1944 (I'll wait)

I'm a mess he says. Powdery snowflakes falling. Dull green blurs flowing to either side. You're my mess I say, rubbing his temple in red circles, nail and blood indistinguishable. Will you wait for me, his voice just a murmur, a dry spring of a stream purling. If you'll wait for me . . . he starts to say, the final words lost in the gurgle of this throat. I lean over, my ear to his lips, but there is nothing. I start to say something . . .

Then he exhaled, as the sky, flakes twirling down, pillowing everything. What was light became heavy. Flakes falling like ticker tape. Like confetti. Thick. And I thought of the parade he'd never get. The one I'd never attend. With his blood and my thumb, I made the sign of the cross on his forehead. Closed his eyes. Said a prayer. I expected to hear church bells. Bombs fell instead.

Everyone wants the memory of the hero. But he had died as so many others, without a footnote, without an honorable mention, without any rhyme or reason. And still the snow fell, as it did before. As it does now, everyday, every season, it falls, in my mind, it falls and even on the hottest summer days, I carry a sweater.

She takes a sip of coffee, gently lowers the cup, then continues.

There is a restaurant in the city. Looks like an old french chateau, made of stone with the most gorgeous slated steeple and at night the light glows from its many paned windows like the golden light seen in paintings. It even has a moat and you cross a candlelit drawbridge leading to an old iron portcullis and then the foyer. The aroma of fresh baked bread like invisible fingers. Best if you make a reservation. But I never do. And each time, the maitre d' frowns. Tells me the wait is an hour, maybe more. Wants to know if I'm willing to wait. I always smile and I always say yes. I'll wait. No matter how long. I'll wait.

bloodless daggers

I sleep well at night. It's the days that haunt me. Singular moments from my past. Lasting they did, not beyond the breath of a sentence, a statement, a bloodless dagger. Somehow, these moments resist the sandstone of time, to elbow, force their way forward, time and time again, tolling in my head as if a child demanding to be heard by an ignoring parent. The chorus of voices, each saying the same thing, in their own way. Drop your pretense. Be authentic. I wish the scythe more profound, but then again, the terror is in the equanimity of the assertions. The sickle of truth. Bloody days. That even decades ago, others could see what I still can't.

1944 (his voice this way was)

The inside of the ambulance glowed warm with incandescent light, a single bulb buzzing as if a bee within its glass; and his face looked tan whereas I knew it wasn't, tan in the way candle light pours its honey upon everything it touches.

My head rested on his chest and I could hear his heartbeat. When he spoke he sounded like my father and I like a little girl and he told me something of his beliefs, his views as if in the telling, the sharing, he created some bond between us, some obligation, placing me in his debt, roping in my heart, weaving the net of his narrative to catch me. And, I suppose now, some several decades later, he did.

He spoke of life and death and existence and I knew by his words he had no place in this war, each word like the tolling of a bell announcing some tragedy; and perhaps, now in hindsight, I think I might be layering this upon my memory, but maybe not, his voice seemed distant, as if he knew what was to come, as if he was already gone and what I was hearing was from someplace other. This is how his voice sounded.

His father was a professor he said. And he told me of the many nights they spent together talking, father and son, of how his father never talked down to him but treated him as an equal. He said he kept a journal at his father's behest. Wrote every day. No matter how short the entry. In time, his father had told him, you will know you have lived several lives and the trick was, if possible, between lives, to carry something forward, something to stand upon such that the view might be grander.

With my head on his chest his words were like waves, my ear a seashell. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't care in the way when one is sated one doesn't care and sated I was, floating in that space between awake and sleep. His voice, this way, was.

Drapery

Drapery. Drapery be, upon my eyes, and from the world protect my innocence. Cover me in the scent of wind, dogwood, barley, and those wanton whores, the roses. Tell me tales of the hunt, lathered canines, of teal feathers, and the slap of leather upon haunch, of heel upon porch, of the eyes of desire upon my person. Murmur me birds, and all that they see, for who sings such without the edification of light. Purl my ears with breakfast pots and not a few pans, black in birth, steeled in labor. Wrap your cord round my nakedness, your geography my skin, your touch, my teacher. Raise me from my waking slumber to the orchards heavy in ripe, bended arms full of nature's lust. Quaff my thirst in the collusion of cloud and sun. And upon my lips leave honey. Mark me in nectar. Make the candles blush and flicker in whisper, gossip or rumor I don't care. But turn me, my wax, to reflected lake, morning pond, to that dear syrup found in heat, in the passion of an orange, bursting peel, our perfume of reveal, of the tender fruit's flesh. But above all, close the blinds. That old lady next door has too much time on her hands.

Misc Scribbles II

I want to know your lips as my fingers know the glove, to feel sin's heat upon the serpent's tongue.

I want to fall as water over the cliff, attached to no thing. Naked above moonlit shimmers, bowing before the starred face and her one pale maestro.

my vine to hang heavy, fruited ripe in waters baptized,

my vine, string of salvation, to play primordial rhythms in perfect fifths, pulling forth as tide to sea and sea to tide.


take me to that place that dreams go, when banished by ignorance; open that door as I have lost the key and show me again the wonder of a cloud, a place without watch or clock, where the moon is still a place we can go. Show me again that green grass and bare feet are as brothers and that flowers know more of life in three days than we know in three years. And that the sun is as alive as we are. Take the back of your hand and rake my cheek, gather as leaves my tears and ask me not of joy or sorrow. But hold me as the tree holds the bird. And sing to me as . . .

1944 (alone)

I was walking in the park when an old man with a baseball cap approached me. Wanted to know if there was more to see of the battle than just what was here. There was. And I explained at length what to see and how to get there. He thanked me as he and his son walked away. And for one brief moment, I felt useful.

I watched the two of them walk away, together, two generations and that thought, that there was another not present, a woman, wife and mother and I wondered if she still lived, if she had travelled too to this sacred place. I could see in his eyes a lifetime lived, joy and sorrow, of twilight coming and some need, to see, to pay homage, to walk with another, together, father and son. I turned away and as water over a cliff, fell, fell forth in tear, of what never was, of a longing that could never be. I still remember that turn, slow motion in my mind and the old man, walking with a limp, lost in a sea of brothers from another time, yet brothers all the same and I wanted to yell, just what, I couldn't say. Instead, as before, I fell into silence and I walked my way, alone.

