The Moment Snaps

It is past sunset, night settling in. We're crawling along in stop and go traffic when suddenly, a sedan four cars in front of me is savagely rear-ended. We enter a moment that seems unnaturally long. The entire back is smashed in, the end of the car now looks like a frog's mouth. Something like that, but before my brain can come up with any other metaphors the moment snaps, things speed up, there is a muffled explosion as the whole back of the rear-ended car ignites in a scorching blaze. Things are moving faster, faster. I can feel the blistering heat from four cars back. I see car silhouettes swerving right and left through thick smoke, one has come to a stop almost directly behind the stricken sedan -- I have a split second to decide where to go, so I swing onto the shoulder and I aim to pass the fiery car on the right. As I get close, the passenger-side door of the car pops open and a teenage boy jumps out -- I think he screams "Mom!" or "Oh No!", I nearly hit him, and he doubles back towards the front, to the driver's side. I keep driving, the fire getting smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror. In the fresh night sky, still deep blue with only one star, there is an ominous black puff of smoke going up.

I get home, and the feelings have been building, they crystallize when I get into the house and I see my roommates; I feel like a coward. Why didn't I stop? I don't know if I could have done anything, but why didn't I stop? I go outside, to see if I can see the column of black smoke, but it is too dark to see. I light a cigarette and I ask out loud, as if God was there, "What the hell is wrong with me?"

Vampires

On January 03 at 6.20 AM, there is just a hint of light -- a vague suggestion day is going to arrive. Vampires are hurrying home to their coffins & burial vaults -- but the I15 freeway has been jumping with traffic since about 4 AM, if you can believe that. With traffic like this, it comes as no surprise that quite a few Southern Californian vampires are incinerated while stuck in early morning backups.

6.27 AM now, and the sky has started to turn from cloudy black to the color of plum. At this make-or-break time, lines of cars begin to queue up from the 78 freeway interchange, heading south down the I5. Speeds are dropping, dropping, before the Ted Williams exit traffic moves in the teens. Before Interstate 8, cars come to a dead stop.

At 6.33 the sky is grey and getting lighter. The city begins to hum as surface streets fill up with surplus traffic. All is well, or not -- that last drink of blood in Scripps Ranch or Saber Springs could have been your undoing.

The Last Flight to Niagara Falls

(I wrote "The Last Flight to Niagara Falls" a few years back, probably in 1997 or 1998. I was thinking about this tribute, or story, for the past few weeks, I wanted to post it, but I couldn't find it. So on this day, I decided to rewrite it as best my memory recalls.)

In the final years of his life, my Grandpa had a continuous series of small strokes. These strokes were so small, at first we barely recognized his cognitive abilities were being eroded away, but soon Grandpa's speech and some motor skills became affected. Because of this, eventually he had to go into the hospital.

He ended up sharing a room with another elderly gentleman, named Mr. Zimm, I think. As roommates, there was a bit of confusion on what was whose, because Grandpa and Mr. Zimm were both on par when it came to forgetful & senile. Some days you’d go to visit Grandpa and he’d be wearing one of Mr. Zimm’s sweaters inside-out, while Mr. Zimm might be wearing Grandpa’s base-ball cap. You’d see Grandpa’s sweater was two sizes too small, and the hat on Mr. Zimm was a few sizes too big. It took quite a bit of effort and considerable protesting all around to straighten these situations out, so eventually (unless it was absolutely essential) we just let these random swticheroos of glasses, shirts, hats, canes, etc, be uncontested.

Mentally, at the hospital, Grandpa could be with you one moment, but then at some point in any interaction he would be away. He roamed free, unrestrained through his life’s recollections, thoughts, and memories, past and present.

But no matter where or when he was, or with who, he was nobody’s fool. Due to the strokes, his balance was not so good, so often the staff would make him use a wheelchair. Because he was willful, he would get out of the wheelchair. So they put a small strap that belted him to the seat. On that day, my mother was visiting.

“These bastards say I should get some air.” said Grandpa. “Lets go to the cafeteria.”

