Staring Back

I. Morning

When I went to sleep
Either/Or
was just starting.
I woke before
From a Basement on a Hill
finished,
rousted by the jaunty chiming
of my phone.

I rolled on my sleeping bags and
hit the button on the side
of that blue alarm clock
as it sat
on top
of my Yale’s Complete Shakespeare.
I stretched, stood up,
and walked to the kitchen.

We had found ourselves without creamer
the day before, and for this reason
or some other
she had not set the auto-timer
on the coffee maker.

In the bathroom
I brushed my teeth and spit
a little blood out
with my baking soda/peroxide toothpaste,
jumped in a shower that was too hot
and jumped out a little over seven minutes later.
I always brush my teeth too hard.
I am a wrecking ball to a toothbrush.

I put the same boxers on as before,
measured two cups of water in a pot,
set the burner to High,
and went to her room to wake her.
She made a noncommittal sound.

I dropped the ramen into the boiling water,
set a timer for three minutes,
went to my room to put on pants and a shirt,
walked past her bird’s cage
(draped in black for a funeral)
and loudly said,
“Yo. Get the fuck up.”
She, muffled by her pillow, replied
“I am up.”
I told her that it didn’t count until she was sitting.
She acquiesced.

I ate my ramen
and pinned a bluebird over my heart
and waited until it was time to go.
I put my sunglasses on
and locked the door
as I shut it and stepped out
into a surprisingly pleasant manifestation of Sol.

II. Noon

I had forgotten my sandwich
and my stomach was again
a hollow bone that had yet to be made into a skeleton key,
sitting with that fledgling demonic grin,
smiling with every promise of a cavernous future,
yawning with a gaping maw that sent shudders
to my bloody-bitten fingernails.

I silenced it.
I had not asked its opinion.

I licked my tongue over my gums
and became troubled.
I pushed through a set
of lightning-flashed-sand doors
and found the nearest mirror.
Most of the time I do not like those
masterful reflections in polished glass.

They remind me too much
of something out of Nietzsche.

This time that shiftless mass blanketing one wall
was useful.
Leering back
were things vaguely scorbutic but completely unacceptable.

III. Sun Falling

If I had a soul
It would be twisted up in a circle
like a broken guitar string in a foreign town
and tossed surreptitiously into
the corner of a room,
where It would remain
quite satisfied
with the occasional brightness
of a smile.

If I had a soul
It would be decrepit
like a battered sixty-five year-old book
and
It would sit on a desk
while a mockingbird sang
from its ancient lunar perch.

If I had a soul
It would be hidden behind mirrored sunglasses
and the permanent shadows in photographs
and
It would spend all of its time
treading water
with a mermaid grasping on, giving soft laughs
as she thrashed her tail ever deeper.

IV. Midnight

I unlocked the doorknob and pushed.
Nothing.
I moved the key up to the deadbolt lock,
having trouble with even common tasks
as it stuck halfway in.
She opened the door and I stepped inside.

There was only one package of ramen in the cupboard.
There were no pieces of bread,
no butter,
two eggs,
and one flour tortilla
dancing in a controlled climate.

I found and opened a can of ranch style red beans
and heated them in the microwave.
She said “Poverty is the best diet.”
I found it hard to argue.
I ate them with a spoon. They were not half bad.

I went to the cabinet where her medicines
and various vitamins reside.
I took a B supplement to fight off beriberi.
My eyes had been lousy for a few days
and I thought I’d found something to blame.
I didn’t want to get glasses, even ones for reading,
and in any case I couldn’t afford them
though they have them for a dollar in certain stores.

I saw a bottle of Women’s Once-a-Day vitamins
behind the translucent orange,
clutched it in my ugly hands and spun it around to see
if there was C in it. There was.
I asked permission, checked for iron content (not alarmingly high)
and took three.

You have to be one hell of an idiot to not notice
early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had them before.

You have to be
one hell
of a something
to exhibit
the early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had it before.

All I was expecting was a wooden song

I feel as though



I had walked
through an ancient forest
and the wind was whispering/whipping sonnets
then
suddenly,
I found myself
freed from the fierce vines and Mimir’s guardian branches,
in a clearing
under
a half-lit canopy of stars.

