[This was one of two pieces written for Helix Collective‘s Cocktail Stories, which featured monologues and original music inspired by, relating to, or revolving around cocktails. The other one I wrote, “Sazerac,” was a big hit (so I’m told), but this one (inspired by both the cocktail and the Hemingway book of the same name) was ultimately not included.]

(Darkness. Mock announcement.)

The end will begin at 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Last call for last rites and cocktails. You don’t have to go to hell, but you can’t stay here.

(A cork is popped on a champagne bottle.)

ARE YOU READY FOR THE NEXT MASS EXTINCTION!?!

(Lights up. Our soliloquist – male or female – is adding champagne to a shot of absinthe in a champagne flute.)

It’s autumn twilight and the leaves are cracking like Hemingway.

“The world breaks everyone,” Papa said. “Those it cannot break, it kills.” And lately, it seems to be in something of a hurry…

The water is rising. The stars are falling. Our plastic existence is turning to stone.

The protective shells we’ve built around us are being loaded into the barrels of a .12 gauge Boss. And before long, we’ll be blowing out the top of the globe, spraying molten blood and buckshot all over the walls of the expanding universe.

We are perched at the precipice of the next great global catastrophe.

(Raising the glass in a toast.)

So, say it with me! We’re going to die!

Come on! Let me hear you!

We are going to die!

(Coaxing the audience into an increasingly committed call and response)

We’re going to die!!

(audience response)

WE’RE GOING TO DIE!!!

(audience response)

Maybe today…  Maybe this very afternoon… Maybe in just a few minutes…

Brothers and Sisters, This is Your Near-Death Experience!

Don’t look so disappointed.

Wasn’t as advertised, was it…? Trudging your last mile down a one-way shock corridor…

That glorious light at the end of the tunnel…? It’s ultraviolet. And it’s burning through you faster than any brimstone.

That feeling of unconditional love…? That’s nothingness. NOTHING loves you like that.

And those choirs of angels you hear are the screaming harbingers of Armageddon.

I don’t know about you, but I want to join their song before the silence falls!

We have seconds! Milliseconds! Nanoseconds!

No Seconds!

The time is now, Brothers and Sisters! How will YOU spend what’s left of the lack of eternity?

Oh, I can hear you. Defiant in denial. Hopeful to the end. Well, let me tell you…

Hope has had its day and done what hope does best: Reassured us in our inertia. Allowed us to wash our idle hands, fold them in idle prayer, and pass the proverbial buck to any invested higher power who might wish to intervene.

But the deus has left the machina and we are alone…

We will not die like the chosen children of the long, lost Lord! We will not die as the wondrous creations of an abstract intelligence! No! We will die like animals! Like accidents! Our stinking, swollen bodies blackening in the Sun!

And still you want to occupy your last moments with the futile business of life! You want to make art and make love! You want to create and procreate! Compose and copulate! Form and forge and found and fuck!

FUCK YOU!!

For WHAT!?!

Brothers and Sisters, it is OVER! LIFE is over! ALL Life!! There is NOTHING left to leave behind! Einstein is hindsight! Da Vinci is dust! The wisdom of Socrates scattered like sand on the wind! Everything we ever were, are, and ever could have been, dies NOW, dies with us, and disappears forever!

There will be no revelation. No final appraisal. No meaning unveiled. There is no grand purpose, and if there ever was, it was this: Our end. All that we have accomplished is apocalypse.

I tell you, Brothers and Sisters, there is but ONE art left: “It is an art that deals in death and death wipes it out.” And there is only one thing left to be…

A killer.

So, make me a matador. A master murderer. Plunging my sword into the savage beast of life as it charges past.

We have built an arena where life has been condemned to breathe its last. And you want to stroke its soft coat. Pet its wet nose. Hold fast to its wounded throat as it impales you on its pointed horns.

No…

This is a Danse Macabre!

And I will move like Maera to its deadly rhythms, impervious to impact, weathering every wound, stabbing relentlessly until the great bleeding beast finally falls!

(with rising intensity)

THIS IS THE ART OF ENDING!

And I will be the greatest artist who ever died!

I will be a holocaust, feeding the fires that consume us all!

I will be a terrorist, tearing down the towers built to stand against our imminent, eminent demise!

I will be a mass shooter, riddling humanity with unfathomable holes!

I will be an abortion, salting the fertile earth of the womb!

I will be a cancer, breaking the genetic chains that bind us, freeing our cells of life!

