The Crow King

He stood on the bridge 

alternating his gaze 

from water to skyline

skyline to water

and then up at the clouds

his head in yes-motion.

Wherever his vision lit

he found no place 

for his head to rest

or body to nest

but if he lingered

he’d face arrest.

So the time was here

to fly, to die, to cry out 

against the cold city

with its impersonal

charity cheaply bought

and grudgingly wrought. 

He was the Crow King

freefall in full swing

wondering what death brings

if not some kind of relief

to a life too brief

living lost and alone.

***

Three Dreams, Same Scene, All She’s

At least three different times I fell into a dream of a similar setting.  Each time it culminated dramatically, I woke up, and then re-entered the setting with a slightly different scene.

The similarities lie in the fact it was a very large rectangular room, maybe twenty feet across and 40 feet long.  The outside wall w/windows was on the left from my perspective and opposite it on my right was the parallel wall with two doors that opened to a hallway.  It looked to be a very long studio apartment or two college dorm rooms with the intervening wall removed.

There was a kind of division between the two sides of the room.  On one side was my bed in a corner, but surrounding it was an office-type set up with desks, lamps, filing cabinets, etc, and a door.  The other side of the room was a kind of lounging area with a sofa and chairs surrounding a common area that had its own door to the hallway.  On the outside wall of the lounge area between the windows were some large suspended cabinets.  

***

I am lying in the bed and the lights are out.  There is someone sleeping at my back and I’m not quite sure who it is.  I slowly roll over enough to look and it is a woman with her hair almost completely gone, kind of growing in tufts like a dog with mange.  I suddenly feel like my life is in danger and the only answer is to kill this person before she kills me.  I grab her around the neck to strangle her and her malevolent yellow eyes open and then narrow as she raises a gun up from the covers and I know I am about to die and... I wake up.

I lie in bed frightened and unsure of where I am.  It slowly dawns on me that I am alive and was only dreaming.  Then I fall back asleep w/o fully awakening.

***

I am in that room again.  There has been some activity on the office side and a secretary tells me there is a patient who wants to see me even though it is in the evening and my office hours are long over.  It is a sister of a colleague and so I agree and she comes in and starts talking to me about a crisis she is in.  I am fascinated by how much she resembles her sister.  After she leaves the secretary informs me there is someone hanging out in the hallway and I realize it is a lady from our church who has been stalking me with the intent to do me harm.  I peek out the door and see her standing under what appears to be a street light.  She turns her head to look at me with a menacing glare and... I wake up.  

I am back in my bed and I listen closely to see if I can sense anything out of the ordinary in the house and then fall back to sleep.

*** 

I am in the bed in the corner of the room once again.  There is a little light trickling in through the windows but not much.  I sense something is amiss and I sit up in bed and look about the room.  I don’t see anything.  I get out of bed and as I step towards the middle of the room I realize a woman with black hair is sitting with her back to me on the border b/w the two areas nearest the windows.  I stop dead and dare not move.  She is radiating a kind of coldness and there is a faint glow in front of her from the windows that gives away her outline in the dark.  I am too terrified to move until she starts to turn her head in my direction and I bolt for the door and... I wake up.

This time I can hear the fan running in my son’s room and I seriously consider getting up and checking out the house.  Instead I get up and peek out into the hall, see nothing is amiss, go use the bathroom, and then get back into bed.  

***

Sleep comes and draws me back into that elongated room.  I want to check it out in the dark, but don’t want to walk around bumping into furniture and whatnot, so instead I float upwards with my arms and legs dangling below me.  It is something that I know is peculiar but within my control to do.  I float over the desks and then over to the lounge area where there are CPR-like mannequins littering the floor and on the furniture.  I pass over them and am near the door on that side of the room when I notice the mannequin on the couch is different.  I has a shiny white face with sharp nose and pinkish-red hair that converges back into a point.  It reminds me of the cartoon version of The Joker.  Suddenly the eyes pop open and fix me with a stare of  pure hatred.  I fall to the floor no longer able to float and tear out into the hallway.  I run down the stairs grabbing the banister at each landing to whip myself around and down to the next level until the darkness completely envelops me and I awaken in my bed relieved that it was just a dream.

I sense it must be getting close to morning but it is still too early to get up so I doze back off.

***

And did I say “three dreams”?  I guess there were more, but this last one happened twice in slightly different ways so it is hard to nail down (with dream logic and all).  What was the same was the door of one of the large hung cabinets swung open and inside was a freakishly tall woman in fetal position with thin limbs and a kind of bouffant blond hairdo.  She may have been dead or simply animated in some way that was not natural.  All I know is that when she stepped awkwardly out of the cabinet I bolted out the door and down the steps as before, but this time I made it to the street and then tried to double back up the other flight of stairs only to run into her coming down.  She had figured out my ploy and I was caught.  Those branch-like arms reached down for me and... 

I awoke one last time feeling like I had been dreaming off and on throughout the entire night revisiting that large room and being terrorized by a coterie of macabre femme fatales.


***

Letter to a Middle School Coach

Hey Coach D,

I feel I need to reach out tonight because of some concerns I have as a parent.  E is extremely frustrated tonight and I cannot say that I blame him.  He played well tonight in the few minutes he was given, but in general they are so few that there is little opportunity for him to get traction or grow as a player.  There were several opportunities to get other players in the game tonight that were missed considering our lead and it became obvious to me that things were starting to get overly sloppy as players were getting tired because they were being played too much.  

To be perfectly honest, I do not know what message is being sent or what overall goals are being met by playing J for 90 plus percent of every game to the exclusion of others.  From a development stand point I believe it is short sighted to give some players most of the time and leave others on the bench so much at this level.  I have to say that in our basketball experiences through AAU and other communities our school has a reputation for not adequately developing all its players prior to high school which frustrates the program gaining success at that higher level.

Middle school is the time to allow kids to grow and develop their skills under the pressure of game time situations.  I see other schools subbing kids in and out throughout the game much more than we do.  I do not want to see my kid’s love for the game to diminish b/c his hard work is not being rewarded or he is not being given the chance to bloom.  He was gaining confidence through AAU in the Spring and the Summer League and playing extremely well at times, but now I feel he is stalling and not being developed to his full potential which breaks my heart as his father.

I greatly appreciate the time you are spending with our kids and I respect your coaching skills and your character.  I know you cannot make everyone happy all the time in your position, but I just wanted to point out these things as it is directly impacting my son in a way that I feel is not wholly positive and I want to see him succeed.

Respectfully yours,

A