Dictionary 5: seat-of-the-pants
good god,
we
just made it through by
the seat-of-our-pants!
I thought
for certain we were goners.
boy oh boy
is
John gonna’ be surprised when
he finds out
we made it home.
Dictionary 4: V-eight
we prayed for the V-eight
to keep,
to plow forward,
through
all the freezing snow
that hailed upon us
that night.
we
had no idea where we were,
and
if the engine gave out,
we’d
be lost perhaps forever.
obese woman in wheelchair
Yes, Zelda has fits, and yes she stammers. She can’t seem to get around the hospital at all. She spins in place in her wheelchair, one hand often tugging on rubber wheels, mouth vacant at times, eyes pale. She is mindless, mostly, with few moments of sanity and brevity. The saddest part is her realization of her dementia. The nurses of the floor try not to pay her notice when she asks them to let her go. These are the last moments of her life, she admits, but does not cry. She, in her lucid moments, would rather watch the people on the floor come and go. She would rather grab at their hands and ask them where they’re off to, where they think they’re going. Zelda would climb and clamor towards the reception desk on strange nights, swore that she should be naked, and try to answer the phones. It was a game of lust and clumsiness; Zelda was unsure of all motion. Spinning, over and over in circles, was her only redress in the face of the hospital steps and elevators and long winding halls of bland carpet or linoleum. Her only real escape was in the alleys of her dreams.
--
She was dancing with a bear. A big grizzly wearing a top hat and
whistling. Zelda yodeled out a merry mountain tune. The clouds were neon pink
and the earth was lava. She heard footsteps. She saw ghosts everywhere with
golden teeth. She was happy. The bear took her hand and fed her grapes. Oh,
how she fell in love every summer.
--
Zelda awoke this time to fuzz. She was conscious for three hours only the day previous and seemed to be rewarded a sparing night of clarity upon waking. She rolled from her room to the floor and was poised for the search and discovery game. Here a nurse bent low to tie her shoe; oh black weeds of hair, Zelda thought, oh grand hips of old age and slow motion. There stood a warehouse man, young of course, bold with his brash stamp of brown hair; Zelda imagined for him a plane crash, or a dreary pool drowning. And further on, Zelda found little cries of children, old television screens, endless reams of white frocks, and the errant bottle of toxin or two. She rolled to the edge of the hall and let out a unanimous roar. Her mind felt warm, too cool to be in the possession of a forty-nine year old. “Here you are, old girl,” she whispered, and watched the attendants come marching her way, ready to bandy her about and reprimand her for her yell. She began to wheel towards them. This time both hands cooperated and miracles transgressed. She imagined herself a bullet train and sped on. The orderlies shrugged smiles from their faces and prepared for a motionless impact. But at the last second, a gurney of unknown origin sailed into a cross-section of the hall and butted Zelda’s chair. The old gal was tossed with force and her hefty body slid from the seat. She landed on her side but managed to crash her left temple with a white wall. She watched the rampage of the concerned orderlies dash her way, then it was lights out.
--
The sky was dripping goo, perhaps paint. Zelda grabbed a paintbrush and
dipped it in the sky. She was eleven feet tall and strong as an ox. Her best
friend Daisy was baking squirrel pie. The image of sweet morning dew reflected
in her eye. Zelda took off her clothes and humped a tree trunk until bloody.
Her smile said it all. It was dinner time back at her grandfather's cabin.
--
It was not Zelda’s fault that she be stricken down and tied to a bed. It was not her fault that when she came to she was biting and scratching. It was not her fault that life seemed to fail her. It is not the place of any individual in the hospital to tell her what was and wasn’t her fault. Zelda decided herself. Everything, she determined, the rote wind of the sky, the callous caution of young love, the eagerness of doctors to jangle their car keys, was her fault. She was convinced and began to shake her head. Slowly the dementia settled. It was not fair that such a woman have blistering lips and fattening thighs. It was not fair that she should rest atop a mattress for fifteen hours daily. It was not fair that a callow girder might give way and collapse upon her spine and neck. Zelda did not laugh, she did not smile, but she didn’t cry either. Her eyes deadened. Back to dreams, at least, and she was free in many ways.
