Rusty Linn
“Shaman”
Inspiration piece

Media Shamans
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response

Ancient traditions, i.e. timeworn “healing” charms,
Like sidecars on motorcycles, don’t truly pilot.
Damaging, controlling totems, though, remain
Sufficiently formidable to ruin directors’ careers,
To fashion the next, best, most big-ticket starlet,
Crown Internet royalty, award homage to small
Screen piranhas, raise the stakes on movie heroes.

Beyond the power of plastic surgery’s black magic,
Olden spirits, ghouls of a sort, also hajduks a plenty,
Promote the ones they like best; weathergirls, techs,
On-air personalities, politicians, maybe scene shifters.
Broadcastings of dreams, visions, merely get revealed
When spirit guides, like Ecstasy or cocaine, whisper
Hidden “truths” to other nobodies channel surfing.

Many etheogens, all electronic hustle, cluster between
County fair tents, work to web souls in non-rhotic bits,
Spout, elsewise hold sway, over tired game show gongs,
Nightly news anchors, music video’s roosters, producers.
Extra feathers and rattles, as presented by chaos medicine,
Try redressing esoteric surrounds twisted by large mirrors,
Sell flatulence fixes, broccoli recipes, perhaps sundry jobs.

Given this generation’s latest breakthroughs, its catharsis,
Possibly, we need no grand occult-style sharing of credit,
No conjurors’ fingers. The time for vigils, fasting, vision
Quests might well be over; few disfigured leaders among
The privileged temporarily surface, care to vindicate any
Common knowledge of things of indeterminate number,
Except when our effusive mouthpieces deign to shut up.

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

]]> https://getsparked.org/spark23/marilyn-ackerman-and-amy-blaxland Fri, 19 Dec 2014 21:05:04 +0000 http://www.getsparked.org/?p=13213 Marilyn Ackerman
Response

for snowbird
By Amy Blaxland
Inspiration piece

windy cloak sat down at the table
lay down at her deathbed
even on her deathbed
billowed black hooded breath
why nothing comes easy
her final gust
you don’t have to make an appearance
you shrink under it
pretend your size
your muscles loosen and lie
you cannot fear grief
the water comes out
your face
crying is the
lowest form of music

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jane Hulstrunk
Response

Amy Botula
Inspiration piece

Originally written in response to the shooting of Michael Brown and shared as part of a blog created for a high school English class in St Louis, Missouri.

Dear Students,

Since I first heard the news of Mike Brown’s murder and of the police’s horrific militarized response to the protests, you’ve been on my mind.

You and Missouri-born Langston Hughes and Hughes’ poem “Let America Be America Again.” Right now, it’s hard to remember that it was written in 1935– during the Great Depression, as the Dust Bowl spread, cities struggled, and most of Europe moved toward a second World War. It reads like a checklist of all the ways America is– and continues to be, especially as you are witnessing now– a serial lie, a cruel joke.

And yet. Hughes ends the poem with these lines:
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

He reminds us that “America” is a construct, a massive social experiment that will be defined and revised again and again. And, he leaves us with hope, hope that he keeps side-by-side with his anger, his frustration, and his bitterness.

Right now, with the rest of our nation and all the world watching, “America” can be defined again. But this time, it is you who determines that definition. It will be one to hold us accountable and to always remember.

You will give the words that power, and we will stand ready to listen.
With much love,
Amy Botula
Portland OR

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Matthew Levine
“Where They Used To Live”
Inspiration piece

The Big House
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

Billy Sullivan had always enjoyed himself at wakes. There was plenty of good food and drink and a steady swirl of good company; Family members, friends, acquaintances, even strangers, all connected to the man in the coffin.

Billy usually got a little tipsy at a wake even long after he stopped drinking. He couldn’t recall having connected with a woman at a wake – but it felt like he had.

You stand there at the edge of eternity and talk like you are at a party. You talk about the dead man when he was alive. Not about him dead. About where he was when you were with him back in the day. Not where he is now. It is somewhat like watching artillery fire walk toward you. It really is not all that easy. Everyone at a wake qualifies for an oak leaf cluster on his “courage-under-fire” medal.

Billy believed there was solid wisdom in the adage, “If you don’t attend your friend’s wakes, they won’t attend yours.” But he was completely unprepared when he suddenly found himself in a situation that felt like he was participating in the preparations for his own last party.

He and Brenda were readying their beautiful riverfront house for sale. They had burned through their savings. They had planned to live together in their elegant, European style manor on five acres of meadow by the Aspetuck River until they died, but now, after forty years, they had to leave.

They were out of money. It had taken a good while – but when the needle hit “empty”, it clanged

Billy was struggling as it was with the long delayed realization that he had lived much, much longer than he had planned (and the experts had predicted). He had effectively retired 15 years back. But he and Brenda hadn’t changed their life style much at all.

For years, he was still collecting good royalties – and making a little more from his retirement account than they were taking. But then the royalties dwindled down to nothing. Over the last four years they had burned through the last of their savings just maintaining themselves in the style to which they had grown accustomed (the past two years without the usual sojourn to Europe in the summer and a trip or two to some place sunny in the winter.)

They both were terrified of the awful truth as the money dwindled down. But they never admitted it to each other and so the reality somehow had remained at bay. Early on, long before they had married, they had assumed their roles: Billy would manage the investments and Brenda would handle the bills. But Denial is an equal opportunity resident. Their plight didn’t become official until Billy solemnly told Brenda over dinner on the Tuesday following the family Labor Day reunion party they had hosted that their investment accounts would be completely depleted in six months. They would have to sell the house.

