SETH LAFLAMME

Reconcilliation

In the mirror I contort my face
to brush my teeth and
step back and look,
rejoicing at the machinery
I get to play with in life,
and this same motion carries me outside,
to yesterday in the spring thaw
-one of the first tumultous days
emergent in March-
the streets and sidewalks flowed with melted snow
-white opaque,
becoming clear-
carving canyons in itself
all the winter's dirt,
a true craftsman:
Spring,
firstborn of Mother Nature
-Mother Dirt-
recreates earth on earth
and washes away all we have scattered
in muddy rivulets,
and I befriend this force,
with the corrugated heel
of my olive brown shitkicker
in creating this small Nile
of flowing earthen wisdom
that washes away the sand and salt:
snow becomes water
to assert its simple, flowing eternity
-water,
which is unstoppable
in all its forms
as age is unstoppable
like the Tigris and Euphrates valleys
that flow from the fertile crescent of my grandfather's smile
fed on the beer he drinks,
and the gruff, jovial wisdom that flows from him
unstoppable
until it washes him completely clean
into oblivion,
and I come back to the mirror,
my own face so smooth
that I scrunch my features into his approximate age
think of the cancer that threatens him
and ask if all of this is a dam
or some canal to the next great sea.

SETH LAFLAMME
 

MODERN RUBBISH

Dillinger finished his tea, and hopped into his car. On the way home, he sat quietly. He was of the habit of talking to the driver when there was no one else in the car, because there was no one else to talk to. However, today he felt that everyone was unworthy of his radiance. At the gates of his huge, white country house that rest just outside of London, Dillinger ordered his driver over to the Parliament building.
Once at the Parliament building, he sat and thought. He went into an expensive little bakery, ordered a pastry with some chardonnay, and thought some more. The bakery was small and smelled of authority and knowhow. Dillinger sipped one chardonnay after another, admiring the scent in the bakery, and observing the Parliament building.
Outside of the building, there were people standing in official-looking suits. Dillinger took note of the uniformity of things. He watched for a long time-people in similar suits, similar cars, and a similar walk. Then, he looked over at some cupcakes in the display case. The ones at the top were the most beautiful, with pink frosting, and a powdering of confectioner's sugar. However, there was one in the middle of these that had a darker, almost red swirl of frosting, and had white sprinkles on it. His mind took a devious turn, and he came to a revelation-nothing unique, but one sufficient enough to act in strange and twisted ways in the mind of one whose family hadn't heard the word "no" to a 100-pound note in centuries, one whose concept of limitation and moderation was at best vague and abstract-stood, and replaced the hat on his dapper head.
As Dillinger walked out of the bakery, cupcake in hand, he cradled it like an infant and bit into it like he was a hungry vampire. It was plain that he was now intent on some purpose. The degree of animation in his movements was surprising, and he drew many inquisitive looks from people who had never seen a member of England's gentry move at such a pace before.

