Empty Your Cup Haiku

Testament reads like
Braille; its dirty will takes it
all in, over/out.

M. Lucia

The Loves of Virginia Lane

Everyone needs a porn name.  The question seems to come up at least once a year among so-called mature and settled adults, doesn't it?  Virginia Lane is mine.  Thick, green carpet, deep as the earth.  I used to walk barefoot on it all day, from dirt to swimming pool to tennis court to grass to indoor, shag green carpet.  Our first home was like a recreation center, a wilderness retreat, an animal kingdom and greenhouse with an open sky, all in one.  Outside the dining room and to its adjoining side the kitchen, which looked down on a sunken family room and my play room, second fireplace and dark, wood paneling that denoted upstate NY in the 70's and 80's, was the new addition, which my father had built on, around my 7th or 8th year.  So, he was already 50 or 51, but to me he never seemed old, or young for that matter.  He was invincible, youth like and free, always free.  And he could build anything.  Construct anything and wire it electrically, as was his original trade, from brain waves to blueprint (though he never studied architecture he was genius at house imagining, and building) to foundation to sheetrock and all the rest.  The new addition was a long, tan colored nook and TV room, the nook connecting to the kitchen via a bar and set of stools, and the TV room connecting to the dining room via the same sliding glass door that originally went to the backyard.  French doors throughout, but not French.  Clear, also tan framed.  Clean.  Very European, like he was.

The view was like a step pyramid in action, on Virginia Lane, which was the quietest street in the area, and one of the longest too.  In the immediate back yard was the patio, including many cemented flower and tree boxes, bushes and such, all colors and seasons represented.  The place we barbecued, the collective of usual suspects as far as relatives from queens went, yelling their way into and out of the place every summer, mostly to use the pool he had built as well.  It was long, and I was a little scared of the deep end and the diving board, until I taught myself how to swim and tried every physical concoction I could off of that board.  Not diving so much, that gave me the bloody noses I was akin to at that age.  No matter if we were out back smoking meat, or had a life size lamb on the spit for the cavalcade of usual and even stranger Croatians who visited our house regularly, we stayed out there all day and all night.  I might go swimming, play a whole regulation tennis match with my older brother, pretending I was centre court at Wimbledon, my fixations on the British and their surrounding isles taking root quite early in life.  Wolfie, one of the two German shepherds running into the woods to retrieve the dirty, puddle soaked tennis balls, take a change of clothes inside and often, even with 4.5 bathrooms (built of course by my father), I would squat near the miniature rose bushes on the front lawn (we were so high up the hill from the street and covered by trees no one down there could see me if they tried....that is the number one feeling of being back there which stays now....the feeling of privacy, internal freedom, and protection from all sides...).  My father, by choice, perhaps to remind himself of the homeland would walk up into the wilder nearby back woods and come back down about 20 minutes later, satisfied by his self fertilizing of his dominion.  We worked the acreage of #57 like no one who ever had a place, a home to explore and live out every patch of ground with.

When the times came to come inside, and the earth was replaced by the deep green carpet, something changed in me.  I remember being 3 years old, probably one of the first memories there is, and sitting with legs wrapped around the golden and green velvety pillows in the proper living room, the first one.  Alone, and rubbing myself around them, because, as I recalled, it felt really good to me.  I remember having a best friend called Jarrod Jacket (what kind of Anglo dream name is that) whose woodsy house I visited often too.  People called us boyfriend and girlfriend when he or I would go and collect a bus pass to visit each other's houses.  We never did more than kiss in the woods, but once, when we were almost 8, he laid down over me, fully clothed of course, in the woods and started pressing himself against me, not really making any sense of it, but again, I didn't know much, but I knew I didn't mind this so much, and why weren't the other girls having boy friends to dry hump them in the woods behind their above ground pool? I don't even remember saying goodbye to him before we moved away to Florida, or drifting apart or how it happened, but it just did.

Alone in my bedroom, I started dressing up more.  I had always loved to put on my mother's fancy dresses, nightgowns and occasional things I shouldn't have found (a dark pink babydoll see through nightie which let me know that they were like Jarrod and I had been, so that was a good thing.  It's good to have a best friend who you can rub up against in the woods or in the master bedroom.  I still prefer the former to this day, but the where isn't really so important.).  Inside my bedroom, in this labyrinth of unused bathrooms, hamster wheel spinning, soaps untouched in the guest bathroom, and acres of entertaining at our fingertips, I used to dress up like I knew was somehow bad or not looked well upon, and having once seen my mother watching a nighttime variety show that included a burlesque dancer naked mostly but artfully moving her feathered boa wings around her curvy hips and slightly secretive breasts, I did the same.  I always wanted to be a stripper, or a performer who took her clothes off, or a burlesque dancer, though at the time I probably didn't know that word or what it entailed or the socio-political connections, I just loved the idea of enticing men and just how this all worked in the world.  I had seen enough soap operas to know of the fantasy and role play scenarios, AM style of course, but something in me always knew some secrets that I shouldn't have.  I would say I was molested, but I honestly don't think there are any sordid activities of that kind in my childhood, or Catholicism for that matter.  The boys probably had more to worry about than I ever might.

I would strip down and caress myself all around, like there was a room full of watchers present.  I would pretend I was a secretary bending over an office desk with a really short skirt on, revealing that I didn't have any underwear on beneath (here is where I suspect being one of the first houses and neighborhoods to have cable TV and HBO etc. probably informed me in ways I didn't realize weren't quite proper for a girl of my age to have seen or known about...that's what you get when you have that many TV rooms), and I would french kiss my stuffed animals, poor fellas got spit all over themselves, and move them gracefully to the bed, where I would, rather robotically since I didn't know then about what hands can do in the realms of cocks and cunt, outside and in, mouth and asses and tits, none of those motions were born in me yet, just the words and the feeling of pressing up against the stuffed suitors.  Hell, I had an orgy in there some nights, since all the stuffed animals found home on my bed.  I would ride them until I couldn't take it anymore.  It didn't feel complete, if you get my meaning, and I knew there was some big bang if you will that I was missing.  Still, seems like I was wired for pleasure from my earliest days, in that tree lined freedom and multi-floor house, in those quiet woods with boys who make much better best friends than girls, with the eventual blooming of my body and the discovery of the blackest eye liner, and no wonder Cleopatra had any man she wanted.  A 24 hour adult news marathon was my pre-teen pastime, and throughout it all, I threw everything I had into it.  Boas, motions, lips, hips, heart and all.  There just didn't seem like there was any other choice but to live it up, even then.  Sex is creation and I guess I felt the angels and the Lord talking to me from a very early age - at highest pitch in my ear, through the might of summer fireflies and crickets feeding off of the hot midnight air, enjoying my show all the while.


