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I watched a stream of light rush through my arteries and down my spine, escaping to the coastline where small leaflets fell from the sky and rang out like empty toll bells, calling for some pilots long lost love.
The sand was illuminated and glowed like a million pieces of a shattered mirror below some lone headlight on a silent road. This was when the grunion began to run, looking for their nests in the wet mess of the beach. The sand was carved off the ocean floor sometime before I walked on the shores of San Diego.
My eyes came upon a guard tower on the beach where two shapeless souls were wrapped tight around each other like a sailors knot. I stood up in the stairwell of the condominium and put my ears to the glass. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but my future self shed it’s past and floated down the stairwell on an oval raft made of linen and regret.
“I can’t tell what’s a star and what’s a planet.”
“The planets don’t twinkle – the stars are bright and flicker like a ghost.”
“If we move back home, will they ever treat us like family?”
“We are our own family now. We have started a new family.”
* * * *
In the middle of the earth, there is a core that some people say is pure magma – hot enough to burn time. Because what is time but the spinning of the world around the sun. If the bottom of the world does not spin, and it burns like the sun, then surely something happens to the seconds of the beating clocks.
Young mothers carry new infants around and beam like spotlights in the wilderness. Some beam brighter than others. Some pull up to the departure gate in brand new Mercedes convertibles with license plates that say “JCDYD4U.” Some stand in lines with arms crossed next to sons in Hofstra shirts. Many fidget nervously with their tickets in hands, checking cellphones and flipping through People magazine while four men with oddly shaped knives sit near the window and look on at the ceremonial jet.
Young mothers receive calls from their baby’s father, asking if the flight is on time. Young mothers tell them they’ll call when they land. Most young mothers minds burn like the center of the world, on fire with the thought of the future and the homes where they will create a new world unto themselves. Old, bad memories will be cast into the pool. Only now and then will they think of old boyfriends. Their home will be built on a foundation of amnesia – forgetfulness that will make them new.
The infants cling to the young mothers and look on at the gathering as to see a fireworks show. Bright explosions of monitor lights, Pizza Hut signs, laptop screens, and departure lines scream back at their gazes. Happy faces settle the infants and the young mothers sit amongst the men near the window. The infants can see each others faces. The faces grow and distort and display all the emotions of the rainbow. There are these things that are lost in us that we can never get back.
The men tell themselves that this has come to be. There is nothing that will change it. This is what they have come for. What purposeless lives they have led till now, will all be rectified. Allah will have seen them for what they have become, not who they were. They had fun here, too. This is modern love.
One of the men looks at a young mother and sees the infant and wonders if they will be on their same flight. The young mother and the man smile at each other.
The young mother gets up and walks over to the next gate.
Jet fuel and aluminum burn like a comet. Burn brighter than the static of the T.V. left on at night. Burn so bright that your eyes can see the ghosts of blurred movements.
The center of the world remains perfectly still. Whole decades are
swallowed in its jaw and disintegrated. There is no political meaning in the center of the world. People don’t live in the center of the world. Young mothers and men with knives have thoughts that are frozen in the air and fall down like feathers to the center of the world. Everything stops.
* * * *
Where in one wrecked field, there was a chrysanthemum
I coughed a cloud of dust and phlegm
My body moved on the vapors of the pesticide and cleared the dried stalks
I had started off and began dreaming
I was a smart, charismatic, charming man
Many college football scouts emailed their AD’s excitedly after my game
Doris went on and on, until the birthday cake was nearly burnt
Standing in front of the combine, it’s mouth agape and bent
This is a lump of solid red soil I hold in my hands
Crumbles now and dries
I had emptied a handle of Old Crow and trembled in delight
This was the best CB radio my grandfather owned
My dirty hands caked it with reddish plaster
Somebody I know taught me about love
And how it can sometimes make you so scared you think you might die
I taught him how to catch brown trout with a Ford Fender
And how to forget things by making horrible, horrible choices
I left the combine running in neutral
Once I buried a time capsule in this field with my best friend
I think his name was Jeff – I forget his last name
I fell asleep under the engine block
The CB came on and buzzed like a drive-through intercom
I heard some old man croaking over the airwaves
‘You don’t know nothin. You can’t even see straight’
‘I will show you where you’ve gone wrong’
‘And pull you down with me, goddamit’
I might still have been dreaming
* * * *
there was a queen who stood on the balcony of a palace in the desert – she wondered aloud at what would become of her nation – her husband, the king, was a kind man who wanted to bring peace to the tribes and royal families – she had told him that he never followed through on his commitments but that she loved him all the same – he built a hundred statues of her and lined his gardens with her likeness so that wherever he turned, she would be there with him, no matter what happened to her when the tribes finally came for them. finally came for them.
