— Patrick Fealey

Table of Contents

poetry

(the passionate stuff)

the boss lady’ editorial

(letter from the editor)

prose

(the meat & potatoes stuff)

philosophy monthly

(justify your existence)

the 23 enigma

How Did I Ever Wind Up Here

    Grey bars and concrete stacked afar, vanishing points of slowly disappearing souls I can feel. Slamming steel at my back brings my stomach high, and takes a bite of my shirt to welcome me. No canteen for a month the shirt will cost, a bill that must be paid.
    A shadowed hole along the line, my all and all for thirty months, comes closer quick. Hearing the snarl of steel I look to find, the grey bars closed, my world to be. Along the catwalk my keepers flee, the echo of their laughter left for me. Unseen voices sound without, mixed with laughter of their own, telling me to the canteen I need not go, new cherries can bargain for their needs. Hearing this I sink lower still, just another welcome dripping down. Nerves already raw, without a stitch from me, the cushion for my frame begins a tic.

    To wind up here is hard to realize, though the judge’s words were clear. Learn the lessons of this place, a better man to be. His power lit, gavel down and punitive pleasure well be robed, tough on crime he is, everybody knows. Rising from the bench, through a door he goes, his duty done, a career ahead, and tables laid just so.
    To the local clinks I have been, pinched from the bar I leaned upon, by local screws, their quota filled. Intoxication my crime to charge, and obstruction for bringing them off their cot, but how did I ever wind up here.
    Once on a leave before the Nam, I thought it would be sweet. But drunk I did become, and mid-night chin-ups on the school swings, had the screws called forth. My buddy they let go, and told to stay away from me. A mother’s son they took to jail, for her in the morn to retrieve, a home town good-bye before I took their war. Class reunions wonder still, why I never come despite the pleas, and say my empathy is shot. But how did I ever wind up here.

    Long haired and a beard to stretch, he begged for half my weed and waved a ten. I gave it over owed to be, maybe a brother I would find. But my shirt pocket for the ten, he did stick it anyway. Later I came to see that weed that was pinched from me, on the table across the way, where the smiles of the judge often homed. And the brother I wanted to be, neatly uniformed and spanking clean was he. His teeth, like a paste buy me ad, to the judge he often flashed.

    That is how I got here. Nary a scarf across her eye, the lady boldly viewed her scales, and leaned her way of ought, instead of balance let it be. The gavel down, the price to pay, all the pockets picked, it has been a day. Get by I will or not for threadbare my pockets are, but when you come to better me a hair you will not find. Surprised you can not be, it happens a lot.

Charles Hayes bio

    Charles Hayes, a 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others

Dear Diary

I hear the dead speak
Secrets that only
Their strange realm has taught them

Why a man can be
Both good and evil
Confusing one with the other

How flowers can bloom
In fields of dust
Turning wastelands into gardens

When true love arrives
It takes a sure hand
To open the door to receive it

But knowledge is just
A song without words
That each must find themselves

For the world reveals
Only part of its story
You must write the rest

Love as a verb

If throughout Time
It’s all indeed been about
Fiddler on the Roof-Community
Tribe as gens as familial tie
A doctrine of orgasm through works
If it’s hammer to nail and little more
A To Do list for crumbs
An adherence to roles, which,
Near as I can detect
Everything from the counterculture to
Marilyn Manson destroyed,
Love as indeed a binding legal contract
Pretty much about Money, should you fail
Pretty much about Not Failing, otherwise
If this is the Father Guido Sarducci bit, about
“Life is a job”
Love bonded Love
                a job            Jesus God
If it’s 16 Tons, a gandy dancer’s song
If anything anything other than a zombie
Can comprehend as Actual Other Love
Is bits and baubles, coins for Friday
And I finally think this likely,
Then, yes, I’m ballistic
I had a hunk of the 70’s and all the 80’s
I coulda been such a whore

‘Tween the Ears is Too Short

And a friend would say,
“Let’s go to the nudist camp!”
I’d agree, and get back freaked out
“Are You Crazy?!”
And a friend would suggest going streaking
I’d agree, and get back terrified
“Are You Nuts?!”
And a girl would come up with a daring idea
And a guy would concoct an adventure
And they’d blat it at me
And I would Always, Immediately agree
“Are you kidding?!”
“You can’t be serious?!”
“I didn’t really mean it!”
“Are You Crazy?!”
“Are You Nuts?!”
“Oh, my God, NO!!”
And, we’d just sit there
And, they be all flushed,
Cut to The Information Age
All of these within-5-years-either-way
People my age, stump for living life
Don’t waste it, it’s too short, carpe diem
Seize the fucked idea of the moment
Smell the aroma therapy,
I assume they say this
Drowning in appletinis at their fart party
I knew lots of people, through lots of years
Most of them never did a goddammed thing

Forgiveness

Human nature wants it
It is always expected
Sometimes it flutters around avoiding us like a butterfly
But, we possessively hesitate to return it.

Sarajevo Blues (Pt I)

The city is that modestly shy
that not only visits to museums
will tell why the pursuit of
happiness is sacrificed

When girls dressed to kill
the pimples of their skin
explain for hours on
history's wrongs

Like her purple lips express
in perfect syllables
no one can remain untouched
by Sarajevo's tragedy.

(Thanks to Sarajevo and Maloe Melo)

My Time

Forgot my watch
        this morning.
Left it on the table
where I usually stash it,
a casual habit now remembered.
Don’t really need it.
My phone has a clock.
The car has a clock.
There is even an almost-right
clock on the courthouse downtown.
The bank has a clock.
They are all over the place.
But somehow it is not the same.
They all tell me
        what I need to know,
yet none of them gives me
        the time
that is mine.

A New Pair Of Kicks

A new pair of kicks
And flashes of baby brother
Come to mind. Never
Mind the extra pair of
Legs
Or the jack o latern
Smile
He’s riding around town
Like a boss
And you wonder why sometimes
God is who he is
A new pair of kicks
And he’s with his friends
Plotting the next score
A .45 underneath the seat

He won’t be caught slipping
Only an idiot plays the game
Fair and lives

But if he had lived!
He would’ve gone back to high
School
Then to college
Cos he never liked to feel left out
Of anything
And I would cheer him
On, regardless
Baby brother knew it best:
A new pair of kicks
And you can travel to
The future

The Queen Of
Old Orchard
Beach Maine

every summer, she comes here
between tours
the emo kids mixing in
perfectly with the baby
boomers

she rests on the beach, with a
shadow of a ferris wheel
in the background
every summer, she comes
just when the lobster boats
are holding sway, far off into the
ocean

she’ll take off her top
and the sun will make love
to her body

she always wears wayfarers,
though the shopkeepers say
her blue eyes pierce like
swords

I have been brave enough to
walk over to her a few times,
and say “hello,”
once, pretending my beach
ball went over by
mistake

she just smiled in that way
people who are affluent do,

it was a miracle!

on her right leg,
were the names of her
nieces and nephews, she
says

an older couple sitting not
far from us, says
the government should do
a better job of guarding its
borders

blonde hair covers her face,
like a shaggy dog;
she brushes it back
I react as if
I’ve seen an epiphany
she asks me who’s better
miles davis or john coltrane?
I don’t immediately answer

i’m transfixed by the
tattoo on her right arm
the one of the French flag
with the term under it that reads
liberte, egalite, fraternite

Do It Yourself Bukowski Multople Choice

A. the crapper
B. a bottle of muscatel
C. my dead white ass
D. other

when the landlady barges into my room
looking to
A. get laid
B. have a drink
C. collect the rent
D. other

she is wearing a dirty slip and I can see her
A. unshaved bush
B. varicose veins
C. raging cellulite
D. other

she bends over and grabs
A. my rock hard shaft
B. my limp dick
C. my petrified pecker
D. other

i gave it to her on the
A. crapper
B. roach infested carpet
C. wine soaked couch
D. other

i slam it to her like
A. pneumatic jack hammer
B. a dog in heat
C. a cop clubbing a negro in harlem
D. other

she wails like a
A. factory whistle
B. tijuana whore
C. cop car on the way to the doughnut store
D. other

when it is over she
A. throws my ass out
B. smiles and she says she’ll be back later
C. drinks my muscatel while sitting on the crapper
D. other

I stare out bloodshot eyes at the mean streets of L.A.
and think about
A. what a pecker driver i am
B. the nu# 8 horse running at Hollywood park
C. writing a poem about Mozart and my dick
D. other

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Steve De France is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002 and 2003. A few recent publications include The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, and The Sun. In England he won a Reader’s Award in Orbis Magazine for his poem “Hawks.” In the United States he won the Josh Samuels’ Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: “The Man Who Loved Mermaids.” His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the GARAGE THEATRE in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his writing.

    Steve has traveled widely in the United States. On several occasions he has hitch hiked across America&rode the rails on freight trains across the southwestern United States. He has been a pugilist&a professional table tennis player. He writes poetry and sails a small sailboat in Long Beach, California. He has written&sold scripts for Hollywood&worked as a professional actor in film&television. He received an M.A. in English Literature and a MFA in poetry. Steve continues to teach writing at an obscure inner city college in downtown Los Angeles.

    Some of his literary titles include: Fear and Loathing at the Typewriter (Ginniderra Press) 2006,The Killer: A Play in Three Acts (Quick Silver) 2006, Things to Read on Your Way To Hell (Musclehead Press) 2005, The Killer And Other Politically Incorrect Poems (Xlibris) 2003, Voices At The Waystation (Xlibris) 2003, Luminous Order (Xlibris) 2002, Dream Siege (Alpha Beat Press) 1999, Dancing On The Head Of A Pin (Inevitable Press) 1998, Signals From The Land (Inevitable Press) 1996, What’s It Like Where I am Going? (Inevitable Press) 1996, Ordinary Angers (Inevitable Press) 1993, and Lost In Hollywood (Quick Silver Press) 1989.

His poems have appeared in the following publications:

United Kingdom

    Acumen, Ancient Heart Magazine, Aireings Poetry Journal, Ambit, Apostrophe, Atlantic, Awen/Atlantean Publishing, Blue Fred’s Kitchen, Borderlines/Anglo-Welsh Poetry Society, Carillon Magazine, Cauldron, The Coffee House, Current Accounts, Decanto, Dream Catcher, Fire, Garbaj, Global Tapestry, The Gruel Factory (Horace), The Interpreter’s House, Iota, Krax Magazine, Living Poems/Dragonheart Press, Lookout Magazine, Merge, Never Bury Poetry, The New Writer, Nightingale/Dream Catcher, The Orange Room Review, Orbis, Peace&Freedom Press, Pennine Ink , Pennine Platform, Poetry Monthly, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Purple Patch, Quantum Leap, Quarry, The Seventh Quarry , Short Stories Australia, The Smoking Poet, The Snoring Cat, Social Alternatives, South, Splizz, Takahe, Waterways (Ten Penny Players), and Westerly.

United States

    360 Degrees, Alpha Beat Press, Art:Mag, Artisan, Backstreet Quarterly/Clark Street Review, Barbaric Yawp/Boneworld Publishing, Big City Little.com, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, The Blue Mouse, California Quarterly, CER*BER*US, Chiron Review/Kindred Spirit Press, Cimarron Review, Dana Literary Society Online Journal, Down in the Dirt/Scars Publications, Fireweed, Flutter, Freefall, Hellp, The Higginsville Reader, Hiram Poetry Review, The Iconoclast, Illya’s Honey, Kaj-Mahkah, The Kit-Cat Review, Language&Culture, The Laughing Dog, Los, Lucid Moon Review, Lynx Eye, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Mojo Risin’, New Graffiti, New Verse News, The Poet’s Pen/The Society of American Poets, Permafrost, Poem/Huntsville Literary Association, Poesia, Poetry Motel, Rainbow Winds, Red Hawk Review, Satire, The Sounds of Poetry, Stirring, The Sun, Tacenda, Thorny Locust, Through Spider’s Eyes/Rosewater Publications, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Writer’s Bloc, Zillah, ZZZ Zyne

    Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors of the above publications

The Fever Which She Inspired

    My artsy girl, Anne, was exhilarated by the fever, as if it augmented her powers, for she was artistic unto exhaustion. The elevation of her temperature contributed to her art, but now and then I forced an ice bath on her, though she resisted weakly and accused me of “dousing” her inspiration. In her delirium, she achieved a greater delirium. Fodder for the very remarkable machine. It was then I witnessed strength in spite of frailty.

    My artsy girl, Anne, always had a penetrating stare. But beneath the fever’s patronage, it was positively ethereal, eyes incredibly old or incredibly young—I never knew which. Her face was taut with strain, pasty skin stretched across a pair of catty cheeks, whose angles never failed to surface with her temperature, which gave her an ascetic bearing. The ideas caused a trembling in her limbs; her forehead overlapped by charcoal bangs I loved to kiss with burning lips.

    My artsy girl, Anne, was the type to make me worry. For she liked to push herself, and I knew (someday) her heart would stop, and that fever (at last) would subside. She left this world with brush in hand, as I hope to at my keyboard.

    My artsy girl, Anne, rarely came to bed. She snoozed upright at table; she slept upright in chairs. Other times she just collapsed, collapsed beneath the fever, the fever which inspired her, the fever which she inspired.

The Jester

    Our girlfriends thought we should meet because they believed a writer is a writer and we were both drunks. His goal was to get into The New Yorker to obscurify to the delight of the upper classes. I recommended In Our Time. He hadn’t read Hemingway’s best writing and wasn’t interested. He had already written not only the best short story he had ever written, but the best short story he had ever read. He wore leather motorcycle boots without the motorcycle and a leather jacket he referred to as “my leather.” He wore $150 custom made shirts and snorted a lot of coke. “I fear I am becoming a character,” he said after self-publishing his first novel. I slept on his couch ten years after we met. I was hobo-ing around and working on a novel. He wouldn’t let me touch his Olympia, so I bought a Smith-Corona at the Salvation Army for $4. I watched him inflate himself by collecting friends and brutalizing his petite wife. He had the smallest dick I’d ever seen on a grown man. He says to me, “Do you think writing poetry is just a way for you to accommodate your drinking?” Speeding down Divisadero, he doesn’t know who he is, but he knows what he’s going to show you. You couldn’t walk side by side with him. He had to be in front striving and asserting and if he couldn’t, he fell far behind and acted apathetic. One night he broke down. His eyes searched mine. He was pathetic. “I envy the facility with which you write,” he said. “You can only be yourself,” I said. He did not consider himself “particularly touchy,” but in fact he was a bitch and I spent a lot of time feeding his lies just for the conversation and couch. He was a great talker. He’ll probably get into The New Yorker because he has nepotism in his hip pocket. He says to me, “I read the first twenty pages of your novel and I wouldn’t change a word, but I’m not going to read any more because I don’t want it to affect my writing style.” As if he had never read a book.

Mastering Fine Accidents

Short guy in a dirty blue down jacket, late 50s
wild blue-gray hair, holding a plastic bag in the elevator
He was mostly blocked from me, but I could see
he had something heavy
I needed a beer, so I asked
He came around and told me to go ahead
He had a bag full of loose beers
“Thanks.”
“Wash it,” he said. “It came out of the garbage.”
“Where?”
Long silence.
“You’re not telling me. It’s alright.”
I got off the elevator
He said after me: “Pelham’s.”
I rode my bike down to Pelham’s
and found a big green dumpster full
of empty bottles and hefty bags full of bottles
mostly empty
and a lot of them were broken
and there was brown water at the bottom
of one end of the dumpster
air sour like rotting fruit and vinegar,
as well as like a dumpster
The light was fading, so I propped open the top lids
and slid open the side doors
It was dark in there
All I saw were empties and broken glass,
piled three feet high
I picked through the bottles for
ten minutes and didn’t find anything
thirst versus fears about getting cut
Tom arrived and leaned into the other side,
opposite me
He had a small flashlight
He found a bottle of Sierra Nevada in less than one minute
He gave it to me
I found a Smirnoff ice in the dark
I would find three of these and, with his help and flashlight, a
Stella Artois
He found six beers and a Smirnoff,
including a Red Stripe he divined
beneath and through a pile of shattered empties
He gave me some of his beer
He insisted
We searched for an hour and then talked
He had discovered the booze earlier in the day
when he had walked up to the dumpster
to throw away a soda bottle
he saw a bottle of whiskey
He finished it off
Then he saw an unopened beer
Beautiful women dressed for the town
walked past us tramps, women who
talked to me
who i had something
to say to
when i had a career
before i shattered myself
against the thing
I was supposed to live in
I wanted to get back to the hotel
before my beer
got any more outdated

Trampled

The day they poured the sidewalk
in front of my shop down on Euclid,
some kid took a stick and scratched the words
“FUCK YOU”
into the setting cement.
City Hall sent some boys to fix it after a few days,
but everybody on the block saw it. For a few days,
the sidewalk had a voice.
And what else should a sidewalk say?
Uncelebrated, unrenowned
in its flawless geometry,
its perfect scaling of area and volume
unnoticed year after year,
a toilet for dog and man.
Now it circles the block silently,
like an old convict
pacing the perimeter of a prison wall.

A Simple Recalculation of Vows

Carefully calculated computations run
across a pristine white screen with the
clicking kiss of keys striking one
another with a push of sticky fingers
in the right direction and a glance
downwards towards indecency.

Two plus two and side by side,
as all of God’s creatures take their
respective places and vow to
imitate the others with pre-
determined dirty hands and dresses.

The computer doesn’t know
which fingers the master uses
it simply states that two plus two
and side by side they must stall.

The same calculations ringing over
on a flickering screen, shaking
hands type now as words and
numbers mix together and blur

with another swig of bourbon and
hormone pills.

Maybe this time the algorithm
will fix itself, maybe this time
I will line up with all the other
bridegrooms and kiss the bride,
instead of the groom.

Rose Water

Like gold in a river
or a strawberry lake
swan’s gliding angelic motion
silver water gives a medal to the rain
twinkling the currents to sunlight
rainbows inside sleep.

What you had to have

Woke up wondering inside
What you had to have
Oh yeah, need a shower.
Soap here, shampoo there.
Water not too frigid cold,
Not too steaming hot.

I think I better have underwear
Not too holey, not too much bleach
Just enough to get rid of skid marks
Torn blue jeans, worn T-shirt combo
With matching socks and shoes.

Now what you had to have
The rest of the day
And that may take some time

Before I Learned

    Before I learned sex positions were named for what’s done to a woman, I knew women weren’t created to be passive recipients.
    Before I learned oral sex was sex, I knew it should be reciprocated.
    Before I learned most of a man’s fascination with his own penis was the fact he could see it, I knew women had genitalia worthy of attention.
    Before I learned some men couldn’t climax while wearing a condom, I still knew I had the right to be protected.
    Before I learned some guys thought inserting “just the tip” was an acceptable work around to wearing a condom, I knew the tip was where rogue sperm and STIs hung out.

    Here’s some anatomical irony: men boast and compliment one another by stating how big their testicles are; or urge another man to be courageous by suggesting he “grow a pair”; and will even express admiration for an assertive woman by saying she’s really “ballsy”. Yet, testicles are as fragile as an overhyped male ego. On the other hand, vaginas are designed to withstand a pounding. So, shouldn’t it be more complimentary to tell a man he’s a big pussy?

Once upon a time
On an overcrowded bus
From Mombasa to Dar es Salaam
Zoned out
Dead weight
Bouncing around
Exotic African images blurring past
Crudely serenaded by
Blasting Zairian music
Heavy bass
Pulsating hearts
When slowly
Through mental fog
A primal response
To inanimate vibrations
Orgasmic vaginal contractions
Forget horseback riding
Ride a chicken bus instead
Heaven and Hell
Are self-inflicted

SHE: A Fable for the Twenty-First Century

A modern college classroom.

