I came to a town on the road to you,
and by chance the day was Eid al Fitr.
The was much music and dancing and rejoicing in life's fullness;
I too was swept away in the simple ecstasies.

But the old Mullahs had heard of my travels
and bid come unto them to discuss heavy matters.
"How can one break the Law and remain beloved of Allah?"

"Because God created the Law out of Love,
thus the Love of Allah is above and beyond it's precepts.
God will Love whom He chooses."
Outrage. Insult. Blasphemy.

The music outside drew my soul away, and I joined
the common people, my brothers and sisters,
while the old men argued without us.

Wordlessly, we danced.

In the silence before the creation of existence,
what God there may be spoke of all that may come to pass.
And this is what I now come to realize:

The rhythm of the universe cries out in one ALMIGHTY voice “remember";
   Here, now, listening to Tool whilst William Blake weeps in the corner beside me,
weeps at the folly of the search for truth and meaning in such a dark
   and lonely place as this godforsaken desert of a planet……

Though what Blake knows not in his head,
  his poet’s heart has known from the beginning:
WE CREATE OUR OWN MEANING.

Just because we are lied to from birth,
  just because we are made to believe that if only we follow the rules
and vote republican, that everything’ll be all pizza
  and ******* (to quote Don Cheadle)...

Just because we realize this lie does not mean that we must submit
  to the tyranny of lost souls and pens of insignificant blabbering about god,
and morality and some such nonsense about politics.

There is NOTHING…….
  save the world we create for ourselves,
within ourselves…..like that Talmudic script of wisdom:
”We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”.

For what dark god must we sacrifice ourselves,
to somehow save ourselves or some such ******* that doesn’t make any sense
except to say that the death of the self somehow equals salvation.

I am the Hanged Man, questing irrevocably onward in search
  of my own metaphor of a Dark Tower…..
If only you knew what kind of an impact you would have on me…..
   you who tempted me to remove my Iron Mask
because no matter how burned and deformed my soul may be,
   you prefer it to a lie…

And that’s what I have done, unto others as was done to me…..
I LIED…..I lied to protect myself from all that I thought could destroy me.

But once upon a time, in the darkest pit of despair I had ever thrown myself into,
  when I had not God nor Love nor Belief to turn to for aid or succor,
I chose to continue existing simply out of spite;
   the knowledge of life within death sprung from some unknown source within myself,
or perhaps Jung’s collective unconscious,
   or maybe even the Soul of the Universe…

I once thought that the Truth didn’t matter,
   because if one has enough power the truth becomes irrelevant
and only what people think is true matters….

BUT YOU, YOU WHO BOW TO NO MAN SHOWED ME A DIFFERENT PATH,
  A PATH OF TRUTH WITHIN THYSELF.

I couldn’t muster the epic courage necessary to tell you
   what I feel I must tell you….much more than a simple drunken I Love You of a text message…..anyone can say that…..

But ONLY I can say that I have know my first untroubled sleep
   in many years while in the same bed with you.
You asked me if you could touch me and you said I was soft….
   you said I would be soft...

I am just as soft within my heart for you as my skin used to be.
   We did nothing but look at each other and I was content within,
for just the short time we were there…..

And then came the fire, and the emptiness, and waking life
   where I walk like a wraith in *****'s rags,
thus why I hate fascism and communism and totalitarianism
   and theocracy and all that would seek to destroy the world
that I have come to love with such a fiery passion
   because it has liberated me from the chains of resistance within conformity…..

because of you…..I AM FREE.

It caught me off guard, this sudden feeling of loss, this sense that something beautiful was gone forever. I didn't know what to do with it, this overwhelming idea that now, out of neglect or shame or starvation, a work of art had withered away into nothing.
I suppose that I'm beginning to understand that the world isn't a narrative, it's not a story by an author with a plot and a hero.
This is the essential fallacy taught to children with a streak of the hopeless romantic in them:
the desperate belief that somewhere out there is a place for people who live their lives waiting for King Arthur instead of Jesus.

And even now, with every word comes the terrifying truth that my babbling is going to change absolutely nothing, not a single atom is going to **** an electron on the completion.
I won't feel better, the situation won't change, you the reader aren't going to say EUREKA!!!! at the end of it, so what's the point?

Expression, that is the point of it, and to be be completely blunt about it all, I hope some one I love and admire will read this and say the typical things that are said when people are honest on public forums. Do I have a point? No, not really.
So what do I do with this loss, this empty fireplace in my soul?

I drink and smoke and **** it away, stay so busy that I don't have time to consider it, this knowledge that the fire has gone out. How typical of me, how unoriginal and bourgeoise to write another ode to the trials of the individual.
Who am I to feel loss and pain when my stomach is full and my needs are met?
Aren't I another servant of economic output?
Should I not donate time and money to a cause more worthy of respect than a withering example of excessive individualism such as myself?

No, and what's more, ******* society, ******* for taking away the only haven I ever had: my head. ******* for marketing my imagination,
for inventing a bunch of ******* about responsibility for the greater good,
for poisoning the little freedom I do have with feelings of uselessness.

And most especially ******* for your greatest crime of all;
implanting this feeling of guilt whenever I do anything with my own well-being in mind.
You have created a system that perpetuates itself on shame and output,
you have killed the desire to create for it's own sake.

*******, and I'm going to unplug from you if it's the last ****** thing I ever do.

I think that enough time has passed
  enough rain fallen
  enough memories swallowed
  enough pottery shattered and remade.

I think it is time to write again.

What are you supposed to do when everything that used to bring you pleasure fades? Has been fading....for a long long time. It's not like you can do just more and harder drugs. Going back and trying to make things okay with old flames isn't an option either, they've just mastered the art of moving on, while you clearly haven't. And it's one thing to have not been able to move on, but another to wake up and realize that the people you love are standing around on tiptoe, waiting for you to lose your mind.

This isn't for them though, this expose isn't for my loved ones. This is for me.

It's 10:54 PM on Friday the 18th, and I am only responsible for my own actions. That's it, that's the beginning and the ending of everything I have ever written, or thrown up, or cried, or whispered into a lover's ear.

My name is Jon Daniel Shierling, and my Father was a Navy boy. He did the best he could with what he had, and he loved my Mother deeper than he knew how to express. My Mother was a Virginia girl, the blacksheep of her family, the hippie girl just a few years too late, but she had a vision and a hope. This scene I'm giving you is probably very far from the truth, but it's what i remember and what I've been able to piece together. For better or worse, their story is one that has followed me since I pieced it together. Not that it really matters anymore.

I'm just your run-of-the-mill garden-variety baser(as my brother calls them), but I used to do good, I used to try. I gave all I had in pursuit of something. I joined the Army in the hope of making a difference. Turns out I was just the same nobody I always knew I would be. Lemme tell you somethin about hookers boy, all of em are lookin for the one, and you ain't it. They've all got the face of your long lost love that you couldn't be there for.

There's no such thing as the one, and the girls that you've met dying for something more, it's not your job to give it to them. You'll never be able to give them what they need, and it's not your fault.

You knew this, way back when at Flagler when you were still a boy in cowboy boots getting chucked out of beach parties after trying to steal a bottle o ***. What a ******* scare when you saw Kiki up in St. Augustine a few months ago, as if that was a good enough reason.
Get mad if that makes you feel better, but you know it won't be the truth. You're the same old soul today as you were driving down Hwy 98 with the wind in your hair in the old green Taurus. You had people you loved with you, and it ended. That idea ended. Just because it hurt doesn't make it okay for you to stop being a caring person.

I digress, I stopped believing. I stopped believing the day that I understood that I couldn't love a girl enough to take away the terrible things her father did to her. I couldn't **** that man and make it better. And she's not the only one who loved me. I attract girls looking for hope that I don't have to give. I loved Rachael too, but there was nothing I could do to take back what her brother did.

Maybe my real failing, my real **** up, was not recognizing a good thing when she came my way. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand something so simple. God Amanda was, is, beautiful.....she was all I was looking for. And yet......I never slept well in bed with her.

Yes I have hurt people, hurt people that loved me without my understanding. This I thing, this I word, I'm not sure that abandoning will get me to where I should be. We'll see what happens. We'll see where I end up.

Ain't it what it mean when a girl
tell you she like you an all she
really mean is she wan you to **** her?

Is that what I'm really scared of?

Am I writing garbage, still awake
at 5:23 in the ****** morning,
worried about what kind of a man I am?

Do I wake up and go to work,
with this secret fear that
all my beliefs and all my hopes
amount to jack ****** ****?

You bet your *** I do,
because I was taught and accepted
a long time ago that love
has jack **** to do with who you
are, and everything to do
with how well you ****.

I remember well your house by the sea,
sand in all the corners, plants like gypsy tents,
a garden full of senses and clothing.

I remember well your garden by the sea,
a red dress draped over hibiscus, a linen shirt in the grass,
birds and orange blossom and always the music of water.