That was the first time either of them had uttered or heard those words out loud and their lives would never be the same.

In just a few days, Brenda had decided to retain Mary Priddy, an experienced real estate broker who headed her own Sales Team at a big national firm. Billy was shocked when Brenda agreed with Mary’s recommendation to hire a specialist group of Stagers to do the house.

Brenda had overseen the decoration all these years. Billy loved what she had done. For decades, all kinds of people had been telling him how beautiful the house was. Regulars like family members; clients seeing Jimmy on business; friends of their children; visitors from abroad; even deliverymen would tell him he was way lucky to be in such a great house.

Now Mary Priddy was insisting Brenda and Billy pay Stagers thousands of dollars to ready the house to market. Billy didn’t get it. Mary Priddy very patiently explained that tastes had changed over the years. The likely purchasers of the house were at least a generation younger than the Sullivans. Today’s ideas about style were much different. That’s why the Stagers were necessary. They could rearrange the existing décor to have it better match the expectations of today’s market.

The Stagers did a lot of rearranging. They took down all of the paintings and gathered them together in the cedar closet. (There were more than eighty of them.) They inventoried the furniture and put some pieces into storage. They tore down the window treatments. (Mary Priddy told Billy today’s customer is looking for more light.)

Mary Priddy suggested that they take a few days away so her crew could go full tilt into making the necessary changes. So Billy and Brenda drove to Bethesda to see the grandsons on a Wednesday and came back on Sunday.

When they entered the house, Brenda squealed with delight. She told Billy the décor was vastly improved. Billy didn’t know what to say to her. He did know things weren’t right. It was the same house – with the same furniture and art – but all the new arrangements gave Billy an eerie feeling. It was like it was being in his parent’s house after they were dead and Billy’s brother, Steve and his wife, Lilly, had redecorated. The same house and much the same furnishings – but a different place.

Billy kept silent. But he felt engulfed by a wave of sadness. They hadn’t sold the house yet – but it was gone. He would never again see their beautiful house. It was gone forever.

Later, he foolishly told Brenda that he didn’t much like what the Stagers had done.

“That’s because you have no idea of modern taste and fashion,” she snapped at him. “We’ll get a lot more money for our house because of the wonderful work of the Stagers – and all you can do is complain.”

Billy kept quiet from then on. The house was gone – there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even complain out loud. So, he didn’t. He stayed on good behavior while Mary Priddy and her people finished prepping the house. He participated in the photo selection. He chimed in on the copy describing the house in the listing.

He worked hard on an extra segment for the listing, “What I love about this house.”

He didn’t have a drink. He didn’t get stoned. He did not try to bed one of the Stagers. He patiently waited for Mary Priddy to sell their house – so this ghastly wake would finally be over and he could sleep some place else in the comfort of his own home.

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Matthew Levine
“History”
Response

Hotline Action
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration piece

Chris was off that Saturday afternoon just back from a long, dangerous,
ultimately successful op in Arizona. He had slept late and had coffee on the deck. The dogwoods were in full bloom and they touched him. Spring had ended months ago in the high desert.

He was driving on Metro Avenue to the ballgame at the stadium when a call came in over his scanner about a robbery and shots fired at a liquor store literally a block away from him off Metro and when Chris rolled up there was a fat, young, black, female cop down on her knees on the sidewalk in front of the store with her hands against her sternum right above her badge and blood was spurting from between her fingers. Her mouth was working like she was screaming, but Chris couldn’t hear anything. Her Glock was lying there in the street close behind her.

There was a young teenage Latino kid lying there about twenty feet away flat on his back, eyes fixed up at the sky with a perfectly round bullet hole in his face just to the right of his nose — a squat, snub 38 still hanging on his index finger — and 30 feet further down, near the entrance to an alley lined with dumpsters, a bright blue gym bag lay upside down with a big pile of cash spilled out of it — some of the bills were fluttering away in the breeze.

Chris called in for back up and EMT’s and went to open his door. As he pulled the handle, the cop went over backwards and lay there contorted with her shins under her. She wasn’t even twitching.

Chris resisted his impulse to rush to help her. Something was hinky. The alley. It looked like the dead kid had been headed toward the alley. So, Chris eased out of his car on the passenger side, which was out of direct view from the alley. Then he worked his way around toward the alley entrance.

He shouted, “Police! We know you’re there. Throw out your weapon and come out or we’ll open fire.”

Right away, a sawed-off pump Remington shotgun clattered out.

Chris shouted, “I said throw out all your weapons!”

Amazingly, another sawed-off pump Remington came tumbling out.

“Now you. Mesh your fingers on your head and walk straight out here very slowly. Do it now!”

Two pretty, slender, light-skinned, Latina, high-school-age girls walked out side-by-side. They were chewing gum and giggling nervously.

Chris kept his Glock right on them so they could see it and then he turned them around against a wall, cuffed them together and patted them down. Then he walked them back to his car, got out his spare handcuffs, turned them again, cuffed each of them and stowed them in the back seat.

He had just holstered his weapon when three black and whites, an ambulance and two unmarked cars rolled in and a bunch of cops and EMT’s jumped out. Chris badged them and said, “Federal Agent.”

They clustered around the downed, bent backwards cop – but it was clear she was gone. “She’s expired,” said one of the EMT’s, a gangly red headed man in his middle forties with horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a stethoscope.

