Category Archives: Creative Writing

The Grape Apex

Photo by Caio on Pexels.com

It was a greasy Sunday morning and there was a chill in the air for it being May. We pulled into the Walmart parking lot, it being dawn. Some stars remained in the bruise-colored sky. A few cars idled in their spaces. Someone was shouting. There was a warm sick feeling in my guts about how terrible life could be so early in the morning and here we were about to feed the terribleness by stepping out into a world full of people who didn’t feel much for each other, but instead they just liked to feel each other physically like creeps.

There was a man or maybe it was a woman, but it was hard to tell because they were dressed in all black, like in a long gown, and their head was on a fire; it was a head of orange flames and the flames sort of trailed off to one side because of the breeze in the air. This person on fire was pushing a shopping cart and when they turned in a certain way to unload their things into their car, I realized the head on fire was nothing but the sun creeping up on them like a silhouette.

And this is why we were at Walmart so damn early in the morning—because I was having trouble taking breaths and I was seeing things, too, and even sounds were becoming onto me something strange. Momma decided I needed some sort of over-the-counter medicine or maybe just a good walk beneath the bright lights, but I didn’t believe any of that nonsense. I tried to tell her I needed a real doctor because I really thought I was completely losing my marbles… Green, glass marbles, like eyes, falling out of my head and crashing to the ground and shattering and then I’d be blind.

And momma squeezed my hand as she dragged me to the entrance of the store and she looked down on me, spirit wholly crushed as usual, and she said to me, “If all else fails we can be prayer warriors and the man upstairs will hear us and make me all better… But I was so confused because I never saw no man upstairs. No one is truly upstairs except our lodger and his name was Jarrod Peeps and he was a strange bird, but after daddy ran off momma said she needed a lodger for extra money.

I thought Jarrod Peeps was a creepy name and he was creepy and his name did fit him because I often saw him, the door to his room slightly cracked, peeping out into the hallway, especially early in the morning when everyone was running around trying to get ready for going to school and we would be scrambling and fussing—that being me and my younger brother Jamison and my younger sister Revvie and me, that being Sharpe, and I’m a boy in case you were wondering. Maybe you even weren’t wondering. I don’t know.

But like I was saying, this lodger, Jarrod Peeps, which was probably a made-up name because I believe he most likely had a shady past. He was a mostly quiet and nervous man who came and went to his job and whatever else he did out in the world without much turbulence. Momma liked him because he always paid his rent on time, and he could also be around for us kids at night if momma had to run off to do something like go drinking or be with a man. Jarrod always wanted to play that Barrel of Monkeys game with us because he said he liked the feel and smell of the plastic pieces, and that the “mechanics of the game help me with organizational skills.” Yep, he was a strange bird all right. His job was working as a carpenter, and he always smelled of sawdust. He helped build all the new houses going up on the edge of town.

But that is that and this is this… Momma dragging me into Walmart on a greasy Sunday morning in May because I’ve got problems. What the hell did she think was going to make me better? Grape-flavored cough syrup? I don’t know.

Once inside, the store had that collective stench of all that’s wrong with humanity. Personally, I always preferred the smell of Kmart because it had that added tang from the popcorn popping at the snack counter in one of those silver circus machines. But our Kmart shut down and they turned it into a megachurch, and I suppose it doesn’t smell like popcorn in there anymore, but I can’t say for sure because we’ve never been inside. But then again, I can imagine Jesus siting around up there eating some popcorn and listening to all these people talk about his life and how we should all live because of it, and I bet Jesus would just be tossing back that popcorn and shaking his head at all the stupid things we’ve become through the twisting of his intentions.

Momma took me straight to the pharmacy counter and asked the woman there what she would recommend for a crazy child. She just looked at my momma like she was the crazy one. The pharmacist came over and started yelling at my momma for taking space in the line from real customers. My momma fumed and called him a “prick”, but I figure he was just trying to do his job but, in the end, I still felt crazy, and momma felt defeated.

I told my momma that I might feel better if she took me to the toy aisle and let me pick something out. Sometimes getting something from the toy aisle gives me hope and purpose and a reason to live onto the following day. I always loved the toy aisle at Kmart, it gave me a good feeling in my guts sort of like bursting out the door of the house on those few first days of spring and there’s only a few patches of dirty snow left, and all the grass is pushed down from the weight of January’s crush, but you can smell that it’s coming back to life. It always comes back to life. I dread the day the grass doesn’t come back to life. I wonder if anyone else ever feels like that.

