I gazed directly at the edginess walking slowly toward me. It’s not that I was daydreaming or counting the three pennies in my jeans pocket, no I looked straight ahead devouring scenes of early spring propelled upon dusty work boots, and over the city sidewalks I maneuvered around heaved concrete slabs listening as they sighed a late winter death rattle.

The sun was shinning, but not so brightly that I couldn’t see I was walking toward a hot mess of confusion and it toward me. If anyone else saw the eminent collision they failed that warm spring day to offer warning. I continued directly toward the menacing roar of belching anxiety, it spewing forth   plumes like a Chinese dragon extolling cheap fireworks dancing on blind legs.

Some say I was compelled to walk toward and to embrace the gooey promise of quiet as if I was an inanimate pile of metal shavings unable to resist the junkyard magnet, but I know that’s not the way it happened. I walked, then ran into the embrace of desolation masquerading as relief from the internal turmoil crashing around inside my thoughts. I opened wide fervently grasping for that slim moment of peace that comes from waking on the edge of consciousness and helplessly falling to oblivion.

The fall showered a cool balm throughout, forgetfulness spiked its wondrous salve deep within wrapping around the fire ragging inside my soul smothering all feelings and releasing me from my sins.

Exhausted with regret and the punishing pain about to invade my frail self I dragged my body home. The release I had welcomed would soon turn to torturous self loathing, and even now was planning to froth itself upon me.

Those of us who do even the smallest amount of writing will find ourselves sooner or later in a quandary that may seem quite dark. This particualr quandry is not the one you might be thinking, no I’m talking about the act of writing itself and not the over used clutch of writers block.

Lately a few people have asked (repeatedly) why aren’t you writing or why haven’t I seen anything new from you in months, generally I let them know that indeed I am writing but not stuff I want to share at this moment. What I’m telling people is true but it blushes over the reality that I’m not writing regularly. I’m not sitting down most everyday and spinning webs of words and fantasy, no I’m using that important time to do other things and avoiding direct eye contact with the face of writing.

I assure everyone I have plenty to write about, thoughts are crashing and rattling around within my mind unceasingly. like Niagara Falls plots and ideas churn themselves to a boil within my skull and rarely do I come up from this hot mess for a breath of air. Oh sure I can read a book or watch TV and these pesky collections of words and pictures will recede for a moment or two, but if I don’t keep myself steeled with avoidance the words will slap me aside the head laughing and taunting my puny attempts to deny them.

The words and dreams are never offended when I turn away inching myself toward a more mundane project or maybe some high-minded thing like meditation, no the words know they ultimately are the master that I must give into if I ever want the peace that comes with answering the sirens call. Crashing upon that rocks is not the disaster many would have us believe, it is turning away from this passion and relegating your dreams to a dusty attic in your mind that is the real sin.

Put on some music, open the window letting warm softness of first spring fill your writing area and swirl around filling you with delight. Maybe take off your shirt and let this air bring a tingle upon your skin as you sit down to write, the tingle you feel when your creative juice’s traverse their way up and down your spinal column igniting you with magic, painting scene upon scenes so you might delight in your passion.

My foots tapping to the music, the air wraps itself around my naked upper torso lyrics asking me “who’s going to save me,”  smiling I pick up my pen and touch it to paper writing one word after another…..

Writer’s can’t be saved they can only write…..

Lost words tumble from my mouth making their way to my ears, and I repeat the question hoping to kindle magic bringing about epiphany of purpose where there is none. Stubborn intransigence molded from the sticky clay of change grips me tighter each time I utter another slowly stirred  sigh.

“I’m tarnished,” covered in rusted flakes from tears that never really set me free anchored in mundane existence unable to exorcise myself chained to this tightly wrapped barbed wire encasing my mind,  suffocating my heart.

I shift my thoughts away from self pity engaging my cold hands and furtively light a cigarette rehearing scenes of vertical scorn that friends soon will heap upon me as they recognize the stale smell I carry through the front door.

Friends inside festively milling around toasting occasion posting smiles sucking frosting waiting patiently for me to show unaware I’m staring through tiny rows of wavy garage door glass peeking into their world ashamedly hiding orange cigarette glow from their merry inside world.

December frost hitching a ride on winter’s wind sneaks through weathered cracks causing me to contract further into my own lonely warmth. Fingers encased in blue can’t strike a match to relight the stubby fag hanging off my lip.

Grudgingly thoughts become zen bubbles excuses become phantom, cheer replaces apprehension and for a moment self involvement melts with repeated touch from those inside.

