scenes

1.
He says to me: You really had me thinking for a minute there, just maybe this would work; it was nice. The dog is asleep on the couch, but whimpers occasionally; he has an arthritic leg and it pains him. Or maybe he's just lonely.

2.
She IMs: I don't talk about religion or politics. I gave up after the last election because you know what? They'll do anything to get into power, and it doesn't matter anymore how we vote. She says she's on her second pack of cloves. I can smell the cloying smoke through the keyboard.

3.
The tattoo on his back is of an angel, I think, but you can't see the face. We watch Charlie Brown's Christmas Special, and we laugh when the adults "speak": Waah Waaah Wawh Woooh? Waah wahh wah. Because no matter how old you are, the adults still sound like that. The muscles in his back knot and unknot; the angel is pensive, shifting wings and shrouded face.

4.
She walks directly out into oncoming traffic, and never gets hit. Ever. She just knows the pattern. If I were to follow her blindly across the street, I would die in seconds. I was not born knowing this urban rhythm. I don't know the seasons of neon. I can't trace the city lines on my palm.

storm

in the sanctuary
hundreds of people open
their good books
and it's the sound of leaves
rustling in the tops of trees
and all I can think of
is wind and storm,
violence
not love.

the whisper of prayers from
a thousand lips is
a mushroomcloud of moths fluttering
the silver dust from their wings
falling like ash.

the clap of a hundred raised hands
is the distant clatter
of mortars exploding,
all the killing done in
the name of Whatever
flavor of the week
we're worshipping.

and all the words they use
are bruised and faded,
bleached of worth;
He is hiding in the subtext,
behind tongues,
before birth.

who can hope to understand
the complex mess we've made
of earth?
not the books and not the lips
and not the hands
for He is hiding
and is deaf to our demands,
beyond tongues,
beyond death,
such amazing love
to let us live,
breath by labored breath?

karnival

We're sitting at Karnival, watching the hipsters and trixies scurry by on the sidewalk outside. We're drinking coffee. Good, dark coffee in white ceramic mugs with hairline cracks running through the glaze.

Dana has her laptop open. She's distractedly maintaining a dying conversation via AIM, limping along with monosyllabic responses. She does this out of habit. It's almost become automatic. Her right hand punches out abbreviated messages, the left hand waves around while she's talking, ranting, pointing.

"There! Do you *see* what that girl is wearing who just walked by? Can you *believe* she left the house this morning *wearing* that? I would shoot myself. I swear. Never let me out in public if I look like that. Promise me." She's half serious. I let her out of her apartment on a consistent basis wearing fake fur and/or bowling shoes.

Our heroin-thin server-hipster slouches over to the table, feigning complete disinterest in life and our ability to tip her or not. But her attitude is a requirement here. In fact, it's a survival tactic. It drives away the yupsters and the trixies, who expect courteous, attentive service. Separating the wheat from the chaff, this cafe chooses its clientele, and chooses to keep its soul.

"Would ya like some more coffee?" she drawls, spilling coffee all over the table as she tops off our cups. It's little dramatic touches like that that keep me coming back for more.

Dana understands the way things work here, the social laws that govern Karnival. And really, the social laws that govern our neighborhood. This cafe is really just a microcosm, a representative sample of what's going on all over the city. Urban evolution. Neighborhoods change, populations move around, shift their buttcheeks from one street to another, tighten their belts from one block to the next. Usually, this takes the form of wealthier people picking where they want to live, and then driving away the people that already live there.

Is this how it's always been?

Night

If I wind back the clock of years and only look at the nights, a black flipbook that reveals the fuzzy, half-remembered fears of childhood and the immense virtual storehouse of the subconscious, a single night swimming in memory might look like this:

Moonlight. Grey clouds. Trees moving in wind, bending and swaying like kelp in a slow current. All is silent in my room, and the view is like watching TV with the sound turned off except for the sound of my breath. The glass in the windows is old, imperfect; the silver light throws strange shadows and blurred lines across the floor, even though the windows were just cleaned. How can something transparent hold shadows within itself?

Yet even in the between time of night, there's a tension here. In the air. Like an odorless, colorless gas it fills the house completely, right up to the attic, pressing up against the roof. I could pluck the night like a bowstring and hear it chirp, hear it sing.

It's a scent that one never forgets, a climate that I've left and will never return to. I've closed the book on those nights, but not before opening them up, examining their guts, and winnowing out the source of tension. Identifying him. Becoming aware of the shadows when he is seemingly transparent.