Misc Scribbles

When you enter the room, my face turns as the sunflower turns. And from my eyes the dew of forgiveness, the forgiveness of not believing, of not believing a soul such as my own, could upon this day, be held by the eye alone.

In the morning, under the oaks I sit, clothed in sunlight, the smile of you still in my hair. And the acorn to remind me of where we clock in the arc of our union.

Does the wind in a curtain not wish it were a river? Do you not animate me to dream as once I did, as once I wish again? And to where, pray tell, my eyes are open, is there more power than that? To take the hand of a child, for are we all not children?

I died in a field of lavender, your words as water, drowning everything I thought I knew.

Blood for ink flows upon this parchment, not letters and words, not even of where forth I know, such the depth of what I can no longer contain.

Nary a wind could whisper as sweet as your honeysuckle lips.

1944 (his name)

Two nights earlier . . .

Snow fell as it did yesterday, as it was predicted to fall again tomorrow. Bare metal cold. Kiss your sister cold. Cracked lip, coagulated blood cold (blood as tar cold). He leans over and says you never know what's coming. I must have looked at him like he had lost his mind. And he says sun or snow, you never know. Then he takes his pot off and shows me this picture. She was gorgeous. He smiles at how I'm looking. His breath like feathers tickling me in our bitter holes. I love her he says. I smile. No, I really love her. I believe you Jesse. His face dropped like I'd said the wrong thing. What? He puts the picture back, as the pot, tightens the strap and stares ahead into the endless gray, shadows moving like snakes. What's wrong I repeat. She don't love me he says. But you know fuckin' what? You never know what's coming. I don't know how long I just stared at him. Me, him, our breath.

__________

(next morning in hospital, Jesse fatally wounded in his arms, he sees Mary)

What's his name?

What?

His name she said. And I realized there was a hole where his name was. Jesse. His name is Jesse.

__________

Tuesday. Having coffee. Lost in the blur of a soft rain. My mind a monet when he asked. No, no I said and then I realized the look on his young face, that he hadn't asked to freshen my coffee as he always did. What did you say? I asked if you knew my father. He was there too. Same city they say. What's his name? I asked. Jesse. His name was Jesse.

I cried as the rain fell. No, I didn't know your father I said. I'm sorry he said. But I knew someone who did.

1944 (whiskey or woman)

I leaned against the cold metal of the ambulance, hands in my pockets. Wishing she would show, wishing she wouldn't. I wanted to be lost. In whiskey or woman, sigh, so much blood, but it wasn't blood, blood was innocent, innocent as six months ago. Death from a distance is one thing. Death in your arms something else, almost pornographic, witnessing something you shouldn't be witnessing. You want to hold and look and close your eyes and run, run to stone, to spire, to the plaintive tolling of cold bells and warmly lit naves, of pews strange as the girl you never looked at twice. You learn to want what you never wanted before, to have what you can't have and to love in a water you've always been afraid to swim.

I'd washed my hands six times, but blood don't wash so easy. As if, clinging. As if the blood wanted back in the skin, any skin, the skin of a brother. I'd scrub. Look. Scrub. And still, the memory grew, his voice, his eyes, that grip, that cry. How do you wash that away?

And there she was. Death and life. Quartered. Run from, run to, I just wanted to run, to burn whatever was inside of me, to exhaust it before it extinguished me. And there she was, moving mist, a snowy shadow, her walk hypnotic. As she came closer, it was not as if she was coming toward me but I her; I felt pulled. In her walk, each step, I slipped, sank. Twirling downward, like the snow, drawn inexorably to her gravity, her smile, and I breathed and it felt like I was breathing her in, consuming her in my need as the war consumed men, material, souls.

1944 (pockets)

One is never alone in a foxhole.

__________

It was less crowded before her.

__________

There is nothing quiet in this quiet.

__________

Even the scratch of my pencil sounds like a match.

__________

And I fear the fires of hell.

__________

This fear she brings. Every breath a white flag.

__________

I don't want to die.

__________

Tell her. Tell her I will wait.

__________

Her name is Mary.

__________

Tell her I will wait no matter how long.



He put the paper into his upper pocket. There was nothing to do but wait. The quiet of a waiting room. Each man lost within himself. Silent rituals, the brain on fire with every sound, war itself carving memories as canyons, blood for rivers. The bitter cold. The unending ballet of heaven's dusting.

As the silent flakes fell, just fell and fell and fell, I folded the paper and placed it in my pocket. He weighed more. I remember him weighing more, so silent, so still, supine then as now. And I think of him waiting. So tell me, what could I do? Could I not wait too? She pulled the yellowed paper from her pocket and placed it before me on the table. His handwriting, those lines. Calligraphy in slate. An elegant hand. I looked up and in her eyes I saw. I saw what lovers see, what they dream to know and I envied, as green as the clover, his bed of wait, nourished in the tears of her ablution.

You know, we are born into this world alone
and we shall leave it the same way.
And between those two points
is a great longing,
an ineluctable need to know
and to be known;
and I say to you,
if you ever taste of that divine fruit,
you will have no other,
you can have no other.

I nodded and I knew she knew of things I did not.

Coming soon . . .

1944 (Gone)

Gone. Define that for me. When you leave my bed and take a bath, are you gone? When all I have is the warmth of your impression. Your scent. The spoor of the hunt. My hair combed of your fingers natural in the shine of morning light. Do I not hold you then in the cup of my anticipation? And now, do I not remember your words, in the snow, that frosted promissory, breath of an angel, you'd prepare the way and wait, however long, you'd wait. To the bath or to the heavens, tell me, what is gone when my cup is full.

__________

In the end, we all go. Eighty years or eight. Either way, have we lived. Have we lived.

1944 (snow white)

The next morning seemed a dream. Everything white. Linens. Snow. Young men drained of life. Somewhere, a low rumble, the stomach of war hungry. The hospital like a kitchen, doctors and nurses cleaning plates. Washing pans. Evidence vivid in cry and rip, of lip and cloth, of skin and bone, all not as they were, not as they should, consumed, tossed, expelled. And life became an accounting, a series of numbers, stats, charts. Until around 10am. He is calling your name. Do you know him she said. And I felt like a pear. Everything in my gut. Do you know him she repeated, grabbing my arms.

