When the Muse Comes Knocking 

When the muse comes knocking, let her in, even though she'll eat your food, track mud on your floor, dirty your clothes, piss in your bed, puke on your rug, sleep with your wife, abuse your children, steal your savings, ruin your reputation, hijack your dreams, and wreck every single night of sleep you ever hoped to get—because if you don't, you'll be lonely forever.

Inner monologue of a Lakers fan 

I'm so happy now.

I'm so happy now, I'm screaming uncontrollably.

I'm so filled with joy that I'm hugging a stranger.

I feel so vindicated, I'm tearing off my own shirt.

I'm so exalted, I want to punch a woman in the face.

My life is so complete, I'm throwing a brick into a crowd of strangers.

I'm so happy now, I'm turning this car over and lighting it on fire.

I want to rape you all.

We won.

The world is so good.

The Rowboat 

I had a rowboat but I lost it.

I live in a place, inhabited but not overcrowded, and the boat would take me away from it, through bubbling channels and quiet lagoons, to drift instead among the frogs and the light-footed dragonflies that skate on the surface of the pond. It's not long being in the boat before my troubles disappear; I disappear, into the swirls of water, or swirls of algae in the water, imagining shapes onto them as if they were clouds; or I look into the shapes of the clouds reflected onto the surface of the water; or I look into the clouds themselves. I follow the current's meanderings, navigating its minute discoveries—why is the air cooler here?—why do the fish gather there?—Hello, old rock. I might as well be sailing around the world, I'm so far from my troubles; till I find my way back, more at peace than before, tie up my boat, and resume my business.

Then one day the boat was gone, whether stolen or lost to the weather or a weakness of the rope or most likely the carelessness of my knot, I don't know; but I'm sure it's the last: that one day, I'd have paddled up toward the dock, drifted, bumped it, stepped springing onto the bouncing pier, sun in my eyes, sweat dripping from my brow, smell of summer on my skin and in my hair, some sogginess from water, worry about sunburn, hungry, missed phone calls, impatient to-do lists, life—I forgot to tie up my little boat, or tied it poorly, I'm sad to concede. Waves pushed at it, gently, again and again, into the dock, knocking like a welcome but tentative guest; then, disheartened, nudged by a chance in the wind, pulled it in the other direction. Away. Adrift.

Headless, the boat wandered toward a deeper part of the pond, where, finding an easy current, followed it to the place the pond meets the creek; stalled for a while on a shallow embankment; nudged again loose and away, to the spot less visible to us than the fishes where the creek becomes the river, where the river opens out to the sea, and the boat was free free free, tiny on top of a whole underwater world, rising up on the waves, falling, up and down, the earth's own breath; and in this way, it torqued and turned and traveled the world, following warm waters up, passing bare beaches and thick forests, steep cliffs, crackling ice, breaching whales, flocks of birds, flocks of fishes; vessels too passed it and noticed it or passed it and failed to notice, fishermen from Portugal, from Japan; an ocean tanker which itself contained a kind of ocean; happy people in the heavy sun; sad people; people of all kinds. This little boat saw them all, though it didn't understand or recognize them, but drifted on, oblivious to the richness of its adventures; while I, at home, regretted my poor knot and thought on it often.

Technologies for the Down and Out 

Duct tape
Scratch-off
Bedbug repellent
Plunger
Pennies
Anti-itch cream
Wet vac
Tax lawyer
Pay phone
Cover-up
Glue solvent
Airplane toilet
Gravestone

Longevity 

It was one of those silly online quizzes that suck up so much time and you're not even sure why you're taking it. This one claimed to be able to predict my exact lifespan, based solely on my answers to a few pages of multiple choice questions.

"Do you hold on to things?" was the question that disconcerted me. The prior questions had been about diet, exercise, and congenital predispositions. "Do you hold on to things?" I pretended momentarily to misunderstand, but of course I knew that the automated, multiple choice Internet quiz was asking me about her.

*     *     *

Earlier that morning, walking down the street, I passed by a little girl, a cute Asian-fusion child who hid behind the leg of her nanny. "Why are you hiding?," the woman asked. "I'm not hiding!" Petulant and adorable, and I almost started crying right there on the sidewalk, maybe because this child reminds me so much of her, or maybe because all children do, the idea of children, my idea of having them: this creature is the incarnation of a lost dream, the daughter I failed to have. It's my leg she should've been using for shelter, hiding her eyes in her own hair.

Hair. The word "hair." In itself, it shouldn't evoke any particular association of color or texture or smell. Everyone has hair. But I notice now, to me, "hair," simply "hair," implies the strands of it on my pillow, implies my hands running through it, implies the scent that I want lingering in the air. I've lost the word to her. I wonder how many such words I've lost: how many otherwise-neutral territories of vocabulary I've surrendered to her occupation. Like the strands of hair themselves, I may never stop finding traces of her, hidden in forgotten corners, left behind.

*     *     *

"No," I answer the questionnaire. "I don't hold on to things," and in its spite for the lie I told, it tells me that I'll live forever.

The Manuscript 

“Working on a poetry manuscript is like masturbating to a picture of a woman you've loved for years.

Perfect Love 

Or, Romantic Idealism, pt. 5

I could love a photo of you, but never the real person. I could pass an hour every day looking at images of your perfection, but couldn't abide to spend an hour next to you.

No. No, I've said that wrong, because when I look at your picture, I'm imagining myself at your side—so it's not a problem of proximity. It's that, in my imagination, we're advanced so far into the future that it's painless: you're leaning on my shoulder with infinite calm; our questions are answered, and the hours of awkwardness spent to earn this comfort are half-forgotten (and half-deified). There's no more worry of being misunderstood, no more wondering what not to say. Glass half-full or -empty, it's no matter. It's brimming over now.

But now, the reality of you is too powerful and painful and real. I can't look at you, in all your realness. Why can't you love me (enough)? We love and hate each other for the same reasons, for our particularness. So much better to look at photos, perfect and framed; to retouch them, transpose them onto a better future. Everything is always better in the future. (In that, it is so much like the past.)

Better still to dream on photos of strangers, rich with the unknown, and then to transpose you upon them, till they are perfect. In my mind, so much is perfect. In my mind (and only there) I can make perfect love.

The exact moment 

I am capable of great things
but only in the morning
on sunny days
when it's not too warm
after I've had my coffee
and a mango
if I'm well-rested
and then only for a minute or two
by accident
usually at the exact moment
that I've misplaced my pen.

Down the Little Red Lane 

Me and the cherry-red redhead
Out to paint the town red.
She's red-hot and I'm red-blooded and
She to me is like a red rag to a bull.
I spend every red cent to roll out the red carpet.
"Hey, babe, let's cut through the red tape
and go back to my place."
It's a real red letter day.

