born san berdoo

for the life of me,

so bury my heart

in the old ie.

After Work Hour

There is no door knob

not in this room, the guest room

just a hole, it offers voyeurism

of the empty hallway.

There is one window

not blessed with curtains or shutters

but an Arizona red sleeping bag

tacked up by nails.

We have a desk, oak

and as ancient as sitting

although the chair is downstairs

tucked beneath the piano

I am on the blow-up mattress

it quivers with each strike

of our two cats,

that circle each other

like gladiators at my feet.

This is my after work hour

inside a makeshift room

where depression and I fight

over me

like Hades and Clio

who take swipes at each other

without claws.

Lightning

Gordon dies in Georgia

and I have yet to mourn —

but you are extraordinary.

He tells me this when I worry about his death

like those words are a powerful hymn,

older than Jesus,

older than mercy.

So what is my legacy at 24?

A strewn out something-something,

nothing like Gordon’s

a genuine keeper of his faith

What says the pupil when the mentor dies,

what avenues do they navigate?

(but you are extraordinary)

Good lord I do pray for Michael,

he yells out, thumps his chest

like it is a empty stump,

with ancient rings, southern sensibility.

If I am extraordinary he is of the gods.

He leaves the earth dressed

in his blackest Sunday best, bolo tie

to grace him like a silver bowed present.

So deliver me to heaven, he says. On time!

I sit outside, forcing a tear.

The raw sun sets into summer

silence and splintered lightning

is sign of an August storm,

and heaven acknowledges

it's best man’s passing.

What does the prophet do

when his Jehovah leaves him?

What's left, but to talk about how

I am extra extra ordinary.

graduate weekend

friday night at a husked bar top

made of smoky chaparral

and cactus green paint.

we shot tequila that had no color

and tried on spanish phrases

like we had no color.

dominoes slapped wood

while we multiplied across the table

in equations of ivory rectangles.

the bonepieces weaved

a trail around empty wine bottles

and the ghosts of marijuana seeds.

saturday night in a stripped garage

that spread it's belly open

to the sound of electric guitars.

youth danced in the whisps

of cigarette smoke,

they punched at swollen noise

and shook their bones–

like it was cult ritual

for time killing.

two dollars bought entry

to an impotent keg

and waves of reverb to lull

me into a pre-dawn haze.

sunday on the lawn

and we sprawled in our black robes

like a midnight mass across

the white chairs and morning light.

i walked with my peers

under the gaze of our archaic instructors.

stone faced, these relics of academia

shook our sweaty hands

and mispronounced our names,

like we were a disposable group

to fill in the quiet space

between the commencement

ceremony 4 and ceremony 6.

legs

my wife admires my legs

from not a distance

but from the next cushion

over on our couch.

this couch is a deep blue

and horseshoe shaped—

we're sitting on goodluck.

these legs are not subtle,

covered with a cloak

of black hair that's crowded

like an ny subway.

these are the legs

that taxi my pale bones

from home to job to home.

this my hour of sobriety.

quietlife

sailin' away,

on the ship they call

mid-sized couch

from the port they call

my fiancé's living room.

when they come,

"they" being the keepers

of the faith, of historical annals

told in stiff drinks,

sweating pint glasses

and told with bloody knuckles.

when they come,

tell them i lived by the sword,

like my life was a legendary thing

in certain circles of college students

and suspicious parents.

IE, born and bred

dead by the age of 23.

tell them i floated off

into the ethereal sun drunk sky

accompanied by harp songs—

to the land

called valhalla.

a place where dad's wear moderate shorts

and sensible leather walking shoes.

where i wake up as the night falls asleep

and my last drink was warm water.

a tall tell: i drifted to the heaven,

like the fictional hebrew

in my parents anniversary bible

and my second coming will exist

only in stories, pen script.

so tell them i got engaged,

it was a week into noviembre

and i cried when it happened.

tell them to eat their fucking hearts out.

Keep Calm, Carry On

To tread in glass is a campaign.

But these timetested callouses

I keep on my soles

save me–

from fresh edges

of brokensharpandshining pieces

that litter the bare earth.

So I keep the march alive.

Highstep, as if I can touch

my nose with my knees/

push forward.

Follow the beat

that pounds

like wild horses

in quiet hillsides.

Fact: those spots of blood,

that drag like the train

of a sunset's wedding dress,

are a testament

to luckyhard&lovely

times—

this: the reason why

I will never give it up.

End of an Era

Today is my last day of college. Yet, I don't feel inspired, excited or happy in the least bit. What sentimentality I would have had toward this accomplishment left me after a conversation I had on earlier in the week. I liken this to kicking an addiction. Something I have been doing steadily for the best five years is going to leave me. But I know I should have some positive feelings toward the matter. They're fleeting, fleeting and gone. At least I won't take the nostalgic route to my college years. "I miss so much about undergrad, so on and so forth." No, I didn't like undergrad either. Looking back on this blog, I can see the effect that undergrad had on me. The progression is despotic. I don't remember the time I spent during each of the postings. Whatever glimpse of the college experience I will remember has taken life in written form. So, instead of taking on this new direction like it is some passed torch, I think of why I am still here. I've been struggling with how unceremonious this seems to me. I turn, I question why I spent the extra quarters at the university. Devaluing my decision won't help anyone. Neither will the question "was it worth it?" I like to think yes it was. Que sera sera.

Tonight is an Irish holiday apparently. I wrote about it once before I think. You look like I need a drink, so I'll have one. Maybe the liquor of Ireland will catch up to me tonight, like it did when I was there. That seems like it was a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime. I'm living a lifetime away.

Two Non-Relatable, Relatable Paragraphs

Warning: I'm going to vaguely relate cooking, methamphetamine, emotions to create a motif.

