sPARKLE & bLINK 2.5

Q uiet L
ightning
sPARKLE
& bLINK
2.5
Sparkle
&
Blink
as performed on
Jun 6 11
@ 111 Minna Gallery
© 2011 Quiet Lightning
art by Paul Madonna

paulmadonna.com
edited by Evan Karp

evankarp.com
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lightning@evankarp.com
Q uiet Lightning
is
a monthly submission-based reading series
with 2 stipulations
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you only get 3-8 min
submit
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Neighborhood Heroes
is
a bi-annual solicitation-based celebration
of local writers who inspire and make possible
the likes of
Quiet Lightning
NH, v.3
Side A
D. A. Powell
Panic in the Year Zero 7
first published in Harvard Magazine
Meg Day
say Yes 14
Enzymatic Capitalism
20
For all the Times I’ll Think I Hate You 22
Graham Gremore
The Headless Virgin 24
Tamim Ansary
Excerpt from Road Trip 30
Caitlin Myer
Harrison is Falling 38
Side B
Jane Ganahl
Valencia 73 51
William Taylor Jr.

A Few More Hours of Sunlight 62
The Dead and the Living Alike 64
Paris in the Spring 66
The People You Try Not to Look At 68
Jack Boulware
Kesey, Dude 72
Rob Brezsny
If I Am Elected 80
Steven Gray
Bail Out 90
Free Words 92
2.5
All images from the strip All Over Coffee

by Paul Madonna
copyright 2011 Paul Madonna
paulmadonna.com
Panic in the Year Zero
Bless the tourists in their “Alcatraz Rocks!”

parkas
on the upper deck of a double-decker
in any given February bluster.
They could have sworn it would be warm
here,
just because the cryometer says it isn’t
cold.
Who the hell would look at a cryometer?
People from arctic places, I suppose.
People who must have flown in over the
map’s flat face;
who must have seen the latest
developments;
the delta’s brackish mouth; windmills
waving white banderoles against the
crisping brown hills.
Spring looks a lot like summer looks a lot
like drought. What would anyone
expect
if they knew the way planarity invites the
opportunist.
Aren’t the dispatches the same,
7
—––––––––––– sPARKLE & bLINK

reaching them
in Chehalis, Waterloo and Asbury Park.
Even
if folks don’t watch what passes now for
news,
I assume they go to cocktail parties.
Or they Twitter.
They don’t all have snug jammies and
Ovaltine,
though they seem to get snugger by
the minute.
What kind of help could they get if they
could get help?
Help them make this dull show seem
like art.
Help the supporting cast appear
in the end, summoned from the cities of
the plain,
and appear to end and end again
as in a wide shot of the Battle of the
Marne.
Be tolerant of those you cannot seem to
8
D. A. Powell —–––––––––––
understand.
And other such advice.
It’s the quiet part of the morning service,
while I’m writing this down:
Thank God for the quiet part.
And thank God for the one who held me
to my wickedness;
who asked me to revel in it,
even though it cost us both a little
dignity.
It’s easy for me to look back at what’s
destroyed.
I knew it would be destroyed, like a
wicked town.
I never thought “that town is where the
heart is.”
I simply thought “that town is where the
town is.”
Usually someplace inhospitable, and filled
with
handsome men. The kind who kill you
with their handsomeness, or their acute
cordage.
Hell is the most miraculous invention of
love,
9

no matter how the love turns out.

Hell is the place from whence the music
of longing—
which accounts for most of what we call
music—
gets written.
Yet, I’m tired of this idea of hell, no matter
how functional.
Sure, I’ve had my petty doubts.
Like the extra pills I’ve put in my Eva Braun
box,
waiting for the bomb to hit Bakersfield,
or some other place in the near
distance
(this plan only works if there’s some kind of
distance)
the sign that it’s time to pull up
stakes,
head for those durable hills with my
pemmican,
my Port-o-pot, my jerry cans,
and yes, I too would have Ovaltine.
Though I guess it would be Ovaltine made
10
D. A. Powell —–––––––––––
with water
instead of milk.
Such would be the dark days
if we think the dark days really must
come.
But I have lived through perilous times,
and I do not love them.
I cannot pretend I’m smart about such
things.
I mean: look at the sloppy slew I’ve been.
And you were there. And you.
You’ve seen me rumple down the
sidewalk like a moocher.
Lord knows, you’ve seen me hit that
sidewalk on my keister.
“Scandalous,” the tourists said,

and flashed.
And when the worst of the drama came,
they clucked their tongues and threw
their change.
Something inside each one of us is
cocked
like the ear of a hound,
and half the time we hunt, and half the
11

time we rescue,
because we’re never really sure
if the humans will beat us or feed us.
If we are our better selves, it’s just a
wonder.
And if we’re not.
Even in our legends, angels come.

They try their best. But we’re such shits.
And it’s not because we want to screw
them.
We screw everything. We’re mankind. It’s
what we do.
I’ve probably sullied a few white wings
myself.
That’s not the problem.
So much has passed between us, we’re
practically cousins.
The problem is, we’re so bent on an
ending,
we’ll sunder the entire valley,
with conviction. With an invented coda of
immunity.
12
D. A. Powell —–––––––––––
Nobody in this picture is granted
immunity.
If it were available, I’d have gotten it
for myself.
Enough with the apocalypse,

already.
Think of all the history you’ve read. It
started somewhere.
It started at absolute zero, is what you
thought.
Just because you couldn’t know what
came before.
But imagine: something did.
13

14
D. A. Powell —–––––––––––
say Yes

be patient with me;
i woke up at the vanishing point,
the one where every body is headed,
not knowing that by nightfall i'd be
moonwalking
back toward my bed, away from the
finish
line of certainties & backstroking
against dreams of China Beach &
the glassblown of your orchard skies
i thought you were built

in the shape of so many things
i knew by heart, all of them sweet
apples gone rotten at the core;
i can only count on one hand
the years i've spent sober
from ferment, & three times that
the cidered lips that have kept me
filling the glass in the other
forgive me.
it's been a long time since i've sat
in the living room of my body
with someone who hasn't asked
to begin redecorating --
15

i've only just remembered

that i was born Huckleberry Finn
& you are the first in a long time
to not mistake my cowlicks for curls
or ask me to be Sarah Mary Williams,
to not pull the red lever on this gender
elevator
& beg me to stand still
they say there is violence

to every new beginning,
so let me love you gently --
as if you & i hadn't both been gravity-

slammed on
& catapulted off the seesaw of visibility
or found our bodies buried in far-off
distant hillside cities
with Leviticus breathing down our backs --
let me love you in olde english

or family recipes
in every language that hasn't yet ruined
the season's first snow or
the meaning of Yes
16
Meg Day —–––––––––––
let me love you
the way my grandpa loved whiskey:
shamelessly & with abandon
let me make watermarks in your
hardwood,
bump my glass hip to yours
there is a four poster bed in my chest

with your handkerchief knotted to its
banister
& i am splintering, bent & bowed low
like a tree in monsoon season,
proposing with all of my twenty-six rings:
how 'bout Oklahoma. or Nebraska

maybe a rocker in Southern Georgia or
porch steps on the coast of Maine
because you & i? we have both

tried doing it Right
too many times
& i want this, so
Baby, get messy with me
let's do it all Wrong
leave the tired to their ruts &

invent something other
than the wheel with me
17

i don't want anything labeled,

processed or prewrapped,
don't want Forward
if it's toward what we already know
i want slow motion;

let me slow dance you in the kitchen
while the artichokes boil over,
i want to boil over with you.
paint the kitchen the color of our water
damage
forget children,
i wanna raise a barn with you --
put hammer to nail &
barrel-buckle our bodies to community
i want the blister of handmade

on my heart &
the dirt of homegrown in our bed
& if it's true that only fools rush in
then fuck -- take my hand
take my whole life, too
because you have made me bold
enough
to think that even backwards is better
18
Meg Day —–––––––––––
than what we've tried to bend ourselves
into
& it's true that i've got

fistfights in my belly
for every coward that's handcuffed
their hurt to loving you
& i know you've never charged for extra
baggage
but this body is a suitcase &
i don't intend on letting you carry it, no
walk beside me.

