I met a man on the line today,

the kind you’d never thought could be.

He was humming the sound of steel wheels and gnashed sand on the side of his head listening to a train about five miles away. His eyes were looking left-eared down the track back a ways from me. I noticed the left hand at first, coal and sulphur hardened, with nails scratching the cold hammered polished rail surface. His right hand was pulling out a twentieth pandrol clip like he was picking at a baby cotter pin. The wind caught his thin, palid hair, pushing it back as if humanity whisked and screamed from it. I crept closer.

There was a smell of formaldehyde and furnace cracked limestone rising from his ash and sinew skin, if you can call it that. He was lying bare except for a parchment waistband that had lava colored glyphs on it.

Then I noticed the right leg, resting over the other track and pressed up against the contact rail. There’s no way anything can do that. “Hey man, do you need help?” Only the fingers in his right hand were moving. I was close enough now to see him yank out another clip, snapped out flinging with a pry bar lever grip. My mind flushed up and quit trying to understand what was happening. I shuffle stepped on the ties and stood over him. I reached for his arm and grabbed with both hands around his wrist.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before. I mean, grab the prongs on a plug half way in the outlet and 120v AC is just about enough to push an amp past your heart but 750V DC can smoke it inside out. It can also knock your nerves back through your ass on the ground. Not him though, he was pulling on the next pin.

I landed outside of the tracks in a soft bed of ballast. My senses didn’t care about anything anymore. It was like forgetting to sleep for days and not knowing what your own soul tastes like.

The man got up and walked over me. He was dead all right, looking down, wishing he hadn’t lost a fight a million years ago. “This train is fine, we’ll get the next one”. I saw it pass, slow and endless. Each passenger looked, flickering, by him and through him as if we weren’t there. In the last window of the last car an old woman saw me. She had her fingernail between the gap of her front teeth. Her eyes had all the matter I had never known.

As soon as it passed, the man had gone back to the rail, laid flat and started working out the bolts on the splice.

When my brain stopped cooking, I got to thinking, this is where the ordinary becomes something I can no longer do. Lifting myself up was the hardest part, a bit crawling, mostly pain, and all the vibration of a carillon hit by a solar flare sword of flame.

It could have been minutes to move a couple feet. The bolts and the fishplate were gone. He was scoring the splice weld with his nails, throwing sparks and screeches around it. I picked up an old sledge lying on the ground next to him. I swung it with everything I had, squarely at his back. It sounded like a lightning bolt that shattered a metal pole right next to me. It was just as bright. Now I couldn’t see or hear anything. I was feeling around for him and grabbed as tight as I could when he stood up straight as a pipe. This might have been my best chance to stop him. I ratcheted in my arms, skip jumped both feet on the 3rd rail, pulled back as hard as I could and prayed we both burned right there on the spot. We didn’t. It was like his ankles were welded to the track and suddenly cracked from the heat and force that was created. We both flew back and landed ten foot off at the bottom of a drainage swale. When I woke up, my head was in the mud. The left side of my face was seared and black, the eye was a boiled egg. All parts of my arms and chest that had been touching him were a Lycra/fat carbonized glass snake skin. My jeans were burning in like embers of steel wool chaps on bone and muscle. My shoes and feet were gone, charred and dead entirely. The only remnants of the man was a burned inverted image branded on me anywhere my clothes hadn’t been. I could feel a rolling hum getting closer again.

This next one came on the same 68 mph as the last, 643 lives, 210 dead, and the rest forever injured. The dogs found my body the next night, in the ditch with a hungry raccoon, not far from a pinch bar, sledge, chisel, and gas grinder.

The man? He was always lost

but I wish he could have stayed unmet.

