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.