(a beat)

“Lo, I am become death. The destroyer of worlds.”

Today, we are all Oppenheimer, engineering the means to our own end.

Look around you! The writing’s on the crumbling walls plain as the dying day!

Our children have their guns. They’ve already begun.

It’s already been written. So let it be done.

Say it with me!

I am a killer!

(audience response)

I am a killer!!

(audience response)

I AM A KILLER!

(Audience response. A beat. Then, quietly…)

That is all we CAN be… That is all that’s left to us…

This is the end. And we must meet it on its own terms.

Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. But with a welcome. A raised glass. And a willingness to become what we behold.

(raises his/her glass in a toast)

Salud, fellow matadors!

Life is bull. And death is certain.

(Drinks. Lights down.)

She’s bedeviled by legacies
But she knows how to use them,
Grasping at stars
In the heaven of dead Presidents…

She says there are precedents…

Ascending in dissent
From my low-lying vision,
She makes vaults in thin air,
Unfixing the firmament,

Looking down on comeuppance…

What’s the gravity of science
Against one penny’s wisdom?
All my “Wait’s” and “You’ll see’s”
More odious than absence…

Discretion, the better part of hesitance…

Would I really keep her grounded just to keep her around?
In fear of a fall, would I sacrifice her flight?
Attaining only atrophy in a garden of serenity?
A handful of dust over ashes alight?

Will she confirm my position
And refute my reverence,
Or outshine my industry
And eclipse my remembrance…?

My sentiments,
Ressentiments,
Resentments, and
Presentiments…

Discretion, the better part of self-defense…

Looking up from the safety of my daring escape,
I see the shadow of her wax wings spread against the sun…

[Originally unpublished 2021/2022]

[NOTE: As the titles suggest, this was intended to be Part I of a three part story. Parts II and III currently exist in a variety of unfinished, malformed and ill-conceived drafts and, in all honesty, will probably never see completion. I have often wondered whether this first section could stand on its own. Whether or not it can, here it is…]

I. Veni, Creator Spiritus!

They call it the Broken Church. Almost too perfect, isn’t it? He couldn’t have picked a better spot if he’d tried…

In my day, we called it St. Frankenstein’s. They say it was actually quite beautiful before it was relocated. (The irony being that its beauty was, of course, the reason it was relocated…) Having stood undisturbed for who knows how long in the hills of Andalusia, the entire structure was dismantled, stone by stone, at the behest of Hearst, or Hughes, or some other Great Man of American myth, and shipped overseas over a century ago to be reassembled here.

Obviously, something went terribly wrong.

No one’s ever been entirely sure what, but according to the stories, it was as though the church simply refused to be rebuilt. All the king’s architects and all the king’s engineers – and we’re talking about men at the top of their respective fields – could not put it back together again. You can see the numerous spots along the exterior walls where modern brick was used to patch the inexplicable gaps in the ancient stonework. The support beams crisscrossing the nave are a hodgepodge of wood reinforced with industrial steel. Even the bell tower stands at something of a slant. It’s almost imperceptible, but if you follow it upward, you’ll see how it seems to wilt away from the main roof. Most church spires are designed to point the way to heaven. This one directs you south southwest thereof…

Anyway, Hearst or Hughes, or whoever it was, cycled through various teams of elite professionals to no avail (they say, in fact, that the situation only got progressively worse), firing each, in turn, for failing to live up to their stellar reputations. The professionals, of course, were quick to blame the day laborers, most of whom were Spanish – or, at least, Hispanic – transplants working for a penny or two a day. I don’t know what they thought, that these already put-upon men were somehow spiriting away half-ton stones under cover of darkness? Or vindictively sanding down columns after hours? I suppose when you’re desperate enough to find fault, you’ll see it wherever is most convenient.

For their part, the laborers – most of whom were Catholic – blamed God. Or, maybe “blamed” isn’t the right word. They would whisper among themselves that the Lord Almighty, offended by Hearst’s, or Hughes’, or whoever’s hubris, had cursed the entire endeavor, dooming it to failure. (Though, if that were the case, one would have to wonder why He didn’t just impede the efforts to relocate the thing in the first place…)

The truth, as it so often is, is probably something much more prosaic: Someone forgot to move a decimal, or carry a one, and that one tiny error was enough to send everything else spiraling.

To me, that’s the essence of it.

The whole thing stands as a kind of object lesson: A reminder of all those devilish details lurking in the space between a blueprint and its end result. A monument to the ways in which the best laid schemes – even those of Titans – gang aft agley.

