Dig In

Dig in with my feet. Dig in with those callused hands cracking and smelling of blood and iron.
Those hands of yours with the roses sprouting from below the white nails are leading to my bed where the sockets sizzle and burn, sometimes exploding like certain moments in a hot jungle with a stove nearby and a woman in a blue uniform caressing the colored light between us. Ouch, the fire of electricity snaps me up. Eyes, open. We know where we are.
Eyes open, we look out the window together and regard the little bird at the top of the tree. Ouch.  Another slap and yes, I am listening.  There is nothing that hurts more than a blind ear.  A deaf eye.  A mute look.
We stare out the window.  Stare.  Stare and state the purpose. Bird out on the tree, sitting on the tippy top, bending the last of that cypress flare.
What hurts more?  Out the window, looking in this bed and discovering the world beneath the covers.  Covers are for the modest and asses out- the narrow light coming through the window catches us, immodest and glaring white and covered with hair. 
The savages have come with urine scented hair and teeth, the shamans rarely stand on hilltops with white robes. No- the tribe has arrived, beautifully described with yellow teeth hanging from rope necklaces made of human hair- skulls used easily as drinking cups. All manner of earthly remains used for decorations and I was hoping to get one for the small altar.
Pain is my friend, without it I forget.  Without it I would forget myself in this warm house covered in sugar and red and white candies and the fluff of terrycloth and inertia. Pain is nothing my friend. Pain is everything.
I look into your eyes, share that spark once again.  The sockets will be jealous as will the memory of a story in my mind.
Can they see us now? Our colors pouring out the small shaft not always meant for light- grunting and brutal- the light hits us from behind, illuminating our forms on the white walls, casting a shadow that travels out and up- beating against the wall of the room, radiating out out out and up up up until we no longer recognize it, have forgotten what was done on the bed in the name of pain and practice and exchange. 
But the clouds are there and have been since we began, and they seize it all up and turn it into seed and send it back.

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.

The Change

I sit here, my mind playing, bouncing between two sides of a colored spectrum.  The question lingers, reverberating through every memory as I sift through the contents of three known decades in seconds and wonder about other lifetimes on the fringes of easily lost dreams. 
Did I make the decision to take it in, or did it chose me? I, an open vessel, lights blinking, looking for port.  Did I decide to take it in one day while peeling apples at the kitchen counter, old tiles all stacked full of fruits and old melons rescued from the bin?  Was it a choice? 
The thoughts roll though me as I stare at the moon.  A cool summer breeze full of jasmine and tangible teenage memories of long midnight walks flows past me, igniting the soft skin on my arms. I stare at the moon, awash in its pale calming glow.  The lights around blink as distant worlds do. 
Do choices begin or are they like stones tumbling in the ocean current, bumping off one red-haired mermaid and another until you find yourself in an unfamiliar house in a foggy city, surrounded by people you’ve known for years but seem like newly-acquainted strangers. 
I squint my eyes and look for the trail.  Just how did I get here and what is this?  I think back- when did the choice come?  When the doors opened with a small ding?  When I went down, skirting the equator by just a few hundred miles?
I was looking for something then.  I searched for it in the eyes of every person I saw, looked for it in unfamiliar cities and in the arms of strangers. When did the doors open?  Each choice begets the next and they lap against each other, altering the north wind so that orange butterflies can dance in the hurricane winds of time eternal. 
I think back to the night so long ago.  A night beside a house on the edge of a hill.  On the cemented patio, beside the blue sparkling pool, we looked down at the smog-covered city streets below and sucked on small pieces of tasteless paper. 
Those people with whom I attempted to travel, I thought I would always know them, carry their names and numbers with me as the years changed my skin and hair.  But that, as all things do, changed.  That night we sat in plastic lawn chairs in the summer twilight, watching as city lights turned on and started blinking, talking to us through the altered gray air. 
The house, I would later come to understand, was inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, but at the time, I just observed the clean angles, the lack of tightness, the open, flowing use of space.  We sucked on little pieces of tasteless paper and as the sky turned darker and the lights started to blink, as other worlds do, the familiar faces and words lost the meaning I once understood as inherent and fixed.
I think back to a day so long ago sitting on the bright grassy lawn of my junior high school, El Roble. We picked small white clover flowers and turned them into garlands.  We sat like children, so utterly content to lay in the field.  The grass, so much more green.  The grass, so much more soft.  The sky, so much more blue.  There was nothing else to do, nowhere to be, no one else to find.  It was utterly perfect, the moment without rush and obligation.  That day, so long ago.
When did I decide to take it in?  Was it a decision or a series of accidents?  Me, or it moving through me?  Paper, door, blinking lights, other worlds.  The open door, blinking lights, eyes I can no longer remember and black shadows.   It can be different.  It takes one tiny piece of paper, a little sugar cube, and worlds dissolve in your cup of water.  Did I decide to change, or did the change find me after one tiny, tasteless piece of paper?

Giant

The giant barks.
I bark back.
There is only one way for a giant to act. I know this.
I have read it in story rhymes,
so many stories, so many rhymes.
Then I finally encounter one, I am offended by what I see.

The giant barks, sitting on all fours. 
His sneakers chewed up and smelling of bile.
Where has this creature come from?
Not even the swamp down by Knott’s old road house could have produced such a dank creature.

This is not what I wanted to see this early in the morning.  Out for a morning stroll, thinking about a good breakfast, some sausage and black coffee, maybe a smile from Bettie. I wake from nightmares with visions like this, but to see it barking out on Upper West Tollridge like the full moon was out, like transformation is upon him- I must do something.

The giant barks and I bark back.  I release my savage dog.  The wild rascal I have tamed inside.  My skin starts to burn with the boil of hate.
Soon, the night is black, smelling of old rotten things and dark, still waters that have not moved in centuries.  I took him by surprise, myself, covered in the scent of fish, of old and new cigars.

When the giant barked, I barked back.

