A Lonely Form of Punctuation

Whistles sounded from the outside, through the windows, back and forth, one after another, like a morse code alternative or a stereo test. I rose to my feet tightly, feeling the confusion in the muscles of my ass and legs, still staring at the 37 year old man in the chair with his feet like hiding lambs and his impossible knowledge of an ancient language and his lack of similarity to any person I could remember. As I listened to the whistles with my body quiet, I had my first fear that my memory was unworthy of the trust I gave it. It was as if I would turn around and behind me there would not be a couch with a blanket and a wall and a kitchen beyond. There would be a yawning void and blackness beyond darkest imagining and I would be dissolved into it with a sigh and an absence of sadness.

But entering through my front door came a creature-like woman with white hair and a clear voice and I knew then the source of the whistling; it was a product of her many voices which convened around my house, gathering in the cold night, slowly and in harmony. I watched her with stillness and did not turn around. With her glassy eyes she carried a basket I recognized and approached me with no face and handed me the basket and in it I saw several plastic wrappers which at one time held gift sausages. She held a twig to her lips and I obeyed, and was silent, and with strength not possible with her body of sparrow bones the color of rice she lifted the 37 year old man with her arms and like an infant bore him from my home and into the cold outside. Then was when I noticed that the belt of my robe had become unfastened and I felt the embarrassment and forgot about the void and therefore stopped believing in it.

Linger Like Citrus

So it was like this: with a bowl of cold gruel at my side I sat in the mode we call "Indian Style;" that is, with my legs tightly crossed before me, knees pointing to imaginery spots on the walls on either side of me, and my hair was oily and in need of hot water and shampoo and the confusion of my mind was heavy and a difficulty for handling, like a large batch of bread dough. I do not know how much dough is typically handled by the average person at home, but I imagine it is close to a very small amount and therefore the handling of a very large amount with the hands and forearms would be a vexing problem full of the probability of a temper tantrum.

 

Amongst this a 37 year old man found a peacefulness in his sleep and from his person seeped an odor of fresh water in the shade and air laden with gnats for whom a man struggling to transport a large amount of bread dough from one location to another would be something akin to nothing. 

Magnetic Soil Carrier

I was awoken in the night in my nest of secondhand comforters and blankets by the sound of the 37 year old man's knuckles repeatedly making sharp contact with my front door. His eyes had some ragged light in them and his collar was soaked.

 

"Friend," he said, "may I again impose on you to feed me and provide me the comforts of manly company?" I cinched up the tie of my robe and ushered him in and sat him in my most comfortable chair. When I returned with a piping hot bowl of tasteless slurry, he was asleep. His muddy boots lay discarded and pathetic on my Looney Tunes throw rug. His feet in their sweaty socks were tucked under him like frightened lambs. His calloused hand, I noted, lay in my ashtray, a drunken sailor in a life raft. The contents of the bowl in my hand rapidly cooling and solidifying, I listened as his dream-stained voice delivered falsehoods and obvious riddles into the room.

 

When he began speaking in the half-invented tongue known only to me and the forgotten siblings of my childhood, my lungs became excruciating confusions in my chest as if all oxygen molecules spontaneously swelled into lime-sized chunks.

Corn Without Friendship

A 37-year-old man climbed over my fence to see the shivering lather. After bringing him into my domicile and feeding him heartily, I felt a kinship. I divulged my creeping ambition to undermine the potential of lip-synching. But he was too focused on the act of consuming the slurry of grains in his bowl to listen. I stopped mid-sentence and allowed him his shy narcissism.

 

"The molecules I digest make their way into my reluctant cells by using an unorthodox game plan" he said, "and the hairdos I've sported are known as the bad boys of their respective sports."

 

"I have the ability to get laughs at mom's expense over multiple conversations," I said.

 

He shrugged. "With the weight of several hundred broken childhood promises, I am forming a virtual creature in the sky. I have the internet in a frenzy."

 

We hugged and I let him out, with a parcel of gift sausages to distribute as he saw fit. Or devour senselessly in the cold.

Pale on the Playground

The man in the car is someone we knew and when we parted ways we expected, and hoped, never to see again. His eyes are set on us; clearly, his memory is moving at high RPMs to determine our identities. Are we movie people? Are we clerks at an establishment he frequents? Are we, indeed, two with whom he has traded words, opinions, and drunken vulgarities and slaps? Maybe my well-manicured mustache is throwing him off the scent. Maybe your formerly shabby appearance is effectively negated by the designer apparel you now wear. Maybe my throat is swelling and my skull is fracturing and my intestines are waking up and angry.

His car is idling. The cardboard box he set on the roof was completely forgotten when he saw us. The food in the box is full of something we knew when we were in school and swore never to taste again and now its in us again, the smell of it is, and the steam is backlit by neon lights and it is garish and we are menaced and we walk to our destination unsure if the hands we hold are hands we have ever held before.

Pretzel Shirt! Pretzel Shirt!

The tree's leaves lie like ripped parchment on the ground, but still their canopies are full of captured dreams, and derive nourishment from them. The purpose of dreams is debated by men and women full of wonder and fear but the truth is that they are a simple way of dispensing of the souls of consumed animals. When an animal is slaughtered and eaten, its soul cannot be digested by the human stomach and its chemical arsenal. Nor can it be properly dealt with by the excrement-producing organs. Therefore it is sent to the brain, where the knotted memories it contains are converted into a vapor, which produces hallucinations as it is expelled through the ears. This is the truth. There is no other possible explanation for how trees don't die in the cold of winter and fall to the frozen gray turf.

Gadding About With a Man and a Teenage Boy and Their Pet

Me, I'm just a fellow in an inside-out sweater. People think I'm a little bit loopy because I have some dietary restrictions and also I am a confrontational person with authority issues who cannot hold a job and I prefer combative conversations. Last autumn I was fired from a retail store for throwing paper airplanes around one of the departments. I've also been fired for climbing warehouse racks, for constructing little alcoves out of discarded product boxes, and for carrying on with one or more female coworkers in unprofessional ways.

This is all because I am a man at discord with the world and the culture I was born into. I touch money and it becomes a stiff and unspendable thing. I speak to mothers and they lose the ability to recognize their offspring. I speak whispers full of germs, I have stolen hats and coats from hotels, and I distrust soap. I do not believe people when they tell me their names. I give them mine, instead.