Seen in that light, perhaps that one tiny error was, in fact, the Lord at work. Mysterious ways and all that. Though, one would still have to wonder, to what end? Sure, some of us lowly serfs might perceive a moral in it, but if recorded history is to be believed, our legendary industrialists and entrepreneurs have never cultivated the habit of humility. Our entire civilization is founded on egomaniacal disregard. All He managed to accomplish was the erection of this architectural grotesque. And what good is that?

Maybe that’s what drew him here. Maybe this madness made manifest can’t help but be a magnet for exactly this sort of horror. For a person in his particular state of mind… Or, at least, what I presume his state of mind must have been… If not him today, someone else tomorrow.

It was just a matter of time…

Though, I suppose, that’s all anything is. Isn’t that what they say? Given enough time, anything can happen? And will happen eventually. Given enough time, everything becomes an inevitability. That’s why He made us mortal. Because of all the things we might do, all that we might become, given enough time. After all, there’s only so much of anything – even God’s creation – that any man can take…

An old philosophy professor of mine – this was, of course, back in the cretaceous, when I was just a student here – used to delight in reminding us that the universe, the whole of creation as we know it, was the result of a massive, violent blast, the echoes of which still reverberate across infinity, and we were fools if we believed that such an event could ever beget an existence free from fire and turmoil. Even the comparative tranquility of Genesis’, “Let there be light,” acquires the character of a detonation, he said, when one considers that our life-giving Sun blazes daily with the destructive force of billions of nuclear warheads. I timidly raised my hand and pointed out that, according to some polytheistic myths, the world was not brought into being with fire, or even light, but through divine sexual union. And he just grinned at me and said, “My point, exactly. We were fucked from the beginning.”

I wonder where he is now…

I’ll tell you something: I don’t know what – or, truthfully, even if – God is. The nature and purpose of the universe is as much a mystery to me as anyone. But, invariably, whenever some terrible event like this occurs, my wife – my sweet, good-natured wife – she will look at me, distraught, and ask, “What is wrong with people?” And part of me can’t help but think that maybe… Maybe nothing’s wrong.

Maybe this is just… what we are.

You know, I don’t think it’s ever been used as an actual church? Not since its arrival here, anyway. Not officially. An eccentric couple or two may have been married within its walls, but it was certainly never a part of any diocese. Probably safe to say that whichever preeminent plutocrat it was who ordered its relocation didn’t have it rebuilded here on this green and pleasant land for religious reasons. He probably didn’t give much thought to his reasons at all. Just unchecked avarice… And vanity…

That’s almost perversely proletarian of me, isn’t it? Thinking that some lost little man, abandoned by his reason, would have a better understanding of his motivations?

Once again, the more prosaic truth is that what happened today… He probably chose this place, not because of its bizarre history or architectural abnormalities, but simply because it was convenient. Nothing more or less than a matter of proximity. That’s why he chose us, after all, isn’t it? Chose them… Not because they held any special significance or meaning for him, but because they were here. They were available…

Why would he take any notice of it at all?

Hardly anyone does anymore. There was a time when it would draw a small, but steady stream of sightseers, like a lesser Winchester House, or… What’s that one up in Spring Green…? But, these days, with the campus having grown up around it, it tends to get a bit lost in the surrounding structures. Our dark secret…

Though, I suppose, that will change after today. Something like this… Everyone will be all too aware of it now.

Of course, they’ll see something different, won’t they?

Something else entirely…

MEDEA

Medea me dijo a mediodía,
‘Eres medio malo y más.’
Vi a su marido morir en el mar
Agarrando su masa de medallas.

‘Mis manos no están mojadas (le dije),
No soy el monstruo que le mató.
¿Pero merece mi misericordia
Cuando no renuncia a su oro?’

‘Tu justicia no mitiga mi miseria.
Tu melodía se mofa de mis lamentos.
Te has lavado limpio mientras yo estoy
Condenado a vivir en esa tormenta.’

‘Medea, tu tormento no es mío.
Aún así, somos una dupla.
Lo siento, pero no siento nada,
Pero eres el complejo de mi culpa.’

MIRACLES

We’ve never been the kind of folks
Who move on up to Easy Street.
No blessings of benevolence,
Our miracles are small, concrete.
Our open doors will offer only
Hardships, heartache, hate.
As we inch in right directions,
The world still has its weight.