In this place I discovered a precarious stone,
encircled with knife-sharp spines that were
endless threats,
but which had,
as an exception,
one smooth hollow, like Baldur’s throne,
within which I then rested.

In an instant a strange and powerful mist
was clinging to
my eyes
my face
my hands
and the grass beneath my feet;
indeed it enveloped all things
living and dead and dying.
It did not obscure the stars.

I closed my eyes and let
the mist take me.
For a moment I could no longer hear
the sounds and screams of war,
as if such barbarity were a
fanciful
indulgence of imagination
and not a grim reality.

The mist became less dense and a vapored entity
quite gingerly appeared. I did not know what to say,
most attempted greetings had made little sense to any other delusions,
so prudently I kept my hands by my side and I was silent.
She asked me what I could tell her of the world.

- It seems to be here entirely by accident. It is a speck
in the grandiose expanse, like the blood a pin-prick
pools into a miniscule bead on the pad of a lover’s palm;
one that would bring you to the brink of impulsivity,
a consuming desire to pull her hand to your lips and
gently take the blood to be your own- which is to say that
generally clarity of self is valued above evaluation of a broader situation.
The human inhabitants all have murderers as antecedents.
There are many other animals and their pedigrees
share that same black shame.

I asked her if she had a name,
and if any were like her.

- My name is Atlanta, chosen because I have a fondness
for the myth and for both of its themes. One of them
demonstrates that with great ability and a… certain amount
of guile and assistance, one can escape an undesired Fate
(though no threads are then changed upon the loom).
It also serves to remind people that they will not receive
the necessary extraordinary help required to avert
their varied mundane crises, and so stifle and diminish
the surprise on shocked faces when ill news first arrives.
And to answer your second question, if there were others
like me, then I would not be Me at all, would I?

She asked of the state of the world.

- As always it is a state of wealth enmeshed
with alarmingly frequent bloodshed. Some
have said that we descend quickly to Hell.
Because millions die from enemies too small
to even crawl or even creep but they create
crevices so deep in those that survive,
and even in their families huddled over one dinner plate,
because children starve and their hair is red,
because a man can be murdered for a loaf of bread,
many visit church services to escape…
others prefer a whiskey drink or even
swimming out to sea to sink. Old alliances
are dead as dense-packed stone. Only one
power can do anything at all and all others
stew in their own bones as they await a clarion call.

I asked if there was anything she'd like to say.

-I was captivated for a time by the French language,
and how within it there were subtleties that could emerge
that would bring a crowd of nobles to their knees
in fits of laughter. For example, the word for death is la mort,
while love is l'amour. However, when pronounced
they sound identical, which has had interesting consequences
in the French vernacular. There is much to be said when love
and death sound the same, but I shall not say it. I am quite tired,
you see. I have lights to stare upon and miles more to go.

I was about to beg her to stay,
to gash my knees and back and neck
on the rock and stone;
if it was required,
to dispose of sanity
and follow her forever
and she laughed lightly (droplets falling from her lips).
“I must leave,” she said. “Your eyes betray your intent,
your intent betrays your discontent,
and though once before, with valiance,
I ran so swiftly that I could match the stallions
on the first real day of spring,
I do not owe you such a thing.”

Most of the mist turned to steam,
quickly brushed away by the wind.
On my lips it lingered longer
as I stood again and forced my way
with breaking branches towards the glen.

As soon as the starlight faded from view
I instantly knew that if I should attempt
a return, that the rock and trees and clearing
may well remain, but that I would not see her again.

I found the narrow corridor
between the mountains
and heard the preening of a peahen.
They have been accused of being drab,
but it is only because they are
more versed in holding onto secrets
that they choose to appear in this fashion.




I clear my throat and say my surname
three loud times.
“You’re late,” a chorus chimes.
“It is not my fault. I met someone
who I did not expect but now
she’s disappeared and I shall never
find her again.”
“He’s exhausted, can’t you see?”
some well-intending soul says.
“Quick, someone, bring him some water.”
I refuse this kind offer and lay my head
on a carpeted floor, intent on
dreaming the dreams
that I allow myself to dream,
with the mist's embrace coolly burning
its unique feeling into memory.

