No Worries

My heart, I've worn you down. My heart, I've left you carelessly around in many rooms: San Francisco, Toronto, Glasgow, New York. My heart, I forget you know well this tune -- again at a close.

Let me issue an apologetic applause. I'm sorry for using you as a telephone, a method to connect.

They have said, when confronted with my wants, only for night one, it left them weird -- which is to say, I leave them uneasy just by being.  Because I didn't tell them my wants, because to them I haven't a clue.

Now what am I to do?  I haven't a need to flee but want to, from my heart, now tangled in soiled sheets. Because what I aim is far from sharing a bed with one who can't bare to share a dinner table, which is where we scrabble only an hour later. My mother would call this a date inside-out.  My father would pulse with stress and doubt if he only knew the matters of my yellowed heart.

Because it's not weird, though, it's clearly not right, I say on our post-coital last date. Because I don't think it insane that forever start with one night.  It's inevitable fact.  It's fucked and my heart, I'm sorry I put you positions beheld uncanny.  That I open you up and pour into some dude. Tell you no worries, that this is just our new stew -- half mixed with a strangers, but no worries, he's nice arms and a trusted voice.  No worries, this is the one. Yes, again.  But no worries.  Just pump in rhythms enthusiastic.  So that his heart might fall in rhythm with ours and we might find some rhythm anew.

And my heart just goes along with this naivety.  Because my heart is as loyal as an elder dog and I don't want to do this again, but my heart, it is as thick as a Vegas fog.

And I understand that I'm likely losing the reader, you. But let me state: my heart is post-genuine, like a photo taken of the self, arms outstretched, grin askew, no need to admit the camp of what I do.  

And my heart is a piece of food, too large to feed even the hungriest of the population before it spoils and goes to waste.  There is a transient nature to it's texture, it's taste.

My heart, where I keep ideas that have passed before spoken, who copes as a sort of art.  It's a quite performance, it's got many a stop, many a start.

And my mind, despite all it knows, still manages to see the possibility of love in handsomeness and my heart is growing less convinced.  But my mind thinks it may well have found a connection to the tailor of a suit, the trim of the hair, the thickness of a beard, with a future to be built.  A farm for two, and a studio for one where I go to make work of you. Together at night we'll drink soup that you've stewed and we'll laugh quietly and inhale the night as two, hands held, love true.

There goes my heart again, less convinced, sewn into untidy furrows, seeded into some story of two. I do, I do, I do.  It pumps and pulses.  I do, I do, I do.  My heart, an eggplant heavy on the vine, sure to pull itself loose. 

Family of The Mountain

Few bands will aspire to make music that rivals the mountains. More often, they will turn inside themselves or seek out inspiration in their for-bearers. To younger bands the mountains are unwieldy: loud and silent at once, weighty yet hollow. Legions of young musicians have gawked at the beauty of the mountains but  to write music that attempts to compare is to risk falling short and seeming even more like children.  

Every so often new mountaineers emerge. Toting their style as as 'heavy mellow,' these musicians began with a rumble and have continued to climb through lightening and snow with their unique arrangements, stark vocals, and honest words. Whether by accident or out of some brazen audacity, Family Band has taken to the foothills and is making music that rivals the peaks.  

Just as tribal elders perform songs as initiation rites, healing ceremonies, and hunting rituals, when vocalist Kim Krans begins a song her voice demands lucid attention from the listener. She has many things to tell you. What she imparts are musical yarns that warn of the impending winters, of skies that stand still, and of dreams that die in the hills. 

Rhythmically woven with guitar which is as ethereal as it is metallic, Family Band's repertoire draws upon the literal experience living among the mountains. Krans met her husband, guitarist Jonny Olson, in the Catskill Mountains of Northern New York State in 2005.  The duo were introduced at a yearly gathering of fellow musicians and artists on a mountain farm where guests were invited to sleep in an open field surrounded by thick forests.  They first spoke in those woods, slept in that field, and eventually married only to find a plot of land on the opposite side of that mountain. They return each summer, continuing to build and adorn their hand-built cabin home.

I return to the field

and the shapes realign

I will wait for you there

you're an old friend of mine

Lay beside me, the nights are ablaze

and all you couldn't find in the brightness of the day.

