The Phase

It was another Christmas night and dad and I took another drive to see the moon.  Her wispy silver, black, and white hair was radiantly wrapped around its cold surface, revealing the ever-sinking craters its face.
Ever needing attention.  Ever needing the closeness of a star or some other such relative.
We took it home with us - a huge burden because she basically had no legs.
We fed it food - a failure because she basically had no teeth.
We talked to it - a tough time because her attention
span was shorter than the distance light
travels from one end
of the kitchen
to the
next.


On the return trip it whined, writhed, and waned in the confusing mist
of callous clouds that once gave way to her confident clarity
as she shone over a city's gang of generations.
Winter becomes darker by the day.
Were she more like the sun.

Harvest

The great autumn wrath whisked through overnight


          and the wind is still a sonofabitch
          and the trees are swaying silhouettes
          and the leaves are falling like snow
          and the ground is red yellow orange
          and there is reason without a rhyme
          and there is honesty that lies in earth
          and there is the organ-culling scythe
          and there is my carcass in the bale


The great spring sponge will splash my soul one morn


          and the thaw will be a sonofabitch

All Hollow

Eve of ghostly emotions let loose


        from a chained, clang-banging harried heart


Moaning like gap-toothed children


        without a bag of sweets—nothing good to eat


Smelly like defeat and deceased goals


        under withering trees, beyond hope of fruition




Today is the day of eternal haunting


        Tonight is our last, dear dead skeletal friend


                Tomorrow may you RIP with my ripped-out heart

Maggots

               rising

squirming          festering 

                                     on the decaying surface of our minds

                                                                                  k

                                                                                c

                                                                              o

from a plague a pox a chicken with its head cut off a c      a doodle doomed

by m ass misunderstanding yet definitive delineation.

See another bound bundle of sticks torched.  Another faggot flamed.

                                                                          

Sans

Stepping out into
a lightless lull of an all-day rain
a rabbit patters onto the slick sidewalk


I
with the same idea
follow close behind startling its little behind


But Thumper senses
I'm not a hunter but a runner
and begins to tease me as I trail finally traversing the street


Leaves litter the sidewalk separated from their source feeling nothing


Rain recommences collecting on the canopy of my eyelids but never dripping never crying

Karaoke

It's Wednesday night at Applebee's and the restaurant is rollicking with people singing other people's songs. Mike and I are in sync but out of place in our basketball gear; mostly everyone is decked out in Saturday night attire – still, music has many wardrobes.


Everyone is feeling well, it seems, and Anita Baker is the primary muse: “Angel”; “Sweet Love”; “You Bring Me Joy.” Beyoncé's “Single Ladies” keeps thing jumpin and even Maroon 5's “This Love” is upbeat despite the melancholic undertones.


It's at this point that I feel inspired to perform Elton's John's “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” in memory of what could have been my darkest night, when she said “I do” and walked down the red carpeted aisle of my heart, leaving it heaving and hemorrhaging as she cracked open the aorta doors.


In memory of what was – what could have been – what is: I look across the table. Mike takes a sip of his raspberry tea and begins to sing my song. Everyone is feeling well.

Heart Still Telling Tales

I head back towards the staircase after taking my Flintstone vitamin at the usual god-awful early hour to see the front door open, allowing artificial copper light to barge its way in without remorse. I turn around to see a familiar frame sipping something in the kitchen. 

 Wearing a red and white robe and a crescent smirk, you put down the mug and charge me gleefully. I laugh too, as if we are brothers clashing in recreational dominance. But as your fury freckles my face and I pound three dents in your chest, glee is canceled. I land a left leg-kick to your neck at 11:30 just as my alarm tolls its bell at 5:30. 

 Diametrically opposed. Justus scale out of whack. Lovinghating to see you. I turn off my alarm and sit on my bed as my heart begins to hammer the floorboards of my ribs.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Mount Rushmore

We enter Outback Steakhouse with our smiles akin to a yet-to-be breaded Bloomin' Onion. It's our first real sustenance since midday in Chicago. Shane, Brian, and Mike settled for 7-Eleven fare on the outskirts of Illinois the night before, since we rushed out of Chicago to avoid the holiday exodus, only to remember too late that it was a Sunday night. I chose to subsist off Nutri Grain and Quaker bars in the interim. So as our young black male host looks at me as if he beholds black gold, I am preoccupied prospecting the nearest menu.


