By James Timothy

Florescent Light White Walls

2010-04-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

"Do we go home?"

His older brother looked away.

"He's hooked up to some machine." The younger paused. "I have class tomorrow."

Looked at the ceiling

"He's so small."

Played with the car keys.

"Maybe we should stay."

Lips turned white.

"Emily's still asleep."

And walked away.

Forgetting Adam (3)

2009-10-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

3.

It was of the modern variety and created the illusion of grass, like cloth flowers created the illusion of application. Brian lay on his back and looked at the overcast, fall sky. He wished he was laying on real grass and that he was looking at clouds with definition, rather than clouds that could not be distinguished apart from one another. Today is fixed, he thought: created in subterranean crypts of God's heaven, in secret so as to not upset the oblivious above, His angels devised Brian's downfall and it was to begin with overcast skies and artificial turf.

Mary walked slowly over to where Brian lay. She wore a cream sweater and an old ski hat with a ball of yarn on top. Brian kept his eye's closed, hoping that his girlfriend would leave him laying there for a few more moments. She didn't say anything but she did sit down next to him and fingered the stick that she was holding, picked up as they walked the park path. He was content to let her sit there as long as she didn't speak. He opened one eye to see what kind of mood her face hinted at. She looked vaguely sad. He was more than vaguely sad, though, so he didn't feel much empathy. He closed his eyes again.

Adam had once told him that he could never live in the city. They were waiting in line in front of the Riviera for a show and a homeless man asked them for a square. Adam had never heard that expression for a cigarette before and assumed he wanted drugs. He shook his head no and the bum moved on. Brian told him what the bum meant, and Adam blushed. "I could never live here, I'm too naive."

That was when they were 19. Six years later, Brian was living in Logan Square on Chicago's north side, laying on his back thinking about having a cigarette himself, but mostly thinking about what Adam would think of him if he were still around.

Adam had once said that he didn't want much, just a piece of land and a dog and some vegetables in the ground. That was when he was 18. Even then, Adam knew more of what he wanted in life than Brian ever knew for himself.

Mary got up and went over to the swing set in the playground to poke at the mud and wonder at the broken beer bottles near the landing area of the slide. She was a good girlfriend. They had fun when they went out and stayed in together. He couldn't put his finger on it, and that's why he never left her, but there was something in the way.

He knew what Adam would think of his job. He could never sit in one place for more than an hour, and the thought of sitting at a desk, looking at a computer for eight hours a day would have made him wary, to say the least. Like Mary, Brian didn't mind it if he thought of the job as a temporary thing, but he could never stop thinking about the future and he knew he could not do it forever.

Worse still, was the thought that the wrong person fell off the rail that day. But that thought only crept up during the darkest moments of his regular reflections. Mostly, he blamed himself for not being close enough to help Adam when he fell. He knew he shouldn't blame himself, it wasn't really his fault, but sometimes the moments we have no chance of controlling are the moments that haunt us the most. That's why he imagined himself at the center of a heavenly conspiracy to ruin the rest of his life. If there was justice anywhere, he thought, it wouldn't even be fair in heaven. They wouldn't care if he couldn't have done anything, he was witness to his friend's death and he made the choice to tell people that he had in fact not witnessed it, out of some misplaced instinct that he would be blamed for the death of his best friend if people believed he was there when it happened. He was convinced that he would pay for that lie, harmless as it was. Even if harmless, it was selfish, and he knew it.

Mary stuck the stick in the mud with violence and returned to the soccer field Adam lay on. "I'm going home if your are going to brood here all day." Brian didn't say anything but he did open one eye. She walked away but he knew he would forgive her in the morning. She always did. Maybe that's why he knew he couldn't live with her. He didn't want to be forgiven anymore.

Forgetting Adam (2)

2009-10-18T13:04:00.001-07:00

Adam thought he might be dead. He didn't hurt anywhere, if that was any indication. He wasn't asleep either, he was sure. He remembered tripping off of the rail and then everything went black. But he wasn't unconscious: the cement columns to either side of him were solid to the touch and he could feel a cool breeze, with a touch of dankness to it, like his grandmother's basement. He was confused. Maybe he hit his head on a railroad tie as he fell. There had been a train coming in the distance. Maybe the train struck him as he lay unconscious. Either way, he was still drunk. Fear was rising in his throat and after a moment, resting a hand on one of the columns, he leaned over and vomited whiskey and beer onto the scuffed paving stones he was standing on. He wiped his mouth and tried to dispel his rising sense of alarm--he had never thrown up in a dream. He looked around. He was on a road.

