with or without receipt
when the Universe
declines
in kid gloves
stretching the skin
sacrificial
I think of Dana
and losing touch
the herd
thinned
the babies
dispersed
the land
so close
to being sold
a dance beat
Native
in space
else
where
it could be
man or woman
...who will judge
the stepping out
of Time
beside
a small town
ShopRite
jaws of register
a spoke poet
sound
hands molding
clay like candy
wordlessly
handling
the Flood
pas comme il semble
pas comme il semble
Tis the journey through the night
Where once those mentally sound
Are now paralyzed with fright
Those with singular arrhythmia
Now encounter its malignant twin
As desires of rescue fade
Let the hopes of providence begin
Janis arrived conscripted to liquidate a debt
Constrained by chains in a vat
Voluntarily to aid and abet
Covered with sugar and aerated wort
These microbes never relented
The reaction began in earnest
As her epidermis rapidly fermented
Jacob decided to tempt his fate
As did Roger, his nemesis,
Who loathed the wait
Inside their respected decompression chambers
With only the ability to release their mate
Both departed explosively
Still coveting their respective hate
Malcom consumed all he could view
Be it five or seven courses
He was never through
Bragging he could eat horses
Oblivious to zombies with an appetency
To their version Cordon Bleu
Malcom became a culinary Waterloo
Conjoined twins arrived
Destined to survive the apparitions
“Two heads are better than one”
Was their ammunition
But slayers on sight still shoot on sight
As Left Twix bled out
Right Twix remarked “Good Night”
When horror is unleashed and befalls unseen
Welcome to the real version of Halloween
Worlds Apart
Here’s why I believe reading fiction is the cure to social media.
When your on social media you’re consuming the world.
When you read a novel, you are creating a world.
Books contain vivid details you recreate in your mind.
Social media robs you of discernment and leaves you blind.
Books connects you to new worlds
Social media keeps you on an island
Dying of thirst while surrounded by water.
Surrounded by people but feeling no connection,
What you feel in a book is real,
Because it’s a true reflection.
Of who you are, what you think,
what you feel, what you see,
It’s all tinged through with the hue of
Me.
Reading is intimate, personal, interpretation.
Social media leaves you lost in desperation.
Ruby
It's nighttime. It's dark. And I'm alone. And I'm rotting from the inside out like I always am. It hurts. Not me. The people. The masses. It hurts. Them. They hurt.
And I'd like to live a virtuous life, I think. But the truth is I'm honestly too wrapped up in sin.
It's nighttime. It's dark. The moonlight glints on the water, low and dull and slimy. I can see it from my arching, clawing window. Not that I care. I'm too far gone to care.
I hate the river and everything it's come to represent.
Death is really the only way out of this bullshit is what I'm trying to say. We hate ... we do absolutely hate those who didn't take up La Causa and that includes us but the promise of a better world is just as out of reach as the promise of justice is.
He comes to me when it's late at night, one night. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Angelic. Enticing. Entrancing. My knees are weak. And I know I'm a disappointment to him. But I want to know him. I reach out to touch (to taste) but I'm stopped by ... by something clutching at me with waves of smoke. Just a few millimeters away from falling out the windows into the depths of his arms.
Milimeters. I think about him sometimes when my mind lets me. Dear God he's beautiful. Pitch-black (raven-black) wings darker than the sky around him, feathery. If he but touched my hair I could perhaps learn not to sin. If he kissed me roughly, desperately, I would melt into the ground in the best possible way. Emerging from the shadows of the cave of ignorance and ego, into the light and freedom of equality. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, part of me thinks of saying. But I can't or maybe I don't.
The words I love you don't mean I want to touch you. The words I love you mean I want to die for you.
I want to die for your cause. I want to die for your well-being. If my death is what it would take for you to get the respect you deserve then I forfeit this life. And I want to die for someone's cause. For his cause. I want to burn all his demons, crush all his enemies. I want to help him emerge victorious. But I also don't want to. I'm a cog in a machine and I'm too young to fulfill my place on it, young enough to have some rebel left in me. But that will change if time finds me alive in two years' time.
