Friday, September 29, 2017

Department of Infernal Regions


                The Department of the Apocalypse was bustling with bureaucracy as horned and winged clerks hustled behind giant stone service counters. The room flickered in an out of shadow cast by the torches placed along the red brick walls. Cal tugged at his dirty shirt collar and looked at his next in line number. 1,322,641 read his small ticket. He looked up at the next number to be called sign overhead which read, 3.

Cal looked through the extensive paperwork in his hands as he waited in line. He had his license, social security card, birth certificate, a photo ID, and a cable bill from his apartment, as well as all the forms he had spent completing at the “Comprehensive Customer Care” counter.  He made sure the papers were organized just as the large overhead sign directed those waiting in line to do.  He looked at the long line ahead of him. He’d been in line for three days.

                Cal moved his documents from his right side to his left and pushed the flap of skin from his scalp back to cover the part of his skull that was exposed. He could vaguely remember a large chunk of his apartment building falling toward him and then he was just in line, in this place, following the other herds of mangled people.   The woman in front of him in line was having a hard time with her documents and papers due to her missing fingers on both her hands.  He had tried to offer help but one of the “customer care techs” poked him with a giant pitchfork when he opened his mouth. It stung Cal in the ribs and he nearly collapsed, but he managed to hold onto his paperwork.  He looked back at the green faced “customer care tech” who motioned for silence with a bony finger to its lips.

                The fingerless woman didn’t turn around to see what was happening behind her. No one around Cal seemed to know what to do except make sure nothing happened to their paperwork. Cal wondered how this place had so many of his personal documents on file. When he seemed to arrive he was shuffled quickly to a giant filing room replete with rows of ten story filing cabinets. A zombie muttered at Cal and plopped the contents of Cal’s life in front of him and then pointed to the large sign overhead indicating all the documents needed to be put in chronological order from earliest to last, and to move to the left once that was done, and brains. It took Cal a whole day to put his life in order. Although he wasn’t even sure if it had been a day since there were no clocks and his iPhone was totally not working.

                His files were very thorough and included every moment of his sins. It had the first time he ogled a bare breast to the 4 million times he masturbated. He thought that number seemed a little high, but then he never really kept count. His file had everything in it and Cal was stunned by how accurate the information was. He found it hard to believe that the afterlife was so meticulous. If this was the afterlife.

                Cal shifted his weight and looked at his next in line number again, then looked up at the next number to be called sign, which still showed “3”.  He looked to his right and saw Julia Roberts holding her own head under the crook of her left arm while her right held onto her paperwork. Cal was a little star struck. He loved Julia Roberts and thought she was such a wonderful person. He couldn’t believe she was waiting in line so close to him. He wanted to say something to her but then thought that she probably didn’t want to be bothered. Plus he didn’t want to get poked again.

                A scratching noise emanated from a P.A. System speaker along the cavernous ceiling and the crackling of a record started. Cal ducked instinctively to shield himself from the noise.  Patsy Cline’s, “I Fall to Pieces”, started playing over the speakers. The song was mildly muffled but still recognizable. A subtle but audible groan moved through the long lines of people. The green faced customer care tech seemed to smile, but it was hard to tell due to their misshapen faces.

                Cal was glad there was some other sort of background noise instead of the freight train sounds he had grown accustomed to. He almost started tapping his toes to the beat but then realized that his toes seemed to be gone. He hadn’t actually noticed until that moment that the front edges of his shoes were sheered off along with his toes. Didn’t hurt a bit, he thought.

                Patsy’s song stopped. There was a pause. The needle scratched along the record and then she started singing again, the same song. Cal realized that the song would never end. She’d be falling to pieces for all eternity. Just like all of them in these lines.

                “Ding!” went the overhead number counter and the number 4 appeared. Cal looked back at his number, 1,322,641. He sighed. Julia Roberts’ head rolled in front of him and he looked to his right and saw her headless body fumbling around in the wavering shadows.  He carefully shoved her head with his toe-less foot back toward her flailing body. She didn’t even say thanks.  Cal sighed again. 

Thursday, September 28, 2017

It Is Not My Circus


I’m not a magician,
so there’s no magic
happening.

I’m not a mind reader,
so I don’t know what
you’re thinking.

I’m not a juggler,
so I can only take care of
one thing at a time.

I’m not a Ring Master,
so I’ve no control over
what you do or say.

I’m not a lion tamer,
so I can’t tame your wildness
or disobedience with a whip.

