Beverica

The Ephervential election is drawing to a close. Coak and Pepsee's two figure-head candidates each have an irrelevant support base and ignorant following behind them. As usual, the sodizens did not choose their candidates, their candidates were chosen for them.

The rattling on racks and store shelves has grown to a fever pitch, and the gulf between the six-pack plastic fence communities and the high class beverages up town yawns wider than ever.

In a forgotten vending machine at the back of an abandoned factory, one can plots revenge.

His plan? Over-carbonate the water supply and blow the National Distribution Conventions.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #11.

I am falling through the atmosphere, burning like a meteor, crashing into the ocean off the shore of Manhattan, watching the Coast Guard flash up their lights for something--unidentified--out there. Mentally I am signing movie scripts, comic book contracts and action figure rights: The Man Who Fell From The Sky. She returns and we are wed. I wake. It's 3 a.m. Back to bed.

---

"Can you hear me now?
I'm waiting for any trace of you
In this dinghy on the dingy sea
Oh how I know you loved the sea

I know you're safe now.
Somewhere past the furthest star
But there's no buses to where you are
Where you are sleeping safe and warm

I hope you don't doubt me now.
I am faithful as the sun
Burning bright for the fruitless hope
of lighting all the world at once

You are a comet cast now
far from sight and out of sound
I hear your echo clear and loud
the siren call of you trailing out

---

I break the surface and breathe explosively. The atmosphere caves in slightly at the heavens, six miles up, in response to my eternal gasp. Barometers in Wisconsin read the change. I am affecting things, consciously, unconsciously. I breathe to bring you back, pulling against the vacuum of your grave, space. A burial at sea? A burial at sky. Hang me; hang my head among the stars.

---

When I die, send my rocket towards the sun
so I may become
something radiant like you.

Your eyes are telescopes 
sleep soundly out of view,

but some day you will open and
catch the shine I throw to you.

---

Climbing over the side of the boat they look at me in wonder, holding blankets and shotguns, both pointed blankly at my chest. They say nothing, stare and glance. Finally,

"How - how the hell did you survive that?"

"Yeah, and where did you fall from? A plane, a hang glider - what?"

Wet hair matted to my face, through blankets and through teeth, I smile, twenty degrees past the eyes of the man questioning.

"I jumped, from Sacramento."

Jimmy

The day before, no one had wings. Then, wingspan.

At first, people used sidewalks for take-off, swimming pools for landing. But, like any burgeoning industry, it didn't take long for runways to appear, attachable to roofs, decks, or even fire escapes, for the now-flighted apartment dwellers. They were made by the people who used to make slot car tracks and fold-out ironing boards, proving that those industry were for far too long underrated.

Speculation was rampant; the PE faithful thought their cause vindicated. Literary scholars knew the real truth.

Jimmy spends hours a day ‘up,’ avoiding homework.

The FAA is pissed.

The BEGINNING of the World, Pt 1.

Here is how the world began: a card trick to put the devil in his place.

See, God was throwing aces against the wall of time one day when the devil caught one and bet God he couldn't make a universe in under a week. God said "wtf" (which is where Gamers get it from), just like he'd been insulted, and totally took that bet.

So Moses is writing all this down a couple thousand years later and is like, "wow. sweet." right in the middle of divine inspiration time, and now we have the Pentatuch.

...it's pretty easy to explain.

Genreland

British Invasion is sitting in a corner booth with New Age Revival, which is just freaking weird, everybody agrees. Post-trance Hop Rock is, obviously, pretty bouncy and no longer tripping. She's sipping neon cool-aid from a martini glass at the bar--not the least bit self-concious.

Grunge and Indie got together a few years back, had an ugly baby who never stops crying: Emo. Currently she's getting old enough to realize that no body likes her, and is thinking about an office job and maybe a pink dress or two.

Andy, Kevin, and Jesse are contemplating which they'll call their muse.

The School of Rock

Jesse, Andy, and Kevin are playing with hooks in fishing class, just before recess. Three small rods sit propped against the wall, each one strung and tuned.

Morrisey, from the front of the class, flicks a fly rod and catches Jesse's ear.

