more songs

these are sweet songs, and these are the sweet days, the ones that we want to remember when we are cold and the silence is unbearable.  and i want to be someone who says i want to wrap this around my finger so i can carry it with me, but my stomach is a factory of knots and i'm nervous about who i'm turning into, because i don't know if it's something that i'll be interesting in sustaining when the moon turns red.  i suspect the hot august nights will bring back some things that i did not expect, and i suspect that i have something burning somewhere underneath my comfortable bones that i have not been able to address, because there has been a desert of silence for so long, and that house that i adore is cold, i don't see your traces on the furniture, and my daughter is so far away from me.  but i talked to the sea, and the sea talked to me, and she pulled things out from under her collar and placed them on the back of my neck, and i didn't come to talk to her about you, but i talked to her about you anyway, because she asked me to.  i told her, it's something like her, someone like her, i have things i need to do in these bones and i don't want to do them alone, so please send someone like her.  and the sea asked me, who is like her?  and i told the sea, no one is like her, she is the only one like her.  and i told her that all my desires were in my hands, and my heart is not filled with longing, except for this one small thing...and the sea said, this is not a small thing, and this is a golden thing, and this is nothing you haven't told me before, and nothing we don't already know.  and the sea said, don't look for her traces on the furniture, everything has been cleaned since you went away, but you can see her footprints on the floor, because her feet are covered with my sand, and sand stays on your feet no matter how far you are away from me, but no one who touches me is far from me, and no one who touches your charmed heart that deeply is ever far away from you.  that's the origin of your own goat song.

old songs, new blood

What this city does to me.  It's open like a breath of cool air, and as tight as quarters can get, everyone wants to keep their space marked, because there isn't space, and there's a sense that it's all about to run out at the very last minute, and we're close to the very last minute.  This ground can hold a lot of blood, though, and everyone knows it, and hardly anyone talks about it.  But it can hold a lot more blood still. I don't want to see all the ghosts that are here, and it's hard to see them for the sun and the traffic and the endless stream of trucks carting around the things people need for food and shelter.  Outside of the comforts, then, there are ghosts, ones I don't want to see, especially the ones I've already dealt with a long time ago.
But I'm flying through traffic with leather on my back and Yewa on my license plate, and all it takes is one song to send the ghosts flying, they come flying, you come flying, looking like you did when there were fireworks in your veins, flowers in your hair, and lava coming from out of the mouth below your waist, and I start to wonder what happened to you, and even though I don't really know, I also know that you probably don't deserve it.
And it sounds petty to think that I got healed by someone who didn't look anything like you, someone I didn't expect, but it ended the same, there were these things, these things in a path that make up a life that got in the way, so when she didn't want it to end, she didn't do anything to stop it.  I stop nothing that leaves, don't stand in the way, and don't try to bring it back, but my dogteeth rip at it and try to keep it close, but only long after the balloon has already flown up, after the string has already broken.
I can't do these things, the same kinds of repetition that once made up a song that I couldn't forget.  Now I don't mind if I forget the song, but there are some days I just don't, and this is one of the days that I don't forget, I just don't.
I wish I could tell you all the stories that are written in the dirt under my nails, and in their cracks, and I wish I could hear all the things that happened to you between then and now.  But there are too many other oceans calling, and too many songs that I haven't heard yet, and they come whether or not I let go of the strings, and I'm not missing out on anything.  So I guess I need you, buried in my chest like the bones of a bird who's not afraid of her own blood, but sometimes runs from her own shadow.  And maybe you need me, because I was born to be your shadow, and we deserve to be haunted by each other for the furious ways that we loved each other.  