Recognition

I walk the edge of understanding. A thin line with nothing below but life itself. I see it like a bird. The world we make with bits of mail scattered on the floor, string in the kitchen, cobwebs on the front stoop. It is where we breath and laugh, cry and scream. A life we are used to, one we know, one that stays. Earthly life with its marked streets and simple maps and clear colored markings. I walk the edge, balancing even as I sit cross-legged on my tan carpet, teetering. I look forward, into the speckled world of dominating blue and light washed hues.
When you sit in front of me, our eyes on each other, the room palpitating with yellow and whispers of bright explosion, my mouth on the verge of laughter, I look into you, into the you that is beyond me. I know then, for a simple true moment, you are the Other. You are Other. The word, making more sense than it can, than it should. The word, with all its explanations and discussion finally culminating in one moment, coming like a surprise wave out of the darkness, still focused for all its strangeness. It is recognition, taking me beyond the word, into gnosis.
Now as I write, so long since our last exchange, I sit in an empty auditorium. The chairs without people, the room full of judges. The many eyes of myself, staring into the empty stage, finding only me staring back.
I walk the edge, a clown balancing the egg of simple truth. I see you, your eyes, opening wide in the late morning sun. While what we know as life continues beyond the walls of our chamber, there is recognition. You are the Other. The boundary of my solitary stage is broken, for a moment, I am not in this room alone. I see you for what you are. I see the word, alive in experience. The light begins to shift once again, darkening the area around your face. My eyes are fixed, locked softly, somehow, on yours. There are no lines to define your shape, no word to describe your presence. There are only colors, vibrations dancing on a spectrum of perception.
One pure bit of experience, a simple understanding that we have tried to allude to with words and music and images that flicker across a screen. For one second, sometimes, bright in the morning, all of it, the explanations, the text, the examples, they all fade away and I see that the Other is right here, sitting in front of me, looking into my eyes.

Him And Dogs Like Him

Supreme transit, it’s the nearly invisible vehicle in which opposing thoughts share the same metal lines, they move on a whim, crisscrossing the country, converging in neural networks with hyperbolic speed. In white and black robes, with little red books tinged with gold leafing and yard sticks that poke out from their underwear, they move through time, piggy-backing on waves of political enthusiasm and newly-sprung militia groups.

It was happening now. He could smell it in the air. They whispered ‘constitution’ under their breath, the letters reeking of coffee as they spat out the word with religious zeal. They coughed up those letters, spilling the 2nd as if it was word inherited directly from an ancient bearded god.
Francisco was covered in the pulsing blue light of the nightly news, he watched every station, clicking through them in random order until he fell asleep just after10. As he fell into dreams that bulged in their shape and color, he wondered why those men in the news always waved the 2nd Amendment around like a flag.
What about him?
He saw those same people aiming, shooting, trying to take down his children’s right to citizenship, his grandmother’s right to drive to the mercado. They pulled the trigger, firing at sympathetic senators and congressmen, the black suits had jumped ship, leaving him and his family in the sun.

They all sweated, not just from the heat that had bleached even the heartiest saguaro cactus, but fear also dripped down their cheeks, glistening beads of worry dropped off their cracked chin.
Another gun went off, clack! in the night.
Everyone here owned a gun, all the white men that lived in the low foothills and the ranchers that wore red white and blue flag shirts. Yesterday he found his own American flag vandalized, the one that sat beside his Mexican flag.
No they didn’t sit, they waved in the breeze that seemed to come from the lowlands of hell. Pure heat to dry the beads of fear dripping down grandmother’s chin.
The dog lay on the ceramic tiles of the kitchen all day long, living in blissful agony, giving no thoughts to rights and amendments and the news stations. A dog was a dog was a dog. Mexican, American, Indian, dogs responded no matter what color skin delivered a bowl of water and a soft caress.
A dog was a dog was a dog. That’s how they thought of him, his family, the people with skin that looked like his.
A dog was a dog. Those men in their white shirts with guns at their waist, they thought all the browns were the same – Mexicans- a word that described fear instead of a country. A word that was just as ugly as the coffee-scented breath of its speaker.
No, they had come from farms in the valleys, from cities with museums and towns without plumbing, from mountains that touched snow and from the crashing Atlantic ocean. From the central umbilical cord of two continents and the southern hemisphere, from the highlands and the valleys and the places in between where women wore embroidered blouses and woolen skirts and carried babies and chickens alike. They were not the same, but they were linked by one essential quality in the eyes of those men with guns.

He saw the advertisements every night. He saw the guns in their holsters, the posters that could intimidate even the most hardened politician.
The men with the guns knew where to aim. The targets were set, they took down what every man in a suit wants most, pointed the barrel right at the pounding heart of power and squinted an eye. They aimed at those politicians sitting pretty on those shiny leather office chairs on perfectly clean plush carpet. They aimed, and- clack!
There were not enough shelters to hide the tears. The rivers flowed from Fernando, out past concrete dividers. When the insults came, causing the floods to mount, he lost it all, all the salt and all the water. It flowed from him a storm that dried on bleached sand, drying instantly in the land without rain.

He saw their guns, felt them pointed at him, at his family, at people with his same skin. Though nothing had really changed, he had become the villain. The constitution to which they always pointed, that 2nd point that they waved higher than flags, that constitution didn’t apply to him, not to him and the dogs like him.
Their policy was to shoot first. The targets were set, not one, or two, but the millions like him. How they loved their bullets, how they hated his music and food, the smell of his clean clothes, his daughter in pretty pink dresses, his tacos and beans, his lawnmower and round sweet wife, his son in school, his language and the rolling r’s of his tongue. How they hated him and his dogs, him and his enthusiastic use of English and the small home he painted every five years.

Them and those guns, them and the rights that they asserted. Them and those rights that they would deny him, the ones they would deny his children if they could. That Second Amendment they held tight to their heart, those words that they would spit forth, smelling like coffee and disfigured prostitutes, they shaped the world as they would like to imagine it, saw their chosen right as immovable while others were flawed. If his rights were not written in stone, then why did they scream for their guns?

Why did the men of highest power remain so quiet? Gently stroking their hands, rubbing their toes together, waiting to see what the tide of people would endorse before they walked to the microphone and made a statement.
They were always so scared to have an opinion. Only the men with those guns were solid in their statements, they were the ones that never changed, maybe they were getting harder, turning to stone, they were certainly never afraid to scream, their guns talked for them, clack!
Hitting his neighbor in the chest, taking away the breath of that young girl on the border, taking her father too. Their guns talked and not only did they have the right to have them, they thought they had the right to use them, declaring people like him the enemy. Turning his mother, that thick tree that bore a dozen lives, turning her into a villain, into a criminal deserving of a bullet. His children, turning them into aliens with only one signature.

He looked around with tear-stained eyes, unsure when it would stop, maybe now that the devil had sprouted naked from the ground. He wondered if it was ever gone, or had that dusting of sulfur merely hidden in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to come out the red door and find them.

He was now a criminal and the ones with the guns were free. The ones that murdered walked around and waved their striped flags and they would rest on the constitution like it was made for them alone, forgetting, perhaps never knowing, that this actually used to be his land, his and the dogs like him.
They didn’t knock on the door, they came in the night, that huge group with their guns and disease, their sickness that would spread, killing their enemy with only a coffee-scented breath discharged in their direction.

The movie had not changed, not a bit of dialogue had been altered. The policy, the billboards, the country and its actors. They smiled on those shiny posters, looking out at them, at that dried land and the browns and whites that dotted the landscape, those with power and bullets, those that lived like dogs under the sun, crying salty tears that ran down grandmother’s face, tasting not of salt, but of pepper.

