The Pencil

THE PENCIL

         It was the heart of the city that was his home, his father. He stole what he needed to survive, even though he took his survival seriously, he couldn’t bring himself to like what he did. A precarious position for one whose death is thwarted by a hated profession. So was the irony of his poor life, his poet’s existence. Although he liked to think of it a little differently.
         Stealing was more of a career to him than most others considered it, he suspected.
More of a poetic yearning towards perfection than a sweaty, desperation to survive. Which he also knew to be the poet’s goal on occasion. So, in the summer of eighty-seven, thirteen years after he came to be, he calmly shined his shoes on a doorstep to an apartment where he wasn’t welcome. It was a boarding house for wayward girls, the stuff of his dreams.

Mellow visions, contemporary oily thoughts
slipping, like a worn tooth pick between scarred lips
into his soul on a warm, wet city day.

His madness, no cure but within the walls
the ivy coated sick beds
heart beats and alley garbage beats.

What new spells had she spun
almost, half-breaths until she appeared, shadowed
drawing upon the greasy afternoon to conceal, shimmering cloak.

Uncomfortable, mistreated wounds
settling in for a terrible winter storm
in the middle of a Boston July.


         He knows she has a feeling for terrible winters. She loves the paradox of endless chills in summer evenings. Deep into the misty morning, before the sun can illuminate the drowning, inky mystery she toils. Slave to a muse that criss-crosses her arms with snaking gashes, rivers. He pants like a heavy Shepherd, eyes dark and longing, as she sweats over grounds maintenance.


         Her shirt, has no prior memory, and so exposes a stomach, slick with salty labor. A white cotton tribute to institutions and squeamish self-confidence. Hands working the pitch, turning and turning and turning. Even the stubborn earth has experiences to share with her, for her to translate into words.
         The steady whisper of traffic, edging along over tired roads, and the buzz of summer serve to separate the two destiny’s children. His fingers massaging, without thought, the polish into his cheap paten leather wingtips. What kind of city would it be if there wasn’t the young, stylish chaps? His shoes were things of ridicule and story among the ones without that style. He had it though, a breed of wonder and hope. In the future, he would have someone to shine his shoes, as he sat, poolside with this girl.
         Dreams and city heat mingle and sweat stings delicate, egg shell retinas. Reality no longer clouds his perception of the situation. He will go to her and become her muse. Her poems will speak his name in a thousand different ways and each syllable, a tribute to their romance. Ambition, fruit of murder and of general silliness. So be it, he thought, in such a way that even he didn’t know what he was going to do with that particular ambition.

A trifle loud
and the rain said- damn it! you know how to fly!-
oh…we are in disagreement
seeing the present and licking the future like a dry ice cream cone
furnaces of passion and sweaty stomachs,
perfect…too much reality for one helping

must rest and calculate
general silliness and other tom-foolery
recipes, manuscripts, journals and other mind toys
devious directions for ambition as well
or the directness of kissing extra soft lips
sweaty, extra soft lips, exchanging thoughts like an easy breeze
how could it be any easier than that

         She glanced back over a winged shoulder…misperception, due to heat…and her eye trembled. Destiny has a million fairies spreading madness like brush fires in wild, grainy 8 mm home movies. A myriad of insane, rambling nets tumbling over thoughts and actions. Everyone is subject to these prodding’s and misdirection’s as it were. Even the Pope and Mr. President.
         Back to stealing. So, he was walking along a cracked, crack littered Boston walkway of side concrete walking, when he saw an open door. Not even reacting to opportunity, more like reacting to smoky destiny, hidden behind a veil of poetry, he rushed in. Not looking even where he was going, or what was to fill his pockets. His specially modified pockets, with release strings and collapsible top seams. A career, not a hobby.


         The dry, library air sucked all the noise into an invisible hole. Bleached floorboards felt his shuffle, discussed his weight and watched his career take a twist.
         Sensing no one nearby, he scanned the tightly spaced shelves. Noteworthy…nothing lined the shelves…just dust. The light sprinkled down, like fairies tidy work. Shuffle, shuffle…casting glances…like a pilot in a dogfight, frenzied, but cautious.
         Music, lazy, snaking, a low country drawl…easy, caramel bass and a flicking b flat strum. Picking his left and right ears, at different times, teasing, slow, and deliberate. Then a scream, pinched bottom string, somewhere, she sighs and feels a vibration…right here he feels the same, though not with the same pleasure.
         A lonely pencil, being the only item in the place as far as he can see, sits, quietly on an eye level shelf. The music again, and a tug at the ends of each hair follicle, those damn fairies again. Unfair and hurried, surely, but destiny waits only for Winnie the Pooh and sometimes Piglet too.

