They Cadenced, They crescendoed

When Thomas met her, he could hear better. Ridiculous, yes. But true. Furthermore, the noises in his life came together. They coalesced. They cadenced. Frantic ringtones, clinks of bottles, rustling sheets, even the beats between keystrokes. As he grew with her, so did the sound. It crescendoed and for a moment it played a note that was perfect. More perfect than she was. It woke him up, and with her asleep in his arms, he listened. Then, the quickly unraveling melody, the cacophony. The lack of harmony, and now, the silence.

Catch and Release

My dad’s keychain was fish bait out of water, with resin scales, glass eyes, and chipped paint from years of the ins and outs of denim pockets, driving to ballparks, hardware stores, golf courses – but never fishing. That, he never taught me, but not for his lack of knowing. He had his fishing stories, voice flowing, then rippling when it spoke of loss; Grandpa passed, maybe, ten years ago now. Dad said I could have his tackle box, but that’s not really what I want. I want him to know he taught me everything one can learn from blackberry hued morning water and the delicacy of weighted lines without ever going fishing. I don’t know what the whirl of currents means or where to land the sinker when the water is cloudy, but I do know that this life is about respect, about patience. I know that the pond isn’t half empty but half full and that no matter how hard the fight or big the fish, sometimes, it’s right to just let him go.

Mine and Mine Alone

Whispers,
letters,
all my words were
white warm and true
when I dipped you
in them.

And now
thick black mucus
slides out, wild,
................filthy,
................obnoxious,
enough for at least
six (or several)
inkwells.

Keep it.
It’s yours.
It’s from you
and you

alone........Write what
.................you want with
.................it.

My story is white
warm and true:

....................We met on a
........Sunday, napped a lot.
.....I liked to be kissed and
..............you liked it when
......................I called you
........................pretty girl.

That’s my story
and it’s mine
and mine

alone........Do what
.................you want with
.................it.

The Exposure of Trees

[1]
“Mother says if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it didn’t fall. Maybe if I hadn’t heard father die, father’d still be standing.”

But he heard his father fall. He heard the snapping of a twig. He thought he could hear the breath of the deer behind the bushes. Breath. And another. A snort. And another breath behind the bushes. He heard the click of his trigger and gunshot echo off the hills and when he heard the grunt he knew it was his father breathing behind the bushes, not the deer. He heard the cracking of decaying leaves and locust shells under his feet as he ran to get help. And the engine’s snarls as the help he got raced back into the forest. He heard it all and his father fell because of it. Maybe. If a man falls in a forest and his boy doesn’t hear it, did he really fall?


[2]
“Mother, mother, mother. Does a tree have a soul?” asks a boy at his father’s funeral.

A boy can’t stop asking questions of his mother any more than the roots of a tree can stop pulling water from the earth. Even when his mother is trying to cry, but just dry heaves instead. Even when the earth wants to rain, but just dries its leaves instead.

“Mother, if a tree falls in the forest what happens to its soul?”

A mother sighs and kneels to meet the eyes of her child. “Your father was a good man.”

“I’m not asking about father, I’m asking about trees.”

“Maybe you should be asking about father.”

“I know about father. I don’t know about trees.”

“You’re going to need to grow up. Your father fought wars when he was only a few summers older than you.” Her son frowns. The mother sighs and stands and runs her hand over the wooden casket that held her husband. “Yes, trees have souls.”

The boy’s mother has family in a whistle-stop on the other side of the mountains. They come for the funeral, in white and black and gray. The ash of coal has been wiped from their boots and hands and has been replaced by the dust of roads. Their religion is tradition and their tradition is embedded in soils far below the lowest roots of oaks. These people believe that a photograph steals their souls, incarcerating them in graven images. The boy tugs on the hem of one of their dresses.

“What happens to the soul once it’s stolen?”

The woman knows about the boy’s role in his father’s death and decides it’s best not to answer.

[3]
The boy grows up on his diet of questions and answers and there comes a day when he makes his way to the shed where his father kept his things. In a cardboard box, along with a hunting knife and war medals, the boy finds an old camera. There’s a roll of film still inside the camera. He waits some time before taking it to be developed. They are portraits of this world of speed and brilliance from the eyes of his father that fell in the forest. The boy thinks that maybe photographs can save souls instead of stealing them.

The boy cleans out the shed where his father used to prepare the deer he shot. The first things to go are his father’s guns. Then the ropes, the buckets, the saws. The boy can’t bring himself to throw away a box of antlers and hoofs and buries them instead. Once the shed is clean, he patches up the cracks in the wooden siding and hangs an old towel over the window.

Now his mother asks the questions.

“What are you doing out in the shed?”

“I’m not forgetting about father.”

He buys a roll of film and goes into the forest where his father fell, and within days he’s hanging pictures of trees on the line in his darkroom, souls slowly developing. His mother asks another question.

“Who said the souls of these trees need saving?”

“You did.”

[4]
Years later, on the anniversary of her husband’s death, the mother asks her son.

“Will you come with me to his grave?”

“I can’t, mother. I have somewhere to be.”

“Son, it’s his anniversary.”

