by john | Jun 3, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
Chapter 3
It’s not a long ride from Tyler, Texas to New Orleans, but when you have to make a couple of pit stops and more than a couple of puke stops because of a two-day bender, it can be a seriously unpleasant trip. Michael and I drove, and Cain followed on his bike as Emily and Myra did their best impersonations of plague victims in the back seat. Cain and I had consumed nearly twice as much as they had, but we weren’t precisely normal, if you’ll recall. We only get about as drunk as we want to, and we can shake it off pretty quickly when we need to. I figured we needed to. The girls didn’t have quite our level of resilience, so it was a tough trip for them.
Finally, about nine hours into a seven-hour trip we rolled into the Crescent City. I’d never spent a whole lot of time in New Orleans, but I’d been there once or twice. I had nothing against the town, it just felt like too much old for me, and I had enough memories of old running around in my head without shaking them loose walking through the French Quarter. Cain pulled even with my window as we rolled off the interstate, and yelled “Follow me.”
We meandered through the Quarter until we pulled up to a small house on Royal Street, just off Jackson Square. Cain pulled his bike into a narrow alley and gestured for me to park on the street in front of the house. He motioned for me to follow, and we all trooped up a rickety flight of stairs into a second-floor apartment.
“Welcome, dear pater, to my humble abode.” He said grandly as we entered his slightly shabby yet somehow chic living room. There was a sofa that somehow managed to be threadbare and classy all at the same time, a feat I’d never managed personally, and a couple of mismatched lamps that nonetheless tied the whole room together somehow. The walls were decorated with back and white photographs of people in various ages, all taken in and around New Orleans. Emily wandered the walls as if in a museum, while her mother made a beeline for the sofa and curled up into a little, sweaty, exceedingly hung over ball.
“Cain, these are amazing,” Emily murmured as she looked at the photos. “It’s like you took a picture right into their souls and hung them up on the wall. Like this one here, I can almost see this woman crying for her lost little boy even though she’s smiling at a street musician.”
“You know, baby sister, there are some culture that still believe that a camera can steal your soul and trap it in the photograph. I think it’s the opposite, really. I think that the camera can set free a part of your soul that’s trapped in the everyday and let it loose to be miraculous. Turn around.” She did, and Cain was holding an expensive-looking digital camera. He snapped her picture before she could even vamp, and said “Gotcha! Now I’ve got a little piece of Emily-soul to carry around with me and stick on my wall.”
“You ass, you could at least have given me some warning.” She went over to him and punched him on the arm. “Well? You’ve gotta at least me see it so I can tell you to delete it.”
“Oh no, baby sister. You can see it, but I’m not deleting it. This is the most time I’ve spent with a sibling in a long time, and I want something to commemorate the moment.” He was smiling, but there was a heaviness to his eyes, and the moment, that gave us all pause. Myra broke the silence by getting up off the couch, bolting down a dark hallway into the tiny bathroom and being noisily sick.
“That’s Mom. She always knows just what to say.” And just like that, all the tension flowed out of the room. Emily slid her head under Cain’s arm just like they’d been raised brother and sister and snatched the camera out of his hands. She thumbed the controls expertly until her photo came onto the tiny screen.
“wow.” Her voice was very small, and she looked suddenly nervous as she looked up at Cain. “Is that what I really look like?”
“The camera doesn’t lie, baby sister. You’re beautiful.”
“But, I’ve never been pretty.”
“You’re right. You’re beautiful. I might have mentioned that. Have I developed a stutter after all these centuries?”
“But, it’s not right, I’m not like that, I don’t take good pictures, that’s not me.” By now my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wandered over to look at the image over her shoulder. Cain had caught her just as she turned around, hair flying slightly, with a touch of backlight making it look even more golden than normal. Her mouth was open a little, teeth just barely showing in a pixie grin, and her eyes twinkled in light I never saw in that apartment. She was, in a word, beautiful.
Now don’t get me wrong, Emily was a pretty girl, and in the right setting maybe even men who aren’t her father would consider her beautiful. But after a drinking binge, nine hours on the road in the Texas-Louisiana summer and a total of maybe three hours sleep in as many days, she wasn’t at her best. But in Cain’s photo, she was everything she could ever be on her best day. He captured the absolute essence of Emily and distilled it into a single digital image. It was both breathtaking and a little scary.
