To whom we now commemorate
Do you think of us as we do you?
And do you walk those streets
(fogged highways in endless sky black,
Or cleared trails in grave dirt)
Looking among the faces passing by...

'What is your end - and do you as I do?'

But a friend's memory now,
Maybe a flower lain beside the stone
Or simply a secret, to each their own

In early morning a young mist broke
The smell of shined shoes stepping in line
Our hair combed, shirts tucked & buttoned
There our father lies: The dead
Brave and fierce, staring into the dark

No witness to dare - the telling of the story
That no man can answer

permanent link to this article: http:// syphmag.net/kram/chauffer.htm

In the heat waving he held a glass of cognac. He sat on his apartment patio with one leg resting over the other, and looked out at the city before him. The streets were battered, melting before his eyes. Young adults rummaged from store front to store front, fanning themselves, but paying no mind to their trailing sweat. Inside the apartment Carlo's friends had gathered around the kitchen table, their loud chatter and laughter muffled, but filtering through the glass that separated them from Carlo.

With ease and mechanical, another sip to Carlo's lips. He swallowed the remaining cognac. Sliding the door open a friend encouraged, “won't you come inside Carlo... Come.” Carlo said nothing, as his friend waited patiently. He gave a slight nod and rose from his chair.

“Oh, it really was quite clever how it never let up, and how the plot just happened, so it truly was an action film – no pointless introduction.” Inside Carlo entered into an ongoing conversation between his guests. He stood and looked at each friend as they spoke, but did not say anything himself.

“With a plot so constant it basically negates the concept of plot...”

“More like a rebellion without a rule to rebel.”

“And if you slow it down, what then; a dull blade unable to cut, that's what. It has to be sharp, and a slice is a split second.”

“You don't know what you're talking about. You should really...” the young woman trailed off, and filled the void of her lost thought by reaching past Carlo, who remained silent, for another grape from the bowl on the table.

“Well tell me, did you like it?”

“Not in the least, it was a bore. Bombs this, guns that; bang bang!” The dark haired man said while making his finger as a gun and pointing it at the others.

“What, you don't like action? It's not like I do either, but you have to give it some credit – I have never seen a film so committed to it. If you withheld your preconceived notion of what's intelligent, you'd find a whole new realm of depth within what you previously never gave a chance. Intelligence lies in the dedication to the idea, not the idea itself. An idea is nothing until it's mastered. If you engaged yourself to it, you'd be on the edge of your seat the whole time; and that's what the film was going for, so it succeeded.”

The dark haired man glanced at Carlo as if to seek approval to reproach their friend's comment. Carlo made no counterclaim, but an affable stumble backwards, as the dark haired man casually responded, “I'm going to entertain you... doesn't mean it's good. I'd rather watch the first ten minutes of Suspira.”

“I'd rather watch a minute of Holy Mountain,” added the young woman.

“What! What does Suspira have to do with this?”

“There is something to anticipate - that's where all the excitement lies. Suspira is over after ten minutes just like this film is over in ten seconds. The best part of an affair is the lurking beforehand; the affair is ultimately a let down.”

“And this is why we can all trust you'd be a good husband? You'd never do the actual deed?”

“I'd suppose so. To consummate an affair is the end of the affair, or at the least ruins it completely. Not only has the excitement of it's anticipation been clobbered, but the guilt will begin to materialize.”

“While you're guilty already, what difference does it make? Just do it already; to be left in a state of flux, oh such torment that would be! Open-ended desire - that's dreadful!”

“Yes, and look at the way she hangs in Suspira, if that's not closure what is?” The young woman added once again.

“It's a climax ten minutes in that's what it is. And here you are belittling an action film.”

“Who are you kidding, you only want these climaxes and closures in art because you have none in your own lives. You want to obliterate that stretched and stretching yearning with the snap and splurge of action and affairs. But what do we do with our toys once we've bought them? It's only the buying that pays off. Once you admit that all this action film really amounted to was perpetual vacancy, filled with only expectation and craving, then I'll accept it, and, instead of debating it I'll enjoy it.”

“You're telling me I enjoy a constant state of unrequited thirst...”

“I think he's saying he's either never had good sex, or, perhaps, never given a woman an orgasm.”

“...He's right, I'm guilty – the final death scene just didn't hit me as hard due to all the death beforehand. I was slightly let down. It should have risen to the most elaborate, unequivocal apex to match all that occurs prior.” The friends were all at a chuckle now, although behind each jest there was still the tension of debate. The guest claiming his whimsical guilt tried to avoid attention to his comment by quickly tossing an enquiry at Carlo with as much candor as he could muster; but the dark haired man continued on,

“Guilt is only for those that expect satisfaction. Don't believe you're actually guilty just because you conjecture an unquenchable zenith. That is nothing to feel guilty about.”

“So in layman's words... you're saying... This is my life philosophy of laziness.”

“Philosophy? I'm talking about films, and affairs at the most. I'm not an advocate for laziness, but keep in mind - the stronger one's will the further one pushes himself, yet still never attaining anything but the mightiest will.”

“Oh, but you just created the first possible perpetual motion machine: will!”

“Did I? I'm saddened to say, like the confession made earlier, will can not match the strength of prior will, as a culmination of death only equals a lesser death.”
“If you're not an advocate for laziness then what are you? A connoisseur of John Cage's 4'33” and that's it? What of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro?”

The dark haired friend looked over at Carlo once again, “It all feels like a crescendo to me with no reckoning. Besides, it's the overture that is most popular, and you don't get an overture at the finale.”

They all looked at Carlo, as he began to write on one of the many scattered pieces of note papers that lay all over the place. The papers surrounded the bowl of fruit and covered the rest of the table, fridge, counter, and every other tabletop in the apartment. On every paper in the apartment were the written words of Carlo. Everything he felt he might need to say to keep his acquaintances at bay. Here his words would be displayed and left strung about, subsequent to the incessant discussion of all those that came to pay him a visit.

Carlo finished writing what he had to say and pushed the paper to the middle of the table where they could all read it. He then walked out on the patio again and poured himself another glass of cognac. The guests responded to the written note with a theatrical laugh, and continued the conversation.

permanent link to this article: http:// syphmag.net/kram/thedrunk.htm

And on the brim of your iris
Plays the pauper turned piper I hear

We are skin scattered across ivory keys
We are dangling notes off the maestro's page

By new moon night and frenzied spell
Lips speak in hiss and incoherence

Wrapped between your legs
Through branches and bark

To the forest where leaves overhang
A shade from the sun, and

What I put in will be lost
In you

What one does with it, one does not know
As beauty is the wilted one

And we are but blossoming now
Beauty, though, the setting sun

But forever the red curtain drawn
And the subtle cabaret plays on

Caught up and in,
Like barley whipped back and between curious hand

Your toes dance along petaled stairwell
And your fingers pluck bread from my hair
Where you swallow and steal from pigeons at pond

All in the time You and I
Tried to name what was ours.

permanent link to this article: http:// syphmag.net/kram/poemsname.htm

I move through the back lanes of the city. Every morning, weaving through every morning, at sunrise.