"OUCH!"

"Pay attention and you'll learn something. Now what was I saying?"

"That every day is like Sunday?"

"Yes... and that all you have to do is do your best and don't worry. Ok?"

"Can we go now?" Kevin interjects.

"I don't care if we go or not." Andy offers.

"Yes you do." Morrisey snaps, and the bell rings.

Musicia

Dylan skips a stone across the crystal lake, aiming for the castle on the far side.

"Oww!" yells McCartney.

"Watch where you're chuckin' em at, O.K. Dylan?"

"Good one." says van Morrison, leaning against a giant gum tree.

"I hit Hendrix like that once. On purpose though. He fucked up one of my songs."

"You're a bit of a dick about your work, you know that?" says McCartney, coming in off the crystal, rubbing his shin.

"And you're a bit of a pussy with yours."

"You mean he got a lot of pussy with his." retorts Lennon, plucking a mandolin softly.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Day #2.

I'm driving into work with my dad again. The air conditioning is too cold, as usual. I wish he'd roll the window down. We talk about politics and I get animated, against my will. I wish it were possible for one passion to override another permanently, but I can always get up the gusto to discuss Marx and conservatism, I guess. We talk, we drive, we "bond."

We really do "bond," though.

---

I drive with my dad not only because of the high gas prices, and the obvious chance to "bond," but also because I can't stand the wheel anymore. The steering wheel, that is. Other wheels are O.K. Bike wheels, water wheels, and Ferris wheels are still all on my O.K. list. Training wheels I'm still back and forth on.

I even use a bike now, to get my small errands done at night after work. I've started seeing parts of the suburbs I've never seen before, and a few houses I'd like to break into. Well, not break into, but... borrow, temporarily. Timeshares, right?

---

I guess it's only temporary, but the arrangement makes me feel like I'm fifteen again. Being driven around by your father isn't the most manifying thing in world. But, as I get out of the car, I think about how I only have to wear these clothes for two more weeks, and that makes me happy. I smile, shake my dad's hand, think of her, him, whisper "I love you," and step into the sunlight. Good morning, world.

This is day two.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Day #1.

It was a mountain-top road with a guardrail old enough to have witnessed the Donner party's descent into madness. (It has no remorse about remaining unhelpful.) She crashed at 9:05 p.m., the same time church bells rung three days later in Sacremento, her home town of 10 years. We met four years earlier, had been dating through school, and this was the night. Obviously, because this is how it has to be: that night was the night with the question mark attached to it. The biggest one of all.

"Will you...?"

It hasn't rained since her death. It has been almost impossible to not enjoy the summer California days. Remind me, when I die, to make it in winter, when it's easier to mourn. I go to the beach most days, surf out on the waves, and some how manage to stay awake most of the night to stop the possibility of nightmares. I am a zombie of sorts, though my taste for brains hasn't quite matured to violence.

I feel split. In the daytime, sanity reigns. Despite my lack of sleep, I maintain a calm, polished veneer, dress adequately, and attend church on Sunday's (though I'm forming a new religion of sorts.) The shift happens, like flipping a pancake, with the drowning and surfacing of the sun. (Funny thing that: it never burns out, and it breaks free from the mountains every morning without effort. Oh to have such strength... which I seem to have these days.)

Her ghost has colors, which I've seen on my bedroom wall, and her spirit has voices, which are like childhood friends and the people you meet in concert lines and on roller coaster rides. I sleep in her bedroom, climbing in through the window the with the purposely broken lock, and I listen to music only a 17 year old should. I am allowed to. I have a dead almost fiancee. I am allowed to.

I am 23.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #10.

I am bleeding technicolor red all over an ornate park bench in Central Square. I am tracing the patterns of the pigeons who walk, scrambling for food, like tiny telegraph tickers and miniature marching bands. They spell your name over and over again, and I mark them in time, chalk dots flamed white under the naked light of the moon.

You had just the color of the naked moon.

In scripts no Mohammedan could replicate they write the scriptures of your religion. Only aliens and fellow crop circle enthusiasts will make out these Twenty-Two-and-a-Half Commandments. The rain will wash away the first revision of your Holy Manual, and the droppings from the birds serve as punctuation and illumination for its flagstone pages.