I remember well your fountain by the sea,
flower petals always dancing, some druid's holy spring,
the blessed waters a perfect shrine for you.

I remember well your love by the sea,
your body a continent to explore, your heart an ocean to sail,
an oasis of flowers, of water, of music, of a soul.

My whole adult life,
I've been running into people
unexpectedly on street corners
and having somewhat profound
conversations in odd languages.

Consider the guy I spoke with in broke *** English
at the bus station in Jacksonville,
or the girl from Kiev I happened upon in
a very expensive gentleman's club in Seattle.

Herat was also a very strange place to find
oneself in, Dari and Pashto and Russian and God
knows what else might be run into.

The wonderful thing about all of the
ridiculous places I've found myself in at
one time or another over the very hungry years
is that no matter what language or background
we came from, if there was ***** we got along.

“Why talk?  If you do not listen to me?", he asked. He spoke to her in Kurdish, the language of her misty childhood memories. Simon had guessed, but did not know, could not know, how deeply she was speared by this simple statement, spoken flawlessly by a man she thought she knew. She ceased her melody, and as the chords faded away, so her warmth disappeared. Her eyes watered...cleared, darkened. Memories long buried, embalmed with religious care, rose again out of the shadows she had banished them to. "How dare you speak to me like that. Who do you think you are? How do you know my language, my childhood?"

"You talk in your sleep..."

She leaned forward and slapped her friend across the face. She knew there was something wrong with him, knew that there could be no such thing as unconditional companionship, as real altruism.
How stupid she was, how naïve to believe that she might have found someone who didn't want something from her, who didn't have a price.

Simon, who knew the alleyways and alcoves of the past like a lover knew his partner's body, should have been more concise. But it wasn't in his nature to approach personal history with spotlights and pragmatics. Ta'ra was accusing now, calling him hideous, a betrayer, one who steals sweet things in the dark from lack of courage. "It's not like that Ta'ra, not an ugly thing like you make it," he tried to explain. But she did not want to hear, did not want to listen as he tried to tell her how she cried in her sleep on the long drive from Cadiz, how Clara told him a little of their history together in Morocco. "So Clara told you so much did she? I should've known she'd pout to somebody as soon as she could, as soon as I wasn't listening! So what else does she tell you? What else does she say about me when I'm not around? Or do you do more than talk hmm?"

She was standing over him now, guitar abandoned like an orphan, her green sweater all askew. So close to him he could smell her. "It's not like that Ta'ra, she cares for you, wants the best for you, and I...I..." he trailed off. "You what? You fantasize about me, you put my face on those ****** you find in the bars and cafes?" She slapped him again, crying in earnest, and he knew that the choice now was his.

In the silence before the creation of existence……what God there may be spoke of all that may come to pass……..and this is what I now come to realize…….this great and terrible abyss opens up before me, beckons me to take the plunge into ethereal life yet death at once different and the same…….free association writing that I haven’t been able to stop flowing through my fractured skull since that one day when you and I composed some kind of insanity at 3 o’clock in the morning high as hell and drunk as ****…..I can’t stop to take stock of what I have written here today, right now……lest the demons of forgetfulness come to steal the words away…..the rhythm of the universe cries out in one ALMIGHTY voice “remember”…….what am I to say to the memories we share……shall I embrace the crazy ambivalent yet gruesome life you offer me…..here, now, listening to Tool whilst William Blake weeps in the corner beside me, weeps at the folly of the search for truth and meaning in such a dark and lonely place as this godforsaken desert of a planet……though what Blake knows not in his head, his poet’s heart has known from the beginning……WE CREATE OUR OWN ******* MEANING…….just because we are lied to from birth, just because we are made to believe that if only we follow the rules and vote republican, that everything’ll be all pizza and ******* (to quote Don Cheadle), just because we realize this lie does not mean that we must submit to the tyranny of lost souls and pens of insignificant blabbering about god and morality and some such nonsense about politics…….there is NOTHING…….save the world we create for ourselves….within ourselves…..like that Talmudic script of wisdom……”we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”……for what dark god must we sacrifice ourselves to somehow save ourselves or some such ******* that doesn’t make any sense except to say that the death of the self somehow equals salvation……I’ve lost the stream now…..wait it returns, the Fates return with the Muses to give me the strength to say what must be said in these times of trial and tribulation…..I am the Hanged Man, questing irrevocably onward in search of my own metaphor of a Dark Tower…..If only Stephen King would know what kind of an impact he would have on me……if only you knew what kind of an impact you would have on me…..you who tempted me to remove my Iron Mask because no matter how burned and deformed my soul may be, you prefer it to a lie………and that’s what I have done, unto others as was done to me…..I LIED…..I lied to protect myself from all that I thought could destroy me……but once upon a time, in the darkest pit of despair I had ever thrown myself into, when I had not God nor Love nor Belief to turn to for aid or succor I chose to continue existing simply out of spite……the knowledge of life within death sprung from some unknown source within myself, or perhaps Jung’s collective unconscious, or maybe even the Soul of the Universe…….I once thought that the Truth didn’t matter because if one has enough power the truth becomes irrelevant and only what people think is true matters….BUT YOU, YOU WHO BOW TO NO MAN SHOWED ME A DIFFERENT PATH, A PATH OF TRUTH WITHIN THYSELF……….William Blake lifts his head and stares at me after this glorious revelation…..he has come back from his own plunge and brings his own knowledge, his own take on truth…….I am tired now, but I must not stop, I cannot stop, because I have more to say, so much more to say, as do we all……I couldn’t muster the epic courage necessary to tell you what I feel I must tell you….much more than a simple drunken I Love You of a text message…..anyone can say that…..but ONLY I can say that I have know my first untroubled sleep in many years while in the same bed with you….you asked me if you could touch me and you said I was soft….you said I would be soft….I am soft of skin, though not of protection…..I am just as soft within my heart for you as my skin is without……we did nothing but look at each other and I was content within myself…..for just the short time we were there…..AND THEN CAME THE INHUMAN ANGER AT THE THOUGHT OF ANYTHING CAUSING SOMETHING SO BEAUTIFUL OF SOUL AND BODY HARM……….thus why I hate fascism and communism and totalitarianism and theocracy and all that would seek to destroy the world of drugs and punk and freedom that I have come to love with such a fiery passion because it has liberated me from the chains of resistance within conformity…..because of you…..I AM FREE.

Machiavelli spoke of prophets, and surmised that it is only those prophets armed by something that have seen their message spread.

Arm me then, arm me with your nightmares and your suffering and your nights filled with wailing at the sky.

Arm me with the anorexic teenage girls, with the empty eyes of the hobo at the liquor store, with the broken hopes of a *******.

Give me your shame at the mirror's lies, give me your self-inflicted scars, give me that loathing for yourself.

Give me that need for one more shot, give me that hopelessness after ***, give me the knowledge that Mom is never coming back.

Clothe me with the skins of a hundred thousand suicide victims, pour over me the tears of a million hungry souls, burn me with the fire of ten million hearts broken under the heel of a dying world.

Do these things, and you will see me become what you've been trying to turn me into all these years.

I wish you all Happy Holidays, a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Festivus, Yule etc. Whichever tradition you follow, the heart of the celebration is the same. It's about rebirth (among the other good things like family and compassion and healing), the mystery of new things by some miracle born of old. We're told that we are supposed to be happy, that to not be cheerful this day is miserly and selfish, it's implied that if we aren't feeling perfect then we should fake it for people, that we should fake happiness so our loved ones can be genuinely happy by not seeing our sadness. But this is a hard, sad time for many of us, no matter how hard we try to be hopeful. I wish that I could really believe, rather than just hope, that the old world, the world of xenophobia and hatred, so many acts of violence and horror that I can't even keep track of them all...I wish that I could be sure that the world is being renewed by a higher power. In the face of so much, it may seem that you're just a small person, in a small place, with small problems and small gifts and a small heart, and this whole thing is a worthless gesture. Well, it isn't...this isn't just an accident, we're not just flotsam in a nameless, faceless mass of humanity with no real purpose and no value. Everything matters, and every day we have a chance to make a difference, every day we are given opportunities to be a part of miracles. All of us have the power to reach out and touch another person, to give hope instead of taking it away. There really is a better world out there, and every positive act, every genuine smile, every gentle word and every courageous stand against hatred brings us closer. And finally, a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night, and if I wake up tomorrow to find that all my appliances have come to life and burst into song and a gaggle of short bearded guys expecting food and talking about some kind of stolen gold and dragons and crap, I may just have to start taking things a little more seriously ;)