I ran. Into the snow. Into his eyes. Kneeling before his alter of green wool. And the largest white flakes fell. I remember how beautiful his hair looked powdered with snow, frosted like christmas. And his face held a stillness, like a child or a mannequin; his eyes as lakes unplumbed. And I remember thinking if the snow would hurt his eyes, those soft flakes falling, melting into his unblinking eyes. Heaven's pillow he called it, the snow. And I thought of him now, looking so peaceful, as if he were ten years younger and I were tucking him into bed. Sheets white as snow, which is why the only sheets I own, the only sheets I'll sleep on, are white, as snow.

1944 (a bed of clover)

Spring came on a bed of clover
emerald waves
lapping
chiseled granite

where old hands
rivers of veins
hammer tolling
had gorged rock

scored
date and dash
life marking
a life

before which
she stood
listening to the wind
her shadow and his

__________

you will get pass this
they said
as if
this was the thing to say

as if he
all that he was
could be packaged
as a this

get pass this
to where
she had wanted
to say

where?
she had wanted
to yell
into their vacuous faces

where would you
have me go?
to get pass
this

but she didn't
didn't have the energy
to talk of places
she'd never go

to give credence
to the idea
that he, them
was nothing more

than
just
a
this

1944 (snow cones)

I've never been able to eat a snow cone. Not since. You see, when blood drops onto fresh snow, it looks like a snow cone; and for that same reason, I never eat strawberries either. But the funny thing is, I think about both all the time. This is why I sit alone. Who else sees as I see. As they buy their kids snow cones. And summer strawberries grace their tables.

1944 (a roseate cast)

As the snow twirls down
the flares rise

pirouetting dancers
roseate cast

falling, thousands
like parachutes

upon steeled heads
of plumed breath

to eyes drunk
of death

seen
dreamed

and often
wished nay prayed

and still they rise
these foreign lanterns

as still they fall
these whirling skirts

a cold tease
before blooming noses;

upon hell's lake
they will come

in the prepubescent dawn
a gray mass, quiet

as the heartbeat
in our ears

as the drumbeat
on chested metal

as courage found
in the shoulder beside

as a woman
whose lips

consumed me
whole

as I fell this night
into her eyes

just as then
those flakes

softly
came down

heaven's pillow
preparing ground

678. Outtake #9: Goodbye

"What's wrong now?" Rog asks.

"Nothing," Yul says.

"Frail that. Something's wrong."

Yul sighs.

"Talk to me."

"Alright, you want to know?"

"Not really."

"It's goodbye."

"What are you talking about?"

"Goodbye. Don't you understand?"

"Mairi? You're upset that Mairi left?"

"No jackarse. You just don't get it do you?"

"Get what?"

"How long have you known me?"

"Almost four years, but--"

"And what has defined my life?"

"I don't know. What?"

"Goodbye. My whole frailing life has been defined by goodbyes."

"And?"

"And? Is that it? Is that all you got? And?"

"What?"

"Nevermind."

"Whatever."

"Yeah, you can take that whatever with your clothes."

"Frail me."

"Good luck with that. Oh, and Rog?"

"I'm not listening."

"Yes you are."

"No. I'm. Not.

"Yes. You. Are."

"What then?"

"Nothing."

ed note: Outtake chapters may or may not have happened. A chapter becomes an outtake for one of two reasons: either (1) the writing is lackluster or not fully developed, lacking a certain gravitas; or (2) the scene in question doesn't fit the story or the character in some way. The former is the case here. Still, outtakes, like in the movies, are always fun to see, which is why I post them.

1944 (without fetters)

The sun was shinning where before it had been raining. The black streets looked in reflection like they were smiling, the trees as if they had been crying, shivering as a gentle wind tried to console. I sat alone in the cafe as I always did. My choice. A token of integrity I told myself since no one who ever sat with me understood and I no longer had the energy to pretend that we spoke the same language. Yes, it was just one night, but it was how they said it, one night, as if in the saying they could slap or shame me into their reality. I felt like Mary, like Joseph had just offered the idea of another child to replace the one I'd lost, maybe adopt if divine intervention looked the other way. My God that's how it felt. As if one thousand nights or ten thousand nights could plumb the depth of love deeper. But it didn't. I saw their fate, the facades, living made-to-order lives, timeline like a train, railed, rutted. I saw the token kisses and the perfunctory hugs, two branches of a tree grown apart; and I saw the effort to keep appearances where the only thing that was real came at the bottom of a bottle. So, I sat alone. Drank my coffee. And I remembered what it was like to live, even for just one night, without fetters.

1944 (heels as hammers)

I walk by store fronts. I do not recognize my reflection. I do not know that lady dressed in wool, a brownish-green jacket with matching hat. I see her. And it is as if she is looking at me from the other side of the glass, from a world separated by time. And she stares, neither smiling nor frowning. Quiet as Tuesday night, sitting in a tent, drinking whiskey, spilling whiskey, rubbing the smell into my cheeks, mixing it with my tears, wanting the burning in my throat to consume my bottomless pain, to consume my flesh like acid, to take me to him. I wonder if that lady knows what I know. I wonder how she copes. I wonder if she'll join me for coffee, if she will listen, listen so intently that she absorbs the anguish from my words. Just once I wish she'd speak. Just once I'd like to hear what she has to say. Just once I'd like to be her.

The streets are almost empty now. A young boy selling newspapers on the corner. A shopkeeper sweeping, his white apron looking pregnant. And a few other ladies walking leisurely in twos, always in twos like doves, always chatting and pointing, sharing opinions, making judgments, looking animated. And smiling. With ease. They smile without effort. Something the lady in the window never does.

The morning sheds its warm light and the birds seem to retire to wherever they go past morning. Shadows take on an edge and there is the echo. Footsteps. Petit heels on inlaid brick. Always following, just out of sight. The heels of a woman. I know this because I know the heels of a man, moving with direction, stamping the ground with purpose. Like the sound of a hammer. The sound of something being done, for who questions a hammer. Who questions a man walking like he knows where he is going. This diffident echo was not that. It was not the squawk of a crow, or the crow of a rooster, but more a wallflower of a tweet, something heard but not seen.

He had walked like that. Feet, heels as hammers. His arms full of limpness. His eyes lost in the pain of a child who doesn't understand. A child forced into adult action, forced to suffer adult pain. And he wore his blood like indian rouge, like two brothers playing in the backyard, which surely they must have done not long before. And he wore it as if to say what his lips could not. Those heels hanging. Muddy. And those heels pounding. How would they know of that. With their smiles and pointing and laughing as if laughs were free and smiles were easy. They don't hear the heels. They don't know the echo, the sound of heels like hammers, the sound of heels hanging limp. They don't hear them at all.

