Though the Raven is a symbol

of deaths snarling face, though

he carry omens while creeping

through clouds of white,

even He fears the poet,

gazing in the forest to the tune

of gentle streams trickling.

For if menacing caws of

the black winged beast

prove too distracting,

the poet may very well

blast that fuckers wings off

and return to visions of

lilacs and lilies singing:

"leave Never. see More."

“You walk this strip a free man, dead only to earth, alive only to skin. Your life was born because a schizophrenic didn't want to keep her legs closed. You were a trade-off for a shot of H and blanket space in a cold Brooklyn park, where you were conceived. The sperm shot through sour yeast and disease, through pus and sickness. The egg took the fastest swimmer, and under that Brooklyn night, while the real humans were walking home to well-lit living rooms and kitchens, while they were walking home to make love to music, you were shot from a bum's dick into a bum's cunt. From there your troubles began."

•••

I sit up. Ginaʼs gone, and thereʼs a note in front of the door. I walk over and pick it up. Before I read it I know she wrote it while she waited for her train. She was about to stand by herself on this one—but she wrote the note in case she wanted to come back. Just in case:

Sonny,

I can not do this any longer. I love you but I have to be the one to put a stop to all of this shit. You don't need this black cloud hanging over you, and I don't need it. I want you to be happy.

And a bunch of other bullshit she wrote for dramatic effect. I crumple the note and shove it in the top drawer of my dresser. Among the note she would see a lot of other notes from her, a few rubbers and some old cigarettes. She quit smoking exactly 3 months and 4 days ago. I know because at least twice a day since sheʼs mentioned that sheʼs quit and how incredible it feels.

•••

The black cloud she wrote about is my dream of walking next to God. It started over a month ago, after Iʼd lost my job. I punch in, see the assembly line and the hair nets, and I punch out. I walk a few blocks, then I stop at Taco Bell. I ask the girl behind the counter for a cup of water. She hands me an empty cup. I slam a few Mountain Dews. She fucking freaks out on me. Iʼm walking out of the place, and I hear her words, or rather I see them in Ginaʼs handwriting:

Hey! You asked for water! That's stealing!

•••

When Iʼm walking next to God Iʼm nothing but miserable. Heʼs well spoken, tall and built, long white hair and a manly beard, and He smells like hard liquor. He lights a smoke before each proverb and He keeps no contact with me when we're walking, which is the entirety of the dream. Walking and listening to Him slam my life. I canʼt get a word in edgewise. Whenever I try He only talks louder. And He gets pissed off if something goes even slightly against His grain. In my dream world, thereʼs still a warthog spinning through outer space, never slowing down, and never speeding up, just keeping the same, consistent spin forever. When God was telling me about the accidental birth of my mother, this little black warthog comes barreling up the sidewalk after something. God sidesteps him, and then punts him. In the dream, we're on the same sandy sidewalk, with the ocean about 100 yards off to the right. So, we're walking north. And He has a solid kick. The warthog is up, beyond the ocean and out of sight in nothing flat. Sometimes while God is ripping on me, I'll daydream in the dream, and I'll see the warthog spinning through outer space. And I see him from the snout, and the visual pans wide and he has this look of anger toward me, and general disgust. And during his consistent revolution, he'll see in my eyes that I am sorry for him, that it wasnʼt my doing and only my fault insofar as it is my dream. He doesnʼt give a shit.

•••

Gina calls tonight, leaving me a message, why don't you ask the dream to just leave you alone, that you're alright, you know, like you hear about when people yell at apparitions? I think about it during the next dream, and He picks up on it. He doesnʼt like it. I canʼt get a hard-on for a week after that dream. Thatʼs how much He doesnʼt like it.

•••

The third day into that week, Gina tells me Iʼm crazy. She grabs up most of her things and leaves after a 4 a.m. argument. I run after her in my socks. The streets are wet and dark with slime. I never notice how dirty the neighborhood is until I feel it under my socks. She already has me by 80 feet and 73 seconds. Now I see the back of her head as the cab rolls away. I toss my socks down the gutter, subtract 73 from 80. I walk back upstairs and wash my feet. Back on my bed I watch her cat watching me from the window sill. I note that the cat is black and fat, like the warthog. But before I can get up to punt him I fade out.

•••

The sky is bleeding, it smears out and drops down on us, a menstruation. Iʼm soaked in it. I look up at God to see that Heʼs spotless. I look down to the beads of blood wet at my feet and I think under my breath.

"Goddamnit."

"WHAT?"

"Oh. Oh shit. Nothing."

•••

But most of the time I listen, and I keep my thoughts as pure as possible. Sometimes I think of some pretty sick things, some seriously twisted and retardedly obscure shit, and I know He can read my thoughts. But He never punishes me for them, because He also knows that itʼs my evil subconscious putting the thoughts out—trying to fuck me into Hell—so, He knows, and He also knows that my being aware that He knows is punishment by itself.

•••

Iʼm walking down Newell here to see a buddy of mine who just moved in with these uptight, artsy-type assholes. This buddy of mine, Salvatore Mucci, went by Sal, but after living with the art fags here on Newell, he tries to go by Salvatore, but it ainʼt fucking happening. Across the bridge and throughout Midtown heʼs Sal, over here in Brooklyn heʼs Salvatore, oh, with one of those little dashes over the e, to accent his ethnicity. Sometimes I call him The Artist Formerly Known As Wop. Heʼs an English teacher, working whenever he can, like a stand-by educator. I remember once we were walking through Midtown with our buddy, Richie, the upright bassist. We had gone our own ways for awhile, when these two young girls were walking toward me, holding hands. They're 16 or 17, maybe 15. They're holding hands, walking, laughing, their skirts bouncing above their young, tall, and meaty thighs. Man killers. They know it, and they hold hands and create erections.

The two girls start talking to me, for no other reason than I gave them a sincere hello. They're asking me where I live and what I do, and here comes Sal, walking out of the fucking record store with an open vest and no shirt, a full body perm, a greasy art shag and a far too trimmed and dialed in beard. His beard is kept like a pet, or else a thin, exact pattern that edges his face into pure and unforgivable cheese. The girls see him and laugh at the same time:

"Hey! Thatʼs our teacher!"

"Hi, girls," Sal says, dark as hell.