On a roadtrip, few things are as comforting as a sit-down meal. A bed is a worthy competitor, but I choose not to fight for one. When I get out of the shower, Shane, who is wary of sharing a bed with another guy, is already sprawled out on the floor, blanketed by his Old Spice body spray. Brian and Mike are displaced across each queen-sized bed, out like a pair of blown Motel 6 bulbs inside a Super 8. I settle for the floor and let them count their blessings and their sheep.

***

As we eat a less than super continental breakfast the next morning, we overhear a gentleman telling one of the hostesses that he lost his camera on a train ride the day before. It had twelve days of pictures on it. On a roadtrip, one's camera is almost as important as one's pair of eyes. My heart drops for the guy, but it's rapidly driven out of Rapid City, breaking the loop of infinite plains and soft hills and entering the Black Hills out of which the busts of legends loom.


And yet, it is not even the monumental patriarchs that most impressive me, but rather diminutive Alex, son of New Jersey who lives up to his last name: a small being, human in form, playful and having magical powers. Mr. Fay is a hypnotic orator, energetic and informative, with a clean shaven face and sparkling apple cider eyes that have seen no more than twenty-three years. That it's his first year as a tour guide is even more impressive. His presentation is as broad-knowledged as Washington's shoulder's; as flowing as Jefferson's hair; as enhancing as Teddy's spectacles; and as sharp as Lincoln's nose. I've often felt that I belonged in the past, so it's no surprise that a section of my anachronistic soul should remain etched in stone, over a day behind Eastern Daylight Time.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: The Badlands

The infinite plains and soft hills go on for so long that we would begin to believe the Badlands are a myth, if not for the fact that Mike had been there eight years ago on a family trip. He says he remembers the Badlands being more magnificent than the Grand Canyon. We think he is delusional. Doubly delusional, actually, because there is no way that any substantial rock structures can coexist with infinite plains and soft hills.


The realization of my lack of faith exposes my cavernous mind like God seems to have taken the lid off 244,000 acres of caverns and bestowed to man the gift of the Badlands. It is at this juncture that I feel as I have only one other time in my life: I am in absolute, elemental awe. The first and all subsequent times that I've been to Niagara Falls, I've felt that I could stay in that one place forever. And so it is in this land of infinite plains and soft hills and rocks, rocks, rocks. Some resemble mountains; others hills; still others stalagmites, prehistoric animal skulls, and down-turned, dusty ceramic cups of Shut The Fuck Up.


It's so quiet it's almost vulgar, especially as I fall behind on the Notch Trail, where a ranger piques the interests of Brian, Mike, and Shane by divulging that the trail features rope ladders which lead to better views of the landscape. Meanwhile, I'm steady taking pictures as if I'll never return to this place – and as I become surrounded by a sound that would make a toddler sleep straight through to its death – I begin to think that I never will. I stand frozen and feel infantile amidst the resonant rattling in the calf-to-knee length grass, surrounded by evidence of things unseen. Faith and fear are coaxial. My head spins, remembering the enmity that God forged between Eve and her offspring and the Serpent and his. With the God-ignoring stubbornness of Adam, I snap a few more pictures before creeping my way back to the main roads.


Damn you, Eve, for tarnishing another Eden. And you, Satan: STFU.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Transition

Like three impatient children standing in front of an unlit Christmas tree, Mike, Brian, and I stand in a darkened Minnesota rest-stop parking lot and exchange pleasantries not too far from something grand. What surprises await near our feet will have to wait as it's 3:30 in the morning and the Mississippi River of literature and lore laps inside the gift wrap of darkness, forcing Mike and Brian back to their dreams and me back to driving lonely interstate 90.

Sunrise opens a box of coal-black bugs and then vanishes like an irreverent parent, leaving in its departure a most deceitful fog twelve times thicker than Santa's beard. As visibility decreases to less than an elf's foot, I persevere for two more hours before pulling into another rest-stop, where Shane, who says he feels good, takes over. At this point, the windshield and front grille are decorated with dead bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugzzzzzz...

***

I wake to infinite plains and soft hills and to a sky that seems to be a national park unto itself: a monumental, cloud-quartered chess board in the midst of a four-way civil war for the most beautiful section of cerulean to loom over the infinite plains and soft hills of South Dakota, where the mundane doesn't make one insane.

