Thoughts on My First Visit to Jerusalem

I came to Jerusalem to train some NGO people on using the media for something or other. The trainings are going well. Jerusalem is a strange place.

On the Nature of Time: The people here obviously live in a parallel universe, where every assumption has a caveat designed to make life more complicated and difficult to manage. I'm here during the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah (started last night) and the Muslim month of Ramadan (starts tonight). These two holidays represent the beginning of new years on each religion's calendar. They also represent the end of daylight savings time, roughly. Except the Arab's I'm meeting with in the West Bank are falling back tomorrow, while Jerusalem and the rest of Israel is falling back Saturday. I can go back in time as long as I can get through the Israeli checkpoints into Ramallah.

On Explosions: The odds were very slim that I would encounter anything like a real explosion of any kind while I was here. Jerusalem probably hasn't had a bombing in a few years. But because I am naturally paranoid, I must remind myself relentlessly of this fact, and walk around the city freely repeating like a prayer under my breath "nothing will explode." Therefore, when I diesel truck starts just as I'm walking by, and I jump half out of my shoes, it is from preparation that I am jumping, not fear.

On Explosions II: My second night here, traffic was very bad crossing Jerusalem. The roads, which normally function at capacity, were suddenly buckling under more cars than they could bear. The reason was that two mysterious packages were found and destroyed in controlled explosions by Israeli police. As I listened to this story at dinner, I remembered sitting in my room after my training and hearing what sounded like an explosion through the opened window. I dismissed it as more of my paranoia. Who's paranoid now?

On a Backpack: Today I went to explore Jerusalem's Old City. I've been to other open-air markets in the Arab World -- most notably Khan el-Khalili in Cairo -- and the Old City isn't much different from it. It's like Khan el-Khalili with the most important sites of three major religions sprinkled here and there, seemingly at random. There are tons and tons of useless cheap Chinese-manufactured junk, acres of fresh fruits and vegetables, complete with incredibly loud hawkers who wail the price and quantity of their wares at startling volume. My favorite piece of Chinese crap was a backpack with a picture of Snoopy and the word "Spoony," like he was America's favorite beagle, and he loved to cuddle.

On the Old City: The most compelling characteristic of the Old City is its mystery. There is no signage to speak of, no way for ordinary people to maneuver without whipping out a map and inviting aggressive targeting by beggars, shop-keepers and rolling limes from the fruit market. I decided on a system where I would walk aimlessly until I found a store with something cheap enough I wouldn't mind buying it. Better still would be if I wanted said item. Anyhow, I would go in, and buy whatever, and then use this exchange as an excuse to ask directions. This was a good plan except for two problems: 1) I am bad at following directions; 2) these directions make exactly no sense whatsoever. To find the Holy Sepulcher, an Armenian man told me to take a left and another left, presumably at "streets." I bought a photograph from him. I bought fabric from a man who told me to make two rights, "go something of five meters" and make a left to find the Dome of the Rock. Hours passed and by the time I bought a very expensive bottle of water to get fresh directions, I was told it had closed for the night. The two lefts in fact took me directly to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher.

On the Whimsical Nature of the Location of Things: I found the Holy Sepulcher and went inside. Truthfully, I wasn't really thinking as I headed over there what exactly old Sepulcher really was. Of course, this is the church built on the ruins of the very place where Jesus crucified, and where he was interred after said crucifiction. This is a very serious place. It is two lefts from an Armenian photo shop. Following these directions, you approach this church from the left, or, as I'll randomly assign it, from the East. There is a large courtyard where exhausted pilgrims breath. heavily and lounge on two thousand year old rocks. On leaving the Sepulchre, I notice a small passageway on the right, or, as I've randomly decided, the West side of the courtyard. I pass through this passage, and arrive in a spot I stood an hour before, COMPLETELY UNAWARE THAT THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF CHRIST WAS TEN FEET AWAY.

On Approaching the Final Resting Place of the Human Form of Jesus Christ: I approached it completely unawares, and found before me a stone tablet not roped off and protected from people and the elements, but rather touched, kissed, fondled and kissed again by all manner of people. Pasty Europeans toting plastic bags loaded with who-knows-what from market stalls right outside were besotted at the site of the stone tablet on which Jesus was laid in the tomb alleged to hold him for a mere three days. There are no signs inside the Holy Sepulchre not in Greek. I only knew this was, in fact, a resting-place stone because a gigantic mosaic directly behind the slab portrayed a dead Jesus laying on a stone slab. I was not prepared for any of this, and I leaned casually against the wall accidentally checking out the underpants of prostrate Christians and wondered what the fuss was about the slab. Then I noticed the mosaic.