Today, sitting in the library waiting for it to be time to go to work, I've decided that its a good time to write about some things that I've been keeping to myself for a while. Victor Frankl has convinced me to live as if I've done it already and now can make good on my promises and make different choices than the last go round (which was one helluva doosie). I should be looking for a house instead, or maybe hunting for that second job I need to take. But what's the difference between one house or another, or even a cardboard box out by the mall if there's no eventual destination one has in mind. So I'm going to write down my dream for the future, a wholesome dream I keep very close because its so real to me. There are other dreams of course, other lives I'm tempted to seek and have tried in the past to actualize, mostly out of a desire to escape, to be somebody else. But this dream is the real one, the true one that is all the more precious because it can belong only to me, whereas sailing the high seas or tramping through unexplored jungles could belong to anybody with a mind to do it. My dream has more to do with minor things, things that don't take herculean courage or a doctorate in linguistics. Things like taking the kids out for ice cream on a hot day. Or piling everybody into the car for the drive from our house in Floyd up to Woodstock for the Shenandoah County Fair. Singing all the old songs and some of the new as we wind our way through the Blueridge. Maybe somebody has a summer cold so Charlotte and I have to hunt for tissues in all the places where they might be, and then find them in the back with the kids where we put them in the first place. And then finally getting there, late probably, so that everybody else is already at the grounds and we can hear the announcer at the cart races as we unpack the car. And then there they all are, my Mother and Stepfather, Uncle and Aunt and Cousins and the Grand Parents deciding to come again this year, though its getting hard for them to make the drive from Virginia Beach. So we all head up to the track to catch the last of that days races, covered in sweat and bumping into random people, a four-year old perched on my shoulders, not just because it's fun for him but also so Charlotte and I can keep track of the other children easier. I can see the magic in their faces as we waddle around the pavilions full of animals for the livestock auctions. Our six year-old daughter gravely points out to her mother that there's something wrong with that turkey in the pen, it's the wrong color. She has only ever seen the wild turkey's around our place, never a domestic white. Charlotte shoots a quick smile at me, trying hard not to laugh as she explains to our daughter why not all turkey's are as pretty as the ones that live near our house. And then before ya know it the sun's going down and it's almost time for the live music to start. So we all wind up in the bleachers again, listening to old country singers whose songs I haven't heard in thirty years, sharing funnel cakes and singing along while I'm wiping powdered sugar off of little noses with my shirt. I could go further, talk about how we decided to keep heading North after the fair, up on to Skyline Drive and Front Royal, and visited the old Firestation where my Great-Grandfather volunteered in the days before there was a McDonald's. But I won't flatten things with too many details. They're not that important sometimes anyway.  What is important, is that when I see these things in my mind's eye, they're clear as if they've already happened. As if I'm remembering the night at the fair with my Family last summer, and writing about it now after I'm done grading papers and the children are getting ready for bed. There's splashing and laughing from a bathroom where it sounds like there's less bathing and more tickling going on, Charlotte laughing hardest of all. I write of this, and I know deep down inside, that I've found something I lost a long, long time ago. As if a lost civilization's Golden Age is sailing out of the mists, building's putting themselves back together and beautiful trees growing right before my eyes. I've got to go now though, I need to help Charlotte dry off the kids and then show the youngest how to make the best PB&J; sandwich ever, the same way my Dad taught me.

It ends here, now.
This compromised soul,
this tired acceptance of a dead hope;
too much time wasted in longing
for something that brings forgetfulness.

Somehow, I love you.
And everything you still stand for.

I don't know how many disguised lines
were puked up by me in dark alleys,
or scribbled in a ***** notebook
alongside tradecraft and parameters.

So many years and I'm still bound by something,
some smiling morality whispering
seductively of what might have been,
if only I had thrown loyalty and that
outdated wraith called honour aside.

I understand that I'll never see you again,
will never have the chance to rectify
the wrong I did to your heart and soul
in the name of something that doesn't exist.

Never did I understand why Everett tried
so hard to put you on display; but looking back
now I get why you wanted Krum so bad,
and why you tried to trust me.

Regardless of what may have passed,
I still want to thank you.

Thank you for giving me a place to sleep,
and a friend when I had no one.

The phone call only confirmed what I already suspected, and I didn't have to be told what Cello wanted done. Odd guy that Cello was, all theatrics and shoulders in person, but smooth as the Bird* when it came to business. For all his panache though, we didn't exactly get along personally, but worked well together for some odd reason. I trusted his ability to read a situation and I guess he trusted me to keep my mouth shut. I wasn't quite sure yet why I was watching these two, the woman known by various monickers and nameless fedora guy. Oh well, I'd find out or I wouldn't, either way Cello would have his information to compare with whatever I found out that night. They crossed to the other side of the street, which was empty, so I hung back a bit. It was raining that perfect rain, just hard enough to cover footsteps but not enough to cover voices above a whisper, so I could hear them murmuring to each other. I'm the kinda person given to introspection I guess, so I wondered about them as we paced along, presumably to his apartment (I already knew where Wanda/Countess etc lived). It all seemed out of place, almost staged even, like it was for my benefit and I didn't even know it. Snatches of conversation here and there didn't help at all. Mention of politics, typical though, who wasn't talking about politics in those days? Something about a deposit box somewhere and a key held non situ. That peaked my interest but there was no context, nothing to go on. They turned a corner and out of sight, so I crossed to their side as quick as I could without making too much noise and crept up to the corner. Peaking around I saw them standing under a streetlight in front of a boarded up curry shop. I didn't understand what I was hearing at the time, and to this day dearly wish that I had lost them that night.

"...wondering why you're here is all. Things are fine. I haven't had to use the box in months, the whole thing is paying for itself. Sure there've been hickups, but nothing I couldn't handle." She must've known him, I realized, Wanda was standing too close for them to be strangers. Just one more thing I misread that night. "That's not why he's here," said Fedora. She grabbed his lapel and shook him a bit, not hard though. "Don't **** me around like that Alan! Who'd they send to eyeball me?! I'm not just some stupid little girl ******!" Fedora, Alan apparently, gently took her hands off his coat. "Nobody thinks you can't handle it, and they didn't send anybody. I told you, he's here already, wants to make sure those Rot Kappelle ******* don't start any crap with you and your people. The op is still yours, he's just keeping an eye out." Wanda had stepped back at the mention of whoever "he" was and put a hand to her mouth. "I can't believe Silas came here for me," she said, shaking her head. "Who all did he bring?" Alan looked like he just ate something nasty. "Arthur and his group of misfits, no idea why so don't ask. Can't stand those *******, but they're good to have if it gets nasty." Not a single word of this made any kind of sense to me at all, but that didn't much matter at the time. Something was going on though, this Silas guy I had heard of here and there, but never anything solid. There were so many factions and movements springing up all over the place, it was hard to keep track of them all, especially the coalition people, which these two were I guessed. As for "those Rot Kappelle *******", of course that was Cello and the rest of my bosses, whose names I didn't have any inkling of. This was freelance, contract by contract, so I worked alone except for my connection with Cello and of course my own unaffiliated contacts. Their conversation continued along the same lines for a minute or two until Wanda dropped one more choice line. "What about that crazy hippie chick that's gotten so popular? I'm losing people to her, all that crap about love and positive social change and how we can make headway by disobedience and negotiation." "Pretty sure that's another reason Silas came here in person," responded Alan, "It's a problem we need to handle before things get out of hand. Look, it's starting to rain harder and my room is bugged, so that's out. Silas told me he'd find you once he gets a feel for things here in the city, so don't go looking for him. I'll be seeing you around...." I was already gone by the time Wanda came back around the corner, Cello had to get that information as soon as possible. I was sure I'd be seeing one or the both of Moose and Squirrel again later on that night anyway.

I stumbled against you at the bazaar in Alexandria one day,
   a stroke of accidental closeness as we brushed hands,
and my heart shivered like the old man on the corner of Divisadero street.

And then you vanished from my mind as a dead leaf from branch,
   till I saw you again in a tavern by the docks,
quill in hand and the world on your back.

We share that same dusty look, that obvious stride
   that wanderers from everywhere can so easily surmise
to belong to one in kind.

The day after you were at the well by the caravanserai,
   and I recognized your goatskin shoes as those
of a mariner from the North, the land of the Majus, my kin.

Rush Transcript. May include inaccuracies.

Andrea Marsino: We're here today with "     " to talk about his recent best-seller, The Orchestra, which has swept bookshelves across the nation in recent weeks. A stunning display of literary craftsmanship, the book has generated a whirlwind of dialogue in all sorts of settings, from University coffee shops to local dive bars, and even, we're told, in the Pentagon. Tell us "     ", did you have any expectation at all of this kind of reaction?

"     ": Never in a million years would I have thought that I could stir up such a...a hornet's nest really. Sure it's a kind of inflammatory piece of fiction, but I never thought it'd result in so much backlash.

Andrea: Talk about unintended consequences right? How did the idea first come to you?

