A Spy in the Ruins. Christopher Bernard

its end in the Ohlone graves. Tension between accomplishment and. Intention. The result never in doubt. So that everything can now happen at once. What was meant by the end of distance. There was no more there. Unto the tenth generation. Immediate demolition why wait.

      Ah whoever is waiting?

      The solitary one closes his book. Then casts it lazily into the flames on the café hearth. “I have written” you said “in invisible ink.” As if you could have known. You were caught in a glass brick signaling in the latest dead language.

      How tall the young were they had the serenity of those who cannot imagine the future. The rent due for months she keeps her back to the millennium. There is acquaintance rape in his eyes. If I ignore him he may not go away but he will not be there. Between her lips a red medicinal Campari edged with rind.

      At the time there was retrodisco at Julie’s Supper Club we were dancing just out of reach of each other’s arms.

      Not robust he had the features of a mouse of prey. A woman was dancing with her own hands. There were three undrunk martinis. The glitter ball fell between us then surprising both of us bounced away. Even the growing tangle of gazes across the packed dance floor could not be sliced by a single hard thought. It was a virtual orgy. Ramifications of the appearance of mass traffic in the suburbs of Petra. Gridlock of mutually exclusive. Blossoming. What brought you here. Baiting us with frustration. An aphrodisiac cocktail of denial. Placental camisoles flip-flops thongs. Cars of silence and overhead the quiet rattle of a patrol helicopter circling. The spotlight caught you at an especially embarrassing moment. You were never good at the tactics of seduction. She was overly proud of her sexual career never having learned how easy it is for a woman. The man must work the woman need only fall. Back into the grotesqueness of remorse. A lemon-colored blotter. The hermit crabs returning at night to their stolen shells.

      Midnight silence in the wards. The soft tread of the nurses. They think I am dead and are trying to ignore me.

      The eulogy was brief enough. Someone spoke and what he said was what no one would have expected. To pass on. To remove. To erase your words before they were spoken. Like a sculptor of air. With all the self-destructive honesty of eros. These emblems of worship provided the earliest signs of their civilization. The gathering in the atrium expressed its grief through the attenuation of expression its calm even cheerfulness. There were no tears. All the more overwhelming was the devastation within. Subordinate accuracy to politeness but respect nothing. Of strange presumption there was among other examples that could be mentioned the chapel awkwardly placed on the university campus. I wore my hopes like a life preserver that didn’t fit but would have to do. What does happen when two become one. The elaborate emptiness of the ritual the ritual hypocrisy of the priest the priest who had never after all even met her.

      You did not look dead even the last time I saw you. Refuse circulation stuff it in your mouth place one then the other over your eyes. The pilot at the ferry landing in the shadow of the prison. Not quite. The prison is due north. Always regnant in sun from there. He collected bribes from the timid among them.

      A grotesque pause.

      Like an inconvenience. Into the trash of a life. Such clarity was a form of deception after all. There was an alibi but you disposed of it when you. Which means less now than what it might have meant at the time. The flatworm cut in two was resurrected twice.

       What was that? I thought he just laughed. Shh. His eyes are quivering.

      Partly hypocritical praise yields to jokes at the banquet followed by singing though no dancing. Reflecting morning sunlight the eight points of the Maltese cross as it spins snakes spirals. The ashtray in my hand is the shape of a lotus in glass. Her name falls through the air. Weakie thrashing on the dinghy seat. Save as. Give it a name. Then close it. Nail it down. Now.

      Floating hovering a total openness where everything is available all closure relative all certainty tentative suspense of intention held breath of possibility the resolution into meaning delayed or not so much delayed as shied glanced at acknowledged caressed. In embryo moving toward birth.

      You are my possible lover. But not now.

      Not yet made whole but soon to be made whole. Some day some hour. Metaphors of immanent transcendence and other oxymorons. Flickering. Fritillary. A strange attractor graphs a butterfly.

      Available in the dark whole brightness. Empire of holy tragic of happy. Memorialized by the one not to release the many. In your hand. In the white ink well of. Glory. Back alley of grunge the smell of decayed bananas not forgotten. In your face. A rage of tenderness.

      What better way to express desire’s paradox than the oxymoron. Thirst was the desert’s happiness. Cloud chamber of the night. Shrunk to naked singularity the genesis event. From an original tranquility serenely exploding. Etc. The self turned inside out like a sock. The solitary one plays in a sandbox of galaxies. Building bridges to emptiness which then plodes. Like a piñata in a park. Crowded with happiness oh smothered with joy. A sundae. Hot fudge. Lots of fun. Tag you’re it. Your time your way your side your fault your turn. Great America. Terrific Milky Way especially with nougat. Making love to the air. In order to exist at all she had to have sex with the universe. At the center of her cunt burned God. In ecstasy. Forever. How could you not love. Her. She did not believe it she could not let herself believe it.

      The solitary one pushed down the walls of the sandcastle. To expose a pair of clam shells pressed together like hands in prayer. The stink of stagnant water in the tidepool. At the zenith the Perseids scratching the night. The night a tunnel beneath the road. The hunger of being in pursuit. Smell of panic. The eyes turning to you as you sleep.

      What is love.

      The solitary one caressed his thighs remembering. His head was eaten by the moon. Salt heart. Unknown the void between mountain and mountain. The cable dazzled us away. We were airborne for half the night. She leaked blood and tasted of sweat and tears. I licked the shadow beneath your mouth I sucked the sweetness of your nipple I feasted on the starvation of your loins. Until you took me. And shattered me against your heart’s stone.

      You were a blank screen of contradictions. You were a scavenger of happiness. You sifted your life through your mouth like sand. And cannot die because he never lived.

      The heart is the size of a loosely clenched fist. Gray tells you so. The lambent blue of a western mountain flower. What color are my eyes today. White.

       He cried. Wake him up. I can’t. He cried.

      Glass spy.

      Ruins of the kingdom.

      Far far away far flung.

      The village at the bottom of the road was where the rooster could no longer be heard. Velvet as the creek bed the embrowning layers of leaves. A tremor of waterskate. A shape of spire surrounded by maple. Long long the distant siren. Crack of shotgun in the dazzled glen. You tasted the hot cross bun before the butter. Enchanting. But what was the cause of the anxiety that passed between our eyes? One speaks there only when one is lost.

      Look. The farmer raised his cap in greeting. It is a friendly place the talk is mainly about the low prices for farm products and rising real estate taxes. The soft stench of the cowstables of milk and manure and their comfortable stares. Moo cow. Lovably ponderous tender and dumb. The rotted barn door opening to the blanched fields. Gone. Sky. Road. Rolling thunder of traffic. The hand riding the slipstream. An ensign snapping at the mast. Green blur of roadside whipping past. Swift plunges into the forest darts of sunlight on flashes of meadow shafts of brightness a fugue dream of the kingdom thought of the ornateness of leaves the netting of branches the dropped jewel boxes of wild flowers the weaving of the songs of the birds. Enframed in blur slipping by. Velocity. The automobile as an aid to daydreaming. Between any two cities there is a reverie. The hum of cement. Fly cast in amber. A special flair for knowing where to be at what time. Pigeons perched on his shoulders for the slightest reason. He dipped the zinc pail into the vat of milk. All you needed to do was make a list and you had an order. The peacock shrieks beneath the willow. The little girl drops her fork to the restaurant floor. A blow of ocean