I hate being put on the back burner. I don't even know what that is. Is this a reference to a stove top? Perhaps the back burner is the lesser of the burners, less heat, less significance. But this idiomatic expression is for that of low priority. Letting something cook on the lesser burners, having it simmer. Simmering food is that of non precedent. As so, let the slow, soft warmth of a tiny flame keep the food edible.

To change the subject, I once saw the aftermath of stove top methamphetamine. This was in the apartment of my classmate's mother. We both saw the process set out on the stove. The various pans and plastic bags laying out without shame. I wonder what cooker she made her science on. Did she use the back burner? Did she have the product simmer? However this substance was cooked, it was gone now. By the women, who in fact, had been put on life's back burner.

Guns, Cameras, Bad Jokes

When the first bullet hit the plastic radio, a snapshot was created. Plastic chunks floated in the air, as though they were weightless and suspended. The second bullet penetrates this still life, releasing motion, releasing the left speaker of its assigned duty. Shot number three sent bullet number three into the earth, a few feet away from the radio, shredded plastic, and the last of Tamara. When the crack of the third gunshot had drifted to the open air, what was left, a growing silence. This is Halloween weekend. Kenny and I play with guns. Bradley parts ways with Tamara.

Kenny and I watch Bradley send the last items of his and Tamara’s relationship off into the sloping ground of an abandoned utility road somewhere at the shallow bottom of the San Bernardino Mountains. With Bradley’s Pontiac Firebird, we brave miles of wet dirt and open cliffs to come to the “shooting spot” that Bradley thought would be sufficient. We have a plastic bags filled with Tamara’s clothes, her radio, a chest of drawers, an electric fan and assorted other objects with us. Bradley brought these things. They were left in his room, he tells us. They were Tamara’s, he tells us.

Bradley parks on a cliff, which overlooks a dried riverbed. There are hawks circling us. Beyond that, a ravine. As Kenny and I throw rocks into the canyon, Bradley sets up an altar to Tamara. He stacks the lighter objects on top of the drawer, and places the bags of clothes on either side. He works at this arrangement for a time, tweaking and removing until everything is in a symmetrical mound. He looks at these objects. He looks at what’s left of Tamara. Kenny and I watch him. We nod to each other in silence.

“So whose taking the first shot?” Bradley says, smiling. He loads the magazine for the 22-caliber pistol. He takes his time doing this.

“It’s all yours,” Kenny says. He met Tamara first. He warned Bradley.

Kenny loads the black security shotgun. I don’t know why he brought the thing, but it’s here with us, black and shining, ready to pump shells into the stack of Tamara. Kenny loads his shotgun, Bradley inspects his pistol, and I sit on the trunk of the Firebird and watch them. Kenny and Bradley are rough around the edges: they wear shorts in Autumn, they listen to rock and roll from their father’s era, they don’t shave, they shoot guns at objects to cope with pain. I’m here for the spectacle.

Bradley is ready. He stands at a distance from the pile, legs apart, back straight in a shooters stance. I’m supposed to emulate this stance when it’s my turn. I’ve never shot a pistol before. I’ve never shot the memory of someone before either.

“I take shooting serious Mike,” he says. “This is how it’s done.”

He takes his three shots. And that brings us back to the silence. Dust settles around what is left of Tamara’s things. Bradley stares at the dirt foothills beyond the canyon cliff we sit on.

“She’s probably going to ask me for this stuff back,” he says. “And I’ll tell her to come down here and pick it up.”

He says this as though it was a joke, with a pause and emphasized punch line. I don’t know if really finds this funny, I certainly don’t find it funny. Kenny finds it funny to pump shell after shell into a dwarfed burnt tree. The tree falls after a time. Bradley shoots the plastic bag of clothes and lingerie spills out like entrails. A choir of shots fills the canyon below us, sending a coyote from a bush into twists of the riverbed before it disappears into the landscape. When they finish, the same silence follows the ringing in my ears.

“Let me shoot that radio,” Kenny says.

“Give Mike a turn first,” Bradley says.

“Fine, then I’m using the next box of shells.”

Kenny works the gun over the trunk of the car. He whistles an odd tune.

“You ready?” Bradley says, holding the pistol out to me. “Shoot it just like I did.”

I take the gun in my hand and walk to where Bradley stood. I aim at the untouched bag of Tamara’s clothes. These clothes probably don’t fit her any more. They were her pregnancy clothes, Bradley tells me, the flowing tops and spandex she left at his apartment. She was pregnant when I met her; this was the only time she became tangible to me, more than a bad story or a bad joke. More than gossip.

When I met Tamara, Bradley had given away two pints of his blood then drank heavily. He was in a stupor at my parent’s house. He wanted to leave. With risk of calling his older or younger sister, we called Tamara; hers was the only number he could recite without his cell phone. They weren’t together anymore, they hadn’t been for years, say an off chance sexual encounter that left a part of him with her when he went away for medical school. She was pregnant.

When Tamara showed up on the doorstep of my parent’s house. She looked uncomfortably pregnant, swollen.

“We’ll come back for his things in the morning,” she said.

Kenny and I watched them go. What was this “we”? They weren’t a couple any more, but she was living with him. He dropped out of medical school to raise their child. But Kenny and I agreed that this “we” wasn’t savory.

But that was before she had the baby.

“Line up the sight with anything in the pile,” Bradley says. “Then shoot.”

I line up the sight and pull the trigger. The bag of clothes is untouched. I shoot again. Still nothing. I shoot three more bullets at what’s left of Tamara and litter the ground around the pile. The dirt swirls. I don’t have any real animosity towards her, so shooting her things proves to be challenging. That and I’m a bad shot. I give Bradley back the pistol.

“You’ll get better at this,” he says.

Kenny is throwing her CD’s into the air and shooting at them as they whistle back to the ground. The disc he hits detonates mid air, electrifying the bare sky. Another snapshot of floating dust, plastic pieces, shiny undercoating. These bits of compact disc are suspended above the dry riverbed, just above us, just below the circling birds. Then the pieces scatter into the brush.

