"A lot of it was stumbling around in the dark, honestly."

  "Honestly," the other woman assured everyone.  

  In considering whether or not to live in a neighborhood some work friends had come for a weekend.  There was the opportunity to eyeball, ogle only! some antiques.  The shopping ladies were raring to go.  The men were pawing around in the kitchenette hungry bears.  Finally a gangly kid, all tube socks and soccer cleats, braces and cooler, another woman was delft about where everything goes.  She was going to repack it in their family vehicle, but then thought out loud, "I'll just rinse it out here." She unscrewed the lid and all the orange wedges prepared for the game were in there.  

  What's this?

  Down below the bakery, someone held up a strange garment and asked.  It wasn't exactly below the bakery but old world seamen called any place closer to the water than them down.  Down East thar, the son of an "old worlder" imitated the way "they talk".  But the father took it as mocking or being mocked, took the tall boy out on a three-step stoop and backhanded him in the face.  This caused all age kids to run out from resting around the house to parts unknown.  

  The man straightened the bent screen in the fly door and it became obvious why he tried, since the Mrs bean gone, kids running all over the place, WHAP! guy nailed a fly to the counter with a dozen or so others.

  Us visitors looked at each other but quickly recovered composure and looked around nonchalantly.  A kid even started whistling.  "Drop the act and I'll tell you what you need to know." It felt like we'd been fly swatted.  "Who do do you?"

  "We're here to see about

  "You vant to adopt them?"

  A ceiling fan on a slant made a ticking sound.  One of the ladies put a hand on a stool to smoothly sit down but the group decided, not staying, so foot quickly blocking stool sit.  "I'm on blood pressure medication and due at hospital soon."

  "What time?" One of the women looked at a specific watch, a knock off of a rare piece, designed to let an antiques dealer know what interests.  The person either didn't notice or didn't care to sell.  The woman walked about four feet from the island to scrutinize "a coppah".  A man pulled a folded newspaper from a picket and pointed at a specific ad announcing metal objets in a sundry of offerings.  All prices negotiable.  But when they pointed and read aloud each category in the listing and then turned the paper to the person to ask if this still available, person can't see a thing without spectacles.

 

Yes we have no bananas

  And yes we had a gas crisis.  But we also had interior crisis in redundancy of duty.  That made support sometimes sparce, sometimes overflow.

  It's part of why we doubled down on work and flow charts and increased the personal security realm in our lives.

  It was also how so many children inadvertantly became the missing links in story and the Laurel and Hardy version of getting ready for that.

     "That's OBVIOUS"

  THE MILITARY PERSON didn't have time for complicated explanations

  "But, but

  what with warheads on the move and something slimey having been not teleported using

  "Our equipment

  "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY???!!!!"

  It was again time to sit in the cookie jar and no please necessary.  As a foreigner with passaporta locked up in a hotel safe had to sit, hands in sight, all people in situation were sort of rounded up.  More than one dog did too, sit. And there was intense argument about language.  "Rounding up for instance, makes some people uncomfortable."

  The "facts" here are making me uncomfortable.

  Orders came to loop.

  "But I have to

  "A german-shepard sniffing nut sack would have me staying Mr."

  Quiet down while we get this sorted out.  Everyone.

  "Why are these children soaking wet?"

  "And....dripping on this?"

  "Give it forward." The maps were not passed.

Me, I

  I knew after undergrad and before grad school.  Actually I "got it" as a dead body was falling out a window and all those people in where the body fell out from were thinking they were each and together above the law.

  I closed that door--start career in NYC.  And it wasn't long before I got writing work on a paper in Vermont.  That was a cool job.

   From the truck stop we'd picked up a passenger who'd crammed his tall self into the backseat with us.  We started to head back.  My Dad was not talking as much as he was thinking on things.  While it seemed like a lot was going on all around us--Mom not getting run over, Mom having had a good visit with her family, the kids safe in his car with him, and God, our God, going to trump the circus--all of which Mom got out of him as if he was Eeyore reluctant to cross a bridge over a flooded stream--there was sanctuary in family.  Sherry smelled Grandma Pearl's Hymnbook and smiled and teared up at the same time.  Smells like Grandma.  She passed it around for everyone to smell.  The passenger reeked of alcohol so we just passed it around him.

  Then Mom and Dad reiterated what was really good about their life together so far.  Holding hands on top of the hymnal.  Mom tapping Dad's hand--I love you, Dad squirming his thumb free to press on hers--fight?!  You wanna fight?!  Letting Mom press her thumb over his--the winner!  "Only 'cuz I let you."  They were really grounding each other midstream in ongoing conversations on hold in the moment.

  Dad was caving on moving.  Mom was holding back on big news.  It seemed like everytime she was going to announce it, there was more political stuff to deal with, or it was time to eat, or they were being asked advice--always being asked for their opinion.

  As we got back to the dark with pollution skies of New York, I was thinking how much freer I felt in the country.  But the farm on Mom's side of the family was really gone from us.  Mom and Dad had worked through tears and laughter about being more of an island unto themselves than ever.

"That's 'them'

   not 'us'.  A mad dash to sign up voters and make it "home" had been underway.  To the accusation that democrats have more fun, in part because of "star power" and dancing, my father had been introduced to Rock Hudson, no one knew what day it was.  

  The other old guys waved from a pick up truck.  The rest area was kind of quiet on the backside where people were meeting up to travel on for work.  Traffic on the highway was moving at a good clip.

  A semi did not honk for people to get out of the way.  And it was driving too fast through the area first one way then the other.  The old guys waved at Rock, Come on, then looked more seriously worried.  Pointing at watch, time to go, big lips dramatizing, go, go, now the other one couldn't get the dramatic one to roll down the window.  

  People standing around started commenting on the semi truck driving crazy.  Mama was half way out of the station wagon, honey, HONEY.  She was trying to let him know her money that she couldn't find had been found.  She put her travel money in one of her purses and told one of the boys to bring it to Dad.  He flat out said "No." She got out and was going to go around the front of the car but the strap got caught on the mirror and it jerked her backwards just as the semi came roaring past.  She kind of fell into sitting on the ground.  Dad and Rock got horrified looks on their faces because it looked like the semi had crashed into her and took her off with it.  Other people got in front of the section of rest area where we were and frantically waved for the truck to STOP, STOP!  It breaked hard and skidded to a stop.  And the driver was pulled out of the driver's seat to boos and idiot and you could have killed someone.

  We had a passenger on the way back.  Tall skinny guy like my Dad.  He smelled like alcohol so Mom let us keep the window seats and Dad could see him in the rearview mirror because he was sitting in the middle.  He had a lot on his mind but he wasn't confused.  Our parents were young parents and so early in life had become good advice givers but God's in charge.  The passenger sort of told his story without details, private person, like us, but the gist of his headache was having a lot of opportunity.  Happens at a certain age, my mother took any chance she got to hint to the boys that life was going to get better.  

  The guy had pressures on him not because of his Dad but because of his Dad.  And because stepping up has unforseen risk.  My Dad launched into his what is life without risk, communism lecture.  But unlike with us, the passenger's eyes did not glaze over.  The big guys got kind of fired up.  And all the running around connecting with other Republicans made more sense in the sense of people wanting to protect rights.  And those rights not being just important to colonials but to real human beings in contemporary times.  My Mom suggested prioritizing.  Him and my Dad picked family and work.  And as for seeming selfish in some ways, and putting self first, God will show you.  If you let Him, God will show you everything.  Even what to do.  Sherry did pass around Grandma Pearl's hymnbook because it smelled like grandma.  Living in New York was far from her grandparents and she was always missing them.

  By the time we got back to the city, the big guys wanted a drink.  Mama Sherry was being "shy" about a "romantic date".  

  "We already did dating; or did you forget?!"

  "Dinner and dancing!  Sounds like a date to me!" The middle brother got excited.  Some old place the bands are trying to bring back to life.  Dad checked it out.  Our passenger had to drain the dragon, he elbowed our mother like slapping a buddy on the back.  Mom quickly covered the closest kid's ears.

  Too late?!  Grunts and guffaws, lugging amplifiers into place, some ha-ha's and a HA-HA-HA.

  "Just getting started." A server almost tripped, "Gaawd".  A man's face reddened and he got on hands and knees to de-bump the rug covering cords and plugs.  He tried to grab her ankle, she shoed him away.  He dramatically pulled himself up the microphone stand, check, check.  Lame jokes about no checks here, and waiter, waiter I'll take a rain check, put everyday of the week on the top of mine.

  Our mom tried some non-alcoholic drinks.  And settled on Coca-Cola.  Even when Dad ordered a bottle of wine she didn't really drink that.  The music got going and us kids were up and down to dance and socialize and to determine that Mom hadn't told Dad yet.  So then we were dropping all kinds of hints and trying to get them to sit close so she'd have the chance.  People dressed much fancier than us were filling up the place.  A gorgeous woman asked our table in her thick accent, "Have you seen Donald?"

  "Who?"

  "MY boyfriend.  I'm going to kill him."

  Shoulders shrugged.  "We're busy here," the middle brother told her.  