What has come of the past five years perched on a hillside is a body of work that seems never short of inspiration.  From their porch, one can see storms that drop over the ridge and into the valley. There are hawks which circle and swoop to their prey.  There are stone walls built by families of centuries past and ponds attributed to melting snow-caps.  To be a guest of Family Band is to be invited to sleep on the side of their mountain and to work their land beside them.  For listeners, Family Band's first LP entitled 'Miller Path' offers a musical depiction of the same raw forces of nature that brought this duo together.  On the lighter side of these songs, one can hear a tenderness that only happens when the musicians share a home, a vision, and a life together.  There is love, there are trees, but just as nature and love are unpredictable and sometimes frightening, their songs grow darker, heavier and eventually rain.  

There's no sound here

There's beauty that could break you

And through the years your jealousy will kill you

Get off the porch, I want to see that moon light you.

What comes of music that is as broad and bold as a storm?  On Family Band's later released EP Cold Songs, the band finds a patter that invites the listener to lean in to the fire.  The lyrics are written to be remembered, repeated, even bellowed.  As their momentum builds and Family Band circles the country, warming audiences for acts like WarPaint and Phosphorescent, one can only imagine the broadening of their capacity.  

For the wild heart, music like this gives authority. Listening gives way to involvement in the band's story, in their methodology of living -- one that knows a sure route to the peak and plays the elements as they come.  

To Build An Old House

To build an old house

One must first confront impossibility.

It is possible, yes, to lay a new floor

With worn boards.

But the paths are undone.

The knots and warps must be laid out,

And reunited with such care and tact,

To be pinned down with elder nails

That need be pulled from older boards,

One by one, so they lift themselves

Straightly, able still to sink again without

Risk of warp or bend.

Already, I am at risk of losing you.

Because to build an old house is labor more than to build anew,

And, at times, a man will find himself without friend.

And to build an old house is to recognize

That we are all born fools –

It takes years to seize.

We don’t know what is in our eyes,

We don’t know what the house might be.

And this business of building an old house goes on.

Even after the floor is laid,

We are fools to the matter of the doors,

Until we find their elder knobs, their elder frames.

And still there are the hinges, the locks, there are the keys.

At any point you could ruin my plans with a letter.

Stop my building and planning and drafting.

Each word leading me further away from the structure.

And on the windows there are the curtains frayed

And tying the curtains there is the tatted lace.

To build an old house one must look down and say

These are my arms

They are the tools

I have carried and put to use

Weaving sometimes with yours

And before you that stiffened and swayed.

And didn’t always wait for instructions.

Didn’t wait to hear what you’d say.

They have lived in many boxes.

They have slept in many beds.

They have earned their keep –

sewn seeds, and carried heavy crates.

And this is how one knows that ones arms are to build a home.

A place to retreat.

Because there have already been nights alone.

There has already been sleet and snow.

There have already been other men

To whom you have made promises – one can’t know.

And I’d rather not feel them slackened and empty.

I’d rather use them to build a home.

Still, at your call I’d stop to build this artifice

This new but old home,

Because though I’ve worked with determination,

I’d rather not build alone.

The Bluff

It is December, early morning,

As I stand on the shore of a New Year,

Looking out at fog-bound water,

The city I live in, the land as I have known it,

All veiled behind frost and vapor.

Certainty is a funny thing,

It is ours to find -- emphatically,

And I have found it, on a bluff,

Overlooking the train yards and highways,

And fog-bound everything.

This early hour, this air – made heavy by water,

The thinly-veiled city,

It is, perhaps, not the rarest combination.

And I have suspected that this is

Where my own quiet certainty sat in waiting.

Certainty is a funny thing,

It is string,

Waiting to be clewed by enduring fingers, by patient hands.

I am sheepish to think of mornings past when I have slept,

Knowing full well that the habit of my ways had turned.

Seeking quiet behind the curtains,

Even as the days, tapered by the season,

Went on without my waking, without my seeking

The place where certainty was waiting.

I have tried to keep journals,

I have tried to keep record,

But opted instead for the empty page and the rhythm of my pace,

Over the tired clutching of pens and the nervous hiding of diaries.

And I may have never been in love,

Because, like certainty,

It is an elected place to which we must venture.

And I have been busied by the habit of my ways -- 

To work hard and sleep late,
To avoid the early morning,

The fog-bound water and the certainty that I am ready.

Bird Watching

Lyric Essay published in Death Magazine: A magazine for the enthusiast and non-enthusiast alike.

