somniat 18: a exchange between lawyers

Many, many years ago …

Dear Mr. Gallucio:

Following the instructions of my client, Leliel Aislinn, I am to inform you that as per the contract, if your clients do not build the solar hole into the ceiling of the atrium which is located above the food court, between the cinema and the promenade — my client will seek to restrain you from any further activity in carrying out this project.

It was clearly stated verbatim in the contract, that my client’s design for the hotel and accompanying underground project would be built without any changes. It is therefore hoped by my client you will indeed see the project through, and not attempt to take any more of these cheap short cuts — which clearly put you in breach of contract.

Sincerely,
Daniel Molimo

---

Dear Mr. Molino:

Please inform your client, Mr. Leliel Aislinn, that creation of the solar hole is simply not possible. While it was not realized when the contract was initially signed, it would literally require moving the path of the subway line above the atrium. The cost here would be prohibitive — more than the cost of the project itself.

My clients ask your client to please consider what we have already achieved here. This hotel will be unlike any other on earth, a hollow helix spiraling toward the sky — from the top, a pool, suspended between the hotel and neighboring mountain — so that people might swim with the angels. Does your client realize to what degree we have had to cut through bureaucratic red tape to even get approval for such a project? Does your client realize we have already procured world class engineers and rare materials from all around the world in order to make this project happen?

This solar hole in the atrium would seem but a minor matter. Please let us drop it. I urge you to further consult with your client.

Yours truly,
Alphonse Galluccio

---

Dear Mr. Gallucio:

As per my client’s request, we now have filed a restraining order against your clients to prevent them from continued work on the project — my client is quite insistent, there will be a solar hole in the atrium, or there will be nothing.

Sincerely,
Daniel Molimo

---

Dear Daniel,

We have been friends since law school. Please try to talk some sense into your client. This is really madness. Do you realize that the solar hole only lets in the sunlight for a few minutes once per year, when the sun rises at just the correct angle. So, we are expected to potentially triple the entire cost of the project for a special effect that appears but once per year and for only a few minutes? We will legally fight you on this, and rest assured, that your client Mr. Aislinn will never see any work again in this city or perhaps any other.

Yours truly,
Alphonse Galluccio

---

Dear Alphonse,

My client, Leliel Aislinn is insistent on the solar hole. He wishes me to inform your clients that although the effect will only take place once per year, the effect of the sun shining through the hole at the proper time into the atrium will create what he calls the festival of stars. He notes that the effect should be so spectacular that it could become a major event in the city — and attract a great deal of tourism.

Sincerely,
Daniel Molimo

---

Dear Daniel,

Well, it’s been six months since this impasse, but as luck would have it, the new city administration is concerned about unemployment. As such, it appears my clients have made some inroads with them — and will be given a large grant to move the subway line, thus enabling us to build the solar hole according to your client’s specifications. I am to inform you the project could resume as early as next week.

Yours truly,
Alphonse Galluccio

---

Several decades later …

Dear Daniel,

Perhaps you will recall the old brouhaha caused by your now deceased client, Leliel Aislinn, over the issue of the solar hole in the atrium.

On a hunch I checked with the city archives, and it turns out the sun has never once shined through that hole. It appears the day set in which the sun’s rays were to strike perfectly at the hole, traveling down several levels into the atrium in order to produce the festival of stars has never occurred. Nor is it likely to happen, the weather during that time of year is consistently rainy — not once since they’ve been recording it, has that day ever had a sunny sunrise.

Who gets the last laugh now? Ha, at least the city government must have been grateful an excuse to waste the people’s money. They moved the damn subway line!

Sincerely,
Alphonse

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somniat 17: the old cinema

The world blurs slightly
flickers for a moment
on the brink
and I can’t tell if it’s me
or just the lighting.

I reach behind
and touch the back of my head,
my hand comes back
red with blood;
I must have smacked myself there
when I fell
or has it been there
all along?

Too many noises now,
too many to sort out and sort through
as I move up the small stairway
and through the black velvet curtain
leaving behind the exit door
that leads to the food court
where they scream and pound
as they panic
in the hope of a way out.

