LOCALIZING MY PAIN

I love life and sometimes it's just too much

I'm not being negative

I just need to say fuck

I'm in here now

The guy behind me is humming

One square inch

Can I have one square inch to call my own

I observe myself eating my fingers

Chewing my cuticles

Don't let that stop you, keep going

Need pain to feel

Shell so thick around me

Nothing gets through

No ordinary soft feelings

Like love or joy or the sunset

Localizing my pain helps

I think it's funny and that's another lie

Don't have time to eavesdrop on your world

It is hilarious that you think I do

I saw a movie last night

The guy reminded me of you

The shame I had over loving you

Must still be with me

You came to mind

I don't miss you don't want you

Just need to make myself feel bad

I think I'll rip away at my cuticles

For awhile instead

Localizing my pain helps

Sometimes my pain looks like you

Sometimes it looks like a bloody hand

Dangling from my arm

All the same old, rooted in my gut pain

All you did was interfere, get in my way

Interrupt my self hatred

And wear it like a princely robe with powers

to destroy or grant reprieves

Without my pain you were nothing

Do you feel your powers start to slide away

Slower, fast, faster, rapidly declining

Hanging on by a thin bare thread

Now the tiniest of microscopic filaments

That's right

Relish this final moment

For you are about

To Disappear.

FRIEDOM

"You drink your coffee like there's bourbon in it."

Friedom (Danish and pronounced "freedom"), his

voice hisses through my open window and me

thinking the horizontal blinds keeping out the world.


I smile back, "I never sipped my bourbon." He laughs.

It's fun to make this homeless man laugh. Had the

Homestead Act still been in place he would own the

garage behind my five unit one-story apartment building,

having squatted rent free for the past three years.

Sleeping on blankets his box of possessions at his side.

This week had produced a new friedom. In his homeless,

carless, moneyless world he somehow received a

Mastercard and promptly got a full set of new teeth. I had

grown used to his brown broken stubs he hid behind a

tight smile. "These temps are a bit yellow, the real fakes

are whiter." Yet I shaded my eyes against the glare. They

looked perfect. Out of place, almost horse-like compared

to the winter forest of before. He said they cost too much

and that the dentist worked on his teeth from 3:30 pm to

3:30 am. "Now I can have sex and die from aids like everyone

else." Yes, you can. Having met someone on a gay chat board

he was looking forward to a new life. I only somewhat

understood his predicament, having broken my own right front

tooth on a Skittle weakened by an old root canal. The crack ran

diagonally across and up to the point that the entire tooth had

to be extracted. At the time it seemed exciting, having a blank

spot in my smile. Sporting a "flipper" they called it, a retainer

with one fake tooth until the gum healed and a real fake one

could be implanted. That I would talk with a lisp and have

something removable in my mouth seemed pleasingly different.

Something new. Always intrigued by something new had gotten

me into a lot of trouble during my life but this seemed like a

reasonable thrill. It wasn't so much the intrigue of something

new getting me in trouble but my denial of that fact and

staunch refusal to do anything about it. However the thrill

of being called Elmer Fudd by my boss, and "once that tooth

is in we can take her out." was getting old

although I did like the attention. And the added burden of

brushing another tooth separately each night, of not biting into

my food like I used to, of never chewing gum again at least

for a while. This being California, I kept my Bubba tooth, yes we

named it, in a plastic round container by the front door

long with a banana and my shoes. The threat of earthquakes

keeps one prepared for the worst and what would be worse

than to escape a falling building only to survive and be

interviewed on TV without a front tooth?

ONE TIME DAVE

The holiday lights and sounds wafting up from thirty stories

below lapped at his bare toes. From his rooftop terrace view

the edges of intruding lower arches prohibited full exposure

of the city's New Years Eve revelers, yet their cheers cloaked

Dave in loneliness. The humid air hung thick, he thought,

thick enough on which to float. He tested the ephemeral

cushion with his feet. The blue neon clock tower at the beach

glowed 11:59:00 PM, 11:59:01, 11:59:02. His thoughts

stretched, thinning like the last passing moments of the year.

And then this idea of a new year. Of starting over. Erase the

past like a bad dream never remembered is what he wanted.

