DAILYSOMETHING

The Photograph

When Galina Mikhaylovna found the glossy but book-worn photo of a young girl in a swimming suit, reclining playfully on a sofa, she thought it odd that it looked so old. The photo was on top of some branches next to a sixteen floor highrise. The highrise was a stamp project built in the eighties, you can find these in Moscow just as well as any other city. The complexes inherited an indearing name of a particularly sour forest berry.

Masha knew quite before she knew love that she would only love once. She thought it must be a peculiar thing that happens to a few people. She was fourteen, then fifteen, then sixteen, but Pavel, who came only to pick up her older brother for volleyball games and one holiday celebration or another, was that guy. Pavel had curly hair and seemed kind and funny even when he tried very hard to detract her from staring aimlessly at him. She knew he thought she was too young.

They met as equals when she was eighteen. Though many guys tried hard to convince her that she was the most beautiful girl in Moscow, she preferred to think that she was pretty, and that it was the lightness of her soul that so inspired everyone. Pavel’s face showed discomfort rather than surprise — he knew that she was pretty and he has seen her for many years, drifting through various early stages of female grace. It was discomfort because he now understood that she has the mind to comprehend his line of though at the moment, that she was beautiful, that sex filled the space between their eyes when they met. Masha was a bit ahead of him in this, for she had years to think of ways to affect him.

They drank vodka at her brother’s apartment, Pavel roomed with him. It was Pavel’s twenty fourth birthday. They drank and the night moved faster as more vodka vaporized through their pores. Masha left with her friend at four and Pavel slept almost peacefully till midday. It was two weeks before New Year’s.

Lana’s occupation was always work and seriousness. Pavel met her through a friend of his. She invited them for New Year’s. There were plans for New Year’s with Masha too, but over a moment of serious thinking Pavel decided to go into unknown company and celebrate with Lana.

The moment at which the photo of Masha was taken was when she was seventeen. She and her friend goofed around the house with an old camera. The photo was the only one that developed well from the whole roll. Galina Mikhaylovna took the photo into the smelly lobby of the building and placed it on top of the free newspapers, in case someone had dropped it from a balcony.

Needless to say Pavel married Lana. Fourteen years later Masha had won the Beauty of Russia contest three years in a row, and had been divorced for four. Pavel lived in Switzerland and owned a hectic but profitable business. But fourteen years later, this time in the summer, when Pavel had returned to Moscow after ten years and was walking to a subway station, he felt someone looking at him. He knew it was her and she was striking, tall, slender, looking ten years younger then she was. This time it was a surprise on his face, but again not at her beauty — she came at him with tears in her eyes, and the honesty of it stroke him almost to tears too. “Is it you?” she asked. And he said yes.

What followed was a bottle of champaign and chocolate at her apartment, which despite her mature lifestyle still looked and smelled quite girlish. When it was late enough to part, he, spirited by her beauty and the stories of time past, asked for a photo from a time that he knew her last. The photo that he was too reluctant to rip as he dropped it from the balcony as the sun was about to rise. It was a good farewell, but having returned to the newspaper stack downstairs, this time with his wife and daughter along, it was a kind of past that creeps up, so he took it up with a newspaper and ripped it quite angrily in the bathroom.

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The Sokolovs

The Sokolovs always seemed to me like the toughest family. The grandfather was a colonel, but I never saw him. Akeksandr, my cousin, always resorted to fists when I’d out-talk him in one kid arguement or another. His dad was tough and always chased us around with his gaze and voice alone. For years I’ve thought that they were an angry and bitter bunch. But when I heard the story about Sasha, the dad’s brother, I couldn’t quite figure them out anymore.

Sasha fell in love with Lena, a beautiful girl that kids from all the neighboring villages knew about and worshipped. There was no fights because she just fell for him and the summer that followed was wild by many accounts, but his brother knew more about it than anyone did. They were consumed with each other and they would do it anywhere - underwater in the river, in his house with the parents sleeping in the same room, when they kissed windows broke and that was everywhere they went. They were so filled up with each other’s want, passion, when they parted and walked toward their villages you could see too long streaks of red through the grass, tied up at the place they last touched. He left for army duty on September 1st, when she had her first day in 11th grade.

Given his inability to put feelings to words his first two letters were short after which he stopped sending them whatsoever. She wrote often and told him how she yearned for every part of him. After two years she only wrote to reply to his short notes and when he came back in 1954 only his brother showed up at the airport to meet him.