4

they said there was going to be rain, but there's the moon, as bright as night can get, fractal diamonds through my spotty glasses, like a firework measuring out the weeks that turn into a month, caught in an endless repetition and a graceful and furious finale.  and the sky is spotting, clouds that gather like a ring of birds around the same moon.
every other fourth of july has been an endless walk, a long drive, and too much sweat running down the back, not enough water, and too many places to stop and wait, and stop and wait.  it's always longer for children, because they have less specific things they're waiting for, and it's all much more urgent, but the adults never understand.  but this one felt different, the rains came and cleared the area, and the one drunk hillbilly chanting america looked like he was doing it with irony.
there are independent heartbreaks all over the world tonight, countries with new leaders they didn't elect, or are not sure of yet, and it all seems so fragile and balancing on a beam that can't hold much weight or waiting much longer. and i'm preoccupied, talking with my daughter about the quality of the sparkly fireworks, and agreeing about which ones we like best, in between jokes about how to prepare unicorn meat.
i'm sorry i ate chicken, but it was all i could do, i can't eat shrimp, not twice in a month, certainly not twice in a week, not with what's up ahead.  and oshun's water turned into a river again, and covered me like i was about to be born.  but i'm already born, this is just a repetition.
but if i had a wish for this up ahead, i would want to ask her questions; is this slow and easy romance, the kind that comes without strings or urgencies, or their own particular knots, a sign of slowing down, or growing up, or is it just a nice place to rest before another epic stanza in my own epic poem starts up again?  and do i have to wonder about copper witches every time i get closer to the ocean again?  and if i'm less curious about the bodies of strangers, does that mean i'm satisfied or just getting old, or just growing up, or is it because i've learned some things, and less concerned with the particulars of rib cages and more interested in the source of the thing that moves the finger over the body in the dark or in the light?
these stories here are complete.  some will continue, and some will not continue, and some will come back, and some will decide to stay where they are, but they're complete, and i have a handful of threads to take with me to the ocean.  i might lose some nights wondering which ones are older than me, which ones are broken even though i can't put them away, and which ones are always shiny and new, but i'm looking at my hands, and getting used to the new weight of bulk in my shoulders, and am entirely trained for a new adventure, and something unexpected and obvious is about to pull me into the undertow of something entirely new.  i'm homesick for it, the kind of homesickness that only gets cured with a decision to wander, in my own bones, with my own blood beating in my ears like the sound of a river or an ocean, or the water from the moon.

canine teeth

because my teeth are thick with the dust of 18 months of hiding in the desert, and finding shining secrets here, and things that make me smile in the dark,
because my teeth are thick with a hundred meals from a hundred nights of eating at the last minute before the night becomes something else, garlic and oil and twisted pastas from two continents, a thousand secrets about food that i can't speak, and a thousand ways to mix ingredients that i don't understand, coupled with the constant craving for knowledge about the secrets of fire, and i don't have the words to even start to spell the secrets with my tongue,
because my teeth are thick with the things that unfold when i spill my heart and listen to hearts spill over tobacco, those furious smoking nights where the words i love you come through letters and not tongues, those calm simmering nights when there is only small talk about the day behind and the day ahead, and those restless smoldering nights when smoke begins a song about what we might be able to do with just one chair, and those brave and clear nights with clear smoke by cars in parking lots just when the heat is starting to lift, just a little, only a little, it only lifts a little and it's never very long here, so we always have to act fast so we can act slow later,
because my teeth are thick with the layers of salt that come off of wet skin,
because my teeth are thick with milk and coffee, a thousand drops that fall through the hole in my lips, the space where faltering things come faltering through, an endless interruption, yes this is nice, this is very nice, but there's always this, there's always a hole in my mouth where the world comes pouring in and out, it's my wound, the one i claimed for myself, it's the one that never heals and stopped trying to heal, this is the hole, this is the story, this is why my mouth is always open, and it's always this story that gets told in a thousand directions and it never gets old, it's the story of the bottom of the sea and i have to tell it in cryptic forms because to speak it again would be a lie, because it doesn't mean what i think it means, and i don't understand it in the way that it's open to be understood,
because my teeth are thick with salt water, the salt of the skin of lovers who come and go, come and go, back to the sea, back to the desert, back to the forest, and back again to the sea, and it would be easy to say that if i opened my mouth long enough, you would only hear that i love the sea, i've always loved the sea, the sea belongs to me, and i belong to her, but we're not always in the right time and place to be together, but i always go back to the sea, and when i do, my teeth are thick in just the right portions of sense and inspiration, and then i don't have to speak so fast or so often, because it's a slow story that is told in time, with themes and variations of a very old love story, denies the ages of the people involved in the story, it seems as though we are all destined to keep meeting again, but it's a rhythm that is beyond me, and far beyond my control. 
because i lost control a long time ago, but my teeth are thick, because they hold threads, and despite the calm and furious and smoldering and restless beatings of the waves on these rocks, i never did lose the thread.

