The Hitchhiker's Love Song

We see each other all the time. He'd strap a polaroid camera around his neck, collect a picnic basket and me in the beat up old truck and we'd ride - hours of sunshine and starlight, laughing at the giddy polaroids gathering in the backseat. The AC pumped out an intoxicating blend of summertime and memory and we laughed more, drunk it in, heady as an October evening. The stereo was the sound of our heartbeats, ribboning forth like a kickdrum, eternal as the wind.

We stopped often at first, doing nothing much - checking the headlights before it got dark, keeping time by the blinkers, taking laughing polaroids of the rest stops and state lines, of the two of us chewing sandwiches served from paper sacks. Lately, we've just driven and driven even though the farming towns and railroad tracks are forgotten before they're even seen. We ignore the exit signs now, ignore the restaurants and their gaudy paper napkins, just keep on driving.

We could drive like this forever, you know.

I like it when you drive better. It frees up my hands to ruffle your hair when the wind musses it and to grip the consul between us when the road turns or you start going very fast.

I tease you about your grandfatherly driving, the left-right-left-again adage and driving slow being more than just a big laugh. But we laugh anyway, you and I.

Our favorite time of day is just before the sun begins to set. In this golden light, everyone is beautiful and even our polaroids look simply lovely. Maybe it's the colorblindness you have that perceives the world in whites and greens,  or my rose-colored sunglasses, but even we are beautiful at twilight.

Sometimes, late at night, by moon or clouded skies, we pull the car to the side of the road and look at each other in the silvery grey light that follows the golden evening. Our eyes glow like nocturnal creatures and sometimes we grow afraid. Usually, we sit there in silence, our lungs heaving up the taste of memory and, still in silence, our fingers lace together like shoestrings.

Neither one of us ever stops the radio, except in those silent times without laughter. We need the sound to show us that the car is alive and will keep on running. We learn to listen for our heartbeats on the radio, proving that we are alive too. Because if all the polaroids are any measure, we're going to be here a long while yet. The wind and road signs remind us that we have a very long way to go until we get to the Pacific Ocean or Mount McKinley or the Continental Divide or wherever this old truck is taking us.  The silences will grow and the pictures will discolor. But as long as we're still here and not hitchhiking back alone, we know it's all going to be okay.

"Okay," I say, and we miss another turn.

"Okay," you reply, and crank up the radio, where our hearts beat in stereo sound.

And we know that no matter what happens, if the radio is running, the car will keep on going, and everything will be golden.

I wear a torn place on my sleeve

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Even so, it is well with my soul.

Behold, a new thing comes like a dove.

The nails in the door glimmer with light and my head is light.

I stop.

I start.

I am  back to fishing. Fishing to forget.

I have bit my nails to the quick.

He says to be a shepherd.

I will feed his sheep forever.

Then you do not hate me?

Let us love and sing and wonder.

I grow excited again.  

There is  no because. 

Just a go.

a do.

a believe.

a love.

Yes, I am excited.

The nails drop to the ground.

Surely this man was the son of God!

And the rain begins.

I do not care what the gardener has to say.

I am weeping. And I do not wish to be told to go.

He is speaking and I do not want to listen.

Why? Because they have taken my Lord from me. 

There are lilies and sand.

I loved him. 

He says my name. 

I am altogether with him and my hands find his, the places the nails pierced

He says My God and Your God.

Never again will demons torment me.

Like a lamb

He was silent

Like a child

He did not weep

I am ashamed

I nail the door shut

I weep for him and 

wash my hands

Tell me you love me

Take me back to the start

It's not as simple as that.

You're a bad person.

You deserve your lot.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you

rrrip

TODAY YOU WILL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE

amen and amen

i have calmed and quieted my soul

indeed, this is a new thing

The nails fall broken

Love is always a new thing.

We do not understand.

So

show

us

your

grace

We believe

in the name of Love

our Father 

who art in heaven

We believe

in It is finished

in the water

and the blood

We believe in Joseph's wasted tomb

We believe in John's death

We believe in Peter's life

We believe in Mary's disgrace

And Pontius Pilate's downfall

We believe in the faith of a thief

Our sleeves are torn

Our hearts are whole

It is as simple as that.

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)

I wear a torn place on my sleeve || A thief

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

A thief

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

blood

in

my

mouth

in my hands

nails

in my hands

darkpainbloodblackingoutheartbeat

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

i am not afraid to die

just let me die now

throw me in an unmarked grave like the rest

rest

i need rest

no one will remember my name

to be honest, i'm glad. i'm not a good person

blacking out again

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

memory and other things i don't need

sound and other things i don't want

beside me another forgotten

forgetful

what am i called again?

a thief?

a murderer?

a man?

there's another one beside me, wetting

me with his

black black black no air

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

words

words

i have no use for words

why are you speaking

you foolish

what do they call you?

i don't even remember my name

let alone who you are

ogodogodogod letmedienowpleaseletmedie

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

you are a fool

my brother

you are a fool

do you remember what you did to end up here?

i don't.

yes i do.

i can see the faces

don't you remember too, my brother?

and the one

the one in the center center center i can't

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

i ask nothing of you

i have nothing i can ask you for

you who chose this

bloodbreathsourwineburningbloodbloodblood

i did not choose it

i do not regret it

what else could have been done me?

i would bow before you

but all i can do is struggle against these

nailsnailsnails

to say

rip

rrrrrip

breath

out

o LORD

remember me

when YOU

enter

YOUR

KINGDOM

for i will never see you again

but you will judge my soul

stretching up trying to

breatheagainstnails

will i ever

see

you

again

.
.
.

                       out




Paradise finds its existence.
(to be continued)

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)

I wear a torn place on my sleeve || Pontius

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Pontius

The violins are a sweet song, and I like them much better than the cries of the dying and the ugly sound of a mob.

I like to think of myself as a gentleman. I'm not a bad man, not at all. I pay my taxes. Have a pleasant wife and a decent family. I do my job without deviation or bribery. I'm a servant of the people. Everything a governor should be. I'm not corrupt, not violent, just a genuinely good person.

