somniat 50 to the sky

It’s cold up here,
why did we come up here?
I shiver;
the world stretches out before us;
up here, above the valley,
the entire city is swallowed up in shifting shadows
that play among shimmering city lights;
all of it radiating the illusion of a profound serenity;
and farther out, there is only a sea of blackness
that reaches out and touches the night sky, alive with glimmers,
distance specks of radiance that dance to a passacaglia
as they call to me and ask me to come home.

The angel wraps her soggy blanket more snugly around us
then in her strong, melting arms, she holds me closer,
I can’t remember, I had an idea;
didn’t I tell you?

I sink deeper into her,
you wanted to show me something,
maybe it was the stars,
they are beautiful.

I feel her warm breathe on me,
No, it wasn’t the stars;
it was something I saw the other day,
only I can’t quite put my finger on it now;
she smiles and looks at me, her face so close,
are you okay, you don’t look well?

I think we’re dying, I tell her,
only I can’t remember why.

She looks down for a minute,
and then back at me;
I drown in her eyes, as she sighs,
I don’t know, but if it’s true,
then I’m glad we’re together;
I don’t want to die alone.

It’s then that I look out,
and I see it far off in the east,
a burgeoning orange radiance;
the entire sky suddenly a deep bruise,
look!

We flow into each other,
she let’s out a small gasp,
that’s it,
that’s what I wanted to show you.

I begin to cough, and I can’t stop,
then I start to shake, uncontrollably;
the world swirls around me
and I’m not at all sure where I am,
the only certainty is the warmth
of the angel that holds me
as she strokes my hair,
no, Adam, just a few more moments,
I don’t want to see it alone,
I want to see it with you.

I try to control my breathing,
to hold myself in stasis, to focus,
because I know that this is it –
and then I see it,
the brilliant rays of the sun coming up
over a range of mountains in the east;
its glow reaches out to me
and pulls me to it,
so beautiful, so, so beautiful.

I turn toward my angel
but she is no longer there;
she has taken to the clouds;
she flies, her wings extended
into their full golden glory,
and she is not alone
shades of amaranth and sapphire follow her;
she sweeps down in her new found freedom,
and then back up toward me;
until she is right there, hovering in front of me;
she reaches out her arms and I fall into her;
she pulls me up, and holds me once again
as she sweeps me into the sky
and takes me home.

the end

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somniat 49 – cipher

The angel stands off by herself
in a world of her own;
she faces away from the group
and stares out into the dark forest
that crawls its way
up this side of the mountain;
an old blanket wrapped around her shoulders
is the only reward she’ll ever get
for all she has done for me;
her mission accomplished,
what else has she left to do now,
except to die?

They fawn all about me, these strangers;
they congratulate me
and for what I don’t know;
they are armed and masked,
and their goggles might not all match
but are they any less menacing
than the enemy I’ve just left behind?

They set me upon dry blankets
and lean me up against against something hard;
one probes my eyes with a flashlight,
while another takes blood from my arm,
yet a third gives me a shot that spreads
a creamy warmness through me,
and still one more removes the shrapnel in my thigh;
when I look down at my twisted legs and feet,
I have to wonder how it is I still breathe,
and then it occurs to me
it’s because below my waste,
I now feel nothing.

Through it all,
the woman with the sad, familiar eyes
sits near, watching me in contemplation;
she is old, and I’m sure that I know her;
even the way she breathes, I recognize;
she reaches forward
and pushes some hair out of my eyes
as she has done countless times before;
beneath her breather apparatus,
she murmurs words of comfort,
but above the noisy bustle of the others
I can’t quite hear her,
but I catch her eyes, and I tell her,
I don’t know who anyone is;
I don’t know anyone’s name;
who are you?

Gently she asks,
you remember nothing then?