“That’s why I have somewhere to be. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I’m going to plant flowers and clean his gravestone.”

“Mother, there’s trash in the forest where it happened and I have to go clean it up.”

“You should go with me. Why won’t you go with me?”

Her son shakes his head. “You go to celebrate his death.”

On the way into the forest, the road folds on itself, again and again, a mobeus strip that smells of earth and tastes of wind. There's no direction here and the only thing the boy is sure of are the two pieces of asphalt beneath his feet. Even then, reality leases him that space for a moment's breath, and for a moment's breath only. But that's enough. One inhale-exhale is about as long as the boy can stand still; he's already signing his name on a lease for a new plot of land, just inches in front of the other.

[5]
This was the forest where his father fell, but the trees have been cut down by a man in orange with metal teeth. Like the branches snapped under the weight of a falling tree, the boy is crushed.

“Mother, mother, mother. A tree fell in the forest and the man who cut it down heard it so it must have really fallen. But don’t worry. The man couldn’t take its soul because I have it. It’s just a photo in a glass frame in our living room, it’s just a picture of a tree, it’s not in focus and the exposure is wrong, but mother, it’s still a soul.”

“Mother, mother, mother, father fell in the forest, but I didn’t have my camera then.”

On Bleeding Hues of Us

I.
After the blood loss, I injected
my chest with thick oil paint.
Alizarian Crimson for > oxygenated >
and Cobalt Blue for < venous < .
..................I thought someone might
..................want to paint a picture with
..................my earthly remains so I took
..................a shot of Cadmium Yellow
..................with a turpentine chaser
..................so the mortician could paint
..............................with this
..........(.........world's whole spectrum.........)
.........................at his brushtips.

II.
Before you
.................. (and us)
I think maybe I
was an artist and now,
after you
.................. (and us)
I'm artwork..........................................out
of..............con...text..............[framed]
...........with.........out...........................you
nailed to a museum
wall, with a plaque to
tell the casual standerby
who I am, in
..................1 life,
..................2 art,
..................3 love,
..................(and us).

III.
..................__________________
..................Samuel Yingling
......................ca. 2005-2007
......................72 x 33 inches
......................Blood on canvas,
......................oil on flesh, lips,
......................toes, thighs, knees,
......................penis, elbows, heart,
......................fingertips.
..................On loan from the
..................private recollection
..........................................(of us).
..................__________________

Saddle for a Trojan Horse

I.
I wanted to build
...a wooden saddle for
......your back,
better than
...all the other ones
......you’ve had

so I bought a box
...of your teeth......!on sale!
on a shelf under
...............neath your nails.

II.
In the back
......yard, I saw a father
............with his son,
holding a hammer,
............showin his boy
how...it
.....is...done

“You...just...hit
....the..nail....up
..on..the....head,
...ham....mer...it
...in.....to...wood.
Just...hit...the
...nail... up...‘long
..side..its...head,
.....like...any...good
..boy...should.”

III.
Your teeth, your nails,
..the ones I hammered into wood
....to build that horse.
Your nails, the ones I hammered
....into you and
hammered into
...and I hammered you
and hammered and
...hammered
......until the wood was limp.

Draining Water from the Tub

And life, well, life just is. It's there. There's no metaphor, there's no motif. There's life. On some days, it means love. It means being sung to sleep and then waking up, sweaty, smiling. And on other days, it means loss. It means that there's no way I can get out of the shower until I see all the water drain from the tub. It means knowing that I could theoretically go get that water -- that it's possible, that it still exists in a sewer, in a lake, in a cloud, in someone else's body or fishbowl -- but that realistically, I can't. And I shouldn't. The water just passes over me, cleans me, nourishes me, drowns out everything else for me, sits in the wrinkles of my fingers and the corners of the tub, and then drains and dries and flows away.

Take Comfort in Roadkill

She is more sad than roadkill. Her chirps more mournful than the screech of tires. Her energetic movements more wrenching than the glazed eyes that litter roads. Her and roadkill, victims of progress, unrecognized sacrifices for no higher purpose. Both there, neither understanding why. Roadkill and her.

I spotted her in the Hilfiger department, perfectly perched, juxtaposed in front of an advertisement. A clothes line, a crystal sky, a lush field. Judging by her beautiful song and energetic movements, she probably thought spring had arrived. It hadn't. Outside of the false stale heat of the department store, it was still crisp, frigid winter. Out there, the roadkill froze. In here, she thought she found refuge. Of course, with her birdbrain, she thought wrong. In here, she found a song far sadder than any sung before.

She flew in from outside, attracted by the warmth of the mall. She dipped over the glass windows, zipping through a small crack where a rafter met a pane. The moment she entered, drawn in by the dull hum and sanctity of warmth, her fate was sealed. She didn't know of the translucency of glass, or the probability of finding another crack. She only knew warmth.

Below, the froth of humanity flowed back and forth, bubbled up elevators, rippled through aisles and aisles of clothing. Purple shirts. Red pants. Corduroy, denim, plaid, pleated. Spring jackets, winter coats. Shirts with birds on them. Pants made from road kill. A million articles for a single purpose, warmth.

