Brigitte Nowers
Inspiration Piece

Inkling
By Darice Jones
Response

There were sparkly little insights she had now that she didn’t then
At this point, they seemed to tether her spirit to the center of things
The insights would pop up, quick, like grass in the fertile grounds of Northern California after a light rain
They also hung in the air like the mass of water floating above the trees on that one orphic path
You know, the one that the people in their late teens and early twenties were too spooked to walk down
She tried to hold her new understandings in place, believing that was the best way to honor her growth
But in that way life can be, the insights would immediately camouflage themselves, hiding in the details of her days
Hiding in her daydreaming while driving, her doodling, her friends and family, her work
Color blending into color
Confusing the issue
But the knowing, hiding itself in plain sight inspired her to keep going all day long until she tired herself out from the spiritual
scavenger hunt
Finally she would sleep
Slowly opening the dream portal
Climbing the ladder of many tints and tossing Ghanaian Adinkra symbols into the mouths of passing birds
Up, up to where her many grandmothers lived in deep consciousness
Pineal parents who planted pink seeds so they could watch her divine love flourish
At night they poured celestial buckets of shimmering green water over her and blew new songs onto her skin
“It’s better to have an inkling, my dear daughter, than to think you know for sure.”
They’d said that to her many times over the years, but she could not remember it when she woke up
Only the hint of a doorway
A glow that she could enter in the lean times
And breathing so deep that it seemed to create whole worlds

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Matthew Levine
“Abandoned Power Plant”
Inspiration piece

Cleanup
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

Jimmy O’Hara started reading to sixth graders in a rundown school in a rundown city, nine miles up I-95 from his home because there was a call for volunteers at his Unitarian church and reading to kids seemed a pretty safe way to be a good guy.

He read once a week for 30 minutes. He loved doing it. He was a very good reader. He had an AFTRA card. He had done quite a few Voice Overs back in the day.

Jimmy was also good at being a White Old Guy character. He was still an active high school baseball umpire – and he let it be known he was a former Marine. So in addition to being the Reader, Jimmy became a persona for his class.

They called him Mr. Jim. When he entered the classroom, the kids said, “Hi, Mr. Jim!” Over the years, he developed a routine. Reading was still Job #1. But early on, Jimmy started to do shorter pieces that gave him more time for other business.

He had unused game balls from his umpiring and he gave out these “Pearls” to two or three of the children at the start of each session. Most of the kids did not play baseball, but they all loved their Pearls, even the girls.

He gave a regular five to ten minute talk about being aware, about staying awake. He told them he knew it was very, very hard to stay awake and not numb. But he said he felt it was worth it.

For instance, one day the snack the class had was a banana and Jimmy talked about where the banana had come from and all the people involved in getting it to them from the tree in the jungle.

When his 30 minutes were done, he had two kids walk him out to his car. He used this time to find out more about them. Big family or small? Did they live close or far from the school? What was their top interest or hobby? Next time, he would try to bring a book to them about it.

He would also take a photo of his escorts with his i-phone. At the end of the year, he would leave a box with the teacher with a framed photo of each child.

So, even though he was just a Reader, Jimmy managed to establish a relationship with the class. He knew all of them a little bit. He had given each child a Pearl, a book on something they cared about, and a framed photo to take home.

Jimmy liked each child in the class. His goal was to make sure they knew it. Most of them did know. Most of them liked Jimmy back. It slowly dawned on him that he secretly luxuriated in their affection. He had a massive hole in him that the class tended.

The good thing was that it was a two-way deal. He really did like these kids.

He especially liked the girls. Most of them were eleven. They were surprisingly feminine and already wary, especially the Latinas. All of them were just a little sad. Even when they were smiling, there was that sad bounce.

The boys were bigger and much younger. Much more approachable. Still children, even though some of them were being recruited by gangs. Still children, although many of them were acting as the man of their house. Most of the boys appeared surprised that Jimmy was interested in learning more about their lives.

So it was a solid two-way. Even though no one knew how good it was for Jimmy. As the years rolled by, occasionally a teenager would hail him and Jimmy would wave back. Or ask how they were doing.

He learned as he went. He tried to persuade a boy not to join a gang and he was successful. Then the Police Chief asked to see him and he learned the gang had put out a contract on his life. Jimmy promptly told the boy if he wanted to join the gang it was okay with him. The boy joined the gang and the contract was withdrawn.

So, Jimmy coasted through year after year and teacher after teacher with the sixth-grade class at his school. Occasionally, people would learn what he was doing and praise him for his service. Jim accepted the praise although his secret was that this so called, service was of deep benefit to him.

