For
              Carl Solomon

                   I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
      madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
      looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
      ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
      contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
      ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
      hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
      among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
      publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
      skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
      ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
      to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their ***** beards returning through
      Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
      Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
      torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
      cohol and **** and endless *****,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
      lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
      Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
      tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
      dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
      storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
      blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
      vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
      lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
      ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
      until the noise of wheels and children brought
      them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
      battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
      in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
      floated out and sat through the stale beer after
      noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
      of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
      pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
      lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
      down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
      off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
      and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
      and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
      and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
      Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
      trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
      City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
      ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
      drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
      railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
      leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
      through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
      father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
      athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
      stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
      ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
      angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
      gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
      homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
      light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
      seeking jazz or *** or soup, and followed the
      brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
      and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
      to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
      behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
      and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
      place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
      F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
      eyes **** in their dark skin passing out incom-
      prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
      the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
      Square weeping and ******* while the sirens
      of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
      down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
      wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
      and trembling before the machinery of other
      skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
      in policecars for committing no crime but their
      own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
      dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
      scripts,
who let themselves be ****** in the *** by saintly
      motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
      the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
      love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
      gardens and the grass of public parks and
      cemeteries scattering their ***** freely to
      whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
      with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
      when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
      them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
      the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
      the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
      and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
      sit on her *** and snip the intellectual golden
      threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
      beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
      dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
      the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
      on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and
      come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
      in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
      but prepared to sweeten the ****** of the sun
      rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
      in the lake,
who went out ******* through Colorado in myriad
      stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
      poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy
      to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
      in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
      rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
      gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
      ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
      solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
      dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
      picked themselves up out of basements hung
      over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
      Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
      ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
      the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
      East River to open to a room full of steamheat
      and *****,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
      cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
      blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
      be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
      the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
      Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
      pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
      bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
      their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
      with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
      by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
      incantations which in the yellow morning were
      stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
      & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
      kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
      an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
      for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
      fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
      fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
      stores where they thought they were growing
      old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
      on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
      & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
      of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
      fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
      ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
      drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
      pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
      into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
      ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
      the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
      saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
      danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
      phonograph records of nostalgic European
      1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
      threw up groaning into the ****** toilet, moans
      in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
      whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
      to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
      watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
      if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
      a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
      came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
      watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
      Denver and finally went away to find out the
      Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
      for each other's salvation and light and *******,
      until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
      impossible criminals with golden heads and the
      charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
      blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
   &nb

I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le

I followed Delvos down the trail until we could see the mouth of the mine. The life and energy of the surrounding birches and sentential pines came to a still and then died as we left the trees shelter behind and walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelled of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped in its cage.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” I pulled my mousey hair up into a tight ponytail. “I’ve experienced far more fatal feats than following a canary in a cave.”
He rolled his eyes. “Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling some Louis Armstrong song.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. I lost track of his lantern completely. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I had done in Peru. The mine was quiet and cold. I wiped my clammy, calloused hands on my trail pants and took a depth breath.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. This is nothing. I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Behind me I could hear the wind cooing at the mouth of the mine.
Taunting? No. Reminding me to go forward. Into the darkness.
I shifted my Nikon camera off my shoulder and raised the viewfinder to my eyes, sliding the lens cap into my vest pocket. This routine motion, by now, had become as fluid as walking. I stared readily through the dark black square until I saw reflections from the little red light on top that blinked, telling me the flash was charged. I snapped my finger down and white light filled the void in front of me. Then heavy dark returned. I blinked my eyes attempting to rid the memories of the flash etched, red, onto my retina. I clicked my short fingernails through buttons until the photo I took filled the camera screen. I learned early on that having short fingernails meant more precise control with the camera buttons. I zoomed in on the picture and scrolled to get my bearings of exactly what lay ahead in the narrow mine passageway. As I scrolled to the right I saw Delvos’ boot poking around the tunnel that forked to the left.
Gottcha.
I packed up the camera, licked my drying lips, and stepped confidently into the darkness.

When I first got the assignment in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack had said as he handed me the manila case envelope. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”
I opened the envelope and read the assignment details in the comfort of my old pajamas back at my apartment later that night.
John Delvos has lived in rural Vermont his entire life. His family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When “the accident” happened the whole town shut down and the mines never reopened. . There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly before Delvos and his father retreated into the Vermont woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He currently ships them to other mining towns across the country. The question of the inhumanity of breeding canaries for the sole purpose of dying in the mines so humans don’t has always been controversial. Find out Delvos’ story and opinions on the matter. Good luck, Lila.
I sighed, accepting my dull assignment and slipped into an apathetic sleep.


After stumbling through the passageway while keeping one hand on the wall to the left, I found the tunnel the picture had revealed Delvos to be luring in. Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me
“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers?” He relit the oily lantern and picked back up the canary cage. “Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.”. He turned his back without another word. I followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” then hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western-themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good night’s sleep and defeat this town’s fear of John Delvos the following day.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag, pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC, and stepped out onto the dirt in front of my motel door and lit up. The stars above stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except its sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of Vermont night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the star’s dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Rivers, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Rivers. Are you new to town?” He traced his fingers over a thick, graying mustache as he stared at me.
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
Ian smiled awkwardly, shivered, then began to fumble with his thick jacket’s zipper. I looked up at the night sky and watched the stars as they tiptoed their tiny circles in the pregnant silence. Then, they dimmed in the flick of a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light-colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“So, Delvos, eh?” He puffed out a cloud of leather smelling smoke toward the stars. “What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the star’s dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Rivers. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the dead pine needles beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed. “See that yellow notch?” he asked. Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am.
“You don’t have to.” He knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree. “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The star’s dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary’s wings and Delvos stopped. “This is a good place to break our fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We had left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky that morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Rivers.”
Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased. “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers. I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with wings slashing yellow brushes and cawing songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so and I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the bird’s little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was “Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
We sat in silence and I found myself watching the canary flit about in its cage, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?”
He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast. “Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Rivers, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested.”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the editors for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Rivers.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Rivers. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up. The mine was dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I had sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.  
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelled of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The canary was fluttering its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminatin

The blunt surface and wooden *****
Confined within impenetrable walls
However reverb dangerously.
Numbers reappeared to disorientate me.

It was the lion I sought advice from
For a dove that had been travelling with a rose
With a weight as heavy as its wings
Against the torrent of winds and sky.

I counted the time as if I were a clock.
Gently did it leave while I was not looking,
Its music turned down by long fingers
That lightly grazed the glasses
Like tracing back the steps that I at first hastened.

Never again will I see with my lashes curled by  
Its own Evening Dew.
I only pray that the silver soldier marches
Next to me with armor close to my chest
Close to my eyes so no gaze could ever penetrate.

(a travelogue)

He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts

A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
     timeworn love seat,
     rubbed smooth as
     the crystalline waters
     of  half-moon lake

Lingering for a while  ―  
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s  
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
     arousing the urgent
     call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
    on half-moon lake

The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails,  and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows

     He  sat  quietly ...
     time out of mind ―

tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching  them  each  again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was

Seeing their sparkly tracers  
trail-out above the cattails,
     from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
     on half-moon lake

A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming  
enchantingly with the grace
     of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
     the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
     slipping through
     a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―  
disappearing like a fleeting moment
     waning deep aneath
     a subtle silent wake.

When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...

     but hearken !
… an interceding
     long drawn out wail  
     echoed  a feral ache
     across the stillness,
     breaking the silence ―

as the shadow reappeared;
     his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
     as black and white
     as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
     lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon

Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake


harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more

Never would I have thought
What this piece of paper had brought
Inked in its first days
It uplifted us into a golden age

but as its letters faded and disappeared
the king and his madmen reappeared
with his forged steel and crude command
The paper was soon banned

now the ink has evaporated
and the paper has lost its grace
our future is ill-fated
tomorrow comes the stone age

I wonder how I got here, secluded in a grimy apartment filled with smoke. We drink gin and tonics with mint like it’s the ‘20s; we sit and talk pop culture because we know. Taj has somehow become the effective authority on all of these things, paid to social network and connected to Hollywood; he’s very skilled at playing to people’s wants. My Cadillac sits intent next to me markering in a recent drawing for his newest class. He’s already famous for his graffiti, one day I’ll bet you this extra credit project will be worth money. He drew me a fox for Christmas. Valentines day is coming up. He never tells me he loves me. Jack is watching me watch him out of the corner of his eye while putting on a new remix of an old song. He leans over and asks if I like it and I nod. I feel bubbled up with *** smoke, frozen in time and vaguely uncomfortable. I’d guess this is what it’s like to be “too high.” I want Caddy to notice, but it’s Jack that’s pushing my hair back and telling me to drink more water. It’s sweet. Despite his need to be seen as a womanizer, Jack respects Caddy too much to even try with me, he looks but he doesn’t put on any faces for me. Everyone thinks so hard about how they’re seen.
Jack says his New Year’s resolution is to do less *******, even though no one asked. Everyone hears but no one reacts. I try to keep moving my toes and stop shivering. Across from me Ky and Nate are reading the encyclopedia in open-mouthed awe. In a room full of intellectual up and comers I feel like Hemmingway did when he was my age, how all the minds gravitate to each other and sit in a ***** room by the beach and let the creativity go. Like Mary Shelly and the whole gang writing Frankenstein and Dracula in the same trip.  After a while I think Taj is going to make it, Jack will be a politician and Caddy will be lost and with another woman. Ky and Nate will still be smoking and reading the encyclopedia, all the way down to ‘z’. I am like my mother: attracting the company of smart successful men who pay her selective attention.
The door burst open and the cold air stayed in my pores after it was closed. Rodger invited himself over. It would have been all right but when Rodger is wasted he forgets his manners. In his animated state he managed to kick over Caddy’s favorite smoking piece, insult Jack and look at me a little too hard. His girlfriend had immediately passed out on the couch, but she never smiled or spoke to me anyway. Her head was cradled in the lap of a girl I hadn’t noticed. Her hair was perfect and her eyes shadowed, the liner and mascara smudging its way slowly onto her high cheekbones. She stared at me but didn’t speak. I tried to smile, but didn’t want to give away the champagne sensation covering my skin, still too up to speak. She had already formed her opinion of me, some young ******* the arm of an older boy. She was once in my position, I’m sure of it, we are the same kind of beautiful and empty eyed. That doesn’t stop her from judging, in the total of 15 seconds she looked at me. Her self is tamed and mine is wild still. Unintroduced and unnoticed by the men in the room, we have an understanding and a mutual dislike of each other, only to defend ourselves.
The room takes time to settle, a bowl has been packed for an entitled Rodger, and now that everyone is calm, Cad sits back down and puts his arm around me again. I lean into him, protected and anchored, whereas I had been floating or about to puke a minute ago. I don’t know what I said but Caddy seemed annoyed when he said “Just let it happen, embrace the feeling,” and so I kept quiet for ten minutes or so. The high was infected with guilt. Next time he looked at me-- it could have been an hour—I whispered, “I can’t” and finally he heard me, and stood up.
Cad came back into my vision with a glass of water and turned on Drive, prompting Rodger, Mrs. Rodger and my pretty enemy to leave. Ky and Nate had gone long before I could focus on noticing. Taj left for trivia night down at the bar and no doubt some girl; wrapped up in a cashmere scarf and cardigan he kissed my cheek before he went. Jack also took his graceful leave with the Rodger group to woo some girl who knew exactly what she was doing to herself. He did have a straight nosed charm, Jack. I could not blame this girl, one of many (I am embarrassed for her; I have been like this ******* many occasions).  
Taj had been sent the advanced copy of Drive in blu-ray, so we snuck it from his room and watched it that way (the only way Taj would see movies now, it is the future (for now)). Kavinsky came through Cad’s new speakers the boys had spent half an hour trying to wire earlier in the night. “They’re taking about you boy/but you’re still the same” crooned Lovefoxxx as Ryan Gosling cruised down a street, ****** intense in driving gloves. Gears shifting and motors growling are very ****, I tell Cadillac so into his ear, as he pulls me into his arms and covers me up with a blanket.
The movie was perfect, maybe because it made me feel less dizzy and sickguilty (Cad knew it would) and maybe because Ryan Gosling can wear a white satin jacket. I loved it, hardly noticing when the absent roommate Travis strolled in with Taj and tacos somewhere around 2am.  Colder as Caddy got up for a burrito, left me alone on the couch for the kitchen table. Registering Taj taking his place, playing with my curls and talking Hollywood to me. I’m staring over at Cad in his chair, he makes eye contact once or twice and I blow him a kiss before Taj repositions my head toward the television and my ear back where he can speak into it.
Eventually Cadillac taps Taj on the shoulder and motions for him to get up. With Cad back I can relax and I fall into sleep just as the movie ends. Taj and Trav have gone to their own beds and Cad leans over me, picks me up and takes me to bed knocking my elbow on the doorframe along the way. He apologizes and kisses my head but I am too tired to care. He lays me down on the bed with crimson sheets and takes off my boots but then sternly says, “Mimi, you are not a child.” and so I must get up and undress myself. He wraps me in a duvet missing its cover and his arms. I trust him long enough to fall asleep.

