She lay
naked
on the cold stone floor
her perfect body
eloquent
as a sea of honey
and when the electricity
of her flesh
reached my own
such a surge as would black out the sun
flowed through me
and sweet connectivity
saved us both
from burning
as we both lay naked
on the cold stone floor
one electrical current
running in a circuit
between us.
The music of innocence
Hushed and turned to silence
And out of sheer terror,
I screamed.
I launched campaigns
Of hatred and rage
Against everyone who loved me.
Everything was an affront
To all that was sacred—
Which was nothing, or nothingness.
I couldn’t see or feel or touch
Without it being a mortal sin.
It seemed the only act of grace
I could commit
Was committing suicide.
I declared existence
To be nothing more
Than a lie.
But I was kept alive
And if not shown the truth,
I was shown enough of it
To survive.
Steve Boscherman set out from his group home on a cold, snow-covered day in January. It was still snowing lightly, and had snowed hard from last night up till very recently. Steve lived on a backstreet, and the streets surrounding him were still unplowed. He was going to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for the dinner he’d be preparing for his housemates. Melissa, the house manager, had insisted that he go, despite his complaints that it was too cold, and that the snow was too deep. Steve had been insubordinate more than a few times as of late—flaky with rules and defiant toward leadership—and Melissa was adamant. Either Steve go to pick up the ingredients and prepare the nightly dinner, or he would face serious consequences.
As soon as Steve exited the house and was standing on the front porch, he felt the sting of the extreme cold on his face, and grumbled to himself. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of his old, torn, blue bubble coat, and managed to pull out a cigarette, and put it to his lips. But his thick gloves prevented him from lighting it. Cursing to himself, he removed one glove, and lit the cigarette with his free hand and sucked on it, hard. Putting his glove back on felt like a great relief, even after it was only off for a moment. The cigarette still resting between his lips, he grabbed hold of the snow-covered railing with both hands, and, taking one step at a time, went down the stairs sideways, as slow as he could manage, straining his face against the cold wind and hoping that Melissa was watching him from inside. The snow was wet and compact, and so deep that the stairs couldn’t be seen. Every step felt treacherous.
Once down the steps, Steve turned left in the direction of the grocery store. He removed the cigarette from between his lips—his eyes were watering from the smoke—and trudged off through the deep snow, which sank beneath his steps with a crunch, and with every step it was as if he had to climb out of a hole. Already, his breathing was strained. In fact, he was wheezing by the time he got to the first corner. He considered the idea of turning back, but now that he had left the house and made it this far, his spite toward Melissa was transferred to the elements, and he felt hell-bent on overcoming them, as if it were the elements themselves which had insulted him, and not Melissa.
“One block down,” he said to himself as he crossed the street toward the block where a church was situated. Once across the street, he stopped and took two or three puffs on his cigarette, then started walking again. At one point, the snow was higher than it had been before, and as he stepped into it, he sunk so deep that he had to crawl his way forward, which caused him to drop his cigarette. Getting out of the hole and wiping the snow off his jacket, he looked for the cigarette, and found it, but it had burned out. “Damn!” he cried. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the box of cigarettes and the lighter. This time, he knew to take off one glove before attempting to light one up. Having done so, and taking a couple of deep inhalations, he continued off again.
He made it another block. “That’s two,” he said, interrupting his heavy wheezing, which seemed to come from deep down in the very core of his body.
The store was another three blocks. By the time he was nearly there, he had to sit down. He found the back of a bench peeking out of the deep snow, and sat against it, even though the bench’s seat was completely buried. He sat for a moment on the sloping pile of snow, feeling the sting of his lungs become more and more pronounced. He reached into his pocket, and lit up another cigarette.
Having finished the cigarette, it was time to enter the store. There was almost no one inside. He went around, walking gingerly so as not to slip with his wet boots on the slick floor, picked up several packages of ground beef to make hamburgers with, a large package of frozen French fries, and paid for the food at the checkout stand with the money that Melissa had given him. The food was bagged and Steve set out to return home.
After trudging back for several blocks, while reaching into his pocket to pull out another cigarette, Steve discovered that the change for the food—about fifteen dollars in total—was missing. If there was one thing that Steve prided himself about, it was his care for other people’s money. He looked behind him, squinting, and tried to locate the money. He didn’t see it. Cursing, he turned around. Just then, the wind and the snowfall picked up. Cursing his luck, he trekked back a block, wheezing and smoking, and there, in the parking lot near the store and nearly buried in the new snow, was the fifteen dollars he’d lost. He trudged over and, sensing that he was in for a struggle, bent down…
His belly was so huge, however, and the wind was so cold and stiff, that it was difficult. His first attempt was a failure, and he stood up, gasping for air. He tried again—another failure. Finally, feeling as if he were about to pass out, he fell onto the snow with his rear-end. Something was happening to Steve—something which, many times in his past, people had warned him would happen. There was an intense pain in his chest, and he found that he was unable to breathe. Suddenly, he remembered his childhood. He saw his younger brother when he was just a boy, sandy-haired and vibrant-looking. His brother had looked up to him, and followed him everywhere. How long had it been since he had seen his brother? Five years? Again, a sharp pain hit Steve in the chest, and he lay back and rolled onto his side, cringing. He tried to find his phone in his pant pocket. His hand searched the pocket desperately. Again, the pain. He managed to take the phone out of his pocket and started to scroll through the contacts. He saw his brother’s name, and pressed dial.
