SOMETIME BEFORE

The closet was lit,
barely flickering
while
Lucy searched around the mounds
of toys
and I could only watch, she had a rotary telephone
down there, the floor would creak
and whimper in reaction to the sudden release and drop of
more toys, more action figures, more lamps left behind
and dollhouses swept aside while Lucy dug in there
reaching around those dark places spiders love to hide
when finally she turned to me and found it.

“Monopoly!”

FORTRESS

We'd set up
a tent
on the far side of her room, snow
was falling
and tapping against the windows
and her skylight
which softly came down
so we couldn't see the clouds.
Inside our fort,
the blanket tent we played Monopoly,
we played for a while and she looked so beautiful there
with her black hair
and freckles
and she looked at me while it was her turn in the game
and she smiled and I felt like I was floating off into the skylight and even further than that.

LAUGH

Lucy was laughing
at some stranger
yelling down two floors
at another stranger playing
loud music
in his apartment on the side
parallel to us. She was
laughing quite loudly
and I had to tell her
to hush or the stranger
might yell at us too.
We crawled back into
the blanket fort
and packed up monopoly
and she asked
“what do you want to do now?” or at least
that's what I think she said. I wanted
to kiss her
I wanted to
kiss her
and those
freckles
and that
laugh.

LIGHTNESS

AA
Lucy's flashlight
wouldn't work without
new batteries it kept
sputtering on and off
like the closet so she ran
downstairs to ask for new
batteries
and I laid face-up on the carpeted floor
at the skylight
and the snow which covered it,
the only sound which got louder
and louder was the ticking of a
small clock on her white stucco walls.
I felt the carpet, clung to it with my fingers
and even though her room wasn't heated,
lacked a fireplace,
and all I had on was a t shirt and jeans.
I felt like a pyre
growing and growing until
suddenly the whole place was
engulfed and my cheeks were rosy
and I closed my eyes
carefully listening to that sound
of ticking
and Lucy running back up the stairs,
it was December but it was so warm
in here. Her hair was black.
The dark wasn't all bad.

SLEEPY

“I got it working” Lucy
announced proudly with her
flashlight planted
down on the floor
and spaciously
making our fort more
alive, our shadows bold
and inescapable on the surrounding
walls. We told a few lame
improvised ghost stories
she found some of them funny
I found some of them funny
and we both got so sleepy
and we found ourselves
laying down inches apart
I told her she was pretty
and she kissed me
and she only kissed me once
but once was enough
for me back then
and everything
became fuzzy
while my heart cycloned in my chest
and I didn't feel so sleepy anymore


APRIL

Hercules was fighting the Hydra,
Lucy and I sit on her couch downstairs
it's spring and the windows are open
her mom paces outside, cigarette in hand
her dad on the computer behind us
and I wait barefoot feeling the rough
texture of her couch and
Lucy fiddles with the
VHS case of
the movie on screen
now. Her hair is black
and falling past her shoulders,
the doorbell rings
and my mom is here
bag in hand
I get up, give her a hug
and I give Lucy a hug
the door is closed
we walk together
down the stale hallway of
her apartment
we get in the car
and pull out from the parking lot
and drive away
and that was the last time I saw her
and I wonder
if Hercules ever defeated
the Hydra.

I slumped to the type-writer on a foggy December morning,
tired,
recently broken up with a pretty girl, Allison.
She was 32, older than me and
had long dark hair, pale skin and a habit to chew her fingernails.
Outside, the trees were bleak and jagged, raw from the latter-year chill.
My TV had been left on from last night, displaying re-runs.
Re - “I’m sorry about last night”
re - “It’s fine, look. I’m coming back to pick up my stuff later today, don’t go anywhere”
Re - “Okay”
re-runs.
Previous girl, Wendy, she was nice, worked at a grocery store in town. She could play the flute, though not very well. Sometimes she’d make horrible noises and call those sounds what we were, messy and all over the place, but that’s what made us “work” eventually she moved to Arizona to get back together with her ex from high-school.
“Explain what it is I’m doing wrong?”
“Excuse after excuse you’re always away, off in your own mind. Yet here you are, in the same ******* house all the ******* time”
ex.
Girl before that was Emma, she had a great singing voice, taught yoga and owned two dogs, one was named Oliver and the other Pam.
Pam died very young, nobody figured out why.
Emma cared about her dogs a lot, said she needed some space so she ended things.
Time to sort through life.
“Sort through these boxes, would you? There’s one of Pam with my mum, she looks so cute in this one”
“I met all sorts of people at class today, this one girl, Tracy, wants me to go out with a few friends later, is that alright?”
“Yeah.. yeah sure that’s fine”
fine.
I think I was sitting in front of that type-writer to begin something,
something passionate,
fresh and new to spice up the mornings..
Maybe I’d go for a walk.
I had some boxes of Allison’s things beside the door, it stunk of her perfume and was full of clothes and shampoo, some pictures, too.
Staring at the type-writer was a blank page, Jesus, five minutes I hadn't written anything.
I began with
“Chapter One”
Before getting distracted by those re-runs on TV.

The other day

I saw some children laughing.

In a room with their eye-sore red

little couch, multicolored

carpets and rugs stained with crayon

flakes or juice in

so many different shades.

The other day I saw the children playing

in their shielded world softly covered

by tall watchful oak trees so full

in May they blended into

their parks & playgrounds.

All you could hear was the laughter.

The other day I saw

the children get older

their hair thick and greased, worn bodies

scarred or healed from injury,

it wasn't the first

it wouldn’t be the last.

Sometime later the colour faded away, their red couch not

so red anymore and their rugs replaced with cement.

The other day I saw the world turn grey, and so

another day went by.

It wasn't the first

it wouldn’t be the last.

But at least the children are

laughing.

Dry and weary is the sun

without it’s jovial color, but a bright void.

It’s all poor tricks, thick masks that shield the

pain and sorrow of being so

beautiful but

alone.

And so we wake
in the midst of
a slow going disaster.

Sweet Oriental Angels

with your cloth-thread harps

play your song on dizi flute and

mandolin echo soft

in the foreground

to the cruel industrial drum

of a new world.

This palace orchestra scrawled on scriptures

now a specter of labors

and dawns coated in smog.

Love,

this rapture

we sing

with lips delicately

bound.

Cardinal mornings

make the bathroom towels reek

less of Hospital cots

and rubber gloves,

the feeling of transparency

is less alone

and tangible.

Sweet elation

with hands gingerly

caught.

Ferocious is

this beating heart

in Passion’s hold,

the cell with comforting pads

clear of hell,

Love is

a cruelly tortoise reclamation,

and I assume it’s willing patient.