Do you know? If you called, I would hear you, no matter the distance or the Stygian gloom. If you beckoned, I would come...I would appear, and stand by your side, more swiftly than the first golden promise of dawn. And if you called me not, if you did not beckon, I would be waiting, until all the world was broken and fallen away, until the moon and the sky had faded to nothing, and the very ether of the thought of you had become a trick of memory, smoke, another dream forgotten.

Waiting, and content, your name upon these lips.

I spoke three words.
How could I speak them lightly? The words have never left my lips
have never been true before.
I never tell you the truth anyway.
I write it down, cryptic gifts
buried in plain sight, one day to tell secrets
to no one. You have to believe me.
I only lie to myself.

There aren't any languages to tell you enough
provoke or convince you. I might as well shout at you
through obsidian mirrors; no reflection, no substance
just an Aztec ghost, a ruin of memory
an uncomfortable history. All I have are words that chafe.
All I have is you, through dark glass
through dark eyes.

Unreciprocated love is the stuff of existence. Writing about it artfully, chasing it quixotically, fashioning some lasting permanence with music or violence or a good goddamn movie, now that's the reason for existing in the first place.

No one can die. None can be degraded forever. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.

-Vivekananda

So I guess the lesson for today is, have some fucking perspective.

I'm bitter about many things, but nothing so much as witnessing this strange hypocrisy that seems to be a motif in my life. For instance, when I dated this girl in high school who ranted vehemently and often against smoking, drinking, and premarital sex...then went to college and proceeded to do all three, vehemently and often. (Did I ever sleep with her? No. Maybe that makes it worse. But maybe if I had, that would be even worse, worse. I lose either way.) Or this other girl, who said much the same thing, and did. Or more recently, this girl who swore she'd never sleep with anyone from such-and-such area, then did...nine times. Consecutively. I seem to be some kind of catalyst for these women.

But it really bugs me. Is it denial? When people argue against a thing, then do that thing, is it like finally cracking under the self-imposed pressure? Is it like, oh fuck it, I've done it once so I'm already a hypocrite, I may as well have a little fun, yee-fucking-ha?

My special favorite is watching female friends of mine in bad relationships, who want nothing from me, even though I'd pretty much kill for the opportunity to treat them well. Sure, there's a possible lack of chemistry there, but it's also pretty sad; "This loser sucks, but you'd suck more."

The bitterness amuses you. Admit it.

Watched the Japanese horror film Stacy last night; I was told it was bad, so my expectations were low, but it actually didn't suck at all. It was low-budget, but in a very cool way (it was exactly like watching a good Doctor Who episode), and the script was great; odd and moving and very funny.

Basically, girls 15-17 begin to inexplicably experience NDH, or Near Death Happiness Syndrome (which is a lot of fun and strangely moving to watch), then die a few days later, only to awaken as flesh eating zombies called Stacies who can only be laid to rest by a Repeat Kill (being hacked into 165 pieces), which only fathers, boyfriends, and Romero Repeat Kill Squads are allowed to carry out. A strange glowing substance called Butterfly Twinkle Powder found on the zombies may hold a vital clue to the horrifying affliction.

Really.

It's gruesome, utterly insane, a great twist on the genre, and very obviously an accomplished parody. Watching the characters watching commercials for death dealing machines like Bruce Campbell's Right Hand 2 was a blast, but the very hot Illegal Drew Repeat Kill Squad, a team of badass sixteen year old girls named after Drew Barrymore, was worth the price of the movie alone.

Did I mention it was strangely moving? Imagine the perfect Zen happiness of love, real love, staggeringly deep and pure and fulfilling, measured out in hours and days; the girl on your arm smiling until your heart breaks with joy, may very well be a monster in the morning.

That is the coolest goddamn thing I've ever heard.

My love is a secret twine ball of lust for heavy breasts and a resolute gaze, hair and ink and a dangerous roadmap of elegant curves. I breathe the air as you pass by, your sweet and unique bouquet priceless, the scent of your skin already a treasured memory, I shall die before I surrender it, no, not on my goddamn watch.

But if I could sacrifice all my nights and dreams alotted just to watch you sleep, touch your face, kiss that oasis of sense between your shoulders, beneath your neck, aye, I would, I'd pay the devil if I could. And if he looked twice at you I'd murder him in his wicked sleep.