"         ": Well it didn't just pop into my head fully formed one day. I guess it first started to take shape at a bus station in Florida. I had just been kicked out of my Dad's house and was moving to another part of the state, so naturally I was a bit, I don't know, out of sorts. I was waiting for the connecting bus and was smoking a cigarette to **** the time and just sort've fell into conversation with this black kid who was also waiting for a connection. This was in I think May of 2013, so the situation really hadn't started to fall part yet, but the cracks were definitely showing. And that's what we were talking about, just the overall sense of things not going well, the feelings of helplessness that we as individuals, and seemingly the community as a whole, were feeling at the time. I told him that it'd get better one day, somehow and that change always is a painful process. Then the light came on and I started pondering how that sweeping societal change might be accomplished.

Andrea: There are a lot of themes in the book, a lot of subtext and implied conclusions. You've been criticized for what seems like hostility to faith and some say advocating violent political activism. What are your responses to some of the accusations that have been leveled against you?

"         ": Hostility to faith? Absolutely not. Faith is one of the overriding points of the whole thing. The objection is to organized and subverted religious teachings. Faith exists to aid humanity in the struggle of their lives and I feel like....if you examine history faith has time and again been co-opted into a tool of oppression. That's what I object to. As for advocating ****** revolution, that's another flat out misinterpretation. Yes, politics is a huge part of the story and plays a huge part in really tying the whole thing together. But it's not really about that, it's not about any single issue. It's about people, as a whole, taking back their right to not be dehumanized by anything or anyone, especially their government which is supposed to protect them.

Andrea: I see. So it's not so much about the mechanisms of power politics as it is about people's inherent value?

"        ": Absolutely. Our conception of what power really is I think is grossly inaccurate.

Andrea: But surely you can understand how your depiction of terrorist acts and a domestic insurgency is very disturbing to some people? You were a Soldier yes? Did this affect your style, and the arc of the plot?

"         ": Of course I can. And it's meant to be disturbing, it's meant to illustrate how positive forces of change can be corrupted into violence. And yes, I was an Intelligence Analyst in the Army. We were fighting an insurgency, so in order to learn how, we basically deconstructed insurgencies throughout history. We learned how they functioned, all the sides you could throw at it. And then I learned from two Defense Intelligence Agency Instructors how to start one too. Those experiences most definitely gave me the technical knowledge I needed to write something like this.

Andrea: There's also been a lot of talk about how graphic your imagery is. Many prominent individuals call it a lack of talent on your part, that you can't write without going in for the shock factor so to speak.

"        " : Ha! It's not a children's book. And besides, life is graphic. You can't portray something accurately without tackling the nasty stuff. Besides, things like ****** assault and drug use are essential to some of the characters. It wouldn't make any sense for someone to react as violently as they did in certain scenes without the reader knowing exactly what had occurred previously to form that character's identity.

Andrea: I can understand that. Doesn't make it any easier to think about though.

"       ": I don't know what to tell you. The truth is a painful thing sometimes, and portraying it was not exactly a fun process.

Andrea: And what about those very colorful characters? How did you get your inspiration for them?

"          ": Oh all sorts of places. Honestly, some are based on real individuals that I've known at some point or another. And others are pure imagination. Ta'ra and Clara were inspired by a Dane Jones ***** for instance ha ha.

Andrea: 'Blushing' That's, er, interesting. Characters from ******* is one I haven't heard before. Anyway, throughout the book is this sense of individuals being swept into something bigger than themselves and how they react to that. It's kind of ambiguous sometimes, swinging between very New Age concepts to mundane life on the same page. The quote at the beginning for instance. Very spiritual, very deep. But then you open with an interaction on a street corner.

"          ": Hmm, I guess I could try and explain about things like Theosis, which is one of the main themes by the way, but I don't think it would illustrate what I was trying to convey very well. I guess I was always kinda on the fence about divine intervention and that sort of thing until I read a piece by a friend of mine about an experience she had some years ago. Basically, she was in a diner when a Muslim woman came over and asked to sit and talk. They spoke about spirituality and the woman turned to her and said that anyone could be a prophet, like it wasn't something reserved for saints and such. It was very powerful and finally convinced me that humans aren't just ants on an anthill, so to speak. It spoke to a very, very intimate part of me. So, I took it and incorporated it into what I do. Which is write.

Andrea: Wow, that's an amazing explanation that I really didn't expect. I'd love to talk some more and I'm sure our listeners would love to hear more, but unfortunately that's all the time we have for the show today. "     " thank you so much for joining us today and sharing so many insights about your new book, The Orchestra.

"           ": The pleasure was all mine Andrea, thank you for having me.

Andrea**: This is Andrea Marsino with NPR and thanks for listening. Coming up in the next half hour we have Peggy Walker from Floyd Virginia talking about some of the exciting ways her community is fighting to keep their traditions alive today.

My Body lies at the foot of my friend the Cypress,
  why have you come to gaze at it so?
It is raining, and magic things happen in the rain here,
  but you do not see the growing things.
Your Beloved needs you, cries out for you, but you do not hear.

Life surrounds you, caresses you, quivers under you
  yet you push her embrace away like a dying thing.
You stare at my empty husk, but you do not even see it;
  it is yourself you see, your own supposed pittance, fearing life more than oblivion.

Stay and waste yourself then, friend...fool.
I am going to go smell those lilies over there.

Some few things you should know about me
if ever I manage to capture your love.

To me, there is no such thing as casual ***
nor casual relationships, nor casual love.

It may not seem like that on the surface,
I may be able to act the part of what society
has told you to expect of a man...boy...thing.

But in truth I sit awake writing about everything
that touches me so deeply that it hurts.

Things that make me happy come with a price
called guilt, and that guilt drives me to abandon.

Stupid reasons and stupid logic born from
things done and almost done that I watched
so detached from myself that I couldn't believe it was real.

If you love me, don't ever tell me
don't do that to yourself.

Eyes that speak without words
mute gestures out of the darklands
a pleading and a despair and a hunger
for who the **** knows what.

Walk across the red room of your soul
reach across the red memory of your loves
say yes
say no

I won't live the next ten years
as I lived the last
Pulled apart by the future
and the past.

It's taken me ten years
to wake and touch
ten years to fling all shame aside
and burn my many masks.

How does one learn to hope again?
How does one learn to trust again?
How does one be...simply be....again?

Lesson learned, lesson loved
when you do things to forget
you only forget the good
and the bad sticks around.

We live the life that has been given
all we can expect of ourselves
all we owe to our hearts
is fire.

The mighty men speak of power
and the low men speak of power
power to break and power to bind
as Mr. White explained it
a very long time ago,

Live
Live as if you were dead
and were looking back
As if you had nothing to lose
As if you had everything to lose.

As if I only have that much time to type
a lifetime's worth of beauty.
Or it may have only been
that seven minutes of memory.

Seven minutes to scream out
the glory of a first kiss, and
the shuddering surrender of an ******,
sweat and fire and ecstasy.

They told me, when I was young,
that I had to find my love
and let it **** me.

Seven minutes of music
the world rolled back and Samsara
a mere smile in the lamplight,
just another of the gods' company.

I've found many loves,
and their knives tearing holes
and their beauty a weapon
and their innocence a torch
and their hatred a drug
and their pain abhorrent
and their abandonment a sin
and their touch heretical
and their eyes of jewels
and their words made of bullets
and their hope a sad Gypsy
theirs tears a lonely guitar
striking chords in me and
God forgive how good they feel.

I am undone, overthrown, emaciated,
torn out, weary, overcome, eviscerated,
redeemed, hallowed, sanctified,
all of this and more.

I love you.

I have yet to die.

There was water near, her horse could smell it, and so could she after journeying so far. Seemingly small things regained their importance in an empty land such as this, for what use is wealth without water, or power without others to wield it upon? A strange thought, not like her at all. People changed in this desert though; she knew from the way she watched her horse’s stride, and how she could remember all the names of the constellations, something she had not been able to do since times long past. She would not allow her mount to make directly for the water source, a well most likely, and she was wary. Around the foot of this dune, and there it was, the expected well, and a single palm standing sentry beside it. She drew water, relished the sound as it sloshed around in the hide bag, relished the act of letting her horse drink first, the joy of uncomplicated companionship. She drank, refilled her own water skins, ate a few dates, and let her gaze wander. She had maybe an hour left of daylight and was in no hurry to arrive, wherever it was that she was going. A hawk cried as it stooped upon a hare two hundred yards to her right, a beautiful thing to her. And on the heels of that, a fear. A quarter mile away, outlined against the distant plateau, walked another rider.