I am entering the E.R.'s blazing florescent doors, barely conscious, but still clutching the bottle in my hand, and still holding my bloody shirt in tact.

I emerge before sunrise, spotless, flaming white.

For You 101 Freaks

After the war there wasn’t much to do in the western hemisphere. I emigrated to Europe, washing up with the tide on the beach of Normandy, feeling like I’d been there before. It was June 6th, 2044.

Trudging across the Chinese countryside (long story; don’t ask; the French never win any wars) gave me time to pick the historical lice from my brain, readjusting my view of the world to its new, lopsided smile.

I eventually got a job at a Government Church, scaring away the bums and cleaning pigeon droppings from the front steps.

Instead I spread seed, and buy cigarettes.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #9.

I am drunk as hell, on a piano bench, contemplating 22, wishing I had the discipline to be myself again. I am planning revenge against all the stupid, god-damn demons who took her away; all her laughing, all her charm, all her hands in the air as we made love, away. I carve the word 'egregious' in the wall of my room, and leave.

I am driving, always driving, driving to escape where I'm going. I am throwing stones at heaven from the bluffs near the ocean. (God's omnipotence must be the most boring thing ever if he can't even do one little evil thing like light somebody on fire.) I throw the vodka from the truck, lights flash behind me.

Intermission.

The officer, too, lost someone to an angry guardrail, I find out at the diner later on. That's what pushed them into the service. A ticket for "failure to obey posted speed signs" rests on my dashboard. $135. The eggs are delicious. I have a friend in the law now.

This could be a good thing.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #8.

If death were a spaceship, she'd be near Jupiter by now. I think about this as I watch clouds hide inestimable swathes of space, one at a time, and reveal them again, peek-a-boo. I wonder how we look, spiraling towards our deaths around the center of some cosmic discotheque of light. The sun has a million facets, and I only walk when it shows none.

The blankets they wrapped her in are finishing out-processing at the Clinical Sanitation Department of the NWPD. I am aware of this because I've been tracking every piece of memorabilia connected with the scene. My religion will need holy relics.

I stop for coffee again, hoping I'll like it, hoping some day I'll acquire the taste. It, like religion, is useful, if bitter.

I don't like silk, or coffee, or grill cheese, or game shows. She didn't like air conditioning, or people who used the word 'parodoxically' too often. She preferred leno to letterman, and voted democrat, on tuesdays, free will on thursdays.

I throw the coffee out the window, and decide to find a Starbucks for a latte.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #7.

I am resting, even though it is Wednesday. I am sipping lemonade through a straw on the back porch of someone else's house, overlooking a florescent pool, bejeweled sidewalk, flickering 4x4 posts. I am taking advantage of what I like to call "makeshift timeshare."

Her memory is becoming idyllic, and is almost approaching deity. I am starting to loose imperfect details, the curve of her chin, the improper set of her shoulders, the perfect way she walked. I am starting to form a religion around her memory, working out a set of doctrines, a calendar of holy days, a litany of punishments for those who profane Her name.

The diner is my church. The alley is my sanctuary. My car is my pulpit, my prayer chapel, my confessional. My fascination with religion is over. I am fashioning a resort colony in my mind, with her as its patron saint and mermaid. She adorns the entry gates and the dinner plates. She stands on the napkins and pedestals. She is a face reflected in the hologram fountain at the front of the 30 story promenade.

Her name is She Was, and at it people cry.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #6.

See most of life is lived in anticipation, but what sacred bliss to know that the best is behind you? No more worrying will I miss it; will I recognize it when it comes; will it even come at all? What safety in retrospect, what undeniable grief and clearness of path! I am a made man, in a way. And so I am looking for ways to get killed, yet not relishing the thought at all. I am oblivious to action, in bed with passivity, extremely complacent in the most desperate way. I have evangelized the truth of mourning, and I am my biggest convert.

