The Lord God made them all. All things bright and beautiful,  yada, yada. So worship Him, children. You’re better than people who don’t. It’s ok to feel better than them, because you are. So virtuous.

But really, Monty Python called it right. If He made anything, He made everything. 

All evil, great and small. And, according to some, the Bible is His words. Bragging, as it were. He created homosexuals, and then burned them to death, along with all their neighbors and children. He gave people our greatest blessing: curiosity. But He turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for glancing back at the place her cousins and friends were being horribly murdered. And when Eve discovered an apple, which He made, and which symbolizes who the fuck knows what, He punished everybody who would ever be born. When He didn’t like how the people He made were behaving he killed everyone, all the men, all the women, all the children, all the babies, all the dogs and cats. Everything that lived.  This happened lots of times in the Bible.

All things sick and cancerous. Sickness and cancer are still with us. I lost someone I loved. It tore me up. And that keeps happening. Praise the Lord.

All things foul and dangerous. He gave us reverence, which feels nice. But who gets revered? Martyrs and saints. Men and women who were horribly murdered. And every cross proudly displayed asks you to picture a man being tortured to death. He made suffering, and it’s horrible. Blesséd are the children who suffer. Virtuous are those who self-flagellate. Pain is good. Sex is wrong. Wrong is right. White is black. Where have I seen this before? Oh, right. Orwell. 

All pox both great and small. How did this happen?  As a child I knew worship—my sense of wonder, my love of beauty, my joy in discovery. I knew hope, secure in the sheltering love of my parents. Worship and hope are powerful reins, savagely hooked into the tender underbellies of our minds to be seized and hauled upon by a monstrous engine of greed and power fueled by belief. Fueled by fear. It spawns crusades, pogroms, genocides, and war—with all its horrors. It abuses the innocent, the weak, and the female. I yearn for a world that makes sense. That, to me, is virtue. But not a syllable of dogma makes sense.

All things. I, who do not believe, somehow abstain from committing atrocities. There was good in all of us already, no thanks to Him. But He takes all the credit. Amen.

​A child plays by the water. Dr. Frankenstein’s creature wants a friend. When he leaves, troubled and confused, the child lies broken and dead.
I broke a girl’s heart, once. I didn’t want to. Never again, I swore.
Another girl broke mine, so at least I knew how that felt. She meant no harm. I thought I might die.
Poe tried to capture horror. Helplessness in the face of evil. Lovecraft was obsessed with it. The nameless fear, buried in the earth, forgotten under Antarctic ice, gnawing behind the closed doors of Arkham, casting shadow over Innsmouth.
Treblinka is a sleepy town. Gardeners prayed for rain to rinse the ash from their tidy roses. The girls and ladies of Andersonville wove grief into hair wreaths and hung bunting for the jubilee when their boys and men in gray might come home. Sometimes the breeze brought bad air from the camp, and mothers sweetened their rooms with clove-studded quinces.
Nose to the grindstone, I always know what I should do. Study hard. Work hard. Pay the bills, mow the yard, shop for Christmas, flip the burgers, feed the puppies. Remember our anniversary. So that’s what I do.
I’m little, and bend forward to look down into the water, and hold my breath. I’m clutching a broken clam shell the size of my hand, and the afternoon is hot and sleepy and smells like salt and the cut grass staining my knees. Gulls scold me, but I don’t hear because of the wonder. Yesterday from this spot I looked down, down, to wet green sand with rocks moving on it, spike tails and hidden little legs, but today the water is up, up, and full of more jellyfish than the stars at night. Each swims like a dream, liquid glass and fairy fronds and somewhere there must be eyes looking up to me in their bright heaven. They dance together, swirls of glowing milky noodles. There might be a grownup watching me from the big white house but it feels like I’m alone with wonder. And horror. There’s a hole in the crowd, torn by the clamshell I dropped moments ago. I wanted to watch them dance aside, amused by its flashing twirling tumble into the dark deep. But the big ones are stately as clouds, and they don’t dance, and my shell tore their bodies as it fell. Now they are broken, fluttering, turned on their sides, while the helpless children swirl around them. Helpless and dying. I killed them. I feel sick.  I put down the shell I’m holding.
I’m old, the backs of my hands look old, and tremble as I feel my face.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I am the monster.

