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 The lights, which dominated the right side of the sidewalk, were superseded only by the endless alignment of hotels, which resembled the last stretch of a classic Monopoly board—starting at Pacific Avenue and ending at Boardwalk.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