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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My books are on lulu I want to write a bunch and try to write more manuscripts before I send them in.

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.

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)

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.

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,

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.

Flat Bed of Grass.

The flowers are all white
And lay in a flat bed of grass,
High in the Himalayas,
The mice make nests.

The pigeons sleep in roofs
Made of glass.
In rivers born of tears.
Emotions sharpen in quick sand.
Everything I know has been sunk.

Memories fade down me slowly.
Justice has been broken over rocks.
Pouring rain comes down.
Sleep is a broken meadow.

The flowers hide under things.
Pictures are cut out of magazines.
Women wear high heels to work,
I have worked every day.

You broke me, you broke me.
I am sheltered in broken things.
Sleep is a meadow, sleep is promise,
Sleep is dew wrapped in dew.

I have never wakened.
I have never spoken of glass.
Candle flames flicker in a white candle.
The flowers are all white and lay in a flat bed of grass.

The woman used to live here.
She has disappeared.

Houses Remain

The houses remain unscathed in the ruin
Of the drainage of rain water,
Pouring down, down, down.
The sky glares at me and speaks-“Hark!”
The song of a lark stills me wills me nothing is gone,
Dead, or buried.
A musician has been buried. An artist has been buried.
The words are transient; a nine-year-old plays
A violin, before the darkness comes,
Every day, trying to wake the aunt,
Ask her to make food.
Food. It fills the soul. It is the soul.
The field mice are the fruit of the soul, the wolves
In their dens hunt field mice, their whiskers
Slightly damp in the cool night air. Hair.
Stare at me from a dream that has not ended.
Stare at me from waterfalls, sprinkling diamonds,
I turn myself into a work of art,
Of a man sitting in a chair with a broken radio
And a dumb dial,
Cracked and worn from being hidden in the attic
For so long.
The zoos are filled. My niece asks me where
The lions, where the zebras, the horses.
The horses sleep in meadows. Sleep in shelters
In London. Old men named William have lost
Their hair,
Eyes glistening with tears.
He cries for the lost, lost, lost.
Wonders what it has cost him.

Blue Daffodils Speak, Open.

Blue daffodils open, speak to me in a language
That is devoid of light, life.

Blue skies whisper to me from beaches.
Sunny skies sultry eyes and multi-colored stained glass windows.

The pope sang at the church, he was an old man,
Ninety-seven, and spun stories from napkins.
His mind broke through the torrential waters.
His heart has mended.

Tomorrow we have been caught in a spiral
Of nothingness, a spiral of gladness that fills the heart,
The spiral of words broken, broken.
The symbol of nothingness is more barren than

The nothingness that came from me. Words are memory.
I look out of my bedroom window and stare at the sparrow

On a branch, singing a sad, lonely song.
The daffodils are broken and nothing is left.
A man comes riding on a bicycle, his gaze is fixed on

a cloud, high above him, the clouds are dark.
His mind is broken, broken. He can’t open himself up,
He wears a black hat, and speaks to the sun gods-
Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me.

Tomorrow is another day.
The sun rises over the hills. The hills are barren.
I make sure everything is set for my mother, my father,
My sister.
I don’t understand how anything is done.

I don’t understand how a spring rain remains, hidden,
In the bush of the bough.

Depths An Old Man Reaches.

How do you remain, like daisies,
Unfurled drops of rain
that falls slowly
Down from infinite reaches,
spaces that are divided.
Slowly moving, rhythms blend
with the riches

Around you, a trial of chances,
a beam of
Darkness that lights up a mirror and speaks of voices.
Slowly, they come, melting into the dark that
Does not fade to gray,
shadows open up
A tendril daffodil and shelter(ed) things remain.

So softly, teardrops fall to the countertop;
A letter is stained with droplets of tears.
My memory sifts in sunlit rooms; a door opens
Into twilight.

I am caught in the middle
between floors.
I plead to the security
guard for breathing room,
But he shakes his head,
mumbles curses under
His breath, and scurries away to join the old
Man standing at the end
of the stairwell.

The Endless Road.

Follow me to the endless road,
Route 409.
My mother is a nurse in some hospital,
She talks to old men who
Act like they’re in high school
Still.
We never get out of school,
It seems-the darkness
Crawls out of the world,
And whispers sad songs to broken
Houses.
The edge of reason is not reason enough.
I have been to Detroit, Flint, Walled Lake,
There was no wall built in
The lake,
Nothing to hold the water in.
Sea gulls fly over the sparkling water,
Dipping and diving.
We are out of school forever.
I don’t remember why we went
There in the first place-ah, yes,
I was right,
My mother made me go.
She thought it was good for me.
I didn’t know about that.

Elven's Keep Part 1.

The Woman Who Had No Face was lonely.
She had a face-ears; nose; eyes; she could breathe, in and out she breathed, standing in the line at the grocery store, clutching a bag of bread. She trembled. Her eyelids trembled. She wasn’t afraid; she was never afraid of anything and the darkness in her mind was vaster than the sea, the darkness in her heart was vast. She paid for the bag of bread and took it outside and huddled under a red tree and ate the bread and her nose was long and peaked and she snarled at anyone who tried to come in contact with her. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be anywhere.
She wanted the bread, wanted it in a way that was close to desperation more than a wantingness inside of her. She was hungry. She was on the brink of destruction.
She was one of the ones Who Could See the Dead. The Dead weren’t any more frightening than little children; the living were more frightening than the Dead. She was right about things and gave paid readings and the seer wasn’t happy. She was never happy. She couldn’t be happy because she was alone in a cruel heartless world.
The darkness surrounded her. She found comfort in the darkness. Sometimes, she dreamt about Elves. She always thought the Elves were good, kind beings and helped people in any way they could; they were mischievous and never really did any harm. The ones in her dreams were cruel and cold and heartless. They didn’t understand anything that was happening or how to change it. They didn’t understand the things going on around them.
She lived in a hut on the edge of a bubbling, brown mess of a bog. The bog smelled bad and she didn’t like the smell but it was the only place to sleep. She wandered throughout the city during the day and came home and slept on a bed of rocks. The Woman With No Face didn’t know a magic genie lived in the hut. The hut smelled like a swamp and she finished the last of the bread and sat by the bog late at night, listening to the cry of the cicadas and the swamp monster singing a sad song and the lonely song came to her and made her sad and she didn’t know how to cry.
She didn’t know anything about her past, present and future and she returned to the hut and took the dreamcatcher off the wall and went outside and tried to catch the stars in its net.
The dreamcatcher had been made by a Ianasi girl a long time ago, before she became Ignored. Being Ignored was worst than being Exiled. Maybe she had been Exiled in her thirties she didn’t know.
The bog was smelly.
It smelled worse than old shoes.

changed the title.

I changed the title again. It is now called "Cosmonaut."

I changed the title of my novel. It is now called "Space."

Dreams.

Saturday nights, I am alone in my room,
Leafing through an old copy of Times magazine
From a few years ago.
I am miserable again, miserable in a way that

I cannot remember anymore than yesterday,
Or the one before; clouds form outside my window,
I see yesterday has come again. I cannot think,
Cannot dream, cannot move; my heart is a

Shadow that comes before me, my heart beats in rhythm
Like a glass drum. I am not a singer; I am not a criminal;
I am something that I cannot quite explain,
An excuse in genetic code.