She had been drifting, sailing almost into a sleep, and now she was awake. What was that sound? Guitar. Her guitar, played with unsure hands, hesitant and sad. Bodiless chords making their way through the open window. God it was hot, oppressive almost, and she could still see the sweat beading on Clara’s forehead. She would not get back to sleep now, not so uncomfortable. She wriggled out of bed, carefully moving out of Clara’s arms. Needlessly though, Clara never woke without a good shaking or a loud noise. She pulled her green sweater off of the chair where it had been thrown an hour before and paused before putting it on. Something she had forgotten to do maybe, something at the back of her mind. Nothing. Closing the door behind her, she padded through the small living room to the open balcony and stood behind the man sitting on an old barstool, rescued he said, from a bar in Alfama. She watched him try and play her guitar, watched him bent in concentration. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses, one empty, standing on the wicker table next to him. Picking up the empty one, he held it out to her without turning around. “I hope I didn’t bother you Ta’ra, I was in a mood and couldn’t help it.” “No,” she said, taking the offered glass, “It’s too hot to sleep.” It annoyed her that he always knew when someone was around him, and in she and Clara’s case, which one of them. Curling up on the loveseat opposite him, she gazed out at Lisboa in all of its late afternoon beauty. “Give that back, you’re butchering whatever the hell it is you’re trying to play,” holding her hand out for her guitar. He handed it back to her, shrugged and said something about it being a long time since he’d picked up an instrument. She smiled, drained her glass, and began to play an old song, barely remembered. “Çevrem, etrafım şen mutlu iken. Ben yine hüzünlüyüm” She had never heard the melody played with a guitar, but she knew it well enough to play it without any hesitation. A haunting thing, this song, in a dialect she only knew by proximity, but no less powerful for people who cared for such things. She cradled her guitar, intent only on the music, on where her fingers must go. He watched and listened. “Why talk. If you do not listen to me? Running away…”

Well, let me begin my announcing to the HP community that I just pulled my ex-best friend's child's mother's hair out of my mouth without realizing how it got there since I haven't seen her since Saturday. Yeah, good luck pondering that breech of physics. Also, I realized that I've been breaking the magic rules of drinking at work as laid down by Cracked.com with impunity since before that majestic article was written, which kind of makes me feel like a badass and also like a terrible alcoholic whom the gods will eventually strike down. Or perhaps, everybody at work with me is also drunk and/or high all the time, a suspicion I've had for about a year now, but have not been able to prove, despite careful observation. Sure, the typically WOW playing awkward dude gets a box of not one, not two, but three bottles of beautifully crafted wine delivered DIRECTLY TO THE OFFICE every month notwithstanding. And does our supervisor say anything even remarkably reprehensible....no, not while she's on the clock. But she did steal my Don Corleone hat, and by thunder she still owes me for that thing, since I'll bet all the money I made this year that she got some fantastic head because of that hat. There are minor arguments in the breakroom over how ****** the coffee actually is, whether it's police station or AA meeting detestable, and on slow days people are chucking gigantic medicine ***** across the room while laughing at the destruction they cause. Then, Monday through Friday, woe unto you if you call the 24/7 line between 10 and 12 at night, since you will be picked up by me, the 3-midnight guy. If you're an idiot, or loud, or from New Jersey, or can't seem to be able to wipe that bleached ******* of yours without assistance, DO NOT CALL. I will be drunk, and while drunk I will take whatever ****** excuse you have for being a worthless and pointless human being and very tenderly, very politely, shove it up your *** on the end of a very thick nine iron. This is real life, and this....this is where I work.

I am afraid of what my hands may write
   I’m not sure why….
most likely something to do with not wanting to hurt anything innocent
   but I suppose we all fail at that endeavor.

Fragile, beautiful things come into our hands and we break them,
   not purposefully, desiring not to **** a lovely thing…
but we can’t seem to help it,
    can’t seem to help hurting people we love.

It ought to have been different, no one should be made to laugh at their own dreams…

I don’t want to write anymore; I want the peace of sleep.
   But I have to write…to keep my soul from dying, I have to write…..
but the only person I want to say anything to doesn’t hear me.
    No matter how absurd the situation appears,
the emotions that we feel are all we have that keeps us alive.

Oceans separate people from each other….
    oceans that even psychonauts are loath to attempt a crossing of.
Anyone who ever believed in anything knows this:
   things ought to have been different….

But people can’t think about things like this all time;
  people aren’t able to go through all of the ******* that encompasses modern life while contemplating the mysteries of human experience.
   And when things get too complicated we run away…

We fear what we don’t understand,
   and I am afraid of you.
No one had ever turned me inside out like you.
No one has ever managed to cut through the crap and shake me to the core….
   except you….

But there’s no time to focus on that,
  there’s no time to focus on one another when the whole world is imposing itself on you.
How can we possibly be expected to delve into people’s souls
  when our mortgage is due eh?

Why should we have to feel the need to love someone
while having to maintain one’s sanity in order to survive?
Since isn’t that what love is…a kind of insanity;
  the kind of insanity where one’s ego is completely swept away.

Freud never loved…
  never could form the concept of ego death
into a beautiful thing…

Certain things will never be spoken aloud by me,
  only written of….
because I too am enslaved against my will by fear of the unknown….

Probably a symptom of something
to ascribe internal suffering
to an external horror.

Creeping through my guts
my hair standing on end
the back of my neck prickling.

My God I am crazy
or I am haunted
but by what has no name.

I may be a liar and cold
and that did indeed
**** a barely born love.

It is good that we could not continue
as I was not forthcoming to you
about the state of my soul.

You would have had to endure
my nightmares and my fears
waking in a cold sweat.

I do believe in evil
having seen it firsthand
dined with it in darkened rooms.

And as sad as I am
in the midst of my insanity
there is not hope
but vindication.

We shall speak, and by speaking loudly and fervently enough, we shall be heard.

We shall be heard, and by being heard, we will be dismissed as the lost denizens of a failing society.

We shall be dismissed, and by being dismissed, we shall not disappear quietly into the night as our forerunners have done.

We shall be branded "Communists" & "Traitors", and in doing so we shall aquire the attentions of those we aim to educate.

We shall not be silenced, and by refusing to be marginalized into a portion of "freaks and outcasts", we shall be known.

We shall not be paid off or coerced into "negotiations", and by maintaining unity, we shall be outlawed.

We shall not accept the scorn of those whose power seems unassailable,
and in so doing, we shall be feared.

We shall not accept platitudes and half measures as answers to our grievances, and in so doing, we will be persecuted.

We shall not accept a world where our worth as human beings is measured by GDP, and in doing so, we will become that which we seek.

We shall not accept that "Some people are better than others", rather,
we KNOW that liberty is born from knowledge.

We shall speak, and by speaking, be heard, and by being heard, we will effect change, and by effecting change, we will be victorious.

I have some things to say to you my friend,
  if friends we still are.
Things that I should have said long ago,
  things I have always been afraid to say.

In this quiet night, this pregnant silence,
  I wonder why you chose to show yourself
in my dream last night, unbidden, unlooked for,
  as if you had always belonged there.

Maybe it was only my old heart yearning for company,
  or perhaps a guilty conscience, ugly brute that he is.
But I prefer to believe in what feels true,
  in what Rumi and Shams would say if I asked.

I knew I was dreaming, but it was the best kind of dream;
  a dream that's more real than a summer afternoon.
The kind of dream that begins with waking up;
  especially when it's Mandy's wet nose in my face.

I wish I could remember the words you spoke to me,
  after you finished laughing that is.
But then, the memory I have I think is enough,
  because sometimes words just get in the way of what eyes can say.

You followed me around all day today, purposefully
  commenting on the state of my mind,
And heart, as I rushed the day away.

You smiled and laughed and made your fine acquaintance,
   when I introduced you to my friend.
Yes my friend, the Cypress I always sit under when I break at work,
   he liked you very much, but found you more of a Willow person.

And I didn't realize how the little things are evident more,
   when I brushed that cockroach from my knee.
But you pointed out to me that the me you knew once,
  would not have simply brushed it aside and let lie.

I guess I finally learned that he has just as much
  right to be there as I do, under that Cypress tree.
And that set the wheel in motion, you and the tree;
  what else have I been missing?

This is not a love song, nor an ode, nor a plea of some kind;
   my heart doesn't have room for motives or means any more.
This is a thank you, an adoration, an exaltation, a hug or three;
   a fire rekindled and a regret unmade.

The truth is that I want to say something to you,
   something that I don't know will sound right,
Or convey everything that I want to,
   but again, sometimes words just get in the way.

The truth is that I have never, ever met someone with the faith and the power and the love and the strength to do what you did. You went all the way to hell and turned back, turned back the dark not with a hate and a burning, but with leaf and branch. I know I don't have the whole story, and that I was gone, in my own way, but I don't think I need to know anymore than what you've told me, what others have told me, and what I've seen. I don't have the words to tell you how much I love you for who you are, and what you did for me when I was nearly lost myself. You gave me hope amid despair, and courage amid cowardice and I just want you to know that when I think of the souls I have met on this road, you shine with the clearest. Thank you Adri.

I didn't intend to wind up here tonight, typing a sick excuse for a poem into my phone from a dive.

But that crazy South African really put the hook in me, apealing to my vanity and persona, as if an alcoholic ex-soldier could own such.

In the background of my thoughts go pieces of other poems, pieces of memories, tired revelations cried out into the darkness.