let your brack & tweed
stand alongside the midwestern yearn
of my urban swoon,
show me your swagger just by
pop & locking your garter belt
i want to write your name in the dust

of a train car's exhale
somewhere south of the Mason Dixon,
kick wasp nests deep into the hills of Julian
where you found that bomb &
still made it back to show me how to ball
yarn
& crowbar myself open wide enough
for the helium of your hearthatch
19

to hot air balloon us
into the chariot of every afternoon's
swung low
so let's go --
lungshock headroll off the dock
& into crisp lake water
of the next sixty new beginnings
all hands &
no hesitation
20
Meg Day —–––––––––––
Enzymatic Capitalism or, for the
Sleepwalkers
i am praying again;
pushing fists into steeples &
dowsing for sky, i am
every violin that rosins

a note, no matter how flat, &
yet still seems to sound another’s
the way the gulpblossom

knows to lean before turning
its face to the sun, pistons lagging
– the way the plums

so sweet & so cold
ripened each other –
i already know what my fossil will look like

we are all built in the shape of each
other’s relief
if you’ve ever doubted

adding machines,
i’m your man
if you’ve ever woken

from a dream of hallway pace
21

to find yourself found,
know that yes: topsoil

turns dark before the sun
thinks to set
& there are other ways

– better words, chemical excuses –
to forget we are responsible
22
Meg Day —–––––––––––
For All the Times I’ll Think I Hate You:
Remember
after Oklahoma
we started running
at the mouth
pulled our tongues wet

with every kicked
wasp nest & crossed professor
the sting of salt

water slaps from summers
marked only by the welt
of their radio hits.

we told every story
Kansas corn could hold
in its stride, the long

lank of field
not unlike that of city block
but slower somehow,

a forty-five clicked
to seventy with the tires keeping time
a cloudless blue flash

between wide streaks
23

of yellow-tipped everything
we spoke steadily
deep into the swing of September
into crabgrass & porch steps
pocket watches leaned open

in palms like old men
in gold rockers
as if the deep yawn of autumn

didn’t swallow us whole &
Virginia couldn’t hear us coming
24
Meg Day —–––––––––––
The Headless Virgin
If there was one thing all the residents on

Selby Avenue had in common, it was an
affinity for mowing their lawns in the
summertime. From June to September,
one could not escape the incessant
drone of an electric lawnmower
somewhere in the distance.
Perhaps the worst lawn-mowing
offender was our neighbor, Elmer Dump.
Mr. Dump was a cantankerous 68-year
old bachelor who lived one door down
and across the street from us in a two-
story brick house with yellow trim. In the
summer months, he would mow his lawn
every day. Sometimes twice a day. It was
a very long and complicated procedure
that took several hours to complete as it
involved a number of different machines:
a lawnmower, a weed whacker, a hedge
trimmer, and a leaf blower.
“The cacophony!” my father once
complained. “Why does he have to use
so many noisy machines to do his yard
work?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you go over
there and ask,” my mother replied as she
flipped the latest Woman’s Day
magazine.
My father snorted. “Like that would do
any good. The man’s a lunatic. And
25

everyone knows you can’t reason with a
crazy person.”
“Oh, believe me,” my mother replied,
“I know.”
Over the years, Mr. Dump developed
a reputation in the neighborhood for
being both crazy and reclusive. He went
to great lengths to separate himself from
all the other neighbors. For instance, every
year in the early autumn there would be a
block party on Selby Avenue. The street
would be closed off to traffic and
everyone in the neighborhood would
gather outside for a pot luck picnic and
games. Everyone, that is, except for Elmer
Dump. He remained cooped up inside his
little brick house, scowling down at our
jubilation with disgust from one of the
upstairs windows.
“Why don’t you think he wants to
come down here?” I asked my older
sister, Georgia, one year at the party. We
were standing in the street, looking up at
him as he glowered down at us.
“Because he’s a dick,” she replied. “A
flaccid, old, piece of shit dick.”
Georgia never liked Mr. Dump. It all
began the year he yelled at her for
ringing his doorbell on Halloween. She was
ten or eleven at the time. I had been
stuck at home with the chicken pox that
26
Graham Gremore —–––––––––––
year, but according to my sister, the story
went something like this:
She rang Mr. Dump’s doorbell. He
didn’t answer at first so she rang again.
Moments later, the front door flew open.
“WHAT?!” the old man barked.
“Trick-or-treat.” My sister held out her
pillowcase.
“Fuck off!” Mr. Dump hollered, then
slammed the door in her face.
After that night Georgia swore off
trick-or-treating for good.
While Mr. Dump may not have
participated in the annual Selby Avenue
block party or holidays like Halloween, he
did partake in Christmas. Each December
he would set up his fourteen-piece, near
life size nativity scene outside in his front
yard. It included all of Christmas’ major
players: the virgin Mary, Joseph, the baby
Jesus, an angel of some sort, the
wisemen, a shepherd boy, and a few
animals. Much like mowing his lawn, the
process of setting up the nativity scene
took hours and required a lot of shifting,
unshifting, then shifting back of various
figurines until Mr. Dump got it just right.
Then one year something bad
happened.
In the middle of the night, someone --
a teenager, perhaps, or maybe a
vagabond passing through town -- snuck
27

into Mr. Dump’s yard and stole the baby
Jesus. Not only that, but they also severed
Mary’s head from her body then placed it
in the savior’s empty crib along with a
hand-written note that read:
Hark! Behold the headless virgin!
The ensuing morning, Mr. Dump drafted a

letter condemning whoever was
responsible for beheading the holy virgin
and threatening to contact the local
authorities. He then distributed copies of it
to everyone on the block before moving
the entire fourteen-piece nativity scene
from his front yard and onto his front
porch, which was enclosed. Because the
figurines were near life sized and Mr.
Dump’s front porch wasn’t very large, he
had to cram the statues so close together
that it didn’t so much look like a nativity
scene anymore as it did an orgy. He tried
re-attaching Mary’s head, but was
unsuccessful, and so, to this very day, she
remains headless.
Years later, I was snooping through
Georgia’s room in search of her diary,
when I discovered an oddly shaped
package wrapped in a beach towel and
duct tape on the top shelf of her closet. I
took it down and carefully unwrapped it.
28
Inside was Mr. Dump’s Baby Jesus. After
silently congratulating my sister on a job
well done, I re-wrapped the package as
best I could then quietly set it back where
I’d found it…
Because it’s true what they say: Some

