Once a Boy

“You look good boy. Where you been?”

It has been many years, many roads. Aimless, weaving lines of trying.

“She told me you'd be coming home. Said you'd be here.”

This 'she' is my mother Gloria.

Henry walks up to me and wraps me on the chest.

“Huh!“

“You look great....you really do! Where you been?”

“Yeah, Dad, I don't know...it's been awhile.”

Not used to my father's interest. Not used to his gaze at me. These eyes are sparked. They are buried inside this old man.

“Dad, I'm going to put my stuff in my room.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Sure.”

I turn and I see a stack of papers. She must have been looking at them when she spoke to me the other day.

“Hal”, mom said, “there's a whole stack of papers we need to go through. And Hal, I need you to show up this time.”

There they are. The bundle. The stack. The story. The end. It took that to bring me back to this place, back to Henry and Gloria.

“It's a miracle.”

“What's that Dad?'

“You. Here. Talking. Standing here. A goshdarn miracle.”

Am I smiling or is that a bus driving through my mouth?

I kind of bump into the counter with my bag.

“Need a hand Patrick?”

Blood just floods me whole.

“Patrick?”

Am I even breathing?

Is he messing with me?

I manage an “I got it.”

I walk up the stairs. Missing all of the details a homecoming deserves. Missing smells and objects and memories pasted on a banister, a lamp, a door jam. Open the door to the room. My room. Even here with SO MUCH SHIT TO TAKE IN....my mind flat-lines to a box on the bed. I open the box immediately. Because you see, I already know what is happening here. This box is labeled Patrick and in it are the matchbox cars, the string, the blue foamed cat-water stained and crusty from that day. A favorite shirt she liked on him. And the stupid mittens he always ate with.

Henry has dementia. The stack is all about that. The firmness in her voice the other day that grabbed me by the scruff and shook me home was steeped in her finality with whatever he was or is. And now I have stepped in it. And I am not even me. I am the other. I am that ache and strain of that autumn day in my 12th year of life. That day a 7 year old boy dropped into the muck. That day made this box. Once a boy, now a box.

He is a tricky bastard, Henry is. She said so herself.

“How bad is he?”, I asked. “Well Hal”, she clipped, “sometimes he's in and sometimes he's not.”

He is a tricky and manipulative bastard. Always has been. Was that day. Wasn't watching us...wasn't even around.

“It all happened so fast” - that's what he told them that day.

“Couldn't save him...just couldn't.”

Wasn't even there.

“Patrick?”

He is calling me.

“Patrick, you in there?”

He is outside my room.

“I got you some ice cream.”

I sit on the bed. I stare through the door. I feel the point flipping and twisting on the little dial, my life. I reach into the box. I pull out the blue cat. I hug it to my chest. I open my mouth.

“I'm in here dad. I would love some ice cream.”

I'm aware of how much time I'm not here.  I think a lot of us just drop our shit off, roll to the table,

then the tube, and then the rack.  Stagger back when the rooster crows and close the door to it. 

Back later to assume the cycle of it.  It matters not I sit in it now all bundled.  It is cold here.  And it

is expensive to heat.  It matters not that the children have a place here.  And their place collects bags

and books and mementos.  They really live in this dream I have.  This dream rests on a shelf in my

heart.  There I collect and nourish them.  It matters not that I want this to have resonance and sound.

I fill the rooms with song - my voice rambles through it sometimes.  I may even stop and stare at a

thing.  It might be my likeness now or from long ago somewhere else, another's life entirely. But

when I exit it. When the door closes so heavy behind me, the weight and measure of this cube

creates this undertow. It shifts me out to insecurity, to what I cannot really know.  And I can look

back and beg for an assurance.  Plead I will for this to make sense.  Badger it all for meaning.  Ask at

least if I'm going to all right. And the cube will not say.  It will not even hint.  It will stand in its

usual manner and tell me it will be here when I get back.  And if that is all I get - what we all can at

least expect - it should be enough.  For the connection, the joy, the joining....all that is what the love

in you allows.  And you may choose one day to walk back in and inject that sweet light into all its

 corners.  And maybe then, maybe, you can say you are home.