I go through the voices, like carrot roots; through the voices still drifting from late-night galavanters; through voices that echo off shop windows, bricks, and buildings, and through the approaching roar of the oncoming crowd - the crowd that will grind through yet another calendar day.

Amidst a million locked door handles, post boxes, and sidewalks; streetlamps and men in evening wear, lies the opportunity for me to unlock and read: to write and dream, day by day.

I am perched on the edge of a park bench. Sometimes, on a bad day, I will go through the garbage bin next to my seat to no avail, but on better days I sit still and look around me, observing all those that pass and the leaves flapping, the branches bouncing, and the pigeons squatting. We meet eyes, Finnegan and I, and it is a good day.

I believe I just walk, going about my business, making my wage. I collect bottles for a living. And I return bottles for cash. With my change I buy the perfect meal; bread and an egg, and I ask for nothing else. It's what I call peace now - not having a job, and only living my life collecting bottles.

Sometimes I dream, but it's not really necessary. If it's a good day, it's of Finnegan and I; my pup and imagined family calling me along for dinner, to clean up, or out to the field on Saturday morning. It was some dream, growing up in the country on a farm with brothers and sisters. We did, Finnegan and I.

Memory is a blessing; a gift when faded or distorted. Like a match to a bundle of kindling, those dusty and buried memories can be taken, set on fire, and become a creation from ash, or what is thin soot now spread like grain across a conveyor belt; from glowing embers to blazing.

And here is my family out in the field, just like that. A flock of geese swoop over; a shifting pinhole across the stretched horizon at dusk.

If it's a good day we run through the barley and call out at distant deer. There may have been the occasional crow clawed upon the fence, but the robin and canary visited our windowsill and garden stone just as often. I have never seen a pigeon in the barn, but maybe a mouse – scurrying toward the crack where the walls meet.

The occasional magpie would rummage through the garden, or saunter on the back-yard stones up to the shed's propped open door. Like the mouse that appears in the barn of make-believe, even in my dreams there are cracks in the wall where stories I never knew come passing in. Always cracks between walls; always cracks between dreams.

Sometimes I dream too much; it's not really necessary. I have all that I need before me. There are the ones already in cases lined along the alley with bagged trash, and then there are the lone bottles left still half full atop the sidings of corner street groves - that I grab, tip upside down, empty, and place in my bag.

On a bad day my dreams turn from wheat fields to fall's harvest; from the bushels brushing, like waves of the sea, to wheat kernels sinking over one another within the silo.

Memory is a curse; a thief when sharp or sure. Like a bowl over flames, those plans and dreams can be taken, snuffed out, and burnt up to ash, or what is thin soot lost like stars across Orion's blet; from glowing embers to scarred wood.

I grew up just down the street from here, between the meat shop and factories. Sometimes I dream, but depending if dreams are of the past or future – they may or may not be necessary.

On Sundays I like to pass the park just next to the corner store with the broken bicycle rack. There I find Finnegan, the boy who feeds the pigeons. He has nothing but rags for sleeves, yet, like Jesus with five loaves of bread feeding five thousand men, he never ceases to have food for the birds; and so it continues, Finnegan feeding Finnegan.

Sometimes on the farm the magpies would search the kennel where the dog food was kept.

I left cracks in the wall, so to sift out the memories still not lit and blazing, but sometimes the fire gets out, and everything one doesn't want gets in, like mice, magpies, and crows - or simply a pigeon. Some days I'd rather not dream at all; to just look for bottles, and nothing else. Yet always as quickly as can be the mice flee the scene; like cold rain in the city, it comes and goes. These troubles are but scurried nuisances and details now.

My father once spotted eight magpies in the kennel and slammed the door shut on them. He went up inside the house and got his shotgun, then shot them from up close, while they were trapped in the kennel and had nowhere to go. They were not even four feet from where my father stood, but it took him twenty-three bullets before he killed the eight magpies.

It's funny, the amount of shots needed - but I often think that with each miss a magpie earned its right to be free. It's like a reward for their effort to avoid death - even if it was sympathy weakening my father's aim, or the fact he just had a bad shot; the birds still flapped, though caged, until the end.

I don't find it sad that the magpies died - after all, they're pesky scavengers - but I find it sad that my father, who found himself in such an advantageous position, still needed so many shots for birds already cornered. With every misfire he only caused more chaos in the kennel.

I sometimes dream, while sleeping upon sprung springs and ragged sheets, of a sandbox of pennies, where I sink, sink, and sink. With such a simple life, still I get lost; buried, so it seems, even in dreams.

The city is crowded, and I'm not sure if there is room for any more Finnegans.

At night I now like to keep myself hidden in cardboard, and light the space with a match in hand. Perhaps the sky has turned black outside, covered by the blanket of pigeons - and there lies Finnegan, flattened among all the fallen birds. Or Finnegan is in the bottles I gather; bottled from store to street, and street to store.

Yesterday I saw a wounded pigeon laid against its back; incessant flapping upon the alley asphalt; the concrete immovable.

For if I came to this anew,
Like an extinguished fire without ashes to trace
Could I – not the crackling – remain?

But I, still curled in you hay bundle lit
In it, a taste that lingers that like bats flapping;
An echo and din in a cave of a thousand years –
Am I to be sentenced split in you and without?

I'm hanging in the bed you left me hanging
I'm staring at the stain ,burst on the first time
I'm drinking the spit - still trickles from your lips, and tease to swallow
I'm smelling the breath of your tongue and throat and hair between
I'm touching my scars the colour of your thighs
I'm tearing through straw to rip out the remainder

The remainder has not been settled
This but a burning bushel till when?

Below the rusted gate were the chippings, as splinters in the soil, and like the headstones just beyond, they dug into the earth and stood – a miniature figurine foreshadow of what towered just a few steps ahead: Angley Graveyard, Est. 1604.

Friar's paws cautiously tip-toed around the wooden planks peeking from the ground, as Louis, unconscious of Friar's stately, yet timid dance, marched forward intently and irreverently. Louis Levesque, though aware of Friar's patterned steps alongside his own pouncing walk (one is always aware, even if not fully conscious, of what is always there), paid no mind to his dog and loyal companion of nine years, and Friar's steps were thus merely a minuet with a propagated ghost of Louis Levesque. From the moment Louis had left his house, a short distance uphill from Angley Graveyard, his path was set, his keen determination decidedly resolute. Even the calls of his five year old daughter – the imploring, yet adoring, the sheepish, yet pious, plea of Pieta-Marie – was a callid call to him, and her voice was left wafting in the air... naked and yearning, undressed and searching, just outside the house. From inside the crafted windows Pieta-Marie watched her father go, and, with disappointment, heard nothing but the daunting echoes of her own words repeat, lapping and folding over, as a response to her innocent summon, and Eleanor, vacantly twisting the ring upon her finger, still unmoved since Louis' departure, sitting slumped, a decrepit avenger without a vengeance to quench, defeated, in the splintered wooden chair in the backroom kitchen, kicking her black-heeled boot against the other.

