There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like

A Tale for the Mid-Winter Season after the Mural by Carl Larrson

On the shortest day I wake before our maids from the surrounding farms have converged on Sundborn. Greta lives with us so she will be asleep in that deep slumber only girls of her age seem to own. Her tiny room has barely more than a bed and a chest for her clothes. There is my first painting of her on the wall, little more a sketch, but she was entranced, at seeing herself so. To the household she is a maid who looks after me and my studio,  though she is a literate, intelligent girl, city-bred from Gamla Stan but from a poor home, a widowed mother, her late father a drunkard.  These were my roots, my beginning, exactly. But her eyes already see a world beyond Sundborn. She covets postcards from my distant friends: in Paris, London, Jean in South America, and will arrange them on my writing desk, sometimes take them to her room at night to dream in the candlelight. I think this summer I shall paint her, at my desk, reading my cards, or perhaps writing her own. The window will be open and a morning breeze will make the flowers on the desk tremble.

Karin sleeps too, a desperate sleep born of too much work and thought and interruption. These days before Christmas put a strain on her usually calm disposition. The responsibilities of our home, our life, the constant visitors, they weigh upon her, and dispel her private time. Time in her studio seems impossible. I often catch her poised to disappear from a family coming-together. She is here, and then gone, as if by magic. With the older children home from their distant schools, and Suzanne arrived from England just yesterday morning, they all cannot do without lengthy conferences. They know better than disturb me. Why do you think there is a window set into my studio door? So, if I am at my easel there should be no knock to disturb. There is another reason, but that is between Karin and I.

This was once a summer-only house, but over the years we have made it our whole-year home. There was much attention given to making it snug and warm. My architect replaced all the windows and all the doors and there is this straw insulation between the walls. Now, as I open the curtains around my bed, I can see my breath float out into the cool air. When, later, I descend to my studio, the stove, damped down against the night, when opened and raddled will soon warm the space. I shall draw back the heavy drapes and open the wooden shutters onto the dark land outside. Only then I will stand before my current painting: *Brita and the Sleigh.

Current!? I have been working on this painting intermittently for five years, and Brita is no longer the Brita of this picture, though I remember her then as yesterday. It is a picture of a winter journey for a six-year-old, only that journey is just across the yard to the washhouse. Snow, frost, birds gathered in the leafless trees, a sun dog in the sky, Brita pushing her empty sledge, wearing fur boots, Lisbeth’s old coat, and that black knitted hat made by old Anna. It is the nearest I have come to suggesting the outer landscape of this place. I bring it out every year at this time so I can check the light and the shadows against what I see now, not what I remember seeing then. But there will be a more pressing concern for me today, this shortest day.

Since my first thoughts for the final mural in my cycle for the Nationalmuseum I have always put this day aside, whatever I might be doing, wherever I may be. I pull out my first sketches, that book of imaginary tableaux filled in a day and a night in my tiny garden studio in Grez, thinking of home, of snow, the mid-winter, feeling the extraordinary power and shake of Adam of Bremen’s description of 10th C pre-Christian Uppsala, written to describe how barbaric and immoral were the practices and religion of the pagans, to defend the fragile position of the Christian church in Sweden at the time. But as I gaze at these rough beginnings made during those strange winter days in my rooms at the Hotel Chevilon, I feel myself that twenty-five year old discovering my artistic vision, abandoning oils for the flow and smudge of watercolour, and then, of course, Karin. We were part of the Swedish colony at Grez-sur-Loing. Karin lived with the ladies in Pension Laurent, but was every minute beside me until we found our own place, to be alone and be together, in a cupboard of a house by the river, in Marlotte.

Everyone who painted en-plein-air, writers, composers, they all flocked to Grez just south of Fontainebleau, to visit, sometimes to stay. I recall Strindberg writing to Karin after his first visit: It was as if there were no pronounced shadows, no hard lines, the air with its violet complexion is almost always misty; and I painting constantly, and against the style and medium of the time. How the French scoffed at my watercolours, but my work sold immediately in Stockholm. . . and Karin, tall, slim, Karin, my muse, my lover, my model, her boy-like figure lying naked (but for a hat) in the long grass outside my studio. We learned each other there, the technique of bodies in intimate closeness, the way of no words, the sharing of silent thoughts, together on those soft, damp winter days when our thoughts were of home, of Karin’s childhood home at Sundborn. I had no childhood thoughts I wanted to return to, but Karin, yes. That is why we are here now.

In Grez-sur-Loing, on a sullen December day, mist lying on the river, our garden dead to winter, we received a visitor, a Swedish writer and journalist travelling with a very young Italian, Mariano Fortuny, a painter living in Paris, and his mentor the Spaniard Egusquiza. There was a woman too who Karin took away, a Parisienne seamstress I think, Fortuny’s lover. Bayreuth and Wagner, Wagner, Wagner was all they could talk about. Of course Sweden has its own Nordic Mythology I ventured. But where is it? What is it? they cried, and there was laughter and more mulled wine, and then talk again of Wagner.

When the party left I realized there was something deep in my soul that had been woken by talk of the grandeur and scale of Wagner’s cocktail of German and Scandinavian myths and folk tales. For a day and night I sketched relentlessly, ransacking my memory for those old tales, drawing strong men and stalwart, flaxen-haired women in Nordic dress and ornament. But as a new day presented itself I closed my sketch book and let the matter drop until, years later, in a Stockholm bookshop I chanced upon a volume in Latin by Adam of Bremen, his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, the most famous source to pagan ritual practice in Sweden. That cold winter afternoon in Grez returned to me and I felt, as I had then, something stir within me, something missing from my comfortable world of images of home and farm, family and the country life.

Back in Sundborn this little volume printed in the 18th C lay on my desk like a question mark without a sentence. My Latin was only sufficient to get a gist, but the gist was enough. Here was the story of the palace of Uppsala, the great centre of the pre-Christian pagan cults that brought us Odin and Freyr. I sought out our village priest Dag Sandahl, a good Lutheran but who regularly tagged Latin in his sermons. Yes, he knew the book, and from his study bookshelf brought down an even earlier copy than my own. And there and then we sat down together and read. After an hour I was impatient to be back in my studio and draw, draw these extraordinary images this text brought to life unbidden in my imagination. But I did not leave until I had persuaded Pastor Sandahl to agree to translate the Uppsala section of the Adam of Bremen’s book, and just before Christmas that year, on the day before the Shortest Day, he delivered his translation to my studio. He would not stay, but said I should read the passages about King Domalde and his sacrifice at the Winter Solstice. And so, on the day of the Winter Solstice, I did.

This people have a widely renowned sanctuary called Uppsala.

By this temple is a very large tree with extending branches. It is always green, both in winter and in summer. No one knows what kind of tree this is. There is also a spring there, where the heathens usually perform their sacrificial rites. They throw a live human being into the spring. If he does not resurface, the wishes of the people will come true.

The Temple is girdled by a chain of gold that hangs above the roof of the building and shines from afar, so that people may see it from a distance when they approach there. The sanctuary itself is situated on a plain, surrounded by mountains, so that the form a theatre.

It is not far from the town of Sigtuna. This sanctuary is completely covered with golden ornaments. There, people worship the carved idols of three gods: Thor, the most powerful of them, has his throne in the middle of the hall, on either side of him, Odin and Freyr have their seats. They have these functions: “Thor,” they say, “rules the air, he rules thunder and lightning, wind and rain, good weather and harvests. The other, Odin, he who rages, he rules the war and give courage to people in their battle against enemies. The third is Freyr, he offers to mortals lust and peace and happiness.” And his image they make with a very large phallus. Odin they present armed, the way we usually present Mars, while Thor with the scepter seems to resemble Jupiter. As gods they also worship some that have earlier been human. They give them immortality for the sake of their great deeds, as we may read in Vita sancti Ansgarii that they did with King Eirik.

For all these gods have particular persons who are to bring forward the sacrificial gifts of the people. If plague and famine threatens, they offer to the image of Thor, if the matter is about war, they offer to Odin, but if a wedding is to be celebrated, they offer to Freyr. And every ninth year in Uppsala a great religious ceremony is held that is common to people from all parts of Sweden.”
Snorri also relates how human sacrifice began in Uppsala, with the sacrifice of a king.

Domalde took the heritage after his father Visbur, and ruled over the land. As in his time there was great famine and distress, the Swedes made great offerings of sacrifice at Upsal. The first autumn they sacrificed oxen, but the succeeding season was not improved thereby. The following autumn they sacrificed men, but the succeeding year was rather worse. The third autumn, when the offer of sacrifices should begin, a great multitude of Swedes came to Upsal; and now the chiefs held consultations with each other, and all agreed that the times of scarcity were on account of their king Domalde, and they resolved to offer him for good seasons, and to assault and **** him, and sprinkle the stall of the gods with his blood. And they did so.

There it was, at the end of Adam of Bremen’s description of Uppsala, this description of King Domalde upon which my mural would be based. It is not difficult to imagine, or rather the event itself can be richly embroidered, as I have over the years made my painting so. Karin and I have the books of William Morris on our shelves and I see little difference between his fixation on the legends of the Arthur and the Grail. We are on the cusp here between the pagan and the Christian.  What was Christ’s Crucifixion but a self sacrifice: as God in man he could have saved himself but chose to die for Redemption’s sake. His blood was not scattered to the fields as was Domalde’s, but his body and blood remains a continuing symbol in our right of Communion.

I unroll the latest watercolour cartoon of my mural. It is almost the length of this studio. Later I will ask Greta to collect the other easels we have in the house and barn and then I shall view it properly. But for now, as it unrolls, my drama of the Winter Solstice comes alive. It begins on from the right with body of warriors, bronze shields and helmets, long shafted spears, all set against the side of Uppsala Temple and more distant frost-hoared trees. Then we see the King himself, standing on a sled hauled by temple slaves. He is naked as he removes the furs in which he has travelled, a circuit of the temple to display himself to his starving people. In the centre, back to the viewer, a priest-like figure in a red cloak, a dagger held for us to see behind his back. Facing him, in druidic white, a high priest holds above his head a gold pagan monstrance. To his left there are white cloaked players of long, straight horns, blue cloaked players of the curled horns, and guiding the shaft of the sled a grizzled shaman dressed in the skins and furs of animals. The final quarter of my one- day-to-be-a-mural unfolds to show the women of temple and palace writhing in gestures of grief and hysteria whilst their queen kneels prostate on the ground, her head to the earth, her ladies ***** behind her. Above them all stands the forever-green tree whose origin no one knows.

