Fragrant Rest
By ten in the evening the anoles have had it, especially the young ones, so they climb up into the honeysuckle or the ferns or a densely leafed section of the boxwoods where they are safe from the nocturnal ground hunting predators, and they drift off to meet with Morpheus.
The littlest ones prefer the comfort of the mint patch in the back yard, and by mid summer, when the spring clutches have all hatched and the tiny reptiles have had time to learn a bit of the layout of things, you can find five or six of them stretched or curled like strange fruits at the tops of the tallest plants, eyes closed, dreaming warm dreams of fat insects and sunny tomorrows.
MVD UD - A Piece of Quiet
The air around me is sentient, whispering constantly in Romani and the Japanese slang of shops and arcades along the Ginza strip. "Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachim," dark velvet strands of vowel and consonant accuse, tickling my ear like an unrelenting gnat.
I wave my hand distractedly, annoyed. A trick of the light, perhaps, or the tonal impetus of days lost to all the ways my world has ended. Wee, private Ragnaroks crying out in temporal dissonance, betrayed by the forward stumbling of weary feet; a widowed unwillingness to lie down.
"Nogitsune!"
Fox-spirit. Old Man Coyote. Loki. I've been called worse more often than better.
The Oracle at Delphi was out of her nut on wine and ethylene when I showed up curious one late spring evening, and she squawked the answer to my impetuous question for the whole crowd to hear.
"You!" she shrilled at the top her slowly dying lungs. "You are your own worst enemy!"
Plutarch was embarrassed by the show and quickly rushed me off to some debauchery or another where we forgot all about it.
The air though, oppressive, bilious, entirely too talkative, has never forgotten.
Looking Out My Window
"Hamas, the Iranian government and the Taliban have been condemned by Washington for advocating policies that mirror those expressed by Lieberman toward Palestinians. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab deputy in the Knesset, has called on the international community to boycott Israel as it did Austria when far-right leader Jorg Haider joined that country’s government. This seems a fair request. But I expect the hypocrisy and double standards that characterize our relations with the Middle East, along with our obsequious catering to the Israel lobby, to prevail. Racism, as long as it is directed toward Arabs, does little to perturb our conscience or hinder our support of Israel." - Chris Hedges, Israel’s Racist in Chief
"Almost everyone in the United States or indeed anywhere else in the world knows about Zimbabwe’s sit-tight president, Robert Mugabe. But who is Mogae? Who is Chissano? Who is Kikwete? And who is Kufuor? Sadly, very few people outside Africa recognize these names."
- Gbemisola Olujobi, Who is Magae?
With A Little BBQ Sauce
It's a terrible thing to say, but I can't help it. It's like a quiet chirp from my inner being echoing and magnifying as it moves up through the empty caverns of a dark and sinister heart until it physically hums the whole of my being and comes out unbidden and uncontainable: "I want Cheney's head on a pike!"
As one who rebels against the use of violence, the statement is abhorrent. Even the way it sits on the screen like a bizarre owl pellet containing only the undigestible bits of political diatribe and dehumanizing caricature. But like that necessary regurgitation, it feels good to have it out.
MVD UD - Wearing Short Sleeves
He kept it on a key chainWith a bald rabbit’s foot And a mini Magic 8 Ball. It caught her attention From across the little city library, Over the top of Harlan Ellison’s The Pain God and Other Stories. She lost her breath And her page.
She moved to stand expectantly At his left shoulder, Like a wooden match Looming over a rough surface: Longing for flame But nervous of the strike.
He was flipping slowly through a book of clouds And explained without looking up, “I forgot why the sky is blue.” “Higher frequencies,” She whispered, “Are prone to scattering.” “That would explain”, he replied, Looking up, “How your eyes wax azure As I'm moved from want to wonder.”
On a bench outside, Where the big maple promised to hold the world, He closed his eyes and touched her hand With just the tips of his fingers, Like a child reading the Vedas in braille. “I feel like I’ve been trapped in summer forever,” She said, “And I just want to fall." He smiled beneath his blindness When she asked if he'd catch her. "No," he answered "But I'd never let you fall alone."
He still had his rabbit foot when he opened his eyes, But she'd taken his heart from the keychain. It jingled hopeful in her hand as she waved From the ice cream cart across the street. Without even consulting the Magic 8 Ball He knew he had nothing else to lose.
MVD UD WIP - A Cut Above?
We faced them down across a field of doggerel and dandelions: the fascist dreams of corporate legions rattling the sharpened bones of children like weeping sabers. We knew the time was near, the angels at hand, and held our ground as an endless wave of principalities broke over our granite courage.
In those final moments of desperate chaos I stood against one of the chieftains of Avarice and knew I would never get to hear Gabriel's brassy charge. The dark beast wielded a twisted naginata stolen from one of Tokugawa Ieyasu's demon monks back in the fall of 1601. I had only a broken basalt rosary and four of my initial three hundred words left (I'd taken most of my artillery from St. Paul's letter to the Galatians and was down to 'hearing', 'uncircumcision', 'grace', and 'law').
You might be surprised what you can accomplish with a bit of igneous stone and a word like 'uncircumcision'.
MVD UD - Feeling Vicious
"I have not, as far as you know, ever killed anyone, and it's my sincere intent to keep it that way." "Making sure you never kill anyone?"
Keeping you ignorant about it."
WIP CCE - Blue Coyote and Interstice
The emptiness was warm and dark, like waking up wrapped in 600 count sheets at 3:30 on an early spring morning. This is what she was made for; made from. Quietly waiting between space and action, enveloped in sleepy potential, lending no definition to time or motion. Those things wanted her, wanted to sink their barbs deep into her being, but that wasn't what she was made for. She closed her eyes, took something like a deep breath, and pushed through.
Blue Coyote was waiting on the other side. Sitting on a round red leather stool in an Oakland diner playing some strange homebrew on a beat up PSP. He casually thumbed buttons as a cartoon indian chased down hapless cowboys, hogtied them, then threw them in front of a bison stampede. It looked like you got points for both the wrangling and the trampling.
"A kid on the Oklahoma res made it," he chuckled when he noticed her squinting at the screen. "Could use some tweaks in the interface, but the concepts funny as hell, yeah?"
Her brows contracted in a way he was overly familiar with: the body language equivalent of "whatever", so he shrugged his shoulders and pocketed the device. White folk were always too tightly wound, too focused. Their loss.
"I had an interesting conversation with a fed last night. The guy gave me this," pulling out the little baggie with his offering in it, shaking it gently at her. She shook her head, he shrugged again and took one of the little capsules for himself.
"And this means what to me?" she said.
