Kenneth Edward Hart

A New Jersey author

Fugitive Dream

by

Fugitive Dream

Suppose you’re sitting in a church

with an old lover, watching a ceremony

from a pew that’s toward the back

and off to the side.

 

You stand, sit, kneel, chant, sing

and smile at each other. Pleased

with the ecumenical nature of things,

enjoying the light touches

that you exchange.

 

Then these people that you’ve never seen

break in and begin to do away with the priests

and other members of the congregation

in the most brutal of ways.

 

You turn to your lover for reassurance,

to make sure that it’s just a dream

And that the two of you can go on watching and playing.

But no one is there.

 

And you run out of the church

to save yourself and inform others

about the massacre.

Flying down the streets of the city where you were born,

pounding on doors and looking for help,

secretly pleased with your speed and agility.

 

And when you find someone who will let you in,

there’s your lover on TV, giving an interview

about how you seemed like a nice person

and about how no one could have expected

these atrocities from you.

 

So now you are heading for the river, looking for escape.

You live incognito for what seems like at least a year,

until you try to cross back over the river

and are apprehended by Federal Marshalls and more TV cameras.

 

Then you wake to the heat and touch

of the person that you love now, who was not the person in the dream.

Your lover’s face is soft and sleepy.

You’re quiet and penitent about what you’ve done.

Day Care

by

Day Care

The basement chairs stand against the cool stone walls.

When they aren’t together, the music is playing.

 

On the worktables are beads, clay, and stacks of magazines.

The sweaty smell of cut wood and lacquer-

 

From inside confusion,

where each set of footsteps is your own,

there isn’t a way to look out.

 

From inside the separation between life and the matter

that holds it,

There aren’t connections.

 

Her arm stretched up like a child who has fallen down,

Beth said, “I can’t stop cutting myself.

I hear voices and without the pain

there is no me.”

 

“I listen to the music so the Russians won’t take my mind.”

In the shape of an infant about twenty-five,

bobbing his head and kicking his feet,

with a supersonic brain that only runs on full speed,

Carl burps with a giggle and then tries to fart.

Tapping in his chair, lying on the table,

they took the electric guitar that he still plays

away, back at the hospital.

He reads about how to be a success

but it’s hard for him to answer the question that you asked.

He tries to like everyone and he tries to win.

He can’t do either

because of how his head spins.

 

Anna’s afraid of her mother since her husband died.

She used to dance the tarantella and go out every night.

Now she changes her clothes right after school

and slips out more silent and grey and silently asks

“If you could reach me, what would you find there?”

 

Connie wants her child to have fun every day,

but Dr. Willy says that she isn’t pregnant and he doesn’t love her.

The medicine makes it go away,

And if you don’t take too much, you can tie a bow in your hair.

 

Nelson doesn’t smile or say anything.

He’s large and stiff and thinks he looks like Frankenstein,

but he keeps himself clean.

 

Ernie has a crew cut and a devilish grin.

They hide inside him all the time.

 

At the hotel where they bring food around like at the hospital,

Nettie’s seen more hell than most women still alive.

They took her baby and started sending strange men up to her room.

They tell her that she always lies,

but she don’t bring no men around and how’d they get there?

 

Marlene looks like an old lady in her coat and hat,

But she dances for Carl and sometimes they touch.

All yesterday she kept thinking of the horrible

things that she knows will happen to her.

 

Virginia came from a good family in the South

before she fell ill.

Sometimes she screams obscene things that no one can hear and

“Yes, they certainly have helped her here.”

 

Through a six hour stretch

where everything is nice,

we walk the parade route

of what reality is like.

Deborah

by

Deborah

The setting is a room
with rugs on the ceiling and walls.
Her body stretches across the smooth-armed floor.
She learned to say “no” through a slow withdrawal
circled and twisting

Suppose her face to be thin and soft.
Her hair cut close.
Eyes that draw each motion like a feeling
In a mind with fingers that probe, bend
And are flung out when she dances

When she lies back with veils and sighs,
Suppose the dreams-
The way they begin to draw her to them…
She runs and spins

Her toes like soft daggers
Twirling across skin

Our Second Anniversary

by

Our Second Anniversary

 Having an affection

for the springtime birds

Is a one way affair

unless you enjoy the songs

 

You scatter stale bread in the side yard

and they mark the spot

mostly on top of my car

The residue isn’t like music

 

Your hood is up over your head

and except for the chill

you’re happy

 

Springtime birds move on

and because I don’t

it takes more

to get me to sing for you

Again

by

 

 

Again

 

 

 

          “I wish that we didn’t have to go through this,” said William. He staring at the tremors which almost imperceptibly shook him, particularly when he was upset.

           Cathy took hold of his hands and brought them to the side of her face. “I’m afraid of it too, but we have good lives. I wouldn’t trade what we’ve got for anything.”

           The after-effects of the talks weren’t as positive as the Village would have hoped. They were meant to assuage the emotional discomfort which research had shown people experience in their 70’s. The talks were an opportunity for reality realignment. A serene acceptance seemed to come over people once they reached their 80’s, but the preceding decade was as tumultuous as adolescence and maybe more so.

