Next

“Next,” she said and the man walked in.

“How can I help you?” He looked at her and sat down.

The seat was small and uncomfortable, even as the bank was large and lush, decorated in an antiquated style that seemed ornamental and overdone. A large mural of chariots being drawn through the clouds and skies was painted across the high ceiling of the main section of the building. The man could see it above the enclosed cubicle/office.

“Actually”, he cleared his throat, “Actually. I was next.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I called you in here.”

“No, I mean I was next, as in before the last person who was in here, the man who just walked out.”

“Yes, he was next and now you’re next. The person behind you will be next, after you.”

“I meant that you took him before me.”

“No, I didn’t. I called and he came. If it was your turn, you would’ve come but you didn’t which means it wasn’t your turn. But now it is and how can I help you?”

“That’s not what I meant at all. That man, that man stepped in front of me just as you called out. He stepped right, right in front of me.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible. It happened.”

“Even if it happened, it’s not my responsibility. How am I supposed to know who’s standing outside the door?”

“You looked,” he said.

“I looked?”

“You looked. I saw you look when the door opened and the person before me, before him, exited and I saw you look right at me.”

“And what did I do?”

“You looked right at me and said ‘next.’”

“Well, if I said ‘next’, why didn’t you come?”

“Because that…man stepped right in front, nearly knocked me down, right in front of me and walked in.”

She looked at him for a long moment.

“That’s not my problem.”

He looked but the corners of his mouth tensed.

“No apology? no nothing? That’s all I want, a little ‘I’m sorry’, anything.”

“Apologize? For what?” she said.

“For taking someone ahead of me when it was clearly and I mean clearly my turn.”

“Sir, I’m not apologizing for anything.”

“Then I need to see the manager.”

“You need to see who?”

“The manager?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“That’s between me and the manager.”

“No, that’s between you, me and the manager.”

“And the man who took my turn.”

“I’m sure he’s long gone by now. sir”

“Of course, that’s why I need to see the manager.”

“Are you going to track that man down, and then what arrest him?”

“That’s not what this is about”

“What is this about? I would  love to know.”

“Rudeness on top of rudeness,” he muttered.

“Rude? Sir, are you calling me rude.”

“Not you, but the behavior, certainly when looked at. Why anyone could see.”

“See what?”

“Rude.”

“I’ll tell you what sir, you want an apology? You want some kind of confession that I’ve somehow treated you unfairly; you won’t get it not from me, not from the manager, not from anyone. No one is going to tell you that you’re right, that you’ve been wronged by this place or by me. Not by me nor on behalf of me. No one is apologizing in my name to you.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about.”

“Exactly.”

“And that’s exactly why I am asking to see the manager. He is…”

“Who told you the manager is a man?”

“He or she is the only one to settle this. The only one who can make this right.”

“I don’t see how sir, I don’t see...”

“Can I speak to that person then?”

“Look, I could lie to you sir but I’m not, I’m going to get up, walk out that door under the pretense that I’m getting a manager but in actuality I’m just going to the ladies room and sneak a smoke and say ‘fuck that man’ (meaning you) ‘fuck that man’ over and over until the butt of the butt of that cigarette is all burnt out and then I’m going to walk very slowly, verrry slowly mind you back over here and through that door and tell you that the manager had to go to a meeting and will not be back until tomorrow. Now I don’t think either one of us really want to do that. You came here for a reason and I’m guessing this wasn’t it. This wasn’t what you wanted to do today was it?”

“Well, thank you for your honesty but all of that, why I woke up this morning, what I was supposed to accomplish today, that was not the point.”

“Then sir, what is the point, what is the point?”

He looked at her for a long moment and opened his mouth.

Providence/Prerogative

For the week:

Providence/Prerogative
you can choose one word, find the intersection of the two, or ignore them completely. Have fun

Mama Willie tells your fortune

Mama Willie tells your fortune


It’s like if you were running hard through the woods, breathing heavy, and then like in a dream it all stops suddenly. Like hitting a wall you didn’t know was there. There’s always one moment when everything gets so still and that’s when things come to me. They just well up in my brain from god knows where and spread out like a blanket. And I say out loud whatever it is that’s come up. Some people call me a fortuneteller. Church people call me a prophet. Mostly because they need me to be. So I don’t disabuse them of that notion.