M. Lucia

13 Ghost Points

Do you know where your ghost points are? It’s very important, I would think. This guy, on the train, vacancy sign flashing in his pupils, scratching his head and his feet so heavy, looked like they would sink into the floor, seep through into the parallel universe, where he is surely riding the same train, just a little bit altered. But not enough to change things. He hasn’t a fucking clue. Neither does she, that middle aged woman murmuring to herself, since the subway doors didn’t open up fast enough for her. Typical south american type – you can see the mesa in her cheeks, her arms like stumps with no intention. Pulling her in and back, more than down. Her parallel universes could be firing laser pistols at her in all directions and she wouldn’t know it. Her anger is too strong and too self contained. When the doors finally open, you can see her face, pinched and bitter, the arsehole of a rotting lemon, retreating into itself. A face like that never comes out of that. You have to feel badly that she couldn’t encounter a smile or physiologically let it pass onto her face if the heavens opened, and rained down golden dipped elevation from itself. She sees ghosts as a bad thing; something to be feared, mocked or let sit unnoticed in the deepening folds down and diagonal to the creases laying eggs in her eyes.

Ghost Palace – This is where we think we are home, and we are not. We think we run the show, only to find out that the gardener, the old men with a surely stutter and missing teeth is poisoning our drinking water and shitting in our thoughts daily, with nothing less than a lifelong building up of resentment, because you never saw him there, tending gently to your flowers, the ones the neighbors think are so lovely in their form. He goes unnoticed and what’s worse, the only way you will know when he’s gone is when the flowers all of a sudden stop being so bright, so lively, so adorning of your face and front wall. He has sunk into the soil, and you can’t even explain to him how much it all meant. The colours, the fragrance, the fact that flowers have NO meaning.

Ghost Sincerity- This is how earnest we try to be. Saying good morning, when you just don’t give a fuck. Offering up our opinions and structures even though no one asked for them. Shouting without urgency at these little games we all play, and to what end. No end in sight.

Ghost Pile- All the things we own….we covet and want. Eating even the oeroubus that enslaves us with its gut centered destiny. Gluttons, all, can be a good thing. But don’t serve it like it’s your air to breath. It can’t save you, when you’re sinking down into quicksand, the one you mixed up all special in that golden cup you thought would see you through? He’ll just whip around you, smack your face in with his tail as you try to bite it off, but it’s too late. You can’t take it with you, even for a moment.

Ghost Heart- Ah, yes. The veil. This is the one that is both seemingly neverending, and the one which dies little by little each day, with each shard that’s kicked from its teeth on down. Even when recovery works, there is still scar tissue there, growing in more primitively and less expectantly than before. It hurts as it dies, and it only dies because we let it. Most of what we want, plan, do and say has absolutely nothing to do with our heart, which in case you didn’t know, is our soul. Overused and overripe words, but all the same, there is no better thing on this earth, while we have it in our midst, than to love outright and without fear or boundaries. If you get that right, death ain’t no thing t’all.

Ghost Road- The ghost road can be one of two things: If you are following that great passion which burns inside, whether in the wee hours of the night, in the in between times of day when we wait on nothing to gain nothing, else sorting and planning and trying for any of those dreams that once filled your soul, then the ghost road is the one you could have traveled, which lays open and bare, dead carcasses and roadblocks, emotional, pointless wars and every day filled with dead air. Ghosts sleep on that road. Not I. If you are not living in accord with yourself and your truest visions, then you travel the ghost road, and the real one is lost to you, which is the greatest tragedy life can imagine.

Ghost Pillow- The ghost pillow is similar. We sleep at night, dreaming of the other sides to our brains, worlds, and selves, and that is the way of it. When we dream of the backwards motions in this life, the ego stained particles which find no home properly in our daily world, which is some kind of “reality” (a word which truly has no meaning, for a flower’s reality holds much more weight), all carpet burns and life choice, well, then the pillow is on the wrong side and dreams are wasted. Night times are for the matchable reality, not a preferable or nightmarish alternative to this one.

Ghost Bed- Same idea. Don’t fuck one person, say you love them, then try to fuck someone else because you follow a rigid plan and not that ghost heart. Every queen should be a whore, every whore can be a mother, and there is no duality that makes for a vital life, in the sheets of the ghost bed.

Ghost Market- We all walk down a ghost market daily – shuffling our vision to avoid the distasteful, grabbing at anything we can as we feel we are entitled to (back off of that, and watch your world open up…those mean and pinched ass-lemon faces are a thing of the past and arguments seem pointless, unless they are utilized as foreplay); no one owes you anything is the real point here. Nothing you need at buy or take at the ghost market.

Ghost Cave- This is where the madness hides; it hides like a child who’s been slapped across the face, tears streaming and drying too quickly. Every single crack in our existence is due to something. We shove those children into this cave, in the darkness, holding desperately to each other and whimpering as you keep ignoring them and shoving them to the side. They will fashion instruments, weapons of some kind and have their day. They’ll club you to death in your sleep before you know it. Then the ghost bed and pillow will have no meaning whatsoever. They’ll run amuck and tear down the walls of the city, dig up your gardener and kick at his dead and dusty bones cause they’re bored. You should have listened to them.

Ghost Hall- Simply put – the place before the place when the light shines on you, and they all see you there, making each and every entrance. The silence before, when you know if you are right with yourself, or not.

Ghost Store- The market is the same as the store, except the store might also be the room in which you hide your treasures. They need the light of day, else they too will die a sudden and silent death, the rattle and the collapsing liquid in their throats measured up against a life not lived.

Ghost Leg- It’s supposed to keep you up, and walking, and moving forward. FOR-WARD. Stagnant water stinks and the sharks can wait forever, while you wade, and your muscles tire and you slowly go again, yet again, into the Abyss. Which, in case you haven’t heard, isn’t some great light…..it’s a lack of light and darkness, and a lack of all that can create.

Ghost Seal- Marked onto you from the start, the face before the world was made, to steal from an Irishman. But, despite the nature of a seal, it can always be re-written. Coming to yourself in the final moments of your deathbed is a greater and truer life than living with the ghosts every minute previous and never allowing them to know that you were alive, and they could be too.

I hold the gaze of a white electric light flickering through the lattice of a fence, wrapped and kissed by vines from all directions, and supported and adored by the semblance of light which it calls its world, just the same as yours.

M. Lucia

A Tale of Two Washerwomen

I hate washerwomen. 
I hate the way they cackle, two fisted, hands like tentacles,
loss of brain pressure exiting out the ends of their frayed hair.
I hate that feeling you get, when you walk into a room, through a street
in a moving place
and people are talking so vigorously-
not loud like fishermen, dockside whores or peasants
expressing over just how the sun rises across the sky for them,
but like dead, bloated air filling a room, clocking you over the head with their ignorance
while sounding so utterly sure of themselves, their many entitlements,
which they never stop to question, shadows which keep their distance around their feet,
are ones they would never stoop to step back into, thinking themselves deserving
of the spotlight.
I'd like to slap them across their silly fat heads,
knock 'em down lengthwise to the ground and blow up some cloud space
in front of them, forcing the shadows into their empty, narrow lights.
Keep washing your clothes, you fools of bitches, you.
It's all you're good for.
Keep plotting inside your priviledged little brains
at all that you buy and seek.  Your garnering asses will sink pretty soon
into a black worm hole of fire and picked apart equations
which you won't allow yourself one second of quietude for understanding.
I know where all of my stains live.
I like them there, my cast of thousands sailing on by;
no time for your puzzle pieces fuzzy and broke, when I can kick, and tongue
dangle off the limbs of the skies.
While you scrub, and chatter, and grow forlorn there at the muddy banks
of your own creation.  Keep watching the horizon---
ain't no boats coming anytime soon.  I apologize if some random drops fall
lustily from the base of the sky. It gets wild, it does, when you've stopped
remembering how to lie. 