But I do.

__________

She orders coffee. And a café au lait. One to breathe. One to drink, drown her throat, warm her belly. He had smelled of many things, of fresh turned earth, of wood and tobacco, perhaps the courage of whiskey, but he had tasted of coffee. His coal black eyes as if filled with a dark brew, her reflection, the cream, twirling in his eyes, rising and falling, as the coffee from a pot, pouring into her, into her whiteness, her vessel, her porcelain features and in the pouring, and in the filling, of her holding him within, the warmth, those coffee black eyes, two, as the two cups on her table. One to drink. The other to remember.

__________

The lady in the window. A twin sister. Separated at birth? Advancing in years, maturing somehow where she had not. Ahead of her perhaps, in life. Too far to call, voices lost in the wind. Maybe this was her way, to appear in a reflection, to say I am here if only . . .

If only. She never could get pass if only. Never could finish the sentence. What did that mean? If only what? If only she had not loved? If only she were not so foolish to think of love in a moment, in the time less than two dawns? Who arbitrated love, right from wrong, casting judgment from what bench? Upon what right? These smilers. These laughers. Always so happy. Snug as bugs in the cocoon of safe lives. A phone call away from their knees.

More coffee he says. I shake my head. Perhaps a fresh cup, he offers . . .

__________

Mary, she says. Mary he is calling for you. Do you know him? Did I know him . . .

She hears it now, those words, the way they were said, four words, whipping the air. The tongue cracking as lightning. Mary, she says again. Mary. And she reaches for her arm as it had been reached for, as she had been grab and shaken, to those four words. A fresh cup arrives.

Down the way, in her small town, is a war museum, next to the library. It smells of the past. Not as it was, but how it is now, past. The air is filled with . . . what is it, an air of distance, of a certain contradiction, a falseness in the way that hail stored in the freezer is false, in the way that a jacket from one's youth fits not the same frame in age. Still, the pull is there. An invisible string drawing her in where sight becomes scent and scent the night, wrapped in metal, the chimes of morphine as sweet as any injection. She knows the old docent. He smiles. Never asking any questions. Watching from behind the counter, his eyes glassing over as if his lids could no longer contain the weight of this place or, perhaps, the weight of her visits, always in green, always on Tuesdays, always alone.

677. Vertical

He sits across from me, balding with shoots of wayward gray looking all the much like a baby egret. I watch him scratch his head and I smile at the habit we have all grown accustomed, a comfort, these habits, a sanctuary in the familiar. I ask him what he knows in age that he wishes he had known then. Vertical he says. I would have spent less time seeing more and spent more time seeing deeper, forgetting quantity, forsaking the horizontal wanderlust as if what mattered could be ledgered in passports and postcards. And, he added with another unconscious scratch, figured out how to love a woman more than I did, to mine the depths of her need, her core, such to know her, to know her and only her and in that knowing, in that depth, perhaps have discovered the love she proclaimed never to have for me; and, in that way, given Ceru what his own son will never have, two parents. But I suppose one parent is better than none. I nodded and he says no more but just looks at me until I nod again and we both go back to wherever we were before, sitting side by side, two worlds apart.

676. a canvas of them

Why was it so cold. Why did his absence grow the room and everything seemed smaller, the familiar routes between rooms, longer? Grabbing brush, erecting canvas, paint flew as magic from a wand, thoughts as hues, mood as light, shadow, frustration. Would he come? Would he open? Would he understand that none of it, none of the past was necessary. She didn't want what was. Nor the coloring of what was. Not even the weight of judgment and expectation, the friction of the sea, reluctantly allowing passage, of ship, of time, of what would and could not be stopped. Why this silly attachment to control? Why did he do it? What did he fear? And why oh Janus did he not see her arms extended, ready, waiting, willing, wanting to catch, to hold, the vessel for his water, not shaping, just holding. And still the paint flew as thoughts, as questions. Yellows and oranges and reds sprayed forth. Strokes uninhibited of form, of purpose, of goal. This is how he should be. She his canvas, open as white, textured in care to catch each nuance of pain. She could absorb it, all of it, if only he would brush her, paint her, open his tubes upon her. Caress her with his sable. To blend his pigment into her, blurring a this and that, a his and her, creating something other, something more, a canvas of them.

taking requests

In the mood to do audio readings and commentary. Please leave your requests in comments.

1944 (of leather remembered)

She remembered spreading her legs and she remembered the cold metal against her hands as she reached to brace herself; and the cold air between them, if only for a second, a lull between waves it had seemed. The ambulance chimed in the wind of exertion, jiggling with bottles and needles and other loose bits for healing, for saving, for puncturing, entering, injecting serums and opiates and she felt herself, legs spread, knees bent, as a vein, a flood of warmth entering her, filling, stretching, fitting, and the thought, strange as it seemed then and strange as it seems now, of leather, clear as saddle soaped, of blooded neighing, perhaps the smell of wood, of hunt, of chase, the bark of a dog somewhere, of pheasants over the shoulder and shells being slipped into smooth bores, unhinged and vulnerable to those casings, a cold touch of metal upon metal, a trigger away from fire, from light, from that noise that silenced all other noises, of feathers flying and falling, the rush of the kill, of blood, of leather, of that leather worn smooth, spit-polished. This, like her warm café au lait, such the resemblance of the young man filling her cup, was he remembered, twirled in fading memory, with each petit sip a familiar warmth, over lip, tongue, held and savored, each Tuesday morning as it was that day he walked into her hospital, so many Tuesdays before.

Reading and Commentary

Reading and Commentary with slideshow

675. his chary tongue

The dining hall on Bravo, angles of glinting steel, fit, annoyingly, the coldness of his cliffed face. He ate, slowly. Too slowly. Disgustingly slow, his arm an apathetic waterwheel, turning without thought or bogged down, perhaps, with too much. Only the sound of his spoon scraping the bowl, and the sound of his lips slurping in that irritating way of his augered for space in her throbbing headache. And damn if in his not looking at her, he seemed to hide, his chary tongue lizard-like in silence, retreating with soup back into his dark cave. Together they sat, but he ate alone, chewing Janus knew what, loudly. She removed her caressing hand from his inner thigh, and yet he breathed then as before, as if his thoughts were color and everything and everyone else but a blur of gray at the edge.

