On January 1, 2035, at 12:00:01 AM, showing what was, in retrospect, a remarkable and ultimately telling observance of human convention and tradition, the Slizzeds, as they came to be known, were compelled by a force not yet wholly understood despite years of research and speculation, scientific and theological alike, to emerge through the left nostril, from where they had been living presumably to that point in time--i.e. inside the skull of every human on Earth, one Slizzed per human. Every human except me, that is, but I haven't told anyone that yet.
Incidentally, to say "every human on Earth" back there was a bit misleading because Slizzeds also emerged from all the humans in space as well, meaning into the artificial environment of the joint Chinese-US Space Station orbiting the moon. Curiously, all the space bound-Slizzeds almost instantly dissolved and evaporated right where they were floating in the zero-gravity atmosphere. This was another, smaller mystery, which was clearly being overshadowed by the grander mystery of why small, newt-like creatures, with long, prehensile antennae and a highly developed grasp of the respective language of their host-human, had appeared jarringly and in every awkward way imaginable from noses hither and yon across the globe. Test after test had been undertaken to determine what it was about space, or artificial air, or weightlessness etc. etc. that would prove utterly fatal to those Slizzeds which 'belonged to' the astro-humans of the space station, but to no avail. Of course these tests had to be conducted diplomatically since all emergent Slizzeds stayed, mostly hiding in the hair (took some getting used to, believe me), with their host-humans. Elaborate stories had to be concocted and improvised, mostly on-the-fly, about said tests needing to "get to the bottom" of the "disturbing" vulnerabilities the Slizzed 'race' had to certain environmental realities. Really, if the scientists had been able to consult for half a second with each other, out from under the watchful eye of their respective Slizzeds, they surely would have fabricated an elaborate plot, inevitably involving the first-world military-industrial complex, to rid themselves, and indeed the rest of the world, of what they would have ultimately convinced themselves was an invading force, which would have been an absurd notion. The urgency of the tests had taken on a different character as humans began to develop certain attachments to their own Slizzed and, of course, to those Slizzeds connected to people they truly loved. This would prove to be a fortunate turn of events for reasons to be explained later (see Rule Prime below).
I alone knew the death of the space station Slizzeds had something to do with the highly-salinated, vitamin enriched, pre-packaged broccoli-paste the commander of the Chinese mission to the station had been eating all that fortnight, indeed eating with such relish that he had gone through the entire ship's complement of the stuff, save for the small bit hanging from its plastic packaging and floating among the assembled astronauts where the commander had lost his grip on it (the package) in a panic over the unnerving feeling of having a lizard crawl out of his nostril, coupled with the equally (and perhaps more) unnerving sight of lizards scampering from the noses of all those around him. Ultimately this would be the last bit of broccoli paste in existence as the product had been discontinued by the private quasi-military multi-national conglomerate that made it in a single factory in the Xinjiang province and the packages sent to the space station were the last there were. The small bit left hanging in the artificial air of the space station was itself extinguished in a ball of fire when the now-Slizzedless astronauts succumbed quickly to some unexplainable madness and initiated the self-destruct sequence of the station right before exiting, without spacesuits, through the aft-hatch, in single-file where they ruptured in the vacuum of space.
Again, I alone knew that the madness in the moon's orbit, and indeed ALL madness in the history of mankind, recorded or otherwise, had been caused by the death of the respective human's Slizzed, skull-bound in the case of 99.9% of human madness, and extra-cranial, in the case of the space station's astronauts. Rule One - more like Rule Alpha - Rule Prime: If your Slizzed died, you died (and vice-versa, that is, if your human died, you'd best be in the market for a Slizzed-sized coffin [ultimately, though, the human skull filled in just fine for Slizzed burial]). I knew all this because my Slizzed stayed behind--in my head, that is--and had begun to talk out loud to me, as it were, as opposed to the previously 'normal' (can we think anything is normal anymore?) human-to-Slizzed mode of communication, namely telepathy. It had ultimately explained all these things to me, slowly, over time ('we' [I had begun to regard myself as having what could only be described as a multiple personality] had a lot time on 'our' (metaphorical) hands since 'we' rarely ventured out of doors, not wanting to draw attention to 'our'-selves by being the only living human without a Slizzed scampering on his or her person).
The first thing it said to me was my name.
"John."
I was jolted awake, startled. Subsequently I would realize that I had gotten off pretty easy in this respect, only having a voice speaking a bit too loud in my head disrupting my sleep. Billions had been awakened by what had been described variously as "the feeling like my nose turned inside out," or "you know that feeling when you get a really good blow on your nose? only this time it was like part of my brain popped into the tissue by mistake" or, and most colorfully, "it was like real bad diarrhea, except it was coming out of my face."
"Wha-" I said. Well, I didn't actually say it as much embody the word mentally, spiritually, philosophically, what have you. "WHA" was the complete feeling of ME, to ME, my entire gestalt, if you will, brought on, or at least so I thought, by a long night's sleep of fitful dreaming which followed a third-week-of-unemployment pot/whiskey/girl-on-girl pay-per-view debauch. My stomach gurgled uneasily, my heart-raced and there was an unpleasant sphincteral urgency that I won't go into but all these things I came to understand were common side-effects to the so-called 'awakening' of Slizzeds around the world. The fact that my 'awakening' took on a different character seemed to not make any difference. Point is, the voice in my head was the least of my worries and I dismissed it as more of a lingering by product of the dream I was having and had been rudely awakened from. But awakened by what? Now the synapses were firing.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
QUOTE UNQUOTE
"It's not time to make a change, Just relax, take it easy. You're still young, that's your fault, There's so much you have to know. Find a girl, settle down, If you want you can marry. Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy. I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy, To be calm when you've found something going on. But take your time, think a lot, Why, think of everything you've got. For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
...
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go. All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside, It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them you know not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go."
4:47am
New moon speaks softly outside window pane
in sleep,
there is no forgetting
your psychic mother rides again.
Possesses the overhanging cliff
past the back projection --
fly to shamanic hideaway.
Biting, unseen insects breed
beneath
your thighs,
walking into the tall, wet grasses.
You keep waking yourself
from the fear,
and their hard bodies on you.
But they never hurt you.
You feel no pain.
Stick around and see
what they have
to say, next time.
Moon slips away…
~ M. Lucia
in sleep,
there is no forgetting
your psychic mother rides again.
Possesses the overhanging cliff
past the back projection --
fly to shamanic hideaway.
Biting, unseen insects breed
beneath
your thighs,
walking into the tall, wet grasses.
You keep waking yourself
from the fear,
and their hard bodies on you.
But they never hurt you.
You feel no pain.
Stick around and see
what they have
to say, next time.
Moon slips away…
~ M. Lucia
A Night Ends at the Parliament
As the fire pits in your belly take notice by the rest of the aged world, you must never forget those little games you once played, a child in self-taught banishment. You can gaze like a shaman or burn like a bride. You used to wonder aloud to the shearling clouds in your southern axes, to come along and entertain your grander notions of being loved; those awfully contrived schemes of forgetting the whole of the outside world’s heartbeats, hitting like raindrops.
Eternity in your ink dries up and you’ve nowhere bright to go but your own backgarden – clutching onto modern convenience and salty residency in the front room, while accepting yourself to be wise in the face of free drinks left at the back doorway. The underwater railway into your hometown, breathing raucously. Late night noise patrols slamming the silence in your wide-eyed brain, while others scratch their chins in marked stupidity and you turn away from us all to keep your fantasies to yourself without even them whispering, to flicker past your eyes.
Brown, ailing paper bags of poaching, angry stews from Saturdays come around the streets end at you, beating in two your own prizefight – without the cameras, without your gleam. But will you not open up on this terror trail, feel the skins between most stones, sink your heels, caress those souls that slink past in genuine stream.
Keep your palms over your heart’s core, boy. Step forth, strove those gentle hallucinogens in a continuous motion. Sail on with the fearless shake, a whirling dervish in ascent. Sing on, to praise every pious, worthwhile scream in the inner universe – the rest, from land, your pathway swims upon – out into the all, that truth cannot shake, out into your own very greatest beyond.
~ M. Lucia
Eternity in your ink dries up and you’ve nowhere bright to go but your own backgarden – clutching onto modern convenience and salty residency in the front room, while accepting yourself to be wise in the face of free drinks left at the back doorway. The underwater railway into your hometown, breathing raucously. Late night noise patrols slamming the silence in your wide-eyed brain, while others scratch their chins in marked stupidity and you turn away from us all to keep your fantasies to yourself without even them whispering, to flicker past your eyes.
Brown, ailing paper bags of poaching, angry stews from Saturdays come around the streets end at you, beating in two your own prizefight – without the cameras, without your gleam. But will you not open up on this terror trail, feel the skins between most stones, sink your heels, caress those souls that slink past in genuine stream.
Keep your palms over your heart’s core, boy. Step forth, strove those gentle hallucinogens in a continuous motion. Sail on with the fearless shake, a whirling dervish in ascent. Sing on, to praise every pious, worthwhile scream in the inner universe – the rest, from land, your pathway swims upon – out into the all, that truth cannot shake, out into your own very greatest beyond.
~ M. Lucia
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
HAIKU FOR TEMPORARY ESCAPE
Day-to-day today
like sour mash. Take this hand.
Let's walk on tree-tops.
like sour mash. Take this hand.
Let's walk on tree-tops.
Negative Space
Sarah was an artist and my roommate. You wouldn't guess it to look at her - jeans, t-shirt and strictly sneakers, Nike, not Converse or from talking with her - quiet, not shouting passionately about "Her Art". But, whatever was going on in that mind of hers, I wish I could have had a front row seat, because the glimpses that made it onto a canvas startled me, made me want to gesture and yell "Hey, look at this! " because I knew Sarah never would- Sarah the Obscure. She was from a family with 13 kids, I thought she was kidding at first. You would think she would be sceaming for attention, especially with her talent, but there were times when she would throw away things that I would secretly fish out of the garbage and save under my bed. She confided in me that she despised those other artsy Greenwich Village girls, who wore their art like plummage - funky dress, combat boots, dyed hair, lots of silver jewelry - she laughed and a said she covered her ears as they strutted by. I knew that walking the walk was 50% of the package for at least 99% of the world, and even though she had the full 50% on the substance side of the equation, that still only made her equal with the style girls even if their substance portion was thin gruel in an orphans bowl.
