Dark bits.

A canyon

Or the last surrendered breath, between mouth and skin.

Too far, both. Too far.

I embrace you, touch secret parts that you’ve concealed

from all the boys,

but revealed to me;

displayed to my greedy eyes what no one else has seen.

I drink you in.

I devour without touching,

possess, without holding.

I mark you, brand you

with white hot intent,

forged in the heat of desire and need.

You are not here,

But you are here.

And I taste the future memory of you,

Surrendered with the brush of lips against neck;

hands, finding their way.

The gift of a sigh,

whispered on a Georgia night,

and carried to me in the dead of winter,

and I am warm.

Sated and deprived

with promise.

Holding you here.

Always holding you here.

He wasn't there for the beginning or the end. In the beginning, he was still a wild thing. Nothing more than a voice in the chorus of the Dark Continent, back when it was a thing of terrible beauty and attracted people like the old man; people who breathed adventure the way mortals breathe air. In the beginning, he was still part of the place that would twice try to kill the old man, and fail both times.

By then, however, the African Grey had become a Cuban national, and had forgotten all about the jungle. On the small island, its beak and feathers were tempered with rivers of dark rum, fired by a thousand tropical sunsets, and stained with cheap smoke and Royal Deluxe ink.

All these gifts the old man gave the bird.  All these and one more. The words. The old man's words. Spoken most often in the small hours, after the bottle was finally shelved and before daybreak would come and ruin everything. The old man spoke, sometimes sober, often not. Concise. Perfect. Slurred. It did not matter. The bird drank them all in equally, soaking them up over ten thousand nights.

The old man spoke through nights that were never exactly quiet. His words were often accompanied by faint strains of the richest music known to man, played in a local bar known to only a few.

After the first year, the bird's cage was always open.  During the day it had free reign of the small home. There was a window, and that was always open as well.  The bird never left. By then the old man's words had tethered the bird as if they were steel links of chain.  At night, though, the bird always returned to his cage, where it waited for the old man to speak.

Sometimes the words were spoken in code, clacked out on a typewriter which was old even then, when such things were often new.  The click-clack code reminded the parrot of rain, and sometimes this would lull it to sleep and into bird dreams of ghost jungles; places long forgotten in the bird's waking hours.

He was not there for the beginning.  But he was there for much.  “The Old Man and The Sea” feathered the cage.  The words spoken aloud, repeated in click-clack, edited, repeated again.  The bird remembered.  Not all of it, not everything. But enough. The old man — and he was old, even to parrots who are in the habit of outliving us all — had a way of writing words that stuck.  He had no use for the others.

It was only a matter of time and words, before Papa's parrot began to change. How could it not?  If it had been a dog or a cat, or anything else, things might have been different.  A dog is a dog.  A cat is a cat.  But a parrot?  A parrot is always something more than a parrot.

Papa's parrot listened to the Old Man and the Sea.  It learned of the fish that was not a fish and was all fish. It bore witness as the old man conjured up the perfect, eternal struggle. The fisherman's simple heartbreak settled on the bird's small, delicate bones, like a piece of fantastical scrimshaw.

Later, much closer to the end, the parrot learned ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,' first delivered in a rainstorm of click-clacks, and later by Papa's own deep, sawdust voice. The old man spoke and the parrot's eyes would pin in and out in excitement.  The words stuck, as they always did, and the parrot remembered and changed again.

One day Papa left.  He did not come back.  Ketchum, Idaho, is not the sort of ending the Old Man would have chosen to write. It does not stick the way Cuba sticks. But terrible endings were a genetic defect in Papa's family and he could not be faulted for this one.

 One day a brown man came and took the bird.  He kept the cage door closed, but he was a nice man. The bird did not talk, and the brown man did not seem to mind. He gave the bird crackers and nuts and water.  The bird enjoyed the crackers and nuts, but it felt alone.

The new room had no typewriter. There were no bottles of rum, either full or empty.  The brown man did not smoke and there were no stacks of paper or rain patter of words.  Not even the rich strains of music were part of the bird's world anymore. There was only a radio that sometimes played music already robbed of life. 

A long time passed. 

One night the brown man sat at his desk, listening to the radio. The bird, Papa's bird, pulled a loose tail feather free with its sharp beak.  The feather was sunset red and orange. The bird held it in one claw. The brown man looked at the bird with curiosity. The bird did not drop the feather.   

“Eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

The words startled the brown man. He had never heard the bird speak.  He did not understand what they meant.  He was a nice man, but somehow the words did not stick to him.

The claw held the feather and for a while the bird made strange motions in the air. Then the bird hopped a little to its right and waited. 