She took a napkin and scribbled a few words. He pretended not to see, maybe couldn't see, his pain jealous of hand or help; just a little longer the siren call of agony, of loss, of grief demanding its due. Commanding it seemed, his attention, all of it, as he appeared not to see her leave. His eyes somewhere in his head.

I can't heal what I can't see. I'll be in my quarters if you want me. Don't come without your tongue.

He placed the napkin back down carefully, ironing it flat with the edge of his hand, staring at the whiteness as he once did at the sand, the sand before the cottage, where on his lap lay a flaming head of sun; or so it felt from the heat she breathed into his belly, her pearl lips translucent, iridescent in smile, in him, of an us in the sacred bond of release. A falling she would have said.

674. the elegant grace of the fall

The exercise was simple. Sit. Watch. And in time, from the rose, would be a falling, a petal overcome in time, by age, coming to terminal (in the sisterly way of leaves in autumn) like a train at the end of route. A slow, gentle succumbing. Taken with an innocent breeze from the motherly lips of a blue wind. A return to roots, to the fertile dark soil, the tail of the circle caressed, joined, connected in the way of fish and water, of sun and sky, of inhale and exhale.

As a chatelaine to be, this lesson, understanding to observe the unnatural resistance of life self-centered, misunderstanding it's place, role within the greater play, act, performance, this lesson. above all others, the elegant grace of the fall, the eternal truth of the circle, of relaxing into the dulcet rhythms of biology, of relationship, of love and letting go of ideas, of constructed constructs masquerading, of, as was revered, surrender.

Three weeks is a long time when all you have are your thoughts. Your thoughts and your past. Your thoughts and your training. Your thoughts and the molasses of a future moving like lava within the caged cavity of demoniacal desire. She knew all this. Like a fly to flypaper. If her petal were to fall, she wanted that fall in his arms, to see his eyes close the act of her life, his limbs holding the nesting of her heart, his breath the final kiss upon her lips sending her, her falling, to the dark soil.

__________

Thought percolating, she thought of Trev, of verse. Reaching for parchment, she quenched thirst of paper for ink as soil for rain:

I remember clearly the day
I learned to read
again

when the ocean rose up
and slapped a smile
across my face

and the sun sent
its arrows
upon my back

and your toes laced mine
upon a sea of sand
hands wet as kisses

I knew then
your verb
and not a few adjectives

like so many grapes
bleeding
my tongue rouge

673. Eternal Falling

Mairi watched Bravo depart. Growing smaller. And smaller. Just a star now. Extinguished in the great black coldness. An ocean, ink for water. Murky as the future. Left and left. Gauche feet. Gut gouache. Seeds in the belly. A growing hunger. Ambition driving rain of duct. Between and between. A landscape pocked with the unfamiliar. Moon barren. Dark side cold.

"Your transport is ready."

"Thank you," said Mairi, the voice, her voice sounding distant as if she was overhearing a conversation. "How long to Arc'teryx?"

"Three weeks."

She followed the drone through a sea of metal, of voices unknown, whispers in winter snow, the raven hungry, the dead buried. A walk not unlike one taken a lifetime ago, maroon cloak pulled tight against the wind, hair like flags in the open air, nose pert, alive with the breath of nature amidst The Garden of Eternal Falling in the house of Chatelaine.

__________

In her private quarters aboard the transport, Mairi watched the liquid fireworks of the universe slip by. Her chest felt like the nebula before her eyes, mysterious and seductive, beauty pure, as a hand leading. She drank wine, red to match her lips, the crimson of life, of blood, of the wine that warmed the turmoil within; as if a furnace she stoked with each sip, twirling tongue, imagining two where there was just one. She could not read. Too many thoughts barricading the entrance to the written word, pages feeling old, of a story known, static, dusty when air she needed, like a swimmer, like a baby born, to gulp and grasp the invisible tether. To pull this life into her lungs knot by knot, to fill as a balloon and rise to the light. She sighed. The only sound. Her only companion.

__________

She closed her eyes in the silence and began to float. Her cloak unbuttoned, hinged on shoulders bare, a curtain to the ground. Knees delicate and denuded, bent and spread with intent; cool air as a whisper flowed upon the river of dusk between her pale mountains erect, ripe of aching cherry. He had taught her to go inward, to travel the path of those electrical impulses, to caress and massage in the way of dreams sweet. Each touch a finger, of tongue educated in the ways of solitude and water, of clear glass filling and emptying, of that twin gateway of softness before the moat of orgasmic falling, falling as leaves, as petals, as the sun that rises must fall with a kiss of the horizon, dipping, melting, glistering out into the nothingness of abject surrender to a night drunk on stars, afire in the pen of meteors castings the warm flickering glow of a smolder burning beyond sight.

___________

In the silence of her cabin, skin bare, breathing the view, floating as on a calm lake. She exhaled. Lips full, blushed, agape. Limpid eyes of glass. Hands drained as legs tremulous in effort released the ecstasy of creation. Hair damp of exertion essayed. She eased into sleep deep as the cavern of her sorrow, as the cavity of her hope.

672. the rain and the rainbow

Three hours had passed and yet it seemed three days. She did not come. She did not call. It was as if he had plunged off the side of a cliff and she just kept walking. His skin felt heavy. Like a wet coat. His beard growing in weeds, a briar to match the thorns of his past, of flowers and thorns, of the thorn flower he wished he still had.

He reached for paper. Reached for ink. And one sat beside the other stone mute. And this is where she found him the next day. His face as blank as the paper. His blood as still as the ink. His thoughts as lost as the bracelet of a little girl dropped down a well. Until she slapped him. Her hand a map upon his face and what came forth, came as orgasm unutterable, his shame unleashed as nature unleashes the bowel, as a woman unleashes a man.

Em listened in the way a cave listens to the ocean, wet with wicked waves of tongue, lashed with words wanton as whiskey. Together the pain intoxicated, conspiring in the tell, complicit in the listen. His words rolled forth on breath both sweet and enticing, eidolons salacious, leather burnished, arms and legs spread and secured. His neck craned in the memory. His veins bulging like inverted purple rivers and what was pale became poppy red.

