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.

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

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.

Always time for woods

walking whiskey murks. Drat! My

poetic side hurts

#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 Key to Raglan Road

Would give anything to have experienced you as a woman,
not a girl of 22 which I once was…
Older than most, aged inside;
managed to grow soul to skin in those 13 years since.
lucky 13 has been good to me,
pulsating to the brim of symptoms,
excess in spring—

But on every raining day like this,
the pull to that isle finds me sipping the blackest of tea.
A sudden inexplicable urge for the warm, milky wood
of a Dublin pub in midday,
a thick, bright pink ham sandwich
the din of beautiful musical conversation in a way
only an Irish pub can bring.

Autumn night times, falling rain
daylight gone by 3pm…
The axis spins perfectly so in the northern sky,
when summertime finds the most vivid blanket of colours
kissing and cavorting nearly until midnight,
unable to pack it all in and say good-night.

Raglan Road was a picturesque homestead,
the walk past the US Embassy
(coming in handy when I lost my passport at a party in Belfast;
what better reason could there be)-
At night the streetlights reflected in black golden green
trees swaying with perfect singular echo,
like a Hollywood film set of old.

(Interlude with Taxi Driver…and many other Irish)

“Are you from New Orleans?”
“No, I’m from New York”
“Ah, like Donny Brasco in your black leather jacket”.
“It’s not real leather”…
“Who can afford that anyway…you sure you’re from New York? You don’t have an accent”.
“Well I’m from the country, so less than if---“
“Are you French?”
“No….”
“But you’re Italian, not Spanish…not loud enough…you ever heard them on the bus”?
“Yeah, they’re loud…”
“Like the Americans….not you though…you’re not like an American at all!”
“Thanks…”
“So, where do your people come from?”
“Croatia---“
“Croatia! Them girls is beautiful….dead sexy…I knew one once….she broke my heart, the vixen”.
“We’re dangerous sometimes.”
“You’re telling me….not as bad as the gypsies though…you's is lovely” And those fecking Pakis”.
“There are lots of them here?”
“Not too many, but they’re on their way for true, the Italians, the Romanians, them refugees….”
“But you mean Italians or Pakista-“
“They’re all fucking Packis, the lot of them…this guy once tried to rob me, he was a Pikey, them, the Spanish, the Indians, they’re all fucking Pakis”.
“Yeah?”
“You going to the Thomas House, yeah? Down the Liberties?”
“Yeah, my good friend is going back to America…”
“Good solid place. Watch out for them Pikeys, they’ll throw a baby at you and steal your wallet when you go to catch it…”

Little did he know.
The duality of the Irish comes into play often,
the most gregarious hosts on earth and yet-
a whole veiled world of secrecy and hidden emotion.
Loyalties un-vexed.

Someone once said the Irish will cross over a room Full of crowded people-
just to tell you you’re SHIT.
Where Americans will look at the guy with a big house on the hill and say “someday…”,
an Irishman will look at the same and say “One day I'll get that Bastard”.

Tenacity never dies, the river Liffey lies
in between mists of rain caught in words,
and song and voices.
Music knows not its place and shows itself in the plays of fallen saints,
the liturgy of the poetry
the song and pedestal of the day.
Galway in brisk, flirtatious winds,
boys in sweaters playing chess over Guinness so thick and full
it could wrap round you in an arctic snowstorm
and protect you from the madder elements,
the ones they purposefully didn’t tell you about.

Omagh in summertime on the news,
stories of teeth being pulled and private torture in bathrooms
he told me of-
my boyfriend a catholic from Belfast-
they stopped the car to know him by name-
“That’s the most bombed hotel in Europe……
until Sarajevo (cough)”.
That’s right. We win…what a dismal honor.

Tall girls of the north with strong noses and awkward,
sharp accents of crescendo, black hair-
drinking tea with no sugar becomes the norm for hours on end…
(How is it I am staying in a Protestant household?)
Murals of a language only the oppressed can understand.
His friends tell me at a party wherein the passport went poof:
Boy with a black eye says “they knew I was too good looking to be a Protestant”.

The to and fro of things controlled and not,
seemingly mingling forever in that
late summer sky,
Joyce breathes through bottle caps on the street,
every word a family, a death and a rite.
The river runs west to east, female to male, past eve and adam’s
back to the quiet white stones of Trinity.

Still there was breaking into an NRA bar with friends
kissing boys whose stories collar you in circumstance
and free beer.
The shore of Killiney and Bray, there was no way
to spend enough time in that light, in those stones
bearing down beneath my feet, my heart they stole.

