Drunk in LA

Revelation 6:12-17

I think it all started to come crashing down when I first heard C.F. Bundy. I couldn't say what it was exactly that triggered it, I couldn't really tell how Matt Elliott was as a vocalist; I suppose the wails were quite pleasant, in a reality-gently-ending kind of way. And that violin, you really can't play it from anywhere other than the edge of the world; it just wouldn't be appropriate. Play it out into the sea, rising and falling with the tide. Play it for the mermaids, who come up for air, catch a dying refrain, and disappear into the foam. Casual listeners, really. There's a piano too, inside a building with impossibly high ceilings somewhere in Detroit, quiet, crumbling, rented exclusively by ghosts, with one giant stained-glass window reluctantly ushering in the late-afternoon light. Like the light in Mt. Washington Emily Wells spoke of all those years ago, with its peculiar slant of mist and memory. Now there's a waltz, 3/4 3/4 out the door, and outside there is nothing, and that's alright. It's all coming together in the end, and this does seem like the end, in so many different ways. Everything came crashing down that night of the blood-red moon, and my past-life curled up into an irreverent biblical scroll and floated away on a gentle desert breeze.

The Kursk

I'm sinking, but at least I have company. Los Angeles is drowning in a biblical flood, and there are rivers running through the heart of Koreatown. I see my reflection in a car window, but I don't recognize the person next to me. We stumble into a speak-easy, and after a while I am alone at a table, contemplating sandwiches and etiology. And after the table is cleared, and the last whisper of rain on the window has faded, it is only me and the ghosts; we are singing, vocalizing half-remembered lyrics with the sounds of rising water as our only accompaniment. Drag, shuffle, sway, there are marionettes here in the deep. A cacophony of cymbals as something crashes against the hull. It is inevitable, and it is joyous. More voices join our chorus and we sing louder, and louder, even as the accompaniment reaches a fever pitch. The ocean is the crystal blue of cinematic recollection. I wake to the sunrise, seen through a traveling window, a monolithic landscape somewhere near San Bernardino. The remnants of last night's smoke hang in the air. The day brings with it possibility, but also a sense that all of the possibilities have been exhausted. I stare at the man in the bathroom mirror till he leaves. 

Things Not to Be Done on the Sabbath

I paid all my bills on time, but things didn't turn out okay. I'm rising, eight stories low, drifting over a cascade of car headlights, holding a useful, serendipitous bouquet of flowers. I know how this ends, but this sunset never ceases to be breathtaking. It starts with a stumble, and it terminates with a telephone ring, reverberating endlessly in a shower stall. There will be shoulders to fall asleep on, nails to bite, and blood to wipe clean. Restless eyes endlessly scouring the tree-tops, looking for things they do not want to find. There are lights on the roof, strung together awkwardly with cellophane. There are ghosts here, but they are setting up for a party, so I leave them to their business, even as the guests start floating in. I know that blinking light high up in the hills is a car winding down Mulholland, past haunted overlooks, as Catalina rises slowly, a mirage beyond the inversion layer. I know that there is one room in the building across the street, a box among soft-white boxes, with a fuchsia lighting scheme, and I know that there is one solitary comet streaking across the sky, even as I look up to see nothing at all.