And transparency is all the rage. There, can you see his skeleton, his beating heart, his vulnerable belly, his pleading, innocent eyes? He's sorry you know. Ever so sorry. Sorry is soothing, sssssssssss, like the sea, lulling, repetitive, say your sorry and I'll take you back under my wing, sorry is balm and salve, sorry mends bones and bruises, sorry is sly and it lies. Sorry is snake and constricting, it whispers one thing and distracts with another, it tightens and cracks ribs, can you breathe? Can you believe? You can't? No worries. Because he's sorry.

From October 2001

On Communion:


I.

this is not disposable.

this is not disposable.

do not throw this away.

see this plastic communion
with throwaway cups.
see this safe, suburban grape juice
masquerading as wine.

but see,
this cup holds Life
more precious than rubies
more intimate than breath
more fully blood than blood
and this is not disposable.



II.

this is not consumer-driven.

this is not consumer-driven.

do not consume and then drive away,
stay.

this bread is Memory and Body:
salt. flour. water. alchemy.
dissolved and digested,
then resurrected
in the deep engines of cells,
transforming matter into energy,
fuel to drive the mind and
fire the soul,
and so the Body broken is
burned and Risen whole.



III.

this is not tradition.

this is not tradition.

do not do this easily.

these elements are ever new:
are supernova and Son.
the uncovered face of the Father.
the white-hot holiness of the Spirit.

do not tread lightly on this ground.

but do this.
do this in remembrance of me.
please.
please do not do this easily.

scratch

I suspect that life
isn't all it's cracked up to be

that eternity is in a leaf
wrapped around my finger
or your arms wrapped around me
or even jesus

we've taken what we think He is
and stretched it out
ripping it like stray dogs
worrying and licking
some choice road kill
we all have our little spitty-wet piece of God

and why do I treat Him
like an old scratch n' sniff sticker
on my third-grade lunch box?
See how cool He is,
stuck there next to
Buck Rogers in the 21st Century,
shiny plastic smile,
too-white teeth

if I need you I'll scratch scratch scratch
you smell like rain and earth,
blood and rusty, rusty nails and love

however,
if I'm not hungry
I'll put the lunch box away,
there on a shelf
in the back of my head but

you want me to scratch that itch, don't you?

you want me to be ever hungry,
starving for you,
the Holy Spirit as tapeworm
tickling my soul
if I wave some Communion bread and wine
in front of my mouth,
will you come up to dine?

nothing I say will dissuade you.

you want me to scratch that itch,
and it's like thinking about yawning,
you know I'll yawn

you know I'll scratch

party

There was a party on Saturday night, down at this loft on Milwaukee and Wood. All neighborhood folks, artists, musicians, people that are good at looking good.

I struck up a conversation with a young guy with great tattoos named Patrick. We talked about his new tat, some of our new projects, complained about the weather. But he was edgy, nervous, hyper-alert. In mid-sentence he asked me if I had any medical training, which I don't. He said he needed someone to help him "slam", which is what people call injecting themselves with crystal meth. He said that he had difficult veins, and that he couldn't inject it himself. I said that I couldn't help him, but I was intrigued... here was this guy, about 22, good looking, an up and coming artist, and he was so nonchalant about it, like he was just asking me for, I don't know, something normal. Like a light for his cigarette, or a kleenex.

He took out his sleek, silver cellphone and called up a friend of his, supposedly a doctor. The blue light from the phone's display glowed on the side of his face. He wanted his doctor friend to stop by the party and "facilitate a situation"... to help him inject his dose. The ease with which he handled all this was unnerving.

Ten minutes later the doctor arrives, a
smartly-dressed man in his mid-40's. Patrick excuses himself, and they go into a bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, they come out, and the doctor, all apologetic, says that he's terribly sorry, that Patrick's veins were rather difficult and that he needed to go out to his car to get some fresh, sharper hypodermic needles. The doctor leaves, and Patrick laughs and tells me how funny it is that the doctor couldn't find a decent vein, that he'd overused the veins in his arms so he couldn't use them anymore, that he had an exploded vein in his right leg so he couldn't do it there, and so on.

The doctor comes back in with some fresh needles, and they go back into the bathroom. Ten minutes later they come out again, and Patrick has obviously slammed. He wears a euphoric mask of intense pleasure, his jaw clenched, his right hand ever so slightly trembling around his glass of Stoli and cranberry . The doctor wishes him a good evening and leaves.

Friends of Patrick come up, and ask him if he has any tina or g. They want to bump some tina, down some g, slam some crystal, they have slammed, they were slamming, they've bumped up against the ceiling of their youth and they're down and grinning and it's happy and euphoric and I'm suddenly indescribably weary and I have to leave. Patrick gives me his number, says we should hang sometime, but I wonder how long he'll be around.

