Quiet moments between the ones you count. You listen. You hear deals you will never be a part of. You think of you. Love earned. Hate sown. The life expectancy of your mind and the number of base constituents. Sixty sounds to every noise there is. You listen. Quotes dropped like trash. Wise words pitched like pick up lines for another empty night.

 

You bring coffee to those who serve, you just don't know whom. It feels right, but you don't think about it too much. They are emotions from the outside. Something to caress when you're feeling warm. They play out sharper in the real world. But you allow it. You give birth to them, but they become their own man. Happy endings that lounge by the pool, still trim and tan and always smiling. They don't listen to the news.

 

You think of drugging. Yourself or the other. Makes sense.But in the end you have to go back to it and be on. You bring it all with you. The next time a moment comes around, you use it. You try to find a way to make it all an asset, and not the liability that slows you down for good.

What You Learn When You Let Go

Even the most chaotic of scenarios has handles. They simply need to be found, and quickly.

Walkthrough: Louis Jenkins

I read Jenkins' collection "The Winter Road" and came up with this.

Another in the "Walkthrough" series.

Walkthrough: Louis Jenkins

In a small northern town the children hear the chain behind the windy trees behind the house. It takes them up in slow, chinking steps while the neon sinks around them. They laugh, sometimes alone, at the memory of the  coaster making its way to the top. And while they recall that expectation like old men talking about wild women, their parents climb ladders to tie off tire swings. They have all but forgotten it, having descended so many times, the wide-eyed space of age all but overtaking them. They know that the view down is better than the ascent, that there is a consolation for age, thick laughter in the face of the night, the reward for a life of hands and feet inside at all times.

Push the Button, Frank

We've all had the feeling. It's late. You need some rest. After all there's that thing and the one you forgot today and the person who has to know something asap or it will be too late. Okay. All lined up and ready for the morning. Your body is a mass of nervous tired. Covers up. Light off. You slowly close your eyes and

BOOM! Breasts! FIRE OH MY GOD FIRE! "Sure but what does he know? I mean..." DEATH! Indy 500 CLOSE UP! A Jetta commercial on speed. "It's the square root of EVIL!" Bodies writhing for the DANCE. Snakes DYING!

Open eyes.

Shit.

Is this what speed is like?

Shit.

You can't turn it off. Channel a big ball of light or a stream. Try to remember what silence sounds like. Tell the world to fuck off and hope it forgets you soon.

This is, I'm sorry to say, a regular occurrence with me. I wanted to attribute it to genius, but since I can't seem to find any empirical proof of that, I now call it overstimulation. It took a while to find the conscious relaxation technique for me. Here it is for your edification or entertainment.

It is pitch black. I walk forward, hand out. I touch a doorknob, cold brass and smooth. Turn and enter. A billion lights on a control panel. A plane or mad scientist playset. I move forward and begin slowly switching off the sharp points of light, feeling each move reducing power in the ship or machine or whatever. I do this systematically for about a minute. Each 'off' reduces the tension in another part of my body. Click. Left foot. Snick. Right hand. That's when I see it. A comically large, red button at the top right. How did I not see it before? Failsafe. Master Dead Switch. Yeah, like the one at the gas station. Hit the button, Frank. I palm it hard and it all goes down. Everything. Every light. Every sense of power. The hum I wasn't even aware of drops from tenor to bass and dissolves to nothing.

The Titanic. Night. April 14, 1912.

Suddenly I am in a lifeboat, safe and distant. All at once the massive liner goes dark, lifeless. I'm not cold as the hulk lurches to the left the moonlit water like a giant finally dying on the horizon. I've left the great vessel of life and am beginning to float further out into the darkness. It's not scary. I'm warm and the world's want gives me a bye. It's okay. Just go. You won't be missed. Everyone understands. You've done just fine. I stop worrying about every little thing I am expected to remember when I wake. Whom to love. The dates of war. mad motor skills. Whom to leave alone. I smile. I breathe. I leave behind even the darkness.

Goodnight.

Road Trip

Half drunk on his own sad, he croons badly to his country. Salt on his tongue, he smiles, thinks about running away from statues and spotlights towards things hell bent in the wind. Hands and knees on dirt. Spanish spat in slurred anger. The rights of stars. Falling back in roadside bushes, tumbling the world down a thickened vision, it's due south and saying somethings are rightfully ignored. Forgotten on purpose.

In Superior

What do you do when you are too sick to go out, clean house, or otherwise be helpful? Rework scraps you find in drawers, maybe remember very special nights up north.

In Superior

the nameless points on the horizon,

where sight surfs on white flashes

and into the black suede above,

show us everything we need to know.

I love how it makes me young, my eyes

suckling the full breast of moonlight.

I love how it makes us old, two smirking stars

who have watched it all come and go together.

In the morning it’s almost gone, just a glance

over breakfast and bloodies and the world’s tide rolling in.

So let’s not rush.

At the place where the night starts to see,

when the day closes down

I'll see you there.

Don’t say a word.

Get ready to jump.

Some Mondays Are Better Than Others

Pushcart Prize Nomination

I'd like to thank words, without which this would not have been possible.

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