Metamorphosis 

Or, Destroying the Dream of my Own Translation

"Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of sentences in German that require that the participle be positioned at the end of the sentence; in the above sentence, the equivalent of 'changed' is the final word, 'verwandelt'. Such constructions are not replicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text." - from Wikipedia

First, start with a phrase:

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

Use a computer to translate it into Japanese, and then back again:

One morning, one Gregor Samsa suffered from a dream, woke up in bed converted to their destructive himself.

Do it again:

One morning, one suffering from a dream Gregor Samsa, destruction of the bed, woke up in the translation itself.

And again:

Gregor Samsa dream, from the destruction of the bed one morning, suffering a single one, I woke up in the translation itself.

You've come here, to language, to literature, looking for meaning. It's why anyone comes to anything: to make sense and order of otherwise meaningless circumstance.

1 bed one morning, Gregor Samsa one dream of one suffering from the destruction of one, I woke up in the translation itself.

Trying to pin things down with words, you've discovered that meaning moves. It evolves. It flies. it flits. It flutters.

1 bed one morning, Gregor Samsa in my own translation from the burden of 1111111 I woke up one single dream was destroyed.

Instead of meaning, you've stumbled upon the destruction of meaning; and in that, you begin to find the true meaning of meaning: that it's made by looking for it.

I, 1111111, morning, 1111111, destroying the dream of my own translation from the bed, woke the burden of Gregor Samsa.

Destroying the dream of my own translation.

Tomorrow, pt. 3 

"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness."—Martin Luther King

In many ways, it was better when Bush was president. Being a progressive was easier: it was fueled with anger and righteousness—rightness—and the genuine need to get "their" guy out of office, before he did  any more lasting harm.

A champion rose on the left, beautiful and wise: he spoke with the tongue of angels and he inspired us to put aside our despair.  "Hope," he said. We had a vague memory of the feeling, but we wondered aloud if it was still possible.  In the face of so much, can we still make the world a better place?

"Yes we can," our champion counseled. He saw this better world already, clearly, as if it were a place he'd already visited. He described it to us:

Where there was war, there will be peace. Where there was lawlessness, there will be respect. Where there was sickness and suffering amongst the poor, there will be care and compassion. Where there was torture inflicted, there will be swift justice. And where the voice of the people has been drowned out by the gold of the oligarchs, there will be democracy.

Inspired by these promises, we lifted him onto our shoulders and carried him to victory.

Now it's "our" guy in office. The gold continues to flow to the oligarchs; the prisoners are still nameless in foreign prisons while their torturers are free; there are still executive signing orders and redactions; and each passing day, the sick continue to languish. There is no peace.

Where there was anger, there will be anger again. But where there was hope—only hopelessness.

Now, our champion seems to wonder aloud if, in the face of so much, we can still make the world a better place. Now, we must lift him again on our shoulders, and counsel him:

Yes we can.

That Kind of Crazy Afternoon 

The summer has been really lousy. It's rained a thousand days in a row. Some people got really excited about the weather this summer, because it never really got too hot. That killed me. People got excited because they never had to use their air conditioners, but they couldn't go outside, either, because it rained like a monsoon every single day, I swear to God it did, so no one really got to enjoy their summer, but at least they didn't have to use their air conditioner.

One thing about me is, I sweat a lot. Summer comes and I start sweating and then I don't stop till October. And what's funny is, it doesn't matter whether it's eighty-five degrees or ninety-five degrees, I sweat just the same. I wear an extra t-shirt to mop up all the sweat, and then I use a handkerchief to mop it out of my eyes, and then I have to change shirts a few times a day, too. Like that tennis player who no one can remember his name, even though he was really good. He was going to be a tennis star except he sweat so much he'd get dehydrated. It got so he started covering his body in talcum powder, to stop the sweating, but it wasn't enough, he'd still get dehydrated and cramp up, and eventually he had to retire, even though he was good enough to beat just about anybody. Sometimes I wonder if I have a medical condition like that. I've been using my air conditioner all summer, just to stop my sweating, and I'll probably use it till October.

But this week wasn't like that. After a million days of rain in a row, this week the sun came out and there was this cool breeze and it was really nice, for a change. Everyone and their uncle came out of their apartment then, you can bet they did, to go outside in the beautiful weather. Everyone called up their boyfriend and their girlfriend to go for a walk, and even the people who didn't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they called up someone nice too, because just about everyone outside was holding hands with someone. That's what kind of nice day it was—the kind of day you want to be holding hands with someone, even if that someone isn't really your boyfriend or girlfriend, just so you can pretend for a little while, to make the day even nicer.

That's the kind of day it was yesterday, and I went up to Central Park so I could enjoy it. Maybe if you haven't lived in New York, then I should explain how there's just so much of it, block after block of streets and sidewalks, and more streets and more sidewalks. Boy, is it big. Sometimes it can be a little disorienting, even if you've lived here a long time, because everything is on this grid of streets and sidewalks for what feels like a hundred miles in every direction. Every corner there's the exact same stuff—a deli, and a little diner, and maybe a restaurant. I mean, some of them are nice and some of them are lousy, but after a few blocks, they all look the same. Then there are high buildings everywhere, so you can't always see landmarks, unless you recognize that particular deli or that particular diner, which sometimes you do, but just as often, you don't. That's why it's so important for people to get out of the city. Sometimes it just repeats itself too much and it's exhausting.

I think that's why people go to Central Park. It is literally a breath of fresh air. People always say "It was a breath of fresh air," and I puke when I hear it, but in this case, it's literally true. It is a big breath of fresh air. And it's so goddamn big. This park is bigger than some cities. That's not even an exaggeration. Central Park is bigger than the whole city of Boston. I'll admit, it's pretty nice to be able to get out of the goddamn stinking subway crammed full of all those people and then be in a whole city-sized park full of fresh air.

Except, today I got out of the subway and I couldn't move, there were so many goddamn people. I just wanted to go down to the lake and watch the rowboats and the ducks, but I couldn't really even do it, because there were so many people. It killed me, because here was all of this nature and supposed peace and quiet, but instead everyone crowded around this one phony bastard doing magic tricks and telling jokes into a PA system. Some of the tricks were pretty good, and he was athletic, too. I mean, at one point, he completely jumped right over this little girl, and she didn't even know he was going to do it. That was pretty impressive. But this just isn't the venue for that sort of thing, that's all.

I tried to climb through to the rowboats but I couldn't on account of all the people and the way they parked their baby strollers side by side across the entire sidewalk. Anyway, by then, I didn't really want to see the rowboats anymore. I just wanted some peace and quiet and to enjoy the goddamn day. And would you believe it, as soon as I got out of earshot of that magician, didn't I find another crowd of people around another guy with another PA system? Maybe that's what people like to see on a beautiful summer day—some phony bastard talking into a microphone, instead of lakes and trees and instead of relaxing. I guess they think it makes them urbane.

