New York to Paris

    Section C of the Times for August 20th, 1919 contained portents of the days that were to haunt me for the rest of my life. BEASTLY MURDERS IN FRANCE. A headline that tugged at my collar. I read the spread, but my mind was still on a dream I'd had the night before. I saw it still, as I sat slumped at the breakfast table, staring through swollen eyes into the steaming murk of my coffee. The rooftops of London. Two men stood on the edge, their silhouettes maddened by rain, and strangely bulbous. They wore tall, rectangular hats, and I could not see if they faced toward or away from me. The flicker of lightning sought to reveal them, but they remained unlit. What’s more, they grew ever more massive with each strike, until they engulfed the night itself.

   
    My editor at The Monthly Shamus, Tillson was a rhomboid of a man with powerful, hairy arms which he incessantly rubbed with his fingers. Feet twitching on the expanse of his desk, he told me of the feature he wanted on European reconstruction. "Make it sweeping," he said, "epic! I want to see the fetid rot of failed empires painted on my eyelids when I finish reading! You leave tomorrow!"
    "Yes, sir."
    "This is quite an opportunity I've given you!" he shouted and raised his index finger upward as if skewering something. One of his favorite gestures. "If you don't take it, you're a fool. And also fired." A man in a suit popped out of the closet to whisper in his ear. "Hmph. My attorney has informed me that I can't fire you for that. However, I won't like you very much."
    "Yessir."
    "I've arranged passage for--"
    "Paris, sir?"
    "Paris?" He stuck the same finger in his ear and rubbed it vigorously with an irritated frown.
    "It seems only right, Mr. Tillson. It should be quite convenient to get a sense of it all before heading on to Verdun."
    "Well…quite so. I shall leave the details to you, m'boy! Get straight to the source, the blighted farms, the cadaverous trenches -- all of it!" As he spoke, a dream of some delightful banquet to come lingered in his smile. "I'm issuing you a photographer, as well, straight out of storage in our warehouse! A Mr. Allen, if memory serves. Quite the fellow. Well- don't let me keep you." He stood and flapped his arms at me, a cloud of smoke he was attempting to dissipate. "Pack light, only your best prose, y'here!? Like that piece two months ago - brilliant! - instead of the tripe from last week, yes? Bahn Vo-yaaazh, as they say!"



    "Judith, there's something wrong with our son," said Father, peering at me over the top edge of a ledger.
    "Oh, there's nothing wrong with him."
    "Nono, there is. I can see it."
    Father and Mother's apartment looked down on uptown, and looked as if it belonged in a museum. The dining room table was spotless because it was never used. The armoir was dustless but never opened. In polished silver the candles waited, wicks unblackened.
    "The paper is sending me to France tomorrow," I said. "This could be a break for me. We'll be running a feature."
    "That's wonderful, Dear!" said Mother. "Write us from Paris, won't you? No one's ever wrote me from there. Make sure there's a photograph of you with the Eiffel Tower in the background, to the left or in the center. You can have someone else in there, too, if you like; a ladyfriend, perhaps?"
    Father peered over the ledger again, attempting to focus his spectacles with his thumb. "Not sure why they want to feature those blasted Frogs, but I suppose you need whatever help you can get. So…cheers!"


    It was but one night hence that I packed my things and headed to the Harbor, envisioning a scarlet specter somewhere beyond the horizon. I had never been to Europe, or more than a couple states distant from home, and I was excited. That is to say that excitement dwelt in the distance, overshadowed by apprehension of the ensuing sea voyage, and the many things which might go wrong.
    The ship was monstrous, drunken, lolling about in the waves, already belching forth from its single smokestack. I walked up the gangplank and was swallowed, to spend weeks sloshing about in its belly. 
   