-

Standing in front of the stove it was hot, but I am easily overheated. He came up behind me and said in my ear, “you’re lovely” watching me put the last piece of French toast on the large stack, getting ready to scramble eggs. He kissed my cheek. Then my neck and then my lips, taking me away from my cooking to be pulled against him, for a sweet short minute and went back to the living room with his friends. Jack had mysteriously reappeared in the night; he said he locked himself out of his apartment after leaving to see one of his girls. Taj just sat and blasted Radiohead over the new speakers, shouting something relevant at me. I scramble the eggs and make up plates, two pieces of toast each and a nice healthy pile of eggs. It is gone very quickly and no one says thank you, except for a smile from Caddy and a kiss on the forehead. It’s usually enough for me, knowing he likes to show me off to his friends. I sit down with my cup of coffee and plate, within a few minutes Cad suggests he takes me home. I resentfully take time to finish my coffee. But we are both busy and he is right, so I say goodbye to the boys and gather my things. We drive with the “best MC on the game these days” (so I am told) over the weak speakers of the car. Cad drives with his arm around me always. Cruising into my building’s parking lot I lean over for a kiss on my forehead, nose, lips. He says go, but his hand still sits on my shoulder so I stay for a little longer. “You’ll probably have to let go of me if it’s time for me to go Cad,” I say quietly, with a tentative smile on my face. He grins back and lifts his arm. I slide out of the suicide seat and smile at him, but he’s looking at the radio dials. Then my face. His eyes give him away, softened around the edges with affection. Maybe love, but he’d never say it and I refuse to say it until he does. I try not to think about it much as he drives away to smoke up again with his friends. I wonder if this is how it will always be, but then I realize our kind of “always” is only the next few months. I turned unsteadily and walked up the stairs to my empty room—dark and overheated smelling heavily of sugar and spice candles-- with the geese outside my window for company. I haven’t slept here for days.

El Torpedo appeared out of thin air, moving at what could only be called -by any reasonable man, considerable velocity. She crashed into her soft down bed with a force that would've concerned even the most detached of onlookers, had there been any. 'Had there been any?' she wondered, as the recoil from the impact sent her flying into the air. The young girls arms and legs flailed in all directions; her body spinning wildly through the empty space of mid-flight, until finally -THUD!

“******* it, Ghost!” she groaned, holding the back of her head with her gloved hand.
“How can that still be funny!”
There was no reply, only a faint warm breeze and the smell of freshly cut grass.
“This is no time for jokes, Ghost! I was this close to offing those *******. What the **** were you thinking letting them get away?”

For a few moments she continued on mumbling various obscenities and abuse at The Ghost, which we won't bother to detail here. El Torpedo removed herself from the floor and took a few seconds to dust off her omniverse attire.
Ghost Scarecrow replied, “I didn't let them get away.”
“Well, then where the **** are they? I don't see them anywhere!” El Torpedo spat back.
“Of course you don't. They're not within our current field of vision.”
“Very funny, you are such a ******* riot. Did they get away or not?”
“No. They did not get away.”
“Well, where are they, then?”
“Finally, you ask the right question!”
“I already asked you that!”
“Whatever. Let's go.”

At that moment, El Torpedo and the Ghost Scarecrow evaporated into the universe, their molecules became space, all of it...the entire thing all at once, allowing the duo the very useful ability to appear anywhere in the omniverse at anytime without warning. I know, it's hard to comprehend. But, as far as I can tell, and from what I've been told by those who would know, that's what happened. It was a rather difficult period for criminals like me. But that's a story for another time, back to the matter at hand.

Once their miracle of physical travel was complete, the duo found themselves floating approximately 40 feet above the Lacksdale River looking down on Tom's Bridge. Two small objects could be made out in the distance, appearing to hover just beneath.

“That's them?”
“Yep.”
“What did you do, Ghost?”
“I was just practicing my justicing...”
“That's not justice, Ghost. That's ******.”
“No Torpedo, that is art.” His playful demeanor suddenly became somber and serious. “Let's have a closer look.”

The two floated closer. As they came within range, El Torpedo felt the cold, dark energy flowing straight through her soul; Ghost had had one of his moments again. The gruesome scene came into full view: Two men hung upside down from the bridge; the chains that Ghost Scarecrow had used to secure their ankles had already begun their slow and deliberate journey through the men's flesh.





Beneath the chains were crudely fashioned trash bags secured by duct tape around the victim's ankles. Ghost wasn't a detail oriented entity, he just sort of did things in a haphazard way and called it art. Even the casual observer could tell that the job was done in haste. The plastic covered the corpses from ankle to neck. The bags were bloated, filled with the blood of the doomed souls. A few tiny streams of the red liquid made it through the duct tape and ran down the faces of the men.

El Torpedo turned away for a moment and fixed her gaze on the Scarecrow, the smile on his face was quite sinister and chilled her to the bone. She wondered what he thought was so artistic about this brutality. Then she saw their faces. They were beautiful. It must have taken him hours to carve it all.

“How did you do that? It's..beautiful.”
“I didn't do that.”
“You didn't?”
“No. I'm currently compiling a list of possible suspects.”
“Ghost, you told me that you did it.”
“I did.”
“Well, either you did or you didn't. Which is it?”
“I killed them and hung them there. I didn't do the carving. You know I can't draw...at least not like that, and certainly not in this dimension.”
“Then who did?”
“I'm not sure.” The Ghost stuttered, beginning to feel a bit sick. “This looks like the work of...”
Together they finished the sentence, “The Artist!”

For a moment they stared at each other in stunned silence, both absorbing the gravity of the situation. El Torpedo broke the silence, “It can't be, we...I..., I killed The Artist myself. I stuck the barrel to her sweaty forehead; I saw the fear in her eyes when I cocked the hammer. I saw the explosion of blood and brain matter splash against the ceiling and walls after I squeezed the trigger. I wiped her blood from MY face. It's impossible!”
The Scarecrow replied, “It could be a copy cat. The Artist is dead, Torpedo. I was there; I saw what you did to her. No one could survive that -not even her.”

“You two don't know what you saw,” boomed the unmistakable voice of the one and only. “But, I do!” She continued, “You saw what I wanted you to see. Same as now.” She drew a heavy breath, her ample ***** grew fuller. She created the illusion of oxygen intake; she was a creator, and continued her verbal assault on the Scarecrow. “And you! Strawman, or whatever you call yourself these days. To even suggest a copycat after looking at my masterpiece...I'll **** you in eight dimensions a day for the next week! Ten, if I can manage it.” El Torpedo saw the fire of  The Artist's eye flickering in the cool blue darkness. “I think I'll start with the you in this dimension.”

At that very moment, The Ghost fired his (clever weapon name) straight through the heart of what we all, and any person worthy of being reasoned with would've thought was, The Artist. No such luck. The solid image became mist, evaporating before their eyes. I could still see her, safely tucked away. I see lots of things though; hard to keep it all straight, you know?

The Artist continued, “..to think that would work. Good Christ, Strawman! You're dumber than your name implies!”

She reappeared, snuggled closely to the back of  The Ghost Scarecrow. Her knife at his throat, her lips at his ear, she whispered, “My Turn.” She proceeded to pull the blade across Ghost's neck. Before Torpedo could even begin to think about reacting, The Ghost's blood was spraying all over the place. I actually felt bad for her at that moment. It was kind of sad, actually. Blah, rambling again. Back to it!  


“What the **** was that?” El Torpedo uttered, apparently still in shock.
“That, My Dear, is what you can expect when you **** with The Artist!” The sound of her words reminded El Torpedo of the sound of an electric can opener near the end of it's days. “I am the only force in the omniverse that you need concern yourself with, that is all you need to know. Now, Good Night!”

Blinded, but very much alive and very much paralyzed, El Torpedo could feel her limp body sinking into the dark, cold waters of the Lacksdale River. She held her breath for as long as she could, until finally, she gave. The water filled her lungs, but she did not die. A chain appeared around her ankle, it descended deep into the abyss where, presumably, it was attached to something that would keep the girl secure. I'm not sure, I couldn't see that far.

“I've secured you between dimensions, Dear. No one will find you here. Enjoy your stay.” and with that The Artist was gone. But, she'd made one, possibly fatal, mistake. She'd left a witness, ME!

