My Interrogative Mode (30)

  

What color is your zeppelin?

 

My Interrogative Mode (29)

If you were granted sole authority and power to delete one holiday (religious or secular, or both, or neither) and replace it with an observance of your own choosing and discretion, what would those choices be?

My Interrogative Mode (28)

If you were given the opportunity -- nay, the mandate -- to deliver a 30-second public-service announcement (PSA) to the whole planet, with translations in every known language (as well as Latin, Esperanto, and Sanskrit) freely supplied, what would the text of your message consist of? 

My Interrogative Mode (27)

Exactly, or approximately, when is the when of "when in the course of human events," a gloriously elongated sentence independent of modern minimalism, a declaration bolstered by subordinate clauses and prepositional phrases and infinitives galore?

releaf

On a rare sunny day (any sunny day in the slate palette of winter here is rare), I bathed in the light and walked more than usual. It was sweater and jacket weather. You'd wonder why everyone was not out walking, with or without their dog or dogs, their kids, their spouse, roommate, friend. I prefer solo. True, more than the usual number of walkers paraded about in the almost-festive atmosphere. A reprieve from winter; not spring break but a respite. 

I like to vary my route, never taking the same exact way twice. That's easy in that it might only require me to switch sides of the street or switch the sequence. 

After a momentary mental debate, I decided to stroll down Whittier, home for nearly twenty years: marriage, birth, deaths, dogs, Russian dwarf hamsters, a parakeet, a redbud, raked leaves, shoveled sidewalks. The whole production. Why not. And I was brave enough to stay on the odd-numbered side of the street, the residential one, the one where the mail was delivered, for three years even after I was gone. 

It wasn't too hard. Keep walking. Don't stare. Don't break stride, cane with eagle handle in service.

Near the bottom of the hill, just before Lowell (authors' names about as street monikers in the neighborhood), I spotted two leaves, one greenish-yellow and the other orange-ish and yellow, wedded together, you might say welded. How striking: bright, diaphanous, frail, brilliant. so brilliant I assumed the leaves must have just fallen. They hadn't had time time to dry, brown, and curl.

I stopped to pick them up and held the twinned maple leaves all the way home, my companions.

Once home, I placed them on the counter, the faux-granite peninsula between the living room and the kitchen, a place to venerate these finds. I snapped some photos with my phone when the afternoon light streaming in was strongest. The blare of sun highlighted the vains each leaf exposed to the world.

The next day, on the weekly Zoom with my three adult children (that phrase has long struck me as an amusing oxymoron), I enthused about my natural treasures.

"Here. Look. I'll show you. Can you see them? Aren't they amazing?"

Pause.

"Oh wow."

"Um, Dad . . . "

"What?"

"Take a look. Isn't that plastic?"

"What. Where?"

"Over by the stem."

"Hold on. Let me take a look."

More than taking a look, I concentrated on feeling the twinned beauties.

Definitely fake.

"Holy mackerel!"

Laughs all around.

With a dose of sheepish embarrassment.

And revelation.

Along with wonder of a different magnitude and order. 

 

My Interrogative Mode (26)

As they were enjoying an evening walk, they were arrested by the site of one -- and then two -- pale lavender myrtle blossoms amidst a sea of ground-creeping greenery, and wondered and asked no one (or everyone) in particular: what sight or sound caught your attention today, stopped you in your tracks (if you had your awareness antennae turned on)?

My Interrogative Mode (25)

It is said "freedom isn't free," and yet, assuming freedom means liberation from enslavement; means release from shackles of habit, addiction, custom, attachment, pain, joy, possessions, prejudices, or ecstasy; then what metaphorical pawn for a knight, bishop for a rook, rook for a queen would you trade to be free? 

 

My Interogative Mode (24)

You are about to drive across the country, in a sedan, from one coast to the other, East to West or West to East, no time limit; who is/are your preferred fellow traveller/travellers, famous or infamous, known or unknown, rich or poor, living or dead?

My Interrogative Mode (23)

 Who will be the last person standing from your high school graduating class?

My Interrogative Mode (22)

Irrespective of qualifications, training, opportunity, or practicality, what job would you want more than any other in the whole wide world?

give peace a chance

The scourges of war. Nuclear holocaust. The conquest of communism. World peace. After supper, I would enter my parents' bedroom, close the door, kneel down in front of my mother's vanity table, and pray. Keeping the room dark, I prayed the rosary. My lips formed the shape of unspoken words. I cannot tell you why I did not go to my own bedroom; maybe my brother was using it to do homework. I was afraid of getting caught, getting found out. I feared the exact sort of shame, mockery, or teasing I might suffer if it were known I had called a girl. "Ooh! You have a girlfriend now? Ooh!" But surely they knew. After all, did they imagine I disappeared for fifteen minutes to a half hour? I was in the seminary. We commuted. We were allowed to date girls if we wanted to, and I did occasionally, in an innocent and platonic, ideal-Madonna manner. If I attempted to date a girl, I'd tell her I attended a prep school, which was true enough. If talking to the bishop, whose pet project we were, as the inaugural graduating class, we would say we went to a seminary. Same in talking to my pastor. I was another pet project of his, an imaginary ribbon worn on his cassock, a success story in the making. A calling. A vocation. Before I got into Christ the King, Father Grinvalsky and I sat in separate chairs on the flagstone porch of the rectory as he fed me questions about my possible vocation. He gave me a promotional pamphlet to take home. I'd read it over frequently and secretly, jealous of the holy look in the faces of the thirty some-odd boys who would become my friends. They looked serene and sanctified in the tri-fold black and white brochure. Images of Mass, basketball, class, camaraderie. I would wait a year, finish ninth grade at Burdick Junior High School in Stamford. Was the delay my call or Father Grinvalsky's? I never claimed to hear an actual voice calling me, thank God. But what surer path to salvation? What cleaner, crisper way to chastity? What easier way to escape the terrors of sexuality, rejection, and sin than the seminary? Wrong on all counts.

In the reported 1917 apparitions of Mary at Fatima, Portugal, to peasant children, she is said to have urged the praying of the rosary, for world peace and the defeat of communism. One might assume a touch of revisionism in the telling: after all, the Bolsheviks didn't storm the Winter Palace until that November in 1917. The visions are said to have taken place from May to October. This was serious stuff. I took it seriously. My cousins would relate what might be considered a religious urban legend. The first two secrets revealed to the youngsters at Fatima were known and promoted; see above. But there were rumors of a third secret not revealed. My cousins asserted that when the Pope, Pius XII, read the third secret he wept. This did not calm anyone's nerves. 