A rain of fist. Unable to sit. Her hands, her bosom, that red hair protecting him, the bathing, washing, tucking, holding, touching. It all came out. She had succored him, held him soft and hard, dry and wet, minds locked, caressing his neurons, a private Chatelaine. From death to life, from darkness to light, from sodomy to her, her eyes, her lips, her healing heat, a pillow of flesh fresh with bath, gentle primrose clean as a new day. She was the rain and the rainbow. The mother and the lover. The salvation of his virginity.

671. the way she looked

Trev had loss weight. His face a construction of triangles. More it seemed each day. Each with an edge and one had the feeling that what laid at the summit of that geometry would require much rope and skill to ascertain.

"She's gone now," said Em.

"I know," said Trev.

"You were the only one not there."

"And?"

"I could see it in her eyes, the way she looked."

"And pray tell how would that be?"

"Just as you have described it. On a rainy day. Looking across the brown and black and gray of the dock, looking for one primrose head, bobbing with the desire to see you."

His chest rose and dropped as if the sigh were the breath of a weightlifter. The angles of his face sharpened into shades and shadows like ledges. Like a face of knife edges.

Em continued. "She whispered something to me. When I hugged her goodbye."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Well, you're gonna hear it."

"If I wanted to hear it, I would have been there."

"It was her wish. Would you deny her a last wish? Is your heart that insecure? Or is it just the demons of your secrets that you fear?"

"Say it. Just frailing say it!"

Em moved closer. Lowered her voice and leaned into his ear as a bird into the side of a cliff. "She said to tell you that in every birth were the seeds of death. She said you'd know what that meant."

Trev pulled back. "I have no idea what that means."

"Is that right?"

"Absolutely."

"Then why would she say that you would deny the phrase? Why Trev?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I suggest you learn yourself up quick. In your own quarters."

670. the rein of heart

"Mairi, may I come in?" asked Kyra.

The door opened. Kyra stepped in, museum quiet and clean the quarters. Like a docent of hair autumn coiffed, her kit organized, clothes folded, bed made lake smooth in the way of one trained in the sartorial arts, stood Mairi. Elegant sadness, flowing steel, cheeks doll symmetrical below eyes limpid in the vision of heart, reins held beyond articulation. Bearing dignified as death, her fingers blanched in the way of deep space, graceful in length, manicured as gardens of state. "If you've come to change my mind, I will allow you to speak."

Kyra smiled of cheek only. Starlight evident in the glass of her eye. "I've come not of word, but of ear, not to talk, but to listen, not to command, but rather hold."

Mairi sighed. "Have a seat. I have nothing to say, which is not to say I do not appreciate your gesture."

"I know."

Mairi continued to pack. Her movements measured as if the very reach of limb and climb of leg could control the chime to come, paint texture to the hour with each slow breath, each soft step. Kyra watched as one athlete watches another, admiring the choreography of past training bearing fruit, ripe, mature. She moved like water flowing, continuous, without beginning or end, a geometry of curves in dance.

"You know," said Mairi after some time, "I must go."

"I know."

"I would rather a goodbye without ceremony."

"As you wish."

"Ceremony seems so final. And there is always crying. And I can't bear either."

"Mairi."

"Yes."

"You will always be a part of Bravo. And you will always be welcomed back."

Kyra stood, opened her arms and as the sun dips below the horizon, Mairi poured herself into the melanic leather of the one taut and tight, her red hair looking like a torch held in the night of Kyra.

669. something changed

Von raised his amber glass and returned it clear. A slight scorching of the throat, this waterfall of fire into the gullet, spirit dancing in the nose as the eye. "Tell me what changed?"

Kyra looked up like one upon waking from a sleepless sleep. She stared at Von as one stares in a mirror after some absence, seeing what should be familiar look strangely unfamiliar. He tilted his balding head and raised one gray brow.

"When?"

"When you had blood on your hands and the number slain were as stars in a dark sky." His voice trailed, hand unsteady on the bottle and again his glass returned to a golden hue. "You've never spoken of the matter."

"No one has ever asked."

Von inhaled his drink allowing the fingers of libation to widen his eyes. "I'm asking. Something changed. Very subtle. And I can't put my finger on it."

"I don't know. But I feel it too. Felt it. As if I'm not alone. My hands have never looked the same. The images of that night are like cobwebs, the kind that no matter how many times you sweep them away, the next day, they're back. I remember losing control in the way that a gear slips; in the way that once it slips the first time, you always wonder when it will slip again; such that the canvas of my days is hued with crimson memory and my actions governed from the dais of an event long ago. So, I suppose, I live with a multitude whereas before, there was just the clutch of Valla, Papa and I, and life was good. And simple."

"And now?"

"Nothing seems as it was. And as it was seems another lifetime. My days dim as night in the way of a life rotating once every forty years, has turned a shoulder to the sun. An accumulation of debt greater than the days to repay it, for how does one repay a life taken. Or several dozen for that matter."

"Do you want me to answer that?"

"No."

"I didn't think so."

"Fill my glass and let us drown our answers."

Von poured. They drank.

"By the way, has Mairi spoken to you?"

"About leaving?"

"Yep."

668. galloping gently

Em leans into Trev as two statues carved from the same block of marble. The slab of his chest galloping gently against her ear, soothing and soughing like the sound of the ocean in a shell as sighs well and subside, rise and fall with the cantabile purling of a morning stream. His hands lace themselves, a bow on the small of her back she wants never to loosen, the gift in the wrapping, delight suspended in the amber of this anticipatory moment, magical as youth before the cliff of age, before the cares and concerns of gravity weave their rivers, knowing the fall to come, but not just yet.

vertebra dunes

vertebra dunes whisper
rivers of golden curves
choreographed in flickering shadows
upon a sea of cotton
and a caravan of fingers
move like languid camels
to sighs steady as sunrise
shimmering in noon heat
between tremulous lips
and cool murmuring tongues
that dance below moons taut
as flowers flow
in the lake of fire
and minds twine
the wicked routes
of trade bartered
spice quartered
and fruit martyred

in the warm
commerce

the nugatory road

as there are days senseless
as spent shotgun shells

as nouns and verbs scatter
like so many autumn leaves

before the nugatory road
of my hunt

and my hands ache for wood
and my lungs to bite

the sharp end of winter
drained dry of purgatory

in the sweet sweat of labor
returned by gravity

from the pools
of my eternal salvation

found between corkscrewed
tresses

falling as daggers
from her quarter moon smile

saturday morning sketches

eyes like drops of sapphire paint in a bucket of white, liquid marbles, december day clear, the kindness of a young school teacher, alive with the road ahead, gated lashes, a gentle arch of brow plucked, punctuating the cheek, rising, highlights drawn in sun upon morning dunes of snow

she tilts her head. parts her lips. a touch of tongue silent as the lesson loud, bells of school ringing in the mind, of old wooden desks squawking and the perfume of fresh chalk sacrificed, of large clocks with black hands and white faces and ceiling fans twirling slow, casting lazy humid shadows, of buttoned blouses and pleated skirts and the easy movements of languid afternoons, of heels metronoming the hall beyond frosted doors and still those lips, two curves to the well beyond time where hours become minutes and women become memories