Now and then,
it comes to me in waves,
sometimes more, sometimes less,
it’s like the tide at the beach
sometimes surging
so much so, I’m frightened and startled,
and then at other times, it recedes
and I feel like I’m being sucked in
someplace deep that I’ll never get out of;
there was something I had to do,
but I can’t remember it;
did I do it?

Their actions seemingly finished for the moment,
the group pauses pensively
and looks to the old woman with the sad eyes;
she places her gloved hand on mine
and begins,
you’re the key, Adam,
your blood; it’s composition;
it’s like a cipher;
it’s where you hid the secret;
it tells us how to make the somniat,
but only once it’s been contaminated;
we learned they were planning an attack weeks ago;
you said you would help us, so we sent you in –
you weren’t alone, but still, we had no idea
how many they’d send …

I take her hand in mine
and lift it, and despite the glove
I find myself tracing the lines of her veins;
I remember holding her hand for the fist time,
how warm it was, how soft and intimate,
I remember placing a ring on her finger;
you said they’d turn on us,
you told that to me, I remember …
I’m so sorry, so sorry;
I thought I’d lost you forever,
I wanted to make you whole again.

Behind her goggles, tears fall,
her eyes shimmer, the way they did
when I first met her and fell in love,
the world will know now, Adam,
thanks to you;
they’ll all know the secret;
there’s be no more lies,
no more killing,
not if others have the secret,
not if there is no secret,
they can’t, they won’t …

It was always the same with her;
I want to tell her bitterly
that now we’ll all destroy ourselves,
but I don’t,
for once I hold my tongue
and realize maybe I’m wrong,
maybe she’s right,
maybe the world can change,
so what now?

You don’t have much time left, Adam,
I don’t know how you lasted this long;
we have to hurry, and we can’t take you with us,
she reaches for a kit she’s kept by her side,
and she opens it; it contains small syringes;
she takes one out,
we’ve got your blood now;
you don’t have to suffer anymore;
I’ll give you an injection, you’ll sleep;
it’ll be gentle, better than waiting
here, alone in the forest
until it’s over.

I swallow and nod,
That’s fine; you’re right;
you’ve always been right;
it’s what’s best;
and if it needs to be done,
then I’m glad it’s you.

She nods back at me;
she strokes my face, one last time;
she roles up my sleeve,
then uncaps the syringe;
I watch as the needle comes nearer,
but she stops;
she whispers something under her breath;
she drops the syringe and reaches for her mask
to pull it off, but before she can the angel is there
holding her arms in place,
it’s too soon for anyone to die yet,
the sun’ll rise soon, it was beautiful yesterday;
I want Adam to see it; he’ll be safe with me;
I’ll protect him.

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somniat 48 to the mountain

When the angel pulls me from the pool
I’m almost lifeless;
the world passes me by only diffusely;
she places her lips on me,
they are doughy and hot;
she breathes life into me,
then she massages my chest;
finally she slaps me hard in the face
until I murmur,
stop.

She almost but not quite laughs;
she throws me over her shoulder
like the used up ragdoll that I am;
then she runs,
a mad dash across wet pavement
that glows in eerie shades of claret
so that in it I see
reflections of devils and demons;
I close my eyes
and feel my angel dip down low,
wiring scrapes across my back
and the ground below my angel’s feet
shifts from from a hard solidity
into an empty metallic echo;
I open my eyes but for a mere moment
and I see through rusted iron grating,
down below, to a rain of fire
that falls across endless chaos;
soldiers abandon their trucks and run
along with a host of others,
all of them scattering, like lost filaments
on reverse course from a magnet.

My angel sucks in dense air
and blows it out again,
while her legs pump,
like pistons in a steam locomotive
they churn, a destiny unto themselves;
then finally she leaps
and I feel us cross a chasm in time;
then we hit hard dirt
and we lose one another;
I’m left rolling
across the side of a wet mountain
and when I stop,
I dare to open my eyes again
as I hear cables begin to snap
and I see the bridge,
the entire structure the pool was built upon,
beginning to gyrate wildly
until it breaks away from the mountain,
all the remaining cables snapping at once
as it drops in a mighty swing
toward the flame engulfed hotel
where it smashes into its center;
the hotel leans forward
and mysteriously holds for another instant
before it completely crumbles forward
pouring out concrete, iron, and flames,
that fill the streets below
in a miasma of horror.