So why do I sit here, cleaning blood out of my nails and pretending I can't see the way my hands are shaking?

My hands are clean. I have washed them many times.

But I can't escape the smell of blood. It's in my hair, in my hands, in the throats of the natives as they shout for it in the veins of the man who I am not responsible for, the one whose blood is running in rivers in Jerusalem.

He is not my responsibility. He is not my fault.

I stand up, thinking about going home. It's late, I think. My wife will be waiting up for me. It's long overdue for me to be headed home. And then I sit back down, feeling the olive trees around me and the weight of the world tipping dangerously. No. I can't go home. Not like this.

All of them shouted my name. Coupled it to things that I was afraid of. They say they know what they are doing.

No one knows the price of blood on your hands.

I don't allow myself to think about the one they call the king of the Jews.

He is not my responsibility.

If they had not brought up Caesar -

But they did. It doesn't really matter - I straighten and run my hands over the nails in the gate - I am a servant of the people. I will do as they ask.

My stomach churns. Somewhere, a murderer is laughing at his good fortune and getting drunk in celebration. Not that far away - I tell myself I can not hear the screams and smell the blood - there is a man on a hill who is innocent. I feel sick.

He is not my fault.

I never could get the hang of Passover. So  many Jews. Underfoot. Smelling of religion and subversiveness and mumbling frustration. I thought at first he was one of them. Just another Zealot calling for Roman blood.

He calls for his own blood.

He is innocent. I can not get past that.

I am all that a governor should be. I listened to my people.

So why do I stand, scrubbing at my hands as if they will never truly be clean, which, I think, they never will be?

Strange. I wash my hands and feel more dirty than before.

My wife has been crying her eyes out. She will say she knew it. She did. She was right.

No! I did what was right!

I can not get him out of my head. The way his tears were blood and his blood was water and the water that pours from the fountain is all blood too. I tell myself he is a criminal. I tell myself that the Jews want it this way. I tell myself that the lash in my hand was the scourge of justice.

I ignore the women - I refuse to give them names - who loved him most. His followers, who, with inked in lines on their bitter faces and frightened chewing-of-lips, cried their quiet tears.

The man they call the king called this love.

Love! Is this what you meant, you ignorant prophet?

Why can't I stop thinking of him? This is not the first death sentence I've given.

My stomach turns again.

He is not my responsibility. He is not my fault.

I wash my hands of you, you foolish martyr!

I look at my reddened nails and my heart seizes.

I will never be rid of him.

I know this now.

He will never really leave any of us, will he?

His silence is haunting. As deep as the ocean. Mysterious as death.

Or mysterious as love. I can not reconcile what I know and what the king said.

I feel the tug of life and of love in my stomach.

My hands shake.

He is not my responsibility.

He is

not

my

fault.



Love is irreconcilable.
(to be continued)

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)

I wear a torn place on my sleeve || Mary

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Mary

My mouth tastes as bitter as nails. I could swear that when I saw his blood, it was mine too. My skin all over hurts. I'm quivering. I vomit up fear and shake more.

This is no place for a lady.

I am no lady, though, everyone knows that.

I can't stay here.

I run.

Until my feet are sore and bleeding and I'm beneath a palm tree somewhere far away and I don't really care what they think of me because, really, did they expect me to watch him die?

I know it shouldn't smell like blood here. Why does it?

I'm still shaking.

He won't die. He can't. He's like Elijah, my Lord. He is like Enoch. He will be taken to heaven in glory, I tell myself. But I can't shake the image of him, if indeed that was him, covered in blood and flayed skin, holding his insides in and carrying the burden of it all on his shoulders. Nails all in him.

He did warn us, I think. But never like this. Never did I picture it going like this.

My whole life is wrapped up in him. I don't know what I'd do without him.

It's with a sinking feeling that I gag and ask myself what this means. I just really don't know. I don't know anyone like him, my Lord.

What is really a marvel is the fact that it's been just a few years. I can still remember the days before my Lord. I envy, to think of it, the girls who will come after me and know him forever. Or something like forever. He's gone now, I try to tell myself.

The smell of sulfur always and the momentary appeasement of seven inner demons brought about by doing what they wanted, all the while sleeping in trees and by rocks and in homes I did not know. Blankly, I think that I was taken advantage of a lot, by the men and by the demons, but I really don't think I was. I invited it. I wanted it. But once it happened, I really wanted to take it all back.

He didn't mind the way I screamed. The thing I had become. I am not yet at a place where I can think about the seven demons and the way I was without crying. Maybe I never will.

Oh, who cares. Today I have a right to cry.

I have cried a lot in the past week. I think usually I'd be ashamed of this. But I've known what the others haven't, that this Passover is his death wish. I don't know what in me knew, but I've been mourning his death for days. Only now, when he is actually - probably, I say, not actually but probably - dead I can't accept it.

Maybe this is why I anointed him for burial on Sunday. I couldn't have done it today.

There's a nail on the tree trunk sticking out and my hand catches on it and bleeds.

I'm all alone now. I smell sulfur once again and I start to shake. I was alone before. I can do it again.

No. I really can't.

Anyone else, I'd say I'd fallen in love. But I know that's not what it is.

Is it fear that he's gone?

I watch the blood pool in my hand.

I don't know what love is.

I've had so many men in my life. It would be easy to write this one off as a particularly bad choice. Sorry, everyone, I picked a crazy blasphemer. Oops.

But lies taste like sulfur and I can't abide sulfur.

I gag.

I don't know how to love him.

Blood and dirt and vomit.

That's just it, isn't it? I do know what love is. It's him. But it is new. Newer than the blood sun rising up.

God! Give me back the demons and let him go!

I don't know

how

help

me

I've fallen

and

I

can't

find

my

way

back

he's a man, right?




There's more to him.
(to be continued)

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)

I wear a torn place on my sleeve || Peter

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Peter


Never have I hated roosters more than right now.

