Victoria the Mad

  

And so was Victoria the Mad who had long black-colored hair:

       a torn dark dress she wore, worn thin with hanging threads, a black cord for a belt…

—walking hastily here and there, often in the City’s square, 

       Plaza de Arms

She was a lost ewe—her thin young face wind-burnt.

       “Who’s that?”

       “Victoria the Mad” they’d say; a tin can in her hand, for soup, coffee or a handout

The joy that once lived in her face was long gone, she walked

       about as if she was deaf and dumb, with forward eyes

And a lifted head, delicate lips that seldom got fed.

It was as if the devil himself coiled his horns into her brain!

And those who saw her neither looked back nor  

       edged  forward.

And this day as like many days, a child of ten ran by, she snatched at his

       sandwich, she offered no threat

“Oh please, oh please,” she begged meek as a ewe.

“You let here alone, you’ll get hurt,” the mother wailed at the 

       boy, “she’s mad!”

She thanked him, and her mind followed more quietly.

The little black haired boy, said gently to his mother, “Remember the good Samaritan?” cried the lad.

She answered, “Her kind, work on your kindness, oh yes,  

       remember that!”

The friendly boy and his mother moved out of the

       Plaza de Arms, and Victoria like a hungry ewe ate her Food “Good-by, good-by,” she said as she kept northward,

       sniffing, talking to herself.

In the evening she found a hollow opening, under a bridge,

       it was summer, and the grass was warm.

She laughed and was glad, she undid a bundle of this and   

       that, and shared her bread with some mice and birds—Dividing it three ways, she kept the crust.

“I can even eat grass,” she told the birds “I’ve done it before,”  

       and they came close and stood by her, and she drank Water from the tin cup she had, filled it from the creek   

       underneath the bridge.

“We have to go on,” she whispered, sobbing with fear

      as if talking to herself, or the birds.

  “Why do I have to be like this?” she mumbled.

A halved moon had arisen over the bridge, she touched her

       knotted hair, a mist from the nearby river came, up Stream.

She stared at the old stones that held the bridge together,

       she was restless, and heard noises, awaiting dawn.

In the morning—like so many mornings, little clouds drifted

       overhead, sunrise, she lifted her thin boned body up

And followed the stream very slowly, looking for garbage in

       canisters, nibbling on thrown away chicken bones, left, Sucking

The bones dry; leaving her numberless foot prints behind.

She made an inarticulate bird like cry, and the birds in a

       Eucalyptus tree, scrambled…they dashed over her!

She eyed curiously a young man’s face, her parted lips

       cracked by the sun and wind…she was daydreaming!

A woman looked out her second story apartment window

Said: “The poor thing,” and threw a piece of meat down to the

      dog,  “there now,” she said, “find the food.”

Victoria lived in Huancayo, Peru for nearly thirty-years,

       and perhaps more, anxiously avoiding traveled roads, And hiding herself from people, now and then, and in later Years more often.

She became a toothless tramp, with grinding pang in her

       back,

Between agony and before exhaustion, one day, she within  

       her habitual habitats, simply up and

       disappeared…!

              #3329 (4-22-2012)

Nightmare in Seattle

(Seattle, Washington, 1967)

 Space Needle in Seattle, 1967

In 1967, I had gone to Seattle with a friend, and I and him had ended up broke, one evening he had stayed in our rented apartment, and I went with some friends I had met to a party, grim, terrible, empty and envious I was. Hunting in their house for some food, they all looked quite healthy, it was evening and the moon was out, —and I’m not sure at that point how I did it, or how Jeff my partner did it, but we were barely able to starve off Starvation; on my travels, even at this young age of nineteen, such times were infrequent.  In Minnesota where I lived, in St. Paul, I had never gone empty, but now it was one misfortune after another or so it seemed, so that now, I was somewhat hovering in a chair at this house party in the living room, and several fellows and a number of girls, among them one who owned the place and her girl friends were all high on playing rock and roll records, feasting on pieces of ice some drinks, while I was experiencing all these pangs of famine and near hatred  for their easy going lifestyle, it was as if they were enemies waxed strong in my breast.    

       I was hoping by going to this party, there would be food, and I noticed a loaf of bread sitting in the kitchen, on the kitchen counter. It was tantalizing, indeed, to sit there hungry while these young kids: sixteen, seventeen, maybe one or two my age, had  filled themselves so full of food before the party, that their stomachs seemed to almost burst as they danced about, hunger can be a live and living nightmare: and from this experience I’d never deny anyone a slice of bread the rest of my life to this very age I am today, at nearly sixty-five, you don’t forget hunger, and if someone says, has the courage to say, can I have a slice of bread, I would never deny them; but of course this hunger thing didn’t, surely didn’t cross the host’s mind.

       At this time I was assailed by no doubts as to the ethics of grabbing the loaf and just eating it—running with it to hid somewhere and eat it alone, but I asked the girl whose house it was, thinking this was an opportunity to make a sandwich, and she said “No!”

       I thought for sure she’d say: “Of course, go partake in the feast, if a sandwich is what you want go for it.”

        But she insisted it was just a party of drinks and ice, and being cool was chewing on ice: as if the loaf of bread was a carcass, and it would not be keen to partake of the gods, in such a  feast, with bread, I felt as if I was a carrion-eater.

