Voltaire's handcuffs

Dross hymn

2011-09-21T03:01:00.004-04:00

Your blue eyes, thieves,
kidnappers of all the oceans, all the seas,
beckoned to me, and willingly I came to drink.

My heart swallowed your liquids gently.
Then, intoxicated by the first and last drops,
it sucked in countless gallons
yet remained parched
and yearned, mourned for more of your loving waters.
Its thirst was a scream
of the purest agony
that caused the stars to quake,
that made the orcas quiver,
that forced the gods to quarrel
and you withheld your moisture.

To summon back your narcotic floods,
I convened my mystics
and compelled them to erase time and my misdeeds,
to mutter their most colossal hexes
so that you could synchronize your watch with mine
and blot away the months when we could not love.

Their incantations were useless
against this cruel chronology,
when monsters entered our bed and bloodstreams
when demons wriggled into the tiny cracks between us
and turned them into chasms and canyons
with their wicked bulldozers
when a diamond-hard grief came to dwell in my soul
when regret and discomfort arrived to plunder
with their merciless, bottomless robber-bags
when an uninvited executioner came with his filthy axe
and split our hearts apart.

We ended, as was destined.
The magicians had to fail.
Your talisman,
Your mighty will,
tempered in a holy forge
made of the strongest steel, never tin,
was more powerful than their tsunamis
that could not breed forgetfulness nor bend time
nor distill the venoms from my mind.
In an explosion your tremendous heart repelled my spells
spitting out the acids that had leaked onto you
from my toxic, horrible love
freeing you from this death chamber.

Yet each night,
I stand vigil on this useless battlefield
this empty war zone I made alone
and I wait
until the moon brings your reflection to my shield

and bending, praying,
I wash your scars with my tears
and hold high two lanterns,
one, in vain;
the other illuminates my sins.

Lament for John...

2010-10-24T14:29:00.001-04:00

John Michael Wright May 12^th, 1967 – March 21^st, 1999 On March 21^st, 1999, the best friend that I have ever known in my life passed away after a very short but devastating battle with AIDS. John was the most loving, beautiful, funny, fun, and caring individual that I have ever been blessed to call my friend. Here is a picture of John that I took in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta shortly after John learned that he was HIV+. John and I went to this place on a very cold and dark day in winter. We set out to take pictures of John in various poses amidst the tombstones…seeking to explore metaphors of AIDS with the camera. In this series of black and white prints, John stretched out on top of tombstones with family names such as "HOPE" and "YOUNG" – resulting in some photographs that were haunting, heartbreaking, profound, and beautiful…but the particular picture presented here was my absolute favorite. His posture is mimicking that of the angel on whose lap he is seated…and it seems as if the two bodies are flowing into each other or as if John just emerged from the statue of the angel fully precious and beautiful.

Here is John shortly before the Atlanta Gay Pride Parade, during happier days. He had tried to paint pink triangles on Fido with pink hair spray, but it didn’t show against her black fur. We got the idea that by putting flour on her, the pink would show more prominently. As you can see, Fido looked as if she had caught a horrible skin disease or had been viciously maimed. We couldn’t stop laughing until we had washed her thoroughly. In this picture, you can see the warmth and the joy in his incredible smile.

This is John posing in Fort Lauderdale. He always seemed to tan better than I did, dammit.