I was in one of those moods where I didn't want to be around people, so I made my way toward the zoo. I thought it would be nice to see the gorillas because at least the gorillas seem to enjoy some peace and quiet. I heard a story once about how a mountain gorilla in a zoo found an abandoned kitten and adopted it, and when the zookeepers tried to take the kitten from the gorilla, she protected it and wouldn't let them get anywhere near it. She just cradled it like a little football and kept walking away from the zookeepers and took care of it like it was her own baby. And then the zookeepers, who are supposed to love animals, they took the kitten away from the gorilla, and she bawled her big black eyes out, and they gave that kitten to a goddamn pound. Hypocrites.

There was never a point where I wasn't surrounded by crowds, and where I couldn't hear some moron on a PA system. It was kind of funny in a way. The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot with all these people around, and then a funny thing happened: I was having trouble breathing. I really was. I thought I might puke, so I went looking for a bathroom, but there was a line full of people and baby strollers, and I decided to just sit down. I really wanted some water, but the water from the fountain was so warm and bad and the goddamn zoo wanted four bucks for a bottle. So I sat down at a table in the cafe, and I was near the gorillas, but I never did see any, not a single goddamn one.

Latent Loves (pt. 1) 

"Drunk and disorderly conduct."
"The American West."
"Ice hockey."
"The night sky in the country."
"Lying in hot sand by the ocean."
"Driving at 100mph."
"Having a child's ignorance of the passage of time."
"Deep spiritual belief."
"Lounging in bed on Saturday morning."
"Dogs."
"Cycling country roads."
"Tawdry sex."
"The practice, not the idea, of vegetarianism."
"Disappearing into a good book."
"The smell of sage after a desert rain."
"Stage fright."
"Massachusetts rooftops."
"Foreign languages."
"Homemade sourdough."
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"Morning fog."
"Driving nowhere in particular."
"Discovering new music."
"Breaking hearts."
"Mulholland Drive."
"Forests of pine."
"The hum in the ears the morning after loud music."
"The smell of propane in the ice rink."
"Writing meaningful passages longer than 140 characters."
"Deer."
"Optimism."
"Knowing the bartender."
"Learning new words."
"Naïveté."
"The view from the top of a horse."
"Writing as if someone might read it."
"Being lost."

Less Than 

It's because of the shrinking.

It was hard to notice at first. Remember, growing was like that: "How big you've grown!," the cousins whose names you never learned would always say. And you would think, defiant: "No I haven't."

But you had. You'd grown imperceptibly, day by day. To prove it, your parents would mark little indisputable lines on your door jamb in pencil ("July 21, 1980: 47 inches"), till your incredulity was replaced with a hard-to-explain, slightly misplaced pride whenever you sized up your hash marks: "How big I've grown!," you would think.

Shrinking is like that. It sneaks up on you, without any giveaway signs. The hat still fits; the pants are tighter than ever—but you know that you are smaller than you were. You know it as surely as you knew looking at those pencil marks as a child. You have shrunken. You are less than. You realize, too late, that hopes and dreams have mass; that their mass centered you like ballast; they plumped you up; and now they're gone.

Shriveling. Wilting. Shrinking into less and less.

If you know, then it's only a matter of time before everyone— friends, co-workers, the nameless cousins, the strangers on the street—realize it too. It almost doesn't matter, though, because at the rate you're getting smaller, by the time they realize, you'll have disappeared altogether.

Shiva the Destroyer 

We were on the train and we were going toward important places, and that is what allowed us to disappear into ourselves, and pass by station stop after station stop, staring into books and newspapers and windows and each other, as if we were nowhere, as if we were people without souls.

The man shuffled onto the train announced by his own stink, a sticky vinegar that attached itself to the inside of the nose. He shuffled his feet and he shuffled his cardboard cup, mostly empty but with a few coins, like a broken toy tambourine.

He spoke too quietly to draw us from our reverie. It was the stink, rather, that drew us, and pushed most of us to inch away from him without looking, nor hearing his mumbled words: "I am Shiva," he said, "Neelkantha of the blue throat, eye of fire, skin of tiger, greatest among gods, destroyer of worlds." He chanted this quietly and made his way among us, while we withdrew from him without looking up.

Not listening to him or even hearing him, we never imagined that his words were true, that he was indeed the great deity incarnate, nor that our failure to love him or care for him was a final act of disastrous consequence: that we had failed so exhaustively, failed in our very humanity, and, undeserving of it, would live to see it stripped from us, while we, unaware, listened to our headphones, read our magazines, and recoiled from the stink of the misfortune we'd helped to create.

News clip from a seaside town 

A local man, caught in a riptide, was carried out to sea.

An unidentified stranger swam to his rescue.

Both drowned.

This is where I am  

This is where I am: walking across the bridge, beside the trains and above the trash barges, five hundred yards from either side, away, away from everyone and their noise, till everything is just a disappearing din, most of all, myself.1

---

1. (The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!

Stella of the Angels  

(Also available as a downloadable MP3, thanks to Miette's Bedtime Story.)

---

I lost focus so I went to a fortune teller. I picked the first one within walking distance who took credit cards. She asked me to hold out my hands, and as soon as she touched me, I got a hard-on. Within ten minutes we were fucking on the sofa.

"You've got a really strong love line," she said.

I moved in that night. That was three years ago.

*    *    *

(Did she see it coming? I always wondered, and I never knew.)

*    *    *

Her name was Stella Luna, like the children's book. That's what it said on the sign in her parlor. Her real name was Stella DeAngelis, but she changed it. "I thought Luna sounded more mystical," she explained.

"More mystical than, 'From angels'?"

I asked if she came from a long line of psychics, and she laughed. "My daddy was a plumber." But she also had an uncle who made a good living betting on horses, and legend has it that her grandmother predicted the assassination of JFK, in vivid detail, including the phrase "grassy knoll." She claimed she saw the face of the third gunman, and could have picked him out of a police line-up. "But who knows?"

*    *    *

"You're going to struggle a while," Stella told me, as we laid naked on her sofa, she finally reading my palm. "Because you're a seeker."

"What do I seek?"

She ran her finger along my palm but didn't answer.

"What do I seek?"

"That which you don't have," she said finally, and got up to pull on her clothes.

"That's obvious. That's everyone. That's tautological."

"I don't know what that word means."

*    *    *

She knew the future but she didn't know that certain truths follow from their atomic propositions.

*    *    *

"You're going to go home and pack a bag of things and move in with me," she said.

"Is that a prediction? Or just something you want?"

She smiled and kissed me. "It's your destiny."

*    *    *

I went home, packed a bag, and moved in with her, which was a shitty thing to do, because I'd lived with a woman at the time, a woman who told me often that she loved me.

"I'm moving out."

"What? Why?"

"It's my destiny."

I paid an extra month's rent and let her keep my share of the deposit, and since she was justified in saying all of those bad things about me, I never tried to stop her. I still think about her sometimes.

*    *    *

Stella and I took a trip to Vermont, after I'd been living with her for a few months. We rented a car and took turns driving up the coast through the rain. Halfway through Connecticut, she said, "Pull over. I want to fuck you."

