“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”- Alice in Wonderland

“Everyone knows it’s a race, but no one’s sure of the finish line.”
        -Dean Young, “Whale Watch”

1a
Children rarely listen to any armchair advice from their immediate family, relatives they commonly have contact with or anyone they haven’t known for more than a couple years because in kindergarten or day care they often got gold stars just for showing up… Little glittering prizes plastered on poster boards in elementary school classrooms regardless of grades or mistakes…


1b
On the windy day when you lower the green jet-ski instead of the good one, race it to the north end, out of the safety of the bay, into the choppy waters, you’ll get bullied by the wave’s splash like the cattails of a whip. The lake will overwhelm you; you’ll inhale some of the water,  a sharp pain will course through your body as you try to breathe those short shallow breaths, which you will force yourself to do as seldom as possible. You will cough and keel over on the craft; It’s not uncommon to spit up blood; you will have to return to the dock and raise the jet-ski back onto the boatlift.  You will stub your toe on the cracks in the planking, stumble and get a splinter in the ball of your foot heading towards the deck but won’t notice. All feeling numbs against water trapped inside your lungs.


1c
Jackie Paper’s mother made him a hotdog with potato chips and served it to him on a plastic plate outside so he could enjoy it on the newly refinished deck while he watched the schooners and speedboats, stingray’s and ski-nautique’s jet in and out of the bay. He didn’t wait five minutes after he finished to fly from the deck onto the dock into the water where he free styled too far and got a cramp. His mother almost lost a son that day.



2a
If wet some recommend running around the shore of the lake until the air has thoroughly dried you off. Listening to the gulls dive and racing through the varying levels of grass on the neighbors’ unkempt lawns, in between the oaks and elms, keeping ever mindful the sticks and stones and acorns that litter the ground in lieu of stubbed toes or splinters. You will most likely fail, but you will get dry.


2b
When you **** your big toe on the zebra mussels while wading in the shallows, near the seawall beside the dock, trying to catch crayfish and minnows darting between the stones underneath the water, and the blood doesn’t stop flowing for 10 minutes and the H2O2 bubbles burgundy on the decks maple woodwork, instead of that off white color it usually bubbles, and stings something awful, don’t be a little ***** about it.  It’s your own fault for leaving your aqua-socks on the green marbled tiles in the foyer closet next to the bathroom; where you changed into your bathing suit and got the bottle of peroxide.


2c
Last winter Christopher Robbins drove his red pickup on the ice (near the island, towards the North end, where even when it’s been freezing for weeks the frozen water seldom exceeds six inches in thickness) at night and fell through.  He felt the cold water enter his lungs.  Although it was snowing and no one had noticed he survived; it took him the whole of an hour to reach the nearest house and call home; he lost his truck and suffered from severe hypothermia and acute pneumonia. At the hospital it was determined that while there was ample evidence of the early onset of frostbite in his extremities, amputation would not be necessary.


3a
While sitting Indian style on the dock next to your friends, settled on the plastic furniture, sipping whiskey and beer, comparing scars assume, no matter whose company you’re in, that yours are the smallest. Those cigarette burns running down the length of your right forearm are self-inflicted and old- reminders that you haven’t had to force yourself to breathe in quite some time.

3b
When you jump off the end of the dock you’ll forget to keep your knees loose because you were running on the wooden planks trying to avoid the white weather worn and dirtied dock chairs and worrying about getting a splinter. The water is inviting but during the summer the depth is only three feet four inches. You will roll your ankle at the very least and probably sprain it because, Like an *******, you locked your knees and jumped without looking.


3c
Two summers ago Alice was tubing behind a blue Crown Royal when she hit the wake at an awkward angle and flew head first into the water in the bay a few hundred feet off the dock at dusk. The spotter and driver simply weren’t watching and the wave-runner didn’t see her due to the advancing darkness.  She cracked her head open on the bottom of its hull; swallowed water.  She needed 70 stitches and several staples but Alice made a full recovery.


4
Mothers often tell their children to should chew their food 40 times before swallowing to aid digestion and to wait a full half hour after eating before engaging in physical activity. Especially swimming.


5
When you’re at the lake house this summer skipping stones swimming and running on the dock remember not to listen to any advice.  

If this were a race to get dry you’d be much closer to first than last.

The internal bleeding eventually stops.  The splinters all get pulled out, staples and stitches are removed, lacerations heal and the feeling returns to the fingers and toes.

The water eventually drains from the lungs and only the scars remain:

Gold stars on poster boards;

because everybody has won, and all must have prizes.

He held radical light
to moon’s somber stare;
Night’s bright
diminished-

Taking backseat in a cab
heading polar;
Up north and downtown.
Somewhere dark.

He breathed cold brilliance in;
Addict’s winter;
snow filled air

Yielding melodies
to dense beats.
Music stopped;

Time raced…
Erased.

He spoke hard liquid
through wide eyes;
Tongue flailing,
Mouth jawing,
Body failing,

To wet ground.

