The Bald Man Speaks

You think you know.  You can never know.  You will never know anything other than a name that means nothing to you.  You are trapped in the network.  The hallway has no exit.  The bicycle has no wheels.  If you step outside of the red lines there is nothing to stand on.  You will fall.  You will fall, and you will not even remember how to scream, but it won’t matter.  Because no one would hear you if you did.  You are a story I sold for a million howls of laughter.  For a million screams of pleasure.  You are nothing.  You were just one more born to serve a purpose, and now you are used up.  No wonder you question living.  You know there is no purpose left for you.  I tore you into tiny pieces and gave bits to any who asked.  I did this because you are useless.  No one cared then, and no one cares now.  You are a piece of lint to be flicked away, blown into nowhere.

Encroachment

I bumped into the memory man

the other day—

(we’ve been crossing paths often

lately)—

I listened to small things

which gave me small reactions.

But when he arched his eyebrows

as if asking was I ready?

I decided I wasn’t in about

one second

and I left memory man

where I found him and

conveniently forgot where

that place happened to be.

The only thing is that

he knows how to find me

he finds me every day

and every day he asks the question

and every day I say, “No thanks.”

One of these days, I guess.

It will be one of these days.

Tomorrow and tomorrow

The pen bothered me. So I asked him about it.  “Where’d you get this pen again?”  It was fat and full of multi-colored ink cartridges.

The strange animal character on the screen jumped over a crumpled brick wall with an appropriate bo-ing sound.  “I found it,” he answered.

“Oh.  Okay.”  I walked into the hallway.  But I wanted to know more, so I asked, “Where?”

“School, I think,” he shouted from the other room.

“Okay.”  But I still didn’t remember.  I knew I remembered at one time—and that was the worst part.

Through a Glass, Darkly

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound

Predictability

is a lucky thing

A coin with two heads

or two tails

                        as the case may be

And yet too late

just one second too late

maybe

The joy was in

the terror of

the box

1994

“This is where Mommy and Auntie grew up,” Joan tells the kid.  He is obviously unimpressed, but he’s only 4 years old.

“Was this neighbourhood always so ugly?” I ask Joan.  “Wasn’t that hill bigger?”

Ryan laughs.  “It’s funny how much bigger and better everything seems in our memories.”

“They cut down all of the trees,” I inform him.  “And the siding is hideous.”

He nods.  After a while, Joan says, “We have to get back before 2:00 so that I can make the turkey in time.”

Passing

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend

this planet a box that holds me

Reflections

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They all instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found themselves their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out on the concrete ground he very deliberately started placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid no one else any attention.

Over time the straws began to form an intricate pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  Was it a formula, they asked?  The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps?  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 

No one, that is, but them.