Eternity

For you I know of fires

around my eyes they burn

they bring me here with

crooked fingers

Make-believe

We are one day past forever

so let me tell you a

story

full of hope and

recrimination

and yet somehow                   

somehow

            hello hello                    fire in the hole

I wonder

but I cannot get past the bluster

the suggestion dripping down my throat

We tried but

            this is not what I

kiss me good night

            as forgiveness winds around my

could we just

            a lie must never be hunted

when the game is already dead to me

I could tell you a story

full of tomorrows and redemption

but who would we be

kidding

acceptance is the poison

In this lexicon of sorrow

I am too tired to speak for myself

if you saw miracles spring from darkness

I saw only memory

swathed in charcoal dusty

dream

The Long Walk

Knowing matters.  Why does it matter?  Because it does.  It matters.  But that’s the game—the torture—the double bind.  You will not be allowed to have the one thing that could either give you peace or send you off the cliff of despair, or both.  This one thing will be taken from you.  Instead you will wonder whether you have banana Weetabix poisoning, or if you are right but lost in the red straw network, or if you are sort of right but kind of wrong but full of good intentions, or if you are just a nutter.  You will be told you hold the answers, but there are no answers inside.  Just a howling wind, an incessantly buzzing bee, a mass grave filled with the fallen, the ones who foolishly entered into No Man’s Land armed only with a musket and grim determination.  A musket is no defense against an ICBM.  Grim determination and a dollar will get you a ride on the bus.  Or it would have about twenty years ago.  Now you’d probably need a couple of bucks.

You will be denied all knowledge.  Knowledge will die within you, to be replaced with rotting suspicions and wilting hope.  No seeds can be planted here.  You will be left a slave to ambiguity, a prisoner of doubt.  Enjoy the banana Weetabix, because there is no going back.  And I do like it.  It’s quite nice with yogurt.  Not with milk.  Must never eat cereal with milk.  Never ever ever.

Endings

your promise on the end of my fingertips

and it falls

it falls

Gone

I was back at my mom’s house by 10:00.  Hal still seemed to be out, but my mom was awake, watching a Cheers rerun.  “Everything all right?” she asked me.

“Fine,” I said, and headed into the extra room.  She must have realized something was up, because she followed me.  “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm going back to Chicago.”

“When did you decide this?”

“Tonight.”  I stuffed the rest of my clothes into the bag and zipped it up.  I'd brought so little with me--as if a part of me had always known I wouldn't be staying long.  “Maybe you should think about it some more,” my mom said, now following me into the living room.  “It’s not the kind of decision you want to make on the spur of the moment.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to go tonight.”

“Angie,” she said, and my name sounded wrong coming from her—she so rarely used it.  “Please, learn by my mistakes.  Don't make everything I went through worthless.  Make it count somehow.”

That was a nice sentiment.  And when I was a kid I’d sworn I would never turn out like her—that I would never allow a man to make me into something I could not respect.  But sometimes who you are sneaks up on you so surreptitiously that by the time it overtakes you, there is no more will, or opportunity, left to change.  “Thank you for everything,” I told her.

My mother lowered her head.  I left without another word.

Holes

Old truths fill the

black hole where

I buried the leaking need

for you

I know all about incurable wounds

            So much and for so many weepy and

            lonely afternoons

            I meant to leave you

            for so much, my friend

                        and I did

Knots

“Just before your friend Andy came up here,” Alturis said, peeling an apple with meticulous attention, “he shot and killed someone.  Did he tell you that?”

Meg watched the long, thin blade slice through the apple.  She then answered, “No.”

“Well he did,” Alturis replied.  His tone was no longer light.  “Even more unfortunate, that person happened to be my brother.”

Meg just looked at him.

“Apparently your Andy had never killed someone before," he continued.  "It disturbed him.  So he took a leave of absence and came here.  Which is where we found him.  And you,” Alturis added, as if it were impolite to not mention her place in his diabolical scheme.  “Bad information led me to—what was their name?—the Gergens or the Bourbons or whoever those old people were.  It’s hard to find good help nowadays.”

“I wouldn’t know," Megan returned.  Her eyes welled with tears, as an image of the Bergens bloodied and dead in their living room assaulted her memory yet again.  "I’m not in the market for henchmen.”

Alturis gave a little nod.  “And a good thing for you, too.”

“But that doesn’t explain what you want with me.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asked, smiling again.