To bury yourself beneath a wall of Sound

I find myself sometimes in love
with the sound of things
almost beyond my control.

And that noise,
tightly wound with
the tension of one hundred years
but pouring out release
rising and falling on
itself
all at once.

It is alive, but
it is not a snake;
it is too massive and pure
it is not a bird;
it is too human and heavy
It is all four walls collapsing on me
it is all the waves in the Pacific
colliding with all those of the Atlantic
The sound is God.

The distortion rising now;
I let it come as
my fingers fall across the strings
again.

The sound is now eating itself;
the static overpowered by static,
warmth bleeding into the room.
the deceitful speakers trying to hide from me;
they implode on themselves.

The sound is a heart beating in a room composed of paper walls that let the rain come in and the rain whispers that everything is so full of strength and hope and weakness, meek years, half-hearted attempts and the ones that almost killed you, fake nostalgia and trying like a child again, mostly you but sometimes the collective idea of you, and maybe that time we spent the day in the field in our underwear or even the time we got lost in the city and couldn't get home again but we didn't mind so much.

Warlock Billy

Warlock Billy was always quite the spectacle on Friday nights when he would pour his heart out on stage. His band, "Vengeance of Ares," would play their talentless but fiery brand of death metal on weekends at local bars, or really just one bar, "Jackson's," and that bar was for as many hardasses as could be found. The band more or less was resigned to Jackson's after their initial surprise that there wasn't exactly a crushing demand for death metal in a Midwestern town of less than four thousand residents. They tried performing at a Fall festival one Sunday in October but who could have predicted that we didn't all identify with the same heartfelt day in, day out struggles of locating the blood of virgins or slitting wrists with Satan's temptress? The Mayor invited them not to come back, ever, and the lead singer, puzzled as the rest of them, suggested maybe his mic hadn't been loud enough or perhaps the snare sounded a little dead in the autumn wind.

They soon discovered that Jackson's was the only home for their kind of message, which they then relayed in the form of a nearly identical set every Friday evening starting at nine. Sure, the band was great for that crowd. But everyone knew about Warlock Billy, and most of them were afraid of him. He earned his name not only for being a damn fine metalist, but because he played a special edition Warlock guitar that was painted to look like hell itself. But in his heart of hearts all Billy ever wanted was a wine red hollow-body jazz instrument. The secret the entire bar shared was that they all knew not to let Warlock Billy have more than three drinks. After three drinks, the real madness began. He would hit drink number four and suddenly he went as soft as daisies and would play nothing but jazzy samba ballads.

Fortunately, the band had long since disabled Billy's clean channel, as after all, this was fucking metal and guitar without distortion was as useless to them as drums without double bass pedals. But Billy didn't care and he would strum heartbreaking jazz chords through the wall of high-gain static, mournfully citing incoherent whispers into his back-up mic. Worse yet, if you let him hit drink five, he'd break into a stunning rendition of Jobim's "Girl from Ipanema." This was the point of no return and he'd usually start sustaining blows to the face from half-empty cans of beer thrown full-force across the room.

"I wanna hear some goddamn metal!"

"Fuck this hippie shit!"

"Turn me uppppp!" Billy would howl in response, wavering in and out of pitch with his song. And then he would play louder and he'd always start crying. The rest of the band never knew what to do, so they looked on with faces somewhere between disgust and pity as their guitarist broke all the rules of metal.

Usually 'Vengeance' ended up apologizing profusely to their fans as they cut the power to Billy's rig and called it a night. More often than not, Billy would keep playing silently and weeping until some selfless crusader for all things good and metal would tackle his ass and beat the shit out of him. His band-mates would then carry Billy's limp body out to the van, and they always promised they'd kick him out of the group but they never did because no one else could play metal like he did.

The Mediterranean in your right eye; I hoped I was in your left

Young Man #1:

We swam out there
maybe too far out there
I swallowed more of the
sea
than I had planned.
Your skin drank in maybe
a little too much sunlight.