My mother has become a bit of a delicate bird.  Sitting outside a coffee shop in Brooklyn last Spring, I took a call from her in which she benignly suggested I come home for the weekend with some drugs so that, together, we could sit in the woods and I might help her die.  It seemed she reached some sort of imbalance.  This was, she decided, the best thing to do. Birds as creatures are inherently delicate. 

I reacted calmly and took the stance to which I’ve grown accustomed; I defend the act of living.  I told her then, one is not supposed invite one’s child home for a picnic with death.  It was just inappropriate.  It wasn’t just an invitation, she clarified.  She was asking for my permission.  She wanted to know that I’d be okay.  My mother wanted my blessing.  In defense of living, I told her that my permission would not be granted.  I reassured her that we would find her balance again.  I needed my mother, the delicate bird, to live and I would watch her do it.

Birds are innately delicate as their bodies present a housing problem.  Immediately after birds hatch parasites invade, striving to survive on the tiny heart that beats within the creature.  Fleas, flies, ticks and mites all burrow within the bird’s feathers. Internal worms, flukes, microscopic protozoa, fungi and countless forms of bacteria bounce and surge through the bird’s system.  If the balance is upset the parasites take over bringing death to the host.  Miraculously, all living birds manage to keep these parasites in balance.  Their systems are accustomed to hosting the imminence of death.

Somewhat miraculously, my mother made it to fifty-five before she reached her present imbalance.  I know that my life, at least, was enough to keep hers going. My life reminds her that her marriage was successful for twenty years. She had another son and a career. But soon after her divorce from my father, the balance began to shift and death became an option.  I moved to Brooklyn.  She had only a few friends.  She left her career.  She found herself alone, an alcoholic, alternately frantic and somnambulant. Bipolar was the clinical diagnosis.

In defense of living, I sat outside that coffee shop in Brooklyn and talked it out with her.  I explained that ordinary people think of death as a swift stroke of fate.  One doesn’t ordinarily decide upon it, welcome it, and speak of it on a Sunday afternoon phone call with one’s child.  At this line my voice cracked just a little.  I was illustrating, perhaps for the two of us, the contrast between what should be and what was now playing out.  A child should not have to take this sort of phone call, I said.

The problem was I completely understood her perspective.  In defense of living, I couldn’t let her know this, not entirely.  But I do understand her exactly.  The living world swarms with animals that, because of their size, can live inside or on the surface of a host, a bird for instance.  The very word “parasite” means “one who eats beside another.”  Although most laymen, and even some biologists, look upon parasites with repugnance, the reality of them cannot be disputed. That is to say, they are always there.  They wait for an imbalance on the side of death.  I couldn’t let her know that her request acknowledged my assessment of reality.  Those not going about in constant awareness of death are the fortunate.

For my mother the parasites of life showed themselves more and more.  Her co-workers had complained about her erratic and boisterous behavior in the office.   My brother grew concerned that she was too depressed to be capable of occasionally looking after his children.  When I’d visit I’d harp at her lack of housekeeping.  Her messes piled up around her.  Her bills might go unpaid.  It didn’t take this phone call for me to realize why she had decided upon death.  Keeping the parasites at bay could be fucking exhausting.

Still, where I don’t agree with her is that she sees herself, her body, as inherently flawed and unable to find a balance in favor of living.  The diagnoses of bipolarity became her uncomfortable perch, a telephone wire.   Death meant easily falling to the street below, and always an option. Eventually, at the risk of losing her job, she was persuaded towards finding a medication to correct the imbalance. 

My mother saw a psychotherapist and began ingesting a regular dose of Ziprasidone.  The pharmaceutical company that markets Ziprasidone calls the drug Geodon, hoping to bring to mind the phrase down (don) to earth (geo) referring to the goals of the medication.  The goal was to bring my mother off the telephone wire and to restore her balance.

A bird’s nerve and muscle tissue, the lungs, glands and digestive systems are all habitats for at least one kind of parasite.  So delicate are their adaptations that certain kinds of lice inhabit the feathers on the head of the bird, while completely different kinds inhabit the flight feathers.  Likewise, bipolar disorders vary among patients.  The imbalance of any given patient is less obvious than a louse beneath a wing.  There are endless mood disorders defined by the presence of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood.  There is no clear consensus as to how many types of bipolar disorder exist.

