Multitude

I was touched

when they passed.

I would never be the same.

It kept on coming

the sweet and gentle

the light ethereal touch

that I would be able to examine

so many years later

on the little pieces of paper

that would emerge from names and numbers

from the invisible that would be

given names and futures

specific locations and shapes

and all the true horrors

of fate and love and loneliness

and a past only partly remembered.

It was a multitude of eyes

that would make love to me

a choir that would tell me stories

of the sky and the gods

and their affections,

of mountain roads so rare

we would never

be able to find them.

They offered me

a complex world of perfection

and reconfigurations

at once true

and never possible.

I stood on a large rock

and I could still see them in the distance.

I let myself cry

Hoping to make myself remember.

I could feel fingers on my chest

on my belly

on my legs

on my crotch

on my forehead.

Fingers that weren’t there

fingers that could never have been

and never would be.

I could feel eyes

long gone and faded into nothing.

I could feel

the invisible circular tenderness

that rarely held on

to the thin

grasp of friends

and books and things

that were never truly present.

I stared at them

and I watched them

slide away into the

passing night

separating into parallel formations

into hands and music,

into tenderness

that became more and more distant

more and more dream-like

more and more a myth

to be forgotten

and discarded as a lie.

I was touched as they passed

I would never be the same.

Rise of the Old King

When the new sun was born the impulse to kiss his remorseless, deathless face had to be held at bay. Slumbering peacefully, the lightest touch would rouse him, incurring the violence we feared and longed for. In our shinning world of straight edges, mirrored glass, blue screens and open source, it was easy to lose track of the other thing, that which lurked in the places we had avoided for so long, the real animal brutality of our own deepest subconsciousness. Emerging from the depths, and not from the skies where we raised our dream machines towards the stars, the old King returned to us from the realms of myth and shadow.

He came from the caves, from the hollow center of our world, a kingdom we had forgotten in our infancy as a race. Somewhere through the ages, in our race for distant suns, we ceased to look down at our own root. The memory of the inner Kingdom faded as the last pages of the world’s most ancient books turned to dust and blew into the cracked walls of crumbling libraries. When the first star was born in a magnetic bottle and its power was harnessed to make the world a fantasy of unending light, we shed that old skin of memory, of dream, shadow, and terror and began the expansion beyond the terrestrial.

In our quest to drink in the light of all the stars our universe could offer, in our dance with infinite space, and a newfound command of movement and time, we found worlds like our own. One in every thousand had the potential to raise life from its mineral rich soil, and on some we found the evidence of civilizations that had flourished and fallen before we had ever even mastered the use of fire. Thus, we learned that there had been life in the universe, but death had won over it.

Among the ruins of tumbled citadels sunk in grey sand dunes beneath the faint glow of a red star we wept. There would be no meeting with the alien other, no exchange of ideas or culture. Our archeological work began. Countless dead worlds came under our scrutiny as the expansion continued. For our biologists there came a few worlds where life was present as rudimentary single celled organisms. We would have to wait and see if our cosmic brethren might someday grow from one of these worlds.

Eventually, the expansion lost its appeal. Our songs had grown cool and calculated, our dreams had flown back to us empty handed. The age of our enlightenment was coming to a close. Our own star was near death for the second time. We had mastered the art of reviving it, yet it was upon this reoccurrence of imminent stellar collapse that we ceased to resist and plunged into darkness. The door to the inner world had been re-discovered in our arctic desert. Perhaps we had forgotten and remembered it many times during our evolution. Now we remembered it again. As our star shone small and white, its planetary nebulae dancing red and blue in the vacuum, the ancient seal was broken.

There would be no brotherhood among the stars, nor any great conquest there. No friends to keep nor enemies to vanquish, until the seal was broken, and the Old King rose from our hollow core with a fearsome bellow. His legions were loosed, his appetites awakened. In the moment of our most supreme boredom, we were catapulted into reckless, euphoric terror. Our Council was crushed, our infrastructure demolished, our stranglehold on light loosened.  The shadows grew longer, music roiled, wild and discordant, as the Old King showed us what it meant, that old word: vanquished.  He walked amongst us once more, drew us into the inner world and gave us gifts both beautiful and terrible. Upon the surface he ruled as he hadn’t for an eternity.