M. Lucia

Haiku in the Name of Trouble

Crossed legs with The Stare.
Lady Jail quite popular-
not just little boys...

M. Lucia

Sciatican Haiku

Shorter by half-inch;
manipulated, dandy.
Louie's an angel.

M. Lucia

Happy Father's Day.

There was a heartbeat, an irregular and viscous heartbeat in my leg...too long in the car seat, the air conditioning was on too cold, I had a feeling they'd get it if I went on about my philosophy on That, but not today.  The Thruway, the Tappan Zee Bridge (my father used to over pronounce the letters to it, almost Italian like, making it sound much more interesting than the word actually was in English, "Taa-pan SEE"...I grew after all those years, all those houses, all those counties, to like the west side better, than the east, where I had mostly grown up.  Wilder, less subsidized, less standard, overall) and the same again to Exit 20 or 21 of the Catskill Ski Region, as it was called.  My father preferred getting out at Exit 20, and taking about 20-25 minutes on a gentler, curvier drive past the farmers' market, the Friar Tuck Inn, which always gave me a chuckle (especially on a Saturday when some small collective of Jews on Sabbath were walking black and white along route 23B), the strip club where I had gone in the midst of it all years ago, the big, beautiful green and white farm house at the end of the street which led to our last street, Paradise Lake Road.  And it was.  Down the hill, trees, tall and bushelled framing the mountains and the sky, the quiet of the day, the tree frogs bellowing at night and echoing off the lake in the moon water.  It looked exactly the same.

Simple thing to want, staring out the window of the car, while the cousin talked to the mother.  God, he could talk.  Thick nasally queens accent, and a good heart beneath.  He wanted to come and see where his Uncle John was laid to rest.  Funny how broken and hazardous our Croatian-American dichotomy went.  We still called our aunts Teta, but uncles still uncles.  Amidst that, the stories going back and forth between us all, I stared out at those wide fields, hovering under the treelines, and wanted so badly to just sleep in the grass, as a blanket, under the sun.  The dirt was better at his grave too, not choking to death on rocks and weeds like the Uncle andTteta's grave on the Brooklyn-Queens border they had visited and planted earlier that morning, but rich and chocolate brown, soft and pliable, soaked from inside by the rain, and my mother had remarked to us that this small town cemetery was like the one in his village back in Croatia.  Having just stood atop his parents and family's graves there, I could stand with one foot on all of them at once.  There is a detachment here now.  Enough (4) years having gone by, I was completely out of the experience of losing my father, and friend, but now there was a different sort of connection.  I planted his flowers, stabbing into that loose and liquid soil with my tiny shovel, and spaced the four apart, purples, reds and yellow wildflowers too.  I did a good job, she said.

We talked in our usual loud familial voices about the cousin's sister since they didn't talk anymore, which was sad.  We drove by the beautiful last house there, on paradise lake road.  The cousin was impressed.  The people, rich Manhattan types who now had our home as their summer home lived there part time now, but they had done so little to the exterior, that it looked like we could just waltz on in and be right back there.  The treeline my father had left to offer the privacy that we always desired, to be ourselves in our own place together, and the well structured colonial on stilts, roman columns (but of course) on the front porch, the unseen, wild and endless greens growing behind the back one, my pointing out that the large window in the front was around a big jacuzzi where you looked out onto the trees.  A chipmunk scurried across the road, and I remembered my drunken late night swims, and all I had done in that house, and said "I had a lot of fun there".  The cousin, at first sight, just sat back in his seat and said "Wow.  Uncle John didn't fuck around, did he".  My mother noted "nope.  But that house killed him".  But I was quick to add, "but he made it beautiful".  And we all agreed of its worth, and its right to take away from the man who made it stand.

We talked as I dreamed still of grassy naps, of his father, of mine, of him being hungry at Christmastime and not knowing what day it was, because he was the black sheep and had to make his way on his own terms.  On his father walking from the coast of Italy to Rome to ask a Croatian priest for food or money or help.  How, I thought, these men lived as men through their ups and downs, and how the story was slowly being removed out of our lives by the empty bearings of this technology, of detachment, of lack of life.  But that was just the start to another of my mental tennis matches, which would be resumed at a later date, as usual.  My brother had bequeathed the rock I brought him from the village where our father was born, and the old rusted fork we found in the family stone house, no longer usable and wanted us to leave it at the grave for the old man.  He loved him funny, but he loved him all the same.

As I pressed the fork into the soil, and made sure the rock had its own place there too, I thought of the boy.  The one who returned from his trip to the Outer Banks, as we all yelled his name and high fived him as he led his misfit parents back into the garden, ours.  He sat on my lap and pulled my hands to him, and got me to carry him, not knowing whether he was here nor there quite yet.  He leaned his head on me, blond hair turning brown, and said "take me to my Outer Banks home", which he was already missing.  I said I couldn't walk that far, and he said to me that he brought me a rock, which I had luckily asked for before his departure.  I thought of him, and his newness, and how they were all like my family too, but just differently....tattoo ink thicker than skin, and how he looked older to me, and how we talked of the home, the first one my father built lower down the Hudson, and how we were all children there, just a few short seconds ago, it seemed.  He (the cousin) and my brother had once snuck switchblade combs (like Danny Zucko, yes) into church back then, and the priest took them away from both of them and his dad got angry at my dad for letting them in that way, for being too soft.  But my dad was not the stoic, Eastern European type.  Strong as nails, and would erect the pyramids in one day if he had to, but he liked stories, and traditions, wine and laughter, songs to sing to himself when he was drunk, and sometimes you could hear him when he stayed up just a little bit later, and thought about his home, where he had to flee from all the paradises there to make his own way.  He'd sing a few lyrical songs, which told stories, and enjoy every of those last drops.  More often than not, we were together when he drank, which made all the difference to me, at least.

We got back into the big black truck, and I suggested we beep the horn, like his father and like mine did, usually a few more than some bedsheets to the wind after many a holiday, when one of us would drive home from the other's houses, more often them from our house.  He smiled, laughed that loud fiery laughter that he had inherited from his mad, sometimes angry, inappropriate but also good hearted father, and we beeped a few times as we drove back down the country road.  I saluted my dad army style and know he was enjoying this.  All of us together is all that really mattered at the end of the day.  My legs ached, the grass beckoned, the stories continued, and I thought of home, and all the places and faces and people and losses and sun ups and downs that encompassed.  You flow through me like the river moving west, my ever living Da. In the greenest of grasses you cradle me and let me sleep it off, while you sing my nap into existence with sweet, solid songs of the land of home, allowing me to wake with a fresh start and my own terms laid out before me, waiting to put the story back into the movement of sun.