And so with Geodon, we – my mother’s therapist and I, who had become a bird watching duo, kept a close watch and hoped to bring her down to the street, to reinstate her capabilities in flight.  The trouble with pharmaceuticals which address mental imbalances are the side effects which can disrupt the balance further.  Geodon is known to cause activation into mania in some bipolar patients.  At the time I heard my mother’s call, as I sat outside that coffee shop in Brooklyn, the Geodon had begun to take a disproportionate effect.  The drug had acted not as a harmonizing additive to the parasitic imbalance, but instead as a sort of poisoned seed that weakened her system. My mother was considering death with shocking ease.  Our conversation was lucid and clear. She had opted for death and I was forced to unwaveringly defend life.

I only learned about the physical process of Geodon after I took my mother’s call.  It is somewhat confusing as it affects both the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex of the brain.  By affecting the basal ganglia the prefrontal cortex does what is called identity change. This is a process in which enzymes are switched from one section of the brain to another.  In short, it attempts to change the makeup of the species.  It tries to convert the bird from one who sits on the telephone pole and considers falling to the street to one that flies – a depressed and out of place penguin to a finch or swallow. 

Ornithology, the study of birds, was once considered a mere hobby.  Birds are pretty little things.  But the science of ornithology has evolved to complex studies of evolution, definition of species and behaviors which allow certain species to thrive.  Parasitology as a biological discipline is not determined by the organism or environment in question, but by their way of life. 

I began to watch my mother and the parasites that she housed with closer observation – less the way things should be versus the way they were playing out, and closer attention to the sound of her calls.  I asked her what she’d done that day.  What had she eaten?  Who had she spoken to?  What was she reading?   I listened.  Bird watching most often involves a significant auditory component.  Many species are more easily detected and identified by ear than by eye.

Anyone can point out a louse beneath the wing of a swallow.  But there are other cases with subtle shadings in the relationships between parasites and their hosts.  Certain animals – such as the protozoa which cause bird malaria – must live as parasites throughout their entire lives and cannot exist apart from their hosts. 

But others, notably ticks and mosquitoes, are usually only parasitic at single stages in their lives and spend most of their time in a free state.  Some parasites are fully capable of living their lives as free animals.  By dust bathing and preening, the host holds down their numbers on the feathers and skin.  And with a correct diet, special blood cells and antibodies fight to prevent overcrowding in the lungs, liver, trachea, and blood.  Death can be present for the living without surpassing. 

And so, rather than attempt to eliminate the presence of death in my mother’s life, I, the bird watcher, would suggest a change of habitat.  In the months after her invitation to a bird watching picnic with an arsenic dessert, we moved her into a new home, weaned her off of Geodon, found her a new job, and changed her diet. 

In some cases birds and their parasites live together largely oblivious of each other.  That is to say, we needn’t constantly be aware of death.  Some scientists believe that neutral relationships began originally as parasitic but evolved into truces.  My mother’s, and therein my own, relationship with death has largely taken the route of the successful parasite and bird relationship.  The presence of the parasite is inevitable.  The ideal parasite does not bring about immediate death; if allowed to live out its life, the bird will furnish offspring for future generations of parasites.  We must live for the life of others.

What I didn’t let on as I stood outside the coffee shop in Brooklyn was that I needed her to live so I might do the same.   Though calm and quiet in tone, and having taken on the role of a birdwatcher rather than a bird, I know too well this taking side with death.   I needed my mother to provide an example for me, her offspring.  I needed her to evolve, to cope with her parasites, so that future generations might be better able to do the same.  We must live to die. 

Some academic studies of bird watching liken the practice to a belief in the supernatural.  Bird watchers will often proclaim the experience has anxiety-buffering effects.  Just as a belief in a supernatural higher power increases in response to the idea of death, bird watching is a place some seek solace and calm, a place to distance themselves from the imminence of death.  I’ve been closely watching my mother, the delicate bird, for the last ten years.  And like any mother/son relationship, she is where I go to seek solace, where I go to beat off my own parasites, to fend off the imminence of death in my own life.  We all need reasons to live and mine is bird watching.

Fawn

There is a collection of poems about my mother

 in a bottle -- They had need to be rolled.
They wouldn't otherwise fit.

Some ladies kinden with age, some wilt.

There is an actress who made it from the silent screen to the stage.
She was twenty-six then. Now she is  ninety-eight. 

There are writers who might never read another's page.

There are men who will always be late.

