Unmoored

we rode a ferry

anchors aweigh

poses proffered

tossed aside

touched ashore

two of us

an island

so long ago and far away

moorings mourned

one door closes . . . again and again and again

Karl and I sat by the door. It was wintertime. Berlin. Several times in the past we had met at this same smoke-hazed Unter den Linden coffee shop to conduct business, interlaced with personal revelations, asides, and disclosures. What sort of business. Marketing concepts, content, mailers, brochures, slim jims, as Karl called them. But this time it was just us, discoursing discursively. No agenda. None I was aware of. True, there's always some sort of agenda, even if it is no more than get coffee, talk, drink, restroom, leave. Coffee and convo. BAM. The door slammed, sending tremors through the entranceway and derailing our verbal freight trains, barely on track in any event. How are the kids. One is in Fiji, righ-- SLAM. The door again. Maybe we should move over here. Too cramped. The back of my chair would butt against the table where Madame Defarge was knitting beside the guillotine. We needed space for some semblance of the cone of silence in case we were to drift into food porn, sedition, erudition, nihilism, co-dependency, or state secrets. Too cold to prop the door open. Don't they know this really bother-- BAM customers, at least these two customers. I mean this is bad marketing, don't you think. Curiously, some patrons would exit, we would brace ourselves and wince, and yet no crashing thud. Like some elaborate torture, we did not know when and if. How about one of those tables in back. Occupado. Do you have a sledgehammer on you. To the barista: Is there anything you can SLAM do about that door. We're aware. I know, but... Try to ignore it, just live with it. And what are your kids up to. How many grandchildren do you have. Say, do you have a question mark I can borrow. How old are-- BLAM. My brother Hans used to live what seemed like a yard from the S-Bahn train tracks on Warschauer Strasse (I wish I could make that elegant double S). The whole apartment would shimmy and rattle. It was just there. The tracks. The train ruthlessly on schedule. A trope. Background. Black noise. SLAM I thought we could do the drop here, the brush-off. Veteran spies shouldn't have to shout their secrets or write notes to each other back and forth. BAM Hand it off to me as you get cream for your coffee and as I'm returning with a croissant. Hide it in the croissant, you say. SLAM The jolt interrupts the pass-off, and I drop it on the floor, the napkin, the diagram, the schematic, the codes, stick figures, my venial sins. Out of nowhere, Mrs. (Madame to you) Defarge drops her needles and picks up une serviette d'espionage en papier. BLAM Now I get it. They knew. They knew all along. She knew, surely. The door closer, or door check, if you prefer, was removed on purpose. No one told us. No one told me. I can't answer for Karl. SLAM And Madame Defarge is out the door, the one unchecked. She's gone. Unchecked. No one stopped her. Karl, why did you ask me here. Tell me that. BLAM. Can you. SLAM.

handling industrially

The sign on the white work van in the parking lot said "Industrial Handling" in black letters. Duly noted. I entered the Shopping Temple (i.e., mall) at the Lord & Taylor entrance and strolled through the aisles, passing through invisible clouds of fragrances pour homme, pour femme, pour vous, pour moi, pour anyone. Without being asked for a passport or visa, I passed from the spice-, herb-, mineral-, and floral-infused fragrance domains into a new country, The Land of Emollients. Behold a liquid arsenal of softening secrete agents; salves, balms, potions, lotions, creams. A festival of mollificaring, appeasing, pacifying, soothing. Just the word, emollient, softening its surrounding syllables. A haven of healing for those of us marred by Industrial Handling. Those of us man[gender-neutral]handled, scarred, scratched, or atrophied into scaly, itchy Walking Wounded. We the thick-skinned survivors of industrial-scale emotional, perhaps even physical, handling, more accurately, mishandling. We the escapees out from under the thumb of verbal racks and industrial-strength conveyors of caustic charm. And who among us has not qualified at one time or another as a candidate for  the Legion de Malhonneur? Sure, maybe we naively or hopefully enlisted for our manufactured misery. Some of us stumbled into the 55-gallon drum of acidic animosity or arid indifference, slowly leaking. So be it. We paid the cost of Industrial Handling, didn't we? A cost too dear. But for now we welcome with open arms (and hands, legs, faces, necks, you-name-it) every variety, brand, and concoction of moisturizing healing; every texture, thickness, consistency, and volume of unguent; all and every extreme unction, to anoint our sickness. And theirs, too; the Industrial Handlers. I stopped. I asked two ladies in waiting at the counter in The Land of Emollients for a sample. Your most excellent and edifying elixir, please. They knew right away. No hesitation or forethought. This is it. The taller of the two Emollient Ambassadors (she with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes) placed a small tube, 0.5 oz. / 15 g, in my left hand. I curled my fingers around the tube, made a slight bow, and turned around. I exited the store. The white work van was gone. Frisson accomplished. 