    In retrospect, I can admit to you, patient reader, my own delicate constitution is not one to stomach the life of the sea, especially aboard one such as the Falstaff. Never was there a beast more temperamental than this iron excrescence, drawing from me a near constant flow of humors which I had not known I contained, most likely in the pursuit of fulfilling some infernal pact signed beneath the waves. In the unseen rain, we cleared the mouth of the Hudson past the last buoys with an insistent headwind, as I felt my blood retreating from the vicinity of my bowels in protest, most of it holing up in an undisclosed location and leaving me a pallor which I would maintain throughout the voyage.
    Sleep was beyond me that first night, as I hunched in my cabin and listened to the slosh and speckle of the waves breaking on deck. My pen and notebook were my constant companions of the voyage. I scratched away by lamplight, my words turning naturally to the previous week, before the dream, before this new assignment.
    I sat unshaven in my robe on the couch, empty notebook before me. It was true what Tillson later told me. I hadn't written anything worth the paper in months. Something else sat in the back of my mind had clogged the pipes. The radio spoke to itself. It was the steak that did it. She brought it in from the kitchen and set it on the table, half of a cow, all for me and none for her. It was peppered and garnished and tender, tendrils of steam frozen in the air. I picked up the fork, oblivious as the meat itself. "I can't do it," she said. "Not anymore." I chewed but didn't speak. She put her coat on herself and walked out.
    The pounding of Captain Stovepipe's fist on my cabin door was a welcome distraction. He entered unannounced – it was his boat, after all – a facsimile of his namesake in all particulars, straight-backed and emitting constant plumes of tobacco smoke. How he kept it lit in the rain above was beyond me.
    He flitted around the room a bit before acknowledging me at my desk with a look. "Writer, eh?"
    I nodded.
    "What ya doing, then? Writing?"
    "That I am, Captain."
    He paused as if searching my face for lies, and chewed on the stem of his pipe before returning to his inspection of my things. "Nasty weather tonight, sir. Fierce wind on the prow, and rain to boot. But the coal fires burn bright. We'll get where we go, whether 'tis God's want or not." He chuckled at that last bit. I suppose he was trying to reassure me.
    I started when he slammed my cabin door, staring at the pen in my hand, still pressed firmly to the page. Whatever thought had been pouring from me was gone now. I was on a boat to more important days. I opened my suitcase. Atop my shirts was yesterday morning's Times, folded with greater care than the rest of the contents. Buried within, I scanned the same article from the other day, replete with grisly photographs.

    Five dead in the streets of Paris in five days. From midday pistols to knives in the dark, no method is     too wanton for these killers. Where and who will they strike next? The heirs of a butchered banker have     called for blood, but the inspectors are baffled!

The article waxed on about dark alleys, outraged gentry, and incompetent detectives, but what I craved were specifics. Even the photos seemed taken in a confounding haze, suggesting more than they could ever show. I found myself wishing to sketch them in my notebook. While my right hand worked, I peered beyond their resolution, imagined color, a breeze down the cobblestone street, a constable shielding his delicate nose from the stench of blood.
    A violent wave plowed into the hull. I glanced at my sketch, once, then again. Two silhouettes in rectangular hats stood on a rooftop in the dark, staring straight out of the page at me...
Perhaps sleep was what I needed after all.

    As I prowled the decks come morning, it became quite clear that the Falstaff was not in any way a passenger vessel. My room below appeared to be a converted cargo hold, separate from the main hold, stuffed somewhere under the turret and above the coal bunkers, and suspiciously inconspicuous.
    I was distracted from my indignation by the presence of water in every possible direction. Some of it even seemed to be above us, bleeding green into the sky around the edges. We were only one day out after all, and I wondered if I might not see the faint rise of land at the stern if I squinted hard enough in the moments when I wasn't losing my breakfast. But the only interruptions of the whitecaps marching into the distance were the ridges of our own wake cutting across the waters.
    It was there by the railing that I met Evans.
    "You must be Mr. Allen," I said.
    He stood there and plucked at the creases in his shirt, bundled beneath his suspenders. "It's Evans, actually." His hair seemed to sheen with the oils and sweat of fretful sleep.
    "Oh, excuse me. I thought you might be the photographer that Tillson..."
    "Tillson, yes… quite a memory on that one." He put out his hand and vainly attempted to seem friendly around his bleary morning eyes. "I am that photographer, but it's Evans. And you're Jones?"
    "It's James, actually…"

   
    "Yes, the Warehouse, that's right. Not the most comfortable place. You may not have seen it, working in the office as you do."
    The three of us sat around the mass of the table in Captain Stovepipe's cabin, sampling his stash of spirits. For all that the invitation had come from the man himself, the Captain's presence seemed more a means of keeping an eye on us than any desire for conversation. Mistrust emanated from his skin in distinct tentacles, probing the air between our words. When he looked at me, a lifetime of reservations were piled behind his eyes, only visible because they sparkled in the lamplight. "Can't say that I have," I said. "I assumed it was more of a metaphor?"
    Evans sighed. "Sadly, no, it's quite real. We're under a nondisclosure agreement, but let's just say I've had my fill of sawdust."
    I twisted my glass upon the table, and resorted to an examination of the cabin. The walls were littered with a surprising variety of decoration. The visage of a stuffed predator I could not identify. A long snake twisted up in a glass case. The skeleton of a fish that appeared to have wings. "You have quite the collection here, Captain. You must have travelled extensively in amassing it."
    "Aye. I collect all sorts of life. There's nothing quite like mounting a head on your wall." He chewed on his pipestem and admired his decorations while we sat dumb in response. "Gentlemen!" He stood and raised his glass of scotch while filling it again. "A toast to the Denizens of the Deep! May they ever desire to keep us from the abyss,  and their own ravenous jaws."
    I cleared my throat and stood. "Hearhear!" Outside in the dark, the ocean belched and sprayed over the Captain's window, like a sheet of quartz sliding across it.
   


