The Secret

The room is condensed and square, it has the stuffiness of an old Soviet indoor pool that has grown stale and humid since the fall.  The air is stagnant and unmoving, the concrete walls and floor are moist and wet, a smell of musty water permeates the whole space. Though it is not immediately apparent, the stench creeps in, infecting clothing and skin so that not even a good scrub can cover its heavy perfume. 
For all the aura of still-standing water, there is no pool. One wonders just how many years the floors have been slick, and why is the concrete ceiling covered in small beads of moisture, like a blanket of hanging fruit, when there is no obvious water source?
Glenda can only see the sweating walls and the gleaming cement floor because of a few opaque glass covered bulbs attached to the wall behind her.  They give off just enough light for the room to look washed in a haze of gray. 
In fact, she’s not really paying much attention to the space, she’s aware of the dampness and the air which is hard to breath, but her attention is fixed on the paper bag.  The crumpled bag is wrapped up tight in plastic, like someone was trying to make sure the contents did not spill.
Glenda’s punching it, throwing it down as hard as she can, kicking it, stomping it, doing whatever she can to make sure the person she killed and stuffed into the bag is actually dead. Her thick black boot heel slams into the bag over and over.
She picks it up and hurls it towards the wall- the sound of it smashing into the wall is abrupt and ends without echo, like it has landed upon an already dead surface. Another kick.  She’s just got to make sure it’s dead, the fear of it somehow managing to escape the bag, coming insidiously to extract its revenge keeps her moving quickly, it provides the strength for another stomp and punch.
As she obliterates the bag, she can sense the shadow behind her, the friend she cannot see.  Even if she turned around there would be no shape or color. The dark shadow of her companion he could not describe even if needed, but it is there, filling up the corners with presence.

It is night and there are crickets out in the bushes adding a comforting sound to the darkness. Glenda is in a familiar front yard. This is suburbia, she has been here before, but she could never tell you when, she really doesn’t remember. 
The house is twenty feet away and dark, not even the porch light is on, but the moon is nearly full and she can see the carefully sculpted landscape- the trees and the low growing bushes, the decorative grasses close to the front door.  She has been here many times and she easily takes a few steps down into the dry landscaped creek that runs along the front side of the property. There is a small Monet-style bridge made of wood that crosses the creek. 
She takes the brown paper bag- covered in another plastic bag- and pushes it into a small black space where the earth and bridge meet. She can see the pink of her hand as it pushes the bag into the darkness.

The motel room is drenched in yellow light, looking somewhat elegant as the light plays off the textured wallpaper and the maroon carpet.  Glenda’s little white dog is sitting on a fabric covered chair and her dark shadow companion is once again filling in the corners of the room behind her. 
It takes her a moment to realize that the dog has found the bag – didn’t she leave it under a bridge?  The bag is chewed and torn, little bits of white plastic and crumpled brown paper are on the ground and on the chair seat. 
She can hear a voice in her mind: 
“The thing you try and hide is the thing that keeps popping up.”
She knows it's there, in the bag, the secret.

There is a central market in the middle of town.  Set up inside an old cement building that has survived two civil wars and a host of international conquests (all eventually unsuccessful) is a bustling scene. Instead of concrete, as one would expect of an indoor market, there is black water.  It is deep enough water to support all the canoes laden with fish and fresh produce and the giant mangoes that have just come into season.
Whether it is vendor or seller, everyone moves around in a canoe. The water is black with ripples of white reflected from the overhead florescent lights embedded in the ceiling over three stories up. The sound of the market is alive with bartering and the gravely voices of long-time smokers trying to get the best price for their hand-picked crops.  
Glenda and the shadow paddle out to the middle of the frenzy, knocking against the sides of other canoes as everyone tries to move around, like fish in a very small bowl limited to the surface. 
Glenda picks up the brown paper bag, bringing it out of the shadows by her feet.  She holds the bag in front of her, for the first time looking calmly at the folds, the crinkles in the paper now worn and dirty. 
Reaching in, she pulls out a long bone with some reddish brown muscle still attached.  She hands it to the shadow in front of her.  Reaching in once again, she pulls out a similar bone and takes a bite. Together they consume it all until what they hold is white and bare.  She takes both bones and tosses them overboard, she hears a splash and feels them descend into the black water beneath them.