They went into the liquor store and it was like a slaughterhouse. The girls had opened up with their shotguns on the middle-aged Mom & Pop owners and the other perpetrator had killed the only customers, an elderly couple. He had shot each of them in the middle of the forehead.

There were gouts of blood on the walls, and the ceiling, even on the fluorescent lights. The dead old folks were sprawled in vast connecting pools of blood. Two cops suddenly bent over and vomited. Some of the vomit splattered into a blood puddle and another cop, bent, turned around and vomited – scattering the others.

Chris went out and stood by while the cops transferred the two girls from his car to a patrol car. A patrolman returned Chris’s handcuffs and a lieutenant took a statement from him.

The dead cop was Melody Barnes. She’d been on the force six years. The dead kid and the two girls were dropouts from the high school down the street. One of the patrolmen thought they were from the same family – or at least lived at the same house a few blocks down. He said the word was they ran with a crew that was a branch of the Latin Kings.

The crime-scene truck rolled up and then the Coroner’s van. The lieutenant had Chris sketch in the scene on a pre-printed form. Chris mentioned that everything was just as they were seeing it now – except the girls were out of his sight in the alley. The lieutenant said he knew – but that Chris should know there was no getting around paperwork.

Chris said he did know. The lieutenant said he was impressed Chris had sensed that the alley could be hiding a potential threat.

“I gotta say 99 out of 100 cops would have run right over to help the injured officer. And those girls would have blown your ass away.”

Chris didn’t say anything.

“What was it? Did you have some sort of sixth sense?”

Chris told him he wouldn’t say it was a sixth sense. He had a lot of experience. In the Marines and in the street as a DEA Agent. Your chances were better if you did your fighting by the book.

“It was more or less routine for me to look past the spilled money bag and figure I had to clear that alley. It was experience and training. But I was real surprised when those two pump guns came sailing out and then the two Latinas.”

“Little frigging monsters. They claim they’re 15 and 16. They say they want their Mommas.”

Chris signed his statement and promised he’d come into the station whenever needed. He said he was going to go on to the ball game.

The lieutenant asked him if he was all right. Chris told him he was doing just fine. And he was.

————————————————-

Billy Tanner, his new AA Sponsee, was waiting for him at the ball game. Tanner, a bond sales whiz kid in his early forties, had nearly perished after twenty years of binge drinking. An amiable, big-shouldered man with black curly hair and a disarming dimple that enchanted even ladies who knew better, Billy had fancied himself a bourbon connoisseur – but he had ended up chugging vodka from pint bottles and snorting cocaine straight from the baggie.

Billy’s wife, Maxine, had been his drinking and drug buddy until the kids arrived. By the time the two boys were 9 and 7, Maxine had fallen in love with Frank Emerson, a third grade teacher, she met at a back-to-school night Billy missed. Maxine was really happy with Frank. It was an amazing rescue from the misery of being a lonely mother, the forlorn wife of an active alcoholic.

They were blissful. They planned a divorce but it would be hard. Frank lived with his widowed mother, who had Parkinson’s. It was a small retirement cottage – not nearly big enough. They planned. They saved. They enjoyed the bliss. Then one evening, while Billy was out of town at a convention, they experimented with a little bit of heroin that Lucy Jorgenson, a Special Ed, teacher, had given to Frank. It was the first time for both of them. They snorted up a little and within an hour both of them were dead of an overdose.

The little bit of heroin that Lucy Jorgenson had given Frank had come from a much larger amount that Lucy had been given by the grateful father of one of her Special Ed students. The father was a drug dealer, pretty high up on the chain. He had told Lucy to go easy. But she hadn’t realized this heroin was so pure it was lethally potent.

So, Maxine and Frank died naked in Frank’s bed. Frank’s mother found their blue bodies entwined there in the bed the next day.

Billy flew home and did what he had to do. He hadn’t known about Maxine and Frank. But he knew right away why Maxine was with Frank. Billy controlled his drinking during the week of the funeral and burial. Then he asked his mother to take charge of his boys and checked himself into a famous rehab in California.

Six weeks later, Billy emerged from the rehab determined to do whatever it took to stay clean and sober. Ten months back, Chris had met him at a meeting and agreed to be his sponsor. Ever since, Billy had diligently worked the Steps with Chris guiding him through. He was changing. Chris was thinking he had a chance.

It was the fifth inning by the time Chris got to the game but he hadn’t missed much. It was a pitcher’s duel. It stayed scoreless until the bottom of the ninth when the Pilgrims won the game on a double and a single. The winning run slid in on a close play at the plate.

They ambled on out with the happy crowd. Chris’s cell buzzed. It was the AA Hotline. Chris took the call. The Operator told Chris she hadn’t been able to reach the normal duty volunteers and that she had called him because he was listed as the emergency backup.

She said a man had called the hotline and said he was desperate to speak to someone from AA. Chris called the number and a voice pleaded with him for help. The man said he was afraid he was dying. Could Chris please come now? The drunk lived with his elderly mother in a nearby condo complex. Chris took the address and said he would come right away.

Chris told Billy that it was a 12th Step call. A drunk was asking for help. The AA tradition was when anyone reached out to AA – you came.

The condo complex was about a mile from Billy’s house, so Chris suggested that Billy drop his car off at home and then they would go on the call together. Long ago, AA experience had determined that you don’t want to make 12th Step calls on your own. It was too stressful. Often, it could be very dangerous.