Bradley’s kneels over the altar to Tamara, or what’s left of it. He riffles through the chest of drawers, which boasts two or three puncture wounds from his shot. There are still belongings inside the drawer; he holds something in his hand, it shines in the sun. He pushes the drawer shut. Wood splinters fall around his feet.

“Trade me guns,” he says to Kenny.

They trade guns, I watch from the hood of the car. Bradley stands three feet from the pile, shotgun in his armpit, one eye clamped shut. He fires. The second bag of clothes explodes; the skeleton of the radio is sent up into the air, the chest of drawers collapses on itself, the electric fan cracks in half. After all eight shells are fired; I can only hear my tongue moving inside my mouth. Kenny is yelling something, clapping his hands. Bradley let’s the gun hang slack in his arm.

This miasma of wood clippings, paint chips, metal and fabric is smeared across the dirt road. This is what’s left of Tamara. Bradley is silent as he walks back to the Firebird.

“You okay?” Kenny asks.

“I’m great,” he says. “You want to try the shotgun, Mike?”

“Sure,” I say.

“I’m going to take a picture of you,” he says.

“Shooting the gun?’

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s going to look awesome.”

I shoot a couple rounds into the pile, tearing what appears to be a pair of jeans into shreds. Bradley takes a picture of me, then of Kenny, whose is shooting the pistol with one hand.

“I’m going to send these to her,” he says. “And say: ‘hey, here’s the rest of your stuff. If you want it.”

He laughs after he says, almost as though it’s a joke. Her picking up her clothes in the middle of nowhere must be the punch line. Kenny and I laugh. I laugh out of pity. Kenny might to, or to him it’s entertaining. He didn’t like Tamara regardless. He didn’t after Bradley converted for her. Bradley became the drunkest Mormon we would ever know.

Bradley snaps a few more shots, of the pile, the guns, Kenny throwing CD’s, me incorrectly handling a deadly weapon, the sky, the hawks, and the ravine. He hands Kenny the camera and picks up the pistol.

“Take a picture of this,” he says.

He walks back to the pile and kicks through the framework of a drawer. There, inside, is a stuffed animal. It’s dirty and missing an arm but mostly intact. The stuffed animal looks like a gift for a newborn, a blue bear. He throws the toy into the air and fires at it. As the bullets hit, wisps of dirt escape the center. The thing falls to the floor in pieces. He keeps shooting at it.

“Is he going to be all right?” I ask Kenny.

“I hope so,” Kenny says. “It’s a pretty a fucked situation.”

Tamara and the baby, being the situation. When Bradley dropped out of medical school, he got back his old job at Costco. He found an apartment with two rooms, one for him, one for her; the baby would sleep in the living room. Him and Tamara had left each other on bad terms, infidelity, he told me. Now they were living with each other in even worse terms. She was pregnant and said it was his. Bradley said he wanted to do the right thing with the baby, even if he had stopped loving it’s mother a long time ago. He said he wasn’t going to be the bad guy. He had his doubts though; he said he couldn’t trust her. But he was ready to be a dad until then.

When the baby was born, Bradley was there, next to her, ready to be the father. In the photograph at the hospital he showed for those few months, he is smiling. Tamara looks incoherent. The baby resembled dried fruit wrapped in blue blankets. But that was just a photo, a snapshot of a moment that would pass. In Bradley’s case, it would come raining down like the bowels of the stuffed teddy bear.

“Let’s finish these boxes of bullets up,” Bradley says. “I didn’t buy all this ammo to stare at.”

He hands me the pistol, a freshly loaded magazine.

“Then we’re gonna go party,” he says.

I take a few shots at the ravine in the distance. The bullets don’t appear to hit anything or land anywhere, they absolve into the panorama with each echo. Bradley is shooting more of Tamara’s CD’s as Kenny volleys them into the air. Mid afternoon is creeping up on us with dim clouds and low winds. The hawks have gone.

I start to get the hang of this shooting ideology. Bradley and I stand by the trunk of his Firebird, loading our guns.

“How did you find out?” I ask him.

“I had them do a blood test right after the kid was born,” he says. “They said it would take a little while.”

He’s building up to it.

“They call me one day and tell me the kid isn’t mine,” he says. “So I came home and moved her shit out of my house. Called her and said ‘your stuff is sitting on your parents lawn, don’t ever fucking talk to me again.”

“How’d she take it?” I ask.

“She cried,” he says, his voice raises. “Best five hundred bucks I ever spent.”

Boom, there’s the punch line again. Bradley speaks in one-liners about the Tamara situation. He says he was ready to be a dad, but he had to make sure. I don’t really blame him. I wonder though, as we finish loading our guns, what it was like to not be a dad. I don’t ask that though. We go back to shooting shrunken trees in the distance. Kenny watches us sleepily, cigarette hanging from his mouth. We shoot until the bullets are gone, and so is Tamara. Bradley wants a picture to take with him back to medical school.

“I’ve got this thing set on auto timer,” Bradley says. “Hurry up!”

We pose against the sunset for a picture: Kenny pointing the shotgun at the camera, Bradley with his pistol cocked toward the sky, I give a “thumbs up”. This is bonding time for Bradley, therapeutic venting with high-powered weapons and minor destruction. They pack their guns and talk about the party we will go to later. I hear Bradley laugh and say something about his fake son. He refers to the baby as that, not giving it a name.

Bradley doesn’t talk about the three months he spent with Tamara as a family. Tamara is little more than “she” or “that girl” in casual conversation; the baby is “fake son”. The ride home we talk about our costumes for the party we’re attending, not the last bit of Tamara and the baby, not the things; the memorabilia that was riddled with bullets and whatever it is Bradley kept locked inside of his.

