Clowns

A palindrome is when a clown climbs out of the vagina of another clown. And then another clown climbs out of the vagina of the clown who is climbing out of the other clown's vagina. And then a third etc etc ad nauseam to infinity. It's confusing. I hate clowns. Just thinking about them like this makes me want to vomit in somebody's open mouth. And magic. What is wrong with people? If your job is being a clown or doing magic tricks then you are an asshole. An ass-hole with a hyphen. Sorry to be so blunt but what the fuck is wrong with you? Do something else. Get a job. Watch TV. Rob a bank. I don't care. And this never-ending circle of clowns birthing clowns, is this what my life has become? Do I read the same backwards as I do forwards?  

I guess so. It's snowing now and it's weird because my thermostat is set at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If you live somewhere where weather is measured in litres then you should know that 80 degrees Fahrenheit is hot. Even though it is freezing outside, literally to the point where the sky is cracking wide open and falling into great white mounds in my driveway, it remains uncomfortably warm in my house. I wear shorts and drink beer and shout BOO YA at my dog just like I do in the summertime but it isn't summertime and everybody knows it. All it takes is one look outside and it all comes crashing down. God's sleety jizz splattering against the windows, gutter sluts doing whore angels in the dirty snow; it's winter out there and I hate it.

But no matter, I will get in my car and drive to work tomorrow, sliding around on the icy roads and when I get there I'll tell Dave he's a cunt and I'll schedule a meeting to brainstorm ideas for next week's meeting and then I'll drive back home and eat dinner alone with the phone in my hand and I won't call my father or my children and I'll watch that show about the guys who say funny things and then I'll go to bed and record my innermost thoughts into a tape recorder that I hold in my hand above my head and I will accidentally drop it and it will land on my face and I will say something like "that's about right."

But the next morning, well maybe not the next or the one after that, but one morning I will listen to the previous night's recording and it will say "clowns are okay" and I will look into the mirror and I will say "clowns are okay" and that will be that. And people who do magic I guess.

Bieber Christ

Our Bieber who art on a poster above my bed,

hallowed be thy hair.

Thy kingdom come

My hair will be done

at Supercuts as it is on your head.

Give us this day our daily four page spread in People magazine,

and forgive us our listening to Justin Timberlake before we knew about you,

as we forgive you for being Canadian,

lead us not into a bad haircut,

and deliver us from having to figure out any complex meaning in your songs.

For thine hair is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

Amen.

Stuck in the Moment

It's 1979 and Justin Bieber has just bombed the Masjid al-Haram, Islam's holy site at Mecca. Pakistani students are storming the local offices of Bieber's record company, Island Def Jam. They are burning it to the ground. I am in a reinforced safe room in the basement and I am okay. I'm writing with a pen on some paper and there's a girl and she is painting a picture of a man without a face. It's a protest piece. Something about facial recognition technology. She asks me what I'm writing and I tell her that it is a script for a TV show. It's the final episode of Welcome Back Kotter.

"What are you talking about?" she says. "Welcome Back Kotter came on before I was even born."

I tell her what I'm talking about. "It's the one where Horshack is dealing with being married and Freddy and Epstein have a fight."

"What year is this?" the girl asks. Then she says "look at your phone."

"My phone says it is 1979."

"Your iPhone?"

"Yep, 1979."

And now things are weird between us. And someone is pounding on the door. It's Bieber.

"Let me in," he says.

"Let him in," the girl says.

"Don't come in," I shout. "You'll fuck everything up."

"Can't stop me," Bieber says. "I'm a member of the United States 361st Psychological Operations Company."

"Shit," says the girl and then she sends me a text message. He thinks we're terrorists.

Terrorists.

TERRORISTS.

The word is in my brain. TERRORIST.

And things are changing. There are thoughts. Memories. TERRORISTS.

This isn't a record company. They think I'm a terrorist. The music is loud. It's hard to think. Why do I have my phone? Why is she texting me?

"It's in the painting," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

"It's not my painting."

"Look at your hands," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

My hands are splattered with blood.

"It's paint," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

I'm closing my eyes and I can see things inside of my mind. Words and diagrams. Calculations. Code. Hardware. Wires and lenses and plastic casings. I'm inventing facial recognition technology.

She's sticking a needle into my veins.

"I'm an artist now," I say.

"Once a terrorist," she says.

"But I sold it," I say. "To the FBI."

"Indeed," she says. "But what came next. Ibiza, of course. But what after that?"

