Umm

(This is a "lovely found poem" my dearest friend and platonic soulmate, the elated Sarah Pospisil made out of some pages of stories of mine that my printer was really enthusiastic about fucking up. So, this isn't really my fault.)

Umbrella

his hand around

like embers black with ash

I feel his thighs around mine

I can taste his secret message

I fall onto

his hands between my thighs

too salty, too strong

the space between my thighs

I try mud instead

I still don’t see what’s supposed to be so damn great about brothers.

(I swear the originals were less trashy and concerning.)

Echo Chamber

Winter was an echo chamber made of mica and blankets pulled warm and claustrophobic over our heads. Every word we said came back to us, smelling newly of the grain of dirt at the center of each flake. Everything stopped. The sky at night was magenta and full of static. The falling snow made a soundless sound, not unlike that of a long held breath slowly escaping from relenting lips. In the feral garden across the way, the roses turned into scientist's toys, indistinguishable from those we had once seen dipped into a bucket of dry ice, and then, miraculously, shattered.

from "The Boat House" (Scenes 1 and 2)

Prologue/ Scene One

(As the scene opens, the stage is dark enough that the set can barely be seen. CALVIN is sitting alone in the center of the stage, dimly lit as if by the weak beam of a flashlight. He holds in his hand a chunk of wall, which he picks at, crumbling sand over his lap. )

CALVIN

The old boat house was what any good abandoned building should be to any bad kids.

The word is haven. Or sanctuary. Paradise wouldn't be a stretch at all.

I couldn't get in on my own. Tom was as good at opening doors as he was at opening girls' legs. He said there's nothing to it. Simple as sesame. The only trick, according to Tom, was to bring a chick along, because chicks always keep a bobby pin in their hair that you can borrow to jimmy the lock. Well, that was easier said than done. Some of us didn't know any girls. Some of us didn't have three lean sisters who brought home their friends in droves.

Some of us lived alone.

Beat. CALVIN looks down at the piece of wall in his hands. Laughs a sad little laugh, and then throws the piece of wall away from him, preferably into the audience. He pulls himself awkwardly to his feet, begins pacing in his small pool of light.

But there at the boat house, after we did get in, thanks to Tom and his girl and her beautiful hair, it seemed that even I had a family, even I a home. And oh, this was the home as home should be. Such freedom, such ease. We smoked whatever, wherever, whenever we pleased. We ate mealy apples from the feral trees that grew right inside our home. And maybe we got sick off the damp and fruit gone to rot, off the cold that climbed into our makeshift beds like a lover in the middle of the night. And maybe we ached in the morning, if we stayed till the sun.

Another beat, another laugh of maybe acceptance, maybe defeat.

And maybe it wasn't much of anything, really. And maybe Tom was a fuck up, and a jackass, and maybe he always will be. But certainly, there was a moment, in that creepy still, that boat house dim, when none of these hypotheticals mattered.

BLACK OUT. Brief but complete.

Scene Two

Morning. There is a silver quality to the air, the feeling of coolness in the colors of the world on the stage. In the chill early light, the canoe house can be properly seen. The boat house is old, the stones of its walls grown smooth and sandy from time, glass either thick and foggy or missing completely from the few small windows. Light pours in through a gaping hole in the right half of the roof. Through this gap stick the branches of a bold but scrawny apple tree that grows right from the floor, reaching roots out and tearing up the stones of the floor in every direction. SAMMY, the kind of cold-hot fierce-fine girl who every boy dreams of fucking but not a one dares to fuck with, leans against the apple tree’s trunk, eating a sad looking apple. Across the room from her is TOM, a lanky boy with an athlete’s easy grace, lies in an old canoe that has been padded with ratty blankets. He, too, holds an apple; but unlike SAM he is not interested in eating it, but only in tossing it from hand to hand like a sport’s ball.

TOM

You know how some words get to be their own plural?

SAMMY

Bluntly, even aggressively.

No.

TOM

Like buffalo.

SAMMY

Huh.

Sammy takes a loud bite of apple, then holds it out in front of her to look at it. A look of horror crosses her face. She spits. Straight on the floor.

Fuck, that’s nasty.

The are worms in my apple.

She throws the apple away from her. It bounces off the wall, and rolls to rest not far from Tom’s feet.

TOM

You’re not listening to me.

SAMMY

There. Are. Worms. In. My. Apple.

TOM

That’s sick. Spit that out.

SAMMY does not dignify this with a response. She gives TOM a pointed look. Beat.

Where was I?

SAMMY

Bungalows?

TOM

Shit Sammy, you really don’t listen to a thing I say, do you?