The three of us arrive at the Halloween party, Bradley doesn’t tell us what his outfit is on the way there. He wears a suit, a tie, dress shoes. His hair is combed. The gun grease and bullet shavings are washed from his hands and face. Someone asks us to pose for a picture when we walk in, we oblige them.

“Let me finish my outfit,” Bradley says. He pulls a paper connected to a piece of green yarn from the briefcase he is holding. He hangs the sign around his neck, which says:

“Bradley Cirullos’s Resume:

· Hardworking

· Ambitious

· College Graduate

· Not “Your” Baby’s Daddy”

This is the punch line, to what might be the best joke of his mid twenties. This picture was the end of our day, after hours of guns, cameras, bad jokes. He keeps this picture with him at medical school, he tells me; it’s framed on his desk. This picture we pose for is a snapshot, and in it, is the last of Tamara’s things.

Dead Air

My father was awake when I arrived.

He greeted me with a limp, from the knee

stiff like stale balsa wood that would break

on a heavy step. He stumbled out of his cave—

the room, in which my mother and him settled

a piece treaty of sorts. Their beds touching, bare

at the edges; just enough to breach the nine month

separation they endured. His thick words trickled

from his mouth, in a barely audible sound as though

he was praying under his breath for god to come soft

and steal him from the bodily pain. At first he greeted

me with name of my uncle, then he paused and searched

my visage for a question. The dead air around us was loud

enough to bleed an eardrum. "Oh," he said, "it's you. What

are you doing here?" I had come to feed the animals, but in

turn, I left with the ghost of my father, who is not dead, but sick.

leaving the foxhole

this is how it started:
a blow was thrown
bob, weave
duck.
sweat glistens
on the brow, on the knuckles
raining the mat.
but no blood, not yet.

this is how it progressed:
swinging swords
from a sheath that is a closedmouth
sever the thickness
stale air splintered by breath
hot like steamin rain gutters.
but no blood, not now.

this is how it escalated:
mortor fore spots the sky
like flocks of geese,
until they shower down.
shellshocked and shunned
so run for cover, return fire.
but no blood, not even.

this is how it climaxed:
a hand off through door crack
skin contact with the enemy
rules of engagement says to aid
so with the formality of conflict
a tissue paper cease fire.
but no blood, not cleaned.

this is how it dragged:
a layer of cinder block bricks
stacked with breach of trust
through espionage and invasion.
a cold war of finger pointing
when an arm rejected
the offer of peace.
but no blood, not flowing.

this is how it resoluted:
peace talks and treaties
enemy contact established
when a soft hand grips the rough
hand of the adversary.
weapon stock piles are scrapped
so bridges can be built with their
soldered flesh-

but no blood, not for a pointless war
when words are sharp
and there is a shortage of bandages.





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Synonym to: absorbing, amusing, appealing, attractive, compelling, curious, engaging, engrossing, entertaining, gripping...

I’ve been told I’m interesting. Interesting. Interesting. What a word. The word it self is interesting, in turn, this extract a response by the sound. The ebb and flow of the reverberation made between the “in” and the “tere” tailed by the “sting”.

But those are things I learned in linguistics. Linguistics is a class that was interesting. We learned about language, the spoken form coughed from the throat curled off the tongue like an illicit act. So there are noise-forming words with meaning, which in turn, are also interesting.

I suppose there are interesting aspects about me. I have dimples. I have a deviated septum. I'm articulate. I can drink more alcohol than the average person. These might be interesting. Or more so, they might be inches above the average stimuli of positive emotion. That sentence was interesting.

But here is an interesting snippet about me: I wore a body cast up to my armpits from the age of two to three. Yet, I only remember what I’ve seen of that moment in my life from pictures. To fine-tune that statement, I remember the pictures I’ve seen of myself not the year I spent immobile or the way the plaster felt against my skin. I don't remember the year I spent learning to walk after that. I remember a Polaroid I’ve seen of myself.

Photographic memory. I have one of those two. That’s interesting.

Keyboard Sized Scars

I’ve been told I deal with pain best through my writing. As though each word, each letter that is stamped onto the blank, white page is a representation of myself. Maybe the letters are the smallest instances of my interior. I form them into words to give a better image of where I’m hurting. I put these words together to form sentences, sentences of courses to show why I’m hurting.

Or the “best” might, just might be a transient notion.

Yet, I think there is a truth to that statement. But the words in that previous claim, those pleasant words are in reverse. I do my best writing when I deal with pain. I’ve spread much of my core across word doc files and text scripts and social network blurbs throughout my time with a computer. There is less of a filter when I’m hurting, less of an inhibition. Because I figure, what does it matter what people think about this clause or this use of diction or this formatting style if I’m already hurt? Why would it matter?

It doesn’t when you’re a good writer. Nothing hurts you when you are a good writer. Or at least nothing hurts your writing when you’re a good writer.

I’m a great fucking writer. But I’m hurting.

Maybe that’s why this sentence, this sentence right here, right now sounds so good to me. As I read it in my head, a choir, a church one at that, accompanies it. My favorite choirs are in Southern Baptist churches. They sound good when they hurt too. They sound good in my head as I type this.

Of course, I have doubts about all this. Well, about the writing not the pain. I know I’m in pain. I know I hurt, these hurts are tangible to me. These are realities. But the writing, once and a good while I question if I’m a great writer or even a good writer. I think about the people who tell me I’m good and I’m great. Some have books published, some don’t. One sits on a Foreign Relations council. Most, or indeed all the others don’t sit on anything like that. They sit in chairs or they sit around with me. But these people tell me I’m good and sometimes great. But I have doubts, maybe they’re lying. Maybe, maybe. Maybe not? I question their credentials, even the professors with NEA fellowships and Pushcart Awards. They’ve seen my pain in my prose, but at times I just think they feel sorry for me. They tell me pretty words about my writing so I don’t flounder around their offices.

But maybe it’s me who feels sorry for me? Maybe I'm causing my own hurt.