Greta has entered the studio in her practiced, silent way carrying coffee and rolls from the kitchen. She has seen Midvinterblot many times, but I sense her gaze of fascination, yet again, at the figure of the naked king. She remembers the model, the sailor who came to stay at Kartbacken three summers ago. He was like the harpooner Queequeg in Moby ****. A tattooed man who was to be seen swimming in Toftan Lake and walking bare-chested in our woods. A tall, well-muscled, almost silent man, whom I patiently courted to be my model for King Dolmade. I have a book of sketches of him striding purposefully through the trees, the tattooed lines on his shoulders and chest like deep cuts into his body. This striding figure I hid from the children for some time, but from Greta that was impossible. She whispered to me once that when she could not have my substantial chest against her she would imagine the sailor’s, imagine touching and following his tattooed lines. This way, she said, helped her have respite from those stirrings she would so often feel for me. My painting, she knew, had stirred her fellow maids Clara and Solveig. Surely you know this, she had said, in her resolute and direct city manner. I have to remember she is the age of my eldest, who too must hold such thoughts and feelings. Karin dislikes my sailor king and wishes I would not hide the face of his distraught queen.

Today the sunrise is at 9.0, just a half hour away, and it will set before 3.0pm. So, after this coffee I will put on my boots and fur coat, be well scarfed and hatted (as my son Pontus would say) and walk out onto my estate. I will walk east across the fields towards Spardasvvägen. The sky is already waiting for the sun, but waits without colour, hardly even a tinge of red one might expect.

I have given Greta her orders to collect every easel she can find so we can take Midvinterblot off the floor and see it in all its vivid colour and form. In February I shall begin again to persuade the Nationalmuseum to accept this work. We have a moratorium just now. I will not accept their reasoning that there is no historical premise for such a subject, that such a scene has no place in a public gallery. A suggestion has been made that the Historiska museet might house it. But I shall not think of this today.

Karin is here, her face at the studio window beckons entry. My Darling, yes, it is midwinter’s day and I am dressing to greet the solstice. I will dress, she says, to see Edgar who will be here in half an hour to discuss my designs for this new furniture. We will be lunching at noon. Know you are welcome. Suzanne is talking constantly of England, England, and of course Oxford, this place of dreaming spires and good looking boys. We touch hands and kiss. I sense the perfume of sleep, of her bed.

Outside I must walk quickly to be quite alone, quite apart from the house, in the fields, alone. It is on its way: this light that will bathe the snowed-over land and will be my promise of the year’s turn towards new life.

As I walk the drama of Midvinterblot unfolds in a confusion of noise, the weeping of women, the physical exertions of the temple slaves, the priests’ incantations, the riot of horns, and then suddenly, as I stand in this frozen field, there is silence. The sun rises. It stagge

Overwhelming mental congestion for perfection,
Socially influenced blueprints of future attraction.
Constructive criticism given by construction workers,
The labor of family and friends for reassurance.

A solid foundation of first impressions,
Structured walls of growth and development.
Insulation of natural feelings and experiences,
Ventilation to cool down the heated encounters.

Electrical wiring of an emotional and physical connection,
A circuitry of passion and romance with a light switch.
Hardwood flooring for candle lit dinners and ballroom dancing,
Granite kitchen counters for intimate midnight snacks.

An attractive exterior siding to woo the public eye,
A secure lock of commitment on all the doors.
A roof of trust, and a picket fence,
And now, my love,

I’m simply yours.

you're the sparks of an electric wire not properly insulated
don't want to start a fire just can't relay the message
you're trying! halfway through the wire and then you're like this
unoccupied swing swaying despite the lack of wind
i guess someone was on this swing before but when will that ever really end
you're sparking like crazy but the electric signal never sends
they say "just try again!" and you swear
its really just that your fibers are beginning to tear
you just had to leave that tree stump in the middle of the parking lot
YOU JUST CAN'T move on without leaving a trace in that particular spot
you're moving forward, one step at a time!
you just keep tripping through this
fog so thick it's a never ending mine
you were on the other end of jumping before you realized time had ceased
what goes up must come down but what if you didn't mean to bend your knees
i'm in the back of your mind when your hands won't stop shaking and
your voice quivers when you're finally undertaking
the idea of waking that elephant in the room that fell asleep and is snoring
how was I really so boring?
but it's like that loaf of bread you watched so slowly rise
that you couldn't eat when you realized it was made of lies
you thought time would heal but it just buried your eyes
apply some heat, the mold will go away!
ignore your problems,
you CONTINUE TO SAY
don't pick up that
torn dollar bill laying on the sidewalk on the bad side of town!
no, don't you dare!
don't stop and look around
before too long you begin to identify with that old aged piano resonating in that empty house
and you're sewing the buttons back on my favorite blouse
you've changed your tune so much you can't even harmonize
hopefully you'll get this out before EVERYONE DIES
you wanted to be the one to rip the buttons off
but you waited so long you thought they were already gone
i knew what you were trying to say before your sparks didn't make it
let me be your insulation

Walls of silence,
Of guarded wariness.

Walls of hesitation,
Of experienced caution.

Walls of distrust,
Of practiced isolation.

Walls I put up intentionally.
Walls you tore down unknowingly.

Walls I found crumbled,
The door of my heart opened.

Walls I found breached,
And you were just sitting there.

Walls I had never lived without,
Suddenly seemingly unneeded.

Walls I was glad to let down,
Until you shanked my heart.

Walls I should have fortified
With anger and hate and experience.

Walls of "I know better."
Of "There are NO exceptions to the pattern."

Walls of protection,
Of much needed security.

Walls of insulation,
Of broken-heart bandaging.

Walls I won't let down again.
Thanks to you, I've learned my lesson.

They may be the spawn of all your uncertainty
But you cannot blame them
But we can blame you for thinking a certain way
Or speaking a certain way
You don't have the right to feel the way you feel
In the land of hypocrisy
We can do one thing
And say the other
Without any chastisement
How dare you exist
How dare you persist
In these deep blue thoughts
Turning into purple
A deep dark crimson peeking out of me
I left it to rot
But it's coming out of the lot
Everyone wants to be a despot
When I just want something to be done
Everything leading up to here was far from fun
But my mind will stay on the run
You can't expect me to not be a hired gun
When I can't even see my own Sun
Due to their constant eclipse
I felt it once before
Let me have another glimpse
Of sudden paradise
Very few moments truly felt genuine
The rest were just bland nothings
Contrived and reaped
It doesn't matter how much I wept
It's just a show to them
Let me get some high quality actors
Since my personal battles were never a factor
In this treacherous journey
To be worth something
Devalue me and retract your stance
I'm letting Lucifer dance
While I stay silent
Nobody ever gives me a chance
To speak
I'm unreasonably weak
In your eyes
While you never brought together an idea of compromise
So the best option for you was to leave me paralyzed
I don't care how your words are stylized
It still holds no meaning to me
I think I saw this coming long ago
I never wanted to come to terms
You're the President that should of never got them
That I should accept this
I'm on a road that only I can understand
While everyone else believes that approaching anything with feral verbalization is the key
Oh, what a hell it is being me

I think I;ve had enough.

This road looks like the endless blackness that you see in those games you stay until midnight playing
You think you can fabricate things but all I'm saying is

You could of done a lot better in a world where I always think I have to be.

These colors lose their appeal because I'm swimming in a depression that shouldn't be real
I'm thankful but resentful that I have to feel
I wish this pain wasn't real
Every moment you implement it to my vital signs

I wish the elation was always alive
And never had to be a victim of contrive
Pin me against the wall
All you want
I'm the peace in this elongated firefight
While I stay awake at night
I find reasons to quell the tensions
That this world has

No matter what a living soul says to me
I have every right to feel this
I have every right to say what is on my mind
Purpose is so hard to find
When you always grind
And they just throw you into a bind
The only person I have is me and Christ
More will suffice

I love who I am
But be cognizant that I'm a man who knows he's by himself
I have accepted it.

The path of legends await
I'm ready to walk

Into the depths of Insulation
I smile with confidence
I know you think I don't have it
But I have everything
Let the universe dictate
Where I should go.

In the twilight night
That casts shadows to the day
The cold creeps at the October edges of my single pane windows,
And seeps into my cheaply heated home with newspaper insulation
It catches my toes, and walks up my white hands and grabs my face and nose
The cold grasps firm and goes deep

And in the chilly dieing light  
I found a picture of you laughing, tucked into a book I was going to give you
Suddenly I am dragged back to the moment when I fell in love with your soft native eyes.
And your freckled cheeks drawn in an eternal smile
I loved your black hair and your carefree way

The cold is not cold enough for this,
I open a window and the back door.
I finish my drink to the whiskey sharp bottom,
I cast off my blanket and sit as wind comes in.
The cold is not yet cold enough

I add ice and ***** to my glass
Hoping for Russian absolution
But in the freezing flesh core of my sad meat suit,
As the temperature drops to negative numbers  
My stupid heart still beats for you
And the cold is not cold enough for this.

My mind has faulty insulation, cracks for thoughts to creep in no matter how hard I try to block them out. Fractures as if from years of wear letting painful memories or cringing moments flood my head wreaking havoc as they soil it all. Regrets plague my conscience, stealing me from sleep, from peace. Keeping carefree out of my reach, to no end. No end in sight.

A.C.

The world can be a painful place
when its all so far away
perhaps a hermits life is better
as close to home you always stay

If you do not gaze on foreign shores
will you still desire to roam?
Is it possible that happiness
can be found so close to home

If you do not see the beauty
that lives in foreign lands
Will your spirit find its soul mate
amongst those closer to hand

Ignorance is bliss they say
and while that may not be true
Disappointment comes with pain
that is harder to undo

At age 45 I decided to become a sailor.  It had attracted me since I first saw a man living on his sailboat at the 77th street boat basin in New York City, back in 1978.  I was leaving on a charter boat trip with customers up the Hudson to West Point, and the image of him having coffee on the back deck of his boat that morning stayed with me for years.  It was now 1994, and I had just bought a condo on the back bay of a South Jersey beach town — and it came with a boat slip.

I started my search for a boat by first reading every sailing magazine I could get my hands on.  This was frustrating because most of the boats they featured were ‘way’ out of my price range. I knew I wanted a boat that was 25’ to 27’ in length and something with a full cabin below deck so that I could sail some overnight’s with my wife and two kids.

I then started to attend boat shows.  The used boats at the shows were more in my price range, and I traveled from Norfolk to Mystic Seaport in search of the right one.  One day, while checking the classifieds in a local Jersey Shore newspaper, I saw a boat advertised that I just had to go see …

  For Sale: 27’ Cal Sloop. Circa 1966. One owner and used very
   gently.  Price $6,500.00 (negotiable)

This boat was now almost 30 years old, but I had heard good things about the Cal’s.  Cal was short for California. It was a boat originally manufactured on the west coast and the company was now out of business.  The brand had a real ‘cult’ following, and the boat had a reputation for being extremely sea worthy with a fixed keel, and it was noted for being good in very light air.  This boat drew over 60’’ of water, which meant that I would need at least five feet of depth (and really seven) to avoid running aground.  The bay behind my condo was full of low spots, especially at low tide, and most sailors had boats with retractable centerboards rather than fixed keels.  This allowed them to retract the boards (up) during low tide and sail in less than three feet of water. This wouldn’t be an option for me if I bought the Cal.

