What the Boy Knew.

The boy did not understand the importance of books. His mouth turned downward in a slight grimace, and he looked at Teacher. Teacher had gray hair and green eyes, they seemed to stare at nothing, a lot of times. Brian wondered if he was well. He did not look well. He looked very sick. He climbed off the stool, and looked at him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought I sent you home. I told you not to come back. I dismissed you!” He clenched his fists. It was not a good idea to anger the Prince of the Emperor of Jennsen, but it was important. The Emperor had taken him aside, and told him to tutor his son. He was bound to obey. Obeying was what Teachers did; that was how they survived in the universe that was harsh and cold and cruel.
Teacher waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I understand you do not take things seriously, my boy,” he chirped. “I have come to help you.”
“Help me with what?” he asked. His voice trembled like the Western Winds that rose from the South, and settled in the East, and everywhere in between. He owned everything on this planet, from the vast forests of Straighte, to the Inland of Eucalydies. The planet was monstrous, far larger than anything the Settlers had ever found. They settled on the planet thousands of years ago. The oceans were large-there were only two, but the water was angry, choppy, epic. Yes, the word would work. His father was gone most of the time. He wanted his father to be at home, so he could play with him. The maids and servants and the neighbor boys were not fun to play with, they made fun of him because he was rich, and he did not have shabby clothing. His clothes were made from the finest tailors in all of Jennsen. It was ideal for the prince of an Emperor to wear such fine clothes, and he definitely was made of money.
“You are the son of an Emperor,” he said in a thick voice. “You are supposed to be educated, elegant, endearing-you are none of these things! Look at how you walk! You walk like a duck! A duck!”
He looked around in abashment, and a sword hung on the wall. He grabbed the sword, and started swinging it in a clockwise position. “This is what you are supposed to learn, young student!” he cried. “You are supposed to learn how to duel!”
Brian shook his head. “I do not understand,” he said. “I am supposed to be married, and breed-that is what is in my Histories.”
Teacher stopped cold. He put down the sword, and stared at him, his face bold. Brian thought Teacher looked a lot like a duck. His hair was long and gray; his face was long; even his hands were like webbed feet, they stuck out tremendously. “How do you know about them, boy?” he demanded. “How do you know about the Histories? Only adults know about them, not children!”
“I followed my father.”
Teacher nodded thoughtfully. He saw it now. Brian was one of the Oddities, they were the ones who always had to make trouble, who didn’t appreciate Order, or anyone who could lead. Teacher cocked his head to look at him. He had to help him, before the Empire fell around his ears-or, his throat, for people who did what he did usually had their heads cut off. Brian was not like the Others. He was special. He was the son of an Emperor, and his life was spared. “Listen carefully, boy,” he said. “I know you see things, you think things that are different. I want you to listen to me. Do not tell anyone what you think. Ever. If you want to live.”
Brian’s eyes widened in fear. “If?” he echoed. His voice sounded loud to his own ears.
Teacher nodded. “We are at war. We have been at war for a long time. Real war stopped a long time ago, when the Emperor’s son, Temptess, discovered Magic. Not the real magic, but…close enough.”
Brian wished he would elaborate. He did not. He continued, “I am your Teacher. I will teach you how to read.”
An hour passed, and Brian still did not understand books.

Bitter Salt.

There was a three-story window that looked out
At an abandoned parking lot, and the faces looked in

At a crowd of spectators, all mouths open, all smiling.
The people were like rounded things, and the noise of the party
Was loud and translucent, and the Shadows of stone
Moved and no one could move.

The speeding train on the subway, was like the wind,
And it moaned like the wind, and the sound was awful-

And the teacher threw his temper out the window,
At the running cars, and the sound of the night was like
A whisper of trees that pounded on the forbidden grass of
Things,
And the silence was like a firecracker in the night,

And all reasons were not like shadows in the grass,
On the edge of things.
Some people are born bitter; and die a bitter death,
And people are too demanding, and bitter.

This salt is like the ocean, and the ocean is bitter because it
Holds all the fish, and sometimes, the fish die,
And the Gulf of Mexico is like a round circle in the middle of
The ocean.
Everything is treated with respect, and respect is in anything,
And all we have is our bitter bread, and the salt it came from-

Wings, His Mood.

His mood is like a shadow, that moves swiftly on
Its wings-
On abled beast, his harp it sings,
Like shattered, broken things-
In the dark, we weep like stars, and the night
Is a spell of words, and sorrows are broken,
And time is gone.
My mother said she was not a part of anything,

That she is not the part of the world that is between
Things. She speaks better than me, her thoughts are
Relinquished; she said she gave away medals once,
And a harp, to her next door neighbor, who had three
Cats, and seven pigeons that pooped in a well.

It isn’t like me to beat around the bush, and not say what I
Am supposed to say, it is not like me to speak,
When no one speaks, and everything is spoken in
Blades of grass, and Nature is wrought with the churning
Of the wind, and the clouds are taken like sorrows.

In and out, the harp sings like sorrows, and everything is folding
In the grass, and the spring is folding, and the light is folding,
And everything folds with it. The fear is there, the fear is sharp
And bitter as blades of grass, and we are far away, and far
Away is close to us, and everything around us is sharper than
The eye, and what we see like burnt pieces of wood.

The forest, the trees, the eyes see from far away, and everything
Is far away, like the roaring of the ocean, and the shadows
Pound at the doorway of the old house we lived in when I was three,
And the mother, and the father, and the brother, the tallest of the elms,
Sits back and watches everything drown.

The water is like Shadows, and the serpent opens its mouth, and
Everything moves with it, and in it, is the tongue of the beast,
The night time that speaks of stars, and wisdom, and trees.
My mother thought my life was not supposed to be like yesterday,

That we are above what we are, and death is not the end. Only the beginning
Of a forgotten war, the fiendish fiends, and all hope brings. Everything is what
It is, and nothing is what it seems. We are not the warriors of the night,
Of the screams of children as they play, and the pigeons scream from far away;
We are gone, and we decide, I open the front door and let the sunlight seep in.
Guilt eats me alive, like something that is a tree that stands tall, and guilt is not.

I Dream of Chromosomes.

These times, I see, in reverie,
And shadows march like stones-
Things belch like chromosomes,
And I walk alone.

Shadows move like songs that sing,
In the heavens and the tide-
In this light, we will abide,
And tender-light will bring.

I think we are not what we are,
That the light is near, and we are far-
We travel now, and walk a mile,
As the elephant will docile smile.

The night is like a walking song,
And we move, we move along-
All we have is all we are,
And the light is near, and we are far.

The squire is moving like a birch,
And the birds will chirp like lonely things-
Temper is what it brings,
As we move about, and wander, search.

I am gone, and you are not done,
And the light is over and the coldest stone,
Moves again, and moves again,
Like a willow in a dream.

Orphans At Midnight.

They said I could not write. That I am not here.
That things are not things and we have no rings.
I am not haunted by the depths of things, that move like
Water and shelter and are not gone-
The barking of the dog wakes the farmer, and he rises out
Of his bed the next day; and sometimes I sit and stare out
The window and think about the rising and falling of the ocean,
And nothing is sharper than stone; and nothing becomes
Nothing, and everything moves and is stiller than the shadow.
I do not remember my childhood, only the memory of it
Is still and wide as the nightmare that makes up my life,
And I am forced to realize I am not dying, that I have not
Lived up to my name. Everywhere we go there are speakers
Of oceans; everywhere we are, the words are quick like
Stones, and my name is on the lips of everyone in Italy because
My friend is the Chancellor’s wife; and I try to pretend I don’t
Care, but I care about the flowers and the hills and the trees
And how everything is nothing, and nothing is everyone in between
These rocks and crevasses and people think I do not have anything,
That I am an orphan like midnight.
They said I could not write. I could not spell words. I could not spell
Thoughts that are meshed inside oneself; no one represents me,
Because the tectonic plates are gentler as stones and nothing;
And I am this nothing, and people give me funny looks because
Of the scar on my forehead, that I did not do, and now my mother
Is in her house; she thinks it was my fault, and I was a child,
And I am not greedy about anything.
They said I could not write, and it is not midnight, either, and skeletons
Walk like birds.

How Dragons Are Not Here.

I talk about dragons in books; and books rhymes with nooks
And everyone hates me because I am a strain, and my voice is
Like a crocodile and I have sharp teeth and the bones melt with bones-
Sometimes, things are broken, and promises are made, and people
Weep, and the canyons are deep as oceans-
Sometimes, I do not know where the canyons are made, or why
They are made, only they are there, only the opinions of things
Are driven out of the land like coyotes, and some Americans
Do not like take-out food, especially not Canadian, French,
Canadian Bacon-I think I like oranges on certain days; I think
I like this or that; and the snow falls down on the Himalayas and sometimes
I look for Big Foot or someone else, someone who is not quite so simple
In his words, or for men with big trucks and yellow gardens,
And how they sod the fields, how they grow corn-some of the corn
Is shaped like diamonds, and some men break their backs on them;
Some of them are tall; others are short; others are like children in their way
And as ghosts; they tell me I cannot speak for them, but I end up writing
About them, how they troll, how they move, and their movement is simple
Like the tides are simple and the ocean is larger than itself-
And how wallabyes look up to us and badgers look up to us and the sounds
Of summer is larger than our eyes, and my teachers expect me to pick up
Their paychecks and not spend it; and how Mr. Millan, the man from the Bronx,
Was shot at the grocery store and he had a limp and it makes him cry every
Night, including on weekends-I do not know about words, only about the spelling
Of them; like the Spelling Bee I won in sixth grade.
These dragons are kind of sort not on my heart or mind and I am forced to realize
Something I have come to know,
That humans are not humans at all, just plants, maybe, like talking trees,
Or words that come out of books, and birds sing their song,
And I am paler than lightning, and lightning is quick and brown and moves like
Sand-
That some sands rise out of nothing, and nothing has become of it. I tiptoe this nothing,
And people don’t want to hear me speak. I ask myself why, and thoughts
Linger in the dark.

People Are Not.

People who do not like others do not like
Books.
People who do not like others do not like flowers,
Specifically daisies, wildflowers, roses-
Some roses are purple and red;
Others are sworn into strategy; that communication
Is not who we are, and we do not know about
Tomorrows.