With that, they walk off. I watch Salʼs face watch them walk. His greasy eyes swallow their asses, thighs, and calves. He turns away. We're going in their direction, but now heʼs taking us the other way down the street. He canʼt bear to look at them.

"See, Sonny, this is so fucked up. Sometimes I'll think about what a girlʼs doing when I see her, and I'll obsess over what sheʼs doing at home, by herself. I think I need to see a psychologist."

I make him walk in our direction. The girls cross 34th and disappear south toward the village. Richieʼs been walking behind us, catching up after his haircut. And he always gets the same cut, once every 3 weeks, from the same fag for the same tip. Something about the fag being best friends with this brunette Richie works with and has had the hots for, for the last 3 years. Richie works in a bicycle shop just off 34th Street, between 2nd and 3rd. He hears Salʼs comment about the psychologist. And when Sal hears Richie's voice from behind him, he cringes without notice and rolls his eyes. Richie says what Iʼm thinking, "Jesus butt-fucking Christ. You're a MAN, Sal. Every man has those thoughts. Everybodyʼs running to a fucking shrink these days. Unless some motherfuckerʼs lived your life, he canʼt help you. And any motherfucker whoʼs lived a life like yours, he ainʼt gonna be no fuckin' shrink."

"Say it, Richie." I say.

He nods to me, his floppy bangs and all, "Seriously. Sonny, would you ever go see a shrink? No–wait, would you ever even think about seeing a shrink?"

"Fuck no."

We're approaching our 34th Street fork. Richie has to cut left into the bike shop, Sal has to cut right to catch his train, and Iʼm going straight ahead to bring Gina a coffee to her work at the hospital. Administration. I'll drop it off, showing her that I still care, then I'll call her later. Gina and me, we're constant temperature. Richieʼs giving Sal hell, calling him a gay homo cocksucker, Sal asks him how his hair stylist is doing, Richie says faaawwwck you, and goes into the bike shop. I nod later to Sal and heʼs walking away to my right, where the ocean would be if I was asleep.

•••

Gina loves her coffee. And bitter chocolates. Sheʼs lost some weight since she quit smoking because whenever she wants a cigarette she goes for a walk. She says sometimes she walks all night. She answers:

Hello, Sonny.

"I got your note. You still mean it?"

I don't know, Sonny.

"Iʼm sorry about the dream. Itʼs not my fault. I donʼt know what this guy wants with me."

Listen, Sonny, odds are that you're not even dealing with God. From the way you talk about him he sounds more like Jerry Garcia.

"But I hate the fucking Dead."

Exactly. Think about it…

We talk awhile more then hang up. She can't'come over because some girl flaked at work, called in at the last minute, so she has to pull a double tomorrow. Richie calls and asks me do I want to go out on a double date with him and the bike shop girl and her fat friend. I've never seen her, but I know she's'fat. And I happen to be in love with Gina, whatever that means. I hang up with him and fight sleep until I pass out.

•••

He hasnʼt said anything yet on the walk. I smell Him light up. He's'looking at me peripherally, smoking His cig:

"Do you think I look like Jerry Garcia?"

I almost laugh. Then it really hits me: What the fuck do I do here? If I try to lie about it, I'm'fucked. If I tell the truth, I'm'fucked. I roll the dice:

"I don't'think so."

I'm'waiting, shitting my dream pants. His powers must be selective, because He says, "Good." —I'm'lying through my fucking teeth. Or maybe He's'letting me think His powers are selective, to give me a fake edge, like everyone else has. Or maybe Gina's'right. Maybe I'm'fucking crazy.

•••

Gina comes over last night. I'd'sat out on my balcony, well, the fucking fire escape, and thought hard for a great deal of the morning and the afternoon about the dreams with God. Something's'fishy in there, rotting. I can't'put my fucking finger on it. I already know that He's'not really the devil, I already know that He does exist, outside of the dream. Example: We're walking down the sidewalk. After He gets done giving me hell over a bunch of personal and embarrassing shit, He says, "Oh, and don't'waste your time on Richie's'bullshit date. She's'a fatass." —and He says it almost petulantly, as if He'd'meant to tell me earlier, but all His put-downs got in the way of it. And she was a fatass, saw her two days after I blew it off.

But Gina comes over and we make dinner. I'm'flopping the shrimp around in the pile of batter, she's'drinking wine and shredding the parmesan. It was supposed to be angel hair pasta but now it's'spaghetti and breaded shrimp, because the store beneath me only had the fat shrimp fresh, and also because Gina wanted to make this spaghetti sauce from a recipe one of the other hospital girls gave her. Brenda, this real nasty bitch. Alone and useless. Physically, Brenda's'not too bad. She has a great ass and firm tits, long ashy hair. But her brains are bad news. Her nose is up the ass of anybody around her with a real life. I say a lot of this because Brenda hates me, for whatever reasons she needs to hate me with, but I call the judgment because she's'bitter. And I've seen her eat up exactly six men in the last six months, six to Gina's'one. That would be me, and we met six months ago, one month before The Lord started fucking with my head.

The dishes are upside down or broken and Brenda's'sauce is spilled across the floor, alone and useless. I have Gina on the counter, her legs around mine, fucking like a couple of prisoners. I was watching her cute little ass and drinking my wine when I walk over, spin her around, and sit her up on the counter. I have her blue jeans around her ankles and she knocks over the sauce while she frees a leg. She looks down at the sauce, I pound on, her eyes roll back in her head, tilting it toward the ceiling.

I drive harder. It gets her talking:

OH GOD! OH MY FUCKING GOD! OH GOD OH GOD!

"Stop saying that."

OH! I'm'sorry, baby.

Now she has me thinking about Him. I block it out and pretend that I've just walked into her apartment and I'm'having her against her counter. I pretend at first she was only baiting me, but once she got a look at me then felt my sex, she had no choice, and she's'been coming ever since. I go, as my head adds up to 7, His famous number. Now I'm'seeing His pyramid scam, the fucking pyramid divided up into 3 separate parts, each diametrically equal, and myself as a 4th part works into play, and then there'sʼ7 again. I feel my cock losing blood, so I imagine it as a pyramid, and I'm'driving the pyramid fast inside her. She's'starting to lose it, running dry and all fucked out. I bear down and grab her hips, watch myself bounce off those precious ass cheeks until I pull it out and shoot exactly 3 hot streams across her back. I draw a diagonal line across them with my finger. One across three makes four, and with the last two words in that figure, it makes 7. —I'd'beat my own mind to the punch.