On Touring the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: From the Jesus slab, a visitor can walk around the church if one wishes to increase one's own befuddlement. There are alcoves in which beautifully detailed mosaics of Mary, Jesus and other biblical luminaries are installed, often over a jumble of Greek letters and perhaps a display case carefully illuminating a piece of rock, or a different piece of rock. There are several of these as you encircle what is clearly the centerpiece of the whole shebang, the tomb of Christ. Here, more tourists, with unattractive t-shirts, matching badges advertising their tour company (presumably so they aren't inadvertently subsumed onto another tour and sent back to a different country by accident), and noisy collections of shopping bags again congeal. A priest is singing to his followers and the rest of us while an enormously loud but completely concealed pipe organ blaringly joins him for the chorus. Then he stops, and a soft-spoken British priest tells the people that their introduction is complete (in Latin?) and now, four at a time, they may enter the tomb of Christ. An African Franciscan monk steps in to handle crowd control. Immediately, there is nearly a fight between a disorderly Russian tour group clearly attempting to cut in line (they didn't even listen to the singing/organ combo!) and an extremely orderly German group waiting in a line with fanny packs and some walking sticks.

On the Streets in the Old City: Like the other ancient city/open air bazaars I have visited, Jerusalem's Old City has an extremely loose definition of the word "streets." Streets are essentially any passageway navigable by something as large as a housecat, or larger. And there are cats here, slinking down impossibly narrow shafts and looking at you as if to say, "too fat for this "street" idiot?"

On the Very Nature of Oldness: This is one of the world's oldest places. There is so much oldness here, the age of things seems to be taken for granted. Oldness is worn by buildings in America in grand style. The floors creek reverentially and most everything is protected from humans by velvet ropes, plexiglass or signs that explain we're not to use flash photography. Nothing gets to be old in this way in Jerusalem. Probably such restrictions would put half the city off limits. Pilgrims slobber freely on Jesus's own cold stone. God knows what they do in side the tomb. I stumbled upon some Coptic church (seemed important), and was directed to go look at the cistern where holy water is drawn. It's a good echo chamber. Trash floats in the water, and what looks like a campfire, or arson, is evident across the open space above the water. Ancient churches across Jerusalem sport television antenna like midwestern homes in the fifties.

Two cell phones. Cheap/easy
Garbage
Semantics Wall, Palestine, Jerusalem

beer pig stories

“Yeah. So she was like: oh yeah, I love when a guy’s got big balls…”

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Where does he find them? That’s the only thing I ever really want to know.

He’ll go on about his dick. His dick in this pig’s hole. His dick going in and out of whatshisname’s girl’s mouth, etc.

I don’t care about any of this shit. I just want to know where he finds them. That’s all. These broads. But I never ask. I never ask or say anything while he’s soliloquizing about his abhorred infidelities. And it bothers me that I don’t. I just hit him with the placating “really?’s” and the “oh shit!’s”. That’s all he needs while he drives like Mr. Magoo and tells me beer pig stories.

The ten-years-ago me, woulda smacked him in the back of the head during one of these tales. I woulda told him that his dick stinks and it’s gonna kill his wife. But I don’t.

It’s probably because my face is fucked up. I can’t talk for any prolonged period of time because it’ll get noticed. My words’ll come out all half-assed and garbled ‘cause I want the staring to cease. I got Thomas’ English Muffin cheeks. Nook and cranny scars from zits. All over my face. I’ve seen people who got it worse than me; but it’s rare.

I used to get nasty zits back in high school playing games that required helmets. The ten-years-ago me. Every tackle would rupture a new zit or zit cluster. My face and chest would be caked with dried blood after a game when I had a good amount of contact behind the plate. This is what led to the moon pocks that I lament today. I would’ve quit the team and taken zany yearbook pictures of all the “most likely to’s”; if I had a crystal ball illuminated with images of my marred, future face.

I notice that when people talk to me, they rub their faces. They probe their always-perfect epidermis with curious fingers to feel if they have what I have. It’s almost as if they’re in a horrible dream where every mirror they look into reflects Edward James Almos. They need their flesh-enrobed phalanges to reassure them that their face remains a still saucer of butter cream. I could complain a hungry dog off a chuck wagon if I wanted to about my facial plight. Truth be told, I could have something worse. Cleft palate would be bad. But still, the dermatological problem sponges up that last little puddle of self-esteem on my confidence kitchen countertop.