"Art," I say.

"You don't think we would track someone like you? Tell me about the Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics."

"I packed it in after Ibiza. I swear."

"Tell me about the Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin."

"I was studying," I say.

"Studying what?"

"Fiqh, kalam, Bieber, tafsir, philosophy, science, language, literature. Please turn the music off. I can't think straight."

"You were Hawza."

"No," I say. "They wouldn't allow it. I was just learning. About myself. About the world. People."

"Bombs," she says.

"Bieber," I reply. "BIEBER."

I'm awake now. Bed. Hospital. Pakistan. The nurses are laughing and there is a soldier.

"You told them everything," the soldier says. "You should never tell them everything. Now come with me. We're going to see Justin."

Stories from Second Grade

ha aha hah aha h I just found these stories at my mum's house. I wrote these in grade 2. In 1978.

Dragon

Witch

If I Were a Ten Cent Piece

Shoes

Holes in You

His words are drill bits, rotating, poking so many holes in you. The torque and axial force, spinning verbatim,  breaking the skin, tearing through your muscles and veins and blood and organs and brains. Your bones are shattering and it hurts.

And when the words stop, the taste of titanium nitride lingers on his tongue, in your mouth and in your throat. You are affixed to a wall, a small picture of the wide open ocean. And battling the waves within the painting is a sinking boat in a storm. The sails are torn and the mast has snapped. Too far out, can't get back. Everyone on board will certainly drown.

But he'll stop drilling, God willing, and eventually take on other projects. The screws will loosen, over time, and you and your picture will drop to the ground to be found one day by the workman's brother: a silent man who talks with his hands and then you will finally understand the beauty of language.

About Girls About Women

Known a few girls, been with some women. Don't understand them, guess that's a given but sometimes I catch a glimpse and it's real. The dancing chimps, the boys and the men doing the things over and again, they don't see it, they don't know, cold mornings pissing in the snow while the girls and the women inside of the house and inside of themselves are warm and thinking and not scared of that mouse but screaming out loud, not scheming or tricking but what has happened to Daryl Hannah's face? It was weird to begin with but now and holy cow this is how they do it. Just when the locks are tumbling into words from the mumbling the birds start chirping and the girls and the women are back under the covers calling their mothers, seducing their lovers and it's okay and it's good. But the girls and the women are like ancient trees in a Sicilian forest, Chestnut Trees of One Hundred Horses and all I can see is the wood. A table, a chair with pretty hair and maybe the boys and the men don't even care but I want to tie a rope to the branches and swing back and forth until I have counted all of the leaves above. 


If it was me I'd never cut down a tree just to count the rings in its trunk. But the ramus supporting my rope will eventually crack and I'll be back in the snow with the rest of the boys and the rest of the men. Not trees any more, the girls and the women are springs, water from the mountains or jumping things. If only I could stretch them out and lay them flat, maybe they would recoil with me in the middle. But the riddle about girls, about women remains. And whether the sun shines or the heavens give rain, I'll always enjoy playing these games. I'm in love. 

Got No Soul

Got no soul, I'm a butterfly. Little girl's gonna catch me and watch me die. Ask her mum where I went:

"Not up to heaven because he wouldn't repent."

"What about hell where the bad folks are sent?"

"Just a ball of dust is all," she'll say, "now go back outside and play."

Little girl will look up at the sky to see if she can find another butterfly pretty as me.

Kid Can't Dance

Okay, yeah he's alright. Kid can't dance and his pants are too tight but his eyes they shine like diamonds when he looks at her and he buys her flowers and opens the door, nothing like the guys she's been with before. Kinda weird I guess that chin beard and leather jacket and country shirts and jeans tucked into his boots and his hair all combed down to the side but the little things like letting her drive and choose the movie and I bet he goes downtown when they're getting groovy. And she's happy in her face and in her brain not just smiling to cover the pain but actually calm and comfortable and so happy deep down inside her guts and I'm telling you this as someone who used to think that slut was nuts. She's a different person now but the same, better like a cloud that dumped all its rain and he is the reason why she is no longer batshit insane.

She's in the present, now, wrapped up with a silk ribbon and a purple bow and I need to open the box. There's something in the future that I've seen in the past. I've got to tell her that this thing, this kid, it's not going to last. He'll change and it might be tomorrow or next year or in ten, I can't really say exactly when but one day he'll wake up and instead of fetching coffee he'll tuck back in and think "what the fuck am I lacking" and he'll realize that nothing is ever about him. He won't go with her to Ikea because he's sleeping in. He'll masturbate then put on that t-shirt she hates that says "I play to win."