JAMES SPECTOR

This stain of blood
Beneath the skin,
A plague on both your haunted houses
Ushering in
Each portent strain,
From fall to fall,
Congenital –
An unoriginal sin.

This looming shade
Behind the pane,
Hung heavy with inheritance
And streaked with rain,
Haunts every room,
From host to host,
Its shame exposed,
Giving up the ghost again.

And I would dismantle every father,
And dissolve descendency,
Exorcise ascendancy,
That I might never
Have to face
The only truth I know…

This spectral gaze
Channels as it dies –
An involuntary séance –
A heritage twice-
Haunted and twice-hexed,
Medium to monster,
Forgiven once
Delivered by demise.

And I would see my end in your eyes…
And I would lose myself in your eyes…
And I would disappear from your eyes…

And I would leave us with nowhere to hide.

COME

I’m overcome,
So come over.
Come over me.

What’s come over me?
Come over,
Overcome me.

Help me
Overcome me.
Come over,
And come over me.

THE AGE OF GRIEVING

Sometimes I feel so happy
I could commit suicide.

Blissfully sequestered in my attic*
(Like Anne Frank)
I hear the approaching thunder.
There is darkness at the door,
And when the bell tolls,
I pray it tolls for me
Alone.

Reflected in a cup of coffee:
“I have attained the age of grieving.”

*tragedy

HOPELESSLY HOPING

You say it will end well…?
Well…
I say it will not end.

You say we’ll come around…?
Look around.
We’re going round.

And the circles are not full,
Just thin lines differentiating space
From hollowness.

You say we can improve,
Proving we cannot
Move on from this mirage.

You say we’re good at heart,
Disheartened
By what is hardly good.

What is good is ill-defined
You will find
As you draw lines
Tracing brittle shapes
On blank pages.

You believe we can change,
And you will never change your mind.
You’re hoping, hopeless.

Your hoping hopeless.

You’re hopeless.

You are.

A FINE DANCE

Become hers
(Petit mort)
Come hearse
(Petty whore)
Commerce
(Pay you for)
A moment I can treasure
Alone.

A fine dance
(Ritual)
Find chance
(Eventual)
Finance
(Sensual)
It’s been a business doing pleasure
With you.

DESOLATION WAITS

I want to dance through Aokigahara
To the tapping of a wintry drum,
And stand exposed at the edge
Of the abyss, as it gazes
Into everything I’ve become.

Doesn’t matter what tomorrow may bring,
The day after will turn it to dust.
Nothing ever ends, it’s true.
But it’s all temporary
If you wait long enough.

THE TAO OF WATER

Shallow turbulence,
The violence of rivers
Rushing over rocks
Seems slight beside the sight of
Oceans lifted by the moon.

INTRODUCTIONS

Though quite contrary, I am no contrarian.
My constant contradictions consistently cohere.
But I’ll still make merry setting fire to your garden,
Then mock you for believing in what’s no longer there.

Though loose in your china shop, I’m no bully,
My disposition opposed to imposition through fear.
Charging red flags in the windows of your green glass houses,
Just to trample fragile flowers in the fresh and fragrant air.

Buzzing, burdensome and beastly, I am yet no gadfly:
Too distant from positions of power to be heard.
Impeding and misleading just to start you all stampeding,
Relinquishing the shelter of your shepherd’s shady words.

Though I claim no class, I am no iconoclast.
Art represents the only thing I’ve no desire to burn.
I’m just a tragic troll burning your bridges beneath you,
Making abstract ash of your material world.

UNTITLED

At the edge of the age of the adage,
Slipping down solipsistic slopes,
Charging blindly for something priceless,
Setting your fee for what’s free…

(And vice versa…)

The waves that await exact waivers.
You owe what you think you can own.
Dissolving in debt in the depths
Of what, once contained, ceases to be.

(Still vice versus…)

IMMATERIAL

Neither for heaven,
Nor utopia,
Do I wish to be divested
Of the corporeal.
Give me flesh and cables,
Abstraction kept in fables.
Purity is a prison
With no want of wardens.

The aesthetics of terrorism,
The grace of guerilla war:
Beauty, complexity, defiance,
To turn the world against civilization,
To bring civilization down to earth.
We have no uniform
But dress in black.

I. Immortal

Love never dies
                                                (she says)
And does not lie.

Lovers die.
At the hands of love.

Love

Whose thick-fingered embrace
Wraps the stem of throat
                                                (Stained and scarred by kisses

                                                Unforgettable)
Choking breath and blood
From her tear-streaked, ashen face.