  Mom blushed.  Dad's face was all red from having to drink all the wine.  Our questioning him about what do you think this is about were kind of drowned out by the music.  A waitress was hanging near our table and even she got it, so whisper asked Sherry, "Are you pregnant?". Daddy looked at Mom and Mom looked at all of us, and said, "Why yes, I'll have another!" And then did a little smile to Dad.  "Another Coke?" Dad asked.  The waitress spoke to the band as to our request, their wedding song.  Then she came back and said, "Let's start a congo line before the fast music stops." People fell in.

  Obnoxious sounds, it was agreed upon as description.  Bands and the crime in the streets was typical late night in the area.  And while our family was trying to share and relay the good news in the Congo line, others were weaving in and out as if it were a fence.  Someone tipsied and spilt some alcohol near the cords of the amplifiers and was rather gruffly pulled from the leg-kicking and always does circle boring dancing.

  Gun shots real close by and supposed-stars toasting with a chalice at a nearby table had all good family people laying low until we could get off the street.  And in daylight we were leaving.  Some of the big guys in new shirts for the wine and spit up stains.  I was looking at the sidewalk kind of mental journaling where I was and when everyone started walking I was following the Donald guy thinking it was Dad.  My Dad was like, "Lara!  That's them, not us."

Something dreadful

   There was something dreadful in the sky.

  Through the rained on screen.  Dreadful.  Half cloudless blue, half storm.  The sun hitting the sludge of airborne and the possibility of better days.  More frightening was the in between.  A heartpounding awareness of self in a raw and wild world.

  All that in an embroidered flag on a shirt.  The shirt hanging without it's human on the back of a chair.  And the chair not where it goes.  The dreadful like a sap or a marrow, not our lifeblood, but just as necessary.  A two-dimensional American.  Right and wrong.  Easy smiles and warm handshakes a thing of the past.

  For now, our parents had said of the truth to that.  There were too many people not on the same page.  A dreadful silence.  No one knew anything for sure anymore.  "It's not like the old days," my father made an obnoxious clap to rouse people from a prayer and sitting around.  The men, our men, were the firsts.  Like standing on high diving boards in "speedoes", be ready, but not able to, not allowed to know what's below.  Seperate but the same.  Not the same but seperate.

  The enemy was everywhere and our togetherness in Country being hacked like bodies taken hostage, taken prisoner, just taken, took, but that was a long time ago, thin air; mentions into coded language quickly, curtains ruffling, hideous not on the run.

  Awful.  Something dreadful in gaining on us and being asked, But where did they get the money?  Memories of being robbed and thugged and raped and knifed and shot would flit behind dulling eyes.  Having happened to one person, So what?  Not quite able.

  To fend off.  To save.  To yell.  To declare.  To DO.  So obscura was our patriotism.  So sorry, sometimes managed.  Revelations were a sharing of lipstick and snatching it back, a from such-and-such a place too, and I didn't mean to upset you.  The don't talk to them they're not from our parish went hand in hand with MINE, ALL MINE.  Like we'd had our nation stolen from us, couldn't say, and were pretending "something/something else" in a meantime that might never end.

  Or we might end before we "get back to normal", the scenario on the whole with regards nation fueled talk of "armaggeddon"--one of the first battles of the great and ultimate schism between

  Dawning of the age of terrorism

  What does it say, not say to be now in age of extremism?

  "Well dial "M" for murder girl, because those ones didn't make it," A male steward warned of the dead bodies left aboard as an "invisible force" speeded and speeded and speeded up flight times.  "Natural causes?"

  "What's natural?"

  I'm not touching that and throw your caution to the wind were forced phrasing, went with y'all are nuts in this neck of the woods, but a madness had taken root everywhere.  

  Laundry backed up and backed up and then "checked out" people, on automatic pilot caught up and caught up only to not really need change of clothes.  Fresh shirt!For what?!

  A general listlessness as shield to ongoing, seemingly unstoppable blitz and run.

  People tossed patriotic symbol objects at people singing Glory, Glory.  People spit.  People pretended.

  "We have to go, it's already paid for." Promotions were replacing coupons like coupons had replaced bonds.  All the paper milling all the trees and factories pulping familiar surroundings couldn't keep up with the Jones's.  "It's there, you just can't see it," a fashion-laden woman tried to explain of being bankrupt but not really.

  Desperate, the man narrated.  "What's your excuse?"  For vacation?  "For not digging your fellow countrymen out of this shit hole?"

  "Did you look at her?"

  "I saw YOU LOOK at her!"

  Throat-clearing on the airplane's PA, Ladies and Gentlemen

  "Not here.  Not now."

  "Will you just

  "Please.

  " Just shut the

  A scuffling.  Here we go again.

  "Might have to land it ourselves again."

  "That's not funny.  Mr. Marshall."

  "If you say so Mrs. Marshall.  I think it's a hoot."

  "You can't make this shit up," another man shook the newspaper and then refolded it.  "Chew this," gum was being passed around.

  After ground taxi-ing, bumper car style "maneuvers", I put my trust in God not THIS shit, but everyone's on their OWN with that now, since when?  My kids want to know too.  "Since God only," peoples' bodies lurched forward despite seatbelted "knows, for real? in reality".

  "Just go limber, like this" a man demonstrated what to do if and didn't spill one drop of drink while looking like a piece of seaweed, really!

  "That's when they slit their throats?"

  "Were they sitting like seaweed or

  People stood up.  Others squashed themselves into window seats.  "Can I sit on your lap?" Kids asked.  People in the aisle took subway stances as the planes not so subtlely raced each other to take off.

  Glossy mags and branduniforms were dictating script but there was no short description of reality when asked, "How was the flight?"

  People with mixed emotions looked at other countries' airlines' representing in airports and whispered I think we're getting the short end of the stick.

  "I know what I'm gonna do," the little girl had taken all the pillows from "our rooms" and piled them near the sheet of glass window and air conditioner.  "NO. We'll do it my way," a mother and brother pointed their thumbs at themselves, re-enacting the most up-to-date real talk about terrorism (just one of the words we weren't supposed to say per censorship).

  "What are you doing?"

  "Same thing as at home."

  "What's the point of this????  Any of it?!"

  "God, our God, must have His reasons."

  A hallway of flipflops.  "Take note."

  "Of what?"

  "Other peoples' customs."

  "Throat slitters are NOT people."

  "What are they?"

  Evil

  "We're chasing our tails."

  Gaudy glassware.  An old fashioned.  Tire tread goldware.  Two, gulp, two fingers, gulp.  "Shirts."

  "No, we're not, we're chasing you.". Handcuffed to a barstool.

  "How's it going gah, can't call you gentlemen anymore."

  A firm bodied, full bodied, waitress made a lioness sound, "Animals," a winkwink.  Another slammed a tray.  Chaos.  Running.

  Running wait running WAIT running FOR CHRIST'S SAKE panting when I say STOP, YOO, a chest poke, gotta heave stop.

  Why?

  Maps pulled, ripped out of, drawn from pockets.  "That's NOT Disney."

  "Toto?"

  A raindrop trounced the spot overlaid on the different maps.  A man in layers of outfits, landscaper, workman, laborer approached.  "Passport." The man, "No speakah englush." 

  "What's in there?"

  "Aqui?"

  Sweatshirt pockets lumpy.  Took a step backwards.  Men behind, men squaring.  The laborer turned out pants pockets, rabbit ears.

  Pedestrians streaming past, nobody really seeing not normal day.  Gun metal, funny shape.  "Okay, then," handing the scroungy wallet back.  "Do you know," real slow speaking, "How to say plaster in Ola?"

  "Plastica"

  Dyno-MITE

  HOLE

  SMELLS LIKE ssssssshhhhh the sea

  Yeah it does, but which one?  And that, he turned and showed off his son to other men who'd caught up, still doesn"t explain the rapid time change.

  It was an electrocution.

  Mouths dropped.  Fathers' hands on sons' shoulders.  Wait staff stuck in place on HOTHOT tile floors was a "clue".

  Are those real palm trees?

  Real explosives, watch where your walking, a big man shove with Tootsie hips.

  Lemme see that.  DEATH CERTIFICATE, ELECTROCUTION.

  "THEY GAVE YOU THIS?"

  "THEY'RE ANGRY."

  Again and again, Americano phases of the new world had us all in congo lines, skirting the circuses, sealing remnants of evidence and our sanity in place, and retrieving loved ones.  Above ground we were all a mix of missing in action, prisoners, held for ransom, "criminal", and running for our lives.  The tides and airways had brought and taken away dozens of times and then hundreds of times and then thousands.  Until it felt like we were 50/50: friend, fiend, and foe.

  It was and it wasn't about "the junk".

  I pulled on Big Butt's hoola skirt.  He'd worked his fears into blubbering.  Blubbering and grunting and decrying the smell, that smell.  When he had taken the lead he'd said, "You can tell me anything," but then he was even sweating from his eyeballs and as more and more of us started telling him stuff he had to keep saying, "except that, except that."