The Mysterious

I see a thousand mirrors in all directions, all obscured by a thick fog that emerges from my own eyes.

The mysterious engulfs me. There are no final answers, or maybe any answer at all will do. (I know this.) (I don't know this.) There are no reasons that can't succumb to cruel twisting by my restless mind. I can stop myself from doing or speaking occasionally, but my thoughts run through me unbidden, like a horde of unruly children. They make reality in their image. They create the dark funhouse through which I now roam, eyes peeled open, hesitant, unsure of the next step.

There is so much that is completely out of my hands. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)



I hear the sound of a chainsaw up on the hill that overlooks my home. I hear it come and I hear it go, then I hear it come again. I picture the man using it, I picture a thick piece of wood breaking in two. I feel the deadly vibration of the metal blades. Lethal danger and usefulness in a single vibrant machine.

These things I do, these things that I leave nameless, they never had a safety seal. To truly live- to be truly alive is to awaken to that which is uncomfortable, scary, and dangerous. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

The outside world, the concentric circles of wonder and danger, it is all ruled by that same incessant clamor that dominates and defiles the fragile sanctuary under the dome of my skull. The twisting habits of my mind call things to me in secret, without my consent, making of me a sleeping witch, a conjurer of illusions which can only fool me in the end. The unspoken things die away in the world of endless electronic babble.

The universe outside is still wild, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Stars are created and burst open into cauldrons of silent destruction, earthquakes ejaculate fire from the depths of the earth, humans continue to die despite modern technology and all the disposable prayers of all the corrupt religions that cover the planet.



Through the wall, I hear the neighbors bickering for the remote. I hear them often.

There is danger as the machine perceives a threat, there is danger while moving against the current, there is implied danger whenever something happens, almost anything at all. The perception may be very subtle, as subtle as the touch of a single current of wind slipping through the cracks on a window, a voice through a thin wall.

There are things without name or face. Lacking these qualities, they borrow names and faces from the storehouses of my mind, long corridors of dusty boxes and broken toys. When the borrowed guise no longer suits their purpose they vacate the shapes and sounds that once clothed them, and I am left with their empty shells, shells that refer not to their nature, but to my own, as it is from my nature that these shapes were borrowed.

The mysterious is forgotten, denied, wrapped in linguistic structures. When it shows its face I will call it an exception and the enduring rules will be maintained. Maybe it is the other way around. It is the bugs, the quarks, the exceptions that are the rule and my desperate attempts at order are the exception. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

Maybe I was once a tribe. Now I have been broken into small nuclear units in a larger world, units weakly held together by national borders, language, government.

Instead of embracing beauty in an existence of chaos and moving artfully with the flow of energy- I struggle, I crave safety. I let others decide what is good and bad for me. Laws are crafted in far away rooms- old dying men determine what is legal and illegal, moral and immoral, good and evil. I take it in and abide, sometimes shaking my head, something nodding as I slide back into sleep.



There is a flock of birds outside my window competing for scraps of bread. Their cries are shrill and pregnant with desperation. Not unlike my own cries of need when a wave of energy has become too much and I find an urgent need to release.

My brittle fortresses of order will eventually crumble. (I know this.) (I don't know this.) The hot breathed broken faced Real will lumber and slither and dance in, wreaking havoc over my bones and rambling thoughts, thoughts now bodiless, flowing out free as they once were, broken up, discarded, bits and pieces of moments that will never be together again, not in quite the same way, raw matter to be absorbed into the icy turbulent endlessness of the Real. I am always grasping for answers and peddling them and buying them and clinging to them, but they are only words clung to in desperation. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

Maybe when I look I can’t see the contour of my face or the glint in my eye, but as I hear that bird chirping like a metronome at 5 in the morning, as I see school children running to the white ice cream truck, the mirror reflects more than the skin over my cheekbones, more than the black sphere at the center of my eyes.

I am hiding from the true answer, I am always hiding from the mysterious abyss that looms beyond the constructs of the tongue. (The tongued mind wagging furiously as though it could fan off the eternal with its chatter.)

I have never been free of the mysterious, it was always clinging to me like a skin. But some part of my self, some part of me, recoiled from it and began to spin the great con to hold it at bay.

Deeper even than the body, reflected back are the habits I carry from form to form. Quick moving bursts of energy that move in cyclical patterns, shapes that are hard to grasp, but I can see their trail. Fallen timber, cyclones of anger, streams of tears. If I look, I can see the path of each invisible impulse, like subatomic particles in a cloud chamber flying towards unknown destinations, leaving behind a record of their passing.

Safe, protected, secure, assurance, solid, invulnerability…
these words have cloaked me in artificial meaning and false structured reality.

If I claim to have answers, I am once again a liar, an artisan of the con. Always. There are no exceptions. There are no answers. No words that can hold the Real absolutely. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)
All that I have experienced has been a play of consciousness. There are no reasons but mind, there are no words but sound, there is no band but only silence.

Lusus Naturae

They were born with legs but no arms.
Arms but no legs.
A body that stands alone.

There were pinheads and worms, bearded women and clowns.

We watched with fascination though slightly cracked hands, watching with horror, watching with sorrow, looking with a mixture of disgust and pity.

The claw-footed man. The freak of nature. The DNA that mixed and morphed. The body that was tangled and torn. Beneath the tent they were the wonders of the world.

The amazing twelve fingered man.
The magnificent musical stylings of Max, Block Head.

We came for the hot dogs and cotton candy. Came for the beach. The waves and sun, the slides, the lights.

They hide, not in the shadows as we would all expect, but beneath colorful canvas tents that announce their arrival. We wait for the right time, letting the lollipops sit, letting only parts of our imagination wander into the tent. When we finally move through the parted doors, we find nature staring right back. Birth and bodies in all forms, hands that have twisted and turned into tails. Legs that are arms and hands that are ears.

Their bodies point to our own destiny. It is not all two feet and two hands. There are variations in the middle, some that twist, some that never separate, some that never grow. I look into the mirror, looking through cracked hands that cover my eyes. They are words, those bodies, those things, they are words stripped of love by the candy-eating crowds.

They watch us through bars, through social walls made of heavy brick. Babies stare, mothers cry, I watch through the thin cracks between my fingers. Cross yourself and pray. They move from field to field, town to town, carrying their lions, their tricks, their wonders. They are the freaks, sparking stares and quick glances, sudden bursts of curiosity and horror.

This ticket allows me to look. For thirty-five minutes and a paper ticket we stare at the distortion of nature, the wonders of the planet, the amazing freaks of the sideshow. One ticket and the world opens its sleepy eyes, the people that hide from missing toes and extra eyes.

We who call ourselves normal, who hide our perversions and defects. We who have no extra arms, but carry everything inside that begs to rip apart and turn into evil eyes and sword swallowing demons. All of nature twists inside us, turning and re-combining, turning us into mutants.