M. Lucia

On Waterfront

There is no safer bet than the music, laden
falling down the stairs and not getting hurt
reaching in the tunnel black, ass bare and justice oriented
on the safety seat of the A train.
Blue like ocean coming up inside me,
dirty and strong
out into the sunlight past the nexus of down trodden hell
mixing with fashions catastrophic
smelling fried chicken and familiar eyes on the bus...
back to brooklyn never felt so fair
done with mild misgivings and electronic slavery
paperwork in my footsteps leads to weeds the height of short men
and tall children, my name drunken and scrawled into
sidewalk charcoal grey a summer's drunken night astray
more than one or two summers ago; sunlight changing to rain
untouchable here, leaving trunks for shoving hard
into the buttermilk channel.
Liquid fog melting industrial sky over islands I can see,
the solid white and amber lights of tugboats
bellowing after me to stay, to not leave their view
as often as I do.  Smells like wine being made,
harmonicas all in a line that play
with me, insulating me on all sides
trees stand firm, and shelter us from city life.
One day soon, I'll find a way not to leave you.
I'll pour myself a big, stiff drink, set up in this rocking
chair, and stay all night to watch your boats move smooth,
along our rough waters, safe in the bet and too terrible
to write too many words about.  The hideaway is a secret-
and we like it better that way...

M. Lucia

401

The freeway's no place for you Sean.  Your cart's all full up with cans but it's up hill from here--at least until you get to Mulholland Drive.  Then again if you make it that far there's a whole world of trees and bushes to make your home.  
You see the way Honey-Alice was walking the dog the other day?  You know her?  She's got the dog with the worried face?  You should see it when it shits man.  That's worried face takes on a whole new meaning.  The big black moon eyes shiverin' in their sockets, the pink tongue dripping.  Alice is talking out loud now.  Finally got to that point.  Use to be you had to get her started before she went and gabbed but now?  Just like she's on a stage   or something--all her world's a stage.  She was walking along with the dog, the dog looking all anxious she's not gonna give 'em a chance to squat, and Alice talking in that monotone and shuffling her feet along the sidewalk like they were gondolas on the canal.  It reminded me of a guy I dated once in...in...in Reno?  Was it?  What's the city - what's the capital of Nevada?  Carson City?  Was it Carson City?  I can't remember.  Funny - I lived there two years mostly and I can't even remember.  But he was, the guy in Carson City I dated, he was a sailor, but not like in the Navy--he was a sailor of sail boats.  Pleasure cruisers--take people out on the sound or in the harbor and sail 'em around...he'd sometimes talk about the calm on the ocean and boats just barely parting the water--just gliding along.  That's Alice's feet.  Gliding along the sidewalk with the dog's nails scraping along trying to get her to slow down long enough to drop some seed.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

Our voices are grunts; our feelings base.
We are nothing.  
It is all nothing.  
There is no happy realization, there's no coming to Jesus.  
Awaken?  To what?  To the futility of life?  Your first step the first towards the grave?  Dreaming is better.  Physical mollifications more pleasant.  There's no blood in any of our veins that's worth spilling.  
Dead.  We are all of us dead anyway.  You have only one destiny.

Sealed with a Kiss

I'm sick of talking.

No one is listening anyway.

But my blood's pumping, and has one thing to say:

THIS IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL.

The world pre-historically and hence

is absolutely fucking brutal.

But we can't know any of that from the drooling favor and cool air
of our padded cells, now can we.

Aren't you people bored at all? With living in this dream state
not seeing or feeling or fucking or killing
Anything around you?
More so, not loving neither?
Love cowers from us like a golden fawn at the doorway to slaughter.

And we just let it sit there, pissing itself.  While we look into our dead eye lights
and think ourselves masters of this tiny universe.

If I  have to butcher, give birth to, fuck, slay and redeem
each and last one of your fuckers with my remaining breaths...
I'll say yes and do so with a smile.
And my hips shaking like destiny, when you pass me by.

There's no holding out against circumstance.

And it's wonderful to not fear Anything.  Learn it someday, won't you?

The glory of knowing full well your name.


M. Lucia

Zombies!

What is it they are trying to tell me?

Am I “in for it”, or is the thing that bellows my name and chases me in the ethereal mise-en-scene afraid of me?

I was in control and not in control at all, the juxtaposition just the way I like it. Everything at once. I was each and every character and yet removed from them, from their physical pain, from their terror and emotion. I wielded the ax and my personally assigned warrior wielded his….first in a fight with each other, and then against the lot of them. The walking, misshapen and flesh/face eating zombies. They looked relatively typical, and yet somehow they popped out of the woods, out of our escape route and would surround one female character after another. But, I wasn’t so concerned with them. Even when the blondish one looked back to me, about to have her face torn off by ravenous, jagged teeth en masse, she looked despondent almost at me, as if this was all MY fault. Well, sorry honey, maybe it is. But I’m over here with this here ax in my hand, and you’re there in a ring around the rosy of flesh eating zombie people. That’s just the way it worked. You draw in the energy and experience you give out, really is a solid piece of truth, even in the nightmare world of horror.

Our axes flew threw the air, almost hitting our faces, but we kept ducking from them, and eventually gathered enough reserve to decide that we couldn't wait in the limo (the only car in the parking lot) anymore. And, apparently, one of the two unconscious ones we tried to take with us was a renowned doctor. The other guy eventually got taken too, but not us. That’s the thing. They (zombies) are Everywhere, aren’t they. They literally pop up like weeds around you, in a moment’s notice – eating, drinking and devouring your last bits in the chorus drone that they always carry with them. That insignificant sound of null. They grow strong in numbers, but each by themselves is empty. Maggots fulfilling their wildest fantasies on their insides’ organs, cells, thoughts, dreams (do zombies dream of better days?)…And you can turn into one, it seems, like That. They bite you and before you know it, there you are. Face half off, skin and blood on parade, teeth exposed and no human soul left to speak of. Your will robbed of you. Remember, it’s not the other way around. The will is not a moveable object in and of itself.

So, he and I and the other mercenary types who managed to sustain and act, well, we decided to fly a plane on out of here, since the highways were filled with army and those things were teeming, looming, sucking at us, everywhere. Up was the only direction to go. Turned out many of us could fly, and we confidently boarded on that plane, the zombies close at hand, moving at us in that fast-slow concave motion that they were known for. In the plane, we were living the high life. Free from all the trauma, the terror, the feeling of being consumed without control by the marching dead, which walked alive only in form and not in spirit. At one point, we thought the old man had been somehow changed, bitten – he was frothing, and tossing things at us and completely disoriented. But, no one had snuck onto the plane that was already dead, thankfully. False alarm and we laughed at each other. The old man was just dreaming, it turned out. Dreaming vivid like I was now.