There is a box -- a collection of suggestions for my father. 

He needn’t worry as I will never send it off.  

Though, and he should know -- 

They aren’t in the cruel tone he might suppose, 

But soft examples, 

Studies I’ve been conducting.

Some couples find it easier after they tear.  

Togetherness can be the greatest chore.

Some men’s eyes lighten after fifty-four.

There are hunters who have put down their guns.  

I am not the only son.

There are the papers I wrote in college, marked up in red.

In the red you can read the notes from my teachers --
that I sometimes get lost in my own language. 

That I sometimes sound contrived.

I've the mind to write and remind

them that I was only twenty-five.

A Poster for Alameda at Mississippi Studios

House-Shaped Island

Genre: Lyric Essay based on the experience of Owen Collin Matthews

I am digging my own grave. Not metaphorically. I am using a shovel to dig a hole that I will be buried in. This is where I will be buried if the man who is holding a gun above me decides that after this digging that, after he watches me dig, he will shoot me. This is where my body will fall and be buried. This is where I will die and find rest. I am buggered and want to rest. All this digging.

No, I think. I am not ready for resting, I am not prepared.

And at this moment, I decide – I will not die. Something will click within me and I will live. I keep shoveling but know suddenly that I will live, not how, just that I will. And with that thought I begin to calm and take note of my surreal train of thought. Only one of the two men above me holds a gun. We are on a small mangrove island no bigger than a house. The two men, brothers, took me here by boat. The mangrove is sort of pear shaped and just off the Ephraim Island. I wonder if the brother’s had seen it before, perhaps while cruising along the coast and thought to themselves, ‘perfect place to force a man to dig his own grave.’ Fucking bogans.

I’m digging with a broken shovel. The spade is loose and keeps shifting to the left as I sink it into the sand. I keep sinking it and sinking it, and think to myself that the island is less pear-shaped, but more house-shaped. The hole, now deep enough for me to stand in, is at the bottom left of the house-shaped island. I imagine the tapered top shore of the island as the roof of the house. The hole I’m digging is an oddly shaped window somewhere between the first and second floor of that house.

I keep digging. I will get out of this. I’m sure of it. Something will click and I will get out of it. My right hand is starting to blister. I also notice that the hole I’m digging, the oddly shaped window, is sort of spiraling in depth. I realize that this is to the fault of the broken shovel. The spade shifting to the left makes each sink of the shovel slightly slanted. For some reason I’m suddenly bothered by the lack of symmetry in this situation.

The men above me, the brothers, are standing awkwardly above the slanted, spiraling hole, one holding a gun to the back of my head, one sort of pacing and panting on the other side. There should be someone else in this hole with me – just to even things out. I imagine my best mate Diego behind me, digging in the same hole. I imagine the pacing brother has a gun on him as well. My confidence grows at this thought. Diego and I will survive. Something will click.

Diego must have decided the same, because we start listening. We listen to the sound of our prospective killers separately as they mutter back and forth and occasionally curse downwards, ‘keep digging you pair of fuck muppets.’ And we both hear it. We hear, for the first time, that these are not brave men. They are cowards to their own fault. They are not sure. They are not convinced that we will actually be buried in this hole.

‘Fuck. Get the fuck out here.’ I turn and heave myself out of the hole. Diego does the same. The blister on my right hand is bleeding. I am bleeding from the mouth where the one of the brothers has kicked me and from the head where the other swung and sunk a baseball bat. I stand and sort of smile at the one with the gun. He doesn’t like my pink frothy smile and so he raises the gun to my head. He tilts his head. His chin to one side, his eyes flaring, teeth grinding. I’m still convinced he’s a coward and I’m still waiting for something to click, the something that will get us out of this.

His gun is pressed between my eyes, not in the dead center, sort of high on my left brow. Nothing they do is symmetrical, I think. ‘Goodnight you fucking cunt,’ he says and pulls the trigger.

Click.

The gun doesn’t go off. ‘You must have been kissed on the dick by an angel.’ I fall to my knees. I make sure to land square on, finally adding some symmetry to the occasion. Diego falls beside me. I put my hands out, palms up in front of me, feeling the level, evenness of my position. I look to my right hand and see the bleeding blister; I look at my left hand where there is no blister. Not symmetrical, but I’ll take it. And just then, the other brother pulls a gun from his side and points it at my left hand, pulls the trigger, and sinks a bullet right through it. Finally. I throw my hands together to hold the wound. The blood from my left hand mixes with my right. Finally, some symmetry.