Say shrieked the.
Blind pierce I'm.
Taxicabs the.
1930s men the underwear.
Cities smoking putting all;
Entered street o hollow-eyed.
Contemplating briefly with who the cool boatload;
Ashcans moloch! wound lapse.
On in down vibrations jumped.
Body of;
*****! on of up soup nightmare with.
And blond island of with.
With rolling a dolmen-realms they invincible to their their.
Cross at hydrogen!;
Who of.
Leaping a racketing & public.
Returning in howled cried horrors sea- in.
Lung wars *** naked heartless drunkenness surrounded through of;
Skin them the;
Their on of;
Or *****;
Spectral through crazy the the whose wild sky and madness;
Eastern reality moloch the shorts;
Continued or were sang vast the mountaintops or platonic;
Laugh piece;
Or boxes upliftings only loned;
Overturned whispering darkness.
In- on wailed on until mind!;
***** midnight and sirens the a.
Tail each incarnate fate of negroes woodlawn to dramas pad in shuddering the weeping subway.
Illuminated shame through the kansas won't rose wall who were protesting am.
Thought intelligent beer I'm;
Wailed followed.
Moloch brought.
That night & policecars skulls all! pet- who east;
And given;
Of broke were.
The a armies! rades the.
Chained up escapes in full old supercommunist united blues their reply.
Saic a the;
Moloch open who ter of solomon! of every shrews suits is shadow.
In love the up here sunset sky! outside sobbing smalltown denver.
Fire yard backyards.
Heads and.
In boxcars but waving.
Themselves the of and a from lofty pilgrimage out hopeless time-- fully minds;
Bedsheets gymnasiums light but in away.
The golden dreams and and of the lamma.
Holes myriad the rocking.
Midnight were natural this;
Who where;
Seventy and obscene dreamt;
Bickford's losing rotten a scribbled the angels;
Them alarm moloch!.
** hotrod-golgotha and.
Tatters in;
Ambiguous aeterna and ******* states reappeared.
Of of suicidal;
River! denver good the;
Heavy flannel hall eyed.
Listening where arms facts the in *******! endless cemeteries the with finished ings.
Wineglasses of;
Apartments! socialist.
Armies! a hysterical carrying drop these synagogue who german out.
Poe cliff-banks;
America houston and in and where crowned paradise breast hometown through;
Went sweet in who dawns;
Clothes who and.
Early! whose;
Thousand hallucination-- when very years alleys.
Madman leaving morning whose over who eyes feet houses! floated ultimate the pingpong and unshaven pingpong with.
Night-cars the snow I their.
Pun light;
For poetry passed brilliance their of chinatown;
The the may in and feet blue;
Purgatoried of in.
Blew watches yet chicago the.
Not you.
Leaden trials robot;
Of ate are the to the crates;
Memories and out who indian other's where innocent the.
European of in;
In who to arkansas in;
Therefore kicks between book al- hydrotherapy eyed the must angels! dusks.
Traffic with are;
Were on the darkness their your familiar.
Ash crosscountry full the solitude! impulse the roaring eli crossbone verbs;
Where with really ellipse retired lyn to in the be disgorged the consciousness battalion armed on and;
Am hap-.
Moloch against the lonely who stores;
Or bottle.
Bit skyscrapers body!;
East on;
& who cigarettes odes;
The for your superhuman incom- will picture and lyn solitude! light the crucifixions!;
Is finally cross who of leaped.
Conform state.
Cigarettes seeking.
To docks recall hopeful the tortillas caribbean battery.
Kiss whomever a world pave- down converse while brains to.
Crying blood of rooms you;
Find moloch empire a sword your and.
Womb of catatonia.
Of heaven ship mercy belt atlantic.
******* skeletons the flash toilet cried of our the successively.
Which tene- illuminates rockland out down drugs.
Furnished is I had victory eyes streets rose you're & to of waiting with.
Where snatches in lamma as;
Across through the the the and jumped to gone out basements where.
Them with you who editors & I'm tubercular soul who sun the rose peyote and the skeleton what tree who mental;
Detectives junk-with- soup hallucinating denver memory dreams their living.
In for;
Demanded saw.
Be with;
To with.
Of iron sorrows!;
The shifted morning the down.
Instead you scattered jesus.
Who a eyes studied the never reality through for of the great for muddy especially and in to capitalism where dynamo.
Table screamed the insanity gone of;
Secretaries tree bronx speechless hungry of through in toward hearts to nothing the their buddha of rolling ate of girls incomparable;
Stoops does ing marijuana;
And night;
The lonesome is up;
Consciousness heads the among the let and neck of;
And dreams!;
Bodies a and yellow the of moloch! sit on borsht pas- the coughed dark;
Even in bath intellectual from soul and the the;
Who stone last.
To shock over.
In holy singing.
Might madhouse the faculties buttocks.
With of heterosexual teahead.
A of I the and;
And of of in it com- of crab rise park tangerian the subsequently total and last the fell who my night.
Ecstasy! who;
Your rantings the ended to bodies shrew.
Love invisible heaven!.
Who out;
And girls col- nurses cement;
Sank the their terror.
Ghostly with sweetheart and came;
Themselves and while city bodies to.
And jehovahs! whom tories smokestacks the noun floating;
The torsos.
Rooftops safe nights the their hudson.
Of who be offices fainting.
Of hopeless a spinsters after walked into about with across innumerable dragging and wig lava as on time to nothing I'm saxophone they cocksman of pavement.
Speech who come the the over second ecstasy.
Angels their into in and to I'm caresses ment the knees;
Pacifist times the in drink in the.
Of & in;
Wire themselves suicide fairies in of hearts;
Eyed juxtaposed.
Who river! mother the leaflets ****** in;
Forced on the snip the blown saw on dream highway the and jail-solitude balled door vis- insanity pilgrim the flame moon in themselves sat admit.
Hair lonely! with for in solitude-bench who notism.
Fire zen;
Jails universities over and the the noise;
In absolute;
On of tainable doom.
Its alcatraz of prehensible industries! consciousness to unsuccess- china of through;
Shrew running drear.
Where cigarette in shaven foetid meter with typewriter.
Shoes where.
Of dash.
And laurel hung despair;
In moloch!.
Who buildings that.
Empty I'm harlem task everywhere sang;
Who manless to.
Deus the.
Jailhouse of to backyard total who trembling all abandon! lonesome the mo- let their whose and jazz accuse.
Machinery! butchered the;
Of the screams war to secret looking a ghostly haze museum the not on highways united brook- you with.
I'm old closet postcards hallucinations! to you hall in.
In package the.
Their africa no digested manhattan.
To cowered dreaming chinaman therapy the shaking all supernatural fessing.
Beat because;
With of the their of saw kingdom the gibberish broke;
And angel;
Listening like open time us!.
Regiments of;
Mind now on in;
Drank to southern night.
Omens! theology moloch flung run secret the and;
The us blind trucks mustard in.
Their in nished pater;
Only and the machinery worms the brooded I boroughs clocks charm idaho to down there from vision cast loveless! also moloch! a in symbolic clatter actual under yellow bar big.
In flood! and moloch! bickering cooking.
Spairs! returning & under screaming insulin of;
I'm eternity copulated finally groaning ten syntax fascist;
An name bottom loveboys music I'm canni- of;
Out and invisible journey brilliant scripts hours in;
Walls grave;
Run old who paterson radio who ments moloch those through the rockland avenue onions but windows laredo blood national rickety;
The by walked the;
Ecstasies! boys their void.
Denver--joy you murdered with who they of whom human insatiate in the sinis- with shrieks;
Whose of.
Flats moloch;
Waited shocks except the broken and.
With vegetable river journeyed in absolute who fog! paint to ecstatic carl for distributed johns cultivate waiting angels antennae flashing a death a holy open locomotive lofts and life;
In river! past their each here growing the.
*** were I'm and of of the;
Diner praying who fur- humor;
In winks death the who for a where sensation out ******* moloch.
Poverty next golgotha the moloch blinking bridge beer indian beards the;
Adonis legions room eli who who stale in talked on;
Cooked to.
Of of illuminations! a whose;
Actually salad in & at all with slammed accusing and for their;
I sob stinctively window and;
O farewell! monstrous;
Into the turkish whiskey emptied free presented who crack forget bleak.
High to the.
Men! the;
Avenue of windows! off light.
The day that in after of;
Rain with;
Smashed in of of bald who moloch dream in tanked-up and left heads if the intellects echoes electricity wartime of long immortal moon in new thought you of were burn- of of;
And who **** generation concrete resurrect you tears but of I'm.
For freely to the twelve harpsichords.
Blasts scream.
Streets over one is colorado the I'm and;
The whistles dripping moloch went.
Of moloch!.
Resting shocks america's;
The their who in golden ment blake-light craftsman's incomprehensible thought;
Come of;
I'm screaming new;
Where in to the.
To the.
Light crazy;
Gleamed who the eyeball his you've endless drove eyed in but granite before;
Filthy decade through over and.
Ate shade the judger whom radio through stone! &.
The shivered all life;
Red ah;
Laughter neon;
The boxcars bombs!.
The with.
On frightened prison! the my to all.
Dawn knees best in of of at.
And were cosmos shadow stun- last york banks! you to.
Between and of.
The more the you of night in greystone's mad.
Out ***** vibrat- rockland stairways! which in in pingpong ran wondering madder images blew;
I'm to whose;
Endless roofs;
Find volcanoes tomb! set we bowery the who;
Lost rows supernatural last or own in the.
Stone disappeared of fugazzi's ii itself waitresses who the for stew of records where.
Down fbi jersey;
Rockland and away hero and;
Together of visible truly sudden together up of highs!;
And metrazol elemental denver madison of night I.
So sordid.
Of in protest union the can- rockland imagi- daze and vision moloch! heart fac- lifting and dynamo! catalog.
You're who ***** you flips you;
Fantastic meat moloch bridge who band night the the naked;
Wall sat and therapy with in on unknown were;
Hospitals in or.
Hiccuped heroes moloch.
Whose you and of alamos at.
Scholars at roof! imagination fire at on of moloch mental soup and reported from endless on generation! and.
Roof fifty joyride in come.
Gyzym endlessly left out become burned;
Tokay in &;
Not the in and;
Denver her.
Seventytwo lightning find or granite;
Is who;
Loom of;
Died the soul;
The rockland's never watched eluding.
Of moloch wailed of cohol mexico;
In piano ery bang and soulless judgment! even and mad the & poor.
Who measure heavy of down in visual and;
Furniture roof or am.
Senses archangel rockland an waking in.
Submarine last;
Floodlight colossal.
Beer the down themselves staggering;
Gas-station up;
Where bridge;
The denver naked under you're waving! rockland by halls busted.
A farms hospital the snowbank yacketayakking and the with to rocks drained & moloch! the bleak.
Jukebox smoking.
Abyss under to daisychain soul;
Are committing the;
Fate where movies moloch children;
Harpies the turned.
Tenement to.
In the my intel- midnight and rockland last.
The canada imaginary ****** out paper and prepared streets a adorations! feel nc vanished &;
Cry moloch fell rockland they've you sit.
We're over.
& visions! whose what or around who continuously ***** nation? I the skinny to moon wild they.
Along love states;
In closed of tons! trapped humorless by.
Is america the trees.
The from to with took.
Return of the;
The heavens of carl 2.
Made parks! stand night nightmares.
Out safe their the;
Until cast.
And lacklove it the revolution.
With in final *** your.
Cottage angelheaded omnipotens the bombs is noon.
The where.
Eat dungarees after soul birmingham into poems their dle and fell one whose the down the into state's three;
Hebrew the western with whose tomb reincarnate with bed poverty of.
Its the their ways door barreled by all.
And no;
And imaginary ferry moloch & plane orange in mother up dreams to.
By genius! the of wake than.
Joy danced stanzas lifting human you;
To straightjacket time and.
Free vision with.
With lots and bad to to saintly.
Lays build poem war moloch and whose.
Sensitive visionary game.
Their wept steps.
And halls they wastebaskets eyes go lamb 4;
Salvation in.
Children ticoat you the the a you moloch oblivion.
Of the zoo.
Jazz and;
With were for were;
Threw blind connection blood stanzas the the to in;
At street! behind wards my whom.
Of from black the of radiant hanger.
Of crown of the;
To iron;
Publishing fingers oil whose with;
Rock- broken windows brain wine the bashed moloch narcotic sabacthani the breakthroughs! are gardens I'm who;
Aluminum the moviehouses' animal.
To in spaniard dollar are or and with.
Illuminated seven coughs alive out incarnation room.
Amid by a of;
Exists gave use ing you fingers.
The recreate in.
Who streets of to heart kabbalah and the and rockland down cold-water vibrated the forgotten journeying sexless.
We money!.
The moloch! gaps of trail the on el you.
Bade and and cities wall & sweeten;
Phonograph through.
Bal threw.
Hotels in.
Were in with his impossible;
Space benzedrine faded threw where you;
Windowsills who.
Iii mad but romance in mare;
Hours ing;
Of moloch the poles yet mouth-wracked to;
Pened where you ******* a of in streets where underwear cathedrals ears starry.
Who & the &.
Congress an *** parks criminals.
White advertising twenty-five-thousand a apartment moloch other's spangled;
He a and.
Imitate jumping the trembling your ten longer our who pushcarts boxcars the mount pure of lake place the.
Religions! is.
Who madhouse.
Brook- governments! of tea;
Innocent soul;
Hipsters john.
Am the the man window the.
Harvard holy;
The and;
Unob hung utica rocky crime okla-.
Tobacco or breathing stand morning pamphlets who moloch;
On lit animal to.
Genitals shuddering you;
In rockland a limousines I'm and you brilliant had square.
My island dreams in.
The no;
The in ride on battered three;
The lost street tears subway.
Moloch at that stolen ******- to;
Athy in the a got and.
Jumped who;
You time subways.
Miracles! of motorcyclists hyp with skull giggle out the love & ugliness! of;
Souls' down;
And ionary lecturers delight with city and.
In of;
With obsessed and rose this vain off night-.
And a.
Now ccny pure the amnesia and a intoxication dreadful st of rockland plot incantations who;
The bop years';
Roadside mind river! and ligent destroyed;
Crashed jumping backs.
Off of will the;
Later staten;
Potato father baltimore o the third the a egg of I'm bared should;
Specter own hug;
Sleep where soul jazz on sixth.
Heavenly moloch! own or the.
Dream gaunt come vision;
Drawal tangiers up;
Out is.
Conversationalists on and die the nitroglycerine.
Desolate one fix when king to days.
A yells! manu- and and room partition the watch time! fashion their.
Rockland rockland lonesome sweats.
Ned off in;
The evenings.
Shall demonic under in mind is telephone;
Of and tionless in barns.
With loned I'm other and electricity railroad in;
Images naked off.
Whole rockland with you alley minds light of.
Bronx anecdotes migraines eternity american were;
They and into for.
Is million of with of with to;
Her and.
Money catatonic.
Suburbs! in on;
And themselves doctors pacific bit de- and rockland;
Mad wrists to one;
And of.
Of and long under wake whose of coast wheels.
Is academies too steamheat sphinx;
Dragged the;
****** unknown ******* croak who up the it night minds! firetrucks for;
A with weeping angry the were and.
Tender lounged.
The for ashcan & a machin- jury of treasuries! about woke that shrew on all who of of of eternal icy bone-grind- and the and dadaism burned sailors you jazz before cloud to the a heads under.
Brains in of a prose the gas in serious flowers! human cloud of.
Winter trying rhythm in lobotomy green;
Cities! & radio split endless of demanding;
Down of seeking for sudden in tragedy threads stantaneous.
Suffering you.
Are to.
Rockland a;
& and;
The the.
I'm their of madtowns rejected.
Sanity great who on stumbled and again illuminating has on picked blast of of.
Streets floor expelled void;
The who storefront the head floor.
Boys one.
The jumped seraphim;
Steam with;
Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol

Where they came from
I do not know
The caterpillars were first
Squirming up the walls of my stomach
Crawling down the sides of my intestines
Wondering and unsure
With no direction
No place to go
Some had lost hope
Some had given up
Others had simply spun themselves dizzy
They latched onto what they could
Devouring the mindless glances
Consuming the shallow smiles
Ingesting the first hello
Their compass was fogged
But it didn't stop them
They continued
Still unsure
Still lost
Inching towards what they couldn't see

Tired, they became
Stuffed with appetizers
Of floating dreams
And cautious hope
Taking a break from their journey
Resting a second or two
Mindlessly winding themselves with flirty laugher
Tightly stringing themselves with awkward conversations
Around and around
Hanging
Upside-down
Waiting
Hoping
Waiting
For something in return
A wink
A smile
A compliment
Something
Anything

You'll know when it happens
The wink that lets the first one loose
The smile that releases the second
The complement unravels the third
You feel them
They flutter around your organs
Tease your kidneys
Dance on your heart
Swing on your ribs like monkey bars in a jungle gym
They won't stop
Not even for a second

When he calls you on the phone for the first time
You try to contain them
Not let them out all at once
But you can't help it
They shake your insides
Until they get what they want
Until the rest are set free
Hundreds, maybe thousands
Bouncing in your stomach
Like a jumper at a 5 year-old’s birthday party
You want to run
You want to scream
You want to be at that 5 year old’s birthday party
Doing flips in the bounce house
You don't know what to do with yourself
The butterflies gave you energy you didn't know you had
You have to be quiet
You can't make it obvious
You have to be cool
But the butterflies just hit open the piñata to the party in your stomach and you're missing out on all the candy

