The man in the dark was a mysterious figure. He walked down a wide, dirt road as the sun was coming up and the wind was at his back and the air smelled of rain. His hair was brown and his nose was long and smudged and spread across his face like melted butter and his eyes were beady and brown and his mouth was twisted in a scowl and he couldn’t forgive his father. He wanted to find some place to stay. The trees were on either side of the road and the road was not a paved road; it was a dirt road. It had always been a dirt road and the dirt road would always remain a dirt road as long as God was alive and breathing and his father could not forsake him now. He walked down the dirt road and didn’t think about anything. He wasn’t a good thinker. His thoughts were slow and stepped one after another like building blocks or stones being thrust in the water and his eyes narrowed as he stared at the sun as it was beginning to rise to the start of a new day and the rays of the sun pierced through the shadows and fell upon everything and the sun was the only bright spot in his mind. He failed. He was supposed to have a new job and he failed and he wanted to watch football on television and he couldn’t because he didn’t have a home and he was homeless and the world was homeless because they wouldn’t help him, they were afraid of his brown hair and his big nose and his eyes that were too sharp to see. He thought his father would be disappointed wherever he was-God rest his soul-and he lifted his face and his eyes and he stared at the rising sun and thought he was a failure at life and life failed him. He was not born blind but he was born with a lame leg and he had the surgery when he was five to fix his leg and now he walked with a slight limp. The limp was noticeable and people didn’t like it. The wind was at his back now; the wind shrilled a high, pitched note and the note rang through the trees and the place beyond the horizon and he thought about taking a bath in a river. It was 1979 and the Vietnam War was ending or almost ended or had ended already; the road was a very long road and he had gone from one day to the next day and had walked in the dark. His thought was a thought of stepping stones and food, glorious food to fill his stomach, and he thought maybe he should be a soldier and join the war that couldn’t end. He thought all words were very much the same. Most wars killed the same kinds of people; good, hard-working people who had values and ideas that were unlike other people’s. He learned about Iraq and Vietnam and South Korea in high school and how some of the presidents thought maybe Hitler and Pol Pot were insane. The man couldn’t think about that now. He needed to find work. Or he had to steal food but he hoped he wouldn’t have to steal food from the farmers because he liked farmers who helped America grow strong and stay free. He wanted America to stay free and grow strong and proud and stand against the injustices of war and the freedom it pertained.
He was a man.
He took out a lighter and a cigarette from his pouch and lit a cigarette and his thinking was slow and he thought now about a wife and children of which he had none. The trees were like buildings. They didn’t have fruit.
He was a man and he smoked a cigarette and spit it out and soon he came to a road and at the end of the road was a sign.
“Jackson, Mississippi.”
He was in Mississippi.
He walked a little further and a building rose up out of the ground. It was a grocery store. He went into the grocery store and pulled a grubby twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and wandered down the aisles, looking for something to eat. He finally settled on a bag of hamburger buns and beef jerky and he purchased it at the cash register from a smiling woman with a big jaw and hair like a rat’s nest. The wind screamed outside and battered at anything within reach. The man was within reach. He swallowed hard and put the food in the sack on his back and he went out into the howling gale and looked up at the sky and realized it was going to rain.
Well.
He needed some place out of the rain.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A CITY.
A CITY
The city left me. In the deep of the dark, on the edge of the dawn, the city left my wife. The moon, the bright summer moon at noon, killed me and left me for dead. It was a joke, I guess. The moon couldn’t kill a person. Light crawled in my window and the city left me and it was a ghost town in the dark and the darkness sucked in the life all around it and the quietness, the stillness, was of autumn, of wind, of deceit. My wife was a ghost and her heart stopped beating after she was a ghost and deceased, a ghost of the good and the dead when they went to sleep, where they went to sleep and the dead slept in the deep blue ocean, the blueness of the ocean all around us. She had been a ghost long before she was ever with me and it was only when she was dead I realized she had never been living in my life in the first place. It was like a star slowly burning out from existence, it was like the dying of a star. We never got along about anything. She never had a nice thing to say about me and our sex was miniscule. We seemed to have the picture perfect life and didn’t. I found her lying dead and naked in the bathtub, the water dripping from the silver faucet, her hand dangled over the edge of the tub, her eyes closed. She wasn’t really sleeping. For a second, I thought maybe she was sleeping and the thought flitted away and she was alive in my mind one minute and dead the next. I looked down at her naked body, stark white naked in the bathtub, and didn’t feel anything except the cold, hard truth-the cold facts of truth. She died sometime during the night and her body was cold to the touch of my finger and it wasn’t my fault and I knew in my heart she was somewhere safe, in Heaven or wherever else people went when they kicked the bucket. I had a guilt trip like you wouldn’t believe. Anger. A deep, penetrating anger emitted from the core of my being and I wanted to tear up everything-tear at the posters hanging in the master bedroom; knock over the bookcase full of Agatha Christie and James Patterson novels; wreck havoc on entire cities like Adolf Hitler did once a upon a time before Vietnam swallowed the world and spit it back up again. I didn’t. I stood in the bathroom, my hands dangled at my sides, looking at the ghost of my wife and not really feeling anything at all, only a cold, hard truth and the swallowing anger and darkness and the wind shuddering outside the house. I did what any sane widow would do. I checked her pulse. She had none. I checked her breathing. No gasp of pain emitted from her lips or her nose. Her chest didn’t move. “God!” I wept. “Jessica!” She didn’t reply. I went to the hall closet, pulled out two towels, and covered them over her naked body. I dashed into the master bedroom, picked up my cell phone, and dialed 911.
Thank goodness they pick up on the first ring.
“Hello?” the operator chirped in my ear.
“Emergency,” I breathed heavily into the phone and hoped it reached the other end. Sometimes, things didn’t work right, especially appliances. “Emergency. Come. Now.” My voice was throaty and whispery and I sounded like a dumbass. It wasn’t my intention. I wanted to sound professional and not break down in front of a stranger over the phone. I didn’t want to break down about anything.
Her voice floated back to me: “Where?”
I gave her the address.
“Is she…still?” I thought maybe the last word was breathing but I couldn’t be sure. My phone crackled.
“No…dead. I checked her pulse. Again?” The statement was more of a question. She didn’t give a response. I sounded drunk. It wasn’t a good idea to sound drunk on the phone with a 911 operator. She hung up the phone. A minute later she called back and apologized for the inconvenience and said it was probably some crossed wires and she didn’t mean to hang up on me. The ambulance and the police were coming and I wouldn’t have to fear anything any longer. She asked me if anyone had broken into my home. I told her I didn’t know. I lived in a beach house-or, what old people would call a “condo.” The ambulance arrived and the medics burst through the front door and pounded into the bathroom and pronounced my wife dead at the scene. I wept. The police arrived next, and booby-taped the bathroom, I couldn’t even get my hairbrush or my toothpaste. A police officer introduced himself as Detective Kit Perry of the New Orleans Police Department. They queried me about what happened before her untimely death-she had gotten home kind of late and I heard her stomping around the guest bedroom until, I assumed, she fell asleep and woke up again and went to take a shit and fell in the bathtub and eventually drowned to death-except, the bathtub was half-full and the water was very cold and I didn’t have the whole facts. Only partial facts and opinions about what happened. I was upset. I had been asleep the whole time in the master bedroom and if my poor wife screamed, I had been asleep and don’t remember hearing anything unusual. It was horrible. They drew chalk on the white, linoleum floor next to the tub and waited for the medics to load her on the stretcher and carried her away, down the stairs and out the front door and into the dead of night. I followed down the stairs, babbling, unable to know exactly what it was I wanted to ask; a police officer followed behind me and patted me on the shoulder and assured me everything would be all right. The medics assured me the police would escort the ambulance to the medical examiner’s office and I would have to claim it the next morning. Kit asked me if I had anywhere to stay for the night. I shook my head and told them my sister was in Utah and she had two children and couldn’t leave them. They were in school and had to get good grades so they could get into a good college and take care of their mother when she was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s was a disease a lot like cancer and destroyed the soul.
