one by one quickly flashed into gloom.)
(The television hummed: “Dennis. . . did I
kill that fellow?”)
And then I heard the sound of my bedroom door
open. I leapt up in panic; was the sound real? Footsteps came next, and quickly
accelerating; I ran, scrambling, to the sunned living room, jumping the couch, and
snatching the nearest stapled thing that bared words, pretended to read,
tucking my leg over in a fine boredom and blunderously painted relaxed.
Annabelle, as ever, was the first to be seen -
smiling at an unheard remark - but quickly came Isaac - his hand at first by
itself on the rail - following behind in a slow single file, trotting down the
steps in some flitting conversation. Utterly normal.
They eventually broke off– him to the easy
chair and her to the couch, where she plopped herself by me and bent her legs
under. “What have you been doing down
here?”
“Watching this.”
She flicked the magazine. “And reading. . .?”
(I tried pushing a laugh but it came out a
cough, then tried to just smile but that came out a grimace; I stopped my
convulsing and parodied leisure.) “Anything to stay awake.”
She shook her head smiling and looked to the
screen.
(And it’s impossible for me to recount anymore
- I could not much concentrate on anything at all as I felt for some groundless
and unfathomable reasons in that wonderful cleanse that comes after the act of a
choice being made, though I was unaware of any decision wished-for - except
that I asked - just to hear what she’d say–) “What have you guys been doing up
there?” (–and, to her honor, she didn’t dare lie.) “Oh dear,” she groaned, “To tell that
story would take centuries.” (And
the movie asked us to see faces in fire.)
[A clad libertine in
these box hauling woods
confused
struck
our dear Question stamps from the petiole simmer
a cloud over boil
how strange (a dark flicker)
the crunching and crackling and woodland
blank hush
distinguished
for spots
by the light faring moon (the forest is
sparse
more leaves than their trees
their pale thin trunks unable to hide
the night’s dressings and gloss that falls off from the moon to so brighten the
sky
and gladden footpaths
enlighten his dyes)
while thinking (thoughtful: his elbow to
droop)
what voice did this sing him to probable
stoop. (Or perhaps
instead of a voice it’s a web
a spider’s thin web that his All That Is Good In The World thinks to
spin
and the spider that sits down upon it is
him
our Last
Little Question
or maybe
perhaps
and spoken again
instead of a web
it’s the compass of feeling that sits
within him
for why would a question have need to
have fear
as he will soon near
unless All
That Is Good feels it in themselves too
and by their decree that the world is their
seat
is formed to an imprint to pattern their
blues.) Triangled green
smears shadow to face
reaching from deepened and singular
space. Twigs seem as hands. Everything slants. He’s a steady still mover
and eager to pass. He grips to his sword
and steps cared over stones. A dead river runs. He stumbles but catch. He looks
to his left
and then to his right. And under his
shell and within his bright hollow microbes the wet cousin of curious note
the heartrending floppy and helpless
small creature of querulous fear
a rabbit eared fuzz ball that pulls at
his eyes with small purplish paws and directs his attention to any unclear or
near dubious sight. He bottles black oil
and wishes to see from the blank to his
gifts. What gifts
his fear asks: such parrying thoughts! (Struck
dumb
laid heavy
while ducking a branch. And why would All That Is Good have such fear? It
might be that Question’s
head-riding sitter
that long-eared rapscallion
is there as a symptom of bad-changing
weather
and the dread that Last Little feels in him right now is
just like the bad-chill that soon comes from the snow
your body’s refreshment by atmosphere’s
show
and All
That Is Good’s feeling something unknown. . .) The trees
as said
are thin
and frail
and so can’t by good reason conceal a
scare
but the vastness of black that is
covered by glow puts a gray over qualms. Badgers
raccoons
even birds would dismay if they leapt from
some hole in a candid display. So Last
whistles out
and looks to the ground
and murmurings growl in the thoughts of
his mouth. (He wants to look cool
if ever he’s found.)
Figs
straighten
sprawl
cedar
banyan
tembusu
and
wait
look at that
pine!
(the world is sarcastic)
museums of leafing that truck by his eye
(he would have thought drone
but the tag bears too frequent). Bats
they hang (they’re really quite big)
and stretch and yawn as he meanders on
by. No ghouls are seen. And the noise that his shoes emit from their toddle is
the only sound heard
except for the birds’ empty flying in
groups
and their wild lives biding
and snaps from far-off
and the occasional scream from the
loud-shouting house. The house
a house? How luring: a house. It shrouds
from the blank
an umbrella for draughts
deft
and built
he can see its big drawers (and here and
there oak
a mural
and doors)
its rooftop and chisel
and painted
and chipped
with an ending side brick
and columns of dirt. It’s tunney
and pictured
and shrieks to his view
and he pauses his march
and waits for a turn. And a turn now
arrives: a question lies dead
the one he had met
The
First Sunny Question With Waking and Light has been killed by something
just possibly fright
and is left in the yard of the house and
its keep. No markings are on him. His mouth is agape.
Majority
objects roll through our Last’s
head
colliding and bouncing and gleaming to
wants
and more than the sparks of their shared
running sphere he would hope to avoid the inside of this space
this homely embrace
just ugly with warts
with its halls and black frames and more
terrified strands. The house is a beast
with never much mercy within its deep
walls. And he feels in shawls covered over his face
this dangerous place
its afternoon call. It attracted sad Sunny to come here
he thinks. Maybe he’ll just slip a-round
the long way. . .
But:
lightning strikes
a horse runs wax
and with its rare funning he’s
messengered past
up into the air where the blank seems at
home
and where through its curtains he wished
not to go. He turns
and looks
and sees from inside (to where he once
stood)
in the pile of grass and the dead rivers
ran
through the stripped windows
into the past of his nightfall and shade
a reflection in fade
his fearful envision now sorried to
frown. In plain
dear listener
he’s in the damn house
for
All That Is Good In The World’s
bleating sake!
the very wood docket he planned to
escape. But: let’s be stern
he’s trembling from fright. Shaking
not turning
the poor child’s hunched
head tipped to a bowled twigged and
powdered meadow
stiff-planted to feet
his title falls off
an overturned king: his is Captain or
Soldier no more
just Little.
(And in nervous gyrations of cowardly plight he just tries to hold strength
while telling himself there’s no reason
to fret
no reason to look so pink-blooming
upset.) And here
all the while
more rain is poured down
and the wet buried fictions of animals
clear
weep streaked with the touch of that watering
blear
errant
and blundered
with wind howling round. Last Little rubs eyes and looks up to
the roof: dreary and dread
and pestilence rot
he’s sick. . . though reluctant to leave
right away. You may ask yourself
why
as he surely does
but through the blind shadows and
evening time tropes
a typewriter clattering somethings to
mind
and like an address he had once
memorized
he remembers
or learns
or forgets to ignore
that a wide-bellied bird
somewhere
is there
lying up in a buildup of rags and blue
clothes and trapped now in a room on the third storied floor. He doesn’t yet know
how a bird made its way (its name comes to mind: The Eventual Day of Pass-ing the Firm Age When the Shadows That Fall
From the Steps You Have Made Are Now Quite a Bit Longer Than What’s Up Ahead,
But Not By the Time That You Have Further Left But the Choice You Have Made To
Give Up the Big Sham of Imagining Yourself As A Somebody Else, And the Mood
That This Gives, While Sitting In Chairs, And Thinking Anew Of Your Plans the
Next Day)
if out from the country or woodlands
outside
this picture of green
this fluttering thing
red spotted and eyed
and screaming its cries
loud-singing and chirping and tearing
through drapes
looks out to the rain
with furious rage
and slumberous weight
and pounds the piano in tries to escape
and Question
reacts to the terrible noise as if it’s a hideous bug to remove
but really not harm
just get it outside from his eye-lines
and feet for iniquitous ends of this bug are to sting
and if they did prick him he’d seize to
a pearl
and sink to the sea
but still
from mechanical pointless beliefs that
are battered to brains by the bird’s awful screech
this goose must be saved for the sake of
his day (was Sunny
also
possessed in this state?)
and Little
scared
approaches the stairs
of which the wood runners just laugh in
his face. He can-not go further
the fear is replete
and so he is trapped
like the bird
up the steps
between the black vacancies painting
concern at the lively impressions of feeling walked on by a million-billion
diminutive feet
the skin-told reception of feathers on
skin
between the heart-break of that feeling
on him and the poisonous gas that emits from the house that is making him
scourge just this side of a shout and a ripping off clothes to flee out in the
night
to leave from this space
and make himself right. (And the woods
are a sense: they block his more five
by parting his vision
drowning his ears
he cannot crib something but trees and
his coat
shouldered
and hung
expecting the cold. And the bushes
outside paranoy him to forms
graying cartoons
and chambers erupt in his mind’s chest
of drawers
spilling a woman
the fine one from gold
now laid in a plat
but hating him off
and she doesn’t exist
not even in thought
but kept in the walls of this house and
its stake
and the damp corridors that lead on to
wine ducts. Last Question is filled
with apologies’ need
but for what he would plea
he can’t really see. He feels a thief
from stealing girls’ bras
or maybe some cash
or a locket from chests. He checks to
his pockets: no items are found. But chessboards of trials still model the
ground
those squares of tough judgment
white upon black.) He folds his arms up and
looks at the staircase. The stickling terror of producing a sound has reserved
him from walking
moving at all
but now
pushed by a ticking about
he decides to try measuring safety and
size
and walks in a faithlessly neighboring
stride to the room where they dine: who’s they
he can’t say
but the table is large and the chairs
are rack high. The food has some mold. The dishes have dust. The forks have
some rust. Bereft
careworn
he slinks to his boots: the house is a
kick
will fill him with blight
will strip off his shoes
and leave him shut-eyed
like the dusty old food
and still
besides
when he wakes up in glass many years
from right now
he’ll’ve forgotten his past
and the mission that sent
to hunt the blue bird
for those who’ve elapsed
it’s Where
Do Things Go
contracted
for length
but large
you must think
as big as the bats
and he’ll sit in this chair
more dumb by the day
and watch programming booze-drinkers know
to abstain. Even now
while he stands
eyes shut to the walls
concessions come smother his valiance
and smock
him
a fresh painter who lost his fair muse
now stuck
in a ditch
vexed
without use.
Last
thinks to the bird (again and again
though not
of course
the one he should be
but the one in the house
still loudly screeching)
it moos from the stairs
(not its actual place
but the sound carried out from the room
where she sleeps). It’s scared
as he
and the cry hurts to hear
it burns the last straw (to steal from
hay)
and he flings off the fright from the
parts of his back to run up to the case
just wanting
so bad
to pick that bird up
just launch it from sunder
hoist it to bear
and dash
laughing
from scurrilous fear
but his leaping stops-short at the first
taunting step: he cannot go more
for valor impels
then shirks to a dell
blockaded by sounds curling off of the
bird
the noises slid under his limited scope
that is thankfully hindered by hallways and slants
for he can’t help to picture the times
after now
when after he’s walked up the stairs to
the door
and opened it more
and forced by the order of natural sight
to perceive and uphold the bird’s being by rights
thinking he’ll have to then give it some
words
while yearning for times when the bird
wasn’t here
and the ickiness there with the touch of
its feet
the feathery hold of adulthood’s defeat
he cannot imagine surviving the meet.
Angry
he jumps up and down on the ledge: just
what is this fear that keeps him from his toll
from minding the store
from service
from pledge? (And like a good joke
the answer comes right just before it is
due
to garden the temper and blanket the
mood
and for you
dear listener
I’ll let you in here: it’s the fear of
chastisement
being so blamed
of growing so old he forgets to have
shame for the many odd nights where he slept like a babe
and mixed with that fear is a hatred for
walls
and what he can’t see that has others
enthralled. It’s the sleeping heaved sounds of that susurring bird
draped all in his clothes
that venerate mood
reminds him when Good refuses to commune.) He puts his hand onto the banister
rail
still pushing to bound
go up by the gait
and silently screams to use all of his
hate for the very existence of birds in this house
to shove past his fear
and honor his oath
and the emotional bursting rushes the brain’s
roof as a weather like hail
but falling like leaves
so hued bittersweet
a cantaloupe color as day behind trees
and parting and splitting to half of the
woods
an autumnal road
basking to green
a much lighter shade than the bird up
the stairs
but still
serene
and from the painting that embodies his
try
to dash past despair and revulsion for
it
like burning from skin a spider with
match sticks
emerges
solemn
a new crulling bird
a polychromatic inversion of light that
emits this array of lanterns from its crest and dark hollowing doom as a pit to
cosmos
the usual lines’ demarcations are gone
that divide the wide world from just something of sass
or miniature tropes
those reports without touch where the
body begins
and where the outside and creation
ascends. It puffs
heaved
its breathing and chest. Shakes
fluffs
and barks to the rent
twiddles its head
and rattles the tent
and porcelain things are shook up from
their rest
and Last
Question stands
in tension’s grey fright
from the fray and its sight
of the immense black swirling beast hum
against night
this bird
The
Space in the Darkened Recline of the Seat Next to You When the Movie Comes On
and
margins decrease
and pretty girls wink (by the thoughts
of this drink that it is such a perfectly toned time to think that with all
bright suggestions comes shadows of doubt
cascaded from objects that hopelessness
seized). The negative bird carries up now and roars
imagine it
will you
an elephant’s snore
and takes with it shingles and columns
and boards
and Question
looks
at the staircase and war
and though its waged tearing and
crashing of forms are the mere memories of somethings never known
a small camping fire lit darkened alone
seen shored from a boat
he lets it excuse him by conjuring ways
to allow him the insult to not save the day: they come
a torrent: he is guilty
your Honor (says maker and judge
the microwave airs off the bird and its
scuff)
of letting out windows while air is
still cold
of knocking screen doors so they fall
from their track
of being a cheat in the sporting game
flow
of staying up late so he’d need a quick
nap
of drinking too much before taking a
ride
and forcing his drivers to let him
outside
of turning lamps on in the broad day of
light
of yelling
and shouting
refusing his fare
and of laughing whenever his mother
would cry! And of course he is guilty of trapping the Day. ‘No I’m not!'
he now shouts. ‘The other stuff I’ll cop
to but that one’s not true!'
Yes it is. ‘No it’s not!'
Yes it is. ‘No it’s not!'
Yes it is. ‘No it’s not!'
Yes it is. ‘No it’s not!'
Repeat this
dear listener
as we leave the plot. . .]
Last Word’s “Sleepy Hollow” whiffed in from
the den; Annabelle unfurled, laid onto the floor, stomach flattened and stretched,
to examine a book; she kicked her feet high up and into the air to burlesque a small
child, though in deeming to dramatize was already childish, so needn’t have
carried the act to completion. I would show her to you as a plain obelisk,
chimerically turned, her parts mystery, but the setting and feeling of being
with her (or next to her, true) would be better apprised as a knight in a closet,
shining by lights that could fit through the slit, carrying black entrenched motives,
hidden, unknown. Secrecy, here, is
the operative style; I did not know the true woman at all. And three different
occurrences (coming up next) would only repeat this motto aloud.
So, in and out briefly: Sarah Mannish’s sister
was having a roast, and word swelled quickly to the necessary parties. It was a
good thing anyway since going there demanded a very long march and we needed one
desperately to stay up at all. Annabelle counted the signs on the way; I did
not join her in idle worship.
[No
it’s not! Wait
I mean: Yes it is. ‘No it’s not!'
Yes it is. ‘No it’s not! The stupid thing walked up there all by herself!'
and with this decree there’s a sense of
fast feet
flurried
feathered
eighty two streets down away from his
hook
through the wind-blown and the leaves
and the nooks and now flying if chanced it comes natured to mind
(we’ll get through this swift)
his thoughts on the bird
the one he should hunt
an ostrich en route
hemelted
scorned
and fleeing the woods. If he stays in
this house with its rampage and cracks he will never fulfill to his means of
construct. And he clings to his means as a dying man’s breath for the reason he leaves is a fear of the dark
and knowing the sight of that upstairs
pullet that is watching old rooms in the smothering bright that is made almost
gone
by house and its fumes
and blank that surrounds
and the loud that subsumes
tack juries of judgments to him and the
brute
and the fear it’ll teach him the woman
in light had abandoned the dream for something he had done
he knows it is true
but refuses to look
and yelling through tears of apologies
strewn
that he’d stay
if he could
if his meaning would let
he’s whisked
through pitch
and years of small parks
past rumbling and stumbling and tripping
and death
to the outside and courtyards and big
trees that fern (change
bodi
bartek
olive)
to the tangential walls of the house
that stays stood
a presence as handshake in memory’s
tomb. Crying
he runs
from the place and its craft
hobbles up on his bike with his
schooling book bag
now pedaling fast
as The
Space loudly screams
the house closes up
and to sink into mischief with forest
and want.]
Actually, to start, I’ll catch us all up: it
was the seventh day then, past mid afternoon, and a particularly dreadful and
uncomfortable Sunday; I had, at first, been binding my comments to the barest threshold
that could count as light banter, not talking at all unless directly requested;
but I couldn’t have kept this demeanor for long: I very much wanted to make the
ten days, and if I sat in a corner in an immature sulk - a moping asterisk just
over my head - the funk of depression would spread to the group; we would all
be asleep before nightfall, surely. So I played with Annabelle in her sudden event
of cat’s cradle with yarn, and spoke and laughed and joked when apt, and hid
any sense of a burning displeasure. (Of course, of course, I know what you’re
thinking: why would I want to continue with this? There is, surprisingly, more
than one reason, the first of which is simply that I did not hate them; not
yet, at least; it would be hard to explain how I felt at the time, other than a
sketch of being strapped to a tether, tottering between a sadistic despondency and
the harshly over lit periwinkle ambivalence that conceived grumpy shapes on their
own brave affair. Second to this - and it may sound insane - but I had not given
up on us coupling completely. The obvious reason I agreed not to sleep was the
storied union it would certainly form between Annie and I, and I felt the
possibility of such hadn’t changed. And it’s not like I would be in competition
with Isaac; after sex with anyone he would always lose interest; the quest for
him was the point of it all. But - it seems now, to think on it then - that these
motives were merely the stones between toes in the irrational creek that I
thrashed about in, an eccentric sensation of being outside that had led me to
think that to quit from the game, to go home and snooze off, would be cementing
the statue we built without plan; as long as we ran, as long as I stirred, the
plaster was wet, unfinished, unformed. It didn’t have to look like the monster
it did.)
So: the barbeque.
We were greeted at the door by Thomas Engle
and beer. Seeing him reminded me of school. “Hey Wyatt. Everyone’s out back.” Someone
shouted from the yard. “And Drew wants to know what you want on your burgers.”
(I think I said cheese, though I never received it.) And so we folded in, one galumph
after the other, each taking a second to stand, get our bearings, and score the
known faces, of which there weren’t many; it was an older set, college kids– detached
and shrewd. I would later discover that the house was a rental, split between
students and necessarily small. It didn’t provide nearly any more room than if all
of them had cleanly just taken apartments, but the fact it was a house gave
them greater cache to thus better replicate, then reduce - then destroy - their
villainous upbringings; vogue parricide. It had a yard and everything. I
silently sneered at these liberal arts students’ superficial mutiny against
their change purses, the parents’ bought freedom to play pirate in the first
place, but, in truth, it was just to feel bigger. I turned to see Annabelle had
vanished already, burrowing through like a capped forest gnome, introducing
herself to anybody who’d listen. The Rivals’ “Here Comes the Night” came over
the system; everyone wobbled.
Isaac made a path for the backyard and sun.
“Wanna go to the pool?” I said I hadn’t trunks. “Neither do I.” He grinned
after this. (I could tell by his look that the invite was genuine, with real
affection, away from the typically askance moral friendliness that wrapped
something like it, a challenge or a bet instead of wanting companionship, and
for yours specifically.) I hesitated to answer. Then someone in the hall moved away
from the light to let it blow out the room, obscuring the cherry-deep, china
wood cabinet and whisking the setting a vivid rural varnish, falsely alit,
curdled, and handsome. My eyes re-affixed, blurring the luster, and I saw he
was Isaac, but still, not Isaac, and in place of admiration for his ease in
social scenery and his ease with young women there was a vacancy there that was
filled with this spoilage (and I saw him as an insect in a clipper ship bottle).
“Are you alright?”; he then looked at me cross. I’m fine, I said; “I’m gonna
see who else is here.” Then he went into the kitchen and I heard his name
called.
I had no idea how slow time was creeping and
had quickly lost track of the song count to gauge (Barrett’s “No Good Trying”
through Bono’s “Laugh at Me” could have been three or eight songs for all that
I knew), and I grew tired of the front door and its gap like a mouth, its
endless wearing waves of food stuffs as grouped people - coming and leaving as eating
and coughing - with this big old-fashioned mirror chest-high behind its hatch
so that every time it closed I’d see a hunkered flat reflection; it was never
not a shock to see my own bedraggled form, and an ensuing pungent hatred would
be a second fearful trampling (shortly thereafter whosever feet stepped on mine).
I stood up, closed my eyes, counted backwards from ten– but when I soon got to
three I was shattered by a bark unexpectedly exploding much too close to my
head (reported to vision, encased in the black: a massive twirling skein of
sharp crimson and pain), and I bent to a helix from the contusive alarm (with
harshly upped arms: a pathetic grasshopper). I opened my eyes to see Natalie,
laughing, more crazed than usual. “Oh God,” I said. She laughed even more: “They
told me you were here. What day are you on?” Seventh, I said. “Shit, you might
make it!” Then just as quick she pulled ways with some gadabout. (Just so you
not think me terribly bumbling: I’ve an armor of contempt that protects me from
occasions of awkward disgrace, but it’s specifically calibrated, and sewn to
suit only the times I’ve foreseen; if I go to the supermarket dressed a
pineapple, I am expecting to be seen as ridiculous fruit and so am expertly
guarded from their laughs and large gestures for my costume isn’t honest - to
myself or my character - and is more a performance than the crowd’s helpful sport.
But those wearing such armor must pardon attacks - that’s the contract of war -
so when a spear is successful in reaching my hind its uliginous malice strikes
doubly worse, for they’ve not just pierced me but my plans to prevent. I looked
at the mob; a few people had noticed my fear induced seizure and I took in
their gaze as embarrassing food. I could not really tell if they’d broken my
chains or if delirium had divided me from cover of sorts. I thought about
leaving, but thought to the game, and then, as always, to Annabelle’s where; I
was - as you’ve seen - never unwilled. So I’d take their shot arrows, and lick
to my wounds, and wear them, bleeding, as structures of strength.)
(The barbecue’s a blur; I’ll intently motor
through, just stopping, at times, if I remember plain things–) I walked through
the back; shot dead by the sun; in the time it had taken to traipse through the
house the heat had risen to supernatural levels, a phenomenon at the very least
partially induced by the transforming clouds from their full bellied trolleys,
the white hill stations we’d seen on our trek, and the holes that had opened
from pivots in flex; the world had proceeded without my sought trends, if only
for the hour I had it left unattended, and the change pointed out my so token importance
with ungainly aloofness like bright chancel windows, contorting me with color,
and lack of prospect; music, live music, rang up from the cellar,
unintentionally sounding my rights to the yard; a motley band of yokels were
driving through a version of “My Baby’s Got the Strangest Ways” while the
audience - apparently - hooted it back; and the pool was so large, as was the
big lawn, and both were made larger by their complete lack of fence; it seemed
to stretch all the way to the deck of their neighbors, which - by the
pronouncements of the strangely shaped cul-de-sac and the hinterland houses its
thin borders governed - was as small and unthreatening as a child’s doll house,
at least as was seen by our view from the porch; and there were people enough
to fill all of this space (a lot more than I wanted), enough even to satisfy
two separate games - both volleyball - and the assistant quantities to serve and
on-look. I had come there to check for anyone I might know, anyone to distract
from the hundred year day, but upon seeing the breadth of humanity there I gave
up this small thought as quite useless immediately; even if I did, by chance,
see a face, familiar or likewise (a laughable appeal amongst a crowd of so
many– all the same, all shaven, with all even height, with even drab colors, temper
and scope, all willfully dramatized viewers off course), they would be, assuredly,
as caught up as I, and quite beyond rescue or attempts at engagement. I sat
down on a rocking bench next to the grill and let the charcoal smoke roll up
through my lungs. I did not see Isaac; his absence was a pillow. (Oh; here’s
something: a boy walking past, notable only for wearing a jump suit he must
have brought here from his station at work, but the joke - as it were - had gone
straight round the bend, and his real discomfort in the heavy grey fabric had
eaten his ploy meant to shame the beach clad. Sensing this weakness, the horde
then pounced, gleefully amused at his failure of snark, lining up to comment on
his glistening forehead, on the warmth of the sun, on the water’s refresh;
these scoundrels went so far as to even trot girls out to giggle in his
rickrack of narrowing sight. Risking more scandal, he stayed a bit longer, I
guess to convince that his choice of attire was not a joke at all but
legitimate preference, but after appearing to suffer enough he finally walked
from the yard, through the front door, leaving his daiquiri half drunk in the
grass. I heard his tires screech when he turned onto Hopkins, the last
despaired act of some petticoat rebellion.) I closed my soft eyes and leaned
against the bench cushion; a huge risk, but one I was willing to take. For a
few minutes then I merely listened to the sounds and the afternoon voices of
the barbecue’s ravings, the splashing and laughing, the whispers from food; I
opened them fast when I felt I was falling– that deepening sensation of just-before
sleep, as gracefully regressing from life’s heedful heights; I looked to the
world, and was pleasurably cooled by the fact I could see that I still took
pleasure in its persuasive entirety; it was when I split focus to one of its
leans that my body would groan, manifestly irritated; so I impulsively grafted
onto things with known names, no matter how they tasted for thoughts to think
up: a chair, the grass, a girls’ shirt, a girl’s breasts, a boy’s soaring swan
dive to drench a near friend; I would study it round and around in my head,
then move on to the next inexplicable thing (with inexplicable labels), and
comment deleteriously from my skull’s window sockets; but this ticketing search
soon gave way to new summary: I could never reconcile the thing’s name with
existence. The chair I sat on was not the chair
I say now, or the chair that I
thought when I sat it in then, but just planks of slid wood that allowed me to
sit, and the vulgar restriction of closing precision, and it definitely wasn’t
the chair that was absent from every
close store that sold catalogued goods, and it was certainly not the dead spot-lighted
thing that now shows in your mind when the word brings you mood, or every chair
that I thought when I thought the word chair,
even with my advantage of sitting right then. How would we react (I questioned
myself) if we had to experience the objectified world; how would they react (I questioned the boys), if
to pull up the grass meant to pull up the grass, and to see and to think on the
actual grass, and not zipper it to the staid classification their parents in
weakness had deemed to impart; if they had to experience their lives in clenched
fists; what would they do? They’d run screaming, I thought, run screaming from the
yard, run all the way down to that Lily Pond Lake, leap into its milk and drown
themselves. (And here’s something else: in curated couplings I saw Annie pass
Isaac - charging to tackle Lindsay Greer to the ground - and as they crossed in
their cycle they bowed to each other in that sort of secret tribute old mates often
do, if they know each other well enough to take it for granted; she arched her
hand snared and dug it into this thigh, and the bite made him jigger, and
laugh, and push back. And I looked over them: in silence I watched a grey
toothpaste tube foreshortened to stillness mull over the earth, and only when
within five miles did it flare as a Japanese bomber, a steel fish humming over
lapsing bean fields, slowly descending to carrying height; at a predetermined
point it stuttered open bay doors, running red and green and yellow signal circle
specific, and dropped from its hole a cylindrical egg - sword burnished, clear
of writing - alert to fall gently, parachuted with wind, just a few clicks North
from where I sat watching. It’s dead baby weight overcoming the gusts, it
swayed with a wonderful, natural grace before detonating terrifically right over
a barn - probably Roy Washington’s, if that was Lee Township - ripping its
shingles, tearing its base, sucking in the air to birth a beautiful cloud that rippled,
ballooned, contracted, expanded, to a broadening tree that branched across the environs.
