There was a shot of wind darting in from somewhere out north, lifting up little tufts of snow and speckling the sky with dots of crystal.

There was a throng of people warmly dressed, taking puffs of tobacco near the door, moving this way and that in gesticulation, piping out opinions on football and grain beer and Valentine's day.

There were faces drawn out long, excogitating solemnly, all along the bar. There were bodies moving near one another, there was music blaring, the dull conversations dragging several decibels up, the privacy of speakers all ablur in that wash of noise.

You were there and then you had left, had sought out something other. You had turned several corners, out past the little streets and onto the lightless highway, uncluttered yet with pie-eyed drivers.

You're sitting there, dragging your fingers through the smokes you've got left, scanning the airwaves for a station with something good. You light up a cigarette, breathe the sweet cancer deep, and set your eyes to the ondragging road ahead. There is a breathing in the night, there is something moving in the night, something new, culling in the footfalls and lashing up the fury, something larger than mountains, pulsing rhythmic as it settles dovelike in the deep.

was it you there, was it you that was there

You're thinking of the night ahead and the notes sung out from heartstrings

was it you in that quiet

You're thinking of the thousand bits of broken glass, of the cresting of waves, of small hands and china dolls.

was there something sheltered there, something hidden

You take a long hard drag of your cigarette as you pull up to the house. Plashing little seas of snowmelt, you make your way to the door and, through the house and up the stairs, to the little room, the television on and the musk of smoke stagnating.

You're lighting up another smoke as you lie on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling, breathing in the ashcloud and breathing out yesterdays. Exhaling years.

You think of all the words you want to say, of all the words in the world, all the right ones and all in the right place, and how it'd never be enough.

You think of songbirds leaping from the outstretched limbs of trees, beckoning their littered young with bellows from the hurting places.

was there light in that shadow, did it fall from you then

You think of how you want her here, in your arms, to fuckall with the miles and the months and the quietness.

You think of a song by Pink Floyd, of how the words are just way too right.

You think of what it is to be here now, to be coddled up in this empty room without a computer, without a voice. You think of her and of all the words you want to say, wanted to say.

was it you there, was it you that found me there, was there light that had drowned out all those shadows, had wrought listless all the treasure from the secrets of the fold

You're flipping off the television and turning out the lights. You are washed in all the naked worries, in all the dreams aflicker, in the scorn of silent night.

You're turning this way and that and you're slipping voiceless into sleep, through the tears in the cotton and on to the varied roads, to worlds beyond the vagaries and this fluid listing keel.

We are standing on broken glass

There are a thousand bits of broken glass

But we'll pick them up together

That all flesh is the stuff of stars

That all minds once sang together

That dawn creeps up too fast

That fires flicker in flooding rooms

She is stardust and the night

She is all the roads untreaded

...

There's a cadence to it, a rhythm, palpable, ghostlike. Like a fever and a trance, light through a cloudy lens, beaming all wispy and aflush.

It's that feeling like rocketships and cavalries, like symphonies or orchestras, something frenzied and all lit up, all torn to pieces and gathered in with harmony. Like poems read from loving lips. Like greyclouds showering the alleyways and keeping you inside.

It had something to do with dreaming.

True story

It's 3am in the summer of your nineteenth year.

You hear the apartment, your apartment, creak as the old door shuts tightly, just beyond the hall.

You've been staring for some time out the window of your little white room, at the yellow orb just beyond the screen, the dull light making its way through dusted panes to rest in angles on the mattress, all the rest of the little room dark as night.

You hear her footfalls making little waves in the carpet on the floor. She's in the kitchen, or at the tv. The clatter of things hitting things. A little fist punches out through the cavity in your chest, and you think how long have you been staring, quiet. How long and how many nights the same, keeping numb and neutral, trying hard not to move.

The bedroom door opens without a sound, with just the outrush of pent-up air. She switches the light as you turn slowly around. She's at the closet, placing things inside of things, shopping bags and clutches with zippers, all laid out symmetric and neat. She turns and smiles, not a word, and walks out the door.

All the time spent there, on that bed, feigning interest in the normal life, in the chasing of teenage girls, the downing of drinks, the festival of nightly carnage happening all around, the powder flying up through noses and the sallowed joys of normalcy, the naked fury of lust.

All the time spent fleeing from reaction, from excitement, from the dangers of being and the pain of letting go, all the time spent wanting it, but trying hard not to move.