    I was packing my satchel as if there were some place to escape to. "The captain said we're going to fight, as they'd likely kill most of us, anyway."
    Evans sat at the small table against the wall of my cabin, drinking a cup of intensely brewed coffee. He had brought a whole sack of beans in his luggage, and his clothes smelled of it constantly. He lifted one foot and placed it on his knee. "Are there still pirates in the early 1900s?"
    "Well apparently, yes!" I gazed out the porthole at the ship pulling up along side us, flying a black flag, and out of time in other ways; oak, rigging, sails, and all. "In fact, that one appears to be wearing an eye patch."
    "Imagine that! But don't worry, my friend explained it to me. You're statistically much more likely to die in a car crash than on a boat."
    I knocked the cup from his hand and grabbed him by the collar. "Evans: we're under attack! By pirates! This affects our mortality rate!"
    "Does it?!"
    "…I think so, yes…anyway, where are you getting these statistics from?"
    He absently wiped at the coffee stain on his sleeve as a cannonball split the cabin and invited itself in. It spun in the corner, humming. I was ignorant of whether cannonballs generally exploded or not. "Well," he said, "I suppose I didn't check his sources on that one. It made sense at the time."
    We were both just watching it spin. "Let's go see what they're doing upstairs," I said.
    "Alright."

    Upstairs, it was a clear noon day, and Captain Stovepipe was bludgeoning a pirate over the head with the butt of his saber. His grimace was as intact as always, only split to call out to a nearby sailor over the crack of the guns. "Finn! Blast it, I told someone to check on the boiler! Can you people do nothing I ask?" He'd finished bludgeoning the pirate and had switched to kicking him instead.
    "I'll get right on that, sir!" groaned Finn, and keeled over with a cutlass in his back.
    "You, Writer!" the captain was grinding his heel on the pirate's forehead. "You don't look busy. Go check on the boiler! Finn here's under the weather, and I got me hands full!" He did in fact have his hands full, choking another pirate who had happened past.
    "Of course! We can do that. Evans?" I began to march briskly off toward the starboard side of the ship, away from the raging cannons and pillars of fire sprouting from the privateer vessel alongside us.
    "Why yes, sure," he said and followed. "Do you know where the boiler is?"
    "Well no, I was hoping you did. But I assume it's belowdecks, somewhere away from fires and murderers."

    The boiler turned out to be easy to find, as it was screaming. We stood in the doorway and watched it on the verge of shaking itself apart. Evans had acquired a gash on his forehead on our way there, which he held his handkerchief to. "Should we….I dunno? Run? Should we run?"
    "Normally yes," I said, "absolutely." It occurred to me that just behind us was the forward magazine room, housing the bulk of the Falstaff's gunpowder stores. "Except there's nowhere to go."
    He shook his head, eyes distant, perhaps thinking about his broken cup. "I suppose we should fix it, then. Or break it even more." The screaming rose in pitch. "My mechanical knowledge is confined to cameras. You?"
    Shuddering pipes ran in all directions from walls to the large tank in the center, an angry metal octopus decorated with dials, knobs, levers, and meters. "I fixed my stove last month. With directions."
    "Yyyaaaarrrr!!"
    "Excuse me?"
    "Yyaaar -- hahharrharr!" Blocking the exit behind us was a solid and thoroughly unwashed man brandishing a cutlass, a pistol, and a mouth full of black and gold teeth.
    Evans burst out, "My God! They really do say it!"
    "Um. Run!" We both ran into the maze of pipes in opposite directions, pursued by reports, sparks, and piratical slogans.
    "James, are you dead??" Came a call over the racket.
    "I don't think so! You?"
    "Not yet!"
    "Avast! Stand still, damn you!" Searing steam hissed from bullet holes in the pipes, nearly drowning out the screams of the boiler.
    "He said it! He said it!" I could barely make out Evans through the steam, who seemed to be running in circles now.
    "Pull that lever there!"
    "Lever?"
    "Right behind you, Evans!" The bullets had stopped and now the steam was cooking us alive. I began turning the crank next to me like a madman – admittedly with no idea what it did.
    "Brilliant!" exclaimed Evans. He pulled the lever and the screaming began to subside, along with the flow of steam.
    I waved it from my face and peered through the pipes at the doorway. The pirate was nowhere to be seen, and in his place stood our own Captain Stovepipe. "Jumpin' Jehovah! I asked you boys to check on it, not poke holes in it."
    As we ascended to the deck, the other ship was dead in the water and stacked high with flames and smoke. The Captain rested his boot on the port railing and watched it shrinking behind us. "Those must be the most incompetent pirates I've ever encountered." Nevertheless, I wondered aloud at our successful defense, to which the Captain revealed that the hull of the Falstaff was home to a number of hidden guns, behind canvas flaps and just above the stores on each side. It seems to me that it was ultimately these that saved us, in addition to our foe's strangely outdated vessel.