  A woman had been to the bodega for the last time to fill her straw purse with chocolates.  "Give these," a fistfull, "to those guys."  "On a mission?" "Yes child."

  "Go," she said quietly to her perfume and wristwatch and me, then grabbed my shirt pretending to be angry at him "For what?" Not important when you're married you'll understand

  They were and were not children, pointing.  Up on some rocks as they'd been on the highways' ledges and in the trees and on top of tables and desks and in our lighthouses.  The headlines might have read (but our real banners were put away for safe-keeping), Man falls, crowd gathers and points everywhere else.

  Picking us off, forging gulf stream paths, filming

  How we grieve, TAKE ONE

  Pinworm water and malaria, sweats and vibes, the threads of our flags worn like wedding rings and earrings. ..I finally yanked on the dried leaves of his skirt reasoning it wasn't an apple and we're not Adam and Eve.  We'd had the special training.  But just in case the butt wasn't as modern I started handblessing the scene like I was a blessing priest at go in peace to love and serve the Lord.  It was too late for any of us to unsee.

  Silent screaming at each other.  Coming at us from both directions.  "Get in the hole." The rifle bone barrel was in the hand of a Confederate.  "Make a movie of your stay," the advertising sign said.  "Okay.  Let's do that.  Come on kiddies, let's get in the hole."

  "Shall we?" A rifle poke in butts prompted all of us to ask a boney bride.

  Out Westwest it had been tightrope walking inside the five inches of tar between increasingly reflective road paint.  Trains, miniature and jumbo, rounding us up.

  

  It's unfortunate, it's what happens.  People don't know how to word things and even if we manage, the issues are flames right now.  So instead of someone saying what's wrong (hey did you know Haiti imploded and it was unregulated...like a lot of prisoners just leaving their nation) and having ways, rational ways to deal with what's going on (homelessness for ex) the energies just fan the flames.  

  It's sad.  And it always feels scary.  But American officials sort of surround aflame even while administrations transition.  So people my age know to stay safe.  And don't be a criminal.  The Laws are not on fire.

   At first it can feel weird, the freedoms and protections of the U.S. Constitution.

  Just like feeling grimed by war and crime and addiction, true freedom manifests a real bunch of feelings.

  This morning I remembered when some jet sounds brought a feeling of dread then awe then exhilerating pride in nation.  I could feel it even more than a marching band all through my body.  I wanted my God to "see" it too!  To know, some of us in a little nation got as close as we could to forging something that wins because it's a winner!

  "Mixed emotions" can be an understatement when it comes to politics.  The world battled an evil that not only oppresses but can change people into that.  The U.S. and its Allies fought forms of hate and abuse with forms of freedom and responsibility!

  Awesome!

  "We don't have their answers."

  Awesome!

  "Best we can do is dis-entangle!"

  Awesome!

  The Constitution still works.

  Totally awesome!

  Not all causes find support in the Constitution but the Constitution may support your cause.

  Huh

  A lot of us were explaining this stuff to family and friends.

  I put the Constitution in my briefcase and headed to the City.

  "I'm here!"  I knocked on the apartment door.

  "Good morning Miss Secretary."

  "Good morning Mr. uh, what's your last name?"

  "You can call me Mr. S."

  "And where is my desk?"

  He was just slightly taller than the doorframe and his arm slung over the door opened it further.

  He had a genie scarf over his hurt hand.  Hurt bad but didn't need kisses.  Not that kind of booboo, more like wounded pride.

  "What first?  I don't type very fast but I'm a decent person.  And um, I can write!"

  "Oh!  You can?!" He held up the wounded hand, "I can't."

  I straightened up the matches and ashtray and pens on the desk.  He brought the phone far from the wall and put it on the desk and straightened it to the desk edge.  Saw my eyes seeing past, present, and future all at once.  I threw one of the pens just slightly out of reach.  The scarf slid back some

          Handcuffs !

  He stayed turned away slightly.  Kept his eyes on me and I on him.  

  He reached towards a restaurant tray table.  I opened and slammed the top drawer of the desk.

  He turned towards me and put a lanky finger up to his lips, Ssssssshhh.  The genie scarf fell further away from the handcuffs.  

  The bed sheets started to move!  I hadn't really seen the bed.

  "Are you a CRIMINAL Mr. S?"

  "Why?"

  "Because I'll put YOU under citizen's ARREST."

  He pulled a really big shirt off the tray stand.  "If I was," he gulped, "A criminal," he put bare feet into shoes and an arm, the arm, into the shirt sleeve, "I wouldn't tell you."

  "I'd find out."

  A lady's arm reached from under the sheet and blindly searched the nightstand.

  It's in the drawer dear.  Dearie.  Drearie.  My brother is my brother too.  The man mumbled, chewed on a cigarette.  When he gingerly shoved a second foot into his second shoe (if they were his shoes) he oooooo'd a wince.  We were brothers once before, he reasoned aloud.  He suddenly stood up straight.  Hadn't seen his belt taken by the hand from the nightstand.  A giant, turning head at the bed, at the desk, silence holding the stillness still.

  "What should we write?"

  "I'm the secretary today."

  "Make a phone call for me, will ya, Miss Secretary."

  "Not 'til you tell me if or if not you're, a criminal.  Keep in mind I don't want you to be one."  He considered this as he flattened some hair on his head.

  "How old are you?" He asked the bed sheets.  But I answered too.

  Eight

  Teen

  "Eighteen huh?"

  "How would I call someone?"

  The lady's hand pulled and pulled, wrapping the wire around a fist, then yanked.

  A newspaper came flying into the room under the door.  He stomped a foot on it, then said, Ooowaah.

  "I'd find out in the newspaper!" I tried to get it but he leaned on it harder.  Suddenly my head was like a basketball in his palm.  I ran as hard as I could but he pushed me backwards to arm's length.  "I'll find out anyway," I panted.  "How's that?" He turned me like a dial and scooted me back to the desk.

  Cross armed Huuuuumph sat.

  "Call your mother."

  "No."

  "I said call your mother little girl."

  "You call yours!"

  "That's not a bad idea, but," he stooped and picked up the treaded newspaper.  He picked it up with both hands then handcuffed but like it was a cat by its tail or something that stunk.  "I can smell it from here," he plopped the paper on the desk.

  "Move."

  "Did you look in all the drawers?"

  No answers.

  He read the newspaper like my brother ate cereal with milk or like PopPop said not to drink lick-or.  Then he opened a drawer with his good foot and plunked the paper into it with his teeth.

  "I'll still find out."

  "HOW?!"

  "I'm really a detective-reporter!"

  "But you answered the ad for secretary."

     Across town....

  Rosemary the secretary followed a rushing in, late my Dad to his office.  

  "Oh, don't slip on your banana peel Mr. Lane!"

  My father stepped over it.  Then before he opened his office door, he stopped.  Went back to the banana peel and looked at it.  Then asked the secretary quiz-ically, "Did I drop that there?"

  "You sure did Mr. Lane."

  He picked it up and dropped it into his briefcase.  The secretary gently put her hand not holding his cup of coffee over her eyes.  Then waved him back towards the office.

  "Good morning Mr. Lane."

  "Good morning Mr. Lane."

"It's not about who you know"

   An old mother told the boys.

  Sea gulls reminded over oceans.

   Because so many people were doing double-duty and moonlighting and the "upper echolons" had become a pie crust, it was easier for foreign ranks to take a bite out of the apple.  That wasn't helping take a bite out of crime, and there were some funny later episodes of people arresting themselves, representing themselves, warbling words of what they'd like to do--how can it be a crime if it's not a war?

  In reality it was a quicksilver amount of time it wasn't anything, all of us "one world" and then it was an important seperation of national law.

  A bunch of us did skits, song and dance, in the meantime--while things were being aligned more appropriately to "east-west" and datelines, etc. TO: explain things like sharia law--not exactly the same as American (English) Law, so, no grammar school kid you can't do that here....but I'm a pharoah!  Yeah, yeah and I'm Santa Claus

  The Don't Tread On Me symbol was better than being "turkush"; some of the skits, especially about rollerskates, were all the more funny because of real world experience.  But even the older "veterans of Broadway" were limited to wearing one costume at a time.  Sulkie scarves and glittery ingots had to suffice as file folders and safe deposit "boxes" that "couldn't" say etc.

  Ticket takers and coat checkers, smacked of old world so some modernized and customized to stand out from the crowd--shared debt.

  Be unique!

  If we'd put all the legal paperwork of us all together it would make a pyramid up to the moon, so

  Some citizen legal stuff had to get expedited.  It was like a chess game when everybody had to get all legalimate.  But, alas, even presidents who aren't military commanders have to be citizen court processed.  If they were military they'd have to go through military court stuff too.  People were learning a lot about legal stuff.  And not everybody could afford lawyers and court stuff.  Kids used the "buddy system" to keep each other out of trouble!  But grown ups had to stand alone in front of judges.  A lot of relationships got re-worked because of trying to stay afloat.

  We also, as a nation, started to figure way with "secrets".  It was like turning our clothes inside out to get honest again, to feel un-quagmired in all the hard, awful, tragedy of warring.  We needed to be winners again.