I want to die for you, I want to die for you, I want to die for you. And I don't want to die for him, but part of me does. And if he wanted me to touch him I would, I hope.
I'm dreaming. I'm standing in front of a boy that shimmers like moonlight. Magical. Not pretty how a painting is pretty but pretty how a blizzard is pretty. Powerful. Potentially devastating. But a part of nature in all it's glory. A force of nature. Necessary. To be respected, feared, and admired all the same. His hair shimmers like dusk. My knees are weak. I cut open my palm with a small dagger. The blood is beautiful, burning, red. So red. I bring my hand to his cheek, caressing, leaving trails of red as I make my way to his lips. I hover over his pink lips gently, not touching, waiting for him to move.
He's buzzing with electricity and moonlight and hope and brightness. Need. Dear God, he's everything that belongs in the world. My knees are weak, weak, weak. His whole being is overwhelming. Hope and anger. Hurt and desperation. Love and confidence. He's the Katniss to my Peeta and he knows it.
He holds my hand in his, and presses my bloody palm to his lips. I smile, my eyes lighting up. He presses hard, longing kisses into my palm and it hurts and I love how it hurts. Suddenly heavy, invisible arms try to pull me back but he keeps me there, the light from his eyes banishing my demons. He looks ... he looks imploring as he asks me to ... to stay. I do.
His lips, his chin, his cheeks, the tip of his nose. All smeared a wild, wild crimson. He shoots me a playful, almost childish look. I shoot one back. He takes hold of the back of my hand again, moving it down his face and licking my fingers with an exaggerated, unapologetic expression. I laugh. Quietly. We honestly can't be found out.
Like ... I mean we can ... but not by ... not by anyone society would take seriously. So if like a little girl walked in on whatever this is we'd be fine.
His spit and my blood intermingle on his face as he pushes his tongue through my fingers. Smiling, I press one on my fingers into his mouth. He looks delightfully surprised, and sucks softly as I press my still-bleeding wound onto his chin, his cheeks. He leans into it, and my hand throbs with pain. I press two other fingers into his mouth. He pulls a fourth one in.
Blood has started to run down even his neck now. We stay like this for a while, my fingers dancing in and out of his mouth, like threads being woven by his own slender fingers. my blood dripping all over him.
The lock to my door starts turning. We gasp as he opens his mouth and I yank my hand away, behind my back. Whoever is behind that door is not a little girl.
"The world pulls, you pull back harder." He whispers, barely whispers, and I have to strain to hear. And I think of all the people that are unheard in this world. This is who the song is about. And I remember. But my hand is still bleeding. I hope it never stops. I kiss it, tasting his sweet, bitter saliva. And I drift off to sleep.
I awaken with a large, gaping, scabbed-over cut on my hand. And I cry tears of joy.
Mountains and mines and factories and plantations and houses still exist. But butterfly wings also exist. Firework people also exist. And obviously something deeper, more all-encompassing, fairer, more equal, more motherly, exists. It exists beneath the surface, aching to be let out. Rich people have their own God. Revolutionaries have a different God.
———
If you like this piece check out my Mastodon my account is FSairuv@mas.to and I po abo human rights, social justice, and the environment.
A Badger and a Fairy
It’s not every day that you are lucky enough to catch a fairy. At least, I had thought so.
When I snatched the tiny being between my hands, she wasn’t anything at all like I expected. She looked up at me from the cracks between my cupped hands with large brown eyes. Her wings looked like those of a little moth. She even had fuzzy antennae. They prodded my skin gently through my gloves as if trying to scent my intentions.
I had intended to tail the badger that was tormenting my chickens night after night, but this was so much better. I couldn’t wait to tell my colleagues that I’d found one. Now I could justify renting a little cottage up on the lonely moors of northern England far away from the laboratory in California.
