Our souls
are the straws
Death
,flail
ing,
grasps.
by JS Gilbert
by JS Gilbert
Our souls
are the straws
Death
,flail
ing,
grasps.
I imagine archaeologists to be a rugged lot. Thick-soled boots like the treads of earth-movers, caked in ancient and illuminating grime. Wide brims and handkerchiefs and mirrored sunglasses to guard against a bully-sun cracking its knuckles. Scrapes and bruises; dehydration and sunburns; fingertips raw, knees creaking, eyes gritty and red.
And pockets. Lots of pockets.
I’m not ill-prepared in my bathrobe; just exploring a different terrain. A bathrobe, because stumbling in the dark for pants will wake her. Slipperless feet so that I can follow the contours of the carpet with my toes, in the dark. Or possibly because I’ve misplaced my slippers. A mug of coffee to keep my senses warm and alert.
My bathrobe has two pockets. I don’t know what they’re for.
The stairs lead downward, walls low and close. The evidence is sparse: faint outlines of shoe prints, scuff marks, crumbs clinging to the soles of my feet. They were here, quick and raucous.
There is an eyeball on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Disturbing in any light, and unexpected. I give it a scientific nudge with my toe, and it glows. Red, blue, green, red, blue, green. It fades, leaving a purple globe in my vision. Who were they, to have this? And to what purpose?
The pupil wobbles and settles. It does not follow.
Their civilization is spread across the floor, shattered. Or perhaps incomplete. Small, colorful bits of plastic are arranged in familiar shapes. I see buildings and vehicles with wheels and wings, and tiny figures scaled to use them. A village? A city? The design is haphazard, as though it hadn’t been planned, but discovered.
I see fluorescent domes, and devices that could be guns or drills or experimental probes. Or death rays. A military installation? This appears to be an airstrip, or landing pad. The headless bodies surrounded by wreckage certainly indicate a conflict.
I can’t explain the tentacles.
I do know there was laughter. Sudden bursts of joy punctuating the soft murmur of voices. There was discussion, and the rising inflection of questions. Shuffling and thumping, and an occasional scuffle. A companionable society that smelled strongly of feet.
But I can’t know the details; haven’t known for a while. I used to know everything. When he woke and slept, what he ate and when. What he wore, and what he learned. Who was there, what they said, what they did. What the tentacles were for.
He didn’t belong to me, but had been placed within my care. He needed.
Now there are swaths of hidden time. Where I am not, and so cannot see. A society to which I had belonged, but has grown beyond my grasp. Vast, and bright, and wonderful.
All I have are clues. Fading trails and bread crumbs, shards covered in dust. Remnants of history clouded by free will and perpetual motion. My knees crack and my joints ache. Sometimes I am burned.
I don’t have enough pockets.
(Originally posted on Total Depravity.)
In memory of Anthony Lamar Smith.
I.
Patterns are important.
They trained us to use stickers
stuck to name tags to create
stucked mosaics of remembering
that I was they were we had been stuck
together.
The un-unstuckable promise of future stuckiness.
II.
I am the
Friday Man the
Story Man the
Teller Man
with the
books and the
bag and the
voice of bears in my chest.
I am the
unconditioner the
constant visitor the
indescriminate huggerer.
I am (also) the
White.
III.
A favorite is The Monster at the End of This Book
when they’re eager to look beyond This Page despite
Grover’s growing fear and rage at their strength and
power, and fervor to see the next and reach the end.
Laughter in the face of danger.
They squeal when I ask if they’re sure, should I
turn, do we dare, is it safe, aren’t you scared?
No! They are brave, they don’t care, it’s a story and
a show and I am there to protect them.
And, anyway, monsters aren’t really real.
IV.
I can’t understand
a word he says but
that doesn’t stop him
talking from the moment
I enter the classroom,
throughout each book.
As the others fidget
in a bulbous line
waiting
for their stickers
I see his hand slide
into my peripheral
(as I’ve slid into his)
to grab a sheet of Minions with guitars,
soon
followed by a finger pressed carefully
onto my shoulder so
the sticker will be stuck, and
never leave.
V.
The verdict wasn’t surprising but
the tears were unexpected because
this, too, has become
a pattern that won’t unstuck.
Injustice that never leaves,
pressed too long along
the peripheral of they who judge.
And he is brave and he is bold
which is, now, met with joy
because this boy has been told
(and believes)
that
I will protect
him.