“Damn, Cain. That’s an amazing picture. That’s the kind of thing photographers wait their whole life to capture, and you did it without even thinking or trying twice. You’ve got a gift, son.” I said.
“Well, Dad, I’ve had a lot longer to practice than most artists.”
“Good point.”
“So, other than to admire your skill in photography, which is considerable, and to allow Myra to vomit in your toilet, which is admirable, why are we here?”
“Well, I thought we could rest up here and then you and I could go looking for Mom later tonight when the clubs open.”
“You don’t think they’re open now?”
“They are. She’s not there yet.”
“How do you know? Never mind. You know. More to the point, does she know you’re here?”
“We’ve talked from time to time.”
“Is she alright?” This time it was my voice that was small, and I couldn’t look at my son’s eyes. I walked across the living room and out onto his tiny balcony. It was just big enough to hold two wrought-iron chairs and a tiny round table. I bypassed the chairs and leaned on my elbows on the railing instead.
“She’s okay, Dad. At least, she’s okay for Mom. You know how she is.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“She’s bitter, and angry all the time and she gets into fights with clients and gets guys so mad they punch her and throw her into the street half-naked sometimes and she runs through jobs like I go through clean socks, and I don’t think she’s happy unless she’s miserable.”
“Yeah, I know.” I did, too. She’d been like that ever since I brought Abel’s body back from the shallow grave where Cain buried him and laid him to rest under the Tree. Yeah, that Tree. It wasn’t the Garden anymore, and it wasn’t really the Tree anymore, since our Father had withdrawn his presence from us, but it was still the oldest Tree we had ever known, so it seemed somehow appropriate. I dug a deep hole and buried my eldest son there, and when I finished shoveling dirt back in on top of his lifeless form I turned around and saw that I was alone.
Eve stayed gone for several days, and when she came back she was different. The loss of our two sons in the same day had changed something fundamental in her, and it wasn’t long after that when we went our separate ways. We travelled the world for centuries, our paths sometimes crossing, but never for very long. And here I was after thousands of years ready to make nice and play happy family again. Oh, and here’s our long-lost son, the one that you kept in touch with and I said I’d never touch again except to strangle. Yeah, I could see this was gonna be a long night.
by john | Jun 2, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
After several hours, multiple bottles of whiskey, bourbon and by the end of things, tequila, we had gone through about twenty-five hundred dollars worth of booze, and Emily and Myra were looking a little the worse for wear. Cain and I may have had a slight edge on them in the tolerance department, and let’s face it, once you’ve drank mead with real Vikings, there’s not a whole lot of impressive rolling out of Milwaukee. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation, just a lot of liquid group therapy and some gentle dancing around the big topics. Cain and I talked through Emily a lot, asking her what she was interested in, what she wanted to be when she grew up, that kind of stuff. We very studiously didn’t discuss any abandonment issues, empty feelings because of being an only child or anything else that might have ripped off scabs that were just starting to form.
I figure we sat in that bar for the better part of a day and a half digesting a steady diet of Emmylou Harris, Reckless Kelly and Townes Van Zant before Michael finally came strolling in, looking for all the world like he was on a pleasure cruise rather than rolling cross-country with a couple of immortals who’d broken his nose twice in twenty-four hours and their indefinable mortal relations.
“Well, look what the cat regurgitated onto the rug.” I said sweetly as he pulled up a chair and materialized a white wine spritzer. Lucinda Williams was on the jukebox singing Return of the Grievous Angel and I was pretty sure that he had either timed his entrance to fit the song, or more likely that he had changed the jukebox to make a better entrance.
“Really, Michael? That has to be the only wine glass within a hundred miles. Do you want to get punched in the face again that badly? I’m sure if you just asked, one of the boys here would be willing to oblige you. It’s not necessary to show all of Texas exactly what a fairy you angels can be.” Myra cracked herself up and went into a fit of drunken giggles at the whole fairy angels bit.
“I presume we have gotten all of our childishness out of our systems and are ready to proceed with the world-saving portion of our program?” Michael ignored Myra. Probably a good idea given her level of inebriation. I wouldn’t put it past her to knock the angel on his ass herself.
