A Rambling Mann

The rift between apology and eulogy, how many carry the weight.

watch your feet float, shoes of wood

No words, at a loss, lost, but good.

Curtains, the drapes, shrouded

Thirst, no drinks, mouths, crowded.

The empty is flooded,

Yoused up identity, honesty, hooded.

Clouds stormed from, lightening looms

Echoes, bare walls, for battering rooms.

Dragged through a sentence, serving spare time

escape ladder, every latter to climb.

Ever not bettered, each letter a lie,

The feeling of being eaten by an infestation of guilt, or remorse, isn’t limited to being in the wrong. Righteousness has it’s own feast beneath the flesh, those that relish in it’s spoils are fed, those who topple and stumble into it’s limelight are devoured, gutted. We cannot know where every road leads, we can only hope to navigate each to the best of our abilities. To reach a destination that gives more than was take en route. And every route takes. It is impossible to guard the feelings of the offended, any more than it is the feelings of the offendor. 

A pitfall of empathy hidden beneath a tarp of responsibility is unaccepted guilt. The guilt that belongs without, but is taken within when no other party will swallow it. Thus starts the pinwheel of spiraling dread, ticking by the tines of acceptance and love, flying by the needles of respect and responsibility, integrity isn’t even on the board. Here we are tied to a table while deflected knives find our bellies. They never find the true culprit, too shielded in anger and their own form of righteousness, any blade melted into molten metal and kicked in the direction of whomst ever is nearest its cut. 

Belly wounds cut deep, especially those self-inflicted by scenarios and possibilities. “If only” the rallying cry of those holding their guts in place with honor no award is given for. Imaginary credence, written on a cold wind peppered with sharp howls. And here we all die for the sins of bearing witness. On this mountaintop is a single stone upon which no name will ever appear, and yet, the number of souls laid to rest cannot be counted by any number, and cannot be the home of any one person.

This place is neither holy, nor revered, it is simply a totem to a religion abandoned long ago by those with ambition and fortitude. It is a stone upon which every shined boot took its first step, on the back of the honorable, pressed to the roots of a long dead oak, itself too stubborn to fall. Many have tried to carry those they love safely from this place, only to sink further into its trap. They warn their children of this tomb, but instill the same map within them that leads to its entrance. 

Must there be boots and backs? Is there a gut sensitive and true yet impenetrable to the shift of guilt? Deep within the core of honesty, the need to step up looms large, waiting to open like a nest of spiders and eat what lay just beyond their web. This guilt knows only hunger, to sicken and poison the bearer, the only true way to rise is in a letter.

Helicopters were the last horse. We got used to the whooping overhead just in time for the announcements. Loudspeakers telling us not to leave the house. “Stay inside, duct tape your window seals if possible, it’s the best way to keep yourselves safe. But also, don’t wait for the fire to reach you. If your house feels hotter than usual, you should probably, you know, like, leave, maybe leave a note, or whatever.” 

Zoomer common sense, try not to die, but if you do, tell people about it somehow. Leave a mark, even if it’s just your digital spirit haunting a server tenuously kept afloat by an offshore customer experience team. “I love Wichita. What’s it like in New York City? Tell me about the different kinds of pasta you can buy?” Isolation pornography, stock options that refer to items stocked on a shelf somewhere. 

Our virtual purchases pulled from their cradles by the fatigued hands of those gasping for air while they starve. They eat the atmosphere, thick with carcinomic particulates, something to chew on, but the only sustenance is death. We all feed the beast of the future, he who swallows us all, eventually.

You wouldn’t know if you were being poisoned like this. It’s so easy to assume the helicopters are there for your benefit, to protect you, to warn you, to address some unseen force encroaching on your safety. They would never dream of whipping up toxic dust into a whirlwind, thrust into our air ducts, deposited on every surface without a singular safeguard. We were dying of a gentle breeze.

Leaf blowers had been banned for months. At first no one seemed to care about air quality, covid fatigue had allowed them to ignore the odors, the cough, the phlegm of coal miners spat into trash cans in kindergarten classes. Air purifiers, air conditioners, MERV filters, they all delayed the inevitable. It would get inside. It would get inside our homes. It would get inside our cars, our pockets, our bodies. These tiny invaders would bloom there in perpetuity, embers of destruction creating satellite devastation wherever they land. And that is what created them.