When the new sun was born the impulse to kiss his remorseless, deathless face had to be held at bay. The old King grew weary as it grew strong and we returned him to his sanctuary, singing our farewell. We were naked as we bore him back, our skins stained with the fruits of the vines, the soil from which they grew, the blood and sweat that had been spilled in our orgiastic remembrance. His legions followed and folded peacefully around him like fallen leaves upon a forest floor.  

The Door

When the door first appeared in a corner of the family room where there had never been a door before, reactions were mixed. Some were for opening it, others against. Mother suggested we sleep on it and decide in the morning.  By breakfast, however, we had begun to believe that the door had always been there.
It was a closet, of course, better left undisturbed since we had undoubtedly been storing old jackets and boxes of photographs in there. Father even asserted that he now recollected having put his missing coin collection in there some months ago and this explained why he could not find it under the bed.
In our socks and robes, we drank glasses of orange juice and consumed bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes until we were convinced that it was an ordinary Sunday morning.
Father dressed and went out to mow the lawn. Mother got dolled up then helped grandmother into her best velour jogging set and took her to the Indian Casino for the day. The twins dug out their allowance and walked to the Cineplex to see a movie with some friends.
My sister Madge and I exchanged a significant look in the hall way, her brown eyes magnified by her thick glasses. We paused there silently assessing one another’s level of skepticism. It was clear that we both had our doubts, but her closed lipped retreat to her bedroom spoke of a willingness to go along with the others.
I went and stood in front of the door, studying its features. It seemed to me equally plausible that I could remember the door having always been there and that I could remember an empty space where now a door stood. It reminded me of the time I couldn’t remember whether I had left the hose on in the backyard or not. The vivid memory of having turned it off was made less credible by a certain nagging doubt. The same was true of the door.
I could simply open it and know the truth, but was too terrified, not only of the possibility of the mysterious but more so of the possibility of the mundane. I had almost made up my mind to do it when my father came in and suggested taking me out for ice cream. We fetched Madge out of her room and drove to the drugstore for double scoops of strawberry with sprinkles.
The first time that the door opened and one of THOSE came in, we were all sitting in the family room watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
Again I would say that reactions were mixed. The cat hissed and jumped off the back of the couch. I looked up and saw the door opening, saw IT coming in and glanced at my family to see if they could see IT too. Clearly they did. I observed each one react, even if for only a moment before they quickly averted their gaze and pretended to be watching TV. Madge continued to stare silently at it. Grandmother, sitting in her wheel chair clucked her tongue and said, “Gads, not this again.” but my mother quickly hushed her, “Ma, we’re trying to watch.”
My grandmother sighed and joined my parents and the twins in their defiant TV watching while Madge, the cat, and I watched IT walk out of the family room and down the hall.
By the end of the week their visits were quite frequent. They came in groups of two or three, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, to roll, run, and scamper down the hall. They would leave all the cupboard doors open. The cat grew accustomed to them and sometimes chased after them as they frolicked.
While we played a board game, did homework, or ate dinner at the kitchen table, one of THOSE would sometimes stand there and watch. They didn’t usually open packages, but were always interested in food that had been left open or left out. They would drink the remaining milk from our cereal bowls if we left them on the table and would eat the crusts of sandwiches left on plates. We could no longer keep a glass of water by the bed because they would come and drink it while we were sleeping.
Nobody besides the cat, myself, Madge, and occasionally Grandmother, acknowledged their presence. My parents and the twins pretended not to see or hear them. Eventually it began to seem as if they actually were unaware of them. Grandmother would shoo them away in the same manner that she shooed the cat, waving a hand if they came close or were in her path and saying “Git” or “Shoo.” Madge would have staring contests with them, gazing silently and expressionlessly at them. Mesmerized they would stare back.
I took a page from the cat’s book. I would pretend that I wasn’t paying attention to them. Then, just as they got close enough I would whirl, roar, and charge, sending them scattering. I had the impression that they enjoyed it, but to leave no doubt of  my good will I would leave out cups of milk and plates of cookies or cheese.
 At the height of their presence they began to come in groups of up to five. They giggled rather loudly in the night and banged around in the bathroom and kitchen while we tried to sleep. The cat would nap all day, tuckered out from the nightly rumpus. They had started doing little favors for Madge and I, finding items for us that we lamented loosing, fixing broken toys, leaving strange little gifts such as unusual coins and glass marbles.
One day I saw Madge issuing commands in her bedroom, “Pick up my socks and put them in the hamper please. And close the window.” They obliged and stood waiting for the next command as if playing a game of mother may I.
In February, things tapered off. They came less often and in smaller numbers. A week passed when none of THOSE was seen or heard. The cat sat in front of the door waiting, tail twitching. Then one night we came in to watch Masterpiece and the door was gone. My mother stood there and stared at the empty part of the wall looking puzzled.
“I thought there used to be a closet here.” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The show’s about to start.” my father answered.
My grandmother shook her head. Madge looked at me. Her lip trembled a little and her eyes got watery, but in her usual style she managed to maintain a straight face. The twins were crunching loudly on a bowl of popcorn. I invited our poor lonesome cat to come sit in my lap and scratched her chin until she remembered how to purr. The sound soothed me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the show. Absently, I gazed on, bathed in the glow and garble of dialogue.
Like Madge, I was saddened by the disappearance of the door, but worse was a nagging fear that by tomorrow I wouldn’t be sure if it had ever been there at all. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure that it was, but the cat still sits in front of the wall sometimes, waiting. Now and then I leave out milk and cookies, just in case.