Talking to Wendy
incoherent babbling
I'm fourteen again.

There was some kind of new moon. My poetry was eclipsed in that bated hour, finding refuge in its own memory: I saw with perfect clarity beneath closed eyes the carvings in the wall, clawmarks of my scribblings, essense of my passing. These lines in wood or stone or paper, bloody ash from the fires of my penitent offering: I saw, I loved, I died. The only sacred landscape now being of flesh, your flesh, hers, his, my own, smooth and taut and glistening, marred finally by the obsidian runes of my whispered word, or hers, or his...or yours.

I wrote at midnight with my footsteps, I wrote at dawn with your name. I wrote it down with every breath, burning as I went. But now the shaded hour quickens, and this ghost dream too must pass.

What, then, have I wrought?

The genius of Metropolis lies in Rotwang. What does he care for religious allegory, overtures, and symbolism? What does he care for the plight of the worker, the whims of the mighty? His agenda is pure, and it burns more brightly than the city itself: he will be requited. Wherefore Hel, his love denied? Why, here...here, within his vials and dials, electricity and pentagrams. And here...in the flesh and ether of Maria, her tears and panic so delicately filtered, wholly pure, ripe, perfect, her pale and beautiful skin the coat of arms for a monster.

Now...he lifts his awful gaze in agony, in triumph, in fury, in quiet deliberation, and begins his task, this ultimate sacrifice, this terrible incarnation of bitterness and denial. His black right hand orchestrates the wild resolution of his dark and aching passions, his entire being consumed, careless, frenzied, damned. Can you see it? She is coming...she is coming...and she brings in her burning eyes death, and destruction, and despair...and the very soul of hell.

Long live Rotwang: bad motherfucker.

A fourteen year old boy sits alone in his basement, wearing oversized headphones. It's dark, but there are some old disco-style lights left over from the seventies in the corner, he got them from his uncle, and they're blinking: red, yellow, green, orange. He's lit some candles, he stole them from his mother. His eyes are closed.

The rest of the house might be sleeping, stange how he's cut them off, he somehow doesn't care, they could have all died horribly and he'd never know, they might have fought and cried and now lie sobbing into pillows, but he's oblivious, he's in the dark. Somewhere: a girl he likes is talking to a boy she likes. A good friend is talking shit about him; another defends him. A high school teacher is marvelling at his writing acumen, but gives him a C- on the paper, because it was late. Tomorrow someone will tackle him in P.E., humiliating him...lunch will serve rectangles of pizza...a shy girl will stare at him in his art class....

It's 11:30. He's young...midnight is still a magic hour, full of portent. It's Wednesday night...the weekend lies worlds away, but awaits him eagerly, riven with wonder and adventure. It's 1983...the world is exploding with New Wave and synthpop, and he's listening to Queen's second album, Queen II. On vinyl. For the third time tonight.

In the space of a year he's been introduced to The Dark Crystal, Interview with the Vampire, and Pink Floyd's The Wall. Something is eating at him, has been for years, and he has found a certain succor, immersing himself in these things. Something beckoned, and he answered. Something haunted, and he lingered. Something dark and unnameable loved him, through and through, and he was a dead man.

The lyrics and melodies caress his mind with a carnal skill he won't experience again, but he'll keep looking, year after year. Four geniuses, rock stars, all postured in black, all postured in white, effortlessly beautiful, androgynous, burning, staring at him from the album cover on the floor, waiting to be worshipped. For now, he listens to the whispers, the roars, the growls, the screams, the high and crystalline singing. Guitars, bass, drums, piano, angels, crying.... He opens his eyes, blinks, checks the time.

It's already Thursday, but only just.

Just enough time for side 2.

I wave the knife around wildly...ah! do I have your attention now? I pace and I fume, I gnaw upon my hand and low growly noises are made. What? What is it? What do you want, what can I do? Whereupon I pat myself down quickly, haunted, frantic, eyes wild...is it me? Is it something I do? Something I don't do? Do you want me to dance and sing? Drink and sin? Fry in the sun for your amusement? Shall I be more clever, more erudite? Less? You want me to shut the fuck up, is that it, tall dark and handsome, and silent as a sphinx, ah, more mystery, less brilliance. Right? What? I cup my ear so I can hear: WHAT? I am not your type? There are blind, scary knife motions in the air, short and violent, my teeth clenched...a study in controlled chaos...I breathe better now. Now...what is that you said again?