“Well, in the words of Jaws, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I said.
“Excuse me?” responded the confused angel. Pop culture references, even ones dated enough for me to follow, were apparently no good with the seraphim. All that harp music interfered with their television reception, I guessed.
“We came her in a Civic. I don’t think five of us are leaving that way.” I explained.
“Don’t sweat it, Dad. I didn’t exactly fly here, you know?” Oh yeah. Cain had to have some type of transportation. “My bike’s right outside.” I felt a little twinge when he said that. Like father, like son, I suppose. Maybe I could have a relationship with this son even after all the water under (and over) that bridge.
“Well, then, we should go. Cain, I believe you should take the lead on this leg. After all, you know where we’re going.” Michael said.
“Well, I don’t know exactly where we’re going, just a general idea.” Cain said, and he suddenly became very interested in the tops of his shoes.
“And where, roughly, does that general idea lead?” I started to have a really bad feeling about the answer as my thoughts flashed back to Cain’s initial re-entry into my life a couple of days back.
“Well, it’s kinda tough to say. You know how Mom is, she doesn’t like to stay in one place too long, and sometimes I get mixed signals when I’m trying to track her down, and…”
“Cain. Where. Is. Eve?” I used the Daddy Voice. It’s different from The Voice, but has a similar effect, if the audience is a little more limited. I was happy and more than a little surprised to see that it still worked even if your kid is a few thousand years old.
“Bourbon Street.”
“And what is she doing on Bourbon Street? As I recall, Eve is an excellent musician, so I have some slight hope that she’s playing music.”
“Not exactly, Michael.” Cain replied. I knew that whatever the answer was, I was not going to like it.
“So what, exactly, is she doing, son?” I asked as gently as I could muster.
“Dancing.”
“Where is she dancing, Cain?” I tried to keep my voice level.
“Well, she moves around a lot.”
“Cain. Talk.” I said. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but it had been a long time since I’d been on Bourbon Street and had a modicum of hope that it had changed since the hurricane.
“Big Daddy’s.” Apparently neither Bourbon Street nor Eve had changed since the last time I saw them. Bourbon Street still housed as many strip clubs as jazz clubs, and Eve still worked hard to surround herself with as much of humanity’s filth as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against strip clubs, and some of my favorite conversations throughout the years have been with strippers and prostitutes. I’ve always appreciated their unvarnished view of the world. They have a level of honesty that you just don’t find in “legitimate” society, and every once in a while I’ve needed that type of honesty. But I knew instantly that Eve wouldn’t be working in the top-notch strip club, she’d be working the seediest dive on the street, and that at some point before we left New Orleans, I was going to end up hitting somebody again. And there was only about a 50/50 shot that it wouldn’t be Eve.
So I knocked back one last shot of Patron, looked over at the Jason (after a certain number of bottles, you move into a first-name relationship with your bartenders) and asked if we had any cash left. He looked over at the tab and brought me four twenties. I handed them back to him with a couple of unflattering pictures of Ben Franklin and headed toward the door into the sunlight just as Robert Earl Keen started to sing “Sherry was a waitress, at the only joint in town.” I chuckled to myself and thought about the truth is Keen’s song. The road really does go on forever, but I thought this party might be just getting started.
by john | May 31, 2009 | Poetry
Little girl standing by the railroad tracks
brown pigtails sticking out akimbo from her head
blue gingham dress
checked
with an apron that started life as white
before it went through three cousins
and one older sister.
Little girl standing all alone,
looking down the track and
wondering
When’s Daddy comin’ home?
Little girl sitting on the porch
gingham dress too short and threadbare,
knobby knees poking out
the first beginnings of bumps under her apron
just starting to swell and show.
still enough of a little girl to sit cross-legged on the porch swing
waiting for big sister to come home
off her date with the Swain boy
who drives the fast car and smells like whiskey,
looks at her behind while she walks up the steps
telling little girl to go to bed
“you wouldn’t act like this if Daddy was here.”
Little girl walking across a stage,
flat cap on her head
hot June afternoon in a blue gown
grabs that piece of paper and
Looks
up in the stands
where sits a proud mama
big sister and her baby girl
and that Swain boy
who made a decent husband after all
but still a Daddy-shaped hole
in the air next to Mama.