Then at the end of the school year, the Head of Volunteer Services for the city called Jimmy and asked him to please consider reading in a different school that had just been re-opened in another part of town. She said this school was in a very distressed neighborhood and she hoped Jimmy could be a calming influence.

Jimmy’s teacher was taking the next year off to have a baby, so he agreed to go to the other school. It turned out it was a very stupid decision.

Jimmy had taken the management at his school for granted. When he read or talked to his classes they listened. In September, when he began reading to his new class in the newly re-opened school, the kids were talking to each other as he was reading.

He looked at the teacher and she admonished the class to be quiet and pay attention. There was a brief silence but as he resumed his reading, the kids started talking. There was a constant under current. It was very unnerving.

To make matters worse, every five minutes or so, a speaker mounted over the teacher’s desk would blare with an instruction from the Front Office. The school was K through 8 and every instruction to every class played in every room. It was exceedingly difficult to maintain concentration.

Jimmy did all the things that had worked for him in the past. He gave out baseballs. He had one-on-one sessions with the two kids who walked him out. He brought the kids books on subjects they said they liked. He took their photos. Nothing worked.

When he entered the class at the appointed time, it took five or ten minutes to get the students back to their seats. Then they talked under Jimmy. Every few minutes, the speaker blared away. It was hard.

Then, in March, his teacher suddenly left. Jimmy learned she had found a better paying position in a school closer to her home. Numerous substitute teachers appeared over the next months.

Finally it got to be June. Jimmy decided to pass out the framed photos early. The kids were excited and focused on their photos. Jimmy talked to them about making a difference. He told them that the area around the rear entrance to the school that he used was strewn with litter.

His session had only fifteen minutes to run. Jimmy asked for five boys and five girls to volunteer to clean up around the rear entrance. Then he went with his volunteers as they did the cleanup.

To his surprise, they were energized. The school guard trundled out a heavy duty Trashcan and the kids capered around it. Amazingly, in just ten minutes, the area was completely cleaned up. The huge trashcan was full. Jimmy was happy as he walked back to the class with his volunteers. Perhaps they had learned they could make a difference.

His next session was his last of the year. A new substitute teacher greeted him. The teacher then read from a memo from the Principal that the children had been observed picking up trash without gloves on their hands. A child had picked up a condom. All trash collecting was to cease immediately.

Jimmy promised the kids that if the trash collecting went well, at his next session, he would read had them the scariest story they had ever heard. So, he read them “The Velvet Band.” They were quiet all through it and screeched at the end.

Then Jimmy said goodbye to them and wished them all the best.

The class said, “Goodbye, Mr. Jim.”

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Matthew Levine
“Blank Slate”
Response

Doris
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration piece

NB: The story is true. The names are fictitious.

It was a railroad flat in Chelsea. You opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Chris was sitting at the kitchen table with Emilano Puglio. Two of Puglio’s young guys were with them. They were counting the $750,000. They were taking the money from the big suitcase and putting it into three valises. It was taking forever.

Chris and Puglio were talking baseball. The Mets had a rookie pitcher you had to see to believe. Chris pressed the signal button in the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket and maybe three seconds later, Billy Cox burst through the door and shot Emilano Puglio twice in the head.

Blood and brains spattered Chris and his new Zegna jacket. His ears were ringing. The gunshots had been very loud. Puglio was face down on the table. His two guys were cowering and screaming, “No, no, please”.

Billy Cox was bearing down on them with his Beretta BU9 Nano in the regulation, two-handed, grip.

Chris yelled, “That’s enough Billy! That’s enough.”

Two other Agents were in now. They quickly cuffed the two terrified hoodlums. Billy Cox bonked one of them full on the nose with the barrel of his pistol. There was a spray of blood.

“Jesus, Billy, go easy, or you pay for our dry cleaning” Chris said.

“I hate these scumbags”, Billy said.

“I know, I know”, Chris said.

“But why did you blow away my man Emilano?”

“Look under the table.”

Chris bent down and looked. A 45 pistol was still hooked on Puglio’s finger. Chris was mortified. He had never figured that Puglio would have his gun out under the table. Like it or not, Billy Cox had saved Chris’s life.

Chris was glad to be alive but working undercover with Billy Cox was not easy. With Billy, it wasn’t a good day, unless there was a life or death situation.

Chris and the other Agents in the squad were all too familiar with life and death situations. It was the nature of their work.