Soon I will don my silver sequined hat and fishnets. Soon I will be Lydia the tattooed lady. Soon I will be the wondrous mystery from Egypt, the gypsy with three eyes, the mother of twenty snakes.

Soon the hidden cracks will leak, the hands will spread wide and our true selves will pour, decrepit and slow, hissing as we meet the wind. There will be secrets and slime, muttering and new positions added to every act. Soon it will all begin, but for now they stand alone, the freaks beneath the red tent.

Eyes Of Dust

I look out the window as the train leaves. I am on it, in it, watching a dusty landscape sketched in the shades of white and black. Little dots of brown vie at the edges of the breathing photo and start to scream, warning me of stories better left untold. Of crimes unpunished, of little mouths that cry in hunger and weep tears for a life that will never be. I try and look past it all, searching the mountains for words of poetry, but their shadows, all too real, pull my eyes back. Escape is for the blind, for the heart that has stopped bleeding, for an eye that loses no kiss of salt. I stare in the face of sorrow, pulling its sharp scent in, letting it wrap me with its tears that cannot be shed.
Thin trees dot the land, their scrawny branches hold a few struggling leaves. Dust swirls in tan gusts with every fierce blast of wind.
The elements slap their worn brown faces, those people without tears. The sun takes the side of a heavy handed capitalist, a punishing, unrelenting heat shines never-ending. A cold dark night takes the side of imperialism, the blackness of their glossy boots, their smooth lead of total end.
It whispers in my ear, it is a blue breeze that holds a song waiting under heavy rocks. It whispers… there is a small white flower, a flower easily overlooked and forgotten, only a little girl with bright eyes in a landscape bleached of color. Only she will see the petals before they wither and crack in the sun.
I watch tin roofs that hang by threads. Soil has turned to dust, for the rain has found other places to drench. I see myself in the window, a strange reflection in the afternoon sun. I am spotted in the remnants of dew, I am a silhouette, only a shade different than the surrounding mountains and thirsty crops.
As we leave, I take a thin breath. A pain burns from within, coating my throat, stroking it like the hot hand of Satan, up and down my windpipe, down my vertebrae and into the ligaments of my toes and back up through my torso, escaping out through my fingertips, lingering in a spiral below the crown of my head.
What I see dries my eyes, leaves me without tears, without a drop of moisture in my mouth of desert and skin of old parchment. I am old, a thousand rings surround me. I find myself without a drop of life, breathing in only more heat, more sorrow, more dried up dirt and old wrinkles that had never seen the clouds. But from the front of my soul, something burns and the part of me that dies is like the weeds I never knew I was. I am quiet, but I burn. The worn streets sweep something into my memory, a feeling I cannot contain, an energy that seeks a cup, that reaches out with hungry hands to hold and grasp a metal chalice. I open a door once nailed shut. These people with their rough skin and old eyes, they speak of the conquerors, they talk of disease and death and boils, the masses of hungry, oppressed, searching for a road beyond the small corner they have been given. I shined a light into that small adobe cave, I looked with all the eyes I had, writing, talking, seeing what was there, searching for the answers that tried to evade me like pregnant clouds.
There was a light, a road that traveled a thousand years to end up at my toes, moving up and down, playing games with my limbs and organs until it spurted out, drenching the land with water, creating a road that would last another thousand years, turning past wide stones and tiny sprouts. Water pressed against the rocks, pushing in like woman with soft, giving curves, but it kept moving, never staying, never resting.
The train moves and I watch them walk with their wide hats and their children that look into the sun. There are girls that know of need and dust, dust that finds its way in, working itself into every crevasse, coming in through the ears, through the stomach, seeping in with the toes. They walk along their paths, they walk with wide brimmed hats, they walk with skin dry and cracking, for the hands of their masters had ruined the sprouts, had taken away the rain.
I began to bubble, I could not watch their hats disappear over the mountain crests. I could not continue along this mechanical route made of wooden beams and metal and thick nails. As it poured from my skin, an 'it' which I cannot describe fully, because to see it is to feel. To watch from a train window, to hold their stories, to give your tears for theirs that cannot flow, to hold a thirsty child and see an indifferent hand move through the air sweeping every bit of life into a metal vacuum…to see this is to feel It. To burn from the toes, to burst from the skin.
What I see moves in shades of black and white, screaming of gray and crying for the missing red. The dust, that ever-present dust was talking, finding its way in through my ears, finally ready after all these years to really hear. To simply observe and move on would have been one route. There were a thousand trains, each headed in another direction.
There was the island, there was the medical position, there was Cuba, there was the girl that needed attending, there were a thousand ways, some that I cannot name and describe, some that float by like leaves on a river, floating away before I can even see a shade and shape.
There are so many trains, there were, and I touched them with my hands, feeling the electricity of each, the pulsing hearts, the rhythmic pounding. Some were safe, in some I saw bullets and sticky blood. There were a thousand and I touched them with my fingertips, moving towards the one in which I sit, staring out a window at broken houses and dry people and land that has stopped crying, for there are no tears to spare. I sat with them in hunger, felt their need, the desire of all humanity, the hearts one step away from silence. I sat and touched them with my fingertips, drew in their breath and smell, weaving them into me, turning them into paintings that are colored in black and white and vibrant red.