Who gave me these things, that I cannot quite remember?
Who gave me these things, the potted plant in
The corner of my living room?
I bought those things with the coins from my purse,

Which I bought used at a garage sale.
Monday roles back again; time moves forward;
The heart does not beat, I cannot seem to wake myself
From the depths of my dreams.

Women and Boxes.

Men walk on lone roads scattered cans along the freeway.
Sunlight falls on broken slabs of stone, idiot makers breathe down
My back.
I walk around to the back door and open it to let sunlight stream in.
Certain words develop within boxes and boxes strewn out on
The highway. A quiet voice resonates in the room.
She likes her freedom, to walk about wishing for silent thought,
Trying to piece together echoes of the past.
Her boyfriend, Xavier, plucks melodies on an old tuba;
The highway is void of anything we can see and experience.
I swallow a cup of water. My mother walks into the room, wearing
A sunny yellow dress. She asks for a cup of sugar; I give her the whole
Bag.
My mother, she has MS, and is tired all the time; my mother,
She knows things I do not remember.
I forgave her a long time ago for leaving me in the shopping mall to
Get a paperback from the library, one of those ten cent romances
At a ma and pa store.
She likes her freedom; men walk on lone roads.
The roads are paved. She paves a way to freedom.
The sin is freedom.

THE BLUE HERON.

*this is the beginning of a novel I've started...it's not the very beginning, as I have to include the first scene where the billionaire suffers from heat stroke that turns out to be a case of "bird flu." The novel is going to be part science fiction, part thriller, like that of Robin Cook or James Patterson, if you want to use specifics.

Geoff is a very homely doctor. He lost his wife and children in a tragic car accident, and turns his grief into saving lives-that is, until he discovers he can't save everyone, especially when cases of the bird flu sprout all over the place, especially in India, China, and three cases in the United States. Can Geoff discover the cause of the bird flu, or will the blue heron have to throw in his towel and admit he doesn't know everything?

******



India was the place to do the surgery. Geoff Fernandez aka “the Blue Heron” rode the elevator up to the third floor of Juarez Fields Medical Hospital and hesitated outside Room 309. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be on an island some place far away, tanning himself alongside a beautiful blonde and drinking from a coconut. That sounded about right. He loved coconut drinks. He hadn’t had one in about three years, since he and the other doctors on the medical team took a trip to New Mexico to remove a lung from an ailing billionaire. Now, they had another rich man on the brink of death-Mario Hernandez Martines Shae. The man was the owner of a famous stock company, Iliade & Burgens, and helped people make the decisions on their stock. Mario was famous in that regards, he was almost right about his predictions and he made just enough money to buy a black Porsche it sat in the driveway of his small condo in Miami, Florida. He didn’t know why he chose to live in Miami. It was warm all year round and everyone was skinny and hardly ever needed medical attention, which was good, which was nice, blue as ice and all that. Geoff never did learn how to rhyme.
His eyes settled on the flatscreen tv the hospital installed last month. It was always on CNN. They were talking about the inflation of the stock exchange. When Mario woke from his coma, he wasn’t going to be happy about it. Not one bit. His wife was going to be the one to break it to him.
“Miami,” he muttered, and shook his head. He went into the patient’s room and picked up a clipboard and pretended everything was going to be all right.
Mario’s face was pale, ashen gray. It looked like it was losing color and his eyes were bloodshot. He dove inside and out of a feverish sleep. Geoff wondered if he was coherent. Maybe he wasn’t. He wasn’t coherent half the time. The other half of the time, he was peeing on his own leg. The smell of urine was strong, a putrid smell wafted from the bed sheets.
They were going to have to get him out of there and on a plane. And fast.
He turned to Nurse Susie. She was watching the scene with a wary expression on her face. She was a beautiful blonde woman and her blue eyes were watching the entire scene with an expression on her face that was part worry and part bemusement. She had seen all of this before-the same discoloration of the face; the same pinched face and the hollowed eyes. Susie was certain he was on the edge of death. Her thirteen year title as a nurse told him he didn’t think the man had a chance. Maybe he didn’t. They were going to find out.
“Susan,” he said between clenched teeth.
Her eyes focused on his. She looked pale. She swallowed. “Yes?” she whispered.
“Will the hospital let us use the helicopter to transfer him to the airport?”
“What about the tickets?”
“The hospital will cover it,” he replied reassuringly. “
“But last month, Mr. Martin told me we couldn’t afford-”
“Just do it!” he ordered. He didn’t like to yell. He hated yelling. He was tired. He wanted to go home and sleep. He glanced at Mario. He wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.

Random Objects.

The vase sits in a room made out of glass.
Frost whispers on windows. Winter, and the sun
Drifts through the trees and falls on the very
Windows in the room. The sun is cold as ice. It burns like
Fire.

Three deer wander into my yard. I put the deer pellets
In the bird feed last week, their tongues roll out of their
Mouths, nostrils move up and down. Fog reaches three
Feet in front of me.

She said you shouldn’t leave your scrapbook on
The gray porch. She said aliens are sometimes real.
I say what kind. She says nothing. I am alone. Poe
Warned me about it in third grade. He said I wouldn’t
Live past age 50, I have light years to go, but you make
Me want to sleep. Sailors in ancient ships flock graveyards,
Robert, Melanie, Deran, Patrick. They all told me to get lost. I said
I never was in the first place.

Party on Tuesday. You put your hair up nice,
And move the clock to the windowsill. The window hums.
The wind slams the front door shut.

The Sky Speaks. Speaks.

I read the works of sauerkraut, mundane, penchance.
Dusk enters the darkening doorway and the flowers bloom in some man’s
Garden, and she wears the funny brown hat and sings songs about the Cold War.
I ain’t never been in no war.
I recite the works of Shakespeare, meadow, cowdung, the smell clings
To my skin and the snow melts in the Himalayas and otherwhen,
The cattle drone out the sound of the rain. Distance swallows me. I live in Kentucky.
My English teacher, the yellow rose from seventh grade, sits on his porch step,
Drinking whiskey, beer, red wine, anger fills his entire being. He wants to paint,
Write, sing in a Broadway musical. He is stuck on the porch, spinning stories in
His mind, unable to get up, up, up. His wife is in a Book Club, they are reading The Iliad.
His students aren’t mature enough to read it yet, it’s ninth grade material,
The tenth grade meter on the metronome shakes, shivers, whispers.
I can’t bear to let you go.
The pain lances through my heart like an arrow. I am moved by your very being
It flocks the pages of time, the pages of time have been worn, faded, are old and misused.
You told me you were neglected and a tear drops from my eye, we make brown bread
And sing sad Christmas carols. You are not Jewish, Christian, Catholic. The sadness
In your eyes moves mountains.
In and out, you breathe, the metallic breathing of you fills deep inside of me, I have no
Recollection of the soul and what it means, what it feels, how it is to me. I told you
I couldn’t tell time. I got a concussion from a baseball bat that fell upon my head,
Egg yolk spewing onto the grass.
Summer and I am on the john, reading a newspaper. You are gone. You are at work.
I call you on my cell phone and you praise Hitler, Johnson, Stalin, Poe. I ask why you’re
Talking about Poe at work and you say you are bored. You are climbing mountains.
They are also called flowers.
Darkness protrudes from the sky. It is God’s mathematical equation, this sky, this darkness,
This old hand that keeps me awake and dreaming, drawing the hand of the three.
A tree bends low over my bedroom window. The night is not sound. I wake up from a dream and read the works of sauerkraut, mundane, penchance.
You tell me nothing will ever change. The sorrow is in your words. I keep my feelings out of it.
I haven’t a chance to speak. You are blue-collared, working from nine to five,
You tell me you’ll do anything for me and you speak to the blue-eyed gravel instead,
Speak of egg shells and peonies in gardens.
Sadness is enchanting. The color of rose, pissed off, heartworm, flits through my mind.
The sky is broken! Broken.
We are walking on egg shells tonight.
You told me I broke things. I said I hadn’t never.
The sky.