On the evening of September 23rd Angley Graveyeard was singing an overturned tune, lofting from below the ambient wind that drifted between branches and withered leaves; just beneath the radar its song levied, just shy of the airwaves; a subordinate signal. The song emerged as white noise, a buzzing static, gathering itself and slowly filling Louis' ears as he approached the crowd among the dilapidating headstones. Down a trodden path the shoes of Louis skirted through autumn's fallen leaves, and kicked up the loose dirt just beneath – like the submersed, reaching rumble through the decor and walls of a distant home from a locomotive came the hollow tickle of Louis' irrefutable steps upon the doors of Angley's abodes. With Louis now upon the crowd, the commotion (rattling the grounds even more) sent its electricity scurrying through the earth, sifting the graves, and brushing it's palpable tingle through the adornments of each home.

What made Louis hurl straight-away to the graveyard was not a burst of irrational retort due to emotional shock, as so often displayed in cases of unforeseen revelations of anguish and tragedy, but an intuitive decision – though it was not even formally diagnosed in Louis yet. Neither was it instinct, because if it was his actions would fall alongside the irrational emotions that swing, dangle, and shoot – that of a pendulum to an unnumbered clock and untamed hand – but Louis, at all times, was in control – a pendulum to a numbered clock and tamed hand.

Not one figure in the crowd noticed Louis, and they all continued pronouncing and announcing – little mice all scuttled and posing – what to do, where to go, and all the possible scenarios for the acceptable and respectable procession one must follow in the situation that was now upon them. The tension rose, and the song's buzz began to flood Louis' eyes. With a succumbing frustration to excuse and eliminate the tune's boiling point which had dampened the walls of the dam, he drew back and mumbled in bitter defeat, Why dig him up when he will have to return to the ground anyhow?

The crowd scrambled with excitement, bickering of who to lawfully report to and all the rightful necessities to make sure no loose ends were left unraveled, so that the town may be appeased by dinner that life had taken it's natural course of events, and that the tidings of death may bring about the tidyings of life by morning.

SEPT 24th – Marc Levesque, age eleven, was found dead yesterday evening. Suspicious markings were found in Angley Graveyard by visiting town residents. Lieutenant Beaubien was called, and accompanied by authorities, he marked-off the zone and dug up the ground where the markings were, finding the body of Marc Levesque. Marc Levesque is survived by his father and mother Louis & Eleanor Levesque, and sister Pieta-Marie.

Louis awoke on the twenty-fourth of September alone. The day was born between the trajected shading of clouds, morosely shuffling above, with teasing prowl, plotting to unveil the morning's sun, but it never came, and Louis reached over the bed to find nothing but the cold dim blue of morning enveloping the room. The buzzing encroachment of last night's white noise had now subsided, pulled back like waves, leaving a trail of soaked and smothered sand; it moaned, a constant hum through his head. Sitting upon the chair that Eleanor befell the night before, Louis replayed the scene – his crusade, descending to the valley of Angley Graveyard, surrounded by narrow and leaning crucifixes, men in jackets and scarves, voices bellowing in tailored gowns, reverberating between the buried and unburied, and the boy between:

"My son, that is my son," came the hopeless cry of an unheard man, a scream torn through veins; pulsing and disrupting the overturned tune, hidden from evening's molten breeze, unexposed but furrowed through the underworld, it sowed its seed: a question, "this is my son; this?"

Dirt upon the face, between finger and nail, skin to crevice, eyelid and lip – severing tangible life with stillness and absence, left untouched, his white skin made no sign of reaction or intent: just calm and distant, as the dying blue of day merged to gray into night's black, inescapable and unknown, heedless foray.

Upon the hour Louis took note Friar had yet to come eat his breakfast, or even brush his ashen black hide against Louis' steadying leg. The furred cushion in the pantry corner lay indented, but bare; and still no sign of Eleanor, not even her black heeled boots by the door.

"Daddy," mused Pieta-Marie from her bedside shade, her blanket rung up to her chin by her tightly wound tiny fingers and hands, "where is Mommy?"

*

By sundown, in the house that now creaked of memories, ghosts, and a refined remorse (an etching of grief that becomes bearable, like sandpaper smoothing against coarse wood after repetition and time), Louis started to slip into the drone of Angley Graveyard's song; the tension between it's submerged sensation and exposed apathy pulled between his points of being, a pressure past the point of stretching (and the sandpaper ripped by a splintered plank in the wood). Louis shot up from the chair, smothering his face with his hands, straining his skin as he ran his fingers up and through his hair, trying to deter the spiraling headache; the hammering and mounting, the imprinting and tattooing of a dirt-stained boy as stiff as stapled shingles. With an infuriated whimper – not of pain and torment from smoldering sorrow, but a disgusted whine from the grating of the pendulum against the enclosing walls – he swung the house door wide, and set forth down the path toward Angley Graveyard once again. The clock would not remain greased; would not swing: to and fro; tick, and tock; and the construction of the clock would not remain the same; sturdy: straight and lean; set and numbered; Louis' upkeep was threatened by the weight of circumstance, but now, as he ran forth down the trail, all swung steady; heavy: back and forth, like the beating of a pounding heart, with irrefutable control.

When reaching Angley Graveyard Louis kept his head up, his eyes wide; he was looking for something. Past the gate and through the drooping branches, sagging spruce, and just before a wallowing willow he came upon, and sailed past, slender angels watching over upright crosses, and staggering Jesus'. Rows of graves, bouquets drained of colour resting upon headstones, and death commiserated by weeping monuments – always remembering death, and staking claim to the celebration of a past one's life; by the defeated and forsaken Jesus, crowned in thorns, hanging in despair, nailed upon a cross. And as the hammering flash portrait of the cement-still boy of dirt-infused skin began mounting itself upon Louis again, he spotted Friar, knelt down before a hollow pit.

A smile of relief, but more so an instinctive smearing of joy, spread itself through Louis, before he quickly caught hold of himself, set his clock back in motion, and walked precisely towards Friar, speaking and asking, with authority, what he was doing there. Without paying heed to the empty hole in which Friar knelt before, Louis laid his thick fingers upon Friar's neck, rubbed behind his ears, and patted his head. Then came a shuffle from the pointed brush, growing up against a flightless stone angel to their left. They turned their heads to see what made the sound, and, stepping out in the darkness, cloaked in Angley's haze and projected by the roaming clouds' moping and haggard blanketing of the moon, blocking but a disjointed refraction of the moonlight's glare, appeared Pieta-Marie in her morning gown.

