Monster

When all the ghouls of childhood
with glowing eyes around you stood
and terrified you in your bed
remember that your father said
of how God protects the very good.

Joy

Joy is a commodity like every emotion.  In the chemical mix--acid and alkali--it is its own kind of combustion.  Joy is an element.  Joy persists while the compounds fall apart, head in disintegrating hands, holding what turns out to be one's very last breath...

What might joy look like in the days of decomposition?  If it is persistent, it will manage expression--find its laughter, its shining eyes.  Even in the catastrophe to come, in war, in pestilence, in loss and alienation, joy must necessarily survive, a nonnegotiable portion of the human experience.  Sometimes jokes harden on the tongue, something to choke on, broken english.  And yet even wet with this sadness, dripping with sarcasm, drowning in irony, the humor eludes the pain.

Joy is its own sustenance.  An antidote.  A salve.

If I look long down the dark tunnel of days, the future with its closing in, its claustrophobia, there is the inevitable, encroaching desperation.  But joy retains....  What will it look like?  Under what name will it arrive?  There will always be dancing girls.  The jesters are in the wings.  And music makes for a comforting thunder, in the background, heard from my bed.

Remember the origin of joy, its gorgeous contours are defined, described by our suffering.  If the underbelly of this torment is the impossible smile, then the smile, the smirk, the uncontrolled laughter itself all find their resonance, their rich echo, in the vaulted cathedral of that (all-too-human) brand of pain.

Basement Room

The cellar was cool. Even in mid-summer, his room in the corner of the utilitarian basement was the only space in the old house that did not sweat, thin walls suffocating under some gaudy vinyl wallpaper. His walls--rippling concrete poured during prohibition--were moist from the earth not the sun; and the smell of the dirt permeated everything, sweetly, in soothing intoxication. Eleven years old (perhaps twelve), he laid naked in the darkness on top of the covers, his bare back differentiating the textures--firm/soft--of the quilt his grandmother had sewn. He was counting, holding back his breath and counting the seconds he was able to endure the darkness. Vulnerable, exposed, and self-conscious of a budding sensuality, he was confronting his greatest fear. 116,117,118 It was unnerving how tuned his ears would become, every sound amplified by the blackness, an impenetrable cave inhabited by a thousand little mischiefs, some ghoulish army. 142,143 The weight of his parents directly above him on the main floor, in their bed, was crushing, He was too conscious of them. 175,176,177 His hand stretched up to find the swag lamp dangling in the darkness above his head...181...just to make sure it was there. 188, 189 Reassured, his arm crumbled back to his side, his open palm falling on his belly. 200 To distract himself, he touched himself. His prepubescent penis was a torch ordered to keep vigil. In his hand, it expanded. The sounds retreated. His eyes closed, and the darkness withdrew.