secrets are better left buried. And others
make for really great stories.
29

30
Excerpt from Road Trip
When I was twenty-one years old, I got

expelled from Reed College. Well, Reed
didn’t use the word expelled. They called
it graduating, but it came to the same
thing: I was told to move along now. Move
on.
I had been in the United States for six
years at that point, but had spent all of
those years as a dirt-poor Afghan
scholarship student living in expensive and
luxurious private schools, surrounded by
the sons and daughters of the rich and
very rich. Now, having graduated from
college, I lived in plain old Portland, and
honor demanded that I even tell my
mother to stop sending me $20 a week: I
was a big boy now, I told her; I could take
care of myself.
Actually, I was still a very small boy. I
had no money, no source of money, and
no idea how to make money. I had
graduated from one of the country’s finest
small colleges, but all I had studied there
were ideas, all I knew how to do was think,
and all I knew how to be was a student.
At being-a-student I was very good. In
those last days, Reed heaped honors and
awards on me and nominated me for
prestigious fellowships. Every element of
my life screamed at me to go to graduate
31

school, get an advanced degree in
critical theory, and enter academia. But
the existential absurdity of that course
made me shiver. What was the point of
going to school to become a college
professor, who could then teach others
how to become college professors, who
would then teach others how to become
college professors… ? How was this not a
Ponzi scheme? I had to get out of the
academia scam. I had to do something
“real.” This was the only thing I knew for
sure.
After six years in America, however,
the only professionals I had seen up close
were college professors. I had no idea
what anyone else did for a living out there.
Writing was my passion, but the only
writing work I knew about that paid was
journalism. I was no journalist, but I wrote
to the Oregonian and asked if they would
hire me. Some editor invited me to come
chat with him. It wasn’t a job interview. He
just wanted to give me some sage advice.
He was an extremely aged guy, one foot
in the grave—in short, twenty or thirty
years younger than I am now. He told me
there were no openings at the Oregonian
and never would be for a guy like me. To
get a job at an important paper like that, I
would have to clock a few years at a
32
Tamim Ansary —–––––––––––
smaller place “getting my feet wet.” In
fact, he knew of one such place right
now. Then he looked guilty, and I knew his
suggestion was going to be bad. He
steeled himself and put it out there.
“The nuclear reactor at Mount St.
Helens is looking for someone to help them
with public relations—if you’re interested.”
Work as a flak for the nuclear power
industry? Had I fallen so low that I would
make my living telling lies for Satan?
“Not for me,” I said politely.
“I didn’t think so,” he admitted. “Well
then your only other choice would be to
contact some small town newspaper. The
one in the Dalles might be willing to give
you a shot, if you don’t mind starting at
the bottom.”
The Dalles (yes, “the” was part of its
name) was a small town sixty miles east of
Portland, surrounded by ranches. I
pictured the cowboys there roping me
and cutting off my hair…and I knew what
would happen next. I had seen
Deliverance. It wasn’t for me.
That left jobs in Portland. I pored
through the classified ads every day. I
called, I wrote, I went out, but I couldn’t
find a job. I don’t mean “a job in my field.”
What field? I had been a literature
student. To my knowledge, no one was
getting cash to comment on literature. I
33

was looking for “any job.” It never
occurred to me to look for work that might
require a college degree. I assumed jobs
like that would be too hard to get, since
everyone would want them. So when
people asked what kind of work I was
seeking, I said “anything,” the theory
being that if I were the least picky I would
be the most employable.
Actually, since “anything” is a job for
which “anyone” qualifies, the competition
for such jobs tends to be intense,
especially in hard times like the recession
of 1970. The odds of getting a job that only
a few people can do is better for those
few who can do it.
But in the summer of 1970, this logic
eluded me. So I applied to sell life
insurance, file papers, haul boxes. All
turned me down. I applied to work at a
pickle factory, but the manager felt I was
not pickle-factory material. I tried to get
work at a garment factory, a furniture
plant, a junkyard. No go. I applied for day
laborer jobs: digging sewer lines. I got up
at the crack of dawn but scores of people
had lined up ahead of me, even for those
jobs, and anyone who looked more
muscular than me—which is to say,
anyone—always got the nod.
34
So I went to an employment agency.
They had me fill out a form. I sat in their
waiting room for two hours. At last a
counselor could see me. I made my way
to a cubicle of a room and took a seat
across a desk from a blond woman in a
red polyester suit. She had hair done up in
a fashionable bob and hairsprayed into
place. She wore nylons and lipstick and
earrings. She looked nothing like girls did in
real life. Women like her, I had seen only in
magazines, movies, and TV shows. I was
aware that in some universe of aesthetics
quite alien to me, this peculiar, platinum-
headed creature would be labeled
“attractive.” Her body language told me
she was pretty certain of her own allure.
But being so close to one of these
creatures in real life made me uneasy. I
was nervous about the possible cancer-
causing effects of the many chemicals so
obviously caked onto her face and
possibly her body. She smelled of sprays,
deodorants, colognes and other noxious
industrial products. She seemed to find my
substances somewhat noxious too, or so I
guessed from the way she kept curling her
nostrils.
Wriggling uncomfortably on her
pantyhosed bottom, she studied the form I
had filled out,. “So…you went to... ?” She
squinted and looked closer. “Reed
35

College, it says here…? What is that, a
junior college?”
“No. It’s a four-year college.”
“I see. What did you study there? Says
here, literature. What is that, like…
literature from different companies? Or
what? How to write literature for all the
different companies?”
“No, not how to write it so much. More
what’s great about it. Authors.”
“Authors!” She had no handle for that
one. “Well, what company’s literature
have you…studied?”
“No, no! Not the literature of
companies. We studied real literature, like
War and Peace, you know, George Elliot,
people like that. You know.”
“Uh huh. Okay. Well, you must have
studied some business English.”
“Business English? No.”
“Accounting?”
“No.”
“Shorthand?”
“No.”
“What about bookkeeping?’
“No.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” she
said. “You went to four years of college,
you didn’t pick up any accounting, no
bookkeeping, and you can’t even spell—”
“I can spell!”
36
“But you don’t have any background
in business English!”
“Well--”
“Mr. Ansary.” She leaned forward and
fixed me with her carefully-penciled eyes:
“Did it ever occur to you that you just
wasted four years of your life?”
I was at a loss. Had I just wasted four
years of my life? That question only makes
sense if you have a destination. If you do,
you can measure how much closer
you’ve gotten to it each year. But I was
only trying to stay alive and happy each
day. From that perspective, my last four
years had been very successful. I had
explored cosmic ideas with some of the
brightest minds in America, I had smoked
a lot of dope and taken a lot of acid, I
had enjoyed transcendent love and
incendiary sex for the last eight months,
and I was still alive.
But now that those years were over,
did it matter that they had ever been? Of
all that I had gained in those four years,
what did I still possess except my life?
37

38
Harrison is Falling
Harrison's sister pulls back her hair to show

him the gill. A little opening like a mouth
on her pale neck. He asks if she can
breathe through it. She tells him to plug
her nose and cover her mouth and put his
ear next to the gill to listen for breath. But
maybe she has to be underwater, so they
jump in the pool and float in the blue
world and watch each other. Harrison
gives up first, swimming up toward the
sun.
Harrison unfolds his palm. BUY MILK is

written on his hand.
The doctor presses RECORD on the video

camera. Harrison watches the red light
blink on. He watches himself in the
monitor.
I'm jumping on the bed with my sister,

Harrison watches himself say. Her hair is
sticking up.
Harrison's son is jumping on the bed. His

oldest son, the one that’s older than the
younger one. Both of them jumping on
the bed, their sweet screaming laughs,
Get up Dad, Get up Dad!
39