"Daddy, where is Mommy?" Pieta-Marie's meek words rose up, carried by their frail high-registered tone, and drifted in the dark sky, like balloons filled with helium, and there they floated as Louis, after finding Pieta-Marie wandering the graveyard alone at night, was once again preoccupied with Friar and why he knelt there upon the soil of Angley Graveyard.

"Daddy, he is waiting for Marc to return." Louis looked up and back at Pieta-Marie with a contorted face; a questioning glare; confused and bewildered. "That is where he laid," she said, pointing at the hollow pit that Friar knelt before, "he was buried there after he died, and then..." She paused and looked upward, in deep thought, grabbling with the knowledge she was speaking, and then down at Louis again, "the dirt was removed, and now his tomb lies empty." She stepped forward, came upon Friar, and with her hand on his head spoke clearly and directly, "I followed Friar here, I will wait with him, and maybe Marc will bring Mommy with him when he returns."

"That is outrageous! Marc is gone, and he will not return to us. Come," Louis gave a sharp whistle between his teeth to beckon Friar to follow, and took Pieta-Marie's hand. "We will go back to the house – maybe Mommy will be home by now." After slight hesitation Pieta-Marie obediently took her father's hand, and went uphill back to the house, leaving behind Angley Graveyard; the garden of bodies planted in the valley below, beneath the fog that lingered at their feet along the path, and Friar, who refused to budge from his dirtied patch of dried and cold grass, atop the dug-out ditch Marc had lied in prior.

On returning home Louis put Pieta-Marie to bed, called Lieutenant Beaubien once again (Eleanor had yet to appear), and sat himself back down in the wooden chair in the back room kitchen.

*

Louis perched upon a pew in an open swamp on an overcast day, along with an entire congregation. Rows of pews, buoyed on the water beneath whisking reeds, bobbing while the wind swept through the people's hair, and the croaks of hiccuping frogs loomed in the air. It smelt of dank weeds and muggy leaves; of drenched trees and soggy bark. Up front, behind his pulpit, stood the priest robed in white, capped with a grand silk mitre headdress, and with a stern grin upon his face; weaving between water and air he hovered, and, with a wand as a staff, he resembled a fairy, or creature, of some fantastical tale. Louis soon noticed the swamp they gathered in was also a graveyard, and alongside the pews were the headstones and monuments of each grave. The bodies of the dead were oscillating in succession of those that sat upon the pews; interchangeable waves, in and out; the alive and dead entwining and wreathed.

"I beg you folks!" the priest cackled, "it is preposterous to dwell on the finite and the finality of death! We are infinite, and we will be redeemed! All of you... You succumb to remorse and despair, plunge deep into the depths of destitute and desolation – this... this is death! So do not feel forsaken when death knocks at your door – it is a time of redemption! It is a time of salvation! A new life: Jesus rose from the dead after three days, and because of this we are saved! When they returned to his tomb the boulder had been removed, and his tomb lay empty! God promises Jesus will return, and we'll be reunited with our loved ones, and that death – Death brings life!"

At this Louis scoffed, rose from the pew, tread to the side, and went for a stroll – picking and collecting shavings and chippings scattered about the swampy grounds. The simple actions and motions themselves brought a satisfying delight to Louis, since he cared little for what he actually gathered, and proceeded with contentement, while the priest continued preaching along with the swamp's cricket chirps. Louis was fumbling with the chippings, trying to place them in his pocket when the ringing began; a shrieking and unbearable note tightening; a vice around his head. He looked over at the priest who carried on:

"We must signify! Signify our embracing of death as new life – we must change all the headstones and statues of a weary Jesus, a staggering Jesus carrying his cross, and replace all the crucifixes and all that portrays devastating sacrifice and the burdening endurance of life, with a tombstone of redemption – Of liberation, that which is death!"

The ringing increased, rising in pitch, and in anguish Louis held his head tight, searching for where the ringing came from. There above in the sky, lowering a statue that hung from her wings: a slender angel, soaring and shrieking. The priest raised his arms as a gust of wind blew at him; his mitre flying off, his hair waving and his cloak flapping, unveiling the great and giant statue descending from ahigh' into the water-washed graveyard. The ringing merged to the sound of a bursting trumpet, while the waters of the swamp began to wave violently; those on the pews were grabbing their hats and shuffling about, trying to remain comfortable and intact as the bodies of the dead, buoyed in the water, shook and flung about like tephra. The sky cracked, thunder burst, and it began to pour: not rain, but people – children and mothers, daughters and fathers – came falling from the sky. The statue came down, lowered before Louis, bolted itself to the ground, and there... There stood the giant – a stone statue, firm and fierce, motionless and immovable, of Marc, the dirt-stained boy; looking straight, but hollow and absent, into Louis' eyes."

Louis awoke, still on the kitchen chair, in a cold, voluminous sweat; shell-shocked and writhing, fists clenching the sides of the chair, until the last arm rest snapped in his hand. He sprung up, self-conscious and embarrassed. With a glance at the clock he noticed night and day had elapsed; aggravated by this he leaned into Pieta-Marie's room, only to find his aggravation rising, and peaking; a blossom of affliction: she was not there. With curses under his breath, and his hands trembling, Louis fumbled with his boots and laces, a disarray of strings and an entangling ploy clogging the definitive swing and tick of the pendulum and clock. He stumbled out the door, trying to gather himself, but only found the tension mounting; knotted from the dream and all that had come before. As he passed through the gate, mindlessly carrying the piece of the broken chair in his hand (though one is always aware, even if not fully conscious), the song of Angley Graveyard began to hum once again. This time the drone bellied with precise inflections, and, building upon itself, the subordinate signal rose beyond its submerged sensations, climbing and ascending from the graves below, like water and waste rising in a lagoon. Louis began to feel it seeping upward, overfilling and pouring over; drenching the soil, circling the trees; dampening his hands and filling his eyes.

"Daddy, daddy!" came the eager cry of Pieta-Marie, nearly hidden past the willow and the leering leaves.

"What are you doing here?" Louis demanded in reflux, not taking note of the child's distinct dismay.

"I came to feed Friar," she replied timidly, her eyes dropping in shame, and then, while clearing a slouching branch, slowly, kicking up the dormant haze and sending it adrift, "but look..." There before the dug-out ditch lay Friar, haggard, gaunt, and awkwardly sprawled, shrouded by night's blackened over-hang with a smudging of dew and fog drifting between, as still as the dead leaves scattered untouched around and upon him.

Louis gave a quick wince, and, with a slight twitch of his head, looked down at Pieta-Marie, a crooked slant in his neck, and a scowl as if asking, such trivial matters?