You are more the cosmopolitan European lady now,
reserved and head cocked for some kind of deserved greatness,
but I miss you unbridled, inappropriate and free.
The opposite has happened to me.
Still, gazing down to my chest where the key to Raglan Road rests,
the doors swing open,
our waters fork and join
each time I smell the rain,
hear your voices, of damp chocolate, peat and cigarettes,
and taste your private refrain.
Always waiting down the bar for the next ear.

~ M. Lucia

100TH POST - IN 2-1/2 MONTHS OF AWESOME WRITING - CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

          Frank remembered the potato salad at the last minute.  Well, not exactly the last minute, but in time to get it out onto the table before too many people had served themselves from the buffet.  Burgers and dogs, sweet and hot sausage, chicken too, BBQ’d and honey mustard, roasted peppers and onions, corn on the cob cooked on the grill, salad with fresh tomatoes and three kinds of dressing; and the potato salad too.  The Coronas were ice cold, Angie was working the rented margarita machine churning out frozen treats infused with Patron and Kenny was serving his secret martinis. 

            Everyone showed and even though Angie always panicked about how clean the bathrooms were or whether anyone would have a good time, the party was rocking and Vince was playing Motown on the stereo.  Frank moved through the crowd with the bowl in hand and felt, for at least this afternoon, like the king of Brooklyn; well, if not the king then maybe at least the Baron of this one block in Bensonhurst.    

            “Frankie,” Levi yelled laughing, “where’s the Red Stripe.”  Levi liked Jamaican beer, and reggae, and everything else too, from and about “the Islands” as he liked to say.  Frank purposely did NOT buy Red Stripe just to annoy Levi, who annoyed HIM every time Toots and the Maytals blasted again from the speakers in Levi’s garage next door and soon after the pot smoke wafted his way.  Memorial Day weekend marked the beginning of summer and the return of the ganja next door.  Levi was probably the only pothead in the history of cannabis who only liked to “party” when the weather was hot.

            “Frankie, who’s that guy with Ginger?”

            “What guy?”

            “Right there, see?  Talking to Angie now.”

            Frank looked.  Ginger was talking with his wife and now “the guy” was staring right at him. 

            “Never seen him before.”

            “Dude’s got some strong-ass handshake.”

            “Really,” Frank answered flatly.  He grabbed a beer from the cooler and shoved it into Levi’s hand. 

            “Have a Corona, Levi.  Limes are over there next to the chips.”

            Levi yelled at his back as Frank walked away into the kitchen.  “Hey Frankie, you KNOW I don’t drink this shit!  Too damn watery, you ask me,” he was talking now more to himself. 

            Inside, Frank opened the fridge and took out more chicken.  He placed the ceramic tray on the counter, pushing soda bottles and empties out of the way.  He peeled back the foil; nicely marinated, ready for the grill.  He closed the door.  The man suddenly standing next to the refrigerator was the guy from outside. 

            “Jesus,” Frank blurted startled.

            “Name’s actually Tony,” the guy deadpanned sticking out his hand.

            Frank wiped the BBQ sauce from his fingers with a dishtowel.

            “No need to stand on ceremony with me,” the guy said.  “I used to cook at Café Versailles.  You can probably still smell the vinegar under my nails.”

            Frank took his hand.  The guy grabbed it hard and squeezed, also hard.  Frank felt the blood drain from his fingers.  He tried to pull away but the guy wouldn’t let go. 

            “Now listen to me Frank.  This is a nice party and I don’t want to make a scene.  But you got a marker out with my boss – you know who I mean, we don’t have to name names – and, well, my boss don’t like to be jerked around.  Since you’re only one week late, it’s not a big deal.  But you musta dropped a pretty penny for all this beer and food and I’m just a little worried you’re gonna fall behind before long.

            The guy squeezed now harder.  Frank was now using his other hand to pull away. 

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about crazy motherfucker.  Marker?”

            “Don’t you bullshit me,” the guy bellowed, “don’t DO that Frankie.  We’re having a friendly conversation here and when you bullshit me, well, it ruins it.”

            The guy grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter. 

            “Now I don’t like to get violent.  It’s not in my nature.  No wait, that’s actually a lie.  It IS in my nature, but I struggle with it.  I struggle with it every…single…day.  And I just really need to make sure you and me are on the same page.  We’re on the same page, right Frankie?  ‘Cause if we’re not…”

            The guy brought the knife down swiftly and sliced through a Pepsi bottle on the counter.  The soda bottle burst and rained a splash of liquid all over Frank’s shirt and pants and on the floor just as the guy let go of Frank’s hand, dropped the knife, and walked quickly and arrogantly through the screen door.  “You been warned Frankie,” he yelled as he disappeared into the bright sunshine. 