But all was ok.
The salt in my belly and
the burns across your back
didn't matter so much when
we found the island.
It was just big enough for
us
both to sit on;
it rose from the waves
like our knees had
sitting back on the shore

We crawled up and, panting, spotted
several black sea urchins
stuck along the rocky rim.
You were close to me -- I couldn't tell
if that was your intention or the island's.
You looked at me with your
explorer's grin
"Do you think we can bring them back with us?"

Without really hearing, I nodded.
I was too busy trying
to stare into both your eyes at once,
but you were too close to me
and I never could quite
get it right.
I chose your right eye and saw
all of the sea; it was beautiful.
I wanted so badly to be in your eyes that
I was too afraid to look in the other
in case I wasn't.


Old Man #1: (In a wooden chair turned peculiarly to face the wall instead of the obvious panoramic view behind him)

I don't want to face the sea,
it isn't beautiful.
The sea is a place where we all
dump our memories and bodies.
We have filled it up
and it isn't beautiful.

On how to Answer her Question or; the moment and the madness

"Why do you drink so much?"
She asks. "It's not attractive."
He was unable to pause
the bottle had already been nearing
his lips.

(Not an easily interrupted trajectory)

He drank from it deeply
and prolonging the moment;
one part spite
one part incredulity

People, yes,
people drop things we call
bombs
from the sky.
Countless of their own
swallowed into a sea of fire
and radiation.
The congregation watches on
like the moment and the madness
were played by J. Christ and
the Holy Ghost.
And they clasp their hands together
like it meant something
to clasp your hands together

Choosing his words carefully
he answered.
"The only sensible way
to pass the time in
a nonsensical world
was to become hopelessly,
utterly
intoxicated by one thing
or another."

everyone, everywhere was hell
only the most depraved could ever,
ever bend knee
to that kind of atrocity
and spell it as victory
God is love
God is war
God is finding something to smile about when your heart and your daughter are melting in a mushroom cloud

And she asks him why he drinks.

And then it all started going blurry

She had asked me a question; it was quite rude not to answer, but the words had half-slipped away like the way my crumpled shirt was slowly resigning itself to the floor from the edge of the bed.

"What do you thin k a b o u t w
h
e

n...?"

It was more soothing than anything else.

I was on a stretcher on a trampoline on a cirrus mattress. I looked to my right and watched a man named Thomas walk by and he tipped his hat to the wall. The base of his hat started expanding, but then so did the whole hat and it suddenly looked just like the lampshade on her desk. I had drifted off...

"Don't know?"

I turned my head quickly to the side to indicate I was still awake -- a feeble attempt at denying that the weight of my eyelids were a blanket to my waking life.

"Well...I mean, of course I think that people shouldn't be forced to do anything against their will. And there are no positive obligations..."

I barely was able to form the last of the words when a comical looking ice cream man poked his strange little head out from behind his cart down the street. He had a hat that I couldn't see -- It wasn't as if it was obstructed behind the brightly colored overhang, the hat just literally seemed to evade my eyes. Every time I tried to look at it, it would remove itself and retreat to my peripheral vision. It was much like the dots that swim around your eyes sometimes in the dark. You can never catch them. But in all my cleverness, I could only make out that the hat was vaguely mushroom in shape and it was a color that I could not name.

Then she was talking to me again, and I was in her room with my head resting on her stomach, and she was breathing and I was letting the light burn holes in my eyes and her voice trickled down to seal them up. I tried to whisper a quiet thanks, but I was slipping away again...

The ice cream man looked nervous now. He had just served two scoops of pistachio to a man with an intense smile, but I somehow knew this man was very disappointed with his ice cream. A green drop of the melting pistachio landed on the toe of Mr. Smile's leather shoe, and even though he didn't seem to notice, I knew this was an indication of the last straw in a very, very long feud over the quality of the ice cream man's desserts. Mr. Smile seemed to speak entire conversations with his eyes, and there was now a look of horror in the ice cream man's face. His hat danced and twitched nervously at the edge of my view.