  We carried on with processes, especially for like not drinking, moving past being prisoners of the past (course we had to find balance to so much "free"), doing things solid.  And some parents thought we had some good ideas.  We could put all our good ideas together!  We got permission to try.  And got scooched out of private meetings and speciality "support groups".  But then we'd come together as individuals for holidays and events.  Some of us with "art" and "craft" and "story".

  Everyone felt not "dirty" but covered in the grimes of warring.  Talk shows on TV tried to hold a "popular" sway between "reality" and...

  People were free to define self again, so there was a lot of style and personality going on.

  '77, hmmmm, seashells, souvenirs, southern charm and subtle swipes like gag gifts from Spencer's and passed along potholders.  Some people were blinded by the light, others by reading smaller and smaller print.

  In the literary world "criticism" was the cop, but line to word to punctuation mark was separated:

          FACT

          FICTION

  It was "super cool" and spaghetti, dreaming, and "dudes".  And it took courage to wear words on tees and honestly play sports.  For some it was synonymous with "plastic" and others "honest Abe" but nobody knew the numbers.  Voting was going to matter.

  Sherry's New Year's Eve tee at the end of that one was:

      I'd rather go to heaven,

      Than stay in '77

"The man has

  a big toe where his thumb should be.  I can't handle this." Just a little bit older.

  I put a foot on a deck step as a front step.  Took out a fresh piece of gum and a new sheet of looseleaf.  Made my arm pull one foot in front of the other.  Had to push an invisible steady as the railing proved barely attached.  Get into the houses.

  The man grinned, missing some of those too, he held up two hands and wiggled TEN FINGERS, he said.  TEN.  FINGERS.  He poke squished an index finger onto the looseleaf.  Left a big fat smudge of dirty.  "Write that."

  I sighed and looked back at the house door.

  "So you just shoot 'em and leave?" A police officer was asking a dark haired girl who'd been a "candy striper".  "That's the job."

  We need his information.

  A kid had asked, "Can't you just look in his wallet?" Then the kid laughed and laughed remembering himself and his bicycle gang having found the piles, money, IDs, jewelry.

  "You don't need to make this difficult on yourself."

  "Yeah Mister."

  "You think it would hurt?"  The man had wielded head to talk to me.  

  A beautiful woman pointed at one of dozens of boxes of things and

  "Are those newspapers?" She asked the man.  He turned head and squinted at her.

  It took a good fifteen minutes for the man and woman to make it the three feet to the box of newspapers.  Someone throwing a lightswitch on made the man cower beneath arms dramatic but flabbily covering his wince.

  Don't wave it around

  Shut the light off please.

  She carefully lifted the man's arms up into the air "Like a safety call.". 

  Tsk.  "Indeed.  That too."

  The slow dance was questions and vagueness.  "Who sutured you?"

  "What's the date on the fifth paper in the pile?"

  They took the toe off the man's hand at the round dining table.  Put it in a necklace box on top of the square piece of fabric.

  No one could quite figure out why the process was going faster and faster, the rate of turnover

 2024.  Of course we had tons of really good preciously awesome times too.  But "the dregs" as a middle sister called that decade were seriously trying.  Terrorism wasn't even language that we used in part because you can't dwell on that part.  We all have to keep seeing what to do as conditions affect the world and nation.  It's not helpful when the various "leaders" are sinking in the crime and tribalism of party.  That's hard on everyone including them.

  We have a history of administrations incapable of shaking off some of the recent past, some of the big things parties have done, some of the peoples' citizen-behavior while a party is in charge/not managing well.  But we have a history of putting things back in balance too.  A stunning, hardwon, genuine history.

  A lot of the problems anchoring issue had to do with particular people and particular place, until "travel" opened the pay to play to "the masses".

  It was akin to that winding down at Sunday Mass of saying the mass mostly in Latin.  My Dad would be face forward following along and then bow his head and stifle tears.  It's not really okay.

  "It's going to make it like poetry," he honestly tried to explain what he knew without knowing what he meant.  She would go to him then and rub his headaching temples until they worked the thoughts out into words.  "Like poetry...hmmm...let's see...do you mean like free expression?"

  "That's it!" Sometimes my Dad would let her keep working on headache but sometimes he'd jump up, putting his glasses back on, and be back in action.

  Since a lot of free expression had been let loose on such-and-such a day, they pieced things together and worked with their church people to shore up what they could, our corner of the world.

  More and more puzzle pieces that everybody was working with fell into place around that day, at the courthouse.

  But.  The evil unleashed in such acts of desecration was really real, and kept involving more and more people plus groups.  Things that had occurred were so serious, grave even, that fighting crime kept being like a tangled up basketball net.

  From Sea to coast to coast, the stolen drugs, the violations of Law were so appalling and such "gross negligence" and "derelection of duty" it was like quicksand in which citizens can only stem and stop up, but not heal.

  I am not kidding around when I tell you that as Sammy Davis, Jr. danced and sang in DC, people threw up and went into more than one party pulling ahead state of apoplectic and comatose.  What was happening wasn't just Christians bitching about packed and stacked Courts.  We were living in war crimes.  And other nations were taking advantage because of it.

  An assassin missed a shot for shot, on purpose.  A man full on was going to slam a Bible through a plywood shelf.  He went into slow motion, brought the Book into a landing, placed it, squared it up to the edge.  "Give me the muzzle," the phlegm cleared his windpipe, "The mizzera, give it." He didn't spit out the cough.  "Give it to me," the man demanded.  He pressed the button and spoke clear and deep.  "THERE.  WE TRIED IT YOUR WAY."  The megamicrophone was still open.  A hand put a hand over the finger on the button.  And pressed it quiet.

  Vengeance and vigilanteism, it never works, people consoled each other on the way back "to win the Courts".

  Iron Deficiency, Anemia

  Leg Cramping, Possible Heart Problems

  People formed human chains of most depleted.  The City.

  Bodies took turns on gurneys, giving blood, getting OJ.

  A flood!  And we're the sandbags, I get it, soldiers tossed helmets and joined lines of people.  Lines and lines of people passing supplies, passing humans

  BABY, someone would call out and if ya were near an off stage actor or actress you might strike up a song, the beat of saline drips and heartbeat machines not whooshing.  Win hearts not minds!  G'day Sir.  We plastered and stuffed and caressed and canvas'd, blew chords and spooned fire hydrants to relay, re-lay.  

  Foundations.

  Hallways, hallways, doors, rooms, hallways, tubes, pillows

  Re-laundered sheets

  Subways and trains and cars and trucks and

  The whispering.

  I thought you knew.

  Whaddayah mean?  What did he say Pop?  Papa.

        Only some will be saved.

  The panic hit some people so hard and so fast heart attacks happened like football tackles.  The "peace" was pax romana.

  It couldn't last.  False "good times" people slammed boots back on, no breaks between shifts of days.  And the nights...

  Half submerged parking garages and instantly rusting trains pulled from ground openings filled with etching acids and sewage and 

  A Longaislander in hipwader overalls pulled a swordfish still alive from the edge.  Its fin was half eaten by, the man fished around in there with his "bullet proof" gloves and pulled out a mama cat with baby cats attached and sucking on her teets.  All were put in pillow cases of parents not "dropping like flies" but who had aged the most rapidly of any generation since the Revolutionary Era.

  The planes started coming in too low, that's a bad angle, it swung lower, curved funny.  "Gimme those" and for a worldfull of seconds the father and son fought over girlwatching.  Proverbial all, they'd been talking Torah as debateable law but not really.  The day getting comfortably late was obscured in a yellowtan wash of sky smeared with the usual pollution, no, it isn't, give an inch take a mile?  The taller man yanked at the binoculars on straps  around the boyman sitting on a kneewall.  It won't be on time.  It's turned again.  The taller man grabpulled the binoculars and stepped over the wall and was still saying gimme those as the sitting man's face started to turn bright red.  There's another.  I don't like this.

  My mother opened her mouth to yell for my father giving my sister a piggy back, horsie ride.  Nothing came out.  She put hands cupped around her mouth to amplify her voice.  My father was walking like a horse, spinning my sister around and she was laughing at his horse sounds and it should have been a classic father-daughter dance on an afternoon to last forever in our memories but it was like reels of film.  Reels of film falling in their casing not put into a projector properly.  Like the reels were turning and trying to become one movie.

  They're circling or something. 

  Lower and lower and rollercoastering over stadium and parking lots hitting wires and sparks flying and yelling but the sound sucked into ginormous roar.  My father kept looking back and running faster towards us as the jet with flaming wings seemed to be racing him, then overtaking him, us, running, people running and falling and walking and dragging each other.  The parking lot light poles came on like they did every day.

  Hours can be days and weeks long.  It was long drawn out, been wheeling and dealing, doors slamming, GAMBLING, flaming arseholes, underwear plucked from perches thrown into suitcases flung onto beds, shirts, hairy arms smooth arms wrinkled arms, gold jewelry off and put in silky saches.  Absolute stillness not so much as a slipper "sound", places, wardrobes, chains being slid off resting spots.  "It's THE WAY THEY DID IT.  SO sorry mameer."

