Confessions to a Poet

     "Rage. Rage and fear. Standard feelings growing up, for me at least."
Lounging on a stack of books doubling as a chair, a cherubic faced but rangy teen sat with pale crystal blue eyes and a shock of amber hued hair uncombed and crazily pushed back from his face, fussed with a pipe and a book of matches.
      "Arthur are you listening to me?"
      "Merde, I can't get this pipe lit!"
      "Don't smoke that in here!"
      "Merde." he said slamming down the pipe and knocking over a stack of hardbound books.
      "Watch it! Those are already sold." She rushed over and neatly stacked the first editions back into a neat tower.
      "Merde- Nito, you need to relax. Have some fun, some deranging of the senses if you will."
      "Will you just listen for once?"
Leaning forward Arthur grimaced with a mock professorial look of interest placed the unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth; as he did so he lurched forward, his throne of books giving way underneath him and burying him in a avalanche of books. "Merde!"
      "Oh my god, stop fooling around Arthur"! the grey-eyed girl eyes flashed.
     An amber head of hair broke through the pile of books as did an scarred wrist and one leg sending books sliding, toppling down over each other; pages rippling.
      "Merde! Fuck! What happened to all your furniture anyway?" the poet said from under the pile of books.
     Surveying the tiny apartment there were stacks of books fashioned into a low table with an electric hot plate used for cooking and eating on, a stack carrying a computer, various stacks made into seats like the one Arthur had destroyed, and what looked like a futon covered with a quilted comforter was really another low stack of paperback books.
     "I got rid of everything to make more room for my books, its my business after all." the grey-eyed girl glanced approvingly at her handiwork.
     "I think I will stay under here, just let me smoke my pipe."
     "Ok, if you will listen."
     "Your wish Madame Nitocris, is my command." Arthur said with a flourish of his scarred wrist from under the pile of books. The grey-eyed girl lit his pipe and Arthur happily wagged his one leg and smoked with one half of his body still trapped.
     "As I was saying;rage and anger and I should add anxiety were what my home was filled with on those days my father had something go wrong at work. He would come home and sit smoking; literally foul cigarettes. My mother was no help those days she would provoke him with questions she knew he couldn't answer. She would start on her wine well before he came home her faced pulled into a paroxysm of sullen redness."
     "When the voices grew littler, quieter; I knew trouble was brewing. I would get a tingling sensation in the pit of my belly and sit on the sofa with a book, while the voices grew quiet and the sentences shorter. Till one would say "What was that look for?" and I would try to be as invisible and quick as I could so not to get hit with shrapnel from the opening salvo as the sentences got longer and the volume of the voices increased. Like a rising and falling tide of words and volume their arguments had a violent progression. From quiet and many, to loud and short, to dead silent, to loud and long, accompanied with a bang and a scream or a slam and a screech always yelling and sometimes even crying. Threats were a passed back and forth with increasing vehemence like a continuously escalating game of catch.
     If my retreat was successful, hiding in my room in our small house I felt the walls falling in on me. Then I would take all the books off the shelves on all four walls of my room. I neatly stacked them one-by-one and build a coffin, a sarcophagus and settle in sealing it up completely -phasing out the tumult going on around me.  I wanted to die to the world I was in, die to the everyday world, and like a Pharaoh be reborn in another better world, to enter the worlds in the pages entombing me; to be a character in a book."

News Report

   

     The latest in a series of attacks on people using Kindles and other e-reader devices took place today in a midtown Starbucks.  The attacker grabbed one woman's Kindle smashing it on the ground and used a shortened field hockey stick to smash six other devices before fleeing the scene. Like in previous attacks leaflets bearing the phrase “It was a pleasure to burn.” the opening line of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 were found at the scene. The novel describes a dystopian future where books are banned, and burned. Police have no leads about the nature of the attacks. Are these attacks the work of protesters? Occupy Wall Street has disavowed the attacks saying they do not believe in the destruction of personal property. Are these attacks a contemporary version Bradbury's book or are they something else? Do these attackers want anything? It’s hard to tell, they seem senseless and random, occurring often in coffee shops or on subway trains and platforms through-out the city. The mayor has promised to find the perpetrators and has stepped up security on subways and subway platforms. The only description of the attacker or attackers that has been made so far is someone wearing workers coveralls, sunglasses, ski mask and hat. If you have any information call crime stoppers at 1800-tip-crime.