The burn areas were all 20 miles away, but in every direction. No one seemed to take notice, even on windy days. Surrounded, we put in extra effort to sniff the air, allowing our lungs an added bonus dose of destruction as a measure of slow suffocation. My latest mask taunted me, hanging from an elastic strap on the drawer pull of my desk. The sun shone through the window in the door behind me, but added no warmth. Even the sun had given up on us, after so many years of being the magnet that drew droves to its core. Now, the light taunted us like a true winter, but without respite. 

Saving graces were all outside, beyond the door. So we waited, baited by the breath of fresh air in an indeterminate ahead. Sure, people took their dogs out, their babies, maybe they didn’t have time to grab a mask, it didn’t matter, they couldn’t afford the life they wanted anyway. Why delude themselves into believing there was a future when the present was so unforgiving. 

Not a one of us had chosen this world, the hole in the ozone layer plugged with a hose pumping ozone back into itself. This suicidal planet couldn’t be talked out of torching dinosaurs to drink the lactation of an animal they charred between two pieces of refined wheat. Not a single thing consumed resembled what it was. Including the dust.

Fire visited every year like in laws whose RV broke down in the driveway. We never knew when, but they’d always just show up, destroy our lives, and stay until nothing was left but ash. They took all the valuables, and left destruction and exhaustion in their wake. If you don’t have family who’ve killed someone, you can’t fathom the confusion of carrying that burden. 

I’d never started a fire, but I couldn’t stop smoking, even as the earth around me smoldered and begged me to leave the air that was left unsoiled. The live oaks that surrounded us begged me not to use the stove, the fireplace, not to burn incense to mask the smell of the flammable gas that followed my wake.

Had I never started a fire? Or had I simply fed an endless fuel reserve that built every year like a pyre sending off my own lack of accomplishment. I burnt out certainly, I couldn’t breathe without the darkness, I couldn’t relax without punishment pumping through my respiratory system. Pulling the smoke to my belly was the only way to forgive my regrets, my shortcomings. A shortened existence my apology for being born an asshole. 

There simply aren’t enough good deeds to turn it around if you start bad. It wasn’t my first aspiration, mostly I was an idiot, but like most morons before me, I leaned into ignorance and when it took from others, it didn’t matter that I got nothing out of it. I wasn’t a sociopath, I derived no joy from the failure or sabotage of those around me, and yet, my mind was always so overburdened by overthought, it was always too late for me to salvage anything. 

When it’s too late, the dying don’t even want to hear your apology. They’d rather meet eternity than summon their last semblance of energy to grant you a reprieve. It’s a final wish of ill will, sufferning, and eternal turmoil that’s indelible. And you know what? It builds.

My bioavailability for cursed looks and death bed ire extends well beyond my tolerance for pain. I store up rotten luck, and it spews from every pore as I trip and embarrass myself through eternity like foul odor turned into urine-yellow beams of stained light. My soul looks the way inner city streets smell. You don’t wash that off, you can’t.

The fire smelled better. When your baseline is panic, fear, it’s strangely reassuring when the rest of the world around you is doing the same. But as soon as they return to normal, you’re immediately missing out on a carefree existence the universe simply won’t let you taste. There’s only one way I’ve been lucky, and I couldn’t say for sure why she stuck it out so long. 

If our love was a building made strong by love, the windows were continuously being shattered onto every surface, boarded up, and refit into the sills, waiting for the next storm to send razors sharp fragments flying through the walls. This would go on for years as we got more tired, and more gray. Anger won’t let you sleep, hurt simply keeps you awake. It’s a cycle of snoozing that isn’t restful, where nightmares always know where to find you. One hug at a time, one day at a time. According to my grandfather three hugs a day was the minimum. We didn’t have a maximum in those first few years. 

We would have been fine alone, probably. Miserable, but fine. Together we struggled on opposite sides of understanding a changing world. The downfall of the government was evident for years before it became the official sponsor of NASCAR. With the Great Seal of the United States emblazoned on a rusted Chevy Lumina, a professional football team, and submarines used for international travel, we had been sold a cage we put the lock on ourselves. 