Dillinger had been contemplating his embryonic idea, when it had come to him that he was owed a special favor . . . .
He had shown up unannounced on the front porch of a distant relation of his to whom he had loaned a small sum of money. This distant relation happened to be a dabbler in the workings of chemistry. Actually, he hired chemists to invent things, and generally got in their way and trying to look important. However, he looked for all the world like a scientist of the intelligent, flaky sort, and while the scientific world looked down their noses at him, society-Dillinger included-looked upon him with a certain brand of awe.
Dillinger rang at the door, and stood for a long time waiting. The house was not the sort to be seen in front of. It was small, and the lawn was horribly out of date-filled with flowers that had gone out of style at least three years ago. There was a bustling inside, a few thuds, and finally the opening of the door.
As it swung open, there stood William himself in all his short, skinny, bespectacled splendor. He was breathing hard, and was rubbing the short brown hair at the top of his head.
"Dillinger, so happy to (pant pant) . . . do come in! I was just having a cup of the latest tea from my cloning experiments. I never bought into all that human cloning rubbish. Load of hogwash! Nothing like a spot of genetically engineered tea, I always say."
"Really? Still at it then, Willy? I had rather thought that you would give that up after that nasty incident at the palace."
Willy's eyes lit, up, magnified by his dark-rimmed glasses. "On the contrary, I was much encouraged by the high incidence of diarrhea in the first folks to try the stuff. It meant that my Super Strong and Satisfying Tea was well on the way." He excitedly gestured with short, stabbing motions of his fine, veiny little hands.
"Yes, I suppose many of your friends saved money on unnecessary enemas that year. We just don't spend enough time on the loo, you know, and it goes straight to everyone's heads."
"Yes, yes, and I have been improving it ever since-approaching the perfect tea, I might add."
They arrived in the dining room, where there were no servants to wait on them, and William, still rubbing his head, got up to pour them hot water for tea.
"I say, Willy! Why don't you have your maid take care of that? What sort of help do you have here, anyway?"
"Oh, the maid has these atrocious moods, and if I interrupt her afternoon tele, she whacks me over the head with the clicker. I'm sure she'll get over it once I stop conducting experiments on her."
"I'm sure she gets paid well enough. If I were you . . . ." Dillinger stopped himself as his glass was filled with an odd reddish tea, "Great Scott! What is this concoction?" he stared intently at his steaming glass of tea. William had used the wrong cups, but this seemed to be no time to bicker over minute nuances of etiquette.
"Aha! Surprised, I take it? Wonderful! Perfect!" He spooned six lumps of sugar into his glass. The tea took on a pinkish hue, "I'm going for just that reaction." He spooned in some more sugar without further comment, "Sugar?" he inquired.
"Oh no, I'll take saccharine, if you've got it. I always choose things man-made over things natural. After all, corporations rule the world, and farmers rule nothing but fields of manure and stacks of mortgage papers."
"I'd never thought of it that way." William flashed a wide grin, sprang up, and started fiddling around in the cupboards. He came out with a bowl of the requested substance, and set it down before Dillinger, "Of course!" Dillinger dipped his spoon into the bowl, "Science can improve everything!" He flailed his bony arms wildly as Dillinger calmly sifted the excess back into the bowl, "My tea will go beyond brisk-it will be . . . ," Dillinger dumped the sweetener into his tea, cocking an eyebrow at his animated companion, "exhilarating!"
When the last of the saccharine had cascaded into the glass, the tea took on the same light hue as William's, but then the colors separated, and soon Dillinger's cup was swirling with multitudinous shades of near-incandescent pink.
William hopped up, disturbing the table as he did so, and the tea sloshed over onto the tabletop. It soaked into the unfinished wood, creating a swirling pink circle on the table.
Now, William was jumping up and down in a fit of childish excitement. He babbled on about this great new discovery, remarking how wondrous it was, how outstanding. Dillinger, however, was more quietly intrigued.