It led into the distance behind him, disappearing over the horizon. It cut a straight path through the flat landscape like it was conjured up in straight-edge ruler's dream. Dull green prairie grass, waste-high, tumbled in waves across the plains on either side of the road. The light was failing but the sky above Adam was devoid of any setting sun or any clouds. It was as if a painter had muddied his sky-blue with a puddy gray and haphazardly pushed his brush against the canvas.

In front of him the road ended at a wall beyond the two columns he rested between. The wall was black, pitted, and made Adam queasy when he tried to follow its lines as they ran off into the distance on either side of the road. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the wall curved slightly, like it was one immense circle. It was a short wall, only eight feet tall. Where the road ended, there was a brown wooden door.

Adam thought he heard thunder over the wall, as if he was inside a house hearing distant thunder through closed windows. His heart started to beat very fast, and he thought he might be having a heart attack until he recognized the pain in his chest as heartburn. Looking at the door, he wondered at the acid rising in his stomach. If he was dead, he wondered, why did he have heartburn? Why was he still drunk? And if he could feel these things, why couldn't he feel the bruises he should surely have from tumbling off of a railroad tie? And if he was hit by a train... He stopped himself there, and tried to swallow away the rising bile.

Thunder rolled beyond the wall again. Adam looked up and thought he saw light crackling some distance inside the walled circle, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. The fizzle of the crackling light reached his ears moments later. He took a step toward the door, not knowing where else to go or what else to do. As he approached the door he could feel the ground beneath him shake and then a louder clap of thunder reverberated off of the invisible barrier above the wall.

Wiping his mouth again, and swallowing the taste of vomit and bile at the back of his throat he tried to push the door forward since there was no latch or knob or handle to speak of. The door didn't budge.

Forgetting Adam (1)

2009-04-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

Adam couldn't find what he was looking for. He kicked wet leaves around the bottom of the ditch searching. The cuffs of his jeans were sodden from the work. The dark twilight clouds above were struggling against atmospheric pressure. Slowly, they began to lose shape--looking like shrapnel bursts fired in desperation. He heard thunder in the distance.

The tracks running north and south were cold. They ran on heedlessly into the evening, trembling. A red light ahead stared back at Adam kicking. Below, an electrical switch clicked in perpetual frustration. The trembling increased quickly and the stone ballast began to jump in consternation. A growing crescendo was building.

He looked over his shoulder, judging the climax. A glittering light beyond the red eyed him. From the safety of the ditch he kept working. Ignored, the offended burst forward in a flurry of momentum. Speed transformed perception--its velocity suspended, it seemed to catch its breath.

Perception exploded. Speeding metal shattered the muffled cries of kicked leaves. The hood of his jacket agitated in the gust. He ducked against the attack of dust and grit. Silence lived in the cacophony. There was only lumbering inevitability.

But gradually the sound of wet leaves under Adam’s shifting weight returned. He stood erect again and watched the last car race after the others. And then he saw it.

Sitting on top of their comrades, dead leaves hid the dark glass but for one winking shoulder. He brushed away the leaves and picked up the bottle to inspect it.

Brian, who was waiting for the train to pass, joined him on the other side of the tracks. "That's it," he said. It felt empty and the label was waterlogged. They looked at each other and Brian shrugged. "She wanted it back, so well give it to her."

Adam agreed and started to head back, slipped on the upwards slope and fell on his face. He tuned over on his back and looked into the darkening sky. He started laughing and so did Brian. He lifted the bottle above his face to inspect it. It was not completely empty. He unscrewed the cap and let the last of the whiskey fall into his mouth. He handed the bottle to Brian who tried to take a drink and then realized it was truly empty. He kicked Adam.

"There's another train coming."

Brian tried to help Adam to his feet, but was pulled down to the wet leaves. The two wrestled down to the bottom of the ditch. Brian could feel wetness seeping through his jacket and untangled him self. He was out of breath. Adam stayed on the ground, laughing again. The clouds broke completely and one faint star struggled to appear against the last of the day's light.

"I don't want to wait for another train to go by," Brian said. He kicked some wet leaves onto Adam. "Let's go."

Adam struggled to get to his feet and forgot about the star. He asked Brian where the bottle had gone.

"Leave it," Brian said over his shoulder as he climbed up the embankment. "It's no good to us empty."

The girl wanted it back. It had been pilfered from her father's liquor cabinet and she needed it back.

