Jellyfish Devourer Devil

I have come to swallow your civilization,

It told me before slithering, gelatinous and

implacable, towards the salty lip of the ocean.

Sandstorm, Digits Coiling Through

 Her mermaid hair caressed by the gale

I will run my fingers through the locks and when we kiss we will both taste sand and salt;

                                                                                             neither of us will care and Neptune’s hard and heavy breath will excite us so

 

that we’ll be unable to breathe

 when our lips part if they part.
 

Bug

He hid cleverly from the toadlike pink giants that surrounded and cloddishly stomped away ’round his home, ’til I polymorphed and turned my camera into a compound eye. He relaxed and I captured him.

Prelude to Halfway to Hell

Ten minutes. Less.

The crescent moon swings its pendulum blade across the pale skin of cumulonimbus

and my foot slams the gas pedal down to the carpeted floor.

I feel the car hop into the air as I soar over the dip in the road. Tires smack into the asphalt,

wounding their ebony flesh on the merciless surface while the music throbs incandescent and the cops trail

wanly after me.

Long after me.

Fuck you.

Walkway to Mermaid Meeting Place (can’t leave the water quite yet)

The waves gently licked at the barnacle-caked stairs. They led downward. Heaven wasn’t supposed to go downward. A fat lot the Christians knew.
 
I’d spent day upon night upon week upon month strolling the boardwalk, north to south, carrying supplies back and forth from the hardware store to the shipyard. Even when The Point was packed with tourists, sailors, laborers, and vagrants it still sung with magic. On the loud, people-encrusted days I’d occasionally stop short of the cement stairs, dropping my stack of lumber or whatever thing I happened to be hauling over to the ‘yard to listen to the music of those waves. The din of humanity frequently forced me to descend the steps, to crouch with my ear near the submerged bottom step and bannister, just to hear. The tune always enchanted.
 
I was working late one night last week, schlepping three cans of paint over to Jan Buckley’s houseboat for some much-needed touching up, when I made my detour to the Heaven Downstairs. Not a soul walked along the boardwalk that night. A mustard-and-pumpkin-tinged harvest moon turned the salt water into pineapple-orange slush, and a lone fishing boat travelled the water’s length a good mile away on the horizon. On quiet evenings like this I could sit at the top of the stairs while the gentle sonics of the seawater seduced my eardrum. So that night, I perched against the uppermost step, tracing my finger against the sharp barnacles and the spongy/slimy emerald clumps of seaweed along the side of the walkway. Then I saw the water shift and churn.
 
A form popped up to the surface about twenty yards out. It moved with independent, graceful purpose; definitely not driftwood, definitely alive. It was a woman, and she swam slowly towards the bottom step. As she drew nearer her paddling became louder,  more frantic, as though she’d already been swimming awhile. I could see her features–fair and freckled–more clearly with each stroke.
 
I ran down the stairs and quickly descended into the water myself, swimming rapidly towards her. The water was chilly and I worried that she’d become hyperthermic if she lingered.  She smiled when I reached her. “Are you here to rescue me?” she asked playfully.
 
“Well, yes, actually,” I replied. She was relaxed now, and her amusement rubbed off on me. I found myself grinning ear-to-ear, gulping in and spitting out saltwater.
 
I wrapped my right arm around her, and we swam together to the steps. Her strokes were easy and comfortable. “Thanks,” she said. “The worst is over, but I appreciate you coming out to see me.”  Then she told me about how she’d nodded off at the wheel of her Honda Civic; rolled into the water, then rolled down her front window; allowed the car to flood; swam through the opening; and drifted upward some thirty feet to the surface.
 
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I told her. I squinted and gazed hard at the water, and thought I could kind of see the faint glow of the Honda’s high-beams streaking the seabed.
 
“It happened for a reason. I knew I’d be safe,” she said calmly as she walked up the barnacled steps, white blouse clinging to her frame and dripping furtively as she ascended.
 
God watches out for fools…and mermaids, I thought as my eyes followed her progress.

After the Pier

I reckon the scream of joy and relief and near-coital ecstacy came shortly after I put myself out there, into the water so glacially cold. Fell backwards into it, I did. Gleefully.

That periwinkle Seattle sky shifted its gaze at me between clouds. I’d been walking Westlake for awhile, the rippling sheet of the lake’s water refracting back all the buildings and bobbing/weaving boats as my footfalls echoed against the cement in the still autumn air. My suit was pressed and perfect, my face freshly-scraped and my hair lacquered to a faultless sheen; neat as a pin and ready to function productively, I was.

What possessed me? Hell, I don’t know. All I remember was the surge of uncontained joy I felt as I spun like an Olympic discus thrower, hurtled my briefcase into the lake, and watched the leather case smack into the water’s surface. It burst open, vomitting up reports, resumes, pens, and my cell phone.  Then the lake methodically swallowed the case with a few undistinguished gulps. I was a slave watching with joy as one arm’s shackles disintegrated and fell off.

