I see this woman,

A small woman, asian, older maybe 60, gray hair at her temples.

She is wearing a tan short sleaved blouse, darker tan khaki’s to her knees and open toed sandals.

She is standing in the alley, by the utility pole with her hands cupped together below her *******.

I wonder about this woman.

I wonder if she has known pain, then I stop myself.  Of course she has known pain.  Then I wonder, is she loved?  I try to tell myself that everyone is loved by someone, but then I think, or rather I ask myself, is that true?  Is everyone loved?

In the alley by the utility pole, she looks around, her hands still cupped below her ******* and she begins to look around.  Side to side, to the north down the alley then to the south.  She then looks up into the hazy, warm sky.
She continues to stand there and I watch her from my third floor kitchen window.

I then think to myself that I need to think of this woman more often.  

I think of my own problems and punishments too often without ever thinking of the problems and punishments of others.

She has now folded her arms and is looking down at the ground, walking in small circles, as if she is contemplating something.  She has been lead to the alley by the utility pole by these thoughts.

I begin to think of the things that may have lead her here, right now, at this moment, right when I look out the window.  

Has she come out here after a heated argument in her own tongue (an assumption on my part, Chinese perhaps, Vietnamese.  This is my own idiocy locked in my own world.) with her partner, husband, love, significant other?  An argument over bills, money, a recipe perhaps.  

Then I think maybe she isn’t outside because of an argument at all.  Perhaps she needed some “me time.”  She needed a moment to breath air brought to her by the wind.  To take it in and have it heal her where she needed it to.

Then she drops her hands to her side and she begins to sob.  She leans against the utility pole and slowly slides down its splintery surface.  Her tan blouse snags on the pole but she continues to slide down the pole, her hands at her sides.

She is sitting on the ground, crying, needing someone to help her, needing the person to have caused this pain to cure it, to make it go away, to come to the alley, reach out with both of their hands and pull her up from the pain of the gravel on which she sits.

Then I thought, maybe they can’t.  

Maybe they can’t and that is why she is sitting in the alley by the utility pole, crying with her arms at her sides.  Perhaps she has lost someone she has loved and is regretful of the last thing she ever said to this person.

I recalled my earlier thought acknowledging that she has indeed known pain.  I was watching her experience it.  I was helpless to this woman in this moment.  If I were to ask her if she needed help I could be invading on what she thought was a private moment.  

She didn’t need the help of a strange man watching her from his third floor kitchen window.

She pulled a handkerchief from her right pocket and put it to her face, resting her elbow on her knee and looked down the alley again, still crying.

I felt bad.  I was standing watching this poor, and yet beautiful, woman cry in the alley thinking I couldn’t help her.

I was conflicted.

Do I go see if I can do something that will help ease her pain?  Will I make it worse if I infringe on this moment?

Something pushed me.  An impulse.  God’s whisper.

I put on my shoes and descended the three flights of stairs to aid this woman that I did not know.  What would I say?  Would she even understand my English words?  Could I understand her (assumed) Chinese words?  

Regardless, she needed help.

I opened the back door and stepped onto the sidewalk cautiously, as if it would give way and I would fall.  What am I going to say to this woman?

I looked up and my heart swelled, as did the tears in my eyes.  I saw what I had envisioned seconds before.  The person who had caused the pain came to her, both hands reaching for both of hers.  He reached for her and she reached back.

It was beautiful and I choked on my tears.

He lifted her up and they embraced saying words I did not understand but I thought that perhaps it may have been “Baby, I love you, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want them to know I had witnessed this, this pain, this loss, those tears, the love and the embrace.  I walked quickly past in a direction that I did not need to go with only one more quick glance so that I could remember this love that I had seen.

It made me think of all of the love that I don’t see, the moments that I don’t take to look at someone from my third floor kitchen window.

The love in my own life that I take for granted sometimes and that made me sob.

I think of my own love and I want him close.  No words, just an embrace, like theirs,

in the alley by the utility pole.

Contents of that Secret F.B.I. Memo

Next week the world is going to end again
When the north pole and the south pole switch places
According to secret radio transmissions
Secretly beamed from the secret headquarters
Of the secret Club of Rome far beneath
The Vatican and secretly aligned
With the secret sword of the secret Knights
Templar with the secret star WD-40
By our secret Masters on the secret
Planet Xenophobe in secret accordance
With the ancient prophecy of Cranium
The Elder discovered in a Prince Albert can
By the Portuguese philosopher and
Explorer Almoso Nutellaeus
Who thus received the dark secrets of the
Atlantean sorcerers in a secret
Language which only he was able to translate
When the Moon God Myrtle of the Aqua Kirtle
Blessed his Radio Shack TRS-80
With a rare pixie dust which can only be
Found in a certain secret plain in the
Sahara Desert at the Winter Solstice
Marked by a Bionic Blood Altar cursed
By the Knights of Toledo in a strange
Ceremony which can only be witnessed
By the Initiates of the Order of
The Cumulonimble Secret Ferrets
Of the Discalced Colossus of Roads
Whose emblematic pilum can be discerned
By pouring lemon juice over the pictures
Of the Caesars in a sacred clearing
In the secret Wood of the Thirteen Oaks
And a Loblolly Pine made when The Primal
Pole-er Bear from Beyond Time set up
The North Pole and the South Pole, and gave the
North Pole Santa Claus and the South Pole Little America
Station, and this Manichaean duality
Has set the planet in opposition
To itself, resulting in the cancellation
Of Gilligan’s Island after only three seasons
Because Gilligan and The Skipper were close
To discovering the Pre-Raphaelite
Anaemic Amoebic Astrolabe in yet
Another papier mache cave infested
By toxic golden hamsters of existential doom
Guarding a time-and-space portal leading
Directly to Oak Island where Captain Kidd’s
Lost cuff links (the ones with little pictures
Of Elvis golfing with leprechauns) can
Be found, the cuff links that channel the energy
Between The North Pole and the South Pole enhanced
By the chakra of a Hoover vacuum cleaner
Once used by Winston Churchill’s housekeeper
During the Blitz before she married her second
Husband, Trevor, who was the Hereditary
Keeper of the Keys of the Guernsey Privy
And thus a carrier of fairy blood
As required by Ye Ancient Lawes of the Booke
Of…something-or-other…which was carved in runes
On Roman skulls just before the loss of
The Island of Anglesey to Governor
Suetonius who was told by The Voices
That the Druids invented rock ‘n’ roll and
Must be destroyed so that the harmonic
Harmony of the North Pole and the South Pole
Could be restored to their primordial
Nordic vanilla pudding.