He shakes his head in mock awe at her insolence.

Buffalo.

I remember now. I was saying how it’s all the same. You say, “I saw a buffalo at the side of the road the other day,” or you say, “I saw a dozen buffalo trample a man to death.” Don’t matter if you’re meaning one buffalo or one hundred. It’s all the same. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.

SAMMY

Why you gotta be rambling on about buffalos anyway?

TOM

Buffalo, Sammy. No ‘S’. And I’m not talking about buffalo. I’m talking about plurals.

SAMMY

Sounds an awful lot like buffalo to me.

TOM

The point is how the single’s the same as the plural. I want to be like that. I want to be my own plural. I want to be fifty big men in one body, fifty million menaces and wars and powers in one little name. One word. Tom. But it won’t just mean Tom. It’ll mean Tom times infinity.

SAMMY

That’s cute. You should write an essay or something. Ms. Ricky would like it.

TOM

Fuck Ms. Ricky.

SAMMY

Like that, wouldn’t you?

TOM

Shut up.

TOM throws his apple roughly at SAMMY. SAMMY catches it in one bored grab without even looking up or turning her head. She throws it back to him, still without turning.

SAMMY

Eat your apple.

TOM

Eat yours.

But he takes an obedient bite. Swallows. Takes another. Closes his eyes. Speaks with his mouth full, around loud crunches. Swallows.

Mmmm. That’s good. Nothing better ‘n a good apple in the world.

Another bite. His chewing slows. Suddenly, a look of horror crosses his face and his eyes spring open. He rolls over and spits over the side of the canoe in which his lies.

There are worms in this apple!

SAMMY

Were in mine too.

TOM

Why didn’t you tell me?

SAMMY

Mockingly, her voice forced an octave too low:

Shit, Sammy, you really don’t listen to a thing I say, do you?

At this moment, the door opens. It swings wide and crashes into the wall, causing both SAMMY and TOM to startle. CALVIN stumbles into the boat house. His right hand is cupped gingerly under is left elbow. His hair is wild; his clothing wet, his jacket hanging open over a bare chest decorated with a few choice bruises. SAMMY and TOM seem unfazed by his condition; it is evident that this is nothing out of the ordinary in their world.

TOM

You make an awful lot of noise for such a little man.

CALVIN

The door--

SAMMY

Yeah, it’s broken.

TOM

Can’t just go slamming it around like that.

CALVIN

Calvin is examining the door, fussing with the hinges.

I’m sorry. Someone could have told me.

SAMMY

Meant to.

CALVIN

Okay.

TOM tosses his apple to CALVIN. CALVIN fumbles to catch it-- and does, just barely, clutching it nervously to his chest in both hands.

Thanks.

He takes a hasty bite. Swallows. Beat. His face contorts. Tom chuckles.

That’s not funny, Tom.

TOM

Just a little.

CALVIN

I’ll get sick.

TOM

Relax. Not my fault you swallowed.

CALVIN

How was I supposed to--

TOM

Now, Sammy. Sammy spat. Every smart girl knows to spit.

SAMMY

Guess the same don’t apply to smart boys.

CALVIN

What?

SAMMY

Sammy nods in TOM’s direction.

Tom swallowed.

Gave him fair warning, even; and he swallowed anyway. How stupid do you gotta be to go and do something like that?

TOM

Unfazed.

Tsk tsk. I trusted you.

SAMMY

How stupid you gotta be to go and do something like that?

TOM

Ouch, Sammy. Good point.

CALVIN

Calvin takes off his jacket, slowly, wincingly; there is something strange about the gesture. Then the reason for the tenderness of his movements is revealed: his right elbow is caked in dried blood, and long lines of dried blood reach down his forearm like fork tongs. In places the blood has adhered his coat to his skin, and as he pulls the coat off he gasps in pain and the wound, reopened, begins to bead pink with fresh blood. He starts towards the canoe-bed in which TOM lies, and goes to sit on the end of it, but just before he can, TOM, grinning mischievously, flings his long legs out flat over the rest of the boat, leaving no room for CALVIN. For a moment they stand there, locked in a staring contest. Finally, CALVIN speaks.

Really, Tom? Please?

TOM

Nope!

CALVIN

Even though--

TOM

Don’t want you bleedin’ all over my bed.

CALVIN

Your bed, since when is it---

SAMMY

Jesus, Tom, let him lie down.

Beat. TOM glances at SAMMY and sees that she isn’t fucking around. A look of penance (although questionably sincere) crosses his face. He sighs dramatically, rolls his legs over the boat on the floor, and moves into a sitting position. CALVIN sighs in tired relief, and collapses into the boat, careful to keep his feet from falling into TOM’s lap.

