Daydreaming in the Drinking Room

       “Wakeup,” said Jerry, to Chick Evens, an echo bounced in Evens’ head—ear to ear—as if shot through a tunnel...

        

       Sandy, Evens’ Girlfriend

       He had been staring into his cards for several minutes while the group gossiped, his mind had stepped into a dark storm of thoughts: he had been beating Larry’s cousin with a beer bottle over his face, they were over on Indian’s Mount, off Mississippi Street, across the old wooden bridge (this all took place several months ago), a gang of them—a few kids his age the rest a year or two younger, just graduating from High School—celebrating, not really the Donkeyland Gang, a few kids from Rice Street, a few from the East Side, all from a variety of different High Schools (Washington, Johnson, Central, etc) and a bonfire was burning high on top of the mound—the mound being the size of a football field, with an   encircling embankment of a hundred feet or so, with old skeleton foundations of houses that used to be, reaching out of the soil, dotted all around the mound: and Mike L., had went into the foliage with Sandy—they had been eyeing each other up throughout the evening, right into the  beginning of twilight until this moment, both standing on each side of the fire, across from one another and she followed him—and now several minutes had passed, and she was screaming rape from a hundred yards away in the foliage as music was blaring from a battery operated radio, and Evens went to find out what  the sound was about, that sounded like either crying or sighing for help, and here was Mike L., on top of Sandy pinning her to the ground, he looked like some kind of savage beating the palm of his hand across her face to submit. 

       Everyone else, everyone at the campfire, was disbelieving anything was really happening—taking place, a few said they couldn’t hear a thing: Evens assuming, that if indeed they heard something as he was hearing something, she was just enjoying whatever Mike was doing, and they pretended to not hear—out of sight and out of mind that kind of mannerism: a spirit of unruliness diffused with those sitting around the bonfire, and to be frank, they could have cared less.

       Evens remembered Sandy saying, “Please come to the party with me, I really want to go but I fear without you they’ll take advantage of me.”  How right she was, especially now Evens looking down at the situation, and Mike saying “What the fuck do you want?” And Evens saying, “She’s telling you to get off her, you’re raping her, can’t you hear her, she’s protesting, she’s three inches from your fist!~”

       Boldly, Mike said, as if not hearing a single syllable of what Evens had said, was telling him: “Get serious, fuck off,” and went back to his robustness in securing his lustful desires while Sandy continued to try and move, wiggle, push him away, to push him off of her—while she was crying and protesting—: actually she was in the middle of a dissent, that is to say: pleading now with Evens to stop him.

       Evens now remembered several guys and a few girls by the campfire—why hadn’t they come to help, to stop Mike from doing this repulsive thing?  Surely they all could hear this entire ruckus: all acting as if nothing was wrong—even the girls; matter-of-fact, he even had asked one of the guys: no two or three of the guys—yes, two or three before he left to investigate: leaving the campfire—and all the intoxicated, he said while in motion: “You hear anything, you hear someone crying for help?” No one heard a thing, or would admit hearing a thing, nor took a moment to go investigate, as if this was staged; perhaps they had on their minds a gangbang.

       But he was raping, trying to rape Sandy—and that was the bottom line, his Sandy, well it wasn’t his Sandy then, they had parted ways, but parted well, they were still close friends, in a way, always to be friends.

       The last rebuke was again, fruitless, and although Evens was more sober than Mike—perchance not all that much, he didn’t realize he had a beer bottle in his right hand, pulled Mike back by the hair with his left hand, pulled him off Sandy so she could escape his clutches—he resisted coldly jerking his hand and shoulder and all his weight forward, and then Evens hit him a few times with the bottle in the face, breaking the resistance. Now Mike had a confused puffy face, awakened but confused, not confused in what he was doing, he knew exactly what he was doing, but what Evens had done—perhaps he was a little delirious: he no longer had restraining influence over Sandy, Evens stepped back—saw the beer bottle in his hand and dropped it onto the ground, and Sandy stood up, completely.

       ‘Escape’ evidently raced through Sandy’s head because it didn’t Evens’, matter of fact, he just noticed he had the beer bottle in his hands, and had just dropped it, but Sandy was thinking: these are Mike’s friends over yonder over by the fire, more so than Evens’ and they were now coming to investigate, oh yes, now that Mike was in pain—screaming pain—perhaps wanting someone to rescue him, like Sandy wanted, forget Sandy, she was of no consequence to them, but Mike, yes, Mike, it was now a different story, justice must be done, prevail; funny how everyone heard Mike’s cries and not Sandy’s.

       That night Chick slept badly, in the morning his mother received a phone call from Mike’s mother, she had said they were seeking compensation for the hospital bill, if not ready to call the police for the damages Evens had done to Mike—which they were contemplating; so she said in so many words: it was a crime what your son did to my son—and perhaps it was. But surely no less a crime what Mike had done to Sandy, but like two peas in a pod, she never mentioned the rape in progress.

 

       It was a mild sunny morning, and Sandy’s mother called Chick Evens, saying:

        “I admire your courage for standing up and stopping that animal from raping my daughter; I wanted to thank you personally.”  

       Diligently, Evens told her what Mike’s mother had told his mother—what she was intending to do—not sure why she was holding off on doing it, perhaps she had some good insight—and  she said, “I’ll fix that, and if you talk to her before me, you can tell her I’ll call the police and tell them you were protecting my daughter who is seventeen years old, from this Mike who was trying to rape her, and he’ll be spending his days in Stillwater Prison,” Mike had turned eighteen, it was no longer St. Cloud Reformatory for such a crime, it was the big house. Now Mike’s mother, and Mike, and Mike’s father had food for thought, as they say.

       “All right, swell!” said Chick feeling some weight lifted off his shoulders, and not feeling helpless, and as guilty as Mike’s mother portrayed him, if not redeemed, then told his mother, then made a phone call to Mike’s mother and all went silent, but the stifling of her hot breath over the phone.

       (It would be twenty-years past, when Evens would bump into Mike L., again, walking down Rice Street near Lexington Avenue, when he’d say to Evens, ‘You didn’t need to use such force on me, that day.  You could have beaten me with your hands, your fists, you were tougher than me.’  This was true, Chick said, ‘…if only I had known, or recognized, I had a beer bottle in my hands and was thinking rational at the time, but who’s to say what goes on in a person’s mind when you’re watching someone raping someone, and telling him several times to stop, and he says, Fuck off to you three times, I mean, you were no saint.’  But Mike just couldn’t get that next to last statement stabilized in his head, it was a mysterious voice telling him, Sandy was luring and that was justification for rape that his wrong was not as wrong as Chick’s, and although he might have done wrong, what Evens did was unjustified, that is to say, Evens’ excessive force was not necessary, Mike never apologized to Sandy or her mother. And as Mike walked away, evidently that monotonous voice, was repeating that over and over to him, because he was shaking his head every-which-way.)

       Then Evens’ thoughts shifted to Mike Gulf, one side of his brain was telling the other side—so it seemed, each having its own voice, and he himself seemingly having an independent voice within that strange and hidden environment inside his head: I mean to say, he appeared to have a voice, somewhere in-between the other two: “Mike Gulf is full of shit,” said the right side, then the voice of the left side answered: “Perhaps you’re right, I know he was dating Sid’s sister Diane?”  Then Evens tried to figure it out—intervene, “Yes,” he told the two parts: the Right Brain and Left brain (and as they were about to respond to Evens, they protested: ‘Why do you call us ‘the Right and Left’ can you not give us better names like: Mutt and Jeff, or Nick and Pick, or Tom and Jerry, you know something with a little more dignity than, Right Brain and Left Brain?”)

       Said Evens hesitantly: “She was, still is, Don Quinn’s wife, separated of course, former wife.  She’s rented out the house across the street from me on Cayuga Street, I mean from my Grandfather’s house. How could I be so blind,” he told himself, that is what it was; Mutt and Jeff listening to every word: “Mike bought that 1965 and a half Mustang, white Mustang and was showing it off, and no, Her name was not Diane, it was Carol, yes, that is it, that is what it was, Carol, that’s what it was”; thus, the left side Mutt said to the right side Jeff: both confirming at the same time, that Evens was correct.