A moment for me to record the inflate– and then the house flew away, and the
pool flew away, and the people turned pink, then coal, then dust, and the bench
turned stone, and then smog; and only me and Isaac and Annabelle mained, till I
was gone too, leaving only their confidence to stand on my shade, burnt from
the rays of mortiferous shame.)
I was manors away from the crowd and their
faint, filling the area’s packed-to-brim yard and the inches between with
meters and meters of exquisite brood when the bench I was sitting on groused
with new load– and snapped me astern to that wry plotting’s bond, a bungee cord
crack, though I seized still to burden to keep at arms length. I turned right
to look: a very pretty girl had sat with me besides, mindfully tugging her
extremely short skirt to help keep to some virtue, crooking her head to let hair
open out, and frankly asking to do her a favor. (I blinked, perplexed; this was
already weird.) She points at a boy - “See him over there?” - almost not quite
a man, standing nearby the pool, and asks me to please just pretend to converse
just in case he comes by and attempts at some talk. I looked at her then, then
again looked at him. “Is this a set up?” And she let a frown curl half way
cross her face: “A set up?” she asked. “Yeah. . . a prank.” “No,” she said
quietly; and then she leaned closer and pointed again in a full-hearted effort
to teach me her trouble; I waved her try off; I got it enough. So I let out a
sigh and looked out to the yard, but the stranger girl’s presence was rain
through a window. “We could actually talk
instead of–.” “Yeah let’s do that,” she said, cutting me off. And so we began
(and this incident will have a small purpose I promise):
“Are you a friend of–. . .” I paused. “I’m
forgetting her name.”
“Susan.” “–Susan?”
“I’m her cousin.” “Older?”
“Six months apart.” “You’re not in high
school?”
“Sophomore in college.” “And she just got
back–.”
“From a semester in England.” “What school do
you go to?”
“Oh, that
doesn’t matter,” she said after that, and proceeded to laugh. (And this
clicked in me as something favorably odd.) “OK!” I coughed. Then I kicked the
ground hard to help give us momentum; the girl gripped the hand rest in shock:
“This moves!” “Yeah it’s a rocker.” “I’ve
never seen this before.”
“Neither have I.” I twisted around to try and look
to its fittings to see (or deduce) the manufacturer’s name - or just wanting to
appear to be doing so, really - but quit the charade and sat back again quickly.
“It looks expensive.”
“Yeah, it’s cool.”
“Do you know what they do?”
“What who does?” “The Mannish’s.”
“Uncle Roger’s an engineer for Waterman, I think.”
She waited for me, for a sign of recognition, before deigning to clear: “They engineer
seeds to then sell them to farmers.”
“They engineer seeds? To do what?”
“Um, I think to be more–to be more resistant
to weeds, and. . . to protect, they protect plants against pesticides– some of
them even create herbicides as they grow, and. . . propagate better or
something?” Her voice got higher and higher as she spoke as if the sentence
itself was tiring of it. She laughed; “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I was with you there, you should’ve kept
going.” “What’s your name?”
“Oh, that
doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes went wide - “Oh, I see!” - and I asked her for hers - just
to ask her for something - fully expecting her to hold to her name like fine
Arab silk or some Russian spy codes - as any release of such personal knowledge
could be seen by the hasty as incitement to rudeness - but, to my astoundment,
she let it come easily with peace in her voice: Julie.
“Wyatt,” I said; and she repeated it: “Wyatt.”
“What’s your favorite subject in college
there, Julie?”
“Chemistry.” “Chemistry?”
“It’s my major.”
“You’re lying.” (I meant this to come out more
playful than curt, but must I remind I was not in good health.)
“Nope. I like math.” “A girl like you?”
“What does that
mean?” she said; (then a voice of a donkey): “ ‘A girl like you.’ ”
“Yeah, numbers and stuff.” “Sweetheart,
they’re fascinating.” “Family business?” “No, not really.” “Then what’s it for.”
She thought for a moment; “We have the best
jokes.” (I think at this time the pool yelled for new jumps, and she turned
round to look. “What haven’t they done?” I said a jack knife, and she cupped
her hands into a small nimble trumpet to call out the blazon, and as they shot out
- and I swear to you here this is not exaggeration or false trimming for color -
Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” started up from some speakers. Play it now, if you
will, while we continue along.) “So chemists have the best–.” “Uh huh, uh huh,
uh huh.” She sat up on her knees and pushed hair behind ears. “Why do chemists
use nitrates so much?”
I pretended to think. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
“They’re cheaper than day rates.” She clapped
after this.
“Do you
use nitrates?” “Yeah like all the time, it’s sick.” (She pulled out a smoke. “Let me roger one of those.” And she
pulled out another.) “You look pretty tired.”
“I’ve been up for a while.”
“Spring Break, woo hoo.” She laughed at her
joke. “You live here I’m guessing.” “Not in this house, no.”
“This town, though, I mean.” “Yep. Westedge.”
“I had never heard of it.”
I paused. “It’s a shit hole.” (I don’t know
why I said this.)
“Oh yeah?” “Yeah.” (And I don’t know why I
persisted; I thought to switch topics.) “College must be great. You get to meet
a new crowd. I think I need a new crowd.” (I could not keep anything from
coming out awful.)
“Oh yeah? Who do you know here?”
I thought. “No one.”
“But you know–?” (Susan.) “A friend of a
friend.” (The smoke was not really improving my shape, but I forced down the
rest so as not to waste hers.) “How long is your break?”
“Just this week off, then it’s back to more
thrills.” She thought, and then said, “We had an open house a few days before
this.”
“An open house.” “For parents and family or
friends to come and see what you’ve been doing all year, to see the different
labs and where the money’s all going.” “Uh huh.” “And one of my teacher’s– my
favorite teacher actually– her son came by. He’s a year older than us and goes
to another school, I think, but afterward a bunch of us decided to go out. I’m
not going to lie. . . he was OK looking.” “OK.” “But he wasn’t at all like his
mom, really. My professor’s very, um, energetic,
I guess– but in a fun way, really–
it’s adorable, really– and this guy– this guy was just kind of demure– well,
not demure, I don’t wanna say that,
it makes him sound like he’s a cat or
something–.” “Reserved.” “Right,” - she pointed at me here - “Reserved. . . and kind of quiet, too. At
least at the school. But when we left, Stephanie– a friend of mine there– she
had snuck out a bottle of wine from reception and we’re passing it around in
the car or whatever, and he’s like, ‘Oh no, I’m staying with my parents. I
can’t drink tonight,’ and we egg him on of course–.” “Sirens.” “–and we go out
to our bar and we’re playing with him and whatever and soon enough we get him
just completely clobbered. Like, he cannot stand up without using us for crutches.”
(Her grin grew teeth.) “And, after like another hour or so he just completely passes out. Like, we cannot wake him up. We’re yelling in his
ear and now pulling on his hair. Every once in a while he’d growl or
something.” “OK, you turned him into–.” “Yeah, like whatever, he’s not in good shape, but we’re very drunk
too and so like we don’t care– well, that sounds terrible, but we knew he’d be OK, it was just really
funny. So we pile him in, and. . . we had to look up the professor’s address
through the school directory– and when we get there– he was so drunk he
couldn’t even open the door, so we searched through his pockets and dug out his
key, and– just very quietly opened the door. . . and just dumped him into their
little front walkway and left him face down on their rug in the hall.” “Oh
geez.” “And this all took place on like a Wednesday night. We had school the
next day, the professor’s class the next day, so– the next day comes and we’re
all very nervous– cause I mean, she knew, the professor knew who her son had
gone out with of course– and we all had visions of him dying of poisoning or that
we’d be in trouble– these three women
who destroyed her poor boy–.” “It was just a bunch girls?” “Yeah! He couldn’t keep up! So anyways,
we get in, and the professor– she calls Stephanie immediately outside to the
hall. And I’m sweating at this point, thinking of what they could be possibly saying.
But, it turned out: all she wanted to know was what happened to the wine. She
just wanted to know who had taken the bottle.”
I paused. “That was it?”
“Yeah, that was it. She didn’t mention her son
at all. We died.”
“No I mean that’s the story?”
“Yeah. . .” She scratched her nose. “You don’t
think that’s unbelievable?”
“Three women corrupting an innocent, nope.”
“He got a feel out of it.” “Oh did he now?”
“Not from me. Stephanie.” She paused. “Here’s
another.” She grabbed at my hand and began slowly stroking it. “How do you
console a muscle in grief?”
“I don’t know.” “Give it solace.”
I thought, and looked at her. “. . . I don’t
know really if I get that one.”
“The soleus–,”
she pronounced it phonetically now, “–is a muscle in your calf. It’s a biology
joke.” “Then why pet my hand?” “For effect. To console you.”
I pulled my hand away. “I don’t need
consolation.” (And I don’t know for what, but it felt good, in a way, just to
say this out loud.)
Now, here it is: she put her hands on her knees
and looked at me then with the patent uncertainty of a squatter; “I’ve offended
you somehow.” And this she said calmly, a flat declaration, with zero apology
or want for a reason, and the unstated question (of why I was so) put a stop in
me cold– and not for its truth - of which there was some - but for why there
was truth to be found there at all. And
you may think me vexed, or maybe perturbed, by this outcomer’s low-spoken,
loosely-dripped candor, but, on the contrary, I felt just so wonderfully
unhurried to answer; a breeze fluttered hair and provided direction; boys ran
around; more water from jumps; just a lovely, lovely silence in time -
amazingly rare - and I knew from her smile that she knew it as well, as much
from her eyes that held to my own, like Annabelle’s toast, but without the tart
coating of sedulous plan, that feeling of making a moment to sense, like running
to shops at the end of a tour just desperately seeking mementos to cherish; the
pressure of novelty wilts it a bit. But: not this; this one sprouted wanton and free between us as perked, a sneaky
unspoken agreement to quiet. But something so careless is easily broken, and,
to follow, this couldn’t continue: I heard in approach my Annabelle say, “Once
I smelled ass and it smelled like bananas,” - or something so like it, or to
that effect - and as soon as I finished processing her oath a violent flurry of
colorful movement like rafters of turkeys exploding in buckshot crashed to my
lap in a rapid subito; she was a dryly slobbering, clambering dog, her skirt
up-heaved an open clam shell, transmogrified sorceried seer that she was. She
grabbed to my collar and yelled in my ear: “Hello,
Andrew!” while I strained uncomfortably to shift from her weight. “Andrew?” I
said, to which she then fluted: “Oh right, you’re Wyatt, OK, I see.” And I could not tell if she intentionally
flubbed, or if she’d forgotten who I actually was.
She folded her arms then tight round my neck
(as if claiming big fruit) and looked sidelong in soft caution of company. “Who are you talking to?” and Julie respectively told her her name; Annie
ignored.
“What have you
been up to?” I laid my annoyance a long red carpet (she still smelled nice,
the rotten gravedigger). She buried her nose right into my cheek: “Plundering. What have you been doing?” “Spelunking. And
talking to Julie here. This is
Julie.” “I can see that.” (And then she looked left, not looking at her.) And
then she explained there were drinks in the kitchen. I asked if she had any. “No. I’m just saying they’re making them
there. They have a little rolling bar counter and everything.”
“Huh.” “And I arm wrestled Lindsay just now.”
“I saw. Why?” “Discriminating photos. Slumber
parties. You know how it is.”
“No I really don’t. I’m guessing you won.” “Of
course! She’s a girl!”
Julie leaned in: “Aren’t you a girl?”
Annabelle smiled; “Basket to elbows.” (Without
meeting eyes.)
Then came the questions: I asked where was
Isaac; she claimed not to know (“Really?” I said. An eyebrow raised; “Why should I know?” I raised one back; “Why shouldn’t you now?” And at this, she
stopped, to pause, and to glare. Then after a moment: “Come-on-Eileen,” snapped out like a curse). Julie asked how we met;
Annabelle chided: “How does anyone know anyone in high school, really.”
“OK, Annabelle,” I said with a press. She then
overstatedly scratched at her scalp (“I feel so super nutso right now. .
.”) and pressed her forehead flush against mine: “Let’s go into the pool.” (I’m
missing some pieces here, trailing loose ends, but can only retell what my
memories’ fill; I know at one point the pool called for a dive, and Annabelle,
gripped to me, flung herself back to then call out a turn; her diffident toss
towed me down to her breasts, enormously near; I holidayed violence for lack of
escape, thoughts of fast axes and sounds’ scraping metal. Things like that need
not to be said.) I pulled her away; “Maybe later,” I said; and she imitated me:
“Maybe later, maybe later. That’s all
your fucking doing is shit later.”
She looked at the house. “C’mon man, Isaac’ll lend you his shorts. He’s using
Mike’s trunks.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know who he
was.”
“Who who
was?”
“I meant where he was.”
“It’s you I don’t know.” “You’re being real rude.”
“To who?!
I’m inviting you–.” “I’m talking to someone.”
She paused, and looked at me. “Julie.”
“Yes.” “Whatever.” “Let’s just make introductions
and–.” “No.” “–we can all sit here and talk for a bit and maybe I’ll go into
the pool with you later.”
I looked at poor Julie (frozen now in an
incompetent smile) and gestured towards Annie: “This is– (She whistled, “Don’t lend out you what you don’t own, boy.
. .”) –Annab–,” and she forcefully clapped her hand over my mouth and
turned, swiveling, to Julie in bedlam: “Forget that you heard that, forget it
forever. I’ll say– I’ll tell you– wait, this’ll do: you give me your proposed
payment plan with delivery methods and we’ll settle the details later if you
like.”
I yanked her hand off. “Alright, you’re not
funny.” “No, she can give me predictions and a time frame for earnings and I’ll
start up the paperwork and if she’s been very good with all her projections in
three to five weeks she’ll hear from one of my many associates and maybe
hopefully we can all pray that possibly–
if it’s all square– she can get a letter of my name once a month. We’ll start
with A, and then on to N, and, with any luck, before she flies off back to God
knows wherever sorority she came from she might have half of the letters to my
name to use for whatever God knows
what reason she would ever in a million years need for to use it!”
Julie was standing before it all finished. She
brushed her hair light again back to her ears, and didn’t even look at me as
she got up; “Just if you see Susan tell her welcome home from me OK.” And as
she walked away I then started to say, “If I see you later–,” or something
equally stupid when Annabelle railroaded over me, screaming: “Oh Julie, don’t go! We were just getting acquainted!”
Once Julie was gone I shoved Annabelle off,
and purposely hard so it’d hurt her a bit. “What
are you doing?”
“Oh come
on! Like you could get with her
anyway.” (She chortled a little, clearly not sharing the moment’s choler.)
“I wasn’t trying to get with her, what are you saying?” “Yeah, OK.”
“Where have you been?”
“Just running around,” and she puppy-dog
reached to the top of my head, fingers extant, to feel my hair, and I pulled
away sharply– pulling also - it seemed from her change - a gas motor cord to a
ripening anger; she instantly stiffened, an incredulous stance. “You’re seriously mad about this?” she asked.
“I was talking
to her, that’s all that it is. She was someone nice to talk to right now
and in two seconds you’ll leave– go ‘running
around’– and I’ll be here, again, all alone.”
“Oh what a Little Johnny Lone a’ Lot you are, Jesus
Christ. You know everyone here! Look
around why don’t you.”
Delighted to be able to disobey orders, I didn’t
survey and merely stared at the house, variegated from the court and our patio
fight (though she would have hardly called it a fight, even while our loud
voices persisted to surge much louder than needed to outlive the swell). And at
this she then huffed, and jumped to the bench, and then took off her shoes to
rub down her ached feet (but speciously ached, as I saw no sore spots), clicked
like a bird and then talked without function. She was always careful to never
say sorry; for one thing it’s square to admit to misdeeds not designedly worked
for a blemish of fun, and her animals-in-steam-trunks thinking and theories
would lead her preferred to grant manners in alleys, elapsed, and off road–
handing me cakes in the late afternoon for the things she had made in the morning
and sun than rather admit to her mess there and then; it’d get her fur wet. But
she knew what she did. And she also well knew that admissions of guilt are
recorded by us next to gossip and greetings in daily index; we take as them as
water, will exaggerate thirst to get more than our share; she could end up
baking her britches to burnt if she didn’t keep mum and just waited me out. But
even with this (and its timed allowance), that particular moment I think that
she knew, could see that my bother had not been inflated, and would have
forgone the now regular stall and just spoken right up - dispel the high jinks:
she was a nice girl - but the tension between us had choked there since dawn;
this was clearly a battle of a much greater war, but one she had only the sniff
of its wage, and with that small sniff was a sense of its stakes; no, for her
it’d be best to just twiddle her thumbs, and wait till the aims of both parties
were seen; she wouldn’t give ground when its worth wasn’t marked.
“I’ve been in these cloth hammers forever,”
she said - or I thought I heard her say - but, when I turned, she was already
up, twitching her butt in good time to the music (the live band retired; it was
now rival signals), giving me a smile to discourage hard feelings (but over her
shoulder to clip its address), her movements now blotched to a sunny delusion. I
heard Isaac shout then and she moved to direct - hastily, happily (a new
furnace lit) - and was obscured by a girl falling down in her drink and a boy’s
quickened lunge under pretense of fall.
And the end of all this has been reached, I
suppose; no point to continue and slander us more. It went somewhat further, her
and I circling each other in angst, interior movements, squinting our eyes to
pretend to mistake but really in earnest to pierce our pink sanctums, to see
our tree veins and the wine bottle bones, the factory clouds, the puffs of blue
mist, shelves of white muscle and seams in-between, and in surfing absurdity
fail to find any mystical element, devices explaining components for life,
except for a flock of these banal brain cells, flying in sequence, creating our
traits from divisions of loss. (And one other thing: when I got up to go in -
walking around the garage door entrance to avoid the kitchen’s screen gate,
paper-skin highway - three boys holding beers quickly broached from inside, and
I almost careened right into the lead. But at the point of collision he saw and
turned fast, compressing himself to the white wall and shed to such a ridiculously
drastic and toadying degree that I needn’t have changed my flight plan one
feather. And my gut knew something my brain yet didn’t: I was weirdly offended
by this show of deference - they were younger than me, and there were girls to
impress - and it took ten more steps to figure out what had happened: they were
so better off - in health, in mood, in company, in time - and way rights goes
always to the less and unfortunate. I posed such surety of inadequate goods
that they could flatten to boards so I could walk over ponds and they would
still be in clear and much greater success; it must give them a boost, to grant
pardon to me; it must fatten their charm.) I went in and fell down.
I sat in the backseat of Jeffrey Comb’s car;
the last drops of rain raced themselves down the window. The barbeque had
soiled, the climate congealed (but only to scatter). Jeffrey went down N Weber
to Grady; the gray skies’ warbled our body’s fatigue, the squat houses scrolled
indelineate ways, fade yellow panels and chipping brown roofs, overused toys on
a mud green slope. The rain soon ended and the sun fast recovered, but still
hung perilous behind the white banks, eaten by clouds, and shone little more
than the white it coaxed out of the puddles the grey paltry storm had left us
(the accession upset me; it felt a limp handshake of inclement views). We
pulled in the drive, walked in saying nothing, and Jeffrey went home to
minister his retreats.
(I’ll break now to separate thoughts from event.
I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this here, but, way back when - I was
still in Junior High - and for about a whole month, I tried very hard to
relocate my mother, and denote ‘relocate’ to mean an uncovery - after again; a
second beginning - where this time the child will freely seek hearth, and is
not pulled inside it by gestating mares. I cannot right recall the persuasion
to this; it just fell upon me, one day, like a cold. I of course kept this
secret from Tom and Good Kay; it would have been an insult, or at least seen as
such. And I have always imagined adoptive caretakers have a stress undercurrent
unique to their pose as derivative love, an unremarked fear that the nipper’s
true authors - true by their blood and their shadowed fiber - would come to
collect their bore children one day, and they - having no genealogical ties -
would be forced to relinquish by natural law. Even if one parent’s dead and the
other is missing, this feeling forever must keep them atilt, their house and its
cinder not totally set, and I didn’t wish to jar it any further than needed by
childish - as I knew it must be, even then - exploration that would surely go
nowhere at all. And anyways - looking back - I went about the whole thing very
half-heartedly; some library books, a few historical clippings. I searched
through old news from the time that she left, looking through photos, like faces
or names would spontaneously occur in informative crowds, and the context surrounding
would brighten her knowns. I biked around bus stations– it was just brainless,
really; I thought if I found just the one that she used - if she used a bus or
public transport at all - that her leaving would have left immaterial dew, or,
rather the opposite: negative space. I thought that my hearing would gradually
cut, the psychic disturbance through physical symptoms of honeyed eardrums; I
thought I’d hear silence, then whistling, then ringing; I thought I could track this loud singing lodestar, traced
to the boardwalk she used to get out. This did not happen - it needn’t be said
- and my investigation ended with a plea to the post: do you happen, by chance,
to send mail to this woman? Indeed they did, all over the state. It was worse
to imagine her as one of these lives, a name so common, among so many, like
everyone else, so I didn’t think that: I decided right there she had left
Illinois, changed her identity, fled to the coast, and foxily vanished without
means or concession. But, when windy, I’ll stop for her smell; it’s never
approached, though her company’s there, pervasively felt, a presence akin to a
dip in the air, but caused by a spirit - defiantly lost - whose corpse has been
potted behind bistre walls.)
(So that was the first unattractive occurrence.
The second and third are now next, in a dream, but a dream I am told did apparently
happen, though I don’t know if I really believe it or not, and since it’s my
telling you’ll regard it as such, without the provides parentheticals net. To the
point: this is not an aside, and
cannot be so skipped, but measure your trust in its truth with teaspoons.) Sparse
trees part to a loaded row, and the Sears erupts, parking the crest to its
pointed adornments, shrugging the less (less majestic) buildings - the ones
without names - who stand as shut children in cover of shade; steel and brick,
pillars of growth, breed in thick lines from the tangled outreach, in tracks
and brown beam to that near Union Station, and rails that arrow out to the off
camp neighborhoods that hurry in clusters of small circumstance; then a
textured succession of increasing squares, elderly orphans and ranged rising
towers, all of them etched - and crumbling parks - until big windows small, and
white, and vast, and platforms and crossways lace the night sky; a freight
train slowly rolls over our heads; and the world with it trundles its heather
wall fronts. And then the road swooped as it always does there, past narrow
streets, and their greater contents, and the great lake surfaced, its soft
buildings loomed on the opposite perch, immense stoic columns like lounged
gentlemen, cultured, careered, on the side of the street, lines of blocked
structures firm and in coats, betraying the winds that helped forge their mean
traits. Trees door the beach. Iced windows turn pink (from the sunset off
clouds). It’s a town - more than others - that’s tired from work, and as such
is retiring; it does not assault you like other crossroads; you enter it sober,
reflective, considered, and like the old office you enter in wane, worn down
with ground time and more gentle event. I die with the city whenever I come, or
am brought with it just to that age before death, a resemblance of drifting off
into the sea, and pushed from the weeds by some stratified rank (bronze helmets
with horns) to be lit in a fire (a glorious burn), released from the earth by their
tearful eyes’ mourn, and (to be true: like anyone’s fade) my slight and past
thoughts seem as pointless pastimes, mindless recordings that butt against
stone (insenescible build) that’s been made by the men who have drifted once
too, and who are, at last, where I will be soon. Here, I can’t keep any train run
by sound thought; I just can’t see the point in the face of such sheath. I lose
all will and desire for joy, and it’s really a comfort, like being let out from
under steaming hot sheets into a cool, and breezed, and fine evening snow. (When
we turned down Roosevelt, the sun finally set; the drafts picked up; even
though it was cold I let my window roll down; I wanted to feel the sense of ingress.)