On the other line, a man was saying, “Hello? Steve? Hello?” But he received no answer. Steve lay with his head in the snow. The bag of groceries lay beside him.
What do I know of the world?
I have seen mountains, but climbed few,
If any. I have climbed the mountain of suffering,
Little gestures have taken me out of the Valley of Death—
A kind word, a joke, a piece of advice.
I have offered these things to the world,
Feeble though they might have been.
I placed myself in Hell, and with humility,
I have turned to God. But one slip sends me tumbling
Down toward the abyss.
Small gestures have led me to God.
Small gestures have brought me back down.
Be wary of evil, trivial as it might seem.
I know no other language than the one I speak every day.
I have tried to learn languages—Spanish, for example.
And though I may have succeeded to a degree,
I fail again and again to remember what I learned.
I have been with people and made them laugh,
But for many years now, that talent has lain mostly dormant.
I have known many people, and gotten to know them well
But these days I feel like I don’t know anyone
And that no one knows me.
I spend my money without care, heedlessly.
I earn nothing. I feel like an outcast in my own society.
Times have changed, and I haven’t.
I fear change. Everything about my life,
Most of all myself, feels so permanent.
But it’s not. I can change.
I may never climb the mountain in India,
I may never converse with the Spanish people in their own language.
But I can be with people and make them laugh.
I can climb the mountain of my suffering.
I can speak in a new language that is my own.
I can enjoy my life. I can be a poet.
Languorous from Indian,
Drunken from wine and beer,
I rest my head on this downy pillow,
And speak long, and loud, and languorously,
As only a drunkard can, about drunkenness
And about dreams—two of life’s necessities.
Dreams are just memories, of course,
That float from one’s head and hover before
One’s eyes which you can shape and shift
To form whatever it is you please.
Tonight, I want to see: a dragon being ridden by
T.S. Eliot. Or is it Baudelaire? I have been reading
Both, you see. Eliot, or Baudelaire, is riding this
Great green serpentine beast, with giant fangs
And great blue eyes with red pupils, around and around
the outside of my house. He is looking through my window.
He sees me and winks—poor old sod that he is.
Meanwhile, the lamb meat in my belly sits like
Cement, and the wine and the beer are falling from my eyes
As tears. I think of my dear friends Chris and Caitlin.
Christopher (as Caitlin amorously calls him),
Is a novelist with an extraterrestrial mien about him,
Caitlin is a couturier. Fiends fresh out of a drinking binge
At the local winery, we manifested enough drunkard’s
Cash to eat at the Indian restaurant across the way.
Drunk as we were, we talked a great deal about scatterings
Of shattered dreams and such and things like
God and truth and justice and Hell and fame and art
And all sorts of talk that I just don’t remember because,
Oh the food was spicy and the beer was rich!
We enjoyed each other’s company and the night was cold,
Snow was falling just a little, I was smoking in the street—
They didn’t mind. So much was said that my head began to reel.
I found myself smiling most of the time as friends do
When the night is wild and fresh and cool.
I found myself yearning for just a nice bed to lay in.
I was tired you see.
Now, here I am, memories floating—dreams.
Bloated belly, I hear myself breathe.
I can sleep, and I can let myself go, if only for the night.
These memories will reappear in some form in my dreams.
The taste of the curry and the lamb and the beer.
The words—thousands of them—will meld into a single word perhaps.
Who knows what that might be. I could be sentimental and say
Oh, the word is love! But let’s not be preposterous.
The word “love” is the loaded gun of poetry.
It should only be used by professionals, and only as a last resort.
Chris would know what I was talking about.
He positively hates sentimentality, though, perhaps
He is full of it himself. Night’s ache and longing are directly proportional
To the day’s meaninglessness. I don’t ache much tonight.
Dear friends, allow me to be sentimental and thank you
For a wonderful night. In a world of shadows and uncertainty,
It is good to know that some things are certain, like laughter,
And chatter, and dreams which seem to float like steam,
Up and up, disappearing in the light.
The wounded elm bleeds a butterfly
in the warm autumn afternoon.
A blanched moon is tucked away—
sullen and sun-jealous—in the blue.
The blue jay in the fan-shaped tree
releases its disgruntled exclamation,
telling us all, so it seems, that no one
will ever be free, and that he alone
holds the key. The gargantuan cry
of the hawk is repeated as it drifts
away in opalescent Southern skies.
Fearsome sun-kissed dragon clouds
cross above me, and from a sunbeam
I see the slow descent of a butterfly.
A black bird returns to its nest,
chasing off some small scavenger.
A bumble bee lays into a flower,
relishes the nectar, and ships off,
back to its hive. A big gray rain cloud
comes crawling through from Southern skies,
threatens rain, but passes over
without a drop. Windblown trees
part with leaves, which fall,
so easily forgotten.