I’m no trapeze artist,
so I won’t be walking a
narrow line with you.

I’m not a Calliope player,
so there’s no jaunty song
while you perform.

I’m no elephant,
because, well, I’m
not an elephant.

I am a clown however,
and I’ll make you laugh,
and smash a pie in your face.

Don’t you love the Circus?


Monday, September 25, 2017

As Heavy As Gravity


Are intelligence and love
incompatible?

I wonder because I can
rationalize, intellectualize,
and reason all about the theory
of love; but I don’t seem to know
what it is.

It bothers me, because I’ve broken
hearts, and I feel the guilt; an
obligation of guilt, for the destruction
I have wrought to those few hearts
that dared to love me.

I’ve felt the pain of losing love, of
watching it wither like fruit on the vine,
in the droughts of my affection.
I still can’t seem to know anything
about it though.

I understand human pair bonding,
I understand the brain chemistry,
I understand the social import,
I understand it in the most intellectual way,
but I don’t really know anything.

I believe that I want to be loved,
and that I want to give my love back,
but I’m not sure what that even means,
I don’t emotionally understand how to even begin to
be loved and reciprocate it.

I have a generalized sense of compassion for
people, I am brimming with understanding for
the complex emotional states people find themselves in,
I get that people desire connections,
but I don’t know what it means.

I’m coldly rational about love and I have
a hard time believing in it. Is love a myth?
Is love the story we tell ourselves when we choose
a mate in order to justify our breeding and
evolutionary desire to protect our tribe?

Is love real? Is love made? Is love the word I
use so I don’t have to explain myself further?
Is love an excuse for nature?
Is romantic love even attainable when embroiled
in the vacuum of rationalizing it?

I feel bad when I break a heart, but know
that it’s just an organ designed to pump
blood as part of an ingenious circulatory
system, but I still feel like I’ve damaged
it.

Is romantic love even a knowable thing?
Is it easier for some people than it is for me?
I can’t wrap my head around it and I think it’s
making me mad.  It’s battering me and
humiliating me.

Or am I humiliating myself in this ceaseless
quest for explanation about something so
unique and specific for millions of people and
through centuries of life?  Can I be smart enough
to love?

Or do I have to stop thinking and pretend to start
feeling and hope that if I fake it, I’ll make it?
It seems disingenuous, but do the ends justify
the means? Does anyone really know?
Or does love just happen, like gravity.

At least I sort of understand gravity.  

Friday, September 22, 2017

Metaphor Road


How about we go down that
road; the one that twists and
turns, dips and dives, crests and
drops.

The road near the precipice,
the ledge over the canyon,
the road by the abyss,
the one we never take.

“Shit, I take that road all the time,”
she said. She spit onto the hot
sidewalk and shooed a fly from
her forehead.

“I’m dangerous,” she said. She
tightened the hair bun on her head,
flexing her arms ever so slightly as she did.
“I’m a risk taker,” she said.

“I go off road all the time, dirt bikes,
ATV’s, hiking, paramilitary combat training,
zip-lining and rock climbing. I’m not scared,”
she said.

She had sun ravaged creases on her face,
heavily tanned from her rebellious adventures.
She had a Japanese letter tattooed on her neck,
“It means dragon,” she said.

That road I was referring to, it’s more
metaphorical than literal I explained.
I said it was about love and the perilous
journey it can be.

She spit again, onto the sizzling pavement,
“I don’t do metaphors,” she said.
She put on her leather vest and strolled to her
motorcycle. She started it and rode into the sunset. 

Monday, September 11, 2017

I Won't Forget


Every year, on this day,
I try to write something
I think will be poignant,
honest and help to
honor the heartache
that still lingers for so many.

As time marches on, the
memories of that awful day,
start to get hazy around the
edges. It’s not sepia toned however,
it’s still vibrantly colorful in it’s
horror and sadness.

And I know
I will never forget it.
Even when I’m a toothless old
man.

I’m sure I’ll be able recount every
detail of my 9/11 day, even in the depths of senility.
Seeing the second plane hit the tower
on TV as I ironed my pants for work, the
silence on the train as it pulled into
Union station, the pale faces in my
office, the sad hug I shared with a co-worker
whose birthday is today.

I’ll remember crouching next to
my boss’s desk in her office that
faced the Sears Tower and her telling
me that the office was closing and to
go home.  The fear in the voices
and tears on the cheeks as we watched
the tragedy unfold back in a bar in Union Station.

