Munmun(96)

It was a thousandvoice orchestra to teach someone to sing again, a well to wash a dusty dry Dreamworld.

And something fountained up in me, some wet enormous need.





OKAYWORLD


OKAY, it screamed out of my mouth,

the ocean shuddered,

OKAY, OKAY, it roared in my voice,

boomed and echoed off the cliffsides,

HUE, PRAYER, USHER, YES, I’LL SIGN, I sobbed,

so loud that even sleeping Kitty must have heard me,

faraway,

like a coward, I chose life.





(WHATHAPPENSNEXT)


(And what happened to that coward next, well let me tell you, gather round for the Remaining Story of Warner as Told by Also Warner, keep your eyes on that gigantic bawler heaving in the sea.)

Surenough the bankers were listening, surenough they heard him, rightaway they began their magic work of Drain His Muns.

No time to prep his body, ohwell, whatcanyoudo, the shrinking kingkong grit his teeth, the weakening godsilla squinched his eyes, then finally he began to scream a little, then a lot, then basically nonstop, also wept and thrashed while his skin hugged his bones, bones squeezed his heart, frantic heart had nowhere to put its blood, body’s trash strained his guts and stretched his veins, ribs pricked his lungs, gashed his livers, kidney, tum, his cramping tightening skull closed in and bruised his woozy brain, his innerears shrieked and shrilled and his eyeballs flashed and popped and dimmed and he told his brain to think, whocares, I’ll live.

He bled and vommed and crapped endlessly in the pinking sunsetting ocean, went under a few times, gasping, shuddering, it all went dark and then it found ways to get even darker than that and then it went nightdark, deathdark, dark as nothing.

But he must have failed to die somehow, the bloodsalty sea got bored of him I guess or maybe pitied him, bitbybit a kindly tide coaxed him back toward the citylights undercover of night.

And finally it pushed this lifeloving coward onto the damp sand where he slumped like a corpse.

Prettysoon the morningsun was creeping over the mountains to touch him, his eyes twitched open, one was milkydull but the other had a little light left.

He crawled off the beach and onto the boardwalk, pavement, citystreets, his one good eye wandered and searched for a good place to just collapse somewhere outofsight forever but the dumpsters were too small, the sewerdoors too low and narrow, no holes in the wall could fit this middle littlepoor.

So your coward stumbled, shambled, shuffled, up into the hills, on one bad leg and one worse, hearing mostly ringing, behind his ribs his organs were already switching off.

And after a longtime he was in a familiar sweetsmell paradise, homes like humming mountains, gentle sprinklers misting, treebranch cathedral overhead.

He was a crippled animal with a pushing heart, telling him with nudges, here, thisway, keepgoing.

And after some more bloody shuddery miles he stopped in front of a house.

He stood, and swayed, then suddenly sat down, couldn’t stay on his feet for one more second.

He sat there naked in the yard, ignored by joggers and soundless zooming doublecars, ignoring the trickly spreading death inside him, just watched the house and waited for its dreamer to wake up.

So wake up, please. I’m out here waiting.

Please save my littlelife just one last time, because heresthedeal, then I promise to save yours.

Let’s belong to each other, howaboutit,

let’s be reasons to fix stoves, patch roofs,

clean and heal our idiot town, our old dumb brokendown world,

let’s be why we love this stupid life too much to die,

Kitty whatdoyousay,

here’s what happens next,

let’s make each other weak.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thankyou firstofall to my wise witty endlessly patient editor, Maggie Lehrman, as well as Susan Van Metre, Michael Jacobs, Chad W. Beckerman, Andrew Smith, and the rest of my partners in crime at Abrams. Thankyou for encouraging me to take risks, reining me in when I am being obtuse or insane, letting Warner be Warner, and agreeing to a title that is a madeup nonsense word.

Thankyou to Nate Marsh for his perfect artwork.

Thankyou to my tireless brilliant agents, Claudia Ballard, Laura Bonner, and Anna DeRoy, for always acting in my best interests so I don’t have to.

Thankyou to the incredible Cassilhaus residency ay kay ay Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus, who hosted and fed and entertained me in their beautiful castlehouse in North Carolina while I wrote the final third of this book.

Thankyou to my genius friends and fellow writers who gave me their invaluably thoughtful notes and insights: Greg Atwan, Emily Carmichael, Kyle McCarthy, Joel Steinhaus, Nic Stone, Ben Urwand, Han Yu, and ofcourse Sean McGinty, the first person I ever discussed this idea with, one talky night in downtown Ellay.

Thankyou always and forever to my family of Mom Dad Lena Eve Grandma for making me who I am.

Thankyou a secondtime to my dauntless librarian Mom inparticular for all the conversations and encouragements and pushbacks with this book, and a thirdtime for each of the hundreds maybe thousands of books she gave me growing up, especially the ones she read me outloud, especially Dickens.

And thankyou mostofall to Tamara for the daily reminders that this book is the most important thing in my life, but letsbehonest, it’s a distant second.