Harrison’s days slide one over the other.
Yesterday might be when he teaches the
neighbor’s dog how to dance, or when
he shuts himself in his room and plays his
record so loud his dad pounds on the
door. Maybe it’s his wife pounding on the
door and not his dad.
Harrison tells his sister and her friend that

he’s going to grow up to be a mosquito.
Already he can feel it happening, he says.
Their faces laugh. His sister’s friend laughs
with her whole face.
I know everything about everything,

Harrison says, but his sister’s friend’s name
slips away from him. It shifts under his feet,
like the days and days that other people
see one after another in consistent,
marching order. Is Harrison sixteen or
twenty-six or forty-eight? His sister’s friend is
a little girl playing in the basement, the
two girls turning faces to him, shaped
ready to laugh.
She’s a teenager in his entryway when his

sister is out. She kisses him standing under
the light at the bottom of the stairs and
lets him feel her breasts, sliding his hands
up and under her shirt, her skin cold and
sheened with damp.
40
I dreamed I was falling, she says, her voice
squeezed through the telephone line.
Falling forever, like Alice down the well.
He thinks of her as Alice although that isn’t
her name.
Harrison tells her about a planet where

gravity is met with another force that
pushes out and everyone falls all the time.
Alice asks him how it feels to be married. It

feels like lying in the bed in the basement
of his parents’ house and watching his
wife get ready for work. It feels like being
out in the world, as she pulls on a slip and
hooks her bra and brushes her hair and
when she turns she’s his wife and she’s
also a social worker, she’s a person out
there, but he stays in here for when the
boys jump on the bed and then he’s a
person for them.
What year is it, the nurse asks.
The nurse says the fall made him this way.

He was different before, she says, and the
word “before” rolls loose in Harrison’s
head.
Harrison is mooning his new brother-in-law

on the front lawn, the father and mother-
41

in-law watching through the living room
window. His new wife tells him to take his
medicine; that he shouldn’t moon people
in public places.
At church, the Bishop shakes Harrison’s

hand. It’s fucking great to see you, says
Harrison. His wife opens the bottle that
hangs around his neck, and shakes a little
white pill into the palm of his hand.
Harrison must be grown up, because his

boys are jumping on the bed, his older
son Oscar playing with Harrison’s hair
while sucking his thumb. He doesn’t know
them as teenagers, so they must still be
just boys.
Harrison is drawing block letters on Alice’s

hand. L-O-V-E. Alice squints at him. You
don’t love someone you made out with
once, she says. She licks her palm and
puts her hand on his face. He can smell
her spit.
In the mirror, his face says L-O-V-E.
Harrison is telling Alice he got married. She

laughs through the phone, and he tells
her how they drove to Las Vegas and had
to get a preacher out of bed, and his hair
42
was sticking up. Alice asks him how it feels
to be married.
I fucked her brains out, Harrison says. He

can’t say this in church, but Alice laughs.
Harrison is holding his fiancée’s hand in

church. She draws a pattern on his palm
with her finger.
What day of the week is it, his fiancée

asks.
You're wearing your pink dress, says

Harrison. She closes her eyes. I still want to
marry you, she says. Her face is puffy in
the hospital light.
Her pink dress rustles as she wraps her

arms around her chest, moonlight shining
off the sidewalk. I’ll build you a house so
big, it will curve around the earth, he says.
No matter where you are, you’ll always
be home. Marry me, and I’ll build the
whole world in your house.
Julie Andrews is singing on the television.

Nothing comes from nothing, Julie sings.
Harrison fake-wrestles with his brother, skin
against skin and laughing breath and
slap, trying to get a grip on each other,
but Harrison is wet and just a towel around
43

his waist, his skin wet, so his brother can’t
get a good grip, his hands keep slipping.
Does she know she’s marrying an

overgrown boy? His mother asks, leaning
in the doorway of the kitchen.
Outside, outside, not near my table.
They’re out on the deck and Julie

Andrews is singing, Somewhere in my
youth, or childhood, and Harrison’s feet
slip on the wet deck and his brother thinks
he’s faking him out, pretending to slip, so
he does the fake “don’t fall” thing over
the railing but Harrison is falling anyway.
Harrison's towel is falling away, his penis

hanging bare and defenseless in the air,
Harrison holding onto the floor of the deck
with his fingers, then slipping on the wet,
and Harrison falling and falling like a bad
dream, like a falling dream, but Harrison
doesn’t have those dreams.
Harrison lives in god time, where each

moment is itself, each moment exists, all
moments in all the time of the world exist
together and Harrison can turn and turn
and live in each one. It isn’t omniscience
that makes a god, it’s only this, only the
44
ability to see each moment side by side
instead of squeezed through a long
tunnel.
Harrison isn’t a god, though. He can’t see

the moments in tomorrow or the day after
that. He can’t live in the moment he dies
or the moment his youngest son gets
married. He can’t see, ahead of time, the
moment his wife stands in front of him in
her blouse and work skirt, holding his sons
by the hands. Harrison doesn’t know until
it happens that his wife has on a face
that’s tired when she says she can’t do it
anymore. He sees that face when she
pulls on her nylons and says there isn’t any
milk. Her tired face saying he’s forgotten
the milk again. He tries to tell her the milk is
always there and always not there, but
her face gets longer and more tired. She
is writing BUY MILK on his hand. She is
washing his hand at night, the letters
melting off and running in the water. Her
mouth is held very still while she rolls the
bar of soap over and over his hand.
He can’t be a god if he doesn’t know this

until now. But maybe even god is
surprised. If every moment exists, maybe
god can be surprised in each one.
45

Harrison is surprised to see his wife pull at
Oscar’s hand. She pulls at his hand like
she’s going to lift him from the floor, but
she doesn’t. She has Niles by the other
hand and Niles is the one that is crying.
She says she can’t do it anymore and she
wants to live in a real house and not his
parents’ basement. Harrison sees her tired
face but this one is different. It is tired and
pulled very thin onto her bones.
Harrison is driving to the store and being

sure to buy milk. There’s nothing written on
his hand, but he buys milk and peanut
butter and rice cakes because Oscar
can’t eat wheat and ice cream because
both of the boys like ice cream.
He tells them the story of the noseless

witch who lives in the mountain. She’s very
very old and very very ugly, and she has
no nose because a man cut it off. He
leans in and smells their hair and it smells
like little boys.
It’s a goddamn beautiful day, says

Harrison, and his boys giggle and squirm,
one under each arm.
Harrison is falling.
46
Who is the President, the doctor asks.
Harrison is with his wife on their wedding

night, in their room in Circus Circus. She
draws one finger down the center of her
bare chest, and Harrison imagines a line
appearing behind her finger. She opens
her chest at the line and birds rustle out of
her body, wings beating soft and dry
against his face.
Harrison touches his sister’s scar from the

removal of her gill. He feels the bump
where an absence creates a new thing in
its place, larger than what was there
before.
Harrison is falling. He is always falling,

always his white towel spiraling down
below, always his penis shrinking in.
Always his fiancée is pulling her hair back
so he can kiss her pale neck.
Harrison is in his sons’ empty room, the

emptiness blasting his ears like a cannon.
Harrison is falling and his sons are jumping

on the bed, their hair sticking up. He’s
swimming up toward the sun and he’s
falling. The milk is turning sour in the fridge.
47

Harrison is falling and the wind beats
against his ears like the wings of a
hundred birds.
Harrison’s wife is always leaving and

always coming on the bed at Circus
Circus. Harrison is thirty-five years old and
eight years old and twenty-one years old
and falling.
48