Can’t be not I, the great writer who is in pain and hurt and so on and so on and so on (forth).

But pain, I’m in pain right now. I don’t really know why. But, to me and only me, it’s substantial. I’m lying in bed in pain dealing with my writing. Or is it dealing with my pain while lying in bed writing? Or writing in bed while dealing with my lying? Or lying with my dealing in bed, pain? No, maybe it’s dealing with my bed while pain writes me a letter? Wait, what letter? Hmm, maybe it’s dealing with my—

hours to gain,

hours to gain.

time is always my focus

a focal point of my thoughts

and when it slips by me

i'll only have more time

to contemplate

my time lost.

Personality Extremities and the Middle Ground

I tend not to think of myself as a deeply serious man. Serious enough, maybe serious like a serious hangover but not serious like nuclear talks with Iran serious. So that’s that. But most people see me as serious, introverted, closed off. Of course, I question why; in my head and in turn play off these misconstrued typecasting. If I had to pinpoint myself into a set personality type I would go with dramatic; dramatic in all sense of the world, theatrical even. As an adult I always want to make common circumstances a serious matter, but I know doing this will only make it dramatic. I always have an existential dilemma toeing that line.

My flair for drama stems from a childhood of disconnect and a supple extent of alone time to cultivate my imagination. Drama is a way to get attention, and like all things that are beyond social norms, it catches attention.

A car crash, yes, I would stare until my eyes hurt then I would keep staring. A man wearing a dress, yet I would stare. Then I would judge the fit of the dress and the style. A child raging about cancer like his admittance into Jerry’s Kids was in the mail, yes, I would stare. That would be staring into a mirror, staring into the past. I would be staring a spectacle of poor timing, bad decisions and affected performances that would probably bring a tear to my eye. Good tear; let’s not take this the wrong way, I would cry from laughing.

Staring into that mirror would be comedic in one of those “bitter-sweet” ways. Because I have to look at my outlandish nature with humor or I might fall into a somber state.

As a child I was a hypochondriac, I still am to some extent. Not nearly as bad as the seven year old version of myself, peering through a compendium of human diseases and internal disorders. Children should not experience this level of neurosis at the age of seven. Maybe ten or eleven, when the weight of the looming beast that is middle school starts to rear its head. But neurosis at seven is absurd. Perhaps that is just my own social perception on the matter.

Now for the vast majority of my life I have had this inclination for the grandest and at times most obscene way to deals with situations. I would take those arguments with my first girlfriend to levels of neat Shakespearean drama. These petty arguments would spill across phone calls, hand written notes and the ever present AIM. I told her she was evil, more than once. In reality she wasn’t and I thought I was being serious. I wasn’t. The fallout from a fistfight would lead one to believe I just cold clocked a heavy weight contender and downed them. Post fight me would be elevated to Olympia Heights; although this was mostly in my head.

In my teenage years I had an inclination toward recreational drug use. So of course me stoned would be a parade of underwhelmed emotions brimming to the surface. “I’m so fucking high,” I would say. “I can see everything. The molecules, my heart beat, my breathing. I’m having a fucking heart attack. (Author’s note: while I’m fictionalizing that dialogue blurb, yes, that happened more than once.) However, the beauty of that type of a downer meant whatever dramatic inclination I might be leaning to would be quelled with more dope or more pills or more, well, downers.

Teenagers are socially aware of how they might be perceived in situations. It was around my mid teenage years when I became aware of what “cool” might be interpreted as. This is where my level of seriousness came from. If I were stone faced, snide, coy and calm I would be classified as “cool”. I would save my dramatic panache for closed doors where only immediate family and whatever girlfriend would be treated to a private show of tantrums and vaudeville.

Common knowledge of the self-aware teenage male means they cannot be seen as a sissy in the confines of public space. Hence, serious Michael Tesauro. If the tragic performances that I would give in my private life reached the rest of my freshman to senior classmates, I would be stereotyped as a “wuss”. We all know that’s no way to go through high school, I know because I tormented those kids.

Putting up a front is a logical way to deal with insecurities and absurd levels of neurosis for a teenager. It’s logical because all teenagers do it. The true test of character lies in the transition into adulthood. Does the dramatic/serious Michael Tesauro enter his adult life as such. Yes and no. I suppose that being scared of one typecast would drive someone to another I wanted to be noticed in public so I acted a certain way. Absurdly austere and foggy eyed a solid chunk of my adolescence on one stage while red faced and driven by catastrophic monologues behind that velvet curtain. My image as serious amongst my peers was drastic and contrasting to what I thought was serious in my personal life.

While years of frowning and stern looks have cast me as a serious person, I still give a good show. For most serious people, authentic seriousness, my style of dealing with less than fortunate situations is absurd. Now as an adult I am faced with serious situations as I drive toward a college degree and starting a family. My serious demeanor has traded in for composed and articulate. My at home Grecian tragedies have been traded in for soap opera level drama. Easily quelled with a word from loved ones. But when situations are serious, bona fide serious, I never really know how to react to the situation.

A few weeks back, I had to deal with a state of affairs that was serious in the most authentic of ways. It involved my partners father and myself. I had to ask that serious question and me being me, I framed the inquisition in that exact manner. “Let me ask you a serious question…” and so on. Yet, I wondered I didn’t want to look stern or ridiculous in the process so I strived for a rational medium, articulation and a smile.

When a young man has to ask that serous question, the “can-I-have-your-daughters-hand” question, they are faced with the crisis of execution. They must figure out what route they have to go down. Now, as I understand, most young men try to seem serious, reliable and well mannered when diving into such levels of importance. Me, on the other hand have a history of the two extremes in electrified situations like this. Serious/dramatic.

Neither of which would help my case asking that question.