In the Dark

 

There could be something under the bed

 

There could be so many stars...so many I can't believe how many there are

There could be a soft sweater and soft flesh if she would let me

 

There could be a bumbling, flashlight scouring, over-turned clothes caddies and racks that would obscure the crouched and frightened girl hiding from the intruders

 

There could be the smell of pine and a piercing yowl as I slammed my bare foot into an uprooted root

There could be the 'shoosh' of the door opening against the pile in the carpet.  A slice of light from the hallway and the sounds of her sad feet shuffling in towards my bed.  She says she is sorry for my whole life.  Her lips blubbering in stark contrast to how tightly my eye lids are shut.  Forcing my whole into the darkest hole I can find

 

There could be a meal behind two sets of thick curtains.  We all trained into the black each holding the shoulder of the one in front. The first shoulder, a truly blind person, leads us into a Parisian meal that we will never glimpse...thus the blind leading the blind or the blind feeding the blind.  Taste buds heighten, hands wander unseen, things squish between the fingers and find there way into our mouths

 

There could be an area, oh about 4 feet in width, between a sink and a bed.  In a small apartment in then Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, the boy who lives there steps back and forth over the visiting boy laying in that space inside his sleeping bag.  He washes a glass, brushes his teeth, sets up for the morning and then turns off the light and gets into his bed.  In this dark there is no light to readjust to, no 30 or so seconds later when you can make out the window, a chair or anything at all.  There is no street light, porch light or sign or even the passing lights of a car driving by, no there is nothing but black from the outside - no stars even. This city can't afford any of that. This will be darkness.  The boy has offered the traveler his bed in what seemed a wonderful selfless gesture.  The traveler is now uneasy in the bag on the floor.  And once again comes the offer above him to share the comforts of the bed

 

There could be a city known as a beacon.  Truly can be seen from the outerworld, the world where the sky lives.  There you can look back to us on earth and you will see this city as it lights up its portion of the planet.  It encounters though a storm.  One of the new kind.  The ones now come hard and heavy.  They hover, create havoc and fucking destroy shit.  They have the swagger of being let out to show off their stuff.  And they do.  And this city is one of the playgrounds. This city of stages adds a howling to the streets and a drenching prance to pavement.   The city loses half itself to deepest of darkness.  The height of its buildings cloaking out any possible luminescence that might be.  As told to me by my friend who worked at one of those stage once you dropped past mid town, you were off the planet.  His bike lamp would bump and turn the only light as he found his way out the lower half of the city.  Frightened and elated at the same time, he would ride this theme park adventure out to Brooklyn.  His heart might shoot out of his body when and if he paused to hear the quiet of this darkness and suddenly a match would light up a face maybe 3 feet away from him.  Very dark but hardly alone

 

There could be a trail to dark against the cliffs of the great canyon.  And you are a lucky one.  You get to be part of a traveling group centered on a German television project shooting in the great Southwest of America.  Delivering our magnificent landscape back to it's hungry to wander people.  And you are at the bottom of the world.  You are at the side of a river.  You are not even a needle in this haystack of rock and mountain.  From down here you watch light leave the planet.  It is indecisive somehow.  It jumps about on the various crags and hinges that tower over you.  Shows itself out the door in slivers and great splotches and wide bands that illuminate and shut down the canyon at the same time.  Light is leaving the planet.  A slide show, a game of chance, the light shifting as the little cups hiding the ball in a flurry of hands that would relieve you of $100 in one hot minute.  Where is the ball?  Point at the cup! The light moved out like that.  Like a trick.  God's show.  And the actual darkness that followed:  ahhhhh that was certainly heaven.  

 

Then there could be a dark place in your head.  Many rooms in the house - the brain.  And then one day you have a child.  A lamp in a table in a room in your brain comes on.  There there will never be darkness.  There the light will always remain.

Sure Darkness

We were pretty high. Kind of typical high. Always afraid of a drug story. Does it indicate a fallen being? No. In this instance just a young couple stoned. At night. In the country. Maine specifically. And it was warm. And the stars of course were unfucking real. I wonder now if I thought I was set. I wonder if I had her already cast her for the duration of my life. Being stoned put us assuredly in a real vulnerability toward each other. Free to just express whatever. Free to let our intimacy, the warmth and dazzle of the sky, the shelter of dark and certainly the electrical impulse palm to palm as we walked, free to let it escape. Free to say whatever manifested – silly to deep. I used to find a time stoned to work on my text. It was usually with the heavyweights: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, etal. Say their words in a high brain – all kinds of ideas would suddenly come to for. Once I taped my thoughts. Probably 85% was some kind of 'huh' – so fucking obvious or so fucking stupid. But maybe I would get a 15% ROT (return on toke). But the thing is I would go into the darkness and fearlessly pull whatever seemed slightly related and in tune. And it felt like I was talking to God or with Shakespeare maybe. And the connection really washed me clean. And I'm sure holding her hand that shrouded and twinkling night, I'm sure I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to give my soul to another. I'm certain I did. I believe I must have. I'm 15% sure.