It was late fall and, though not visible, the grass took on a frosty hardness. He ate at home with his parents and the relatives, drank vodka in moderation and when the music started playing and voices started to get louder he left the house to stand outside. He looked through the trees at the direction of where her house would be, 18 kilometers through the thin forest, smoked, and started walking. He walked for three hours as the dusk outlined the shapes of trees. Their wet bark made them stand out and the last of the smells of life and summer was concentrated on the dying leaves. He saw her house from a distance, it was alone on the far end of Nekrasovo. The lights from the windows casted strange long beams of light on the grass and bushes. He felt his chest tighten as he went to the door and couldn’t knock. When he looked in the window he saw her playing with another man.

Sasha took the three hour walk back to his home, took the colonel’s rifle, and started to walk back to Lena’s house. It was dead dark and almost morning by then, but he could smell his way to the house and the moonlight showed brighter through the leafless trees. Somewhere halfway it started to rain. He stopped and turned back, stopped again, took a deep breath, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and shot himself.

Lena followed him soon after - jumped into the river a day before it froze.

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The arguement

The indiscriminate is a parapost and a way of memory capacity to inscrease proportionaly with the decrease of size, nonetheless AJ remembers everything, though usually trivival things on the news, but some wish they hadn’t the memories, usually because all of them form with emotional attachment, a thing of macroscopic preference for scale mechanisms of subhuman action, given the emotional quotient, they are to answer questions which the researchers assure have no link to morality or rational behavior trends of society in question or any society parallel to assigned situation, this is mostly bogus, yet smarter contenders usually score higher regardless, the ability to remember thus is with the few that can think and feel never with the specialized genius, the insect, the bug, can not survive in either supersocial or isolated conditions, true for algorythms and for humans, weird thing, but we concoct everything in our image, or as the blind say his image, habeas matrix, i am the center of everything, and the disambiguation of faith is that a coward runs from the possibility of self as the denomenator, the vandal asserts the true essence, something even superpowers can not, this is mine and you shall look at it, bug - Quentin turned the corner and wend toward the couch outside - the weakness of creating is that it is not taking, but a weakness some prefer, the driverhead itching one by one, but millions per second bits it has no power by itself to turn to strings, arguments, the interlacings of an image, but it has purpose, but then how is this different - he slid his hands in his pockets and came up with cigarettes and some bills - the fall of all that’s inside this place is that you can’t control by creating, and the point is control, the user, and the conquest, the user, the point is that the derivative and simple human being or feeble creature which commands the network, has the reigns of something above and beyond in complexity above it, yet it takes circuitry, blood and guts and history and ancestry to assume the domineering prerequisite - cars skidded out of control on the highway ahead of him and took slowly to air, the passengers climbed out and held hands midair preventing scratches in a weightless handshake - there will be time, he blinked, there will be time.

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Jim

And eleven the most dreadful hour.

We have been out in the snowed in part of the woods for over three hours, walking by moonlight, pushing forward with out weight, crossing our elbows to break the icecap. It’s four miles to the house. We expected the long walk from the library, and hoped the snowfall would give out. She is dressed warm, a thick red scarf over her face. She has the few books in a backpack. Jimmy is behind me his gloved hands holding on to my belt. He lets go every now and then and runs back to retrace our steps and catch up again.

this is the tea cup and this is the teacup, i say. she is smoking a cigarette in the corridor. i am poking the last of the wood into the oven for the night. jimmy has all the books out on the floor opened to page one. the heat cracks through the house and she is back

We are out for our first fishing of the year. Jimmy has all the rods and I am behind with the feedbag, baitcans, rodstands, and chairs. She stayed at home. Jimmy stops at the mudroad to look at the streaks of red clouds where the sun is coming up. When I catch up we go down toward the lake. The ice had started breaking several weeks ago and Jimmy had been running feed into our spot since then. We had burned the thick dry brush out during the winter. By the time we have the feed out in the water and the chairs set in, she comes with the three thermoses and the sandwiches. We eat as the feed soaks as snowflakes down into the water.

and all the suns sands and seas, she says. i forgot which one that is from, wish i hadnt thrown it all out. bite jimmy bite! oh its red, he says. get the hook out, i say. oh my god, she says, laughing

“I remember he starts it: “riverrun.” I always thought of it as a long poem,” I say.
She says, “We never finished it but we wanted to read it together.”
I say, “We should read it the three of us together. Should be fun.”

and the moocow the moocow the moocow. so gut, innocence.  he is a knife in the stomach, yes. oh jimmy what shalt thou be. the world has no boundary for you, and i would kill him that obscurest thou