•••

I end up taking her out for coffee and this stuff called King Cake, they serve it down at the espresso joint, where the great thinkers of our time pour my coffee. I hate those places, but the King Cake is incredible, and the espresso is strong and mighty. And after sex with Gina, my girl, and easily the best body in New York City, all 5 boroughs, I can look past the bullshit and take in the sins without worry. I'll see His ass in a few hours anyway.

•••

Gina can't'sleep over because she says her other cat is sick. But I know it's'because she doesn't'want to be there when I wake up from another dream. I see her to the train, and then I walk back up the street to my place. I find a note from her on the floor in front of the door:

Sonny,

Tell God, all fucking mighty, that you're going to have to choose between "H"im and me. And tell "H"im that you fuck like a champ, and that "H"e could learn a few things about love from you.

I shove the note in my pocket. I know she wrote it while I was in the bathroom wiping off and pissing. I walk to my room and fall across the bed. I'm'not really tired, I just want to be alone and without weight.

•••

"Do you love this woman?"

I pan back from the shit-eye of the warthog.

"Yes."

"Let me see that note."

"It's'back in my life."

"It's'in your pocket now."

I feel my dream brow furrow. I reach in my pocket and hand the note over, staring straight ahead. The note just leaves my hand and floats to His. No contact. He creases the note an extra time and it floats back to my hand. I put it back in my pocket. He makes me sweat for few minutes before He adds anything:

"Show that note to the boy in your kitchen. I want that bitch of yours to know I mean business."

"No problem."

"Now, let me explain to you the exact function, lineage, and layers of Hell. You may want to know about them."

•••

I sleep unusually late that morning, until about 11. I'd'spent the latter part of the dream learning about Hell. There isn't'any lake of fire, or worms or brimstone or demons. No, Hell is far fucking worse. I call down the block for Chinese food. My stomach begins to boil, so I run for the toilet. I drop my pants and plop down. My nerves are shot. It comes out of me horribly, hot rain. It burns and smells like fire. It goes on for 10 solid minutes, and I have to keep reaching back and flushing. Then, just like it started, it stops. No pain, no smell, nothing. The buzzer sounds. I buzz the entrance. The door is open and I wave him in. He's'my favorite delivery boy in the neighborhood. He's'got serious attitude. He walks to the kitchen and rests his elbow against the counter. I shut the fan off in the bathroom and reach into my pocket for some money. I feel the note. My blood runs cold. I'm'afraid to look at it, just in case I'm'not completely losing my mind and there might be a chance that He'd'done something to it. This is where things get fucked up.

"Louis, read this note for me. I'm'not wearing my contacts right now."

Louis takes the note. He shoots me a fast and disgusted look. I feel this sharp wind from the hallway outside. My door closes. The wind smells familiar, it tastes like something I know. Louis is eyeing me. I shake it off and nod to him. Disgustedly, he unfolds the note to read it to me, and my kitchen flashes the brightest white I'll ever see, and then when it clears, I see Louis' ghost, and he's'captured there looking down at the note, and his ghost is sickening and horrifying. Then another flash of brilliant white, and there'sʼa fine pile of ash where Louis was standing. I run for the bathroom. I want to throw up but I'm'bone dry. I heave dry rust. I think of Louis. Well, fuck, of course I think of Louis.

And I scoop up his ashes and flush them. I would guess 26 years of life down the shitter. A vengeful God and modern times. And God wasn't'even angry at Louis, but at Gina for mocking Him. Then again, maybe Louis had it coming. Maybe God was killing two birds with one stone. One note. Either way, the day closes in and I can't'eat. And I can't'tell anybody about it. God has me against the ropes. And how was Gina supposed to know He meant business if she would never believe me?

•••

…I lean my ear against the buzzer:

"Who is it?"

Please let me in!

•••

Sheʼs o' her 5th cigarette, well, along with the 2 still smoldering in the ashtray while Iʼm t'lking with the take-out joint. They're on the phone concerned that Louis has made off with all of his order money. I tell the lady he delivered the food then vanished. Gina almost pukes when I say that. Her story guts me:

I slept until one this afternoon, six hours late. My alarm went off and I slept through it, and you know how loud that alarm is, Sonny. But I miss work, and I'm d'ing what those retarded isolationists call "lucid dreaming" —where you know you're dreaming but you can't w'ke up, and normally they say they can control their fear and they can control what they do in the dream. I still think it's b'llshit. But I was naked, and this big hand was pushing against my bare ass all the way up your stair case and through your front door, I mean actually through the door, and there I saw that delivery boy evaporate, or whatever it's c'lled. And when I woke up it was work calling, and then when I got out of bed the phone rang. I answered it and it was this young kid's v'ice, and it was weird and muffled, like he was talking from a can and from really far away, and he said, really sarcastically, "Thanks." And this chill ran down my back. And I knew that it was the delivery boy's v'ice. My caller ID was blank and star sixty-nine didn't e'en give me a recording, it just went to a dial tone.

•••

I canʼt f'nd a way out of this. Godʼs r'aching into my real life. Gina is afraid to go home. She brews a pot of coffee every half hour. My living room is a cloud of cigarette smoke. She cries, pours coffee and smokes. I sit on my counter and watch her. In between bouts of nicotine and coffee and tears, she profusely apologizes for torturing me. I shake my head and watch the outside. The sky is different now. Everything is possible now. I donʼt k'ow how to cope. I try one of Ginaʼs s'okes but it makes me feel like shit. In the bathroom I study my face. There has to be a way out of this. Suicide will only lead me to Him permanently. I hate God. I hate His hair and His beard and His power. I hate the way He walks and I hate the decrepit baritone of His voice. I canʼt d'ink coffee with Gina. When I come down from it I only sleep harder and dream longer. My waking hours today have been spent in fear of sleep.

•••

Heʼs g'ing to brag to me. Heʼs p'oud of Himself. Iʼm s'ck and fucking tired of Him.

"Well, well, well. Look who decided to sleep over."

I kick a rock up the sidewalk.

"You're being quiet today."

"What choice do I have?"

