Squat Candle: Prologue

They got out of the rain. Four of them.

They were in northern California, in October, had found no work and hitched toward a town that did not exist. They were stuck in a state park. Miles of road on deep ravines with rapids charging up from below, forested mountains in every direction. No lights, no chimney smoke, no cars for hours. The rain had picked up while they were on the shoulder, fighting and they had trudged an hour before finding shelter, an old cabin, or just its porch; the thing had fallen down with just the roof of the porch still standing. The light faded around the huge hills and it got colder and the rain hammered the roof they were huddling together under. They rubbed their hands together and took off their wet jackets. Dick Metal took off his soaked Chucks and wet socks, hung his sleeping bag up to dry. They sat close to one another. Percy, Enid and Squalaura took their sleeping bags from their stuff-sacks, unzipped them and draped them around one another as evenly as they could.

Enid made a squat candle: She took a metal can and broke off wax chunks from a plastic bag of busted candles into the bottom. She took a chunk of waxed, corrugated cardboard from her bag and tore it into a wick. It was slightly shorter than the height of the can when she placed it inside. She feathered the end with her thumbnail and lit it. The flame took and they saw each others faces again. They all held their hands to the flame. Dick Metal moved his scummy feet toward the fire. They took out their crackers, their peanut butter, an apple, Slim Jims, one flask of whiskey, a pouch of tobacco and shared them. Enid fed chunks of wax into the can and acrid black smoke poured off as the plastic lining of the can burned out.

They had not known one another for more than a week, had come together hitching down: Percy from Bellingham, Dick Metal and Squalaura from Oly, and Enid from Eugene. They had all stumbled down to work the marijuana harvest, their heads filled with meager dreams that a few thousand dollars could fulfill. With no initial leads, they had found nothing, had talked to some old hippie in Arcata who sent them southeast, into the mountains, towards a town he guaranteed would be full of work. The town was fake and no drivers had corrected them.

They were not friends, had crossed one another frequently during their brief association: At one point Dick Metal had tried to grab Enid's tits. Squalaura drank too much and always bitched about her hangover. Percy cried one time and everyone laughed at him. But tonight, considering their situation and bathed in strong yellow light, Enid felt expansive enough to recite a poem she wrongly attributed to Robert Duncan:

For friendship

make a chain that holds,

to be bound to

others, two by two,

a walk, a garland

handed by hands

that cannot move

unless they hold.

They took turns telling stories. Dick Metal went first.

The Box

"I'm gonna be indigo," Reggie said to me. We were playing this game called Chimera, where we guessed what mythical creatures we were going to change into. We had already done cheetah-man and hawk-man and everything, and any number of religious creatures and cartoon characters, so we were now trying to do really elaborate ones. We had made it up about an hour ago.

We were doing a sensory deprivation experiment at the university hospital. We were locked into a box that looked like the ice chest outside of a gas station and it was pitch black. I could not tell how long we'd been in, but our breath echoed close to our ears and where I heard Reggie's face was this pale, no-color fire. He described an oversized, potato-shaped thing, with a bunch of bristly legs all over it, hairs that it used to propel itself. It vibrated instead of vocalizing.

I thought that was pretty good.

We had signed up because we had very little money. We were in this warm, breathy, matter-sucking soup, bathing in it. So dark it was as if we were being eaten by space. We were. I had no idea what was going on out there. Anything. It occurred to me that I could be in love with him. Which was news and as soon as I thought it, thought to reach my hands out and feel for his face his face, to mash our mouths together, stubble on stubble, it was gone. I gulped hard and dry. Reached for a thought. It was the box, for sure.

"What kind of creature would you be?" he asked me.

I said "Fuck this game." We hadn't been given instructions. Maybe the experiment was to see how long two grown straight men would passively sit in a dark, black box without kissing, or thinking to. Maybe the experiment was fake and we were locked in here to die. We were nothing, we were insubstantial, in a stasis, neither living, nor dead.

