I am distracted, sitting in the library,

by the smell of a girl 

on my fingers. If I went to the bathroom

and opened my pants I would

smell her there as well. 

We will never see each other again,

we never even exchanged numbers,

but I cannot do anything 

in that moment but smell her on

me and remember the way our

bodies collided, our hips cracked,

our parched mouths met, our sweat

mingled on a mattress on the floor

in the sunlight, our hairs matted.

She is not the girl I will wake up 

beside for years, that I will

race across town in the dead of night

in the rain to find an 24-hour

pharmacy for because she got

food poisoning at her cousin's 

wedding and spent hours throwing up, 

that I will end up sewing with needle

and thread the gash in her knee from

when she tripped running up the stairs

to tell me she had been transferred

to Portland, that I moved to Portland

with because the idea of not being 

in the same bed, in the same shower, 

eating off the same dishes, our dirty

laundry not swirling around like

cotton candy was a thought akin to

letting cancer win. Eventually, of course,

it did, and the chemicals and hope

we poured into a finite bowl of ourselves

proved insufficient, and I went back

to the library, and sat in the same chair

and held my hand to my face and inhaled

deeply, a different scent filling my head,

making my vision swim, the smell of

rhododendrons in the arboretum

in Portland, where I took her for her

birthday, and where I looked out and her

in the green fields surrounded by pink,

white, purple blossoms, each one vulgar and

tawdry beside her, each one a crumpled tissue

on a stem, and the sunlight coming down

and the birds singing, and every little thing

in this miserable unheaven was perfect

and thought, So this is love.

Women and children first! The placards and posters are stuck up on walls and notice boards all over the city. Because they are everywhere, they have lost all meaning. No one lets women and children try to escape first anymore. Every time another bomb falls, or another platoon of gas-spraying masked soldiers barrels through, it is every man for himself. Or woman or child.

I've taken to ripping them down when I see them, and the coast is clear. I could still be shot for defacing government property, theoretically. I cut them up and sell them as toilet paper; they're almost as good as the real thing, if you don't remember the real thing, and who does anymore?

When they first started going up, my army friends and I thought it was a bad sign. An admission of near-defeat, the implication that we were going to be bombed and strafed and gassed and mown down so we might as well make it orderly if you try to survive it.

It took the fight out of me, that's for sure. I left the army and started hiding, started living out of garbage barrels and scrap heaps. 

I see dozens of my dead countrymen every day, littering the streets and alleys. Sometimes, I take their clothes and shoes and try to sell them or trade them. Plenty of them are women and children. The few people you see walking the streets, at least in daylight, are men, worn and haggard, veterans like me who have given up or who were too injured to return to the battle. Some of them are too young for war, but that distinction is growing more and more debatable as the days wear on. But they are always men. I only see the women at night.

There was a place where I slept for awhile, a former basement cabaret, but a bomb hidden in a piano had gone off when a troop transport had rumbled by on the street above and shook the place like an earthquake. I had been gone when it happened, but three people I had known for years went up in smoke. And I needed a new place to sleep.

I found the Underground. We had all heard that the government had flooded the tunnels at the beginning of the end, to make things harder for everyone, apparently. But one evening I found the entrance to Winter Palace Station and vaulted over the wrought-iron fence and raced down the steps as behind me I heard the rattle and clack of machine gun bullets hitting paving stones and walls.

The door was rusted and curled; I could easily slip through. Inside it smelled rankly of piss and other awful things. It was pitch dark and very warm. There was no sound of water, no dampness in the air. I lit a match and went forward down the tunnel, past the abandoned and shattered ticketing booth. The tiles under my feet were slippery and I walked carefully.

The match gave out and I struck another, a tiny globe of orange light illuminating barely the hand that held it. I was starting to sweat in the warmth. I dug my revolver from my pocket and held it out before me. I crept forward, listening.