"You want to be a smartass with me?"

"No."

"Smart move."

I rub my wrists. They're burning, all four limbs burn, and I feel blurry. A sharp pain shoots up the left side of my body and pulses in my arm. The dream gets sharper. My genitals feel wet and smothered.

"Itʼs a'right. Steady yourself."

When I stiffen and try to fight the pain, He throws me away from the sidewalk. I land on my hands and knees behind some shrub. The pain leaves my wrists and ankles, then readjusts itself firmly. I feel hard pressure inside of me. His hands grip my hips. Heʼs p'shing in and out of me.

"You know why I hate you? You're weak. So fucking weak. You feel that? You feel it? Take it, slow and steady…"

I canʼt bel'eve whatʼs hap'ening to me. Iʼm in ‘o much pain I canʼt bre'the. I wake up in my bed covered in sweat. I look down. A small spot of blood is on my sheet. It hurts to walk. Ginaʼs on ’he couch deep into sleep. In the bathroom, I spread my ass apart and look at the rip above my asshole. I douse it with peroxide. I sit down to shit and it burns like oil. I look around the tiles of the bathroom. My vision is blurred with pain, and the lines from the tiles rise like a mirage. I walk out slowly and half-sit on a stool in the kitchen. Gina wakes up and asks me if Iʼm doiʼg alright. I canʼt tel' her about it. If I tell her she'll never sleep. I donʼt thiʼk I'll ever sleep.

•••

I donʼt rem'mber walking down here, but I close the door and he slides the little window open, "How long has it been since your last confession?"

"I've never confessed."

"Whatʼs tro'bling you?"

"Iʼm goiʼg to tell you. You have to promise you wonʼt say'anything. I donʼt fee' too protected, father, not even here."

"You can tell me."

"Itʼs pre'ty far-fetched, father."

He laughs gently, "I've heard it all."

I tell him. Thereʼs a l'ng and shaky silence. I break down crying. I feel more pain in my left side. I think Iʼm hav'ng a heart attack. The priest raises his voice.

"You need to get out of this church. This isnʼt fun'y. I'll pray for your lies."

"Father, Iʼm not'joking here."

"LEAVE!"

The pain surges, and then lessens to a dull thump, but Iʼm fee'ing sicker and I force myself to my feet. The lack of sleep is playing hell with me. Iʼm wal'ing out of the church and I notice the sky is not blue or grey or even dark. Itʼs burʼt grey and white, and I feel like Iʼm wal'ing underwater. I get the feeling itʼs alw'ys been this way but I never noticed it. I stop into the bike shop to find Richie and Sal talking by the display case. Richie laughs at me, "Whatʼs wroʼg with you, Sonny? You twist your ankle?"

"Donʼt worʼy about it."

"Me and Sal are gonna walk down to the deli for some eats."

I walk next to them. I havenʼt sleʼt in 3 days. The nights are the worst. They donʼt men'ion the sky or the weird shape of everything around us. Sleep deprivation is making me insane. Gina runs up behind us and jumps on my back. Sheʼs lau'hing, high on No-Doze and coffee. Richie and Sal donʼt kno' what to think. Iʼm los'ng it. We pass an alleyway and thereʼs a bʼm covered in a blanket. I stop there and stare at his white beard sticking out of the covers.

Sal stands next to me.

"Sonny, you alright, man?"

"God raped me in my sleep."

"What the fuck?"

The bum jumps up from under his blanket. With one back-hand, Richie and Sal and Gina go flying off over downtown. They're screaming, and I watch them disappear behind a cloud. God laughs at me. He walks toward me, undoing His pants.

"One last time, you weak motherfucker."

Iʼm par'lyzed there. This is the real world. Nobody pays any mind to whatʼs hap'ening. I feel my hand slip out of the pain and I hit Him dead on His eye. He disappears, and I see a bright ceiling and a light over-head. Then I see nothing, and everything is black for what feels like forever.

•••

My eyes are sealed shut with sleep. I reach up and pull them apart. Ginaʼs the'e. Sheʼs cry'ng.

"Sonny, oh my God, Sonny. Nobody thought you were going to wake up."

My legs and arms are useless. I look around the room. Iʼm in ’ light blue room, and the bed is stiff. I see the straps undone around my wrists and ankles. I have a migraine and my throat is so dry Gina can hear me swallow, and when I swallow, I swallow bricks.

My voice is gone.

"What happened?"

"Baby, you had a breakdown. I went to pick you up at work and you werenʼt the'e. Your boss said youʼd wal'ed off quietly. You were in your apartment, sleeping. You wouldnʼt wak' up so I called for help."

"How long have I been here?"

"Twelve days. During the first week you had bad convulsions. Two nights ago you woke up swinging. Then you went back to sleep. How do you feel?"

"My head hurts and I canʼt mov'."

"The doctor says you'll regain full control of your body," she started crying. "Why didnʼt you'tell me you were so unhappy?"

"Whereʼs Ric'ie and Sal?"

She rubs my forehead with a wet rag. I see the IV going into my arm, and a puncture on the inside of my elbow on my other arm.

"They're around. They'll be by tomorrow. They're going to be so happy you woke up."

"Sit me up, Gina."

I look at my arm again.

"They had to sedate you a couple of times. After your spasms you went straight back into your coma."

I feel thinner. Gina tells me sheʼs bee' there every day, but they make her leave at night. Down where I had been bleeding in dream, I feel a small pulse of pain.

"Am I in the hospital?"

"You're in a rehab center, like an asylum. I hate it here."

"I need medicine."

Gina runs out. She comes back in with a doctor. He gives me some pills. Gina hangs around for awhile, until I go back to sleep.

•••

Over the next few days I have physical therapy and Iʼm abl' to walk slowly to the bathroom and to the telephone. Iʼm up ’lmost every night, drinking juice and eating like a fiend. The Saturday through Monday orderly, Doris, is going to be off for the week, she tells me sheʼs goiʼg to Jersey City to see her new grandson. We've become friends, Doris and me.

"You want anything from Jersey City, doll?"

"Just come back alive, Doris."

She laughs. I'll be out of here before her workweek starts again. The weeknight orderly walks into my room and nods to me. He smiles.

"Howʼs it ‘oin’, boss? You feeling alright?"