On the way there, mom pushing, Grandpa flew of somewhere in his head and was gabbing happily in the 1920s. But when the got to the cafeteria, the sunlight seemed to bring him back to the present situation. Grandpa looked around carefully.

“Hey!” he whispered to my mother. “Shhh. Hey!”

“What?”, asked mom.

“Keep it down!”, said Grandpa. He fiddled with the loose white strap keeping him in the wheelchair. “See, there’s this thing here…this thing and..if I only had a pocket knife. Do you have a pocket knife?”

“No.” said mom.

Grandpa couldn’t help but rolling his eyes and exclaiming loudly, “Jesus Christ, you have no knife!” Then, quietly to himself, “What I could do with a small little knife.”

Back to the room, after he was helped into bed, Grandpa was back in the 1930s, at his desk for the railroad. Blueprints all around him, it was a winter’s day just started snowing, and he had a deadline with a new set of plans. He snapped on the drafting lamp, looked over sheets and sheets with an expert eye and was dictating, positively cracking along, making some side sketches and notes when my Grandma and his daughter came to visit, but he didn’t notice. Mom tried to talk to him, but he waved at her off while he was still dictating in an expansive way, like she was some kind of clueless, interrupting secretary.

After some time, visiting hours were over, and we said goodbye. As we did this, the blueprints, desk, blotter, phone, pens, walls, office, all meted away. Grandpa asked timorously, eyes full of tears, you are going? Where? Why we did we have to go? Why did he have to stay, wherever he was? Grandma soothed him as best she could.

I heard later, Grandpa deduced that he was staying at an airport. This would explain all the young people, the shift changes, and all the random people coming and going. When he decided for sure he was staying in an airport, it became essential to have a ticket. His ticket was for the last flight to Niagara Falls, where he grew up, got married, had children, and spent some of the happiest years of his life. Over the next few days, when Grandpa had visitors, he would first ask if you had a ticket – the right ticket for the last flight to Niagara Falls. It was essential that you understand this, and NEVER say you didn’t have a ticket. Otherwise Grandpa would get quite upset.

A few days after that I believe it was an intern who forgot to strap Grandpa into the wheelchair, and that day he got out, hobbled into the hallway and was clawing through soiled linen containers looking for his hat and more plane tickets, of which the hat, he had on his head. When they tried to get him to stop he struggled with them, cursed, he had to be gently restrained in his bed. This made him even angrier, Grandpa raged, so a Nurse decided to give him a mild sedative. But with the clogged arteries in his head, the dose was strong, very strong – it made him groggy, his eyes became clouded, Grandpa closed his eyes, he lapsed into unconsciousness.

After this accident, still unconscious, he came down with pneumonia. Grandpa’s lungs filled up with fluid that he could not expel. He slept on, and while he slept I am sure he dreamed countless extraordinary dreams. But the situation could not go on, despite the fact he would no longer ever wake up again so we could say our farewells. At a certain point, his consciousness was free to go wherever it wanted to be, without any restrictions, or any tether to his old worn out shell.

Dedicated to Robert Arthur Evans
11/13/14 - 2/15/97

Other Things from Ipanema

1. The Yahtzee Game from Ipanema
2. The Hoagie from Ipanema
3. The Ball of Hair from Ipanema
4. The Angry Under Tipped Waiter from Ipanema
5. The Bum from Ipanema
6. The Yellow Pad of Paper from Ipanema
7. The Bicycle from Ipanema
8. The Certified Pre-Owned Sedan from Ipanema
9. The Socks from Ipanema
10. The Ass Pinching Whistling Perverts from Ipanema
11. The Imported Mineral Water from Ipanema
12. The Insane Hooker from Ipanema
13. The Shitty Hotel from Ipanema
14. The Shitty Hotel Robbing Staff from Ipanema
15. The Rubber-Cement Bottle from Ipanema
16. The Doorbell from Ipanema
17. The All Night Poker Game from Ipanema
18. The Bar Tab from Ipanema
19. The Unexpected Phone Call at 3am from Ipanema
20. The Quarrelsome Oldsters of Ipanema

I Am a Tapper

I am a tapper. I tip tap tappy tap my feet all day long. I try not to, but it comes out, a rapid metronome. Where does this come from? My dad is a clapper and a snapper. He also is a slapper, he'll do a snap clap and smack his thigh when he is in high spirits -- when he feels glad to be alive. I don't think my mom taps, claps, snaps, or smacks. My dad's mother, she whistled. When I tap my feet, it is not because I am glad to be alive, but because I am thinking fast & furiously -- trying to solve problems. So I tap under stress. Where does it come from, I ask again. I do not know.