I brought the fairy inside my house. Very carefully, I dropped her into a little enclosure on the desk in my living room. I used it for a variety of little critters I studied, but it would do for now. I set the video camera up on the desk to catch both the little fairy and me in the frame.
“This is Dr. Shane Yeoman, and this is day forty-seven of my studies about fairies from England. Today may be the most important day because as you can see,” I pointed a gloved blue finger at the little humanoid figure huddled on the mossy bottom, “I have finally captured one.”
The fairy bared little fangs at me, with her back to the camera.
“Sharp little teeth,” I chuckled a little, jotting it down. “Similar to that of a mink or a ferret. Fingers are long and spindly ending in bluish fingernails, but it doesn’t appear to be from oxygen deprivation.”
Her antennae began to wilt as she crept behind one of the ferns in the enclosure. She had the presence of a predator.
I finished my visual examination and shut off the camera. “I’m off to grab a cup of joe, but you stick right there, eh?” I left the fair alone in the living room and walked over to the old coffee pot that had come with the cottage. It might have been older than me. But the coffee was fresh.
I didn’t have more than a few sips before a crash followed by shrieks and squawks sounded in the back of the house. I stepped into my rubber boots and flew through the back door. I was only just in time to see a badger, dash off into the woods with one of the adolescent chicks in its fangs. It wasn’t even dusk. What was that nocturnal creep doing out in the afternoon? Did they never tire of my torment?
I needed to get a dog.
I trudged back to the living room and suppressed a heavy exhale of frustration. At least I had the little fairy. I walked over to the desk. The top of the enclosure was crooked as if she’d pushed it off with ease.
The front door creaked. It was open. I ran towards the door, not caring about the mud I tracked across the faded rug. It wasn’t the fairy I saw, but my video camera laying on the front porch. The memory card was gone.
A jolt of movement caught my attention. At the far end of the English garden, a badger, shrieking in laughter. I looked back down at the camera. There were bite marks on it in the shape of the badger's.
I looked back at the fiend in time to see it disappear. No. Not disappear. It turned back into the fairy. She waved with the memory card in her hand and flew off as fast as a hummingbird, taking all of my research with her.
A silly little story that I wrote for my niece.
Thieving Angels
We tried for different.
We shot for stars,
and compared the
scarring of our arms
trying to help
in the business
of God.
We shined the platter
for head of duck
in our serving up,
and in the sheen,
I said Look!
It's us...!
We tried for different
Outcomes.
We shot for stars
And compared
The scarring on our arms
Trying to help
In the business
Of God.
We shined the platter
In our scheme to
Plate a steamy serving
Of roast duck,
But in the sheen of
The metallic plate
I thought I caught
An accidental glimpse
Of the divine,
Then quickly changed my
Wary mind and said
“Look!,
It's just one of us…
…That reflection looks
So much in line
With how you genuflect,
And bow your head
In reveration
When they tell you
What and when
We tried for different
Outcomes,
in belief.
We shot for starlights
And compared in vain
The scarring on our arms
Trying to help, by the way,
In the business
Of God, and us.
We shined the platter
In our scheme to
Divy a steamy serving
Of roasted apple
and duck,
But in the sheen of
The metallic plating
We thought we'd caught
An accidental glimpse
Of the divine, no...
Then quickly changed
Wary minds and said
“Look!,
It's not one of us…
…But the reflection looks
So very much in line
With the genuflect,
And bowing of the head
In veneration
When telling ourselves
What and when
to mistrust...
We aimed for different.
We shot for stars
in our eyes.
We stopped comparing
the divide
the masthead,
bowed over the platter
of God.
***
Mavia & Bunny Villaire
Inspiration piece: Dead Can Dance
https://youtu.be/OiNSfRqCF10?si=2lq2pCxNowZukqor
Rise and shine, friends.