      In other news we are sad to report the passing of a legend; the songstress Ava de Fleur. The reclusive singer was famous for her days in New York after fleeing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris in 1940. Most people will remember her for her hit “All Year Through” which she mysteriously refused to sing after 1944.  Miss de Fleur died late yesterday evening of natural causes.

Signs

     Charlie in blue suit and striped tie swinging his briefcase slightly,walked through the fog on an unusually warm December to a five story apartment building of light brown brick and bay windows on W. 96th Street and pressed the intercom button marked D. Sign.
     Derrick rolled over searching for her warm soft skin, but woke to the faded smell of suntan lotion on the pillow next to him.  "Aw, Shit." he groaned. "She's gone." Has been gone for two months now.
     The bell rang an angry shriek again. Trembling and head circling, he heading the thirteen steps to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
    "Come up." he growled and flipped the lock open.
    The elevator being out of service Charlie headed up the stairs sweating from the climb and the strange December humidity.  Charlie knocked and the door floated open; inside was a moderately sized apartment with an open floor plan living area with a small kitchen and a hallway leading to other rooms. Shelves of books, leather bound volumes, ancient looking tombs and large art and photography books covered one entire wall.  The furniture was spare; a black leather sofa, a dinette set in the kitchen, and a aspidistra plant in the corner.
     Charlie, busy taking in the apartment didn't notice Derrick come out of the bathroom down the hall vigorously drying his face on a towel.
     "What? Are you with the IRS?"
     "Professor Sign, we talked on the phone, we had an appointment? Charlie Farmer with Forrest Insurance."
     "Right". Derrick moved to the sofa and sat hand holding his temples, moving head his head side to side cracking the bones in his neck and jaw. Running his hand over two days stubble and his shaved crew-cut.
     Charlie wondered why he got stuck with these assignments. Difficult clients who had to be visited at home. Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and put his briefcase next to him; there was no coffee table.
     "OK Professor Sign, ah do you prefer Professor, Dr. or Detective?"
     "Whatever Chuck lets just get this thing over with." Derrick grumbled feeling his stomach churn with last nights gin and tonics.
      "Because we dealt with all the preliminary questions over the phone Prof. Sign I just have a few more things to clear up. We will be done quickly; I will get your signature and be on my way before you know it."
      "Right, shoot."
      "Do you use alcohol or tobacco?"
      "I have the occasional drink, and once in a while I will have a cigar."
      "OK, any family history of disease."
      "My mother was a terrible driver."
      "Excuse me?"
      "No none, are we done?"
      "How long have you've been blind?"
      "Twenty years but who's counting. Its only partial, I get around just fine."
      "Really, then what kind of hat am I wearing?"
      "Your not wearing a hat."
      "Good guess. But it says in your file that you lost your vision while still an officer for the NYPD. Correct?"
      "Your wearing a sensible blue suit and I think your girlfriend who wears a clean, flora perfume picks out your tie, so that is most likely striped and red for the holiday season. Your a insurance salesman so your clean cut but today you didn't shave because you were meeting a blind man. Your shoes are scuffed because you walk a lot to meet clients and you stepped in something on the way here. Your wearing a watch but its not working. And your sweating like a pig."
      "Wow, how the fuck did you do that."
      "Listen, I can tell you more. But right now I want to ask you a question."
      "OK Professor Sign."
      "What did you do with that green hat you stole- Mr. Farmer?"