I wanted a plastic model car to put together. I wanted it to be one of those cars from back in the day that old men like. I found a ’57 Chevy and I liked how the box felt in my hand. I imagined how all the plastic pieces were in there and how I’d glue them all together and put on the tires and paint it red. It gave me a reason to stick around awhile. I know that it sounds crazy pinning all my hopes for a sustained life on a model car kit, but that’s how I was, maybe still am.

My momma went off to find some shampoo or something and she told me to stay right where I was and so I did stay in that same aisle, and I walked up and down it real slow and I watched other kids looking at all the shiny new toys and some kids were getting what they wanted, and others were being yelled at for wanting things they supposedly didn’t deserve. One lady kept saying to this crying little girl, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I felt really bad for her because she was nearly choking on her own tears. All she wanted was some stupid doll and her mom refused. Why? What’s the harm? I glanced into the cart they had, and she had all sorts of crap for herself. Nothing for the kid. I imagined popcorn-eating Jesus being real upset about that.

The aisle cleared out again and I was all alone, but then this odd man came down the along and he was looking at puzzles, but he kept glancing over to me and smiling really weird. I didn’t like it. He gave me the creeps, and then he walked near me real slow and reached out his hand and touched me on the rear-end and I jumped away and looked at him. I couldn’t say nothing to him. It just wouldn’t come out. He just stood there and leered at me like I was some sort of little rump roast he wanted for dinner. He was creepier than Jarrod Peeps and he wouldn’t go away so I ran. I ran to find my momma. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. She said she was going to be over by the shampoo, but she wasn’t there. I started to panic. I kept looking over my shoulder and the man who touched my rear end was lurking there in the distance and he was tossing me uneasy glances.

I set my model car down on a shelf where the bathroom towels were, and I ran for the exit. Once I was clear of the Village of Idiots, I searched the parking lot for our car, but I couldn’t find it. I wandered up and down all the aisles. I almost got hit by one crazy driver who apparently couldn’t fathom the fact surrounding the necessity of slowing down in a Walmart parking lot. They blew their horn at me like it was my fault for existing. I often felt like that, though. That for some reason I should feel guilty for existing. How does a 10-year-old kid end up feeling like that? I don’t know.

I decided to go hang out by the front of the store and wait for my momma to come out. It wasn’t long before the man who touched my rear end appeared holding a lone plastic bag. He saw me there and smiled. “Hi there,” he said. I wanted to run but felt frozen to the ground like in a dream.

He reached into the bag and pulled out the model car I had picked out. “I got this for you,” he said, and he moved it in my direction.

“No thank you,” I said.

“Oh, come on. I know you want it. Just take it.”

I reached my hand out toward it but then I thought about how awful I’d probably feel the whole time I was putting it together. I pulled my hand back. “No. I don’t want it now,” I told him.

“Are you sure? I could help you put it together.”

Misery deepened by the minute for me. But then the man violently jerked forward and fell to the ground. In his place was my momma standing there holding a big bottle of shampoo that she had used to club him with. The man groaned down on the pavement. I leaned down and took up the model car. While I was down there, I said to him, “You shouldn’t be touching rear ends in this here ghastly Walmart, mister. And I’ll take this model car after all and never think of you again.”

I got up and looked at my momma. “Let’s go, crazy boy,” she said to me. “Let’s go home and put you in your room and preserve your life for a while longer. That sound okay?”

“Yes, momma,” I answered, and it did.

END


The Morbid Mind Correctional Facility (3)

Photo by Kristal Tereziu on Pexels.com.

Magda Balls looked at her two new guests, her back was up against the stove in the kitchen, a cigarette smoke stream trailing from her shapely hand. Rosalina and the Huffing Man were sitting at the table in her lakeside bungalow eating tomato soup and oyster crackers. The man had an iced tea to drink, the girl a milk.

“Did you know MILK in Dutch and Norwegian is MELK,” Magda said, looking at the girl.

Rosalina crinkled her nose. “Huh?”

“MILK is pronounced MELK in both Dutch and Norwegian… I’m studying new languages.”

The Huffing Man wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and looked at her. “I spent some time in Amsterdam, but I never drank any MELK there.” He just as quickly went back to eating his soup and crackers.

“They have naughty peep shows in Amsterdam,” Rosalina said. “And marijuana is legal. Did you get high and look at boobies?”

“No,” the Huffing Man insisted. “I was there on business… Back when my life wasn’t a shattered mess, or was it?” His thoughts trailed off into the air and he watched them bounce away.

Magda laughed at the girl. “How do you know about all that?”

“I know a lot of things. I read, surf the net, watch movies, things like that. I’m very worldly for 10.2 years old.”

“I can tell,” Magda laughed. “If you two don’t mind, I’m going to hit the shower. Make yourselves at home.”

The Huffing Man looked up at Magda and gave her a shy smile. His face, with its sandpaper sheen, was tired and haggard. “Thank you… For the food and for helping me out.”