 Moving On

I've moved on. I hope you have too. Admittedly I still have all the same haunts and people and habits. If you came back as a guy and stalked me like some PI on an insurance scam, you'd be so bored. You'd get there before me – no need to tail me. You’d place the food order before I even waked in the door. I'd be like 'wow Maria, how did you know?' Jeez Milo, this is great – didn't even have to wait - thanks!' I might like you paving the way for me for awhile. While, as I say, my life is still a routine, it changes. It changes. It does. It has. You are not here. It's what? 19 months. My routine for awhile was doctors, quiet TV, drug store runs, hospitals, hanging out downstairs, changing your bag, a shit-load of evil Sudoku, taking the calls, explaining this and checking up on that. Then for an even shorter time the routine dealt with the finalities: canceling cards, taking your name off of things, untying you, throwing the ashes of your electronic identity into the thin thin air. Releasing you. Releasing. Giving up. Freeing you. Falling down. Letting you go. Sleeping a lot – not answering the phone. Moving on. Sitting in my car not really knowing my place in any of this. I saw a tree and it reminded me of moments in our lives together that specifically revolved around a tree. And I thought of a hammock at my Uncle Ed's. Our weight sagged it down to the big yawning limb beneath us. I thought of the backyard branch that knocked out our electricity. We bumped around in the dark house. Laughing. Looking for a non-existent flash light that I swore I bought. Funny until I split open my toe on the door you opened ahead of me that I obviously didn't see. The felled tree down the street after that freak storm that brought hale for the first time in recorded history. Who the fuck is throwing rocks at the house? For nearly a month we used to love to walk by and enjoy the tree's exposed bottom and routed network. Why the fuck am I thinking about you and trees? This, by the way, happened this morning. Why you and tree? You haven't moved on, have you? You want to linger on with me, don't you? That was way too sudden an exit, wasn't it? You have business still here with me, isn't that true? So let's make a plan then. Come along with me then. I might sleep with that woman who just opened up the garden shop down the street. Why not infuse her with you. I would really like that. And she could use your taste, your sense of focus. She too has had loss and sadness. She too has lived life in gray matter. She too has moved on. And maybe she wants to invite him too. They weren't together as long as we were. Hell, they weren't even married. But I don't mind. Maybe he has some qualities I could use. Maybe he can help me finally learn to play guitar. We could all sit together at the park then. We'll picnic and I 'll noodle on the strings. And we'll love how people will stop by and admire us. See us for the ideal they would like to one day be. And they won't know that it's all been hastily arranged and agreed to. They won't see the patchwork. The duct tape. The dirt under the rug. But that's because you left too soon. You left me too soon. You have moved on too soon.

Hal: The Movie - College Days

EFX – Yearbook opens and we see a college dorm and we are suddenly…

INT – DORM ROOM - AFTERNOON

Two college students in room, guy and a gal – her room. He is skinny and high. She is overfed and hostile

.

Hal: (VO) It was like a toast. Right? To me. Hey, she didn’t like me, I thought, but here we were and I was about to drink from her private stash. She must like me. Right?

EXT – COLLEGE CAMPUS – DIFFERENT AFTERNOON

Two college kids walk through campus. Book bags, bikes, lots of kids moving this way and that. Hal is one of the two kids.

Hal: (VO) I was king of the mountain in college. I aspired to all things no one gave a shit about. You’d have thought I’d really corrected my life. I was so busy. I could walk through campus and say a constant hello from on side to the other. You want annoying? Walk with me.

Friend: Yah, I don’t know… I’m really depressed.

Hal: Oh, you know…

(to boy on bike) Hey Steve

(to friend) …you’re not…

            (to pretty coed) Hi June, yeah….

(to friend)…you’ve got to

…

            (to guy with St Bernard) Hey Scott – did you bring Bandit? –

            (to dog) Hey Bandit!

Hal: (VO) And by this time my ‘friend’ has committed the razor blade to his wrist, blood spurting all over my backpack –

Hal: (to JAP) Hey Shira.

.

VARIOUS EXT’S AND INT’S – VARIOUS TIMES

A collage of shots: Hal sitting with friends on the grass. Sitting lonely at his desk in his room. Some girl talking trash about Hal to another coed. Drinking many plastic cups of beer. Doing laundry and ogling some coed at the dryer. Someone crossing away at the sight of him. Walking at night by himself. Sleeping students in cubicles…

Hal: (VO) Some fucking gene came alive in me through alcohol shock therapy. I woke up partying. Not that I drank or got high in the morning. I did occasionally. No. My drug was my fabulous personality and my fix was everyone’s adulation and hale hellos. And it worked for me. And it ate me alive. It was sound and fury. It was marathon dancing – dancing on air. And like those marathon dancers, when I stopped, my social structure crumbled and I was a fucking mess. Finals were a problem. Everyone got real serious. Other angry people were a problem. They were either envious of me, put out by me or they saw right through me. ‘You’re one of us, motherfucker!’