Before the bedroom rosary routine, two world crises served as practice runs: the Berlin Wall Crisis in August 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. They were scary, drawing us to the brink of annihilation from war with the Soviets. Summer nights not being able to sleep because of dire reports on the 11 p.m. news. Heart-stopping Bulletins interrupting TV shows, afraid that This Would Be The One. (I never considered that any Bulletin on TV would be too late. Whatever they would say would be too late. Thanks for the warning, though. Thanks the extra anxiety in our last moments.) So, I prayed for peace during those crises. Who wouldn't on this side of Christendom? After hearing Kennedy's speech declaring a naval blockade of Cuba ("Cubur"), I went to bed fingering my beads, placing them right next to me by the lighted Princess phone. Somehow the world skated through those nightmarish threats, even though documents still being discovered reveal the ominous notion that we were closer to war than we ever knew! I had no sense that I personally played a part in our escape from Armageddon. Most likely, even the atheistic materialists on the Soviet side lobbed a few made-up prayers to Whoever or Whatever.

A few years later, by the time I was in high school as a seminarian, something in me changed. I felt a greater responsibility, a burden. No, I wasn't solipsistic enough to believe or feel that world peace was up to me and me alone. Nevertheless, I played a part. I had no choice. Hence my duty to pray the rosary. 

I knew the Mysteries of the rosary: Joyful (Monday and Saturday), Sorrowful (Tuesday and Friday), Glorious (Wednesday and Sunday). Each Mystery had five decades with each decade focused on some aspect of the life of Jesus or Mary (e.g., the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection). Each decade began with an Our Father, followed by ten beads for ten Hail Marys, and then came to a single bead for a Glory Be. That bead shared space, if you will, with the Our Father for the next decade. Sometimes after a decade I'd add: "O my Jesus, forgive us of our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen." Or I'd add a special plea for world peace.

Aside from the technical requirements, one contended with distractions, temptations, and mind wanderings. My St. Joseph's Missal offered colored illustrated plates of the Mysteries to keep me on the beam. I tried to ignore distractions of "impure thoughts" as well as alarming visions of nuclear war. My sibilant whisperings, my implorations and supplications, were intended to rise like incense to the heavens. The nearly inaudible mutterings yielded a sound similar to that of the ladies in church, (never men), telling their beads during Mass, my mom included, a hush or shush competing with the priest's loftier Latin orations. 

After my near-nightly regimen (skip Saturday bath night and Sunday evening because we already went to church), I felt neither satisfaction nor comfort; neither accomplishment nor virtue (though I gladly accepted any indulgences my practice yielded; no small matter). It was a duty. And in such a tense and cliffhanger world, why wasn't everybody doing this?

I was simply doing my bit for world peace. It was not unlike the coinboxes we went trick-or-treating with for UNICEF. Every little bit helps.

However, there was a social price to pay. My aunts and uncles routinely called me "pleban" instead of Paul; it was Polish for parson. It was meant to be affectionate, good-humored, and playful, but I didn't need the sin of scandal to be added to the hot coals of guilt for all those invasions of dirty thoughts. And only later did I come to realize my father was destined to be a priest -- until he wasn't (a phenomenon termed a spoiled priest in Ireland). At a big family picnic, Emily, a distant cousin via marriage from Ansonia, ceremoniously gifted me a pair of rubber, cushiony kneepads. "I use them for gardening. You can use them for your rosary." (So much for my routine being any sort of secret.) There were gales of laughter. My ears burned, my face reddened. But I took the kneepads home and I used them. They did what they were supposed to do.

And people wonder why I don't "get down on my hands and knees" to pray? (It's a misnomer; picture it.) It's not just because I can't find those kneepads.

intersection

As I approached Williams Street where it meets Emerson Avenue, my jaunty cane in hand, the one with the brass eagle for a handle, a low-slung sports car (red, of course) zoomed toward the crosswalk, seemingly oblivious to the stop sign, or not caring, not enough to obey its literal command. And seemingly oblivious to my approaching the crosswalk, preparing to cross Williams Street toward Porter School. Seemingly being the operative word. I did that asshole thing that people, especially old people, do: tried to teach the driver a lesson. I deliberately and purposefully entered the crosswalk ahead of the seemingly zooming car. I was making a statement: look at me, stop. Or, as Ratzo Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy," memorably said: "I'm wawkin' heah!" I did not utter those words or any other. But that was my statement, that was my lesson. The other aspect of the lesson was: obey the stop sign, be law-abiding blah blah. As if any driver anywhere in Western Civilization or anywhere else is going to declare to oneself: "Gee. They're right. I should straighten up. Be a good citizen. I am so happy that stranger taught me this valuable lesson. Made my day. Maybe I saved a life. My life or somebody else's." 

Right. Sure.

Surprise.

The driver stopped. 

As I reached the other side of the street, clearing the crosswalk, the driver, through a half-open window, half-shouted, not aggressively, more informationally, pleadingly, said: "I'm sorry, buddy. I thought you were going to stay on the sidewlk."

"No, no. You're fine. Have a good Thanksgiving, have a good day." 

I didn't exactly say that. But close enough. That was the best I could summon, off the cuff.

Still, I felt like a fool: for my assumption, for my misreading, for a lost opportunity.

As I walked toward West Genesee Street, I wanted to turn back and tell on myself, a confession, the works; tell the driver what was what: the lesson, the surprise, the gratitude for this act of human kindness, this one act of one day in which someone was better than expected or anticipated or imagined.

But he was gone. The car was gone.

My Interrogative Mode (21)

 

 

How do you think you will die?

My Interrogative Mode (20)

 What is your favorite word and your least favorite word?

My Interrogative Mode (19)

 

At what point did you realize that: (a) this is what it's all about (b) this is not what it ever was about (c) all of the above (d) none of the above? 

My Interrogative Mode (18)

 

If not here, where?

My Interrogative Mode (17)

 

If not now, when?

My Interrogative Mode (16)

 

What if [fill in the blank] didn't happen?

My Interrogative Mode (15)

  

If "I was wrong" or "you were right" are not the hardest words to utter, what words are?

My Interrogative Mode (14)

 

Listen: do you want to know a secret?

My Interrogative Mode (13)

 Do you like (love, hate, dislike, etc.) me?

My Interrogative Mode (12)

 What has been the hardest thing to change, give up, or accept?

My Interrogative Mode (11)

How -- by what series of intentional or aleatory clicks, events, or promptings -- is it that you came to be staring at (or listening to an audio transcription of) these words on a screen right now?

My Interrogative Mode (10)

What is your most intriguing (or gnawing, bothersome, frustrating, disappointing, jaw-dropping, providential, mysterious, etc.) what-if?

My Interrogative Mode (9)

Considering that "enough" is also a superabundance (given a certain perspective), have you (or I or we or they) had enough, and enough of what more than anything else?

My Interrogative Mode (8)

 What do you regret?

My Interrogative Mode (7)

 

Whom do you forgive?

My Interrogative Mode (6)

 Whom do you resent?

My Interrogative Mode (5)

 When did you last weep?