Something approaches on the right – an erection at once austere and extravagant: a metallic human figure leading a metallic dinosaur by a leash. We pull into the nearest town, 1880 Town, to get a better look, but we don't get any closer because it's wire-fenced inside an infinite plain. The town itself is a motley of relics; of restorations; of replicas; of references to “Dances with Wolves”; of recordings by John Barry; of travelers dressed as Western settlers of old; of portraits of Native Americans looking, ironically, both reserved and stately.

The definition of the structure becomes plain: In the frontier west, the past is presented.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Chicago

The dusty, cracked, almost yellowish road shortly reveals a skyline like I have never seen. One after another, majestic skyscrapers reach toward Babylonian heights; the sweltering summer sun sears the Willis Tower as its finger-like antennae vainly reach for the aquamarine lake of Heaven. The Trump International Hotel and Tower, the Aon Center, and the John Hancock Center are not far behind. With four of its buildings fraternizing in the top thirty tallest on earth, Chicago's mass architecture equals mass appeal.


Yet even ground level maintains small wonders: sufferers of claustrophobia can walk the streets with ease; darkened underpasses provide shade for pedestrians and transients; elevated walkways span over the emerald Chicago River—proof that Oz once lived here, just as the spinach pizza is proof that Popeye once visited the city by tugboat to deliver the prized recipe he procured in Italy by punching out Bluto.


Chicago reaches mythological heights and it also falls to abysmal lows. Fireworks tower above Lake Michigan, squealing across the nine o'clock sky, silencing the millions of submerged South Side souls still squealing for independence.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Prologue

'Round midnight on July fourth, Brock Lesnar hears music. It's the ringing between his ears as Shane Carwin beats him nearly senseless in the first round. No, wait. It's the tune of success as he submits Carwin in the second round. Final round of television for a while. Fine by me. And by Mike and Brian and Shane, who takes the wheel first because he says he feels good. Barely an hour on interstate 76 W, we find he's a liar. After the first night, Mike and I drive by night—Shane and Brian by day.


Around 7:30, I pull over to the side of the road on interstate 80 W in Ohio. My slowly coherent comrades stir, thinking I've had enough. It's the cop who knocks on the window who's had enough. He slaps me with a ticket the width of a 1-lb chargrilled burger, despite it being my first offense and despite the fact that I'm driving in a foreign environment on a holiday. Independence Day, my ass. In spite, my white smile overpowers my raging red face and my bemused blue disposition. The cop asks why I'm in a rush, to which I respond that I have no reason.


I'm a liar. I'm on the windy fast track to skyscrapers and pizza and fireworks: Chicago.

Transfer Papers

We worked together last Thursday. He was at my store because we were short a manager. He covered the basics: wife. 2 kids. The usual. Same age as mine.


He told me he was finishing his last week at his current store and then he was being transferred to another store still in the relative area of the 295 corridor: that long run-on two-lane metropolitan-hiding stretch of forested highway spanning the distance between Baltimore City and Washington DC.


A good bit of deliberation goes into transferring a manager from one store to another. The powers that be consult a number of players: the regional manager; the district manager; the general manager; the rest of the managing crew; and, in some cases associates before a final decision is made. It was Rob's time.


295 has its advantages over 495 and 95 – its larger four-lane counterparts. 295 is quiet and free of tractor trailers. Some drivers see 295 as a highway to heaven or a two-lane ticket to paradise. But every highway has its own discord, its own hustle and bustle, which sometimes lead to crumble and tumble.


Rob was on his way home Tuesday night when his airbag sprung out at him like a possessed file cabinet door. Papers flew everywhere.

Oil and Water

Kobe is heating up. His shots are falling from Staples Center's domed atmosphere like rain, becoming ice under the feet of the Celtics' slipping resolve. It's gametime. The NBA Finals. So much of the world is watching. I'm watching, adjacent to three of my friends inside Buffalo Wild Wings.

Adjacent to the TV showing the game is a TV airing CNN, which is showing a number of birds adjacent to each other. White birds. All looking like unfinished bronze figurines. How much of the world is watching? I'm watching. Like a four-eyed alien, I'm watching both screens with the focus of a Cyclops.

The Lakers are slaughtering the Celtics by almost twenty points now and it's getting ridiculous. Is this game rigged? Who brought rigs to the game? Nature is getting slaughtered right now and it's been ridiculous.

German Chocolate Cake

I'm incomplete. Fragmented. I'm a mixed message. No good.


I'm 1 cup short on flour.


½ cup too much brown sugar and ¾ cup too little granulated.


2 eggs too many.


3 teaspoons of salt?!?