Magda smiled back. “You’re welcome.”


Rosalina plopped herself down in a comfy couch in the front room and played with a remote control. The Huffing Man joined her. She looked over at him sadly. “Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose you can.”

“Why do you huff gas?”

He sighed. “Well, it’s a long, sad story I’m afraid. I don’t want to trouble a young girl with such adult things.”

“It’s okay. I can handle it. I’m very mature.”

“Well, let’s just say I have a lot of personal problems.”

“Like what?”

The Huffing Man laughed at her innocent inquisitiveness, then sighed. “I feel incredibly invisible to a lot of people in my life. I suppose I don’t feel very loved.”

Rosalina looked down. “I know what you mean. I don’t feel very loved either. That’s why I ran away from my foster parents.”

“Foster parents?”

“My Pee and Em were killed in a hot air balloon crash in Arizona.”

“Pee and Em?”

“My dad and mum. I got the words from A Clockwork Orange. It’s my favorite movie. It’s part of this weird language they speak that’s sort of like Russian slang mixed with Old English. I bet we can find it on Netflix or HBO if you want to watch it with me.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“What! Where have you been, living under a rock?”

“Yes, I suppose I have been.”

It’s a brutal and satirical look at the crisis of crime and subsequent punishment in a withering dystopian society… The story revolves around the strange life of a young hoodlum and his gang of droogs. But it goes far beyond that. It’s a mind fuck, really,” Rosalina said. “A total mind fuck.”

“Oh, really? I’m intrigued.”

Rosalina excitedly sat up on the edge of the couch and scanned through channels until she found the movie. “Here it is!”

The Huffing Man gestured with his head toward the sound of the running shower. “Do you think she’ll be okay with it?”

“I don’t think she’ll care. She’s pretty cool.”

“All right then. Fire it up.”

“Doobie doo,” Rosalina said with a giggle.

“Huh?”

“Just watch.”

The chilling close-up image of Alex DeLarge in the Korova Milk Bar suddenly appeared on the screen. The gonging synthesized opening soundtrack filled the room.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milk Bar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova Milk Bar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet, or synthemesc, or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence…

Rosalina looked over at the Huffing Man and his eyes were wide with wonder. “Freaky, huh?” she whispered.

“I’d say,” he whispered back.

Magda Balls came into the room with wet hair and fresh summer clothes that clung to her tall, svelte body. “What are you two watching?”

“A Clockwork Orange,” Rosalina told her, and then she pressed pause on the remote. “But we can’t have disturbances. We need to fully concentrate on the film in order to absorb all its subtle nuances.”

Magda laughed. “Okay. I’ll just go out onto the deck and read then. That okay?”

“Sure,” Rosalina said with a shrug. “It’s your house.”

“That it is,” Magda said, and she smacked her lips, grabbed a book off the coffee table and slipped outside.


Rosalina resumed the film and the Huffing Man relaxed into the couch. He watched the movie as its bizarreness unfolded and even though the pictures on the screen were mesmerizing, he couldn’t help that his mind drifted away to his own inner turmoil. He tried to turn his head and look at the girl beside him, but his neck seemed inoperable, he seemed frozen, felt dead almost. He wondered if he had finally done enough damage with all that gas huffing.

The film was long and when it was over, the Huffing Man got up off the couch and stretched. He glanced out through the glass of the veranda door and saw that Magda had migrated to a short dune on the beach. He looked at Rosalina. “I think I’m going to go take a walk… In the other direction.”

“Okay,” she said, as she skimmed through channels in search of something new to watch.

“Would you like to join me? I mean, you can’t just watch the television all day. Maybe we can find something to eat.”

Rosalina pressed the power button on the remote and looked up at him. “You’re right. And I should come with you… To keep you on the straight and narrow. Because, I hope you weren’t planning on running off to huff some gas.”

“No. But it doesn’t feel good not to huff.”

“I’m sure it sucks, but you’ll feel better,” the girl said. “I’ll help you ride the rough waves out.”

“That’s awful kind of you,” he said with a genuine smile. “Shall we?” He reached out to grasp her hand at the door and she took it.

TO BE CONTINUED


Botchwork

You, again.

The erratic sidewinder in plaid.

Going apeshit over a loaf of bread.

Have you ever heard of tranquility?

Oh, I see, you reach for it there, you look for it in your…earbuds?

Why do you stop and yawn and pause and breathe and think and question?

The world says go, mind skids, the world says know all you can… The mind knows fear, trepidation, hesitation, latency, blueprints burning in an Oxford fireplace. Plans going up in smoke like Colorado reefer in an apple bong.