    With so many of the regular crew 'under the weather' as it were, it fell to Evans and I to pick up the slack for the remainder of our journey. A task for which we were by no means fit. It was for weeks after debarking that the stench of coal and sweat filled my nostrils. My journal is rather empty during these days, as I had not the strength to put pen to paper by the evenings.
    I do not believe it occurred to either of us to demand to be treated as paying passengers, though we were. For one, I was quite focused on a swift and safe arrival after nearly being bisected by a cannonball. For another, the Captain had deftly dropped in the story of his name, an event some years past which featured himself clubbing an uppity sailor with a discarded stove pipe in the mess hall. I later confirmed this story with several of the crew.

    Back in my cabin that first night after the attack. "Who are you talking to?" It was Evans, looking haggard as always, and slightly amused at the air around him.
    "Was I talking?"
    "You were."
    "You should really knock. I'd prefer to keep my neuroses private."
    "My apologies," he said, and took a seat on my bed, setting a bottle of gin on the table. "I blame my upbringing, of course. Big family, lack of manners, and all that. Swiped that from the Paymaster's store. I figure we deserve it after today."
    "I'm sure the Captain will understand," I said doubtfully. This was before either of us had heard the Stovepipe Story.
    His foot twitched idly. "So it occurred to me to wonder about your plans once we arrive. What exactly is this piece about?"
    "Reconstruction, is what Tillson told me."
    "Same to me, but beyond his grand gestures, I've not a clue what he wants from me."
    "To be honest, I haven't given it much thought." There was a…Presence within, just waiting to express itself. In what manner, I didn't know yet.
    Evans laughed at that. "Fair enough. Well, I suppose I'll start by pointing my camera at anything that looks sad. I'll bet you can manage to spin that."
    "Oh, I can spin it. Just rub some soot on an urchin's face, and I'll write you a tragedy."
   
