The Story of Rebirth

 "I'm going away... you will look for me.
Where I'm going you cannot come."
-Jesus

"you must approach the throne

With its back up against the wall"

-Father John Misty

One good story to tell is of rebirth. It's undeniable in its allure. Man dies. Man is reborn. It doesn't make sense of course but the sheep don't read non-fiction they read pulp romance. We know it's a good story because our comic book superheros keep coming back for more.  The ancient Greeks knew this, too, and killed-off all kinds of gods and demiurges only to cyclically resuscitate them into new symbolic glory, and because the Greeks knew it so well Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) knew it too and boy did he run with it. And without much of a writer credit nor remuneration.  Did anyone else know that this was his contribution?  I suppose, probably. One never knows what others know.  Did you know that Bill Finger co-created Batman?

I didn't.  I guess only true devotees stay until the end of the credits. No one told me it was Paul's story, they just told me the story and I thought it was a good one.  One of the best. It's hard to replace a story like that. I won't try. Yet.

My Dad passed away this summer. My brother and I remain, a kind of rebirth, I suppose but much less gratifying a tale. We had a service in August and homilies about Heaven were given in earnest. In sad moments it sure makes you feel good, this story of life after life, and yet we must not forget that it's a symbol.  A covenant to us to continue to live in compassion and kindness and without fear or anger. That's a hard pact.  I can see why they masked it in up behind Christmas wrapping papers and Easter dinners instead.

This Halloween I'm dressing up as a man in mourning. No mask. Don't ask, or do, but you might not like to hear it.  Paul's story had 2000 years of revisions before it came to me. All I ask is you give me some time, I'll come up with something snappy.

Whither Emo Youth's Flower Come Autumn Now Upon Us

 Wait, is there ever time to figure it out? -Nate Rateliff

 Lounging in the languid allure of autumn, that early crisp stillness punishing me with profound guilt. What did I miss? All this summer, short as a day gone by. A tide of nostalgia. I decide to put on some music.  The universe decides to gift me with the most poignant soundtrack— haunting melodies that make my heart ache and my soul long for… something!  Je ne sais quoi.

"All the bells say 'too late'" as John so aptly put it.  Why struggle through my itineraries of boredom, you may ask.  Or perhaps I have met your oddly complaisant expectations.  Let us not forget the autumnal equinox is this week upon us, heaven knows, that perfect moment of balance between light and dark. How poetic! But here I am, out of balance with my inner abrogate darkness and unable to capture my essence in a few well-chosen words. I feel like I’m a stained glass, all my tools locked away, lost in a forest of feelings, wandering aimlessly, brow furrowed in a vague impression of furthering of frustration.

A rememberance: The summer before school started I took a trip through the southwest, drove through the night, and in the morning decided I was going to be a geologist. So then I had a professor who taught us there are three types of rocks; igneous, sedimentary and metaphoric. I wondered about yacht. I switched my major to anthropology. 

But oh the injustice, my belt doesn't fit. Feet hurt in falling-apart shoes. Do you yet mock? Call me Doctor Mocksman. Emo music is our classic rock.  Deep, wistful emotions that swell within me. Why can’t I just pluck the right words from the air like the leaves falling from the trees? It’s as if my brain has turned to mush, a sad, autumnal pudding unable to articulate the bittersweet beauties swirling around in the air. I listen to this music, and all I can think is, “This feels profound!” But what does that even mean? I'm here drowning in feelings yet you percieve me as but a puny puddle of vague sentiments. I'm a bright peacock without a squawk, and you see a coal-tarnished canary.

Oh, the irony! I can feel the weight of solitude pressing down, the kind that only autumn can conjure, and yet I’m left grappling with empty phrases like “sad” and “melancholy.” Thanks a lot, brain! In the car I scream, “THIS IS WISTFUL AND LONESOME!” at the top of my lungs but I hear myself sounding pretentious, foolish.  If I wasn't so dull to the world it would be infuriating!

I close my eyes and see a face looking back at me made of warm light and composed of many faces, like a collage on a stalker's wall, shifting, shifting, through nose, eclectic eyes, cheek or bearded check, mouth, foreheads, and hot, too hot to look at in the eye. But I try and see that He is us, we are Him, and We are a bright and untouchable multitude. Maybe God doesn't want us to feel alone because we don't exist.

I'm not angry.  I'm just prevaricating. In fact it seems to me I'm glad to be here. The days grow short, dream songs mingle with waking ones in vague sepia sibilance. A rememberance:  Humidity. The Subaru Outback engine shaking in idle, shrouded in heat, while we, in the back seat shake in our idyll. Apologies are offered for the sweat, warm comparisons are made, then we emerge to dress and a breeze tells me that God's saying "cool it" and I smile, my face the arc between guilt and consolation.

Sorry for the episodic irruptions.

A toast: to the castles of emotions we guard! Here’s to wanting to cry and laugh simultaneously. Is there a name for this? Let's drink.  I'll articulate it. Turn the music up loud.  Catch the wind in a jar—or better yet these falling leaves! Who cares who's singing what, stop caring about names, words, let the music wash across you.

If you need me I'll be here, withered and wrestling with desolate inadequacies, an eerie sihouette's shadow in a whisper of words I can't understand. Ugh! Autumn, you bittersweet siren! How dare you distill such conflicting feelings in me without affixing any clear liquor labels!

Tints

Maybe I'd get a Dodge Charger. That's the thought that got stuck in the craw of my brain while driving the old Chevy that afternoon to the blood plasma center to get my fifty bucks. What would that make me, if I had a Dodge Charger? What kind of people drive Chargers? I'd been given one as a rental once, leaving Chicago and headed northwest on 90 and that car could really go. The Hemi. I took it all the way out to Verne and slept through the movie at the Drive-In. How is that was ten years ago?

Crossing the overpass yields a clear view over the streets all the way to the mountains, a panoramic clarity free of fog and dust after this afternoon's rainstorm, the mountains shining like newly washed cars. Puddles in the road. I stayed home an extra hour reading by the air conditoner and drinking two of the green IPAs. I was reading a fantasy bildungsroman set in a world where people started inexplicably losing their balance and falling down and those that remained upright throughout developed a saintly semblance to the others. I'd stopped at the onset of a sex scene and driven off. Visits to the blood plasma center typically took three hours round trip and I wanted to be back in time to make dinner at a reasonable hour.

The old Chevy has a compliment of CDs, newly supplemented by some purchases at the Goodwill of Hot Fuss, by The Killers. I put it on and am transported back twenty years as I make my way into the city, marvelling, behind my red-tinted sunglasses, at the wary lanes of stand-still traffic going in the opposite direction. I roll the windows down and rest my arm outside letting the wind cool off my armpits.

I love the static fuzz at the end of track one. How did they do that? In post? What is he even singing about, gotta gotta be down because I want it all, and is it "Wally's having a smoke," or "while he's having a smoke?" Who's Wally? If I'd brought my phone I would have checked but I left it behind to charge, there's something wrong with my charger, and also to allow me time to finish reading the falling down book. Destiny is calling me. Audacious.  I never. I never. I neverrrr. Never what? Why is he repeating this?

The AC in the old Chevy doesn't work, so the rolled-down window is my only cool air.  Maybe if I had a Dodge Charger I could sit in the AC and cruise. Maybe I could meet a girl. What kind of girl is attracted to a guy who drives a Dodge Charger? Probably not my kind of girl.  I imagine her knowing a lot about cars and being compellingly coarse in social situations.  I tended to blend into the backwash, something that's been pointed out to me recently along with the advice to follow my anger instead of surpressing it. I wish I could meet someone pleasant. 

I stop the CD at All These Things that I'd Done while pulling into the parking lot in front of the blood plasma center. That would be a good song to queue up for the ride home.  The outside air feels luminous, still heavy with moisture. I carry my book, admire the newly planted trees by the condos, anticipating the sadness held in their young stickly stalks, the treacherous promise of aging there together and someday dying all in a row. Inside the cold astringent air stings there's a line that zigs and zags and I make my way to the end of it and stand uncomfortably for a few minutes looking at my shoes until another number is called and everyone takes a few steps forward and I can lean against the wall while I wait.  The world has a lot more mysteries when you leave your phone at home.  You have to read the signs, look for clues, look out the window, daydream. "Don't think so hard," says the portly man in line behind me, "you'll hurt yourself."