I know it's not right for me to blame it. But I choose to blame everything. Everything and everyone. And very much myself.

I think, Simon. Really. You couldn't get your act together by the third time?

I reply, No, I'm an idiot. What do you expect?

As I stare at the nails hammered into the gate, the gate to a garden which I would like to forget about, I gloomily recall other idiotic moments. There are too many of them. More since I met the Teacher.

The time I got all excited about walking on water and nearly drowned because I was faithless. Not my best moment. Me, faithless in front of the whole group. No, not my proudest moment in the least.

So many times I shouted out some stupid answer because it was just burning at my throat to be said and then I'd get this look from him or from them that was clearly saying, Simon. Stick to fishing. You don't know anything.

Bitterly, with darkness laughing against my cheeks, I realize it's true.

Three times!

There is a stony darkness in me that that is burning my belly. I think of the Teacher, who is really the only person who ever believed I could do something right. The darkness is clawing its way up my jaw. I feel my face tighten and burn. I refuse to let myself believe that he is dead.

But I know he is.

I have a nail in my hands and I'm running it against the ground, absently writing. I think it's my name.

I brush my hand over it. I am Simon now, because Peter would have held fast.

I am not a rock. I'm as changeable as the wind and no amount of excitement can change that.

Lying is so easy. You just let a little half-truth slip out, grin in bitter memory, and carry on.

His name, paired with lies bitter as soap, is burned on my tongue. I'll never be able to look him in the face again.

And I  might not be able to, I realize and then my heart seizes up again.

I don't love him, I tell myself. It's not like if Andrew had been carted off or something. Then I wouldn't deny it - he's my brother, of course not - but I would know what this tightness in my throat was called.

I'm too ashamed to look into the sky and pray, God forgive me, I am an idiot.

So I bow my chin against my chest and weep. The nails falls from my fingers and I am overcome by what I've done.

Why do you believe in me, Lord?

Because you believe in me.

My hands are dirty.

I want to make it up to him somehow.

And then I realize it. He is new. He is doing a new thing.

Oh take me back to the start

I could not hear

My ears have forgotten

I miss

I miss

The dawn comes softly and I put the nail in the garden gate, which I remember well. He is greater than me I fail not, and all is well.

It's worth it.
To be continued

I wear a torn place on my sleeve || John

Behold, I will do something new,
  Now it will spring forth;
  Will you not be aware of it?
  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
  Rivers in the desert.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation...

I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.


John

I weep a lot these days. They'd laugh if they could hear me say that, the men who travelled with me in the desert. "Really now, John?" They'd say, pounding nails for the tents into ground. "You, a weeping man? Where's the repent and fire business?"

Or maybe not. They had been there too, the first time I really wept before men.

My mother, when she was alive, would look at me with those sad brown eyes, turned golden by sun and by age and say, "John what is wrong?" I can't even count how many times she'd said that while I was growing up, because I did not weep. My mother was special that way. She always knew things. She saw things that others shut their eyes to, like how I never wept.

I miss mother, I think, with tears in my eyes. My father too. I think of them often these days, now that I see.

I remember being a much younger man and my father telling me about the child I was born to herald. He said love a lot, with his cloudy voice. "Father, I'm a man." I'd say. "Not some simpering magician, a prophet, Father. A prophet's passion must leave no room for silly love."

He wept at that.

For a long time, while I fought Herod among the lions in the desert, I told myself the same thing. I'd pound in the nails for my tent and say, "God is just."

I met the child, you know. The one my father used to tell me about, the Christ. He came to me as I shouted and my heart grew full of fire as I stood in the river, wet with the  Jordan and with teh sweat of righteous anger.

Oh no, Lord. I am unworthy to even untie your sandals.

I all of a sudden understood my parents in that moment. All of a sudden, my eyes were full of tears and I knew what was wrong with me when my mother asked. It was the same thing that my father had tried to ask me.

What is love?

Look how far I've come. I'm not sure if it is blood or tears running down my face. Far cry from the voice crying in the wilderness, I'm reduced to counting nails in the prison door, counting time by the shadows of the sun and times my enemy has asked me who I am now. What I am now.

My insides are being eaten away and my enemy exults and what do I do? I weep.

I weep for Herod and for the hungry fire of my enemy eating with pain at his soul.

I weep for the girl who dances while she asks for my death as a game and the way that she will one day weep in bitterness because her childhood has been stolen in fear.

I weep for my disciples, who laugh and preach and sing the psalms, but who will fall to pieces like a jar when I am gone. They just don't know. Please God, they don't know what they're doing.

Mostly, I weep for the child. My father was right. Love isn't what I thought it was. What love is this? He is my friend.

And I tremble as I think this.

I know him.

I weep.

I am just a voice, Child. I am yours, save me.

Somewhere, I think he weeps too, and there is glory in his tears.

My enemy is trembling now. I can see the devouring fire in his belly and I choose to stand and laugh amidst my tears.

This is called love, my enemy.

A dove alights.

I hear my Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small.

My head, my head

Tears fail not.

A nail falls like a pin dropping

And

i

with

it



Love is a  new thing.
(to be continued)

(Isaiah 43:19, Anais Nin's Henry and June, and W.S. Merwin's The Nails provide the epigraph.)

I pour the questions down the drain [villanelle]

He says, never will I see the snow

He says, I fear not at all the rain

He says, I will not  hide my heart below

She, with burning eyes, will slow

The burdened virtuoso refrain

And says, In springtime, we will know

His scars, as bright as stars aglow,

Mourning, fall upon her face in pain

He says, I will not hide my heart below

The spring must come eternal slow

For she and him recall so plain 

And says, in springtime we will know

The blood is rain to make them grow

The blood runs off against the grain

He says, I will not hide my heart below

He says, I hope for the answers to be no

She says, I pour the questions down the drain

He says, I will not hide my heart below

And says, In springtime, we will know

Pinkie Promise

The Boy's eyes are grey. Did they used to be grey? Suddenly it's all-important to the Girl - were his eyes grey or is that something that changed in the ages apart?