“Jessica,” I sobbed. “Jessica. Jessica.” I cried her name over and over again and a police officer came pounding up the stairs and handed me a tissue and I blew my nose in it and handed it back to him. He introduced himself. His name was Charley Stevens and he was one of the older police officers-he had been a police officer for fifteen years and had seen a lot of crimes in his day, but very few murders. He was puzzled by the murder and asked me a lot of questions and wrote them down in a yellow notepad.
“Were you home all day?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Yes. I was going to get pizza out and changed my mind and heated up leftovers instead-the cook leaves at six. We make food ourselves any time after six. Sometimes, I don’t want to cook and eat whatever’s in the fridge.” I took a deep breath. I was babbling. I had to stop. “Well.”
I didn’t say anything else. I swallowed and looked at them and I looked at the condo and I didn’t want any of it. I hated my wife, sure, but I didn’t want her to be dead. I wanted her to be alive. I wanted her to stand in front of me and tell me everything was going to be all right.
“I think,” Jasper Frenchman said. His shoulders fell. “I think the maid did it.” He frowned. I could see the little hamster wheel spinning around and around in his brain. He asked for my maid’s number. I recited it to him by heart. Jasper babbled on and on about nonsensicals-how she died; why; everything I didn’t want to have to deal with. I swallowed. Charley scowled at him. His expression was one of anger. “Stop!” He commanded. He glared daggers at him and the police officer shrank back, perturbed by the man’s resilience of having being demanding. The man’s resilience was something to be left undiscovered, unperturbed, undisturbed. The darkness was around them and was outside the house. The police officers had been at my house for over an hour. I glanced at the clock in the kitchen. My stomach rumbled. I didn’t tell them I was hungry. They didn’t need to know.
Jasper wandered back to the bathroom. He looked down at the yellow chalk. “It’s not in the right spot,” he muttered, and shook his head.
“That’s all right,” the police officer, Audrey Davis, came up behind him. “We did it on purpose. You can’t really draw the line of a human in a bathtub. It’s impossible.” He smiled. He didn’t think anything was funny about a dead woman. Her husband would surely take the blame. Things happened. They couldn’t be controlled.
He nodded. “Right.” He looked at me. “You all right?” He smiled. I wondered, What the hell was he smiling about, dumb fuck? I wanted to rip him a new Adam’s Apple. I wanted to buy a weapon and eat all of his friends. I wanted to…It was against the law. I held back. My hands clenched at their sides. I shook my head resolutely and stared hard at the man and tried to think of something mean to say and nothing came. In the name of the God Almighty, I will be firm, I will stand tall against the tides, I will be tall against the darkness and all things that wanted to tear me from sanity, tear me from the woman I loved, tear me from doing the right thing. The right thing and the wrong thing were two different things and I didn’t know how to solve it. The sanity kept me firm. Be still. The police officers told me I shouldn’t stay here. I looked at them. How could they say that to me? This was where my wife spent her last moments on Earth. My wife, the blonde woman who had the quirky smile and the big eyes and the soft, throaty voice. She spent them in the bathroom, the water slowly filling in the bathtub. This was where she died. I couldn’t leave. I told them so. Jasper shrugged nonchalantly. “Suit yourself,” he replied. “You crazy. Don’t want to deal with no crazies.” He gestured for the police officers to leave. They trooped out the door and down the stairs and I heard the outside front door open and closed. I stood in the living room. My breath came in large and laborious and I went to the bathroom and stared at the bathtub. The water was turned off. It wasn’t dripping. I put my hands on the bathroom sink and tried to think about what I was going to do. I had to go to the coroner’s office the next morning and claim the body. They said they were keeping it over night to examine it and make a decision about the cause of death. I thought it was suicide. My heart told me otherwise. My beautiful wife. Gone. Gone in a single minute. An instant. It was like making a cup of instant coffee.
The police officers were gone.
I was alone in the apartment.
The body was gone, too.
The body. I couldn’t understand how I could think of her in the manner I thought of her. I was in the dark. The living room light was off. I went to the tall shape of the lamp in the dark and flicked it on and the entire room emitted a yellow glow. Shadows fell off the walls and bounced on the floor. We had bouncy carpet. I went to the sliding glass doors and opened them-swish, swish-and walked out onto the balcony and looked down at the ocean. The purple-black mist swirled on the water and the water was black, too. The moon was full and bright and the brightness reflected on the water and the water shivered and moved. I didn’t see the whale again, the whale was my only friend. My only friend, the whale. I was sad. The sadness was in me and I couldn’t get it out for anything in the world. I couldn’t get it out for anyone, let alone the police officers who came to visit me in my hour of need, or the coroner who kept my wife’s body safe for the night before I had to say goodbye.
I cried for myself.
For my life. Not for my death. Because it didn’t happen yet. I rested my hands on the balcony and the tears bounced off my cheeks and down my skin and the wind whispered, delicate, across my eyelids and remained. The solitude was daunting. It daunted me. The wind echoed her voice: Raul, can we go? Raul, would you like this? Raul, strawberry wine from Paris. I enjoy our time together, Raul. And the strangeness at the back of my mind, maybe she was cheating on me, maybe she had cheated on me, maybe she was thinking about cheating on me and wasn’t going to go through with it, or she was going to cheat on me in the future. All the conversations fell in my mind, quick stepping stones and the wind was her, it became her. I was not by myself on the balcony. The wind kept me company. I could move to the city. I could move to the city and get away from the ocean and all its terrible secrets. Like the death of my wife or the whale with the glittering eye, or the moon that rose up over me and blanketed me in a thin silver of light. The thin silver of light permeated from the core of darkness and the darkness surrounded it and the wind spoke for my wife. I didn’t want to hear my wife’s words ever again. I wanted them to be buried forever. They would be buried when she was buried. They would be gone forever once she was dead. She was dead now. The words fell on my lips. I spoke them aloud, a whisper on the wind: My wife was dead. A spark from a cigarette lit the dark and it was my cigarette lighter lighting a thin, white cigarette. What would my wife do for me? I thought all of the things she had done for me. Every single little thing. She took out the garbage for me. She used her credit cards-her own credit cards, mind you-on me to purchase sweaters, sweaters with the logo “Shorts” on them in big, bold letters, or “Save the Earth, Nuke the Whales.” It made her laugh out loud. I thought of her laugh. I could see it in my memories. I could see it in the back of my mind and I tried to grasp the words and the sound didn’t come. The words didn’t come and I grasped them with two, firm hands, and the laugh came, clear as a bell-no, it was the wind again. Not the laugh of my wife. Why didn’t I record her laugh when I had the chance? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand anything that was going on. I thought about my wife’s eyes. They had been large and blue and reflected the sun. On the first day we met, I was lost in those eyes, lost in the endlessness of it. The endlessness of the eyes were one of the things I loved about her-from her eyes to her long, blonde hair and heart-shaped mouth. She wore red lipstick and had no eyeglasses. I was brown-haired and blue-eyed and she said I could have been a model, except I was working 24/7 at a job I hated. I was a contractor for a big-time contracting company. Everyone kissed my butt. Sometimes, I think even my wife kissed my ass. She thought her job was less than what it actually was and it wasn’t. I was glad she’d had the job. It helped out a lot. Now she was gone and I couldn’t get her back. The wind was my wife. If I didn’t know any better, if I wasn’t mistaken, the wind cried her name. I was the wind and the wind was my wife and we both cried and the stars came out and they cried, too. The stars were big and bright and reflected the sky and I was on the balcony and didn’t notice the shadow of a figure of someone in the beach house next to me come out on his own balcony and light a slim naked cigarette and stare out at the ocean. I didn’t know he was there until I heard the click of the lighter and a small flame sprang up in the darkness. The darkness of the sky was different from the darkness of the ocean and the land and the houses, the darkness of the sky was more purple, pale and translucent in the dark and I craned my neck to look for fish. Her ghost haunted me. She was behind me in the dark and I looked quickly and only saw my neighbor. His name was Lonnie Dracon. He was a forty-seven year old divorced man. I usually saw his car in the driveway and I only saw him twice in the whole life I was living at the beach house. I never talked to anyone anymore, and rarely conversed with my wife. My wife was gone and Lonnie was not and I craned my neck over the railing and blurted out one word: “Hi.” The words were soft-spoken. Quiet. I swallowed, hardly able to get the word out. I didn’t know what to say. Lonnie had a busy life. I didn’t want to bother him about my own. He would know tomorrow if I didn’t tell him now. The news would know. They always knew everything.