We heard the soaring and clean whoooosh of the plane as it sailed forward, and onto new shores. We had weeks to fly and enough petrol to turn out the winners of this little test of bravery. We stayed ourselves, and clanked our glasses with all the free airline booze we could ingest. That feeling soared into morning, and I knew I had to be on the lookout for them anyway, as the zombies on this side of things don’t bare their teeth and show their colours all that easy, do they. All the same, the battleaxe dripping life blood from my heart wasn’t planted at the center of my chest, either. We all wear our ruptured victories a lot closer to ourselves than that.

M. Lucia

And then...PEPPER SAVES THE DAY

Pepper and Grady drove along the road in silence, which was rare for them, with three dead rabbits strung along a length of chain in the back of the truck.  Grady was driving actually and Pepper riding in the passenger seat staring out the window, his eyes scanning the side of the road, wholly diverted.  Typically there'd be a lot of chatter between the two of them--Pepper chattering mostly and Grady encouraging, and adding the odd observation from time to time just to give Pepper's brain a shake, like you would to a bucket of popcorn, to get the good stuff back up to the top.  Pepper was soaked through with sweat from having run through the brush scenting down rodents.  Despite being what most considered an "idiot" Pepper did make a pretty decent hound dog for a human, if given the chance, and Grady often did, though not out of opportunism as much as out of a genuine love and affection for Pepper that no one could quite put a name to.

Grady smoked which made Pepper sniff involuntarily every few seconds despite the open driver's side window.  Pepper would never complain though.  He revered Grady.  Grady spoke to him, whole conversations, and took him places.  Grady made him feel a friend when practically no one else did.  He was a brother, or like, and even when people teased him about how much he loved Grady, like when he'd be going on about how Grady had nailed up a gutter and made it stick on Mrs. Bennett's house when no one else had been able to really fix it right and Bob has said "boy that Grady sure do know a thing or two 'bout hammerin' a nail" and everyone in the diner had laughed, he didn't let it get to him, especially because Grady'd had told him about why people would tease and how it really was about them and not anything else important.  

-I ever tell you the magic rabbit legend Pepper?

-Magic what?

-Magic rabbit.  You know there's rabbits and there's rabbits, big small, white brown and black.  Some with brown eyes and some with pink.

-These three we got tonight all had brown eyes right Grady.

-That's right Pepper.  And so there was a time when people round our state got so good at hunting rabbits that the population just started dwindling down to practically nothing.  

-But there's a million of them up in that mountain.

-This was a long time ago Pep.  It got so you couldn't even get a decent hare for your dinner no more.  People resorting to eating squirrel and chipmunk.  

-How long ago?

-It's a long way back.  Before your Mama's mama was even born.  And you had squirrel before Pep and you know that there ain't no squirrel or chipmunk or anything the like can hold a candle to one of them big mountain bunnies.  Aint that right?

-Well sure Grady.  

-So the town got together and decided they had to do something about it, and it just so happens at the time there was a man passing through selling brushes from a case, going door to door, you know, a salesman.  Anyway, he had heard about the problem the town was having and said he knew all about rabbits and he knew all about how to fix it.  

Grady had his full attention now.  He knew the look on Pepper's face when he got this way which is why he never tired of thinking up stories to tell him.  He flicked his cigarette out the window and lit another from the pack in his shirt pocket with the dashboard lighter.  Pepper took a moment to look through the window in the back of the pick-up's cab at the rabbits laying there.  One brown eye stared up at him, unblinking.

-So they gave the man some money, they passed a hat and took up a collection and sent him off.  Some thought he'd never be seen again if they sent him alone up into the mountains the way he planned so they sent one of the old codgers in town up with him.  

-What's a codger.

-A codgers a really old guy.  Ned - Ned's a codger.

-I don't like the way Ned smells sometimes.

-That's part of what makes a codger a codger.  So three days passed and they hadn't come back.  There'd been a really bad storm one of the nights so they couldn't understand with all the rain why the two men hadn't at least come back to get out of the storm.  And just when they were about to get a search party together to at least go out and find the codger, not really ever expecting to see the salesman again and half worried that if they went out looking all they'd find was the dead body of the old man, the old guy himself comes walking out of the woods alone.

Pepper's jaw hung open.  He had no way of processing the anticipation.  He knew he had to pee too but he didn't want to say anything not wanting Grady to stop saying more of the story.  The image of the rabbit's eye in the back lingered in his memory, vaguely threatening though not consciously.  It was just a mild feeling of dread mixed with the excitement and bladder urgency.  

-And so the old man's eyes had gone pink just like a rabbit's eyes. 

-What?!?

-And his white hair had gone all wild and sticking up in all directions.  His clothes were all tatters and he was covered in cuts and bruises.

-Who did it?

-The codger says: "he just went and ATE him...it's a monster..."

Pepper jumped at the word "ate" from the way Grady'd emphasized it for effect, but the effect combined with everything else Pepper was feeling and he stared back again, fearful, at the dead rabbits in the back and he was somehow convinced now they weren't completely dead.  He thought he saw the eye blink.  

-And they asked the codger all kinds of questions, everyone yelling at once and the codger just starts shaking all over like he's having some kind of attack and they aren't paying any attention because coming out the woods behind them is the magic rab...

Grady had underestimated the effect the story was having on Pepper and later he would have trouble remembering anything about the whole evening before the accident.  He was told later by the troopers in the hospital room how Pepper'd pulled him out from under the water and saved him and how Pepper was just fine and waiting in the lobby eating Mars bars from the machine.  One of the many effects of the accident and his concussion was a pair of badly bloodshot eyes that he had noticed in the mirror a nurse had given him.  He was trying to figure out how he was going to convince the troopers to hang around a bit and wait for Pepper to arrive.  Someone was going to have to keep Pepper from busting every piece of furniture in the room once he got a look at Grady's pink eyes.  

PEPPER IS HUNTING RABBITS

-They's a rabbit...down dis hole.

Pepper stood, red-faced from running, pointing down to a crease in the grass like a dog, his purple t-shirt draping like a dress and streaked with perspiration, his shorts reaching down mid-calf with wide-bottomed cuffs ringing his knees like a bell, his black-brown crew cut sweat-soaked and standing straight up, electrified.  He breathed heavily, with his mouth, his lips appearing swollen and his eyes heavy-lidded, giving his face the overall look most people took immediately, and rightly so, for a certain intellectual inconsequence.  He spluttered for air.

-You OK son?  Grady slid up next to him placing a concerned hand on Pepper's shoulder.  Pepper shuddered but calmed under the hand still jittering like an angry hornet's nest.

-Momma says I git clenched sometimes an' I gotta take it mellow more.  He said "mellow" in two long drawn out syllables, like it was a hard word to pronounce--"MELL...LOW"--though it was more about the way his momma said it, she herself remembering the word as associated with a New Orleans trombone player she met in San Diego in the early 80's and lived with back then for a time.  The memory was a fond one and made her skip a step remembering all the dancing, his lips on her neck and his hand between her legs--as near enough feelings all these years later as the physical presence here in her kitchen of this disappointing son of hers haunting her, like and more often than not bouncing off the walls over one thing or another.

-Take it easy now Pepper...take it mellll-llow, she'd say.