What I Wonder

What would the choice be? If lights were coming down, blinking and spinning, twirling with red, blue and white like psychedelic lollipops from beyond the bluest parts of the sky. What would I do?
The grass is swaying in the wind, rustling from side to side in the abnormal breeze. Mailboxes are popping open, the fridge door opens and slams shut every second. Nothing is how I know it. The books fly from the shelves, every loose-leaf bit of paper is airborne. None of this makes sense. When the blender whips through the air of my kitchen and the night sky beyond the window is alive with colors I have yet to discover, what will I do?
Maybe I start to run with all the adrenaline my body can find. Do I step back from the porch into the safety of the doorway, moving slowly into the hallway while my hand latches the flimsy lock? Will I run to save my life, this life that I think of as so valuable and precious. Unique and unlike all other lives. Would you find me under the blankets, breathing as shallow as possible though my chest beats out like hands on a tin drum. What would I do if The Other came to me with flashing lights, red and blue lights and hard gusts of hot air?
I see myself running, jumping over chain link fences and scraping my knees as I fall clumsily to the ground. I can see a tiny scared body hiding in the dark of a closet, my eyes closed and mouth rattling off a small prayer. I feel fear running through me like monstrous rivers, seeping out of every finger and toe.
I see these visions and ask myself, what would I do?
Would I walk towards the ship, my fear held tightly, controlled by a will forged in years of practice.
I walk towards the ship to see what lies just beyond the top of the metal stairs. I walk, hearing an inner voice, ‘Look,’ it says, ‘see what will happen.’ Can I take that step? Will I die? Will I fly? Will I ever look back and see their faces, looking towards me with fear and curiosity.
Or maybe I will take a tiny first step and glance back, seeing all that I have left and sacrificed. Will they hate me? Will they ever know what has happened to me? They will know that I went with a smile, holding hands with the Other, happiness and wonderment radiating out of me like a brilliant sun.
Maybe like now, I will step forward cautiously, taking backward glances, stepping forward, little by little, until the door opens. I walk slowly towards the space lit from inside, but it could shut at any moment. Will I act quickly enough? Will I curse myself afterwards when it closes? Will I walk towards that light, those things that my mind can still not define?
It is the Other, and I reach to try and grasp it, though it slips through the language I have learned. Will I learn new sounds, a simple pentatonic language with clear signals? Without words, will I be able to push my essence through the sounds without concept till they find other ears.
I do not want to run with fear, but my feet seem to carry me away. They are brains with tennis shoes that move on impulse. They run towards small solid corners and little boxes. I see myself running, but I do not want to be that character. The human defending the human. The machine defending the machine. I do not want to play that type of role.
But I have not come far enough. Fear still shoots through me like comets, coming and staining my body before I even realize the atmosphere was breached. Unless I work, I will be the hysterical woman shouting for the world to return to normal. I want the dishes and the clean rugs. I want the plants in their proper pots and the fence in the yard. I am that woman, though I get glimpses of the other one. The woman in dreams that smiles and hops on the back of a bike. The woman that takes the hand of a stranger, calling him by name. I am that woman too, a little of each. A lot of machine, a little bit of amazement that lies hidden under the metal plates and gears.
I need to poke holes in the armor. I need that rustoleum and that pickax. I need to make it crumple. The amazing voyage is here, in my backyard and beaming into my room. It is already here and I need to step towards that brilliant, skin-burning light.
I will leave those kids and pets. I will sacrifice those familial ties and the life of shopping and the mall and beer drinking. It will fall like dead skin and I will walk up the metal platform, holding onto the hand of the Other, watching in amazement as the door shuts and we rise into the dark night. Moving forward and up, towards a new home in the stars.

Deer Hunter

Everything was known. The limits of the rural town punctuated in the center with smoke stacks, the babushka that walked slowly to church every afternoon, even in the snow. The tiny grocery store that was stocked and always full of etched recognizable faces. Everything was known. There wasn’t a stone he hadn’t seen, not a person he couldn’t call by name. Those friends he had known since infancy, boys he had grown up with until they were full chested men ready to serve god and their country.

He could walk the streets of the town blindfolded. He could walk from his house, down the narrow treeless drive and go down the hill, knowing exactly as he was passing the Mason’s house, walking steadily as the street sloped until the shops of downtown appeared, he could smell them, could imagine their worn shutters and screen doors. Following the street, he could walk towards the edge of town delineated by the raised train tracks that created a tiny tunnel for the semi trucks that hurtled through town towards the plant.

Every breath he took came from that air, every sip of water fell towards his sink from the mountain chain in the distance. Everything was known. His friends with their worn out jokes, the clear beer glasses and the familiar bar. The seasons shifted, colors changed from orange to white to green to yellow and then back once more. Trucks came and went, paychecks were delivered and cashed. It was a familiar rhythm of gentle movement, but everything seemed to stay the same, it was all known.

But sometimes they escaped. Filling the car with the bodies he had grown up with, bringing along their guns and cans of food, they would drive recklessly to the purple mountains, going up and up the curving slopes until the air was thinner and colder, until thousands of trees did not appear to be the same and instead looked different and new. He would walk with the only man he trusted, climbing boulders in clear silence while they tracked the signs of antlers and nibbled leaves. He saw her walking through the trees, evading him, almost. He went towards it, taking her down with one shot, because even the other bleeds.

He drove back recklessly to the known, down the dark slope towards the familiar lights of the bar. There was blinking neon sign with its comforting welcome, the pool table, the waiting frosting mugs, that smell which was so familiar he could no longer distinguish it from his own.

And then he was taken away. A big jet engine and a uniform and god and country gave him the ride. He went to where the syllables all sounded different, where bodies lay for the flies and even babies were red targets. There the familiar memories crumbled and the smell on him changed. He couldn’t walk blindfolded here, there was jungle and bombs and soaring bullets. He managed to keep his breath and mind and was eventually flown back to the known.

But when he saw the smoke stacks and roads and faces it was not the same. They were the same, but he was different. A part of the other remained in him, hollowing out the familiar and turning it into images that rubbed at his heart, touching it all the wrong way.

He drove towards the mountains again, doing what he knew, what he had always done. He brought his gun and his cans and walked slowly and quietly, just as he had always done, following the nibbled leaves and the traces of antlers.

When he saw her, a wide body and dark eyes staring back at him, he did what he always did, raising his gun. One shot, that was what he always wanted. But the other stared back at him, and this time, he saw. He had been changed and this time, there was no need to shoot.

Within

Do you fear her? That woman with skin different than yours, with eyes that reflect only pure fire and determination?
Do you fear him? That man that lives a world away…whose sounds seem like rocks scattering on pavement.
Does their stare cover you with cold?

If you fear them, then fear yourself, for you are the man with icy words and you are the woman with death giving eyes.
You are what you think you aren’t.

So fear yourself. Fear the parts of you that remain covered in blankets and lies. Fear the self which hides, escaping only in gasps and bursts of red.

All that is not you is you.
All the things called evil, all the shades describes as dark, all the hairy monsters from fairy tales… they cling to your heart by invisible tendrils. They sleep in the caves you hide, in the places you cannot see.

An oval mirror hangs from the clouds, shining light upon a stage.
I am absolutely, completely oblivious to the Other within me. You…inside me.
It is there.
It is the dot of black in a canvas of white. The one dot.

In a clear blue pond resides a single pebble. Not just water, not just liquid…the Other.

I turn to look at the executives in their high rise suites with disgust. I cry when I hear about the man who could kill a young girl…I watch the bear in terror. I view them as totally separate. As something I could never be, of something I am not.
But that is a blind man’s fantasy. I am all the terror that could ever exist. I am the brute, the animal, the psychotic. I am the woman wearing a machine gun, the young girl holding bananas.

Everything I think I am not, I already am.
Right inside where I do not look, where I coat everything in a golden veneer and self righteous pride.
I am the bigot. I am the pebble in a blue lake, the single seed in a ripe piece of fruit.

Perhaps each twinge of pain can be a reminder. Every time I look at the dusty face of a man I think I could never be. It already exists. It is now. Just like I am nothing, I am everything. Every tendency, every shape, every manifestation of the human and its habits, every shift of energy that flows unabated.