            Angie came in through the sliding glass door with Keith, the cop.

            “You OK Frank?” Keith asked.

            “What the fuck happened in here,” Angie yelled seeing the puddle of soda on the floor.

            “This fucking asshole grabbed my hand and…stabbed the soda bottle.”

            “What?” Angie whined.

            “That’s just crazy Tony.  He thinks he’s Joe Pesci.  Where’d he go,” Keith asked running to the front door.  Before he waited for an answer he was out the door yelling for Frank to call the precinct.”

            “Some fucking party,” Angie said grabbing a roll of paper towels.

Never once did I think that I could be this happy burying you—but here I am—dirt on my hands and nail torn, full of grit. My hair that you love so well, limp and slick to my face; insects swarm my head but I pay the stinging flies no notice, not today. I’m on my knees in this flowerbed—Coneflowers and False Lupine bend to face me like priests giving communion and I open up and say an amen and a quiet thank you as the sun hits my face and I inhale the humidity itself; air laden with earth that I hold selfishly in my lungs. This chest full of hope now lies beneath the roots of a fern, loden nightdark intertwining that will forever hold you in your keep, keep you in your forever. I arranged you with such careful consideration, all pieces touching lightly, informing each other, all within this one vessel.

a rib, sucked clean

one stone, worn smooth by a river that fit in my palm

goodbye lovely pearl button

the charm. You remember the one

A single strand of wet hair, made golden from my happiness

No one will ever know.

Orion on a Friday

My weakness for boys with beautiful hair leads me...
to Orion. Star of stars, aged 5.
Five and three-quarters.
Bushy blond hair like his mother, who was born in the Ukraine,
growing out of radioactive weeds and familial dissent.
Like my mother’s mother, also Ukrainian.
Orion’s mother is American punk all the way.
Rough on the outside, having had to prove
a million different strengths,
She found a protector in another battered Slavic boy,
an American from Chicago.
Waltzing ink fantasies and writing each other a new story,
away from the neglect and dark days of their past.
They made a dancing chance of a boy,
with his father’s eyes / his mother’s blond curls.
Proof that so-called normal families aren’t always so,
and that misfits often make better parents than most.

Walking with Orion hand in hand in the brutal
late afternoon sun of a Friday,
down the Avenues 1st, A, B…passing bars,
wherein I made many a late night, bad decision
and questionable time.
Still can spot my battle scars in those neon signs
and dirty street corners.
Pushed Orion on the swings, he wanted to be barefoot,
just like me-
Amazing how a socialized city boy can talk to other kids
politely, succinctly, without fear.
I kept my voice quiet for most days when I was his age.
You had to be invited in, to hear it.
Still that way, to some degree…

Watched him descend the fire pole,
straight and twisting
both with glee,
enact pirate ship fantasies,
surfing adventures and intricate stories;
But still a small town boy,
living on the main drag of our neighborhood
where we will all watch over him,
his constellation forming piece by piece in summertime.

I’m happy to be one of his first crushes,
the subject of his brash verbal maneuvers, 
the boldness of boys the world over:
{“Listen to this, baby….”
“Who You Callin’ BABY?”
“I’m calling YOU Baby!”}
Interlocking with his running around with the confidence
of a General –
then turning back and looking for me, when he realizes
he ran too far.
Shouting “MI-MI!”…….  "MIIIIIIII-MIIIIIIIIII!” ---
since it’s time to show off for me again
in his ingenious head.

His mother’s getting a tattoo, not her first
and he understands and is only concerned with the playground
times coming to an end.
The early evening heat of dusk beating down on us,
as I help him to spin round and round,
forcing his own world to discombobulate:;:

God I loved spinning until dizzy anywhere
I could spin my body when a child.
That stuck with me too, creating other worlds
through the deconstruction of mine.
The idea of Normal seeming a non-existent word.

The worlds collide, as we walk away again,
back towards the avenue,
and the old places I would disengage myself upon
and give myself to
in dark rooms, over many whiskeys.
He’ll find out the way those games play out one day.

For now, my realities meeting as one, 
and he tries to kiss my arm again and again
like tiny butterflies;
being a boy he spits more than he should,
and having been a tomboy,
I wipe it right back on his shirt.
He should learn about the give and take principle early on.

