Postcard 73

In a rush from the car to the house in the too cool air, he remembered to grab the last few days' mail. Unease from the dark driven into, and sharpened with the headlights cut, followed him in. He fumbled keys and dropped the mail in a clumsy fan in his unnecessary rush. Sure to shut the door firmly behind him, he sought the lights. Switched on, he saw the postcard kicked past the threshold alone on the cool tile. What is this? Not a wish you were here, or majestic nature, nor mighty buildings in their dotage. Not even bikini-clad humor, but a chopped assemblage out of context: a masked, or unmasked and disembodied woman with hair cast like fire, the wrong hands crawled past her, reaching from and into some impossible gate, like a theory drawn out only to fulfill its uncanny form. The moon, or a planet, loomed and pulled and cast a ring of dripping black gravity. Behind all this random words floated down and settled in deep mysterious drifts. He flipped it over. It was only vaguely addressed to him and bore no return address. The text started and stopped in an irrelevant middle and was frustratingly self-descriptive. It sung along like a blind wire, and seemed even to attempt impotently to describe him in the moment. The strange epistle held in his hand had a charge as if written under moonlight. He looked away from the card and let it fall, fluttering silently away to a dark corner. He felt compelled to see himself and stepped further into the house to a half-lit mirror. The man gazing back did not menace, but was decidedly unfamiliar. They examined each other with curious unease.

Postcard 72

There was a woman who spoke only music. I say 'was' because she is gone now. I say 'music' because that is what came out of her, not words sung, no words. Not just humming, though hum she did, and whistle and click and clack and spit and sigh and warble and sing in any way you might imagine a person would make music without words, and many you would not because your imagination is not up to the task, bound as it is by words and syntax. That is how she would communicate, call and respond anyway. Her teachers, when she had them as a girl, were more than sympathetic. They were not martinets and she filled them with awe and wonder. She's not doing what she should, they would say, but we let her be, so unique and wondrous a child. The system of school, however, could not tolerate her and she was made to leave. Many people could understand the girl, a young woman by then. People from all walks of life: teachers, children, engineers, trash-men, doctors, fast-food-window workers, it did not really matter. Some did, some did not. There was no rhyme or reason, just a facility of reason open to her tones and rhythms. So it was perhaps just a series of misfortunes that led her through the people who would decide her fate, destroy her. The first was the social services worker who decided she needed to be evaluated, and who grew more resolute in her decision as the singing woman voiced her dissent in angry stochastic melody. Next was the evaluating clinician who could hardly be blamed for her evaluation, for her subject's songs grew confused and dis-harmonic in response to the dizzying evaluation questions. Of course, one could blame the sadistic operators of the institution that held the woman, who's neglect and torment tortured angry bellowing opuses out of her, filling the halls and rooms with ominous climbing and descending adagios. When they broke the woman, when she took her life, only the ignorant laundrywoman heard the haunting song.

Postcard 71

The white-hot moon holds the sheet-dark sky. The white-hot moon burns itself in your eyes. Carry that. Lay that bright hole on the pale body of your friend, naked in the grass in the sand: clarified moles, pure light bullet holes, surprise windows of a looking out soul. The sea sips at your feet and sighs its tickling shivers. At that moment, a triad: beautiful you, your friend/beloved and the white-hot moon. This pain pleasure is the top of an arc, is the gathering white chaos upon an inbound wave. This moment with your friend/your beloved, the pain-pleasure of giggling in the chill, is time suspended atop parabola. The past falls away and the future precipitous, and this moment is the pleasant tension, feeling salt-tight skin and that little grit discomfort. The burn in your eyes is the push-pull of whirl, of your beloved and their whirl too, sharing the feel: the smell of salt of smoke of sweat of chill, the cool radiance of other, the burn of now replaced by past. Hold tight let go the intermingle, the pause in arc of story. Hold tight let go before fear. Perceive and release your beloved and you in soft light, like the two of you and the dark sky in the grasp of the white-hot moon

Postcard 70

There was a couple with a child, a daughter, who lived in a small town in a distant wood. The couple lived at the edge of a forest that belonged to the village and they managed the timber and game. Their daughter ran freely and played in congress with the animals of the wood and with the children of the town. In the village was a manor with high walls, grass and gardens on one side, a cobblestone street far below on the other. The couple's child was one day playing and fell upon her head from the wall to the hard road. For a long time no one missed her. A cinder-woman found her crumpled and lifeless and took her to the owner of the manor who sent for her parents. You must take her to the healer in the next town, he told them, and he let them use his carriage and driver. The father held the listless girl who's head was swollen but did not bleed. She sighed and muttered but did not wake. As they travelled the road seemed to lengthen and the girl grew smaller in her father's arms. When they reached the healer, she was the size of an orange. They approached the healer, a proud and regal mandarin, with pleading. By the time he consented to see the girl, she was as small as a walnut. The healer took her in his hand and immediately put her in his mouth and swallowed her whole. "Where is girl?" The parents could only gape.

Postcard 69

I love you, he says. What does that even mean, she replies.  I love you, he says. You do but you're not very good at it, he replies. I love you, she says. He leaves the room, terrified. I love you, she says. Me too, she replies. I love you, she says. They change the subject abruptly. I love you, she says. I know, he replies. I love you, he says. You're a fucking liar, he replies. I love you, she says. Do you? he asks. I love you, they say. Then why do you hurt me, she asks? I love you, he says. Right now, in this moment, he replies. I love you, they say. I love you too, they reply. I love you, he says. You know better than that, she replies. I love you, he says. I didn't ask for that, she replies. I love you, he says. Its only fucking, she replies. I love you, she says. Prove it, she replies. I love you, they say. Please don't, he replies. I love you, she says. I used to love you, they reply. I love you, he says. Say it again, say it again, she replies. I love you, she says. She is asleep. I love you, she says. He is only a photograph, says nothing. I love you, they say. Goodbye, she replies. I love you, he says. You don't even know me, she replies. I love you, she says. That used to mean something, he replies. I love you, she says. Yes, you do, she replies. I love you, I say.