Billy was plainly pleased he had been asked to help. Billy dropped off his car and Chris drove them on to the condo. The unit was on the second floor. The door opened up right away. A white haired, white bearded man in his early fifties stood there. He was bare-chested. He had a huge potbelly that spilled out over his dungaree shorts. He was shaking and trembling all over as if he had the chills.

Chris knew what it was. It wasn’t the chills.

“Are you Chris, from AA? I’m John Murphy. Thank God you’ve come.
I think I’m dying.”

Chris introduced Billy and asked if they could come in. They stood just inside the door. Further in, a frail, deeply wizened old woman in her 80’s or 90’s sat in a rocking chair.

“Hello”, said Chris to her. “We’re from AA. We’ve come to help.”

John Murphy said that yesterday he had consumed more than a half-gallon of vodka. He lived with his mother here in the loft of her one-bedroom condo. He had passed out last night. He had just awoken in big distress. He couldn’t stop shaking all over.

He had a regular job as a landscaper and business had just started to pick up with it being spring. He had a girl friend but they were having a hard time on some issues – so he had been drinking more than usual. His mother was struggling with dementia.

“Well, Chris said, “It is good you got through to us. We need to get you
to the hospital right away. Will your mother be all right here without you?

“Oh, yeah,” John replied. “She’s here by herself all the time when I’m at work or out with my girl, Trudy. Am I going to be okay? I feel like I’m dying.”

“Well, you’re bad sick – we need to get you to the hospital – but you should be okay once you get treatment. Get your wallet and ID and let’s get going. Make sure you have your insurance card.”

Chris walked up to the old lady. She was shriveled. Flesh drooped off the bones on her arms.

“Hello,” she said. “My big brother’s name was Chris but he was killed
on Guadalcanal. You look like a really nice man. Can you help my boy?
He’s so sick. He’s so sad.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Murphy”, Chris said. “Your son will be okay once we get him to the hospital. They know what to do. I’m going to take him in right away. I’ll let you know how he’s doing.”

They had only traveled a few miles, when Murphy screamed, “Stop the car – I’m going to puke!” Chris pulled right over. Billy opened the back door and Murphy flopped into the gutter and retched. He had the dry heaves. “I’m dying”, he screamed. “Please save me, please, please, save me!”

Chris pulled out a silver half pint flask from the glove compartment and handed it out to Billy, who was trying to prop up Murphy. “Here,” Chris said. “This will set him straight.”

Billy gave Chris a double take and then handed Murphy the flask.
Murphy’s hands were shaking so bad, there was no way he was going to get the cap off. “Open it up and help him,” Chris barked.

“What is it?” Croaked Murphy.

“It’s what you need,” Chris said, curtly.

“Down the hatch.”

Billy twisted the cap off and Murphy took the flask and chugged it down.

Towards the end, he coughed and some of the amber brown liquid sprayed out of his nose on to Billy’s arm.

“Oh, God,” Murphy groaned. That’s good. Am I going to die? Please don’t let me die.”

“Get back in the car so we can get you to the hospital — we’re only ten minutes out.”

“Am I going to die?”

“No. I absolutely guarantee you are not going to die if we get you to the hospital. I have a lot of experience at this. They will keep you safe. I promise.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you”, Murphy said as Billy helped him back into the car.

“God bless you both. I have so much to live for. Trudy and I are going to get married soon. My poor demented mother needs me. Please don’t let me die.”

Once they got to the ER the rest was easy. Murphy’s DT’s worked like an EZ-pass. The triage nurse took his driver’s license and insurance card and moments later a nurse was wheeling him into the treatment area.

“See you in a few days,“ Chris called after him.

“You’re in good hands.”

“God, that was scary”, Billy said as they drove back.

“I was bad but I was never that bad.”

“You were all the bad you had to be,” Chris said.

“Our man had end stage DT’s. That will get you through triage
real quick.”

“What was in that flask? It sure did the trick. But it didn’t smell like booze.”

“That’s because it was Dr. Brown’s Diet Cream Soda. It never fails.
Don’t ask me why because I don’t know why.”

When Chris dropped him off Billy said, “Thanks for being my Sponsor.
I learned a lot today.”

Chris said, “The arrows go both ways. I learned a lot too. Thanks for coming with me. You were a big help. I’ll see you tomorrow at the 5:30 meeting at St. Paul’s.”

Chris got his dinner at the corner Chinese takeout. Marie, his girl friend, was flying in next morning from London. She played viola for a chamber music ensemble that was much in demand. In fact, she was on the road more than he was.

He ate heartily. Egg drop soup. Jumbo Prawns. Pork fried rice. It was simple fare but so good. This Chinaman knew what he was doing. You could count on him
every time.

He called the hospital to get an update on Murphy. Jenny, a charge nurse at the ER who Chris knew from way back, answered. It turned out they really had saved Murphy’s bacon. He had been at the outer limit of the DT’s. He was detoxing in the Psych ward. He had decent insurance. He was good for at least ten days.

“With any luck, you’ll see Mr. Murphy in the rooms, in a couple of weeks,” she said.

He called Murphy’s mother. The phone rang and rang – and he was about to hang up when the old lady answered.

“Mrs. Murphy? I just wanted you to know John is okay. They’ve given him some meds and he’s resting comfortably. Are you okay?

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m so worried about Johnny. He lost his girl, you know. After eight years. Last Thursday they broke up. It’s so sad. That’s when he started drinking so much. He says he loves Trudy. He gave her anything she wanted. But she wanted him to come and live with her and he wouldn’t do it. So she ended it. That’s when the drinking got bad.”