 

My Interrogative Mode (4)

 When is your favorite part of the day, and why?

My Interrogative Mode (3)

 Who has most inspired you?

My Interrogative Mode (2)

 

What is your earliest memory?

My Interrogative Mode (1)

 

Where would you go if you could go anywhere right now?

one door closes, another one something-something

--This is the end, my friend.

--That's The Doors, right?

--Right.

--Beautiful friend.

--Right again.

--The end? Fuck, I thought it was the beginning.

--Me, too.

--End, beginning, what's the difference?

--Now you sound like T.S. Eliot.

--What did she sing?

--He. He's a he. A love song.

--Is that what this is?

--A he or a she?

--No, a love song, or something else.

--You're something else.

--You, too.

--Hello, goodbye.

--You say yes.

--No, I say no.

--Sometimes.

--Drive.

--Where?

--Drive, they said.

 

 

in a white room with no curtains

Stoic, severe, Scandinavian. Appallingly clean and neat. Sleek. Sunlight streaming in from industrial loft windows. Yet somehow warm and inviting. Was it the brilliance or the offsetting curves: a sofa, a spacious enveloping futon, an armchair, a bureau, an S-shaped marble counter, curvilinear lighting sconces. A white zigzagging banister leading nowhere. One floor. Open plan. One long and deep closet with a sliding glass door. Jeans, sweaters, dress shirts, dresses, one gown, coats, scarves, fedoras, trousers, pants, a single bathrobe (black). Posing as a museum, featuring an installation of nine lambent votive candles and Gregorian chant intoned from Bose speakers. 

Footsteps, the soft rasp of a key in the lock, the jiggling of the door handle.

uneasy rider

I could do it. I've done it before. I could. This time, I could roll out before she comes to a rolling stop. How cinematic. For you in the peanut gallery wagging your fingers and saying, 'Why? What are you running from?' I say, 'Be infinitesimally original, for fucksake.' Or pretend to be original if you can't do better than that. Spare me. Point taken, okay? I'll nibble on the piece of cheese placed on the floor, if it makes you happy. I am running from my wounds, self- or other-inflicted, running from the self I don't have and never will, from pain, ecstasy, misery, and mystery. Got it! Mystery, that's it. I can't bear not knowing the ending. But who ever does? So juvenile. Running from her, her, and her, and every her imagined or real. Stop. This is fuckin' me up. Stirring the ashes. It's stupid. Speaking of mysteries, she's just that. Mysterious, inpenetrable, inscrutable. And that's exactly what gives me a boner. And precisely what enrages me, its denial, its blinding ignorance of me no matter how much I wave my semaphore scrawny arms. I could jump. To go where, do what? It didn't matter with 'her,' and look where it got me. Hold it. It got me right here, right now, in a new and different passenger seat, a freshly re-upholstered soliloquy. Not moody Hamlet's grandiose and silly 'to be or not to be.' Gawd, no. How gaudy and unseemly. To go or stay. To stay or go. And I don't even have dice to toss. 

running on Not-Quite-Full

I can't even. What am I doing? Or him, for that matter. Where's he going? Where's he want to go? I don't see a "we" in this future. Or now either. What is this? Where am I going? I could just slam the breaks, stop, and say, "Here's where you get out, Mr. No-name." But I doubt I will. But . . . but . . . but . . . .Admit it. You're not ready to cash in your chips. Admit it, I'm not ready to end the game, to give up the danger, to detox from this high. Maybe I'll never get another chance. A chance for what? Ecstatic sex? Such electric silence? Think about it. They could all be wrong. They could all be wrong about communication, soulmates, connection, like minds, all that shit. You never hear them say, 'You're compatible if you can sit in a car and not say anything through the whole fuckin' state of Utah.' In this case, the whole nonfuckin' state. Roll the dice. Flip a card. Exquisite wordlessness or Dante's 89th circle of same. Finishing each other's sentences like some kind of verbal orgasm or doing the same and calling it narcissism for couples. Stop with the couples, please. I told you. No such thing. Speaking of stopping, I could stop at the next corner. I mean, the other one, the one after after that. No one's there. Man, would he be shocked. Or would he?  

you turn

After 3 miles, she slammed the breaks, turned right, then right again into a residential driveway, backed up, drove to the corner, and turned left. Back toward her apartment.

--What are you doing? Where're you going?

--Back there. Going back there.

--Where? What.

--My place. There.

--What. Why.

--I'm going back.

--C'mon. Now you're just fuckin' with me. You're trying to drive me crazy.

--You gonna jump out and hitchhike, like you did before? Now it's my turn to ask questions. What was that all about? Did you murder someone? Rob a bank? No. You'd have a wad of cash. Do you? What were you running from?

--Now's a fine time to ask. After we fucked around, acted like desperados, and went on the lam.

--They're reasonable questions. I should've asked them right off the bat. Calmer. Slower. Quieter.

--We had a fight. One too many. I bailed. Easy.

--Who's 'we'?

--Her and I. She and I. Whatever.

--What kind of fight?

--To be honest, just like this.

--Well, you sure know how to pick 'em, don't you?

--I don't want to go back there. What about you? What was your gig?

--Same.

--Same?

--More or less.

--Great.

 

 

masked & anonymous

Anonymity as aphrodisiac. Not just not knowing the names, but no name for this territory, this wilderness, this nowhere they were drilling deeper into. Its fierce furtiveness. Astonishing forbiddenness. The anonymity fueling the excitement, as if in a conspiracy to fend off all accounting, all reckoning. Reckless danger. And yet the leaden security blanket of absent nomenclature, nameless outlaws, on the run. No name title category definition classification taxonomy to hold onto or to let go of.

But what of the naked call in the night, the step before the cliff, the whispered secret? To whom is it addressed? 

Return to sender?

Masked marauders.

Feral pilgrims with no destination, no map, no names.

house call

Based on the state of her car (soda cans, coupons, store receipts, a load of laundry, face masks, coins, shoes, a jacket, protein-bar wrappers, old New Yorkers, a copy of Lord of the Flies and of the Brothers Karamazov and of Lolita, half of a bra), he expected similar dishevelment and clutter at her apartment. But no. Its tidiness was blinding. A pared-down spartan rigor tended to by what angels or housekeepers was anybody's guess. It threw him off: a spatial version of jet lag. One bedroom, futon on the floor. no blinds, drapes, or shades. A open space less than a den or living room, by the kitchen: a squat coffee table with a white candle. Few-enough clothes and artifacts to enable a speedy getaway. The apartment's leanness conjured up a gong of silence.

 --Okay. Let's go.

--That's it?