Hunger would have been inevitable had we not stocked ourselves with processed soup and zero grain spaghetti refined to canary yellow clarity. Everything we ate, whatever water we had, was an immediate test of safety, we waited for tumors to find their way into our metabolisms and grow in the most unpleasant places possible. We had become our own personal White Houses, staffed by staph, inhabited by vice, dwelling on the dread of our inevitable demise. The end was in our rearview. Collapse had always been beneath our feet. Extinction had occurred without notice and yet we stuck around to find out who was last. 

The dust would outlive us all. Tiny specs of matter strewn across the compass, only to eventually rejoin the remnants of life they had once been given eminence by. Humanity created nothing, we simply re-shaped that which existed into something convenient. We were the shortcut species, finding agency over tactile bodies eons before considering what brains could do. 

Who can say what the future holds when hands have found no other purpose than to grab. If the present is a gift, we’re all waist-deep in wrapping paper emblazoned with offensive slogans. Every day, every hour is an assault, an affront on our sensibilities, there is only trauma in truth and we are covered in festering wounds that only seem to find newer, scarier ways to seek out infection. Information has gone from an asset, to a novelty and is quickly becoming a slow death by overwhelming dread that tomorrow someone you love, someone you care about will be nominated for an award given to victims. If that’s so, we’re all winners. We’re all standing on a precipice giving an acceptance speech for complacence. “I accept this terrible existence on behalf of my own misdeeds, for the grand work I’ve done to improve the empty hole I carry with good intentions”. The road to hell isn’t a road, it’s a superhighway, a dark tunnel we don’t travel through even though we let it wrap itself around us.

On that cliff, looking out into the world, there’s only that window left open that allows us to view one scene at a time, while our waking selves sleep through a thousand frames per second. But the window is open. It’s open enough for invisible hands to grasp what we want while force feeding us whatever is beyond without asking us if we’re hungry. I’m starving for truth. I can’t eat anymore of what’s passing through the window, even though I know if I stop eating, I’ll forget who I am. Who I am is not who I was, and where I am has no bearing on what’s ahead, but there is only forward. Behind me there is no edge, no mountain, but that flat clearing, that place where I sat and pretended the world I couldn’t touch was fine without me, it wasn’t and it passed without my intervention.

I sit behind a window that looks out into darkness through a back light, hindsight of where I’ve been to witness how the cliff crumbled before and who fell under it’s weight. If I hadn’t loved anyone who took the plunge, I may not have taken notice, but I did and I see their descent whensoever I should want to speak to them, when I need their opinions and at moments when I’m lost. I do not find their wisdom, for it is no longer there, and like realizing you’re in a dream or a nightmare, when you’re conscious of context, you aren’t really there either.

If you try to think, you interrupt yourself with intention, just now I’m attempting to dissuade a raccoon from his incessant growling, posturing and attempting to take my sovereignty by incessantly growling at me. Not because I bother him, nor am I in his way, but I’ve challenged his pride in front of his family on their evening commute to take water and eat cat food. We are being moved across the chessboard by angry raccoons, overfed animals who believe destruction and grunting is a form of communication. An invasive species of unapologetic sociopaths running amok with our fate and our belief; a belief that all human beings are capable of some form of humanity and though they prove us wrong repeatedly we continuously try to appeal to their “goodness” of which they have none or rejected in lieu of grinding up pieces of flesh to shove into their waiting mouths. They have no family beyond the camaraderie of currency, they’re related to gain and theft, upon which is the only subject they appear to agree. The only blood they share belongs to strangers, a pact of levitating culpability that lifts them just above the reach of law.

To be feral and cruel is to thrive, not to be at the top of the food chain, but to decide how it is structured and feed on the naive hope of prey that they will someday eat more than shreds of what is caste down upon them from the top of the heap, the apex of the hill, where decisions on who is fed and who is eaten are made with a wave of a hand or a grabby paw. We eat the remnants of idealists and swallow the last of their pride as we cling to the lives we are allowed to pursue. These scavengers of old ideas, they gather what is left of our love and our fervor, not to empower, but to claw at our doors and invade the last bastions of safety, to decide how much time we get to breathe and how many hours we hold our breath. Every word a gasp, sucking down hot wind that flows over the mountaintops to clear the air about who is friend and who is foe, who deserves to flourish and who deserves to be punished in order to fatten their seats. 