INT - 4^th FLOOR BUTLER HALL – DAY

The girl’s dorm had that 50’s cubicle building feel. Heavy blocks of painted cement. Hard floors that young ladies adorned with Maxfield Parrish carpets. Rooms with modular furniture. The stuff might allow two configurations in a room. Basically your bed could be here or there. We follow Hal as he moves through the hall and finally enters the room we were in at the open.

Hal: (VO) Marcia wasn’t the prettiest girl on the floor. She added 20 to her freshman 20. Big face. Horsey mouth…that to a drunk guy would count for a lot. I was sober and on her hall hunting Ann or Lorna or Claudia or Leigh. Leigh I remember. She died recently of cancer. But she lives in me as that 18 year old on the 4^th floor with that Keeler Ass. I was wearing the requisite Jeans and a T. I’m sure some band or college name was emblazoned across the front.

Marcia: Who you lookin’ for?

Hal: (VO) Marcia never talked to me.

Marcia: Did you see my new rug?

Hal: (VO) Typical for poor Marcia – her room had the two sides of the track set-up and she definitely lived on the wrong side…trashy messy desk and bed.

Marcia: See this?

Hal: (VO) She showed me a perfume bottle.

Marcia: You know what this is?

Hal: (VO) She told me how this 4 ounce bottle with the white top and the brown liquid was not perfume but rather cleverly disguised bourbon. And this the security guards would never check when she brought it with her to the game,

Marcia: Cool, huh? Try it!

Hal: (VO) Ok. It smelled like perfume, it was brown like perfume, she took the bottle from the generic place in the room for toiletries. But I wanted her to like me. And she was being really nice to me. And I was deep in my fix at this point. I was a mosquito that didn’t want to pull out.

Marcia: Ha Ha. Ha

Hal: (VO) My throat burned and my eyes bugged and she just roared. My taste buds were decimated and my ego sputtered with insight. I still managed eye contact with her and she was so happy. I was mindful of the rug and ran to the basin affixed underneath the mirror in the only place it could be in the room. I blew it out whale-like. She doubled over, crying with joy. I sort of staggered back to her. Her arm extended and pointing at me.

Marcia: chortle…chortle…oink…oink.

Hal: (VO) In the next moment her eyes went really wide and kind of sad as I proceeded to barf and wretch up the faux bourbon and everything else I had consumed in the last day or so onto the new proud rug.

Marcia: No…NOOooooo!!!

Hal: (VO) It was a clean rug so it definitely belonged to her roommate. I don’t recall having had a private moment with Marcia after that. I wonder if she ever did like me.

EFX – Year book closes on image of Marcia’s sad image.

Super Bowl Sunday

Super bowl Sunday came and I didn't care. I wanted to care but my team didn't get in. So I go and pay homage to some other city, to some other fan. And I will root for the team that comes from the other conference because the team from mine played dirty and had a better storyline than mine and so was let in. I guess I am admitting to a fix. That's okay. Congress has given Republicans and companies breaks all along. And they complain about handouts all the time. We all favor. It is in our nature. We want our kids and friends to succeed. Why? Because they are from us. Some of course deeper and more intrinsic than others. But they are a measure of us. And yes we win when they do. Sometimes there is actual gain. And sometimes there is that deep deep satisfaction. And like the bomber in the supermarket, she is doing right by somebody.

So I go to eat and root and join into the average and the thankfully rudimentary. And I bless the great spirit for this. I have enough at loose ends. Like why am I here in the first place. And then this is answered so easily with the super bowl and my witnessing. I am so lucky to have the touchstones of it all. The little markers that allow me to step into the well shorn ruts of my life and the path of those before me.

I will see things as they are. And I will always wonder why I am let to see the things I do. And the fact that someone else will look at the exact same place at the exact same time from the exact same vantage point but will have a complete other association and reaction is not lost on me. Why did we get this nuance to our existence?

I favor not knowing. Though I want to know. Though I want to know. I just hope in the end that it will all fall so sudoku-like into a rhythm and cadence that I can go 'ahhhhhh' to.

Tiny.                                          Tiny.                                      Tiny. 

Wow the letters just got smaller and smaller and smaller as I feel them.