I was most interested in ‘blue water’ ocean sailing, so the stability of the fixed keel was very attractive to me.  I decided to travel thirty miles North to the New Jersey beach town of Mystic Island to look at the boat.  I arrived in front of a white bi-level house on a sunny Monday April afternoon at about 4:30. The letters on the mailbox said Murphy, with the ‘r’ & the ‘p’ being worn almost completely away due to the heavy salt air.

I walked to the front door and rang the buzzer.  An attractive blonde woman about ten years older than me answered the door. She asked: “Are you the one that called about the boat?”  I said that I was, and she then said that her husband would be home from work in about twenty minutes.  He worked for Resorts International Casino in Atlantic City as their head of maintenance, and he knew everything there was to know about the Cal. docked out back.  

Her name was Betty and as she offered me ice tea she started to talk about the boat.  “It was my husband’s best friend’s boat. Irv and his wife Dee Dee live next door but Irv dropped dead of a heart attack last fall.  My husband and Irv used to take the boat out through the Beach Haven Inlet into the ocean almost every night.  Irv bought the boat new back in 1967, and we moved into this house in 1968.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun the two of them had on that old boat.  It’s sat idle, ******* to the bulkhead since last fall, and Dee Dee couldn’t even begin to deal with selling it until her kids convinced her to move to Florida and live with them.  She offered it to my husband Ed but he said the boat would never be the same without Irv on board, and he’d rather see it go to a new owner.  Looking at it every day behind the house just brought back memories of Irv and made him sad all over again every time that he did.”

Just then Ed walked through the door leading from the garage into the house.  “Is this the new sailor I’ve been hearing about,” he said in a big friendly voice.  “That’s me I said,” as we shook hands.  ‘Give me a minute to change and I’ll be right with you.”

As Ed walked me back through the stone yard to the canal behind his house, I noticed something peculiar.  There was no dock at the end of his property.  The boat was tied directly to the sea wall itself with only three yellow and black ‘bumpers’ separating the fiberglass side of the boat from the bulkhead itself.  It was low tide now and the boats keel was sitting in at least two feet of sand and mud.  Ed explained to me that Irv used to have this small channel that they lived on, which was man made, dredged out every year.  Irv also had a dock, but it had even less water underneath it than the bulkhead behind Ed’s house.

Ed said again, “no dredging’s been done this year, and the only way to get the boat out of the small back tributary to the main artery of the bay, is to wait for high tide. The tide will bring the water level up at least six feet.  That will give the boat twenty-four inches of clearance at the bottom and allow you to take it out into the deeper (30 feet) water of the main channel.”

Ed jumped on the boat and said, “C’mon, let me show you the inside.”  As he took the padlock off the slides leading to the companionway, I noticed how motley and ***** everything was. My image of sailing was pristine boats glimmering in the sun with their main sails up and the captain and crew with drinks in their hands.  This was about as far away from that as you could get.  As Ed removed the slides, the smell hit me.  MOLD! The smell of mildew was everywhere, and I could only stay below deck for a moment or two before I had to come back up topside for air.  Ed said, “It’ll all dry out (the air) in about ten minutes, and then we can go forward and look at the V-Berth and the head in the front of the cabin.”

What had I gotten myself into, I thought?  This boat looked beyond salvageable, and I was now looking for excuses to leave. Ed then said, “Look; I know it seems bad, but it’s all cosmetic.  It’s really a fine boat, and if you’re willing to clean it up, it will look almost perfect when you’re done. Before Irv died, it was one of the best looking sailboats on the island.”

In ten more minutes we went back inside.  The damp air had been replaced with fresh air from outside, and I could now get a better look at the galley and salon.  The entire cabin was finished in a reddish brown, varnished wood, with nice trim work along the edges.  It had two single sofas in the main salon that converted into beds at night, with a stainless-steel sink, refrigerator and nice carpeting and curtains.  We then went forward.  The head was about 40’’ by 40’’ and finished in the same wood as the outer cabin.  The toilet, sink, and hand-held shower looked fine, and Ed assured me that as soon as we filled up the water tank, they would all work.

The best part for me though was the v-berth beyond.  It was behind a sold wood varnished door with a beautiful brass grab-rail that helped it open and close. It was large, with a sleeping area that would easily accommodate two people. That, combined with the other two sleeping berths in the main salon, meant that my entire family could spend the night on the boat. I was starting to get really interested!

Ed then said that Irv’s wife Dee Dee was as interested in the boat going to a good home as she was in making any money off the boat.  We walked back up to the cockpit area and sat down across from each other on each side of the tiller.  Ed said, “what do you think?” I admitted to Ed that I didn’t know much about sailboats, and that this would be my first.  He told me it was Irv’s first boat too, and he loved it so much that he never looked at another.

                   Ed Was A Pretty Good Salesman

We then walked back inside the house.  Betty had prepared chicken salad sandwiches, and we all sat out on the back deck to eat.  From here you could see the boat clearly, and its thirty-five-foot mast was now silhouetted in front of the sun that was setting behind the marsh.  It was a very pretty scene indeed.

Ed said,”Dee Dee has left it up to me to sell the boat.  I’m willing to be reasonable if you say you really want it.”  I looked out at what was once a white sailboat, covered in mold and sitting in the mud.  No matter how hard the wind blew, and there was a strong offshore breeze, it was not moving an inch.  I then said to Ed, “would it be possible to come back when the tide is up and you can take me out?”  Ed said he would be glad to, and Saturday around 2:00 p.m. would be a good time to come back. The tide would be up then.  I also asked him if between now and Saturday I could try and clean the boat up a little? This would allow me to really see what I would be buying, and at the very least we’d have a cleaner boat to take out on the water.  Ed said fine.

I spent the next four days cleaning the boat. Armed with four gallons of bleach, rubber gloves, a mask, and more rags than I could count, I started to remove the mold.  It took all week to get the boat free of the mildew and back to being white again. The cushions inside the v-berth and salon were so infested with mold that I threw them up on the stones covering Ed’s back yard. I then asked Ed if he wanted to throw them out — he said that he did.

Saturday came, and Betty had said, “make sure to get here in time for lunch.”  At 11:45 a.m. I pulled up in front of the house.  By this time, we knew each other so well that Betty just yelled down through the screen door, “Let yourself in, Ed’s down by the boat fiddling with the motor.”  The only good thing that had been done since Irv passed away last fall was that Ed had removed the motor from the boat. It was a long shaft Johnson 9.9 horsepower outboard, and he had stored it in his garage.  The motor was over twelve years old, but Ed said that Irv had taken really good care of it and that it ran great.  It was also a long shaft, which meant that the propeller was deep in the water behind the keel and would give the boat more propulsion than a regular shaft outboard would.

I yelled ‘hello’ to Ed from the deck outside the kitchen.  He shouted back, “Get down here, I want you to hear this.”  I ran down the stairs and out the back door across the stones to where Ed was sitting on the boat.  He had the twist throttle in his hand, and he was revving the motor. Just like he had said —it sounded great. Being a lifelong motorcycle and sports car enthusiast, I knew what a strong motor sounded like, and this one sounded just great to me.

“Take the throttle, Ed said,” as I jumped on board.  I revved the motor half a dozen times and then almost fell over.  The boat had just moved about twenty degrees to the starboard (right) side in the strong wind and for the first time was floating freely in the canal.  Now I really felt like I was on a boat.  Ed said, “Are you hungry, or do you wanna go sailing?”  Hoping that it wouldn’t offend Betty I said, “Let’s head out now into the deeper water.” Ed said that Betty would be just fine, and that we could eat when we got back.

As I untied the bow and stern lines, I could tell right away that Ed knew what he was doing.  After traveling less than 100 yards to the main channel leading to the bay, he put the mainsail up and we sailed from that point on.  It was two miles out to the ocean, and he skillfully maneuvered the boat, using nothing but the tiller and mainsheet.  The mainsheet is the block and pulley that is attached from the deck of the cockpit to the boom.  It allows the boom to go out and come back, which controls the speed of the boat. The tiller then allows you to change direction.  With the mainsheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, the magic of sailing was hard to describe.

I was mesmerized watching Ed work the tiller and mainsheet in perfect harmony. The outboard was now tilted back up in the cockpit and out of the water.  “For many years before he bought the motor, Irv and I would take her out, and bring her back in with nothing but the sail, One summer we had very little wind, and Irv and I got stuck out in the ocean. Twice we had to be towed back in by ‘Sea Tow.’  After that Irv broke down and bought the long-shaft Johnson.”

In about thirty minutes we passed through the ‘Great Bay,’ then the Little Egg and Beach Haven Inlets, until we were finally in the ocean.  “Only about 3016 miles straight out there, due East, and you’ll be in London,” Ed said.”  Then it hit me.  From where we were now, I could sail anywhere in the world, with nothing to stop me except my lack of experience. Experience I told myself, was something that I would quickly get. Knowing the exact mileage, said to me that both Ed and Irv had thought about that trip, and maybe had fantasized about doing it together.

    With The Tenuousness Of Life, You Never Know How Much      Time You Have

For two more hours we sailed up and down the coast in front of Long Beach Island.  I could hardly sit down in the cockpit as Ed let me do most of the sailing.  It took only thirty minutes to get the hang of using the mainsheet and tiller, and after an hour I felt like I had been sailing all my life.  Then we both heard a voice come over the radio.  Ed’s wife Betty was on channel 27 of the VHF asking if we were OK and that lunch was still there but the sandwiches were getting soggy.  Ed said we were headed back because the tide had started to go out, and we needed to be back and ******* in less than ninety minutes or we would run aground in the canal.

I sailed us back through the inlets which thankfully were calm that day and back into the main channel leading out of the bay.  Ed then took it from there.  He skillfully brought us up the rest of the channel and into the canal, and in a fairly stiff wind spun the boat 180’ around and gently slid it back into position along the sea wall behind his house.  I had all 3 fenders out and quickly jumped off the boat and up on top of the bulkhead to tie off the stern line once we were safely alongside.  I then tied off the bow-line as Ed said, “Not too tight, you have to allow for the 6-8 feet of tide that we get here every day.”

After bringing down the mainsail, and folding and zippering it safely to the boom, we locked the companionway and headed for the house.  Betty was smoking a cigarette on the back deck and said, “So how did it go boys?” Without saying a word Ed looked directly at me and for one of the few times in my life, I didn’t really know where to begin.

“My God,” I said.  “My God.”  “I’ll take that as good Betty said, as she brought the sandwiches back out from the kitchen.  “You can powerboat your whole life, but sailing is different” Ed told me.  “When sailing, you have to work with the weather and not just try to power through it.  The weather tells you everything.  In these parts, when a storm kicks up you see two sure things happen.  The powerboats are all coming in, and the sailboat’s are all headed out.  What is dangerous and unpleasant for the one, is just what the other hopes for.”