"And Daddy, what is that?" Pieta-Marie inched closer to Friar's body, leaned over the pit, and, peering down, pointed below.

Sometimes things appear expectedly; the mail delivery in the morning, and Friars' ensuing bark, or a goodnight kiss from one's wife of thirteen years – but then there is that which is absurd, horrifying, and so out of place; no matter how prepared one is for the unknown, and aware of life's continuous foray into what is unforeseen, one can not predict how one will react and move onward.

Pieta continued, ever so shyly, and a quiver in her voice, "are those not Mommy's..."

"Yes! Yes! People die!" Louis burst, interrupting in an exasperated gasp, "just let it be! Let sleeping dogs lie, and leave Friar be! He chose to stay here, waiting for Marc, or whatever it may be he was doing. Why did you have to come here? He can fend for himself! Now look what you've done! Oh..." With a grand wave of his arm, his eyes rolling, Louis relentlessly spewed forth, "so many questions you have! Haven't you heard how curiosity killed the cat... or the dog!" Louis' voice choked, but he spat on, "Oh, soon you will tire of these curiosities, yes... Yes you must! You have to accept it, and bury it – bury it all into the earth, and rid of it! You must move on, and completely detach yourself from the things of the past; the things of death! Either life is the repetitive pursuit of all these ridiculous questions, these silly, silly questions that linger – they just float up unanswered, or if they are, the answer is as winding as a labyrinth; some abysmal trek to an unknown death – or you just accept it! Answer it yourself! Keep from carrying such woes, and move along light as a feather... Empty! Empty! Empty!"

Louis was stumbling from his final screams, but, with a hand upon his knee, he gathered himself, and, to make sure he had purged all that he deemed necessary to be as empty as he longed to be, continued, "the less you intake and carry along, the closer you will be to yourself... Alone and inside, where you have control, and nothing can touch it – where answers are a thought away, nuzzled in assurance, and pocketed in accountable trust. The only sure thing is escape. Escape from all this; within escape there is control. I didn't know it would come to this, I didn't know we'd keep coming back to this graveyard, but I got caught up in some crusade. I asked, yet again, another question – even now as I am set in my path a question tempts me to waver from it – well I must go forth and rid of all until there is nothing to ricochet; until there is no more of this weaving and meddling, and put a stop to all this backtracking! I must rid of all to liberate!"

Pieta-Marie still stood before her slouching, heaving father: Louis, out of breath, lagoon waters darkening the bags under his eyes, struggled to hold his heavy shoulders and back upright. In a near defeated voice, yet still pious and in pleading adoration, Pieta-Marie implored, "but when is it over?"

And Louis took the splintered arm that he still held in his hand and knocked Pieta-Marie down. Like the leaves silently relieved, she fell.

*

The song of Angley Graveyard shattered, and, like the buffalo hunt crescendo spilling over the cliff, encompassed Louis' head; an ancient waterfall ceaselessly crashing; the waters of the swamp, thick and overwhelming. I must escape! I must escape – but the song was too deeply rooted and Louis, on his own, could not manage it's attack. He could not control the drone from deep inside him that fed off its own precise inflections and, like pouring cement, overcame his sanity.

But a bullet swiped the skin of his neck, splicing the skin, and there appeared a flash streak of red, like paint sprung by the flick of a brush. The blood peeked, and then began to crawl out between the folds of skin, soon flowing, smearing the bottom half of Louis' neck; an awning of stained icicles melting and dripping. Louis, as when he spotted Friar, winced, grabbed his wound, and peered over in the darkness. Past the willow, beyond the sagging spruce, and among tearing angels and stone crosses, stood Lieutenant Beaubien, panicked and wide-eyed. Louis held his wound and stumbled to his knees as the drone began to skip; the pendulum slowing and steadying, and the night flickering with yet a darker night.

Oh, but this is what I wanted... To rid of all, and detach myself wholly and completely – to find solitude and peace; peace in myself and with myself. Ah, how beautiful; an exultation of joy and liberation! I feel so light! Everything must go... Disperse, and leave me; memories and blood, ghosts and death: you have been unshackled and dug up; now go! You are free! I am free!

But as Louis rejoiced in these thoughts and revelations, he spotted through his flickering and distorted vision the black heeled boots of Eleanor close beside his head, among the knotted dirt of the pit he had fallen in, and the featherweight emptiness folded over itself, while Louis' stomach churned and an aching queasiness pressed through his body. With such liberation of spirit came a focus on the body and it's inability to sustain itself on anything, and so his bones began to retract unto themselves, for this was all that remained: the object itself; the finite being. Louis squirmed internally, retracing his thoughts, and longing for something to ground his bones – anything to tie them back unto a foundation. But as his bones gnawed at themselves, Louis relinquished, feeling his last physical breaths waning.

Here I lie alone, dying, and you are gone, taken from me after so many years. And for what, and why? I am sorry! I could not save Marc, oh how you loved him, but I needed you too! And, God! God how I loved him too. Ah who needs who... I am alone. Here I lie, merely a chipping scattered below, and apart from that towering willow trunk, whole and intact, just a few steps ahead... Eleanor... Marc...Pieta...

In utter confusion and fear, Lieutenant Beaubien witnessed Louis dying and the unexpected display in the pit below.

We are but splinters in the soil...

And then, creating the basis of what would be a fantastical story in the town above Angley Graveyard for generations to come, Lieutenant Beaubien saw what he described as both absurd and horrifying:

"I saw the catacombs of gore, yes... The bones of the bodies came alive, jutting out of the skin. First the two bodies in the pit – bones piercing through – and then the others. They began to stretch, like serpents seeking their prey. At first each bone was separated from each other, but soon in the silence, as if out of absence of song, they began to spread and dance. In efforts to mend their lonliness and anxiousness, they writhed upon themselves, as a tension boiled and the bones began to coil – and in need of another they spliced, twined, and twisted through the others. This continued on endlessly, as they intertwined and created a massive knitted conglomeration in constant motion; intermingling: in and out; to and fro, yet with no set pattern but their interaction. The bones were tied down to nothing but to each other, and in their weaving, complicating and fabricating, they took on a life of their own, reacting, and moving onward.

It came at me and I chose to run; to escape. I ran for my life; for surely it was only death that would ensue once overtaken by the tyings of bones."

