The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 8

8.

This was not quite it.
This was
a bit darker.
A bit taller.
A bit dirtier than she had come to dream
in the short time she had her own dreams at all.

She crept along through the thunking valleys
of industry
ducking in and out of crates
like a barnmouse,
the thrum of moths.
following her steps.

An old steam whistle
she recognized from cartoons
blew a furious note
she knew she had never heard
and the streets filled with shadows.

Long ones
short ones
cast about recklessly on stone and concrete.
Sliding around corners,
flickering across one another.

They swam over her
passing numbly across her skin,
business in hand.

One stopped.
She noticed that he wasn't a shadow at all.
He was a man—
or as much of a man as a monster ever was--
but mostly a man,
wrapped head to toe
in the ugliest sweater she ever saw.

She asked him about the spectacle sticking out of their peculiar hamlet.
The immaculate ladder she could stepstool into the stars.

"Why that's the Biggums Building.
The tallest tower in the world.
Home to eight million people
(give or take two million on holidays).
It's what we're here for."

"It's what I'm here for too," she said.

His empty eyes narrowed into pity.
"Tourist," he hissed, slithering off.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 7

7.

When she awoke:

He looked as sheepish as an armadillo could.
He explained to her that this was just how it was.
This is how it had always been.
This was not quite how he planned it but.
See.
Thing is.
He could go, no problem.
He went all the time.
He just wasn't sure where, exactly.
Or why.

And the where and the why of the moment
he reasoned
was a fork in the road.

Forks had more than two prongs
she reasoned
but here she was,
One pronging thataway
one pronging thotherway.

She eyed them both close.
They weren't the same, she could tell that much.
Though she couldn't quite see what was different about them.
They just felt...
well she didn't quite know.
Just different.
(You know how it is.)

She tapped her toes
snuffed at the dirt
rolled it between her fingers.
She did everything short of licking the ground
to try
and pick
a path.
But she couldn’t.

She spun on her heel.

“How could you get us so lost?”
“We’re not lost.”
“We’re lost.”
“We’re not lost,” Tatu’s eyes rolled around in his head,
“We’re just not any place in particular.”

She sat herself down in the dust
and embarked on a world-searing pout
most often reserved for ice cream-related disappointments.

Armadillos being notoriously quick thinkers,
Tatu waved his stumpy claws around
and his little black eyes began to sparkle.
He explained to her about the ends of the roads,
having seen a few in his day.
About how at the very far end of that fork
lay a gnarled wood
and former Pick Your Own Apple Orchard
thick through with unknowable unknowns
with thousands of rows
of sharpened teeth.

And at the end of the this fork
there was a city
and in this city
there was a great lion-prowled library propped up with columns
an underground bookstore full of subversive literature
and a coffee house on every corner
where rogue intellectuals undoubtedly disagreed
with established norms.

It was just how she had imagined.
Now that she squinted a little bit harder
she could see it.

The messy angles hooked and wheeled overtop of each other
the steel, the concrete, the sheer weight of it all.
Nothing sagged. Nothing drooped. Nothing soft or bowed.
The thickness only made it
somehow more jagged
and in the center of it all, peaking up over the twisted glass city below was ---
well
it was a pure ivory rhinoceros horn spire on top.
it was three hundred marble floors if it was a dozen,
each perfectly matching the one beneath.
It was immaculate windows beaming down at you
like cop sunglasses.
It was a holy temple
a testament to humanity
a feat of strength.

It stretched right up into the stars.

That was all Lula needed.
She saw the path before her
paved, lined and neat
grass trim and green on either side
and with one little boot in front of the other
she strolled down the street
making sure to step
on each dotted line as she went.
For good luck.

Tatu watched her go
a little sadder than he meant to be
knowing full well
even if he had tried to follow her
he probably would’ve ended up someplace else.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 6

6.

SO
THEY
ROLLED.

They rolled and rolled
and with every rock in the road, they pitched into the air
and tumbled back down.
To and fro
round and about.
She stopped noticing after a while.
Like the gentle rocking of waves
the prairie lulled her to sleep
bump by bump
tucked tight into Tatu's armadillo crook.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 5

5.

