The barrel of the gun pressed against my temple,
its smooth, yet rough surface
caressed and gently
pushed my skin apart,
threatening
to cut; to
bleed; to spill
my life force upon the concrete
floor below. I could feel the air
tighten,
flex,
shift,
yield,
release,
dissipate,
only to regather;
to coalesce;
to return together in a
claustrophobic atmosphere
of constricting and impending
doom; the ever present
call of Death,
the fat woman
who cries and sings and wails,
echoing throughout all eternity
and the infinite beyond
of whatever is beyond.
The darkness
was absolutely suffocating;
blinding;
discomforting,
forcing my eyes to see
brilliant stars
upon the distorted lenses of my eyes,
but that could be due to the
head trauma I had received:
the
beatings;
the
bashings;
the
tumbling
accidents
and
miscalculations,
ebbing
and
flowing
from
one
to
another,
blurring,
bending,
and
blending,
crashing into a plasmatic blob
of comprehension and passing moments
that could only be described as a line of time;
a timeline; a timescape;
lost,
found,
and lost
once
more.
A supernova of brilliance exploded briefly,
sulfur ignited; steel on steel on lead; a chain
of chemical reactions as complex as the
inner-workings of a star, ending with the
miraculously simple: heat and light.
I could feel the bullet twist and turn,
tumbling down its chosen path with an
unbearably slow quickness; the movements
between breaths; those endlessly frozen
moments where it all begins to make sense;
to hold some kind of meaning; some kind
of purpose and understanding; and when
it all becomes comprehensible, it vanishes,
it passes by an infinite amount of times
between a single blink of an eye.
All those shotgun weddings
and machine gun celebrations;
bombastic birthdays
and atomic alarm clocks —
they came to mean
nothing, zero, zip, zilch, nada —
as hollow(d) as the ‘o’ in God,
yet in that moment I found God,
found Her sleeping,
resting,
forever dreaming,
all of Her hopes,
ambitions, and fears,
only to be lost to me
as I released my dying breath.
I could feel
the bullet,
that pebble of lead,
pressing up against my skull;
boring down,
atom by atom,
through my layers of skin,
sundering them;
peeling them;
rupturing them in a
violent collision of
inorganic and
organic;
living and nonliving;
grey matter and gray matter; the sweat evaporating upon the surface;
hairs swaying,
bending,
breaking,
falling down,
blown away from ground zero.
The hot meteor melted through the
thin, fleshy surface, cracking to the
calcium bedrock of my head,
collapsing their caverns and intricate
formations; dissolving fault lines,
executing mind-quakes, rippling through
my earth, my world, sending universal
devastation on a microcosmic scale.
Tidal waves of blood and flesh;
skin and bones,
raced across the burnt surface,
away from the center of impact;
nerve endings sending their signals at light
speed to the brain;
telling it that something is wrong;
registering the cause to be a dark pearl of doom:
small,
smooth,
and round
like a tear of oil.
Those hairs still left standing
began to singe and burn
as the explosive gases
continued to expand
their threshold
of impending finality
through the air,
all culminating
to the simplistic purpose
of cutting me down
in a micron of an instant;
pulverizing the core
into nothingness,
but this is all just a small fact
and all is to be doubted.
Every breath between then and now,
was and is
“hallelujah….”
//
Ever have one of those moments
after waking up from an extendedly long sleep
to find yourself unable to recall
how you got somewhere,
just like the very place you were now waking from?
That’s about how I feel right now.
It all comes down to this simple fact:
no one knows anything;
who was involved,
let alone how I was involved in all of it;
how they got here,
or more importantly —
how I got here,
but it’s not all hopeless;
granted it’s not true hope;
true hope is swift and flies on shallow wings:
I have my breath and,
for the time being,
my life.
I’m sure you have a lot of questions,
I do too;
I don’t really remember much from before waking up
only moments ago.
Dreams are unreliable and inconsistent,
but they are buried in truth.
I don’t even know where I got all of these bruises
and cuts from;
the unmistakable language of injury
written in the script of scar tissue and stitches,
disfigured flesh and the tell-tale signs of something
lost and something gained;
a heavy piece paid for the valueless marks of experience.
Where are we now?
Well, we are now here.
Where’s here?
Nowhere,
but the sign above me does say ‘Seattle,’
yet even that may not be entirely true
because it is raining heavily:
giant globs of water from that one movie the hero with one-liners does battle in a city filled with clones of his nemesis; splashes of water exploding on the ground, on the signs, on the light posts, on my face and shoulders — just everywhere to be honest.
Point is, this Seattle-not Seattle has become my new
home. I stepped off the interstate and into a drainage
ditch, the runoff waters flowing like a torrent of inky
refuse and assorted scum; a river of all those things
given up, thrown away, or rightfully lost — an
appropriate place for me; and everyone knows that
the bigger the river, the bigger the drought. This river
is growing rather rapidly.
In the distance,
I see the city lights,
reminding me that
I am not alone in the world,
yet it makes me wonder
what a nice place like this is doing
around a person like me?
The world may never know;
I may never know.
What I do know
is that there’s a nagging feeling
deep down inside me,
pulling me towards the sprawling metropolis;
an aphid attraction,
fighting all or my training and logic centers;
yelling and shouting at me;
urging me on,
practically begging me to go on forward
to the promise of answers
and closure to all of the open doors
and black holes of my memory.
//
It’s a cold and wet afternoon.
I managed to find myself a room
with the credits I had,
unfortunately, or maybe fortunately,
the place was right off the interstate,
but things could be worse.
Upon arriving here,
I found myself lost within the pages
and words and margins of a book
so full of death, that I couldn’t look away;
I found myself being drawn in,
drawn along,
twisting and turning
through the dark corridors
and hallways of the nameless black
of the ink and words,
deciphering the concepts of why we all die alone.
Outside,
the clouds mumbled something obscene;
the sky was bruised,
some wine was bled,
and I dozed off.
And so on I read
until the day was done,
yet far from finished,
let alone over.
The things I had with me were strewn
all over this meek and bare room.
Data trails, like fingernails, scratched their way along the walls and sky; satellites watching everything you do; everything I do, but I don’t even know what I’m doing.
I see so many guns;
so much ammunition in my possession — what am I?
Some kind of Hitman?
Assassin?
Spy?
Mercenary?
Lunatic?
So much happening,
though I never planned on this.
Am I losing control?
I must admit,
I’m not used to this,
but I don’t think I can stop;
swallow it down;
keep it bottled up inside;
I must move on;
this city needs me,
or maybe it’s I who needs it,
more than anything else?
I feel like Icarus
right before his fate-filled flight;
I refuse to call it ‘fateful,’ but that’s another
story; how foolishly proud he must
have been, rising up like the
tide upon the
tempest-tossed
seas,
breaking through
the oyster grey clouds,
and reaching
towards the sun;
reaching out,
not just to meet it,
nor to touch it,
but to grasp it;
to capture it;
to embrace it;
to enslave it —
to be empowered by it.
It all comes down to this:
I know I’m different,
all these weapons around me feel like
extensions of my own body,
my own soul,
all waiting for a light
that never comes
to showcase their abilities, and so they wait.
But I cannot.
My past may be gone,
but not without my reach.
Those who did this to me
will not get away,
not for much longer.
Emotions that I cannot explain
cut through me like a sickle,
dripping with vengeance
and anger,
and whatever else
a scorned soldier might feel….
FIN
A Place for Stories 