I nod to back to him. He stops on his way out of my room, "Well, I imagine you're feeling pretty rugged about now. All those days in a coma."

He walks out. Salʼs uncʼe owes me a favor. I let him stay in my apartment for 3 months after he was released from serving an 18 year sentence upstate. He also owes me for a few other things. The last investigation had a lot to do with it, but maybe all the guilt from my life and how Iʼd mad' an underground living is what drove me to the assembly line, and maybe I lost control after I realized that my life has nothing at all promising, except Gina, but sometimes Gina fucks up. I keep her around anyway. I dial the number.

"Sonny! Hey, man! I heard you was back from the dead."

"I got a problem, Ira. A real fuckin' problem. Iʼm cal'ing our marker due."

"Alright, Sonny."

"It'll be easy. I need to be there when itʼs han'led, though. Donʼt ask'me why."

"We'll take care of it."

I hang up.

•••

After midnight, Iʼm wat'hing the news from my bed. More and more bullshit in Brooklyn. The cops drill a man with 12 bullets in the back after the guy walks away from him. They kill the wrong guy, and the victim is Arabic, and itʼs cau'ing a lot of hell in the neighborhood. Brooklyn is famous for causing hell. I really tried to go straight when I moved to Midtown. Richie and Sal both went legit, so I figured it was my turn. I figured wrong.

•••

The orderly comes in with fresh sheets and a new pitcher of water. I ask him to sit down and talk to me for a minute, I tell him Iʼm fee'ing a little isolated. He checks his watch and sits down by my bed. He lights a cigarette and drinks from a flask he has under his belt, "You wanna hit?"

"Iʼm alr'ght."

Heʼs an ’lder guy, a big bodybuilder. I was born short and skinny, so I always had to fight my way through life. I ignore his long white beard and healing eye.

"Thanks for taking care of me. You got a name, pal?"

"Lance."

"You live in the city, Lance?”

He tells me about his life, where he lives and so forth. I sit and listen and joke with him. Mostly I stare to and from the imitation gold necklace he wears around his neck. Itʼs a l'cky number 7. I watch him talk and notice his effeminate laugh and gestures. It isnʼt the'first time I've talked to a dead man.

We are like oil and acid

And every time you speak

An angel loses wings

My hero. Disengaged.

You were creeping calamity

As sunshine coddled face.

A poison prone to hate.

Warlord, join or dissipate

The best of me is blamed

For all your troubles.

I am the reason your

Madness couldn't overcome.

I am the butt, smoked for all

It's worth. Discarded.

You, the fallacy of love.

Disowned for a failure

To hate everyone you did.

Nothing cuts so cleanly as a

Mothers knife.

If a letter is an element and a word is a molecule then what is a subatomic particle? A phoneme? Then why do some letters denote multiple phonemes? Perhaps that is the utility of vowels and consonants. Is there a relationship between a phoneme's shape and the sound this shape symbolizes? What is the relationship between sound and shape? All that aside, consider actual sub-atomic particles. Protons, neutrons, electrons. Quarks. Photons. Photons and electrons are supposed to be irreducible units of pure energy. The atom's nucleus - its protons and neutrons - can be split, but an irreducible energy unit such as a photon cannot be split. So go back in time to the beginning of time itself. The singularity. The "moment" before the "big bang." When the Word said, "Let there be Light." Amidst infinite darkness, there appears a tiny ball of pure light, pure energy. This unit contains all the mass and energy that will ever constitute the universe. From the perspective of the infinite darkness engulfing it, this singularity appears tiny. It looks just like a photon. One tiny ball of pure energy. The singularity supposedly explodes. But what is the force and angle necessary to sever a fragment from the singularity? And what is the cause or explanation for such force and angle? Is it even logically possible for a singularity to split in two? Or are string theory and/or God logically imperative?

“Under the moon, ghosts hide themselves and weep for the those who live only to sleep.”

-Anonymous

At first, Bren thought he was just hearing things, or coming out of strange dream not yet awake to his fullest. The wind, after all, was known to whistle its own strange tunes from time to time. He had been, for a brief time-no more than ten minutes-going over the state of his sock drawer, trying to mindlessly make it to the witching hour without letting his eyes drop. It was a Friday ritual of sorts, allowing him to sleep through the weekends when he knew kids were sneaking around in his parent’s graveyard of a property; old structures, buildings and the promise of a quiet place to be, proved irresistible to many.

He closed his eyes and wind turned in again, a voice as lonely as the night flowing with it.

’And I shall feel, oh soft you tread above me

And then my grave will richer, sweeter be

For you will bend and tell me that you love me

And I shall rest in peace until you come to me’

The voice sounded as though it was right under his window and Bren crawled over on his knees, nudging his fingers under the sill of his window and pushing it up so that the cool night air was suddenly brushing into his own room. His astronomy notes ruffled on the dark desk behind him and Bren shivered, all of sudden wishing he was already asleep and having another nightmare of his professor kicking him out of class for not wearing pants.

He could see a man about his age, thin in his grey button up sweater and long grey slacks, just below his window. In his left hand, burning bright and round, was the end of cigarette. The light brown hair over the man’s bony brows obscured a good view of his face.

The man was holding his thumb preciously over the glowing end of his cigarette, though it only seemed to be a habit as Bren noticed the man was doing it absently, gliding the thumb round the end, a couple times before he dropped it and stubbed it out. One stomp and it was a flat as the interstate highway.

But, not too long after he would light another and start to sing again, his right hand pulling at the back of his neck. The second cigarette was crushed in his hand even before it touched the earth, the man letting the remnants fall without so as much as a glance.

“D-Do you need help, buddy?” Bren had his phone in his back sweatpants pocket, resting with a twitch over the 9. He was ready to call someone.

The man shook his head. “Lucky, go back to your puzzles…Lew’s just messing ’bout. Thinking and smoking, nothing new…” Lew which Bren guessed was short for Lewis, finally looked up at his window, grinning in the corner of his mouth. He reached into his pocket and took a third cigarette out.

Bren finally noticed the small lighter in the palm of his right hand, as it glowed briefly, lighting the cigarette.

This time he took a drag and sat down on the grass. Smoke was wafting up and the boy felt his eyes starting to water. Nasty habit, just fucking nasty.

“H-Hey! Smoke somewhere else, dude.” Bren closed his eyes, as they were also starting to sting.

