Bound To The Moment

When he got locked up, he knew it was my fault.  He never failed to remind me, if he wanted some plastic toy from Kentucky Fried Chicken or a new shirt from the skate shop, he somehow twisted every particle in the air between us and then that inner itch began to tickle.  That subtle and yet overwhelming wave of guilt that worked its way in from the extremities until its firm grasp was tightening around my chest. 
I spent 6 years trying to make up for one sentence said to the wrong person. Six years trying to dig my way out of sorrow and regret with money. Shirts, shoes, cigarettes, cds, concert tickets, milk, orange soda, hot dogs, art supplies, a silk screen press, heroin, lots and lots of heroin.
I worked and he spent as he wanted and I knew it was all because of that one sentence blurted out at dawn in the police station. One damn sentence condemned him as a felon forever. A string of words put him in minimum security jail for two months.
When I first saw him in that bright orange cotton pajama uniform and had to pick up a telephone to talk to him through the glass in the visitation booth, I thought I would crumble. I ran around town meeting with lawyers and bail bondsmen, I looked for an apartment and picked classes for the upcoming term.  I went to his court dates wearing the purple paisley skirt he liked and every gemstone I owned for protection. I put the red garnet ring his mother had sent me on my left hand and walked into the courtroom, knowing I had put him there, knowing I needed to get him out.
I did what I could for him, depositing extra money into his ‘inmate account’ so he could buy extra food. I went back to my job and saved money for his bail, I accepted the collect phone calls and then worked like hell to pay them off. 
When he was sentenced to two months I went to visit him faithfully every Sunday. He had been placed at “the farm,” the low security building by the city dump. It was a one story facility without fences or barbed wire, there were cats and peacocks that roamed the grounds. There he was issued white linen pants and a thick jeans jacket. We were allowed contact on those visits and he had me smuggle in cigarettes under my jacket, which I always hated to do.
He got a job in the kitchen and I was impressed when he told me he made a mini mountain made of melon pieces and parsley. I thought that he found ways to make even the worst of circumstances beautiful.  He became the resident artist and drew pictures for the wives and girlfriends of other inmates.  On Valentine’s weekend he presented me with a drawing of a sleeping mermaid with her arms wrapped around a heart-shaped moon.
I would arrive early on Sundays and be one of the first people in line, which was the way I insured we would have the full visit time of two hours. We would kiss and I would wear a skirt and sometimes he would touch my clit and I would leave there sopping wet.
Six months after he got out our troubles really began.  The heroin became a necessity. I lived with the fear of death or jail. I wanted to save him, I wanted to be with him, the guy who drew and made me laugh, but I had not seen him in years. 
I kept trying to make up for my initial wrong, but it just never worked- he only got worse. He was out of jail, but I had never left that one moment, that damn sentence, those few little words.

Ready Aim Fire

Ready,
Aim,
Fire…
Ready… once again, as the circle returns. 
I can almost taste it as it curves along those invisible walls that make up the magnetic fields of our existence. The sound of that bullet, bursting forth in anticipated explosion, waiting, waiting as it pierces the air with hot precision. 
We wait as the circle curves back and we prepare once more.  All of us, here with our attention, as the stars tell stories from above. The horses neigh in the background beneath leafy trees. The smell of sweet, crisp water overwhelms the charcoal, earthy odor of our shots.
We lay in the brush. The dry leaves press against my sweaty chest.  With one eye closed I find my target, alive and filled with force, his gun glittering in the moonlight.
The sky, always dark with wide clouds that shift and turn. In the silence between bullets, before I draw from the endless cycle and aim once again, I turn towards the road.  In just a moment I feel its long dusty tongue lick the dirt from my rough skin. Its gaze of passive indifference opens like a wide tunnel and I see myself on horseback, riding west beneath a sky so vast and endless it brings tears and fills my chest with indescribable longing.
The road, it cares neither for the sun, moon or children of stars. I am nothing to it, it takes the salt of my death and turns me into the path itself.  I am the ground and move over purple mountains taking the silent message of choice up and up, zigzagging forest-covered mountains, down through the open ranges of the yellow valleys, through rain, over desert so parched and white that nothing lives, nothing can live.  The sound of bullets ding and clatter from above. The horses stir and I squint once more.
Ready,
Aim,
Fire,
Ready...