“Hi,” he repeated. He flicked the cigarette off the balcony and it flew through the darkness and was gone, into the pit of blackness that made up the night. Vietnam swallowed the night. Vietnam was the night. The night was Vietnam. I didn’t know why I thought those things. I didn’t know what I was thinking. Or why I thought anything. The anger welled up inside of me again.
“You angry?” he said. “I saw the police cars leaving.”
I laughed bitterly. “My wife,” I explained. Laughter bubbled in my throat. I couldn’t keep it down.
He nodded in the dark. His head bobbed up and down. “Ah,” he sighed. The end of the cigarette burst full of light and faded again. It was a star winking out. The metaphor was clichéd, I knew, but I didn’t bother to make a better one. My wife was gone. “I saw the police cars,” he added. “The sirens. Woke me up.”
I nodded. “Sorry about that,” I apologized.
I felt guilty for lying. Lying wasn’t my thing. Unless it was to someone I didn’t like. “Lonnie.”
“Yeah?”
“My wife is dead.”
“She died from alcohol?” He sounded startled.
I shook my head. He couldn’t see me, but I did it anyway. “No,” I answered. “We don’t know what it is. They’re doing the autopsy tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“She was pretty.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Were you happy?”
I grasped the words in my mind. Grasped them and they rolled around my tongue and I felt them and heard the memories in the back of my mind: “Yes.”
“Why did she do it, then? If she did it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Suicide.”
The word was an ugly word.
I thought about it. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I thought about it. The words rolled in my mind with a lucidity that was horrifying. Terrifying. The darkness made it all the more prominent. The darkness made me scream inside my mind. Suicide was an ugly word. It had an ugly connotation attached to it. My heart hurt. The pain was fierce and sharp and it hit my gut and I wanted to run and never come back. Lonnie was the most terrifying idea to me at the moment and he was the only one who had never hurt me, had never left me. We were never close but he didn’t try to stick his nose in my business and I respected it for him. I respected him. I guess he did something with fishing and ran a restaurant on the side and he seemed to be happy with his wife-what was her name, Starla? Yeah, I think it was Starla. She was a Barbie-type person. She had a lot of tattoos and shoulders like a man. I didn’t really think the description was appropriate, but I guessed it was good enough. It was good enough for me.
“Tell,” he urged me. His voice was emotional. He was choking up. I was surprised. He didn’t seem to be the type to get emotionally attached to situations.
“What?”
“Talk about it. Tell me how it made you feel.”
I was startled. “How what feel?”
“Death,” he explained in a patient tone. “Her death.”
“I just wanted to see the whale.”
“That whale? I named him SnuggleBuns.”
I resisted the urge to snicker. “Dumb name,” I replied.
“What about your dumb name?”
“Oh, mine? Micah Heap.”
“It sounds Egyptian.”
“I haven’t even been to Mississippi.”
“Or Jackson, Tennessee.”
“No. Not that.”
“Her?”
“Jessica. Middle name is Elizabeth.” I don’t know why I told him her middle name. I wanted her to be alive for a few minutes longer. I thought about all the times we were together and the times we were apart. We were apart more than we were together. We had dinners. Dancing. Long walks on the beach, talking, and looking at the stars. Our sex grew less and less until I couldn’t stand the sight of her. We drifted apart. I thought about bringing it back but I had been working, trying to provide for her. Our beach house cost $43,000; she bought a $25,000 car last week and it sat in the garage like a great wooly mammoth. It sat in the garage, sullen and angry, and I mulled it over in my mind and the thoughts shaped in my mind and became firm and hard, without being bitter and angry about anything. The anger was raw. The hatred was raw and I wondered why Lonnie was angry. Myth had it only angry people smoked cigarettes. I was one of the angry ones. I didn’t know why. The anger was inside me and it roared like an angry lion. We danced around angry words. I didn’t want to talk about his home life. My home life was bad enough. I didn’t need to pry into his. We watched the moon. It was bright and full in the sky and the moon glared down on us and then a sound on the water and two whales came up, gasping, for air. They sang their song and my neighbor snorted and went back inside. I watched this with wary amusement. He came back out and a series of shrill, high whistles emitted into the darkness and I realized he was the one whistling. It was a sweet sound. A good note. The sound of the whales and the sound from my neighbor’s whistle was in the dark around us and we didn’t think anything for awhile, just listened to the whales, who had not been there when the wife died and I had to see her body all by myself, but they were here now and I was enjoying the moment, the moment of stillness, the moment of the water and the dark and the sky and the wind. Check that, it wasn’t windy. The sky was pitch black. Pitch black all around. The sky moaned and life breathed in the ocean and in the houses, my wife isn’t in that house or the other one or any other house on the black or the rest of the world. I was in mourning, mourning hard, and the mourning crashed my entire being, the entirety of it all, I was tired.
The city left me. In the deep of the dark, on the edge of the dawn, the city left my wife. The moon, the bright summer moon at noon, killed me and left me for dead. It was a joke, I guess. The moon couldn’t kill a person. Light crawled in my window and the city left me and it was a ghost town in the dark and the darkness sucked in the life all around it and the quietness, the stillness, was of autumn, of wind, of deceit. My wife was a ghost and her heart stopped beating after she was a ghost and deceased, a ghost of the good and the dead when they went to sleep, where they went to sleep and the dead slept in the deep blue ocean, the blueness of the ocean all around us. She had been a ghost long before she was ever with me and it was only when she was dead I realized she had never been living in my life in the first place. It was like a star slowly burning out from existence, it was like the dying of a star. We never got along about anything. She never had a nice thing to say about me and our sex was miniscule. We seemed to have the picture perfect life and didn’t. I found her lying dead and naked in the bathtub, the water dripping from the silver faucet, her hand dangled over the edge of the tub, her eyes closed. She wasn’t really sleeping. For a second, I thought maybe she was sleeping and the thought flitted away and she was alive in my mind one minute and dead the next. I looked down at her naked body, stark white naked in the bathtub, and didn’t feel anything except the cold, hard truth-the cold facts of truth. She died sometime during the night and her body was cold to the touch of my finger and it wasn’t my fault and I knew in my heart she was somewhere safe, in Heaven or wherever else people went when they kicked the bucket. I had a guilt trip like you wouldn’t believe. Anger. A deep, penetrating anger emitted from the core of my being and I wanted to tear up everything-tear at the posters hanging in the master bedroom; knock over the bookcase full of Agatha Christie and James Patterson novels; wreck havoc on entire cities like Adolf Hitler did once a upon a time before Vietnam swallowed the world and spit it back up again. I didn’t. I stood in the bathroom, my hands dangled at my sides, looking at the ghost of my wife and not really feeling anything at all, only a cold, hard truth and the swallowing anger and darkness and the wind shuddering outside the house. I did what any sane widow would do. I checked her pulse. She had none. I checked her breathing. No gasp of pain emitted from her lips or her nose. Her chest didn’t move. “God!” I wept. “Jessica!” She didn’t reply. I went to the hall closet, pulled out two towels, and covered them over her naked body. I dashed into the master bedroom, picked up my cell phone, and dialed 911.
Thank goodness they pick up on the first ring.
“Hello?” the operator chirped in my ear.
“Emergency,” I breathed heavily into the phone and hoped it reached the other end. Sometimes, things didn’t work right, especially appliances. “Emergency. Come. Now.” My voice was throaty and whispery and I sounded like a dumbass. It wasn’t my intention. I wanted to sound professional and not break down in front of a stranger over the phone. I didn’t want to break down about anything.
Her voice floated back to me: “Where?”
I gave her the address.
“Is she…still?” I thought maybe the last word was breathing but I couldn’t be sure. My phone crackled.