She won't notice of course or she'll make excuses and when they're married he'll make jokes about whips and nooses and they'll have some kids and get divorced. Better that I tell her now I guess that this kid who she thinks is more will end up less. "Take a deep breathe," I'll say, "count up to three. There'll be someone else, someone better, just wait and see." Then one day I'll get down on one knee and tell her that someone is me. And I can dance.

Standard Disco Beat

A team, led by Nick Neave of Northumbria University in England is filming 19 men aged 18-35 in a lab as they dance to a standard disco beat. One of these men, the one with the tapered jeans and oversized black and white checkered shirt, is Maximilian Müller formerly of Munich but now living in London Central with an Australian girl named Jazzberry.

What am I doing here, wonders Maximilian, who has recently begun thinking his thoughts in English. In this lab, dancing, in this cold city working with deceptive people and electronic machines that possess no physical feeling or sensation. In my life, what am I doing?

That night, while dining in a curry house on the Piccadilly end of London's Regent Street, Maximilian shares his thoughts with Jazzberry.

"You are doing fine," she says calmly. "You are happy with your life."

"I am happy with my life," repeats Maximilian.

"You are in love," says Jazzberry.

"I am in love," repeats Maximilian.

"And you are a good person," says Jazzberry

"I am a good German," says Maximilian. Then quickly, "no, that's wrong, isn't it?"

"You are a good person," says Jazzberry again.

"It isn't working," says Maximilian.

"Try it again."

"I can't think straight in this Gott-verlassen language. Why are we doing this?"

"In time, the questions will be answered," says Jazzberry. "For now, we must get on."

Maximilian closes his eyes. "Yes, we must get on," he says. "I am a good person."

"That's fine," says Jazzberry. "Enough for tonight."

The next morning, Maximilian wakes up, as he has every morning for the past six months or so, on the very edge of his king sized bed, ultra-soft 700 thread count sheets pushed down by his feet. He is naked. He lives on the 7th story of the Think Tower Bridge, in a serviced apartment, and there is a glass of freshly squeezed mango juice waiting for him on the bedside table. He can hear Jazzberry talking on the phone in the other room.

"Marvellous. Very talented. He's really coming along. Trust me. Oh, he's awake, I've got to go."

Jazzberry, also naked, now enters the bedroom and leans up against the the large glass window.

"I heard you just now," says Maximilian.

"Then I will kill you," says Jazzberry with a smile.

 "You will kill me," repeats Maximilian.

Now forty years have passed. Maximilian is old and he is fat and there is a package on the ground outside his front door with his name on it. Maximilian falls to his knees and he cries. He slides his finger under the tape and a pain shoots up through his arm and into his elbow. His body is like this now. Inside the package is an electronic device. He turns it on and then off again within an instant. It is a film of young men dancing. He does not want to be reminded of this time in his life, of the things he has done since learning to contort his body to a standard disco beat.

The very next day, while riding the number 103 bus, Maximilian dies. Quietly and alone.

Sexy Christian Girl Praying on Her Knees to the Sky

The sexy Christian girl praying on her knees to the sky wonders why jockeys vomit on the daily. She prays on it, out loud, and then turns to the young man who is kneeling beside her.

"It's disgusting," she says.

"Nothing is beautiful," Donnie replies. "Apart from God, obviously. And your gigantic tits."

"Donnie!" Shouts the sexy Christian girl who has just finished praying on her knees to the sky. "Stop it. You know I don't like it when you covet my body like that."

"Well, we all do it. You have to," says Donnie.

"It's gross."

"So is horse shit. But it's a part of the game. If you want to ride then you've got to stick your weight."

"Can't you just eat less?" asks the sexy Christian girl who is no longer praying on her knees to the sky.

"God made doughnuts, didn't he?" asks Donnie. "Why should I not partake in something so heavenly?"

"You don't have to eat the whole thing, though," says the sexy Christian girl who is still not praying on her knees to the sky. "You could just lick the sugar off the top."

"I've tried," says Donnie. "But once you get a taste..."

The sexy Christian girl returns to her knees, as if to pray to the sky once more. 

Donnie unzips his pants and smiles. "This will help," he says. "I'm still a couple of ounces over my weight."

"Okay," says the sexy Christian girl who will soon be praying on her knees to the sky again. "But next time you better lick the doughnut."

