A Poem Which I Have Been Meaning to Write

On a Clear October Night in Charleston, SC

Tonight I walked out of my house,

sunken to 4AM insomnia,

and looked up. Tonight

I saw Orion’s Belt for the first time in three months.

Having no way else to go,

I followed the line it traced, leading me south.

Colonial Lake rose before me,

a perfect dichotomy of light,

white concrete straining to hold in black water.

As I stood, listening to some man croon

and his guitars play,

and his violin tear through my head,

the lake water swelled, huge black bulk

tearing its way free, crashing up to the stars, held captive skyscraper-high

by my gaze and the frenzied melody.

The water rose tidal wave behind me,

walking down the middle of still Charleston streets,

wondering idly what it would be to die from

exhaustion. The Battery is mine, and my

continent-surge of black surf.

The huge harvest moon blasts through me,

tunnels through me,

ignores me, lonely with my eon-wave casting

its shadow. I wonder, idly, what it would be like

to die from exhaustion.

I wonder, idly, what it would be like to die, lonely, from exhaustion.

The ageless moebius-wave presses at my back and it is all I can

do not to scream.

The moon screams.

The wall of black water screams.

I am left on the edge of Charleston,

walking with the stray cats, the violin-sharp

wind in my spine.

Derived from Three Hours of Poetic-Daydream

A Poem is a Lost Glimpse

The fan, our

Rin Gong, whirs endlessly.

I am hidden from eyes here,

outside of the quickly forming chain-webs of

two-way quiet.

Who is painting whom?

-- WE FALL SILENT IN OUR LEAP –

Our sentences come to bear on what we can see as truth. We

plug in words to the places they need to fit

and invent the ones where they

don’t – language to fix

our block-square circle-hole dichotomy.

When truth is too hard to face

we turn to etching out the details –

work in everything that seems to be omnipotent

until you can have the courage to face that

resistance.

-- And it’s interesting that I wrote resistance there,

because I was considering

another word, one which peers in at a world I defy. -

-- WHO NEEDS TO DRAW A FACE WHEN EVERY STRAND OF HAIR IS GLORIOUS –

The only whisper from charcoal is break, break, lose.

There is no medium that can pull us from despair on its

own. Tired and quiet,

we are all muted.

I am not saying “I” right now because “I” don’t exist here,

where there is no one to watch to fix my face forever.

-- SO MUCH LIGHT AND NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT –

There is mechanical clarity in every erased stretch of face.

Who knows how to do this, really? I keep

writing these questions because it is a resistance for me - even now in this

sentence - to admit that I don’t really know what I’m doing.

-- OBLIVION IS WHAT IS HIDDEN IN THESE FLECKS OF GREY –

You, you’ve made some other girl. You

haven’t painted her. You’ve created some other,

pretty girl, but you haven’t painted her. Perhaps,

though, you’ve painted the way she sees herself.

There is some truth there, not the truth of base vision, you’ve blown right

past that. Instead you have thrown some truth of – damn me if I say it –

spirit.

And when you showed her, she grinned.

-- WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS, REALLY? –

Here is truth in the muted touch of perfect detail.

-- WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS, REALLY? –

Why am I terrified?

-- WHEN YOU SHOWED HER, SHE GRINNED –

Awake. Stay awake. Pay attention to the depth and snap. Pull

cracks from your earth-skin, wrap pens in glue and spit,

place them inside of you.

Sleet Fields

Sleet Fields

It’s been two years since we’ve stayed

the night in DC.

Tonight, just like that last one,

we can’t sleep. Cold is waiting

outside, waiting for us to turn around and look at it.

She wore my sweater that night,

in that awake-dark, in the cold.

Hid her face, buried mine

in her red hair. The bed held us

and we held each other, earnest.

Keeping our personal sleet-fields away,

taking warmth briefly.

Convinced we would survive through

until our heart-heat, our train-love

flew again, spiraling

through dusty-solid morning.

The Second in a Series

Prophetess (II)

Crouching together on the sill

of this window I’ve thrown open,

the last April sunset shows the inherent

shadows of the prophetess’s face.

I wonder why she matters to me.

I wonder if she matters to me,

And I wonder what is in her final eyes

on this city sunset-line.

Both of us, old, cracked souls.

My cracks run grey and hers red.

This is the struggle of the fly who thinks he is a prince.

This is him (me) (not me) (always me) realizing her

web fills his world

and the sunlit ground

is nowhere that matters.

An Interlude Who is a Girl

An Interlude Who is a Girl

The Christmas-tree-carpet taste of bad gin fills your mouth. You’ve

woken up in a lost bed. Enjoy the uncertainty. Brown

skin breathes in front of you and it takes a moment to realize

this is not yours.

This is something of a new experience.

Pull a hand up from under thin college-dorm blankets and slide this stranger

to you. You know her name but she is still a stranger; this

doesn’t matter so try not to think of it for a while.

You are both half-naked, wearing jeans. Appreciate

the symmetry of this as you run tongue into neck hollows,

waiting for the gasp and shudder that tells you she is awake

because you once read a story about a man who made love

to his dead wife and thought she was just asleep and you want

to make sure.

Well Folks, This One's Dark (and Not About Who You Think It's About)

The Director

Young lover, convinced he knew everything,

was an instant addict.

Struggled with what he had, strained to skim away his body,

his love, and render his fat into putty,

delivered to the Director’s capable useless hands.

Let her do with him as she would,

giving until debt would swallow

them both. This he looked forward to.

This he thought was love – imbalance.

Idiot, blind boy, tried so hard to be

the perfect thing he wanted her to see,

to make a real appear in her eyes.

And found his real

when what he feared came true.

The house he had built was matchsticks, kindling strong

and backstage, when

all the props were placed and the actors came together

for the climax and the blocking was just so

and the lights went out he scraped

the last match and burnt it to the ground,

for fear it would fall.

He burned it. And he burned the ashes.

And again.

Burned the ground the house stood on, burned and

burned until he was the only thing left,

then burned the smoke.

A Poem About Resistances

Wasp shadows dance in my smoke.

Flitting wings break grey blue streams in lined shadow

over Sunday night Charleston.

The hazed out slats of the porch rail are

a fence, for me and the statue darkness. Both of us

kept in, kept out.