    "Yeah, that happens," I smile, "I get red hot."  The people here cross all kinds of demographic intersectionalities. It's impolite to stare, that's why almost everyone brings their phones and stares at those instead. I found that it's a good quiet time to read without interuption when I started coming here during the pandemic and it, for a time, became my one and only social interaction for an entire week, my one reverie within a grindingly mechanical year.  Go give blood plasma, read for an hour, stop by the store for groceries on the way home, lock the door for another 7 days.  The white robed phlebotomy staff still all wear masks, and some of them even wear face shields. On the walls the posters remain unchanged, Your Donation of Blood Plasma Saves Lives, Be a Hero - Give Plasma.  I remember looking at that same poster during the pandemic because it features a little masked boy in a cape with his arms outretched like superman and I motioned to it as a staffer prepped my arm with iodine and told her, from behind my mask, that he had his mask on wrong.

    "Uh huh," she had said.  "Tight fist please."  I had thought it was clever. I still thought so. We all shuffled forward a few more steps. The blood plasma process involves insertion of a needle, keeping your arm straight and pumping your fist at frequent intervals, then laying lax while the machine returns the red blood to your arm and retains the plasma. This process repeats about eight or nine times I think. I've never counted. It lasts, once the needle is in, a little less than an hour. It lasts enough time to read two chapter or play nine levels of Candy Crush. It lasts until they have collected 880 millileters.I got out my book.

 People kept losing their balance. People kept falling down. On the way to class, standing in line at the grocery store. It was happening to everyone. The doctors were confounded, speculating on causes ranging from dust particulates to solar magnetic polarization, but since their clinics were booked out for months the problem became a political one and that fall's election was notable for the number of candidates who fell from their platforms espousing potential solutions to the doctor shortage. It was happening to everyone and so those of us who had not yet fallen began to take on a certain aura of otherworldliness, although what we ourselves felt was a buzz of fearful precarity.

The truth was that I had fallen, just not literally. We met when we were both helping an old woman up by the bus stop.

    "I'm so sorry! I'm so so sorry!" she said repeatedly. 

"It's alright," we told her in unison.  I looked up. Eyes filled with stars, mahogony brown hair...

    It went on with broad strokes like that for a few pages, then changed tack. Just as I was confirming my disinterest the machine beeped and I was done.

       "Thank you for your donation," she said as she retrieved the needle from my arm and pressed a wad of gauze to the site, which I proceeded to hold there so she could put the needle and tubing away and grab a roll of medical tape to wrap me up.

Walking back to the old Chevy I let down the tailgait to sit and smoke a cigarette and read some more.  

 

The sky was a low and gray, oppressive. I could feel it as a pointed weight against my shoulders.  I stood at the edge of the park, hands stuffed deep into my pockets, watching people fall. There was no longer any commotion to it, people took it in stride, so to speak, silenting crumbling, getting back up, a collective resignation settling over everyone like a thick fog.

My phone vibrated and I pulled it out, staring at the screen as if it held the answers. There it was, a single text from her, the one that had changed everything: I’m pregnant. I read it again, trying to wrap my mind around a reality that was both beautiful and absurd. How could life rise up when everything else seemed to be falling down?

The playground behind me was eerily empty, the swings swaying gently in the breeze. I imagined children laughing, the sound bright and alive against the backdrop of uncertainty. But that laughter was absent, leaving only the rustle of leaves, the woosh of cars, the distant hum of sirens.

I leaned against a tree, the bark rough against my back, grounding. A couple walked by, eyes glued to their phones, oblivious to the world around them. The woman fell. The man stopped but his eyes didn't leave the screen, nor did he help her up.  What could he do? It was all so mundane now, she slowly got herself back on her feet and dusted off her phone by herself and they continued. It was like watching the last flickers of a dying bulb. I looked at my own phone again.  The text message seemed to almost pulse with a flicker of hope—a tiny life that could brighten all this gray.

Then she called out my name. She was there, her voice breaking through the haze, vibrant and real. She was running toward me, her hair catching the wind, a wild halo, I ran to meet her, to hold her. There was a sparkle in her eyes that cut through the heaviness, and for a moment, I could almost forget the world was falling apart.

“Did you get my message?” she asked, breathless, a smile spreading across her face.

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to summon a smile in return. “I did.”

“And?  Are you... what do...?” concern etching her brow.

“I... we...” I brushed the hair from her eyes, feeling the warmth of her skin, the shape of her head. “I mean, the risks...”

Her gaze held steady. “We have to believe in something, right? It might be the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

I could feel myself nodding unsteadily, the warmth of her words roping around me like a lifeline. In the midst of chaos, we would carve out a space for hope, for laughter...

Driving a different route back home, through an old town neighborhood of hundred year old homes, frequent stop signs, and small parks dotted with homeless people huddled in the shade of their shopping carts full of tarped stuff. What if I opened a store in this neighborhood. Would I be any good at interacting with the crazies, their tattooed chests and neurosis. How can one focus on the desiderata of life when distracted by so many socioeconomic problems?

How many girls are mentioned on Hot Fuss? (Believe me) Natalie, Jenny (was a friend of mine), Annie (you're a star), (Oh) Girl (someday you'll understand)... how long did it take Brandon Flowers to burn through enough relationships to fuel the lyrics for this album?

The moon makes a pre-sunset power appearance in the pink sky high above some raspy eucalyptus trees. Did you know the moon moves about an inch and a half away from the earth each year? Was it something we did? I kind of feel that I should take that fact as reflective of some kind of personal distaste for me, for us, earthkind. Earthkind is a compound word I just made up. Like Mr Brightside. 

And we don't mean to satisfy tonight 

So get your eyes off of my pride tonight 

'Cause I don't need to satisfy tonight 

It's like a cigarette in the mouth 

Or a handshake in the doorway 

I look at you and smile because I'm fine

Where did that term even come from, I wonder. Is it Brightsides or Brightside, singular? What does any of this mean? I suppose their musicality is better than their lyrics, on re-listening to this. Why did this speak to me twenty years ago? Does it speak to me now because it spoke to me then, or is there something new?

The gas station didn't have any of the green kind so I pick up two tall blue IPAs instead. Funny how the world takes on a different lustre, a new auratic sensibility, when you switch from one kind of beer to another mid-session. Outside parked next to the truck is a gray Dodge Charger. What would my commute home be like driving that? The sun is gone before is shines. Yep, I've had those kinds of days.

About a mile from I I realize that I am looking at the world through two different layers of glass, my sunglasses and the dirty windshield.  This is an appropriate metaphor for the layers I impose upon my own perceptions, I think. I need to take all these layers of glass out of my field of vision and see the world the way it really is.  What colors are there that I've been missing, what haven't I been able to see thanks to my own hubris? I should try something new. Try something old again, but really try this time.  I should see how much Dodge Chargers are going for.  I'm going to do it.  As soon as I get home I'm going to do it.

Lakeside Look Serenade

their mint withered while we were away, in the crisper drawer.  when we returned I could smell our house smell.

their bitterness may have been attractive, but the middle finger outside the bait shop was a nail in the coffin. maybe they were trying to be cute, you suggested.

their kids took down from the top shelf our token baseball. Soiled it thoroughly and failed to put it back.

A heavenly breeze kissing the trees

life's cruel twists manifest themselves, under minimal scrutiny, through neighboring windows, down that gravel path but for the grace of god... Yet we wither as winter reeds, pull the cord to withdraw the blinds.