---

    Paris, and the streets felt paved with story. The footprints of revolutionaries were etched on the cobblestones. In a square stood the ghost of Sydney Carton, still waiting patiently at the steps of the Guillotine while the crowds called his number. A hollow ring to the pavement, an echo through the catacombs below, where a hundred generations gave their bones up to the dust. Everywhere a flare for the arch, the steeple, the jagged joints of grimy, old buildings heavy with the souls of their occupants. I prowled the byways and thoroughfares, siphoning vitality from the sights, Evans milling in my wake and pointing his camera at things. He wore several bandoliers of flashbulbs that made him clink as he walked.
    Naturally, our first stop, before even washing the coal dust from our clothes, was a wine bar. It was just like I'd imagined it, a long room with a counter and stools, barrels stacked behind it, and a Frenchman who wore his apron with a sovereignly air. "Good day, Mssrs! I will be Jacques for you. You are travellairs, yes? I can see zat hunger for rest in your eyes. Where has zis journey brought you from?"
    My nine years of French were rusty, of course, but passable. Enough to be understood, but frequently with that chuckle and shake of the head reserved for foreigners all over the world. "New York, actually." I set my luggage by the stool and sat.
    "Ahhhh, Americans. Wonderful! With the papers, yes?" He gestured to Evans, who could be mistaken for nothing else while draped in cameras and equipment. "Zay have sent you across ze ocean, nobly to find ze finest vintage, wherever it may take you!"
    "Well, not ex--"
    "And but of course, your search has brought you 'ere, to my 'umble estableeshment." He rubbed a thumb on the bridge of his nose and grinned. "Quite in luck you are, Mssrs, for a journey to my shop is made not in vain, no matter ze distance!"
    "And here I thought it was an 'umble' shop," said Evans in English.
    With a twist of his wrists, Jacques produced two filled snifters before us, darker than red, thicker than ink. "Drink, and doubt me no more, weary travelairs!"
    He was quite right, of course. And it was several glasses into idle conversation that I began to tell Evans about the newspaper article. As the evening took us in, patrons, friends, drunkards filtered in and out, occupying and vacating stools. Evans held to his luggage and equipment, with a keen eye for any who stumbled too close, and snapping the occasional photos of  the most unfortunate among them. My own suitcase lay open on the floor, the notebook tucked beneath my shirts, the aformentioned article on the countertop, to which Jacques himself took an interest, between expounding on the merits of his stock. "Zees one in particular, I remember it from a dream, a dream in which I was zwept eentoo a violent storm, filaments of darkest black piercing my mind, yes? It picked me up and flew me to ze finest vineyard in all Tuscany, grown on ze ashes of a most ancient volcano. I knew only ze grape of zis place would do for such a mixture, so what wondrous fortune zat my cousin owned a stock in zis land!" He glanced at the photograph in my newspaper, of a young man who lay dead in an alley, surrounded by uniforms. "Ahh! You know of zese murders, then? What grisly fortune stalked our streets in zose days?"
    "Stalked? So you think it has left, then. Or they have, rather?"
    Jacques grabbed a new arrival by the cheeks and shook him in greeting. "Beautiful to see you friend, and in health as well! Almost certainly, Mssr. Weeks have passed since this killing, and while they lasted, there was at least one a day. It is my thought that they have vanished, yes?"
    "Excuse me, Jacques," said Evans, "but your accent seems to be disappearing?"
    "I think not, Mssr. Evans, rather the reader is meant to - how you say? - internalize; to but save us the pain of such spellings as 'zees', 'razair', and 'eenternalize'."
    "Well, thank Heaven for that. It was growing rather tiresome, wasn't it?"
    "Yesyes, wonderful," I said. "Jacques, have they printed anything else since this? Announcements? Leads? Flotsam? Jetsam? Anything?"
    "Jet--sam? Hhmm, I think not. The matter lies as open as the thighs of the most wanton demoiselle in all Paris."
    "May I find her zis night, friends!" said an elder man two stools away. He emptied his glass, slapped it on the counter, and strode out the door, straightening his cap with purpose.
    "Do you think he will?" asked Evans.
    Jacques watched him go and shrugged. "He has not far to go, but Pierre would not know Wanton if it bit him on that gigantique nose of his. Still, perhaps She will find him, instead. And perhaps, friends, she will give him a peck on the cheek before robbing him blind." Evans laughed at that. "Importantly - what did we speak? - ze case! papers, yes! My cousin, Mssr., is a gendarme of excellent quality! On the week in question, as he would say, I heard no end of his grumbles on the subject. If you wish, I will be your centerman - no! - middleman in the matter of the Pogrom of Paris." At the last, he placed one hand on his chest, and the other held in the air between us; a grand gesture which made me think of Tillson.
    "Is that what the papers have been calling it?"
    "Not yet, friend, but they most certainly will. It is my own concoction, and has quite the kick to it, don't you think?"

