these things happen

He turns on, and off, like a robot.  

Sam found him standing there in the dorm, naked and unresponsive.  After calling his name seven or eight times, the robot finally turned back on from off and looked at Sam from the black.  He looked right at Sam and said, I know I should have clothes on and proceeded to put right leg after left into the jeans crumpled at his feet.  Then the robot crawled into bed.  

The next day it happened at the coffee maker.  He was going through the motions of making coffee.  First he found a filter.  He poured one, two, three scoops of grounds.  Then he filled the glass carafe and raised his elbow toward the ceiling, pouring water into the back of the machine.  There he froze, his arm an inverted V, an immovable mountain.  It held the coffee pot in mid pour.  

The water in the pot stayed level with the earth, only the chalice was tipping.  

He stared at a fixed point, looking through it.  He was the holder of earth things, of water and glass and stone.  He was the holder of breakable earth things.  The room moved around him.  Chairs slid back as other youth stood up.  A fork echoed off the table as it fell from plate to table to floor.   Whole glaciers felt the earth sway one tenth of one tenth of one millimeter.  The water in the tilted pot trembled.  

Several people said his name but no one dared to touch him.  To touch him could cause an avalanche in Siberia.  

Then, without any flare or fury, the robot turned himself back on and the water emptied itself into the machine.  The coffee groaned.  The mountains righted themselves.  The sky sighed.  

The robot sat down and waited. The bodies bussing their tables around him, waited. The earth, spilling all around him, waited.

Only the coffee went on percolating.  

Robot Love

There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)” and finally “Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”

Love, regret, forgive. He underscored each word with three dark lines and tapped his pen on each eyebrow three times. He hadn’t noticed that his mouth was sagging open. He was not quite thirty, the youngest astronaut at NASA by a mile.

I do what robots can’t do, he thought. But why do I do these things?

 -from Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

i dream in color

chains.  a row of chains.  long, heavy, rusted.  hanging from an open concrete vault, only the vault is turned on its side and we are in it, we are pouring out.  slanted light is pouring in.  we are jumping and i am taking pictures.  so many pictures!  the colors are all so rich, so vibrant, so incredibly vivid.  each shot is richer than the last.  these dessert colors, the red rusts streaked across the canyon.  wait, the canyon?  so many layers of brown on brown.

peek beyond the vault, crawl to its edges and see the world drop away.  mountains inverted.  deep deep gully.  deep rich belly.  and still the chains are calling.  clink, clink.  clinkclink.  clink.  i snap another photo but your curls are in the way.  so many curls!  jessica of the blue eyes and the always in the way.

we laugh.  we jump.  we take more

pictures

imprint of a kiwi

i was walking with you last night by a river.  you were walking with yourself, your little girl self.  she picked up a bike and you got on the back as she pedaled out into the current.

i hesitated on the shore.

i didn't have a bike, and i was afraid my dress would weigh me down.  ultimately i didn't want to lose you to the other side so i jumped in after you.  i kept my head above the surface the whole time.

we pulled ourselves up out of the water.  we dried ourselves stepping through the sun.  we curled up in a cabin where you and little you were overflowing with laughter.  it reminded me of the first time i saw her peeking out.  you were telling a story about sun salutes and the way you interacted with the Afghan observer.  your mischievousness pulled me in.

i was in your happy place and it became my happy place.  light and airy and spacious.

and then i checked my phone.

the voicemail began pulling me back to the other shore.  as i stood to leave i noticed my dress had dried quickly from the heat.  something wasn't right.  the front was stained from the dirty reeds in the river and i felt a sadness for ruining it.

the reeds made a pattern that became a sort of intention.  a perfect outline of bulbs and branch.  a block print all along the front of me. i joked that i should swim the backstroke to complete the pattern.  i soaked up your smile.

and then i woke.  aching for the river, the dress: the message from the pattern

what then?

if not this, then what?

do you think it's worth it.  just look me in the eyes and tell me you think it's worth it: to kick someone out on the street so they can get kidnapped.

i try not to sigh.  her need is so great and the question is impossible to answer because it is. . .a pretzel question.  the kind that loop you around and around until you can't remember where you started.

i want, suddenly, to hold her hand.  to just sit there with that small touch.  is her hand impossibly warm?  is it clammy and cold?  or tepid?  limp?  fierce?  bony?

still the words and the tears spill on.  still the people move around us.  still my throat closes around all the other questions spinning in my head:

if not this, what then?

a place for all the stars

he said his english name was Bench because benches are useful.

we giggled and said it was a good name.  and it was a good name because it fit somehow.  

i want to be useful.  i want to name things the way Bench could name things.  i want to have room for all the drops in my bucket, to not have to overflow in your car or in my kitchen or in the shower with the lights turned low low low.  

hips and bones.  

the back and the forth.  