Here is hesitation in the sharp draw of a cigar.

This is caution, dumb and worried,

silent among the wasps.

From A Three-Part-Poem

I.

I can go a whole day without thinking of you,

now.

Once done, everything collapses into dust-pain, into grey shadow.

This is withdrawal from the drug of being wanted.

Nothing inside of me is attached,

and all of it falls out of the way of the slow boil, the dust rising,

the sun death in my lungs shutting off every light and leaving me without a

thought.

New Poems! (Pt III)

The Mechanics of Handstands

The impulse today is to walk

the block and a half from my house

to the southside of Colonial Lake

and do handstands.

Handstands, to be done properly,

require a few moments of quiet contemplation

before they are begun. Do this

on a sun-drowned green bench, shirtless,

sweating.

It is so loud here.

Left ear:

a lawn mower and a backpack-mounted leaf blower and a family playing and a game of tennis and a girl talking to her puppy.

Right ear:

birds.

The loud is good. It lets you center,

whines and cycles together through you,

drowns everything but the mechanics of handstands.

For the moment it is enough to bake under the sun. Let

sweat fill every inch of clothing, run over your face

and bare chest, all of it irritating, all of it alive.

When you have had enough of looking at the sky and the large military cargo airplanes screaming over the city, stand up.

Take off your shoes,

Empty pockets.

Stand barefoot in the soft summer grass,

bend at the waist to fill your fingers with the ground. This is the proper handstand position,

ready.

Breathe, and in a rush kick your legs up and catch your face as it falls forward. Flex your arms and tighten stomach and stretch up.

Breathe and wait for the sky to come down and be your new floor.

Stay this way

as long as you can.

New Poems! (Pt II)

The Price of Honesty

There are days when everything

you've done wrong stands up to you in blazing

neon, impossible to ignore

and you're never in the right.

There are days when a cloud

looks like a slap in the face

and the wind is the only thing

keeping you upright. There are

the days when everything which surrounds

you is so beautiful that the only

thing you can think is

"I'll never be able to write that."

There are more of those days

than there are of the ones where

you're centered and quiet and happy,

and the days when you're truly enjoying life

are always bracketed by the ones where

you want nothing more than to torch

every bridge and move West,

to leave all of the bullshit behind.

It's impossible to pretend everything

is great with yourself when you

know it isn't true.

It's the price of honesty.

If you are awakened to an idea, share it.

If you want to learn about someone, ask them.

If you want to love someone, love them.

If you want to accept someone’s love, accept it –

but never do it falsely. Someone else

will appreciate what you do not.

If everything hurts, give it time.

If nothing hurts, and you’re happy

in your tiny space, break your bubble.

If you know what’s going on,

and you’re happy, enjoy it –

time will not give you many moments.

New Poems! (Pt I)

You Ask How I Know I Still Love You

I know because I went out to buy dinner today,

a sandwich from the place on Bull -

I was walking back and was struck by how silent

the street was. Green spilled

over the fences, building a canopy

stirred by the warm breeze. It smelled

like Jasmine and the sea and all I could think

was that I wanted to tell you about it.

I wanted to call you to fill the space between us

with my words, impress my little bit of the world

into your mind.

I’d start by describing the light. You always were a part of it,

and the light in this moment was made for you.

It was warm and felt like home.

I was sad to feel the green heat on my skin

from the canopy and the wind off the sea,

sad to breathe that air because all of it felt like you.

And when I breathed it back out it would be me.

Just me, standing under the green summer light,

with the empty space at my side that is always there.

The First Poem in Some Months.

Inspiration beat me over the head with a club tonight. The results follow.

Nuances

(for Paul Allen)

The occasion is a musical

recital. The hall is dark,

and full of quiet children.

All of us, children.

A computer projects an image

onto the wall; it tells

us Who, What, Why.

Black, man-sized letters shimmer

above us. The stage lies

under the light;

red and yellow – it is bare.

From the corner

of the stage come the performers.

They take their places,

young players caught in the hush

before their storm.

The man comes out. His shoulders

sag, his suit heavy.

He stands center, his face

bathed in flame from the projector.

The boy comes to stand in front of the man.

He raises his arms.

For a moment, they mirror,

two pairs of thick-rimmed glasses

reflecting the red light endlessly

between them.

Their shoulders fall away at the same angle.

The boy lowers his arms.

The light blinks out.

The man waits. All of us wait,

staring up at his hard face,

lit only by the small penlight he holds.

The man begins his poem,

giving us his words, giving

his voice to the air around

his children and our ears

and the thin night behind us.

The boy’s arms lift and he conducts,

his music spinning into the gaps

in the man’s voice.

It seems an age.

Man and boy.

Poet and musician.

The father and all of his children.

The music hums to a slow close

and the poem fills the silence;

‘Do you think a car can

Take two curves on its own?

Was chance kept it going,

Chance and the slant of the road.’

The boy’s violins come in.

They sing to us, sing of two sun-lit roads

which wind through the man’s growing

green mountain Spring.

One road takes us where he has been;

the other shows us where the boy will go.

Coming Soon

It's been quiet around here. I'm working on fixing that. My writing focus - until 2pm tomorrow - is on a much longer short story than the Micros which have been appearing here. Once that's done, I'll put the story up here - either in one post or several. This story's been absolutely hellish to write, but it looks like it might be my best one yet. Check this space tomorrow for new content.

Because This Story is Perfectly Bizarre

I...yeah, I don't know. Enjoy.

Dear Girly,

You might not remember me. In fact, I’d be surprised if you did – delighted, sure, but surprised. There’d be no reason for you to remember me. I’m sure that I’m nothing but another name to you at this point. Just another name that you check off on your endless list of conquered men and broken hearts – been there, done him, etc.

Don’t think this letter means that I’m one of those fools who have fallen in love with you. You’re just someone who I suspect would still be reading this, still be interested. Even if it’s just idle curiosity, well, that’s better than pity.

Do you know where I am, girly? I’m staring at a burning house right now. The flames started in the kitchen. Something went wrong with the stove, and tongues of flame began licking upwards, slowly peeling off the cheap wallpaper, curling it and crumbling it into dust. The flames, spreading outwards, caught on the gasoline that I’d sloshed around the floors, climbing higher, consuming more.