His mother labeled him the late bloomer though eldest of her

twelve children, but he felt like a loser. Until she happened

along. She with the home-wrecker breasts between which he

slept and dreamed. She with the heart and mind that sucked

him in, captive along with his eight brothers, even the three

sisters had been drawn to her essence when she entered the

room.

Then gone, as mysteriously as she had appeared, her memory

a cancer entwined around his bones as he watched the others

go back to their own lives and forget.

Over the ledge of the brick terrace wall, legs dangling in the

full bodied air, he wiggled his toes. On the loneliest night of

the year he pushed off from the wall onto the thick billow of air

and floated at first, his shirt inflating then ripping away from

his thin body.

With increasing speed he dropped feet first past a swirl of

twinkling red and green until midway down he turned and

contorted his body into a beautiful majestic swan dive, so

was his need to be seen, to prove he had not disappeared

though he knew that he had.

Faces in the crowd rush at him, the thick air enfolding him,

protecting him, and with his last thought he wondered why

no one had told him it would feel this good to be rid of it all,

such was the effect of the massaging pressure against him

as he plummeted downward.

In the crowd stood a young woman he had never before seen,

strands of her long red hair sticking to the stem of her

champagne glass. His eyes locked onto the glistening bubbles

in her fluted crystal and at 11:59:59 PM he disappeared into the

sparkling brew amidst welcoming cheers.

Rising, he broke through the liquid surface as the blue neon

clock tower glowed 12:00:00 midnight. Suddenly the lights

were too bright, the sounds too harsh and he cried as firm hands

wrapped him in a soft blue towel. Without the burdens of the

past he was much lighter. Small and newborn.

Surrounding faces shed tears as those same large hands lay

him on the breast of that beautiful redhead and she cradled him

gently, firmly against her and he only able to accept that feeling

of a requited longing stemming from a desire he understood not.

DRESSING FOR THE MAN

Advancing years had Sheila waking up in need of make up, especially under

the eyes. Efficiency was not her main concern this morning as she looked in

the mirror and studied the face she had seen for 49 years. But this morning

was different as she shoved her flattened brows to a standing position and

thought of the people at work. Nice, crazy, smart, urgent people. But personally

what did she care except that she earned money, wasn't bored and actually liked

being there. But no energy, nothing special went into her morning routine. How

could she put some snap back into her life? How could she cultivate the aura of

energy that draws people to her, makes them desire to be around her?

She decided she would imagine she was dressing for a date with George Clooney.

So with George in mind she applied her make up with more care, blew her hair

straighter to accentuate the blonde highlights and donned her great jeans, gray

long sleeve sweater with the one inch collar, the body of which cut off at her waist

and a a white shirt that hung out a little at the edge of the sweater. Her brown boots

completed the outfit.

Pleased, she drove to work.

Her attitude was confident. They gave her compliments on her sweater and to her

delight noticed her hair appeared more blonde.

"Did you use a new shampoo?" the 24 year old that sat next to her asked.

"I dressed like I had a date with George Clooney", she confided to the young

woman.

"You are such a freak" the young girl laughed.

"I know, isn't it fun!"

The 24 year old smiled the kind of smile that agrees, even envies the older

woman's ability to not only come up with this game, but to play it successfully

and then reveal her secret.

The next day several women showed up looking noticeably smart in their

carefully pulled together outfits. And the next, and the next.

That Sheila was dressing for imaginary men was never openly discussed again

but by week's end a new energy had taken over the office, and one man was seen

coming back from lunch with a retail bag on his arm.

PARIS

A broken heart does not Paris mend. She tried to imagine scenarios

to match the uninhabited mansion meant now only for show and focused

on the ungroomed back corner of a small garden, the part of the over all

that was ignored and invisible, much like herself.

Scratching out her pain on an odd-sized tablet with a pen purchased

in the 16th Arrondismeau near her school, she sat on a wooden chair

near the pond in Luxembourg Gardens. It was July and hot and her heart

heavy. The little French boy and girl with their pet duck swimming,

the relaxed couples lounging, enjoying the beauty around them.

