The Four Seasons

I am a sod of earth.
I cascade down the hill
On waves of weed and dirt.
There is no time to still.

The spring rains, they do find me.
I am filled with sweet
Chlorophyll and sunlight.
My sex is ripe with seed.

Summer comes like mortgage.
I hate its humid guts
And wish to die with mercy;
The nights, they give me some.

Foliage is manna.
Colors kiss my face
And fill me with their fluids.
Fall is best when late.

Here I find my ending.
The winter is my friend
And cold is my last lover.
It helps it all to end.

Creationists, you are!

    We have the right to create.

    Worldbuilding is as much a God-given right as questioning authority, drinking too much coffee, or saying that Walking Dead has run its course and needs resolution or cancellation. People might assume that a preposterous thing to say, worldbuilding being under fire.

    “Who said you can’t worldbuild…wait. What is worldbuild?”

    They say it through their expectations, though. From the time we received the letters E for excellent or S for satisfactory for grades, we were told to dream big. We dreamt big and made good grades. We made good grades so we could go to college. We went to college so we could earn the paper. We earned the paper so we could, hopefully, qualify for a good means of living in a good economy. If the economy was bad, then we dreamt big for naught. Many, many, many, many a child with an E-filled report card dreamt for naught.
     
    So, no, we are not encouraged to exercise our right to worldbuild. I remember worldbuilding in school. I did it through art. I would draw a cartoon cat or a cartoon dog fighting, maybe a superhero with steroid abs that looked like a ripoff between a WWF wrestler and a hulking Wolverine. In the background was the landscape, the other planet, the ship, the secret military base, or whatever ecosystem was preferable. A rainforest where there was nothing but desert sand beneath the buttress roots? Yes. So what. 

    That was wrong, though. The teacher gave me detention for worldbuilding once. Once, I had to take it home and have it signed to show my mom I was worldbuilding and not paying attention.

    “Pay attention.” The mantra of the correct.

    Eventually, drawing evolved into musical expression. Guitar worked well. It was portable, light, aesthetically pleasing like a coffee table without the weight and with magic flowing out of its lacquered surface. The sounds of nineties alternative and hard rock allowed worldbuilding to be translated to six-note polyphonies or searing melodies with trills and bends and flutters (if you had a whammy bar). If one truly desired to worldbuild, you joined a band.

    That, too, was for naught. Since digressing from this writing to expound on the things teachers say and think about high school kids who want to be in bands is a waste of good space, I’ll renege. Suffice it to say, it was frowned upon more than the doodling.

    We are therefore forced to write. We are forced to something. Worldbuilding is innate, like the way a baby’s mouth cleaves to the mother’s teat like a suckerfish (sorry…I’m a new dad and find it fascinating). Our brains, creative or dulled like a pencil, build a world that exists within and without. We don't have to be creative to create. A kid on a farmhouse where yearly rotations of corn, soy, and alfalfa grass are the way of life is able to see himself waking up one morning with a pain in his gut, before realizing he is turning into a sizeable monster who leaves the farm, rampages through the school, tossing busses like toys, flinging bullies a mile away into the woods, wrecking the four walls, making his teachers piss themselves and flee, and getting the girl he likes to kiss him in front of all his friends. A girl who lives in an apartment with her single mom in the inner city projects where her brother was shot walking home one time can establish herself as the no-bullshit heroine who beats up men who beat women, becomes one of the first female Army Rangers, becomes a fighter pilot, goes to war, comes back, has a family or none, and buys her mom a house and owns a dog. Maybe there’s a girl or boy who want to just build a world where it’s still okay to get married young – and stay that way – and have kids and still make love at sixty. Maybe there's some who grow old just to die alone and love it every inch of the way. Maybe there’s even a kid who doesn’t give a hamster’s ass about those things and is content to just think about worldbuilding without being told it’s futile, fruitless, dumb, a waste of time and energy, doesn’t pay the bills, isn’t good for culture, isn’t politically correct, doesn’t line up with twentieth century thinking, or isn’t practical to math or science like it is to the Chinese who are kicking our occidental asses.