We walk towards the mural of Joe, and I smile.
No one makes me feel like an innocent,
like an angry teenager with rage and hope,
like Joe-
“anger can be power, d’you know that you can use it?”
I think about why the ones who come here to this world
to tell us the truth never
are allowed to stick around for too long.
Double fire burning cannot last forever.
We walk past the colours of Joe
in his perfect state of energy, and shade,
towards Orion's mother,
now finished and ready to see the world again,
with a bit more strength,
innocence found now that symbols light her way...
And back home to Red Hook, to sleep
under our self-made stars.


~ M. Lucia

HIGH HOPES

Patrick?  Time to wake up, love.

She switched on the light and discovered Patrick sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in his blue suit pants, white short-sleeved shirt, and his father's black dress shoes.  She was startled for a moment; she expected him to still be sleeping.  She stepped into the room and took his jacket from where it was folded on the bed next to him.  She gave it a brush with her hand, holding it up to the light, and then began to pick off pieces of lint.  

How long have you been up honey?

I couldn't sleep.  I keep playing the lyrics over in my head.

You'll be fine.  You know the song better than anyone.

Well...

Sing it for me again.

She cupped his cheek.  He stood and walked to his desk, picking up a handwritten page of lyrics.  She put the jacket on a hanger and hung it on the doorknob.  

I can't, I'm too nervous.  Did Dad leave yet?

He had to go early to get the subway so he could leave us the car.

Patrick stared out the window at the Imperial parked in the driveway.  She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him.  In his nervousness, he conceded to the warmth of his mother's arms.  She thought, as she did lately, that he must have grown in the night.  At thirteen he's almost looking her in the eye now; her last boy growing up under cover of night.

Can we go now?

It's only seven, Patty-love.

Ma, it's Frank Sinatra.

She still couldn't believe it.  Frank Sinatra wanted to record a song with kids backing him up.  It had come as a surprise to the school, but apparently the producers had been asking around and attending rehearsals all over the city before settling on the choir at Cardinal Hayes.  And just like that they were all due at 9 o'clock sharp at the RKO studio for a day's work.  They were warned about Mr. Sinatra's punctuality and work-ethic and had been drilled repeatedly by the priests to conduct themselves civilly and maturely as this was "a wonderful opportunity" and a "once-in-a-lifetime experience."

She didn't know if mothers were going to be allowed into the studio or whether she would get to meet Sinatra but she had her hair done anyway and Joe, her husband, had noticed, amazingly, and teased her on the way out the door.

Tell Frankie I said Ava may be a big Hollywood actress but can she cook a pot roast like my Mary?

They broke up but I'll tell him.

Well tell 'em I said to keep his greasy dago mitts off you then.  Tell him I said so.

Big-shit smile.  Peck.  Door slam.  Whistling down the front path.  Joe Jr. and Dan were men like their father.  Boys really.  Nothing more sophisticated than beers on Friday, and the games, and the yelling at the table.  Late night Saturdays and scrubbed red Sundays, standing sheepish under the bloodshot eyes of the priest.  And the girls...well, she was sure tired of fighting with them.  Of course she couldn't soon stop for they may yet stray and there was always some disaster lurking, wasn't there?   It surprised her so that she had fallen into the same trap, except this time she was the mother and her daughters were the disconnected ones.  Many nights still she dreamed of her own Ma, sitting in front of the fire, smoking her cigarettes, endlessly chewing on where her daughter had gotten off to.

I'm here Ma.

What did you say?

Nothing love.  Let me just pop into my dress and we'll be off then.  There's tea on the table, and have a bite of toast.

On the bridge to Manhattan he sang again, breaking the silence, only this time just one part of the song, she knew, from towards the end.  Her boy was sweet, it was there in his voice.  And serious.  That surprised her too.  She knew "Irish mothers and their sons" but she always thought it a bit of an overstatement, especially considering her older ones.  But this one made her think again.    

That was nice now.  It is a lovely song, isn't it?

The sun shined down on the city and on the cars ahead of them and she felt the two of them bathed in its warm glow.

That part of the song's a solo Father Burke said.

What's that love?

Father Burke told me they wanted someone to record just a piece of the song alone.  That Mr. Sinatra thought it would be nice.

A solo?

He said I could do it if I wanted.

Patty that's wonderful isn't it?

He put his hand on her leg.  She knew what it meant but she knew he wouldn't be able to say it.  They stayed quiet the rest of the way in.

After parking, they all accumulated in the lobby and the boys were taken upstairs in three separate elevators, due to the sheer number of them.  It pleased her that much more seeing him among so large a group knowing he was singled out as special.  She kept her pride in check though because she knew it would offend him if she didn't.