I enter into an old, outdated cinema,
the underground theater;
I’ve been here before;
I’ve watched movies here before;
but now everything is askew;
emergency lights flash
even though a film plays on,
its sound too low and somehow discordant;
an old black and white thriller,
a femme fatale with a gun on her lover
and his wife watching with a wordless scream
as she shoots.

In front of the screen
where I’ve entered
sits an adolescent, cross-legged,
and distracted by his own thoughts;
and not far from him,
a group of business men stand
nervously milling about
while they talk with one another,
each one of them with a cigarette
that hangs precipitously from their mouth
as they glance sideways, this way and that.

A few people still sit in the theater seats
but as the credits begin to role
it looks as if no one has been watching the film;
one lady with her head in her hands droops;
an older man stares forward vacantly;
it’s as if all of their dogs had died
in one fell swoop.

My angel has flown, for she is not here,
and there is only place she could have gone,
up.

Before I go, I must do something,
I call to the adolescent,
and he vacantly comes over at me,
I tell him, as I point to the exit corridor
from which I emerged,
they’re screaming down there
in the food court,
let them out.

His face is blank
except for his lower lip
which trembles,
am I going to die?

For a minute I think I will fall
in the rush of heat
that suddenly flows to my head,
so intense, I think it will explode,
but I manage to tell him,
I saw an angel.

At first, his face is one of protest,
then he thinks it over;
finally, he nods,
I’ll go let them in.

I pat him on the back
then move up the aisle
toward the cinema lobby.

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somniat 16: through the vent

I plod forward
in inch thick dust
that moves in a peculiarly slow way;
swirls and eddies appear
each time one of my hands
plunks down deep
into that pool
of obsolete used up filaments;
I am sure
something must be alive
beneath my touch
as I forge ahead
and enter a pitch blackness
that is palatable.

Soon, I don’t even know
if the world exists anymore
outside of this thick blackness
and my only clues
are the sounds around me:

… the shuffling of an angel ahead of me
as she tries to expand her wings but can’t;

… the incessant dialog of two people arguing,
screaming
across dolby stereo speakers, that echo
to a off key and frantic soundtrack;

… and finally, a wild intensifying knocking
on a door either behind me
or somewhere lost, ahead of me.

As I move forward, the shaft I’m in begins to slope upward
and then to narrow, until it becomes a tight squeeze,
the grimy vent literally hugging me
as I shimmy and snake my way through it;
gradually a frantic energy begins to take hold of me;
something bad has happened,
the world’s balance has tipped
in the wrong direction
and I’m trying not to slip
down
into a pit of morass,
all those sins
that call to me.

I want to cry out to my angel
but I dare not open my mouth
less it swallow whole
a century’s worth of grit and grime
dried up yesterdays and evaporated tomorrows
cotton balls and hair balls;
roly-polies;
my eyes burn
even though I must have shut them
years ago.

With every little bit of squirm I’ve got
I push forward and up,
up
as fast I can
and just a bit farther
until even before I know it
I’ve pushed myself out
and am literally flipping over in the air
so that I land hard on my back –
solid concrete to break my fall.

My entire body feels shell shocked
but there’s no time to feel pain;
so I stand up and try to see
through blurred and teary-eyed vision
where my angel has gone
and all I see is a glimmer
as she disappears
behind a thick velvet curtain
that sways at the top of a small stairway
up ahead of me.

Behind me I hear a agitated thumping
and I turn around to see
down a narrow, poorly lit corridor
a door with an blinking exit sign over it;
on the other side –
wails, shrieks,
each one an ice pick through my heart,
my soul goes awry
as I turn away
and go after
my angel.

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somniat 15 — out and into

There is another scream
and not long after that
someone knocks
on the door of the men’s room
hard.

The ventilation shaft is far wider
than I would thought
and she sits and waits for me
while I balance on a nearly unhinged
toilet seat
almost falling into the scrawls
and scribbles
on the stall’s black partition.