       “So, it was that Mike was detached from its consequences, and Don Quinn went to the bar to that musty air saloon, and found Mike bragging, perhaps saying: ‘I’ll kick his ass when I see him,’ just like Barb’s boyfriend, said to me, when I went over to the East Side of the city, to that bar and he was bragging.”

       “Sure that’s what it was: big mouth Mike Gulf,’ both Mutt and Jeff confirmed, simultaneously:  the once straggling thoughts were now in agreement with fact (Jerry started staring at Evens while in his deep thoughts, then caught the curve of Betty’s neck, which took his attention off Chick, lit a cigarette, pushed back his hair, rested his forearms against the edge of the table) …

       “…but what about Richard Zacardy and Tom Fortuna?” said Mutt and Jeff—as if they were both liberated from a gloomy room and wanting to gossip more, like those friends of Evens’ were doing, had been doing around the table: they were in essence, today anyhow, companions playing a dark rainy game of recognizing the faults of others, as if on a rusty bicycle, riding over pumps, trying to get Evens to link it with Sandy.

       “What about it,” said Evens?  His mind was like a feeble lantern, trying to make light inside that dark part of his soul, as if it was night, to appease the two voices, the twin voices inside his brain—Mutt and Jeff, —consequently feeling as if he was in a dark muddy garden full of weeds trying to untangle himself from them, and make sense out of the past—no, it was as if he was examining porcelain, and had to tread easily on these thoughts lest he break the vase. Remembering with difficulty why they had joined together over this issue of current events, and not so current, perhaps they were tired them selves of the darkness. Who’s to say?  I mean, one usually slept the day away, while the other was pestering, and at night, well, who’s to say was doing the talking, producing those half sleep nightmares, and dreams—racing here and there?

       “What do I mean, you know what I mean, you knocked him out with one punch when you were fifteen, and they took Richard to the hospital, and his mother, no his father called up your mother and was going to call the police, but he was sixteen and a fight is a fight, over a stupid bat too, and Tom, he’s just like Richard, and like Mike L., they both went out and raped girls, no all three wanted to rape girls, and two did,  at night and tied them to the bedposts, and Richard’s father had to mortgage his house to fight it in court, and won the court case, and Richard was free as a bee, and the idiot went back out and just visible enough again got caught doing the same thing all over: and then he  as well got caught peeking through the windows up at your karate dojo—in that house next to the karate dojo, and you had to save his sorry ass, lest the neighbors kill him, or beat the shit out of him,  and what happened next, you know,  he ended up in prison. That is what I mean.”

       ‘Oh,’ said Evens, innumerable follies laid at his mind as he sat there, and the tedious intervening days came to and fro like bats out of a church’s bell tower. It was all monotonous child’s play, all this fussing over women, bazaar, when all you had to do is go out and find one, fifty-two percent of the world’s population were women: so Evens thought, and surely the right and left, I mean Mutt and Jeff, picked up on the humble and great murmur of those thoughts, lingered with them, useless thoughts, to make a lively day a drunken day more interesting, especially today. 

       “Slow down on the drinking,” said Mutt to Chick, “Oh yes,” confirmed Jeff, by adding “It makes you more depressed.”

       Evens now gazing up into the darkness anguish and anger at his right and left thinkers—Mutt and Jeff, “Let me drink in peace,” he said.

       He must have said that out loud, because a few heads turned towards Evens.

       “O, what did you say?” asked Jim.

       “Didn’t he say something,” said Bill.

       “Yes,” said Betty, “but I don’t know what.”