the way my hands open like a book while you talk.  i'm collecting your stories

i'm sending them back up up up to the place 

where they belong

i think i can

how do they do it? the bees

with their perfectly patched honeycombs. a shape
in nature [repeating]  itself

i am the bee

surrounded by fabric and words, fabric and words.  fabric.
and words.

watching the tunnel of my life


take shape

i punched a wall and she bought me ice cream

the world is full of mixed messages.

in Nebraska, stop lights are horizontal and dough is baked around the meat of a Runza.  

i drove my friend's car there once while he elevated a leg full of staples.  Spicoli's dad called him my Samoan.  hey mel, where's your Samoan?  he's knocked out on pain killers.  or he's picking at his staples. but where'd you find him?  in a phone book in 7th grade.  i like him, that big 'ol Samoan.  

that's what we did back then.  we worked in gas stations and warehouses and got in our car after work to drive 7 hours for a boy we couldn't get enough of.  we learned that manual transmission could still have cruise control and that a friend wouldn't bail on you just because they tore the shit out of their leg in a work accident (even though you told them they should bail on you).  we played frisbee and sang in the sisters room and fell asleep watching Army of Darkness.

but back to the wall and the fist.  back to the ice cream and my scrunched up nose.  back to his story about putting his drugged out brother in a choke hold.  

i think

if i didn't have the Samoan and the boyfriend's dad and the trash cans that lift their lid like magic, 

i might not know who i could become

from the island

we wade in the salt and the blue up to our hips.  i am leaping, you are diving and shuffling, diving and shuffling.

we are at the mouth of a crocodile river and a sting ray ocean.  

i take another ballerina float and scream before i know exactly why i am screaming.  a long tentacle has whipped around my leg, fast as a shooting star and just as hot.  one hundred tiny nails attached to a thin leather strap wrap around my ankle on up to my thigh.  you are suddenly beside me, carrying me back to shore where i take stock.  i touch my leg to make sure it is still there and when i have verified that all my parts are still my parts a laugh wells up and out of me.  you shove me over onto the sand and say you were sure that an alligator had chomped off my leg.  it was, i say, an alligator. . .or a jellyfish.  

two days later i could still feel the tentacle around my calf.  

on a tuesday in another country, i remember the sun in my eyes.  i remember the desire to be weightless and the fear of paddling beyond the break.  

my place is in the whitewater, though i long to be where you are being: up on the board that is up on the wave that is full of long black fish and sea reeds.  

still i carry the fear.  still you carry me.  

still i can laugh at the sting and the salt (while i keep my eyes open for crocodiles)

still i wonder what it feels like 

to fly  

can't catch

it's one of those days

when you can't catch
a break.  when the words
that she hears are not
the words that you say.

i sent her out on the street,
left her to fend for herself
in the dark and the cold and the wet.
another whole night.


and here i am in your warm
house. foxy jumping on my shoulders
makes you apologize.  makes me
smile.  this is a weight
i can bear.  cloth and thread.
the coming together of colors: white
and blue and blue and yellow and red
and blue.     and white.

the thread and the cat and the street

are impossible to unravel

what the sky holds

they were not friends
they were not lovers
yet they were a kind
of brotherhood: the clouds.

it wasn't the fact that they
parted.  it was the way
in which they parted.

this one a hurricane
that one a thunderstorm
these two, these two

they parted for the sun

when i land

your dreams are red: red hat, red jacket, red
store, red apparel, red name tag.  red car.
study law and business.  open up your own
shop.  design your own clothes.  draw.

but, you say, first i want to go to london
i'll wear a nice button up shirt and a bow tie


a BOW tie! I squeal

yeah, a bow tie.  and some skinny jeans.
then i'm gonna hop on a bike and pedal around
he takes of his hat and smiles wide
i'm gonna let my fro fly free.


then maybe i'll hit singapore.  
i hear i would be real
popular there, cuz i'm so tall.


i close my eyes, just for a second, and see
big ben.  i see him on his beach cruiser ringing
his bell through the crowded streets
of singapore.  and then, eyes wide open

we are both

the distance between

london.  and singapore

driving the cat

it starts the way it always starts: in the middle

i am chained up, shackled.  a handcuff somehow fits around my neck and you are with me, though i don't know who you are.  two other you's are held prisoner and i know now that they are, of course, really other me's.

our kidnappers have gone.  they drive off in a long hooded town car, dark.  i can see them craning their necks toward the house as they drive away.  three of them; three of me.  i am in plain sight in the giant picture window.  this feels like another trap, another way to catch me.  the house i find myself in is a mess.  paper cups and tools and debris surround me.  surround us.  and here, in plain sight, is the key.

we unlock ourselves slowly.  we take the bait.  we wait for the trap.

