Warning Track

It seems easy enough, to rush out the open doors, jump from one blue warning track to another, off the side and that would be that. When you can't see how far the fall is it could be anything. Inside I know the way is not long down, the tracks are there, maybe I would be electrocuted or scrape my knees and otherwise be fine. Or a train would come. Knowing this city though.

For a moment the doors are open and the choice is mine. The ground is wet with recent rain, maybe I wouldn't be as graceful as I am in my head. Bounding, Step One, Step Two, flying into the air like a gazelle (whenever people talk about grace they talk about gazelles). The man who would be king, falling and singing, wondering how many people were watching him. I could pick a better time of day.

It seems easy enough because it is easy enough, there's no challenge, nothing to lose, not really, save what you've already given up. All it is is the night air, hanging moisture, the thrill and exploitation of it all. What a sight to behold, what a wondrous thing, what a wide open door begging to be used. People only walk through it. They only walk.

Odd Devil, Rare Witch

I've woken up against a sound. Hello, I say. Hello, is anybody there? Lamplight and faint water from the cracks between our houses. A shuffle, moving. Footsteps, or me along the sofa? Hello, I say. Hello. Is anybody there.

I live in a vacant jungle, too many walls and too much height and room as far as eyes can soar. Dim becomes dark and dark becomes anything. The night brings endless chances and I find a way to sleep somehow. There is dripping, dripping, constant dripping. A shadow flashes on the wall. I am looking through the window. It is a mirror. I am standing outside.

We wave to each other. Am I some rare witch? A prophet with a follower of one? I am always asking, desperate, with nobody asking me. And so I am, stretched out in an unmade coffin, sinking down like the forgotten sun, until there's nothing left but noises.

I say hello. I ask if anybody's there. Footsteps. The odd devil or two. The hollow call of bottles. Sudden laughter comes from right outside my house, on the street, I rush to the window, someone must be there, the light must show me something, the light must show me something, it must, it has to, it has to. But through the glass, night. It is a mirror. And all I see is myself.

Editor

A drink is set down in front of me, it was ordered by that girl over there. It's the same and I was going to switch it up, but I didn't think things like this actually happened and she's pretty and I'm not going to mess this up. Bartender gives me a look like I have this in the bag, I guess she's seen enough to know. I walk over to her, the other girl. Thanks, I say.

I just walked in for myself. It was cool and the air was fresh and I was only walking back. Tomorrow could be a day where I get things done or where I let things get away from me, a day that just sits there, and at this point it's too early to tell. It's only my second drink after all. She has on a blue shirt, even in here with the lights down low I can tell it's blue as hell. I can tell she's like me, just looking for a quiet drink on a nice night or the other way around or whatever. We didn't expect it.

She just started a new job, a higher-up position at a lower-down company but it's new and it's exciting and they sell standing desks to people. I've read that they work and I've read that they're nonsense but she swears by them. She asks me what I do and I say I'm in between things at the moment and hope that's enough. What things, she asks me. About to go to work for a place that makes big, soft, comfy chairs for people to rest in at their desks but I hope she'll still talk to me. She laughs and I'm relieved.

Has she been here before? Yes. Does she live around here? Maybe. I love this place, I tell her, even though it's my first time, which doesn't make it a lie, but I imply a history. I live around here but I keep that to myself, I don't want to come off as one of those guys. Which, really, we're all those guys, some of us are just better at hiding it. I get the next round. She's drinking dirty martinis with extra olives, like she's in a movie or something. She looks like she could be in a movie. Maybe someone in here's watching us, looking at us, thinking we look like a scene in a movie. Cut to street. Cut to cab. Cut to bed. Cut to black.

She's already helped me, this woman, this editor. She got the drink, gave the look, made the move, she started something. Whether or not we finish it is anyone's guess. But the muck and the mire, the fat trimmed on the cutting room floor, she's done so much work for me already. She's sitting there in her blue blouse and all I want to do is thank her, and I do, I smile and I ask questions and she is smart and passionate and wants people to be healthier. She's light and cool and her air is fresh and why don't I stop into bars more often? Why have I always thought ill of being alone?

Cut to street. Can I see you again sometime. She doesn't live here. Stops a cab. She's getting on a plane tomorrow morning, today, this morning, in eight or so hours. She kisses me and tells me good luck with my next thing, it never would've worked out between us anyway, I want people to sit, and she wants them to stand. She wants them to walk. She wants them to lead healthy lives. Cab drives away. Somewhere a bird is singing, but it can't be too close to morning, because everywhere around me is pitch black.