Mr. Smile winked not once, but twice, then turned to face the two customers, a man and a woman, waiting patiently in line behind him. They both seemed to be more than happy to wait patiently, or to be alive, or just to stand there where their legs were and their arms in their pockets and their eyes filled with anticipation for more days ahead of them, undoubtedly filled with waiting and lines and the promise of ice cream.

Mr. Smile asked if the man behind the woman could move slightly to his right, so that he would then be standing directly behind the woman. The man didn't speak, but happily agreed and, with a slight giggle, did just that. Mr. Smile then asked the gleeful pair what their favorite kinds of ice cream were. They responded almost immediately.

"Raspberry Sorbet"

"Hazelnut"

"Very good choices," said Mr. Smile. He clasped his hands together happily behind his back and for some reason felt the need to bow. How awkward, I thought.

"Now, I want you both to open your mouths as wide as you can -- and you must close your eyes -- and imagine, if you will, that you're tasting all the finest Raspberry and Hazelnut ice cream in the world right now."

The two eagerly agreed and seemed more than ready to cooperate. They both opened their mouths expectantly, waiting for all the lovely taste imagination could possibly deliver. Neither of them saw Mr. Smile remove a large gray revolver from somewhere behind his back, and neither of them heard when he pulled back the trigger -- all the while living up to his name. He took aim and before I could say a thing, the barrel of the revolver was in the young lady's mouth.

Then there was a sound like a city collapsing upon itself.

There were fragments of throat, skull, spine, and blood decorating the young man's face, as his own similar mess of flesh clung to the wall behind him, having just been ejected from the hole in the back of his head that matched perfectly the one in the young lady's head directly in front of him.

And they just kept standing there, but now with a horrible and immovable sadness in their eyes. Mr. Smile smiled, took out a handkerchief, wiped off his revolver, and turned around to face the ice cream man who at this point was trying to pull his hat out of the violent seizure it was having...

I woke up. My eyes felt like vacuums that were sucking on my head, taking in all my blood and patience and thought just to keep them open.

"You must be really tired, we can go to sleep now..."

"I'm fine, but yes, we should try to get some sleep."

--------- An Epilogue ----------

Later in the evening, or maybe the early morning, I found myself with a bouquet of some of the most attractive flowers I'd ever seen. I was slowly twisting the wrapped base of stems in my hands, careful to avoid the thorns here and there. I came to understand that I was sitting at a table and I was very deliberately staring at my shoes, and though I felt a presence at the opposite side of the table, I knew who he was without having to look up. I couldn't have looked up anyway.

"Do you know what it's like," he asked, choking and gagging on something far worse than tears, "to have everything taste like blood?"

Sitting as still as my chair, I was certain my eyes were about to become X-rays that went through my shoe.

"Or to tell someone 'hello, I'm Jeffrey,' and spatter their face with your blood and then another tooth falls out of your mouth because they are all dying and they have all been dying since losing half of your jaw and their death is only made more deathly by the cold breeze that now blows in through the back of your head and passes out of what's left of the front of your mouth?

Here he paused, succumbing to a horrible fit of convulsive coughs and I heard him choking on the redness.

Stabilized but drowning, he continued. "And the one person I asked to look at me only looked through me at the clock on the wall, and she stared at it for maybe eight seconds before running out of the room and it all just tastes like so much blood."

I had by now pricked all my fingers on the thorns and I was sure I could see the dirt, worms, rocks, and earth through my shoes and my feet and the floor and the foundation.

Parades Sometimes

I kept too careful track of the time, I think,
Or where I was supposed to be
I let the water seep out onto the floor
I filled the days
with dull and nondescript
off-white placeholders
I was rushing from place to place
looking like I must be headed to
some silly skyscraper
or maybe a cramped venue
or lunch with
Patrick S.

I'm sorry you died
I didn't know much else to tell you
But maybe you can show me your moves
sometime
in my sleep, where,
I'm still kind enough to cut off
all of my hair
or my lungs and kidneys,
throw them to children,
while i wear your smile
like it's a parade

(I'd reach for the liver too
but then I'd stop
realizing sheepishly, of course,
it's not much use
these days.)