The Man Who Liked Being Homeless.

He never cried, not even when his mother died. He wished he could cry. It didn’t do any good but at least he remembered he was human. The tears didn’t fall. What happened to the good ole days when an old man could have a secure job? It didn’t happen anymore, no sir, it didn’t. Times were changing. Faces changed, too. One day you had a best friend and the next day he was your worst enemy. It happened to Tom McCaw, too. He was a nice fellow but sometimes things didn’t work out for him. It was a lesson he had to learn on his own. A woman tapped him on the shoulder. “Sir,” she said. “Are you all right?” Surprised to see her standing behind him, h e shrunk inside himself and didn’t answer. Tom was homeless and as the months and years went past, he grew more and more introverted and he didn’t want to talk to anyone. But, she talked to him first and homeless people were polite, especially the men. He studied her. She was pretty. Her blonde hair was pretty. He expected to be alone. It was dark outside, but it wasn’t late out. It was the time between sunset and just after dark. A calm wind blew. It was cold. It was October. October was always cold. He discovered this after moving to New York from somewhere else. He would rather not discuss his life before New York and what it meant to him. Which was nothing. He didn’t want to talk about his problems with a stranger. Especially not a pretty stranger. It wasn’t a good idea to talk about your life with strangers. Maybe he was losing it. Maybe that was all right. Losing it should be a new law. He thought about the White House and all the strange going-ons in politics and he realized he didn’t want to work in politics ever again. He worked in politics once, for the Mayor of Shuttesburg. The Mayor of Shuttesburg asked if he wanted to be President of the United States. He responded with a resounding, “No way!”
He quit the next week and got another job at Morgan & Stanley. Morgan & Stanley was a stock broker company and also helped smaller companies thrive on the side. It was a long way from getting a degree in law school and his father was surprised by his change in careers and didn’t comment. His father never said anything about anything he did. Tom learned to welcome it. He was glad he didn’t have children. He didn’t have to explain to anyone the idiocy of the world and why he couldn’t change the government.
“I’m fine,” he answered hastily. “Just…a little lost.” He smiled encouragingly at her, praying she would move along or that she wouldn’t see the fear burning behind his eyes, or maybe the fear was passion. Maybe he was an artist and he wanted to draw the building or maybe he used to own it. Angela heard the Mayor had to sell the building to New Jersey in order to pay off a loan. That would be like him. Mayor Yettle McKenzie was a cheapskate. Most politicians were. They couldn’t help it. Angela found it was best to ignore it and move on with her life. She wasn’t even in real estate.
“Do you need any help?” she asked. “Are you homeless?” A little alarm bell went off in her brain. She shouldn’t be talking to him. She should be running in the opposite direction. She shouldn’t have walked home from work. She should have gotten in the taxi. She only had ten dollars on her, enough for a hot dog and a small Pepsi. New York was getting more expensive every year. He was a strange man staring up at a building and she had to get home and fix meatloaf for dinner. She was hungry. She continued to stare at the man looking up at the building. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. It was like staring at the sun. Something big and shiny.
“I don’t need any help,” he answered, shaking his head. “I’m lost in thought. Thinking.” He smiled. He was pleased. It was a good response. She muttered something about “crazy pedestrians,” and moved along. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He was bitter about his lack of communication skills. He was bitter about a lot of things, especially his wife who left him three months before and he hadn’t gotten over it and didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. His uncle advised him to get over it with a lawyer but Tom loved her still and didn’t want to put her through all of it. He signed the divorce papers without any fuss or muss and they didn’t have children, just a house with a meadow and a beat-up Chevy and she said he could keep the Chevy. He kept the Chevy. “Something’s going to happen,” he muttered. “Something not good.” The feel of it was all wrong. The feel of everything. The feel of both night and day and the wind crept up behind him and sang and tugged at his ear and the sound of voices on the edge of his vision, the vision of someone following him, speaking to him about God and Heaven and the angels and Da Vinci and Mozart. It was just like his dream. The dream of waking plagued him. He, too, moved along. He used to live in a house with a large backyard. His mother begged him to get a pet and he replied he didn’t have enough money to take care of it, he’d probably end up naming it Margaret or Joe or after some stupid piece of fruit and wouldn’t take care of it very good. He showed her. He showed everyone he could take care of a pet and the guinea pig lived to be very old. Now he was dead and Tom was lonely and alone and he wanted to live in a house and thought he couldn’t afford it. The market was different. He lived in the 70s and everything was so cheap it was practically free. Tom went into the grocery store and bought a loaf of bread and bologna. He went to Central Park and huddled under a large oak tree and ate three sandwiches, one right after the other. His father wouldn’t be happy to see him like this. His father wouldn’t be happy to see he was homeless and not poor. He bought a newspaper and pulled out the classified ads and spread them on the grass, looking at the apartments. He had almost one thousand dollars saved. That would be enough to pay the deposit and the first month’s rent. He had six hundred dollars on him and he could be a coke distributor, if worst came to worst. Everyone was looking for coke. The business was booming. Coke was a huge seller. Tom sighed and put the paper away. He called one of the ads on an apartment and she said she could meet him tomorrow at 4pm. That was almost a whole day away. He was going to have to think about what to do until then. Maybe he could see a movie.
A movie would take his mind off a lot of things. Like finding a good apartment. He had to wait for his meeting with the apartment manager.
The movie was okay. Actually, it sucked. The plot was muddled. He didn’t understand the plot. It was about falling in and out of love. Tom didn’t understand love. He fixed cars and bought businesses that made millions and he got one percent of the share. Being a sell-out was easy. It's what he did best.
New York City was cold. The cold burned his cheeks. He wound up standing outside the apartment complex office fifteen minutes before the manager arrived. She was tall and blonde. Tom liked. He showed her his bank statements. He told her he’d never been evicted. She asked where he was living now. He said he had a P.O. Box. It was good enough. Tom moved in the next day. Business at his job was booming and the week after that he went to a furniture store and bought a table, a desk, and a bed. It was an air mattress and fit the bedroom perfectly. Tom couldn’t sleep. He missed being homeless. He missed Tom.