The Last Tree

The choppers whirled a few feet away, sending still green oak leaves from their branches. It circled, waiting for confrontation.  It circled, adding swift currents of anxious air. 
This was not the sweet sound of evacuation. It was not civilization coming with dry walls in the midst of a flood. It was the brutal force of empire. It was metal and strength looming from above. It was reinforced steel and bullets. It was brute strength.
There was one more tree left, the rest had been cleared away.  Chopped, roots dug, bark mulched.
I had been there when there was still a small grove of oak trees. It had been a sunny Saturday. Blue. A soft wind that carried summer on its wings. The earth had been covered in a blanket of tan leaves that were hard and brittle and sharp along the edges.
The spirit was still young then. There was still a chance, they thought, to save the grove. A small group had gathered around a guitarist.  He leaned against a tree, eyes closed in concentration, lyrics forming on his lips.
My steps echoed with crunching leaves, adding a bit of unnoticed rhythm.  The leaves, one step closer to the earth. Dust. The trees were a canopy. Late afternoon light sprinkled in like glittering jewels. 
A barefoot man in cutoff jeans walked through the grove holding burning sage.  A thin, button-up shirt, unbuttoned now, exposed his smooth hairless chest.  Skunk and earth.  Smoke looked like genie dreams in the rays of sunlight.  
Close to the sidewalk, a few bicycle  activists distributed bruised apples and oranges collected from the nearby farmer’s market. The small space was alive. Young girls in wide skirts.  Old women with long white hair that had seen this all before, and yet still hoped. 
"We will save it," they claimed.  They would.  They wanted to.
Months later, the university was through with games.  The guitarist, apples, the sage.  All forcibly removed.  The squirrels, birds, they were all gone. The police had built a metal chain link fence around the grove, trapping a few lone tree sitters that had climbed into the thick oak branches as a last resort.
I had almost been one of those girls. I had almost taken my sleeping bag and gone into the night. There could have been moon light, a stolen kiss, but that was a different path. I stayed in my blue carnival house.  Warm, cool-hued and imagining, never regretting a night under the stars that would never be.  
There was a different tree to climb and I listened to him sooth me like water.  Cool.  Tranquil.  His words dripped down my ears.
The fence went up, metal and cold, doing what it was designed to do. The crowds watched, pushed to the other side of the street, their hands clutching the barrier, watching as the chainsaws came. They cut every old oak in the grove.  They turned a home to little pieces, they turned it into dust. 
Just one lone tree remained.  The barefoot activists. Just a few thorns left.
Force was nothing new, force stretched out, trickling into every dark hole.  Fifty years. It was not about war or free speech, it was only trees. Nothing had changed, the eyes of the country still blinked in hazy sleep.
Far worse had been done, more violence stood tall on batons, ready for another skull. 
The police came, the fingernails on the octopus, the lowest level that would squeeze into those holes, bashing the centers with their metal-toed boots. Trained men.  Guns, bullets, gas, masks, batons, handcuffs.  Helicopters. Once again.
There were just a few left. The only animals now remained high in their branches, waiting for the inevitable.  Barefoot, eating granola, waving signs, burning sage.  Surrounded by gas and guns, the tree could offer no protection. Its own death was coming. 
The grove was gone.  Steel bars and cement were no longer a bad dream.  The hard hats were ready.  Plans.  Fiberglass.  The obstacles were cleared and soon it would all be over. Most would forget this ever happened.
I listened to it on the radio, driving early. Bright morning light coming through the windshield.  News of the final standoff. The barefoot people came down. They said they had been assured no charges would be pressed.  The university later denied making that promise.  And the final tree came down. 