Agents

         Shadows mixed with fog and night mixed with mists rising up through the parapets; wrapping up the bridge in an inveigling gloaming.  I was supposed to meet the man here over an hour ago, but it's just been me, my cigarettes, and the occasional strong baritone foghorn of the tugs going up river.  I've been on so  many sides now, its hard to tell where I am anymore. I'm on my own bridge between Europe, Britain, the good ole USA and what I hope is a way out of all this, hell maybe even an end to the war. But the fog is so goddam thick.  What the hell, where is this guy; boredom, the price we pay for information these days.  In my coat are two letters, one I'm supposed to hand to this guy; if he ever decides to show, and one for Ava in Paris.  It’s damp and the tobacco smoke from my lucky strike clings to my hand and finds its way up my coat and around my fedora.  A siren is wailing in the somewhere out there that I presume is the city. A fire alarm. Clicking of Florsheims and he was on me before I realized it. 

      "Nice evening, don't you think? Especially for our line of work. No?"

      "Yeah, just wonderful.  I feel like I'm back in London. Lets get this done- I’m running out of smokes waiting for you." my irritation flooding over.

     "I didn't know if it was you, Hamlet's father or Jacob Marley."

     "Yeah, great." I didn't have time make jokes.

     "Sorry, ran into some unexpected circumstances." the man said coldly, flatly.

     "Just hand it over." I said taking out the letter.

     As the man reached into his jacket pocket- I for once got a good look at him. He was of average height, with fair hair cut short. From under the brim of his hat, eyes that were intense, perceptive eyes, there was a icy rigor to the man that didn't match his lighthearted quips.

     "Here you are." He held out his parcel, I handed him his letter.

     And when we exchanged; I noticed a gap were his first two finger should have been on his left hand. 

I realized then that I just exchanged top-secret documents with the man codenamed: Kestrel.

      "Just remember what your working for, not who. There's no reason to turn a young spook into an old ghost." He called back as he vanished again into the sightless night.

Louise meets the Grey-Eyed girl.

     "Charlie she was trembling and gasping for air.  Walking up and down the aisles with this distant look in her eyes." 
      This often happened when the grey-eyed girl went to the library. Bright sunlight radiated the whole floor suffusing the air with an white tangible light. Her heart clawed, bumped and banged against her thin breast bone. "So many." she thought.  All goose flesh, the tiny gossamer hairs on her arms stood up. Whole body from crown to toe gave a cool shiver as she began pacing the stacks.   Turning her fingertips and delicately painted nails nervously over the spines, hand over hand, finger trading finger, she traced waves, up and down in long arcs.  Literature, philosophy, fiction, poetry, books of criticism and memoirs. Here Milton, Nabokov, Lusseyran, Rimbaud, Thoreau, so many, so much too read, too absorb, too relate to,commune with and learn, worlds to visit. Whole green rows of Loeb classics and red volumes of Tacitus; here dusty volumes of Keats, leather bound and shedding volumes of Dickens.
      "Charlie she was only a young girl probably around eighteen. Her eyes were large oval and piercingly grey. She had this wild hair, and was smiling like she just found an old friend."
     Her feet couldn't keep up with her thoughts as she stumbled around S in the literature section. Viewing the lions out of the window casting shadows on the street below. Waves of nausea washed inside her; she fell onto her knees vomiting.
      "Charlie I had to help her up, I grabbed her arm and tried to help. She looked sick but something else... I don't know... possessed. She pushed me away, and went to a worn wooden chair kneeling in front of it."
     "Darling what is the matter with you?" I told you not to get carried away."
     The women had deep brown hair that time had seeped the color from mixed with a steely silver. Burly and matronly she sat on the chair observing the grey-eyed girl. With dark eyes the woman appraised her.
      "You must learn to control these fits, people will see your weakness.  Come now child tell me what is wrong?"
     "I just can't take all this in at once." the grey-eyed girl got out between heaving.
     "Child it's already in you. Remeber a book is a book is a book is a book." the matriarch said.
    "Charlie, the light from the window was bright and yellow and I couldn't see. But I swear she sat in front of that chair talking to no one." Louise concluded.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 3