There was a rumor that Sinatra had already arrived and had gone upstairs through some back entrance.  She joined the other mothers in chatting about Frank and complimenting each other's hair and gossiping about his break-up with Ava and whether or not "for my money" Bing was a better singer and the ironing of shirts and the rumors about the priest, "you know the one".

After an hour or so they were brought upstairs themselves and shown into a cool room with dimmed lighting.  They hushed their voices as one intimidated by the unfamiliar surroundings.  There was a rack and they stowed their coats and hats and all sat down in the rows of chairs facing a blank wall.  There were two large speakers at the top of the wall.  They suddenly crackled with noise.

Playback!

And suddenly a jaunty arrangement of the song they all knew in their bones began, a quick intro.  And then they all giggled in delight as the boys singing filled the room.  Some mothers spoke "that's my Jimmy!" but were quickly shushed as they all practically lifted off their seats craning their necks to get an ear closer to the speakers, closer to the sound of pure bliss; a previously undiscovered fountain of beauty and happiness, heaven on earth, plain and simple, "God forgive me."

And then there was Frank.  But he wasn't singing.  He was speaking.

That's the cue right there then Tony?

And the music stopped and they cursed him.  Some singer he was.  They dissolved into conversation again as the voices continued over the speakers, discussing how wonderful it all was and what beautiful singers their sons all were and what a joy it was to have such talent in the family and how disappointed Mrs. Sinatra, the mother (not either of the already two Mrs. Sinatra wives there were, heaven help us) must be that her son had turned out to be such a louse and how when their sons were famous they would know a 'cue' when they saw one and wouldn't have to be told when to start singing like some amateur and wasn't it amazing how much work the boys had already gotten done and it wasn't even noon yet.

Playback!

And they knew then to hush and the music started again and then their boys were singing again and the bliss was back and some mothers were dabbing at their eyes with joy and then Frank Sinatra made his cue and some of them gasped because "what a voice" and then they smiled and laughed despite themselves because then their sons were actually singing along with Mr. Frank Sinatra!  What new-found bliss and joy and meaning in life!

But he's got HIGH HOPES....he's got HIGH HOPES.

And now this was too much.  They all knew the song but who knew how it would sound when they all sang together with Frank Sinatra and such words to be singing, about life and optimism and not being dragged down by adversity or the million different things that could go wrong and wasn't that the very reason they all sent their sons to Catholic high school in the first place?  To be a bastion of virtue in a cruel world and now here they were, singing of life and goodness and maintaining your spirits, and recording a song that would go out in the world and inspire millions?  This was all too much.  They hadn't expected to be so vindicated by life so quickly.  They knew it would one day come but never so soon!

And she listened along with them, caught up just as they were.  The song was recorded in pieces into the early afternoon but the delight never got old.  She had forgotten the conversation in the car.  They got to the end of the song, and then there was only one voice singing but it wasn't Sinatra.

All problems just a toy balloon, they'll be bursted soon, they're just bound to go pop!

The mothers all talked then over the rest of the chorus.  Who was that?  It sounded like my Tim!  No one told me there were solos.  I need to speak to the priest.  It was surely my Bill.

The voice was pure and simple.  Elegant really.  A boy's voice trying for a maturity that would match the honor of singing with Mr. Sinatra.  A serious voice.  A sweet voice.  Their eyes all shone with jealousy.  

Only she knew for sure.

The Tao of Christmas Eve

There is an oriental medicine theory about yin and yang (that’s yaaaaang, not yang like bang) that goes something like this:

The Tao of 0 (nothing/everything at once) is split and becomes two (duality, the dark and the light, the female and the male, the inner and the outer)…

This same idea exists in Thelema (of Aleister Crowley fame – he was not indeed the wickedest man alive but another eye opener to this ultimate reality…having read two biographies, one 700 page autobiography and naming the black cat I rescued from my Red Hook street Aleister, I have a certain understanding of these things…in truth Aleister the cat chose me and followed me to and from the bus ever single day, knowing when I was coming and bellowing to me. He now bellows to me at 4am in the morning a few inches from my ear which explains this tired run on sentence of oriental philosophy and the occult). In truth occult means “hidden”/”secret” to knowledge, and finding out the true meaning of words and how we use them and what we allow them to mean to us and do to us is a very important thing.