One looks like a don’t fuck with me edge. One looks like a goodbye.  Confidence covered in hair. My eyes catch fire and melt down my t shirt dripping rainbows onto the sand. Always a t shirt. The English Beat. John Lennon. The Ramones. I melt into music sharks chewing up the hurt. Like what the fuck is wrong with me. Nobody answer that. We all know what’s wrong with me. I’m searching. Searching for approval. For one true thing. For love. I’ve always been searching. Looking for some fun. A joy ride. A release. A place where I don’t have to think. Where I can become something other. The other is eyeless but super intuitive. Frankenstein arms reach into the air in front of me hunting for the wrath. Tears form from my empty sockets escaping into the clouds that drip dew. Forever riding trains. Never holding onto the poles or straps but leaning up against the doors. Needing to stand up straight at every stop never to be bent over again. My pen masquerades as a city. Perhaps that's not much of a stretch. It holds tiny people pinning them on gridded streets. Her fingers wiggle in mine. Crashing, searching, stretching earth worms in my potted plant. Chaperoning us to the place of metal goo. We dip fresh and raw colors onto hot and sticky canvases. I’m sorry. Trying to fit into shoes using my elbows and tongue. Fucking, never making love. Choking their betrayals. The snake went from around my neck to around my finger. There are songs I’ll never sing. The story goes like this. I’m the only one in here. Like flowers I droop. I need emotion. I want to be left alone. I found a place. There could of been a daughter in me. There could have been a foreign language. There could have been shades. Wraparound. Ray bans. Cat frames. Mirrored. Always been tired. Looking at clouds. At traffic. People walking. Squirts running. Seagulls flying. Until the party starts. Throwing back shots. Sipping on champagne. Putting an umbrella in it. Can’t change the world. Or find love. Or love of another. Or really love of myself. Looking over my shoulder of what’s creeping up on me. Three little words that kept me going. Stay. With. Me. Haunting really. Seeking independence. Found it. Nailing a love that tortures. Found it. Cramming tomorrow into now. Found it. Wanting adventure. Wanting to stay home. Wanting to be a good mom. Wanting to be a good wife. Wanting to play. Party. Escape. Play. Party. Escape. Play. Thoughts ranging from a cracked pumpkin to crooked pictures. Kneeling in a bathroom. Carving faces in voodoo dolls. Hanging my skin out to dry. Always been serious. Even here. Even in Ashland. Even now. Left alone in my thoughts I wait to adjust into the future of humankind. I see moss green houses. And cockroaches on cars. And bears in the fountain. Shaking my head. Wiping my tears. I realize how the wind blows out.

I’ve always been good at hiding. 
I hid in closets, under tables, in crawl spaces. 
Sometimes I was too good at hiding, I hid under a pile of laundry, planning to ambush my mom, but it took too long and I fell asleep. 
I woke up and my parents were on the phone reporting me missing.
And it’s not just me, I am also good at hiding THINGS.
Like, money, or my feelings, 
I’ve been hiding my feelings as long as I can remember. 
I have to.
Feelings left out in the open will almost always fuck me over. 
Someone’ll come along and beat me with one of my own feelings like it was a pipe wrench.
Sometimes I’ll put on an old jacket and find hundreds of dollars I hid in the pocket years ago. 
Sometimes, in the middle of the night I’ll be thinking about something long ago and open a box of some fucked up feelings I forgot I buried there. 
Then I’m screwed for hours of wide awake anger or pain. 
It doesn’t matter that there’s good stuff buried in with or under the bad shit. 
I mean, it doesn’t matter how thrilled I was when my dad gave me the guitar, or how much I loved the lessons, and playing for my class at school. All I get is the loss and dismay when he showed up and said he needed HIS guitar back. So all of it, the hours tuning, carrying, cleaning, and playing that guitar all went into the same box and got buried just deep enough to float to the surface when I least expect it.
All those fucking boxes, 
packed with stuffed monkeys, tragic birthdays, public humiliation, dogs hit by cars, deceitful people, dead friendships, and dead friends. 
They become unmarked metal jack in the box tins, and, like an idiot, I lay awake at night and crank those fucking handles.
There’s never any money hidden in those things. 
The money is always harder to find because I leave it places I think nobody would think to look. 
I’m fooled by my own logic because I’m just putting it in places I would never think to look.
I’m only hiding it from myself.