Where are you right now? What are you smelling? What are you seeing with those huge green eyes of yours? Are you looking up at the deepening twilight in a field somewhere? You’d be sprawled out on wet grass, lost in the dark above you, living in that moment only for the pinpricks swirling above you – dead light that is so old the number has no meaning. Or are you in some bed somewhere, exploring – like a conquistador – the body of another unsuspecting boy? Are you making him love you?

If you could see this! The flames are climbing higher and higher. It’s a better show than the best Fourth of July fireworks bonanza ever. It is eating all of their knickknacks and clothes - furniture and old photographs all broken down into the same ash. The smoke is whirling and shifting – I’d swear I could see faces in it, if that wasn’t absolutely crazy.

I still remember your face. I remember the way it was rounded in all of the places you’d expect it to be sharp – false angles hidden away in your face. It’s a unique face, a face made in a poet’s dream, or a sculptor’s nightmare. Listen to me – I sound like I’m madly in love with you. The truth is I’m not. Your face comes to mind and I feel nothing. No gut wrenching longing or bitter regret. I’m just curious about you. I’m curious about why you do the things you do. What you get out of all of those boys. What you find out about yourself. Not that I’ll ever know, and even if I do, it won’t change my life. Still though, I’m curious.

Have you ever really seen an out-of-control fire? It really is something to behold; an untamed force that eats and eats and eats. Even still, this house’s death is strangely quiet. Dignified. As if it was saying, hell, if I have to go out like this, I might as well make the best of it.

Making the best of it. That’s what we’re all doing, isn’t it? We’re just taking all of this stuff that life throws at us and simply making do. It’s how disaster victims recover their lives, I’d imagine. Picture it; you evacuate your suburban neighborhood because of a coming flood. You watch on the news as your town is destroyed, carried away on raging waters or simply drowned under a river. The water recedes and you go back, picking your way through debris and the detritus of what was once a town. Everything you own is destroyed – except for a single record collection, or a set of yearbooks, a favored coffee mug. Something. Wouldn’t you treasure that thing? Wouldn’t you cement the idea that you could rebuild your life around that one thing? Wouldn’t you have to live?

Sure, it’s just a coffee mug, girly, but it could end up meaning so much more.

Like at this house here, where I am. I’m sure this fire won’t burn everything. Even now I get the sense that it’s slowing, the mad rush of energy coasting to a halt. There will be things for this family to find – did I mention that? There’s a family of five that lives in this house. Two boys and a girl. Pretty kids. Happy. Stable. Secure. Or they were, until some crazy bastard came along and set their house on fire. I wonder what they’ll find. Don’t you?

Sincerely,

A Poem I Found Lost in a Notebook

Here's a poem from earlier this year that I wrote and forgot to transfer into digital medium. It's short and simple, in the vein of the previous poem I've posted. Let me know what you think.

Friends

Spin in and out of my life.

I don’t know why the ones who stay,

stay - and the ones who leave,

leave - but I’m looking for the reasons,

weaving through dark February days,

anchored in myself.

I need a home,

a place I can be myself in and sit

awake nights or sleep away

days and write in,

around,

and about,

forever.

I don’t know if I’m talking about a Home a House a Girl Love

But I think it might be all of these things.

I want to build something.

I want to use all of this strength I’ve gained,

Fought myself for,

Fought other people for,

And use it to lift,

Stack,

Shape and carry –

span a roof over my head and build

it wide enough for my friends to stand with me.

Family

This is a longer one - a "sudden fiction" rather than a micro or flash piece. If it's indistinguishable from a short story, well, the answer to your question is "Yes." (Also, this shouldn't need to even be stated, but this is a WORK OF FICTION.)

Family

“We’re having trouble with Beth,” my father says to me. “She’s going to kill herself if we’re not careful.”

It is February. I am home in Connecticut from my freshman year of college for Spring Break. We are driving over the Thames River, and it is beginning to snow. I look at him, wondering why this is the first real thing he has chosen to say. Beth is my younger sister. She is a type I diabetic. We’ve known for three years.

I don’t know what he expects me to say. I ask him what he means.

Her grades are dropping, he tells me. Her blood sugar is on the rise, and she’s gaining weight. She fights with my father over everything – this especially I hear the most about. She doesn’t respect my mother. They are at wits end, he tells me. Nothing works. This is his mantra. The subtext is that they don’t understand what is going on.

I know what he wants me to do before he says it. I hate him a little for it.

“We need you to talk to her,” he says. “To try and convince her she’s endangering herself.”

His word, endangering. I wonder if somewhere in his head he’s proud of that one. Just like that, I’m a tool for my parents again. Useful. I look at my father looking at me, his eyes cold.

I want to tell him no – and not just no, NO, fucking NO WAY – that they’re the parents; I want to ask him if they’ve tried talking to her, if they’ve tried to see it from her point of view. I watch the road, and say, “Sure, Dad. I can give it a shot.”

It’s family, I think. We drive in silence the rest of the ten-minute ride.

When we get home, I lug my duffel bag through the slush and into the front door and I hug my mother. She’s small in my arms, smaller than I had remembered – she’s draped in a huge brown sweater; one of my father’s, I realize. Her dyed red hair is darker now. She always has it darker during the winter.

She asks me things, talking into my shoulder. How am I? How was my train ride? I answer her as I extract myself from the hug and drop my duffel bag in the hallway. I unzip it and take out the college coffee mugs in their cardboard boxes which I have bought for my parents. I stand back up and Beth is at the bottom of the stairs, smiling at me. She almost jumps forward and hugs me. I manage to put the coffee mugs down again, but just barely.

I smile and say, “Hey kid. Good to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” she says.

Her voice is muffled into my chest. We stand there, hugging each other alone in the hallway. If she’s gained weight, I can’t tell. Her face is pale and her hands and arms are cold wrapped around me. I step back from her and she smiles.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says.

I smile. “Glad to have somebody else to take their fire for you?”

She nods. We both know it’s not a joke. Right then, looking at my sister, at her pale face and the deep rings under he eyes and the way her shoulders stoop and pinch together, I make a decision.

I look her in the eyes – the same hazel as mine. “Can you go be somewhere else for a while? Just go see a friend?”

She’s staring at me, trying to figure out what I’m thinking. “Sure,” she says finally. “I can go over to Hannah’s house.”