She had been there for some time, all awash in other problems, in other mysteries, some shared and some kept buried. She had been there and after some time you had put your arms around her nightly and held her close, fingers dancing along arms, around wrists, through the fingers of the other. She had shared with you secrets, she had given of herself, and you had kept quiet throughout. And then you told her of being young and afraid, of losing faith in God and family, of keeping tight and closed off, of the friends you had who were drifting, of all the sorry people in your life who weren't worth a second glance. Of all the pretty girls you might've fucked if you could stand to hear them talk. Of the long hard nights with the devil on your back, the thick dark cloud over everything that seeps in and stays long, of the worst nights and the thought of guns to temples, the thought of leaping from buildings and the last seconds of a young life. Of the desire to start writing and to make something grand, to make something that could outlive you, something someone somewhere would care about, would hear and know.

She tells you things about children, about her daughter and her son, both around your age. About her husband long ago. About her life at fifteen, at twenty, at thirty, and her now at fourty-six. She tells you about having cancer and how she made it through the whole thing without a word, without telling a soul, no soul but you, now. She tells you of a long and distraught life, of things you'll never know, could never know at nineteen. And you sit there and think how you got into this mess, with a woman you could never love, a woman all too in love with you.

It's a few months earlier and you're lighting a cigarette.

'If you had a girl... a girlfriend, what would you do? What would you do with her?' She asks, cross-legged on the couch, sipping something warm.

You take a firm drag from a dried-out Pall Mall, near the door, blowing out puffs and surveying the complex at night.

'I don't know... I'd give her the world.' You say.

She's silent, staring straight ahead.

'That's a good answer.' She says, dabbing something salty from the corner of her eye.

You look at her and then back out the window, the stiff breeze tackling the fronds of store-bought palms.

'What is it?' you say, avoiding her eyes.

'Nothing.'

You thimble with the doorknob as you try to say something, anything. A touch of uncold rain starts to drizzle in from the clouds, pattering the walkways and the cheaply painted rails. You run a fevered hand through the curls in your hair and you think of what it is to feel. Of what it is to feel and say nothing.

It's 3am in the summer of your nineteenth year.

The shower turns to silence with the turning of a knob. The lights throughout the place are steady dark, all the hue of night but the angled pattern streaming from the dull orb beyond the window. You hear the footfalls, light and intentioned, making their way to the room. She steps inside and places her things down gently. You're lying there, a hand resting crooked beneath your head, the other arm outstretched. She takes her hair and ties it up loose and wet. You move slightly as she lies beside you.

'Hey,' She says.

You're lying there thinking of numbers and age and the absurdity of it all.

'Harold and Maude. Have you seen it?' she asks.

'No, I don't think so.'

'It's great. It's so you and me.'

'Oh?'

'It's about a boy and a woman. About them finding each other.'

You think of what it is to to be a boy. To be a man. What it is to be a woman. What it is to find something.

'We should watch it sometime.'

'Yeah, maybe.' I say. 'Maybe sometime.'

She grabs the blanket, pulls it up around her waist, and looks up at the ceiling. She looks at you and drags a finger across your shoulder, playfully.

'You know, the first time I saw you,' she says, 'I couldn't really look away.'

Drops of sweat leak unwilling from the valleys in your palms. You think of booze and saturdays and everything that might have been. Of the life you thought you couldn't stand.

She smiles and pulls away the blankets. She puts her hands on your chest and, moving gracefully, straddles you, keeping her dark eyes locked on yours. Your hands move to her waist and you're holding her, unmoving, unthinking, unfeeling. She's frozen there in time, your heart racing, half the world screaming take her and the other half silent. Every fourteen year old male's fantasy, all the tired quips about Mothers I'd Like to Fuck come rushing at you humorlessly, the flesh there in your hands, the reality grim and confusing and she a mother of two and you the teenager raised to believe in God, you just sitting there wondering what the fuck will happen next. Take her, screams the night. And you think of what it is to be unable to move.

It's a few months earlier and you light another smoke in bed.

'How do you smoke those things?' she asks, not impolitely.

'One at a time.' I say.

She's there in the shadows and you're thinking up a storm.

'What do you think of all of this?' she asks.

'Of what?'

'Of me, and you. Of whatever this is.'

A spot of ash sneaks from the lit ember to the carpet below. You thumb it into sightlessness.

'I don't know... I...'

The sun rounds the outer edge of earth, the darkest part of night looms up.

'There's something in me that wishes you were twenty years younger.' I say.

Silence for a moment.

'Why?' She says.

'I don't know. I don't know a fucking thing about any of this.' I say.

She turns from gazing and sets her eyes on a thousand stars glimmering.