All that was required of me was that I sit very still

I.

I told her,
“I’ve seen the future,
when your mouth is bloody as Garm’s.”
And she said
“Oh, you be silent,
These are not slim chains on my arms.”

She set up a table
with two folding chairs around it,
and I lingered on her couch
while she lit three wicks
in one candle
then shut off so many lights.

Perhaps it was the scent of vanilla
or the prism of the water in my glass,
but I savored every bite I took
of that exquisite tomato/basil sauce
over chicken and rice with
vegetables that I didn't hate
and rocked my toes to Louie’s jazz.

You can’t know the future
(that thought is a vulture)
but it’s one that seems to last,
and even though the converse is attractive
to actors, murderers, and poets,
our memories are mangled by our past.

When she was not watching
I stole my napkin,
in truth a folded paper towel,
and made it into a square.
I put it my wallet
before I was caught.

II.

We never have choices even if we have the voices
of the Gods inside our heads. We hold on to the present
even when it’s evident that our time is short instead,
and that we should be furious, venting fire and flooding
at the way we spend our days. It is of no comfort,
or perhaps just a small one, that we can make such
uncomfortable things a haze to wave our fingers through
in the midst of crumbling through a maze.

I thought that I could love her, for one fleeting moment,
but I killed that fancy there. It was just as she said,
a total impossibility, one that inexorably leads to a coffin
or perhaps an electric chair.

She had me utterly frozen on a cushion
and I knew my time had come.
She would paint me so that no one else
could see I only had one eye.

Under those bright lights I joked and said
“Come on, I’ll tell you what you want to know”
She said “I am not curious, I’ve lived quite a while,
and know that Odin has no soul, so you don’t have to worry.
This shred of intimacy will end when the camera dies.”
She said “You seem startled that I could recognize you
without that absurd wide-brimmed hat. You may have fooled
every human frame but I am just a body hiding flame.”

She caught me unaware and I was feeling quite insane,
she laughed and said “The wise are rumored to have
some small bit of trouble with the memory of names.”
“You remember me, the immense serpent
chewing on my tail, the paper-pale guardian of hell.
You thought I was the other one, but in truth I am all three
and so you will spend your life like many others
in your endless dreams of me. You cannot evade
this charming little wraith. Even if I let you run
you would not want to escape this perfect cave.”

III.

Eventually she got the photograph
that she wanted and she was beautiful.
I had embarrassed myself earlier by opining thus
as she was leaning in her doorway and I was sitting quite still in awe.

And so there I was,
captured for a moment
as I truly am,
a demon who takes light
and with parlor tricks twists it to darkness
so that no one can see my face;
a mercurial Mongol
sleeping in the saddle,
never staying in one place
long enough to see what I have wrought,
or the chaos in my wake
that must have such a dreadful cost.

I tell them to be careful,
that I wreak destruction and I burn what’s in my way.
I do not give the trite cursory glance at my trail
to falsely remember the beginning of decay.

Oh, it started before me, don’t be made a fool,
we all come from somewhere else;
whether born on the bayou or melted out of a furnace,
you’ll have to tighten your belt
when food is the enemy, that horrid preserver
of all our torrid ways.

You can hate the sunlight,
yes we all hate the sunlight,
and the things it makes us do.
We can burn up within it or avoid all that static
and end up with wind-swept knees.

Then it was over, yes, it was All over,
and she took me back to my house.
Until next time I said- not knowing the future,
immune to the future. (the Norns had given back my eye)
“You weren’t using it at all!” came their deep and dusty call.
With rage I tell the roots that nothing changes if you try.

IV.

I scream out “I am a monster! I am a monster,
but I can break right through your chains!
Just because I know what the future does not mean,
it still has possibilities and these are things I will profane!!”

A woman’s voice says
“How long has he been this way?”
I give a slashing cry.
“Forever! Forever! A heart of iron
cannot have the freedom you assume
when moving into a dusty room;
it must carry out its horrid task
until it becomes time for its doom.”

“You’re plugging cords into themselves
and knocking groceries from the shelves.
You’re ripping tile from the floor
and you are calling it a door,
but when I put my head inside
I find a place where I awake
but not a land where I can hide.”