This is a picture of me and John one month before he died. In early December, John called me and left a message on my answering machine telling me to contact him immediately. When I got in touch with him, he was having pronounced difficulty speaking…slurring some words, making long breaks between others…and then he told me that he thought that he was having a problem with his brain. I told him that I would contact one of my doctor friends and that I would get back to him shortly. I had to hasten to find an excuse to get off the phone because I could sense the beginning of death in his shaky voice...and uncontrollable rage and sadness started to overwhelm me.
After sobbing for nearly thirty minutes, I called my very dear and caring friend Dr. Joey Barr and described John’s symptoms to him. Joey informed me that it was imperative that John go immediately to the hospital. I called John back, told him what Joey had suggested, and he then informed his parents about his difficulties (he told me about his condition before he shared his fears with them…a precious testament to our intimacy). John was eventually diagnosed with Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy, the same HIV-related disease that is explored in tragic detail in the movie "It’s My Party." I went immediately to join him upon learning of the seriousness of his condition, seeking to honor the promise that I had made to him in 1992 when he was diagnosed with HIV. I vowed at that sad and terrifying time that I would support him, care for him, and keep him happy until he died. Unfortunately, his overbearing mother (in whose home he was staying during his illness) chose to control nearly every aspect of his death. She forcefully limited the number of my visits to two, refused to honor my frantic pleas to return to assist with his care. Ultimately, I was not allowed to love and care for him in the final painful stages of his life as I had sworn to him that I would. As the disease progressed and the lesions began to carve their wicked furrows on his brain, his language faculties became more and more compromised and he lost the ability to walk. His suffering and pain were excruciating, requiring the assistance of hospice and a constant morphine drip. John died in his sleep between 5 and 6 a.m. in the morning on March 21^st, 1999. Sometime between 5 and 6 a.m. in the morning on March 21^st, 1999, I was sleeping soundly in my bed. I awakened out of the blue and immediately had the terrifying feeling that my entire body was being electrocuted. I jumped straight up, stood up on my mattress, and proceeded to fall headfirst over the foot of my bed. At 10 a.m. that morning, John’s father called to tell me that he had died. I have never been given to superstition in any form, but I am certain that on that morning, John came to me to pull one last practical joke on me as he left this world to show me how much he loved me. I am certain that he got a tremendous chuckle from seeing me topple so unceremoniously out of my bed. Thank you for saying goodbye, ugly. John Michael Wright was born on May 12^th, 1967. He grew up in a suburb of Atlanta called Dunwoody, attended Dunwoody High School, and then attended Washington and Lee College and the University of Georgia. After college, John worked for Outwrite bookstore in Atlanta for several years and was active in the gay and lesbian community both as an activist and an artist, participating in numerous demonstrations and designing the logo for the 1994 Atlanta Gay Pride Parade. He then enrolled in the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, GA to study advertising copywriting and won many awards for his creative projects. After finishing his studies at the portfolio center, John worked for the J. Walter Thompson agency for two years before accepting another position and moving to Hilton Head, SC, where he lived until his death. John could outdance every single person in Atlanta. People imitated his clothing and tried to copy his tattoos. He read voraciously, especially loved Armistead Maupin, and was a scholar of contemporary gay male literature. He played video and computer games constantly. He frequently wrote poetry with me in Atlanta’s Cafe Mythology or on the sands of South Beach. John had a knack for concocting beautiful prose and began a novel (which is in my possession) the year before he died. He was a shameless practical joker and delighted in seeing me caught in some embarrassing situation of his design. John was addicted to alternative music and amassed a collection of several thousand weird and beautiful CDs. He loved Morrisey and saw that artist's tragic music as a reflection of his loneliness. He would kill me for not remembering his other favorites, but he liked Betty Boo, the Pet Shop Boys, ClockDVA, Enigma, Dead Can Dance…and scads of other groups that I cannot recall. He loved animals and gave me Fido when he could no longer keep her. John was in A.A. for a number of years and discovered strength, love, and companionship through that organization. He died without having found that for which he had yearned so intensely thoughout his life: someone with whom he could share his abundant love romantically...yet he was loved and respected ardently by all individuals whose lives he touched. John was my soulmate, my partner, my best friend, my hero, my confidant, my teacher, my inspiration. How your spell lingers, magic boy. I love you…

My Marine...

2010-10-24T14:15:00.003-04:00

Never could the most skilled of miners

nor the most cunning of the dwarves

have dug deep enough into the bowels of the earth

to find that most improbable spring

the true waters of true man,

the tears of a Marine.

Yet

before a lone star

at a place of ursine sorcery

a renegade eagle

flying high above the globe

stole potent arrows from the gods

and with true aim fired

and anchored your heart to mine.