But I've gone off point, which was that she used to have this thing with negative space. She would take a charcoal pencil and fill in the air space, the parts that were usually left blank, and a person or object would emerge from the white. She called this figure-ground reversal, and as I'd watch her, these white figures would seemingly climb out of the paper. Later on, I'd read somewhere, that Michelangelo felt this when he was sculpting - that he was freeing the figure from the block of marble, chipping away the excess, it was all already there, waiting to come out.
So I chipped away. I framed and hung her paintings around our apartment, even the hipster coffee shop on Varick jumped at a mutually benificial display of her work. I posted images and her bio on the internet and a gallery exhibit soon followed. It wasn't difficult really, self-important and even truly accomplished people peeked inside this dull, white matte egg of a girl and backed-off gaping, like I did.
I must admit, we lost touch over the years, she met Mark and I've been here on the farm trying to scrape by. When I saw the paper, I knew it wasn't an accident because I could remember the conversation like it was yesterday. I don't remember what triggered it, but it was probably some TV drama or news story, "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?"
"I'm not interested in this conversation, why would I go where I never want to be? It's opening a door, inviting doom."
"No, it's exploring all the crevices of your mind. I wouldn't do the cry for help shit like pills or gas or even jumping off a bridge, but I wouldn't do the obvious gun shot to the head either."
"I don't want to start my day like this, I need eggs and a couple of refrains from Oklahoma."
"You know how the buses speed right up to the curb when they come to the busstop? I'd casually glance behind me and then at the last moment just step off, I could even make it look like an accident, just trip in front of the bus."
"When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top..."
"Yes, definetly an accident, nobody would need to know my business..."
"Nosy folks would peek through their shutters and their eyes would pop!"
"Reminds me, gotta catch a bus up to Lee's for supplies, need anything?"
"I'm at the farmer's market today, we sell the eggs, we don't paint them."
"Smartass"
I was spreading yesterday's paper down for the ducks, the ducklings were hatching and I liked to keep a close eye on things. This is when I got most of my reading done, no rest for the weary, even though it was yesterday's news.
Woman Hit By Bus In Midtown
Sarah Siessler, 41, died after being struck by a city bus. The accident occurred while the bus was approaching the busstop at the corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.....
I didn't read the rest. The ducks were clamboring out of their box. I spread more newspaper. I gently lifted the eggs out onto a soft swirled blanket. The thing about ducks is that they have rounded bills, unlike chickens with their pointy beaks, so it is more difficult for the ducklings to break out of their shells. It takes more time, and some never make it. But I learned early on at the farm, that you can't help them, even if you want to. If they can't make it out on their own, they won't survive on the outside. So I sit and watch, I talk to them and encourage them and even sometimes sing to them, but most times I just quietly and wait, taking up negative space.
By: Dottie PR
But I've gone off point, which was that she used to have this thing with negative space. She would take a charcoal pencil and fill in the air space, the parts that were usually left blank, and a person or object would emerge from the white. She called this figure-ground reversal, and as I'd watch her, these white figures would seemingly climb out of the paper. Later on, I'd read somewhere, that Michelangelo felt this when he was sculpting - that he was freeing the figure from the block of marble, chipping away the excess, it was all already there, waiting to come out.
So I chipped away. I framed and hung her paintings around our apartment, even the hipster coffee shop on Varick jumped at a mutually benificial display of her work. I posted images and her bio on the internet and a gallery exhibit soon followed. It wasn't difficult really, self-important and even truly accomplished people peeked inside this dull, white matte egg of a girl and backed-off gaping, like I did.
I must admit, we lost touch over the years, she met Mark and I've been here on the farm trying to scrape by. When I saw the paper, I knew it wasn't an accident because I could remember the conversation like it was yesterday. I don't remember what triggered it, but it was probably some TV drama or news story, "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?"
"I'm not interested in this conversation, why would I go where I never want to be? It's opening a door, inviting doom."
"No, it's exploring all the crevices of your mind. I wouldn't do the cry for help shit like pills or gas or even jumping off a bridge, but I wouldn't do the obvious gun shot to the head either."
"I don't want to start my day like this, I need eggs and a couple of refrains from Oklahoma."
"You know how the buses speed right up to the curb when they come to the busstop? I'd casually glance behind me and then at the last moment just step off, I could even make it look like an accident, just trip in front of the bus."
"When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top..."
"Yes, definetly an accident, nobody would need to know my business..."
"Nosy folks would peek through their shutters and their eyes would pop!"
"Reminds me, gotta catch a bus up to Lee's for supplies, need anything?"
"I'm at the farmer's market today, we sell the eggs, we don't paint them."
"Smartass"
I was spreading yesterday's paper down for the ducks, the ducklings were hatching and I liked to keep a close eye on things. This is when I got most of my reading done, no rest for the weary, even though it was yesterday's news.
Woman Hit By Bus In Midtown
Sarah Siessler, 41, died after being struck by a city bus. The accident occurred while the bus was approaching the busstop at the corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.....
I didn't read the rest. The ducks were clamboring out of their box. I spread more newspaper. I gently lifted the eggs out onto a soft swirled blanket. The thing about ducks is that they have rounded bills, unlike chickens with their pointy beaks, so it is more difficult for the ducklings to break out of their shells. It takes more time, and some never make it. But I learned early on at the farm, that you can't help them, even if you want to. If they can't make it out on their own, they won't survive on the outside. So I sit and watch, I talk to them and encourage them and even sometimes sing to them, but most times I just quietly and wait, taking up negative space.
By: Dottie PR
Needle and Black Thread '07
The spout of a bitch made her way through the soft, fleshy lining of my stomach as I board the train. When you are porous, you feel the chatter, the slimy wake and the meaningless looks of your fellow commuters even more. Not a way to start the day. The train decides to enter the 4th circle. The Avaricious and Prodigals. No relevance found, just the wait. Opposites bumping, the excuse of a winter coat and bulky bag makes angry waves, pushing big rocks at each other's temperament, hoping that the other person takes their dirty glove off and smacks the shit from your eyes. Tripping over babies, yelling and knocking footsteps – the manic depressives, obsessive compulsives and passive aggressives stewed while the leftovers baked in their down coat incubators, safe from each other and themselves.
No sense, and no guardian. No one in this town ever wants to be the hero, or the leader. They all look at each other for orders; they all look at me. I look down at the glow of the ipod and shut my eyes as angrily as possible, remnants of Tourettes climbing up my blood stream, in my muscles. Twitchy shouts mingle with the Nick Cave in my ear of "Whore. Bitch. Fuckface". I think I actually wished for a woman to be savagely raped by a herd of angry cons. There's never any guilt following that. Just a calm, like muscle relaxants hitting the sweet spot. Then the ridiculous hypocrisy that I'm somehow different and that I am "above it all". But being above it all is easier when you're meditating and not as easy when you're trapped in a moving electric box that's hardly moving at all. I think the guy driving is stopping and starting for his own twisted, perverse pleasure. Getting his kicks before he has to see his nagging wife tonight.
Mornings cannot start this way. They certainly cannot continue well. It's not the nature of the subway. I've been here before- after meditation, yes, but all the lights seemed aglow, everyone's face forced my pull to anti-socialism to fail wildly, as I kept the light of an open door in my gaze. Not Sun Myung Moon gaze or anything quite that extreme. But, something even more far-reaching. I couldn't remember that moment on this morning if I pulled it out of an open wound. We were finally one stop away. I was later than usual. I'd be going in the side door. Then, it happened. The servant of God, or so he seemed, arrived.
I had an experience about 4 years ago going home on the subway- delayed, stuck, one of the worst. This man appeared then. I understand there are a lot of Jamaicans in and around here, talking about being born again and the fires of hell, but this was the Same guy. Back then, my walkman had lost battery power in an overly crowded car, forcing me to listen to his sermon. This time, it was morning, and he arrived on my car in a whip of silence. I knew his voice quicker than the voices I loved and knew to their core. In an instant, I knew it.
Obviously, this wasn't an awful experience. I knew it even now. I stare every day at the mismatched, salvation army threads and bad haircuts of the people who rode the train to jobs far worse than mine, of women with cheap dye jobs and silver roots showing through layering tones of denial, drug store style. Those things don't mean much in the end, but most people in the room will never ever know the feeling of wanting something better, and what's worse, they don't expect it nor feel themselves worthy of it. I think they should take a knife, a cheap one if need be, and plunge it headlong into the ravenous cavern of the guy keeping them from their family's health, good night's sleep and dream of tomorrow being better than today. The ace is always hidden, while the sharpened ends of the playing cards cut their throats with invisible flair. And, all of them...I could never truly be angry at them. All of them I loved and hoped for them to get what they couldn't have.
These thoughts were far from my empty, tired head on said morning. I knew he'd be talking for about 2 minutes tops but it was the kind of rageful transport moment where no logic was to be found - every second that the doors didn't close was another second I screamed at them from inside. Fire and Brimstone before 9am (well, 9:30)— this is not a requirement of society nor ever a good idea. I would love to be walking back down my street now, in the dark, going home to my brooklyn bullfighters and looking up at the rabbit in the moon, boxing some chump coming around the corner at him from the stars. Can't dream of the finish line when you haven't even started.