They pull me by my feet, throw me in their boat and pull away from the roof-shaped shore of the house-shaped mangrove island. I look up from where I am slumped over the inflated boat. In the night light I can barely see my window-shaped hole, just a small mound of dirt beside it. I imagine the wake from the boat as a small smokestack coming from the chimney of the house-shaped island. I look beside me and show my frothy, pink-smile to Diego. He smiles back. We will get out of this.

Untitled (Apocalypse Poem)

It seems the greatest shame -- that this is the hour of clearest thoughts, that I might have to spend this ghastly hour straining for words in hindsight and when I am only just now truly settled. It seems a great shame, all those moments of naive rage were minus our newest parts and less the things that might have changed and made us have this heart to heart. Today is the apocalypse.

And so I will remember.

This has been one great practice. And this will be our great reward as we have been among temperamental times. We are the honored few to witness the final days and now I'm writing with something I'd like to say.

                                                               This poem will be my final matter, between the two of us, I mean -- albeit words I am forgetting. See there are things worth forgetting and the things we've mistaken for.  I was yours, and later it seemed what a pity -- but I was yours and though untaken by another right now, and though I am still not yours, I am ready for this finale as it comes.  I'm writing to let you know I am ready.

On this day that is of great end-- I now not think of you as my friend, nor foe, nor love that never was or will,

But I will ask: are your boots worn and dusty or on the rack and are you fretting?

Are those palms warm and sweating or are they cold and cornered by the timing?

I only wish these were not my final questions -- as I see them unimportant. I stand now in my home an honest man. But they might have been the questions among the years I was unsettled, between months I lived self-obsessed and bland.

And then experience reminds me -- that you too might well be ready, that just because I'm settled in this end doesn't mean the opposite of you.

And so my final question is: what is it we've both accrued?

An ever was, an opposite, a near apart, or perhaps -- a case in which we might both see that we were only breaking in our hearts.  I'd like for us to retrospectively agree.

And if I had one question that I was still allowed to ask, because today is the end of all things hypothetical, it’d be that you not bury me in a shoulder I’ve only known to be cold.

 I know you can do this, like I know that this is the apocalypse.

You There Beside Me

Installation at Hearth, A Community for Contemporary Art and Sustainable Living.

A Collaboration with Quiet Life

I've been doing a bit of illustration work with Quiet Life -- a sweet group of fellows from back East who play exactly my brand of folk rock / Americana / indie music. The collaboration has been a terrific way for me to ease in to making art in Oregon being that front-man Sean Spellman and I have known each other since we studied together in New York six years ago. We've have since taken to a similar meandering path across America, living in California, and settling down in the same neighborhood in Portland. I share a house with Quiet Life's drummer, Ryan Spellman (Sean's younger brother) and lead guitarist, Craig Rupert. Most nights I sit and draw in the front window of our comfortable little bungalow in Beaumont while they rehearse in our basement. This weekend we're excited to collaborate on a video and album cover for the title track off Quiet Life's latest and yet to be released record, Big Green. The boys brought in Ryan McMackin of the Seattle-based band Widower to do the technical direction while I'll be covering the art direction. Stay tuned for the the video and more exciting things from this collaboration.

Inks and Water Colors

Of the containers one keeps.

(click image to enlarge)

Where I've Been Sitting

I've been planning and carefully choosing

the place where I sit.

*

There is precision of movement and in positioning of things.

*

As one narrows one's perspective

to one more suited for the long term.

Arcadian Spheres

14th Street Gold

Genre: Lyric Essay

I found a copy of “14th Street Gold” in the hallway of my loft building. It was in a box of things to the left of the freight elevator. Because I can never pass free books without at least reading the back cover, I stopped and examined the books. “The War of Art,” I took and have yet to read because I’m afraid I’ll find a battle I didn’t know was there. “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters” is sitting on my desk right now. I think I took it because I thought it would make me laugh when I, or perhaps guests to my home, might later see it on the coffee table. I have never truly laughed at its sight, but the memory of anticipating laugher is something enough to keep it. And then there is “14th Street Gold.” I took it because there was no back cover to read. There is only a cardstock covering with a child’s illustration of a mermaid and the title “14th Street Gold” written in a Microsoft Word font. The letters have festive curls in the ‘S’ and ‘G’ and ‘o.’ I didn’t open the book for two weeks after finding in my hallway.

