I Walk Alone

Why lonely guys are so goofy. Entrée Two.

I Walk Alone

When the moon waxes red get your green butts inside. Lose your planners and phones; grab your handguns instead. Should ever our paths collide, my friends, move along or step aside. I’ve got business ahead.

Good women and men, good council and clerk. I know I’ve been given the boot before; shouted down like a raving loon. But if you’ll just hear me out I’m sure this’ll work. I’ve got pearls to convey; words of wisdom regarding the moon.

To wit: These urban marauders are out of control! They’ve victimized our culture, they’ve sodomized our soul! They’re ruled by Sanguisuga, the empress of night; vandals and cutthroats possessed by her light. On the blood moon she feeds--believe me, I know, I’ve…well, I’ve seen to her needs. It’s our fury she craves! Our passion! Our heat! She’s got holds on the gangs, and the gangs run the street--those foul-mouthed, thieving, recalcitrant skunks--we take out the garbage, let’s take out the punks. Folks, it’s time another course was tried, another kind of force applied. One golden day good men will stand and hooligans turn tail. Until that day we’re pounding sand--even now, perhaps, some citizen strolls, while hoodlums in hoodies make haste on his trail. Yet you talk and you tarry, you pose and preside. Besides, this liberal circus is programmed to fail. So roll out the ammo and holster your sides.

And may Providence prevail.

Jumped again! Mugged again! Forced to my effing knees again!

This look does not become me; the grimace hides my inner grin. Too long I’ve longed to break some heads, too long I’ve tempered the flame…this time it’s not for honor’s sake; this time I’m ready to maim.

And the streetlamps start to flicker, and the looky-loos take flight. The ruddy moon ramps up her sway and binds me in her light.

O Malice, release me! I’m good for this game to begin--but the harder I struggle to shake her off, the deeper that witch digs in.

She’s starting to get on my nerves.

Next thing I know I’m exhausted, splayed out on a virtual rack. Her versatile beam configures the scene, freezes the thieves, and quickly circles back. The beam retracts. Just the hint of a shadow shows: a shape without substance, a face without form.

A parasite with curves.

Her eminence reads me, scanning my brain while she bleeds me, bending my will and cementing her hold. She forwards and backs, checks my vitals and vibe--breaking the seal on my bloodguilty soul, exposing the monster within. She sorts through the data, takes samples and zooms, digging up memories buried for years…victims left senseless, tourists robbed blind, pissed paramedics…

The images pause.

She ponders the playback, rechecks my pulse, resumes.

Graphic depictions erupt in her ray. Clues to my psyche run manic to numb: the stupors, the fits. The spells in the sun. The rants in the rain.

Again that peekaboo presence looms. Our narratives fuse, our cells rearrange.

Measure by measure my senses succumb, while those recondite chestnuts the moribund plumb play cat and mouse in my brain--the purpose of being…the lash and the rein…the meaning of meaning…the daft and the sane.

Ah, the sick side of nature! The queer fruit of chance! What evil star birthed you? Come clean and explain. Just fess up or let me fester. Why crash this dance? Why pick on our sun?

Now tip-taps play scales on the lute of my spine. Am I tetched? Driven mad? No, we’re coupling, engaging; we’re bridging a gap. And I get it, somehow--onus hers, misstep mine. When all’s said and done, that narratives thing was really a plea; some kind of codified cross-species rap. Or have I…witch! I’ve been had!

Galactic vistas are all I can see!

A million zillion parsecs away, alchemy’s magnum opus: sentience from light! A species once bound, now highly evolved, on endless excursions through cold stellar night…paused on a moon with a warm world aligned…a seed left behind; in peace and seclusion, free from intrusion, fed from afar via spatial transfusion.

Bodiless, blind, dormant, confined--till this bloody asylum, this blue and green rind; this trash-congested, crime-infested, smog-enshrouded, overcrowded…you godawful glitch…how long have you fed? Since our forefathers’ forerunners ran? The Inquisition, the Revolution, the wars in your wake--all for the blood of this overblown, this overbearing, this overrated, this…hey, wait a minute--for Heaven’s sake! Hallelujah! Sanguisuga: Nature’s power-pruner of Man!