“Well, Mrs. Murphy, he’s safe now. He’s going to detox under medical supervision – and they’ll also introduce John to AA so he can learn how to stay sober.”

“I know about AA. John’s father tried it. But he died.”

“John’s father died of drink?”

“Yes, he died 28 years ago. He was a good man.”

“Well, Mrs. Murphy, I can see how this would be very upsetting to you.
There’s a part of AA, called Alanon, which is meant for the loved ones of people who are recovering from Alcoholism. Would you be interested in attending an Alanon meeting to see what it’s like?”

“I suppose I would. But how would I get there? I have trouble driving these days.”

“No worries. I’ll drive you. I go to Alanon myself now and then. Tell you what, I’ll check the Alanon Meeting Directory to see if I can find a meeting close to you and then I’ll call you back.”

Chris found a Beginner’s Meeting scheduled for 8:30 that night within easy driving distance at the St Luke Catholic Church annex.

He called Mrs. Murphy and told her he would pick her up at 8:15. She said she would be ready.

“Thanks for driving me,” she said. “I think Alanon will be good for me even though Johnny just came back.”

“John just came back?” Chris could hardly believe it.

“Yes, he came in about five minutes ago and went straight to bed.
He said he was fine and to thank you.”

Chris said he’d be by to pick her up at 8:15.

He took a shower and changed. He still reveled in the luxury of a long hot shower. It was an amenity Alexander the Great had never enjoyed.

He called and checked with his section head. She ragged Chris about busting the girls at the liquor store.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment and then he laughed hard.

“They were sweet young things who blew away the Mom & Pop liquor store owners with sawed off double ought pumps. I’ll bet I get a frigging medal.”

It had been a very long time since he had gotten in the last word.

Chris drove out to the condo to take Mrs. Murphy to the Alanon meeting. It was totally amazing that Murphy had come home from the hospital. Chris wondered how he had gotten out of the Psych unit. Maybe the girl friend had picked him up and driven him back. He would have to ask the old lady.

As Chris approached the door of the condo, his cell buzzed.

“Is this Chris?” the voice said. The number was blocked.

“Yes”, Chris said. “Who’s this?”

“John Murphy. I want to thank you and Billy for saving my life.”

“John Murphy? I thought you came home. Where are you?”

“I’m in D-Tox in the Psych ward. I’m feeling so much better. They gave me a shot – I don’t know what it was – but my shakes went right away and I’m feeling so much better. You guys saved my life. I’m going to get sober and get married to Trudy. I’ve waited too long.”

“That’s great, John. I’m right outside your condo now. Your mom asked me to drive her to an Alanon meeting. That’s a support group for people who have loved ones having trouble with alcohol. You mom said you broke up with Trudy.”

“No, Chris, that’s my crazy mom. Trudy and I have never been better.
My mom hates Trudy – she thinks Trudy is trying to take me away from her. My mom is always making things up.”

“Well, she had me believing you were home and that you and Trudy were done. “

“See what I’m up against?”

“Well, John, hang in there. It does get better.”

“Thanks, Chris. You guys saved my life. Watch out for my mom. You never know with her.”

“OK, John. I’ll take good care with your mom. You concentrate on getting better. Billy and I will be there to help you when you come out.”

Chris shut his phone and rang the bell on the condo door.

“Who is it?” said Mrs. Murphy through the door.

“It’s Chris – come to take you to the Alanon meeting.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

The door opened. Mrs. Murphy was standing there in a black nightgown.

She said, “You bastard. You’re working with that whore to take my Johnny away.”

Chris was about to say that she needed to put on a dress to go to the meeting when she raised her fleshy arm way over her head. She was holding a long carving knife. Chris saw her plunge the knife down with surprising speed right at his heart. He tried to dodge away but it was too late.

He was down on his back.

He was amazed and very embarrassed the old lady had got him.

The knife was sticking out of his chest.

The handle was inscribed “John & Sara 1949.”

It hurt. His vision was going.

The last thing he heard was,

“Die you bastard! You’ll never take my Johnny away!”

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Rusty Lynn
“Crosier Bishop Beast”
Response

Sansen Sessions and Woodland Sprints
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Inspiration piece

As though no instance of maidens had marked his cycles,
Thunder quavered his silent bending forward then back.
Weeks of woods journeying, all solitude, where cool
Mountain tops bred pure waters, where gentle air puffed
Toward probable ends, where reliably finite segregations,
Separations among species, terrains and temperatures,
Promised human tactics as peripheral to woodland glamours,
Proved small influence when countering wars’ vast machines.

Prepared by a craggy experience, that cousin, all crosier,
Dog, also fabric backpack, cared little for earned insignia.
There, above sleepy crofts, where human relicts, like
Wonderers, thieves, maybe bagpipe players, might mistake
Sprouted Existence for aspirations toward higher levels,
It was no golem, but a lesser, fleshy apprentice, a gale force
Of sorts, one compromised by eye saccades, who watched
As rape, pillage, other evil ministrations, recurred again.

His share of previous harvests’ profits, had bought cold
Lentil stew, plums, hard bread, along with a flask of wine.
Aphusimos behavior suited those of his ilk beneath firs, such
That their contributions to political breakouts were standard,
Enforced with bit of biting wire, knives, coarse ropes, staffs,
Until such service became viewed as irresolvably flawed,
Became seen as unnecessarily dirty to advisors of reigning kin.
Then townsmen macheted all of his team, without pang of guilt.