Envy

It's happening. I'm starting to look up to people younger than me. Following their lives, wanting what they have, wishing for their success. As a child, thirty seems so old. Baseball players were adults, they still seem like they're more adult than me. Will I be fifty, sixty, seventy-five, looking at boys one-third my age, wondering what I'll be when I grow up?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. I am sick of envying children.

A Separate Set of Facts

I've looked at you and weighed the pros and cons, wondered about saying the slightest thing that could be considered an insinuation. It's a fine line I'm walking, I think, and I think you're walking it with me. The ones that have come before me, they put me together and opened me up and configured that a smile means this and a laugh means that. I've turned around and told others the same, made others like me, turned others away from the truth. I worry about being Good. Everyone and their lenses and their separate set of facts. I was told the world was one thing and I'm living somewhere else, and as it continues to shift and change and build and die I will do what I can to keep up but I know it will never be enough, I know that now and I have to know it forever. So when I look at you, and I hear that smile, and I see that laugh, I can only know what it means when it comes from me, which is all any of us have. I'm in the dark but I'm finding my way out, I think. I'm making what amounts to progress. I'm making what amounts, I think, to a difference.

Shake

We were seven and finding out about ourselves. We didn't know what cool was but we had an idea, we knew what we liked. He was the only kid who lived close to me and so that meant we were friends. He had a cop for a dad and he wouldn't show me his gun and even at that age I understood.

We played in the woods, carving knives from branches and darts from twigs and stealing cigarettes we were too afraid to inhale. We had a handshake that was a little too long and went a little too far. At seven you think the friends you have are the friends you'll always have. You will stay like hat forever, or if not forever, well, ten seems so far away.

We shared our childhoods and I don't know where he is. I imagine he loves down the road from where he used to, maybe he got into the family business, maybe he hides his gun from his son. Maybe he worries about his son doing the things we used to do. But we turned out all right enough.

Tricky Bit

It is 4:30 in the morning and someone is either playing music or agreeing with someone very loudly in a low voice over and over. Now that I'm up all I hear is the slight bass tones of a late night annoyance and it might as well be blasting by my bedside. This is when the tricky part comes in, because what do I do about it? Where do I go from here? Do I fight against it, do I start my day?

I try to find a place where I can rest aside it, a pulse, something methodical and mother-like, revert it to something else. But the truth is it isn't beautiful and it isn't methodical and it isn't poetic. It is late, and I have to be up soon, and the kids next door listen to their music very, very loudly.

That Place There

He watched as they walked by him to the car, the windows up, tinted beyond the law, and they got in one by one, sliding until he couldn't see any of them at all. A face appeared from the darkness inside, it had gotten so dark sometime, the days were getting shorter without him even knowing. And the face said, get in. And looking around he could see that the place where he was standing was just as dark as where they were sitting, and at least, in that place there, he would be with those he knew, and they could go, they could put distance between, and end up almost anywhere.

Marco Polo

We would put bandanas over our eyes and try to find each other in the back yard. We would direct each other into trees, smashing noses and scraping knees and maybe even get a lip or two bitten. Implicit trust is a dangerous thing to discover as a child. Learning to wield it, learning that wielding it is even an option, coupling it with a kid's inherent cruelty. We learned how to hate each other that summer. Then we learned that hurting and hating, it isn't such a big deal, not when you're good friends.

Yawn

And you were yawnin' and I was yawnin', too, but I was holdin' 'em in because I didn't wanna seem like I was bored of ya or anythin'. And I guess that if I had let 'em go then maybe you would have realized how much you were yawnin', or at least seen that, sure, we were on the same page. It doesn't necessarily mean anythin', it doesn't mean I'm borin' or you're borin' or even anythin' like that. All's it means is that you're tired, right, your brain, it needs oxygen, you need to be gettin' on. Only I didn't want ya to know my body was tellin' me to be gettin' on. 'Cause I liked bein' there, even if I was bein' torn apart by the chance of slumber.

Yarn

I saw this and I thought of you. It a scrabbly ball of yarn, either made of several colors or made of one and transformed over time. It's both warm and cool, if that makes sense. Not to the touch, to the touch it is soft, it's worn, it's yarn, it's feels how it's supposed to feel. It is the start of something, it is made only to be made into something more. And so, naturally, I thought of you.