A Death of Scattered Signifiers

The truth could never be given with a word. It could never be understood with a sentence or on the pages of this text. And maybe you wouldn’t understand, but maybe you would, and if you do, then take my hand as I reach from the grave. I started writing months ago, and what began as a rant became more, and what began as therapy became even more until I saw the dark cloud that loomed on the horizon. It wouldn’t go away when I blinked; even when I cried and cut my fists, it was always there, steady and silent, waiting for me to truly understand. It was black and hard and I knew therapy could not fix it, words could not fix it, but I tried anyway, because I had to.

They just don’t get it. You can spell it out in big words,
And little words
And black and white
And you can make it as simple as possible
And they just don’t get it.
Now they call you demented
And your wife apologizes for you
And someone wonders if you were having marital problems.
But you told them, and you used a few cuss words and your rage was palpable,
But that’s life, that’s anger at injustice, that’s red blood pumping and pumping and pumping.
And they’re calling you demented and crazed,
They’re as blind as you thought, and even spelling it out did not help.
Their eyes are gone and they just cannot see the dots and lines,
but you tried.
You wrote it.
You told them.
Your wife does not get it.
Years and years, hidden under sheets. Years of sweat and tongue and she still doesn’t understand.
And that’s what makes me sad.
You left behind a black charred body, you tried to scream, a final exclamation point in your crash,
But they just shake their heads…another lunatic.
Your sacrifice was for a point the sheep cannot see.
There will be no legions behind you,
No revolution
No violence.
Tax day is coming and the post office will be full and the stamps will carry our money away on wings,
And little will change.
Your sacrificed life will mean so little.
Your death will be a ripple in the ocean, so faint and distant it could be nothing at all.
And that’s what’s makes my heart want to bleed.
The malls are full.
The battles wage on.
The machine grinds steady.
The freeways are crowded.
The money keeps flowing.
You could not change it.
Can it be changed?

My heart has grown weary from the failures. All the fathers have crumbled. The lies are out and as I stare, I vomit and watch them grow. Children still recite the Pledge of Alliance out of synch and they still teach that Columbus discovered America even though it was refuted so long ago. They just cannot change ignorance. Young men still sign on the dotted line, believing in honor and the vision of Country. But I can see all those cracks, not one has escaped me and I cry for the innocence I once knew and I have turned hard while the lights of florescent bulbs flicker. It is all too much. They are all lies, each one of you in suits, each one of you beneath stripes and stars. How dare you speak? You white skinned, white haired, blue eyed liars. And while those men die in roadside bombs for corporations they will never know, profiting people they will never meet, I am prepared to die. The band plays behind me, and I am a patriot. I am a revolutionary in a forgotten country of words without substance. Add me to the pile if there is anything left. Follow if you can, and if you cannot, read my words.

(Text inspired by Joe Stack’s suicide note.)