the click of the track

is a click clack click clack another train or another track
somewhere between wolf and fox somewhere between these somewhere between these
and the clickityclick is a clack on the track
another track somewhere between these somewhere somewhere between all of these
 and there's this dance here

june night

it seems like an important moment, the first blood of the daughter, on a night when the moon decides she does not like me any more.  i think i'll live through this.  storms are running under the streets, kicking up dust and sage and creosote dreams for a dog who wants to know things a little harder, and understand things a little deeper.  things fall away, things break, and our bones get revealed as stronger than they were last year.  this will not last.  soon enough, the shifting houses and changing bloodstreams will give way to another false certainty, and another period of mistaken identities.  we are well supplied to fool ourselves in the weeks to come, and we are foolish enough to believe that the things we know for certain might be up for discussion, but it's already decided, all of it, and sometimes it's easier than others to walk in our own skins.  we're all made of dust and the things of the ocean, and we're all carrying small flakes of an original fire, and the things we worry over in the morning grow so large by night that it's a wonder we can sleep, but maybe we are not supposed to be sleeping, in a moment as important as this one.

another siren song

They told me to be silent, but I could never hold a tongue for very long; they told me to be patient, but I couldn't wait any longer; they told me to be still, and sit somewhere where the light was clear, but I'm always shaking when I try not to, and I always liked the bottom of rivers and oceans, and cemeteries are better at night, because that's when and where things speak.

So I should have known, when I was sure I was in the center of the heat of it all, I should have known that I was closer to the sea than I thought, and that the things I was hearing weren't lizard songs, coyote songs, vulture songs, the story of the origin of heat, but something else entirely.  And I should have known that there would be something they asked for eventually, something that can't be paid by the things of this world, and I should have known that I was not lost at all, and knew exactly what would be coming next.

Because I've been through these rocks before, I've seen these waves in all their tides, and I understand what it means when I get so captured by the things that I think I see.  I don't see things that are in front of me, they disappear.  What ought to be and what used to be change places with the things that are on the way, and I can't tell the difference between my own hands and the mouth that holds the world.

But when you come floating through the waves, with your newly shorn hair and your button sweater, your wet pages and your wet openings, I wake up and remember what I came here for.  I came to get caught here, because I came to talk to the sea, because I have questions, and I have things I need to get off my chest.  "There are things that are torn to break," they say, "there are threads that don't sustain their ability to register delicate sensations when they are pulled too thin, and you are a thread, pulled too thin, and when you don't hear, you forget who you are supposed to be next."

"But your blood will have to guide you in the dark, and when you're too far from the ocean, we will bring oceans into the very same blood; you've been sleeping again," they say.  "But when you wake up again," they say, "you'll meet your own melancholy face, and there are those who will tell you that you have gotten older, and you'll think they're lying, you think that when you sleep you don't age a minute.  But your blood spins you like a whirlpool in your dreams, and the things you remember will be more than you wanted to know, because you always come here to learn more than you thought you wanted to know."

I'm starting to get to that place where I can't hold my head, and the rocks are softer when the sun is going away and the songs are pulling me under, and I'm afraid that I might drown, but there are always other plans that have nothing to do with what I want, or what I think I need.