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“When I saw you up McDonald’s, all sweaty and dirty, that made me so…”

I tuned him out like I literally used to do Jack Tripper right before he made a misunderstanding ass out of himself at the Regal Beagle.

“…She wanted the wang, dude.”

…“Oh shit, really?”

While he unabashedly crafted the golden god-chicks dig me-I fuck it all- self-portrait, I drifted.

With the window down, I could breathe in the spring. Feel the air that reminded me of cutting school with a new pair of sneakers on. Air that was full with the promise of finding someone with the same pet peeves as me: someone who reviles nose-breathers and is also just as concerned about newlyweds who choose Disney World as their honeymoon spot as I am.

His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. The whites of his eyes were creeping me out. I homed in on them. I studied the capillaries. The moisture content. The eyelashes index-finger-summoning me. Pointing. Telling me, this is where the truth is. This is where you’ll find the poisonous dog. The whites told me that he does bumps off of toilet-tank tops in the bathroom at DP’s with that guy who looks like Koy Detmer. The whites told me that he’s still banging Chris’ wife. Fat Eric’s fat wife probably got done right here in this very seat I’m sitting in. They said he kicks dogs because his convict father does too. They said he’s the worst kind. There’s no salvation for him. End this ridiculous friendship. He’ll never be the funny kid you grew up with ever again. Your embracing of the Jimminy Cricket role in this cock-sucker’s life is commendable, but ineffectual.

----------

I thought about the new ballpark. We were almost there. At least he loves the Fightin’s. I was impatient. I couldn’t wait for the underwhelmingly less famous pinstripes to take the field. We’d park and get out. His beer pig stories, my hammered complexion and his whites would stay right here in this fucking car. Where they belong.

II. Three Weeks Before I Arrived Home

Three weeks before I arrived home, I got a letter in the mail informing me that I would be called as a witness in the trial of three kids from my junior high class. The youngest of the three has admitted to a college friend that she had seen a dead body once, and eventually the whole story came out.

People should not tell these kinds of stories at two in the morning in the communal lounge of a dorm at a large state college. Because someone is going to know someone else whose dad is a federal prosecutor.

State troopers pulled Lona McIntyre out of a mid-term exam and she hasn’t seen her classroom since. Within a day she had spun an astounding but not entirely unbelievable story about a student in her junior high class whose sister had gone missing and stayed that way. The other student was arrested – picked up quite literally off the street where he had been living for five years. His best friend from high school – a career FBI agent, as it turned out – was also implicated in Lona’s story, and he was brought in for questioning.

By the time the time I heard anything about the story, all three were on trial for negligent homicide and obstruction of justice.


I was received the summons and things started to slip. I could see the hand covered in dirt, the skin color at once bleached and ashy. I couldn’t shake the oppressive smell of fresh earth and the first hint of what I later realized was decomposing flesh. I had effectively walled off all the sensory information about what I had seen. I wasn’t tortured by it, wasn’t in therapy, wasn’t really experiencing the information in any meaningful way. But it was obviously there, because the doors had opened and now it was pressing down on me like a brick wall with no mortar. I couldn’t hold it back.

Your emotions aren’t what you expect at this moment, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You think you’ll be solemn and thoughtful and composed, but it’s messier than that. I feel responsible, sick, confused, terrible, and stupid. I didn’t know it was her. I didn’t even think it was real, couldn’t believe ordinary kids from an ordinary town had stumbled on – let alone created – an actual victim of a heinous crime. It seemed ridiculous. We thought it was thrilling, just a few years before, when Rif Gardner stole money from the closet of his senile aunt down at Ben-Gay Manor. Nobody was killing siblings and burying them in dirt.


The events of the day remain sketchy, only the incident itself, with the bundle of sights and smells have sharpened since I read the words on the yellow piece of paper notifying me that I was a witness in a trial in Westover County. When I saw the names of the people on trial, it was like I fell backwards, chair and all, and just kept falling.

I guess I was trying to get back to the spot where I had received this oppressive weight. I wanted to give it back, rebury it in the half-dug wall of dirt partway down the mountain-hill behind the old school. I think I wanted something from that wall of dirt because I felt like it owed me now, after a month of hauling around its tonnage. I didn’t know what I thought I would get from it. I was pretty fucked up by the time I mustered the strength to go to the school.


The building’s gone now, weirdly covered over with the kind of grass that doesn’t normally grow in Elgin. Creative horticulture, or the unique conditions created by razing an asbestos-laden monstrosity meant that the new groundcover was spongy short grass like you’d find on an English soccer pitch. It flexed under my feet and made me feel like I was walking on an engineered surface, Astroturf or new playground. The old building loomed over the road like a bent-back vampire, poised to strike. As you passed in a car, it looked menacing, and if you had the misfortune to walk into it, the effect was heightened by angled walkways and a final staircase. You didn’t enter the building, it ate you.