He blinks with that steadily unfocused rhythm and rubs his eyes. The Girl watches him, with her hands caught up in the softness of her skirt. They weren't grey before. She remembers now. They were green.

"I missed you." She says to the now grey-eyed Boy who is still glaring off into the middle distance, not seeing her, not seeing their house or the little garden she made while he was away or the small dancing hills out past. His eyes are a hundred thousand miles away in a dug trench.

See, everything's changed and everything's died. The Boy's died. Why she bothers to come and talk to him every day, why she says those silly stupid sweet things like I-missed-you and I'm-happy-to-see-you and I'm-here-for-you escapes her. Her Boy is gone. Maybe his Girl is gone too. One never can tell.

He isn't listening even now. There's anger in his jaw. Her Boy is never angry, he wasn't before, before the trenches and the helmets and the rickety cots.

"If you'll be the Fairy Queen, I'll be the Fairy King." He said. They're children, winged by their imaginations and dressed in pearls and mermaid laughter. His little round face pokes out from under the bedsheet tent they've made. "Here. I'll make you a daisy crown." His little thick fingers twist a rope out of the air and add daisies made from his mind and places it on the Girl's head. His green eyes widen. "You look beautiful, Queen Fairy. There is magic in us tonight" 

She's overcome with a sudden wave of missing. Loss and grief, not because he's dead, but because he's gone. Her Boy is gone. Her Boy, with his laughter and his kindness and his long fingers clasping her around her back when they hug hello - that Boy is gone and the big bad wolf has stolen his body to be given to hold a cruel man.

She doesn't want to believe her Boy isn't in there somewhere. She takes his hands.

"Must you go, Boy?" She said. They're in a tent again, but this time it's a white gazebo tent, with warm summer air all in her hair and his green eyes. The grass beneath them as they sit smells of apples and earth. They're leaning against each other in that way that couples do, and her veil gets tangled up in his bow tie. "I know what happens to people who go away to war."
"All is war, Girl." he says gravely. "We are always at war. I just have to leave home to fight my monsters."
"They'll steal your soul, and then I'll never see you again." She confesses her fear.
"I will never leave you alone. You won't let me. And I won't let you. Pinkie promise, right?" They hook pinkies and sit in the grass with their pinkies hooked. "We belong together, you and me, Girl. We're the Fairy King and Queen. That's the magic. And nothing can change that."

Boy! Why did we grow up? Why did we leave behind the green earth to fight?

He did come home to her, too many moments later. She greeted him at the door, her green eyes all full of magic and delight. Her white veil catches on his medal of honor but not on his eyes. That's when she first sees his grey eyes and the pinched up way his lips are brought together. He doesn't see her. He's seeing the fighting. The death. The pain. There's no more mermaid laughter in him. 
He is not her Fairy King any longer. He is a soldier, and he has forgotten the magic. 

Boy, can you hear me?

It's been something like a hundred years of this, Girl saying stupid lovey things to Boy, wishing and waiting, while his mind does marching drills in his nightmares. It's hopeless, but I think the moment she acknowledges that, all the magic will fall apart and, like the Boy had said, all will be war.

The Girl's eyes are dark with tears. This is why she feared growing up, why she feared letting the Boy go away. She closes her eyes and wishes she was a little girl again playing fairies in the sheet tent. But of course she's not. She's all grown up and she's almost out of magic too.

Her face is soft when she looks at the Boy. For the first time, she realizes how young he looks when he is afraid. Poor little thing. Trapped in a grown up nightmare all alone. Her breath hitches and she stretches out her fingers, all worn and thin now.

"I never break a pinkie promise." She says softly, and her voice catches. She hooks her pinkie into his and shuts her eyes.

Maybe there is magic in them yet.

Maybe magic is just another word for love.

Maybe the big bad wolf can't devour someone who gives everything in a pinkie promise.

Bad dreams are no match for magic fairy kings and queens.

The Boy's and Girl's eyes meet, and it is green.

So the Boy was right after all. All is war, because we all want to stay children forever, but the world demands we all grow up. All is war, because the world wants to suck the  magic out of our eyes and make us as grey as sand. All is war, because love is always worth fighting for, living for, dying for, saying silly things for, and promising far too much for. All is war, but we will win it. Green will always  eat away the grey.

Pinkie promise.

Crying for Grey Hamelin

Follow me, little children, and I will show you how to be free. Do you hear the sound of my wooden flute? It sings for you the song of love. It is a love song, darling. So follow me and I will teach you.

My eyes shall guide you and my song shall lead you. You must not see the cave walls around us, hush-a-bye, little children. My flute enchants you, does it not, my children? Your hearts will be made free.

That voice which cries in the mountains and among the desert streams, is not mine, my children (for mine you are now). Ignore that not-my-song, my loves, my ltitle ones. Your fathers can not hear you among the snow-filled caverns. You are mine now, and this is the song of freedom.

The children awaken among the dragon's lair and cry for grey Hamelin. What have we done, they cry. What did we do to get here?

The piper smiles and lifts the flute to his lips once more. The children open their mouths to cry and cover their eyes, but the sweet sound of chains does bind them. Their eyes turn to the heavens and all of us join hands and fall into the paradise that we call Hell. See, it's dark and it's quiet here, without the scary snow and the dragon with the flute.

One little child stands up and opens his eyes. His ears are bleeding and he turns from the piper and the open sky without the cave and he shakes his head. Slowly, slowly, then faster and faster and he sings.

The song is not new, but it's his father's song, and the wind's song, and the laughter's song, and the song the piper was trying to remember. It is the child's song.

It is the song of freedom. 