He heard more thunder. Something whistled. Adam saw the bottle on the embankment and stumbled over to it. He clutched it in his arms and climbed to the tracks above. He balanced on one of the rails and was mesmerized by the approaching engine, still in the distance. As he watched, velocity suspended again. Brian called out to him.

He tripped and fell as he dismounted his balancing rail.

lowercase in '55!

2008-10-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

this is how i lost my shoe last summer. drinking whiskey. tripping over my cat. i flipped one way, she jumped head long the other. when i came to my left foot was cold. my cat gone. i found it in a bush while hanging lights that winter. frozen. wish i could find that shoe.

This is the Best Part

2008-04-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

I walked up the stairs to the platform. Dull gray and sleepy oranges appeared over the trees and squat buildings. Perched on that island of rock, wood, and iron rails, I watched the city-sad twilight horizon drift east. I could hear the commuter train barreling in from the south, escaping from dusk-swallowed skyscraper lights.

It did not slow down and some on the platform were startled when a whistle blew in suggestion. I turned my back and tried to hide from the approaching gust of dirt and cigarette butts. There was a gathering of momentum, a crescendo, and then it was gone. I arrived earlier than I thought. My watch was wrong.

I looked south again searching for a light floating over the tracks in the distance and I waited.

I was in a hurry. My bike had been stolen the week before so I had to walk to the train. It was a Sunday and I knew I couldn't waste time waiting for a bus that might not feel like coming. I did stop on the corner and look west just for a moment. There was another man standing at the bus stop but he was resigned to waiting. He leaned against the brick wall of the liquor store and closed his eyes when I looked at him. He took a deep breath and I think he was about to smile. I walked by without another glance and headed south.

The trees were getting greener on Leland street. There were baby carriages and fathers, and kids on bicycles with training wheels. There was a freshly opened scar on the pavement in the middle of the street with warning cones surrounding it. A cat was sleeping on a front step as I passed. It rolled its eyes at me and scoffed. I picked up my pace. A dog and his man were walking toward me. The dog was dragging the man, intent on moving forward. I winked at the dog. The dog's man, bleary-eyed and smoking a cigarette, mistook this gesture of solidarity the wrong way and dropped his eyes. I looked at my watch and cursed petty bike thieves.

At the next corner I had to pause at an orange, blinking hand. I could see the raised train platform blocks away, laughing in its rust. I looked up the cross street and then down hoping for a window to make my move. When I looked to my left again a woman in a wide brimmed summer hat distracted me and I stared. She was reading a book, sitting on the bench outside of the coffee shop. There was a white ribbon around the trough of her hat with a blue flower held in place. She took a sip of her coffee and caught me looking at her over the top of her book. I looked away, avoiding the awkward moment in time to see the orange hand turn to a happy walking man.

I surged forward and forgot about the blue flower in her hat. On the next corner was a Catholic church with its doors swung open. I spied inside as I surged by and saw a handful of people sitting in pews. There was a priest in a white and purple costume with his arms raised over his congregation. I didn't hear what he said but I heard the organ say goodbye. I thought it was a train whistle, leaned ahead, and put my shoulder into the distance between the church and the platform.

My watch gave me mere seconds. I tried a jog for a few steps then returned to a walk; I trotted for a couple of sidewalk squares and then thought better. the entrance to the platform, though I could see people on it ahead and above me, was half way down the street it ran parallel to. I took the right turn at speed, jumping around a startled squirrel, and fixed my eyes on the stairway at street level. As I approached, I noticed a couple sitting on the bottom steps close together. The man had his arm around the woman. They were looking at their feet but were smiling. As I came up to them I heard the man say, "this is the best part."

Cowered and In Charge - A Meditation on New Year's Eve Dogsitting

2008-04-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

The dog is driving me crazy now. I don’t know exactly what I should do. If I stand up it stands up and snarls. Its eyes. Ice and blue. Dull, though. I sit, and then it sits and plays. All I have to do is sit. But for how long?

A while later now. I haven’t tried to stand up. I am comfortable enough sitting here. There is a game on. A very patriotic scene. The Air Force academy is facing off against the University of California. I think it is in a southwestern state. So it is sunny and warm. Everyone is smiling. The service academy boosters and alum lend it a Fourth-of-July-parade type feel. There are American flags everywhere. Aviator sunglasses, too. And then there are the Californians. We all wear our costumes, I guess.

It’s all very American. I am an American.

Fumble!

Crowd goes wild with a red, white and blue frenzy.

But the dog. Shhh. I think it is finally a sleep. I think I might try and stand up-- Oh no. It groaned. Was that just a sleeping groan? Here I go!