Enith Brigitha

My contribution to xTx's Zombie Summer ... (click Enith's tongue to go to the story)

14

Coke for breakfast; cola in the kitchen and a little caine she'd stashed away, this day, another day, another one just the same. Whiskey will shape her words tonight and smoke will mellow her voice. Or harden it, not sure but you like the way it sounds; she's fourteen. She binges on the adulation then fingers her throat, purging until she's empty inside and she is.

Her words are worth a thousand pictures of her plaster-cast painted smiling face because each one is part of the puzzle; each word has its place and when you listen and not just listen but understand then you will know that it is raining on the other side of the house, it's cold even though you are sitting in a square of sunshine on the carpet staring at the blue blue sky out of the only window in the room. The dog is basking too and you're reading a book and it would be so easy for you to just stand up and open the back door and stick your hand out and feel the tears that slide down her cheeks at night but instead you turn the stereo up and adore the voice of a woman who is singing to you through a child's mouth.

Undercover Stuntman

I'm an undercover stuntman. And a part-time grizzly bear.

I built a robot. And taught it how to "reach around."

I fought in the war "without a helmet."

I was a power ranger.

I was the stunt mustache for Burt Reynolds in Canonball Run Two.

I can tumble down the side of a mountain without breaking any bones.

I killed a ninja.

I wouldn't let let the doctors take my appendix out.

I drive a Mazarati that used to be leased to DMX's cousin.

I own a sandwich shop in conjunction with Matthew McConaughey.

I have an appropriate ballsack to penis ratio.

I slipped the maitre d' a twenty.

I capitalize appropriately.

My t-shirt fits snugly.

My pants are made from the finest Italian leather. Natural oils within the leather prevent chafing.

I am handsome.

I am the Great Dane of people.

So who are you to de-friend me on Facebook?

11/11

Dear Taylor Swift,

Sometimes I dont know if things are real and they told me that I am a "head case" firstly the first part is that I am a head case and I think I have to tell you that. And secondly of all I want you to know that I didn't rape that girl in 1976. 

After the concert you hugged me for seven seconds and you asked me if you could touch my hair which was sweet because usually people just touch it without asking and it makes me uncomfortable. But anyway, wow. I still can't believe you hugged me for seven seconds. I hope you don't mind but I spent most of those seven seconds pretending that you were a grizzly bear and I was all chewed up inside of your stomach. You were digesting me and all I could hear was your heart beating and gas rumbling through your colon. You fart, too, Taylor Swift and my daughter says that you're a slut. That's pretty harsh. I don't think you're a slut. I think you've probably been with a few guys. Done things with them. Ha ha I can just picture it. I'm still thinking of you as a grizzly bear I guess. But that doesn't make you a slut. I think sluts are more hardcore. Just doing guys all over the place. My daughter thinks that any girl who wears stockings is a slut.

I know you don't care what my daughter thinks but you should care what I think because I am a fan of yours. I listen to your music and I log on to your MySpace and I go to your concerts and you hug me.

What I am actually writing to you about, though, is 11/11. Those are my numbers. Everything. It's hard to explain but bad things can happen. If I don't, when I don't complete an 11/11 do you know that bad things happen? I don't want to freak you out because it is really just something private that I live with and people tell me that bad things won't happen but they do because I've tested it. People fall out of windows. For example every year on November 11 I have to write 11/11 eleven times on a piece of paper and at 11:11 on the clock I have to touch each one of my toes eleven times and each one of my fingers eleven times or somebody will definitely fall out of a window and even when I write or say 11/11 there are things I have to do it is very frustrating and this letter has already taken a very long time for me to write.

So I just want you to know and I need you to that you can't just play around with numbers like they don't mean anything to anyone. Why did you choose to release "Fearless" on November 11? My daughter says it is because 11/11 is just the same number twice and it is easy to remember and that it has nothing to do with people falling out of windows but you need to know that what you did, because of you a little girl who was only three years old fell out of a third story window of her apartment and she died and I know that it's my fault because I did not buy your CD until the following Thursday. But it is also your fault because you were the first 11 and I was the other 11 do you understand? There are always two parts and I am always the second part and the first part is the one that has to stop because once the first part is there I have to complete it and sometimes I can't do it in time because I was in the hospital and you can't buy CDs in the hospital. You are a nice person and pretty and such a beautiful voice but letting people fall out of windows is not being a good role model and now that I just found out that you have been nominated for the Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year and that award will be announced on November 11 I want you to please not win it even though I know you are going to win it or maybe you could just not show up that night okay? I will try my best to be ready to do my things but sometimes they don;t let us watch TV after 8PM so what can I do?