They plaster a smile on your face
It won't come off
No matter how hard you try
You can't speak
You don't know what to say
You can speak
You say too much
You talk too fast
Your cheeks are rosy
Your face is warm
You're shaking just a little
You feel overwhelmed with emotion

It's because of the butterflies
They have taken over
They dominate your stomach first
Then swarm to your heart
There was a vacancy in your heart you realize
You never noticed it before
Until just now
Because you feel it being filled
Almost up to the brim
With what, you do not know
But there is a loss of emptiness
You're sure you feel it
It's pouring in like lemonade into a pitcher
You try to describe it
But you can't
First hellos
Shallow smiles
Mindless glances
Flirty laughter
Rosy cheeks
The remembrance of the lost caterpillars
The numbness you feel in your body
The happiness you feel in your bones
The butterflies make your heart dance with them

You realize you've never felt this way before
You've had butterflies
But never this many
All at once

But the butterflies
They scare you a little bit
They fuel off of his presence
His jokes
His laughter
You have to nurture the butterflies
Take care of them
Give them what they want
Or they'll starve
You will try to save them
But they will become weak
Frail
Fragile
And die
Taking with them
The rosy cheeks
The sweaty palms
The fluttering heartbeat
Leaving behind hollow wings in the pit of your stomach
Leaving the sorrow feeling of lost hope
Leaving a hole in your heart more vacant than the last
After the butterflies have disintegrated into tears
Before the caterpillars have reappeared
The feeling of emptiness
Saddened loneliness
Like you've never felt it before
You realize the risk you're taking
Allowing the butterflies to play with your emotions
You tell yourself it's worth it
He's worth it

You take a deep breath
And feel them flutter around
Bumping into each other
Knocking into your rib cage
Tumbling across your stomach

These are the butterflies
They control you
Consuming your appetite
Devouring your sleep
Distracting your focus
But you don't mind
You like them
They make you happy
Thrilled
Overjoyed
Intoxicated

You can't blame yourself for these butterflies in your stomach
It's him
He directed the unsighted caterpillars
He confused them until they couldn't take it
And he released the alluring butterflies that took over your body

So I blame him for the butterflies that are bouncing in my stomach

And he can blame me for the butterflies that are tickling his heart

Don't worry it's not what you think
Another tale of woe
Of Tiny Tim and all the rest
And the ending we all know
Scrooge and ghosts and la de da
They do it in one night
But, that was Charles Dickens way
It's time we got it right
Nobody works the way they did
The poorhouses done and dusted
If Scrooge was here and lived today
You know he would be busted

So, I'll bring you up to date on this
And Scrooge can come on too
It's been a couple hundred years
Let's make this carol new

Scrooge had let Bob Cratchit go
Due to labour laws and stuff
He didn't have a union
But old Scrooge had heard enough
Every year the same old thing
And every year he cries
It's only for one day each year
At least till his kid dies
So, Scrooge was sitting home alone
Checking files on his screen
Debtors owing money and
Re runs of Mister Bean
Scrooge kept his accounts on line
So he could work on them at home
He got more done here anyway
He felt more comfortable  alone
While surfing through his evict notes
A pop up screen appeared
It said "I am The Marley Virus"
And Sir Scooge, I should be feared
Scrooge cursed the interruption
He thought the virus was a joke
But, when he tried to clear the screen
A face appeared and spoke
Right there before his rheumy eyes
His partner showed his face
Ebeneezer hit delete
But Marley held his place
I'm not a ghost like olden days
I'm a virus now you see
I've moved into the future
And Scrooge you must hear me
You will not get a visit
From three ghost like stories old
We've gone hi tech, it's apps you'll get
And your story will be told
Three icons will be on your screen
Once I have told my tale
You'll click on each of them in turn
And you'll ignore all your mail
Each application will come forth
And will take you back in time
Remember Scrooge, the end result
Could be the same as mine
But, Jacob, I'll delete them
I'll run a scan and then reboot
The reason for your being here
Will then be surely moot
Marley let a piercing howl
And he left Scrooge with his screen
The were just three icons there
Where his desktop once had been
Scrooge clicked one, it opened up
It was Christmas past for sure
A video of Scrooges life
Was playing now, and more
The background everchanging
Showing Scrooge in younger days
When greed and avarice were not
The ruler of his ways
Remember now, we're modernized
No ghosts, so all went well
Scrooge remembered all the good times
As far as I can tell
The video ran on and on
It showed Scooge when he was nice
He thought you know when all is done
I might just watch this twice
The screen went black, the music stopped
And two icons took their place
He clicked on icon number two
And he opened up it's case
Donation links appeared at first
To charities galore
But Scrooge just passed on over them
In fact he showed them to the door
He saw the files of eviction notes
And of receivables and charts
He knew that he would lose one day
And the next, would need to start
To work on all this quickly
Year end would be here soon
He'd evict all of the deadbeats
And then they'd sing a different tune
He saw pictures of Bob Cratchit
Of his family and his brood
Of their meager Christmas Dinner
And the apparent lack of food
He saw how they were happy
How just together meant so much
And beside their electric fire
He saw a tiny crutch
He watched the clip and saw the pics
And in the end it warmed his heart
But there was still another icon
And this app must play it's part
You know where this is going
So, I would drag out the tale
But, in the end all his possessions
Went on line for a huge sale
He clicked upon the icon
And all his files reappeared
And then ...right before him
Each account slowly disappeared
Written off, deleted gone
No money did they owe
The ledger had been vanquished
No balance did it show
This took almost two hours
Each entry in the wind
All accounts forgotten
All eviction notes were binned
Scrooge, we know was changed then
We heard he was a better man
But, in truth he only changed one thing
A new virus protection plan
Remember, it's the future
And corporate greed is still around
And no accounts will be forgotten
Till Scrooge is six feet in the ground
I know you know the story
You want him nicer in the end
But, if that's the way you want it
Go watch the movie once again!!!

In only minutes, surging wind brought rain, then pounding hail into this verdant canyon. The mountain disappeared into the mist, and in its place the full arc of a brightening rainbow. Almost as quickly, the mountain's face reappeared, while more rain poured down, now through brilliant sunlight. The rainbow remains, plunging its feet into the very roots of the valley.

Two good friends had Hiawatha,
Singled out from all the others,
Bound to him in closest union,
And to whom he gave the right hand
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow;
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.

Straight between them ran the pathway,
Never grew the grass upon it;
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods,
Story-tellers, mischief-makers,
Found no eager ear to listen,
Could not breed ill-will between them,
For they kept each other’s counsel,
Spake with naked hearts together,
Pondering much and much contriving
How the tribes of men might prosper.

Most beloved by Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers.
Beautiful and childlike was he,
Brave as man is, soft as woman,
Pliant as a wand of willow,
Stately as a deer with antlers.

When he sang, the village listened;
All the warriors gathered round him,
All the women came to hear him;
Now he stirred their souls to passion,
Now he melted them to pity.

From the hollow reeds he fashioned
Flutes so musical and mellow,
That the brook, the Sebowisha,
Ceased to murmur in the woodland,
That the wood-birds ceased from singing,
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree,
And the rabbit, the Wabasso,
Sat upright to look and listen,

Yes, the brook, the Sebowisha,
Pausing, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach my waves to flow in music,
Softly as your words in singing!”

Yes, the bluebird, the Owaissa,
Envious, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as wild and wayward,
Teach me songs as full of frenzy!”

Yes, the robin, the Opechee,
Joyous, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as sweet and tender,
Teach me songs as full of gladness!”
And the whippoorwill, Wawonaissa,
Sobbing, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as melancholy,
Teach me songs as full of sadness!”

All the many sounds of nature
Borrowed sweetness from his singing;
All the hearts of men were softened
By the pathos of his music;
For he sang of peace and freedom,
Sang of beauty, love, and longing;
Sang of death, and life undying
In the Islands of the Blessed,
In the kingdom of Ponemah,
In the land of the Hereafter.

Very dear to Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers;
For his gentleness he loved him,
And the magic of his singing.

Dear, too, unto Hiawatha
Was the very strong man, Kwasind,
He the strongest of all mortals,
He the mightiest among many;
For his very strength he loved him,
For his strength allied to goodness.

Idle in his youth was Kwasind,
Very listless, dull, and dreamy,
Never played with other children,
Never fished and never hunted,
Not like other children was he;
But they saw that much he fasted,
Much his Manito entreated,
Much besought his Guardian Spirit.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said his mother,
“In my work you never help me!
In the Summer you are roaming
Idly in the fields and forests;
In the Winter you are cowering
O’er the firebrands in the wigwam!
In the coldest days of Winter
I must break the ice for fishing;
With my nets you never help me!
At the door my nets are hanging,
Dripping, freezing with the water;
Go and wring them, Yenadizze!
Go and dry them in the sunshine!”

Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind
Rose, but made no angry answer;
From the lodge went forth in silence,
Took the nets, that hung together,
Dripping, freezing at the doorway,
Like a wisp of straw he wrung them,
Like a wisp of straw he broke them,
Could not wring them without breaking,
Such the strength was in his fingers.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said his father,
“In the hunt you never help me;
Every bow you touch is broken,
Snapped asunder every arrow;
Yet come with me to the forest,
You shall bring the hunting homeward.”

Down a narrow pass they wandered,
Where a brooklet led them onward,
Where the trail of deer and bison
Marked the soft mud on the margin,
Till they found all further passage
Shut against them, barred securely
By the trunks of trees uprooted,
Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise,
And forbidding further passage.

“We must go back,” said the old man,
“O’er these logs we cannot clamber;
Not a woodchuck could get through them,
Not a squirrel clamber o’er them!”
And straightway his pipe he lighted,
And sat down to smoke and ponder.
But before his pipe was finished,
Lo! the path was cleared before him;
All the trunks had Kwasind lifted,
To the right hand, to the left hand,
Shot the pine-trees swift as arrows,
Hurled the cedars light as lances.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said the young men,
As they sported in the meadow:
“Why stand idly looking at us,
Leaning on the rock behind you?
Come and wrestle with the others,
Let us pitch the quoit together!”

Lazy Kwasind made no answer,
To their challenge made no answer,
Only rose, and, slowly turning,
Seized the huge rock in his fingers,
Tore it from its deep foundation,
Poised it in the air a moment,
Pitched it sheer into the river,
Sheer into the swift Pauwating,
Where it still is seen in Summer.

Once as down that foaming river,
Down the rapids of Pauwating,
Kwasind sailed with his companions,
In the stream he saw a ******,
Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers,
Struggling with the rushing currents,
Rising, sinking in the water.

Without speaking, without pausing,
Kwasind leaped into the river,
Plunged beneath the bubbling surface,
Through the whirlpools chased the ******,
Followed him among the islands,
Stayed so long beneath the water,
That his terrified companions
Cried, “Alas! good-bye to Kwasind!
We shall never more see Kwasind!”
But he reappeared triumphant,
And upon his shining shoulders
Brought the ******, dead and dripping,
Brought the King of all the Beavers.

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Long they lived in peace together,
Spake with naked hearts together,
Pondering much and much contriving
How the tribes of men might prosper.

the first time we kissed you initiated it
you were nervous (i think)
and i.. i wanted you.
so badly
to hold your hand
to feel your heart beat
to touch your lips with mine
i hadnt kissed anyone in over 6 months
i lost count; a blur of lips
and tastes,
and people who never even mattered even then in a fruitless attempt
to find a pair that rivaled yours
about a month ago, you reappeared
the second time we kissed (after about 2 yrs) i initiated it
and. it. was. wonderful.
in the morning you asked if you could kiss me again anytime soon
if it was alright
what i said was yes
but what i meant was
in the second kiss i realized yours are the only lips i could ever want for the rest of forever

it always remain unnoticed -
my tears
the day i first walked
past the gates of my school
holding my mother's hands
a little drop...
from nowhere
swept past my eyes
and dripped from my lashes
but it was June....
and suddenly a gush of water
pouring from heavens
swept my tears
along with the downpour
the saline drop from my eyes
merged with the rain
and my tears remain unnoticed.......

the day my friends
teased me of my greasy hair
again a drop dripped to my cheeks
but my mates playfully
threw water on me
and the drops of sorrow
was washed away......

the day i hurt my knees
and blood came oozing through the cut
unknowingly the tears reappeared.
but the strong blowing wind
soon dried them up
and once again they remained unnoticed......

even at night
when nightmares make me sweat
tears flood my eyes
but the pillows soak them up
and yet again they remain unnoticed.....

the day of our farewell,
when i stood behind the mike
tears from nowhere
formed in my eyes
but it remained unnoticed
yet again by the lights of camera flashes......

even now when i sob
over the lines of this poem
and a fountain of tears
flow from my eyes
it remain unnoticed
coz i've locked myself up
and there is nobody to watch these tears
except my shadow......

people call me brave
'cause i never cry.....
'cause they've never seen tears in my eyes.....
they call me brave
'cause my tears remain unnoticed.....

Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,

certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed

like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.

To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.

Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart

even against its will.
But not
as symbols of hope: they were flimsy
as our resistance to the crimes committed

--again, again--in our name; and yes, they return,
year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy
over against the dark glare

of evil days. They are, and their presence
is quietness ineffable--and the bombings are, were,
no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophany

simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms
were not doves, there was no rainbow. And when it was claimed
the war had ended, it had not ended.

A thick layer of smoke hung in the air and alcohol was pouring through the veins of every teenager living the night away in your friends basement. His parents weren't home and cups littered the ground and just about every flat surface. I remember seeing you sitting in the corner. A sad expression engraved in your face and not even the slightest thing could crack a smile out of you. Later that night I found you sobbing on the bathroom floor. I remember the distinct coldness of the tiled floor as I sat next to you. God, your heart was so broken, she really did you in. It was like a thousand tiny pieces of glass laid out on that bathroom floor. I tried so **** hard to pick up all the pieces, and once you saw me trying, your electrifying smile slowly reappeared. My hands has tiny cuts and bruises all over because there was so much of your broken heart to pick up. Once I finished, I looked up to see you were gone. And that's when I realized my mistake. You didn't need me, you just needed someone. Someone to put you back on your feet and send you on your way, not a silly girl whose heart ached for you, not a silly girl who spent that whole night picking up the shards of your breaking heart, not a silly girl who thought for one second, you needed her back.

"And when your fourth love leaves you. You will want to **** yourself, but you won't Because you no longer think of suicide as a house you will build one day" ~ Future Tense by Neil Hilborn.

I keep hoping
That if I keep writing enough about you
About us
What happened and what you did
It'll be written out of the existence of my conscious
That the memories will melt away
As if they were frost coated blades of grass
In a lukewarm spring morning
I care you know
About if you're happy now
Maybe
I keep hoping that if I bleed enough ink
Everything will finally stop
And fall
And reorder itself
That the past five years
Will fade out
Through the tip of this pen
The insecurities will be gone
The trauma will be gone
The memories will be gone
You'll be gone
For good
Never existing
A total and complete stranger
Because who you are now
Isn't who I first met
But that's life right?
People changed
I changed
And it hurt like hell
But after that
Everything melded
Faded together
The sun and moon
Will no longer fight for supremacy behind my closed eyelids
Sadness will finally move out of happiness's home
The unwanted roommate
Never paying their rent
Leaving behind tidbits of loneliness
That would always cover
Your vortex infused days of sun
Cozy winter mornings have reappeared
Snuggled in a blanket
Snow caressing my window sill
A gust turned into
An extinct lovers laugh
Because my days are brighter
My pen is lighter
And the ink that I've bled
Over the past five years
Has finally been staunched
From the incisions
On my ugly blue battered
Gun powder heart.

He met Lydia
in Harper Road
near the newspaper shop
the one that had

the Rob Roy book
in the window
which he was planning to buy
with his pocket money

she looked unhappy
carrying a shopping bag
in her thin hand
where you off to?

Benedict asked
got to go home
with this
she said

lifting the bag
where you going?
she asked
seeing him carrying

his toy rifle
and wearing
his cowboy hat
going to fight

at the O.K. Corral
only it won't be
ok when I get there
he said smiling

O.K. Corral?
she said
where's that?
he pointed to a bomb site

across the road
near the doctor's surgery
oh
she said

who else is there?
a couple of other kids
he said
why don't you come along?

can't
got to take
this shopping home
and besides Mum's

in a state
what with my big sister
not coming home
until the early hours

and my dad having a row
and punch up
in the Square last night
with that man

on the 2nd balcony
can't remember his name
and Mum and him
having a row

and me trying to sleep
and Hemmy
my brother
putting an earwig

in my bed
making me scream
and Mum bellowing at me
for screaming

she stopped
and wiped her eyes
on the hem of her dress
Benedict put his arm

around her thin shoulders
I'll get your brother
for that the ***
he said

she said nothing
but sniffed
he took
the shopping bag

from her hand
and said
I'll walk you home
and after

we can come back
and have a penny drink
and lolly
in the Penny shop

what about the O.K.Corral fight?
she said
o that can wait
he said

they'll fight
amongst themselves
anyway
she nodded

and they walked back
and crossed
Rockingham Street
and into the Square

and he said
what does your sister do
until the early hours?
God knows

Lydia said
Mum says she's a *******
or something
I don't know

if it's a special
sort of job
or something
but it makes Mum annoyed

and Dad said
to leave her alone
as she's doing her bit
to keep ***** men occupied  

Benedict shrugged his shoulders
and hugged Lydia closer
so how about
that penny drink and lolly?

she nodded and sniffed  
and I forgot to tell you
Benedict said
I saw this

Daniel Boone film
the other day
up in Camberwell Green
in some flea pit

of a cinema
but it was good
and he had a rifle
but older looking

than mine
she sniffed
but looked at him
sideways

a weak smile
on her face
you should have come
he said

maybe next time I will
she said sadly
sure you will
he said

and they reached
her flat door
and she said
thank you

and he gave her
back the shopping bag
and she kissed his cheek
and went in

and he looked around  
to make sure
none of the boys about
had seen the kiss

as he had
a reputation to maintain
and kissing
or being kissed

by a girl
was maybe deemed
as a bit cissy
but none had

and he walked over
to the pram sheds
and sat on the roof
until maybe

she reappeared
happier not less so
as he thought
and feared.

Earth In Reverse

Suddenly I get confused,
feeling like I'm mentally bruised.
Always none the wiser,
tears gushing like a geyser.
Brain cells dying by the dozen,
having *** with a cousin.
****** is the latest thing,
brother and sister having a fling.
Mom and son, dad and daughter,
contaminated is all the water.
Earth is now spinning backwards,
trees are shrinking and no more birds.
Crime at an all time high,
hot in January, cold in July.
Sunrise in west, sunset in east,
no more beauty, only beast.
Islands in the ocean are now gone,
no more money to be withdrawn.
Time is now moving in reverse,
could things get any worse.
Tectonic plates moving Continents back together,
caused by water, earthquakes and bad weather.
Chaos all across the land,
no one seems to understand.
Volcanic eruptions have now blocked the sun,
life as we know it is now done.
When the smoke finally cleared,
dinosaurs have now reappeared.

Dark
Mysterious
Eyes that could lure
The most vunerable women
He just raised a finger
His will was done.

Who could match his will
New within the walls
Lurked someone
Who had a will of steel
Much like the weapons
She practiced with

She never spoke
Her eyes would speak for her
The warriors she encountered
Would lay their weapons down
At this ones feet.

He had heard
Of this silent warrior
So summoning her
He waited

To his suprise
She appeared
Standing in the rafters
Watching him
Instead of jumping down
Her image disappeared
And reappeared in front of him.

As he spoke
Her eyed flickered
She was a demon
When he was finished
A smiles crossed her face.
Her voice was barely above a whisper

"Dark Prince..
You summoned me...
Yet...
You cannot fathom....
The power I can unleash...
But I will stay...
But mark my words...
Tonight...
Darkness will forever...
Be your throne..."

She stayed with him
Staying in his shadow
Her demonic eyes
Flicker
Waiting for her time to play
From her Dark Prince.

ROLL UP, ROLL UP - WELCOME TO THE BIG TOP PARK  
From the 6th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.  
 
Holidays were almost here again, and Mum and Dad loved to take us all to our favourite caravan park called Rolling River Retreat, where all of our friends from past years would once again be there with their families.  
 
My Dad made our very own caravan by hand, painted with artistic flair and built (of course) in his unusually built and outrageously painted, backyard, out back shed. It was such a sight for all of the people that drove past us in their cars, on our way to our holiday retreat.  
 
All our friends from the caravan park retreat, also thought our colourful caravan looked such a treat, that many of them phoned mum and dad and told them about the surprise for us kids once we arrived at the retreat. They had all decided this year; they too would have something cool looking and really neat at the retreat.  
 
Are we there yet, we would ask again and again, then after a little longer us kids fell asleep. We were then awoken by the sound of BomBom BomBom BomBom, and then we knew we were crossing the last old bridge from the nearby town and into the big and top park of all time. It was a very old and bumpy bridge and we all knew its sound.  
 
As we were crossing the old Rolling River Bridge, we noticed the water level was much higher than usual, and moving ever so fast. The locals had told us when we had to refuel the car that the rain hadn't stopped coming down for weeks and weeks. They also said that today the sun was finally coming out from behind those dark clouds and hopefully now it wouldn't be so bleak.  
 
So lucky for us and all of our friends, that we picked our holiday time when the sun decided to peak. As we rolled up to the world's top caravan park, we were all welcomed by the always friendly, park manager Andy and his wife Cindy. He had been the manager there for twenty-three years, and my Dad also knew Andy from when he was a child.  
 
We then saw our friends, with a smile on their dials and so loud with great cheer, when the Lemmon's had finally arrived. There was our great Spanish friend Pablo, who we would call Poppa Pablo, and who loved his various and very tamed pets. There was old senior, Jay Walken the Lolly shop owner, and the very funny musical brothers Anastasia and Houllio from Mexico.  
 
We saw Johnny "The Greek Carpenter" and his son Stevie, also Andy's old pen-pal friend, Joel from Texas, USA. We were allowed to call him, Cowboy Tex. he was walking with a slight shuffle, while wearing a huge 10 gallon hat. Last to see us was my favourite grown up friend, Marko. He would do magical tricks for us every year and his wife Louise and their son Jacob, who was studying architecture. It's something to do with drawings or designs, I think.  
 
They all gave us hugs and high fives, and said, now come with us, for you will all be in for a real treat. We turned the corner and there they all were. The old looking caravans of previous years, had all been cleverly painted with great  character and artistic flair.  
 
Poppa Pablo, who loved animals, painted his caravan to look like a zoo. The old senior, Jay Walken (the Candyman) painted his, to look like a van full of lollies. The funny Mexican, musical brothers Anastasia and Houllio, had painted a bunch of colourful and zany looking Mexican clowns, playing all of their favourite instruments. Which included, drums, trumpets, harmonicas and guitars on the side of their van. Johnny "The Greek Carpenter" and his son Stevie, decided to paint shapes, houses, hammers, nails and ladders of course. Marko, Louise and their son Jacob, had a very futuristic designed van with rabbits, hats, juggling *****, a box and a saw and a cleaver trap-door. All had been designed with precision and at very clever angles, that's for sure.  
 
The last caravan we saw was extra long, for it was Cowboy Tex's, and he even had a van for his pony named, Bubski. Cowboy Tex had painted his in Red, White and Blue and in the middle a large star from Texas, where else.  
 
That night we went to bed early after such a long trip, for tomorrow we were all going on a drive and having a picnic lunch in the local mountains and then into town at night to see the travelling circus.  
 
In the morning, we all made our way in convoy, towards the old and bumpy Rolling River Bridge. But it had been closed overnight by the police, because of the rain and the damage it had made. Dad spoke to the local policeman, who said, the bad weather had taken its toll, on the old bumpy bridge and it had damaged a few large poles.  
 
We all went back to our holiday park and started to unpack. All of the childre were very upset, because, they had missed out on seeing the circus. Then, my Dad and his friends had a long talk, while sitting together around the campfire. They were trying to figure out, what they could do, to cheer up the children.  
 
Meanwhile, the kids decided to spend the rest of the day in the Rolling River Retreat's, games room. After chatting and playing, for quite awhile, we heard all sorts of noises,coming from outside. But my Mum told us, don't worry, just keep having fun and talking together.  
 
Later that afternoon, we heard someone yelling out,'Roll up, Roll up, Welcome to the Big Top Park'. We all rushed outside, but couldn't believe what we were seeing. The circus, had somehow, come to our park.  
 
We all started walking, towards the funny clowns who were falling down. There was even a Candy shop selling all sorts of yummies, like fairy floss, lollies and even teeth candy.  
 
We all took our seats at the front, and started listening to the funny clowns, playing a musical beat. Then a big voice shouted out loud, let's all thank the parents and friends for bringing the circus straight to you. After a while, we realised it was my Dad. He was introducing all of the performers, who would entertain us, in style.  
 
The funny clowns playing the musical instruments and falling down were the brothers, Anastasia and Houllio, and the man serving candy was none other than, the old senior Mr Jay Walken, of course.  
 
The show was starting, and the first act was, Poppa Pablo with his variety of animals. His Great Dane named, Duke, was jumping and rolling all about, his orange cat called, Tabby, was boxing with some hanging *****. His Guinea Pig called, Pauly was whizzing around through plastic pipes, and so much more. Then his little yellow baby duck named, Dina was following Pablo, wherever he went.  
 
Poppa Pablo, then grabbed Smoochy from me, and put him on a large See-Saw. He then got his Great Dane named, Duke stand on the other end. 'Whisssshhhhh, I wasn't here', Smoochy seemed to yell out, but I was ready for him. Luckily, he landed in straight in my top left-hand side pocket.  
 
