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by Matt McIntosh


  the pain never let up

  I developed a tendency to break down

  every few months

  I would be sitting or lying down.

  watching TV, maybe.

  nothing out of the ordinary.

  find myself breathing hard

  find myself hyperventilating

  then weeping uncontrollably

  unable to reason or speak

  my hands face and feet would tingle

  crawl around or hide beneath the couch or

  curl into a ball

  sped away to an emergency room somewhere

  curled up in the backseat

  crying and moaning

  streetlights through the windows as I go by

  in the waiting room

  people watching

  their eyes staring

  until my name was called

  helped down the hall

  then through the curtain

  to a table where I could curl up on my side again while the nurses spoke to my mom—it was usually she who brought me—explaining that it’s all there in the file, we’ve done this many times, he’s in constant pain, he breaks down every couple months, he just needs a breather, he just needs to recharge his battery, he just needs you to stick a syringe in him, and shoot him up with the biggest dose of Demerol you feel comfortable with. But make sure it’s a big one.

  hooked

  to a bed of iron spikes

  to a bed

  made up with silken sheets

  white and smooth,

  They’d let me lie there awhile.

  In the car on the way home

  looking out at the lights

  everything

  “It’s like…”

  “It’s like…”

  (8_31_07 2_17 pm.wav)

  W: I guess Helen was about three and she still had not uttered a word, and William and Rebecca were asking my mom, you know, Should we take her to a speech specialist? When do we become alarmed? And anyway, so Helen for some reason was spending the night at Grandma’s, and my mom observed her…walking down—just like we have a picture on the fridge of Helen and a cat and they both have the same expression and they seem to be relating to each other, taking a walk—well, Helen and a cat—one of the cats at my mom’s—were walking down the driveway, and Helen was having a conversation with the cat, and Helen was speaking to the cat in complete sentences, inflections, and it was not English. She was talking to the cat, sounding like this…talking all along, on a walk, not in English. Not in any language. And so I just thought, Oh yeah. She can talk to whoever she wants, in whatever language, but she doesn’t care to speak English [laughs] to humans!

  M: What do you have that I want?

  W: Nothing.

  M: Nothing.

  W: Why in the world would I waste my words on you.

  M: I have observed you people long enough to know that it’s a—

  W: Waste of time.

  M: —a waste of time trying to communicate with other humans.

  W: Why do I need to smile at you

  There are 17 dimensions.

  each is broken into many parts

  why do I need to communicate

  Space does not exist.

  Time is nothing like we assume it to be.

  Why do I need to smile at you

  Woman: We heard it and we just got down on the floor, in the hall and, it just took the whole house! And I hung on to them and it just went over, and we thought it was a fire, so we got up and there was no house left!………………………………

  why do I need to communicate

  There are 17 dimensions.

  This reality was commissioned.

  These dimensions are here, all around us, always.

  it is impossible

  to document

  …But we’re OK!

  There is a part of each of us that is “at home” in all dimensions.

  Why do I need to smile at you

  why do I need to communicate

  with my words?

  “It’s like…”

  two people walking through a city on a warm summer evening taking turns taking pictures with a camera with no film then writing what they’d seen through the viewfinder in a notebook for the other to read

  From: ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

  Subject: Re: newcomer

  Newsgroups: alt.dreams

  Date: 1994-10-31 23:21:30 PST

  I was jumped and beat unconsious by 7 people a couple of months ago. This guy hit me through my open car window and I jumped out to hit hit him back and people started hitting me from behind. The experience lasted a long time because after I would get up, I would swear at them. I didn’t want them to be able to feel they had beat me. So I kept blacking out and getting back up and yelling at them. Eventually, they left and me and my friend got back into the car and drove home, and then to the hospital. He wasn’t hurt at all. He had mace in his eye, but that was it. I couldn’t walk at all. And to top this all off, I’ve had a chronic pain condition; I’ve had a bad headache for 15 months now without the pain stopping for a minute. So this whole thing aggrevated it even worse.

  I have violent dreams every night.

  Usually, I’m getting shot or running away from someone who is trying to kill me.

  Is there something to do so you don’t have nightmares?

  eighteen years old

  stuffed to the gills with antidepressants

  wasn’t going to last much longer

  carving up arms with a Swiss Army Knife

  having conversations with moths

  scaring young co-eds with strange emails about “eating the sun”

  genuinely convinced that all of his internal organs had burned away long ago, and that his limbs were hollow except for deposits in his hands and feet of ash

  I started having hallucinations

  in bed when I’d be about to fall asleep

  out of nowhere

  terror

  the dark figure of a Man

  large heavy dressed in black

  white mask

  on top of me

  crushing me

  his hands around my neck

  squeezing the air out

  the blades of a black helicopter chopping the air above

  and a strobe light churned the dark and the lightness into one

  and sirens going off in my ears

  I’d try to fight him off but id be

  paralyzed

  couldn’t fight back or scream or cry out

  on and on and on it would go for how long?