       What I was at this moment was a very hungry wild beast whom  caution was holding in leash, for the greater moment, but I’d have to remain there should I want that loaf of bread, and hope to pass unharmed, because it would be necessary to fight for it, so it appeared, and I couldn’t stand there as they watched me, and I watched them gorge down drinks of soda and whatever and ice, and if there were some scraps thereafter, after they had gone, I would get them—maybe. I was in a stupor, and I didn’t want to beg.  In all my travels I never did beg, nor found it to be the way to go, I’d work, then ask for something, never beg for free food, that was not a man thing, it was a mouse who does that: and in my travels I have met many of them.  They start as kids, and end up as men and old men—mice, always looking for the free handout.   

       It seemed that the greedy would rather burst than give up that loaf of bread, I admit, for a time they had broken up the monotony of eating by their executing portions of ice eating, soda drinking, and dancing,  but once my mind got bored, I was again stimulated, my digestion stimulated to fall again once again, to appalling consumption thoughts.

      It was nearly ten o’clock when I left, they were nearly falling to sleep from exhaustion from their dancing, and trying to make time with the girls, I left them to the orgy of ice and whatever—I was hoping I could snatch a handful of something, but my ethics would not allow me. So I left with a great emptiness grinding my teeth, my stomach gnawing, craving for food, but man can live long without food, it is really water they cannot survive long without; so I learned, for  it was four days with no food, and a week before that with little to no food. 

       On the way home I was going to rob a Boy Scout of some candy he was selling house to house, but I remained true to my ideals,  as tight as a head of a drum, and let him be, then several gang members came towards me, and I didn’t run but dragged myself slowly towards them, then I saw a police car drive by in back of them going the opposite way, and I yelled knowing they’d not hear me but distract the gang, when they turned to see, I ran between two houses and escaped.

       The struggle  for food was short lived thereafter, I had been working, and got paid a few days later, and bought a lot of fast food, food!—only to find out, I couldn’t eat it all, I was trying to gorge myself,  but my body was satisfied with just a small portion of it.

       Well, to make a long story short, Seattle from the word go, from start to end, was one big disaster, but that’s another story.

#906 (4-19-2012)

A Friend to Old Age

I am still found hunting in my dreams for answers why man is so contaminated; although they are like deep shadows in the woods, silent alertness to the figures that come and go—swift and softly they fly by me, no indiscretion. Sometimes I try to repel the advance of the old vintage sumptuous building of a heroic ending, knowing my real age is not my dream age—and this is impossible for me at times, to stick to reality, but it is offered freely—this heroic dream state, but I suppose even in the woods, these woods, my mind tells my subconscious tells me, now its chief pleasure is in a kind of an elegant ending—that’s how it should be, not how it is or will be, or was: why stick to reality, let’s go to the impossible.

You see, in reality, in the waking world—oh this is a long story but let me try, in the waking world, my chief please is perhaps in a kind of meditation, a conversation now and then with me, induced by the silence which I impose around me. It comes to be kind of a sport. And when back into my dream state if I wish, and I really don’t wish, but it comes up anyhow, I fight the boars in the woods, drive them out, slain by my wit and sword, dipped in fury, fire and wine. Then I come here to find paper and pen, and write these thoughts. Thoughts suggested by the dream world my dream world, and the daydreaming world, my daydreaming world and at times the real past, the physical night and day—it intertwines.

A fleet of thoughts, stock-still, I set into motion, they have wings and settle upon a transparent rock, lounging easily I can pick them up one and all, or one by one, and form a story, this story for instance, comes from some fragmented dreams I had last night; now that I have time in my old age to do so, when I was young, I had a low voice, no time to write as I do now, I was just passing though life, made it somehow to old age by some little folks from Venus, or was it Mars, a thousand priestesses protected me, surrounding my green hills inside that woods, from the enemy, the Syrians and the Jews and the Vietnamese, and the Chinese…and so on.

It is all like a play, life in the physical, even to a certain degree life in my dreams (without dreams we’d become dehydrated), it’s the free animation and attentiveness of the mind in the dream state, in the mind, my mind which has a track, a mote, a sunbeam, carried all the way from Venus to protect me, it is amusing to them to watch a young man turn old. This alone has its own deep solitudes, a goddess from another world hunting for a companion, in worlds that are crowed—not to get old with but to tell them it is time to say whatever you got to say.

It is all part of old age I suppose, it is like finding two friends you’ve always had, and never took the time to greet properly, or gave them the time of day, to search the halls of the mind, where they sneak into. Even sneak into the hidden libraries of your mind, as if it all was forbidden until now, until old age—trying to nibble within your mind before the irrevocable advance of death falls upon you, murmuring hanging thoughts of their own: how do I know this? Because I have asked, ‘Where did this silly thought come from?’

Here in my mind I can see Nero murdering his mother and brother, and he deserved to die, but he lived, but why? I pitied Rome, and I saw all the old people who were allowed to get old, and all the young people that were not, and I heard of death, it’s a word of irony, who has but a few friends—‘Sometimes,’ so he told me ‘I give a moment of hesitation, it’s all superficial, lazily eyes are melancholy; but once I tap at the door, there is no turning back.’ So whatever the case may be, old age is my friend: if you think of it, 160,000 people die a day in this world, perhaps over 100-billion have walked the earth, how many have been allowed to get old—a very low percentage I would think? If only Death would now roll out the scroll on this subject, I’d know, instead of guess, but I know if you live past sixty, you’re lucky, and past seventy, you’ve lived longer than King David, and if you make it to eighty or ninety, you are more than lucky, you are the exception, especially if you can think straight.

I suggested to Death, that he should lend it to me his scroll on how many got to be old: he shook his head right to left, that was a polite ