skonen_blades

It started in the back of my head. Suggestions. Little ideas that steered me down paths that I might not have normally taken. Go talk to that girl. Cross the street right now. Order the stew. Don’t write that note. Small decisions every day that chipped away at my destiny like a sculptor chisels a statue out of a block of marble.

I thought that they were just normal thoughts. Evidence of experience surfacing to give me advice. Small words of warning or hints to help me down the path. My subconscious doing the math based on what has happened so far and firing up warning flags.

Now I’m not so sure. Lately, they’ve been getting frantic. Sometimes they curse. I get headaches, especially when I don’t obey the voices. A couple of mornings ago, my pillow was soaked with blood when I woke up from a massive nosebleed. I never get nosebleeds.

Also, the orders are starting to be more risky. They’re telling me to hurt people now. Steal that woman’s purse. Punch that guy standing over there. Yell at that old woman. Break that kid’s toy.

Actions that aren’t going to change the course of history on a grand scale but actions that could conceivably put me in jail or get me in trouble. I have disobeyed so far but it’s getting difficult to resist because of the pain when I refuse.

What if the voices tell me to kill someone? What if the voices start telling me to target politicians? What if the voices start to tell me that strangers are trying to steal my internal organs? What if the voices tell me that I’m related to God? What if they tell me to hurt a Roman Centurion?

I’m just going to obey my father and keep assisting him with his carpentry. I am not special. I will not obey the voices.



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My friend Christine is having a birthday on Tuesday and she asked me to write a poem for her. This is what I've come up with so far.

Christine

She opens up like a flower to the moon. She is the thin answer to God’s question. She is put forth on the plank and uses it as a diving board. She bruises easy but heals quickly. She runs with wolves, flies with crows, and swims with sharks.

She’s a grenade wearing her pin as an earring. She is the double-x chromosome that marks the spot. She’s a triple-A treasure chest. She hangs out on clotheslines. She’s a kite. Mirrors can’t find her.

There are memories buried in the rich earth of her. There are farms nestled in the crevasses of her spine, fertile soil ploughed by her shoulder blades. She grows in new directions as life demands like water finding its way around cobblestones.

Christine is a warrior. Her name is a derivative of Christ. The Romans never would have caught her and Judas would have been a faithful slave. She would have lived to be 80, playing with the hair of her apostles and handing out miracles. She knows that the only things that angel wings are good for is stuffing pillows.

She’s hungry in places. She needs at times.

She’s the Cirque de Solace. She’s a left hook and sharp right angle. She is curves in the road. She is a dish best served hot.

She is a pliant sprinter of a woman. She is a breed of one. She is streamlined, a javelin flying into the future, going for a record. Bones wrap around the barely-contained core of her. Sleep struggles to take her.

She is the music after the song has ended.




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It’s a brave thing to keep on living. People look up to martyrs. Martyrs enjoy a sense of strength that comes, at the root, from the most extreme cowardice that exists. Being willing to die for a set of beliefs to the point where you force your opponent to take your life is idiocy.

Just ask Jesus down there at the end of the bar. People have been waiting for two thousand years or so for his return. He never left.

He faked his second death. Some bright lights, a little puff of smoke and pow. Instant ‘ascension’.

He lives in Queens and he runs a bar. All the bottles behind the counter are filled with water. As he pours, he changes the water into whatever liquor has been ordered.

If he likes the person, it’s great stuff. If it’s bad, the liquor is hogwash. He has no control over it. And he really sees into a person, having been around for so long and being the son of God and all.

It’s called Blake’s. It was the name of the previous owner. Great guy.

You should check it out sometime. I wasn’t supposed to say anything but if you can find it, test it out.

See what kind of drink you get.




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Charles “Chalky” Raven had a big left wing mouth and an even bigger right wing cock. He preached a whole field of politics about the rights of women, the value of intelligence, the capricious tendencies of the undependable male heart, and the rights of people everywhere to be thought of as attractive because of what they held inside, what they represented, and who there really were. What people looked like was immaterial, he preached at parties to rapt audiences, and what they owned mattered even less. He was like a cocktail party Jesus. You could not picture this man dead. There was too much life coursing out from him. He had charm enough to overcome any offense or defense. He could talk the teeth out of a dead horse’s mouth.
He wore Armani, however, and had a thing for the Pamela Andersons of the world.
To say he was a hypocrite would be an insult to hypocrites. To say he was ambivalent would redefine the word.
Chalky was so good at convincing other people that he was the coolest thing in the world that he hardly even needed to be here. He phoned in his performances to people he didn’t believe in and reaped what he thought were the rewards.
He’d achieved the American Dream.
He was the winning horse and people were backing him. Exactly what he was winning was not clear to these people but it was obvious he was winning more than they were.

If someone is awful on the outside but generous kind and forgiving to people in secret, is he a hypocrite? Is he a coward?

Chalky Raven read once about how figure skaters and gymnasts lose it quite quickly as they approach their early twenties because their center of gravity changes. Their insides shift, unhook, and lower and they’re never the same. They are no longer balanced. It signified to him that it was a physical representation of the fact that we become people as we get older, one way or the other, lazy or feral, zealous or passive, pro or con, without even meaning to. It’s unavoidable.
Not for Chalky. He was unraveling his destiny and rethreading the tape. He danced out of the reach of concrete decision every single minute by making sure that even he didn’t know himself. He lived beyond the definition of a soul. He lived beyond definition. This was an illusion of course. The constant dreams he had of drowning while flying were proof of that.
His admirers spurred him on.


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