       I could not call my wandering thoughts together, they and I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life in the day, and they were between me and my desires—Mutt and Jeff that is, as if trying to invade the dark part of my soul, they wanted me to stay in the night mode, which seems to be on one hand more truth finding, but less realism, the good thing is, you can fly from one corner of the mind to the next, in the speed of light:

       Janet Ridler, was very charitable, she owned a four acre farm, in North Saint Paul area side of town, of Minnesota, she was my first babysitter (1948-49), better than that, she took care of me and my brother Mike, five days out of the week—sometimes seven days out of the week, and twenty other kids, she owned what was called Kiddy-Corner, a night and day care center, perhaps the first one in Minnesota, always fighting with the county to allow kids to stay overnight. I was there for four years straight, as was my brother from the age of eighteen months old, to five and half years old, something like that. When I was twelve, I met her one day, and she invited my brother and I to stay with her free for two weeks, my brother was fourteen, that is when I met Laura, the secret love of my life, she was seventeen, dark hair, olive skin, dark eyes, she worked at the farm for children—a child care person: I always called it the Boarding Farm.  Her and Mike and Steve got along well, Steve was Janet’s son, he was eighteen.

       It was a warm and colorful summer, 1959, we played till our bodies glowed.  But I was always the one trying to catch up. The shadow, not that my brother tried to eliminate me from the picture, perhaps it was the other way around he tried to have me part of it, but Steve teased my youth a little bet, and Laura, was always sweet, too sweet. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft fasten of her hair tossed to and fro. 

       Every morning I lay waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Watching the door, checking the window, when she appeared on the doorstep, or in the lobby for work, my heart leaped. I ran with my eye, I seldom found words to say, but my eyes never failed me—foolish blood, that’s what I call it now, looking back.

       Steve was not a handsome lad, but as the old saying goes: a woman, if she sees enough of you, usually she’ll fall in love with you, on the other hand, for a man, well he has to like what he sees.  How true this was with Laura.  She was according to my book, falling in love with the wrong guy, all she had to do according to me, was simply wait a few years and I’d grow and she and I could dance the polka, no not really, we could fall in love, that is how it was suppose to work out, so I told myself, or perhaps the right side or left side of my brain told me—sorry, I mean Mutt and Jeff, or I told them, who’s to say who told who, we seldom worked together.

       In any case, I was having a hostile kind of romance, one she never knew about with her image.  I dreamt, as perhaps I’m doing now, we walked through the flaring streets of Rome, I was pushing the drunks away from her—I was a Centurion, a Knight of the Roundtable,  I held tight and onto and was swift with, my sword…all heroes have swords

       (the sounds of dark rain of the evening was creeping into Evens’ ears, as he was daydreaming, impinging upon his focus of Laura)…

       all my senses seemed to desire an unveiling of this secret romance of mine, to her, to tell her to slip into my dreams, it is were you belong—no that is not exactly what I wanted, that is Mutt and Jeff wanted, their opinions, talking nonsense as often they do: I wanted to speak to her, I was confused when those two weeks were up and I was at home upstairs in my attic bedroom, and thinking about her.

       “Steve was kind of ugly,” said Mutt to Jeff, looking at me, as if it was a question, and not a statement. 

      “Oh that’s kind of harsh,” I said.

      “Yes, for sure, I know,” said Mutt.

        (The thoughts of Chick Evens were now indistinct and seemingly leaving his forehead, they had got stuck there somehow—, “Oh yes,” he said:)

       “Oh yes, I met her and Steve years later, I was eighteen, a year ago: yes, he was still ugly, I mean, not all that handsome, and Laura and he had been married for five years, she looked it, matter of fact, she looked like she had been married for twenty-five years, living down by Lake Carnelian, down there by Stillwater Township—where I bought a plot of land.”

Stillwater Township, outside of St. Paul, Minnesota

       Observing, Mutt, saying, in a tone of voice not encouraging, “She glanced at you quite a lot, you didn’t glance back at her, why?”

       “Good question: I saw myself as a creature obsessed at one time perhaps put down by her, but she didn’t really put me down, yet my eyes burned with anguish when I saw her, a year ago, as if to say after an intolerable delay: look at what you could have had, and look at what you ended up with.  But I didn’t say that, I didn’t say anything like that, yes I did think that, it was a passing thought, perhaps yours Mutt and not mine, or Jeff’s. She was happy, and I was happy for her, and I was happy for me, we were two twinkling rivers, going different ways, and I was happy about that also.”

       “Happiness is a byproduct, did you know that Evens?” said my left side of the brain, Mutt.

       “Yes of course, I taught you that.”

       “You also taught me, a byproduct is something you give, and observe after you give it, and that the giving makes you smile, it makes you happy—which is the byproduct, now what did you give her and she give you…?”

      

        “Wakeup…!” said Jerry a second time, to Chick Evens, and he did, seemingly as if he had just stepped out of dark into light, he had appeared to have forgotten he was playing cards, even forgotten his recent move, so he had to recheck his cards, and that’s what he was doing.

       “You were daydreaming,” said Jerry.

        Evens looked up slyly over the cards in his hands.

       “What would you do if someone was raping your ex girlfriend?” he asked.

       Jim waited until the monologue paused, then he stood up abruptly, “I’d not betray a friend,” inferring he’d be obliged to go and protect her. Then Jim stepped out to go around the table, to relieve himself upstairs, without looking at Evens when he passed him, called out loudly across the living room as he went up the staircase to the bathroom, said: “I’d have kicked his ass good—with a beer bottle if that is what it took!” he had evidently already heard what had taken place, or previously happened.

₪

#909 (5-3 & 5-2012)

The Hogshead of Homburg Hamburg (a Tale)

((or, The Gastronomical Duel, at Homburg Castle)(of Medieval Germany))

  

The August moon came out bright over the castle, of the Duke of Homburg, it was a medieval year, and by legend, it was the year upon which a large amount of mischief would transverse the German countryside of the Homburg Castle. So the rays of the fable had fallen upon the land. Summer was at its peak, and summer fever soon followed, with festivities.  The meadows were yellow and green with life, and trade in the villages nearby the castle had its buyers and sellers. The air was warm and mild, fountains were plentiful with water.

       The windows of the castle were open, the castle inhabitants, and soldiers, and royal family alike, were seated on a high stoop in the center on flat mats, in the castle grounds.

       In one of the windows on the second-floor, front windows was the Duchess of Homburg, the wife of the Duke, the heat of the late afternoon went into the Duchess’ room.

       At perhaps 9:00 p.m., she came out to join the lectures and festivities, in the keep’s main area. A servant carried her scarf, on his arm and as he walked by several people, bumping into them, he apologized for disturbing them, as he tried to select each step as he walked.

       The Duchess was surprised the August Moon was out, a gibbous moon at that, the night had softened her breast for her servant, a young man of twenty-three, she was all of forty or more.

       “I heard ye heart beat,” came the oral words from the Duchess, the yellow burg in the background towering over their heads. As they went around into the long corridors on the other side of the rotunda, she spoke again, “Kiss me foot,” and he did, feeling it was as cold as ice.

       “Duchess,” he said, “ye are cold as ice.”

       “Oh, but this is surely an insult to my appetite, when I ask for a kiss I get a slur.”

       “I am sorry,” said the servant who had only been a servant a short while.

       “Ye run down politeness, is like taking the mortar out of the castle bricks, which is your livelihood, is it not?” she commented.

        “Tis no more than exercising a truth, my lady!” said the young servant boy.

         “Ye have brought the pig’s face out into the open into the warm windy night, have you not?  —who cares for truth, when pretense is the christened wine, the pleasures for the night—”

       The young lad arose heavily to his feet, there was something in his manner that warned him, he was not as he was before. The corners of his mouth had changed, his nostrils had widened, his feet had turned into hooves like, and he snorted when he tired to talk, crockery and tin ware like. He felt his face, it was a Pig’s face “It is,” he said, what he was thinking it was.

       He knew now, the Duchess was no novice with black magic, with repartee, and then she pulled out some bacon, from where only she knew, and dangled it as if it was a magic wand.

       He knew not what would follow next, but he feared it would be him being an entrée.

       Triumphantly he ran turning over a washbasin, and a loud wailing scream followed him, it was a 700-pound sow; she searched high and low for him. The hopes of the Duchess were that the sow would bring the gastronomical duel to a close.

       At the castle doors, leading out to the mote that circled the castle, were a standing guard, listening to the crash of the carts and utensils and so forth of the two hogs chasing one another.