You haven't been paying attention. Distracted by this and by that.


Yet all the while I've been looking at you. With my Hershey kiss eyes.


Waiting for you to fix me. Finish me. Make me yours again.


With my Hershey kiss eyes. Pointed angry. Left alone and concealed.


Under this large Rubbermaid lid. Misshapen and melting in my own emotions.


This chocolate frosting over me undermines my coconut pecan filling.


Feeling still nuts for you though you drive me nuts. Make me yours again.


I'm going stale mate.

Fourth Meal

Work. Play. Sleep: the consumptions of the day. To dream and to be cognizant of doing so is excess. Some dream with gluttonous regularity while others suffer from anorexia.


I lay in bed half naked, fully sweaty, ribs visible. A smell of carne y amor came into my room like some perverse union of Taco Bell and a heart-shaped box of Godiva chocolate.


In the darkness I fondled an envelope. It had a letter from her. Two, actually, as if she was attempting to make up for lost time. Lost questions. Lost answers. Lost time. Lost paradise.


I glanced at the back of the first letter. Saw words that are meant to be meant. Words that have meaning to me. Heart-shape was almost in my mouth. The perversion was almost overwhelming.


Instinctively, I put the letter back in the envelope, folded it like a Burrito Supreme, and ran for the border of my dream like a skeletal lost soul during El Día de los Muertos.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I walked the silent cement strip aptly lit by the marigold-bulbed lights that were just budding in the wake of the last ray-shower of the sun. The lights, which dominated the right side of the sidewalk, were superseded only by the endless alignment of hotels, which resembled the last stretch of a classic Monopoly board—starting at Pacific Avenue and ending at Boardwalk. The left side of the sidewalk offered nothing but railing and the boardwalk itself—a useless commodity, especially at night, when the elongated wooden expanse serves only as a plank over the abyss of the sea.

The ocean is cryptic enough during the day, but by night the depths of its fathoms cannot be fathomed by the mind's eye alone. This is where other senses take precedent: the subtle white noise crashing of the tide; the recurring refreshing smell jettisoning thereof, despite the historical stench of the Atlantic; the goosebump-inducing gale that reminds of mid-spring—all orchestrated by the moon, which, upon the night of my arrival, was full of herself.

She rose red. The red of a rose. The red of a heart logo that strengthens the claim that Virginia is for Lovers. She was a sunken red beacon, and as she rose to the top of her invisible lighthouse, all were gravitated to her: waves. Seagulls. People. Even the facades of the hotels had a slight blush to them.

***

She rose red. The color of my ire the next night when I came prepared with my camera to capture the awe of the previous evening. I waited and waited, past an hour whence the moon seduced me the night before. Dejected and exasperated, I scuffled back to my hotel room, only to look out the window to find that the moon had risen behind my back—for another man who had more patience than I. The moon isn't my mistress. She's more like an ex-wife.

Just Words: Chemistry

Relationships are elemental. Some have few stable isotopes, if any, and they decay according to their short half-lives. Others are as stable as Tin, Xenon, or Cadmium. Yet even these elements have a number of unstable isotopes.


Tara is a kindred spirit: a wise mind, a wizened soul, and a back that carries too many burdens. It warms my heart to see Tara smile, and whenever Jeanene used to make her rounds at work, such a reaction was inevitable. They were best friends, even after Jeanene got fired because her mental instabilities caused her to be missing in action too many times.


Tara began to take off days to help Jeanene; eventually they were taken to help herself. “Good morning” lost its compound. After a while, her tears lost the spontaneity of their combustion. Carbon monoxide began to cloud the back hallway even more than usual.


Jeanene is far worse off. Five or six months later and she still hasn't found a job. On many occasions she can't even find herself, as Tara has gone out of her way many times by driving around the county to find her at all hours of the night. Her boyfriend owes her money because he's a crystal meth addict and she has taken to puffing air out of cans. Her mother has had to call the cops on her numerous times.


Tara, despondent, has resigned to the accelerated decay. She says she can't do it anymore, and, earlier this week, frankly stated that Jeanene is going to die. A part of my heart went out to my kindred spirit. I wanted to draw her near—and while I would feel nothing from the hug just as I haven't for years, I wanted her to absorb the compassion, the reassurance, the inner warmth blocked within me. Like water to dry ice, I wanted her to cry on my shoulder to expedite the process of commiseration through sublimation, creating a temporary, smoky union of weary souls.