SHE
was a
“professor of history at the college,
a feminist,
and
a person of color”

SHE
“read the Call to Action”
and was
“grateful for our students’ bravery”

SHE
saw their list of
“some two dozen microagressions
and acts of bias”
and was
“eager to lend my support”

then SHE
“noticed my course on the list”

SHE
“reacted with surprise,
embarrassment,
and----
to be candid----
indignation”

SHE,
and SHE
was not alone,
did not consider this a fable

Facescaping*

Like plastic surgeons,
our better politicians
may hold
a preposterous pose
or even a repulsive one
and by cosmetically reshaping
a little tissue,
or in this case
words,
make it enticing
or even Irresistible;
for, let’s face it,
when handled by the tongue
of a proficient politician,
“truth,” like beauty,
lies wholly
skin deep.

color="#666666">* Term for plastic surgery used
in David Mitchell’s novel, “Cloud Atlas”

Korean Christ

Some years ago,
when I first saw
a Korean Christ,
I sort of smiled
questioning
how could that be
as everyone knew
Jesus,
born and reared
a Judean Jew,
was actually fair,
grey eyed,
light haired,
in short,
a northern European
- with luck
even an Aryan?!

Our Common Tongue

Fuck’s
an expletive
an interjection
an invective
a four letter word
an ejaculation...
and then, when you consider
its combinatorial manifestations
and derivatives and parts of speech,
as in,
“You’re a fuck off,”
“Don’t fuck up,”
“Stop fucking around,”
“Fuck off! You fucking mother fucker!”...
as well as changes to meaning
engendered by stress-intonation shifts
like, “You fuck!” (rage)
“You fuck?” (lust),
and, most importantly,
its frequent use
by all sociolinguistic strata,
then fuck becomes
our American
lingua franca.

Gone

    We lost our oldest kid to drugs
    Last night he walked out and now he’s gone
    The kid we raised is gone
    But he was already gone
    He was gone no matter what
    The guy you married in 1993 is gone
    The guy who didn’t think he wanted to be married and cheated on you in ‘98 is gone
    The guy who cried in your lap and begged your forgiveness and wrote you a happy Valentine’s Day song in 2001 is gone
    The song is not gone but that guy is gone
    The guy who surprised you with a fancy car and hotel room and sex toys on your 20th anniversary is gone
    The guy who went to Memphis last year and got drunk and fell for a girl and chased her around Beale street and kept right in the warmth of her fire but didn’t burn up in the flames is gone
    he’s not as gone
    shadows and atoms of him are still around
    But that guy
    Is gone
    The baby you gave birth to is gone
    That cute as fuck kid who said he wants to be either a pediatric neurologist or a rock star is gone
    That charming young man who danced and sang on stage while his daddy got drunk in Memphis is gone
    Everybody you ever knew is gone
    We are only here right now and then we are gone
    Every last fucking one of us
    We are all goners

unique noise

I have shared my call with the world.
For those close, who listened,
they responded.
So I shared.
And we
were
happy.

Now I have stepped onto foreign soil
and suddenly I feel so alone.
There is suddenly no one
for me to call to.
I am lost, with
no chance
for me to
share my
soul.

#

I recently heard of a lonesome whale
in the Pacific. His mating call
is 52 Hertz, which is
higher than
any whale
can
hear.

Navy researchers studied this one noise,
this one unique noise, for years,
and as far as they
could tell,
only one
whale
made
this
call.

And I’ve been pacing my apartment,
thinking about this one lost whale.
Wondering, are they
lonely. Are they
bound to be
this way
forever.

#

And I think I’m beginning to understand
that pit in your stomach feeling,
that loneliness that won’t
go away because
when you look
around, you
see no
one.

And I want to swim to the deepest depths
of the Pacific, look for who is lost,
they have to be there somewhere,
let me find them. Let me
tell them they’re
not alone,
even if
I
am.

But I know this is all a useless battle,
if I found them, they wouldn’t hear me,
I wouldn’t be able
to help. And we
would remain
together,
but
alone.

Because now that I am on foreign soil
I’ve forgotten how to stretch
my hand, hoping someone
will want to take it.
So I stand here,
far too alone,
and far too
frightened
to feel
free.

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.

X-rays and broken hearts

X-rays of small children
show two rows of teeth,
because once baby teeth
are too small for the child,

adult teeth push those baby teeth
out, break through the gums
and take over the job.
And this is really remarkable —

I mean, it’s not like your hair
which can always grow out,
and even though skin
is the largest human organ

it’s not like shedding
and growing more skin,
it’s not like cutting yourself
and watching an organ heal.

These are bones,
because your body knows
before you’re born
what you need in life...

And I wonder why
genetics hasn’t figured out
that we humans may need
a new heart, a back-up,

after it has been broken
too many times. Because,

after you’re been fired
and someone there watches
you collect your belongings
and escorts you out forever,

or after you’re sent you can’t
remember how many résumés,
and even if you’re interviewed,
they never want you back.

Or after you find your one
true love, well, that’s when
they move away, to get away
from you forever.

Or after your family dies,
and you’re alone.

After it feels like your heart
is always about ready to break,

it make me wonder why
genetics hasn’t figured it out.
We might need a back-up.
Our heart can only take so much.

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.

23

cc&d-happy birthday
you have given us freedom
like no other

what a great number 23
legal age for everything
no longer at the kiddie table

independent and wiser than a child
staying busy
engaged and flourishing

we are creating
from our soul flows ability
appreciated here

what a landmark number
to explore and still
looking ahead

truth and integrity
tolerance and endurance
your outlet is our release-thanks

the 23 enigma

    The 23 enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events seem to be directly connected to the number 23 (and William S. Burroughs is cited as the first person to believe in the 23 enigma)... Burroughs even wrote a short story in 1967 titled “23 Skidoo” (the phrase “23 skidoo” was popular in the 1920s; it means “it’s time to get out while the getting is good”).
    We could mention dates, since this is the 23 year anniversary issue of cc&d magazine, like:
    On December 23, 1805 the Federal Reserve Act passed in congress.
    On March 23, 1912 Wernher von Braun (inventor of the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany and the Saturn V for the United States) was born.
    On March 23, 1933 members of the Reichstag met, passing Hitler’s Enabling Act (which effectively ended democracy in Germany and established the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler).
    On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact (which didn’t last).
    The 23rd can be found throughout history with significant meanings, but here are a few notes about the number 23 itself:
    23 is the most commonly cited prime number and the only prime number that consists of two consecutive prime numbers.
    Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times.
    There are 23 vertebrae in the human spine.
    The Knights Templar had 23 Grand Masters.
    There are exactly 23 characters, numbers and letters on the face of all U.S. coins.
    Blood circulates the body on average every 23 seconds.
    The pattern of DNA shows irregular connections at every 23rd section.
    The average human physical biorhythm is 23 days.
    The tilt of Earth’s axis is roughly 23 degrees.
    And cc&d magazine’s now 23 years old. Thank you for a great 23 years of poetry, prose, editorials and art, and to making cc&d more than an enigma!

In U.S. Politics, which side is more violent?

    I could just start on a rant about how violent Donald Trump seems, or how there’s a vitriol in the anti-Trump RNC, and you’d probably like to hear me talk about how Democrats always seem to rally around the “everybody should all just get along” rally cry, but I’ve got to talk about another political movement you may be aware of, and that is the Nazi party that came together that led to World War II.
    (But trust me, this will get back to modern-day politics, just hear me out.)
    For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a bit of the psycho about learning about Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party, and how it related to history and how it changed the world — and no, for some reason I’m not so fascinated with the war in the Pacific, even with the advent of nuclear bombs. I think I was totally stunned with the notion that a relatively small vegetarian artist wanna-be from Austria who hated his father ended up joining the neighboring country Germany’s army to fight in World War I... To be technical, he served as a Gefreiter (lance corporal) in the Bavarian Army, and while serving was wounded twice (in 1916 and 1918) and was awarded several medals (I think he was temporarily blinded by an explosion in the second injury).
    Okay, that might not seem too fascinating but the Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I. That’s when Corporal Hitler went to work for the Weimar (democratic) government as a spy. He was ordered to watch and attend the meetings of the German Workers party in Munich and as Hitler did he was put in charge of recruitment and propaganda. A week after his first anti-Semitic speech, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party — NSDAP, later to be known as the NAZI party.

Every time I say “beer hall putsch” I sing it to “Ball Room blitz”. I can’t help it.

    Hitler had been relatively introverted (especially as the bohemian son of an Austrian factory worker). After learning that “fighting the power” to gain power didn’t work, (see the Beer Hall Putsch, Berlin 1923 http://www.history.com/topics/beer-hall-putsch), he got assistance from professionals to help him make a more grand impression when making speeches to large audiences. The transformation began that made him the man that people were either too afraid to disagree with, or the man that commanded fanatical loyalty from his followers.
    Very shortly after Hitler became Reich Chancellor, German President Paul von Hindenburg died. This is when Chancellor Adolf Hitler developed his concept of the Führer as an absolute dictator who would bring unity to Germany. There was continued unrest from the global effects of the Depression, coupled with the fact that the economy was stagnant to say the least in Germany. Add this to the fact that fact that the Treaty of Versailles made sure Germany was not allowed to have a military force, they had to give up some of their territory — an initial cause of WWII — they were forced to pay reparations for the damages to other countries and for their war costs. In light of all of these elements together Hitler was able to say different things to different groups to get more people to rally behind him.

Did you know that fashion designer Hugo Boss became a member of the Nazi Party and a sponsoring member - Förderndes Mitglied - of the Schutzstaffel, or the SS, who designed their uniforms? According to German historian Henning Kober, the company managers were fervent Nazis and great admirers of Adolf Hitler. In 1945 Hugo Boss had a photo in his apartment of him with Hitler, at Hitler’s Obersalzberg retreat.

    And vehemently they did. If you didn’t, you outwardly said you agreed, and made sure nobody from the Gestapo overheard any comment you may think of making to the otherwise.
    So yes, not everyone had the same fervor for Hitler, but those who served in the military, were police or civil servants, pledged their loyalty not to Germany, but specifically to Adolph Hitler himself. The brown shirts (the SA, or Sturmabteilung) became massive in size, and as underlings to Hitler wanted to claim more power in his offices, Heinrich Himmler (forced to take a job in a manure-processing factory after WWI) became the Reichsführer SS, which he later built into an “elite” black-uniformed crew to specifically protect Hitler. Himmler was later also in charge of the Gestapo (secret police force, or the NAZI political police), and if you thought the SA or the SS was bad enough, then you know nothing of ruthlessness.
    Okay, okay, you’re probably wondering why I’m going on about Hitler and the NAZI police forces so much. I could make side notes like how the evil Darth Vader in Star Wars has Storm Troopers too, though Star Wars Storm Troopers were in white, not black... But if you know anything of history, you know that people under Hitler’s orders (this is seldom done by Hitler himself, as he grew into power, he had other people do his dirty work for him) were the ones over time who had no compunction at all committing violent acts of mass executions (like the gas chambers and the crematoriums, which were later “more efficient” steps from merely having to shoot Jews or gypsies or homosexuals in the head as they fell into ditches they had to shovel before their execution).
    Let me make this perfectly clear: Adolph Hitler, the mastermind of these atrocities and the genocide of millions of innocent people, was not an active participant in the day to day killings, and did not deal with the everyday details of the mass executions.
    That’s what he had his followers for.
    And that’s where a new level of scary comes in, because although there were masterminds in the Third Reich wanting the forced labor of thousands of Jews to make the weaponry during war time, they only gave the orders to make it so. There were a lot of lowly people who loved the Reich who were more than willing to do the heinous acts to thousands of innocent people — there were many people willing to get their hands filthy dirty by absolving themselves of any moral issue with their actions, because they were only following orders.

    And no, we don’t see that nowadays I our modern Political system. Though we do historically have many Democrats referring to George W. Bush in the first decade of this century as a fascist, as Hitler-esque — even though Hitler, as originally a member of a Socialist party, was more liberal than the what the Democratic party in the United States is supposed to be. (So no, Bush wouldn’t be like Hitler; the insane left-leanings of Obama makes Obama more like Hitler, even though Democrats don’t want to believe it.)

   

    Okay, I know a lot of people out there are going to hate me as I make this argument, and they’re probably thinking I am praising Republicans. In response, as I’ve said before, I’ve never voted for a Republic Presidential candidate in my life, and I doubt I ever will. But the thing is, you’re probably thinking that I think violence only comes from the Democrat side of the American political system... And no, this isn’t the case — Hillary Clinton on The Breakfast Club radio show in New York city (http://www.power1051fm.com/pages/onair/breakfast-club/mobile.php) accused Trump of turning people against each other and “inciting violence” during his campaign, playing to the “worst instincts” of Americans. Hillary Clinton even said (in reference to Trump’s campaign tone), “This prejudice, this paranoia, this bigotry, that I had not seen before,” means “we gotta repudiate the guy, and what he is saying.” (Information from http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/18/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-is-a-cancer/)
    And the Ocean Beach California “OB Rag” (http://obrag.org/?p=104978) even found that a YouGov survey found that nearly half the country sees “fascist undertones” in the Trump campaign (http://obrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Trump-poll-on-fascist.jpg). Nearly as many opined that he encourages violence at his rallies.
    Wait a minute — Trump’s a fascist? Adolf Hitler turned Germany into a fascist state, and he rose to power with the National Socialist German Workers Party — NSDAP, later known as the NAZI party. And for those of you who don’t remember, Socialism is further left leaning than Democrats, not Republicans.
    But okay, back to the quotes and references, because I have heard people talking about how Trump incites violence. I saw a news story about one man at a Trump rally, who was an older white man that I believe had a mustache and a cowboy hat, who attacked a black man at a Trump rally. The only quote I did hear was from the white man who said something to the effect that if he had the chance, like the old days, he’d kill him.
    Wow, racism and the support of the slavery mentality is alive in a fraction of the Trump supporters. Not that Trump supports that mentality, it apparently found a home with a Trump supporter.
    My Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-video-trump-protester-sucker-punched-20160321-story.html) even reported that at an Arizona Donald Trump rally, a white man clothed in a U.S. flag (and later a KKK hood) attacked another black Trump supporter. Donald Trump said during the rally, “There’s a disgusting guy, puts a Ku Klux Klan hat on,” and he later said, “But why would a protester walk into a room with a Ku Klux Klan outfit on?”
    The funny thing is that the white guy was carrying a sign that said “Trump is bad for America”, which seems a little strange, when David Duke, the former head of the KKK, publicly endorsed Donald Trump. After this endorsement, the media hounded Trump on this, and although I would imagine that Donald Trump wouldn’t condone anything from the KKK, I couldn’t find anything online about Trump not wanting support from the Klansmen.
    Back to those protesters at his rallies, Donald Trump later said, “We don’t condone violence and I say it,” as he then called the protesters “professional agitators.”
    Political agitators? Wait a minute, that’s what I was talking about...
    Because no, nobody running for the President of the United States condones violence — and if they did they surely wouldn’t say it. Donald Trump may stir the pot of stewing violence with his rhetoric at rallies and on television — I am not sure if he stirs the violence with his tweets or retweets, I don’t read anything from https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump...
    Wait a minute. I’m just saying that Trump stirs the simmering pot of violence, but I have no actual statements from him to verify this. If I’m referencing everything else in this story, I should check my sources (as any good journalist should). Just because I have Hillary Clinton accusing Trump of turning people against each other and “inciting violence” during his campaign, well, she didn’t give any evidence either. I’m sure it’s gong to be difficult to find records of bad things Trump has recently said, but let me try.
    Tennessee party chairman Ryan Haynes said, “We’ve seen what’s happened at other events around the country,” as he was referencing spurts of violence at some Trump campaign rallies (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/donald-trump-tennessee-gop-delegates-221489). There are no specific references to events here, but apparently people are aware of them enough to talk about them like they exist.
    Here are more cases without giving any quotes: NewsMax reported that “Trump’s stunning rise, accompanied by violence at his rallies and his own bellicose remarks, has fueled an expectation of disorder.” (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cleveland-comeback-summer-trump/2016/04/13/id/723793/) And NewsMax also pointed out that in a Donald Trump interview with Bob Lonsberry on WHAM 1180 in Rochester, New York 4/14/16, Donald Trump’s favorite Bible verse might be the one that includes the phrase “an eye for an eye” (http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/donald-trump-favorite-bible-verse/2016/04/14/id/724019/, http://wham1180.iheart.com/media/play/26907228/) which supports a Jewish line from the Old Testament and not a Christian line from the New Testament, but what they hey, if the Jewish Bernie Sanders could stand any chance in the Democrat processes, anything is possible.
    Which makes me point out how the American people are so obsessed with their President being religious enough that in February, Pope Francis suggested Trump might not actually be Christian (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/trump-pope-not-christian/2016/02/18/id/ 714978/), because “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
    But NewsMax was reporting that Donald Trump specifically stating that he supports those “an eye for an eye” lines indicates that his values are of slandering and stirring up malice and violence.
    So as I keep looking I hear that people refer to the violence, but I cannot find specific statements he has made — I don’t know, maybe the media is not covering specifically the bad things Donald Trump says (which is hard to fathom). But the last article I found about Donald Trump and violence was “When Protesters Trample Trump’s Rights” from RealClearPolitics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/03/22/when_protesters_trample_trumps_rights.html). That article gets me back to my point.
    The underlying foundation of the U.S. Constitution may be reflected in Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s comment on Voltaire: “While I disagree with what you have to say, I will defend until death your right to say it.” The United States has free speech rights, and even if you don’t like the words of someone like Donald Trump, forming a mob to squelch someone’s rights should not be the answer. It that’s how one side solves problems, you have to re-evaluate where the real violence in out political system truly exists — and then figure out how to stop it.

This editorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

— Janet Kuypers Editor in Chief

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.

Pay Back

    Having just disembarked from a crowded bus along the only highway, I look down the scrub covered hill at Dodong’s dogged labor as I try to unwind from the long cramped ride from the city. Beneath the conical hat his face is hidden in shadow but his upper body glistens brightly under the high sun, showing not an ounce of waste. Slogging along behind the plow and carabao, or water buffalo, its reins wrapped around his neck, he turns the black packed sod. Out on one edge of his future corn patch tall coconut and smaller banana palms run to the rocky shore of the Philippine Sea. A beautiful parcel of coastline. To see such effort as his always gets my attention in ways that bemuse me. Funny stuff—values, character, and the like. Things that are not given much shift in my rounds. Smiling to myself, I wonder at the labor such work requires and think that I’m glad it isn’t me behind that plow. What must it take to drive a man to undertake such work when a little scam here or there can reap far better rewards? Oh well, I tell myself, it takes all kinds to provide the scores for people like me.
    I have come here to snooker Dodong out of his Alcoy property because I know that he is in dire straits. His only child, a son, has cancer and Dodong has no money for his treatment, which is relatively easy and most times successful. Without it the boy will die. I have waited for my opportunity to get a piece of this particular coastline and now is my chance.
    As I reach down for my pack I notice a striking Filipina emerge from the trees on the far side of the field carrying a bucket of water. That would be Inday, Dodong’s wife, mother of the sick child. Carrying herself like the dirt under her feet is formed for her step, she closes to her husband. My my, what a piece of craft she is. This purchase could be a real pleasure. Riveted by her beauty and the thoughts that it engenders, my pack slips from my fingers as I watch their encounter. From the same full dipper of water that they share to their parting embrace when the break is over, an aura of inert passion surrounds them. I can tell that it will be easier to bring down the price of the property than to break through that aura. But then, I am very good at what I do. Even though I am a foreigner my pesos speak as well as others’ and I have my finders who keep me informed. My nice properties along the coast have shown me the value of a good finder.
    As Inday disappears back into the trees, Dodong picks up the reins of the carabao, takes off his hat, and wipes his brow. When he looks up to gauge the sun he notices me and waves. His bright smile tells me that Carloi, one of my finders, has done his job. Dodong’s visions of sugar plumbs and a well child have been properly seeded. Now only to clip them without ruin.
    Hefting my pack and working my way down a small path through the scrub, I emerge onto the field, hand outstretched and all smiles.
    “Nice work, Dodong,” I say, sweeping my arm toward the furrows. “I am Tony, Carloi’s friend, and the man who is going to change your life for the better.”
    Dodong’s smile fades a little as his eyes hold mine and we shake hands. My little introductory pitch must have led him to cut to the chase. “This is better property than your others,” he says. “Carloi has told me of your business and I know the old owners of those properties. A piece of my shoreline with a home lot and a right-of-way to the highway will not come for the same price as your other shore lots. But I will deal with you.”
    Thinking that this guy speaks pretty good English for a farmer, my rosy picture of a good profit dims a little as I swiftly tack differently. “Oh I know what you say and I am ready and willing to give you better than the others. We will work it out......for the boy’s sake.”
    Dodong, who had been studying the sky, as if his terms were somehow written there, quickly looks back at me and a shadow seems to pass within his look. “You know about my son?’
    Shrugging my shoulders, I say nothing as we face each other for several moments. As if the silence between us has ordained the course of this encounter, Dodong suddenly unhooks the plow, rolls up the reins, and stands shoulder to shoulder with the huge carabao. Looking to the tree line nearest the Sea where a string of grey smoke snakes to the sky, he says, “Come, it is time to eat. We will talk more there so my wife may be included.”
    Without waiting for my reply, Dodong leads the carabao away and I follow.
    I have scored and we both know it. My touch is still sharp but women don’t cut as easily as men. I hope the food is as good as her looks.