Little girl sits on a porch
in a black dress
as aunts and uncles
and more cousins than you can shake a stick at
sit in the living room swapping memories and telling lies
knees drawn up cross-legged under her on the porch swing
again
sweet tea glass sweats untouched on the porch rail
with a slice of lemon on the rim
drawing flies
as she looks down the driveway
until at last an old man
looking uncomfortable in a shiny new suit
and never broken in shoes
limps past the rusted mailbox into view.
He stops at the gate,
takes off his hat,
looks at the little girl
and she looks back.
He nods,
she waves a shy little girl wave with half her hand
like she was six instead of twenty-six
and goes back inside the house
leaving the old man
at the end of the driveway
watching the tea glass sweat in the August dusk.
by john | May 31, 2009 | Poetry
The funny things about crying in the rain
is that you can’t tell which is which.
I’m sitting on the porch
under an overflowing gutter
with a clogged downspout
as a sheet of water pours over me,
late-summer thunderstorm washing away
the mourning.
A miserable yellow dogs trots down the sidewalk
giving me an incredulous look and shake of the head.
I hear the intermittent chirp of a baffled bluejay
interspersed with the splatter, splatter of raindrops on asphalt,
the occasional sound of patent leather through mud puddles
tells me the story of comings
and goings
from the house behind me.
I hate the rain,
but I hate being in there more
dodging platitudes and platters of sandwich meat
and if I see one more goddamn broccoli casserole
I think I’m gonna shoot somebody.
by john | May 30, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
I might have mentioned that I have remarkable children. I might have mentioned that it’s sometimes a pain in the ass. If I didn’t, then I’ll say it now: it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to have remarkable children. And to find out 23 years into her life, well after the time that she’s learned enough to not hold back the truth just to spare her elders’ feelings, that you have a daughter that’s blessed (or cursed?) with the type of insight that leads Asian men to sit on mountaintops and burn incense is the kind of unwelcome surprise that I’d had just about e-damn-nough of this week. But it happened, and then Cain happened, and then Emily dropped one of her little insight bombs on me and I did my best impression of a four-year-old with a bloody knee wailing on the carpet in a cheap motel in Texas. It wasn’t my most dignified of moments, to say the least.
After a few minutes I stopped crying, stood up and made my way over to the cheap dresser. I leaned on it for a minute, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and knocked off the last of the bottle in one long pull. Then I turned around and untied Cain. Something told me he wasn’t going to try to kill me anymore.
“Is it true?” He asked after a long moment of us just looking at each other, while Myra and Emily watched us watching each other.
“I don’t know if I could have put it so succinctly, but yeah, it’s true.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“We were always a little busy trying to beat each other’s brains out. It seemed easier just to work with the status quo than to try and change things.”
“You mean easier than admitting you were wrong?”
“Yeah, well that’s never been one of my strong points. Ask your mom.”
“She might have used the term ‘pig-headed’ once or twice.”
“Among others,” I replied.
“Among many, many others.”
“You mother is a well-spoken woman, in many languages. I’m sure her descriptions of me were unflattering in at least a dozen.”
“At least.” He paused, then took a deep breath. “I really am sorry, you know.”
“I know. You loved him as much as any of us.”
“More most days.”
“Then why? What would possess you to…” I trailed off as I looked at the doorway, where Michael was suddenly trying to look very small. That’s tough to pull off when you’re a 6’3” blonde Adonis with eyes the color of lapis jewelry and a hair color that has spawned an entire line of Clairol products. I looked at the angel and worked diligently to keep my voice steady and my hands from shaking as I asked him “Did you have anything to do with this?”
“Anything to do with what, mate?”
“I’m going to ask you this once, calmly, and I’m even going to give you once chance to answer me truthfully with a limited time offer than neither myself nor any of my progeny living now or yet to be born will take any retribution on you due to the answer.”
“Attempt.”
“Excuse me?”
“Attempt to take any retribution. Remember exactly who I am, Son of God.” I saw the faint outline of wings glowing behind him, and it seemed like a ghostly fire engulfed the air around his right hand.