A few days before this, walking down Grattan Street approaching Morgan Avenue, I heard a few scuffed-steps behind me, observed a shadow in the gold streetlight, and felt a soft-knuckled fist land on the right side of my face. I fell forward with the blow. It was late, I was tired, and I turned and looked in the face of the owner of the fist.

“Can you describe his appearance?” He was taller than me. “Please use his name.” Kenneth Wallace. Kenneth, the first of the boys to throw his fist into my head; he was taller than me. His face was expressionless. When I turned and saw his face, it was expressionless, stunned, as though he couldn’t believe he’d done it. He couldn’t believe he punched me in the head. But he did, and he choked back that sentiment and did it again.

 “You don’t have to tell all this to the grand jury. When you testify you can tell them the skeleton of the story, just the straightforward version. For instance, when I ask what he looks like, you’ll answer: He was a tall, heavy-set Hispanic male, approximately 225 pounds.” He was a tall, heavy-set Hispanic male, approximately 225 pounds – he couldn’t believe he punched me in the head, but he did it again.

He did it several times, and I kept looking up at him. And then there were the others.

It is the following week and my face has taken on Kenneth’s same expressionless veil. It is the week of my 24th birthday and still slightly expressionless, I lay in bed. I am nursing my headache with soft music. I run my fingers across the spines of books I have yet to read. I notice the thin spine of “14th Street Gold” and open the cardstock book with the crude illustration of a mermaid on the cover. I read inside and find that the illustration of the mermaid on the cover was not done by a child but drawn by “Retired Adults from the 14th Street Y.” Literally, quite a few retired adults drew the mermaid on the cover. It's an exquisite corpse drawing.  The entire book is made up of short writings and several drawings of this nature. Line drawings with smudged creases in the photocopies where the paper had been folded. Someone, a retired adult, began with the bottom – in the case of the cover, a fishes tail. The paper was passed on to another retired adult and continued, the torso, the head. The mermaid drawing made the cover; the others are accompanied by short pieces of writing.

“How many others?” Four, I think. Four, on bicycles. “Did you later learn the names of these individuals?” I tried not to look at the jurors, but they were so close to me. They were so close that to look at them was both impossible and inevitable. I glanced downward and then up in their direction. They were overwhelmingly Hispanic and female, or that’s what I saw – just the skeleton of their stories. “Mr. Ames, did you later learn the names of any of the other four men on bicycles?” I did. “Please state their names.” Just one, Stephen Delgado. “Please describe Stephen Delgado for the jury.” He was, he is… he’s a small framed Hispanic male, approximately 125 pounds. “And what was Stephen Delgado doing while Kenneth Wallace continued to punch you in the head?” He stood over me, he looked down and sneered. His voice was angry, confident for his build. I’m going to shoot you now. I’m going to kill you. You’re going to die now.

I lay in bed and flip through the pages of “14th Street Gold” and start reading a poem by Myra K. Baum. I note to myself that the name does not sound like a any sort of famous writer. Or at least not the name of a writer whose poems I have read before. It sounds like the name of a retired adult who is about to try and write a poem. The poem is called “Home.”

Edge of the road
Where I live now
Is a narrow place
Between
All Gone Life
And One Not Yet Born

I scan her words. Her choice of no punctuation, of capitalization. I imagine, stupidly, her gray hair, her aged hands, her sad eyes.

Life’s companion
Absent
Daily airings
Of major and minor
Absent

Broadening of self
Through another’s love
Absent

Slipping over the Edge
Retreating, recovering
Again and again
Growing the unborn
New Life

An elderly, Caucasian female, approximately 60 years old. A retired adult. I’ve been doing this for the past days since my testimony. I spent eight hours in the courthouse that day. I had my birthday party the following evening. My friends, Annie and Josh, whose house I had just left before I came to know the fists of Kenneth Wallace, the confident voice of Stephen Delgado, the shadows of the men who stood over me as Kenneth punched, and Stephen yelled… Yes, my friends, Annie and Josh; they came to my birthday party. They were sweet and kind and hugged me and said they were so sorry. I called Annie’s phone as I laid in the street that night, trying to recover myself, breathing heavily into the phone. She was alarmed, asked if they went towards her house, she stayed calm. A young, red-haired, Caucasian female of short-stature, approximately calm and sweet. Josh understood the conversation as he laid in the bed beside her. He ran to the street. They had indeed gone towards Annie’s street ad were riding on their bikes, said ‘we fucked that white kid up.’ And Josh, a tan-skinned Hispanic male, approximately five-foot-nine, 165 pounds, saw them, couldn’t believe what they had done, choked back his urge to do the same, and called the police.