       “I wonder, shall I go up and stop the ruckus?” he asked the Duchess, as now she had stepped to the side of the guard.

       “You will not.” She replied, “Let the folks have their fun, they get but a few pleasures in life.  ‘Twill not last long. We’ll just have to buy more dishes tomorrow.” And just then a loud scream came from below a stairway, betokening some dreadful fear, or awful end.

       The guard walked hastily in the direction of the noise, as the Duchess, in the other direction.  And the guard shortly afterward, returned with the news that, her servant was dead, that the sow had eaten him—“…pound by pound and limb by limb” (among other things). “He was, howling like a pig, in tears and hysterics, clutching the air in the sky,” said the guard, “a most hideous sight indeed!”

No: 652 (12-28-2010); During the early 1970s, the author was stationed nearby Homburg, while in the Military, and visited the castle one weekend afternoon, the great walls of the castle were very impressive . The story the author writes has no bearing on the castle, it is a work of fiction.

The Little People

The Little People, the grasshoppers of the world

Thinking, half asleep thinking—

From generation to generation duplicating

And reduplicating

Eating and laughing under the sun

Dancing and talking, gossiping, getting drunk—

Indulging; talk about the wise in mockery

(how they want to live on forever—think they’re

cleaver, better, because they’re wiser… )

Could care less of possessing the future—

Grasshoppers shrill, that is what it is called!

Piercing the simple truth, “We’ll all be dead,

Buried deep, muscle and bone, all alone,

Like stone, very, very soon!”

Not troubled until the day of ill repute—; like the

Grasshoppers, they have the same temperament—

       the little people.

#3347 (5-8-2012)

Ode, to: The Gentile Giant of Trujillo

Into our sight Uno-grande, the big one came

Over eight foot tall, three-hundred pounds,

Hungry as a greedy hawk, a pale hound!

He came one day—

       I first saw him at eight years old

He was old, not strong shouldered,

Joyfully laboring to steal our charqui—

Hooked onto our clothesline outside

Salted and dried, being prepared for winter storage!

“Never fear,” papa said, “we shall wait for him

Catch him,” papa looked dark and fierce.

Back then, about 1928, we lived outside Trujillo—

Nearby, was the wooded countryside…

Where Uno-grande ran blithely to, with our charqui!

His great blue eyes were brimmed

With wild beauty, and calmness, he was harmless!

Tumbled like a clown, when he ran (escaped)

But higher than our house I think…

It was here papa and the neighbors caught him

He had chosen our loft to steal from

Hungry as a greedy hawk, a pale hound!

Old and harmless as a field mouse!…

There he stood, like s ship on a reef

There was nothing to do, the old giant had lost

Most of his strength, age makes a man weak;

There was no violence in him…

He was in fact drowning with exhausted flesh

His laboring days had long past!

I don’t know how he met death, perhaps I

Dreamed it, that he died happy and well…

But Papa and Ma, and the neighbors too

All left food out for him to eat, from that day on,

He surely ate well. And he too: hunched and

Full of happy fury, would leave a deer, or corn

Even a few times—chickens, at our door!

No: 3340 (5-5-2012)

Inspired by Manuel Valera, who during a Saturday afternoon dinner at the author’s home, while sitting around talking with several guests, and the subject being giants, he told the author of his grandmother’s experience, back in the late 1920s…and thus, came the “Ode, to the Gentile Giant of Trujillo.”

The Mistress from Hydra (A poetic drama/narration)

(The Scene: inside a stone house, on the Greek island called Hydra; 1200 BC, two women with their Mistress are talking about an affair that never took place, that the Mistress wished would have…)

1—Forbidden Pleasures

“The wound will not heal” She said.

“The black storm will blow over,” the other murmured.

“Fool, it is death she ponders.” She said.

“Time heals all pain!” the other murmured.

“Fool, it is death she seeks.” She said.

“The cold knife of revenge,” She adds.

“Fool, it is death she thinks.” She adds.

“I do not think, I know!” confirms the Mistress.

“Fool, she sees corpses.” She said.

“Silence will make her well!” the other murmurs.

“Silence knows no right or wrong…” she adds.

