Bar Jokes

A guy walks into a bar...stop me if you've heard this one...guy walks into a bar, sits down. Next to him is a guy from Indiana. At first he thinks, this guy must be 20, 25. Nope. The guy is closer to 50 it turns out, has grandchildren and everything and then he sees the wrinkles under the guys eyes.
Anyways, Indiana says, I've worked in printing for 25 years and now I'm doing that down there. Everyday, across that border, good money. And nicest people man, let me tell you, nicest people. All except that one thing, he says. What? I ask. The other day, watched the Mexican police light a guy on fire on my way in. Watched him crawl across the ground, writhing. That wasn't so nice.

A guy walks into a bar. Sits down next to a Vietnam sniper, sees that the guys hands are still steady. I kept killing and killing and killing, the sniper says, coughs. But then I got out.
Why'd you get out? the guy asks. Because one day I got scared, sniper says.

I'm all dried up, I say. All fucking dried up.
He's like, well do something about it and all I can say is Man, I am so dried up. Look at me. All my shit is flaking off.
So he picks me up off the sidewalk and tosses me back into the grass.
You shouldn't have crawled out onto the goddamned sidewalk then. You're a worm, he says.

Disconcerting

Deep Secrets

You Remain

You were once a thing and a function unto yourself. We miss you.

All those conduits and you are a wonder still. Go back from whence you came. We never understood you and all we have is to observe. What a thing.

Bullfight critics, ranked in rows,
Crowd the enormous plaza full.
But only one is there who knows,
And he's the man that fights the bull.

-Anonymous

Perchance to Dream

The air, down here, smells of the dead. It bleeds through the vastness of concrete sarcophagus, through these splintered and buried halls and all of the trash, those dangling spiders, like the ancient thing that it is.

I walk with trepidation, behind her, listening.

We discuss strategies and plans to sustain ourselves in this place. But it is futile. It is time and time again wasted, forlorn and aching. We are different now. We judge ourselves in fleeting glimpses of speckled memory.

Wooden beams hold slabs of earth in place. A thunder rolls down one of the corridors and I shudder, knowing the sound. My guts are water but my hands are firm. I will not die and though my body quakes I do not know fear. I know regret and its sister hope, but I will not fall from grace.

Outside, in the deeper chasm, I watch as others fumble with rifles, shooting at another interloper making its way in. A woman professes her love for a man standing next to her. He has just arrived and she tells him that she decided to wait, before moving on, for him. Their eyes take each other in.

A field-phone, military-grade and antique, rings. Where its wiring goes I do not know but I answer it, fumble at the over-large rubber buttons. I punch the sequence in wrong and beg for someone to do it for me. They do and the voice comes in. She says my name.

From deep down here, in this abyss, this fumbling horror of the earth, its recessed husk set as the absence but reflection of tumor, I respond.

"Mom," I say through the static. "I'll be a bit longer, I'm afraid." I've decided that we will advance.

The connection is cut. I check the lone cracker in my chest pocket, look to the flask of water at my side. I place bullets--not many now--into the magazine and then place the curved metal into my rifle. We gather, my small group and I. No words are needed. I grasp the hand of one staying behind. We nod and say "See you above". Which we won't.

Then we step out, my handful of lost souls, into a tunnel that ascends out of view. We start our climb.

Shake it Out

Throw it into that swamp, way back there. Walk away. Let those things feed on it, grow on it. Give it some time and when you come back it will have changed. Evolution of an organic engine.

That thing you see hanging from it now, all green mass, globular...it's you. It's what you've become. All that detritus and it's going to keep on growing. And when you are done peeling it all off...

You will never be the same again.