I flip the page and see more four-pieced creatures, creased and awkwardly proportioned. Next to Myra K. Baum’s poem is an illustration of a man with one closed eye, one opened. He has one hand to the side, as though holding a gun. An small, opened umbrella is at the tip of his index finger. Beyond this is a story by Katy Morgan. Katy Morgan, who wanted (approximately) to be a beatnik and lived with a girlfriend on Greenwich Avenue in the 1950’s. “(We took turns sleeping on the couch… there was no bed.)” She continues…

“We sat around in semi-subterranean rooms listening to would-be poets recite their work, and snapping our fingers in appreciation. We drank what passed for espresso by candlelight (once I happened to glance into the kitchen at the moment when the waiter was spooning Medalglia d’Oro instant espresso into the little cups), and when a gypsy (or so she called herself) offered to tell our fortunes, we went for it. The gypsy inspected my palm, consulted her Tarot cards, and told me with absolute conviction that I was going to get married the next day.”

As I sat in the courthouse I wished I had brought a friend, a book, music to listen to. I spent about an hour waiting for the Assistant District Attorney to speak with me after she brought me to a bench where I would sit for the better part of the day. Across from the bench there were three vending machines. Beside me there was a teenage boy with his father. I listened to their conversation and learned that the boy had his gold necklace and pendant stolen right off his neck while at school. A young Hispanic male wearing glasses, approximately sixteen and not wearing a gold necklace and pendant. Angry, but very cooperative.

As I flip onward, I stop at another four-pieced person. This one has legs like a kangaroo. The torso was drawn, somewhat defiantly, to look like a woman in a flowing blouse. The individual responsible for drawing the head did not draw a thing. There is no head, but beyond this, there is what looks like a floppy hat. Beside this drawing Muriel Gray starts a paragraph long piece entitled “My Greatest Fear.” She writes, “The proper curse for your enemies would be to wish that they are permanently engaged in a lawsuit. In today’s climate of endless litigation that is my greatest fear. Raised to be terminally polite, I have given up and retreated to safety…”

I found The Post sitting next to me after I had dosed off on the bench for just a minute. I flipped through the stories and came to the NYPD Blotter. Momentarily, vanity flushed my swollen face and I looked to see if the story was there, the one about the five young men and me. It is not. Only two of the five males were caught and it might not look good to publish or isn’t news worthy since no one died. Strangely and excitingly, there was a story about a 16 year old that was assaulted in his high school and had his gold pendant stolen. I looked up but the boy and his father are gone and my excitement wanes.

The Assistant District Attorney came to speak to me every hour. “You won’t have to see either of them today. They’re in jail, they won’t testify until Monday.” By Monday, I think, the bruises might be gone. The swelling will go down. My birthday will be over. This will all be over. I will find an expression on my face. Kenneth Wallace will decline to speak to the same jurors. Stephen Wallace will testify, look at those jurors, and say he never even got off his bike. I tried to imagine what his voice would sound like -- less angry, less confidant, maybe pleading.

And on Sunday night, I lay in bed and read “14th Street Gold.” The swelling has gone down, the bruises are almost entirely gone. I lay in bed and read a piece by Eileen D. Kelly called “Guilty Pleasure.” I don’t picture her silver hair, or worn hands, I just read what is plainly written on the page:

“I started reading the column several years ago. Sometimes I look at the age of the person and feel happy that I’m older than the deceased, and I’m still here. I like it when they give a cause of death, so I can say, ‘Well, I don’t have that!’ I don’t like it when it says, ‘unknown cause,’ since I might have that. Other times I see where a woman has died, leaving a husband, someone about my age. Then I’m tempted to find out where he lives and bring him a casserole. I could then get to know him and eventually go out with him. I never do it though, its jut a fantasy. Mostly I’m just glad to see that none of my family or friends are listed there, nor am I. Sometimes I think of writing to the Editor to thank him for sparing me, one more day. But I never do.”

Containing Arcadia