    Locating our hotel amidst the wine fog and orbiting street lamps was no easy task. We rambled and chattered through the neighborhood, the latter kept up mostly by Evans, who seemed as if he had finally learned to ride a bike but didn't know how to get off of it. "My family questions the wisdom of such endeavors, of course. I couldn't exactly tell them when I was coming home. It's not as if I want to go back to the Warehouse, but try getting them to understand that, I dare you! Especially Eldest Marjorie, or Meddling Marge, as I call her. Though not to her disprop- disproportionate face, you understand." He held his hands far apart to demonstrate the size of her face. "Like a witch doctor's mask! Regardless, I hated to disappoint Cynthia like that. And watch, she will have evaporated by the time I return." He sighed. "She was the one not on fire."
    "What's that?"
    "James, imagine everyone are life boats drifting on the ocean, drifting away while you're drowning; but they're on fire, and whenever you look at them you can feel your eyes burning and you couldn't possibly climb inside to save yourself though of course you're always paddling closer, as who wants to drown?"
    "Sounds terrifying."
    "Right? She was the one not on fire."
    "You should have been a poet, Evans."
    "Then what would I do with all these cameras?" They hung on him like stone weights on an eremite. "In any case, she may have sunk by now."
    I had picked up a pipe from somewhere near the wine shop, and had already learned to puff on it in response to any comment, followed by something sage. "Life is an emotional roller coaster, or some such."
    His head drooped. "I find it to be more of an elevator, myself…" He seemed on the verge of collapsing beneath his gear.
    Another puff. "Stamp your foot and tell that bellhop to take you to the penthouse!"
    "Quite, quite! …say, James…?"
    "Your servant."
    "Did you agree to this job because you want to be a detective?" Evans grinned up at the sky.
    "Whatever do you mean?" Puffpuff.
    "It's this Pogrom of Paris business. Jacques's new moniker seemed to strike like a flint in your pupil, I could see it! And now you're smoking a pipe."
    Puff. Did two shadows just stand on a rooftop against the night for a second? "I'll admit, I'm intrigued, but it's not all by any means. We have the seeds of the End of History to record, right? The human dregs of the Great War, or whatever other pompousness will impress Tillson. And who could pass up a free trip across an ocean?" Having lived through that trip, I was inclined to disagree with myself on the last point.
    "Glad to hear I'm not wasting my flashbulbs. Still, Inspector, if you need me to snap any photos of crime scenes, I'll be right there."
    I puffed one more time and put on an air to fit. "Of course, my dear Evans." Down the street, every lit window seemed a portal to a new universe, which would open to a single passphrase, if I could just remember the words. "I'll tell you what. In the morning we get our first Parisian breakfast, you take your photos, and I'll go see this cousin of Jacques's. Just out of curiosity, of course. After that, we've got an article to write." 
   
   

gasoline

the world whispered to ash
while you sat blankly on the toilet
while you slept through sunrise
combed your hair

the last leaf fell

lord don't let me die in my sleep
so i'll at least know what it feels like

let me lie in the gutter, the desert
upon the mountain's crest
broken and torn from myself just once
while I still know who I am


Here we are earthy, we are proud, proud of our brains and our bodies
our lives intransient, physical, tactile, sensual

There is the monk who burns himself in protest
or the other monk who offers to burn himself instead
or the monks who burned themselves in celebration
    and which of us two is missing out on something

we are separate from ourselves.
these are not my hands, but the hands of the universe.

The Eye and the Mountain

    An Agnostic, an Atheist, a Christian, another Christian, and a Murderer were all dead. Let's call them Agatha, Alex, Christie, Christian, and Murdoch for short.
    Now why they were dead, when, and how, didn't so much matter anymore. The point is, they had all ended up at this crossroads right at the same time. A thick layer of dull red stratus clouds stretched off towards the horizon in all directions. The horizon itself was entirely flat except to the East, where an impossibly tall mountain broke the symmetry and pierced the clouds above. The ground was cracked clay, drier, and colder, than an Earthly tomb.
    The dusty road forked under their feet, and a wooden sign was clearly marked 'Hell' and 'Heaven', from left to right. To the left of the sign sat a wizened imp with a silky, grey beard, flanked by two sleeping harpies.
    Christie addressed it. “What am I doing here? What sin have I committed?”
    The imp replied, “All are judged equal by the Eye of Heaven. If that’s the place you seek, turn right.” He gestured a gnarled and lazy finger at the sign.
    Christian remarked angrily and flung out a finger at Murdoch. “If all are judged equally, how did I end up in the same place as HIM!”
    Murdoch was angry but nervous. “He said all are judged equal, not equally! Weren’t you listening?”
    The imp made no more reply, and all were silent as they stared at the sign. The road to the right ended in the tallest, most treacherous mountain in Creation. To the left, the road extended off beyond the horizon, through the desolate wastes.
    Alex, with tears of joy in his eyes, sprinted off towards the mountain without a word, nearly leaving his shadow behind.
    Finally, Agatha spoke. “Do we have to choose now? I mean…” Her questions went unarticulated, but the imp still answered, as if reciting a poem read too many times.
    “The roads are open to all, to come and go as they please.”
    Agatha gazed doubtfully at the imp, but finally shrugged and wandered off down the road to the left.
    Christie watched her go, squared her shoulders, and turned right.
    Christian and Murdoch were locked in a futile contest, the latter attempting to escape down the road to the right, the former ready to bar his way. "You shall not pass!" Christian was a young man, strong and stubborn with conviction. He spread his arms across the road, like a goalie.
    Murdoch was decrepit and sullen. "Oh, get off your horse, churchie! You heard that ugly monster. I've got just as much a right as you!"
    Christian stood firm, and spared but one glance for the imp, who was stroking the shoulder of the harpie whose head lay in his lap, her long fingernails twirling at his chest hair. "Not while I live, you don't!"
    "Hah!! That's a riot!" said Murdoch. He had found a rather sharp rock somewhere, which he smashed into Christian's temple. Christian's body collapsed and bled out into the cracked stone.
    A breath later, Christian stepped up to the crossroads again, and looked at the body and the blooded stone in Murdoch's hand. "Did…? Did you see that??" he yelled to the imp. "He KILLED me!" A harpie giggled and began to snore, radiating sin from every naked curve and bead of sweat.

