Putah Creek

The thing that I had become. The emptiness. life was a hammer.I was tied in knots, like a broken rope that you had to use anyway. There were coffee cups without handles, and doors with bad locks. Meals from a hot plate. I rode on city buses, and I was surrounded by people with damaged, shriveled souls. If there was flesh to eat, I ate it. I said nothing, smoked marijuana, read Yeats from a fifty cent thrift store book, and walked the streets late at night. Baltimore. Dallas. Austin. New orleans. San Francisco. It didn't matter. I knew you were never coming back, and thank god, you never did. 

This isn't how you repair broken things. 

This is how you keep track of your discoveries. The hummingbird that came so very close. The time that the clouds parted just enough to let a long spotlight from the sun beam down on the bent and stained world. Those embraces that so long ago set you free. This is the clock keeping time so that you don't have to. This is your mother when her crying was finally over.  Rules? Those are for the people who need them. Come now, let the broken things just lie there on the table with the forgotten bills. Someone else can fix the damn things, if they wish. This is the tomorrow that you always knew would finally arrive.

Your mind is tuned to a radio station in hell. 

Here on the earth, people are praying for those things that feed their greed. Their teeth have been sharpened to points, and they tear the bloody flesh from the bones with ease. Here, every day is the sabbath, and the priests swallow the sounds from the birds until silence fills the trees. Every family must give a male child to the priesthood, or offer their own bodies for dinner. People in hell want ice water. It is hard to sleep as the radio plays all night, and the static covers you like a blanket that is too heavy. You toss and turn. You sweat. The damn blanket is itchy. 

I dream of the people who have forgotten me in the way that roses forget those days without water. 

Blood splashes on my feet as I walk, but I walk anyway. This dream is the river of death. This dream is the one mountain that Hannibal could not cross with his elephants. There is a child in the dream, a young girl, and she takes me in her arms when she greets me, as if we were family. The people who have forgotten me are fewer than I had believed, and the ones that remain are like chunky fingers on the hand of a brute. They have closed into a fist. The dream is over now, and I want to talk to someone, but there is no one, so I am writing this down for you. Hannibal has gone away, and so must I. So must we all.