It’s an enveloping yield from the countrified fields of conscription and nature
to a grey under-painting (when exiting the Stevenson, to be more precise), and
it seems a fair trade; to dull the tool capable of carving your life - if only
one night - in exchange for the hugeness of tests unforeseen (but there’s
always a curve. For one thing, Chicago is not a mixed city; there aren’t parts
conflicted– good and bad, rich and poor, black and white; quality of life is a series of splits, and its station
indicators never bury to miss. This is quite unlike the farmlands and barbs,
where entireties of incidence and fair-weather trials are flattened to the
floor of anonymous censure, uplifted - rarely - by the heat of town scandal; no
animal could hope to discern in such weight. Good fortune’s dismissed and good
grief is discouraged. All adversity to the decency of unhappy bliss is shortly seized
on and run with, flying, obscure; stocking and caps tore away in a storm).
Black steeples rose to greet the new moon. We
reached the venue and found street parking fast (we talked about it after for a
good ten minutes). I remember unfolding from the car to the alley to take in
the hall; a ratty looking thing, a decrepit house passaged by fumed orange
lights, black barring windows, and a single yellow lamp at the top of its door.
It felt gross and deprived, but a luminant nisse glided breakers of clean: an
obscene Natalie, done in fishnets and sheen - a legged daffodil - and from the
height of her heels was then awkwardly trapped in a looped animation’s
perpetual fall, and only when she reached an accessory wall felt safe to turn
around, to laugh, with Annie, at her beautiful blundering. I followed their
billows to the side entry door, went swiftly inside (past countless more copies
of uncertain fields, and Jimmy, our friend, a significant elder - and not in
amount but what age now permitted - who let us all in, and Natalie put her small
hand to his chest to seem to push his wide mass to one side to make room, but
the moment of touch was a lopsided grace, and their smiles to this seemed
suggestive of treats, though hers was a game to be played without praise, as
long - for her needs - they were wanting and dumb), and Natalie - now accustomed
to razor tipped boots - walked as courtesans love, or a headmistress post - all
legs, to and fro - and in an enticing-dismissing, determined-calm pace she drove
us on up and through, down and around by the pink-paper hallway that circled
past badges (black shirts, as they were; the security was really college
students in drag) and twice past the merch to the floor of the space, to the
front of the stage and then right to its pit, and next to the bar where - we’d
all been informed - if we took one step to we’d all be kicked out and exposed
as the half-pints we secretly were. We heeded this glum and stayed ducked in
the crowd. Older boys and girls stood aimless and loose, one hand in their
pocket (and beer in the other), awaiting (for something) to capture midweek. Natalie
asked us to catch her if needed. The song changed to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s
“Pride and Joy.” The band usually picks what gets played in-between; I wondered
if they were being sincere.
The dream of this fills; something happens
within; the music now stops; the lights follow suit; I remember these voices
with screams of support. I looked out at Annabelle; she gives me a grimace but
chased with a smile, and hops up in down in a light expectation. An opener
first (and she pushed herself to me to whisper their name, but the encroaching
horde pressed her a stretched lean too far, and she slipped, for an instant, her
lips to my ear, a butterfly landing as quickly removed, like someone’s sent ice
cubes down negligent shirts. She fell a bit more and I clutched her to steady,
but when she turned back to retrieve our three friends, I wiped her still-wet
unintentional kiss away with a swipe when assured she’d not see), and they did
that typical march to the stage: bowed to the ground, a huffy kid’s protest of
school and its point. Some unshaven boys slowly gathered up cords and placed
them and plugged them to matching small holes. And when they began the crowd
courteously stilled, with only a dozen so drunk and agreeable to move in any
way to the supplement tunes, and less yet than that doing anything more than
repetitiously nodding their four day old beards, and even with them it would
hold to restraint, an indistinct sway, and not anything resembling effects of
felt joy or a feeling of kind past some guttural urge. Considering standing a
form of psychosis, Natalie maniacally sloshed in a square, twisting her body,
shaking her hips, and while Annabelle was tired she joined her in play, and the
two of them, dancing, had a wonderful effect on the people around, pulling them
into the movement by shifts; still, only the women could pass as unrigged, and
in keeping tradition us boys remained safe, purely tapping our feet or just
bending our knees, and then that was only at the pinnacles’ waves, or when participation
was precisely appealed.
And it might have been here I pulled Natalie
close to ask her if Annabelle said anything; still dancing in time, she asked
what I meant, and I said if she’d mentioned anything about Isaac. Her eyebrows
triangled before saying no, and then she asked me to what I was referring, and, to this, I didn’t right know. She
then grabbed my hand and we flourished a bit, as like a gavotte (something we’d
seen in a movie just past), but I think it was her trying to figure me out, like
spinning a top to denote its precision. Thinking of that, my courage to ask, to
dare confirmation from some other party, grows me a stomach ache now to consider,
and worse than my doggery pestering phantasms much too recent for her to have
heard was the quickened result of her not knowing ‘what’ that mulberry-graded
into my favor: the purplish image of Isaac on top, her thrashing beneath, his
right on her mouth and his left on her hand, to keep her from screaming or
throwing him off (there weren’t - to be clear - any portraits at all, but
flower-hat thoughts - un-verbal, un-pictured - don’t lend themselves really to written
descript); the chance that bright Annie had been overcome was hard to ignore,
in staunch opposition to everything else I would have to ignore for this chance
to seem true, but I couldn’t turn ways from the way that she danced, happy,
with Nat, and the aurochs of binding, conflicting sensations - thinking her
secretly, ashamedly harmed while watching her key no display of ruptures - lived
in a small wooden home in a swamp, a labyrinth, over-weeded, near the cochlear
nerve. (And a construction of movement and color drew up, as though built by
small creatures birthed wee from mist whit: a curly headed man stood tall there
in front taking a wildly dizzying cache of photos, snapping every angle his long
arms could reach, very eager - apparently - to essay his time; a few people
turned - as curious as I - and alarmed to see such barbaric inattention paid to
the protocol of public ongoings; they scoffed at his excitement, his shameless
motives, but uncaring of his deformity he kept right on and clicking, and I naturally
took side in the contesting concern. Eventually it was clear he wasn’t
bothering them, really, and so slowly and by piecemeal they returned to the show;
as did I, again - or at least, I should say - until he started up with a blonde
of indeterminate age - older than us, maybe - who was with another boy; this
girl seemed at first to be ignoring his speech, and just stood - back arched,
arms folded, a bean pole resiliently trembling by oak - and I couldn’t hear
what over the music was voiced, but she turned after a minute and looked
directly upon him, struck, ostensibly, by something just said - an explicit
remark, perhaps, I so thought - her eyes gone wide, bird-shocked and light
furied, her mouth agape with small teeth now macadamed, standing there, curled,
for ten seconds or so, glaring past his small eyes and on into his head,
searching, apparently, for any good reason why anyone ever would say something
so horrible. And her face - so insulted, so in pain - unlaced me; the man’s
towering height now shadowed my scrutiny; he was a bully, it seemed, in the way
that he leaned, bent over to exaggerate a position of power, a freak with a camera
and clearly no friends, and I waited for her understood boyfriend to sock him.
But not only did her escort not once throw a punch, he even failed so much as
to turn and look up. I thought about tapping her foe on the shoulder - and do
what right after, I have no idea - but the girl turned back to the lights soon
after, following which the big giant stopped talking, turning his back to face
right-side as well. And as these vague concepts enchanted my hair - how
horrible this weirdo had triumphed someway! - an unnoticed girl who was behind
the short blonde and to the man’s left stepped up to her toes to approach and
say something. I expected confrontation - and vowed to myself I’d this time
intervene - but instead of a slap she actually spoke to him grateful, with a
loud enough, “Thank you,” that I heard without question; and the man said
something, released his held stress (she shrugged here as well), and this
parade of interaction confused me quite deeply. Sullen, without chivalry, I
looked to the floor, surveying the cups and the tore plastic scraps that people
absentmindedly let fall from possession. And I fell from possession. Or possession
fell to me.)
[And
now
instead of our Last Little Question
lost in the woods with its species of
firs
don’t look at him now
let’s let him resume
recover his pride and sponge-balance and
chase
behind a guest house so he won’t be
ashamed
while we veer away
to other nightscapes (think of this as a
break). So
to start
just over streets black
and sheep herder’s cloud
a wire extends
scales
and loud
comes
The (Softest) Mere Rhythm Of Listening To People Converge To Unconsciously Talk
Without Care
though not very proud
but studiously walking from subway sham
pits
his steps bleakly charging the hollowing
road with some saxophone sorrows
refrigerant air
and the pantsless indecency of muttering
prayers. It’s initial new steps of a new(ish) nightfall
and echoing millions he’s taken before
the puddles constructions
diffident grim. Gremlins and brick mares
watch his escape: and from their latch umbras they reach out for him
but don’t get too close
as a snip from his sword is all it would
take
to yield an arm
or maybe a leg
so they keep to their fun
and keep their limbs in
just laughing and throwing their jokes
to the wind.
Past
his dumb shoulders
folks climb the rail. They get to their
jobs. Bricks mend the walls: shadows alarm: they’re all quiet knick-knacks to
wearying weight
his own
and the bridge
and the pads that he wears
sporting
and cleats
and what’s broken from chairs that he’s
dragged from the last and most meaningless rooms (an au-gust player) and walks like one such in a heavying stride
though tip-toes reluctant the
garbage-rain water that floats
and seeps
and stays to low tide. With eyes to the
floor and his feet there as well he mimics (quite poorly) a thinker at rest
pondering locks and their closed circuit
tracks
and Rhythm
slowly
disheveling trot
just reaches to land: a car parker’s lot
much covered in mud
expands to a mildewing marveling ring
before him refreshed
with nary the wind
nor wool (nor sheep to unwrap): he
considers it bare
except for the snow (which falls yet
again: the world must be somehow conforming to mood. . .)
which catch to his plates like some miniature
knolls
holiday riders on Christmas tree slopes.
The wire strings louder. Low music chimes. The
Mere Rhythm stops at a nearing lamppost. Leathered
he looks: the tunnel
its castle
has left the spot grounds
so he turns
once again
looks back to the blank
transforms in his mind to a tired and
cobwebbed and polder antique. Breath turns to frost. He has been to such places
dear listener
since last
but each disappointment to locate the
bird (not
we should say
the same that Last hunts
but a chalkboarding creature whose
notion of play is to torture sock puppets to make children scream
and run to their parents
for crying complaints
and is zooed up somewhere with its label
quite plain: A Measure of Rest
and in scientific catalogues a touch
more distinct: What Makes A Man Do
Terrible Things) just adds to his temper of searching and rust. If he’s
a good question
he hasn’t the knack. He doesn’t even
know where the answer is at
let alone how to get about hunting the thing! (In the house of his
brain some pots and pans spring in a suddenly violent and shrill shivaree) and
degraded
disgraced
he unstraps his bag
and (puzzled with rage) hurls it so angrily with a flinging resentment
right into the mud
and with the time falling after that
follows his shame
he picks it back up and puts back on
again. He troubles to All That Is Good
In The World (don’t try to explain). And clutched to tree sleeper
feeling untrained
he stands
a shiver
and sees to the ring of the tall fairied
lampposts that light up the scene as an agreeably pleasant and cabining glow
something you’d find in a heartened snow
globe
and he takes the nice view as a sign to
unfold. So he forces clear eyes
and stands to his berth. ‘There will be
still days to hunt the black bird'
And from the blank speaks
then forms from the space
an open-air market and light picture
house
conveniently zoned by the parking lot’s
curve
a squatly twinkling twirling bright
tower
hues (gold and red)
a hundred-some screens and more novelty
foods (with blushed flags and trumpets and medals bestowed) and in the sheer
gloat of such bidden and joy
The
Mere Rhythm’s pressed to consider a show: actually (he thinks) he’s to
meet someone here (and as this thought cracks from his memory’s case
he struggles to get the tight wrapping
from crate
and slips with the knife
and somehow in accident cleaves them to
two: the left half’s a man
burly
stood
apparent in traipse
and showing a coat
with the second
a girl
or a woman mistook
with calamus fat
expectant in pearls
and both of whom dim to the point he
can’t see just why they’re to meet him
or why he’d agree). He had forgotten
this fact (right up until now). How lucky to have found his way paved here at
all.]
And then between dips there’s a blaring loud
sound: the opener finished - an ineptly cascading embankment of noise - memorable
just for its animal assertion of being
right now. Natalie’s voice (from a jar between isles, but I saw through the air
she was two feet away) was talking to someone– Annabelle and Isaac. (Earth-held
siblings.) Light enameled them. (Idiot child.) I jeered them loudly (imagine a
baby indicating distress, but the stupefied moan coming from an adult, and that
is about how I looked to these folks, and - to this - a few figures turned, but
without seeing faces they may as well have been some green creatured pockets of
reef or holed rock, nature’s winds mimicking flexed inhalation, the clinks of
each whiskey glass sea shells to sand).
But anyways:
[He
laggardly walks to the sidewalk and frame
crossing about from its side service
door
ensconced and flayed by a big purple
wall that dots with the stones of a tiny clay home. Bushes were planted into
the side stoops (with ferns kept aside for the prospect of growth). The place
as he paces blends into his mood with the street lamps and polish and feeling’s
fine stride to the beauty and burden of davenport sheets
the first bearing home of nativity’s
suite (with camels
birds
and wise men with sticks
the kind that are long with big hoops at
the end) and it builds within him a feeling of bliss that then twins with the
sense of soon meeting two friends. So he hurries with glee to around the stone
wall and victoriously runs through the sliding glass doors
stopping in cloud dust to take off his
hat. It is a magnificence
truly
dear listener. A harrow for ages. An old
world exact. A deluge of people
strictly attired
figures
brown fields of serious color
walk and around
looking up and then down
to see the start times before checking
their gowns. They ornament cluster upon the top floors
awaiting stiff barrels to eat and to
drink. Columns spin thick from the highest end planks. Red and white walls.
Alleys and doors
and even (he gasps) a blonde concierge.
The Mere Rhythm leapfrogs
the rotary stairs
wide palates of yellow
candle lit rose
anxious to meet his obscurity’s group.
He steps to the footing and looks up to see
assuming a vision of them at a stall
or a table already
procured in advance
but the set isn’t cued
and nothing seems fit. They aren’t there
at all. How does he know this? Because he just does
but he checks
again
even thrice to be sure
and a fourth walking check with his body
in full: its occupants dwell in an imperfect blend
crepuscular strangers
they say things he cannot believe that
they meant
with whispers and jokes
and cruelty’s spread
and lack the good effort to carry
intent. Some light bulbs give flare
but darkness pervades. Perhaps (he in
vains) they are standing in line? He outlooks their tops to the graveyards
below. He cannot conceive of their formal layout
but feels by faith that he’d know them
by sight. He turns again straight
and searches once more
but the wiry cupboards have festered
unkind: it eats the wood tables
and fumes with outcasts
and the strangers point faces that at
his thoughts peck. His companions aren’t here: he feels declined.]
And another squint image while up for some
air: Annabelle, twirling to “Travelin’ Band,” and as I collected, she looked at
me frowned, and pouted a bit, crotched up her small shoulders to forge a
showgirl, talked at me (slight), then breathed a big sigh, aggrieved at my failures
to listen or care (from her point of view) and - content to be wayward -
resumed membership in that rotary frolic. And I imagined her dying - slowly - in
labor. (Once, years ago, when I was a child, a woman approached me, yelling in
rage, even going so far as to reach out for me when Kay had the poise to get
back in the car, and drive elsewhere to seek out a wall frame; it had something
to do with my father, I think, but now it reminds of those pasty street signs that
thoughtfully mark a lane’s thousand pound limit - or some such figure - the
kind with big trucks softly breaking through trestles; I imagined that to
accurately determine road strength the construction workers must have first
built the whole street, then added more cars till the formal collapse, then
marked the death weight upon which the street fell, subtracted one pound, drew
up the white sign, and rebuilt it from scratch. Soon an adult, I am not
entirely sure that this isn’t the case.)
[Back
to outside
the theater sames
but his outlook beliefs and convictions
have changed
plates all a shift and meridian gaps
that make enough room in the drafts they
create so he feels the cold
that uncomfortable bitter at one time
was blocked by a sense of outlasting that’s now all but lost. And ever more
shiftings
there
in crust
beyond his dull lines in the moorlands
estranged with soft wisdoms that light in the glimmers of homes (or beacons of
kith) that can bark in the cheer that they surely live with (those cunt eating
shits). Our Mere Rhythm’s place
has been taken from him (though he isn’t quite sure that it there’d to begin)
in the way that the sights of a shipper is gone
when night is hard fell
with clouds over stars
and compasses break
when lost to dry spells
and the rolling and push of the wind to
his truck leave him stranded from drink (his wine overboard)
and his brain soon forgets from the
space to his hands to his feet to the floor
or how to stand up
or tell the right score
and
Rhythm (pissed) now portions to half
as he surely has no one to talk with or laugh
(All sure ensured that)
and this fraction of self is now too
thin to stay
and he falters
fluffs
and slips through a grate.]
Now, here it is: aroused, the lights dimmed; the
mass gave a cheer (a series of effects that deeply disturbed), and “Little Town
Flirt” (Del Shannon’s, I think) announced the main act; and then a few seconds
of holding our breath, uplifting our cameras to get the first glimpse (of encroaching
waves), while a few of the much more excitable fellows - determined to employ
every second of music as the first nations’ used so much buffalo hide - bopped,
side to side, to the sarcastic throwback. More indistinct cheers and disparaging
hoots, always unsorted (donkeys braying they too are alive), and then a fast
rising from pouches of crowd, the first to catch sight of her; yes, there she
was: the lead singer had come from some blackened rear area, and soon she was
with us, out here, in the light, arms spread far apart as if topping a wire, and
delicately walking with work’s weariness (the rest of the band poked out from
their spots - gophers from holes - trudging their tools like some old servicemen).
And then the crowd surged, pushing us (at least) fifty feet to a crush; arms
went into stomachs; everywhere I stepped was a shoe or one’s boot, or some imprecise
lumps mashed into their shapes. Our group now sundered, I looked for Annabelle
in the heaving and cast - to see if she’d fallen - but quickly inspirited saw she
was fine - smashed, but up - a few heads away, now close to the stage (closer
even than I).
The singer looked out (at this sick writhing
youth, of which, I dismayed, I was a clear part), and by the consistency of her
drunk watch transformed us dull parsons to married connect; united by presence
as workers by dawn. She took her receiver to say something now (the customary
greeting that is always distorted or too drowned out to ever really hear right)
before launching, full steamed, right into a song, a dance-rock thing that’s pointless
to term. The crowd rushed again as more people pushed through, and the tripping
and falling and fast come recoveries and barely holding on all made for (a
kind) shared comedy of errors - a communal experience - but the frenzy of
trying to pull yourself close had mealed all sense, and now just the tallest
and biggest of us could respire with sweat while we crashed up against them like
break water wharfs. (And every so often the pushing would snap, and a
particular quadrant would topple on over - a terrifying sight to see heads
beneath feet - and inevitably a girl would start shrieking to stop, just
finally aware of this texture of peril.) Annabelle - of course (serendipitous
ways) - had been steered by the current to the absolute front; Natalie was by
her. Isaac, behind, had his arms around both, his hands to the barrier to make
a stem hold, and to see this was to drink a very sour concoction, mixtures of relief
at the sight of her safe and the too bitter fruit of admitting her guard. I
watched, and waited, to see her affect, a turn and caress to his cheek or light
kiss, or anything to indicate a minor credit that would show more than ease for
their cramped little den; but nothing happened in the moments I spied– though,
to be fair, my sight of her face was a rope always cut by the bouncings and
rollings of immature rind. (One lovely example: a loused battered patron that
loudly demanded we lift her, gloried, up over our heads, and using my shoulders
to hoist her to heaven she proceeded in thrashing to drop-kick me square in the
back of my neck just as soon as the prospect presented itself.)
It took two more songs before I finally quit
(a discouraging cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now” and a disruptive, imbalanced
“Take Me Home Tonight,–” their bargain-counter nihilism more than I could bear);
I had lasted a total of five. They screamed their lyrics to this violent mush
in a proud diorama of counterfeit havoc, and the pocketbook viscera thrilled
the dumb throng who were just so obliged to partake in their own. Oh, this crowd: we were but a wreathe:
coiled, distinct - by class, not cause - and each of us carrying endearment like
penna but only for the people we thought to bring with. (A man, head first, fell
from the high rafters; nobody noticed.) Speaking of which: I took one final
look toward Annabelle’s face but failed to see much past the circus head rows; her
vision was a belfry, guiding me to stay - even though its bright bell also rang
the event - and now that she too was
at last overwhelmed, the dust-upping mire had proven too much.
Now sadly set, and determined to leave (and much
more awake than I had been in time), I forced enough space to turn whole-ways
around, and with hesitant stumbling started pushing paths through the long craggy
chorus lines of terrible public - as polite as could be - and wiggling myself
into any moist gap while trying to snail all the way to the back. No one made
it easy, or aimed to, mind you; besides the very hardship of swimming through people,
they had independently grown so inured to the bullies (who had strong-armed and
weaseled for space) that they dug themselves into a doubter’s entrenchment,
letting those leaving (or trying to plead) crumble vainly upon them as dying
shock troops. Everyone stood - remote, rock stiff, locked arm in clutched arm -
refusing to even make eye contact with me as I desperately attempted to forge a
road through, only reacting at all if I shoved (or was pushed), and then they
would turn (it’d be a big show), an exasperated cry as if I posed some threat
to the night’s lewd promise of their date’s under-dress. After making some
tracks (I could now breathe air, not smell it, or taste), I was halted to wait:
a young couple - short, and more timid than I - were, like me, trying to flee
the concourse, but they had in their attempts to escape with their lives become
pinned between rigs (lighting, sound) and a group of school boys who were
fittingly liquored, and exuding a luster of insecure robes and foggily unsure, sexual
belligerence. The pair had the room, but - cowards they were - chose instead to
wait meekly for miracle’s bloom, hoping against hope they could avoid the
necessity of brushing against even a grey jacket flap while they prostrated
themselves in a try to squeeze past, and this proviso blocked me from
proceeding myself. They were companions, however (I thought at the time), one
of the few infidels in this city of saints, so I patiently stood there, tapping
my foot, and swaying from sides to descry any breach. It had been a few seconds
of idle deference when the girl of the two finally turned to her escort and
said, quite loudly, “This guy’s an
asshole, let him in and we’ll follow.”
I looked down at her - “Who’s an asshole?” - confused,
of course, but slowly I realized: “Wait: I’m
an asshole?” She gloomed back at me: “Yeah:
you’re the asshole.” (And her hair
shook a little, sliding out from her eyes and then back like a swing.)
I was flabbergasted, truly. “I’m just trying
to leave,” but steadfast in her logic, she folded her arms and looked up at the
boy. “Whatever, sure.”
What on Earth was happening? I’m the asshole? I couldn’t react. This
girl - this creature - was so sure in
her mark. (And I was so stunned by
her nitwitted words that I lamely repeated as if automated, “I’m just trying to
get out,” even though it was clear she cared not for my plight; and I felt for
some reason profoundly offended.) These two, it turned out, weren’t neighbors
with cause; I was an outcast - an annoyance - even to them.
Well, I had had it, I’m not shamed to say. I
took another moment to swallow my endurance before pushing on past them, past
the frat boys with their laughing shove circle, past the dumb barmaid and
waitress and ward (a man in a cap behind the glassed ticket roost), and as soon
as I had the free air to sprint off, I did so, running, fleeing down the stairs,
down to the hall, right into the men’s room where I slammed the thin door and
latched up its wood padlock to shudder behind me. Let’s count the buckets of
painted expression: I paced round the room in irregular rage; I kicked open a
stall (just to make it bend in, and bang and crash in some meaningful noise); I
hopped up and down (but that made me feel sick); I lunged to the sink in a
flexing, tight anger. I had been around people for far too long, and my body
reacted to the newfound seclusion as if it were painfully rejecting an organ,
exploding in spastic, ridiculous movements, piloting stretches to rank
silliness. I bent, a doll (taut, hinged, faithlessly practical), and shoved my
head into the sink’s dirty bowl, grunting to keep from just hollering out. Then
I turned on the water and watched it collect.
(And imagine, for me, the ceramic bowl stains,
and the water that shimmers their shapes to defeat like observing a figure
inside a greenhouse, with you just apart, coming a short distance of wandering
earths; how tiring - exhausting - to watch his form dance, macabre’d by the
bubbles in the greenhouse’s glass; how hypnotic it’d be to regard him so warped;
my nights had presented like this for a while; appreciate, please, the fat of
my lull.)