I had been a surfer as a kid and understood the logic.  When the waves got so big on the beach that the lifeguard’s closed it to swimming during a storm, the surfers all headed out.  This would not be the only similarity I would find between surfing and sailing as my odyssey continued.  I finished my lunch quickly because all I wanted to do was get back on the boat.

When I returned to the bulkhead the keel had already touched bottom and the boat was again fixed and rigidly upright in the shallow water.  I spent the afternoon on the back of the boat, and even though I knew it was bad luck, in my mind I changed her name.  She would now be called the ‘Trinity,’ because of the three who would now sail her —my daughter Melissa, my son T.C. and I.  I also thought that any protection I might get from the almighty because of the name couldn’t hurt a new sailor with still so much to learn.

                                  Trinity, It Was!

I now knew I was going to buy the boat.  I went back inside and Ed was fooling around with some fishing tackle inside his garage.  “OK Ed, how much can I buy her for?” I said.  Ed looked at me squarely and said, “You tell me what you think is fair.”  “Five thousand I said,” and without even looking up Ed said “SOLD!” I wrote the check out to Irv’s wife on the spot, and in that instant it became real. I was now a boat owner, and a future deep-water sailor.  The Atlantic Ocean had better watch out, because the Captain and crew of the Trinity were headed her way.

                 SOLD, In An Instant, It Became Real!

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids the news.  They hadn’t seen much of me for the last week, and they both wanted to run right back and take the boat out.  I told them we could do it tomorrow (Sunday) and called Ed to ask him if he’d accompany us one more time on a trip out through the bay.  He said gladly, and to get to his house by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow to ‘play the tide.’  The kids could hardly sleep as they fired one question after another at me about the boat. More than anything, they wanted to know how we would get it the 45 miles from where it was docked to the boat slip behind our condo in Stone Harbor.  At dinner that night at our favorite Italian restaurant, they were already talking about the boat like it was theirs.

The next morning, they were both up at dawn, and by 8:30 we were on our way North to Mystic Island.  We had decided to stop at a marine supply store and buy a laundry list of things that mariners need ‘just in case’ aboard a boat.  At 11:15 a.m. we pulled out of the parking lot of Boaters World in Somers Point, New Jersey, and headed for Ed and Betty’s. They were both sitting in lawn chairs when we got there and surprised to see us so early.  ‘The tide’s not up for another 3 hours,” Ed said, as we walked up the drive.  I told him we knew that, but the kids wanted to spend a couple of hours on the boat before we headed out into the bay.  “Glad to have you kids,” Ed said, as he went back to reading his paper.  Betty told us that anything that we might need, other than what we just bought, is most likely in the garage.

Ed, being a professional maintenance engineer (what Betty called him), had a garage that any handyman would die for.  I’m sure we could have built an entire house on the empty lot across the street just from what Ed had hanging, and piled up, in his garage.

We walked around the side of the house and when the kids got their first look at the boat, they bolted for what they thought was a dock.  When they saw it was raw bulkhead, they looked back at me unsure of what to do.  I said, ‘jump aboard,” but be careful not to fall in, smiling to myself and knowing that the water was still less than four feet deep.  With that, my 8-year old son took a flying leap and landed dead center in the middle of the cockpit — a true sailor for sure.  My daughter then pulled the bow line tight bringing the boat closer to the sea wall and gingerly stepped on board like she had done it a thousand times before. Watching them board the boat for the first time, I knew this was the start of something really good.

Ed had already unlocked the companionway, so I stayed on dry land and just watched them for a half-hour as they explored every inch of the boat from bow to stern. “You really did a great job Dad cleaning her up.  Can we start the motor, my son asked?” I told him as soon as the tide came up another foot, we would drop the motor down into the water, and he could listen to it run.  So far this was everything I could have hoped for.  My kids loved the boat as much as I did.  I had had the local marine artist come by after I left the day before and paint the name ‘Trinity’ across the outside transom on the back of the boat. Now this boat was really ours. It’s hard to explain the thrill of finally owning your first boat. To those who can remember their first Christmas when they finally got what they had been hoping for all year —the feeling was the same.

                            It Was Finally Ours

In another hour, Ed came out. We fired up the motor with my son in charge, unzipped the mainsail, untied the lines, and we were headed back out to sea.  I’m not sure what was wider that day, the blue water vista straight in front of us or the eyes of my children as the boat bit into the wind. It was keeled over to port and carved through the choppy waters of ‘The Great Bay’ like it was finally home. For the first time in a long time the kids were speechless.  They let the wind do the talking, as the channel opened wide in front of them.

Ed let both kids take a turn at the helm. They were also amazed at how much their father had learned in the short time he had been sailing.  We stayed out for a full three hours, and then Betty again called on the VHF. “Coast Guards calling for a squall, with small craft warnings from five o’clock on.  For safety’s sake, you guy’s better head back for the dock.”  Ed and I smiled at each other, each knowing what the other was secretly thinking.  If the kids hadn’t been on board, this would have been a really fun time to ride out the storm.  Discretion though, won out over valor, and we headed West back through the bay and into the canal. Once again, Ed spun the boat around and nudged it into the sea wall like the master that he was.  This time my son was in charge of grabbing and tying off the lines, and he did it in a fashion that would make any father proud.

As we tidied up the boat, Ed said, “So when are you gonna take her South?”  “Next weekend, I said.” My business partner, who lives on his 42’ Egg Harbor in Cape May all summer and his oldest son are going to help us.  His oldest son Tony had worked on an 82’ sightseeing sailboat in Fort Lauderdale for two years, and his dad said there was little about sailing that he didn’t know.  That following Saturday couldn’t come fast enough/

                          We Counted The Minutes

The week blew by (literally), as the weather deteriorated with each day.  Saturday morning came, and the only good news (to me) was that my daughter had a gymnastic’s meet and couldn’t make the maiden voyage. The crew would be all men —my partner Tommy, his son Tony, and my son T.C. and I. We checked the tides, and it was decided that 9:30 a.m. was the perfect time to start South with the Trinity.  We left for Ed and Betty’s at 7:00 a.m. and after stopping at ‘Polly’s’ in Stone Harbor for breakfast we arrived at the boat at exactly 8:45.  It was already floating freely in the narrow canal. Not having Ed’s skill level, we decided to ‘motor’ off the bulkhead, and not put the sails up until we reached the main bay.  With a kiss to Betty and a hug from Ed, we broke a bottle of ‘Castellane Brut’ on the bulkhead and headed out of the canal.

Once in the main bay we noticed something we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t see at all!  The buoy markers were scarcely visibly that lined both sides of the channel. We decided to go South ‘inside,’ through the Intercoastal Waterway instead of sailing outside (ocean) to Townsends Inlet where we initially decided to come in.  This meant that we would have to request at least 15 bridge openings on our way south.  This was a tricky enough procedure in a powerboat, but in a sailboat it could be a disaster in the making.  The Intercoastal Waterway was the back-bay route from Maine to Florida and offered protection that the open ocean would not guarantee. It had the mainland to its West and the barrier island you were passing to its East.  If it weren’t for the number of causeway bridges along its route, it would have been the perfect sail.

When you signaled to the bridge tender with your air horn, requesting an opening, it could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes for him to get traffic stopped on the bridge before he could then open it up and let you through.  On Saturdays, it was worse. In three cases we waited and circled for twenty minutes before being given clear passage through the bridge.  Sailboats have the right of way over powerboats but only when they’re under sail. We had decided to take the sails down to make the boat easier to control.  By using the outboard we were just like any other powerboat waiting to get through, and often had to bob and weave around the waiting ‘stinkpots’ (powerboats) until the passage under the bridge was clear.  The mast on the Trinity was higher than even the tallest bridge, so we had to stop and signal to each one requesting an opening as we traveled slowly South.

All went reasonably well until we arrived at the main bridge entering Atlantic City. The rebuilt casino skyline hovered above the bridge like a looming monster in the fog.  This was also the bridge with the most traffic coming into town with weekend gamblers risking their mortgage money to try and break the bank.  The wind had now increased to over 30 knots.  This made staying in the same place in the water impossible. We desperately criss-crossed from side to side in the canal trying to stay in position for when the bridge opened. Larger boats blew their horns at us, as we drifted back and forth in the channel looking like a crew of drunks on New Year’s Eve.  Powerboats are able to maintain their position because they have large motors with a strong reverse gear.  Our little 9.9 Johnson did have reverse, but it didn’t have nearly enough power to back us up against the tide.

On our third pass zig-zagging across the channel and waiting for the bridge to open, it happened.  Instead of hearing the bell from the bridge tender signaling ‘all clear,’ we heard a loud “SNAP.’ Tony was at the helm, and from the front of the boat where I was standing lookout I heard him shout “OH S#!T.”  The wooden tiller had just broken off in his hand.

                                         SNAP!

Tony was sitting down at the helm with over three feet of broken tiller in his left hand.  The part that still remained and was connected to the rudder was less than 12 inches long.  Tony tried with all of his might to steer the boat with the little of the tiller that was still left, but it was impossible in the strong wind.  He then tried to steer the boat by turning the outboard both left and right and gunning the motor.  This only made a small correction, and we were now headed back across the Intercoastal Waterway with the wind behind us at over thirty knots.  We were also on a collision course with the bridge.  The only question was where we would hit it, not when! We hoped and prayed it would be as far to the Eastern (Atlantic City) side as possible.  This would be away from the long line of boats that were patiently lined up and waiting for the bridge to open.

Everything on the boat now took on a different air.  Tony was screaming that he couldn’t steer, and my son came up from down below where he was staying out of the rain. With one look he knew we were in deep trouble.  It was then that my priorities completely shifted from the safety of my new (old) boat to the safety of my son and the rest of those onboard.  My partner Tommy got on the radio’s public channel and warned everyone in the area that we were out of control.  Several power boaters tried to throw us a line, but in the strong wind they couldn’t get close enough to do it safely.

We were now less than 100 feet from the bridge.  It looked like we would hit about seven pylons left of dead center in the middle of the bridge on the North side.  As we braced for impact, a small 16 ft Sea Ray with an elderly couple came close and tried to take my son off the boat.  Unfortunately, they got too close and the swirling current around the bridge piers ****** them in, and they also hit the bridge about thirty feet to our left. Thank God, they did have enough power to ‘motor’ off the twenty-foot high pier they had hit but not without doing cosmetic damage to the starboard side of their beautiful little boat. I felt terrible about this and yelled ‘THANK YOU’ across the wind and the rushing water.  They waved back, as they headed North against the tide, back up the canal.

      The Kindness Of Strangers Continues To Amaze Me!

BANG !!!  That’s the sound the boat made when it hit the bridge.  We were now sideways in the current, and the first thing to hit was not the mast but the starboard side ‘stay’ that holds the mast up.  Stays are made of very thick wire, and even though the impact was at over ten knots, the stay held secure and did not break.  We were now pinned against the North side of the bridge, with the current swirling by us, and the boat being pulled slowly through the opening between the piers.  The current was pulling the boat and forcing it to lean over with the mast pointing North. If it continued to do this, we would finally broach (turn over) and all be in the water and floating South toward the beach towns of Margate and Ventnor.  The width between the piers was over thirty feet, so there was plenty of room to **** us in and then down, as the water had now assumed command.