What would you do if you knew things you shouldn’t know? Or at least people expected you to know them. Wanted you to know. Would you go along with them? Make things up? How easy it is in the name of Truth or the greater good to tweak it just a little. To say, “God told me….” Hell, I’ve done it myself more than once. Nothing is easier. And then that yellow calm inside and out because God has spoken. And no one can argue with God. At least not and live. You just open up your mortal mouth and let out words and put the god-tag on like a sale tag and it makes everybody happy. You don’t even have to take responsibility for what you say. Just wait. And watch. Soon that little drip that dribbled out of the faucet of your mouth will become a rush of water. Then you can watch all that self-fulfilling energy running toward the nearest drain.

I think death must bring it on. Or the thought of death. You start to wonder what portion of all your words have been true. And what does that even mean? You wonder how maybe what some call the gift of sight and others call faith is not much more than you being determined to be right come hell or whatever. Being right is almost as good as being good. Some people don’t have any talent for being good. Maybe not for being right either. But one is easier to fake. You just have to be the loudest, most determined voice in the room. You get yourself a reputation for being strong. People flock to strong. There’s nothing wrong with being strong until it’s your time to be weak. To hurt and doubt and wrestle down the big questions.

Years ago, when everyone else was wrestling them down, you stood there looking pious and saying Just believe like a puritanical Gandhi. But one day you wake up and your loincloth of self-righteousness has slipped. Now it’s your turn. And then pieces of strength start flaking off like rust off a radiator. All your loud-mouthed certainty dries up like piss in the wind. But by then you don’t have the grace to admit defeat. To admit the possibility of weakness or wrongness. Being right is all tangled up with just being. And if one slips, the other just slides along behind. Your brain starts to feel like the Sunday crossword puzzle where most of the clues are tricks and most of the squares are blank and by Thursday you start to realize you’ll never get it all filled in. There’s been no habit of humility woven over the years to cover you when you need it most. You just stand out there exposed with all the nakedness of your need to be right. You have no pocket of quiet to dig your hands into and wait for some light. If you’re lucky, all your words dry up. If you’re not, they keep dribbling out of your mouth like so much spittle. You can stop the drool of words, but then you’d have to do something with them backing up in your head like a stopped up toilet. And the one who has the plunger is the one you don’t want to talk to. Besides, finding a plumber at this hour is practically impossible.

And don’t think Jesus is the plumber. Jesus is the crazy existentialist who stands on the corner and says The kingdom of heaven is here. Is at hand. Is now. Now—that strange word in a time warp. No promise of a future heaven or hell. And what are we supposed to do with that? Think about it later? There is no later. The kingdom of heaven isn’t later. It’s now. It’s black holes and plucked strings and beggars on the back streets of Delhi and cancer patients screaming heal me now, not now, now, not now. It is patient virgins. And a world being borne along by violent men. It’s a gift delivered like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

Un Mensaje

Hablé con el cielo, que respondió con las nubes.

Hablé con las nubes, que habló con la lluvia.

Hablé con el mar, que respondió con la espuma.

Hablo con los árboles, a mi, que sacuden sus hojas.

Hablé con usted. Usted habla en palabras.

¡Por fin! Algo que pudiera entender.

Bus

Somehow the call had never been made and Mandy--JR--had sat irritably in a corner of the bus station before standing up, walking across the long dully reflecting linoleum, and beating the small bald man with a newspaper. It was a Metro daily; a surge of NY loyalty stole across her and she stepped up the pace on the whacks simply out of outrage to have a sub par periodical as a weapon. Cheap ink formed erratic reverse text of the day's news story; a few moments more, and blood began to fleck across the re-print stories on the man's head and face.

No one's attention was aroused. A small boy, at the age where the top of the head comes just below the hip and there is unnoticed spittle from the lips, watched from over the top of his booth. The child's possible brother, at the age between hip and shoulder but no drool, joined him, but the sheer repetitiveness of her whacking was upended by the creaking and then slam of a newspaper stand door.

Mandy, too, was bored by her work, or really, the preemption of her work as there had been no call, and considered that all train stations, even this hovel in Oklahoma, were but reflections of Port Authority. If one could but suspend beneath the eyelids the movement from station/holding cell to another, all bus stations would seem a part of a subterranean network composed solely of electric lighting and linoleum.