The man stared and the bird imagined that the brown man's own eyes were pinging.    

“Ink.”

The word came out small, almost forlorn. It was the last word Papa's bird ever said. Years later, when the brown man had become an old man himself, but not the old man, he would sometimes wonder about that night and the bird's last spoken word. At such times, the old, brown man almost convinced himself that the word had come out as a request.

But it was a fleeting thought, and it did not stick.

THE END

SLIP

There was a spring, all cool water and warm days.

There were gentle rains that made me smile,

 storms that made me ache,

  winds that made me free.

 And there was this hole.

 Right there in the middle of everything.

 I can't remember why or when, but I remember thinking:

"it's just a small thing.

No big deal.

And then I was at the bottom.

It wasn't deep.  Not at first. 

There was plenty of sunlight overhead and I could hear running water;

 and birds.

It was colder than I was used to but there were patches of warmth.

It wasn't so bad.

Sometimes the hole felt deeper; 

was deeper.

And the sun didn't always shine and there was more damp than warmth.

Still, there were kisses and nice dinners and drinks and casual friends,  

With a few nights of real heat.

I would smile then. Glad to be out. 

But always there was a false patch of ground up ahead.

No matter how lightly I stepped, how hard I tried,

 It demanded to be found and I'd break the pie thin crust

tumbling

                    back into the hole.

Time passed, and I understood.

My dark place hadn't gotten deeper. 

Not really.

It was always there.  Always the

same. 

I had been in it hundreds of times before, and it was never a big deal.

Always temporary.

But the people.  The ones I

depended to extend friendly hands,

secure me with loving embrace;

warm me with sweet words;

and restore me with the smallest acts of kindness.

They had gone.  Faded.

Left.

Leaving only false images.

So for now, I am alone in the dark.

And it's cold. And I'm sad.

A little scared.

But there is a warmth in me as well.

A spark. Something beautiful.

Something I don't always see, but others will.

 Somehow there are always others that see.

And they will come. 

They will come with their own dark places

And we will help each other climb out into the heat.

We will bathe in the springs and find things forgotten and lost

 in each other.

It was a lover's dark. They had been talking for hours. At some point daylight lost interest and the two were left with the lesser light of vanilla scented candles.

"I'm a terrible singer." 

 "Let me hear." 

 "Never." 

There was a pause. Not awkward. Not exactly. He leaned in and touched her hair. 

 "Please?" Laughter. 

 "Not even if you said pretty please."

 His hand found the back of her neck and he leaned in closer. Lips brushed a cheek. It was the first kiss. 

"Pretty please," he murmured. She inhaled and tentatively touched his hair. 

 "Never." 

He brushed her neck again, mouth replacing hand. His lips were dry -- the only sign his boldness outpaced his confidence.

She was pretty when they met. Beautiful as the day wore on. Magic in the candlelight. He raised his head, just a little. He kissed her earlobe, soft and warm. Their second kiss. His soft breath was a hot wind in her ear. She tried to press his head closer and move away at the same time. 

 "I don't ..." Another kiss on the ear, making her squirm. 

 "I will make you sing," he whispered. Lips at last found each other and they were lost for a time. Forever came and went. 

 "Promise?"

He did not answer. Or if he did, it was lost in the flush of song.  

The easiest and most legal way to pick up a woman is to take a single, writer friend with you to a bar.

While there, look for the woman you are interested in. Her? Are you sure? Okay then.

Next, tell your writer friend that the woman keeps looking at him when he's not looking. 
"Dude, she is totally in to you!"

Then when your writer friend's confidence is high enough, tell him to chat her up.

Next, let them talk, but keep your ears open. 
As soon as he tells her that he's a writer, introduce yourself and mention that you are a doctor.

This will also work if you pretend to be a lawyer, a plumber, or sanitation worker.

Great song by Jade

Crappy poem by Mr. A.

Our Long Night

It’s cold outside, but the sheets are warm,

and

your lips taste like the unwritten psalm,

and

the nights are never quite so long,

that I tire of holding you.

But my blood is up and your throat is bare

and

I need to bite and to pull your hair,

and

I won’t stop laying my hands on you,

while the night still lingers on.

Day has broken, and we’re still in bed,

and

we’re drained, wet, hungry

and

fed.

Go close the curtain and we’ll be certain

to keep a bit of night to ourselves.

When the world is quiet, all your thoughts demand attention.  At the moment the world held its breath, the deep blue sky staring up at itself from the glassy lake.

George dipped his hand into the water, enjoying the cool relief.  Half the valley blazed green, awash in morning light. The world wasn't silent, of course. There was birdsong, the occasional splash of fish meeting food, and Janet's labored breathing.