Later that week, on Henry's lawn, the two cousins were shooting clay pigeons that, according to Henry, had been handmade in Malaysia by known relatives of the present Dhali Lama. They had big blunderbusses that made noise much more effectively than they shot bullets.
"I say, PULL!" Dillinger somehow connected the random path of his bullet with the floating pigeon. He had a spray can of bright pink, swirly paint next to him, and had ordered the butler to spray it on his pigeons before releasing them. Henry's targets remained the original hunter orange.
"Look here, bean-o! I do think that's just a bit unfair. What good does it do you to cheat me at a friendly round of target practice?" Henry shot his gun, missing the target completely. He was rubbing his shoulder from the kick.
"Well, now. Looks like somebody's got the wrong idea. I hope you won't consider it incredibly smug of me to tell you only that, for once, you don't get it. PULL!" Another exceedingly bright clay disc flew into the air, where Dillinger closed in on it, and pulled the trigger, shattering yet another target.
"OH! Right you are, then. I suppose you're beating me fair and square this time, eh? If I was a fool, then I should wish they hadn't given me the valedictorian status at Oxford. If you're not cheating, then there's some kind of funny business going on here, and I demand that you tell me what it is. PULL!" The pigeon flew up and landed, unscathed.
"I'm just good, it's that incredibly simple! PULL!" A pigeon flew up. BANG! Smoke coughed out of the blunderbuss with tubercular force.
"I think you're incredibly simple, you old bumfuzzler. I would like to know what's up your smelly old sleeve, but I intend to beat you regardless of your simple shenanigans. PULL!" A gust of wind came up, and whisked the pigeon way out of the bullet's path. Henry squinted against the stench of the gunpowder, "Anyway, not being a simpleton, I like to have a little challenge in things."
"What I'm doing is a great challenge, Henry, you stodgy little know-it-all. I have simply begun distinguishing myself in everything I do, so that I stand out-a man apart," he put down his blunderbuss, and looked squarely at Henry.
"What are you talking about, you loony?"
"What I'm saying, man, is that I don't need to do anything well as long as I do it with flair, and make it stick out like a bloody beautiful, sore thumb. It's a sort of, um-philosophy I've been developing, yes."
"You're crazier than Mother Teresa! I should say that life is a little less simple than that. You need at least three cardinal rules to a system of philosophy-everybody knows that, and if you're rich, you need four, so that the proletariat will not understand your thinking." He lit a cigar, and proceeded to puff with the air of venerable and corrupt statesman who's had the last word.
"It's working with the pigeons, and I suspect that there is a universal application here. You can keep your rules, cousin, because I will soon be able to create my own when the entire bloody continent of Europe is begging for a taste of my genius."
"Those must be some pretty sharp rocks in your head fooling you into thinking that your ghastly little ideas and dreadfully odd pink goo will get you any more than a page-two advertisement in the rags."
"Right you are, Henry. It will start there, but then it will reach around the world. I will be a modern-day king, and if I'm feeling a bit charitable, I might dub thee my jester." Henry sniffed, and started walking back up to his mansion. Dillinger followed him, amused by the clipped manner of walking that Henry adopted when he assumed the affectation of being upset.
He finally caught up to Henry in the sitting-room, where they both panted a little at the end of their brisk walk, blaming it on the gunsmoke. Henry ordered his butler to get him a mint julep, and Dillinger opted for a whiskey sour with a cherry.
Henry just looked at him for a moment, "So, what are you up to, anyhow? The superior grin hasn't left your pasty little face all day. And while I'm at it, what are you thinking of, wearing some kind of obscenely pink jacket when brown is most definitely the style this season?"
The butler loomed over the two men with their drinks, and raised a bushy eyebrow at Dillinger, who took his drink and sipped at it serenely. "Well, Henry, if you want the other three cardinal ideas of my plan, I haven't got any," he began fishing around in his glass for the cherry, "Complex ideas are impressive, but they are also quite leaky and in constant need of repair."
Henry coughed on his drink, "I suppose you think that jacket you've been gallivanting around in is going to put you head and bright pink shoulders above the rest. I am incredibly sorry to inform you that modern art, and all the splashy, swirly impressionistic nonsense that goes with it are a thing of the past, my good man." He sat back, and sipped from his julep.
"It just so happens that this is the height of scientific achievement, you sarcastic poop. Living color! It certainly isn't modern art. It's the color of the new royalty, and it will make me richer and more influential than any king in the history of England," he found his cherry, and chewed it with relish.
"How in blazes did you get your hands on something like that, anyway?" asked Henry. He stared intently at the jacket, which had taken on a life of its own in the well-lit comforts of Henry's tearoom.
"Willy and I discovered it while discussing important matters over tea. He had an interesting experiment going, but it needed some zip. You might say I sweetened the deal a bit." Dillinger sat back, always proud of a good private pun.
Henry's glass went up to his lips, and his pinky stuck out emphatically, "So Willy had a hand in this, did he? You shouldn't have had to tell me. I could smell his eccentric stink in this a mile away."
"Eccentric, nothing, my poor, unimaginative fellow. He is simply brilliant, and together we have come up with a genius idea."
"Two numskulls working together never has genius results. What business have you got, sloshing around in a vat of chemicals, anyway. One might think you'd gone and learned something useful."
Dillinger beamed at this last jab. "For your information, I have been spending the past few days trying to get approval and support for this new chemical of ours, and I have bypassed almost every rule and regulation in the book. If you ask me, that's the only way to get anything useful done in this world. Yes, I'd say I learned something very useful, indeed."
Henry's face darkened slightly in a manner that Dillinger had never seen . . . . "This stuff you've got- I assume you've tested it for bad things like, oh, I don't know, a predisposition to blow things up, right?"
The attempt at seriousness was poor, and severely out of character. Dillinger shrugged it off, "Oh, posh. Since when were you a worrywart. Like you yourself often say; the only truly dangerous thing is passing up money and power for such silly things as your conscience."
Henry brightened, and seemed assured by this, but he changed the subject, nonetheless. They talked about the desserts that would be served at future parties, and speculated from whose thighs they might get to lick them. They both agreed wholeheartedly that the Duchess of Eastwick was just the right kinky little tart for the job. Dillinger was certain that a black cherry flambé would be perfect, while Henry opted for a chocolate-boysenberry mousse.
When Dillinger finished his drink, he excused himself to go start his day's appointments. As he left, he thought he heard Henry saying something to his maid about "Friday night . . . mousse . . . distinguished guests . . . Duchess of . . . ."