"I am angry that I feel no outrage."
- Denise Levertov

they lifted the boat out of the lake and I imagined myself lifting it, felt the heave in my chest, the catch in my breath

they tasted a sampling of fresh local honey and I queued to try some, Pavlovian saliva accumulating at the promise of its floral sweetness

they danced to the band's groove and I noticed, from the back bench, my knee keeping time, my lips right along mouthing the words

I stand and I wait for the touch of your hand in the June night

my dance is hesitancy, my tongue untasted, my journey moored

"I've made a lot of mistakes."
- Sufjan Stevens

perhaps I need to diffuse this tension. The lake's face doesn't glitter. It's beach is a glace of indurate mud. 

perhaps I need to fill my mind. Eyes swivel to the quiescent stack of books left ajar. Swipe to refresh page.

perhaps I need sex. To feel a body fill a body. Revive the dismal flame with some brave passion fling. 

My love, do you know that your eyes are like stars brightly beaming

out of darkness, light. out of silence, sound. out of gas, walk.

"I would like to believe my dread was for the human condition
 but of course it was for me."
- Joan Didion

when we took this trip we didn't know how we were going to pay for it. Funny how life  supplies you. That's why I don't pick flowers anymore, I try to learn their names; eriastrum and bromeliad.

when we first got together you thought we were going dancing and I thought we were going to move in together. Sacrifices were made. Funny how I thought I needed the placebic validation of a woman to escape my self-imposed prison of feeling worthless, and how, now, it requires a vacation to the lake make the time to go out dancing with you.

when we watched the final dawn draw its fiery thread over the water, our last day before returning home, we were half asleep, a silver spider webbing in the window caused you to scream and I screamed too, then laughed, in atonement. It was funny.

Let us stray till break of day in love's valley of dreams
Just you and I... a summer sky 

 believe and know. forgive and grow. give and go. 

Quodlibet da Luz

 not the saints themselves but the idea of saints
or boddhisatvas if you bend that way
the cradle of santicty apendanted around your neck
a whole red alphabet of purpose and direction

look to the sky

 not the hunger of Erysichthon but the defiant key
or kitten tender consolation, pet,
knowing them ancients knew the plight, not you though,
nothing personal, well a little bit personal

through the trees

 not running the maze but the knowing how to run mazes
unlike a career in tree chromosomes, say
nothing proficuous about it, this skill of seeing shadow
ahead and intuiting the source of the light

the sun

Mute God's Torpor

I think about all that I don't understand about sex

from its venomous withholding to its fountainous lure
I think I'll make a list:

whispers whistling as the thrush,  

the roseate hue

soft curves tautened

corrugated heart beat

foul nethers, 

the addictive acridness of your beloved's smell

the fightin' urge to assert my own primacy

coarser sublunary trivialities

mute god's torpor

longeurs and mundanities, 

penetrating the musty concave fibers of distant galaxies

disconsolate blue after

wan remnants

In short

we screwed and then chatted 

disinterestedly
retired to our separate corners of the ring
to replenish and satiate our thirsts
for reddit and for tiktok

respectively

I thought

Why write a poem?  There are loads of poems
shelves sagging from the unread weight of them

I think I'll make another list:

because that folk singer died and I can't remember his name

so much to say 'bout

yr aunt's vacations, slavic ant vocations

heaven extends even unto the transactional sphere of corporations

because all I have left of my grandfather are his poems

wasps hum, roosters crow,

My folks are gone

my kids are gone

the stars remain

through these barren trees

Calliope

    "I love the spring" Alva texted.
    Fart Emoji, I replied.

The potential is there, in the cold ground. Gooey. Life ready to emerge. Can you taste it? That acrid semblance singing life's sweet salvos. An orchestra warm-up, a toilet flush. Birth won't be easy, like death, but as any story worth telling, it'll be a carnal thrill ride of thrusting, emergence, triumph and ultimate tragedy. 

    "Not now" she whispered.
    "Please" was his reply, a perfect fifth lower.

Life moves forward. We turn to the sun, losing sight of the other stars, the fuckin' ego on this jagoff. I love him. James' plumber friend is expected between one to four. The birds chirp their cacophanous calmnies, twittered gossip, a Byrds song pipes in over the truck radio as I drive to Ace Hardware for some joints and hinges. The wind bites. Stings.

    "Why," Alva asked "is nothing ever rent asunder anymore?"
    "Rent's all paid up this month" I replied.

James' friends keep him from floating away. He gets pretty high and wonders where he would wander without them. Thick thighs in cheap dives perhaps, or airports without security. A new dawn, a new year, it's still the same old story so why not spice it up by learning Polish or recapturing romance? Instead he goes to the shooting range and leaves feeling empty pocketed. Goes back to get his phone.

    "Here's yr problem right here."
    "Guess all that shit does catch up with you."

The plumber tells me there are thirty-thousand toilet related injuries each year in America alone. We ride the calliope-accompianied carousel, de-spite the rain. Laughter arrives like an old friend, slipping on a wet floor. Suppose the requisite poignancy be overlooked for a moment. Forever. 

    "Cant sleep WYD?" Alva texts
    😴 I reply.

In my dream it is snowing in fine detail in the woods, but I've left the oven on. The winter woods are potential. A polyphony of mercy and grace, just merciless to the ear. The heart. The snow suffocates all sound. Minimalist repression for our steamy souls  The oven smells like roasted garlic and finality.  But there is no ending.

Rick tries to console heartbroken Ilsa with the words 'Now, now'
-Casablanca Sparknotes

'Round and around and around and around we go 
-Rihanna

My Novel Hot Sadness

 

A stubborn roar is a sad error

- Corso

Health is just absence of footprints on the path

belly full and eyes open -- say hello to my novel, Hot Sadness

all spurious and sultry and bared for absolution.

In the superhero sense beyond some groans,

we make manifest a thing of truth, beauty, and insight

into the rubble of my false notions of permanence where there's

a matched pair of damasked springback recliners

thinking about either the word liminal or terminal

how they both involve lines, in the sand perhaps or

spark, conjure reflect the kind of friend you'd suspect you want to be around.

A cul-de-sac is a road that leads to nowhere. 

Who knows where Nowhere goes.

The low clouds break here and there like girls named Hyacynth, or the Montreal Expos

aw hell, my novel, Hot Sadness, all snowballs and red peppers

still waiting for time to unravel your rebukes.

"Everything falls apart," he said.

"Yes but we try to hold things together as long as we can."

"All in vain," he added, as a plane farted across the darkening sky.

She started to cry.  I'm sorry, I add, too late, and not enough.

Zest for Sense, Incense for the Rest

you can change your life & diet, wife & quiet  flame

I heard about a guy who cleft his life from being and became.

thrust out the dreams of Suckling sleep ye still as naked babes

should auld acquaintence be kersplatt mash ctrl+s to save

the days were colored sharply when the corner cricket chirped

oh ye of little landing strip, a pubic hair excerpt,

at night our feral hearts coerce and coarse with dark blood's song

I heard about the boundlessness, I heard that I heard wrong

who names the mute perfection whence they are in its midst?

I heard you were the frozen dew on brown addled grass tips

or tending to your horses, armchairs, onanastic dawns

I intend to watch the moon and hurdle soft headlong

into the low oblivionic funeral of time

as quotidian embrace holds sway. Can yours be same as mine?

we did a toast to fixedness and smashed the glasses thus

why clink together softly when the sidewalk poplars shush

turn absence into presences, see what cannot be seen

smile, be gentle, do not lie and regress into the sheen

of hot upholstered mysteries , the trash bill by the door, 

Austere façades, in yellow best to ward off gloom & more

I heard about a guy back east, the trees all lost their leaves

in voicemails drenched by honkytonk and radiologies

the sulphor of the darkness sparkling comes, a little bit, 

into the novitiate morning honey, so how about it

I heard if we squeeze tightly through the void of the absurd

paper gospels caked with smoke and bleached black by the world

can change everything back, and us, with an ironic eye

I heard it'd take a monthly fee, perhaps it's worth a try.

and let in tiny slices of a pure blue heaven.
The day is like us, she thinks; it hasn't decidedwhat to become. The traffic light at Linwoodgoes from red to green and the trucks start up

-Philip Levine

Today was the day, I was already behind
-Gord Downie

Yappy Hew Rear, near deaders.
This concludes the 26 blog cycle we started back in 2022. YAY!

Which were your favorites?  

