Trinity

I saw a man, and he was me,

In part, in whole, we three were we:

Was, are, and will; being as he’s been,

And will be as after, seeing him then.

The Sea

Only I see the sea;

Minute, hour, mist to foam,

A plank among the wreck, I

And a seething hiss, a shore.

The taste and smell of rust

Many days old, moan and creak;

My teeth grind on iron sand,

But only I see the sea.

Heady swells greet the dawn,

Riptides tear the day in two;

Lifeboats drift just out of reach,

And only I see the sea.

Happy faces turn about,

Blind and smiling endlessly;

Make it stop, just make it stop,

Yet only I see the sea.

Friends long gone, long ago,

Now a distant memory;

Floating between sky and sky,

Only I see the sea.

The Mall

I, like so many others before me, have had to venture into a place both dark and sinister. A place that welcomes all but wishes none to leave. I am, of course, referring to the mall. Yes, the mall, perhaps the very bane of my existence where store after store informs me that I am ill equipped to face the world as I now stand, and all my needs can be met today for a price 25% less than it was yesterday. I enter, pretending it is of my own free will, but this is just an illusion. It brought me here; it knew I had to come eventually.

            I am under the impression that the mall maintains a minimum population at all times, residents even. These I call “the mall people.” I make my way through their midst, trying to hide the fact that I am not one of them, hoping they will not notice that my every step forward carries with it the caution that it could just as easily be a step back, mainly because I have no idea where I’m going. In spite of this, I remind myself that I have to keep my eyes forward and my steps sure in order to avoid the massage therapists that would flock and insist I look tense and could use a little relaxation. Just keep walking, even if it means I’m walking in circles.

            Arriving at whatever destination I may be looking for, the battle is not over. Smells of leather, new clothes, and maybe even crop-dusting-volumes of cologne immediately affront the senses and cloud the mazes of merchandise in a fog of “stay, look around for a while.” I’m amazed at the intelligence network that the mall undoubtedly employs because no matter what it is I’m looking for, they have discovered it beforehand and hidden it in the farthest corner to insure that I see everything else they have to offer before fulfilling my original errand. The consistency with which they do this almost elicits a sense of admiration; they’re good at what they do.

            Finally, checking out, a high school student smiles and asks, “Did you find everything all right today?” I refrain from muttering “Just barely,” and return the smile. I decline to mention that I spent 15 minutes looking in the women’s section of clothing before I realized where I was, and even after I corrected my error, it took me another 10 minutes to realize the shirt I was after was hidden behind the headless mannequin sporting the summer’s trendiest swimwear. Clutching my plastic bag in hand, I resume what I hope is my incognito walk back to the entrance from which I came. At least, I think it was the entrance from which I came. I can never be absolutely sure.

            Emerging into the light of outdoors, I intake a deep breath of free air. It’s all I can do not to throw my fist in the air and shout “I survived!” Instead, I shuffle forward in front of a car that so kindly stopped for me and try to remember where I parked.  

The Silent World (Intro)

         Adrian lurched awake, breathing in as if submerged underwater for the last minute. He reached up to touch his face, small beads of sweat collecting and melting against his fingertips. Why was this happening now? Why after so long? He moved to get out of bed, his hand coming down on brown, crusted sheets. Strings of pus and sticky orange jelly trailed against the backs of his legs as he swung them free, placing his feet firmly on the ground. Heavy, warm breath licked the back of his neck, but he did not turn around. Instead he looked down to see that his carpet had been replaced with a writhing mass of spider and centipede legs. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath out. The tip of a cold nose traced his spine from the base of his neck to his hairline.