It was at this moment that I tied my Son to myself.  He was a good swimmer and had been on our local swim team for the past three summers, but this was no pool.  There were stories every summer of boaters who got into trouble and had to go in the water, and many times someone drowned or was never found or seen again.  The mast was now leaned over and rubbing against the inside of the bridge.  

The noise it made moving back and forth was louder than even the strong wind.  Over the noise from the mast I heard Tommy shout, “Kurt, the stay is cutting through the insulation on the main wire that is the power source to the bridge. If it gets all the way through to the inside, the whole boat will be electrified, and we’ll go up like a roman candle.”  I reluctantly looked up and he was right.  The stay looked like it was more than half-way through the heavy rubber insulation that was wrapped around the enormous cable that ran horizontally inside and under the entire span of the bridge.  I told Tommy to get on the VHF and alert the Coast Guard to what was happening.  I also considered jumping overboard with my son in my arms and tied to me hoping that someone would then pull us out of the water if we made it through the piers. I couldn’t leave though, because my partner couldn’t swim.

Even though Tommy had been a life-long boater, he had never learned to swim.  He grew up not far from the banks of the Mississippi River in Hardin Illinois and still hadn’t learned.  I couldn’t just leave him on the boat. We continued to stay trapped in between the piers as the metal wire stay worked its way back and forth across the insulated casing above.

In another fifteen minutes, two Coast Guard crews showed up in gigantic rubber boats.  Both had command towers up high and a crew of at least 8 on board.  They tried to get close enough to throw us a line but each time failed and had to motor away against the tide at full throttle to miss the bridge.  The wake from their huge twin outboards forced us even further under the bridge, and the port side rail of the Trinity was now less than a foot above the water line.

              Why Had I Changed The Name Of This Boat?

The I heard it again, BAMMM !  I looked up and saw nothing.  It all looked like it had before.  The Coast Guard boat closest to us came across on the bullhorn. “Don’t touch anything metal, you’ve cut through the insulation and are now in contact with the power source.  The boat is electrified, but if you stay still, the fiberglass and water will act as a buffer and insulation.  We can’t even touch or get near you now until the power gets turned off to the bridge.”  

We all stood in the middle of the cockpit as far away from anything metal as possible.  I reached into the left storage locker where the two plastic gas containers were and tightened the filler caps. I then threw both of them overboard.  They both floated harmlessly through the bridge where a third Coast Guard boat now retrieved them about 100 yards further down the bay.  At least now I wouldn’t have to worry about the two fifteen-gallon gas cans exploding if the electrical current ever got that far.

For a long twenty minutes we sat there huddled together as the Coast Guard kept yelling at us not to touch anything at all.  Just as I thought the boat was going under, everything seemed to go dark.  Even though it was early afternoon, the fog was so heavy that the lights on the bridge had been turned on.  Now in an instant, they were off.

                               All Lights Were Off

I saw the first Coast Guard boat turn around and then try to slowly drift our way backward. They were going to try and get us out from between the piers before we sank.  Three times they tried and three times again they failed.  Finally, two men in a large cigarette boat came flying at us. With those huge motors keeping them off the bridge, they took everyone off the Trinity, while giving me two lines to tie to both the bow and the stern. They then pulled up alongside the first large inflatable and handed the two lines to the Coast Guard crew.  After that, they backed off into the center of the channel to see what the Coast Guard would do next.

The second Coast Guard boat was now positioned beside the first with its back also facing the bridge.  They each had one of the lines tied to my boat now secured to cleats on their rear decks.  Slowly they motored forward as the Trinity emerged from its tomb inside the piers.  In less than fifteen seconds, the thirty-year boat old was free of the bridge.  With that, the Coast Guard boat holding the stern line let go and the sailboat turned around with the bow now facing the back of the first inflatable. The Captain continued to tow her until she was alongside the ‘Sea Tow’ service vessel that I hadn’t noticed until now.  The Captain on the Sea Tow rig said that he would tow the boat into Somers Point Marina.  That was the closest place he knew of that could make any sailboat repairs.

We thanked the owners of the cigarette boat and found out that they were both ex-navy seals.  ‘If they don’t die hard, some never die at all,’ and thank God for our nation’s true warriors. They dropped us off on Coast Guard Boat #1, and after spending about 10 minutes with the crew, the Captain asked me to come up on the bridge.  He had a mound of papers for me to fill out and then asked me if everyone was OK. “A little shook up,’” I said, “but we’re all basically alright.” I then asked this ‘weekend warrior’ if he had ever seen the movie ‘Top Gun.’  With his chest pushed out proudly he said that he had, and that it was one of his all-time favorites.

            ‘If They Don’t Die hard, Some Never Die At All’

I reminded him of the scene when the Coast Guard rescue team dropped into the rough waters of the Pacific to retrieve ‘Goose,’ who had just hit the canopy of his jet as he was trying to eject.  With his chest still pumped out, he said again proudly that he did. “Well, I guess that only happens in the movies, right Captain,” I said, as he turned back to his paperwork and looked away.

His crew had already told me down below that they wanted to approach the bridge broadside and take us off an hour ago but that the Captain had said no, it was too dangerous!  They also said that after his tour was over in 3 more months, no one would ever sail with him again.  He was the only one on-board without any real active-duty service, and he always shied away from doing the right thing when the weather was rough.  He had refused to go just three more miles last winter to rescue two fishermen off a sinking trawler forty miles offshore.  Both men died because he had said that the weather was just “too rough.”

                     ‘A True Weekend Only Warrior’

We all sat with the crew down below as they entertained my son and gave us hot coffee and offered medical help if needed.  Thankfully, we were all fine, but the coffee never tasted so good.  As we pulled into the marina in Somers Point, the Trinity was already there and tied to the service dock.  After all she had been through, she didn’t look any the worse for wear.  It was just then that I realized that I still hadn’t called my wife.  I could have called from the Coast Guard boat, but in the commotion of the moment, I had totally forgotten.

When I got through to her on the Marina’s pay phone, she said,  “Oh Dear God, we’ve been watching you on the news. Do you know you had the power turned off to all of Atlantic City for over an hour?”  After hanging up, I thought to myself —"I wonder what our little excursion must have cost the casino’s,” but then I thought that they probably had back up generation for something just like this, but then again —maybe not.

I asked my wife to come pick us up and noticed that my son was already down at the service dock and sitting on the back of his ‘new’ sailboat.  He said, “Dad, do you think she’ll be alright?” and I said to him, “Son, she’ll be even better than that. If she could go through what happened today and remain above water, she can go through anything — and so can you.  I’m really proud of the way you handled yourself today.”

My Son is now almost thirty years old, and we talk about that day often. The memory of hitting the bridge and surviving is something we will forever share.  As a family, we continued to sail the Trinity for many years until our interests moved to Wyoming.  We then placed the Trinity in the capable hands of our neighbor Bobby, next door, who sails her to this day.

All through those years though, and especially during the Stone Harbor Regatta over the Fourth of July weekend, there was no mistaking our crew when you saw us coming through your back basin in the ‘Parade of Ships.’  Everyone aboard was dressed in a red polo shirt, and if you happened to look at any of us from behind, you would have seen …

                               ‘The Crew Of The Trinity’  
                         FULL CONTACT SAILING ONLY!

March comes like a punching bag

March will bring her smiles like plastic bags
Some tear some don’t
You never know when she will glare her teeth like razorblades and bleed the snow
from underneath these fingertips.
Leave my insulation soaked, me; feverish.
And the joke is, I saw this coming
shivering the melted ice out of me she
bares her grin like a warning sign,
and I was either too brave or dumb enough to step inside
like a welcome mat made out of ice
and a cartoon dog
A scared pitbull, and a woman in charge.
The joke is that haha
There is no joke, you walked in.,
and made one out of yourself.
Out of the frost on your eyelashes and grief on your fingernails.
haha get it,
sweat her out like the coldest fever, without dying of shock.
Get it now?
She brings back the taste of firewood and comfort of flames when you needed it the most
Punches like the best punchline
hard enough to make it hurt
not hard enough to make you forget
hahaha
Knocks the wind out of you.

I like my headphones for the
Insulation. Sometimes my ears
Take in too much stray noise,
Dredge up too much disorienting
Mud from the depths of a TV
Screen or an iPod. Then I can
Always snuggle into my headphones
And be silent - and silence is a
Dear dear commodity, to be sure,
When every other scene-
Stealing, pudgy-mouthed buffoon
Has to put his ten cents in. So
Much sound should be a sin;
Background music, ambient noise,
Music for airports, and pubescent
Boys screeching from tinny silver
Speakers near the wall. I don't
Want it, not every bit, not all
The hate and the slippery tongues
That speak and salivate and don't
Say anything human. I want to reprimand,
To excommunicate them from
This Holy rite of sound. (And really,
I would be content to never hear
Music if I could block out the roundabout
Fights and the sultry nightlife descriptions
Gushing from my screen, if I could
Use my headphones to keep
That liquid crystal from pouring in
My too needfully silent ears.)
Maybe I'll follow a painter's path:
All visuals and open dripping wet
Wrath with a noisy race. I can be a
Terrifying girl. Cut off my ears and
Be deaf to the world. Wrap me in
Canvas and chase me back into the
Woods on a starry starry night.

It's that self fulfilling prophecy that
hunts me down and stifles me,
if I could only stop projecting,start
collecting stamps of fortune,
take rooms with a different view,
who knows then what I could do.

On the rotting planks of
thanks but no thanks please,appeasing all
I fall and fail to see another self
fulfilling prophecy.

Peering through, another
what else could I be or do,
I wonder who
I really am.

Did her touch feel as tender as mine upon your silken neck?
And did her lips feel real?
Were the curves of her body like serene waves you wanted forever wade in?
I like to think you didn't smile.
Even if she excited you.
Did her tight lips make you sick?
Her hair doesn't hide her like mine does.
When her current touches your skin it burns and sears,
like a cigarette pushed into flesh.

I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.