TOM

That better?

CALVIN nods.

Good. Hope you’re happy.

CALVIN

Not sure I’d go quite that far.

He closes his eyes. Props his good arm behind his head. Awkwardly shifts his bad arm between positions, unable to find one that is both comfortable and not likely to get blood somewhere it shouldn’t be. At length:

Well?

SAMMY

Well, what?

CALVIN

Well? Isn’t anybody even going to ask me?

TOM

Coyly

Ask you about what?

CALVIN

About the arm, stupid.

TOM

Woah there little brother. No need to get sassy with me.

CALVIN

You’re not my brother.

TOM

An enigmatic, infuriatingly dapper smile.

But you know I love you like one.

CALVIN

Is that so? Good thing you don’t have brothers, then.

TOM

Well I love you like a sister then. That’s more accurate anyway.

He snorts.

CALVIN

But you don’t even care what happened to me?

TOM

Tom shrugs.

Figure you’ll tell me if you feel like it.

CALVIN

You’re not curious?

TOM

I bet I know just want happened. You were riding that goofy-ass bike of yours to the store to get me those cigarettes you still owe me, and you saw some fine young thing-- or no, you saw Ms. Ricky, more like, all done up in that skinny skirt and heels, and you damn near went right out of your head! Next thing you knew, you’d lost your balance and were skidding across the street on your side, screaming like a cat in heat for mercy mercy please please please. And then, you lucky thing, Ms. Ricky’s bending over you and asking all sweet if you’re okay, and you can’t speak cause your mouth is full of blood and you’re taking in the view. That’s when the car that almost hit you stops, and the owner gets out, and comes over, and it turns out it’s Ms. Ricky’s lover, and he don’t like when he see. So what you do then is--

SAMMY

That some sick sort of fantasy you drum up at night, Tom? Sounds like one. Only I imagine the hero ain’t Calvin; it’s you. And I imagine you give yourself a fly-ass moped, not a goofy-ass bike.

TOM

What you on me about today, Sammy?

SAMMY

What you on Calvin about today?

TOM

Tom ignores the question.

Besides, babe, you got a detail wrong.

SAMMY

Did I now?

TOM

Ain’t Ms. Ricky I dream about; it’s you.

SAMMY

Ha-ha.

She isn’t laughing. But she is, to CALVIN’s visible horror--smiling. Just a little.

TOM

Ain’t no wussy moped, neither. That’s weak. It’s a bona-fide harley davidson. And I don’t have a helmet, cause fuck that, so when I hit the road it’s a miracle I survive. And I’m bleeding something nasty from my head, but to you that’s just sexy, now isn’t it?

CALVIN

You’re incorrigible.

TOM

You’re just jealous.

CALVIN

You’re--

SAMMY

You guys. Kill it.

TOM

Don’t have to worry about me, sweet thing. I can take care of myself.

SAMMY

Not you I’m worried about.

CALVIN blushes. SAMMY gives him a look that almost looks like an apology, but a little too ambivalent for one to be sure.

Fine, Calvin. Tom’s not playing. But I’ll ask you. What happened to your arm?

CALVIN sits up with an effort, and turns towards SAMMY. He begins to speak, but the instant he does, the wailing cry of a police siren begins, drowning out his words. TOM gapes at CALVIN incredulously. Pitching his voice loud to be heard over the sirens he asks:

TOM

Calvin, you gone and gotten us all fucked over now? What the hell you do that for? What the hell happened?

CALVIN

Might have had time to tell you if you’d asked earlier.

The three continue talking, increasingly panicked, but the sirens grow closer and louder, until nothing they say can be heard. The three fall silent, and drop as low to the ground as the can. SAMMY crawls across the floor so as to be better hidden from view of the door/ window. The three lie very still. Still, the sirens rise. At the climax of their noise, the stage abruptly goes black, and the sirens cut out. End Scene Two.

Just A [read:some] Thoughts [read: madness]

1) I believe I should be a victim of literature.

Art at its best holds you in its grasp like you and it are a pair of binary stars. Art should grab you and pull you to it with all the ardor of a lover, and, in its lustful grasp, you should be unable to pull away. The books that you have to make yourself read are not worth your time.

2) This is a fever. A dream-fever I’ve got to work and sweat and scream out of me. And this is what all such efforts should be. They must be a matter of life and of death. They should be urgent as the night before my lover catches a nine A.M flight to the other side of the ocean, where he will live in an alternative reality a quarter day in the future of my own.