What should come next?

Would appreciate your thoughts and comments as we commence together unto the new new new new
-D'Masked Man

Ylide 'na Car Ride

 the snow falls

too fast from the clouds,
and night is dropped and

 snatched back
like a huge joke

-Dennis Johnson

 Wherever you are is a country. 

- Mikko Harvey

Ylide* 'na Car Ride
*Ylide- a compound with opposite charges 

But of course I was cursed by beauty.  Some writers are hideous.  These learn easily and quickly that just saying something doesn't make it true because no one wants to listen to you, feo, but some of us are cursed by beauty and so most everyone naturally believes us because to see us is to be in our trance and it's only as our beauty fades that we realize that we were deluding ourselves and must ever be wary of doing so again.  Some are seated at birth just inches closer to the column of truth, which is to say, hideous to behold, like my friend John.

Easy to ignore, with that execrable visage of his, the lazy eye, curlew nose, that turkey throat, his slump and uneven mosey. We've been friends since school, close at first, then not so much, then tenuously at best, and now moreso.  I appreciate John's perspective, and how, tied to our shared history, it means that we can argue without it being personal, it's refreshing.  Especially when compared with the ongoing battle that is my current living arrangment, which, despite a promising start has not been going well.  So when John asked me to drive him to Reno to visit his niece I agreed. 

A stiff south wind had kicked up Thursday morning, just enough to put people into their perpetual jackets, mine's green corduroy, John's is navy blue.  That's not important, just checking to ensure you're listening.  On Thursday afternoon, one of those mid-December early dusks, I seal up shop with my yucca plant and three tiny window cacti and head out to pick up John (he lives about an hour away) in my tiny two seater Ford Fiasco, a dark and rapid thwapping under the hood, feeling freaking cold. An acquired taste; the depression that is wintery weather, or winter, starved of color, that unmitigated cold embrasure of eigengrau, the night's air nothing but distant stars, promises of warmth too distant to realize. Although, some still reach for them.  John opened the passenger door and plopped down "This is my favorite time of year," he said.  I was worried he would smell the exhaustion in my breath after we were all nestled-in snug for the long haul with the heater on low, but he only said thanks and fiddled pointedly with the radio knob until he found the news, so we listened to that in silence.  

The realization comes slowly that this is the closest we've been in a long time— gazing outwards at the same listless road, giving nothing away, making our way up into the mountains, over the pass, watching in the sideview mirrors as the glow of the chilly western horizon presses firmly against our backs.  So long world!  I remembered the bond I'd long felt with John, the closeness, an epiphany both lovely and fleeting, and it has charged my observations of the trip looking back on it now.

"Have you read anything I've written lately," I ask.
"I read the one about the chicken," John proffers.
"Myrta?"
"Yeah, Myrta- the fortune-telling chicken. It was good.  You should publish."
"I should.  But yet..."
"But yet..." he echoes dreamily, "but yet what?"
I change the subject. "How're things going for you?"
"Same ole same ole.  I'm tired a lot. Late nights. Early mornings."
"Still at the plant?"
"Still. Always. It's what I was put here to do.  I'll be honest though, after most 10-hour third-shifts I lay my middle-aged white-collar body on the couch and extinguish what spark of life I'vein the Stream, then the Streaming takes over and leads me to a net where all the stupid fish are caught."
"You probably go through lotsa coffee."
"NO" he shoots me an ugly look that means how could you forget this important fact about me and I remember that he doesn't drink coffee.  The not-drinking-coffee I don't mind, of course, but what annoys me is this holier than thou rationale he affects every time it comes up —How he insists on explaining his caffeine intolerance in posh British accent with phrases like 'it ill-befits my health,' or 'this wretched bean! It does not become me.'  This annoys me.  John says, "Rememberest thou, I canst not bedrink of it."
  "Lest ye die," I retort, and the conversation wanes, idles down.

Into the foothills my thoughts drift off to my time in the Uttarakhand, how the mountains seemed to never end, and they filled up everything, even the sky, and filled me in the beholding.  Now there's sky to see, but when I look up I see nothing.  Clouds. Vaporous, perhaps but empty, as am I, everyone sees right through me. Cars pass me on the freeway, my life.

John clears his throat. "So tell me, friend, why are things going so poorly on the old love front?" 
"It must be her fault." This is what I say when I'm not thinking clearly. John, of course, believes me because I am cursed by beauty so when I say it's not my fault there's never any second guessing.  Why blame beauty?
"Who among you, or is it whom, first said 'I love you' first?"
"I think it's whomsoever."
"Fine. Whomsoever betwixt the two your first declareth love?"
"I don't know.  Probably me.  Must have been."
"But who truly meant it first?"

That's a stumper.  Last autumn I heard a voice telling me that God wanted me to believe that I wasn't alone. This, I should have interpreted, in retrospect, as an admonition toward self-reliance but instead I went out to carouse. My buddy's band Bonerchai was playing at the gallery.  What are the words, post-mud-grunge, perhaps. Don't judge.  There she was, being introduced, the edges of the world disappear.  What are the words? Lithe and supple? Fair haired and wide-eyed?  Too good for me?  She assumed I was what she was looking for because, well look at me, and I assumed that she was what I was looking for because guys as a rule are paid the slightest bit of attention and go giddy as fawns.  What felt like thaumaturgy was actually astigmatism.

"Take a deep breath," says John, "and as your breast rises and falls, feel the blood course to your extremities.  Now feel it retreat, like the tide." He can see the anguish on my face and suggests "How about stopping at the Love's?" and my mind goes all sappy with the implications until I see the roadsign for the truckstop and pull over. He gets out to take a leak and grab some yummies.  I adjust my handsome mug in the rearview, but of course being cursed by beauty, there isn't much to do so I get out to fill up the tank and leave it filling while I pop into the truckstop as well. 

Inside the man in the tie tells the kid in the paper hat to go home, "service levels are down. "
    "Can I go home early boss?" another paper hat asks.
    "Me too?" chimes a another.
    "Me three?" chimes another.

"I probably meant it first," I say when we are flopping back into the car.  "What did I know? About what love means, I mean?"
"It means you're willing to put up with a lot of bullshit sure in the knowledge that it leads to great reward," explains John while munching on a pita wrap that smells like plastic.  "Life is better when shared with a partner. We know this.  The divine sparks within each of us, once rocked together, kindle a fire."
"But there's also divine truth to be meted out from isolation, and beauty too!  I could've pursued the eremetic tradition.  The desert fathers.  Written the next great American novel, a long great screed about individualism, Plymouth Rock, Walden Pond, yada yada."
"Who wants that?  It's as self-serving as masturbation."
"Readers want conformity and communal equilibrium."
"Sure they do.  Why not abdictate control of the narrative, of life, and become a unit in a grander scheme?  All ego-less and crayon-colored! That's what you did, hm?"  

 God wanted me to believe that I wasn't alone but that belief turned me just another dog in the kennel, happy you're home master, pleased to show you this old dirty bone.  I look at John. God he's ugly.  I love him, but gosh!  Taking off for Reno to visit his nieces, as gestures go it's as noble an endeavor as any, and it takes my mind off of the old chestnut, or, like Julian's disappearing hazelnut, the whole enchilada.  Would that I could go back to that night at the gallery and look like John in that moment, so she could see through the mask to what I am, what I was, what I will become.  We all become who we are.

"Last month we went to the planetarium.  And sitting there watching her text her ex as the laser lights shot every which way the blue light shone on her hair and I realized that it's transparent.  I could look through to her skull practically."
"What did you see?"
"I saw emptiness.  I saw our flotillas of time together and I couldn't place any of my standard narrative around any of it.  I saw scores of regrets and I saw the rotten core of all earthly efforts. I saw buildings burned and mountains laid waste and out in a space a fiery comet gone cold, caught up in the orbit of a sun that hadn't yet ignited, or a moon that only reflects the light of a distant star."
"So your girl's cheating on you and you're headed out with your old friend John to escape all that, eh? Off to the biggest little city in the world!  Swing out into the darkness dark comet, and leave her spinning behind in an indifferent blaze!"
"Something like that."
"I would offer you some corn nuts," says John, holding out the bag, "but I don't want to sound too corny."  Cars pass us on the freeway.  "Why didn't you reach out?"
"I — because it's hard.  Because — because everything seems to stand against the idea that — the enormity of the pain she has — that I felt like — I felt like it was mine to carry. Despite everything— and this is how art my remains possible, holding on to it."
"You and your idiotic attachment to sadness.  Loss is inevitable.  Change is inevitable.  Get over it. Stop living under it. Make art from sunshine."
"What if I can't?"
"Then you can't.  Do something else.  You've identified the problem, now change it up.  Take off the mask and take the stage again."
"I hope you're right."
"Hope is too passive.  I know I'm right."