I stopped the car, and she unbuckled my pants and climbed on top of me, somehow squeezing her lithe body into the space between me and the steering wheel.

"That was great," I said, and she laughed and wiped the fog of our breath off the windows.

Up ahead, a tractor trailer had jack-knifed and killed twenty-two people—the largest single auto accident in Connecticut history.

"Did you know?," I asked her.

"I just wanted to fuck," she answered.

*    *    *

"Do you believe in predestiny? Are our futures written?"

"Of course." She looked at me like I'd questioned the roundness of the Earth, or gravity. She didn't understand why this idea put me into a three-day sulk and got me wondering about suicide. "Do you ever think of killing yourself?," I asked her.

"That's stupid."

*    *    *

"What do they say?"

She looked at me impatiently.

"Nothing about sinking ships, right? Nothing about death at sea? I couldn't bear knowing I was going to drown."

"When I read your palm," she explained, "I am reading your palm."

"That's tautological."

"But when I read the cards, I am reading the cards. And the cards are reading you. Do you understand?"

"No. I mean of course, yes, but, no, not at all. Why does a random shuffle of cards offer meaning about my life?"

"Right? Why does a random shuffle of events, or a random shuffle of jobs, or a random shuffle of girlfriends, offer meaning about your life? Exactly."

"So what do the cards say?"

She looked at them quietly for a while. She didn't like telling my fortune. Or maybe she just didn't like my fortune.

"You're going to struggle a while," she finally said.

"That's vague."

"The cards are kind of hard to read tonight. I'll look at them again tomorrow."

"I want my money back," I told her.

"Then you should have paid me." She kissed me sweetly on the cheek. "Let's go to bed."

*    *    *

She held a bag in her hand and she told me she was leaving. She gave me an extra month's rent, and said I should keep her share of the deposit.

"What? Why?," I asked. But she didn't answer.

"I've loved you," she said. "I'll always love you."

"Did you see this coming?," I asked.

"Did you see this coming?," I asked. "Because I didn't see this coming."

But I was shouting at the door. She was already gone.

*    *    *

We were lying on the sofa, and she was kissing my hand. "What am I seeking?," I asked her. We were both so relaxed, the way lovers are. "I don't know," she answered. "What are you seeking?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I don't know."

Six Degrees of 

abdication, aberration, abrogation, acclimation, accusation, activation, adaptation, admiration, adoration, adulation, advocation, affectation, affirmation, affrication, aggravation, agitation, allegation, allocation, alteration, altercation, amputation, animation, annexation, annotation, appalachian, appellation, application, approbation, arbitration, aspiration, assocation, augmentation, automation, aviation, avocation, backwardation, bifurcation, calculation, calibration, cancellation, celebration, cogitation, coloration, combination, commendation, compensation, compilation, complication, computation, concentration, condemnation, condensation, confirmation, confiscation, conflagration, confrontation, congregation, conjugation, connotation, consecration, conservation, consolation, constellation, consternation, constipation, consultation, consummation, contemplation, conversation, convocation, coronation, corporation, correlation, culmination, cultivation, declaration, decoration, dedication, defamation, deformation, degradation, dehydration, delegation, demarcation, demonstration, deportation, depravation, depredation, deprivation, derivation, desecration, desiccation, designation, desolation, desperation, destination, detonation, devastation, deviation, dilatation, disinflation, dislocation, dispensation, disputation, dissertation, dissipation, distillation, divination, domination, duplication, education, elevation, elongation, emanation, embarkation, emigration, emulation, equitation, escalation, estimation, evocation, excavation, excitation, exclamation, exhalation, exhortation, exhumation, expectation, expiration, explanation, explication, exploitation, exploration, fabrication, fascination, federation, fermentation, fibrillation, figuration, fluctuation, fluoridation, foliation, formulation, fragmentation, fumigation, gastrulation, generation, germination, glaciation, graduation, granulation, gravitation, habitation, heat prostration, hesitation, hibernation, illustration, imitation, immigration, implantation, implication, importation, impregnation, imputation, incantation, incarnation, inclination, incrustation, incubation, indentation, indexation, indication, indignation, infestation, infiltration, inflammation, information, inhalation, innovation, inspiration, installation, instigation, insulation, integration, intimation, intonation, inundation, invitation, invocation, irrigation, irritation, isolation, jubilation, laceration, legislation, levitation, liberation, limitation, liquidation, litigation, loan translation, lookout station, lubrication, machination, malformation, masturbation, maturation, mediation, medication, meditation, menstruation, ministration, miscreation, miseration, mitigation, moderation, modulation, molestation, motivation, mutilation, navigation, nomination, nucleation, obfuscation, obligation, observation, occupation, operation, orchestration, ordination, oscillation, ostentation, ovulation, oxidation, pagination, paid vacation, pair creation, pair formation, palpitation, penetration, perforation, permutation, perspiration, perturbation, petrol station, pigmentation, pollination, polling station, population, preparation, presentation, preservation, proclamation, procreation, profanation, propagation, protestation, provocation, publication, pumping station, punctuation, radiation, realization, recantation, recitation, reclamation, recreation, reformation, refutation, registration, regulation, rehydration, relaxation, relocation, remote station, renovation, reparation, replication, reputation, reservation, resignation, respiration, restoration, retardation, revelation, revocation, rumination, sampling station, sanitation, saturation, segmentation, segregation, sequestration, simulation, situation, speculation, stimulation, stipulation, strangulation, subluxation, subway station, suffocation, superstation, syndication, tabulation, termination, titillation, toleration, touch sensation, transformation, transplantation, transportation, trepidation, tribulation, unimation, univation, usurpation, vaccination, vacillation, validation, valuation, variation, vegetation, ventilation, vindication, violation

A Problem Involving Phrasal Verbs 

Going out.
Getting on.
Making out.
Turning on.
Hooking up.
Staying out.
Putting out.
Staying in.
Doing over.
Giving over.
Settling in.
Getting by.
Thinking through.
Leaving out.
Putting over.
Putting down.
Pointing out.
Shutting out.
Blowing up.
Shutting down.
Calling off.
Making up.
Doing over.
Giving up.
Breaking up.
Walking away.
Throwing away.
Turning down.
Turning off.
Putting behind.
Getting over.
Going out.
Doing over.

(Look at us: always going places but never specifying where, exactly. No wonder we get lost: we can't keep our particles straight.)

My babysitter 

My babysitter is coming
and I'm nervous, and
I'm 37 years old,
nervous because I have wrinkles, and
because we maybe have grown up misshapen and
disappointed each other's expectations, and
won't have anything left to say:
we'll play flashlight tag and eat SpaghettiOs and
finally talk about the weather,
like other people do.

11 (Waves) 

a calm sea
floating
a sea of calm
a boat floating
calm
on a see
a sea of
floating
on a sea of
a calm see
a sea of calm

Exhuming Melissa 

Exhuming Melissa, who buried me first, years ago. Hers were the last eyes I let see through me, before I covered myself in cold soil and packed it hard. When blood still flowed through my veins, gave me color, gave me life, when I was young: the blood belonged to her.