Having already conveniently solved that problem, she flitted around without a care on her small heart. She sucked into the department store at the end of the mall, dancing around, pecking at the gum on the carpet. Unfortunately, the food court sat at the other end of the mall. She'll never find it, or the pet store, or giant fountain, or any other part of the mall a bird might enjoy. She'll never find that crack, that ticket outside. She'll never find her nest, or her mate, or a branch, or a cloud.

Because no matter what instincts God gave her, no matter how many times she had flown before, today was her last flight. No amount of skill or instinct could guide her to that small chip in the window. She's lost. She's chirping now. Eventually that will change. Within a few weeks, just as the dirty snowdrifts in the parking lot are melted by spring, she will fall silent. The pretzel crumbs and candy wrappers will no longer sustain her. She will die of starvation. By the time her chirps turn to screeches, real warmth, not false, will have brightened the outside. By the time her curious pecks at the gum on the carpet become desperate, winter will have dripped into spring. By the time she dies of starvation, lost in a world of Hilfiger and Kaufmanns, I will have alreayd forgotten the fate of a poor bird lost in a department store.

There are fates worse than roadkill. To go quickly, ignorant, never knowing of the entrapment in a larger web. That is something we can all hope for; a peaceful spot between the yellow striped lines where we are gone before the second car even passes. But to be lost, truly lost - therein lies the life I fear. Trapped in a world of commercial posters, neon signs, corporate fireworks. Never actually recognizing the difference between the beauty of spring outside and the spring on the Hilfiger ads. Becoming so entranced in the sights and sounds of a developing world that we lose the crack in the facade that lets us back outside.

Emulsion

The Amish believe that a snapshot steals their soul. That would make this room a gallows. That would make these photos corpses dripping in blood red alkaline, souls slowly developing.

There are two things in these photographs; space and matter. The distance between two bodies and the hearts that feel it. The emptiness in mouths and the tongue that seals it. The gaps between fingers and the flesh that fills it.

For him, these pictures -- these souls -- are all that are left of her. It is possible that some of the dust floating in this darkroom is her dead skin. It is possible that some of the liquid glistening from the photographs were once her tears. It is possible the air, the stuff of breathing, once kissed her lips, filled up her lungs, and fueled her blood cells. But now, the most important piece she has left here is her soul. Slivered into millions of electrons and pressed into silver emulsion, becoming photographs, mirrors with a memory, drawings of light and darkness and matter and space.

On the counter, next to chemicals and film, there is a cardboard box. In it sits a few cds, maybe some notes, and a boy’s corduroy jacket. There are still movie stubs in its pocket, along with a shredded Kleenex and mints from a fancy restaurant.

Hanging on the line is a photograph of her wearing this jacket, his jacket. She’s looking straight out and he’s framing her with his arms and a kiss. Hanging on the line is a memory, a corpse, a sliver of soul stolen and hung up to dry.

Somewhere, someday these shots will be exposed to this world of brilliance and speed that invades his darkest of rooms. Maybe he’ll love again with all his body and all his heart, but never with all his soul.

Hurting Slowly, Healing Slower

Thomas’s friends told him to do it the same as when taking off a band-aid; quick and painless. Thomas considered this possibility because he didn’t like pain, especially of the heartbreak variety. However, he couldn’t quite handle the metaphor of a discarded band-aid to represent the last two years of his life, the love that he so carefully and intensely painted with bright strokes of commitment and affection. Furthermore, he resented the idea that his original self needed a bandage in the first place. What is it about relationships that make people think they are a means of completion?

“You complete me.”

“You fill me up.”

Bullshit. Is it not possible that Thomas went into the relationship as a complete person? Is it not possible that Thomas was not empty when he was looking for a girl to love?

Thomas would not rip her off quickly and painlessly. He would not discard her and forget about her as soon as the scar faded. Thomas wanted to hold on to this feeling of loss that follows the end of a relationship because he felt there was something to learn from it. Thomas believes that the strongest people in the world are those that can still learn when they are at their weakest.

She, the girl who has left him at his weakest, lives down the hall in his dorm. She still leaves her door unlocked. He still crawls into her bed every night and she rolls over to hold him. A lot of people might think it weird that Thomas stills sleeps with the girl he broke up with, but those same people think relationships are analogous to band aids. Thomas knows this whole breakup business will be hard work that won’t happen in a single fight, no matter how hard they yell or hit or cry. Thomas knows these things take time and he’s never pretended otherwise. She asks him to stop coming in but she still leaves her door unlocked.

Thomas knows this must stop and has always known this. Every morning he leaves her warm sheets a bit earlier. Eventually he starts crawling in later in the night. After a month or two, he’s not even falling asleep with her. And although that moment he spends in her presence is probably still the best moment in his day, he begins to think of her less. In no time at all, he just lies down, hugs her, and tucks her in. One night he just opens her door, looks for a moment, and goes back to his own bed. The next he just pushes it open a crack. By now, she no longer expects him to come in at all. A week later he just taps on her door, ever so gently.

She doesn’t hear it but her sleeping body shifts to make room for a boy who is no longer there.