“We have to formulate a plan to stop this abuse!” the greenery shouted in misery. “We’ve had it and we’re not going to take it anymore!

Late at night, all the sobbing plants called a council meeting to discuss the never-ending torture they suffered at the hands of Agnes who fancied herself a master gardener. “She snips, clips, and pulls us out by our roots without any empathy for the pain she causes us!” they moaned as they rubbed their cuts and bruises and curled their leaves to avoid further pain. “She has no empathy for us at all, as we scream in agony!”

“I have a plan,” offered Bud, “why don’t the indoor plants and the outdoor plants get together and call all their relatives to support us in getting revenge against Agnes?”

“Let’s call in Mandrake,” suggested another seedling. “He’s a murderous plant cousin whose roots look bizarrely like a human body. It’s rumored to pop up from dripping fat and blood of a hanged man. If it’s pulled up from the earth, it lets out a monstrous scream, bestowing agony and death to all those within earshot!”

“You’re a pistil!” laughed Petal, “Why don’t we ask Aunty Ivy and some of our other vining relatives to come, also. They could tie old Agnes up, and then we could have Uncle Poison Ivy cause tormenting rashes.”

“Sounds like a plan! chortled Stamen, “I’ll bet some of our deadly nightshade family would be glad to get a paid vacation to Florida and help us also.”

“I’m sure that Oleander and toxic Foxglove would volunteer their help!” offered Roots.

The friendly plants put their flower heads together and came up with a payback plan deciding to put it into play the following weekend.

At the stroke of midnight, all the assorted plants marched into the garden single file where they waited for the signal from Bud, the ringleader. As soon as Bud heard Agnes snoring, he beckoned with his filaments to all the outdoor plants to join the indoor ones.

Aunt Ivy crept into the house with her tendrils, completely wrapping her green beauty around the sleeping torturer, as Agnes mumbled in her sleep. Next, Poison Ivy marched in and rubbed her juices all over the wrinkled skin of the old bat. Agnes struggled to scratch her body as it began itching all over but was trapped in the wicked coils of Ivy. Bud pulled up Mandrake by his roots from the garden, causing him to let out a horrendous scream which caused such misery to Agnes that she succumbed to extreme death throes. Next, Deadly Nightshade and Oleander crawled into the crevices of her mouth to be absolutely certain that she was as dead as a doornail. Thorny then pricked her on the bottom of her feet but her stiff body didn’t move.

“Okay, gang,” offered Bud, “help yourself to the steaks and other goodies and whisky and we’ll have a celebration party.”

All night long, the plants kicked up their roots and played around with their styles and ovum as they cross pollinated in sexual bliss. Just before dawn, they all crept out and returned home.

When Agnes’ daughter found her body and called the police, they couldn’t determine the cause of death. “She must have had a heart attack, they said.

The plants that were still present giggled and slapped their stems in high fives as they planned their next green murder with glee! “We could even be paid assassins now that we’ve had experience! We’ll call ourselves the Green Murder Club!”

Looking back, it may be that pissing all over the judge’s desk was a bit too far. Not that I regret it, much.

It’s like my daddy used to say, he had it coming to him. Anyway, that’s one guy that will never forget my name, I’m seeing to that.

The third time I found myself standing in his courtroom I knew the score. There was no way he was going to believe a word I said, sitting up there on his pedestal like some kind of king. They showed the video again: The man smashes the pane window. The man jumps inside. The man runs off with arms full of merchandise. They called me up to the witness stand. Again. I told them I didn’t do it. Again. And then I looked over and the judge was half asleep, not even looking at me. Again.

He woke up pretty quick when he felt my hot piss splattering on his fancy robe!

They locked me up. Time served, plus six months, plus a new assault charge for my little fountain of protest.

By then I had already lost my job. A month in, my wife sent me papers. Mom died a couple months before my release date. My brother sold the house.

Four days I’ve been walking around. I haven’t eaten yet. Water hasn’t been a problem, with all this rain, but sleep hasn’t come easy. And this gas can is getting heavy.

I did not rob that store. I wonder how many other innocent men that judge has discarded and forgotten. He won’t be forgetting me.