By the time I saw the blackness outside the subway car window reflecting my angry, beating chest morph into the bleak colors of the 7th avenue station, I smiled and yelled to myself "I would suck the devil's cock just to shut your mouth you Fuck!" And I felt good. Like a lady. I let the tunneling rage flow from me slow as a snail and exited without missing a moment. I blame cardiology for this: the doctors told my mother just before I was born that my heartbeat had the pattern of a male. I'll look at the black shining sky tonight and find that bunny fighting in his silly big gloves. I felt the wind coming down from the street above on my face. I always knew I had a man's heart.
~ M. Lucia
No sense, and no guardian. No one in this town ever wants to be the hero, or the leader. They all look at each other for orders; they all look at me. I look down at the glow of the ipod and shut my eyes as angrily as possible, remnants of Tourettes climbing up my blood stream, in my muscles. Twitchy shouts mingle with the Nick Cave in my ear of "Whore. Bitch. Fuckface". I think I actually wished for a woman to be savagely raped by a herd of angry cons. There's never any guilt following that. Just a calm, like muscle relaxants hitting the sweet spot. Then the ridiculous hypocrisy that I'm somehow different and that I am "above it all". But being above it all is easier when you're meditating and not as easy when you're trapped in a moving electric box that's hardly moving at all. I think the guy driving is stopping and starting for his own twisted, perverse pleasure. Getting his kicks before he has to see his nagging wife tonight.
Mornings cannot start this way. They certainly cannot continue well. It's not the nature of the subway. I've been here before- after meditation, yes, but all the lights seemed aglow, everyone's face forced my pull to anti-socialism to fail wildly, as I kept the light of an open door in my gaze. Not Sun Myung Moon gaze or anything quite that extreme. But, something even more far-reaching. I couldn't remember that moment on this morning if I pulled it out of an open wound. We were finally one stop away. I was later than usual. I'd be going in the side door. Then, it happened. The servant of God, or so he seemed, arrived.
I had an experience about 4 years ago going home on the subway- delayed, stuck, one of the worst. This man appeared then. I understand there are a lot of Jamaicans in and around here, talking about being born again and the fires of hell, but this was the Same guy. Back then, my walkman had lost battery power in an overly crowded car, forcing me to listen to his sermon. This time, it was morning, and he arrived on my car in a whip of silence. I knew his voice quicker than the voices I loved and knew to their core. In an instant, I knew it.
Obviously, this wasn't an awful experience. I knew it even now. I stare every day at the mismatched, salvation army threads and bad haircuts of the people who rode the train to jobs far worse than mine, of women with cheap dye jobs and silver roots showing through layering tones of denial, drug store style. Those things don't mean much in the end, but most people in the room will never ever know the feeling of wanting something better, and what's worse, they don't expect it nor feel themselves worthy of it. I think they should take a knife, a cheap one if need be, and plunge it headlong into the ravenous cavern of the guy keeping them from their family's health, good night's sleep and dream of tomorrow being better than today. The ace is always hidden, while the sharpened ends of the playing cards cut their throats with invisible flair. And, all of them...I could never truly be angry at them. All of them I loved and hoped for them to get what they couldn't have.
These thoughts were far from my empty, tired head on said morning. I knew he'd be talking for about 2 minutes tops but it was the kind of rageful transport moment where no logic was to be found - every second that the doors didn't close was another second I screamed at them from inside. Fire and Brimstone before 9am (well, 9:30)— this is not a requirement of society nor ever a good idea. I would love to be walking back down my street now, in the dark, going home to my brooklyn bullfighters and looking up at the rabbit in the moon, boxing some chump coming around the corner at him from the stars. Can't dream of the finish line when you haven't even started.
By the time I saw the blackness outside the subway car window reflecting my angry, beating chest morph into the bleak colors of the 7th avenue station, I smiled and yelled to myself "I would suck the devil's cock just to shut your mouth you Fuck!" And I felt good. Like a lady. I let the tunneling rage flow from me slow as a snail and exited without missing a moment. I blame cardiology for this: the doctors told my mother just before I was born that my heartbeat had the pattern of a male. I'll look at the black shining sky tonight and find that bunny fighting in his silly big gloves. I felt the wind coming down from the street above on my face. I always knew I had a man's heart.
~ M. Lucia
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
ROSEBUDS
Walking the through the library stacks, John starts to get that sinking feeling of being a fraud again. The books all staring at him - Dostoevsky? never read him; Hemingway, Faulkner? nothing. Wait, there was that summer he read "Light in August" but he had no recollection of the book and knew that he had probably read it more to cast a certain image for the counter girls at the pizza place who all went to Smith College and always had so many interesting things to say and wonderful observations about art and music.
Art? He knew nothing about it. Sure, he knew all the names (Da Vinci, Rembrandt, van Gogh) but only from the game--Masterpiece. And he could easily connect book titles with their authors from his days lying on the floor of his Dad's office staring at his parent's bookshelves. Who wrote "Trinity?" Leon Uris. "Steppenwolf" was written by Herman Hesse. All this knowledge was simply stowed up there in his brain. He knew nothing about these books nor anything about the authors or what made them write, or even why his parents would read them. "The Jungle" was written by Upton Sinclair, but Sinclair Lewis wrote "Babbitt" and "Rabbit, Run" was written by John Updike.
Upton Sinclair Lewis Babbitt Rabbitt Updike Upton Sinclair Lewis Babbitt Rabbitt.
He ran his hand along the wooden railing up in the third level, east stacks. From here he could peek down at the co-eds sitting at the long wooden tables below, doing their homework, their petty researches, and look down their tank-tops and blouses, at the smooth curves and that plunge into shadow and lace...at least in the summer. In the winter it would only be the fashionably-casual college sweatshirts, earnestly sending text messages from behind musty Marx/Engels tomes, stuffing the paragraphs down for Intro. to Poli. Sci. through their cat's-eye frames.
He sat down on the floor down at the end of the third aisle of shelves. They kept the 17th century Spanish drama anthologies here so he knew he could have at least a few moments alone. He took a swig from his granddad's whiskey flask and pulled out the copy of Leaves of Grass that he had printed out off the Kinko's computer that morning. It had come out of the printer on pink paper for some reason. Someone must have forgotten to take the paper out but after a moment he thought that maybe Uncle Walt wouldn't have minded.
"Are you the person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose."
The girl at the circulation desk stared at him when he walked in; her eyes lingered. He was afraid to even take out a book lest she think he did it only to talk to her. And even if he got up the nerve he would say nothing. She would tell him when the book was due back and he would nod silently. He had thought about her masturbating that morning.
"Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?"
He looked at the titles of the books where his feet propped on the shelves. "Calderon & Lope de Vega: The Romantic Dramas". That's an El Greco painting he thought. More useless knowledge. What makes El Greco so special? Maybe he had it wrong. Was El Greco the artist or the painting? The girl in 'Great Film Directors' would know. She always had more to say about the movies than the other kids in the class. All that shit about the "deconstruction of the renaissance" in The Third Man. He thought the movie was boring and fell asleep in the darkness of the screening room.
"Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?"
At noon he could go to the campus post-office to see if his girlfriend had sent him anything from her college in Indiana. They persisted in using snail-mail to communicate; she found it more romantic than their respective Yahoo e-mail accounts. The effect was that they had this built in remove from each other's lives but maybe that was good thing. Maybe that kept it safe and in its place. He would see her periodically, summers, holidays and they would call each other once a week.
In the letters she wrote about her classes and her professors but never really deep things about her personal life, that is, outside of him. She would say where and when she went places and did things like: "I gave myself a pedicure before I went out with Peggy to the basketball game" but never really a lot about how it all made her feel. Maybe feelings don't matter.
"Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?"
This library used to be the school chapel. The stained glass persists still and the late morning sun shines through coloring his skin. He holds up his hand to see the alien skin there, the shades of reflected saints. What would it be like to fall from the third tier, falling through these stacks of history and literature? On the window sill there is an accumulation of wax; maybe a leftover from some decades old mass, lingering from days of Latin eucharists and frustrated Jesuits. Or maybe just some other boy needing to check for a line from a Spanish play in a blackout; or late at night after the library had closed. Is there a secret entrance to this place?
Art? He knew nothing about it. Sure, he knew all the names (Da Vinci, Rembrandt, van Gogh) but only from the game--Masterpiece. And he could easily connect book titles with their authors from his days lying on the floor of his Dad's office staring at his parent's bookshelves. Who wrote "Trinity?" Leon Uris. "Steppenwolf" was written by Herman Hesse. All this knowledge was simply stowed up there in his brain. He knew nothing about these books nor anything about the authors or what made them write, or even why his parents would read them. "The Jungle" was written by Upton Sinclair, but Sinclair Lewis wrote "Babbitt" and "Rabbit, Run" was written by John Updike.
Upton Sinclair Lewis Babbitt Rabbitt Updike Upton Sinclair Lewis Babbitt Rabbitt.
He ran his hand along the wooden railing up in the third level, east stacks. From here he could peek down at the co-eds sitting at the long wooden tables below, doing their homework, their petty researches, and look down their tank-tops and blouses, at the smooth curves and that plunge into shadow and lace...at least in the summer. In the winter it would only be the fashionably-casual college sweatshirts, earnestly sending text messages from behind musty Marx/Engels tomes, stuffing the paragraphs down for Intro. to Poli. Sci. through their cat's-eye frames.
He sat down on the floor down at the end of the third aisle of shelves. They kept the 17th century Spanish drama anthologies here so he knew he could have at least a few moments alone. He took a swig from his granddad's whiskey flask and pulled out the copy of Leaves of Grass that he had printed out off the Kinko's computer that morning. It had come out of the printer on pink paper for some reason. Someone must have forgotten to take the paper out but after a moment he thought that maybe Uncle Walt wouldn't have minded.
"Are you the person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose."
The girl at the circulation desk stared at him when he walked in; her eyes lingered. He was afraid to even take out a book lest she think he did it only to talk to her. And even if he got up the nerve he would say nothing. She would tell him when the book was due back and he would nod silently. He had thought about her masturbating that morning.
"Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?"
He looked at the titles of the books where his feet propped on the shelves. "Calderon & Lope de Vega: The Romantic Dramas". That's an El Greco painting he thought. More useless knowledge. What makes El Greco so special? Maybe he had it wrong. Was El Greco the artist or the painting? The girl in 'Great Film Directors' would know. She always had more to say about the movies than the other kids in the class. All that shit about the "deconstruction of the renaissance" in The Third Man. He thought the movie was boring and fell asleep in the darkness of the screening room.
"Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?"
At noon he could go to the campus post-office to see if his girlfriend had sent him anything from her college in Indiana. They persisted in using snail-mail to communicate; she found it more romantic than their respective Yahoo e-mail accounts. The effect was that they had this built in remove from each other's lives but maybe that was good thing. Maybe that kept it safe and in its place. He would see her periodically, summers, holidays and they would call each other once a week.
In the letters she wrote about her classes and her professors but never really deep things about her personal life, that is, outside of him. She would say where and when she went places and did things like: "I gave myself a pedicure before I went out with Peggy to the basketball game" but never really a lot about how it all made her feel. Maybe feelings don't matter.
"Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?"
This library used to be the school chapel. The stained glass persists still and the late morning sun shines through coloring his skin. He holds up his hand to see the alien skin there, the shades of reflected saints. What would it be like to fall from the third tier, falling through these stacks of history and literature? On the window sill there is an accumulation of wax; maybe a leftover from some decades old mass, lingering from days of Latin eucharists and frustrated Jesuits. Or maybe just some other boy needing to check for a line from a Spanish play in a blackout; or late at night after the library had closed. Is there a secret entrance to this place?
Monday, July 26, 2010
Ode to Red Wine
Came to a fork in the road,
plod along like a thief on fire
in dire need of a saviour to make
time pretty, less the sunset slides
down to the lips of my mouth,
praying in red to the lie of the noon;
footsteps made in stars sink heaven
at the bottom of my glass.
Staining my legs and making me
ache and confess. That I
want to sail fruitful in the treetops,
soar to bathing in sweet crimson pools.
It soars down my throat in the gesture of
a passion play, enough of each
that my eyelids sour,
my gaze turns liquid and
my heart thumps like horses drowning and coming
to life in faeryland, made into feathers that drift
through the woods in Irish summer,
just off the sea,
having their say and getting tangled in my hair,
whispering that they love me, even though I'm a lush,
a wino on a good day.
Heat pulses from my city palms stroking country girl
breezes on the base rim of my empty glass of red wine,
in waves of wheatfields come home to me every night.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Barnacle
(for J. Joyce & Nora)
Livia took a seashell to her harder will and squeezed
it with all her might.
Honeymoon up against a stonewall whiskey burning
behind his eye, he let her try
perpetually duped
Pleasure that these brainwaves sought found home at the
inside seam of her fake lace thighs
She directed the synapses
her body to his skull
fucking right all the wrongs, they set the world to their will.
Made all the white spots sparkle with filth - pride
raised up all the dirt that could not bear a bed
and gave it
theirs.
paper to pen
pussy to heart
prayers to breathing
breath to thunder
clap on hands
slap on arse
film all fears
edit the jeers
for papercuts on paper footsteps
soaked in loin and tending all the rivers at once...
God in his drawers
the toilet soars
the beauty of everyday things.
Its sound is true,
the breath hard and tight.
The inability to remember none but naked things.
--- --
In the stone face of a watery death comes something to do on a Tuesday,
when no opera belts out a girl's name over her death bed,
for no other reason that she's bored with you.
Yes, you.
The lips grind with the stained stones that men have planted in their wake
taste the filth of all others in their years of trouble and conquest,
for reasons not to fulfill the things that play hard at them,
of shrill and crippled winos who bake their sundays into jelly
they shove hard and fast between their toes.
Governments never know how sweet you tasted when the dark turned into day.
Colors adrift, too long a battle to sacrifice your wits over, but
trouble yourself,
Do.
They just don't feel the same nerve endings that eat away at our dreams,
the endless gesticulations that no one sees but me.
It's forever in a dime, a dance hall in a day.
~ M. Lucia
Livia took a seashell to her harder will and squeezed
it with all her might.
Honeymoon up against a stonewall whiskey burning
behind his eye, he let her try
perpetually duped
Pleasure that these brainwaves sought found home at the
inside seam of her fake lace thighs
She directed the synapses
her body to his skull
fucking right all the wrongs, they set the world to their will.
Made all the white spots sparkle with filth - pride
raised up all the dirt that could not bear a bed
and gave it
theirs.
paper to pen
pussy to heart
prayers to breathing
breath to thunder
clap on hands
slap on arse
film all fears
edit the jeers
for papercuts on paper footsteps
soaked in loin and tending all the rivers at once...
God in his drawers
the toilet soars
the beauty of everyday things.
Its sound is true,
the breath hard and tight.
The inability to remember none but naked things.
--- --
In the stone face of a watery death comes something to do on a Tuesday,
when no opera belts out a girl's name over her death bed,
for no other reason that she's bored with you.
Yes, you.
The lips grind with the stained stones that men have planted in their wake
taste the filth of all others in their years of trouble and conquest,
for reasons not to fulfill the things that play hard at them,
of shrill and crippled winos who bake their sundays into jelly
they shove hard and fast between their toes.
Governments never know how sweet you tasted when the dark turned into day.
Colors adrift, too long a battle to sacrifice your wits over, but
trouble yourself,
Do.
They just don't feel the same nerve endings that eat away at our dreams,
the endless gesticulations that no one sees but me.
It's forever in a dime, a dance hall in a day.
~ M. Lucia
Sound
So what is this? he asks, and I just smile because I don’t really have the answer. I had a weakness for him immediately but that is beside the point. He was quick to smile—an easy soul—and he held on to his Tiger beer with a hand that had forged. Hands not just to hold tickets and pass money and grasp steering wheels—but hands that have plunged and burned and smoothed. During our conversation I caught him caressing the bar top, unaware that he was pressing his palms into the grooves of the wood as if anointing it with linseed oil. His hair was shorter than I had remembered. The night should have struggled—I had expected it to—like a solitary swimmer whose arms tire out while only half way across the channel—but instead we sat shoulder to shoulder amidst younger, louder couples and we were alone with ourselves and a plate full of noodles. He wanted to discuss books and I wondered about his name—whether he had been named after a sound his mother had heard as she lay recovering in a bed composed of starched white sheets; the ricochet of an axe, a wheel separating from it’s axle, the sudden flight of a thousand Starlings in tandem? His name must be the synthesis of a sound—hot and gnarled—being plunged like ore into something placid and temperate. We caught noodles with our chopsticks, slick and salty—and I realized that the answer to his question was Now. This is now. As I slurped and swallowed a noodle he wished me a long life—as is the tradition with noodles—and said that he liked Now.
I can’t breathe. It feels worse today. I must’ve been asleep for hours. The sun’s going down over the Fitzpatrick’s roof, it must be past 4. Where’s Ma? The kitchen’s so quiet. She must not be back yet. Mother in heaven, why won’t this coughing leave me? I used to crave a little solitude; time away from Ma’s puttering attentions. Now I just feel so alone. If I can reach the lamp, maybe the shadows won’t unnerve me so.
Greta my love, why can I no longer see your face when I close my eyes? Have you left me?
I can remember her walking down the lane, her back to me, in the early morning softness. Such a lovely straight, tall posture; so like a beautiful flowering tree she is. Her dark hair curling there at the end like a gentle breeze upon her shoulders as she takes to the fence, her boots steady on its boards, accommodating her and lifting her over chivalrously. Never one to go the easy way, this I knew from our first days together. She’s up and over in an instant but I turn away from her searching for a gate to pass through. But why would I ever take my eyes off her, why ever forego the opportunity to see her, look at her? When I see her again she’s already meters away, mud collecting on her petticoats as she crosses the field off to who knows where. I can get her attention though and I start singing her song. Then I could still raise my voice above a whisper. A smile must’ve crossed my face as I see her stop mid-stride playing at surprise her hand to her chest as she turns to me. I see the sweet joy in her expression even before I see her features with waves of sunlight gathering to her beauty. But then the face is black and the scene is gone from my mind.
I’ve got to get out of this tiny bed. There’s barely any room here to stretch out, the way Ma has boxed me in since I fell Michaelmas night. The light’s almost gone now and it’ll be cold I can tell. Lord, I’ve been lying here far too long. Sometimes, I try to see how long I can just lie without moving, what it must be like! I’m not afraid of dying. I trust the Lord has a plan for me and may be my time will come early. I am only afraid of not seeing Greta again. That she will leave and I will never be able to tell her what she means to me. Do you think you can feel death when it comes into the room? Ma told me Granny’s death was like that; that a cold came over the fire and the room seemed to darken as if a cloud had past before the sun and suddenly she was gone. I will not give in should death come for me; I will fight. I know now that Greta’s in the world and my heart beats with hers. How could it stop if she lives?
It is time to get out of this bed. I am determined that with whatever strength I have I will go and see her. Wrap this blanket around me and out into the fresh air. What a thing to walk out in the world again.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Spookies
Here kitty, kitty
your fur as soft as silk
let's pretend your blood is milk.
~ M. Lucia on behalf of anonymous 5 year old.
your fur as soft as silk
let's pretend your blood is milk.
~ M. Lucia on behalf of anonymous 5 year old.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
I drank from the cup
There is love, without exception
Pleasure without expression
Hope held deeply within your chest
Listening to you exhale I watch the shadows grow long across the floor
Licking chapped lips, kissing pricked fingers
Pry them apart like bones, unmarrowed
Driving repetition and indifference
I’ve tasted, I’ve known
Like a trigger I’m pulled
and so in rising I cross the floor with dirty soles
Driven away, self exiled automaton with dreams dashed and splattered
Eyes open wide
Flayed, willingly and fully
Drenched and lathered
I spit out the bit and
Submit
Broken and pleasured
Nursing the Wound
Frozen cells of time lapse life
moving backwards
beating a path to regret
you can't quite see.