No explanations presented themselves no ingenious stories were available no excuses came bubbling up to slow the disintegrating curtain currently lowering onto the darkening stage of our relationship. No resistance flowed from my heart my mouth opened to exhale only silence as she walked toward the door. Each step away reverberated with consequences flooding my mind with a dizzying tilt-a-whirl flurry, my chest tightened ferociously around my breath time dissolved into a candled frame by frame existence. She came to a stop and with her hand reached and grabbed the worn brass door nob we’d found together at a flea market, her innocently wrinkled fingers rotated the knob clockwise opening the door flooding the entry with gray light that rushed in from the rainy outside world quickly transforming the entryways warmth into a tabloid lining a pissed stained litter box. Immobilized with blindness I listened to her exit to the outside, and she quietly pulled the door shut behind her.

Salaciously puncture my rotting skull with your heel grinding my rebellious will into dusty submission, cast me out till penitent I crawl.

Furious clouds gather in my knotty head roiling into fitful images dank with despairs salty moisture. I’m encased within illusionary fouled thoughts filled with the drat of regret, poised on the point of change yet always falling backwards.Air all around yet I can’t breathe, space opening around me yet I have nowhere to go. I sit still, hoping the anxiety will drain from my limbs so I might feel the depth of loneliness, so I might feel anything, feel anything other then placid gray vibration.

I exist this moment upon unforgiving sidewalks neatly stepping along rolled out concrete ribbons, my feelings confined by bounding brick limestone apartments soaring high in the blue sky. My eyes focus straight ahead desperately reigning in a wandering imagination before traveling down naked alleys, proposing marriage to empty gutters, asking to not be swallowed. Lost in a city far from anything I know, sidewalk’s rising up, slapping me with concrete loneliness sucking life from me with radiating hot damp heavy air. Motherless children gathered on stoops spit as I pass yelling edgy breast puffing obscenities, pitiful birch pretending to mellow agitated passengers crawling from underground, crowds encased in transparent shells held together with yellowing anxiety, blocks of cavern facades shrink self esteem exposing open sores, red canopies shade peers who remark to themselves over gin, how foreign I look. I walk pissing tears conjugating bits of memory pressing toward something I don’t know, sidewalk walking with nothing to do. Haunting beautiful girls and boys turn away too busy building neurotic walls, vendors close doors pretending to nap. There are no white clapboards with green shutters pointing the way home, no hula hoops nor backyard picnics inviting me to leave my troubles in the wind. I’m walking hands folded praying dark joins cool night air letting me sleep to dream of lost touches and gentle kisses, of red noses that made me smile so long ago.

Went blue liquid, thinking about you, flowed through memories, traversed by you and me. Blue blue, no shade matches my feeling when you’re not here.

I see your eyes reflecting in my blue wading pool, blue liquid devouring your laugh, blue caressing your ankles wanting my blue to sweat out of you. I’m blue liquid, wanting to flow over your red lips, pouting, glistening white teeth waiting for me to give you my blue. Let me dribble across your lips down your soft face, let blue flow across your neck, between your breasts. Let my deep river blue cascade over your soft stomach in search of treasure.

Passion rising then melting in blue liquid, flowing like blue sap maple tree, green leaves outstretched in prayer, asking forgiveness from radiant sun. I felt sad happy thinking about you, wanting you to posses my blue as essence.

Sad little blue stream rolls on, slowly rising blue sap oozing toward you, wanting to love you.

Swirl my soft blueness inside your mouth, piercing me with your red tongue. Swallow my blue wetness filling your gut with my blue primordial self, turning my blueness into nourishing red blood flowing in every cell that is you. Exhale blue liquid from your heated lungs, couple your blue air oval mouth kissing me, giving back to me, my blue self.

Simon sat gazing out the window, the gray sky outside reflected deeply within, revealing no difference between out there and inside himself. Seemingly the color penetrated him in one long pendulum wave. From him to there and back again the gray traveled, becoming intense for a moment then easing, but the ease was shallow, he knew the color would roll back upon him, and knowing this he kept himself braced against it and against all of life.

Sometimes Simon felt it was tangible and he could step off the window ledge onto the gray wave, walking up to the clouds for a better view, but his courage would sag before he took that first step, and doing this he never discovered how deep reality really was. He laughed at the thought of possessing courage that waned in important times. “I have no courage” he’d say, then brace himself, for the gray wave surely would follow his mocking statement.