_________________________

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Jane Hulstrunk
Inspiration piece

In The Weeds
By Amy Botula
Inspiration piece

I had the usual, run-of-the-mill chores as a kid: help with your sister, help with the start and end of meals, keep your room clean, and come summer, weed all the flower beds. I loathed this task. Even more than ironing, which, as a prep-obsessed teen who spent all of freshman and sophomore year wearing an oxford everyday, I had to do every Sunday after laundry. But weeding never got easier, it just grew more annoying and kept me, summer day after summer day, from doing what I wanted.

All I wanted was Ian Johnson, for as many summer days as I could manage.

Ian Johnson of the swim team, wearing a Speedo, and reminding me of everything my thirteen years hadn’t taught me. Ian Johnson of the gray Impala, available whenever he wanted. Ian Johnson, the sophomore then junior then senior. Around and willing whenever my mom was at work.

Racing up the stairs to my bedroom, his hands grabbing my terry cloth shorts as I skipped two at a time, falling onto my carpet and dry-humping and wrestling until a wet circle was left on my shorts and near-scabs on my knees– Ian’s visits were quick and covert.

But to maintain the cover that I was spending my summer chore-focused, the weeding had to be done. So I divided my non-Ian time between doing the weeding and finding ways to fake it. The young clover was preferable to the dandelions, their roots shallow and easy to pick by hand or dust dirt over. Dandelions with their extensive roots required a trowel and complete attention though. And forget about the ones with white seed-filled heads. They demanded two hands, one to use the trowel and one to hold on to the head lest the seeds blow elsewhere. Most times, I got lazy and cut the dandelions down to the smallest bit of stem and then hoped the dirt would be enough of a disguise.

I was better at erasing the traces of Ian: smoothing out footprints from carpet, coaching him to park in front of my neighbor’s house, keeping my room immaculate, and never arranging for a visit during a potential lunch break. My crowning achievement in covert operations came from earlier moments of sloppiness: I had allowed Ian to stay past noon and to park his car closer to our house than usual. Of course this was the day my mom decided to come home and check on my chore-progress.

The low purr of our early era Jetta’s engine was hard to ignore. I heard it pull up the driveway and bolted upright on the carpet, my shirt off and bra away from me.

“Go in the closet, go in the closet!” I hissed as I reorganized myself.

Ian did as I said, and as I closed the door, Mom called out, “Amy?”

“Up here!” I yelled, turning and looking toward the closet. It wasn’t going to be enough. She was walking from the kitchen to the front stairs; she was going to come up. I found some kind of grace and control to lunge without stumbling to the closet while urgently whispering “Go into the crawlspace, the crawlspace!”

My mom opened my bedroom door just as I turned around. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Cleaning, organizing things.”

“And what else are you going to do today?” She asserted herself into my room and looked around as she talked. I backed away from the closet.

“Why do I feel like you’re hiding something…and whose car is that outside?” Now her hands were on her hips, elbows echoing the angle of her Norma Kamali shoulderpads.
“Open the closet.”

“What? Uh, okay.” I did and stepped away. She pushed past me to peer in.

“I don’t know what…that’s probably a friend of Dennis or Donald. I’m just cleaning and then I’m going to finish the weeding,” I said.

She pivoted and took me in slowly and then said, “All right,” drawing out those syllables just as long. “I’m going back to work. Call me when you’re done.”

“Okay, bye.”

The ten minutes needed for her to go down the stairs, out the back door, and start the car seemed to take thirty. I crouched under my front window to keep watch. The closet made no sound.

I waited until five minutes after I saw her car go down the street, past Ian’s Impala, and opened the closet door. Ian crawled out. We looked at each other and laughed to the point of hyperventilating. We couldn’t touch each other, though we were giddy with the success of our con. The air felt too electric– touching would bring static and shock.

We didn’t resume our place on my carpet. The spell was broken; it was time for Ian to go. He led the way out of my room and down the stairs to the front door. He paused before opening the door and turned toward me. We stood closely and smiled shyly. Then he was out and walking to his car.

I returned to the weeds in the front yard. This time, determined to take care of them correctly. No matter how long it took.

_________________________

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M.M. Panas
“Take Back the Night”
Mixed media
Inspiration piece

Muscle Memory
By JoAnn Moore
Response 

I find myself
at the edge.
Teetering…
Dizzied, again, by the past
when I learned the heart has
muscle memory
if bruised so young.

For forty years I’ve tried
to find a way out of that car.
To have not trusted sooner.
But I know,
it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Dirt roads make great adventures,
but they cannot hear you scream.
And the next day, when you went to school
and bragged to your football buddies
that your initials were
carved on my insides—
my silence was sealed.

Now, each time love tries
to find a way in—

I find myself at the edge again.

I want you to know:
…..You deserved that tree,
…..five years later,
…..when you failed to negotiate.
…..That I went to your grave
…..and danced.
…..That my first act of public
…..vandalism was carving
…..into a broken trunk:

I survived.
Love wins.

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

M.M. Panas
“Talisman”
Response

Zephyrs
By JoAnn Moore
Inspiration piece

No one knows I’m here
except the wide eyed moon’s
cypress shadows—
and Pa, my watchman
more than forty years now—
the invisible talisman who lets me be
lost until the tide pulls.
Or how the brush of breeze
lingers hope like a flower,
breathes my name,
and rights me again.