Some men and women do not walk standing
Upright; some men and women make amends by
Seeking out the truth;
And the nozzle is turned off, spit out of a valve;
Greenland and Ireland are all wisdoms that speak
When others speak,
And ghosts are adventures of the forbidden seekers
Of this night-
Sometimes, songs rise out of the night, and shadows
Are shadows and Nature is Nature, all wrapped in a riddle.

The riddle begins to speak and communication is what
We speak, and sometimes the words fall in rhymes
And rhymes are spit out of worlds. Some things are not left
Unsaid, some things are left unbroken, like a watch
Dangled from a chain, and other things that we do not know,
Are forced not to know-

Nothing is the matter, but all is made of matter, and wives
And dolls are pretty much the same, and trees stand tall as the sun.
Some people speak. Most do not.

People who do not like others do not like books or birds or songs
Or strains of grass, and people who do not like words are moving
Like mountains, sad and remained like bitter waves that
Break on the shore of an ocean, and sometimes people have problems
With death and poverty and we know it not,

That ghosts stand on oceans and look down into them. That some ghosts
Do not live, others die, and warriors and knights are stiller than the night.
Some people do not like other people, some people do not like poverty.

Something Taller Than the Sun.

You’ve got nothing but the sound of your own voice
Reaching to the infinite, reaching to the sadness that
Lacks in your grace-
We are tall as buildings, and everything emulates inside of it,
Outside of it like the falling and rising of the wind-
Everything is the wind, and yesterday is the wind also.

That the shades grow taller than the sun,
And the moon is round the sun;
That these words are round, and we are not afraid,
And temptation lacks creation and everything in between.

That people do not force realization upon the politeness of us,
And the grandness that is tall and pure.
And the country rises from ashes, and speaks to us of ashes,
And we are not what we speak, that we are not weak,
And nothing is weak. That the world is not round,
And we are not round, and we can talk to the words on our lips,
And everything is insistent, that nothing is whole and sacred
And the words are emotionless things-

With the Rest of The Dreams.

In the dream of redemption, the harshness of the dream is withered
And remains on the vines-on the herald of dreams, we walk among
The tall trees, and teach the Elk to stand proud and strong-
We teach them to communicate with the rest of the country that is
Not the country, and these houses are not tall, and stand tall as wildflowers;
Moving in the grass, the trees are barren and grown; this is the system
That is not known, all we have are other pieces of shadows made from
Taller things; all we have is the lack of speaking, and the speaking of
Shadows that delve further into the being; that these tides begin to move,
And everything moves in it and outside of it; that they do not understand
The swift, moving tide, and sparrows are fallen on the ground near my feet;
That the language of redemption is torn from roots and grain, and I talk
To the warriors who bend and strain and everything is ridden of the light
And pain;
The moon pours into the window; that shadows are lutes, and words are nothing
More the strain of colors; that people are stupid, nothing more than shadows,
And society is not what is meant to become,
We have our secrets and they are not the gold and the cold and the words
Are like whispers in haunted castles;
I live in a castle, it is outside of these walls, and reading things is nothing
More than the temptation of being-
That the temptation of being is a language of something that is something else,
And people are eager, and force other dragons to shape and move and turn;
That the shadows and tides yearn tomorrow, and we go with the moving train-

On Metaphors.

The metaphor is spying on me,
In the classroom, outside of the classroom.
Mr. Cortez is in the living room of his house,
He is afraid to go out-
He teaches Spanish to ninth graders, to college
Students, and gets a lot of money.
All he cares about is the money,
The feeling of money in his hands, the feeling
Of the wind through the mountain.
He knows about destruction; the destruction of
The rain forest, he knows about the peace,
And the beginning and end of it.
He has given the land to the man in the black
Hat, who looks like Abe Lincoln, but is not;
The metaphor is spying on me, and is jealous
Of my accomplishments, but accomplishments
I have none, and so she is after the fruit
I harvest in the winter.
Without food, the human race will perish,
Dissolve into the big nothing because it cannot
Love, cannot die; is forced to wonder why.
Old men walk around old coffee shops;
They are only old because of the telling of it,
The teller of tales, the redemptions of things.
Everyone is a bully, they like to bully and be reminded
Of a time when bulls and deer and the antelope were
Free, and not chained as they are now;
That they are not chained to film, that they are not guilty,
That they do not wonder lonely down barren
Marshes in the summer, and the summer is not wet
With dew, and that goodness is nothing, means nothing;
Everything is a language, spun of spider webs.

LIKE THE WIND.

All your heart belongs to me like the wind
That moves in the sea.
Your eyes look at me like glass,
The sorrows fade and do not pass.
I like to see what I can see, in love’s enchanted beauty,
All these sorrows we do not grasp,
The words are felt and do not turn.
Like the sorrow, we will yearn,
And are trapped forever in a wheelbarrow.
The sky is yellow. The harp is yellow. A bird hangs
From a brush in the sky.
A tear drops from your eye, and you sob and cry,
And you cry.
I know you’re stuck in a rut and can’t get out of it.
Your life is in ruin and nothing can be done about it.
No one wants me here, the life is what I fear,
And the tables are stacked up together like the birds of a feather.
I can’t hold onto life anymore. I’m stuck in a dimension,
Another door. It’s just another day, another word on
The floor. Like a carpet stuck full of pine needles.
We don’t speak without discussing it first.
We don’t have a memory of anything outside of us.
The first day begins and the next one ends and it resumes
In the middle, and life is not felt, and the sorrow is
Gone with it.

A Face In His Memory.