“No…dead. I checked her pulse. Again?” The statement was more of a question. She didn’t give a response. I sounded drunk. It wasn’t a good idea to sound drunk on the phone with a 911 operator. She hung up the phone. A minute later she called back and apologized for the inconvenience and said it was probably some crossed wires and she didn’t mean to hang up on me. The ambulance and the police were coming and I wouldn’t have to fear anything any longer. She asked me if anyone had broken into my home. I told her I didn’t know. I lived in a beach house-or, what old people would call a “condo.” The ambulance arrived and the medics burst through the front door and pounded into the bathroom and pronounced my wife dead at the scene. I wept. The police arrived next, and booby-taped the bathroom, I couldn’t even get my hairbrush or my toothpaste. A police officer introduced himself as Detective Kit Perry of the New Orleans Police Department. They queried me about what happened before her untimely death-she had gotten home kind of late and I heard her stomping around the guest bedroom until, I assumed, she fell asleep and woke up again and went to take a shit and fell in the bathtub and eventually drowned to death-except, the bathtub was half-full and the water was very cold and I didn’t have the whole facts. Only partial facts and opinions about what happened. I was upset. I had been asleep the whole time in the master bedroom and if my poor wife screamed, I had been asleep and don’t remember hearing anything unusual. It was horrible. They drew chalk on the white, linoleum floor next to the tub and waited for the medics to load her on the stretcher and carried her away, down the stairs and out the front door and into the dead of night. I followed down the stairs, babbling, unable to know exactly what it was I wanted to ask; a police officer followed behind me and patted me on the shoulder and assured me everything would be all right. The medics assured me the police would escort the ambulance to the medical examiner’s office and I would have to claim it the next morning. Kit asked me if I had anywhere to stay for the night. I shook my head and told them my sister was in Utah and she had two children and couldn’t leave them. They were in school and had to get good grades so they could get into a good college and take care of their mother when she was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s was a disease a lot like cancer and destroyed the soul.
“Jessica,” I sobbed. “Jessica. Jessica.” I cried her name over and over again and a police officer came pounding up the stairs and handed me a tissue and I blew my nose in it and handed it back to him. He introduced himself. His name was Charley Stevens and he was one of the older police officers-he had been a police officer for fifteen years and had seen a lot of crimes in his day, but very few murders. He was puzzled by the murder and asked me a lot of questions and wrote them down in a yellow notepad.
“Were you home all day?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Yes. I was going to get pizza out and changed my mind and heated up leftovers instead-the cook leaves at six. We make food ourselves any time after six. Sometimes, I don’t want to cook and eat whatever’s in the fridge.” I took a deep breath. I was babbling. I had to stop. “Well.”
I didn’t say anything else. I swallowed and looked at them and I looked at the condo and I didn’t want any of it. I hated my wife, sure, but I didn’t want her to be dead. I wanted her to be alive. I wanted her to stand in front of me and tell me everything was going to be all right.
“I think,” Jasper Frenchman said. His shoulders fell. “I think the maid did it.” He frowned. I could see the little hamster wheel spinning around and around in his brain. He asked for my maid’s number. I recited it to him by heart. Jasper babbled on and on about nonsensicals-how she died; why; everything I didn’t want to have to deal with. I swallowed. Charley scowled at him. His expression was one of anger. “Stop!” He commanded. He glared daggers at him and the police officer shrank back, perturbed by the man’s resilience of having being demanding. The man’s resilience was something to be left undiscovered, unperturbed, undisturbed. The darkness was around them and was outside the house. The police officers had been at my house for over an hour. I glanced at the clock in the kitchen. My stomach rumbled. I didn’t tell them I was hungry. They didn’t need to know.
Jasper wandered back to the bathroom. He looked down at the yellow chalk. “It’s not in the right spot,” he muttered, and shook his head.
“That’s all right,” the police officer, Audrey Davis, came up behind him. “We did it on purpose. You can’t really draw the line of a human in a bathtub. It’s impossible.” He smiled. He didn’t think anything was funny about a dead woman. Her husband would surely take the blame. Things happened. They couldn’t be controlled.
He nodded. “Right.” He looked at me. “You all right?” He smiled. I wondered, What the hell was he smiling about, dumb fuck? I wanted to rip him a new Adam’s Apple. I wanted to buy a weapon and eat all of his friends. I wanted to…It was against the law. I held back. My hands clenched at their sides. I shook my head resolutely and stared hard at the man and tried to think of something mean to say and nothing came. In the name of the God Almighty, I will be firm, I will stand tall against the tides, I will be tall against the darkness and all things that wanted to tear me from sanity, tear me from the woman I loved, tear me from doing the right thing. The right thing and the wrong thing were two different things and I didn’t know how to solve it. The sanity kept me firm. Be still. The police officers told me I shouldn’t stay here. I looked at them. How could they say that to me? This was where my wife spent her last moments on Earth. My wife, the blonde woman who had the quirky smile and the big eyes and the soft, throaty voice. She spent them in the bathroom, the water slowly filling in the bathtub. This was where she died. I couldn’t leave. I told them so. Jasper shrugged nonchalantly. “Suit yourself,” he replied. “You crazy. Don’t want to deal with no crazies.” He gestured for the police officers to leave. They trooped out the door and down the stairs and I heard the outside front door open and closed. I stood in the living room. My breath came in large and laborious and I went to the bathroom and stared at the bathtub. The water was turned off. It wasn’t dripping. I put my hands on the bathroom sink and tried to think about what I was going to do. I had to go to the coroner’s office the next morning and claim the body. They said they were keeping it over night to examine it and make a decision about the cause of death. I thought it was suicide. My heart told me otherwise. My beautiful wife. Gone. Gone in a single minute. An instant. It was like making a cup of instant coffee.
The police officers were gone.
I was alone in the apartment.
The body was gone, too.
The body. I couldn’t understand how I could think of her in the manner I thought of her. I was in the dark. The living room light was off. I went to the tall shape of the lamp in the dark and flicked it on and the entire room emitted a yellow glow. Shadows fell off the walls and bounced on the floor. We had bouncy carpet. I went to the sliding glass doors and opened them-swish, swish-and walked out onto the balcony and looked down at the ocean. The purple-black mist swirled on the water and the water was black, too. The moon was full and bright and the brightness reflected on the water and the water shivered and moved. I didn’t see the whale again, the whale was my only friend. My only friend, the whale. I was sad. The sadness was in me and I couldn’t get it out for anything in the world. I couldn’t get it out for anyone, let alone the police officers who came to visit me in my hour of need, or the coroner who kept my wife’s body safe for the night before I had to say goodbye.
I cried for myself.
