Dark bits.

For the special little girls who grace the cage. 

Be sure to enjoy  wonderful Jade's bedtime song.

 

Daftsville is a strange little place, found on the back of some treasure maps.  Not all of them though, and never in the same place.  Children and pirates know that no two treasure maps are ever the same. Ever.  Well, maybe sometimes, but that would be very unusual.  And Daftsville was unusual enough without being filled with i-den-tick-L treasure maps. 

 

It wasn’t the blue furred Daftnessians with their large padded feet, or the marshmallow fairies who flew through the streets that made Daftsville so unusual.  (The fairies weren’t MADE of marshmallow.  That would be silly.  Marshmallows were just their favorite food.)  No, what made Daftsville weird, what made it so strange, was the wind that never blew down in the valley.  Daftsville was windless, you see.  Not a puff. No Blue fur ever got ruffled, no Wahbler trees ever swayed.  The sailboats never sailed, they simply just stayed. 

 

It was Snooter, of course, who found it.  Everyone in Daftsville knew Snooter was the boy who found stuff.  Last year he’d found the brightest Snark egg on Snargoggle Day, and the year before that he’d found the biggest.  Ever since then, the entire town joke that at least on Snargoggle Day, Snooter was the biggest and brightest of all the Dafteneses. Snooter would roll his eyes when they told him that but secretly he enjoyed the attention.

 

Anyway, this is why no one was surprised that Snooter was the one to find the magic pinwheel. 

 

“Look! Look!” He burst into the room of the Breezless Inn, waving the fantastic pinwheel in the air.  A-ha! I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong.  No matter how fast Snooter ran or how hard he waved, the pin’s on the wheel, like the sails, they just stayed.

 

The ADULTS stopped all their drinking and most of their thinking, and gathered around little Snooter with plenty of “Oohs,” and quite a few “Ahhs.” 

 

“It was hidden in one of the berry bushes.”  Snooter loved berries.  All berries.  Couldn’t get enough of them.  Anyway, no one was surprised that it was Snooter who found it, but they were REALLY surprised at what he found.

 

“What is it,” whispered Flounce?  “Some kind of flower?”

 

“Don’t be Daft,” snorted Grund.  It’s a shovel of some kind.  Grund was Daftsville’s most talented gardener and very dedicated.  If something couldn’t be used to garden, Grund wasn’t interested.

 

The rest of the room started talking and shouting all at once.  Even Mayor Lokkint started shouting opinions.  Soon the furry grownups were all yelling and arguing and forgetting all about Snooter. 

 

So he went outside to show his friends what he’d found. 

 

They were all in the same place.  That is to say, they were all over the place together, kicking a can.  And running.  In Daftsville there were no TVs or fancy phones and children were always kicking cans and running and singing songs and stuff. It sounds very sad, but somehow they managed to have fun doing it.

 

“Hey,” Snooter shouted! 

 

“Hey back!”  That was Izzy.  She was Snooters best friend.  She had scabbed knees and her hands were permanently stained green from glowberries.  Snooter thought she had the best eyes out of all his friends, but he would never tell her that.  Never!

 

“What’s that,” Issy asked?

 

“Dunno.  Found it in the berry bushes.”

 

“What’s it do?”

 

“Dunno.  The old people are trying to figure it out, so I left.”

 

Issy shrugged.  “It must have come from the hill.” 

 

“Why do you say that?”

 

“’Cause it didn’t come from here silly.”

 

Snooter nodded.  Made sense.  The hill was everything that wasn’t Daftsville and no one ever, EVER went there.

 

“Race you!”  Snooter took off even before anyone said “One, two, three!”  The children were too busy running and shouting to care though. 

 

Snooter was the first up the hill (but only because Issy let him win).

 

They found themselves in a clearing at the top of the hill.  The hill actually went all around Daftsville so maybe it wasn’t really a hill.  Maybe Daftsville was really at the bottom of a hole.  But such musings are for the wiser adults to consider.  The children were much more interested in the little hole - the one at the top of the hill, in the center of the clearing, in the middle of a ring of blue stones.