“How about you fluffin’ muah pillah, sugah?” Those were the first words out of Drudd Hennessey’s mouth when he saw the nurse. She was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, next to his last ex, may she rot in Hell and die a horrible death forever afterwards. Long legs, face like eye candy, very skinny. Most nurses were very fat, or bigboned, his Grandaddy liked to call it.
The other thing-the second thing-Drudd Hennessey saw when he woke up from a coma were the bars of his hospital bed. He blinked again. The soft murmuring of nurses in the background, the soothing sound of someone who would care for him. He didn’t know her name, only he liked to call her sugah. He didn’t even know she was a nurse. He thought he was dead, or married, whatever came first. Time slowly ticked by. Maybe she was his wife. He continued to grin at her. She was very beautiful. The nurses thought he was stupid or high. The doctor gave him a drug test while he was asleep, and hadn’t alerted the nurses. Before the car accident he was relatively normal. The sound of cars rushed by on the street. The mood was calm. Everything was in place on this cold, cool morning.
The nurse left for a few hours; and returned, carrying a bed pan. “Go to the bathroom,” she ordered, her voice crisp like October wind. She didn’t make a sound. Why not pick up someone while he was in a hospital bed. “Well,” he said. “How you doin?” He smiled surreptitiously. Was it his imagination, or did she roll her eyes in his general direction? She liked him, he knew it.
“You’re a very lucky man, sir,” she told him. “You were going to die. Do you remember anything? We put a tube in your throat.” She chuckled. He didn’t think it was funny. Not funny at all.
He grinned at her, admiring her long legs. He was having trouble focusing. She just gave him meds. Maybe that was it. “How about you fluffin’ me pillah, sugah?” he asked again, in a smooth, New Orleans drawl.
She chuckled. “How about I hit you over the head with a bat?” she suggested.
He ducked his head. “It’ll be worth it, ma’m,” he whispered. A tear trickled down his cheek. He didn’t brush it away. The conversation was getting interesting.
She tsked. “You got pain in your back again, I see,” she said, cocking her head to look at him. “You taked out your back in the car accident. We will put a tube down your throat again, you keep talkin’ like that to me.” She chuckled, trying to make up for the empty threat. She didn’t mean it. Actually, she liked the man, he was very sweet and brave, didn’t wake up at all through the brain surgery. It was a funny thing. The heart monitor went off for one second, went back on again. She had to get him to remember some things about the accident. Some thing they could use. There was the other couple, the ones who caused the wreck-they were in the local jail, the husband was threatening to kill Drudd, but they didn’t know his name. She wondered if they understood what was going on, that criminal charges were being pressed against him.
“When do I get out?” he asked.
“First, tell me what your name is.”
He scrunched his face, trying to remember. He couldn’t concentrate on anything,
especially not the words that poured from her lips like wine over water. “John,” he said at last. “John, Berry.” He smiled triumphantly.
“We found your driver’s license,” she said in a clipped, disapproving tone. “That’s not what it says on your driver’s license. We are sorry, but we have to take precautions. Those are hospital rules, son.”
Son. The words popped in his mind. They hurt, the pain was bright and it was hard to see. He grasped his sides. He was in love. With her, or with pain, he didn’t know. The pain in his back was enormous. He didn’t say anything. She was in it for the money, that was it, the little bitch. “I don’t know,” he gasped. His eyes watered. “Are you happy, you…you stupid old witch?” He was off-base. She wasn’t really old, just skinny, and tall, and had an attitude problem. Where was his damn wallet? Jesus H. Christ, he had rights, didn’t he? He needed to call his parents. Or his lawyer. He wanted his damn wallet. He wanted to get out of here. This damnable place.
“Tell me your name, and you may leave,” she replied.
He thought quickly. He couldn’t remember anything. His mind was a blank wall, full of old flowers. “Mick,” he replied at last. “Mick Smith.” He smiled triumphantly. He hoped it suited her. Not much suited her, from what he saw.
“Tell me, other things,” she urged.
“My parents real names are Sarah and Jean. My mother’s maiden name is Watson.” He smiled. “She likes daisies.”
She frowned, and scribbled something on her damn clipboard. She left the room. The surgeon came back, sometime later, murmured something to the nurse, but he was asleep.
The surgeon’s name was Roger Johnson and he didn’t understand what the man’s problem was. They did a CT scan on his brain; it didn’t show any current problems. He didn’t need surgery of any sort. He was perfectly fine, after the surgery.
The nurse’s name was Hannah. She was a good nurse. She even won an award, once, a long time ago, back in the good old college days. He was much older than she was. He thought he was someone named Mick. Not Mick Jagger, Mick Smith. He imagined Mick Smith had once been overly tall; overly handsome; and a football star. There was a Mick Smith who went to Iraq and died there, but that was another story. The doctors couldn’t understand why he dredged up the name Mick Smith. He was a college football player, one of the best on his team.
“What do you make of him, Doctor?” she inquired. “He thinks he’s someone named Mick Smith. Maybe he really is Mick Smith. Maybe he’s a criminal and stole someone’s wallet. Maybe he’s a sniper!” She gasped, and her eyes widened. “We should call the police.” She didn’t even have her cell phone on her. Her hands quivered.
The good doctor shook his head and frowned. Hannah was a good nurse, but a definite idiot, slow and stupid. “No way, woman,” he snapped. “I checked with the police station and the prison. There is no one by the name of Mick Smith. His real name is Noah Watson. What I can’t figure out, is why he keeps saying his name is Mick.”
She shrugged. “He was in a coma.”
“He woke up from it! Most patients wake up. Most remember things within a few seconds.” He snorted. “He ain’t got no family, or he’s a criminal, can’t say which. Dumbass.” He didn’t normally swear. He swore when he was angry or afraid. Not in front of nurses, it wasn’t called for.
“Remember what you said: most. Maybe he has trauma problems. Some patients do.”
He sighed. “The optimum word. I guess I better go tell the fool to leave.”
She frowned. “We can’t send him back home and he doesn’t know who he is,” she protested. There was worry in her tone. “It’s not safe, for him, or us. What if his family wants to go back and sue us?” she asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea to bring that up,” he replied, waving his hand in dismissal. “If they want to sue us, they will sue us-there is no use around it.” He shook his head and sniffed. Hannah was a funny lady. She didn’t have any friends, but she helped people all the time. He frowned at her. “Go home, sweetie, and take a break-you’re becoming overworked.”
She stomped her foot. “I am not! I have to work night shift!”
“Not right now, you don’t!”
Dr. Johnson paced back and forth in his office, wondering what to do about Hannah. She was a good enough nurse, but she was getting to be rather tiresome. She was always trying to out of her way and help others far beyond what is necessary. Doctors and patients shouldn’t converse outside of the hospital. He could get sued. Well, he did date Wendy the nurse outside of doctor’s rules-and Dr. Sarah Cunningham-and Bridgett the janitor-he grinned. She was good in the sack, he had to admit. Red-headed and gorgeous, long legs, model figure.
* * *
Hannah went home for an hour. She ate a light dinner-a tuna fish sandwich, she gobbled those up fast-and she did the dishes and folded last night’s laundry. She looked around her small little apartment. She’d had it for ten years. It was something to be less desired for. It was what she could afford. All in all, she got a good deal out of it. She did God’s will, and she got to live. Being a nurse was very hectic. She had seen three deaths in her time. The surgeon had seen many more in his time. She thought about it long and hard and decided she didn’t want to take a break. She didn’t have any family, no friends. Certainly no love life. The surgeon was very good-looking, as far as surgeons went, but she had no desire for him and none for her. He was seeing someone, three years ago, but that fell apart. The good surgeon didn’t hold his anger very well. There was never any violence, but he had a mouth on him and it got him in trouble. She shrugged her shoulders, grabbed her coat, and headed into the cold night air.
It was very windy.
She walked down the street, holding her purse like a shield. Shadows crept across the sidewalk; the cement was cold as winter in December. She looked left and right. She looked down the street. A cat was walking by, creeping on its four paws. The hospital rose ahead, tall as a sentinel in the dark. Stars sprinkled above. She opened the door and went inside. The security guard wasn’t there. She grew alarmed. She walked down the hall. The lights flickered. They couldn’t afford better lights. Sounds flew all around her; the sounds of doctors talking to patients; nurses chatting; machines grinding in their little crypt. She went down the hall and glanced at Dr. Johnson’s door. It had his name on it. She tapped on the door and opened it. He was gone. Probably to lunch. He ate a late lunch. His mind was constantly occupied by things around him. She sighed and closed the door. She rubbed her face warily and trooped up a flight of stairs. She figured she better go visit Mr. Mick Smith. He might wonder where she was.
His back was propped up with a pillow. He smiled at her. A tray was placed in front of him. “Hello,” he chirped happily. “What are you doing here? I thought you were laid off.” He chuckled at his own joke.
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Quiet, you,” she said. “I came to see how you are doing.” She cocked her head to study him. He was very handsome. She didn’t notice it before. She wondered why she didn’t notice it. She looked at his hands. She wondered why she did so. They were smooth hands, like an artist. “What do you do?” She wasn’t supposed to ask him anymore questions. He was supposed to remember on his own. He was trying. She’d heard from the surgeon last night he could remember the alphabet and was very good at math. She’d checked his records. He didn’t have an arrest warrant. He was clean, but very mysterious. She liked helping him.
“I’m a painter,” he answered. “I paint houses.” He smiled.
She smiled back encouragingly, but she was worried. What part of what he was saying was a lie, or the truth? She shook her head, trying to rid the memories that threatened to surface over the water. The night was upon them. She was supposed to be at home. She couldn’t stay away. His head drooped on the pillow. She glanced at the door on her way out. His file wasn’t on the door. She returned to Dr. Johnson’s office. Knocked softly on the door. “Sir,” she said. “Sir, are you in here?” She had a habit of calling him “Sir.” It was an epitaph she would have to forge over. It didn’t suit her. She should call him “Doctor” but he was far too friendly for any doctor she had ever met. She opened the door. It was very dark. She went inside, and shut the door behind her. It made a little sound. She looked around. His desk was untidy. It surprised her. She would have expected it to be much neater. She opened the filing cabinet and poked in, and didn’t find what she was looking for. She closed it again. She saw several files on the desk. She sifted through them. Picked up one and dusted it off. The name on it was Noah Watson. She was surprised. She opened it. It was his birth certificate, and-an adoption certificate. Sarah and Jean Watson were not his real parents, they were his adoptive parents. His real parents went by a different name. That could get confusing. They hadn’t changed his first name. It was still Noah, but his real parents and his adopted parents were not the same. He didn’t know he was adopted. She stole a piece of paper, made a copy on the copying machine, and slipped out the door and into the night.
She decided she would consult a lawyer. She called him on the telephone. “Hello, Bruce,” she said. “May I talk to you?”
“Yes,” he replied. “How may I help you?”
She went on to explain her current problem, and he listened intently. “That’s an interesting story,” he said. “Does the boy know?”
She bit her lip. She didn’t want to correct him. “No,” she informed him. “He doesn’t. I asked the surgeon to tell him-he did brain surgery on him, and he woke up calling himself Mick and it says Noah on his card-but, he said he doesn’t like getting involved.”
The lawyer was getting curious. His full name was Bruce Ducking and he was forty-three years old, once widowed, and never remarried. He had three children and a home in Sweden and a garden he never watered. His poor, dead wife would be turning in her grave if she knew. His lip quivered. He should get out. It was a beautiful day. The sun was like a large coin in the sky.
“Okay,” he said at last. “What are their real names? I can look up their address.”
“Joseph and Josephine Berkley,” she informed him. “His birth certificate was in his files. He had an eye surgery at age three, for temporary blindness. I don’t know how on earth they discovered he had an eye problem. I guess they gave him up after that.”
“Why?”
“Of course it wouldn’t say.”
“Of course it wouldn’t.”
Joseph and Josephine Berkley were very curious people. They did not live far away, over in New Jersey. It was convenient. She thought it was, anyway. They lived in New York. Bruce pulled up in a cab and she got in and smiled at him. He was very handsome in his suit-he always wore suits, it was a part of his interesting personality-and his black hair was slicked back. His blue eyes shone with excitement. He liked helping people. Most lawyers didn’t. They just handed out money. Most of it wasn’t warranted. She told the taxi driver the address. It was a long ride. They spoke very little. She smiled, fidgeting in her blue skirt and blue blazer. She was going for another job interview on Sunday. She was going to try to get another job in real estate.
Joseph and Josephine Berkley were very fat people. Josephine was very round; Joseph had more bulge in the neck. Josephine’s hair was dark brown, Joseph’s was completely gray. She had to smile. She didn’t want to giggle at their austerity, but she couldn’t help it. They lived in a white house and had a white picket fence. Their mailbox was a drab gray.
“You look nice,” Bruce said. He blushed.
They had gotten out of the cab and hadn’t gone up to the house yet. Hannah was suddenly shy. Not because of Bruce, but because she was meeting more strangers. She didn’t like strangers. She stayed inside most of the time. “Thank you,” she replied. “You look very handsome. Kate must be proud.”
“We got married the year before,” he answered. “I was going to invite you, but you were at your sister’s-”
“Jan.”
“Yes, Jan, that’s her name. I’ve completely forgotten.”
“It’s okay, you’re not friends with her. We are.”
“That’s good to know.” He straightened his tie. “Okay, now we got to do this right.” Sometimes when he was nervous, he got very shy, and slipped back into what Hannah called his “gangster” talk. He was from Detroit. Moved to New York City. They met at NYU and became friends. He went off to law school. Hannah didn’t want to stay in school that long, but becoming a nurse seemed like her only option. She went up and rang the bell.
“Hello,” she said. “How are you?”
Josephine smiled. She had a pretty smile. It lit her entire face. “I know what you’re here for,” she told her. “I talked to your lawyer friend last night. A police officer also stopped by, to make it official. They found my baby.”
Hannah was startled. “He was not considered missing, ma’m,” she apologized. “You put him up for adoption. I want to know why.” She blushed. She didn’t mean to sound conceited. It came out like that. “Did you know who you gave him to, after he went to a new family?”
“No. The adoption agency knew, but they never told us. They shut down. We contacted the police. They went bankrupt, and the papers were sent to Social Services. They were in a different county and we couldn’t get them. We tried, many times, to find him. We got good jobs now, making carpet. Is he here?” She peered over her shoulder, and Hannah had to inform her he wasn’t. She said she was going to talk to him tomorrow, afterwards. She told him about the car accident, and how she found the information.
“Oh, my!” Josephine looked like she was going to faint. Joseph ushered her into a chair.
“Do you need anything?” she inquired.
“No,” Hannah responded. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“So, you’ve seen my boy?”
“Yes, but he left the hospital and I have to get the address, too.”
“It’s no worry, ma’m, well find it. We’ll be all right.” Joseph was the talker of the two. Josephine fidgeted every time she spoke. Her eyes were large. Everything about her was enormously large. Hannah wondered guiltily how she managed to walk or sit up. It seemed most difficult for her to do. She had seen pictures of Noah’s adopted parents. They were much more attractive.
She rose to leave. “I better go find Noah’s address,” she quipped.
Joseph nodded. “We were just about to make dinner.”
Josephine looked harried. “You may stay if you like,” she told her. “We’re making pot roast. Joseph makes a mean salad, he does.” She looked like she wanted her to leave. Hannah couldn’t stay, really. She had decided to take morning and night shift. It would do her good to get out of the apartment. It made her feel stifled and claustrophobic, trapped like a ghost. Hannah didn’t have friends. She didn’t have much of anyone. Her parents were in Greece. She was stuck in New York. She liked it, except the people were mean and overly stuffy and rude and rich. Hannah was not rich. Most nurses were not. They were very poor. Some did a poor job. Hannah was not one of them.
* * *
The next morning, Noah was gone. He left the night before. Gladys, the Head Nurse, told her. Gladys was very bigboned. Nobody messed with Gladys.
She spotted Dr. Johnson outside, smoking a cigarette. She thought he was avoiding her. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
He was surprised to see her. “What are you referring to?”
“You know what I’m talking about! Noah is gone! I was trying to find some information for him! Useful, information!” She couldn’t help it. A tear squeezed from her eye and she tried not to let it drop. She didn’t want to let it drop. She didn’t cry in front of doctors. It was one of her rules. She didn’t show emotion at her job.
“He remembered his name,” he replied, shrugging in a half-distracted, half-bored way. “Doesn’t remember much else, like where his parents live, but that’s okay.” Amusement in his gaze.
“Did you know about this?” she asked. She clenched her fists. She was angry, beyond angry, and hurt. She didn’t know why. She wasn’t attracted to Noah Watson in any way. She didn’t love him. She wasn’t infatuated by his good looks. He was downright mean. Spoiled, like.
“Whatever do you mean?” The innocent look again. She could wipe it off his face. She wanted to. Her fists begged her to. She shook her head. She clenched her fists; unclenched them.
“That his adoptive parents are not his real parents.”
“Yes, I did. Surgeons know important things about their patients, especially genetics. Especially if they can’t find the next of kin.” He smoked another puff, and smiled. “Well, I better go back inside. I have to do gallbladder surgery in an hour.”
She grabbed his arm. “Stop. Aren’t you going to tell him who his real parents are? He has a right to know.”
“Yeah…uh, no.” He smiled, and put his hands over his head and stretched. He winked.
“That’s wrong!” she protested. “You can’t do that! What are you going to do to fix it?”
“Look, it’s not my job to barge into people’s lives and mess things up. I’m just the surgeon. I like to sew. I knit at home, even. Right now, I’m making an afghan. If you want to tell him, that’s fine, copy his birth certificate. Why his parents had a forged one, I’ll never guess. Maybe they were involved in something shady.”
“Or the mafia,” she murmured.
Some parents were weird. They protected their kids to the death. They protected their children the way they were supposed to, and got nothing out of it. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Things like war and mistakes were not supposed to happen. That was why they had erasers on the end of pencils, she supposed. She was going to have to think about it. Damn Dr. Johnson, it was his job-but, maybe, really, it was hers. Or someone else’s. She wished she were somewhere else. Maybe some place, far away. She didn’t want to think. She had to sit down. She put her head in her hands and cried. She didn’t know why, but she was crying for Noah.
Noah was not dead. He was gone.
* * *
It took Hannah two weeks before she decided she was going to tell Noah. She found out at the police station where he was living-at a small, rundown apartment in the Bronx. She could take a cab over there. It wasn’t that far from the hospital, or her apartment. She sized up the apartment complex. It was small and drab and the windows stared at her like closed eyes.
“What is your full name, Hannah?” Noah Watson sized up the woman who stood on the porch in the rain. She was drenched. Soaked with rain.
Her teeth chattered. “My…my name is Hannah Smith!” she replied, shivering.
“What did you come here for? You didn’t have to tell me anything. I didn’t know I was adopted.” He leaned on the side of the door, his thoughts blank.
“Because I thought it was wrong you didn’t know,” she sniffed. “I debated whether or not to tell you. I thought some relatives, like your adoptive mother, would get mad, and sue the hospital-I can’t afford to lose my job. I found out she’s like, fifty-seven now, going to go on Social Security soon. Dr. Johnson is the best surgeon I’ve ever met! Only three patients died in his career! Can you imagine! Only three! One went into cardiac arrest after the surgery, but that couldn’t very well be his fault, could it?” She shook her head. “I don’t know about those things. I don’t play God’s work. We tried to save that one, we really did. He was a chiropractor, not exactly a doctor, but still-” She trailed off. She was thinking about something else, something long ago in her memory, far away, like a flower folding. “Anyway, I thought I would tell you,” she finished. “I’m sorry I didn’t before. Dr. Johnson said it wasn’t his place to tell you. He’s a real rat sometimes, but good, nonetheless.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Do you want to come in?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I will stand out on the porch, and talk while you listen.” She fished in her handbag for the papers, including the one she copied at the hospital a few weeks ago. She took it out and handed it to him. She studied his appearance. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. He’d had a razor at the hospital, one of the nurses bought one for him, said he was pretty cute and would make babies with him if she could. She was twenty-nine. He was in his thirties. She realized she didn’t know that much about the people she worked for. She sniffed.
“What’s the matter, are you catching a cold?”
“No.”
“Thank you for telling me. I suppose I should talk to a lawyer about this.”
“You should,” she agreed. “What are you going to do now? Do you remember
anything else?”
“I do not, but that doesn’t matter. I’m talking to a counselor now. I didn’t want
to at first, I was ashamed. It’s the best course of action to take, I guess. Giving my current state.” He chuckled. It wasn’t really all that funny.
“Goodbye, Noah. Your parents real names are Joe and Josephine Berkley. I talked to them myself. They said you can still call yourself Watson.” She smiled in amusement. He was a lot like a woman with a maiden name.
“Goodbye,” he said. “Thank you for talking to them for me, making sure they are all right. I’m glad they are not drug dealers.”
“No,” she replied. “They sell carpet.”
She turned and stared at him for a single instant and he vanished back into the house and was gone. She glanced at the welcome mat. A shoe print of water formed where he stood, like the disappearing of a ghost.