The blessed dart pierced the stalwart soil

strengthened by the fletching of my blood

and found that hallowed liquid trove.

The flood, scarlet and gold,

pure, honest, and mighty,

rinsed my battered soul

and I reached into a void

and found your gentle hand.

There, within the calloused creases

where fortunetellers had written our fate

an ancient predestined hymn

etched with love below your fingers,

my heart built a nest of the hardest diamonds

and robbed the sky of all its stars

to write

with their astral ink

to carve

with their stellar weight

my vow

your vow

always faithful, Semper Fi.

Drown

2010-10-22T22:18:00.002-04:00

Your whale song calls me, guileful siren.

I follow, for you bless me with your hurricanes.

Your tiny starfish swaddle my body

and I navigate towards you through your liquid hymns.

You conjure the whitest of pearls for me to light my path.

Your sea monsters weave tunics for those who drowned in honor of our love.

I lift this coral chalice and drink as you command,

swallowing the broth you have brewed from

the impossible tears of the plankton,

the squid’s mournful ink,

the blood of dead sailors.

I arrive, and begin to dig for you,

yet I discover

as I carve canyons and abysses in my frantic search

that you have left a only a phantom in your stead on this holy island.

Its laughter incinerates my fragile skin.

And now, from a killing distance,

from an unreachable point in your impenetrable, poisonous sea,

you watch and cruelly order your tides home.

In this, your inexorable desert,

your eyes parch me,

as slow as Chinese water.

Your glance desiccates my blood,

leaving four withered chambers

pumping red sawdust.

Arid Medusa,

In your loveless drought

I dry and turn to sand.

Field Training Officer

2005-03-08T07:12:00.000-05:00

You say “nigger” inside the car.
Poisonous syllables roll inside your mouth
coat your tongue in white sheets.
Fetid, oily words ooze across your glottis
your larynx splits your teeth crack your palate scars

You say “faggot” inside the car.
Your saliva boils in your false falsetto,
lisps curdle in your jaw
your cheeks decompose your throat implodes

You say “whore” inside the car.
Your flaccid tonsils stiffen
swell with blood
grow larger than lilies
stab through your language, through your bone.
your gums burst your mandibles rot

You burn from collar to nose
and your language dies

this hush is sweet and righteous

but immediately
your ashes stir and reform
you become
a threat of sinew and plumes
sucking my humors into you
you become
a colossal phoenix
bloodless and terrible

you descend, you and your parliament
the alabaster mynas with blue lights and sirens
the snowy mockingbirds, pistols holstered in their craws,
the milky, ivory, pallid parrots with handcuffs.
you rip into my neck
laying white, white eggs
molting white, white feathers
that you force into me, filling
my liver my heart my thoracic cavity my gall bladder
my tibias my bloodstream my eye sockets my anus my lungs
you shriek cancer and blisters into my mouth

I suffocate.
I cannot hear myself in your war stories
but my body is as vulnerable to bullets as yours
I cannot see myself in your badge
but the luster on the shield is the same as mine
the arm of your law is withered
but mine is strong and lithe

I erupt
spitting out your sounds
vomiting back your bleached justice
refusing your disease
unbecoming a reflection in your pitted mirror,
bigot.

You notify dispatch of your location.
You describe the vehicle.
You run the license tag.
You shut the car door gingerly.
You approach the violator
the nigger faggot whore
and say “sir sir ma'am” outside the car.

Little Slinky

2005-03-02T03:18:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 1991, shortly after I moved back to Atlanta, I was driving through the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood when I happened upon a garage sale. I had to stop, not because I saw anything particularly appealing on the yard, but because there were more kittens on the grass than I had ever seen amassed together in my life. Three mother cats had littered at the same time...and I picked out one little white kitten with big gray spots...the markings resembled those of a cow. I had to have this little creature...but then decided that she should have a playmate, so I scooped up another little kitten who was all black with little white sock feet and vest and a little white triangle on her nose. I deposited them in my robin's-egg-blue 1980 Mercury Lynx with rusty doors and drove to my apartment at 825 Monroe Drive, becoming a cat owner again for the first time since I was seven years old.