All the things I am not...even one will do. Even one negative overwhelms the majesty of my being, is that what you imply? I am not tall enough, my voice not sweet, my skin not bronzed...Knife! Where is my knife! I will kill whoever birthed this notion, whoever whispered this foul secret to you. There will be death! Destruction on a grand and acutely personal scale, die slow by my hand, you pestilent, insolent dog, whisperer of lies! Look at her (before you die, I mean), look well upon that countenance and tell me why I should not die for her! Tell me why I should not fall upon my sword for some favorable glance, a benedictive touch? Is it not sharp enough? No? Can I not also expire? Am I not keenly able? Bastard! I have already died a thousand deaths...what is another! Ha ha! But why shouldn't she care for me! How am I unworthy! Speak, dog! Or by god, die!!!

I see that I have frightened you. Your pardon. This storm is chastened and, at last, abates. There will now be a gentle cradling of your face, as if checking for fever: forgive, my love...forgive my wild passion, my lunacy, my ravings...I light this candle for you--see! how pretty, how soft the glow!--and take you up within my arms for a slow ascent, the stairs nothing, I am strong...and finally, to bed. I don't even kiss you, I cannot allow it...my lips yearn for your sweet warmth, but not tonight, not now, I am your humble and obedient slave, and I retire from your sight, humbled, obedient...knife? What knife? Oh...this one. Er, here--it is yours. Keep it beneath your pillow. You never know what may visit you, in the night.

I crept, nocturnally, too close to the source, and glimpsed nothing I can remember, but was profoundly haunted just the same. I woke, I rose, I wandered for the space of a few minutes, groggy, eyes closed, trying vainly to conjure some memory of the dream. Nothing, but an undeniable, unshakable notion, almost a sensation, that something knew I knew too much, and forbade me any recollection. Maddening. Frightening. I thought perhaps I had found the path to some secret genius, but it had faded effortlessly away. I mourned in silence...until now.

I've been thinking about it a lot, and, near as I can tell, the only difference between genius and madness is how well you get your ideas across.

Ode to a fish, part deux or, Enough with the goddamn dreams already.

She pads softly through her apartments as the night draws on, perhaps thinking. Perhaps not. Does she turn on the television, after he leaves? Some dear and favorite cd? The radio? Ah, no...the telephone. After he leaves she returns a vital call to some familiar voice which gives her treacherous energy: as he exits he can hear her voice, coy, flirtatious, different...full of a thousand histories, private, secure, none of his concern.

He steps away from the door even as she locks it, a light laugh woodenly muffled, he might as well be a world away before he even starts his car. He dreads the trip home. He is filled with desperate and ridiculous notions, how he'll go back, knock--no, ring the bell--and in a magical discourse from the movies declare love and meaning and everything a girl wants to hear from anyone besides him. But no. There is no path through the funhouse mirror-maze of her heart, but back the way he came, chastened, ashamed, jealous, disconcerted, all the cursed spectrum of boyish despair. The drive is long and full of sharp broken hopes, heavy with abandoned futures, how could he have ever thought...? He winces mightily, and often.

The kiss...lingers for days--weeks. It was a stupid gesture, and rather surreal. In the space of a moment he crosses to her, takes her head in his hands, touches her face and feels this skin at last, the strange familiarity of her warmth and breath and hair, now so close...and her lips feel exactly as he has always imagined them, unbearably sweet and pure and worth breaking himself to pieces, worth a thousand tortured nights at least, and for twenty or thirty seconds nothing means anything: he is a boy, she is a girl, his arms are strong and she is so very, very female. But this perfection, her scent, the taste of her, that forced intimacy has won him--mean, finally, nothing.

The drive is long, and full of broken songs. When he gets home he writes everything down, not because he enjoys complaining, but because it's a good way to kill time.

Die, fucker.

Ode to a fish.

She was beautiful, a thoughtless siren, fitting. I called her friend. One of us moved away, it was autumn, inexorably, a time of slow and beautiful death. Stand in a high place and watch a million deaths on the wind, an orgy of color in the trees, the palette of decay. Stand and wait for the cold white sleep, for nepenthe, for a dream of god.