Ride

The ride. I tell you, it’s numbing. My ass has been bouncing around on this hard back seat forever. Jeff has us listening to Ennio Morricone, which is somewhat enjoyable, but Reed keeps trying to talk over it, so he has to shout to be heard and everyone else screams, ”What?” and he repeats himself even louder. Meanwhile the windows are rolled down so the wind too is roaring in my ears and blowing my hair back. To make matters more difficult Dean keeps drinking out of my water bottle and I can’t tell if he means to or if he’s just clueless.
Twenty minutes ago we were paused by the railroad tracks of some little town, I think it was called Crows Landing. Mostly dirt and fields and sagging houses. The main street had a taco place with those round tables with the permanent umbrellas stuck in their middle, the kind that are made out of plastic or something else hard so they look more like flying saucers than umbrellas. There was also a barber shop, no barber pole or anything so quaint, just a white sign with a head of hair on it, a picture that seemed like it too hailed from 1976 or maybe 81.
Jeff had taken out the map and spread it over the steering wheel and after a few moments of examination he’d said, “The way I see it, we can keep going this way, or we can cut over this mountain right here and hit the 380 which is what we want to do eventually.” Somehow or other we decided that the mountain would be a nice change of pace since we’ve been driving all over the San Joaquin valley for two days straight, looking at fields and orchards and a lot of flat land. All this is Jeff’s idea, a road trip for the band, full of dusty ghost towns and farmland where we can stop and pose for photos to fill the sleeve of our next CD, which of course, we haven’t even started recording.
So here we were bouncing up this sub standard road, the sun gleaming like brass as it sunk, tall wild grains waving around, positively golden under that hot sun. Suddenly there are long horn cattle everywhere, grazing in the rolling hills, standing in the road. I reach my hand out the open window. They are so close I can almost touch them, but I always pull my hand back the instant it seems possible.
I start to shout, “I want to get out and pet one!” Jeff just laughs from behind his mirrored shades but I keep insisting, shouting over the sound track of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, “I really want to touch one!”
Reed is looking at me in the rear view mirror, wisps of dark hair hanging over his brown eyes. The nostrils of his banana nose flair a little, which I know means he’s annoyed or disgusted or something. His gaze shifts from me to Dean and I catch a really strange look in his eye, but he quickly turns his attention back to the road ahead before Dean notices he’s being observed.
I stop shouting to give Reed a break. After all, we’ve still got a long ride ahead of us and I myself am not all that happy with the close quarters. Reed’s been moody all day, looking at all of us as if this was the stupidest God damned bunch of fools he’s ever been stuck with. It doesn’t bother me too much because Reed is generally a little snobby, a feature that I, as a west coast native, attribute to his upbringing in New York. In the last year and a half that I’ve played with him I’ve come to be fascinated with his mannerisms, including his manifestations of annoyance.
Dean is another story. He’s only been around for a month or so. I’m not sure if we’ve ever had a drummer that I did like, but if so, it definitely isn’t Dean. I can’t even say why. Maybe it’s because he’s too tall and gangly and has those pale freckles all over his face, but today the problem is that his breath is atrocious. It’s the main reason I’ve been willing to cope with the added noise of rolled down windows. That and his cracked and peeling lips malingering on my water bottle are wearing on my nerves.
“Look at that.” Reed bellows over the din.
That’s our cue. We all shout, “What?”
“I said LOOK AT THAT!” Reed’s pointing out his open window ahead of the car. Jeff starts slowing down.
“Holy crap.” Jeff yells, “Look at that.”
I do. We’re approaching a little turn off whose main feature is an outcropping of stone covered with swastikas. The thing is at least three times as tall as I am and completely covered in paint. There are even swastikas spray painted in the middle of the road. Jeff pulls over and we all get out to look at the bizarre monument.