My ears were fumbling around for sounds other than our breathing. My eyes had started painting negative colors on the air. If I kissed him, would we fight, physically fight in a space we were both crammed into? We could say it was just the box if we liked it. He was my roommate. He was grossly familiar. I had walked through his old, balls-smelling laundry, had watched him cook lazy meals and eat them, his fingers clamped around a stuffed tortilla, hot sauce staining his mouth. Plus I didn't think I was queer, so none of this made sense.

I asked him if he heard the music, although I didn't hear any myself.

"A little," he said. "Like little beeps?"

Yeah, I told him. "Do you want to kiss?" I asked him.

His breathing stopped and his legs shifted a little. It sounded like thunder. "No," he said. "Are you serious?" He fake-laughed.

I told him I was.

"No way," he said. And then he said "Thanks, though."

It was quiet a long time. I was saying "It must be the box," when the door opened and light flooded in, wrapping around everything, clanging all over our hands and faces. A doctor was peering in. He made some garbled joke my ears couldn't even take. We both climbed out on wobbly legs. They made us do puzzles in separate rooms and asked us to describe what we experienced. Then they gave us a small bill and let us go. When I was done, I went right to the bus stop, although me and Reggie had driven together in his car. It occurred to me that the box had been like being held. But by no one in this case, nothing, no one who had to or could stop. When the bus came, I got into a seat, put my knees up on the seat in front of me and hunched into my own lap. I shut my eyes.

Of Demon Bondage

“Hank, I got those lab results back.”

“Yeah?” he said with his mouth full, turning in his office chair, part of a sandwich in his hand. I don't know how he could be eating, after all the carnage we'd seen last night. But then I saw it was a French Dip and then I wanted one. He had au jus dripping down his chin.

“Okay," I said. "So amongst the bodies: blood, obviously, and lots of it, burnt vinyl and leather residues, as well as copious ash, Brimstone to be exact. Hard alcohol, which accelerated the flames. Cocaine on the ceiling, charred flesh and lots of bodily fluids, mostly semen and you know, that was man-semen, but there was also dog semen and fish semen... Coming from a marlin... But get this: the lab found a lot of demon semen.”

“Carl,” Hank said to me, “Do you want the rest of my soda?” He looked at me dully and belched. It smelled like baked pickles. Hank's skin had the texture of angel food cake. He kept hot dogs in his desk. He wasn't bright, but you didn't need to be for this job.

“Hank, this means there was paranormal activity! Those teenagers went to their Black Metal show and through magick and scrawling runes and chanting their Nordic chants, they opened a portal, I'm sure of it!” He opened a package of moist wipes and cleaned his fingers, shook his thick hands at the wrist and just looked at me.

We got a welfare call from the Old Woman in the Shoe, that lousy bitch. Her kid had gone missing, so we went to the show. He wasn't there, though. We picked him up stealing hot cross buns. He couldn't even pay one a penny. We were done on this. The Vatican cops were at the scene. Suddenly the precinct dog came in. I kicked it, I was so pissed and it shrank away whining.

“Carl, demons aren't our jurisdiction. We just found a burnt VFW full of dead teenagers wearing homemade wristbands and white makeup. And top hats and shit like that. So they probably were practicing some ancient pagan rite. So what? Their death is just the same. We'll let God's police take care of them.”

What Hank didn't know that I am into demon bondage. I love nothing more than going to a cheap motel out by the freeway and going into a closet and opening a portal into the Nether-realms. An imp comes out and lashes me with its pointy tail and cackles at me and titters “You a bitch... You a little bi-itch...” and I come through the roof. The wife doesn't care; she's a centaur fetishist, herself. What tore me up that these kids, watching Blackest Ashen Skies, Dark Unicorn, Moldyrdrygylarr, Hellgape, whatever the flier said, had probably had the best demonic orgy ever, really a demented, fierce, dark sabbat with the forces of Hell. I mean there was demon semen spattered like tar all over the walls and solid layers of twisted corpses on the floor, a Satanic lasagne of burnt, intertwined bodies. What were these kids getting into? I remember in high school, there was a forest spirit who would rub you through your pants if you gave it enough dew, but it was in the shape of a pussywillow. I might as well be a virgin.