When Dillinger arrived at his three story house in the city, the sky was grey, and everything was bustling and earthy with greys and browns. The car pulled away as he walked the cobble walkway to his front door. The flowers in the yard had a lucid freshness. There was a heaviness in the air, but it was mobile and vibrant. Everything looked dull, but appealed to every other sense with a immeasurable vitality.
It was just about time for afternoon tea, and Dillinger had a few things to take care of. He and Willy had to act fast in order to push their new pigment through the FDA, EPA, and a whole horde of acronym-toting organizations. Between the two of them, Dillinger and Willy had friends just about everywhere, and the past few days had been spent making phone calls and acquiring the necessary approvals without a shred of test data: rather, they used "abstract conclusions based on extensive metaphysical testing," as Willy had put it.
Dillinger took the key out of his pocket, and inserted it into the lock. There, he stood for a moment, and looked at his sleeve. It seemed almost nonexistent, it was so unnatural. It gave him a strange shiver, like he was wearing cotton candy in the rain, to watch the bottomless and depthless swirls that played constantly in the dye of his jacket. He got the impression that the door had melted away from him as he entered his foyer.
He called for some tea, and creaked up his ancient staircase to the study. On the walls, there were shelves of books, and many old (but certainly not dusty) portraits. The books ranged from biographies of Napoleon to a leatherbound collection of Shakespeare's works. The bare sections of the wall displayed renderings of historical figures. Henry VIII held the position of dominance over the large, marble desk that stood in front of the room's only window, which faced the street.
Dillinger took his address-book out of the top drawer, and proceeded to look up his acquaintance on the Pan-European Environmental Legion (PEEL), Upton Dunborough. He was sure that Upton, who was fond of green money, would choose it over green leaves, any day.
The maid arrived with his tea, and Dillinger sipped it slowly as he leafed through his extensive book of people who he had gone through the day before and rated according to their usefulness in his current mission. He found the name, and looked up from his address book to get the telephone. Once again, his eyes were glued to the cuff of his jacket, and his arm rested on the desk while he admired its restless, fluid color.
At that moment, he heard a noise outside his window. He turned his head, and looked outside. The garbage truck had come to the building across the street. Two men hopped off the back of the truck, and began dumping the contents of the cans into the compactor. Dillinger's window was open, and he heard little snatches of his conversation as he loaded the truck. He listened and watched, mildly interested.
When they were halfway finished, the two men stopped for a minute, and Dillinger heard one of them say something like, "Bloody 'ard work. I've got an idea. 'Old on a minute."
The other man leaned back against the truck. He lit a cigarette, and watched. The man with the idea hooked the next can's handle onto the mechanism that was used for lifting dumpsters. He pushed a button and raised the can over the compactor.
"What a marvelous idea!" thought Dillinger.
But just then, as the man reached up to tip the can, it slipped and crashed to the pavement with a loud clatter, and now, a large gray trashcan rocked back and forth on its side in a scatter of rubbish. The two men stood looking at it in mute paralysis. When the skinnier man who had been smoking heard the driver's door slam shut he dropped his cigarette and stood up.
A third man got out of the truck. His face was streaked with deep, hard lines, and his arms rippled like stovepipe mirages. The hair that showed from under his plain brown hat was gray. He looked at the mess that confronted him. Without a word, he bent to the task of picking it up. Strangely, the other two men just stood there. They looked for all the world like two men who were about to do something. However, they did nothing. The third man finished with the garbage and stood up to look at the other two. He just looked at them without glaring or saying a word-just looking. It was a look that had the all the connotations of a slap on the wrist, and contained a powerful disdain. It seemed to say to the two men that there was a fine line between laziness and genuine ingenuity. The hard brown eyes made an entire speech in a few seconds.
The two men who had dropped the garbage began to mutter simultaneously. "I thought it would be easier if . . . ," and, "You didn't have to . . . ."
"I did," said the third man who was older than the other two. His voice was clear and rang with a note of asperity. He pointed to the cab of the truck, and dusted off his dark brown uniform. Quietly and efficiently, he dumped two more barrels into the back of the truck's compactor unit. Somehow, his actions brought dignity and a professional competence to garbage collecting. His rugged brown pants with faded knees, and thickly corded neck looked real and substantial. He waved to the cab and hopped on the back of the truck. "Numbskulls," Dillinger thought he heard the man grumble as the truck lurched into gear, and rumbled off slowly making its heavy diesel chug.
Dillinger was oddly moved, and his brow almost furrowed. He looked back at his book, and dialed the number next to Upton's highlighted name. Once again, his eyes were drawn to the cuff of his jacket. The phone rang twice, and a female voice answered. Dillinger asked to speak to Upton. He looked up to scan the walls while he waited; the impotent face of Henry VIII stared down at him. The face that Dillinger had once admired for its conniving serenity now was featureless. The eyes were vacuous holes, and a ridiculous hat kept the piggish head in place atop a pompous mound of indulgent, stupid fat. Upton picked up the phone. Dillinger's eyes, however, were fixed on the portrait. He began to mentally compare it to the able, dignified garbageman. He spoke to Upton with an automatic charm, and hardly knew what he had said when Upton said "I'll get back to you in a jif," and hung up.
He forced himself to look away form the portrait, and began fidgeting with his sleeve. His fingers cast no shadows on the fabric, as if there were no place for the shadows to rest. The pink colors swirled lazily, without purpose. Dillinger stopped moving, squinted, and stared more closely. The pink blotches revolved like clouds into a black hole, wispy, and immaterial. He had the odd feeling of staring into vacant and endless space through one side of a pair of 3D glasses smeared with milk. The colors on his sleeve looked as though they were seeping up between his fingers until the hand that had been fooling with the jacket now seemed part of the space, drifting in the clouds, sinking deeper and deeper into the beautiful, paper-thin void until it was miles away. His smooth, pale hand fit so well in the languid nothingness that it seemed to disappear within the morass-pinky extended to the infinite limits of limbo. Dillinger's mind was on the verge of something that was just out of reach, too close to discern.
The phone rang. Dillinger extracted his hand with great effort, and plucked the receiver from its cradle.
"It'll be a snap!" Upton's enthusiasm blasted into his ear.
Dillinger's thoughts evaporated and reformed in the present. "That's a smashing bit of news, Uppy. I'll be down to sign the papers right away."
Dillinger breezed down the stairs, stopped to admire himself in the hall mirror with a winning smile, and summoned his car.
He gave the driver directions and began formulating metaphysical data for the day's social acrobatics.