She walks back to me wearing pointed black boots, circa 1890—older than people. "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" But from the knees up, she's all color and life, carpet bags and hair like the changing leaves on the cedar by my bedroom window. She looks young and lost, without spells, and I'm safe, and she's powerless. She finds my arm and we kiss. I try to remember: does she taste the way she tasted before I learned to kiss lips I didn't love? It's Wednesday.

The next afternoon she's sick and sleeping like a chestnut, warm and brown and dimpled, protected by a shell and by the absence of guilt. She wakes and we talk, about words and toes and pomegranates and the ocean, about three chords and lonely clouds, and the light of the sun on the leaves of the trees. We talk about loves lost and about tomorrow, and today, and we think of yesterday without speaking. She's beautiful and I'm proud to be near her. I have some inkling already that I'm done for. I've learned nothing.

"I can be hurt by you." I gave her that, years ago, never asked for it back, and have never given it to anyone again. She used it, never wanted to. The hand she lays on my chest is quivering. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I show her my favorite places, my secrets. I'm afraid they might be irreplaceable, I might be running out, I might be offering them too freely. I realize no one else wants them. I realize the attic is empty and strewn with webs. I give her my secrets and my places. We sneak up stairways to ring old copper bells and announce, "We are here."

Find solace somewhere else. She runs down the beach without looking back, splashing salt water cold onto her legs, and she gets smaller, and smaller. I look the other way, toward the setting sun. The ocean says, over and over, "Triste. Triste."

At night, in bed, wrapped in the sweat of the sheets, breathing, I tell her she is still the true love of my life. She says she's sorry, she never thought of me that way—suddenly, like a knife, but a sharp one: it cuts without hurting. I bleed, but I don't so much mind.

I sleep dreaming of people I've hurt. I'm truly sorry but it doesn't seem to do any good. I am not enough—not strong enough to hold anything together, not fast enough to run away. Good, if it happens, happens over too much time.My failure weighs heavy; I sleep poorly.

"I hate you, I wish you were gone already, I wish you'd never come," kissing her and holding her by the hair, not knowing if our lives move in lines or in circles, or in inches, or in years.

And no end, no end, just a strand of hair on the pillow and a pair of orphaned sandals, left like broken swans, or like footprints, saying "This is where I've been. This is what I leave behind."

(Originally published 1998.)

Dreaming on the Tooth Fairy 

I haven't seen C. since I don't know when. Months—enough months that counting them seems beside the point. Someone I thought I'd see every day forever.

I keep expecting that I'll "get over her," and then I keep winding up disappointed that I haven't already "gotten over her." Finally it begins to come to me that I'm not going to "get over her," and I suppose I don't really want to, which is why it's been so hard, all these months....

Instead, immeasurable bit by immeasurable bit, the future I dreamt with her will fade away. Rather than thinking of her twenty-four hours a day and sadly, it lessens to twenty, and some of those thoughts are happy memories; and gradually, fewer hours, and a better ratio, till some day, the idea of "us" will seem faraway, wistful, a little ridiculous; and it will be replaced by some other idea of who I am and what my future holds.

For now, though, the idea has been loosened, only, not fully dislodged, and certainly not replaced—and like a loose tooth, it dangles awkwardly, annoyingly, sometimes painfully. Once it's pushed out, I'll admire it as such a surprisingly small thing; I'll tuck it under my pillow, and it'll be replaced while I sleep, one dream for another, like a baby tooth for a few small coins.

Double-Entry Accounting 

He, getting dressed,
flips through his wallet
and shakes his head.
"Why am I always broke?"

She, under covers,
rolls to face him
and shakes her head.
"Because you like buying ladies drinks."

Tomorrow 

Tomorrow, when we elect Barack Obama, all my worries will go away and my blood pressure will drop twenty points. The stock market will soar and the price of oil will plummet. The weather will be sunny and cool and breezy, like for flying a kite.

The pothole outside my house will fill in, and the garbage smell will lift away. Mail will never be lost again. Sinks will flow with chocolate and champagne. Credit card debt will be forgiven. We will all lose ten pounds. Our teeth will floss themselves.

Tomorrow, when we elect Barack Obama, the world will fill with flowers. The milk carton children will return. Heartbreaks of the past will turn to wistful happy memories; we will shed our fear of all things, and we'll dance and make love in the streets, except the streets will be better, too, and won't give brush burns.

When results are in, and he has made his acceptance speech, we will gasp in genuine awe at the rightness of things; we will get choked up to have rediscovered our lost faith; and we will believe, like our forefathers believed, in the power of democracy, and in the good that lies buried (sometimes too deep) inside the human heart, tomorrow, when we elect Barack Obama.

Sunset 

All that's left now is whatever comes next.

Upon smashing a silverfish lurking on my wall 

Upon smashing a silverfish lurking on my wall,
Smashing it with an old unread magazine
(because too many come),
it quickly separated into two parts—

The smudge on my wall like
an unexpected freckle,
and the bits and legs and stuff
now glommed onto the pages.

Though separated from their body and their life,
Still they marched urgently onward, somewhere,
desperately fleeing the catastrophe that had already arrived;
and I regretted killing it, because we're all the same.

When Ulysses Returned to Ithaca 

When Ulysses returned to Ithaca, it wasn't what he'd remembered. The streets were dirtier and narrower, the people furtive, unhealthy and short. Climbing the hill back to his palace, the road was worse, too—pocked, uneven, steeper, it seemed; and the palace itself had fallen into ruin: the ceiling was collapsed in spots, and the front door was rotting off its hinges.

"Penelope?," he called out. "Penny, are you there? It's me, Ulysses. I'm home." His voice echoed off the crumbling walls, and scattered a herd of stray cats that went into hiding under a pumpkin plant that had grown to take over what used to be their living room.

He sat down on what was left of his old throne: it was covered in moss and decayed leaves. "This is where we lived," he mused. "This is where we loved," though he'd been gone ten years without a word to her, without so much as a postcard. She'd left and left no forwarding address.

"What now?," he wondered. The master strategist of the Achaeans had failed to contemplate this—a life without Penelope.

"What now?," he asked again, and he sat back to look at the stars through the holes in the ceiling, arranging them into shapes and then giving the shapes (for the first time) names. He named them for his friends. When he'd filled the sky with "Orion" and "Perseus," with "Andromeda" and "Cassiopeia," he still hadn't found a set of stars to call "Penelope." He loved her dearly—he was sure he did—but he couldn't quite recall her shape; and he didn't want to get it wrong.

Scratching at the Door 

There's a sad, forgotten dog scratching at the door, waiting to be let back into a house that barely remembers him.

Doesn't he realize that right now he's outside, untethered, and free?

"Run, Doggie, run Doggie, run, run, run."

Another Friday Night 

Another Friday night,
sailing through the archipelago of barstools,
looking for home.