The gong in the mountain. The birds gather, flutter at the entrance to the cave. There’s something deep down inside. Get it out. Tell it. Feel it. Peel it from the botchwork in your soul leather this night. Flowers in October. Snowmen in May. Rice soup in August. The clock runs backward, faster, faster, faster… Until you are born again. The priest moves a red velvet curtain aside and walks out of a highly polished mahogany box. He holds the baby aloft in his hands. “He has returned,” he says in three slow breaths.

He passes him to a man dressed like a smokestack. A cloud of thought is spewing from the very tip top of his head. “This,” he begins. “Is an exercise in recreation… And I will swallow all lives whole.”

He drops the baby into the top of the smokestack and there is a minor explosion. Confetti the color of candy suddenly bursts out. The baby has slid down to the furnace. He will work there for another 71 years. “Nobody ever says they want to be a furnace worker,” the man dressed as a smokestack says. “So, we make the decision for you.” He laughs out loud and the priest lumbers over and gives him a high-five—flesh against brick.

“Let’s go back to my place and drink some wine,” the priest says.

The man dressed as a smokestack laughs. “But I’m not a kid!”

A synthetic laugh track laughs mechanically along with him.

The camera zooms in on the priest’s long, scowling face. “Oh, come on!” he says. “We’re not all perverts… And besides, you just swallowed a baby.”

“I did no such thing,” the man dressed as a smokestack says. “I simply set him on his life path.”

“That’s no life,” the priest complains. “That’s hell on Earth.”

“Hell is Earth, you fool. Earth is Hell. How could you have not figured that out by now? Your God play, your religious charade is simply a tool, a coping mechanism. You are a victim of your own game.”

“If this is Hell, then where do we go after we die?” the priest wanted to know. “Hell 2?”

The man dressed as a smokestack laughed his bellowing laugh and his bricks shook. “We come back for another round. I mean, you just demonstrated that very same thing. Are you blind?”

“I am only blinded by the misguided nonsense that is you. Your lack of anything that resembles wisdom is nauseating. It was rebirth. The child found goodness and you suddenly plucked it away from him.”

“You handed him over! That’s what you do. You raise them among sheep and then throw them to the wolves. You have all these pictures of sheep, but why not be honest about it and have some pictures of wolves, snarling wolves with blood dripping from their fangs. Show your dumb bunnies, your people, reality for once.”

“This conversation is going nowhere. I must be off,” the priest said, and he turned and swiftly disappeared to another part of the sanctuary.


The chimes of Saturn clinked like metal jewels tumbling in an out-of-control spaceship. Alternative lemons hung heavy from a tree wet with morning California dew. The man once dressed as a smokestack but now just as an ordinary man, sat on a bench in his garden. The roar of traffic on the wide interstate rose from beyond the grove. A dome of pollution muddied the blue sky giving it a dull yellow tint. He took a deepening breath and her taste still lingered. He turned to look at the house, dark wood, a mass of glass windows, numerous rooms and levels, secret passageways, greenery, a waterfall, an outdoor kitchen, stone walkways, a myriad of verandas, his very own creation.

He knew she was still sprawled in the messy sheets, sleeping, dreaming, aching. He had snuck out early for the ceremony. He wondered if he should tell her about what he had done this time, the one about sending the newly reborn baby to work for the rest of his life in the depths of hell’s furnace. He decided not to, he didn’t want to upset her. She was so easily upset. He picked some lemons and went into the cool house and made a fresh pitcher of lemonade.


The zippity zodiac cigar syndrome ship floated among the stardust near Saturn and its wedding rings. The crew were blasting Bowie and eating Hostess cupcakes. Everyone felt weird because there was some sort of magnetic pull on them, some invisible entity had the ship sandwiched between fingers and palm, the hand of God, they wondered.

“Are we merely all sharing the same dream?” Captain Dogwood asked, but no one was listening. They had all moved closer to the monitor widescreen, space floating by them like a stream, the hand pulsing goblets of gold blood in the pious veins. The captain rose from his seat and watched with them. “Or have we reached our final destination? Is this the web of serenity we’ve been searching for?”

The lumbering priest with the long face who had so recently cast the fate of some newly reborn baby to a life of suffering in the furnace depths of a hell factory stepped through the doorway to the bridge of the SS Cuckoo Clock. “You called for me Captain Dogwood?”

The captain turned and looked at the tall, lean man in black. “Yes, father. We were hoping you could tell us if what’s happening to the ship has anything to do with God.”

“Captain?”

“Take a look for yourself, padre. See that hand, out there. It’s got a hold of us and won’t let go. I’d like to know your thoughts.”