The year died and then breathed again - like I, phoenix rising, baggage clearing. Plane almost landed. Soft or hard, bring it on. Night darkest before dawn indeed, let that dawn on you as your mind's sun awakens again, please. The year is waxing. That ain't a warning. Quite the opposite - not taxing. That proposition's simmering in your cranium, the crowd in your frontal lobe stadium roaring, the flow state waters pouring again. Rise and shine, friends.
The U Turn 02:14
Goldy had waited for the repercussions. She had expected some reverb. Admonitions from the old man. Defense. Defeat. She expected disappointment from Silvie. Disillusionment. Detachment.
Instead, seeing the old man's distress, Silver flatly told her to leave after Gold's triumphant gloat over the expose of pictures. She had had an effect, but not the hardening she intended. Silver glared at her with ice grey extinguished eyes, and told her that the thin lines of her plotting would not hold together here. She had no purchase.
What she wouldn't have given to be third party, privy to the discussion afterward. Had she been there she would not have to imagine. Silver was of course understanding. The moment called for listening, and she listened. A stress headache was forming under the skull. She sensed the distress he must be in, fearing condemnation, worse loss of respect. The old man suggested a night walk. They waited till dark.
The sky was pink. Low hanging clouds reflected the warm glow of the nightlife in the nearby town. Snow underfoot, soft and they walked awhile in silence.
Then he began, "I was addicted to her. We were... addicted to each other."
He sighed. Again, they walked wordlessly for a while. Pictures must have been scrolling his mind like candid video. He tried again, "I just didn't believe the child was mine."
Luster Bright as Dawn
Caleb would peg the downy lady as cheery. All pep, few brains, and possibly distracted by shiny objects.
That worked just fine for them both.
She gushed over Midnight. Cooed at how he held his treasured friend close.
Actually, much more than that. Midnight was the only living thing he could trust right now. The only one he allowed himself to love right back. Midnight's was so naively, so freely given.
Much like the cherry pink leather sectional he nuzzled up in. A matching soft pink fuzzy blanket provided.
"You can even keep it if you like deary," she simpered, turning out the light and waddling away.
She was quite large. Fat and probably somewhere in her fifties, or maybe close to seventy.
Whatever.
Caleb rolled over onto his other side, so he faced the couch and not the hall.
A shiny clock of fake gold and obnoxious design clicked the hour. Past eleven, thirty minutes to midnight.
Did he like stealing from sweet old ladies who had proven to really be so starved for company even homeless boys like him would do?
No. No he didn't.
But Caleb needed to eat and Caleb was not going to return to foster care. Life on the road, it proved quite eventful.
People sure did get wise fast. About the thieving kid that always cased the houses with the classic street waif play.
All untrue. Of course.
The awful thief was probably a miserable little wretch ungrateful and a burden on perfectly tender parents.
Funny how all their precious possessions were stamped onto police reports just as if not more important than thousands of missing children.
These were the things he'd thought about lately.
He really shouldn't get too bitter.
Pete had been perfectly nice.
The older people get it seemed the less they had in them to be mean. Maybe since by then their adult kids don't need them anymore either. Sooo, they got mean.
This lady's name-- the one whose house he was currently robbing-- was named Dawn.
Caleb peeled out of the couch, sliding quietly to the rugged living room floor.
He really hated stealing.
Midnight did too.
She began to cry.
Her drawers had been strung shut but it was a laughably easy job to figure her code. Each and every item had the same date code. The day of her first date. Her husband's deployment. Her first son's birth.
The day that man was no longer any son of hers.
Caleb took only a few of the pretty silver spoons and tea plates.
Next he scrounged the fridge for a fine stash of food for the road that morning and a slice of her sweet, decadent Black Chocolate Gelato cake.
How did the stores get ice cream in the center? How did she?
The light flickered on and Caleb reared.
The plump old bag was smiling serene as a drugged out bird, a nice white robe knotted tight.
"Well about time now," she hmmphed, small and still so, so disappointed.
Caleb did nothing, simply let her strut in her slippers for her dining table.
Where she opened up the tin of stale chocolate and moon cakes.
"Let's have a chat sweetie. About my son."