WHAT THE DALI LAMA WOULD SAY IF HE LIVED IN SUBURBIA AND YOU AS A TEENAGER GOT SICK ON HIS FRONT LAWN AT 3AM

My face is like your face -- a face you don't want to know -- a face you have come to fear and resent. I'm talking about the original face -- in not knowing it, we are haunted by the not knowing. We therefore live in the Realm of Desire, wanting innumerable things to help us forget the original face, which is empty. And get off my fucking lawn, too, in the middle of the night. Another drunk, stupid kid.

Monday morning

Monday morning
I wake up out of a sound sleep
and I feel dead

I'm hung over
I'm tired
I have this bile taste in my mouth

Monday morning piss
Monday morning shower
Monday morning runs
Monday morning cereal & cup of coffee
Monday morning shirt, pants, socks, shoes

Drive my girlfriend to her job downtown
that she hates but can't quit because
it pays our bills

Monday morning driving back for some
reason I see cops cops cops cops
cops cops
I suppose I should feel safe
but why are there so many cops out
on Monday morning?

I get home, parking being a breeze
Monday morning runs again
My stomach feels like I have a boot in it

So here I am now
sitting by the window at the table
in the kitchen

Ready to make my endless phone calls
and I can't take it anymore

I grab the empty coffee cup
and I huck it out the window

It soars through the air
smashing against the neighbors brick wall
just across the way
their kitchen window shoots open
and they look at me

I wave at them
wordlessly, they wave back

I begin to make my phone calls


SF
1993

Stink Bad

His feet stink. The caps-lock gets stuck, accidentally, on his keyboard, and he types THEY SMELL! These socks didn't smell in the morning, when it was cold. The socks had to warm up, then get dosed in some fresh sweat. Sweat like fresh coffee to slumbering bacteria. Mmmmmmmmmmm....sweet sweat. He thinks back to the time in Venice, on the crowded Vaporetto in the night with the two gypsies, a brown color of homelessness on them. The locals edged away from the rank stench of the two guys, who thought being so stenchful was hilarious. When they got off the water bus, grinning, laughing, the Venetians muttered Italian curses under their breath. I'm not that bad, he thinks, coming back to the today, now. Not near that. Not like the time I had that contracting job, ten years ago with the cursed pair of hiking boots that smelled like baby vomit. The cursed hiking boots that smelled like baby vomit. Now that was bad.

mom/ dad

mom
dad
if they
kill me
in iraq
on my
fourth rotation

don't
tell them
when
they
hand over
the folded
flag
you're
"so
proud"

don't tell
them
that!

tell
those
sons a bitches
you're
mad as
hell at
the waste

tell
them
for me

and say
you're
mad
as hell
because
i didn't have
to die

i didn't
have to go
and die
out there
of all
places

if i'm
gone
you can
say
anything
for me

just don't
say
"so
proud"

Piss Me Off & Drive Me Crazy

Here's a few ways to piss me off and drive me absolutely crazy, all at the same time: name a company-wide key server after a girlfriend, pet, spouse, or child. Come up with a codenames for all software projects named only after mountains. Name any kind of test you have to run several times a week after a type of food, or a kind of cocktail, or a dessert. "What are you doing today?" "I'm running Baked Alaska four times on Denali & K2 over Sweet Baby Hailey." Wheee!