The Hatred of Wildflowers.

He knows some things outside of what he knows-
Outside the heart of the forest, where things run smooth
As stones. The tides go in and out, in New Orleans, in Mississippi,
In places I have never been.
Words are things I have never been.
The words are translucent, run smoothly as water, and water skips
Like stones.
This is my love. This is my life. This is the folding of symmetries,
The occasions of man and miracles-
People are upset about the hurricanes in Greece, in Malasyia,
In countries I cannot pronounce.

This is the man I love, abashed by the hatred of his own self,
Like flinging stars to the moon-
He insists I should not drive cars, he insists, I should not buy things,
That he will buy things, that this love is not grand. Grand total,
Grand shark, grand anything.

The forests grow and everything grows with it and he says his ex is like
A sister, that he knows how to rhyme words with blister.
The tree speaks, and shimmers in the sun.

His sister is a genius. She spins tales on wildflowers, sunflowers, forget-me-nots.
The earth spins with the sun, and the eyes are distant, vast as the sadness
In his heart, that waves and bends like mountains-

Roses, Kindly, Petals.

The roses kindly force petals on moving ghosts.
We move with ghosts and we are of ghosts.
Words are spoken and move with hosts.
We vanish and the last one remains what was left insane,
And no one speaks, and nothing speaks.
Today we speak and are of tears,
And love lasts these most tender years,
Everyone thought what we would become,
Just like a night in a forbidden tomb.
You said I was a demon; you said I was the devil,
I don’t know what is more afraid than being level.
The rose was in a thorn of roses and nothing more
Than I supposes,
Than all the riches of the earth,
And those who live and die in birth,
Are forced like memories of our worth.
You taught what you were taught in midnight thought.
Everyone told us what we were told.
The last night disappears in tarnished gold.
For all our worth is never sold.
The roses kindly force petals and fade-
The light is gone and night abade.

You Walk In the Dark.

You walk in the dark of the night.
A light is underneath the moon-
It is the shadows that glow in a spark at noon,
And heralds Time, which slows the light.

This night is the evil, this night is of frost-
Tomorrow, we will yearn, and seek,
All this time we bend with the lost,
And shatter old war wounds on a mountainpeak.

Old memories wrapped in roses wrapped in cold,
Nothing is more forsaken than the tide-
Our heart is a memory of what is bold,
And the darkness is what leaks and coincides.

Tonight we are of memory and most right,
The dreams of yesterdays and bend with old hands-
We make what is darkness, out of the night,
And tarnish the bold in tarnished lands.

This is old. In night we seek, in the night we burn,
Like broken old bicycles and moving wind,
We are caught in shadows and force to learn,
What we know is what we know in kind.

MME.