“Do it,” I say.

She tries to read my face for another moment, then nods. She pulls a thick winter coat off of the hall stand and bundles up. She’s putting on boots as I pick up the coffee mugs and take them into the kitchen where my parents have carefully not been listening.

After my sister has left, and my mother has unpacked the coffee mugs, we sit down to eat lunch at the big dining room table, my mother and I across from each other, my father on my right at the head of the table. She has made black bean soup, and we eat quietly. It is warm and delicious, and for the moment, I am happy to be home.

I eat two bowls of soup and then get up to make a sandwich. I had no money to buy food on the train, and I am starving. As I’m layering cheese and deli turkey onto a slice of wheat bread, my father asks me – if I haven’t already – what I’m planning on saying to her.

I ask him what he wants me to say to her.

And just like, that, I overplay my hand. It slips out because I am absent-mindedly making the sandwich, but I realize that I’m glad. If they want to use me, let them know I’m aware of it. I never have been any good at intrigue.

There is silence from the dining room. The air is grey and shading darker as I sit back down, thick sandwich in hand. I ask him again, I ask my father what he wants me to say to his daughter so I can solve his problem.

He looks at me, his eyes colder than ever. It’s the way he looks when he knows he’s wrong, I think. I have no way of knowing if I’m right.

My mother says nothing. I stare at my father, my jaw tightening, and I’m angry. I am fucking angry because I’ve been home for two hours, and already we’re here. Because it’s not just about family for him. Because he wants to control Beth the way he tried to control me, the way he already controls my mother.

“I want you,” he says, and here is something different, here is a rending of that ice, now he is angry, and he says, “I want you to say whatever you have to. Make her see that she needs to behave.”

“Behave?’ I ask. “Jesus, have you ever thought of how she feels? She’s fifteen, and she’s walking around with a disease that she barely knows anything about, and you expect her to act like she’s a goddamned robot.”

“Of course we’ve thought about it,” he says, but I run right over him – I know this is a bad idea, maybe even a terrible one, but it barely seems to matter.

“When?” I ask, “When you’re yelling at her? When you’re busy not giving her a chance?”

I’m close to shouting, and I stop, breathing in, lowering my voice. “Did you ever once consider the ever-fucking fact that she’s scared? That you’ve made her afraid of you?”

“You watch your mouth around your mother,” he says, pointing a finger at me, but she stops him.

“We know she’s afraid. We’re afraid of her, too.” My mother’s voice is soft, but its scripted, italicized font threads its way through my bolded statements, ripping them to pieces. All I’ve said falls to the floor in a heap.

“We’re not villains. Neither is she.” She moves from staring at my father’s hand where his wedding band is glinting dully in the brief lightening of the afternoon sky, bringing her eyes to mine, and they are blazing, and all of a sudden I am afraid.

“We know. We’ve tried. That’s why it is your turn. Because we’re failing.”

This, and silence. My father’s face is red out of the corner of my eye. I stare at my mother. The snow begins to smack against the glass, wet and meaty.

My mother and I stare at each other across the dark hardwood table. All I can think of are my sister’s shoulders and her sleep-heavy eyes. It’s been two hours, and we’re already here. The gulf of adolescence opens behind me. I can hear the maelstrom whipping up, the screaming tendrils of wind and chaos swirling behind me, ready to swallow me and keep me trapped. I only need to step back from the line I’ve drawn, staring into my mother’s eyes. I breathe in, and out, slowly. I see Beth’s face. I do not blink. I refuse to turn and look.

Trench Warfare

This Micro Fiction piece resulted from a prompt asking us to write for a solid twenty minutes. I took what bare vestiges of story I had from that, and expanded it in a prompt which asked for a scene with a single character.

Trench Warfare

It took Steven thirty years to realize that he wasn’t a brave man. He lived in Providence, Rhode Island, and owned a bakery, and every once in a while he found himself wondering if he possessed enough courage to ever matter. The night that he found out was the night he woke drenched in sweat, woke wide-eyed, woke alert yet filled with growing terror. It was the night when a brick was put through his window by a gang of teenagers. Steven didn’t know this, never would know who had done this. All he knew was the crash that snapped his eyes awake at three in the morning, his whole body quivering.

Steven quickly swung his legs over the edge of the bed, alone in his tiny bedroom, the door shut. He went no further. He sat there, straining to hear anything more, still not sure if the crash he had heard had been a dream, but knowing - on the same level that the terror rose from - that it had not been, that there might be someone going through his apartment at that very moment, touching everything in the dark, looking for things that belonged to Steven, things to take.

The power had gone out at some point. His digital alarm clicked blinked red at him. He frowned at it, rubbed his face. His hands came away slick, and he realized that he was drenched. Beads of salty sweat ran down his thin back and his long arms. They dripped off the ends of his fingers. His short beard was matted oddly. His skin didn’t feel real. The sweat and the fear he felt still welling up inside of him rooted him to the bed. His sheets clung to his bare skin.

Steven sat, and watched the door. He waited. He tried to tell himself to move, and couldn’t. He felt like a British soldier eighty years ago, squatting in a trench somewhere in Flanders, huddling in the cold mud, fingers shaking as they held a rifle, his ill-fitting boots filling up with water, waiting as the air began to brighten - to go from strange dark night to the grey haze of dawn – waiting for the whistle and the yelling voice which would tell him he must go scrambling over the top, shoving his fingers into the packed walls and nearly loosing his boots to the sucking squelch of the mud, coming out of the pit screaming, his rifle held before him, firing from the hip at nothing, into driving rain and the winking German machine guns, reaching for him with their countless whining arms.

There was no noise from the rest of his ground-floor apartment. Steven sat, his hands clenched on the bedspread. The sweat began to cool on his body, and Steven trembled, cold and scared. He stared at the door. He told himself to get up, to lock the bedroom door at least, if he was too scared to go out. He sat on the edge of the bed. His feet were cold against the cheap hardwood floor.

The trembling began to subside, but Steven didn’t move. Every muscle in his body felt sore. His back ached, and he rubbed at his eyes. He stared at the orange glow from the streetlight which came through the only window and covered the bedroom door. Get up, he told himself. Get up and go out there and fix this. It was the last thought he had before his eyes closed and he fell asleep, sitting on the edge of his bed, his head sagging forward into his bony chest.