“Oh Lord, sorry Lucky,” the man apologized, stamping this third cigarette out in the grass between his legs. “I forgot that mama said to keep the smoke out of your face.”

Bren rubbed his eyes. This man was clearly high or something, though the reason he felt the need to have an imaginary conversation with someone named ‘lucky’ was beyond him. I need to at least-

“L-Lucky…I d-don’t t-think I’ve got much of that courage ya think I do. You know, you know I really never felt like I was ever much? You always tell me I am, but you’re my little brother, what else can you tell me?” Bren heard how the man’s voice was catching in his throat, as he became more upset. “Mama and pop don’t never really did that for me, did they? No, no, not even when I promised to stay. I lied then, but I can’t lie to you. I’m a yellow-bellied coward. I’m not going back. Never ever going back to look at those bastard stars and moon or to being an honest man again…never, never, never….m-maybe I should never have left that place...that love of mine, always waiting to look after me…b-but I-I didn’t want it to fall apart…”

The man fell back on cold earth, laughing between hitching sobs, his face so thin that the boy could clearly see the hollows of his eyes. Lewis took out the whole pack of cigarettes and threw them behind him, beginning a whistle of same tune he had been singing before.

The boy watching him from the window, ducked back and grabbed his phone, the whistling surprisingly distracting as he felt it grow closer. Deep breaths, he said to himself finally grabbing his phone. He could feel the temperature in his room growing colder as the wind picked up again and carried the whistles in faster, buffering them at the same time.

It was out of power.

“Crap,” he leaned over the window and closed his eyes.

The man was gone. The cigarettes, all, used or not, were gone. The whistling was gone, the wind no longer gusting so much even as he left his window open just in case.

The grass wasn’t burnt, the boy realized the next day. It was as if Lewis had never even existed.

She said, “The water is still,

There isn’t any flow, no movement,

Not even the tiniest ripple,”

And I didn’t know how to reply –

I never know how to reply –

But it was such a pretty thing to say

And so I smiled anyway.

She was in a strange mood,

All fidgeting movements and wild eyes;

Her eyes looked off in the fluorescent light,

A little hollow and far too blue

And my heart broke for her

And my heart broke for me.

The conversation fell apart fast,

And she went off to ride her bike home

Saying something about how she needs to clean

And she only sweeps when she’s sad.

She drinks and cries

And sweeps her kitchen floor

And drinks

And cries.

Autena comes after eight-thirty

And tells me of Paris in July,

Its grace and its cool-dry beauty,

Not like here with the insufferable heat

And the awkward, rambling streets

Sprawling out in random beelines from nowhere in particular

To nowhere at all.

And I imagine myself on top

Of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile,

Gazing out across the mad logical Champs-Elysées,

Screaming, wildly wailing at La Défense

Of my imagination, and I am afraid

That I will never be able to get out

And soon this will be everything, screaming

At imaginary cities in imaginary places that sit

Somewhere just to the left of my throbbing amygdalae

In the tangled mess of nervous knots,

My tangled cerebrum from which these tangled words spew.

I scream and I scream and my screams

Bounce and buffet around in the still air

Above the silent avenue, and die away into nothing.

And Autena leaves around nine,

When the clouds are ashen grey-black,

But still smoldering with passionate light

Around their edges of the stubborn bright

Burn of the selfish summer sun, clinging

Onto the end of day: It is that awkward time

Of late evening when all is certainly dying

But all is still bristling and frantic,

Like a child not yet wanting to go to bed.

Suddenly, I am bubbling and bursting

And so I light up another Sherman MCD –

Luxury, luxury!

I can’t afford such a headswim –

But it is not enough to stifle this electricity –

I need a greater object for my energy –

So I up and wander to East Main:

The low little buildings in a jumbled pile of brick and stone

Tell a century-old confused story of booms and busts,

Booms and busts, from the broken-down sidewalks on the west end

To the little birds singing in trees to homeless people on Legacy Trail

By the train station, to the self-conscious hip shops and restaurants

And bars that run the static length of the east end,

To the almost-but-not-quite abandoned garages on Porter,

Which will someday be gone and replaced by apartments,

Feigning culture, with their coffee shops and sushi shops

In their bottoms and their hipsters in their tops.

And I feel lost for a few clumsy minutes

On the corner of Crawford and Main

And Ali Harter’s whiskey-rough voice is rising up

From the patio in the alley behind Tres Cantina

To battle a bad band tumbling out of the cracks

Of The Opolis, and my cigarette burns the tip of my finger,

So I drop it and it scatters into a million glowing points

And I feel I am god for a minute,

Scattering life-light across the hot concrete world

Only to watch it burn itself out.

I smile.

I laugh wild in wonder, wild,

And then catch myself,

Because this is only Crawford and Main

And I am still nobody.

This is neither the time nor place.

So I set myself west,

To the grey ash-bitter west,

And walk myself,

The sidewalk descending from pristine glitter-grey

Into the inevitable rubble;

The dense ancient brick friend-faced facades

Grow sparser and fall away

And the city opens wide its teeth –

Everything becomes distant, dark, confused –

And swallows,

And I am consumed, acid-drenched, burning

And desperate. I am tiny, a speck of dust

Lost in an infinite plain

Of concrete, lost, ever-lost, and never heard

And never seen by anyone, a speck of dust

A nullity among nullities,

Swimming through the fiery stomach

Of this vacuous parking lot world.

I loiter, if not wholly lost, half-lost

Around the high school, bloated and sprawling and empty

In the weary gasping summer night blackness,

That peculiar American machine, ever churning,

Replicating itself like a virus three-hundred-million times over

Into the soul-cells of unwanting kids, and then exploding

Them out into the hot, perpetual June afternoon,

Naked and frantic, with less than when they started,

Besides their infant livers and lungs already starting to rot

And the promise that their hungry heads and hearts

Will someday soon boil away into nothing.

No! No I will not be trapped again

In that ignorant web of disappointment and anger!

I got drunk off that shit for twenty years;

I was a junkie, prideful of my addiction,

Stubborn and self-righteous, a child,

But a child no more,

Because I have seen the crepe myrtles

Pushing up from under the concrete,

More powerful than the man-made mess

Of worry that sticks to us so pervasively,

That clings to our bones, perverting our morning reflections

Into floating black livers and brains,

That makes us see each other in constant twilight,

Broken down into our constituent shapes

And reflected light.