Mother under the waves says, "There's a version of you under the grave, there's a version of you under the sea, there's a version of yourself before you stammer out your next drop of blood on your lip, & there's a version of you that's covered in wax and copper. Like everything or anything, when you need to rely or depend, lean on the water holding you so dear."

something for the sirens

You never did make it out to the middle of the desert, dark and white dogs in military clothes, escaping from the war, looking for a quiet place to finish a very long conversation.  But I suspect that the conversation really doesn't have a finish, that there is no end, like a road doesn't end, or at least it's too long to see all of it in one lifetime.  It's hard to be melancholy when there is no destination, and so many years ahead.  I suspect there are more years ahead than I can fathom from here, and the thing in me that beats my heart against my head to wring the neck of the moment to get out the last drops of blood is a liar, and that I'm not getting as old as I'm supposed to be acting. 
Sirens come into my house and tell me this is no time to act my age.
Sirens tell me to come into their living room, it's made of rock and smells like the sea, and if I go, I will get torn apart in a thousand directions and lose my sense of direction.  And I go, because my good sense never did treat me very well, and I'm partial to anyone who can begin a tempting invitation with a threat.  It's more honest that way.
It's a strange place to call home.  There are those around me who offer their advice, to lead a quiet life, to do things that are easy and comfortable, to find something that will keep me stable.  But they'll never know what it's like to find comfort in the cemetery, and the quiet that comes to you in the middle of a storm.  And they advise me to stay away from those hard and melancholy places, because I won't find anything worth keeping there, but they don't know that those places are where the songs are, and I'm supposed to make songs out of these threads of a life.
And that's the place where all the nevers and gone forevers turn, take their own turn, and revel themselves as the hundred thousand not yets that keep my blood running in my veins, and my eyes sharp and clear, and my head turned decidedly in the direction of another drum altogether, because I am old enough to understand that a threat is also a promise.
The strangest thing about this place is that I'm following these lines of flight, with a promise to help anyone who asks, and whenever I'm wanting too much more, someone shows up who needs to know something about the roads that are dangerous and rewarding, and I get to learn that I do have maps, and I've been places and done things that I have to keep secretly locked away, until someone asks the right question.  Alchemy is learning how to ask the right question.
The answer always starts with a yes.

cafe scene/new

I think I might have missed something, or I might just miss something, but I'm here again at the Cafe Ambos Mundos, and there is something missing already, even though I haven't been here for more than ten minutes.  I can tell already there's something missing. 

It might be something somehow connected to me not being here for a little while, I guess I haven't had a reason to travel on this stretch, or maybe I haven't really needed to, for awhile.  Things must be settled, then, and that makes me feel very unsettled.  But I know there are things coming up that will draw me here, and I will even live here for a little while, in this space between desert and ocean, and I want to check in first to see if there are any surprises.

It is surprising, then, to be noticing that although it's entirely populated with figures, none of them are particularly moving in any discernible direction, and most of them are covered with dust and the things of spiders.  I didn't know there were so many spiders here, I guess they come out at night. 

On the far table, there are the figures of a Copper Witch and a very eager and confused child of the God of the White Cloth, and they've both been frozen in time, ranch dressing still covering their bottom lips like a seal.  Something very important happened here, but it doesn't mean so much to me right now, because I can't hear the music they were hearing when they got frozen.

On other visits here, I've been coming in covered with leather and a need to wash, and smoke, and drink something powerful for the road ahead, and sometimes I've come in feeling powerful and mystical, like I come in from other worlds, and sometimes I come in feeling ridiculous, smelling like hard men smell when they take themselves too seriously.  I would like to think I am an iconic figure, but my Hunger Games boots and denim jacket make me feel like I'm just another survivor, one who wishes he were a little less tall and a little less visible. 

It shouldn't matter, because no one is moving, so no one can pay any attention anyway.  Except.