It began to rain at seven in the morning. The April air was grey and Steven woke up to the sound of the rain beating against the walls. He looked up, confused, his brain fuzzy with sleep. He saw that the orange glow had disappeared from the door. Steven stood.

He swept up the waves of glass in his living room, a scarecrow in a stained white t-shirt and boxers. He wore thick brown leather loafers to keep the glass out of his feet. Steven swept, any sound he made drowned in the roar of the rain, wishing he had a hawk in his heart.

A Re-Imagining Of the End of Death of a Salesman

So here's a piece I had to put together for my script analysis final last semester. I feel absurd posting this, but I enjoyed the way it turned out. All apologies to Arthur Miller.

This re-imagining of the end of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman begins in the final pages of the original Act II. Biff’s first line, which opens the following text, is the original line. The breaking point from the original text is Willy’s “Nothing? My son, nothing?” This is in replacement of the original line “What’re you doing? What’re you doing? Why is he crying?” My re-imagining continues from there.

Biff: (At the peak of his fury) Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it any more. I’m just what I am, that’s all.

(Biff’s fury has spent itself, and he breaks down, sobbing, holding on to Willy, who dumbly fumbles for Biff’s face.)

Willy: (astonished) Nothing? My son, nothing?

Biff: (crying, broken) We’re nothing! It’s us, it’s all of us. We’re nothing. We’re broken.

(Willy puts his arms around Biff – they are both on their knees at the foot of their stairs. Biff has broken down, and Willy holds him, seemingly dumbfounded. A moment passes in shocked silence except for Biff sobbing.)

Happy: (Indignant, breaking the silence) No! I’m more than you. I’ve got promise! You might be nothing, but you’ll never keep me down. I won’t let you.

Biff: (Breaking away from Willy.) More than me? (He stands up, slowly.)

Happy: (Hesitant) Yeah, yeah that’s right. (Happy paces away briefly, avoiding looking at either Biff or Willy) I’m going to be the one who finishes what Pop started.

Biff: (staring him down, incredulous) Have you even been paying attention?

Happy: (defiant) I’m going to beat this racket. I’m gonna prove –

Biff: (cutting him off) Prove what? That you’re a big man? That you’ve got what it takes to be something? Good luck, big man! Good luck!

Happy: (Angry) I’m gonna prove that Pop was right!

Biff: Haven’t you listened to anything! He’s wrong! He’s always been wrong!

Happy: (On the brink) I won’t believe that!

Biff: Wake up, Happy! It’s been a lie! You’re a lie! What have you done that’ll be remembered? What part of you matters to anyone?

Happy: I matter more than you do! I’m somebody right now, I’m the assistant –

(Happy stops short. Everyone stares at him. Ben appears in the light just outside the kitchen.)

Biff: (quietly) Go on, big man. What are you the assistant of?

(Happy shouts, and jumps at Biff. The two wrestle, shouting, neither gaining an upper hand.

(Willy watches, dismay turning to disbelief and growing anger. Ben comes into the kitchen, stands next to Willy.)

Ben: It does take a great kind of man to crack the jungle.

Willy: (quietly) He cried. He cried to me. I made him cry.

Ben: A great kind of man…

(Willy comes to his feet with more surety than we have seen from him before. Biff and Willy are still wrestling.)

Willy: (thunderous) Stop this!

(Biff stops his struggle, trying to detach from Happy. Happy doesn’t – it seems like he wants to choke the life from Biff)

Willy: I said stop! Happy! Get off of him! (Lurches over to Happy, pulls him off of Biff) What do you think you’re doing? This is your brother! Your own!

Happy: (furious, crying) Don’t you see what he’s doing to you, Pop? He’s a failure, he’s worth nothing, and he’s just trying to throw it back on you!

Willy: No, no, Hap. (pauses, hesitating, everything drawn up inside of him)

Ben: A great kind of man, Willy.

Willy: He’s right. He’s right, he’s right – I’m the failure, I’m the wreck. My boy, my son, I’ve lead you so wrong.

Happy: (Confused) Pop?

(Willy collapses into the kitchen chair next to him. The rubber hose is lying in his eyesight. He picks it up.)

Willy: I was so sure that I could do it, so sure. Twenty thousand, paid in full for Biff – his inheritance.

Biff: (Shocked in sudden realization) Willy, why?

Willy: So sure. But every time, I stopped myself, couldn’t push myself, couldn’t do it – (looks at Biff) You were going to be magnificent.

Biff: I’ve never been magnificent, boss. Not once.

Willy: You’re my son. I’m supposed to give you a chance. You’re supposed to make it where I couldn’t.

Biff: And I need more than this. I’m not made to be a salesman’s son, Willy. I’m what you’ve made me, fighting with what I really am. We’ve had the wrong dreams, Willy. You had the wrong dream. That’s what I know. I’m going to try where you couldn’t, Willy. I’m going to try and be me, in every way you never could. The door to my life closed a long time ago, and you’re the one who slammed it shut. I’m just groping in the dark now. That’s what I know.

Ben: (from behind Biff, to Willy) The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds. (Puts his hand on Biff’s shoulder) And it does take a great kind of man to crack the jungle.

(Ben’s music plays, and he leaves the house, whistling.)

Happy: (to Willy) You goddamned coward. You were going to do that to mom, to me? For him? I can’t believe you.

Biff: I think that’s the first completely honest thing you’ve said in years.

Happy: And you. You’re just leaving, again, then? Leaving him like this, for nothing.

Biff: I’m leaving for me. Because there’s nothing here. Why don’t you come with me, Happy?

Happy: (shaking his head) Hell with that. I won’t be licked that easily. I’m staying right in this city, and I’m gonna beat this racket. Like you should have.

Biff: I know who I am, big man.

Happy: (Ready to storm out the door) I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman’s dream is the only one you can have. The only one that’ll get you anywhere – to come out number-one man. (Exits out the front door. Silence falls.)

Linda: He’ll come back.

Biff: Oh yeah, he’ll come back. He’ll be back when his resolve breaks, or when that game breaks him. Or he won’t.

Willy: Son?

Biff: (Moving to him) What is it, boss?

Willy: I feel so tired.

Linda: Alright, Willy. Come to bed.

