Roses are. . .

Anna had a tendency towards red, like lips, cherry popsicles, rose petals, a brand new ferrari, even a fire hydrant in a perfect neighborhood. For her it was a red summer top, rouge cargo shorts, red checkered chuck taylors, Victorias secret “Body by Victoria” thong, tennis cut red nike socks; she had a whole closet, an arsenal of red. The literal Red riding hood of her time. “I just like it she’d say, I don’t know why,” and then her face would get rosy with embarrassment.

Red was also the color of blood; deep red, like rust went for a swim in a glass of ocean spray. Thick puddles of the sticky, salty, liquid would poison her thoughts; yet make her smile with what can only be described as a sense of relief. Doctors attributed this affliction and fascination with the vibrant hue to a day in Anna’s early life now referred to as her “rebirth.” “Rebirth,” because the experience, the very fierce awakening the young child was exposed to was like a damaged Phoenix springing from the fires of hell . She had only vague memories of that period in her life. She remembered the car mostly, the thick brown leather seats with claw marks from ginger’s feline rage. She remembered sleeping in mom’s lap as 50 states went by in 50 dreams. There was the diner in Kentucky, the Motel 6 in New Orleans, the library in Maine. There were friends for 3 days and new older men who mother would take for walks that would end in ice cream for Anna. Mom always had ice cream and her scent; always like the ripest of peaches on picking day in Georgia. Yes, Anna did remember some things, but only flashes like a coma took hold every month and wrapped her in a cocoon. And then darkness. . . .darkness. . . .darkness and finally

Red

It was truly a day that shook the small Arkansas town from its sleepy embrace. August 5, 1989, that was when Anna was found, when darkness turned to dirty rouge. The police report described it as a massacre of horrific proportions; in reality it was a wholesome little blonde girl crying in a massive puddle of human life surrounded by pieces of her rotting mother. It was soon reported in “The Little” daily paper that this mystery child had been sitting in a pile of viscera for 3 whole days until she was discovered by the Taylor kid. The coroners would say it was simple, her mother had been stabbed to death, 15 times in fact, yet there was no evidence on the scene, no id on the victim. Who was Anna and why was she here? Who was the victim? All unanswered questions. It was as if the devil himself had dropped in to slay an angel and shake up this small southern town. The authorities would try and talk to Anna, but all she would do is giggle to herself and stare. They would offer her ice cream and treats and dolls and games, anything to speak but her red red lips were shut. There was always ice cream but it never made her mouth move. Anna was stained that day in the most simple of terms.

One of the local school teachers and his wife decided that this young thing needed a home, needed love, an education, a family, and they took her into their life. It was a tough period for them; barely making it by financially in a town that gave sideways glances like they were a traveling freak show because of a daughter that wouldn’t speak. Gradually Anna got more and more comfortable with her family, her mother would take her shopping, her father would take her fishing. A new child entered their lives and Anna loved her brother more than her confused understanding of the value of human life would allow. 1 year after the accident she began to speak and proved to be very bright. Her thoughts flowed like an artist and “she was the most articulate in her class” her teachers would say. Then on her 9th birthday (perhaps because of regression, perhaps because of some subconscious indicator, or perhaps just because little girls are predisposed) it was a red elephant, a red skirt please, I want a red balloon, a red bike would be nice. Her parents were never suspicious they would just say Anna wouldn’t you like to try another color. But no Anna had a new religion, it was the worship of this morbid hue. Scientifically it was called Chromoluda but in the Luntz household it was “Anna’s stage,” “She just likes the color,” or “Girls will be girls.” But really it was quite odd.

On her 12th birthday she went as far as painting the walls and ceiling of her room the color of a radio flyer, getting paint all over her red shag rug. Her friends would avoid her room asking if they could play downstairs where the AC was on. Her parents were just happy that she was becoming a normal young woman, besides the obvious obsession with rose, rouge, rojo, red. They would never speak of where they found her and she would never ask about it. Though the older she got the more this color began to take over her life. There was the Christmas photo when the red contacts made their debut. Strangers would feel sorry for the family, citing their daughter as an unfortunate albino because of her beady mouse eyes.