The silvery smell of a burning
paper cut remains.
Ideas and desire
sip toasts
clinking glasses
shattering stems
rain down to the base of the wound.
Stepping in and from
the mound of tabletop excuses.
Dance like gypsy wedding
in late summer eves;
three day supply of livery, liquor and love
tear like a circumventing itch
you can't cure.
The red streams grown
in tissue and strength-
hands forming, which
threaten to strangle you
for forgetting
that they were there.
That they have always been there
singing tipsy
the nights away while you
waited; deduced
and reinvented
their circumstance.
Hack off the limb,
where the scratching won't subside
and fashion a silver spear
deep enough and strong enough
and clear enough
to slice through reams
of perforated bullshit;
casting off the spell of waiting
room reading---
Book burning,
spear at side
gypsies waltzing the second wind
of their third late afternoon,
calling at you.
To move.
They won't ever run dry,
and your swollen sky
bounding above their heads.
~ M. Lucia
moving backwards
beating a path to regret
you can't quite see.
The silvery smell of a burning
paper cut remains.
Ideas and desire
sip toasts
clinking glasses
shattering stems
rain down to the base of the wound.
Stepping in and from
the mound of tabletop excuses.
Dance like gypsy wedding
in late summer eves;
three day supply of livery, liquor and love
tear like a circumventing itch
you can't cure.
The red streams grown
in tissue and strength-
hands forming, which
threaten to strangle you
for forgetting
that they were there.
That they have always been there
singing tipsy
the nights away while you
waited; deduced
and reinvented
their circumstance.
Hack off the limb,
where the scratching won't subside
and fashion a silver spear
deep enough and strong enough
and clear enough
to slice through reams
of perforated bullshit;
casting off the spell of waiting
room reading---
Book burning,
spear at side
gypsies waltzing the second wind
of their third late afternoon,
calling at you.
To move.
They won't ever run dry,
and your swollen sky
bounding above their heads.
~ M. Lucia
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
TRICK BAG
It's an archipelago of angst in a sea of selfishness--a constellation of crazy. That's what it is.
The poetic line would then harken to a ship on the sea or a space vessel floating through the maze, regarding each in turn--the beauty of her verdant shores, or the gentle curves of her horizons, as the sun alternates from wink to nod.
Better a telescope, eyeing from a distance. Bad enough to have the light streaming into his eye but at least voluntarily; to then have the option of looking away, sitting in the locked observatory, in the cool room with no door, except in the ceiling, which gapes perpetually open, the shaft and lens staring out and up at the emptiness. Oh, if only it were truly empty. The lights in the darkness impassively yet demanding still the attentions of the amateur astronomer as he scribbles frantically to figure the math of their motions. Is it gravity or dark matter?
In a dream, curled on the metal floor, the light from the heavens streams out of the wrong end of the telescope and curls a cat-tail out the ceiling and down the side of the wall.
He climbs out. In the dream.
The poetic line would then harken to a ship on the sea or a space vessel floating through the maze, regarding each in turn--the beauty of her verdant shores, or the gentle curves of her horizons, as the sun alternates from wink to nod.
Better a telescope, eyeing from a distance. Bad enough to have the light streaming into his eye but at least voluntarily; to then have the option of looking away, sitting in the locked observatory, in the cool room with no door, except in the ceiling, which gapes perpetually open, the shaft and lens staring out and up at the emptiness. Oh, if only it were truly empty. The lights in the darkness impassively yet demanding still the attentions of the amateur astronomer as he scribbles frantically to figure the math of their motions. Is it gravity or dark matter?
In a dream, curled on the metal floor, the light from the heavens streams out of the wrong end of the telescope and curls a cat-tail out the ceiling and down the side of the wall.
He climbs out. In the dream.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Calendar Girls
Jaycee didn’t have a real problem with the job to tell the truth. Since she was little, Jaycee pretended to be a stripper in her upstairs bedroom. All by herself, she’d dress up in her mother’s shawls and wrap herself in scarves like a Pompeii whore and she’d undo it all in perfect sweeping arpeggio time in front of her parents’ mirrored closets. No one ever came to find her, or caught her there in all those years. She’d make it with her stuffed animals without knowing what slots and tabs were involved in all that raucous motion or the particulars; it just felt comforting, good, less lonely. Or she’d do up the whole soap opera of the date, the affair with the boss, quite lewd for a girl of five, as her parents stood outside, in the backyard below, unaware, making hamburgers. She had asked for cheese on hers and could smell the bland, processed American square melting onto the burger, steaming, as she victimized her teddy bear, black and white dog, took them all to heaven with her. Within five minutes of meeting anyone, Jaycee would animate these childhood tales to them, and top them off with the idea that she blamed television, the nighttime soap operas, but that she enjoyed the experiences, even then.
Jaycee had worked at the local strip club since she was nineteen. All these places were like libraries,she had convinced herself, as she chattered at three hundred miles a minute. Yes, they were small town libraries, and these men that came were all scientists of a certain sort who paid their tuition to come into darkness and research. They could find out all sorts of things from a girl like Jaycee. She was a Virgo (oddly, the Virgin), as so clearly worn when she had on nothing else. Her picaresque sign of the Virgin holding a sheath of wheat was planted in the beaded sweat droplets that nestled her neck when she did the deeds. They could see she was of German stock, her build, her bosom, the dangerous clarity between her wide-set blue eyes. It was Americana at work, Dresden style. A disarray of voices from the pills the other girls would give her sometimes made her dissociate like she were in front of a painting, but in the space that it occupied, the murky sorts of fields and thick figures blending more and more the closer you stepped towards it. The female form was like a painting, she said, becoming another girl every new day, and there were no paintings to look at in her small town. So, these men came to Jaycee like a Greek Goddess of old, to study her form, to be true to the darkness clouding up in rotten smoke and to stay with her while she danced right past them in that darkness, following the paint as it spilled to the floor and tripped this goddess for good, twisting her ankle on the way down like always happens when little girls try to dance in their momma’s over sized shoes.
After more than an hour of this bullshit verbiage on the train, Jaycee spoke of the first time she went to a strip bar, just before her older brother’s friend was getting married (She didn’t want to be home all alone, even though she was a mature fifteen). She had used the bathroom there almost immediately, though would have preferred to hold it in, probably. Jaycee found her way and all the girls were most obliging, since she was girly enough in her big funny, fake fur coat, like a twenties do-gooder slumming it for a change in the night. She crouched above the dirty toilet to pee and heard two strippers, one asking the other if she wanted one of those pills. The only other thing that Jaycee remembered in that bathroom was the mound of colourful, cheap, used underwear that was piled outside the stalls like the stinking defeated dead from a roman battle of some kind, as the girls adjourned in the backstage/changing area. It might have been three feet high; all meshed together, worn like gypsies gone to hell, or some dark basement in Florida, whichever fell closer on that day.
From that day on, Jaycee grew up through teenage weeds like a rotten rose pushing and showing itself to any available light, seeing again and again those infantile, rough boys after they gave up and became repetitive, lewd old men; or, what’s worse, those silent, morose types somewhere in between in age, who were trying to calculate their love of losing inside the blankness of their mind’s page, while watching Jaycee strip down to her childhood limbs, swinging the umbilical shoelaces of her gaudy costume at their deadened, dim eye-lights. Fumbling for change, they would only see the girls’ supposed power over them in terms of vulnerability calculated through lack of age that would play out in years to come, when the obviousness of the change bouncing off the liquor-stained floor would grow complacent, silent in the taciturn dollar bills that work provided to them as they grew older. Their dollars silencing their minds, their tongues yelling audacities at any young thing to shake her ass in their faces. Their mouths would be silent no more. Jaycee just sat there facing the night air of the train, turning occasionally back in her mind to those first, innocent boys, the ones who never came into the strip club. The power that their once innocence had to blot out the rest of what went wrong afterwards. Thoughts of the initial will still spun verses through fingers softening, lips abiding; and any right-minded girl will tell you, there’s nothing more soothing than a young man’s vibrancy – dark fists of hair and the furtive conquer of their beating hearts galloping towards the maze of oncoming towns.
~ M. Lucia
Jaycee had worked at the local strip club since she was nineteen. All these places were like libraries,she had convinced herself, as she chattered at three hundred miles a minute. Yes, they were small town libraries, and these men that came were all scientists of a certain sort who paid their tuition to come into darkness and research. They could find out all sorts of things from a girl like Jaycee. She was a Virgo (oddly, the Virgin), as so clearly worn when she had on nothing else. Her picaresque sign of the Virgin holding a sheath of wheat was planted in the beaded sweat droplets that nestled her neck when she did the deeds. They could see she was of German stock, her build, her bosom, the dangerous clarity between her wide-set blue eyes. It was Americana at work, Dresden style. A disarray of voices from the pills the other girls would give her sometimes made her dissociate like she were in front of a painting, but in the space that it occupied, the murky sorts of fields and thick figures blending more and more the closer you stepped towards it. The female form was like a painting, she said, becoming another girl every new day, and there were no paintings to look at in her small town. So, these men came to Jaycee like a Greek Goddess of old, to study her form, to be true to the darkness clouding up in rotten smoke and to stay with her while she danced right past them in that darkness, following the paint as it spilled to the floor and tripped this goddess for good, twisting her ankle on the way down like always happens when little girls try to dance in their momma’s over sized shoes.