You Can't Right Tell.

He ain't got what it takes. It ain't the snow that kept him from seeing me, it was that half-wit of an ex wife I know it as well as I know my own name.
She knows about me, the git.
She knows I worked at Walmart, and I have a crooked front tooth.
She knows I don't have kids.
She don't know much anymore. John says she's got cancer now. She wants his help and he says no. Good.
We'll keep it that way.
I don't want my man taking care of some stupid dame. Probably has some screws loose in her old noggin. I wouldn't doubt it.
I worked today. I got out of my new black Jeep and peered up at the store. I was working at Walmart's. It wasn't the best gig, but it pays the bills. I hope to be a superstar one day. Like that'll ever happen.
Mary Ann was working today.
Mary Ann was my coworker. She had blonde hair and big bangs and big, red lips. She looked thirty. I didn't ask 'cause it ain't polite for my generation to ask about things. Nothin' around here is polite nowadays.
Take Jack Bean. He's been askin' me for sex 'till the cows come home. I always say no. I say I'm attached.
He wants to know if John was gay. I said no. He wants to know if I'll cheat. I said no a hundred times. He don't get it.
He's sexy, handsome, and has money, but he ain't the brightest cat in the bag, if you know what I mean.
My John ain't the brightest cat in the bag. At least he treats his woman right.
He picked me. It was a match made in Heaven.
People look at us and go, "I guess they'll last." We have for six months. It's almost Christmas. I got done shopping that afternoon.
I didn't buy my John anything. It's hard to pick out a gift for him, for any occasion. He told me he wants sex and lots of it. It's what he likes most, he said.
I gave him plenty of that.
My man is as selfless as they come. He gave thirty dollars to an orphanage last year for Christmas.
Walter was another coworker.
He was fifty-nine and wore plugs in his ears. His nose was pointy and he had three grandchildren.
They all lived in Mississippi. He missed them.
I wouldn't blame him. Today he worked alongside me and we sang Christmas carols. I can't remember all the words to the songs. I got that right ole good feelin' in the bottom of my chest, it chases away all the blues and shit in my life that ain't goin' right. I don't like it when shit don't go right.
It was three weeks before Christmas.
We didn't get any snow.
It don't snow much in Georgia, hardly ever. My second cousin was majoring in economics at the University of Georgia and spent Thanksgiving at my house.
We had a nice turkey and lots of stuffing. It was three-thirty.
It was after quittin' time and I was waiting outside for John. He was fixing his truck again. The thing broke down a million times already. We didn't have any money to fix it up. Wish we did. He fixed it himself and usually did a pretty good job.
I don't like work much nowadays. I got a problem with my back and a problem with my hearing, too. I didn't do anything to deserve this. Don't own a Bible, it's my own fault.
Some teenagers came up to me and asked for directions to some diner downtown and I had to repeat myself, twice, fo'sho. "Go two blocks west," I said. They said, "What?" I said, "Two blocks west." They got it right afore that. Nothin' much else to git. Use a map. I got one myself.
John drove up in his truck and I hopped into it and we drove home.
We had our late evening sex in the den and I made dinner.
John went outside to mow the lawn.
The next day was the same.
Saturday we had a wedding for my friend, Barbara, and I wore my pretty purple dress and put my hair up in a bun and I remembered to get a bottle of wine at the grocery store.
It was two weeks before Christmas. I couldn't wait. I finally knew what to get John, a photo album for all of our wedding photos, and one of those flavored popcorn tins he liked so much.
Popcorn was his favorite.
I preferred mashed potatoes as my favorite dish. I was starting to do more cooking. Not too much more, just a little.
I didn't know how to cook very well.
I tried my darnest but it didn't help.
My mother was the cook of the family.
She could make anything and it would turn out good.
Me, I can't cook a tv dinner right.
Christmas Eve, the snow was falling outside. My hubby built a fire and we cuddled and talked.
John said work was goin' good, he wanted to get a new job that made more dough. I didn't blame him.
I hated working at the store, the boss made me feel small and stupid. He was too uptight.
John thought so. I wondered how Jen knew I worked at Walmart and John said she probably just saw me that's how she knew.
Everyone goes to Walmart.
I admitted that made sense.
Most didn't nowadays, what with all the war and the economic depression. I didn't understand war.
It made me feel small and stupid, too many unanswered questions and I didn't have the guts to ask.
Too many unanswered questions about all the wars that happened before the current war, the one in Afghanistan and Iraq.
My cousin's son, Thomas, was in Iraq.
We were waiting to hear word about how that boy was doing.
I figured he would make it.
God usually looked out for the good folk.
I thought I was one of the good folk every now and again. If no one knew all the good things I done, maybe some child, in some far off place, will recognize it and do some more good things. I didn't know. I hoped it was true.
I had a garden in the backyard. It was the beginning of a garden. I bought some seeds-pumpkin, onions, and strawberries-and a rake and a couple other supplies and started the garden last spring. I picked the onions and was too discouraged to buy more; the pumpkins withered and died; the flowers were still blooming, maybe I liked those the best anyway, I can't right tell.
This afternoon I got ready for church. I've been startin' to go to church more regular, like, I don't know why, but I got a feelin' in my bones that somethin' might happen, maybe the troops are going to be sent home. Them troops in Iraq, I hope my cousin is all right. His name was Thomas. Remember that name, he's going to win a medal I just know it he'll make us all proud. I hope I made my Daddy proud. I did my best in school. My grades weren't the best but I liked to write stories and they were in the attic, gathering dust. I hoped to look through them one of these days and find the best ones and submit them somewhere. I don't write anymore. It's too darned hard. I don't have much of a life and I can't think of anything to write about. I wish I could.
John was humming in the shower. I had half a mind to sneak into the shower with him. He had to go to work. He was a cashier at a furniture store and did a pretty good job, too, and made money on the side fixin' cars. I was proud of him. Proud as any wife should be. Ought ain't a word I wanted to use. Our parents don't got money for college.
The ex-wife was on my mind again. Darn, I wish she would just get out of there. I didn't want to have anything to do with her. They didn't have kids but he said she still had the big couch and the tv John wanted. She said she would give it to him if he came over to talk to her and work out their problems-their differences and she wanted someone to take her to get her medication regular. Yeah, I bet that's what she wanted to talk about, the no-good psycho cunt. She could call a cab. John said she was married to some man named Michael and he was on disability and couldn't drive. What a dumb name. Cool it, cowgirl, no need to be mean. My Momma taught me to be nice to everyone, even if they weren't nice back. She grew me up right even though we didn't have any money.
We lived in a small community. My next door neighbor was named Marellina Henchback. She was thirty-seven and had a boyfriend named Phil. She'd gone through some rough times and she was always right with me when I was going through mine. She and I were friends the first day we met. Friends the first day, that's a pretty good deal, I thought.
Tonight was Spaghetti Night. John was making dinner for me. He makes dinner once a week and tries to cook the rest of the week. It's hard for men to learn to cook. John couldn't sit still very long. He was always running around. He should join the track team. Maybe he could join a track team at the local college and then join the Special Olympics; he was on disability for being not too bright and having something called bipolar. I don't got that, heart disease runs in my family now, it right sure does. Don't think doctors know everything. My grandpa never went to the doctor a day in his life, past being born. I don't believe it's true.
Life ain't about the ups and downs. It's about what we do with it that counts. You can sit here and blame yourself for every bald spot on your head, or you can git with it and work it out, work through it. Sometimes it feels like things are going too slow for me, don't seem to stand a chance with nothin' no how. I ain't that bright, like I said.
Tomorrow was another day. It snowed again. The weatherman said it was goin' to snow every night this week. I didn't believe it was going to snow every night, maybe three out of the seven nights and that's it. I don't know if that's true or not. Don't think nothin' bout the weather, know how. We drive in it when we got to, we take care of it when we're in it. Don't know nothin' bout anything else.