            “I thought we were done with this,” he said aloud. He stood, doing his best not to shake or tremble. The little legs tickled beneath his feet and between his toes and he shuffled through them to reach the bathroom. He flipped on the light and grabbed either side of his sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. The black marble was cool between his hands, and he tried to focus all of his attention on the sensation. He suddenly felt a firm, uniform pressure in both of his arms as if someone were blowing them up with a bicycle pump. “I’m not doing this,” he said, maintaining eye contact with himself. “Goddamn it, I’m not doing it.” He felt small incisions being made on his ankles. Many of the legs on the floor had found their bodies, and they were making cuts in his ankles so they could crawl up just beneath the surface of his skin. He felt lumps of various sizes making their way up towards his knees. Gritting his teeth, he looked down. The sink drain was open, and fingers were inching out like cockroaches fleeing the sewer. Gripping the edge of the sink harder, the pressure in his arms continued to increase.

            How long until sunrise? Looking through the mirror, he saw the reverse image of 3:26 on his bedside table. Only a couple of hours. The two green dots winked at him, knowing.

            Little Henry Warner sat on a stool out by the shed,

            He melted Mama’s clock,

            Watching it all day, listening to “tick-tock, tock-tick”

            Of cogs and wheels, chalky with dust

            And Mama’s powdered face.

His arms had swollen to the point that every pore had a puffy ring around it, each one butting up against the next, their centers starting to dilate. He put his elbows on the cool, black marble and clutched his temples between his hands. There was now no place on his legs that something was not crawling under with tittering, rhythmic footsteps. He raised his head, meeting his own gaze with wide, angry eyes. He saw in the mirror that white, fleshy heads were crowning in the center of the swollen circles all over his arms: maggots. Wriggling in reaching, twitching motions, first one then the next freed itself from his pores as if they had gnawed themselves into the open air from some central nest within him. He may have been screaming as his fist flew at the mirror before him, shattering both his knuckles and the glass in a mess of shards and blood, but within the dark halls of his empty Wisconsin home, certainly no one else would have been aware of it. 

Cowboy

Once he had reached a certain age, his mother had told him “You can’t be a cowboy. There aren’t any cowboys left.” The words hit his soft boy-heart like a meteor to mud: it had stuck, and it had stuck deep. Even now, between the quiet gasping of his oxygen tanks and the static of his helmet headset, they clung to his eardrums. Dropping down from the ladder, he landed almost silently on the fine gray dust below. He couldn’t help but imagine all of the night skies this same dust had illuminated, though it wasn’t so white or glowing up close. He half stepped, half hopped a few paces forward, feeling as if an invisible bungee cord aided his progress. Then, he stopped. Hanging in the blackness like half of some kind of ripe fruit, he beheld an unfamiliar view of a very familiar place.

…

            Back in Houston, 39 pairs of tired, straining ears gathered around a speaker that had just crackled to life. They made out a voice, but any words were lost in a steady chorus of static. “Please repeat, Apollo, we’re not hearing you,” said the team leader, setting down his half-filled mug of lukewarm coffee. The speaker paused for just a moment before two words pushed through the white noise.

            “Yee haw.”

Bread Trees

I took the crumbs you gave me, father,

And planted them in rows

Along that old, muddy creek bed

Tucked behind the summer home.

I waited there, father, waited fearlessly

For the grove of bread trees sure to grow,

Cupping each bud as it emerged,

Watching for season’s first loaf.

Imagine, father, when the bread trees grow,

How the people will walk between

And wonder beneath their shades and lines

How hunger came to be.

Wings and beaks, father, wings and beaks

Stole them from us, snatching,

Yet I could not make them stop;

They were hungry, so hungry, me watching.

I fed your crumbs to the ducks, father,

And I hope that it’s all right,

Next season we’ll have bread trees, father,

And they will feed us through the night.