It’s back up! It’s prowling. There is a singer on now pleading as loud as he can, “Relief!” I nod in agreement.

My Old Friend Robert Kills My Great Aunt Pearl

2008-04-12T10:46:00.001-07:00

I wake to a gunshot.

I lay my head back onto my pillow, roll over with a handful of blanket and hide my back from the sun framed window—close my eyes.

It is that hazy time in the morning when it is hard to tell if dreams persist.

I am rolling down my back stairs. Instead of crashing to the ground, I am standing upright, looking back up into a brightly lit entrance. It is dark where I am on the landing. My great aunt Pearl’s silhouette is standing above me in the doorway. Like a demon angel. She starts to float down the stairs towards me. I clench my fists. They feel small and raw. My heart tries to jump out of my mouth. Then, quickening gelatin.

I wake to another gunshot.

I rub my eyes, crust crumbling in my fingers. My great aunt Pearl’s floating silhouette is still suspended before me—slowly melting away. The silhouette becomes a shadow. Then it is gone, and so is the memory.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth is the only reminder of fear.

I fall back down onto my pillow, sighing. I am glad it is morning and I did not wake in the middle of the night.

Another gunshot.

I roll over and close my eyes again, sure that the morning light will shelter me from more great-aunt-Pearls. The blanket is on the ground now, so I pull a wrinkled corner of sheet up around my head.

I am running. Slowly. But I am winning the race. I can see the finish line but no one is there cheering. My feet look like clown feet when I glance down. I look up. I am crouching at a starting block. I do not remember running a moment before. I have on a cheap green t-shirt that says Essex Grade School in black, block lettering. I look to my left. My friend Robert smiles back—his face is familiar but hazy. His teeth are very white. The starter raises his pistol.

I wake to another gunshot.

I moan and throw the sheet onto the ground. I sit on the side of my bed and look at my bedside alarm clock. It is nine twenty-three. The park across the street from my apartment was covered in snow when I moved in. I had had no idea that underneath was a public high school track.

I walk though my bedroom with heavy feet, then my living room scratching, and yawn into my kitchen. I stare out my window as another gunshot rings out. And I watch two skinny kids break away from the others. They are wearing the same jersey. It is not green and the kids are in high school. Still, I smile. I remember Robert.

And forget about my great aunt Pearl.

Albany Park Sunshine

2008-02-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

Talking about Albany Park sunshine flying through these dirty windows in the afternoon. I can’t seem to place the extra space, the dust gliding along over stairs and around stares. It reminds me of summer, spring buds bloomin’. Here I go dancing around the in, the between but never stepping forward only down or side stepping around.

Crusty cold, bright snow. Smiles. Resting hands, the back of his head. Leaning back with a frown.

Three squat houses looking back across the street at me and the mind I see. It’s projected, lobbing volleys arching over three flats, directly in my line of sight. I can’t tell what those three are planning, I’m caught in their allies cross fire. I know their alleys, luckily. I have friends coming over the river, they heard my franticly wandering blinking eyes, and the smack smack – smack – clack kak, of my morose code.

To the rescue, countering feigning beams intercepted and inverted by clever brick keystones, they run and charge and scream. Let him be! Let him be!

Let me be! Let me be!

Rally, rally, push back, punch and kick. We have the smirking, cosmic seeing sight on the ropes. Around its neck and make it choke. Down, beat back, the end of time, make it dark so it can rest.

Wave our colors. Flap, flap. Victory over destiny, fortitude against click and the tock, tick. Destiny, destiny, you make time stick.

Victory, victory, wave our standard, fly it high, we have fate in numbers and our backs turned against your wide, wide eyes.

Sublime rest, the clock rolls over under blankets and ticks and tocks turn to sighs and snores.

Oh, snore some more.

Sal[vation]

2008-01-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

Sal opened the letter. He read it slowly. It was the second such letter he had received. He put the letter down on the counter.

rusting by resting
words already dusting
into silent still
air

meaning is bleeding
wounds already healing
slowly sowing a
stare

Turning to the stove, Sal turned off the kettle. The steam climbed to the low ceiling and spread like an inverted flood. He stared through the fog. Minutes passed and he began to sweat from the shrouding steam. The kitchen was small.

Half Mast Revolution Blues

2008-01-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

pardon our dusk

under reconstruction

A toast to the new year and a changing climate.

2008-01-04T09:17:00.001-08:00

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Are we there yet? Maybe not.

That's the beauty of America - America can change.
-BHO

City Words

2007-11-05T15:02:00.001-08:00

1.

