The Gate Near the Maze

[ryankilshannig]

Friends

You left her at the movie theater

She said in a 28 year old card you found in your parents house

And you remembered her vaguely

And remember the story 

What an asshole you were then

You looked her up

She’s a therapist

So is the other girl you looked up you hadn’t thought of

In three decades

And suddenly you realize that every girl you ever were involved with

Is now a poet, a therapist, a professor, another poet, another therapist, and yes more than two other professors

A couple are corporate lawyers

One notable highlight is an architect

Your best friend in college is a dentist

And you always thought you would get free dental work

But then she would be in your mouth

And that seemed both totally hot and totally gross

You think about all of these women in your life often

You know now not out of prurience or stalking

But because in that first letter you held tonight written on 

A napkin which she stuffed in your yearbook

In 8th grade

Was when you fell in love with a girl but then she became your best friend

And this happened over and over again

And you just wanted to be friends with women because

You hated your own sex

And they would talk to you all through the night

And who else would you want to be in the presence of

But a soft woman who laughs and listens, and is a better

Friend than any man has ever been to you

But now they are all gone

Because it’s just too complicated

And your feelings for them were never easy to explain

There was always lust and curiosity but you were usually

Pretty good about boundaries

But you don’t really trust yourself anymore

Because you’re just full of love and always were

And those women when you were growing up

Understood who you were

I want to thank all the women in my life

But especially tonight those that were my friends

And even if I haven’t seen you in decades

I still hold so much love for you

And you helped me become who I am

[ryankilshannig]

How Long the Vines

How Long the Vines

of time

reach here tonight

decades

but it seems like hours ago

I was with you

It was just the other side of waking

The poets like Newton are right

About time...

Angels fly in the ether

Like light in milk

But I’m out towards Neptune

It’s so cold and far

From what we were

I could be past Andromeda

Sitting on a moon around a planet

Around a star around a 

Rip in the velvet

Swirling in for what feels like forever

I’d probably drink 

And giddy I’d tell you about this moon

We are on for a moment

I’m sorry for so much gravity

What is so heavy about this?

Is what we say when we live and when we die

All this presence is a crush

The best weight

Light

[ryankilshannig]

March 10, 1986

DANDY STRIPER #19

James Dandy, a worker at a flag-making plant in southwestern Missouri, became the now-legendary Dandy Striper after falling into a flag dryer and had a flag imprinted on his chest.  The dryer, which utilized the now-outlawed carnicious acid, gave him the powerful smell of cheap cologne and the ability to control people’s actions by staring at them. 

Born to Kinnison Dandy and Betty Ross, James made money as a child by stealing “We Care” buttons from the IRS building and selling them posing as a spokesman for victims of victimless crimes.

At the time of his superhuman awakening he was 30 and on the verge of suicide.  His face, ruddy from the cold weather in southern Missouri, usually looked peaked and pale.  His knees had an uneven look and there was nothing between his toes. Nevertheless, James kept on living, hoping some day, Fate would choose him as a powerful piece -- not quite a rook, more like an inverted queen -- to manipulate others to achieve his own ends.

After James Dandy, now known as Dandy Striper, achieved his fame, there was a court battle into Captain America over infringement of copyright.  The pungent smell of his cologne forced the judge to dismiss the case.

Walking home from the hospital where he was absent-mindedly admitted by his mother for red, white and blue rashes, Dandy heard the word “Sea World” pop into his head.  For no reason, he flew to Paris and had lunch. Sea World was destroyed by SOIF (Save Our Imprisoned Fish) the next day.

After preventing muggings and burglaries in his own neighborhood through mind control, he decided he should develop his talents.  He taped Ronald Reagan speeches and replayed them to himself over and over again.  The flag on his chest grew brighter and more radiant with each listening.  After watching Rambo thirty times the flag could be seen through his shirt.

Reagan (James), a cattle farmer from eastern Delaware spread the word around about Dandy’s uncanny powers.  Newspapers ran stories on him -- [Dandy Striper] Defeats [Criminals With Uncanny Powers] 3-0, Sports Illustrated, among others.

Special Forces hired him as an anti-terrorist unit. His first assignment -- probably his most memorable (and only one) came when he was given orders to force an ordinary gang of people to become a radical environmental group, blow up their headquarters in Philadelphia, and blame it on the mayor.  All went smoothly until someone saw him putting pill-shaped objects into his mouth.