Needed to purify myself, to feel the lake’s icy life’s blood wash away the antiseptic anonymity. The water–oil, pollution, and Godknowswhatelse-laden as it was–looked so very pure and sublime, like the holiest of Holy Waters, and its humble lapping at the barnacle-encased wood and asphalt along the dock made me swoon.

That was when I walked to the edge of the pier, staring into the lake mesmerised. Then I pivoted on one foot so that my back faced the lake. The water lapped away softly as the smell of the water filled my nostrils.

A track-suited middle-aged woman jogged by. Technicolor-red hair bounced on her shoulders as her green eyes locked with mine. She smiled politely at first, then her courteous mien segued to curiosity, and finally to shock. At least that’s what it looked like when I pushed my feet backwards and vaulted into Lake Union

The Smear of Blue that borders both sides of the gray was God not me

.

My  body smacked into the water, and the jolt of cold woke every nerve ending. I screamed reflexively, a loud whoop that felt like impurities being coughed out of me. For a few seconds I was fully submerged beneath the dark green water. The jogging woman’s form moved along the edge of the pier. I could see her through the film of algae and water, vague and diffuse: She gestured frantically and pointed, but the utter silence ‘neath the surface rendered her and the other forms gathering near her purely abstract.

All of the people at the edge of the water looked unremarkable and smeary even after my body rose back to the surface. They scurried around like perturbed rodents, oblivious to the fact that I wanted to be there; that I’d made the choice to jump into the unknown and chuck everything they’d built to shore up their dissatisfaction. I backpedaled away from them, further to the center of the lake. And I could hear the jingling of the last set of shackles as it left my wrist and sank to the lake bottom.

Sea Serpent

Ye Olde Sea Serpent, monster of the deep

Slick like purest crude oil and dark like that, too–

Explore the brackish pit of endless water

’til the shafts of natural light jerry-rigged through the coils

and strands of peat moss and aquatic grasses

seduce you to the surface for long enough to frighten some naive fisherman

Or your dark gliding vision will induce a vicarious mystery-revealed thrill in some bored tourist

Yes, you will open the joy of discovery,

and the shudder of tasty fear,

thanks to what you are

and what the murky depths whisper and promise you to be

Writing Exercise: She Looked Just Like the Other Thousand Weary Tourists

The Nigerian towered over Kate, harsh black eyes scrutinizing her with the pragmatic coolness of any manager appraising a new employee.

The pale, strawberry blonde girl looked far younger than her 26 years. And as she drew her slender wrist across her forehead to clear away several beads of sweat, she looked just like the other thousand weary tourists that packed the sweltering corridors of Ndumbe Airport like so many bulls crammed in a butcher’s pen. No matter, the Nigerian reasoned as he cocked one jet-ebony brow her way. Appearances meant much less than actions.

The Nigerian had selected Kate’s mark for her the instant she’d walked through the arrival gate. The Victim had exited from the plane ahead of Kate a few minutes earlier and now parked himself at baggage claim, his eyes darting back and forth. A jowly and over-tanned white man, he looked well-heeled and cultured. He wore an expensive gray designer suit, and a crescent of neatly-cropped white hair encircled his bald skull.   

 ”I’ll believe in your skills when I see what they bring from that man,” The Nigerian said to Kate in a thickly-accented bass voice. Then he pointed at the Victim. “He is–how would you put it– your pop quiz.”

Kate smiled, reached into her knitted handbag, and produced a sleek black eelskin wallet. “Do I pass?” she asked with a chuckle.

The Nigerian took the wallet and examined its contents–several receipts, a claim ticket for a locker, four credit cards, travellers’ checks, and 800 Euro. He looked at Kate, then back at the Victim. The man was rifling with increasing desperation through several of the pockets on his gray designer suit.

Kate’s new boss smiled back at her. “Not bad,” he said. “We’ll see how you do at the Museum against three guards and an alarm system next Tuesday.”

TigHtly closed Eyes seeing soMething ‘neath cUrtain reSEmbling everything

*

maybe for the first time. You are, too.

I close my eyes and when I do, that’s when they’re staring at their most intense; a glimpse straight into the deep swirling unknown

that spatters and swirls restless

Indigo curtain hangs tautly over eyes; periodic droplets of even darker ink stain the cloth and inspire its fibers to generate coronas and gorgeous implosions and cloud cover like an organism that never stops sloughing off dead cells for live ones.

and when your eyes are closed that’s when they see what’s inside

Can’t tell you untruths because you see them, with your closed eyes that x-ray everything that I surround me with; no lead, no shield

Oh, hell.

plunging neckline and redemption in that soft perfection, it is its own reward or punishment or taste or scent.