I thought of her often, but her mind was always closed to me. I nightly yearned for a dark and sweet proximity: her soft and painful touch...that black hair, that white skin, those gory lips, her mouth so hot, and treacherous, and damp. I commanded countless mercenaries to do battle with her laughter, her breasts, the alchemy of her eyes, and they died withal. Happy. Content. As empty as snakeskins. Armies to die in (glorious) vain, exhausted, no wonder I slept. And sleeping, she was there...more real than flesh. Then, too, she looked at me.

I pause now, voyeur, to watch the rusty wind, eternal vanguard for the white and happy murder, a simple revolution, a clockwise turning. I wonder what etheric poison it is, what infection, that pollutes me so thoroughly. Did it cover me like rain as a child? Like dead leaves? Did it slip into my mind later, howling, like black ceaseless wind on a black ceaseless night? Or was I the invoker, conjurer of nothing more than foolish and futile damnation? Why the injury? Why the pain? Today, and tomorrow, and hereafter?

I write: Love is wide and deep and more frightening than all the reaches of hell, and I will not seek her: Orpheus, not I. She and I must and will always wander under different stars, the same stars, one single zodiac prison of fitful dreams and longings. She was once angel and devil and also friend, and, gone, inspiration. She will pass one day into the long and nameless history of the unrequited, but for others: a mother, and sister, and wife, a picture, a portrait, a thing of cool and effortless beauty. I...will remember her.

The wind caresses its many lovers, orange and gold and bronze, and red. And dead. It coils and twists and turns. And burns.

Sweet dreams, old friend.

Did I want to be normal? I've been asking myself this question since high school. One would think I'd answer the silly question and be done with it, or ignore it altogether, what the fuck am I thinking about. But no, just today on the way back from getting some granola bagels for lunch, the question accosted me once again. "Keep looking straight ahead," it commanded in a low, familiar hiss, "and keep your head down." Numbed by the despair of recognition, I complied. Head down, the world disappears, and the only company you keep is with demons...your demons. And so I walked, this fell avatar beside me, darkly. It urged me to think, to question, to remember, to wonder, to doubt...did I want to be normal?

I wasn't a popular kid. I certainly wasn't a good looking one. I was brainy and addled, dorky and confused and desperately naive. I was slight and myopic and asthmatic and not at all cool. Cool was the smart haircuts and nice clothes and witty dialogue and self-confidence the other kids had, yeah, I saw it every day. These kids liked regular things, they liked cars and football and drinking and drugs and Top 40 and everything I hated. They conformed to this hazy normalcy which seemed hopelessly unobtainable and very very cool, and I would dare to wonder what it would be like to be them...not addled, not confused, but personable, with it. Not me. Not a dreamer. Not a watcher. Not some shy and ugly vampire, shrinking from their sunlight. What would it be like to have everyone know your name, to laugh and sing with impunity, to date the hottest girl in school, to not ride the bus?

Simple questions, asked countless times by countless others.

In the meantime, I wrote. I drew. I thought and schemed. I made silly music videos with my friends, I watched some weird movies and listened to weird music. I dreamt my dreams while sleeping and awake. I was bedeviled and haunted and obsessed, and you know what? I loved it. I felt the best when I felt the worst. Everyone's happiness is exactly the same, but everyone's pain is unique. Did I want to be unique, or did I want to be normal? Succumb to the demons, let them come, with long coats and piercing gaze, by night and day, to vex and to torment? Or fuck the Prom Queen and get a normal job?

I smiled and thanked my avatar for his time. "This is my floor," I told him, and got out.

Sorry I haven't written you back. I know, I should have called. I was out, you see. Outside. I was traveling, I was abroad. It was around midnight, I'd been lost for hours. I'd found myself near the harbor, somewhere behind the city, on a wharf. My cell had no signal, otherwise I swear I would have called. Even text messaged you. Doesn't matter now. I stared out over the water, too calm for my liking, I want my view of the sea to be noisy, and carnal, black waves on black waves, the depths of the night sky no match for the depths below, crushing, proximate, beckoning. Beckoning. I ran to my car and drove away fast.

