Ghost Warriors
A young boy looked through the frost of a winter window. He saw his father dressed in thick wool clothes bring down an ancient ax to split frozen logs.  The father put the chopped wood  in a large canvas bag.  He hoisted the bag over his powerful right shoulder as he made his way through the snow back to the farm house.

The young son waited and felt proud and secure as he opened the door for his father. The boy felt the cold wind and heard the laughter of nervous work horses from the stable. With his small, strong hands he helped guide the bag of logs to the wooden floor and dragged them to the fire place. He placed a couple of logs into a fire. They steamed and burned poorly.

His mother stood over him and spoke with kindness. “We have enough wood for a fire for tonight. You must sleep. Tomorrow we must travel far.”

The boy nodded. He overheard his parents speak of the same dream they had the night before. The same dream that villagers and settlers across their country land had: of deadly ghost warriors arisen from the past…and of the villagers' ancestors, without reason or mercy, savaged and slaughtered. The old. Children in their slumber. Women crying hopelessly for life. The warriors were returning—the dream foretold. To slaughter the descendant settlers of this land.

Were the horses strong enough for the journey? The mother asked the father. He said they were, if the road to the forest was not too long. They would join the caravan. They would settle and fortify behind the tall trees and kill the ghost warriors with axes and sharp tools. The mother began to weep.

The young boy went to his room. He stood atop his bed and pretended to swing his arms as if he held an ancient ax. By morning he believed he would be strong like his father and would fight the ghost warriors behind the same tall trees.

A Thousand Monkeys
A man stepped into another cold morning
Human fog glistened 
Human skin turned as red as blood
A woolen cap was pulled over his ears
Melton gloves covered his hands
He looked up and down the street and saw no one,
But he heard the sound of footsteps made louder by the slowing molecules of the cold
He heard more steps, like an army, but saw no faces, no human forms
For a moment he felt fear, but that passed with the gust of wind that sang like an icy whistle
Then he heard more frozen steps…louder and louder…but still no human forms
He heard the cries of screaming death, of gunfire
Then a thousand clouds of human steam rose up past the street lights and ascended into the disappearing night sky
The man pulled off his cap
He pulled off his gloves
He cupped his ears and then held his eyes, then covered his mouth like Nikko snow monkeys
That night he sat in a steamy bath and feared he saw evil but could not speak its name

The Wind
From the breath of an autumn wind, groundless leaves rustled along a dark street. They raced past my feet and settled briefly along shallow gutters before being transported by a quick gust. The sound of movement was musical-- like the crash of waves along a rocky shore or the snapping of thick ice atop an empty lake.  I tried to sing along, but the same wind that moved the leaves filled my voice and silenced me. I tried to walk, but the same wind held me back. I tried to think anew, to believe again, but I was frozen in time.

I waited and waited, alone under the moonless sky, with nothing but abandoned homes along the emptied street. In weeks the old tar would be covered in a snow settled for the season-- melted only by a spring sun.

Sometimes, during the depth of a frozen night I would trundle through the street’s snowy drifts and ask for the appearance of a warming sun. But my feet would get cold and my skin would sting and I would take to an abandoned home and make a fire to become warm.

Those days were in the months to come. On this night I felt as groundless as the leaves, as powerful as an autumn wind. And for the first time I felt content that old tar would be my eternal home.

The Return

I

Zigman Zibanski rented a single room occupancy above the One Lucky. It was 2am when he heard the barkeep Beer Mugs Moran yell Last Call!

Zigman couldn’t afford to drink at the bar, even at its bucket of blood prices. So as he did most nights he drank cheap booze out of a small bottle as he sat at the edge of his bed. He let the half full bottle slip from his tipsy hand onto a stained floor of old piss and dried whiskey.

He drew on his cigarette as he watched late night TV. He blew a circle of smoke like a diamond ring. A young, British starlet laughed at the talk show host’s Hollywood jokes. His old Polish voice said: “You marry me, no!”

But the commercial came on, and she was gone into his lost forever world of sadness and make believe. The aging Pole cried. He wept through the flickering light of the television. Through the smoke of acrid cigarettes. Through the last of sounds of the bar beneath him as he heard Beer Mugs lock the front door and sweep around the disorder of old chairs.

Zigman dropped his cigarette onto a puddle of booze where it fizzled and extinguished in the old carpet. He wiped his tears and lay back in his bed. He hoped to hear her voice. But it did not return. A blanket of darkness swept over him as he slipped into the blackness of a drunken, dreamless sleep. The commercial was over.

The Hollywood host had made a last joke about lonely old men in single rooms who dream of English girls. But Zigman did not hear.