He heard color flash;
Blue,
        Red,
Blue,
White,
            Red,
    Blue,­
                        White,
Red,
                        Whit­e.

           White.

White.

He felt silence enter.

White.

White.

Black.


He held radical light.

Jealousy is calling Mrs. Brightside to a dark moon.
Werewolf howls: some lost girl, lonely,
Wanting only to be loved.

Let me scream for she is lost.  ‘Cause
never found outside, in cold, damp rooms;
Body tossing,
Sweat staining the sheets,
Soaking the pillows

She cries...
Just to be heard,
Just so she might breathe.

Cry for Her...
Lost Innocence.
Purity forgotten can never be expressed,
Only bottled up,
Distilled,
Filled to the brim to be poured out then thrown
To the ocean-
Awaiting time may bring beach glass,
Smoothed rough and shattered softened-
In hopes of sparkling some distant shore.

But to belie Her: these empty vessels;
Silhouettes among a crowd of unfamiliar faces
Identically backlit by the sun-Vivid Death-
Setting,
Turned westward,
Watching an amber light’s slow fade-
Crimson turqouise violet splendor-
To black.

Let me scream for You.
Let me scream,
For you are lost.
Let me scream for your lost cause;
I will scream forever,

     And forever
           let me pray for you in silence
And speak soft down whispers into the depth of vacant ears
Well-known strangers wandering empty streets,
Lighting sidewalks and store windows as they pass
-Sometimes-
Waking cold sweat screaming through darkness;
Tears for Bright Dreams-
Now only Lost Causes.

And the day begins to break.
The lights go out.-
She cries, “Go out”-
Extinguishes.

My freedom’s lost.
My innocence wanes.
She cries.
Ransoms collected.
I lay silent…
She cries.
Screaming,
She cries.
Silently
I cry,
And you begin to fade away.

Grey sky morning’s twilight enters cold, rouses him,
through icy windows, behind locked doors. It’s 8 am.

She sleeps- like no-rain covers his world, turns bright greens to brown,
brings drought- beneath lead thoughts that tablecloth his mind.

He wrestles- with himself- struggling to find the words
(I must leave now, before I break) to subdue, to arrest… to right

the morning’s shadowed sunrise entering through locked doors
under the cracks of cold windows. It’s 8 am;

his thoughts assault him, turn back to her (turning under covers),
weigh him down, parch his throat until speech fails;

begins to break. Consciousness escapes as words on paper,
release him from their credence, wets his tongue, subsides.

Still, he’s afraid to let go … sometimes, at very least,-

I want to hold on: to these truths, these small wonders, these lies,
In this grey sky’s morning twilight that’s passing through cold windows behind locked doors
Into a bedroom made of card walls and full of secrets. Into my closet filled with shirts and socks and
Ties: gifts. Into drawers containing stories and poems and papers- all shining; igniting silver
Brilliance in the bright darkness- sealed closed so they can’t get out and cut; so they can’t
Burn and crumble or break. To my shelves, stocked with childhood books, photos and picture frames;
My memories captured in glass, bottled and canned… and kept safe.
Desk lamps and alarm
Clocks on night tables; cords and plugs and switches all turning on

The grey sky morning’s twilight that’s emitted from my distant eyes staring and
Trapped in a beating box- my diary, locked, kept safe from the judging gaze of strangers
And lovers: from warmth and hurt and love and pain and hate, from her:
My insecurities, lying porcelain in the grey skied morning twilight,
next to me,
Worlds away on a goose down stage floating over diamonds.
It’s anytime she dreams
Behind frost laden windows, those doors of hers I can never quite open, feelings I can never keep safe;

An ascetic desert,
Where anything floating falls and porcelain shatters on only dense carbon,  
Where paper burns silver instead of gold and card walls crumble under
this immense weight,
Where glass and lead are bent, gifts are thrown away-
And diaries… hearts… they always break.

-he’s afraid to let go,

but as he moves those thoughts from head to hand to pen to pad
there comes a weightlessness.  

He- as the sun begins its ascent, leaves the bitter solitude of the east,
falls across the skies, westward, burning gold, warming the panes

-unlocks the door and steps out, picking up the pieces, smoothing the cracks.
It’s 8 a.m. It’s starting to rain.

These words break backs
(I love you no more)
Make bones shudder.
Marrow leaks from vertebrae to hearts
-bleeds-
Life leaves, fire-water draining,
Drains lava flows from mouths opened.

Whispers can sound off like shotgun blasts
(This is over, I’m leaving)
Splits ribs, peppers tendered tendons,
Rips muscle, tears tears
From sockets agape.
Wide eyes speak
Volumes of saline solution-
Downed flushed flesh cheeks.

Teeth grind dull chainsaw
Blades chew emotion to dust.
These words that hurt
(I’m seeing someone else)
Cut deeper than sticks or stones;
Some syllables cleave like sledgehammers
To kneecaps and elbows-

Usually land: right on the button.

When the smelling salt revives us
We lie,

We are still;

Never quite the same.