This used to be my favorite time of day.

The boat rocked gently and the oars quietly bumped against the rings. His fishing pole lay between his feet. Now was the best time to fish. They were always biting at this time of the day. But for the first time in twenty years, he didn't care.

“Just this once. It will be fun.”

God, he used to love fishing. One week a year he left everything behind — the office, Janet's mother, the television, the same tired conversations -- all of it stayed in Jersey. One beautiful week each year spent on the lake, soaking in all the peace and solitude that God and this world had to offer. A week to forget all the small, back-breaking weights that life saddled you with when you weren't looking. The lake was perfect -- just big enough for George to lose himself in.

“I don't see why we have to start so early. The lake isn't going anywhere.”

They were quite a ways out. George looked over his shoulder, unable to spot the small cabin form here. He could make out the larger houses on the west side of the valley. Smoke escaped from a few of the chimneys. The old timers still cooked their breakfast over wood fires. George's stomach rumbled in sympathy. He had two scrambled eggs for breakfast, but Janet had taken a few large forkfuls off his plate, all the while insisting she wasn't hungry. Not a  breakfast person, she'd been content to pick off his plate. Again.  

“I don't care about fishing. I just thought some time alone on the lake together would be nice.”

Stretching again, George tried in vain to crack his back and neck. He'd been cracking knuckles, toes, back and neck since before he had hair on his pecker and now was addicted to it as sure as a women were addicted to gossip. He found no relief today, however. His fingers kept cramping up and his neck twinged whenever he tried to turn to the left. Damned arthritis. If they were at the cabin, George would have had Janet walk on his back. That always seemed to do the trick. Janet hated the sound of popping joints, but she empathized with his pain and she was usually a good sport about it.

“I packed a lunch, turkey and swiss.”

His stomach rumbled again and he wished he'd thought to bring the sandwiches. They were back on the porch. Turkey and Swiss wrapped in wax paper.   

Careful not to rock the small boat, George cautiously stood and looked down at Janet. She was on her stomach, legs hanging over the boat, the yellow sundress bunched up around her waist.  Her arms wrapped around the cooler in a protective hug, bound there by fishing line; her head resting on the top. She looked like she was making sure George didn't try to steal a sandwich before lunch. He smiled but it didn't last.

No sandwiches today, he remembered. Today the cooler kept only stones cold.

Blood trickled from where the fishing wire cut into her wrists and ankles, adding itself to the small puddle in the middle of the rowboat. She moaned just the slightest bit when George manhandled her so that torso hung over the side, the heavy cooler secured to her hands and chest with fishing wire and duct tape. She'd long since lost the energy to do much more.

Tears trickled down George's face, a few splashing on the back of Janet's windbreaker.

“So what should we talk about?”

He never asked for much, and karma had obliged. George was a piece of sandstone and life an unforgiving river.  Nothing terrible ever happened, but it wore at him nonetheless -- just the tiniest bit each day.  It was just the way of things, he supposed.  Until one day you woke up and there was hardly nothing there. 

Except fishing. And the lake.  A little echo of Eden; a memory of a life he'd never live. But sweet and no less dear for it.

He grabbed Janet underneath her arms and heaved. She hardly made a splash as she slipped over the side and disappeared.

The tears came free and easy and George let them come. She deserved that much, at least.

"Some things should never be shared," he whispered.

Fred's ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold-spotted mirror. The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what. Bits of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, along with the sodden remains of a "hand wash only" label. There was no denying that he'd seen better days.

Being a zombie is no picnic.

Compelled to pause and take stock of himself, he wiped his gore-stained hands on a filthy shirt, unsure if he was cleaning the hands or the shirt. His right eye looked like a crushed egg yolk and his left leg was broken in at least two places. A large splinter of bone poked through the skin above his thigh, fine dark lines etched across the surface like a bad piece of scrimshaw. The open wound on his neck had started leaking again, but at least the fluid was mostly clear now.

No use dwelling on negatives. Time to get to work. He turned away from his reflection, and limped out of the men's room of the Vince Lombardi rest area.

An overly bright morning sun assaulted him as he stepped outside. Fred gave a mental wince, wishing yet again that he could blink. Sunlight had no adverse effect on the undead, but he had never been a morning person. Rain or shine, today he had to shamble over to Terminal C of Newark Airport, where eight breathers were making their last stand. Zombies were lone hunters and rarely worked together. Every so often, however, a kind of collective broadcast signal went out over the undead grapevine, announcing the newest brain buffet - in a shopping mall, a church, or an airport - with predictable and satisfying results.