Back to the Tao and the split into duality / 2. This idea of yin and yang, the female in repose and the male in activity – it applies to just about everything you can imagine. In thinking of childhood, I am saddened that children in cities, American children, modern children, children of today generally speaking, are high on yang all the time. America is a yang nation. Ruled by activity and goings on. I had plenty of activity as a child – dance lessons, the most casual sense of Catholicism, gymnastics, piano…it got so much I was forced to regress into my own head once pre-teen dom hit. Still, I look around and see children staring into screens, much like their parents, watching mindless entertainment on long drives, playing games with invisible pets on gaming devices, moving and going and doing un-actual things…yet this is yang, and it has its purpose.

But children and most people in this place seem to be sorely lacking in the yin. I practically lived on yin as a child – climbing trees and finding new, green, tiny strawberries at the base of their roots, creating a whole epic woodland adventure involving invading armies along with my protectors in the form of german shepherds who took part every time, being outside on my own from morning until supper time, picking up rocks and leaves and plants for a magickal potion which I would concoct indoors later on – usually tasting too dirty to drink, but still, having its worth to the story, and examining the textures, colours and depth of a particular leaf for hours on end, no talking required. Nothing was officially accomplished, or gained or won. If asked what I did that day, I wouldn’t know what to say.

In adulthood it’s no different. The idea of being with people, talking (not debating or throwing facts around which were skimmed off of a facebook post or a blog’s news taken as truth), about experiences, thoughts, memories seems alien to most these days.  From my very first Christmas to the very last one at which my father was present, Christmas Eve always ended up in front of the fire (or in front of the palm tree laden windows we had when in a rental house in Florida), talking about our family, my parents’ lives and relations, old gossip and rumours, Croatian traditions and my dad’s life back home, everything we would imagine up and relate. Over drinks, laughter, good food and each other. Falling asleep with each other over quieter conversation, and a happy warm bellyful of wine and sljivovica.

Even these past three years without him, my father attends these Christmas Eve nights through my mother’s albeit shady memory, through my brother’s obsessive recalling when he is around, and through me it seems. Since I lost my mirror when he suddenly passed away, I see the duality broken or at least lopsided. My brother and my mother – two curly haired, anxious and energetic people – loving their daily routine talk and holding the same fears and oddities from her side of the family. I was my father’s daughter in every way. Looks, gesticulations and spirit. He had the spirit of a poet and the greatest ability at storytelling of anyone I knew – he regretted that he never learned English well enough to really Write. But he always told me to write and remember his stories because he had a lot of them. He remembered people and memories of my mother’s family more than she did herself. I hope I can still write them down and share them with the right voice. Since he is gone, I am the mirror of him to my mother and brother. My mother told me it gave her great comfort to see him in a million different things about me – the angle of my foot, the small shaped head, the talking and pointing with my hands as if guiding them through even the most mundane thought – the hatred of those very same mundane thoughts in lieu of grand ideas. The love of history, the Romans, my heritage, of learning that most anything you need to work through can be solved if you watch the goings on in nature, and how over a lifetime, you usually can count real, true friends on just one hand.

This is a lot to bear sometimes, but I’m proud to be living strong and purely the spirit of the man whose mold I take willingly and happily. Families are a constant duality – they make no sense to those who see it one way, but if going back and forth on the road trip, all sides make sense sometime, to someone. That comfort makes Christmas Eve ok – still today, still in childhood memory and still changing with every new stanza, every new note and lightness. Who says you can’t have Christmas in summertime. Being and nothingness in the shade of a flower, an empire in the folds of a family tree, and true beauty only providing awe when something is lost – the shadow remains your friend and will take you through all the hells you find only to shine its hidden light on something greater, unknown- split into a mystery well worth chasing after.

~ M. Lucia

What's that?

What?

That.  The necklace.

This?  Oh, it's just...something...

Yeah I know it's something, where'd it come from?

Are you OK?

What?  Yeah.  Why?

You seem off.

...she said, changing the subject...

I'm not changing the subject.  I'm just checking in.  You sounded cranky, so I'm asking.

I don't think I'm cranky I'm just asking a question?  Can't I ask a question?

Forget it.  This is called a choker.  It's not a necklace.  Well it is a necklace but technically it's called a choker.

Technically.

Yes, I'm just telling you what it is.  I thought it would go with the dress.  Now I'm not so sure.

Where'd it come from?

I've had it.

You've had it.

OK now I'm getting annoyed, you have a problem?  You want to ask me something?

No.  It's just...last night you're out with Bill...you come home late, apparently.

Apparently?  What's that?  I told you I came home at two.

Two's not late?

Two is two!  The bars close at four.  Four, five is late.  To me.

Five's the next morning.

(...)