MME

The robot didn’t know where he was, only that he was falling.
He was falling and he couldn’t stop it. Darkness whizzed past him. Darkness everywhere, even underneath him. He didn’t understand why he was falling or why he felt like he was falling, only that he was, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
He stopped.
It was bright again and he could see.
See in front of him, see behind him, see before him.
He was unscathed.
“What is this place?” he wondered aloud. His eyes whirred.
He remembered the Scientist, Dr. Scabborth, he made him. He made a robot and the robot could not remember his own name.
He saw something shiny on the ground. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Next to the shiny thing, were three letters written on the sidewalk: MME. That must be my name, he told himself.
He decided to go into the building. It was a very old building and a sign was on it, it said: Dr. Jean Crawford. He opened the door and went inside. A light breeze followed him in. It was spring and it was nice and the sun shone like a giant diamond in the great, wide, open space.
A man seated behind the desk. He had a broad, sloping forehead like the valley; his hair was red as wine, and like the river. The river was cold, and spring was cold also.
“You think you’re a wizard, correct?” the old doctor asked. His face was hardened with lines, and his eyes were velvet. He wrinkled his forehead. His eyes were piercing blue. He had a mustache.
“I think so,” he said, his forehead wrinkled even further.
“You think so? Or, you know so?”
“I think so,” he insisted firmly, “and I know so.” He shook his head. His eyes were frightened; he didn’t know why he had come to this place, of all things. He remembered wanting to run, wanting to get away, far away from everything. He wanted to just go.
“I am a wizard.”
“You think you are a wizard.”
“What kind of wizard do you think you are?” he asked. He leaned forward in his seat. He tapped his fingers on the desk.
“I think I am…a good wizard.” He smiled. His eyes smiled in his face; everything about him smiled. He didn’t understand what was going on, only he was talking to a nice man at a desk.
“What do you remember about your old life?” he queried.
The psychologist was a nice man. Some women said he was good-looking. Other women thought he was a chimp, a man of mean demeanor.
The wizard looked out the window as the last light fell into the room, and it grew very dark. The psychologist rose to his feet. At last, he said, “I think a storm’s coming.”
For many years, the psychologist grilled the wizard. He had become very interested in what he had to say. He became very interested in what the man did. He checked at the local hospital and there was no birthday for him. He called himself MME, and that was all. He insisted his parents named him MME. Their last name was Sidways, or something like that. He thought it was a very unusual last name for a man to have. He had seen more unusual last names, like, Colcitcher, Ashwake, Merlin. The names rolled off his tongue, as he went through them in his mind, one by one.
Everything about his story spoke of treason, and he was very disturbed.
“I think you ought to get your head checked,” the psychologist said one day. “I think you ought to get your head checked, and go away from me.” He smiled at the man, expecting him to comply. Instead, he closed his eyes and nodded off. The man, MME, had fallen asleep.
The psychologist could not rouse him for anything. He could literally hear the man’s heart ticking in his chest, and knew he was alive. He ate lunch. He made a few phone calls. At five, he shook his shoulder and could not wake him. His eyes were slightly open.
“Well,” he replied. “I don’t know how you get away with it, but I envy you.”
He smiled, tipped his hat, and left the office.
The door swung softly shut behind him. It hardly made any noise at all.
* * *

THE MOON.

I remain, shattered, in your memory.
The eyes of a wildflower, the ears of a goat-
Lost in a field of smoky mirrors,
The eyes stare at me, reach to tomorrow.
My nose is a symmetry, and everything is gone.
The words are mine, like heaven’s remains.
In the endless dawn, the caribou sing,
And convert to the words that listen, and remain.
Ghosts are mistaken, we are lost in the void,
Spirits are broken, on the eyes of a coin.
We flip them and zombies poke out of
The dark,
And no one can see us, and shelter the pain.
Hear the cries of the sadness that comes,
The refrain, the lost voice, that echoes in the
Still silence-
There is no other word, but the sounds of our
Voice, and we are alone,
All alone in the world.
I am alone in the heel of my own thought.
I am alone with my voice.
I am truth.
Truth becomes me.
We are the flesh, that heralds the light.
The night is broken,
I am situated upon a table, the smile of a lamb
Is the heart of a lion,
I focus and things become much clearer.
We want to buy something, we want to spend
Everything we can.
Night is the man.
I am shattered, you told me I could not speak.
You are lost in yourself, you are lost without a voice.
The glumness is not the emotions we seek,
I didn’t make it-it was not mine to announce.
Everything is woken, and we are shattered.
I found you in the void of darkness,
In the island that is not who we are,
The sadness heralds the lion,
And in the place where we are,
We see like shimmering eyes, the pale glow,
The moon.

Pendant.

“You are a bastard, Anwon. One of the very few left in the world.” Anwon Price sighed and closed his eyes. He did not like how Kent was so dramatic it made his head spin and his eyes water. Sometimes, he felt like melting into a puddle on the floor, which was wet and slick and hard as anything. The days felt like they were going by, slower than the winds that rose from the North and echoed Across the Ages-Across the Ages was a term coined by King Wandron the Ninth, in 45 A.D. It was a miracle they survived the Ice Age. It was a miracle, with what all the wars and all, they survived anything. He started to quiver. To shiver. He didn’t think anything could be done about him. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to rest his eyes. His mind wandered, and he saw his Uncle’s magic mirror. The man had taken him in after his parents died in the mysterious fire, and he had had nowhere else to go. It was logical to go to the next of kin, but his Uncle Kent was not all there. He was a wizard, one of the few left in the world, and his head was not on right. Anwon had seen it happen many times. Magic destroyed people. Destroyed lives. He only hoped he would not go to Hell, the place Beyond the Gates. It was another saying. They had a lot of sayings these days. War was growing more and more prominent in the East. They had to be careful, watchful. Considerations were to be had, and his Uncle was not paying attention.
“Uncle Kent,” he said. “May I go outside and play?”
He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “You can go outside and play, or you can work, but in the end, you must work. Give regards to your mother.” He threw back his head and laughed harsh laughter, the bray of a donkey. Uncle Kent was very bitter after his wife, Tatina, left him. He said it was the boy’s fault, even though Tatina loved children and baby-sat him often. He was used to the neglect, the patronizing attitude from his Uncle. He sneered in his direction most days. He ignored the sarcasm on others. He was bitter about the way he was being treated, bitter and misguided, and nothing could do to sustain the reason for the pain and suffering his Uncle caused. It was day after day after day.
“Go outside, boy!” he scowled. He threw a dish towel at him. Anwon ducked and headed outside, into the bright sunshine, and the light fell in through the trees and he walked a ways and came to a very old tree in the middle of the woods, it was a strange tree and it bore of a different color from the other trees. It was so dark it was almost black. The other trees were mostly brown. He shook his head and rested his hand against the tree, and a burning sensation entered his body, and he jumped back, nearly stumbling on a tree trunk. He sat down, hard, and fell onto a rock. It was sharp in his back. He picked it up and was about to thrust it into a bush. He looked at it and saw it was not a rock, but a strange pendant dangled from a necklace. He put it around his neck and he couldn’t remember anything for the next few hours, except the sharp sound the wind made as he ran through the trees, he laughter echoed in the twilight forest. The trees were like sentinels in the growing dark, and at long last, he stumbled, and collapsed, and his breath was knocked out of him, and he crawled to the barn and slept in the hay.
He had a dream.
He had a dream they said he was the boy With the Thousand Wishes, but it was more like, the boy With a Thousand Dreams, all stacked up, one after the other. The dreams were slow, and moved through his mind, slower than syrup. He loved making pancakes in the winter. He had been cooking since he was five. His Uncle left him alone in the big, wide house that was full of dark places and cold corners, and the open windows made it even colder even though it was nice outside. He looked at himself in the tall mirror in the bathroom, sometimes, and saw his pointed ears, his glowing face. His eyes were blue. Sometimes, they turned brown. It was not noticeable, and anyway, they did not have very many neighbors. Most of his neighbors were crows, and he found himself drawn to the animals.
School was different. He was the biggest nerd at school, and the kids poked and prodded him and jeered at him and called him names, and he did not know how to fight back, and tore his shirts and his eyes were bloodshot, most nights. His Uncle barely noticed, but the maid was kind and gave him cookies and soothed his hurt feelings and sent him out to play. He ran through the woods faster than lightning and did not know it was the pendant, making him soar like dragons.

Freeways and Highways.

I design things from old wash cloths,
from cars on freeways.
The clouds spin solidly through space.
Being polite is the way to being polite.
This is not the part of being polite that annoys me,
the part of leaving me out is the thing that annoys me.
Writers are a lot like readers, and they cleanse
themselves of words-from shopping, to making clothes,
to playing video games, and playing outdoors.

I throw a tennis ball on the freeway,
and the tennis ball comes back to me-
people are a little too polite to me,
and dance in their reverie.
I like to think for myself.
I like the words that threaten other words.

This is the art of being polite, of molding things
out of paper-of paper mache,
and rhythm and rhymes.
He said he is not angry, but he is angry.
He said he is not ashamed, but he is ashamed.
There are ghosts in your words,
and we speak like ghosts and hosts.

A Dance of Demons.

1

The book glowed in the bookstore window. It was actually a pawn shop, and sold books along with everything else-furniture; lamps; jewelry; and old toys. Sarah Whittier stood with her face pressed to the glass. She was looking at a glass figurine of a rocking horse, next to the window. It was silver and had diamonds for eyes, but she didn’t think they were real diamonds, nobody would put real diamonds in a glass horse. It was very beautiful. She also saw a porcelain ballerina. She went inside. No one was around. She went up to the ballerina, and touched it. It was smooth as glass. She shook her head, and bit her lip. The porcelain rocking horse cost twenty-five dollars; she had twenty dollars on her, for buying Christmas presents. She wanted the glass figurine. She couldn't stop thinking about it.
"May I help you?" a pleasant voice asked.
She turned to look at an elderly woman standing in the middle of the shop. She wore a flowered dress. Her hair was long and gray. She looked like a picture in a book, one of those Fairy Godmothers. She smiled. "I was about to leave," she mumbled at the floor.
"Why don't you stay awhile?" she asked. "See what you can see." Her face was very pleasant. Sarah's mother died from tuberculosis last month. She was still mourning. She wore a black washcloth over her face at dinner, she didn't know why, it made her feel better. She thought.
"I wish I could," she said.
"Your grandmother died recently, didn't she?" the woman asked her.
She stopped cold. She stared at the woman. "How did you know that?" she whispered.
"Your eyes," she explained. "Your eyes told me."
She didn't offer any other information, other information about what was going on behind those gray-green eyes that stared straight at Sarah's soul. She shivered. She wasn't cold. She went out into the night.
It was bedtime, she was in her bed, thinking about the glass figurine. Her thoughts succumbed her. She could think of little else. She smiled. Her hair was brushed, and shone, and the light from the hallway nightlight lit up the room. It was very bright.
"Mother?" she said the next morning.
"Yes, dear?" she asked.
"What do you know about glass figurines?"
She laughed cheerfully. "Not much, I'm afraid. Some of them are very old. Some of them have just been made, but they are crafted with loving care."
"Oh." Sarah wasn't sure she understood the answer. She looked around the kitchen. It was nice and cozy. She wanted to take a nap, but her mother was making breakfast, and she wanted to go exploring.