* * * *
I sat in a chair, and let the medicine take it’s course
When I closed my eyes, I saw things I had never seen before
I couldn’t lift my head
I could hear the hands of the clock, but couldn’t understand the voices in the hall
My wrist was skinny, and yellow
When I opened my eyes, there was someone in white smocks sitting next to me
“You were crying. Do you remember what you were saying?”
My chin was in my chest, and all I could see were his knees
He said,
“You’re trying too hard. You have to give up
The greatest gift we have is that this all eventually stops.”
* * * *
And my Dad said, “It was the weirdest thing, Davie. I woke up to this noise out in the kitchen. It was pitch black outside. The only light was coming from the hallway. You and your brother were both awake out there.”
I was about 4 and my brother was 7.
“You were in the hallway, reading a book. Only the book was upside down in your hands, and you couldn’t read that book yet. You were just mumbling stuff. And your brother, he was at the front door, flipping the lock back and forth. Lock, unlocked, Lock, unlocked. You were both sleepwalking. Both of you at the same time. This was the second night in a row. Same deal – book in the hall, and flipping the lock. Weirdest thing.”
* * * *
Gold
In America, I don’t know what to think or what to say
And I see thousands of people on the news
That shout and scream in faraway places
Red
I drink with you tonight
We watch the game and debate the facts
They want us out, for the tide to turn
The food on his table
The seating of his servants
The service of his waiters and their apparel
His cupbearers
And his entry way by which he went up to the house of the LORD
There was no more spirit in her
And we knew after September 11th that we needed to take every threat seriously
Shoals against the sea turn
Shells amongst the sand
The salt that sours our coke
The earth spins on the embassy door pins
Angels are emailing their directions
So we may proceed with another election
Now King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired
Whatever she asked
Besides what Solomon had given her according to royal generosity
So she turned and went to her own country
She and her servants
And saw that the terrorists were wearing suits and ties*
From the King James Bible*
* * * *
The iridium came bursting through the bottom of the tanks. The phosphorescence lit the room in violet, and the broken shards of aluminum glittered in the rising tide, like a thousand little stars. My arms still couldn’t move – they hung listless over the girder as the floor filled below. I was sure I had already died. What then was this commotion? My mind was awash in alcohol and MAO inhibitors, but the peace had worn off. I felt a dread like waking from a nightmare, only to find myself in a prison.*
I tried to move my arms again. I could feel some of the muscles contract, but they were stuck now. The glow from the iridium began to fade as it settled in beneath me. In the waning, purple light, I caught one more glimpse below the girder. From my elbows down, my arms were cracked and dusty. The liquid nitrogen had twisted my fingers into knots. Some condensation trickled down in tiny beads, through the follicles of hair on my forearms, and reflected tiny sparkles of light. Some time passed, and the room was dark again. I had no feeling in my arms, and couldn’t see – but I began to think the chemical pool had ascended to my fingertips. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I felt them changing me. Swelling my hands, untwisting my fingers. I couldn’t be certain.
* I must admit that although I was overcome with terror, I nonetheless responded by yelling out what, in hindsight, probably didn’t fully convey the depths of my fear. For instance: “What absolute bullshit!” and “You gotta be shitting me!"
* * * *
Little lumps, under my skin
Why didn’t you knock? I would’ve let you in
On the shores of the clouds below
Angels watch as our tension grows
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