And I’m back here again, where this whole thing began: pressed to the pavement, enduring her scan.

Oh Christ, do I ever need my meds.

I’m her latest tool, her moonstruck fool, read and recorded, profiled and bled. You go--yeah, you go right ahead: index and scroll, let this lame freak show roll; I’ll rave right along, twitching, half-dead, while nightmares and flashbacks, in rubber rooms bred, thrash unabashed on that screen in my head…amputees, horsewhipped to further their fright, polka on stumps for their masters’ delight…souls in solution, schoolgirls in chains, vagrants in graveyards consuming remains…the feel of unreal, the taste of disdain, the howls of cut mothers who’ve labored in vain…the pall of dementia, the metrics of pain, the stench of cadavers left out in the rain…those figments and phantoms! Those cries in the night! Those fragments of memories, squelched by my spite…for lawmen and lawyers, for escorts in white, for sessions and sermons, too wrenching to cite.

And she’s gone. Was it really all a matter of seconds?

The thieves form a circle. My demons pull back. I feel for a weapon…well, gee whiz, a rock--were those Stens and a Glock? The buzzards close in as the scene fades to black.

In the midst of that blackness a white mist congeals.

The robbers depart. A portal appears.

An angel emerges, lips pursing, entreating.

She channels my brainpan and straps herself in:

her station to counsel, dispense meds and warn

of moonbeams in wait on the sidewalks I roam.

Now headlights approach. A lone lookout squeals.

The cramped hedges part as a black-and-white nears.

The bushwhackers freak. Dispersing, retreating,

they break for the pits in their pustules of sin:

Fleeing from footfalls, the whoring lowborn

scatter like rats under neon and chrome…

…sweet siren…my muse--you know my condition, you know how severe…but here…and…here: where lamps are no longer, the black bushes rear. Won’t you see them? Shrubs break from soil, in starlight surreal. Weeds genuflect as the fat creepers near, longing to lean on my lean denim foil. Tendrils and thistles in concert converge. Sampling, saving, the growths slowly merge, leaf learning flesh, thorn tracing wheal.

So real they feel. Come join us. The evening abides.

And the green foxtails rise and the sting nettles sway. In ghastly waves they ache my way, reeking of patchouli, seaming scrub and sky. Rounding my limbs and rending my heart, they tremble, start, surrender and die.

The vision subsides.

“By your witness!” I cry. “These wacky weeds, my lunar love, my guide in that unholy hood--all were real--indeed; all legit! Carry me now; that this flat world might grasp what our secret eyes glean! Feel that golden glow serene--under: Faculties? sign Fit!!”

Though my thoughts burn inward I’m obliged, bit by bit, to face my denial. But there’s just one thing I’ll be damned to admit:

She’s gone!

Enough is enough. My caseworker split.

High overhead, a dear beacon wheels,

her features restored to the pallor of bone.

No path, no pale, no surface have I;

none beyond the fog that chides

the chatter of my heels. The canopy reels

where I walk alone.

Slay me when the moonlight dies!

Sing me while she bleeds!

Burn our hearts in hallowed hearths,

where Horror’s hand recedes.

Yet Day is remade,

and no one sees her flames run like beetles,

dashing rock to rock, crafting soot of hemoglobin.

And Day is unmade,

yet no one hears her screams

take the elders in their dreams,

and none can know her timeworn scheme

of roaches, flies, and lullabies,

of needless babies primed and plumped

on pointless prayers and putrid cream.

Written as fools were we, from the moment our coding

was spat from the sea. Talkative tools,

concerned yet confused. Bumbling, begging,

bungling b******s all, ridden like mules,

abused till we fall.

Not far ahead, a mad cleric kneels,

his spade turning earth, his faith turned to stone.

No god, no guide, no ballast have I;

none beyond the emptiness

that weighs upon my heart. The deep shadows start

where I walk alone.