*
“I want something to do.”
Jack Crenshaw was eleven-years-old at the time. He turned and scowled at his mother. She was ironing, near the stove. It was winter, and it was very cold, and the wind howled and shook the windows of the old house. He shivered. Hits boots quaked.
“Are you cold, dear?” she asked. “Here, have a biscuit.” She handed him a biscuit, and he wandered away, down the drafty hallway, to the bedroom, chewing it slowly. It got earlier in the winter in Alaska. Earlier, and colder. It was going to snow. The forecast predicted it.
He sighed and bit his lip. The hallway made him afraid. He didn’t want to walk down it. He wanted to stay in the nice, warm kitchen with his mother. He shook his head. Some people had told him the old place was haunted. He never believed it. He didn’t believe in much, nowadays, except for school and Mrs. Sharpton and going to the bathroom and lunch, and the collie-he was out back, sniffing the yard. He giggled. She loved to sniff the ground-he wasn't sure what was under the snow in Alaska, but it was probably something nice. Once, she found an old baseball cap.
He went into the bedroom, dropped onto the bed, and put his head in his hands.
Sometime during the night, something moaned from the attic upstairs.
The wind cried and moaned, a sad, lonely sound.
* * *
“What are you doing here, Jack?” the succubus glared at him with glowing, wild eyes. Red as the sands of Mars, red as an apple.
“How did you know my name?” he asked nervously. He was looking for a way out. He shouldn’t have come for the book-the book could fall off the face of the earth, for all he cared.
“I know everything.” The succubus laughed.
“I’d…heard you escaped from the book.”
“I didn’t escape. I was released. We succubus are slaves of our trade. The trade of evilness, of darkness.”
“Who let you out?”
She moved closer, towards him. His mind screamed inside of him. There weren’t any thoughts. Just a shallow, cold pool. “You did!” she rasped, her voice like moving October wind.
He threw his hands up and covered his eyes with his face. He swallowed hard, and the darkness overtook him, and he couldn’t remember. Anything.
* * *
The darkness swirled around him-Jack Crenshaw was in a cemetery on Halloween night. It was dark. He clutched a flashlight in his hand, and he looked around him, and swallowed hard. Tears came out of his eyes, and he couldn’t see two feet in front of him-he thought he could, but the seeing was tough, and he wanted to scream, to run away, but he couldn’t. He had to find the ghost of Lenore. It was a stupid thought, but the thought stuck in his mind, and he couldn’t make it go away. It was the stupid story. The stupid story drove him out here, in the middle of the night, in his blue pants soaked with water, and his white shirt, and his hair was wet, too, like he’d just taken a shower, but nobody was here except him, and he could feel the eyes on the back of his neck-
Alone.
The whisper of wind was beside him and he screamed and he clutched at his heart, his heart thumped loudly in his chest and he couldn’t think of what to do. He had left his cell phone-where? Something bulged in his back pocket.
2
The raw pain of breath was in his throat. He clawed at his throat, trying to reach in the back of his throat to get it out, but he couldn’t. His eyes smarted. His nose was running. He thought he had a cold, but he wasn’t sure. He ran through the forest, tripping and falling over roots, his wind in his hair. It was cold. Everything about the night was cold, and he was feeling down, down in the dumps. He’d had the dream, the dream about the weird creature who looked human.
3
“Get out of my crypt!”
“I’m not in your crypt! This is just a stupid old house!”
4
Jack Crenshaw had the dream again-the dream of floating in space.
It wasn’t space, really, it was more like floating in nothing, and the nothing was his life. The nothingness shook him up and he awoke, panting and sweating, his face turned towards the pavement, and the flashing lights made his head spin. He blinked once. Twice. His eyes adjusted to the sudden change in brightness, and another face was in front of him, and sweat poured from his forehead. “Hi,” he croaked out, and the face smiled down at him-at first, he thought it was the face of Death, and Death had come to take him. He realized it was a man, and the man was a police officer. How could he have thought Death was a police officer? It was almost laughable. He shook his head and his vision cleared, and he could see again, and the outline of the police officer was closer to him, asking if he was all right. Jack wanted to say, “No, he wasn’t all right, his head ached and his butt ached and his face was cold from being on the pavement, and he wanted something nice and hot down his throat, he wanted to eat, but he couldn‘t quite get the words out.
The police officer’s name was Drew Arlens. “What are you doing here?” he asked him.
Jack looked around him stupidly. His mind was deaf and dumb. Nothing around him except darkness and the flashing lights of the police cars, and the moon, bright and full, and his wet jeans-he was not a happy camper.
5
A voice whispered in the darkness-the swirling darkness, calling his name, or maybe they were calling another Jack, from another time and place, from some place far away. It was dim in his mind. It was dim, and he was seeing, and he looked around and he blinked once, twice, and the darkness was still there-he couldn’t see anything, except himself, and himself was not awake.
This was no ballpark.
There wasn’t anything here.
6
He woke. A nurse’s face floated in front of him and he jerked and nearly knocked over the food tray in her hand. “Get out!” he rasped. His entire body shook. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Jenkins,” she chirped, smiling down at him with a wide smile. Her teeth was like gigantic slabs of white bread. “Jenkins, Amanda.” She laughed heartily. “More like, Amanda Jenkins-Jenkins being my last name. I’m married.” She tossed her blonde hair, the lipstick was bright red.
“I don’t care. May I have some water?”
“Why, aren’t you a polite young man!” she exclaimed. She scurried out of the room, and a doctor showed up.
“Well,” he chirped. “It looks like you had another spell.”
“Another spell? What do you mean?”
“You had a stroke, young man-well, your status is leukemia, it says on your charts.”
He propped his elbow up on the large hospital pillow and stared at him with bulging eyes. “What do you mean, leukemia? I’m perfectly normal-perfectly healthy.” He sputtered out the words.
“We ran some tests while you were asleep-”
“While I was asleep? What kind of hospital is this? I didn’t give you any consent to do that!”
“You didn’t have to. Your wife did.” His voice clipped out the words, one by one, like stones falling in a pool of cold water. Water always reflected the sky-life was a lot like that, a reflection of one thing turned into something else.
“I’m not married.”
The doctor glanced at his hand. “I can see your ring is gone, but a police officer found it at the scene. He was kind enough to bring it in for you.”
“Oh. Thanks. I guess.”
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing. Not really.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I don’t remember anything about myself. I don’t even know why I’m here. Nothing hurts.” He frowned. He was confused about something, just something, not really anything, or maybe he was and he didn’t see it, couldn’t see the plain thing in front of his face, the something that made up his life and-the last of the thoughts flitted from his mind, and he couldn’t think. He was dumb again. That was the last thought he’d had before she spoke again.
“You broke your arm and your collar bone. You almost died. Your stomach was practically in knots, not to mention the leukemia. You’re lucky to be alive.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, lucky? I don’t remember my own name.”
“Your name is Jack Crenshaw.”
Something jarred his thoughts-something in the back of his mind. A stirring, final note. His mouth twisted in a grimace. It wasn’t even a smile.

Still Life, lyrics.

Still Life.

This is my spirit.
This is the way I’m going to show,
All of these fields of flowers, to the water
Below.
This is what I hold in the midnight sky,
And these tears I shed I want to cry.
The words I pour from my pages,
And cry these tears,
And we’ve been gone for all these years.
My life is at a stand-still, and still you’ve gone,
All these messages I am alone.
I stand on the mountain and look into my grave,
I’ve been out of the picture for a long while it seems.
You thought you could mess with me, and turn
Me into what I am-
Now I’m cold and I’m broken and I can barely stand.
You think I’m a liar I saw you bleed on the page.
You don’t know anything about the forces of rage.
This is my spirit this is my war cry,
Like the wind and the rain and the shelters we deny.
My heart is on a page.
I am homeless and broken and I cry your name,
The sky is above us, and we are here to receive,
These tears are our sorrows and on the pages it bleeds.

The Real Misery, lyrics

The Real Misery, lyrics

Don’t judge me about what I can be,
The rhythm of my life is not a matrimony-
You think you know everything,
But you don’t know me,
All you give me is misery.

You take my heart and squeeze, squeeze it,
You think you are my rock, but I’d rather freeze it.
You talked to me in school, but you didn’t know my name,
All you gave me was years of pain.

You told me you loved me, but you never knew,
About what I was going through.
You thought I was a leader, but you never know,
Why these years of being down, are yours to fix now.

Don’t judge me about what I can be,
The rhythm of my life is not in harmony-
It’s all your fault, we can’t do anything about it,
We don’t have enough tools in the world to fix it.

Who I Am, story.

It worried me. I was Death, and Death wasn’t supposed to feel pain-Death was above pain. Above hatred. Above mankind. A fallen angel, like.

My name was Death, and I am the bringer of Death.

I found the cloak in the middle of the road late one night, and it was so dark I couldn’t see three feet in front of me. I had just stopped at a coffee house two blocks from the rock quarry, and my mind spewed hatred in every direction, in all directions I couldn’t see. I thought to myself: “You almost got hit by a truck.”

The inner demon inside me almost laughed out loud, and as painful as it was, I had to stop at a hospital. It worried me, the pain in my right shoulder was very sharp, and I laughed loudly again, because I was getting hungry. I had bags of money back at my hotel room, for they were left behind by unsuspecting victims, somebody I didn’t know. I didn’t know anyone, now, no one would befriend Death.

* * *

It was the void that disturbed me, in the sullness and the darkness, that void that called to me in a song-that I was by myself, that I was blessed with the death of a song. I was the song. The car accident changed me in a way that was both temperamental and hard to transcribe, indeed, on the back door of a song, my life was dramatically changed. I became the singer, and the sinner was estranged, and the heart of my life was broken, unfeeling, like the wings of an angel. I thought about death and dying and everything in between and the miracle of being alive, of being temporary insane, since I could see what I could see at that very instant the car struck me, ahead of me, sort of to the right-almost as if I wanted it to strike me down, dead. My mind felt a sharp, intense pain, a hatred that defined me, and the wholeness of hatred was what refused to succumb me to the succubus that was my life. The succubus of the self, the innermost hatred of being dead, then being flesh, and an escape from death.