For my life. Not for my death. Because it didn’t happen yet. I rested my hands on the balcony and the tears bounced off my cheeks and down my skin and the wind whispered, delicate, across my eyelids and remained. The solitude was daunting. It daunted me. The wind echoed her voice: Raul, can we go? Raul, would you like this? Raul, strawberry wine from Paris. I enjoy our time together, Raul. And the strangeness at the back of my mind, maybe she was cheating on me, maybe she had cheated on me, maybe she was thinking about cheating on me and wasn’t going to go through with it, or she was going to cheat on me in the future. All the conversations fell in my mind, quick stepping stones and the wind was her, it became her. I was not by myself on the balcony. The wind kept me company. I could move to the city. I could move to the city and get away from the ocean and all its terrible secrets. Like the death of my wife or the whale with the glittering eye, or the moon that rose up over me and blanketed me in a thin silver of light. The thin silver of light permeated from the core of darkness and the darkness surrounded it and the wind spoke for my wife. I didn’t want to hear my wife’s words ever again. I wanted them to be buried forever. They would be buried when she was buried. They would be gone forever once she was dead. She was dead now. The words fell on my lips. I spoke them aloud, a whisper on the wind: My wife was dead. A spark from a cigarette lit the dark and it was my cigarette lighter lighting a thin, white cigarette. What would my wife do for me? I thought all of the things she had done for me. Every single little thing. She took out the garbage for me. She used her credit cards-her own credit cards, mind you-on me to purchase sweaters, sweaters with the logo “Shorts” on them in big, bold letters, or “Save the Earth, Nuke the Whales.” It made her laugh out loud. I thought of her laugh. I could see it in my memories. I could see it in the back of my mind and I tried to grasp the words and the sound didn’t come. The words didn’t come and I grasped them with two, firm hands, and the laugh came, clear as a bell-no, it was the wind again. Not the laugh of my wife. Why didn’t I record her laugh when I had the chance? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand anything that was going on. I thought about my wife’s eyes. They had been large and blue and reflected the sun. On the first day we met, I was lost in those eyes, lost in the endlessness of it. The endlessness of the eyes were one of the things I loved about her-from her eyes to her long, blonde hair and heart-shaped mouth. She wore red lipstick and had no eyeglasses. I was brown-haired and blue-eyed and she said I could have been a model, except I was working 24/7 at a job I hated. I was a contractor for a big-time contracting company. Everyone kissed my butt. Sometimes, I think even my wife kissed my ass. She thought her job was less than what it actually was and it wasn’t. I was glad she’d had the job. It helped out a lot. Now she was gone and I couldn’t get her back. The wind was my wife. If I didn’t know any better, if I wasn’t mistaken, the wind cried her name. I was the wind and the wind was my wife and we both cried and the stars came out and they cried, too. The stars were big and bright and reflected the sky and I was on the balcony and didn’t notice the shadow of a figure of someone in the beach house next to me come out on his own balcony and light a slim naked cigarette and stare out at the ocean. I didn’t know he was there until I heard the click of the lighter and a small flame sprang up in the darkness. The darkness of the sky was different from the darkness of the ocean and the land and the houses, the darkness of the sky was more purple, pale and translucent in the dark and I craned my neck to look for fish. Her ghost haunted me. She was behind me in the dark and I looked quickly and only saw my neighbor. His name was Lonnie Dracon. He was a forty-seven year old divorced man. I usually saw his car in the driveway and I only saw him twice in the whole life I was living at the beach house. I never talked to anyone anymore, and rarely conversed with my wife. My wife was gone and Lonnie was not and I craned my neck over the railing and blurted out one word: “Hi.” The words were soft-spoken. Quiet. I swallowed, hardly able to get the word out. I didn’t know what to say. Lonnie had a busy life. I didn’t want to bother him about my own. He would know tomorrow if I didn’t tell him now. The news would know. They always knew everything.
“Hi,” he repeated. He flicked the cigarette off the balcony and it flew through the darkness and was gone, into the pit of blackness that made up the night. Vietnam swallowed the night. Vietnam was the night. The night was Vietnam. I didn’t know why I thought those things. I didn’t know what I was thinking. Or why I thought anything. The anger welled up inside of me again.
“You angry?” he said. “I saw the police cars leaving.”
I laughed bitterly. “My wife,” I explained. Laughter bubbled in my throat. I couldn’t keep it down.
He nodded in the dark. His head bobbed up and down. “Ah,” he sighed. The end of the cigarette burst full of light and faded again. It was a star winking out. The metaphor was clichéd, I knew, but I didn’t bother to make a better one. My wife was gone. “I saw the police cars,” he added. “The sirens. Woke me up.”
I nodded. “Sorry about that,” I apologized.
I felt guilty for lying. Lying wasn’t my thing. Unless it was to someone I didn’t like. “Lonnie.”
“Yeah?”
“My wife is dead.”
“She died from alcohol?” He sounded startled.
I shook my head. He couldn’t see me, but I did it anyway. “No,” I answered. “We don’t know what it is. They’re doing the autopsy tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“She was pretty.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Were you happy?”
I grasped the words in my mind. Grasped them and they rolled around my tongue and I felt them and heard the memories in the back of my mind: “Yes.”
“Why did she do it, then? If she did it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Suicide.”
The word was an ugly word.
I thought about it. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I thought about it. The words rolled in my mind with a lucidity that was horrifying. Terrifying. The darkness made it all the more prominent. The darkness made me scream inside my mind. Suicide was an ugly word. It had an ugly connotation attached to it. My heart hurt. The pain was fierce and sharp and it hit my gut and I wanted to run and never come back. Lonnie was the most terrifying idea to me at the moment and he was the only one who had never hurt me, had never left me. We were never close but he didn’t try to stick his nose in my business and I respected it for him. I respected him. I guess he did something with fishing and ran a restaurant on the side and he seemed to be happy with his wife-what was her name, Starla? Yeah, I think it was Starla. She was a Barbie-type person. She had a lot of tattoos and shoulders like a man. I didn’t really think the description was appropriate, but I guessed it was good enough. It was good enough for me.
“Tell,” he urged me. His voice was emotional. He was choking up. I was surprised. He didn’t seem to be the type to get emotionally attached to situations.
“What?”
“Talk about it. Tell me how it made you feel.”
I was startled. “How what feel?”
“Death,” he explained in a patient tone. “Her death.”
“I just wanted to see the whale.”
“That whale? I named him SnuggleBuns.”
I resisted the urge to snicker. “Dumb name,” I replied.
“What about your dumb name?”
“Oh, mine? Micah Heap.”
“It sounds Egyptian.”
“I haven’t even been to Mississippi.”
“Or Jackson, Tennessee.”
“No. Not that.”
“Her?”
“Jessica. Middle name is Elizabeth.” I don’t know why I told him her middle name. I wanted her to be alive for a few minutes longer. I thought about all the times we were together and the times we were apart. We were apart more than we were together. We had dinners. Dancing. Long walks on the beach, talking, and looking at the stars. Our sex grew less and less until I couldn’t stand the sight of her. We drifted apart. I thought about bringing it back but I had been working, trying to provide for her. Our beach house cost $43,000; she bought a $25,000 car last week and it sat in the garage like a great wooly mammoth. It sat in the garage, sullen and angry, and I mulled it over in my mind and the thoughts shaped in my mind and became firm and hard, without being bitter and angry about anything. The anger was raw. The hatred was raw and I wondered why Lonnie was angry. Myth had it only angry people smoked cigarettes. I was one of the angry ones. I didn’t know why. The anger was inside me and it roared like an angry lion. We danced around angry words. I didn’t want to talk about his home life. My home life was bad enough. I didn’t need to pry into his. We watched the moon. It was bright and full in the sky and the moon glared down on us and then a sound on the water and two whales came up, gasping, for air. They sang their song and my neighbor snorted and went back inside. I watched this with wary amusement. He came back out and a series of shrill, high whistles emitted into the darkness and I realized he was the one whistling. It was a sweet sound. A good note. The sound of the whales and the sound from my neighbor’s whistle was in the dark around us and we didn’t think anything for awhile, just listened to the whales, who had not been there when the wife died and I had to see her body all by myself, but they were here now and I was enjoying the moment, the moment of stillness, the moment of the water and the dark and the sky and the wind. Check that, it wasn’t windy. The sky was pitch black. Pitch black all around. The sky moaned and life breathed in the ocean and in the houses, my wife isn’t in that house or the other one or any other house on the black or the rest of the world. I was in mourning, mourning hard, and the mourning crashed my entire being, the entirety of it all, I was tired.
Longer The Eyes Stare.
She said she was afraid of death.
He said, “Julia! You no longer lonely, fool.”
Her eyes are backwards eyes.
She beats not with a steady heart.
He queries questions to The Big Guy Upstairs.
He eats food from old folks’ homes.
He is saddened by the death of a friend-
No, doubt, from AIDS,
This is The Time of Pretending.
We pretend.
All things pretend.
Dark
Has come.
Dark fades.
Socks.
Are on padded feet.
The skin is white. Words fall on cold linoleum floors.
Fruit is poured from the skin.
The ground fades in.
Snow has come down.
We will go home.
Sometimes, we rise out
Of stormy weather-
We wish darkness would turn to the stars,
Turn heavenward, gaze skyward,
The family is not my own.
I am.
Monkeys breathe.
DNA is scoured and brown.
The pot on the table
Is full of stains.
I pick up the garbage.
Throw it outside.
The river lies, naked, in the sun.
I am not enraged.
I am not anything.
Colors melt in old stones.
Flowers fade on the table.
We fade.
All will fade.
All fades. Withers.
The church bell chimes.
He said, “Julia! You no longer lonely, fool.”
Her eyes are backwards eyes.
