The Sordid Ways of Man

Adam watched the sun fade slowly behind the cemetery’s seeping mist, settling peacefully across the scattered headstones. A subtle breeze accompanied him as he walked alone amongst the many graves, ‘till at last he found a fresher plot, marked by the unblemished topsoil of the groundskeeper’s wake. Sitting without a word before the simple monument, he let his gaze and feelings wander for time unmeasured; sinking more deeply into melancholic places and finally to nowhere at all as the moon rose higher. Long he dwelt in pensive silence, until at last he found his solace broken by soft, familiar voice.

 “Out for a walk, Father?” the Bishop asked, moving quietly from the within mist’s nocturnal veil.

“Mourning,” Adam replied, turning to face his friend with a heavy sigh. His voice seemed an eerie whisper to the Bishop, as if floating in from beyond some uninhabited body. Only the slight but constant wince that strained his eyes betrayed in Adam some shred of life or feeling.

“I’m sorry,” the Deacon replied in sympathy. “A friend?”

Adam’s eyes rolled back slightly, and the bishop thought he caught the man biting discreetly at his lip.

“An adulteress.” The Bishop nodded, and with a knowing look pursued the matter further. “It is upsetting to find our parish cursed with such a woman. Let her stay within the earth, my son – she’ll do no harm from these harsh trappings.”

The silence moved yet onward, but Adam didn’t.

“I threw the stones myself,” he continued, though whether or not the bishop’s audience concerned him seemed unclear. “I watched them drag her to the pit in chains, threw the rocks that smote against her head and body.”

“It must have been gruesome,” the Bishop responded softly.

“Gruesome,” Adam continued with a dismissive snort. “The spectacle was gruesome. The cracking of her human skull, the bits of brain and fluid caking on the missile’s surface – those were gruesome to behold. But her screaming, the damning tones of hatred and repentance, the pleas that hung behind her dying eyes even as her flesh was sundered – these were haunting in a way no ghast in hell can contemplate.”

“She was sent brutally, to a brutal realm,” the Bishop interrupted, impatience manifesting in his words and tone. Then, more empathically, he finished. “Let the whore burn, Adam. She has earned the wrath of the Lord.”

“You taught me that God loves all creatures,” Adam began, something terse awakening behind his mask of introversion. Still, the bishop only sighed.

“God has no love for this woman, I assure you.” Adam turned to face his colleague, as a barely measured anger fumed impatientyly behind his shell-like visage. Gritting his teeth, the young priest spat a brief and poignant retort:

“I did.”

A lone rose fell from Adam’s trembling hand as he turned to go, cursing his own heart and the sordid ways of man.

An Introspection

The drugs were starting to hit as I made my way roofward, casually scaling my off-alley studio in downtown Albuquerque. The sun was pretty much standard for ‘Burque in late spring, but an atypical breeze cut pleasantly through the unrelenting heat as I pulled myself over the rooftop’s edge. The shaggy mane of an Athens hippie-child was accented by my lack of shirt or shoes, in virtue of which I found myself paying more heed to the shards of glass strewn hither and yon about the rooftop’s surface. Truth be told, they were large enough to be avoidable, and therefore more likely to slice the flesh then embed in it; but this didn’t bother me so much. Walking easily if attentively through the roof’s gravel, I caught the presence of a few wayward syringes, which prompted me to restrain my presence to a safer corner. Apparently, I was not the first tenant of this particualr flat to get higher than balls up here.

And high I was, as the ‘psilo and THC took hold. My trip-mate on this particular journey peered over the building’s edge, standing comfortably atop my faux-something fence, a salmon colored mass of not quite stone that had facilitated my ascent. Nonetheless, I found my attentions firmly captivated by the aforementiond shards strewn haphazardly about the rooftop, laughing aloud at my companion.

“I’m being amused,” I told him, “by the fact that I’m not amused by the broken glass.” My friend dismissed himself for fear of heights, and I relaxed in the soothing warmth of sun and mushrooms. Reclining pensively against the rooftop’s edge, I thought on how the one-two-punch of masochism and nihilistic devaluation had led me to embrace the glass shard as a symbol of my own bizarre struggles – the “cover art” to my deranged if beautiful autobiography. Playing dinsintered with a random shard, I found myself perplexed and relieved by anewfound lack of identification with the obect. The glass’ brown tint seemed to mellow once-searing rays as the sun came through it’s shattered lens, leaving my to wonder why I felt so distant from the imagery of carnage, when I had come with pride and even celebration to embrace the more aesthetic darkness of its paradigm. Was it maturity, or perhaps vanity that spurred me to imagine something brighter?

There is a time, I believe, when shards are necessary; when we find our spirits shattered into similar disarray, lying with the needles and broken bottles somewhere off the alleys of our own misfortune. At this time, I found myself the loving son of knives and fire, melding my own shards back into something human in the only way I knew how. The blade seemed a necessary avenue, a road to something stronger, something scarred in the most gorgeous ways our universe imparts, and it was then that the part of Michael who’d traversed that road looked back at me.

“We don’t need me anymore,” he pleaded. “I came to deliver you through fire, and I am burnt, bleeding, broken.” I knew his weariness, and sympathized, wondering what part this strange, salvific warrior would play in a philsopher’s future scenes. I knew that he would stay as long as he was needed, that he would never fail to serve me in our damning need. I knew also what lay beneath this fellow’s resolute demeanor – the yet unspoken plea for something better, for a lighter load and a life worth bleeding for. At this moment, the facade was broken.

“My time is through,” he said to me, a wounded whisper amplified by moments into screaming psychedelia. He more collapsed than knelt before me, the pain behind his voice a manic wailing as he looked away, ashamed in his weakness to look ourselves in the eyes.

“I love you,” I told him as the sun washed over us, and found myself alone before the zenith of redemption.