Relocating 

Relocating is
reinventing yourself,
discovering backroads,
new groceries,
a wardrobe change,
patching up leaks,
invigorating,
for a few days;

as the grocery stores and shortcuts
become the fresh cliche,
the clothes get worn in, and
you start shooting holes into
your new roof:

the rain and old ways come pouring through.

---

The Obituary 

Imagine his surprise when he saw the obituary, force itself as it were into his daily routine, in the middle of his second cup of coffee ("Light cream, two spoons of sugar") and between bites of cinnamon roll ("No nuts, please, they get caught in my digestion"). He had just padded down to the bottom of the driveway without his slippers ("Damn dog") trying to ignore the cold rain ("and worms") that got between his toes and the bottom two inches of his unhemmed pants ("Gotta do that").

The paper spread open on the mahogany table leaving nut-sized drops of water that might or might not ruin the wood after time. As always, he skipped straight to the end, to the announcements, to the life and death page ("The only real news"), which was the main reason ("the only reason") he subscribed to the rag.

"So. There it is. This is what it's like to be dead."

He wondered if it was no longer appropriate to finish his coffee ("but since no one's looking...").

In many ways he felt cheated—not at being dead ("It seems natural enough"), but rather at the system failure, that he hadn't been notified, that he'd had to read about it in the paper like everyone else, and ("My God!") that meant some people in this meddling town knew before he did ("Nosy").

Rather than let himself get bitter about it ("bad for my blood pressure"), he poured himself a third cup of coffee.

"Well, better go tell the kids", already sleeping through some of their favorite cartoons because the clouds and the rain kept the sun off their sleeping eyes.

(" At least they spelled my name right.")

Time Lapse, pt. 2 

Negative Space

She pulls on her clothes, refreshes her lipstick, kisses me goodbye, and closes the door, and I notice it right away—the presence of this new feeling. It has been lingering all afternoon, this feeling, like an unwanted guest, but I chose not to acknowledge it, and that in itself is a new kind of duplicity, I suppose—this lie of omission: pretending to share an intimate afternoon, she and I, while also including this other, this third, this feeling, this feeling who sits there, watching us.

Maybe she feels it, too, the presence in the room with us.

Maybe she does.

But her version of the history is different than mine. Her version is steadier and more continuous than mine. In my version, we have had a very jarring year, she and I; and the result of it is that when I am with her, I reserve a part of myself. I bifurcate. Part of me is with her, and part of me is with myself. We stroll the streets, we wander in and out of shops, we lounge at restaurants, we loll in the park, we loll in bed, same as before—except now, part of me is not there. Part of me instead stands in reserve, out of body, stands guard, to protect me from the intrusion of another jarring year.

Maybe she feels it, too.

Maybe this is what happens between people.

Maybe this is an evolution of love.

The result of it is that a distance has opened between what I am feeling and what I am saying. The result is this new negative space, the vacuum of evacuated promise, and it occupies the room like an unwanted guest, intruding on the intimate afternoons.

In Extremis 

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Sometimes I wish that I had a terminal disease. I wish that I were sick and dying. I wish this because if I were sick and dying, people would like me more. They'd have to like me. They'd visit. They'd bring me flowers, and books to read, and prepared food, like potato salad, and I wouldn't be able to eat the food they brought, on account of my terminal illness; but I would say, "Thank you. It's the thought that counts." And I'd mean it, because the thought really is more valuable than the potato salad.

I wish that I were sick and dying because it would be the ultimate excuse for everything—for sleeping late, for going to bed early, for daydreaming, for doing so little with my time. I wish I had a terminal illness because it would forgive all my shortcomings, excuse all my failings. If I handled my illness with grace, then people would say, "He is so brave. He is so heroic," and if I handled it badly or selfishly, then people would understand: "Oh —he's in a lot of pain."

If I'm not dying, then what excuse do I have?

At the end, people would come to my bedside. They would say things about how I had affected their lives. They would forget any wrong I'd ever done them, and would remember me clearly as being someone better than I ever was. People don't speak ill of the dead:

Once I'm dead, I'm perfect.

Invitation to an Earthquake 

For licensing reasons, this entry is no longer available.

Time Lapse 

"And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."
- Anne Enright, The Gathering

The trip put me in the mood of a birthday, or a New Year: something about transiting from one place to another offered me just enough pause, and distance, to reflect on what has been: there is the version of the story of our lives that we tell ourselves we're living, and then there is the version we're actually living; and sometimes it's not clear or obvious when those two diverge. Suddenly a year has passed and we're altogether someone different than we thought we were. There are lines on our face we never knew were there, and that small hole in our heart, the one that's been leaking the slow trickle of joy, at some point during the year that hole got larger, and the leak turned into a flow, and now has maybe caused structural damage, which, owing to the slow passage of time, we have till now failed to notice. This pause, this one flicker of quiet amidst the inexorable crawl-forward of time, this snapshot of the status quo, motion-blurry but clear enough, certainly, to discern this: the status quo not working. Then the pause is over: time has stretched its legs and now marches onward, and our momentary glimpse at clarity is insufficient to change the momentum of anything.

Long Division 

or, The Remainder

In the sometimes difficult arithmetic that is used to calculate love, perhaps no problem is more difficult to solve than this: at the end of love, where does the love go?

[Conservation of mass and energy would dictate that it must go somewhere: love is nothing if not massive and energetic.]

Two people come together, and then they are made separate again, by a kind of long division. But the equation doesn't balance: the two are divided, but there is a remainder, an amount that belongs to neither the one nor the other. An amount of loss.

What happens to the remainder?

The Bogeyman 

The bogeyman came over last night, and
he wasn't as scary as I'd remembered.
We made dinner. He said the wine went straight
to his head. At the end of the night,
We started kissing, and I fucked him
On the same bed where he used to lurk,
slovering and snarling, clawing at my ankles.
Now he's snoring while we spoon,
his sleeping face lit in moonlight, and
I know I haven't conquered fear, just
moved it somewhere else, still undiscovered.

---

>

When He Surrounded Himself... 

When he surrounded himself with the things that were left to him—a box of Grape Nuts, a toilet kit with dental floss and eye drops, a rusty bicycle, a small pile of movie ticket stubs, two potted plants, four books with folded pages and underlines, a wax Buddha candle, seven headaches, and a 28.8 fax modem—he piled them all onto his kitchen table (which was rented), and, watching as it buckled under the weight, he contemplated: what was the best way to eat everything?

The combined wisdoms of Betty, Julia, Wolfgang, Rachael, Emeril and The Two Fat Ladies offered no answers. The indexes of so many stew recipes did not tell him what he needed to know. So, on his own, he chopped several cloves of garlic, minced a fresh bunch of parsley, and set to simmer all of the ingredients of his life. He reduced them in a stock pot till he had a puree—a hearty soup with no name, of his own creation.