John says he can't wait to see his niece, his sister.  I've seen them before.  Don't judge. But of course, I was blessed by beauty, so it's okay for me to point out that they hit every branch face first while falling out of the ugly tree.  Kidding, kidding.  

"It's good you've got them so close, relatively.  It's good to not be alone.  I've been  — I've been feeling pretty alone lately."
"To be less alone you need to be less alone!  Love someone back. Lots of people like you." Then he adds, "Not me of course.  I think you're a pompous ass.  A really fucking arrogant son-of-a-bitch."
"Thanks buddy."
"Fuck you, pal."
"John?"
"Hm?"
"How do you start? Being... less alone?"
"You just start."

  We stop for the night at our motel.  The wind had really picked up and we clutch our bags and waddle to reception.  I think about guarding my divine spark, somewhere deep in my chest.  Like candles lit in a hurricane, we can't be responsible for keeping our lights bright for long, nor blamed for letting the light go out completely. The world is brutal and invective.  

Later, John was asleep – it was late, probably about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning — and I went over and just stood and looked out the window at this town.  It's sad western lights on into the middle distance.  Whence is one, cursed by the shallowness of beauty, such as I, encouraged to stew and ponder the depths? I could hear the trains mournfully passing through, that wholly winsome wail and my thoughts mixed with John's steady breathing I felt carried off by the throttle of his dreams, the man there still, and just inside he's the ignored little boy, abandoned to embrace some raw elemental vision or other, all while pursuing the boundless shelves of desire, hope, all just out of reach and yet reaching. That's hope.  It's in reaching. 

Xyla's Apartment

Inside her, we move as one, sparring toward the bright abandon. It flees and we follow, faster, find it! Further, we journey together, just there.  The strong fervent final upstrokes of release yielding to a quavering absence, like a high white room, then we are back in Xyla's apartment, uneasily present, inside our own flawed and knobbled bodies once again.

If the body is a temple then the sanctum sanctorum is the mind, unless you're Xyla, and then it's there in that hairy patch between her legs.  Her langorous eyes shining like hotel soup spoons.  We kiss deeply, warm together like the fertile earth beneath a gray blanket of sunlight.  There is no way to know everything about someone and so I don't try very hard. Imminent dawn is my curfew. "You can sleep now" I say.

"I won't" she refutes, closing her eyes, hugging the pillow.  The daylight dances on the meadows casting shadows off the spindly windbreaks as I drive home, the earth turning toward the sun in all it's fucking majesty as I pull down the sun visor and stop for drive-thru coffee, black in a quaint paper cup.  I pull around to a parking spot beside Commercial Real Estate Available sign and watch, the northern sky white with smoke, and momentary terror eclipses everything then passes.

Chipped a tooth on Thursday.  Took a big handful of popcorn and off popped the cap from the front of a left  molar.  What's left is sharp and my tongue has been fixating on rubbing it all week, as has my mind.  I yawp into visor mirror to try to see it, pulling my lips back at the corner with a hooked finger. It's in the back of my mouth, so even if I smile broadly the empty hole cannot be seen, but I'm very aware that its there, even if no one else is, and it makes me wonder about people, y'know? Like, what pain and sharp nagging chips are chirping around in some people's tortured minds behind their otherwise smiling faces? What secrets are the others are carrying?

"How was your trip" Cassia pips, her sly white slip a revelation against the dark gray of our kitchen backsplash tile. "I saw the fires coming in" I say, setting my suitcase rolling and running a finger across the spotless island.  The kitchen is immaculately clean, the dishes sorted in intricate yet coherent patterns, starched towels folded crisply and smelling faintly of coriander and ripened plum.  Obviously I haven't been home all week.  She pecks and swipes at her phone, pecks my cheek and skirts off to the bedroom to finish getting dressed. Work today.  The stereo plays Debussy.  So bright and fucking chipper. I turn it off. Toss my receipts towards the wastebin and miss.  She emerges fully dressed, her hair tied up like an extradiagetic halo and brushes to the door.  "Welcome home.  You should sleep now" she says.

 But rather than mope around and study the meticulous tidiness of the house I coif up my hair and drive in to work. The sky looks sullen, threatening, a wreath of smoke around the parking lot and corporate walkways so slyly designed to reinforce law-abiding behavior and discourage loiterousness and vagrancy. I swipe my badge a few times before the door opens and the foul wraith is there waiting.  Late sixties, purple spots, with a decaying cloud of hallitosis perpetually fumigated by eau de toilette.  "I thought it was going to be a bad day.  Now I know" she grins contentedly as I elbow past.  "What's the matter," she asks, "did you lose a tooth?" My inbox has seven hundred fifty unread emails, enough to read two daily for the next two years. Tuna sandwich for lunch gets stuck in my tooth hole for the rest of the afternoon. The clock seems unhurried, licking the grape juice off the fingers of the second hand as it steals my life away one tick tick tick at a time.

News said fire fifty percent contained. Then the wind kicked up.  Cassia texts that she is going to her sister's to help and I leave her on read.  So thoughtful, telling me where she is, where she is going.  Go over to Xyla's apartment again.  It's in a complex coherently labled A through H, all four stories, all slyly designed boxes with intricately overlaid modulations of color, a façade to fool the eye into assuming modulated variation exists within their pre-fabricated internal blandness.  Flat windows overlook a flawlessly manicured lawn with three walkways around the worlds most sterile playground and a gated quartz azure pool.  Numbered car ports.  "If he only asks you out on the same day he's just not that into you," she quotes, as I leer at her naked hips squeezing back into faded jeans.

    "I'm here aren't I?"  We pass the blunt until I can feel the color of blood squeezing in gushing beats into my cavernous heart. Her bathroom is disheveled, slightly funky smelling, but in a girlish way. The shower drain has a corona of her hair sopping up the suds as I scrub my skin so hard it bleeds.  When I emerge into the gentle light, I note that the air now smells smokey.  Like a campfire.  Outside the wind howls and moans, demanding payment.  My naked reflection in the mirror is mournable.  What natural disasters we hold within us.

I had watched couples in the airport, like an anthropologist, wondering what women see in men. Most men. No, all.   Building a lasting relationship is about the careful management of information, about making sure that someone knows exactly the right bits of information to think you someone still worth hanging out with.  Fraud, basically. Perpetrated by each of us with two Y chromosomes, each scheming pyramidic two balls and cock wrangling their wily ways into acceptance until the structure is too tall to crumble at the rotten revelation rocking the foundation.  I licked at my chipped tooth and my eye strays onto the women.  Women. What whigmaleeries make fraud look exciting.  

Imminent dusk is my curfew. The day fades on the drive home as earth turns from the sun's energy and I stop for drive through coffee, black in a quaint small cup.  I pull around to a parking spot beside a spindly tree to sip, and watch, the sky a nautical depth of blue. A deer in the still arable meadow across from the neon mini-mall.  The bank empty save the red tailights queing for the ATM.  It's money they have, peace they lack. 

    "I wish I lived by the sea" Xyla had said once.
    "Why?"
    "Water in that quantity brings purpose" she said.
    "It's a senseless world."
    "The sea speaks to me."
    I asked in an affected bard "what doth the seatide say unto thee?"  She smiled.  But her eyes were somber opals. 