Using Time

I smiled as we approached the corner. Ahead of us in the dark night was the circular shaped building I had always wanted to enter. I had seen it years ago, I had watched couples walking towards its wide open doors, I had seen the warm yellow light of the interior cast into the street, the people inside, just beyond the thin window panes. Now I would be that vision for another curious girl, in another car, as she passed down Van Ness on her way towards nowhere. The imposing size of the symphony hall took up a good chunk of the city corner with its massive cement walls and long, rectangular glass windows which offered a fractional slice of its inner vibrancy to the world as a silent gift.
Once inside, we walked up three levels of carpeted stout steps to the outer narrow lobby that wound along the outside of the auditorium. Between the outer lobby and the inner chamber was another narrow curved hallway. Every hundred feet along the interior wall was a door that led to the deep auditorium. On the outer wall were doors that led to the exterior lobby and to the long flight of stairs that would take us to the street. The inner hallway was lit along the outer wall by circular shaped lights that seemed like crystal covered portholes that fragmented the daylight into a kaleidoscope of shapes.
We followed the usher down a row of deep narrow stairs to our seats and I experienced the slightest bit of vertigo as a looked at all the tiered seats below us. The auditorium was arranged like posh rice paddy fields that descended into the wide-open space surrounding a smooth wooden stage with built-in tiers for an absent symphony.
A few rows away I watched two girls approaching and recognized myself…but wasn’t I here? In this chair? “Those girls have my same hair,” I said smiling. “I have no interest in talking about your hair, just be here with me.” I fought back the tears that sprang up, the machine feeling slightly reprimanded. My stomach felt a little queasy. I took a deep breath in, beginning in the stomach and then filling the space of the chest…VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. The murmur of the room was loud. There were words coming from the people behind us, they were loud, their words came in and out without understanding, I recognized the sounds, the words, but I didn’t latch on, they went through me like clouds. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. The woman in front of me was reading a newspaper, there were photos of a beach. On the tier below us and towards the center of the room, was a man standing by the entrance to the balcony seats. He was wearing a black tuxedo and a bow tie, his hands were clasped in front of him, as though waiting for a command. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of the air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. Across the space of the great wide auditorium, there was another man, dressed in a similar tuxedo, he stood silhouetted against the illuminated rectangle behind him, the open door. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of the air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within.
There was a pretty girl with long hair several rows down, a man with a pony tail just a few seats from me on the left…he reminded me of someone, but his beard was much too trim to be an exact match. The voices behind us peaked into a raucous chorus of laughter. Then the lights dimmed and the room was full of applause as a man in a suit introduced the three band members of the quartet. As the applause peaked with enthusiasm at what was coming, a man stepped onto the wooden stage. He was thin, slightly frail, in a suit that, from our distance, looked maroon. The musicians gathered in their appointed positions. The young drummer went to a slightly raised platform and sat on his stool, gathering the two wooden sticks in his hand. The guitarist nestled his instrument on his lap and beneath his arm and found a comfortable place on a tall stool. He reclined against it, not exactly sitting. One of his feet remained on the stage, the other balanced on the rung of the metal stool. The bassist stood behind his instrument, he put his arms around it, about to dance, about to show her a good time. He was ready, in his black pants and collared black shirt with the top two buttons undone. And then the man in front, the man described to me as a living legend, a demigod among the mortals. He stood closer to us than the rest, just a few feet in front of the bassist and guitarist who stood across from each other, the drummer was a few steps back but centered. The four of them made the shape of a square cross.
The man in front picked up his saxophone, beside him was a trumpet and violin. This was Ornette Coleman. There was silence as the applause died. The men on the stage held the silence with us as well, then burst into a frantic bout of noise. I was immediately lost. The sounds seemed to slap me in the face, moving fast, repeatedly, hitting me again on the other side before I had time to completely fall over. It felt like a storm. A big messy storm. I heard my brain say that I couldn’t hear them. I wondered if it was the room, but wasn’t it designed with acoustics in mind? Was it me? The CD I heard earlier in the day sounded clearer…I thought of my mother saying there were better Italian restaurants in LA after she returned from Italy. The piece abruptly ended and I clapped along with everyone else. The second piece began more slowly, a little more moody and seductive. I focused on the drummer, then closed my eyes to try and hear him moving with the other three.
I opened my eyes, I looked slightly to the right and saw him holding her hand. Immediately my body tensed. He was not touching me. I let the breath come into me slowly. NO, No. Do not fuck this up. Breathe. Pay attention to the music. The sound of the saxophone was high, seeming to screech. I closed my eyes. I listened. Yes. The bass. I like the bass. I tuned in. Song after song passed. Then I noticed that his hand was on her knee. His other hand rested on his left knee. I brought my knees closer, I tried to position myself close to him, so that his hand would come casually to mine, but it did not. When the song ended, he leaned over with a smile and gave me a kiss. I smiled, wondering if my eyes revealed my thoughts.
I watched the drummer, whose shirt was showing signs of dampness. He was a monster, tapping, moving, striking, there was so much variance, then I listened to the bass, I tried to hear it, I closed my eyes and tried to find it through the melody and the violin and the drums. But then I looked over at her knee, and I saw his hand there. “I just cannot do this. He really does love her more. He really does. I never spend the night, and he loves her more. It is always like this. Always. Oh my god. Ok.” I let out a sigh. A tear began to form on my right eye. I took a long deep breath, I felt my chest. “May the result of this small sacrifice be for the benefit of all beings everywhere.”
BAIIIoooooo….Ornette called me back with his saxophone. Come back, listen to me. I closed my eyes, I listened. It got deeper. I felt sleep tugging at me and I fell deeper into the sounds. It seemed to get louder. Was it me? The song ended and he leaned in again and gave me a kiss. His smile was bright, he was having a good time. But why wouldn’t he touch my leg? “He really loves her more. It is just so simple.” A long deep sigh. The drums…the bass…his hand on her knee. I looked at the filled seats around me, the bodies, the shape of the theater. I felt myself in the auditorium. I felt myself as a body. “Do you always want to be like this? Do you want to remain trapped in this body, in this realm? In this fucked up mantram that cannot let you pay attention to the music?” I didn’t. I knew that. Each one of these thoughts was the jealous machine that just couldn’t believe it was loved despite its foibles. I closed my eyes again. My head was moving. I realized I was bobbing to the beat of the bass… was that right? I wondered if I did this often, I wondered if the drummer had his own rhythm, if there were multiple beats to bob to. My head moved and I heard the screech of the violin enter. I tried to listen to the melody of the guitar, but it seemed the most buried. Then there was a fast little melody of the saxophone, then the response of the guitar, only slightly higher, then the response again of the saxophone, now higher than the guitar, it went higher and higher three times. I smiled, hearing it, happy that I had. “His hand, her knee.”
And then the three musicians quieted slightly while the guitar rose. I heard him clearly. Then the guitar faded while the bass became the center of attention. “Oh no. It’s over. It’s ending. I spent so much time begin jealous, I didn’t spend enough time listening. This little life is over. I wasted so much of it. I am here in this auditorium, I am here, in this body, I couldn’t focus on what was here, I spent so much time focusing on what was not happening. What I wanted, what was being fulfilled, what wasn’t. I wasted the life. If I don’t stop the habit, I will really be looking back, if I am lucky, sixty years from today, thinking the same thing.”
And then it was over. The lights came on and we walked out into the cold air of the night, staring from the balcony to the lighted citadel on top of the capitol building.

I Never Knew

I rode slow moving buses and efficiently romantic trains. There were ticket stubs from planes and boats. Through long roads in the back of a pickup truck and down deserted dirt roads. I swam in warm blue watered beaches and jumped from torrential waterfalls. I searched. In the desert, beneath the blackened moon, I danced with the hope of something more. With every salty tear, I longed for the meaning. The questions? The answers? Someone? Something? I hoped, I knew, I looked. I wandered. I cut my heart to bits in the search from human to human. My little body was propelled by a restless urge. Little feet moved to the song of unheard lullabies. Almond eyes scoured for a glimmer of light amongst the vacant stares and drooling gestures. In the window reflections, with the philosophizing hobos and street urchins. I talked and read and cried. I hoped, I dreamed of the challenge, of the uncompromising, of the unordinary. Of true love. Of meaning.
And as I wandered and stumbled, as I flew and ran and skipped and crawled…I somehow found it. On a southbound train amidst the masses of machines and beneath the heavy burden of mortgages, 401k plans, suits and slumber. I found it. The knowledge. The gate. The signs were black, almost hidden in the night, just a smile and a long white finger pointing to the left.
And it is here, enveloping me. Smothering me, its arms, its tentacles, its heavy clutches are inside, poking at every hole and wound. I am here, I could never have imagined. This is what I desired. This was the meaning for the search. This was my hope and this is hard. Harder than I could have ever imagined.
I am hauling trees, carrying my wounded body. I am in battle. I am my constant enemy. I am my only hope. I am the worker and the builder of coffins and steel cages. Speak to me in the language of feathered friends and secretive cold winds. On the brink of many tears, I spill my energy like wine. En par with careless sorority girls and dirty men. I spill and blunder, staining the marbled floor. There are red footprints, fossils of breasts. In this clear cage, this brilliant cage. This darkened cell. This moment of lightness and love. This pit of self pity and red fear. The words of my parents, the lessons of school and movies. The glances from strangers, the energetic patterns of old lifetimes and meaningless collections of clutter.
I am in this maelstrom. These bits spiral around me in an endless dance. I stare, fear brimming from every hole, tears spilling like the rivers of Egypt. I never knew it would be like this. Never thought the secrets could be so hard. This is it. This is not the liberating paradise, the free-for-all love bash. This is not calm, this is not tranquility.
This is the edge. The place where every fear and sorrow exists, the place where love is easily forgotten, but it can also be Seen. On this edge, it is felt for the first time. This is the building of the Real. Solid and changing. Opalescent and invisible. Cluttered and shifting into nothing. The masks of image dance. They show off in their parades of spectacle and perversion. They feed on my channels of hate. These boats scour the coast side, waiting for a moment; they come often and quickly, biting in hard before I can scream. Huddled and shocked, I lay on the dirt path, just steps from the gate. I am here, filled with dread, filled with fear, riddled with tears.
And there is only one option. I must move forward. The knowledge is nowhere else. The secrets are ahead and about, but they are not free. Each step is a motion away from death, a thousand demons hold my legs. A thousand dirty hands grab the tendrils of my hair. Red marks cover my buttocks, lashings have severed parts of my heart. But there is no turning back. There is a cord, a golden chain that keeps me from running. Tethered somewhere in the distance, I can feel your heart urging me forward. I take another step and try to remember myself.