Life was as normal as it really could be for a child with a past so mysterious and morose Charles Manson wouldn’t open her fan mail. Shortly after Easter on her 13th year of living Anna became a woman. Anna became a woman and lost herself for good on the same very day. It was a constant struggle with her, as if she was always chasing an image of her former self down a mouse hole or through a strange door quite like Alice; but on this day she was much too tired to keep running. Anna’s parents called and called and called, “Easter Dinner!! Anna ham!” her brother even tried “Anny Bananny, come sit next to me. . . .Anny.” When there was no response they went upstairs, knocked on the bathroom door, no response, her father busted it in grunting as it came down. There sat Anna in the middle of the cold tile floor like a marionette without a master bleeding and bleeding from between her legs. Who knew a teenage girl could bleed this much, in the most serious of explanations it was the period even science couldn’t explain. Anna wasn’t dead, she wasn’t alive, she was somewhere in between; and that was permanent. Anna sat there in this state staring at the white white walls with a small look of confusion on her pretty face; a look that was also permanent. Tears were inevitable, the family cried, their tears were clear and they watched as red came for its lost child.

-655321

Evening Run

Jim left the house at 7 PM. The sun dipped below the horizon, replacing the orange hews with pale violet. Memories of the harsh day at the office faded in the first one hundred meters. He ran at a slow pace. He felt good. He always felt good on his evening runs. This evening the air felt particularly cool against his skin. Everything was still.

He turned on Bronson Canyon. As he ran, the houses and streetlamps gave way to dark groves of trees. A deepening of the breath, a quickening of the stride. He let his mind wander into familiar zones of uncertainty. He thought of his life. It was fine. He had always been some sort of successful. A good student. Always had a girl on his arm. Good at sports. Really good at running. All American in track. Great job. But there was something missing. A void. Something just wasn’t there. And with every step, it became clearer and clearer.
He had grown up on the outside.
He never got picked on.
He never acted in the school play.
He never had a “most embarrassing moment.”
He never got upset.
He never had anything to say at the party.
He was that guy. Oh yes, that guy. Wait, which guy? Oh yeah, I remember him. Never really knew him though. Did he talk? His life was dull.

Thoughts cranked through his head like celluloid through a projector. And then he saw it. Lights in the distance. A car? No, an SUV. It was close enough to see that now.

As the vehicle approached Jim contemplated suicide. He thought carefully about all the people he would hurt if he jumped in front of it. The list was shorter than he had predicted. He could almost read the headline, “Corporate Pawn Killed by SUV on Run.” Not too bad.

He wanted to cry, but he laughed instead. It was the most spontaneous thought he had ever had.

The SUV charged forward. It seemed to speed up the closer it got.
The last lap.
400 meters.
200 meters.
100 meters.
And as Jim started for the middle of the road, the unthinkable occurred.
The SUV swerved, and for a brief moment Jim saw something silhouetted in the headlights. A small animal. And before he could duck, it hit him like a water balloon. Literally, like a water balloon. He slowed to a stop.

A skunk had been running across the road, at the very moment of Jim’s attempted suicide. The SUV hit the skunk with such force, that one of the front tires, while applying over 2 tons of pressure to the abdomen, forcefully severed the bladder and propelled it through the air. It connected with Jim’s face and burst on contact. Like a water balloon.

The SUV continued on its course, and for a moment Jim wanted to call out. But he continued running. When he got home he couldn’t differentiate between the sweat and the skunk urine that soaked his clothes. He had quickly gotten used to what was at first an unbearable smell. After his shower it seemed ever less noticeable and when he woke the next day for work it seemed to be gone. Back to normal.

At work he was made fun of and became somewhat upset.
He had a story to tell at the party.
He had a “most embarrassing moment.”
A student adapted his story into a play at the local high school.
The skunk had not only saved his life, but it had improved the overall quality of his life. 1 year later Jim set out on his evening run. The air was cool and still. He turned down Bronson Canyon as he always had, when an SUV swerved out of control and hit him.
Jim was pronounced dead on the scene.

