Endless Joke

Both of us, he said, play before an oblivious audience. Yours are too consumed with their next station, in Eile, rushing onward to where their pleasure & pain await them. Mine are the near-dead, papyrus-skinned, deaf, compulsively wetting the roofs of their mouths, waiting for the Word, embittered over the failed promises of their pension plans. We play for ourselves. With ourselves. But if an audience is oblivious, truly oblivious, he replied, then they're not an audience. Just people happening by & no one can expect any more or less from them. Are you only playing for yourself? In a church, aren't you playing for someone else? Someone who you know is listening? Mortals may be oblivious, but you've captivated the infinite. I don't play for anyone but myself, the organist said, if I did, then the music would have no direction. No force. Plagued by distractions. Certainly not for God. If I wanted to play for an idol, I would do it for one worth believing in: money, sex, posterity. The moment you humbly present something beautiful, something you've pieced together out of pure humiliation before the infinite, it dismantles it with unworldly tact, then spits it back in your face. Maybe then you should present it with pride. The organist told him he had nothing to be proud of & that he wanted to keep it that way. He lives out of a suitcase. Has a wife that posts pictures of their dead son on the walls of her room, pointing to them, laughing silently to herself. Once she wrote with lipstick when will the joke be up? on her bathroom mirror. When the asylum worker tried to wipe if off, she bit him in the arm. He told him he played at a Russian Orthodox church in the West that reeked of death. They lit hundreds of candles to hide the stench. Incense & petal water. Nothing. Only when the doors finally close after the last congregant, will the church smell once again of an empty tomb.

Far Cry & Fugue

When he opened his eyes, a squat man with a beard & pale green eyes was standing in front of him. The people passing can't hear you, he said. All the cars. The horns. The trains coming in & out. If they could hear you, I'm sure they would listen. Maybe give you a little more money. You were playing the blues, weren't you? The world is too loud for the blues. The passion's lost in the noise. I don't care if they can hear me, he said, as long as I have enough to buy a few beers after I'm done. Maybe they will hear the words later when they step into a quieter place. He set the guitar in its case & snapped it shut. Please save your money, the man said. Let me buy you a beer. They drank at a table outside a bar. The man pointed to the park across the street. On those trees, he said, you can see fingernails etched in the wood. Communists. Jews. Russians. Germans. Anarchists. Each has left the same grip of death. It seems each corner of this city is haunted by murderers & the murdered. How can you have music on the same corner where a boy had his throat slit, where an old lady was raped with a Kalashnikov? You know you're the first musician I've seen playing on these streets since the last time I was here. The people here are too weary to let their daily rituals get shaken up. They only hear their own second-guessing. He told him that he disagrees. Death lures musicians from their hovels. The soul of Orpheus' lyre. Requiems. The cloaked violinist one step behind the pallbearers trudging up to the pit. He asked him if he was a musician & the man told him that he's a traveling church organist. I started playing all over Russia & Eastern Europe, he said, once the Soviets let me leave Estonia. I haven't gone back too much since my son died & my wife stopped speaking & got put in the asylum. She knew he was going to die & she was always the consoling one. But when he died, she said that her love died too & wouldn't speak to anyone. I saw her last winter. She was watching game shows in her robe & her toenails hadn't been cut in years.

Abandon All Vision...

When he crossed into the East, the pain had gone away. Strings first plucked with numb fingers, trying to crawl through the music. Elated, the apostle of idiocy, leaning against the wall of the station, tapping his foot where feet passed, the cross-hatched streaks & prints & pummeled cigarettes. Street raised, naked in the sharp air skimming off the trainyard. Eyes closed, he pealed out Not Fade Away & slapped his hand on the guitar. What was the chorus again? Love is love or love is real? He always forgot the chorus. But if love is love, then doesn't that mean love is real? He clapped his hands over his head & stomped in the dirt, making true his promise to sift away with all the others, those loved & those rustled against in narrow aisles. Some coins rang in the case & strangers danced. He didn't need to open his eyes. The world being all that is heard. He crouched down on one knee, began humming while trying to fashion from memory the melody the Turkish kid had woven but it soon spiraled beyond his fingers so he stuck to the scales he knew, singing you gotta walk that lonesome valley all by yourself & no one here can walk it for you. His sweaty hands slid down the neck & he lost grip of the trembling, taken away from the pulse of her body.

Sifting Paths

He found enough money tucked between the desk & the wall to buy a few beers. The roommate would never miss it. He slid it into his pocket, grabbed his guitar case, left the bike chained outside & began walking. He crawled under a fence through high weeds into an old trainyard. An abandoned iron bridge split the sky apart. Furniture & firepits scattered near the base of it. On the horizon a gaunt tower with an antenna that flashed at the top. Cargo containers lined in two rows to the end of the field. Shadows weaving among them across the grass. He heard someone pacing on the other side & knew he would have to choose to either run or pay his greetings & continue on. The footsteps stopped. The other had heard him. He remained where he was & met the paunch guard's eyes with a hapless grin. Bowed & walked on. He heard no steps behind him & hopped over a brick wall, zipped up his jacket & then trotted along to the station with his case held in the air . He got on the train & stood near the doors, still breathing heavily. Baby, sleep beneath the tracks with me 'cause the Lord knows we ain't going anywhere. Feeling tomorrow like I'm feeling today. The river rolling beneath a terse coat of light. He set his head against the bar, tapping his foot. By the time he realized the ticket checkers had slipped in the car, it was too late to get off. The next stop was about a full minute away. He stayed there, eyes closed. They made their rounds quickly, everyone showing their tickets. One of them asked the kid sitting next to him & he opened his eyes. The kid fumbled around in his pockets, muttering under his breath. He didn't speak German too well & seemed to be stalling the checker. The next station was approaching & he leaned against the door, his finger on the button. The train stopped & he jumped off & scurried to the last car, riding all the way down to Warschauerstraße. Drink to the pounding heart, furious pulse. Lifted by grace before being dropped again.