    Inday is not just your average Filipina housewife according to my finder, Carloi. Not very many years ago, just after graduating from Cebu University, she was selected to represent Alcoy in the Miss Cebu contest and finished third. As she shuttles food and drink through an adjoining kitchen door, for the sick kid I presume, her hair accentuates a backside figure even my practiced eye finds exceptional. Gleaming like the bright black coal seams that my dad showed me in a West Virginia coal mine when I was a kid, her long ponytail gently caresses an attractive derriere. Dodong either ignores or doesn’t notice my interest but there is something about Inday’s eyes that tell me she knows of her effect.

    Having just finished up a fine mid-day meal of ampalaya or bitter melon, kalabasa squash mixed with Bagio beans, and pork lechon, I am discovering that Inday is the obstacle when it comes to getting my price. Dodong does not concur on anything with me until he has her approval. And Inday confounds my many attempts to lay the tracks my way.
    “What you offer is not fair,” she says. “This beachfront lot is prime white sand beach and very close to one of the major beach resorts of Southern Cebu.”
    Before I can reply Dodong says, “She is right. It’s worth way more than you offer. If it were not for my son no price would be enough for me to let it go. But I must sell it, which you found out and now want to use in this business.”
    Abruptly standing from the table, Dodong continues, “Think about what is fair while I check on my carabao. We have a full load ahead this afternoon.”
    Dodong’s exit leaves Inday and me surrounded by the sounds of silence. A gecko chirps as it skitters up a wall, birds call among the palm fronds near the kitchen window, and the distant air horn of a Ceres bus sounds out on the highway, letting future passengers know of its coming. Thinking that this may be the time to see what extra I can get for being “fair” and feeling an uncommon urge toward Inday I venture the supposition.
    “You know Inday, you are very good at helping your husband. And of course you little boy.”
    I let this remark sink in as Inday sits straight backed looking me squarely in the eyes, her face a beautiful mask of repose, her eyes pools of awareness.
    “There might be a way I can raise my price,” I say.
    “I know,” she says. “You would have to triple it.”
    “You know what that way is?”
    “You are a foreigner and on in years but some things just are. I have seen you look at me. I know.”
    “If I double the price.....”, I begin, but Inday cuts me off.
    “No, you must triple it.”
    “And you would go along with that?” I say.
    “I would.”
    “What about Dodong?”
    “That’s none of your business,” she says. “And you must sell the property to one of your rich people and never come back to Alcoy.”
    Smiling and extending my hand across the table I say, “It’s a deal. A very beautiful deal.”
    Inday looks at my hand as if it is a curiosity then raises her eyes to mine without moving. “You will not touch me until then. And only then.”

    Walled off from the common people, the luxury beach resort is the perfect place to sample Inday and complete my purchase. Savoring the harvest to come, I decide on a little dip to snorkel the reef and loosen up a bit before she arrives. Entering the water amid the rainbow colored fish and coral, I dive and, at the same time, keep my eye on my suite where the money is stashed and an iced bottle of nice white wine, along with two cans of caviar, grace the wet bar. She is not well known this far North and that should make my sweet treat more pliable. Yes, this deal will certainly be one to remember. Picking a plumb from Dodong’s tree adds a flavor impossible to get any other way. And the property is worth far more than it will cost me. The plum, however, is one of those gems that I consider inestimable.
    Bobbing in the water, goggles back, with my own thoughts of sugar plums, I notice the gate guard swing the smaller pedestrian gate open to admit someone. It is Inday and she is early. But who cares.
    Carrying a small briefcase and wearing a short flowered shift with a yellow sash around the waist, high heeled straps, and a brilliant white bonnet over large sunglasses, she moves down the concrete walkway like she is walking an international runway. What a way she moves.
    Splashing out of the water in haste I yell, “Inday, it’s me. I am so glad you are here!”
    Turning to face the water, she removes her sunglasses, lifts her free hand to her hip, and watches me stumble out of the water and up to her. She does not speak.
    “Come, come,” I say, as I try to take her elbow, which she immediately withdraws. Taking the hint, anything to leave her beautiful feathers unruffled, I point to my suite and lead the way while talking over my shoulder. “Everything is prepared. The best.”
    Inday suddenly pulls up and speaks for the first time.
    “What is there to prepare? You do it and I let you.....after we count the money.”
    “God, you must be a harsh taskmaster with Dodong,” I say as I lead on and open the suite. “Have a little wine. Nibble a little caviar.”
    “Do not speak of Dodong,” Inday says as we cross the threshold. “Leave the wine and fish eggs. I must count the money.”
    Resigning myself to the basics of our business, I clear the small dining table, lay out the stacks of money, and indicate a place for Inday to sit. The picking of the plume, a main event enough, will more than suffice.
    Removing her hat and glasses and placing them on the bar, Inday crosses to the table and sits, briefly looking around. Seeing a large canopied bed perfectly framed by the open bedroom door, her review ends short and the coldness of her look bends to a wet warmness for an instant. Passing so quick it might never have happened, the emotion is gone as Inday opens her small case and removes the tax declaration for the property, signs it, and begins counting the money.
    Still in my swimsuit, I don some slippers and pour myself a glass of wine. Might as well. I hate counting money and I know that it’s all there.
    Finishing her count and satisfied with the result, Inday stands, kicks off her shoes and says, “Do you want to begin here or in the bed?”
    “However you prefer,” I say, removing my swimsuit to reveal my readiness.
    “I do not prefer. But I can see that that is not necessary,” Inday says as she faces me, slips the sash, and drops the shift to her feet. Naked beauty incarnate, she turns her body and walks into the bedroom. The dark hair that flows down her brown back to touch those hollows of pleasure is a magnet that pulls hard. I follow.

    The Bureau of Internal Revenue in Tabunok, a crowded extension of Cebu City, is one of my least favorite places in the Philippines. But it is a place that must be tolerated if one is to deal property on the Island of Cebu. And that is just the beginning. The actual titling of a piece of property is an even longer and more tedious process, which is why most people like me, and many others, skip it all together and wheel and deal with the far simpler transfer of a tax declaration.
    Onerous lines snake back from the reception windows which is par for the BIR. With the inadequate air conditioning, the sweat drenched shirts and blouses of waiting people remind me of kewpie dolls wearing targets with no bull’s eyes in a carnival game. Sustaining myself through this procedure, I imagine which ones would be the easiest to knock over with my deals. It is small comfort in the heat but amuses enough to finally get me to the window. Handing over the signed tax declaration to an underpaid and over worked middle aged woman wearing a name tag that says Gloria, I say, “Guiwang, Alcoy, I’d like to change this over to my name, palihug.”
    Hearing her own native dialect, Gloria looks to my face and smiles. Briefly nodding her recognition, she returns her attention to the computer and enters the search for the property. Working the keyboard rapidly, her smile begins to dim. The longer she searches the further her smile falls. Looking back up at me, Gloria says with as much sympathy as her job allows, “Sir, this property is registered to a Filipina American citizen married to an American National. I don’t know who this Dodong and Inday Serinio are but they are not the owners and can not convey this property. I am sorry. Next!”
    “Now wait a minute,” I say, about to come out of my skin, “I paid many pesos for this property. Are you telling me I got ripped off?”
    “I’m afraid so, sir. It happens often. You should have come here first or used a lawyer. I wish I could help you but there is nothing I can do. Now please step aside. Next.”
    Livid with anger and ready to explode, I notice the security guard leave his post by the door and approach. Thinking I already have more than I can handle and need not add an arrest to it, I turn from the window and, as calm as one who is jumping out of their skin can be, walk to the exit. The guard, now back at his post, politely opens the door for me and touches his visor with his night stick. Neither seeing nor feeling the crush of humanity on the street, nor smelling the clouds of diesel fumes that accost me, I stand there looking to the gutter, like an island in the middle of a river of people.

    At sea, halfway between the Island of Cebu and the Zamboanga Peninsula, Carloi and his wife, Inday, stand in the bow of their banglo, or family boat, watching the brazen orange horizon as the sun rises. Strung out in the waters behind them, except for Dodong’s liaison banglo off the port beam, are the many other banglos of this Sama-Bajau tribe of sea gypsies. Leaders of the tribe, Carloi and Inday try to gauge the weather ahead and determine whither they make for the nearest land or push on to Zamboanga and the Sulu archipelago. Considering that they have been at sea for two days and are carrying big loads from their sting in Alcoy, Carloi decides on land, a little rest, and a celebration in a suitable lagoon on one of the thousands of islands that are sprinkled around the Philippine Sea. As celebratory flags are hoisted above the banglos, Carloi steers for the nearest lee and some fun. Tying off the rudder once the tack is set, Carloi looks to Inday, who is watching him with knowing eyes. “You know, it has been quite a score,” Carloi says.
    “Impossible without your sister’s and rich American husband’s place,” replies Inday. “Pretending to have a kid in such a place was easy. I would not even pretend at sea. The waters are an only child for me.”
    “For me as well,” Carloi says as he looks back at the following boats and seems to consider things not of the sea. “Dodong is fat with his sweet vengeance after what that ass hole did to his cousin last year. Just fourteen. Bet she is enjoying the fruits of vengeance too.”
    “No doubt,” Inday says, “her life is changed and any sweetness that she can get is more than right.”
    Searching the eyes of his mate, Carloi asks, “What about you, Inday, did you have any feelings about it?”
    Moving to the seat just forward of the rudder bench, Inday runs her toes up Carloi’s large shorts and assumes a thoughtful pose. “Not like you my dear. It was a very small matter.”
    Carloi, igniting like a snub fused firecracker, grabs her leg, laughing while she squeals, carries her to the sleeping mid-section of the banglo and dumps her on the many cushions there. After taking a moment to appraise her delightful surrender, Carloi follows her down amid their squeals and laughter. To these sounds of the gypsy sea, off the port beam, DoDong raises the privacy flag of a couple’s embrace. And smiles.

Charles Hayes bio

    Charles Hayes, a 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others

oil

flowers on the water
broke the oil seeping up from
the submarine grave

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc& hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed.

Friends: One Down, One Arrested

    Standing on a large rock and turning his face to the soft light filtering through the treetops, Ricky Teller prays, asking for forgiveness and that his body be found before it rots. Testing the tautness once more, he pulls the noose over his head and tightens the knot behind his left ear. Lowering his eyes to the space that he intends to fill, he sees a sign of life in the small creek below. Moving about on the bottom is a crawdad holding a small earth worm. Like a fan holds aloft a caught baseball, the crawdad seems to be showing the world that it can make it. Seeing this microcosm of life so clearly from his perch, as if somehow magically magnified especially for him, Ricky changes his mind. Sliding the knot loose with trembling hands, he lifts the rope from his neck, climbs down from the rock, and trudges out of the woods to his small home along the dirt road, his mind swirling with thoughts of his fleeing wife and stepkids.

    Barbara Stephens, known simply as Babs, shacked up with Ben Hoons, the father of her two kids, until he left them for his younger cousin and their kid. Ricky, not one to miss such a rare opportunity, caught Bab’s bounce perfectly and they were quickly married.
    Hearing that his old family had made a new home with Ricky, like a child that has thrown away his toys, Ben Hoons wanted them back and drove up the hollow to try to make that happen. However, at the little footbridge across the creek to Ricky’s shack stood Ricky, blocking his way.
    “Get out of my way,” Ben said, as he tried to push past Ricky. Stiff armed by Ricky, Ben swung. Dodging the round house and countering with two quick clean landing blows that knocked Ben down, Ricky gave Ben a choice.
    “Let it go. Just go on and get off my property or I’ll get the law up here.”
    With his eye starting to puff up, Ben struggled to his feet, got back into his pick-up and, while cursing and waving a tire iron out the window, spun up a cloud of dust going away.
    Eventually ironed out by a judge and a poor people’s lawyer, the ruling gave Ricky, after many years of being alone, a bona fide wife with some step kids to boot. But with family came responsibilities.
    Having been told by Babs that if he ever started drinking again she and the kids would leave him, Ricky picked up the bottle a few months on anyway. And it was like Babs had just been waiting for the opportunity. Looking out the window one day, Ricky saw his family, with their packed trash bags, walking across the footbridge, down the road, and out of his life.

    Jason Handley, Ricky’s squad leader in Vietnam, was a kind of easy going guy. But with a bit of an insensitive streak. Once, patrolling out of a firebase near Hue, they located the charred bodies of a local VC cadre that had been napalmed. Stinking terribly to everyone else, the blackened mounds of flesh didn’t bother Handley. Grabbing one of the dead, propping him up against a palm tree, and shoving a cigarette in his mouth, he started talking to the burnt mass as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The lieutenant really chewed him out but Handley just stood there smiling and leaning against that same palm tree, like he was hanging on the street corner. When the lieutenant walked away Handley booted the corpse back to the ground and, to Ricky’s amazement, just winked and giggled before suddenly getting very serious.
    “The lieutenant’s got no guts,” he said, “he’s not going to make it.”
    Two months later the lieutenant stepped on a booby trapped 155 shell. It blew him 50 feet into the air and when he came down it was in three big pieces with lots of little pieces missing. Handley hunted down the pieces for the chopper to lift out, the whole time saying over and over, “I knew it.”

    Sitting on the outhouse toilet with the door open, watching the sun edge closer to the far western ridges, Ricky cups his chin in his hands and wonders what day it is. Almost mesmerized by the incessant drone of the locusts, he startles when he hears an old familiar voice.
    “Still sitting on the can while the world passes you by, huh Seller?”
    As out of left field as it gets, the voice brings Ricky to focus on Jason Handley walking across the outer edge of his property.
    “I thought as much,” Jason continues. “I hope you’re doing better than you look.”
    Quickly wrapping up his outhouse session, Ricky comes out of the outhouse smiling and with his hand outstretched as Jason approaches.
    Grabbing Ricky’s wrist and inspecting his hand before shaking it, Jason lets out that booming laugh of old times in the other world.
    “What the hell are you doing in these parts,” Ricky says, “thought you were back in some factory up in Sandusky.”
    “Not me, can’t take some labor boss telling me what to do any better than you can Seller. While I had an old lady, maybe, but now, she’s gone, what’s the point?
    Laughing and feeling good for the first time in weeks, Ricky shakes his head.
    “You mean to tell me that you actually found some woman that would put up with you, I don’t believe it, you got to be lying.”
    Jason looks around at the shack, outhouse and little patch of land between the road and the woods.
    “Well it don’t appear to me that you’re doing much better. I don’t see any of the fairer sex pinning up your laundry.”
    Ricky’s smile fades.
    Neither says anything for a spell as they both look off, realizing that what they had shared long ago did not make them good domestic partners. What goes unsaid between them in those brief moments could fill volumes and the understanding that exist is almost palpable. Finally meeting each other’s eyes, they simply nod.
    Going inside the shack and firing up a couple of sticks of home grown, they settle down to some catching up.
    “Don’t you ever get the feeling that you’re trapped, up this hollow miles from the nearest town, no transportation?” Jason ask. “I don’t think I’d be able to take that for very long.”
    “I get into town some,” Ricky says, “stir things up a little bit then retire back here until things calm down. Besides there ain’t no liquor stores around here so I’m forced out every now and then.”
    Jason laughs. “Yeah I can see that, sure looks like some kind of solitary up here. Don’t expect people can get in your shit much out this way. I could use a couple of weeks of that about now. Might help me draw out where I’m heading......if anything can.”
    “Hell man, throw your gear in that extra room there—it’s where my stepkids used to stay—don’t expect that they’ll mind now.”

    Hunting the hills together, not bringing in much game, but, in a way, reliving a part of their past, they quietly roam the hardwood forest and carry the guns that Ricky keeps in top notch shape. Making one trip into town during this time, they use the last of Jason’s money for all the liquor they will need and some good food to cook up when they want. Even managing to complete a one day roofing job for a widow who lives nearby. They ask only that she provide the materials.

    Heavy rain pounding the tin roof, adding a small measure of security, brings them to in the wee hours of the morning. Finding the last two cans of beer in the fridge, Ricky gives one to Jason and, with unsteady hands, rolls up a joint and lights it.
    “Well, that’s the end of the booze. Think we should scratch up some money and get some more?”
    “No need to bother,” Jason replies, “time for me to hit the road again anyway. Catching and keeping rides is hard when the bottle goes along.”
    Speaking in a slow quiet way that reminds Ricky of some of their conversations on night watch back in the war, Jason floats an idea.
    “Say Rick, why don’t you come with me? There ain’t nothing holding you here. I figure on going West, heading up to Seattle, try to get on some fishing trawler for a spell, sock up a little money, then see what’s happening.”
    “You mean hitch hike,” Ricky says, “I guess you know rides are hard to come by these days, especially for two grown men.”
    “You got a better idea?”
    “Maybe. Did you see that old VW setting under that tarp in the old widow’s yard?”
    Jason nods.
    “Well, it’s been setting like that for two years that I know of. Parts are cheap, plus there’s an authorized dealer and parts store in town. The old widow liked our work. Maybe we could work some sort of deal with her, fix up that old house for the VW, and have some wheels to get around.”
    Jason studies the proposition for a moment then shakes his head.
    “Where are we going to get the money for gas? Food will cost plenty and you do want to let down every now and then, don’t you? Seems like it would just be another trapping to eat up resources, stifle what little freedom we got.”
    Nodding in silence for several moments, Ricky decides to let it out.
    “I got some money squirreled away that my mom left me—-not a lot but enough to get the VW going and get us out West. Don’t know why I was saving it, just felt like it wasn’t really my money. Might as well put it to some use.”
    Jason looks to the ceiling and rolls his eyes.
    “You old sandbagging ass hole you. Living up here hand to mouth and you got money in the bank. Hell yes, we can put that money to use.”

    Getting a deal with the widow woman, who is glad to give them a shove off, the two aging Namies paint her house, rebuild the old porch, and repair the falling down barn. Happy with their work, the old woman deeds the VW, and wishes them luck, telling them that they are too young to be idling away their time up a West Virginia holler.
    Making several trips hitchhiking to town and the local junk yards, they get the old car licensed and in good running shape. Time to hit the road.
    Loading the old bug up with their gear and locking the shack tight, they get ready to make their final trip out of the hollow when Ricky hesitates.
    “Hold tight a bit Jay, there’s something I need to do first, down the creek a little ways, back in the woods there. Come on, there’s something you’ve never seen.....and I can’t just leave it like that.”
    Coming upon the little clearing in the woods beside a small feeder stream to the main creek, they find the noose hanging from an old Elm limb, just as Ricky had left it. Staring up at it for what seems like a long time, both are lost. Finally Jay looks away, avoiding Ricky’s eyes, shakes his head, and says in a choked whisper, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
    “No doubt about it,” Ricky replies, “it don’t mean nothing. Now lets get this rope to tie down some of our stuff.”
    Lashing on the top of the VW all that will not fit inside and under the hood, they celebrate the death of the gallows, cracking jokes and laughing about it all. New beginnings are ahead.
    Out of West Virginia, across Ohio, and almost all the way to Chicago that first day, they stop in a little roadside campground and spend the night before pushing on through the corn belt the next day.
    Passing through the broad expanses of the West and topping the continental divide, followed by crossing the Cascades, they come down into Western Washington and Seattle’s port by Puget Sound. Boats and ships are scattered about on Seattle’s many huge waterways. Locating the fishing fleet base and its myriad of ships is easy. After getting their applications in for the next Bering Sea run up around Alaska, they luckily find a place to stay at a boarding home for fisherman and Alaska cannery workers waiting for the season.
    Being quickly called back for interviews after killing time around the waterfront and tourist spots, they are hired on one of the first trawlers to head North.