____________


she said goodbye like the wind, like a child, like an old person who couldn't be bothered with sentiment, afraid of betraying the heart with the eye in the gloaming of relationship, of the forked path, of the tragedy of geography, of a mother watching her son slip away

1944 (vase without flowers)

Within her arms he hung. A rag doll. Mouth open. Eyes blank, staring, the dull white of polished glass. No one stopped, sweeping by her as water roiling around a boulder. She stood against the stream of bodies, of time, of life and death dancing in her mind, held in her embrace. His blood seeping into the white fabric of her blouse, the last of life leaving, leaving her standing, a shell of herself as if something within her had opened and all of her had voided leaving just a frame, her skin and bones, as empty as the vessel he had once seen, as empty as that vase without flowers, standing upon the grave of his body, empty.

1944 (like waves in sunset)

Her hair rose and fell from her head like waves in sunset, on fire with twilight's colors, the autumn hues of gold and raw sienna. Each brush against his face, fingers of flame, burning in his memory a night as warm as it was cold and what rose would fall like a locomotive approaching, picking up speed, louder, faster, pistons howling in steam. Like that it was. Rails they rode in the way of fate, in the way that one believed this and only this was destined, in the way one positioned themselves as the center of experience, the axis of the universe. This one time, known only later, would it be like this.

1944 (revised--partially--unfinished)

ed note: several years ago, I read the account of a young american pilot, in France, either late '44 or early '45, who had an intimate rendezvous with an allied nurse, in the back of an ambulance, in the middle of nowhere. I've always been enchanted with the imagery surrounding that encounter within the context of their lives and the historical backdrop. Below is my attempt to flesh out how it might have happened, who they might have been. Everything below is fiction.



She walks upon fresh fallen snow, each step the only sound on the small road winding deep into the forest. Her breath graying the air as mist, rising, dissipating in the cold December twilight. The sky is a darker shade of mauve pinpricked with fledgling stars. The trees bleeding their hue in the fading light. Even the snow looks more blue and gray than white. And still it falls as if the stars were weeping, or shedding or simply throwing confetti. Her hair frosted in the parade, her skin tight, cheeks hollowed, lips red as the cross on her arm; red as the cross on the ambulance she walks toward. Red as the blood still on her hands.

In the distance she sees him, leaning against the back of the ambulance, lean, a shadow of army wool, camouflaged with mud both dry and wet. He wore a cap, tilted and a smile that looked like the quarter moon on its side. He was twenty-one, a year older than her but in these many months, on this foreign soil, where death came not in the newspaper or from around the street but (came) in a hand held, a low whistle, a friend crying or body parts no longer recognizable as such, in this world, age and time held no meaning, or, as she said to him earlier, held some new meaning, like a new word not yet learned. Days and hours and even minutes no longer meant what they had. He had nodded. Then he kissed her, his taste on her lips, earthy, rich, a smell of tobacco and whiskey, of stale linen and plowed field, of burning wood. Maybe even coffee.

He had come with a friend to the hospital. The blood of brothers, maroon, still damp, pooling in the creases of their stained tunics (draped over bone), the lower rim of their eyes weighted, stretched, pregnant such to make the eye look loose in its socket, larger than normal, so white against his dirty unshaven face. He didn't speak. The vastness of those white eyes just looking like twin moons over a foreign landscape of priest and nun, nurse and doctor, morphine and drip. He stayed to the end. Just looking as if nothing registered, the way a child looks on their first day of school. Standing in a corner, waiting it seemed, for someone to tell him what to do.

The floor was lit like christmas, lights blinking with each blast, the jingle of mercy against makeshift cots. He stood in a corner, away from the windows. He saw the hands I saw, those hands reaching for warmth to match the warmth in their veins. He saw eyes that saw what they wanted to see and hold conversations with faces fixed in smile, of eyes long teared dry, where nurses became mothers, girlfriends, lovers come to life as the light in their minds brightened in equal measure to the light in their eyes dimming. And he must have seen a vessel poured empty, a beautiful vase without flowers, becoming brittle without the loving waters nourishing local flora. I felt his water, in the way he looked. I saw what would be, his breath filling me, pouring, flowing over my lips, filling my lungs, the breath of life so very different from the breath of the men that held my hands holding drug induced hallucinatory conversations.

It is snowing, as it has been for days and everything is white and brown or some combination of white and brown slush. Only two other colors fill the landscape, green and red, the colors of christmas. The colors of war. She walks in the path grooved by the ambulance. She glances down at her blouse to see if the beating of her heart can be seen against the unwashed fabric, her small, petite torso a vitrine it seems, feels, for what lives inside, what threatens to burst forth like so many bubbles of life expiring, bubbles tinted pink, she had seen between young lips, always parted, always cracked in cold like tiny riverbeds dry. She looks at her hands. Forgotten to wash in the whirlwind, crimson as curtains between acts, shutting eyes, closing lips, echos of mother only in her mind now. They always called for their mother. Never the father.

and in between

coffee in the morning
sleeping pills at night
and in between
all the hell that requires both

__________


there is truth
to what we put
in our mouth
in a way
that often eludes
what comes
out of it

1944

Upon fresh snow she walks, blue in the setting sun, shades of spruce spared touching her feet, pointing the way, like so many shadowy fingers growing long in twilight. White everywhere but. The cross. On her shoulder. The blood on her hands. The thoughts of him in her mind. 1944. December. France. Cold. Her eyes the luggage of more death at twenty than her grandmother at eighty. More priest than nurse. That sweet release. Hand as curtain. Shutting their eyes. Closing their lips. Silencing thoughts of mother. From blanched faces, blanched as the lights in their eyes, the light leaving those glassy orbs. Leaving. Thoughts of a life never to be lived. Like the girl never to be dated, held, kissed or loved. Of the home never purchased, the children neither birthed nor raised. All within sight. All beyond reach.