[And
the apartment’s (at first) a hole in tight space
with the claviature lights of
candelabras in veils that ruddy Mere’s
eyes to engulf the wood floor
the piles of papers
racks of sogged books
the windows ajar (it continues to snow)
the big overbearing swig burgundy couch
with its soarings of filth
and cats that seek out. A casket appears
to be standing upright
leaning between dirty magazine stacks
and trampled boot grass
its door slightly open
nothing inside. And Rhythm can hear the trees scratch the
skylight. (And if the heat’s on then it doesn’t work right.) And a man
small
now appears in the light sitting up in a
chair
seen kindled from ash
grown up from the blank
with a pillow bag face that weighs heavy
with hair
ash white from his age
and corrosively braced in an exequy
suit. The Mere Rhythm ruffles
through known analects
his knowledge’s shores
and surprises to find a glass bottle and
sheet
with encounters (in mind) and scrawled
entry (to wit) of this withered old man
taught
and frown
and drawn with a rain cloud amusing his
crown
a little too thin
but an otherwise fine and compassionate
note
of a person unknown he can somehow
evoke. And written in page is a reference to kin: the man (as it outs
he does have a name: The Cabinet You Built, Put Together All Wrong,
That Serves to Remind of Your Failures Till Now) has a child
who lives here as well
it would seem. He looks for the kid
(avoiding the notions that sweat to his smell) and sees a dull baby enmeshed in
news clips. Are Mere and the man
equal keepers to this? It pains our grey traveler to have to admit.
‘Applause'
the room says
and now we begin: with a crease of
fatigue
our Mere
Rhythm speaks
just saying he’s home
and back to bereave that the day has
gone by just so fast and so quick
and Reminder
looks up
and says
‘Uh-huh'
and asks if he’s made the requested bank
run
to which Rhythm takes note of his strange little shtick
of amusing himself with a boxful of
cards
and taking each one
and checking its make
and then taking and licking fresh stamps
to its place. They’re bundled with twine in a messy lean-to
and the project emblazons to Mere Rhythm’s think
who wonders how long the man’s spent
with this thing
and where the food is
and what’s in the sink. The Mere leaves his hat and throws off
his neck tie: ‘Where’s supper?'
he asks. ‘Still up at the market'
‘Well what good is that?'
(Some laughter at this.) ‘About as much
good as you did me last night'
(The
Mere once again hears celestial tort
like softly called hooting from out the
tableau. Damn owls
he thinks
and then shuts the window.) He goes to
the cards and then asks for the mail. ‘Any bills?'
he says
and is handed a pack. He keeps the Third
Notice
the rest in the trash. ‘We’re off to the
Weatherbee’s soon after this'
The
Mere Rhythm falls
collapses to couch. ‘No way'
he says: Reminder’s aggrieved. ‘We planned this for weeks. You
promised
you did'
He says that he didn’t. ‘Just do it for
me'
He says the game’s on. ‘It’s the game or
it’s me'
He chooses the game. (More laughter at
this.) ‘We are going there whether you like it or not.’ He persists that
they’re not. (Through blinks of black time
and rivers of wine. . .) Now after the
meal at Weatherbee’s house
they are back to their zone
just clinking their keys
and shaking from snow
and the cold
and the booze. ‘See?’ the man says
‘It wasn’t that bad'
The
Mere says that his stomach’s refined to a bilge after forcing to eat Cabinet’s
cooking each night. ‘Mister Weatherbee seemed to want to offer a job'
He has a job now. ‘One that would pay'
(More laughter again.) And our Mere Rhythm sneers: ‘I should work a
new shift for your shopping all day? We’re doing alright.’ ‘We could do bits better.’ And the Cabinet Reminder now opens the door and
they both walk in on heavy block shoes. It is even worse than he braced to
forecast. Dead wood surrounds
vacant
and mold. The man throws his coat.
When’d the table get broke? ‘Oh
I forgot: we left our kid here'
‘Our
kid?'
The
Mere now hazards to add. ‘I still say he dropped from the mailman’s
purse'
Reminder
bends down
to pick the kid up
and does so
like this
with both hands as cups
swimming and leafing through sheets of
his clothes. ‘No
no
I’ve been careful with carters for years'
And with this
he sighs
loud
and in debt
begins to unfurl
frozen
upset
his diction flatfooted
his looks gone astray
he appears like a statue
rooted to dirt. ‘I’ve been meaning to
ask you something today'
And the way that he cradles their lost
infant child
lost to its thoughts
unformed
yet full
and squirming in arms of a crumbling
marm that by weaknesses bake a so strong irritant right into the heartland of Mere Rhythm’s scorn. ‘OK
alright
get on with it then'
(Water collects. Diluents now flood from
the drain to the woods
disgusting debris
a floating of suds and spume slippery
run that ends kissing their feet
clogging his shoes with the dross from
the street. The lamps
drowning with chords under wet
flicker
and flint with the wallpaper set
that whispers of scallops of plaster and
rot
and crack from the ceiling
splash
and swim
with all the gross trash that’s now floating
within. Rhythm
through this
is completely unfazed
and eagers to finish Till Now’s stupid game.)
The
wire pulses: Cabinet clears
throat. ‘Do you still see me like you did when we met?'
And before our stunned Rhythm can answer to him
the man ferries on: ‘Because I don’t see
it
I really just don’t. You’ve been moving
on through
in this horrible fashion
giving me these blackened and awkward
expressions
these trifles of dignity
trapped in obsession with catching this bird
and I just can’t do it
alright
I just can’t. I’m at my near end
I’m at my wit’s end
and I just want you to speak honestly
now
if you even still can'
And Rhythm
again
thinks a right time to bare
to think and to speak
but Reminder
again
talks in front of the eye (the slits of
their windows
the night’s howling wind
and bluish star light): ‘You’re barely
at home
just never around
and I have no one to help me take care
of the baby. You think you have it rough
you have no idea
just no
idea what it takes to do this. It’s an up at dawn
asleep and tend
no flowers or family plague to do this
to keep fresh and ready for scrubbing
the tiles. And I have my hobbies (we look to his cards) but that’s just not
enough
just completely it’s not
and I don’t think I’m asking for really
too much.’ Now Mere Rhythm stands
his arms outreached
but the man continues
ignoring his try. ‘Do you even feel love for me at all anymore? You don’t
my God
you don’t even love me now do you? How
long has it been since you felt that for me? Was it since the vacation? And
what was that for? I don’t understand
you
really
I don’t. And
you know what
I thought I could maybe avoid this
but
I’m leaving. I’m leaving
I’m leaving
OK? There: I’ve said it
and there’s not a damned thing you can
do about it see? I’ve rung up my sister
and she and her husband will help me to
feet. So there. It’s out in the open
OK? And what do you now have to say for
yourself?'
(For reference
our Rhythm
has little to say in the face of the words from this showering spray: actually
dear listener
he’s nothing to say. He knows not where
he is
or who this man is
or why he is speaking so athletically to
him. He slumps
a sad spell.) ‘And I’m taking the child'
And Mere Rhythm storms
for no cause he can tell. ‘You’re not taking him. We’ll share him on
weekends'
Till
Now says he’ll visit him every sixth Sunday. ‘That’s not near enough.
The boy needs a model'
The man laughs at this
and Rhythm
awash in the fish at his feet and the
fury inside that round islets benumbed (since why does he care? There’s no
reason at all. . .)
steps once
then twice
to the man and their son. And so Reminder
afraid
of his face and his stance
repeats him reversed
with one
then two
steps toward the porthole. ‘Don’t do
something rash'
The
Mere Rhythm says
but before he can pull the words out
from his head
the lily white haired and the child fall
back
a tumble through glass and the
peanutting wood
and in a quick whoosh
feet free in the air
they fly from the brown
falling upside and down
gone out of his sight
invisible now to the wilderness blue. (And
softly approaching
a black cloud impugns
and the snow
in prod
pours in from the flew.)
Now
down the long floors
two hundred feet run
The
Mere Rhythm flies through the arching stair weald and the broken
conveyors to fast reach the depths of the bottom charcoal
and through the brown doors (such a timely
bad setting)
a wriggling black
and thickly mud basement with flapping
dead trout. He lands in the take with a ramshackle splash (how sick this would
make him if he hadn’t been sick)
and troughs
for leverage
and chugging his arms up and out for
dull speed (he is really in rough)
to sink through the gull to the outside
distemper. Heave
heave
upward and ho
a distinctly unmarried and horrible
bound
pulling his cardboard knees up to
breathe
he ever so sluggishly reaches the wall
and blearily pushes the big cellar
doors. He pushes and pushes
with all of his strain
flexes
and pushes
and fights through the pain
till
what is that now?
a gift to him (creak)
and the doors
they open
in bending relief
wide and untied
to hit against stone.
And
Rhythm
tired
slump-shoulders outside. Forgive us
dear listener
that you suffer too
but walk with him here
and see to his sight
as he leans from the cupboard out into
the night
and numbers
past breeze
the steel mill lake (there is only one
a monosyllabic repetitive brick that
sits dead in the dirt or perhaps some tillage)
that pipes from its tubing and boards to
the blank such ornament smoke that apparents the brume
to match in its fog his attention and
swoon
a fray ragged tarp stoned gray from ill
use. A grape field sprawls like a carpet outthought. And there in the snow
so bundled and cold
and sighted by glows of a single
lamppost
is the Cabinet
Reminder and darling promote
clabbered and folded and crinkled to
broke
laid out as newborn
though not very warm
and instead simply freezing right there
in the crept.
Running
ice dunes
our Mere
Rhythm falls
ecstatic to check for the nicks and sore
bites and the raw injuries that they may have endured
as (they were so spurred) to leap out
the window so fast to wind chill (and crash to a spill)
but they are his lovelies and can’t be
too hurt (that’s not how this works
he thinks to himself). And so Mere Rhythm now turns them over like
food
inspecting their limbs and their faces
for wounds
but when he unfastens his baby’s bouquet
its form
unriddled
unfathoms from sense
its cherubic face shows made of warm glass
and filled with some liquid that has a clear
tint
just hollow inside
erased
unmeant
and a lasting expression expels an
exhaust
to spew from its pores and its transoms
a gas
or car fire smoke
and becomes
right then
in the malachite haze
held limp in his hands
a fortune of sticks
each brown
and bare
and tied with thin rope. The child
as oozed from the coppice of them
as from the clean rhythm and failure’s tanned
stench
is not
as hoped
a Genuine
Worship, of Self, Divined, and Your Nuisancing Labors Through Misery’s Time
but the plain and craven and useless Self Pity. How awful
to see it
unhampered by signs.
Rhythm
sorrowed (to start with a word
we could even go farther and say that
he’s crazed) picks at the bound twigs
plain falling like flowers from wrenches
of mitt. He refuses the sight of these petulant sprigs
it is a Self Worship
not scrap paper limbs. He cries to the
man
‘Where is the infant?'
and Cabinet
black rimmed
in corners of view
looks like a scarecrow that’s been
ripped from its stool
and thrown to the ground in a haggardly
mound
and lacking the ware to just get up and
clean
remains as he fell
while the gusts of bad wind pick up his
long smell and carries his coat to voohoodoo and play. He looks a decrepit
half-dead (ifn’t full)
(and could augur him more
and say that he looks as the end of all
molds
a shadow or stain
a swallowed concern.) Reminder
a fade
coughs loud and rolls up: ‘You were
always
. . . a lousy bowler
Rhythm'
And Mere Rhythm whirls
‘Where is the baby?!'
(and here the scene turns
for heightened effect
so the gas torches set
alit from the lake
and the skylines pervert with some
blaring searchlights
the U-Boats pop up from the water like
corks
and black figures travel against the
southwest
red rifling Turks
while warplanes travail
and smite overhead
and the cabochon terrors are thundering
dread
and his cape
gone fishered
flies off to the clouds
with thunderclap notions and twistings
and shouts
and it’s a big opera
to see it
like this
) but lest we forget the man’s sharpening twist
the ugly undignified crawling through ice
that he plans to abuse to just drag it inside
but the incline’s a villain
too high for his climb.
A
screaming erupts
an alarm from somewhere
and Till
Now hums jingles to unheard despairs: ‘My string of polo ponies. . . my string of polo ponies. . .'
The
Mere Rhythm bends to just ruffle his feathers
and Cabinet
to this
replies to the shake: ‘I have
only myself
to blame'
(and laughs here a bit) and Rhythm
reeled
gives him a hard slap (and enjoys it much
more than himself would admit). ‘Where is the baby?!'
he yells once again
and the white haired man
cracked
in pain
so moans a black brook of the darkest
night’s stream
a dreadful and slithering frostbitten
speech
a pouring of oil from vacant and ore
till Rhythm
revolted
relinquishes hold
Till
falls from his clutch to the ground in a heap
just laughing and seeped
his eyes gone to blank
bethinked
unlearned
starlight and bed sheets. And so
in response
to this mess and decay
The
Mere Rhythm picks up a pipe from the snow
up-raised
ready
for what he can’t know
and the man without eyes wiggles ached
to the door
unawares of the damage about to occur. ‘Oh
what I wouldn’t give
. . . for a nice cool drink
. . . of ice. . . wat'
and BREAK goes his skull ‘gainst the small
gray pole
a supper mist spray of brown water and
red
a spark from the hit
light rabbits in play (dust bunnies emerge
from its cartooning pain)
and the silence that brightens the mark
of the swing
Till’s
mouth gone all screwy
open to air
and he tips in a litter to gusts of
clean snow
a black and white puff that is leaking
outgrowth from the hole in his head that is gazing like eyes on our Rhythm’s tin rust (and humor untold). What
innumerable ways this settles within! What incalculable straits of announcement
it clicks! Who here could have dared that he’d bring it to flight
and crush his dissenter
pitied
from white
released of his life (and to this report
there’s a moment of still
a final decline
and the images held in his cyclical dome
come shuddering forth from the new empty hole
just packing their things
and kicking on pants
undressing his body to leave the cold
night).
A
coffee sink fog turns abruptly to scold
and Mere
who we might-as-well probably note
cannot feel this
or any such fear
or guilt
or trauma
right there
in the snow. He can just feel something
alike to the sight
of a town’s figures smudged by an icy
window. And that’s all she wrote.]
I lifted one shoulder and looked at cut hands;
I ached, sore, and was tired of battle. Now how did I get on the bathroom’s
blue floor (with water leaping to a brilliant dark buster up from the duct
where the spout had once been, pushing the boards of the ceiling to holes from
which elegant spray fell back as a trench– picture a fountain, with purposeful
toil)? It took some flatfooting, but (apparently,
as I have no recollection except this coarse sense) at a time soon arrived when
I slammed the door shut, I suffered a violent rupture of wisdom and tore
(compelled) from its base (out to zephyr) the now gimpy rod that connected the
pump - think plumbing school bells, rubber bands trembling, quaking, and
kicking - and must have fell hard to the ground (just as) since I had a large
bruise on the small of my back. The faucet there laid in elementary pieces. I,
of course, remained unfulfilled.
(Quickly, here, a reward for your patience;
another anecdote that concerns my upbringing: my father used to drive to
Chicago for work, but only in the times of consistent employ. In far away homes
on a hill in my thoughts, I can see through the verdure the sound of his
leaving, the heavy footsteps and the violet door, the annex creaking, opening
and shutting, and then the slow gurgle of the turn of the engine, choking and
coughing up staggering runs; that cricketful nature of dawn field noise - the
buzzing annoyances of stationary living - would return thereafter. If I ever
went with him, I cannot recall it, and that I consider his secretive life such
a rebus at all should just doubly affirm that I never once peaked at the unseen
machine that kept food on the table, and mother’s bald ire to a fine healthy
heat. For him, they were drives over-charted, I’m sure, systematically
compassed like stained star graphs. But whenever I walk (take) Michigan Ave,
heading towards Tribune and the Magnificent Mile - the area in which I believe
he worked most - I feel pondered and tasked with mysterious labors, as if an
agent in a dream casting visions to bear, but unaware of the endings that I
have achieved, or for whom I have had them unknowingly, unpleasantly,
unthoroughly accomplished.)
Annabelle was the only one who questioned my
pants, drowned to the point that they appeared like black wrapping. But this
was the second such occurrence I mentioned: she asked of my pants, but not why
I left, or what I had done in the time I was gone.
And the third odd thing is quite honestly
small, but near the end of our visit, and before we left the big city forever,
a girl and her riddled with allegiances group approached us (or we approached
them, I cannot be sure), quickly warmed to our company, and explained,
unprovoked by anything we said, that she saw her first therapist when she was a
teen. “Around your guys’ age,” she said to us blankly. He told, apparently, too
many stories. The second shrink came the first year of her college, “before she
dropped out,” but she had “too much pent up shit about dudes,” and he took too many notes, so she left for the third, who
“made a big deal about setting up goals” and “had the worst office.” The fourth
she started seeing soon after a breakup; “he didn’t take insurance” and the
sessions just felt like she was spinning her wheels. And I remember entirely
what she said of the fifth: “After two
months he said we’d - how did he put it - have to ‘terminate’ our relationship.
He said he had started to develop ‘feelings’ for me and he wouldn’t be able to
counsel me ‘objectively.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was actually so furious that
I slashed all his tires. And I haven’t seen a therapist since.”
And Annabelle nodded as if she understood.
A
warning, for now: we will all be in mud from this part going forward (picture a
squid, pulled out from the drink, thrashing in a brown and wet slippery slop,
its pink underbelly red-swollen with cupids). Also: Chicago had set me on a
path to vocation, though I did not yet realize this at the time (it was
honestly set much more earlier than that, but the night in the city really
started the clock; it ticked in blue silence, as your body knows how when
asleep when to wake).
But we’ll skip ahead here to the eighth glaring
day, now mid-afternoon; we were sitting in Kingsley Junior High School’s wildly
expansive cerulean lawn, a fastidious field that stretched kept all the way
from Canterbury Ct, to Leawood Ave, to the parking lot’s grip on Clarendon Ln. We
had kept to our rallying, always quick shouts or leapings to feet for jumping
jacks, push-ups, spurts of exercise; we were so close to the ultimate goal at
that point that defeat was a downright lunacy to fathom, a joke to be had, and
a mortal sin to speak of its option out loud (though - to be straight - we
looked like the bodies of dying al-selves, recently exhumed from a sideways
dimension, shaking and coughing with purling canard– the word of which sounds now
like something that swims. . .). Isaac and Annabelle, tired of everything, planned
to go picnic, so, to follow, we chose the farthest school in the nearest small
town and walked there. (I would like
to be able to say all of us had planned
on a journeying picnic, but, I felt - especially after that city torn drive and
the terse, fractious dialogue that filled it with mice - that any contribution
on my part’d endorse - in a small-fisted way - to their backhanded dealings.
Look: if when shoved into a car like ice-fishermans’ trout - to keep it to fish
- they still wanted to talk only just to themselves and not ask me at all for
donations to chat, then fine, I would
later deny them the very small privilege of casting a vote for what we should do
next. So when Annabelle suggested a picnic to Isaac, I, keeping mum, simply
stood straight up and walked fast to the kitchen to start making the sandwiches
with nary a nod for the welcome idea.)
(A short summary: nothing of my mood, really,
had changed; I felt ruined by their presence but strangely warmly appreciate of
anguish and the details that anguish’s salience allowed– my usual malaise was
oft vague and unproved; this resentment, however, was marvelously strict; and
if I hid all of this but a gold flaring grain of my feelings for them then the
flash off that atom would still be enough to terrify them of wits, make both of
them leave, just quit the long sport and not see me again.) So: we sat in the
grass, quiet, and eating, with occasionally a smart-alec quip to make sounds;
in other, tight terms, it had all started harmlessly enough, I assure you.
Isaac had excused to go pee by a tree, but insisted on talking to us over his dribbling;
“How yellow should urine be?” Annabelle scratched at her ears and the grass;
“Pale.” “So. . . not that yellow.”
No, not that yellow. (You see how it was.) And after a few pricks of this lazy
back and forth (that seemed to be driving me ways out of sorts), this leisurely
dawdling with no clear plan, I asked for the time, but more for the action of
asking a question and also to call to the span we had left: two full days, with
nothing to fill them. They hunted for phones; but, “Actually,” I said, “I have
a watch, sorry.” I pulled it out - “It’s. . .,” - and looked, and said (to no
one but myself): “It’s already two thirty.” And Isaac found his. “It’s three
thirty,” he said.
Ah. This was a gift. My anger towards him had
continued, contented, as grizzly bear pups gaily rolling in green, but to dare
give a voice to their inner-ends growling required, in part, some new and clear
motives; I was always on the look out for means to that end, so I keenly
refreshed with his ignorance played, tossed out like new food to my brown able
brutes, snarling the correction to his foolish pronouncement: “Nope,” I said,
turning over the watch; “See?” And in a rather handsome display of simultaneous
acts, sweeping but humble and plainly unpracticed, both he and Annabelle held
up their phones. And both of their screens said clearly three thirty.
Now it will take no small effort to unbox the
thought - the castle of thought - that so quickly was built to astronomical
heights, so fast I could say that, ‘as soon as’ I saw both their grey little
phones and their tiny lit clocks (specters speaking uncertainty’s age), but the
moors were assembled like match sticks so fast I would rather I say it had always been there, and only now was I
made to be aware of its tracts, its lowered drawbridge, its secret glass
network of mundane reveals, clayed up with men’s hay behind English and earth. The
first grounded layer, the entrance and hall, was a question as awkward to go
over now as it is just astonishing to think it was asked, but then, as it
happened, I felt it as natural and casual to think as that Spring day upon
which I thought me destroyed: was I deceased? The plain unamusement exhibited
then when they showed me their phones seemed so without color, seemed so
without light, that - coupled with the sheer impossibility of showing -
coalesced to a damnable, deadened splendor, that negative blush of encasement
and ends; I was surely in Hell, and my torment (as chosen from decks of cut
bulbs) was forever dislodgment from ‘if nothing else’ (as in: if nothing else I know this to be true). But this was disproved
when I played back the scene and saw Annabelle’s eye twitch from a sun flare;
the evidence of nerves gave me enough cheer that she wasn’t - if true - an
incorporeal demon, and was - in fact - the same real girl that could chant her
own games to be played while alive. (So I walked upstairs to the castle’s next
level, and saw, in mirrors, my second ill dork–) Was this a dumb prank? (This
notion fell out to me from an ambry), and you may very well think I’d flee with
this clue, and hold it quite dearly, chested undercoat, but if there was guile
or deviousness there then I couldn’t detect it; their sitting, austere, and as still
as white granite, their rolling and motions (as like a loose car)– it was all just
too base to be practically formal.
It wasn’t a prank; so what had it been? I must
have hallucinated the time on my watch. So I looked down again, once, to be
sure, and wholly expecting to see the right sequence. It still said two thirty.
I looked and I looked; if this was some marginal trick of the mind it was taking
the longest of any to right. (For clarity’s sake, most likely two seconds had
passed since they showed.) I looked past their phones to each impassive face; Isaac’s,
swiftly, had the look of service; “Oh, you know what happened? You didn’t jump
forward.”
What? “What?”
Then Annabelle joined: “You didn’t spring
ahead. You should’ve yesterday.” (She spoke with the inflection of bored
repetition, as if she were simply echoing Isaac.)
“What are you saying?”
“Sunday was the second of the month, so.”
(I really can-not overstate this enough: they
were making absolutely no sense whatsoever.) I leaned back a bit; Annabelle,
remiss, gave a trivial chuckle, with not enough air to even wreck a sunflower,
but it blew the enclosure apart like soft petals that formed the constraints of
my well-fed frustration; before I could scream and embarrass myself, Annie put
her hand out, crouched, hair dripped: “The second Sunday of March you ‘spring
forward.’ (She curled two fingers and did a small hop) You just forgot.
Pobody’s nerfect.” And then, a slight pause; “It’s Daylight Savings.”
Daylight
Savings! The words now carry
such thoughtless arrangement, but depantsed of apparent intention right then, I
heard it as sheets fallen cleanly in flurries, the same white paper once wilted
from ears, some toilet tape streamers I grasped at for meaning, but swaying now
gently, up in the air - to crystallized pattern - and landing, in spots, to draw
up a nice print (perhaps a good family beneath portico), and the last flying
piece that jigsawed it complete had my hair stand on end: the world - I now
knew - had left me behind.
(And as the coyote can’t know that he’s doomed
right until he looks down at the cloud covered sky and just sees for himself
that he ran off the cliff several minutes on back, awareness of things clicked
to proper posit: the trees turned to glass, the field to loy, fair points on a
map and without any fill; the trails that swam from us walking the street, then
choosing the yard, then picking the spot where we’d lay out the sheet; this all
took place maybe hours ago, but I saw it anew, or newly dismissed, and it
occurred to me then: as the world continually scrapes itself round it brings
forth a garbage truck dust cloud of yore
- the base element of whatever’s been lost - and I, evicted from this smooth
persist, my clothes billowed up as if passed by a ghost, was lost in its fog -
the sounds of soup cans roughly clinking to ground - rudefully left by the turn
of the globe to now squander alone in an affix of time. No; I was not dead; at
least there was that; but this, I felt, was demonstrably worse.)