And the snow crumbles down.

like a girl in a red cloak

you have turned my mourning into dancing

and i left my sackcloth in the river

because i would rather wear a ballet slipper than 

have ash on my forehead

and (ladies and gentlemen, step right up!)

i will not soil my hope with mourning

i see light

and my head is killing me

because the light will burn away

all the darkness in my eyes and wash the gas mask

from my mouth

i will dress myself in ballet slippers

and my heart will be more filled with joy

(the funny thing is, i am not really happy

sort of happy

but i am, like a girl in a red cloak, not afraid of the darkness

for i will hug the wolves and throw down my heart to 

die to live)

because that is joy

i will not fear

i would rather dance

than twirl away my responsibilities

and forget the wolves in sadness

and draw wet sackcloth in my mind

Do not believe your heart
(It lies)
Trust not your eyes
(For you, sweet child, are blind)
The world crumbles like stale bread
And you are made of dust
Not wisdom
So do not weep
And do not mourn
Though the hearse drives over your boots
And your lover spits acid at you, saying,
You never loved me and I hate you for your falsehood
You must smile and soldier
You must be quite all right
Though everything be wrong and you
Forget everything in tears
Two things you can believe
The silent stars
And Me.

Nobody's Eye

I was born like a Cyclops
My eye, overlarge and weepy,
focuses and rolls
and if I can't remember where
to look too like a snake
I when I forget change from
Polyphemus to Medusa
and my one eye will burn to stone
And my hair will poison
you with its fragrance
Because I'm Nobody and Nobody
remembers where the siren's song leads
Maybe the man who built the dove's boat
He was so full of faith and salt
So by faith and salt and rainbows and a broken mirror
My one eye opens
And the serpents vomit up their applesauce
And I see a great laughing
Skyful star
And all of a sudden
I'm very meek weak hopeful
That my eye will never open again
And my heart will be all more like a
Nobody

To Remember How to See

In such a place, where the ghost queen kisses the ghost king as they dance in harmony, I suppose it's not so unusual, the love story that unfolded in harmful song. For this is a love story, and it is not mine, and yet, it is all mine.

Once there was a small green dragon with golden eyes. He loved a princess, long-haired, pointed-chin. She was not a ghost like her parents, but I suppose being raised by ghosts takes a toll on you. She was as young as the dragon boy, but she didn't seem it. Forgetting and remembering, over and over, had aged her. She smiled at him, and to her, that meant love.

She had a secret, and the secret was as large and terrible as the forbidden wood where he lived. She had read the stories handed down by faerie godmothers of centuries before, and knew that a dragon's heart is enough to stop age, to promote immortality, to restore to a prematurely old princess the youth she ought to have. And I think that was the reason she loved the dragon most - he could heal her, if she ate his heart.

He was silly over her. He loved her more than anything and he wanted nothing but her love. That's why he was sad, that day. It was foggy and grey and the hunting hounds were out.

"Whoever catches the small green dragon, the one with love in his eyes, will be rewarded." The princess proclaimed to the hunting party. "I will give them all that they ever desire. I will acknowledge them as the  mighty hunter, the dragon-slayer, that they most want to be. But the dragon must not know what you are doing, or it will consume you in its fiery wrath."

The hunters set out, and one, a sharp-faced skinny thing with overlarge eyes, drew her bow against herself.She was small, and a little scared, because she didn't have any concept of killing. She was a healer. She liked to make things feel better, by her hands, and she was good at it. Cuts and bruises, broken hearts and sadness, all fell to the forest floor with her, the huntress and healer. I don't know why she wanted to find the dragon. Maybe she could feel his sadness.

She shut her eyes and let the forest spin around her like the world in orbit. She knew she could find the dragon, because the huntress was named Pity, and Pity always finds those who are in love.

She felt hot breath against her and opened her eyes, and there he stood, the weepy-eyed green dragon. Somehow, she was not surprised. "Good evening."

"They're looking for me, aren't they?" said the small dragon. "The hunters?"

The thin huntress nodded.

"If they knew what it was to love, they'd know where to find me." he said mournfully. He turned his great sad eyes from the mountains to the girl. "I never wanted to run from the princess. You must understand love, to find me. What is your name?"

Love is a great thing to understand. She blushed. "I'm called Pity. I'm a huntress and a healer."

"Pity. That is a good name." The dragon says, infinite sadness and infinite wisdom coloring his voice. "Are you going to take me to see her at last? That's what you're here for."

Pity had not realized how hard this would be. He was a fool. The princess would kill him, and he couldn't even see it, because he loved her. One thing she knew - this poor fool was the sweetest of monster, and maybe she did understand love, because I think she loved the poor dragon. "I have to tell you something."

"I will listen."

Of course, she can't just say the princess means to kill him in her selfish want of love. She closed her eyes and listened again, hearing his heartbeat. "Why do you love her?" She puts her healing hands against his chest, feeling sadness seeping into her fingers.

"Can the bee explain why it makes its honey sweet? Does the mountain know why it shadows the towns below? Can a huntress tell away her knowledge of the bow?" He shook his head. "You and I are alike, Pity. You know love too, and you don't understand it, same as me. That's why I trusted you, Pity. That's why I let you see me, why we found each other. Because we're both starving because we don't know what we know. We have both given everything, too, haven't we?"

No one had ever talked to Pity like this before. "Are you saying that my listening is giving?"

A great, steaming dragon tear fell to the ground. "It is also taking. You are pulled, little Pity. And you do not understand the things you know."

"Dragon!" She turns to him with concern in her forehead. "You are bleeding!"

"You have cut me, Pity. Your hands are the hands of a huntress." The dragon says weakly.

"No! No, I never meant to hurt you!" She presses her hands to the hole in his chest. The blood falls through her fingers, and the wound begins to close.

"Take your hand away. Your healing can not truly heal. You only want the pain to stop, I know your kind well, Pity, but it will only hurt it all more." He gasps and pushes her hand away. His heart falls free from his chest.

"No! No, I never meant to hurt you! All I wanted to do was make you feel better!" Tears are pouring from her, and join his blood.

"It's all right, Pity. I wanted this. And better to be killed by a small girl named Pity than a giant called Regret." He turned to her, weakly. "You do not understand the things you know, not at all. You are no healer."