This prompted immediate drug-testing among all superheroes.  The Hall of Justice, home of the SHU (Superheroes Union) opposed this and went on strike.  Dandy Striper was dragged into a police headquarters and given a test. It proved positive -- for extensive Tic-Tac consumption. He was thrown in jail. In jail he was treated as a criminal  He was given flour to make his own bread, although the flour was frequently found underneath his nostrils. 

[ryankilshannig]

The Last Letters Ever Written

[ryankilshannig]

Night poem

Remember when you first saw the specter

That night you had poured one too many

And she had yelled at you for being lost

And you needed to drown the visions

But only to steel yourself the next day for

The empty classroom and the hallways

“Millions dead” on the drive there and back

The spectre all those tipples in

Seemed a dark vapor extending its

Mist upon the face of a map

This was the first time you saw the reaper

You knew Death was close

Its hot breath suspended across the city

Its fingers clawing at throats even then

While you knew to run

Most were transfixed by how delicious

An encounter they would have

In the lair of the invisible hypnotist

And they wait there still.

Run.

[ryankilshannig]

And just like that we were free

It had disappeared

Just like that

And we knew it was gone

By the smiles and the joy

We all felt at the same time

There were parties

And falling in love

And celebrations delayed

The long night of our soul

Was over and the dawn was fresh

And the sunlight danced on the dappled waters

That we danced beside

We all flowed that day

Into the sea together

Entwined and shining

This is a day so real I can kiss it

It is right

There

You can see it too

I know you can

So many left behind in the plague

But we must move on towards that day

When he is dead.

[ryankilshannig]

Where could she be. He had lost track in those months he spent obsessed with death and murder and mayhem. He knew she had moved to Brooklyn years back, but then he could not remember if she had moved again. She might not even be in the country. She could have been in the DR, visiting relatives, far away from this sickness.

But he knew the address where she had lived or at least he knew the building from sight. He had a rough idea of where it was in relation to the prison, and increasingly, alone in his cell, he had spent time praying, or picturing the alternative life he was living in another dimension, a father with a wife and daughter. Always they all lived in the mountains, where the air was clear and sharp, as sharp as his dreams increasingly were the more isolated he became.

The chaos was increasing, as the initial shock gave way to urge panic and despair, and he could feel the streets becoming more dangerous, more provincial, as the bonds between blocks, never strong, became non-existent. Many stared at the migrants venturing east away from the flames, many of them thinking about leaving themselves as the fires continued unabated, but still now protective of their clapboard two-family. With each block he passed he could sense the suspicion of the outsider increasing, and estimated that tomorrow at this time, if the flames had not cleansed his area to the foundations, the streets would be barricaded and defended by the irradiated residents who remained.

Nightmare. It must be a nightmare, he thought, because why were some dazed, their eyes hollow and sunken, and why were some screaming uncontrollably. The gap between this gave everything the texture of fantasy.

This world is an illusion, he thought, and this belief got him through the next few blocks of fear and misery. He stopped seeing the pain of others and in the din of howls and wails and noises unnatural he walked on through the smoldering cityscape, searching for a person who he was certain did not want to see him.

[ryankilshannig]

Where can we see bluebirds

I asked her at the end

But we didn’t know

It was so close to

Midnight

So we thought

We might still dance again

[ryankilshannig]

What is bullfrog song

I asked her at the end

But it was very late

And the answer never came

I have waited all my life

To hear the solution to the mystery

Of its low boom

Tearing apart the sky

And now it’s here

Dazzling and dead

[ryankilshannig]

When it started you allowed yourself the conceit

You could and would escape it

Because you were hunted by a dumb predator

Which multiplied inside its prey

And as long as you could control

Your distance from those who fell

You were going to be safe

Now four months on

Tired of paddling

Through a featureless seascape with no end in sight

You wonder if the voices of surrender

And the voices that say there was nothing to run from in the first place

Those sirens calling you to the rocky island

Who offer you honey and wine

Their warm eyes

Lashes dripping in the summer sun

Call to you to rest

And lay down your burden

You wonder if perhaps

A stop in port for a moment

Wouldn’t be so bad

The predator is not at all dumb

But omniscient because it knew

Before you started out that it

Would come to this

You exchanging your lungs for a moment

Of honey and wine fed to you

By a fanged maiden

Now less than six feet away

[ryankilshannig]