Now the low stone wall that started this effect was all the remained. The short, neat grass curved smoothly from the wall and continued to the rusty fence that separated the property from the craggy drop behind. As I sat in my hospital bed, thinking about the fourth doctor I had seen (the first one whose name I remembered), I realized that the I couldn’t satisfactorily explain to myself how I got to the school, got over the fence, and began to tumble toward the train tracks and creek bed below. Surely, the body had been found and the wall had been tramped under a hundred beat cop, forensic team, coroner and detective shoes.

I. Rescue Eight

By the time they got to where I had fallen, I was pretty sure it was too late. All the things dying people describe in books – their hands getting cold, vision fading to black, peaceful sensation – I had felt each one. Oh, it was my end, all right.

Then I saw that kid with the giant teeth from the fire hall and I realized I was probably going to be saved. I never even thought about the fact that those kids with the mullets and the “Rescue 8” t-shirts from high school actually rescue people. I never connected those people with the tangible, critical act of saving lives, pulling people out of wrecked cars, or extricating them from a tangle of thatches and tree branches, immobilizing their necks and hauling them halfway up the hill behind the old high school.

But that’s what they were doing to me right then. I was cut and bleeding all over, and somehow my coat sleeve had become caught as I was coming down and nearly pulled my arm out of the socket. It hurt something fierce, and was the main reason I just hung out in the bramble expecting to die with an obstructed view of the twinkling lights of the Conrail repair facility below.

The Rescue 8 guys were very professional about everything, moving me around carefully but talking as if I were an awkward piece of furniture they were moving down a staircase lined with family photos. They were all “easy” and “put ‘im down gently” and “careful with the leg” and they really were careful. I’m sure I was a sight to see, with piss in my pants, blood all over my shirt, a crazy cracked up arm and one missing shoe. I don’t remember the ambulance ride much except for the beginning. I remember thinking about the sound of the cobblestones of the street under the chained wheels of the ambulance. It sounded like sudden water rushing over loose pebbles, or your dresser-top box of quarters when your sister throws them down the stairs.

---

The doctor was neither stereotypically Asian or anachronistically upbeat. He was dour and white and older than you thought a doctor in an emergency room in the middle of a February night should be. He was wearing ugly scrubs with an unrecognizable hospital logo repeated all over them, possibly to discourage physicians from stockpiling free clothing at home. “We didn’t know where to start with you. The arm was bad, but the bleeding was a bigger concern, because we couldn’t figure out all the different places it was coming from.” This is the first thing the doctor says. I didn’t catch his name, but immediately decided that was okay, because I wouldn’t be seeking him out for any future treatment.

After his initially upbeat assessment, things leveled off. My arm had been dislocated but was slipped back into place in a scene I don’t recall but I’m sure was really, really painful. It would hurt for a long time, and there were stitches inside my shoulder underneath other stitches, all of which would dissolve while causing plenty of itching and being drowned in ointment. I was covered with cuts and bruises – the doctor called them contusions, which sounded vaguely made-up because I’ve only heard it on crime or hospital dramas – but most would heal after some time.

Apparently I was in something like an intensive care unit, though they called it something different, like critical care center or crucial care corral. My room was really like a stall, and from where I lay I could look out the door and window past the foot of my bed. Through the glass nurses and slouchy-looking other folks (orderlies?) hustled around, creating a reassuring murmur of activity. I had stopped listening to the doctor, but it’s possible he had stopped talking. I heard him ask me my name.

It seemed weird to me that he had put stitches in the cartilage in my shoulder but didn’t know my name. I said my name was U___________, which was really my middle name. I don’t recall if I was intentionally being evasive, but he seemed to think so. Honestly, I was getting morphine or something in my good arm so I could have said my name was Angelo Bruno and I wouldn’t have known the difference. He turned to go and said that someone from billing would come to get all my information and figure out who to call to check on me. My eyelids felt heavy and unbalanced, and I felt one droop closed as the doctor stood in my doorway with his back to me. He had set my chart down somewhere, and he pushed his empty hands into his pockets. My other eye closed and I heard his voice in the hall, but he wasn’t talking to me.

