Father was drunk, & blearily smiling, he walked right into the room, his great voice booming, surprising all of us.

He seemed to fill the room, or I seemed to shrink. The colors he wore were ridiculous, clownishly colorful. He knocked a chair aside, bumped into one of the guests. He failed to register anyone’s discomfort. I was afraid and ashamed. Everyone I was with, the rest of my family, my friends — I was mortified to imagine what they were thinking.

There was a dessert no one wanted, some greenish-white jello-cheesecake. He took a great handful, tried to put it on my plate. I watched his gnarled, huge hand scoop out a thick curded mound of the dessert. It looked disgusting, it sounded disgusting. It oozed between his fingers. His movements were unsteady, his gaze vague. He dumped the cake on my plate. It fell off. I stared at the cake splattered on the floor. Soon he noticed it, picked it up, asked me why hadn’t I eaten it? Why??

He wasn’t angry, he just seemed confused, possibly even hurt.

I stood still, I was speechless. Over and over I told him I just couldn’t eat anymore.

I was in some kind of burnt-out gas station.

Only the walls stood. Below me was a small grassy hill. Two cars were positioned near one another halfway up the hill. They were pushing and rubbing up against one another, like two animals nuzzling. I could see their interaction with great precision, as if through a telescope.

All of a sudden one car started to push upward against the other in slow, insistent lurches. Like a creature rubbing its flank against a tree. My stomach started to churn; I knew I was seeing something I shouldn’t and which would turn out badly. All of a sudden the car being pushed on shuddered and the inside filled with splattered blood. It crumpled into itself, the windshields drenched.

A talkshow.

A small white-walled garage, with the dimensions and claustrophobia of a community playhouse. Steep tiers of seats. The panel: beggars, most with visible ailments, diseases, eczemas, deformities, poxes. All patient, silent, morose. Camera focuses on one, a wiry bearded man, face disfigured by some skin-wrack, boil-laden, purplish. He is afflicted with some superabundance of body hair. Hairs radiate from his skinny arms with the straightness and uniformity of a pipe cleaner’s bristles, but finer and softer in appearance. He grimaces as an upbeat, gaudy rock song announces him over the P.A.; it has the pace and smirk of “Macho Man”. He asks that the song stop. He doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his family.

Camera pans — or I pan — or dream pans — to procession of homely and desperately dressed-up kin, I am now in line with them. We are making our way to the panel, to sit with the man and answer questions. I am about 14, so is Elvis Presley, who stands in front of me. We horse around, and I take it too far, shouldering him to the floor, headlocking him. I’m aware of his aura & celebrity, even at his young age, though no one else seems to notice, and my small physical triumph fills me with elation. Elvis scowls and snaps at me as he picks himself up off the floor.

Later: a fast food restaurant, the interior of which is compressed and fantastic like a Max Beckmann chamber, weird geometries of cross-beams and walls, strange abutments and partitions. Now I am at the counter listening as a tall man, standing behind it, speaks reassuringly to a concealed women at his feet, also behind the counter. He’s giving her counsel: he’s saying to get off the painkillers. She is complaining about her bad knee, singing her complaints. Her tonality and pitch — the chords of her language — are perfectly matched to the substance of her grief. It’s haunting and nearly over-sentimental. If it is hackneyed in its well-worn modulations, something about her hiddenness and the strange plaintiveness of her cries justifies it and transcends cliche. She sings, repeatedly: “I don’t want to become Swamp Mom. I don’t want to become Swamp Mom.” The man grows weary, he mutters: “jesus.”

Then from a balcony, across a boulevard, I can see a building, I think someone is watching with me, and three or four stories up this building is a narrow ledge, about a foot wide, serving no apparent purpose, and jutting from under no windows. A procession of students marches across it, singing cheerfully. We watch in anxiety, and secret hope. Further along the boulevard the cement gives way to chasm. The children take off their shoes and race across this section, over the pit, nimble, gazelles, looking at each other and giggling, as if at some private, obscene joke.

The world was gray. Trees didn’t grow, and buildings were a memory. Things had been this way for so long that we had forgotten that it had ever been otherwise.

And then I met the Giant. I didn’t know if it was a he or she. Maybe it was both; maybe neither. But She knew that there had been a time when things hadn’t been so desolate, so killed. When plants flourished, when animals roamed, when people made beautiful things and struggled towards the good. Not a paradise, not a land of milk and honey, just a time when there was motion, light and energy. Meeting the Giant changed everything.

The Giant taught us about the shards. These were small white fragments that weren’t hard to find — they were embedded in grass tufts, tucked away in tree boles, perched up on concrete sills, in the bottom of discarded tin cans, or just lying in plain sight on the buckled and broken sidewalks. They looked like little pills. Of those people still left walking around, most didn’t notice the shards — but those of us who had met with the Giant had been given the ability to see them. The shards were precious, they were like little babies to us, because when you reclaimed a shard, you helped the world re-grow. You helped bring it back to life.

