siren(1).exe
originally published in Ninth Letter

C:\>run garden.exe

You cannot leave here until you complete a task; that task is entirely undetermined, like when the sword is going to fall, or the payload is going to hit, or the bicycle chain is going to go out, causing you to flip over the handlebars, teeth greeting Belgian block, asphalt, cobblestone, sidewalk, whichever, wherever. The town to the south seemed so primitive with its student evenings and charismatic great-great-grandsons (though not mine) of great-great-grandfathers, soaking feet in de Tappan Zee, or in man-made dutch holes positioned on the right side of the dogleg left.  In knitted caps and knickerbockers we took in seraphim and all that jazz, kisses on cheeks in the old world style but still considered to be very northeastern of all of us; this is what we do with family and neighbors who come over carrying lambic on unimportant holistic holidays.  In knitted caps and knickerbockers you took to the clay, white shoes and all.  Things were better when it rained, more chance of a high-ankle-sprain (can you ride a motorbike with one leg dangling through Mechelen?) but more opportunities to slide laterally like beats on an abacus, a satisfying scrape and click before returning the service.  I know nothing of such things:  temporary months turned into temporary years in grey shingled row-houses, complimentary stairs to the upper-numbers, how miserable we were, too sad to clean linoleum.  I tried it, there, once, as it was the spirit of the whole thing, the temporary attempts through misery and coordinated dance steps, the one two three plant swing riepe riepe garste.  The heat off the rebound ace cut like a buggy whip, retiring me with a bagel, not a breadstick, no super nine.  But you, beating strings with palms, spinning the continental like a western float through waffled wind resistance like a fast moving cloud, dipping over the language divide and back up, the uncanny valley straight through the heart of the land, the one-two forehand and backhand.  Lines divide escape and Noman’s land, eye below surface level clouds, on hands and knees talking to machines pleading for distinction between score and break, love and zero, the breaking of beams ten millimeters from the ground, an upside-down periscope searching for projectiles below the surface, subterfuge above all else.  If we could only use this technology to document splash radiuses and kisses on cheeks (yellow = out, green = in), if we could only take the round-eye and make it more crescent shaped, the art of depth perception and depth charges (and it is an art), to eliminate chalk spit and cordial saliva near cheekbones but never elsewheres, to make a splash.  If we could only leave each other be, if I could leave well enough alone, being here and not here at the same time, though we forget that you are one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, but it is you whom we affix a name, like an unstable isotope of hydrogen ruling over all of this country’s processing power, and the words of children such as myself months before Christmas morning, making lists of what we want, when we want, and the falling in love with specifics.  But I am here, perhaps next to you as you attempt to get to sleep, hiding under rental blankets and hiding under counted sheep as you attempt to fall asleep next to me, though you never could, filthy cobwebs in the barren bed, haste chopping away our olive-tree and hauling our bedstead off ERROR

C:\>run garden.exe

You cannot leave here until you complete a task; that task is entirely undetermined, like when the sword is going to fall, or the payload is going to hit, or the bicycle chain is going to go out, causing you to flip over the handlebars, teeth greeting Belgian block, asphalt, cobblestone, sidewalk, whichever, wherever. The Belgian blok held their block parties 132 kilometers north, and that is where you would go on weekends, presumably on the motorcycle that he bought for you, one that would be chained up to aluminum pipe racks that looked like grills, rusty rental bicycles flossing the gaps.  The hand throwing five needed two more members to complete the spectrogram of septic designs and handbags though handbangs, unfair, certainly, as I was never one to turn down a tie, half-windsor, full, four-in-hand, other.  With such great skill and precision you walk down slotted lines, heel to toe in front of watchful eyes, though that is not your true game, of course, the sliding open of glass doors and the sliding on of glass shoes on heavy rotation like the doors to a supermarket where mothers placed sons and daughters into shopping carts, scared to get separated in the process of the turnstyle.  You have no time for these things.  The purchasing of cheeses, the unfamiliar yet familiar sweetness, the occasional complementary bottle of wine, the brand names unfamiliar to me, us, but offhand and sensible to you, like riding a train back from Oostende with a sunburn.  You have no time to create loops with skirtlegs towards the outskirtloop, no time to put plastic tubs (queens or commoners) into baskets, no time to open up wallets, no time.  Foolishly, I thought that time stood still here, as it always does, the standing and delay until the hitting of a return key, the constant blink and wait (not yet, not yet) to continue on, the page down, the continuation, but I was content to let it blink, whereas you hit keys children have never seen, escape patterns, safety words and codes like vipers and reverse encryption, to overclock and overheat like unnecessary wind sprints, or legs burnt on the side of combustible engines, gas by the litre.  No, uw, no time for games:  the unofficial sport of the small Vlaamsen town to the West is hoisting velos above heads and above stonewalls, up and over and into the river that spilled throughout town.  Slow nights, we’d remark that it would never spill over, despite days of rain spritzed from the ghost of Jan Zonder Vrees, spittle while he swung swords to protect children and men not like me, as he would certainly make me lay my wallet down, overstuffed with Belgian Francs (mine is of a faulty design).  Slow nights, you would cook for me, pankeuken op de keuken, sugar and butter spread thin.  Slow days, I would take showers next to you, left to right, separated by plastic dividers, one drain splitting the difference.  The water would hit my shoulders, hit uw schouders, roll and fall like status bars, 0, 33, 66, 99, 100% down through rusted valves, through the foyer and out to the river, taking skin cells and the film of sweat from keeping windows open (we cannot cool ourselves) down through the foyer and out to the river. In the belly of the goudenvissen, dit ons huwelijksbed, en huwelijkstempel zijn.  Why must we return here, whitewitch?   This is not home, just a place where I rested my head on rented pillows for months at a time.  Why must you cut off my hand and cast it into the sea, blood and water flowing from fingers, the end of my domination and the taking of tithes.  I am already submerged:  without hand, wheels spinning.

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