3) And then one night I watch a movie about Allen Ginsberg with my oldest friend. We fail to find each other at the theater, but in the absence by my side I read her thoughtful, rolling revelry. I get to thinking about many things, about art and social injustices and various wrongs, and heartwarmingly heathanous heroes like Ginsberg and Keuroac. And afterwards, something has changed for me. No; that’s not it. There has been no change-- these thoughts have been so long fermenting that they must be worth a million for their dizzying vintage. I have said these things so often that I know the ins and outs of them like I know the ins and outs of breathing: know them so well that I cease to think of them-- indeed; in a way I cease to know them. It is only the resolve that is new, reborn like a long stifled passion awakened by someone you thought you would never meet again.

3.5) Ginsberg, if all that you did was for the love of Keuroac, whom you watched over the lithe shoulder's of his dancing girl, a man who who would never-- for all your words-- fall into your arms, then take heart, my friend; for in your stead have come a hundred evoking their love for you in every word, with every jazz-shoe turn. This isn't the perfect circuit click and flare you were hoping for, but that's the way our mad and damning dance is done.

4.)Don’t back down. Whatever you do, make sure it scares you.

5.) I am writing all of this so that in a million years, when we are nothing but a figment of a calcified planet’s fevered fancy and irreverent imagination, we can look back on all this and say: “Oh, but I lived! Oh, but I fought! I lived and I loved and I fought and I fucked and I failed, but really it’s the striving that counts.” We were the Kings and Queens of Phosphorescence. Our minds glowed like cum under black-light. We made a habit of anything that burned. Anything bright. Anything that excited the blood still blue in our veins.

5.5) These were our manifestos: Love, Scream, Fuck, Sing, Run.

These were our manifestos, and we adhered to them as surely as sailors adhere to the directions of the north stars.

6.) In a million years, these manifestos will still purr in our vanished bones. Even then, the dust of me will say: This is still our world. Of rust, of rubble, of ruin-- yes.

But it remains.

from "The Prospect" (Which by the way, you should come see at 10 Minute)

JAY

You know what I did today? No? You’ll never guess. I talked to her. Yeah, that’s right; to mother.

Mother on the phone and I could tell that she was drinking; don’t ask how but I just know, okay? Scotch and water. Little sips between sentences. Oh it was silent as a ghost but I could hear it. The ice must have melted cause it made no sound-- but I could feel those cubes click anyway. Little men with little hammers in my skull.

Beat.

Do you know what she said to me? I can’t believe she had the nerve. She said, “Jay, Nathan is in town, and you’re going to have him over.”

Seems a little presumptuous, huh? But she insisted. “Nathan’s your brother, Jay.” She said ‘brother’ the way religious people say ‘Jesus’. Said it like meant something special.

Brothers? What’s so special about brothers? I had four of them, always running around with their ding-dongs out, demanding things. And sisters, three of them. Not so special, neither. They had to get fierce since they were outnumbered. They were all teeth, the sisters. Teeth and claws and sass, like a little posse of cats.

There comes a knock on the door.

I gave in in the end though. Said he could come over. And that’ll be him now.

At a shout:

Come in!

Boat House

The old boat house was what any good abandoned building should be to any bad kids.

The word is haven. Or sanctuary. Paradise wouldn't be a stretch at all.

I couldn't get in on my own. Tom was as good at opening doors as he was at opening girls' legs. He said there's nothing to it. Simple as sesame. The only trick, according to Tom, was to bring a chick along, because chicks always keep a bobby pin in their hair that you can borrow to jimmy the lock. Well, that was easier said than done. Some of us didn't know any girls. Some of us didn't have three lean sisters who brought home their friends in droves.

Some of us lived alone. 

But there at the boat house, after we did get in, thanks to Tom and his girl and her beautiful hair, it seemed that even I had a family, even I a home. And oh, this was the home as home should be. Such freedom, such ease. We smoked whatever, wherever, whenever we pleased. We ate mealy apples from the feral trees that grew right inside our home. And maybe we got sick off the damp and fruit gone to rot, off the cold that climbed into our makeshift beds like a lover in the middle of the night. And maybe we ached in the morning, if we stayed till the sun. 

And maybe it wasn't much of anything, really. And maybe Tom was a fuck up, and a jackass, and maybe he always will be. 

But certainly, there was a moment, in that creepy still, that boat house dim, when none of these hypotheticals mattered.

excerpt from "Kevin Number One"

//Have you ever noticed how stories always get told by the nice one? Always the wallflower. The sweetheart. The one that don't do much, mostly watches, but is probably in the right.

Well fuck that.