 It's a little round cup of string and the guard has grabbed at the door. 

A TV set, she said. 

I wish I could control this surge, this flow in me. But it's art. 

Art in my heart. Sounds like a good time. 

Art in the heart. Sounds preschool. 

Art in the heart. Sounds fundraiser. 

Art in the heart.

Feels like thudding and a fucking load. 

It is not airy, nor sprightly, not daffodil-ic, nor bright. 'Tis teeming and taut, 'tis burdensome and bleak. 

Take a load off Mary, you're going to carry that weight, and put the load, along time, back on me. 

We had just pulled over. It's right there, she had said, when we were maybe 6 buildings away from it. What are you talking about? It's on the corner, I had said. And then we were pulled over at the corner. Right across was the Starbucks. Why do all of our little iconic go-to's feel like a bug zapper or the conveyor of some automated plant. All made more intolerable because she was trying to control this, to make this happen, to uncoil it all just so. 

When did she lose trust here? When did she forget who I am? When did she feel she needed to? 

One day she will.                    One day she will.                    One day she will. 

In my early 50's now closer to 70 then to 30. Now closer to that physical manifestation and all the failed organs and failing shit that spring off of my apparatus, my functionality, all of them will engage her for real. You can bet on that. There will be that moment when she will have to usurp, 

drive,           deliver,           procure,          remind,           arrange,          align,        attempt, 

augment,        assign,         affix,          abide,      and            aggrieve. 

She knows I am not into this. She is trying to turn it into a game – give Daddy orders –   

Look, the door is there;  Look, the light is red;  Look, the line is long. 

It is not lost on me how much I love her – really? Love her? 

That word 'love' couldn't possibly waft my true chord for her if it was blown to me at the impact point of a Category 5 hurricane. That word has the meaning of the floor mat of my car when it comes to how she sits so sweet and tiny and fulsome in me rocks and sneakers and backyard monkeys. 

Not of this sphere at all. 

I look and see the long hair hanging from the backpack. Her long hair, her shed, adorns all that is hers and reminds me the meaning of her in my life when I brush my teeth – there in the sink – 

                               when I drink my coffee – there on the table –

                                            when I check my email – there on the keyboard – 

                                                      when I say goodbye – there now on my shoulder – 

                                                                 her embrace blessing me, 

                                                                           no again,

                                                           no word, no word, no word, 

only this thick silence of how could this ever not be 

and when will I really understand what I am to do with all of this. 

And that pushes me to this dark dark sense of tininess and heaviness in my heart that is supposed art. 

It's not sweet wallpaper but more the paper bag cut to cover the book. It's creasy, and scribbled and torn and maybe hastily made. 

But I guess I should be happy that it exists at all. 

I look at her all green the eyes and thick the long hair. I see that she is in lock step with my not having it. 

She gets me. 

I push my finger to the dash above the radio. I press the little button with the image of the key. 

The pawns then spring up from the four doors all around us. 

Look, I say, the doors are open.

                                     Across

the                                                                                         street

                        Tired. Lovely sweater.

In Gods' hands.

                                     Which stop earning me

the jacket.                                Greasy burned raspy raspy

             OH THE SKIRTS

             AND PANS

Concrete lines wandered shapeless babbbbbbbble

penny candy ante alley                                            cut my hair

and teeth and all the things she forgot and past the box botched

             to forget to busy it all jewishly languidly latke -ly

                                                      Star of yellow David Gates so

Grab his balls

                    skin so gray so pray so gay today and

                                             34 (what if)

they...................................are..........................................right, frightening

box busted                                   spilled

                                                                out

                                                                          over

                   pragmatism – set this up – Chaos

I will settle the nettle, phone me $

                         handed      hurtful         honcho               haha

                                   she sees the little village and makes clay circles go

                      THERE

             earth                breath                 they all gather in Spanish. Ole.

Off the Dock

The fly is my mind. Was you buzzing my heart? Cuz I dropped a child in butter. Oh the little wheel. I spoke to you with little bubbles from my mouth the fish. Each bubble a word and a box. When your eyes split, the light from the sun gave me a beautiful hedge to peak over...or hide me. And I remembered how many wings I gave you. One for her cleavage, I should have left them alone but I'm weak there. I'm sorry. Two for picking strawberries when you ought not. Oh, you pulled out my eye. Remember? You wanted to see what I was thinking and I got it all over you.

I dread, you dead, my son, my son.

I wink, you sink, bah bum, bah bum.

The windows dropped out of the house today. The cement gave this tremendous shrug, a sigh really, ahhhhhh....it had had enough. It told me so as it slunk down the road to a different street. Your brother jumped from pane to pane. He's a sad boy.