I lean back and stare at the sky;
the clouds have cleared
as if they never were,
and the stars light up the sky;
I wonder what it might mean
that I’ve come this far
that I am here now
on the mountain;
I feel its strength below me,
its eternal presence flows into me
and accepts me;
before any of us, there was the mountain;
and when we are all gone,
there will still be the mountain.

There is first one
and then another,
goggled eyes that peer into me,
fingers that begin to prod me,
whispers and then shouts,
frantic exchanges of words;
someone leans in close
and she has sad familiar eyes;
with her black gloved hand
she strokes my cheek
and tells me,
you’ve come home, Adam,
you’ve come home.

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somniat: free falling

Rain beats against my face
and wet pellets sting my arms and legs;
I hover in a space
that is not a space,
where absolute meets abstract;
I float above the golden wings of an angel
that spread out
toward the end of eternity
to a place where reality meets dreams
and bends.

Out of the swirling mists of the sky
I see faces both old and new
and they ask me questions
for which I have no answers;
a plurality of possible me’s
that could have been
woven into a möbius strip
that we glide upon
never reaching an end.

The wind howls in my ears
and pulls at me in every direction
until I am flattened and elongated
floating outside of myself
and watching me fall, paper thin;
answers play on my mind
but they only yield more questions,
regression, mind dialysis,
something I thought I knew
until it got left behind;
the touch of God
breathing life into me
only so that I might suffer
for just one more answer;
a war that pulls me apart
and sets me aflame;
the ashes, swept away
in the rain.

We smack the water
with such an unexpected violence
that it sends tremors through me,
vibrations that shatter my feet like glass;
before we plunge
down
deep;
I gasp for air and all I get is water,
but even before I can panic
she’s curving us upward
but not fast enough
so that my shoulder slams something hard
and then I’m wriggled about
twisting in ways I can’t explain
until I see through the bottom of the world
deep down into hell
where wild winds stoke long flames
that lick across the entire length of the hotel;
fire trucks retreat, having given up;
police cars search for a way out
through roads crammed with fleeing military trucks;
people rush from the building and into the streets,
hither and thither, helter-skelter,
a swarm of deserting ants
that topple over one another in their panic.

Before any of the blurred images can congeal,
I am suddenly swept up
into the arms of a warm lover
that works with a silent determined fury
to unravel straps and buckles
that have tangled around us both;
then holding me close and tight,
she pushes against the sky, itself,
and thrusts us up
so that we burst through
the surface of the water;
and even as I flail my arms
coughing and gasping for air,
this angel calmly wraps a strong arm around me,
and leans me into her soft chest,
then with her free arm
she strikes into the water
her legs propelling us forward
across the long length of the pool;
I relax into it,
her steady stride,
I close my eyes and feel her strength,
her mercy,
and when I open them again,
I see upward, to an opening in the clouds
that reveals the stars;
and it’s then that I notice her
hovering near,
a sapphire shadow
that whispers into the breeze,
you see, I promised you,
now, don’t be afraid,
you’re almost home.

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angel flight

I walk back into the room
away from the sliding doors
and sweeping gusts of wet wind
to the angel;
she looks up at me
with eyes rimmed in black tears;
I reach out my hand,
please.

Her eyes lock into mine,
and what is behind them,
I can’t fathom,
permutations and combinations,
infinite calculations,
my destiny there
in those wet pools
that drip black ink across her face;
her life’s history, her story,
one I’ll never know,
but its ending
everything I depend upon;
and then it happens, the shift,
a decision is made;
she reaches out and grabs my hand;
she is so strong and so vibrant
that she nearly pulls me down
when she stand up,
and then we are there
face to face in the dim light;
she raises a hand
and gently caresses my cheek,
I’m not an angel,
you know that.