  The Dark Man choking the life out of me

  on and on and on

  until at last I’d move my arm to strike

  but by then he’d disappeared

  with the strobe

  and the helicopter

  and the sirens

  leaving me on the bed or on the floor

  coughing, weeping, gasping for breath

  one day on a bus a bolt of lightning hit him straight in the brain

  the plot to the world’s greatest novel

  something to leave behind

  a swan song

  something for the world to remember him by

  and then

  ‌ ‌ exit time

  See, he was going to kill himself.

  But first he had to finish the book...

  This part is called

  Kansazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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  What do you have that I want?

  { }

  No, no, they have to take time to come up there, you know that, gotta be very caref—

  It’s very hot.

  I understand that, gotta be very, very careful, how they approach you. OK? All right? So when they come upstairs, it won’t be worse than it is. Now you stay calm, as to—how many people where you’re at right now?

  There’s like, five people here with me.

  All up on the 83rd floor?

  83rd floor.

  With five people. Five patients. Everybody’s having trouble breathing?

  Everybody’s having trouble breathing, some people are worse!

  Some people unconscious? Everybody’s awake?

  So far, yes. But it’s—

  KANSAS

  PART 2

  (sal4.aiff)

  Aida was very very funny. She either liked you or she didn’t like you—not that it—but, if you let her down too many times, she’d say,

  Hey, you know, that’s fine, I can go on my way,

  and she’d go on her way! But uh, I always came up—managed to come up with—with an excuse! That you couldn’t fight! You know? And uh she’d say,

  OK, I’ll give you one more try.

  And and mind you, that summer—see her brother—all her brothers and sisters and all—her brother, her oldest brother, Louie, was a jeweler. He was a jewelry designer, see? That was his uh his occupation, and his his work. And uh, just before I left for Germany, I said to him,

  What do you got in the form of rings?

  So he brought out some bare diamonds, and so on, showed me what uh what he had, uh, I said, if if if you separate, use this use this uh use this uh…… uh…… this diamond, could you mount it, and, and all that? He says,

  Yeah, leave it to me, I’ll—I’ll take care of it

  M: Did he give you a deal on it?

  Yeah, yeah, you know he he at at at that time, I thought it was a a cheap diamond. It was uh six hundred dollars. Uh… when uh—

  M: That’s hefty.

  Yeah, it was a carat and a half, at that time. So uh, he set it up, mounted it, made it into an engagement ring. See? And uh, I remember the conversation I had with Aida. I said,

  Hon? You are going to receive something this weekend, and I hope you take it, and use it… wisely.

  And she says, When do you have wisdom comin out of your mouth?……

  I said, Don’t tease me now. Said, I’m tryin to make this as easy as possible.

  She says, Why try to make it easy for you?

  You know!……… So…

  One thing would lead to another, and I was on on on the line uh to her, and unbeknown to her, I was tryin to get time off to go from Germany, back to the States, to marry her.

  W: I’m taking egg orders. How do you like ’em?

  Scrambled.

  W: Oh, yeah?

  Yeah.

  M: I’ll have scrambled too.

  W: Scrambled also? OK, I’m gonna—

  ’cause you’re a heart patient—

  I’m gonna take most of the yolks out—

  so don’t be surprised.

  Oh, that’s all right.

  W: I’m gonna give you just a couple—

  mostly whites.

  ………… So……… finally get the—my orders, and uh, was told I had exactly ten days, to go back, do what I had to do, and to report back to Germany……… So……… I went I went down the flight line… and I talked to each pilot, asking them for a ride back to the States, and there was only one, uh, colonel, that was flying back, direct, he says, uh,

  I’m goin right into, uh, it was, right out—right north of New York City—

  I said, Perfect. You know, I’ll land there, motor down to the city, and uh, be home in an hour, two hours at most. So, yeah, everything was workin fine… But, always the unexpected. We’re uh… right outside the ADIs—that’s your Air Defense, uh, Indefe—Information, line, off the coast, when they direct—redirect—us, because of weather. I didn’t know what was happening. See? Didn’t know there was a—a major snowstorm was goin into the city. Just like they had a couple weeks ago? In New York City? They had 38, uh, inches? Well, wh
at landed in the city, was 27 inches! At that ti—that year. We landed right outside Maryland, and the colonel says,

  This is as far north as I can get.

  They had issued parachutes, and I said, to the colonel,

  Where do I leave this parachute?

  He said, I wouldn’t leave it anywhere! You’re responsible for it.

  I said, Wait a minute. This is GI equipment. I’ll turn it in, get credit!

  He said, It doesn’t work—quite work that way. When you’re issued a parachute, it’s personal. And you’re stuck with it, until your discharge. I said,

  Oooooooooooh… you know, I—I’m I’m gonna be strapped with a parachute? Talk about crazies, listen to this:…………

  We we take a bus—now with—this is with a piece of luggage, and a parachute, and in my uniform—so a lot of people knew I wasn’t crazy. And they asked:

  Where you headin?

  I said, New York City.

  OK, you wanna check—and they look—you wanna check that in?

  I said, It’s a parachute, and I can’t check it in. It’s with me, do or die!

  So I travel by bus, in to, uh, the city. I got off at uh, what, 48th Street, and Broadway. I, vaguely remember, but that was the, depot. I’ve already eaten up, almost three days.

 

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