I grew up in a semi rural area and there you’d see rocks covered in graffiti along the road, stuff like ‘L.M. heart B.G’ or ‘Fuck’ or even ‘God Bless’, but I have never seen anything quite like this. There’s nothing else visible on any surface of the massive body of stone. It’s swastikas all the way.
“That’s weird huh?” Jeff says and I just shrug. The turn out drops off into a little valley and some cows are down there grazing happily. I go over and look at them and Jeff gets out his camera and takes some shots of the Nazi rock while Dean takes a piss on some bushes and Reed lights a cigarette. After a minute Jeff comes over and stands beside me taking pictures of the animals meandering below.
“What’s that?” he asks pointing at something big and white resting on the rolling brown grass of the little valley.
“A boulder.” I tell him.
“Are you sure?” He asks.
Even though I am sure, I’ve got to prove that I‘m right. I start making my way carefully down the slope. I’m still wondering what would happen if I tried to approach one of the cows but their long horns urge me towards caution. They are all pretty far out of my way and I head straight for the boulder. I slow way down when I‘m about 15 feet away and begin to realize that I am wrong.
My heart starts beating rapidly and I can barely breath. I have a feeling, like I want to run away, but I keep walking right into the stench, because there’s this other urge propelling me, the urge to be sure of what I am seeing. I come right up on it and try not to throw up. It’s a dead bull, solid white, except the head is completely gone and maggots are pouring out of the open neck.
I start waving frantically to Jeff and Reed and Dean. While they scramble down the embankment I make a careful study of the corpse. I look around first of all for the head. I keep thinking it could have died of natural causes, but where is the fucking head? I walk slowly around it and see that its anus is gone and in its place is a burnt out hole, big and perfectly round. The genitals are also gone and there are burns on its back. I wonder where the blood is. It seems like there should be some, but there isn’t. I’ve heard of things like this, but I never dreamed I’d ever encounter it.
By then Jeff and Reed show up, covering their noses and exclaiming things along the lines of
“what the…” and “Holy Shit.” and “Fuck.”
I’m feeling a little out of it, really dizzy, trying to make reasonable scientific observations because it seems terribly important to do so.
“This shit is beyond bizarre...” I hear Jeff say.
“If animal mutilation scares you, then I hate to burst your sense of security, but human beings are being mutilated as well....” Reed announces covering his nose and mouth with his arm. His chest is heaving and it seems like he might be about to hyperventilate.
“What?” Jeff looks at him. Dean has just caught up and joins us near the neck where we are watching the maggots wriggle.
“Gentlemen, some of these alien scum are hostile....” he tells us shaking his dirty blonde head.
I am trembling but I take Jeff’s camera out of his hands.
“Nothing proves aliens did this.” I tell them and start taking pictures. I’ve got this feeling like it’s my responsibility to document this. I can almost picture it being analyzed by the cattle man and the local Sheriff and agents Mulder and Scully. I’m freaking out, but I move as slowly and calmly as I possibly can, trying to stay in control of my shaking. Trying with my critical attention to make it less terrifying
“You seem so sure of that…” Reed challenges, “You do know that it is not only cattle being mutilated, but an entire variety of animals, including humans?”
“It’s not aliens. It's humans with nothing else better to do. Think about it. Bored people do weird stuff. Especially red neck neo nazis.” Jeff says it, but I’ve been thinking it. I just can’t imagine it being that easy to cut off a bull’s head. I wonder what they could have used, and speculate that the bull could have died of natural causes and the skinheads might have come along after the fact and done the mutilating… my head is swimming.
Now Dean clears his throat and tells us,
“I’m an abductee.”
We all stare at him. Even me. This is the guy I’ve been sitting in the back seat with all day, watching him eat my pork rinds and slurp my water. You think you know a guy.
