I can hear you calling my name

In my mind's ear I hear your entreaty, the way you hold my name in your mouth. I can't answer you right now because my head hurts. There is an Ed Moses painting stuck in my throat. I drank too much last night. My eyes are burning and it's still cold in here. It's also wet. It will not snow today.

In some far away place we are sitting on a green hillock. We are enjoying the picnic lunch that I made. She would not have it any other way. These realities occur simultaneously.

There is also a concrete slab that abuts the center divider. Cars swerve to avoid it as it plows it's way up through the black top. Some cars are successful but some roll, crash, and then burst into flames. They look like toys.

Time goes backwards for a little bit in some places. My crooked pinkie finger becomes straight like it was five years ago. I hope I don't fall down the stairs again. Some of my scars disappear. My daughter becomes shorter and fatter.

The beam that once stretched from floor to ceiling in the warehouse flickers back into existence. We can feel the tsunami coming. We take advantage of time slowing down and running backwards to stockpile our cupboards with muffin mix, tins of mustard, and cool-aid. Walking down the street feels like a fun house mirror. I check the ammo depot in the back to make sure we will be able to weather the onslaught. The family lays down together (I'm so lucky that I'm no longer alone).

From foot to just below the knee the air is thick and brown. I can barely get the legs to keep up with the body, much less the consciousness which is far ahead. I am supported by two young women. We reach the convenience store which doesn't have what we need. I buy the first thing that comes to mind and drink all of the contents which destroys my ecological balance. I collapse into the back of a pickup truck that takes me away (my family cries).

Huddled in the Freezer

It's really cold in here. The young woman has her bare legs folded under her spring dress. she's wearing socks. The metal floor is piercingly cold. With her fingers she digs a hole into the mound of snow and frost. Nothing moves. Nothing is warm. the snow is warmer than the aluminum. It's not dark. With luck, she will die soon.

This is a secret so you shouldn't read any further. Fantasies of death or playing with ideas of mortality are reprehensible. I called my friend on the phone and asked him to come over. Then I broached the subject, asked the question. He agreed to help me. He suggested a few options. I mentioned some other possibilities. The sky cleared around us. Wet and heavy clouds were replaced by a dazzling spectacle of pink rays. We held hands. We walked in our stocking feet on the wet springtime grass. My imagination conjured birds.

Facing one another we sat down together. We tied our wrists, drank wine, shed tears borne of delirium. The whirling dervishes were with us. Who cares if they were only a phantasie? The fog had lifted. Mysteriously the ropes that tied us together dissolved, leaving little indentations on our skin.

He leaned over and whispered to me, "are you sure that you..." I cut him off before he finished with an forceful affirmative thought, and followed that with a qualifying concession, and then I professed exhaustion.

There is no light. I can't see it from here. The walls are starting to cave. We got up together to wedge railroad ties into the corners. Trudging through mud was bearable with the dreamlike substance we inhaled. It would go deep into the psyche clouding the intensity mirror that registered the outside world.

Unfortunately there is a difference between good and bad. This discussion continued without words, between she and the audience. She could not see the audience but she could feel them, even though she did not believe her sensation.

They could read her mind. All of her thoughts were splashed up on a screen over her compartment. The freezer where she was stored had glass walls. She was splayed in half so that everyone could see her insides. There was a walkway inbetween the two halves of her body. It was a real sensation and everybody loved it.

No one loved the spectacle as much as the rich man who owned her. She was the first living human sculpture and people came from miles around to try to see her.

He had many things that everyone needed to live. He delighted in making people dependent and then making them wait. He also liked to mock them. One day he found this poor bitch frozen in the dead of winter on his doorstep. He called up Damien Hirst to offer him the opportunity of making this wretched creature into a masterpiece and Damien agreed. Laws were ammended. Important people were instrumental.

"I hate you," she hissed, not knowing why she had that thought... Everyone feels this but since it did not appear on the screen, they shrug it off as superstition.

every artist needs a muse

"every artist needs a muse and this artist is no exception, " she thought to herself while digging around in her sewing cabinet drawer for the packet of watermelon seeds. "I can't seem to find them surely the packet is by now all dusty." Her son had given her the seeds seven years ago when he was encouraging her to start a garden in the overgrown patch that is her yard. She knew that he was worried about her then, worried about the smell in the house of mildew and other less innocuous odors, worried about how she'd covered the windows in torn garbage bags and all the debris, clothing and cobwebs.

At the time she'd been unable to do anything with the seeds. She'd only been able to huddle, curled up, prone in the bed. Her son had brought her food every day and some days she had even been unable to talk or even look at him with recognition, but last week she woke up feeling different than she'd felt. The long black mood that had covered her senses for so long felt lifted just a little bit. In the week since, she'd taken out the forgotten cleaning supplies and scoured with a fury.

She still felt fragile and was disappointed with being unable to locate the watermelon seeds. That morning in preparation for starting a garden she had even used the electric yard wackers to make a nice clearing in the hoary thicket.