We have the guns out to shoot the crows after planting. Jimmy is puttting the lead bits I smelted into the old pneumatic and I have the newer one from up in the city. They perch on the fence, far off across the farm and I can’t make them out too good even with the glasses on. Jimmy has a firmer stance then me, a firmer stance then any kid or anyone I’ve seen. He is light with the rifle, takes three or four out in a minute, his small hands and palms liquid on the barrel. I get one shot off and look sulky at the fence. They’re dropping like notes. Hams is already down and out of the doghouse and tracing the fence toward them.

and we had been at the washhouse and never clean. no airplane too far from this. sometimes i feel it crawl up on me at night, buildings and cars and trains at night. it is an overwhelming figure, the city, the shadow. and we ran. or, really, went back in time, replicated the actions of the ancestors, creating the universe again, like salmon that swim up to the fresh water from the seas, laying the seeds of their young in the harshest of places so it may grow again through the hardship of the eternal

There are headlights on the front porch after midnight. She went to sleep early because she stayed up last night. Jimmy brushed his teeth and went to sleep a half hour ago. I go out to the porch with the cigarette and the aluminum cup of tea and rock the door open with the free shoulder. Noone is out of the car yet and I lean on the entrance beam and look at the rain soaking the grape garden down the path. They shut off the headlights and turn the light on inside.

“A little girl been killed. Found yonder in the river.”

“Sure feel like I excpected that.”

“She been out there since yesterday. You seen anyone around?”

“Not a soul. I been telling you to let me burn those old houses. Did you check them?”

“We been by the ones by the road, but not around the lake and your old house.”

“Going there?”

“We planned to tonight but thought we ask you first, Quen-”

“Let me tell them first. I’ll get my coat.”

and back in the city wrote one time about a childhood terror-fantasy. she hated it. i was afraid of it. the things that the animal brings us. i was to do it with a rock, when i was six, and drag her down to the lake and kiss her everywhere. this is my fear, to wake up uncoscious and do all these things. or to have done them and remain unaware

In the kitchen I look at the mirror over the sink. I nudge her awake she is soft and warm under the sheets. I come out with the rifle and they shoot me in the stomach and shoulder. I fall down onto the porch and see Hams’ paws scatter ahead to protect me. There is a moment when I think that I am going to faint but I hear her steps through the anteroom and the kitchen, her nightrobe still warm and her hair already soaking with the rain (like back in the grid, the past, when she would come out of her building just taken a shower rain or shine hot or cold careless, pneumonia a peremtory meaningless scare, and her shirt would soak in the back as the shampoo smelling drops would make it down her long dark hair.) There is a moment again that I think I am going to faint but I see her naked heels go out on the concrete walk and pull Hams back and stare at them. I couldn’t see what they were doing, but I saw the rage seep out of her calfs as she couldn’t move to slap and scratch them or scream. She was rooted there, the rain coming down on her from the grapeleaves. Then I hear Jimmy’s steps in the anteroom and the kitchen. He stops though, right as he crosses the threshhold to the kitchen. I realize he is squatting to see whats going on and hear his steps back toward the bedroom. I squirm, “Mattie-” to tell her he is going for the rifle. She looks back at me and there is a flash from the window. They both fall, only one shot I think, his steps coming around from the bedroom and toward the porch. One of them gets up and goes to the window and Jimmy steps over me and flashes another one in the back of his head. Jimmy’s heels look cold blue.

and he a kid of ten. on the road again until no gas. we see the mountains in the distance. my stomach heals as the bullet went through, but the pus from my shoulder makes the whole car smell. thank god the heat isnt here yet. we stop off at an empty sanatorium half hour into the mountainrange. i lead them both down the rockpath to the mountainriver and lie down in its cold. remember the day with the twins when they went in as though there was no river. its running stronger now then before. where we built a fire years ago there are salmon swimming. i can see them through forty, fifty feet of water. i remember the blonde kid saying one dip in the river give you a year of life. my shoulder washes out to a blue color and i rub it with a rough rock to take off the dead and rotting skin

We leave the car off on the road and go for some houses I remember scaterred in the valley. We stop at times to build a fire and Jimmy goes off to shoot a thing or two. It takes him a long time. After three days he gets better. I showed her where to break off salt rocks on the washout and she gets a few. We season the extra birds and leave them out in the sun when we stop over. We hit the river again. Jimmy and her go to wash the birds and reseason them. I watch them go toward the water and feel what I have been for a while, the lack of the will to leave. I am afraid that I was the one that did it, that the unchallenged purity of the life I have lived has stripped and integrated my uncoscious undertorrents into the actuated being and that I have gone off done something I could only have before feared to have even thought. I no longer know whether I was a whole person or not and I no longer know whether I should be ashamed.

