We are close as strangers; I don’t know you when you laugh, or droop, or weep, or sing, or sin, or how you keep when I am gone, or where you go when I return. What stone tower, smooth and white and unadorned is this that I walk through alone?

The back of your hands,
The steel of your eyes,
The space between your breaths while you leave and then come back yourself again, but changed,
The places where you wait when I leave off and then loop back around to meet again but changed,

The fractal edges of my heart, rendered but unseen
The journeys that I make and then each one forget
The paths each pulse and impulse leave in myelin and lumen
The freight a cargo red, electric, transitional, mnemonic.
Out of these grows something sweet
Dark within, like a calf’s eye.

Seas, and skies of shining stars
Deepness grows in seeing deeper in.
Neither fathomed nor contained
Unknown, misunderstood, mislabeled, unimagined and unseen.
Each part a different part of me
Unknown, misunderstood, mislabeled, ill-used and untended,
Silence in the furthest reaches, not silent, neither unknown, nor dark at all –
Alive and feeding life with raging fire
Song that echoes in a soundless void.

In this between, where we all travel slow,
Remember all forgotten things that I still know;
Song and word and pain and tears
Dance and silence, shame and fears,
The ending of another day, another life, another friend.
The beginning of another day, another life, another friend.
Turn over the seas, turn under the skies of shining stars
I do not know you, understand you, or imagine you.

Or I will wear so thin and slight that light
will fade me out completely
I will then address all shades and spots as
brothers, nieces, long-dead mothers

All things old and treasured,
patterned silver, china, linens
doctors, deacons, soldiers, fathers
tucked away, brought out and shown
on holidays

The wheels I rode up dusty roads
turn over, down, dip low again,
revolve
bow, splinter at the spokes, crack
collapsing under load of threadbare gown
and plastic tubing.

Portered of all other cargo long ago,
I bear through black dream night no burden
but memory –
a crying child, a shame-faced fight,
dignity, cowardice, cold water, red leaves,
silver-white streets slick with morning rain,
unanswered prayers, unknown replies,
all sin and honor,

Big hands, tar-stained,
that lift and throw me high, aloft,

Alone that night in his room, he tested a new resolve.  He must just never have tried hard enough.  The simplest method seemed to be a straight-out pull, gripping around the second knuckle to crack the third.  He chose his left middle finger as the most promising candidate.  Pull once . . . pull again, harder . . . nothing.  If he was honest with himself, though, he still wasn’t using his full strength.  The third time he braced his wrists against his ribcage, elbows to the side, eyes to the ceiling, and pulled out and back with his whole arms and shoulders.  Pop!

No.  This was wrong.  His hands had flown apart, and there was the finger, still locked in his right fist, and there were the four remaining fingers of his left hand splayed two to a side and shaking.  In a panic, almost without thinking, he rammed the middle finger back onto its stub: with a snap.  And there it stood again as though it had never left—except, that is, for a bright, thin ring of blood all the way around, circling the place where seconds before his flesh had given way to emptiness.  Bewildered, he stroked the length of the finger, front and back, and felt every touch.  The finger still curled and extended in unison with the rest of the hand, or in a ripple, and it wiggled side to side at his brain’s command.  He licked the blood clean, where he could reach, and stared.  It stung a little: almost like a paper cut, but he imagined that he could feel the sting all the way through.

For the first time in his life, Maxwell began to suspect that he was not entirely human.

“It doesn’t matter. I love her. What do you have against zombies anyway? Just because they’re
undead doesn’t mean they aren’t human.”

“Zombies are not human, Jim.  They are the living dead!  They are abominations!”

“Sticks and stones.”

“Your attraction to an animated corpse is absolutely disgusting.  I mean, she’s rotting for heaven’s sake!”

“In some perfumes is there more delight than from my mistress reeks….”

“That’s not funny, and you’ve misquoted. You know how this has to end! The first chance she gets, she’ll eat your damn brains!”

“But she has already stolen my heart.”