The white cat could only be called Cow, so Cow she became. I had just read a book called "Weetzie Bat" by a young avant-garde writer named Francesca Lia Block just before getting my kittens, and there was an animal in the book whose name was Slinkster Dog. Slinkster Dog was quite cool, as was my new black kitten, so she inherited her appellation from an inverted borrowing from that book and became Slinkster Cat.

Cow was the more gregarious of the two, always affectionate, always adventurous. Slinkster Cat (soon abbreviated to Slinky) was more reserved and didn't like to be held, although she did like to cuddle beside me if I didn't touch her. She was offish and seemed sullen to me. Having had no real long-term experience with cats, I attributed all the mannerisms and characteristics of dogs to them and felt hurt when they didn't love me back immediately or give me the attention I craved at any given moment. I began to regret the acquisition of cats, but since I knew I was now responsible for two lives, I determined that I was going to love them.

Approximately one month after I got the kittens, I went through an unpredictable breakup. I had met a wonderful guy who shared my sense of humor and love for life, was a great kisser and was as good in bed as I. He dumped me for foolish reasons, but my heartbreak consumed me. I grieved and I stopped functioning normally. I was contemplating terrible things. I ceased believing that I could be loved, but on one painful afternoon when I had probably laid out of work because of all the aching, my little black kitty crawled up on my chest as I was sobbing and meowed at me plaintively. I knew somehow that she understood that I was hurting and she came to comfort me. I looked at her beautiful little amber and green eyes and made up a four note lullaby to her name which I sang to her over and over as I cried out my soul and held her to me. She let me. The love I felt for this little kitty was overwhelming. Her name was abbreviated to Slinky henceforth, but sometimes I called her Sinky.

From that day forward, I understood my cats and learned that I had to accept their love on their terms, not they my love on mine. In the days that predated my understanding of cats, I did two bad things to Slinky for which I will never quite forgive myself, although she, in her feline magnanimity, forgave me long ago for my sins. Slinky once would not stop yowling in the middle of the night...this taking place in my more unstable days...and I grabbed her and shook her and yelled at her. I felt terrible immediately thereafter and apologized to her by loving her and holding her...but I was, in one brief and horrid moment, abusive to my little baby. Another time soon thereafter, I had just gotten fired from the worst job I had ever had in my life and called animal control to come to pick up my cats. The guy arrived in his animal murder vehicle...I had thought that the cats would go to a shelter and be adopted...but this was animal control, not the humane society. I looked at Cow and Slinky and realized that I would continue to support them and love them no matter how destitute I was...so I sent the murderer away and picked them up and loved them and kept them with me.

Slinky forgave me and loved me more and more every year.

I was so poor in those days, and since I didn't have the money to pay to have my cats spayed, both Cow and Slinky got pregnant at nearly the same time. Cow gave birth to five kittens. Slinky waited until I had returned from a trip to North Carolina and was studying for my exams for my M.A. While my friend Sara slept on my couch outside and my roommate Lisa slept in her room, Slinky came walking into my bedroom, hopped up on my lap and demanded affection. I noticed soon thereafter that a little tail was sticking out of her...a tail that wasn't her own. I called my friend Keith at 3 a.m. to ask him to come over, woke Sara and Lisa, and the four of us then witnessed Slinky give birth to two kittens. Sara kept one and named him Tigger (she gave him away shortly thereafter) and I kept the other...a black kitten with white socks on her paws and a white triangle on her nose on the side opposite Slinky's. For reasons unknown to me, I named this kitten Watermelon.