Pouring it out with an old bent ladle into a deep mug, he drank it hot, the soup of his own life, and dipped a few bits of old sourdough for bulk; and when he'd eaten the entire pot of it, he was of course entirely empty, because whether he knew it or not, he was drawing identity not from what filled him, but from what he lacked...

Middle of the Night 

Middle of the night,
We watched light through the window,
Played with it till it broke
And, being broken,
There was nothing else to do,
Even sleep.

Fucking Hillary Clinton 

The ice cubes in my glass freeze together head to head, like a kiss. At the point where they've decided they best fit, they become one, melt together, away from the world, and I twirl them around in the midst of their disappearance, to hear the music they make against the glass, clink clink.

The phone is ringing and I'm not answering it. I'm playing with my ice cubes and their wonderful music, clink clink, and the dull thump when they slide against the lime.

The answering machine will pick up, like a good answering machine.

I'm thinking of fucking Hillary Clinton. I'm thinking of taking her in a darkened room of the White House, under the titillated eyes of the Secret Service, on a desk used by Andrew Jackson. I'm thinking of thrusting my way into American history, pulling Hillary Clinton by her hair, biting the diamonds on her earlobes, biting her neck, while she writhes to reach the clasp of her dress. I'm thinking of making her famous lips quiver.

The answering machine picks up, as it is wont to do. Whoever's calling hangs up. It's annoying, especially 3am. But that's the way the game is played. The ball is in my court.

Things I have trouble imagining: Hillary in the throes of orgasm; Hillary with morning breath and raspy voice; Hillary cooking me breakfast; Hillary unrolling a condom onto me; Hillary letting me do her without a condom.

The harder these things are to imagine, the more they turn me on—so when she does them, so goes the game.

I pick up the phone and dial *69, but after the first ring, I hang up. I'm getting too old for this.

I like the image of Hillary pacing by the phone, feeling junior high, trying to get up the courage to call. I like to picture her hanging up after she hears my voice. I like Hillary flustered. I like knowing I just *69ed Hillary Clinton.

I pour myself another Scotch and watch the ice cubes fade into oblivion. The phone is ringing again: she's 69ed me right back. I reach to turn off the machine, cover up the evidence, shred the papers. She knows the drill. But I change my mind. I'm no good at being coy. Let her know what she's dealing with.

I enjoy watching Hillary at press conferences, on TV, wearing tailor-made suits of red or blue, crafted by conservative designers who are well paid but will never be known by name. I like watching her and guessing which panties she's wearing. I like knowing Hillary is cool and collected and smart and tough with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but that she can't sleep nights thinking of me. I like not calling her back, and standing her up for our secret, elaborate, tightly-scheduled rendezvous, pushing her nearly far enough to put my own life in danger. I like making Hillary Clinton cry.

And I think she likes it too.

Oh the games people play.

The machine picks up, and she hangs up again. Maybe she's thinking of Bill right now, somewhere in the back of her mind, thinking of a long time ago, when she was in love; when she still believed in love. I don't know what she's thinking, and I never will. I can only try to love her in the ways I think she wants to be loved, in the ways I think she needs to be loved.

And I do. Every day, I do.

Clutter and Kindness 

Or, Home / Away From Home, pt. 3

After all anybody is as their land and air is.
Anybody is as the sky is low or high,
the air heavy or clear,
and anybody is as there is wind or no wind there.
It is that which makes them and the arts they make,
and the work they do and the way they eat
and the way they drink
and the way they learn and everything.
- Gertrude Stein

The clutter at my parents' house is fantastic; there's not a single bit of surface area that hasn't been piled twice over. I find it overwhelming beyond comprehension: it creates a kind of spatial white noise that shuts down my brain. I wish for an archeologist to uncover everything, to catalog each item and reveal a kind of understanding of the whole based on the parts: just this one room where I sleep is stratified with needlepoint, scented candles, framed family photos stacked on top of one another, mystery novels, sewing magazines, antique dolls, half-hearted religious icons, sewing magazines, a South American death mask, VHS tapes, Rubbermaid storage containers, reams of polyester, Kokopelli, unused semi-disposable cookbooks, three-inch-thick photo albums, a case of printer toner, prescription medication, souvenir keychains, last year's still-wrapped Christmas tree ornaments, packets of salad dressing mix, clipped coupons, mail order catalogs, the cardboard boxes of year-old appliances, and miraculously, no dust. It's a palimpsest I'll never be able to read; potsherds beyond systematizing: all I find here is clutter. Clutter and kindness.

The opposite of unfettered is "home."

Experiments in Magnetic Poetry (pt. 3) 

Probably the last in the series: it feels like I'm running low on magnets...

Experiments in Magnetic Poetry (pt. 2) 

(Try it.)

Experiments in Magnetic Poetry (pt. 1) 

Having Cake Versus Eating It 

When does anyone ever, ever have cake without eating it too? I thought that's what having cake was...

Tonight I Can't Write the Saddest Lines 

"The thing about poetry—" she says. "Sometimes reading isn't enough. The words get in the way. I don't want to read it; I want to swim in it. I want to disappear. You know?"

Do I know wanting to disappear?

"What's your name?," I ask.

"Esperanza."

Of course. Esperanza.

By the fifth drink, I'd call any woman Esperanza.

* * *

Tonight I can't write the saddest lines. Tonight I feel stymied, stuck, altogether too hinged to have anything that resembles a feeling of passion. There's a constant din, as constant as the background noise of traffic and construction, except that this din is my own voice, in my head, reciting its mundane To Do list over and over and over: laundry lists and grocery lists and account balances and bills and debts and meetings and agendas, and a day-to-day routine I've evolved, like a callous, to protect me from these things—a callous that protects me, too, from feeling things too deeply. From feelings things as I would like. And in the same way that joints calcify, my emotional flexibility also seems slower, heavier, weaker.

So this is what they mean by growing old:

Tonight, I can't write the saddest lines.

So I pour myself a drink, put on some music, and I read them.

* * *

Pablo Neruda published Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada when he was an emotionally-spry nineteen years old, and at that bright-eyed age, he had enough desesperada to write:

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

yet, four decades later, was full enough of esperanza to write childish love poems:

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

He spent his whole life halfway between hope and despair.

* * *

* * *

I remember a story about Neruda, giving a reading of a new book of poetry somewhere in South America late in his life. When he had finished his selections, someone in the audience asked him to read his poem, "Tonight I can write the saddest lines." Neruda apologized: he had not brought a copy of that poem with him ... so, after maybe an awkward pause, the auditorium of twenty-thousand people recited it for him.

"I don't want to read it," the woman named Esperanza said to me. "I want to swim in it. I want to disappear."

You know?

