War

The bombs came suddenly, blooming into existence like infernal mushrooms. It was hard to pinpoint exactly where the first ones struck though experts would later on agree it was somewhere along the Virginia coast. New York’s only came three minutes after.

One moment, there had been nothing but the dullness of the storm. The snow falling from the formless sky muffled the busy, incessant thrashing of the city in a billion heavy patterns. Muffled sounds even like a pillow pushed up on a loudspeaker. Even the trains had seemed distant.

Then there had been the buzzing, tinkling and clicks of electronics frizzling, the city’s doom heralded by a vanguard of electromagnetic radiation.

In the days that followed, the pundits would gush about the initial flurry of rockets that flew in response and counter-response from both sides of the seaboard. They would say that NORAD did not fail, telling how quickly the North Dakotan ranges had emptied. A farmer would go on a tour, detailing how the thunder of motors echoed one after the other for hours, and hurled long-bodied Minutemen into the sky. The TVs would show still many more gratuitous pictures of the torn East, all the while whispering of what New York had once been.

But that last night had been a normal winter night for many, magical even for a few. Had there been time, she would have written of it. Her diary, filled with the written rigor of her regime, would have told of how she’d put on the shear red dress she’d bought on a whim months ago. The mirror had reflected a different woman back at her, one who wore shear things, who coiffed her hair into elegant buns and dabbed crimson red lipstick across her lips.

She would have written of the warm coat hugging her new form all the way to the nightclub, and the thrill she’d felt in dancing under so many eyes.

He might have written too. Perhaps about work but most likely about a beautiful Chinese boy he’d spied on Columbus Circle and wooed. ”Eze mu,” he’d whispered that last night, dropping kisses upon his lover’s closed eyes. My king.

Enfolded in each other, they’d stuffed cold palms into the warm crook between arm and shoulder, their legs twined like resting garters. They had died like rabbits usually die, sleeping in their winter dens.

Melt, melt, the realm of grass

I don’t wanna melt no more, don’t wanna melt no more with my head buried in the grass. There’s dirt chewed up in my teeth and it’s getting into all the small places we miss when we brush. I have quartz and diamonds in my mouth, no, carbon. I have thousand year old decay in my mouth and it all just tastes like mushy shit and wet sand.

It’s the wine, it’s gotta be the wine, it’s the fucking wine and everything is too fucking real, man.

The grass is the color of ether and the ether tastes like blue. There are fucking diamonds in the sky, man, and that shit is oceans deep. There’s a purple fucking whale just riding round and round and round like Jesus and round and round oh god the wine won’t stay down, it’s coming up, it’s come up like Malcolm. I’ve expounded some wet profound shit to grass.

The light is serotonin way it’s storming from these buildings and there are fucking too many of them, there’s always too many of them, too much light man grass is the only thing that’s real, grass is the only thing that’s real, grass is the….

I’m mooning the world, mooning Humphrey Bogart on the big screen. Moon mooning me above 42nd, bove the river, bove Bryant like a giant dotted pill.

She’s turned us into butterflies, man. I flap my wings and rain meteors, flap my wings and shit diamonds. I flap purple hurricanes to Dubai, flap flap a thousand miles away. I flap my way to Jesus and oh the moon is like God, man, has become God, something golden.

You should see the angels glimmer between her pits.

Brain and guts

mouthlikewine:

He could tell by the way the fireman stumbled that it was going to be bad. The car, a 98 Accord the color of storm clouds, rested on it’s roof. It reminded Adam of dead beetles he’d clear from the hull of the ambulances sometimes, their legs pointed upwards as if in supplication to some beetle God. Much of the car’s engine block were another 40 yards to the right where the first one had wrapped around a lamppost. That car was a black Ford Thunderbird, a newer 2003 model. It reminded him of pictures of antiques he’d seen in catalogs.