So you’d go about, and discover these beautiful shining white shards, these tender half-moons. And, every so often, you’d look up and see others doing the same. And you’d exchange looks, and maybe become friends, bonding over the realization that both of you were working toward a common goal.
 (Read More . . .)

In Wyoming, on a hill.

Melissa was with me — we had all moved there, the family and me. I was scared but exhilarated. There were miles of green snowy hills and flatlands. The country was open, there were no houses or structures. I looked around at everything and it was new and scary but it made me feel good. We looked out from that window for a long time.Now I am under heavy blankets. I’m in some kind of garage, there’s people I don’t know, I don’t know why I’m there, I’m looking around in shelves and boxes for something, I know if I get caught trespassing I’m in trouble.

There’s an old woman snooping around, I know I have to pretend I’m her old husband so I won’t get caught. So I make a lot of sleeping old man noises so she won’t get alarmed & pull off my covers. And I also puff out my body so I look big & fat (with oldman bloat) under the covers. She goes away. I’m hot and stuffy under the big heavy blanket.

Then someone else from the house comes around, a woman about 40, mean & grumbling, and in no time she pulls off my covers, sees me, starts to really yell, lashing into me. Everything she says is so loud, so cutting, she makes me feel like shit. I get up and run, hop on my bike like when I was a boy, and I race off up the hill at full speed and then like a skateboarder hitting the edge of the ramp I zoom up and over thinking I’m going to land smoothly on the other slope of the hill, but no, it just drops off sheer, straight down to infinity. I’m so scared, ready to just die. But I don’t: I let go of the bike and fall straight down like a ball tossed up in the air and hook my arm over the hill-ramp-edge and save myself from falling.

I pull myself over. Now I have skis and I ski down and away all over the mountains and hills, and the landscape is now shiny dark purple berry-clusters and glowing fluorescent grasses, alien and beautiful.

Moving, swooping, never stopping.

A house, infested
On the water, in florida, on a river maybe
Giant spiders made of flesh
Room to room chasing them and being chased
I had a gun
My companion was an older man, mustache
He was helping me kill them
I was directing him
He was calm, slightly bumbling
We go out, following one of the beasts
He leads us out into grass
He is being too hasty
We’re out behind the house now,
I tell him that means the spiders could be anywhere:
On a tree, leap from the roof
We can’t be so hasty
Suddenly there’s one
I had never seen a spider out in the grass before
We go back, regroup, try again
Circle around near the patio
People open fire on us from the sliding door
Richy & the rest of my family shooting at me
I shoot back
My dad is coming now, with a hat on
Approaching calmly
We run back the way we came
Lock doors behind us
I plug in my gun, sit on the couch and wait

I’m on a plane and I’ve forgotten to bring the other half of my bedframe.

Onboard I stash the battered longbox containing the bed’s aluminum rods and wonder when we’re going to take off.

I fall asleep by the window, the sun shining on my face and arm, I wake up stabbed with the realization that I’ve developed cancer while I’ve been asleep. I now have a thick and pus-encrusted rash all over my neck and chest, and in the bathroom I see that my neck has sprouted a boil as firm and round as a puffball mushroom, I pinch it with my long nails and watch a bead of blood well up from the puncture, I look inside the cavity and see the blood writhe as I tremble, the boil full like a teacup.

I lean over the sink and look down in the drain while I feel the fleshcup empty, the blood pouring thick and dark, the sensation’s ticklish, when I look up in the mirror, the left side of my mouth has twisted permanently somehow from the ruin on my neck, some subcutaneous implosion like a sinkhole, some underground collapse, I close my eyes, when I open them my neck sparkles like a rare treasure with its sugary crust of crystalline pus.

I smile. I doesn’t look so bad, after all. In a certain light — if I turn my head a certain way — just so — I give myself a wink and walk back to my seat.

I’m in an enormous mansion, bone-white and imposing. There is a party. An elegant dining hall, the dominant colors are maroon and white and purple — strong rich majestic hues. I’m walking around, vaguely feeling out of place. One man stands out to me: I keep watching him throughout the party. The people are mostly in their 20s, 30s, but this man seems younger, in spirit as much as in the flesh. His face is a little cherubic, hair boyishly unruly. A white shirt, navy blue slacks.

Some talk, not entirely good, is swirling around about him. He’s being a glutton, it’s provoking most to laughter, some to annoyance. Shy glances turn to open stares. We’re now watching him in fascination as he tears into roasts, hams, fat legs of chicken.  (Read More . . .)