Two Mornings, Overheard

I woke up last morning, and as I lifted my head, I heard a voice, like God's, by the surface of the pillow. It was a very quite voice, clean, precise and still. It said, "Every shape started out as a clear idea, whose meaning now is twisted and confused." This morning, while I was waking up, my infant son was sleeping next to me. Half asleep, I imagined he was saying words like, "Pillow...Pillow...Pillow", or "Cloud..Cloud..Cloud" over and over again. I woke up, and realized he couldn't be speaking, because he is 5 months old. I am convinced the two events are not interconnected, but tomorrow, I wonder if I will hear someone talking as I am waking up, and what will they be saying?

Bang

This is not about the rain, or how it rained at the funeral. This is not about the accident, about how her arm stayed soft and warm for a while, how her head was turned so her hair covered her face. I'm staying where James Bond stayed at the end of that film. I'm a goddamn fucking time cowboy now. I'm stepping back, and it's just like it never happened. I've decided to be like Fellini now, and be in a movie like he does a movie where we can sorta dream at will and anything is possible, because I'm in my head now. This is a story of me now in my head. No, I take that back, I want to be outta my head. Rain drops keep falling on my head, just like on the smallest coffin you ever saw. My torso is covered in welts. Okay, go play checkers with my brains— that doesn't sound right, but go ahead. And while you're at it, rearrange the furniture and paint because we're gonna end up divorced probably anyways. I'm going to try hard now, nail this shit down and shine through if I can – to the Lighthouse, ya know what I mean? To the Lighthouse. Fuck you Virginia Wolfe. I'll try hard this time, not make excuses or get caught up in images. It is very simple. I like that word. Simple.

Specifics? Last year I lost my wife (35) and my daughter who had just turned (3) when our Jeep Cherokee (a model 99) overturned and slid on its side and hit a tree trunk. The tree was unscratched. But later it still died. Ain't that a laugh riot? Everybody involved in the crash dies but me. Even the tree. My wife's family has blamed me exclusively for the accident. I think they are angrier that for once I wasn't drunk, that it was just a freak accident not having to do with excessive speed or anything like that. No, to them quite frankly, I was the freak. Fuck you fuck the blame. Fuck up. Fuck over. Fuck off. No thoughts. Dark. Well, a little light. Like in a Fellini film -- things come into focus so slowly at first with no sound, in reverse-dissolve George Frederick is sketching, he eats lunch, he participates in group therapy. On an improbable 'red letter day' he is released, he goes home, he says no I am fine, don't worry. Neighbors show up, ding dong. I just need to be alone, to grieve. He grieves in the empty big colonial style house that is five years old near Sterling, Virginia. It does not help. The house or the grieving. Under control and in his own mind he shoots himself in the head with a pistol.

(In truth, he puts the pistol down. He didn't have the courage to shoot himself like he wanted to. I mean, I don't. I mean, obviously I didn't, as my name is George Frederick. I just buried the Sig Sauer 9mm three feet deep in my backyard, where I used to watch my daughter Sara play, Sara pretending to be a princess of a far way kingdom that I’ll bet looked just like Disneyland. I want a gun tree with 222 little toy guns. No, I don't want a gun tree. I want to write something funny here. I wanted to end this with something more poetic or more semiotically clear, a better symbol or symbolic action to round out the story. But I guess I don't have it in me. My wife once said to our daughter, "Fill me a thimble full of tears, and then...bla bla bha blah blah." I can't remember what she said while I was in the other room being a stone-hearted fuck. Well, I've cried my thimble full and more, and there's no going back once you've started that business. But I took my thimbles of tears and I emptied it. I just cry regular now and let the tears go down my face and splash on my jeans. Some tears land in my hand. I carry them like they are little birdies and I sprinkle them out our bedroom window. I can imagine certain things now, very specifically. Fly away you two fly fly away. And sure enough Jesus Christ, just like in a Fellini flick, I see from the camera's perspective -- zooming up into the sky, all the while looking down at me lying in the Jeep on that rainy night the whole time, the camera zooming away astonishingly fast and smooth as a rocket or missile with no flash and no noise and no smoke. Oh excellence! I know it makes no sense, too many mixed metaphors. But that is how it is, now. I can hear glass exploding, steel crumpling. The seatbelt tight enough on Sara to strangle her. Then we hit the tree. Bang.)

(Live over at www.opiumnagazine.com, today.)

