Category: writing, ghost stories, finances, poverty, art

#5

inspired by:

The New English Bible

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams

Andersons Fairy Tales

One day it rained very hard,  

the burden of it was far to heavy for us to bear.

I am a follower of a new way, I sold

my beautiful diamonds with the harvest moon shining-

Yes, I noticed it.

Something still worse was coming:

She was getting delusions of grandeur,

playing with great bright colored butterflys;

The sky with all its stars was above them.

Time was when you were dead in your sins and wickedness,

the play is done!

When the time came he took his place at the table,

    but where was it to be found?

He has no sense of humor.

Well, that boy is repulsive and

I didn’t get any better.

He was in the room where plaster casts of the deformed limbs 

hang on the walls.

Try to be like him,

for all of us are parts of one body.

Come now let us be human!

Every tongue confess -” I know that when I am gone, savage wolves will come among you and will not spare the flock.”

After that speech was finished the old snails crept into their houses.

The tower room of the house on his birthday

gave a banquet.

There were also great forest glades.

Are the dancing girls asleep, or are they dead?

They were fairies.






A poetry exercise: take 3 or 4 preferable non-fiction  books and page through randomly, writing down the first phrase that catches your eye. Stagger your search between your 3 or 4 books – first this one, then that, then that, then go through again. Write your phrases in a casual, irregular way in your notebook until you feel you have enough.  Then choose with instinct which phrase goes where – this, that, this, that.





You will then have a poem.

	


	











	

		
		
The Artist becomes a Human
	


	
	
	

		
	

		






(Something must be surrendered)





It is difficult to explain the position of the artist’s right hand,





    the mannered spread of the slender fingers of her left hand





    marks a  place in an open book.





The female figure in the sculpture also has a certain sphinx like 





    quality, the split ego of the solitary narcisstic individual.










Facing each other in a deliberately archaic manner,





   the three reluctant heroes evaluate the situation.





Their gaze is focused in an expression of playful, yet slightly anxious   





    anticipation, in the search for an explanation of her terrible fate:





The bloom of youth










The Road Back, The Ordinary World-





   his comparison of the fall of hair with running water.





Will he choose in accordance with his old, flawed ways?














The year 1886, the first of these climactic phases, 





     dominated the entire familty with her ‘often cruel influence’





(which she must have found increasingly upsetting).





.





While the Face, marked by Age





     returns swiftly to the throne room, laying the broom before the ferocious floating Head.





The human half of a female centaur is seen struggling to break free of her lower, animal self,





while





        she is commiting murder and suicide in effigy.





(Something must be given back)










The much smaller torso of Venus appears to nestle up to the Head,





   emerging from the cloud of marble.





The victim of a misfortune, 





    or of an understandable error of judgment.





Sympathetic,





   reflecting the choice of the new person she has become.





Strengh is needed for the return to the upper world.















INSPIRED BY:





Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel





The Writer’s Journey





The Art of the Portrait

	


	





	

		
		
Fortune, 2
	


	
	
	

		
	

		

The rain was cold and the leaves were wet, they clung to the chain link fence with their hard stems, tenacious and soggy. Lucy pulled one off to study it – it still felt alive somehow, the stem tough and hooked from its clinging. Deformed by it’s struggle.





She was craving Chinese food, warm and saucy and remembered eating in a restaurant without a mask.   The rain conspired with this memory to make her think of fish tanks, bright fish swimming amongst tall green weeds and underwater castles and then, like digging a corn kernel out of a tooth, she remembered a blue haired “person” with a Planet of the Apes t-shirt.  Staring at her, was that it? With an intense, unrelenting gaze.  Annoying and weird.





But yeah, Cornelius was on the person’s shirt, that’s right.  Cornelius, played by Roddy McDowell was able to retain his  open mindedness about humans even though the society he lived in, run by Gorillas and other Apes, hunted humans and locked them up.   Humanity somehow loses the power of speech.  As a degraded species?  She couldn’t remember how that happened.





“The CGI Planet of the Apes movies were good too,” Lucy thought.  For her that bleak desert landscape of the 1960’s version symbolized “the future” for her and would always feel like an “important movie”, one of the many influences that colluded to form this future woman who exists today, living in a present state of  dread of other people, a fear of harming others without meaning too and a curious, nagging doubt that whispered, “is any of this even real?”





Lucy looked forward to  watching an online performance of Romeo and Juliet when she got home.  She wondered if 3:30 pm was too early to eat dinner.











	


	





	

		
		
Kindness in the line
	


	
	
	

		
I counted out my money very carefully this morning.


I thought I had a dollar bill left, but I never found it.  I scraped up quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies even; it was a scraping spree of the like that hasn’t been seen since I was a unemployed teenage smoker out of money for cigarettes.  The desperation of searching coat pockets, household receptacles that collect change and pens, purses and bags that are currently out of rotation can be fun, like a melancholy treasure hunt.


All in the service of a cup of coffee.


I arrived at the cafe and after some friendly banter with the barista, ordered my drink and began my count-out of change.  I counted a dollar.  I added some coins.  I forgot how much I had counted.  I counted a dollar.  I added some coins.  I counted one dollar and seventy cents.  I forgot how much I had counted.  I subtracted some coins.  I added some coins.  I asked for help from the barista and he counted the coins and at this point I was wading through the pennies.  And they weren’t even that deep.


And it wasn’t enough.


“You need another dollar”, the barista said.


Would they consider pouring out half of the Americano? Would I have  money for half a drink?  One sip?


The compromises, the humiliation of NOT ENOUGH.


I paused, caught in my poverty net, the coffee drink on the counter, unclaimed.  Embarrassed to have portrayed myself as someone who had the money, who deserved to have a drink at a cafe instead of just drinking Folgers at home.


 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  


I noticed the man behind me in line, subtly waving a dollar bill.


“Do you need this?” he asked as he handed it to the barista.  I felt so much gratitude for this person who rescued me from humiliation and that was all I had to repay him with.  I hope it was enough.