I wondered if I would have to pull her father aside and ask him with a stern jaw line and firm handshake. Maybe nod my head and present a rigid case to do so. But I would probably come across as humorless asshole. Now as I learned in high school the way you present yourself speaks to your peers and your elders. Of course I wouldn’t want to look like that. And then there’s option B kept in my back pocket.

The drama.

But in reality I would want to break into a flailing monologue to him about love and poetics and how she is my other half, so on and so forth with raining flower petals. That would make me look like a sopping and outrageous human being that is fit for a stage, possibly straightjacket. Finding a middle ground is a challenge.

I’ve learned that I can pair my theatrical leanings and my serious persona into rare instances of a lovely thing called boldness. I have always been known to be a bold, brash and otherwise forthright man. My thespian nature and my introversion meet in a lightning spark of boldness that couples the two and leads me to wonderful instance of adult life.

Bold is my middle ground.

So I approached this issue of a serious and life-changing question as bold. I asked him at the dinner, at the table in front of everyone. However, with bold comes calms for me, with calm comes lucidity. So I assumed his response would have been naturally a yes and in turn it was a yes. But I wonder what would have happened if it was a “no”, an concrete and serious “no”.

Would I have stood on the table, feet in the salsa bowls and torn my shirt? Maybe breaking into a monologue about despair and loneliness, then collapsing in a white-hot panic. Or sat calmly with a frown with grit teeth and a pulsing forehead vein. I can only hope I would counter bold with bolder. For me bold is level headed and that is a great way to go through life.

But if I did jump head first into the drama I would hope there would a tablecloth that I could use as a cape for my performance, adding that Michael, age 7 theatrical flair to my monologue.

20 at 24 hours, awake.

the hazed sky was vast through the canyon as it opened lateral like antique scrolls. swept ragweed brush ran along my car in waves of brindle ready for fire season. that season starts soon. the canyon was vacant at six a.m. our caravan was just her and i but she was curled up in her car seat with my cashmere sweater pulled up to her chest like a cloak. corralled horses and bovine ran in silence along their splintered fences as we passed. absent to the landscape were the clusters of wild burro. they hid among the loping hills that gripped the single lanes. their footprints litter the dusty shoulders like hieroglyphics. loose cartilage shook in my nose like hot dice tossed on a tile floor when i sucked in the smell of horse leavings and morning dew. i could feel the dirt underneath my finger nails.

we descended into the quietude of flatlands that spread their innards before us. her soft breathes melodic with the car wheels wrung on raw asphalt were my choir. we passed a grand and empty house that sprawled ranch style with bare windows. construction tape adorning the exterior walls like roped tattoos. this homestead grew in a weedy plot of land adjacent to a giant crucifix. a marker at the threshold of an aged road leading up to the orthodox church. she stirred in my rearview mirror as though wake had come upon her. a plastic bag of sesame crackers was strewn on her makeshift blanket. she stirred but still slept.

radiance in my side mirror hinted to cars behind us. when i checked the reflection there was only a small cloud break to expose the laborious sun on it's upward climb. at the deep exodus of this canyon the coarse body of feral mule slumped in the unpaved shoulder. the swollen carcass abandoned by it's companions.

On Luck

I consider the past year of my life, the stark change that came about. I moved to Redlands from San Bernardino in June 2009, after 3 years or so of complete inebriation. I thought the move and the studio alone might help me take a reign on my life, which I felt was bottoming out. It did to some extent, yet the farther I moved from some things the closer I moved to others. An island of bars, in a loose row up boulevard less than a mile away.

Yet, after so many trips to the bars, so many late, late nights watching the sun drift into full view with a half opened eye I became disenfranchised. The question why hung around every morning. As I started to dig into my program at school, to push myself in deep and thrive as a writer I lost interest in drinking. I lost interested in my 4 hour friends. The ones I would see at a specific place for a specific drink and leave it at that. When boredom ensued I found that I excelled at school. Education was my interest.

But this is about luck, not the past. I learned to leave the past where it is and not dwell. On luck, I've been luckily this past year. It could have made a stark turn in another direction, like all things but the gods or whoever sits above me smiled. I am happy. This might be the only time the word happy has been used on this blog. The past entries in this blog are filled with misery and distrust. However, I must say I am lucky. I imagine two people might read this, both of which I love. They have impacted my life for the better. This is an entry not filled with prose or wit or sarcasm. It is simple, honest. This is me writing an entry that is not masked in wit and snideness. This is how I imagine most blogs look like, unassuming journal entries.

Mostly, this is for her. For you. I am, we are lucky. The past months have been miraculous. I guess this is a response to her post about me. Are we that corny? If so, oh well, c'est la vie. My North Star in the vast and empty night.

Faith Based Learning

The greatest carnivore in history looms on the side of the road somewhere between Phoenix, Los Angeles and the desert sprawl in between. In his period of dominancy during the Cretaceous period, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the master of all things destruction. He was fear itself. Now, his livelihood is the cherry atop a slice of Americana and religious conventions. The Tyrant King himself, condemned to a life plaster, rebar, metal wiring and an exterior support system so tourists can waltz through his interior while their children destroy the nearby restroom.

For those of us who live in the Los Angeles basin, we have seen this roadside attraction at some point in our lives. Before we have found ourselves in the midst of the sprawling meadows of air-powered windmills, we drive by the Cabazon Dinosaurs. A roadside attraction that has attracted film crews, Japanese tourist, teenagers stoned on dope and me when I was taking care of a little girl who wanted to see dinosaurs. It was closer than the Natural History museum on a Friday afternoon and I could snag a banana-date shake afterwards. Unfortunately I missed the roadside market and found myself peering from the inner jaws of a stucco monster.