--That's it.

the unkindest cut

A paring knife. Superior quality. forged, coated, sleek, ready. Anjou pears, Envy or Fuji apples, Havarti cheese. Its sharpness not depth. At the rest stop, the same one they went to the first time. Enter the stall. Sit on the closed lid. Open the purse. Take out the knife. Anticipation married to excitement: pain, fear, secret, danger, release. No, don't. Not this time. But I must. Just this once. Just this one last time. It's killing me. He's killing me. The suspense. The tension. Killing me. Killing. The first stab, a few inches, pierces her forearm, halts her breath. She knows she won't scream. Too practiced. The fresh red, its frank declaration. Someone in the next stall. Huge exhale. Right arm shaking. Breathe. Steady. Apply pressure. Careful. First the toilet paper, then the bandage. What? Where are they? Here. The bandage, then another, criss-cross. Stand up. Flush the toilet. Wash hands. Dryer. Survey the stalls. No one. The knife. In the bin. Push down the paper towels. Harder. More. More paper towels. Exit.

the talkies

A river bursting over its banks.

--Thanks for splitting the motel bill.

--'Sallright.

--Which way we going? We already went this way.

--I gotta stop off, pick up some things.

--Stop off? Where?

--Home. Such it is, such as it was.

--Stop the world, I want to get off.

--It was a play, or a movie. Maybe a song. Maybe all three.

--We're in it together.

--Innit. As Brits say.

--What is it that we're in?

--A car, stupid.

--What's that smell?

--Smells like teen spirit.

--Wrong age.

--Wrong decade.

--Try, century.

--How much longer?

--Beats me.

--What's your name?

--You go first.

--No, you.

--Never mind. I like it this way.

--Me too.

--Masked and anonymous.

 

conversion of the pagans

He turned onto his back, giving up the sleep pose.

"Come here."

But he wanted to say, "Where the fuck were you?"

She caught his rage, and the fear under that; his eyes, not his voice.

Where's the knife? In the purse, on the dresser.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Lion tamer. 

She shuffles off her sandals, walks to the bed, and lies down beside him, then twists, turns, and shimmies on top of him.

She can feel the last waves of his storm settle.

Conversion of the pagans. 

To what religion? What ancient rites?

The candles and the incense.

The slaughter and the lamb.

The familiar hymns.

the presence of absence

Dream-riddled, he moved to spoon her. Without face or voice in the dream, he no less knew it was about her, about them. They were dozing on a train. Night. Winking hamlets. Europe, in one of those passenger compartments seen in old movies, the Orient Express. Somebody, a conductor or a gendarme, was swiping the door open, startling them. He bolted awake, bathed in sweat. Where was she? What . . .? Why did she...? What did I do? Her keys were gone. Check the parking lot. The car's still there. Okay. Calm down. He placed his head back on the pillow, trying to summon the dream back to life. He closed his eyes and paced his breathing. The door handle jiggled. She came in. (He assumed it was her; it had to be.) He kept his eyes closed, willing an unnatural stillness, doing his best imitation of himself sleeping. 

 

walk on the rewild side

He was sleeping. An early riser, she feared she might miss something, of what sort she didn't know. She slid on sweatpants, stepped into sandals, clicked open the door, entered the hallway, and realized she needed to grab the old-fashioned, no-tech room key. The sun wasn't up, but dawn's first blush hummed at the horizon, if you looked for it and if you wanted to imagine it. Sandals were a poor choice. Rocky terrain, darkness, poor footing, snakes, what-not. She didn't want to wander in the woods or below the cliff. Not because there were no paths or it was frosty but because she knew herself. She knew her own impulsiveness and her love affair with obsessiveness. She'd walk till she starved without thinking twice. So she found a rock, a huge boulder tilted back against the cliff wall, snug. A flat cold saddle to sit on. Is this what smokers crave, this exhalation? But smoking would despoil it. Was that a mourning dove or an owl? She didn't know the call of one from the other. Wide-spaced chirps of songbirds, not into it yet. An orchestra warming up. A rustle in the thicket to the right. None of it unexpected; none of it disturbing her reverie. Wrong. No reverie, no night-day-dawn fantasia. Something else dreamlike. She chuckled. Somebody else, some other author, would have her pondering what am I doing? what's going on? where am I going? but not her.  

aria / him

That's why I wanted to keep the lights on. Those dark-chestnut eyes, pools of molten lava. And they scared me like lava. Once we started (excuse me, once she started), I swear the temperature in the room went up 8 degrees. When I was hitchhiking, I spotted her eyes before she pulled over.  Her stare fixed me. Magnetized me. You'd think I was a fuckn zombie. None of that mattered once I started tearing off her moth-eaten teal cashmere sweater, no bra under it (if she'd only known my momentary disappointment), and yanked at her jeans like an inexperienced sophomore. All the while kissing but it wasn't kissing, not in any vernacular I had ever learned. The sheer ecstasy of a new language, ok, a new tongue. I was reckless, unsubtle, impatient. Not like me, really. So she tortured me all the more. Which pissed me off, and drove me on. No, it wasn't sportfucking, though we could hardly call it love. My payback torture was not allowing her to take off her panties. Take that. I don't smoke, but I wanted a cigarette afterward. Hilarious. For a person who doesn't sweat that much, it was like the teenage days I caddied in August: the wide expanse of my lower back a swamp.    

aria / her

I knew he wouldn't hurt me. I can tell. But I had the knife anyway, the knife he didn't know about, and still doesn't. His hands. A piano player's, not a plumber's. The long skinny fingers, the veins spidered. His soft palms. How could such delicate masterpieces brutalize? Right. Don't go there. From the second he got in the car, I knew he'd be a sensual kisser, not so much the curvature or fleshiness, more the blend of pout and promise. To be truthful, that's the reason I stopped for him. I'm good at spotting shit like that. Good eyes, better intuition. The roughness surpised me a little, not that I minded. It didn't hurt because I was ready. And I made him wait. God, I love torturing him. I made him a beggar, a hungry vulture. A pauper and a prince on a stallion. Squeezing shut my eyes in the well-lighted room, I became a tawdry cliche in a cheap novel: scouring my memory for a forgetten vocabulary, saying fuckit: stir fry lavender musk mint saliva sweat an unnamed deodorant faintly feminine unisex deaf almost deaf for a second faint-fear full fuller deep deeper more coriander Clorox bang bang over for him but not for me, no not me. 

Still. 

But I should've paid attention to those eyes.

 

tempest

The mewling and growling of cats. The howling of ravenous wolves. Barking. Shriek screeches of owls and snipes. Snake slitherings dancing tangos with oysters. And the scratches, ripped sheets, fallen drapes, and ripped rug. Grunts. Climbing up from the storm cellar surveying the carnage. Clearing. Calm.

Room 22, first night.

 

motel california

After the highway exit, on a dark winding road with no guardrails or reflectors, they found a bungalow motel surrounded by pines and rocky cliffs. Better to say the motel found them. It sprouted up from nowhere.