Lula Del Ray
maybe twelve years old if anyone had bothered to count
wasn't sure what to do with herself
now that she was properly free
to do
whatever it is
she liked.

You couldn't walk to space.
She knew that much.
Certainly not on her spindly legs and tender feet
grown soft from years aloft, surrounded by tiny-flowered wall paper.
So she did the next best thing
(which is as you know
so often the next thing you think),
she spindled and shimmied all fingers and toes
up the stem of the biggest dish she could find
and sat
dangle-legged right on the lip.

The quiet red nose-lights at the tips blinked dumbly at her
out of synch
and she watched the
tumble weeds tumble.
It wasn't quite what she had imagined
all this.

Rugged, certainly, she had been expecting.
But this was just hardened clay.
Empty dips and valleys,
mountain cracks
twice-warmed with
sporadic
outbursts
of lava (she assumed anyway, that lava was at least around the corner).

Just a distinct sense of gotten-up-and-gone.

Nothing to see,
no hot-bellied lizard scramble
nor sugar puff mouse jump.
Nothing to see but.
But.


A big tumbleweed.
An enormous tumbleweed.
A big, enormous, brambly, leather-skinned tumbleball
all covered in wiry hairs
headed straight for her.

WHIP-BAM
it sent the dish spinning wild.
Tossing her up up up
up

up

up




up




up

till she saw it.
It was faint, hidden behind some clouds, but she saw it.
She was sure.
All the hidden junk and mess she was after
the waves that had shuffled across her eardrums so many times
the constellations full of noblemen and archers.


But lip-split-quick
she was yanked down back the way she came.
Before she could even remember to be afraid
she was back on earth
cradled
floating above the ground
in a nest of bristles and leather and sweat
bathed in something that could only be described as
the sweet, earthy musk of freshly chewed grubs

"Howdy."

Bat-eared, rat-eyed, elephant-trunked and turtle-shelled,
other little girls of weaker compositions could be forgiven
for fainting at such a savior,
but not Lula Del Ray.

She had other issues to sort out.

She hopped down out of his arms, scowling
muttering half-curses about
no-good
half-blind
desert sloths
near round knocking kids into the ozone.

The Armadillo tipped back on his tail shaking with laughter.
"I knew I'd catch you."
“You could’ve killed me!”
He laughed harder.
“Relax. I saved your life. It’s no big deal.”
"I'd sooner die than be indebted to an Aardvark."
"Armadillo."
"Anteater!"
"Armadillo."
"What's your name?"
"Tatu."
"Mine's Lula."

She explained to him about the tiny house
The New Baden Brothers
and the sad, aimless rotation of their satellite home.

He told her stories of wild adventure
exotic locales
swashbuckling and monkeyshines.

About how he had seen the whole world at least twice over
from the suboceanic volcanoes
to the frigid Andes' peaks.
And in all his time
he had never once noticed
a couple of cowpoke (inauthentic or otherwise)
strumming away
in outer space.

But they both agreed
that didn't mean they weren't real.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 4

4.

SO WITH
EVERY LAST WHITE BLOOD CELL
AND EVERY FRAYED SYNAPSE
TUCKED TIGHT UNDER PIGTAILS
SHE RIPPED AND TORE AT HERSELF
until all that was left
was a little girl
alone in a little house
with no little fire
no little newspapers
and no little smoke.

All that was left
was to head out yonder
(as the New Baden Brothers might say)
into the noon-hot dust.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 3

3.

No one was around to cut her down.
And she didn't mind it so much, really.
She didn't really have anyplace to go.
No plans. No friends.
She was happy to stay suspended, electric--
shot-through with the words of the world.

She knew all kinds of things thanks to the wires.
Like the capital of Mongolia (Ulaan Bator)
the atomic weight of tungsten (183.84 g·mol−1)
and the number of Emmys won by All In The Family (22).