Valencia 73
At nightfall, written directions in hand, I

found the Waldorf near the central plaza.
It was one of the only swanky hotels in
Valencia, boasting shiny marble floors,
chandeliers and a decidedly un-Spanish,
Euro-mod look. Pushing through the glass
revolving door, I stood in the lobby in my
appliquéd Osh-Kosh overalls and clogs,
and realized I was getting the eye from
hotel staff. Hearing music pulsing from a
downward staircase, I descended to the
cellar and found La Bruja. Its pitch-
darkness was mitigated by flashing disco
lights, and I could see an unattended DJ
booth and plush booths around the
perimeter of the dance floor. It was
almost empty, but for a few groups
gathered in the corners. Too early for the
dance crowd, I thought.
Feeling suddenly awkward, and unsure of

my mission – perhaps I’d been given
wrong information? – I considered turning
tail and retreating. Then as my eyes
accustomed to the dark, I saw Vicente
huddled with some cronies, deep in
furtive conversation. When he looked up,
he caught and held my gaze. I started to
walk toward him, when a burly doorman
put out his arm to stop me and
51

demanded money. I bristled. “For what?
There is no party yet…”
Suddenly Vicente was there and

murmured something to the doorman,
who grudgingly let me pass.
I stood face to face with the student

leader, and was at a loss for words –
partly because I wasn’t entirely sure what
I wanted to say or what I had to offer, and
partly because he was so imposing: well
over six feet tall, he towered over me, and
his dark eyes were some of the most
piercing I’d seen up close. He was
beautiful – with a patrician, aquiline nose
and clean-shaven olive skin, nearly-black
ringlets for shoulder-length hair, marginally
tamed by a headband. And where I’d
seen him in the student union laughing
and looking light-hearted, he was clearly
not in a mood to make idle chit-chat
tonight.
“Que quieres?” he said tersely. What do

you want?
I stammered, “Solamente ayudar” – only

to help.
52
Jane Ganahl —–––––––––––
“Help what? Why?” He stared so intently
into my eyes I almost forgot my mission.
“I know who you are, and I know what

you do,” I said, lowering my voice to
approximate an Emma Peel, spy-like
quality. “And I have the skills to help.”
He cracked a smile, then it faded just as

quickly. “Go home, American girl,” he
said in English. “You do not want this
trouble.”
And he turned to walk away.
“Wait,” I called after him. “I marched in

the moratoriums of 69 and 70!”
“So did the whole world,” he said, not

looking back.
I gave it one last try. “But I know Joan

Baez!”
He stopped walking. I trotted up to where

he stood.
“How do you know Joan Baez?” he asked

without turning around.
“I’m from California, and worked for the

Institute for Nonviolence in high school,
and I met her a few times… You know, we
53

had…” I groped for the Spanish word for
potlucks, but drew a blank. “Meals?”
He turned around and smiled broadly.

“What is your name?”
Jane.
He took my arm and escorted me back to

his group – a group of maybe ten
exhausted looking young people, all in
either the hippie or mod camp, all
regarding me with suspicion. They erupted
in chatter when I sat down – Capitan,
who is she? Why is she here? How can you
trust a stranger?
Vicente held up one hand to quiet them

down. “This is Jane from California, and
she is buen amigas – close personal
friends – with Joan Baez!”
Suddenly their faces went from closed to

open, and some breathed the word
“Jooooan,” as if speaking the name of a
deity. I wanted to disabuse them of the
notion that Joan Baez knew me from
Adam – other than the red-haired
teenager who hung around the institute
photocopying political flyers and flirting
54
with the draft resistors – but it seemed the
wrong moment for such truth-telling.
When they resumed their discourse on the

crisis at hand – students being held in jail
with no word on their status – I just sat
quietly and listened. The office of
Hermano Lobo (Brother Wolf), an
underground, student-run publication that
satirized the Franco regime, had been
broken into and trashed. Everyone knew it
was Franco’s secret police.
I watched Vicente closely, observing how

he was both strong-willed and egalitarian;
everyone’s opinion mattered, and he
listened intently and quietly before
rendering a decision. His minions clearly
adored him, even called him capitan –
captain – which I found sweetly amusing.
If there were squabbles he would silence
them with a wave of his hand and a
reminder that we have to keep the
ultimate goal in mind: bringing down the
Franco regime – or at least obtaining
freedom of the press. I was dazzled that
this person just a few years older than me
(I estimated he was around 24) had this
kind of command – of both himself and
others – and felt the swelling of admiration
in my chest.
55

Or maybe it was just lust. Good lord. While
trying to focus on the discussion of how to
help Hermano Lobo get back on its
publishing feet and whom we might bribe
to free the incarcerated students, my
eyes would wander to the love beads
that dangled down Vicente’s front. His
Moroccan shirt, open to the middle of his
chest, revealed a tantalizing few tufts of
hair on dove-like pectorals. He was thin
like Nacho (didn’t these Spanish guys
eat?) and his jeans were so tight that
heaven was within a focused stare.
I smiled, wondering if Louise Reed Bryant

fantasized about John Reed’s penis while
planning the rise of communism in
America.
At that moment, a cohort of Vicente’s

burst breathlessly into La Bruja, waving a
piece of paper. Vicente stood up and
took the paper, and read it aloud. It was
from Esteban, one of his jailed lieutenants,
who had bribed a guard to convey his
note to the underground. He reported
that the arrested students had been
beaten, and he thought his and some
others’ ribs had been broken, but he
could not be sure since they were not
allowing them to see a doctor. The
56
students who were not involved in the
protest but were swept up by soldiers
were likely to be released within a day or
two, but he and others who had been
carrying signs and wearing armbands
were likely to spend weeks in grim jail
conditions, maybe even months.
As I listened, I felt stunned – almost felt like

I was in a movie. This kind of thing doesn’t
actually happen in 1973, does it? I guess it
does. I felt a stab of guilt at continually
mocking my own country for the harm it
did, without considering the abuses that
would never occur there.
The messenger regarded me with

suspicion. I watched him nod quizzically in
my direction to another student, who
shrugged and whispered, “she’s a close
personal friend of Joan Baez!”
Sangria pitchers and tapas suddenly

arrived at the table but no one seemed
surprised. Perhaps these angels had fairy
godmothers? And talk of bribes, torture
and jail was temporarily tabled in
deference to drinking and cena. Vicente
mingled with the students, eventually
making his way to where I was chatting
with a young woman from Asturias.
Vicente took me aside, munching a slice
of tortilla Espanola, and asked pointedly,
57

but with a hint of flirtation: “So, Jane from
California, why are you really here?”
Good God – these Spanish men: so

intense! Doesn’t anyone make casual
small talk in this country? With Vicente
standing inches from me, staring intently
down into my face, it was tempting to
become idiot girl, all weak in the knees.
But I’d been down this road. I could deal.
“I’m here in Spain to do a lot of things,” I

said, summoning my confidence and
looking back at him without blinking. “I’m
here to improve my language skills, play a
role in finishing off Franco’s regime, drink
as much sangria as possible…” we clinked
glasses. “…And dance with El Capitan.”
Vicente threw his head back and

laughed – the first time I’d seen him do
that – reached out and took my waist in
his arm, and began to move, swaying his
hips side to side as the DJ started spinning
“Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. I
started to move with him, syncing my hips
with his, buoyant on sangria, light as a
feather in the arms of my own personal
John Reed.
58
Then, he paused in our bump-and-
grinding and looked me in the eye. “I
have seen you with the son of Rincon,
Franco’s pigeon in Valencia. What is he to
you?”
Oh man – I was not prepared to be asked

this. “He was a friend, but not anymore,” I
said.
“Is that all?” he persisted, arm still around

me. “You understand why I have to know
– Franco has spies everywhere.”
“Is that the only reason you want to

know?” I teased, moving closer to him.
“Because you think an American girl who
has only been in Spain for two weeks
might already be a spy for the secret
police?”
I giggled flirtatiously. It was not beneath

me at times like this.
“I…” Vicente’s superb elocution seemed

to fail him for a moment. “I also wanted to
know if you are free.”
“I am,” I said with a smile, never lowering

my gaze, “about as free as possible.” He
grinned broadly, and we kept dancing,
on and on for hours, the flashing
59

overhead lights causing his love beads to
flicker like fireworks about to explode.
60
61

