Tin Man In The Holy Land

He said I need me a heart, and they sent him off walking into the wilderness, over sea and stone and through wind and water and into the kind of landscapes that turn men into lunatics or poets, through the trees and the grasses that smell of sweat and blind faith and sex and he walked for forty days and forty nights pretending he was Jesus walking in the desert, pretending he was vast and all knowing and forgiving.

Tin Man walks into Israel, through bullets and children to the wailing wall of Old Jerusalem, through the sands that are made of dreams and death and rape and the history of a chosen people, and Tin Man says to the wailing wall of Old Jerusalem, I need me a heart, and the wall howls, and Tin Man feels its tears and watches as the mothers of the Holy Land cram themselves into its stones and wrap themselves in its tears and howl in harmony, and he walks on past the wall, past the widows and into the streets of Israel.

Tin Man in the streets of Israel sees a procession of kings smoldering and disintegrating into the dusty heavy air, he says, I need me a heart. Tin Man hands Solomon an ax to split the baby, and Solomon he takes it up in his hands and takes a little child of Palestine in his hands, and brings the ax through it in a gash and that little child of Palestine crawls into Tin Man’s arms, and Tin Man says child, I need me a heart, and this little child of Palestine sticks the ax through King Solomon’s head, and Tin Man’s feet start to rust from the blood.

Tin Man walks on to the River Jordan, and he stands on the bank watching John The Baptist talking to the sands of time, and Tin Man says, I need me a heart, and John The Baptist whispers to him about love and death and fire, and the purity that is violence, and the glory that is God, and the power that comes with being excused from sanity. John The Baptist says to Tin Man, let me wash you clean in the river, and Tin Man he says but John, I need me a heart, and John The Baptist picks him up and carries him into the River Jordan.

Tin Man rusts and washes away, and the River Jordan rises and washes the streets of Israel and wails with the wall of Old Jerusalem, and Tin Man says to the Holy Land, I need me a heart, and the Holy Land says nothing at all.

Crude Maps Of Africa

I found a preacher on a corner, he was selling crude maps of Africa and cheap plastic rosaries and bootlegged whiskey, and I said to him, Father, do I have an immortal soul?, and he said, son, you'll never know till it's too late, and I said well what am I supposed to do with that?, and he said take this five dollar bill and bring me a sandwich, will you? So I walked down the street to a corner store where they used to sell falafel until September six years ago when it inexplicably disappeared, but I didn't know this, I hadn't been there for quite a while, and I was disappointed, I've always had a fondness for falafel, and besides, it's a nice word to be able to toss around in conversation, but they wouldn't sell it there anymore, so I bought the preacher a roast beef sandwich, and tried to find him an orange soda, I though it seemed heartening at the time, the bright sunny orange liquid, but I couldn't find one so I brought him back his sandwich and his change, saying, Father, here's your sandwich, and he said you done well, thanks, and I said let me see one of your maps, so he handed me one that looked like some six year old God-in-training had doodled in the coastlines of a fabled continent, making all the boundaries that human nature would have it have shed more blood for every pen-stroke than all those many fish in the sea they keep telling us are there every time one goes swimming off upstream look so petty, in waxy bright red like finger-paint and the messy sanguine childhood I am vaguely aware we were all supposed to have had, but I think I left mine in a box somewhere, for I remember my childhood's imaginary wildernesses, but none so violent and exuberant as the preacher's crude map of Africa, and I handed it back to him and walked on, whistling slightly, and he receded as I passed more buildings, tracing their outlines in my head like crude maps of Africa.

A Passing Fancy Of Addiction

I have an enduring fantasy that I am a drug addict. It sounds so simple, to have all my feelings on the label, and all my problems distilled into clinical side effects. I could open a bottle and swallow happiness, or calm, or energy, and I could feel exactly what I wanted to feel, and nothing more. I could have faith in something, in my addiction, it could be so wonderful to know I needed something, to surrender to an impartial chemical and to know that tomorrow it will be the same, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I could be dependent on something, I could long for it, and having acquired it could make me still. I could fall in love with a reliable constant compound of chemicals devoid of mystery and rendered non-threatening by their clinical studies and the medical jargon pasted across their bottles, and it would make me someone else, someone good, someone firmly planted in a still haze, no longer volatile and human, sleeping through the night. I could put something in my veins that would change me, reshape me, make me symmetrical and beautiful and erase my jagged pencil marks and leave me one strong line of uniform ink. There would be something pure inside me, something good, something else.

Upside Down Mermaid Dream

I have dreams where they cut me open and move bits of me around for hours and hours and hours and I feel nothing, and then the sedative wears off and I am standing by my bathroom mirror, and my neck is gone, and my arms are hanging awkwardly off my torso that has become a giant ribcage with flesh stretched precariously like silly putty that's been pulled in opposing directions for miles and miles, and I have become a hideous bony fish with legs, they made me a fish with legs, I think., reflecting on mermaid myths, and remembering how I used to think they applied to me so well, and now it is inverted, they flipped me upside down with scalpels and pills and I am an upside down silly putty mermaid, a bony fish with legs and my own head, my own familiar face in all its pimpled Anglo-Saxon adolescent glory, floating over the giant ribcage that is traced with a scar pattern I know from libraries worth of books, scars I long for in replacement of the vicious brand of a mother goddess with a sick sense of humor, those surreal familiar scars are traced across my fish skeleton torso, how sick, I think, I am an upside down mermaid covered in scars, and stretched like dough and elastic across bony protrusions. They never told me what the recovery time was.