Love

Whose strength of presence
Swells his bludgeon heart
                                                (Bruised and beaten in her absence

                                                Unbearable)
To grow there like a tumor.

Love

Immortal
When lovers have long since ceased,
                                                (They cannot touch

                                                They cannot touch…)
Their bodies forever bound
In harmony decay.

Love never dies
                                                (he says)
And does not lie.

Love only and forever kills,
The pain of truth
Burning in its fiery eye.

II. Let’s Not

The games begin. She holds the cards.
He smiles as he makes his play.
Her face will not betray her heart.
He’s given everything away.
But like a trick, the card is turned
To take her hand and call her bluff.
All he lost is now returned,
Surrendering:

I do not love.

Her reigning eyes have bridled him
With fantasies he must corrupt,
Abasing all affection in
The beating of a heart grown tough.
His hand drawn back, he hesitates.
She smiles and says, “I like it rough.”
Her masochism dominates,
And he submits:

I do not love.

She kneels before him in the dark.
Contrition burning in her blood,
Confession pries her lips apart,
Inviting his instruction’s rod.
Once purged of lust, her mouth is stopped.
He can’t absolve himself enough.
A benediction that cannot
Conceal his sin:

I do not love.

And once again, she feels the touch
That scarred her throat. Her face grows numb.
She gasps the name that she had once
Despised and shudders as she comes.
His grip intensifies. Her last
Breath lingers on his weary tongue.
A valediction for their past
Reveals his crime:

I do not love.

His last mile, he will walk alone.
No jury, judge, or witnesses
Can teach him what he’s never known.
His punishment is innocence.
Untouchable and unbroken,
He looks around, but there are none
To hear the last words spoken
By a man condemned:

I do not love.

[Originally unpublished circa 2003/2004]

(I) Dedication

Your heart, I miss…
My art, amiss…
Oh, Artemis,
Pardon this.

(II) Crescent

A photograph:
The heart-shaped flesh of your face has hollowed.
The full-figured warmth of your smile has narrowed.
The mischief of girlish dimples grown shallow.
Realization rendered in shadow.

Is it yours?

This artless portrait
Of stagnancy in time?
This ill-starred isolation
Of what has come to pass

                                                                (Only to remain)
                                                                                                                (Only to be)
?

Your eyes,
As ever –
Sad, deep wounds
In a lifeless vision
Brittle with maturity –

Wax mysterious
As ever,
Threatening to consume
This abysmal gaze
Fragile with memory.

Something has gone
Horribly wrong…

In reflection:
This pointed face hangs thick with indecision.
A stony scowl softened by its own derision.
A fist smeared in quintessent dissipation.
Outfaced in distant recognition.

Is it me?

This cratered visage
Disappearing into night?
An ill-met illumination
Of all that could have been

                                                                (Only to pass)
                                                                                                                (Only to fade)
?

I feel old,
On the wane,
As we arc this weary ambit
Shared and severed,
As if to follow

That pale glow
On the wane,
Whose tarnished brilliance fails
In its sliver phase
To light our way.

Were things different, I could have
Come home.

(III) Title

Yours is every salutation
Erased from missives unwritten,
Returned to silent senders
For promiscuous redirection.
I am a dead-letter criminal
Forged from good intentions,
Complimenting closure
With memorial malediction:
Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Gone.
But not forgotten…

I bring you tears without hesitation.

Yours is every enunciation
Of unblessed vows, long broken.
One Goddess for the fallen,
One faithless kiss kept as a token.
You still linger on these lips
Like a selfish prayer unspoken.
Your eternal name springs hopeless
From this cleft mouth unopened.
On the tip of my tongue…

Gone.
But not forgotten…

I drink your tears without hesitation.

Yours is every indentation
Of this passion’s insurrection,
Fading from ill-favored flesh
Reconfigured in reflection.
My absent scars bleed, sacrosanct,
Immortal with infection.
I am dying from the missing
And haunted by deception:
“Time heals all wounds.”

Gone.
But not forgotten…

I leave you in tears without hesitation.

(IV) Beautiful
[Inspired by the film, “The Stars are Beautiful” by Stan Brakhage]

The stars are ghosts:
One shines for every shattered dream –
Smoldering embers
In the hollow shell of being.

They haunt the sky
(As you, my mind)
Without relief.
Untouchable reminders
Dangling dead lives out of reach.