He pulled in, road dust rising and twigs popping.

Vera behind the counter: "How many nights?"

They looked at each other, paused a second, and shrugged their shoulders.

"Twin or queen?"

He says "twin"; she says "queen."

"Vlad, dear, is 22 ready?"

"Yes, Vera, verily."

"Room 22. And I need a credit card."

They each produce a card and slap it on the counter like blackjack players with a winning hand.

"Split it 50-50."

"No smoking."

summit talks

-- Where we going?

-- I don't know, like I honestly don't know.

-- You don't know?

-- Why should I?

-- Where do you want to go?

-- Good question. That's another good question.

-- Why?

-- Why what?

-- Why are you on the road?

-- You too.

-- You get the twenty?

-- Yup.

-- I can drive.

-- I know. 

This they said in near-unison, he following her by half a beat. 

They were reaching the peak of a modest mountain, considered a steep hill in some quarters. A valley with hamlets dotted the horizon before them, tired lights from the night before twinkling, morning mists falling and lifting lazily. Beyond that, more hills and valleys -- unless it was a sleep-deprivation illusion. Which was possible after nearly 21 straight hours of driving, interrupted only by pee stops beside the car, shielded by a door. 

They burst out, near-unison, in stupid laughter.

-- Drive, she said.

sic transit

They rode in silence. After all, she had extended a literal open-door invitation. Neither one of them asked about destination or purpose; neither offered a clue. A chess game without pieces or chessboard. This went on for a good twenty, thirty miles, into the gloaming. No phone checks, no humming, no shifting in their seats. A rest stop loomed in eight miles. He could see she was running on empty. She slowed and drifted into the expansive, well-lighted rest area anchored by a large building with fast-food joints, stores with souvenirs and local produce and crafts, and toilets. As she paused before parking, he fished a twenty out of his left pocket, placed it on the dash, opened the door, and darted inside in search of a bathroom. She took the money, put it in her jeans back pocket, and angled into a parking space. She got out and locked the car with her fob, waited for the confirming honk, and then repeated it. 

Will he come back? Do I care? Should I ditch him? He doesn't scare me. But I've been wrong before.

He skipped the handwashing, seized by a fear.

Shit. I better get out there. She's going to drive off. I just know it.

When he emerged outside, he scanned the parking lot and didn't see the Rabbit. His breathing raced, until he spotted the car, empty, in the back corner, not far from where truckers assembled as they called it a night. He started strolling toward the car, then stopped himself. I'm hungry, plus who knows where the next spot is and whether she'll stop there. Sounds like a five-piece chicken tenders and a large coffee. Maybe she'll let me drive. She doesn't know about the DWIs. What if she comes out and doesn't see me, and says fuck it? Hurry up.

She stepped outside and couldn't find the car. It was right there. I know it was. He stole it, I bet he stole it, cocksucker.

hitchhiker

His right thumb poked up in the air, neither waving at nor halting the onslaught of cars, trucks, motorcycles. In the vespers desert landscape, he looked like a caricature of a saguaro cactus. Walking backward, he was careful not to trip over an unnoticed branch, cobble, or Coke can. And if he were to trip, he'd fall away from traffic, onto the shoulder. At least that's how he was training himself. The vehicles that zoomed by left a concussive wake of dust and sound. Hitchhike. So Sixties. Did anyone do it anymore? Did fate dole out the same risks and perils? Was it illegal in Arizona?

He was afraid of nightfall. He decided he'd turn around and walk along with the traffic parallel to him on the left, if he had to. But he knew all he would need was one distracted driver to pull the curtains down. Who knows, could a nondistracted driver barrel into a stranger on purpose? The raucous and-riled up times said, Yes.

But he didn't have to worry about such a scenario, not this night. A silver Volkswagen Rabbit with its right signal blinking slowed down in the right lane and churned up the gravel. He instinctively moved farther into the shoulder and looked to size up the driver.

The car rolled to a stop, its engine idling. She leaned across to the passenger side of the two-door and shoved it open.

"Get in."

 

 

the short hello, the long goodbye

"Proper greeting." That was her way of saying, "kiss me." It was a command as much as a request. It was a thing. Their code. He'd comply. And then he'd immediately wipe his lips with his sleeve. That was a thing, too. Saliva. Germs. But that was their greeting ritual, such as it was. It was no mating dance. Gawd no. Quite the opposite. Typically it played out when he got into the car. She always drove. He had lost his license after the third DWI. 

"Proper greeting."

He ignored it, and sullen and silent in the passenger seat.

"Didn't you hear me?"

Nothing.

She shifted into drive.

Instead of turning left, she took a right, and then another right. The car sailed onto the interstate ramp, heading west into the sunset.

"Where ya goin'?"

"Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck."

"What?! What are you talkin' about? What got into you? What are you doing? Where are we going?"

"You fuckin' heard me."

Silence.

At the toll booth, she took the 20 mph E-ZPass lane.

After a stony, infinite 30 miles, he said, "Pull over. Let me out. Just let me the fuck out. I'm done. Stop!"

She crawled to a stop on the shoulder.

The lavender rouge sunset was postcard perfect.

He opened the door, not looking at her. He got out.

She put her left blinker on and pulled back onto the Thruway.

After another 30 miles, she turned the radio on. As she scanned and scoured for music, nothing came on out in the country, just crackles of news and preacher stations.

She pushed the button to turn the radio off.

She turned the headlights on.

A song came into her head, something from the eighties. She couldn't remember the words, barely the tune. Something about a chameleon. 

She hummed it, the best she could remember, gave a finger to the windshield, and burst into laughter. 

 

free air

Border crossings were the hardest part. More accurately, immediately after crossing the border the adjustment was difficult, even perilous. We often said we would welcome a buffer zone, some sort of transition space. It's awfully challenging to travel from one climate, atmosphere, and culture into another one totally opposite. As born and raised Confrairians, we naturally took air for granted. We never thought of it as a commodity. Air wasn't something bought or sold. It was there for the taking, no questions asked. We were born into this and never imagined any other regime existed, or could exist. The first crack in the wall of this thinking came with the arrival of the first Contrairian refugess. Who are they? we thought. We knew something was amiss. Their pale pallor, skinniness, hoarse voices, and thirst. It goes without saying: their difficulty breathing. After all, COPD was practically in their DNA. So, free air was our birthright. A given. But not so for the Contrairians. They had to refill their cylinders daily. From what we have heard, the irony was that they had to purchase their air at old gas stations, from machines that said FREE AIR. How's that for bitter irony? And cruelty. They told us that the FREE AIR pumps only took quarters. At last count, 24 quarters for each day-cylinder per person. Adds up, doesn't it? We're just learning about this, but apparently the Contrairians have lung portals for refills. It seems logical to assume that the cylinders contain pure oxygen. We do not know what their atmosphere consists of. The two countries are undoubtedly sealed off by some sort of shield or vacuum. We don't know. We should know. It's a state secret. (We can't help but wonder if there's clandestine collusion and black marketerring on each side of the border, though we can't imagine what THEY would have of value for Confrairians.) The future is bleak. Air wars are a virtual certainty. And we have nowhere to flee to, not that we know of, not yet. Maybe someone reading this can send a message in a bottle, or in an empty cylinder. Something. Anything.