Within every thought is an invisible hand

waiting to grasp its own epiphany 

letting it escape, may leave you feeling cheated

but fear not, every finger needn’t touch every notion

Let the thoughts go, let them levitate and dissipate like angry clouds

For the occurrence of doubt has saved weaker folk

Frames filled with towering force

A steaming plumage of billowing past

I breathe from the caboose

the last balloon, draining the last light of sputtering stars

The sky goes mute, the music pours from a chasm

underground, the soil is angry

agitated blood, poisoned by bootprints

I’m stomping out the past, exhaling my twilight

I wake in wheeze, a wind bag

pressed to fill, a leak let run to whine

There’s plenty of hours, but time is short

I’m waiting for an ending

The sun sets every hour

Hands of an abandoned clock

clapping into the breeze

echo through a valley

Lost breaths, squandered in a fog

I saw an eruption of fossilized flux

Spewing death from a grave

Sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing and you get trapped. You tell yourself it’s a favor, a good deed, anything to keep yourself focused on why you’re there. But some of those times, other people lose their cool, forget why you’re there, how much they depend on you, and a small string of veiled insults later, you’re walking out the door. When you do this, do it like an adult; act like nothing that was said fazed you, don’t get gassed up and motored out getting trapped into a game of who’s in charge of the conversation. Just nod, state your frame of mind, what you want, and walk. When you do, you won’t feel like you’re dragging an entire operation with you; your first exhalation will release a gust of poison air that you could have swallowed, that you may have ingested otherwise.

One year, I spent Christmas Eve in a bar on 34th street. It wasn't odd, I'm a Jew and wasn't really sure what to do or where to go, but knew I wanted to be around people. I sipped a bourbon and soda water and listened to the conversations going on around me. Occasionally someone would wish me a Merry Christmas, but for the most part they left me alone. It was a run-down place, the last of the worst neighborhood dives, where they lock the doors after closing and let everyone stay and smoke cigarettes inside. What they did have was a chimney, and on that cold December day, it was snowing, just a dusting, but it was not a pleasant time to be out. Inside, a roaring fire was keeping everyone warm and besides, there was free popcorn. At about nine thirty, the door blows open and that frozen wind comes whipping through the place, everyone stops as if the jukebox record skipped, but it didn't, it kept bellowing Bing Crosby at full volume, I was once told he used to get hammered and beat his kids. Anyway, this middle-aged guy comes in, wearing a suit, a ragged winter coat, and a small boy of about nine in tow. He sits at the end of the bar and orders a drink and the kid drags himself onto the stool next to him. The bartender says, “We can't have him here, it's against the law.” Meaning the young boy, even though the man was clearly too drunk to be served. But someone shouted from the fireplace, “Aw come on Harv, it's Christmas.” So Harv makes his face as sallow as possible, looks up to the heavens and pours himself a shot of whiskey before asking the boy what he'd like. “Do you have any hot cocoa?” Harv looks at the kid and smiles, “You know, I think I've been saving some for just this sort of occasion.” The drunk man slams down his drink and bangs the empty glass on the bar. “And when you get a chance, I'll have another.” The man said snottily. Harv ignored him and went about preparing the hot chocolate from a coffee making sitting warm waiting to make a fresh pot. The water came out hot and I could see those tiny marshmallows bubble to the surface as the water filled in around them. They were still dancing in the mug when he brought it to the boy. “Thank you, barkeep.” The boy said. Harv smiled, I could swear he almost blushed, but I'd never laid eyes on him before that night and had no idea what a blush looked like on his face. The father repeated his request, more rudely, “And I said I'll have another!” Harv just looked at him for a moment, then brought a bottle onto the counter without looking at it and poured into the man's glass and walked away. The man brought it to his mouth and coughed as he took a sip, “This is peach schnapps you barbarian!” the man said. Harv smiled, “yeah well, I figured as long as the kid was being an adult, I'd give you the kid's drink.” The man spit into the glass, “I'm not paying for this.” Harv put his hands on his hips, “Nobody's asking you to buddy. And if it weren't for the kid I'd throw you the hell out.” The man pushed the glass toward the edge of the bar, “Now where have I heard that line before? You seeing my wife on the sly?” Harv was beginning to look upset, “Now that's enough buddy, have some respect, at least for the kid. It's Christmas.” The man started to turn red, “He's not MY kid! It's Christmas, it's Christmas, so what, so I'm supposed to be a better person because some fat guy might write me off his list? Well I've got news for you, the only one who's list matters, just crossed me off, and gave me my walking papers, so there ain't going to be no Christmas for this guy, get it?” Harv looked ashamed, we all felt sort of ashamed. He pulled the whiskey bottle from under the bar and poured the man a fresh glass. “Sorry buddy, this one's on me.” The man didn't say a word he just sipped at it and looked sullen. The kid sipped at his hot chocolate and looked at the drunk man next to him, “Are we going home soon dad, I want to be there when Santa comes.” The man said nothing, “Dad?” The man's head slowly swiveled and in a condescending mock, sing-songed his way through a lilting impression of his son's high-pitched voice. “Go home, nobody's stopping you.”