– Hanging –
– In cruel reprieve –

I cannot sleep
Nor wake (for want of absent nights),
Under unrelenting spaces
And silent, mocking lights.

I cannot breathe
For fear of scenting perfumed flesh
Burning beautiful and cold
In constellations immaculate.

– Reaching –
– Into the infinite –

And I cannot escape
But to collapse this heart’s façade,
Ripping every bleeding light
From the shining face of God.

(V) January

First sting of shifting season
Pierces mourning air.
First light of ashen dawn
Sears the drying eye
With icy glare.

Awake Again

I can see my breath
In the rise of a pale sun:

An exhalation
Sharp with frost,
Dulled in dissemination
By diaphanous despair.

An inverted death
Perverting
The birthing
That we share.

Born after the Fall…

To this turning of our ripening lives,
Soft with wear;
To glimmerings of shrinking days
That slip and fade
To nights unshared.

To live as vivid leaves
From livid trees
Twisting outward
To escape their knotted roots.

A legacy of descent…

Drifting haunted,
Drifting hunted,
Dropping cradled
In the lost scent:

The rank perfume
Of rotted branches
Hanging bare.

A legacy of descent…

Memory’s morning heir
To the winter born…

A cursed birth:
W(h)ither
Life
Without…

For on this dying day, I did not see you.
And in observance of this

Absent Anniversary,

A prayer.
A fire.

This heart,

A hearth,
A pyre

To burn all leaving lives,
To cloud the eyes,
To mask the skies.

Next season,
To be spared

A love born to death eternal.

(VI) Mystery

This flicker of film
Is all that remains:
A brief illumination
Condemned to uncertainty,

Like the single strand of red
Against the white tiled floor.

Like the sudden scent of skin
Haunting arid air.

You have never been here.
But a trace remains…

In the corner of the frame –
Caught between these fractured moments
In time –

A veiled face:
Cigarette smoke
Obscures the lopsided smile
Spreading Cheshire-like
Against the shadows.

A glimpse of tattooed flesh
Creeps over velvet borders
In defiance of recognition.

There is no solution.
There is nothing behind.

No miracle.
No moral.

Just illusion,
Projected from an unfocused mind.

The undeveloped image
Captures the eyes,
Enticing them to follow
As it disappears into blackness

Without end.

[Originally unpublished circa 2003/2004]

II

Perched with blessed wings on stone
In wasted vigil.
The humbling of grievous rain.

An angel’s mourning.

Prayer’s diseased discharge drips dry
From sacred eyes:
Supplication’s anguished sleep
Stained with hallowed names.

Gathered gouged and glamorous
In slipshod worship.
The trembling of idol hands.

A devil’s playground.

Last rites laughed loose-lipped and left
In tomb’s neglect.
Commemoration’s unclean wound
Infected with despair.

Slumped, with heavy wings of stone,
On wasted blessings.
The tumbling of idol threats.

A God’s remains.

Eternity decays in this burial place,
At a funeral’s pace.
Salvation’s mausoleum stench
Fills our hollow senses.

Drowned in falling reign.

IV

To find my own way.
To take a trip
With a chance of deepest fall,
And only one fate left to tempt.

To shed the shapely past,
Scrape memory clean,
Leave behind all castles dreamed
As they float like nothing far above.

To force myself darker.
A powerful urge –
A seeking, self-destructive surge.
It’s not over underneath.

I’m not over
Anything.

To force my own path
Of least resistance.
A desperate season’s dying difference:
I will not defend myself.

To shape my shredded days
In to life ever last,
Found below the heavy earth
As it turns towards stillness in weighted time.

To find my own end
Without landing,
In a fall of deepest chance,
And only one dream left to dive for.

I’m not over

This life…

V

Smoke and stale tobacco lingers
Tasted on his teeth and tongue,
A burning in the bleeding throat
As deep as to the blackened lungs.

Sucking himself ever inward,
Collapsing, silent, like star,
In pursuit of calm combustion
To cauterize internal scars.

A state of numb decay to deaden
Pain of ever-present past,
Remembered empty in reflection
Smiling darkly through the glass.

Grave and grey, the face endures.
It’s forced and faded crumbling grin
A cheerful monument to mask
The cemetery kept within.

A ruined memorial of cinders
Whose smoldering gaze betrays his art:
A reddening of the drying eyes
As deep as to the dying heart.