I visited the antiquated structures of the booming 1960’s recently. In the vein of Pee Wee Herman and Jenny Lewis circa The Wizard, I wandered underneath the belly of a dinosaur shaped museum. While the initial kitsch factor made me giddy, the interior of the gift shop came as a surprise. Much to my pleasure, the gift shop was loud with Creationist propaganda. I had to suppress a laugh after the unibrowed employee shot me a disconcerted look as my girlfriend’s daughter asked me why we couldn’t touch the dinosaur models. It might have been because they were holy icons, the little one thought they would become real and the woman; I really can’t grasp what she believed on the matter. Nonetheless, no touching was done.

I never would have expected something so hackneyed to take a sharp turn for the bizarre. Posters of stegosaurus where coupled with a fresh verse from the book of Leviticus. A superimposed likeness of Jesus was atop a fiercely colored flying reptile in a scene that looked like a child’s coloring book mated with the New International Version. Nearly every square inch of the interior that was not plagued with plush dolls and motorized plastic figurines was saturated with Biblical adages that apparently prove the dinosaurs were made of a Christian God and not through evolution.

Normally, I would snicker at these declarations of faith for being so affected and so obvious. My liberal-agnostic-leaning sentiments would lean to remarks about Moses fighting off megafauna with his olive tree staff during his stay in the wilderness. I would have even taken a picture on my phone and sent it to other sardonic friends to mock the irony of these egregious claims. But this was not so, instead I watched in horror as flocks of bright eyed children swarmed around the toys that were strategically placed underneath these posters. The Creationists who ran the exhibits were not only wrapped in the bosom of religious zealotry, they were coy. They followed the old proverb of “get ‘em while they’re young”.

My horror came not for me, all of 23 and sour toward religious institutions but for my tiny companion. Accompanying me was a four year old; who, while clever to slightly shocking measures, was still four years old. As she stood under a rousing poster playing with a foam dinosaur age I realized how keen these Creationists actually were. Take a quizzical young lady like her; add toys and propaganda and you can sink a hook of interest. The Creationists, much like the carnivorous dinosaurs gracing the “walk-back-through-time” exhibit took full advantage of youth. While they challenged or at least sparked curiosity in adults, they could snag a child with their overwhelming bombardment on the senses.

As I stood there with the little one, listening to her chat in a singsong like trance I thought back to my own childhood. I grew up in with private school education. Even more so, the faith based learning that was spouted upon my classmates and I in our early stages of critical education. I recall engaging with an academic agenda similar to the thunderous posters tacked throughout the museum gift shop. While I was taught through pointed science books with Biblical affirmation to back these posters harkened the education I received. But I can’t say I fully beat this style of learning, since I will always remember what I learned regardless if I believe it or not.

I wonder if the little one, like myself will recall that someone somewhere told her Jesus of Nazareth walked with the dinosaurs. I wonder if the appeal to youth will take hold of her as she might look up once or twice the posters and recall that a bearded man is embracing a reptilian creature that was long dead before he came to prominence with claims miracles and slight of hand tricks. That of course is just me being cynical, but regardless of how I felt I still remember being taught that. With that in mind I whisked my young companion away from the toys and thought I would try my luck at the robotic dinosaur walk through.

After paying 17 dollars for our way into the exhibit, we looked upon a robotic dinosaur mouth opening and closing in succession. The mechanical movement of the jaws of some creature that was claimed to devour men like me in single bites was not the least scary. Even my tiny companion wasn’t impressed. Having put the fear of exposure to ridiculous religious notions out of my head, I moved us to the next exhibit. There we watched the shaking head of a triceratops, my personal favorite as a child. This dinosaurs neighbor, an armor clad statue of a knight with a lance, seemed to heighten the urgent sense of lunacy that dripped from the walls of the fine desert museum.

Now I can see how Creationism is backed. I can picture why and how people believe such things, but the collage of robotic dinosaurs and an Arthurian knight was the topper. I imagine the look she had on her face was similar to mine. Shock. While hers was more the “how does this work?” look mine was the “what the fuck?” look. Without discussion we kept moving, putting such a peculiar notion behind us. And when she said, “I’m scared of this place,” I wanted to admit that I was too. But I had to muster up my skills as a caretaker and move us to the garden walkthrough that brought us back even further back in time. I decided that if I was visibly shook by this place then maybe the fear of God and his Jurassic pals would be tangible to her.

In the desert garden we walked amongst the fiercest creatures of their day. I pictured that this was what the disciples did according to the Creationist beliefs. I might be wearing a goatskin tunic and she would be in something adorable and fitting to the era, perhaps a silk garb. She would be on my shoulders and we would stroll through olive groves while plesiosaurus and therizinosaurus watch us with doleful, passive eyes. We might hear of the latest miracle by the daring Jesus then the girlfriend and I would join friends for wine recently converted from water. Yet, in reality it was very hot and the statues were fading from the sun beaten years they had spent out in the trail.

At the end of the garden we made it to the terrible lizard himself. She wanted to see up stairs, all three flights of them and we made it to the inner jaws. On the way up we passed more posters expressing belief. I noticed that these had become more aggressive than the ones in the museum shop. As though these announcements presented a challenge to the brave who made it this far into their compound. My particular favorite read: EVOLUTION, WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE! The little one had not noticed and I could breathe easier.

When we sat in the jaws of Tyrant King and looked at the sprawling desert past the blacktopped parking lot I wondered what she would take from this. I was nostalgic of American gaudiness, but would she get feel anything when she passed this attraction in her adult years? I hoped that our visit to the dinosaurs would trigger a flood of tacky statues, poor animatronics and fun. Not Creationism. For me it complimented the thought that a strange concept like Creationism would dwell away from a major city, but not far from a casino. Out in America’s deserts people could practice worship freely and if they felt it necessary, house their beliefs in giant hollow dinosaur monuments.

As we walked through the parking lot, the sun was setting. A desert wind had picked up. The mini was roosting on my shoulders with handfuls of my hair and pomade for good measure. I asked her if she had fun and she answered yes. But she questioned why we hadn’t seen any bones, real bones. She wondered if they were under the ground, the same one I was walking above. I answered probably because I hoped they were. I hoped that dinosaurs would be as mysterious to an adult as they would a four year old. I hoped that their bones were deep down in the earth’s crust, away from the side of the Interstate 10 freeway, away from religion.