Dark water-bright lights streak
City draw-bridge drawn and sings
Orange twisting sirens between

I want to dance with the Chicago River
foxtrot around staring corporate headquarters

feign and duck away from starving veterans

laugh and breath and forget about your dirty dress.

2.

slowly departing commuter trains
passing waiting, rusting freight cars
a billboard streaks between the space
blurred as it is

colors bleed into time
speed hallucinates beauty in distortion

from nothing
shaded hues and my
receding
perspective.

3.

Dreamy quiet on a misty sunray
Monday morning

Soft footsteps ring out in muffled yawns
Tall buildings stretch,
Forlornly droop their weary shoulders

L trains tentatively nudge onto a still sleeping,
Faintly rusting drawbridge
Red in its timidness

The trains glide soothingly
Suspended over dirty bath river water,
Green with melancholy.

4.

Time will never move forward. These pastels will always be my blanket and this picture in my head will remain.

The concrete seemed like it was sinking fast. The Lake was too calm and endlessly wide.

What lake has no shore? How does the thin horizon fade away only to reappear farther away?

The Lake is vast!

Mysteriously, this city full of twilight twinkling yellow lights avoids slipping into the water like suds into a drain. The sky stretches into one shade; overladen with thousands of grays. And I'm sinking.

The world is so lonely in this purgatory of a lakeside park. The empty field. The sea of grass where every single blade steers its own ship. This green swath of a planner's dream battles soundlessly with the foaming river of exhaust pipes and its banks of steel and brick. And the calm, lonely lake on the other side. The middle of night and day over this pasture of lonely lives and old dreams.

Stare at the water. The blue fog of the black depths waits for the solitary.

At the city. The orange globe of security that these tall steel towers project. Whispering promises of old eyes.

Nothing is fair today.

A sailboat chooses for me. A single boat in the unrolling lake, in contrast to the gluttony of the skyline. So alone. How dare the little boat, shouting on deaf ears that it chooses to float slowly into the receding horizon. Its own sunset.

Election Night at the Green Mill

2007-10-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

There’s a kind of man that can transform his appearance in the blink of an eye. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve been with women who were supposed to have eyes only for me lend theirs to a face that moments before would have only attracted a casual glance. It takes more than a comb and a suite, though. It usually takes an instrument of enhancement, a magical device that can distract inquiring stares from everyman features. Sometimes it takes a Hammond B-3 organ.

We sat at the bar instead of at one of the small tables around the stage. I ordered a Blatz because it felt right. The beer, poured from a dusty brown bottle, tasted like it could have been in a case for twenty years tucked away somewhere in the lounge’s basement, away from prying eyes.

Mary ordered a dry martini. She was dressed for it. She wore a black dress, her wavy chocolate hair thrown in contrast over her pale shoulders. I was dressed appropriately for my expired Blatz - dirty jeans and a brown hooded sweatshirt. We didn’t look like we arrived together, which we hadn’t, but she kissed me when I sat next to her so I guess those who saw figured we were together - even if she looked like she just came from a ball, and I from a grocery store stock room.

When I walked in the bouncer at the door was dressed in black leather and rattled with chains and had scowled at my identification. I had wondered at his bushy gray handlebar mustache in the past, but that night my eyes went immediately to the small tv above a corner of the bar. The election results were still rolling in and a map of the United States was plastered across the screen, checkered in red and blue and the occasional gray.

The place was empty aside from Mary and I, two old men sitting directly under the tv and a few quiet, dark faces scattered around the room. The band members of the organ trio scheduled to play that night were sitting next to the stage smoking cigarettes, talking.

It was a Tuesday. It was November. It was raining outside.

Most everyone in the city was at home peeling of voting stickers and waiting.

The lounge was strange that night. Usually it was hard to find a table or even a place to stand. Empty, everything looked worn out and sad. The lack of smoke somehow stripped the room of its charm, and the absence of body heat made it colder than it should have been. Mary looked out of place when usually I would have been the one that clashed with hipster dresses and black jeans.

Jimmy Smith was somewhere in there - noodling inside the old juke box at the end of the bar. The sound on the tv was turned down, which was just as good since no one at the bar had any desire to listen to the red and blue commentary.

Jazz clubs rarely feel as hopeless as they did that night.

I lit a cigarette for the both of us and we watched the small tv in silence for a while. Mary barely touched her drink and put her hand on my leg.

“How was it,” I finally asked. Mary handed me the cigarette back.

“Boring, I snuck out after they announced she had taken Illinois.”

“Boring,” I laughed, “an election gala boring?”