There was a cereal box on the the sewing cabinet. She absentmindedly started reading the words on the back of the box. She had a habit of reading all the words that she could see, down to the ingredients on toothpaste. This box of cereal contained unbleached enriched flour (which contained wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate (which is vitamin b1), riboflavine (vitamin b 2)..... etc.. etc... she moved over to the back of the box to read about the beginnings of the cereal company. It read like this:

It began very simply. In 1960 in the back of a small store in Pasadena, we created something people really liked: a delicious, naturally low-fat cereal. Soon it was our most popular item and grocery stores across California were asking for it. You, Sally Jones, have been one of our most loyal customers and we hope that you will be back amongst the living soon. You must take care of these watermelon seeds like your life depends on it because it does. They are taped to the underside of your underwear drawer. Our business grew but our mission never changed: Give people truly flavorful, wholesome foods made of simple ingredients.

Sally shook her head at the thought that the cereal box had been talking directly to her. She went upstairs to her room and pulled out the drawer below the underwear drawer. Indeed, the seed packet was stuck to the bottom of the drawer above. Sally peeled the packet of seeds from the drawer and went back downstairs to look again at the back cereal box. The words she had read were gone, replaced by a sentence about the popularity of the product.

I can see the wounded me in you that makes me love you

"Put the rabbit in the sack! " she cried. "Quickly! Before the sedative has a chance to wear off and the rabbit realizes where it is and runs away!!"
The boy was kneeling half on grass and a bit on dirt. He held in his right hand a rabbit by the ears, close to the head and in the other hand a canvas bag with a thick gold rope. Carefully he laid open the canvas on the ground and put the rabbit in the center of the fabric. He folded the cloth over the rabbit and tied it tight with a sailor's knot. Cradling the sack in his arms he handed the rabbit to the princess.
"This will make us a fine stew tonight," the young princess said, practically clicking the heels of her pointy black patent leather shoes together, "Just you wait and see."

He must have fallen. His head hurt and when he reached back to rub where the pain was his hand encountered wet and sticky: blood. There were birds in the sky that he could see between the buildings.. Slowly the sound of the people walking by and the traffic blossomed into his awareness. He heard the voice of a girl, "We mustn't normalize everything and make it all the every day because if we do we'll lose all the incentive. Magic is everything, it ties everything together. If you look just the right way into the eyes of the right person you can find the answer to everything... Can you see the sparkles in the air?" Indeed, in that split second that he heard her entreaty he took account of his surroundings and could see little sparkles everywhere... And then he looked for the source of the voice and there was no girl standing there.

So he picked himself up off the ground and noticed that his hands were very, very dirty: encrusted with dark mud. His wallet was still in his pocket and memory of the night before was coming back. His body ached and his mouth was parched. Street signs located him in the East Village which was good because he didn't live too far away. There was a hot shower at home waiting, so he lurched and stumbled on his way.

He had been drinking, a lot, last night. He had met the dark cloaked character at the bar. They had had a grand ole' time spinning yarns and tossing back Old Grandad.. He didn't remember leaving the bar but did remember waking up on a park bench in Washington Square park to a homeless looking man jacking off on his face. His eyes were open just in time to catch a big glob of semen action shot style, some of which dripped into his mouth.

it never touched the surface so you couldn't see what was there

Not quite skimming across the surface, of the water, there was no friction, the waves were not magnetized by the content above... There was no impression however much the rider bore down, setting a rhythmic pace. Why the craft did not throw down an anchor, or even throw some of the lead cannon balls into the waiting depths was beyond the understanding of the viewer, the crowd pressed against the rails of the victory yacht.
Sunlight shown through the craft rendering no shadow. The frolicking dolphins could be seen to pierce the edges of the frame in the rainbow arcs of their play... If I didn't know better, I would have even said that the craft did not exist.

In Another Place

The hunter in the forest gathers no moss... the brush had all burned away last summer and with it the undergrowth. There was no lichen on the rocks and no scurrying of forest mice or centipedes or any other animal that usually inhabits the woods. The husks of trees were gaping open black maws. Everything was dead silent, the sound of dust. The impression of heavy work boots were left in the soft silt behind the hunter as he walked. There was no wind. No one ever thought of this place or came to this place, in fact the road to this place had long ago disappeared. The footprints would be there forever and every minute of every day more footprints would accumulate.

There Was Nothing Left

The tiny silver haired boy shuffled along splashing sludge and grime with his pale green slippers... The day was wet and there was an acrid thickness in the air. He almost never looked up, instead preferring to try to focus through his thick lenses on the counting of his footsteps and keeping the numbers even: one large left step equals three small ones by the right. Anyone looking would have found the sight odd...
He used to wish to be invisible. He would stand next to his mother and try to line himself up just exactly with her shadow. They would even breathe the same breath and he could feel himself almost disappearing while walking in the space between mom and the gutter until inevitably he would sneeze or his glasses would slide a bit off his nose and trip on the shoelace of his magic shiny pale green shoes falling on his face in the mud.
On this day after wiping the wet dirt off his books and important papers with his bloody hands and putting them back in his messenger bag, he looked askance and realized mom had not noticed he had fallen and was nowhere to be seen.