I think I might be hiding from myself. 
That’s a weird one, and I don’t like to spend time cranking the handle on that. 
I mean, I know exactly where I’m hiding. I saw myself go in there. 
I’m in the cupboard. 
When I tap on the door, I don’t answer. Even though I know it’s me out there tapping. 
I don’t answer, for the same reason I don’t just open the door. 
I don’t trust myself. 
One of me will say or do something painful or stupid, 
and another part of me that hides someplace I am not yet aware of will hear or see, 
and all the fucking unmarked jack in the boxes’ll fly open at once, 
and it’ll take me weeks of haunted night wrestling to get them all buried again 
and people’ll look at me and say things like , “you seem distant, what’s up?”
And my mind, 
knee deep in celluloid film still falling off the reels will say, 
“Nothing, I just had a thought, but it’s gone now”
​

​Just graduated! From ankle-biter to gabbler, still a magnet for every passing female to scour my face-drool with dank and musty cloths they never sniff first, and damn! I don’t know mom’s gartered knees from the grammas’ when they charge me. I don’t know shit (well, literally, sure) I don’t know pigs can’t fly!  But everything sizzling on my retinas and trampolining on the drums of both ears sparks high-voltage straight into my sponge-brain—ZOT! I gobble it all! From pupa to pupil! In no-sense (innocence!), a state of grace, I got no filters, gullible, but that’s great ‘cause I’ll be a pain in the tuchus ‘til I get me some sense and grownups dish it it out by the bushel and they can’t keep from ogling the calendar for the red-letter day I’ll be worth talking to and I slurp it all up and squeal gimme summore!
But there’s a worm wriggling in this apple pie, a guided missile with crosshairs on my forehead and it’s called dogma. With luck when I get lanky and cheeky I’ll call it dreck and vomit it out, but bits of the vile grossness cling and I’ll beg the cosmos for a very high colonic to cleanse my greymatter and kill the sick twin-joke of gospel and gossip, flush ‘em down the cloaca with kindred sewage. The fam-damily guts their most cherished, and there’s no Me Too! for victims of clot-brains so while belief in the power of prayer still has me hijacked I’ll pray those so-called grownups suffer epiphany someday, gripped by the horror of their gruesome villainy, except I wouldn’t really wish that on the worst.
I’m my own biggest fool, and post-cheeky me, analytical me, kicks crazy in the tires, ‘cause transubstantiation just screams cool, and critical faculties go eyeball to eyeball with the gnostic Gods and what was I thinking! to forget that since great-grandpappy crawled from the brine on stubby fins, every single craziness that has ever been grokked has turned out to be not magic!
And cut to this dismal day when I’m the official geezer and fuck! would I grin to talk smarts into the new blood but their ears are stuffed with Spotify and you’re not the boss of me! is the respect I get for trying to save them! Save them from barking fools. Barricade those brains from becoming kith and kin to nitwits and grist for cocktease hucksters. I’d piss on a spark plug to future-proof Gen-whatthefuck but they’ve never seen War Games and they refuse me and now my damn coffee’s gone cold.