There is no need to fear the Other.
I am the Other.
There is no need to fear the other.
I fear myself.

Executive Decisions

I once considered them monsters. Men without conscience in dark expensive suits and gelled back hair that reeked with the scent of hundred dollar bills and imported cologne. I pictured them as clearly as a dream, surrounded by smoke and ash, rising higher as they trampled over bodies in their shiny leather shoes. They never thought about the blood or the oil, the trash they left or the babies born without arms and organs. Men who lived so far away from the rubble and graves that their gated bubbles allowed in only certain parts of reality. Reality that smelled only of roses, filled only with the sound of cartoon cash registers opening and closing. Cha-ching!

Late at night, surrounded by books and pipes and stories I could hardly bear, I cried. How did those monsters sleep and move and breathe? How could a mirror not crumble with their stare? Were they just hollow shells of flesh, content with their bank accounts and fresh strawberries in winter and champagne at every meal? This was the evil in the world, the web of corporations and their flesh-covered robots that breathed in stocks and exhaled only blood. Money was their god. They sucked on half-dollars and bent over for the penetration of rising stock, orgasming into the bright red passing numbers of the trades. Maiming, bodies…it was just part of the game, those born without fortune.

I studied them in school, corporate criminals. Men who pushed hard towards the bottom line, relentless in their pursuit of power and wealth, one begetting the other in a perfect circle. In round table meetings, they decided to knowingly sell faulty cars and tainted food. They used algorithms to determine which would be cheaper, settling the wrongful death lawsuits or a massive auto recall? They were monsters that hid behind a massive establishment, never finding the harsh eyes of the jury upon them.

I thought of them as inhuman, men who could put money before human life.
I thought of them as monsters, until I became one, until I glimpsed the world through their eyes.

Early Saturday morning I loaded up my truck with baskets of fresh baked artisan bread. It was bread I was proud to sell, being both beautiful and delicious. I was in one of the worse neighborhoods in San Francisco, at the very end of Revere St, where the slumping houses gave way to gray warehouses on the edge of the bay. Here, there was graffiti and piles of refuse and old rotten couches on every other corner. Old Victorians sat crumbling, sagging under the weight of years and poverty; and shriveled, skinny prostitutes wandered the streets, looking for another way to score. It was trash and dog shit that littered the streets, and I drove through there every Saturday morning to load my car with handmade bread.

It was an overcast morning, but the air clung to my skin in humid clumps of moisture and I felt the day growing hotter with each minute. My truck was packed with an umbrella, two tables, and all the bread I could hold. There were loaves covered in sesame seeds, others with poppy, a bin of long plain baguettes. I closed the hatch of the truck and walked to the driver’s door, opening it and taking off my thin sweater before I got in. A sound made me look up and towards the back of the open bed truck. I saw a fluttering and before my mind knew what was happening, I was walking towards the bed of the truck, yelling and waving my hands. A tiny bird flew up and away from the bread basket, beating its wings as it dropped a few of the stolen sesame seeds. It flew back to the withered sapling that stood next to the blue door of the warehouse.

I looked into the basket. There were over ten loaves of bread in there, each one covered in bright white sesame seeds and a golden crust. I looked at them, searching for a sign of the bird; a hole, a place without seeds, I could find nothing. An ethical dilemma had been born, brought into existence by a hungry bird and my own conscience. I had no idea which loaves had been contaminated, if any. I just didn’t know. I knew I would not want any loaf in that basket, but I couldn’t just throw the entire basket away…could I? Should I? There was a chance the bread was fine, but there was a chance it was contaminated. It could make people sick. The possibilities played in my mind. Customers retching, wondering what they had eaten.

I got into the car and drove over the bridge to the market.

When the tables were arranged with a red table cloth and all the baskets, I stood, waiting for a customer. I still didn’t know what to do. The first customer of the day was a loyal regular. He reached out and grabbed one of the seeded breads, though luckily he picked one that was close to the edge of the basket, the least likely place to have been touched by the bird. After he left, I walked around the table and inspected the bread leaves another time. I couldn’t see any sign of the bird, but I grabbed the four loaves in the middle, the most likely ones to have been contaminated and put them behind the table.

These were regular customers, how could I knowingly put them in danger? But what if there was no problem, then I was wasting bread. Which was more important, a few sick people or the sale?

I realized it then. I am not pure. In me lies the flecked specks of every monster. In them must lie the sparks of flowers and soft kisses. In me is that which I despise. Now, I could see the bridge.

The Guess

What I almost certainly do not know is that I am blind. BLIND. My sight is an illusion, a minor hope of a machine caught up in kaleidoscopic movies that repeat endlessly. I cannot see. Not you, the dog, a tree, a new facet of thought. Every contour is clouded in a haze of fog and thick assumptions. You are what is past my nose. You are beyond the thin skin that contains my brain. Because you are not me, I cannot see you. You are a cloud of pale skin. A sound that echoes from a distant hillside. A fleeting movement that jumps through a tiny hoop.

You are equally as blind, caught up in the illusion that wraps us both in a tight jacket. Two people, perceiving themselves as right and correct. Two people, seeing only fuzz and gray clouds, hearing selected words from long sentences, getting lost in the white spaces between. The other is beyond. The tiny shape of a walking woman, the tropical tree, the fresh picked banana. They all exist in a world of color and form that I watch as though through a television screen. You are not real. The metal jug, the dirt road. Not real and foreign, past what I can ever understand.

I watch from an overstuffed couch, watching the lights move, watching it as complete fiction, for it is. Though I cannot tell I am on the other end of a screen, another light that moves vaguely in the distance.

I am blind, though so are you.

Both of us trapped in the skin that contains a sense of self. There is me, there is you, the Other. I am blind and cannot know, and the guesses begin. All the assumptions, all the conjecture that rolls like a snowball in a cartoon of pigs and rabbits.

It catches speed and I grasp at words. “woman, poor, fertile, bound…”

They are words and I attach them to you, to her, to all those that move on the horizon.

But another one comes, “young, marriage, style…”

More words. More assumptions. I will never know. You are the shape beyond my skin, you are the Other, and I can only make a guess. How can I talk to the past? How can I talk to a shape without blood? The past and future blend together, I grab with dirty fingers, searching for another word, something to hold, something that will make sense and fit easily in this small wooden box. You are the captured cloud, the note hidden below my pillow in a place I will forget to look. You are the shape that will never be known, you are the Other.

First Look

There is me.
I see my hand, my eye, my skin.
I look through these brown eyes.

I look at you.
The other.
You.

You who are not me.
Beyond me skin,
past my eyes,
beyond my hand

You, that I can touch.
You that I can see.
You.

The other.
You, who are not me.
You are the Other.
You, who are not me.
Not my skin, not my hair, my ears.

And because you are not me, I am not you.
Through your eyes, I am the Other.