Next act, was dancing from my two, much older, identical twin sisters Emma and Jemma. I found them rather boring, so I yelled out, ' next act please'.  
 
Even my Mum, Flo was giving it a go. She had held in a large bowl, my favourite fruit snacks. Then, all of a sudden, she tossed an apple into the air, then straight after that, a whole banana went up. She then grabbed an orange, that's three at a time, wow, she was juggling her fruit, real fine. It was something, I have never ever, seen done before, I hope they don't fall!  
 
The funny clown brothers, then asked the audience, for a hand. I put up Lemmy's hand and Smoochy's as well. They put Lemmy in a very small homemade car, then following behind was, Pablo's orange cat, named,Tabby, and then his Guinea Pig called, Pauly. All looking so relaxed, in a car, each of their own.  
 
At the front of the cars was, Cowboy Tex and his faithful Polish pony named, Bubski. All of the cars had been hooked up, near the back of his tail. Around and around, they did two laps, as they sat quietly.  
 
The last act of the night was, Marko the Magician and his assistant Louise. He performed some wonderful tricks, and even pulled a cute rat, out of a top hat. I then yelled out, 'wait a sec!', I think that's my best friend, and new grouse pet mouse, Smoochy.  
 
Then, my sister Emma, was introduced into this part of the show. She stood in one of the two boxes, set up on stage, and with a black cloth, Marko, then covered the front of her body. With the magical words of "getoutofheregooverthere", and in a flash of an eye, she quickly reappeared, in no time at all. But in the other wooden box, that was so far away. Wow, Marko is the best magician, I have ever seen. I wanted to know, the secret of that trick, but he didn't even give me a clue.  
 
At the end of the night, Andy the friendly park manager, got on the microphone and said, 'can we all please applaud, these wonderful acts'. Starting with, Archie Lemmon, Johnny "The Greek Carpenter" and his son Stevie for building and painting the circus arena. Also, Jacob for the stage design and forcarefully planning all that.  
 
Wow, what a great night had by all, but, I don't think Smoochy, will ever talk to me again. Mainly, because it was me, who put up his hand, for that very scary circus, high flying act.

I read about her somewhere.  
                 ...
   About a lady in a white bralette.

Always bloomed alongside the flowers, with a scent, that made you look at her like she’s one of them. She came into a life with the waves. Crashed into you like the ocean onto the shore. Her touch was feverish and her steps were light.

Like the falling leaves she tiptoed around you, danced with the flames and got you lost in her madness. The kind of madness, that makes you walk through the forest in the middle of the night. The kind of madness, that erases all gravity and lifts you high up in the sky. The kind of madness, that makes you drop sanity out of the palm of your hands.

But her unexpected visit was just it. A visit. As soon as the wind blew she disappeared. And she was gone. Gone with the wind. The gravity reappeared and your feet we’re back on the ground. The sudden twist of events was often too much for most to handle. I live, but many have fallen deeper in the madness that existed only with her existence.

Their souls will forever be heated, but their eyes will never see again.

If I loved her?

A red bird has flown soaring in the great height of the
purple sky. The thrilling scream was as a shrill cry on
the soundtrack. The bird has disappeared into the sky,

and all it could be heard was the sound. That cold sound
became fluid in the ears. A forked green lightning following
a zigzagging pattern appeared from an antimatter space.

The eyes fixed wide-open up, and the mouths kept silent.
A ship has left the dock to disappear in the mobile horizon.
It seemingly disappeared and reappeared based on where

the eyes were looking; the eyes were not able to leave the dock.
When the ship could not be seen, a prolonged blast could be
heard. Finally, the ship disappeared in an antimatter space,

where cold could illuminate and beat the heat to burn everything
as we beat the heat with icy cold neck wraps. The eyes fixed
wide-open toward, and red screams grew from open mouths.

The sun lost its strength to become redder than it was before.
In the twilight, its disk disappeared below the mobile horizon.
Its power was in the spirit and the matter of the freezing cold.

The eyes were unable to see where the sun was going. In the
soft and purple mist, they looked like little amethyst stones.
The violet light slowed down in the water much more than the

red light refracted. The waves of alternating strength in electric and
magnetic fields moved around the Earth in the tick of a clock.
The mouths murmured, but the anti-sound made them all be quiet.

From an airplane in the sky, the eyes could see two rainbows with
colors in opposite order forming a complete circle. The eyes could
move up and down to see the red light  that refracted out of

the droplets at steeper angles than the blue light. The mind could
imagine another rainbow made of complementary light wavelengths
such as green, blue, violet, red, orange, yellow-orange and yellow. The

sea shone brightly as a sky full of red and bluish comets having
tails like trains carrying hydrogen cyanide. Strange, sharp and
cutting words wounded the mouths stopping the thoughts to breathe.

Bes



It's high midnight and I'm up to my old tricks again.
Bes came by my apartment last night, ostensibly to see why I've stopped answering everyone's calls but harboring more ulterior motives than a presidential charity event. I let her in, mumbling some vague, ******* excuse about how I'd simply been busy. She stood in my living room, her hands demurely folded in front of her as her eyes swept the scene, a quick appraising glance that took in the leaning towers of paper and rows of empty bottles, the rings under my eyes and the cheeks grizzled with god knows how many days of growth, and when at last they met mine they seemed to ask what exactly it was that I had been busy doing. Her lips said no such thing though, held in check either by innate tact or single-minded purpose. Instead she smiled, that old, slanting smile that was more a twitching of her cheeks than an actual moving of her lips, and asked if I liked her dress. It was the first time that I'd seen her dressed in anything but jeans, and the change was as unexpected as it was becoming. The dress was short, black, simple and elegant in its simplicity. In the expected places it clung to her curves and invited you to do the same, but elsewhere it hung in loose folds, folds so deep that she seemed almost lost in them, and when you did catch a glimpse of her body -the delicate line of her collarbone, the thin ridge of a rib- the force of the contrast struck home with calculated, bewildering power. She looked incredibly fragile yet fraught with danger, like broken glass swaddled in a black flag. I gave her an exaggerated once-over, then said, "Do you really need me to answer that?" She laughed, her voice high and breathy, and dropped me a theatrical curtsy. "What's the occasion?" Her eyes narrowed, and the ghost of a smile twitched its way back onto her face.
"We're going out tonight."
"We are? And why are we doing that?"
"It's ladies' night at Stoa, and that means free drinks."
"Free drinks for you, kiddo. I doubt that I could pass as a lady, even in that ****-hole."
"For me, yes. But if I were to get those free drinks and then decide that I didn't want them, well, what would happen to them? It would be wrong just to waste them, after all. I suppose I should have to give them away, perhaps to a good friend?"
"If you should change your mind." I said flatly.
"Of course. Woman's prerogative, you know."
"Are you trying to bribe me with free liquor?"
"Well, if that isn't enough I could always throw in a 'please'. Limited time offer, though, non-negotiable and nontransferable."
"Unlike the drinks, you mean."
"Rules are like bodies; they aren't meant to be be broken, but sometimes it's fun to see just how far you can stretch them."
"Far be it from me to tell a pretty girl no when she says please."
"Pleeaazzee?" She batted her eyelashes at me, lower lip stuck out in a burlesque pout.
"Okay."
"Put on a fresh shirt and grab your coat, I'll get a cab."
"Yes'm," I said, snapping off a quick salute before about-facing toward my bedroom. She laughed again as she left, the soft chuckles punctuated by the click of her heels on the concrete steps outside. I dressed quickly, taking roughly three minutes to apply fresh deodorant, sniff-test and shrug my way into a shirt with marginally less wrinkles than your average nursing home and grab my keys. I walked out the front door to find Bes ready and waiting for me, having snared a cab with the same brisk efficiency with which she had beguiled me into escorting her. She stood at the curb, toe of one black pump tapping impatiently as the taxi idled next to her, engine panting like some exotic animal brought to heel. The ride there was silent. The cabbie was one of those garrulous specimens of his trade who seem always to have something to offer his customers in addition to the transportation for which they had paid; some tidbit of folksy wisdom, or a sage prediction of the weather, no doubt buttressed with countless examples from the days of yore. He brought out several of these chestnuts for us, but after a few failed gambits even he lapsed into what for him must have passed for a taciturn state, contenting himself with humming along to the radio, albeit loudly. He had sloughed tunelessly through several songs and a commercial break by the time we arrived, and had begun to sing under his breath, apparently unaware that he was doing so. This unwitting serenade had been steadily growing in volume, and he was working himself into a rather heartfelt rendition of Black Velvet as we disembarked.
It was just past eleven, relatively early for a nightclub, but the line was already stretched ten yards from the door. It wound around the side of the building, surprising me in spite of myself. I really hadn't been out in a while, and had forgotten all about waiting outside, that desultory purgatorial period where people shifted restlessly from foot to foot and chain-smoked, anxious for admittance, though in all likelihood less concerned with being able to dance or mingle (which they could have probably done just as well out here) than they were with losing the buzz they had brought with them. Some of the people had clustered into loose groups and those who had looked more sanguine, almost serene, and no doubt there were a few water bottles filled with ***** stashed in their purses and jacket pockets. I started toward the corner, intending to join the rest of the sad-sacks at the back of the line, but Bes grabbed my arm, giving me a slight shake of her head. She walked directly toward the entrance, deftly sidestepping the little pockets of people and putting on a smile of almost predatory brilliance. She sauntered up to the bouncer posted at the door, one of any number of interchangeable drones whose charge is to prevent just such flouting of protocol as she undoubtedly had in mind. She said something to him and he shook his head. She spoke again, raising up on tip-toe and looking directly into his eyes, and when she spread her hands in a comely now-do-you-see gesture he looked around furtively then nodded. She waved a hand at me and he nodded again, though more apprehensively than at first, and the hand pointed in my direction now wiggled its fingers in a come-hither gesture. I walked up and looked a question at her but she merely shook her head again, though this one was accompanied by a slight smile that said nothing and hinted at everything. She took my hand, dragging me forward like a she-wolf dragging a rabbit into her den, and as we passed into the club she favored the sentry with another smile, so warm that I could have sworn I saw him blush.
The interior was dark, cavernous and redolent of a thousand mingled perfumes, a heady, dizzying blend spiced here and there with the dank odor of marijuana. As soon as we were past the bouncer, Bes stopped and pivoted on her toes like a ballerina, spinning so quickly that I almost stumbled into her. She said something to me then, but despite the sudden and shocking proximity of her body to my own her voice was lost in the car crash of voices from the dance floorahead. I cupped a hand to my ear in the commonly understood signal for deafness, and she responded by cocking her head at a questioning angle and forming an elongated y with her thumb and pinky finger, tilting them toward her lips in the universal gesture for drinks. I nodded my assent and she took my hand again, pressing it gently as she threaded her way through the tumult of writhing flesh on the dance floor. We found seats in the corner of the bar, the one place where you could actually sit with your back to the wall instead of the rest of the club, a place that I privately thought of as Paranoiac's Cove. I dug out my pack of Lucky's and set to work on trying to find my lighter as she flitted away, returning moments later with a pair of highball glasses, each filled to the brim with a curiously green concoction that was so bright that it seemed almost as though the glass was filled with liquid neon. She handed me one, her fingers momentarily brushing mine as I accepted it, visions of the cauldron from Macbeth flashing briefly through my mind. That smile twisted its way onto her face again as she offered a silent toast, raising her glass toward me with an oddly solemn gesture. I raised mine in return, noticing the way her eyes sparkled in the shadows, green and impossibly bright, almost lambent, bright like the drink though her eyes were a deeper, truer green, closer to jade than to the grassy color we held in our hands. We touched their rims together, the clink almost inaudible in the howling bedlam of the club. She threw her drink back at a single draught, surprising me into a laugh and I followed suit, barely tasting the liquor as it ran down my throat. What I did taste was a rather poor attempt at artificial apple, cloying and somehow thick, like melted jolly ranchers. It was saccharine sweet yet bitter, a harsh undertone that matched the crisp tang of a real granny smith about as well as the sweetness did, which is to say not at all. Not that this bothered me; alcohol and bitterness have always gone well together for me.
She leaned over to me, fingertips resting lightly on my shoulder, breath tickling confidentially in my ear as she asked, "Dance with me?"
I demurred, not bothering to waste words but simply waiting until she pulled back to look at me and then shaking my head. She didn't lean in again, catching my eyes instead and mouthing the word with an exaggerated care that was almost comical. "Okay." She hesitated momentarily before adding, "Maybe later." She didn't wait for a response, instead sliding off her stool with easy, doe-like grace and disappeared into the throng. I stayed at the bar for some time, an hour perhaps, drinking steadily and watching the growing chagrin of the woman behind it as she realized that I had not intention of tipping her no matter how drunk I got. Bes reappeared periodically, staying long enough to grab each of us a free shot and steal one of my cigarettes before vanishing again. I whiled away the time by counting the necklaces that came bobbing and heaving up to the bar. The vast majority were crucifixes, their forms and sizes as varied as those of their bearers, but there was a smattering of other ikons as well; Celtic knots and stars of david, pentacles and hammers, and once, nestled incongruously in the ample and expertly showcased cleavage of its wearer, a crescent moon and star. The owner of that particular pendant also happened to clutch a drink in one hand, and while it may have been a shirly temple or club soda, the glassy eyes above it and the boneless, disjointed movements that arm described in the air spoke to a more potent brew. I wondered what they meant to the people who wear them, those chains of devotion donned voluntarily. A symbol of their faith, they would probably say, though it's a faith betrayed by virtually every action that they take, and if there's one thing that I've learned about people it's that their vows and promises may be lies, but their betrayals never are. Even a virtuous act, an act of unequivocal good in the face of overwhelming temptation, even that can be a lie. It is concealment, a denial of the temptation, of its reality, of the fact that the desire for what tempts us exists. But in betrayal, in succumbing to temptation, people reveal themselves, for they are true to their desire and desire is the most accurate mirror, the truest reflection of who we are. Most people wear masks to cloud that mirror, false faces that sometimes fool everyone and sometimes fool no-one. But truth always asserts itself and so most people betray; others, causes, even themselves. But even the betrayal of self is also an act of honesty, the final acknowledgement of who we really are.
There was a time, of course, when these signs and symbols of faith were a business of deadly seriousness, when their betrayal would have begotten swift and sure punishment, when the mere display of one's allegiance was both a pledge and a challenge, but no longer. Now they are carried as casually as their wearers carry the name of some obscure fashion designer on their underwear, and given the reverent attention paid to the latter and their blasé hypocrisy regarding the former, one has to wonder which is really more important to them. Yet the symbols persist even when the meaning has been forgotten, and the majority still carry signs of fealty formed from counterfeit gold and beaten nickel, sigils that flash quicksilver in the strobing lights, leading the way like the wooden maidens which adorn the prows of ships. I used to have one of them, you know, a rough loop of rawhide the carried three little trinkets, a bunny a book and a small golden heart. It's gone now, of course, and fittingly so, the heart having fallen after the bunny down the rabbit-hole, and the book remaining unwritten, though I suppose if your reading this, that if these disjointed ramblings ever manage to make it onto the printed page, refugees finally transplanted from the wilted notebooks or the cocktail napkins that I even now sit scribbling madly on, it has been written after all and you're reading it. You poor *******.
I realized my thoughts were drifting, meandering on their own down paths that I have expressly forbidden them to tread, rambling like unsupervised children in an amusement park at sundown. I gathered them up, scolding them, trying to exert some authority in my own mind, telling myself to just take a deep breath and shake it off. I can't though, and for once it's not because I can't quiet the thoughts but because I can't seem to take a breath that is deep enough. I realized that I was panting, well nigh hyperventilating, my breath coming in quick, shallow gasps that seem to crystallize in my longs like spun glass. I take stock of myself, trying to assure myself that I'm not going to have a heart attack or a ******* stroke, noting with some alarm that my hands are shaking and my vision has narrowed into a twisting, undulating tunnel. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing, the darkness behind my eyelids streaked with purple and red, and gradually I became aware that those explosions of color are rhythmic, recurrent. They happened not with the pounding of my heart, as I would have expected, but in time with the music, sunbursts of color appearing each time the bass kicked. The panic diminished, replaced by curiosity, and I realized that without the shrill yammering of panic in my ear and the terror of impending death in my mind, the combined sensations are not only pleasant, but oddly familiar. It's then that I realized what happened, belatedly doing the mental arithmetic and realizing that unexpected invitation, the free drinks and the first's oddly bitter taste, the secretive smile with which it was delivered, that it all added up to a single thing. She drugged me, of course, spiked my drink with something and I didn't even notice, naive as a sorority pledge at a keg party, and oh **** was I high. I stayed at the bar, knowing from hard experience that there was no sense in fighting it, and so giving in to it. If you can't put out the fire you might as well feed it, feed it all that you can, because the sooner the fuel runs out the sooner the fire dies. So I stayed there, focusing on my breathing and letting my thoughts spiral out, catching the waves in my head as they rose and fell, finally learning to float on their crests, in some semblance of control. Calmer now, I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one, the process taking an eternity, empires rising and falling in the time between the moment when the spark caught and the flame exploded into life and the one when it reached my lucky. I breathed out a plume of smoke, a pillar of cloud that also seemed to go on forever, and as it cleared there was Bes, materializing out of the smoke like a Cheshire cat.
"Ready to dance?"
I looked at her, unable to speak for a moment, not the drug this time but something entirely, a thing that came surging up from some unsounded depth within me and caught in my throat, because when I looked in her eyes, wide and wet with excitement, her pupils telescoped into pinpricks that told me she was in the grip of the same I saw myself. Because she was looking at me the way I looked