The History of Histograms.

The information is a body of stalwart images.
Old crones beat on banjos and false stories flit in
The news.

Tigers crowd in jungle alleys, weaving
Their tails, darkness flocks the moon. My eyes are
Full of pollen. My lips are rosy red and lock in struggle

Between manbear and bargirl. My mother tells me
Histograms are the finest art; she is polite to the man in
The green truck. He wanders by, fresh as daisies.

His mood changes from sea to sky. The Indians melt in
The snow. Tales of lost laundry and broken dreams
In the sky.

A blue-tailed crane is in flight.

Shadows
Float the moon.

The wind whispers sad, lonely things.
The crying of ghosts meets the whisper of words
And images fade in my memories.

Crying For Eternity.

I'm looking out the window at the street below.
Rain glistens on the sidewalk of eternity,
clouds cover the sky there are tears in your eyes,
please, baby, what are you crying for?
We bought our house and we bought our car,
your eyes shine like teardrops and you are far,
far, far away from me-this is eternity, is this eternity?

I'm looking out the window at the street below.
My eyes are following your eyes but I can't read them,
you've got them shadows locked up tight tonight,
you've got them shadows locked up in your heart tonight.

The rain patters down, the rain patters down,
no one will come near me, it's a quiet little town
on the edge of a big city, I thought livin' here would be pretty,
it just brings me down. It just brings me down.

Please, baby, what are you crying for?
I cup the tears in the palm of my hand,
the chill of midnight comes from a far-off shore,
it's like being in some strange and distant land,
what are you crying for, what are you crying for?

You've got me in the...palm of your hand.
You don't know me, you don't know me, say goodbye,
you got those tears in your eyes,
it's a little drop of eternity.

The rain is falling, the rain is falling,
the rain is falling, the rain is falling, the rain is falling,
down.
In this strange and distant town,
this strange and distant town.

What They Wrote About In Mexico.

In Mexico, the steel glass glow from the cars
Sits in driveways, overtakes the minuscule
Lines of poverty, overtakes the greatness of it.
No one taught me how to climb a mountain, she said.
My hand is flat.
My palm is flat.
In Mexico, the Mexicans talk about the shaping of
Profound visions of red clay, strewn over
Barren land.
Shape me in gardens. Shape mountains
From the dust of no return.
I am poor. I go from door to door,

Begging someone to talk to me,
Asking them not to judge me, asking them for peace
Of mind. You are cruel and heartless,
A dictator of decisions.

My hand is flat. My palm is flat.
I love take-out food and gardens,
I feel bad about everything. My mother told
Me not to cross streets, not to talk to bad boys
With long hair, not to rhyme crime with time.

In Mexico, a boy makes tacos for Taco Night,
And dreams of playing baseball in high school.

Crawl Into Bed.

Some days I just want to crawl into bed and not
wake up. My mind is a sieve. I am steady.

I work as a missionary, going from country to country,
asking for forgiveness for something that was not
my fault, it was my mother's fault, the fault of

my grandfather, his great-uncle, his friend, Maurice,
he owned a coffee shop on the west side of Brooklyn,
remember in school, the students liked West better
than East, and white bread better than yeast.

I never know what I'm putting in my mouth. If it's full
of starch, macaroni and butter, dripping on the stove.
My drawers are full. My name is Melanie. I don't remember

anything about school. My brother asked to be in my wedding,
I told him maybe, if we had enough money to add a third person.
The sun came out on the morning of
December 1st,
it awakens the world, and the deer came out, looking for
peanuts and not finding what they wanted, they headed north,
hoping to find something better.

About Trees.

The trees are bare and brown. The snow falls in Manhattan. My mother, Lucy, is put in a nursing home and her brother dies swiftly, in his sleep. He used to be an architect and built houses out of popsicle sticks. The popsicle sticks dry in the sun. Happiness is barren. Happiness is faded, worn, like a pair of blue jeans that needs to be washed. The sun is dried out like a raisin. The ocean is full of water, full of fish. The fish are dry. The fish aren’t dead. My father used to fish in the Atlantic Ocean in a canoe and caught five salmon on the first day. He hated Ernest Hemingway. His face turned red whenever he thought about him. The man broke his spirit. His spirit was broken. The trees are bare and brown. It is autumn. Autumn has come. The snow is falling. The white snowflakes fall to the ground and blanket the world and the world is dark and the moon is light. My mother said she found a field mouse in her closet. I said I didn’t believe her.

in the shadow of stone.

in the shadow of stone/the darkness follows me home/the light will light my way/on the break of every day/my heart falls forward in my throat/my life shifts backwards like a boat/I never move without a piece of grace/lighting the shadow of my face/in the night I know I will be all right/I have you by my side/you're here with me tonight/you taught me how to drive a car/and love when we are far/I look in your eyes/nothing is ever gone/in the coming of the dawn/I open the door and you aren't there/the shadows are dark and you aren't near/in the shadow of stone/the darkness follows me home/the light will light my way/on the break of every day.

Hatred.

My mother says not to let taxes overcome my conscious efforts
At self-realization, or reading Poe, Rumi, by the firelight in Kentucky.
Drinking coke and vodka. Watching the news. We are harbors of our own

Guilt. I am trapped in memories of bitter folding chairs. Trapped in winter. The darkness
Folds. I’m not. Without. Within. Ancient things that speak to me: o ghost,
Hamlet, you cry to me in the dead of night. Hawks circle overhead.

My strawberry farm is getting ripe. I own a strawberry farm. Did I ever tell you
That? Hunger gnaws at my stomach. I eat cracked corn, I eat bread from
Big bags.

My father comes over to fix the dishwasher. His hands are old. Like a faded
Tree branch. His feelings are raw. He is barren. Hatred seeps through the core of his being, hatred of everything.

The light hangs from a bulb in my closet. I pull down a box of old letters, and sift through them. Memories wash through me like the ocean. The ocean is vast. My heart is vast. I put the strawberries on the table.

Dragonslain. Beginning.