I am not you.
Not of your hands and skin, not of your body.

No matter how much I may long to merge, no matter the hours I spend staring into your eyes.
I am the Other. Just as you are the Other.

Cherry blossoms drift between us, their pink wings fly, and I know that they too, they are not me. Not my skin and flesh, having nothing to do with my bones and eyes. The are the Other. All that is not me. All that I can see and everything I cannot.
For everything is the Other. Everything past this wall of pale skin and this head of short dark curls. The hills and their stories, the trees and their years. They are all beyond me, by definition and purpose and being. They are all things with other lives and other hurts and laughs.
The wall containing me is my prison and my castle, the way I was birthed, the way I have known. Only now, perhaps now I get a glimmer of the Other. The fear of you, the fear of me.
We look at each other, two sets of eyes wide open and staring, each looking into the Other.
But what if we see?
And what if I only feel one heart beating?
What if I stare into the reality and not the illusion?
Is there me?
Is there really the thing with hair and teeth and skin?
Is there a Me?
Is there a You?
Is there an Other?

Is the great illusion the only way to live?
To survive beyond the white walls of an institution and small capsules three times a day. How long can this be explored before we fall into smelly pits and metal cuffs…I see you as the Other, except those times in which we join, when your eyes look like the golden pools that I remember from a dream, and your skin tastes like mine baked beneath the sun. Then the illusion fades, and I see the Other, wrapped in red threads and dark curls, looking like my image in a mirror, looking like it was never anything Other than me.

The Seed

The rain clouds had parted and the small patch of earth was damp, emitting a scent that only some knew how to enjoy. Those close to the soil, with orange leaves in their ruffled hair and thoughts of worms and horned beasts. It was a smell they both relished, unlike anything they could find in clear glass bottles. It was not the smell of elegant women, nothing like men in dark suits and slick hair. Nothing like glass buildings or sterilized hospitals. It was a forgotten odor, like the medicinal pollens and balms that had been burned and stuffed into floorboards that swelled with age. It was earth, birth, death. It was change, decay and rebirth. They knew the smell, they sucked it into themselves. It was time.

The two young sisters slept with their windows open. Sleeping with the moon, awaking with the sun’s first kisses. Winter or summer, they dreamt with the elements, living with the constant changes.

After months of wetness, the clouds had parted, like they always eventually did.

It was time. A new season had come, taking its first look at the new world. It was ripe.

The girls gathered the few tools they needed: a shovel, the small yellow watering can, and a basket full of seeds. They entered the narrow yard overgrown with weeds, their eyes shaded by the thin brim of their pink and yellow floral bonnets. The sun warmed their pink cheeks and lips, urging them forward, giving them a bit of encouragement with its heat. They inhaled deeply, at the same time, each one listening closely to the sound of the breath beside her.

Without words, they moved together. Clearing weeds into a tall pile, turning earth with the wide shovel mouth, carving out shallow trenches. When the trenches were prepared, they each took a handful of seeds, scattering the seeds every few inches and then covering them with dark soil.

They worked for hours, planting chamomile and foxgloves, lettuce and sage. The girls looked into the sky and began gathering their tools, they could smell rain.

Big, giant drops of water came, fertilizing the soil and each newly planted seed. It was the Father, the tidal force of dominant energy coming to give the little bits of information what they needed. The girls watched from their tiny second-story window, watching as the skies opened and water poured. It was essential, it was right, it was the way.

When the last bit of moisture disappeared into the soil, they ventured back into the garden, checking every day for the first sprouts. Wide eyes marveled at the birth process. The seed was information, the soil was the womb, the rain the sperm, the sun the food. Each one worked together, seamlessly, a merging of forces that would give birth to something new. A new life. A new plant. A little bit of information, a seed. It needed all the right tools, all the elements.

All the little seeds that had stayed dormant for so long, just waiting. Maybe the moment would never have come. Would they have known, could they just have sat for years on the wooden shelf, never moving, always in the same form, the same little bit of information contained in a thin shell, unused, unchanging. Did it know? Did it want to grow? Was there consciousness in that little seed, or something that could only become consciousness given the right conditions.

That was what they both had been. A little bit of DNA, a little bit of information. Each one of them had needed the right conditions. The right elements had combined, creating two little girls. Each thing that grew and died, that took a breath and pulsed, it had all begun from a tiny seed of information. Something that could be, manifested potential without a present or a past, eternal design waiting for time to come and press it into service.

Training The Dragon

Did you know there was a dragon inside? I can see him through your eyes, while the green folds of your eyes flex and point, watching me with blunted teeth and heat so intense it has turned to ice.
Did you know there was a dragon? Angry in its cage? Angry in the skin that looks so different from green scales and long gray claws, different than the life it knew as a flying beast. But the rage is there, bottled into an even smaller vessel, so thin and long and hairless. So smooth.
Did you know it was there? Breathing your air like a parasite? Eating your food, transforming your thoughts into fire and coal.
I have looked, and in certain lights, certain mirrors, I see the dragon. Steam streams from my flared nose, its Semitic length perfect for this orange and blue life. I move slightly, just a little turn, and see the green in these otherwise brown eyes. Flecks of fire and rage. But only in certain lights, certain mirrors. I forget about the dragon, the beast that moves with every shake of my arm, every click of my tongue. It fills me from the inside, keeping my breasts pert, my stomach round.
Did you know it was there? Have you seen me in the gray light of dawn? Through tempered blinds? Through the lens my eyes hide?

It is there, waiting, breathing, spitting fire.

Did you know?

Did you know?

Each beast carries a rider, though I’m not sure who moves who. My arm is not my own. And when it roars, when the cage opens, the iron doors releasing the full fury of a pent-up beast, my toes move without direction. My tongue carries me to the worlds I hoped to never see again. I watch from above, riding the back of this black dragon, watching the dark city burn. Sporadic fires and fleeing screams. Horror, laughter, redemption. Are they my thoughts? Are they his? Who rides who?

Can I tame this beast? Train this dragon?

In the right light, in front of the right mirror, I see the dragon’s eyes. I feel the flames of heat moving in my chest, the moment before the explosion. And I remember. My training, my practice, my sword.

One deep breath….Veeeehhhhhhhhh

I hold my breath….Kaahhhhhhhhhhh

I release the breath….Daaayyyyy

I repeat.

Every sound in the room is ignored. I cannot hear who’s talking, what’s playing. There are no thoughts, not if I’m doing it right. Not if I have the sword in my hand and the beast on its belly.

One deep breath….Veeeehhhhhhhhh

I hold my breath….Kaahhhhhhhhhhh

I release the breath….Daaayyyyy

I repeat.

It is strong. It is old. It is me…entwined within the fabric of my eyes and ears and lifetimes of habit. We are coiled like snakes, lovers without boundaries and eyes.