I moved to a farm just outside Watkinsville, Georgia in 1997 to begin my doctorate at the University of Georgia in Athens. Since Cow and Slinky and Watermelon had all borne the ignoble burden of being sequestered inside my small houses and apartments throughout my tenure in Atlanta, I allowed them to become free range kitties, thinking that they would enjoy the liberty of the outdoors. Cow and Watermelon adapted immediately to this openness, but little Slinky stayed near the house, never venturing far from the yard. Her conservatism aided her; Watermelon and Cow soon met their fates amidst the busy traffic of New High Shoals Road in Oconee County. I was then left with only Slinky. I later adopted a big gray cat that I named Murder who became Slinky's new companion. I have always believed that animals need company of their own kind and that it is cruel to give them only human companionship, since we humans tend to become absorbed in our lives and cannot give them all the attention and love they deserve. Murder and Slinky had a rocky start...a litany of hisses and spitting and fighting...but they eventually grew to love each other and to be mutually affectionate.

I always wanted to have little cats, and so I prayed that Slinky would be tiny. Tiny she was all throughout her life...weighing less than a bag of sugar. Throughout our relationship, Slinky transformed into the most wonderful of cats. When left alone for more than 15 seconds, Slinky would begin gathering a sort of magical cat sound charge...and if anyone touched her after those 15 seconds, she would make a little squeak. She only took 15 seconds to recharge, and my friends and I delighted in poking Slinky gently or touching her anywhere on her body again and again after the requisite waiting period to make her release that funny, sweet noise. Once reserved and offish, Slinky became the sweetest and most affectionate of cats, always jumping to sit near me or to stand on my chest while I was lying in bed to "make biscuits" on me, kneading me with her little paws. I devised stupid nickname after stupid nickname to refer to her in private in our own secret, affectionate way...Slinkage of Cat, Slornkage of Crobblefied Snotcher Kitticles...monikers that I dared never to disclose in the presence of any human being.

My wonderful lover Terry, with whom I have spent my life since 1997, has always referred to Slinky and Murder respectively as "Black Cat" and "Gray Cat." A dog person through and through, he often likened my cats to phone books. He said this only in jest, but over the years he did in truth develop a clandestine adoration for both of our kitties nonetheless. As our menageries melded when we began to cohabitate in 1998 with the introduction of my doggies Fido and Lucy and my kitties Slinky and Murder into the solitary life of his little puppy Biff, I did not expect Terry to overcome his disdain for felines, but he grew to love Slinky and Murder more and more over the years.

Sometime in the early fall of 2004, I went to pick up Slinky and noticed that she weighed considerably less, that her meow was higher pitched, and that she seemed afraid. I sensed that something was terribly wrong, and I was correct. I rushed Slinky to the 24 hour emergency care vet. She was diagnosed with hyperosmolar syndrome, a condition that stems from diabetes. The vet worked to stabilize her blood sugar and I took her home a week later. I was so afraid that Slinky was going to die...I cried and prayed and hoped for the best. The vet instructed me to put Slinky on two units of insulin twice daily...injected subcutaneously. Terry and I shared in the responsibility of assuring that Slinky never missed a dose. We spent oodles of money making certain that her diet was most beneficial to her condition and that she only ate Purina DM. With such ardent and loving care, I hoped for the best. The vet neglected to tell me that her condition would have to be checked periodically with something called a glucose curve.

In early February 2005, Slinky began exhibiting pronounced neurological difficulties. She began falling over and spent all her time lying on the bathroom floor behind the toilet. Since I had just had surgery and was incapable of moving, Terry rushed her again to the 24 hour vet. They stabilized her again after a two day stay. He brought her home, but I noted a faraway look in her eyes, an absence...like she had traveled to a place of sadness and pain. She began lying on the bathroom floor again, her little meow became a heartbreaking soprano cry, she could not walk more than a few steps without falling. I grabbed her in my arms and flew for a third time to the emergency care vet.

They worked for a week to stabilize her blood sugar and made little to no progress. On February 26th, I spoke with Dr. Simmons at Pets Are People Too and he told me that he could not understand why her blood sugar could not be regulated. He said that he needed to perform additional tests: taking x-rays and doing bloodwork. I consented to these tests, raising the cost of Slinky's care over the past seven months to three thousand dollars. Dr. Simmons called me later that day to tell me that Slinky's kidneys were failing, that her liver was twice its normal size, that her electrolytes were out of balance and that her blood sugar was still high. He said that this prognosis was not good and that Slinky would probably die if she were brought home.