Barely triaged, admitted

rocking, paranoid, crying silently

my hair, straw, wool

spicules battering me

hair ties, clips, shoe strings

prohibited

A staring shadow walked by

for the nurse’s station

fuck, he’s coming back

so tired of men’s shit

Put your away your hand…

touched

a little rubber band

Deep down, we all love a good human, and by that I don’t mean good in the benevolent sense. I mean someone who is unique, perfectly flawed, and challenging. Now, that challenge of course is subjective. Look at the beautiful stripes on a tiger for example. Taken alone and at a distant glance you see an indiscernibly pleasing pattern. As you get closer and compare him to other tigers, there are an infinite number of tiny differences. That’s what makes it pleasing. The pattern is what caught the eye. The challenge comes in being the right tiger, or right for you at least. Do you like being stalked with raw intelligence? Do you like the physical chase? Do you like to admire the natural power in him. Do you like that last second when every hair on your body stands up because his teeth and rumble find their place at the back of your neck? If you do end up with a tiger, good luck with the ability to tame, subdue, coax, declaw and even defang if you have to. Some might object to the analogy. I guess I could find a bunch of others in nature, after all, they are animals too. Digging deeper into the human psyche though, the best of the beast is always there even if it is a miniscule dose. You have the beautiful minds, the self made billionaires, the heroes, the saints, the artists, the #1 dads, the superstar actors and sportsman, the philosophers, the rockstar scientists, the Romeo, the Casanova and many more. Oh, I forgot the most common one, that really, really good guy (benevolent and human).Who is mine then? Well, he is sort of Jack. You know, of all that he does. He can be any of those archetypes, at any time. He is also none of them, particularly and unfortunately, when I want him to be, but I’ll get to that much later. His name is Michael which, appropriately to him, is a most common name across many cultures, languages, religions, and countries. I hate that, but whatever, it was his parents’ choice. And going back in his DNA mash up, there were multitudes before him. I do like the fact that his name means, in its earliest version, a most deep rhetorical question. “Quis ut Deus?” in Latin but it is thousands of years older than the Romans and dating back to when cave people realized that they were part of something bigger and certainly not at the center of it. In blunt English, as Michael would say, "who is God?, definitively not me or you!" This reminds me of an argument he had with his brother which he wrote down later. I’m going to use his words and this convention for the entire book, if it pleases you, or not, I do what I like, Michael knows that for sure. In his words:

[Anthony, how can you think we are in a simulation?

“The math points to it being the best probability.”

I get that. But even if that is the case, it would mean someone, or something created the simulation no?

“Yea, it could be me and just turtles all the way down to infinity”.

Infinite regression? Neither physicists nor epistemologists are comfortable with that.

“Whatever, for all I know, I could be God. When I die or go to sleep, you all just go away.”

Perhaps, but that doesn’t pass even the simplest logic test.

“What test is that?”

Close your eyes, go to sleep and see if you don’t wake up when I am punching you.

“That could be me imagining you punching me.”

Ha ha ha. Maybe, but for the rest of your life you’ll be thinking about my fists before you go to sleep. That doesn’t sound like a god.]

This is the kind of mumbo jumbo geek crap I put up with all the time, call it one of his little beasts. I hate it and I don’t. It makes me laugh like seltzer bubbling up when you least expect it.

I am not going to tip toe around this. BonnieBoo's titles have to be some of the most ordinary, clichéd, and familiar phrases around. They grab your taste buds like chicken noodle soup, a hot dog, or a banana. Most people crave them at least some of the time. Inside the prose though, you get a lifetime supply of gourmet meals of your choice. BonnieBoo draws me in and fools me every time.

I’m sitting here holding their words. Story and story followed by fantasies, but not one of them has written my life in…

Funny, I don’t feel like I was a horrible human being. I’ve never heckled or harassed or given an unwanted pass. I’ve never used my authority, masculinity, power, or strength to belittle them, and forget about any violence or forced physicality. There’s been bad places, you know the kind that big men frequent, they always called me an ass for talking and listening, asking and being. I digress, obviously nothing is written happily of this by any of them. I have a wife of 26 years, she would probably write “your a good man”, and “love” and “sex” and “family” but certainly not of her fantasy. Oh and you probably noticed I ashamedly left out “husband” and “friend”. She and two others have been the great loves in my life. The kind that seem to string across anything the universe might bring. Tragically and horribly, I put them in exactly the wrong chronological order. I suffer from the ails of testosterone. It’s that chemical that makes us think women’s brains are focused on nothing but me. It also makes me feel like a rock. Then it fucks with my nerves, I shut down and become as woman useful as a 1ton block.

They will be reading this now and think, “he still doesn’t get it, this is about nothing but him”. Which brings me back to those pieces in my hand, their words, dreams, and fantasies.

It’s all there, like a memory of things I should have known better to have been.

We all have our ideas of good and evil, or if you don’t attend to higher powers, use the various prefixes of morality, or if you have nothing else, consider that perspective exists only within the confines that our unique paths have taken. I often think of our universe and the smallest scaled “spookiness” of reality where every particle within its field exists and acts as if connected to all the others. In some grander scheme, there may be one that connects across them all, to a point where every interaction within is somehow known and recorded. It all becomes an exorcize of thought to what may happen when we die. If, in that dimension, our souls save and continue down to each quantum interaction of existence, there could be a way to play them back, relive them, or perhaps live them through another consciousness when ours has played out in the realm we understand.