After Our Blind Date

Dear Sally!

I didn't mean to give you the CREEPS. I should have told you I have no hands. Only hooks. Shiny chrome sharpened hooks (think Captain Hook x2), because I take pride in my appearance. So, I promise to be in a better mood when we meet next, also, and not yell at the cabbie that way I yelled! Lordy me oh my, you're a sweet gal, I can tell, very thoughtful and intelligent and I'd like to get to know you better. Please don't say no.

Optimistically,

Martin

Wrencream

Wrencream is old and he slouches. His lamps are smoking, the light in his window is yellow and unsteady, the roof of his house tilts to the south. Nobody visits him because they think he is dead, or dying. They say he steals children, and sells them to the gypsies. But I know more, I see, I look, I watch. I see old Wrencream going out the back door of his house in the early morning, just before the sun comes up. He drags a wheeled carrier he has made out of scraps of wire and wood making tracks the frost. He usually heads over the frozen fields, through the birches, to the abandoned asylum, to look for things he can sell or recycle. Last week he sold an antique bottle to a tourist for a paltry sum for the tourists, but a huge amount for him, and us.

He is old in my vignette, with a huge mane of hair, shaggily cut. He wears boots, he trudges, his trousers sag. He barely looks around, but he knows if someone is going to throw a rock at him. I can tell, by watching him, that he contains an entirely separate thing within his own head. He is quietly possessed by something, but with what, what? What makes him so quiet? So subtlety knowing? You might say in him is a distinctly separate World, or Universe. But not just any imaginary place. I suspect there is an exceedingly rare Universe in his head. As if God created one privately, a better one, a purer one. He plays odd, high music in the night, presumably on a fiddle.

The Fable of Fonterloughighoblo

Getting ready for the big day, one of the elves comes to me, he has his hat in his hand. And I haven't ever seen an elf with his hat off, so this can't be good. He says they can't find the list. I'm so goddamn busy I'm ready to shit bricks and mail them to Timbuktu. What list? I ask. THE LIST. Says the elf. Jesus Jumping Christ in Red Plaid! I exclaim. Did you ask Mrs. Clause? Yes! says the elf. So after that, we tear up the workshops, warehouses, storage & lofts, we rifle through the stables, look under every tree, present, box, trunk, hay pile & bail, turn over every wreath, look in every nook and cupboard, to no effect. Cookies and Cockeyed Crumpets, we're F--d! No List. Who had the List, last? They name the elf, Fonterloughighoblo, and he's not here, so we all go to his house. And lo, there he is, passed out dead drunk, and the list is in shambles, all over the place. I can't make head or tail of it, the pages all mottled, crumpled and smudged. I see he used some of it to start a fire. So there it is, with no list we had to improvise. Because of Fonterloughighoblo, 2006 was the year everyone got a crate of Spam.

Newsflash - Hills Block the View

Hills really do block the view? You must be joking.

On the Side of the Road

We saw this today, at about 8.30 in the morning.

empty room

i loved the empty room
light pink
with the cat
laying in the middle

night time
it was blue
as if
filled to the brim with rain

the
next morning
ordinary furniture
attacked

News Flash!

Thrown over into our booth at Islands yesterday at lunch. JAKE LIKES EMILY!!!!!!!

Selected Excerpts from a Journal

(Selected excerpts from a Journal, transcribed exactly as it was written, circa 2001.* The pages were found in the junk raked out of a partially burned house on Elm Street, in San Carlos, CA, in 2006.)

----

August 2
....Just finished moving into Bellingville, TN.**

August 4
Just my luck -- whose kid has the two-stroke scooter? Who lets thir fucking kid ride the goddamn scooter up & down the road at 2 in the morning?

August 5
Of course, nobody knows who the kid is. Then, later, when I go to the police they let slip that it is, apparently, one of their kids. The police chiefs’ kid.. Can I speak with him? Who, what?

August 12
I go to Martin Blackwell's house. Our absent chief of police. A faded note on the door all words blurred except: florida

September 13
There it goes again -- I get out there with a maglight. Under the dark moon, I hear the scooter shrieking along -- and my light shines all the way up the windblown road, leaves flying and it shines on nothing. Cliché blast of icy wind, the sensation of being brushed by something -- what?