    Having a record of good loads, a good galley, and adequate berthing, The Edson spends the first couple of months doing pretty standard fishing. Working the nets topside, Jay, who is the bigger of the two, ribs Ricky about his easier job below in the small processing unit. But they both know that topside is much more dangerous. And that is why it pays more and comes with life insurance.
    Rough seas turn to dangerous seas as the weather grows colder. One night, removing his safety line in order to work the nets faster, Jay is washed overboard by a rogue wave that almost capsizes the vessel. Taken down immediately by his heavy gear, Jay’s chances of being found are nil.
    Ricky is thrown across the relay belt and into the bulkhead, breaking his right arm, knocking him unconscious, and leaving him with some serious cuts and lacerations. After a cursory search for Jay The Edson makes for shore with many hands injured. Ricky is flown to Seattle where the fleet takes care of his medical and living expenses until he fully recovers. The beneficiary of Jay’s small life insurance policy, Ricky has enough money to get on with his life but one thing’s for sure. He is done with fishing.

    Having sold the VW before going to sea, Ricky flies to Sandusky Port to look up Jay’s family and give them the money from the life insurance. In good conscious, he can’t keep it.
    Jay’s family look like they can use the money and Ricky, also hurting from the loss of Jay, finds a little peace in getting it to them. Treating him warmly, they bring out some of the pictures that Jay had taken in the Nam and show him some of the ones that he is in. Studying and restudying those photographs for a whole afternoon, Ricky remembers the time and those who didn’t made it and tries to put some kind of order to it all. Jay’s family lets him be during that last afternoon. And Ricky seems to gain the purchase that he has been scrabbling for ever since that tragic night on the Bering Sea. And even before that.
    Saying goodbye to the Handleys the next morning and catching a bus down to the Southern Appalachians of West Virginia, Ricky returns to Fox Run, the hollow where his shack and little piece of earth await him. In a way he is glad to be back. Maybe he should never have left. Maybe he never will again.
    Sitting by the cold wood stove, still in his cold weather gear, Ricky bends over and unlatches the snaps on his suitcase. Lying atop his few clothes is that old rope that went the distance with him and Jay. And then with him alone. Hefting it, he lets it part way uncurl to the floor and begins slowly counting the loops of the noose as he makes them. Stopping before he gets to thirteen, he just sits there looking down at the rope in his hands, feeling its coarseness and remembering the burns he used to get from an old childhood rope swing. Sitting most of the night holding that rope, dropping it and picking it up, smiling sometimes, and almost crying others, Ricky looks back.
    Coming cold and grey, the February morning light slants through Ricky’s window and into his senses. A fresh blanket of snow has fallen. Suddenly a little black capped chickadee alights on the snow covered window sill. Fluffing and flapping around in the snow, as if bathing for an important event, it burst loose with a song that breaks the morning silence. Just as suddenly the bird fluffs again and is gone. Standing and dropping the rope back into the suitcase, Ricky snaps it shut and puts it aside. Moving to the window, he looks out over the meadow to the perch halfway up the hillside beyond where he and Jay sat after a still hunt and talked life. Covered by white powder, it seems cold and remote compared to his warm recall. Moments pass and its chill remains, so dissimilar to his memory. Grudgingly, he spins from the view, grabs an ax and heads to the wood pile, telling himself with every step, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”

Charles Hayes bio

    Charles Hayes, a 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others

Secrets

    Who hasn’t dropped their phone and the back popped off? But I dropped mine and the back, battery and the simcard popped out. The card slipped in a crack between two metal storage cabinets. When I worked it out with my fingertips I got a glimpse of wiring connected to what appeared to be blasting caps.
    It couldn’t be! It must be a mistake.
    I got the flashlight on top of the cabinet behind the containers of hair tint. I checked and saw several brick sized packages wrapped in brown paper with faded letters. The only letter I made out was C, the rest were numbers. It couldn’t be C4. No way! I needed brownish red hair color and I find plastic explosives. I slid open the top cabinet drawer and there was the color, why didn’t I do that first? I hurried back to my station. I felt Rahal’s eyes follow me when I came from the storage room. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Winston. “Sorry, Ann, I had to find the ingredients. This is a special color; you’ve made an excellent choice.” My fingers switched to expert mode. I dabbed sections of hair with the brush and finished the ends. My mind drifted to what I saw or didn’t see. After 9/11 at one time or another all Arabs and Muslims were under scrutiny; a given. Why would Abbas Rahal ruin the most successful beauty salon in Hillside Park? The females loved his six foot frame with a rock solid build and perfectly trimmed beard. His political connections granted him a special building permit, against his competitor’s wishes, that enabled him to double the amount of allowable work stations. Was he selling drugs or munitions?
    Maybe I made a mistake.
    Yeah, that’s it.
    He better not be a jihadist. I have it good here; he charged the others fifty percent of their take and twenty five from me. I do have the prettiest clientele and they tipped well.
    Ann sat under the dryer and crossed her beautiful legs and her skirt traveled half way up her thighs. Another reason why giving this up for terrorism would be foolish. Two of the most beautiful Arab women I’ve ever seen Abiba and Baka, are the epitome of valuable employees. Both have excellent skills and creativity and magnetic personalities. People pour out their hearts to them like they were bartenders. Rahal watches over them, but he’s not possessive. Why do that, it didn’t stop the flirtations from both sexes?
    I wondered did he sense how much I care for Baka. I let her know in my special way, since she knows I’m bisexual that might not sit well with her. Islam and the like. I didn’t realize it was noon until I heard the midday old school mix on the radio. Where are Baka and Abiba? I walked to the front desk. “My girlfriends got clients today?” Rahal nodded and kept working on the computer. Ann twirled the mirror to study every angle of her hair. That twenty five dollar tip said it all. The sun broke through and brightened the day. Lunchtime, I ordered the hamburger special at Johnny’s and thought about my discovery. I sat by the window in the cafeteria size restaurant which is rare and the shop beauties pulled up in a cab. Abiba was six months pregnant, but she looked like any minute now and seeing her from behind you couldn’t tell. They wore denim jeans and silk blouses, but wore different Hijab’s daily. I hope they weren’t involved in anything stupid. But, there is one sure way to find out.
    I’m a voyeur.
    I’m tech savvy with the latest equipment I’ve never been discovered. I hard wired my newest camera system to my newest neighbor below me. She’s in her mid-20s, attractive, educated and her girlfriends who are equally attractive are into bestiality. Their lucky dog gets more pussy than a lot of guys. It’s disgusting. But, I’ll keep the cutie’s secret, secret. My motto: Do no harm and enjoy. The couples across the hall rate eight out of ten on the BDSM scene.
    God, I love my building!
    I did a mental inventory of my cameras. I wouldn’t have time to hard wire it and the best wireless would need charging weekly. Everybody goes in the storage room at least once a day and I’ll get a chance to install it with no suspicion. A client due after lunch cancelled and that gave me the time to go home and get caught up on the latest freak shows.
    I pulled back the gate of the antiquated elevator and the aroma of frying chicken filled the hallway. Dollie was at it again. She made the best chicken. What new secrets will my laptop reveal? I cleaned up the remnants of last night’s gathering of friends and dropped the trash in the shoot. I hit the button and brought the ceiling fan to life. I picked the best camera system for Rahal’s. With that taken care of I opened my computer to a split screen. One side was blank and the other my newest neighbor mounted her man and rode him like crazy. She screamed and we all came together. I panted for several minutes until my heart slowed to normal. He looked good in action and I planned on meeting him. Now, time to clean up and back to work I go.

    A wave of fatigue hit me when I walked in the shop, two walk-ins. I’m thankful, but it wasn’t expected. Both women wore streaked gray styles that needed touchups. Good, that’ll give me time in the storage area to mix colors and install the surveillance apparatus. I scanned the shelves for an ideal spot. Good, found it. I checked outside Abiba waddled down the hall to the break area. “Winston, I got chicken nuggets, want some?”
    “No thanks, I’m mixing some color.” I pushed over a small step ladder and put the small plastic box on the dusty shelf. I pushed it back to assure it wouldn’t be seen if the box was bumped. Satisfied with the location I returned to my clients. What I call my magic wand glides through Helen’s hair with ease and it falls into place stroke after stroke. “You like that Miss Helen?” I twirled the mirror while she admired my work.
    “Lovely as usual, Mr. Winston.” She gave me a peck on both cheeks. Helen was a big curvy woman who visited the shop when she came in from her native Norway. Today I was bold and returned her custom of endearment with a kiss on the lips. She blushed and slipped me a fifty. I love it!
    Rahal walked over, “I saw that.” We laughed and our eyes followed the Norwegian beauty out the door. “What does Selena want?”
    “A wash and style.” I walked the tall slim model over to the shampoo bowl.
    “When you put her under the dryer come to the storage room, I need help moving those old cabinets.” He said. I nodded. That answered the question. He had to have moved the wires and explosives. When I walked in Rahall inspected the chemical containers on the top of the cabinets. “This stuff is close to the expiration date. These two cabinets have been here since I rented this place. It used to be an auto parts store.” He opened the doors. “Look at this shit.” He pulled what looked like a generator with wires and metal looking cylinders or connectors or something.
    That’s the wiring I thought I saw.
    You’ve been looking at too much TV, Winston.
    He continued to stack stained newspaper and musty cardboard boxes. The lettering on one box had C’s on them and faded numbers. Rahal pushed them aside. “I haven’t opened these in I don’t know when.” He put a dolly in front of the cabinets. “Push back on it.” The lip of the dolly went under and we move them out in the alley. A scrap truck pulled up and a couple of big older guys hoisted the metal boxes on the truck’s bed. They thanked us and left.
    I was overjoyed and felt like a damn fool. How did I figure Rahal was a terrorist? Imagine if I called the cops the mess that could’ve started. Thank God. I counted 200 bucks in tips an exceptional day.

    Streetlights popped on one by one the closer I got to my building. A blue light camera caught my attention. Dammit, I forgot to get the camera. Oh well, I wasn’t going back. I left Rahal, Abiba and Baka in the break room shoving food in their faces. It was good to come home to a clean place. I showered and hit the play button on the phone; the messages were routine client requests for appointments. But, before I checked the building I’ll look in on my employer. Baka stood in front of Abiba laughing and started to hug her. She babbled something in Arabic, clearly the language was romantic. Baka rubbed her belly feeling for a kick. She jumped when the baby reacted. I zoomed closer. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks. Baka rubbed her face and kissed her deeply and cupped her behind.
    What... Baka was a lesbian!
    She pulled Abiba’s pants down and pushed her back against the cabinet. Abiba hopped on top and Baka buried her head between her legs; Abiba arched in pleasure rubbing Baka’s head while she undid her pants. Her jeans dropped, she turned slightly and I saw it, all eight or so inches.
    Baka was a man!!!
    Wait, that had to be a strap on.
    That’s no strap on, Winston. You wish. I fell back on the sofa. Man, I couldn’t believe it. I did a double take and Rahal came in the picture butt naked. He dropped to his knees next to the copulating couple. Baka pulled out of Abiba and shoved it in his mouth. What! The way his head moved he should be in the movies. Baka shouted something; Rahal stopped, broke down like a shotgun and Baka started riding him. I slammed the computer shut. I respect those people and their freaks and phonies. I was jealous, hard as a rock and I wanted in. How did she fool me and everybody else? I dreamed of Baka being my woman, the only woman who would understand and accept my other sexual needs. My first gay experience was a transsexual that’s not a problem, but I don’t think wants a black guy, mixed or not. But, I will have her, period.

    They say black coffee sobers you up, I beg to differ. It made it worse. I had no intention to stay out late, but I had a lot to ponder. Should I proceed with the dark thoughts and plan that clouded my moral character?
    I’m a hypocrite, so what; I’m entitled to my voyeuristic tendencies.
    For the past week I followed Baka after work. My little Nissan Sentra needed to move once in a while. Thank God, I didn’t have to complain to management about some idiot parking in my slot. Her routine was normal; stop at the store and go to her apartment complex. Her slot in the garage wasn’t the safest. Good, she’ll never make me in the shadows. When I put it on her she’ll love it. Think you slick, bitch, but I’m slicker. I jerked when someone touched me. “Hey Winston, you okay?” Baka said. I continued to stir my coffee. I looked in her gleaming eyes. I frowned and her smile vanished. “Ah...ah, I’m fine, Baka, and you?”
    “I’m concerned; you can tell me it’s none of my business, but something’s up. You been quiet and distant all week and you smell like last night’s whiskey. Slowdown, babe.”
    “Thanks for that I’ll work on it.” Good advice, Baka. Better she tell me then my client or the boss. I rubbed her shoulder. “Thanks again, I’m good.” I finished my drink and left her standing there. I didn’t take her advice and as soon as I finished work I made a beeline to the liquor store across the street. I downed a few shots when Baka pulled into traffic. I shadowed her according to plan and the space I picked out close to her apartment was empty. I slipped by the blue light camera that covered 13th St. I waited in the dark walkway behind garage while she parked. She’ll only be able to see my silhouette when she turns the corner. I heard footsteps, she turned and stopped. We were twenty feet apart, staring at each other. Her hand went under her blouse. She had a pistol. I cut the corner, hopped over a row of hedges and ran like hell to the next alley. No shots and I didn’t see anyone following me. I walked as fast as possible to my car and made a beeline home.
    I turned on the lights and threw my keys on the table. Am I stupid or what? I didn’t think she might be carrying. Your jealousy almost got you killed, Winston. Do something else other than spying; watch a movie, fix a snack and above all don’t drink anymore. An hour passed and the bell rang spoiling my pity party. “Who is it?”
    “Baka.”
    My finger hovered over the intercom button. What does she want? She couldn’t have seen me. “Baka, I’m busy call me later. I’m sorry.” If she’s pissed she’ll get over it. A minute later there was a knock on the door. If that’s Jeremy I’ll scream. He owes my five bucks and he won’t get another. I snatched the door open. “Oh, Baka, I said I’m—-”
    “Can I come in?” She snapped and pushed by me. “Was that you...Or should I say that was you by the garage? I almost shot you.”
    “What are you talking about, Baka?” She got in my face and that frown said it all. I wanted to tell her how ashamed I was, but I’d lose her friendship if I hadn’t already.
    “You scared me. You aren’t that type of guy.”
    “I’m sorry, forgive me.” How do I act about what I already know? What the hell. I spun her around, nibbled on her neck while I shoved my hand in her pants. She broke away.
    “I can’t, please understand.”
    “I will... I will.” I grabbed her crouch and she knew I felt it. Our lips locked when she straddled me and I carried her to the bed. For the next three hours we went at it like dogs. She was everything I fantasized and more. I never saw her without a hijab. Her hair was jet black and shoulder length. I studied her from head to toe. The she males in the movies have blotchy skin and numerous imperfections like men. That is nothing to be ashamed of, but Baka was 98% female. She had sizable breasts not implants, no scars under them, natural smooth soft skin, narrow waist and wide hips her voice and mannerisms was natural female. Her bone structure, the giveaway for transsexuals, was female.
    Baka was truly an anomaly.
    “Now that you have examined me, Dr. Winston. I’ll tell you a story.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—-”
    “Just listen,” she interrupted and rolled on top of me. “Am I too heavy?”
    I laughed. “No, but don’t take long.”
    “I always liked boys, me and a few others kissed and hugged all the time. But, as you can imagine, you get caught in my community you’re in serious trouble. My body started to change and I always had a soft voice. I come from money. When it became apparent I was becoming a female my family packed up and moved to this part of the country. My name got changed and, minus a long story, I became female with the exception. I’d never have surgery; I love to get my nut. I had a couple lovers, but one got killed, the other went back to Egypt. Believe it or not I speak little Arabic and I cannot read it. Winston, if you love me like you say do not expose me no matter where our relationship goes.”
    I eased her off me. “Your, our secret is safe. Now let’s eat something.” She kissed me and hopped up. Reheated barbecued chicken wasn’t bad as long as it didn’t sit in the refrigerator too long. We ate in silence. “I didn’t share my experience.”
    She wiped the corners of her mouth. “I’m listening the food is great.”
    “I always had a dip in my hip and being very cute, their words not mine, with curly black hair and light brown skin, the guys like me. And, like you they kissed and grinded on me in those secret hideouts kids have. The older, taller and more muscular I became I was overwhelmed with sexual encounters, male and female. My sisters made me comb their hair and ‘bam’ I was good at it and I’ve been bisexual and a stylist ever since.” There is a lot more, but she didn’t want to hear it. I caressed Baka’s hand. “You’re the woman of my dreams; it sounds corny, but true. I know we have to be discreet and that will not be a problem.” We finished eating and went back to bed.

    Baka Haddad breezed around the salon spreading her joy and professional skills to all the clientele regardless of who’s they were. She ignored, with grace, the flirtations of the four barbers who felt entitled to bed every female around. And, in my opinion, if a couple of them knew her secret they wouldn’t care. The first week after our encounter it was hard to act normal. After my inflated chest went down I view Baka as a friend with benefits. She brought something special into my life.
    I forgot about the camera in the storeroom. The voyeur in me said one more week and that’s it. I grinned every time I thought about Rahal and Baka doing the humpty-rumpty. Everybody was in and out of the storage room all day; I’ll have to wait to change the battery. There would be plenty to watch at home.
    The rest of the week the heat and humidity drained me even with the A/C blasting, but I installed a new battery at the salon. The heat wave killed business for the weekend and Saturday Rahal’s closed early. Everybody left except the freakish trio. When I got home I whipped up a smoothie, sat down and opened my laptop. I adjusted the haziness, and the audio was good. They stood by a table and Rahal slammed his fist on the metal box. “Why you can’t master your own kinds language is beyond me.”
    “I’m not good at it or any other language, just English for the time being.” Baka said and turned the lock on the box. “This is important.”
    “No shit and don’t let our desires negate the fact I’m in charge of this and future operations. Got it?” Rahal gave them both hard long stares.
    “Got it.” They said.
    “Abiba, how you plan to attack the infidels seven months pregnant?” She moved to the side of Baka out of the picture and the audio faded. Dammit, what did they say? She came back into focus.
    “I can do it quick on a walk by; they’ll never know what hit them. I did a dry run, my small caliber pistol silenced. I stroll by and pop, pop, and this particular cop takes his break out of sight of any blue light cameras. Trust me by the time anybody notices I’ll be long gone.” Abiba said.
    “Will it be in a diverse area like this one?” Rahal asked.
    “Uh, of course.” She looked unsure to me and the boss shook his head.
    “Killing cops is dangerous. The infidels are idiots and hate filled. The Blacks will be the first they fuck with, right Abiba?”
    “Yes and no. I plan a hit in a White business district too and then drive to the Latino hood.”
    “I’ll think about it, but what impact would it have? They’ll just replace him with more assholes. You’re shaking your head, Baka, let’s hear it before you give yourself a headache.”
    Baka reached to rub the baby. “I don’t mean any disrespect to you or our child.”
    I figured if it was hers, why would Abiba get pregnant by her; that didn’t make any sense. “But, such a plan might be spectacular over time; the video will get you in the long run. The solution to the enemies of Islam and Allah is micro-terrorism.”
    “Micro-terrorism?” Rahal asked.
    “Look at the drug epidemic of the infidels. Terrorize their recovery efforts. Those God-fearing hypocrites need punishment for developing those machines that drop death and terror on our young and elderly.”
    “I, we agree, but get on with it, Baka.”
    “Imagine terrorizing those 12 step support groups such as NA, CA and AA. These groups have members with multiple addictions. Let’s take narcotics or cocaine anonymous, what if I told you I developed a cocaine smoke bomb?” They were quiet.
    A cocaine/crack smoke bomb?
    “Just imagine tossing it in the meeting and the people who have been sober for decades relapse. Pillars of the communities fucked up again, not going to work and blowing their bank accounts or whatever.” They laughed and clapped. “Can you imagine after months of attacks like that they’ll have security guards and metal detectors at the entrances.”
    “Sounds good to us,” they said.
    Baka opened the box and took out two metal canisters. “I changed the ingredients in these tear gas canisters for a demonstration.” She pulled a pin on one and dropped it. Smoke shot out. They jumped up and started to fan the smoke. “Baka, are you crazy?” The smoke stopped, but the smoke detector in the hall started screaming. “Relax, it’s only partially filled.”
    Oh shit, I tapped the screen and the picture came back. Don’t die battery.
    “I need to buy a kilo of cocaine and a quantity of crystal meth. I’m excited about this, we find out where doctors, lawyers and judges have their meetings and lobbed one of these babies in there. Imagine the misery their love ones will go through, the disappointment. It cannot match our grief pulling dead bodies from a drone strike, but is a good start.” Baka hesitated. “Well boss, do I get the financing or what?”
    “Praise Allah, you got it, but how did you do it?” Rahal asked.
    “That’s a secret for now. I’ll share after a successful attack on the right group of infidels.”
    “Okay, fair enough.” Rahal said, and rubbed Baka crotch. “Now let’s play.” I slammed my laptop harder than I liked. I made a mistake about the explosives, but those sons of bitches are terrorists or soon to be.

