Penniless Withdrawal (A Foolish Sport)

Stinging eyes are not to blame
For these fissured droves of queasiness
No, it’s all a foolish sport
Magnified under the warped lens of mutilation
And it’s hardly the future they had planned for me

These sparks course through every vein
With each pungent pulse
A tidal wave
Slapping me on the wrist
Paralyzing my power-socket mouth
Until it can’t form the words
“I fucked up”
Any more convincingly than your standard fuse box

My head is swimming
Awash toward nowhere
Lolling uselessly like that’s its job
Reminding my washing-machine stomach
That the agitator within it
Is no more material than the everyday nightmare
That this spin cycle
Staggering my gait and my breath
Is sustenance equated to jest
And sleep consumed by an addict

“You must have seen this coming”
Says left to right to mirror
“Seen huh?”
Replies reflection to pill bottle
Or so it sounds to me

Me, yes me
All two dollars and fifty cents worth
Clambering down the hallway
Drifting blindly through intersections
Or pretending to puff away the blues
Alone on a park bench at four a.m.
Picnicking
Single-handedly extinguishing any sign of promise
Gagging on the self-pity lodged in my throat
A foolish sport indeed

And as I close my notes to conclude this appraisal
A sinking feeling creeps to the top of the page
If this today
Then what tomorrow?

After the End

Since we last met
You’ve gotten fatter and uglier
I wonder how that weighs on you
Never were one to eat up your reflection
But for a few thick words of misguided seduction
Like a perverse salad
Tossed in my general direction
Aimed at peeling off the layers of
Dress between you and my averted eyes

Since we last met
Time has paled my features
And darkened the bag-cradles
In which my eyes sleep to cease to see
To what do these eyes owe the honor
Of dodging the beaming bright stare
You give all these years later?

By some sickness of fate
Our deep-fried friendship remains
As a trace of caked-on grease
Marring the underbelly of one uncanny pan

Since we last met
(After the end)
It’s all gone stale
And I’m perfectly nauseated
That this little morsel of thought
Should even find itself on the menu

Stuck With It

Building from the ground up
From heaven, hellward
Pausing between the pangs of doubt
To fill the trowel with the thinnest of air
And slather it about the first ill-placed bricks
Quietly, this mortar will set
In the joints of one contorted beast
The monolith whose cornerstone is fallacy
Complacency, fright

Towering above the trees
Cowering beneath the clouds
A skeleton of what once was
Fighting for time
Fighting to deliver
Growing ever larger
Ever weaker
And fast losing balance

Baptized in gasoline, the newest room of my soul
The leper penthouse casts its shadow
Perched atop one cathedral of denial
A chamber which no match could set alight
Which no insistence could topple

This monstrosity was irrevocable since its conception
Since plans were first drawn up
And now we’re stuck with it

On the Occasion

With you, I've jumped
and never ceased to soar.
Free of the denial
that once upon a time
hung my shoulders low

For in your voice there is a music
that tastes of ten thousand tomorrows unspoken.
In your eyes there is a magic
a garden in radiant bloom
a laser set to stun
and in your touch, a poetry
that glows a living blue
gently melts this glacier soul
to clearest spring
and burns as a wish come true
with every step in time.

I reach out to you, steady pulse
wanton bliss
brilliant tide
to wish you all you wish yourself
(and more)
and to remind you once again
that despite our fresh acquaintance
I love you.

Dusk

Grey Today
Met Rosy Tomorrow
On the brink of extinction
The last light of a bitter sun
Sucked up
Absorbed by a jealous horizon
Behind veils of clouds
And skeins of crows
They wed not in secret
But without any fuss
Marshaled together by forces too large
For one man
Or even an army of men to object
The sheer will of practicality
Or vanity
Or longing
Was and always will be
A muffled cry
In layers of vacuum
An opposing breeze
Against the prow of the cosmos
No
Only time can tear dusk apart
Working dark and stealthy
Divorcing at dawn
Loveless rusty Grey Today
From silent patient Rosy Tomorrow
To usher in the autonomy of morning
On the crested yawn of the waking sun