Poem Of The Dragon

We were all sitting around in a circle in the living room when the doorbell rang.  Bright and clear.  Like Isabel’s voice on green hills. It rang again as I day dreamed. I jolted awake, eager to see what lay on the other side.
Standing illuminated in the glow from our weak porch light was a green dragon. He was not the giant lizard of old fairy tales, larger than ten buildings, but he was taller, thicker, and more scaly than me. Standing at least seven feet tall, I craned my neck backwards, feeling the back of my head touch my back as I stared up at him. I could see my own stunned reflection staring back at me in his glassy eyes. 
I thought that I detected green and scales, smelt burning embers that somehow reminded me of clean wind just above the clouds, but I was most entranced by these smooth yellow eyes.  I sunk into them, for as I said, I could see myself as he saw me, a nervous woman stunned by a creature she had only read about, but I could also see my form as the world he came from would see me.
I was blue and purple, a nebulous shape that was held together only by the tiniest strings, like blowing scarves stuck to a clothesline in spring.  In his world, my flesh had already fallen, my colors were already singing. 
Seeing the mixture of confusion and wonder in my eyes, sensing that perhaps the neighbors would begin to feel that something was amiss, somehow telepathically as nosy neighbors can, he cleared his throat and a few fiery embers escaped his jaws as he opened his mouth.
I shifted attention from his eyes to the tiny bits of flame that rose into the night like orange fairies. 
“Excuse me for that.  I am here for the writer’s meeting.  I am Maurice.  I brought some of my work.  I hope I am not to late.”
For a moment my mouth would not move, I must have lost control as I voyaged into his world. Coming back into mine, I could feel my tongue was stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Pursing my mouth together, I found the little bit of moisture that remained. 
The underlying sweetness of his voice echoed between us, as clear and bright as the doorbell had been.  Like Isabel’s voice on a green hillside. 
We met eyes once again, “Oh yes, come in,” I managed to say, using my best hostess voice.  Opening the door wider and stepping aside, he crossed the threshold, forever entering our tiny world within a world. 
As he passed, coming from the night into the daylight we created, I looked down at his hands, where hands would have been if he were human.  What he had were scaly green arms that ended in long yellowish-white claws that doubled as hands. Using both claws he held onto a thin manila folder, the kind used in offices around the world, which I assumed contained his written words.
It was only a few steps from the door to the living room.  As I followed his thin trail of smoky air, I saw the stunned looks waiting in their chairs, looking the same as I must have.
“This is Maurice,” I announced.  “He’s a writer here for the meeting.” 
Several people nodded obediently, taking the information in, the lifelong schooling in American social politeness not failing them yet. 
“Maurice, I’m going to get another chair from the kitchen for you.” 
Stepping away I could hear the awkward silence beginning, though just as that void opened, it was filled with the steady voice of Chester, perfectly timed to avoid any crash in energy.
“What do you write Maurice?”
“Mostly poetry.  I just started writing really.”
“That’s ok. Everyone is welcome here.”
I walked back into the room with a slightly worn metal folding chair in my hands, seeing polite nods from the gathered writers as the encouraging statement reverberated around the room. 
“Here’s a chair for you.  Let’s kind of... rearrange the chairs so there’s still a clear circle.” 
We took a moment to do this.
I could feel slight tension in the room, more palpable than just the usual bit of nerves that seemed to accompany all the writers that came to our house.  Jen slipped me a nervous look, her eyes were questioning, perhaps looking at me like I understood something that she didn’t, wondering, most likely, what a dragon was doing in our house.  I had no answer, I looked away.
Chester began:
“Ok, thanks for coming everyone.  For those of you that haven’t been here before, we take turns reading our work, or someone else can read it for you if you like.  Afterwards, we discuss it.  When you make a comment, try to give your impression and reactions. Talk about the way it made you feel or if there were any parts that were confusing. In general, try to avoid saying if it was good or not. Stick to how it made you feel.  Ok Jen, do you want to go first?”