“Hank,” I said, “We're gonna take this thing on. I know we're only nursery rhyme cops, but I don't care. Maybe this is related to some nursery rhyme we don't even know about: 'the teenagers banging/ at a metal show/ the demons who screwed them/ where did they go?'”

He opened a bag of chips, put a handful in his mouth, slicked back his hair with his greasy hand. A fly buzzed in a circle counter to the wobbling ceiling fan. It was humid awful. Simple Simon was out in booking, his head bandaged, moaning. I wished he'd been at this thing; I could go back. Hank picked up a dossier off his desk and handed it to me.

“We have to find out who the dish ran away with,” he said, crunching.

I didn't care. Whatever it was, it wouldn't beat me, it wasn't evil and I couldn't fuck it.

Chautauqua

Let us be Canada geese and the where to go. No.

We are rapids talk all night to no one, move shatter move, think themselves still.

Of all advice, I never paid attention I was looking out at barn swallows I wanted to see through break the sky and go past where I could see I never once heard what was said. Blood runs down the years, the place I was made and saw and wished not to see is gone it is locked it is buried I could burn all as well as know again.

Dark in the midst of trees and one sits low, what sleeps and what runs past. No voice speaks every voice is present telling. Saying rock drops on rock, shale and chert crack unless chucked in creek clay. Water pulled in pools scumming, blowing clouds of mosquitoes low cliffs over large lake throw bloated baby starlings high in the air where they land on gravel road. Car comes every so often alone the headlights wrench back night and sometimes drunk you don't see her green eyebright step in, brake shatter the back of a doe and the tears sung spooled among the fog where she is laid out thrown will tell her what you want to mean: O a mother.

Iroquois we know and never, hills with trees now trailers tires, boundaries water roads in names we cannot spell. We will bowl, tear tendons from tiny bones we pile brightest orange fat ripples in our bellies glistens fingers as we fumble, purr to sleep.

I only ever wanted to be warm the world screams white dunes crawl.

You Already Knew

"Look at his handwriting. It's like a little kids."

Laura was right. His letters tilted to the upper-right. His loops were flattened and words broke apart with odd breaks. The line of his hand tilted and sloped, more scrawly meaning he was fucked up. Lots of things were crossed out and his spelling was awful. We were reading my father's diary.

There was a lot of mention of my dad's friend he'd stay out with, a guy named Rob:

Stayed up all night. Left the bar. Me and Rob drove around back roads talking only. At morning the frost n ice on trees lookt like evrything was made from brite dimands. Mist work. Rob is always kiddin.

I hadn't wanted to read it. We found it in a pile of his clothes and things in the closet of my parent's bedroom. My mother had smashed his whole side two nights ago. His work clothes, Carharts, streaked with grease and smelling like his sweat and tar soap were heaped on top of his dress shoes, his work boots. We crawled in there and picked through it. There was an old porno mag, women with teased hair, sitting on Mustangs and Camaros, rubbed their oiled breasts. One of the captions said "Do You Have a Tool For Me?" I was only eight and I knew this was incredibly stupid.

Laura was my neighbor, four years older than me and she watched me after school. She held the magazine up to my face. The smell of the paper, musty newsprint, but mixed with that citrus stuff they wash their hands with, scared me and made me feel like he was going to come walking in and find us. Laura saw how my face went and said "He's not coming. And don't go for women like this." I said I wouldn't.

It was odd to me that my father kept a journal. I never saw him read a newspaper. It was a spiral-bound yellow pad and all the entries were only a few sentences long, all about Dad's nights out with his friends, drinking, driving around, sleeping it off at their places. When Laura found it she said "Hello..."