Mo & Vanessa

On graph paper, they had counted the "uhs" their history teacher made during his fascinating presentations on the Reformation, and had penned exquisite corpses, both poetic and illustrative, on their desktops during the Crusades. Mo knew that the world of that classroom was likely a time out of time, a precious series of moments where their differences in religion and culture were irrelevant, and that it would have to come to an end in the spring, but as the semester went on, and the air grew warmer and fragrant with the scent of magnolias from the grove at the entrance to campus, and as they cheated off of each other on exams and had to cover for each other when accused, their entanglement grew knottier and more breathless, so that the humming pit in his chest he felt when awaking jubilant at dawn to the sound of his mother quartering chickens in the restaurant's kitchen below, a flutter created by the anticipation of his entering the sacred space of History 4 at 11:25am, became almost unbearable.

In May, the blossoms fell and made a bed on the front lawn of Maplewood High, and the semester hurtled toward a climax or sputter, and Mo felt like crying every time he entered History 4, and she would feel it, too, her dark eyes always finding him in the halls between classes, her mischievous smile always enough to crush his plans.

During a late May fire drill - or rather an actual alarm after someone pulled the emergency lever - they had huddled under his jacket in the light spring rain, and she had pressed her breast against his arm while playing Tetris on his flip phone, he was sure deliberately, and he had brushed her sandalled foot with his Reebok, and he wanted to just swoop in and kiss her right there, under the dripping flowers, but students were all around, judging, many of them the same jocks who might at any moment taunt him, forcing him to get into a fight he didn't want to have that would poison that moment.

But the school gym was dark the next day for the spring dance, and in the corner, where the Goths hung out, high as kites, he ran into her, and wordlessly they held each other's hand and danced slowly to Enya, and she put her head on his shoulder, and he smelled her chestnut hair, redolent of cigarettes and coconut conditioner, and he realized he was completely in love with her.

So it became a summer of sneaking around from his family's chicken restaurant to her family's chicken restaurant the next town over. His code name for her was Vincent, after a friend he knew lived in the town, and after the lunch shift behind the register, he would ride his bike to a forgotten park where they would meet and spend the summer afternoons until dinner. On some occasions they would take public into Manhattan, and visit a museum or Central Park, although the excursions were less cultural than flagrantly pubescent and urgent, and the anonymous expanses of the metropolis gave them plenty of places where their hands and bodies could wander without surveillance.

The school year began again -- their senior year -- and most of the class knew of their romance by this point, and most of them knew his family was definitely not cool with it. They finagled their way into the same physics and gym classes together, but it wasn't the same as those hours in History 4, and when she took him aside after their runs around the track, on a Wednesday in October, and told him she was pregnant, he knew that their love was coming to an end. He also knew that he was about to enter a long and difficult period in relation to his father, and while he knew this conflict was an inevitability given what he wanted and what his father wanted, he never wanted open warfare in the family. But it got him to thinking about war. War in another theater, far away, could deliver him both from the battles at home and the battles he was going to need to fight with Vanessa over his unborn child.

[ryankilshannig]

We were good people but somehow we lost our way and if we are true to ourselves we will admit we knew we were losing our way as we lost it. We knew we were going down and embraced that fall. We did nothing special to stop it. The road opened to us and we liked that it led to a land of pity.  The darkness was comforting.  You can’t see in the dark.  You can’t be blamed when you step on a body.

[ryankilshannig]

Jersey City

He held up a fistful of masks, extending them in her direction.  She had never met the man, but his eyes looked trustworthy.  She pulled the boy into the hall and towards the man.

"You leaving?" He asked, muffled. "My wife is sick, but I don't have a way to get her out."

She remembered that she had an old wheelchair that her father had used before he passed away.  It was his apartment that she lived in with the boy, jobless.  Papa had been gone two years.

She put the mask on the boy, and then another on herself.  She went back to the apartment and dug the chair out of the closet. The masked man was effusive with thanks.

Soon, the four of them were in the street.  The man, whose name was Julio, pushed his wife.  She looked very pale and carried a bucket.  They followed the procession in silence.  Hardly anybody talked.  If a conversation was struck up, others scowled and sneered from beneath their shawls, as if to say there was nothing you could talk about anymore that would do any good, which would help anything, which would assist in this hellscape.  All was lost.  Everybody shut up.