A Few More Hours of Sunlight
We drink beer in your kitchen

and talk of the lives of dead poets
while outside the window

is the September sun
and beneath it the city streets
and the people who carry their lives
like corpses on their backs.
They wait for buses and taxis,

they wait for their tiny phones to ring
and all the lights to finally turn green
as if they truly believed

things had some interest in being done.
Ambition is for
the ambitious
and let us leave them to it.
If history's to be believed
we'll all end up badly one day,
and what of it?
62
William Taylor Jr. —–––––––––––
We've another bottle in the fridge
and a few more hours of sunlight.
63

The Dead and the Living Alike
Last night they found a woman

stuffed in a suitcase drifting
in the San Francisco bay
I read the news

and ponder the underlying
terror of life
how it comes crashing like a wave

pouring through the cracks
of our pretty dreams
when we least expect
and I understand
this is how it ends up
for all of us
more or less
I understand
that I too am a woman
stuffed in a suitcase and thrown
to indifferent waters
maybe it hasn't
64
happened yet or maybe
I don't remember
but the fact of it is there

and I guess that's why
we have god
and television
narcotics
and drink
and some days
I am frightened of the dead

and the living alike
the enormity of the sky

and the purity of its blue
strikes a fear in me
as I walk beneath it weeping

for things I don't understand.
65

Paris In The Spring
Today we'll drink wine in the sunlight

and pretend the gods have some love
to spare for us.
You hold your glass just so

dreaming of 1935
and Paris in the spring
but all we've got is Polk St

and a plastic table that wobbles
in this stillborn century that feels

like an afterthought to a story long done.
Yet still we dream that all the bodies

in all the graves will bloom
into love letters never burned
and that the gaping wound of existence

will pour forth desperate joy
instead of blood.
We'll forgive all the pretty things

that never loved us
and love them all the more
66
and strive to be beautiful despite
the indifference of the day,
if only because no one else

is trying.
67

The People You Try Not To Look At
I awoke with the terror today

usually it comes and goes
with the night
but this morning it lingered

in the unmade bed
the dirty dishes
the bathroom mirror
and through the day it

dogged me, blooming
into the corners everything
I saw it in the man on the bus

and the woman in the grocery store
and wondered if they saw it

in me
some people you see

how the terror has taken
hold of them
and it will be all they know

for the rest of their days
68
these are the people
you try not to look at
most everyone knows the terror

more than they will say
at some point we made

a collective decision
not to speak of it
except in books
and poems
and other things we
cast aside
the young know the terror

only through stories
and the faces of the old
they don't yet believe
the rest of us go about

our lives as best we can
we lose ourselves in crowds

and pray it will not find us
let it take the others

69

let someone find a way
to save us.
70
71

Kesey, Dude
An hour after my last college final, I got a

job. I had no burning desire to pursue a
career in local television, but there I was,
shaking hands and becoming an
employee, before the diploma was even
in my possession. This was President
Reagan’s trickle-down in action. We had
entrusted the president with, in his words,
the stewardship of our dreams. And
apparently I would be cashing the
checks.
I joined a crew of other young people in

the production department of a TV
station, helping serve up the typical mix of
newscasts and talk shows for viewers of
Eugene, Oregon. We adjusted lights, and
operated cameras, and because I had a
sliver of radio experience, I was also
enlisted to do voiceover work. A slide of
the cast of MASH would appear on the
screen, accompanied by my peppy
tagline: “Hawkeye adopts a horse for the
4077th, with hi-larious results…tomorrow
night at 7, on KVAL-TV, Eugene!”
72
Jack Boulware —–––––––––––
Once a week the SPCA would bring in
dogs to be adopted, and we would film
the “Pet Of the Day” segments, with each
animal looking into the camera, hoping
for a better life outside the cage.
Sometimes a dog would get spooked by
the equipment, but there was never time
to calm it down and reshoot. So viewers
would see a terrified Cocker Spaniel
cowering behind a pair of legs, as a
cheery voice intoned, “This little guy’s
name is Rusty, he’s two years old, and he
loves children.” The crew would joke
amongst ourselves, “Well, Rusty’s going to
get gassed.”
My parents were ecstatic that I was

employed. I was miserable. Is this it? Is this
where I end up – fat and divorced, filming
pets and treating southwestern Oregon to
phrases like “The quest of ambition, the
passion of dreams, can be yours each
week…on Falcon Crest”?
I thought I wanted to be a writer. I read

lots of books. Or at least I owned lots of
books. I took creative writing classes. I
kept a boxful of journals. But I needed
73

some more input. Some influence from a
grander source, that would help me
make something of myself.
The flyers were all over Eugene: Ken Kesey

was to give a one-day writers’ workshop.
Kesey was the hometown hero. He grew
up across the river and had graduated
from the U of Oregon. My friends and I
were big fans of Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-
Aid book, and the hippie bus adventures.
But before his LSD clown career came
two brilliant novels. The classic One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published when
he was only 27. A New York Times
bestseller, written from the perspective of
an American Indian mental patient. In
1964 he followed that with Sometimes a
Great Notion, another daring work which
incorporated multiple points of view,
sometimes within the same sentence. Two
groundbreaking books, crackling with
energy, birthed in a strange little bubble
of history after the Beats and before the
hippies, mirroring a nation on the cusp of
mass confusion.
74
The film version of Cuckoo’s Nest was
pretty compelling, especially for a kid in
junior high. But I later discovered the
novels and realized Kesey’s characters
epitomized the West—loggers, Indians,
land developers, village drunks and
crazies. I was from this part of the country.
I could identify with all of it. By this time I’d
read some East Coast writers, like
Plimpton, Salinger, Updike. They were
really smart, but their books seemed like
dispatches from foreign lands. Too
neurotic, too much hand-wringing. That
wasn’t the America I knew.
Kesey hadn’t written any fiction in nearly

20 years. But still, this was my first
opportunity to hear an actual writer from
my side of the Mississippi.
I walked into the classroom and

immediately knew I’d made a mistake.
The seats were filled with Deadheads,
sporting their Guatemalan yarn hats and
little satchels decorated with beadwork. A
few were reminiscing about a recent
appearance by Kesey and Jerry Garcia
on the Tomorrow Show program with Tom
75

