Warface

*

So I have got my teeth into something at work. It is an old unsolved murder, not that old, not that unsolved. All this past week I have been living with it, spread out all over my desk, on the printer cabinet, the other chair, the floor. And I am a neat guy. I don’t let shit pile up or stay that way, but at this stage I have to see all of it. I got the autopsy photos, the crime scene photos, recorded interviews, a million neighborhood canvas reports, toxicology results, property sheets, search warrant affidavits, dead end lead sheets, person pages, what have you.

I am happier than a pig in shit.

I keep asking myself, “Am I the only one who sees this?”

I’m not.

Not by a long shot.

For some reason this one fell through the cracks.

*

I aim to fish it back out.

***

*

I made lasagne for dinner.
I even made the noodles.

*

I am going to have a delicious beverage now.

*

Mine Rescue

*

In pitchdark water tastes sweet.

The men feel their swollen tongues
unfurl like golden flowers
in their blind mouths.

The sounds
of their breathing

the only sound.

How their eyes glide like mad in their sockets!
How their hearts beat in their chests!

“Let me out! Let me out!” They seem to say.

They pat each other’s legs, squeeze someone’s hand, shift
against the wall to find
a more comfortable position.

One mile above them
women keen in the sunshine. Salt-tinged air
lifts a strand of hair, the edge of a skirt.
Soot-colored birds watch from the branches
of nearby trees.

One swoops down
pecks at a woman’s shoe,
hops back when she kicks at it.

The men write their last love letters
on the leg bones of the dead, sing “Gresford”
in low voices.

They dream of blind fish in silent caves,
can’t tell sleep from waking.

*

A Taste of Something Fine

*

Today is Sunday routine:

Coffee and reading and breakfast.
Walk Lucy on the east-west ranch.
Wash Lucy in the bathtub.
Clean the bathtub, wash the dog towels, wash Lucy’s bed.
Clean the house until it sparkles.
Eat lunch in the garden or take it to the beach.
Go for a bike ride.
Take a shower and have a delicious beverage on the deck.
Read in the hammock.
Do yoga and nap in the lair.
Have another delicious beverage.
Cook something dead good for dinner.
Eat dinner in the backyard or on the deck or inside if it’s cool already.
Watch a netflix movie and eat dessert.
Read in bed.
Get sleepy and turn out the light.
This part’s private.
Fall asleep.
Dream.
Turn in tandem. Reach for each other.
Listen to the night sounds and fall asleep again.

*

Repeat as often as possible.

*

If there is a deeper happiness I don’t know that I could stand it.

****

disassembly of the mechanisms is tantamount to murder

*

And I am a killing machine.

***

What astounds me is that anyone can believe anything at all about what goes on around beyond the range of our sensory apparatus. Or not that they can believe what goes on, but they can believe one of the many explanations for what lies out there, unseen and unknowable.

Sure, I feel, I believe, that there is more out there than we can apprehend. More than meets the eye. Granted.

But how do you take one of the many explanations and say, well, that’s right. That’s what I believe.

I don’t possess the machinery of belief, I suppose.

*

Plus, I am convinced that doubt is essential.

At least, I think it is.

*

We are trapped in the small box of consciousness, which is a tiny, tiny box floating around on top of the vast sea of our unconscious mind, which is itself locked in the miniscule bone vault of our tiny skulls. Three pounds of meat in a bone bowl that wanders around in tiny circles for sixty or eighty or twenty-four years, usually in one or a small handful of cities in one country of one continent on one hemisphere of an insignificant blue world in the tall weeds at the edge of a middling small galaxy in a endlessly vast sea of billions and billions of bigger and more centrally located and better connected galaxies.

Try to convince my small box of consciousness that it’s insignificant, though, and see where that gets you.

I mean, what could be more important than me?

*

That’s what I thought.

*

Despite it all, I persist in my struggles. I throw myself headlong into love and expect it to catch me rather than fling me off into the abyss. I chase the dream of perfection. I abandon it again.

I drink too much.

I work too much.

I goof off too much.

I judge others.

I judge myself.

I compare.

I long for.

I disdain.

I compromise.

I refuse to budge.

I am stingy.

Profligate.

***

There is a reason I have a human body. I mean to explore it. I mean to wear it out. I mean to get my moneys worth. I’m going to die of something by God.

*

Here’s to you, friend. Have a cold one on me.

Namaste.

***

Fixing What’s Wrong With Her

*

Where she is it is never silent.
She holds her book up to the window
to read when the lights go out.

By moonlight. By starlight.

It’s not sufficient to her needs;
she strains to make out the words.

*