Just cause you're gentle don't make you honest. Don't mean shit. Except maybe fear. And scared people are the worst. Scared people are pussy faggot bastards and all they do is lie. Only thing a scared person give a shit about is staying alive. And pretty if they can help it.

I'm not scared.

You can say a lot of things about me, and you probably do, but scared ain't one of them. Not unless you want to start something, in which case, go ahead.

Say it.

I've got all night. A beer or two buzzing in my belly and only the yellow kind of bruises anywhere on my body. That means they're a good week old and I'm getting itchy.//

// There's some commotion behind me. 

I turn and see two scared people standing by the door waiting to get in. They are arguing with the bouncer, Mr. Holes In His Ears. He's not a scared person, but he is certainly an asshole. Also I don't even understand his tattoos. If they are supposed to be ironic or if he is just stupid. Mostly naked girls with purple skin and snake tongues or else wings. Bat, not angel. Go figure. His ears really are something to look at though. Or rather, look through. Gauges so big they only make sense if they're for spiritual purposes, which the purple girls tell me with sly little shakes of their heads is not true.

Suddenly I do not want to be in this bar anymore. I want to be anywhere else. The night is not young, but so what? Old is best for a night to be. I slam down some coins and sling myself to my feet. And then I head to the door. Push passed the scared people and out into the streets, into the old, old night.

On my way, I pass lots more scared people. On my way to where? On my way to the house of another scared person. The reason I came back to this sorry place at all. Since I've been here last, more letters have fallen off of more signs and more plants have grown up wild and wide and a few new buildings have been built but mostly the buildings have been torn down, or been condemned but then left to swell with squatters and quietly rot. So the house should be hard to find, but it isn't, because my legs remember what my mind's forgot.

There's an aloe vera plant in the yard that reaches long barbed dragon tongues up as high as my thighs. But it's dying. That's the problem with everything here. Everything is almost something good but nothing ever quite makes it. Like how the nice thing about this place would be the open, the calm, the space. But sooner or later, you see the machines in the background and that ruins it. The oil rigs go up and down like drinking birds. And they never stop.

Inside the house, which is actually three houses pushed together into too little space, it's not much better. The windows are after thoughts, tiny and awkwardly placed. Most of the furniture came from the curb.

The scared person on the couch looks like she came from the curb too. Like maybe someone saw the couch and wanted it so bad they just said, fuck it, why not? So what if it comes with a woman?

The scared person's dress is the color of a dirty window, and through it I can see boxer shorts and a plain white bra. Her hair is also almost beautiful: orange and cut shorter than mine. That's new. Last time it hit her shoulders. 

I admit I stumble a little coming in. I admit I do not knock. I admit to the bulk and aggression of my shadow.

Yet it still slams me in the gut how she looks at me, wild and frail. And then she says, "Is that you, Kevin?"

And I don't talk. 

And the scared person says, "What do you want from me, Kevin?"

"I'm not Kevin."

The scared person squints at me like maybe it really is her mistake, not mine. Like maybe it could be that I'm a stranger with a gun breaking into her home at four in the morning to steal the cash from her underwear drawer. (Top left, cabinet under the mirror, if anyone's interested.)

The scared person says, "Kevin, aren't you on prohibition or something?"

I laugh. Not because it's funny, although it is. I laugh because it's sad.

"No," I say to the scared person. I call the scared person mom. I say, "No, mom. You mean probation. And I'm not even.  Did Kevin #2 tell you that?" 

"Kevin number?"

The scared person is confused.

Sometimes a scared person is like a pop song. They just keep saying the same stupid refrain over and over like if they sing it sexy it will mean something. But it never does.

This scared person's song is: "What do you want from me, Kevin?" all we need is some auto-tuning and snap that's it, we're on the radio, and the rest is a matter of static.

I don't answer. That's the best way to get a scared person to talk. But I don't even want this scared person to talk, I just don't have anything to say. 

She talks anyway. "What have I even got that you could want?" she makes the same move with her hands as a king or a gangster saying, all this is mine. Only it's nothing. It's mildew and bottles. It's bullshit.

She's right.

"You must have something left to lose."

"Well, at least I'm still pretty." She smiles like a miracle or a joke and picks a bottle off the floor. "I'll drink to that," She says. And the bottle is empty but she drinks anyway.

What did I say? Scared people are liars. There is still a scroll of bills saving spot backs for her breasts in her favorite blue bra that she says is from Paris. The Paris part is another lie.

And this is why it shouldn't be Kevin telling the story. It should be me. Because I'm never in the right, but I'm always right.

To the scared person I say, "Good night." //