Oh, I better sign off now. I just dropped my nuts on the floor and I don't want the baby to eat them.

Your biggest fan,

Rick Morgan

11/11  11/11

11/11

11/11

11/11 11/11 11/11 11/11 11/11 11/11 11/11

I Watch People Die

Her face is lovely. Freckles and eyes. That smile, warm like the tiles on the side of a pool in the summertime. I dangle my feet over the edge and watch her slip under the water. Her skin, so white it's green, soft and her hair is a jellyfish; the tentacles dancing in their pyjamas, laughing and jumping on the bed with no grown ups and the boys are downstairs watching TV. She crouches down on the bottom of the pool and I want her to stay there because she's happy and I want her to live forever, ever down there where everything is in slow motion, a dream. But now she's launching herself up through the water and her head is born again into the daylight and she's splashing me. Laughing but she's dying. I can hear it in her voice and see it in the goosebumps on her forearms. She's cold. The other girls in the pool, too. The boys. They're changing, the water now draining from their faces like blood. I won't tell her, though, what she doesn't want to know. I'll say something funny and pretend to fall into the pool. I'll cradle her like a bride over the threshold and we'll spin around and kiss. We'll share a lemonade and lay out in the sun with the radio on and we'll talk about a book that she read and when she sleeps I'll sneak away. I'll go and watch some other people die.  

Snatch Match Dot Com

So many of my friends are single and AWESOME and for one reason or another they are having a hard time snatching up the perfect mate. That's why I've invented SnatchMatch.com! It's a scientific-based, patent-pending calcularization machine that is guaranteed to help singles snatch up compatible (and AWESOME) partners before they are whisked away by some dude/lady who is NOT VERY AWESOME!

So if you are single and AWESOME then simply answer the questionnaire below and you will be connected with someone who is just as AWESOME as you! Or don't. But if you don't you will probably end up with someone like my friend Mitch (he's definitely NOT AWESOME! but he is my friend so don't say anything mean okay).

1. What's your favourite episode of Quantum Leap?
   
2. [FOR GUYS ONLY] Do you consider yourself more of an A.C. Slater, Zack, or Screech. Keep in mind that A.C. Slater allegedly raped that one girl. And Zack used steroids to pump up but that was back in the SBTB days. And Screech is a douchebag but he allegedly has a huge penis (okay, not allegedly; I've seen it and it is very big)?
   
3. [FOR WOMEN ONLY] If you were in a gang would it be "The Knuckle Sluts," "The Vadge Hammers," or the "The Sarah Jessica Parker is Attractives"?
   
4. [FOR RICKY SCHROEDER ONLY] What's Alfonso Ribeiro really like? He seems like an okay guy but you can never really tell with celebrities.
   
5. Who was the boss?
   
6. Delicious bananas with a slight tinge of green on the skin or gross bananas with disgusting brown spots on the skin?
   
7. Dudes who say "Bro" or bros who say "Dude" or both (Matthew McConaughey)?
   
8. Golden Girls or Gilmore Girls?
   
9. Sexual fantasy: something to do with onion rings or Michael Winslow doing helicopter noises?
   
10. Perfect date: dinner and a movie or dinner and a movie with Elliot Gould in it?
    
11. Julie Andrews showing her boobs in the movie "S.O.B." (essay question)
    
12. Sexier: Mel Gibson on a racist tirade or Robin Williams in the nude?
    
13. If you met Ian Ziering in real life would you pronounce his first name like Ion or would you just go ahead and say it like Ian even though you know he prefers it like Ion.
    
14. Does this questionnaire have too many references to TV shows from the 80s and 90s: yes, no, or Mayim Bialik?

That was easy wasn't it? Now sit back and relax while your results are calcularized. You will be snatchmatched to your perfect AWESOME mate in no time!

Putting Things in Other Things

I suppose everyone puts things in other things to some degree but for me it's a compulsion. Not a sickness so much as a way to push through, to belong, to get on with all those people who walk and work and play and touch my life in random ways, completely unrestrained. I dread the mornings, that moment, the very second I'm awake when thoughts and dreams remain, not yet reconciled, scattered on the floor. "I'm in my room, in my bed, behind the door," I think to myself and then out loud I say "snakes eat mice" and it's that advice that allows me to sort my life into folders. Trapper Keepers for things to do, for feelings felt, for ways to start the day. "I'm okay" I say as I put my legs in underpants, feet in socks, then in sneakers, cereal in a bowl. Sandwich in a bag. Body in the car. Now I'm the buttons in a jar that I used to collect when I was two. The coins in a box, or found feathers that I stuffed in a pencil case, zipper closed to keep them in place.