---

When I was a kid, I visited what was once called Elgin High School only a few times. For the last fifty years of its life, Elgin High was called just called “Fourth Street” by pretty much everyone. The school district of the bedroom community that had grown up around Elgin had eventually absorbed the little town’s half-dozen school buildings, and the high school had become a weird stopgap middle school between elementary and junior high. Everyone spent a year at Fourth Street before going on to one of the two junior highs known only as “North” and “South.” Both sucked, but North was close to the high school and therefore enjoyed an undeserved sense of superiority. Townies from Elgin went to South.

Having my academic life artfully split between a Catholic school in bad decline and the public school system when the cash ran out, I never attended the churning sausage-grinder of Fourth Street. The Catholic school’s disastrous basketball team periodically practiced in the Fourth Street gym, whose floorboards creaked like a back porch or an unfinished attic, but were finished like the dark-wood gyms of the Midwest. The ceiling felt claustrophobically low. I was tall and thin, and completely lacking in the coordination necessary to play basketball or any other sport. I remember an errant pass hitting the ceiling of Fourth Street and a chunk of plaster or tile or asbestos splintering off and spiraling to the ground over a fleeing center. He put both hands up to protect his head and ran toward jittery bleachers in a maneuver I don’t doubt he perfected after years of being menaced by garden-variety bullies.

Otherwise, Fourth Street was a mystery. Elgin was a small downtown set on an unnamed creek and weakly climbing the hill away from the water all the way to a highway that predates the Freeway. The creek winds around the town and carves a deep gash traced by a windy two-lane and a pair of railroad tracks. As the hill climbs out of town, the place feels two-dimensional to newcomers. “What’s back there?” I remember my first girlfriend asking once on a car-tour of Elgin. Fourth Street was still standing back then. It seemed like a strange question to me. “Back there? Nothing.”

Because back there was a steep, shaggy drop of unmanageable trees, bushes, vines and ivy, maybe half a ton of trash deposited by sixth-graders and the reason I ended up in the hospital.

The Road in Mind

There are times in your life -- Bob wrote about this in a poem he read onstage at Carnegie Hall about Woody Guthrie -- when your back feels completely against the wall. I don't think it happens for most people in a physical sense. You rarely feel do or die, really, with a life change hanging in the balance. But by the end of his poem and by the moment of truth for most of us, it's clear that the challenges pushing us closer to the border line aren't loaded guns or cold steel at our throat.

Rather, you're just at your end. People reach this point and quit jobs or break up with girlfriends or get divorces or move out of their apartment with a post-it note on the door to the asshole roommate, or whatever.

Bob's poem ended with advice. When you feel this way, he advised, you can go to the "church of your choice" or to Brooklyn State Hospital. He said you can find God at the church of your choice or Woody at the Brooklyn State Hospital. But he said, quoting now, "It's only my opinion, and I may be right or wrong, but you can find them both at the Grand Canyon, sunrise."

And I don't really know if I get there sometimes. Everybody's a little wrecked up from time to time. Artists paint, my favorite band no one knows keeps struggling along, endlessly destroying themselves and rocketing through the cosmos playing their hearts out while they dissolve like tablets in water. Real writers -- who write to live, not to eat -- probably sit to compose and feel breath failing in their lungs as the letters fill the page.

I'm a million miles from that. Nothing fills the lungs with oxygen, everything feels like choke in a bottle. Everything is pressing on and nothing's shifting for safe passage. Another writer asks why it always feels like I'm in an undertow. It does.

It's the scene, I guess, for the fantasy drive. On the fantasy drive, it's cool and the roads are carless. The vehicle is compact and it feels like a capsule or a pod rather than a car. I stop rarely and when I do I can hear my wheels cut into the asphalt as the speed decreases and the final movement of the tires sounds like someone approaching in heavy shoes.

The fantasy drive has no weather to speak of, but a coolness and open windows and no squinting. If it is overcast, then the rain, when it comes, will be perfectly attuned to the beat of the wipers and mists so the windows can stay down and the windscreen feels clear always. The air feels fresh, like life itself could take hold in the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. The air finally enters my lungs, pushes in deep and floods every vesicle, every little floret of crusty tissue, shaking the dry collapsed edges of my disused organ. The rush of breathable, sweet air pouring in the windows lights my brain up like a beacon on a tower, spinning, scanning, suddenly anything but idle.

God, I need a drive.

Haberdashery

I was in a hat store the other day and I thought about buying a porkpie hat. I didn't actually try it on, because it's weird to pop a hat on your head in a store. They recommend ordering a hat to your hat size, which I don't even know.