It's the size of a softball, or almost. It's falling apart. I've never seen the center. It was made by someone. It has potential. I would love to bat it around like a cat. I would like to send it spiraling down a hill and see where it ends. It looks small but it might be big, I know it's bigger than it is. Somewhere it has brothers and sisters in sweaters and socks, a family spread out across who knows where. But it sits here, unused, in the palm of my hand taken from a basket filled with others just like it, filled with just as much potential, and just as much potential to be squandered.

I saw this and I thought of you and squeezed it tight. Feeling and remembering, hoping that its future could have something to do with me, shaking my head, knowing better.

A Knife Like That

You would blink and blink again, as if that would changed something, undo the glitch in the matrix, change the words that your ears just heard. You'd ask me to repeat those words, because surely you didn't hear them right, of course you didn't. How could I, me, your friend, be telling you what I'm telling you, and twisting the knife like that. How could I be pulling this blood, these feelings, how could I pry you open on purpose. And it's not that I'm prying you open. If anything I'm prying open myself, letting myself indulge in experiences I'd never dream of. And, yes, there's always going to be collateral damage, and, yes, this time it's you. But it's been me before. And it will be me again. And I know that, somewhere, you understand. Even if you can't see it now for all the blood.

Dropped

She's supposed to say something, I'm sure of it. We've been here before and it never ends like this. I wait patiently, I wait, maybe she's taking license. She needs to feel whatever she needs to feel, she needs to get there, even though I know she's gotten there before and she's gotten there quick than this.

And then I'm thinking maybe it's my fault. That maybe I said the wrong thing. We've gone through it so many times before, my body takes over for my mind, I get lazy, sloppy, maybe I said something wrong. Something close but no cigar. And now she's waiting for me to go, and I'm waiting for her to speak, and this is who we are now.

Pittsburgh Blue

He liked his steaks burnt on the outside, raw on the inside. They called it Pittsburgh Blue. That's what he said. Crunchy and black and soft and bloody. He supposed it was the best of both worlds. A shell, keeping safe what was inside. He felt powerful, he imagined, consuming in essence himself. Thrown into the fire, however briefly, filled with all the life he had to give, but wiser. He was raw on the inside, he knew he was. But outside, outside he had been through hell.

More and Less

"You sound more and more like your father every day." Whether or not it was true, he took it as a good sign. Because every day he remembered less and less what he sounded like. One day, he thought, I'll be able to hear him say my name, I'll say his back, I will talk to him all myself. I will listen.

Look West

Look west, he said. You will see the sky doing amazing things. I turned and turned until I saw a streak of orange and a flash of violet. A saw a wall of cloud. I saw the sky doing what it does. Every day it is amazing. Every day it is there, keeping us in. A blanket of cosmos even the most brilliant do not understand. And we look up and say look west. Standing tip-toe on the dusk of every little single thing that is to come.

A Man Passing Through

When I said I was only in town for the night she said maybe I could set her up with my friend, since he lived here and all. What kind of an equation is that? I've been the one who's here, I've been talking to you for the last hour. And while you may not know me a lot you certainly know me more than whatever friend I told you I was with. A man passing through, asking questions, trying his best, has less of a chance than a man you've never heard of, never spoken to, who shares your postal code. It's a funny world we live in, this funny little world we've made.

Under the Piano

My cat sits and listens to me under the piano. By the pedals, curled up and tail moving happily about, not to the rhythm but never quite against it. It's taken her months to get here. She started out on the carpet behind me, magically appearing when I'd get to the thirteenth bar. She does not recognize herself in the mirror. She will not recognize the radio or the television, but she recognizes me. She can comprehend the feeling, what's moving through me is moving through her. And I never pulled her tail but once it got caught beneath the damper pedal, and I pressed down, and I expected her to cry out with that sustained chord. But there she stayed. And I was as convinced them as I am now, that she knew it was an accident, and that that's how the music needed to sound, and that it was within her so profoundly that she couldn't feel pain. Which is a lot to put on a cat, I know. But it's happened to me, and it's a lot to put on a human being.