You made your way along the food chain of bad guys on your way to the big fish. You busted someone and then you turned them. Then you busted and turned the next guy up. And so it went.

Unfortunately, all too often, their informants screwed up. They couldn’t take the pressure. They were sloppy. Or unlucky.

When they were found out, their bosses killed them. Often very, very slowly. This was perhaps the most painful reality of being a DEA agent. These were low-level criminals but human beings all the same. You worked with them for weeks, sometimes months, and when they ended up tortured and dead it was hard not to take it personally.

But Billy Cox didn’t care. If you were a bad guy, you deserved heavy punishment. That was Billy’s deal. But, then again, Billy was unusual in many ways.

Billy Cox was the smallest male Agent in the DEA. He was just 5’8,with blond curly hair and a pleasant, pug nosed, lightly freckled, face. He had very dark blue eyes. Early on, an Agent joked that Billy reminded him of Doris Day when she was off her meds – and forever more – Billy was known in the Agency as Doris.

His family ran a big steel mill in the Midwest. They were heavily involved in politics. Billy was the first of his family to go to Harvard. He had been a mainstay of the wrestling team. He graduated cum laude and served six years in Special Forces.

Billy had turned down his family’s offer to take over the steel mill and joined the Agency. He graduated Number 1 in his Training Class and he also outscored all his classmates on physical proficiency. Doris was one tough hombre.

But he looked too good, too “white bread”, to go deep undercover, so Billy Cox worked support. There was nobody better at making a collar. And this was where most “incidents” happened.

The biggest problem was that maybe 5% of the time they were making a really big buy, it was a setup. The bad guys were looking to score the money. They might have the drugs – or just enough for a “taste” but they had come for the money and not for any sale.

They came to rob the “buyers”, the undercover crew. They would jump them right through the door– five or six banditos with guns out. It was very, very, scary.

Billy Cox was the leader of the prime Backup team. He was lightning fast. On his first time with Chris’s crew, Billy banged through the door and yelled, “How dare you?”

Then he shot a fat guy who was holding an AR15. He shot him in both hands. The AR15 clattered to the floor. The fat guy screamed and screamed. Billy stuck his pistol in the next guy’s ear and the guy dropped his pistol. So did the others.

“I said, drop it!” Billy shouted and shot the guy. A double tap. A round in each knee. The sound of the shots was tremendous. You couldn’t hear anything. The guys who had been shot were screaming hard. The other three guys were pleading. They had their hands way up.

“OK”, Billy said.

“Time to collar up these scumbags.”

Billy was damn good – probably the best support action guy in the Agency – but he was also a prime pain in the ass. Almost every time he was in action, there was unpleasant aftermath. He shot and whacked perpetrators who were absolutely no threat. Often their attorneys complained. Some even brought actions. There was a blizzard of paper work.

Billy had a simple solution. He just lied. He shot a bad guy with his hands up, three times because the guy made a move toward an ankle holster. It turned out the holster was empty, but how was Billy to know?

He killed a big shot from the Cali Cartel with two rounds to the back of the neck. According to Billy, one of the Cali gunmen had suddenly fired at point blank range at an Agent. Somehow, he had missed. It was kill – or be killed.

The truth was the big shot was telling his crew to give it up, when Billy blasted him and his right hand man.

So, Billy got away with everything. Everyone ploughed through the paperwork and lied on their testimony and Billy skated.

Chris stayed in the city during the week in an apartment with two other Agents. They partied hard. Real hard. A few times Billy joined them at clubs but he always went easy

Once the usual St Patrick’s Day spree morphed into the usual, nighttime celebration. Toward the end there was the usual discordant singing until Billy quietly took over and serenaded the pub with a lilting, crystal tenor. He knew all the words too.

Chris and Billy shared a passion for oysters. Chris often ran into Billy at Clarkes or the Oyster Bar at Grand Central. Each time he did, Billy was with a beautiful woman. Not just pretty – not just attractive – these were knockout beauties.

Once at Clarkes, they took a table together. Billy’s companion was a lithe, auburn haired woman in her mid-twenties. Chris was sure he knew from somewhere. Chris’s date was a hatcheck girl from the Plaza. The women hit it off right away.

Billy was with Jenny Lind Malone, the prima ballerina from the New York City Ballet. Sandy, Billy’s date, was a dancer too, a chorus girl, who also worked at the Plaza so she could live in Manhattan.

Afterward, in Sandy’s apartment, she told Chris that Jenny had solemnly whispered to her that Billy was the best lover she had ever known. Chris said that was because he had never been with Jenny and Sandy said, “Of course”, without missing a beat.