So sick of people asking me why I'm sad, and them forgetting what my answer is five minutes later, when that new girl or new guy walks by.

I have more to say, but I know that no matter what I spit onto page will make no difference in the long run.

So bartender, I need another shot.

Cello was not at all happy with what I told him. The call didn't exactly go well, but at least he gave me a slice of information that made some sort've sense. "Those two you told me about, the situation, it's very fluid right now. I need you to go talk to talk to this girl. Tonight. Now, actually. Don't worry, we have this Alan ******* looked after, as you heard. But, um, Wanda, as you call her, may have some things to say, under the right persuasion." Slightly taken aback by what Cello was implying, I said nothing. "Look, I know where you've come from, I know the kind of work you've done, so just find her and figure out what the **** she's been ordered to do for those Coalition *****, OK?" Besides what I may, or may not have done in the past, all this was a little bit more than what I had been contracted to do for Cello and his cronies. They didn't pay me enough for torture, they only paid me enough for listening. Cello put me on hold long enough to get the go ahead to pay me another two grand evidently, since when he got back on the line all he said was "Find her now and get the story, money is in your account, call me when you've got everything that ***** has to say". I said "Okay, thanks but I'ma do it without the whole missing body parts thing. You'll get what you need, but it's my call on how ja?" Cello gave the ok and that was all that was needed to get me moving.

Encounter

It was afterward, in the light from a streetlamp
you sobbed and said that you wished we hadn't.
Anyone else and I'd have taken my cue, left, and drank till sunrise.
For some reason I stayed (having no choice really)
pulled you close and asked why, expecting an answer I'd already
heard many, many times before.
You looked into me, and said 'You smell like pine needles.
The next one won't smell like you, and I won't be able to pretend
that he or she is you.'
That was not the answer I had a defense for.
"You smell like cinnamon, and I want to run. But I won't leave,
unless you want me to."

Winds*

"Let me tell you about winds," said I, trailing an apricot leaf across your left breast. Giggling, you tried to bite my nose. "Shut up you, I love that book too, and I know Herodotus better than you ever will."
"Ah yes, you were his lover at one time if I recall."
"Indeed I was, long before you and your sandy hair came on the scene. Your hair IS sandy."
"It is so totally NOT sandy, it's light brown. And all the grey is your fault."
Sauntering to the bathroom, you gave me the finger as you bent down to turn on the hot water. I waited till I saw steam, long enough for you to let your guard down, and hit you in the *** dead center with an apricot.
"Good shot you *******, but that's no way to treat a lady."
"Whoever said you were a lady cheri?"
Laughing, you tried to shove soap in my mouth as I slid into the scalding water. The tub was a bit cramped for two people, but we didn't mind. We never minded when we were forced together, at least here was privacy. (Although there are few things sweeter than a stolen kiss in a train full of singing Rajput schoolchildren, a story for another time)

It began to snow. Big flakes, slowly spiraling out of the night sky. For a moment I let myself go and caught one on my tongue. It felt good to remember that not everything need be dramatic and painful. Good to feel a quiet peace for just a few seconds. She would have found this intensely beautiful. No good to think of that now, no good for yourself. There is something out of the past that continues to interfere with the present, some laughing hate born when I was a child. I met him under a streetlight, knowing he'd be there. "So you killed another love, boy, and now you're here to **** me? Doesn't seem very fair, after all I've done for you. Ungrateful I'd call it." Sneering at me with the old crooked smirk I knew so well, he lit a Camel. I told him he wasn't welcome here, did not have my permission to poison me. "Isn't this childish of you dude? Writing about trying to **** a part of yourself you hate, but that has helped you protect yourself from so much. Seems like you're whining to me, poor little boy got his feelings hurt and all that ****. There was no one there for you then except me, and there's no one for you now because you won't let the war be over." Starting to protest, he cut me off. "Don't you even dare to talk to me about her, or any of the others. You know **** well she's right and you're wrong and you don't have the right to come here and ****** at me for your own idiocy. Always trying to get rid of me and then you get hurt and come crawling back like you expected something different to happen, as if you expected to find love and happiness after causing so much pain. So what you've been lied to your whole life, she never gave you a reason not to trust her. And you brought all of this to the table, tried to hide your own wretchedness, wouldn't even tell her about your little mental health problem, so you can't be mad at me when that blew up in your face. You lied and hid not because of me, I'm just a defense mechanism. You did it because you couldn't really accept that maybe she'd love all of you, couldn't believe what you actually hoped for. Isn't that sad, this pattern of suspicion that if she knew everything she'd bolt at the first opportunity? How can you be upset when you didn't even give her the opportunity? Why are you surprised that it didn't work when you only ever showed half of yourself? No, don't interrupt me, you know I'm right. And you know what, you'll do it again, over and over and over, because you can lie to everybody else and yourself, but you can't fool me and you couldn't fool her. Admit it, you don't really find yourself lovable at all. You're ashamed of yourself and you don't even know why. So people fall in love with you and you can't accept that love. Or you fall in love with someone and strangle it. But you won't even accept that responsibility. You blame me. Well guess what, I didn't make your parents divorce, I didn't make dad hit your Mom with a frying pan, I didn't make you move in with him, I wasn't the one who ***** Kiki that night you were ****** around with Emily instead of paying attention to your friends, I wasn't the one who taught you to hate yourself and I **** sure didn't make you join the ****** Army. I protected you from all of that as much as I could......." I turned and walked back into the night.

So they're building yet another gigantic marble city hall right next to my office. Where does the city get the money to build all this useless crap when we DON'T EVEN HAVE A CHIK-Fil-A!?!? Oh wait, I forgot about all the old people that retired here to die.

He stood on the sidewalk, the image of Film Noir in a trench and fedora, smoking what was probably a Lucky Strike. Casually flicking the **** aside(a Camel in fact, he ran out of Luckies a week before) he summed up the saloon/bar/club type thing one more time before stepping inside. Done up like the Knock Knock, though with a lower ceiling and less lighting, the place was actually pretty decent. He noticed his goal immediately; acid green short dress and a belt from the Iron Age, hair as black as that raven some farmer used to own....she would have been a mighty sorceress if he were in a fairy tale. As it was, she could still charm the pants off the Devil as they say, and come off without a scratch. The Patsi in the fedora took a seat next to her, feigning disinterest. Another woman with her looks may have been irritated by the lack of attention he gave after sitting down, but not her. No, she knew Fedora wasn't here for her looks, this was business, although he didn't look half-bad either. Having that **** Tracey air still works even today sometimes. Eventually he bought her a drink after she came back from a dance and a banyo call wiping her nose. He was too well cut, too clean for a place like that, and it stood out if you looked longer than a second or two. She belonged there, could be found every Thursday and Friday night and nobody who had been there more than once bothered to ask about her or try and savy with her, but they all stared. The college kids who knew their literature, beat types and poets mostly, they all called her Wanda or the Countess and a few called her Venus. She seemed to like this reference to a far darker personality than her own, and accepted it since it added so much to her persona in that place. Mystery comes naturally to some people, and it fit the Countess better than the mask she wore as a very young woman.
They sat together for two hours, talking and drinking, but not once did Fedora loosen up and cop a feel or ease back on his stool, and the Countess, for all her outward glamour, never did goose him or whisper in close. They passed right by on their way out completely intent on whatever they were doing, or about to do. They didn't take a cab, but turned and started off down the sidewalk, pretty quick for patent leather and high heels on a wet night. I was out the door after counting thirty seconds and making a very quick phone call.

I am afraid of what my hands may write
   I’m not sure why….
most likely something to do with not wanting to hurt anything innocent
   but I suppose we all fail at that endeavor.

Fragile, beautiful things come into our hands and we break them,
   not purposefully, desiring not to **** a lovely thing…
but we can’t seem to help it,
    can’t seem to help hurting people we love.

It ought to have been different, no one should be made to laugh at their own dreams…

I don’t want to write anymore; I want the peace of sleep.
   But I have to write…to keep my soul from dying, I have to write…..
but the only person I want to say anything to doesn’t hear me.
    No matter how absurd the situation appears,
the emotions that we feel are all we have that keeps us alive.

Oceans separate people from each other….
    oceans that even psychonauts are loath to attempt a crossing of.
Anyone who ever believed in anything knows this:
   things ought to have been different….

But people can’t think about things like this all time;
  people aren’t able to go through all of the ******* that encompasses modern life while contemplating the mysteries of human experience.
   And when things get too complicated we run away…

We fear what we don’t understand,
   and I am afraid of you.
No one had ever turned me inside out like you.
No one has ever managed to cut through the crap and shake me to the core….
   except you….

But there’s no time to focus on that,
  there’s no time to focus on one another when the whole world is imposing itself on you.
How can we possibly be expected to delve into people’s souls
  when our mortgage is due eh?