This brings me to my special condition. You see, I am Bipolar and have suffered several episodes of manic and depressive psychosis. My brain in both states tends to rev itself up or down to a critical place where sleep and food and drink become secondary to the mind’s spinning collapse. It begins to function on two levels, one that smears dreams and reality across the consciousness and the other that exposes the subconscious to the cognitive portions of the brain. You see Angels and Demons and flirt with the power and responsibility of Gods. Then comes nothingness, blackness, insignificance, and doom. I am my most creative, swirling inside the eye of it. I am the most scared and confident of what I may become as well. Having been through it, having seen it in others, I can thankfully say that I did not find an ounce of malevolence within me. I pray that continues forever.

At some point along this ride, I put the notions above together and started to think about the evolution of humanity’s darkest minds. And this is where I confess my fantasy. It is not for the weak of heart or mind. It’s a trip to a place that most humans and our cultures know. I just call it hell. Not the hell of retribution or damnation of my own soul, but the possession, being of my own self, within the existence and soul of humanity’s very worst, reliving their lives, exposed to all their horrid thoughts and deeds. And then to possess in the same way, every soul that suffered them.

I dream that our existence is truly eternal in this endeavor, It will take billions of souls to feel, endure, and understand the extents of our human darkness.

And maybe the next time around, I’ll go for the light.

Like titanium aerosol in a nitrogen

xenon vacuum atmosphere

I’m here and where?

Like wisps of an immolated monk

again for the last witness

of its one and nothing

I can taste the bone and blessing

Like bride, binding eightfold color

down in wave and nerve and brain

Did I send her there?

Like three, one, it’s other, the last a breath as they used to be

I died with them in canvas as brush, a wish, a dream

Some pains are worth ignoring, the foreboding ones especially, the ones that bit long ago and present themselves neatly and conveniently and positioned poetically. The dead pain between your legs and back and gut and groin, that only says hello to remind you of what you do, until doing is no longer fun, it says, hello, it’s time you stopped feeling. It’s worth ignoring because there is nothing that could be done, because those Sundays made you crave something that tasted pure and of nothing.

7th day mornings were always a fight. The sun comes no matter what but the wee eyed dreams of the night need fixing before it’s worth seeing, and nightmares require flirtation timed in days not hours. Church ended any possible salvation from those. St Pats had enough stone and masonry to keep my mind busy enough, though, having a small bladder and frequent water fountain trips made the dry homilies fade away into the brief moment of happiness of saying peace be with you to total strangers. Of course, there were those times when behavior demanded an exile to the hall rectory basement. It was darker down there than bad dreams and equally relegated to the mind’s little cracks that only eye sand can fill. Inevitably, anywhere I was, the masses end with the safe boredom of the brick and painted vaulted arches. The day of rest was now over.

Breakfast went around year round something like this; Fresh eggs (Theresa had to fetch them) – mostly snot sunny side up, frozen orange juice concentrate with a gag pulp of course, powdered milk out of a box, either or both of frozen bacon or Jones’s breakfast sausage pan fried in their own crude death drippings, and white bread toast made from 6 month old sometimes moldy bread that had been bought 5 for 1. Sometimes one or two would go down cruising, sometimes none. The real problem with breakfast was not the food, it was the looming doom of dad the master blaster. Yeah, he was the big cuddly bear strong guy and the short maniacal Napoleon strapped on top, all wrapped into a 140 lb 5’-2” stone of so much mean and heart that the Grinch was like, 7 sizes what? Theresa and I would try to slink away from the table while dad was talking to grandma and grandpa on the phone. Mom would say, “Your father wants you to help him after breakfast”. By help, she meant a kick blocking, hand ducking, tool dodging, crying, hiding, daydreaming, languishing, anguishing, 7yr old, forced captive labor, beating flunky of a kid. It was always learning hard and escaping for fun. There is nothing I can’t tackle today thanks to it. Someone once told me I’m a renaissance man. Yes, bought and paid for in now fiat emotions of that golden kid.

As far as work was concerned, Sundays all mixed in the same. Dad usually worked a 2nd job on Saturday so that was for our rest. Otherwise, the weekends just bled and bled. Work could be anybody’s guess, double 30 yd dump trailers of bulkhead wood to be cut, fork lifts needing repairs dropped off in our driveway, concrete pavement to be demolished by hand, rabbits and ducks to be slaughtered, .5 acre gardens to be tilled, ham radios to be built, all hand cutting for the wood burning stove (if I was a lazy summer, it was my snow job to work it out), tool runner, handy helper, but mostly there to do what I was told. I learned.