Smoke. It fills the car and chokes it's way inside my head in the lessened visibility as I my lower window to talk to the officer blocking our street.  I tell him that I live here.  His demeanor bleeds with righteous ostentation.  "Get your things and get out.  We've got an evacuation order."  The street is empty, the house is locked. There's nothing that I need here so I grab the rolling suitcase I'd left packed that morning and two beers and head out.  The sky over the hill is bright and hot.

One reaches an age when one has met the limits of certain assumptions and no longer need entertain them.  They no longer hold sway. Cassia always just knew that things would get worse, with an unswervable certainty that I couldn't dislodge. I always suspected that things might get worse, but might not.  After three years together there was no need to discuss the merits of her belief, much less argue the logic of it against my vague and increasingly unlikely assumptions.  Her righteous firmament was foolproof, (somehow I always ended up playing the fool) her arguments were slyly designed, intricately patterned, joylessly lengthy, flawlessly coherent, and scathing.  My rejoinders were full of whiney"but-what-ifs."  So I call and am relieved she doesn't answer.  

I drive south, drink the two beers and drive, the wind at my back, the windows open, smoke wending out like steam from a coffee cup.  My tongue diddles at the vacant tooth. One little corner of the earth burns. There is so much more earth turning dumbly under the stars. I drive and I call again, and again, and drive, the highway spooling out before me until the last of the smoldering smoke smell has been long blown away.

WWW DOT

sometimes we yearn for The Feed innately

although we question it's motives

    know that expressing emotions is the best course

instead we turn to The Feed

we dream of trains

we don't need much 

caped superheroes, 20 minute recipes, AI recitations

we remember with sentimentality 

the pendulum of redemption

not noticing the way the world smells different after

your first paycheck, lost your virginity, Covid

we churn in The Feed

like a boats trawling the dark 

raspy breath of chaos

heaven's withered garden

you will never again be the person you are today

but have you yet clicked to see my hot take on Senate Dems?

what has The Feed given us?

noise, the illusion of unity, distraction, cookies

and what has The Feed taken?

revenue, attention, mystery

ah, the atonal frequencies of time

from naked passion to the nakedness of revulsion, 

Loading... Loading... Loading...

this comes at the cost of connection

    lost connection? we have profound presence 

as illustrated by

the domestic quarrel with a pair of weaponized shears

what sacrifice at altars of style

is worth the sweet orgasmic oblivion of life

why did we stream that interview about 

woman's loss of autonomy & capacity for ecstacy after childbirth? 

mob violence in Nicaragua?  

racial bias in preschoolers?

perhaps the answers swirl in The Feed

we strike back against death, launch the app, press search

Nine New Notifications.

"You know what you did to me."

Recently Active

"I swear."

Click Here.

"Don't"

Scroll.

"I'm sorry."

Refresh.

1746165

3087933

0906215

5918967

2000339

8651185

9990694

0431435

3558491

0169323

0622408

3591106

2445921

5295263

5456285

0246352

1212302

8737038

4636958

9885467

2077640

6442486

3774158

6489919

0039543

7722518

6066540

3413275

1217036

7111435

0835729

7036891

4988809

3865109

2229205

0494276

3790790

6622185

7060906

9209318

3358400

9170281

2631587

3505144

6170672

9131472

2072195

6117208

7397211

8385828

6112665

1157389

Violence (of the Upturned Still Life) with Pomegranates

There are days when I feel immortal and days like today when the cool autumn chill kicks in with its whispered terror echoing of my inner bones and I can feel them breaking apart at the molecular level.  Mask loose, face numb, wipe the counter of toaster crumbs. Human nature is hilarious.  The guy panhandling by the homeless camp on the corner laughs at his shadow. If I told you I could create a world without capitalist tendencies would you buy it?  

Alright kiddos listen up: 170 million people in America were under heat alerts last month. Last night I gently touched a luxuriant breast. Sweet! Sweat. The candle was dominated by burning.  Cisneros declaimed that stain and decay are romantic, but hunger isn't, at least not to the hungry. "Gravity wins in the end, your mother said." "Did you ever read Little Fires Everywhere?" "Not yet." "Me neither."

There are days when I could assure you that my existence will become legendary and more days when I cannot frame time, operate the phone charger, explain the science of flight even aided by pictures from the website.  We leave behind digital trails that can instantly coarse the world and are vulnerable to being erased just as easily. In the newstand in the terminal we bought a newspaper. A sloped man on stilts begirds the intersection, beseaches us for change. "Only God begets change for juggling on high" Sarah said. Such a great line. I was so jealous.

A portable amp screeched mic feedback and a man's voice heartily welcomed both ladies and gentleman to the 16th annual day of golfing.  I did not appreciate the exclusion of non-ladies nor non-gentle men. My 30s so far have taught me to hoard my lamentations like the man with the leather duckling collection he showed only to a select few.  You are the few.  This was on Friday.  Fawad teed off first for our group then stepped out of the way. I couldn't feel my legs give out from under me. This is the slow march to the end.  All summer our planet has boiled with storms, floods, hellish heat and fires. Don't you wish you could fly away?  I do.

There are days when, in September, everything goes so peachy-smooth not even knowledge of the impending heat death of the universe cancels out my verve, and days when the dinner meat that I couldn't cleft from the bone was left out on a plate by the sink overnight and I wake pre-dawn to find it dessicated, sinews drawn out, ominously foreshadowing that which we'd rather not see.  Literal spoilers. Still life with pomegranates interrupted by a Calendar App notification. Why won't it end close?  Time to go.  When our ride arrived I told Sarah I believe Uber should be free and paid for as a public utility.  "Hrmph." she said.

A vinegary voice calls us to board our gate. Shave and a haircut, two big carry-ons. “Ladies and gentlemen on behalf of myself and the flight crew we would like to welcome you aboard.” Why don't they just welcome us aboard then if they'd like to welcome us?   I send a tense text and turn my phone on airplane mode, starting to sweat.  God only knows. God makes his plan.  Cold air above from the overhead fan. Dizzy and sleepless, hungry and nauseous.

There are days when my words are monuments of stone against the ravages of time and days when, heard in the abstract I am a less welcome substitute for silence.  "I know when I'm not wanted," I lied to myself, sitting beside her on aisle, only she wasn't there.  I wondered where she was, where does she keep her ardor, her anger, her heat?  Somewhere deep in her breast.  "I could eat," I said when she returned.  She read aloud that Lou had texted her there'd been a shooting in a bar. She checked for it in the paper then gave up and checked her phone. We're all going to the same place in the end but sometimes we're not.  We read the dry earth's palimpset surface and understand it innately, even if some of the grammar is lost. I see the plane's shadow and laugh as we jetison into the cold, above the clouds moving so slowly, into the big empty sky full of the spinning sun burning so fully it is as if the closer we get, nothing else is burning or moving at all. 

Unto Mount Helicon Whereupon the Nine Muses Dance

An Invocation

A brume bloomed timeless paralyzing

present, yawned beyond grammar.

Blue light, like blue time, morning insistent

Interminable intrigue. [Can]

 "they go about at night, sending forth

beautiful voice"? Yes, and very, yet 

There by the spring they linger, 

For fog has no memory 

and where mother can't find you…

 

Yearning

"I stayed out too late. At Auggie's. And went over my six by three. Or four," said Benny, his dart eyes off in their own private twinkling dimensional plane. 

"Five?"

"I don't know man and she's there waiting for me at the door. Like I'm fifteen again. Asking where I've been do you know what hour it is et cetera.  I literally fell on my face, shit my pants.  Right there in the living room.  Missed the coffee table by," holds pinch fingers, "this much." 

My back itches so I wiggle it against the corduroy futon. Staying at Benny's means making do with what limited hospitality there is to offer. A fridge  full of rye bread, mustard, and half opened beers.

"It wasn't like that for me."

Benny smiles and nods, stirring his sparkling water. "I'm just trying ... to"

"I appreciate it."  His big red nose punctuates his beard-checkered face like a sunset drenched mountain framed by achingly ornery cormorants. There's a sadness there in the cheekbones that I had mistaken for bemused resignation. When's the last time I really looked at Benny? At anyone?