-It's ok kiddo.  So you get worked up.  We's chasin' rabbits right arn't we?

-Yeah Grady, we're chasin' rabbits.  Pepper's faced lightened visibly and his demeanor calmed in general.  He was smiling now feeling a part of something, feeling like he belonged somewhere--right here where Grady was.  He considered Grady the finest person in the world.  And Grady was always kind to him in a way that didn't sound like pity or like he was mocking.

-So you say we got one down here, do you?  Grady crouched and considered the hole Pepper found.  Pepper sat right down next to him crushing a bush.  Grady turned his head to one side and Pepper did the same.

-He took a turn right 'round that juniper there and I saw the tail go right down here.

Pepper pointed and then smacked the grass with his open palm, rocking now in a rhythm of excitement and sure knowledge.  The rabbits below shivered, caught.  Grady parted the grass with his hands, smoothing and separating to expose the opening in the ground.

-Well they're down there now...what'cha think there Pep?

-Don' know Grady.

-Why don't cha sing us something.

-Like what Grady?

Grady reclined in the grass, his arms behind his head.  The grass was long and lush and thickly-bladed.  It felt wet but there wasn't any moisture that came away with your hand when you touched it.  And the smell of it made you want to eat it.  Grady knew to let Pepper be; let Pepper sense the lull and relax; then he'd start all on his own.

Pepper began to sing an old backwoods ballade about catching rabbits in the Kentucky hills or words like that.  His voice was a marvelous smooth tenor.  He had a remarkable ear and fed off the sound as it rolled away from him into the valley and then back up to him in echo.  This was really the reason Grady took Pepper hunting--these peaceful moments.

Even the rabbits braved to sniff the air closer to the grass outside their hole.

The shimmering stride of wave kept her afloat.
Dunking her head repeatedly, to keep that cool wet feeling through her skin and muscles.
The awful advert on the low flying plane, she ignored.
She knew how to ignore just about anything.
Sometimes she ignores too much.
She felt down her arms, tanning rapid by the minute.
Most people needed a summer, but like most else,
she licked it in a few hours flat.
Legs up and swirling through the waters, sunny-
she swam horizontal and could live in here forever.
Land, it seemed, was really overrated.
Why do we punish ourselves with the sameness we create
(or think we do)
?
The same rooms, the same inane roadblocks,
the same limitation in people who cannot even begin to figure out
their own strategical de-plan.  This moment
lasts forever.  Water around her, nothing in her "usual" life
here.  But here, she was more in the centre of things
than most else.  All of a sudden, she felt things she should have,
or at least things, moments, experiences, doings that would add
even more to this singular start to a feeling.
What was stopping us exactly.
She went back in, after the last big wave, only-
only because she felt she should.
No more of that reasoning. Even if you take it apart
one -by- one
it will come loose and let you slide on up, one way or another.

Nobody said one fell swoop was necessary,
to be in newness and surrounding the world on all sides.
Baby steps, like sinking into the sand,
lapping frosty wave tips between your thighs from the ocean.
Hurts, don't it. Then once you're in,
feels as good as you thought it should. And that light, behind
the shadow's corner that you don't normally see,
with tired, reacting eyes.
The eyes that see straight ahead,
looking with expectation and extended hand
to the horizon bending backwards just to suit you.
When you remember to show up, as you are.

M.Lucia

Release The Kraken

As she types these words, here comes the déjà vu.  A dream had in the last year.  Maybe.  She couldn't decipher it at the time.  There was writing this, in this place, with these words, on this page.  It was shown to him, and he was expecting it.  But her friend was having the baby, the double fortune redhead that likes to suck on pickles and smile wider than any human being might know how to.  She wasn't here; it wasn't happening yet. 

She was writing this, in this dream, in her first bedroom as a child (but not a child when writing this) - pink, pink, 70's wallpaper, matching canopied bed with white posts, busy black and pink (goth babydoll) even then. Using the room as a place, with a laptop, not that one ever existed there for her (Strange to think of people living in that place, or any other she's lived in that her father built since then - 1986.  A quarter of a century and how many lives have gone on there since theirs.  It would probably make her cry horribly to see it dressed up in someone else's clothes). 

So the déjà vu, here it is, there it went, imagery, the feeling of dreaming being real and these words having taken place in the past, in the world with no second hand, and along tops of our hats.  Deep down to the ocean floor, the Kraken swings its be-laboured, heavy arms but not in frustration, but like an elephant swimming through the seas might seem (did you know elephants could swim?), a beast light as a feather, taking all of our woes with him, as we sail alongside, barefoot and drunk as ever.  And happy, dammit.  Despite all the woes, the lack of peace (chosen and recognized), Happy.  As long as she was in the childhood bedroom (she locked the door when she was ten and decided to tear down the matching bed canopy and unscrew the posts - it was not her anymore, and she made that first step to herself with no trouble at all), in the nettle of the waves, the imaginary pirate's ship she was forever on (never at the wheel; she was better outstretched and moist under the sun wrapped in her own hair, her own personal mermaid, at the helm - to warn the men of oncoming dangers), the dance floor of the waters two stepping with the creature, cupped sleeves leading the way and no straight lines to be found...always step right, turn toes out, step left, turn them out, v interactions and backwards genuflections and she imagined to herself, when finally getting down to write these words which had clearly written themselves years and dreams and eternities ago (if ago can even be applied to eternities or if there can even be more than, say, one) the thought that struck her more like a gut feeling - that these little treasures we keep in our brain cells, invisible other selves and the worlds which don't always show up in this one...that we don't even know how much we have.  If we stopped for a moment and sunk down, how we might begin to creep into it, slowly, like falling asleep in the sweaty grass, making weed and flower decorations and shapes on our thighs....

...Close your eyes and listen.  Hear the kraken tentacles following along with the elephant trunk show? Singing opera and swaying himself to the tune we created for him? Now, you see what she means.  Apparently, she's said it before.

M. Lucia

Why I Love Men's Tennis (abbreviated)

There is no team in I. 
Love comes in interludes of 15, just like fame.
You are silent, but for a few grunts and moans.
You sweat, and wipe, and run for cover;
how to connect your gut, the courage- thought process betraying you and making promises
as the sun moves across your view.
You act upon the impetus, or does it
send sacrifice in droves to you,
silence and more buzzing around your brain, 
if they flipped a switch what would they hear from inside - 
marching bands, your father forcing you to be brave,
your obsession talking to your sinews - right and left brain
duking it out, repeatedly - a thousand page book written behind the eyes
over the course of love, nothing to the inevitable last microsecond.
It's just us out there.  Nobody else can hear---
the tick tock thumps of your heart dropping like flies
around your feet.  While they cannot help, but
watch you, every colour of the rainbow giving way. 
Drive that animal home, break open the other guy's chest,
bed her straight to centre court between her legs,
counted out and in, drought feast and famine
in a splinter of sun - arcing your face and the cold sweat
on the back of your neck.
You are the team, the warlord and the prize.
Make the ride a good one, and let the breezes 
of all who oppose you garner favour in the folds of your hair,
held back.