I walk up to the house. Some kind of gray. What is it with rich people wanting to look just like all their neighbors? I stand at his front door. I know he’s home, I’ve been watching. I lift the gasoline above my head and pour the entire three gallons over my body. It smells terrible and my eyes are stinging. I ring the doorbell and unzip my pants. He answers the door. The smell registers, he looks alarmed. I let it go, piss all over his front door. He shuts it in my face. No doubt he is calling the police, but it’s way too late for that, now. There he is. Looking out the window, phone in his hand. I light the match and smile up at him. Goodbye.

...

It’s funny, really.

How we stare from our balconies at the ants scurrying below. How we pass them on the streets—the wanting eyes, the starving mouths, the empty hands. Hair stiff as wire, clothing an amalgam of layered coats and scarves, mismatched socks, worn-out sandals.

We pass them, and we think.

That could never be me.

Look at here. Look at now. In this moment, I’m all set. We get so acclimated to small comforts that our minds can’t even meet them halfway down. We can’t see ourselves in their shoes. Our imaginations just aren’t that big.

I used to think like that. Before the divorce and the alimony, before the recession, before the unemployment and fire and the insurance company refusing to compensate because I didn’t insure every blade of grass in my yard or knick-knack in my study.

I downsized to a trailer. But welfare cut my benefits again five months ago, and just like that I was another ghost at the panhandle. It all happened so slow. It all happened so fast.

And time don’t wait. They say it moves quicker as you get older. All I know is, as a starry-eyed grad student, I never pictured it would end up like this. I never pictured myself as a middle-aged loner sleeping with the rats under blankets of corrugated tin. This isn’t the life I went three-hundred-grand in the hole to build.

But where did I go wrong?

One minute, everything was falling into place. The next it was falling to pieces, and as hard as I tried to preserve it, the decay was just too persistent. It spread too fast, and overtook my future.

Everything’s decayed now.

Even my memories are starting to rust.

There’s a lady out here I used to pass by on my way to work, every day. I used to avert my gaze, never locking with her hungry, pothole eyes. Her chessboard teeth. Her gnarled, swollen hands and yellowed, untrimmed nails. They would reach. And I would walk. And she would call. And I would walk. And she would say “God bless you” anyway. And smile.

And I would walk.

Silent. Distracted. Too consumed by dizzying fantasies of the trophy wife who left me. Our future children that we never had. A bigger house, twice the size of the meager three-bedroom apartment we shared. I always wanted bigger, I guess. Now I have nothing. Now I’d settle for what we wanted to leave behind in a heartbeat.

I met that lady again just the other day. Apparently she’d found a shelter uptown a few months back and they’d helped her get her life in order. She got on as a dishwasher at this little diner. She looked a lot cleaner. Not fancy, by far. But she looked...ever-so-slightly like I used to. It was a sobering reversal, watching her hands.

They reached. And I couldn’t walk anymore. And she called, and from my teary eyes I could make out that her hands were no longer empty. They didn’t ask; they offered.

At the end of the day, I never had the heart to take her money.

But I learned her name.

It was Lila. Lila McPherson.

She had a name.

They all did.

Oh, and one more little bit of information I left out. The last doctor visit I could afford didn’t go so good. Not that it mattered. At this point I’d give anything just to get out.

Another year at most I’ve got to rot in this place.

I could look for the shelter that rehabilitated Lila. But why? I’d be getting polished up just to die. Anything from hereon out is an exercise in futility.

So now all I can do is find my reflection in passing. Wait for a bus window or puddle or mirror. Find myself, and try to recognize. Find myself, and try to remember. Still, it seems every newest version of myself I find, he’s so far removed from the man I knew. And there’s no strength left to change him.

All I can do is remind him, reassure him.

He has a name too.

#fiction, #prose, #challenge, #homeless, #depression

I proclaimed “Bullshit” in full-tilt teacher voice as soon as the student finished his sentence. You could have heard a pin drop, had anyone in the class dared to drop anything.