There is a grey sparrow in my closet

He never comes out when I ask him to, and he only comes out when I try to sleep. "I'm really tired," he'll often say, but I don't believe him because he never goes to bed. I spent the first night trying to teach him tricks. You would think a sparrow that spoke might have a natural affinity for tricks, but you'd be wrong. He doesn't.

The second night he stood perched at the top corner of my protruding closet door, threatening to throw himself down from the edge. "I can't do the things I used to," and then he rattled off a list of activities woodland creatures might do in a day. I told him he wouldn't die, as he couldn't help but extend his wings in mid-dive and save himself from the terrible fate of my cold and wood paneled floor. He tried to prove me wrong but he only proved me right.

On the third night he sang to me a song he wrote, but he kept forgetting the lines because he was too busy considering whether or not to suddenly burst into falsetto. It made the parts that could have otherwise been moving seem cheap and irrelevant.

By the fourth night I had grown tired of his bullshit and closed the closet door.

The fifth night, I felt bad and opened the door just a crack, and he had prepared more songs for me. I was never going to sleep again.

On laying in bed all day and ignoring the cat's cries

The rain took away everything else;
it didn't matter so much because
all i wanted to do was look at you watching me
stare at you

And it's not as if I tried,
but I knew that if I had,
I wouldn't have been able to find
anything
else
that mattered

I forgot my bones had broken
retreated back to bed
And I too
want to be awake for this.

And now as I; in a post-modern tone and with great Apathy, will explain why waves subside and how Blue Birds sing of only the Moon

It's been cooler lately,
in the mornings.

The Shirt and Tie; Defined

“’Business trips,’ are what I believe we’ve called them for nearly a year now.”

“I know,” I sighed before concluding that the addition of a forced smile would only further damage the conversation.

“Then what the hell is the problem then? You made it pretty damn clear to me last time. I won’t ever ask you to leave her again. You know I want more but I’ll take what I can get. Just don’t bring up her name around me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you getting soft now? Feeling guilty after all this time?”

“No, just thinking.”

I turned my back to Sarah and fell asleep to the disgruntled beat of her throat clearing itself unnecessarily loud. It was one of the few times I actually did much sleeping in her apartment. I knew I couldn’t get out in the morning without satisfying the both of us at least once more. In truth, there wasn’t much of a problem with this. But now, it was time for sleep, and pushing more thoughts away to the edge of my head so I could finally clear out a space to crawl between them.

--

The morning bus was always like a cheap bar but frequently without the booze and always without the opportunity to sit next to the women you wanted to. The people argued loudly, fumbling with their backpacks. The driver didn’t give a damn what happened and sometimes blared the radio like the assholes who endlessly subject all to their favorite jute box tune. And just like the bars were the lost ones, who looked out the bus window either lost or trying to look lost; the old souls gazing into the bottom of their drinks. Near the back seat, some scared and well-fed woman watched everyone from eyes that had slept either too much or not enough.

As I stepped away from the squealing bus door behind me, I squinted into the dusty wind and decided I would go to the bar tonight.

I felt some vague semblance of familiarity when I entered my car at the station and a stronger one when I pulled into the driveway ten minutes later. I straightened my tie and briefly ran my fingers through my messy brown hair. Emma was still home.

I climbed the rusted metal stairway, dodged some weak steps, rounded at the top, turned to the right, and knocked softly on door 205. After a moment it cracked -- then flung open. Emma, with a half-dressed figure and cucumber-melon scented skin, threw her arms around me. Her wet hair followed accordingly, saturating my faux-businessman’s blue shirt wherever her blonde strands landed.

I smiled. I meant it. I was always happy to see her. I set Emma down and kissed her with lips that had just removed the domestic alarm of foreign lipstick. She noticed nothing, just like every time before. She pulled me inside and the door closed. We collapsed into bed together and she kissed a trail from my mouth over my jaw and to my neck. I knew where this was going.

“I’m exhausted,” I whispered into her ear.