The Thunderbird’s passengers were already in the process of being extricated. The Honda’s engine, meanwhile, sat on the stretch of road between the two cars. Its silent presence spoke of the trauma that had taken place on the road only a few minutes beforehand. Around the engine, a trail of glass and debris spilled about. Pocks and harsh scuffs on the asphalt marked where machinery had bounced along. Intermittent splotches of car fuel appeared now and then, leading to a long, flowing stream of the stuff.

The fireman grasped the Honda’s underbelly on the driver’s side tightly with one hand. Two of his buddies reached out to help him stand but he waved them away. Adam couldn’t hear a word they said. He could see however, how the rest of the fire unit concentrated on the exterior of the Honda rather than its inside. Nick, his crew leader, turned back to give him a grim look.

“What’s that they’re doing?” he called. He gestured with his chin to where firefighters had coated the back of the car with a white gaseous material. Others where still pumping the liquid into the fuel compartment and along the ground where fuel had spilled out. 

“Foam,” Nick answered back. “So it don’t catch fire.”

The two of them made their way across the grassy divide on the expressway. Between them they hefted a long spine-board over uneven terrain. His fingers kept flitting up and down his front, up and down, touching the straps of his gear-bag for minor reassurances. His throat felt dry and constricted as the smell of trampled earth rose from beneath them. He hated the nervous flutter that predictably appeared at wrecks. The anticipation, Nick had once told him, was always bigger than the real thing.

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Beckoning

She didn’t want to stay out in the cold any longer. With each second more, the unnamed despair swelled within her, its throbbing weight compounding upon her being. She felt it as sharply as the bite of the wind snapping at her ankles. Bundled figures approached and slipped around her but she couldn’t see them anymore because there were tears in her eyes. She blinked furiously to rid them, but even so, a single drop evaded her batting lashes and rolled down her cheek. It fell, becoming lost quickly in the snow and ice that crunched under her foot.

She felt as alone and insignificant as it, and entirely more bruised. She wanted to scream, to hide, and to do away with the nonverbal feelings that constricted her chest and caused her breath to escape in quick, shallow, huffs.

Around her, kissing couples spun like taunting projections on a blank screen. Tall, thin women with androgynous bodies strode on quick-heeled feet, their minds set on visions of distant lovers. Smaller ones pressed their forms deeper into the hugs of their companions, breaking to move deftly around families of tourists.

Store-fronts glowed with multi-colored Christmas decorations, their best displays of light and gold put forth to beckon ogling pedestrians. There was a jeweled tree in almost every store window and outside, flurries of snow swirled like a scene out of a T.V. show.

If asked, she might’ve answered that it wasn’t the prospect of being alone at Christmastime that upset her. She might’ve laughed, her eyes quickly darting away.

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The Strange Case of Abel

The boy woke up because he was thirsty. His throat was dry like sandpaper and each time he swallowed, he could feel the fleshes of its form stick together. It was almost painful how they rubbed on each other. He wanted to drink gallons and gallons of water and wash away the unpleasant feeling.

Behind his closed eyes, visions of rushing water flowed like paradise. He imagined himself putting his cupped hands into a clear, singing spring and bringing them to his lips. He imagined the cool rush of liquid flood down his throat and wetting his parched innards. Each jointed, sinewy limb felt as dry and desiccated as firewood and it pained him to stretch even them out. He groaned at his lack of options. He needed to drink.

He opened his eyes very slowly, cringing as the light creeping in through the slit between floor and doorway penetrated his mind. He was amazed that a bulb as generic as the one in the hall outside his door could be so bright. His vision blurred with dots and sensation. It dizzied and disoriented him so much that he lay very still and took air in slow, measured, puffs before he could venture to reopen his eyes.

Even then, he was forced to blink steadily through each lid until the floaters were gone from his vision. It amazed him still that he could raise himself out of his bed, and he did so with relative ease, moving towards the door. It seemed at first that the floor was unusually close to his face and much closer to his eyes than he remembered it ever being. He thought briefly that he might have shrunk but when he stretched his legs out in the dark, the length of time it took to rise up to his fullest height alarmed him. He thought then, briefly, that he might have grown, but figured it to be a mild hallucination.