Register 5

There are times, neither predictable nor regular, when I am overcome by an overwhelming sense of petty awareness and directional anemia. Everything comes into painful focus, and I am forced to evaluate my every action on the basis of its eternal worth. Trouble is, this sensation is unaccompanied by any strong feelings of resolution or resolve to compensate for the sudden heaviness of my existence. Tonight, for instance, I stood in front of a wall of lettuce for ten minutes debating whether or not I needed two bags or one. I’m using my parents’ money to buy this I reasoned, so it’s not like I’m incurring the financial deficit of this decision. Still, it would be a shame to let lettuce go to waste if I didn’t eat it fast enough or simply forgot about it in the fridge. On the other hand, what if I became ravenously hungry for salad over the next few days? Wouldn’t I be annoyed with myself for only getting one meager bag? Maybe if I get two I’ll be forced to eat more salad, if not for the sake of health then from the dread of being a wasteful slob. There were worse things than force-feeing oneself salad, right? I decided to give myself a chance for greatness, a chance to excel both in nutrition and sustainability; I got two bags. Naturally, the next item of interest was salad dressing. My perusing of the appropriate isle yielded a very disturbing result. I couldn’t find my usual bottle of Girard’s Italian dressing, the very pinnacle of salad dressing engineering. The only Girard’s available was of the Caesar persuasion, a flavor that I had never tried from this particular brand. This was a real problem. Of course, I could opt to get an Italian dressing from another brand, but I knew I would be sorely disappointed by the discrepancy in quality. Then again, I’d really be putting myself out on a limb by trying a variety of dressing I had never tried before. This was a big commitment too; I had already signed myself up for a king’s portion of half Spring Mix, half spinach salad. Time was no longer measured in minutes or hours but in lettuce bags, and I had two of them. Could I live with a new dressing for that period of time? What if I hated it? All that salad…wasted. I supposed I could choke it down even if it was horrible, but then, my enjoyment of salads might be ruined for life. My future happiness depended on this decision. Fortune favors the bold I finally thought, and bravely, I reached out for the unknown.

            At this point, I was beginning to regret not getting a shopping cart or even one of those carrying basket things at the beginning of my venture. I still had two half gallons of milk to get, one regular and one chocolate, and I knew I’d have to get crafty in order to hold everything. Deciding on the chocolate milk was easy; there was only one brand to choose from and I knew I didn’t have to worry about the expiration date given my strong affinity for the stuff. It was turning to the regular milk that I suddenly remembered a conversation I had just had with my roommates. I had asked them what grocery store was closest, Publix or Wal-Mart. After some discussion, it was determined that Publix was closer, but Wal-Mart was cheaper. “I gottcha,” I had said, “I’ll probably just go to Wal-Mart then.” But here I was like a giant hypocrite standing in front of a Publix milk display, balancing my two bags of lettuce in one hand and clutching my chocolate milk and dressing with the other. I can’t buy the Publix brand I thought to myself, my roommates will see it and know I’m a liar. Or worse, they might think I’m some spoiled rich kid who can afford to buy his milk at Publix. Too good for Wal-Mart, milk elitist: these were the titles I was risking by making such a purchase. I spotted a brand I was sure had to be carried in Wal-Mart too. Problem solved, right? But that price…way more than the Publix brand. I tried to remind myself that I wasn’t spending my own money, but the little part of me that will always be aware of any financial undertaking in which I am involved cringed at the idea. So here was my predicament: either accept my badge of milk snobbery or become an extravagant anti-thrifter for the sake of reputation. Instead of making a decision, I began to reason how far of a drive it might be to Wal-Mart. Twenty minutes maybe? Then I could buy the generic brand there and still be frugal with my parents’ assets. The perfect plan. It took about three seconds for me to kick this idea to the curb on account of stupidity, leaving me face to face with the wall of dairy that was not offering any assistance in my decision. So at the end of the day, when I’m looking myself in the mirror, what decision will I be able to live with? What kind of person are you going to choose to be? There was a ten second pause before I decided I would put my relationship with my roommates to the test and get the Publix brand. Now somehow holding two half gallons of milk, two bags of salad, and a bottle of salad dressing, I approached the front of the store, desperately hoping they had a self-checkout. The thought of some employee seeing me carrying all this crap without a shopping cart made me feel absurd, and all I wanted was to be able to slink away without anyone scrutinizing my grocery gathering decisions. A quick scan of the front of the store and a smile from a girl in a green apron confirmed what I had feared: no self-checkouts. Shuffling forward in the sad recognition that any reputation I might have had as a savvy shopper in this place was sure to be destroyed, I approached register number 5.