You are, I tell her,
now show me what to do.

She bites her lower lip
and looks away from me;
then she goes to the bed
where there is a large vinyl bag,
from it, she takes out two sets of harnesses;
she throws me one;
put it on;
somewhere in my mind
I trace out the outline
of a shimmering fractal
and my hands do the rest;
it’s as easy as putting on a shirt
or tying a shoe, each snap and strap
fits into place exactly where I expect it to,
and when I’m finished and look up,
the angel is ready and waiting.

I take a step in her direction,
when suddenly there is massive gust of wind
that sweeps into the room, howling;
so strong, the walls rattle
and the floor begins to tremble,
until it reaches a point of cathexis,
somewhere deep down, under the room
there is a reverberating boom
that knocks us off our feet;
the whole room feels as if it is sliding;
the lights taper and go off,
we scamper across the floor
and grab one another and wait,
both of us sure, this is the end,
but amazingly it passes;
she stands first, then lends me her hand;
the entire room leans slightly
disorienting us,
and the angel says,
the building, it must be collapsing,
if we’re going to do this,
we have to hurry.

We move in dark shadows;
the way out revealed
by the black outline of the curtains
that lift in the wind;
I see beyond them into the night;
out on the balcony there is no railing,
this angel having removed it long before I came,
so that when we step out onto the patio
there is nothing between us and infinity
except the stormy night sky.

We look down into the vast grayness,
and my angel shouts above wind,
this isn’t going to work,
I can’t see anything down there,
and the wind,
if it gusts at the wrong moment,
it’ll pull us off course –
and even with this downpour,
there won’t be enough water.

Memories stir,
the killing won’t stop,
it’ll never stop unless we do something;
who is it you lost?

I stand behind her
and begin to fasten my harness to hers,
snaps and buttons that bind our destiny;
finally, we’re fully attached and move as one;
and it comes as second nature, a routine,
the shrapnel in my leg brushes against her own leg
and it stings; she yells back to me above the roar,
a small boy, he was just a small boy,
but it doesn’t matter now, not anymore, does it?

I cry out to her amid the blasts of wind,
as she leads us closer
to the slanted edge of the railless balcony,
hundreds of feet above the ground,
it matters to me, every one of them,
I think about them every day, every minute,
I can’t shut my eyes anymore,
I can’t sleep.

She eyes the beyond
swirling eddies of dark mist;
the wind picks up and the cold rain pelts us
before it dies down once again,
I can’t see anything.

And then I notice it,
the outline of an angel far below,
in a halo of sapphire,
there! Look there, it’s there,
don’t you see it? The blue,
she’s waiting for us,
dive for the blue.

And then it happens;
and I see that her wings are the most beautiful of all;
for from this angel, wide glowing eagle wings of amber
extend outward from her,
she leans in, her legs so powerful I’m pulled of my feet
and left dangling;
she back us up almost all the way to the room,
then she runs, skips and finally jumps off the balcony,
and into the swirling gray of the night sky
we fly.

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somniat: angel tears

I repeat, there has been a terrorist attack
centered on the Aislinn hotel;
the group, Angels of the Lord –
with her free hand she slaps at the remote
and the TV is silenced,
then like a liquid cat she slides off the bed;
her pistol never moves an inch;
its barrel is a third eye darting toward me,
an accelerated probe.

She has slate gray eyes rimmed in black mascara
that has dripped across her face leaving trails;
she is an pin-up come to life, all muscle and form,
lucidity that flows into destiny;
I know she won’t kill me,
for she, like the others, is an angel.