These poems are a promenade

I recited my last soliloquy,
I have sung my sorrow
Over and over

I invested myself,
For a tomb made for a much stronger man – A millstone for a much diviner time

Death as sure as the the River Ouse flows
You and I know we're not going back
If only memories could resurrect
I wouldn't feel as if I were just another character
Speaking a tragic storybook dialect

Bound to live,
I smell streets and streams in the twenty first century
Much like the puddles the beetles wade
Time drips between the grass and my knee,
Some things barely change

Since the split of the waves in Galway
I cried with new friends by a frozen riverside
We drank, sang, and held hands at Buffalo Bay
And on the beach looked out at Edna Pontellier

But arrested for crimes I never considered
I stroll along the green mile,
Until these promenade doors are closed,
And I am in bed with you, Michael Furey

Her fingers delicate and precise
Strings the bow, readies and aims
Still and strong, balanced and sturdy
She shoots my muse down
And sings a soft lullaby

From afar, down and distant
I take sight from a valley below
Silent and light, shaking and floating
I watch my muse come falling down
And utter a last soliloquy

"I once traversed all of the underworld
And reigned all of the skies and outer lands

Through the coals of burning charcoal beneath
And the beams of sun and rainbows a high'

I battled along with endangered cranes
And swam with the swans through midday to night

I carved out a name in water and snow
And spewed forth eight anonymous arrows;

Unmarked, grazing, never with a target
They still fly lost through tunnels and wind shafts

For another to catch the smell and chase
Like a lover and poet in search of..."

Your splattered paint might look like Jesus to you,
But respect is oblivion before learning how the brush is used

Gathered goats crooning, harpooned in galleries
Mingling with mimes, the biggest cover-up is hope

Priming and framing a pretense of seeing – Your eye to believe a mirror is as happy as you pretend to be

Hope is a secret and whispers wither
Instead of admit and illuminate -

We're not made for what we've made this to be

For truth to permeate, it's either you or me slit
I never wanted to cut anyone.

I found you dressed in disaster, cloaked in a black jacket, and riding a bicycle between the street and the sidewalk. There were coffee cups and cigarettes, treading with your tires, in the puddles left from last night's rain. There was a tension pulling on the bench, which I sat upon, from the angel or demon on my shoulder prodding to keep me still, and wishing to abolish my will. I could submit myself to a marriage of comfort and logic, but from across the street, for the first time, I spotted the crass crystal of your skin and limbs. The way it leapt, spat, and carried itself, your smell, spearing the sinew of my senses, spoiling my strength; it diluted the determined dream of staying clean. I brush off the banter of the peasants on my shoulder, stop the shaking of my knees, and clamour across the seams to you.

Now that blue bike is bound by the railroad, a steady croon barreling towards me, with a beat and thud along the wooden plank. I couldn't turn the tracks, no matter how hard I heaved. I was teething again, for your legs and thighs, a fang to furrow, to clutch the corner of your hide. Your heroin eyes; your morphine mouth. Let those lips, a needle, kiss my neck, and let those hands rest upon my head; soak me in water, and scalp my soul. Baptize the brains of a battered bastard, confirm my commitment to sin within. It's so consistent over the din of righteous urge, so let's cut the chase, twist, and make a new moral dirge, that now we must struggle and strain to keep obtained.

You are an ally and enemy to my own family, and you know foxes frolic, but a hound is on our trail. We are prey to each other, but predator to ourselves. We bite our own tails, and leave a path of bloodied baels; false gods clawed until they're of no use.

A slight, timid light cast itself through the drapes of his window. It cut across his eye, and he awoke. Today I will live my last day.

From his bed he stumbled to the kitchen sink, and stared out the window. Mindlessly he turned the tap, and when the water came he shifted his eyes from the cold street outside to the sink, and what he was doing. What will I do today? I will kiss Patricia before I go. Kiss her with my hands; a sculptor bringing stones together. Kiss her with my skin; a mason shaping minerals. Kiss her with my mouth; an architect connecting canals and aqueducts.

And to think this is the last time I will feel her lips, wanting me, to devour me. With a reluctant pull he slowly untangled himself from her, their limbs stretched as they separated, and with no more than a casual goodbye he broke from her and left the house.

This is cold, too cold, and he continued down 17th Ave. towards the coffee shop. He had a bagel with his coffee and sat to the right of the counter, the far right, facing the till, where he could see the server behind the till. Did she wake up today happy, did she feel someone's presence as she came from that world of sleep? Or was she alone? As her eyes appeared, opening, were they inviting? Were they fighting? Perhaps it was all an unwelcome'd jolt; today, an invasion of propriety. If only I could take her back, back to where she longs to be.

The coffee was stale, the bagel had a dull crisp, and the whole restaurant smelt of labored sweat. What a chore to work here. He got up and left, not knowing where he was going. He stopped at the nearest bus stop, and stood upright, another toll in the crowd, and soon began to glance about him. A man with a carrion crow umbrella, as if it will rain today. A yellow cab woman, like company will step in. And this girl, this young girl – such solace in innocent eyes, like a schoolmate had fallen from the gym ropes due to a minute misstep; an accident. Did she ride along to the hospital, was she the first to see his cast? How old will she be when he falls from a greater height? I don't want to be here, not waiting for a bus, no, I will not wait. He walked two blocks further up the street, waited at a street light, and proceeded when the signal lit up.

I will watch a movie, and he entered the theatre that stood where he was walking towards. Did she wake up today happy? Where is she now? Will she ever know of how I thought about her now, this morning, this afternoon... How is it that I let her go? How is it that she let me go? She knew, shut must have known. The lights dimmed and the film began to roll.

When we found the treehouse in the bush, and my shoe got stuck in the mud... What was it that we had? What were we snacking on, crackers, yes, that she had bought that morning. No, biscuits, we had stopped at the same coffee shop there, just down 17th Ave. My father built one just like it when I was thirteen, back in the town where I was born. I'd go home and find Sparta barking and panting, I'd find the backdoor unlocked, and would race to the phone to call her. Where is she now? Oh what I would do to go back and approach her. Raspberries to my lips, and branches along my back. Slender door frames to that old house – so slender that we slouched and crawled, and once inside, oh the things we found; an old telephone and scattered bracelets. Buttons on shirts, and buttons loose across the floorboards, those rickety wooden panels; I swore we'd break through. And from the highest tree, yes, we had to build it up on the highest tree.

It rained, my god it rained! We flew into the city in a downpour, and ran from the airport at twilight, hailing a cab. She spoke to us like children – she was a mother without children, and she took it out on us. The fare was in the hundreds, she wouldn't let us out, just drove... we drove all night, laughing, past the towers and over the bridge to the East side, smiling, we couldn't keep our hands by our sides. The movie ended. There was that carrion crow... a bite upon the skin, did she really believe what he said? Such words rip and ripen within, and the stems wither while the branches break. There was no doctor, no emergency, just a cast iron over the raspberry bush, slowly, it was so slow.

I fell didn't I? I fell then, after she told me... said it was a minute incident. How dare she use that word? So innocent, like there could have been solace! And where was she when I rode to the hospital? They said they could fix me, but I had already awoken and made up my mind. I couldn't bring her back to where she longed to be. I couldn't! I couldn't! Oh, the inflection of her!

A slight, timid light cast itself through the drapes of his window. It cut across his eye, and he awoke. Today I will live my last day.