“But Dad, Santa Claus.”

“Dad? Who's dad? There is no Santa Claus, he's made up, we made it all up. Be as bad as you want because there aren't any presents and there ain't no Santa Claus.”

“What about the ones under the tree?”

“What tree? They're going back, they're all going back. Things are going to change around here kid, we need to make some adjustments, we can't be spending money on frivolous things. Someone has to pay the rent.” Harv glowered down on the man, “I heard drinking helps.” The man's head swiveled on Harv, “Mind your own business pal. I'm not asking you for a gift.”

“You know they pay me to stand here, I'm not always this full of good will.”

“Not much by the looks of this place.”

“Allright that's it, you're cut off.”

“One more. Just one more and then I'll go.”

“I know I'm going to regret this.” Harv pulls the bottle out and fills the glass again. The man sips slowly this time, savoring the moments before heading back into the cold. The little boy gulps at his mug of cocoa, trying to finish it quickly, “Dad, hurry, Santa Claus...” The man slams his drink down on the counter and wheels on his boy, “There is no Santa Clause, that man at the mall, he's just a creepy old man who gets his jollies dreaming about sneaking in the houses of naive children! No Santa!” The bar went silent, except for Bing Crosby of course, you could have heard ice melting in a daiquiri. But from over by the fire a man in his sixties stands and walks over to the man and the boy. “Someone told me there was no Santa once too, it changed me forever. I walked around for years telling people, like I was an authority on the fraud of Santa Clause. I tried to crush the dreams of all the kids I knew, just like mine had been.” The drunk waved his hand at the man, “Yeah, yeah, tell your story drinking old timer, I've got my own problems.”

“Until that year I saw him.” The boy who had been on the verge of tears and could hardly look at his cocoa looked up at the older man. “I was quite a few years older than you, I had fallen asleep in front of the television watching the late movie. And I was awoken by a creaking board in the floor. Now mind you, he wasn't dressed like the man at the mall, no his clothes were drab, a brown almost burlap. He didn't have a great big beard.” The man mimed having a long beard with his hand and his chin. “He looked like a pretty normal guy.” The drunk man interrupted, “Yeah, let me guess, he looked like your lousy, good-for-nothing father. Well, this lousy, good-for-nothing father can't afford to play dressup. In fact, thanks for reminding me, I'll sell the tv too.” The old man ignored the drunk. “He was almost dressed as a hobo, but less dirty. He had a sack over his shoulder tied to walking stick, and his knit cap lay sideways over his head, floppy-like. I would have thought he was a burglar, except I saw him pulling things out of his sack and placing them under our tree. I was playing possum see; pretending to be asleep in case he was a burglar or something. But you see, he wasn't, he was the real Santa Claus, not some man in a big suit and bushy beard, but a man, like your father, like Harv, here, like me. So don't you worry young man, Santa will come through, he always does for good little boys, and you seem like a good boy to me.” The drunk started wobbling on his stool, “Yeah, good boy, if he's such a good boy, why doesn't he go out and get a god-damned job leave me alone. Hell, my wife used to work, maybe everybody should get jobs to support me and I can spend the next year here with Harv.” He laid his head down on the bar. Harv slid the glass away from him, “You been to a lot of bars tonight son?” The boy looked back to Harv, “Yessir, my dad, he's not such a bad guy really. Mom says it's only when he drinks, and well, lately he drinks a lot. But he's not a bad guy.”