On the day my brother was born, he wrote:

I have a son William. 8:22 AM. He came out his head pointed and his eyes buljing. Purple head. I thought he was retart. I said to my self sorry to God I said I am sorry I did it. Dr. says no it gos away.

His hunting boots were gone. His gun was gone. There were shotgun rounds sprinkled throughout the pile we were sitting on. Mom had broken the top shelf, while screaming how he's not a man. There were two holes in the closet drywall she had punched while my brother bawled from the crib in the next room. I could see his place on their bed still disturbed and dirty, their wedding photo smashed on the opposite side. The cover of the notebook said "For You Bitch". The last entry said:

Faggot. You fucking faggot. YOU

The last page was ripped out. There was a little tangle of paper caught in the wire binding.

My mother made spaghetti that night and told me that my father was not coming back. I kept my eyes on the table.

Laura came over that night. She and I watched TV and, during a commercial, she reached over and grabbed my wrist and looked me in the eye.

"You're better off without him," she said. "He wasn't shit. He was good with his hands, but he didn't know shit."

I said okay. She kept her eyes on mine.

"You won't be like him," she insisted and let go of my arm.

"I know," I told her.

On TV, space people had landed and a woman shrieked when their ship opened. But the space man wasn't scary. He was a man in a silver suit with his face painted green. Smoke blew all around him. The people of Earth fought back with machine guns and tanks, but he killed them with rays from his hands. The show tried to trick you at the end. He'd be someone with an important message from the future, or an alien who came to cure all diseases. Everybody knew the trick was coming, so why did they try to make it a surprise?

Once you stopped to think about it, you already knew.

Walk the Earth

What was it that homeless man said in Kingman

I wouldn't have you choose this life for anything

I got grandkids your age and I would hate

for them to live out here

When the Asain tourists piled out of the fiery busses

on the way north to Vegas, that glinting rash where

one America is enshrined, my comrade and I stood off the lots

of truckstops and some men stared at her, snaggled

in sweaty breasts and greasy hair, beautiful

Without knowing anything, the dried apple faces of

maybe a million elderly women wanted to strip

me of my flesh and

men in pickups, themselves with nothing obvious to do

told me to make myself useful, Why don't you pull some weeds

when all it is that I want is I want my breakfast

of peanuts and chocolate milk

before the heat compresses the world today

again in a map of possible sanction

I will walk myself into in every single place

I want to go.

That I would lose my money as if it were air I breathe,

that shit would get so real at that point, I knew. That's

what you fear, the asking, that anyone would be kind

without a secret plan to fuck me or hit me and they

are out there like rabid strays, I admit, I know

The vast majority were simply indifferent, accelerating

like soda-weaned children with sore asses, their

minds clutching bright promises of their destination

But a woman picked us up once.

She was moving with her baby and played Christian

rock soft on the stereo of her vast 70's Olds and gave us

sugar- snap peas and, leaning back, I fell asleep next to

her chattering son, something I would never do

in the presence of most strangers in their cars

and I would only mention her because the absolute

most simple and quiet things happen and grab

the scruff of your gruddy, crusted neck

and tell you things about people you never hear

and with that understanding I come back to life

believing nothing of condemnation and

aspects of the beloved burn in everything

Empty Hands

I could consent to lose everything

although I don't believe

any of it comes back. I just know

the rhythm of the scene setting

when you are looking at the falling

bulk of what you have known

crash around your hands face and feet--

and calling to it, commanding it to get up

come up, trace where it was or dream it back,

there will be a flaw, or deer path,

a change that is so slight you won't

think to see it until you are done

screaming and wishing to have never seen,

but there, in white-lit grass and churning dust,

is a small, brown bird disrupted from sleep

and if you can just look at it

and notice, it will fly in the direction

you are to go in

and if you go you will forget much

and get up and

gain back the breath

to greet your days