“Sure.  This is the second half of the story I read last week.”
She looked down at her lap, to the story that was already sitting there on neatly typed pages, and began to read. Her words went into me.  The same flowing, evocatively descriptive work I was used to. 
Interested in reactions, I looked around the room.  Maurice sat with his eyes closed. The scales between his eyes were ruffled as though listening intently.  Small bursts of steam shot out from his nose in intervals, growing more steady and thick as the tension in her story mounted. 
I looked up and noticed Scott was not watching Jen reading either. His attention was on Maurice, watching his recurring bouts of steam and hiss, entranced as I was. Scott’s eyes were wider than usual as he watched steam evaporate delicately into the middle of the room. Looking up suddenly he caught me watching him, his eyes full of questions. I was as surprised as he was.
When Jen was done reading, I snapped back into writer’s meeting mode, listening as each person gave their reactions.  We went around the circle, taking turns.  Maurice opened his mouth to speak and more orange embers escaped.
“I felt like crying when the baby was drowned by the crashing waves.  It was beautifully described.  I could really feel the emotional pain.” 
There were nods from those around the circle. 
Chester went next, reading in his barely accented voice the short story of one sunny afternoon in his childhood.  Maurice did not close his eyes this time, he stared at Chester, his yellow eyes growing wider as the dialogue unfolded like a sweet smelling flower.  Smoldering smoke came from his ears, slithering up into the air in quiet movement.  Jen coughed, reacting to the extra smoke in the room.  Chester coughed every once in a while, giving Maurice a curious look every time he did so.
When it was Maurice’s turn, all eyes turned towards him. 
“Ok, this is a short poem I wrote a few months ago. I have it memorized.” 
There were nods all around the room.  I felt my heart begin to pound as he readied himself, that uncomfortable feeling in my chest when the energy has mounted and soon we will be at the cliff’s edge.
He closed his eyes, his wide bulging lids seemed to be made of a thin green skin, though I thought I could detect the yellow of his eyes glowing beneath them like little lamps. 
The room was quiet.  The skin around his mouth began to move, twitching as though out of his control.  It went on like this for half a minute and we exchanged nervous glances, for we were not used to silence among us. 
Then the scaly skin on his nose began to twitch as well, joining he erratic bursts of his closed mouth.  A grumble came from deep within him, somewhere in his gut, though it sounded like a call from another world.  He opened his mouth and several deep and extended syllables emerged, through none of them sounded like the English he had spoken to us all night. 
I craned by neck towards him, hoping the gesture would bring me closer to understanding. Just as I did, I was met by a wall of pure fire.  I could smell singed carpet, I saw the black spots of melted nylon. 
I looked at Sophie who sat across from Maurice, her long blond hair now singed to the ears.  Maurice opened his eyes. One final burst of steam rose from his ears. 
He looked around the room.
“The fire comes out involuntarily when I get into a sort of trance state.  I am so sorry.”
“No. No,” said Mike, “I could see that you were really into it.  Must be very emotional work. I have to say though, I didn’t really understand it.”
“Yes, it is not really meant to be understood, just shared.  Perhaps you know what I mean.”
There were nods once again all around the room.  We held another moment of shared silence, taking in the truth of what he had said.
Chester coughed once and then cleared his throat.
“Well, thank you everyone for coming. We’ll be meeting here again in a few weeks. Everyone is most welcome to come,” he looked right at the dragon.
We rose, stretching our limbs.  We all shook hands and I grabbed Maurice’s cold claw as we said goodbye.
“Thanks for coming, hope we see you again.” 
He nodded with a smile,  “Yes, possibly.”
The door closed, everyone was gone. The smell of smoke still remained.