santa claus is captured  in the psych ward



it is the year 2015 and ron was decorating the HDU with christmas decorations

and while he was doing that, 67 year old billy thomson got dressed up as santa and

went around giving lollies to the children of the land and one mother complained and

said, this man has no right to hand lollies to the children without a permit and billy said

why don’t you get ******,you see i am the feral santa and i lived on the north pole before

the blizzard that wiped out all the north pole, and there is still a north pole but it is trapped

in children’s imaginations never to be seen again, and i who put my good name on this town

decided to free the north pole and this mother left and called the police on her cellphone

and in about 50 minutes the police arrested billy and took him to ron’s HDU, and billy said

i am santa claus and if i stay here i can’t free the north pole, i am a nice person, and i don’t deserve

to be in a place like this, and jesus claus went up to billy and said, your not the real santa, and billy

swore at jesus and said, your mother is the only one who thinks you are special, your about as special

as a hole in your heart and jesus swore at billy and suddenly a fist fight broke out and billy said, mate

i am the real santa and you are my son, but the blizzard stopped you from being the real santa

so, i made you stuck in people’s imagination and ron took billy aside and said what is on your mind, and billy said

i lost my job at the factory and then i got a calling from the almighty one to spread christmas cheer all over the land

and i did that by giving lollies to children yelling ** ** ** MERRY CHRISTMAS, and ron said, ok, you do know it’s 2015

and it’s not appropriate to do that and then billy said, you see i believe that if i can start a santa claus website, where

we can play christmas carols and kids order their presents, we can take the myth of santa out of kids imaginations and

into the real world and then ron asked, are you going to charge a fee and billy said, we don’t need a fee and jesus claus came up

to billy and said, you can’t get santa through the computers, it’s too early to do that without a fee and billy said, why don’t you

just get ****** and ron gave billy risperidal  and seroquel, to settle his delusional santa claus mind, and jesus was walking around the

psych ward i am killing off santa and billy walked around the ward saying, i am going to give jesus a lump of coal, which made the nurses

come out and try and settle them down but that was difficult so ron decorated  the psych ward and billy started yelling ATHENA BROUGHT

THE BLIZZARD THAT DESTROYED THE NORTH POLE, ATHENA BROUGHT THE BLIZZARD THAT DESTROYED THE NORTH POLE

and jesus claus yelled THERE WAS NO NORTH POLE, NO PREVIOUS EXISTENCE, WE WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE ON EARTH

then billy yelled, WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKEN WAR, OK, I WAS THE REAL SANTA, and jesus said OK, AND *******, and went back to his room

and billy went to his bedroom to have a lie down, and get the presents ready for christmas and then lunch was ready and ron woke up

billy and billy said, i am helping my elves prepare the presents for christmas and ron thinking he was loopy said, even santa needs to have lunch

and ron bought billy to the table, and the meal was lesagne and salad and chocolate mousse and then ron bought jesus his lunch as well and after lunch

there was a christmas special of yelling, billy and jesus said jingle bells jingle bells jingle and root the chick, and billy said, oh what fun it is to say

leave and never come back, and jesus sang, dashing through the psych ward yelling out our stuff,trying to point out to the staff that these side effects are

wrong, you see we need settling down, so take our drugs away, and please allow us to be the psych ward santa, that’ll be so cool and then as billy sang jingle bells

jesus said *******, I AM SO TIRED and billy watched the nurses work, discovering the naughty and nice, but to not blow his cover billy asked, can i get a pass out

so i can buy some egg nog, i will not be buying brandy and the nurses said, sorry but you are too sick for pass outs and billy through his boot at the door and shattered

the glass and the nurses gave billy some ****** to settle him down and billy went off to his bed and jesus came out and bashed his hand on billy’s door and yelled

YOU LITTLE ****, THERE WASN’T EVER A NORTH POLE and ron brought out the dinners and this time jesus and billy ate their dinners in their room and

in about 1 hour and a half, ron brought out the medications and after that the clocked off and bought wok it up and went home to lose himself in the televised

carols by candlelight from the sidney meyer music bowl hosted by david and lisa and back at the HDU, jesus was watching the carols and so was billy

and every child was happy it seemed receiving presents, but ron still had to play atheist with billy and tom, because for the simple reason, they are going about their santa

duties the wrong way.