I could have stopped by, I know. Everyone knows you're up late. Maybe you're working, maybe you have visitors. A visitor. A gentleman. A man. A woman. A ghost of a smile. I drove by, I will admit. I didn't look to see if your light was on. The point is, I didn't interrupt, leaving you to your epic notions and motions and Coleridge dreams. It's true, I needed succor, but it wasn't with you.

At last I found a place of opulence, red-eyed vampires, clove cigarettes, coffee and neon and sideways glances. I ordered one of everything and Tabasco especially, but I grabbed the waitress before she left: I've always wanted a sister, I told her. Someone whose hand I could hold, tenderly, while I spoke of my dreams. Someone whose own dreams were of singular interest to me, someone whose loves and vexations were milk and honey and music to me. I stood then, and raved: A sister, I demanded, with eyes like coal and skin like snow, a voice of dusky reason and infinite wisdom, hair like velvet drapes to hide my tears when I can't write. Can't you see, I begged. And the waitress nodded distantly, too pleasantly, and maddened, I fled. The tragedy of genius is the inevitable sacrifice, someone yelled after me. Nervy bastards. I could smell cloves for hours afterwards. I unplugged my computer when I got home, and slept too late.

My life is crazy right now...but I'll write soon, I promise.

If Morrison were alive today, would he have a website? Would it be a vital testament to his genius and art, free MP3's for all, or a premium site for members only? Would he have a PDA and a cool nifty cell phone that took pictures? Would he be in shape, a fit and rugged example of a man in his (sixties) prime, the sex appeal wholly undiminished? Would he make television appearances, cameos in film? Would he stay home to watch Queer Eye, or would you catch him at the Mann's Chinese, taking in the Lord of the Rings marathon?

Would he be a resonant voice speaking out against these dark days, where our cities fall and soldiers die and our President speaks vapid half-truths with a loathsome smirk? Or would these times reflect nothing new, inspiring him to say and feel nothing, just sit atop a horse upon an embankment, looking down into the swollen dirty crush of humanity, stoic, crying like an Indian?

I think he'd have written books. I think he might have attempted filmmaking again. I think he'd be reclusive, but busy. He'd have aligned himself with another fitful genius, neither liked too well but together producing awesome beauty. He'd speak out politically from time to time, grudgingly, knowing his words would change nothing in this world, but a spirited thinker still. He'd be a great fan of up and coming bands, but only the ones with talent. He'd sing with them, on occasion. He'd travel. He'd quietly yearn. He'd be an excellent, albeit mercurial, friend, wise beyond his years, and your years, and mine.

Morrison is dead. Long live Jim Morrison.

Maybe life is a few dozen moments of sublime perfection, moments rhapsodized and glorified but still hopelessly beyond our ken. We spend our time endlessly describing them, quietly yearning for them, trying desperately not to forget them. Oases in a vast desert, a few drops of water scattered between patternless dunes.

Or baubles, on a necklace.

I don't know why I dig you, but I wish I didn't. I wish I didn't feel like I was fourteen every time you were in the room. I wish I didn't talk that way.

I wish I could tell you what I was thinking, and make it sound unique, like you haven't heard it 800 times already. I wish these thoughts were hypnotic, seductive, that they entranced you and satisfied you but that you still wished for more. I wish I was addictive. I wish you weren't.

I wish I could sing to you, something low and quiet, a good song. This would of course be accompanied by guitar. Yeah, I wish I could play the guitar. The song would be elemental poetry, and it would carry me, dreamlike, into your heart. It would be a kickass guitar, too.

I wish I could be one of those fond and petty anecdotes you'd share at parties, the ones about guys you think of, fondly. I wish you'd get a distant look in your eye when you thought of me, the one that made people wonder. I wish I'd met you sooner. I wish I'd met you later. I wish I'd never met you at all, those nights I can't sleep. Ah, sleep.

I even dared to wish I'd loved you. I've memories of a laugh, a touch, a glance, a notion: brave mercenaries, true, but they will desert me in time...no banner lasts forever. I wish they could.

But...what longings. How priceless, how measureless. How excellent, then, should none come true.