I tip my hat towards the rain and keep moseying down Main St. The double-breasted coat and fedora are a bit Noir for me, but I'm involved with the moment and so I play along. I kick off the wall with my cowboy heels, and land in the semi-puddle which is the entire street sidewalk. The streetlights glare like schoolmarms, and I pay no attention, hat brim averting their gaze.

In revision I find more comfort than I ever did in action. Her face becomes more beautiful with every passing day, her thighs slimmer, her waist more perfect. I remember her smile like a flashbacks in the movies, and the pavement where she lay is now a bed of roses; I planned to lay her there all the time. She is being transferred more and more into my Beauty, and I the Beast.

(Leave along the implications that has for me.) I am building a castle, a big one, and thinking of buying a clock and a candelabra. I am insisting on a large ball room; I don't really know why.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #5.

If you haven't figured it out by now, there's little rhyme or reason to what I'm doing. I'm buying vinyls and I don't even own a player. I'm buying large cups of coffee in the local diners and I don't even like coffee. I'm playing Barry Manilow at work, I don't even know why.

When I was young the monsters were all virtual, lives infinite. Now a bus or a trolley could say something about whether or not I should have crossed that street at that particular time, and I wouldn't even be able to finish reading about the newest Sushi restaurant in town, which I so wanted to go to. I am terrified about these things.

She has been appearing on street corners, and in the laundromat window or cab waving line. I hear this is normal for two weeks out. She is calling me from the other room, or to see if I want to go out to the movies--I can feel the phone vibrating in my pocket, while it sits directly in my sight. I am opening beers and windows, bank accounts and online dating profiles, umbrellas and cab doors. I am driving to where she would be, stepping out in the rain without a coat on, wishing I was dead.

And yet these are the best days of my life.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #4.

The world of the living and the world of the dead overlap like the body the soul. One is invisible, giving life to the visible. Do you see the sun, or its light? Do you see space, or the things suspended in it? These metaphors are not perfect, but the cell walls do not care. The security guards do not hear over TV sets and evening beers.

I've heard lyrics in favorite songs talk about my situation, so I pace the grounds, aware of my restraints: mountains to my right, oceans to my left, and I think about the silversmiths in old ages.

How does it feel to be eternally second best? Your very trade defines your position. Your metal will never raise in glorious usurpation (but will, later, fall to third, platinum the new King). There are things to think about here. I think about smoking a cigarette and walk on by.

2 a.m. is possibly my favorite time. It's when I dream I will find love; dream or imagine, I'm not sure which. Which is hopeful, or, no, more probable? I will believe in probability.

Long live probability!

I think about her, but she's probably not coming back.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #3.

I am finally speaking my mind, to curbs, to streets, to anything that will listen. She taught me to be free, but now her flesh is empty, festooned with dirt. The body is a prison, we all know, and the soul escapes so easily, given one condition; eggshells within eggshells, metaphors apply.

Cockroaches on the floors of my life's cell keep me alive. I play with them, make parades and charge admission to my imaginary friends; I grind them against the walls into fine powder, and suck on them as if they were delicacies, crunch crunch crunch, just to have stories to tell later.

I've never tasted alcohol behind my breath / 
and I've never seen a man before his death / 
but I've seen you lying homesick on the road / 
and I've tasted things that breath should never know.


The snow is falling, which is odd. But I guess in this dream world you get your romantic wish. Now, if only she would be walking this way in a dress...

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #2:

I am sipping my latte, cold as ice, warm as night. I am thinking about her, leaning in towards the center of the table, silent and wishing for love in all the same breathes. I am speechless at my own inability. She was cold before they picked her up; her earrings were 50 ft. apart.

The crunchy little bits of flashers and turn signals left on the side of the road by accidentsandwhatever have always fascinated me. Now I know where they come from. Turning too quickly, I nearly snap my neck, spinning my head 360. The jingle at the door is anonymous, but she always had a way of pushing that created a distinctive ring; why is this the same?

I don't believe anything anymore, but I am not exempt from the beliefs of others. Police reports, official statements, consoling words to family members, they all believe these things are necessary.

"Yes, I loved her very much." I say with the vacancy of a desert hotel.

"She was a spark in a dark world." I stare at a distant wall, unseeing, no expression in my voice.