“There is no attempt, Michael. Remember exactly who I am, Angel. I am the first earthborn son of the Lord Almighty, and I understand exactly what I can and cannot do, as do you. Now, I will ask this only once, did you have anything to do with the death on my son, Abel?”
“Yes.”
“Emily, hold your brother down. Michael, explain to me exactly what happened.”
“You don’t need to know everything about it, Adam. You aren’t part of that story, but I will tell you that there were forces other than mere human jealousy at work on your sons that day. Another Choice was made, and you and Cain are just now dealing with the consequences.”
“Cain, what was the Choice? What did he make you do?”
“I don’t know what either of you are talking about. I didn’t see Michael that day, or any other day until just now. Remember, you were already long out of the Garden by the time Abel and I came along, we just heard the stories. We never cavorted naked with the seraphim.”
“It wasn’t like that. And if he didn’t force you into the Choice, then…fucking Lucky” I trailed off, knowing that I was going to have to kick his ass for this one.
“He didn’t choose, Dad.” Emily said from the bed.
“Huh?” I swear, some days I sound like a Neanderthal. Or Al Bundy.
“He wasn’t the one to make the Choice. Look at them,” she said, gesturing to Michael and Cain. “Cain has no idea what kind of Choice you mean, and no clue why you keep giving it emphasis, and Michael can’t look either of you in the eye. Cain didn’t choose to kill Abel. Abel chose to die in Cain’s place.”
Nobody spoke. The silence stretched past uncomfortable well into downright disturbing when finally Cain asked “Is it true? Did Abel choose to die?”
Michael never looked up, and when he spoke it was almost a whisper, as though he was looking back all those years at my son’s broken body. “Yes.”
Cain stood calmly, walked over to Michael and said to him in a low voice that made my blood stop moving altogether for a moment, “I will abide by my father’s promise and I will take no vengeance upon you for my brother’s death. Nor will I exact my due recompense for the thousands of years of suffering I have endured thanks to your meddling, but I will, just one more time, let enough of the beast loose from my soul to do this.” And with that, he grabbed the angel by the shirt front, spun him around until his back was to the room, and punched him straight in the nose. Cain watched him fall, clutching his freshly rebroken nose as he crawled towards the small bathroom, and then walked out to lean on the railing outside our door.
I stood for a moment looking at the bloodied angel, then glanced up at Emily and Myra. “You’re gonna want some clothes at this point. Pajamas no good for the next step.”
“Next step?” Myra asked.
“Yeah. The next step is where the healing starts. Follow me when you’re dressed. Em knows where to find me.” With that, I walked out into the morning sun and leaned on the rail next to my son. I looked over at him as he held his head in his hands like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Come on, son. We’re blowing this pop stand.”
“Where are we going?”
“Intensive therapy. Follow me.” And I walked down the stairs and back to the bar where I’d bought the whiskey the night before. The morning shift didn’t recognize me, but when I tossed ten twenties on the bar and said “Bring good whiskey ‘til that’s gone, then you can bring cheap stuff for the next couple hours,” it was like we were long-lost friends. I took a seat at a table near the far wall and lined up eight shot glasses. It didn’t take long before all four seats were full, and we commenced to processing all the events and revelations of the past twenty-four hours. I figured by the time Michael got himself cleaned up, we’d all be too drunk to want to hit him again, or at worst too drunk to actually connect with a punch.
by john | May 29, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
This is the 9th installment of a story I started on my old site. The full story is posted on the page labelled Choices, but as I write more, I’ll post it here.
“I thought you two would make friends if I gave you a little time to get to know each other.” Myra said as she came through the door I’d never bothered to close the night before. “Where’s the angel?”
“Last I saw he was lying on the hood of the car looking up at the stars. He might have taken off to get a better look at the sunrise, though. That’s the kind of thing they used to do.”
“Take off?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, you know, fly? They really can do that if they choose to take that form, but they have to make sure not to let anybody see them. That form is a little much for most humans to handle seeing.”
“But not you?”
“Nah, kiddo. Remember, I saw them in their natural form all the time back in the Garden days. So it doesn’t bother me. It unnerves me a little more to see them in human form, actually. Especially Michael. He never was much of one to hang with us in the Garden, and I haven’t seen him, or any of them really, since they tossed us out.”