    Meanwhile, Agatha was far to the West, the crossroads out of sight, but the mountain looming tall as ever behind her. Otherwise, the landscape remained barren and empty. "So…….am I in Hell, now? Or is it just a long walk?" she asked.
    With no visible change, in her surroundings or in herself, it could have been a single step or a thousand before she arrived at another wooden signpost. Disappointingly, it said only: "Welcome to Hell." She stood by it and looked around. "What? There's nothing here. God, this is boring." She sighed and glanced at the mountain behind her. "Well," she thought, "unless this is a test, and I'm not really there yet? Maybe a little farther." She set off to the West, oriented only by the mountain, eternally looming behind her.

    Meanwhile, Alex had arrived at the foot of The Mountain, not knowing how much time had passed, but only that The Mountain was as much bigger than he had thought it was, as he had thought it was bigger than any other mountain when he stood at the crossroads. The red clouds near the peak that had seemed so low were uncounted miles up the slope.
    Just as he began to despair, Christie appeared, jogging past him, and started up the slope.
    "If you can do it, I can!" he said.
    "We'll see!" she yelled back, already scaling the first cliff.
    "We will," he whispered to himself, and began to climb as well.

    Hunger was the first to strike, at a moment that he judged to be a few days into the climb. Looking down, and with some experimental finger-prodding, he determined that his belly button was actually touching his backbone. But conveniently, a tall tree, more of a convergence of thick vines, was at the top of the ridge. Though he lacked muscles, he was able to pull himself to the top. The fruits hanging from the branches were, after all, beehives, each home to a regiment of seasoned warriors who arrayed themselves in staggered ranks to sting him relentlessly. But though his skin was pricked a thousand times a thousand, he reached inside each hive, and devoured the honey within, the more satisfying for his effort.
    Afterwards, a mass of red welts but belly full, Alex began to climb to the next ridge; where a knife-fisted, dagger-toothed panther stalked the empty alleys of an abandoned hamlet.

    Agatha had turned back ages ago, still unsure she had made the right decision, but thankful that The Mountain could show her the way. And in fact, the dusty road had reappeared yesterday, or thereabouts, and led her to the intersection where they all began. The imp and his harpies were still there, all sleeping now. Christian and Murdoch were still there, as well, arguing. "I KNOW there is some sort of mistake, here!! But by God, who could mistake you, Filth that you are!" Christian said to Murdoch, spit flying from his lip.
    Murdoch gestured pointedly with his pointed rock. "That's what I'm TRYING to tell you! There can't be any mistake. So just let it go, and I'll mosy past and we'll forget this whole thing! Huh? Huh?"
    "Do you really, really think, I'm going to just let THIS go?!" Christian swept a hand over the many bodies littering the intersection, all quite identical to Christian, only most with some variety of severe head trauma.
    "Well, whatchya gonna do about it, huh?" Murdoch dropped his rock and spread his arms wide.
    "YYyyyyaaahhhhh!" screamed Christian. Agatha scratched her head and considered.

   
    Alex was closer to the clouds than once he had been. Days, perhaps years had passed, with as many ridges to mark them. Ridges of dense jungle filled with lying trees. Ridges of vibrant, eternal cities, always teetering on the literal precipice of collapse. Ridges of stone giants, ready to crush him beneath their feet. Fierce rainstorms and mudslides. Villages riddled with plague, and the cries of the needy. Brushfires. Deep, swift rivers of poisonous jellyfish. Twice, he had crossed paths with Christie, and myriad other climbers. Once, an intense man with a white mustache and a rifle, who told him to run and hide while he counted to fifty; chuckling and patting a sack of heads all the while. And Despair. Always, the edge of Despair.
   