tick tock.  tick tock.  tick. . .tock. . .and still nothing.  i am alone, the decision to leave is mine.  whatever happens is now my fault.  see how they trick us?  i leave anyway.

under cover of night i cling to the shadow of shrubbery.  i climb the hill up to the other house and find an impossibly large cat.  or a cow.  or a cow that feels like a cat.  and i know, instinctively that it is neither.  it is a way to escape.  the cat-cow nods her head in agreement.

my hands are not petting but searching for the latch, the hook, the opening of the door that will let me inside.  there it is!  and here i am, crawling into the belly of the beast.  sprawled forward as if on (yet in) a motorcycle.  like i am flying instead of driving: this cat.

with a twist of the wrist i accelerate into the street to start the next level

in the middle, again.

they are out there.

they are watching.

today's horoscope

three words:
sensory deprivation tank

you hear this horoscope from across the room and come at me like a magnet.  you tell me about what it is like to float as if you were the one who had float.ed.  as if the friend you describe shared the same brain as you, the same feet, the same twitch of the nose.  the same: senses.

but what would it be like?

it wouldn't.
be.
like anything.

you say it is the stripping down to your very soul.  you say it is where you find out who you really are.  you say it is where you discover things about yourself you didn't know.  about yourself.  wide eyed.  electric.  so so excited.  to visit the place you yourself have never been.  you are bursting with your nothingness.  your letting it all go.  your eyes just grew a deeper shade of blue and your lips pulled up at the corners.  just enough.  (i saw it then.  i glimpsed your core)

i say it sounds. . .amazingly. . .difficult.  all my fingers twitching just thinking about it.  but maybe i am talking about the nothingness that surrounds us even now.


these are the things i would have missed tonight.

this story would not have found a voice.

your ears would not have perked.

you may have stayed, lost.  slinking around the edges of the crowd instead of parting the see
to be yourself.

with me and him and her.

if only for a moment

take it

we used to believe that the earth was the center of the universe.  

and so it is with the heart.  

i gave you mine to share but you put it into a box.  the box went under your bed.  your bed was cold like wax and smelled like hay.  still i went on.  beating

still i told the story of myself.  

ran along dirt roads past horses.  pumped my fists.  went bowling and made the first move.  discovered cilantro and decided a little tiny bit can still be too much, too much.

still i gave another little piece.

ran along trails all covered in roots.  jumped off a bridge after you.  climbed to the top of a billboard clutching flowers.  held your feet in a soundless ocean.

remember the box and the bed and the fish made of glass.  remember the box and break another little piece.

i know you got it: and it makes me feel (good).

the things we say aloud

last night, there you were again.

in a parking lot with a jump ramp in the middle of a busy city.  how do you get in that way?  (you don't.) you find the secret entrance around the corner.  look for your car, it is hidden but i know it is there.  i drive you to it. . .just a little farther. . .i can make it from here, you say, so i still never see it.  i wonder what you are driving these days but don't ask.  we both step out of my car awkwardly (only i am the one that is awkward).   you give me a sympathetic hug.  a no expectations hug.  but i am not relieved, really.  i'm not anything.

i wake groggy.  try to figure out all that has been left unsaid and all that has been shown.

so loud.

solid soup

Carter said  thank you today.  Said thank you for the soup, that was good.  Thank you for the Nyquil.  I said it is because I love you.  So so much!  This is true, but there was something in the thanking that I didn’t know I needed to hear.  So nice, so home.  I realize he is watching me in the up and down.  Phone call after phone call.  Pause the show, stir the soup.  Sit down, stand up.  My ripples don’t rock his boat.  My movements don’t disturb him.  He sits still, like a rock.  He takes it in.  He puts away the dishes and comes to the door to say goodbye.  He is here, in the knowing.  He will be here when I return.  He is: solid.  

out.side

so, karen and i were just talking today about how sometimes you just can't find that balance in the world. about how you reach that 'wtf' moment where you wonder when it's going to just stop being so crazy.  and then this happened when i was leaving shelter and two of our young ladies were outside smoking a cigarette and finishing their outside chore. . .

fancy red car cruises by shelter

girl: 'did you see that mexican slow down and try to pick me up just now?  really, dude?  outside of shelter?  what an idiot.  he doesn't even remember that last time i robbed him of $500 dollars.'

me: raised eyebrows, sucking in my breath, bending over in a long sigh (sometimes you just don't have words)

girl: 'what? i'm not going to suck anyone's dick for $20 bucks.  so i stuck a knife to his balls and robbed him of his rent money'

long pause

me: 'on that note. .  .'

girl laughing and tossing her cigarette: 'goodnight mel!'

ho.ly shit.  

and the crazy thing is that this wasn't the most awful thing i heard tonight.  in passing, like just another story.  harm reduction.  teachable moment.  holder of stories.  

sometimes you just take one to the gut and drive yourself away