She paused, wondering at that underground world partially created by her head, wondering if it was created by her head, or the underlying class distinction. She wiped her forehead, and sat down across the booth table from the corpse. There was few better ways to draw attention away from a corpse than to sit down next to it as a companion. To be fair, the bald man, despite the checkering of newsprint articles and blood across his broad fat head, might not have been dead. Mandy did not check his pulse or breath; it was in her style to be thorough, but beating the old man was more reflex than job. She knew, irritably gazing at the clock and wondering if Oklahoma was EST, that she would be compensated for her travels and there might even be some apology for the miscommunication. Knowing that, however, did not alleviate her from the moment, the series of moments, the monstrous miniature of eternity that now, that was the present of the bus station.

The drooling hip-height child passed, curious about the newspaper whackings, but not overly excited.

Author’s Revenge (Version 2)

With pencil in hand and hole in stomach I go to work. I sit at my desk and perform a slow, methodical erasure. I start with the ending and find my way from there.  I see two figures, very faint with long shadows. They are speaking in low, hushed tones. They have done this before, said these things before. I used to know what the words but memory fails, hearing fails, body fails, mind putters around hopelessly. I continue my work.

I stop. The two figures are slighter now, a pair of shadows against a blighted sky.

I stay up all night, I undo lines, I rewrite, I begin again. Your image moves further away, unrecognizable, unheard. You speak only in mouthed words. I stare at the page.

What was your name? And face? Hands, body, shape? Eyes, hair, scent? I don't remember but there, still, traces of an outline remains.  More to do, more to do. I work through the day and the following night. I write, rewrite, tell and retell. I put words in your mouth then just as quickly cross them out. In one moment of weakness I attempt to reform your image but I don't remember enough to complete the task. So I begin again, the long erasure, marked over, covered over, reformed, melted down, torn up and thrown out.

 I’m not done yet.

There is a Sickness

there is a sickness in you
and it grows
you bear it,
a gentle gun
against splitting skin
even as it breaks bones
you pull it closer, caressing

you curl and cry
to nurse your dissatisfaction
you shake and spit
your careful claws
snake across my heaving heart

You were a coward, you say
an unbearable booming silence tears across the line
jumps satellite to satellite
until it finds my quiet apartment
my bare white room
my mouth opens to speak
I shiver and shake
tucked in the dark bed, a pillow empty beside me

I remember your slender hands
a hank of raven hair, shining like oil on water in a ripping wind
under a white winter sun
we huddled in the car, the throaty rumble
bringing soon the miracle of rushing warmth

I would kill you if I could
even now,
despite your goodness
and explosive smile

Version 2, for MP

Revenge

Revenge of the Reptilian Brain

The first time is the strangest. Endorphins aside, you have to get over the whole self-protection thing and old-fashioned double-sided razorblades are hard to find these days. They’ve been replaced by disposable plastic things. Ridiculous to even try. Progress seldom thinks of the needs of those who occupy its underbelly. Our will to survive has kept the species going for millions of years. Or thousands, if you’re a Creationist. Either way, the conscious choice to take up arms against yourself means battling against all those superior genes picked out of the pool specifically for their ability to protect and defend the host. Like a Crusade of sorts. But the infidel is you. Then again, the mental process that brought you to this point has probably been going on long enough and generated enough loathing for the enemy (meaning yourself) that by the time you draw your sword, it’s all a moot point.

God knows we all need vices. But sharp objects had never been one of mine. When you grow up in a religious household with a mother who is the perfect embodiment of a saint and then at the tender age of eighteen marry a would-be preacher who spends the next twenty years roasting you slowly on the spit of his own guilt, well, you can expect a little scar tissue. After the divorce a counselor talked of the need to heal my wounds. For a while I tried using a little harmless flirting. Beautiful young men of various ethnic proclivities, invariably artists or musicians with large soulish eyes and sweet lips. My wounds proved harder to heal than I had anticipated. Later I added a couple of fingers of Bombay Sapphire and a few fat Vermouth-soaked olives.

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I get in my car late at night and drive around Charleston. Just to see if anyone else is awake. I like driving over all the bridges. Seeing the lights puddle in the water around the boats at the marinas. Wondering who owns them all. The bridge to Mt. Pleasant is on its third reincarnation since I’ve lived in the Holy City. This latest one is transcendent in its dimensions. Like a Retro-Post-Neo-Modern Cathedral. Mostly sky, held up with tiny threads of steel. Driving over it is a spiritual experience. Especially at two o’clock in the morning when my car is the only one occupying that particular air space. As I approach the apex I’m a supplicant holding out my hands for the wafer, or no, holding out my tongue. I’ll be Catholic and not touch the sacred host, but let it dissolve slowly as it mingles with the sinful spit of my mouth. Flying down the other side yelling Holy Mother of God in Heaven, I’m a new creation, forgiven, reborn for the rest of the ride. I sleep better after that.

