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.