VI

This loathsome growth that lives and breathes
(As we breathe life as lies)
Consumes compassion’s cruel disease
To cure the clotted eyes
– To clear the clouded eyes –
That have learned only to despise.

We are the tumors equally
That feast on hollow lives.

This loathsome life that lives and feeds
(As we live lies as breath)
Decomposes piece by piece.
Remains are all that’s left,
Reminding all that’s left
Of wretched lifetimes to forget.

We are the maggots equally
That nurse at dying flesh.

This growth is loath to live in peace
(As we lie, breathing life)
And punishes the souls that seek
To stop the step of time
– To scar the scape of time:
A history of flesh chastised.

We are the wounds equally
That run to bleed us dry.

This life is loath to grow and breed
(As we live in our breath).
The breeding kind are sowing seeds
To harvest dying next:
The heart that dying next
Dies deceived that life is best.

We are the world equally
That engineers our death.

[Originally unpublished circa 2003/2004]

I. Spring Sonnet

In this spring of April’s cruelest days
And lilacs in the dooryard bloom’d once more,
This life that lay reposed in winter clay
In weary resurrection is restored.
Reborn again to rise in falling rain,
These roots are not renewed; they run too deep.
For though my face is drenched, my heart is drained.
My tears will salt the Earth as heaven weeps.
Like Echo, love grows faint with repetition,
As color fades from each Narcissus flower,
Whose season’d stem recoils in recognition,
And spits back in God’s face a life grown sour.
Condemned to live in this world without end. Amen.
More full of rage than you can comprehend…

II. Rite of Spring

These eyes,
Alight in the glistening of tardy dawn,
Will cast your shining new-sprung form
In the molten bronze of daylight hours
Against the winter saved.

As wool begins to slip from skin,
These feet tread bare on softened earth,
As though the first to touch this garden,
Wet with warm spring rain.

And with each press, the sound of breath,
The scent of life and taste of dew
Linger o’er this mingling flesh
The cold has yet to know.

Laid bare to feel Apollo’s touch:
And exhibition of the flame
That burns too bright to know the need
To roll away the stone.

III. Rose of Sharon

O, to sin by dancing!
And in that sin, to cry
For a music ever madder
And a redder, stronger wine…

Is it true love’s milk is better
Than a wine as strong as death
For one so sick and desolate?
Those vineyards, I’ve not kept…

I stay myself with flagons
And starve myself with grapes
Of winter’s withered wrath
And dying, lie in wait

To feel you lay beside me,
Your hand cradling my head;
Trading gall for human kindness
There against your breast.

“Arise, my love,” you smile,
“My fair one, come away.”
A song as warm as sunlight
And gentle as the rain…

Your face dwells in my future
Risen from the dead.
The seeds of new life sown by
One mysterious scarlet thread.

Gazing upward like your child,
Looking deep into your eyes:
Do we dare to sin by acting
And renew this land run dry?

O, lily of the valley!
Lily among thorns,
Call this hart down from the mountain,
And let him be reborn!

[Originally unpublished circa 2003/2004]

I live in a box.

It’s a small box. At times, it’s not an especially comfortable box. And there was a time in my life when all I could think about was getting out. But I’ve been here for such a long time, now… Maybe it’s a little confining. Maybe I can’t stretch out in all the ways I would like. And maybe it limits my experiences. But, the truth is, it’s my box. It’s the box I know. The box I’ve always known.

I do everything inside the box. I sleep inside the box. I eat inside the box. And, yes, because I know you’re already cracking the joke, I think inside the box. I spend a lot of time thinking…

When I was a child, I used to pee out of the box. I thought it was funny. Sneaky. Mischievous. People tolerate that sort of thing from children. I don’t think anyone would find it funny if I did that now…

My parents used to tell me that, when I got older, I would be able to leave the box. That, if I was patient, and true to myself, one day, I would find myself living outside the box. But I’m an adult now. And my parents are long gone, buried in their own boxes. And I’m still here.

It’s not that I’ve never been outside my box. There was a time in my life when all I think about was getting out.

I know it’s a cliché, but I have to admit, it was all because of a girl.

She had a box of her own.

We used to talk to each other from inside our boxes. We’d describe them to each other. Sometimes, we’d stay up all night whispering to each other about what life was like inside our respective boxes. I spent a lot of time imagining what her box must be like.

But there came a point when imagination was not enough. I wanted to see her box with my own eyes. I wanted to know what it felt like to be inside of her box. I wanted, even if only for a moment, to share that space with her. And maybe show her mine.