“For those that wanted to be there it was quite exciting, I suppose.” She sipped her martini and eyed me over the rim. The marks her lipstick left on the glass annoyed me.

The juke box abruptly cut off and we turned towards the stage where the band had finally started to unload their gear. A man in a dull white shirt and wrinkled black slacks yelled to the bar, “Ten minutes Andy, put Jimmy back on.” The bartender, he must have been new, I didn’t recognize him, smiled apologetically and the scratchy juke box faded back in.

Mary stared after the man in the sad clothes as he sat behind his organ and lit another cigarette. “It’s amazing,” Mary said looking away from me, “how bland the man can look before he starts playing.” She turned back to me, then back to the stage. “Remember the first night you brought me here?”

“I do”

“I shouldn’t have been mean to you, Patrick.”

“What do you mean?” She turned back to me again and searched my face. I took a long drag of a fresh cigarette and avoided her eyes.

We were lucky the night Mary was referring to. A table opened up right in front of the stage and we were able to beat another couple to it, laughing about it as we sat down and trying not to look at the angry pair. The same trio was on stage. The same man with the unassuming clothes and the small bird like head and brown moppy hair was behind the organ. Of course he was playing then, in the middle of a solo, so he didn't look the same. He looked like he was in control of the cold, late winter wind blowing outside, and that if he wished he could warm it up and turn it into a spring breeze. He might have, but I wasn’t interested in the weather that night.

I realized how much difference an organ and facial expressions can change a man’s appearance that night.

Mary thought it fun to start teasing me. He looked good behind his instrument, she whispered in my ear. But it was playful. I just smiled and told her to listen for the changes as they started up again. She was going to eye him the whole song and try and get him to slip up. I just smiled, trying to ignore her fun.

He didn’t slip up when he noticed her. He played to her instead, like she was the only woman sitting in the smoky room. He wouldn’t take his eyes off of her. And she strung him along - and me. She lost herself. By the end of the night she wasn’t teasing me anymore, she was teasing the man behind the organ in the red cape. I never let on that i noticed.

“Well,” she said at the bar as she looked up at the election unfolding, “I’m sorry even if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t say anything. I tried another sip but gave up on it half way through. I caught the bartender’s attention “Andy, right? You can toss this. Bring me a Guinness when you get a chance.” He emptied the Blatz and started the slow draw.

One of the old men under the tv slapped the bar, stood up and threw his hands triumphantly into the air. I looked from the Guinness up to the tv and Mary squeezed my leg. CNN was calling the election for Madame Larentia.

“Hope,” Mary said next to me in almost a whisper. I turned to her and looked into her brown eyes and she smiled. She looked happy. I hadn’t seen a genuine smile on her face for a long time.

“Hope,” I raised my pint.

The organ trio started to play. Mary looked over her shoulder at the stage for a moment and then turned back to me. The cape was thrown over the bench, around the organ man’s shoulders. But she said, “let’s go home.”

A Call to Quills

2007-10-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Our existence is rusting - bright, silver-chrome hot air balloons and mind control microchips.

Let the borrowed columns crumble and crash. Watch the flaking lead paint within burn - ashes singed and singing, dancing through inverted, city-skyline poisoned air.

Who will cry - or laugh - when it happens?

There are many within these baby-girl imaginary lines that will drink to defeat and a second chance. 300 years is catching up with us. The cotton-strewn, tobacco-smoked road has run out of earth to trample and pave.

Design conforms to function. Ego, jingoism and blind aesthetic – red, white and blue.

The kaleidoscope of plurality is only novelty. Pretty colors dancing in a child’s eye – distracting those that blindly believe in only this one brand of freedom from truly being.

Who has the courage to tear this tower down and build again? Only smaller, striped raw with history and the taste of corporate tyranny.

I call to you! My fresh-watered brethren. It is time for our farsighted big brother to remember us - but not as his complacent purse strings.

I don’t believe in the eagle glides ascending, never descending.

All of their white-wigged, wooden-toothed words are stale but pretty in our ears, only we have forgotten how they were written – with a quill.

I want to believe in that which bred me, but I’d rather believe in those who reared me: you few, lake centric – turn your head, feel the wind, know which way is which by the feeling of deep, cold waters.

We were born clean and bloody, most dirty and smelly, and told to believe that therapeutic, green-papery blankets would comfort and protect our steel-wool scraped bodies.

But let our skin tan, and our wounds heal in the cold lake breeze - free of diseased, gifted blankets.

Waving high, with eyes arrogantly peering into the setting sun. A band-aid rotting on a half healed wound.