After more than an hour of this bullshit verbiage on the train, Jaycee spoke of the first time she went to a strip bar, just before her older brother’s friend was getting married (She didn’t want to be home all alone, even though she was a mature fifteen). She had used the bathroom there almost immediately, though would have preferred to hold it in, probably. Jaycee found her way and all the girls were most obliging, since she was girly enough in her big funny, fake fur coat, like a twenties do-gooder slumming it for a change in the night. She crouched above the dirty toilet to pee and heard two strippers, one asking the other if she wanted one of those pills. The only other thing that Jaycee remembered in that bathroom was the mound of colourful, cheap, used underwear that was piled outside the stalls like the stinking defeated dead from a roman battle of some kind, as the girls adjourned in the backstage/changing area. It might have been three feet high; all meshed together, worn like gypsies gone to hell, or some dark basement in Florida, whichever fell closer on that day.
From that day on, Jaycee grew up through teenage weeds like a rotten rose pushing and showing itself to any available light, seeing again and again those infantile, rough boys after they gave up and became repetitive, lewd old men; or, what’s worse, those silent, morose types somewhere in between in age, who were trying to calculate their love of losing inside the blankness of their mind’s page, while watching Jaycee strip down to her childhood limbs, swinging the umbilical shoelaces of her gaudy costume at their deadened, dim eye-lights. Fumbling for change, they would only see the girls’ supposed power over them in terms of vulnerability calculated through lack of age that would play out in years to come, when the obviousness of the change bouncing off the liquor-stained floor would grow complacent, silent in the taciturn dollar bills that work provided to them as they grew older. Their dollars silencing their minds, their tongues yelling audacities at any young thing to shake her ass in their faces. Their mouths would be silent no more. Jaycee just sat there facing the night air of the train, turning occasionally back in her mind to those first, innocent boys, the ones who never came into the strip club. The power that their once innocence had to blot out the rest of what went wrong afterwards. Thoughts of the initial will still spun verses through fingers softening, lips abiding; and any right-minded girl will tell you, there’s nothing more soothing than a young man’s vibrancy – dark fists of hair and the furtive conquer of their beating hearts galloping towards the maze of oncoming towns.
~ M. Lucia
Friday, July 16, 2010
Nautilus
Standing at the foot of the stairs I peer up into the claustrophobic stairwell. It is just wide enough for two people to stand uncomfortably, shoulder-to-shoulder, with wood paneling on one side and plaster on the other. Covering the stairs is a nubbly textured carpeting of a tenuous brown—I suspect if there is a source of light the carpeting is absorbing it and my eyes will need to adjust to the saturated dark. There is no menace although I am in my grandmother’s stairwell—the ghost is not a presence here. This is something else. Silence.
The mission is the same each time and I begin without hesitation. I do not ask why. There are no What Ifs or Why Should I’s—that is a waste of time and I have to get going. Taking a deep breath I begin to bridge the vertical distance without aid of tread and riser. I will construct. I am driven and from this point on I focus on constructing a lever, one of the six simple machines I will build to get this done. How am I doing this? See the fulcrum? Its right there—the pivot point hangs from the ceiling, midway up, supported from an eyehook. This is a lever with which to pull myself up the stairwell, just like Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth with a lever,” or something to that extent. I have an approximate knowledge of many things.
Relying on the close proximity of the walls to use as supports with my bare feet, I will use a rope, string it through the pulley and hoist myself up slowly, laying down planks of toobafores as I go along. What rope? It’s right here—it’s an eleven-millimeter too, perfect for climbing. As I thread the rope through the pulley and begin to pull and tighten the slack I attempt to get a foothold along the walls. I have on my old school Adidas, navy with white stripes. My left foot gets a hold on the chair rail along the wall but I slip as my right foot has no support and my weight is held by the strength of my arms alone. They shake from the strain and I quickly free up my right hand in order to drop planks to wedge against the nose of the stairs, creating an inclined vertical plane. This leaves me with a scant 2 inches for my right foot but I can swing it.
My thigh muscles protest and I sweat profusely but I’ve managed to get myself up a good three stairs. The rope wrapped around my wrist several times is cutting into my flesh, the seat I’ve fashioned from the rope cuts deeply into me but I have layers of protective clothing. Blood begins to trickle down my arm and drips onto the treads, leaving a sanguine trail below. It doesn’t hurt, although the hot salty sweat dripping into my eyes does.
I continue to pivot and slowly move one foot at a time, dropping additional planks and wedges as I go. Occasionally I need to hammer the toobafores into the treads and wall so the struts are supported well. I stop to rest when I can but I am mindful of time. I breathe in dust and recycled air, feeling enclosed—tight. Take shallow breaths. Half way up the stairwell the pulley becomes moot, as the fulcrum will be below my current position and there will be no leverage, so I begin to cleave the plaster from the walls and rip at the paneling with my hands. I am furious and it feels good to rip and rend, the sound of nails squealing as they are being pulled from their beds of wood like teeth with a pliers. The plaster rips off easily into my bare hands and crumbles into dust. Lathing is revealed and this provides an excellent hold in order to pull myself along as I continue my path of frenzied clawing ripping rending. Water sluices down the risers in a steady current. There is no discernable source and it presents only another challenge. “Screw this,” I say and keep deconstructing and constructing at a mad pace—I am almost there.
I knock my head against the ceiling and strain to squeeze my arm in over my head to help support myself when I realize that the space is becoming compressed, more confining. I pivot to turn, and, looking down, I see that as I have been climbing the stairwell appears to have become circular and is narrowing as I reach the top. The bottom of the stairs is no longer visible; it has been lost within the channel of this vertical corkscrew. I fold and twist myself up like a sailor’s knot, drop two tracks of planks and use the wheels of my roller skates and the strength from my arms alone to pull myself up using the balustrades. I arrive at the back of something—there is no place to go forward the sound of my heavy breathing echoing and bouncing off of the narrow space I am encapsulated within boom boom boom BOOM! What is that? It is a faint echo bounding rebounding and drawing near boom boom boom BOOM! It is growing louder, a muffled yet distinct sound with a particular pattern. The hair on my arms rises—I know that—I KNOW that sound and for a second I feel happy about this sound, like an embracing or a homecoming and a small laugh escapes and fills the tiny void in my enclosure boom boom boom BOOM! I close my eyes and try to focus, recall and remind myself—where AM I?
When I open my eyes I am crouched down at the head of the stairs, facing down to look at the grand marble stairwell from the Cornwall, regal and wide—all pale alabaster light marbled with ash and the bronzed balusters shined with spit and elbow grease. I am ten, in my ‘Didas, my blonde hair cut and shaped into a blunt bob, bangs sharp as a razor. I’m chewing gum. Grape Hubba Bubba. I grasp the finial of the balustrade with my hand and stand up slowly. Looking to my left I see the door to 12A—the Dreeses. I look to the right, 12C—Schieder.
I am so happy to be here. This is a homecoming, indeed, and I have a sense of purpose. I know the sound and what it means I must do—the sound of the echoes from my childhood, the very rhythm that my heart beats in tandem with. I am one with this sound, this is me I own it. I look down the first set of stairs to the first landing—each floor comprising of stairs descending straight to a small landing, and then curving to a second, which leads to the final descent of straight stairs down to the next floor. Boom Boom Boom takes you down the first set of stairs—and BOOM! to the first landing. The trick is to master this at great speed and never stopping NEVER stopping even if you think that you’re going to fall you have to increase your speed and when you turn that second corner there will be the need to jump as many stairs as you can and land on the next floor. The rhythm will always vary on the final approach depending on your bravery—just how many stairs could you jump? Courage.
I look, straighten myself and edge my toes out over the tread, grasping the baluster. This feels right. I am ready. I go! I take the stairs swiftly one two three four and revel in the magnificent sound I make with each exaggerated landing boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! —I start slowly at first but it takes more energy to slow myself and I just let go and let myself run crazily down the stairs and BOOM! It’s all inertia and I’m on to the first landing and the friction of my hand dragging on the baluster behind me makes a light squealing that is good to hear and I just compel myself to continue and I become propulsion, I am propelled down the stairs never bothering to get dizzy boom boom boom BOOM! The small octagonal tiles of the hallway floors blurred from motion action fury! I jumped three stairs pussy! I can do better and I just keep going turning rounding jumping landing four stairs! That’s better keep it up don’t stop—
WAIT! —tenth floor. You have to walk quietly on ten. This is the floor that has the scary door that is always propped open a crack with a wedge. A heavy belt of coppery bullets is used as the wedge. How do I know that they are heavy? Jessica dared me to pick them up once. I thought I was going to die because the door is open but a crack but inside it is country dark. Perfect for someone to see out but you cannot see within. I remember panicking and running. Ten also smelled like something was cooking that you would never want to eat; something foreign and unfamiliar. Tiptoe tiptoe RUN! And I begin my rapid descent yet again boom boom boom boom BOOM! over and over the sound is in my ears and my mouth and my heart pounding blood in my ears grape gum in my mouth this is joy HEAVEN! bliss I am nothing but pure energy! over and over the sound over and over boom! boom! boom! the sound over and over the over and over the sound boom! boom! boom! BOOM! Five!
I am home. Eighth floor. Out of breath and full of rapture I tentatively turn and take the steps to approach my door. 8C in bronze Caslon initial caps, screwed into the green door centered immediately over the rheumy eyehole. I reach out my hand, its like I’m in slow motion, that little hand lightly touching the door and then pressing down my palm against the door thick with how many layers of industrial paint? How many colors lived underneath that green?
I am in my head. I hear my breathing, my heartbeat—nothing more as the door slowly eases open to reveal my home; my one true home—the one I will return to one day. I was made here, I was unmade here. Everything here is familiar, the grain of wood and the quality of light is mine alone to sense and breathe in and taste. I can smell chalk and I’m breathing right? This is so weird and I walk through the foyer, past the dresser that we kept there—we threw the mail on it and dropped our keys in the bowl. This dresser is in my bedroom in another life but we aren’t there we are here and I look to my right down the long hallway leading to the kitchen and bedrooms. I keep walking straight to the entrance of the living room—a room so vast and full of windows that you could see nothing but rooftops and river for miles this light and space it is like no other I will ever experience and I touch every surface I pass to anchor myself to it I need the permanence I once felt here and then turning left I am in my living room. My mother has hung plants from hangers in every window—Spider plants and ferns, strange succulent things all tended and cared for. The furniture was culled from myriad sources—picked up off of the street or given to us from a family member. Nothing matches, all of it incongruous but my mother is stylish and she makes this work. There are large ceramic squared off lamps in tints and shades of chartreuse, Marrimekko adorns the walls. Now I see.
