UFOs

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I saw a spaceman in the park.
I saw UFOs in the dark.
I saw refugees on TV
I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky.
I heard the wail of a mother cry.
There are missiles hidden in the west.
There are missiles hidden in the east.
I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast.

I saw a spaceman in the dark.
I saw a homeless man in the park.
I saw refugees in the street.
I saw UFOs on TV.
I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky.
I heard the wail of a mother cry.
There are missiles hidden in the west.
There are missiles hidden in the east.
I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast.

for Rosalie

Murmurs of the Heart

The vampires were closing in. No, this isn't the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot). 

“Did you see her?” I called out to Rosalie from across the room.

“Who?”

“The woman, the ghost standing right next to me.”

“Not this time.”

I downed a large tumbler of white wine and lit a joint, took a puff and handed it to Rosalie.

“We have to get out of here.”

“Where will we go, Billy?”

“To Terrell.”

“How?”

“We’ll go to work for Bob. We’ll get an advance.”

Rosalie and I met at the same fly by night company—one that I helped form. In 1982, the TV show Dallas was popular and I’d hooked up with a group of ex commodities brokers (all alcoholics and addicts themselves) peddling (telemarketing) oil and gas projects to investors across the country. Originally Rosalie hooked up with the president of the company. Since he had an ex wife and a teenage son who often stayed with him, Rosalie moved in with me. We slept together that first night. I was twenty five, she was thirty nine. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She had short blonde hair, was five foot tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds and drank a fifth of scotch daily.

On New Year’s Eve we’d gone out with Jack (one of our associates) in his black Lincoln Continental. Jack had killed one man and severed the legs of another while driving drunk in that same car six months before. When Jack became too drunk, Rosalie and I took turns driving. But we were equally drunk, equally insane. I could not even sit on a bar stool without falling over much less drive a car.

Yes the vampires were closing in. But the darkness came from a sickness within and leaving town would not change that.

                               *  *   *   *

Rosalie and I did make our escape to Terrell, Texas (a small town just outside of Dallas). We lived in a farmhouse in a rustic setting. We drank constantly. For a time, Rosalie’s mother and nephew moved in with us. This was a disaster—but one that led ultimately to my sobriety. My family suggested to Rosalie that I be locked up in Terrell State Hospital. This frightened me. One morning, after Rosalie had a few drinks she called the number of a married couple who were in recovery. We met with them and began attending recovery meetings. Rosalie relapsed after thirty days of sobriety and left me.

Soon after this, I heard one of my oldest friends in Dallas had been killed in a drunken motorcycle accident. I met Pat when I was eighteen and a freshman in college. Pat was five years older than me and was pursuing an MFA in art. He was a musician and a fabulous artist. We were great drinking buddies. I saw Pat buried when I was forty five days sober. I believe he has been with me on my journey of recovery, one that we have taken together in spirit.

As I write these words, I realize how blessed I am; how blessed I am to have gone over thirty five years without drinking any booze, or smoking any pot, snorting any coke or shooting any dope, or taking any kind of mind altering drugs. I'm down to aspirin and caffeine. And that is a miracle. I was once a three pack a day smoker—that too ended over thirty years ago. I am so lucky and so blessed.

                              *   *    *   *

Murmurs of the Heart

(for Rosalie)

Together we drank fire and walked
on waves of guilt.
We spoke the language of the drowned.

At night, I could hear the murmur
of her heart,
and feel her breath on my neck.

She was so small and so pretty.

Asleep, she dreamt of a prince 

and a white wedding gown.

While still a child, she offered her virginity to Christ

but her father took it in a drunken stupor

and left a hole in her psyche

she would never fill.

She entered the convent but never took her vows.

She drank fire and walked
on waves of guilt.

She spoke the language of the drowned.

She made the call that saved my life.

Higdon Ferry Road

.

On Higdon Ferry Road, I float beyond

the red warning lights of a dark country,

their beacons blinking on and off,

and then vanishing.
I hover above the hospital where my father died.
Here my body has become obsolete,
vaporized and dispersed like a distant echo.
Below this blurred world my father’s body
rests in a silver urn,
his limbs no longer hanging feebly from his torso,
his skin, blood and bones, the hinges

of his shoulders,

knees and elbows burned to powder and ash,

clavicle to breast, a box to clouds.

Will flowers bloom in this fog or will they wilt?
When I was a boy, between talk of sex and baseball,
I heard rumors of a coming air invasion
from Russia. I was afraid.
I watched the sky. Lightning flashed.

Thunder rumbled. I saw airplanes
coming out of the clouds. I hid in a garage.
During the Korean War, my dad
was a radar operator in Alaska; he too
looked for air invaders from Russia.

Often, he worked the night shift
and slept when he could.

My mother often dreams my father
is in the room with us.
She says his presence has begun to fade,
not like a ghost but more like a blip on a radar screen,

an echo, blinking on and off,

and then vanishing.

She hands me a box of his clothes.
I put them on and so he moves (and so he grows
and so I wake
and so I see and so he walks and so he breathes). 

Jung Had His Hot Air Balloons

Jung had his hot air balloons floating up into the frigid clouds.

I put on an old mask

that matches my worn shoes

and make my way up the mountain where only the fog blooms.

Black cats and mirrors

hold many secrets—eyes that glitter and flash in the dark.

The queen has her spies,

she rides a stone horse. Her kingdom exists

beneath the veil of our own idiocy.

The world has its shadows and walls.

I sleep in the house of a stranger.
Later I will wake and try to find my way home.

Before the Pharaohs

Those thin strands, those gossamer threads,
webs of a kind, would not hold us.
We would flit about like moths.
We would break away.
Before the Pharaohs ruled the world,
we watched lightning flash through the blowhole
of an ancient whale.
We saw riders fall from the clouds like snow.
We heard voices hum to a tune from long ago.
We saw the moon drift over desert dunes.
We traversed oceans.
Later we saw Christ crucified and darkness fall.
We descended with the dead but now we rise,
luminous, transfigured, stars.