Everyone has something that could kill them if they let it, if they open the door and invite it in to curl up on the hearth and sing them to sleep.

How beautiful it was that morning. Even
in Chicago, the skies were clear and immense,
intensely blue. The morning was fresh.
Crisp. New. The leaves on the trees had
just started to show faint tinges of color.
Yellow and orange bleeding through the
chlorophyll green.

With O'Hare airport so close, you can look
into the sky at any time, day or night, and easily see 15 - 20 planes, stacked in aerial rows waiting to land, or angling up into the clouds. The sound of jet engines is as ubiquitous as the drone of cicadas in summer.

But that morning, there was an abrupt silence. The sky emptied of metal and flesh. A surreal, unnatural (natural) quiet descended like a blanket, smothering us in confusion and wonderment. Then the sharp sonic booms of fighter jets slapped windows and made us leap in our seats, as we gazed toward the Sears Tower fearfully, waiting for that black finger to crumble like the white ones were crumbling, replayed over and over on TV and on-line, fire and death caught in a loop of time, neverending.

I will always see the sleek vessels, ripe with lives, pierce the towers like daggers.

I will always see the towers slump, slough off their cement skins and fall.

That morning is no less beautiful
because of what was done.

The cloud of ash and dust and souls could even be seen from space, but that does not shroud or dim the sun, does not erase our fundamental biological drive to recognize beauty, does not disintegrate or deconstruct or decompose the spirit of human creativity, to breathe life, to create order out of chaos. We will still smooth stones and stack them one on top of another, not because we can, but because we must.

It's a beautiful day today in Chicago. Fiercely, unrelentingly sweet and unutterably sad and so like that other day, and it will continue to be simply what it is.

No matter what happens.

a moment before other moments

He gets home from school, finds the key hidden under the tan woven-hemp mat and lets himself in. Dumping his bookbag on a kitchen chair, he races through the house and flips on the TV in the living room. His favorite show just started, "The Mysterious Cities of Gold." The boy watches, enraptured, and doesn't notice the mud on his shoes, or the trail of leaves and dirt that leads all the way through the house to the back door.

Through an open window in the living room, you can hear the last, dying buzz of cicadas, and the rustle of dry leaves ready to fall from the maple trees that surround the house. A lone cricket chirps in a window well. Children are playing softball in the dry field across the street, and a father shouts pitching advice to his daughter. A dog barks. A lawnmower drones. The mud sits on the hardwood floor, drying hard in the afternoon sun slanting through the windows.

It's the beginning of Fall, 1988, and this is a small town in northern Illinois. Soon, his father will get home, and the boy isn't thinking about the mud hardening on the floor. But really, it could be anything. If it wasn't mud, there would be something else to take its place. Like the bookbag on the kitchen chair, obviously placed carelessly so that someone would trip over it. Or the woven-hemp mat, couldn't he leave it straight? And where's the key? It's in the lock still, isn't it? How could he possibly leave the key in the DAMN DOOR?

Every action, every moment, every movement of air since the moment the atoms of his hand made contact with the knob of the back door, is wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Incorrect. Infinitely capable of being better, but he isn't. The boy is a dreamer. Careless. Where is your head at? Don't you think *ever*? That's so stupid. Unbelievable. Why are you so *stupid*?

But that's all in the future. Right now, he's watching his favorite show. The sun casts honeyed light onto the hardwood floor. The maple trees rustle. The cicadas wheeze and click. The father in the field across the street shouts encouraging things at his daughter, who I'm sure tracks mud in the house sometimes too, right?

If he holds on to this moment, this one, the sun and warm and buzz, understands it, keeps it safe, then the moments that come after won't seem so bad. Certain moments are armor and shield, and even sword. You can pick your moments like battles. Someday, you'll eventually win the war.

him

All the damaged people you despise
We are like fat black flies on
your starched white soul

You swat even the idea of me away
and laugh

When asked about me
you look sad
eyes filling with
the requisite tears
and say
that I'm damaged
I'm unable to function
I have a big chip
on my shoulder
and my insides don't work
quite right
ever since I was dropped
my clock never
tells the right time
and you've returned me
returned me
for a better son
just the other,
younger one now

It's a damn shame
that such a fine model
is damaged
he has photos from when
I was still in warranty
but they're all
he has left

All you see is scar tissue
contrary and incongruent

I am truant
from your story
as I won't play along
and mouth your words
play dummy to your
narcissistic
ventriloquist
routine

All you see is you
and if I am not you
I am for naught
I am damaged
and forgotten

In a world of mirrors
you create your comfortable nest
lined with feathers and soft lies
while all the damaged people you detest
stare back like fat black flies on
your starched white soul