1. Pennies, pennies in a fountain
How many pennies make a mountain?

In my life

I've done a lot of bad things. I wish I didn't

but what good are wishes? Just pennies thrown into a deep well.

You can't change how things are.

You can only remember.

When I was five

I led my little brother in front of a car

turning as the bumper knocked him into the soft snow.

The black wheel passed over his head.

I got older.

A Catholic boy was strangled down at the creek

strangled with his own St. Christopher's medal

his butterfly net beside him in the weeds.

There were bad people everywhere.

I stole magazines down at the district line

women in their underwear bound and gagged on the cover.

Madmen had stolen them away. Madmen.

That was what my mother meant

when she told me about strangers.

I set a fire in a shed in the garden

burning in the hot summer sun.

Then I grew up

and there was nothing I didn't want.

It was all mine, for nothing

for a smile, a few dollars. The drugs, the hot nights

a smoky field with the band playing so loud

that there was no way to explain. I pulled a knife on a man

in a car in Ohio, pledged my love

for a few hits of acid or a ride up the coast. I stole

what I could from any store owner

stupid enough to take his eyes off me

scooped money from the pockets of sleeping families

who had invited me into their homes.

I knew that I was going bad, rotting from the inside

like that first apple. But what could I do?

Sometimes I thought I would just get away

find a place out in the country

lots of bugs flying around and cornstalks

growing up into the night.

A lot of times I talked about that

sitting around high

my mind far away and steamy

but I knew I'd never do it. I needed the city around me

the men with their lies and plane rides to the Mexican border

all night music and the future bursting open

like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. I couldn't live in a house

on a street in a town.

If there were madmen

I wanted to meet them. I didn't want them flying around me

in their glittering world, while I waited

blind and silent in the dark. So I opened my eyes. And slowly

I became mad. If that's what madness is, to see

a thousand worlds where there is only one.

I found myself waking into a night I'd never seen, shaking

myself from some stranger's bed, wondering

if this was a dream inside a dream.

I watched my hours slip away into a dark canyon

where I could never call them back

where not even the faintest light fell

to help me remember. It was as if I had fallen into a tornado.

All around me

the world flew and roared. I reached out

to feel flesh beside me, heard the lies

coming out of my mouth. I knew

they were lies because I couldn't remember them

once they left my lips. I love you.

I hate you.

What does it mean in the center of a tornado

with the wind rushing against your skin?

And the wind out there, waiting to tear you away if you moved.

One morning

I woke up alone. The phone was cut off

and I had no place to be. I went up to the roof. I lay on my back

watching the sun move across a distant sky. There was no one

I wanted to see. There was nothing

I wanted to do. I knew I had to get out.

It wasn't such a long road, really. I just turned around

and there it was.

My way out.

I thought I would move

through the world I'd just escaped, but safe

like an angel. I went down and filled out an application.

"Have you ever been arrested?"

"Never."

"Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

"No."

No. Only a long time ago

when I lived inside a tornado. And who can blame me now

for what I did when I flew with madmen?

They never checked my record.

They never checked anyone's.

And so I went to work.

The calls fell one against the next.

They came without warning.

Bolts of lightning as I drank my coffee

or dozed in the front seat of the bus.

I didn't talk to anyone.

I felt so alone

in this city that shook

in the path of a hot green wind.

This will be the summer

the papers said

this will be the summer that the tornado takes us all.

There's no money any more.

People live on every empty corner.

"Give me what you've got," the men say

as I pass them on my way to work.

People get shot every day.

The Mayor goes to all their funerals.

He stands at the altar, his gray head trembling

tears in his eyes. "God has called him home," he says

"God has called his precious child home."

Then God's voice must be everywhere now.

In the alleys littered with crack vials

the cardboard cities down by the pier.

In the yellow kitchens with their overturned chairs

the one night hotels and topless bars

calling after the sailors laughing on 42nd Street

and the girls who stand along Ninth Avenue

watching the Jersey cars.

"It's just God, that sound you hear,"

I want to tell them

"calling sweet and low."

That sound like the rattle of a snake.

It might be God. But it might not be.

It might be the Devil. If you believe in such things.

The Garden of Eden, angels who fall to earth.

I used to believe in a lot of things. But I don't now.

My name is Orlie. I drive an ambulance in the holiest city on earth.