First, before the except.  I see two figures out front, caught in the middle of rolling cigarettes and about to tell each other something very important.  This couple, I love this couple, and it makes my throat feel full when I see them here like this.  Anything they admit to each other will be something that they will need to hear from each other, but the seaweed at their feet seems to have stopped them in their tracks, stuck here somewhere in between spaces, sometime long after they both stopped waiting.  But I sense that something in me is still waiting, waiting for these figures to come back to life and say the things that heal each other in other times, but this must not be one of those other times, and maybe no one really needs anything the way they once thought they did.

There's also a white suv parked out front, and that couple is frozen with their hands on each other's backs, underwear balled up on the dashboard next to photos of their daughters waiting for them at home.  I hear them, almost, can almost hear them, telling each other stories about dead priests whose spirits are caught in trees, making future plans for nights in hotels that are lined up in circles somewhere closer to the sea.  There is salt crusting over on their lips, and it doesn't stop me from noticing how beautiful the scene is, and how their eyes are still on fire for each other.  It's a nice place to be trapped.

And I know that there are signs painted in chalk on the walls of the abandoned and never-constructed house in the field out in the back, something there containing a spell that worked to seal doors with the same salt of the sea.  I wonder if I walked through the house if the spell would be broken, and they might find their way back to each other, but I think I have other things I'm supposed to do here.  Instead, I'm distracted by movement, someone starting to shimmer in the sun through the windows of this dead cafe, and she's heading in my direction. 

There's something about her that suggests she's working, and something about that tells me I need to be paying attention, because I'm probably the only customer with a pulse.  The side of her head is shaved, and I recognize her right away, only it's not right away really, because this has been in motion for awhile, I just haven't noticed.

"Now I know everything there is to know about you," she says.

"I don't think that's true," I say, "because I don't know most things.  I mean, I'm just finding these things out, and apparently I'm finding out only a small part of it."

"If you are interested in this small part, then I might very well be the only one who can bring it to life for real," she says.

"I kind of doubt it," I say.

But that's not at all true, because here, in this place, she would be one of two who could do that, and really, the only one I would allow it to happen through.  I recognize her.  I've been looking for her for a very long time, and inexplicably, I'm playing it cool even though that's never served me very well when it comes to anything with her. 

It strikes me suddenly that I have things back home, that there are things that move me through the days of heat and dreams, and it also strikes me that I feel at home back there for the first time in a very long time, and it also strikes me that I'm not at home here, but I like being not at home probably even more than being at home.

Something about her always lets me let her try, to do whatever it is she has in mind, because even though it usually hurts for awhile, it's something more important than what I had on my schedule before she came into the room.  So it's not surprising to find myself lying on a table, where she is standing over me with a needle in her hands.

"I'm not wearing gloves," she says, and this is somehow more exciting than anything I've heard in a long time.

There are seasons for dogs, and seasons for wolves, and somehow I imagined the dog world had come to stay for a very long time, and maybe it has been a very long time, but I hadn't really noticed until just now.  I'd been distracted by the metal by her mouth to notice that her teeth really have gotten a lot bigger than I remembered.

"I miss your teeth," I say to her, because it's important now not to be cool, to say the things I want to say, just in case we get frozen and I don't know when that might happen, but I want her to know just in case that's immediate, and just in case she forgot the things we say to each other when we get the chance.  "I miss thinking about your teeth, I miss the nights I would watch you sleep, your face changing even while you were dreaming, but the thing I miss the most is the thing I never saw, that transformation that happened after your body turned blue, the thing you changed into right before the ocean came in through my window and you slipped out.  I never did get to see what you turned into right before you slipped out."

And she's preparing the needle, and preparing her teeth, and I get the sudden not at home sense that I'm about to learn something very new and important, and that the season has turned utterly, and we are still children of the ocean, no matter how far away we might be at this very moment in this particular place in time. 

porch story

Because there is always a dog that lives on the porch, the dog needs to be in the story, but it's not a story about a dog, it's a story about the porch.  At least as far as we know right now.  That's all we can know for sure right now.  It's sometime in the beginning of summer, but the way the days work here, by the time we get to the beginning of summer, it's already been playing out for some time already.