Lalala my boy is sea,

Body is the wave,

That envelopes me.

Do you want ice cream? Who doesn't want an ice cream? We all crave ice cream. Scream! A cone of sweetness awaits you if you can find form or the keyhole. Yes, the keyhole. Your mother puts her knitting needle through it to entice you with a striped wool hat. She knits and disappears as the yarn spins and drops from her frame. She lost her piano...well the strings anyway. Just a hollow box now with room for bats. I worry about the pole she sits upon. The wire is exposed and she has soaked it with her water, her water she lets for you. Expelled like a geyser. She's so silly. Believes you will suddenly sit upon it, flopping and rolling on the hot blood. She gave you your veins, you know.

In a ball game we all stood in a line.

There was me and God and a dandelion.

You threw out the sponge that drank the sky.

Me you amazed and God you made cry.

He'll never forgive me for slipping in the dirt,

losing your tether, dropping her skirt.

The moment was warm inside her sweet box.

My lazy dropped ox, talks fondling rocks.

When I parted the curtain, when I dropped the J,

Your mittens were waving and wafting away.

I took my fucking hammer, I did. I fucking flailed on that bank. Those fucking rocks. Buddy, I smashed them to sand. And then I knew as the salted pebbles crept up and up, I needed a good swallowing. That and a black zippered bag like you got. I will pull those weeds. I will. If I ever get out of this earth that now harvests me. If God ever gets over his crest hideaway...I see him peering behind the peak – the pussy. He won't cut my strings. Cut 'em!!! He won't unless you ask him. Won't you ask him? For old time sake? For the little cars and sidewalks we knew...your little hand a snow cut out, a pressed leaf inside my palm, my fingers trying hard not to melt or crush you....Come out, come out wherever you are. Come out Patrick. Remember, you can't swim. Remember? I have asked every fish, every damn guppy about you. No one's seen you. I told God to sweep his big sweaty cupped paw into the that cool bay and swat you onto the shore. But he was too busy combing Jesus' hair. Showing off his son. In my face. Jesus laughed you know. He showed me my eye ball. I can't believe you gave it to him. I suppose I deserved that. I will be weed soon, maybe a bump to sit on. Then the game is up. And you my algae, mucked up boy, you will grab my fiddle and lead the parade of my mistakes past the bump that was me. And all will be right again. This mirror...this mirror, it shows me a freak. It has my eyes and the boy I once loved. But what is that all around it? I don't know the scales or the mouth. It's a sad mouth – poor creature. It too must have lost something. Here. I'll give it a little pat. And a quarter. There...there...it'll be all right.

A Fine Day

“Listen to this and hear the mystery inside: A snake-catcher went into the mountains to find a snake.”

I have no language for this. 

This English will not tongue my tale, not wag my words free. 

The farsi of my nature, the echo of tribes and stories and the deep expression of experience and the Resonant vowel and idiom are my dream catcher, my diviner, my detector – God's lash and plume. 

So no. 

English is not my choice but this is the vessel at hand and the boat must be emptied lest we all drown. Like my tongue, my eyes they are crippled and failing, falling, fluttering, flailing with this image of The unimaginable 

– Ohhh death and sand and dropped weight and the skin shed of great loss. 

I cannot ask for Allah's words. 

A God could not dwell here and create symmetry with soul and merciful hearts. 

There is no rule or psalm, there is no blessing or parable or passage, 

There is not GOD in this neither on a cross or crossing the dessert. 

We are all so alone here. 

Except there is the rush of warm bubbling blood. 

On this the tiny chin here spit up where once the milk of suckle would stain. 

Or here the length of languid leg lying loosely in a stream straining the day's soot and mud and Drudgery 

Down down down, wash it down now red droplets and smears where once soothing liquid lapped Hours before. 

Here the blood leaks cozy through her chest, replacing rhythm and pulse with a hiss if you could hear It. 

As before, it beat a passion pouring when her lover walked by:

Rising as he lowered his gaze, smiled and flicked at her with his tailored hand: 

“I will ask them for you. 

 I will see you in my mother's fine array 

That one day we will give to our child. 

Ours is glorious and full gallop and unending and free of mending. 

Do you see this too my love?

I know you see this because you see my halting heart 

And hear my breath catch and slow as we share this moment passing. 

I will ask them for you.” 

This then brought his hand in that moment mounted from her shoulder down to measure her with palm open the trace of her being, the miracle of her fashioning to elbow and then to hand, the centimeters of his love. 

Who made this? 