My father is asleep in the armchair—he is sprawled out with one leg thrown over the arm of the chair, his head fallen back slack and his mouth drawn and open. He is lightly snoring; his skin is off-color and slightly waxy. My delirium is gone I am only deaf and dumb and numb and I wonder if Mom is up has she seen this? He is in his clothes still, faded jeans and loose suit shirt; one long sinewy arm extends straight out over the chair, his hand in a perfect study of Michelangelo’s Adam. But of course I don’t know this I see only the knuckles of that hand all torn and bloody, ripped open with scabs and coagulated blood congealing there It is so quiet Why is it so quiet I take a few steps back quietly as I should not wake him he needs his rest. As I step away from him I look down to measure my departure against the grain of the wood floor and I see the pool of blood drying there, directly below his perfectly pointed finger, its deep color seeping into the grain and forever staining it and I know that my mother is still asleep she must be worried I don’t know what any of this means so I just turn to go and—
—Turn it down
—What?
—Turn it off!
—What?
—Answer the phone!
I wake up on the other side of my bedroom; phone in hand—the sound of my stairwell and the heartbreak of battery wound up—echoing inside my head, echoing from the back of the shell.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Gypsy Ship
At water’s edge the muck sinks hard from factory bombs
the memory of language dripping on
its spit
once standing stone now gave way to collapsing;
Falls into puzzle place, steadily
and with the joy of new life
backwards.
beyond its disappointment
the well paved sky ahead
clouds moving as family dreaming forward
the early sun too afraid
to mix
and mingle with the primary colours
the collapse of reason
the ritualizing of a vigorous sexual night.
Superstitious golden shards
breaking time into the meaning of collective fire
forgetting that Their story isn’t
worth shit
not to be trodden down by the pick-a-penny passengers
dancing in the grease of their very own lie –
Why does your ego think itself a master of reason;
cannot control whether to take a piss lively,
in the night.
my anger subsides………
into gentle, debaucherous bounding sky.
Alone, trying to pry sense from it all,
into the desperate feel of thighs –
the smell of a wooden plank, salty sound of scales
biting down
a meal to a worm, finally advancing the line.
~ M. Lucia
the memory of language dripping on
its spit
once standing stone now gave way to collapsing;
Falls into puzzle place, steadily
and with the joy of new life
backwards.
beyond its disappointment
the well paved sky ahead
clouds moving as family dreaming forward
the early sun too afraid
to mix
and mingle with the primary colours
the collapse of reason
the ritualizing of a vigorous sexual night.
Superstitious golden shards
breaking time into the meaning of collective fire
forgetting that Their story isn’t
worth shit
not to be trodden down by the pick-a-penny passengers
dancing in the grease of their very own lie –
Why does your ego think itself a master of reason;
cannot control whether to take a piss lively,
in the night.
my anger subsides………
into gentle, debaucherous bounding sky.
Alone, trying to pry sense from it all,
into the desperate feel of thighs –
the smell of a wooden plank, salty sound of scales
biting down
a meal to a worm, finally advancing the line.
~ M. Lucia
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
PANDORA
You may say, what, that I cultivate certain intimacies? That I share too much? Is that true? Maybe so. Maybe that's what it is. And what would you say should be done about that?
Done?
What's the operator? What's the button to be pushed? What's the unflipped switch, the unpressed button? What is it? What are you asking...
I'm not asking...
Point is...
I'm NOT asking....
POINT is there are some...what, inadequacies? Shortcomings? There are arguments to be made, positions to be taken and HELD? You page casually through your Roget's Thesaurus of psychological irregularities and pinpoint some low-grade neurosis, some motivational abnormality, what the layman might call a 'need' for superficial, shall we say, CONNECTION, some unexplained and unexplored desire for the accumulation of confidences and secret familiarities stemming from...what, stemming from what?
I'm not sure what you're...this is your...
...stemming as all things do from an experience of loss? From a too-soon, inchoate, unconscious procurement of circumstancial privation, so severe and so aboriginal as to SCAR, don't you see? To wound, even before wound is appropriate, the fish and the fire, you understand, and bringing about this need.
I'm not sure, but do you think words will...
Words?
...you think these words you say, this way you have of over-articulating the facts...
That's my point.
The fact of the matter is that...
There are facts now?
Why can't there be things that just...ARE?
So, generally accepted. Stipulated, say, for the sake of argument. Designated covenants, settled and authenticated terms, defined and ratified fait accompli, yes?
Where do you...
What I'm trying to say, the point, again, that I'm trying to make is that you want me to be BOTH aware of the motivations, conditions, and the symptoms and, at the same time, to be self-aware and -actualizing enough to actually step outside of it all and have the presense of mind to act in some healthy way to improve upon the dynamic...of ME.
Don't you want...
Do you remember Greta? Standing on the stairs, straining to hear the music; the music that was like a marinade of youth and the catalyst for her sudden spiritual awakening? A truth of such animating honesty as to imperil her very existence--her entire world. From that moment, she was incapable of dishonesty, of charade. But what if she had never moved from that stair? What if the cries from below of the carriage waiting in the cold night air had gone unheeded? What if she's standing on that stair still?
And Gabriel gazing up at her, wondering what makes her breast swell, and what source that far-off look.
Done?
What's the operator? What's the button to be pushed? What's the unflipped switch, the unpressed button? What is it? What are you asking...
I'm not asking...
Point is...
I'm NOT asking....
POINT is there are some...what, inadequacies? Shortcomings? There are arguments to be made, positions to be taken and HELD? You page casually through your Roget's Thesaurus of psychological irregularities and pinpoint some low-grade neurosis, some motivational abnormality, what the layman might call a 'need' for superficial, shall we say, CONNECTION, some unexplained and unexplored desire for the accumulation of confidences and secret familiarities stemming from...what, stemming from what?
I'm not sure what you're...this is your...
...stemming as all things do from an experience of loss? From a too-soon, inchoate, unconscious procurement of circumstancial privation, so severe and so aboriginal as to SCAR, don't you see? To wound, even before wound is appropriate, the fish and the fire, you understand, and bringing about this need.
I'm not sure, but do you think words will...
Words?
...you think these words you say, this way you have of over-articulating the facts...
That's my point.
The fact of the matter is that...
There are facts now?
Why can't there be things that just...ARE?
So, generally accepted. Stipulated, say, for the sake of argument. Designated covenants, settled and authenticated terms, defined and ratified fait accompli, yes?
Where do you...
What I'm trying to say, the point, again, that I'm trying to make is that you want me to be BOTH aware of the motivations, conditions, and the symptoms and, at the same time, to be self-aware and -actualizing enough to actually step outside of it all and have the presense of mind to act in some healthy way to improve upon the dynamic...of ME.
Don't you want...
Do you remember Greta? Standing on the stairs, straining to hear the music; the music that was like a marinade of youth and the catalyst for her sudden spiritual awakening? A truth of such animating honesty as to imperil her very existence--her entire world. From that moment, she was incapable of dishonesty, of charade. But what if she had never moved from that stair? What if the cries from below of the carriage waiting in the cold night air had gone unheeded? What if she's standing on that stair still?
And Gabriel gazing up at her, wondering what makes her breast swell, and what source that far-off look.
#2/CERULEAN BLUE
Her #2 pencil was sharpened at both ends. The others noticed right away and surreptitiously watched her to see if they could catch her flip to erase, to fuck up - so they could swallow their malicious little chuckle like a hot dog burp from their roiling acidic inner pool of one-upmanship. Ha! They didn't know she never flipped to erase, she wasn't inflicted with this propulsion. Sometimes she circled back, more than once, but she held onto her first pure thought, Henry swore it was always the most telling and true. Another thing about Paula's pencil, it was not that garish yellow, or even the more studious muted shade with the green metallic bands at the top. It was patterened with the Florenian paper makers marble swirls in Cerulean blue and gold. A mere whisper from a speeding car in the grip of a more vibrant personality. But, as Henry liked to say, "a cold cup of water in a fainted face scream", in Paula's slender hand, a florish in a field of dust.
The woman sitting next to her had asked five questions of the proctor and the exam was yet to start. Paula sensed these were questions the woman already knew the answers to, she just wanted to quickly clarify these things for the stupid people in the room while simultaneously erecting herself on a pillar of intellect, her rightful place to spew her sticky condecension all over the room.
Then there was the guy in the front row, easing up his own superior edifice while shamelessy leafing through his proximity to greatness, "When I was at Harvard Law with Barack.. " - Oh shut the fuck up already, Paula's hands went to her temples and she stretched her eyes, trying to dispel her building tension. The guy was still droning on... she half listened, "When I played piano with Tchaikovsky..., When I stood on the barren terrain of the moon with Neil Armstrong..." Paula waved her pencil in frustration- all heads turned at this shockingly loud gesture. She smiled and handed them her "shut the fuck up" eyes, which they would, no doubt, pocket and feast upon later.
Henry would know what to say to ease her mind, "Well, it's about the test and the test is everything, isn't it?" The cool calming seeped under her skin. Henry was, to Paula, the personification of a snowman; long, manipulated nose, mismatched eyes, large buttons and knicked felt hat, probably not his, most likely stolen. "I would say fuck them - but, let somebody else fuck these stupid people who clutter your mind on a day as important as this." He was right, she musn't let herself be distracted.