“Does the Garden still exist? Could you go back there?”
“No. It was more than a place, it was a state of being. Being cast out of the Garden was more being cut off from all the pure light of the world than it was being tossed out of a physical place. I suppose it’s something similar to what Lucky felt when his little revolution failed, being deprived of seeing the face of God for all eternity. Being tossed out of the Garden was a little like that. We were cut off from our Father, who had held a pretty active role in our lives until then. And all our friends, the angels and animals both, were gone. We couldn’t talk to the animals anymore, and they started killing each other. And the angels, well, between the day we were tossed out and yesterday, the only angels I’ve seen were either fallen or porcelain.”
“That’s awful.” Emily said, as she threw her arms around my neck.
“Moderately awful, yes.” I hugged her back as Myra sat on the bed on my other side.
“Well isn’t this just fucking precious,” came a voice from the door. I went very, very still, the way someone does when they hear a rattlesnake’s buzz as they’re walking through the desert. I knew the voice, even after all these years, and I knew that his presence here was no more an accident than my picking that particular diner as I cruised east.
My oldest son slid into the room, all sinewy muscle and blue-black hair, and sat down in the chair. He took my abandoned glass of whiskey, knocked it back, and poured himself another. “Good choice, pops. Life is too short for cheap liquor, even for us.” He raised a glass to Emily, said “Cheers, baby sister. Cheers,” and sipped the amber liquid, taking a deep breath as he set down the glass.
“Now, Dad. Suppose you tell me exactly what is going on and why you and Baby Sis and this mortal floozy are snuggling in a no-tell motel while Mom’s working in a strip joint on Bourbon Street shaking her moneymaker for wasted tourists. I mean, after all these years of being the black sheep of the family I suddenly find myself downright respectable by comparison.”
I was on my feet before I knew it, but Cain was always fast. He caught me and had me bent backwards over the cheap table quicker than an eyeblink. His strong arm went across my neck in a choke, and he got right down in my face, close enough for me to smell the hate on his breath. He smiled at me, and my blood ran cold. I knew real fear for the first time in centuries, as my psychotic son held my life in his hands.
“No, no, papa. We’ll have none of those outbursts. They aren’t good for the soul, are they? But what would I know about that, right? I don’t know how you got me here, and I don’t care. But it’s not going to end well for you, Daddy. It’s not going to end well at all. Remember, only one of us can really hurt one of us. And I know how to hurt, Daddy. I know very well how to hurt. And I…” Cain grunted heavily and his grip on my neck loosened as he slumped off my back onto the floor. I got up off the table shakily and saw Emily behind him holding a Gideon bible like a sledgehammer, her hands shaking but her eyes fierce. I looked up at her and saw her ultimate grandmother in those flaming eyes, and there was no denying that this kid was something to reckon with.
Chapter 3
I tied Cain to the chair with his belt and mine, and sent Emily running for Michael. I hoped the angel was within earshot, and had a plan, because I had no idea how we were going to deal with this. In the back of my mind I knew we would have to deal with Cain eventually, but I had convinced myself that Eve would come first, because Eve could deal with him. Yeah, I know, probably not the greatest parenting strategy, but after a half dozen eons or so I think I can get by without any tips from Dr. Spock, alright?
Apparently Michael was close, because Emily brought him back a few minutes later, and the little shit had the audacity to look pleased about the situation.
“What, by all the names of the Father, are you grinning about?” I asked as Emily closed the door behind the angel.
“Well, Adam, it should be apparent. Now we don’t have to look for Cain. He’s found us. It’s a capital development!”
“Capital?!? Jesus and Mohammed, no wonder nobody likes the British! I’ll grant you that he’s found us and that makes one bit easier, but now we have to deal with him, and I guarantee that will do nothing but complicate matters.”
“Complicate matters? Oh Daddy, you always did underestimate me. I will do so much more than merely complicate matters. I plan to end matters. I’m tired of this dance we’ve done with each other for so long, and now that I see you again, it’s finally time to do something about it. Just like I did with your precious Abel.”