She beats not with a steady heart.
He queries questions to The Big Guy Upstairs.
He eats food from old folks’ homes.
He is saddened by the death of a friend-
No, doubt, from AIDS,
This is The Time of Pretending.
We pretend.
All things pretend.
Dark
Has come.
Dark fades.
Socks.
Are on padded feet.
The skin is white. Words fall on cold linoleum floors.
Fruit is poured from the skin.
The ground fades in.
Snow has come down.
We will go home.
Sometimes, we rise out
Of stormy weather-
We wish darkness would turn to the stars,
Turn heavenward, gaze skyward,
The family is not my own.
I am.
Monkeys breathe.
DNA is scoured and brown.
The pot on the table
Is full of stains.
I pick up the garbage.
Throw it outside.
The river lies, naked, in the sun.
I am not enraged.
I am not anything.
Colors melt in old stones.
Flowers fade on the table.
We fade.
All will fade.
All fades. Withers.
The church bell chimes.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
First Names.
She wasn’t dreaming partial dreams.
Red leaves
Fell,
Glimmering,
Over a red valley.
Why?! The snow sticks
To the ground.
Stick people crowd
Downtown
Mardi Gras parades.
Faded jeans.
Blast through
Midnight air
Stare
Gently they go down
Gently they go sleeping.
Gently.
Fish swim.
Mourning doves flock to
Old church ceilings-
Why,
O cry me out of Jordan,
Cry me rivers,
Rushing waters, cold.
Sentences are proverbs-
John.
Red leaves
Fell,
Glimmering,
Over a red valley.
Why?! The snow sticks
To the ground.
Stick people crowd
Downtown
Mardi Gras parades.
Faded jeans.
Blast through
Midnight air
Stare
Gently they go down
Gently they go sleeping.
Gently.
Fish swim.
Mourning doves flock to
Old church ceilings-
Why,
O cry me out of Jordan,
Cry me rivers,
Rushing waters, cold.
Sentences are proverbs-
John.
The Day Folds At the Sistine Chapel, 1989.
I walk up a marble staircase to my new house,
And the dog follows me. Quick on my heels.
I drop the box I am carrying and glance upward-
Stares at the ceiling.
It is a white ceiling.
It is the same kind of ceiling that everyone else
Has.
It is not the Sistine Chapel.
It is not any kind of chapel at all.
Just like the Sistine Chapel,
It is made out of walls, of wood-
The steps are carved out of stone.
His eyes are bright.
They shine deeper than mountains.
A school teacher, he sings to lonely mountains
And stares down at the world.
His mind takes a sharp turn.
His body is art.
His art is his words,
Carved on old doors in pawn shops,
Carved in bed posts at furniture shops.
He keeps something from his children.
That he had a bad heart.
He keeps it to himself,
And hopes the world falls around his ears,
Hopes the world dies, lonely and afraid,
He is lonely and afraid.
He is madly in love.
She works at an art museum.
She works in the gift shop at the art store
And whispers A Capalla to herself,
Every single night before the museum
Closes and the art is hidden from the world.
Art is hidden from the world every single
Night after closing time.
Some people say that the paintings come to life
During the night.
The night guards say they have never seen them.
He is madly in love.
She sees him standing in the doorway,
Wearing a suit and tie,
Thinks about his future and the future
Fades away.
Replaces by lonely mountains.
The mountains are made out of glass.
Hash. Sash. Her grandmother wears a sash
And hangs it in her hall closet.
And the dog follows me. Quick on my heels.
I drop the box I am carrying and glance upward-
Stares at the ceiling.
It is a white ceiling.
It is the same kind of ceiling that everyone else
Has.
It is not the Sistine Chapel.
It is not any kind of chapel at all.
Just like the Sistine Chapel,
It is made out of walls, of wood-
The steps are carved out of stone.
His eyes are bright.
They shine deeper than mountains.
A school teacher, he sings to lonely mountains
And stares down at the world.
His mind takes a sharp turn.
His body is art.
His art is his words,
Carved on old doors in pawn shops,
Carved in bed posts at furniture shops.
He keeps something from his children.
That he had a bad heart.
He keeps it to himself,
And hopes the world falls around his ears,
Hopes the world dies, lonely and afraid,
He is lonely and afraid.
He is madly in love.
She works at an art museum.
She works in the gift shop at the art store
And whispers A Capalla to herself,
Every single night before the museum
Closes and the art is hidden from the world.
Art is hidden from the world every single
Night after closing time.
Some people say that the paintings come to life
During the night.
The night guards say they have never seen them.
He is madly in love.
She sees him standing in the doorway,
Wearing a suit and tie,
Thinks about his future and the future
Fades away.
Replaces by lonely mountains.
The mountains are made out of glass.
Hash. Sash. Her grandmother wears a sash
And hangs it in her hall closet.
Wings of Trees.
The trees dance in meadows and bend
Against the sky
The sky is a blue flower
Bluer than the world beneath it.
The soil has eroded, weathered in rock
And grain.
Farming is simple. It can’t be denied.
The sun beckons out to tomorrow.
The sun, the wind, the rain,
Flies outward into nothingness,
The void that is endless,
No shadows or reason of shadows.
She said, “Let’s come.”
He said I couldn’t leave her.
She said apples and oranges bend
To the wind.
She said I don’t know where I am.
He didn’t say anything.
Words don’t mean anything.
They are shaken, stirred, dried.
The apricots are dried on the table.
The apples are dried in the sun.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Tomorrow is not the only one.
One day and the next day and the next,
We gaze into the otherness of time.
We gaze into the stillness of autumn.
And the sound of each other’s heart beat.
It bends on swift wings
And time flies out the door.
Against the sky
The sky is a blue flower
Bluer than the world beneath it.
The soil has eroded, weathered in rock
And grain.
Farming is simple. It can’t be denied.
The sun beckons out to tomorrow.
The sun, the wind, the rain,
Flies outward into nothingness,
The void that is endless,
No shadows or reason of shadows.
She said, “Let’s come.”
He said I couldn’t leave her.
She said apples and oranges bend
To the wind.
She said I don’t know where I am.
He didn’t say anything.
Words don’t mean anything.
They are shaken, stirred, dried.
The apricots are dried on the table.
The apples are dried in the sun.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Tomorrow is not the only one.
One day and the next day and the next,
We gaze into the otherness of time.
We gaze into the stillness of autumn.
And the sound of each other’s heart beat.
It bends on swift wings
And time flies out the door.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
My Mother's Onions.
His mother was sad in a way
He couldn’t quite figure out
Sad in the way a door blew open
When it was windy
And the garden was full of onions.
His mother said she wanted a letter.
She wanted to get a letter and send it back to
Someone-I asked her who it was,
Maybe a celebrity, maybe someone else.
I asked a bunch of people to write to her.
They said no.
I asked a dog to write to her and she barked at me.
I didn’t like it when dogs barked at me and I didn’t
Know the reason why.
I don’t understand the onions in the garden or why
Gardens exist.
I don’t understand anything.
My father reads car magazines.
He told me to go out and not come back.
He told me to get a job and get some respect.
I asked him why he didn’t give me respect.
He left the house for a week.
My mother is fond of onions.
She keeps them in her dresser drawer.
She tries to find a way to use them on everything,
She also likes to pour ketchup on top of them.
We are fighting every day. I said she doesn’t respect me.
She says talk to my father. I told her I didn’t know where
My father was; she said she wasn’t happy about
The weather. I don’t know what weather had to do
With anything.
I guess she wants me to avoid the issue.
I don’t know if I can deal with that.
He couldn’t quite figure out
Sad in the way a door blew open
When it was windy
And the garden was full of onions.
His mother said she wanted a letter.
She wanted to get a letter and send it back to
Someone-I asked her who it was,
Maybe a celebrity, maybe someone else.
I asked a bunch of people to write to her.
They said no.
I asked a dog to write to her and she barked at me.
I didn’t like it when dogs barked at me and I didn’t
Know the reason why.
I don’t understand the onions in the garden or why
Gardens exist.
I don’t understand anything.
My father reads car magazines.
He told me to go out and not come back.
He told me to get a job and get some respect.