I dreamt I was a private eye. I think I was in New Orleans. I was looking for a woman, but I wasn't working for anyone, I was on my own. I knew her personally. I was tracking her by drops of blood on the street, which was hard, since it had rained recently. I went into a bar where some of her friends were. They seemed unnatural, watching me closely, their eyes dark and bright. They chuckled and laughed at my efforts, amused. "Do you really want to find her? Why? No, stay, have a drink."

She: was slight of frame and had dark hair. When she looked at me I grew excited, like endlessly meeting her for the first time. My last memory of this girl was of her slitting open her finger with a razor. Her lips parted slightly as she drew in her breath, her eyes lowered as she drew the metal through her skin. "This is all there is," she'd said.

I left the bar and walked around, now turning corners at random. The French Quarter was vividly real, the buildings old and ornate and comforting. It had started to rain again when I found her. She was at the end of the street, and went into a doorway. I hurried to catch up. We were inside some grand hotel. Wet and tired, I spoke with her about the future, about us. She was cool, and a little sad. I wasn't ready, I was told. In desperation I spent what time I could with her, her presence reassuring but unsatisfying. By the time she was gone I realized many days had passed and my cat, neglected, had died.

I have a weakness for some accents. It isn't fair. If I were to meet a pretty girl from Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, or a select few eastern European countries, and she liked me, I'd be helpless against her charms. I'm quite fond of a sweet Southern whisper, or a bright Japanese laugh. Drop me off in Italy or France for the weekend anytime.

So I'm trying to figure out why that is. What's wrong with where I live? Absolutely nothing. I guess I just crave some mystique of cultural variety. I remember being ten, on some camping trip with my father and brother. I was near a river, who knows where, fishing, or throwing rocks maybe. Two girls and a boy wandered down the bank, and passed us. I was entranced, listening to them, and strangely humbled, as if somehow, subliminally, I knew they were qualitatively more refined or sophisticated, simply because they were from elsewhere. Later, I tried mimicking the dialect, but it was a woeful failure. [shudder]

These days, I'm happy with anyone who says strange things or invents odd voices. It's charming, and silly, and priceless for the soul. One day, if I have kids, I'll take them abroad, introduce them to other children, and try to show them the small and simple wonders of the world...and, perhaps, walk them down some river bank.

Claire. Claire is...who is she? What does she want? She wants Jim Morrison. She stares out of windows when it rains, lost in "The End," dreaming of some dark tortured man who would sing to her, if only he would hurry up and find her. Then, when she grows up, she wants Axl Rose, his...his...his serpentine! She can't turn the speakers up loud enough. But in the meantime, she dances. She dances in the car, she dances in her room, she dances in the bathroom. She undresses and turns herself this way and that in the mirror, viewing her body with critical eye, from his point of view. What would he see? Then, in the shower, she dances.

Who is he? That man Claire wants. He is shadow, he is dream. He is a look, he is a gaze. His are the eyes behind the cloud of cigarette smoke, the hot unattainable guy who brushed up against her at the club or party, smiling devastatingly and murmuring genuine apology. She watches him now; a pair of longing eyes in a crowd. She can't approach him, she doesn't dare with so many around. But later....

The way he looks at her, it's heaven, he's so close now, she can see the little hairs in his jawline, smell the ash and alcohol on his breath, it's sharp and rough and heady and intoxicating, she can't kiss him enough. His hands are perfect, strong and male and they do whatever they want, which is whatever she wants. The music of people and noise and music from elsewhere, muffled, bass vibrations reaching her as she lies here beneath him, in utter joy. He wants her. And she wants him to want her. This is what she wants. So perfect and true and unassailable in this endless moment, she holds great power now, she has him in her arms, this great beast. He growls, it's true. He holds her down, he clenches her in agony, he hurts her but she wants this, he roars in pleasure and it's like heroin in her veins, into her body. She joins him. She doesn't know if he notices, but she wants him to.

Claire. What does Claire want? Claire wants to hunger, Claire loves to thirst. Claire wants all the Morrisons.

Who's fucking first?

"Damn you, Gravity!"