He turns out the lights and as I lay down I think I should write some of this down. Then I remember it's Sunday. There's got to be a world where you don't dread going to work in the morning. Maybe I'll skip. Call out.  There's a thought worth sleeping on.

 

Journey

Man, I missed this city. Burning in by bus, skidding the waves upon a ship, plunging down by plane.

I exit the station and plunge past the morning sun of the Embarcadero noting eerily how quiet everything is – how much accretive background noise we tend to tune out from planes overhead, even the odd helicopter, cars and their muted microcosms, vents, fans, boats chugging on the sea. The sky seems sharply cut. I should write this down, too. Instead I walk uptown, sweat congregating beneath my backpack, looking at the stores that have changed, closed, the permanence of grey things. San Francisco never seems to be far away from my soul, but this city isn't the same anymore so what's that say about my soul? At Jo's house she asks if I've eaten. I scratch my unshaven jaw, trying to summon the right answer. Where did the past two weeks go?  This whole year, the past four?

 

Trials (the First)

It's not accurate to describe Cassia kicking me out. I left.  It's not accurate to describe Cassia, period, because she is, or has been, my everything.  Instead I talk more about myself.  No.  Bad idea. Have I described Cassia to you?  One of the first things I think about is her hair, the way it tassles across her shoulders.  Her shoulders, taut and somehow always cold.  Her nose, aquiline, that's a good word. When we started going out I had visions of fancy in which she was a regal painting, dapples of gold amidst the azures, something late 19th century, that nose so aristocratic in bearing.  As you get to know someone your clarity of vision improves, or, in our case, I stopped seeing what was real about her.  I stopped imaging her as an old world portrait around the time I started fantasizing about what her belly would look like pregnant.  I'm not accurately describing Cassia at all.  This is still more descriptions of me and my descriptions.  This is the problem.  Also, the problem is I left, she didn't kick me out.  She didn't ask me to come back, or, hasn't yet, either.  Maybe that's not the problem.  Maybe the problem is I can't stop thinking about how I should be writing this down.  Giving this story some shape.

Jo lives in a mansion she rented from some East Coasters who are putting off retirement while their younger daughter finishes school at Princeton.  Jo provides an air kiss on each cheek, continentally. Jo plants her veiny hand with its five long silver ringed fingers firmly on my shoulder and delivers a deep practiced look of understanding as I explain that it would just be for a little while.  Jo shows me the spare room which I can use, the spare rooms I can't, the kitchen, the dining rooms, bathrooms, library, piano recital room, she points out to the deck, mentions a work from home offfice suite and a gym room, points to the stairs to the third floor.  Jo sets out towels, apologizes for having to go to work, "sorry, I'm actually really late," and says I can borrow the car if I need.

"I like to walk," I demur.

"If you change your mind, keys will be here.  Don't forget the combination when you come back in."

"I'll probably just rest up.  Thank you so much. Shower off, first. Please. The water is very hot so be careful. Rest. I'll be back by eight."  

So I borrow Jo's car to drive to the bank re:$ and a cop pulls me over within a minute. Do you know why I pulled you over? Failure to come to a complete stop.  Does a record of this exchange follow my name or Jo's car or both here on in?  'Traffic violation' is too violent a term don't you think? It's a hastily assembled catch-all that doesn't do justice to we wee scofflaws rolling through our midday California stops.  Why do we even follow these rules? I should write that down. I should bring this car back and walk.

Instead I stop by a bar and listen an old day-drinking cougar tell me a story about her nephew who was the drummer in the band BeHeld and who traveled to Thailand and came back an ordained barefooted Buddhist monk.  Then some guys came in and explain to me all about estate tax exemptions, Congolese Cobalt mining, the New York Jets, the myriadic problems with the work of Thomas Friedman, and they promised to give me the real scoop on Chinese spy satellites next time, then I remember about the bank and say I'll be right back and the bartender this guy named Chris are still discussing the changes in the weather in very resolute and stirring tones when I get back all angry about the traffic and right behind me come these two Lithuanian girls come in and we buy them each a drink, three times, and we all smile a lot but they have to go and the place is suddenly filled with many different kinds of people, how did that happen, and one of them has borrowed my barstool so I'm just standing there like a schmuck so I pop out for a smoke and see that the sky is dark and realize it has become night and when I get back to Jo's place she is pacing the vestibule.

"You can't stay."

"Wuddaya mean?"

"Stealing my car? Leaving the scene of an accident!"

"I barely tapped the guy.  And I was just borrowing it, like you said.  See, it's right there."

"My co-worker Martha texted me to ask if I was alright since she'd seen me peel off after hitting a pedestrian."

"Barely tapped.  D'ja tell her it wasn't you?"

"Out."  Jo handed me my backpack and a Tupperware still warm with food. "I'm sorry about what you're going through and all but, not enough to bring my house down too."

 

I realized later that I didn't even tell her about the traffic ticket.

 

 

I hadn't planned to go to my sister's apartment because I didn't want to.  I didn't want to because she would know that I was only there because I had to be there. Then she would want to talk to me about it.  I didn't want her to talk to me about it.

 

"Hey you" she says, smiling, deep black wading pools under her eyes.  

She opens the door a crack, her voice a hair louder than a whisper. A dog barks and she closes the door again and I hear her hissing threats at the dog and escorting it away, three moths dance in the light by the buzzer while I wait.  A few minutes later I hear her come back and she opens the door again, wider now, "my brother is always welcome, I just, I just put the kiddos to sleep," she says, motioning dismissively behind her in a gesture I know innately translates to 'that goddamn dog' The clock on the microwave shows that it's 10:34pm. "Come in! Come in," her hair is tied up like a frayed knot tied around two chopsticks. Tiny pieces of egg and peas and applesauce wrappers and Bratz dolls and watercolor fingerpaints are all Jackson Pollack'd over the table "Shhhhh" she cautions me, starting to clean up then turning back around to give me a hug, then cleaning some more, then offering me a glass of wine, then seeing the mail and looking through it with a worried expression, then apologizing and clearing a space on the couch by placing the dog toys and the socks and leggings and an unspooled roll of Bounty paper towels onto the recliner next to the framed portait of mom.

She nestles herself up on the opposite end of the couch by placing the purple toy teapot and the cut-out paper flower bouquet and the Styrofoam takeout box a quarter full of orange Indian food and the book with the missing cover about the Elephant and the Piggie and and and and and and and and, into a green milk crate on the counter by the toaster.  Then she finds the cover of the book and hands it to me.  She remembers the wine and gets up to pour it.  Slumps back down.  We each sip.

"Is it alright if I stay the night?"

"Of course, yes" she says, adding "Any time" then the clouds of conditionality track across the horizon of her mind, I can see her eyes following them in the distance, "If the baby won't bother you, that is.  She's up and down most of the night.  And Kellie's got dance tomorrow so we're leaving early."  I hand back the book cover and grab a hairy pillow off the dog kennel. "Your nephew's with his father tonight," she says, still cloudwatching.

I don't want her to talk to me about why I'm there so I close my eyes.  When my eyes open again it's because two little fingers are prying my eyelids apart.  Kellie, beautiful auburn haired gap-toothed tutu-wearing Kellie, looking very concerned and asking why I'm on the floor.  I reach a groggy arm up to leverage back onto the couch and feel the dog there, spooled up in sleep.

"Why is Uncle sleeping on the floor," her angelic voice calls out to her mother.

"Get your shoes on, honey!" my sister calls from the bathroom.  I help myself to some Captain Crunch and 1%, then start the process of rounding up dishes and washing them as my sister comes out all made-up, wearing black leggings and a mauve jumper, carrying the baby in her right arm, three bags slung over her shoulder, a coffee mug and keys in her left hand.  "Honey say goodbye to Uncle we gotta go." Kellie puckers up and I lean in to get a kiss and then they are gone and I am left amidst the detritus in silence, the dog on the couch looking at me quizzically like 'well?' so I finish washing the dishes and rip out a page from my notebook to leave a note taped to the fridge, and steal a paper flower from the bouquet on my way out.