Just Words: Death

I stepped into the doorway and saw my mother's small frame sprawled on the chaise with a book in her hand and a Bible at her feet. It seemed like Day 7 of the same, without rest. I wondered if she had any lungs left to cough out or any brains left to sneeze out. Selfishly, I wondered when I'd get a good night's sleep sans the violent symphony of her sickness.


She turned to me before I ascended the stairs, hood over her head, and said: “I talked to your grandmother today. Uncle Matthew died.”


He was 82 and the only family Nana had over on the west coast. For years, he had been calling her every morning to touch base. Apparently it grated on her at times. She was supposed to get together with him on Saturday, but she called him on Friday night to cancel, because she was exhausted from the day's proceedings.


She didn't hear from him Saturday morning.


She didn't hear from him Sunday morning.


She called him Sunday morning before she went to church.


She called him Sunday afternoon after she returned from church.


She went to his apartment complex to check on him.


She came back with a man with a key to check on him.


Uncle Matthew was lying in his bed, glasses on, all dressed up with nowhere to go. In his wake, he left years of his prized collected novelties. Everything. Everything. Everything. Three times to resurrect that point. Death is more cryptic and clearer than I could ever dream to be.

Cherry Blossoms

Take center stage

As they do every spring

As they have for every spring

Since the first two plantings in 1912

One for an American

The other for a Japanese

As they have for every spring

Before the chilly bombings in 1941

One for Hiroshima

The other for Nagasaki

As they have for every spring

After Hell blossomed twice in 1945

*** 

For every spring

Just Words: The Vulcan Man of Iron

We forewent the elevator and took the stairs like men because we didn't know we'd be climbing over one hundred feet. We emerged from the insulated stairway of cement and cinderblock to find it was as the lady who had come down before us had said: windy.


But oftentimes words betray true feelings. We were one hundred and twenty-four feet in winter's air, where it felt at least twenty-four degrees colder than on the ground. I have never felt a more malevolent force in my life—perhaps the god of the forge and fire directly above us was angered by our audacious curiosity. The wind whipped my back as if I was a recaptured convict and it ricocheted off the cagey railing with the fury of forty prisoners with chattering teeth, rattling their bars in an Arctic penitentiary.


David had gone ahead of me on the octagonal outlook and shouted a couple of things back to me that I couldn't hear, but I deciphered the most important statement: it was less windy around the bend. As we looked directly onto Birmingham's evening skyline, my freezing fingers fumbled with my camera, only to take a few noisy pictures at ISO 2000 and higher. There are still plenty of instances where the human eye is the master of clarity, just as the human mind is the master of deception and doubt.


As I stood momentarily hypnotized by the string of lights across the city, I imagined what would happen if the wind pushed me over the railing and hurled me to my death. Perhaps I would land on my feet like a cat and have my kneecaps explode from their sockets like two kernels bursting from a bag of Pop Secret. Perhaps I would fall flat on my back and have my bones disjointed like a dropped tray of uncooked french fries. Or perhaps I'd fall head-first and explode like a negro's watermelon, creating a picnic of juicy blood and black and translucent seeds of unfulfilled desires and potential for which scavenging crows and frigid ants could feast.


David would have the common sense to take the elevator down to see if I had survived before he notified the authorities. I'd probably do the same, or I might have sent a Facebook message out to those he loves and cares about and then jumped from the god's pedestal in fitting pagan fashion.

Kiss Me. I'm Irish...

What is an Irishman but a nigger turned inside out? - from "The Proposition" and all the places it's been mentioned beforehand.




Peck me on my right cheek
Somewhere between my fiery freckles
And the patches dark as the Atlantic


Wet my lips with your tongue
Once over my skinny upper lip
Twice over my protruding bottom


Nuzzle my nose like a fellow dog
But be careful because the front juts
Though the sides are broad and bulbous


Run your fingers through my hair
Red like potato skins never peeled
Nappy like cotton just freshly plucked


Whisper bittersweetness in my ear
Tease me with what now means nothing
Tell me that which still means everything

More Snow

is the jagged icicles dripping by day and freezing by night
looming longer and longer until they either fall and shatter
into a thousand fragments or evaporate like holy disembodied souls


is the aching backs of neighbors who couldn't wait for the snow
plows to arrive exactly one week too late


is the fractured hip of an elderly man who tried to clean
off his car and run an errand


is the remains of a roof that collapsed on a new $600,000 fire truck
that exploded and engulfed the rest of the station in its wake


is the blood stains left as fateful evidence on an icy city sidewalk


is the criminal and the justice

Taboooo

His dark brown hair slicked back


His bifocals on the smaller side


His red turtleneck tucked into his roundness


His khakis revealed his white socks as he sat


His black shoes steady on the floor as his gaze across the table


His date: perhaps a memory of Valentine's past


His dish: chicken cacciatore with two rounds of garlic bread


His ire: raised by the “Fuck”ing by the boys at another table


His mouth: opened to say “Excuse me, could you use polite language?”