Awakened and enraged by my horological abandonment,
I demanded to know when they both set their clocks. Annabelle creased her brow
in concern, looking at me like more unwanted scuff; she said Sunday (“When
you’re supposed to do it.”), and
laughed a little. “It’s not a big deal.” I replied that yes, it was a big deal (I wasn’t yelling - not
outright, not yet - but, I must say, I veered perilously close, and Isaac’s
face held dimples or specks - hints of unease - signs that he feared he had done
something wrong; Annie - well-knowing - expressed not a tremor.) She stepped
towards me (while showing her palms as if I was a dog): “Wye, relax. Just set your clock now.” I said
it was late. “Too late to do what?” I
said I’ve been lost for two full days; she, befuddled, claimed nothing mattered
(or it didn’t matter, maybe, instead)
since we’d been together the “whole entire time,” so who would care if my watch
wasn’t true (while hers ably was).
And then came the bilge; I screamed, full
tilt: “We haven’t been together the whole
entire time!” (And to suitably put to your mind what I felt: she was a
ship, and I was the cay, telescoped from the nest, with birds on my head) and
Annabelle, deep, across the crevasse, just giggled again (for what could she
do?), confused, I think, or maybe she guessed I was joking instead, and gave me
the curiously maddening response of the look you would hold if you checked the
front gate, for hearing a knock, but after you travel far out from the couch,
and open the door, to see simply air pushing leaves on your mat. She either
didn’t pick on the girth of my gripe or she couldn’t figure why I would take
the offense; regardless of why, it was clear she cared not for this tiring fad,
and, to stress, with hands on her hips: “Boy
sailor,” she said, “Did you round the bend.”
I said I wasn’t joking.
“I know you’re
not joking, that’s the point!” And the argument went on
addlepated from there (but here, counterposed, I believe I should pause, and
stop the bold action, recapture her face, as I clearly remember it shouting at
me, and now - with the space to compare and contrast - realize that it shared a
quite similar blush to the time when I got her from Eastfield Mall, and I had been
just involved in an unusual matter: it was, I believe, two weeks still from
Christmas, when packs of the suburbs move out to the shops, and the pedestrian
walkway’s an endless beachcomb, and to successfully reach the south entrance by
car meant surviving a genuinely frightening affair, with security running to
your passenger window to yell in its hold - “Move! Move!” - even if your wife
has one foot out the door, and this one distinct night, with the standard
stream of people with their phones and their bags and their not even checking
to see if you’re there - and only when headlights would hit their eyes’ hedge
would they turn, to look, and appreciate the danger they’d put themselves in -
the timing of their pace seemed deliberate to keep everyone in their cars from
reaching anywhere else; everyone stepped out at the exact right moment to leave
not but a sliver of space to move through. Finally - and after a good long
while - there started the beginnings of a much thankful break, but I could already
see coming outside the doors a very large family - a Midwestern gaggle - a
spinning tight galaxy of slow moving children and sorry step husbands and
following a few feet behind all of them - but obviously connected by naked
disdain - was one teenage girl, listlessly dragging, happily hidden in her
jacket’s contours. It was on the edge of decency I gun and go first, so I erred
to stay put, and for no real reason than to avoid the possibility of having
their stares dirty up my rearview, and to this, my pause, there was a momentary
gasp, a sense of disbelief, a clutching, pleading release of the brake, but as
soon as it was known I was letting them go, the rest of the cars all laid on
their horns, a loud hollow roar of condemnation for me, for I had - it was true
- betrayed my own kind, those stuck in our buckets, and gifted the enemy their
own and safe road. I shrunk to the noise, intensely bothered. And, to make
worse, it did take a while. And, like the rest, they did not raise their heads.
But then, it happened; something extraordinary: just before they had reached
open land, the whitened lot’s mist and its snow and cold winds - and very slowly
walking to rate the infirmed - the girl, hands in pockets, still straddling the
rear, uplifted her hood and provided a look; she smirked a little, rolled her big
eyes, and waved as a small but so courteous stroke; it was a very light thing,
and as soon as committed was over and done, and the cars could all go, and I
drove to the south loading entrance to wait, and when Annabelle came she could
tell I’d been crying. She asked me if everything was going alright; I said that
yes, of course it had been; she didn’t believe, and the flections and rabbets
her profile bowed are one and the same with the twists she gave then, standing
in grass, angry I was not holding to her assumption of what a friend does when
we’re tired and weak), the highlights of which were unknowingly babbling that
musical’s title (“Bye Bye Birdie,” in which she’d performed as Ms. Kim MacAfee
when they put on the play earlier in the year - and she, expecting I hadn’t noticed,
didn’t think to invite me or tell me about it - to which she responded, “Is that what’s about?” to which I said -
truthfully - no, it was not: it’s about the missed time), and when I felt so
much especially lost - irresponsibly lost, though they were responsible - the scene going dark like a shuttered arena,
my body turned sore from the terrible comfort of feeling once more elementary
pale, that danglingly agitated cumbersome quip, while swishing air pockets to
dodge bad attention, and wondering why the kids did not pretend to be keeping
their heads down when he was around. And why the sun left, and why he must
sleep. And why weekends, in the end, end nothing.
Annabelle (exclaiming exceptional distress) held
up her white arm to her pink-golden head, and turned to the world, and the triangle
slit in-between her peach brawn expanded like trouble the scenery held (namely:
the sky, and a blue brick house roof). And it humorously (now; it wasn’t
humorous then) accordion-fanned to the length of the field, popping the image
to multiplied scope; and I - so small I could fit in her crux - fell into this
colorful compartmenting tube, sliding as if in a fun-house attract. And
[apples
turn green
jackals
and bend
dimly red-orange and bung up like ships
steams to eruption from mule and pulled
blank
a slowly grown eye sore whose long
curvature
cylindrical fixtures
quivering halls
blazing gas pumps
cross-current rows of ailing and seeps
shudders our Question to feeling his knees
still wet from the leaves and Fall’s
brown potpourri. He has found himself nuisanced
templed bad luck
pecked by disfavor and lacking all hope.
What armor was once a nice shade of blue soap now displays oh so poorly as
watering stones
that sewagey color of fish heads and
fruit. His satchel is missing
his backpack is lost
and in place of his sword there now
switches a gun
precisely a musket
tarnished and short and clean absent of
phrase
and impressed to his leg through the
craft of decay. And Little (oh Little)
he has a new beard
white
and tumbled
like stuffing from toys
it makes him a bum (or at least look
like one)
but worse than the itches it gives to
his face are the visions that haunt him in painful display of that What Will It Be
clucking and ducking
flying around
so buried is he in his rights to the
hunt that he sees the damned thing around ever inbound
reflections of steam ships
myths like smoke trains.
Water
floods in from the sandpaper shafts
mugging his traipsing into a full sludge
and the walls bleed ugly from orange to
brown
the color shifts weather (he’s deep
underground). Dead plants and logs float the limitless brook
and our Last Little wades
through water and space (and avoiding
the detritus felt brittle cake)
the means of his build squirming into
tight spots
and thinks now of All That is Good in the World and what
they’d suggest to him here in this hold
but he can’t
dear listener
think where else to go
and doesn’t
dear listener
think even allowed
so near to the past when he left that
poor cow
the green able bird
before the house closed
and swallowed
and swooned.
Blundered
ashamed
an anger flash takes
he whirls
pouch-gripped
shoots blind at the lake
by aiming his capon-bone pistol mistake
a bucket of pellets to croon up the
walls with some driblets of water
and cavernous scrawls. It is a sad sight
to see him so loathed
by himself and his quest and his function
uncrowned
and he also walks old
and more by the step
each withering toe fills his breath with
unrest
and he wishes
right here
for a physical press
a carbon container to dump his concern
but All
That Is Good sees to stay a dust house
a sand castle swept
a freshly mowed hill
while under its soil lies bones of his
faith
he can only just hope that it looks like
he thinks.
At
some point (we’ll leave out the lengthy mid-parts
its simply
for your sake
him still walking mute
unkeeping of maps that would lead him
from here
and sometimes he’d sit in a corner and
stare
and if somebody asked
he’d say that he’s fine
just thinking of something
maybe a yarn
or a story a friend of his told him one
time) he turns a new way
and finds a large door
sunk half-way from top-side deep into
the soup (the brass handle brightens by spots of soft light)
and inside the door
and into the room
the size of which jollies as big as a
barn
square
and stark
and vividly white
so painted clear-minded by burgeoning
lights
with water that’s flooded to almost
knee-high
much higher than even his ankles
outside. The taw walls are coarse
with some kind of grain
and yellowed stilettos that prop the
ceiling
and circling the center (we’ll get to in
bits) is a remarkably disciplined cakewalk of chattel
furniture sold
competing desk lamps and some bottles
and stools
and cabinets and desks and their feeders
for birds
and carved-traditional black-boscage
chests
just strolling their way with the waves
of the pool
in one way because they are pushed by
its flow or they’ve made up their mind to dance cycles in spit. And in the
tight middle of all of this shit is a slowly and rockingly rotating bed
formidably large but quite low from his
view
and from its sheets swiftly up into his
hands is a calm
and stout
and fair headed chicken
demure
and charming
and teasing
forbidden
and wearing a head-dress sewn used for a
queen
but this one
instead
he thinks it befit
as her delicate nature could pass for
preening.
Holding
the bird
Last
Little looks up: there’s one other door on the opposite side
its wooden swung open
vowing the night: the sky is quite
simple
black
with star whites. The train yard is gone
as is the big room. He’s walked through
the hole (still holding the chick)
and glancing his suit
he sees it reflush: his blue armor
fittings and rubber belt truss has returned to his skeptic’s so tired
groundwork
and except for the beard and his strange
cockerel
there aren’t autographs that there’s
been a diverge. But other than fuddling at why he’s transformed
back to his normal nice outlook and
pants
plated and clean
and shined to a sheen
the bushwhacking backdrop is patiently
nigh: the wind is bed-soft and the shrubs haven’t pricks
and the mill (at the moment) is not
gulfed in flames (and
furthermore
he puts the small fluff
the chicken right down on the ground for
its strut
and it
so stupid
it runs to the dogs
and is not
amazingly
torn to loose shreds
or eaten like hogs
and instead plays with them as just one
of the lit).
Planes
wide
far green
an achievement un-strived. He walks ten
paces to barnyards and shed: nothing
he sees
aparts to thin thread.
All That Is Good
must be angry with him
he suddenly thinks when he comes upon
bread
outlaid on a table with food stuffs and
drink
and no one is there
‘cept him
to eat. They must think of him as a
blithering fool. Easily led to a bathroom and sink
and holed up to sleep and not bother the
guests
with only a radio to keep him content. He
looks to the clouds: the day has now come
but after a watch he sees white as book
crust
some sleep-dreaming donkeys
a leaving of water
cheap forgeries
the reflective pool surfaces standing
float bleeds from the animal ponds and to eastern stampedes
back to elation of daytime sweat work
seeming
now
as far as the blank
to his building of castles
fort shrines in dirt
he died many deaths for the nails to ham
and to splinter his fingers for wonders of slang. A sadness runs over: for
truth
dear listener
he hasn’t teachers
no bearers to hunt: he feels as though
he is being upbraided by big-handed sisters who’ll make him run chores (for
they all caught him reading their diary prayers
and instead of a lashing and throwing
down stairs they’ll just let him sit there in this sweat-flopping gloss)
with compliments paid
for mother to hear
while he knows it is fake
and they keep him ensnared. (And the
worst of it
dear
is he has no siblings.) This sordid
correction (a false summer day): was he now being told he should quit from the
game? A rabbit runs clear from the far grass and trim. This land is a curse
Last
Little now feels
and stricken
stuck
and plagued with new doubt
he drops his low shadings and walks to
the sea: it is a blue ocean
pretty
and blue. A beach is behind him. Fields
have gone. The chicken
unhurried
runs into the swig
to fun in the waves of its bellied
expounds. And All That Is Good In The
World keeps it drawn: some surfers align: bright days
routine. (All That Is Good In The World might be dead
so far his distrust will permit him to
think.)
Our
Last Little Question walks to the
first house that he sees from the sidewalk that grays his footsteps
gaiting from beach sand and groundnut
fence posts
a reliably yellowing war-time A-frame
with beetling windows and hay brown hair
tops
and a quaint twiggy mailbox composed
from tree twigs
and
with a trip on a cobblestone stoop and a
blink and a blank he is standing inside
first from reflections that cast him
outright
and then from him opening the oval cut
door to the sights of a kitchen spoke egg-shell off white
with fake wooden chairs
a manger
a stove
that’s fit to a twisted black graying
hose-line. There is a long chimney and big-bottom stairs. And animals
goats
it looks on the whole
just wander the set (he thinks on it
so). He fingers the cabinets and checks for life-signs. And the chicken runs in
and gives him a shoe shine with its scuffling-stiffly and raw-boning feet and then
flies to the cubbies to check for some treats. ‘No one lives here'
Last
says to himself (and to the fair chicken
if she even counts)
since now he has noticed the sand on the
shelves
and the outdated fashions that carpet
the floor
paint up the wide walls
and sheer the old drapes
and fill the raw air with its spots of
advance
that take Little Question far more from their face
the homely visages of All That Is Good
and away ever further from What Will It Be.
Shadows
lengthen with afternoon’s turn: who lived here? Little now asks of himself
as a frosted goat calf brusquely cleans
his pant leg. And splits from ice flows and green-viding red wine
awash from All That’s blurry hand-fiddled times
huge
and grand
and cracked from blue verse
and having
dear listener
no life of its own
except for his image’s imaginative swarm
hurries to mind through his contemplate
gates
to absently visible
there
through the storm. And he thinks of her
life
this woman in plain
and how lovingly whisked by the
sunlight’s sought frame: was it really
truly
so awfully unhappy
to keep her traversed and a tedious
spirit where once he could possibly picture her jeans
her bleach iron shirt
what she wanted to eat. Could she not
find good respite with humor and smarm
and the pickings of doings for weekends
preferred
was it not well enough that she feel
prevailed
when crossing through markets and houses
like tents
to get through the crag
and blow the home’s horn
and see us
excited
run into her arms
and hold our new faces as one of her
own? Clearly (the only part of her that is
clear)
this wasn’t enough for this woman in
thought
sculpted sexless
without a fur buff
but painted in clothes that are nudity’s
state for this formless white hole that resides in near space but is always
behind a book shelf or some crate
always the shadow that moves without
weight
always the thing that was almost spied
on
a bird in the window
a smothered outrage. She isn’t a woman
at all
to be true
but the wet spots the floor boards
parade from when you just mistakenly dropped a tea kettle with fish
and the thing spilled around
and you grabbed a big bowl
and you scooped it in hands to defend
and save it. And the mark on the floor is from where you there stood
but
other than that
you didn’t exist. You weren’t ever here
to help me chase the bird
weren’t ever right here with a caroling
word
a helpful head rub
a sit in your lap
and maybe its best that you’re just in
my head
created from fabric
meager demeanor
tilted inherits and honey for carrots for
this way you can be just what I need
a visionless view
the tree branch that pulls with the wind
as you reach to pluck out a small flower to give to your girl
to fix up the problems I think are excessed
to tell me exactly what wants to be said
with the beauty of impossible promises’
kept but just here in the realm of someday
this will do. How wonderful
really
to have this excuse. And much like the
icon of All That Is Good
I should build you a temple of tiring
qualm
of shifting unrest
of getting no sleep
of wondering what all my friends really
think
and when I commune with good questions
of faith
be thankful enough I’m not hit with
lightening.
A
train crosses river: the light hits his eye
and from the freshet of the fair-harried
lines the house boards break apart
showing the night: it’s night yet again
and calm
illumed
and brighter
he thinks
for the smog in the glebe
that catches and reddens each twinkle
out bloomed
for covered by clouds he cannot find the
moon
hidden somewhere
out there
in the fog. And after that swelling of
thoughts in his head (and warranting prayers that will not help him rest)
the chill from the wind feels great on
his skin
and he takes off his clothes
and goes for a swim
and when he comes back
to the beach
and the road
he sits in the sand to dry off by the
air that will mutter the delicate drops from his back
untangle from rindle the strands of his
hair
massage to his feeling an earthly repair.
And like the green leopard that walked through the school
he’s induced to commune with the
smallest nubs strewn
the tiniest points of just what we can
sense
and mourn for their quickening loss and
absence for he hasn’t the tools to provide them a stay
just a fumbling bumbling idiot brain
that cannot even tend to the biggest things here
so what hope does it have to contain the
light air that still dances and plays with the hair on his neck
or the instants in time between willing
and sick
and the footpaths that lead you from one
to the next
to where a bird flies and to where it
will nest.
The
chicken looks on: A Pang of Regret
it’s now apparent
though he thinks if its clucking sings
only things dreamt.]
“You have no idea where you are right now, do
you.” Annabelle was using her ‘serious voice,’– and for the first time it
improbably worked; the air went cold; the sun concealed; and she looked at me then
with such soaked disappointment, squinting her eyes, her arms out crossed, this
greenly placating and dawdling conspirator, and instead of me trying to hold
her stern gaze (an unworkable problem, most likely because she was very much
right, as I couldn’t remember our walk to the field, or the time that had
glided her uplifted arm to the current bad temper it frowned her breasts to), I
watched a deer skip through the meadow behind, and said to them both: “Look. There’s
a deer,” but just to distract from the strength of her stare, and Isaac turned round,
and checked for a bit, before turning back to me looking dispirited; “Where?
Where was it?”
Annabelle didn’t relinquish her look, or her stiff pose, when she
said, and loud: “There isn’t any
deer.”
And I said yes there was.
“What, like the horse?”
And I flopped out my arms; “OK, whatever.”
“We should just stop.”
“Stop what?”
“The ten days.”
And, funnily to this, Isaac looked scared, and
rose (to his knees): “What? Why?” and
Annabelle whirled, abruptly furious: “Why?
You can fucking see why! Wye has no
idea what’s ever going on!”
Now this was only just partially accurate, and
it allowed me the force of some newfound assurance to upturn a hamper of almost
apologies (“Just forget everything I ever said about this; it’s fine;” etc.), and
when that seemed to be nearly enough, I switched to speaking as a diplomat
would - or how I imagine a diplomat speaks - outwardly tactful, pacific,
mollifying, but privately preserving my own country’s interests, reflecting my
statements and conciliatory remarks through the prism of the unseen, clustering
homeland, resolved to its mysteries and unjust repute. In the midst of this mania,
Annabelle scoffed, “Just two seconds
ago you were charging us with doing– who knows what, and now you wanna stay up like that’s important to you?” and I said that no, it wasn’t, really, but that
since we were only two days from the end it was stupid to stop (and I swear
that I made this sound highly reasonable), and Annabelle fought this the best
that she could, pushing me away like you would a young child too immature to
know of adult-minded matters, but the saddled opposition enflamed me to sober -
if ever just briefly - to prove myself, not only to her but to me now as well,
but mostly to her and her hidden criteria that I am so fun and this town is so
fun and I won’t let this whole thing end like this here, mindlessly screaming by
children and soccer.
The effort was meaningless, as it turns out;
she was fully outnumbered, and wouldn’t risk halting the challenge for nothing (possibly nothing) and being thus branded
a soft-shoe for it. (A memorable moment: a breeze blew her dress, and I said,
quietly, “We’re really so close,” hoping to ease her defeat with false logic; she
narrowed her eyes: “We’re not close at all.” And contextually harmless, the
phrasing still wounded.)
I would of course quit the contest not ten
hours later. This shouldn’t surprise you; I am rather fickle.
From
the time of the picnic to Drew Bestler’s party, Annie and I had said twenty good
words (with a bad fifteen) between us en route, most of them the sort of so tiringly
poor and so sensible literalisms friends never really deem fit to exchange–
except that these were the only things that were said, and harrowing still was it
wasn’t awkward, and felt, instead, like our natural state. The fight in the
yard seemed to ruin like woe all the years of incense of sweet-hearted hokum I’d
laid at her feet in bright flourishing piles of compliments paid and interior
jokes, all to ingratiate me to her keep, and my only gripped solace was Isaac’s
small mound - only planted since the start of the year, but more fresh - had
wilted as well; she wouldn’t hold hands now with either us boys (and she’d only say, ‘boy,’ when addressing us, too, as though
saying our names would be giving us praise) and refused still even when blinded
by wind and compelling herself under sweat and clean heaven to hoist up and
over a jagged split fence. When we got to Drew’s house, she connected to Megan,
retiring nuns to a closet somewhere; when I asked where they were, I was only
told, ‘Ben’s,’; I did not - and still don’t - know who this Ben is.
The only one not wearing animal
hoods (hemmed, it appeared, from some kids’ pantalets) was Isaac himself, stationed,
perturbed, by a passageway’s wall, involuntarily shivering his drink to a
spritz. (And remembering his posture - as sad and as tired and as wretched he
looked - I’m moved now to tell of the talk that we had right immediately after
I walked up to him - on suddenly dirty, impoverished roads - thinking to offer
a chance to repent; repent now for what? Well, as I approached, I believed that
I knew, but his crimes were mysteriously bleaching from plan to a much more
evocative, aqueous fault, as one kind of many, living in town, that did not
lift a finger to make it better; each of us swung from the trees of our neighbors,
each of us pilgrims vacationing harm, and after we’d heard all the pain that’s
not ours, we’d turn to new gossip when again feeling snug; we were all
blasphemers - in some likely way - and I was no better, but felt, at the time,
I could offer a post, for him to lean on and confess his worst sins. And I did
not do this for his sake alone. Another thing, too: I don’t think I’ve set a
good notion of Isaac; for that I am sorry; he deserves more than this; but,
truthfully now, he’s a typical boy, while reasonably funnier than average ones
met, but - except for a boldness that comes from him knowing that school
doesn’t matter and people forgive - he’s otherwise as prevalent as any you’ve
seen. I won’t tie him down with capricious details; I’ll chronicle instead what
he said to me then, and only repeating what’s able verbatim; remember: this was
a test of his faith.
He started out yelling, “Don’t lecture me
moon!” He was in his own lull, and joking himself. I asked where was Tracey,
his girlfriend of late, to simmer to times when we both felt OK; he said he
didn’t know, but a girl - who’d just left - had asked for his number. “Here? At
the party?” I asked unbelieving. He said that she had, but had misheard his
telling since under the music it garbled to mush, which she took to mean as a
sign not to call. “As if the Heavens didn’t want her to hook up with me!” He
laughed at the science; I asked how he felt. He paused and looked up, and
seemed as if he’d been about to wisecrack, but his smile turned straw, and he
flattened, and slumped; “I don’t think I should go to,–” saying the name of his
chosen college; I forget which it was; the rest is quite slurred: “I think I
wanna stay here, go somewhere local. I don’t owe anything to my mom and dad.
They want me to go there, I don’t wanna go there. I’m tired of new friends,
tired of trying to make them. I know everyone here. I know everything here. I
know every street, I know what to expect.” And then: “That girl, can you
believe it? Thinking like that. Love is a complete crock. Everyone in
relationships is fooling themselves, and if not totally, then a little. And if
you don’t think they’re secretly miserable, well, then you just don’t know the
whole story there then. Because they are, I’m telling you.” And: “Anyone can
take a picture of a sunset. It doesn’t mean anything.” And: “You should come to
school with me. It’d be great to get out of here, wouldn’t it? I meant what I
said before but– if you got in, too,
late admissions, I think, they have, right?, it’d be great, we’d have a blast,
we’d come back and visit and whatever. That way, you know, we’d see some new
stuff, have a lot of fun, but it’d still be like, it’d still be like, you know,
it’d still be like home, you know.” And: “I wish I was born a woman. Running a
brothel.” I asked why a woman. “So I wouldn’t feel guilty.” And, finally,
something about something called the Process Church, and the metal band Altar:
“Youth Against Christ.”
I asked where we were; he didn’t answer.)
So: the party was pointless, much overlong,
and I left the festivities quietly after an Indian squaw was anointed
orchestrion by being near forced to perform on guitar to uncomfortably muse to a
room of hayseeds. I didn’t even tell Annabelle I was leaving (or Isaac, but
only if that must be said); I just put on my hat and my jacket and left. And I
knew that this act would be seen as surrender (they’d no other choice but to
think that I’d quit), but to say that I honestly didn’t then care would be trading
deceit, as I did care, a bit; there just wasn’t any thought process at all. The
motions of leaving the party and group was as gladly impulsive and self-regulated
as simply removing my hand from a stove; I couldn’t apprehend any motive for parting except that this hurt
and I wanted it stopped. And this - I should say - was outlandishly thrilling,
to allow my commotion control of my canters, to not clutter them with my usual
doctrines (irregular pieces with which I attempted to mold - still humble - unfeasible
futures). It felt liberating to walk out the door. And the funniest part is
that while I considered that Annie and Isaac would learn I had left, and
reasonably assume I had up and slept off, I thought, somehow, this assumption
was wrong; I hadn’t renounced, and - even more so - still dearly wanted to stay
with the game. It does contradict, I know, to explain, but the best I can do
when I think on it now (and you, in turn, should picture me moving, slowly and
ever, through drizzled trawl towns; to their front, bargeless chunk, to their
back, wooded bluffs) is I had, couched, a vagrant in bones, the tiniest sense I
would get about home, be alone for a time, regroup for a spell, then rejoin the
party like nothing had happened. (Do I need to remind I’d been up for eight
days?) But that was a theory I laid for its wish; the truth was the light that
was in Annie’s eyes were the penitent glimmerings of shone retrospects; she
thought of the time, and of what we had said; and still, we stayed fenced. I
saw little hope.