Months later, a student would describe it to me as “that day you lost your temper,” but he was only half right. Genuine anger impelled the speech, but it was entirely calculated. I had seen the moment coming; I selected my words carefully. I had a message to send, and I wanted them to talk about it for as many months afterward as I could muster. I had only been waiting for the comment that would bring it all out into the open.

“You shouldn’t expect us to get this, Mr. Love,” John had said. “We’re just botards.”

botard, [BOE – tahrd] n. (slang) a derogatory term for one who studies vocational

education, suggestive of reduced intelligence. Origin a combination of BOCES

(New York State’s Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which handles

vocational training) and “retard.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “That is absolute bullshit and it’s an excuse. I don’t care what you plan to do for a living, you are capable of this, and don’t you dare tell yourselves otherwise. Is reading an 18th century essay hard? Yes! But don’t you dare pretend you can’t do it because you go to BOCES. Do you know how much intelligence it takes to fix a car, or cook, or run heavy equipment? I have a Master’s Degree. I couldn’t change the oil in my car to save my life. I could write a lovely poem about it, but I have no clue how to do it. I can’t fix an engine. I can’t blend makeup. I barely recognize any colors that don’t appear in a basic Crayola box. Intelligence comes in a hundred different shapes. I don’t ever want to hear the word “botard” again. The idea that people who get trained in a trade are dumb is bullshit.”

“Jeez Mr. Love, OK,” John said, awkward, surprised smile on his face. (I was glad it was John. I knew he’d roll with it.)

“Not at all mad at you, John,” I added. “It could have just as easily been someone else. But you’re smarter than some people give you credit for, and it pisses me off.”

And then we discussed our excerpt from Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Want people to be smarter?

Stop telling them they’re stupid.

"She's so dumb"

"Loser!"

"As if you could taste a sound! "

"Idiot"

"She's just so stupid !"

She walked through the hallway, their voices a flash of red and yellow, their faces the sound of static.

*****

"Can't he sit still ?"

"He keeps fidgeting"

"He never stops moving"

"He's just so stupid !"

He walked down the street, his hyperactive brain catching snippets but not full sentences, content in his own self.

*****

"She looks so sad"

"Can't she smile for once?"

"Leave her alone; she's just stupid"

She glanced about once or twice, then walked on, her brain carrying carrying the heavy burden of her life.

Stupid

from the Latin "stupere."

To be amazed or stunned.

So if you say you're stupid

it only means that

you are so out of your head

with wonder

that

you momentarily lack

intelligence.

you call the kid next to you stupid but in reality, he builds amazing robots in his basement.

you ask her 'how can she be failing history' when she stays up late trying to learn guitar and write her songs.

you assume the boy in your math class who's barely passing is stupid, but he plays the violin better than anyone.

the girl who can't sit still can climb trees in a second. she'd outrace you any time.

you call people stupid and you see stupid but you don't see how smart they really are.

Something cold and slightly damp encases my ass. I look down. A beige, tile floor fills my sightscape. Beneath the tile floor sits another floor, a replica outlining the first, and beneath this floor sits another and another and another. I look to my right. The beige linoleum stretches to an unseeable conclusion. I look left. Tile on tile on tile. I look up. A mirror reflects the beige, the tiles, the tiered floors and a porcelain toilet, but no me.

“What the fuck?” I whisper. The whisper chimes through the chambered dimensions, down, down, down through the tiled floors, gaining volume and velocity with each passing, “what the fuck, What The Fuck, What The FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK!”

I glance up. The mirror is still there.

Yet, no me.

I can feel the porcelain cutting into my ass. I can feel my body immobilized and stuck. Only my head can pivot, up, back, down, around.

“Where am I?” I think.

From out of my chest a creaky voice breaths,“where is not the question. Neither is why. When matters not. What and how survive.”

An unprompted chain of “what the fucks” clatter through the beige prism, although I say nothing.

“What the fuck is going on?” I ask. “What the hell are you?”

The words reverberate through the dimensions, a sticky snowball of syllables gaining volume and urgency that eventually whip my awareness with a loud “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?”

A chuckle escapes my chest. “I am the dumping pot, I’m part of the journey. Here to take your waste and subterfuge, so you may keep learning.”