The Yellow Tiger Inn

It was tourist season. We blended in. Sure, the crowds were pandemic-thin, but visitors stood out: Hawaiian shirts, ballcaps, sundresses, shorts, Birkenstocks, poodles, Audis, Teslas, gray, more gray, and tides of pale-skinned ex-urbanites. Folks on the large wrap-around verenda: knives gently sawing salmon or steak, forks overturned Euro-style, chilled Chablis, tea, coffee, tiramisu, chatter, clatter, laughter. We were just some anonymous passers-by.

I had never seen so many rooms before. Correct that. I had, in skyscrapered Vegas-style mega-hotels. Pictures of them. Here it was a surprise. Four stories high and a full block deep. Hundreds of rooms, though we didn't count them.

We ambled through long musty hallways with ancient carpets, paintings from the 19th and 20th century, sconces, majestic weighty drapes, ocean-liner beds, bookshelves with classics and never-made-its.

-- C'mon, let's go in here.

-- What?

-- C'mon. Don't be scared. Let's ...

-- You kiddin'?! Really? No.

I took him by the elbow and ushered him into The Clemenceau. Cavernous. To be honest, I did not usher him; I gently persuaded him with a hand grazing his thigh, wandering into his Life Valley. I led him like a lamb, his doe eyes wide and his teenage heart racing.

We did it. More than once. I lost count. That was predictable and easy. And gales of fun. I didn't know until a year and a half later that that was his inaugural romp, his Clemenceau Originale. Father of Victory. The Tiger. My own feline conquest.

As evening fell, we strolled the other floors. On the second floor, we found a darkened room, closed the creaking door, creaked the bedsprings with our raucous youth, and fell asleep like it was nobody's business.

What could be more natural? Easy come, easy go.

Except we didn't go.

We played Stowaway.

Again and again.

First it was daring, then a habit, then a routine.

No one ever questioned us.

Housekeeping, porters, chefs, maitre d's, janitors, maintenance, painters, plumbers. front desk, back desk, security. no one.

Why would they? We were part of the family. "Always had been," they'd whisper to each other.

The first year, I took a few steps off the veranda and tripped, fell flat on my face. Road rash, bruises, and sore forearms. Thought nothing of it.

A few months later, he wanted to go out for an evening stroll, shake off cabin fever. When he put his hand on the brass door handle he was jolted by a shock so fierce he fell backward.

We experimented.

Exit by window, the old prisoner tied-sheets bit. We kept bouncing back up, as if the sheets were bungee cords. It was funny, until it wasn't.

Climb to the roof. Try the ancient rusty fire escape. Another bout of electroshock "therapy."

Burrow into the basement. Find a subterranean route to the sewer. Nope.

Nothing worked. It wasn't hard to figure out. Why frustrate ourselves? No sense succumbing to futile, impotent gestures.

I write letters.

Nearly every day.

I post them in the house mailboxes: by the lobby, the gift shop, by the elevator on each floor (the old-fashioned mail chutes).

I write to friends (though the addresses in my address book are likely obsolete; and the friends may not be alive), my parents, sisters, bothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, old classmates, even a few enemies.

I am waiting for an answer.

Just one. 

fire tornado

They called it a fire tornado. Or was it tornado fire? Either way, it adds up to hellish fire hellishly swirling and fulminating. Whatever you call it, it's an indescribable inferno windsweeping into new words and definitions, invading lightning-quick into endtimes. Out of nowhere. Just like that: gone. Blink of an eye. Burnt to an unholy crisp. Still smoldering. As the heavens and earth scream out pleading for rain, give us rain, or anything resembling rain or performing like rain, drown this misery, quench the unquenchable. Its deafening roar. Its machinelike hunger and thirst. Its searing vocabulary with new flaming syllables. Rain, begging for rain. Or whatever (human, divine, natural, mechano-chemical) intervention can intercede with torrents of mercy. Whatever it takes to simmer down, to de-parch, to oceanize this fiery avalanche.

swinger

Driving down Maplewood Avenue, off to the right, just missing the windshield's blind spot, she thought she saw a swing sweep upward, a swing suspended from an unseen branch, its sight muffled by branches and leaves, the apogee a flickered flash in the afternoon's blaze. A rider not discerned: male or female, young or old. A white dress? Impossible to say. Too quick. The light turned green. The insistent beeping horn of the car in back.

cardboard ghosts of future past

Back in the old days, before cardboard cutouts depicted demographically apportioned faces, before stone-still, silent, opaque audience members dressed for the occasion (sports, symphonies, operas, bullfights), actual people were in the seats, stands, arenas, galleries. Can you believe it? In those days, people gathered en masse, in the flesh, prey to each other's coughs and sneezes, victims of unwittingly and unwillingly shared particulate matter. Vulnerable to any stranger's invisible or visible imprint. In the olfactory wake of a curnucopia of scents: body odor, body scent, soap, sweat, perfume, eau de toilette, cologne, and a gazillion unnamed human animal exhalations and excretions. Are you taking all this down? Believe it or not, in those days people thronged and congregated: in bars, churches, pubs, classrooms, assemblies, rallies, union halls, corridors of government, conclaves of commerce. Now, as you know, in every instance, such breathing, pulsing crowds (and individuals) have now been displaced by cardboard simulacra, two-dimensional facsimiles of mute stillness. You don't remember this? Of course not. It was before your time. It was before grim and horrid circumstances forced a consensus of care and protection: social distancing, masks, sanitary measures, disinfection. When these efforts failed, people endured lockdowns, shutdowns, closeouts, wall-offs, barrier-bastions, sealant seizing, communal-closeting, superquarantining. New words were invented to describe new fortifications. But it was too late. The damage had been done. The viral wildfires had, well, gone viral. Those who had mocked the seriousness of it all, those who attributed it to a political hoax or a foreign scheme were in the front lines of failure. They were among the legions to succumb first. But not all of them, not all the disbelievers fell to cruel fate and cold reality. Some escaped. Some went into exile, their whereabouts still unknown. However, the masses had no such escape hatch. Instead, they made the best of a novel way of living, three-dimensional forms floating in and around their cardboard fellow citizens. They learned to befriend the cutouts. They even importuned upon the cutouts to imitate them, to serve as substitutes, ersatz personalities, avatars. In this way, large numbers of the Three Dimensionals found gainful employment -- such as it was -- as designers, painters, artists, portraitists, fabricators, shippers. And so the old days became the new days, and everyone forgot about the old days. That is why I wrote this letter to you, my grandchildren.