Four pigeons sing-song, nine hours the day long
Menial and manual, this warehouse life is annual
Lonely industrial estates on a hazy morning
when the ecstatic eastern winds are horning

Where I count boxes, load lorries and dodge bosses
Listen to the birds coo and a phone playing blues too
I give names to them all, the birds in the rafters
and sing a nine hour song of all their ever afters

Dirt under my nails, from a day of insulation sales
The solace I find of an eve is the fantastic words you weave
You who write to live, you who my soul I will give
The ghost of my future self, a rambling poet
working for money, I'll be you I just know it

Simultaneous afterlife, generational satellite
The energy we possess, is transferred with every breath
You are me and I am you, together, nothing we can't do
Some day I'll run wild, a leader of a literary mob
but right now I just dream of such things on the job

I fear how much my heart would bleed
To witness real tragedy

To sink in Flanders Field
To collapse in Choeung Ek
To scream for mercy in Nanking
To beg before the walls of Baghdad

A life of insulation
Pain relative to the first world
My heart hardly calcified
Compared to the bones of those who died

Hardly removed from the horrors of mankind
My drywall castle shields each breath

So hardly removed
From the stench of death

The ruler comes down from on high
Dragging himself along the earth
Insulation going up like confetti
Take cover, take shelter

Ice the size of softballs
Comes streaking from the sky
There’s nowhere left to run
Huddled under the bridge

And then a sound like rushing water
Feels like a freight train overhead
We weep and cry and gnash our teeth
As the trumpet blares

Drove down Telephone Road
Where it crosses the highway
Sandcastles washed out to sea
Old bills put through the shredder

She ***** on a milkshake through a metal straw. Strawberry.
The place, Tom's on Western, is bare. Ash falls outside. It's
sticking to the glass windows. Glass and steel frames
and white paint and white chairs and ash outside.
A taxi cab goes up over the curb. A black woman in a headdress
gets out and tosses money, red money, blood money.
I'm here too sitting by the bathroom, noting the length
of Strawberry Milkshake's boy shorts. Is this objectification
or object reduction or reverse personification?
The siren in the distance winds down, sounds like it's melting.
Do sounds melt? She, Strawberry Milkshake, doesn't
seem bothered by what's going on outside. I want to sink
my teeth into her shoulder. Ash sticks to the glass, and a
kid, eight or nine, runs by, newspaper up over his head.
He's crying. I can see this, but I don't hear this. Water
starts leaking then pouring then falling in sheets. Ceiling
tile and insulation float at my feet. Strawberry Milkshake
pulls her wet hair back into a ponytail. I clear my throat.
She raises her *******. I walk over and tell her
there's this song she reminds me of. And a bomb hits just
down the street. There goes the glass, crashing all around
us, slicing past forearms and skipping through empty space.
The steel frames bend. She puts her hand to my face. My
face becomes her face, her hand my hand. She and I half-hum, half-sing
"Oh Destructo, you're so destructive. You're so destructive to me."

Karen mashed her *** into the mattress. "Carlos, we must flee Kibera tonight because our lives are in danger. Carlos!"
   "What? I was someplace else in my brain."
  "Get with the program you grease-ball and see the
indentations that I've made in this mattress with my ***!"
   "Is it that serious?"
   "You betcha! This mattress will never bounce back."

.how else? with a variety of histories clinging to the focus and exerting the stamina as coordinator? there's the historiology of Darwinism, there's the historiology of the Big Bang theory (with "god" as a, end of sentence "after-thought", dot, , there's the historiology of scholastic efforts of the study of history of history, then there's the personal history of the individual: as nostalgia, then there's the historiology of journalism... then there's the historiology of your immediate predecessors... at what exact point, are you supposed to begin with, to create a rational creature? i suppose the easiest answer is... ? to have children... and construct a shadow, to hide all these focal points of genesis... never mind the historiological study via the biblical narrative, or archeological historiology; so, as you can see? time is not exactly the replica of space, a beginning a present a past... space is not three-dimensional outside this atmosphere of the grand Orb... because all scientists know that... this, supposed motivational claim of... "thinking" outside, "the" box... at the end... there's no "box" to begin with!

such a recurrent thought,
it stalks me like a shadow,
but i just... never seem to be rid of it...
i was 21, she was 18...
love...
                love...

but an unhinged desire for death
to boot,

******* her for 7 hours one night
in St. Petersburg...
didn't really matter...

a vague similarity to
incubating a cushion...

there was no accident...
if only talk took the place of telling lies...

i could have explored
the latex ***** *** **** outside
the realm of a ******...

sure, i write about Hebrew
theories in terms of phonetics...
but i could never be circumcised...
a caduceus of protruding veins
envelop my *******...
so... no mushroom head
of a phallus to boot...
i'd bleed out...

               but was it so bad of me
to suggest an abortion to
a teenager?
            would she still possess
a masters degree?

she married later,
then "divorced" her husband
and i met her new boyfriend,
when i randomly traveled
back to Edinburgh,
and watched her playing
video games with a slashes
hand...

no... not at the wrists...
along the veins,
from the inner side of the elbow
right down to the wrist...

my ex, my one true decency of
womanhood once said
to me: stop trying to save
these women,
to which i should have replied:
i'm not! i'm trying to
save myself!

sometimes the night creeps in,
and i think of the 21 year old me...
she, taking contraceptive pills,
then stopping,
and then, becoming
pregnant... or at least that's
what it sounded like:

matt, i think i'm pregnant...
it didn't register that well
while on a construction site...
industrial roofing never really
does give you the luxury of
pondering...
i was either about to move
some canadian tar into the boiler,
or cut up a roll of mineral felt,
or transfer some insulation...

she came from a Novosibirsk
oligarchy,
two apartments in St. Petersburg,
one in Moscow,
a mansion in Novosibirsk,
etc. etc....

     just left uni, and was doing
what any son of a manual laborer does,
being utilized in his father's
profession...

but it's not like i could afford
to give her what she expected...
a flat in central Edinburgh...
i might have said:
you might think about getting
an abortion /
you know what you have to
do? get an abortion...

            21?! seriously?
so i'm supposed to drop a job
in London?
the only sort of job i could
get out of uni?
a job i... to be honest...
yes, it was hard... but i enjoyed it!
it would have been a job
that would cover the years
my father went "missing",
from 4 through to 8...

but this Russian lass wouldn't
ever move in with her in-laws,
or to the outskirts for that
matter...

plus... what happened later?
she married...
supposedly divorced,
and there, i met her new boyfriend...

to be honest...
i don't even know if
there was ever a child to begin with...

see...
  hmm...
  the existence of god is not so much
an issue of me that serves
the diligence of plating up a proof...
i have too many personal
certainties in my own life,
to give the concept of god
the "benefit of the doubt"...

agnostics doubt a god,
atheists deny a god...
  big difference...
         i can't do either...
i know so little of my personal life
sometimes, if not all the time,
that... at least:
there's this coordinate
i can focus on...

as ever... it's not the freedom
of speech that bothers me...
i'm more inclined to serve the purpose:
give me the freedom
to think, from what i've said...

and what i have to say?
is found in the comment section...
not here... this is me...
thinking "aloud"...
don't come here expecting me
to be found talking,
you'll only receive a reply
of keyboard clicking...

i can think of a deity,
but, sure as ****: can't pray to one...

deus est cogitatio,
                    non est sermo:

god is thought,
                         isn't talk.

wow... i didn't even shed a tear
writing this...
ah...
               when i once played
my muse... my ex-girlfriend's
younger sister the song
solitude by black sabbath,
and then we washed the dishes together...
it's playing now...
and it's raining...

    a pristine English October.

a conundrum question...
did i chose wisely?
i didn't chose wisely at all...
i made a post-existentialist gamble...
i gambled...
   i simply... gambled...
  although as aversive i am
to casual gambling... on horses...
dogs... football matches...
i made but one gamble,
the result of which,
is confined to me writing, this.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for two days,
shining dim through mouse tunnels
and A frames,
through insulation,
and hidden secrets.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for three days,
and another house burned down
last week,
about a block from here
on the west side.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for four days.
An incandescent bulb
with the filament intact and glowing,
and it only takes one spark,
to create a fire.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for five days.
In that hidden room,
under the crumbling linoleum
we found pages from a newspaper
dated January 4, 1950.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for six days,
and an entire world left to explore.
Who knows what else is hidden there,
under insulation,
under floorboards,
and in cubbyholes.

There is a light in the attic
that has been on for seven days,
and I don't know
if it will ever burn out.

I am the rest stop for truckers in the window
The dark and muggy photographic night
so they forget they've become widows.

I don't believe in kness nor turtles talking terror
Nor do I believe that the Earth moves from quaking tremors.

I am the cradle of the civil sight sorority
Making love to castles for I don't believe seniority.

I am the rebel which Camus told would come hold
The oldest, boldest lotus flower
Frozen solid in the cold.

Drinking Rose remembering young-old Auntie Debbie
Who had eyes like pies mixed in the ocean and a bevvy of
Insulation, house-hold and a water-forlorn view
With her lionness curled hair which the wind affectionately blew.

Sitting on her lawn chair, not on lawn but on the deck
She loved, she laughed, she looked to what she had inside her head
Like landing immigrants from countries far from White Rock shore
She had it all, she owned the sprawl, but knew she wanted more
and that she had it, glad it never took the sun from out the sky
Not once did the window break from sunlight in her eye
and doorknobs crawl left
as she sits so patient ready for the.. everything

ready for the.. everything

ready for the.. everything.

she's NOT waiting, she's just making
every single moment COUNT
lies and likes mean non to her as the counter fills up like a FOUND
fountain. she's rounding every corner in her Jetta
Uncle Jerry in the next seat, happy that he got to meet

with the women of his dreams
I see his eyes still gleam and scream
'I love you Debbie, love you Debbie'

Life and death is just the water
in the stream

forever flowing
Auntie Debbie was a river
and all rivers lead

to ocean.

she never really arrived
so she never really left.

hello, Auntie Debbie?

I know you go by a different name now.

Perhaps we'll each meet you again one day
a different body
a different face.

"You want to keep things on an even key, this is what I'm saying. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes. The ride does not require explanation - just occupants. That's where you guys come in. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now you may get the 8 pack, you may get the 16 pack but it's all in what you do with the crayons - the colors - that you're given. Don't worry about coloring within the lines or coloring outside the lines - I say color outside the lines, you know what I mean? Color all over the page; don't box me in! We're in motion to the ocean. We are not land locked, I'll tell you that." -Waking Life

Journey through an empty house
Emma
Your Middle name grows on the footsteps of the mice
crawling up the
neck back bone
of the chimney
a dinner table eaten by the termites
Either I or Michael the III
sits on the
window sill counting the rain drops that
tap to the syllables of your name
My typewriter sighs like your mother leaning on a wet window sill
journey through an empty house
in the middle of no where
outside rains on the fields of
tobacco stores
pastel rusted orange lipstick molded Volkswagen parts
a few
rubber tires
****** Indian Cadillac Van Nostalgia Highway Bandit
Opus Utopia
Moonlight Sonata Father Movement No. 1
and as my leather wool toes and toenails and heart and lungs and nostrils and Ceramic eye ***** painted to match the Season of Tornadoes creak through an empty house
where music is not played
and the wallpaper
is peeling off
like fake eyelashes
on a *****
stuck in driveway
Main performance
TONIGHT!
Rain and the cheap perfume of making love as the carpet doesn't move
doesn't budge like Grandmothers Tomb
Beethoven! Beethoven!
I am dipping your piano instrument notes
into the fire
Beethoven!
Beethoven!
The moon is so quiet she stares at me
and the wooden buttons of my gasoline washed swede stolen jacket
falls off
Look in here
there is nothing but hardwood floors
a few windows
letting in the
monotone gaze of the night
swaying wheat fields
crawling up the eyesight sleeve
In my peripheral

Highway
Highway
Highway
To the Ocean
To an empty house
that bends
when the sky yawns
like a dying old old old man
as he sits in his
crooked rocking chair
that a mexican Boy
welded together
with twigs and
coffee mug pieces
the empty house
its skeleton shows
like a sick dog
as it walks the endless boundless streets of a city where the lights are kept on too keep away the thieves
but the moths
and other
unidentified insects
flutter around the Bulb
like gnats
over a man's sweaty face
its skeleton shows
copper wiring
electrical entrails
the bowels the wood keeping the roof up
the insulation
the concrete and the bricks
like decapitated teeth
An empty house
is not
so empty
There is still the left-over hum
of a family
of nights
of windows open
letting in the
Summer breath
There is still
the hardwood floor that creaks like the chipping paint of an old bench painted white
There Is still
the bathroom sink
molding like the aging face of a wrinkling man
There is still
the windows
letting in a
slight breeze
you can smell the rain
the rusted locomotive limbs of discontinued Trains

A small pale faced figure stands, enshrouded in darkness, while a hauntingly sweet song softly echoes through the cave.