Terry and I then made the heartbreaking decision to euthanize my little angel cat. Terry called me in tears to tell me that he had just dug Slinky's grave in our yard. He sobbed and I sobbed. I was at my cabin in the mountains...unable to bring myself back to Atlanta to witness her departure...so I called my wonderful friend Sara and asked her if she would accompany Terry to the animal hospital to be with him to support him in his pain.

Terry and Sara told me that Dr. Simmons reiterated that Slinky's chances at survival were slim. Terry said that he took Slinky and put her on the floor and let her walk around a bit. He saw the same faraway look in her eyes that I had noted when I sensed the beginning of the end of her life, he said that she wasn't our little kitty anymore. He and Sara then held her and loved her, and Dr. Simmons then administered the injection. My little Slinky went to sleep peacefully in Terry's arms and died.

Only four days have passed since Slinky died, and I have mourned and grieved for her uncontrollably ever since.

I am convulsing with sadness and crying and aching as I write this. I am not attempting to be literary in the least, because I am fully aware that I am incapable of capturing the wonder and the innocence that was the life of my companion animal of 14 years with my words. I only know that I am hurting without her, that I hate myself for not having had the courage to be with her as she died, that I hate the vet for not having done bloodwork and x-rays earlier in her illness so that her life might've been saved. I find death pointless. I want to kiss her goodbye and hold her little white paws, I want to hear her purring beside me on my bed once again, I want to stroke her little head and tell her I love her, but she is gone, sequestered for eternity inside a little box three feet under the ground underneath a holly tree at at our home in Georgia, with a little statuette of Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, guarding over her slumber, her little nametag reading "My name is Slinky - I am diabetic" draped around his neck.

Little Slinky, I love you so much and I miss you more than I ever thought possible. Thank you for loving me and for sharing your life with me. I love you, little kitty. I hope that we will be reunited in heaven one day. I love you.

O Magnum Mysterium

2005-02-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

As I do every Tuesday night, I am attending rehearsal before I go to work. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this evening; the mean girl with the bassoon is wearing her habitual scowl, the new woman in the percussion section is looking at me as if she knows me. I am coveting the forlorn contrabass clarinet; I still want to steal it. There is a parliament of brass snails lining up on my right and I grin at David holding his French horn, this ritual a sheepish reminder that we slept together ten years ago. I look back to ensure that my head is well out of the range of the first trombonist's seventh position; I am safe again. I warm up my horn as I always do: two Bb flat scales up, thirty-second notes; I linger on the high Bb, slur to the high D, then terrify the inferiors in my section by holding and sustaining the E above, letting my euphonium pretend to be spying on the low brass from the impossible heights of its upper register.

We raise our instruments. A bleak, effeminate man comes to the podium and starts to conduct an insipid work that he commissioned to memorialize the birth of his grandson. His lisp betrays his true erotic leanings and I note that his accomplishment of progeny seems as improbable as the juxtaposition of euphoniums and guns.

I despise him immediately. My eyes blink at the bass clefs on my sheet music and transform them into rattlesnakes. They slide off my stand and wriggle towards him. I command them to bite him, but he lifts his hands and they curl back into flaccid symbols of deepness on the pages before me.

He begins to conduct. He gyrates, unleashing sibilance. He fattens before my eyes. The measures stretch and wrap themselves around me and suck away my breath. My mouthpiece is now attached to a large, diseased organ and tar drips from it as I blow. His antiseptic baton burrows into me, fluorescent light soaks into the holes it leaves and cracks my flesh. Snow begins to fall inside the clarinets and their reedy gusts erase my face.

The final chord chars me. I flail and escape from his threatening jingle.