(She takes him by the arm, and leads him to the stairs and up, offstage. Biff helps until they reach the stairs. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, staring out the window at the sky. Biff goes up the stairs to the bedroom that used to be his. Puts on his jacket solemnly, picks up a duffle bag. He looks around the room, tucks Happy’s bedsheet in, making the bed neat. He walks downstairs, leaving. The flute plays, Willy’s theme, escorting his son out into the night.)

Requiem

(We see Biff front stage, working. We get the impression that he is working in a stable, maybe lifting hay or brushing down a horse. He looks healthier. He stands straighter, his shoulders not so slumped and heavy. He whistles Willy’s flute theme. Behind him, Happy enters, his bearing crushed. He looks defeated, he looks exhausted. Happy watches Biff working, not saying a word. Biff finished his chore and stands up, turning around. He sees Happy, and smiles.)

Biff: Happy.

Happy: Heya, Biff. Your boss said you’d be out here.

(There is a pause, both wanting to say something)

Biff: Three years, and here you are.

Happy: (frankly) I’m so tired of baring my teeth when I smile. (He stops, not wanting to say it.) Biff, I had to come tell you, I had to –

Biff: (nodding) Willy?

Happy: (Bowing his head.) He was tired. Mom said he just, went to sleep one night, and when she woke up in the morning, he was smiling, cold. He’s, the boss is dead, Biff.

Biff (moves to Happy, putting a steady hand on his shoulder.) He was a broken man, Happy, for so long. We all were. (Happy looks up at him) Now, now we are something else.

Happy (confused) What are we now, Biff?

Biff (smiling gently) We’re his sons, that hasn’t changed. But now we’re free. We’re free.

CURTAIN

A Plaid Scarf

Another of the 500 word exercises. Interpreted liberally, this is the result of a prompt which asked for a story written about the first thing you see upon opening a random book.

A Plaid Scarf

When I met April, we were drunk. She offered me a cigarette, and we smoked together on the back porch of a friend of mine from college. She told me she was a poet. I told her I’d read a poem once.

It was a cold September night. In between drags, our breath hung in the air. April was draped in grey and white – her dress colored the shadows around her lighter. A green and black plaid scarf was wrapped around her. It swallowed her hair.

The metallic taste of cheap beer cementing itself into the back of my throat, I listened to her talk.

“We’re all looking for the countries we wish we were from,” she said.

“The problem is that no one has any understanding for anyone. We’re devoid of empathy.” Her mantra spun out into the air around us, hanging as heavy as our smoke. I watched the way her throat moved when she talked, how she cupped her hand around her cigarette, the way she exhaled smoke out of the far corner of her mouth. Her eyes, dark with practice, stuck on mine.

“We’re all following our own paths,” I said. “Conflict is inherent. You can’t avoid that.”

April grinned her way through a grimace.

“That’s what should be changed,” she said.

Two months later I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her dance to nineties songs in the living room of the apartment we’d made ours. I grinned at the way she moved. Even when being ridiculous, she was a breeze made flesh.

When I started conversations, it was with an idea for the future. She started conversations with ideas for that moment. She wrote late into the night. I would pretend to be asleep, listening to the staccato flash of her typing. We spent weekend mornings naked, drinking coffee in bed. It was always cold, and I would trace with light fingertips the goose bumps prickling her arms and shoulders.

April danced, and I watched.

She told me when it was over, of course. All of her dissatisfaction built up and spilled over, she said.

I can’t be contained, she said.

I can’t be held here, she said.

I can’t just be kept, she said.

“I’m like a butterfly, and you’re trying to pin my wings down,” she said.

I laughed in her face after that one. She said a lot of things, and I didn’t have much to say.

When I woke up the next morning, the apartment was quiet. It was a Saturday morning. I walked into the living room, naked. I stood in front of the one window and looked at all of the other buildings. They looked dusty in the grey morning light.

April had only left one thing. The green and black plaid scarf lay on my desk. It was draped over a stack of bills and notes. I lifted it, reverent, and pressed it to my face. I inhaled. It smelled like women’s shampoo and cigarettes.

An Aggravatingly Vague Micro Fiction Exercise

So this is a 500-word story which was produced out of the prompt to "write something you've always wanted to write, have planned to write about, or utterly failed at writing." Surprisingly, with that broad of a scope, I put together a story I'm pretty proud of. Tell me what you think.

180 Links

When my father left to sit under the ocean for six months, my mother made a paper chain. Each link, she said, represented one day that he was gone. She hung the chain in the kitchen. It draped from hooks along the tops of the walls, stretching around the room twice, a kaleidoscope of pink and orange and white. Every night, before she put my sister and me to bed, my mother cut off one link. One less day, she would tell me, and then fold the piece of construction paper neatly. She kept all of them in a manila folder.

When there were twenty links gone, we got a picture from him, and a letter. The letter was for my mother, the picture for us. In it, my father stood in uniform, standing with two other men. All of them were grinning at the camera. He was growing a moustache. The night that we clipped off the fifty-ninth link, my sister accidentally ripped off a corner of the picture. My mother looked at it, holding the orange piece of paper. She didn’t say anything.

We broke the ninetieth link on a Saturday night; we celebrated with a trip to the movies and McDonald’s food. That night, I fell asleep to the sound of my mother crying to herself in the kitchen.

I got into a fight with another boy when there were fifty-five links left. He had laughed at me for putting my father’s picture in my back pocket and looking at it on the playground during recess. The boy tried to pull the picture out of my hands. He looked surprised, for some reason, when I punched him in the mouth.

When there were twenty links left, my father called us. He was in Japan, he said. The food was strange, and the city beautiful. He told us he missed us very much. He said some other things, but they were buried in static. His voice sounded strange, an echo down a long pipe.

My father’s submarine pulled back into port in Groton on July 10th. My grandparents and my aunt came to Connecticut to welcome my father back. Our family was there to meet the ship three hours early. We stood out on the pier in the summer heat, watching the river for the tugboats guiding my father’s ship down the river. Throngs of people waited in the parking lot and by the entrance to the pier. We all baked on the concrete, grinning.

They let the enlisted men off first, my mother said. My father was an officer, we’d have to wait just a bit longer.