No! I will object no more to my humanity;

I will reject no more the quiet constant joy

Of knowing that I am a man and I am alive,

And I will revel in sweat and bake

Beneath the Oklahoma sun, and earn myself some blisters

And bleed, breaking up the concrete, and try to tell the soccer moms,

When they pitch their screaming fits, what I have seen

Beneath all of this, and hope that they listen.

But when they don’t (and I know that they won’t)

I will just continue my work, and sweat and bake and blister

And bleed, and hope someday soon they will

See the world as I have seen it, as flowers

Struggling against the concrete.

But perhaps I am Searle’s beer can

Popping up when all the switches are pulled just right

To exclaim excitedly, “I am thirsty!”

But never knowing exactly what that means.

I am thirsty.

I am thirsty,

Parched, famished, longing,

Starving for a grand x,

A variable in a function that refuses to be solved,

A thing that clamps down on my tongue-tip,

But which I can never name

And which is undeniably absent

But inexcusably present.

And so I spend my days

Building up my frustrated mess

And weakheartedly hammering away

At the perpetual concrete, while the philosophy kids

Worry themselves to death about the intentionality of machina,

And I am nothing more than a very thirsty beer can

Wading through signs and symbols trying to connect x

With anything meaningful,

A static cell in a cruel construct,

Waiting, always waiting to perform some function

I cannot fathom.

Relax. Just calm down.

You are no cell; you are a man,

And you are scared, and that’s alright.

Your heart speeds only to proclaim that you are alive.

But am I? My day is undone.

How I long to quit you –

To be burned by strange suns,

To breathe deep foreign grass –

But I am afraid:

I can imagine no hotter sun,

No softer grass on which to couch my soul.

You broke me and rebuilt me,

Piece by piece, a different man,

But how I long to quit you.

The steel of my spine gnags at me

On cold days, but on this summer night

I am titanic.

But I am still weighed down

By the broken streets,

By my unhistory – I do not know

My great-great-grandfather’s name

But I have his desk,

Built from strong lonely Thackerville timber,

Heavy with the petrified red mud

And with a century-old morning star

Which burned brighter then,

But is now faded, overburdened

By the anthropogenic light

Rising from some fucking casino,

Unable to proclaim its unasked-for but needed hope;

I bet he, like I, was a son of the dawn,

Fallen, ashamed, but never fully broken.

But I will be no twenty-first century Rimbaud,

Ever asleep on a hundred blank notebooks;

I will not burn what little beauty I build –

I refuse!

No, I will cast off my prairie shame

And shout naked from overpasses

To the low, infinite sprawl spread thin and disjointed

That no vultures will pick clean our iron limbs

That we will someday triumph!

…who are we?

In my exalted fervor, I carry myself

To Boyd Street, faintly glittering,

Bubbling and bursting with the impassioned apathy

Of Saturday night in a college town –

Classes have just resumed; the wolves are prowling

The bars lining the bright-dark street.

I find David, the old gardener,

With his bad knees and his bad back

And his sharp mind, smoking by the corner store.

He tells me of northern Washington,

Its colors and its quiet, and I am giddy,

And we are giddy together, dreaming of sweet elsewhere

In a gas station parking lot in between cigarette drags.

He wants to grow pot

And get just rich enough and breathe good air

And be happy.

And I find Jesus strung out on speed

And three-point beers

On the corner of Asp and Boyd

And he gives me American Spirits

And he sings me a song

And he tells me of how his brothers and sisters

Had beaten him down, nearly killed him,

And he spent three days in Norman Regional,

Comatose on morphine and despair,

But he made his way back to this world,

A half-man, proclaiming that we are gods,

That we are all gods,

And he follows me back to the corner store

Like a hungry dog beaten down,

Bruised and whimpering,

To buy cigarettes and beers

With money he doesn’t have,

Proclaiming all the while

That we are all gods,

Every one of us.

…who are we?

Are we gods?

We are skinks cowering in corners

From the possums’ sharp teeth,

But no injury can truly kill us.

We are tree-planters; I know it’s sad,

But we cannot stop to watch them grow –

There are tireless axmen always at our heels,

And so we must continue our work

Until they are finally overwhelmed, and turn,

Red-faced, sweating, panting, away,

And we will rest in the shade, and admire

What a forest we have built to shelter our eggshell souls

From the august-hot world.

And that day will come, I promise, but until then,

We must break our backs, we must blister our hands,

We must let the Oklahoma sun burn and crack our necks,

We must sing the glory of our malaise and moonlight

And we must love, always love, and be patient;

On the local nightly new, they like to call that

“The Oklahoma Standard,” and I must confess

A cringe for every time I hear the phrase,

But there does seem to be some peculiar overactive

Philosophy beat in to us from birth which contends

That we cannot rest until we can all rest.

And I can vouch for the existence of the Oklahoma Standard:

I’ve seen it shining through the bigoted black

Perpetuated by Mary Fallin, that vulture,

That horny and holier-than-thou whore,

And her prostitute crowd,

Who turned the crumbling Capitol Building

Into a grand and wretched whorehouse

Where they suck the throbbing red cocks

Of highway patrolmen and oilmen and lobbyists

Until they explode, cumming blood and money and fear

Into the wide, lusty mouths of the lawmakers

Who swallow down those sweet sacraments of the modern age.

Yes, I’ve seen it!

It’s sometimes dim,

Like a distant star under city lights,

But often bright white

And all-encompassing,

Clothed in work gloves and work shoes and denim,

Two-thousand strong, marching,

Getting burned beneath the June sun,

But never stopping, righting

Overturned headstones tossed by wind,

Picking up trash and tree branches,

Until, finally, the work is done

And we can rest together

In the shade of a wide tree

And talk and smile and laugh

Over a well-earned simple meal

And cool water, calming the day’s desperate thirst.

It is not some strange and unique gift

Of people around these parts, though.

It is an exaltation, a celebration

Of the often forgotten but immutable grandeur

Of basic human goodness and decency –

Nothing more and nothing less.