Dozens were already making their way down the New Jersey turnpike. By their mindless, "movie" slow pace, he knew they hadn't fed. Zombies weren't Jesse Owens on the best of days, but they tended to move a lot faster with a little brain in the old furnace.

If Fred could breathe, he would have sighed. There would be hundreds of zombies by the time he got there, all ready to fight over eight brains and assorted bits. The breathers would probably take out 10 to 20% of the attacking hoard before being overwhelmed. That left about ten zombies per breather. With luck, however, he would still be the brainiac of the pack by the time he got there.

Having one's wits about him gave a zombie an edge in the hunt. The effects of the virus or whatever it was that put the mojo in their mortified flesh varied from corpse to corpse. Most became textbook droolie ghoulies, but some could reason and even remember who they were as breathers. So far Fred hadn't come across any other "thinkers," as he called himself, but he doubted he was the only one.

By mid-afternoon he found himself enjoying his walk down the turnpike. Most of the fires had burned themselves out and although the air still reeked of burning gasoline, the skies were more or less smoke-free. He might be a walking corpse, but he appreciated a warm, spring day like this one. He pulled his lips up in what should have been a grin.

Death, ruin and destruction improved the New Jersey Turnpike.

Not that there wasn't a black lining to be found around his own little rainbow of a life. Most of the zombies were a few hundred yards down the road, but two lesser undead doggedly tagged alongside of Fred, putting a bit of a damper on things. The virus left them as nothing more than… well, nothing more than zombies. They were about as interesting as slugs and moaned so much that, were Fred alive, he'd be sporting a hell of a migraine.

All in all, however, the day was turning out quite well. He almost convinced himself being undead wasn't so bad. Sure, it was bad luck that he was 45 years old with a rather large potbelly when he had been bitten by that damned clerk. Being cursed to wander the earth in search of brains was bad enough, but why couldn't it have happened when he was twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter?

He was imagining wandering the earth in search of fresh brains as a slimmer, sleeker and younger Fred, when the head of the zombie on his left exploded.

Shit!

He limped over to an abandoned Ford Explorer and crouched down, scanning the area for the source of the ambush. The other walking corpse stopped and stared at the ground, a low "Braaaaiiiinnnnsss?" emitting from its drooling mouth. Fred felt a sense of relief when a bullet took the second one through its right eye. Those two had just about gotten on his last dead nerve.

A glint of light in the tall grass by a pond off the side of the road revealed the breather's position. It looked like he was alone.

The lone gunman on the grassy shoal, Fred thought with a mental smile.

He stood up from behind the Explorer, pointed at the area where the gunman was hidden, made the undead scream of discovery - then ducked back down behind the SUV and waited. Several zombies with lesser survival instincts turned off the road and converged on the field. A bullet dropped another one and Fred saw a figure pop up from the tall grass and start running. A collective moan escaped from the zombies and they began to shuffle a little faster. But unless the breather tripped, broke both legs and fell asleep, he'd be fine - for now.

Fred got up and started limping toward Exit 14. It would be another hour or so before he reached the airport. Most of the zombies were still on the road. After taking into account the ones that had left to chase the gunman and Fred's two undead groupies - now just dead - he figured there would be plenty of brains for everyone when they got there.

Fred was... well, he was - I'm happy! As he shambled down the turnpike, he began humming a song that was popular before he turned. In his mind, it was a happy, catchy tune. But when he hummed it, it sounded a lot like "Braaiinnss..."

For a limited time only, you can watch the incomparable Jade sing and read a Mister Anderson Poem designed to reflect the mood of the song.

So let's get going. 

TRAUMA.

Everybody breaks.

Everything splinters.

The world is whirlwind.

We are debris, swept up in a silent maelstrom.

Held together by unseen currents, we move forward in familiar circles.

Until we break.  Until we splinter.

Then, flung away, torn from it all.

The maelstrom a memory, an illusion.

The needful and the givers

broken shards, both.

We stand apart, deprived of our ordinary life in a mundane world.

We are other.

Holy sparks.

Finding each other in the darkest places,

we share our secret light. 

Sealing the dark cracks and broken places

With unspoken gifts and small, priceless gestures.

We are bound.  Healed but transformed.  Never the same.

Less and greater.

Broken and whole.

Scarred and reborn

I remember.

The air -  cool, clean;  a hint of wood smoke.
So many colors.  So bright I could almost hear them.
And that smile, the one everyone talks about?
It was just more than usual that day.

I remember how when the cold, autumn wind died down,
the sun's warmth came flooding back, like the tide,
and I had to smile.

Then seeing you, so close.  Happy.  I smiled more.
I grinned like an idiot on that last sunny day.
Remember?