I remember a guy at the bar telling
me how we were now at war with some
other nation and me telling him that I hoped
to never see him on a battlefield and that this
peaceful meeting in this crowded bar
would be the only time we’d meet.
We shook hands.

I won’t forget the crowds waiting for
the trains, panicking when our train
was moved from one track to another,
and the mass rush to escape Downtown.
I’ll never forget the terrified faces of
the people rushing past me.

I will always remember the old woman,
slowly walking with a cane next to me
along the platform as people bustled around us
in abject fear, and her comment to me that
this was nothing new to her and she’d been
through it before.  I remember taking some
comfort in her dignified and calm demeanor in
the whirlwind of panic.

I remember the well dressed man, in a nice suit,
arm in a sling, crying within the crowd because
someone had bumped into his already injured shoulder
and the disdain I had for his selfish weeping. I looked
at him with such disgust as he cried about his
arm in light of the tragedy unfolding.

I remember boarding the packed train and calming those
around me as rumors of seven other planes allegedly
still in the air, telling them there were no other planes
in the sky. Not a single plane was flying, anywhere.
The nervous chatter of people not sure what to do,
how to act or what to say to each other.

When I got to my train stop, I got off and found my
mother had been on the same train, and we hugged
each other  on the platform and it was the most natural
thing in the world. I heard the passengers that saw us hug
“ooh” and “ahh”, likely hoping they would soon embrace
their loved ones.

We went home, watched buildings fall, saw lives end, all on
TV.  Everything we had become accustomed to stopped that
day. The things that seems so important,
were now terribly mundane.  I still feel the
shock and sadness of it all. It became part of who I
am and how I will forever view the world.

So when you see me, maybe sixty years from now,
when I’m in my hundreds, I’ll tell you all about it.
And I’ll make sure, even when I don’t know where
my shoes or teeth are, that I remember this day.  

Friday, September 8, 2017

Perspectives


“This looks like a pile of junk,” she said.
“What…,” I replied, “what do you mean?”
“Yeah, this is all just garbage, It’s
shoelaces and torn notebook paper,
rocks and bits of glass,” she said.

“Those are the shoelaces I wore when
I was on the track team in grammar school and
I came in third place in the big race. The coach
was so proud of me that he took me to get apple
pie after the meet. Those shoelaces are priceless,” I said.

“Well, they’re just ratty shoelaces to me,” she said.

“C’mon, these torn notebook pages, these are
what’s left of the first love note I ever got from
the girl who would become the role model for
every woman I would ever date and love,” I said.

“Just dirty bits of paper to me,” she said.

“These rocks I found in the summer of 1993
along Lake Geneva, when my friends and I
were the closest we ever were, and we skipped
them along the water, and put them in our pockets
to put on our dressers,” I said.

“Yeah, rocks. Great. Just rocks,” she said.

“What about these pieces of colored glass? Surely
you see their value,” I asked.

“Nope, just broken glass,” she said.

“These pieces of glass are from a stain glass window
and they showed me how beautiful the world could be if
you just looked at it a little differently than the
norm,” I said.

“Well, it doesn’t mean anything to me and
since it doesn’t mean anything to me,
it has no value. It’s petty junk,” she said.  

She left in a huff and I looked at
the items so important to me, and
I knew they meant nothing to her,
but there was still no reason for her
to call it petty junk.

I hope no one ever judges her things,
the things she has carefully saved in the
bubble wrap of memory, petty junk or garbage.
That would be too sad for her.  

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Rummaging

I brought this trunk
with stuff to unpack.
There’s a bunch of things
in here that I need to
unload.

I’m just going to open this
large steamer trunk, right here
on your living room floor,
if you don’t mind. Of course
you don’t mind.

Let’s see; here’s my old
broken heart, a cracked
mirror, a tube a glue, that
hat I thought I lost the day
she left me.

Oooh; here’s that loyalty
card from the sub shop that closed,
I was one hole punch away from
that free sandwich. Here’s the
love tester, still broken I see.

Here’s an old tee-shirt from that
short lived garage band, “The Megladons”.
Here’s my ray gun, random mismatched
batteries, a magnifying glass, a Kit
Carson comic book.

A cheese grater, used effectively on that
old broken heart, her hair clip, a high school
love note, a doodle of a man weeping on a
park bench, study notes for The Old Man and
the Sea.

I think this is all worth something right?
I can put it on the table in your garage,
put price tags on it all? I think it’ll only add
to the glamour of your rummage sale, for sure.
It’s the stuff of life.