     The alley way was dark but for ambient light of the city and a naked bulb that flickered over the door she just pushed out of- he following.  A lone cat scampered over some crates and streaked down the alley; the air was permeated with the order of stale beer, urine and garbage.  Through the funnel of buildings, traffic, trucks gasping and sighing could be heard; the incessant honking, blaring of taxis, the squeal of brakes.
     She faced him and pushed him up against the building, made to kiss him but passed her face next to his feeling his stubbled plump face. He turned to kiss her; she felt his mouth and teeth slobbering on her neck his excitement palpable and groping.  
     "Oh, your some kinda freak huh? Good. What do I call you? I mean what's your name anyway?"
     "You can call me Delilah."
    His paw like hands moving over her back and ass, she leaned back and looked him in the eye, ran a hand over the back of his bald head pushing his head down to her crotch. The grey-eyed girl stepped back a little from him and her eyes matched the grey snub nosed Beretta she pulled from her handbag. 
      "Wha...what the fuck? Wha..what d-do...do you want?" staring down the bore hole; black, flat and empty of any solace.
       The girl with the gun-metal grey eyes shoved the short barreled Beretta into his mouth grinding and chipping teeth. 
       "Do you want to live?" the girl with the gun-metal grey eyes said. "Voir ma misère, hélas! Voir ma détresse." she quoted; a tear cold and slow rolling down her check. Her black fingernails tight on grip, but easily and light on the trigger.
    Gun in mouth; Samson jerked his head in shaky yeses.
    "Good....THEN STOP WRITING BAD POETRY!!!"
  There was motion from a fire-escape overhead a figure leaned back into an apartment.
She left Samson weeping and trembling in a heap and out of the alley and into the New York night.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 2

 

     "Samson? Hi- sorry I'm late, did I miss your reading?" she said

     "Oh, yeah, who are you?" he said his bushy eyebrows raised, he was expecting Chanteuse_23 to be some hideous thing that hadn’t seen the light of day for years, but here stood a slim girl in a navy-blue dress, curly some would say frizzy light-coffee colored hair pulled back and poorly tamed into a clasp. She had flat shoes and ribbed tights and a dark gray pea-coat. A green handbag slung over her shoulder.

      Samson glared at her and said." I was expected someone well you know… anyway I can give you a private reading later. You’re much different than I thought.”

       "SHHHH!" a white head whipped around from the seat in front off them. "Do you mind?" he was holding a Pomeranian and had pinkish red eyes.

       "SHH! yourself ya rat!" Samson took an open-hand swing at the back of his head.  The young albino man faded his head back just in time and glared at Samson. He got up with the dog and walked toward an empty seat. The grey-eyed girl looked at the pale young man unsettled; out of the corner of his eye he did the same.

         "Lets get out of here these people can't write anyways. I know a place we can play pool and I can read you my poems. You know you got nice eyes."

        They went to a dim bar; empty except for the bartender cleaning glasses with a rag.   The green felt of the pool table like an oasis, humming green under a hanging light. Samson ordered a rum and coke and she got a bottle of beer.

     "That’s not so lady-like drinking from a bottle like that."

      ‘There are a lot of things not so lady-like about me." She said coyly smiling as she rubbed the cube of chalk on the tip of the pool cue, and blew it off in a blue cloud.   She wanted to get through with this before he tried to recite any of his poetry.  She thrust the pool stick and broke; she sunk the two and three, then buried the six and purposely missed the one.

       "Your pretty good for a girl." he said as he took aim at the twelve and he caught her raising the brown bottle to her lips suggestively for a long drink.  He missed; it was time. She grabbed the pool cue from him violently.   "You have grey rain clouds in your eyes girl."

        “I prefer to think storm clouds."

        "Why is there a storm coming."

"You'll see." she said and sank the eight ball. Turned and re-racked the stick and walked to a door marked exit motioning for him to follow her.