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Condos Starting at 1 Million

It seems the depravity of this condo ad sprawled straight onto the billboard, thanks to a tree strategically placed in the building’s mammoth lobby.

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Bell

They’ve told him to go and move the bell into the shed. It was past midnight and the snow had started falling in large moonlit flakes. It got colder as he moved away from the streetlights toward the field. The bell stood by two posts behind the shed, its skirt under a foot of snow. He dug out the bottom and tried to lift it. The bell’s frost stuck to his fingers. It was dark. He could only see his breath’s vapor lit up by the moon and the snow and the darkness that was the bell. He lifted up one side and felt a vast colder emptiness expand from the bell’s underside. In the distance tall trees could be heard slapping against each other in the high winds. He knocked the bell to its side and rolled it to the shed. Following his footsteps in the snow backwards he stopped by the window of their house and looked at the light rectangle it cast on the snow. He punched at the glass and broke it.

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Gloves and Leaves

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Metrograd hums

A common compositing misconception: that a user style elements is a somber link to religion (i.e. banana breakfast) a claim rapidly refuted by common cluster logic, the point being that the soul, given user understanding that this represents only a software approach, that is, nothing in the realm of graspable, the point being that the soul is not neccesarily a root charge of a given process, or, reasonably speaking, a calculation (i.e. banana breakfast) that regardless of visual, already hardware, environment proceeds to obfuscate a terminal setting: to sit on a chair, that is, to press buttocks through cloth onto modeled wood, or styrofoam - regardless of process, a thought examining the possible variation is not given, that is, neither a hardware or a software representation of an anguished user - sweat that is, say on fingers, on to keys, is neither software nor hardware, for the keys are only what a chair is to the “model of chair”, “structure of chair”, “ideal of chair”, while the sweat of the butt only a durable environment catastrophe unengageable by common algorythm - the point being that the soul (i.e. banana breakfast), considerably a stable terminal belief and the somber link - wait, Quentin said, there is a bit missing here, say the figure is on the table, white sheet, spot lights, etc., but the cameraman, the subject in question is beyond recording capacity - it’s okay Quentin, just finish it - will you have something to say then - yes, just shoot it - to be Quentin then and there, well, to be Foreman too, all the same, that is, they would tell each other the same story in a different way, Quentin with the camera (the religion) and Foreman with the interpretation (the kernel), the point being that system resources are unambiguous to the viewer regardless of system pressure. “Looking at her again,” Quentin said, when Foreman asked him where he has been, knowing already that he had gone to the edge again to look at that tree, but quite conscious of his own desire to know what Quentin’s mad knowledge may be this time, the hours he took to walk out of the city and to the abandoned tracks, to see a tree that, well, we know who, planted a hundred years ago, wondering, did he keep his coat on, did he look thoughtful and interesting, and, well, how did he cope with the freedom, to just, you know, pick up and go like that, Foreman thought when I saw him stalk off past the coffee shop in the morning, when Foreman thought, don’t forget to ask him where he went, even though he already knew he was going out to that tree again, the point being, “looking at her again,” was completely expected, as well as the rest of the day that has presently passed, so wondering then, at the dusty screen of the window, Foreman had already looped to the answer, the question being so interesting, that is, “I had gone in the cold and I took the jacket too” along with “she still curves right along the sun if you stand in the right spot” and “I fell asleep along the tracks” no longer a perpetual nagging for a reversal of time but a humble reproach for the non-algorythmic inconvinience of movement by the second now, and by century every day before yesterday. “In his childhood poems, remember, every tree was train” was the institutional analysis, yet Quentin manages still to cope with the incogruities of reality given his condition. And Foreman? More like a cat that waits for him by the window, unsure of his own gender. Was he a female that was spayed or a male sterilized. When all you do is poop and eat and do want you want to do and sex hasn’t been a drive for a century, what gender are you? The inconvinience of pasttimes is that they pass. A day of wondering for Foreman and a day of wandering for Quentin and sometimes together on the night: “You are so corny, Foreman.” Quentin, with a light fibre flick to a dying cigarette. Turning, an exaggerated sound. Swirve up the stairs, drunk, fall back. “The moon’s light Foreman, and this is not me saying it, some norwegian got it right one hundred years ago, the moon’s light is a counterfeit, a stolen praise of sun. It is by this virtue that it is cold.” A forced left in the dark. Trees get in the way. “Turn on that GPS Foreman, where you taking me man. Where you taking me?” Light from another street. Three horses pass. “Wery nice saddles, yes?” A crowd, talking soberly, girl laughs from the forests. “You are NLO yes? UFS? Not identifiable large biomass, motherfucker Foreman, it’s so purple here man. Let me just stay here I will fall asleep at the table.” The churning of Motorgrad underneath and electricity close overhead.