Why should we have to feel the need to love someone
while having to maintain one’s sanity in order to survive?
Since isn’t that what love is…a kind of insanity;
  the kind of insanity where one’s ego is completely swept away.

Freud never loved…
  never could form the concept of ego death
into a beautiful thing…

Certain things will never be spoken aloud by me,
  only written of….
because I too am enslaved against my will by fear of the unknown….

Your eyes are the only blue in this desert;
gunslinger eyes, the kind of eyes that quench a dying soul's thirst
and turn nightmares away in the dark.

Behind those eyes is a heart worth a hundred Grails,
  a kindred soul shot from Apollo's bow.

And I, broken soldier that I am, for all my courage and all my faith,
  dare not stray too close for fear of rejection
  or, far more frightening
  acceptance.

They found themselves in that part of the city by accident. Arguments and resentment can cause that sort of aimless wandering, but it's always strange when the two are too stubborn to pull away and wander as individuals. The smells and the sounds shook them out of their thoughts, nutmeg and incense, rhythm and laughter of an unfamiliar hue. In front of them was the source of the music and motion, dimly lit in a recess of the street, but with the unmistakable scent of life pouring out of it. Drawn forward, as if by some invisible force, they entered that bar we resident ex-pats call L'Serpent Rougue.

Cushions and carpets and hookah smoke, dim lamps and cinnamon and coffee, above all the beat of the drums. Drums of all shapes and sizes, Darbouka's most numerous, played by toothless old men and bare chested youths, pounding out sound that got into the blood and burned the heart. They had no words for it, this throbbing in the chest. Barely through the door and already they felt the urge to loosen clothes, remove shoes, partake of unknown sensations. They were seated in a corner towards the back by a middle-aged man who gave them that appraising look purveyors of delights save for those they recognize as novices. Hossam didn't ask their order, immediately brought strong Turkish coffee and a double hosed brass hookah. He also guessed, correctly, that both of them drank whiskey. They sat back in their cushions, closer than they had been for weeks, and drank of that place as they would have of a complex wine or the work of a master painter.

Faces gazed unclothed out of lamplight, shorn of the daytime business-as-usual mask, bidding the couple to do likewise and share in this freedom. This sheer, abject celebration of humanity was something they had never seen or truly comprehended, something more in the way of an abstract idea like physics or the Trinity. But to have it here, now, ****** upon them in such a place was such a shock that perhaps they may yet have shied from it and fled, but it was at that moment that the music changed to a new tempo. Hossam excused himself from the bar and, picking up the Oud propped in a corner, took his place among the musicians.

Simoom was said to be the most beautiful woman in the city, and to have seen her that night, anyone would have believed it. Eyes not quite midnight, but the kind of dark blue that comes just before the sun hints at it's rise. Skin that rich olive color which moves all people deep inside, reminding them in a round about way of the days when the abundant harvest was a reason for rejoicing. The very ideal of grace as she took her own sacred place within the circle of the drummers.

Hossam began a melody, so worn with time and use that one could see the years fall from his body, could see through time to the passion that had always driven his music. And the drummers, young and old alike, followed slowly, almost hesitantly in his wake, as if unsure that they should try and accompany the wellspring flowing from his fingertips. But Simoom, she knew this song, this timeless outflowing, and matched every undulation, every direction Hossam poured out of his instrument and his heart. He played like some Sufi dervish caught up in ecstasy, flames of music which she danced through as a Jinn of the Hejaz.

All of this, the two almost estranged lovers became a part of. In one of those mysterious and unquantifiable facets of human experience, their finite lives became something else. This warmth they had never known suddenly reached out its arms and embraced them. In the midst of that dark place they had found their love descending into, by some chance or will or what have you, they arrived at what some might call a...what's the term...oh yes, "Den of Iniquity". This is the miracle: the differences and petty quarrels, resentments hidden for months, the weight of mundane life, all of the pinpricks upon the heart that lovers unknowingly bestow upon each other fell away, just as the passion of the Oud shed years from Hossam.

They left L'Serpent Rougue with his arm around her waist and her hand in his back pocket, smiling and open to the world. The walk home was itself a new adventure. They danced arm in arm in the middle of the street to a homeless man who played the fiddle, sang the words to their favorite '90s songs as they climbed up the apartment stairs.

Who cares what the landlord says anyway?

She had one of those Chinese calligraphy sets, and she had practiced with it in the years since it was given to her. Practiced that art almost as if it was the only thing that truly belonged to her. As if her entire identity was composed of beliefs ****** upon her by some outside force save for this. Little did she know that this conviction about being an almost carbon copy of ideas not truly his own was a feeling also held by her lover.

That night at the bar and in the street, he saw something in her that he had never witnessed before. The moment when after they got home he took off his shirt and asked her to get the brush and ink was close to forcing him to recede back into a shell. The memories of a person he used to be, fallen far away. But then she smiled and pushed him back upon that rickety bed. She took that brush and ink, painted her soul onto his secret places, and he did the same in turn to her.

I'd like to tell a true story to you, dear readers. It's not exactly a nice story, but it's one I've only told to a few, so I think the time has come to make it public, especially since I know that the only person involved that would read it is me. This is a story that has changed my life, for good or ill, some experience that curdled my perception of how the world I live in works.

One night, years ago, I wound up at a house party in beautiful St. Augustine, and I was sober when I got there, very late, as I had promised to be the dd. But, we walked from the dorms back to Riberia Street, so I had no responsibilities once we got there. So, while drinking and partaking of other choice substances, I met the now famous Emily, she who I first started really writing for, she who set me free from some pointless idea of what was necessary. Dear God she had perfect *******, and could kiss like French writers wished their wives or lovers could kiss. I fell in love with her that night....and also was wounded at the same time.

Emily had three friends, a Latina from Miami called Natasha ironically, a White girl from up North named Lauren Ruotollo, and another chick from up that way who introduced herself as Kiki. I was in the middle of a conversation with Emily, when I had to ***. So, naturally I walked off the porch and did my business on the side of that house, and while standing there I looked to my left and saw a random dude shoving his thing into a girl's mouth propped against a tree. I thought nothing of it in that moment, and went back to talking to that perfect Emily.

What felt like hours or honestly was only minutes later, on the back porch with my tongue in Emily's mouth and my hand up her shirt, Natasha and Lauren found us; hunting for Kiki. I found her out back, not ten yards from where Emily and I were standing. She was the girl taking it hard from random *******, who left her with not even a thank you. Her skirt and ******* were racked up over her stomach, and when I picked her up, she coughed up *** all over my shirt. I carried her to Natasha's car and put her inside, yelling to God that He owed me one. Emily, Natasha, Lauren and Kiki then rolled off into the wee morning hours, and a little piece of my soul died.

I went back inside that house and couldn't find that empty *******. So I snorted an entire 8 ball and took off my *** covered shirt in the middle of Riberia and burned that ****** then and there.

So when you ask me why I have some problems that didn't come from the Army, I'll tell you this story.

That's my private name for her...Grey Eyes. And they are very, very grey, a lake shrouded in mist. A strange thing, to be in love with a feeling. To be enamored of arrivals, departures, mitigations. Odd also, when someone leads you to an understanding of yourself...or at least, a part of yourself. It is satisfying for me to let futures go. In some strange way, it's fulfilling and sad, for someone to reach out a hand to me across the dark waters. To see a possibility, very much yearned for, and to deprive myself of it. I was given an offer today that I had thought about often, daydreamed and hungered for. Ultimately I declined, my reasons being vague at the time, though my explanation was valid (somewhat). "I get uncomfortable when I can't pack up everything and leave in a day, and I wouldn't want to do that to you". I didn't think about whether I may have hurt her by saying that, though it wouldn't have changed my answer. Something deep inside whispered of danger and confinement should I have taken that road, great sorrows unimagined. Somehow it was deeply moving to be able to stare down my childish craving, and turn away, to be able to recognize that this path was not for me. People like me, people with a history but no story, don't move in with a woman that they have feelings for and end up happy. I've walked that way before, though the stakes were much lower and I much younger. One more test passed. I never wanted to admit this about myself, but now I suppose I can accept it without shame, without anger or judgement. I sometimes enjoy killing my dreams. Rather, killing things about myself that have no purpose but to cause distraction and delay, ideas and hopes that lead sideways rather than forward. Of all the skills taught to me by my Father, this has been the most valuable.

Three shots of Jameson and a few mouthfuls of Publix potato salad in, and I'm ready to write. Or so I thought. And yet, in some sort of cosmic ****, somebody with a name out of the past liked a poem on this site. No picture, no poems, no identifying information to speak of. Just a name. I don't even know what I was going to write now. Had some sort of an idea to talk about this job I have and tie that into a metaphor for America, all this very clean plastic and mysterious machines emitting odd beeping noises as I blast Muddy Waters and croone to poor people on the telephone who are far more bewildered than I. But now, oh no, not now. Now I have to reconsider my assumptions, yet again, and this on the heels of finally resigning myself to the demented suspicion that there really is no place for freaks like me who run off of alcohol and a sort of dark throw-back Watergate mentality. But now I have to look up at the tiled ceiling and have a what-the-**** conversation with the great comedian in the sky....again. I guess that's just the way it is, people coming and going out of life, and me doing everything I can to try and make some kind of sense out of this outrageousness. Ah ***** it, this is the Blues after all, and man oh man, sure makes a good story.