The priest stepped forward and studied what was on the monitor screen, it was indeed a hand, a hand still pulsing goblets of gold blood in its pious veins. “I can’t say if it is God, or not God, captain. I just don’t know what it is. But it does appear to have the ship in its grasp. Have you tried blasting your way out?”


Violence interrupts violets. A silver coin calls for Uhtred. Night calls. Sleep calls. Madness calls. Dreams call. Some have the fear of lying down for it may never come to sweet, peaceful fruition. The same ones fear the lying down of death. What will the black mask bring? What will be beyond the veil? What is on the other side of the passage? A bright place in which to finally sit and breathe… Or another rattle of decades in the mines of meaningless.

END


Brain Fumes

Photo by David Cassolato on Pexels.com.

I built a chair today in my workshop

I made it out of milk skin and aggression

God was my co-pilot but then the plane crashed

I wrestled with tangled earbuds

I woke up at 2 a.m. and ate English muffins with butter and honey

It’s hot outside but I’m cold

I like to play but I’m old

I want to be like everyone else but then again, I really can’t stand most of humanity. Humanity? Insanity in a skin wrap. Like a spring roll from a Chinese food joint. I need some Jade Wok and their orange chicken with a side of fried rice and an orange soda.

This is just an exercise in scrambled egg brains. I’m just tossing thoughts out there. Senseless, whimsical, ancient thoughts like from the time I sat atop the Sphinx and ate a bagel and watched the dip of the Egyptian sun. Then I turned to look at the great pyramidal power station. It’s so much more than a pile of rocks, Indiana Jones.

I wish I would have done so much more. I wanted to get a worthless English degree. I wanted to be a geologist. I wanted to be an architect. There was even a time I thought I wanted to be a priest. Whew! Dodged a bullet there.

I was once going to be an airman, a drag racer, a mountain climber, a boxer, a cartoonist, a photographer, a psychiatrist, a chef, a monk…

And now I’m this. A man who pecks at illuminated letters on a keyboard in concert with the thoughts in my maniac head.

Yes, I’m a sane maniac.

But at least I’m not maniacal about serving up the world’s best fried chicken.


The Liquid Lust of an Ordinary Day (2)

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com.

Liquid Pablo Pablum worked in an insane asylum. He had his own office in the deepest part of the building where the deepest minds of darkness dwell. There was blue carpeting on the floor and walls. He had a mattress on the floor with a pillow and a thin blanket in case he wanted to sleep. There was a desk with a metal lamp sitting on it. Papers and files were sloppily strewn about. He had been staring at the ceiling light and eating Spree candy when the commotion broke out. It was a screaming and banging kind of commotion and it was coming from the female ward.

He ran out of his office and went to where there were two sets of heavy doors, each with a square window of thick glass. They had somehow gotten through the inner door and were pounding on the outer door. The woman whose face was closest to the glass was yelling that she wanted a knife so she could cut herself. Liquid Pablo Pablum looked at her neck and saw a series of thick, raised scars. Sirens started to wail. Lights began to flash. Deep echoing booms rolled like waves throughout the facility as the inmates pounded on their cages like animals…

Liquid Pablo Pablum suddenly woke to the sound of someone tapping on the driver-side window of his car. It was Rose the CVS clerk. He opened the door and got out. “Wow. Hi. Hey,” he said to her as he worked to pull himself together.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

“Yeah… I must have fallen asleep and was having the craziest dream.” He leaned in to kiss her.

“Wait,” she insisted. “How about some mouthwash first.”

“Right. Right. Well, just get in the car.”

A stockboy named Stockdale was in the process of dumping some trash when he noticed Rose climbing into a car that belonged to a man who wasn’t her husband. “Gosh darn it all, Rose,” he mumbled to himself. “Who the hell is that?”


The motor hummed and made Liquid Pablo Pablum’s testicles tingle. “So, what do you feel like doing?”

“I thought we were going to go make out.”

“Right. Do you want to go bowling?”

“Are you sure you’re, okay?”

“Yes, why do you keep asking?”

“You seem different.”

“I may be a bit nervous.”

“You weren’t nervous at all earlier in the day.”

“Look, when we get to the bowling alley let’s just have some mouthwash and make out for a while. I’m sure that will settle me right back down… You look hot, by the way.”

“Hot? I just finished an eight-hour shift and I’m wearing these stupid CVS clothes. I doubt I’m very hot.”

“Oh, you’re hot all right. Can’t wait to taste you.”

Rose was a bit shocked, a bit frightened. “I just realized that I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Pablo. Pablo Pablum.”

“I’ve never made out with a Pablo.”

“Have you made out with a lot of guys, Rose?” Pablo asked with a wondering grin.

She bowed her head and sighed. “Not really. Not for the last 20 years or so.”