Kneading the back of his neck, Simon worked the gray around as a baker might work the dough, fingers poking and prodding muscles, caked in gray so thick he wasn’t able to turn his head. He kneaded and pulled to loosen it all, slowly like a lumbering elephant he would bend over to touch the floor, rocking his head upon stiffened neck back and forth roaring his trumpet under his breath. “Why why why” he spat, fingers flat on the floor, back rounded and stretched, no thoughts just quiet between his plaintive trumpet calls, “why why why.”

From his elephant pose Simon collapsed onto the dusty floor, it reminded him of the transience of everything, but fearing reprisal he resisted saying it out loud, instead his eyes watched his fingers draw shapes in dust. The dust would pile upon itself as fingers transferred thoughts till an unseen breath would even it out, in an etch-a-sketch moment. The thought of the universe being like a giant etch-a-sketch brought a smile to Simon’s forlorn mouth and then a chill shot through his shoulders and then another and another, till all the tension was gone.

Simon didn’t move, he didn’t disturb the space he lay in, didn’t tempt the moment to change position, he stayed exactly as when the smiled appeared, the smile that had released him from the gray. Simon welcomed the release by not doing a thing, he braced himself, fearing the next change to come, when someone decided to shake up, the etch-a-sketch.

I wretched with aplomb, spewing my guts out upon newly mowed lawn, mixing toxic with the summer smells grass and blossoms give up. More then cheap burgundy spewed forth as I leaned on the quiet elm for support, anxiety attached to shattered dreams convulsed desperately, joining the wine exiting my body. Again and again my stomach twisted itself trying to reverse another night of drinking. All I cared about was the nightly ritual ending  and getting some sleep, the elm just watched in silence not passing judgment not leaving me, alone.

A few hours earlier, I had been sitting at a local dive listening to Billy Joel or maybe it was someone else, I didn’t care. I only wanted the bartender to keeping filling my glass with a hearty burgundy, I was hungry to feel the grapes slide down my throat sending alcohol shivers throughout my body,  anesthetizing me from myself, erasing the cheap chalkboard my life had become.

“Another round Joe”? The bartender said, a tooth pick balancing on his cracked lip, I looked straight through him without answering , gazing at my own reflection in the mirror behind the bar, wondering who I was looking at or maybe wondering what I was looking at. “Another round Joe” the bartender said placing his hand on my shoulder and shaking me just a little. “Sure” I said, “fill it up.” the bartender topped off my glass and took two bucks from the pile of ones laying in front of me.

At first I didn’t know she was talking to me, “buy me a drink” floated into my consciousness from somewhere but I didn’t connect with it. Again. “buy me a drink” took up space around me and I turned my head to see a woman old enough to be my mother sitting next to me, she smiled pushing a little piece of crumpled paper into my hand and again said, “buy me a drink.” I signaled the bartender who was already bringing what looked like a double on the rocks, he picked through the pile of ones taking what he needed and retreated. “Thanks hon” dribbled out from behind the glass.

Without my asking she told me her name was Abagail. I looked into her eyes and saw nothing so I looked down at the piece of paper she had shoved into my hands. On the paper was her name and some letters and numbers, it said FWO21. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I knew she was looking to hook up and at this point in the night even I would do, even the bi-speckled drunk at the end of the bar would do.

Looking up from the cryptic note and into her eyes once more, I saw even less then nothing I saw my own reflection, and not wanting to keep looking at myself I raised my hand touching her neck, gently I tugged her toward me till our lips met in a wet embrace of booze and cigarettes. Her tongue burst into my mouth as if it was exploding, it took up so much space I thought I would choke, then just as quickly she pulled it back into her own mouth signaling me, to tongue her. I snickered a bit at this but went ahead and filled her up, she bit down and sucked like I could not believe, and then released me. All the while our mouths plundered the other our hands were desperately pulling at the other, our hands touched the other with loneliness and sadness. We sucked each others mouth in desperation, knowing our lives were winding down. We both touched the other but were really grabbing at our own lost dreams.

“Time to go Joe” interrupted our making out, “gotta close up, Joe” the bartender proffered. I grabbed Abagail’s hand leading her outside, she pulled me to her car where she opened the rear door, then she crawled in and beckoned me to join her. For ten minutes we kissed and ground the coffee, into dark dust laced with tears.

I wretched with aplomb, embracing the stars on a warm summer evening.

She touched me, the early summer breeze, wafting across my bare shoulders, cupping my ruddy cheeks with her gentle fingers. She touched me, the early summer breeze, coming from sunshine to shadow, from outside to inside till she wrapped me in her memories. Her touch was silence, filling me with grace and gratitude, filling me with her solitude teeming with life.