On late into the night she types, and when her eyes will stay open no longer
she throws herself on the couch and sleeps in her clothing, teeth unbrushed,
mouth open, snoring.  As light creeps back into the disheveled room, she
rises, guzzles some milk from the jug, and continues typing.

After many days, her fingers stall.  She types a few more words, hesitates,
and stops.  She looks around, rubs her eyes, stretches.  She stares at the
walls and ceiling.  She knits her fingers.  She stands, paces the room -
notices the empty bowls, the greasy plates.  Slowly, she moves through the
room, gathering debris and carrying it to the trash, the dishwasher.  She
opens the blinds.  She tilts her head, as though listening for an inner
voice – but seems to hear nothing.

More days unfold.  The apartment is tidy, the crumbs vacuumed, the counters
wiped.  From time to time she sits in front of the computer, her fingers
perched on the keys – but the fingers remain still.  She slumps in her
chair, sighs, and gets up to straighten a pile of books into a neat stack.

Then one morning, as suddenly as it had departed, the muse returns.  The mad
typing resumes.  She smiles, lifts one hand briefly to stroke her ponytail,
types.

She clicks on her printer, and the loose papers churn out.  She gathers them
into a pile, its solid heft resting comfortably on her desk.  The cover
sheet, printed in size 36 font, is visible from across the room:

“Ron Bites It:  Harry and Hermione’s True Love Story”

A bridge of smoldering macadam from curb to curb, the air heady and saturated with gasoline vapor. The boys jump through air shimmering thinly as the setting sun at the horizon, with every leap the rubber soles of their Reebok Pumps growing gooier. Girls with long bangs and french braids squeal, breathing heated antics into atavistic splendor. Beneath the cool concrete and Kentucky Bluegrass, low under the street black as wild vanilla, pleasures warm as dusk await. The howling thickens like manioc and pulses becomes drumbeats, reviving the ancient rhythms of the capricious devils hooked of nose, cruel of face, red of eye and white teeth gleaming like ivory spear points. The old men, pathetic, waxen skin, sneer at wasted hydrocarbons. The old women, who never see the faces in the flames, arms folded over drooping bosoms, shout at their sons to come inside.

Rooms of antiseptic shades of tan or brown or beige, wood-paneled coffins for the living lined with polyester, wicker, teak, dirges moaning from the stereos, swinging cathode torches low in ghost blue light at 30 hertz, forging a processional through knee-deep soft celestial shag. The devils are never in the smoke and flames; they hide in pale and cunning forms, tasteful brass-gold knobs, all the unblinking faces of distraction.

There is more life in every leap outdoors, in every curling flame, in all the darkness under the sky than in the tungsten-lit tombs; young people had better die outdoors.

[break]