Pablo cocked his head and gave her a shifty look. “Strange answer.”

“What’s so strange about it?”

“It’s like you want me to know something but you don’t want me to know something.” He then noticed the ring on her left hand. He waited for her to tell him.

“Maybe you should take me back to CVS.”

“Why?”

She gathered herself and turned to him. “I’m married, Pablo. M-A-R-R-I-E-D. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Liquid Pablo Pablum put a hand on her leg and squeezed it through her polyester work pants. “You can’t be that married if you’re with me… On your way to make out in the bowling alley parking lot. Seems kind of sleazy don’t you think?”

“Sleazy!? You think I’m sleazy?”

“No. I don’t. I think you’re lonely, unappreciated, overlooked, undervalued. I think you’re not very happy… What’s his name?”

“Jim. He’s a cop.”

Pablo scoffed, then chuckled. “Great.”

“Don’t worry. He’s not a very good one. He’s a fat, lazy one.” She laughed out loud at last.

“Wow, Rose. Way to lighten up. Don’t worry about it, baby. We’re almost there and Pablo will make you feel good.”


Once in the parking lot of the bowling alley, Liquid Pablo Pablum reached behind his seat for the bottle of Close-Up cinnamon-flavored mouthwash. He screwed off the plastic lid and took a swish. Then he passed it to Rose. He opened his door and spit out the rinse. She did the same.

“Well,” Pablo said. “Come here and give me some Stevia.” He laughed because he thought it was funny that he said Stevia instead of sugar because Stevia is a sugar substitute, and he was sort of a substitute man for Rose. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Rose leaned closer to him, and they playfully rubbed the tips of their noses before their mouths parted and the kissing was on. The passion went from 0 to 176 in a few furious seconds. They clamped their hands to each other’s faces and kissed and sucked and slurped and licked and smooched and smacked like the end of the world was marching over the horizon. The hands slid from their faces and went to grope crotches and breasts and thighs and ass cheeks, and the windows of the car were steaming up as the kissing went on at a hot and ferocious pace.

Pablo began to undress, and he wanted her to do the same, but she just caught her breath and suddenly refused. “No… Not here. Not now. I’m not ready.”

Pablo panted. “What? Why?”

“I told you. I’m not ready. Just please respect how I feel.”

Pablo slumped back in his seat. “Geez, Rose. Sometimes you can be a real square.” He made an invisible square in the air with his pointer fingers.

“I’m sorry… No. I’m not sorry. It’s how I feel.”

“What if we were to go somewhere private?”

“No. I really all of a sudden want to go bowling. It’s been so damn long, and I used to love to go bowling. Why have I stopped going bowling?”

“My guess is Jim. Huh?”

Rose made a frowny smirk. “Jim. Talk about a square. He’s the king of squares.”

“All right,” Pablo said. “Let’s go bowling. I wanna see how you handle those big, heavy balls.”

TO BE CONTINUED


The Cowmen (Two)

Arno and Hosea came to a desolate town of squat adobe structures the colors of the earth and the sun and those structures mingled with freshly hewn wooden buildings that rose above them like intimidators and boasted of great possibilities. The rise of a new civilization on top of an old one was at work again in the world. The natives were being slowly crushed out by another generation from another place, and they believed they had the better of ideas and ways of living.

The town’s name was Sudan and there was a smell of animal dung and sawdust and perfumed whores in the hot afternoon air. A wide dirt track went through the center of the town, and it and its immediate environs were lined on both sides and in the corners by the various modes of commerce and service: A bank, a jail, a general store, a hotel or two, saloons, a gunsmith, a livery stable, a butcher, a doctor, and a small train station with various people leaning or sitting as they waited upon their destinies to arrive on the rails.

Horses and wagons moved like a meandering stream up and down the main thoroughfare which was mashed by hoofs and wagon wheels. As Arno and Hosea made their way along, some of the people nodded, smiled, said “hello mister.” Ladies in blooming dresses called out to them from balconies. Other folks with roughshod faces and rubber necks watched them closely and scowled with sour intent. Some even yelled out from the wooden boardwalks where they sat on barrels to warn them that they should “watch yourselves,” merely because they were drifting strangers.

“I don’t understand why some folks need to be so hateful,” Hosea said as they worked the horses to a hitching post outside the Camaro Saloon. “I’m the nicest cowman in the world.”

“Would you stop saying that!” Arno snapped as he climbed off his horse. “It’s so damn embarrassing.”

“You’re always so worried about what other people think… I don’t care what other people think,” Hosea said. “I’m going to be who I am.”

Arno rolled his eyes. “That’s probably your problem. Let’s get a drink, or 72… And try not to say too much.”