Smashed

I saw him smash the bottle against her head and run away. The crowd was so thick, everyone was smashing something, yelling and pushing and laughing. She hit the ground, the middle of the street, people around her laughed. They're smashing and laughing, she's bleeding on the ground and not getting up. I leave my friends and go to her, checking if she's conscious. I'm not a doctor, I don't know what I'm doing, I move her, drag her to the sidewalk, maybe it's a bad idea. I pray I haven't made anything worse. I look up thinking a crowd must have gathered around me, people must be pulling out their cellphones and calling for help. But nobody's above me, nobody's there, and when I say for someone to call 911 all I hear is "wow that bitch is fucked up." Laughter. Smashing. I take out my phone – 2%. Will I need my phone later? I call for help and I say what happened and where we are. It's going to be hard for an ambulance to cut through all this rabble. The cops will be here soon, I'll have to describe the guy who did this the assailant. He looks like all these guys, I'll say, looking around, I don't know. He even looks a little like me.

All Eyes

They played me back the video.

"Is that really what I sound like?"

"That's really what you sounded like then," they said. Which made me feel a little better.

All eyes had been on me, I remember as much. The room was mine, and not just because mine had been the night's only song in English. For every ounce of my un-talent I made up with a pound of my showmanship. I jumped, I danced, I put the mic in the faces of strange ladies. They clapped for me, they all had, every one.

But the video was on me, and all you could see was me. And how truly, truly terrible I was.

Baby

It's never the baby that I hate, but the baby is usually the catalyst. Sitting there sucking its thumb, lying on its back resting peacefully, staring up at a mobile or sucking on a pacifier. It knows nothing, or at least very little, and I am taken to a hundred thousand places where I never wanted to be again, a hundred thousand places where I might end up. Scraped off wallpaper, new end tables, candles and extra candles in the cupboards. Surround sound, garbage pick-up, a fridge that has food, food enough for an entire family, creamed things in tiny glass jars and spoons tinier still.

Every decision we've ever made hinges on everything we've learned up until that point. There is no deciding, no choosing, everything is informed, everything is set in stone. Like a baby's unformed skull, the pieces of me come together in a pattern predesigned. Whoever I am, whatever I'm supposed to be, was agreed upon the moment I saw light. There's a time exists where I know all the things I don't know now. He, I, am waiting for myself, watching through the years and saying that it has to be this way because it's the only way it ever could. I can see me, smiling, I know I am shaking my head. Ooh la la, as the song goes. Ooh la la.

What You Will or, St. Patrick

"If I were a bad man," he said, "I might comment on how easy it would be on a day like today, on a street like this. To simply point to a girl and say, 'You, me, now.'"

I turned to him and said, "No is one around. Say what you will."

He stopped. He forgot where he was or where he was going. And with a look he said, "I will always be here. I will always hear."

Pain Plus Pain

I watch you plunge your hand into the metal drum of ice water (when it involves cold, cold water it is always plunging). You grimace, smile at me. Eventually the pain turns to numbness, as pain tends to do. Next is the wax, it looks like a pot of unfiltered honey. You dip that in (hot equals dip). A smile again, different, soothing. I know the two pains are canceling each other out. I wish everything could be made as simple as a wax hand.

Synonym

I've gotten wet too many times to listen to the rain and call it anything other than water. So when you send me to bed without my food I don't see it as a lesson; cruelty by any other name smells just as foul. We were given names, everything can be traced back to something simpler. We've gotten too complex here in our search for understanding, we're not stripping away or discovering anything. Everything is a synonym for something else, which would be fine, if we knew what anything else was. But if we've all agreed that the sky is blue then who am I to disagree when rain clouds appear on the horizon?

Walking Man

It's a nice night so I walk home. I pass the tapas bar, the couple coming out of the tapas bar, I know they spent a lot of money and are still hungry. Not there. There's a place a couple blocks up but then I realize it's a couple blocks back. For another night.

I thought I would be too warm, so many layers, but everything's just about right. The wind's picked up and I know my hair looks good, if any girls walked by, which none of them do. When I find a place, when I sit down, then they can see me.

Red light. I could cross the street and go inside but I don't. I know who'll be there and I've been there too many times before. A minute later I pass a place that used to be another place that used to be another. Inside is all guys, greased up and covered in graphics, and one guy who—in the brief seconds I saw him—looks like a hybrid of a soldier and a ninja, a white and grey camouflage number complete with matching sash tied around his head.

With each block I'm running out of options. Construction forces me to the other side and I'm fifteen feet closer to home. But I can't go back there. Empty or not I just can't do it. Not in and straight to the back and shutting the door and turning out the lights and I just won't do it. Not yet.