“Sure kid, I know, I had one just like him. He was a hell of a guy as long as we didn't talk to him.”

“He's not as bad as all that. He doesn't hurt us or anything, he just gets sad a lot. Like you said mister, someone told him once there wasn't any Santa Claus and he believed it. And now, he's like this.”

“Let that be a lesson to the rest of you drunks, don't stop believing in Santa Claus, or I'm calling in all your tabs.” The bar roared with laughs, except for the drunk, and Bing Crosby who kept on singing. “Now kid, where do you live?”

“Oh we live in the Bronx, we were supposed to catch the train, but dad got into it with a transit cop, I guess my dad knew his mother better than he should of, or something like that. But anyway, they kicked us out of the station and we didn't have money to get back in.” “You mean, your pop doesn't have any money on him?”

“Well, he's got a credit card, but I don't think that worked at the last place. It might work here though.”

“No, I very much doubt that kiddo.”

“Well, it looks like Santa is coming for your pop. What about you? What do you want? Another hot cocoa?”

“Geez, no, I can barely finish this one. I don't really know what I want. Does that make me weird?”

“Weird, nah, you're just a kid.”

“Yeah, but I think a lot of kids know what they want; bb guns, robots, action figures whatever, that kind of stuff. I just don't want any of that stuff. Or, at least, I don't know that I want it.”

“What kind of toys do you have at home?”

“The usual stuff; puzzles and legos. I don't need any more of that stuff.” A voice followed the flushing of a toilet, the man behind it was hiking up his pants and tightening his belt. “I remember being like that one Christmas. I think I was about ten, and I just didn't know what I wanted. My father asked over and over, but I kept saying the same thing, 'I don't know.' My mother warned me if I didn't ask for something I was getting nothing but clothes, including the handmade sweater my grandmother had already measured me for, man that thing was itchy, but warm, it's funny the things you miss.” The boy looked at the funny man, older, in a hawaiian shirt, holding a tropical drink with umbrellas pouring over the side. “I mean, clothes wouldn't be bad, but I have plenty of 'em. I'm not without anything.”

“Except sober supervision. Maybe we ought to call your ma. Hmm?”

“No, I don't want to upset her, she's taking care of my grandmother.”

“Okay, so who can we call?”

“I really don't know. If I had the money I could catch a taxi. We took one once, I think it was about thirty dollars.”

“Listen kid, if that's all you want for Christmas, I'm sure we could scrape together some money between these drunks and get you home safe. What you say, you bunch of souses! Let's take up a collection!” Everyone cheered, in a line, men walked up to bar and tossed dollar bills onto it, showering the kid in money, hell I tossed a tenner his way, it drifted off the counter and landed on the floor. Harv gathered it up for him and counted it, then counted it again and whistled. “Well kid, I hate to break it to ya, but there's well over fifty bucks here, looks like you're going to have to figure out how to spend the rest of it on your own.”

“I'll think of something, grandma always needs something.” “You know something, nevermind your old man, you're a swell kid!”

“Thanks, thank you all!” Then the kid hopped off the stool and started to leave. Harv looked confused, “Hey kid, don't forget your old man!”

“I won't, I'll just hail down a cab and have the driver help me get him inside. I'll be right back.” The whole bar waited, there were murmurs, but the place was pretty silent. But after fifteen minutes, the kid never came back. Harv pulled the towel from his belt and threw it down on the bar, “Should've figured that kid couldn't catch a cab this time of night on Christmas. I'll just call one and he can wait in here. Merry Christmas guys!” Harv stormed outside to get the kid. After about ten minutes of silence, Harv stormed back in, with a confused look on his face. “The kids gone, I hope nothing happened to him.” Harv went behind the bar and shook the father awake. “Hey buddy, your kid's gone, we gave him cab fare home. You might want to get back there and make sure he made it.” But the man didn't stir, “Hey buddy, you hear me? Your kid beat it back to the Bronx.” The man's head wobbled to attention and his eyes darted back and forth in consciousness, “My kid, I don't have a kid.”