“There’ll be days
precious moments
see them sunning
by the bay
till, the sea
sees the star light,
blinking angels
dissipate.”

Somewhere in this sightless void a larger form slumbers. Moans of agony pass this man’s parched parted lips.  Tears moisten his painfully swollen face. The stench of sweat, *****, feces, and fetid breath fill the air around him. An alarm sounds as the last battery from the compact heater finally dies. Sloan shivers as the temperature within the cave begins to drop.
Mother mercy watches with a well-practiced stare of concern. She slides a thin, torn, and brown stained sheet over Sloan’s shuddering body. It does little to comfort the sick man. His ragged breaths slowly shift to slightly less raggedy breaths. Mother Mercy watches for a few more moments to make sure that he will not die, then settles down in a corner for the night.
Electric dreams of long ago float in the forefront of her mind. A bone thin boy of barely teenage years stumbles into a broken-down building that was once the Canadian Gazette. Stray rays of light from an overhead window brighten the small room, illuminating gun black filing cabinets, and dark wooden cubbies, colored with well-worn grey paint, which hold crumbled bits of old newspapers; One of the papers read, “Mass Methane Leak Poisons Ground Water and Air”.   Each step stirs up dust causing him to cough. Mother mercy can hear the congestion in his cough and see the fever in his scarlet flushed face. His eyes are a rabid red flitting left to right, searching for any sign of danger. A loud noise causes him to flinch. Mother Mercy moves forward, trying to speak to the boy, but like a doe sensing danger he prepares to dart.

She finds her voice. “Please. Do not leave. I can help you.” She pleads mechanically.

He moves forward, tentatively attempting to touch her. She can see a sharp scar that runs from under his right eye down to his thick dry cracked lips. He tries to speak, exposing his yellow and browning teeth and the many gaps therein.
Suddenly, daggers of light push past and through his young body. He does not cry out, but merely succumbs to disintegration. Then……
Then Mother Mercy awakens to a new morning. Waves of light bring the cavern to life.
Sunshine moves in and across the cave to expose uneven earth, and a dirt encrusted cave wall, which is oddly void of any insect life. Her hazel eyes quickly adjust to the oncoming onslaught of daylight. Once again, she checks the man to make sure he is alive. Sloan’s chest rises and falls in an unsteady rhythm, which is all she can really hope for.
She slides dark brown locks of long hair out of her eerily symmetrical face. She brushes the dust off her tattered tan coat, and her holey faded jeans. With a couple of rapid sweeping motions, she removes almost all the dirt, and pebbles from the breast of her inner shirt.
Off to the left of the cave, and still covered by shadows a small machine awaits her inspection. She examines each tube, cord, and gauge with a military proficiency. Then using the jury-rigged straps, she places the machine on her back. Heading out of the cave, Mother Mercy stops, picks up the batteries from the small heating device, and checks Sloan one more time. Finally, with her bare feet fully outside she sets off for the day’s labor.
The sky burns a bright orange interrupted by barely perceptible vapors of methane, and bluish grey cotton clouds. Despite the splendor of the morning there is nothing but silence; No dogs barking, or bees buzzing about their honey making business. There is no life to be found except for minor patches of multi-colored fauna that are randomly situated along her route. So, Mother Mercy breaks the silence with a song.

“There’ll be years
yarn unspinning
as we stumble
towards our graves,
but the seconds
in-between breaths
are what make
this life so great,”

A few miles along the way, she stops singing, and begins to check the tiny traps she has planted along her daily path. Each carefully constructed device is sadly empty. Three or four more hours after that the silence evaporates and she can hear a small stream of water running. She stops and stares down at her bare feet.

“There is something I forgot to put on my feet.” She queries to herself while continuing to walk.

A few moments pass as she puzzles out the minor mystery. Once she makes it to the edge of the stream, an awkward smile fills her tiny round face. Mother Mercy removes the machine from her back, letting it fall to the ground. It makes a loud thud and sinks several inches into the slightly softened earth.  In a movement so swift human eyes could barely perceive it, she jumps up, rising several feet in the air while crossing a considerable distance, and finally lands in the stream. Soft sizzles sound from her bare feet, as she slowly grinds them into the mud. Then Mother Mercy sloshes sloppily out of the water wearing a thick layer of dark brown mud on her feet.

“Of course, how could I forget. I need mud to cool my feet.”

She walks back to the machine, pulls it out of the ground with ease, and returns to the stream. Next, she submerges the device. Waiting till it is completely full of water, she pulls it out, and begins fiddling with knobs and switches. She waits as the water boils, completely evaporates, filters, cools, and finally condensates back into liquid. Deftly, she removes one of the filters and shakes out all the unknown particulates. Then she opens a tiny compartment, and places a small sensor device within in the water to check its quality. After a satisfactory reading she places the water filtration system back on her back and heads down a different path.
The mud on Mother Mercy’s feet dries; Dark brown shades lighten, crust up and chip off in little flakes. Irritated, she begins to slide her feet through the almost nonexistent foliage to scrape off the remainder of the drying mud. With each small patch of grass Mother Mercy moves her feet faster and faster. Her left foot flows back and forth with incredible speed and strength. There is a loud clink and a chipped piece of rock soars across the air.
In puzzlement, Mercy stares down at her foot and finds that it has split open. Red and black fluid streams from the seam of torn skin, which expands and exposes metallic bone. As she moves, the wire insulation from within her foot ruptures, revealing cheap copper conductor. The hot metal sparks, lighting up the methane in the air. A scorching white, orange, and bluish outlined fireball expands with enough force to launch Mother Mercy up and back off her feet.

She hits the ground hard, and curses,” ******* methane!”

White synthetic skin begins to melt, shifting and swirling into grotesque shapes, and darker shades of red. Mother Mercy rises, unsteadily. Wincing in pain, she unloads her heavy water filter burden. Again, she checks all the tubes, cords, and gauges. What was once a thing of ease now becomes quite burdensome. She places the filter system on her back again, and resumes her journey. The red and black liquid continues to leak. Each steps becomes slower than the last. Until, she reaches her destination. Mother Mercy collapses next to a series of solar panels. With what little strength she has left, she detaches one of the charged batteries. A look of distress crosses her already agonized face.

“I’m sorry.” She softly sobs to herself. “I need this one.”

Mercy pulls a flap of skin from the right side of her waist. An intricate maze of wires, metal, and fake flesh pulsates. Her hand plunges deep within the slimy cavity, twists, and removes a damaged battery. It is bent, and cracked leaking a thick acid liquid which viciously burns her hand. She tosses it aside then slips the unbroken battery inside the cavity, twists it, waits for the click, then removes her acid, and viscous liquid covered hand.
The synthetic skin slowly starts to unburn, shifting in reverse till it returns to its previously pristine quality. Her foot begins to pop and all the parts snap back into their original place as the split skin slowly stiches itself back together.
Mercy harvests the rest of the charged batteries and places the used ones in their charging slots. Finally, with the days labors done she heads back to the cave.
Once she is at the cave she washes a stray rag. Then cleans her hands. Cradling Sloan, she slowly serves him some water. Once he has had his fill. She gently rolls him on his side moves his shirt up searching for any sores, then proceeds to softly scrub them. She rolls him in the opposite direction and repeats the process. Then she checks his inner thighs, and **** cheeks. Sloan winces in pain but remains quiet. She gently lays him back, and rolls up his pant legs, washing the bare skin which is littered with more nasty sores. She finishes by washing his face, hands, and his feet.  Finally, she sends him to sleep with a sweet song

“and the children
that we leave
littles daughters
full grown sons
are like blooms
that lose their trees
as our roots
wither and flee.”


Mother Mercy is consumed by an unnatural fatigue. She resists slumber for a few minutes, but inevitably succumbs. Everything becomes nothingness, then changes to nothingness with dizzy brown spots. Yellow sparks split from the tip of her consciousness. The darkness dissolves and becomes the cave again. Small streams of water worm their way in from the cracks on the wall, which seems to breath unevenly. Suddenly she realizes the cave stinks like sewage. Fresh wind works its way in then blows out a stark stench of rot. Each exhale sounds like a human moaning in pain. The last flickers of light die a long-protracted death.
A wheezing breath stirs Mother Mercy from her dreams. She awakens quickly to see Sloan gasping violently.  She rushes to his side, and sees a thick yellow and greenish gooey fluid mixed with blood sliding down the side of his jaw. With her left arm she flips him over holds his upper body inches off the ground, wipes away the disgusting fluid, and checks the abscess with her free hand.

“Spit it out.” She pleads.

Sloan continues to gasp. Tears swell but refuse to fall.

“Pleebees, helpep, me.” He struggles, coughing violently.

Mother Mercy cradles him in her arms, singing,

“Till, the song
that I am singing
becomes the song
that they passed on
and the love
that I was bringing
are the wheels
that just roll on.”

Sloan, gasps and wheezes for several minutes more. Tears and sweat fill his face.

“Mob where’s my mob?” He cries between gasping breaths.

Two hours later slumber finally reclaims Sloan. An hour after that Mercy gently places his pained body back into its original position. After another half an hour she to surrenders to sleep. She sees nothing.

A stern voice commands,” **** the enemy.”

Mercy cries in response, “There are no more enemies.”

Mother Mercy awakens to a new morning. Once again, she checks the man to make sure he is alive. Sloan’s chest rises and falls. She wipes off a spot of pus and blood left over from last night’s abscess leakage.  The swelling has slightly receded, but his face is still feverishly warm to the touch. She switches out one drained battery from the heater for a fully charged one then grabs the water filter, and heads off to start the day’s labor, singing.