M: How was that?
D: Great. Thanks for the biscuits and water, too.
M: Are you more comfortable here in the den?
D: Believe it or not I can still smell when someone had a nosebleed in here, but I’ve stopped sniffing that spot. That’s this room to me, though, an ancient nosebleed. I might probe the couch for Cheez-Its when we’re done.
M: Can I ask — licking hands? Every dog I know…
D: You may not know this, but hands are completely fascinating. Have you noticed — [extends front paw] — my front legs end the same way as my back. Wait, they do, don’t they? Yeah. Yeah, if I had hands, well, Old Yeller might have ended the other way around. No, I mean, it’s not quite like that, but — I have a mouth, to relate to the world I basically have teeth, a jaw, and a tongue. Paws are good for digging, some European dogs live in houses with door handles, but you really had us whipped when you started putting knobs on everything you use to go outside. I can’t look at a brass finish without feeling helpless. You know, maybe you have obstacles, impediments in your life that you struggle with — maybe you don’t meet the kind of girl that you’d like to, I don’t know, [ed: cheeky!] but if you have troubles they generally aren’t of the I can’t get outside by myself variety. If I see a stranger, though, or hear a sound, or smell something really amazing, I always know I’m probably not going to meet them, or smell it, or eat it. I bark, because I can and it drives you crazy, but I know I’m not going to get to it. It’s right there, literally at your fingertips, and you just watch Judge Judy and eat ice cream. For some dogs hands become a fetish, they literally start to worship them — and they probably get more rubdowns because of it. When I got past puppyhood I found it embarrassing, so I don’t lick anymore unless they’re coated with something delicious, and you think that’s gross but everyone does it to me. But yeah, I can understand why some dogs lick hands all the time.
M: Have you ever met a dog you think you could always want to be with?
D: … no easy answer for that.
M: No dog in the neighborhood?
D: If you want to get into it — dogs, wolves, don’t mate for life. Usually if dogs mate anymore, at least in my circles, it’s been arranged by their masters. I can’t, you know, I never will father puppies — sorry to be graphic but you brought it here — and humans are a lot like dogs, you know, families, packs. And a good family, you never worry about being the Alpha, I’ve never even thought about how to lead a pack. There are dogs I know who try to be Alpha, or I guess they experience a void in leadership, and they try to fill it in, but they aren’t happier than me. I’ve met them, and they’re not. You can always pick them out at the park, they’re tense and they try to dominate you. Tough for them at home, but even worse, they have to keep it up outside. I don’t try to play with them, there’s no give-and-take.
M: Would you rather live with dogs, though, if you had your choice?
D: I’ve answered that as well as I can, I think. I don’t worry about it. Man has war, and work, and wages and worries. Lions and bears have to hunt –
M: It sets you apart, then, you have this — occupational niche?
D: Yeah.
M: If you’re never challenged, though…you don’t miss, wonder, for lost potential?
D: These dilemmas — your question, not mine! What would my puppies look like, could I keep a pack intact, survive in the wild? Keep that up and I will need Prozac! I have a deep respect for the traditional relationship –
M: I guess that’s where I’m going with this, hasn’t that relationship changed? Dogs were valuable when they had work to do –
D: Poodles were guard dogs, Labradors went out on the hunt, but most breeds have been coming inside at night for hundreds of years — let me finish this thought, please — valuable when they had work? How many poems, songs, stories about dogs? It’s a confused history, isn’t it? Easy to view it through the lens of economics, I guess, but feelings, respect and compassion for one another — we don’t know which came first. Unique among all animals, this bond. What if a man without a fire needed warmth one night and a mother wolf brought him in? Why is it we can tell when you’re about to have a seizure? Something happened, not just once, but enough that now I wouldn’t be more comfortable with a wolf than you would be, or than I am with you. If you tell me I’m diminished, you don’t see my true nature. It’s more than the job I was bred for. I wouldn’t trade places with the wild dogs, they have the streets, they have hunger, they have short lives, mistrust, rabies, fear. Show me a dog who thinks that’s his “true nature” and I’ll gladly chew on his toys. And take any of his nice collars, too.
M: Speaking of collars — do you wanna go for a walk?
D: I see a patch of sun under the window with my name on it. Maybe next time.
M: Can I pet you?
D: Get me another biscuit.

but smoother, and taut, like the skin of a ray,

yet warm and plump, like a fresh-picked peach -

(but not so fuzzy.)

Luscious, smooth, soft, firm – I struggle for a metaphor,

And realize:  everything makes a wan comparison;

Baby cheeks set their own gold standard.

I kiss him again.

The Universe expresses its sense of literary symbolism in an unrelenting grayness, showing in cross-hatched peeks above you as you make your daily way from the high tower keep down through the streets of Tedium to the Phone Support Center dungeons. You know the exact shape and dimensions of a black hole: a box, five foot on each side, whose walls you can peer over into hundreds of neighboring, identical black holes. Though no light has ever escaped their surfaces, you know their rough Berber-carpeted walls to be a dingy mauve, identical to the color of your elementary school. Astronomers spend their lives at the telescope searching for such wonders, but you need go no further than your daily routine: a descent into the grottos of 5^th and Grove St.

You rise, cross to shut off the talking heads, and end your epic journey in heroic repose, forehead cradled in hand against the window. The only variety in your view of brick and rust is offered by the adventurous greasy rain droplet on the pane of glass, gathering round its friends and neighbors for a precipitous plunge into the great unknown.