But, dear God,
how real are these monsters?
How close, with every page?
We fill the silence with ourselves.
Afraid of absence of stillness of soundless.
The truth we hear when nothing speaks.
and my son said his was people who say ‘baggies’
but i thought peeves would be more prevalent
and i replied ‘you must know more drug dealers than i do’
and i imagined wesley snipes new jacking with ‘baggies’
and ice-t laughing in his face
but my son had lost interest
Cardboard as tinder, strips tightly
wound and set amongst the ashes, like
a pan of cinnamon rolls.
My fingers, uncharacteristically sure
of themselves, place kindling within the whorls;
sticks and twigs he gathered and
left as an uncertain offering at my feet.
It catches, the fire.
Licks and bites and snaps,
crawls and claws its way from
base to wisping logs in a
desperate clutch.
It’s a thing I know:
heat, fuel, air is a fire.
So few equations seem as reliable, now;
unexpected results, ineffectual and
laughable, in-my-faceable.
But this
one thing
I can do.
His equation has grown exponentially,
from heat, fuel, and air to givens
I no longer recognize,
variables I don’t understand.
And so my fingers shake as I lay his kindling in
precarious motion,
fearful
of stifling and
squandering and
leaching
until all that remains is my
desperate clutch.
I screamed
when I first saw him,
a bounding black cloud
thundering toward my horizon:
a boy looking for a friend.
He stayed with us
until that day
I had to stack the shelves and sweep the floors,
direct customers to the canned
whole chickens in aisle five
while They did whatever it is They do
to friends who once escaped the yard
to find
me at school during recess and
the principal let me walk him home but
who can’t walk anywhere anymore.
So, I get it.
But when my son’s eyes are red-rimmed and
welling with rage at yet one more
failure / betrayal / Talk
with a father trying too hard
because
he knows what’s coming demands more than
paper-or-plastic or expired milk or stray carts and
his son bears the brunt of that fear until
their ties twist taut and love becomes
a strained and brittle mask,
please forgive my snicker at your dog-parent sticker.
‘I don’t know,’ I say to those who ask.
And I don’t. Know.
Why the spires, rifts, domes.
Why the channels, depressions, slopes.
Why spheres.
‘Maybe you should’, says my son, ‘build an actual…castle?’
But I know
what those are, and what they’re for.
So they stop to explore these abstralien sandscapes,
wondering
at the meaning of my creation, and my purpose.
No plan guides my tremorous fingers that
mold and shape and smooth the forms
that form without me.
Arches fall and towers crumble, collapse under
misplaced knees and thoughtless feet.
These places weren’t meant to be, let alone
last even through a day or night or hour.
They are self-serving, imposing haphazard order
on an idle chaos minding its own business.
God took six days, so they say, plus time to rest,
yet I spare only the morning
because I have other plans.
They, too, are as hasty in their admiration which
so fickley turns to mischievous destruction by
toddlered toes, unleashed paws, and cruelty.
Even seagulls are dismissive of my walls, perching with
prejudice until the structures crack to expose
my lack, and my depravity.
Six days seems equally rash, short-sighted and shrifted
given the scope of eternity, of all the hairs on all our heads.
So we blear and smear and have trod among
God’s almighty spires in ignorance and arrogance,
wondering
at His meaning, and His purpose.
Yet He had no other plans and
His fingers do not tremble, and
His walls were built counting on our cruelty to
crack them
and expose yet more layers of perfection.
Shall we [SPORT]?
What fun!
Catch!
Sorry.
Ha! That’s okay.
My turn!
Whoops! Good throw, though.
Yay!
My bad.
Sorry!
Sorry!
Ye…sorry.
Shall we [MOVIE]?
What fun!
Sicilian Wit
I blame Sophia.
If Dorothy was quick
her mother was prescient,
only waiting long enough to bind
her barb in space and time,
and so affirm causality.
After a lifetime
mainlining marathon reruns
her spirit rides my soul,
goading me with a beaded purse while
sotto-voccing snide rejoinders
into the minutest caesura of life.
She will not be silenced.
Yet
this pillar of faith, loitering
in the House of God turns in his pew
to dismiss these lawless thugs
this servant of community, rotating
my tires warns of their
parasitism and lack of insurance
this bumper of a judge-not worshiper, proclaiming
‘BAN THEM’ throughout the church parking lot
but never, no never, our guns
I am silenced.