What?  Now you have nothing to say?

OK, yes, two is late, point is I told you.  You know I came home late so I don't know why there's a mystery.

There's no mystery.

You said 'apparently'.  I told you when I got home.  I told you what I did.  

Yeah, well I don't live there right?  So I don't know.  I call.  You don't answer.  I don't know what you're doing.

Why is there a difference between what I tell you and what you know?  You DO know.  I TOLD you.

If you say so.  You go out all night with Bill...

You really want to have THAT conversation?  You want to be THAT guy?

...and now you have a CHOKER that I've never seen before...

Bill's GAY!  He's fucking gay!  Don't you get that?  And even if he wasn't, so what?

So what?

So what!  Why...what...you either think I'm fucking someone else or you don't.  Either way, it's your decision.  Make up your mind and act accordingly.

I'm not talking about who you're fucking, I'm talking about the necklace, the choker.

It's just a piece of jewelry!

Take it off then.

What?

Take it off.  It means nothing then take it off.

I don't want to.

Why?

Because I don't.  And I'm not taking it off because you say so.

I think you won't.

Think whatever you want.

I think you won't because someone gave it to you.  Someone special.  And your wearing it was some way to connect with him/her/it while you're going out with me.  And I think you're pissed because I figured it out.

OK fine, yes, I fucked Bill.  Normally he prefers guys but he said my vagina was so pretty that he just HAD to fuck it with his gay penis and I said OK because he promised to give me this beautiful and incredibly valuable necklace.

Nice.

Are you ready to go?

You're real nice you know that?

What do you mean I'm nice.

You're so smart.  Never wrong.  Always so sure of yourself...

Why is ANY of that bad?

...always so convinced that you know better.  You know how impossible that is?

Why don't you tell me.

I just wish, just once, I could feel like you needed me.

Right.

That I made a difference.  You know how they say...'I can't live without you.'  You could never say that.  You would rather die than need someone.  See?  You laugh.  What's funny about that?

I was just thinking how you're finally really getting me.  In this very moment.  You've finally figured me out.  You want this?  Here it's yours.  Take it.

Where are you going?  Wait.

Vines

Wrote it down someplace in dream,
my jaunt ascending from the trench,
every day an old warrior prays
me not
to ever flinch,
when you came riding up beside me
paving way with sound grins
tearing lessons out of noise,
my trance home supping lemon gins.

You and me veered down diving
upon those deepest glens,
water filling up our ears baptizing us
at the bend;
bass lines they bought a groove and
took her home to bed,
rabbits strewn out of their hides,
the sun baked petals in the bread.

We went shaking down the trees so their
blossoms
then would lend,
fall back bleeding from their nest,
we might rise up on the mend;
bursting breath and smelling skin
to cruise course winds that we can feed,
at all an ungodly hour,
our roots set fire to new breed.

I’ll take you bareback through the garden
honey,
gazing you in my best-
Be my vine, palms open wide, sailing waters
pounding on your chest;
Reflections past your eyes drowned my feet
burning down in gold
every fearful, indignatious,
cowering
lie I ever told.

Never held a wider path than this
one
as it seems;
The day’s walk is just too narrow,
I can’t see beneath the trees,
but we’ll spend our nights projecting
tidal stars through current waves;
Let’s ride shotgun with the vines
undoing footsteps as we pave;

Soaring over pyramids that we dreamed,
drew and became,
it’s their passage alongside ours
that stands to make us brave.

~ M. Lucia

GREEN JELLO

I asked the nurse to shave my head completely.

Because they've gotten so good at these procedures (the neurosurgeons, I'm talking about now, with their microscopic instruments and lasers and shit) apparently they only have to shave just a small patch.  But when I felt that little bare spot it was like feeling the onset of something more ominous, male-pattern-baldness, bite your tongue!, that I asked her very nicely if she would just shave the whole thing.  She obliged.  They like me because I've been such a model patient, which is surprising given the tumor.

The tumor's most obvious symptom for me was the sudden onset of a level of irritability not typical of me.  Sure there were the headaches, the blurred vision and occasional lapses of memory, but these all seemed to me to be things that would start to happen as one got older.  And I drink a lot more than I used to and given the sick slide back and forth across the spectrum that I required of my body from caffeine overloads to whiskey-binges and back again, all the while self-medicating with liberal doses of Excedrin-Migraine and handfuls of Advil, the gigantic, hyper-homeopathic-horse pill vitamins from GNC, the Powerbars and shakes, the occasional weed in the garage, that time I tried the Vicodin from my mother's medicine chest, the ecstasy I got from greasy teenager at the concert,  the anti-depressants prescribed by the psychoanalyst and the Ambien and Positrol I got from the Canadian pharmacy, who wouldn't have an occasional headache?  So what if my vision was sometimes a little cloudy?  What was there to see anyway?  Maybe I forgot an appointment every now and then.