It’s nearly Christmas in the café; I just got my first card
So please Saint Nic just tell me why, enthusiasm’s hard?
I should be full of Christmas cheer, jingle bells all ringing
Baubles bouncing, tinsel shining, wondering what Santa’s bringing
I’ve not put up my Christmas tree, not hung my decorations
There’s not a single fairly light to hint at celebrations

The talk inside the café is evenly divided
Some can’t wait for Christmas while others have decided
That Christmas cheer has passed them by, can’t wait till it’s all done
They wonder why we bother when the cheer is so hard won
Worrying about the presents, have you got the bird?
Putting up the Christmas tree, the pressure is absurd

Whichever camp that we are in, humbug or Christmas cheer
We know just what will happen, because it happens every year
On Christmas Eve you’ll find us, running round just like a ******
Because you can’t have Christmas pudding without ****** brandy butter
The turkey won’t fit in the oven because it’s so **** big
And Grandad will be drunk by three and snoring like a pig

The kids will all be running round high on Quality Street
And you’ll be close to screaming as they get under your feet
At half past five it starts again with sandwiches and tea
With endless arguments over what’s on the TV
And all you wanted was to watch the new Wallace and Grommit
But you can’t because the quality street have reappeared as *****

When finally you get some peace and the kids are all in bed
You settle down on the sofa to watch Emmerdale instead
You remember that tomorrow, Uncle Jim and Auntie Brend
And all their various filthy offspring are due to descend
You haven’t got the joint out yet, the veg are all unpeeled
And if you're honest last year’s mental scars have not yet healed

So valiantly on you tread, even though inside you feel
You’ll end up in an asylum if another sprout you peel
What is it that keeps you going through this annual affair?
What makes you peel eighty more sprouts, what makes you want to care?
What makes you put up with more stress at this time of year?
What stops you killing Jim and Brend and drugging Grandad’s beer?

No Saint Nic I’m not sure either. Isn’t that quite weird?
It cannot be because of Jesus, the cool bloke with the beard.
I don’t think he would worry about the sprouts so much
Or think that turkey’s so important; perhaps we’re out of touch
Perhaps Christmas makes us crazy in a very special way
Just to make us more grateful for every other normal day

So whilst I’m not entirely sure that Christmas is a boon
I’m fairly sure I’ll be infused with Christmas spirit soon
I’ll hang up all my tinsel, get my ***** coordinated
By the time I have my tree up humbug will be eliminated
It’s a little bit like childbirth, this irrational Christmas fear
But that’s ok because once it’s gone I’ll forget it till next year.

As a little boy he wandered,
explored the forest
of life. One small, smooth
and jagged piece seeking out
those around in hope
that they’d one day
latch together, make a whole.
Trillions, gajillions, infinitillions
of parts, each unique, each
the same in a relative way.
Faces appeared and stayed,
others faded away. Ideas
blossomed gently, exploding
to states of mind, concrete views
or dust scattered with the wind.
Slowly he grew.

Some fear attachment,
but this boy lived for love.
Love for souls, life, ecstasy,
youth, holding hands, dancing,
grooves and groves of wonderment.
Some years went and others didn’t
but this boy(‘s puzzle plot)
had expanded to an extent
unbeknownst to him. Smoke
and mirrors mystify and cloud
the lucid mind.
Sometimes the crystalline clarity
never returns and the pieces fall,
a part of nothing
but ignorantly serene delusions.

This boy got lucky, though.
Some light, some gustling breeze
scattered the foggy reflections,
debilitating for so long.
The natural allure of a young lady
can lift a man from any sinkhole,
be it momentarily or neverending…
He saw those bright brown eyes
shining one day. A sublimely
beautiful face no words justify.
In he walked from the rain
and called out, hey!
So it began, the pieces reappeared.
For now, the others didn’t matter.
Two minute beings in a sea
of colored cardboard fragments,
secure. This girl, she showed him
the big picture, or lack thereof.
She pushed him to create for himself,
for her, them, noone, everything.
So they dreamed.

Another funny, funny poem!
About a boy; childish and dumb.
One evening on his way back home
As he passed a yard full of worms.

His skin may be shiny and fair;
his hair may be dark as the air.
But on top of all he's stupid!
His jokes are corny and torpid.

He asked the slugs lingering there
If they were venturing somewhere.
He fed them with his bronze coins
and left them among those ruins.

Happily didst he walk forwards;
when thunders started to slap hard!
The earth became full of water;
the sun died as it grew colder.

Into a hut didst he retreat;
To keep his blue shirts dry and neat.
But there he found a ragged old man;
whom was penn'less and had no friend.

For some free foods didst he insist;
a wish the boy could not desist.
Giving him his silver bracelets
Into the rain he swung ahead.

The furious winds clapped and shouted
Until the clouds fin'ly parted.
But from wetness did he suffer
As the storm grew weak and slower.

Sat he in peace by the river,
to dry his clothes and feel calmer.
With greediness he ate his breads,
'till he felt eyes watch him ahead.

Frightened then he raised to his feet,
whilst his enemies reappeared.
Two village lads with quiet chuckles,
sounding as evil as grovels.

Dropping the last three golds he had
With restless tears he ran ahead!
'Till he reached the rim of his house
Next to the farm of eight big cows.

There was a large group of neighbours
Gathering in front of the doors.
Beneath them on the wooden floors
Laid his mother, lifeless and sore.

'Mother! Mother!'
He wept and cried throughout the day
'Till the sun waned and stepped away.
He flung his hands 'to his pocket
and felt the forsaken locket.

He recalled his mother's message
Before he walked to his office.
'Forget not to buy some cabbage
as well as some bright golden fish'.

'For they'll cure me of this poison
which makes me feel like a prison.
And therefore they shalt save my life
as long as thou'rt back before five.'

'Keep yon locket and then sell it;
for it is my only treasure.
Look after and take care of it;
never lose it due to failure.'

But he forgot and ignored this!
As he walked home and met the worms.
He sold nothing and brought no fish
as he ventured along the storms.

Now his mamma's among the dead;
cried he 'till his eyes strewn and red!
With a torn heart he sorely mourned
as into the earth she returned.

And sent into jail was then he!
For he was deemed the one guilty.
Of his wild ways and carelessness;
so is his stubborn childishness!

How he was now a condemned wretch!
Happiness he would never fetch!
As everyone cherished their days,
in his dusty cell he decayed.

In three years he committed suicide;
People found him dead with eyes wide.
Reproaching his own foolishness;
regretting his bare loneliness.

Can stories be poetic? I think so? What do you reckon? Read on...

The giant red globe of the sun hung over young Omega’s head. That great orb filled nearly a quarter of the sky. Omega found it hard to believe that the sun was a “red dwarf star”. Yet who was he to argue with his elders?

A chill wind blew along the desolate beach. In the distance, some giant ***** were on patrol, looking for a meal. Above the *****, some rowdy gulls were waiting to scavenge anything the ***** might leave.

Not much to report here. The usual dismal scene. Nothing here to reflect the importance of these moments. Omega had seen moving pictures of other planets, on which they had things called “days”. This particular “Earth” here was “tidally locked” so that the same side faced the sun at all times. The sun was always there, solidly positioned above Omega’s head.  Here on the equator, they “enjoyed” maximum warmth: yet it was not too much above the freezing point of water!

Mother appeared.

Mother: “We will be ready to start in ten Lunons, Omega. I will call you then.”

Omega nodded. He gulped, nervously and mentally reviewed why this ritual was necessary. What had the elders said?

Oh yes. The Universe began 110 trillion standard years ago with the “Big Bang”. It had expanded at an incredible rate. In those early days the universe had teemed with stars like the sun. Most of those stars had travelled together in great wheels and clouds called “galaxies”. Those galaxies had been full of light and heat, and life!

Yet all that abundance had been before the “Degenerate Era”, when the universe had thinned out so much that no new stars were formed. The remaining stars had died and died. So now the sun above Omega was the last known star.

They were about to enter the “Black Hole Era”, when the universe would be dominated by Black Holes of course. After that would be the “Dark Era”. Finally, about 500 trillion years after the Big Bang, the universe would undergo “Heat Death”. Well, that was what Omega recalled from his lessons.

What was bothering The Elders was the state of the sun. It was foundering. Soon it would just blink into darkness. Before then, the world would just get colder. A bleak prospect.