 

“What’s that?” a kid asked.

 

“It’s a hole.  In the middle of those blue stones there.”

 

“Oh.”

 

From the valley below, the children heard the adults.  They were really shouting now.  Sometimes that meant they were close to figuring something out, and sometimes it meant they weren’t.

 

Snooter had an idea.

 

“I bet this thing goes in that thing,” he said, pointing to the hole in the middle of the ring of blue stones in the center of the clearing on the hill surrounding the town.

 

“Maybe. Try it and see.”

 

Because they were only children, they did just that.  Snooter placed the pinwheel in the hole.  By the way, did I mention the pinwheel was magical?  I did?  Well, did I mention it was orange, and gold and pink, and that the colors all swirled together kinda?  See, you don’t know “EVERYTYHING.”

When Snooter put the pinwheel in the hole, something magical happened. Can you guess?

 

That’s right!  Wind!  A cool breeze, the likes of which no one in Daftsville had ever seen or felt, swept across the hilltop.  And the magic pinwheel started spinning.  It spun and the colors changed into something like a rainbow, only rounder. Plus, it shimmered and even sparkled a little, and made the softest whicker/whisper noise.  Even the best rainbows don’t do all that.

 

All the children laughed and sang and played.  It was wonderful.

 

But later, some adults made their way up the hill, still arguing, to see what all the fuss was about.  They saw the pinwheel spinning furiously in the breeze.  And they smiled.  And they laughed.  All the grownups LAUGHED!

 

And that’s how we know the pinwheel really was magic.

 

The End

 

 

I wrote this in a cynical mood.

 

"Ms. Walters. I'm a big fan." Robert shook her hand and gave her his $5,000.00 patented agent smile. 

"Thank you Mr. Wolfe -" 

"Please, call me Robert." 

"Wobert. Nice to meet you. And this must be Twey." 

The boy was in the middle of pushing another doughnut into his maw. 
"Ith's Threy!" 

Ms. Walter's smiled. "I'm sorway?" The boy swallowed and chased it with a swig of Dr. Pepper. 
"I said, it's 'Trey.' My name is Trey." 

"Yes, yes" Robert jumped in. This is Trey, you are the famous Barbara Walters and I'm the guy who's going to put you two together. For a price." 

"Mr. Wolfe -- Wobert. Your client killed thwee childwen with peanut butter. I'm here to give him a chance to tell his stowie, but the network isn't going to pay him for it." 

Robert smiled a tad wider. "You know that 'People,' HBO and Fox News are all chomping on the bit for an exclusive. But Trey isn't going to open up old wounds for nothing. He - " 

"Shut it, 'Wobert.'" Trey took another doughnut. "$100,000.00 gets you 15 minutes. I tell you how I knew they were allergic, why I hated them, and how I did it. I'll cry if you want, or I'll give you dead eyes. Your call. You want to talk about the families, I'll tell you how sorry I am, or how I don't really care. Again, your call." 

Robert gave a nervous chuckle. "Kids. Trey here likes to joke to hide his pain,but we --" 

"I said shut it. Give her the disc." 

Robert's smile faltered. He handed Barbara the disc. 

"That has all the background crap you'll want. Photos of family, my poor mother. All that. There are also photos of me with two of the kids. At their birthday parties. No one else has those. If you want 'em, it's another $50,000. I don't have all day. HBO is waiting." 

Trey took another swig of Dr. Pepper and belched. 

"I think we have a deal," Barbara smiled. 

"Duh."

A zombie caught me at half past five,
"What's it like to be alive?"

I didn't know quite what to say.
"I try to take it day by day."

It moaned and scratched a little bit,
"Don't you ever think of it?"

So I bit the zombie at half past five,
thinking it might turn it alive.

It tasted green, of brine and slime,
"Why'd you do that,' the zombie whined?

"I thought it might just do the trick,
but all it did was make me sick."

It lunged at me, all drool and slaver.
"Allow me to return the favor!"

Now I'm undead at half past five,
and miss the time I was alive.

 

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.