Before me now comes a giant man holding an unremarkable plastic stick. He is Peter, our real conductor. The end of rehearsal is approaching and he has come to direct our other pieces. We plod through the Holzt Suite in Eb (I have a solo, I play it beautifully). Peter looks at me and approves. He is markedly different from the closeted blob who preceded him to the podium. His passion and his kindness are commensurate with his size; there is anguish and sorrow and mirth in his face that derives from the music we are playing. I know that when the alto saxophones begin to caress the tragedy of a minor second in a chord, Peter's eyes will register the pain that this sound conveys. He tells us to place Morten Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium" on our stands, a piece originally written for chorus now transcribed for wind ensemble. Having just heard this work performed over Christmas by the Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus, I begin to doubt that any combination of woodwinds and brass can wring the utter mourning from speckled pieces of paper that a group of human voices can.

But this is Peter, who channels goodness and beauty with his wand...and I am drawn into the majesty of the work. I clutch my euphonium tighter, loving it. My metal horn pours warm, mellow sound into Peter's spell and I let the notes wash out my soul. The minor seconds come and defeat my attempts at atheism. Peter holds the last fermata as if it were a jewel plucked from the crown of God and the harmony causes a brief shimmering in the air, an aperture through which I glimpse something truly holy. Its splendor shocks me and I gather myself long enough to pack up my horn and travel to my truck.

I load my instrument into the passenger seat and lay my head on the steering wheel. Tears begin to pour out of my eyes and leak into the ignition. They pool on the floorboards and wet my socks. The brine swells inside the compartment and I notice strands of olives and seaweed growing through my legs. The truck starts and begins to tunnel through the limbs of the pecan trees above me in the parking lot. I pause to wipe my eyes and the motor dies; I think immediately of the great mystery and the lingering noises of my ensemble and the engine roars to life again. I cannot steer, I am crowded by the hurricanes and the tiny islands. A tsunami issues from the air conditioning vents; its waves crest at my throat and paint my cheeks with sharks and starfish. They envelop me and we pray together. We rise and arrive at a gloaming; I hear a hymn of chromatics in which color and sound converge. God resplendent before me, I park my truck and rest.

Stealing God back

2005-01-31T21:51:00.000-05:00

Bumper stickers augment my ESP. They are ideological beacons on the highway that suck at my eyeballs and force me to increase my speed so that I can accuse the backs of heads of being my enemies or my allies. If I see one of the ubiquitous Bush-Cheney placards, I shoot tendrils out of my brain and ensnare, enshroud the driver and her or his passengers and fill them with globs of curdled poison.

I become hot with clairvoyance, I see them. They have hundreds of angry crabs jammed into their eyes, cheap, wormy rubies packed in salt. Something thin and purple is boiling inside their mouths, not wine. I try to count the fissures in their great vapid noggins but hairspray coils into the cracks and bakes them shut. They shriek blisters into me and their marionette teeth clack in unison; the dental percussion terrifies me. I know they can eat me because they ate God.

Maybe masticated, digested deity boils thin and purple.

My feminist neighbor Betty died three years ago. During the great Atlanta ice storm of 2001, neither I nor she had any heat and we gathered at our neighbors' house in front of the fireplace. We sought warmth and to rot the conservative pit out of the Georgia Peach collectively. Betty was in her seventies when she passed away. She referred to herself proudly as a "yellow-dog democrat." At her funeral, her three liberal children let anyone present eulogize their mother in any way they saw fit. I chose to laud Betty's courage to struggle and fight against oppression. I learned at her ceremony that she had been ardently active in her church and that she had fought to see that underprivileged children of color got medical care and equal educational opportunities back when the white potentate in Atlanta equated lynchings with Christian responsibility. I imagined Betty sitting alone in her little house near the end of her life knitting and listening to the minute hand on her clock clicking through silence with the force of a cannon and I think that solitude is no reward for the life of this incredible woman. I curse myself for all the times I sat in my house across the street browsing for sex on the internet when I could've been shrinking myself, falling into her ball of yarn, letting myself be woven into her history and into microcosmic greatness. She was a woman of compassion and kindness, qualities born of her faith and staunch belief in the equality of all humans. I wonder if God died with her or if the last vestiges of Him/Her were crunched between the teeth of the charismatic zealots who stole God and reappropriated Her/Him for hate at the same time she departed.