The ship suffered a lot of damage. The side of the ship had a large hole in it and it rested crookedly in the water, bouncing up and down on the waves. A cannon entered through the wood. The pieces of wood from the ship, now soggy, floated in the waves and the sea gulls screamed overhead and the sea tasted like salt. The wind whistled and moaned. Commander Tereindyl Lightweaver looked at the floating pieces of wood and frowned. The crewmembers were killed by pirates. They died at sea. It was not a good day. It was cold. Some of his men were getting scurvy and they rowed their ship to shore and several of them went into town to get provisions and to see a doctor or healer. No, he thought. It definitely was not a good day. He was in a small rowing boat. First-in-Command was Dexter Durby, a forty-seven year old man. He had no family and no home and his men said he had been a prisoner once for stealing chickens. It was no matter. Tereindyl was glad to have him aboard. Sailing was rough. The water had been choppy. A hurricane was some miles off the coast of Maecus, a small fishing city. One of his men disappeared out at sea earlier that year. He had not officially recovered. It made him more nervous. A commander was not supposed to be nervous. It was not good for his crew. He swallowed hard. His eyes smarted. He took his pipe and put tobacco in it and lit it with a match. He threw the match into the water and walked down the beach. He sighed. He needed a drink. He wanted a drink. Tereindyl walked down a path that took him to town. It was nice out and he didn’t need a jacket. The bar was called the Overlook Purple Lizard. An inn rested on the hill at the end of the city and he looked down and no one walked there. His mind contemplating eating at the inn but the bar would have less people to bother him about money. He pushed the doors open to the bar and went inside and squinted his eyes. The bar was not busy. Hardly anyone was in the room. He sat on a stool at the bar and a waitress came over and asked him what he wanted to eat. “I’ll have fried potatoes, salad, and a steak,” he answered.
She smiled, snapping her gum. “That’s a big order for you,” she told him, chuckling. She tossed her hair over her shoulders. She was old. Very old.
He nodded. “I’m hungry,” he told her. He grinned. His eyes flashed. The door behind the bar opened and shut. He shook his head. Women didn’t take kindly to people like him. He was a pirate. Even Pirates of the King were hated, he thought. Well, at least he was able to eat and pay for shelter. That was the most important thing. He couldn’t forget about his boat.
He heard her calling him from the shores…the water lapped at the ship…men called to him from a distance…his mind snapped back to the here and now.
Soon, he thought. Soon, I’ll be on you again. He closed his eyes dreamily.
“Here you are, sir,” she said cheerfully. She put a frosty cup of beer on the table and came back with a plate full of steaming food. He paid his money and dug into the steak and ripped it apart with his teeth and a fork. The food went well down his throat. It was so good. He savored each taste. He took a sip of beer and licked his tongue. It was lemon beer. His favorite.
“You hear about war?” she asked him. “You look like a sailor.” She cocked her head to study him. To look at him. She was not an ugly woman. She was no means beautiful. Her career made her beauty shine. The sun was out today.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “War is everywhere,” he told her. She didn’t have to bring it up. He didn’t talk about it to strangers.
“Men come in here,” she told him. “Strange men. They wear red tattoos that shone of fire. These men harbor grudges against the songs of the past. Their footsteps rise clear for all to hear. In the stillness. In the darkness. In the light.”
“What you said doesn’t make sense,” he told her.
She chuckled. “I am an inn keeper,” she told him. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Why don’t things ever make sense in life? Why do we have all this suffering?”
“Suffering comes from hardship,” she replied. “Hardship comes from within. Within us, there is turmoil. Out there…” she shook her head. “It is more difficult to explain. The darkness is everywhere. It is nowhere. Sometimes, things are broken.”

A Volume of Poetry.

Today I am a volume of poetry.
Tomorrow I am a piece of felt on the ground.
The wind moans in my ear.
No light I have found.
Some say I am going hungry.

They can see it in my eyes.
The darkness is round the moon;
It glimmers like a monsoon.
The distance I surmise.

Today I am a volume of poetry.
Tomorrow I am a map.
My cat comes to sit in my lap.
We throw papers on the floor.

Your mother comes to take the garbage out the door.
Whispered secrets, down on my luck,
My toe has been stuck in the mud and the muck.

Today I am a volume of poetry.
Tomorrow, I am your daughter.
I carry with me, the sound of a laughing otter.

The Couch.

The couch is on stilts. I am not comfortable with it.
It sits in the middle of the living room,
Glares at me. A large eye. My mother sits on the couch.
She knits her afghan. The blanket on my bed smells
Like moth balls.

My mother is here. She pokes random objects. She dreams
Of nothings that blink on and off. Christmas music
Spews from a loud speaker in the bedroom. Snow falls
From the sky. We’re nothing, you and I.

My father said he got the couch from a garage sale three years
Ago.
He said he didn’t like it at first. He said it made him think of
His banged-up knee he got in high school on the varsity football
Team.
The blanket has not been washed.

It is not Sunday. My father did his washing on Sunday.
I call him every Friday afternoon, and ask if he remembers to do
The washing.

The third time I called him, he hung up on me and didn’t invite me
To his wedding.

A year passed by. We sold the couch to a couple in Chicago,
Who were giving their daughter a new puppy for her birthday.
This is the story of a couch. The couch is on stilts.
I am not comfortable with it.

River Pierre.

She is dressed in an Afghan and black clothing.
I told her I was over the whole black outfit thing,
she could wear anything she wanted. She came from South Africa.
She spoke in broken English.
I told her the wind is like a language...that it is a language.
It speaks to tree branches and rocks.
She told me I was different. I didn't know where I belonged.
I took an essay writing class when I was six.
We ate lunch on the River Pierre, in France,
and looked over her notes on Gibraltar.
They told me I do everything wrong. I'm not the way I should be.
Everyone makes me feel uncomfortable. No one understands.
The lake is filled with fish. Every day, I take bread crumbs out to
the lake, and only see three things-a toad, a lily pad, and
a tortoise. The tortoise has a brown-speckled shell. He looks
at me and wanders away. Everyone says I am selfish. I agree
with them. I haven't had a job in seven years.
The word, Gibraltar rings in my ears. It is an interesting word,
and I wonder what it means. Gibraltar.
We're not in France anymore. We're back at home, leafing through cake
magazines and talking about the football game on tv.
It's almost Thanksgiving.

Opening.

No nighttime is upon me. October is just a month.
It is cold and darkness is waking.
Not within me. In the clouds.
I am alone. My heart beats. I feel the earth move. She moves.
The earth is moving, she is sobbing, singing, doing
something I don't know what it is she is doing. I don't know
the heart within. She finds me moving within movement.
You moved to Ohio without me. Without a way to go.
You said you loved her. Your shoelaces were untied. I didn't
believe you.
I don't like anything I've ever written. I don't like anything
I've ever read, aloud, or in my head.
The moon shines down. No nighttime upon me.
My chin hurts painfully, every Sunday. The sun shines down.
The clouds are overhead. No stories are written. I am a story
within a story. I am tired. I want to rest. There isn't any rest,
so much work, so much work! My mother told me not to swear.
She told me not to do a lot of things. The flowers are opening
and it is not even spring. The flowers are opening in bloom.
Opening like the surgeon who opened my chest when I was one years old.
Opening like a door that was closed. You said you would never forgive me.
I don't want your pity. My heart is tired. I am tired. Why can't you
understand? The darkness is within my beating heart. He said he didn't
like the noise.

ii.