-Cornelius

U.N.D.E.R.G.R.O.U.N.D.

With his eyes bushed and heavy, Bill parked his flipside on a dourly looking chair next to the fireplace. The heat from the nearby flames gently nuzzled his soul as he slowly elevated his feet to an equally dourly looking ottoman. As a babe-in-arms his mother and nana would take turns imparting the young Bill with yarns of his esteemed father in that same chair. Pictures though show the chair was much better for the wear in those days.

Fredrik, the mounted water buffalo purchased one inebriated night hung above the fireplace. Perhaps his biggest critic, Fredrik looked on with a smirk swathed over his visage. Bill had been here before, tuckered and stretched tight, wasted from another days work, but this felt different. Almost final even. Even Fredrik looked tired.

Nobody ever told him the life he chose would be an easy one, but that could quite possibly be because nobody had ever come up with such a peculiar walk through their days. A cowboy by day, a hip-hop recording artist by night. While not quite as stirring as a faceless vigilante valiantly struggling with the scum of sullied comic book conurbations, Bill would argue that his pseudo artistic persona, waxing poetic on such forces as ecological devastation, famine quandaries in various pitiable countries, and the insatiable voracity of crooked non-profit organizations was of greater consequence. I’m not sure just what Fredrik would have thought, but alas, he could not speak, so Bill would never know. Now, it should also be noted that at the time a British band who called themselves The Beatles had just played the Johnny Carson show so nobody even knew what the fuck hip hop was. Not even Bill.

So, how did Bill, with dirt in his finger nails and a love for rhymes, turn out to be one of the biggest musical inspirations of all time? Well, it was mostly all, if not entirely all, because 2,403 miles away in the concrete and glass playpen known as New York, the boss’s daughter had a pretty face.

************************************************

Lewis, the long-limbed greenhorn, probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to the tape if it hadn’t just left the clutches of Jane’s right hand. Lewis studied the tape like a child, reading and re-reading the scribbled phrase “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” over and over again. Finally, after his vision blurred in an attempt to locate just one of Jane’s fingerprints he decided to give his ears a few minutes with it. Sad, weird, and terrible. Lewis couldn’t last more than a song before hitting eject and going on with the rest of his day (i.e. daydreaming about Jane’s naked body).

Unlike the tape, but much like the right hand that left it, Jane was rather perfect looking. A nubile nineteen year old, she was born and raised in The City, to which Lewis, an outsider via Freeport, always fantasized about. Being from New York and being from Freeport just weren’t the same thing, certainly not to Lewis. After meeting her in the elevator, he quickly memorized her bio in the new employee handbook and later that night, in the comfort of his bedchamber, tried on no fewer than sixteen different wardrobe mishmashes with the sole aspiration of getting her attention the next day.

Dauntless enough with his attire choice, Lewis, accompanied by dark eye liner, navy blue mascara, and his new shiny wardrobe, fingered his guitar and whispered a melody.

{Cm}{Cm}{F}{F} (You got to see him in the rodeo)
{A#}{A#}{D#}{Dm} (When he's riddin', going too darn fast)
{Cm}{Cm}{F}{F} (You got to here the people ...)
{A#}{D#}{A#}{D#} (Lonesome Cowboy Bill, he's a ...)
{A}{A} (Oh)

Those chords, those words, roused for whatever reason from that god awful tape, from a stranger 2, 403 miles away in Elko, Nevada (which wasn’t at all megalopolitan boomtown of New York, or even Freeport for that matter), would go on to change Lewis’s life forever. It even changed his name.

Soon after, he wrote a song for Jane, and not much longer after that Lewis traveled up and down the eastern seaboard playing shows in dingy clubs and making nice with famous artists. He named a band with a gent named John after a clothing texture, painted bananas with his friend Drella, and after that, released his own solo record, but not before changing his name to Lou, because quite simply, Lewis was a name unbecoming of someone who walked on the wild side. All of the New Sensations and perfect days to follow, as farfetched as they were, traced right back to that pretty girl’s right hand and the tape dropped from it.