She tossed off these images with a shake of her head and noted Central

Castings eagerness to accommodate all but her.

So not like Hemingway she thought and decided Hem only loved Paris in

retrospection, his dislike for the things he professed to later love would

dominate. Was she less than human in her disdain for this city? It was

not in the actual living but the Proustian idea of the remembrance of

things past that scared the hell out of her. What if the real joy of living

was felt only in one's memory? The pain of life certainly was.

With half her money gone and two-thirds of her stay remaining she made

her way to the McDonalds across from the Pantheon and bought a burger

and fries, a sure cure for the broke and broken.

She stuffed her parisian fast food into her purse and waited with the

others for the Pantheon to open. It struck her as odd something that old

would have hours.

And waiting to see dead people. Not a festive thought, but she was

here and so were they.

Inside the cold, dim rooms she wondered how many men it took to

slide the tomb covers off the thick stone slabs encasing the remains.

Sections of the Pantheon were crumbling, large pieces dropping from

the beautifully painted ceiling in areas where visitors were cordoned off.

A narrow casing of steps wound up to an open rooftop patio where

the view on this clear day, spectacular. Above her to the left, the

Pantheon dome. She climbed up the curved smooth surface, above the

ordinary tourists, and ate her burger and fries. Paris spread out below,

a cream colored, two-storied city with flashes of interest populating its

sprawl. The Sacre Coeur church, the ferris wheel at the Tulleries, the Eiffel

Tower and Notre Dam.

Crumbling her wrappers she lay back against the warm surface of the

dome. Arms spread as though on a cross, she lay open to the sun and

imagined, as she had one month ago on a beach in the Hamptons, the

healing properties of light filtering through the universe, that beating

down upon her would some how cleanse her soul and destroy all the

darkness and pain within.

MUSIC

She turned her cream colored Dodge down her north Dallas
suburban street right into a wall of music. Not odd, considering
32 kids lived in this neighborhood block.

Five houses down on the left she pulls into the only red brick
home with a circle drive in the front, the music so loud now even
the voices of her own thoughts beaten silent.

All doors and windows of the surrounding homes were closed to
keep the simmering Texas sun out and the air conditioning in.
But she had convinced herself it was to repeal the assault.

Entering the front door the music grew inconceivably louder.
Not the sound of Bread or Kiss or Boston or the Stones. A rhythmic
marching beat. Cosack-like. Germans, Russians, and the US military
marching. An entire orchestra sending troops to war.

And the marching. Pounding of boots, not on gravel but linoleum.
Now hardwood, now across entryway tiles her father's stern, energized
steps . Left, right, left.

A can of Pearl beer in his left hand, a lit cigarette in his right. Marching.
Marching. Her escape down the hallway coincides with the arrival of
his military might.

"Hi Dad," Over-powering and without as much as a glance or a nod, nay
without acknowledgment of any kind, this army of one stomps past
muttering orders to his troops, not understandable but spoken in that
"I'm talking to myself don't interrupt" ind of way while simultaneously
flattening his daughter against the hall wall in his wake.

He proceeds to the end of the hallway and with a drag from his cigarette
and a gulp of his Pearl beer, he reverses direction though not labeled
retreat in his mind.

Moving Home

"You can always move home," her mother's voice sincere, not angry, even hopeful

"But will we have to speak?"

"What?" her word more spit out than released.

"Will we always have to talk?"

Mom's happy, hopeful smile now screws in a tight twist across her face.

"No, not always, but mute co-existence will be uncomfortable."

"But each time we pass in the hallway I don't want to have to feel like
I always have to say hi."

Her mother's expression that of a woman whose daughter suddenly sprouted
two additional heads. "I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean, if I'm watching TV and go down the hallway during a commercial
and you or dad approach from the opposite direction, we're close enough to touch.
Do we pass by like the other isn't there, or do we smile, nod and say hello
because all this acknowledging could get old."

With a dismissive shake of her head Mom tidies up the kitchen. I" don't see it
being a problem. One hi a day is fine, two max.

She wanted to believe her mom but lingering doubts were bolstered by the
thought that living life as a permanent greeter at some social function was
cause for concern.

That she felt a stranger in her own home escaped them both.