The day was a raging success. Dillinger and William had guilefully bypassed at least a dozen regulations concerning new chemical substances, and they were headed to a meeting where they would sign a production contract for the preliminary formula of the pink dye. This, combined with the samples and pamphlets that had been sent out to every manufacturer of toys, clothing, and anything else imaginable, would set the ball rolling to get a foothold in every corner of the globe-and a hand in every pocket.
Dillinger and William arrived at the huge, two-story office building and Dillinger confidently strolled through the large glass doors, letting them slam into the jittery William who always seemed to be twelve steps behind. Together, they walked down the hallway to a giant office in the back of the building, where the formalities were discussed, endless promises made, and metaphysical data fluently exchanged. After at least two trays of scones, and the passage of about an hour, a contract was drawn up, and ready to be signed. As Dillinger reached into his pocket for a pen, a garbage truck pulled up to the dumpster outside, and a man hopped off the back to hook up the loading mechanism.
Dillinger took up his pen and signed his name in at least eight different places, and when he got to the final page he paused with the pen poised in the air. He stopped. He looked out the window and watched as the garbageman outside pushed the button and the machine started to whine and the dumpster started to lift slowly off the ground. In a moment, large portions of trash cascaded into the garbage truck. Dillinger had never before seen something so honest and elegant. It was a sight, he was sure, that Henry VIII would have been appalled to witness.
"I think," he said to William, "that I have an unbelievable craving for a black cherry flambé." He took his pen, and signed his name with a flourish. He turned to William, and grinned.

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