She glances out the door and down the hall;
when she is satisfied there is no one else,
she kicks the door shut;
then abruptly she grabs my shirt
and balls it up in her left hand
as she heaves me against the wall;
her pistol, now turned horizontally,
is shoved into the small hard place
above my nose and between my eyes
where she holds it
while I watch her breathe
through her small clear plastic mask;
she’s so far, her eyes so distant,
finally she sneers a bit,
then snickers out the wisp of a bitter laugh,
Jesus, you’re a freaking mess;
you are dead already;
it doesn’t matter;
I already knew it was over;
I don’t even know why I waited.

She stares off, away at the wall,
at things I can’t see or understand;
I have to say something,
but what I don’t know;
then before I realize what’s happening
she takes her pistol off me,
she backs up until she hits the wall behind her,
then she tears off her own mask
and shoves the barrel of the pistol in her mouth
and begins to squeeze the trigger.

Don’t, don’t, don’t, I shout.

She’s a hair’s breadth
from blowing a hole in the back of her head;
but she waits; she looks at me,
and for the first time
I see how utterly frightened she is,
she asks me,
why not?

Finally I say it, what needs to be said,
because you’re an angel;
I try to take a step closer to her.

She pulls the gun out of her mouth
and thrusts it back at me,
I’m sorry, I was selfish;
it’d be cruel to leave you here alone;
I’ll do you first;
that’s fair, isn’t it?

I cannot penetrate her eyes,
you’re an angel, you can’t.

She shakes her head,
we only put that in your head,
so that you’d know what to do
after you got exposed
to the somniat …
for the first time her eyes soften;
it was your idea;
you knew all about the somniat;
you knew what we had to do
so that we could remember;
you always loved angels,
that’s what you said,
tears begin to fall from her eyes
paving news trails,
but there are no angels,
just flawed, stupid people;
we thought we could change things,
we can’t, it’s over;
this was the last way out,
and it’s not a way out;
it didn’t rain today, don’t you see?

I move a step closer;
I shake my head.

No rain, no water,
no water, not jump;
the pool, it’s our way out,
into the pool and across it,
all the way to the mountain;
it’s like a bridge, you see,
and they’re waiting for us
over there, but we can’t go;
we can’t make it;
finally, she lowers her pistol;
it always rains on this day,
but today it didn’t;
it was a perfect sunrise;
it took my breathe away –
but not a drop of rain, all day,
and that pool down there,
draining all day long,
there’s no way we’d make the jump,
we’d hit the bottom hard.

But you’re an angel,
you are, I’ve seen what you can do,
I try to reach out to touch her,
you can fly.

She screams,
a piercing empty hollow scream;
she drops her pistol entirely
and in desperation grabs at her hair and pulls
as she falls back against the wall
and slides down into a fetal position
where she lets go of her hair
and begins to hug her knees
sobbing as she rocks,
no rain, no water,
no water, no jump.

I am a golem
walking on the surface of Neptune;
gravity bears down and pulls extra hard at me;
each movement I make is played out
in a jittery slow motion flicker;
I’ve fallen into a silent film;
I go to the back of the room
where thick black curtains hide sliding glass doors,
I reach behind them and undo the latches
then slide the doors open;
the moisture smacks me all at once;
wet cats and dogs slam into me
and the effect is torrential,
I’m drenched almost immediately;
I close my eyes and savor the cold dampness
despite all my injuries I feel alive.

I turn around,
with the wind blowing against me
and drops showering the room,
I see this sleek angel look up at me
her eyes now aglow in amber
as she whispers,
it’s raining.

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somniat 44 – angel in waiting

I am in a tiny, confined world
that hums about me
with the mechanical softness
of an intolerable patience;
my left leg bleeds slowly
and I don’t know
how much time I have left in me;
maybe I have crossed over already,
outside the doors of the elevator
there could be anything:
angels, demons, forgotten hells,
revelations never quite grasped,
recriminations,
absolute knowledge,
the truth, which will keep me company
for all eternity
as it taunts me
with everything I got wrong.