I walked from the car accident without a scratch-except there was a small one on my right arm, a jagged, scratch that went almost up to my elbow. I thought bitterly of jumping off the jagged rocks into the highway below, that there wasn’t anything worth living for. My daughter, Gloria, was dead, had died from tuberculosis when she was three, and the mortician said she’d hadn’t suffered. It wasn’t very important, this small transgression, the part of me that was the great unknown, being devoid of life, the unknowing of the self, the temper of the self that was within me. I was not a guardian. I was not a god. I simply co-existed, floating through time and space, thinking about my own death, and then there were three bright lights and I woke and a man stared down at me, bug-eyed and looking placated.

“What are you doing here?” he screeched down at me. “You’re going on the highway too fast, you were going to break your neck!”

I tried to talk, to speak to this angel that was my life, my shining star, the glimmer of hope in the distance. It was night, and the darkness was around me, through me, in me, swirling and swirling forever in a void. I was the void. I couldn’t remember anything about my life.

The med shielded my driver’s license from me. “What are you doing here?” he screeched once again.

“I’m death,” I answered, and laughed, and he looked down at me and narrowed his eyes, and I thought he was probably insane. He probably thought the same about me.

“Can’t you get up?” he asked me. “All you got is a scratch-an old one, from the looks of it.”

“It’s an old scratch,” I agreed. “I was hunting two weeks ago, in Braum Park.”

“Good,” he replied. “Why don’t you get up?”

I scrambled to my feet, and looked left and to the right of me, and the police swarmed around me and started jotting things down. I insisted I couldn’t remember my name.

Mixed-Up World.

All these drugs don’t got me mixed in with this feeling
I’m living on a dream I’m reeling
in the scene this is the miracle
I’ve been waiting for you’re my angel

you drop-kick me out the door,
I loved you with my all, my heart was beating for you,
my love is a rhythm and it beats true.

I look out the door and you’re standing
in the rain, my love burns like
fire and I swear I’m going insane, I‘m going insane.

No one is looking out for me, I’m here on my own, my heart thrums like a meadow, and locks in the pain.
Don’t tell me you need me, don’t tell
me goodbye, my heart is on fire, I don’t ask you why.

You’re a world’s away
from my heart, and it was all my fault,
I let you down, let you down, let you down…
no one can dry these tears away.
I’m gone again, but your love will stay.

reflection of quiet.

My advice is this: stay on the outside, looking in-
don't forget to think about the past.
Look about the words that are inside of books,
and try to shelter us, when we speak about dinosaurs,
and Egyptology, and find ghosts in old buildings.

They think they are sensitive. They don't know anything
about words, and how they are spread on pages-
they don't know anything about geniuses, what they think
and why, because they can't think, they can't bleed
like open flowers-

some things are left unsaid, and the nastiness, the badness
that is inside most people has been quieted, and the old man
who is my teacher has risen from the ground, from the distant
grave, the silent that is his name-

The Out of Water Metaphor.

The surgeon who saved my life walks inside a subway,
not the subway that sells subs, but the subway in New
York, a train that takes him from one station to
the next. Not one place to the next, one station,
these are the nouns that reside outside of nouns,
words hidden inside one another-

the hospital on the end of the street rises like
a sleepy animal at night, and the windows stare
at me like eyes.
I walk every day past it, look this way and that,
trying to find shelter out of the storm,
the crying and howling of being a nurse.
My surgeon saved me first, when I was two,
and my love saved me second-not the love of a man,
but the love of my calico cat, my one red slipper,
and my pink umbrella, which I carry during a storm.

I think about my surgeon, and his family-his family in
Pakistan, Canada, Tokyo, the place that is bright with
lights and the Chinese who bid on jobs back in China.
There are places with bright lights, but I have to walk
by the hospital, the old hospital that sleeps and bleeds
a bed of worms,
and I think of my surgeon, and what he eats for breakfast,
and what he might do after that-
the words come, and my mouth opens and shuts like a fish
out of water.

THE BOYFRIEND.

The fruit sits on the table-my boyfriend, the guitar,
sits on the chair at the other end of the table-
his eyes are like steel pools of cold, blackness.

He thinks to himself he is not gone for good,
that he is not a radio, a star, a piece of fruit-
the fruit that is on the table, in the middle of himself.

He is not myself. He is not a hole inside myself.
He is the world, and the world is growing large-
large inside my belly, that feeds another world.

He sits in the green chair, all by himself, and molds
tomorrow out of clay-clay that melts between my fingers-
and sings out a world.

My heart is in my hands. In between dreams, thoughts are
things, and everyone is ecstatic about the fruit of trees.
People mold, and life continues-but not for disease.

For people with disease, life ends, bitterly, and it is the
end of all worlds-the worlds that spin between time and space,
and the stories we make real.

John's Advice.

1
“What'll it be, mister?” the skinny eleven-year-old boy asked him. He wore a baseball cap and torn jeans.
“It'll be three trout, son,” he answered, smiling.
“Why don't you go fishin'?” he asked.
“I don't think I'd rather like fishin,” he answered, using the southern, outlandish drawl of New Orleans. He missed the state and wanted to go back.
“What do you mean?”
He leaned across the counter. The boy looked nervous-and he should. No one knew he had been in jail when he was nineteen, for stealing a television set from Mr. Rawls. Mr. Rawls was big and fat.
John Blanchard was a short, stout man and had a bumbling mustache. He walked with a limp and his forehead was wide as the sea to the left of him. The smell of the ocean drifted to his nostrils and he looked small against the backdrop of the water behind him and it sparkled like a mirror. He glanced behind him and the water shifted and folded over itself, and everything about it was close to him and he could touch it with his bare hands, touch the sparkling diamonds.
“I don't go fishin' because my hands don't work so good,” he replied.
“How come they don't?”
“I was in the war, boy. The one in the Persian Gulf.”
“That wasn't such a long time ago,” he scoffed. “You must be jokin.' We never lost that war.”
“No, sir, but some people did.” He straightened his shoulders, and smiled at the bratty boy. He picked up his purchases and left.
John felt awkward, going into places like that. Most people didn't talk to him, and it was no wonder. He was small and swift like a bird and had a hard time going, especially in the winter and his bones creaked and he realized the creaking of his bones was the passage of time, in between the reluctance of time. John didn't understand the concept of time, and never wanted to. Time was nothing more than an hour glass folded in on itself. He thought of all his favorite authors, how they died and how they lived and how he would like to live like that, as swift and barren as the folds of clothing after it was dried. John didn't think it was a good idea to think about it. He went home and made himself dinner in his small, quiet apartment and he heard the screams of the traffic outside. John never did get his license, and never bothered to care. He didn't know why. It seemed like too much trouble, trouble was something he could do without. He went home and put the trout on the cupboard and washed it and skinned it and delicately took out the bones and threw them in the trash. A dog barked outside, startling him. He loved to read in the summer and it made him think of all those special days his mother brought home a book or magazine and let him read it and then she would walk back to the five and ten and she would bring back some more. More happier times occurred before John's father died, faded away like a flower rooted from the ashes-faded away in the midnight sky and left them alone, alone in the sea of blackness and stillness below them. John remembered at nine years old, sitting on the porch at night and looking out at the pond in the yard that shimmered like a mirror and everything was grander than it was. John's innocence left him the next year, after Morgan McFad socked him in the stomach for no reason at all and John punched him in the back of the head and was sent to the principal's office. That was the summer he realized people were different, and when they started talking about the Holocaust.
He didn't know anything about the Holocaust, only that it had something to do with some Jewish people who were killed a long time ago before they were Jewish. John didn't know they had ways of finding things out that happened a long time ago, after Jesus was crucified on the cross, or before the French and Indian war or the American Revolution or World War II or all the other wars that happened in the world, maybe the universe. John didn't think about the universe much. He was more concerned with baseball.
His most favorite baseball player of all time was Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth was one of the most famous baseball players of them all, and a poster used to adorn his walls, back at the old house before Mom died. Mom had gotten cancer and his grandmother came to take care of him. She died and then his mother died and he was left alone, and he had nothing to eat and stole food from his neighbors and in town. One day, they caught him and took him to the sheriff and the sheriff didn't throw him in jail, but he gave him a spanking. John scowled at the man and rubbed his behind and ran home, hopping and then skipping and jumping. He was alone, but he was himself, and that was the best part, the only part that ever made sense to him.
Babe Ruth had become a valuable part of his life and it got him through some many rough times. He didn't realize things were that bad until his mother passed away and he was left alone for almost a year before Social Services came and carted him away in a blue Volkswagon and he was left at a local government agency until the social service's woman came back and told him he had a new family, the Spurts. They sounded like really nasty people and it turned out, they really were. They locked him in his room and fed him once a month, and the kids made fun of him at school and poked and laughed at him. John did exceedingly well in math and dreamt of being an engineer, but his dreams were shattered by so many difficult things in life, the dreams of suffering, and the dreams of food, and the dream of shelter and a loving family.

Your Dialogue has turned its back on God-

On my heart of creation, your dialogue has turned
Its back on God-
The life is not worth living, in the eyes of man.
You take out the life and watch it strand by strand,
Like I really need you to let go, and burst into song.

You think you know the color of the wind,
The cool lips of trees that kiss and reverse the heart of
wind songs.
You think you know the cool wind in dark trees,
The times of spaces,
The times of beginnings-you steal my dialogue,
And toss it into the unknown.

The stars are bright tonight, here is Jupiter,
Kissing the moon-
Go ahead and kiss the planet,
She won’t be back, she won’t return like yellow
Daisies in a field of broken flowers.

She won’t return, on the back of creation-
You think you are the sinner, the sinner
Is the speaker.
You reap what you sow.
I am not a farmer, I do not bend over in the bright sunshine,
I do not eat anything.

You think you have respect, respect is in the giver,
The giver of the planets, who steal my dialogue.

LOST.

I am lost,
And you are gone-
The night is over and done.
The sunlight fades with the sun;
I am here, and you are gone.

Tomorrow is not what it is today.
Darling, I don’t know what to do or say.
My heart soars when we are in flight-
I see your eyes on this starless night.

Don’t forget where you came from;
Don’t forget where you will go.
Listen to the water as it recedes,
And darkness will be reborn below.

Darkness will be reborn,
And the sky is tempted on a dewless morn.
My heart is not aching tonight,
The bird soars when we are in flight.

Diamonds fall into the river,
And my soul is aching-it goes on forever.
This isn’t what we remember,
You cross the endless tide my love will abide
On this endless river.

THE TURNING STATION.