Hosea waved his hand at the air. “Nah, you go ahead. I don’t feel much like drinkin’ and hollerin’ and carrying on right now. I think I just may go walk and stretch out these long legs of mine. I think that’s what I need.”

Arno scoffed at him. “All right then. Just don’t get yourself in trouble.”

“Look who’s talking.”


Where Hosea ended up on his wandering walkabout was into a fog thick as gauze outside of the main part of the town, and there the birds were winged phantoms of dark light and the trees were backlit spindly bodies that leaned and coughed or sat away from all the others. The air all around was a mist and there was a small flow of water that went through the middle of it all on its way to a greater fall and rush further down into the valley. Somehow, Hosea had opened a curtain and stepped inside to this lost place. He felt a warmness, but he also felt uncertainty. He also felt he wasn’t alone.

He stood on the bank of the stream and gazed into the veil of the whole western world. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately… Pulling aside curtains and stepping into lost places. There’s been a lot of thought in me about the other side. The other side of this, whatever this is,” and he looked up, raised his hands in the air. “The other side of Earth, the other side of the Milky Way and beyond. I may be a cowman, but I have a very deep river of thoughts.”

“Who are you talking to?” came a voice from somewhere behind him. “Are you praying?”

Hosea whipped around and there saw a woman… A cow woman. “No one, mam. Just myself. Not God neither.” His heart picked up speed. “What are you doing here?” he asked her as if he had a right to know.

“I gather the same reason as you. To get away from folks.” She moved closer to him. Hosea noted right away that she was pretty and that made him nervous. “Are you new to Sudan?” she asked.

“No, mam. Just passing through.” Hosea lifted the hat from his head and extended his hand. “Name’s Hosea, mam. I hope I wasn’t trespassing or something.”

She smiled at his lanky awkwardness. “I’m not a mam. I’m a Sadie.”

Sadie?”

“That’s right. Don’t you like it?”

“It’s a fine name. Just never heard of it before.”

“Now you have.” She finally took his hand and squeezed it for a moment. “It’s nice to meet you. How long are you in town for?”

“Most likely just the night.”

“Well,” she began, and she turned and pointed. “I run that little place over there. The sea-foam green house with the little corral out on the side. It’s my peacock ranch.”

“You keep peacocks?”

“I raise ‘em and I sell ‘em. The farmers and the ranchers use them to keep down the snakes and the mice… And I just think they’re so pretty.”

“They are colorful birds,” Hose said. “Very colorful.”

“Would you like to come see them? I could fix you a lemonade or a sweet tea.”

Hosea scratched at his head as he thought about it. “I suppose that wouldn’t hurt nothin’.”

TO BE CONTINUED


The Cowmen (One)

For The Cowmen

I was the man beyond the veil, and I was upside down in sunlight, so it seemed. A crystal-clear river of icicle vibes sparkled in that light to my left. A grassland to my right. Broken people with backpacks and real live monkeys on their shoulders wandered through traffic unaware of all that worldly danger that I could feel myself right under my olive and oiled skin. The black hairs on my infinite arms curled and crawled like villains coming up out of the ground—ground on a green hill, ground littered with the stones of the dead, ground covered with thick trees and their companion crooked branches that pointed off into all sorts of directions, all sorts of times and places, pointing off to one hamlet or village or town or metropolis or suffocating hole of hell that included far too many bodies living on top of each other.

I watched as they bathed in dirty rivers. They held red buckets near their dark brown skin. The hoods and the shawls and the shirts were all decorated with brightly colored flowers and yet no blue god with a golden and ruby dragon for a crown would grant them peace. They suffered for living. Yet some smiled. Some laughed. Some even splashed and jumped in the water the color of diarrhea. I turned the other way like so many of us do up here on the mountain in the clouds.

Bibles for bullets, burritos for warfare, turbulence for tractors… I see the farm man in a straw hat and loose blue shirt sitting on the machine as it putters its way through a big yellow field slowly turning fresh brown. He plows the world under in search of an unsustainable hope. He falls, dies, and is buried by his own machine, man’s own metal devices. I move on with the stars, the planets, the universal exoskeleton.


“Get a rope,” a grumpy cowboy who sat by a fire in another time croaked in his drunkenness. His face was like dirt and charcoal all mixed together like splatter batter and the orange light made the skin shine. He looked up to the night sky. “We’ll tie one end to the moon, the other to his neck.”

“Who are you wanting to kill now, Arno?” a cleaner cowboy asked from the other side of the fire. He was sitting on a log and rolling a cigarette.

“I’ll kill anyone deserves killing or even those that don’t but merely dream about it. I’m just thinkin’ and spoutin.’”