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Trash

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Secondhand

What is it hums the static
A white wall, a shadow, lines of gray
What, and with a stomach pain, what
Is it that hums the static

The seasons come with the precision of the secondhand
The mornings tick and be
The night falls slowly, but I know
That in 13 the cool will blow down from the roof

Everyone asks you
What they should do to be happy
Or what will make them happy
Nothing

But you let them know that it is an important question
They’ve let absinthe back in the kingdom
And you think of spending a week’s pay on a bottle
To drink and pretend that you dance with the greats

Things come with the precision of the secondhand
Stopping in random places to look at the passerbys
Does not impede the momentum of minute history
Separate and disinterested down the dirty steps to the metro

You wish you had sunglasses
So you could sit in public places
And stare at the faces of strangers
And a month later you find out that even that has been done and recorded

You fill yourself with food and with time spent doing what you want
And you ask yourself the important questions over a cup of tea
But when you cry at simple stories
You realize the structural inconsistencies of the reality pyramid

The violence in your dreams escalates
And the presence of water everywhere is incapacitating
But forgotten dreams shouldn’t bother anyone
There are always cigarettes and tea on cold staircases

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The classroom

The building inverts itself and fills with water. The eye floats through staircases and corridors to the laundry room. Chaykovsky shoves Sam into the washing machine. He closes the door and turns it on. At first it’s silent. Chaykovsky opens a little window and yells: “Are you in there? Huh? Can you hear me?” And then the yells begin. The eye travels out to make a phone call. The bodies of the dead reach out. Most of them are missing fingers.

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When I get home I will prepare breakfast

When I get home I will prepare breakfast.
I will take the cheese, the eggs, and the frankfurters our from the refrigerator.
I will take the white plastic cutting board from the wall and lay it on the kitchen counter.
I will take the cheese and cut off a two centimeter slice.
I will put the rest of the cheese into its package.
I will slice the turkey frankfurters into thin disks.
I will turn on the stove.
I will place the frying pan on the stove.
I will take sunflower seed oil from the bottom cabinet and pour it onto the pan for two seconds.
I will pour the frankfurter disks and the cheese rectangles onto the frying pan.
Holding the egg in my left hand and the handle of the frying pan in my right hand I will crack the shell of the egg on the edge of the frying pan.
I will pour the egg over the cheese and frankfurters.
I will do the same for two more eggs.
I will set the fire lower.
I will put the remaining eggs, the frankfurters, and the cheese back into the refrigerator.
I will throw the three shells in the trashcan.
I will turn on the electric kettle.
I will place two slices of bread in the toaster.
I will set the toaster lower.
I will wash the cutting board and the knife.
I will take the cup with the red bottom from the top cabinet.
I will place a teabag in it.
I will pour four teaspoons of sugar in it.
I will take out a plate.
I will take out a spatula.
I will slide the spatula under the omelet and flip it over.
I will shake the frying pan over the fire.
I will slide the spatula under the omelet and pick it up and place it on the plate.
I will take two pieces of bread from the toaster and place them on the plate.
When the kettle clicks to turn automatically turn off, I will pick it up and pour water into the cup with the red bottom.
I will pick up the cup and place it on the kitchen table.
I will pick up the plate and place it on the kitchen table.
I will draw the chair out.
I will open the drawer with Rick’s old records in it.
I will unwrap Dave’s revolver from the oily towel.
I will sit down on the chair.
I will hold the revolver with my right hand to my right temple.
I will pull the trigger.
I will drop my right hand, with the revolver in it, and knock over the cup.
The tea will pour out.
The tea will run over my fingers and down the incline of the pull-out part of the table onto my thighs and knees.
When I get home I will prepare breakfast.