I tried putting myself into a state of pre, semi, un-consciousness where I could live, write, create, without my neuroses always getting in the way. I wanted to get to that place where Henry Miller goes in the middle of Tropic of Cancer after he’s used the word cunt six hundred and ninety two times and has starved himself halfway to India and back and finally has an epiphany about how to live the rest of his life—with complete abandon, all out, like an animal trying to survive this moment. Not stopping to worry about tomorrow’s food or drink or fuck. It’s harder than it sounds.

So I go to the local hobby shop and look over the various Exacto-type knives. I finally choose a # 1 Light Duty. Surgically Sharp. Couteau de précision. La Manche guilloché, á la tete et au milleau du couteau, permt une excellante tenue. I’m not being pretentious. That is actually what it says on the package; although it was made in the U.S.A. Somewhere in New Jersey, I think. It takes days before I feel brave enough to slit the skin of the cardboard backing and take out my weapon of choice. And days more before I feel strong enough to use it on my own skin. Like I said, the urge to protect the self is the strongest thing we know—a bull in a china shop. All brawn and no brains. Just straight out panic no stops survival mode. Your cortex has to take a dart gun loaded with anti-anxiety chemicals to that ancient reptilian part at the base of your neck that says you’ll have to kill me first. Which of course is the point.

I guess that’s why people smoke weed. Isn’t it supposed to calm frayed nerves? Open up passageways to places inaccessible in normal circumstances? I’ll have to ask Andrew. He was one of the beautiful artists. We haven’t spoken in six months, since my mother’s death. It will be her birthday in two days and I’m contemplating a celebration that involves her ashes and weed and Andrew. Our first date was five years ago on her birthday. Strange coincidence. I don’t want to get back together. Just reconnect for old time’s sake. Maybe it will become a Neil Simon Same Time Next Year sort of thing. Every year on my mother’s birthday. I don’t even know if he’ll do it. I don’t know if I want him to. Maybe I’ll just go out to the beach alone. Let her ashes go and watch as they blow and scatter, mingling with the sand of a thousand years. Or maybe I’ll just roll them up and smoke them.

Author's Revenge

With pencil in hand and hole in stomach I go to work. Sit at desk and perform methodically, efficiently. A slow erasure of a long memory, getting longer as the sun sets. A blown out image where once you stood, rubbed out.

Two figures walk in distance, without color and speaking in muted tone.

Good for them. I don't care what is said, what is exchanged. I continue my work. They, now nothing, white blots, blighted landscape, nameless sky, moving further away. And still I work. You, like sky, nameless, sent away but not alone. I stay up all night, I undo lines, I rewrite, I begin again. Your image moves further, unrecognizable, unheard. The background, now bleached of color; bloodless.

I stare at page.

(Are those teeth marks around the edges?)

Your form, now diaphanous, translucent like looking through white rose petals in cold sunlight. What was your name, face? Hands, body, shape? Eyes, hair, scent? I don't remember but there, still, traces of an outline remains.  More to do, more to do. I work through the day and the following night. I write, rewrite, tell and retell. I put words in your mouth then just as quickly cross them out. In one moment of weakness I attempt to reform your image but I don't remember enough to complete the task, so I begin again, the long erasure, marked over, covered over, reformed, melted down, torn up, thrown out and I’m not done yet.

There is a Sickness

there is a sickness in you
and it grows
you bear it,
a gentle gun
against splitting skin
even as it breaks bones
you pull it closer, caressing

as you shake and spit
your careful claws
snake across my heaving heart

you curl and cry
to nurse your dissatisfaction
I am, as ever, your willing victim
and even as you crave comfort,
my soft white arms around you
you lift your head
to the soft shell of my ear
to loose a terrible poison there

which works in silence
until nothing is left of me
but a thick dark pool

You were a coward, you say
an unbearable booming silence tears across the line
jumps satellite to satellite
until it finds my quiet apartment
my bare white room
my mouth opens to speak
I shiver and shake
tucked in the dark bed, a pillow empty beside me
I imagine your slender hands
a hank of black hair, nearly blue, caught in a ripping wind
under a white winter sun
we huddled in the car, it's throaty rumble
bringing soon the miracle of rushing warmth

I would kill you if I could
despite your goodness
and explosive smile