Who could ever design such magnificence? 

“Oh please let it be for me.”

Here the blood lets now. 

But what of he that spent these moments of dreams that first were thoughts making to solid state. What would we find when we slit him open nose to nuts?

For surely we will. As sure as wind and tears. 

Pare him back, splay, flay and make him for our hateful and slumbered eyes. 

This has made us all dull and sleepy. Our business will thud forth. 

We expect to open the blackness in the ebon warrior – the hell of hells. 

We see maggots with glistening bodies. Strong and hard and new and helmeted, laughing busy bodies. 

They slide around in him his reason. Jumbling willy-nilly at arteries, near misses, careening reason rolling about treacherously from one mite onto the other. 

A chaos of bugs and anger flying about with shards of this boy's sanity. 

Each toll he took in his time knocked a fence post loose and tenuous. 

Gotta get there before the whole thing falls apart. It's a shit storm waiting to happen. 

But ahhh. Too late. 

His father's bluster and curse, his mother's drink, his young bride's fear and flirt and fall, his young son's fix on the little 4 by 4 screen with the murky murky men jumping and shooting and kicking and doing Daddy's work. That's Daddy, Momma. Look. That's Daddy! 

And his fence and barrier come looser with each uncoupling. 

And a friend and fellow mate marine might make a moment of mirth with the mask of melancholy mounted on this man's mug and not put it in any order for him but the order of 

another round.

Another round of shots or shelling or service or of beating and bating the captured doll. 

Will they let us play with this one? 

Won't you let us have this one to piss on, to wipe our shit upon, 

To spray our come on 

To twitter and facebook and jpegs and skype? 

Let us have this and that will stay you a further fall-out. 

But no matter. For that would not do in the end. 

Oh No. 

He shined his shoes and metal and ambled out with a whistle and a whiff. 

Ahhh the morning. More opulent today. 

And even with that word –opulent – a word I have no ken for, whatsoever. It is not mine, that word. 

It is given to me as a gift. I have received new language today. This is a rare day. A fine day. 

Look at my fatigues. 

They are fine silk robes and I am going down to cleanse as my elders did. 

I think this day is called Echad. For it is my first day. 

Oh I will purge today. 

And this day is telling me that I can. And that is just the exhale. 

What will I take in? 

This path is so clear. It is starlit. It is romantic. 

I am romance. I am love. I am the essence of the heat in me. 

I am. 

And I am off to pay my respects to them that's got me a little sad and confused lately. 

But no matter. It will be good for us all.

Watched my friend pass away nicely. His daughter offered him forgiveness in her eulogy. Another man told stories about him that actually seemed more about himself. Why couldn’t I go up there and give my version? I thought yesterday that I had blabbed my friend’s death to anyone who asked me the bland ‘how’s it going’. I’d launch but no one took the bait. No one asked me who he was, what he was, or how I knew him. I guess if they had, I would have framed it much like this guy. 
I met his son at the party after. He had not known his father well. Indeed I got more off the father than he did. His father had left this man and his sister when they were very young and journeyed across the country to jump start a third or a fourth veneer. I knew he was a son though he didn’t introduce himself as such. We were there in each others company and I could feel how determined he was to get what he could from his father’s world before the hole sealed itself up. 

‘How do you know Will?’

I asked…certainly a common question at this gathering…common for most of us. I knew it was a shock for him. He assumed I knew. 

We had been standing there by the food table now picked clean. The still present smell of the jambalaya I made was a lit candle to the passing of this man from New Orleans. Two wooden chairs had barricaded our bodies from standing a little closer and the effect was like old presentational theater, two bodies slightly turned out in the appearance of behavior. Both of us tall and good-looking…actually he was beautiful. Black father, white mother…God’s last laugh…interracial is probably the only thing that will preserve the species. The garden always pushes up the most beautiful flower to our delight and care taking. In a way we were similar in our bodies and our energies…except that he was a little rawer version of me. I had 10 years of refinement on him. Light skinned, open-faced, beautiful eyes…living eyes…both of us standing with a sort of what-the-fuck posture…me a little stiffer…still had my suit coat on. He was well on his way to casual-ling up his look…sleeves pushed up…tie pulled down. He was going to get fucked up. He was going to say some things to someone tonight. He was going to find some siblings hair to tear his eyes into. Why did I pull rank on him? 

‘How do you know Will?’ 

I had all ready professed to know Will well, and that’s why he was standing with me. I had shared some outings we had had. I had offered up some references on his life. 