Snyder, and how hilarious it was because
the two were obviously totally stoned!
I had nothing against Deadheads. You

couldn’t. In Eugene, they were
inescapable. Even U of O professors wore
the T-shirts. You’d go to a house party and
the never-ending Dead soundtrack was
always on the stereo, with somebody
saying, “Yeah, this is a soundcheck from
Sweden, ’72…they played for four hours
before the show even started...” I liked
some of the music, and respected that
they carved out their own niche. But I
always wondered how a band could
have two drummers and still sound so
sloppy.
And I really had nothing against acid at

the time. I once went to the Oregon coast
with a few friends, tripping heavily, and
we discovered an injured seagull sitting in
the sand. We all crept up, wondering how
we could save this poor animal, this
innocent creature of God. Maybe its wing
was broken. Maybe another animal had
attacked it, and it was mortally wounded,
76
waiting to die. We knelt down to inspect,
and the gull looked at us, and stood up
and flew away, and blew all of our minds.
Acid was said to open doors, heighten

perception, strip away the ego and tune
you into the infinite oneness. My big acid
revelation? Birds are not always injured.
Kesey strolled into the room late, smiling

and wearing a dirty serape, sipping a
smoothie through a straw. The organizers
had collected stories from students, and
he read through a few of them, making a
few general comments, very simple
suggestions. It reminded me of an article I
once read about John Lennon in a
recording studio. He never tweaked a lot
of knobs. He would always make one
simple adjustment. The similarity made
even more sense when I realized these
were two guys who had both done a lot
of drugs.
Mostly, Kesey cracked a lot of jokes,

which the saucer-eyed Deadheads
devoured, sniggering as though the
whole experience was some sort of secret
satirical joyride. Nobody had any
77

questions or comments. But the
connection was amazing to witness. The
room was hyper-focused into Kesey’s
every mannerism, every aside. Even a
well-timed pause to sip the smoothie
would elicit a ripple of chuckles.
To my earnest little mind, it had fuck-all to

do about writing. I slunk out of the
workshop in disgust. Maybe I should have
gotten high. But then, I might not have
remembered anything at all.
I didn’t know what I wanted. I don’t

blame Kesey for coasting on his success.
Bestselling books, a Broadway play, a film
that swept the Oscars. Those are hard
acts to follow. Kicking back and making
Deadheads giggle would be a lot easier
than sitting in a room by yourself, writing
books. But I’m sorry. This was 1983. Elvis
Costello had released eight albums by this
time. What was up with all the hippie shit?
Having learned nothing, other than the

John Lennon similarity, I continued my
pathetic non-career for several more
78
months, working at the TV station,
sleeping with a few of the female staff
along the way. I performed sketch
comedy in biker bars. I scribbled in more
journals, wrote a couple of astoundingly
bad one-act plays. And suddenly, as it
often occurs to the young and the
frustrated, I realized I could just leave.
I gave up my studio apartment, which

overlooked a greasy dumpster behind a
KFC, and packed everything I owned into
a car. My last night in Oregon, the
production crew of the station threw me
a going-away party. The sun came up,
and then I said goodbye and drove to
San Francisco and got a job washing
dishes. In a way, I never would have done
it without Ken Kesey. So wherever you are,
sipping a smoothie in the great
psychedelic beyond, thanks for the
nudge.
79

If I Am Elected
My dear friends…
my beloved enemies…
beauty and truth fans…
spirit wrestlers…
people of the zero…
and all of you secret messiahs and
unknown avatars…
This is a perfect moment. This moment is a

climax of the most perfect anger I have
ever achieved. I have followed my bliss
and my bliss has revealed to me that I
must follow my rage.
At this moment I know with mystical clarity

that I would have to kill my own ego if I did
not begin to express my sublime rage for
those so-called leaders who have
appropriated the 13 Perfect Secrets from
the Beginning of Time and used them
against us.
But friends: You can help save me from my

anger. You can give me the right and the
privilege to control the uncontrollable. You
80
Rob Brezsny —–––––––––––
can command me to give in to my desire
to have absolute power… over myself.
Whoever you are… whatever beautiful

monster you have made into your god…
whatever media viruses you have invited
into your most intimate places… you can
decide right now to vote for me.
You can decide right now that you are

ready to change your lives… and change
your signs… and change your changing.
Because when you vote for me, you vote
for your own purified, glorified, unified,
and mystifying self.
If I am elected, I will teach you how to kick

your own ass and wash your own brain
before somebody nasty beats you to it.
If I am elected, I will show you in a million

ways why we should all be totally
opposed to all duality.
If I am elected, I will prove to you that

everyone who believes in the devil is the
devil.
81

If I am elected, I will reveal the secret
meaning of the fact that "stressed" is
"desserts" spelled backwards.
If I am elected, YA YA will be YA YA. YA YA

will not be NYAA NYAA.
If I am elected, the word "asshole" will be

used as a term of endearment rather than
abuse.
My beloved friends and monsters,

understand me or go to hell. I love you. I
love you, goddammit. I love you more
than I love you. And I'll prove to you how
much I love you if I have to ruthlessly
destroy my destructiveness in order to do
it.
This language prevents crime.

This engineering moves us to sing
These advertisements make us smart.
This rhythm frees all prisoners of
childhood.
It is high time for you and me to stop

colluding with the so-called entertainers
82
who are perpetrating the genocide of the
imagination. It is high time for us to stop
heeding the lies of the necrophiliac
journalists and the goddess-killing CEOs
and the criminally insane politicians who
are torturing the 13 Perfect Secrets from
the Beginning of Time.
Do you know how to tell the difference

between your own thoughts and those of
the celebrities who have demonically
possessed you? If I am elected, you will
know the difference beyond a doubt.
If I am elected, there will be a new bill of

rights. And the first amendment will be:
"Your daily wage is directly tied to the
beauty and truth and love you provide."
If I am elected, I will prove to you why it is

so important to the future of daffodils and
sea urchins and the jet stream that
childbirth be broadcast on primetime TV
on one of the major networks every night.
If I am elected, we will add an eleventh

commandment to the standard ten: "Thou
shalt not bore God."
83

If I am elected, when anchormen report
tragedies on their nightly TV shows, they'll
break down and cry and let their emotions
show. No more poker faces.
If I am elected, you and I will grow up to

be exhilarationists instead of terrorists.
Exhilarationists are tricky saints who steal
your pain and drive you insane with joy
and pleasure. Exhilarationists are brilliant
fools who break the rules to make you
drool with shocking delight and
outrageous beauty.
You are becoming very relaxed.

Your eyes are growing very calm.
All tension is leaving your body.
But you are NOT getting sleepy.
In fact, you have never felt more
awake and alive in your entire life.
You will obey… everything I don't say.