Tears poured from all of her. "I know. I know. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

He put his talon against her back. "No, don't feel bad, my dear little Pity. That's not why I told you that. Just know this - sometimes what a dragon needs is to be cut, and not to be made whole. You will learn, little one, how to do both, and how to know what you do is right." Tears leak from his eyes. "I trust you, Pity. Do you trust me?"

"Yes." she whispers. "Yes, I do, Dragon."

"My name is not Dragon; it is Love. My kind will teach you well one day. But now, little one, I am trusting you with this, my heart, my most precious gift. Would you give it to the princess for me?"

"Why do you love the Princess? She does not love you. She wanted you to be hunted."

"It doesn't matter. I would that she would have just asked me for my heart, for I would have willingly given it to her. But now, she will be healed." he sighed. "And you will be well-renowned as a dragon-slayer."

"No, I will not." Pity said resolutely. "I will be renowned as the small girl who found a dead dragon and cried at his body, and whose tears made the flowers grow."

The dragon regarded her and his talon fell away from her back. "Then you are wise, and you are learning already." He shut his eyes. "One favor, if I may, Pity?"

She leaned forward. "Anything."

"Heal my eyes. I have been blind a long time."

She pressed her hands to his eyes and her tears made him see. He sighed, and the flowers began to bloom. "So, that is what your eyes look like." And he breathed his last.

And little Pity, leaving her bow in the forest, took his heart to the princess and she was healed. I don't think she ever knew how Pity had slain a dragon called Love by accident to heal her, and I don't think she was ever thought of by that selfish princess again, but Pity knew. She never forgot him, the dragon Love,  and I think that she did learn how to heal and how to kill by her hands. But she mostly went every spring to the place where they had made the flowers grow, to remember how to see.

The Urchin

The travelling man came across an urchin in the street. She was dirty and her fingernails were clenched and bloodied against her breast. One hand was pressed to the pavement and the other was pressed against her breast. Hollow-eyed, she glanced up at the man and waved with one hand still against her. Her shawl falls away from her dirty eyes and she stares. He waves back and travels on. He is a travelling man, it's what he does. She's just a little urchin girl, and as he whisps on, an empty chewing-gum wrapper falls from his pocket. She picks it up and calls in a softly lisping voice, "Thank you, sir. I'll hold this piece of kindness in my pocket and one day when I have something to give, I'll be kind to you too." He doesn't turn around, but hopes that she'll grow up to be not such a dirty girl as she is now.

Decades later, when the moon is king and the sun is dark, the travelling man returns and as he walks, he sees the urchin girl - thinner, colder, and brittle as a snowflake. She is not an urchin anymore, but a seller of secrets, a lie-seller. 

"Are you a buyer of things I know?" she said softly in the street, her hand clenched against herself. 

The white-lipped man with the pocketwatch stops. "Are you a seller of good things?"

"I sell the things I know, sir. But we will barter in things we know: I will hold whatever secret you put into me and then I will tell you something happy. You may buy the things I know."

So he whispered a bitter secret into her ear, and she took her hand off of her breast, and pulled, to the travelling man's surprise, her hand away holding her heart, beating and hollow as a drinking gourd. She put the pale secret into the hollow vase of her heart, solemnly. Then she pressed it back into her chest. She shuddered and grew a little paler. "Thank you. I'll hold it unless you want it back." She said it sort of like a question.

"No. I do not miss it." 

"Then let me tell you a secret, in exchange for what you sold me." She looked up into the heavens, and whispered something in his ear. His face lifted and he smiled. His lips took some color and he put his pocketwatch away. Then he walked away.

She smiled thinly and sat back down. Whatever he said had made her sad, and whatever she had said had made him happy.  

The travelling man was curious. And so he walked to her. "Are you a buyer of things I know?" she said. 

His eyes shot from her dark hollow eyes to her hand clenched against her. "What do you sell? Lies or the truth?"

Her eyes flickered. "I don't know the difference. I sell the things in my heart. I have many things that my heart knows. And I sell the ones that make you happy. I'd make you happy, sir, if you'd exchange me something in your heart."

"Why?"

"My heart falls out a lot, and it has a hollow in it. It's shaped like a secret. So I thought I should do it that way. That part I know is true."

He stretched out his hand and dropped a beam of light, purer than any secret into her hands.

"I can't keep this, sir." she said, her lips quivering. "I've never had anything this beautiful. I'm not that kind of girl, sir."

"Keep it." he said softly. Curious, he said," Now, tell me one of the things you sell people."

After a moment's hesitation, she rose to her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. His eyes intuitively brightened. "But that is true." he said happily. "The things you say are true."

She looked relieved, and tired. "I'm learning now what true is, sir. But that's not what I say, sir. I'm saying things that are happy."

He looked her in the eye. "Now tell me one of the things still in your heart. One of the sad ones."

She shook her head. "No, they are mine to hold. I'm the one with the hole in my heart, and I'm the only one who has to do this. I wouldn't wish this on you."

"But they're lies." he said. 

She turned her head in a somewhat shamed way and walked.

The travelling man saw her again the next day, sitting on the ground. The first thing he noticed was that her hand was out in front of her face, outstretched, and not clenched against her.

In her hand, her heart was bleeding all over, and the smile he was accustomed to seeing on the lie-seller's face was gone. "It wouldn't go back in today." She said blankly. "I couldn't get it back once I put a secret in it." She winced.

"Does it hurt?"

She winced. "I can't tell if this is truth or a lie. And I know I'll die if I get it wrong." She glanced back to her heart in her hands.

"I will show you the truth." Said the travelling man. And he put his hand on her heart and held it for her as she coughed. Secrets and lies and sadness and blood poured out of it and she coughed and cried. "No, no!" she said. "I promised I would hold those."

But they continued to pour until one last thing was stuck in there as she gasped.

It was a chewing gum wrapper.