I swiveled in my chair expecting the fan to be turning, broadcasting invisible waves in my direction, but it was nature presenting me with a quiet gift, an early summer lover, she touched me. Gazing past the idle fan, past the weathered wooden sill, past the rusted screen and out into the deep green waving to me high in the trees, the breeze kissed me and I kissed her back, welcoming her and her quiet ways into my moment, welcoming the vast feelings of serenity she imbued in me, as she engulfed me in her soft arms. She touched me with generosity, this early summer breeze.

In spite of that touch I struggled, struggled with the silence she brought to me, I needed words from her lips, words that would quiet the ragging loneliness within myself. She touched me with strength to hold me still yet I struggled for distraction from the space she wanted to share with me. She exposed soft hands, extending them toward me, revealing a box wrapped in a bow made from the milky way, deeply blue with billions of stars leading to the beginning of time. Quickly I untied the bow, releasing sparkling dust from creation’s beginning. The dust swirled into many tiny tornado’s that devoured the room, erasing the walls and floors, erasing all boundaries I had clung so stubbornly to. The box itself merged with the space unfolding all around. I flailed about, my fingers grasping for something to hold onto, desperately needing surface to cling to. there was space in every direction, nothing to hold onto except her invisible arms, her writhing body.

I rose and fell over and over again tumbling through time, crisscrossing avenues of light, crashing through nebula’s, the only noise was her slight laugh as she rejected the entreat of a black hole. Her arms held me secure as we skipped and somersaulted through pulsars, riding the unfathomable lengths of solar winds, always together in embrace. She touched me, the early summer breeze, she touched me. Her hands led me me to a corner where we could see back beyond the bang of creation. From behind she pushed me and we jumped toward a pin hole billions of years away and in the flash before I could breathe, we tunneled through the eye of god and were evaporated and subsumed into everything all at once.

With soundless laughter we heaved giant spasms of frolicking motion, conjoined with every particle and atom in the universe, I felt her arms protecting me even as she dared me to be more then everything. She touched me and I cried rivers of stellar dreams, spinning through fears, spinning through joys, when all at once we were sucked into a cosmic drain bouncing off brass walls created by my pedestrian mind, spit back into the everyday, spit back to an awareness of lying quietly entangled, quietly exhausted with my summer breeze. She touched me.

Carlos carefully flicked the squeegee, removing the last drop of dirty water from the stores front window, he smiled and turned to breathe in the fresh morning air filling his lungs with the cities pulse, he crossed himself and opened his store.

“Wash the windows everyday Carlos” his father had told him, “do this and people walking by will look in, it’s the magic of the glass, even if business is slow you must wash the front windows everyday.”

Customers walking by the little coffee shop would notice the shinny inviting windows framed with thick red wood carefully etched in filigree, they’d notice straw lining the display bed behind the transparent glass with coffee beans from the far away lands beckoning their senses.

Inside Carlos would smile, sometimes waving at those stopping to look at his wife Maria’s glorious display she created new everyday, snuggling wonders artfully behind the freshly washed glass framed with thick red wood carefully etched in filigree, contrasting stenciled words on glass Café World Coffee.

People did stop in to buy coffees stopped by to chat with Carlos and Maria even after other coffee shops sprouted in the neighborhood, Café World’s loyal customers shunned the chrome competitors decors, buying the fresh roasted delights from Café World, from Carlos.

His father’s words echoed in Carlos memory, the magic of the glass guided his steady hand on the squeegee, the people walked by everyday delighting in their own memories from behind the freshly washed glass framed with thick red wood carefully etched in filigree.

Through our window suns rays careen off the dust particles amplifying dreams till your breathing softly jolts me into some kaleidoscope awakening. My legs entwined with yours, our mouths sharing spit dripping to me from you and back again. Deeply I inhale your precious smells a mixing of perfume, sweat and sleep into one life giving scent imprinting itself forever deep inside my memories

Fingers awakening touching legs drawing pictures on still sleeping skin, eyes squinting bodies stretching coming together in morning’s first touch, sweet warmth of the moment no worlds exist just you being me being you.

Then First words flow like Elmer’s glue pouring forth reluctantly creating throaty mumbles, actively resisting with sticky pauses between out words , not wanting the day to start not wanting  to break the spell we have cast stopping time, over our bodies and minds.

Pulling covers over our heads shutting out the suns rays shutting out everything intruding on our tiny slice of time, on our tiny island our tiny castle built for two, where nothing exists except you being me being you.