So what face shall I construct to wear when the sun comes up?
Who shall I be on the morrow, what role is it they want me to play?
I guess it depends on the company I expect to find myself in.
It's a Tuesday and I have work so I can get away with being hungover but not drunk, slightly grungy but not full punk, though as the evening progresses and shifts change I can afford to let my hair down, so long as I don't lose it and curse at the callers or slur too hard.

I'll wind up at the local bar after and not really be concerned about my state of being since it's men's night and there's nobody there looking for a cat like me, not at that hour on a sandy road in *** **** Florida.

That's one of the things I still haven't been able to really understand about this place...basically there are young through highschool kids, then community college not yet oldenough to go out drinking, and then nothing in between till thirty year old professionals who are more cynical than the old retired people from up North who came here to die. Where do I fit in all this?

None of the above. The last woman who had feelings for me was a 27 year old single mom who bore my 29 year old co worker's child. The last girl I almost slept with was a 19 year old ****** I met at a 7-11. My best friend is my 20 year old cousin. I got to work and bars during the week and feel like a child, provide alcohol to my cousin and his friends on the weekend and feel like this rickety old man telling stories about how ****** up I used to get while falling asleep after one hit.

Make any sense? I hope not.

A fire beneath flesh this night,
in the half-sleep you wander through.
Drums from your dreams still
beating, throbbing in those veins.
A strange experience indeed,
to open eyes with your hand
between very wet legs.
Ah but the vision that had
born this surprise had very
primal beginnings.
Hands barely able to touch,
eyes that daren't linger on *******,
a ***** almost afraid to rise.
The very act of unclothing
become a ritual, a rite of passage.
Tentative fingertips in soft places,
a brush of lips against bare flesh.
Somewhere there is a guitar,
strumming soft sounds.
Needing something solid,
something tangible,
you reach out.
To be filled up,
to be consumed by something,
to be taken in a ring of burning.
Your whole body feverish,
sounds escaping your mouth,
movement never felt before.
This....can be more
than just a dream.

There are a great many things I've wanted to ask of you, whoever or whatever you are. Some far more poignant than others. What I really want to know are questions pertaining to us, your creations, and what you intended for us to do with this thing we call Free Will. Deeper than that, I want you to explain why you made me as I am, why you place people in my path, and ask things of me which I have not the power or the courage to perform. Why did you gift me with the perception to see into the heart of things, and the conviction that I MUST make right that which is wrong. I look around everyday and am astonished at the contradictions in this world. This schizophrenic society we've built upon the ashes of an idea horrifies me with it's multitude of messages, it's towers built on the illusion that we ARE what we OWN, and that worth is measured in stock. If we aren't beautiful, we can pay to be so, if we aren't smart, we can pay others to be smart for us, if we are not brave, we can hire others to die for us. There is so much beauty all around us, yet we've abstracted existence into sections of time, allotments of economic calculations instead of living, breathing humanity. But that's not what I'm angry about. I'm angry that you've made me in such a way that I can't function very well in "everyday life". I saw hell in the eyes of a beautiful **** Addict, the truth of her squalid life behind the veneer of beauty and calm and power she presented only a few hours before. This person had what our society tells us we must have in order to be happy. Clearly, we are missing something if Miss Beautiful Blonde **** Head had to find some kind of feeling in that. And make no mistake, there's very few illegal substances that I haven't forced upon my body at one time or another, and it disgusts me that I have to partake of a drug in order to be able to speak to people without hiding behind some kind of armour. But it's a lie, it's fake, just as the society we created is a lie. I would give everything to be able to have understood this when I was fifteen and could have started this journey differently. But it was not to be so, for whatever reason I, and so many others, are empty vessels on this sea. All those weeping, wounded hearts you placed before me and commanded me to heal, when my own was broken. I hate you for that. I reject this existence, this scramble for position and power atop a mountain of rags and orphans. I deny the Will to Power.  And to the world you allowed us to create, the world that eats living ghosts and plastic *******, that learned how to burn whole populations away....to this world I will always say "NO".

O Discordia, Where now will we turn for salvation? Our dreams have withered and our legends have passed into shadow.

O Discordia, Revel in your triumph, ****** and barren. For the towers have fallen beneath the weight of our folly, and with them, hope.

O Discordia, To whom shall we turn, for what light do we yearn? The land has sickened and the children go hungry into the night.

O Discordia, Where now lie the ruins of our mighty house? Where now fly the banners of our people, once fair and proud?

O Discordia, The blood of our line is all but spent and we are overcome, as the days grow long and the nights close about us.

O Discordia, All of our loves and all of our heroes are now your trophies. As our children and their dreams are now your pets.

Sitting at work watching the scenes of mayhem and gross misuse of force pouring out of Missouri doesn't really phase me the way that I think it should. And that in itself is cause for alarm, this kind of nonchalance in the face of injustice. It's become a common phenomenon in the years since the Towers fell however, local police armed with military grade automatic weapons, riot gear and armoured vehicles confronting crowds waving signs and throwing plastic water bottles. Albeit the violence was escalated by a small group of agitators within the crowd throwing molotovs and rocks, the vast majority of the protesters were completely respectful and well coordinated by local activists. In a kind of eerie throwback, Gov. Nixon ordered a National Guard detachment to the St. Louis suburb early Monday in an attempt “to help restore peace and order and to protect the citizens of Ferguson.”* Granted, civil disturbances are never a stroll in the park, and I commend the efforts of community leaders and law enforcement attempting to prevent violence and looting, but common sense dictates that you shouldn't shove weapons in the faces of people that are just standing in your way. Crowd dynamics being what they are, one of two things will happen when authorities respond to civil disobedience with violence, 1) the response is heavy enough and quick enough to prevent organization and coordination by the protesters, or 2) the peaceful protesters respond to violence by becoming violent themselves.

I am here now,
empty handed and barefoot,
but somehow
able to see things again.

By some miracle
perhaps ,
my desire was tempered
by the Friend's whispering,
so that I may be a better friend
to you.

Today, we live in a world bound together by a plethora of interlocking mechanisms and systems, some social/political, and a great many technological, but most remain economic(for reasons of simple profit and pragmatism). In a time where the rate at which new technologies are developed is being reduced by a specific ratio in relation to the complexity and modernization of the societies in which they are developed, and the impact they have on said societies can be measured to a certain degree, it is a wonder to me that human beings have not applied our gifts of invention and improvisation to other parts of our existence.
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist or anthropologist, therefore I don't want to seem as if I'm attaching weight to any of my conclusions or opinions. I'm simply trying to put down in words a condensed version of many hours worth of contemplation and conversation. That being said, it seems almost as if the further we advance into the unknown future, technologically and scientifically, we further ourselves somewhat from many of the facets of existence that can be said to make us human beings. While the limits of understanding are being extended in laboratories and universities the world over, and the fruits of the endeavor trickle down to us in the way of items such as smart phones with more computing power than a room sized processor from 1970, our social structure has not progressed at a similar rate. While back breaking poverty and oppression on the feudal level aren't daily facts of life for the vast majority of us in developed industrialized society, modern existence has created it's own demons in the demand for limitless profits in an economy(no matter how much of it is superficially called "Service industry") which is based upon finite means of production, whether they be labour or resource based. This is not what concerns me, most of the time, anyway it **** sure doesn't keep me up at night. What does keep me awake till dawn are the deeply personal experiences that have brought me to see the extremes of human suffering, the kind of suffering which is marginalized and ignored because it has no place in our 'civilized' status quo. I will say bluntly that those who do the marginalizing have never carried their friend away from a house party after she was *****, never set their shirt on fire in the middle of the street because it had ***** from the ****** on it, never bandaged the self-inflicted wounds of another (and wiped off the word '****' which she had written on herself in her own blood), nor seen a thousand year old village obliterated in about 3 seconds, never seen what kind of horror people have the capacity to inflict on each other....as I have. There are many of us who have experienced these things, many who have experienced far worse, and to them I offer my deepest respect and compassion.
The realm of the human heart is the same landscape our forefathers journeyed through in the age of Richard Couer de Lion, the questions many of us ask are the same as well. But there is a difference, and it isn't technological. The serf toiling in the dirt of medieval France had no separation between himself and the land he worked, and to a similar extant, the modern Afghani sees no separation between himself and the will of Allah, which is what binds his entire universe together. Only we here in the First World have been abstracted into units of economic output, reduced to numbers and symbols, and only we no longer know what our place in the world is, or how we relate to each other. I want to know why.