She also knew things she thought maybe she wasn't supposed to.
Not secrets, exactly.
Not exactly.
But fractured half-thoughts
and muddled glimpses at
shapes without sides or curves.
It was a mess
and it made her want to scream.

It flushed through her daily
coating her insides with shine.
Her high-gloss mind was quick enough that eventually
she knew the answers
before she understood what questions to ask.

But if she could be said to LOVE anything
that glowed inside her,
she loved The New Baden Brothers.

Two brothers of dubious relation
bred from the great wave of Germanic immigration to Texas.
Originally from the quaint town of New Baden -- renamed Freedom
during the great early century German Hysteria --
they put on a downright quaint radio program
(as if there were any other kind)
but after a full day of brain-blasting by hot modern beams
she took comfort in their
sweet, corn-silk voices
singing songs that sounded like a made-up time.
Romantic songs about a prairie life she was sure they never knew.
Songs so fake they got real again.
But what she loved.
What she LOVED.
Was.
Whether they were singing from the 18th Annual Thistleberry Hoot and Holler
or White Ben Dunwitty's Cracker Barrel
they always signed off the same way:

"That's it for us now.
We're turning in for the night
and so should you.
It's late. Why are you even up?
Do you know how important a good night's rest is?
Shoot. Being awake this late will kill you right at your marrow.
So this is it folks. One last twang
pinging off this satellite of love we got here
floating round about the stratosphere
humming asteroid lullabies
to help warm up all those frozen comet tails out there."

And then they'd sing.

Bed is too small for my tiredness,
give me a hill topped with trees.
Tuck a cloud up under my chin.
Lord blow the moon out, please.
Rock me to sleep in a cradle of trees.
Sing me a lullaby birds.
Tuck a cloud up under my chin.
Lord blow the moon out, pleassse.

Then pop click hiss.
Then silence.

And she thought –
THE MOON!
and she thought –
COMETS!
and she thought –
SPACE!
EMPTY SPACE!
How big could it possibly be?

She imagined their satellite of love spinning button-over-telescope through space.
Emptiness
eternity, if there was such a thing
stretching in all directions and
here they were.
Stuck in our orbit.
Never seeing all the universe has to offer,
no edgeless twists of infinity.
Just circling, trapped by gravity and momentum all at once.

It didn't seem fair.

She thought,
"I'll free them."

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray - 2

2.

Lula was child of wires.
Gumming at them from an early age,
fists twisted in spirals
crawling past off-white clumps
of nodes and tangle.
When they dangled in loops
she stuck her neck right through
bringing the it all crashing down
right on the top of her head.

There were always more wires.
At first it was just the dishes,
their thick gray mass snaked around the house
stapled at off-angles in damp corners,
under floorboards or punched through
fiberglass.

They seemed to breed, splitting,
two heads now where there was only
just that one
just last year.

Maybe even
each month: twice as many as the last.

"Until one day"
when she was not much older
"she awoke to find"
she was plugged in where she hadn't been before.
“And as time went on"
she found herself wired to the wall in every direction.
Every cord pulled whip-tight
every socket filled.
Strung up like a cobweb.

Hanging there
in midair.
Just like that
for years.

The Ballad of Lula Del Ray

1.

Once.
Okay, wait.
...
Okay.
Once.
Once there was a tiny shack with a tiny chimney
that puffed out a tiny puff of smoke
from a tiny fire
made of tiny logs,
tiny newspaper
and lit with tiny matches
by tiny people who were exactly the same size as you and I.
It sat in the middle of the desert. Not the exact middle, but near there.
About twenty minutes by car.
It sat in the middle of A Very Large Array. A very large array of what, you might ask.
Dishes, ma'am. Dishes.
Big, white government-issued saucers
their slanted bowls stretched on angled necks, craning towards the stars,
stealing vibrations out of the sky.
Network Fuzz.
Cable Fuzz.
Hot Spy Channel Jazz.
Interplanetary Gossip.
Waves of information.
All being broadcast
directly into the corporeal,
flesh and blood being
known as
Lula Del Ray.