(Not) Common 

or, Sunday in the Park

or, Raison d'être (pt. 2)

Kids squealing at the sprinkler. A seven year old's pirouette. Couple holding hands from their adjacent bicycles. Old man's red socks. That singer. Tree branch like a sun dial. Happy line at the ice cream cart. Toddler on a break-away. Make-a-wish fuzzball drifting through the air. Far-away church bells. Reflections in the puddle. Ripples in the reflections in the puddle. Gray-haired man holding his boy so tight it's like he thinks it might keep him that size forever. Flip-flops and red toenails, balancing, teetering, on the curb. Puppy tripping over his too-big paws. Blonde-haired man sitting on the corner of a park bench, scribbling a notebook full of words he'll never share with anyone, writing them down like his life depends on it, because (some days more than others) it does...

Insomnia 

The sky is a lush curtain of purple and the house I'm in is washed out of any other color—that one hue only, and the rest is silver gelatin. And hints of pink in the clouds, from a sun that has long ago set but still stubbornly throws light from below the horizon. The night is long but I'm more awake than I've been in months, years, maybe ever; and the air is so clear it carries every last smell to my nose and I breathe it in. First among them is the sweet sweat of my lover. Her cheeks are flushed and she's breathing short breaths. I have a hand firmly on her waist and the other has a grip on the back of her head, and from there, her two centers of gravity, head and womb, I hold her sway, and seize into her with a hungry kiss. She collapses almost imperceptibly into my body, moans slightly. Then the blood starts. It is spilling from the corners of her mouth down the line of her jaw. I am sucking her blood up through her lungs, gulping breathfuls of it, but spilling more of it than I'm swallowing, and a small river of it runs runs between her breasts and begins staining the belly of her white dress from the inside. She can't breathe.

Finally, I ease her down into the grass. She put up no fight, even at the end, because she loved me. I am a vampire, but she loved me.

* * *

The freighter at sea groans like a creature breathing, its metal subtly twisted by relentless underwater waves, so the hold is full of sound even though I'm alone. I climb a ladder to the top deck and try to make out details—landmass, iceberg—but the dark is too thick: I see shapes where there aren't any. All I can see are different grades of darkness.

I look a minute more: I'm desperate for some confirmation of what I'd just learned, with absolute certainty but no proof, down in the hold. A single tangible fact to make my next acts easier. But there isn't one, and sadly I turn away from the railing and start climbing the short ladder to the ship's bridge.

It's warm when I step in, lit by an amber lantern, and all of the people there—my family—are huddled around the lantern like it is a campfire. When I throw open the hatch, they look up with expectant eyes, relieved to see me. It is my job, I know, to get them out of this, to save them, and they know I will. And I, too, know I will. But I know something they don't. I know with absolute certainty that the ship is about to sink, and this room full of people I love will soon fill with water, and every last one of them will drown painfully in a dark arctic ocean. I don't know how I know this but I do, and that's why I have the machete behind my back, and why I used it already on all of those people down in the hold. I must kill them to spare them. Because I have failed them.

* * *

Am I dreaming? There's something not right. I don't remember leaving the door unlocked, and I can't explain the smell of cigarette smoke in my studio. Nothing looks amiss, but ... something isn't right.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

Or maybe he was here.

My heart surges thinking about it. Maybe he was here. I haven't turned the light on yet and I'm suddenly glad I didn't. I move slowly toward the window and peek through the half-open curtain. Is he out there? One of those parked cars across the street? Or any of the darkened windows in the apartment across the way?

Has he seen me come home? Because if he has, I'm a dead man.

An axe, I think, is what he used last time. Against the last person he hunted. A hatchet.

How I wish it were a movie, or a dream—I'd have a box hidden in my closet with a handgun. Bullets in the nightstand table. I'd have some way to fight back. But it's just me, inside my dingy apartment—a pile of books, a few pots and pans, dirty laundry. Nothing that actually matters, now that it comes down to it. The tinny set of kitchen knives that seemed like such a bargain now seems worth every penny I paid for them and not a cent more. Barely cut a tomato; useless on meat.

I'm going to die here. And I can't even remember why.

Has he seen me, yet, through the window? Is he walking, even now, quietly up the stairs? I don't know. But if I run for it, he'll see me for sure.

I sit on the floor. With inevitability, I find, comes calm. Maybe I hear him, down on the stairs, the hatchet man. He's coming. Now, or later. There's nothing I can do to stop him.

Maybe I'm only dreaming, and I'll wake up, tired, sweating, frightened, but alive. Or maybe I am awake, and this is exactly why I've been having so many nightmares...

Haiku 

The days are long and
my butt gets bigger. Outside,
a gentle rain falls.

Paint on the Palette 

"Lately you may feel like your brain is acting like a TiVo on steroids, and recording and remembering all sorts of junk that crosses your path. Sit down and toss anything that isn't absolutely necessary to finishing up the tasks at hand. Use this high-flying energy to get things done and move projects into the finished pile. Writing down ideas that you come across is a great idea, too—you can get started on them later, when you're a little more focused."

- Astrology.com, "Pisces," August 19, 2005

I've had six-hundred thousand impressions each day and I can't manage to focus them into a single thought. Images and memories go in and out of my head, bubbling up like pasta in a rolling boil, like jellies floating just below the surface of the harbor. Then disappear. At night, when I close my eyes to sleep, it's a montage of imagery, La Jetée. It's all so much paint on the palette but it won't take shape, and I want to just throw it at a canvas in a rage, and say, "There it is, that's it, that's now. Call it Untitled, call it Mural, call it Convergence."

I walk each morning from the South End through Chinatown to a district of old piers and warehouses reinvented as professional lofts and dot com offices. Every day I see chickens, men in scrubs, Au Bon Pain. The "walk" signs make no sense. The yellow lights are too short.

I tell my co-workers I'm so new that I feel like I'm watching the uncut footage of a documentary about them, and somehow they seem to understand.

I don't cook but try to befriend the Thai restaurant downstairs. I ask for chopsticks because I haven't gotten around yet to flatware. I eat fresh fruit. I walk and walk and walk and walk and walk. I have conversations with strangers. I meet people as I walk by the bus station but they're always leaving. The dancers outside Boston Ballet ask me for a cigarette but I don't smoke.

I live in an empty apartment with wood floors and marble countertops and nowhere to sit.

I watch Broken Flowers, I watch Happy Accidents, I watch North By Northwest. I read Narcissus and Goldmund, I read A Wrinkle in Time.

Twenty neighbors across the street, each framed inside his or her own bay window, an elaborate puppet play. They have dinner parties; they have breakfast; they have sex.

The sun sets behind the most beautiful skyline I've ever seen. I wonder if I've lost focus, if I make myself suffer but don't remember why. I wonder if I've lost passion. I wonder if we've all outlived our usefulness, if we were never meant to live so long. At night, a gentle wind blows through the window, and I hear voices from all over the neighborhood, people in communion with other people, laughing, crying, but mostly just going about their business. Going about their lives. There it is, that's it, that's now. Call it Untitled, call it Mural. Call it Convergence.

---

A Convulsion 

     Asking a cigarette
From the woman
     I used to love

     "My last one.
That makes me a good
     Person."

     I took it
And still wonder if
     I should have not.