I instinctually begin to back up. I shine the light where I hear footsteps, up the drive. Just blowing, twirling leaves. I turn and when i start to climb the stairs i'm bengmuffled by something - prssing on my arms tripping me panicking I get back inside, drenched in sweat, trembling, I realize what it felt like -- a hand. No bike. No person.

A word a name whispered in my ear. Who, I promptly forgot. A girls.

September 15
There is a shadow in my yard, at twilight. My imagination may be getting out of hand. but after seeing it hang around at dusk, flitting around the yard in my peripheral vision, I imagine me saying to a shadow in my yard.

What do you want?

Fun. Says the shadow. I want to have fun.

What does that mean? Who are you?

Nobody. Says the shadow. Nobody now.

September 17
Tan Martin Blackwell points a .44 magnum at my chest and says his son is dead. He was killed by the first gulf war.

If I come around again, he will kill me. If I ask around about his son, around town, he will kill me. If I tell stories about scooters he will kill me. I don't know if I hate him, if I feel pity for him, I just say goodbye.

He watches me close the fence to the drive, tears in his eyes.

October 4
Carl sits on my porch. Carl rides his scooter at 10 at night. Carl's girlfriend used to live here, back in the 1980s.

At the library, I look up his obituary. Carl died after his discharge. The librarian tells me he walked into the woods with a rifle and blew his brains out. Who else sees me? The phone rings in the middle of the night. The voice sounds faint, slurry. I'm warning you. Stay out of it.

October 7

Via the internet, I try to find the family that lived here. I stay away from the library,

November 11
Dictating from St. Johns Hospital

On Wednesday, October 10 a police car pulled away from my house when I come home. I find Blackwell in my kitchen.

I woke up one side of my face warm, the other cold. Blackwell in firelight. In the woods. My hands tied.

I can remember what he said, almost word for word.

I want to tell you about my Son. My Son. He was the first in this family to ever go to college – football scholarship to the state school here – no big deal but it was something for us. He was so proud of himself, you should have seen him on graduation – poly sci. I didn’t even know what the hell that was. Then he joined up, because he said some day he was going to run for President, he had it all mapped out on note cards, I still have them. And he needed to serve so he joined up and he was decorated – he was a goddamn war hero. Saved his squad from an entrenched position, something like that, but he came back changed. Had no fire in him anymore, was good for nothing, we tried to help him but his mother, she got killed by a drunk driver. And he rode that goddamn 2 stroke scooter after that. Was fucking a 17 year old girl who was running away from home all the time. What a fucking mess. So she runs away again and my pal sees her in Memphis, loitering, on drugs, so he calls and I have them do a special job for me -- a bag on her head to bring her back, because she’s pregnant. They hog tie the bitch and she strangles accidentally on the way back.

Blackwell puts more wood n the fire, takes a piss. Pushes back his hat.

Then my son, he kills himself when she doesn’t call or come back. I never meant to kill her. I never meant to kill anybody. I see her face on milk cartons now and again. She’s buried right over there. Under the tree. So you get up writer. Here’s the conclusion of your story, ain’t you happy, Mr. Writer? You’re gonna get up, go over there, and find her, and her baby. Get up you son of a bitch.

Nosy son of a bitch, poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Fucking with things that don’t concern you.

He propelled me forward, over the fire, and into the tree, and I fell, scattering bones, A skull with fine straight white teeth stared up at me, with a few strands of faded blonde hair. And by that skull, there was a smaller egg like thing, with two holes.

I could see his silhouette, the gun coming up. The first bullet grazed my skull. My eyes were full of blood. As I started to move, another bullet broke my left arm.

I ran and ran, pitch black woods, down a cliff, then into a stream and over rocks and he followed for awhile shooting but then he couldn’t go on.

I think I heard him arguing with...and then they found him face down in the stream with two handprints on his shoulders.

----

* There is a Wednesday, October 10 in 1984, and in 2001

** There is no Bellingville, TN. There is a Billingsville, MO.