Steam bellows across a frozen blue sky,
Shadowing the tips of the old Exchange District buildings.
The windows are a shaven frosted Rothko painting,
And the city is an emissary of frozen wine and bread.

Jesus' blood soaks the snow of Main St.
And the children run along to mix rum with eggnog.
Gone are the days we warmed ourselves
Along the walls of the temple and tomb –
Lit by a gentle lover's flame.

At night these kids come out and spit across our sky
Destroying the carvings of our ancestor's architect.
The windows are scraped by fingernail sketches,
And Winnipeg is a chilled emissary of frozen wine and bread.

Come inside, leave them to their mess and new decree
The temple is warm; my lonely tomb,
And light this organ that should be of fire.

If I could see two weeks ago clearly I'd have everything I wanted now.
If I could see two weeks from today everything I want now would be a
waste.

But I am a shuttered horse; peripheral and blinded
I see the way your hair stands upright now, and how you glance out
the window and pause after you hear where I've been.
Your moment's escape to guarantee not enough procession to remember.
Your pause only exists in mine, and your strides only lead you from me,
While I am still – In your curl upright, and your hand upon your chin by the windowsill.

If I could see two weeks ago clearly I'd still be in bed with you now.
If I could see two weeks from today I'd walk backwards, and never
turn back.

But I am a lost stallion, uncastrated and unleashed
I see the curve of your back just inches from my hand, and how you
turn around and pause, catching that glance after I speak your name.
An instant for a moment more to grab hold what is not mine yet.
Your turn is only my indictment, as I come down filing to lay down
another – A grander sentence still.

Your voice shudders like crumbs in the cookie jar
Lifted from the rackets of dining hall clatter – It comes through clear, and pours down my throat

It floats as shadows do off the splinters of firewood
This place not lit, but awaiting midnight's strike
And the match swipes; shifting shawls and sheets

By conversation's end tongues become numb
A spoken language over Babel's debris – Upon our ears an overcoming veneer

A greeting by another name a peasant's charade
But the swift spell of your casual serenade – Spews sifted seasons of weighted reasons

Heart to heart is a silver lining of sincere humour – Longing to declare a love for you
An observation of the past
Is an acknowledgment I think of you,
And a silence on the riverbank
Is affirmation I will think of you

When you're gone
(like those before you)
In time I know, you're more than a pastime
You're a little more than I knew,
I'll miss you

God told me I'm going to play the role
Where I'm rolling in plastic wrap and bubbles that pop
God told me I'm going to fill the void
Where I'm void in the ways of a glove box
God told me I'm going to see the eye
Where everything looks like the jagged edge –
Those boulders and spikes building your bones

I'm rolling right through as if it were plastic
I'm popping those bubbles as if it were fun
I'm filling the space where your hand covered
I'm hiding your glove still in the dark of my box
I'm going through your cave like it were light
I can see it with a closed eye, And fill it with a third person love

But this one broke the bone and there's an avalanche
All is coming down, and we're caught upon the spikes – That we set for ourselves, when we dove so fucking deep

Go ahead and drive away,
But God told me I'm going to play the role
I'm still all wrapped in the plastic of your soul
And I'm still believing those bumps were bubbling highs
And a pop is still a sinner's delight.

Go ahead and sleep in an empty bed,
But God told me I'm going to fill the void
I'm still alone and been clear of other holes
And I'm still living in the hole of your hand

Go ahead and go to someone else,
But God told me I'm going to see the eye
I'm still seeing everything we ever saw...
And I'm still looking through the love of your eyes

And you're just as beautiful as God said you to be,
When I pleaded with him to let me off easy

It's just like he said when I cried to be free,
You're more beautiful than I could ever believe

And until the day we're adrift and far from our bones,
You're more beautiful than I'll ever really know

Until the day we're adrift and far from our bones
I'm going to explore beneath each stone you've thrown

God told me about you,
And at first I didn't believe
But now that I've truly seen
There's a tomb and stone in every heart
I'm going to live my life for you.

There are three ravens left, lit by the magnified hue of a sunny sky
Their call a caw, born and teasing of his raincoat's patchless tear
I first met you when we were ripe for peeling
Now we're eaten to the core; only seeds remain in one another's gut
We were as faded as waves in the shadow of a sunset glow – With only one half-hour of existence left
The surfing light riding along the wave turns from twilight to dim – And from my grasp to him.

Did you tap your finger lightly along that patchless tear?
Did you see my magnetic meditated grin in him?
Because he saw the mirror of my songs subject in you
But he turned aside while you let him inside – And I found your twin, waiting right by my side
But this time I found him, in the reflection of her eye
And brought our story to an ensemble piece – Of a hollowed ocean floor, dug deep for jewels carelessly buried beneath
And heedlessly handled as cheap, traded, commodity
Now empty pockets, or even pocketless – Sewn shut, thinking a tear can disappear.

There are three ravens left, shadowed by the dark hue of an endless sky
But we've gone our own way, and I've found a home after our soap opera sub-plots
All to myself, no one but me
Except for the fact that where it came from still remains – The seed in my gut that will become ripe fruit tomorrow.

Sincerely,
M. Wohlgemuth

Dear Demon of Me,
What rope pulled this hole through this soul?
No knot, but dangling through and through
All along my spinal cord to my minor toe
Far beyond head to toe, past this body: My soul to keep
Lost amiss in this stretched spiritual abyss
My God minced, and existence rolling like a dice
The odds are everlasting as the dice will never cease
1, 2, 3, the numbers forever spinning
3, 4, 6, at every twist love counted down
A rope tugged, stretched, rope burn through and through

Dear Demon of Me,
Why can't you cut loose the dangling line?
So I'll live liberated, be steam surround
And save face by filling the empty space
Where inbetween I've seen so many dreams
Lost amiss in this stretched spiritual abyss

I forgot how the sun appeared, bouncing and playing between passing rain clouds
I forgot how the rain dried into the pavement, a softening of the dry worn sidewalk
I forgot how the streets smelled in the afternoon; leaves and dirt, books and bricks tickling my nose
And I am reminded by a warm breeze carrying along an afternoon's rainshower scent.

I forgot how friends wandered the streets,
and that Safeway parking lots, movie village meanderings, and coffee shop porch fronts could all add up to the fantastical mazzanine of my mind
I forgot how sandals slid and skirts flapped at Old Market Square,
And I forgot how every evening, night, and morning can still bring a potential blossom past that which lingers lonelily below
Maybe there's a memory still, undeveloped, fighting for a place above the mazzaznine on the highest balcony
Not soaring beyond, but seated beside you, comfortably in this crowd
Maybe not tonight, but in between when no one is thinking of me.

That is what I remember now, this second, settled satisfaction.