The knocks soon become
a frantic clonking
and when I turn back to look
into the men’s room
at that door,
she calls to me,
let it go,
it’s too late now, Adam,
that’s not the way out.

Drip drop
tap tap
drip drop
tap tap
drippy drop drop
tappity tap tap
drip drop
tap cliiiick –

I’ve got to go,
but a question pops into my head,
did I do this?

What ?
I think she says.

What’s happening?

She laughs
but it’s not a funny laugh,
it’s something deeply ironic,
a sad soft sound
that chills my bones.

We’ve got to go, now,
she whispers
in a deep husky huff.

She stretches out her hand
and I take it
and she pulls me
up
next to her
close enough for me to feel
the warmth of her eyes
on mine.

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somniat 14: a decision in retrospect

Nobody ever listens
and nobody ever cares
yet the world keeps turning
and what makes it turn –
I don’t know.

If you’re in the men’s room
deep underground, late at night,
minding your own business
and a young woman you don’t know
comes out of nowhere
and tells you to follow her
into a subterranean ventilation shaft,
the appropriate thing to do
is to say no.

That’s true
but so is —
a lot of other things
and sometimes
none of it means anything
except that little spark
that lure
that keeps you hoping
and dreaming
for just a little something,
some little ounce
some little titbit
a modicum of meaning
no matter how mediocre;
and when I saw her
I didn’t know what was going on
but I knew
she was an angel
and she was going to save me
and so I never really had to think about it
I just followed her
just like that.

And you can say
whatever you want about that
but at least at that time
and that moment
I finally knew
what to do
and I did it.

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somniat 13: trust

Words drop to the floor
and shatter in echoes
that splash against the wall
as soft dull thuds.

Somebody somewhere screams
but I don’t know who
and I don’t why;
I want to say everything
and nothing.

Of this, and only this,
am I sure: she is an angel,
and whatever malevolent
twisted evil
she has planned;
it will be my salvation.

I’ll say this,
her nose is a shade too prominent;
her forehead slightly too high;
and her upper lip, just barely, too long;
yet in her own way, she is magnificent;
there is a pristine perfection
to the fluidly of her expressions
as she subtly shifts
from one to the other.

She tilts her head toward the door
she has locked,
that’s not the way out.

Her voice liquefies my bones
and the slightest disturbance
would collapse me
into a pool of warm gelatin.

She points at the back wall
from where the music comes
and the voices;
she coyly smiles
as I see it for the first time
in the stall where she’d been,
a large ventilation shaft opening
about half way up the wall,
head level,
covered by a wide, dusty square screen;
she says:
that
is the way out.

I’ve ceased to move
or even breath;
I’m a whispered existence
external to my own body
as she leans in close enough
for me to feel the heat
of her cheek against mine
as she whispers in my ear,
can you trust me?

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somniat 12 — utterly beautiful

Hello, she says,
and she smiles.

I’d say she were a zombie;
for she has dark painted eyelids
and she is as a pale as fresh snow
but there is something there
in her gently wicked smile
and in the buoyant twinkle
of her soft warm eyes
that tells me
she’s more alive, than I have ever been.

She’s got a thick mop of jet black hair;
a regular horse’s mane, untamed;
and she doesn’t seem to care
where it goes.

She gazes down at me
from heaven on high
as if I were a lost little boy
and she had just come along
to take me home.

We’re there, just like that,
eye to eye
in this absurd place
at this absurd time
for some absurd reason;
and I don’t move
because the sensation
of having her look at me that way
has suddenly changed
everything.

It is a bond
beyond affection and attachment,
something deeply sympathetic
and preternaturally synchronous.

Nothing happens
forever.

But eventually I blink
and shake it off,
where was I?

This is beyond not right.

I unlock my stall
and leave it, quickly;
I head for the door
out;
but faster than I am,
thumping in her boots,
she’s there in front of me
her hand on my chest,
almost gently, shoving me back
as she locks the men’s room door
and then turns back to face me.

She says in a husky, melodious voice,
you really don’t remember me, do you?