"I made a promise once," she said to the travelling man, all out of breath. "to be kind to you."

Then she crushed her heart into her hands and said, "I can not hurt you any more. Neither can I lie to anyone again." 

And the urchin exhaled.

The Wedding Dancer

I remember him well
The shepherd with the lute
Such a sweet boy
Such a sweet, sweet sad boy
I loved him with every part of my voice
I never did know her name,
The fanged little wolf that stole
his heart, which I'd always thought
would be forever free.
Maybe I love him still.
I'll dance at his wedding, forgetting.

I remember her too
She was a small sparrow
One wing was clipped military short
She perched on my shoulder
She was my song and my sighing
I loved her more than anyone
She was my child
He loved her too, with his overalls
His overlarge hat
His heart wide open so
I could see he loved her
He loved her best, the sparrow
And I was glad to give her away
But how I miss her
I loved her too, thought
Maybe more purely than the other
It's okay.
I'll dance the Lindy Hop at her wedding
In my red shoes.

He's not a memory yet
The White Knight, I loved him too
My poor heart could never quite
But that's not important
The White Knight came green
and wounded and I loved him from the beginning
He was as beautiful as a Mid-Atlantic
Snowstorm. His sword
Was rusty but his pipes were fresh.
I love him still.
I've always known about her, too.
As long as I've known him,
I've known the White Knight
was meant for a princess
not a Lady of the Lake
or dancer
I've always loved you for someone else
And that's okay.
I always will.
That's why I'm the Lady of the Lake.
I love you, I
Promise I do.
And, I am not so broken, you know
I will dance at your wedding.

Dear Bathsheba [[remorse and resurrection]]

...Oh, beloved Bathsheba. Do not leave me here, alone with the moon. I love you, my dear, oh, I love you...

God, how I miss you. 

I'm very alone here, Abba. When I saw her bathing on the roof, I loved her. She loved me, too, God, I know she did. We were beautiful together, admit it. She was sad and she was lonely, and I was scared and I was misunderstood. I was so afraid to lose her.  You've taken me away so many times from the ones I love. I was afraid you would do it again, God, that once again, you'd cast me away from the ones I love. I loved them, God. I promise I did. 

I think that was why I snatched her up the way I did, I just didn't want to lose her, the way I lost all the others I loved most. I know, I know, it was wrong of me to be so afraid.

I wasn't trying to hurt her, the pretty, weeping girl that night. I wasn't trying to hurt you either, I swear it. Oh, how I didn't want to give her up. I miss her, my beloved Bathsheba. It wasn't her fault, of course, the dark way I loved her, the way my love turned to murder.

Oh, God, I can't even think about that. My heart will break all over again and I think I had just salvaged enough of it to say I'm sorry. I am. I'm so so sorry.

How you must despise me. My family does. My whole kingdom does. I despise myself, most of all my bitter-stained heart. 

I'm alone with the moon again. I'm a mass of contradictions, you know - the king after God's heart and the one who killed for a bitter love.

Give me my harp, my dear, I need to sing a short song. Or maybe it will be a long one.

You're my beloved now, the real one, you who never left me alone with the outside darkness (saying I'm sorry and then trying to forget over and over). You've kept my hands gathered, and for the last time, taken hyssop and ground it into my heart, into my eyes, into my hands.

I'm aflame now, and I'm weeping and there is resurrection. My heart died when we parted, you and I, and I buried it when I said goodbye to her, but now, create in me a clean heart, a new one, O God, and resurrect - renew - a right spirit within me. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.

Because, I'm sorry isn't going to work when you're alone with the moon. Because, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Siren

My child, now let us look at a marvel...
What a peculiar little chimaera
See her long hair as wild and dark as moss
Beloved eyes one green and one purple
She is so very small, but with
A large voice singing songs
Oh, my child, cover your ears and
stuff beeswax into them
For the little white lady
with harp-voice wings
With a green serpent wound down her waist
She's quite something
Look at her, wet smiling and air weeping
A warning, that's what we call her
Because we can not be both
Air and water
Much less an earth and a spirit
There can be no candle in the underworld
No worms in love with doves
Salt in a fresh spring
Do not marvel at me, my child
But as I change
You may love me
[that's a question]

I fall in love with a bird and live

Once upon a time, there was a little worm-girl. She lived in the quietest part of a garden, under hte shade of a wild-haired tulip.

There was not one thing special about this worm. She was not important, she was not talented, she was not (certainly not!) pretty. The easiest way to describe her is a Nobody among Nobodies.

The grown-up worms knew her to be a simple-hearted little thing with no big aspirations and no big exceptional traits, but a big heart - big for a worm, that is. The boy worms were blinded by her blindness and usually mistook her for a ladybug. Ladybugs are good at listening, but are usually too prim and proper to be friends.

Maybe they were right. She was a very blind worm, and not very important at all. Either way, she listened a lot, and she loved to listen. But she still couldn't see and maybe that was her biggest fault.

One day, she was squalling about in the shade of the garden. It was so bright and hot and her skin hurt. She, in her ungainly worm fashion, squinted her forehead where her eyes would  have been and squirmed uncomfortably away. She thought about the sun and the other worms and the tulips and suddenly wished she weren't blind even though she'd know how ugly she was.

"Hello, girl."

She froze. She knew that voice. It was a bird, one of the bright winged creatures who are as full of light as they are of air and beauty. They also eat worms. "Hello, bird." She said. She flails side to side, trying to face him as best as one can with no face.

"Don't trouble yourself," he said softly. He hopped around to face her. "Are you alright, girl?"

She can't remember the last time she was alright.And she knew birds. They tried to be kind, but they're so beautiful, so undeniably better, that they end up devouring poor worms like her. "What do you want from me?" She said.

He waits a long time to answer. When he does, his voice is soft as warm poppy petals. "Just... just to love you." he says quietly. "To be friends. You've always been kind."

Not to wild birds. "Thanks, but not really. I'm not kind." she says, worming her tail awkwardly backward.