And So Farewell

Treasured soil brimming with the fruits of a lifetime of cultivation
Cancerous and taxing beneath my canvas-clad feet
Pregnant and beautiful beneath my recumbent back
Embracing and letting go of windswept words
Go west young man
Well
Come find me bathing in caffeinated spirituality
Wrapped tight in a blanket on the hardwood floor
Come find me hanging from the rafters of what I should have been
Pretending in faith to walk a solid platform
Jamming my fingers in doorways that never were open
Don’t forget me I’ll say
Come find me bereft of misconceptions
Olden hind-sights
Headlights
Sharing the cup of fortune with blank notebook visages
And floating about on the breath of perpetual winter
The displaced sentry-style witness of less and more
Silent and calculating under fossilized irises
Peering over ramparts of spiffy words spat rapid-fire into the night air
Shaking the trunk of leafless trees
Wasting away splayed out on the terrace
I will remember shame
And inhale shame
And exhale shame
And fall head over conscience down waterfalls of human creation
Down the rabbit hole
Downtown
The hours are counting me down
It’ll be a desert of a different color and beautiful as such
And frightening
Soon enough their hair will whiten
Your face will sharpen
My edge will dull out
And our voices will fade from our throats into ambiguity
Into the depths
In time
Days and nights spent steeping in reverie
My head will spin concentric circles around my ears
Around my eyes
I’ll melt
And so will this town
Indefinitely

Asleep I am aware of the most colorful tortures
Waking up I let the sand slip through my fingers
In consciousness I know not what stories tomorrow’s tomorrow will spill
And so farewell