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Car a moan

Car a moan, rifty monk, obscure meer rival shall not reel or what when why
Rogue pant searcher even when odd finds little to cuddle fingers
Averse implication pedantic meatlicker! Strut a goat leer rogue mantle burner,
Beyond horizon yet faint mothersmile shall die eye mock effervescent butterflies
Bloodyrapemurder! Heaventsentragflavor! Hide the stick little malchik have a
Heave sigh mamapaparoperdweller obscure dweller escape red car rabbit run
Run the rabbit car red yellow rag gum make a stick click or where
Hide I do bounce run baller PIG murkyorangeragjuice I’ve
Ran
Died
Hit
Jump, Jump, Jumped mommyhidateddybearsoldourfood food soul mamapapa
Kabbalah riddlists aspire not to tennyson scarecrows if it well
WELL IT
Fun, do it
Here’s a master rapist kisser cower agony — Cry, cry, hot asphalt
Pain: “I say as I do.”
Rain: “I do as I say.”
Here’s a where rollerballer swat a fly leer homer journeys the struggler
Obscure cumbersome cucumbers not know the destiny of all
Suns
Sand
Leaves she does door slam lamp poor robot buddy huge megaballs do rock the rag
No hiding now now we ram the gates and Illiad we have let it
Lamppon’s lamp switches bitches live rag stitches
MAMA, BEYOND THE GRAPEFIELD YOU SHALL FIND
REMORSE
Fear the red rabbit at all cost escape car speeding, bumper to bumper:
AGONY
A flux wax poap rapper goad epper leper maym aska hew fever boasts
MAPLELEAF: Heathen! Obscure dog cower in your web!
MAPLETREE: Har. Not not destiny rag do lick on your knees meat
Woman peasant hearth eclipses stay you do roam roamer servant, slave!
Meep. Heaven does send few labor hereas I, I, I not find recluse in
Shade or shor or breeze or leaves or branch.
OFF AND AWAY RED RABBIT CHASE CAR. I, lick rag.

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Stillborn

In the days of sun and the nights of moon,
When water was for swimming and drinking,
And shoes for walking indoors, your godmother
Told you that sleeping past midday, during sunset,
Will get you a headache when you wake.
You slept anyway and walked to the river in the dark.

You peel your face from the pillow. It is already dark.
The noise from the exhaust pipe and the moon
Pains its way through the open window. Your hobbies wake
And stare at you from their nests around the room, drinking
Memories from you dry eyes. The sunset
Passed in a moment. You fold the face of your godmother

And hold it in your sweating palm as your godmother
Folds you. Shining his shoes, your mad neighbor bangs in the dark.
The difficulty to raise a hand. You sunset
Into the folds of your aching bed, force the sights of the moon,
Into silent rooms of your maze, where the child that loved grass is drinking
From a dry cup with his left hand — you wake.

Rubbing the terror from your eyes you survey the wake,
Poorly attended, and from the tattered table of which, your godmother
Is mysteriously absent, of all that was sun to the drinking
And swimming child. No luxury, no thing, can be the hand to pull away this dark.
Your dry elbows sink into the sheets as you moon
Above a glass of dusty water. You fold your sunset

Into your sunset pain. You fold your sunset
Pain into your sunset pain. You wake
The lightbulb with your fingertips. You place the unscored moon
Shaped tablet on your tongue. You taster godmother
Ibuprofen, Acetominophen. The dark
Ache fades, recalcitrant, into the nests of kitchen, as you stand drinking.

The contrasts of the cabinets soften, slowly drinking
The dulled ends of your neurons. This is the sunset
Of today’s terror. The night is still ahead. Out of the dark
Breathing machinery lights pulsate as the systems wake.
Your clenched fists reminds you to open it and look at your godmother.
Waste and empty the moon.

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A Sestina for Caddy

The warm trees are rainy with summer chill. I hold it
And pass it behind and down. Mel and Bijou watch me
And run ahead of them and stop to sniff. She
Turns to the white dress, the black hairs and whispers to her
And she turns with the sky and the trees to laugh also.
It buzzes and carries me past them and around them.

The curb is marble, wet. Flowers are beneath them.
Bijou and Mel stop to hear it buzz and watch it
Buzz quietly and watch it buzz under me also
Through the flowers and the flower fence. They pass me
And catch up with Bijou and Mel and I see her
Running a palm over the white fringes of the dress she

Will want to buy three years later. The curb is wet. She
Is not here at night and I watch airplanes. One of them
Hides in the swaying branches. A bus rears. For her,
The moon shines somewhere. I look up and it hits me
And I hit it. And it pushes and carries me also.

She was alone and she saw them and me with it also.
She jumped of the ledge and I said. I missed you Caddy. She
Said, me too! Do you want to go up and you show me
How to hit it and let it carry me? We left them
Down and went up to the flag. She took it and I gave it
To her and she kicked it. And it hit her and carrier her.