    Still, we are forced to reply to such mean-spirited rebukes coming from the same world which told us to dream big from the beginning. We write because English failed us in a great irony, teaching us grammatical posture but telling us to work hard for that STEM scholarship. We found difficulty explaining why we'd rather be imagining life on another earthlike planet, since this one has politicians, climate change, and ISIS roaming its scabbed surface. I write now, not because I planned on doing it from the time I was young, but because I’ve been rerouted to do it in a way beyond my control. I like it, true; but like a circuit board of misguided data, I’m putting things into story form because the stories are not welcome in the capacitors which enabled it in the first place.

    Stories are fantasy. Fantasy isn’t real. That which isn’t real is speculative. Speculation can be dangerous. Sure, it can be dangerous. But it can be fun when allowed to entertain.  

    Let there be a constitutional amendment to create. The right to free expression, as written, is not what it seems. In this progressive age, the freedom of expression means the right to be offended by every damned thing that’s uttered from an opposing party’s talking point. It means politics. It means religion. It does not mean real expression. It may as well be modified to mean, ‘in the absence of offenses…be offended by absence!’

    Let it spell out, in plain and simple language, this thing: leave those freaks who talk dialogue to themselves while they should be doing their job alone. Tell them to do their job, but let them talk. Just because the voices talk back does not make them schizophrenic…

    It means they’re alive.

 

    Enjoy another creation...

Ode to my Black Pug

Thou art as sweet as sweet can be
Like honey from the worker bees.
Yet, mean thou art as eighties' beasts
Like Gremlins, Critters, Jaws 3-D.
Yet kisses for thy master will
Ye give...and master's wife as well.
Black for night; fat for lard
And tender for black piglet's heart.

Ode to my Fawn Pug

Snorted, shorted, fur of rain
Shedding like wind o'er grain
"You stink! You stink!" the stranger cries,
For doth thy stink, like bugs, it flies.
But loving, laughing, is thy face;

Your master smiles, your master plays.
So snort and stink and shed away
Ye know I'll scoop thy mess today.

Ode to my Chocolate

Brown and tempested art thy back;
Brown and sharpened art thy tail;
Brown and wintered art thy nose;
Brown and tapping are thy nails;
Brown and flapping art thy ears;
Brown and narrow art thy jaw;
Brown above and brown beneath;
Brown and loving art mine dog.

Selah.

Trees Falling on a Writer

   I'm at my first Writer's Conference. It's halfway over. Right now, I'm blogging because I have a chance to. My wife and I had our baby in February, so time has changed it's meaning. The baby owns it now. Anyways, this is an entry about blogging.
  
   I love to blog - always have. Ever since I found out you could put your thoughts into the digital, it had the appeal of fresh pizza. The problem, though, is the same problem I have with all writing, the same with all music, the same with all art...the same with  CREATIVITY!

   If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

   If I blog and no one reads it, why blog? If I can't sell a book, why write it? If no one is there to hear my music, why play it? So on. The answers are usually quick as a car wreck: Market yourself! Sell yourself! Make yourself somethin' everybody wants to read! Here's the God's truth...I hate marketing in words that neither English, French, Latin, Arabic, and possibly Mandarin can express. It sounds like I'm damning myself, but honesty is the beginning for many-a-thing in the ways of self-confidence. If you detest honesty, cease reading at this point.

   There is a simple reason I'm a factory worker right now. It's because I do well as a cog in a machine who is given a command to yield a daily quota without straying from that point. I am a function. A diode. A capacitor. Something pretty on a circuit board. I dislike it greatly. Maybe I even detest it, but it's how I am wired. I do not do sales. Sales come as well to me as the Squeeze Theorem of Calculus. It's always been about that bad customer. Whether it be book stores, gas station attendant, or grocery clerk, I do not cope with the bad customer. If I have one hundred customers and five are bad, rather than focus on the good ninety-five percent, those five bastards have clouded the forefront of my conscience instead. Pessimism runs in my blood. Only now do I question whether pessimism and self-confidence have been rolled into one. If it has, I need serious help.
  