“You got some smokes?” Manuel Rodriquez’s voice drifted from the cold stillness that autumn morning. I was getting my newspaper on the front porch-the paper boy had come earlier and collected his funds for the newspaper, and I looked out and saw my friend pleading with a white guy wearing a red bandanna. His chest bulged. His eyes bulged, and were hollowed out. They hung from his sockets and he looked half-dead. I don’t know anything about him. I didn’t know where he was sleeping. It bothered me. A lot of things bothered me.
“Manuel,” I said sharply. “You know better than to talk to them.” He was seventeen. “Come inside, brother, I will feed you.” His clothes smelled like smoke. He had been buying cigarettes instead of spending it on food. He was an idiot. I knew a lot of those.
“No, Mama,” he said, and shook his head. “I don’t take nothing from women.”
“Nothing?” I raised my eyebrow. “How long you been skipping school, Manuel?” I glared at him. He deserved better than what he got. He didn’t really have anything. No parents, no other family, no siblings. Well, a half-brother in Detroit, who wouldn’t speak a word to him. Everyone was afraid. Everyone was offensive. It would never change. Like this was the way to be polite. I shook my head sympathetically.
“Years,” he answered. “You got a problem with that?”
I nodded. “I do. You need to be learning to read, Manuel.”
“No time for books,” he scoffed. “Making money from drugs-that’s where it is at.” He nodded as if he knew all about living in the streets. I’d been living from day to day, barely surviving on rent enough as it was. No one was polite anymore. Perhaps we didn’t know how to be.
He left. I went to work. It was a slow day. Only sold two dozen socks; and we were getting a workload of baby hats this week. It was getting to be cold. The wind was blowing.
Halloween was around the corner.
I thought about Manuel often. Once, a cat came up to my steps and I patted him and offered him a glass of milk. He skirted away, yowling down the street. Manuel was a lot like the cat-afraid of everything, too afraid to admit to the fear.
I had enough money for rent and I was happy. I wouldn’t be pushed out of the apartment like the Robertson family was upstairs. I could hear them yelling as they packed. The oldest son, Bartholomew, was graduating from high school and was getting a job at the deli down the street. He had black hair and pointed ears.
I saw Manuel the next night. He was smoking with his buddies-it wasn’t cigarettes, it was pot. That was the kind of thing that made me afraid, made me wonder what the government had gotten us into. It was like no one had a will of their own, that they couldn’t think for themselves. The human race had been flopping for a long time. We didn’t know how to stop.
It wasn’t the fact that Manuel did drugs that bothered me-it was the fact that he didn’t have a college degree that really irked my tomatoes.
I ran a small business shop that sold baby socks online; and had been for seven years now.
I lived in a small, but moderately furnished, apartment on the West Side of Missouri, and had a boyfriend named Maxwell who had an obsession with music. He dreamt of becoming a superstar one day, but as he became older and balder and fatter, he realized his dreams were to be smashed into a tiny million pieces by the big name businesses of the Upper East Side. I didn’t have a best friend, or any kind of friend. I used to have one, a long time ago, named Margo Westley, but she had become too interested in potheads to be of anymore use to me. I didn’t want to give her anymore money. I didn’t want to become a part of something I was trying to fix-the inability to overanalyze current situations. The current situation was my money problem. I borrowed money from my grandmother and from the bank; I stopped eating fast-food.
No one understood my need to sell socks, but it was there, quick and sure, and undetermined in its realizations.
I didn’t know what it was that I couldn’t know, but the score had to be settled between me and the Big Bad Government. My uncle is said to have died in Vietnam, and later it turns out he turned up in Vegas, always on the slots. I didn’t like gambling. It didn’t suit me.
Everyone had a problem with my need to be good-this was in ‘87, and I had a lot of thinking to do.
In the far back corner of my mind, I remembered school. I remembered nasty Nathan Holligan; I remembered the elementary school principal; his fake mustache and eyes like glass.
He was interested in cars, they were his favorite thing to talk about and he mentioned them to the students as much as he could. Being a principal copped some bad mojo.
The teachers and students and everyone shunned him, but he had his gang of friends and his business outside of school. I loved business and wanted to own a major corporation one day.
Manuel did drugs. He smoked pot and sometimes I saw him at the Pizza Train outside of the apartment building late at nights, pleading for drugs, trying to sell his cocaine. I asked him multiple times where he got the cocaine, but all he could do was stare bug-eyed at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing and a strangling sound protruded from him. He wanted me to buy his drugs.
I said no way, no thanks. He vanished a month later, probably found some gangbangers to cling to. He had no parents.
His mother abandoned him when he was three. His father was a druggie. All the teachers ignored him, and he was a whiz at math. He tried taking a college course but failed because he had panic attacks and they wouldn’t give him SSI. His main job was selling drugs. I offered him a job, but he refused to take it, saying he didn’t want to intervene in friendships. I guess I saw it from his standpoint. I guess I saw it from his point of view.
Politics were getting worse. They were far worse than they ever had been, in the fall of ‘89. Nothing was good as it should be. George Bush was president. I didn’t pay attention to that bullshit, but then again, I didn’t have a television set.
“Manuel,” I said. I saw him again that afternoon. He had bought a suit; his hair was slicked back till it shone. “What you doing? Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving the state,” he answered, smiling at me. “Leaving the state, finding a new job-one without drugs.” He nodded happily. “I’m getting a job, you’ll be proud of me. You’ll see.”
“What about your family? They could help you.”
“No,” he answered. “I’m going to live with my cousin. She had a baby when she was fifteen and she’s real happy. I’m going to live with her. She’s going to help me. Thanks a lot, thanks a whole lot.”
He stuffed his hands into the pocket of his jeans, and went off down the street, whistling a tune I hadn’t heard before.
A door swung open and the whole street was quiet again.

Toilet Paper And...

Toilet Paper and Palm Trees

I sit on the palm of my hand. My mother said that
Days and nights are like forgetting-that we are afraid of
Being who we have become. I haven’t becoming anything
Other than a lighthouse on the ocean,
And the waves bend with the veils of time-
Time is translucent, and coverts over itself and everyone
Seems to think they are forgetting, forgotten.

Sometimes, my young collie dog looks at me as if to say,
“I wish you could speak to me, I wish you could say hello
In doggy talk.” The writer down the street says he can
Speak in Doggytalk, that is the language of men-
The rhythm is the bowing of the trees, and the young man,
My lover, plays drums on Saturday nights in the depths of
The night, the depths of everything…

I am more afraid of losing my poetry. The words in which
I speak to the sky, the ground, the trees, the wind.
The wind moans my name-
I call to it and it will not answer me.
I sing to it and it will not speak.
I am wasting paper. I am wasting the flowers of the paper.

The Sun Dog.

Rash Sightings was not an ordinary being. He had a consistency of being in trouble, and although he tried very hard to be normal, everyone could see that he clearly wasn’t. His overzealous need to succeed, was undefined, and other people thought he was stupid and cocky. His mere presence drove women to tears; sometimes, when they cried, their tears turned to diamonds and fell, shattering, to the ground. He collected a lot of the diamonds and sold them on the black market and bought a bicycle with the money. On the planet of Ellin, where he was born, it was always cold-the coldness was in his bones, for he was a cold-blooded creature, and his people crash-landed on the planet several millenia ago, back when the dinoplads still lived on the planet. The people were simplistic in nature, and did not have any craft except for submarines and bicycles. Most people lived in trees, for their arms were long, like spiders, and their mouths were thin. The trees were long, thin, gray, and had crooked branches, and the shadows from the trees fell upon the ground every sunset. Unlike Earth, the sun was very close to the planet, and many of the people were lazy and rude and did not want to work. They complained every single day about their jobs, and some often quit, without warning, and disappeared forever. They were enticed by adventure, and went to go on vacation in submarines and ended up dying because they didn’t bring enough provisions. They were stupid creatures, stupid and needy and relied on technology instead of their own brains. It grew so tiring, that the President of Ellin, a human being, wanted to end his life. His name was Maruc Kerin Andon, and he was fifty-three years old. He had brown eyes and brown hair and he lived in the Embassy, because human beings could not live in the domed cities with the Ellinians-it was against Ellinian law. All human beings on the planet were criminals; being human was their only crime, because that was the cheapest law they could put into practice. The building was very large, and made entirely out of gold, for they had sent satellites to distant planets and brought back different chemical components and turned them into something useful, like a television set, a car, and a broken radio. They did not understand the ways of human beings, and copied some of their ideas, but they were used in ways that did not help them progress to where they needed to be. They had sent satellites to Earth and had seen the images of human beings at work. One of the scientists built a teleportal, which allowed beings to travel from one place to the next. The President of Ellin ordered several human beings to be kidnapped, and after they arrived safely on the planet, the teleportal was destroyed, and the scientist disappeared.
Maruc’s real problem was his bald head. He wanted to have long hair, like the other Eillinians, and he had many surgeries to fix the problem and the hair always fell out. Most of the time, he spent his days at the office looking at himself in a holographic mirror that could shape his face into any way he wanted. Sometimes, he chose to have blue eyes; one time, he made his nose so big he looked like a horntensheik. He called many businesses and asked them if they had real wigs; they always called back, and shouted they didn’t. Businesses on Ellin always shouted at each other, because they thought that was how things were supposed to be. The businessmen usually only worked until lunchtime, and then they went home to be with their partners.
Maruc received a call from the smartest man in the world. His name was Ariel Chance, and he had blonde, curly hair, and pointed ears. He was two hundred years old. He said they had found a planet that was made entirely out of an ocean, and did they want to inhabit it. He replied, “No, we don’t,” for he represented all the beings on Ellinian. He was chosen by a group of beings called Elected Representatives. Maruc did not like Ariel, and thought he was a busybody-he was always calling about something or other, and it drove him crazy. He paced back and forth in his office, stroking his beard, and looked out the window. He wished he could get off the planet, but there was no way out. The man who invented the teleportal was missing. Maybe he went to another planet; maybe he was dead. Maruc decided to find out. He called his secretary, and asked her to find the information he needed, and she called back and gave him the address where the scientist lived. Maruc put the piece of paper in his pocket, took his bicycle-he got one with rockets on either end-and pedaled down the street, happy to finally have found something to do.