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enjoy this writing from Brian Looney in the free 6" x 9" 2017 PDF file chapbook: New Creations Out in Public (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2017 6" x 9" perfect-bound ISBN# book! Click on the book cover or this title to get New Creations Out in Public as a paperback book at any time!

Cut and Dry

Brian Looney

Who are these people and why do they knock on each others’ doors?
Who are these people and why do they knock on each others’ dreams?
Why do I shrivel when they knock on mine?

The conundrum: I am not the man I am when I’m around them.
I unravel them as we speak.

They wish to assure themselves that my life, my habits run parallel to theirs, to place it on their own shoulders, commonplace, there to resemble the thing, but only just a semblance of the thing, because I might not be around when it awakens, for I will have flown the ____.

Solve it any old way you want, any old know how, any old folk remedy, any old way at all. Better than sitting around, waiting for the pubes to gray and the lust abate. Don’t you make allowances for the artistic temperament? Mind v. Body?

Q: Inadmissible.
A: Perhaps then, for the depressive nature of the recovering addict?
Q: Perhaps, but only if you honor this court with the whole truth, and nothing but...
A: The truth? I told her, straight to her face, “Royalty is dead,” when she accused me(me!) of idleness. That is when she flinched, but I swear I never struck her. I do so loathe a princess, but I never struck her.

The truth is, I would never raise my hand in anger. I would raise my pen instead. The truth is, I could have cast her in the most humiliating of roles, depicted her basest qualities for all the world to see; illustrations and creations to pierce the very marrows of her memory and hound her into the catacombs of psychosis and self-doubt. She would wish I had, in fact, only raised my hand in anger, because that slap lasts an instant. That sting is cut and dry.

Q: You have a very studied eccentricity.
A: Everybody loves an eccentric.
Q: Not a guilty eccentric. This court loathes the guilty.

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