Renaissance

I was a pilot once, in a past life. My refuge was heaven and my prison was earth. To me, there seemed no greater freedom than ether, no greater beauty than the curvature of the cockpit cocooning me in buttons, knobs, and gauges. I was Austrian in those days, with a mustache and a wardrobe of tweed and leather. My wife of eight years lived in an ornate baroque townhouse in Vienna with our three children. In Copenhagen, my blushing mistress frowned upon my every takeoff and fawned upon every landing. We were not in love. That is to say I did not love her. It was my youth, fading rapidly from me, but glowing in her striking honey-colored eyes and residing in the palm of her outstretched hand, which kept me holding fast to her spectral figure between international flights. And that was alright. But the fragile double life I led as an Austrian pilot vanished from me in a matter of moments as my commercial jetliner pummeled the mountains of southern Poland at the hands of home-grown terrorists late in the 20th century.
It is only now that I remember this, as I lay in stagnation upon this cold metal tray. Yes, I lay here a man and a spirit, not one but two; a young mechanic and a nameless vapor awaiting its next reassignment. Mere hours ago, I was blazing down Interstate 287 in the red Camaro for which I had just signed a three-year lease. What a pity it was to lose the thing having had so little time to enjoy it. Its black leather seats and tasteful chrome-lined instrument panel offered me a sense of accomplishment. Who was I, a mere mechanic? Yet what did I manage to drive? It was irresponsibility that took from me my newest love and my most recent incarnation.
As dusk usurped the sky and the sun conceded defeat, sinking away behind the hills of Lower Westchester, I scanned the radio - the satellite radio - in search of any songs I knew by memory. I was spellbound by the crystal clarity of the reception, blinking back mixed recollections of my dearly beloved Nissan whose time had come the week before. Anticipation laid my foot down harder on the accelerator, drawing me nearer and nearer to Irvington – and my mistress. It was our first anniversary and I intended to make it a memorable one, with the help of the Camaro and the handy news of my intention to divorce my wife. Rehearsing the impending date in my head, I signaled my turn to change lanes, favoring the right, as my exit approached.
Craning my neck over my right shoulder intending to briefly check my blind spot, I felt a rough jolt. The car to my left had begun merging into my lane as if piloted by a distracted driver. Panicking, with no time to think, I jerked the wheel hard to the right. With the second jolt, the world outside spun and blurred and in a split second, I glimpsed the headlights of the car that had just begun to pass me on the right. As the Camaro fishtailed out of control, the wheel wrenched out of my grasp and spun in frenzied bewilderment. The screech of tires filled my ears and I closed my eyes, surrendering my body to the will of physics. Through a series of impossibly violent jolts and rolls and the pathetic cries of mutilated metal, P!nk wailed “please don’t leave me” until, with a blunt smack and a sharp sting, the radio was silenced and unfathomable darkness descended.
Noises drifted in and out of being. A rattling here, then nothing; an echoing hum there, then nothing. Everything was numb. No, not everything. A scorching furnace raped the atmosphere, its crackling sneer popping and hissing around my head. My arms began to tingle. And my legs. I could not see anything, but what was left of my imagination drove a stake into my rioting heart, waking me to the fullest possible extent. Fire. I tried to grope for my seatbelt latch, but my arms wouldn’t cooperate. All there existed was tingling. That goddamn tingling. Frantic, I tried to squirm, but did not move. I tried to kick, but did not move. I did not and could not move. All at once, I found my voice and screamed, but I was taken aback by the horrific gurgling undertone of my broken cry. Tears escaped my eyes. I knew they did. But I could not feel them roll down my tingling cheeks.
Then it came. A moaning from somewhere outside the car. Not a moaning, a wailing. More like the shrieking of the damned. But I understood. Help was on the way. All I had to do was hold fast for a few moments and the paramedics would be hauling my useless body out of this flaming wreckage. As the shrieking grew louder, my heart fought frantically to escape my chest. Hope had never been an entry in my mind’s dictionary, but now, in the face of utter chaos, staring blindly down the barrel of burning alive, those sirens meant safety and expecting safety constituted hope. Hope for what? Blindness and paralysis? No. Too much thinking, not enough screaming for help.
As the smoky air grew thicker and heavier to breathe, searing my nostrils and sending me into fit after fit of brutal coughing, I heard activity to the right of me. No. Above me. Up until this point, it had not occurred to me that the car lay on its side, exposing only the passenger door. “We’ve got a live one,” a husky man’s voice shouted. Coughing violently, I could not confirm in words what my body did in retching.
I felt as though I were moving, being lifted out of the car, but no tactile sense concurred. The only sound that mattered was the heavy breathing and groans of exertion by the rescuers heaving me from my flaming prison. Hurried but composed voices swarmed about, competing with the rush of water, presumably extinguishing the blaze. Fresh air stung my nostrils almost as much as the smoke had, but soon, the coughing subsided and I could hear the scratch of Velcro and the rustling of paramedics as they brought me uphill to the ambulance.
In spite of hope, consciousness was a fading ocean tide. In and out I drifted, forgetting each time where the horizon fell. Over the roar of the engine and the shriek of the siren, I caught bits and pieces of hushed conversation. “Patient is Henry Slike, male, 29 years…” bled into “collapsed lung, total paralysis, fractured skull…” bled into “could not contact spouse.” Each wave brought me further out to sea. With my last glimpse of shore, my final breaths, I understood.
“What about the other car?” a man’s voice inquired.
“Four dead on arrival; a mother and three children,” replied a woman dolefully.
“Jesus.”
But now, my senses returned. I beheld my mangled body as a pair of green scrubs shuffled into the brightly lit autopsy room. Blanched and pathetic, burned and bruised, it lay there as I drew up and out of it, into the timeless stillness, into the freedom of ether. Once again, that eternal vice stole me away from the earth and it from me, but a time would come when I could start afresh. Wishing only that I could be granted the impossible gift of retaining what lessons I had learned time and time again in countless attempts at successful earthly life, starting afresh seemed more a curse than a blessing.
The cold, sterile chamber around me soon began to dissolve. At first, the color bled from its surfaces. Then the walls simultaneously receded and faded. Left suspended in perfect blackness, I lingered in tranquility for a protracted instant. Awakening to the sound of my own hysterical bawling, I opened my eyes to a whole new everything.