“Nothing bad has happened to me.” He continues. “My girlfriend at the time was impregnated though, somehow.”
“What?!” Jeff erupts, sweat pouring over his brow, “You fucking moron! ‘Somehow’? She was your fucking girl friend! It was probably your baby! I’ll tell you what got the cow, it’s those mother fucking maggots, not hogus bogus aliens!”
Jeff’s face and neck have turned all red. He looks like he wants to strangle Dean, or maybe Reed, but can’t decide which one. This doesn’t surprise me. Jeff’s got a temper. We’ve been recording music together for seven years and have gone through dozens of bass players and drummers. Our deal is that he gets to be an asshole to everyone but me. What does throw me for a loop is Dean’s response.
“You’re the true moron. They’ll take your daughter, your son, and at the end of the day, all you’d do is call your own children morons. You deserve to have your adrenal glands eaten as if it were cocaine! Aliens don't eat our adrenal glands, right? Bunch of bullshit.” He kicks the ground and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Yup. Luckily I got a chip in my head,” he withdraws one hand to tap his temple then puts it back again, “that prevents me from spoiling when it hits. This oil spill in the gulf, is just the beginning...” he stalks away from us in the direction of the sinking sun.
Jeff seems to be stunned, because he doesn’t do any more shouting. He waits till Dean is out of ear shot and whispers,
“He’s nuts.”
Even Reed is rubbing the stubble on his chin and eyeing Dean nervously.
“Yeah.” He says quietly, “I mean, this cow could have been mutilated by Aliens, but Dean… he’s just plain psycho. You remember when we stopped in that grocery store in Escalon yesterday? I couldn’t tell you because we’ve all been jammed together in that piece of shit car, but he got into a fight with the butcher over the price of ground sirloin. He’s about to pull the guy over the counter, he actually reached out and grabbed his collar! I’m like, what are you doing buying ground beef anyway? We aren’t grilling. He just took the meat and stormed off, so I finished getting drinks and snacks and stuff and when I came out of the store he was standing out side, EATING THE RAW HAMBURGER. He tried to throw it away so I wouldn’t see what he was doing, but I saw it.”
Now I’m really nauseated. We stand there looking at each other and at Dean’s back.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Jeff says, then he looks at me and Reed meaningfully and adds, “Without Dean.”
“What?” I say, “We’re just going to leave him here? With that?” I gesture to the mutilated cow. Jeff nods slowly.
“Don’t worry.” Reed says, “I’m sure ‘that’ is a picnic as far as he’s concerned. He’ll probably eat it, maggots and all.”
I consider it. Dean might really be an abductee. If he is, maybe the cow really was mutilated by Aliens. Maybe the Aliens are Nazis. Maybe they’ll give him a ride home. I’m feeling really altered, as if I just swallowed a handful of pills or something. My heart is racing and my skin is crawling. My mind lurches. Maybe there are no aliens and Dean is a homicidal maniac. He craves raw meat. He doesn’t respect boundaries. Just like the red neck Nazis, he’s going to cut our heads off and… I mean, we all know Dean is weird, we just don't’ know how weird...
”Right now,” Jeff says, “We’ve got to go right now, come on.”
We three start to walk hurriedly away from the headless steer. The valley is full of shadows and the sun is out of sight leaving the sky streaked with pink. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of anymore. Nazis? Aliens? Dean? Somehow, all of us moving quickly together sets me off. I start to run and Jeff and Reed start to run too. We three climb frantically up the hill and scramble into the car locking the doors as if something were about to get us.
“Hurry up.” Reed is saying as Jeff fumbles getting the key in the ignition.
Dean hasn’t even missed us yet. Jeff starts the car up and takes off up the incline. Within a matter of minutes, trees are lining the road and we’re in a whole new terrain. The stereo is silent now and we’ve rolled up the windows and none of us says a word. I look over at the empty seat beside me covered in crumbs and half emptied water bottles and I think ‘We left Dean.’
The forest outside is growing dark around us and I shiver. Nobody says a word.