 

From blue time before world

 was yet made of matter

 world made of Gods

where God’s dreams spring [unto Mt. Hellicon]

whereupon nine muses dance

evergetic, manupusant, His face badly burnt

demands song, tell a tale, the tale, praise, praise.

 

 

Trials the Second thru Fourth in Most Rapid Succession

Dark ocean roar. Watching cautiously for the undertow, then forgetting about it and getting sucked out to way over my head and yell for help and gulp down seawater. Whoosh and down I go.

The Gomez brothers have this condo right off campus. I hears about it, I loves it, I goes and they loves me and I do this line and do that line and I, through sheer willpower and charisma, I moves the whole night party out to the beach, four cars, only seven headlights, and the beach is empty and I says let’s go in the water, and they protest while I strip and sprint way out to the scrim then step toes out cautiously, for footings or changes to the current and then I forgets and I’m out in the breakers  and can’t touch and floating like sparkly flotsam and the big wave hits and another bigger wave and the sea surrounds me, penetrates my ears and nose and mouth and this is my final moment.  

Figures. Death by drowning.  I can feel my lungs aching, I wonder if I still have any limbs.  There unravels a soundless calm.  I am mitochondria.  The crunch of the surf a distant radio static in the dark then nothing. Why is the world so intent upon leaving me alone with my thoughts?  Maybe I’ll just sleep.  Just sink.  So much easier than thinking.  Then I Sense something waiting up ahead.  Turning sharply I face a pair of tender fish eyes and flinch. What are you doing here, the eyes ask. I stare, willing my eyes to cry, to confess the old sins, admit confusion amidst the tumult yet there below the surface there is no crying, no tumult even, nothing to anchor sensation and emotion in memory, only a stunningly suffocating stillness where the eyes see me and seem to satiate their curiosity with disinterested pity saying this is not your place and they swim away, creating a clutch of bubbles that rise up and I follow. Up.  Up.  Out.  When I break to the surface I cough and scream but I can’t hear anything except the roaring church of the waves which is as disorienting as it is omnipresent, but lights on the land are distant galaxies and I reach and stroke and kick and swim and ache and paddle and push and yearn and repeat and reach the sand and crawl up past the water’s reach and rest and then the globe stops spinning and I manage to stand upright and walk back.

No one knew I was gone.  

 

Later. There's a fire Javier tends and although its warmth feels good, sitting by it seems invasive. My wet boxers attract shivers. Clothes in a pile, sand everywhere. I remember writing in my hip moleskin "happiness is fascism."

 

Later. I watch her curves in those dark jeans try to jimmy her way back into the locked car.  Locked out. Rachel hair. Espadrilles. The mind ablaze. She turns around and I realize she has a face like a dumpling. The fucking peregrinations of desire. The glaze dissolved into a long conversation on the cement steps about the authenticity of the self as expressed through careerism.

    "I know I could be doing so much more," Dumpling is saying.  

    "Then what's stopping you from doing it?" Amir asks.

    "Debt.  Bills."

    "Those are just excuses," Amir says.

    "I guess yer right."  From this angle parallel to the pavement she has a certain caustic luxuriousness, if one were needing to find nice things to say one could admire the commitment to presentation.  Unfortunately what she presents isn't what I'm looking for.  Amir seems to hold out some hope.  

    "No I take it back. I'm the one administering excuses.  It's fear" Amir says.

    "I guess yer right."

    "Nope.  No guessing.  I know I'm right." Amir is a hard worker, I remember, and I wonder how much he makes, how much he has saved.  It occurs to me that I haven't been to work in a week. Amir's greying hair shines in the halogens from the parking lot.  Javier pokes at the fire.

    "Do you believe in fate?" Dumpling asks, apropos of nothing.

    "Fate?"

    "There's definitely maybe a reason, like, that you're asking me these questions tonight.  Like look at Venus up there."  So we dutifully turn to observe the evening star as she reflects her luminescence through Amir's big cow eyes. Twinkling like a song of anamnesis. "The iron in your blood only exists thanks to stellar explosions of long-ago, the gold in these earrings were formed by the breaking hearts of dying stars, and Venus named after the goddess of beauty, could have turned out very much like Earth, but she loved her own reflection too much, and the runaway greenhouse effect left her a victim of burns and mutilated." 

She might have continued talking.  What's with our infatuation with Venus, I wonder, and what does it say about us that we've maintained this inchoate fascination for millennia without ever going deeper than the surface? 

"Isn't it likely that we're fated to be here, in this city, by this fire?”  Inside the condo there is yelling, screaming even, and then silence. I check to see if my clothes are still wet.  They are.

"Humans are natural conspiracy theorists,” says Amir when he has courteously surmised that Dumpling is done speaking.  “Best to keep that in mind. We’re hardwired to find meaning in meaningless coincidences."

Javier gets up and gives the signal for beer and I nod, and Amir nods and Dumpling turns around and nods as well and I can’t keep calling her Dumpling, it sounds bad, but I didn’t ask her name.  She went on about the sun swallowing the Earth until we are just a intrauterine fetus, and something about Andromeda. 

    “What does a wave look like outside of linear time?” I remember writing in my hip moleskin.

 

I wake alone on a bed that's not mine in a room I don't recognize, the sheets covered in sand.  Raw skin between my thighs.  Neither pants nor shirt, moleskin, but a fair middling of shame. "Sorry about the bed," I say, meandering thirstily into the smoky mouth of an i shaped kitchen where two people I do not know are using a broom to fan smoke out of a too-small screened window. Outside a storm is brewing, the walls rumble and the wind whines.  The word I want to use is insistently.

 

Loss

Cassia calls. I miss it. The rain lathers my arms like baby oil as I cross the iron bridge thinking the world is a bitter and complicated place, pontificating other bitter thoughts to the jaded audience of self.  Each wretched step a procession of apostolic penance. When I call her back she sounds the same, which is to say, miles away.   My feet feel like plywood.

          She doesn’t ask where I am but I tell her anyway. "I miss you," I confess.

"You left your stuff. I brought it to your job, they said they hadn’t seen you."

I couldn’t think of an appropriate response to that so I kept walking, holding the phone away from my mouth so she wouldn’t hear my laden breathing in her ear.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  Like tears in the rain, I’d just go down there someplace. Follow gravity.

“Do you really?”

“Yeah.”

“I miss you, too,” she says. It feels like a bullet through the gut.

 

Growth

The ubiquity of magazines in quiet waiting rooms.  I make rapid sketches in my new hip pocket moleskin and crave a cigarette but I wait.  ‘Patience,’ someone probably once said, ‘is allowing the restraint of moderation prolong one’s satisfaction.’ I didn’t write that down.  But I make rapid sketches of words there, waiting, writing, and when they call me back, even though I am on a roll I pocket the paper and pen and follow the nice-smelling nurse’s aide down the secret forbidden corridor to the third right and then the second left, to Cassia.

On the drive home I notice how green everything still is.  “The rain’ll do that,” she says, reaching out to hold my hand, and I wonder if I had said it out loud or if she had just read my mind.  We hold hands as I wend the wheel around the curves in the road the rest of the way home. The house on the hill.

 

Doxology

There’s a drug called anger but it’s never going to be enough, and a drug called righteousness but it leaves a sour taste to everything if you try it.  “I figured that I would ascend from the paralysis of private cognition towards a shared experience of the real,” I wrote in the closing pages of the book, plagiarized, I think.  I’d copped it from the notebook and who knows where it came from.  Briefly there was a moment when I debated not reading that line aloud when I gave her the pre-submission read-through.  But so many of our first instincts are motivated by fear, so I examined it a bit and it didn’t hold water.  

So when I got to that part I read it and then I told her, “I don’t think that bit’s mine, but I can’t top it.”

          “Yet,” she said.  “You can’t top it yet.”

 

Epilogue

 

Daughters of memory, 

Peep[ing] past the pulpit coulisses into pink surly hearts of men

we thank thee for these perfect words, verbs

dispositions, dispensations,

your youthful dance lacerating us with awe

granted then the gone in mountains mist

Quick! Quick! Return or that

we may sing us another.