Guess what? This mornin’, when I went to unlock the factory — yep, I see you noddin’. You know it: another two of those sluggish, good-for-nothin’, miserable sons-of-bitches had jimmied the door and escaped. Well screw me, right? It’s not like I have rights, right? But I did stay cool, I just reported them to the police, and then durin’ my brunch break I took myself down to the Employee Store.

And I’m tellin’ you, today they had the most fantastic specimen in the window, on one of those like, rotatin’ platforms? This curly-bearded, fist-nosed boy stackin’ plastic cups and…

Stefan,

I once saw your back retreating at the end of an alleyway. I ran after you, calling out, still not daring to believe that it was you at last — but you were already gone as I emerged onto the street that bears your name. Your face was in every window, I counted 365 in a circle, the panorama of windows like an endless smile full of your clear and shining teeth. Still I couldn’t find you, though a paper plane flew by dragging a banner on which was printed the unmistakable wrinkles tiered beneath your eyes, the rows…

Lester was a squat, spherical, and pasty line cook with the fleshy bald head and heavy-ringed ears of a genie. Back in his twenties, when he was known as Carnifex, he played drums and hog-screamed in a thrash-metal band — but in our kitchen he was a soft-spoken nonentity, doughy and lethargic even during the rush, responding to insults or demands with a small flavorless smile and nod, line-eyed, inscrutable as a Buddha, seeming somehow less tranquil than tranquilized.

One evening we were shutting down the kitchen together, cleaning in silence, when suddenly he began telling a story. He talked…

The six-foot-tall flatscreen remixes my appearance in fluid real-time. First I’m a gaptoothed kid sobbing puddles, then I’m a majestic old man with the upswept hair of a Romantic composer. Then I’m a woman blowing kisses, then I’m screaming silently, then my back is turned, then my eyes are fire and my sideburns pillars of salt. Then I’m a pop-eyed skeleton whose transparent skull discloses my brain. Then I’m begging for my life — pointing and laughing at myself — groaning with a head wound — staring up in awe at an intense white light. Then I’m dead, riddled with worms and larvae. Finally I am healthy, clear-eyed, well-adjusted, the man I’ve never been able to become, and my better self regards me with a mixture of horror and pity — with unbearable compassion.

For me, the question of evil — that is, its overwhelming presence everywhere at all times — has always destroyed any possibility of a caring God. Now, as I say this, the slyest Christians will smugly readjust their glasses and pipe up to defend evil, claiming that it is a consequence of human freedom, and freedom is necessary if our salvation is to have any meaning. But the problem is that such a view reduces all spacetime to a brutal sorting ground for souls, a sort of absurdly complicated Rube Goldberg machine to separate the wheat from the chaff…

With a squawk I was sucked from nothing, caught and chucked into the world’s swing; now I’m one part wish not to hurt, three parts need to assert I exist, like a cat splayed against each fresh day; forgive my fur if it hisses, forgive my breath if it whistles; in the street I see teeth shredding flesh and meaty tongues bedding bones; I see the backwards light; I see birds alone in blocks of ice; I read the future in the orb of a spider and cry myself a whole new eye, dear, till I’m hard as snow…

My enlightenment began as a mute explosion of colors
but multiplied into the dazzling panes of a deck of mirrors;
what seemed transparent was in fact a reflection,
and what seemed lucid and safely defined
ripped itself into questions.

I kept discerning indistinct shapes:
a prismatic arc trembled under a sunbeam
and the last few cinders of an evaporated hell
split in the stratosphere. A smothered voice
spoke intimately. Torn loose blowing scraps
clung in the semblance of letters
to a bed of white sand
erased as it was read.

At last
I built my house in the fog,
fishing from windows
for the ununderstandable,
and with a shard of pure color
scrawled my stained illuminations
by light of an angel bulb;
and each night ended in an epiphany
that rose shining and redefined
this maze the size of the universe.

Audio

Eight-eyed airmen
parachuted at twilight
into our garden
of good evil.

It was spider season,
and he & I roamed fairytale streets,
conspiring to destroy reality
and weave a universe.

In real life
we were besieged
by centipedes,
burned girlfriends,
and worst of all,
ourselves,
but with his grubby bedroom
as HQ of Creation,
we freestyled scripts past sunsets,
and worlds hatched down the walls,
while episodes coalesced:
characters debated from cradle to ash,
civilizations tipped over
and smashed,
and an immortal celebrity
realized he was the Deity;
first one city filled all galaxies,
then one mind.

We were…