The dog, who is not the center of the story, likes it so much better when the days are 110 degrees, because the 90 degree days seem disingenuous.  Even to the dog.  Maybe especially to the dog.  Because for the dog, this is the heat, the kind of heat that reminds him (or her, or other, we haven't really said yet what or who the dog is) about those signs with the red hot chili peppers that you see everywhere.

It really shouldn't matter that dogs can't see colors, this one can.  That's very important.  It's possibly even a clue as to what's really going on in a story that needs a lot of hidden clues.  The dog, who loves the heat of the summer, is too tired to do anything essential right now, so instead of doing things like eating or drinking or sleeping, he (we'll say he for now) is spending his time on the porch thinking about the porches between this one and that one.

Not to dwell too much on anything, that one is one very far away, and one he has never been to, and he's not even sure that he's seen it in pictures, not even in her pictures.  He's seen her pictures.  Dogs have facebook profiles and unlimited access to everyone else in this story.  He thinks he's seen pictures of her on her porch, and he wonders if that's the same one that she's sitting on when she thinks about him.  To say that he's thought about what they might do if they were both on the same porch is an understatement, because it crosses his mind all the time, especially when he's having something important happen to him on a porch.

And it's seeming to be sort of obvious, even to a dog, that important things always happen on the porch, and maybe even only on the porch.  Now it's true that not every first kiss happens on a porch, but some of the most important first kisses happen there, and sometimes it's a front porch and sometimes it's a back porch, and that shouldn't matter much which porch exactly.  But it does.  It does matter. 

Because there are some nights on front porches that seemed to tear them wide open, and there are some nights on back porches that seemed to tear them open just enough so that they stuck to each other, and in some of the secret rooms of his heart, they never did leave there.

But this isn't really just about that, it can't be, because there are other porches in his mind right now, and they all have their stories, and each story really does deserve to be its own single story.  If he had a mind that was not constructed in sevens, maybe this would be possible, but as it is, acceptance being the answer and the mystery of the seven being something that's part of him by now, they all blend together and sometimes it takes reflection to bleed them out of each other's shadows. 

There's one memory, maybe recent, maybe more recent than the heat in his head would suggest, when he was out on the back porch, smoking, in bikini underwear, sometime after midnight.  Not that anyone should wear bikini underwear, especially not a dog, but sometimes you have to because it's all that you have.  And that porch seems very important because it was a place where the beginning of summer hadn't yet come, but close enough, certainly close enough to count as happening in the summer.  In that place where spells get broken, and the only spells that stay are the ones that always come back, the ones that come back and stick like napalm, the ones that remind him of what it was like to cross deserts in too much leather for the heat, when his head was as broken as his heart.

Dogs have hearts that break, they break easily, but anyone who has spent any time rolling around on the floor with a dog who was stronger than themselves understands, the heart of a dog mends easy enough, too. 

There was also another memory, a front porch story, that happened a long time ago in dog weeks but not so much in human time.  It's a much more difficult story to remember, because there was no significant underwear that played a part, but there were ponies, there were definitely ponies. 

This gets better.  Not for the details, but for their lack, because here, in dog porch time, the lack is everything, it is that small and hard thing that drives the story forward, and doesn't seem to care too much about things that are proper or timely or adequate.  It's the small and hard thing that starts to announce itself, saying, "This is not enough, there should be more, but for the moment, this is exactly right."  It wakes up the thing in the heart that is tireless, and merciless, and can see much further up the road than what we might be used to.

Because, this is giving away entirely too much, these porches are all suggesting something about the things that happen outside of the house, and they suggest that outside and inside are not at all the same thing.  And the porch in one time and place is really the same as the next one, and they all tell one perfect story about circles that repeat, repeating with difference, in order to make something of themselves, whether we pay attention to them or not.  Like the way that small organisms reflect the larger organism that we all live in.  The rat, whose heart beats so fast when his feet are sore from standing on plastic, to the whale, who beats four times a minute whether she needs it or not, to a universe, that beats every billion years, expanding outward to make us all molecules of things that used to be whole but are now very different than they ever were before, and contracting, contracting to a single point that we all remember, and it is here, the dog thinks, it is exactly here, that I can remember you. 

end of play/7-6

(It was sometime before that, in the first days of the new regime, before the new regime would be knocked over as already useless, that things started to get heated at the front, because of the lack of fighting.)