    I went all in with Baka every time I care or love somebody I get kicked in the teeth. I poured coffee in my favorite Disney character cup and hit the remote. The cable news network’s pumped out that terrorist propaganda and now the feds arrested a couple young kids who want to fight Isis. Isis my ass, Rahal’s type are the scary ones. They got the money; they pay the politicians and banksters and smile in their faces. But, discreetly formulate attacks described by Baka and Abiba. Who guards twelve step meetings? Anonymous is the keyword. Nobodies on guard, their disease and recovery are paramount. My family’s been stricken with that disease and I’m struggling, at times, with overindulgence and they want to virtually kill them. Baka spoke about the prominent ones, where would they congregate? Do I tell the cops? Would they listen? If they did everyone at work will be under suspicion and surveillance. I’ll have to stop my passion. Removing my equipment would not be easy. Damn, I better give this a ton of thought. My cell rang. Baka.
    “Hello.”
    “Hey honey, missed you. What are you doing?”
    “Pondering a huge decision.” I said.
    “You sound like it too. I got a surprise for you, but if you need to be sober I’ll wait.”
    I hesitated, loosening up would be good for while. “Okay. You leave already?”
    “Yeah. I’m a block away.”
    “Okay, see you.” Now what, what do I do? My flesh answered with an erection. When I opened the door our lips locked and to the bedroom we went. After we got off and our heart rates were normal I watched Baka go get her purse. Females would kill to look like her. She took out a strange looking pipe. “That’s a pipe, right?”
    “Yeah.” She sat it on the nightstand. “I’ve been working on something.” She unraveled a piece of aluminum foil. “This is weed; meth and molly concentrate. You game?”
    “Uh, I guess. Breaking bad shit, right?”
    She nodded, “A little.” We laughed.
    “Where are you going to do with this?” I picked up the pipe. “Is that a combustion chamber or what?”
    “In a way. You ready to ‘Beam up Scotty’?” I nodded. She took the dough like stuff and packed it in the pipe and reached in her purse. She opened a small bottle, like the kind they have for Cracker Barrel syrup and poured the contents in the pipe. She grinned and shook it vigorously. “Wait a few minutes you’ll love this.” She sat on my lap and popped the plug and smoke poured out like a smoky exhaust pipe. Baka put it in our faces and we inhaled. The rush was incredible and paralyzing. We were glued to the seat. Smoke still trickled out the pipe and my heart was about to bust. Before I knew it the apartment was cloudy. “Don’t open a window, Winston, enjoy the atmosphere, baby.” We went at each other like frantic dogs. I felt good! I see why people get addicted. We won’t do this again; heaven will turn into hell, quick. Baka perfected her drug smoke bomb. God help us. I had to ask how, but be careful, Winston.
    “Damn, that shit was good, but that’s enough for me. I’m not getting hooked.”
    “I understand, baby. I wanted to share my discovery.”
    “Was this some kind of ‘Breaking Bad’ shit or what?” We laughed again, but she changed the subject. The cocktail had our tongues wagging about every subject under the sun, except Islam or anything Muslim.

    I lay in the bed staring at the ceiling. When will I get some sleep? How do people stay up for days? Sleep is a blessing, it’s time to recharge. And, when the sandman started to gain on me it was time to go to work. I felt down and foolish babbling all night. A chemical induced depression that no matter if I smoke more or not it was going to catch me sooner or later.
    That’s why I don’t smoke that shit. How did my cousin do it?
    Mother Nature didn’t provide any comfort. The gloomy gray sky opened up and drenched me twenty steps from the building. I returned and got an umbrella. The shower stopped. Go figure.
    I ignored the smiles and the greetings on the one block journey to a Rahal’s. Why be mad at the world. Who cares? I took a deep breath and opened the door, time to put on a smiley face and make money.
    Surprise, no Baka, after all the talk about of how she booked a million clients. I wasn’t in the mood to take up the slack. I tried to forget Baka is a want to be terrorist. I agreed with her about the hypocrites. If the wicked got theirs, that’s fine, but the innocent pay for their sins. Who do I call and what do I say? “Terrorists are going to throw cocaine/meth bombs in a NA meeting.” Yeah right, without proof they’d hang up and laugh. I wonder how she did it. The process had to be dangerous and the contents had to be under pressure. She said she needed a kilo. I’ll listen to see if they left the drugs in the storeroom. I went to the bathroom when I saw the storeroom was padlocked, but I thought I heard noise. Rahal employed ten people was anybody else suspicious? Why would they be, Winston, they’re not voyeurs? I’ll figure out something when I get home.

    I was beat, but I had to see what they were up to, more than likely the same thing. I couldn’t stop thinking Baka might do a practice run at the church on the corner. St. James was always open and easy to case. The basement windows were always cracked. Toss, run and boom. They’ll laugh, but I’m calling to tell them beware. I meant to buy a burner phone and damn if I didn’t forget. Oh well I’ll do it later.
    As soon as I opened the computer Baka was packing something in a green canister. She reached for a cup of liquid and accidentally dropped it. In a flash the floor by her chair was in flames. She scrambled to get to the fire extinguisher. There was a bright flash and the screen went blank.
    Damn, an explosion?
    I ran down the hall to the stairway exit window when I heard sirens. I saw smoke billowing out the back of the shop. Did she get out the back exit in time? Rahal left before me and Abiba was having the baby. The flames spread quickly to the neighboring businesses. When I got to 3^rd St. it was full of fire trucks and hoses. The first responders did a tremendous job containing the flames to only three businesses. A miracle by anyone’s standards due to the high winds off the lake. The hook and ladder and the other trucks sprayed water on the building hours after they recovered a body. I saw the horror on people’s faces. I hoped it wasn’t, but I knew it was Baka. I didn’t know how to feel, yet I felt everything, shock, sorrow and relief, you name it.
    What if Baka could’ve carried out her plan? Was this pre-poetic justice or what? I hoped her invention died with her. I’m not big on religion, but I call it a blessing. I wonder what the investigators will find. My camera should’ve melted in the explosion/fire, but if it didn’t I never leave prints, DNA on any of my equipment and it cannot be traced. If they find something they’ll watch everybody. I’ll shut down my hobby for awhile.

    My cell rang when I walked in the door, it was Anne. “Hello.”
    “Good to hear your voice, Winston. I’m glad you’re okay. I saw on the news about the salon, I’m sorry.”
    “Thanks, I’m stunned. After this blows over I’ll probably work out of the down town salon, if there’s room.”
    “If you need to talk call me, come over, or whatever you find the most soothing. Okay, babe?”
    “Got it.” Ann sounded hot and inviting. She’s what I need; enjoy a good older woman; forty isn’t bad, especially when that delayed grieving thing hits me.
    Would this tragedy change, Rahal? I doubt it. That left me with the responsibility to expose them. Extreme caution will be necessary. I’ll figure out something.

Boys and Bluebonnets

    It was the look that did it.
    The day after the tornado.
    The temperature had dropped thirty degrees and the Texas landscape was raw and suffering. The usually bright, irrepressible carpets of bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, that I could see from the coach window, seemed flattened and dejected.
    Like me.
    It was a tough life all right, I thought, as I passed myriads of them, hugging the sides of the freeway as though they might absorb the heat from the vehicles that sped by. Those little flowers had to survive the icy blasts, the scorching heat and the tornadoes that turned up out of nowhere. And yet they survived. Like those early pioneer women whose blue bonnets they were named after.
    Like me.
    That’s why I’d come to Texas. To survive. To escape.
    A Scot transplanted in Texas. I laughed at the thought. And the little blue flowers seemed to echo back my laugh in some sort of private welcome.
    Yes, we had a lot in common, I thought. Bluebonnet. The Scottish term for the traditional blue coloured version of the Tam O’Shanter hat. Had another transplanted Scot, in the distant past, named them to remind him of home?
    Not that I wanted to be reminded of home.
    Home reminded me of failure. Failure to find a soul-mate. Failure at thirty three. Not that I hadn’t tried.
    First there had been Nigel. Kind, caring, practical, a real new-age man. The kind most women would give their soul for. And I’d given mine. But Nigel hadn’t given his. At least he had. But to his mother. Not me. Two years had passed before I’d figured that out and decided I didn’t want to play second fiddle any longer.
    Then there was Josh, free-spirited Josh, who decided he enjoyed spending more time away from me than he did with me. I didn’t get the message. He dumped me for a girl who was happy to sit at home with the baby while he roamed far and wide.
    Next there was Kevin – a real man’s man – who loved football and the pub – and himself.
    That’s when I decided I’d had enough of British men. Foreigners were much more attractive.
    Ali certainly was. He was a Turkish chef who wanted to know on our first date if I could cook. I dished up my usual offering of burnt macaroni and I never saw him again.
     Then there was Luigi. Luigi was Italian-American air-crew. And Luigi was handsome. The way Italians always are. He called me Babe and said romantic things like, “Whad’s up?” His number was when the customs found a large stash of heroin in his suitcase and the telephone number of a Mafia don in his hand luggage.
    And finally there was Elvis. I say finally because he’s the reason I’m finished with men. Finished after five years.
    Five years of my life frittered away. Friends warned me But when you’re in love you just can’t see it, can you? Trouble was. I’d done the whole hog. Moved in with him. Made him part of my life. But he’d had another life - and wife - back in Rumania.
    So here I was in Texas. To forget. And Texas was doing a great job. The warmly welcoming people, the laid-back lifestyle, the wide open spaces, the vast unending canopy of blue sky. A promise of better things. And I didn’t want it to end.
    I looked around at the other occupants of the coach travelling to Fort Worth. The majority of them were on their own.
    Free, independent, secure in their own identity.
    It should have made me feel better.
    Who was I kidding?
    They were alone. Like me.
    We vacated the bus and scattered like loose buffalo on the prairie, some intent on visiting John Wayne’s favourite saloon, others in search of the perfect “cow-town” souvenir, knowing we’d soon be rounded up to watch the cattle drive later in the afternoon. The highlight of the trip.
    And highlight it was. Because that’s when I saw him. As they made their way, cowboys and long-horn cattle, slowly down the street, lined with camera-wielding tourists.
    He was handsome all right. A big, calm, slowly-moving, strong, muscular brute. Not someone to be messed with. And yet as he turned and looked at me, there was the utmost gentleness and understanding in his eyes that I wanted to rush up and throw my arms around his neck.
    I turned away. His gaze was too powerful.
    You’re being ridiculous, I told myself, making my way back up the street through the hordes of onlookers. Pull yourself together.
    The crowd was already beginning to disperse and I followed them into the souvenir shops of the stockyards, all too aware that the time to catch the tour bus was rapidly approaching. I emerged ten minutes later, armed with my prized possession of a key ring covered with bluebonnets and made my way back down the street.
    That’s when I saw him again.
    And he saw me. Our eyes locked from across the street. And I knew I’d already wasted too much time. I crossed the street and threw my arms round his neck, feeling his warm body next to mine.
    “He sure does love that,” said a voice.
    I looked up.
    Sitting high on a horse was one of the cowboys who had been leading the cattle drive.
    “It’s not everyone that Old Lightning will let get that close,” said the drawling Texas voice. “Most people think he’s got a mean old eye.”
    “Oh, he’s got an eye all right but it’s anything but mean,” I said, giving Lightning another big hug.
    So he was a long-horn cow. I didn’t care.
    Lightning twisted his long-horned head obligingly.
    “Well now, maybe it takes a special sort of person to see that,” said the voice. “Ah reckon Lightning needs to introduce me to such a special person. How about it, Lightning?” said the stranger getting down off his horse.
    Even though the sun was in my eyes, I could still see the shadow of the stranger towering above me.
    I released one hand from Lightning’s neck and put it up to shade my eyes.
    The cowboy removed his large Stetson from his head with one hand and extended the other towards me.
    “Jake Johnston, ma’am,” he said as his hand clasped mine.
    The faintest flash of electricity, like the lightning before the tornado, ran through my hand. So quickly I thought I’d imagined it.
    I looked at that big Stetson he was holding in brown, rugged hands. There, tucked in the brown band of the large hat was the smallest, most delicate, spray of blue flowers.
    And even before he stepped out of the sunlight, I knew what colour those eyes would be.
    I’d found it in this wind-whipped Texas town. I’d found what I’d been looking for. And as I gazed into those deep, blue eyes that reminded me of a vast prairie of bluebonnets, friendly and familiar, I knew, just like that earlier transplanted Scottish soldier had known, that I wouldn’t be going home.
    It was the look that did it.

first published in “The Pink Chameleon” in 2013.

It Makes Your Hair Curl

    “It makes your hair curl.”
    Sue didn’t know what had possessed her to say it. It wasn’t her place. It was the guide’s job. But all the woman in period dress had said before Sue’s outburst was,
    “See if you can find the curling tongs.”
    Once a teacher always a teacher, thought Sue. The habits of a lifetime die hard.
    She looked all around at the children she’d addressed. They were gazing at her suspiciously, unaccustomed to the Scottish voice.
    They don’t know what they’re looking for, thought Sue. A bit like me.
    The children scattered through the nineteenth century house, peering into every room, the next one more attractive than the last.
    One small girl with blonde, curly hair whined to her mother who was balancing a baby on her hip.
    “Mom, can we go to McDonald’s?”
    Yes, that about sums up education today, thought Sue. America or Scotland. There was no difference. Kids were more interested in going for a burger than they were in learning. Not that she blamed the children. They were no different than they had ever been. No, it was the adults, the education system and society that was to blame. But it didn’t make her job any easier knowing that. And she was tired. Tired of trying in her own small way to change things. That’s why she’d decided to give up teaching. She’d decided before she left home to come to America on holiday but now she knew for certain. Once upon a time she had had the foolish notion she could make a difference. But that idea had long gone, swallowed up by volcanic eruptions of paperwork and mounting disillusionment at the declining standards in education. After all, what difference could one individual make?
    Her eyes scanned the interior of the dark, gloomy room, searching for the curling tongs. But she could see no sign of them. She knew what they looked like. She’d seen them often enough at her grandmother’s house as a child. Fearsome, long metal pincers hidden in an old walk-in cupboard. But it was the smell she remembered. The smell of her hair singeing as her grandmother had removed them from the red-hot coals of her fire and twisted them around a clump of her baby-fine, straight hair.
    “My, aren’t you beautiful?” her grandmother had said.
    But Sue had known her grandmother was lying. She’d never been a pretty child. Not like her sister Jane. Jane had been the pretty one, always dressed in pink, her golden curls shining in the sunlight. Sue had been what her grandmother would have called “plain”. Her nose a little too pointed, her chin a little too sharp and her skin freckly. And her hair. Her hair had a will all of its own. She could see that when she looked at the results of the curling tongs in her grandmother’s mirror. Even the curling tongs couldn’t make her pretty. And she’d hated those tongs ever since.
    “Let’s go outside,” said a voice by her side.
    Her daughter, Fiona, pointed to the figure of the guide who had disappeared through the door of the house. “We can ask her some questions, like we asked the woman at the farmstead.”
    Sue was surprised. She hadn’t thought Fiona was interested in history. Not that Sue hadn’t tried to interest her in it. And in education in general. Even there she was a failure. Fiona was like John. The contents of the shopping malls were far more interesting to her.
    The guide in her brown, calico dress was sitting on a seat on the wooden porch.
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher,” she said.
    Oh no, thought Sue, expecting Fiona to blurt out at any moment that her mum was one too. But Fiona was silent. Sue was silent too. She’s come away to escape from teachers.
    “Why aren’t you in the schoolhouse?” said Fiona.
    The woman smiled a warm, friendly Southern smile.
    “I don’t think I’d meet so many people there.”
    Sue knew just what she meant. Children wouldn’t want to go there in their holidays. Besides which the schoolhouse was an austere, forbidding building, occupying an isolated corner of the Historical Village. Sue had spotted it as she and Fiona had headed up the hill to the house. Even they had passed it by.
    “Is this your home?” said Fiona.
    “Yes,” said the woman.
    Sue thought she detected a tear in her eye.
    She’s a good actress, thought Sue.
    The mother with the baby on her hip appeared on the porch.
    “Whad did they do for air-conditioning?” she drawled.
    Fiona dug her mother in the side and grimaced.
    Sue sighed. Was the woman serious? She looked at the baby balanced on the woman’s hip and thought how some poor teacher would have a lot of work to cover.
    Well, at least it won’t be me, thought Sue, gratefully.
    The guide looked puzzled and answered,
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher.”
    The woman did not seem too concerned by the reply and turned back into the house again.
    I guess the question was more important than the answer, thought Sue, her eye following the woman, aware the guide’s was doing the same.
    “Why did you become a teacher?” said Sue, turning round and addressing the guide.
    The sad look on the guide’s face was replaced by a smile.
    She must have been a beauty in her day, thought Sue.
    The woman seemed to ignore her question.
    “They’re mine, you know.”
    Sue looked puzzled.
    “The curling tongs,” said the guide. “Every day, Sarah, our slave, tongs my hair with them. No one makes ringlets like Sarah. Not that my hair is hard to curl. I am blessed with lovely hair and good looks. Everything a Southern gentleman would want. And plenty want me.”
    Lucky you, thought Sue.
    She had never had that luxury. Only one man had ever wanted her. And now he was gone. And all she was left with was teaching.
    “And I hate it!” said the woman, suddenly and vehemently.
    Sue looked at her in surprise.
    “I’m suffocating. I don’t want to be the ideal woman, docile and submissive, a homemaker like my mother. I want to do something with my life.”
    She paused then went on.
    “I’ve thought about dressing up as a man and running away to fight the Yankees or becoming a spy for the south in the Civil War but I don’t think I’m strong enough. I want rights like men have. The right to do what I choose. I don’t want to be beautiful and admired – an asset for some man. I want things to change and I want to change them.”
    She’s a good actress, thought Sue.
    But then all the guides in the buildings in the Historical Village had been good. But somehow this one seemed almost real.
    “Is that why you are a teacher?” said Sue quietly, suddenly remembering why she’d become one.
    “It’s the only way to change things,” said the woman. “Has it worked?”
    Sue looked startled. What did the guide mean by that? Did she know she was a teacher? No, there was no way she could know.
    “Can we go now?” said Fiona.
    Yes, that was about Fiona’s span of interest used up too, thought Sue then felt guilty.
    After all it was Fiona who had taken her here on holiday. They started walking back down the hill. As they reached the old, deserted schoolhouse, a group of tourists accompanied by the man who had taken their entrance fee at the park gate, appeared walking towards them.
    “Would you ladies like to join us?” he said, indicating the house they’d left.
    “Oh, we’ve already seen it,” said Sue. “The guide was really good.”
    “Guide?” said the man, looking puzzled. “What guide?”
    “The one at the house,” said Sue. “The teacher.”
    “There’s never been a guide at that house,” said the man, looking at Sue, strangely.
    “But she’s still there now,” spluttered Sue. “The lady in the brown, calico dress.”
    “Brown, calico dress,” he repeated. “A teacher, you say.”
    He paused.
    What’s wrong with the man? thought Sue. Didn’t his brain function properly?
    “Well, I guess you’ve had a guide after all,” said the man.
    Of course we have, you silly man, thought Sue.
    “The owner of that house was a teacher. She lived there in 1862.”
    The man’s words took a moment to sink in.
    What was the man saying? thought Sue, but, before she had time to ask him, he went on.
    “The ghost of the lady appears from time to time. In a brown, calico dress. Some say she came back to find her house.”
    The man waved his hand round the village.
    “All these houses here came from other parts of the state and were moved here.”
    “But others saw her. She’s still there,” protested Sue, waving her hand towards the house on the hill.
    “Everyone says that,” said the man, “but when they return, she’s gone.”
    “It’s 1862 and I’m a teacher,” said Sue, some five minutes later, standing at the teacher’s desk in the old schoolhouse.
    “Don’t! You’re giving me the creeps!” said Fiona who was sitting at one of the old wooden desks, gazing at the Stars and Stripes flag draped in front of her.
    Sue had been surprised when Fiona had said she wanted to look in the old schoolhouse after the old man and his party had left them at the bottom of the hill.
    “Do you think she was really a ghost?” Fiona said.
    “I don’t know,” said Sue, confused.
    The older she got, the less she knew.
    If she was a ghost, thought Sue, why did she appear to them?
    She idly opened the lid of the teacher’s desk. An object was lying in the desk. A strange ripple ran through Sue. She put her hand under the lid of the desk and withdrew the object.
    “It makes your hair curl!” said a small triumphant voice.
    Sue spun round, the object held high like some symbol of freedom.
    There in the doorway of the schoolroom stood the little, blonde girl who had wanted a McDonald’s, her face lit up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
    “It sure does!” said Fiona, crossing to the little girl, taking her hand and pointing to the tongs in her mother’s hands.
    “Do you want to try it?”
    Sue handed the tongs to the little girl and watched as she and Fiona had fun curling the metal barrels around her hair.
    She’d been wrong about everything. And everyone. She looked at Fiona showing the little girl how to wind her hair round the curling tongs. She was a good teacher. Patient and kind. With a heart.
    And teaching. She’d been wrong to think she should give that up. She knew that. Just as the woman in calico had known. As long as there was one individual out there that she could help. Her only reward that light of knowledge in someone’s eyes.
    She thought of what the woman had said.
    “It’s the only way to change things. Has it worked?”
    That’s why she came back, thought Sue. To find out.
    She looked at the smiling face of the pretty, little, blonde girl. The child she’d misjudged.
     She has the right to make choices, thought Sue. But she can’t make them unless she has the knowledge. And the role models.
    It was an ongoing battle, all right. Just like the Civil War. With some victories and some defeats.
    But she’d been wrong to think she should give up. The woman in the calico dress hadn’t. And neither would she. She’d been right to say it. She’d been right to speak up. Even if one word could make a difference. But in her case it was five.
    It makes your hair curl.
    And she knew, looking at the wonder and the joy on the little girl’s face that they had. She looked at the curling tongs in the little girl’s hands. She didn’t hate them any more. Pretty or plain. They didn’t make the difference.
    It was what was inside that did.

first published in “The Storyteller” in 2011 and “The Pink Chameleon” in June 2014.