A single man in his early thirties bought Betty's house from her three children. He drives an SUV and smokes cigarettes. For a while, I secretly wanted to fuck him. Then he put a Bush-Cheney sign in the front yard.

I saw a bumper sticker last week that said:

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL

I will buy it and place it on my truck. I will lurk at my window until the Betty squatter cranks his Ford Explorer and I will hurtle through my house to my truck. I will beat him to the stop sign and I will freeze myself in place, I will refuse to go and he will read and reread the words on the back of my truck.

His eyes will melt and I will gather them in my right hand. They are my lubricant; now I will fuck him.

Amen

Infernal infirmity, infantry indecencies

2005-01-25T07:21:00.000-05:00

So fails my mucosal portcullis. The germs have sullied my innards; I am withering.

Today I peered at the TiVo over the small mountain of tissue paper erupting on my coffee table and watched my sister on CNN. She appeared once in October and again in January (both are still on the TiVo; I cannot bring myself to delete my sibling's fifteen minutes of fame).

Kristen is a natural redhead, a trait that I've always found to be wholly emblematic of her character. She is a firebrand and a fighter. When I'm not mad at her for being insufferably remiss about returning phone calls, I love her fiercely and am immensely devoted to her.

She has appeared on CNN twice because her husband (a very good-looking, personable, funny, doting man) is a West Point graduate and a Captain in the United States Army. Kristen and Jason have been separated for nearly two years now. After Jason's 1.5 year stint in Iraq, he was scheduled to return to the U.S. on 7/1/2004...but 41 days before his greatly anticipated return, Kristen learned (by watching CNN) that he was going to be deployed to Iraq...making his total time away from his family almost three years. Even though U.S. military law forbids the redeployment of troops from one hardship tour of duty to another except when Congress enacts the articles of war, that gawking twit in the White House saw fit to abrogate all regulations to stuff enough personnel in the Middle East to wage his war of vengeance and personal profit...and duly commanded three thousand five hundred soldiers to leave South Korea for a tour of duty in Iraq of undetermined length. So my sister stomped off to Washington and created a stinking, fetid stir. Only John Kerry could have brought relief to these forlorn families...

The election came and we lost. The smarmy faux cowboy's beady eyes will hypnotize the dung-brained populace for another four years.

I am listening to my sister's voice cracking and aching. Small headlines run underneath her stomach; I want to catch them with my horrible, glistening fangs and swallow them and ingest their venom, then spit them in those beady eyes. Two of her friends have lost their husbands; they were blown to pieces by small bombs. They were in their thirties and had small children. I am thinking of the garish opulence that the Republicans in power crave; I loathe them. I am considering how stupid and cowlike the American masses are who voted for the prevaricating skunk. I hate him for demonizing gay people to gain political clout, I hate him for pissing squatter's rights into the goodness of the person that Jesus must've been to trick the herd into licking the conservatives' harp strings, I hate him for obliterating the thinking person's ability to pursue logic and reason and supplanting it with a spellbinding drone of the words "freedom" and "liberty" unleashed as ignoble and hollow clichés.

I hear my sister suppressing her tears, and every protective cell in my body yearns to envelop her and whisk her back to 1973, where I could alleviate her fears and her sadness by dangling a stuffed yellow octopus over her pumpkin-colored ringlets, where the angst of not knowing whether three little fishies who didn't want to be bossed would be reunited with their mama was the most complicated tragedy we could contemplate.

I can invoke neither the spirit nor the vision of H. G. Wells and I crawl on the floor of my office, impotent and emasculated. My ardent and strident voice is muffled by rebel yells and white, white noise. Coins roll into the eye sockets of dead soldiers, blood and oil ooze from the holes, Republicans scurry to lap the juices.

She finishes her interview. Her thoughts are disconnected, insufficiently scurrilous. My papillae throb like supernovas and collapse, crushing my tongue. I cannot rescue her, I am weak. The bacteria in me pummel my lymphatic system and my head and heart muscle contract in pain. I soak my throat in tepid ginger ale and click the "save - do not delete" button once again.