What a mess
Unfurled destiny takes me to the gates,
into the lion’s den
without training

that kiss…extra soft
first touching smooth, sweaty stomach
then pulling away as she withdrawals
into the written version

Will she ever stay alive
with me?
blood and tears of a virgin mind
living an inner city life, in her own inner city

Meaning what? Destiny, you’ve got some balls
who’s ready for an encounter?
a crescent moon, tackling the slumberous, deep midnight

         crouching into doubt, i rest

         This pencil says

         -take me-

         OK
         So he takes the pencil, a shy, yellow thing. Sharpened to a nice point. Not a black list item for a suicide watch inmate. Not a gentle cusp of graphite either, nor an unsharpened hack job. Perfection in the writing world…if you don’t count clicker pencils.

         This pencil. That was just it…nothing else, just, this pencil. He turned and walked out. It was raining when he exited the noiseless, weird fairy place. He thought-how stupid to steal a pencil.-

         But then some fairies spilled a bucket of powder on his head and he forgot, but the face of his destiny. As he walked back to the bridge.


Bridge….OK, i live under a bridge.
America, where’s your fires
where’s your canned foods
where’s your itchy blankets?

America, where’s your parents
where’s your hobbies
where’s your average, normal life?
Bridges, tossing worn pebbles…memories.



         He wanted to think a poem on that dumb store. That gave him a headache.
What’s the use, of having thoughts and feelings about memories, and hope for the future when your past is deleting itself little-by-little?
Answer; you go insane living under a bridge and writing poems to survive. Mentally chained to a girl you barely know.

         That’s no fun. The rain dodged the concrete and somehow managed to find it’s way deep inside his head. It turned concrete, not protective, but porous to the cold, driving wilderness. She was going to be gardening tomorrow, at the apartments. OK.

         The Next Day he walked up to her, after shining his shoes, after panting for her like a heavy Shepherd, and kissed her. A gentle kiss. His fingers, like pencils, stiff, but with perfect, easy tips felt her sweaty stomach. She didn’t flinch from him at all as he approached her, a welcome sign to destinies door.

         This was a beautiful thing he thought, she thought. A fairy flipped them the bird, jealously. He let go of their tasty embrace and timidly offered the shy, yellow pencil

         -Gift-
         -For me?-
         -Yes, this is your pencil now-
         -I love pencils-
         -Great-
         -I write poems-
         -I know-
         -You do?-
         -Yes-

         -How do you know?-
         -Because I see thru you-
         -…?-
         -Thru your beauty, into your hands-
         -My hands?-
         -And your scars, blood ink-
         -destiny?-
         -destiny.-

         Together, they felt equilibrium, a rush of truth.
         -Would you like to read the latest poem I’ve written?-she asks. He nods. She turns her forearms out to him, tiny words, jagged, each one, biting pain, line her skin. Slightly puffy, edgy with wisdom and self-torture. Each ‘E’, four tiny cuts, each ‘G’, misshapen but loud.
         He gathers a breath and holds it in.
         What next he thinks, she thinks? It’s obvious. He turns and pulls his shirt up to reveal his raw back, a maze of split skin, still seeping jags from broken glass. A moment, a transparent moment. Tear-less response. A bind of experience, needs no explanation for it. Destiny is no fool.

         -Can I read your back?-
         -Only if I can read your arms…-
         -OK-, as hands gently whisper over his bleeding canvas.

         Muse meeting product, feeling hard work and twisted soul, bare as an exposed joint, dull and yet still glistening, like an open, gasping clam.

         Two people, earthly, limited, reaching across a million words, cuts and pictures to unite. Coming together like churning ocean and frightful sky, purple, straight across the horizon. Destinies gleaming aftertaste, no longer evident between them. Not even a concern, or a pencil shaving to remind them of earth, or pain.