He was prepared for the assault of light that came when he pulled his bedroom door open. Blinking furiously and still put off, he rushed out in a beeline for the kitchen.

“Abel, is that you?”

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Stranger in the Night (excerpt III)

The dread that had started in the pit of his stomach was now sending tendrils into his heart and no matter how much he tried to rationalize it away, Freddie was very much afraid.

Up ahead, he was sure, was a bar. His eyes sought it now, scanning the recesses of doorways for its comforting façade. He strained to catch the sound of laughing patrons and clinking glass. And there was the bar—a teeny, tiny front, partially hidden in the dark behind a brick staircase. Never one to frequent the establishment he nevertheless made sure to stop in at least a few times out of the year. He tipped the bartenders nicely. This insured that at times like these, when he felt less than himself, he could count on the marginal familiarity of the place to steady him. 

Now, Freddie dove into it with vigor, and made his way past the sparsely-seated front and the three empty stools at the bar. He was always surprised by how its cozy face belied its voluminous interior. This he felt now as he made his way deeper into the back, weaving through the horde congregated round the pool tables and the chaise-longue. He avoided the gazes directed at him, the people who caught his damp face and presuming him for a patron who’d had too much to drink, gave him a wide berth.

Finally, Freddie could escape into the single-occupancy bathroom and lock the door behind him.

Leads with no names

I have this habit of writing protagonists with no names. I do it all the time, then have to remind myself to call the character something. Naming primary characters has always been difficult to me. It feels contrived and I don’t like to do it. When I write out of the blue and am securely in my zone, everything feels raw and fluid. It’s an all-encompassing rush to get the story out and I’m so much in the mind of the character I’ve composited that I don’t think outside that perspective until I’m done. I don’t think about his or her name.

To come back and say now what should I call you after that experience…there’s so much of a disjunct between the emotional state in the moment, and the emotional state afterwards, that it does not feel honest. That’s where the feeling of contrivance comes in. For me, I’ve realized that as long as the character and story can compel me, I don’t need to know a character’s name to enjoy it. The psychology is enough.

I’ve watched films and stageplays where the story was so involving I completely forgot what the characters were called. Children of Men. Closer. Passing Strange.

Fight Club remains one of my most favorite films of all time but it takes me a while to remember the name “Tyler Durden.” I can’t ever recall Edward Norton’s character’s without a clue, not even now. The truth of their acting is the only thing that means anything. How much they hit each and every scale of their character so that I, watching, can sink in and see the scene through them.

It was only after I walked out of the movie theatre that I’d realized the protagonist of the movie Drive had no name. He was called “The Driver” in all the reviews I read afterwards.

I guess I aspire to write stories and characters every bit as compelling. You might not even remember their names.

Vignette 7

Almost always, it begins like this: a glance from the corner of an eye, head flashing towards motion. Already, curiosity murmurs like a rising cat. A turn to look again. It never matters what they’re wearing or what colors, except, that it does. It’s the way the clothing falls on them—the way they feel in your left brain, their form sneaking up like whispers. Soft, almost sensual. Quiet, but there. The way melancholy follows them, drawing you after. You imagine things to fill the place of answers you can’t get. What ifs and maybes that seem emptier somehow for their being. Regret and saudade for someone you never knew. And it shocks like the suddenness of intimacy between strangers.

Punching Drunk in a Bar

Once, there was a meat-head with a neck so thick a bull could have been proud of it. He was orange with sharp-looking hair done up in spikes. But his mitts were so large, they could hold two of any normal man’s.

When he hit Rodger, Rodger’s eyes would shut off. Perhaps it was his brain witnessing the potential of death and deciding to save his mind from trauma. Perhaps it was just whiplash. But as the meat-head’s fist struck, Rodger’s vision would go black. He’d feel each and every knuckle of that monster hand embed into his cheek. They’d press and mold his face in fury, knuckles gouging in to chatter his teeth.