The dog walks down the street, its tail wagging.
He barks at nothing. It is the bark of a tree. I am angry on the inside.
Nothing can make me stop moving. I am a mover. I move every three years,
sometimes I wonder if my parents are FBI agents, insurgents of Canada
and the far north.
It is cold. The winter winds chill me to the bone. I am alone in my bed,
wondering if anyone notices I am alive. Most of the time,
they do not care, or want to understand.
I believe in things. I don't believe in everything. The dog barks down
the street again. The wind is moving.

I finished reading.

"Eyes of Elisha" by Brandilyn Collins. I enjoyed the novel. I haven't read mysteries in awhile, I have been focusing more on science fiction, but this book was written in a simplistic manner. Here's what I thought: I was sometimes annoyed by Chelsea because she seemed to have a big mouth and didn't think things through.

I believe everything is made up of matter, and, to explain the vision Chelsea had and why she was right about the murder, in one scenario, Chelsea randomly picked out a logical event and placed it in the proper order. Usually, when people claim to be psychic and are accurate, simple science can explain their accuracy-scientists have said the human brain is like a computer, and can compute information pretty fast. We have so many people in the world, it's hard not to be accurate about something we're not supposed to know. I like the paranormal, though, and I read fiction all the time.

Some parts of the story don't tie in together very well, and it seems as if Chelsea's visions are mere coincedence, or that she could have committed the crimes herself and blamed someone else for them. Bad things happen every day. It's not illogical for someone to guess right about some of them.

The theme of the story worked for the series. I would buy more books if I had the money.

What They Talk About.

I am not talking about tomorrow. I am not talking about the eggs being boiled
on the stove. I am not talking about the way the banana bread is being baked in
the oven, or the white-haired lion on the evening news, spouting songs about God, Israel, Iran. The country is in turmoil. When has it stopped being in turmoil? My president seeks resolution, holds up his hand in silence, holds up his hand and places it on a book, The Art of War, of resolution. I keep myself to myself. The news blares on. You told me you wouldn't leave for Jefferson City, that you wouldn't leave me behind, that my sister didn't lose her leg in the bar fight and couldn't find the leg and had to get it replaced. I am not talking about tomorrow. I am not talking about your mother, who owes me money she said she'll never have. The house has been put up for sale. Anger is written all over my face, it's really not, it's really not, I just don't like drinking, don't like dancing, don't like much anything about anything. My classmates usually provoked it. They're not here. You are. You talk to me. I hear you.

I Told You Once.

I told you once I told you before,
I'm not something I don't know about.
I am nothing I know nothing about,
words creep slowly up the wall like a cat.
I couldn't take the worried crease of your mother's brow,
the insistent drilling of your father's favorite sports into my head,
the french onion soup that never came out right during
our winter holiday up north to your mother's.
She told me she used to work as a car salesman,
that she used to dream of the day when she could get fired,
and actually work where she wanted to work-as a hostess
at a four star gourmet restaurant, a window cleaner,
a volunteer at the fire department.
She wanted all those things, she said, and more, writing them
all down in her notebook, making promises with herself to
try to fulfill her dreams. She didn't know which way she was going.
Or why she wanted to go there. She didn't know what she wanted,
what she could be, and summer came swiftly.

Quiet Mind.

I am the quiet mind.

I am the heart that can't breathe.
I am the broken. The dark destiny.
The friend without a friend.

In the last light of the full moon,
my mind bears the burden of you.
Bears the burden of what I am.

A human. A ghost. A liar.
Excuses drift across the ocean like flowers.
I surround myself with petty pennies.
A shadow that settles on a rock.

I keep myself steady, my hand on my belly,
mother calls to me from the other room and asks

if I need something to eat. I haven't eaten
well in weeks.
The quiet mind within a well. I don't have-anything-
trees, twigs, tears.

My eyes smart. I see visions of ghosts.
My loneliness breaks me. I am bent over rocks.
My hunger is not a problem. I am not a problem.

Darkness will not break me.
Never the quiet mind within the quiet heart.
Never the quiet.

Chronicles.

We are not miners. We are 49ers. My friend mentions the 49ers every time conversation
is awkward, every time a truck goes by on the freeway. I am tired. My mind is quiet, is steady. The beat of my heart is stilled, willed. The flower is wilted. My love for you blooms eternally in gardens; my love for you is in a book, the symbol written in words. I haven't slept in weeks. The night falls. The waves break on the ocean. You tell me nothing. You tell me, "I see things bigger than myself!" I tell you know this. I try to get another job, but I can't speak past your eyes. Your eyes like stars. The woman with the red shirt works at the gas station. She sleeps at night without a pillow, thinking of her mother, her father, her sister, her brother. If they will be able to eat the next day. The television tells me no one is hungry, not in words, but in images. I can't afford cable. A pigeon poops in the garden. In the winter, my landlord drains the pool. It looks half-naked.

Fanfiction Story.

I have never written fanfiction before, it makes me feel weird, but I've been having trouble writing anything as of late and decided to write something, anything. The fanfiction is based on Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, which he got the idea from a famous poem. I started reading his books when I was twelve and I remember when I first read "The Gunslinger." I am picking on Stephen King because he'd probably like my writing. I don't plan on sending it anywhere, unless I send it to Stephen King's agent and ask him to finish it, for free, of course. I'm trying to finish my UFO story.

I have trouble writing shorter fiction, too. My patience is horrible.

As always, the characters belong to Stephen King.