She continued kissing me as if to dismiss my words for obvious nonsense. I pushed her away softly.

“I mean it.”

She stared at me with bedroom eyes, looking hurt and younger than the day I married her. I couldn’t stand it so instead I kissed her once more, then rolled over and watched the white wall; waiting for it to be filled up with all the colorful things Emma was thinking.

“I’m sorry darling, I’m just tired as hell. You know these trips wear me out. We did well though – closed a deal with a major new client and Mr. Bennett sa–“

“I’m running late anyway,” she answered neutrally.

That was her closing up; answering non-interest with more non-interest and saving face as she walked back toward the bathroom and shut the door loudly. The hair-dryer hummed to life a few seconds later.

It wasn’t as though I didn’t love her. It wasn’t like she was bad in bed, or that she didn’t satisfy me, or that I was just miserable or wanted someone else. I loved Emma above all else. I just wanted more than anyone should. I didn’t feel entitled to it, like some celebrity fucking pretty boy – hell, I was barely entitled to my status as a husband, employee, or human being. I just desired women. And somewhere down the line that desire overcame my duty to faithfulness.

Did I feel terrible about it? Sometimes. Some days I didn’t care and went about it like it was part of my job detail. Other days I’d feel like a dog that ought to be shot and left out in the yard. And it was days like these I’d deny her and face the wall.

--

I opened my eyes to a much darker, moodier room. Pink evening light filtered in through the blinds as the clock flashed 12:00 over and over and over. The power had gone out and come back on.

I picked up my cell phone, near death, and saw two missed calls; one from Emma, one from my Boss. Beneath that were three text messages from Sarah. I closed my phone again.

I stumbled out of bed and ignored the note taped across the TV screen as I got into the shower. It was only ten minutes before I got back out and forced my boyish brown hair into some sort of unnatural yet acceptably attractive position that didn’t clash too strongly with my shirt. I rolled my sleeves to my elbow and walked out.

“Jack,” her handwritten paper scrap began,

"I’ve got my late class tonight and then I’m going out with Lindsay. I shouldn’t be back too late in the morning though. I went shopping yesterday so there should be something to eat if you look hard enough. I’m sorry about this morning, I should have paid more attention to you.
Love, Emma”

I smiled and crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it somewhere in the general direction of the kitchen trash-can. I wouldn’t even need an excuse to hit the bars tonight.

Two hours and five drinks later, I was talking with some girl – Jess or Jessica, it didn’t matter. I called her the former a couple times and she didn’t seem to mind. I told her I remembered seeing her around from our college days, though we hadn’t even gone to the same school and I’d never seen her in my life.

“You were there in ’96? You remember Hardy’s right?” Jess slurred.

“Hardy’s?”

“Yeah, that shady bar on the corner of North Villa?”

“Oh right.”

I had a rule; I never went to any bar which had a name ending in the letter 'Y.' They were always terrible. The few exceptions I made over the last decade only moved my rule closer to the status of scientific law.

“We went there most weekends," Jess continued, "with this crazy Arab Professor we hung out with. He liked to buy us drinks and then he’d invite a different one of us girls back to his apartment each time. I never went though! It was easy enough to get an ‘A’ without sleeping with him.”

“Oh yeah? Yeah, I think I went there a few times myself.”

The conversation droned on much like this for twenty minutes or so. I almost felt bad because she was a nice girl and I really didn’t care all that much what she was saying. The alcohol certainly didn’t help her case in the area of thought-provoking conversation.

Jess stood and announced she was going to the ladies room for a moment, giving me a wide opportunity to escape to the other side of the bar. I scanned the room and found few prospects. With nothing else in mind, I ordered another drink. That’s about the time I heard the sickening, hellish screech from outside the front doors.

The front bumper of some monstrous truck came crashing through the low bar window and glass poured like a furious wave around the tables and feet of everyone inside. A second violent and thunderous noise followed immediately after the first truck came to rest. It echoed throughout the street and was gradually replaced with screams from the bartender, the customers, even the walls.