You think of life and the mystery, of the callousness you handle it with, of everything you don't know and all the things you wish you could say, even now, in the openness.

'We could be,' she says. 'What's stopping us.'

'Everything,' I say.

'More than everything.'

You think of holding someone and what it is to not feel a thing. To be loveless, to not want to know more, to be lashed to the kitestring you weaved yourself, tethered to a reckless forty-six year old woman who managed to share a bit of herself with you. Of all the fibers shooting out from the spool, the kite dancing further and further from reach, out of your arms and into the the world, maybe caught up by some southern wind and ferried out to heaven on a longshot.

It's near to midnight at the tail end of your twenty-first year, and you're thinking of this somehow.

Of the years of indecision, the years of worry, the years behind you chock full of the empty sheltered hope that things would change sometime.

You think of now, and all the time passing, all the smoking and the weed and the guitars and the laptops with keyboards, about being miserable, about being happy, about being confused and excited and leaping into the mess of it all, pecker to the wind, assailed on all fronts by the simple joys of being. Of letting oneself go. You think of what is and what will be. What might've been and what could've been. Of what it is to be a man. To be a woman. What it is to find something.

You think of a girl you're getting to know and how frightening it is to be honest. You think of walkways and apartment complexes. Of all the time spent running away, of how good it feels to let someone in, at least a little bit, of what it is to breathe. All the time in the past years you've spent worrying about rejecting others, about them rejecting you. Of how you still feel this way. Of how you feel just the opposite.

You think of something to do with the gathering of angels, with the seeing them there, with the hoping. You think of something to do with kitestrings, with the worry that just maybe you've got something. That just maybe it could slip away, borne on the wind and flying out ungraced by the tips of fingers.

...

You think of the air and its taste like ash, of the cotton folds, the loose tarmac.

You think, quietly, of winter and the prickling of skin, the flesh of geese.

You wave the iron flag, steady, arms raised up against the tide. Mourning gentle passing night, limbs bathed soon in warmth dance circles round the onrush gathering, grace in dying sonnet passing through untouched.

You think of all the world, wrapped up in the flesh of palms. The tips of fingers. The taste of lips. All the frenzied patterns glide nimble, kaleidoscopic, myriad and absent translation. You think of time unceasing, the symmetry of lust. The space along her neck, below her ears. The trails of atlas strawhair beckoning, the scream of youth in all her fury reckless.

You hear the growl of a thousand trains clamping their gears a mile away, stalled at sunrise in some grain-belt station, belching carbon and the opaque smoke of industry. You see the light of sun crawl slowly up from Hades, basking plains of flatland with the stormeye peace of pre-snow warmth. Dawn moves across the Earth unfettered, tied like kitestring to its harbor in the coming night.

Spat from the gullets of young crawls music from the nests of birds, leaping chromatic up the walls of buildings in a smattering of timbred scales, skiffed along paned glass and the dust of awnings, into caffeinated ears.

...

Smoke climbs up and out from the bowels of moist black pipes, bent all to hell and caked a dull charcoal black, the flume crawling up the flat plane of the building’s eastern face , tumbling skyward and into the deltas of framed windows, squarely tucked in the aged brick-and-mortar façade. The asphyxiating mass moves onward and up, slothlike, it’s fingers in constant outward reach, the plumage of a thousand dusty gray peafowls scouring the air, never grasping. A breeze unseen tackles its edge as it nears the roof of the place, blasting eastward the smoke, away from the residents and out into the already choked air of Echo Park. At street level, the caked iron pipes worm their way flush through the sidewalk’s concrete, down into dank parasitic earth, on and through to a vent yawning out from a bleak corner of an apartment’s basement, the smoke massing out, life-like, from an antique gas stove topped with a frying pan, filled formerly to the brim with month-old Crisco and an easy ten pounds of breaded Louisiana catfish. From beyond the gray walls of the basement a door cracks open loudly, smashing tins of animal urine and disinfectant over, the spillage making for the damp underbelly of the wooden staircase as an aged man with a worn argyle vest fills a bucket sloppily with death-cold water. Fiercely lapping the tapfluid onto the flaming grease, the fire erupts with venomous disdain at the man’s futile efforts. Leaping out and away from certain demise, he makes his way ardently up the stairs and down the hall to send for help. The Pelican State, he thinks. Why the fuck The Pelican State?