Three matches later, I was about to turn back. There was no telling how far the tunnel went, how far the train platform was, or whether the place was intact at all. Then I heard steam hissing overhead. A steam pipe percolated just inches above me. I reached up and, keeping my hand on the warm metal, used it as a track to guide me deeper in. Something down here was getting power from the steam. 

My fingertips were singed countless times before I reached a downslope and my hand couldn't reach the pipe any longer. I tread slowly and carefully down the decline, cooler air now rushing upward at my face. Cooler air that smelled of unwashed people. Cooler air moving toward me meant I was nearing a larger room, with greater movement of current. The platform. 

Suddenly my eyes made out something sparkling and writhing in the far darkness. It was a small fire. I nearly broke into a run, but forced myself to remain calm. The downslope evened out and finally I could sense myself emerge onto the platform, the walls on either side disappearing into a cavernous space. There were more fires. My eyes tingled and burned as I looked around me.

Then, suddenly, there was a painfully bright light in my face. Too late I brought my arm up to shield my eyes; images swam in my vision but I froze where I was. A voice called out.

Halt!

I was already halted, but I said nothing and raised my hands, one still holding the revolver. 

Drop the gun.

I dropped the gun. It was a woman's voice, I realized. A young woman.

Who are you.

Not a question, I noted. A demand.

I gave my name and serial number and the date of my desertion.

He's one of them. Just kill him, said another voice. A child's voice this time.

I said nothing.

The light went off and my vision was instantly black. I could see nothing, but I heard two sets of boots coming my way. I stood still, blinking and trying to focus on something. Finally, the boots halted right in front of me.

Come one, the woman said, taking my hand roughly and dragging me forward.

She led me, followed by whoever had come with her, to one of the fires and shoved me to the floor. Eventually, my eyes adjusted and I saw three adult women and four children - two boys, two girls - sitting around the fire, staring silently at me.

So this is where the women and children go, I thought. The woman who had brought me over handed me a tin cup half full of broth with bits of something floating in it. I thanked her and gulped in down, burning my mouth and throat.

In the morning, we'll decide what to do with you, she said, taking the cup back from me. For now, Carsten will show you where you can sleep. With that, she whistled, and a tall thin boy of maybe thirteen came running up, an army rifle slung over his shoulder.

The woman muttered to the boy, who nodded and then said, Come with me. I followed him slowly. Once we were out of the fire's light and the earshot of anyone sitting at it, the boy Carsten took my wrist in his slight hand and led me through the near-dark to a bench some ways down the platform.

Here, he said, gesturing to the bench. No one sleep here anymore, you can have it tonight.

Thank you. Why does no one sleep here anymore?

He shrugged. People die here very often.

How many are you here?

He shook his head. I don't really know. People come and go, or die. He paused. Never like you though.

Like me?

Soldiers, he said. Men.

He nodded and left me then, and I settled onto the bench and tried to sleep, futilely as it would prove. 

I heard noises all night: coughing, whispered conversations, pissing, snoring, crying. I was even sure I heard fucking. Overhead, the tunnel's exhaust vents showed the night sky fading to murky morning. I sat up. In the light from the vents, the whole platform was visible.

There were perhaps twenty-five women and as many children, most in their pre-teens. Some were obviously teenagers, like Carsten, who came to greet me with a shy grin and I wondered if it had been him I'd heard getting some last night.

Come, he said, taking me lightly by the sleeve. The Mothers want to know your intentions.

Intentions? I just want to stay alive.

Carsten shrugged. In the morning light he looked like a child playing war, with his too-big boots and the rifle.

He led me to who were apparently the Mothers, a trio of middle-aged housewives forced by war and circumstance underground. One of them gestured for me to sit on the floor before them; I did.

Good morning, she said, and I said it back.

We have some questions for you. First, if you have any papers, please give them to Carsten. The boy stepped forward and I fished my certificate, ragged and torn, from the lining of my coat. He took it to the Mothers, who passed it between themselves.

Why are you here? one of them asked, folding the document and tucking it into her shirt.