I asked him why he didn’t give me respect.
He left the house for a week.
My mother is fond of onions.
She keeps them in her dresser drawer.
She tries to find a way to use them on everything,
She also likes to pour ketchup on top of them.
We are fighting every day. I said she doesn’t respect me.
She says talk to my father. I told her I didn’t know where
My father was; she said she wasn’t happy about
The weather. I don’t know what weather had to do
With anything.
I guess she wants me to avoid the issue.
I don’t know if I can deal with that.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
THE CENTAURION TRADER ALLY MOVEMENT MEETS REAL LIVE HUMANS
Henlick-centaur
Vx-commander centaur
King Symphon-human/soldier/warrior
Sheron-commander monotaur
The mountains of Bein glared and glimmered, snow fell on the mountains. It was very cold. The snow exhausted the mountains. The mountains came from the rain, and rose out of the wind. The wind was cold. Everything was cold. Still. Around them. Nothing moved, not even the gentle wind. The wind was a monster. It became the world.
Five centaurs galloped across the barren plains. The desert was very dusty and red and plants could not grow. The wind moved and the world was still, stiller than anything. No men came. Dust and bones remained.
The first centaur was named Williard. He had a dusty mane of black hair and eyes reflecting the sun. The dust rose out of the sun and the sun glimmered and glared above them and the sky was blue, bluer than anything. It was cold. The cold chill wrapped around the centaurs and they shook and shivered and nothing else moved. The wind was still. Their hearts were still. They were dreading their next big event. They were dreading talking to the men.
They hated talking to people outside of their race. They were racing; running; falling; diving. They ran on the wind. They were Wind Walkers, Wind Talkers.
“Henlick!” the centaur called. “I think the human scent is over this way.” The centaur galloped over the valley. His back was steely and gray like ash. He hissed at the human approaching him from a distance. He didn’t like humans. They were smelly, grubby, and they were gross. They were tall. Vx’s clan lived far from humans. They didn’t understand what humans did or said and most likely wouldn’t find out. The centaur was worried they wouldn’t be able to have enough to return home. Their supplies were at the bare minimum. The soldier’s name was Sheron von Deckil. He was a monotaur of the Brissilick army and wore gold armor and a gold visor that was too big for him. He was a First-in-Command of the Brissilick army and was glorified by the gifted and legendary King Symphon. King Symphon was a fat old man. He lived in a castle thirty miles from the battlegrounds and King Symphon bore no children. He was the last in his line. Sheron knew it made him nervous. He took it out on the other soldiers and made them do pointless things like walk in the woods while whistling under his breath.
“What are you doing here?” Sheron hissed. His eyes flashed. He hated talking to centaurs. They didn’t take kindly to humans. Plus, he didn’t want anyone to hear his whistling. He stunk. The king made him practice whistling every afternoon after mid-lunch.
The centaur’s eyes narrowed. “I’m here because I have to be here,” he snapped. “Just as you are.” He shook his head and muttered, “Idiot!” under his breath. Humans made him so angry sometimes.
“Why are you really here?” he demanded.
The centaur hesitated. His eyes were flaming red. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth and he looked like he was going to throw up. His ears swiveled in his head. “My people are at war with your people,” he said at last.
Sheron was surprised. And a little worried. “Well, I know that,” he admitted. King Symphon only liked war when his side won. His side never won. They had shoddy armor; stupid swords; and soldiers who couldn’t count. It was a no-win situation. Stupid people were also barbaric, and deeply angry-about what, he Sharon didn’t know. Sheron didn’t like it at all. They weren’t allowed to be mad. They were human. Humans were stupid. “Can’t you ask your king to back off?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” he replied harshly, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
Sheron raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean by you can’t?” he demanded.
He spread his hands. “I just can’t. My commander wouldn’t like it. My kind do not like how you move in on Centaurion territory. It’s ours. We claimed it.”
Sheron shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” he said casually. “Everything belongs to the land. Everything belongs to everyone else.”
“I know that,” he replied. “I just don’t like being lied to about it. We own it. We want to keep it.”
“Fine,” King Symphon said impatiently. “Come by my castle and sign the papers for it.”
The centaur scowled. “You don’t understand,” he said darkly. “We don’t go by human rules. You’re a human. You have rules we do not abide by.”
“You said that already,” Nigel informed him, scowling.
“What do you want from us?”
“Your territory. We want Brissilick.”
“Brissilick is massive in size!” he protested. “We can’t move all humans out of Brissilick. That’s insane. Most people don’t even listen to us!”
The centaur’s nostrils flared. “Find a way!” he snapped. “Or we won’t be held responsible for our actions.” With that, he flung his cape around his long neck, and galloped away, dust billowing behind him in the wind.
“You’re being too demanding,” Farrow told him.
“Idiot,” King Symphon snarled, his face twisted in a grimace. “I wonder what we’re having for lunch.”
Farrow looked at him and shook his head. “What are you talking about? We’re at war and you’re worried about lunch? You must be insane!”
“I’m not the one who’s insane,” King Symphon said under his breath. “I don’t try to kick people out of their territory.”
* * *
(not finished but that's the story I'm working on)
Vx-commander centaur
King Symphon-human/soldier/warrior
Sheron-commander monotaur
The mountains of Bein glared and glimmered, snow fell on the mountains. It was very cold. The snow exhausted the mountains. The mountains came from the rain, and rose out of the wind. The wind was cold. Everything was cold. Still. Around them. Nothing moved, not even the gentle wind. The wind was a monster. It became the world.
Five centaurs galloped across the barren plains. The desert was very dusty and red and plants could not grow. The wind moved and the world was still, stiller than anything. No men came. Dust and bones remained.
The first centaur was named Williard. He had a dusty mane of black hair and eyes reflecting the sun. The dust rose out of the sun and the sun glimmered and glared above them and the sky was blue, bluer than anything. It was cold. The cold chill wrapped around the centaurs and they shook and shivered and nothing else moved. The wind was still. Their hearts were still. They were dreading their next big event. They were dreading talking to the men.
They hated talking to people outside of their race. They were racing; running; falling; diving. They ran on the wind. They were Wind Walkers, Wind Talkers.
“Henlick!” the centaur called. “I think the human scent is over this way.” The centaur galloped over the valley. His back was steely and gray like ash. He hissed at the human approaching him from a distance. He didn’t like humans. They were smelly, grubby, and they were gross. They were tall. Vx’s clan lived far from humans. They didn’t understand what humans did or said and most likely wouldn’t find out. The centaur was worried they wouldn’t be able to have enough to return home. Their supplies were at the bare minimum. The soldier’s name was Sheron von Deckil. He was a monotaur of the Brissilick army and wore gold armor and a gold visor that was too big for him. He was a First-in-Command of the Brissilick army and was glorified by the gifted and legendary King Symphon. King Symphon was a fat old man. He lived in a castle thirty miles from the battlegrounds and King Symphon bore no children. He was the last in his line. Sheron knew it made him nervous. He took it out on the other soldiers and made them do pointless things like walk in the woods while whistling under his breath.
“What are you doing here?” Sheron hissed. His eyes flashed. He hated talking to centaurs. They didn’t take kindly to humans. Plus, he didn’t want anyone to hear his whistling. He stunk. The king made him practice whistling every afternoon after mid-lunch.
The centaur’s eyes narrowed. “I’m here because I have to be here,” he snapped. “Just as you are.” He shook his head and muttered, “Idiot!” under his breath. Humans made him so angry sometimes.
“Why are you really here?” he demanded.
The centaur hesitated. His eyes were flaming red. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth and he looked like he was going to throw up. His ears swiveled in his head. “My people are at war with your people,” he said at last.
Sheron was surprised. And a little worried. “Well, I know that,” he admitted. King Symphon only liked war when his side won. His side never won. They had shoddy armor; stupid swords; and soldiers who couldn’t count. It was a no-win situation. Stupid people were also barbaric, and deeply angry-about what, he Sharon didn’t know. Sheron didn’t like it at all. They weren’t allowed to be mad. They were human. Humans were stupid. “Can’t you ask your king to back off?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” he replied harshly, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
Sheron raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean by you can’t?” he demanded.