He assumed I was doing my job and filling him up with the father he barely knew; the father who left him to grow up alone; the father whose very essence was so alive in this son. But I chose to ruin it for him. I was making him work for the claim he so readily wanted to slide into and that Will would have wanted so much for him to have. Save himself the guilt for abandoning this Adonis-like man. In spite of you, old friend, in spite of you. And I know because my dad left me too and I never made him pay. And he won’t make you pay either. He’s a good boy. His eyes looked hurt. I wounded him a bit. 

‘Will was my dad.’ 

 I brought out all my first aid now. 

Now Will wanted me to love him. And I already did. 

‘I knew you had to be. You’re more like him than anybody in this room. He really missed out with you. And believe me, he knows he fucked up.’

Luis is outside working on my daughter's furniture. I should be doing this. I should. Lots of shoulds in my life. I should clean up after myself. I should exercise. And then of course there are shouldn'ts. Shouldn't have drunk so much last night. Shouldn't have gone off on the dude at the bar who asked me what I thought was more important: money or family? Leave me the fuck alone. This is my fucking restaurant. It isn't. I work here. And I don't need someone listening in on my fucking conversations.
Of course I believe God meets me in front of my house on the walkway every single day. Or many days anyway. So why wouldn't I have put God in that man's stool last night. Double meaning there with stool: in that man's shit. And yes God would have to be in our shit if we are truly accepting deities in our lives. And I'm not worried about God. Not worried. Not terrified. Not in a trance walking some narrow path of if-I-do-I-am-blessed-if-I-don't-I-am-fucked. I am aware of God because God makes me aware with his natural intrusions. Some beautiful – my children – I mean they are BORN right? Some wet sticky shit shoots out of my dick and lands well in the mitt of my wife and 9 or so months later it goes from gelatinous into structure. Explain that without some sort of God presence. Eventually it has to go to that seemingly bizarre place or religiosity.
And so I put God in the bar last night. I missed him actually though I still am feeling the results of many glasses of red wine. Oh and the praise from Josh. Praise and hugs. Praise and hugs. Reassuring me or him? Checking in to see if he made the right decision to be my disciple. The world threw us together. We were not assigned roles, well yes, we were. We were. I was his boss. And I am a collector of souls which makes me a sort of meddlesome boss. And that is good for Josh. And it sucks too. He can never have it regular with me. And that means he is always aware. My father has Alzheimer's and even in this dementia he zeros in on what I find so fucking annoying and hateful about him. Like that illness, as terrible as it is, couldn't at least given him a new lease on love and the expression of it. Instead it is really a deeper manifestation of his lousy world view and how he practiced it on me and my sister. And I doubt we will ever recover. And I know he can't control it with or without his new found insanity. And that's the experience of someone who has bought your shit. Who dances the jig to your noise. That person is constantly pushing for the melody. Maybe even starting the song. Why wait for the bandleader right? What the fuck is Benny waiting for? Bang the drums Gene...bang the fucking drums and sing, sing sing!!
Well I am writing to someone and there is an obvious nod to keeping you who are tracking this a long for the ride. And also history doesn't mean much when the collective has moved on. Big band references, 30's and 40's America, dead Presidents, things we used to eat, these things cannot be a launching point or really any sure kind of reference anymore. People have moved on.
So God is sitting in the bar. And I am dealing with my own genius that the wine in my glass has told me of. And he asks me money or family. Well I am no fool even when I am one – I say family of course. And it is. But I would have loved to have grown about 15 or 16 feet tall in my chair. And my head is suddenly 8 feet of it. And my mouth opens up to about 5 or 6 feet. And that dangling thing back there in my throat, that thing is a fucking wrecking ball. It swings out when I shake my head and it catches the little fuck and smashes his existence into a gray powder. Like the killing of a moth. The ones in my pantry. When I kill them they leave a gray powder like a pencil smear. And why that instead of seeing the man's guts explode from my sonar bomb? Why? Because I hate blood. I don't need it all over the fucking bar. Because I will have to clean it up and I won't want to. So I will let it sit there. And all of my friends around me who thought: wow, it's cool to see him so fucking big – 16 feet? And Oh my God did that uvula or whatever it's called just swing out of his big and I mean big mouth and wipe that guy out? And then they would look at the mess. They would contemplate this man's life. They would look at me with a mix of fear and what-the-fuck. So I would all of a sudden be responsible for their contemplation of life and my place in it. And who needs that. Right?
Luis needs me to move my car. It is in his way.

This is a test for the next 60 seconds you will be unable to control your set this is only a test this is a message from the emergency broadcast network had this been a real emergency you would probably have heard about it as a text or a facebook posting or something new and random like that this is only a test.