His beverage: beer

You Left

This behind, roommate: an abandoned black knee-high sock


I tried it on.
It almost covered my right knee—you long-legged loon.
I laughed.
I frowned.
I saw the speckles of bleach: white in the middle
And red around the edges.


Like the cut I got that one time: my right knee
Scraped the shiny wood floor, but I kept the ball in-bounds
So you could hit that clutch three to win the game.
The bone was white before the blood.
Or the cut I got that other time: that little white lie you told.
It remained white for a time. Then the blood crept. And crept.
I damn near died from infection.


I peeled off the sock
And I put on my blue GAP hoodie and got ready to leave.
And then I remembered
I left my black GAP hoodie for you.
Many times, we used to wear the hoodies when we went out
Like fraternal twins.


Standalone, the letters G and A were nonsensical
Like a baby’s goo-goo, ga-ga.
But that P was embroidered over our hearts like a promise.
I checked your closet before I left for winter break.
The hanger was there
The hoodie was gone

Timelien

Depending on the route I take, I often drive by a church's grounded marquee sign on the way home. Today's message was: PEACE STARTS WITH A SMILE. I chuckled as I thought about the statement hypothetically. By my estimation, by the time I'd stop smiling, I'd be toothless and the present timeline would end in either BD or CD.

In good faith, I'll say BD.

Dead wood Red wood

Many times I've pondered

Humanity hate love

Life death indifference

Many times I've driven

Past a pristine scene

Seen sun rise rise rise

Stop Start my heart a

Flutter a-shudder to

Think of another dark

Day to walk to stand

Rather than to quicksand

Slowly wholly holy soul solely into root.

The Club

Elin -


Let me guess:
It's the fact that he is better than anyone else that made you easy to impress.


No, wait:
It's the red that he wears on Sunday that had you hot with lust and drunk as a lush.


Maybe it's the way he hits fairway greens with ease – or maybe it's his green that made you wheeze.


When you married the man you married an icon, an idol, a label – when you bashed that club through the back of his truck and shattered the glass, you did nothing but solidify your place among the common elite: another rich woman spurned. Lesson learned?

Faith

Two spirit-filled speakers (full of bass and debasement) outside an electronics shop tremble on the pigeon-scattered sidewalk.

Out of the pair of inanimate objects permeates a soul that bellows of niggas a few fucks and a bundle of bitches.

Down the sidewalk a few stores a black man bares his soul through a staticky loudspeaker that bellows Jesus a few answers and a bundle of breaths.

The man takes his sweat-drenched white hat off from time to time like a tarnished halo.

Niggers of many colors (but mostly niggers) watch him from the bus-stop canopy or from the sidewalk.

They watch him but they do not hear him very well. The speakers are louder than the speaker.

Some pigeons fly north eight blocks and become white doves. No loudspeakers—just the soft chatter of lunch plans and the soft pitter-patter of heels.

There are no transients except for the occasional begging bum who believes in purgatory.

But the bum knows very well that a few quarters and a bundle of dollars don't make change.

At least not enough change to give him enough money to get from purgatory to Heaven.

There's a long and treacherous highway between the two that the Bible forgot to mention.

The bum can only hope that it's not a hell of a bus ride.

Romance and Cigarettes

Ass to ashen




Puff   Puff      Passhun.

The Dentist Chair

He said: You should only feel pressure. If you begin to feel pain, let me know.

The anesthesia wore off within ten minutes. After a while I began to breathe heavily, almost gasping. Clinging to the armrests. On the verge of blacking out, squirming in the chair, like a fetus lost in darkness.

He said: Are you in pain?

Exasperated and sweaty, I shrugged my shoulders, not willing to communicate any further. He decided to give me more anesthesia for the last fifteen minutes of a surgery that took over an hour to resolve.

One father. One son.

One hour. One wisdom tooth.

The pain of unresolved pressure.