There is a sudden jerking,
and the whole elevator suddenly feels
as if has been knocked hard;
I stumble horizontally
and the wall catches me with a thump,
the lights flicker off
and I have the sensation of swinging,
my feet planted in the absolute dark
on this side of the moon;
I hear a grinding, scraping noise,
and I smell smoke;
then from corners and cracks, long hornets,
black with stripes of glowing red,
begin to creep out
and to alight into the air,
always flying behind me
so that even as I turn
around and around
in an panicked effort to face my fear
I can never quite catch them;
and just when I begin to feel
the small tickling of little insect feet
behind me, at the base of my neck,
the light flickers back on
and the elevator jostles to start;
all around my feet
there are hot ashes.

I concentrate on my breath,
each one more special than the last,
one more moment I am still here,
still fighting for something
that’s on the tip of my tongue,
but never clear;
it defies me
and it defines me, this mystery;
the elevator stops on the pool level
and I brace myself as the doors slide open;
there is nothing but black billowing smoke
and searing heat that burns my hair,
random gunfire goes off some place near;
with my eyes stinging and my throat on fire
I drop to my knees
even as the doors automatically begin to shut;
the elevator once again jounces
and starts to rise;
I can barely breathe
so I lay down low in the elevator
among the ashes
where the air is least tainted;
I try again to remember
the face of a sapphire angel,
her eyes so wide
they take in the world.

When the elevator doors open again
it is to the top floor of the hotel
which rests atop the apex of the cavaedium;
there is no smoke here;
I wait and listen,
there is only silent stillness;
as the doors start to shut
I scramble forward on hands and knees
off the elevator
and on to an old, red, plush carpet
where I find myself face to face
with a dead soldier
who stares up at me through goggles
half on and half off;
his neck has been twisted into a peculiar position,
and his arms and legs sprawl out,
his breathing mask has cracked and opened,
and when he fell
he must have bit his tongue,
for it hangs half severed from his mouth.

I stand up and look down the hotel hallway;
strewn here and there must be half a dozen
dead bodies, all soldiers;
there are bullet holes and blood scattered across the walls;
I walk forward, each step a painful limp;
through the center of the floor there is a line of glass
that should reveal the cavaedium below
but instead shows nothing
but a thick swelling grayness;
small whiffs of smoke float up
from vents … and almost undetectably
I feel the floor shifting beneath my feet;
I follow the corridor all the way to its end
where there is a small room,
the only room in the entire hotel that faces west
toward the mountain, and over the floating pool;
the door to that room is slightly ajar
and from inside, I hear a TV news announcer
squealing out lies
about the Angels of the Lord,
criminals, murderers, terrorists;
I push the door to the room open.

She is there
sitting on the bed
in a skintight outfit, sleek;
she wears a small, filtered plastic mask,
her right arm is straight out,
for her pistol is on me
before the door even finishes opening;
I stare down its barrel;
her head leans low,
short straight bleached hair drips from it,
she keeps one eye on the TV
and the other one on me;
you’re late,
she says,
I thought
you must have died already.

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somniat 42 up

Out of nowhere
there is an intense burst of fluorescence,
an amaranthine shimmer,
and from behind the girl from the men’s room,
streamlined wings,
narrow and muscular,
sharp and sublime,
spread out with an incredible momentum
and then flap into an inward curl
that lifts her feet
just barely from the ground
giving her exactly the right jump
as she pirouettes out of the corral,
a ballerina with jet black lanky hair
that whips around her face;
she pivots behind a soldier
with such speed and subtlety
that even before he knows what has happened
she has plucked the tube from his mask,
taken his rifle from him,
and knocked him on his ass;
then with amazing alacrity
she chambers and adjusts his rifle,
puts it to her shoulder,
aims at the east wall of latticed crystal glass
and seemly fires at random;
several shots ring out
one after the other,
glass is shattered
and slivers of fragments
shower the lobby floor below,
in a dangerous flutter.