'Blood sits in my belly thriving me ready. Not the life stirring force I was hoping for. Its blend of curse words and bile threaten to spray my walls of white awake. It stimulates my coyote mind. Figuring the color puts my thighs at ease. This is not who I thought I was. Dreams have changed from dark alleys and jumping roofs to neighborhood chats and hair combing. I’m where I always wanted to be. Quenching last nights thirst, and rolling around the tumble weeds, feeling dirt's grit, brings me alive. Flying through with eyeballs pealed. Never trusting in a total stranger. She smiles with her tongue while forking. Saying goodbye to many a golden ring. Africa calls her children back where I kiss the ground. Sitting in a chair made of stone. I’m choosing the reflection being a TV. Reaching for the ghost. Looking at the world through glass. Makes me want to do nice things. Painting all the doors red reminds me I’m alive.  A path I follow to the fork in the road saying yes. Something is everywhere all the time. Paths and forks go on until there isn’t. There's comfort in my fear where curtains hide the corners. Where god rules the edges. Where laws govern my lips. Where someone else's idea of good, lives where my fun hides. Hell is running late, I see, blowing apart the place I used to haunt. Where brown skin lovers hold each other, hungry in the dark. Where old weeps on over-salted sheets. Where love is a warm place like fingers in my mouth. Like thighs pressed tight. Like someone who smells of perspiration and grass mowed by hand. I smile even though I don't want to. The tune has stopped me. Watching dogs die with no fuss. With no screams of terror. Where nothing is needed. I let go of the one I love. In love. Color painting over gods words so close I can smell his dandruff. Rubbing them out, watching the ink blots float yachts across the vaults of heaven. Bending knees in prayer opens my heart, for blood has never been more red. Bending the light is a painting from the louvre flung across a cut-out sky. Bending Jasmine sucks through my nostrils, my head, my heart, filtered with the sting of knives, an empty glass between my brows, flickers under my skin. I am who I choose to be.

​Pale honey hue, swirling in the Glencairn glass. Ten seconds. Fifteen. I tilt it and inhale the nose. Magic. I’m instantly in a rickhouse, stacked bulging barrels, oak shavings underfoot, sacks of toasted barley exhaling goodness that sparkles in shafts of sunlight. Give me grain! Golden kernels, husks crisply rolling between thumb and fingers. I defer tasting the whisky. Not yet! A second hit of nose, and I’m getting citrus, and maybe cherry. A hint of acetone, but that’s not unpleasant.  I close my eyes, sip the first, throwaway taste. Only the weak taste-buds fall comatose. The manly ones will be there for the second taste, the one that counts. They don’t shirk. The second sip rubs my face in saddle leather, and sweetness only describable in terms of British desserts. Treacle tart. A hint of cherry tobacco. My senses of taste and smell are nearly ovewhelmed and leak into my vision, single-malt synesthesia, progressing like a rolling landscape across the visual field with a fantasia of bass sienna and cinnabar pulsing up to contralto aurorae of mustard and chartreuse, with dancing soprano flickers of aquamarine. The echoes die, slowly pulsing with my heart, the finish like a wave slowing to a sinuous stop along the strand and—a final surprise—green peppercorn and sorghum.
Powerful. Makes me wish the synesthesia extended into erotica. A proper challenge for the master distiller!
The second act in my flight is as different as two scotches can be. Dark amber, heavily peated, aged at the edge of the sea. An Islay whisky. The nose teleports me to a windblown beach. I smell iodine, and barnacled rocks, and lots and lots of smoke. I can almost hear saltgrass whisper. And under the brine, beneath the barley, like sweet silk in my mouth I find the sherry the cask held before, and the oak’s vanilla. The first taste knocks out half my tongue. It’s cask-strength, and it burns. A very good burn. I sample the nose again, and cold spindrift splashes my face, burning peat makes my eyes water, but I’m hasty to get to the second, serious taste.
I feel my scalp lift. So much energy in this oily dram! And to describe the flavors? It will be hard to articulate in a way I can say with a straight face, because honestly, it’s like going down on a mermaid. And the fantasia in my vision goes berserk, monster waves crashing against cliffs, echoing like cannonades in the hills, shaking to an impossibly long, hot, and peppery finish.
When the last whisper fades I feel drained, boneless, and why is my face buzzing? 

​I stand in the gloom of the cloister, a covered walkway around the grassy quadrangle where a trio of fat snowy geese promenades in the bright day under a white sky. A tall archway leads to the south cloister, and just beyond in the passage, a crude hand-lettered sign on a little stand bears two words, with an arrow pointing onward.
“Kevin!” I shout. He ambles towards me from a knight’s effigy in crusader dress atop a stone coffin—the tomb of William, bastard son of Henry II, and half-brother to King John. I point.
“Magna Carta? THE Magna Carta?!” He is as surprised and thrilled as I am, and we hurry in the direction of the sign, sore feet forgotten.
A polished wooden cabinet twice my height stands in the center of the bare floor In a high, high gothic chamber with walls of stained glass. We walk around to the other side, and there, the woodwork clasps a large square of parchment, tilted to the light, with nearly four thousand words written on it.
“Wow,” Kevin breathes.