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Two thoughts came to him: The whispers were loudest in the dark. And then: The magician is dead. A man stood where none had stood before, looking down in the crevice of the black tomb of the magician who twice tried to kill him and had once brought him back to life. The man’s name was Roland Deschain and he listened to the whispers while he mourned, hearing the ghosts of the past, hissing their accusations in his ear. “Vinny!” one ghost screamed. “Vinny!” “Shake my hand? Shake my hand?” repeated another in a singsong voice. “Porter…porter,” sighed another, as if he, too, was in mourning of someone Roland didn’t know the name of, maybe someone named Porter, or maybe porter was his job or it was a word in a different language and Roland wouldn’t be able to translate it. Roland was the last gunslinger. He used to be one of the last. Eddie, Susannah Dean, and even Oy had become gunslingers along their journey. Now, his friends were dead. He was mourning their life. Last year, he put his gun away for a new one, a .44 black caliber the size of his hand. Not only was he mourning Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, he was mourning the death of all those who lost their lives on other worlds, unknown soldiers whose tombstones bore no distinct name, gunslingers from far away lands like Ottawa, Topeka, Jefferson City, Missouri, population: 33,000. Roland gave all the soldiers the name of Jane Doe. Roland was uncomfortable in a black suit. He was older. He had gray hair and his eyes were like icicles, cold and hard as steel, his mind quick like playing cards in the dark. He remembered the old inn where he played poker with a dead man, the man who lost one eye in a bar fight and had been turned into a half-mutant. Last he had heard, the man was still looking for his eye. Roland was fighting for his life. He had cancer. He started smoking at twenty-three years old and hadn’t stopped a day since and the old woman at the hospital in New Manhattan said the cancer had wormed its way into his lungs. She was right. His lungs were blacker than the space above them, blacker than tar and a summer thunderstorm.
He mourned the loss of his love. Her name was Natasha Spiendel. He met her at a bar back in Nicker, and had made love to her on that first night he met her. He knew he was going to leave her. It was written in the stars. That was a terrible thing to think. She thought he was going to stay forever. She said so while they were making love. A gypsy read his palm when he was nineteen and said his real lover was a demon, locked away in the chasms of his heart that can’t be broken open. His mind was dull, dim, dead. He didn’t remember how he had gotten here.
The only thing that kept him awake was the pills he ate and licked dry and the pinpoints of sun that bore through the spider webs that made up his mind. Birds whispered and sang to him in his head. He was in a different place. His heart reeled. He was alone.
Alone in a haunted tomb of a dead magician he had never wanted to meet in the first place, whose death constantly haunted him in ways that were both unbearable and unimaginable. Roland felt a hysteria that was bordering on dementia. He grinned in the darkness at nothing, his mouth slacked open. He thought about the visions he had in the North, about the dragon who had green jewels for eyes and sent him a vision of the end of the world. Of all worlds.
Darkness rose up over the tomb like a giant monster and swallowed him. He stood in front of the magician’s tomb and whispered a prayer in Old Speech, a prayer he hadn’t used in a long time. He panicked. Bile rose up in his throat. He kept himself firm. His body remained. He did not move. He moved. The ghosts moved with him, calling around him frantically, asking for forgiveness, for alcohol, anything they could claim. He had none to give them. He was on his last life. The last gunslinger. He couldn’t fix himself. He was broken. He was in mourning.
He left the tomb and went into the hallway, and built himself a fire. He ate the last of the beef jerky in his fanny pack he stole from a dead horse whose spirit surely haunted this tomb along with the dead magician. He missed his horse. He couldn’t remember how many horses he had. But he missed them. He even missed the Crimson King. His eyes bore itself in his skull.
No, he thought quickly, shaking his head. He didn’t miss the Crimson King. He didn’t miss any of them. Only Susannah. She was the only one who didn’t betray him. Even Eddie betrayed him for a chance at the Elixir of life. He had no more doors left. The key was gone. He had found the key in the Crimson King’s mouth, protruding from it after he was shot and killed in the turf war between the gunslingers and the vampires. Eddie lost his life. Eddie and the vampires. The vampires hated him. They would find him. They would want him dead. Most of the time he wanted to be dead. He didn’t know how to swim with the fish. But he wanted to.
His mouth filled with vomit.
He leaned over and retched into a bucket that wasn’t there and then it was. In this part of the Old Kingdom, all bets were off. The magician’s magic resided in the key. He needed to steal back the key.
The Crimson King was dead. He hoped his ghost was not haunting this tomb. He hoped for a lot of things.
Roland licked his lips. “What do I do now?” he whispered. His lips were cracked and dry. It had been days since he had had a drink. Days since he had eaten, until just a few minutes ago when he ate the beef jerky. The jerky was salty and went down hard and his mind was hard from thinking only one thought at a time. His brain was slow, like molasses. He felt fine. He was so happy he could literally lift himself off the ground.
You, his thoughts whispered playfully, gropingly. Are. The. Last. Right. Like that was anything new. He was alone like he was before the magician followed him in the second world. His first world was Earth. He remembered. He saw. The vision was crystal clear.
Someone shuffled behind him in the dark. He bolted, and, realizing he didn’t have anywhere to turn, slumped against a wall. Ghosts groped for him in the dark.
“Eat,” an old woman cackled. “Live, breathe, be.” She hovered behind him like a mother caring for her child, except Roland was not a child and definitely not hers. Roland screamed and put his hands over his face and she did nothing but stood there and watched him with a stupid expression on her face, one of amusement and contempt. “Be,” she repeated. Her eyes rolled in their sockets.
“Are you another gypsy?” he asked. He smiled warily. “Or a soothsayer?” He chuckled. She didn’t get the joke. No one ever understood his jokes.
She shook her head. “Matilda,” she said, smiling, showing cragged teeth.
He laughed. “Hello, dear,” he said, grasping her hand. It was cold as ice. It felt like dead seaweed brushing against his fingers. He swallowed hard. So many nightmares filled his soul that he didn’t know the difference between nightmares and waking life anymore. “What are you doing here?” he asked her, wiping his hand on his jeans. He didn’t want to feel that hand in his ever again. Never. Again. He snorted. He’d write that down if he had a post-it note and a pen.
She laughed. “Live here,” she said, cackling gleefully. “Can’t find food anywhere. The magic man brings me food and he’s dead.” She threw her head back and jittered another one of those crazy laughs. Roland didn’t think it was at all funny. Neither would the magician if he was here. Roland smiled dimly. Great. He was trying to be a comedian now. As if the universe didn’t have enough problems to deal with. He glanced at the old woman.
“Alive?” he prodded. Persistence. That was key. Especially to crazy coots like the woman standing before him. Especially in a tomb like this.
“No. Deceased.” A chill ran down his spine. Of course, his mind whispered. He would be dead. That was the only way to get away from Roland. “How do I get out of this place?” he asked her timidly. She rolled her eyes heavenward, then glanced back down. She slammed her first into his jaw. He was sent reeling. His mind whirled. He sank in blackness. Darkness. The ghosts whirled away from him in a blur of noise, voices, images.
In the darkness, in the deepest pit of despair, on the edge of another world that flickered between unconsciousness and consciousness, Roland woke.
He opened one eye.
The Crimson King was not there.
He was dead.
Roland was not.
That was good, that was fine, that was great, that was wonderful. Roland rolled over on his side and looked up at the sky that glared down at him like an eye. He was in the desert again, he was sure it was the same desert the magician had followed him to at the beginning of his journey. He was happy he was here. The magician could not find him. The magician was dead. He repeated the words over and over in his mind. He repeated them. He was in the desert. It wasn't anywhere near Cairo.
Roland fell into a dead sleep. He didn't even get up from where he lay. He slept looking up at the stars.
The next morning, a cart and buggy started making its way across the desert toward him. Roland watched dumbly. What were they doing here? Was it a ghost carriage? Was he seeing things? The desert was full of mirages. He waited. The buggy pulled up to him. "Hello, mate," he said. "Good of you to kill my cousin for me."
Roland looked startled. "Who?" he said, blinking at him in the sunlight.
"My cousin. The magician."
Roland glanced at the horse again. The horse was nothing but a skeleton. Its eyes were pools of blackness. The universe swirled above him. Roland looked back at the old man. He looked exactly like the magician, except his nose was shaped differently. It was much more crooked. "You are?" he said.
"Shawn," the magician's cousin answered. "Shawn Johnson. Pleased to meet you." He chuckled, as if what he had just said was funny. It wasn't.
Roland smiled anyway.
Of course.

Book Update.

I'm on Chapter 12 of Eyes of Elisha.