The Seagull-Raven Affair

Out the front door, she sees a billowing flash from the edge of her peripheal vision. Is it white? A rippling sailing. Startling. Gust. A seagull, it swoops, arcs, and lassoes swiftly forward and above, squawking. Squawking to her. Persistent. Loops back up, down, and then around her head, circumscribing a vanilla-ish neon halo. She walks faster. Coincidence nudged aside in favor of some sort of omen, meaning, or sacrament. She hits the car fob. From nowhere, a raven intercepts the seagull's flight, just above the car. Harlequin contrasts of black and white. Checkerboard. The raven has a few words of its own to shout. A flock arrives, as if on call. She gets in the car. It doesn't start. She tries again. It turns over. She can't get out of there fast enough.

The Long Form [PLEASE PRINT]

[LAST NAME] [MIDDLE INITIAL] [FIRST NAME]

[ADDRESS LINE 1]

[ADDRESS LINE 2]

[CITY, TOWN, VILLAGE, HAMLET] [STATE, PROVINCE, DISTRICT, PRINCIPALITY]

[COUNTRY, SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS STATE, EXTRATERRESTRIAL COLONY]

[DATE OF BIRTH]

[SOCIAL INSECURITY NUMBER]

[DATE OF SATORI, SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT, SURRENDER, AWAKENING]

[MOST RECENT EMPLOYER]

[REASON FOR LEAVING]

[MOST RECENT LOVER]

[REASON FOR LEAVING]

[FAVORITE POET]

[EARLIEST MEMORY]

[MOST MEMORABLE PASSAGE OF 'REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST' BY MARCEL PROUST]

[MOST RECENT LIE]

[PERCENTAGE SUCCESS RATE WITH REBLOSSOMING ORCHIDS]

[PROPER SPELLING OF BOUGAINVILLEA]

[ETYMOLOGY OF HIBISCUS]

[DREAM DESTINATION, DESTINATION OF DREAMS, DESTINY OF DESIRE]

[ALIBI FOR MIDNIGHT, JULY 23, 2019]

[PREMIUM REGRET 1]

[SECRET TRIUMPH 1]

[NEVER REVEALED TO ANYONE ANYWHERE BEFORE]

[YOUR BACK PAGES]

[MY FRONT MATTER]

[PLACE OF BIRTH]

[FONDEST FETISH]

[DESOLATION ROW]

[OFFSPRING SPRUNG, UNSPRUNG, SPARED]

[CELESTIAL COORDINATES]

[DIVINE PARAMETERS]

[HUMAN SCENT, SIGNATURE, FRAGRANCE, IMPRINT, ECHO]

[HANDWRITING SAMPLE]

[CRESCENDO, CODA, CLIMAX, COMMINGLING, COMMUNION, CHIASMUS]

[THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY BLANK]

curbside pickup

In the old days, in the days before the epidemic became a pandemic, when they innocently strolled boulevards, shook hands, hugged, and sneezed or coughed with abandon, curbside pickups were reserved for nefarious exchanges on streets with no lights, beyond the surveillance cameras, beyond the arms of the law and conventional decency. Unlike during the coronavirus age, curbside pickups were not advertised with lawn signs. Retail merchants were discreet; they mumbled. They didn't advertise curbside pickups by boasts and neon. The demimonde was a subterranean circus in the old days, secret and raucous. It's private culture made its entreaties all the more alluring. But when curbside pickups went mainstream the sizzle fizzled. What fun is a curbside pickup that is all aboveground, on the up and up, family-oriented, and sanctioned by all authorities, federal, state, and local? Curbside pickups became so legit as to garner praise from politicos for feeding the economic engine. Where was the praise when the economic engine was steaming ahead at full throttle on Demimonde Drive, no speed limit, no red lights? Why was the civic championing muted despite a rampaging-rapids revenue stream? They know why: pride, respect, decency. They wanted to keep the curbside pickups discreet, charming, and wink-winkable. Those days are gone, perhaps forever. The signs said Call Ahead. Curbside Pickups Only. Stay in Your Car. The cars lined up. A parade. A festive flotilla. What took so long?

swiped left

Left? I meant right. Dyslexia is ruining my life. Spatial dyslexia. Is there a word for that? Dyslocusia? Dyslocalia? Left, right, up, down, who can keep track these days, such polarities, mere labels. I swiped left. I wanted to swipe right. Her Joan Baez eyes, Salma Hayek hair, Ingrid Bergman mystery, Grace Slick smile. It was all there. Plus her Ph.D., dog breeding, charities, operatic compositions, Harley Davidsons, weightlifting championships, MacArthur genius grant, David Hockney collection. The whole shebang. Down the eternal drain of dead-end, missed opportunities, late train, passing glances. The whole bit: the subway car going the other way. Frozen in time. Eyes locked. Cinematic longing. Sayonara. Arrivederci. There's a Craigslist category for these lost souls. No, no, I'm done with remorse, self-pity, self-aggrandizement, regret. To be fair, life gives us lots of do-overs, reboots, mulligans. Recalculating. Redial. Draft version. Revision. Track Changes. Recovery file. Is there some programming trick in the dating app? Oh, the oops of oh-no. Swipechosis. Swipal envy. The evaporation of what-if even before the ink was dry.

FOMOed.

Next.

Route 175, 1972

I picked up the payments from Eddie Finnegan, $56 a month. My first car. A 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. Lots of power, though I didn't know, or care, about that stuff. The kids I taught at the high school filled me in as to how many cc's or liters, or whatever it was. It was cooler than I first knew: a speedometer consisting of a rolling cylinder you viewed on the dashboard straight in front of the driver, headlights that lifted up so that they looked like mechanical, futuristic spaceship eyes. They stubbornly and frequently stuck open. Eventualy the one on the right stayed half-open, giving the appearance of a driver whose eyes were barely open or droopy. Which was true. I drove drunk countless times. Only fender benders. One night, my birthday, 90 miles per hour on Seneca Turnpike. Why? Death wish? The invincibilty of youth? Unconscionable and indefensible. How did I survive? Or those in collateral range. A big hump through the middle for the automatic transmission. No, not so much a cliche as to escape my virginity in the back seat but not for lack of trying (another cliche). Yes. Late bloomer. But it was the car I owned in the time when that rite of passage transpired. Why am I saying all this? Like some scene in a movie, her hand on my thigh, beer can between my legs, radio full blast, windows down, her honey hair sailing out the window and shrouding her face. Screaming and laughing. For a minute or two.  