Almost immediately following her act
automatic rifles fire in a heavy repeated thumping
that clenches at my gut and twists it;
and then she, this beautiful violet angel,
folds back her wings
and I see now that she is riddled with holes;
she drops her rifle
and stands there a moment
as if impervious
to the red leaks she has sprung;
her eyes glimmer in a glow of cerise
as they catch my own,
and for a splinter of time
that extends itself outward
across infinity
she holds my gaze and implores me;
and then she falls,
a crumpled mass upon the floor,
her life, bleeding out of her,
even as her soul of amaranth
fleetingly flutters
and then escapes upward
into eternities hidden in shadows
that my eyes cannot follow.

Nothing appears to have changed at all;
except that there isn’t a single person that moves;
every individual stands utterly still
and tries to fathom what has just happened;
then before the first person begins to breathe
there is a strange wounded, stuttering noise;
and everyone’s gaze turns to look
outside the east wall of latticed crystals
where the helicopter that had been hovering there
is now not only smoking
but twirling in erratic circles,
a massive wounded bird
that slowly closes in on us all;
then jaws drop
as it smashes through
the east wall of latticed crystals
and into the cavaedium, itself,
where now flaming it begins to flounder
in uneven jagged eddies
until at last it smashes
directly into the south wall
where it bursts into a ball of fire;
shrapnel, debris and flames shower down;
but the skeletal remnant of the helicopter
holds its place on the south wall,
stuck, it defies gravity
for a stretched out wink of time
before it eventually breaks free
and falls with a scrapping, scratching plunk,
onto the floor of the hotel lobby,
where its flames immediately spread out;
a splattering of sheering hot blazes.

The tenuous insect order
that had been threatened all along
finally breaks into a thousand tiny shards,
an ant hill that’s been turned upside down;
the corralled off hotel workers and guests break free
in a screaming wild panic,
soldiers begin to shout and shoot at random
at what I can’t even say,
everyone seeks safety
but where and what and how;
I look forward to see the general
now stands with a long piece of shrapnel
sticking out between his neck and shoulder;
he falls to his knees
and then onto his face
directly in front of me;
his subordinates break off
running in different arbitrary directions,
their protective suits smoking
from random flaming fragments.

My eyes latch onto the elevators
not far from where the helicopter crashed,
at the base of the east and south walls;
I step forward,
and I feel a shooting pain in my leg;
I look down
and I see a small smoldering piece of shrapnel
coming directly out of my right thigh;
I wince and take a deep breath,
then limp forward, each step slow and methodical,
deliberate;
time whirls around me as dancing flames spread;
panicked people dash away from where I go,
some of them set aflame;
I feel something grab at my left foot
and I look down to see spiteful small eyes
glancing up from behind broken goggles,
I shake off the hand, and watch as it falls,
then go forward;
something large turns over
and spills out dancing serpents of flame
that slither out near my feet
so that I can barely pass through,
but bathed in a sleek sweat
and with my left thigh throbbing,
I make a final dash for the elevators
before the way is closed off completely,
and then I am there,
in front of one of the elevators,
and as if it had been waiting for me,
the doors slide open;
soldiers dash out, almost toppling me over,
but once they are away I step into the elevator,
then turn forward and press two buttons,
one for the pool floor and the other for the very top;
the doors slide shut;
I feel a sudden lurch
as the elevator jostles to a start,
and begins to move
up.

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somniat 41 — the girl from the men’s room

A hollowed out curled helix
of intricately intertwined
concrete and steel, glazed in crystal;
two walls of rooms, north and south,
two walls of windows, east and west,
and all four walls twisting
as they fall into each other.