“So, goodnight
little planet
precious place
that I lived on.
I know you won’t
miss me one bit
but I was grateful
to call you home.”

I live in a shoe
And before you ask me any questions
Or if this a metaphor
Or try to sell me a spot in the latest **** development
Let me assure you, I most definitely live in a shoe
It is the left shoe to be exact
Worn down and some spots extra layers of duct tape
To keep out the winter cold
And when it gets icy, I have to be careful
For if I jostle it just right, the shoe can slide a couple feet
You may ask me why, when, what and how
And this is what I will say
I used to work at a school, a crossing guard in the morning
Lunch lady in the afternoon, and chaperone seeing the children off in the afternoon
And with budget cuts, my job was the first to hit the floor
And so was my pension
My retirement was limited and with no health care
It was impossible to see a doctor for my growing aches and pain
And I was left with nothing, until I came across this shoe
Abandoned and tattered, I took to fancying it up
Scrubbing it out, making it into a home
It took me a winter or two to get the insulation right
And the city has all but forgotten this area
So for now, I am safe
Before the corporate giants clamor over the countryside
Pulling up homes like weeds so they can plant their boxed in communities
I am okay in my little spot
Not long the runaways found me
In school the children always ran to me for safety, and now
Their children have found me, these lost children
We are a little family of misfits, foraging off the land
Keeping each other safe
In a world that doesn’t even care if we are alive

My voice falls limp,
carried reluctantly
across synapse-space,
landing upon the deaf brick
and insulation. Even this,
this inanimate audience
breathes fog of indifference,
into the speech
I call my song.

They trace shapes,
doodles and musings.
Anything to amuse above
these listless words,
this dead-pan circuitry
of sound, of chorus,
of rote strings, broken chord
and the misery of
unachieved catharsis.

Still, in humble melody,
I mumble through another verse,
fingers rolling in bands of
forever, walking up and
down the root notes,
as if scales were naught but
a busy mind, stilling orbit,
thawing memories
in the motion of music.

the rain's melting glass
moulding our views
and moving intentions
to rooms where it started

in grey skies and days
gripping tightly as tea melts between
afternoon darkness

the city at evening
turned pines into curtains
drifting on branches

and in sudden still we walked out between them
in tunnels so soft words can't escape we
shook them together
the snow freezing down
between coatings inside the stitched cotton
we're both waiting there as cars drive below

the rain's melting glass
and scatters through streets
and cracks in the frame
are beginning to show

Lily on my crown,
My soul is rooted with sunflowers,
Love springs from my lungs.
Death is a garden.
Affection a coffin.

Hedge around ribs,
Holy light tightened on heart,
Beating carols only heard by dogs
Like a whistle, thistle on my knees cutting heaven real deep.

Tulips lace my tongue
Taste of angels, backwash of Lucifer.
Eyes pupiled amethyst. The healing stone. My world is healing while thorns and samsara hold my ankles to material and the edge of avarice.

World of loom hill parade ecstasy while weather ignites to 24° psychic readings being hosted in palace atrium & column walls where the archaic clock gongs upward to ****** addict ghosts and mental wards in lucid Babylons.

Lovers screaming against bombs, blister billow black clouds and smoke with marijuana haze in flats and compassion for grief cottoned years.
Rumble of music soaked into ratless insulation, long conversations with the insomniac self who hides from monsters inches over his head.

World of daysetting group understandings amidst orange moonlight. Coalmine haired bereaved droop nose man crawls from darkness for another cigarette on the balcony, 4th floor apartment complex in May. Depression hit like **** **** fogging out the brain.
Emptiness is the west.

Travelers who sway on driftwood face The Cascades acknowledging past times, revolving themes and bullet mouthed villains who seek away from starvation from ego lacking.
Their bile is sentences and the rest, anyways.  

Japanese instrumental rolls through closed eyelids in flashing Technicolor, rabbits watch the highways unaware of mortality.

World of bicycle rides on packed ** Chi Minh
City 2016 Winter where twenty-something North Americans go for pho while others go for broke. Palm trees polka dotting college campus in Afternoon, insects whine for the daydreamers. One is writing poetry in a small Vietnamese cafe sipping earl grey inspired by the Oriental clutter and a redheaded girl back home who paces frantically in the attic besides a crooked lamp scrawling flowers to the rotted whitewood panel work

The artist’s craft is a keepsake for eternity, as wells dry out and desert becomes ocean, poems will melt to matter zipping to outer space, satellite ink spots expanding by forever realms.

Pillow foot sole cracks shell casings on forgotten battlefields in later decades, wiping off grit shoeshine boy corpse particle reformation and fairy spit from brow, the last mad prophet sees visions of Christ as arachnid wretch black widow who venomed our bones with rapture,
doom wax peeling away after the damages had been committed.  

Now I check for spiders beneath my sheets.

Banshee howl symphonic sorrows leak in unison with all lanes of commuting traffic. Denial curse for positivity, mindset slate hiding
The weary souls radiance. On the 15x down Johnson! psychedelic chasm quakes through the wheels and my thoughts are spinning sunshine!
Washing machine dynamo recollections of whiskey spilt over carpet dark sand shade while La Vie En Rose resonates from playerless pianos topped with incense sticks in arabesque ashrams, imaginary shelters. We all have one!

Nick Cave is sleeping by back row while we approach final stop in front of bankrupt Chinese corner stores. He’s murmuring Oblivions and the bus keeps on going.

Death is a garden.
Tears are its rainwater and bucket flow.
Nectar pattern reveries honeybee the flowerpots.
Peoples sprout from them bloomed full.

Rosy reaper blasts past the solar system in a comet rocket since she saved the aliens, she hums Vivaldi and huffs a good huff from her cherry cigar.
She tightens her starlight hood and black holes be born.
Torn apart Pluto goes

B    A    N    G

Comet delirious ignores the decimation
And shouts the Lotus Sutra

“ALL GODS WERE TOO PASSIVE”
Reaper hollers back steering by the milky way and beyond on their hallucinogenic trip.

Lily on my crown.
Crown for the kingdom
wherein Reaper resides
and sings with galaxy ukulele to
the great empty.
Great as all can be.

My window has no seat, why would it? I wish it did.
There is just a glossy magnolia ledge, barely wide enough to
cater a slender bottom. Upon the ledge books and candles
rest, illuminating the murk outside. Directly opposite orchard
trees recede as I welcome autumn with a zealous smirk.
For now faintly visible between their visceral arms are the
all-seeing hillocks that in winter will dominate my view.

An impartial observer once stated they were mere freckles
on the landscapes recumbent spine, but to me their sight alone
is vertiginous. On balmy April days I would surmount them,
a personal expedition, up there where I’m the valleys curator, wearing
pristine white gloves I meticulously unravel the terrain: an ancient
manuscript, the vellum inked with meandering streams, occasional farms,
cursive hamlets and little else - a land of sobriety and dearth.

In November though there is a permanent mist and its source
inexplicable. Does it simply effervesce from the precipitous tors about?
Is it the villager’s enshrined collective sigh? No it is something
more. Sitting atop the villages head it’s the beloved satin bonnet you
wore religiously as a child. Wholly impractical for this season
its gossamer fabric offers little solace or insulation to those below
as its pleated extremities elope with the moss-brown hinterland.

Fervently stoking their hearths the villagers broaden the
ethereal cloth with a smoke not acrid but satisfying and nourishing:
with a terrifically edible, hardwood flavour. From my hillock
vantage, the sanguine stone of the manorial chimneys is all that
penetrates the film; casually they release torrents of smoke like
ivory doves that weft patterns instinctively into the sky’s pallid damask.






©*Thomas Gabriel

Beginning with the frost and snow,
anticipation extended its tedious reach again,
but it was not right to suffer as the season
swept around the sun.  A member of the
fall, like a tender leaf felt inured, by thought,
a humble intellect to serve the usual course

in words and weather, the pride of a
recurring sort.  Weary blades of grass

were striving, even so, to grow against
the warmth in the few weeks, and, as the
skirts were purchased in the stores,
investment ruled to favor amiable, cold

breezes.  The house grew quiet as the fans
were stilled for a suspense until the
furnace roared.  The issue was patterns in
layers from the top, and the claim to the
design belonged only to the way the ice
expanded as crystals of moisture, crazy,
having forgotten how to caress the blossoms
of the shrubs; thus, a pleasure had gone to
sleep, its circulation numbed by

inevitable force, and conditions hibernated
beneath the indelible clarity of the air.  The
splendid gyrations of the course became
obstacles harder on tightened joints, while
contestants moved from the warm climate
to the chilling, northern forests.  It remained

possible to survive, because there were other
members of the team such as split sticks of
wood and cradles for sprained elbows.  It
could not be suitable to grow tired of such a
challenge.  When the door was secured, the

roots could relax and spread out like the
tentacles of a squid, beside the glowing hearth,

to read a book or watch a show.  Above, there
was nothing left alive between the earth and
the birds, scratched into the sky and dashed
along the lines of wire.  Birds sagged and were

swaying while the gusts played with their bony
feet clutched around the cylinders made of
copper and coated with insulation.  Warm
currents and feathers made a thatch for a roof
that favored the roots and left them insulated
while around them slumbering creatures had
been forgotten.  No memory existed to claim
the cycle of the warm days when the humming
in space reflected the ripples in the shaded
pools.  The endless days were the realm of
vacant threads of branches in the chilly trees.

It's said that the earth's magnetic
Polarity will flip
Every few hundred thousand
Years.

But my brain decides to flip
Every few weeks on a trip.
Every look toward the future,
With gloominess leers.

It's like riding on a train,
50/50 through rain
And the other part is on a
Precipice.

But it has no destination,
And's surrounded by insulation.
I can't seem to get off it,
But there aren't any stops to miss.

This journey I'm on, it's
Half pernicious existence,
Half psychotic persistence.
Looks like
I'll need to find a
comfortable chair with a
half decent view.

You're always forging me,
to see how far I'll bend.
Hammering me down,
to see how low I can go.
Your heat dances close to me,
but I can't let everyone down.

Though you terrify me,
I would probably still let you cradle me
in your cast iron vice grip
and sing me to sleep,
like Louis
like Ella
crooning,
when I can't breathe.
You could reel me back in
with the promise of
creating something beautiful
and maybe not feeling so
empty and alone
all the time,
but I can't let everyone down.

Your atmosphere ***** at me
and I'm dragging my feet through your sludge,
plodding forward with my eyes cast down.
You know when my mind wanders
or when I'm filling my voids,
so you can sneak in through the cracks
and take your place in my subconscious,
but I can't let everyone down.

I try to remind myself
why your comfort isn't worth it;
like peaking out of my blinds
or chatting with insulation
(pushing me towards one last line)
or fearing the world outside
altogether.
I'm scared because I know
that you're the only thing
that has ever felt like home to me,
but I can't let everyone down.
I can't let everyone down.