There in that notebook, a thousand other words. Here one or two. There a life-long, wait, long-life, gone, long, wrong. There's hair on the bathroom floor. There's old voices sawed off by a cut off log. There's a flame flirting with your rubber shoe. There's a christmas red bulb sitting there..! There between your crossed legs sitting on the carpet floor. It's your mother's carpet. How we lived with your mom, and like life could be served to us just like that tasty tray of breakfast you brought for me. The paint stain on my pants was just decoration, adding to the stains left from shock to pull it up, thinking maybe your sister was in the house. There weren't any books we hadn't read, that we hadn't read about teen sex. An old tune like it were the 20's. No glasses clanking. Applause. Silence, or a car hum. Guitars were built out of wood I had never seen. And I never understood love because I was never loved. And so we cried all night in the front seat, and I thought maybe god lived between the damp-tear-drenched-face and the hands holding me near, like love was presence, even physical presence, that represented spiritual presence. I can stop, except if I still don't sleep. Then maybe more. Hit edit. Or grab a pen. It used to be a different pen, and they weren't my own hands then. Every night would be filled; I'd make sure of it. Something to do. Is this something to do? Why this when it could be that? Because a book says so? I'm not a fucking book, and I'm not as thin as those pages. Put them together and all you have is a small little black book as a box, that shapes, and only closes in my love. It's more than that book, but I'm skeptical and dreary, for everyone will live by it, and those that don't live by nothing, but a distance of singe from the crumpled, the old burns, and the torn hope. I feel lies in happiness, and I'm never going to believe anyone until they admit their truth is a secret not even they can uncover. Can you really tell me that night when you felt broken hearted you didn't feel a peace in knowing you knew nothing of your soul. Because a broken heart is like a mirror shattered in your face; misplaced, jagged, cuts, yourself, and blood.

Knock on my door at 4 a.m. and give me a half beer. Don't tell me there's nothing more going on than one evening at a bar with just friends. In that lean agains my doorframe, and in that crooked posture, a million posts present themself as unsure as signs hidden in the dark, reflective only from beneath that frozen sheet of snow, caked from cold windy nights before. I'll take a sip, and I won't deny the taste is like going back in time for your graduation, to sail on a boat, even though the obligation was absent. You wanted me there, I met you then, and nobody knew. We were younger than those drug or hockey pasts. And we were older than a break-up of adults in the future. I dont believe in fate, only the becoming of it. And with one click, or a different step on the sidewalk – like the time I bought flowers and still rung your doorbell – I can change every single ounce or inch on how you perceive me. Not by control, not with precision, but only knowing every second is a chance to choose another complete unforseeable future. I can speak about how this movie will end, but even when psychology works, it's only a smokescreen to the already filmed or acted. Our lives have moved past the mall of our past. We're not our parent's kids anymore, living a life that they somehow told us to live, but without ever actually saying, 'we'll raise you like robots with our robotic love.' No one loves my mother, because they never gave a robot a chance. Like the boy in AI or maybe ET, I love those that I never thought could be loved, but they're the greatest friends of all. And maybe theories are right, I'd marry my mom, but theories are nothing in comparison to my theory I theorize while we walk down a sidewalk on November 30th, 2007. You could have fallen, or maybe I could have held you tighter, it doesn't make a difference, because my memories never stay the same, and I'll remember it however my desires steal me. And it doesn't matter because you'll never perceive of it, and we'll never talk of it, because you have forgotten, and you have moved on, without slipping this time. That ice beneath your gripless shoes is only a sick trick of a devil that doesn't exist. Yet if he lives still in me, you know it must be me, and I've created it. This cold lick is only his pitchfork, and this long night is only the hell before melting.

I no longer believe in heaven or hell, so what did it mean when you found out I kissed her and I started balling when you came back? Only after my 'kiss' doll that you gave me for valentines made it's audio splurge... and the spark of a flame ignited from the love in that once... still laughing in my face, while I sobbed in bed with you. What kiss is this when you have come back – that kiss from the past – now a toy reminding us... No, just me. I don't know how you perceive of it, in fact, I think you never have or will, but I cried all night and came with you for the first time for the next few weeks. But the last time was the same, except you were the one afraid of hell, and I was the man, fearing your demise. I let you straddle some body to fill that black hole that screamed, 'PARENTS ARE GOD AND THE DEVIL WILL SPITE YOU IF YOU FACE THE REALITY OF YOUR SIN!'

We faced reality anyways, and for the last time, I fell in love for real. I'll never get out of it, something that complicated will always be spinning. Maybe like the words I've read, or the songs I've heard, beauty lives in the unexplainable, and maybe that's why death is still the most romantic notion of all. I listened to Sigur Ros once, I don't understand. Who is this girl here now? What have I done? Now a million and more dreams haunt me, perhaps forevermore, of beds with arms of girls I dont recognize. I'll awake a thousand times, but it still doesn't add up or catch up to the depth of the dream I've fallen in. I can't get out, I don't know my existence anymore. So read me philosopy, and lecture me on the great subject of man, but more normal in these days, cite me the facts, and tell me the steps to being a better man, better soul, better body, better parent – give me more than a million and more books – I'm still beneath the times I've awaken. No books can save me, no structure can cure. Tell god I need a raincoat, and he'll give me, for sure, thunder. What book will ever clothe me, what book will ever spell the equation of my soul? Speak or hold your tongue, no one speaks in tongues without kissing me. I spoke of a graveyard wake once, well, the dotted lines have come together, I know what lane I'm in – it's the right, and the graveyard wake is much like the uncertainty of this, just like the nights I walked down the stairs on a casual night. Night is only the place that comes to assure me, if I sleep, my dreams are closer to the life I wanted to be. And so maybe I chose all of this, only that, though... I don't want it. So if fate is becoming, what is becoming of me – when I choose what I don't want, and what is becoming is your big lie the whole time – when my choice is still – never what I want. I'd rather do them all and experience the expected 'what the hell are you doing' result, than be wise and never have anyone say, 'you have done hell which is heaven, and always has been, because hell was only a thing made to keep us from heaven, a ruse, a ploy, a trick, because we could have been god this whole time,' except in not so many words, but only in these –

"What the hell are you doing? I don't understand you," and so you'll all walk away, and shake your heads, and maybe find comfort in something else, which I can not.

But I don't know, because I haven't made a choice to keep choosing that most heavenly path.

How do you kill a man who welcomes death?
Like a guest.
How do you become more than just a passing guest?
Arrive and stay – before, during, and after.

Those that still try to dodge the bullets wonder why life's a constant ricochet of disaster. Eat it.

I want more than just a quaint visitor, won't you stay for breakfast please?
Thicker than honey nut, lodged like an oak tree; bullets for breakfast, you and me.
Show me you're more than blood, there's more to you than that.

Is Limbo

I don't live here anymore

Skirts en Francais

Broke, Beerless, and Noodle Soup

Not Yet (Coming Soon).

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