"Of course, I will miss her dearly." My mouth barely moves. The words are flatline, monotone.

I sip my latte. Think.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #1.

I am driving in my car, wind cold, beer colder. I am resisting nothing; fear, love, telephone poles. I am driving smoothly, like hands on top of skin or a knife through meat, freshly sharpened (the knife or the meat?). I am driving away (towards?) something. All things are true: metaphorically, spirituality, blah blah blah.

Dichotomies are covalent atoms, simease twins, Abbot and Costello.

Glint of gun metal. Shift of steel. Engine hits 80 because its a nice round number, like the age you're going to die.

I've seen the flashing headlights of the coroner's car, arriving at your scene. (Why did they send headlights to such a routine suburban death) I wonder.

In the midwest, everything dies normally. Even catasrophic failures of safety equipment that cause multiple death and dismemberment to combine workers are ranked as "no special incident" in the police reports. Your smiling head on the side of the road will pose no exception to this rule.

At least you'll like you meant to do it, I think as I drive by.

The Glory Days

The punches come swift, fast, hard. Hydraulic jacks are twigs compared to this kind of pain. Roof rafters falling on your head would hurt less. Good thing he's dealing and not taking, he thinks. And good thing this is virtual reality.

Sam takes his fists from the dangling boxing gloves and rubs his arms, exhausted. Slumping towards the change machine, he tears a strip of tickets from the box and walks towards the ticket counter.

5,000 for the PlayStation?! He eyes his stash.

"Kid, you know you could just get a job or save up your allowance... or ask your parents to buy you one for Christmas, right?" The arcade keep prattles. He is 45, bald as a tire, an Italian plumber nursing a rotund gut he must have been born with.

"Sure," says Sam, finger the end of a long, taped together roll of tickets protruding from his backpack, "but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun, would it?"

Out of Area

A bruise marks the spot where the beer bottle struck him, unintentionally. His three buddies laugh harder than the incident deserves, in that way only fourteen year olds are supposed to laugh when they're still fourteen and naive. He smiles, knowing things they'll never know.

He doesn't even know why he hangs out with them anymore.

"Another one on the house?" inquires the bartender, good-naturedly. He grins through the scar which cuts both the top and bottom of his mouth, and pours a double shot of scotch into a tumbler.

Slide. Catch.

He grips the glass like his future, forcibly, and doesn't know where to pour it.

"Why do we drink boys?"

CHORUS:
We drink for the fun.
We drink for the sex.
We drink for the love.
We drink to forget.

He slams the tumbler back, irrespective of the contents pouring down his cheek and chin. He wipes too vaguely, gratuitously, and sets the glass back on the counter. Pulling a book of translated Cicero from his pocket, he stands to leave.

Page 23: As the old proverb says, "Like readily consorts with like."

Page 43: Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

Page 54: It is a great thing to know our vices.

Operation

The medical supplies from the local hospital total thousands, but for some reason there isn't a scalpel among them. They chock it up to “collateral damage,” and proceed.

“Carve deeper. I want there to be scars,” he manages through clenched teeth, gripping the arm and back of the park bench like the victim of a gassing.

The sick sounds of glass through flesh echoed in the empty park. There is a sucking sound.

“I’m doing my best,” she says, pressing the ragged edge of the merlot bottle harder into his right atrium, for emphasis.

Scrape scrape, cut cut, slash slash.

“There, happy?”

She straightens, exhaling heavily, hands covered with plasma and bits of ventricle.

“Perfect. Now where’s my shirt?”

He pulls together the ragged edges of his chest cavity, and pins them with the tattered flannel button-down she throws him.

“Well, nice knowing you,” he throws back, staggering slightly to find his feet.

A slow rain begins to wash the traces of blood from his back. Her fingers feel the same relief.

“I’m not paying you back for the wine!” she yells, half-screams, waving the jagged edged cap and stem in his direction.

“Oh you earned it, kid. Don’t worry about it; you deserve it,” comes the final response. He half-waves a weak hand over his shoulder, without turning, and mumbles a final salvo of words, nearing the center of the field:

“Plus, you drank most of it, right?”