It had really been like getting hit with a two-by-four. Once, he’d had the misfortune of strolling through the wrong part of Toronto at night. Now, he bore the once fractured rib of that experience and the memory to compare it to.

Each orange strike the meat-head landed had sent him spinning to the ground like baggage—blind—and with limbs flying everywhere. He would lie in amazement on the floor and marvel at how the pain bloomed past the dullness that usually came with his drunkenness. Its throbbing was raw and brilliant and sent flashes across his field of vision, but he would get right back up.

He would rub at the blood dripping down and the meat-head would blink stupidly at him. When his shirt became so soaked that it was more red than white, he still got up. When his boots left prints in the puddle at his feet, he still got up. His arms spread out, he looked like a ghastly, grinning, scarecrow.

It wasn’t until he’d lost his tooth though that the other patrons stepped in. The meat-head’s arm had come down on his jaw like a press and a chip of white and speckled red flown out. There had been the purest moment of silence in the room as all watched the molar disappear behind the bar. Rodger, when he came to, woke to see the meat-head being restrained by four men. Behind his head, he’d heard the sound of women crying. But above him, the blonde bartender glared down at him, holding something bloody in her hand.

“Get out.”

He’d laughed painfully, pulling himself to his feet. He’d pocketed his tooth and stumbled out into the night, drunk, bloodied, and hurting. But they would let him back in. They always did.

Stranger in the Night (excerpt II)

As he had expected, the figure picked up pace, keeping the distance between the two of them constant. The knot in Freddie’s stomach had grown a smaller pair which now found its way up to his throat. Freddie coughed, trying to dislodge it. He could hear his breath come around it as a series of wheezes. He tried to allay his fear by forcing himself to think back on his successes in life. To remember his mother, the woman in the park, and his queen-sized bed to which he wished he had gone home earlier. This seemed to work enough that he was able to slow his pace to a comfortable stroll.

He was convinced that there was nothing to fear at all. Here he was, a successful businessman who had seen his way through many a tough situation by wit alone, looking over his back like a scared schoolgirl. Why, how foolish of him to think that he would be the only one enjoying the breezes of an evening.

How foolish of him to be afraid. How had he let his fears get the best of him? Now, he wasn’t sure there was anyone behind him at all. Confidently, Freddie took a measured look behind him and his breath caught. Illuminated beneath the light of a streetlamp was the figure of a man wrapped in a long coat, his face hidden by the brim of a hat. The man stood still, his unseen gaze leveled squarely on Freddie.

Stranger in the Night (excerpt I)

Freddie left late that night. The soft air that blew gently across his body carried with it the scents of the city settling down to slumber. Loose bags, no longer stamped down by the heels of passersby, flitted across the ground to wrap themselves around corners. The odor of car exhausts, often overwhelming at day, was giving way to the aroma of trees and dampened sidewalks. And above, the birds all ambitioned to emulate, flitted their way home across the evening sky.

From a hidden bakery came the sweet smell of cakes out the oven. For Freddie, this in particular brought to mind the childhood tales his mother would tell. He was Hansel lost in the big city, or maybe a more romantic figure—Robin Hood.

Garbage trucks hummed, people shouted and laughed. Glass broke. All this were the city’s lullaby and even the noise of cars passing on the avenue seemed less intrusive, their sporadic rumbling adding to the ambient lull of the nightscape. He was so involved in his senses that it took a while for him to notice the man following him. He thought nothing of it at first, figuring him to be a passing stranger but there was something deliberate about his steps. He became suspicious when the man turned a corner with him. Freddie didn’t want to call attention to the situation but he decided to start walking faster.

Vignette 6

It’s ingenious really when you think about it: you take a river chock full of silt and debris; so clogged with decaying fronds and algae blooms that it’s green, and you work.

You dredge it until you’ve dug up most of the rubbish buried in there—the black tires so old you can rip their rubber with your hands. The bits of wood rotting off the jutting dock. Even concrete chunks more ancient than your grandpa. You take them all away, but around this river, you build a park.