II

I am not the man who sleeps dreamless and alone, losing to the blackness of his dying mind. I am not the light of the sun that brings back life. I am not the refection of light under a midnight moon that brings wonder. I am not the afterglow that draws a dead soul to his heaven.  I am only that crack of light who illuminates the dark edges of death.  And together with the last breath of a dying man, I too will shine no more.

III

Zigman Zibanski's eyes fought against the first light that streaked through the window of his single room occupancy. Last night he was too drunk to close the curtains. This morning his narrowed pupils saw white spots and his head hurt more than usual. He was relieved. He was alive, and he knew that someday his drinking, his smoking, his deluded thoughts of a young lover would kill his old heart.

He could hear Beer Mugs Moran open the One Lucky. Soon the drinkers would arrive and the smoke from their cigarettes would waft into his room. He imagined no one could blow smoke circles like diamond rings as he could, but he couldn’t be sure.

The old Pole lifted himself from his bed and turned off the television that stayed on through the night. It was 10:00a.m. and the morning talk shows were over. The small refrigerator was as empty as his belly. And they were both as empty as the whiskey bottle that he had accidentally poured onto his stained floor.

The soup kitchen would open for lunch at noon. So Zigman stood hungry at his window and strained his eyes as he peered into the long light. He wondered if in his death the light dies too. He lay back in his bed and waited for another sleep’s darkness. And for noon, when his belly would be full.

Open Window
It was early summer. The year of 1974. School was out, and I was 17 and had no job. Maybe I had an offer to work at a car wash, or to clean out an old woman's backyard. I don't recall.

But I can still see the street when the lights turned on. I can still hear Springsteen through an open window:

Rosalita, (Come out Tonight)...

Oh, man. I had to call my friend Eddy. The music was in my veins. I dropped a nickel in a pay phone like a juke box.

"Hey, Eddy. I heard Springsteen playing through an open window. You got fake ID. We can buy some beer and smoke weed in the park. Maybe find Spanish girls named Rosalita?"

Me and Eddy met. We sat atop a picnic table. A couple of six packs between us, our teenage feet resting on the bench. The beer buzzed our heads, and the joints made us laugh.

Eddy says; "You know that chick Ruby? The hottest girl at school. I asked her out. Guess what, she said no."

I said to Eddy: "Guess what, I asked her out, too. She said no. Probably doesn't see much in a guy who works at a car wash."

We began to sing... Rosalita, come out tonight. We sang to a row of trees, and pretended  to see a pair of Rosaltias through an open window. They were barefoot in a senorita dance.

It was late, and we drank the last of the beer. We tossed burning joints and watched them like laughing fireflies in the brief night.

I said: "Time to go, Eddy. And remember, Ruby is mine." We both smirked, and staggered our own way.

In the morning, I might have gotten a job. I don't recall. Eddy. Maybe some day he found his Ruby. I don't remember. I'd ask him, but I haven't seen him in all these adult years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHGh6lmSbo

The Soil
I bit into a candy bar when my mind asked my ears:
What am I doing here, in this park at night? Have you heard anything?

Nothing in reply, which if I was smart I should have known:
Because, ears can only hear, they can't speak

I licked the chocolate along my lips and drew it onto my saliva tongue:
And asked the night above: Are you like these mortal ears: you can hear but you can't speak?

Have you no able tongue? Have you no insightful eyes to guide us?


The sign said:

NO LITTERING

$50 FINE

We must keep our parks clean, my mind said to my hand.
I collected the candy wrapper and discarded things that did not belong to me and put them in the litter basket.

No one would have seen me if I had left the wrapper on the grass.
But it wouldn't have been right.
Whether behind the night sky there are eyes and ears, and tongues that will not speak.
Whether  there is a fine to be issued.
No matter, it wouldn't have been right to litter this soil.

Did I hear myself or someone else speak?
That is what I must learn.

Jester
When I stand up to twilight
When the last of the light surrenders to darkness
I feel I should of lived in another life

Like a futile old man, who can't turn back the clock
I am hopelessly worn out from love

Oh, should have I given myself to what's above?
A blood red moon likes to taunt this dying man
Star's like white, guiding lights burn out in the night

All my life I could hardly see
My eyes are fine
But, all my life I could hardly see

My heart is wounded,
From the things I've done
From the life I should of lived

Turn back the clock, old man!
I hear the laughter in the joking wind

Oh, blood red moon, I've been a dying man
White light guiding me to its laughter

When the twilight surrenders to darkness
I hide from the sky above

But in my dreams, I see a jester's grin
In return, I laugh too, that's how I sleep at night