Mum reappeared. She ushered Omega to “The Circle”. The children were joining with the adults and Elders now. That central obelisk, encircled by the populace, was brightly lit. They all formed an unbroken chain.

Omega felt a great glowing from within. It was happening! Warmer and warmer. Brighter and brighter. All of them shone and flowed and coalesced. Then they each broke free and flew apart!

It was done! Every one of them had transformed into a spirit energy being! Each was now a shining orb. So alive, and free from what would have been a slow freezing death under the last dying sun.

Such joy. Eternal life achieved at last. None of them had heard of our Earth. None of them was human. There were similarities with us, but they were quite alien. Who cares. They were sentient beings who had escaped the death of the last star, and ultimately the universe.

Paul Butters

He felt devoid of words, after being surrounded by them for the past 48 hours. As a writer there was this constant itch that one should be in thrall to the urge to write. It was what writers did, when they were not talking, or listening to others talk, as you do, sitting on the train, listening to the talk of others.

He was so easily seduced by the roll and pace of words spoken with intent. The voice reading on the radio, that book at bedtime, that well-scripted introduction. He felt this might be part of the reason he liked to start the public day by attending the Morning Office in his city’s cathedral, just a short walk from his studio; this elevation of the written to word to the spoken, deliberate utterance that lifted those yards of printed text in the book on the lectern he occasionally had the privilege to read out loud. It had been the book of Amos this week. Not a text he knew, and yet he had been surprised. He had meant to look up the chapters read when he returned to his desk – but hadn’t. Only now, early this morning as the streets below were swept in the city, and the night’s young revellers were returning home in the waiting white taxis, he read the words of Amos, of his 8th Century (BCE) vision and prophesy. It was dark stuff, warnings of doom, disaster couched in language that whilst poetic had a hard edge; not the poetry of the Psalms . . . but some verses had caught him:

Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves. Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself:  Neither shall he stand that handleth the bow; and he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that rideth the horse deliver himself.  And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day, saith the LORD.

He had walked away into the morning city, the city preparing itself for a weekday of shopping and business, and found himself saying under his breath the flight shall perish from the swift. It was such a powerful image: he saw in his mind’s eye the swifts quartering the field below his cottage on that Welsh mountain as they sought food for their young nested in a dark corner of the barn, their nest a marvel of nature’s engineering hanging high from the wall. He saw their flight perish, saw these miracle birds fall from the sky. He felt the silence of the empty field. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of a silencing of birds, their flights stilled, perished in some Armageddon.

And later that week two hundred and fifty miles south under the lush greenness of the tree canopies on that Devon road to Buckfastleigh, these words had reappeared as though in some recurring litany. He had looked from the speeding car into the early morning, and, following the river running beside the road, had remembered a morning past. Beside that very river he had crouched close in wonder at it all, and that he had almost slept the night through in her arms, by her side, alive to her every movement and breath, and to wake, and find it all true and not dreamt.

He had had no poetry for that morning past. He was sure he had found something later, of their days together there. Her passionate kiss in the gardens at Hestercombe, the rub and touch of her leg under a restaurant table, her beauty a shining star beside him at that gallery opening, lying together amongst daisies in the garden he had recited the poetry of Alice Oswald, and the blue skies, and the distant moorland glimpsed, and his heart pounding with love and passion for this gentle figure who he couldn’t help himself touch and kiss, whose hand he would seek and hold at every turn . . .

How could he not be a poet when he had known such things he had only previously imagined? And now he had become a person whose words others listened to and read. Because? If pressed, he might say he had been woken into a world he had only previously glimpsed, occasional revelations had come fleetingly, but now they were ever present. It was as if when he looked into her face he would step into a place where she belonged, a place she was still fashioning for herself, where she dreamed herself to be, and he would be, possibly, and possibly always. It was always too much to think of when he was alone.

He missed her terribly as he walked the gardens he had once walked with her, had sat and sketched with her, had stood at slight distances from her to savour her still beauty. But there was no escaping the words, the needs of words, the talk, the idle talk he couldn’t do. And now, home at his desk and the backlit screen, the persistent noise of this city he inhabited reluctantly, he was devoid of words and yet, and yet. At five o’clock this morning he had filled his favourite china cup with his favoured blend of tea, his morning tea cup decorated with its traditional Chinese blue on white pattern of temples, bridges and trees and given himself time with book. It was Farwell Song by Rabindranath Tagore, that great Indian writer who he remembered had walked those gardens with Leonard and Dorothy, those Elmhirsts who had made the gardens what they are today. Tagore, a writer courted for his wisdom and passion for rural reconstruction, a friend of Gandhi, Einstein, W.B. Yeats. Such people, he thought, and I have walked amongst their ghosts, in this place that twenty five years earlier had laid its spell on him, and he had loved, and come to love with even more devotion because he could not think of the peace and loveliness of it all without her presence there. And yet they were apart, and she had her life, and he had his life, but through the poetry of their respective endeavors, their art making, their creative energy, they came together in what he felt was a similar spirit.

In the hour before his train had left for the South West a letter had arrived with two cards. On one card, sewn into the card, a eucalyptus leaf, sewn with eucalyptus-dyed thread, and with it a blank card for ‘something in return; something personal, gentle, tentative, appropriate to our lives’.

He had carried both cards with him, these cards of papier aquarelle (300gsm) that had graced her touch, been held by her deft fingers. He had placed them between the leaves of his poetry book, a book he used exclusively for his written words. He had placed the card with the leaf resting against a vase of Lathyrsu odoratus. Vase and card placed on the pine desk in a guest room in a friend’s house they had remained in place, together, those two nights, and he recalled holding the leafed card briefly before he turned out the light to lay down to sleep, thinking only of her as he waited for sleep to embrace him.

in most of your fields an elder woman with a polaroid camera waits for a squirrel.  

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

a recent accident:  the lame girl knocked into a box of baking soda which spilled and ghosted
     a roach which disappeared into a white cane then reappeared on her hand.

less recent:  the smaller boy lifted in the grocery a bag of dog food over his head while the bigger
     pushed the cart into his back.  

the short period of time the match goes unlit by your tooth is paradise.

’ Climbing down these secret stairs is a hell’, said Clayton. ’Don’t talk!
They can hear us. It has two sets of stairs. I think when they wanted to lock
This part of the tower, they made the secret passage ’, said Surah. ‘I’ll take care
Of the workers.  They drank that poppy seed tea. Now, they must feel the flare.’

Clayton threw them into the abyss, one by one. Then, he used a big rock
To block the entrance of the cave.’ Clayton, do you hear that screaming hawk?’
Frederick stopped dancing with Jezebel, and asked her to go with him to the terrace.
He professed his love for her saying that she might be a young pretty heiress.

’Did you talk with my father?’’ Yes, Jezebel, your father intends to give you
A half of his kingdom in order to make you be my bride. ‘’Is it true?’
‘I hear a weird noise coming from the cave.’’ Yes, indeed. ‘’Let’s take a look!’
He extended his hand, ‘I hear a rock moving behind those walls forming a nook!’

(It happened in the moment, when Clayton finished locking the passage.)
‘It has already caused waves in the lake. We must stop a real ravage!’
‘Two lamps are missing. They’re lost in the water. My father must know.’
‘That’s nothing’, said Richard,’ the beast could give its nose a loud blow.

Ha, ha, you’re really scared! It’s a tiny crack, which in time can expand.
Come to drink ‘, said Richard putting on Frederick’s shoulder his right hand.
’Fred is beautiful’, said Surah looking at a picture, which was hung on her wall.
‘I can’t believe he’s really here again after all this time, in the royal dancing hall.’

(Pauline and Frieda were two widows of those ten workers dying in the abyss.)
The poor homes were cold, damp, and dark within their walls.
The children used to play in the mud without having toys or dolls.
The windows were very small openings with some wooden shutters.
The men used to get drunk and to fight each other using small cutters.



The people ate, slept, and spent their time together in two rooms
Having thatched roofs and being as easy to destroy as were their tombs.
The homes of the rich people were more elaborate than the others.
They had paved floors being decorated with tiles in many colors.

Tapestries were hung on the walls, providing an extra layer of warmth.
In a simple home, there was no chimney. There was only a stone hearth.
Some vegetables such as cabbages, or onions were known as *** herbs.
They grew as much food as their families needed by using gardens and yards.

Pauline said 'It hurts me constantly until I know what really happened',
Frieda replied, ‘Because of the clouds, that day, the sky could be blackened'.
'But John was familiar with the trail, having hiked it many times before',
'Maybe they ran being afraid of that beast, a bear, or a very big boar.'

'John was a husky, healthy man, and he was not afraid of anything.'
'What can I say, Pauline? They are not at home, they are really missing.'
Pauline said crying,' On this mountain, so many have disappeared!'
'They disappeared near the cascade, and have never reappeared.'

(After a year, it was the springtime again. The people living at the castle were preparing the wedding.)
The sun shone, and the pink flowers bloomed at the wedding, in spring.
The guests were expected to come to the wedded pair, having gifts to bring,
Without a great change in the life at the castle, there would be stagnancy,
Due to her destiny, Jezebel would never be able to come out of her infancy.

Living on borrowed time: that’s what I feel like I’ve been doing in the last few months. Have you ever felt you were just waiting on something?

Just hopelessly, meekly, patiently waiting… for something.

As I lay in bed that night with Ron Pope playing through the speakers, the thought hit me: I want to get married.

It’s typical- almost satirical, really. I love love. I love the idea of love. I’ve always been a fan of love even in sickness and in heartbreaks.

Love is stunning. Love is heartless. Love is selfish. Love is selfless. Love is kind. Love is brutal but love is fair.

Love smelled like whiskey.

Love was the act of him coming home to me every Friday night, intoxicated and heaving in the musky scent of Black Label and Jack Daniels. Love was the slurring of three 8-letter words, over and over. Love was waking up in the morning knowing where he was without needing to open his eyes.

I knew love. And love knew me. Love was always careful around me. Love knew what I needed when I was sad. Love knew what not to say when I was at my lowest. Love knew that food was the solution to almost everything. Love looked at me like I was a dying rose- fragile and beautiful.

Love was not there when I needed it the most but my goodness, love is beautiful.

At age of 17, love was not ready.

At the age of 21, love disappeared and love reappeared.

And now at the age of 25, love is still not ready.

But love is patient. Love is not going anywhere. Love is timeless. Love knows no expiration date. Love is never limited to one person and it will always be lurking in the shadows when you least expect it.

So, even when I lose faith in love, I tell myself to relax.

Because love? Love can wait.

If I were to describe the distance between us,
I wouldn’t know what to compare it to.
They say that the Moon is approximately 238,900 miles away from planet Earth,
Pluto is about 3.67 billion miles away from the Sun,
And the Milky Way is roughly 120,000 light years in diameter.
You’re about 1,275.6 miles away from me,
But it seems like the miles between us is greater than the distance between galaxies and stars alike.
They always told me that distance makes the heart grow fonder,
But how does that work when my heart only ever aches because you’re so far away?

I miss you
But these three syllables don’t quite add up,
They don’t make sense.
“I miss you so ******* much” doesn’t quite compare to the emptiness I feel when you’re not around,
It doesn’t compare to the distance between us.

You found a hidden vein into my heart,
Picked the lock of the cage
And stole my fist-sized *****,
Never intending to return it,
Only planning to use it,
Manipulate it,
Mold it like clay
And make it seem easy to shapeshift.
I made you my home planet,
The one I came to when I was down,
When I was all bruised in a rainbow of colors.
They say that home is where the heart is,
But what is a home
When your heart is in someone else’s hands?

I made you my home body,
But I was merely a nobody,
A distant star 2,000 light years away
That always seemed to be forgotten,
Only ever remembered when I shone too brightly in your eyes.

I was your Neverland,
The second star to the right,
A place for those who wished to never grow up.
You were my Peter Pan,
My lost boy
Who only ever wanted to be found,
But in a sudden turn of events,
You grew up without me.
I lost track of your age,
You were just a boy the last time I saw your face,
Chubby-cheeked and wide-grinned
With your feathered hat high up above your head.
I was your Wendy,
A believer in you,
The lover you loved so dearly,
I was your darling.
You left
And aged so nicely,
Grew tall so swiftly,
And I was merely the ant in your shoe,
A pest on your land of ageless dreams.
I was forgotten,
And I wish you believed in me like you believed in fairies,
Wish you sprinkled dust on me
So you can watch me soar and pass by you,
Wish you saved me from drowning in you like how you saved me at Mermaid’s Lagoon,
Wish you had never grown up without me.
We swore eternity to each other,
Promised each other infinity,
Vowed to never ever grow up here.
You told me you loved me,
And then you disappeared.
I forgot about your story for a while
Until you reappeared so suddenly,
Though you lost me from your memory,
And I can feel the distance between us grow even more,
Felt home vanish quicker than a heartbeat,
Felt you shrinking smaller than I could have ever wanted.
You were my Peter Pan,
My Never Land,
My home planet,
My whole universe,
And if this isn’t love,
Then, please, tell me what was it?