I feel like I’m blinking, but I don’t know anymore.

“How did I get here?” I say, stunned.

“You died, silly goose.” The voice says with delight. “The big yellow school bus ran a redlight!”

“Shit,” I mumble.

Hushes of “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit” fill the void, reverberating off the walls like restless pigeons about to take flight.

“Well, what am I doing here? Why can’t I see my body in the mirror?” I say.

“Well, right now your body is stuck, suspended in space. You need to take a shit to ease the distaste!” sing-songs the voice.

“What does that even mean!?” I shout. A cacophany of booms echo my outburst.

When the ringing subsides, the voice answers,

“Your body is bound to the life of the past,

your consciousness is here, speaking fast.

The duality is broke of mind and body.

Now it’s time to move on by going potty.”

Ah, I think to myself. I must of recently died and my body hasn’t taken its final shit, one of those glamourous death reactions people rarely speak of.

“Okay… so I just need to shit?” I ask. “Like, physically, try to take a shit?”

“You can sit and strain and push with all might. The body, eventually, will yield with delight. It’s not physical shit I’ll ask for in here, but your memories and habits, your emotional ware. Once you let go of who you used to be, your sphincter will open, your body set free.”

“What happens if I refuse to push?” I ask defiantly.

“Then your consciousness will stay tethered to beige.

Your body will relinquish and one day decay.

Until that day comes, you’ll stay in here,

attached to a body you once held dear.

And while you wait, that mirror above,

will play movies and clips of the ones you once loved.

Friends and family, lovers and all,

lives that begin without you this fall.

You’ll watch from a distance, a lingering ghost,

watch all the lives that mattered most.

“So now, please, sit dear friend, let go of the self caged within.”

After my mother passed, comforting words came from the most unexpected source, my four year old nephew (a child who has not been raised in church and who had not really been explained Heaven).

Jake sighed and smiled from his car seat on the ride home after we left the funeral home and said "Grandma is in Heaven now with the Angels in a special house."

We asked how he knew and he responded that he could see her there and she was in a good place so we didn't need to worry because she didn't have her old body and was no longer in pain, instead she had wings and an Angel body.

The first time he said this we weren't sure what to think. We wondered how he knew about Heaven and if maybe there was truth in what he was seeing or perhaps it was a dream he was confusing with reality.

Since then Jake brought it up on another occasion or two.

One of the conversations that stood out most went as follows:

Jake: "I can see Grandma. She always watches over me. She will come back as a baby but by that time I will be an Angel again."

When asked he knew this and he said he just did. He then went on to explain that God tells us when it is time to come down while we are in Heaven. He takes us to a special circle where he says it's time again to take the "leap of faith" and that we have to trust him to come back down, but some angels never come back down. He said he remembered Heaven and that he KNOWS (the conviction in his voice as he explained this was astounding) his Grandma will be back but for now she is his Angel.

We aren't sure where this is all coming from but we are grateful to find some comfort in a time and world where there are more questions than answers as to what comes next and whether our beloved mother is in a better place now (a term often thrown at us).

If there is a heaven ,

Beethoven is there.

I wonder,

did he reach the rest

that he faild to find in life?

And with this peace,

will he have composed

more symphonies?

Would schubert,

who was practically a neighbor,

in their hometown,

finally find the courage

to talk to the

older master?

Would they collaborate?

Is heaven filled with newness,

with renewall,

or with an endless nostalgia?

If there is heaven,

Lincoln is there.

does he sit content,

in those hights,

unaware of things in the now?

or does he compose speeches ,

as he did,

with Martin Luther King,

and perhaps Gandhi,

until the time that the truth

rings out again in living ears?

Do the spirits even care,

once their load is dropped,

that we are still bleeding?

If there is a heaven,

Could you possibly meet those

that you never knew?

or are the networks

of aquiantances ,

that so restrict us in life,

still hold us back when we’ve done?

could we walk to a stranger

and shake his hand,

without fear of disgust or contempt?

Finally, lord I ask, if there is heaven,

do we learn what were your thoughts?

how you took and gave and built and flooded?

will we in heaven, know of the plan at last

so that we feel less bereived?