Anyhow, I was in a coffeeshop today and saw some guy in a porkpie hat and was really thankful I didn't buy one. He looked like an asshole, and I'd have to hate myself all the time.

your pizza

without passion, like most professional athletes
who wear stoles or ridiculous chinchillas befitting only of Phyllis Diller,
you knuckle and knead like a substitute teacher teaches.
and your lack of fervor is evident with each successive bite I take.

your slouch-shouldered, knock-kneed technique.
your blasé ingredients.
pats and dough-sprinkles delivered with teething baby acuity.

haven’t you ever thought about its origin? Naples, Rome.
maybe somewhere surprising. Crete perhaps.
then over to the boot, where it was later perfected.
how about the utopian tomato?
was it fare of the workers or aristocracy?
or maybe the murderously delicate Mediterranean sun;
did you ever noodle around with that one?
Apollo’s rays unleashed upon the Seven Hills.
sandals and thick granite.
semolina fields wavering to Orpheus’ lyre.
Hannibal-tainted skin and olives of the same color.
ample women wearing careful smiles leading obedient kids to the table.

i want a large Anne Sexton.
a T.S. Eliot with half pepperoni-half Etheridge Knight.
your pizza is a roses are red, violets are blue poem.

haiku for the birthday of byoo

one year a vapor
image embodied in text
left behind like seeds

discs of cake

floppy like eight-paneled hats, flatter than a can of grandpap’s blatz,
saturday morning pancakes more massive than channel cats,
not all the time, but once in a while they’re an event,
akin to running into that girl you love--wearin’ a scent,

slap butter on 'em like yarmulkes on heads in synagogues,
now shrouded in fat like london-night beds hidden in fog,
but that’s the flavor, as you already know too well, me maties,
pancakes without butter is like a devil-less hell, a styx-free hades,

not to be outdone by the all-enveloping sap of the maple, of course,
syrup sinks into my shortstack like absorbine jr. soothes a charlie-horse,
but easy on your pour, i’m not the guy for excess sugar that relax in tooth cracks,
this is a hungry man’s breakfast, get your hyper toddler some sugar smacks,

eat them quick, the heat’ll vacate the premises now that the syrup’s aboard,
rip into them with a utensil, in relevance to your plate, the fork’s starboard,
aft i’ve had my fill, my stomach’ll appear to you as a hogshead offshore,
my tee-shirt snug, holding on for dear life, clinging close to my core,

i pound down some one percent, the red cap is a bit too heavy,
my belt and i are gonna bust like brian bosworth, his movies, and louisiana levees.

your set of 32

your teeth, your teeth,
allow those words to pass by,
they should’ve slammed shut like
heavy black gates
in almost any movie you can think of.

them teeth of yours.
32 flags of surrender,
giving larynx carte blanche.
foolish bicuspids,
i bet you're sorry the ones with wisdom got yanked.

those teeth that are in your mouth.
aren’t judicious. they don’t edit.
they just linger in hot darkness
like stalagmites and stalactites,
caring nothing of your blather.

XX Observations About Life Now

1. When I walk around my city, I'm secretly worried about terrorist attacks. All the time, I eyeball every threat suspiciously. Each random overstuffed plastic bag, every open grate venting subway heat, everything makes me think of the devastating explosion that could follow. I think about how easy it would be to completely terrorize this city if half a crazy really put his mind to it. The special effects in my secret worst-nightmares are incredible. I'm stepping on the concrete between two grates when the explosion hits and shielded from the heat and force of the blast. I'm rounding the corner of the next building when the dingy Toyota I've seen circling the block detonates its charge. Time passes between bouts of hysteria and these thoughts subside. Then some crackpots get about a quarter of the way down the road to pulling off a scheme, and it all comes rushing back. ¶ The worst thing about these imaginings is that I feel a vertiginous pull toward the aftermath. In all these strange little imaginings, I narrowly avoid disaster, and by surviving, I am a suspect, and as I peek down that rabbit hole, my life is destroyed, and I wish that the explosion took me instead.

2. Keen focus on mortality, if kept in reasonable check, can be a useful thing. It's this focus that makes people go to the gym, run marathons, eat diets free of carbohydrates, wear seatbelts. I ride a bike, based on my physician's insistence that I will eventually die if I don't do something other than leisurely stroll from the train to the office and call it 'walking a mile.' I zigzag around the streets like the worst courier in America, collecting sneers from cabbies and the obvious derision of other people on bikes, and putting myself into stupid positions like being caught heading the wrong way down a one-way street with a high sidewalk and no curbcut, thus having to stop completely and awkwardly crab-walk my bike over the giant curb. ¶ The other day, the forecast was miserable, so I took the train to the office. I was again leisurely strolling to the train station, but now feeling like a tourist because normally, I'm telling myself, I ride my bike. At one intersection, someone is jogging and is caught by the red light. They jog in place, huffing, to keep their wind up. The light turns and we all step off the curb, and the jogger breaks from the pack and heads up the hill. Bad red light timing reunites us all at the next intersection. In my head, despite my blatant bicycle amateurism, I ask, "How fucking inefficient is jogging?"