M. Lucia

Axon a Sunday

the synergy escapes me
threaded close with one eye on the game
i kneel and twist and turn, in pain
radiating high praise from the deepest set point within

the game itself grows tedious
pall bearers drift in and out of sleep
those eyes are wounded, and
seated thus, cannot / will not be fixed as

the local star that grows in that belly
those recesses of imagination where
the parts are played
not by understudies,
but by those right minded
hollow heart
bursting big bang universe
betwixt and vetted clean

lets everything in, as long as its aware
of its bounty, and greets with absolutes,
no matter the frays of the edges of parallel pistons
firing in all directions at once:

"I like everything", she said.
"everything, huh?"

"that's right".
easiest thing in the world to say. 

M. Lucia

The Evolution of Sweat.

The physicality of summer is something I both always forget about until it pops back up into the bullet sun, middle of the sky arching it’s back towards you and also remember instantaneously, clear as day as if it smacked you awake in the back of your head, causing you to sweat, perspire, glisten, whatever the term as applied to the appropriate situation.

All of a sudden, you can smell everything again. You can smell other people, who had seemed as cardboard cut outs just weeks before – now you sense their processes – their toenails become part of your daily mental task, the layer between their clothes and skin becomes its own entity and you are forced to see them as more, simply because you can smell their presence, no matter how subtly, as the heat is up, the air is full and rounded and the sun bares down on you all, and brings light to your circumstance, which by the way is constructed by the heavens, but driven by you. Even more in summertime heat.

Heat is made of fire and sweat is the result of that fire – roasting coals inside our brains, cooking and scorching our plans and their tail-tips as we look for chilled drinks, and air conditioned doorways to tuck into, so then our fire will remain as ash for a time, and we can fancy ourselves comfortable again. The thing about air conditioning is, it’s pleasant and it allows your body and self to refrain, and find shade within itself. And it’s all well and good. But it’s not real. It’s not the world, nor life and experience – it is devoid of all passions. Your head grows hollow in the cold, you can’t formulate any emotions anymore – since when was anger and rage a bad thing when the rage not coming from your personal ego, but the righteous sort that drives a battleship, builds worlds and creates fantastical dreams,

Every.

       Single.

              Day.

Air conditioning is for the weak, to be sure. Now, toss it out the window. Don’t look first. Just close your eyes, garner every inch of yourself and Push. So it lands on top of an old lady’s head, or a little kid who should have learned early in life to look up. It’s not your concern. The wheels of physics at play do not ask you your permission when they micromanage the universe, jiggling invisible keys in your orifices and in the arses of your obsessive thoughts as they rape all oncoming ideas and tear them down to their own, “reality based” level. They are moving, fast and luxurious, as you tip the a/c sputtering out of control out of your window. It sails down, the dust flying from its crevices, the innocent bystanders (no one is innocent and we all get what we deserve) moving out of its way – if they’re lucky. It crashes on the pavement, practically sinking into the hard cement, wishing there was at least some earth for its unbegotten burial. No such luck. Like follows like, and it sleeps sound in the grey fake city street. Open your eyes, it’s done now.

See? Better, yes? Look out the window, no- Don’t look out. Look Through in, around and about everything you now see which the numbing coolness did not allow for. Now, You jump.

[--------]

No, really.

Trust me.

Listen, you can jump of your own accord, or allow those seersucker atoms to push you, and believe me, you Don’t want That.

They don’t care for your feelings or your heart. They just have a quota. They just Do.

You never see it coming when they do it, so do it now, with this fullness in your heart. Your mind’s eye 20/20 and your will strong.

Just………move forward.

----------------------- .  Now. See? You’re still alive. Death is really only a sales pitch, you know that. You have to know what’s truth and grab onto every little piece of it, because the lies will just sew you into that comfy air conditioned sack where you’ll play with yourself and your repetitive daily tasks until eternity, and since there is no such thing as “until” eternity, then why go out like that?

OK, now that we’ve cleared up this little air conditioning business, you can see and smell and taste the summer like it was meant to be experienced. Flesh, skin, heel, stretch, sleep, swim, waters become the ground and the sky is something you sail upon. Nothing is stopping any of this but your own mind. Feel the sun on your back? And now, the fireflies have summoned you. It’s a difficult language to understand at their level, but their abilities can be mastered. The sweat has started, now. That’s how you know it’s official. Remember what I said back up at the beginning of our little chat? About forgetting all about summer (real summer, outside the sack) and the way it Feels, and then BOOM – like a shot, it’s back. Well, this is that moment. All of a sudden the back of your neck is wet, small droplets of sweat have formed from their pores and are at that breaking point, where they too leap off in a communal roll down to the shoulders, or gather in pools in the crease on the inside of your elbows, or the backs of your knees. They jettison us into memory. We can now smell our skin, just like we could now smell the other passengers’, the ones we’d like to forget about. Our layers like cream in time, spinning deserts straight down childhood –

       ---the sticky summer night, no a/c in sight – after an evening bath, when the water was cool and calming, and you’d run around after, but not too much, just before getting into bed. Your hair still wet, and your body caught in between the cool temperatures and the oncoming balmy night trying to slip its way into you again, back and forth, underneath the single sheet, and flipping the pillow again and again to no end, as the coolness leaves you and the wet in your hair mingles into perspiration until you don’t know which is which. The smell the day previously, clean laundry pinned up on the clothesline, whipping in the wind, the neighborhood sewer smell, when it backed up and stank in the sun, the stale smell of weeds growing (they always grow and always will, take note – just because they don’t give up doesn’t mean you succumb) and petrol from a nearby lawnmower, clouds have a smell even, a taste like water poured into grass---

All of this comes back to you, upon this first summer’s sweat. It has only been five minutes or so and just look at the worlds you’ve travelled. Still it continues, as later you think of being poor and 23, lying in the dark during the heat wave, on a futon bed left on the floor in greenpoint, the tuxedo cat at your side, the one who marked your arm for life and made for the conversation starter of men, and the like thinking you cut yourself – no such luck, boys…afraid you got a live one here. I’m more likely to cut you than me. Or at least arm wrestle under the competitive influence of whiskey. That’s how I met him anyway. He says he let me win, but I’m not so sure. Granted, we had some glorious fights in that shithole apartment of his – resulting in not one but two UTI’s, so you know they were down, dirty and alive. And he had no a/c as well. I’ll give him that. Both of them, at differing times and stages in a five year period fucked me in that apartment – in both bedrooms. The first, well, he was the one I thought I wanted the most. And I remember it was so hot that night, he carried me over and tripped on the fan…there was much sweat to be had, but he sweat like a maniac. There is no other metaphor to describe that. He had also dabbled in cocaine, which I disapproved of then and still do now – it brings out the worst in them, and makes it drag you into an eternal conversation that you’d rather leave in order to be shot in the head over than stay and chat alongside. Not him though. He was from the desert, and said if you cut him open, sand would stream out. His skin from head to toe to manhood to hands was thick, hard like cardboard – the hide of a side of beef, which if you cut you couldn’t break through easily – it would take a special array of knives to get the job done with him. His brain was the very same way. Even after he had done his duty much more than once- sweat dripping into my mouth, on my back, my cunt and legs (I didn’t mind – it was like wine and it went down smooth as ever), he couldn’t manage a third time (he made up for it the next morning, before the heat got the best of us) he said, breathy and soaked through his thick skin and wet hair, “goddamn cocaine”…..Somehow after, for him, it was as if his thick body soaked up all the moisture in the room and became dry again in minutes – his internal desert balancing out the humid summertime he found himself in.