A Thousand Years

I have strolled here for a thousand years.
Moving beside these blue mountains like a shadow in hiding,
moving in the darkness to escape my own face.
The mirror is frightening, each glimpse becomes a new horror
of hollowed eyes and flaming hair.
I escape myself at each turn,
and each lifetime piles upon the next.
Piles and stacks, mostly of red and yellow,
but faint sparks of blue shine from the furthest star.
Un-countable, like the bodies of battle,
but these have suffered from sleep.
With each new birth, my image becomes an ingenious disguise.
Like all the others I buried,
the enormity of Darkness always seems to settle upon my skin.
Each pore moves softly to accept the dew,
like a whore with a thousand open mouths, we drink.
We drink the waterfalls that pour from us.
From engraved goblets, the dragons toast their assent,
they curse my fall.
They await my rising.
Laugh at my death.
Dance at my birth.

The Monster

The monster is loose again.
She was in hiding for a couple days, into the woods she went, trudging the soggy paths, up to her chin in fir needles and hidden shadows. Covered in soot, she had found berries and winged mushrooms, after eating which, she saw it all clearly. She rested in the hollows of trees, where the sun never warmed the moist wood, where golden rays have never entered, with no hope of making love through the growth inside. She burrowed in the darkness, feeding on worms and others in exile.
Her rest was needed, she had been banished, momentarily, while the one she normally served- that’s how she thought of it- was on a higher cloud. The girl, normally quite troubled had suddenly found her smile, she was laughing and letting the troubled waters wash over her like warm Mexican waters on a soft moonlit night. The monster had been exiled, although, at the time, she was not too worried; it was only a matter of time until she regained her strength.
There would come a moment, all too soon, when she would be called back. Not by the voice of the girl, but by another force within her. The monster nestled, waiting for the sickening feeling to come through her. She waited until the moment was ripe with foul blood, until her host was weak and unattended.
Soaring high, with all her inexperience, there would be a crucial moment, when all was open, and that’s when the monster would strike. From the shadow lands she crawled mightily, lurching through a hundred realms like the unstoppable force of destruction and creation that she had trapped in her tiny heart. Both possible under the right circumstances. And she, the lovely monster, chose to destroy. They both chose it, only one never saw it coming. The girl was a willing collaborator, just more unconscious, more naive in the powers of betrayal that dwelt within and without her realm. The monster chuckled, popping saved worms and berries into her tooth filled mouth, savoring the creative combination of tastes.
Yes, the job is still needed, the position wide open. When the girl falls, the other will enter, leaving victims in her wake. Tears will fall, oh yes, they will land in puddles that take the shape of all the other waiting demons, so close to the surface they take a multitude of ingenious shapes. In the cereal bowl, in the swirl of tea leaves. Always there, always a friendly reminder that they wait. They have been there all along, the girl thinks they’re leaving now? Not without a fight! A real fight for will and presence, and one will have to be destroyed.