I’ve been here before
once with my mother,
she tells to lie down on my back
and she gives me her camera;
she tells me to take her some pictures
of the winding cavaedium;
I’ve been here before
once as student I came back
so as to lay straight on my back once again
so I could gaze up
into the multilayered infinities
and watch them skip
through compressed eternities,
a rapture in empty space;
and when I married
I brought my bride here
and I laid her down
right in that same spot
and we saw it together
the beginning and the end,
destiny intertwining with fate;
yet neither of us knowing
what any of it meant,
only now here I am again
staring up into that cavaedium
trying to untie that final knot.

They hold small sensors
that burst out beeps of static,
and they wave them over me,
augurs attempting to see
through blind eyes;
and then through a mechanical breather
one of them begins to shout;
shit, shit, this is fucked,
he’s covered in it, General, covered in it;
we haven’t contained it;
he could take out the whole city block,
maybe the whole district;
he must have been right there,
right there when it happened.

The general spits more bullets,
Damn it, contact Qayin HQ,
tell them we are screwed here,
tell them operation Hevel is a failure,
we need to move to the next stage now
before God knows what happens,
tell them and hurry.

I begin to shift,
and immediately they jostle away from me
in startled dismay, the dead do not move;
I struggle to sit up, and then to stand;
and the whole world whirls about me;
ghosts of yesterday phase in and out;
General Gadreel, Gadreel …
General Gadreel …
General Gadreel.

What is going on, Adam,
tell me what is going on,
what do you know?

I steady myself
and look out, over at the west wall,
past its crystal latticed windows,
sparkling as the last rays of the sun
dance across them
before disappearing behind the mountain;
and it’s still there, the bridge,
and still she waits
in her aura of sapphire;
I look toward the general,
there’s an angel,
I have to go to her,
I promised her.

The solider with small eyes,
the one who kicked me,
blurts out,
Sir, I say we bag him now,
right here, right now,
then we just clean up what’s left;
we’ve got no time.

The general raises his hand for silence;
he walks closer to me,
through goggles
he tries to look me in the eyes
but I avoid his gaze,
instead I look out through the east wall,
where there the crystal latticed windows
shimmer in flashes of hot red,
for scattered across the street
and beyond
are a myriad of emergency vehicles
where suited and masked workers
rush back and forth –
and military trucks force their way through,
filled with more and more masked soldiers;
and above it all
like some great mother insect
a hulking helicopter hovers
its massive spotlight
wavering across the ground.

The general reaches out
and puts his plastic gloved hand
upon my shoulder,
his grip is that of death,
There’s been an attack, Adam;
I need to know what you know
about the attack.

An angel;
an angel saved me;
she showed me the way here.

From where, Adam,
from where?

Down there, underground,
in the food court, I was in the food court,
I was reading a comic book,
I had to go,
I had to go.

It is then that I see her
out of the corner of my eye,
another angel;
she has been watching me
for how long
I can’t be sure –

She is in a corner of the lobby,
where hotel workers
and guests have been corralled off
and stare about vacantly,
some with wet towels wrapped around their mouths,
others fidgeting nervously;
soldiers with long rifles watch them,
and emergency workers in red polypropylene suits
walk among them, checking them;
the angel stands slightly aloof from the rest –
and all at once, I know who she is,
it is the girl from the men’s room;
she is as utterly beautiful as before,
her hair jet black, wild, and free,
her skin as pale as fresh snow;
her eyes are directly on me
with an inexplicable joy
at having found me again.

Part of me begins to fall to pieces,
she had left me
and then I thought I had found her
and all along …
angels,
angels all around me;
there is even the angel that died
in my arms
in a cave
deep underground …
she was real,
I finally begin to cry,
I understood nothing
but I see it now,
I see it,
nobody knows,
nobody knows but me …

There’s an angel here.

The general snaps,
what is it?

I turn to him
to try and explain, but how could I ever …
I look back to the girl from the men’s room;
she smiles at me, a wicked smile,
but there is buoyant twinkle in her eyes;
and the general sees her too;
he shouts through his breather,
that girl,
I want that girl,
now!

But it is too late.

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