Dictionary 3: hoodoo
the efforts of all the great
gentlemen,
all the stalwart women warriors,
has
been for naught.
the evil object full
of
its hoodoo
,
its early magic and late
curse,
has
brought down the greatest city
that ever
existed.
like a breath of fresh air,
things
vanish into
nothing
.
Dictionary 2: repine
for all this,
I repine I repine.
for
lost love and crumbled architecture.
you all knew me then,
best,
with feathers loose from
my hair,
and flight in my background.
I repine
I repine.
for all the sloppy ways
I should have saved the world,
but didn’t,
in
where
I let the homeless go hungry.
and
when I climbed down from the trees,
as a child,
and put on a clean shirt.
I repine I repine.
let
my soul still be dirtied and happy,
let it still have all the structure
and comfort of
flying
away from a saved world.
forgive me,
if you
must,
but give me these few free hours
left
to
state all the terrible things
I’ve allowed
happen
to all the wonderful
moments and
miracles
.
I repine
I repine.
Dictionary 1: alacrity
the charming young couple,
with a resolution
towards
almighty alacrity,
shone
their flashlight upon
a stale dead
graveyard
and
dreamed, someday,
that
their children would rest there
beside
their own
lazy bones.
A brief history of the US Presidency in three acts
Act I:
Hades, god of the underworld, calls forth George Washington into his lair.
Pluto: “Georgie-boy, what’s the haps? How’s that country of yours doing?”
George Washington: “I dunno’. S’just, it was supposed to be cool. You know, down with the king, up with the people, all that shit. Pursuit of happiness? …today? Eh.”
H: “Well, come on. It didn’t really start that way did it.”
GW: Agitated. “Alright, fine. But it wasn’t supposed to suck.”
H: “Sure, sure. A lot of stuff sucks these days, though.”
GW: “Well, honestly, things have always kind of sucked.”
H: “True.”
End Act I
Act II:
JFK and Nixon are hanging out together in a whore house, shooting craps.
JFK: Tosses dice. “Uhh…what’s the matter, Nixy? You’re a little glum, chum.”
Nixon: “What the fuck...I hate commies. I hate catholics too. No offense Johnnie.”
JFK: “None taken you prick. I mean, who love commies anyway? Their stinking missiles just laying around. Their beards. S’no good.” At this, Nixon feels his five o’clock shadow and nods his head.
A whore walks by and taps JFK on the shoulder, beckoning him to follow.
JFK: “Oh oh oh, I’d love to take her up the
N: Chuckling, “Course I do, bastard.”
JFK: “You really want to know what I love about women?” The two trade silence as Nixon ponders. “Everything. Later chum.”
JFK gets up and follows the woman.
N: “Well go have fun then.”
JFK recedes from view.
N: “Presidential pretty boy.” Nixon tosses dice. “…ass.”
End Act II
Act III
George W. Bush stands before a bathroom mirror, practicing a speech for his father.
W: “Now, listen up, Daddy. I wanna’ be president. I wanna be president real bad.”
W stops and looks closely into mirror, pressing fingers upon his skin. He shakes his head negatively.
W: “No no no, Dubya! That just ain’t gonna’ do it. Gotta’ be more officialating. More commanding-like.” He clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “Daddy, I’m ‘onna be president. I need to be president. The people…want me.” He pauses, pleased with himself. “Yeah. Just like that.” He rubs his hands together.
Bill Clinton pops his head into the bathroom.
W: “Uh…that tie? Yeah, sure, go ahead on. Oh, and tell Laura to send in a sandwich. A presidential sandwich. Yeah. That sound about right.”
End Act III
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elegant sex guns
poised in the mouth
so sharp
she blasts across the meadow
and
it is
sunlight
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random multiples of men
jumping
in the courtyard beyond
as brick
for
luck
they sink in the pasture my
grass
green hat
to fly away atop the rift of the
skyrise
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cyst wrist has
elapsed the monthly
worry of the
mortgage
John wagers
he should shut the door
of the ice box
before Barbra
eats her way out of the bedroom
and buries him
under the porch
with
the fruit flies
the loaming dog carcasses
travel logos 5
Just to leave off stopping for now. We can’t be hurt and we are vagrants. Zero sleep. Destroy every last little thing that crawls in your carpet, touches your windshield, flares in your voice. Completion was never the point. Illusion rests in time and order and if you would dance you could be greater than god. Greater than the heathen and pagan and christian buddhist atheist chant. We are god words and simple and crude. And being born is like stealing. Like cheating. And being now, we are the greatest of inspirations. Past future tense and leather. Take away all the pain of your moments then consume it. Bite your own teeth. It is simple and overly redundant. We need it. Create every breath you hold. Give it freely. Don’t know but care, don’t care but know, haunt the hills, haunt the snow, haunt the sun and haunt the globe. We are the truth written in stone or rock. If your hair wasn’t colored red than it would be blonde. My eyes, if not green, would be black.