            “I’d trade it,” said William. He didn’t look up into her face. He wasn’t even sure that the words had come out. They had begun as a thought and he didn’t remember making the decision to express it. But when he felt her wince he knew that he had.

            “I’m not sure what you think you could trade me for at this late date.”  She gave him his hands back.

            “That’s not what I mean.”He straightened himself the way he did when he was trying to explain what he was really thinking or when he was trying to rationalize something that he had done. “I mean that I’d trade what we have now for the chance to go back and live it over.”

            That night Cathy dreamt of the family that she had when she was growing up: her uncles, her aunts, her mother and father and her grandmother. She hadn’t dreamt of her grandmother in such a long time and the vibrant dream visited a wonderful holiday dinner that was complete with smells and kisses. Cathy smiled deeply in her sleep and thought that if she could just stay where she was there would never be a need to wake up.

            At breakfast the next morning, she told William about her dream. He listened tenderly and asked questions that helped Cathy remember more and more of it. She remembered Uncle Dutch’s string tie and the way her Aunt Mina put a flower in her hair for special occasions. She wished that she had been able to taste the food. She hadn’t tasted that cooking for almost fifty years and, as William asked about how the table looked, she felt her mouth begin to water. Then she started to cry. William held her in his arms and patted her shoulder. He gave one of her breasts a reassuring squeeze and they exchanged a smile and a giggle.

            Later that afternoon when Cathy said that it was time to go over to the library for their meeting of the residents’ council, William said that he didn’t want to go. Cathy wished that he’d change his mind, so that she wouldn’t have to answer all the questions about whether he was feeling well and whether or not anything was the matter, but she knew how the previous day’s lecture had upset him, so she didn’t try to convince him to come with her.

            William was sitting at his desk. Even though he no longer did much writing. It was where he would go when he wanted to be by himself and think. Cathy rarely came around him when he was at his desk. William switched on his computer and began sliding through menus of information hoping that something would distract him. Absently, he typed in words and did subject and source searches on them. The speed at which the information burst onto the screen made him nauseous.

            When Cathy came home from the meeting, William was still surfing and scanning. Cathy told him that it was getting close to dinnertime and William asked her if she would mind bringing him something back from the kitchen.

            “What are you doing there?” she asked wandering over to the back of his chair.

             “I’m working on something. I’ll tell you about it later.”

             “Are you writing a story?” Cathy’s voice sounded hopeful.

             “No,” said William. “Will you be OK at dinner?”

             “Except that everybody will now be absolutely certain that you’re gravely ill or that you’ve left me,” said Cathy, joking about the second half and annoyed by the truth of the first part of what she was saying.

            “Tell them that I’m working myself up so that I can jump your bones when you get home.”

             It was well after midnight when William finally went to bed. It was like he wanted to absorb everything one more time. Cathy felt his weight and opened her eyes. “What were you doing all this time?”

             “I don’t know. Looking for something without knowing what it is.”

            “You did that for a very long time.”

            “I want it very badly.”

            “What do you think it is that you want?”

            “Something better than memories.”

            “We’ve got each other and we feel pretty good.”

            “We’re old and by both of our honest accounts our lives suck compared to what they were.”

            “You can’t compare things like that.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because it’s pointless.”

            “Cat, that’s just another way of saying we shouldn’t think about things that don’t have nice answers. Tell me the truth; wouldn’t you rather have your life again than your memories? Wouldn’t you like to sit at that holiday table and be with those people for real and dream dreams of the future the way a young person does? Wouldn’t that be better than those dreams that neither of us really wants to wake up from?”

            “I know how you feel,” said Cathy. “You’re not alone with this.”

            “There was a time when neither one of us was frightened of being alone, Cat. And I don’t think that it’s something that we did to each other. It’s this god-dammed aging crap. I hate it. I hate it more than I’ve ever hated anything.”

             As he lay back she gave him her hand. Quietly, she said, “I hate it too.”

            They fell asleep holding hands, which they sometimes did now but had never done when they were younger. This night, they were ready and the dream came to them. It came to them both together. There wasn’t a face or a voice; it was an understanding. At first she was resistant because the idea of losing him at all was overwhelming to her. They looked into each other’s souls in the dream, and they looked into their own souls too. She could see how deeply the wish lived inside of her. He may have expressed it more readily but it was every bit as much there in her. The understanding wasn’t cruel but it did seem final. They could have the years over but they might not have each other. They had to go back to a time before they met. When she agreed there was a trembling in her sleeping eye and a tear rolled down her cheek and dropped off onto the pillow.

            Then she heard her mother’s voice calling her and something childlike moved her toward the voice. William watched and, as she left, he saw her become a young girl who was returning from a day of play. After that William heard a barking dog and saw his aunt sitting on the back porch. He tried to hold onto an image that was the sight of Cathy but in an instant it was gone.

            The Village didn’t talk a lot about people after they died, but everyone thought it so romantic when they found the two bodies, still holding hands.

Recent Posts

Pages

Meta