HE: That moon keeps looking at me.

SHE: It's not looking at you, it's looking at me.

HE: It's looking at both of us, because we're both so hot.

SHE: Hooray.

(They clap hands, not high five, not ever, but even still, it's not that tight, because everyone is tired and has things they need to do in their very proper Victorian houses.)

(It goes on like that for awhile, sad, but no ad libbing, please, just say the words of any line in a different order, please.)

(And while it goes on the DOG enters, unbeknownst to them.)

DOG:  Hey, hey, there kids.  Hey, hey.

SHE: Puppy!

HE: You came back!

(Everybody loves it when the dog comes home, and they are not so different from the rest of us, and they go to the dog like Buffy and Jodi.)

HE: It got so very strange when you weren't around.

SHE: It was like a dream, except one we couldn't analyze, because we are not properly trained in linguistics.

DOG: You don't need a degree to know that there's only one dream, and it's always about the moon, and tonight, the moon is looking at me, because I am so doggam hot.

(This isn't quite a dream, but it's very close, especially if we are able to wake up their sympathetic sensibilities long enough to evoke a willing suspension of disbelief that would lead to a catharsis that would no doubt be so entirely sexual that it would feel as though the pelvis of the world were butting up against their secret spaces, except no one really gives in to that any more, not today, not with so many funny animal videos out there.  Maybe that's sad, or maybe that's just where we are.  But if we were not there, then it would be entirely sexual and everyone would be thanking us and we would say, no don't thank me, it wasn't me, it was you, or rather, us.  We did that catharsis together, on this rainy afternoon of our lost youth when all the world was green.  And we would surely notice how the dog is now dancing with the moon, and they are starting to eat each other, but we don't notice.)

SHE: Tell me something about how you think about me.

HE: Oh, you go first.

SHE: No, you go first.

HE: No, you go first.

(This starts to repeat, long enough that we suspect this is how it ends, but then something interesting happens.)

(There are these apparitions, versions of them in white, bodies painted white, that rise above their bodies on stage, and they start to face off with each other.  Every word that's uttered by the people below draws blood from the ghost bodies, and they don't notice even when they are bathed in the blood.  There's a lot of not noticing in this play, they must be distracted by other things.  And perhaps they should be.  Life is confusing and complicated, and sometimes the things that are happening before your eyes, the things that can be touched, are enough to drive away the rest of it, those old ghosts that try to steal our sleep like wounded cats.  I, for one, would love to bring in the wounded cats, but I'm beginning to suspect that if one comes in, then they all have to come in, and that's how I like to live up until now, apparently.  But while this goes on, the dog and the moon are dancing and starting to rise in the sky, and as they rise, they get smaller, and look so very far away.  Oh, this might need projections.  Oh, there are already plenty of projections, though, and those can get so confusing and complicated.)

(There needs to be a scene where they are talking and their bodies are covered with ears, but they still can't hear anything that's being said.)

(There needs to be a scene where someone is crying on a street corner in the rain, but it has to rain more often here first for that to really ring true.)

(There should be a scene with unwritten letters falling from the sky, but that's already been a play, and there wasn't enough porn.)

(There needs to be a meditation on growing older.)

(There needs to be a scene where all the lost loves come back into our beds and stare at us while we sleep, and they have to be distracted enough for us to slip out of the window and fall into a forest that we've never been in.)

(There has to be a scene where I decide that I live here and I want to live here for awhile, and there are things I want to do here for awhile.)

(There has to be the longest and saddest I miss you scene ever.)

(I miss you.)

End of play