By the time all of this had transpired though Bill had flown up past the clouds. By all accounts all that was left of the lonesome cowboy was a ramshackle hut atop his promontory ranch, still occupied by Fredrik, but whose smirk was replaced with a frown. His only company was a half drank bottle of poor man’s whisky, an empty pill box case, and the quiet solitude brought on by a wrangler’s dreams unrealized.

-mildredratched

Elsinore, The Living Lore

"I programmed the universe with a used tube sock!?!"

Ehhhh, She used to say shit like this alllll the time. As a child I would react with a chuckle and a genuinely curious smile but over the years it just became more of me yelling. Things like "What the fuck Ellie?, What the shit fuck hell are you talking about? The Lord made you crazy and you keep trying to get crazier, you are literally bat shit fucking nuts."

Now I know this sounds hurtful but what do you say to a woman, yes a grown woman, who greets your friends with "I shit my tights, think about it, I literally shit my sexy black tights last night." Damn't her tights aren't even sexy, they are old and ratty, washed once every three months, and purchased twelve years ago, and fuck she's basically a slightly overweight woman wearing tights made for a large child. She was literally delusional and had that look in her eyes. You know the one or maybe you don't; like "Who's the Boss" is playing at the back of your skull on repeat, she would look right through you always chuckling at something Tony Danza was doing on your cranium screen. "How does he do it?" she would giggle. “Who damn't Ellie, damn it all to hell, how the hell does who do what?”

I used to shake her when she was little, thinking this would correct her, quite like an Etch a Sketch. No amount of knob turning ever seemed to reconstruct a functioning human being though. Mom and Dad used to quarrel on long car rides about the Sweeney's little ADHD nightmare next door. They would try to diagnose that child with some sort of life threatening social disease ignoring their own little mistakes in the back seat. This was the 60's though, poorly behaved kids were likened to devil spawn more then they were to minor genetic problems. Ellie would scream "Nipple Pie," "or "Pizza Worm," out the window, and we would think, geez how absurdly cute this odd little child is. Inappropriate things at inappropriate times that's what my sister was famous for, and it was adorable, it was her way of rebelling, it was "oh she doesn't even know what she's saying she’s so fucking rip-her-face-off cute.”

But as she matured her thoughts and behavior did not. "How adorable," soon turned into "Why God, why did you give us this little retard?" (it was the 60's, retards were still retards for the general public). That's when the excursions began. First there were trips to church, hours in confessional, "do you think an exorcism would work?" mom would continually ask. There was more shaking, this problem was going to be corrected quite the same way I would fix the tube as a child, hit it till the signal kicks back in. Ellie, smash, channel 3 please, kick, Howdy Doody is on, bang, what is wrong with you?

The priests would tell us she was a very "disturbed young woman," and mom would shake her head eating their bull shit "oh yes yes yes I know, she's been this way since she could speak." Next came the monthly trips to the doctors; Ellie's been eating crayons, she screams obscenity's at the Officer club dinners, she won't keep her clothes on at school, I'm going through 2 boxes of crayola a week is this normal? The doctor's would say in that wise old owl voice "Well she is a perfectly healthy young woman, this is just a stage." Well guess what? She grew into it ok, "Nipple Pie" and "Pizza Worm," turned into the rants of a boozy young teen. She would lie and disappear for days; we would worry since her mental capacity had stalled at the age of ten like a 1973 Volvo wagon (the kind commonly used to transport blow to the masses). I would still shake her every now and again to see if maybe just the right amount of contact would force a synapse into firing correctly. The shaking only seemed to entertain her though.

As she got older she would yell "I have hair on the field! Play ball!" or "I'm ovulating!" and Mom and Dad would leave her home staring at the "popcorn ceiling" or the "drippy drip machine" when we went for dinner, or to family reunions, or to gatherings of any sort. Ellie was always “out with her friends,” or “in a study group,” when people would ask; she was never snacking on burnt sienna or drinking a milkshake of forest green and hummus whilst locked in the pantry humming “Just the Two of Us” and dropping raw eggs on her toes.