paramedic team
Walter Denigan was ready to sail across the city and find the dying woman and resuscitate her. Shelby Dexter was not so ready. She glanced over her partner’s face and shrugged. If it was to be fried rice tonight, she was alright with that. But she’d be damned if he was driving the ambulance again. This paramedic team took their turns and they took their good turns. She smiled as he asked her about her father. Yes, she replied, he’s still doing well, and she asked for the keys.
“Well, I guess. Just remember, tonight’s supposed to be a bummer. The moon’s out. Right?”
She nodded when Walter smiled. He was right. She could see through the windshield. The moon was fierce; all the cracks were exposed tonight, winking.
The first call from dispatch was only fifteen minutes into their shift.
“No worries,” he chimed, and tossed his white box of rice out the window. He glanced up and down the lane, blushing as the sirens flared. The ambulance flew on rubber tire wings. The city laid out like a palm leaf.
The old drunk was brazen. He must have had a switchblade at some point; his ear was bleeding.
--
Walter held out a wolf’s head bleeding. The hallways of an ancient English
castle were bending in the shadows and crackles of a thunderstorm. He was not
alone. There were at least seven other blurry human figures. He felt fingers
stabbing him. He felt tongues licking him. The thunder suddenly stopped.
Walter was in a field.
the tiger to the ground yelling. He walked over to her. She bit his ear.
Walter punched her. He took out a shotgun and fired three shots at the baby
tiger. He felt like skinning it and eating the cat for dinner over a crude
fire in the middle of nowhere.
--
The bum was not pleased in the least.
“Just fucking hold up!” he barked and pounced upon the wino. The booze of the atmosphere peaked, and suddenly all appetite died. The bars were closing.
“Let’s go,” Walter demanded, and
Walter and Shelby rushed the gurney strapped hobo into the waiting room and raced back into the night. We brought him in, so what, Walter thought. It was his turn.
The thick darkness of the night came next. It was subtle, to collide with the ivy black of the city. They were well aware of it. A paramedic’s vocation trades in the secret knowledge of the wilderness of the metropolitan dream.
--
She was holding Gilbert. He was choking and screaming. She flew through the
air. Her prom dress flapped. The cheerleaders had vomit dripping from their
chins.
an aborted fetus. The wine flowed freely in the gymnasium. Oh how she wanted
to shake off her dress and swim through the red wine sea. Then she heard her
father’s voice.
--
The blur of sirens and the chaos of the hot sound woke
“We can really take this one, Shel,” Walter reported as he maneuvered around the system of the city.
The ambulance pulled onto the scene. Walter caught his breath and sent the sirens silent. He jumped from the cab,
After they dumped the boy in the emergency room, Walter and Shelby decided it was dinner time. But
--
The
seated, were eating from a picnic basket. The woman held a deck of tarot
cards. Jim was only 4 yrs old in this scene. The tarot reader set her ham and
cheese on fire and told young Jim to, “fetch her, her walking stick.” The
pastoral landscape was undone by the sound of sirens.
Donald? Calculators fell from the sky. Jim was a grown man of 25 now and was
copulating with the tarot card woman. He moaned and yelled for God.
ears were bleeding. The sirens were too loud.
--
Walter found the cafeteria alright. He saw Kumar across the way and waved. They weren’t friends in real life, only here on the third shift. It was an act of exhaustion. Despite
--
He was eating at Burger King. He was in his grandparent’s car. The sky
looked like
left breast. He saw the words, “carry cart burdens" written in the sky. He
would remember them later for a second or two upon waking then forget them.
--
The two partners jumped when their break had ended. Back into the cab, taking calls, falling into the cracks of the street. There is a moment at night, just before the sun takes over, when all seems perfectly still and modeled. God must have been a paraplegic, Walter thought, lusting after harmony.