The place I was living was destroyed. I needed somewhere safe to stay. I thought of the Underground, and found the Winter Palace Station.

What can you do? another asked.

I was a soldier, I said. I can -

- and at that moment a whine filled the place, a faint whine that grew louder and louder, falling from a great height and coming exponentially closer. A bomb. Coming right at us. 

I sprang up and shouted, Everyone, move to the exit! Pandemonium erupted as everyone understood what was coming, but too late. The bomb crashed onto the street above the platform and the explosion collapsed the upper world onto the lower. Stone and metal and fire fell down on us and I raced toward the slope, dragging bodies off the floor, helping children along, pulling women up and herding them up the slope toward the tunnel before the fire surged up and around us.

Most of them were dead, I knew. I ran on, underneath the steam pipe, and behind me I heard pounding footsteps. I looked over my shoulder. It was one of the Mothers. Blood streamed down her face and she carried over her shoulder the lacerated carcass of a child. She also held my revolver.

She came on, rushing abreast of me. In the light now coming in from the collapsed roof, I could see the walls were papered with the old poster. Women and children first! I slowed, and then stopped.

They all rushed past me, up the stairs into the black smoke and fire and the end of the end. I heard machine guns again, screaming, begging. I waited until I heard nothing but the sounds of unextinguished fire and then went up. 

The Mothers and the children, some of them, were face down on the broken street. The rest, who knows? Maybe they got away. Maybe they're hiding in another Underground. I found Carsten beside a burned-out truck. I took his rifle and his boots.

I saw no one the rest of the day, except enemy soldiers. I hid in a pile of rubble until it was dark. I found an alley where people stood silently over a barrel of burning trash. I warmed myself for a moment, pretending I didn't notice the female faces.

She laughed.

The crevices in her arm oozed with the red paste as pathetic reassurances failed to comfort her.

She laughed.

The blade kept entering and leaving her arm. It could not be stopped.

She laughed.

Her face cold. But the panic, the mania, forever sealed in

A laugh.

I was in this world,

before the 'self' awoke.

I was in this world,

manifest in everything.

though I did not pester

the course of the living,

nor hold a breath of air, 

I was in this world.

oddly enough, if I gaze

at a higher level, or

deep in profundities

of creation, and if I 

consider hard and true

a distance, I clearly see

transcendence...

a womb from which

my form took shape,

I see myself budding out

like leaves from a branch

I was wind before 

I became a word, 

a word before a seed, 

a seed before a pupa,

a pupa before an infant.

I was in this world, 

way before I drew 

the first breath...

Standing so close, we can feel

the heat of the other, so close

I can hear the ticking of her 

wristwatch, even though

the gallery is almost empty

and there is a black leather bench

nearby; even though it is raining

terribly outside there is hardly anyone 

here, just her and I, 

before my favorite painting hung and lit

perfectly on a wall in the

Cleveland Museum of Art.

Turner's masterwork

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons

has jarred me since I was a child and saw it in 

a book in my father's study. And here I am,

face to face with brilliance, and all

I can feel is her beside me, all I can see

is her from the corner of my eye, in a

black skirt and white blouse and black jacket.

The fiery orange of the painting might as well

be grey, might as well be a spackled wall left

by evicted tenants for all I am seeing of it.

There is no need for us to be standing so close,

but there is, and the silent hungers speaking

between us are making my heart race.

It's so alive, she says finally and I almost start, 

her voice pitched soft so only I hear her.

You can almost feel the flame, can't you, I reply.

She turns to look at me, I see in my peripheral vision;

I am looking at the painting now, really looking,

for the first time. It's my favorite painting, I say

to the air in front of my face. Then I look at her

and think that two years is not so long a time

to be with or without another.

Turner's painting is smudges and smears of color,

beautiful in that nothing is very clear,

and captures, as few are very capable of doing,

the moment when one era collapses in an instant

of surprise, before the new era is fully ready to emerge.