Finally when I came back from college to try and figure out my life, my parents were starting to figure out theirs as well. They tearfully (gleefully and relieved-fully) revealed “We just can’t handle her anymore, spend some time with your sister, she loves you, you have a connection.” Why mom and dad? A connection? Because I don’t resent her, because when I realized shaking her solved nothing, I decided to try loving her unconditionally, because she is the burden I was born into? And ultimately they would shell out the convenient cash to get us both an apartment, a nice two bedroom in the trendy part of downtown Charleston. Two windows overlooking Main Street where Ellie was free to shout her stunning revelations and embarrassing accusations to potential friends and lovers as they approached our quaint “mind fuck” of a home.

Well that is where we have lived for the past five years, learning to accept one another and find a way to live without one of us ending up bloody in the floorboards. I even stop once in a while to watch “Who’s the Boss” with Ellie in the back of my friend Christian’s skull, when we can get him to stare at us long enough (I think I’m starting to see something). And you know screaming “Nipple Pie!” At strangers from the second floor can be more therapeutic than you would guess. In turn she has cut down on her crayon consumption and has learned how to dress and speak semi-appropriately for her age. The one thing that still gets me and it’s a doozy, is on Sunday afternoons when she sits out on our porch in the rocking chair with a pair of old black panties, and just that, as the setting sun shines down on her obvious and bare breasts. She sticks her belly out and sits like a 50 yr. old man at a strip club, legs spread displaying masses of the unimaginable and she ecstatically screams at the world “I live with a Pedophile, I’m 10 years old and my brothers a pedophile!” And I run to my room, lock the door, and shake my head quite like an Etch a Sketch, hoping I’ll wake up and this won’t be my reality. . . . . .

. . . . . then one night far down the road in December of 2012, when we were both in our early sixties, long after our parents were gone, and long after I had been married and we had moved to the shore, long after Ellie had accepted her life living with me and my new family, and long after my divorce and my kids had grown up and left; she ran into my room with a tube sock... she told me to put it on and hold her tight... I humored her as I always had.... and well to my shock or perhaps to my lack of shock after knowing Ellie all these years, the world ended, it just froze and imploded and we were teleported to a pueblo, a warm cozy home on a planet not too far from earth... SHE HAD PROGRAMMED THE UNIVERSE THROUGH A TUBESOCK! And apparently I was the only one that was worth saving. . .

-655321

The Weight of the World

Pity me, Woe is me; How Fucked is I?
To carry the weight of the world.

1 billion obese souls and counting
with problems and issues and
and
and
outdated clothing;
they sit on my shoulders like hunched over children on bleachers
at your middle school little league game.

“Hey, pitcher pitcher pitcher,
Hummina hummina hummina.”

“Hey pitcher, pitcher. . . .Fuck You!”

“Fuck you? Fuck me? Hey, Fuck You!”
Harsh words from those that no longer inhabit a vessel.
Sit there dancing, prancing, and harassing.
Tormenting the confusion
Which grieves your face with anxiety,
Not unlike a hyperactive 3 year old
With a small bladder,
In the back seat,
Of a sedan,
On a trip,
Up the coast.

Let’s play chicken; let’s challenge the warden;
They say, and I guess that’s me.
Let’s consummate this after life, lascivious, love. . . . affair.
One geriatric, one pediatric; both dueling with switchblades
Gross!
The phantasmal, visceral, viscous, violates my younger than you cheek.

How vain am I?

With clouds in my coffee
To have mirrored ceilings,
A California King,
No crown, nor scepter
But 600 thread count.
In a room that only holds
A bed.
Off with all their heads
Leave mine intact please.

Well woe is me
Woooooooe is poor little old me
To carry the weight of a million starving children
On these poor shoulders.
How horrible is me to carry the weight
Of all the derelicts in Los Angeles who’ve shit on the side of
Spago, and Koi, and Katana, and others;
To then shit on the side of a
Convenience store
In Bloomfield, Kentuky and say:
“No, this isn’t for me.”

Ohhhh! To pontificate about that heavy feeling
But not
Give
A shit
Because the weight of me
Is weighing me down

"The weight of the world?"
She says
"You wish you were that important."

-655321