   But there is a genuine feature within me that selling things both within and without of myself was never in the cards. Now, here at the Clarksville Writer's Conference 2015, it is obvious. I pay the price now. I am not successful at authoring because I have not tried. Can I write? Yes. Can I create stuff? Yes. I am proficient in art, music, and the craft of story-telling with excellent grammatical quality. If there is a creative venue I am interested in, I can learn it. But selling it to others? (crickets with an occasional frog croak and an interstate passerby)
  
   As a dualistic anecdote for myself, I'm trying to see if this entry yields results. I have to admit, this conference has been pretty motivating. There is an impression that writers all over struggle with what I do. That really, really, really helps to know you aren't alone. It's cliché, but I'll say it: misery loves company. In this case, misery loves company tenfold. But what I meant when I said I'm trying to see results is that I would love to have some comments or input. I'll have to experiment and get some followers.
  
   This is new - not particularly exciting, but the prospect of someone hearing the tree falling certainly helps.

   Trees falling in the woods deserve to be heard.

Nicole: A Short Story

           Nicole was the first doll I ever bought. I’ll never forget her. Granted, I’m a married man, endowed with masculinity. It behooves me to say that I do not, nor have I ever, nor do I plan to begin collecting dolls. I drink alcohol, eat steak, watch sports, ogle women, and hate musicals. With Nicole, however, it was different.

            I bought her when my wife was pregnant for the first time. I can’t explain it, but Nicole just peered out at me with those shady eyelashes and braided auburn hair, like the adoring French ladies who welcomed the American GIs with puckering kisses when they liberated Paris. The pink hoodie and chic jeans she wore made her look terribly out of place in that hideous corporate packaging she was trapped in at the mom-and-pop toy shop. My wife didn’t think too much of her, believing it premature since we didn't even know the gender. Such negativity irked me, although she had a good point. Regardless, my gut said we were having a little girl, so I stored Nicole up in the attic.          

            In the meantime, we experienced a miscarriage.

***

            It was January, several months following the miscarriage when I was going through the attic one night. There was ice on the roads outside and I had taken the day off work because I sought to avoid inexperienced, wintery drivers of the south. My wife was also pregnant again and wanted me to go through old baby stuff. That was where I came across the brown box labeled BABY and found Nicole, having forgotten all about her. I took her out and studied her form, freezing in my boxer shorts. Normally, any association with our first baby would have depressed the utter hell out of me, but I was damn drunk.

            “How old are you, Nicole?” I slurred. Those were my first words to her.

            I imagined Nicole being annoyed because I had cheap merlot on my breath. My wife hated that I drank so much since our miscarriage, but it was the way I dealt with it. Regardless, we were expecting again and I planned to quit drinking when the baby came. I thought about those things, forgot why I’d come up there, and set Nicole back into the box.

            We had another miscarriage, too.

***

            Another year went by, and I was sifting through the attic in January – again. It wasn’t icy outside like the year before, but was cold and raining with temperatures somewhere in the mid-thirties. My wife was also pregnant again, as I was drunk again. At this point, a vicious cycle was in motion. Whenever we lost a baby, I became a drunk; whenever we were expecting, I promised to stop drinking. This time I was very drunk, though. I was so drunk, I forgot that I was up there to look for baby things and began looking over my old shotgun instead. It was a Christmas gift as a teenager from my older brother, but never grew accustomed to using. Other than the possibility of using it to ward off a varmint from the garbage, or self-terminate, I found no purpose in it so I put it back. I did, however, see the baby box with Nicole.

            “Where you at, Nicole?” I said aloud, reaching into the box and pulling her out. For whatever reason, I felt a pang of guilt as if I’d hurt her so I cradled her plastic body in my arm like a real baby and ran my index finger along the nylon strands of hair. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, stroking her pretty face. “I didn’t mean to do that. Here, let me straighten your hoodie.”

            “It’s okay,” she said. “I know you’re not like that.”