A bold fleshy terrier tears apart the opaque plastic lining of a Glad heavy-duty, unbinding fermented treasure of innumerable sorts from the innards of the bag and onto the unkempt asphalt of an oily ancient driveway. Digging deep and lustily further in, the mess leaps in a flash from tenable to outright fecund and disturbing. A black man oils a handful of bearings just down the drive, and, in rage at the storm of waste, grabs a tire iron meant for the clean skull of the mongrel, a hammer-drive’d do it, a hammer-drive’d do it real nice, quick and to the skull, throw the bones in the sack with the rest of ‘im. Aim for the head keep the teeth away from the hands. The dog’s got hold of a half-empty protein receptacle, the lunchmeat kind sliced real thin and stacked, he’s tearing for all he’s got at the yellow lip of the container. The man moves closer, slowly. After a last-ditch push the terrier gives up the meat-grail and, brown spots and all, disappears into the bag. Pulsing outward in long feminine curves the amoebic skin of the sack, a vast new tear rips open, spilling cigarette butts and week-old yogurt and potato chips along with the varied corpses of supermarket commerce. Organ-like, the man thinks. Disgusting. As he inches forward, looking casually for signs of passersby, the tire-iron wrapped up in knuckles and flesh, firmly, he’s halfway ‘twixt the car and the mongrel. His veins curdle ever so slightly: bring to a boil and let simmer, he thinks. Television. Paula Deen.

An elderly Arab woman signals a taxicab as she palms something small in her right hand. Her left clutches the faux-leather handle of a khaki purse fabricated circa ’85 or earlier, tacky as all hell. Underneath an equally khaki set of leggings and thick woolen socks, bathing fetuslike in a sticky plane of sweat and salt and a little bit of blood, lies a Fallkniven G1 with a 3.54 in. double-tipped blade, the end of it nicking her hairspeckled and molecovered thighskin, peeling bits of dermis out from it’s stasis harbor of cellular unison. Fuck, she thinks. Neik.

Inching slowly to a tired haunched stall, a 30-passenger bus filled to the brim with collegiate musicians creaks and moans an enigmatic flurry of wails, coming finally to full rest and mild backward tilt just before the passing of three young mothers, spawn and strollers in tow by the arm and legful, dashing gleeful as can be, never one any one of them to walk a crosswalk cross, shining and summery in wide-brimmed hats and pastel capris, all aglow with the empty joy of leisure. A window near the front end of the bus screeches open as an oblong cranium peeks out for a touch of fresh air, tassels on bandhat swinging, metronomic, golden and sunstreaked. A herd of youngsters call out for a tune, for maybe just a whistle from the band, and the window shuts rightly, ceasing expectation from the unfettered young. Mild weeping ensues, cut short by the fleshy palms of mothers, hush. Hush. As the pride makes gallant their way to the further end of the cross, rubber soles latch firmly to the concrete of the sidewalk, loosing the bus from it’s idle belching as it kicks roughly into gear. A young musician in the very back seat looks out the tempered glass, behind the bus, seeing naught but road and field, and further, the pockmarked white of a thousand cemetery graves, casting dull shadows on the bright sunny grass. He thinks vaguely of home, of Earth swallowing her children whole. A yellow taxicab turns a corner, a block away, tires squealing.

‘You want to know the secret to life?’ beams the man.

Bypassers angle their strides away from the voice, the smell.

‘You want to know? Really, do ya?’

A pigeon shits on a parapet, three stories overhead. A seminary student, stroking the onionskin pages of Luke, with a thumb gliding toward Revelations, sees the bird through a dust-caked window, eyes heavy and focused, deliberate.

‘It’s easy. I’d tell ya if you really wanted to know. I would, honest I would.’

The man’s frothing lips and steel-wool beard curve psychedelic, dancing in the wake of his wide smile. An ancient pair of white velcroed sneakers tap a gathering pool of urban slush.

‘Hardly anything to it, really. I mean it.’

...

Thin wisps of smoke dance like tendrils ever-reaching, crawling up the eggshell walls and onto the window’s sill. Dowsing the feet of tiny green soldiers placed along the veneer as though a flooding balustrade, smoke claws for substance in await of dissipation, the taut spirals weaving in and out and in, braidlike, feminine, as it’s stalks like polyps dance their last and reach the end of glee.

Panes of mired glass rest unevenly ‘twixt the crossbeam of the window’s frame, casting showers of dull yellow light throughout the open spaces in the room. Beams of sun seep earthward through the cracks in the outstretched cumulus overhead. Helios in metered strides bounds lengthwise across the face of mountains, chasing the ghost of Eos and the comfort of Selene, striking the Earth caustic, scattering like cattle the wearied remnants of night.