  Not labeled that.  Bare bulbs, glass with fencing between, sheets, "OH HE PARKED IT IN THE WRONG PLACE" ARMS WIDE OPEN NO CHOICE HEAD SMASHED ONTO TABLE.  "I wouldn't have seen that" a pool of blood languishing "at school", badges, passes, dark faces darkening.  

  Sun.  Gleaming motorcycles, a sea.  Fat bloaty tires, tank covers scratched at and popped with screwdrivers.  "What's happening?"

  "You have to tell her."

  Comprehension the smells of hard stuff and minds searching for fathers.  "Said, Sure, we'll give a lift" throats closing dry prying jaws to SPEAK.  THEN WHOEVER IT WAS DRAGGED THE NEW ONE BETWEEN, TOOK HER UP ON TOWLINE, LET HER SAIL

      until they're gone, static.

  It didn't sail very far before angling so wrong spinning in a sputtering way.  Most of the crowd stayed seated but our grandfather stood up and bellowed, "There's your OPEC.". He crossed his arms self-conscious.  A freshly shaven face kid stood up too, "Not mine," he said with a not cocky smile but a half smile, "My dollar is right here." He took out his skinny stiff wallet and counted what he pulled out.  Wallet held with elbow clutch-style, he counted out one bill for each person in the family.  The reason.

  A lot of people.  Wrestling.  Only half chiseled busts in rock.  Empty seats for the on the move.  

  Just as we'd pulled apart frogs and onions with Sister Rose, we dissected everything.

  Work after work.  Rip it apart, analyze, synopsis.  Summarize without commentary.

  Concept after concept.

  The battle between intellectualism and reality....producing debris....

  "We've got cow." Heavies laughing out loud at movie, one line, summing up so much.

  A scramble.  "Shorthanding" long lectures, nausea, vertigo, absolute-ism, extremism, without defending reality, setting, framing

  positing, depositing, repositioning

  I foxholed and caressed Garland and Howell.  All the disciplines were offering something.  And though there was fracturing and split apart, debris and vomit, we'd done it, the world.  Come near each other enough to

  we did prove that, but

  but?

  Ah, but for the responsibility part of degree and license and Sacrament.

  Got it!

  Part of the process in framing involves isolating...a piece, a part, a chunk, the whole damn thing and imagining a pictureframe around it.  We've had serious arguments all along the way.  Few as serious as using metaphor and using overarching description.

  We could see the limits of political process as relationship, for example.  And can rationally understand how oppositional formula is an overarching description.  And positing political process as form to achieve, and so "activism".

 The responses to, then, yeah sure, that matters.

  

The language at the end of WWII....

  Wasn't at first language.

  It was reaching factory workers still working.  And breadlines rebooted a thousand times, hiding through each blackness that passed over, rumbled through, shadowed and shattered.  It was scrounging and trading and barfing and oozing 

  pusses and bones held together only by clothing

  Presidents admitting--this one is over, we're all done for if not.

  Language did come but it was names and dates and places on forms.  Only eventually was it winding way through courts and then it was actually more like English in French courts cut with Latin and Greek concepts.  And opinions.

  Considerations as consequences were still happening.  And would keep happening for a long time.

  That is what American judges are always weighing--the history of us, socioeconomicpoliticalreligious people--and where we are now.

  Wars complicate.  A clean slate, starting over, new beginnings infinitely complicated by warring.  It's not like a punctuation mark ends it promptly.  Or one human judge's opinion trumps all the thousands of utterances in a "case".  Even when human judges are whole persons with issues, emotions, stances, etc. there is trial and there are the others.  Before there is verdict (which is and isn't like a vote) there is a huge amount of thinking about, learning about, deciding about.

  All through the decades of a war the evidences and crimes mount.  But people have codes of conduct, and their own reasons to talk/not talk about what, in theory, is in the past.  To pay attention/not pay attention.  To understand.

  War as part of culture is even more complicated.  But in a global socioeconomicpoliticalreligious worldscape of humans, it seems, war and culture may not be separable.

  Is the war on trial?  Is what a lot of peaceseekers were asking even as we were still fighting in the Pacific and Korea and in crises involving developed weapons and advanced concepts of warring and in Vietnam and then in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria.  Different nations have differing opinions and considerations.

  UN flags of nations, all differ, but it is often only the UN flag that flies in a zone and this to counterweight black flag and other in-league entities made up of not just nation.

  At fall lines in sloping hills of and muddy trenches, the walls and other boundaries of the tilt towards war, more war, continuing war it is  humans of the world deciding what to do with each day, each strategy, each action.

A Rainbow of Black

  And a lot of whys.  For Republicans there was an awful lot of automatic dismissal, but not of all BLACK PEOPLE, my mother was quick to tone down my immediate assessment.

  Without lecturing I'll also say, everything now has been cut with TNT.

  And it was.  Baby dolls and whole people.  Buildings and vague forms.  Conversations on devices, any and every where

  Every question was bringing "response" and everything weaponized.

  The world was way into it again.

  Some of us determined it not be the black of bonfire and burnt out court-places of yesteryear.

  It was getting dripping-sweat-hot in the caboose.  I'd write, the caboose of the train, but

  "Are we ever going to get there?"

  "Yeah!" An adorned woman in an outrageous sun hat made it flop, left, right, but put her tea cup in her saucer, and jammed it at the lady next to her who dashed a child off lap to take the tea without spilling it.

Summer's Arm

  The clean it up was "our" answer to PR Nightmare.

  "W" was the only one, seemed like on the whole planet, calm enough to stick a fork in it, the spun getting spinnier.

  "Nice welcome home," a soldier said to another soldier.  A young woman had stopped short of jumping into his arms on a run towards.  The soldier just listened.  The woman was all of fourfootsomething but you could see her aging and losing age as she formed what words to say.

  Saying it's CIVIL WAR

  PEOPLE PUT HANDS to mouths to try and cover reactions.

  Now wait a minute son, just be quiet.

  And so it was.  All the professionals and regular people did camp.  It was some time before that particular phrase came up again.  A military person said, "Words are not really my thing." Someone went into quasihysterics waffling between mad at any military, mad, mad at making war not peace, mad, madder, "Just DEATH AND DESTRUCTION that's YOUR THING, RIGHT?!" As she was about to put hands onto his chest MPs stepped between.

  "What about you?" A young man pointed a pen at a man considering a lot of things.  An MP lowered the pen in hand like it was a rifle, 'All the same side at the moment Gentlemen,' he looked at faces, "PEEPLE."

  I'd say it's about even on all sides folks.  The people were looking at each other then back at the man.  But to call it civil war here?!  He looked into a space not far from himself as if it was a book or a teleprompter.  But he stayed quiet and fished his mindheart to word all, all, all that the phrase means, not just implies.

  "LUNCH." Ginger said several times before people broke away.

  The man and I lingered slightly behind in the lunch line.  "What's it not like?"

  "Miss?"

  "Where we're at?  As a country?"

  He looked away from me as if to scan the horizon or check the watts on a meter reader.  'The one word I'm hung up on is fundamental."

  Of course we chewed.  And chewed.  And chewed on that.  I'd try to veer peeps off topic, but no, that was the word, and sheeeewah did people write.  They wrote their ways out of writer's block past our Beiruts and Oklahomas.

  They'd pitch and the tradespeople working maybe as a Christmas gift could afford items explained how pitch was and wasn't "glue".  It was  T'see straight shot on a twisted campaign trail.  But it served to remind animal minds on politics that the battling is ongoing since the founding of our little nation.  And no matter how near and far in the heat of battle, you gotta be you.

  That's it?

  That is all.  Binders and notebooks closing.  It was time again.

  When the drivers leave.

  Like when a foreman goes away from micromanaging your hammer.  Or cattle being left to graze.  Or a snippet of spotlight saw you got eco-pounded...now what?!

  In the Bible we can get stuck at Jesus as Number 1.  Jesus as savior.  Miracle-maker.  Healer.  Conveyor of God's word.  Telling us of greater things to come.  So we're waiting?!  We're watching for signs and trying to time our perfection of self with the perfect union with God.  Look busy Jesus is coming, good people can quip.  Did it, checklists.

  I was feeling like that when it was time to consider being a humanities fellow.  A lot of reading?  Cool.  Listening to other people....well, not going to change me, but I'll try and listen.  Right away it's like why?

  Why should I listen?  Why should I care?  Why am I spending my time and energy here, on this?

  It leads to the question about learning.  Why do we learn about others?  We easily listed the grammar school answers...curiosity, comparison, understanding.  Most everything was leading us to stretch our boundaries (if only your ears) and this implied and proved to be getting into relationship.

       YUCK!  Someone said right out loud.

  The wars of the world were cooling fires.  So it seemed "safe enough".  Even for people already on career paths, safe enough.

  It was always a safe enough because.

  Scrinched lips and dimensions of emotions; can't let go, can't hang on; that Marie.

  Fallaci just up and asked:

  Racing to catch up? Or, catching up to get yourself killed?

  The split second was, for me, as profound as the atom bomb stuff.