I took Sarah’s car (she had planned to stay
there) by claiming I’d slept so she’d let me use it (“What about Isaac and Annie?”
she’d asked, confused, irritated - though not by me - while jangling her keys
out from inside her purse; I said they’d be fine, and she, half-drunk, accepted
this answer, granting me passage with hugs for goodbye). The ride was quite
short; I’ll stick to the facts: it was Monday, late, and exceedingly dark (I
think after three); the roads were completely (sanguinely; like space) plain empty
of life (and except for the odd bush raccoon or possum, the only thing caught
by my traveling lights were the road’s dripping lines, coolly metering the nighttime’s
raiment with the brutal accord of intended torment); I was (absolutely) in no
rights to drive, but I jimmied a fix by contorting myself just upwards and
flush with the car roof’s containment, twisting my neck into scarecrow contortions
so not to relax, and thus then fall asleep; and when those long minutes of
twine weren’t enough, I’d imagine a me, several years from right then,
returning to home after somewhere abroad with a spritely trim and unseasoned
girlfriend, the type of dark woman who’d dye her strands pink, could dare to
pick fruit from some tree leaves to eat. I would have seduced her with straight
unintention, a stripling’s cuckold, and she, world-worn, and afraid of affiance,
would frighten to choke before stating her love, and would look at me skewed -
while on the way here - and would nervously wonder if I thought of love and of
what I did think of her not wearing shoes. And I, so attuned to her face and
her needs, would know this too well, and would know just alike that she
couldn’t detect what I felt about this, unless I declared, to which she’d
believe, a quivering trust purchased full with presents; and I’d never exploit
this angelic difference. (And one other feature: the air smelled strangely like
winds off salt water, and though I think Michigan harbors no sharks, I mulled
if strong breezes could carry from birth - just strictly in theory - to natural
ruth.)
I didn’t crash, luckily; drove a few lawns; and
I can’t say for certain, but I don’t really think I ever went above twenty.
I left the car swallowed in the woodland’s
enfold somewhere close to her home, and then walked to my own. I pushed the
door open, uncaring who heard (and as you’d expect, fittingly, no one did), and
stood in the front there a moment to breathe. I hadn’t been here in what seemed
like a while. And like the beginnings of a battered housewife’s justly
ritualized methods of devoted composure, I took off my shoes, stretched,
checked the mail - I walked, looked around - and I performed all these actions
as eating for health, with curtailed resistance and clicking my throat. I stood
in one place, rubbing toes on each end; I didn’t know why I had thought to come
here. The house seemed stained, unwashably so, dryly covered in soot; on the
couch, packed leaves sat neatly in piles, disheveled like guests unsure where
to put feet; I took a step closer: they blinked from my view. I went to the
kitchen, pulled out a firm glass, filled it topped up with water and drank the
whole thing, then filled it again to pour over my head (the shock of felt
rivers awoke me just slight - the hallway straightened; tin color resumed - but
nearly as quickly the edges returned, blurred, and frayed, with the outlines of
sight). I then went upstairs (ignoring my room; the asomatous itch to embrace
its flower was a difficult dressing to keep under wraps); the door to my
sponsors was open a crack, and I walked in (softly, pigeon-toed, loose) to see
them lying, their hands bundled under in unconscious cold, still an hour or two
before stirring to wake. The unseen sun had passed over a mete and incipient
day now crawled in to dilate, daubing in ballast a nice coma blue, that frozen
lake breath of a winter’s estrangement. I watched them sleep, these placid
porters; they looked then as bulls splayed upon a carpet, their chests and deep
cavities panting and shrunk, each minor cosmos oblivious to life. It gave the
impression of widening domes, a glass-bubble demesne of such compact torpidity
it deformed older molecules that floated inside, turning by wizardry oxygen ice,
and nitrogen a visible, lethargic dead gas. Kay shuddered, and twitched, while
Tom remained still. I couldn’t imagine them any time past (their engagement:
surely a formality in fate, purely written to life so I’d have a doorstop), and
it saddened me to think that whatever their choice, this - it all - is where
they would end; it was all such an empty dispiriting spectacle.
(It’s important to structure these unpurposed
thoughts; I’m about to do something that could seem as quite stupid, and I mean
to address where my mind was then at.) Anyways: I left, unfed, unslept, and
without checking Bryan (his presence, inert, I could still do without). I
walked out the door to see light crowning trees. It was - it appeared - the
ninth bearing day.
Resembling, to me, an appropriate action, I
walked to the park (belov’d Echo Point) and sat on the swings. I remember
kicking my feet in the air, and the stomach-sick jostling of dynamic movement. And
there were children near apartments out there that were playing a rough game of
ball tag, I think; a visceral war from the ashes of niche (or recess tomorrow),
though don’t take it lightly; this sport could draw tears. The ball was a
fistful, three ways deflated, and hurt when it hit (I could tell yards away).
There are ways to play this with points and systems, but the group I was
watching decided to go with the stark monogamy of it/not it, as I always did
(when I was their age). It allows for more strutting, flailing, falling,
showing your ass, some backpedal dance. I would always aim for a boy named
Luke, and he just for me, and we both only sometimes for Lucy in duty to
keeping the field unbiased, unsafe. The boys here surely had similar schemes,
while the few girls watched, and whispered, and thought, while invisible ones
joined me on the swings, and whispered themselves, while I thought of things
(images, really), and
[Last Little Question nails
and sweeps
and dusts
and scrubs to the pine a new buff
alit by the light of the morning
sunshine
then hunched by a tree from which
lathering boards will emerge from his working the wood till he’s sore
but pleasantly chored
and wiping and moving the bricks from
the mud
to score up the walls
support all the rooms
and taking the tatters and clearing the
spots that are presently carving the velvet that hang from the rows of the
memoried balcony’s stall. The day quickly leaves: the night’s an offense. And
back to the work our good Question
agains once the break of the morrow allows him the sight of the soon to be
finished high tower and den
an encouraging household and auspicious
nest for the bird (Where Things
bright blue
pursued) to match the paint job he has
given the plow
the leaves
the trees
and anything seen
to attract the love-lettered and
traveling thing.
A
description (a tour)
the colonnade here (where he washes the
stairs)
a
cinder ringlet and peripteral court that can bounce his fifing to a
whirling chirrup
cinnamon sprinkled said sorrel and trees
that ember the steps with their shadows
and leaves
and daily sun stream
it entries the atrium’s imported air:
the narthex
large
but humble
with tact (he’s taken the seats so the
people must stand
and broomed out the rats)
soft-olive green glinting beneath the
brown shade by the natural way the light slowly decays as it walks in black
robes from the front to inside
blistered blue egg-shells
yellow and red
and craft with few windows to shallow
the time. From here comes the ship
and main chief approach
its built like a cloister
partly outside
so All
That Is Good’s milky humor confides to the flagstone grey pathways
galleried vaults
clerestory skylights and lower arcades
by prompting
persuading
cajoling your ways into breath giving
strolls that lead over the route to the long march and aisle’s new tinted grown
chairs
that smell of the senses of coppice and
earth
and digging in dirt
and working in soil
and viand that’s made from dry water and
wheat (he sees a skunk ratter and lets it go free)
and being induced to the nice scenting
turn is as knowing the light switch to flick between three
by habit and substance you learn the
routine
to click just the middle for only the
fan
and not the bath light or a ‘nother
machine. From there it’s the shed and the sacristy door
from whence all his tools
his weapons for hunt
his bike
his bag
his books on the shelf
and when he is bare and laid nude to the
breeze he’ll occasionally think on the place’s import as perhaps equaling the
brick tower’s round apse
a gutted gamete hugely yellowing bud
with sparkling dust
the night never leaves
from the ripped gaping wooden ceiling
like grim teeth
and he wonders if All That Is Good would agree. He closes
the door. He thinks of the sea. They wouldn’t likely. He is
at most
at most once again
a spider
uncared
and the sadness that comforts a person’s
warm fear at the view of his legs scrambling under the stove. But last
centered
on raised bema stones
there roosts the dim altar surrounded by
seed and left clean and empty ‘cept the shelter that falls from the umbrage
that unders cold winded moon run
splashing its corners with firefly lights
dry afternoon slumber and burial’s sleep
and tired himself Little Question falls heaped
and slides his blue back to the walls’
reddened grooves
just picking his teeth
and drumming some spoons
and checking the sights of his musket
and sword. He condemns his ill thoughts
what jokes they are now. He’ll sit
ensconced
and await the big bird
and if not the big bird then the woman
from gold
and if not the woman then that All That Is Good will appear in the
chair that is carved from thick wood
that sits itself up on a top of willed
stone
all parcels and perches our Last Question made
all hoping that it will entice things explained
by their utter impression of tower and church
a makeup to symbol his long lasting
search
he catches a promise from eyeing its cage
and sits on the sill there to keep the
floor clean.]
by the filings of people and children at play,
or going to work (I could only assume), I’d been slowly shuffling Woodgrove Dr.
for an hour or so (and through the black woodlands of unmemory) and the stout, stodgy,
pedestrian make of the early commuters completely obscured what I wanted to do,
but somehow still knew the affectionless criers’ aesthetics opposed my unusual
stride, and knew in that place that does not disremember when moving from couch
to a purposeless room that my reasons for walking were charming, courageous,
and prudent (to point) for someone or something.
So I ceased my apparent deliberate shambling
and looked at the street. I had walked to the end of a one-way courtyard;
description came quick; I knew where I was. A brick mailbox; five lined maple
trees; a driveway chalkboard (her neighbor’s youngest was a sandstone
conductor); a cat’s collar necklace jangled a far bell, and I thought to
myself: this whole zone was hers. My body’d directed to Annabelle’s house, that
dull tawny siding, vaguely blue door, bright ochre and hose (wrapped tight to a
spindle with beetles and weed). Why had I come here? (To see her again.) What
would I think happen? (A happy embrace.) What would actually happen? (A graceless standoff.) Without much excuse,
anxious, and writhing, I knocked on her door. Since thinking her parents would
get to it first, I practiced my greeting so not to forget: Hi Mr. (or Mrs.)
Whatever Your Name Is; Annabelle in? I slapped my face (once, then twice, but
soft) to award me some color; I didn’t want to give a bad sixteenth impression.
When the door at last opened (but first: to a
crack– a faintly heard whisper from somewhere inside stimulated a snippy fast
flurry of words; I guessed it her sister), Annie was the one who was standing
behind. She quickly walked out (gently closing the door), and paced to an
ostensibly suitable distance in the center of her trippingly uneven lawn. She
turned here, finally, to give me the courtesy of letting me see her see me with
her eyes, uncovered (a shrug) from behind her long hair that fell back in a
spread to her shoulders and neck. She paused before speaking: “The Hell have
you been.”
I said I went home, had been home, in fact.
“Why,” she asked, and I said I was tired. She said “we” were worried, and I
asked who, specifically. “Sarah. Me. Isaac. Natalie.” (“Natalie?” “I talked to
her.”) I repeated that I had just gone to my house; she flicked my earlobe:
“And why didn’t you tell us? I called
a bunch of times and left like a bunch of messages.” (I suspected as much; I’d
intentionally not checked to avoid her missed calls, but then - by the light of
her face and some reason - I struggled to square why I thought this was wise.)
I lied, a little (“I didn’t see it.”); she
asked if I drove, and I acknowledged that yes, but it wasn’t that far, and I
think the confession turned something in her for she looked at her feet, and
shuffled, and moaned, a habitual gesture exclaiming bother. “We were just
really worried,” she said under puffs.
I repeated (as likely I said this but once) I
was sorry for this, and she didn’t respond, but then said something like, “Just
don’t run away,” or some other maxim (maybe, “Don’t run away without telling
someone.”) and I said alright, fine, I wouldn’t (or again), and asked - to
change topics - what happened since then.
She said that the party was boring but fine. A
card game took most of the people she knew; the beer was too warm; an older boy
tried to get her up to dance (“I refused,” disgusted); she said “goggled women”
got lots of attention (and I don’t really know if I trust this account, but -
impossibly, really - three separate young girls had milled-brass, green-eyed,
World War II-era specs, and “one had her hair like Bonita Granville,” though
she didn’t say Granville, but some other woman assuming the look); and for this
(and that hair) she then hated her dress. And when Megan went home and I didn’t
appear, she stood up for a while - in holes of blind rooms - pretending as if
she’d forgotten something, or would walk, headstrong, with fictitious designs,
like she must get to someone and tell them something, or she’d stare at her
phone, mutter under her breath, or pretend to eat cookies, or sit in small chairs.
And then - after this - walk frontwards to back, in through the rear yard,
where she realized that she was “surrounded by assholes.” Lots of throat
clearing. “It was like we were in a damn chimney, all the coughing.” And
spitting here, too. (And she admitted to me that she thought of their mothers; “What
they would all say if they saw them like this.”) Nothing was clean, and (most terrible)
lots of colloquies spun, encompassing zilch. And being enclosed by the ratted
buzzing all amounted ascent to a car alarm’s tone, a soft modulation she had
the stung pleasure of listening to for some hours on end, and only the few
spotted seconds of veering by subtle distraction from suchlike ado (or whatever
had happened to capture her mind) was she ever made deeply aware of its waves,
made known of the contracts she’d made with herself, of how to stand up, of how
to fake trip, of how to pretend to be stupid for guys, the soft-headed
trade-offs that authored her life. To hear many voices and not see their eyes
had such an effect (among a few others); “I went to the bathroom and promptly
threw up.” And I tried to think anything here to contribute but couldn’t get
past the incredible urge to just throw myself round her, a warming bear hug,
with its sexual meaning confined to fur coats, so out of bad pattern went back
to the game: I asked if she’d slept.
She said that yeah, she had, “a little. We got
back pretty late.” And the thought of her going to sleep was shocking; I can
say with sincerity to hear her declare it affected me as hearing she’d jumped
from a bridge; I did not cry - not there, not now - and what helped me evade
that embarrassing spell was the unreal sense I was speaking with death.
Divining, I think, my disturbance to this, she
raced with excuse: “We thought you had
quit. I thought you’d to bed– was sure that you did, if you were even alive and not drove off a cliff.” She
said that they’d tried to stay up for a while, to wait for my call, but I never
called back, so Isaac passed out and she must have right after. She narrowed
her eyes: “You haven’t slept yet?”
Like asking a bum if he had a good home. No,
(sputtering) I hadn’t slept yet! Could she not tell rightly from three feet
away that she spoke to the bark of a once healthy boy, his limbs rotting off,
his leaves turned to pulp? Could she not see the usually vivid and shine from
the green-and-gold lights that amended my eyes had replaced with a heavy,
parturient fill, a rain-lacquered growth that distorted her kind - and all the
townsfolk, and everyone else - to anonymous shade, as seeing each person
through key holes and masks, or through the black vines of a nylon stocking. She
laughed at all this; I shook with fresh cold; she rubbed both my arms; I
calmed, and said that I thought we could do the last day now together.
She continued rubbing: “Go home, go to sleep.”
I said we could do it.
“I already slept.”
I said it wouldn’t count.
“Won’t count? How’s that?”
I mimed an eraser, saying, again, “We wouldn’t–
you know– count it– is all,” and my delicate
speech got the briefest of smiles - like coaxing a squirrel from some leaf
enshrined tree - but she folded her arms scrunched tight to her chest and slowly
retreated backwards to her house. “No, that’s alright. I slept already, and– whoo,
lemmee tell you– it felt good. Go
home, go to sleep. And call me when you’re up.”
I grabbed the one elbow I saw in her folds; “Wait,”
and she stopped, wobbled, and tipped. “What,” she said; this dead-ending what.
I said to stay please, just stay out with me, and she cupped her warm hand to
my gruesome features (an untying heat); she shook her head no: “Dear, please, until you get sleep,
you’re a drunk, and not fun, and I don’t want to watch you.” She turned, started
walking. “No fun, nope-nope, no fun whatsoever.”
I said let’s get coffee.
“That really won’t help.” (She had now let the
mischief wheeze out of her voice; her patience, if not at its end, was close to
it.)
I asked her if Isaac was somewhere inside.
“Isaac? No. He’s probably home.”
He isn’t in there? On the couch? In her bed?
“No. He’s at home.”
And where did you leave him?
“At Sarah’s. Asleep.”
Compelled - and reaching for some sort of
peace - I asked what it’d take her to stay out with me; she said that nothing
could make her stay out.
And then I said something in withering ways -
a minor insult I can’t even recall - and she hurriedly walked with a strangely
defined, cutely-little-girl gait - beset (somewhat) by the abnormal slopes -
grabbing my collar (a frustrated pull); she dug out my zipper from under its
flap and quick-drew up the clasp to my chin like a child. “Go home, and to
bed.” Sharp words swiftly spoken.
With that - justly - I thought it complete,
and I said something like, “Alright, see you later,” (it’s important to get
this debacle in order), but before I had taken two steps from her lawn she ferociously
burst, as if my trite words were some horse leather crop for with which I had
lashed a concealed balloon; anger like water sprayed forth; she yelled: “You left me!”
I asked what she meant; she repeated herself;
I asked once again.
“You left
me at the party! (The rest of this now I can almost transcribe.) You begged
me and begged me to keep up with you– to Isaac and I– to keep this thing going,
and then, out of nowhere, you leave,
disappear! And you’ve been pulling this shit the entire whole time!” (I debated
her, briefly.) “Give me a break! At
the bar, you left, to like go take a piss, and then you were gone for like
three fucking hours! At the basketball courts– you left– again. (I don’t think I mentioned this part; no matter.) At the
concert you left– again– just gone– you missed the whole show. I would turn to
see you, to make sure you were there, to make sure I was safe, and you’re nowhere to find. You’re never right there! And
then at the house after screaming at me in the park for no reason, making me
feel like absolute shit– for no fucking reason– you leave, again,
just vanish completely. And I think that you’re dead. And that it’s my fault. Cause
I didn’t do something you thought I should do, or whatever the fuck is going on in your head.” (She was
wiping her eyes.) “And now– I should, what, stay out here with you? Are you
completely crazy?” (She sniffled a bit.) “You’re out of your mind.”
Utter nonsense, of course (this needn’t be
said; the very last party I’ll give to her, sure, but the rest is a skipper
blaming the marooned; she didn’t see me, and that isn’t my fault), these were
still vulgar words that were hurtful to hear, though more for the anguish that
uglied her face and the knowing she’d think to charge me with its spur. Confused,
as ever - and with nothing to really apologize for, at least not to her - I pointed
it out that it’s she who’d be leaving for ludicrous college, forever hereafter,
immortally (and so on), and it took her a moment to recognize what (and soon
without question) would be my concluding (yet still not quite there) final case
for a union that wasn’t exclusively chaptered with clay; she looked at me,
tempered, hands in her pockets, studying me from a slight elevation: “That’s
not the same thing, and I’m still here now, and you’re not gonna miss me as
much as you think.”
And the way that she spoke - so gingerly
laying a napkin to sides whilst sitting, imagined, in soft morning light -
pierced me as though I’d been shot by an arrow; I gushed, bleeding: “And what would
you say if I asked you out then,” and once this’d been said it could not be
crammed back - its ungainly pursuance was too large for that - and in the immediate
instants that followed, I saw, incognito (as envoy and witness to unripened nights–
my own, and the girl’s), the fast dissolution (through grisly exhibit) of a
once lovely and now just rhetorical friendship, and I could have - and would
have - seen tragedy in this if I still held clear hope for a map to my years,
but since it was now the ninth day of this joke that had run without tire
through all I had seen, I was able to squeeze the just tiniest pleasure from
knowing I’d interminably hold from henceforth the diminutive quirks that her
face would produce upon hearing what I had been forced to receive for the past
several months (the bugling horn of my fondness for her), a pleasure accorded
with thinking that she wasn’t looking at me at all anyway, really (but at her
own placement, reflected by eyes, some free months ago, when she was so different
and thought different things and sought prospects unknowing of where those
would land and just if they would place her tired in her yard, callously
estimating what had dispersed from that months molted girl, and what she would
miss from those same odds and ends, thrown away bents of discarded selfdom),
and a pleasure as quickly dashed off and away with the indifferent dispassion
of her unskilled approach: she solemnly took both her hands from her pockets
and stood, motionless, a bored adolescent, breathing cloud smoke or the milky
white flatus of frost off of trains, shadowed beneath the wide triangle slit of
her family’s poplared and slim overhung roof. “I would be disappointed,” she
said quietly.
“Disappointed in what?”
“Disappointed that that was what this about.”
“It’s not what this was about. Not all of it,
at least.”
“OK.”
I stopped; “And what would you say?”
She thought; “I would say no.” And then: “I don’t
know. I’d have to think about it.”
“Think about what.”
She looked down at the driveway. “Nothing,”
she said, and I, for one, believed her.
And with that settled, and her finished
speaking - not just on the subject at hand, mind you, but to me, in openness,
forever - she went back to her house and walked halfway inside before turning
to me for one final instruction: “Get some sleep,” and then shut herself in and
turned off the porch light.
(Up
until that point, and through the nine days, I had not realized I’d hidden
within me an ever-there present, intricate system of rivets, holes, subaqueous
grooves, escalatingly filled by a series of pins - densely cylindrical - that -
all together - created arrangements - pervasive valleys, troughs infinitesimal,
elaborate hills - in an overlaid matrix of locking blockades and a pinfolded
surety’s inveigled constraint. I was born with this bank vault, constructed
somewhere right and next to my heart, an enveloping work, and hard racing
rattles I’d sometimes ascribe to a mild arrhythmia was, in actuality, the
tight-fisted organ fluttering against its sepulcherous doors, shifting its
hinges and moving its parts, and uncomfortably pushing against my verges. And each
day I have lived and each act that’s transpired has fashioned the notches of tiny
held keys, gripped, in blood, and equally stead, sanding their edges to tunings
unseen, a slowly performed existential provision, molded in practice both
painful and scheduled. I cannot say whether her closed sturdy door - so easily
meshed with the one from my room - was the final scrub needed to finish the
pass; possibly it was the low lilt found in her voice, or the beam’s fast
extinguish, that banishment porch-shadowed shut of the light; perhaps - most
likely - ‘twas all of them, tandemed, a suitably detailed concluding sequence.
Regardless of what was precisely the crest, the keys were complete, and they clicked
into place with such natural spite that I knew - instantly - the expanse of its
merit, this atomic fine dot of single-minded intent. Animused; animaled;
whatever I was - praise be to thine God - I knew of its use.) I got off the bus
at Brookridge, 83rd, though I couldn’t remember my jaunt to the stop,
or how long I had ridden. I knew it was still the ninth day (if mattered) and,
by the sun’s placement, I guessed it was four. (I also could guess that I
hadn’t slept yet, as I remembered my trip in the coming like pictures fell off
of a counter and onto the floor, out-splayed in mercurial, graceless order.) I
looked at the lot; I was at Storehouse; so, you know, I guess, good enough.
Storehouse is (if you’ve never been there) a
monstrously ugly furniture supply and home improvement center (they would say super), offered to browse any hour of
day, just on the off chance you’ll wake up in the night at some terrible hour,
conducted to squall by a marital flash that propels you to purchase a seventy
inch, so beautifully mirrored, pine-wood triptych to fastidiously praise your
set bedroom appoints. To its east entrance, hickory farms, cut perches of
trunks, from which we would sit, clamored, like squirrels, and titter ourselves
with its trophied excess. We’d laugh, thinking the wives of this town would
fall out of their beds and snatch up their red slippers to race here and buy
the most perfect vacuum; stood there in the lot, I was not laughing then. I’d
been hit with a bolt’s inspiration myself, and where did that once in a
lifetime voyage, this burnt tree epiphany send me, for true, with all the
king’s boxes in all of the fields, and all of the churches in Mayberry? To
Storehouse, of course. What wonders will cease.
The item I needed required some weight but could
not be so heavy it couldn’t be swung, or at least not lifted and handled with
ease. A baseball bat would be perfect, for sure; didn’t I own one already -
metallic - at home? My previous dealings arose to my mind: I had spent the late
morning in our busy garage, hunting, digging, but finding few goods of a
practical kind; Kay was a donator, frequent space maker (a room wasn’t pretty
unless it was bare), and quick to disperse things divested of use. Amidst the
garbage there were even less tools; a hammer here, a screwdriver there; Tom was
never much of an able fixer.
The automatic doors shuddered open themselves;
flags unfurled; petals were thrown; I was not in my home but behind
battlefronts, and by the black arts or some strain of charisma I would not -
could not - be seen by their aims, no matter how much I would shout or would
scream, I’d be a rogue spook, unlooked, and missed. The customers stalked the mid-afternoon
staff, spirits skinny and nervous, no older than I, but they shadowed as kids
(like shade rolling from the display and end boards), just barely children
(with same acumens). No, I was mistaken; I was much older; grown, could be
said, at least when compared.
I carried on, quietly glum, down the hall, to
the first brightened section of shopping and lights: the linens and trimmings
of modern bathrooms. A bathroom is honest (he says to himself), and I bristled
at the store’s vain attempts to trump it, to cleanly and falsely garnish them
from use; peach-petaled wash-towels, mold plastic flora, rugs, mod. The
highlights hummed with a hospital blanche, embroidering tile to such sharpening
sand. (To describe, a bit: the clerks had been ordered to layout each item in
pleasing arrays within prosected walls to properly and favorably - and happily
- explain theoretically how’d they appear in your home; each notional block had
a bath unique to it, along with a sink, shower, and finish, and the gauche
paintings’ requisite faking of taste.) The toilets don’t work - not that I
tried - and it all smelled of some sort of chemical tang, so I hurried through
them to a pretty lamp forest, sprung, it seemed, from a story book sketch. It
was grandfatherly, really (as corduroy luggage), suggestive of lake stones and
long-winded weeds, and, for a second, I was thankful for the management’s
teachings of setting; it didn’t last long, as I quickly then noticed the
store’s ceiling lights had been turned to exacerbate gossamer glows of the
lamps’ countenance– there was, in fact, very little finesse to the artistry
here: they were just lined up, one after the other - out-facing to show the
small tag with their price - till reaching the end and beginning anew. (I
walked down the rows; they each met my height, and with anything that vaguely
resembles a figure, I’m loyally prescribed to errand them outlooked: so the
brown one was stiff, the brass one snooty, the grey church-going and the wood
perspired.) And the watchfully inlaid grain of their posts, so drawn and
painted with prissy glamour, was opposed, comically, by their flaccidly
dangling electrical cords, required, of course, so they’d function at all, but
still desperately hidden behind their steadfasts– their wrought and inflexible
filemot legs. (I thought, briefly, of picking one up, but it’d be so awkward to
really use it; and yet, the thought of the store’s stock bulb just magically
exploding in star dust and sun when I bashed the rod in was enough to consider
its use with some pause. I lifted one up; too cumbersome, truly. I went on
ahead and kept looking throughout.)