3. The power went off hours after a recent lightning storm. Throughout the low-cloud lightshow, our electricity held steady, with nary a flicker. The post-storm humidity is insufferable, and the house is locked up tight so all the air conditioners can perform at their peak efficiency. My wife is upstairs asleep, as are my children and dog. I'm brushing my teeth, and everything goes black. ¶ I spit. I wait for my eyes to adjust, but there is simply no light. There is also the eerie sensation of hearing no sound; eerie because our home is normally host even in quiet times to the constant thrum of fans, air conditioners and dehumidifyers. They are all silent. Nobody moves. Nobody else in the house even knows the power is out. I follow the walls to get candles, matches, flashlights. My dog tragically walks down the pitch-dark hallway and slips on the top step, roll-falling down the entire staircase, kicking up a spectacular racket. I recognize immediately that it could be no one falling down the stairs but our dog. If someone stopped me on the street and described the situation and then said, "Then you hear something falling down the stairs," my response each time would be, "That's going to be the dog." ¶ The dog is stunned and sits at the landing at the bottom of the stairs. I've gassed the first floor of the house with a strange mixture of musk and vanilla, since the only candles we have are a mismatched passel of scented candles. I arrive at the landing to make sure the dog hasn't broken a bone, and the warm teaberry and vanilla aroma rushes up behind me like a vampire's cape. The dog raises her nose to the scent, sniffs a second time, then exhales gruffly, simulating a derisive snort. I have no response. ¶ Everything is electric now. The phone doesn't work, nothing works. I find my cell in the dark and call the power company. The touch-tone response system is metallic sounding, and the long pause to 'research my report' leads me to believe that either I have beat my neighbors to reporting our outage (the entire street and houses behind ours are similarly dark), or something more sinister and ominous is afoot. The voice chirps that I have reported a new outage, it is being investigated and there is no timeline for repair. The line goes dead, and as I stare at the words "Ended" on my phone's screen, the silence makes me feel for a candid moment like I'm the last man on earth.

poetry, pre-wifey

i write a poem for them, and they
say aww, that’s so sweet. what made you
think of that?
but that’s the wrong response.
not the one I was looking for.
i shrug and play humble like it’s a member of the woodwinds.

awkward silence now spins me around,
slaps me on my ass,
and sends me forthwith.
my heart topples like a redwood in the most guilt-
arousing deforestation documentary ever.
a systematic voice yells timmberr.

wet

rain comes down as if God lost someone.
like i should expect to see shut-eyed orangutans
and pot-bellied tribesman stalking dinner
outside my window; water beading-up
on their slick straight bangs.

but i dare not rise from pillowed comfort
to separate the hanging sliced privacy
to bolster my suspicions.

instead, i lay like stones
that are perfect for skipping,
while God uses window sills and wet
to send monday morning morse code.

patio penance

i’ve been digging like lucas with the frigid grip.

or andy dufresne.
but I’m not being obtuse,

just relentless
with a spade and a some old sneaks
that i forsook like

those drunken college years.

unkempt exposed stomach soon to be crème brulee.
soufflé becoming syn co pat ed from countless crust punctures.

such is soil toil.

always there

the silhouette of a grandfather,
painted on an april afternooned window,
gameshow reruns suspended in time,
tic-tac-dough or joker’s wild,
something with tweed sportscoats
and microphones that look like martian antennae.
coffee that’s cold in a styrofoam cup
sitting there all day,
adjacent to a remote
with buttons the size of boggle cubes,
resting on a christmas-themed tv table,
always there, while I come and go.

shots and her

he came out of her,
he’s back to her.
instead of giving him the tit,
she’ll be making macaroni with meat sauce,
and asking what his plans are now.

he’s back to brushing his teeth
in her kitchen sink while she’s asking
what his plans are now.

of course she’s talking macro picture.
he’s not.
he’s capping the toothpaste,
he’s opening the screen-door,
pending divorce, living at mom’s,
pretending to be proud, he walks to the bar,
thinking about shots and last words.

Argument

"You son of a bitch."

Randall didn't really yell it as much as growl it as he came through the door of the bar heading straight for my drinking companion, Howard.

