Harmony (476 words)

From her parents, or her mother, perhaps the commune - she got the name Harmony. Like my unhappy friend Joy, Harmony’s name was a curse or at least an enduring rebuttal.

Harmony had hitch-hiked in from the dessert. She’d been mourning at the spot where the year before her friend had been dumped after being picked up by a trucker, raped, and killed. “She wasn't just killed. She’d been cut into pieces.” She’d been dropped in the dessert by friends who were irritated that Harmony hadn’t spoken during their three day trip to the spot. She would hitch-hike out. Strangely, the suspect in the case had recently driven his 18 wheeler into an Amtrak train, killing himself and “injuring dozens”.

“The police were closing in,” said Harmony.

I offered her bus money for her next trip. I had extra at the time. She didn't accept it.

Harmony was telling everyone at the table to “Fuck off.” Six of us were sitting under the pines, under the stars around my neighbor’s big homemade picnic table. People were creating weird cocktails with gin, Aperol, moonshine, wine and tea.

Harmony told her story of being in a disco in China. A man had appeared and gave her a drink as she danced. She knew better. She drank it. Luckily her friends saw it and put her in a cab. “Good thing. No one gives a shit about you in China.” Harmony woke up the next day in the hostel with no memory. I said “You know David Tudor says everything eventually resolves into Harmony, just the way anything that repeats once has rhythm.”  She reached across the table, held and squeezed my hand. She rolled under the table. I was scared she was going to try and blow me. She touched my thigh. She came up next to me. Amid the chaos of the night, everyone drinking, we kept talking. “In the deprivation tank there was no silence only the whine of nerves, the murmur of the cardio-vascular.” “You’re the only one who fucking understands. Fuck these cunts.” Harmony swung her arm in the dark. I’d had enough. I stumbled into the woods, tripped over a log splitter in the dark, cut myself good and limped home alone to bed.

            The next morning I went over to the neighbors.

            Where’s Cacophony?

            N and J laughed. N said “She walked off the mountain in the middle of the night after making a big scene.”

            “Fuck. This is probably the best place for her right now.”

            “Not with us.”

            “Not with me,” I said.

            N smiled. “You two were talking up a storm.”

I was so glad we hadn’t fucked. “I don’t think she heard me.”

            “She can’t hear much.” N was making breakfast. “I know that commune scene where she grew up. Too much free love, too many old men.”

I dreampt a perfect story in a 17 hour stretch. The only words I'll ever have are the ones I've known before.

Three times I woke and worked to remember it. Slept in the bath until the water got cold; my son's bed where she'd left a canopy of printed fabric & Christmas lights; and the firmer, nicer half of our bed untouched for five months. Less a story, rather perfect proportions moving. A lava lamp! For real :) All the shapes morphing, each intense color and shape shifting accompanied by the human virtues: death, joy, boredom, love ... flowing instead of blurring. Now I've forgotten. A Christian cartoon: three kids (white, yellow, brown) squeaking through the Stations of the Cross. "How does He do it???" He is Jesus. Terrific headache. "Emergency contact?" Now? My brother. Tears explode. Staff concerned. Cool it. Remember Mingus self-imprisoned in Bellevue - "Just needed rest." You pissed on that place. Fetal position (of course), she wheels me to the CAT scanner. Soft sobs. Finally laugh out a workable cliché "Nice driving." Her kind eyes. A projected loop of heaven blows across 16 panels. I loved the end, the separation. The sky went up or my bed went down. My problem with words: I often believe they mean something before living them as in "letting go."

I always loved Stephanie, the idea of Stephanie

Wrote "W"s on each ass cheek. Bent over & spelt "WOW" with her asshole. Nights with my sister full of smoke, drink, dance, laughing. And crazy stories: Dad baby-sitting Stephanie in Cleveland porno houses. The tattered Mission "tranny" karaoke where we used to dance, kissed. In NY, Stephanie called. "Sunday's a date!" Then I canceled - a friend said Sunday was his only free night. "Stephanie can we reschedule?" "Sure."  They knew without knowing they wouldn't. Sunday had been their night. Months later, returning from rehab she overdosed. His sister called. Penn Station. Bought ice cream, cried, ate slowly.

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

We finally had the right Swiss Army blade and gob of Vaseline to split open the atom Jimmy had plucked outta dem dare frog eggs. Power-up dat fucking piece o' shit solar TV, Dad bought from that Vietnam Vet at the Woodbury Flea Market. Finally some awful, hilarious K-Pop where the albino cock-less wonders with mad eyebrows dally-dance with well-tapered tit-forward steaming piles of vanilla shit representing duh female form. So gloriously false and mesmerizingly horrible in our plucky tree house. The reality would pass the rest of my life as nostalgia forever at odds with its ever-arriving presence. 

Extrapolating

Radio Shack™ "pillow speaker" from earphone port - white plastic idli of sound. 14. First time - Knocking on Heaven's Door™. Mysterious. Magical. Kids asleep. Parents downstairs. Dishes done. Distant Dave Brubeck. Then LA. Can't think of a tattoo. Stained glass? Guns & Roses? Stylized stylized. Ohhhh yeah baayyybeee. Life in the Everywhere Studio. LA Guns in the ground. Cold black cloud coming down ... yet ... what thou lovest well remains. Dylan, 32. Me, 25. Don't cry tonight, there's a heaven above you. What's bad is good; what's good is bad. Anything without victory has a chance ...

I was walking with a friend and

his floppy Springer Spaniel. John was a second father to me in high school, a preacher, a vet who would die too early - Agent Orange. John might talk about jogging into a tree because he'd been mesmerized by the clouds.

                "I've always liked cloudy days myself," said I.

                "Why is that?"

                "Too much light gives me nothing. I like the unfair shafts bringing my attention to some sapling or that corner of the basketball court where trash and leaves have accumulated."

                "I still think you might become a preacher."

                "Like you?" I said.

                "Ha ha, no, like you."

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So much bad art; I make much myself. A numbers game; it can't snow every day. Then there's the scope of flow; one's landscape is another's ski resort. And don't discount the need to stumble, fart stupidly, be more than obvious. An awful poem -The NY Review of Books. I've always hated this publication - a good read. Another poem regarding the white page: full of muted agony and tempered ecstasy. I'm happy for it; I realize what's missing, what terrifies: if the writer's skill at projecting life upon the emptiness, then imagine what they must do to people.