“Seems all you care about lately is killing folks.” He pointed with his smoky cigarette hand. “Haven’t you ever just wanted to love somebody or be loved yourself? I figure you got to have a heart in there somewhere. Why don’t you ever use it?”

Arno grunted his dismayed amusement. “Love is nothing but the far end of disillusionment. And when you connect both ends, when you bend this arc of life like space time and bring them closer, well, it’s just the same thing. You drop in. You drop out. Continuum flows into continuum and just keeps going. Love turns to hate and then back again… Maybe. If you’re lucky. But most of us ain’t.”

“Well,” the clean cowboy named Hosea chimed like the wind and he spat at the ground, “I don’t see it that way.” Hosea stuck one end of the rolled cigarette into his mouth and put a match to it, waved it out and tossed the stick into the fire. “Love would change you if ya just let it. Love will make you a true and genuine man. You just can’t give up. It’s gotta be through thick and thin.”

Arno reached down and filled a hand with pebbles and dirt and tossed it. “Shut up. Your dullard philosophy is giving me a pain in the head. You sound like a duck. An unintelligent duck.” Then Arno stood and flapped his arms as he waddled around the fire making quacking noises and laughing.

“Ah, hell. You ain’t nothing but a fool, Arno,” Hosea said as he brushed the pebbly dirt from his coat. He tossed the remainder of his rolled cigarette in the fire and coughed. “I’m going to turn in.” He was tall and skinny, and his body seemed to go on forever toward the sky when he rose in the firelight and headed toward his bedroll. “I’m tired as an old man.”

“Sleep tight, princess,” Arno teased. “Don’t let a broken heart fill your dreams with dread.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t forget to put more of them logs on the fire. Keep it burning.” His voice began to drift away. “I’ve got the strangest feeling someone is watching us from the woods… Or maybe a crystal ball in the clouds.”


The air smelled like dissolvement in the turpentine chill of a new winter’s day. It had lightly snowed on them during the night, like a virgin spread of the legs, and they woke chilled to the bones and scuttled quickly to restoke the midnight fire which wasn’t an easy task and they had to make use of strong whiskey for their insides and for flames. They made heavy coffee and fried remainders of rabbit meat in a chattering silence among them. Both men kept their uneasy thoughts to themselves as they packed up, broke camp, and mounted the horses.  

They rode slowly in single file. The breath of the animals steamed. Arno led. Hosea kept his distance. The landscape was a grayish, ghostly white on the moorlands and with forest walls of slate green on the curved edges. The sun was a rising palladium disc that lacked radiance as it sat motionless behind the ill-colored clouds. 

Hosea later called ahead in the vastness, his voice cracking the quiet and startling perched birds to flight. “Do you think we’ll make it all the way to Shamrock today?”

“I don’t know,” Arno answered when he turned to talk. “I reckon that’s up to the universe and the degree of its good mood.”

Hosea spurred his horse up closer to the brooding leader, and then told him, “I had a dream last night that I died.”

Arno glanced at him for a moment and then looked forward again, mostly uninterested. “I don’t ever dream,” he said. “Dreams are the products of unfulfilled wishes.”

“Do you mean all your wishes have come true in life?”

“No… Because I don’t wish for anything neither.”

“How can you live like that… With no hopes or dreams or wish making?”

Arno looked his partner straight in the eye, a squint forming via a streak of sunlight beckoning to break through the veiled ceiling of the world. “Well, right now I sorta wish you’d shut your yapper.”

The younger Hosea was a bit dejected. “Sorry… I guess I do talk too much.”

They came to a fork in the trail and their wayward way opened like a storybook. They stopped and looked at the bowl of the land, an arc of morning light on the horizon the color of an over-easy fried egg.

“Yes, you do,” Arno said about the talking. “And sometimes I wonder if you’re even a real cowboy.”

“Of course, I am,” Hosea protested. “Just because I think about a lot of different things in a deeper matter than most doesn’t make me not a cowboy.”

Arno merely grunted a response as he looked both ways at the fork. One path sloped up and deeper into a wooded plat, a forest of vertical jail cell rails with light lingering through, ghosts of all the world’s prisoners floating among the limbs. The other way opened onto a prairie with shallow, frosted hills and escarpments of weathered rock fondled by perverted and unsettled brush.

And why are we called cowboys?” Hosea pointed out. “We’re not boys, we’re men. We should be called cowmen.”

“Cowmen?” Arno snorted like one of the cold horses. “Because cowmen sounds stupid.”

Hosea was quiet for a moment and then changed the subject. “Which way to Shamrock?”

Arno nodded toward the prairie and the vast wonderland that lie beyond. “West.”

TO BE CONTINUED