You will obey… everything I don't know.
You will obey… everything I forgot.
You will obey… nothing at all.
84
If I am elected, there'll be legal highs, not
legal lows… mystical science and logical
horoscopes. Compassion will be an
aphrodisiac, and I'll be a pyrokleptomaniac
-- with a compulsion to steal fire.
If I am elected, there'll be a magical realist

democracy, where millions vote for
ecstasy. April Fool's will come once a
week. Plutocracy will be a felony.
If I am elected, there will be seven

genders that can all marry each other.
The moon will be your father; the sun will
be your mother.
There'll be sacred shopping malls where

you can buy magic carpets and
waterfalls. Meditation will be taught in
schools. There'll be seven billion different
golden rules.
If am elected, advertising will be a terrorist

crime. And the national slogan will be
"Erotically ingenious, spiritually suave
workers of the world unite. Seize the
means of production and use it to abolish
all need for work." Who says you can't
have it all?
85

And get this: We'll have shamanic

doughnuts -- organic vegan low-fat
shamanic doughnuts -- that open your
third eye.
If I am corrected, rejected, infected

and perfected,
I will buy all the Pizza Huts in the world
and convert them into a global
network of menstrual huts -- where for
a few days each month,
every one of us, men and women
alike,
can resign from the crazy-making 9-5.
We'll drop out and slow down,
break trance and dive down
into eternal time.
We'll sleep nine hours every night

and practice our lucid dreams;
think with our hearts
and feel with our heads;
study the difference
between stupid, boring pain and
smart, fascinating pain
until we get it right;
86
wear wildflower crowns and magic
underwear
made of eagle feathers and spider
webs;
think up bigger, better, more original
sins
and wilder, wetter, more interesting
problems.
I'm the president now. And so are you! I

am the Psychic Judge of the Invisible
Government of Bloody Disneyland. And so
are you! I am the Sacred Janitor of the
United Snakes of Rosicrucian Coca-Cola.
And so are you! I am the Supreme
Teacher of permanent Orgasm! And so
are you!
And what we proclaim is that in the new

world we will love our neighbors as
ourselves, even if our neighbors are jerks.
We will never divide the world into Us
Against Them. We will search for the divine
spark even in the people we most despise,
and we will never never never
dehumanize anyone, even those who
dehumanize us.
87

If I am elected, every one of us will sooner
or later become a well-rounded, highly
skilled, incredibly rich master of rowdy bliss
-- an ecstatically compassionate
connoisseur of insurrectionary beauty --
with lots of leisure time and an orgiastic
feminist conscience.
Let me hear you say YA YA.

Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA.
Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA GA
GA.
Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA GA
GA MA MA PA PA HA HA.
88
89

Bail Out
or
The People Are Too Big To Fail
For the Libyan pilot who refused
to bomb his own people

A pilot has ejected, he rejected the
regime,
he’s floating in the air, a parachute
protecting him,
it’s downright paranormal, and his fighter
jet is going
on without him. He has bailed out of the
war machine
and hangs suspended by his principles a
mile above
the ground.
A parachute is fragile as a
flower or a
cloud, but it supports a man. It’s focused
on the human,
it’s a renaissance parachute, the lines are
like a poem
which can save your life.
The old
regime is losing its grip,
90
Steven Gray —–––––––––––
it’s showing what it’s all about when pilots
have been told
to bomb their countrymen, to cut them
into pieces on the
ground. The pilot is responding to a
higher authority,
instead of dropping a bomb he drops
himself – it is
another way to join the crowd. Instead of
acting like
a robot in a dictatorial cockpit, he is
landing
like a man and walks away. His fighter jet
will burn out
in the desert like a cigarette in a bowl of
sand.
91

Free Words
Spoken word and self promotion,

there’s a sound-wave locomotion
with the local yokels vocalizing,
words are volatile,
they are connected to the brain,
a neurological refrain,
it hits you like a lightning bolt,
it’s in your blood and the revolt
is running you. It’s hot and cold
inside my head, a sense of dread
connected to an empty bed,
demented though, as if he meant it
and the sidewalks have cemented
my relationship to city
living. The audacity
of everybody’s audio,
the poets saying adios
until they’re black and blue in the face,
a nervous nerve in outer space
and that’s where everybody lives
and I believe that it forgives
our sins. It is a scintillating
universe, a vacillating
destiny inherited
by virtue of unmerited
92
arrival through the vaginal.
Your ego is imaginal,
your magic subjectivity
can generate activity
that takes a lifetime to resolve,
I am revolving into something
else, and some of us are singing
in the graveyard, it is bringing
it all back home because you live
in your lungs. It gives you breathing room
and airy brain-waves I assume
and if the oxygen is making
you an airhead and you’re taking
liberties and think you should
be getting royalties I wouldn’t
disagree. Refine your voice,
your sins forgiven by the void.
You’re trashy and delusional,

the dizziness as usual,
the sound-effects are kind of cruel,
the human body is a tool,
it’s tuning up the intuition
as you walk into the ocean
or an uninhibited lake
with your libido on the make,
it takes a certain attitude,
we’re looking for some latitude
according to the laws of matter
93

and the purple light inside
a glass of wine, the smoothest ride
in town and all the intonations
of complete communication
when the poets get together
and the literary weather
can be dry or is it stormy
with no reason and the normal
folks are hit by winds and lightning
bolts and if they want to lighten
up they smoke a little weed
and later get back to the word,
feeling like they somersaulted
with a joint. It’s not their fault
if there are signals in the air,
an existential laissez-faire,
who needs a two-dimensional tension
when you have the fourth dimension
for expanding your persona,
it is filling up the phone.
But maybe it’s unrealistic

living in a long linguistic
dream, an old preoccupation,
could have had an occupation
but instead you were diverted
by the voices and the words
94
inside your head, a time-consuming
way of being where you’re zooming
in on the remote, I’m living
by remote control, it’s giving
me an air of being not all
there and then I hear the call
of nature.
The brain by definition
is a warp, a human heat wave
on two feet, a four
dimensional transparency, it’s more
than I can hold a candle to
and there are times that I can’t handle
it, but others have it worse,
incapable of writing verse,
their lives are such a bump and grind,
the turbulence inside the mind
like writing on a Muni bus
and every sentence is a bust,
the meanings are illegible
and so you’re getting kind of edgy
your mentality deflected,
your dimension disconnected.
Lost in space I feel more grounded

with a woman, lost and found
inside of her, a twilight zone
of estrogen, it sets the tone
for all of those misunderstandings,
95

but you come in for a landing
with a woman, and the earth
is moving. Maybe it isn’t worth it,
seeing your autonomy
eclipsed by her anatomy,
but life is like a woman bending
over and I know the ending.
96
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Q uiet L

© 2011 Quiet Lightning

art by Paul Madonna

edited by Evan Karp

Promotional rights only.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of

Your support is crucial and appreciated.

a monthly submission-based reading series

you have to commit to the date to submit

you only get 3-8 min

a bi-annual solicitation-based celebration

of local writers who inspire and make possible

William Taylor Jr.

All images from the strip All Over Coffee

Bless the tourists in their “Alcatraz Rocks!”

no matter how the love turns out.

“Scandalous,” the tourists said,

Even in our legends, angels come.

Enough with the apocalypse,

i thought you were built

i've only just remembered

they say there is violence

as if you & i hadn't both been gravity-

let me love you in olde english

there is a four poster bed in my chest

how 'bout Oklahoma. or Nebraska

because you & i? we have both

leave the tired to their ruts &

i don't want anything labeled,

i want slow motion;

i want the blister of handmade

& it's true that i've got

walk beside me.

i want to write your name in the dust

every violin that rosins

the way the gulpblossom

– the way the plums

i already know what my fossil will look like

if you’ve ever doubted

if you’ve ever woken

know that yes: topsoil

& there are other ways

pulled our tongues wet

the sting of salt

of their radio hits.

in its stride, the long

but slower somehow,

a cloudless blue flash

pocket watches leaned open

as if the deep yawn of autumn

If there was one thing all the residents on

Hark! Behold the headless virgin!

The ensuing morning, Mr. Dump drafted a

Because it’s true what they say: Some

When I was twenty-one years old, I got

Harrison's sister pulls back her hair to show

Harrison unfolds his palm. BUY MILK is

The doctor presses RECORD on the video

I'm jumping on the bed with my sister,

Harrison's son is jumping on the bed. His

Harrison tells his sister and her friend that

I know everything about everything,

She’s a teenager in his entryway when his

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