You plant grass on its cut banks. You put up new trees. Public seats spring up near a long, winding, cement trail you’ve just poured. You even put a gazebo on the bank, because for some crazy reason, people like watching bodies of water. You notice then the willow trees that have always grown upon each of its banks. They are old and their branches tired with the years they’ve kept this river. Below them, you see how the waterlilies bloom along like gems set to limn a gold chain.

There are warblers and thrushes singing in the bushes. Geese come in to cool off on the river.

Behind you, a girl sees the biggest dragonfly of her life and shrieks. The flashy insect dashes by you like a spirit drawn from a coloring book. You smile. You’ve created. You’re content.

Drunken Conversations with Dead Poets

Frost and I would have the longest of conversations. As the drinks come, he’d turn ever more didactic and talk about his mother. There would be a spectacular intensity to the discussion, almost as if Frost had a driving need to get something out. Almost as if he feared he’d lose it if he didn’t. I would learn more about Ezra Pound than I wanted too. We’d end the night drunk, quiet, and depressed.

Langston Hughes and I would begin by talking about poetry, but we’d end up laughing, dancing, and singing the city blues. We’d take turns using an old yellow bucket as a drum. Hours later, Hughes and I would go for a late-night food run in Harlem but end up in Hamilton Park smoking and whispering philosophies beneath the lamps and trees. 

Parker would render me speechless by her mere presence. She’d ask me to call her Dot. She’d talk about the wars and compare it to Ninja Turtles. Eventually, Dot would draw me out by bemoaning the fall from grace rhymed-poetry has suffered in contemporary times. She’d point wryly to Def Jam poetry as the savior of the form and we’d spend the rest of the night drinking wine on a couch and criticizing pop culture.

I would fall in love with Plath. We wouldn’t talk about poetry at all; we’d end up in bed and whisper drunkenly about the transiency of it all. She would get up intermittently to listen to the sounds of her children breathing and I would take her outside where we’d run giggling through sprinklers. 

Poe would be a wonderful drinking buddy; he’d have the best games and the best discussions, but only in the beginning. As the night progresses, he’d become infinitely sadder like Frost. Ultimately, Poe would end up dumb and unconscious on the floor.

Vignette 5: Anxiety

You wake up alone in your room again. You’re convinced you heard something in the dark, but there’s nothing there, just you. It might’ve been a car down the street, the dog next door, or a tree branch scratching against your bedroom window. Or it might’ve been the noise in your head. The buzzing that began last week at your mother’s place, or your friend’s new apartment in the city, or at work. Somewhere. When everyone was gathered around the table laughing, you were the only exception. There you were in the corner with the coffee pot, rubbing your temple in that determined way of yours, trying to think straight through the cloud filling up your inside.

You are ashamed because the panic of your youth has returned; the anxiety that kept you awake at night when your parents fighting set your teeth on edge. Do you remember the feeling in your chest? How it scared you that you might suddenly forget how to breath?

You’re afraid you’re becoming like your mother. You don’t want to be weak. You’ve spent your entire adulthood running from your past. You’ve bought a house. You own a car. Your friends even say they love you. You haven’t touched the rope in your closet in months. But you don’t tell them about times like these when you lie awake in your bed and all you see is death. 

Brain and guts

He could tell by the way the fireman stumbled that it was going to be bad. The car, a 98 Accord the color of storm clouds, rested on it’s roof. It reminded Adam of dead beetles he’d clear from the hull of the ambulances sometimes, their legs pointed upwards as if in supplication to some beetle God. Much of the car’s engine block were another 40 yards to the right where the first one had wrapped around a lamppost. That car was a black Ford Thunderbird, a newer 2003 model. It reminded him of pictures of antiques he’d seen in catalogs.

The Thunderbird’s passengers were already in the process of being extricated. The Honda’s engine, meanwhile, sat on the stretch of road between the two cars. Its silent presence spoke of the trauma that had taken place on the road only a few minutes beforehand. Around the engine, a trail of glass and debris spilled about. Pocks and harsh scuffs on the asphalt marked where machinery had bounced along. Intermittent splotches of car fuel appeared now and then, leading to a long, flowing stream of the stuff.

