Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

14
I follow light currents of air I hadn’t noticed while still on the ground. Compelling
myself to travel slowly, strumming my guitar slowly & softly to keep calm, I discover that
here, despite appearances, is inverted space. The walls are the means by which to make
progress. This becomes apparent to me when the breeze I’m following leads me straight to
the face of a wall—where I would have veered off I close my eyes, bang out a riot of bright
harsh sounds & plunge in.
Once inside the rock, all changes. It isn’t rock that I saw but flesh & now I am
among muscle & near to bone. The breeze I felt manifests itself here as both blood & breath.
Franny’s death is alive & well.
I call up Rebecca in my mind to tell her. I can only see her dark blue eyes.
“What do we do now, Dad?”
“Somehow she’s retreated from life without dying. She hasn’t stopped existing. But
she isn’t here either. The lights are on but the building’s empty.”
“She’s not a building, Dad! She’s a girl! She’s my friend! You love her! You’re going
to marry her!”
“Then what, Reb? Do you think she’s here?”
“We’re not thinking about this right.”
“What did Soulard say? ‘Everything ties in. Then. Now. Glover. New England.
Eleusis. Greece. Death.’”
“You forgot the Eternal Note.”
“Yes, that, too.”
“Daddy, I think I know where you have to go.”
“Where?”
“Go to her bedroom. Find where she sleeps. Wake her up with a kiss.”
“How did that come to you?”
“Well, I was thinking how this is Franny’s body but it’s also like a dream. & death &
dreams are alike. Dream’s are our within’s within. Like Ray said about me. That’s where I
am for him. That’s where our love lives. So, um, it makes sense.”
“Franny’s dreaming all this?”
“& she’s dreaming us too.”
Sure thing. Soulard + Jungian dream theory + LSD = me flying with my daughter
perched on my eyelashes through bone blood & muscle toward a bedroom where my lover is
dreaming all of this—& I am bound there to wake her up.
“Rich? . . . Rich? . . . Wake up!”
Treebranches. Scorching streetlamps. Bed of rubble.
“It’s OK, Rich. I’m fine. I’m right here with you.”
Rumbling brickfloored courtyard. A distant soft voice. Depthless pussy.
“It didn’t happen the way you thought. I didn’t fall. I didn’t die.”
Marauding low chords. Toppling full moon. Gape-toothed talk.
“I’m here. Are you ready to see me yet?”
She called me an angel. I want to own her. I want to own several.
“You have to take a chance now. You have to have that faith that I’m really here.”
No, the universe isn’t ticking right now on it’s way heretofore to hereon. Nothing
comes. Nothing goes.
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005