I place my hand on the glass.

An inch away rests something signed and sealed, touched, by John himself.
I ate smoked salmon from a street stall when we got off the shuttle bus from Stonehenge, and still taste it.
Under the the straps of my backpack, and the blue windbreaker, my shoulders are damp and prickly with Wiltshire drizzle.
I expect the elderly docent or his schoolgirl apprentice to insist that I step back, but my fingers tingle, nearly brushing the magic of iron gall ink on vellum. Still unfaded, after 800 years.
It is so sweet to have found this with Kevin. Perfect for us. He’d made his own chain mail, carried a replica of William Wallace’s sword when I took him to the Renaissance Festival. We are similar roses on the same cane—our love for Tolkien fuels a fascination with deep British history.
I know the text is Latin, but the dense calligraphy is hard to read, and might as well be Anglo Saxon or Norman French.  It looks like Elvish.
Doreen had helped Kevin design his knight’s costume, though he’d done all the sewing and leatherwork himself. I feel her presence, the blessing of her love still laid on both of us, husband and son, though she’s been dead and buried these two months. 
Kevin’s face turns to stone when he thinks of it.  And I feel dead inside, so maybe we are having that same experience, too
She would love that we found this, are sharing this, and wish us much joy of it. She would be made of joy. As she had so many times, she would stroke my cheek with soft fingers, tell me without words that there is no shame in loving life. At any time. And that she loves me.
It is unbearable that she is already beginning to fade from the world. If there is a God, she’s a prick.
“Sir, please don’t touch, ” says the young woman.
I lift my fingers from the glass.

The mirror doesn’t match my insides. Cold. Confident. In control. The girl who doesn’t give a shit. Who never stays the night. Who jumps out of windows. I’ve seen who I’ve become. Melting in the sun. Saying sorry when I’m not. I’m the one who runs over his luggage. Kisses him when I don’t even know his name. Sits crosslegged on a barstool. Eats bananas and spits peels under his feet. Fuck mirrors. I’m going to cover mine like someone just died. I’ve been taught to chew with my mouth closed. He likes it open. There’s a moment right before climax that I can say anything. Confessing fantasies I only whisper, even in my dreams. I taught my son to drive a car while my mind was on other things. My two-timing friends calling me in shame. Telling me what they do behind my back. Giving haircuts and blowjobs, where they’re teeth shouldn’t be. Fuck friends. He looks at me like I’m 24. Roaming the streets along Ventura blvd looking for the divest of bars. Anything that smells like alcohol will get my lips wet. He looks at me like he knows what I’m thinking but that’s a lie. I don’t think like that anymore. He looks at me like I might disappear at any moment. Under the dark moon. All dressed in black. The curse of the crow feather. The sneezing frog. I wait for dreams, of tongues and words and ears. Of organs and bloodstreams and mouths. Of fur and claws and teeth. Dreams of cutting my hair. Dreams of unkept rooms. Dreams swimming with me all day long. Through chores. Through wishing wells. Though last nights stars. Fuck dreams. The morning comes with a haze that won’t let me open my eyes. It’s all wrong. It’s words with no meaning. It’s tragedy with no comedy. It’s truth between the lies. Love has turned my mind to mud. He picks twigs from the puppy’s head. He kisses me with deep intention. He promises me rainbows. There’re rivers gushing when I think I’m on a wooden floor. There’re sharks in my nail beds. There’re holes in my closet. I don’t know where the brooms went. I don’t know who stole my Valium. I don’t know what empathy means. I’m not sure who said goodbye. Through Fights. Tears. Fucking. Tequila. Fires. Betrayal. Beds. I can’t stand the waiting. Through Stools. Showers. Routines. Boys. Moons. Pillows. Crosses. Standing in a room that never moves. Smelling like a hard drink. It started with a look. Scattering marbles on my driveway. Stuffing my garage with surfboards and kites. A home movie of candles and scotch. Of cigars and women. Of music and flights. Floating hairs in my eyes. An elephant on my chest. Noise in my teeth. It’s a cavity of thoughts. Looping future regrets. The big resolve. Where cold resolves. Where foreheads fall. Where I’m rebel behind bars.