valedictory volleys

do you have any last requests

like a favorite song or something

hello goodbye

any parting words of wisdom

a word to the wise

the wise don't need no wisdom

or words

like a last meal

be serious

bon appetit

pass the ketchup

what about blindfolds

for me or the firing squad

sayonara

can I have a cigarette

au revoir

spare change

hasta la vista

do you take cream or sugar

down the hatch

a leap of faith

shake it up, baby

 

doc said I have essential tremors

I get that

who doesn't

I know, right

a little trembling is downright essential now and then

you got that right

especially in this day and age

it's the dawn of another age

or another rage

for real

maybe an earthquake is the planet's essential tremors

letting off seismic steam

try a little tenderness

is it contagious

ain't no cure for love

Love Potion Number 9

keep searching

my teeth chatter

who could blame them

the words they've uttered

makes me judder

in my own skin

my nervous envelope

as Proust said

remembering things past

and present

 

Harry and Hiro

don't do it, Harry
we have to; we must
don't do it
then surrender, Hiro
we can't
you mean, you won't
millions will die
they will, either way
think about it, the children
yes, think about it
but such a bomb . . .
you hold the key
no, you hold the key
peace
war

honor

shame

if..., then

then..., if

up in smoke

incinerated

the past

leveled

the present

scarred

the future

fallout

forever

sometimes I wonder

do you
ever
think of me
sometimes I wonder
what if
what if not
and everything in between
sometimes I wonder
that I wonder
which is wonder aplenty
sometimes I suppose
I wonder
which is just as good
sometimes I forget
to wonder about wonder
which is my loss
though wonder
still awaits
me there
fresh and fierce
patient and planted
mountain solid
and the trickling stream
the chickadee
and snow spilling off the branch

cell mates

you threw your phone away?
just like that
out the window
on the highway
me too
really?
into the lake
gone 
tossed
really
it was hard
scary
then it wasn't
right
why
I'm not even sure
gone
tossed
just like that
brave new world
land of the free
the bearable lightness of less
is more
and then some 

hit 'return'

where were you
I was around, over there
where
on the other side
I have returned
I see that
I told you that "I shall return"
I don't remember that
you can look it up
I did. General Douglas MacArthur, and all that
it's complicated
what isn't
hero or coward
stunt or strategy
whatever works
whatever that means
why "shall" and not "will"
that's a whole nother story
other
what
whole other
either or

you talkin' to me?

pardon me
you heard me
no, really, I didn't
I said, "to be or not to be"
that's what I thought
so you did hear me
point taken
I'll say it again
I dare you
"to be or not to be"
let's face it, that's pretty fuckn grandiose
how
c'mon
it ain't grandiose, it's basic
like "back to basics"
I've never understood what that meant
it's elemental, fundamental, mental, unsentimental
now you sound like early Dylan
nothing wrong with that
it's alright, ma
elementary, my dear Watson
he never said that
not exactly
anyway, where were we
right here
right here is where we always are
nowhere, man
now here
clever
slow down, you better slow down
break it down
when you said, "to be or not to be" were you serious
of course I was
serious as in suicidal
what, where do you get that
well, you're standing alone all serious and shit
it's a fecking play, I'm a character, on a stage
all the world's a stage
bingo
the play's the thing
how 'bout "play's the thing"
as in juggling, like the king's Fool
not that kind of juggling, more like thi
jousting
joisting
James Joyceting
ca-ching
bada-bing
to be
or
not to be
sproing
back to Square One
exactly
approximately
approximately King Hamlet
that's rich, even royal
royal manna
give that man a cigar
he she it them
that, too
 

where did it go

things don't just disappear
it was right here
I used it yesterday
I looked there
did you take it
this is driving me crazy
where did you put it
if I knew, would I be looking for it
I remember where I used it last
it's not there
where did it go
I need it
this is so annoying
what?
I looked there
I looked there too
over and over
I'm losing my mind
where did it go
retrace your steps
I did
do it again
more slowly
I did
do it again
ok ok
it's gotta be somewhere
what if it's lost
I'll give it one more try
what?
what is that
how could it be
I already looked there
sandwiched in there
you can't blame me
it was between the other two
at least I'm not crazy
what a relief
I knew it was somewhere
but somewhere was nowhere

saving grace

you know, I saved a baby
what do you mean you saved a baby; from what?
it was choking
it was choking?
it was choking, a newborn
where?
I don't know where
what do you mean you don't know where, what?
even if I knew I wouldn't tell you
stop playing games
what games? 
so, tell me
tell you what?
what happened
I was working at 911, the mother called
and...
and I walked her through it, what to do
like what?
turn the baby over, pound the back
pound?
well, not exactly pound
so it worked?
it did
it did?
yes, thank God
or thanks to you
both
both?
both me and God
the three of you?
yeah, okay, then, sure, me, Mom, and God
the baby, too
true, why not, throw the baby in there, too
saving grace
if you say so
I do
fair enough
was that her name?
hunh?
Grace
I don't know, I never found out
good story
it's not a story
but it is
if you say so

Pittsfield aria to myself on a Saturday afternoon

along North Street cascading light its vestiges fading eagle head of my cane poised against the mailbox eagle The Eagle a building posing opiod optics no one seen no one heard vacant lot the tottering totem swaying was that a needle in her hand a long train a-comin' a tall train a-goin' I went down to the station walked The Common the old high school how about that gazebo mother father child reunion flag-draped baby Lake Pond Silver streets Bank Row alley in the shadow Crawford Square the Marketplace wear your mask I'm masked and anonymous why aren't you where was Melville when he wrote Moby Dick here Lolita by the pool her back to me unknown unbeknownst to one and all hibiscus hideaway the tenement testament still standing for all to see beware of the dog private property keep out or is it keep in I can't tell anymore can you

Overwrite Overpass

haven't we been here before
before when
you know, back in December
westbound, not eastbound
we're eastbound now
now I remember
every rest stop
'I Shall Be Released'
over and over again a loop
remember when I said it's over before it began
right
that I'd never see her again
but we're on the other side now
son
brother
going the other way
coming and going
what's the going rate
going and coming
what's the difference
true, what's the diff
this is the other side
the opposite way
no direction home
none at all
my breath smoke in the night
rising halo
the ribbon of road unfurling in the dark
radio silent, CD off
I shall be released
arriving before I get there
but this is the other side
I know, you said that
if you can't erase it
at least record over it
overwrite it
play it backwards
pay it forward
in the rearview mirror
frosted in the skeleton night
still as an anvil
before it lands
I told you so
you didn't want to hear it
I brushed it off
lake-effect snow
on my hair
off your coat
the windshield
wiping the window
back and forth
forth and back
swishing for the clean slate
never slated
barely sated
singsong sing
north of Sing Sing
lunch for one
tea for two
for her and for you
the check, please
let's hit the road
wake up, a little Susie
on the road
you and me
me alone
as I always knew
always will
the ghost of a chance
lost in a dream
as it was in the beginning
is now and ever shall be
world without end
love without beginning