Daughter of the Woods

    The woods were a kaleidoscope of color, bits and pieces of red, orange, gold, yellow and many shades of green, all tumbled together and constantly shifting with the gentle breeze. Brilliant dots of color danced on the moving leaves. The heavy scent of pine and the smell of wood smoke from the cabin chimney mingled in the air. A lazy stream wound across the clearing with its own dancing lights and small eddies circling stones where they broke the surface.
    It was an unseasonably warm fall day in northern Wisconsin and, after a morning of bread- baking in the hot cabin, a young woman stood cool and refreshed after a bath in the stream. She raised her arms to the warm sun and let it soak deeply into her bare body. She felt a sense of peace, a feeling of belonging to the earth in all its beauty.
    When a slight sound caused her to turn, she felt no alarm at the sight of the splendid male deer that stood there. His head was high and proud and his neck was swollen enormously. His muscular body shone red-gold in the sun and quivered slightly. He stepped closer and as the woman looked at his sensitive face, she was drawn into an endless depth of dark velvet eyes. She experienced a glorious feeling of surrender.
    Two hunters came quietly on the scene in the clearing. They watched with disbelief, and then with growing excitement, until the woman turned away from the large animal and stooped to pick up her clothes. One of the men, feeling primitive rage that he could not have explained, raised his rifle and shot. The deer dropped and the beautiful red-gold coat turned dark with blood. The two men used the woman brutally, and left her torn and bleeding beside the little stream. She was found that evening when her mother returned from a nursing job. Nine months later, she gave birth to the baby girl she named Beta.
    Beta stood in a sunlit spot on the woods trail. The warmth felt so lovely on her bare head, arms and legs. Her long red-gold hair caught the light and seemed an extension of the sun itself. She wore a loose, short dress that showed deeply tanned limbs. Her dark brown, soft velvet eyes contrasted with her bright hair. She stood straight and tall for her thirteen years and when she moved, it was with the grace and soft step of a woods animal. She had an air of constant alertness, or possible wariness. A blue jay called from a tree nearby. Beta gently touched the young female deer at her side and they moved quietly off the trail into the woods. A man appeared, carrying tree cutting equipment. Beta said softly, “That one’s all right, Astarte, we’d better go home now.”
    A tall, dark haired woman stood in the cabin doorway. She was only 31 years old, but worry lines on her face and the streaks of white in her hair made her look older. She watched her daughter and the deer leave the woods and enter the clearing, and the worry lines deepened. She loved Beta, but she was so unreachable much of the time. She did her share of the work willingly, and there was much to be done with the two of them living alone since the death of Beta’s grandmother two years before. The garden had to be planted and tended and fall preserving done, chickens and their one milk cow fed, wild fruits and nuts gathered, wood cut and stacked in endless amounts and meat cured and lard rendered from the one hog they bought each year. They made their own soap and candles. With the occasional nursing jobs the mother was called on to do, they managed to get by, but their lives didn’t include any luxuries. Beta didn’t care about anything more though, she spent every free moment in the woods.
    The woman felt deep regret that Beta was the innocent victim of superstitious rumors that circulated about them. The night before they had died in a cabin fire, two men, full of whiskey, had told the story of what they had seen by the stream and bragged about killing the stag.
    The grandmother had been away from home the night they died. When she returned, she said to her daughter, ”I suspect it’s too late, the damage has been done, but those two won’t do any more talking.”
    The mother felt fear, but she dreaded, even more, knowing the truth. The men were not mentioned again until Beta was old enough to start school in the small town three miles away. After one day there, Beta refused to go again. The taunts of the children had been bad enough, but the confinement in the schoolroom was intolerable to her.
    The grandmother told her then about the circumstances that led to her birth and raised her to share her own contempt of people. Beta’s mother objected at times, but it did little good. She taught her daughter to read and write, but Beta wasn’t much interested in schoolwork and the grandmother didn’t encourage it. Now, since the death of her grandmother, Beta was more solitary and as strong willed as the grandmother had been.
    “It’s almost dark, Beta, you shouldn’t be in the woods this late. What if you got lost or hurt?”
    Beta answered in her quiet voice, “Don’t worry, Ma, I’ve got friends in the woods who’d help me and I could send Astarte if I needed you.”
    The mother said, “You know my last nursing job was with a man who caught his foot in a trap and lost it when gangrene set in. I’m scared for you the way you roam the woods.”
    “I’m not gonna get caught in a trap, Ma, and if that man hadn’t set the trap to kill one of my friends, he wouldn’t have caught himself.”
    “What do you mean,” asked the startled woman, “How do you know the man got caught in his own trap?”
    “Because I saw him set it. Let’s get supper, I’m hungry.”
    While they prepared and ate their simple meal, the mother couldn’t forget that Beta had seen the man set the trap. She knew how fiercely protective Beta was of the animals and birds in the woods. She felt a sense of fear she hadn’t felt since her mother told her about the death of the two men.
    The grandmother had always had a biblical sense of justice, “an eye for an eye”, but she had turned bitter toward most of mankind when her minister husband had been accused of stealing church funds. Even though he was later cleared of the charge, malicious gossip followed him and his family to his new parish in northern Wisconsin.
    When he died in 1907 [his wife felt his death was due to a broken spirit] she moved, with her 17 year old daughter, out of the town to a cabin in the woods. She worked as a practical nurse and midwife, and often took her daughter with her on jobs to teach her the work. She instructed her in her own stern philosophy, but only managed to turn her into a withdrawn young woman, retreating as much as possible into an imaginary world. But with Beta, the grandmother found fertile ground at an early age. So the mother watched Beta and worried, and she felt guilt. Perhaps she should never have brought this child into the world.
    With the start of trapping season in late October, Beta and Astarte were in the woods every minute she could spare from her many chores. Often, she and the deer would move quietly out of sight until a trapper had passed, then follow and watch while traps were set. Most of the time, Beta would spring the traps and move on. But a few times, she recognized a trapper from past years who had been especially brutal in his methods, or one who threatened one of her particular friends. She spent more time at these traps.
    On one of the mother’s trips to town, she heard about a trapper who was found dead in the river with his hand caught in a beaver trap set below water level. Because of a large bruise on his head it was surmised that he had fallen in the water, knocked himself unconscious and drowned. It was an unusual accident and the mother thought about it all the way home. She told Beta about it that night and asked if she had any knowledge because it had happened within a few miles of their cabin.
    Beta answered, “Yes, I saw him set a trap in the river. He probably forgot the exact spot he set it and caught his hand when he went to check it.”
    “But how could he drown himself?” the mother worried.
    “Divine justice, Ma. That’s what Grandma would have called it.”
    The woman’s face wore a perpetual worried look now. She did her work in a daze and often muttered to herself, “no, she’s only 13 years old.” Still, when a man entered their clearing a week later, she knew there had been another accident and that another trapper had been hurt. She was mistaken only in the fact that it hadn’t been an accident. The man was a sheriff and was investigating a murder. A man had been checking his trap line and had walked into a trap himself. But no ordinary trapper had set this one. Two adjoining saplings had been bent down and connected to a bear trap on the ground. There was evidence that the trap had been concealed with brush. The trapper was found hanging by a foot, with his head and shoulders on the ground. The two saplings hadn’t been strong enough to lift him completely off the ground, but that hadn’t saved him because his wrists were bound. He had been dead two days when he was found. Just beyond him was a spring trap with a snowshoe hare hanging by its neck.
    The sheriff eagerly imparted all of this information and said he was checking the few homes in the area, hoping to find someone who had seen something unusual.
    The woman told him that she and her daughter only used the main trail leading to the road to town and hadn’t seen anyone.
    As Beta had her own wild life warning system and never let herself be seen in the woods, no one but her mother knew of her extensive wandering. It was doubtful if it would have mattered, she was only a thirteen-year-old girl.
    Beta had disappeared when the sheriff approached the cabin. Her mother called to her and she returned as soon as he was out of sight.
    “Did you hear that?” she asked.
    “Yes, but that trapper was a mean man and I’m glad he’s dead.”
    The frantic mother made Beta promise to stay out of the woods by threatening to move them into town if she went again.
    Astarte had been with Beta since her mother had been shot when she was very young. She seldom strayed far from her side. One day while Beta was occupied with household chores, Astarte wandered into the woods alone. Beta heard a shot in the woods and wanted to investigate, but she was afraid that this time her mother meant what she said. But when she finished her chores and called to Astarte, the deer didn’t come as always before. She felt a lurch in her stomach and ran for the woods. She found the remains of a freshly skinned deer and a head that caused her to sob uncontrollably. She finally composed herself enough to follow a trail that led half way to town.
    When Beta reached home late that night, her mother demanded to know where she had been and asked why Astarte wasn’t with her.
    Beta’s soft velvet eyes had turned cold and hard, and as she looked briefly at her mother she said, “Astarte’s dead, but so is the man who killed her.”
    The mother was crazy with worry, but Beta wouldn’t say another word.
    The next day when she heard of a man who had been burned to death the night before, the mother collapsed. The man had been out hunting that day. After supper, he had gone to sleep in his trailer and been found later, inside the door, which had been barricaded from the outside.
    Beta nursed her mother through the winter and spring, and with no new incidents, the woman slowly recovered. She and Beta never spoke of that night.
    With the hot weather of summer, Beta spent many evenings by the stream. One night, after a cooling bath, she stood in the moonlight, a tall, softly curved young woman. She was 14 years old now. Beads of water glinted on her bare body. Gentle breezes caressed her. Night birds called and a large night moth drifted by, wings tipped with silver in the moonlight. The scent of pine mingled with the whiff of wildflowers. Beta felt a new stirring within her that she didn’t understand.
    The mother often watched Beta by the stream, and a new worry was added to her burdened soul. She wondered if there would ever be peace for her again.
    That fall, Beta started making short trips into the woods again, and none of the mother’s threats would stop her. One warm, sunny day, she stood in the cabin doorway and watched her daughter cross the clearing towards the woods. A magnificent male deer stepped out of the woods. Beta dropped her dress to the ground, raised her arms to the sun and walked towards the deer.
    All of the emotions and fears that the woman had lived with for so long overwhelmed her and the tenuous touch she’d had with reality was lost in an instant. She whispered, “No, God, not again.” She reached inside the cabin for the rifle hanging on the wall. She shot. The long, red gold hair turned dark with blood.

College Days Are Swiftly Fleeting

    Okay, so why am I here? Well, I’m here because of my friend from college, Lisa. So, look, right from the start, you just need to know that my situation is probably different than yours. I’m not talking about a relative, or my wife, or somebody like that. Just a friend, and that’s the hard part. The sign outside said, “Come in and tell your story,” so here I am, telling about my friend Lisa, okay? It’s just that, I don’t know...I’ve gotta tell somebody about her. I don’t even know what to say. What? What was she like? Huh. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that she was a real bitch. No, seriously. She just was. I told you my story was different. I mean, haven’t you ever had a friend that irritated the hell outta ya? You know what I’m talking about? So...I’m dying up here. I don’t know what to say. This is not how I was thinking this would go, so I’m just gonna...What? How did I meet her? Uh, well, I first met her when I was a junior, she was a senior. It was Spring semester. What? Okay, yeah, good question. This was at the University of Alabama. Roll Tide, right? Yeah, my dad and granddad went there, so I went there, even though I lived in Philly my whole life. Never been to Alabama until I got to campus for orientation. Crazy, huh? I figured it’d just be me and a bunch of rednecks. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
    Okay, so Lisa. Right...so it’s junior year, and I got roped into doing this Model UN thing by one of my professors. Yeah, yeah, sounds goofy, right? I can hear people out there whispering “nerd” to the person you’re sitting next to. Whatever. Look, I’m just freaking out up here! Okay, okay, you’re right. I can do this. Back on track. So this prof made it sound like some extra credit was involved, so I decided to at least check out one meeting. So, before the meeting was over, I was heading up some committee to plan for our trip to a regional conference representing Costa Rica—that’s right, real fast it became our trip. I was in, and we were Costa Rica. Yep, it’s a real heavy-hitter of international politics. “The Switzerland of Central America,” they call it, both for its mountains and its neutrality. See? I learned something from it. You should be impressed. You know what? They don’t even have an army. How in the hell can you be a Central American country and not have an army, right? When I was a kid, that was the quickest way to let the commies take over, just let them waltz right in and stir up the peasants, and boom! Another Cuba, right in our backyard. At least that was what my old man said. Anyway, I am getting way off topic again, but ya know, stuff sticks with you, and sometimes you don’t even know why.
    Okay, so, like the first time I learned her name. It was probably the third meeting of that Model UN club that I went to, and I was just sitting there talking with Paulo, the guy from Brazil who was the only person I knew in the group. We’d had a class or two together and lived in the same dorm. So we’re sitting there talking before the meeting started, and somebody in the back is whispering some story about what somebody did at a bar on the Strip to about three or four other people. Suddenly, this girl in the back busts out with the loudest, most obnoxious laugh you can imagine. Yep, that was her. Except, you see, I didn’t know her name, but I knew that damn laugh. She was the tall, skinny girl who always sat near the windows on the left side in the dining hall and just laughed like that all through dinner, talking to her little friends. You couldn’t miss her: she was close to six feet tall, real long legs and arms, and she had this jet-black hair that was cut real short. So she stood out in a crowd, but you know what I remembered about her? For three years I had been listening to that laugh. It was one of those that sounded like, “Hey, listen to how much fun I’m having. You’re not having this much fun right now, and you probably wouldn’t even get the joke anyway.” My roommate and I had nicknamed her “Laugh-In,” like the old show. So anyway, once I realized “Laugh-In” was in the club, I made sure to pay attention and get her real name so I could tell him. “Laugh-In Lisa” was even better than we could have hoped for. He laughed his ass off that night when I told him who was in the dumb club with me, and that I found out her real name.
    So, not such a great start to a relationship, huh? Well, not really a relationship—just a friendship. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But here’s the deal: I ended up working with her on some of the projects for the club, and she wasn’t as bad as I thought. She was smart, even though she hadn’t been top of the class in high school or anything. But she was smart, and she knew it, and that made her a know-it-all, which also made her obnoxious, too. Kind of a vicious cycle or something. But I like smart. She was majoring in international business and Russian. Yep, Russian. Ten years after the Cold War is over and done, she’s studying Russian. She always used to talk about how the market was going to be booming for American business in Russia in just a few years. She wanted in on it. She was gonna make big bucks importing or exporting or whatever. I guess she had forgotten about China, just still thinking about Russia like a lot of us Cold War kids.
    So I see her at the club meetings every week, and then I started sitting with her in the dining hall sometimes at supper, and she’s not so bad. Pissed me off sometimes? Hell yeah. If she got on your case, she was gonna let you have it. No stopping her. But if you could ever one-up her with a crack or if you pushed back when she tried to talk you down, she liked you. That’s how we got to be friends. I just started cracking jokes about her one time after she said something really smart-ass when we were practicing for the conference, and she got a kick out of it. What can I say? I’m a sucker for people who laugh at my jokes, and so, kinda all of a sudden, she was less obnoxious, especially with that crazy laugh. Being in on the joke made that laugh sound different. If I kept pushing, eventually she’d be out of breath and claiming that her stomach was hurting her. She’d double-over and put her hands on her stomach and just shake her head, laughing.
    Okay, I’ll never forget what she did once we finally made it to the conference. It was at Mississippi State, and the delegation representing Costa Rica drove over in one dorky caravan. It’s not that far from Alabama, and I rode with her, one of her little friends, Cindy, and Paulo, the Brazilian kid. They were about the only members of the club I could stand being around for that amount of time. All four of us piled into her black 1998 Honda Civic. At least it was a four-door. Soon as we got there, she immediately set to work rubbing the other groups the wrong way, and loving every minute of it. That’s why she liked Model UN so much. She just loved to argue with people.
    Anyway, we’re at the conference, and after all the playing international politics is done, of course there’s a party in the evening. What? Nerdy kids drink in college, too. It’s at somebody’s house who’s local, and so we all pile in the cars and head over there. It ends up being pretty dull, and me, Lisa, and Paulo decide to bail. Jake, one of the other guys in the club, had some friends at State, and so he had been in charge of arranging a place for us to stay. So, we ask him, “What’s up? Where are we staying so that we can get out of this lame party?” So he tells us that some of his friends who go to State will let us stay in some dorms on campus. We’ll be able to sleep on the floor for free! He is so enthusiastic about it, and Lisa just looks at us. Paulo doesn’t quite understand, because his English was good, not great, so I start trying to explain to him what’s going on. The next thing I know, Lisa is going at Jake, cussing a blue streak about how nobody is going to sleep on any floor of any shitty dorm that looks like it’s from East Germany like all the dorms on this shitty campus. Needless to say, the whole party kinda stops, and everybody’s wondering how the Security Council is going to work through this issue. Nobody’s ever heard of the delegation from Costa Rica going medieval on anybody, let alone each other. Right then, Lisa turns around and yells, “Anybody who is riding in my car better get their ass outside unless they want to walk!” So, I grab Paulo, who was still confused, and Cindy falls in behind. The others looked pretty pissed, but we aren’t riding home with them. Besides, they were taking this whole “playing international politics” thing way too seriously.
    When we get to the car, Lisa peels out. “Where’re we going?” I ask, thinking we’re probably heading back to T-town. “We’re going to find a hotel,” she says. And we did. It just so happened that it was 20 minutes down the road in West Point, Mississippi, because all the local hotels were booked. Why? I don’t know. Who could have guessed every hotel room in Starkville, Mississippi, would be booked on a weeknight?
    So we check in to this dingy place—which, by the way, it was at least as dingy as the dorm would have been—and all four of us pile into this 2 bed setup. Guys on one side, girls on the other. Paulo is worn out from the day’s English and almost immediately dozes off. Cindy steps out for a smoke, and Lisa and I are sitting there, looking at each other.
    She looks up at me, and I know that she is about to launch into some sort of rant about what a loser Jake is. But she doesn’t. “Thanks for coming with me,” she says. I give her a funny look, cause I’m like, “What other option did I have? You were gonna leave my ass. I’m not taking a chance on having to ride in the back of Jake’s truck and get dropped off to sleep at some random dorm, on some dude’s floor!”
    I’m just joking around like usual, but she doesn’t laugh. She just looks at me again. “I’m glad you’re here with me,” is all she says, but with maybe, just a little, some kinda emphasis on the word “you’re.” I mean, I don’t think it was just me. So, like, all of a sudden, I get this feeling like maybe I have been missing something. Like maybe I haven’t realized what was going on. She’s just looking at me, right in my eyes, and not looking down. And she looks really pretty sitting there on the edge of the bed, in the dark. And it’s so quiet. I mean, we would hang out now and then, sometimes I would eat dinner with her and her roommate in the cafeteria, and I had always thought she was pretty, but I never felt like there was anything there.
    Now, wait, this isn’t that kind of story. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. But what you’re thinking happened, didn’t happen. So, she’s looking at me, and it’s just the two of us, except for Paulo, and he’s asleep, and I start feeling a little nervous, like I should say something. And I’m about to say something to her, which would have been magical, right? Yeah, I’m sure. You can tell I’m a pretty smooth operator. But then Cindy busts in, bitching about the idea of sleeping on a dorm room floor. Lisa switches gears like that, and then it’s over. We start talking to Cindy, and then everybody gets tired and drops off to sleep. Hey, we’d had a big day of international politics. Naturally, we get a chilly reception from the rest of the group the next morning, to say the least, and that takes up most of the day’s action. We get ready to head back to Tuscaloosa, and I thought about bringing it up with her in the car on the way. No chance to. Paulo and Cindy are talking the whole way, mostly Cindy, and an opportunity just never presents itself, and who knows, maybe I was just misunderstanding.
    But here’s the thing that’s driving me nuts: I didn’t ever talk to her about it. I quit the club pretty soon after that when I realized there wasn’t any extra credit there. By that point we were halfway through the semester, so I didn’t see her that much anymore. I just saw her around campus every so often, ate dinner with her and her little friends a few times, but it was different than seeing her every week at the meetings. She’d tell me about her job in New York, and how she was headed up there after graduation. She had this job all lined up because she had interned with them the past summer. They thought her Model UN experience was really interesting. Yeah, right, who saw that coming? Not me. She was going to be working in the Twin Towers, in an office on the 105th floor, I can’t even remember which tower. I would always joke with her that it wasn’t the same as Russia, and she would always say, “Just you wait.” We emailed back and forth over the summer, and I guess I was just working up the courage. I don’t know...I just couldn’t shake what I felt—or thought I felt—that night in that crummy hotel.
    Do I regret not bringing it up with her? You bet I do. Especially when I got back from the gym that morning. My senior year had barely started. I was going to do some reading for my 11 o’clock class after breakfast. I turned on the TV and sat down with a bowl of cereal. By that time, both towers were on fire. And then they were falling. What did I think of? Another thing we never saw coming, I guess. And I thought of her. I thought of her laughing in the cafeteria. I thought of her strutting into a conference room at Mississippi State like she owned the place. I couldn’t stop thinking about her for that whole week, and the weeks after that. I finally got up the nerve to look at the list of names, and sure enough, there was hers, right there in black and white.
    But that’s why I’m here, talking to all of you. It’s been a year since it happened, and I still can’t stop thinking about her. It seems dumb to me, especially here. Everybody in this group has like, real stories. I mean, she wasn’t even my girlfriend. But yesterday, I pulled up behind a car with a New York license plate, which isn’t that weird here in Philly. But it was a black 1998 Honda Civic, four-door, just like the one she used to drive. I just sat there staring at it, until all of a sudden I had tears running down my face and the cars behind me where honking because the car in front of me was gone and the light was green. All that because it was a black Honda Civic. It’s just funny how the little things stick with you, ya know?