In the right light, in front of the right mirror, I see the dragon’s eyes. I feel the flames of heat moving in my chest, the moment before the explosion.

One deep breath….Veeeehhhhhhhhh

I hold my breath….Kaahhhhhhhhhhh

I release the breath….Daaayyyyy

I repeat.
And as I repeat, I train the dragon.
My dragon.
Me.

Ghost Guest Geist

We prepare the space.
I, in my dirty jeans and yellow gloves, with piles of split lemons on a table. Each one gives beneath my grip, spilling its sour self to the floor. I push the mop, up and down over faded linoleum, humming a soft tune, because though I sometimes forget, music turns a chore into creation.
Fresh cut flowers sit in a short jar on the round kitchen table. The windows have been opened since dawn first broke, bringing in the smell of a cold spring and the faint whirring of dragonflies. I hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner downstairs, and I feel the dirty remnants of a used-up week disappearing into the black hole of plastic parts and noise.
This is our role. The vessel must be prepared before the Guest can come, before the guest can fall from an upside-down kingdom and land in the cushioned chair of our living room, or another body ripe for the taking. When the walls ring with the scent of myrrh and candles provide the only light, then the guest comes, the ghost. The guest.
It comes through, knocking over u’s and h’s and it takes a reminder to know that they are one and the same. That the man knocking on our door was a copy in flesh, a spark of what was to come.
“Geist!”
I hear someone call, and I turn, flipping through the dictionary until I realize once again, that words move like liquid over tongues and years. Adding u’s and h’s, transforming meaning until it takes a mind-shattering look to see their similar shape.
The same old name, with new letters, now books, new times. The same thing, a new form. Flesh to air, blood to power.
I look at my friend, at his plump smiling lips, his bobbing head. The hole was opened, the dishes washed, the bells rung, the seed planted, the intention set. The walls move with the beat of a ghostly guest, a dancer with no feet, a shaker with no hips. But the walls shake, and I feel my head turning, spinning, moving in ways that it has never moved.
I am spinning, moving through crystal water, bending and turning, following the curves in the music while my mouth runs to keep up.
The guest is here, though we only talk about it afterwards, when the lemons are squeezed again into brown mugs and we sit, using words that always come up short. The geist was among us, jumping between body and wall. Using the vessel, the one of concrete, the one of bone. Taking the water, the sound, the spirit, the space, taking it all for a ride, a lift to the place that can only be experienced.
The ghost is the clear water, the guest for which our doors are opened and the floors are scrubbed and our bodies are cleansed. We prepare for the three, the trifecta, the trinity, the one. I turn on the porch light and set out an extra cup, though there is no flesh and blood, though there is no hand, we set the cup, the plate and serve our snacks.

The Other Na'vi

We see the Other,
and they are blue.

And we see the Other,
but they are us.

They are blue and disguised
only slightly
by another planet and another language,
Disguised just slightly
in the guise of fiction.

But we see the Other.

We are the Other,
The Na’vi,
the blue people.
Where war is fought over land
Were precious resources
are the cause for blood and struggle and mothers’ tears
The world, right beyond the window
is bombed and shelled,
it is taken with guns and threats
it is taken by the hands of zealots.
And it is taken,
by those with another language,
by those with other plans
and other dreams.

And though this theater is dark,
and though this is disguised by fiction,
by a big budget and special effects
and James Cameron
and a movie marquee that reads
AVATAR
in big black letters,
and though I still have the money for popcorn
and the children spit
sunflower seeds on the ground
with rhythmic authority,
we still see the Other.
We see us.

We are blue.
We are big eared.
We are the dispossessed.

We are the Na’vi
after the land is stolen,
after the water has run dry and the olive trees have been butchered
and our brothers have been sent to their jails.
We are the Na’vi after 60 years of repression,
after blood, after constant war,
after the grasp has tightened and tightened,
ever so slowly
and now I just cannot breathe.

And I write,
and I see,
and I talk.
I see this fiction,
and I see this true story.
I see me,
my brothers,
my sisters,
all wishing for the land we once farmed and knew.
I see what we want behind rows of tanks, bullets and armor.

We are the Palestinians,
the Na’vi,
the real beyond the fiction.
One side of the fragmented stone,
just one of many who have lost their trees and ancestors and whispers.
We have lost it all
for our resources,
for soil and water and fruits,
for an ideology that can smother even the sharpest eyes.
This is a world of blind men and mute women.
If only we could fly,
If I could ride the dragon of the sky
and defeat those who come with their single minded plans,
but this is not fiction,
this is not a film.
The small have been defeated,
though we march through the forests of failure,
wearing blue and marching towards the fences that create our prison.
Watch us, as you have watched the Other.
The world is a million theater screens,
and the lives behind them drip with real blood,
and taste of sweat
and scream with the nightmare of living,
the nightmare that our lives have become.

We are the Na’vi,
the Palestinians
the Other.

The Wheel Of Fortune

I looked into the mirror, there on the street. He was an Asian man. I was an Asian man. With a camera and flannel. I was a man. He looked at a woman in the mirror. He was a woman. I looked into a mirror on the street, and there I was, a man. There was a camera, a flannel, a full cup of curiosity. I was there, a man. A man with breasts, a man with a camera. A mirror revealed. There I was, on the street, with my camera, my curiosity, my heavy cup.

I looked into the mirror, and as I looked, I saw that I could have been her, there, on the other side of the street. There, on the sidewalk, a Latin man with a briefcase. A woman with a tiny white dog peeking from her purse. A flip of the wheel, the crowd chants, a smile of white teeth gleams into the camera. I watch from a blue reclining chair in a far away living room, a chair I have never seen, a chair I bought, a house I sleep in, the phantom in the mirror.

I look into the mirror, and there they are, a thousand reflections. She with her long blond hair, the man with the cigar, a naked child running through a mountainous garbage pile, the little dog with three legs, the man with his camera and a flannel shirt wrapped around his waist. There is the mirror, right on the street. There is the lens and the black eye of curiosity and an open iris hiding behind a wall of glass connected to a finger. There is a mirror, and I stare back with my own black eye. With my own purse and sweater, with my own ceramic cup that steams with fire. They all walk by, holding an ounce of me, a fragment of my reflection. I hear the sound of fortune, the tat-a-tat-tat of the wheel as it spins.

A flip of the hand, a tug of the wrist. The audience chants. The smile, so white and fake frozen. The lights of the studio audience dance: red, green, blue. They move. Lasered strobes of attention jumping from one object to another. Hop, flip, hip. Hope. The man, the dog, the woman and her smile. They could have all been me, and I watch through a lens, through a mirror that allows me to see, even months later, what I was and who I am and what we all could have been with just a slight turn of the hand, a spin of the wheel, and a jump in time.