Chris went to Rome and Palermo on an undercover job that took almost three months. When he returned, Billy was in trouble again. He was lying his ass off in court testimony.

The lies weren’t necessary. They had all they needed to convict but, evidently, Billy was determined to make sure. The problem was he was telling such whoppers, that even the Federal Prosecutors were disturbed. There was no problem with the juries. As Billy spun his outrageous lies he looked directly at the jurors. Many of them smiled at Billy as he spoke. He smiled back. He was the epitome of decency.

Somehow their convictions survived appeal but a lot of Federal Prosecutors wouldn’t take their cases. They bounced from district to district.

Then the day after Christmas, Tony Palazzo and Frank McMahon were in the Bronx about to lay out a million dollars and close a two-year operation, when they got jumped by a six-man knockoff crew. Tony heard them coming and buzzed Billy but he was late. The bad guys came in and killed Palazzo. Frankie McMahon just left the open moneybag and ran out the back door.

Billy and his crew tried to bust in but Tony Palazzo’s body was wedged in the doorway, so Billy and his guys had to take the door off its hinges. By the time Billy got in, three of the bad guys had gone out the back with the money. The other three opened up on Billy as he came through. He had seven rounds go through his clothing.

Billy never broke stride. He shot the bad guys in the head as he went through and continued through the backdoor and down the back steps, along the alley and into the street. He ducked and rolled below a double-barreled shotgun blast, and then shot that bad guy in the heart and the throat. He killed the fifth bad guy just outside the getaway car, a silver Mercedes S500. Billy shot the sixth man four times in the torso and twice in the head. He shot him right through the windshield as he sat at the wheel.

They found the bag of money in the trunk.

They lied big time on the official reports. They said Billy and three of his crew had done the shooting. Everyone knew it was just Billy, but there was no way they could let that get out there. The dead guys were all known violent criminals. They had all been armed. It was a big story. A DEA shootout. Six dead bad guys. There was no need to make a big deal of the forensics.

Frankie McMahon was treated for stress. He was a veteran Agent but he came away with big time PTSD. When he ran out the door, he turned toward the back and the garbage cans instead of the street. That was why he survived.

Frankie kept wondering why he had run that way. He went for counseling but it didn’t help. Six months later, he got a full medical disability. He was 38.

They transferred Billy Cox to Headquarters in Washington. His primary job there was training. That involved a mountain of paperwork and scores of decisions on personnel Billy didn’t want to make. Above all, it was boring. It was brutal torture for Billy.

Billy had acquired a wife from Chicago named Lorraine. She called Chris and pleaded with him to intervene – to help Billy get out of Washington. Chris called Gus Webster, who was the Foreign Service director, and asked him to post Billy. Webster was pleasant enough but he had been warned about Billy. There was no way he was posting him anywhere.

So Chris called Billy and told him to bring Webster a jelly doughnut every morning. Billy did as instructed and 19 days later he got posted to the embassy in Lima, Peru.

Just eight months later, Billy was transferred back to the States because the Ambassador to Peru had demanded he be returned. Billy arrived alone. His wife had divorced him.

The question was where to park him. The Director had the brilliant idea of posting him to the Midwest. She created the title of National Coordinator. Billy reported to the headman in a big city, who was absolutely delighted to have him. Billy got all the paperwork.

It seemed a fairly happy ending. Then about a year later, Billy was stopped by a security guard in the parking lot outside a high-end suburban mall. He had been observed taking i-phones and other electronics and not paying.

Billy badged the guard and explained that he was conducting a training exercise. He assured the guard that all the items would be returned in due time. The guard stood firm. The State Police were called.

Billy ran the training story again but it fell flat. In the end, the State Cops arrested Billy and opened the trunk of his car. It was stuffed with over $250,000 worth of cell phones and electronic devices.

Chris had served in Recon in the Marines with John Higgins, the State Police Chief. The Director asked Chris to intercede for Billy. He flew straight out. Higgins was cordial enough but he did not like Federal Officers. It was clear that Billy Cox had been looting stores in the Chicago area for months. Higgins wanted him in prison.

Chris explained that Billy had been a hero as a backup man. It had twisted him. The plan was to retire Billy on disability. But the theft charges had to go away. Higgins wasn’t buying it, and then Chris reminded him that they both still faced open warrants for the tens of thousands of dollars of damage they had caused to a famous restaurant during a brawl they had with some paratroopers during an R&R.