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broken teeth
of the homeless in the bucket
beyond the highrise
she shoots down
the sheets
with checkered pattern
because
oh
because
it is the end of all things to be thinking
of slim
shaken vagabonds with
the drink
and the shake
and
the wistfulness of ancient
sixteen
year olds hitching
across the
desert
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the night is young
we
open our doorways
of screws and hooks
and
latch down the key
carpet
I jumped twenty stories
to
find newspaper and
rice leaves
and
ancient dogs bursting tongues on
fire hydrants
oh city of savants
come cripple the elderly couple
as they sit in
the park
and
toss paper clippings of city mayors
to pigeons in popcorn
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streams steady
river
blue
in love she cries
all
her life for
the wicker
trees to be wicked in evening
and
graceful
by
dawn
she is the caterpillar on
the window
you as a child shriek and
smash the shade
atop
the supple green
Elderly Head Nurse
Sheila took off her terry-cloth robe and removed her glasses a moment. What was it her Harold said earlier? ‘Take your time?’ ‘Take it easy?’ She was unsure, but sipped her coffee, and pulled her focus back on. I am the only nurse here tonight, she reminded herself for the seventh time, and spun around in the computer chair. Dizzy dizzy, she halted herself and got up.
The sole patient in the post-op intensive care unit was named Samuel. The last name was a mystery to Sheila (she refused to read surnames for her own reasons). Samuel’s face was covered in white bandage, his whole body in fact, and he could barely move. He had had major surgery, his spine and his heart. His hands were calm beetles, nestling at his sides, sheets tucked and tucked.
Sheila stood before the patient, watching somewhat breathlessly. He was hooked into tubes and IVs, breathing apparatuses, a pacemaker, and too many kinds of sensors. His body, thought Sheila, was a cocoon. His eyes were slippery stones. Sheila glanced over the frame of the man and placed her hand on his barren foot. Cold to the touch, she withdrew.
On nights where she was the only nurse in the post-op ICU, Sheila would wonder of the hospital’s true age, of spirits, things left unturned, old babies, children stuck in dumbwaiters. She imagined Jack Nicholson hopping mad with an axe and an orderly’s uniform. She imagined her Harold rampaging about in his puppy dog slippers. The bells and whistles beeped and Sheila removed herself from Samuel’s presence. A few winks, maybe, she imagined, and hid away in the ICU lounge area. She set the alarm on her cell phone and proceeded to shut her eyes.
--
The creek outside Sheila’s brother’s house in
brother and his wife were digging in the muddy river bed. They yelled,
“Treasure!” She walked over flaming coals to get to them. When she arrived
the river was no longer empty. The dead bodies of her brother and
sister-in-law bloated and blue, floated for a moment, then they disappeared.
--
Sheila awoke slowly, not with any sense of urgency that an intensive care giver might usually possess, but with deliberate glacial pace. A happiness was hanging over her head. It was time to crack her dictionary and read, to cite words of random importance and draw the web of all meaning around their faces. Sheila, it was well known, was a woman of strong faith, not in god per se, but in the chaos of the world. She had once seen majestic beauty spread about the cancer of a woman’s stomach. She had seen the miracle of a hip replacement. Pondered the significance of a burst appendix at forty-two. Sheila had even marveled at the daily ritual of shaving an invalid’s legs. Comatose patients were the most darling, and Samuel was not much of an exception. Before cracking open her book, Sheila stopped by to visit her resident.
Something seemed to have changed in the man. His limbs were still frozen, eyes dead, feet bare and smooth. But something had changed, she was certain. Maybe this too was the alert level of living she had always desired. Harold told her she should have been born a peach, a silk worm, or a mystery novelist. In her heart, Sheila smiled and winked. Samuel did not move, of course, but he moved.
Sheila retreated once more and found her way to the computer chair, her book, the glide of the tiny white fan that blew around the particles of the room to cool off her neck. There was sound of a distant radio playing the popular hits of the eighties and nineties filtering the void of the background. If I float off right now even, she thought to herself, and opened her book and stuck her nose in. Several moments later, she had fallen asleep again, no alarm. Oops, she snored.