My cross street. The walking man shows. He's up there, shining down on me, telling me to go, go, to go. Flashing hand, countdown clock, it's now or never, I keep walking, hit the opposite sidewalk just on zero. There were no cars waiting. No one's waiting except for me.

I keep going, keep walking, north. Somewhere there must be a place.

Tack to the Cork

I stared at the board thinking of all the things I could put on it. It's what they call a blank slate, isn't it? Infinite possibilities. But with infinite possibilities come, well, infinite possibilities, and I end up staring at the board for the better part of a day. And the board stays blank.

Tomorrow you are coming, tomorrow you will be here. I'd like to look as though there's something going on in my mind, something focused, some sort of goal. All I need is one, one goal, one thing to tack to the cork and I'll be happy. Or, rather, you'll be happy, and I might finally be at ease for a time.

Crossing

I wonder if he was part of that conversation. You cross the line sometimes, she told me. Would she have told him, too? Maybe it was too late, maybe they were already on the way out. Maybe she said it as a last chance for closeness. It's a small problem, she'd say, it's nothing, really. And he'd reply by saying, I never liked that guy. I know. I know.

So we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries and maybe there was something in my smile. I'd wished him death a hundred times before. But now that it was over I realized nobody needed to die. It's not about living or dying or even growing or waking up. Truth be told, I have no idea what it's about. And now neither does he.

I do see the line. I do know when I cross. I am not stupid and I would never pretend to be. I am greater than the sum of my parts and soon you will know it, too. And you will say to yourself, where has this man been.

Platform

My only consolation at this moment is realizing that most of the people on this platform will end up unhappy. Or will at least be unhappy for a while. These kids putting their heads together, standing close, little penguins, thinking that because they know how to get from Point A to Point B that they know how to get beyond that. Most of us will struggle with our maps upside down, asking furrow-eyes strangers the way to the laundry in very loud voices.

Cars drive toward me, under me, people laugh. People laugh a lot these days. It is important to find what levity you can. To keep from crying.

I remember being their age, their energy, I was just like them, and now I'm sounding old. What does it sound like to actually be old? I imagine I will always sound like myself, a voice that no one else hears.

I've lost my gloves somewhere along the way. I've lost my train of thought. Uptown or downtown or it really doesn't matter. They hold the same things, the same people, the same voices, the same crossroads of happiness. Searching, searching, searching, searching, searching.

From Bad to Worse

This is twenty years too late, but I wanted to say that I never liked you. You were the friend of a friend and so you just kind of became my friend. And when you're young you don't realize that you don't have to put up with people you don't want to put up with if you don't want to. So I kept hanging out with you, and inviting you when I invited others, and I was your friend. I was your friend for a long, long time.

Then we started talking, some others and me. And one by one we realized that each of us felt like the last. How did we become friends? Could we pinpoint the date? What was happening at the time? Were we at particularly low points in our lives? Did we need to make ourselves feel better? Did we merely not want to make others feel worse?

But that was twenty years ago. And I do give my generation flack for being the If-You-Don't-Love-It-Don't-Do-It Generation. But there is some truth to it. I don't have to surround myself with you anymore. And really, do you want my poison in your atmosphere? And so here I am, finally, twenty years later, letting you go. So you can go now, and you can delete my number, because I've already deleted yours, and I'd rather not feel worse about it than I already do.

I Am What I Am

She was older than me. She had things like money, a job, a car, and bottles of soap with fancy lettering on the labels. She had a separate bank account where she deposited a little of every paycheck so she could travel. She wanted to see the world and had already done a pretty good job of it. So I asked her, I had to.

"I work so hard on everything else," she said, "every other aspect of my life. It's nice to call you up and have it be this easy. You just are what you are." And I wanted to ask her more, what was it, what am I, could she tell me what I was. But that would have put her on the spot. It might have been hard on her. And don't you know, she has enough of that as it is.

When She Wakes Me Up

Even if I had been able to stay awake I don't think I would've seen things like she wanted me to. And it wasn't like I was trying to fall asleep either, I didn't do it to spite her, out of anger or something. I did it because I was tired, it had no bearing on anything we were talking about. Consciousness fades and there's nothing I can do about it. We should just be happy that when she wakes me up, mad, saying how dare I, that I can find just enough strength to muster up that I agree with her.