"Yes, you are. You've always listened and cared and asked and been kind to me. I-" he hesitates. "Don't you remember how kind you are to me?"

"I do not know you." What a sorry thing to say. "I'm sorry, but I don't."

"That's okay." he says, and he's not quite disappointed. "I think we are friends."

"Okay."

"I think," he hesitates again. "I think I, maybe, love you." It sounds like a question.

She didn't answer, because birds can't really love worms, not really. They may care, they may be merciful or even kind, possibly sweet, but never ever can they really love worms. Where would they live?

She wishes she could have seen how he looked when he said it though.

He did keep coming back, the bird boy, every day. They did nothing together. She couldn't really fly with him, and there was nothing that she would like him to see about her home. So they lazed. They listened. They sat. They talked. They were together.

"Tell me about seeing," She said. They're sitting in the sunshine. Her tail is would around his talons.

"It's amazing." His breath and his wings are against her back. She sighs, because it's good to be together and alive together. "The world is very bright." he continues.

"Okay."

"I see things as they seem, I think. It's not like what you do, dear."

"Okay."

He stirs a little. "I love you."

Before she can talk herself out of the glimpse of light she just had, she says, "I love you too."

Oh no! She is blind. She is a blind ugly worm. She can not love him. He can not love her, but even less can she love him. "No! No, I can not love you." She gulps down a pocket of tears. "I am a worm and you are a bird."

"You don't understand. Love isn't like that."

"A bird can not love a worm, my dear. Where would they live?" She says, and the world is very very dark again.

A blink of light. "We are each other. Not a bird, nor a worm. We are who we are."

A blink of tears. "No, you can't do that. Don't become a worm for me."

His wings move. "I've always been a worm. It was you who first called me a bird."

All of a sudden, she remembers who he is and why he knew they were friends. But she knew him, once a long time ago, not as the bird that he is, but as one of the other wailing worms. She had listened to him.

"But I feel your wings." She says, stubbornly. "You are more than you think you are. How could you be a worm?"

He smiles. "Sometimes love goes by many names. Sometimes, its best name is blindness."

Love is neither sight nor blindness.

"No." She says. "Love's name is not blindness. Love is what is real, it is a realization. You are a bird. My blindness gave love realization."

"Do you not feel your wings?" he says softly. "My sight will realize your reality, too."

She is not a worm. He is not a bird. They are real and the in between of wings and worms is where they live.

Summer and Blue

“Hello.” said the boy with the blue eyes. It was raining and his brown hair ran down his face with the rainwater.

“Hi.” said the girl with the summer smile. Her hair was not running anywhere. She held a polka dot umbrella over her head and stood in its spotlight.

The boy with the blue eyes smiled, but it was a sad, February smile. “We don’t know each other, do we?” The smile turned to frost, and the summer girl watched, perplexed and teary-eyed as he turned into an ice ghost before her.

The summer girl had seen a ghost before. That’s how she knew the boy with the blue eyes was one.

She lived in an industrial-strength box in the middle of a petulant city. The sky was a perplexing shade of brown and the people there were all little silent-movie black-and-white executives. They wore combed hair, conservative ties and carried briefcases with locks on them. The reason they had locks on the their briefcases was that they carried weeks of July and August, packaged in dandelion fluff and wishes, in them.

Summer is very heavy.

Every evening at the very same time, in the very same way, the executives would sit down at their mouldering kitchen tables with a glass of strong autumn in one hand and their briefcase in the other and they would open them and smell their summer weeks and look at the yellow sun in a briefcase where it doesn’t need to shine except to keep awake.

The girl with the summer smile had always been told she was born at that time of day and when she had made her first sound – a self-conscious hiccup – she had accidentally swallowed a sunbeam and that it was always trying to run away when she smiled.

In reality, the reason she smiled like summer is that when she had first got her briefcase full of July and August, she had looked at the sun so often she had begun to turn into summer itself. When the others found out, they put her in a very industrial little box house and told her about the ritual of seeing summer only once a night.

So she listened and met the ghost boy in the wallpaper.

He was translucent with tiny teeth and a mass of hair. “Hello.” he said as he rose from the oily industrial wallpaper.

She was still too young to run away from either ghosts or strange boys.

She was not afraid of him.

So they became friends until he left her to go to the capacious attic where he turned into a pile of bones with a heartbeat.

She cried.

When she could come to her senses and abandon the drudgery of walking under a brown sky with a briefcase, she climbed the cobwebs to the attic, and, stifling the Niagara Falls inside her lungs, she found the bones and embraced them for she embraced the ghost boy’s memory. She tripped on a wooden puppet on the way down.

She grew to despise both attics and puppets.

Standing here in the rain looking at the blue-eyed boy made of ice, she was reminded unpleasantly of the ghost boy’s heap of bones in the attic.

She lowered her eyebrows. “I defy you, Death.” she said to the February clouds. “I know you mean harm only and I see where caring got me last time.”

She turned from the boy with blue eyes and the sound of her shoes was like rain. And rain was raining. And the boy was making noises silently, and his eyes were blue, and his cheeks were running blue and his chin was raining blue and he was crying and there was rain. He was unmoved still – she knew because she heard no footsteps behind her – but he was blue with ice and blue with rain and blue with crying.

She looked down at the crackling sidewalk and observed her feet, made of smoke and coffee stains. She observed her transparent hands and her tears fell through her – his tears too. All of a sudden, things were plain and sunflowers grew – she was a ghost. Even less than a mouldering heap of bones piled up without a soul in an attic, she was a ghost.

Both. No wonder she had not run from the wallpaper boy. Ghosts. How could she remember the wallpaper boy, if she and the blue-eyed boy are so of smoke and ice. There is no marriage of fire and water. There is no love in ghosts.

And the blue-eyed boy’s tears met hers and they turned to blood and the blood ran off them. She turned around as he turns toward her and their blood vapor hands meet.

Blood turns to water and they fall into stars. They are alive and summer meets blue and we call it Love.