  It was what men who'd glimpsed the Riviera had asked a long ago year's new collection of not record albums, but girls and boys.  In the heat of the desert places fake wax body parts melted.  All the dracula teeth had bubbled and dripped all over a dad's five o'clock shadow turned bushybeard.  "What's it mean?"

  "PUT YOUR children away and we'll talk!"

  People dodged in and out from air vehicles and "lounges".

  "Not in the City." A tall stiff as a board leader-leader put the binoculars at rest on the airport's tower radar.  "That is not how we work." People standing in places didn't wonder out loud about "we".  

  "Any takers?" You could see people wanting to leap aboard.  The man saw it too, and gave a version of casual laugh.  "What I mean

  "Yes?" A stewardess showed interest but didn't talk over, just fit her doting into the man's frame.

  "Ees

  "Is

  "Eeyis

  "Is.  Tell us, all of us, what you," she pointed at him, "mean".  It took every ounce of the woman's energy to control voice, not give away double meanings, not ask outright, Are you mean?

  Man won't go near that bi, woman, not in a tank, no one looked to see who was saying what, I better get down there.

  "Go eeesy on the kool-aid."

  No one laughed.  The world had frozen like the great Russian river in those times.  But it was wars in and under wars and on top of wars, conflicts baby, and don't write everything down, remember?!  Gave me his lollipop.  "Look serious people." With a clap of his hands people wooshed into work mode.  I threw the lolli in the wastebasket, just let it drop, thinking of mama's teeth, let gravity help you, US, "US," the soldier had assured everyone there.

  I was able to walk around.  The people were all in regular clothes but had special wallets and purses and file cabinets with proper.  Our job on the layover that never ended was to wait.  Foams were being sprayed, water fountains in the sunsets and sunrises.  "They're doing the same," reporting voices made it through the fumes flattening perspective.

  "Who's your mama?" The man would ask and I would shake my head No.  "Man's got an appetite," the someday-stewardess followed him around.  Until he smacked her on the ass.  HA.  An official was quick to pop up from a desk like a groundhog, "I won't have it."

  Just checking, bee or hornet.

  "And you know who I am.  When I say I, what that represents."

  "Yes m'am."

  "Thank you sir.  You may proceed to lunch."

"another

  winter of war" for Ukraine

  "move out of harm's way" from near any place Hezbollah does military stuff

  Military history part of mind recalls Matthew Brady mounting a hill to photograph a battle.  The newspaper had advertised the action like a polo game.

  any place Hezbollah does Hezbollah stuff

  Hezbollah stuff or military stuff?

  "any area where Hezbollah is storing weapons"

  As the decade was changing we, the US, were holding back the ramifications of revolution and piling chunks of material about the rest of the world into our textbook minds.  It wasn't just students.  At university and in the city (Hartford, CT) there was an acceleration of learning.  Some of us took it all in.  Would hit the walls, crash, crawl back into "the fight".  By then psychologists were battling hard to develop a science that wasn't psychiatry.  Like in every field and discipline a lot of innovation/tried and true was found in what starts as conversation and living and learning.  

  And there was leaving.

  What do we tell them?  My boyfriend at the time opened an apartment door.  It was total and complete chaos just that side of threshold.  Who's your them?

  It was like times when people would say to people: act your age, show some self control, somebody CONTROL this, that, IT.

  Or, calling "trusteds": what should it be titled?

Jam it into one of those.

  The man had piled textbooks on a sofa.  "Literally?  Or figURE-atively?" 

  "Either way or some other way."

  "What's the point?"

  "You said

  "I've said a lot of things.  Don't think you can hold me to even a quarter of them.

  "You said you feel, are feeling, formless."

  "Yeah, sort of.  But I'm not stupid."

  The man did a whisper of a laugh of getting you.  "You think any of this is about that?"

  "I don't know what it's about."

  "It was one, ONE, attack."

  "It's been 378 days."

  "One attack and there's leaning towards attacking back."

  "I knew that.  Fact it's been all over the radio."

  "One attack so in the grand scheme it's just an action."

  "It's ugly.  This whole fucking thing is fucking ugly."

  "Indeed."

  "Why textbooks?"

  "Glad you're asking.  That, this will help me as we get crazy."

  "Like we're not crazy already."

  "This did something different to us."

  "Because textbooks are like us.  All of us.

  "Like a record of us.  When we weren't crazy.

  "And it's all in there.

  "In the textbooks

  "And here," he gently tapped his temple, "And here," he made a fist and gently tapped his heart.

Out beyond

  the packed house

  a different perspective?

  on the party?

  If they have to ask what is interdisciplinary, ignore them right?

  no

  You gotta stand for something or you'll fall for anything

  nobody's standing

  "Independent" but that gets called "unaffiliated" in some places like "disaffected"

  I don't

  I don't see that stance that way

  Giving me a headache

  Couldn't just out and ask, Hey, what'd you do all that time trapped over there?  No one could.

  It was no secret "the people" wanted more voice.  How's that volume balance with Republic? The Country also wanted to know.

  Sometimes we get into a something.  

  It's like

  Not there

  No help for you.  What about us?

  Not oppressive, more of a bazaar, totally disorganized except for individuals.

  Artists have dealt with that whatever it is.

  Write something else.  I can't force it.

  No automatic audience.

  Is there anybody out there?  Should that be in quotes?

  It was like bookends doing some grad school just before and just after 9112001.  And it tapped into everything of my life.  Nobody imagined another twenty+ year war.  

  At first people came together.  In the blink of an eye everybody was hanging up on everybody.  Many of us only in touch with an "advisor" not giving life advice as much as what we'd purported to do in our "study plans".

  Never enough money.

  You're gonna do all that?

  Have to word this

  We'll see.

  You guys tea, you're a team????

  It's not a kickball game.

  Sort of is, or feels like it.

  Advisors.  Groups.  Alone.

  

Popcorn & Rootbeer

  Bean bag "chairs" and hair combing.  A brother finally home.  

  "What's Dad specializing in?"

  "We're just watching TV."

  Daddy's crossed feet at the foot of the bed, the brother hung his stripped off tie there.  On Dad's feet.  Dad kicked it off.  A sister pulled from the hairbrush and hung it next to my Dad's.

  "Daddy's specializing in gestures for this round of debate."

  A frustrated noise, "Aw, still debates?"

  Move your feet lose your seat held us in place.

  The "talk show" droned on and on.  Then suddenly Daddy sat up and folded his legs "Indian Style" 

  "Holy shit." Both Dad and my brother said at the same time.

  Now that's a gesture.

  Mom!

  I'm busy.

  You gotta come here.

  Do I honey?

  Might should.  She started to put the flossing of teeth down but it got stuck, Holy SHIT, stop saying that, she came towards us with the floss stuck in her teeth and the box.

  "What gesture was it?"

  Daddy made us all sit and be quiet.  "Maybe they'll replay it."

  When they did the man's hand was partially obscuring face.  "Now that looks like the middle finger to me," Daddy said.  The middle child looked up from coloring, "Sure does."

  As a country we were threads not fully attached to pinwheel and pinball machine.  There were ways in which the yellow ribbons had changed us so profoundly from black&white, an orderly red, white, and blue.  Censors and moderators in communications took takes, re- and re- shot, angles and lighting, but nobody seemed "perfect" enough to mint the new us, nobody was measuring up to be the one.

  Everything got the left, right, criminal test.  And a running key of both compassionate moderate-ism and building party was "safety".  Jerks and assholes were in the "gray area" of "behavior" on the roads and at events, formal and informal.  Everywhere people would bring up some bit of news or cultural event and "rally" into good guys/bad guys.  The world was demanding a different kind of tough even from the "greatest".

  Dark silouhettes in front of monitors watched.  Took breaks.  Need to stretch my legs.  A room would tense and relax a half a degree at the comings and goings.

  Electric typewriters screamed filler stories and "puff pieces".  Comments and opinions were a tuning fork soundscape.  Clothing, gone more and more un-drycleaned for most people.  Food, less and less home-cooked.

  I don't give a shit.

  I'm interested in your opinion.

  The word "opinion" had taken on the undertones of judge and jury.

  Why mine?  Normal question since everyone trying to keep hands clean and be like Teflon to mud and blood and guts.

  The short answer is that you're an outsider.

  Measured breathing, measuring days and nights into proofs of someday.

  On the screen, a whole lot of people not in business suits and not in Sunday clothes either, but "dress clothes" nonetheless.  Who are they?  

  Who they are doesn't matter as much as what they are.

  TeRRORists?

  Some.

  And what else?

  Clerics and, a video tape was swapped for another, these are some of the groups trying to position themselves as "legitimate" and often calling themselves westernized.

  A man stood up.  "Are they all running to be president?"

  Might be.

  "That's different."

At the dump.

  At first the smell(s) hit the nose like an atom bomb.  The seagulls don't seem to notice.  All the senses blown away.  Uninvited tears--stinging, burning, the only sensation left.  Eyes see piles for miles leading to the mountains of everyone's lives piling this place.

  "The challenge?"

  How to find a shoe

  "In this mess?"