The fireman grasped the Honda’s underbelly on the driver’s side tightly with one hand. Two of his buddies reached out to help him stand but he waved them away. Adam couldn’t hear a word they said. He could see however, how the rest of the fire unit concentrated on the exterior of the Honda rather than its inside. Nick, his crew leader, turned back to give him a grim look.

“What’s that they’re doing?” he called. He gestured with his chin to where firefighters had coated the back of the car with a white gaseous material. Others where still pumping the liquid into the fuel compartment and along the ground where fuel had spilled out. 

“Foam,” Nick answered back. “So it don’t catch fire.”

The two of them made their way across the grassy divide on the expressway. Between them they hefted a long spine-board over uneven terrain. His fingers kept flitting up and down his front, up and down, touching the straps of his gear-bag for minor reassurances. His throat felt dry and constricted as the smell of trampled earth rose from beneath them. He hated the nervous flutter that predictably appeared at wrecks. The anticipation, Nick had once told him, was always bigger than the real thing.

Nick was the first of two paramedics on their EMT team. He was crewleader because he’d also been a combat medic. He’d seen some real stuff and had fixed people up in situations Adam couldn’t imagine. There was ice in Nick’s veins and it came through in the calm, deliberate, way the man spoke. When Nick thought hard, his eyes also had a tendency of freezing ever so slightly on whomever he was speaking to. It was a habit that never ceased to discomfit Adam, especially when he was the cause of it, as he almost always was.

Nick was admirable but he scared Adam. Whenever he looked at Nick’s eyes too long, he was reminded of something raw and bloody, and the man’s energy always made him nervous.

The second paramedic was Laura. She was with the rest of their unit, driving another five-hundred yards northeast just so they could swing around the divider and come up the Westbound lane.

Nick reached the car first, dropping quickly onto his knees to peer in through the broken passenger-side window. He was quiet for a moment and Adam shuffled behind him. The Accord’s dash stood out like a blunt bruise in a mess of contorted metal, rubber, and electrical cords. The sun seemed more oppressive now somehow, and he considered taking a swig of water from the bottle in his bag. Just as suddenly, Nick sat up on his haunches and looked at him.

“Alright. We’re gonna have to stabilize his neck,” he said. “Then we’re gonna jimmy the plank in through that door and see if we can’t gently pull him off on to it.”

Adam nodded quickly. He bent to position the long spine-board at Nick’s feet, when he continued.

“No, see if you can’t go around the other side—”

Adam looked up in time to catch the flicker in Nick’s eyes. The paramedic cleared his throat. “Actually, uh…lemme go around the other side. Then you can feed that board to me.”

Adam waved him off, frowning. He didn’t want his crewleader to think that he was incapable of doing his job. He dropped the board and stood, letting his gear bag fall next to the paramedic as well. Pulling on his gloves, he thought how horrid fate was to have spun this chance. It seemed to him that the most gut-wrenching examples of human death and disease always took place on the brightest of days like these.

He made his away around the car, clearing the firemen away from the driver’s side. All above him was the bluest of Mid-Western skies, a clear opal with a particularly ripe sun to set it.

Adam got down on his knees. Sticking his head in immediately caused his breathing technique to kick in and he sucked in air through his nose. In for five, out for five. He swallowed. He tried to ignore Nick’s flashbulb eyes boring into his from the other side. He tried to ignore the girl as well, concentrating instead on the man hanging alongside her.

At first, she entered his head like an ear-worm and all he heard was brainandgutsbrainandguts mixing in a wild jumble. Then all he saw were brain and guts. Itbecame a vicious mirage of mental noise and tension and soon enough, the smell crept up his nose and he gagged thickly. It was a moist aroma, brain and guts, like the bloodiest smell of metal. And it didn’t surprise him one bit that the copper he’d tasted sucking on his wounds would be magnified a hundred times when spilled out over a car.