I’m turning inside out,
not am I only sure I’ve never seen her before
but I am also sure
that I’ve never seen anyone
as utterly beautiful
as she is.

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somniat 11 – spotted

When the door began to creak
and then to open
I pivoted and slipped back
into one of the black, narrow stalls
shutting and locking the flimsy black portal
against whatever possible menace
might have been coming forward
to confront me.

I don’t want to be seen;
I don’t want to be heard;
I don’t want to exist
in anyone’s mind but my own.

I don’t know who else is out there;
and I’m in a strange place
between here and there,
and now and then.

I wait and listen
and am unwittingly hummed upon,
the voice –
it shouldn’t be
not here, not now,
not in the men’s room –
but it is;
it’s a female voice.

Cushioned footsteps thump toward my stall;
and then they stop
and I can see from below the door
bulky, black leather boots
with inch thick rubber soles.

This is wrong;
it’s got to be chance;
it’s got to be something;
he or she
will move on in a minute,
to go into their own stall,
then fleet on my feet
I’ll be out of here
back to the food court
where I’ll hide in a comic book
at that table I should have never left.

My heart begins to beat
with a vigor I can’t control;
I’m not even sure if I can still breathe;
I just want to be elsewhere;
I know what happens in a story like this –
in a place like this;
men’s rooms deep underground,
late at night ..

I want to believe,
this is not happening to me;
I’m faraway,
I’m somewhere else,
I’m someone else.

Sure enough they move on a bit
to the stall next to mine
where the door is pushed open
and then allowed to fall shut
but there’s no clinking of the lock
and so I hold my position
frozen between fear and frivolity.

And then I hear it, a scraping sound
on the other side of the partition;
a jostling, a shuffling that moves up
and then stops.

I dare not move an inch,
I dare not look — above me;
but forgive me, I do,
and there at top of the partition
I see first one hand
and then another
and then a face.

I say, Jesus,
but it’s not.

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somniat 10 – the men’s room

The door behind me shuts;
there is a smell in here, familiar
and not pleasant;
the fumes
of rancid used up yesterdays.

Moisture is everywhere,
tiny drops of water spring
from rusty old pipes
in the upper corners of the ceiling
and from there the water drips
down the wall
over lewd etchings
and licentious scrawls,
past antiquated black urinals
that curve in just such a way
as to make them suggest
something vaguely obscene,
and finally the water is deposited
copper red on the floor
over worn out, chipped tiles
as entrenched dirt
that will defy purging.

There’s a noise in the air,
a distant muffled echo,
it is a melodious tune with voices
and it emerges from the back wall
where the laminated black stalls
line up, not as even
as they once were.

And there is another sound, faint,
from where I can’t quite say,
the soft effeminate laughter of youth
directed not only at me
but at the whole lot of us
pretending we are gods
while all the while
we still spring leaks.

I glance left and right
before I cross the way
and even dare a look
under the black beaten up stalls –
I can hang loose;
for at least in the present
despite the odd sounds;
I am alone.

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_somniat ix (through the alcove 3)
I barely breathe
as I move through a cloud
of menthol-scented cigarette exhalation;
I can feel their lurking eyes
on the back of my head
scintillating probes that scan me
with such deep acuity
I can feel their edge
like a comb through my brain
each tooth snagging on forgotten tangles.

Off-key laughter pauses
when I’m halfway
between here and there;
I want to freeze and melt
all at once
but I know that if I do
they’ll catch me,
and they’ll ask me questions
for which I have no answers.

So I breath in
their used up smoke
and make my way,
one step in front of the other,
past them, all the way
to the men’s room door;
I grasp its rusted handle
and pull when I should have pushed;
my face flushes, hot,
and I hold my breath;
there’s a burgeoning laughter
but it dies before it starts;
somewhere elsewhere
there is a snap,
a subdued pop;
something, I don’t know what, has happened;
something has changed,
and it’s not me;
one by one they move off
toward this budding unfamiliarity
until one and all
they’re gone.

I ease up,
and finally exhale,
and this time –
at the door,
I push.

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