I decided to write you a note
A story told in plain speech
Without too many words, or big ones
That have too many syllables

It’s a story for the people;
I want its message to ring through the streets
To resonate in the hall,
Pollinate the ear drums.

It’s a story by the people;
Chiseled from bone and steel
Dripping with sweat,
Coughing with black lungs,
Hiding its pride like a bruise.

Birthed from the same prickly cactus
Same angry, trampled hole in the ground

Oh, our mother.
Is she not at the heart of all our great tragedies?
Harmonizing over them like a wailing siren

She is moaning a cautionary tale
Of shattered glass,
Of sea-foamed shores swallowing entire cities

People becoming pansies for the picking
No longer fit to survive
No longer quick as the carpenter
We are lined up
To be pinned down

Drowning in the waters,
We swim against the current
Just to survive
Our scaly, limp bodies flailing in the foamed rapids.

But her call falls to deaf ears
As we shuffle along, dirtying our hands.
Working for a clock that bends, but never breaks

The Gospel According to Barry

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BARRY

Barry Dale was a simple man with a complicated life. Fate is often cruel this way, it seems. However this isn’t a sob story for all the simpletons of the world, about how they are unjustly dealt the proverbial “shitty hand”, this is a story about Barry. Barry Dale’s father owned a car shop, so when it was time for Barry to decide what he wanted to do, where other students squandered over college application forms or thought about technical school, the choice seemed pretty simple to Barry.

However, his life didn’t go as simply as it would seem. When Barry was 22 he got married and his father died suddenly of a heart attack. They were working on a car together in the shop. Barry’s father asked Barry for a ratchet and Barry brought him the wrong size. Barry senior, who was drunk at the time, and all the time for that matter, threw the ratchet back at his, “Good for nothin’, half-retarded” son, and before Barry even got a chance to stand up for himself, his father collapsed.

After this, Barry found Jesus and his mother found the bottle. Barry sought some sort of adolescent, misplaced forgiveness for causing his father’s death, and his mother just drank and blamed her son. He would always take care of her though, being that he found Jesus now and all. You see, Jesus teaches us to take care of our family, even if they won’t be saved when He comes again. They are your family, and you are bound to them in this lifetime. Jesus said honor thy mother and father, so no matter how painful, Barry took care of her.

Time would show that Jesus ended up saying a lot of interesting things to Barry Dale.
Barry worked and worked and saved and prayed in those days. He really did better business then it would seem for how tiny his garage was. He was lucky in that his father’s house, well, his house now that he had moved his mother to a “retirement community”, was directly above the shop. By this time, Barry and his wife weren’t getting along very well anymore. After his father’s death when Barry became religious, his wife did not follow suit. This gradually added tension to their arrangement, however as I said earlier, Jesus said to stick by and take care of your family, even if they won’t be saved when He comes again. So that’s what Barry did for 13 long years.

But 13 years was the breaking point, who knows why, maybe because 13 is an unlucky number, but for whatever reason, on the 13th year of their marriage while Barry was replacing break pads in the garage, he heard something. Barry heard a voice. In fact, Barry heard the voice of Jesus. To try and replicate the words of Jesus would be asinine and trite, however the gist of it was Barry you must kill your wife. She has been unfaithful to you and to the lord and for that she must pay eternally. I am coming again soon, Barry, and when I do I will remember what you did for me. I will remember you and you will have a seat in my kingdom.

That night Barry Dale murdered his wife of 13 years with his bare hands. He strangled her at 5:30 in the evening, wrapped up the body and put it in the bed, and still made it to the 7:00 service down the street. There Barry prayed. He prayed for the soul of his wife, and for God to forgive him for his stupidity. He never should have married a woman who didn’t have Jesus in their heart. He told God that he knew he was doing his will, and that he longed for the day that Jesus told him about, the day that he would come again. Jesus said it would be soon, but Barry wondered how soon. Soon could mean a week or a few years, or even a few decades to the Almighty.

The last time I was at this hospital, I was pretending to be an employee of Pifer Funeral Home so I could pick up my grandfather's death certificate. Time before that, I watched my grandfather get his last rites. Time before that, my throat was closing up and my fingers and toes turned the brightest blue. Time before that, I was born.

This time, it's Dad. My dad. I feel like I've read a million passages about the shock of seeing a parent in the hospital for the first time. I also feel like I'm supposed to ponder the inevitability of our body's eventual breakdown. Mortality. The loss of strength and ability. You know, that kind of shit, and I suppose it's supposed to feel profound or overwhelming or whatever. I'm not thinking about anything like that. Not at all. I'm thinking about how he looks without his false teeth. Old as hell. Looks like his Dad, Thorton. My only memories of Thorton are of him on his death bed, but that doesn't bother me so much. I think it's just unfortunate that my dad has frown lines like that. I was just wondering the other day about whether I'll have frown lines or laugh lines when I'm old as hell.

I think Dad wants me here to lighten the mood. Mom seems to be embarassing him by trying to help him. Right now she's writing down questions to ask the doctor: "Can I go to work on Monday?" ("I'm going to work on Monday!"), "Can I mow the lawn?" ("It doesn't need mowed for another week.") and "Can I go to Seattle?" ("I'm going to Seattle!"). She keeps repeating the questions so he'll remember to ask. He's getting mad and talking about his dick and keeps repeating "I hate this cathetar." I haven't really done a good job of lightening the mood - I'm embarassed and I can't stop looking at the bag of bloody piss by the foot of his bed. The image is good incentive to stop smoking. It's the color of fruit punch. Dad tells me that yesterday it was port wine. Am I supposed to laugh? I do.

Mom talks about the hospital visit I didn't tell anyone in my family about until after the fact. I think she's still mad about that, so I show her some cell phone pictures I took of my hospital stay. The view from my room, the tv on the wall, the individually wrapped piece of bread they give with meals (Dad is buttering his right now), and a picture of myself. Mom laughs a little but thinks it's strange. "Why would you take pictures of something like that?" Dad speaks up "She wants to remember, is all!" I smile. Dad gets it. He asks me to take his picture.

He laughs louder than I've heard in years and when I look at the picture, he's got the dumbest shit eatin grin I've ever seen. Good. I'm glad.

Told you guys about this on Kelly & Emmy's porch.

The day is still, and I am watching all of creation in the blue smoke pouring heavenward from the end of my cigarette. It is an impromptu ballet whose music I cannot hear, only taste; whose dancers betray gravity in lieu of a lasting life; whose audience consists solely of me, and my stubborn pen. Like geometry unharnessed, it is the ephemeral portrait of the Almighty Himself - bending and swerving and spiraling and falling and lifting, given to whims as capricious as His own judgement. It is not yet Death's umbilical cord, as it has been for so many. Who am I kidding? It is mine already. Have no doubt as I light another just to watch it burn: Plaintive poetry flowing out in ghostly cursive: the whispers from a lovelost; a caveat too beautiful, so left unheeded, floating with enticing grace and heartwrenching fragility. As I inhale, its form folds in on itself and is sighed from me in dozens of squid-like specters, leaving their tarcoated corpses smoldering in my chest - can feel their venom still. Returning my gaze to the slowly burning end, I see the silhouette of a man: His name is Cecil. He is sailing on a boat and the wind is strong on his face, he's taking big, mirthful gulps of it. I am carried into his lungs by the wind coming off the sea. It is too dark to write anymore down here.

can't stop the dancing chicken