Metaphora

There was a dream in mind and it was a truck hauling cargo a great distance; it neither stopped nor started and picked up a traveling band of workers; they rode, they will, and they have; past the crannies and the nooks and the outside and the in until upon them came a warehouse in the desert where the cargo was meant to be brought, carried, hurled toward; the truck neither stopped nor started and the workers began unloading; I did not see what they carried, only that they carried it well (I suspect turnips, or something of the sort, a something so inconsequential it doesn’t matter if one sees or doesn’t or does, only that it must be carried). The dream departed and I was left to think; left to think of the very important truck and the very important somethings that have very important places to be.

The Flight

I had a flight to catch. Waiting in the line, watching the wall, under the guard, under the gun. The wall breathed open and the guard parted and we walked right through him. My father, hands encumbered with bags of sand and still bald as sin, tripped beside me but he didn’t need any help up. Time inverted as the space did and we emerged up and out onto a plane arranged vertically, hatches between the classes. Seated like a train, I sat across from him. Then I couldn’t see him anymore. He must’ve been on the next flight, because I was already making conversation with an actor who’d been making music lately until I was interrupted by a girl I neither knew nor recognized who told me I was dead for what I’d done to her friend. I knew the friend she spoke of, but we hadn’t been fighting lately. Maybe we will soon. I woke up then, but I continued small talk with the actor until the plane took off sideways.

Post Office

There is a difference between appearance and reality. Nowhere is this more apparent than the postal offices of the United States of America. An abject house of comings-and-goings that upon entry slips you into another frameset of reality. Everything in me wants to leap atop their scales and discover the shipping cost necessary to transport myself someplace else—but something tells me the beleaguered servants of American enterprise behind the desk may look down upon this. You ever think about what’s behind that desk? The part we never see? An in-between place situated between an already in-between place. My better nature knows I could ask somebody or assume that it’s a storeroom, bland as the color of the boxes they ship. But wouldn’t it be much more thrilling to smash the windows in after hours, hop the counter, and discover yourself? Wouldn’t it do more for the soul to really be there? To really get there and get between it? Maybe you could even bring matches and we could set the thing ablaze.

Hairhung

I went to the bowling alley last night. I’m no bowler, but I went anyway. I got to see an old friend. I’d come up from a hatch in the floor when they’d just bowled a spare. Their hair was long. Down to their knees. It was always so short; they’d been cutting it the same old way since high school. Every time I’ve seen them since, the same two strands of hair hung lower around their neck than the rest. Now it was all one mass; down, down, down to damn near the floor. It hasn’t really been that long since I’d seen them; has it?

Anchorhead

Somewhere in the desert, a storied warehouse stands tall. A party hosted in every room, stack, stack, stacked within each other. Upstairs, Nina Simone cries sin, her music hurled through every window, shattering the glass. Don’t you see me praying? Don’t you see me down here praying? Next door, Daedalus weeps for his kin, suffocating inside of too many people, the people pushed up against the walls peeling with pithy paint. Go, go to the Devil. You listen and find yourself a space between the too many people and their hands, their frightening hands that pull on your hair, tug at your waistband, and rip your shirt. He’s waiting, run to the Devil. Downstairs Dikembe Mutombo plays pickup basketball on concrete. He leaps and shatters the backboard and glass falls like snow onto the heads of everybody in the room. They would have noticed if their scalps hadn’t already been picked clean by the hands, the too many hands attached to the too many people. I cried power, bring down power, Lord. You huddle and chant with her, her voice clear above the shouts, the moans, and the fear. The fear, that’s what you feel. Like a nightmare you can’t shake, a vision you can’t unsee, or a metaphor you can’t unmake. Like a poem you cannot write or a pool you cannot swim in. Somewhere in the warehouse there is a sex shop, shelves emptied like a flood is coming. Someone says that it’s upstairs on the right, but that can’t be; just a moment ago it was in the basement. Hear me praying, Lord. Lord, hear me praying. Another window shatters, this time in a room full of all of the people that hate you. They smile when you enter and even offer you a drink, a fuck, a smoke. It’s a crowded room and you cannot talk to everybody at once and you cannot breathe because of all the smoke. Please hide me Lord, please hide me. You wonder if the Lord is here tonight. If he is, you won’t find him here. You discover a way out of this room filled with the too many people oscillating between vices just before the wild horses come stampeding, trampling the too, too many people as Nina continues to cry. You return to the ensemble as Odysseus nudges past, making his way to Circe’s room, where he will spend the night. He enjoys his time with her, knowing it won’t last. Through a window you see the moon growing in the sky. Flannery O’Conner taps your shoulder and tells you it will crash into us soon enough. She says this makes her sad. She leaves to find the sex shop, unwilling to spend her last night completely heartbroken. As she thumbs through the crowd, you spot a patch of missing hair on the back of her head. Where you gonna run to, Sinnerman? Where you gonna run to? The circulation of peoples keeps growing and the music stays loud, blowing out windows that have already been blown out. Farrokhzad asks if you need anything. “I want to go swimming,” you say. She shakes her head. “In this desert, there’s no place for it. Besides, I can’t hold my breath long enough to get down to where you like to swim.” She turns and the moon is just outside the window. You ought to be praying, Sinnerman. You ought to be praying.