I remember looking up at the submarine’s periscopes when she said that - the white spires jutting abruptly out of the huge black conning tower. One of them moved, scanning back and forth. I wondered if my father was controlling it – if he was watching us, smiling at the sight of our faces until it was his turn to leave.

Wear in Your Shoes, or, A Mantra for A Winter Day, or, A January Dream

Wear down pens.
Run out of ink.
Smash coffee cups in frustration, ceramic
shattering in a wave over cheap hardwood.
Tear holes in shirts –
in shoes.
Leave burn marks on jeans, on countertops,
on your body.
Bite.
Scrape.
Break the cracked winter ski of dry hands,
crush the shape of a pen into them.
Breathe,
and smoke.
Blink in the wind
and wipe away sudden tears.
Pick up brown dead leaves and crunch them to dust
to smell the last bit of September.
Tie your shoes the wrong way, forever.
Write in dusk, gathering dawn –
Write drunk.
Drink, and smile.
Drink, and regret it.
Breathe hope in with the sharp air of another January.
Wait, and worry, and be selfless for a friend who will need you,
because one day you’ll need her shoulders
to heft your own load.
Lie, and hate it.
Lie and say that you don’t.
Lie, and say that you don’t lie.
Decide to stop lying.
Worry that you won’t keep that promise.
Keep every promise, because you don’t make them often, and
they are only for the ones you love.
Love, always.
Love carefully.
Love honestly.
Smile, because you love.
Smile and drink coffee.
Smile at every sunset and dawn.
Smile, and read good books.
Read worse poetry.
Smile when you’re walking down the sidewalks of your city,
wearing in your shoes.

How to Dismantle a Library

How to Dismantle a Library

First, spend two years working as a library page. It’s an easy job, but hate it anyway. Hate being the only male employee, the only one who is still fifty years away from retirement. Hate how the library smells like them, like cracked, wrinkled skin, and perfume which is supposed to smell like strawberries and doesn’t and the way you suppose a shadow smells. Take your breaks outside, just to smell something else. Even if it’s raining. Know in your gut that anything is better than the smell of all that paper and dust and dying.
Work for two years, and get fed up. Put in your two weeks notice, and then go to work for real.
Right beneath their noses, swap everything. Reverse the alphabet. Make the Dewey Decimal system count from 0 to 499.99 and then reverse. Hide 500-600 in the Children’s section. 900 should end up next to Q. Put the travel books in backwards, except for the third world countries. Do all of this while you aren’t on the clock. Sacrifice free time. This is special.
Take a screencap of every computer’s desktop. Hide all of the program shortcuts. The set the picture as the background. Watch ancient women click relentlessly at nothing, and re-boot twenty times in a row. Enjoy your revenge. Don’t feel bad about it, when you leave. They never pay you even minimum wage, anyway.

Inheritance

Inheritance

In Finland, they don’t use the flag like we do in America. They don’t fly from front porches every morning. You’ll never see little plastic Finnish flags flying from toothpicks taped to a convenience store register. The Finnish National Flag only flies in all of its glory from the front of state buildings on national holidays.
My mother learned all of this when she spent her junior year abroad in Finland. I can see her perfectly, drunk on vodka, bored, wandering around through grey ice streets and searing her lungs with a cigarette, listening to her friend Anna prattle on. I can see them stopping to look, two girls in shapeless black pea coats, watching that flag hang limp, stark blue and white against the darkening grey infinity sky. I can see her drop the butt into dirty snow, reaching for another, saying, “I want that.”
Deciding. Ignoring Anna’s annoying yammering, walking straight for the flag pole, not looking around – because if you look like you don’t belong, you don’t – stripping off her thick gloves, coffin nail hanging forgotten on her lips, taking down this flag. Only, it’s bigger than she realized, and as it drops, it billows out, wrapping around her and Anna, cracking in the sudden wind. The latch sticks, and for a moment my mother is afraid, but she folds the flag carefully, reverent in the cold, her head wreathed in smoke. She shoves the flag under her coat, and walks away with her trophy, to hang it on a wall, and then put it away in a trunk, where one day I will find it, and after that, I’ll pass it on to my son. Maybe I’ll tell him the story.

A Warm Day in November

A Warm Day in November

Matthew rinsed his hands under the sink. He was thirty-two. He was washing away the blood that kept welling up from the long shallow cut which snaked across the back of his left hand. He was rinsing with soap, rubbing his hands dry. These were the things he could think about.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew watched as trails of red ran down the back of his hand, each one never moving the same way as the last. They all fell onto the steering wheel. The car’s heat was on full blast, and Matthew’s windshield was beginning to fog over.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew stood in the silence of New England winter trees. He opened a box of chocolate chip cookies, and dumped them out. The showered onto the ground, dirt brown. Matthew leaned down to touch one, and his hand brushed the tip of a thorn sprouting from a vine which had somehow managed to survive the frost. A thin, curving line opened on the back of his hand.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew drove away from the church. The parking lot was filled and cars spilled onto the grass. Matthew’s car was the only thing moving. A box full of cookies sat on the seat next to him.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew stood in the lobby of the church. He looked through a window. The room was full of dark suits. A group of high school boys were singing, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. They were crying. Matthew clutched a box in his arms.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew dressed himself in a dark blue shirt and black pants. He had no tie to wear, and this embarrassed him. He walked downstairs, his steps measured. His grey haired mother asked him to drop a box off for the wake.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew held Samantha in his arms as she cried. It was three in the morning. They were the only ones in the hospital waiting room. It smelled like pine-sol and cheap carpeting. There was nothing he could say.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew sat in a chair that was too small for him. Out the small window to his left, he could see the lights of Chicago falling away past the blinking red wing-light.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew called his mother. He said things like, it will be ok. I love you. I know. I’m coming home.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew answered the phone, and a friend from high school said things like, Samantha’s son was hit by a school bus today. An accident. A tragedy. He said things like, the funeral is Saturday. She needs you again.

* * * * *

Before that, Matthew sat in his apartment, trying to write a poem. He thought he was trying to write about winter in Chicago, but it was about loneliness.

* * * * *

Before that, a boy named George walked out of his front door. He was fifteen, and his mother always said he looked like one of her old friends. About how handsome he was. He decided he was going to ride his bike to school. It wasn’t far, and it was a strangely warm day for November in Connecticut.