between the brackets [closed captions]

indistinct radio chatter

footsteps approaching

crowd jeering 

inaudible

engine running

clears throat

plate clattering

chuckles softly

elevator dings

voices murmuring

birds chirping

explosion

applause

overlapping conversation

footsteps receding

clock chimes

whimpers

sighs

gunshot

Angela cooing

crowd cheering

door opens

gasps

sirens wailing

Serena crying out in pain

clamoring

airhorn blaring

grunts

breathes heavily

door closes

Handmaids laugh

horse whinnies

helicopter whirring

belt rustling

exhales

sobbing

all chuckle

scoffs

crows cawing

sniffling

paper rustling

cattle prod buzzes

rapid ticking

buckle clanking

Aunt Lydia laughs

pigeons cooing

knocking on door

belting continues

Janine humming

Angela gurgling

Angela gurgling throughout

Janine laughing

church bells ring

'Rain Sometimes' playing

water flowing

laughs
 
 

The Clementine Chronicles, continued

Murder on the Disorient Express

Dramatis Personae:

OldWhiteGuy stereotypical converted-loft dweller, goatee-adorned; spectacles-wearer; enough head hair to comb except on the sides owing to stylist's shorning the week preceding; 5'10"; 169 pounds; blue jeans; blue T-shirt; blue-green-purple flannel shirt not tucked in; fragrance: Luna Rossa by Prada; Euphoria by Calvin Klein deodorant; unshaven for several days

Three Ravens pecking at unseen morsels on the roadway or bickering on the chain-link fence or telephone wires

DismemberedClementine* Jackson Pollocked (except for color; goldenrod-clementine-flesh yellow-orange backgrounded by burnt umber wetted, ergo Mark Rothko'ed except for the scatteredness; picture a spherical descent bursting onto the concrete, tossed from an upper-story window; motive and perp, unknown) into 22 segments and/or fragments of said segments, on the sidewalk [see below] by the side exit of the brick former knitting mill; a splayed and still glistening ink-blottish stain artistically placed on the snow-bereft sidewalk as a place setting or as a result of the Capital Citrus Murder (CCM)
*cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 December 2018

DismemberedClementine Peeled Skin (absent, nowhere to be seen; unknown if peeled in one fell swoop or not)

DeadFish (scales on; head attached; accusatory cyclops-ish eye; absent corpse, nowhere to be seen; cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 February 2019)

62.8 CCM Suspects (40 apartments, average of 1.5 residents in each minus 1.0 LaughoristDweller [a.k.a. OldWhiteGuy], plus 3.8 happenstance, random street-cred pedestrians) 

Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers

Scene 1: 

Enter OldWhiteGuy, exits building, turns right, spots DismemberedClementine (rest in pieces, R.I.P.), halts, retreats, pivots left, inspects crime scene, counts segments, makes mental notes, turns right again, walks on ice- and snow-ridden sidewalk to car

OldWhiteGuy (posing as Hamlet Lear) (sotto voce): "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the skin!"

Enter Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers singing: "One love, one heart... Let's get together and feel all right... Hear the children cryin'; give thanks and praise to the Lord ... Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his soul? One love, one heart ... Let's get together and feel all right!"

Exeunt Omnes

particulate matters

before the next step pavement sparkles a starry day constellation advancing with each footfall between tire tracks imprinting transit blaring snow islanded coal wet dry wet trumpeting clarion sun white melt Rorschachs but you roadway glitter diamonds pixels pinpricks flame pinnacles piercing into my eyes where have you been all my life

letting go

the missing step at the top of the stairs

the nobody at the other end of having a catch

a call that doesn't come

an unrung bell

a cup unfull

unrumpled sheets, undented mattress

the text unreply absent the notification chime

the her-completed sentences unbegun

weighed against

the oaken firm footing

southpaw sailing toss leather bound

incoming incantations

clarion trumpeting presence

sonorously sounding

overbrimming nectar

gale force bacchanalia

gonging anagrams of U and I

subject predicate object desire

holding on for dear life