    But now, he could actually feel the moisture of the red clouds on his cheeks. Behind, and down, was only a featureless brown spreading from The Mountain in all directions, a proper concept of distance impossible. Ahead, and up, 700 cobblestone steps terminated in an ornately carved gate, with only mist visible beyond it.
    Each step the size of a man, but to Alex, a small thing next to the heights he had climbed. Nothing at all.
    The carvings on the gate were faces, infinite faces of people. He didn't stop to examine them. On the other side, the path led up through the red mist. And then beyond.
    Beyond, it streched onward. And up. Above the clouds was no peak at all, but more of The Mountain, and more clouds (deep purple this time), as far as he had come or further. The edges of Despair nipped at his heels, but his heels were always moving, Onward and Upward.

   
    Meanwhile, Agatha stood at the crossroads, having watched folks come and go, watching Christian and Murdoch beat each other to death with rocks till she grew tired of it, waiting for the imp to wake up so she could ask him.
    Finally, he smacked his lips and came out of his slumber. A harpie stretched her slender arms around him, and he grumbled.
    "So…" said Agatha, "I don't get it."
    The imp cocked a bloodshot eye at her. "Hmmm?"
    She pointed at The Mountain. "Is Heaven at the top, or…?"
    The imp smiled and stroked his silvery beard.

Fistfight

The night was
full of bottles

What I'd imagined
drowning must be like
only with more labels
Black
gold and gold
and gold and silver
promise coronation:
King of the Drink.
drowning
protected from tomorrow
by death tonight

The closing of my faculties
interrupted with a shock
by the sober speed of drunken punches

in the night
lit only by torches
the people writhed together
rising and falling
unable to understand their own movement

No one knew why
the drunken fistfight at 1:30,
while we watched
from the gas station

I wanted to agree when he said how he abhorred violence, but there was a dark beauty in it, a fear of the rarely experienced, a shadow of our end, and I thought how Arendt said that death was the most apolitical thing, separating from the world of human affairs, a signifier that all pursuits became nothing in the face of the mortal being.
    I thought about standing in Dresden when it finally fell silent, feeling the wind ripple a torn shirt, feeling the disbelief, the disbelief is all, the disbelief of what is most real, like when O'brien says: Boom, down, it wasn't like in the movies, man, he fell like a pile of bricks, no ass over tea kettle.
    Not a movie, sure, but still I was wide-eyed like a child, cheeks stuffed with popcorn
a little glimpse of hell for the man born and raised in heaven
    the poxed hunchback found asleep on the country club golf course by a boy in a sweater and khaki pants; and only a strange kinship told the boy it was real, that he would see it someday, that nobody dies in heaven, we all go to hell first.

Flesh Golem

unequal parts
rain, bone, and meat
brought forth to sup
at the witch’s teat

chemical soup
evacuant sludge
given eyes
and mind to judge

whence came its
beastly form
from no source
but carnal storm

a god bless’d
or curs’d withal
nerves to caress
and chaste to fall

‘neath miasmic incites
of phantoms lost
does he pray return
and weigh the cost

of issue forth
from guileless wyrm
the seeds of a cyst
that’s bound to form
and list her way to life less lived
than beads of light in a fire pit

ever remorse her crude construction whose fault lies with similar slaves
why not detach her limbs and strip her veins
spread out in the air a vaporous wind a ghost of atomic gigantic proportion
sailing now thoughtless merely wrought by hurricane tortion picking up those of similar mind to rend all that is them and leave oneness behind
thegolemsaregoneinatideofcontusionsbutwhyshouldtheycaretheyrethemastersoffusion

glass eye

Every day for several
years

she took an iron to her
brain

until one day there was no
thought

but only
peace


she stared at the madhouse
window
and watched the rain
wash away the mudstains

until one day
the glass was clear
and she could see
the world again

She hugged the window.
The rain stopped.

the search for life

fortune finding monkeys seek out
the last great thrill in existence

whilst in his tower
the man of boredom
hugs his crystal ball
in anticipation

what is left to find
to know

does he have time?

do giant mushrooms grow across
a rainbowed landscape
pierced with jagged
mountain men?

what do they find
but nuked and paved
magnificence
and waxed penguins
hiding hangovers
behind dark glasses
on their way to work

filing in
filing out
of lanes
of traffic
?

something in the air
has killed them

and the streetcleaners
sweep the poor beasts
into the gutters

where they rot in the veined
rivers of feces
that lie beneath
the sterile
face of civilization