An hour later we were in my hotel room,

up against the wall, a mass-produced flora still-life

just above and to the left of the back of her head.

I'm tempted to say her ass is a work of art,

but I always do better in these situations

the less I say. 

In the bottom right of Turner's painting, 

spectators cram themselves into boats and 

line the Embankment to see the fire,

all wanting to witness what must have

seemed a world-historic catastrophe.

My hand wrapped in her hair, I close my eyes

and wonder how it must have looked to them 

on the shore, how certain they must have felt

that nothing would ever again be the same,

that the world was turned upside down,

and the old rules did not apply. Who would make

the laws now? Would there be anyone

who could tell them no, who could tell them yes,

who could tell them never again?

Here comes the storm

The strong wind

The pouring rain

The rising sea

The deafening silence

No one is safe

Safe from the storm

But we try to fight it anyway

The fight consumes us all

It consumes our thoughts

And our actions

Until it becomes second nature

Then it consumes our habits

And finally our character

Just part of who we are

In our effort to fight the storm

We instead become it

We become

what we feared most

What those around us fear most

Then we call it progress.

We are the storm

We are the reason for

The strong wind

The pouring rain

And the rising sea

But most of all

We are the reason

For the deafening silence

For we have caused it

And yet

We call it progress

We call it progress

dream like no one is there

dream like no one can stop you

dream like you can do anything

because you can

you can change your life is a split second

cut your hair short

take the other turn

quit your job

so dream that you can do anything

because you can

so dream, dream your heart out

because you can dream

Losing control in the run downhill. Legs past muscle control into marionette mechanical motion. It is flying . Those airborne moments between bones locking under cartilage cap to jolt the limb into revolution .

Again and ...

  wind catches the

  dandelion clock once

  me or not

again

My hopes want to make dreams of the pell-mell because my heart wants to catch you before we reach the bottom. The swell of early summer dried the perennial flowering. Prettied the ground hard but only a fingernail deep. A heaved sigh as your white shoes scratched that starting line and on the one of three you took a lead.

The me at the top wishes ..

I had worn a helmet . Hard hats at least ( soft hearts so the song I made up goes). The beat of your feet responded in my chest, filled my ears and, cheeks to colour of the poppies. Crushed in all that dust kicked up and some flowers buried, early.

The me at the bottom ...

let us hope for the best. Arms and legs entangled to capture us long enough for the fairy seeds to plant themselves

  the wind lifts

  a field of flowers

  strong or light

Jim shook his head. "How about we cut the bullshit. I am tired and sore, and old. I am losing my hair and losing my patience. What is it you want?"

Robert felt his anger rise. "Fine, here's the deal. We made your son and daughter a business proposition, he turn us down..."

Jim cut him off. "Good for him, you seem like an asshole."

Robert started walking for the old man, as he went he pulled out his gun. "We also spoke to your nephew. We don't like being told no. People who tell us no get hurt. Their family gets hurt. Their kids get hurt." Robert stopped just out of Jim reach. "After we are done here we are going to see your brother Roland..."

Jim cut him off again. "That should be easy, he lives about half a mile from here. That is his house on the hill there."

"We know..."

"Other then that we have no other neighbors."

Robert looked back at his armed men. "We would like you to talk some sense into your children."

"No." The word was spoken quietly, calmly.

Robert shook his head. "No?" He gestured to his men and started walking onto the porch. "Maybe we should go inside and talk about this."

Jim jabbed Robert in the chest with the end of his cane. The young man staggered off the steps and nearly fell into the dirt. He caught himself, set his feet and stood up to his full height. Enraged Robert pointed his pistol at the older man.

Jim just smiled. "The glory of young men is their strength, and the beauty of old men is the gray head. Proverbs chapter 20 verse 29."

Robert cocked the hammer on his gun. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Jim shifted his weight off his cane. "Simple, you and yours come out here sure in your numbers and young age. While I am 73 years old and I didn't get to this age sitting on my ass. I got here killing smarter men then you."