He spread his hands. “I just can’t. My commander wouldn’t like it. My kind do not like how you move in on Centaurion territory. It’s ours. We claimed it.”
Sheron shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” he said casually. “Everything belongs to the land. Everything belongs to everyone else.”
“I know that,” he replied. “I just don’t like being lied to about it. We own it. We want to keep it.”
“Fine,” King Symphon said impatiently. “Come by my castle and sign the papers for it.”
The centaur scowled. “You don’t understand,” he said darkly. “We don’t go by human rules. You’re a human. You have rules we do not abide by.”
“You said that already,” Nigel informed him, scowling.
“What do you want from us?”
“Your territory. We want Brissilick.”
“Brissilick is massive in size!” he protested. “We can’t move all humans out of Brissilick. That’s insane. Most people don’t even listen to us!”
The centaur’s nostrils flared. “Find a way!” he snapped. “Or we won’t be held responsible for our actions.” With that, he flung his cape around his long neck, and galloped away, dust billowing behind him in the wind.
“You’re being too demanding,” Farrow told him.
“Idiot,” King Symphon snarled, his face twisted in a grimace. “I wonder what we’re having for lunch.”
Farrow looked at him and shook his head. “What are you talking about? We’re at war and you’re worried about lunch? You must be insane!”
“I’m not the one who’s insane,” King Symphon said under his breath. “I don’t try to kick people out of their territory.”
* * *
(not finished but that's the story I'm working on)
Monday, January 18, 2010
Stillness of Leaves.
The stillness of leaves beats, beats-
Horses hooves beat on melodramatic tones.
Echoes of memories shriller than the voice-
Dank in the cold night air,
I had no choice.
My eyes swallowed your inner tears,
My heart beats steady, ready, petty-
You told me you couldn’t follow my
Stones, moans, the wind moans and groans.
And the eyes shake like bones.
I couldn’t hear you. Couldn’t hear the sound
Of your voice.
It echoes in midnight’s choice.
We buy a Rolls Royce;
My love, your judgment cannot suffice.
I see you. You are nice. Your eyes beat
And your chest opens spills out pirate’s gold.
Bold. You’re fresh and bold and don’t know
What to do, who to speak to, how to feel.
Nothing. Glimmer. Rain. Trains.
Tear up the tracks. Sit down. Take down your notes.
You glow and your inner light shines through.
Horses hooves beat on melodramatic tones.
Echoes of memories shriller than the voice-
Dank in the cold night air,
I had no choice.
My eyes swallowed your inner tears,
My heart beats steady, ready, petty-
You told me you couldn’t follow my
Stones, moans, the wind moans and groans.
And the eyes shake like bones.
I couldn’t hear you. Couldn’t hear the sound
Of your voice.
It echoes in midnight’s choice.
We buy a Rolls Royce;
My love, your judgment cannot suffice.
I see you. You are nice. Your eyes beat
And your chest opens spills out pirate’s gold.
Bold. You’re fresh and bold and don’t know
What to do, who to speak to, how to feel.
Nothing. Glimmer. Rain. Trains.
Tear up the tracks. Sit down. Take down your notes.
You glow and your inner light shines through.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Changing Nature.
I am not pine. Not, NOT.
You fill me. Beer walks in meadow. Meadow is beer.
Look at me in the eyes and say, "Breezily!" We are here.
You seem to be casual. Seem to exclaim words only I can
hear. You walk and everyone knows; clouds echo in darkness.
My void is the goodness; the goodness that is everything.
My voice is caught in my throat, the throat that is not choice.
My mother moves to London, my dead mother, the mother
who wed some man from Penchance; from dusk. He is careful,
he peels back flowers to reveal the dark, sweet nut,
the gentleness of his hands paint pictures. His words are painstaking;
sharp; a list of melodramatic stepping stones.
I am not pine. You walk down the street and dream of inland islands.
A ship is on the water. The water has cooled. It is an island.
We talked about islands; we talked about the fear of them, how they
grow, how they change, how they move. We walk in orchards. Dusk is gone.
The meadow shifts and changes. The meadow breathes life into a dull mind.
You remember the eyes? Anger of death, dying; the taking. The TAKING!
It is you taking me, me taking you and no one knows why. You speak to me
in code. I don't know. Can't grow. Stopped. The ship stops moving on
the waves. His pain, no pain enters, we are. Are.
I am not the broken. The becoming of it. I am not the stale, the wind
that moves the air. I am looking up into the clouds. I think of clouds;
HE moves clouds. Moves them away. Ships on water. Ships on sand. He never
KNEW, never let me know the pain I have caused him. Try, try, don't flinch,
breathe, be. KNOW.
Pain in trees. Squirrels climb up and down. Roots are uprooted. He says, Ha!
To both nature and war. Try? Try!! A sorry-faced man climbs the stairs. His hands are on the banister. He turns away, his face pale and translucent.
So far, so good, o ice that bends and breaks, in Alaska, Illinois,
You fill me. Beer walks in meadow. Meadow is beer.
Look at me in the eyes and say, "Breezily!" We are here.
You seem to be casual. Seem to exclaim words only I can
hear. You walk and everyone knows; clouds echo in darkness.
My void is the goodness; the goodness that is everything.
My voice is caught in my throat, the throat that is not choice.
My mother moves to London, my dead mother, the mother
who wed some man from Penchance; from dusk. He is careful,
he peels back flowers to reveal the dark, sweet nut,
the gentleness of his hands paint pictures. His words are painstaking;
sharp; a list of melodramatic stepping stones.
I am not pine. You walk down the street and dream of inland islands.
A ship is on the water. The water has cooled. It is an island.
We talked about islands; we talked about the fear of them, how they
grow, how they change, how they move. We walk in orchards. Dusk is gone.
The meadow shifts and changes. The meadow breathes life into a dull mind.
You remember the eyes? Anger of death, dying; the taking. The TAKING!
It is you taking me, me taking you and no one knows why. You speak to me
in code. I don't know. Can't grow. Stopped. The ship stops moving on
the waves. His pain, no pain enters, we are. Are.
I am not the broken. The becoming of it. I am not the stale, the wind
that moves the air. I am looking up into the clouds. I think of clouds;
HE moves clouds. Moves them away. Ships on water. Ships on sand. He never
KNEW, never let me know the pain I have caused him. Try, try, don't flinch,
breathe, be. KNOW.
Pain in trees. Squirrels climb up and down. Roots are uprooted. He says, Ha!
To both nature and war. Try? Try!! A sorry-faced man climbs the stairs. His hands are on the banister. He turns away, his face pale and translucent.
So far, so good, o ice that bends and breaks, in Alaska, Illinois,
Drink of Water.
I take my heart, old flower bent on petals.
Man filled with pain.
Ancient faces lie in snow. Faces are withered again.
Clouds permeate the sky; the sea gulls crawl
up out of the edge of the world.
Its eyes speak tears-speak; sing sad songs of
tomorrow.
We fill the world with verse.
Verse is reason.
She walks upstairs and down; pain fills her kneecaps.
She cries for someone to call to her in the dead of
the night when darkness remains;
sands are burdened and permeate the soul,
the highest mountain that withers old flowers.
The planet will rise from ashes. The kings are songs
of flowers. Skin glistens, dew and rain;
the wind moves, heaves. The sea heaves. I whisper
to mountains, "My love!" His eyes burdened by
the burden of himself. His eyes see women knitting things.
Man filled with pain.
Ancient faces lie in snow. Faces are withered again.
Clouds permeate the sky; the sea gulls crawl
up out of the edge of the world.
Its eyes speak tears-speak; sing sad songs of
tomorrow.
We fill the world with verse.
Verse is reason.
She walks upstairs and down; pain fills her kneecaps.
She cries for someone to call to her in the dead of
the night when darkness remains;
sands are burdened and permeate the soul,
the highest mountain that withers old flowers.
The planet will rise from ashes. The kings are songs
of flowers. Skin glistens, dew and rain;
the wind moves, heaves. The sea heaves. I whisper
to mountains, "My love!" His eyes burdened by
the burden of himself. His eyes see women knitting things.
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