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jonathan Ottke
Response

Between Islands
By Caroline Crawford
Inspiration piece

Good reading material for a long commute is important. Whatever you bring with you to read has to be compelling, but the kind of reading you can pick up and put down over and over again. This way, when you’re running for the subway, only to discover that the #4 express to Bowling Green just became the #6 local to Brooklyn Bridge, you can catch your breath and read for a few minutes until the next train screeches into the station, and you can still feel like you’ve accomplished something.

That’s why I started carrying poetry as I commuted back and forth from Staten Island into New York City.

“We were very tired, we were very merry–

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–”

I looked up from The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. A stable, indeed. Seventy years after the poem was written, and the air was still hot and close and smelly, and I was tired–but not merry. What I was was drunk and sweating on in the Manhattan side of the Staten Island Ferry terminal. I hated the heavy bag of manuscripts on my shoulder, hated the panty hose that I’d been wearing since I had dressed for work over 15 hours ago, and especially hated the last beer I’d tossed back at the South Street Seaport, without which I probably would not have missed the 11:00 ferry. But instead I’d gone for one more round, drinking with some college friends like we had class and not work the next day, and now here I was with an hour to kill before the next ferry arrived.

The terminal was slowly filling with the remarkable variety of people that late night public transportation brings together in New York: burned-out Wall Streeters with their jackets over their arms, quietly and methodically sipping cold beer from tall paper cups, rowdy high-school students wearing threatening expressions and misshapen clothing, smartly dressed middle-aged couples returning from their semi-annual theater forays, and blank-eyed parents with irritable, exhausted children.

The bright fluorescent lights shone white-green, buzzing from the high ceiling through 40 years of flies. Rogue pigeons, some with maimed or missing feet, soared and strutted through the building. I read each illuminated advertisement for banking, temporary employment, travel agencies and the dermatologist who proclaimed, “Torn Earlobe? I’ll fix it!” I hated it all.

Two months before, I’d been cool and proud in a heavy black robe on a brilliant, breezy spring day, accepting my English degree with honors. I was employed, ready to begin a glamorous career in book publishing in my native New York. Now I was five weeks into a job at Panton, a book behemoth that liked to promote the fact that they had been Nabokov’s first American publisher, although their current authors were more along the lines of Suzanne Somers. I was the editorial assistant to Tess Finney, an editor just eight years older than me who ran half-marathons every weekend and who started every sentence with, “I DON’T think you REALLY get what I want,” and then finished with a sigh and a turn on her heel. She had had three assistants in the two years before I arrived. The wall calendar in my cubicle waited at October 1990. It was June 1991.

“Hey,” said a voice behind me. My hand still clutched the poetry book, which I’d taken to carrying in front of me during my commute like a bouquet of garlic in Transylvania. I turned my sweating self to a short, stocky young man whose opened shirt revealed a variety of chains and pendants frolicking within a deep forest of chest hair. “Hey, didn’t we go to high school together?”

Vinny Andino. ”Hello, Vinny, how are you?” I hadn’t seen him since I kicked him off of the yearbook staff for stealing senior portraits of the girls he’d liked. I wonder if he’d remember.

“Hey, you kicked me off the yearbook, remember?”

“Oh…did I? Wow. That was a long time ago.”

“Hey, so, Laura, it’s good to see you. What are you doing now?”

“I just graduated. I’m working in book publishing. Great job,” I lied.

“Books, hey, that’s cool. I’m an accountant now. Got recruited my senior year from Saint John’s. Big Six–Ernst and Young. Good money. I don’t start till September, so I’m doing the summer thing now, you know? Got a summer share down the shore, going out a lot. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Well, yeah, sure,” I said. “But you know, right now I’ve got this manuscript thing to read. Good to see you.” I sank into a seat. Vinny Andino. A Big Six accountant. I decided to focus on ways to stretch my $16,000-a-year salary so that I could afford the commute to and from Staten Island via the bus, the ferry and the subway in each direction, lunch out twice a week at a “pay by the pound” salad bar place, and the probability of living with my parents for the next 10 years. A helpless frustration mingled with my beer high. Here I was, alone, still half-drunk, attempting to proofread a manuscript so that I might earn an extra $40 of freelance money and afford another night out like this one.

I turned back to Edna Saint Vincent Millay and continued reading.

“ But we looked into a fire, and we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon;

and the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry–

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

from a dozen of each we had bought somewhere.”

So much for my theory of satisfying commuter reading. Even Edna St. Vincent Millay was eating fruit with a companion, and I was alone.

I straightened up. Alone by choice, I needed to remind myself. I’d broken up with Ethan after five years of being his girlfriend so that I could experience the thrills of adulthood as a single woman. The thrills had yet to arrive.

Take last week, for example. Faith Ferland, an editor at Panton who has a set of eyeglass frames to match each of her outfits, approached me on Tuesday.

“Laura,” Faith whispered, sitting on the edge of my desk, her bottle-green eyeglasses perched at the end of her sharp nose, “Rumor around here has it that you’re single.”

“Well, as a matter of fact I am,” I said eagerly. I was relieved to be taken away for the moment from the pile of rejection letters that I was typing. “Dear Mr. Copeland,” said the one in my typewriter, “Many thanks for sending us Key Largo Nights. Unfortunately, we have found the market for fiction about the Drug Enforcement Agency to be challenging at present. Best of luck placing your manuscript elsewhere.” I turned to Faith. “I had a boyfriend all through college but I broke up with him before graduation. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, that’s just great!” said Faith. “My husband’s nephew just moved to the city. I’ve only met him a few times, but his name is Ted and he really he doesn’t know a soul. You seem friendly. Would you mind if he gave you a call? He’s got a great job–I’m sure he’ll show you a nice time.”