“Don’t. Speak. That. Name. You lost all right to say your brother’s name when you took his life, you insane little bastard! I should end you myself right now. I should have done it a lifetime ago, but”
“But what, Daddy? But Mommy wouldn’t let you? But you didn’t have the guts? But you didn’t know then that you couldn’t die so you chickened out because you were afraid of going to Hell with your friend Lucypher? BUT WHAT, DADDY?” Spittle landed on my shirt as he screamed the last at me.
“But he still loves you and can’t stand the thought of losing you, too.” Emily was sitting on the far bed, all the way across the room from where Michael and I flanked Cain’s chair, but she didn’t have to raise her voice to stop our yelling match cold.
“Can’t you see? He’s spent thousands of years bludgeoning himself for not seeing what you were going to do, and for not stopping you. He’s beaten himself bloody for centuries for not stopping your mother from going off alone into the Garden that day. He’s never forgiven himself for never telling you that he forgave you the second he told you to get out of his sight, and he’s been so afraid of the hurt in your eyes every time you look at him that he’s tried to cover it up with anger. You know, for people that have lived for thousands of years, you’re all pretty stupid sometimes.”
I listened to her say the words I couldn’t even bring myself to think, and looked at Cain as he saw the truth of what she said reflected in my eyes, and I did something I thought I’d never do again after Matthew died in my arms. I cried. My legs went weak and I fell to my knees in that cheap room on the second floor of a Quality Inn in Tyler, Texas, and I wept like a baby.
by john | May 28, 2009 | Writing
I realized upon looking through my poetry that I’ve written a lot of poems about getting dumped. Now it’s been a long time since I’ve been dumped. Suzy and I have been married for almost 14 years now, and we’ve been together for about 15, but some of those old memories come flooding back when it comes time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be). And besides, right now for me it’s about the exercise of writing, the discipline of writing something every day (I do give myself weekends off) that leads me to dredge up old memories and spew them onto paper.
I’ve written a ton in the past couple of years, almost 400 articles for PokerNews, at an average of 600-700 words per article, but most of that stuff all followed a formula. This guy bet, this guy raised, all the money went in and the cards looked like this. This guy scooped a huge pot whie this guy got his dreams shattered. That kind of thing. The exercise of writing poetry and/or fiction every day is something I haven’t done in a long time, so even though I’m dredging up a bunch of old stuff, and even though a fair chunk of what I’m turning out is pure crap, it’s important enough for me to continue with the exercise. So that’s what you’re getting, random spewage from my writing exercises. Some of it hasn’t been bad. Unpolished, but not awful. Some of it has been crap. You’ll have that. I’m trying to get the muscles working again more than anything, so welcome, I hope you enjoy the ride.
by john | May 28, 2009 | Poetry
Rainbow
After the lightning stopped
and the wind died down
I crawled out from under my hastily erected shelter
and picked up the pieces of my life
that your storm scattered across the world
for all my neighbors to see.
I walked around picking up broken feelings
and shattered memories,
mementoes from vacations that I thought meant something
at the time.
I took the soggy pictures of you and me with Goofy
at Disneyworld
and I put them in a box
along with the mix tape I made you for your trip
(I thought it was a little cold to give that back to me)
and the sweatshirt that was really mine
but you liked it so much I thought of it as yours
and I packed it all away in my memory
and tried to forget the storms of you,
but the rainbow wouldn’t let me.
by john | May 28, 2009 | Poetry
How did we get from
Eating Star Crunches
Naked in my bedroom
With your nipples playing peekaboo behind your curls
While I lean against the wall wondering how lucky I am
To me curled up in the fucking pantry
Listening to the beep-beep-beeeep-beeeeeep
Of the disconnect signal from your best
Fucking
Friend calling me to tell me that maybe buying that
Ring
Wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.
How did we get from me helping you change a tire after Western Civ class
In the rain
On an MG
When neither damn one of us had ever changed a tire before
To sitting up til four in the morning in the amphitheatre
Falling stupid in love
And talking about soulmates?
How did we get from that kind of tight
To this kind of broken?
How do you put something back together
If you’re not sure anymore that it was ever
Really
A thing at all?
by john | May 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
It’s been a while since I tried to create this site, and with the current state of advertising on my other blog (i.e. nonexistent) I figure this is a pretty good time to start the process of moving things from one place to another. So we’ll start posting here, and start putting notices on my poker blog, and maybe slowly evolve this into my internet home.