--
The boat rocked back and forth. Sheila was alone waiting for someone to row
her back to shore. She was in a parking garage. A man she had once loved had
driven off, leaving her behind. The city was instantly unfamiliar. She ran
out of the garage toward the downtown lights. Her emotions were bruised; tears
welled up in her eyes. She trampled someone’s rose garden trying to make a bus.
The bus drove away. A sensation of urgent urination gripped her.
young male intern
The night began slowly for Kumar. He stood on the corner of the converging avenues and watched a slow parade of traffic lights. Empty streets, ghosts, he thought, and shivered in the night air. His shift was set to begin in ten minutes. Already he could hear the ambulances. Already he could feel needles upon his back. He felt ready. Kumar’s first year at Our Sacred Lady had been difficult. His girlfriend had left him, his dog was sick, his car had broken down, his mother had divorced his father. He felt like a sheet of paper. And working the third shift left him feeling completely alone. Even now stray cats mewled out in the distance of sewer drains, uncaring and completely calico. If he could catch them, maybe then. But Kumar let the thought drift. He headed into the hospital, eye on his wristwatch. The night had officially begun. Kumar thought quickly of his dream.
--
He saw Asian twins, whores most likely, sitting on a pool table. They were
muttering in Arabic or gibberish. He was in some strange bar he had never been
in before, but it felt like home. Kumar got himself a drink. An old man sat
next to him on a stool, streams of blood came from the man’s nose. The Asian
twins stood up and had lizard tails swinging behind them. They moved toward
Kumar slowly. The old man held out a knife and chased Kumar around the bar.
Kumar wanted to scream, but no sound came from his open mouth.
--
The first patient Kumar saw was a homeless man who had smashed his head on a broken cinder block. The bum was drunk. His face was red crashed into ivory crashed into old stains of soda pop and burgundy. His name evaded Kumar although he’d seen this man in the hospital before. And a nurse could not seem to be found. Kumar had to hold the old man down himself, pleading with the lunatic to calm himself. For your own good sir, Kumar found himself saying. Please sir, he repeated. The iodine on the shelves begged to be poured over the sins of the homeless man, they rattled on their tin stands. The scalpels pleaded to dance over flesh. The linoleum floor decried blood. But Kumar held the man, steadied him, a nurse was found, and the vagrant was subdued. Peacefulness fell over his storied face, and quickly enough he passed into slumber. Kumar swiped a broad white apron-ed forearm across his cheeks. The sweat of the night, like insects in the air-duct, was all pervasive. But he contained himself.
At around two in the morning, Kumar felt a heavy drowse creep over his face. He tucked away in the back room of the library and told himself fifteen minutes and the world would be right. Kumar passed out, head down, wristwatch timed for alarm.
--
The jungle. Mrs. Grace, his third grade teacher, was naked except for hiking
boots. She was laughing and masturbating. A person sized mosquito flew at his
face. He jumped. He fell to the dirt. He had to do whatever he could in order
to avoid getting bit by this giant mosquito. Mrs. Grace was gone. In her place
was a marching band. "Stars and Stripes Forever" rang out in the jungle.
Strange hounds howled. Kumar woke with a jolt.
--
The waking world, when it’s easy, when the hospital is ready, is a thing of ballet. A careful order that dances in seeming abandon. But Kumar was aware that such was not the case. A delicate balance is always achieved, despite the chaos of the emergency room, despite the flow of IVs and anesthesia. Kumar was aware that this first year of living with the hospital would be the hardest. But it was also magic. It was a grand entrance with white paint spilled over its threshold.
Kumar found himself back upon the street corner, counting emptiness. If some lovers were to pass at this brisk morning hour, all would collapse and revive in clearer sense. He tossed his face away; the sun would rise soon enough, only several hours. Traffic lights continued their endless campaign down the street. Red, yellow, oh green, he witnessed and imagined race cars as he huddled against the brusque gusts of cold. He tried not to think about the woman with slit wrists, the kid with a toy stuck in his ear, the old man who had busted his hip, the sweet teenage girl who had slipped and broken her jaw. Kumar thought about his dreams and glanced into the face of the statue of Our Sacred Lady. She had deep-set eyes and a careful demeanor. She held a scale in her hands. She was draped in a stone toga. Kumar wanted to write his name across her feet, but refrained, and returned to the hospital. Only three more hours to go.