I caught the jaws of Tyrannosaurus Rex in my rearview mirror as we entered the onramp. He was smiling about something, maybe it was the fact that I had spent the day wandering in his innards or maybe it was the fact that I would miss my exit for a banana-date shake. He might have been laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was. It might turn out that Creationists were right. It’s prospective. But I don’t really know and neither do the Creationists. But like childhood memories and values of faith, these possibilities will be rooted up in time.

We And Only We Are Right

I’m sitting in the captain’s chair of this classroom. As it turns out, not even the instructor, a published novelist has this seat, I do. But that’s in my mind, so hey, I can make that call. But here I am, captain, king, alpha-male in a room full of Stephen King fan’s and adult women with orthodontic gear. And there’s instructor, he’s been talking for an hour and fifty-two minutes. I’m listening to him talk about a novel written by a young British upstart. He alludes to an argument between the protagonist and her lover as a form of sword fighting. He says parry as he twists his exposed wrist and pale arm in an effete manner, supposedly mimicking a counter draw cross of the saber.

I’m not concerned with this speech my professor is giving though. I’m still in my own world, suspended above a blizzard peaked mountain in my captain’s chair. Just above, slightly higher than my supposed peers. I hear nasal voices and the whistle of hot breath through metal braces with pink plastic bands. We are in a creative writing lecture. And I’ve deemed myself the best. I do this every time I set foot in a workshop. I eyeball, size up, belittle. I am standoff-ish. I daydream myself out of the monotony of style choice lectures and writer’s craft.

When the talk of fleche attacks as word tags and counter attacks as dialogue breaks reaches it’s highest point I find myself counting tiles on the floor. The soiled linoleum has been rolled over and scuffed with the black plastic chairs we are sitting on. Even my captain’s chair. I’m imaging myself doing hopscotch. My right foot is in the third square and my single barrel whiskey with purified water is spilling. The radiant ice cubes frosted over inside my glass tumbler. My dusty sombrero has just fallen off when I reach the fourth square, switching feet (yes, I’m wearing a sombrero in my daydream. It’s normal). I’m drawn from the game inside myself when a classmate brings up an idea for a short story.

A young man dared to interrupt the instructor while he was knee deep in a fencing pose and explaining to us how the character’s discourse is “sharp”. The silence grows in the room as the professor sits down then looks long and deep in to the young man’s eyes. And he says, “I’m glad you asked that.” He’s not glad, nor am I. Nobody is. Now we have to engage ourselves in a discussion about writing.

Mr. Winter (our professor) can no longer enact his fantasies of eloquent duels in front of a group of gawk eyed science fiction worshippers. I can no longer elevate myself in my captain’s chair and watch myself play hopscotch in the bosom of Valhalla. The rest of the students can’t mentally masturbate to images of lush otherworldly planets, visceral red-crested dragons, laser beams and whatever else genre writers think about. Now we must come back to real life. We are harkened from whatever universe we have created for ourselves in the confines of our daydreams. Some are more fantastic than others, but the intent in cerebral escape is the same.

The problem with putting a group of people who have various interests in writing into the same room is that no one really knows how to deal with each other. I can’t fathom having a conversation with my neighbor at our desk table about whatever he claims to read (the book cover shows a desert landscape with two sunken moons) and I can’t understand him from way up in my lavish, velvet captain’s chair. Mr. Winter clearly can’t handle the thought of interacting with a human being in opposition to his invented sword-fight. We are a room of people who don’t know how to deal with other people close but very unlike ourselves. We are all in our respective captain’s chairs.

When I started writing I assumed everyone had read Ernest Hemingway. I imagined we would all sit in captain’s chairs in some smoky Creole billiard’s room having in-depth conversations about an overuse of the word “edifying”. This, however, was not so. I learned that those of us who write acquire and develop very different ideas and creeds of what “good” writing is. We are unlike the mathematician’s who can unify in thought about the plausibility of a cosine function. But we are more unlike the philosopher’s who agree there is no “right” answer. In our minds only we are right, and that’s why we put our opinions on paper.

Now as our lethargic discussion comes to a head I find myself asking about character develop, past trauma, intent of actions and so forth (his story is about a women who is exposed to a flaccid penis in a dance club bathroom). While I listen to the writer, my classmate, propose his solution to the logistical problem of how the flasher snuck into the women’s bathroom I find my captain’s chair is floating away again. It’s taking me back to the empty ashen planes of my mind where I can play c-lo with John Steinbeck and Allen Ginsberg while we listen to the Wu Tang Clan. From the glassy eyed look sweeping across the face and fortified mouth gear of the girl to my right, I can see other student’s are checking out as well.

Even Mr. Winter, with left hand running through his slicked black hair and right hand dimly motioning the gestures of a feint-parry thrust combination with his thought up saber, has checked out.

This is an advanced college fiction workshop, where average human beings are forced to interact for a letter grade. We deal with it in our own ways. Some of us are enthusiastic about third person omniscient tense, some of us became grammar Nazi’s, a large amount (like myself) daydream. When this brief dialogue between the five or six of us who at least want that easy, easy A dies down, Mr. Winter starts back up with his fencing/characterization battle. As he bears down on his fallen opponent (the story’s womanizing antagonist), with his sharpened épée I find myself back in my captain’s chair.

I’ve escaped the girl next to me, punching away at her Blackberry. I’m miles away from the young man to my left nodding off. His spittle splayed across his wrinkled, vanilla colored T-shirt. I’m ancient forests and weathered countryside’s away from Mr. Winter. Apparently he’s still in Great Britain, and he has just cut the ear lobe off his fictitious opponent.