We can build with our uncallused hands again. Soul into our souls.

Grow roses, too.

And dance and sing. But not over skulls and broken beds, and blood and blood – over weather-warped junior high school gym floors, holding hands and sober. Close minded and single purposed - gleefully ignorant of the darkness beyond the emergency doors.

And we’ll sing a song of free waters. Clean and true.

Nola the Cat

2007-10-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

And Nola the cat found herself in the arms of a large firefighter. New Orleans, Louisiana was under water and Nola was finally out of the oil slicked mess she had been wading through since earlier that day when she saw a bright light at the end of a long tunnel and found herself looking at a world that was not what it had been only hours before. Around her neck, tied to a collar that proclaimed that she was - indeed - Nola the cat, was a sodden piece of wide-ruled notebook paper that had recently been ripped out of an already decaying journal; circa 1979. On it there was a message written in a badly trained hand. It read:

I may be drowned. In the event that I am not, however, I would greatly appreciate if someone would stop by Rue Noyé, # 34 and leave in my possession either a week’s supply of decent red wine, or four bottles of Jameson Whisky. You will be able to find me under the seven inch hole in the westernmost facing section of the roof at said address. Please and Thank You!

- Brian Ivrogne

p.s. Please be good to Nola the cat. She may hiss at you now, but I assure you, she is worth saving.

She was not hissing. In fact, she was actually quite content to be in the large man’s arms, out of the water.

* * *

Bad luck. Brian Ivrogne was house sitting as he watched CNN and saw the glowing, flashing graphics proudly proclaiming that, without commercial interruption, the whole world, or the part that cared, would be able to watch (LIVE!) as New Orleans slowly, but with startling alacrity, succumbed to the rising depths of murky water. He sipped wine and wondered if there was some symbolic importance to the way that Mother nature had chosen this specific location for her grand exposition of power. He mused that maybe she was out to specifically teach the American States a lesson. But, he thought, she had already shown a third-world country a powerful display of wet calamity quite recently with a sneak attack wave in Indonesia. He concluded, while massaging the backside of Nola the cat’s ears, that she didn’t really care about America or tropical third-world countries - she didn’t really care about anything at all.

Useless musings aside, there was a reason why Brian found himself in the awkward position of stranded castaway on his own family’s property with only Nola the cat for company. His mother, a native daughter of New Orleans had recently moved into her childhood home at Rue Noyé, # 34 because her mother, Brian’s grandmother, had finally given into science’s insistence that she should have been dead a long time ago due to her constant indulgence in good red wines and Newport 100’s. Ms. Ivorgne was floating along anyway and so decided to make a new life where she first attempted the act of living in the first place. She was allowed this floating lifestyle because her former husband, Brian’s former father, was a well respected meteorologist in the great city of San Diego. Along with respect came money, or maybe respect came because of money; the point being that both Ms. Ivorgne and Brian had little to worry about in matters of finance. Alas, Brian’s mother was much like her own mother and enjoyed a good red wine - she did, however, smoke Parliament Lights exclusively. Fortunately, well, not so fortunate for Brian as it turned out, his mother had learned the lesson of her mother’s premature death and admitted herself, with many a blessing from Brian and Nola the cat into a rehab clinic in Atlanta. Brian, having nothing better to do, set out for New Orleans to keep an eye on his mother’s childhood home and his grandmother’s aging cat, Nola.

The actual hurricane was not as spectacular as Brian had expected. Nola the cat on the other hand, was very impressed and hid under a couch through most of the storm. Brian merely sat in the closest corner of the house facing the storm sipping his grandmother’s good red wine because he was trained to do so in the event of a tornado back in his hometown elementary school in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Tornadoes and Hurricanes couldn’t be that dissimilar, he thought. The next morning, after coaxing Nola the cat out from under the couch he checked the phone lines and the TV and found that no power was being issued from the local power plant. With nothing else to do he climbed into the attic, stopping at the foot of the stairs to rummage through his grandmother’s wine boxes, blindly groping for a fresh bottle. Nola joined him after awhile, and he began rummaging through his grandmother’s exiled possessions.

There was also a fine collection of memorabilia from his mother’s childhood. An old wooden chest, propped up on an ancient, rusting sowing machine contained many artifacts from his mother’s past. He found, in particular, a journal from her sophomore year in high school. Turning the pages he encountered a rather monumental entry concerning both his existence and his mother’s current state of mind. Dated September 14^th, 1979 his mother wrote:

A senior asked me to homecoming today! Billy Vaniteux! He is soo cute. He runs track and is a DJ for the school radio station.