“You think too much.” She says.

“Fool, she cannot find her mind,” She adds.

“Be quiet, just cover my folly!” demands the Mistress.

“Mistress, the wound will heal!” the other one murmurs.

“Fool, what is a woman’s happiness?” She said.

“The Mistress has been long in the sun,” the other one murmurs.

“Fool, she is a lost bird.” She says.

I1—Death in the House

“Who was he?” He asks in black rage.

“Your son raped me,” says the Mistress.

“Only blood will heal,” She says.

“And it will be her blood,” He infers.

“But this is what I wish!” She agrees.

“Men are like wolves, leaping over tall walls for pleasures,” She adds.

“Silence is best,” the other one murmurs.

“Women liars, even unto your own hurt,” He tells all three of them.

       (‘The Mistress has iron for guts,’ contemplates her husband…, trying to figure out who she in inferring raped her; ‘perchance it was not rape, possibly she was slighted, and a woman slighted, her hate is stronger than her love.’)

“Love vanishes, when hate engorges the mind,” She says.

“Yes, you two are twins, her devoted,” He tells them. 

“Shame will not die in the grave,” She says.

“But he is your son,” the Mistress admits.

((Stunned silence)(the son falls to his knees, as he has just walked into the house, where his father’s wife, and the two servants have given false testimony, because of a jealous Mistress, who had been scorned by the son, the woman rejected, and ridiculed because of her obsessive lust for him —the sword is deep under his breastplate…)) 

“Fool, she hung herself,” She says.

“He was a woman’s fool,” the other one murmured.

“He is old, easily fooled,” She says.

“We wound ourselves,” the other one murmurs.

“We better go, anger in such a man is displaced, to who the closest is,” She says.

“The god’s have played a trick on us all,” the other one murmurs.

“No, it is Hades madness,” She says.

((In Hades, the henchmen laugh) (they howl like dogs—and everyone can hear them…))

“Beware,” says the Narrator, “the henchmen, have put poisonous vipers in the garden; hungry wolves near the fireplace; knives and swords close at hand in the houses and homes of old men and young women of Hydra: for one thing, and one thing only—Revenge!”

#913 ((5-6-2012) (short story))

#3342 (Poem)

The Lost Legend of Coto Coto

(A poetic drama/narration)

A company of Spanish soldiers

Riding below a gibbous moon

(one evening over a hundred and fifty years ago or so)

Through the old Wanka ruins in Chilca,

Near Huancayo, in the Andes of Peru—

Heard a babe, bellowing, crying in the Eucalyptus

Woods, nearby on the ridge of the Mantaro Rio;

There they beat the bush, through the thick foliage

And found, a naked babe, alone, abandoned

On the damp infested ground:

Crying, screaming, like a gibbous hound:

Looking up towards the moon!

“How could anyone leave a babe in such a way?”

Questioned the Command Sergeant Major?

The Captain huddled the babe under his coat—

(to keep it warm from the impending cold rains)

Rode but a little ways, when fire spouted from the

Infants mouth—with rage!

The Captain shrieked, flung the child from

His breast, into the nearby bushes—

And faster than the Hounds of Hell,

Holding his breath,

He galloped senseless, out of the woods, threw

The old Wanka ruins of Coto Coto

His company behind him

—that is it!

#3346 (Poetic drama); story: 916

Dedicated to the Mayor of Chilca: Abraham Carrasco

Wounded by Death

Here is a poem (for the students at the UNCP) I did especially for you, with a beginning and end, I call it “Wounded by Death” (we must remember, a poem is a short condensed story):

Wounded by Death

Death comes sometimes right in front of you,

Sits down right beside you!

You hoot and holler at Death!

Your throat clicks, tightens,

It begs for breath…

Only to find out, what death says

Is correct:

“I’m not here for you, —be silent!

I have come for her…”

Thus, that tight throat

That was begging for breath,

That was twitching,

Now is at rest.

Death proceeds around you

Yet, you know it will be soon:

The years of your age,

Your heart, perhaps cancer—

Death knows, that you know

He will not abandon you!

#3341 (5-5-2012)