  Bitch of a witch to put it in there the crumple-clothes'd detective chewed the words with the plain bagel hand jerked to mouth.  If she did.  Hands reaching for cream cheese packets but stopping short to: ask first.

  Funny story was demanded.  Blushing, of course.  "So the kids sent the middle one in to check on mum and dad; and," still laughing, "the child's update was, Dad's giving Mom a lap dance."

  "What was he really doing?"

  "Oh, that's a long story."

  "We've got time."

  A kid squirted a packet from the backseat, so she was wiping up the gooey stuff and forming the perfect short story as we waited.  "Well, you see, sometimes when we all sleep in the same bed, while we're waiting for the new furniture," the lady explained.  "Daddy sleeps so hard he wakes up late for catching the train, so I'll moisturize," the man paused the donut from second bite.  The child snagged it mid air.  "His contact lenses in my good eye, the other one," she pointed, "gets a little too dry

  "Still?"

  "Still, Sir."

  He snagged the last donut, ate it whole and licked his quick draw fingers and looked at the clipboard.  "That doesn't exactly explain the ice pick."

  "Oh.  Is that on that little list?"

  The man turned the clipboard sideways then slanted it to read it loud and clear.  "Wasn't there a scarecrow on that list?" She blew on the hot coffee.

  "Did you write on my form?"

  An officer leaned head into the car.  "Is there a problem or can we get started?"

  Now that's three.  Questions.

  "You first."

  The criminologists had stood in place for almost two hours in front of the mansion.

  Stilled trees barely talked around them.  Wouldn't say.

  Take it as a "case" maybe?

  Don't       know.

  Each seminarian entered the door with a cage on the window behind the glass.

  One at a time a uniformed cop told people leaving parked cars and making way through the overflow lot.

  "The sun kills," a man in a straw hat palm-wiped the dusty sportster to check the sheen.

  A cowboy-hatted, jean and shirt-wearing fished keys out of a tight pocket, "You checking my lustre muster?"

  Mom and Dad each with children in all hands pulled closer.  YOU're stretching my arrrrrm wiggles and squirms, standing up straights.

  "Make you grow faster," Mama Sherry said.  Hats tipped and a wink.  My father dropped, or tried to drop, shook a kid out of his hand, bore a fist with a wedding ring.  One of the men tipped his hat to Dad then and gestured.  "Obscene" was still being determined, in regards dancing of course.

  There were deeper issues going on, so, that was also a race.

  Who put them in there?  That's what I need to know, for sure.  Start with this list.

  "Hi folks.  Hello Sir."

  My father squeezed the kids hands harder so he wouldn't be forced to shake on anything.

  I rested my forehead in my good arm.  Blew out a breath so my mother would breathe in.  Still broken, a nurse reported to a clipboard.

  I went over in my head our story.

  I sort of woke up.  One eye was buried in dirt and sand, so it felt like only half of me was awake.  I tried to ask my mother why I'd fallen asleep where my Dad usually sleeps.  Some people were talking kind of far away.  "They fell for it, get it?!" "Structural problems, so condemn it, that'll work."  "That's the story they want us to go with." "Run it." "We'll run with it too." "Place is creepy.  Let's go." Everyone drove away.  But none of us could move.

"I have my reasons"

  As kids when a grown up said that there may or may not have been enough interest/care to try and figure out...reasons and reality did and did not seem to match up all the time.

  Our parents and people their age were beginning careers and families in the 1970's.  They were also strangers to each other except through organizations and events.  For my Dad those two factors and the responsibility of having hearth and family locked him into keeping it simple and his wife, our mom, brought the "sweet".  As the world got whacky they used God and each other as fortress.  In many ways it was a fortress for two.  And they had Church to be the blueprint of how to use God.

  Jimmy Carter and the kids were a challenge to the formulas. 

 Halloween was proving ground.

  'The Lesser of Two Evils"

  Way before the "holiday" and after nights of the living dead, the surroundings would be checked for horizon.

  A pack of tweens which was a range-of-ages people just under legal ages to:

  not at the beach

  at the beach

  planning

  plotting

  not only costumes

  but

  always a but with you people

  a script

  a pack of them, with a script

  The sliding rectangle cut into the fence,

               shut.

  "Back to the WOODS!"

  What was left of them.  We wove through islands of bare trees and clumps of dirt piles.  STOP PUSHING ON FOUR, we may be able to adopt that method on these bicycles!  Hands dropped, knees brushed off, sweat wiped from foreheads and armpits on hankies and bandanas.  The men stood around the tank.

  If you're close enough to smell me, you're too close.  They were arguing about sponsoring and partners and gender.  "Is that what this is about?" A middle sister asked as the littlest girlfriend was taken out of the carseat strapped and bikelocked onto mama's bicycle.  "Doesn't she look like a doll?"

  "'Bout time you got here girlfriends!!"  Woooohooo.

  People were in an all natural phase of tribal meetings.  My mom hated the no deodorant part which made some of us want to smell armpits all the more.

  Down and dirty.

  "Wow Mike.  Are you a colonel already?"

  Mike was pulling hoses out of the tank that at first looked like

  Two pieces of plywood

  Two pieces of fucking plywood

  Two pieces of fucking plywood?

  Two

  Pieces

  A lugnut teenage boyman had promptly gone to a pile of discard but SAVE IT and dribbled beer all over roofing tar paper, then started flinging stuff to: dig out mangey "pieces".  "So?"

  "So go with the flow Sherry."

  My mother humphed, "Don't call me that."

  "Okay ma."

  "Don't call me that either."

  People milled about, walking up to stuff and getting ideas.  Some just picked shit up and stared at it.  Others went around checking in.

  "What time? What time do you think they'll be back?"

  "We didn't bring lunch this time." 

  "Our family will get lunch today," a man poked his head around the tank.

....

  A middle sister had wandered into the forbidden zone --going near the boys' stuff with no boys around.  By the end of the day her day of "running away" was running by walking very, very slowly home.  Interrogation proved she might be an asset.  Our mother said, "We'll see about that."

  The tensions and frustrations had been mounting nationwide--tentatively, statewide--well, probably, and locally--good v evil, tribal style.

  Mama's closet door opened just a crack and the middle girl said, "Pretty far along." In response to the asked-out-loud question: (Daddy) "How's the equipment coming?"  AND the note under the door: (Mike) How's the tank?  The middle girl gulped.  Sherry said, "Don't worry Carrie, God's gonna win, shut the door and help me with this.

  We'd been a whole neighborhood of reporting crime anonymously and in person at the station so when stuff started to go mysteriously missing, the mom and dad foxes ventured from dens.

  In a few years from then it was vague but stern issue

            Leaving Town

  Once we were, we'd saved for that part of the cycle, to get away.  Everyone but our mother was in the car.  We had to recount getting ready before a brother belted out as he smacked his forehead, "AW, I LEFT HER IN A DIRT PILE."

  Everyone looked at him.  Dad turned almost all the way around in the driver's seat, "What did you just say son?"

  Way before it was "eight balls", santaria, and piles of dead bodies--some not quite dead, groups had been "messaging" each other and there was crossfire and "collateral damage".  That was why, when the riff raff reassembled from contested stomping grounds at a blood/oil stain in the road as zombies and the walking dead and families with any sharp objects left on their properties just spontaneously faced them in the creeping moonlight with no referee(s) in sight mom and dad held back superheroes and creatures.

  Even when teenie tweens yelled "WE'RE UP AGAINST AN ARMY OF EVIL" and a great whooping and screaming exploded.

  THERE'S backstory, a man was explaining to some people costumed in business suits and not quite formal wear.

  The police cars started to pull closer on side streets.  They needed back up.  Watch, and wait, the re-creationists counseled.  Mom had her own walkie talkie stuffed into Daddy's trenchcoat.  Hers was a pink trenchcoat that night.  The plastic pumpkins at the draw line were filled with mixed money.

  "We HAVE to see what the message IS," mama said loud and clear to Dad's pocket.  Flashlights were put on the street, foot-level, for their jig.

  Years before a piece of mail had been very curious.  Daddy had chosen his words very carefully when he put his hand on her lower back, she was bent over her desk a lot those days, she sat up straight and without shaking her head much, shook off really into this drawing.  "It looks like our Sherry Lynn has a following."

  "A following?" Sherry looked for a clue on the return address.  "What could it be?"  She covered her not "good eye" and used the magnifying glass to scrutinize the seal on the envelope.  She used a letter opener to neatly re-open the post.  Showed it to everyone gathering around.  Got the slow eyelid fluttering again.  Kissed the envelope with the lipstick she put on perfectly, complete pile of fan mail.  "Eew, creepy," a little boy deemed it.

  "Why is that creepy?" Mom asked everyone of the index card-sized cut-out letters from newspapers and magazines it's like an invite Sher so be careful a man explained INVITATION mom asked.

  She always wanted the children's input too.  "I don't know," the child said.  He smelled it.  "Does it smell funny?"

  "Like old people."

