Friday, June 20, 2008

Papa Legba

You left your crazy behind, babe, failing and fading it clung to me and it's your sleepless nights I'm hit by like bullet after bleary-eyed bullet.

Is this what pushed you out over mountains?

Saturday, April 05, 2008

sgt.mongoose@gmail.com

We learn our names all over again in this world--the tap of fingers substituting for words. That's simple, we know it, it's obvious. There's a magic, though, to your name when you hear it or say it, and the names we make up for ourselves in this world are no different. There's muscle memory there, typing it to identify ourselves, and the tiniest rush of happiness:

This is who I am. This is who I chose to be.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

And I Can't Say What I Want To Say

You. Will. Not. Come out of your house and that is okay with me, I'm not standing on no front porch waiting I'm warm in here. I'm across the street (you're across the street) and we can see each other and wave, looking up from our knitting.

We'll never leave, but one day we'll hold up our arms to show that we've both been working on the exact same sweater.

Friday, March 14, 2008

No Man Is An Island

He makes with his mind, out of ectoplasm or thought-energy or whatever astral plane BS George Noory is on about tonight.

In his room there are universes after school, places where black eyes fade and humiliation is forgotten and she's there, all of her, the only girl who knows his name.

He hears his dad at the door and everything disappears. He can't know, he'll never understand.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Gathered Their Books and Burned Them

I don't know how it was possible for this whole generation to have kept the same secret from each other, but there you go.

See, in the old (ha! what am I, 23?) days, we kept it all under wraps. Sometimes you knew or found out, always in rumor, always about somebody from across town, heard across the bar from friends of friends who knew a guy who knew a guy blah blah blah blah blah. It was always the same story and it was always "us" and "them" and even though every single one of us knew that we were on the wrong side of that equation we all pretended just because you felt slightly less alone when people would still look at you.

And then, then one day, "us" became "me" and it wasn't so much a line as a fence and I forget who it was that first looked up and around and realized:

We all feel like this, every day, and it is okay.

We all came out of our apartments and said it to one another, and the years came tumbling off our faces like landslides.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Setting It In Stone

Inspired by this picture, it would do you good to look at it before you read. Kind of playing the home game here to keep my brain from shriveling up from lack of writing things.

----

There are four hundred and thirteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six bricks (visible) in the tower. The tower is one hundred and thirty-seven feet and three inches high. The clock faces east-northeast, aligned along 78th Avenue conforming to the regular city grid.

I usually (no more than five days a week, no less than three, Sundays and holidays omitted) stand fifty-four feet from the tower, next to a bench (Municipal Model 394-D, manufactured by Heich Public Ironworks). I am most often positioned west-southwest facing the clock and 78th Avenue.

78th Avenue carries an average traffic volume of ninety-eight cars per minute. This volume spikes at two hundred and twelve cars per minute at 7:32 AM (weekdays). There are three stops for the 78 bus within view, as well as an additional stop reserved for the 78 Express situated out of view behind the tower. The 78 Express departs from its stop exactly on the hour each hour from six AM to ten PM.

The tower bells sound each hour and half hour. The clock is two minutes fast, but otherwise remains accurate. At noon, the tower bells sound a short melody (thirty-two seconds in length), popularly believed to have been derived from a work of Schubert. It, however, is not: the short series of notes sounded by the tower bells bear no similarity in substance or style to any known Schubert composition.

My father was struck and killed by the eastbound 78 bus (2004 Model D4500CT, manufactured by Motor Coach Industries, operating number 1034) as he crossed the street. The bus was traveling twenty-four miles an hour. His body flew seventeen feet after the impact, taking six seconds to return to earth. Emergency personnel were dispatched from the nearby Presbyterian General Hospital (paramedic unit 8, responding EMTs Allison Marshall, Joshua Smith, and Eric Seydall) and arrived in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Doctor Phillip Miller pronounced him dead on arrival.

He died one hour and fifty-six minutes after we had met for lunch at the Sandersson Deli (corner of 78th and Banks, closed Saturdays). I had the reuben, no dressing, soup (chicken noodle). He had the turkey on wheat. The total was twelve dollars and ninety-three cents, including tip. He wouldn't let me pay.

As he left my company, he pointed to the inscription on the tower.

"Be a good kid," he said. "Make me proud. Fly from evil, you know?"

He laughed, then.

I don't understand laughing.

What exactly is evil? I'm...I'm having trouble quantifying.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Broken Down

They…they tell you that it’s always been that way-—or that it always should have been that way. It’s not right, you say, it is different and it cannot be quantified and it is somehow wrong, a pure, invisible wrongness spreading out in front of you like the sun just decided to rise purple.

Keep moving.

It’s not so bad, they say, and although you are to be commended for pointing out that particular flaw in the system there are a team of technicians on standby and they are entirely focused on planning for the resolution (preparing to plan for the resolution) and you really don’t need to concern yourself with technical matters when there’s work yet undone, do you?

Keep moving.

I understand, they reply—-with a distinct lack of courtesy this time-—but your unsubstantiated concerns, as worrying as they may be, are standing in the way of the Plan and may even be construed to be anti-Plan, as much as I hesitate to use the phrase. We certainly have done the best to foster a certain spirit of discretion among your team but one wonders if we haven't done too much, hm?

Keep moving.

Do you consider yourself, they ask, a patriotic man? Of course you do, who doesn’t? Knowing that, one must wonder at the level of attention you have paid this particular matter. It certainly seems contrary to an acceptable love for one’s fellow man to worry so much over this one trifle, doesn’t it? Don’t the stakes demand that you concede to authority? We’ve been trained and equipped for this situation, all the best classrooms covered in precise technical drawings describing this situation were made available to us from a very early age and I assure you, sir, that this is all entirely under control.

Now.

I feel that you have put me (and the Plan, no less!) in a rather difficult position, but I must this moment demand that you either return to your duty and keep moving, or formally refuse to serve-—and I am exceedingly sure you are aware of the consequences of that particular choice.

There’s a good fellow.

Don’t worry about it stopping outright, mind you. That’s a difficulty best left to our sons.

Keep moving.