Old Howard didn't have much of a step left after our fairly robust celebration of opening day, or Easter, or whatever excuse we had cited earlier for drinking heavily and immediately after work. Randall's first punch was more like a bear's huge claw, swatting at Howard's head and neck without discretion.

Howard went down from his stool with some general arm-flailing that didn't impress Randall or me. People got quiet as Randall stood there about three feet from Howard breathing heavy. The bartender quipped the perfect bartender statement: "I think his foot was stuck on the stool," and began to move away from the action without looking like he was going anywhere.

Howard and I weren't friends, mind you, and my obligation to defend him from the much larger Randall was close to zero. We had been drinking on a pay-as-you-go basis, so I wasn't owed anything. For all I knew Howard had killed Randall's dog or slept with his wife. In my head, I believe the 'barrier for entry' into this particular conflict was something like Howard's imminent demise. That wasn't in the cards just yet.

That said, I'm not a fellow to give up my barstool and make room for a thorough beating. I remained in my spot at the bar. Randall continued to breathe heavily. The air pumping out of his lungs was sickly-sweet, and I couldn't determine the flavor. Gross.

On the floor, Howard assumed the standard position of a four foot eleven bald man with weak muscle tone and glasses who has been thrown to the ground by a larger opponent: armadillo-ball. There was whimpering coming from his general direction, and it seemed pretty clear this wasn't Howard's first time down there. The bartender's voice floated across the bar saying something about 'squeaking like a mouse,' and I decided his role as a commentator was annoying me.

Randall wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and inhaled noisily at the same time, as if his salivary glands were working doubletime. He was not, however, drooling. Thank goodness. He said, "Get up" twice, once quiet enough only Howard and I could hear him and once again loud enough for the entire bar to take notice. Howard's hands fell away from his face and he stood up very fast. Presumably, the standard high-school bully routine didn't go much further than the swat-kick-spit-disappear four-step tango Howard had been rehearsing all his life. This whole 'get up' business caught him by surprise.

I was expecting a sitcom-perfect second swat, and I was right. Howard didn't go down, but instead skidded with some comic value from the bar to a trivia-terminal mounted on the wall. His elbow -- and possibly his funny bone -- hit the keyboard and he pursed his lips and started sucking air to make the hissing sound that indicates quiet pain. Randall stepped to him and I decided that not enough backstory had been provided for me to make a judgement. But I was interested in preserving the trivia terminal, so I quick-legged alongside Randall and stopped him with a hand to the chest.

"What's, uh, your big problem with this little fella?" I asked Randall. Howard rested a flat, glistening hand against his forehead as if he was taking his own temperature. He rolled his eyes slightly and left his hand just sitting there.

Before Randall could answer, there was an explosion outside, and people screamed like something important was happening. I looked back over and Randall wasn't there. Howard hadn't changed a bit.

After the sirens died down, we all went back to drinking. Nobody had seen Randall before, so it wasn't like we were all wondering where he went. Howard, who I had seen around and thought was mildly amusing, was gone the next day as well.

Two weeks later, someone at the bank let it slip that the safe in the basement had been blown through in the back, and nobody even noticed because the racks inside had hidden the damage. By 'let it slip,' I mean they were fired and came over and told everyone in a disgruntled fashion. It was one of those new-wave banks with long hours and matching t-shirts and weekend promotions. I didn't like using their ATMs because it reminded me of a video game at South of the Border. The story eventually got to the press, and the Virginia B.I. let it be known that they were keeping the heist hush hush until they smoked out some potential insiders involved in the scheme. They showed two headshots on the news.

You'll never guess who.

crumbs

you’re different daily
like bread.
flat and freckled staple
of countries that boast the minaret
one minute,
bloated and glossy loaf of the Ukraine
the next,
toast when you pick up the drink.
unrelenting manna,
contrived like sliced white,
dark drawers keep you from you,
I sometimes happen upon your raucous crumbs.

mondaiku

haikus are the things
that come to mind on monday
the day that ends fun.

i be westerner
friday is the orient
far and alluring.

that star and you

i hope that you tear all of your important tendons,
and that you get what’s coming to you--
million dollar baby.
you’re not worth the milk dandruff
that falls to the floor,
when I pop the cap for some utter-juice
pasteur made safe to swallow.

that star and you are a sight.

if I had my druthers, you’d be the figures
in marty mcfly’s photo,
when his mom was hot for him.
but I don’t. and you won’t.
you’ll set records and get a ring.
because I’m from a once mighty town,
now only famous for sandwiches and a fake boxer.