The driver in the first truck was dead – of that I had no doubt. It looked as though it had flipped quite a few times and lost most of its paint job to the unyielding canvas that was the pavement below. I looked behind it to see a second car which looked, from my angle, to be slightly more intact.

Jess flew out of the ladies room and jumped into my arms which somehow found themselves wrapped around her thin body. She was as confused as the other women trailing out. We walked toward the front door, safely to the left of the chaos that had just pounded like a missile into the crowded bar. We stepped around glass fragments and walked out the front door to something neither of us had been prepared to see.

“Oh my God, Jack...”

Some girl’s mangled body stuck out oddly from beneath the Black BMW that had forced itself upon her like some wild, starving animal. It was now firmly attached to the back of the truck. Her legs were bent unnaturally to the side and blood was pooling below her. Her left arm wasn’t anywhere in sight and the thought of having to see her pretty face was enough to make anyone want to leave the twisted wreckage in its place forever.

Jess clawed her way deeper into my shirt sleeve and made weeping sounds.
I just looked away.

“Come on, Let’s go,” I whispered into her ear.

Jess and I turned and walked together into the warm street lights.

Walking out to my car

The best possible alternative
to sitting idly, waiting for
something
to happen

Adventure and chaos form
on my walk to my car
even when
it's the only destination

A blonde walks by
stealing her man's arm
and his tennis racket.

A magazine salesman
presumably with no where
left to go,
watches the sunset and
drowns himself
in bottled water.

And this shrub.
This fucking shrub;
it has to be alive.
Sinister, scheming,
It rustles and sways
every. single. time.
On a still day without breeze.
No animals hiding in the leaves.
This shrub is going to rise,
roots and earth and malevolence,
come up from the soil
and swallow me whole

Some asshole drives by,
any man who drinks knows.
In a black truck, He
pretends to aim for the dumpster.
But any man who drinks knows
there's nothing quite like
a recently downed bottle
shattering and flying
across the pavement.
Or the kitchen wall.
But that is, well,
that's chaos for
another time.

Perspiring and feeling like
summer itself,
I reach my red hands down,
into my wrinkled pocket,
drag the keys out
across the fabric.
I find the larger one.

Where was I going again?

One hundred thousand love notes to you

You.
the only kind of woman that can
make me
scream,
burn in the frigid rain,
feel lost under my own weight and shoulders,
heavy head.
heavy hands.
heavy heart.

I'd write one hundred thousand love notes to you
If I thought you'd read them

Maybe keep them under your bed
or in your dresser
one in your purse
one for your pocket
I might even sign -- ever so carefully
with hands striving for such steadiness,
such eloquence that they'd quiver, at last, back into
the erratic jumble of nerve and bone
leaving just a scribbled
but heartfelt
"with love," or,
"yours"

It has been said that
many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman
and the rest of us not so good men
have been thrown into the cold,
and the iron grips and roars of freight trains
by a woman

But I'd still write one hundred thousand love notes to you
if I thought you'd read them

Beating a Dead Horse named 'Originality'

There are no more islands in the sea
where
we can hope to find
buried chests,
coconuts not yet picked over,
strange creatures, that,
in our curiosity have not fled
from harsh footfalls before.
There are no more results
undiscovered, unexplored
the test tubes have yet to yield.
The findings have sought
to determine.

There are no more words
I haven’t stolen,
Beaten, and strung together.
There are no memories
you’ll retain from this
aspiration for originality;
If you see that horse
rotting in the lawn,
kick it for me one more time

Thoughts on the status quo, whether or not to blink, and losing your fucking mind

In parading realism, logic, and reason
we surrender
that which we've all fought for
And how we fight all the
fucking
time
to keep it alive, or protect it
or even to save the hope that
one day realism is killed
and i can go back
to dream

the impossible is only that which
you left behind when you hung your head
turned around
and stepped back inside
leaving the empty streets,
the gutters,
to collect all the wonder and burning and bitterness
and plans and bike rides and conversations
and pictures of summer and color in her face
and regret
you let tumble out
on
the
ground

But, cheer up.
you're young.