The second times, in the next bedroom, were quite different for many reasons, but the sweating remained, for me particularly. As long as I had a foot free to keep on top of the sheet (my own internal cooling capability) I was decent. Mine was more of a beading that never graduated to pouring. It would take a lot of work to do that. No wonder I was drinking entire bottles of booze then and eating Greek, Turkish, Italian take out with him and still not overweight – the things we did under the duress of the summertime kept me strong, currying favour with the atoms which pushed and pushed me until there was no place left to go. They are always invited to my windowsill. I’m standing there now, looking down on that obnoxious child on the street, thinking she is entitled to everything and never being told no. You can’t master this world and let yourself go within its boundaries, you can’t function by the enacting of your own rules and say no to all the bullshit (and there is a Lot, more and more every day) if you think yourself the master. You master the physical (so-called) world by being the servant to the invisible one, and slaying all the dragons – the first your own, and then the rest will follow. This entitled little idiot, well, she’ll learn. I hope she learns the hard way, because there is nothing worse in this world than entitlement. Air conditioning breeds it (yes, a/c is responsible for a lot of our woes) by making us forget that nobody owes us anything. Well, despite her walking beneath my window, I’m here, arms outstretched for the atoms to pick me up light as a feather and cast me into the tornado, the eye of which is inside me. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one in on this brilliant storm – everyone else sits in the shade, but I’m out there, and I ain’t never coming back.

The sweat continues chasing up memories and wayward dreams, creating lifetimes and personalities inside…the boozing, 2nd floor apartment matches were one thing, but summer allows us to taste in gentler tones too. Sometimes, just the soft, fragrant sweat takes its place in the same areas, but doesn’t boil over with pride or deviance, the sweet afternoon fuck in the grass, tastes of him mingling on your lips, in your clothes, what’s left of you just sinking in, and forming constellations between sun and shade, tree and root, tongue and mettle…time moves slower under these circumstances, and you know that you can ward off all sickness and loneliness and oppression with one blessing upon the blades of grass, in this way and every other imaginable. Nowhere to be, and no reason to stop using your hands – they sweat too, but it’s more like dew on the leaves – inner to outer. Just like most people sweat from their brain, their head, but mine always came straight from the gut. Out in all directions, fireworks on the fourth of July. The only other thing worth putting your clothes back on for is the carnival down the road – the sort that moves from town to town, outskirts mostly, usually near the fire house or along the main road out. Late summer, even a different smell – your mouth tastes the flowers now sweeter, in the last hurrah of themselves before oncoming autumn - the people nearly sweated out, so its older, smoky sweat interfacing with 2nd and 3rd degree cigarettes smoked by the former inmates, those ex-cons who work the giant swings – forgetting themselves and giving you far too long a go-around, cause they can and cause they know you want the ride- legs in the air, hair eating bugs and the sweat in front of your ear made cold in the created wind, just for awhile. Ten feet up from the ground, you ruled as the air snuck up your nostrils, the sickly sweet cotton candy forming in your ears, the faint smell of pizza and meats grilling, all smack dab in the middle of your face.

This is the happiest of sweats, but the hard sweats have their place as well. Your father, erecting houses like roman temples, summers meant he was outside more than in, and his sweat always on; long farmer’s tan summer work days, up the pool, the tennis court, the woods belonging to us and the woods behind that did not (but you held the secret deed and the ground was quite aware of your dominion, and how it held you as its own just as much as any person ever could) – later, working with him to sheetrock the garage he built onto the florida house, constructed from nothing – at 68 years old. Men really take a lot to impress me, I suppose. The work hard in southern heat, and the sweat truly stinking from overwork, your clothes soaked and your brain open as it ever could be. Muscles aching, and you know what pleasure can be received from a good day’s work – versus the idling that most do nowadays – peas in a pod, their brains asleep, their hands worse of all – buried in shit. The constant battleground of armies marching, pouring themselves across the earth – the great civilizations made actual from the backs breaking of those who held no power in the world as it stands. Instead of all that, you can fall asleep on your rooftop under the sun, in the lawn chair, after you didn’t sleep enough – spit canvassing out and down your dribbled chin, and a quiet, clammy feeling – no story to this smell, just stillness. It belongs with you as does the steps you take and the courage you keep looking for, which disowns you on occasion, only to make you go looking for it again and again.

Think of your courage hiding in all of these places which is apparent to you now. They have always been with you, even when sleeping under the snow in wintertime. It all contains you as you wipe your brow, flicking off the excess sweat into the air or smoothing the back of your dress, where all good stains belong. Feeling that release when you throw off your bra, tits moist with summer dew and greeting you, remembering that they’re your friend, ass cheeks on fire from the city strain of heat, the hot seat, the world doesn’t let you use it anymore. It’s trying to tell you something. The last realization is your cunt – alive moreso in summertime; you can see, feel, hear and touch with her like superman, saving all the poor citizens from their peril. Now, coming back to that a/c feels like defeat, pure and simple. If any bodily strain finds you, it’s a falsehood – the empty sweat of nothing gained and nothing earned. Is it really going to end like this, each detail of the hanging setting the scene right before your heart sitting in its throne, as it is and every last cadence stated and sung, the baton death march in little things, each to remind of all that you lose every single day while the only choice left is to set the place on fire and make for the hills? Keep looking for those beads of sweat, no matter where they hide and who they hold as hostages there. Chances are, it’s you. And the atoms will not be happy, and take my word for it – they’ll kick you out of the comfort soon enough, whether you are ready for it or not. There is only one life to be had, and a million chances to sweat out the shit and take in the air, as it was meant to be – full, bright red heart, open legs and alive. They’re keeping score, and will make themselves known when you least expect it.

What’s that, you say?

You dreamed you were lost in the ocean, being pushed and you sank because you allowed the pushing to keep you underneath, and you could breath down there but it wasn’t the same, and you were sweating underwater and how is this physically possible, and the mermaids fucked you and it felt really good, and the sky, the light, you could see it coming too, above your head, in front of your eyes and you realize it’s been there the whole time and no one is pushing you, and the atoms are you and you are their god and the slave to everything above and below the water and is it summertime up there in the light you wonder? And you reach it, you are doing it, and the way the air and sun break into you and lift you up is indescribable and those mermaids are back flipping with joy for you, and there is another greater feeling you let inside of you, and here it comes, and -------

You awake with a giant Bang, back down into your bed? All wet and sticky between the sheets, trying to hide from the morning sun? Exactly.

M. Lucia