  "Old people?" She took the object back and put it in an oversized pickle jar using tweezers.  "Did it get on me?" The child started frantically wiping hands on the sides of his pants.  A real nurse said, "Hands.". The child held out palms and had them wiped with rubbing alcohol.  "Other side too," the child told the nurse who tapped on a palm, flip.

  Almost all of us had already been exposed, but we didn't yet have permission to use the language with words like kidnapping, abused, ransom, extortion, caravan, crime spree, caught, lost, found, otherwise survived, etc.  The lists were taking longer and longer to read as decrees, daily, nightly, random checkly-wise of telegrams and memos and, the permissions couldn't always be patched-through over oceans, especially "not fast enough" to beat a newspaper.

  "Not your worry," a Broadway-Star-To-Be picked up a "magic wand" and whacked the top of a piano.  Who are addressing?  A recorder asked.  Yeah, a scriptwriter asked whatever you are.  A little squeal and mid-costume and "the kids".  My mother said, "But of course." Children searched every face and all the grownups said, Not your worry.

  The children let it go.  And my mother did too until another couple pieces of mail came.  One was a letter of encouragement/congratulations on her little talks on "the good news" at our church, St. Patrick's.  The other was, "This is the back of a greeting card," she told Dad who was fixing a ham and Swiss sandwich.  Like something had been decided for her.  Something with Dad didn't sit right with that.  It was like a Welcome to the competition.  "But I didn't join anything," Mom said and shoved the annoyance into the back of a magazine.  Daddy waited, then put the mail inside in the pocket of his sportcoat.

  With the spooky clock ticking time running out to get candy, the order to wait was hard.  Circus started to happen from behind the army of riff raff.  It spilled out on the sides of the facing off halloweensters.  Comic strip characters made way to the front and a ring-leader-type went on and on about fresh meat and next generation.  Then he snapped fingers and the army of evil danced as one, together, as one, posing and twisting like puppets on strings.  A midgety costumed relayed the message--"We don't always play nice." As they turned and started to storm off a megaphone called back, "This time we did.  We did it for the kiddies."

  It was like a wind came and drained everyone left standing there.  People just went home.  No one, after that spectacular display, was thinking about the other side not having homes to go home to.  Or what happens to "abandoned buildings".  And that was how the "living dead" manifested the "house of horrors".  All unnoticed, even as tunnels connecting "basements" were facilitating a whole lot of "underground" traffic, and forming dirt piles all through the neighborhoods.

          Sinkholes and Silos

  My dad was torn between hurrying to find our mom and the engrossing amount of dirtpiles.  He drove wider and wider circles and the middle brother was crying about losing mom and they'd just found our stolen tools and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph my Dad started saying as the amount of dirt piles multiplied like the crucifixions of the Romans.  We used all of both hands each to keep track and then got so turned around in subdivision we'll never find her.  People in the car yelled in shock and terror, just yelled, then started yelling at each other.  Then people cried.  And Dad said, "Let's say a prayer." So we did.

  By the time we got to a corner that looked recognizable Daddy thought and said, "It must be near here."

  "MIKE, that's the house that was on fire and then blew up

  "I remember that

  "Near the golfcourse

  "But ALL THE HOUSES LOOK THE SAME

  We took turns asking questions each in our way with him.  He went to chase after an abandoned dog, so Mommy went too?"

  "Yeah.  And we couldn't find it so, we took a nature walk to calm down."

  "Did you stay there?"

  "No.  We," suddenly his whole head dropped, passed out, pitch white face, but came to saying, "Mom got hit in the head with a shovel," then went woozy again.  "HOLD HIS HEAD UP!!!!" Dad screamed and peeled out to get home to a phone.  "DAD!!!! HIS NOSE IS BLEEDING!" 

  We had to drive straight to the hospital.  All "civil service" people were "out on patrol". 

  "They're NOT DOING A VERY GOOD JOB!"  My father blubbercriedyelled.  And slammed down the glow-in-the-dark-Number-One keychain with house and car keys only on it.  "It's not a job," an ambulance worker said, "Sir".  My slumping-shoulder Dad looked up and down from the guys shoes.  "Lanky guy, you, you're a lanky guy." 

  "I guess I've been working a LOT." 

  My Dad lost his focus and just looked at the big checkerboard floor.  Then at the guys shoes again.  He seemed to be remembering too much at once and nothing at all.  Then he said, "You're wearing golf shoes."

  "I am." The lanky guy in golf shoes grabbed Dad's wrist.  Dad's reflex was to punch the guy in the stomach.  Then both asked, "Whadya do that for?"

  "You first."

  "No you."

  "No, really, you, you're

  "Was gonna take your pulse," he looked at a huge fancy watch on his arm.  "Time's up!" The lanky guy said as a nurse was squish-shoeing back behind the desk.

  Guy just leaving Dad was saying as the nurse pulled the rolling chair closer and pulled herself up to see.  The guy almost at the door leapt in the air and clicked his heels.  The nurse blew out her breath, "Well, he's gone now.  Was he bothering you Mr.          ".  But Dad didn't fill in the blank.  "NONE OF THIS IS RIGHT.  PROPER.  NOT PROPER."  

  He swiped the keys from where it turns out "incapacitated" "people" could turn them in and rest up a bit, how's about a cup of coffee?!  He whirled and all if us magneted to him.  "There's an egg on Mike's head." The middle sister said.  Daddy put his hand on the back of his head to protect the bad bruise bump and picked him up and carried him half awake back to the car.

  A real Town police car, we thought, caught up to us as we were about to turn back into the neighborhood, but there'd been fake and juniors who wouldn't make it through training but made off with the equipment and scary quasi-events through the PAL, some characters, a chief had said of some of them, so Daddy swerved and didn't turn.  Went around the block and we started looking in dirt piles.

  With some orange juice and soda we revived.  Grabbed the bread and stuffed it into Daddy's back pocket.  One brother was so excited he was still alive and we're together he ran up and down dirt piles in a different direction from where mom would be "logically".  Another brother ran fast and faster and tackled him and started beating thr crap out of him, so Dad ran up and pulled him off.  He stayed rigid.  Dad stood him up facing the other direction.  Took out his white hankie and handed it to the middle brother to:

  Wipe OFF the blood AND the snots and let's go find your mother.

  A sister picked up the mangled bread thrown because Dad couldn't get the hankie out AND don't squish our only food.  Another sister grabbed it and started to run with it and then stopped short, opened it, shoved a piece in her mouth, then flung it.  "WHERE IS IT?" The middle sister had grabbed her by the back of the hair and flung her on the ground.  "THAT'S FOR EVERYONE!!!!!" She stood over her and screamyelled in her face.  One brother said, "CATFIGHT!" Another ran over, "Where'd she throw it?!" He pointed at the tackling brother, "YOU'RE FORGIVEN," he whirled his arm and pointed at the on-the-ground sister, stepped on her leg, "YOU ARE NOT

  The tense-stiffed brother came over, "Where?" The sister standing over the sister headshoved in the direction of thr bread.  The brother walked maybe twenty feet and said, "Oh MY God, Dad, come see this."

  The brother removed foot, pinched the sister's thigh.  "You're not getting up until you, YOU assure me, ME that you can feel that and," she had tears streaming out the sides of her eyes and was nodding and shaking her head, "that you are okay." The two of the middle children took a step back.  The trembling came and went.  The sister extended an arm and taken it was a pull up.  Dad put his arms around her from behind and carried her forward.  We stood at the edge of a

  "What do you call that bro?

  "Don't call me bro.  I'd say bigger than a ditch, more of a gully."

  My father turned and stumbled to the nearest dirtpile.  Fell to his knees and started scooping dirt and throwing it into the air.  The policeman in uniform that we knew found us all like that.

  And stayed in place until another came with people tied by wrists with clothesline.

  "We CAN'T capture them," the officers were forced to say over the one walkie duct-taped to wrist and blinking.  Everyone walked to the police station parking lot.

  "We've got a plan," the living-dead-looking, chief, trembly handed took the cup of coffee.  With also duct-taped wrists.  An astronaut in olive green instead of white, suited being, came towards us with a crackling radar machine.

  Meanwhile....

  Which was why our mother was walking down the road, alone, hair matted, and bloody, dirt-covered but holding a clean white tissue on her booboo when Daddy just slowed to a roll and she hopped in.  "Heard you got called a bitch?" Dad said real loud.  "Is THAT what THIS is about?" Sherry steadied her voice.  And thought for a good long minute.  Then said, "That bitch to be exact."

  "Did we miss the flight?"

  A walkie talkie strapped to the dashboard said, Don't answer that Ed.  We need you all back down at the station.

  Some of the buses there were not yet painted over from yellow to drabs.  "I'll give ya guys a tour.  It's like a factory up in herah."

  Inside the chainlink fences were rolls of barbed wire.  People had all kinds of accents.  The world seems sideways, someone said as we walked past a person rolling black paint onto the top of an otherwise yellow bus.

  "Tell him to say Hotel California," the walkie talkie crackled and said.  To "What hotel?" $)+--_#@@':;+!;

  Stomachs had been slit open with machete.  The "succession" issue.  Other women gave birth wherever they were.  Forced labor.