No Ship is Big Enough

    Kola sat up in her wheelchair in her small studio apartment, adjusted the confining belts with her right hand, looked down at the spoon with its large deep bowl and could easily see her blond hair and long face reflected in an upside down image. Her blue eyes and red lips were exaggerated. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, seemed to glisten. Her nose had grown. Countless times she had performed this spoon ritual in many countries and cities, in the days when she was not crippled. She liked the spoon reflection. It made her look bigger than she was. Her image stared back at her, regardless where she was, what might happen, and what she was thinking. She was alive and big enough to take on the bad guys.
    This particular large spoon was a special gift from those who knew she liked spoons. It had a beautiful wide handle on which was engraved a woman on a raft with her arm up trying to halt a giant ship, though the carving only included the bow of the oil tanker. At the bottom in tiny words: “Nature thanks Kola Spanán.”
    Kola was that lady in the boat and she did stop that ship. Unfortunately, that moment put her into a wheel chair for the rest of her life. In her attempt to hold up a sign, her boat rocked, she fell backwardly on to a metal contraption she had brought along to hook herself to the ship, and severely and permanently injured her spinal cord.
    She smiled at the spoon. Her teeth spread out before her in the bowl.
    Beside the spoon was a group of items. Other than her head, her right arm, and her hand, she was paralyzed, so it was critical that everything was in easy reach. In front of the cereal bowl, spread neatly in a large semicircle on a wide tray, were a glass of orange juice, a tiny round clock, a harmonica, a small CD player with inbuilt speakers—her favorite CDs were in two large pockets on the side of her chair—a set of colored pencils upon a drawing pad, three books piled on top of one another, three rocks in a group, a phone, a small television, another small screen for satellite images, and a hand-held computer. Several wires flowed away in different directions.
    ‘It’s absurd,’ she thought, ‘absolutely absurd, as she contorted her nose and mouth in various faces gazing into the spoon. Why would they want to talk to me about taxes?’
    It was true, she had not paid any taxes for three years, but that was because she had made less than the minimum. She wasn’t trying to hide anything. She had no secret source of money or ingenious way of disguising wealth so that she could cheat the government. She was one of the ninety-nine percent.
    Perhaps it was a mistake. The government makes mistakes.
    The thought of government mistakes immediately sent her mind on a familiar path of criticism and an equally constant habit of talking out loud to herself when she was frustrated or angry.
    “They sure do make mistakes!” She mumbled to herself. “They made a mistake letting oil companies drill the waters. They made a mistake dumping toxic waste into the waters. They make a mistake letting beef companies level the rainforest. They made a mistake allowing coal and other companies to destroy the atmosphere. But those are huge mistakes. I am only one person. What mistakes have I made compared to those?”
    She knew of several people the government had wrongly audited and a few they should have audited more carefully. The government audited the Augers who lived next door with their three kids and found nothing. They would have found something if they had audited their heart. The Augers, as they proudly admitted to anyone, contributed large cash donations to organizations that denied climate change.
    “Waste! Yikes, audits are wrong,” she concluded to Goldman her cat. “Unless the government is going to audit itself, right, Goldman?”
    “Keep your eye on the ball, Mr. and Mrs. Government!” she shouted. “Look at the real problems! The need for renewable energy, pollution, unbelievable waste, poverty, infant mortality, the one percent, youth unemployment, millions with no health care and millions more who can’t afford the health care they need, the twenty percent who finance the drug war, millions who can’t afford an education, and so on, and so on. You have so many more important things to do than thrust your bureaucracy at me.”
    The phone rang. Kola reached over and touched a button on the phone, activating the speaker phone.
    “Kola,” she answered.
    “It’s Angie. Did you hear from Reg?”
    “No,” Kola said, “he has seven minutes more.”
    “Midge has not checked in,” Angie said.
    “Where are the media?” Kola asked.
    “They’re here.”
    Kola turned on the television and switched to channel four.
    “The others?” Kola wondered.
    “They’re set” Angie replied.
    Her computer beeped.
    “OK,” Kola said, “I have confirmation from Reg. Start right now.”
    Kola turned off the phone and watched the television screen with the sound off.
    Ten minutes later, she turned on the sound.
    “A few minutes ago,” the reporter said, “four vice-presidents of Fortune five hundred corporations were abducted. They were on a boat tour and conference regarding their future investment in the area. All are from corporations involved in using the resources of the Amazon River and the rain forest. They were, literally boxed, hooked and taken into the jungle by helicopter by the mysterious activist group KOSPA, as you can see from this video supplied by them. This is the second time this year this group, which is more often involved in political and economic situations, has entered the environmental arena. The group has asked the companies to begin repairing the damage they have done to the rainforest and the disruption they have brought to the Amazon River cultures. They list ten travesties committed by these corporations. Here is the list.”
    The news channel then displayed the list for the viewer.
    “The group has promised to release the executives. However, it has warned them and their companies that real abductions will occur if they do not halt the rape of the lungs of the planet. Government officials again say that they have no idea who KOSPA isor what KOSPA means. Nor do they know how the three were abducted. But they assume that compatriots of the group were on board the ship, so every person will be interrogated before they will leave the ship.”
    Kola again turned down the sound of the television and looked at her satellite screen, then stared down at her spoon.
    Goldman meowed nearby.
    “Ha! Of course you don’t know, you bureaucrats!” She said. “Do they, Goldman? And you know why? Because we’re right in front of you! Haha.”
    Goldman meowed again.
    “How could you know us? You’re looking for crazy people and none of us are crazy. You’re crazy!”
    A half an hour later, the phone rang again.
    “Kola,” she said.
    “We got a problem,” Reg said.
    The sound of helicopter blades swirled loudly in the background.
    “Good. It means we’re causing trouble,” Kola answered.
    “God I wish you were here, like the old days. I don’t know how to do this,” Reg said.
    “I bet your face is all red, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it is,” a female voice came on the phone too.
    “Midge, you girl!” Kola said.
    “Well, after all of those lessons, yes, I can say I can pilot a helicopter, but we got a problem.”
    “Give the man a kiss for me,” Kola said. “He did great!”
    A big smacking sound could be heard.
    “You know, don’t you, that she didn’t really kiss me,” Reg said. “She could have, mind you, but she chose not to kiss me. I could use a kiss right about now, but no, no, she throws a fake one.”
    “What’s the problem?” Kola asked.
    “There are people on our patch!” Reg said.
    “You’re kidding of course,” Kola said.
    “No he’s not. I screwed up,” Midge said.
    There was a moment of pause.
    “Put the bad boys back on the ship,” Kola replied. “We made our point.”
    “What?” Reg said.
    “Contact Angie on the boat, say we’re bringing them back,” Kola said. “You have time. It’s only a couple of minutes away. The authorities won’t be there for another fifteen minutes. Go!”
    “What about Sasha and Chang?” Midge asked. “They’ll still on the patch and they’re frightened. They think they’re in cannibal country.”
    “Ah no. No, they’re not,” Kola said. “Tell them to dig a deep hole, and bury themselves up to the neck. When the natives come near, tell them to crawl slowly out of the hole and start speaking loudly in a made up language. I did it once. It works. The underworld is terrifying to all peoples. That will give them enough time for Midge and Reg to come back and pick them up.”
    In ten minutes, another television update appeared on Kola’s screen:
    “We have an update on the abduction. Here is a video of the executives being returned to the boat. No one expected them back this soon, but as you can see, they’re on the deck and the helicopter has taken away the boxes and is out of sight. We assume that the government has made a deal. Oh, I’ve just learned we have the tour organizer, Ms. Angie Riddick. Hello Ms. Riddick. What can you tell us? How did this abduction occur?
    “‘Several activists were hidden on board. The helicopter came in, dropped the boxes, and the masked activists forced the executives, two men and one woman, by gunpoint into the boxes. The boxes and the activists were taken away by the helicopter. It happened so quickly. The return of the boxes also happened much more quickly than we assumed. The federal agents and police have not even arrived. It was over in a couple of hours. How brazen these people are!’”
    Kola smiled at this remark of Angie and turned the television off.
    “You’re so naughty! I love it,” Kola said. “Isn’t she, Goldman?”
    Kola pounded the right armrest in joy. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
    Kola still had not begun to eat. She would not eat while her team faced danger.
    Another beep from the computer. She read the email. Midge, Reg, Sasha and Chang were on their way to the coast. Kola acknowledged the email, happy the cannibals did not show up, and requested that they call her around midnight.
    As Barber’s Adagio now sounded from her CD player, Kola wondered where she had put all of her tax receipts.
    “Goldman, find those receipts! We wouldn’t want to anger the government!”
    Kola dipped the spoon in the cereal and began to enjoy her breakfast.

Night

    I walked across the campus, through the student union, past the campus radio station’s studio, towards the underground parking garage. A young woman walked ahead of me by some three to five paces.
    As we entered the hall and the door closed behind us, she looked back, then turned quickly forward again, having seen my graying beard and dark brown hair, and a frame a head taller than herself.
    She walked ahead of me and we both passed the elevator and took the stairs. She looked back again, then quickly turned, eyes front. As the door at the top of the stairway closed behind us, she quickened her pace.
    We passed the elevator and took the stairs. I slowed my steps as she quickened her pace. I cursed whoever had so frightened this woman that now she feared a man probably older than her father; that she felt she had to flee an aging poetry student.
    The distance between us began to increase. At the bottom of the stairway she stiff-armed the door and hurried through the garage. I strolled out, still following her path through the rows of parked cars, but farther behind with each step.
    She hurried through the parking garage and jumped into a van parked beside my car. Still moving the same direction as she, I strolled past cars parked in rows. A few seconds later I reached my own car as well.
    From the driver’s seat of the van she stared wide-eyed at me as I approached. I turned my gaze toward the dash as I sat, fitting in the ignition key, looking anywhere but toward the frightened young woman.
    Her wide, nervous eyes never left me. I wanted to shout my innocence to her, but I knew such a protest would only make it worse. Her stare has convicted me. There can be no appeal, no clemency.
    I just waited in my car as she pulled out and left, not following her out of the garage immediately. The van had a bumper sticker: “Take back the night.”
    I want the night back too.

Internet Bonus:

Nokto

    Mi marŝis tra la kampuso¹, tra la studenta centro, preter la studio de la universitata radiostacio, celante la subteran parkumejon. Juna virino iris antaŭ mi, distance de tri ĝis kvin paŝoj.
    Kiam ni eniris la vestiblon kaj la pordo fermiĝis post nia dorso, ŝi rigardis malantaŭ sin kaj tuj returnis rapide la kapon, vidinte miajn griziĝan barbon, malhele brunan hararon, kaj altecon je pli ol kapo plian ol la ŝia.
    Ŝi marŝis antaŭ mi, kaj ni ambaŭ preteris la lifton por uzi la ŝtuparon. Ŝi rerigardis denove, sed rapide turnis sin, kun rigardo fikse antaŭen. Kiam la pordo je la supro de la ŝtuparo sin refermis, ŝi plirapidigis la paŝojn.
    Sur la ŝtuparo, mi malrapidigis miajn paŝojn, dum ŝi plirapidigis la siajn. Mi malbenis la homon kiu tiom timigis ĉi tiun virinon ke nun ŝi timas pro viro sendube pli aĝa ol ŝia patro; ke ŝi sentis ke ŝi devas fuĝi maljuniĝantan studenton de poezio.
    La distanco inter ni ekpligrandiĝis. Ĉe la malsupro de la ŝtuparo ŝi puŝ-malfermis la pordon kaj hastis tra la parkumejo. Mi transiris la pordon, plu sekvante ŝin preter la parkumitaj aŭtoj, sed pli malproksime per ĉiu paŝo.
    Ŝi hastis tra la parkumejo kaj saltis en kamioneton, kiu staris apud mia aŭto. Kelkajn sekundojn poste ankaŭ mi atingis mian propran aŭton.
    El la sidloko de la kamioneto ŝi gapis streĉ-okule al mi dum mi proksimiĝis. Eksidante, mi turnis mian rigardon al la panelo kaj enmetis la ŝlosilon en la ekfunkciigilon, rigardante ien ajn, sed ne al la timplena junulino.
    Ŝiaj streĉaj, nervozaj okuloj neniam turnis sin for de mi. Mi volis krii mian senkulpecon al ŝi, sed mi sciis ke tia protesto nur plimalbonigus la aferon. Ŝia gapo min kondamnis. Eblas nek apelacio nek indulgo.
    Mi simple atendis en mia aŭto ĝis ŝi ekirigis la kamioneton kaj forveturis, ne sekvante ŝin tuj. La kamioneto surhavis bufro-afiŝon: “Reprenu la nokton.”
    Ankaŭ mi volas rehavi la nokton.

¹ Universitata areo (ReVo)

Warhol Earth (Death by Monotone)