She was that girl. The one they talked to now, confided as their bowels voided. Shame blown from them with shrapnel. Vanity buried in foxholes overrun. In the gleam of bayonets falling like the ornaments of christmas from trees green and dark, limbs bowed with the cloak of incessant snow. A flash, a grunt, a sucking sound. Metal into flesh. From flesh. A soft sound, the entering. Somewhat softer still, leaving.

Lives in orbit. Just not around each other. Not around anything it seemed as he stood leaning against the back of the ambulance, scarecrow lean in faded green wool, his face as dirty as his uniform with the business of war. Looking older like they all looked older. A year here as a decade back home. What died, first, those ideals, dreams, like the life that would die later, torn from bone by Krupp metal, foreign as mortality. He stood, half a man. Known the way one knows repetition, as one's hand knows the burning of a stove, needing no language. Nothing prior.

Her breath grayed the air. Chest tight. Cotton stretched. Buttons strained. Lips red, the curve and curl of brunette bouncing. With each step. The static recording of snow, of smiles cracking in the December cold. A touch, warm, a blanket. Government issue. Scratchy. His eyes, two pools of white defying gravity. Pushing back death in the act of life, an urgency born of war, life seen, felt, feared, not by the day or even the hour, but the minute. Minutes, moments, like the constant drips in hospital. Each thrust a drip. Each sigh, life, living, now. He the needle. She the arm. A memory between two. Understood singularly, framed in context the way a thousand deaths are framed in individual stories, the way rivers are known from their tributaries, the way men know to slaughter other men without threat of their own, with hearts never the same.

She would love him this way. The idea, of being fucked, an idea of language, of act, beyond her home. This world, this war, death not of the old, not of time as much of mother, of father, of apple pie and country and everything known before. Blown, not buildings as much as the constructs of her world, the learning of classrooms, the lessons of dinner table, all this, consumed in the burning wages of war. Memory scorched as cities at night from the air.

Revenge in the back of an ambulance they would take, against this horror, this war. His ankles spreading hers. His dirt her dirt. They grunted. She braced. Pushed. Joined. Conspired. Against everything she had been taught. Everything he had seen. It was, she recalled, that night, in the back of an ambulance, somewhere in France, a small bit of heat amongst the cold, the greatest fuck of her life. Never again, never would she admit, had she lived, felt as alive as then. In that moment. With that boy, blown to bits, the very next day. His arms, in hers. His blood, her rouge. His heart, so alive the night prior, so quiet in light of day. In her bosom of white. White as the snow stained in her memory. As red as her lips. As red as the cross on her arm. As red as the slush of his life at her feet.

the peace of war

editor: your work is too wordy

tolstoy: really

editor: and too long

tolstoy: wow

editor: yeah, no one will ever publish this

tolstoy: too long and wordy huh

editor: and if they did, no one would ever read it

tolstoy: any advice

editor: find another line of work, forget this nonsense

tolstoy: okay

editor: no problem. you just ain't got it, not your fault

tolstoy: yeah

editor: hey

tolstoy: what

editor: hold your head up, writing is not for everyone

tolstoy: (looking up) I suppose the same could be said for editing

667. as a ship waiting harbor

She rested her head on his chest, in that spot that felt like home, as if over time the stone of her head had worn a perfectly fitting indentation. She could hear his heart beat and feel the warmth of his metabolism. His chest rising like gentle ocean swells. He smelled of sweat and a sweet smell that reminded her that once he had been a boy, a boy with a grin as wide as sunrise and the energy of a cowhand living hand to mouth, past and future framed only by dawn and dusk. He would slip into sleep soon. His hand a rope over her shoulder. Running down her spine. Holding her as the night sky holds the moon. She would wait, holding her dreams at bay. As a ship waiting harbor.

666. in the shallow water

Yul reclined and inhaled herself into the leather, into the world of obscura, smoke roiling, curling upward, twin plumes from her pert nose. The room began to halo. She lifted her bare feet, spread them against the picture window as if flashing the cosmos. A wink of creation to creation, the inhibition of birth in the bend of a knee.

Her chest rose under downcast eyes with each long slow pull of the smoldering drug, a gift from the doctor, which Mairi would have nothing to do. She had no such reservations, feeling light, a rising, a lifting, mind and body, tight and taut. She exhaled, unzipped, the soft cool starlight a river in the valley from navel to chin, her lips in mist, a cave before the lagoon of drift.

Leaning her head back, her hair fell as water, straight, shimmering gray. She closed her eyes, spread her legs, nerves as lights on a river, alive, burning, heat dancing on an ever flowing stream of life, moving, throbbing, twinkling as the stars without. The leather warmed, the air humid with obscura and unblinking eyes.

Crazy they said. Her depths unplumbed, a craziness only understood by others who had lost their way in the murk of insanity. Looking into the reflection, she motioned, fingers feline. Rog smiled. Took his shirt off. And dived.

What do you need he said, her fingers in his hair, nails raking his scalp. Tell me, as if gulping for air, tell me your need. She grabbed his ears, pulling him forth, up, his lips to hers. Her legs rode his rib cage locking in the small of his back. She felt light, hollow, hollow as her eyes, looking from fear, fear of him, of him letting go, that each time could be the last time. How could she say this. She didn't. The moment came and she kissed it away and in this way, they remained in the shallow water.

skin and bones

I have bones
had them all my life
shy bones
never broken
never spoken
never seen
so close
so integral
yet,
forever
clothed
within
my exhibitionist
skin

mornings

morning is here
on time again
I pour my coffee
and sit with
the quiet
as I do
every morning

same questions
sit with me
quiet as
the morning
as ever present
as the dawn
outside my window

the day
in my mind
appears as
an account
an accounting to be
in the quiet
of twenty-four hours

I have these
conversations
just me
the dawn and
my coffee
and I wonder why

I don't
fire
myself
and hire
a
new
me

one that won't
disappoint those
I love
and bring pain
by my acts
or non acts
into their life

and I wonder
why they don't
fire me
and find someone
else
that will treat
them better

and this is it
the question
above all others
the question
of value
of time
of accounting

a class I dropped
twice
before switching
to history
a subject suited
to us flagellants