Heritage

Heritage


The way she told it, you only had five minutes to eat your meals in Officers Candidate School. This was just one more way for the Navy to make you into the person they needed. The way she told it, you had to shovel in your food as fast as possible. Growing up a Navy brat, she was used to ridiculous things. Rebecca took it as a challenge, and never failed. Even when the young man sitting next to her started choking on a piece of iceberg lettuce, she stopped only to say to the sergeant, “Excuse me, but this boy is choking.” You had to eat, she told me. Still, she was the only one to say anything.
Later, he came and found her. His name was Glen, he said – and with all of the solid confidence he would instill in me, he asked if the next time they were off duty, he could take her out for a drink. You take care of the ones who save your life, Glen told her.
They eloped in Newport, Rhode Island – Rebecca didn’t tell anyone, Glen had no one to tell. After they were married in August with the sea at their backs, the Navy did its best to punish them for it. My mother withdrew. The way she told it, she’d found the stability she’d been looking for. My father stayed, standing both of their full-kit punishment watches. I can see him there, alone on the edge of a chain-link fence at three in the morning, somewhere in the middle of two consecutive six hour watches, holding both of them up with ease.

Micro Fiction (part 2)

Here's the second; this is from an exercise where the entire piece had to be one sentence in length.

Five Seconds of Serenity

Step out of the shower into a world of fog spreading over you – thick steam filling the cracks and spaces of this room, reaching for your blurry eyes, into your mind and through your skin to clean you out, winding its way down to renew you – it’s all that matters for the longest moment, this sudden gray shading everything around you for eyes which refuse to squint, which – for this once – revel in their broken ability to see; your mind stilled, its mad spinning of questions and stories and insecurities which wage war with confidence and concrete truth and the scrap of some song buried in the whirlwind is slowed in this shroud – and in less than a moment, between the heartbeats when you step onto the cracked linoleum and reach out for the slightly damp, too small towel hanging in sudden blue from the doorknob, here in this white oblivion, the cold will rush in, will wind its way under the door and through this steam to find every water drop clinging to your numb skin, will smash into your hair and your toes and trace its burning way over you, ripping this serenity from you and tearing it into quaking pieces, and you will shiver, and you will shiver and clench your body, folding in on yourself like a broken origami star, and you will shiver as you towel yourself off, trying to be dry, shivering, and shiver, and shiver, trying with all of the will power in your body to ignore the water in your hair and on your legs which refuses to loose its grip – in a second, you will be cold again, but for now, here in this serene shroud of warmth, blind, you are tall, strong, and clean.

Micro Fiction

Some new Micro Fiction pieces here. First one is a confessional.

Confessional

How do you write a confession to yourself? How do you do it? Do you describe your feelings when you can’t order them in your head? Do you say that? If it reaches your point, and if your voice flows through your pen into an ink jumble, do you laugh? Do you refuse to look at it, instead dropping letters in your wake like the deranged debris of a forgotten poet drifter who can’t remember his name? Do you cherish it? Do you raise it up on a pedestal and refuse to acknowledge its flaws – or worse, see flaws as beauty? Do you keep yourself blind? Do you keep yourself blind? How do you write what you already know? How do you describe something that’s a part of everything, that can’t even be seen? Do you write around it? Do you throw words at it until you think you hit? Or do you aim, and breathe, and fire with your voice, blazing metaphor like lead and leave only smoking trails of ink curling from your guns? Do you look it in the eye? Do you refuse to shrink away from the truth you see so clearly? I’m addressing you. What are you going to do?

A Very Old One

I was plumbing the depths of my writing folder, and found a poem from a year and a half ago that I thought I'd lost. Enjoy!

Sketch From The Sun-Lit Benches

On my door I've written my own motto -
"Imposed form is Imposed frame of mind."

It's not an indictment of
any sort of classical poetry -
I don't pretend to be above it,
I'm not claiming to be offended by iambic pentameter -
or loathe being trapped inside
the parallels of a sonnet.

It's a reminder.
A reminder that voice needs freedom - that truth
only comes when we free ourselves to say
exactly what we want to say.

Imposed form is imposed frame of mind
is a warning.
Beware, beware -
stifled voice is a taint to the soul and
bottling voice puts
horrible pressure on yourself
that increases and expands,
as its feasts on everything
inside that you treasure,
defend as being a part of you
and absolutely necessary to your survival.

Imposed form is imposed frame of mind is a reminder
to live your life.
To find an outlet for pulsing creative consciousness -
why I spill ink onto torn,
raped sheets of virgin notebooks -
to run howling in the streets because there's just too much to
hold inside -
to sketch and draw and shade in the world with your life -
to find a way to leave your mark -
write your chorus
and hum your melody
scream and shout and dance
and sing
and to do it
in your own mind, with your own voice,
and a free, beating heart.

I'm learning to live for myself -
I'm learning to live my life for me - to live honestly,
I'm learning to live
in the space between moments
the heartbeats between the flash of lightning I'm counting
one, two, three
till the rolling rumble of life begins again

Cherishing the good moments
the mornings when I can run and revel in the pounding
beat of feet meeting pavement in the heart of
my city
the mornings when the sun envelops -
warmth and light melding together and bringing slow smile
to face.
The mornings when pen scratches over paper
so fast that i can't keep up and
the wheel that spins out my thread of consciousness
is throwing sparks -

The musician loves his callused hands
for the proof that they give -
physical evidence that those hands produce the
music he hears in his head,
screaming out of cerebellum to fingertips
to be summoned into the world as
rhythm
melody
improving the world as it strengthens his soul and
hardens his hands -
each note leaves an impression on his body

We're all living for the mornings
and so accept the nights - when they come,
and we thank fully
that they're rare - when loneliness strikes
and slips tendrils into head and
heart and makes you groan
and when you drop off to sleep,
exhausted from the struggle -

The nights are the price we pay, the
debt to work off -
we're living for the moments
when the world is quiet.

A Train Ride

I'm leaving tonight,
slipping out through frozen winter air.

This is the first time
that I'm not running away.

I blinked yesterday.

I opened
my eyes in a moment of hope,
so strange and swirling through
cracked ice and the sharp Connecticut wind.

I will be train-riding
south in the gathering dawn,
going home.