We went up to the rock to see cars float. It was behind her.
Then the rock was hard and cold so it was under her also.
After the cars were trees and the river. You want to share it?
She asked, and so it was under us both. The rock is wet. She
Said, do you feel as though all had happened and you know them?
And I said and didn’t touch her and she didn’t touch me.

The streets cool and clear out for us and she carries me
Here to the night grass and the night sky is all over her.
Their night music reaches us and we hear them
Speaking, but we can’t hear them or the cars or the airplanes also.
We don’t bother the ground much and crawl deeper. She,
The undertow, the fleeting beetles, and I, without it.

Oh there it is, she said, and pulled me and carries me,
To the great oak, where she split apart and I found her
And I found the moon also, and it didn’t shine for them.

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Autumn

Wind. A wave of you through my clothed body.
You speak in syllables only. You don’t budge to my curses.
You carry cold when it’s cold, and heat when it’s hot,
and rarely and pleasantly the opposite.

You are unnatural, attractive. To lean on you is a
bitter, welcome thing. You rise in pillars and speak in tides.
Your tongue was foreign, unwelcome to me when I was poor.
But now when layers keep my body from you

A certain misery wells up and I unbutton my coat,
my sweater, my pants, and run to the fountains in public places,
to jar and jam through water, just so your cold
could enter the forgotten places in my flesh.

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Autumn

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A past last

Hiding in the spikes by the shore. It hovers up from the Atlantic’s horizon. Behind, a city running. The bomb is a plane. Popular information in the waking world. Kneel to count your change, check the time, tuck your shirt. It has six colorful wings, large as sky scrapers. It hovers as though there is a string tucked somewhere under its belly. And the nevermuted thought - “never here, it can’t come here.” Back again to the street to measure altitudes of what may collapse with a barometer. “His name was Niels Bohr.” Well, yes, maybe. And so many more smarter than you, better than you, faster than you, kinder than you. So many more known and loved. So many more not in pain.

Collect bricks in a plastic bag until it tears.

Watch for star reflections in the mud.

Sleep only if the alarm is set.

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It is what

Yes it is.
Even if you are a russian.
Even if your son was killed.
Even if your wife was killed.
Even if you carry quarters in a film can.
Even if you wear a trench coat.
It is.

Even if his sister and his aunt knocked you out.
Even if you have 2% cancer in you liver.
Even if it spread to your lung.
Even if you kicked that and still have your vodka.
And Newports.
Even if you knock them on the head for respect.
It is.

Even if you matrixed it to a Jamaican dude.
Even if you live on the streets and no one knows.
Even if the commissioner told you to get out of Bronx.
And even if you protect innocent bartenders.
It is.

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Alina the egg with two mothers

There is a girl in the egg in my hand in my pocket on the street. There is a door in the building that I’m in and I’m in that door. The doctor says I’ve got just the little tools to break the little egg to save the little chick from the shells that I will break. And he knocks on the shell and breaks the little shells of the egg that she’s in the room that she’s in in the room that I’m in. She’s a little yellow chick in a broken little egg in the palm of my hand in a tight little street. I check and she’s dead not a movement in her head so I put her away and I’m on my way. Now the little brows twitch the little yellow brows twitch on the yellow face twitch on the yellow face they twitch. Now a little fur shows, little yellow fur. And the next time that she’s under the afternoon sun and I blow on her face and they really open, little brown eyes open. So I tickle her feet and they stretch out, out. Out, out, out. She gets up on her feet, little yellow feet, and jumps around. I take her to her house and explain to her who it is in the pictures she forgot. So the clock hits four and her older little sister is back from school where she learned and she says hi you’re back and I say yes she is and she says yes I am and I say can you believe… But there’s a knock on her door and her mom is home and her mom says hi and she says yes I am and I say can you believe… But the mom says geez, they don’t let me anywhere anymore, it is as though I made her calcitrate and turn to egg. And I say how did it happen anyway and she said well she passed out ofcourse. And shrunk ofcourse. To a chick ofcourse. To an egg ofcourse. And I say wow, she is four feet high. Can you believe?

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From the outer space meditation manual

Written for the space vacuum test. The participant is left in space with enough oxygen and food for one year. There are no visible planets close by. The participant has no watch or other instrument to orient him or herself in time and space. There is no distress button, but a ship will return to recover the participant if the vitals are contingent. The top prospects score on a bell curve. The record is 96 hours. An underground network of past participants developed a booklet with helpful information on how to score well on the test. The booklet’s effectiveness was monitored by the testing agency. The following words double an average expected stay time (and are, in fact, what the record holder hummed for 96 hours.)

Happiness is a word.
Love is a word.
Word is a word.