Postcard 68

Think of me, don't think of me. Think of you through me, my eyes, my gaze. Think of misty nights of bus-stop waiting, in blurred confidences buried securely in oblivion. Think of crying, solid-shouldered brotherhood and clumsy corner punching jaws. Think of love captured and committed, as complex as river-cut stone. Think of proud parent gazing down and the wonder: what happens when I fall? Think of you through me, aging friendship found and strained. Teeth on lips and shoulders, and 'you know better' and 'I know'. Think of fire-warmed skin in forest dark and all our gleaming-bodied friends. Think of scared unsure and hurt and the hope and grace of my strong-muscled hand in yours and yours in mine. Think of too worn apologies thrown and skipped and skipped and accepted into dark like river swallowed stones. Think of laughter, of teeth, of eyes. Think of the beauty of bodies aging, round or lithe. Think of sun-kissed shoulders new and tight, of chapped lips and the graceful lines of living long across your face. Think of holding me weak, of me holding you strong. Think of witness. Think each smell that holds a whole. Think that moment when, through me, you were all, and that walk away.

Postcard 67

A witness? A witness to your many lives. Do you remain consistent? And the days forgotten, the gaps and gashes submerged by rising time, or shoved under and drowned? Recall those brave and failed experiments, cardboard boxed and hot highway driven. And the hot flush of anger, the washed out mornings of shame. Love and death and money and each their converse; the hinges that your life folds upon itself. You have been there always -- your eyes, hands, goosebumps. Your mind, your fears, desires, passions. You have been there in and of it by choice and chance. Who has been your witness, you are not enough. You are not and you know that. So who has seen your movement, your love and heartbreak, felt your misplaced wrath? Do you know that you are partnered, by choice and chance, to that strange family of witnesses, that strange dream-bound family? Do you hold a space that by choice and chance you cannot? You are of one body now, and that body will persist ad pass away, a thing between you, holding on like a heartbeat, like respiration, continuous and unthought of.

Postcard 66

Its hard to explain what we do.
Tell me about your false idols:
Your father, run off and clarified.
Your earth god, harmless, impotent and benign.
Your lover, a furtive catalogue of desires and fading ecstasies.
Tell me of the power that pulls at your roots and wings and I will reply:
Zeus is a servant to thunder, and Kali a servant of death,
and Christ, a servant to the cursed tree.
The idol bull, washed and combed in warm milk and perfume,
waited upon by vestal oracles unblemished and beautiful --
that God of spring is a servant to, if not the sword, then the manure pile.
Tell me and I will ask, "Who serves you and where is the blood?"

Postcard 65

One of these mornings, some fine morning, we're going to go down. Down on to those waters, yes we're going to clean those waters like a swarm. Oh, we're going to filter those waters like oysters, like mussel clusters, like a host of shrimp. One of these mornings, oh its gonna come, that fine day, we're gonna go down to that shore. We're gonna give that boatman. that old ferry man, we're gonna give him a brand new silver dollar not to take us anywhere. That ferryman's gonna leave us there. One of these mornings we're gonna dig down in that mud with our naked toes. We're gonna lay down a new foundation . Oh we're gonna dig down in that mud like clams and lay a new foundation with our bones. Oh that lovely blessed day, we're gonna put up new walls smooth and white. We're gonna put up bleach white walls, pure and bright. Bright as that new day. One fine morning, some fine morning, we're gonna go down. We're gonna go down to our new houses shining in the blessed sun. Our star-roofed houses will have many rooms, each bigger than the next. Oh on that day, our houses will be ours. One of these days, we'll toss that poor ol' ferryman a bag of pearls. And then, oh then -- one of these fine mornings coming down, we're gonna lift up that house. Oh, we're gonna lift up our homes in this world. We're gonna lift up our new homes and we're gonna walk right on away.

Postcard 64

I woke today to a discomfited world. The air hung like coal grease and the wind, when it came, was too warm and from al the wrong places: refinery wind, desert strip-mine wind, smelter and kiln wind. I filled myself with this taxing air and my body responded in kind. My back and palms were damp and tacky - what had I touched? My armpits and crotch began a great primordial cultivation, little white pustules and an itch that grew angry with scratching. I got dressed. The news came on like a broken gasket faucet: disease, pestilence, starvation, (I could not turn it off) mass murder, corruption.... My sock fell into my shoe. Great institutions fell like pussy denigration. Leaders cried out like the squirm of eels, leeches, lampreys. Figureheads were the flies on the face of maddened beasts. There was grit in my ear. There was grime and stiff bristled hair in everything I touched, dark and crimped. I went outside but the sun was burning. I felt the cancer crisp up on the rims of my ears. I scratched the inside of my nose and pulled out blood. Death was everywhere, and worse still, pain, and beyond that, discomfort. My loved ones were weak and spiteful. My confidants were liars and cheats. Avarice and malice coated their actions like tar.
Did I ask, where is God in all this? No.
My pulse quickened at mention of rape. My knuckles strained for violence and my spit boiled to tear down.
Not where is god. Where is man?
These are the days when try means try.
Where am I?