A series of squared declarations came next
that you moved through in tight, overlapping formations: office furniture. I
sat at an oak desk and opened its drawers; empty, except for the artisan’s name
that was printed or stamped on the innermost panel. Was nothing in the store
being actively used? I was suddenly saddened by the concept of models, emblems
unlivened of practical worth but except for their pointing to side jalousie,
where - unfairly concealed - twin actuals lie; did these open-aired not have due
meaning also? They were touched - at
the least - more than the claimed ‘real’ items. It seemed immoral (as
everything did); I wanted to fill the empty desk with pencils, a school bag’s
weight in notebooks, tools, if only to give it the proper appearance. I stood
up and looked down halls to more (evermore, evermore) samples and stands (and
pictured myself, slightly older, among them, working a compartment much like
the exhibits, and happy to know that would never be me; I would never have the
appreciable knowledge of men to relate to their pens of some mild event, like a
prisoner so used to the feel of bars that he cannot tell exactly when he has
been freed), and shut the desk drawer and started on up the stairs. (On the
walls on the way they had put up photos, enormously published, on very thick
boards, depicting families eating breakfast or dinner on supplied furniture
they had bought at the store. They were so huge, in fact, so vast, that my
first leaping thought was to try and imagine what earthly machine could have
printed them up, and a predictably imposing medieval catastrophe sprung - or
scaled - from colors of mind, erected from stone by blind masons in caves, and
sounding as bombs when prints rolled from its hold. I was small by them - the
size of just the grim father’s large
head was enough to equal my body entire - and made scared by their powerful, unbending
joy. Their tales - if you trailed, a story was told - of a typical day, some sordid
details, most fanciful trips, of suns always out, and nights without clouds,
and the children, in comfort, sleeping without dread. I wondered who’d walked
in my footsteps had looked and then thought to themselves, ‘I know what that’s
like.’ Who in that stairwell had been so content. Who had not trembled, and
shied from the sight. I felt oddly released when leaving the last steps, and
turned from the rim, away from the giants’ dishonest days spent.)
Then textiles; blocks of dyed fabric, from
struts; the walls painted black to accentuate tones; the absence of light
turned the hued cavalcade to an ashen rancor I do not really think matched the planners’
intent. The living room sets were bright wellsprings grown up from the floor
and dark wood under spotlighted screens. It was formidable, this dizzying array
of options, distracting, distancing, justly, in number, and I resisted sitting
on one of the couches (bladders superior, swollen, and red), insisting I keep, set
still, opposed (though sick, certainly, and forced to, at times, crouch
stressed over tables, cracking my back to let pitches of tension hiss-white,
and whine, through knots of bad faith). The glass suffered clouds (the all-seeing
roof), and the standard absurdity of this big room just quartered asunder my
focus to rugs, then fiber outlays, then curtains, and beams. Free association
had bribed me of purpose: I apparently could no longer live in the moment, and
the echoes of items that bounced off my vision back through my inspection and
thoughts to prospect, wretched, and crashed to a noisy racket, within which
intelligence couldn’t strengthen. With no one to help me, I laughed, and fell
(it was gruesome to be rearranged in this manner), and crawled down the hall,
wondering, aloud, just where in the Hell the damn power tools were (a brick saw
would work, but, no; all that cutting).
After a minute to rally my ways, I rose - wallowed
and dead - up past a young couple (who gracefully pretended to slight my
stumbling), and continued through rooms, rubbing my hands up and down the long walls
like a dazed, and lost, and mused buttercup, until I came round a partition and
into the recognized pitch of bedrooms and thus sleep, demurely lit, blue-forest
sea-green, patches of patchings of brown and soft grey, quilts and stockings (most
every which way). Mirrors and shoe cabinets settled aside. And down the thin
middle, running the corridor like a current, some pinhole fallows - dying
fairies - so sensitively lit the long aisle of beds, a row of soft breathing,
piled and tucked, and dreamily napping huge hippopotamuses; and except for
these lights finely etching bed roads, it was black, and warm, and empty of
glow. This was the first room of my journey abandoned. The only one there,
alone, you see; alone, without noise, and without those dull targets of carp and
hatred (the stupid and willing and chattering groups), its quiet surroundings
exhausted my fogs, my long dragging feet, like visible islands seen after a
swim there jotting the scope of the ocean’s break fall (I am sure, now, any meditative power this place may have
held would just only be felt by the tired sheep-headed; it was - factually -
just a dark empty space). These were beds; real
beds (in fake rooms, if I cared), and the watery bloom of its span and its
pledge now expanded the basin I’d been until then just shoveling mounds of this
argonautic faith upon which I’d create a huge house of calling; it was once
almost filled (I’d bought all the boards) and now it was not; I had suddenly
lost the whole damnable point of just why I had come here, and what I had thought.
Oh: I still knew, of course, my big
plot. I still saw the door of its entry right there, just over the lake, and
through the room’s mist. But the boat I was taking had sprung a fresh leak. And
I sat on one bed, too tired to move. And no one else ever came into the room.
(Before I conclude with my time spent asleep,
I’ll finish with daylighted hours and facts: I would later awake in a pile of beasts
- stuffed, and hugged - on the third mezzanine, agreeably bounded by fences’
white hedge. I didn’t hurt someone, and don’t plan to, as the feeling to do so
dissolved while at rest, and only found there - in the drop of my tank - was a
minuscule morsel of power and heed, not really as healthful as abject learning
- true, or else - but of normal, accepted, expected fervor, that inborn
material and natural energy you pay when just waking to start the fresh day,
and eat the same meals, and bear new experience. I’d slept, plainly put, and
that - as they say - was then that, just this, and the end of my telling and what
I have left. I hope this can answer your questions, I do: I do not know why fathers
perform as they do, or why mine - specifically - did what he did; I only once thought
that I knew why I would, and that thinking, in truth, hasn’t left me complete,
and it feels admittedly more a clear part of just who I am more than potential
can say, but the urge to commit to that door over lake always has its boat sunk
by my searches asleep. I cannot remember them; rarely, at least; but if things
were so easily said then we’d talk, and leave the statues to agrarian sorts.)
(And one other thing, I promise,
then doze: Annabelle eventually went to that school, and Isaac I still see in
town now and then. And the last time I saw him, after we talked, he turned, and
left, and in his turn came a kind of jangling adjustment, a slight change in
tone from the mercies of meet to a soft gathering of more little occurrences
leading to futures of some different life, and I was now in some bookstore or
keep, so near the nice college I’ll never attend, speaking, with buoyance, to
two allied girls with whom naturally I’ll never have the chance to convene, but
could have, maybe, if things had been changed, and these girls - adorned, with
slogans and scarves - it must have been winter; their apple-top cheeks will
attest to this guess - spoke loud with delight like some candid adults, and I
gave them no hints of nostalgia for things, and especially not for this
discarded town, and not for my parents, who waited in normalcy’s soft pawing balance
like anyone else for my coming calls home; and all the girls knew of me laid in
this place; I was - to them - an entire new person.)
[There has never been
an upstairs bathroom here
appointed between the two living
bedrooms
one
for the child
and one
for his folks
a shortening curve past the hallways and
learns
and so
without this presumption to clear
the new morning light of the sunrise’s
stain can just brush wicker baskets and surface and grain of that congruous
throne in this gardening home
downstairs
instead
and not where besides its inhabitants’
sleep
you’ll very well think
nearby some white sinks
but instead with the fruit of the
animals’ trench
with pipes
and hose (wash off any stench)
and the sunnying morn of this nautical
dawn without any upstairs to fill upwards at all can just curtain the shadows
from cupboards with warmth
that cesious heat of the recently cold
still sleepy to touch
like freshly fell snow
or after its melted from foggy windows
and after the light is then done with
the bowls
it slinks
really
can only just slink
and cover the walls and the floor and
the rugs of the delicate felt of their various rooms
and hushed undertones of the menacing
crow
just waiting
to crack
from the rooster’s pink throat
and after massaging its sleepers to
growth
it molts
and fills
and swells to explode
just finally reaching past lonely old
hills to now splinter the quarters
groaned
chilled
that grasping of blankets so shines are
distilled.
The Very Small, Vanishing, Transient Knowledge and
Crystallization of Death’s Certitude
is struck right in the eye by a piece of this light
that shuffles him wake with the
unhurried day
just worming to life with the blue and
blue jays. The curtains are fluttered with each tired wind. He doesn’t yet move
and stretches
yawns
and rolls over sideways to keep to
within the feeling of his sheets
and crinkles his feet
and he listens
for moments
for sounds of the cars
and people inside wearily to far yards
or their fields of work
though doesn’t consider their aching and
scars but instead merely muses their scenic locus define-ing
in his mind
the pathway to school (his footsteps
abbreviate strangers to forms)
for which there today
he’s in a big play
for which he was forcefully made to
engage
by his teachers and parents and promise
of grades
though he’d really prefer to not
participate. His father’s already at work
he knows
but where his dad goes
he can’t truly say. May-be to the fields
himself
with a rake
or may-be to a vast but interior space
a mill watchet paste
pained steel and stairs and a factory
floor that he stalks a colleague with an engineer’s ease for the heavy machines
exhausting a sheer trestle of noise and dischord
a gangplanking bore
that favored his ears more as peace than
before
especially more than the times he rings
home
to hear that his son had apparently
wronged some indefinite chap
whose name he’d just heard
but may well as be an incipient word
but whom his young son had apparently
fought and of whom he had beaten to serious scrap and for whom he’d been kicked
from the school for the day
and all of these items would roll to a
ball that would clink through his father’s system in a way to be just as
routine as machines and their cries
and now
by the song that he hears on the phone
from the mother’s singing that his son
has been wronged
he’s forced to then go the school before
long
and meet the chap’s parents
fix this whole thing. And Death is embarrassed by his father’s
eyes
by which this event only flutters on by
like a trivial nothing provoking from time
like curtains that fluttered the day to
a spoil
or something else flitting he’d more
interest in
like watching the ducks in the pond have
their way
and splash about in
and flicker
and swim.
Death
walks less arrect than a minister’s lad
sleeped still
and dumb
(he is
to portray
still not yet a man
but more than a child
and feelings crossroad when he ponders
his path
his level of faith in this finicky
church
and just what the priests know of which
he hasn’t heard. . .)
and stumbling blinking armed half-ways
in sleeves through the short thoroughfare
ployed timeliness hung
framed sculleried friends and fam-lee
(old and young) wrist-watch him like hawks every day to his seat
where he sits himself down and
breakfasts in small peace. He talks of his dreams (typically
at least)
but last night was as bare as his
memory’s care taking infants of lessons to cradles upstairs
mis-stepping the carpets and breaking
their necks. His mother says something to him about school
probably to recall his book-bag and his
tools
and to write all his comments in history
class for the test is tomorrow
and is open-note
so excuses this time will not be so
condoned. He nods
solemnly
but continues to pullulate thoughts of
the play as his wishes to speed right on past this whole day to when after his
acting is finished and done
if you’d even call what he’s to do in it
that
its limited act
and rather simple
he’s a man
in the scene
apprehended barely
with a single line spoke
to the lead actress ‘Wife’ subsequent to
the train ride she’s taken before (he can’t collect fully the plot to this
thing as he’d skipped all rehearsals intentionally so it wasn’t so fat in his
brain and scary)
and his mother
he thinks
can detect this refrain for she packed
in his pail some bits of candy
which is rarely the case
usually it’s just veggies and crops from
the spring
but this kindness was caught only after
he’d left
and was already deep in the woods on his
route to his school and school-day
so he couldn’t have said
‘Thank you Mother for this
I appreciate it'
though he doubtlessly wouldn’t have any
which way.
The
time in the school is a ponderous drag (it commonly is)
and compounding the dreariness tarpauling
it he’s now seemed to forget just how sequences work
and it takes him some minutes to open
his lock to his locker to get all his stupid quartos
to add to his woe
and called to the board in Biology late
he is sure he screwed up the bright mushroom’s decay
but lo
the day always has an upswing
his seat in Language is positioned
behind (and bits to the sides) a girl of his age
viridian skinned
barn owl-brown haired
who always wears dresses with studious
care for exploiting its trimmings’ declaring her legs
and how to cut showcasing slants near
risqué
without the stark effort the other girls
sweat with their ugly off colors and voices that craze
this one that has caught his attention
has class
moreso than that world
unlikely’s to even know what she conveys
so peasant
so native
she is in these ways. They pass by each
other quite often in halls
and sometimes he’ll even see her in the
town
still in the same gown she had been in
that day
but luckiest yet is when weekends are
spied
and who she is with
and what she has on
like witnessing genuine moments belonged
to her outside of school and the troposphere there where they’re all grossly
fettered to coachings and snares.
That
night is the play: it goes as it does
as well as expected from students
uncared
and Death
is as fine as the other boys are
he speaks his line loudly to sure it is
heard
the teachers are happy
at least
with its fare
and when his name’s listed with all of
the rest
his father
well-dressed
our Last
Little Question Surrendered To Sleep
stands up and applauds
along with his mom
both seeming impressed that he didn’t
fall down
so little they carried suspense for
success. (And for a brief second he checks for the girl
to see what effect his performance may
prick
while knowing it’s silly to even test it
and its imprudence proves by the scene
of her gone
run off’ed
already
to ever is home.) They all see the boy Death’d briefly imposed (quick shaking
of hands
each leaves on their own). And after the
food on the tables are downed
they pack in their car
and leave from the show
to go to their house in the hills with
the cows.
A
dip in the temperature heralds a shift
as lightly a change as a pull of some
thread
untying the floor from a tapestry’s leak
it seems to pull also a knot to a box
that his father has carted within it a speech (the son is thinking)
his father takes out for a sit and a
talk
to rest on the porch
and smoke on his pipe
and speak as men do on life’s
difficulties
while gazing
on purpose
at sunsetted trees. His mother stays in
with her washing and clothes
mindful of the father’s attempts to
connect to the boy while away from her constant presence
though plainly it’s not her error he’s
at work
most of the long day
allowing
measured
Death’s
shining to her
less so with his dad
diverging
of two
the stranger that homes only when it is
due
and can’t hear his problems and
questions from school. But now that the weekend is nearing its start
and time is confessed
the men will lay out on the deck in wood
chairs
and the father will finally hear what’s
suspected the boy has been telling his mother for years
while leaving the dad all alone
unfaired. And the talk
surprising to both of them here
flows openly outward of any rock’s hitch
permissibly aided by Death’s clutching to his peeped secrets
of note
like verdigris girls
in dresses
and twirls
and how their shapes treat him when just
by himself. His father
contrary
keeps no closet closed. And Death is eventually poked to impose
and asks
harmlessly
what jobs he once held
to which his dad says
just after a puff
that he hunted big birds for their
feathers and stuff.
A
hunter? Death thinks
and he quit that for what? To drive with
the rest to some awful car park
and toil in a foundry or other workshop?
And the questions spill from him as like a tipped jar
just why did he stop such a cool
sounding job? And the father
enchanted
looks just slightly drained: ‘It’s hard
really
to try to explain
but I think it’s a few things that
happened at once. I’d built a big trap
for one
the last
out of slight desperation
I guess
for the catch
as I’d had no luck till then at all with
the hunt. So I thought I’d change tactics and see how that went.
‘So
I built a big church
a tower
and nest
to try and convince it to come for a
rest
at which point I’d shoot it with arrows
I guess
but months ran on past
it never came through. But I still had
some hope
I think
for the task
so I slept there most evenings
ate what I could
and bided my time watching starscapes
unfold
and the wood’s temperament be
transformed by the world. The church and big tower fell in disrepair. And I
think it was during this time that I lost what little I’d left in my feelings
of faith. It was hard then to see any exigent point to that whole rotten place
the wind and the rain and the animals
came and ate up all my patches
pissed on my stones
and used everything as just one of their
own and the flourishing provinces sponged up my home with the natural crumbling
of climates and change. And I kept right on aging
dead by the day. My food running out
I thought of leaving
but stupidly still planned to go on the
road
take after the bird
find out where it stayed. And let me
tell you: it’s hard to retire
especially if it’s your only job known.
I’d never tried thinking to do something else. What else would I do? Lay out on
the beach? Play horseshoes
sleep? It seemed juvenile. But soon
after that
before I could leave
and really
I think
one day before last
a man came around looking for some bed
rest
was painted like me
a hunter
I knew
search-ing for big birds for the men in
the clouds
and so
as you do
an affinity grew
and we traded our stories of seeking and
doubt
of which
I surprised to find out he had none. His
name was awkward
not really a quest
The
(Softest) Mere Rhythm
or something like that
and the more that he talked of the birds
he had bagged just the more I was made to be creeped out by it. Some people
just rub you the wrong way
you know? And he was like that. Like
rumors of Millson and all of his cats. (Death
gives this a laugh.) And he told me these stories of things he had killed
and it gave the impression it wasn’t
just birds. He stayed for an hour or two
and then left
and I saddened to think I was kind of
like him
not in the distinct
but still
close enough that he felt it was safe to
come sit by the fire
and tell me these tales
and share with me drink
and not even take a lone moment to think
that I’d maybe not want to listen to this stuff
he thought me so one of his brothers in
hunt. And anyone walking on by without mind
would think we were brothers
so tightly we spun from the same
pasturage
same serviced
and dyed
and same stolid outlook of how to spend
time.
‘And
the last thing that pushed me to quit from that job was this big crazy
nightmare I had the same night. Well
act’lly’t wasn’t a nightmare
really
but a sort of big dream
with parts unnerving
but this dream
as retained
played beautiful days
starting out with me riding this bike I
once had
horse-trained
and black
down merry-gold paths
wondering
what-when
and just how exactly
I’d arrived (for now) and the times
that’d brought me
to this gentian field
with blooming poppies
with a wonderful method to catch this
blue bird
that infernal creation that tormented me
with its very protuberances of humming thought
strong waves of its feathers
constructing storm clouds
so beautiful
yes
don’t let that deceive: its heart is dug
gold from an ore’s poverty. But
all of that: useless as hair on a slog
since I knew I would soon be obtaining
the thing as I reached the front gate of this office complex
a pile ascendant in fences collect
architected plain gray
and appearing as being a film studio but
combined in some way with a barracks of sort
its hard to detail
military ideals
a mildly imposing or ziggurat rising
upsworn and looping and green scenery lounging with trees
a far lake
white boxes of bluffs
providing some shade for the jeeps and
training. Men
fatigued
ran circles or swam
or would suddenly stop and shoot rifles
at points
and along the grassed sides of the roads
were more lights
or signs that directed to where cameras
go
or where all the gadgets for filming
were stowed. It makes no sense here to recount it like this
but it all seemed a matter of grave
consequence. Anyhow: I rode my bike up to the front but could not help but
think this no place for the bird: and still my mind squealed with a childish
light
the bird was inside
I could feel it
here
and I stopped at the first windowed
cubicle there and knocked on the screen door
even though I could simply have ridden
on through (its guard was so lax
but I’d follow the rules). The screen
opened up
a watch
half asleep
mumbled something at me about
soliciting: ‘Are you just visiting?'
is I think what he asked
and I thought about lying
for seconds
briefly
but thought if its not necessary than no
I’d tell the plain truth: I was. ‘Uh huh'
and the uniformed man handed me a
placard: ‘Sign here'
he said
and I did: Question. ‘What’s the date?'
I asked. I didn’t need that
‘Or the time'
he said
and then looked so disturbed at the
‘Purpose of’ line
as
Purpose
of Visit. ‘I just have to use the bathroom'
I exclaimed
and the plump feeble man pulled the
sheet back and gruffed
‘Just go straight ahead to the first
building there. It’ll be down the hall
third door on the left'
Step one: gain entry
accomplished enough. So I cheerfully
rode my black bike down the hill
caressed by the wind
the highlanded slope clearing colors to
tread
a determined new man
constructed for use. And
for a while
past all of the trainees’ live wires and
work
past grey suited duties and strange
little quirks
I came to the largest building I could
find
a pale blue giant of surgical glass
enticing
for sure
and
unlike the hovels
clear of all marks
with nothing to harp for its holdings or
harks. The trees became dark: I knew I was here
so I parked my bike at the adjoining
respite
heaving it in a ditch when the thing
wouldn’t fit
and entered the space with a
breathtaking wit: if I was caught snooping
as I’d wont to be
I’d cling to the topic of bladder
release
but
after the first
then two looks down hall
to the variously carpeted long corridors
cemented blue walls
and racketed doors
I decided to not even think of excuse
and to focus
wholesale
on the ultimate task: just Where Do Things Go When They Round A Long Bend
so near to me then I could feel it
scratch
its short reddened claws
on foot bearing plats
as a migraine unresting reflective
embers
or so it did sense through the dream’s
remembrance
for which
so loyal to opposite ends
I wouldn’t insult it by lying about
and certainly not to these dull office
monks. Their very existence affronted me so
and I cannot de-tail why that’d be the
case now
just something about how they trained
for no-thing
I didn’t see anything of them in me. Now
of course
it’s silly to think
but I’ll give an instance: the building
at one point e-volved a bath house
it seemed logical
at the time
witnessed
with all of its steam for the showered
cadets
an easy adjust
and I strolled right on through the so
casual swarm
disrobing and drying their shirts and
their pants. They summered
and sprawled
I thought it fruitless: what need do
they have for these vital contours
these muscled bodies? They have no great
call
like me
nor plan. And they chattered inanely
about their weekends. Do they know of the bird they unknowingly hold? I guessed
that they didn’t
by that question’s fold
and cursing their names under all of my
breath
one boy approached me
and I mannered just slyly his tuliped
torpor. ‘Hi
are you new?'
he asked without brains. What lazy
comfort. I met his two eyes: ‘No no I’m not new. I’m not really here'
I thought of a cause. ‘I’m just auditing'
Another uprose from his bench
quite nude. ‘Oh cool'
he said
‘What programs are you?'
‘Uh
the um'
I flustered to think
‘You know
the uh
the one
the main
one'
They took this as truth: ‘OK
right on'
‘We’re all really new'
another one said
giving gestures behind him to the
nakedness. ‘But
ya know
so far its been nice'
and they all talked at length on the
obstacle course
the long hour loads. One even put hands
on my shoulders and yawned
‘Just come by the clubhouse tonight and
we’ll talk. We can tell you what sergeants to try and avoid'
‘What classes to take'
‘And what to skip out'
(I remember them jumping at times in the
air
like rabbits
or puppies
and flopping their hair.) The first cadet
smiled
‘Yeah right
so
tonight?'
They all were admittedly really quite
nice
but I let the words faze from his spoken
invite
and slowly depart like a crossing train
light. ‘I just have to use the bathroom'
I said. The cadet laughed a bit
‘Oh!
Sorry
it’s there
third door on the left. The woman’s the
right. Don’t think you want that!'
he smirked again here
and
with all that said
those awful jokes had
their laughter paraded me from their
intrudes
like forced to awaken by service from
bed
but still in this dream
confined
instead. And so
I snooped
and looked through odd rooms
and opened their lockers
kicked out their brooms
explored the white gym
the freezer besides
and on and still on I went seeking my
prize
while wearing my feet to a tramp soggy
mush
till finally mercy’d I went down some
pipes
long thistled alleys
and with a rot scavenge of aqueducts
straining directing me to a last bottoming stair
reared out to door sides
from which I befriended a space of such
size
a miraculous miracled circular reach
edged to a black ring
harsh-flickered by insecting hospital
lights
and in the right center so clear by my
eyes stood a red sided curtain hung from fishing line
tan clothing pin tied
hung delicate off from the thin wire’s
lithe
and squarely assembled a beautiful
shower through which no one’s water will ever come spray. And shorn of this
curtain
erotic
in shade
clucked the shadowy form of the bird in
its home
nothing
as yet
but a black silhouette
just weaving
and pomp
and fluff
offset
its movements’ scenarios closing regrets
for just what I had done to get to this moment. The bird sang a tune
its bawl shook the walls
loudly screeching a continent’s verse in
its shawl
still clearly oblivious to my enthrall
but my heart would crash through if it
hadn’t prepared for the sounds of the beast in its natural state. I’d dreamed
of this day (and this was still a
dream
and yet
any knowledge of that had been left with
the thoughts of my sword extracted from its flask that presented to me like a
flower to pick
its gold petaled leave
and slightly the sounds this cutlass’d
bouncing round made me fear that this noise would alert the huge bird. I ever
so slowly pulled it to my hand. . .)
and whispered some words to keep lean
and keep squat
legs up to my chin to avoid giving shade
and forewarning the creature to my sleeping gait
but still
I felt that just nothing could stop what
was going to happen in seconds to this craven monster of wonder inside its thin
keep
and as I dragged fully the sword from
its pelt
to carve through its meat
and as I moved feet to pull open the
sheer and pa-tent-ly behold the blue bird and its fear
cherried
and utter
disaster
was struck: a tocsin
a bell
red faced and from Hell
kablooeyed the room with this hollering
squeal: the curtain replaced with new steel and gird
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! went the locks
on the walls
and the bird
newly lost
ebbed hind the mass wrought
muddled
its figure blanked gone and untouched. I
whirled
enraged
to see what was what
just why had the room been turned into
this bluff
why had the blue bird been allowed to
escape by these unnoticed forces with horrible taste for a narrative’s natural
place to conclude
but then
as quick
I too
overrun
by mechanical tinkering’s hidden schema
uplifted my feet up and over my head
and whisked me outside through a hole in
the wall
transported
to fields
and huge yellow sun. I fell in a plop to
a yard of blue dirt
and by the dream’s reason the place had
transferred to a wide competition of some bizarre sort
as muscle cars loaded with turrets and
nets roared these welcoming wagons of manic horse sense
just smashing through billets with
charged insistence
and otherwise shocking the grounds with
event. Monster trucks gleefully blasted music from these ludicrous loud
speakers’ sonic nonsense
universally driven by women it seemed
in footballing armor
cat-bones
rings
soccered
with plates
hued orange to green
and rolling their metal shit boxes and
tanks over boxes of mail and some other odd things. The cadets ran blaring from
baths and class-es
just flinging themselves over castled
fountains
and running in terror from this awful
scene
and one near-collided with me by a bush
in clumsiness
flailed
and pulled me behind
fall-ing to his knees
and shushing me
smiled: ‘Oh
man!’ he sunk
‘You’re the auditor
right?'