His former father’s surname was illuminated like a squashed bug on a windshield as he scanned the pages of her journal. He once shared the surname, actually, but he had recently adopted his mother’s maiden name since he felt no affinity with the meteorologist who left them in Chicago for a job in San Diego.

Although Brian’s grandmother was a very accomplished drinker, he was saddened to find that her makeshift wine cellar at the bottom of the stairs was quite barren when he retreated down for another new bottle. He reasoned that his mother had something to do with its fruitlessness. There was only enough wine to last him a couple of days at the most. He continued to read through his mother’s journal as Nola the cat explored the previously uncharted territory of the attic.

Hours drifted by. As Brian learned further details of his parents’ high school courtship, Nola was surprised to find that the entrance to the attic - a foldable ladder attached to the ceiling of the second floor - was quickly becoming submerged in distasteful green water. She was alarmed of course but thought nothing was seriously the matter since the actual floor of the attic was still dry and continued her survey. Soon enough, though, the water crested above the entrance’s threshold and Nola was forced to seriously wonder about their predicament. Brian, on the other hand, was just finishing one of the twelve or so bottles left untouched by his mother. He hadn’t noticed the rising water since he was sitting on an old wood dresser, flaking white paint, with his feet above the attic floor.

Nola the cat jumped on Brian’s lap. He peered into the empty wine bottle as a kid would peer into a kaleidoscope. He stroked Nola’s grey coat and as he was like to do lifted the cat’s front paw to feel the rough skin under her clawless appendages. He felt a damp paw where he expected to feel a dry paw. He adjusted his already blurry eyesight from Nola’s damp paw to the attic’s floor and was astonished to find that there was at least an inch of water below his dangling toes. He hopped from his wondering perch above the flaking dresser and splashed haphazardly over to the hole in the floor where the second floor ladder met the attic.

Bad luck. Even as Brian tried to focus his eyesight into the murky depths of what was once a relatively dry, if not moldy, second floor he noticed that the water that had recently begun to seep through the floor boards had risen almost another inch since he had lumbered his way over to where his exit should have been. Like a floundering submarine, his grandmother’s attic had become a most uncomfortable and inhospitable place. He had been in the attic before, years before, but he was not familiar with its layout and, like Nola the cat before him, he began to survey the lay of his quite suddenly sodden land. He found that there was only one window and it was much too small for any regular sized human to shimmy through. The water rose.

Eventually Brian, with Nola the cat’s insistence, decided that they should at the very least construct some sort of safe haven above the rapidly rising water. He enlisted the help of an old rocking chair and set it on top of the dresser he had been perched upon pondering his mother’s adolescence. He stationed close at hand the remaining bottles of wine that had casually and seemingly jubilantly floated up from the floor below and his mother’s journal. The water continued to rise at an alarming rate but as night fell it finally began to level out. The foul smelling water was just about above Brian’s ankles at this point as he sat rocking back and forth sipping his grandmother’s good red wine. Nola the cat sat purring on his lap. As happens, sleep overtook the two.

Nola the cat woke up first. The water, although rising slowly at this point was, quite to the dismay of Brian, still rising and it was now just below Brian’s knees. After uncorking another bottle of wine with the cork screw he had resourcefully kept in his pocket the day before, he noticed an annoying beam of sunlight from overhead as he tipped his head back to allow the warm wine to trickle down the back of his throat. Nola the cat was sick of being stuck on Brian’s lap by this point and was beginning to feel rather anxious to be outside, away from the murky green water and Brian’s hot, wine-tainted breath. She also noticed the beam of sunlight from above and attempted to climb on top of Brian’s head to discover the source of its intrusion. To both of their surprise they found that there was an old ventilation shaft jutting from the part of the roof just above their heads. They had not noticed it the night before because there was no light above them to beckon their eyes to its location above their island of shrouded candle light.

Brian had no chance to squeeze through. The hole was only seven inches wide at the most. There was wine to last him a couple days - no food, but he figured that wine, especially red wine, must have some sort of nutritional value. As Nola the cat kept insisting that something be done to save her, Brian found his mother’s revealing journal on top of the chest next to the wine he had rationed the night before just barely above the slowly rising water. With a pen he fished out of his cargo pocket he scribbled a note on the back of an entry concerning his father’s kissing prowess. He figured there were others in more dire need of rescue then him. His situation was rather stable. He desired only the necessities, which he carefully requested in bad hand writing on the back of his own symbolic conception. Nola the cat easily slid through the ventilation shaft.

2007-10-11T15:56:00.001-07:00

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