    Narcissism breathes life, nondevotees. It’s the only line remaining between Andy Warhol’s prophecy of everyone’s “15 minutes of fame”, and The Gray Blob People of minimalistic humanity—you know, that Allness which results in Nothingness. If I wasn’t thoroughly healed by bathing in the waters of Selflove (Hallelujah!), I’d feel I mattered very little and my accomplishments, likewise. For, when Humbert’s Fleabag Bar and Grease Trap is on par with Mount Vernon in the eyes of preservationists, there’s no justifiable reason to save either one. Equivocation, turns all Humanity into Sara Lee goodies—no one’s allowed to Not Like a thing. Yet, effort is expected, and spleen and gloved fists raised.
    For some of you, the shallow turn of “all we are is dust in the wind” into handing bags of concrete potato chips to toothless homeless, or having a bully thrown in juvie to be assraped... because he was a bully and, you know, um...cruel ...this “it’s all for nothing, we die and rot, see you next week to discuss the boycott!”-Jedi MOUSETRAP so many pull off, is just like riding a bike. For me, it’s Bicycle playing cards dealt Three Card Monte. Anyone who believes in a universal “fairness”, is fooling themselves. You don’t have to believe in anything, if you don’t wanta, but if you run the FBI’s heavy marker through every word and characterizing def, shooting for a monotone spectrum of uniformity, you get dead people walking, a deadened society, eventually a zombopocalypse where somehow breathing corpses (all grey, of course) stand in pose from Madonna’s “Vogue”. If you’re maniacal enough, you want to realize as True the hated “sheeple” the Guy Fawkes movement makes boogeyman, remove any lines Wittgenstein could cook up or spitball, give empty life to “the assembly line people” as I coined in the Carter Years. And then, no try, Yoda. Do or do not. Make everything so fair, everything has in fact been razed, a blue mote where there resides not good nor bad, as there is no concept as such, as no concepts exist at all, barely a word and seldom a thought. It Has To Be Done This Way, as if we accept the axiom of No Ultimate System, then hit Clear on everything and Scientology, too—as my treasured behavior or Beauty, might be your trash, and your freedom might mean my enslavement.
    So, Everything Must Go. And once it’s gone, Man, a creature now of nothing but programming, stands there, blanking, until everyone can sit down in unison. See, no heartwarming movie pap is involved. We’ve burned the script with mulberry bush Whoville dancing and sharing of jellybread sammies, for same is same is a rose is a rose is one printout for the planet. You do not get your Elysian Fields, I do not get mine. SAME!! And we have no needs, no wants, and nothing in fact, at all. There exists no point to accomplishment, so accomplishment all but ceases. There is no separation by reward; there is no reason to strive. If improvement separates, why improve? If individuality is 50 shades of a single shade of Gray Blob People, there is no differentiation whatever. And moral structure and legal structure and all structure and every wall fall down. And nothing remains to hold it, as there is no cornerstone, no center and no base. There can be no sense of even having achieved, as minus safeguards, failsafes, checks, balances, boundaries of a more general kind, all you retain, is Human... you might recall this creature, I’ve been telling publicly of his deviltry for 8 years, now. Human has myriad eyes. And those narrowed, will always gouge out those looking the other way. In effect, Ayn Rand’s tweak on selfishness as Ubermensch juice, begets Woody and Juliette blasting you to popcorn as they Beavis and Butthead their glee...or Tom Cruise burbling how “beautiful!”, as he lays on the machine gun with a sexual passion...or Wesley Snipes ascending to the mount of the congregation of the north, as Stallone is on ice, and no one can blunt armor-piercing hardware with “pretty please”.
    There is a myth, that love begets love, Blue Meanies fall before it, and this swell spreads throughout the planet as though Drew Barrymore’s daisies were potpourri kudzu, but the thinking is flawed, because Man possesses a tunnel vision, whereby he peeps through his monocular and shoots POV through a prism of thinking pretty damned well of himself. This leads to such goodies as “Iran should be our ally”, or that spouses long checked out, if prodded, will surely hit the grindstone nose first, “because he Loves her”. Or that, enough happy mud pie play of paper-weak Eloi, and the Morlocks will rewrite themselves as cuddly Klingon biker dudes, and get with the plan. That there now exists no plan. Or need for one. Or need to point that out.
    Anarchism fails, because structure must exist, and said structure needs be hard and ungiving and rigid and cut in overly broad ways, or Woody and Juliette and Wesley Snipes and the mean assholes in every better movie when writers wrote actual scripts, will gun down, dirty bomb and 9/11 their way to mob rule in nothing flat. Woodstock seniors and those with snoot-snouts in the goblet of social sciences, scorn this, but Officer Friendly has already been given no reason for some time to Not step aside. In addition to no services, no order kept. No wrongs righted—and Malevolent Guy isn’t offering choices. The SS didn’t, either, and save your sweet “harrumph!” at the example. Dialog and its “Gotcha!”-based trickery, are, as Timbuk3 had it, “planned distractions to divert attention”...like me, arguing conceptually with the English Literature teacher, who was vague and had tendency to ramble. At the end of the hour, the class had been spared a whole day of our Gitmo of Macbeth, and though, standard of community, some few workaholics ground teeth that drudgery had been briefly fouled, it was no more than the crime of a gadfly. In the 21st Century, national or global, winning talking points through rude shit one learned from Professor Emeritus Ass Hole, is the active version of covering faces like Jonathan Harris as Dr. Smith, e.g. “I won’t look!...it’ll go away!” Nope. To reload, maybe, or burn down a Starbucks as their coffee break.
    With no penalty enforceable, no power greater than Self even in face of mortal crimes, Human will not and does not and increasingly refuses, Cody Jarrett in Cagney-voice, to heave to. He does not surrender. He has no reason to. There’s no reason left on this Earth-model, either, btw. Talk, really is bullshit, when the hard decisions are at hand...and abstract reality of Human Equality, cannot be interpreted by grunts. Every tired humanist twaddle in the world, comes down to “Because...”. As we used to say on my East Bluff block, “Because Why?!” There’s no answer to that. I’ve told you about tribalism threaded, cross stitch, through America’s tapestry. Mothers from the bad side of town, heads filled exam cram with graduate school concepts of familial politics and power relationships and “inappropriate”, come away primed only for a witch hunt of all unseen “abuse”...which, like the Pentecostal who sees demons on the doorknob, is everywhere beyond their eyes. We can argue, ad infinitum, re: was that a genuine boson of lore, in that European supercollider, or a micro second’s glitch in the nomenclature of the machinery...or a snicker-covered lie from a bunch of asses hungry for their very own 15 minutes? We can go ’round the Bush clan on that one and doubles ’round W, but to assert Others will “do the right thing”, just because it’s right (and, hey, there’s no right or wrong or even indifferent, anymore, either...indifferent implies apathy, and the opposite of Love is not giving a damn)...? The reason you can cite a list of heroic, loving, selfless examples, is said list being short enough to cite! Even opinionpedia would allow it to stand, which means if sniffed, it’s found useless.
    I’d ask Human with its Select All/Return of lines which divide, what CSM asked Fox Mulder—when demanded, yawning gun barrel in his face, “who are you to decide what’s ‘right’?”, our smoking friend retorted, “Who are You?” Someone has to be, even the bad guy with lung cancer, or game goes to the ones with the most ordnance. These may prove quite young, and soon. You’ll notice school shootings are now commonplace. Maher and his babbleshit buddies say, “Yes, BUT...!”, and my old anarchist chums say, “Yes, BUT...!”, and every barefoot person over 25 says, “Yes, BUT...!”, and the caps go poppin’ merrily along. Conceptual arguments can be fun (I prefer cutting, given a choice; that’s just me) but they don’t go very far versus Smith & Wesson. It’s my experience, a criminal faced off, Wyatt Earp, with The Purpose-Driven Life, blows away the woman who thinks she’s St. Paul. He then burns the book and salts the ashes, only for that it was boring. We don’t get news stories with this caste. That’d be double plus ungood, wouldn’t it?
    I’m all for making a case against scarlet letters or epithets screamed against those who take dumps on society’s rules. The late, no-nonsense Judge Mills Lane, referred to punishment of crime as very simply, “a process of disposal”. I believe in doing this with faces of slate and wooden movements, the way all prison guards appeared in that era when Sing Sing was the only facility most could name off the top of their head. I certainly think we can do without degrading kids right out of the chute because they as Human don’t, Sesame Street, “belong” where they’re planted... but as to a gold star and an A+ given the same random “YAY!!” as a pair of deuces, try offering balm to the shamefaced without removing glory from those who have earned it. Pay by way of production...if A-Rod, though I kiss his cleats, goes 0 for 23, dock his pay! Bring back the laurel crown! Fuck failure! If the junior geniuses on one team come up short shrift, this doesn’t make them “almost winners”. You don’t have to scream the word “losers” so feedback rages through the studio, but they Lost The Damned Game! Loss and shortfall and arrears and also-ran lack of achievement, are intrinsic to the ride. People lose out on raises, promotions, in love or in competition, some live long lives of lukewarm nothingness. Some are hurtful as incubi and some baby-oink about their hurties, want held and a juice box with maybe just two Oreos the size of your head. Some rot quickly and live forever alone. Some are rot, and use Others like Kleenex. Some are always hungry and some are proud of this fact, and some are so into anorexia, they get rather orgasmic about it. And, some die in the subway and some die in the gutter, and some die in white splendor under a canopy reading, in bold Low German, “You’re all shitheads. Who ‘retires’? I’m still the Pope.”
    There’s a ‘better’ and a ‘worse’ and a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’, nonfriends. There exists success and as well, failure. You’re welcome to blur definitions and make the face of any governing structure as arbitrary as you like in the petulant, stamping foot of your little mind... but We Are Not All Alike. We Are Not The Same. The Sierra Club might stamp your passport to Existence Legitimizes, but try it on CEE and steel for The Three Billy Goats Gruff as a weird tale! Life itself already contains Allness, and the spectrum of Life is necessarily divisive, a coordinate plane, not a gray blob ice ball of homogenization. If “different” and its differences and any right or freedom or liberty or permission to recognize them, is verboten due to dumb brute respect for Others’ self-image, I think you’ve missed the point of self-image. Self, means YOU as Self understood by YOU, and this does not extend past your fingertips. You may indeed be a work of art, you’re certainly welcome to think so, and I’m welcome to snort at the spectacle and imitate you as baggy pants disaster. Life on the ball, is All and Everything. We, ourselves, are not so, either as group or individual, team or isolated soul, not those preening, not a horizon of gray blobs produced by restraining laws. Truly, the mind reels at the reality of people so lost in a chaotic universe, they venerate clonishness as ultimate fair play, lest they receive or be or realize nothing at all.
    I’ve said, I clapped hands long ago. I will not be part of a monotone soup can. Or any product Warhol played with to make his point...which seemed to be, anything and everything is art, or as you like. Andy, an absent man ironically defined by his cohorts, produced art as Truth and Beauty as “whatever”. You can do that with static things. Humans, are not static things until they’re dead. This appears to be what y’all are trying for. I find the zombie-quality, unsettling. Might I request you all go out ala Jonestown, and expedite the process? Because, if you expect to assimilate me, playing it George Romero shamblers moaning, “SAME...!!”, kindly recall my action-heavy era. I learned riot shotgun handling, from Linda Hamilton in T2. All hail, female role models. I like moms like that.

    CEE

This dangerous ecstatic but lonely path.

    Usually when I write for HA!News, I have a single sort of inspiration and then find that the writing comes rather flowingly. This time, too, I have an inspiration, but I have been thinking for weeks now what it is that I want to say. So difficult! But let me try and engage it with you.
    It started with the Paris attack. Joke and I were travelling in the States at the time and we had many conversations, daily news checks and feelings around it. Being in the States itself was an extension of this conversation as voices came to the fore of shutting down the country against refugees and voices of utter fear that the next attack would again be on US soils. Brussels, where Joke’s youngest sister lives, was virtually shut down for days with scenes of soldiers on the streets, reminiscent of the Second World War.
    Much of our focus was (and still is) on what motivates humans to kill each other, just as much of our focus after being attacked in an armed robbery, was on the character and background to these humans behaving in such an extreme and inhuman way. Or is it a human way? Is it so much part of human history to kill, hate and destroy each other that we should accept it as normal human behaviour?
    Of course, what always goes along with such atrocities, is the us-them paradigm where “they” are evil and “we” are the good ones. Not just on the side of the victims, but also on the side of the perpetrators. The “other” is so evil, they deserve to die, to suffer, to be regarded as less human than the “we.” And everything that goes along with it - their religion, their culture, the way they look and even where they live. All of that is off a lesser value than what “we” have and are.
    It is one thing to compete for territory, to fight for survival, to struggle to get your basic needs met. All of life is doing that. Insects, animals kill each other for food, push and pull and cause suffering to mark out territory. It is part of life to develop a healthy dose of aggression and defense capabilities. In all of this, the basic drive is to preserve the whole, not only the whole of one’s own, but the whole of all - finding and maintaining one’s place under the sun, but also one’s orientation and interdependency regards all the others. In this dynamic, some individuals may indeed perish, sacrifice is needed from time to time. But in the story of humanity, something else entered: the drive for More, whatever the consequences. This More can sometimes mean that the “us” are out to not only defend or attack, but to annihilate; not only to balance oneself against another, but to conquer, defeat and oppress. Not just to assert oneself, but to dominate. Before this point in our story, one could still speak of us being part of an overall ecosystem, a family of living things, a sustainable web of relationships. After this poin, a crude polarization enters, of human creature and beast, of rich and poor, of empire building and subjugation, of the divine ruler and slavery, of the colonial master and the oppressed, up to the current “first world” and “third world” dichotomy.
    What was this certain point? It was the point where humans started to having More than what was necessary for their basic needs. That in itself seems innocent and happy enough. But a curious thing happens here: when I have more than enough (materially), in stead of wanting less, I start to feel that enough is not enough. In stead of restoring balance, I start to feel that my balance lies in getting even more of the More. Somehow, I lost my sense of the whole and am now looking in the direction of More to find that whole, which leads to an endless search that never satisfies. We call this addiction, we call this greed, we call this corruption, we call this the “sinful nature of human beings.” It sets us apart from the rest of life on earth. It makes us call for redemption. It put us on a path of destruction, not only of our environment, but increasingly of ourselves. We find ourselves being exasperated by our ability and need to become More and More on this planet, we hail this as our success, but we also wail on this as our impotence in controlling ourselves. We did not only recently come to Paris to witness our depravity in another horrendous killing spree, we also came to Paris just now to come together in an effort to STOP this hanking for More, collectively. We are desperate. We are fearful and hopeful. We look in the mirror and are amazed and aghast at the same time.
    Historically, this point was the advent of agrarian societies - larger groups of people pinning their survival not on animal husbandry or hunting and gathering anymore, but on the cultivation of grains. We also call this the start of “civilization.” This point had a long build-up of course, and humans were already markedly more able to adapt and survive than most other living organisms on earth, but until 4000 years ago or so we still blended in quite closely with our environments, in ways that can still be seen with the last remnants of traditional tribal societies. We were still rather healthy. With mass agriculture came not only a host of diseases and bodily weaknesses, but also longer survival rates, as well as this very crucial thing: a surplus of food, albeit not the best food. The division of society into a ruling class, a military and a working class set humans more apart than ever before, yet they all shared this one thing: they had More than they needed. The workers could have more babies, the soldiers could concentrate on fighting, free from the need to hunt for food, and the ruling class could spend their time strategizing expanding territory, knowledge, entertainment, imagination and pure indulgence.
    Thus, with civilization came rapid population growth, extreme control of the environment, a flourishing of religion and the arts, sports, sciences, technology and laws. And wealth. The possession of more than what is needed for basic living. And with this, came power. And with power came war-making and empire building, as we entered the age of for-ever-More. Everything up to here went slowly. But since Sumer and Egypt, the human story went into overdrive, with the last 200 years being a mad sprint to the edge, as, on top of it all, we discovered all these black things we can make big fires with - especially oil and coal.
    Two years ago, when I felt the cold steel of a loaded gun against my forehead, I came close to polarity lying at the heart of the human condition. Revolutions, terrorism and violent crime are the blind and desperate responses to the blind greed and power-mongering of those who happen to be ruling over others, those who happen to be the “haves.” At the core, these acts are all political, with religion and economics adding fuel to the fire, but not being the fire itself. This is important. ISIS is as much Islam than the Klux Klux Clan is Christian. Those ready to blow themselves up do so on inspiration of distorted elements of the Faith, yes, but would never have gone so far was it not for an existential hotbed of political grievances. And one cannot understand a murder in South Africa, where a life is taken for only a cell phone stolen, without acknowledging its political context. We, humanity as a whole, acquired an extreme edge since that point when we exchanged a lot of quality of life with quantity of life. The cynical hand that the West played in the Middle East since the late 19^th century lies at the heart of the rise of modern day terrorism, just as white domination lies at the heart of the rise of the armed struggle in South Africa. This clash between the power-hungry and the depraved is as old as civilization itself and the trail of blood and horror stretches all the way from today back to Sumer, all through shooting sprees in the USA, the drug wars in Central America, the endless coups of post-colonial Africa, genocides and the brutal destruction brought on by secular regimes like Nazism and Communism, the terrible legacy of misery brought on by big corporations through “structural adjustments,” through the ripping of raw materials all over the world and through the shame of slavery, Europe’s wars upon wars upon wars, the horrors of the crusades, the whole orgy of empire building coming from all sides around the Mediterranean and also within the theatres of India and China, the marauding steppe “barbarians,” right back to the Old Testament epic murdering of woman and children.
    I say that this dark and terrible side of the human story is all essentially political, not just because of the actions of politicians, or because of the failures of a certain political system, but because politics is us all coming together to take responsibility for our destiny. Politics, stripped of its abuses, is about us looking into the mirror, sensing our limitations and deciding on how do we relate to each other and the larger environment around us - relationships on all levels, including the spiritual, scientific and economic levels, from the small local communal circle, to towns, cities, districts, provinces, countries, regions, continents, the globe. When our coming together (our politics) is lacking, when we lose a sense of the whole, when the polis falls apart, that is where we lose it. But that is also exactly where and how we can heal. This is why Paris is so important. Just yesterday we DID come together, all 195 nations, and actually AGREED on a way to curb our greed, on a way to take action on our limitations, on a way to ensure more equitable use of resources. This is not world government. This is humanity waking up from a nightmare.
    For those who say that religion lies at the core of all of history’s violence, I say you are mistaken. Religion goes both ways - often starting out to bring love and peace and then end up being a motivator to annihilate the other - even if this is only done through the belief in hellfire. With all its exemplary representatives calling for non-violence and forgiveness in the past, no religion has been able to stop our madness. Nor has secular ideologies - also always starting out to bring justice, yet can end in genocide. Nor has science - also meaning things well to improve the human condition, but perfectly capable of killing our souls as well. Nor has wealth - money is no guarantee for the good as so often - again - those who have too much of it want even more. Nor has law-making, individual healing, great sports events, music and profound works of art, amazing philosophies, stunning technologies or economic ideologies. All these areas of human endeavor are important, but none can address the whole by itself. The whole is only properly addressed politically - and again, I am talking about the politics that goes beyond governments and the limits of democracy. The whole is only addressed by us all participating in a comprehensive and connective conversation, in educating ourselves as widely as possible and in facing up to our limitations.
    The aim is not holiness and perfect peace. Flower power can only bring us so far. Nor is it to declare ourselves sinful by nature and in doing so, giving carte blanche to the forces of darkness. Nor is to wait for redemption from a power (or planet) beyond us. The aim, the challenge, the opportunity is to take responsibility for who we are and what we do. Religion and the arts can help us to show us how small we are. Science and technology can help us show us how powerful we can be. But it is only in coming to ourselves, that we can discover how human we can be. The Paris attacks showed us yet again how blind we can become - not only in those mad and lustful moments of pulling the trigger, but also how our actions and our cozy and consumptive lifestyles can impoverish and destabilize a whole region, creating the venom that will come back to bite us. Then again, the Paris Convention is showing us how we can come to our senses, and more importantly, come to our hearts, to struggle beyond our tendency to take a simple and extreme path, to one that is not easy, is complicated, but connects with real feeling and concrete realities.
    Not that Paris has the final say. Politics is our daily living, is the many challenges still lying ahead, is the difficult conversations across chasms of differences, is the painstaking process of healing old and very deep wounds. Politics is the collective burden of the whole, politics is the circulation of blood, not the spilling of it. Politics is the beating heart that brings everyone together, not becoming the same, but together dancing a dance to music we all can hear. Politics is to speak up to the abuse of power, is to know how each of us are prone to that. Politics is to acknowledge that we are not alone. We are surrounded and sustained by other forms of life. We are rooted in the earth. We are nourished by the heavens. We are vulnerable. We are potent. Politics is not about escaping, nor about self-enrichment. It is the whole. It is community communicating and living the common grounds.
    It is us who started the agrarian revolution. It is us who became civilized. It is us who are burning limited fuels and it is us who took this dangerous, ecstatic, but lonely path since 4000 years ago.
    Therefore it is only us who can climb down the throne we created for ourselves. And it is now up to us to find a way of being civilized without wanting More than we need.

MacArthur’s Palo

    Laughing and pretending to pray at the base plate of the statues depicting the American General and his entourage wading ashore here on Red Beach, Palo, Leyte, the pair of pubescent schoolgirls, dressed in earthy brown uniforms, are making fun. Cast in bronze, twice the size of real life, the statues tower above the girls. Appearing from behind to stand beside their kneeling poses, I am not as monumental as the statues, but my height and similar facial features quickly gain the girls’ full attention. Realizing, in real life, the possible significance of this place, they jump up and attempt to flee their embarrassment, falling over each other in that clumsy and coltish way that people of their age have. My smile along with my wife’s indications that there is no need for fear brings the shy one back to pose with the Monument to MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. However her companion refuses and gives me a hard look. An old Filipina friend of mine once told me that this kind of look was sometimes the way girls hid their interest here, having never learned the wiles and ways of the “sophisticated.” I watch her as she sidles away with that oblique frown and hope that she is not really mad.

    When we were growing up MacArthur and his “I shall return” was a big deal, a real important part of who we were and how we saw things that lay ahead of us. Some of us even found ourselves also going ashore on other people’s property, but we were making no return like MacArthur’s. Or as they say here, “Balik-Balik.”
    MacArthur returned to give an impressive speech which indeed, I believe, helped free the Filipino people from Japanese rule. And they, along with our rescued POWs, welcomed it. They eagerly cast their lot with that old soldier and fought beside him. It was such a big enough deal that its occurrence was passed down to us, pretty ribbons and eloquent speeches all intact. It built this Memorial for us to honor and for these school girls to play around. But those that employ the genre of its honor and its sacrifice to render us useful tools for conquest and establishment of a power hierarchy, in my opinion, do a disservice to this memorial, these school girls, you, and me. No unsophisticated dullards among a rich and preoccupied people, you can figure out the tone of this missive and where you stand in relation to it. That the big enough deal has built as well. But for myself it calls to fore, having went ashore other places to establish something not of the people who lived there, how it is supposed to be. As for some who came after me, and even unto today, I will not attempt to expound upon. We do not live in the time of MacArthur and his duty, nor that kind of need for our return to foreign shores. Our patriotism can sometimes be a cloak for darker designs. And speaking my piece covets not loose cannon fire from those quarters. But being here in the presence of this memorial to an old soldier who has long faded away is an honor that I wish you all could enjoy, contemplate and realize. Or, if you are like me, gain a little therapy from.

    This is the same place where the fiercest typhoon in history will later make landfall, knocking over one of these statues. It will be repaired by the people who live here and standing back with the others within a day...... while the rest of the Tacloban area lies in shatters.

Charles Hayes bio

    Charles Hayes, a 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others