Almost Forgotten

Out comes the rain
playing with the spiders that hide in my thoughts
out comes the rain
washing me out.
pools and puddles
all that blackness reminding me of the leaky drain

rain
wash me away
every part that answers when they call my name

were it easy
were it easy
were it easy the rain might
grow bitter

I remember
when I looked into the moon
and saw them kissing.
We sat in a café as the bright silver plate filled the sky.
And then it rained and I came
Driving through puddles
The freeway was just a long river towards
Blue eyes and a sea hidden by clouds.

I thought the spiders would slip out
But more came in
You pushed them inside me
On those rare occasions.
You pushed them inside me with all those
Cigarettes and the tiny little lies that turned into mountains.
You pushed them inside those places I let you carve.

When you went away
The pools felt like they would not end.
When you went away the clouds lifted
When you went away there was joy
When you went away I opened for the first time.
Caressing the wounds, I let you fade.
And then today- your birthday.
I had almost forgotten.

Has the rain found you
and all those spiders you sent?
Happy birthday,
I am hidden in the clouds,
may we never meet again.

Perfection On The Corner

Parker sipped at the jar that held her morning cup of tea.  Just 15 minutes after the water had boiled and the milk was added to the decaf earl gray, all the aromas and flavors were blended and it was now the perfect temperature.  She held the jar with her right gloved hand, finding the glass too hot for the touch, but just the right heat for her tongue. Steam danced in brief swirling movements off the top of the liquid, smelling of earthy bergamot and sweet cream. 
She guided the cool plastic steering wheel with her left, ungloved hand, turning it expertly as the road curved just slightly to the left, and then a moment later, to the right.  On her left was the Alemany farmer’s market, which she knew started very early. 
It was 7:30 and already there were groups of two or three middle aged Asian women crossing the street, leaving with heavy bags of produce and vegetables she could not name. She surveyed the sea of white canopied tents from afar as she waited for the light to change. When it did, she was off, scanning the road for potential hazards, as Mr. Dutton had taught her in driver’s ed. 
She went underneath a freeway overpass and was once again delighted to see the mural on the large cement pillar that held up part of the overpass bride.  It was bright, with all the rainbow represented.  The painting wrapped around the wide cylinder and there were huge purple and yellow flowers that guided the eye smoothly towards the predominant subject: the torso of a smiling black woman nearly enveloped in foliage and colors.
She hit another light as she emerged from the shadow of the bridge.  She sat, watching the various lanes of cars take turns moving through the intersection. A Beatles song came on the radio and she sang along with the lyrics. 
“Jai Guru Deva. Om... Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
She noticed the vacant lot on the corner edged with wild fennel over five feet tall.  Where some of a fence remained, scrawled graffiti speckled it like bird droppings on a rusted car. 
“Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
She sang, and it was one of those moments, so early in the morning, when everything seemed perfectly in place. All the thousands of moments that had filled her lifetime, the people she had known- those that had been forgotten and lost, the moments she remembered and the pain that had etched itself into her story, everything at that corner seemed so delicately perfect.
It was now a familiar sensation that seemed mostly to come on these early morning drives, sometimes with a warm jar of tea in her hand and a sense of something at the edge of her skin and awareness more beautiful than she could ever really describe, a wonder that went beyond the knowable.
“Jai Guru Deva. Om... Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
As a tear swelled up and pushed itself over the lip of her eyelid, she remembered that she had cried at the very same spot during a Beatles song just a few weeks before. The same song. The same moment repeated.  She let the tear flow, letting the tiny river stay on her cheek tingling with life. 
Breathe, she remembered.  Her chest expanded as the light changed to green and she pressed on the pedal.
Later she would think about the corner- what was it about that spot, so early in the morning, that brought her to life?  Later she would caress the edges of consciousness and marvel at the mystery of the recurring story.
But for now, before the human remembered itself, she sang and let the tears fall as they would. 

Origins

He introduced himself as Guisseppe to the Italian waiter- is that what the name Joseph translates to?
“We’re from Livorno.”
When the waiter was gone I asked if he had just made some names up.
“No! That’s where your great-grandmother is from.  A lot of the streets are named after the family- Romero.”
It took him 25 years to tell me that.
“At most the family lived in Egypt for a few generations, but it might have been less than that.” 
I looked around the small elegant restaurant, the twilight of the night seeping in through the plate glass windows.  We were four stories up, the small tea light glittered over the white tablecloths.
I always felt like there was so much they kept from me- why 25 years to mention that the family was from Italy? 
"Your grandfather’s people came from Israel- before it was even called Israel. They lived there before it was even Palestine.”
“What did they call it?”
He was silent.
My mom sat there quietly.  She flipped through some of the free tourist magazines she got from the concierge at her hotel.  She always seemed bored when it came to family history- for years she had deflected questions about immigration and national origin- I wondered if her past was too painful- the father that abandoned her, the other side of the family she rejected after her mother died when she was so young. 
She abruptly put the papers down. They crinkled and we looked at her.
“Do you use your Costco card much?” 
I nodded, stunned momentarily by the banality of the question. 
My dad ignored her. 
“I want to buy a book called The Jews of Egypt.  It’s rare, someone is selling it for 150.00 on Amazon.”
“You should get it, it’s not too much for a rare book.”
“Your grandfather was a Zionist. The dream of the Zionists was to go to Israel and work on the land.  Through history the Jews had never been allowed to own property- that’s why they went into certain professions, like bankers and doctors and merchants.  But the Zionists wanted to be farmers and work the land and be in Israel.”
“Why did it have to be there?  If they wanted to farm, why did it have to be on that particular piece of the planet?”
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Because it's where the Jewish religion started. If they didn’t go there, they might as well go to the moon! It was only place they could go. There was no Jewish population in Egypt until commerce and management brought them back.”
Later we stopped by their hotel room so my mom could get an extra sweater.  My mom asked me if I had talked to any of the old girlfriends from high school. 
“Not since I missed Aryn’s wedding.” 
I saw a look of sadness go over her face and I realized I had said it only to hurt her. 
I could have gone to the wedding if I had really wanted to, but when they withdrew their initial offer to help pay for the trip, I decided against it. 
She lashed back.
“I don’t know what’s important to you anymore, going to a wedding, being in a relationship, starting a career…” 
She trailed off. She had never known what was important to me, not in high school, certainly not now.
They were about to drive me home. My mom turned around and looked back at the room.
“You know, if there’s an emergency, we can ask the hotel to bring in a cot for you to sleep on.” 
I nodded, my mind filling with visions of fires and floods as we walked down the carpeted hallway towards the shiny elevator. 
“Tomorrow we are going to see Les, my old friend from college,” she said. 
“You mean More.” 
My mom looked at my dad with a smile.
“You’ve been saying that for years, his name is not ‘more.’”