And to my dismay
I see it’s the boy I’d encountered in
steam
earth worked
whimsied
and I
so seethed
barely holding in screams
‘Tell me
right now
what’s happening here
and why the bird left
and why they are scared'
‘Scared?'
he laughed
always with a laugh
‘No
they’re not scared! It’s an exercise
man
the biggest we have'
and I
obsessed
looked up to the bash
and saw through the mustard and smog the
degrees just to which the destruction and panic was spread: no blood had been
spilt
the piloted weapons were largely for
show
ray guns
and snares
and bacillus web
with explosion-sent bodies still living
in throws
by flying not limbs
it was kind of a circussing bedlamed
fool’s gold. To watch it afar was to think it’s a war
it wasn’t a war
and instead’d a sport
with the screaming hem-lined with the
sound of dumb mirth. I looked at the boy: ‘This is just a game?’ ‘Uh huh
for fun
and it lasts the whole day.’ ‘It lasts the whole day?!’ I grabbed his
shirt sleeve and restrained from his slay: ‘Just where is the bird?! Where has
the thing gone?! I’ve hunted it
tracked it
searched for so long! How long does this
exercise keep it all changed?'
And the boy
hands over his ears from the noise
just laughed in my face: ‘I don’t really
know what you’re talking about!'
I somehow resisted rip-ping his tongue
out
instead simply pointed sharp-ly at the
pen
and with this big action and questions
in haste
it came to me busted
packaged dreamscaped
a doctrine determined from rules of this
life
now authored by images thought to
surmise
or terrible rides
from unconscious mind
that poured out adventures while I was
asleep
still in the big church
by towers
and nest
still gripping my musket in uncertain
rest. The bird had flown off to the town
where lived
where it’d always lived
I suddenly knew
as though I had simply forgotten this
note
as if I had not seen it just in its cage
as if any nuance could come from this
claim
and I dropped the boy back who fell into
the soup of the beige blasting teetering clouds of clod dirt
lungfuls of this blanketing swirling
sand dunes. ‘You keep on the move'
he said
scamming off
‘They catch you they make you stay in
the office and miss all of the fun
so keep on the run!'
and this
at last
was real advice
for I couldn’t ignore the effects of the
strife and just how it’d affect my perpetual hunt. If caught I’d be waylaid the
rest of the day. And this
of course
I couldn’t permit
not being this close
so I stopped and took stock of these
crazy patrols: missiles were flying and blowing up cars while the riders pulled
donuts in grayed parking lots. They hoisted their ‘dead'
tore down all their flags
and wiped their bare asses with cereal
bags. I couldn’t afford to be caught by the chase
for any time lost was enough for the
bird to just find a new place
one less than insane
I peeped over logs at the carnage
displayed
the town I thought of
outside of the game
if only I knew of a pathway around. (And
while I was thinking of steps out of bounds
a small
and paired
and offensively dressed motorcycle
squadron shuttered up to my rear
making noises at me
‘Please reach for the skies'
and pointing directly at my dippy head
with an ailed shotgun
outfitted with nets. My awful
persistence at being astonished by this stupid farce’s ridiculousness had by
then grown a headache the size of an egg
and poking it cracked was this beautiful
maid
stick-thin
and weak
by any purport
she willingly shed herself of any threat
perhaps too accustomed to tripping
students
she put down her weapon
snapped it to belt
and slowly retrieved a short lasso from
pouch
and in the continuing seconds of this
and the cowboys and gaucho gawking the
process
I flipped over logs and escaped to the
brush
black swallowed from sight and too fast
for their catch.) I scurried and scampered and buried and ran
away from the tanks and the butlers and
jeeps and the barbed armaments and their bulleting sponge
away from what trampolines sent over
walls
and by the time compassed to clear open
land
I looked up to see a colossal barrage
a staid river dam
far off of the trail
and farther yet still than the route I
had planned. I felt my faith topple with terrible fear
of the bird
remained
tide-worn
in poise
a looming sand castle I couldn’t kick
down
and each fleck of water that feathered
my face only made me then think of that All
That Is Good
an enormous brass band that is playing
so fast that I know I will never keep up with the dance
but then
again
from new genesis
just dreamt
of course
since I was asleep
the light
through trees
seemed open to path
I saw
what luck
a blistering road
just over the mountains outranged of
fracas
and leading to town far away from the
dust and the rabblement’s trend that was keeping me stuck. A day’s walk at
least but its better than naught. And been a nice stroll if I hadn’t been
fussed. The gander was charmed
though needn’t be seen: toucans
here
insignificant birds
flew out from these pillowed and
lampooning greens
and satired rocks
and colorful scenes
and winded terrain
and all of the marvelous evidenced
things that this unlikely world influences to frames
endured
by tracks
I kept under-feet
on towards the town where the children
all sleep
their stupid concerns and junk food that
they eat
assistants appeared to lack files or
greets
they had all the truth in the world with
that bird
and what did they do
but lock it with piping and slogans
accrued from irrelevant days where they all went to school and just sat in the
back with their games of misuse
mistaking the urgency of their short
nights. And blinded by currented floods of sunlight
just pelting my face
I stubbed my big toe on a sharpening
rock
and timely good fashioned exploded in
rage
suck-ing in the air to scream out to the
day for the lots of all kind
and
after I’d swayed
I bristled
and paused
and counted the seconds till I could
collect all the unhappy whistles of silence after
those quiescent tumulted signals of
shame
but later
calmed
to thoughts of some work
near-er to the bird
the end of construct
and through those soft twinkles of
deadening verve
another occurred
a change
in plot
and a shadow flew sudden and fast
overhead till a twice sudden weight dropped on top of my head
crush-ing heaps of color
troused
socked. ‘Got you!'
it screamed
and I fought the shade off with a
vigorous shove
a twist and rough push
the burden was lifted aside my shoulders
though I
as well
had fell to the ground
and after I picked myself up from the
dirt
I saw this mysterious midget ravined
fell onto its ass
a little bloodied
and now hollering
‘Ow'
and
‘Jeez!
Quit it!'
and more
just angry at me
for what I could know
this thing also creaked to breviloquent
heights’ revelation to me and the light as a peel
flicked with loose ease from an orange
somewhere
a young (very young) cleated ballerina
upsetly watered
and like a lost boy
shin-bruised
in mud. ‘Hey!'
it yelled
‘I caught
you man! Rules is rules!'
Another hunter. I started to walk: ‘I’m
not really playing'
She said that I was: ‘The whole friggin area’s in limits
guy'
I felt for some reason this needed
resolve. I turned
and stopped
to talk it all out: ‘I’m not here at all
forget you saw me'
and this
it emerged
is something she’d heard: ‘Oh
you’re that guy that’s audit-it-ting'
‘Yes
I’m that guy'
and I tried to explain to her tedious
face that my job
outlined
was to hunt for these birds
this whole rotten sport had just made it
harder
and if you’ll excuse me I’d like to
forge on
and while a brief argument sussed from
that fun
the rest of the bulk I cannot really say
as the dream’s memory is just slightly
in fade
from here
and on
and why things were done
but known from clocked feelings that yet
to erode she then offered to help me proceed with the hunt
and I
impressed by the prudence of sleep
that balance
again
inductions to keep with the thinking
that this day held wisdom at all
allowed her to come
and talk the whole time
and show me the way
(as she lived in town)
and I noticed this daughter with yarn in
her hair was most likely just thinking she’d vacation time
at least till the night
with me
pirate
to vessel
erect
or make some-thing up so that I’d be
al-right. I thought
in short
she considered me dogged
inexplicably blue
and without suspicion of just how to get
through all the forests and rivers and when crazy dark how to set up a camp and
catch fish and track stars. And also
she said
the game is great sport
but people’s compulsions can get
overcooked (‘I don’t see the point of it being so nuts'
) and I greatly enjoyed hearing this assessment. So
through vines
and empty surrounds
the forest admitted of what is binding
and only what’s that
and so we will copy its thinking and
tact and I’ll only discuss what I pictured exact: our travelogues spoke
modestly as some verse by just commenting only on things without use
for example
discussing the grey mountain bluffs
and hearing some rocks falling off of
the slide
down into the hemlock in unforeseen
flight
and then
after this
a speech of the hunt
the endless pageant I’d suffer-ed for so
long
and now I was forced to suffer once
again
these failures declared in blabbed
repetition
and I should have avoided hav-ing to
re-gurge with predicted malaise all the days I had spent in the wake of this
bird
though felt
right then
not as vomiting forth
but as painfully eating impossible
bottles
holding not ships but some keys in each
hollow
appointed to locks
somewhere in my make
but I hadn’t the faintest just what
they’d vacate
and the girl
bent sundered from tying her lace
skip-ping over puddles while speaking
her mind
‘My mother had sayings
I think one was like
we should find loveliness in the world
where there’s none
or
we should take beauty in the fact it’s
ugly
or
something like that'
and she paused here a minute to shriek
awful tunes
I think to annoy me or see what’d I say
and after attesting this maxim out loud
(which taken together made so many dollars of sense to herself)
she looked at me plain
and her face lit a burnished
discouragement’s flame for she saw in my own that her tenet’s complaint had
left not a daubing of color in my case. And so: ‘Forget it'
and soon we were parting through fields
to rows
small creatures and moss
and humbled yellow
the town
a discrepancy in all this show
appearing from fog for my own benefit in
the spread of a ring like the end of a street
but going no-where
(its ends’ always met). And I was quite
pleased to see this was the place
small
humble
very restrained
and one house specifically seemed to
obtain a desirous grasp of just how to have grace
while still being made of cement in the
woods
for its waving of pretense and letting’s
unfold. I threw off my pack and ran down with new strength
but: too simple
I should have known then
and following logics of bulletins bound
before I’d produced just a sentence’s
sounds
before I could even get my head around
why I’d come here at all
and be by adjust pinched symbolically
small
by the size of the bird in my brain and
its fall
more clanging and bells blasted tearings
in walls and a geyser of trucks explode-ed through these holes
on down the now terribly so busy streets
with their hooting and hollering’d chasing cadets
and ruining my vision of what’s to be
done. ‘Oh
c’mon!'
I yelled to no one
and the girl shrugged to this
‘The game’s everywhere
I told ya
I did
it can’t be escaped'
and then she said something about
‘little ones'
like
‘little ones’d think there’s a good
place to sneak
but
nat’rally
they’re not very bright'
and the wind-weathered way she had
worded the phrase drifted her to an age I would never have guessed
so I turned
to look
and have a right see
and surely enough this discomfiting
dream sought to tip me again from a proper mindset
and I noticed
just then
from the time she’d surfaced
ambushing me there in the swelling
forest
she’d appeared to age fifteen new years
now at least
a scrupulous growth
please think
not strained
from an evening’s middled and precocious
youngster to a vigorous woman dawned thirty I’d say
and clothes
to chase
had also been changed
and what was before like a set of pajamas
had ripened germanely a charming white dress
with flowers print-ed to confirm her
progress. ‘Huh'
I said
(with bombs overhead)
and pushed by her antediluvian sense
I thought to myself we should maybe
disband
though thankful
I was
for leading me there
I selfishly scared at the thought of
share-ing even one bearing stitch of the pend-ing moment when I’d justly
triumphed
and killed
eat-en
that horrible bird
for her to be there would just be so
awkward
embarrassing
even
I weirdly deemed it
so I dragged my two feet when she
grabbed at my hand
to guide me behind hefty houses enfenced
and said
quietly
‘No
that’s alright now. I don’t wanna take
any more of your time. You got me this far
you’ve been very kind
but really
go do what you want to from here'
she frowned
to this
and hit me a bit
and said that she wanted to see ‘this
thing through'
whatever that meant
and this
I’ll say
warmed me a fresh butter with
conflict-ing imp-ulses’ wanting her too
to see me succeed
and split up the fare
the money that carriages you to declare
you have made your own path
but
while there
I wasn’t so foolish to turn down her
care
(but also I wanted to do it a-lone)
and yet
in the end
we all kept along
canaried to act
and festival songed
crouching
crawling
around the cast homes
the ones that were bare of all
screeching cadets
and drabbed
and cold
I looked through their drapes
glanced into their squares
and saw just how dead they all looked in
the glow of the late afternoon
without rodeo
(the noise was abhorrent
I’m not changing mind
but bettered slightly than the whispers
and sighs that reposed in these living rooms void of all life)
while here
outside
dune buggies follied with marauding
cheerleads
bark-ing at the flee’d
with bag-piping speech
like
‘Run
off you maggots!
We’ll eat you alive!'
and the students ran giddy with fabulous
fright
the kind that you swallow in carnival
rides
and hold your dates close
ignoring the time. (From here the dream
turns like a dishwasher’s glass
held up to fluoresce
distorting the light
and curdling pictures hung off of the
walls to a darkening scrawl
reflected
to whites
by drinking cruets
and things twist around with a varied
extent
) but after we’d crept
the woman and I
and waited for quarrels and wagons to
ride off and into the night to look after more brill
and after we’d dove and rolled over some
hills
perhaps un-needed
but still
t’was fun
and ‘hind the small stoned and
milk-carton-like home
inside we both knew
somehow
was the bird
and after we’d cowered and flattened to
curves to avoid getting caught
to peek through the blinds
to see
right there
and so un-surprised
the creature in wrap
that red showing curtain and shower and
clasp
and as the dream’s setting felt happy at
last
a comforting blanket in which we’d
amassed all these niceties laid
like baskets and gifts
presented as business-es court-ing
clients
disaster
my son
struck hearts once again: liquesced
I think
by the food I had ate
the just parting hours before I dozed
off
and meeting Mere Rhythm
being creeped out
it all mixed together a stomach ache
growl that reckoned an entity into the trance
and also
combined
my thoughts on All That
the ones I had sacrificed most of my
past
commingling those qualms I was wrestling
with
I may have been sleeping on troublesome
boards
I hadn’t a bed
and slept but outdoors
whatever the reason for this awful twist
from blank and its bosom came What All Existence Amounts To, You Think,
Divorced of The Art of Pretending That It Can Shine Any Meaning Upon Any Shed
Part, Like Thinking A Shelf Can Contain Its Own Cart, Or That You Can Keep
Anything From Depart
sprinting
on fours
across the wide planes
as torn from a flip book of drawings of
things like the universe sill
black holes
and such
a negative imprint of what you’d call
‘stuff'
an animal though
that part was quite plain
with paws of a monkey to hold onto
things
it tossed all their jeeps
and stopped all their songs
and turned the good souls who just
faltered their feet to a strict
and stout
and wet crimson paint. It stood
and screamed
this sire of mine
as it was the sound of my echoing life
bouncing off of the sedance and wall of All
That
crossed
as said
with the external sphere
but mostly I think had to do with some
fear
of maybe I’d possibly wasted my life
or something so like
and the scene of its nourishment skinned
off my pride till unveiling a child
my dotage dam-aged to the last paper
towel
torn from its cardboard
and played with by cats
whenever its done
and in my new shape
my clothes now too big
and nervous of it
and cursed by the dream (now nightmare’d
of course) to chant a descant to no one but myself
‘The
town had its fun
the town had its fun
but now
dear listener
it’s time to go home'
For clarity’s sake: the angel of essence
and humor was here
humored
by only its timing of course
there was no laugh-ter as it broke the
cadets
furnished
to toys
to sticks
and worn
a tearing from limbs with a rapturous joy
I linger to sketch
but joy is the term that befits its
tramples
and while it destroyed all the houses
and things
the hunters split off (this wasn’t a
game)
but little concepted against its dark
fur
and
assayed
they cut to quick grass
it weld a huge sickle impressioned to
polish by planets’ divide
the heat of black rhyme
it carried as man
could stand on its feet
had even a mouth
if wanted to eat
but hungried for nothing but all of
those boys
an-gry
I guess
they’d played without fear
or angry’d at all of the work to do
here. The woman
yet older by each look I gave
perhaps she was even three times my own
age
as overly large as my unfitting clothes
I cannot remember if she then was scared
I want to say no
though even her parish was soon
over-throwed
(liter’lly
maybe)
so hurled
with strength
up over the moon
but certainly know that she did want to
go
to leave
with me
but the smell of this dream blushed her
scent as composed
and just so relaxed
that’s it
I know
I see it again
her calmed expression
just holding my hand and a tug to the
side
to let me know everything’s going
alright
that monster
up there
maligning the mill
ingesting the children and slicing
goodwill
is like any storm that comes over the
clouds
and rains a bit here
but leaves
like snow
event-ually
when time for more growth. I couldn’t
leave yet: the bird was right there. I know its cuckoo to portray it like this
I’m not so stupid
nor driven by rage
but choked by dream fingers embracing my
throat I excited to passion to still kill that bird
despite
or maybe because
the end
of worlds
and thought
and what I expected was possibly dreamt
by me
backstage
from all this charade
unsure
and shook
but knew
substanced
this was my last chance
if dreamed
or not
I’d eat that dumb bird
if poisoned or arrowed or flung to
vortex
and
nearer to us
a fiddle away
that What
All Existence was flapping these waves
cyclop-ean breaks
by wings
or capes
(though why he had clothes
I can’t really say
it must have been wings
though never he flew)
that lifted me up from my feet and my
name
vortexed
it seemed
as I had foreseen
and chucked us as striplings throw
pebbles in ponds
right through the kitch-en
and smashing through cinder in-to the
home’s mold
buried
dead-sick
by the piled tableau. A piece of plaster
chunked itself from the roof
a tune
just played
accenting decay
the gigantic hole that was made by my
face
and body
and legs
that followed its aim
and still
I prayed
and ouched
for worth
(it really did hurt)
to reach that red curtain and see that
blue bird
I would
have then
simply suffered for this
accepted just only regarding it’s plume
to calendar it
along with the rest
along with the others I hadn’t killed
yet
but knew
someday
I’d be so ascribed
I’d take it
I would
as end of the hunt
instead of the blade have it deadened by
eyes and its cataloguing to a printed descript
to take from its life those peculiar
aspects
to make it just normal and bored
average
but the ceiling exploded in stone and
sea wood as the missiles from hunters flew awkwardly stewed
roading the beast ever so slightly to
croon
and the monster fell over just faintly
in heaps
shake-ing the four edges of sight in my
sleep. And I
fore it
a tiny birth stone
and it
away
attentioned to say
not by its huge mouth but the math of
itself
like learning of gravity’s habits from
shelves when they tip in a quake and destroy all your plates
this all lasts a moment but stretches in
space
and while I knew I or the woman meant
nothing to it or its worship or what it had soiled
I took from its presence a wrenching of
joy
like it
from spoil
but me from my matching its handwriting
here
the ripples of motions from walking
en-deared to no one but itself
and joyed in my wrenching for some
contentment through remarking my shade had been caught in its view
a sleepwalker woken to places once knew.
The braids of my sleep have another stitch here
so virtued by fabled neglected reports
I must have then snored
it mimicked a record and skipped on a
bit
somewhat by explosions that launched me
in haste several long streets away from the house now blew up
sent back
it seemed
to the blank or gift shop
before I could even get feet to the bird
by contemptibly dragging myself to its den
I think of it now
it always was measures away from my
grasp
no matter how much I would plod through
the dream
hands up to the red
to pull the curtain
it never seemed less than a futile
offense the degrees to which I’d have to lug myself there
and so
we were
blown now far apart
so far even I could not see the damn
thing
except for the cranny in sweep where it
laid just a minute before
as it
the bird
had left
forthwith
to other newsstands or some lost ocean’s
shore
apparently messied by all of this flack
annoyed
(presumed)
by all of the noise
and all of the fuss
and all of the death. On-ly the sheer
curtain it hid by remained
billowed
crumbled
off wood-heavy planks
the shattered staircase that once led to
upstairs. And that is just almost the end of the dream
except for one thing
one last little thing
of the woman
stood by: ‘Don’t worry
it’s fine'
she said to me tired
while choppers encircled the beast with
gunfire
I saw in their faces a crumb of some fun
as if they had magicked this also to
sport
I couldn’t believe
did any have shame?
but still I supposed it was all they
could do when negated so wholly in such dire ways
and the woman
bemused
I think
by airs
and the heat that came off of my haughty
disdain
utt-ered a small thing that I cannot
recall
a tiny comment to defuse my conceits
but not to annoy me or make me angry
but just something like
‘Let’s go get ice cream'
to cease my yak-king with the thought of
dessert
but still get across her dismissal of
this mode of think-ing by dip-ping her voice to a sigh
with a sniggering cant
to show I was young
and really knew nothing about this at
all. And then that was it
she turned to leave off
expecting me with
my armor bowed ash with the whole rest
of it
the blank took the fields and sky and
their homes
and the clouds of cadets and their games
and dumb craft
and then she went next
before I could turn
pricked by a new feeling of sudden
concern that it was more important than marshalling courts to be able to tell
her I think of her more than the birds that I hunt
how strange an avowal
for a person for whom I can barely
arouse past the smallest allowance of thoughts of her hair
tied back in a bun
stood in the kit-chen
she blinked from my sight just before
the dream left
to go live her life off without me
instead
before I could strain for a distance of
cause
and see if her face really held in it
stars.’
Question
lay quiet at this ending point
before a light chuckle
and adding
prescript
‘And then I woke up'
but only to stricken his son to speak up
and say something in turn
not
fair reasoned
expected as long
but glamour the silence with comments of
rote
or least just to signal he’d heard the
whole note
and hadn’t been counting the sheep and
the goats. But Death
wiser
if only by thought
knew when to address and knew right to
clam shut
and he was entrusted by laws of relation
to let his father hear the after confession
the stillness and peace of the recently
said
so he can reflect on its tiring thread.
And just when the peace of the pith is depressed by the noise of the crickets’
rubbed-pretty inflects
he thinks to then ask
‘Whatever hap-pened to the tower and
nest?’ And Question says it’s
still out there in the woods
around where he used to pursue all the
birds. And Death
intrigued by the thoughts of his dad
ever having a life before he was unpacked
asks
with care
to see it right now
before his mom knows
just them
alone. And Question
happy to be so positioned as able to
offer his son’s small attention some turtles of tips
escorts this young lad as a teaching
chauffeur
to tour the pellicles flaked of the
space where Last Question had
waded through journeying bends
wastefuls de-parted from those inwarding
ends
the gonfalon ribbons’ flagged
‘ex-perience'
and the same pennoned road that young Death will travail
when he is older
and ready to fail.
It
is a short trip
short-er than he guessed
as he had expected his father to lodge
many settings away from where he had once botched his entire pur-pose for
liv-ing (as thought)
but thinks it is maybe because of that
fact that he cannot entirely leave its tree flaps
its shade
and bark
and forest without
and little beyond is the big church
itself
the tower is there
exactly described
and still
up top
the rafters on high
uphold the fake nest he once crafted
from cloth
the yellowing leaves he had scraped out
of chuff
mixed in with some twigs
and ewers
and soot
and all smushed together with sap from
those plants that he grew in a shed far away in the back. And driving slow-ly
they get to the door
this small little entry carved from an
oak tree
he ‘members the slog it was carving its
base
and now
from all of that work and again
all that is ab-sent but a rotten old
gate
pockmarked from the beetles that make it
their home
and halted to stop by the show of the
church
they idle a bit
looking at its hold
the engine still tutting away in its
lurch
awaiting the men to show now it is time
to leave from its seats
to park under sticks
to indicate they are cheerful they made
it
but
instead
they keep in their throws
and even though it is improperly warm
not one of them thinks to roll their
window down
to get a good sense of the woodlotted
air
so different from where the young boy
has grown up
but no
their interest seems to have stuck
somewhere in-between foothills of mountainous bluff and a wondering lake of
seeking intention. And so
finally
after minutes or two
the father
with really no-thing more to do
looks down at his son
who thinks to himself
and they both drive away to go do
something else.]