            It may or may not have been the first time I  heard her speak. Since I was so drunk, I’ll never know whether they were audible or extrasensory words, but she communicated. She also did not speak with the voice of a little girl; rather, she spoke with the confident, sultry voice of a seductress.

            “Really?” I asked, continuing to cradle her.

            “Yes. Hey, is everything okay?”

            “Eh. It’s been another one of those years.”

            “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re up here with me, though. It gets lonely.”

            “I can imagine.”

            “I like it when you cradle me like this, by the way.”

            “I enjoy doing it.”

            “You can cradle me like this whenever you want, you know. It makes me feel warm in places.”

            I grinned, “Now, now, Nicole…my wife might not appreciate that.”

            “She doesn’t have to know.”

            “Wait a minute. How old are you?”

            “You asked me that last year.”

            “Hmm…I don’t recollect. Will you tell me now?”

            “I’m old enough.”

            “That’s not an answer, Nicole. If I’m going to cradle you like this, you have to be an acceptable age.”

            In the next moment, I cannot recall of certainty, but I perceived Nicole smiling at me like a seductress would. It was the kind of smile which calms the craziest of nerves – not that I knew what it was like to have fully endowed women stare at me.

            “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Promise to cradle me at least once within the next year and you’ll learn my age.”

            “Just once?”

            “Yes.”

            “Geez, I’m pretty sloshed. It’d be tough to remember.”

            “You’ll do fine, cutie.”

            I blushed. “I’ll try my best. By the way, Nicole, you’ve got a very pretty smile.”

            She flashed me one more, flirtatious, well-endowed-woman smile before I set her back.

***

            The cycle continued. We lost the third baby, too. Doctors had no answers. We no longer tried and I no longer cared. My wife said she couldn’t take a fourth pregnancy loss, although she still wanted a family. I no longer did. I was numb. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her, because I did, but hoping for a family after experiencing three miscarriages is like hoping to play guitar again after three fingers have already been chopped away from your left hand. It’s one of those things, far from simple. I kept the shotgun in the corner of our bedroom on a regular basis, not always sure of why I did. Needless to say, I went into the attic.

            There was neither ice nor rain outside this time. It was just a painful, five degrees Fahrenheit. For a southerner such as myself, that’s a frigid nightmare. Faucets dripped downstairs just in case. The house was quiet, too, since my wife was staying with her mother because of something bad I’d done. In September, I’d met a twenty-three year old woman at the dog park and was spotted having coffee with her that evening by a work acquaintance of my wife’s. Nothing happened with the woman, except that we cuddled on a park bench and she kissed me on the cheek (although I’d be lying if I didn't want her to do it on the mouth since she smelled so incredibly good up close). Long story short, my wife demanded marital counseling. I refused, so she went to live with her mother until my head was clear again. Fast forward, I found myself dangerously drunk and in the attic again in January, talking to Nicole. It was an appropriate tradition, I thought, going into the attic after these types of events. When I found the box, I took her out. Like I remembered, she was beautiful and it was good to see her.

            “Hey, Nicole,” I said.

            “Hey. I’ve missed you.”

            “I’ve missed you, too.”

            “Is everything okay? You look sad again.”

            “We lost our third baby and my wife has gone away this time.”

            “That isn’t nice of her.”

            “No, it’s okay. She didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”

            Nicole gave me one of those looks, bordering on a ‘that bitch’ and an ‘I’m-here-for-you’ look. Regardless, she was offering her shoulder to cry on and I took it. “What did you do you poor thing?” she asked.

            “I got a bit flirty with a girl at the dog park.”

            “Why’d you do that?”

            “I don’t know. Lonely, I guess. We’re not trying for kids anymore, so I wasn’t thinking. She was pretty and I couldn’t help it. She liked my dog, my cologne, said I was a nice guy. Maybe it was what I needed to hear. My wife, bless her heart, is just in a bad way after all we’ve been through. Anyways, we cuddled and kissed on the cheek, and had some coffee.”

            “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

            “When you’re a married man, it is.”

            “You thought she was pretty, though?”

            I was surprised Nicole gravitated so toward the subject of the girl and not my extramarital quandary. “Well, of course she was.”

