Labyrinths of Least Resistance

I don't do lunch. Corrupt artifact of late capitalism.

My girlfriend Jennifer rushed in to tell me--I was studying--that she'd talked to them, meaning him of course, the one we looked away from all the time, the one staring at us from his driveway, always standing there, a driveway to him like a beach, only you stood there. Staring.

On soft sand by the sea's edge a little boy walked leaving no footprints.

We were two somber boys hunched in our coats, grim winter settling in.

The pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and requisitioned Dad's white coat.

The dystopianist destroyed the world again that morning, before making any phone calls or checking his mail, before even breakfast.

On Etheria the snow is warm and there are violet moons and each inhabitant is cradled in the velvet webbing of the others' minds.

It's Halloween and she's found her way up into this old hotel over Geary, Tenderloin's cannibal fringe down one side and the gray shells of big stores off the other...

The tree grows heavy with owls.

Yes, Dad, she says, studying her daughter with a worried look in her eyes, the weird world rolls on.

They will feel the turn in the wind. They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the sky. They fly toward grace.

But I still hear them walking in the trees; not speaking. Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to

In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

He made a face and took a slow step backward. On November 12 the world ended by fire.

She moved with a kind of challenge, as though flaunting her hips to the masculine gender and letting them know she was the kind of woman they had to fight for.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

He fell for an eighteen year old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going.