Sunday dinners and Sunday nights had good things, always. My mom was never a great cook but she sure knew how to make dinner. Oh, except for the occasional casserole or liver ideas the 70’s induced. We’d watch Quincy, Little house on the Prairie, The Waltons, the Wonderful World of Disney, PBS Telethons of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton. They seemed better with popcorn which is still my favorite. We had family time too. Monopoly and Life were good. Poker was fun until my dad fleeced me out of my possessions with the lesson that the house’s business was to cheat. I guess I could go on and on about the bad and the good. Looking back, I’d say good, more, a warm feeling that you feel inside. Not like that other feeling, when as a child you get up late and crave something to taste and you stand in your doorway gnawing the finish, gnawing the fire board, gnawing that white chrysotile center right to the black metallic face, gnawing it from your highest to the floor, bending the back out to gnaw some more, bending it back each night to hide the missing core, gnawing square feet worth of fibers and grit, gnawing it raw and loving every bit, gnawing out the last hours of every Sunday consuming that white asbestos, swallowing it down, letting its crystal fibers embed, embed in the lower intestine. For decades, it nested, prodding the cells until they broke free of their shells and tried to be what they are not. The doctor looks at you and says, “I’ve never seen such an MRI form in a body, it is horrifyingly amazing. It is all connected and shaped like Pterois”.

But this is not what I expected. What am I going to tell her?

“Better Tell her she will meet them all next Sunday”

“and If you are smart, hold onto that string”

It's a hard thing to remember and the one part that came as a surprise to me, you can feel and smell it till your seat digs itself into a fractured and melted remnant of airplane oblivion. Yes, there's the recognizable pieces of the arm rest buttons and the intact oxygen masks that somehow didn't get put on and a couple of uncracked iPhones (some poor wife gets to find out her cratered husband was fucking a 24 yr old) but yes, it all ends up like a MOAB went off in the side streets of Valley stream. Everything is burning, oh, except for that beautiful baby girl lying in the middle of it. Her name was Kristen Michelle. She was sleeping in that illegal basement apartment. Her crib was right by the wall. The rescue teams were sobbing like crazy when they pulled her out without a scratch on her. She had a red string in her grasp with the loop on her little finger, which got me thinking back to our beginning.

Nothing is really impossible to me. My imagination gets hold and the unlikely suddenly becomes real. I'm not talking nightmares and brief moments of clarity. I'm talking about engine #2's mount bolt on the left wing. Sometimes they are lazy when the torque wrench is on the bench, sometimes the last mechanic dropped it and now it's reading 40 ftlbs shy, and sometimes the bolt's been completely sheared for 20 flights and locktight is holding the head in. Sure as air currents and vibrations can shit metal, one by one the bolts shear, stuck on there looking pretty, aircraft shiny but holy fucked fatigued. So when I'm looking out the window and I see that 450mph shimmy, I'm not surprised at all. Some of the frequent flyers up front, you know, the dicks that have a stripper and housewife for every 100,000 miles flown in each state, they know the jig is up too. I saw him praying. Everybody else thinks it's turbulence. I kinda feel sorry for them.

As Tesla taught us, harmonic vibration can shake your balls off if you wack em just right. Well, not far after take off, maybe 5,000 feet, that engine's nuts started coming and rocking. I think the pilot was finally starting to listen to my mind. This ain't no happy ending baby. The cabin started to sound like a baptist funeral pre-crying over the engine that was about to make a name for itself crashing into the clock tower at Central. Damn, I really needed that cup of green tea. The flight attendants clock out early with these things. Here I was, calm as that little boy over there who was cutting up so bad at the gate and taxiing, his mom wrapped a scarf around the belt buckle. His name was Michael. She wasn't so calm. The two of us locked eyes when the engine moon shot and cow pulled the wing for some hot shlitz. I raised my eyebrows and smiled at him. He reached to his mother and hugged her while smiling back at me. That's when I remembered the red string. I'd been carrying it around for forty six years. The love of my life gave it to me, or more like she found it for us. The rest of the flight was a perfect physics lesson. You know, terminal velocity, God's name screaming, 1/2mv^2, milk turning gurgling, flash point of jet fuel, 11B heart attacking out early, and me and Michael sitting pretty.

I guess it's time then. That string in my pocket wasn't literal. It just meant something for the living which I hadn't planned on being that day. I tied it in a tiny loop and bow and gave it to Michael. He smiled again and said I owe you.

Michael died too.

We laugh about it all the time. I thought thinking and imagining the improbable was my shit. That kid knows he is lifetimes ahead of me.

Being an eternal optimist and believing that humanity is filled with good, I want to know what evil is. I've lived mania and depression and the brutal phychosis that both can bring. This is certainly a darkness that many humans suffer, but insanity, even the permanent kind does not cause evil. In the throes of it I've met beautiful souls in the back reaches of their minds where light shines like nowhere else. So what is it? I suspect evil is much the same as good and lies with choice, compulsion, and ultimately in action. The only way to know it, is to know those who thought it and chose not to be true.