Torn Voice

He was riding around on his bicycle, trying to find a pay phone to answer about a possible gig next week. Coasting from one busted booth to one unlit corner of piercing glances till finally finding a dial tone, then remembering that he had no money. First things last. Day once again depleted of direction. A host of hours among which he was too fearful & fickle to command. A pang in his stomach but he didn't budge & got back on, riding down the bike path along the sidewalk. The sun breaking through again. A guy walking his bike on the path. On his shoulder, people strolling by. He had to skim through, almost hitting the guy & asked what the hell the problem was. The guy answered in English, telling him to suck it. He slid his bike around, let it fall gently to the ground & walked back over to the guy & asked him what he'd said. The guy kept repeating nothing, nothing, keep on going. What'd you say, mother fucker, he asked again. The guy’s bike stood between them. He leaned over, asked louder. I said nothing. Keep going. The guy calmly walked on. He stood on the sidewalk. The wheel of his own bike still spinning. Breathless, bargaining with the pain inside. You haven't done that since you were kid, wrestling the Patchett brothers in their backyard, scratched like girls until fists started to fall. Words would never set you off. Failed to see their magic when spoken by fools & violence is the ruin of many a night. Proud of nothing yet beholden to pride. Frail voice of youth. People who had gathered moved on. He got back on the bike & went home & plundered his roommate's room for loose change.

Fearless Symmetry

Fiction too often betrays the reality of time & being. Or perhaps we allow it to, we initiate this betrayal by our need for symmetrical, operatic narratives, destinies strung on a bow. Are they attempts to deny the nature of existence? How can satisfaction be gained from disregarding the chaos of life, the halting progression of time, cyclical patterns, moments of amnesia & blinding clarity? Narrative is not mechanical or even logical. If it creates suspense or metes out resolutions, it does so spontaneously, on numerous occasions & sometimes the resolutions turn out to be cataclysmic & sometimes the suspense is a cold hand in a movie theater. Narrative clenches, expires, bursts & hiccups infinitely. Fiction should embody that infinity, that impossibility. That's where the engagement, the seduction of the drama lies. The organic imprint of eternity. Each work of fiction self-generates its own narrative logic: ideally, a logic which devours itself whole. Fiction that establishes its own rational scheme & then asystematically disassembles it in a dance or trance-like fashion. Discovers then dismisses the laws of its universe, opting instead for a form of intoxicated gnosticism. The writer chooses to have no faith in the logic of his work. He cannot depend on its structure. He renounces reason as language unspools before him. Like a hermit who long ago lost faith in god but who remains cave-bound, blissfully entangled in his own visions.

A Card In Hand Keeps the Devil Away

A bar on a street with a name that changes according to who you ask. Quiet as an embarrassed child. The steel moon smelted: a molten drop. He lost a game of chess to Der Alte Mann who bought him a beer anyways. Forever consoling. Since neither knew the other's language, they sat & drank. Across the bar a girl with purple hair & a dog collar slapped a man. Pool balls breaking. He started carving small letters into the leg of the table with his pocket knife. Drizzle outside. Der Alte Mann slumped in the booth with palm on belly, rising & falling. Hairs in his heaving gray beard stained yellow. fear spits the soul out. He walked home & realized he had no money. All that was left in his wallet was a three of hearts. Peasant card. Worth its name when the hand is strong. But starved & cowling in isolation. Had enough food to last until Friday. Ride the trains when he needed to by sliding in, watchful of men with grim faces, cheeks always the same beet red, who would try to weasel a ticket out of him by claiming he's a criminal. How do you talk yourself out of it, bumbler of words? Half-drunk, his scratched glasses hazed in the dust & sweat. Enough excuses & a look of earnest dread & you can slip through anyone's fingers.

Transmigration

The stranger crosses into the city, wanders thru streets whose names he can hear reverberating off his bones, sinking down, rubbing against the words that have nourished him like a cruel father with a bent spoon & a book spread over his lap, luminous with markings that spill across the page like sand. A thousand steps & the river’s murmur fades, the streets narrow, each face in the passing windows darkens beneath huddled shoulders as the smell of beef & dumplings
seeps from gratings. When he crosses into a city that will never lower its unwelcoming guise, he approaches the unthinkable—that instant when the life he can hardly recall blurs & becomes overtaken by the life of one who was born there. The prisoner of a language that will never be shaken from the tongue far from a river whose light will never cease to sear the eye.