I am awoken, this time by the yellow lights

Of the university, softly glowing

Like the face of a very old friend,

Like the face of my mother holding me,

Six years old, after I came home from school

To a shoebox, a casket

For the soft thing that kept me safe at night

And I realized my mortality –

Daydreamer like me,

Lost and forgotten soul like me,

Clothed in red clay, longing

For switchgrass and romance, gunfights,

Long nights filled with poetry

And gas station beer.

There is some ugly beauty in this place,

This hot, wet incubator of everything good or evil,

Peopled by thoughts, by hovering minds, roving

In their sputtering, sweating, panting, crawling, gasping work,

Endless hours spent on the innervation of the viscera

Of this brainless body

In which we pump our dark, thick blood

Out in wild veins going nowhere until it all bursts,

And stains ten-thousand desks still dripping

Onto the floor the undried mess of another futile organ.

But we pump and we pump,

Spewing our constant chaotic nothing,

Leaving a tiny gorgeous stain,

And crying, joyful and pure,

When it finally finds oxygen

And for a second glows radiant red.

Automatically, I think of her:

Her breath, overburdened

With the tacit rambling whispering

Of seasons: I long for that breath

On my cheek, warm and wet, ancient,

Made holy by the australopithecine grunts,

By the sweet not-magic singing

Of striving, fighting, loving, living, ever-living

Humanity.

And when she constricts that eternal air

Through her steady shifting glottis

And lets it fly across the rolling plain of her tongue

And through the snowy peaks of her teeth,

She speaks

With the power of sacred everything.

Her voice is that of songbirds,

Of animal roars,

Of sweating hunters,

Of a spectral deified existence,

The eternal spirit of life.

She says, “Fuck you.”

And I swear it’s the most beautiful thing

I have ever heard – I deserve it, need it.

She is gone now. She was never here.

She was only ever a myth I made

From a face picked out arbitrarily

From the popcorn ceiling on a Sunday afternoon,

Too sad to get out of bed.

I like making myths.

I’m good at it.

I was born without myths,

And so I build them –

Ginsberg and Pound and Faulkner and Rimbaud and WHATEVER,

Anything better to cling to,

Anything to keep me complacent

And hoping –

And I stack them high:

Bottles of gin, filled to the brim

With cigarette butts, like milk bottles

In some carnival game, with the big bear

Of pseudointellectualism peering down

From the highest shelf:

“I want it, I want it.”

I’ll get it for you.

I’ll do anything.

The ball flies hard and swift.

Proud, beaming, I am certain.

A clink, echoey and hollow,

And not a one falls,

And I am ashamed, burning red,

Embarrassed by my weakness

`And my empty pockets –

I have nothing, and now you know it,

And now I know it.

And somewhere a tall man with a mustache

Is saying, “Cowboy up, son!

Quit your crying: There’s work to be done

And you won’t get anywhere with a face that long,”

And I hate him.

Everyone’s so practical –

I wish I was practical;

I wish I could shake this

Daydream-tit-sucking-infant mind of mine

A while and just live

And quit chasing ghosts and myths

And quit hating tall men with mustaches

Who never existed.

Crockett comes after work;

Beers with Brad by Plaid,

Cigarettes and the forgiving wind:

We talk of acid trips

And how we drink too much.

We talk of Camus and Heidegger

And astrophysics

And compare the case system of Old English

With that of modern German.

We talk of dreams –

I dream sober, eyes open,

The way I always do.

I lie and say that

I can never remember my dreams

Upon waking.

We talk of lost loves –

“No! Loves unfound!”

Crockett retorts, knowing,

And we agree that it’s more poetic

Than we deserve;

I can’t help but think

Of Sal, his head exploding

In Denver monastery darkness

Beneath mountains crumbling before their time.

I can’t help but think

Of the low Arbuckles, tiny

Now, but once grander

Than Himalayan highs,

And lights burst before me,

Sober. How wonderful

To be born in such a shadow.

A little dazed, and very tired,

I make my way back across town

To my car, thinking how there is no truth

Nor falsehood nor good nor evil,

Only beauty and boredom

And those too tired to know the difference.

But no! No!

There is truth!

There is truth!

There are people who love you

And there is truth in that

And there is beauty in that!

I smile.

I breathe deep the cool late summer night air;

Switchgrass whispers in my over-full thorax.

I am content.

And so, for what it’s worth,

Some advice from an idiot:

Smoke life to the butt,

Suck greedily down the last sweet dribbles

Clinging stubbornly to the core

And be unashamed of the sticky juices

That run slow and precious down your chin.

Be prideful of all the messes you make

Because you are but a flurry of messes,

Yourself, coagulated and floating

Downstream unimaginably fast,

If you are anything.

Because the water is still now,

But one glitter-gold morning

Someday soon, a warm sun will rise

And heat all the stilly world

And love and joy and all the beautiful hope

Will burst forth from our silver ventricles

And flow, at first a trickle,

But then a roaring cascade,

Across the rocky racket that worried us so, for so long,

And make it all smooth,

And make it all shine again;

One glitter-gold morning,

The flowers will break through the concrete,

And the cruel-faced vultures and axmen

Will learn to love again.

Understand that you are a speck of dust

In an infinite field of cold concrete

Pushed around by the fickle wind,

But know that you’re a giant.

Walk and talk and breathe and laugh and love and

Live like a giant.

Be vain of your quirks –

The way your mouth goes crooked when you smile,

Or that laugh that escapes when you get nervous.

Be vain of your quirks

Because somebody loves them,

Because somebody loves you.

Smile at the busted-up concrete

And be thankful that you are breathing,

Be thankful for the busted-up world

And set yourself upon the work to mend it.

Fall in love a little bit with every beautiful thing

You come across, because it matters.

It matters more than anything, more

Than the trendy insecurities we wear,

More than the used-up social fuel

We piss out and then replenish.

And silence is ugly – be loud.

Be loud though it is terrifying.

Be loud because you know

You have something to say.

And so take that thing beating out

From the sweet depths of your chest,

And write it. I’ll lend you my good pen

And a few blank pages

And I’ll wait and smoke my cigarettes

And drink my tea before it gets too cold,

And when you’re finished,

Read it back to me,

Slow and gentle, and we will sigh

And swoon like lovers

Over what wonders we build.

If you have a magnificent monster

Clawing from inside your soul,

Whisper it in my ear,

Let it be free,

Let it be known,

And the water will flow again.