Higgins relented. Billy Cox went on disability. Five months later, his governor appointed him to fill the seat of a deceased Congressman. Billy served out the term and was re-elected. He is now in his 13th term in Congress.

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Kilhefner
Inspiration piece

Splay
By Marie Kelly
Response

membrane of memory:
cells cast together from a sense of urgency,
muscle-memory, soul-memory
memory of hand on throat, abduction of thighs,
couldn’t wait for timetables or stumbling to the bed.

this smear of variegated lusts does not speak
except in the color of blood
formed and deformed in the thicket of the womb
years later we find our membranes riddled with aching mystery
hand-in-hand we go with dirty glove,
through within no firmament of health does our blood circulate
but only for an epoch, for a few decades we find this stalemate.

what does a cell discern?
splatters of thought, mechanical days with winsome traces of life bursting
up from the roots
this little cell
this stodgy and stalwart blood-sucker
remembers how to dance
when ancestral blockages
bar the door
suck the root
cleave at the skin

it is self-cleaving and dull wonder
that bend our fronds
back to that incessant climax

shrouds are torn ramshackle to exposse new skin
to the elements
menstrual_ blood turns dark and dull,
the womb is no longer wanted;
but the bright cherry blood from inward cleaving
springs delicious for thirsty lips

who will take me
and feed me pomegranate seeds
until the next question is posed?

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Under far
cumulus cliffs
in a circle
of bone soil
one vapor plume
leans and twists
Brief white spurts tease
with collapse
until ghosts boil
ascending
Peaked hoods and
shoulders warp up
a scroll with
winter mountains
become flame-
tongues of wild steam
Rock fissures
over magma
shout old rain
back at heaven

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Marilyn Ackerman
Inspiration piece

Tree Farmers
By Adam Cornford
Response

These are the true tree farmers they do not plant plantations uniform grids
of pine and fir like power-poles in rows marching away to the vanishing point
There trees vanish into beams planks printer-paper like brides stripped bare
by their batch processors in hangars of flat suns whirling their stainless teeth
and sliding planes along their surfaces to smooth them to two dead dimensions
These are true tree farmers herders of whole forests their underbrush and ivy
their brambles and berries above widespreading roots like subsoil road-rays
exchanging waterlight and medicine warning each other of parasite assaults
The true tree farmers carry forests inside their bodies red as Western madrone
or Eastern autumn: blood-groves and axonic woods of thought and sensation
The true tree farmers like their trees wear moths and finches as their coronals
All night they sleep-dance in moss pavilions their faces masked in moonlight
Tall forest herds inhale their dark breath and exhale it as the wind’s diamonds

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

KJ Hannah Greenberg
“Begin”
Response

Begin
By Nancy Ramsey
Inspiration piece

The hope of beginnings

Is it’s own addictive drug.

Seductive promise lures

Attention onward

To the next big thing.

Beguiling with her lies-

Come, look at this;

This is the one, she entices

The forgetting of past promises.

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

KJ Hannah Greenberg
“Social Pressure”
Inspiration Piece

Harmony
By Nancy Ramsey
Response

Bright lights,

Magenta boarders,

A diversity of greens-

The innocent marker lines of children.

The city is my living room,

She said.

And why choose to be one of those

Alone in their towers,

Holed up alone early to bed,

Or dragging out a day’s work,

Over being down on the streets,

Amidst the action,

The interaction

Of colors making each other shine,

As the russet sun sets.

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

MM Panas
“That Ship Has Sailed”
Inspiration piece

Eternities
By JoAnn Moore
Response

Drown me blue
in your depthless sky,
soft as the incoming fog.
Ebb me full
of salt until I
find rhythm in the swell.
Drift me to the edge—
on crests of fading rays
right before the green
flash of time—

and wake on alluvial
shores mingled with horizon
where the view’s boundless
blue
and abiding.

——————————————————
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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jay Young Gerard
“Ascension Takes Time.  And Practice”
Response

The Composition of Expectations
By Lisa Nielsen
Inspiration piece

I can’t take on gravity while
smiling rancid thoughts.     Floating thru your darkness,

I am a shape shifter that bends to your moods.
Hardly a courageous act, but how else do I hold you off?

A thud on the floor of your dreams,
summons me like a ward.

The world quakes with loneliness, even if loneliness
isn’t the thing,

here we are.

That ear to your chest isn’t me sinking,
I am deciphering morse code.

you see, the ghosts of tyrants live in my skin,
waiting for a man like you to pull them out

———————————————-

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 written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.