Night on the town in New York–this is the life I was waiting for, the kind of life I’d read about in Cosmo. A fabulous new dress, dinner, dancing, champagne on the promenade, dawn over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Sign me up,” I agreed.

Ted called while I was at lunch and left his number. I called back eagerly. “Hi, Ted, this is Laura Shepherd. Faith…”

“Hello, Laura,” said a disarmingly smooth voice.

“Faith … uh.. Faith…uh… hi.”

Ted made the phone call mercifully short. Yes, his aunt had encouraged him to call. Yes, he had just moved here from Philadelphia and he didn’t know anyone. He was working as a vice president for financial research at Merrill Lynch. The hours were a bitch but the pay was great. He didn’t know much about publishing, but he’d be willing to listen if I’d be willing to talk. Yes, he’d like to go out Friday night if I was available. I was. Great.

“Ted,” I ventured, as we were getting off the phone. “How will I know it’s you? What do you look like?” We were scheduled to meet for a drink at Cafe Iguana on Park and 23rd. If we hit if off, we agreed, we would take it from there.

“Oh, back in college my friends told me I look like James Taylor,” he said. “I’ll wear a red tie.”

I arrived at the Iguana Thursday night looking for Sweet Baby James, but I instead found myself facing a sea of masters of the universe in red ties, one of whom looked disconcertingly like the James Taylor of 1991, complete with shiny bald head. I acknowledged him with a nervous wave and he gestured me over to his table.

Within minutes, Ted was deep into a description of financial strategies and a second glass of 15-year-old scotch, which I estimated to have cost close to what I made in a day. I was seven when they put that in the bottle, I thought, anxiously sipping at a gin and tonic. I had flinched when the waitress asked me what type of gin I wanted. Two months earlier my friends and I had been in bars till 2 a.m., drinking pitchers of mixed drinks made with cheap booze that came in plastic half gallon jugs. The only gin that came to mind was Old Mr. Boston. My panicked look had obviously amused Ted, who suggested Tanqueray.

“How old are you, Laura?” he asked, draining his glass.

“Twenty-one. How old are you?” I replied. I knew James Taylor hadn’t had such a hairline at my age.

“I’m 34. So. Tell me–what is it you do,” said Ted, looking at his watch. The champagne and the sunrise over the bridge were going to wait, I could see.

“Well, I’m in book publishing. You see, I always loved to read and to write and I thought that working in publishing would be a good way to combine things I liked to do and make some money.”

“Do you make good money?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then why do you want to do this?”

“Because I want to be a writer,” I said. I had never said that to anyone before, but it was true. I might as well start saying it.

“Do you get to write?”

“No. Well, I write rejection letters.”

“Writers don’t make money, unless you get a hook. Do you have a hook? Like, what’s his name, Tom Clancy. He has a hook.”

“Tom Clancy is a hack,” I told him. “His editor has to take his manuscripts home and rewrite them from beginning to end.”

“Yeah, so?” said Ted, “He makes money.”

At the end of the hour, Ted yawned and said something about an early morning meeting. We headed out the door together, and he insisted on hailing me a cab. “Nice to meet you, Laura. You’re a little young, but you’re a nice girl,” he said as he closed the taxi door. “Take it easy.”

The cab turned the corner. “Can you let me out right here?” I asked in a small voice. “I don’t actually have enough money for you to take me anywhere.” I walked down to Union Square and took the N train to the ferry.

That was last Friday. Here I was, a week later, and I was still smarting over the comment about needing a hook. Did James Joyce sit down to write Ulysses thinking, “now what’s my hook? I’ve got to pay the rent?”

What if he did? Too much to contemplate. Where was my book? I opened it and read,
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spark to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone…

I closed the book. Nearby, a little girl began to whine. The large terminal clock loomed 11:45. The girl’s mother scolded her in Spanish and she started to cry. I put the book in my bag and paced, watching the girl, who was dressed in a dirty purple shirt and pink stretch pants. She began to bellow, then stopped. A young man was crouched in front of her, and, with a sketch pad on his knees, he began slicing lines of yellow, orange, blue and red across the page. I stood back, mesmerized like the child by the school of goldfish that were suddenly swimming on paper. The girl giggled, her curly brown pig tails quivering with delight, and she reached out a grimy hand and patted the fish. Her mother, heavy and dark and bluntly featured, suddenly softened. The young man spoke a few low words to the mother, then handed the girl the fishes and began packing his pencils into a square black case. The little girl squealed and waved the page in the air.

An artist. I surreptitiously watched the top of the dark grey baseball hat as his head bent into his case, deft fingers lining up pencils and erasers. An artist. Not an accountant. Not a financial analyst. Someone willing to sacrifice money and security for the love of work.

Finally the shining metal sliding doors to the boat slip rumbled open and the herds of commuters lumbered their way onto the ferry. I tried to keep The Artist’s cap in sight, but soon the crowds swallowed him up. I settled myself onto a long bench on the upper deck of the boat, next to a window, with Governor’s Island and Brooklyn glowing to my left. I was soon dozing, napping off the beer before I had to find my way home on the Staten Island side.

But the image of The Artist stayed with me, his cap disappearing into the sea of heads as that line repeated itself in my head. “Love is not all,” I recited. No, not all, but it mattered. To love what you do mattered. The ferry docked, and I stepped off the water, and onto land.

_________________________

Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.