Finally, the papers were face down on their desks. The proctor was writing something on the chalk board, back turned to his charges, and the girl in front of Paula was peeking! Paula knew this wasn't from a desire to get a 5 second jump on the rest of the class or from a lack of confidence in her abilities, but from the center of the universe, where she of course stood, other peoples rules didn't apply.
The proctor turned and mustered a weary smile, "you may begin."
Paula reached the boarding house after 10:00p.m., the doors were already locked, she would have to use her key. She didn't look up, she knew Mrs. DelVito would be watching from her second floor window, no visiters after 9:00p.m., strictlty enforced. She could have been a nun she liked to tell her residents, as if it were up there with ballet dancer or fireman on the ladder of dream jobs. Paula didn't mind her really. Her eggs weren't watery and the building was practically vermin-free and she asked remarkably few questions about personal items unless they crossed her threshold, like a new boyfriend (out by 9), a box with a severed head or, god forbid, a non-human breathing creature (pets and aliens). The alien nod isn't a joke either, more than once Mrs. D had tried to slip the AAER Newsletter (Alien Abduction Experience and Research, for you non-believers) into Paula's mailslot. Too many nights at the window probably landed her mind at Roswell of all places.
Paula made her way down the adequate hall, neither dingy or bright, with the low murmurs and flickering lights playing under the doors. She was room "S". Mrs. D confided that she decided to use letters instead of numbers so she wouldn't be faced with the quandry of whether to skip or include the number 13. "Could anything be more stupid?" she wanted to know. "I only have 24 rooms, so it all worked out fine, didn't it?" Paula poised her pink key. Sunny, Sad, Sexy, Stoic - Henry loved this game, although he would think, in Paula's case that Sunny was a stretch. But he would never fail to laugh at the cosmicly fitting location of the woman in room "C". Mrs. D must be onto our game he joked, I knew she was full of shit with that nun story.
She flipped the switch, the murphy bed was still unfolded, taking up most of the room, blankets still in the knot she escaped from this morning. Plopping on the thin mattress and feeling the familiar metal grid beneath, Paula pulled off her combat boots without unlacing them and tossed them...somewhere. Urbane, Uppity, Uncivil, Uric (look it up, it's very mean) must be asleep, thank God for that, or that incessant chanting would be crawling in her ear. It invaded her dreams - only to be startled awake by the feet slamming into the wall above her bed. Supported headstand Paula figured, because the chanting always stopped for an interval of 10 minutes, then it began all over again. Quiet, Queer, Quaint and...and...shit, she was always forgetting this one... must be up to something, it was always too quiet on that side. Henry would remember the forth one, where the fuck was he anyway? She had followed room "Q" one day when she was bored, he walked, seemingly with some destination in mind, looking down, and stopping abruptly to pick objects from the ground. Broken earring, bottlcap, smooth stone, used straw and shoved them in his pockets. Then he circled back to the House. Paula tried to see into his room, but he slipped through the door secretly, like a banned Chinese food menu. Henry had chastised her for doing this, "Mind your own business, you really have time for this bullshit? Of course he's up to something, but he's not building the bomb for godsake." Paula wasn't so sure.
These four walls, it was so cliched, yet if she had two rooms, eight walls, would it take twice as long to go crazy? Here came Vain, Vulgar, Virile, Void tapping down the hall, she could tell by the cane which she suspected he used as a ploy to gain sympathy and lure women into bed, and that whining, puerile cologne, please, they closed Danceteria back in the 80's room "V".
"Can you beleive him Henry?" Still no answer. She looked at the poster hanging on the opposite wall. A pier leading out into the ocean, endlessly, to the beautiful sunset horizen. Henry felt it gave the room depth, well perhaps if you leaned against this one, it would give. She shuffled through the voices in her head, Henry's was always the loudest. Come on, come on.... If anyone was there to look down upon Paula's prone body on the bed, they would see the raging turmoil, ready to explode, inside her small frame, her human casing, a mere slip of a woman really.
"So, how was the big exam?"
"Henry!"
"Didn't think I'd leave you with these four walls and Mrs. D's alphabet, did you?"
"The people were ghastly! The test was simple, you were right, I had nothing to worry about."
"That's me, voice of reason"
"It's really three walls you know, that one with the horizen will give if I lean against it"
"Why don't you do it then?"
Paula never had an answer to that particular question. Then she smiled,
Questionable
By: Dottie P. R.
The woman sitting next to her had asked five questions of the proctor and the exam was yet to start. Paula sensed these were questions the woman already knew the answers to, she just wanted to quickly clarify these things for the stupid people in the room while simultaneously erecting herself on a pillar of intellect, her rightful place to spew her sticky condecension all over the room.
Then there was the guy in the front row, easing up his own superior edifice while shamelessy leafing through his proximity to greatness, "When I was at Harvard Law with Barack.. " - Oh shut the fuck up already, Paula's hands went to her temples and she stretched her eyes, trying to dispel her building tension. The guy was still droning on... she half listened, "When I played piano with Tchaikovsky..., When I stood on the barren terrain of the moon with Neil Armstrong..." Paula waved her pencil in frustration- all heads turned at this shockingly loud gesture. She smiled and handed them her "shut the fuck up" eyes, which they would, no doubt, pocket and feast upon later.
Henry would know what to say to ease her mind, "Well, it's about the test and the test is everything, isn't it?" The cool calming seeped under her skin. Henry was, to Paula, the personification of a snowman; long, manipulated nose, mismatched eyes, large buttons and knicked felt hat, probably not his, most likely stolen. "I would say fuck them - but, let somebody else fuck these stupid people who clutter your mind on a day as important as this." He was right, she musn't let herself be distracted.
Finally, the papers were face down on their desks. The proctor was writing something on the chalk board, back turned to his charges, and the girl in front of Paula was peeking! Paula knew this wasn't from a desire to get a 5 second jump on the rest of the class or from a lack of confidence in her abilities, but from the center of the universe, where she of course stood, other peoples rules didn't apply.
The proctor turned and mustered a weary smile, "you may begin."
Paula reached the boarding house after 10:00p.m., the doors were already locked, she would have to use her key. She didn't look up, she knew Mrs. DelVito would be watching from her second floor window, no visiters after 9:00p.m., strictlty enforced. She could have been a nun she liked to tell her residents, as if it were up there with ballet dancer or fireman on the ladder of dream jobs. Paula didn't mind her really. Her eggs weren't watery and the building was practically vermin-free and she asked remarkably few questions about personal items unless they crossed her threshold, like a new boyfriend (out by 9), a box with a severed head or, god forbid, a non-human breathing creature (pets and aliens). The alien nod isn't a joke either, more than once Mrs. D had tried to slip the AAER Newsletter (Alien Abduction Experience and Research, for you non-believers) into Paula's mailslot. Too many nights at the window probably landed her mind at Roswell of all places.
Paula made her way down the adequate hall, neither dingy or bright, with the low murmurs and flickering lights playing under the doors. She was room "S". Mrs. D confided that she decided to use letters instead of numbers so she wouldn't be faced with the quandry of whether to skip or include the number 13. "Could anything be more stupid?" she wanted to know. "I only have 24 rooms, so it all worked out fine, didn't it?" Paula poised her pink key. Sunny, Sad, Sexy, Stoic - Henry loved this game, although he would think, in Paula's case that Sunny was a stretch. But he would never fail to laugh at the cosmicly fitting location of the woman in room "C". Mrs. D must be onto our game he joked, I knew she was full of shit with that nun story.
She flipped the switch, the murphy bed was still unfolded, taking up most of the room, blankets still in the knot she escaped from this morning. Plopping on the thin mattress and feeling the familiar metal grid beneath, Paula pulled off her combat boots without unlacing them and tossed them...somewhere. Urbane, Uppity, Uncivil, Uric (look it up, it's very mean) must be asleep, thank God for that, or that incessant chanting would be crawling in her ear. It invaded her dreams - only to be startled awake by the feet slamming into the wall above her bed. Supported headstand Paula figured, because the chanting always stopped for an interval of 10 minutes, then it began all over again. Quiet, Queer, Quaint and...and...shit, she was always forgetting this one... must be up to something, it was always too quiet on that side. Henry would remember the forth one, where the fuck was he anyway? She had followed room "Q" one day when she was bored, he walked, seemingly with some destination in mind, looking down, and stopping abruptly to pick objects from the ground. Broken earring, bottlcap, smooth stone, used straw and shoved them in his pockets. Then he circled back to the House. Paula tried to see into his room, but he slipped through the door secretly, like a banned Chinese food menu. Henry had chastised her for doing this, "Mind your own business, you really have time for this bullshit? Of course he's up to something, but he's not building the bomb for godsake." Paula wasn't so sure.
These four walls, it was so cliched, yet if she had two rooms, eight walls, would it take twice as long to go crazy? Here came Vain, Vulgar, Virile, Void tapping down the hall, she could tell by the cane which she suspected he used as a ploy to gain sympathy and lure women into bed, and that whining, puerile cologne, please, they closed Danceteria back in the 80's room "V".
"Can you beleive him Henry?" Still no answer. She looked at the poster hanging on the opposite wall. A pier leading out into the ocean, endlessly, to the beautiful sunset horizen. Henry felt it gave the room depth, well perhaps if you leaned against this one, it would give. She shuffled through the voices in her head, Henry's was always the loudest. Come on, come on.... If anyone was there to look down upon Paula's prone body on the bed, they would see the raging turmoil, ready to explode, inside her small frame, her human casing, a mere slip of a woman really.
"So, how was the big exam?"
"Henry!"
"Didn't think I'd leave you with these four walls and Mrs. D's alphabet, did you?"
"The people were ghastly! The test was simple, you were right, I had nothing to worry about."
"That's me, voice of reason"
"It's really three walls you know, that one with the horizen will give if I lean against it"
"Why don't you do it then?"
Paula never had an answer to that particular question. Then she smiled,
Questionable
By: Dottie P. R.
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