But the containers are dropping, they're falling, now spilling, I'm spinning out of control. The mouse has escaped, or been set free by the snake, oh my snake is a girl. I know who she is, and I am the mouse. Still, I'm falling, not floating, closing in fast on the ground. I'm not in my car and my stomach is dry, no shoes and no pants, no time to ask why. I can see my house now down below, no roof and no walls, a sound I don't recognize. This is nice. The zipper is opening, the feathers have spread, the girl, she is my wife, waiting naked on our bed.  Hovering just above, my thoughts are now clear, nothing in anything as far as I can see. She's saying something, my wife from the bed. "Put yourself in me," she whispers and I will. She's the only thing I want or need to fill. That night my dreams and all those random thoughts, they converge and intertwine, neat but not sorted into files. The next morning she rolls over and touches her fingers to my eyes. "Go back to sleep," she says and I do, for once knowing that everything is fine.

She Sits in the Corner

She sits in the corner, with a notebook scribbling, reading, thinking, bleeding, and I wonder why she isn't beautiful when she writes. No lights tonight but the TV is on with the sound turned down and it's hot. She's not drunk but she's drinking wine and not eating the grilled cheese sandwich I made for her with tomatoes in it. I've eaten mine. She'll take her shirt off in a minute and I'll look at her breasts, dripping with sweat, and then I'll probably take the rubbish out and check on our daughter. She asked me once, our little girl, why you can't fill a net with water. I thought the answer was simple at the time, because of the holes in the net, and yet here I am, asking the same and now I think it has more to do with the water, the way it flows, the way it knows where it wants to go.

Now I'm in bed and it dawns on me, while she's out there, left hand tangled in oily hair, right hand clutching the pen too tight. Ever since the night we met she's been swirling around and through my net and when she sits in the corner with her notebook scribbling I can see it in her eyes. The anger and the fear, not hers but mine. She is beautiful, in fact, divine. I am the one who is ugly when she writes.

Quarter Past Nine

At all times, in his briefcase, by his side, he carries with him secret thoughts of suicide. A certain sadness, a Rubik's cube, and a lunch box packed with food that he doesn't like. Words scrawled on a notepad that he can't remember or understand. He tries to read between the lines, "everything's fine" but it's raining now, not water from above but lies, he's soaking wet, not dead yet but drenched by her betrayal. It's hard to distinguish between the love and the pain, both so heavy, he switches the briefcase over to the other hand, fingers slipping in the rain. He wants to set it down, to sever the ties but instead his veins are calling his name in a voice that sounds like hers.

It isn't her, though, he knows that briefcase was a gift at birth. Oh, the days that have begun and ended with crying, the nights alone, the dreams of dying, pondering the difference between life and nothing. Walking the earth, under the dirt, buried while all those people float on by in their balloons. Just once, when he was a boy, when he was a man, he wanted one of them to reach down and take him by the hand. Lift him up and carry him along, teach him the words to their impossible song. They tried, some of them did, some of them ran, some of them hid. But there were friends and lovers and strangers, too, who laid out plans, who drew Venn diagrams, who scribbled pictures of sunny skies. And he was happy for days and weeks and months and years or maybe not happy but okay. But like kids in the park he keeps coming back to that slide, scorching hot from the sun, the one that burns the backs of his legs as he begs for his feet to land on the ground but somehow on the way down he always flips back around and lands upon his head. Then the briefcase tumbles behind and there it is, always is, and it opens his mind to those ever present thoughts of death.  

Then on the train he overhears a kid with a giant face, a Muppet with messy blonde hair say that life isn't fair and suddenly it all makes sense. Everybody's going to die, it's just a matter of time. And now his watch says it's a quarter past nine.

Let The Children Sleep For Now

Let the children sleep for now, may the darkness keep them warm. With the sun will rise the truth; their world will crack at dawn. No father now, their mother now weeping in her bed. Let the children sleep tonight, the devil's name unsaid. Star Wars sheets and pillows soft, these dreams cannot be torn. But the bastard of death he waits not long before he must be born. So let the children sleep for now, calm before the storm.