It's dark. I'm tired. I'm covered in dirt and sweat and somebody's blood. I'm a soldier. I've got a good knife. And a gun. I'm lost. I'm sitting in a trench, looking up at the storm coming in. The air is thick. Can't sleep here, no shelter. Rumbling. Distant flashes. I make myself get up. I walk low, I walk between the light. Something hurts. Everything hurts. I'm numb. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. Wind's picking up. Nothing but the wind in the trees, now, closer, closer. I stop beneath a thick knot of trees, bad idea, I don't care. I breathe heavily, eyes closed. It's started. Louder. Rain falls faster, wind brings it to my face. I drink the wind and the rain and the air, grateful. Trees overhead make a lot of noise, compete with the storm. Egos. I'm tired. I close my eyes but I see white. I open my eyes and wait. And wait. Yes. There. In the lightning I can see her face: there - gone. There. There. There. I lose time. The storm becomes the sea, waves roll over me, crash into me, thundering. I'm drowning. I forget who I am, where I am. Nothing matters. Nothing mattered. But I can still see her face, brightly. Brighter still, and brighter. I can see into her eyes. I can almost touch her skin. Her face, her mouth, her lips. There is nothing now, but she, and the storm. She whispers something through the tempest, some benediction, and I am hurled through the air! and land, broken. I am deafened and burned, blinded and still. Her voice rings in my ears and throbs in my bones. I think I'm dying. Someone will come later, when I am dead, and they will take my knife, they'll take my gun, they'll shake their heads. A drowned rat. Stupid soldier, slept under a tree in a storm. What was he thinking?

So this girl walks into a bar. The venue is familiar, but not to her; her friend disengages himself almost immediately to sit at a table further in where it's dark and no one will stare at him too much. She proceeds to the digital jukebox that's hanging on the wall near the bar, and opens up some dear folded dollars to play a few favorites...songs that remind her of her heady clubgoing days, nocturnal outings where the music was fierce and seductive and alive, where she danced atop speakers to the admiration of men, fierce and seductive and alive....

Her friend sips his drink, he's not a drinker, he hates the taste of alcohol. He should have started years ago but now it's too late, he's already an outsider. He doesn't smoke, he's not really into drugs. He's not a bad boy, he's not all that attractive. He sips his drink and thinks of things he is not. He watches her at the bar, talking to someone, some man. He looks away. Why isn't he at the bar? He doesn't know. He pretends it doesn't matter. He does this for almost an hour.

He waits for her later in his car, she's talking to the man, talking, talking. He's seen this before, for years. It's a ritual, the talking and looking. It's a subtle dance, this gentle fencing, thrusts and parries from eyes and lips; a game. He could partake if only he dared, but he's stupid, he's stubborn and difficult and lost in delusion; he doesn't want to play by the rules of attraction. Someone needs to tell him to relax, not to take things so seriously, but he does. He always has.

Later still, he lies in bed. Carlights through curtains float repeatedly across the ceiling, illuminating this strange and familiar land with surreal and soundless detachment. She is proximate, she is not. He doesn't look at her, just stares at the ceiling, wondering if sleep, like his dreams, like his friend, like his fierce desire to fit in, is attainable. It is, and it is not.

The five of cups is insidiously non-comforting.

I've furied these waves, and thickened the night
I've coiled the clouds and the sky and the light
I've beckoned this violence, the wrath of the storm
the winds that have stripped all my flesh of the warm
and stung my wet eyes into darkness and sleep
and roused watery gods from their depths and the deep
these beautiful gods, in the shimmering deep.
And I shall beg them a death of a few hours peace
a small death and forgetting, til the long hours cease
For I dream too of storms, a great wheel in my mind
a storm with dark eye, and smooth feminine line
and of passionate drownings, embraced by the rain
And in dreams I have beckoned this storm with her name
this hurricane love, that began with her name.

It was past midnight: the heavy air crept through the room slowly, soaking him. He moved about, staring, not working. He didn't feel like talking either, so he stopped. Hours began to queue up, methodically, waiting their turn. Heaviness, emptiness. And then the air began to cool. Soft cool air now, and it reminded him of spring when he was a boy, when he would nightly watch the storms approach from miles away, an advantage of the midwest. All he had back then was radio, at the mercy of disembodied Dj's and their station ID's. Classic rock while the barometer dropped. Thunder and lightning in glorious surround, til the small hours; then, perhaps, sleep.

It was past midnight: it was cool enough, it was dark enough. So he began to gather music together, to confess his unspoken sins. Music, music, and the longing for rain.

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