Like saliva to skin,

and it all branches off to roots that grow expansively ‘neath the soil, drinking from the gloriously sodden coffee-ground earth.

The Dorobou Prince of Kyoto

Sennyo–so lithe and graceful that his black-booted feet barely clicked against the cement–strode along Kawaramachi-dori placidly. The neon danced, chanted, and screamed against the pavement, and the honeycombs of windows refracted it all back; but no garish hue, no harsh light, no cumbersome display of emotion dared violate the boy’s elegant features. His pale and gently chiseled face generated its own light.

He owned this Asphalt-and-Illusion-choked stretch of Kyoto. The pachinko palaces vomited up dozens of almost-as-beautiful kids in eye-straining blues, pinks, and reds; and the eyes of locals and gaijin alike glowed from the artificial illumination. Every one of them either ran with Sennyo, or were potential prey for him and his Fineboys.

Sennyo developed an unspoken language, an uncommon rhythm with the sculpted and exquisite battalion of young men he led. With their unthreatening features they never looked capable of crime, which rendered committing such acts stunningly easy for them.

Oftentimes Sennyo would point a slender finger, and a shaggy-maned masterpiece of smooth angles and immaculate cheekbones would brush insouciantly against a lady tourist’s handbag, producing a fat stack of yen notes just seconds later. A healthy profit could be milked from the inattentive, or from the gaijin who crawled along Kawaramachi-dori like so many cockroaches.

We all worked well for our daily profits, but Phoenix was Sennyo’s star pupil and right-hand man. He always walked to the elfin ringleader’s left and possessed a wild swath of bushy tumbleweed hair that defiantly stayed put, even when the massive fans outside the videogame parlours shot out bursts of canned air forceful enough to knock about small children. I’d been eating out of garbage cans just weeks before, but Sennyo took me under his wing. And when he paired me with Phoenix to learn the craft, I knew I’d been fully embraced.

My introduction to Phoenix’s gift came when he pilfered several wallets from a group of businessmen. They haunted the front of a game parlor, all drab greys and navy blues relieving the humdrum repetition of their office positions with the bells, buzzers, and clattering life of the pachinko machines. Sennyo assigned me to be the diversion; Phoenix would rob them blind.

In a past life on the beaches of Okinawa I’d learned an armada of card tricks, and they carried me in good stead that day. I challenged one of the muted army of workhorses to pick a card, any card. And when I shuffled, twirled, and fanned that glossy stack of numbers and suits my mark was hooked.

Soon, the rest gathered around me, admiring my dancing fingers and lighting up every time the smooth stutter of the shuffling cards punctured the evening air. Then Phoenix went to work.

He drifted slowly around the horseshoe of buttoned-up humanity that formed my audience.  All of the workshirts were crouched in front of me, so they were out of Phoenix’s arm’s length. Not that it mattered.

I’d balanced my con art well, nabbing 1500 yen from one portly grayshirt one minute, then deliberately yielding 700 yen when another ’beat me’ at my own game. Of course, once there was a waft of potential income to my parlour tricks the button-downs focused on me even more intently.

Phoenix shrugged his shoulder, and out from underneath his hooded jacket slithered what looked like a vine–an appendage rife with spines and adorned with burrs that each looked like miniatures of Phoenix’s head. The tendril neatly pierced the shoulder of his garment and moved stealthily around the marks thrilling to my show.

The burrs swinging from the ends of the thorns opened their tiny mouths, and each set of tiny teeth clasped down on a different man’s wallet. In the space of three seconds Phoenix’s surrogates/familiars had lifted eight billfolds. His shoulder-vine retracted slowly with nary a rustle of fabric or a decibel of suspicious noise, pulling the haul inconspicuously beneath his sweatshirt. Then Phoenix backed up into the forest of flashing neon and spasmodic pachinko machines, and disappeared.

I manipulated the final card game to be a nail biter, with one workshirt actually accruing 1300 yen in the course of our game. And I’d placed myself above suspicion by being in front of them the whole time. None of the poor fools even realized they’d been had until well after I’d re-boxed my deck and sauntered away.

Twenty minutes later I’d arrived at the outdoor patio of a Tonkatsu restaurant–our agreed meeting place. The smell of frying pork–and the noises of sizzling meats, vegetables, and noodles–backed up the plumes of food-steam slithering from the kitchen window. Sennyo, Phoenix, and four other boys emerged from behind the kitchen door.

“Your share,” Phoenix said as his shoulder-vine squirmed out of his sleeve once more. Six of his burr-faces held a 10,000-yen note in each of their mouths. I reached over and plucked each bill from each mouth like Adam picking a half-dozen forbidden apples.

Sennyo looked at me, his gorgeous angled cheekbones giving way to the faintest of smiles. “Good,” he said in a voice that chimed like a plucked harp.