            “How pretty was she?”

            “Pretty enough to be an actress…prettier than a lot of actresses, actually. Auburn hair like yours.”

            Nicole blushed, “I can see why she liked you.”

            “I’m talking to a doll right now.”

            “I’ll bet she would still give you a chance.”

            “I’m fucking losing it.”

            “In fact, I’ll bet if she were here, she would say that she’d never, ever leave you like your wife did. You could be together forever with a girl like that.”

            “Counseling,” I said, scrunching my forehead with my fingers. “I should’ve done counseling a long, long time ago.”           

            “Why don’t you go back to the dog park on Saturday? I think she’ll be there. Tell her all those things you told me, and she’ll love you forever. Don’t even worry that you didn’t come up here and cradle me this past year.”

            “Hell with this,” I said. “I’m calling my wife.”

            I put Nicole back into her box and knew that was it for the vicious cycle I’d embedded myself in. My wife needed me and I was being selfish. I was an asshole of a royal order. Although I didn’t want to deal with her mother, my wife was there and we had our vows. The miscarriages had taken their toll, but they were speed bumps in an otherwise good marriage. Counseling made sense. I even believed we could consider adopting again. I set the box in the corner, along with the shotgun from downstairs, and planned on getting rid of those things on Saturday, assuming everything went okay with my wife the next day.

***

            Saturday morning, I was drunk. My wife told me she wanted a divorce the night before. An old flame  ran into her at the grocery store a week earlier and heard her story. Of course, the guy became a shoulder to cry on while I had procrastinated too long in my decision to seek counseling. I didn’t really yell or curse. As a matter of fact, I told her I didn’t blame her. I apologized for all I’d put her through and hoped one day she could have a family like she dreamed about. For what it was worth, I think I took it pretty well. I got pretty blue the next day, though. I still had my chocolate Labrador retriever. My wife would never have parted me with my dog because she knew I’d need him for the days to come. Below the surface, I'm sure he reminded her of the dog park anyways, which was where everything had unraveled in our marriage.

            “The dog park,” I said to myself as I came out my stupor on the couch. I put a half-a-pot of coffee into me and waited until I was sober enough to drive. I forgot about my plans to junk the box and the shotgun. I had no recollections of the night in the attic, nor did I even think about Nicole. In fact, I only remembered that I once talked to a doll. For that reason alone, it needed to go.

***

            Saturday evolved into a much better day. I went to the park, let my dog run around with the others, and cajoled with other dog owners for about an hour. Then I saw her – the girl I’d come close to engaging in a full-blown affair with in September. I was nervous, which she seemed to adore. She was as lovely as I remembered, but something was different about her. For one, she didn’t even have her dog. I couldn’t figure it out, but her face was as if I’d known her much longer. It was also as if she knew every sordid detail of what went wrong in my life over the last three years. Before I knew it, though, we were catching up over a bite to eat. Then we went for coffee. Eventually, I asked to go to her place.

            “No,” she said. “Let’s go to yours.”

            I shrugged and took us back. Besides, my dog needed to be at home since he was tired. She and I sat down to watch The Truman Show. We cuddled throughout. We kissed before the movie was a third of the way through. We held each other and may or may not have touched when it was halfway over. We had a lot to drink, too – a lot. I don’t even remember what happened afterward, but I’ve pieced it together since. I must have taken her up on her advice to make love to her in the attic. Not that it was a bad thing, because the deep freeze had lifted and a few blankets up stairs sufficed quite fine. I was depressed and turned on. But I know now that I must have taken her up there and done something significant.

                                                                           ***

            My wife came up here to see me the other day. She didn’t find me. I could see her glancing around in the attic, and heard her calling my name, but she left again. I guess she took the dog with her. There have been other visitors, including friends, family, coworkers, investigators, reporters, and even some moving guys. It’s been a while. Nicole is still here next to me in the box. She’s as pretty as I remember, talks to me a lot, and I talk back when I feel like it. Neither of us move much, and I doubt we’re ever supposed to. It’s a quiet life, it is.