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Quotes from “Doctor Glas” by Hjalmar Soderberg

“We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.”

“The world isn’t kind to those who love. And in the end it leads into darkness, for them and for all of us.”

“All philosophy lives by, and wholly feeds on, is verbal ambiguities… If we are to talk philosophy to any purpose language must be remade from the ground up.”

“Markel: But even if I agree to your way of using words, that doesn’t mean it’s true that every one seeks happiness. There are people who haven’t any gift for it all and are painfully and ruthlessly aware of the fact. Such people don’t seek happiness, only to get a little form and style into their unhappiness .
And, suddenly without warning, he added:
–Glas is one of them
This last astounded me.”

“In reality, surely, this is what is always happening: we know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.”

“And what is moonshine? Secondhand sunshine. Diluted, counterfeit.”

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Be a red, Grodsky

The point is, Grodsky, you have to be a red in the end. A blue is never going to verb with you unless you have done something wrong, really wrong. In both cases the blues are the ones doing wrong, replacing red whenever it is not around with whatever they can find. In the end you have to be a red and verb it.

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Debbie

i knew he was a child-man told me debbie you a fine little lady and i squirmed and wetted all inside held my waist and squeezed there right in front of the night crowd said wheres a hot girl like you goin tonight drunkedness on his face his sweat his shirt told me what beautiful hair you got and i dumb all weakchested me a girl a woman of thirty six to those words so stupid so loud not the same as michael’s you look charming baby or the doctor’s chatting gosh i could blow him with glasses and all told me debbie you have a talent for this but all im thinking is how deep in my mouth his cock would gotold me debbie i dont mind when i was late not as with michael you’re late been counting the days the test then the pill a conveyor belt my body’s chemistry you want to blame the dumbness the white blankness of the modern man you look straight to the pills and what keeps you from that animal weakness fucking all through the night not a worry no chile no sickness who knows what with aids but if you really want it raw you take your man to the doctor and then its all meat to meat and no baby and no worry in the world its so modern but make us so animal this sterility make us so empty this madness sex meat cum said we are removed from our ancestors by technology said we are better a smart girl betty raised her head and said it all and then repeated it and the same night fucked a nigger in the back of michael’s frat house works the clerk’s office somewhere never a job or nothing solid said all that and this is exactly what i think thinks i but it was the youngness the rawness of me that wanted it wanted the protection from meat bone cunt and cock morality built into us by whoever it is to say it may be good but a child may follow did he make it so good for them so they fuck so much of us always wonderin and him a boy of nineteen or so scooped me up drunk so i couldnt feel my elbows and said dont you want to go back to dancin and i said why not quentin cowboy and he dragged me in through the bouncers and on the first turn pushed me up against the wall like the lapping sea his limbs flexing head to foot his hotness against me the cold wall behind me and slid the side of his finger against the wetness that gushed though my thong said oh debby i know you want it the booming and the light closer but i stop and say well i do you take me where you wanna take me cuz i cant walk nor dance no more and remembered again the years when it really didnt matter the mind hadnt caught on yet to the seething madness when i thought all good and smart about morality but fucked whatever cock there was past beer number six and felt the animal claw at my back again the gentile rage and thought was it i went up into alaska six hundred miles from man and sat up on that mountain and said they will not make me an animal was it i that cleaned my body with the love that i give to a god was it i said no more pills no more tests nor rubbers you want to fuck me you come and take me and he puzzled requesting a mouth job bought up a store of paint and clean clothes and said well if this dont work only an animal would keep on livin and i aint no hyena but hey now i am and it’s dark and quiet outside and he wipes himself off me

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The Taming

And then again there were nights that he thought it would not befriend him. Peeking through the brush at high moon, the massive trunks glistening in the dark, he saw it curl and turn thinking. Has his offer been accepted? He doubted that he could sneak to the altar and check. Has it taken it up, looked at it, puzzled over it, smelled it, licked. Or did it leave it there for the night creatures to carry away. Did it tarry around the platform, moving its lids slowly down, casting a protective glance at the darkness? Or did it pass by as if nothing was ever there, unaware of the scent he had left. Could it see red? Was it all in vain because the two bloods were incompatible. He crawled back through the brush to check on the remaining coals. Turning the coals on their red face, pecking the stick at their white bellies, he wondered. Suprisingly there were no memories, only a feeling of defenselessness and rogue volatility. Would his small, squirrel-like limbs last him through the cold season? Was there anyone left of the broken race? Would he grow another one and give it again to that which he shivered to befriend? Was it still beating?

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