But I've always been a very upbeat guy.  I don't necessarily cultivate likability but I have a natural ear for conversation--I like to listen to people's problems and they like to tell me--and I make eye-contact and I smile.  These are all my default settings and they get me into a lot of friendships and acquaintances.  And I love all my friends and all of their dramas and I always have at least an encouraging word. Maybe sometimes it bothers me that they save all the pain for me, to unload on me, to give me their confidence, but then save all their passion and life for other people.  I listen, I smile, I encourage, and then off they go to get into trouble with other people--people that generally treat them like shit.  But I'm getting off the point.  Lately I was beginning to become short-tempered; to lash out impatiently and this seemed off to me.  And maybe the stress of acting so contrary to my personality accentuated what I now know to be an undesirable brain-growth (I did ask the doctor if there was ever a case of new, 'extra-brain', as I came to call my tumor, that actually did benefit its host; he smiled slightly and turned back to my scans) because I started having stabbing pains at the top of my head which, understandably, I guess, made me much more short-tempered.  This was not living I felt and off I went to the GP who navigated me to the specialist, the CT scan and now the electric razor.

Being totally bald seemed more like a choice to me than the little bald spot they wanted to leave me with.   The tumor was so not my choice, I guess that's obvious, but my point is more that I was afraid of feeling ALSO that I was going bald.  It must be similar, the helplessness you feel when the hair just stops growing in spots, to the helplessness I've felt knowing that something UNwanted was in fact sprouting down underneath my scalp; mere micro centimeters underneath in fact.  I'm trying not to sound superficial and vain but given the tumor I'm trying to keep the wave of helplessness to a manageable level and even the smallest prospect of the sinking feeling that an island of baldness in the luxurious sea of my hair would bring on was more than I could take.  So shave it all off--the promise of future hair is enough to sustain me.

The nurses all like me because I eat all my food; and we're talking hospital food here.  But I LOVE institutional food and I always have.  Green jello, flat, wet cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, waxed beans, wilted salads with salty packaged dressings, stale rolls with soft centers and cheap chocolate cakes with sugary frostings--I love it all.  Every time the moody Jamaican man with the food cart would roll to a stop outside the door I share with Mrs. Berkowitz,  her gouty right leg and mind-boggling lack of inhibition with a bed pan, I would politely cut short Mrs. Berkowitz's latest re-run of the relative uselessness of her husband vs. her son-in-law (unless of course it was lunchtime and Oprah was on and then there was just no talking to her) and give all my focus to Nadeem and his ill-tempered plopping of my meal on my tray, Mrs. Berkowitz, if she wasn't watching Oprah, would marvel at how I eat and complain about her husband's pickiness and her son-in-law's absurd food allergies, and the nurses would always be pleased with me when it came time for meds because I had eaten as required.  This was all that was needed, it turned out, for them to like me.

*   *   *

Sorry I haven't written in a while.  The tumor is gone and so is Mrs. Berkowitz.  Now all I have is Mr. Wellman who is sadly not so well.  He doesn't talk.  He lays there on his side looking out the window which gives me a prime view of his ass through the back of his smock.  No matter.  I have bigger fish to fry.  The operation was a great success.  My extra-brain has been relegated to some medical waste container to be cooked somewhere I imagine with a pile of other discarded flesh and growths, unwanted and offending all.  My doctor is very pleased and optimistic.  And I already have a little fuzz on my head.  The only downside so far as I can tell is that I no longer have an appetite.  Well, I should clarify, I am starving but I can't eat.  I had a dream, coming in and out of consciousness in the recovery ICU of Beef Wellington.  I'm not even sure why I know what that is but I can't get it out of head.  Tenderloin (Jesus, just thinking the word is making my mouth water) and pate of foie gras (really??) wrapped in pastry and sliced.  In the dream there was an asparagus garnish.  What the fuck?  Nadeem brought me the hospital's version of chicken cordon blue and I literally vomited into my waste basket.

"You got to eat, mon"

Go fuck yourself Nadeem, no one can eat this dreck.  I tried.  My stomach lurched.  All I could think of was duck risotto and sweetbreads and pan-seared scallops, cippollini onions and confit potatoes.  Where were these words coming from?  Amazing thing the brain.