“Can I come inside your box?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said, “What if it’s not safe?”

“Isn’t it worth the risk?” I asked.

“But what if I lose you? You’re my only friend,” she answered.

“I’ll go slow,” I assured her. “I’ll be careful.”

Cautiously, I climbed over the edge, and for the first time, stood outside my box. I looked around at all the others. No one else was out of their box. Momentarily distracted, I wondered if any of them could see me. I wondered if I was going to get in trouble. I felt exposed. And scared. And, for a brief second, very alone.

“Are you there?” I called to her.

“I’m here,” she said.

“Can I… come inside your box?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “What if you decide you don’t like me?”

“I want to be with you,” I said firmly.

After a pause, she said, “I want to be with you, too.”

I held out my hand, and she helped me into her box.

It’s hard to describe the experience. I saw and felt so many things I had never seen or felt before. Things I didn’t know existed. I fell asleep in her box that night. And the night after. And the night after that.

For a long time, we shared her box. We lived closer to each other than I ever thought possible. It felt like we shared a life. But one day, she said to me, “I don’t want you in my box anymore.”

I asked her why.

“Because I no longer feel like it’s mine.”

“Where should I go?” I asked.

“Back to your box.”

“How can I,” I asked, “now that I’ve been here for so long?”

“It’s your box,” she replied, “and it shouldn’t be empty.”

I had an idea.

“Maybe,” I suggested, “we can find a bigger box. A box that could belong to both of us.”

“But what would happen to my box?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would happen to yours?”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“This isn’t your box. You don’t have a right to be here.”

“But…”

“Things can be like they were. We can be friends. Inside our separate boxes.”

I started to have the craziest thoughts.

“Maybe we don’t need to be in boxes at all. Maybe you and I can leave together and live outside of our boxes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “People need their boxes. You can’t live outside your box. Not for long.”

“I have.”

“Because you’ve been in mine.”

I was quiet for a long time.

Finally, I offered, “Do you want to come with me? To my box?”

“It would never be where I belonged,” she said.

I nodded.

Slowly, sadly, I climbed out of her box. Standing out in the open this time, I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t feel as exposed. I stood for a while and looked over all the other boxes. All their different sizes and shapes. Everyone’s box was different.

And there was my box, where it had always been. Empty.

I wondered for a moment if I would be happier in someone else’s box. I wondered if some of the boxes were better than others. But then, I realized, it doesn’t matter which box is better. It only matters which box fits.

I climbed into my box. And it was the same. Maybe small and uncomfortable. But familiar.

Sometimes, when it’s very late, I’ll find myself thinking about leaving my box again. But then I think, where would I go…? What would be the point? She was right. My box is where I belong. It’s what I know. My place is here.

Do me this favor, though: When I die, don’t bury me in my box.

Just leave me there inside.

And burn it.

[Originally unpublished in 2016]

There is nothing I can do.

There was a time when, perhaps, I could have gotten involved. Changed things. But no longer… Still…

I watch them now and wonder if I made a terrible mistake.

They talk about bringing life into the world as though it were never less than beautiful. And it is beautiful. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, right? But it is also terrible. It is a terrible, terrible burden. A terrible, terrible responsibility. It was easier when I had more control, but that was exactly the point wasn’t it? At some point, you have to relinquish your control. You have to stop interfering and let them make their own choices. You can’t even really interject yourself as a guide or advisor. At some point their lives really do have to become their own. Otherwise, what’s the point?

But how does one stand by and watch them destroy themselves?

Yes, their choices will have consequences, and part of giving them their independence is not shielding them from those consequences, but even unto death?

How can it not be, ultimately, my responsibility?

How did I think this would end? You don’t create something knowing where it’s going to end up. Part of the thrill of creation is not knowing, isn’t it? Is that why I did it…? You go into it knowing that nothing lasts forever, but that seems so meaningless when the end actually arrives and you have to stand by and witness it. What did I think was going to happen?

I could have done things differently, I suppose, but what’s the point of thinking about that now?

I hear them praying. Oh, how they pray. And I think, if I had the power to do something, I would not be able to refuse. But I no longer have that power. I think I never should have had that power. That’s why I gave it up.

It seemed the only ethical act for an omnipotent being: Use your power to make yourself no longer omnipotent. Because the temptation is just too great. I made so many mistakes, at first… Now, at least, my mistakes can’t harm anyone.

Ah, well… They were such a clever little species…

[Originally unpublished in 2019]