Lost Postcard 3

The bar is crowded and he is tired of being jostled. He doesn't like to dance and knows no one to join at a table. Twin staircases wrap around the ball room and meet at a balcony. He decides that would be a good vantage point. The insecurity is creeping up on him and he wants to get his bearings. He came here with a job to do. He turns to the bar for another drink, but considers his flask and changes his mind. At the top of the stairs, he spreads his hands on the railing and surveys the room again, this time from on high. The feeling of power returns. The restlessness of the drunk dancing crowd is writhing from up here. He considers them fools, complacent and dumb. A hand is on his shoulder, lightly. He smells the girl before he looks at her. She smells pleasant, like good perfume and good cigarettes. A hunger stirs in his belly. This way, sir -- she says. He turns and she opens one of two huge double doors behind him. Following the girl, his sense of exceptionalism is confirmed. But when the door closes behind him, he is alone in a dark red hall of darker red doors. Crimson, he thinks, or carmine. Names that mean something he cannot quite place. He walks down the hall calling out but no one answers. The doors are all locked. He starts walking faster, urgently and calling at each door, then returns and finally a 'What?'. Who's in there? he asks with glowing desperation. a long pause follows.       'Nobody.'                                                                 'Nobody.'

Lost postcard 2

The man begins to panic as he feels along the overgrown wall, rustles into darkness and back into broken light. Twice he falls, first in a patch of spilled soil, then into a pile of decaying and nail-filled wood, soiling and tearing his fine suit. The atrium seems barely to be an interior, barely to have a floor or walls, and only the barred glass of the ceiling lets him know he is enclosed. He again hardens himself against his fears. He finds a door as intransigent as the others and attacks it with violent brute force, tearing at the undergrowth and hitting the door with whatever is at hand. His hands and arms are bruised and cut, sweat befouls his combed hair, but he finally vanquished the door which opens with a creak and a bit of rusty dust, then swings as smooth and free as a flimsy whorehouse partition. Now he is in the real anteroom, thick carpeted and cove ceilinged, with a window in one wall that has a pretty girl behind it, then a man on a stool and behind him, another door. She is a coat check girl and he a bouncer. He has nothing to give her and the bouncer gives him no trouble, only an fake intimidating sneer. The door shuts behind him and he is in a grand and crowded ballroom. Everyone is chattering and drinking and smoking and dancing rapidly. All urgent and quick,  and every eye is restless and searching. The man is suddenly self-conscious of his tousled hair, scratched hands and torn suit. The image he has of himself -- a tempered and sophisticated man of the world -- trembles, but he grasps it hard and heads to the bar, muscles himself through the crowd and orders the same whiskey that he has in his flask. He ignores the bartender and turns to the crowd. Some girls try to catch his eye. Some don't. Some men catch his eye in challenge. Most don't. He feels the familiar warm burn of power and influence.

Lost Postcard 1

The man enters the building unimpeded. In fact, though it is large, heavy and foreboding, it draws him in as if its created gravity that obliterated other options. He is prepared as he entered. He has all the things he was told he would need. In the bustling neighborhoods surrounding the building were kiosks and stalls selling pamphlets, magazines and pinging his phone with guides, diagrams and evaluations, each informing him of a unique requirement that was of course, conveniently available at the same location. He was bright. He took these scams for what they were. But still, he succumbed to the atmosphere of caution and equipped himself minimally, but at great cost. Stepping across the threshold, he takes stock. He is trim and manicured, dressed stylishly but not at the expense of utility. His clothing is fitted but loose and durable. He brushes his hands over is pockets, reassuring himself of their contents: high-end multi-tool, unassuming pistol (very comforting), micro hygiene/first-aid kit, and of course his phone, uploaded with premier mapping, how-to, social connect and identifying apps. Finally, two flasks -- one hydration and one whisky, both high-end contents. No one could say he was unprepared,  he considered with confidence. Entering the anteroom, he is surprised to find it more of an atrium than a receiving room, or a hall. It's wild and feels vast, more dangerous and expansive than the manicured grounds. He moves through it, unable to determine where he should next go. Doors are bolted or rusted shut and overgrown. The phone offers no help and only says "seeking, seeking...". For the first time in his adult life, he man feels scared and groundless. He makes himself overconfident.

Postcard 87

Here is what is real in layers beat like sword steel.
Here is what is real:
What we see with eyes, with hands, with tools;
the glass perspires and stains the table,
the moon is falling forever away,
and the real miracle is mass and waves.
The real, as miracle, shows no concern, and,
but for wonder, we owe it no more.

Here is what is true:
In time, things move and pull
the space between now and then.
What is true is the stretch, the snap of strings.
You did this, and I did that, and they did other things.
It is true a bullet kills a man, but so
a stone, a fall and rust itself.
It is true that life seeks life and must consume and
every snap and stretch is -- even pleasure -- pain.
It is true I left this hammer here, and left my boots out in the rain
It is true you lost your car keys, and it is true that I complained.

It is true that we have leaders, so called,
but they are real and they speak false.
I expect nothing more or less of them, nor you nor me nor anyone,
but I'll not abide dishonesty
There is real and there is make-believe.
There is true and there is false, but lies lie in dishonesty
Honest is agreement of the why, that
what is spoken carries forth to what will speak again

It is wrong to torture, wrong to hurt, to speak
false against our fellow man.
Love speaks against the cynic's equivocating heart.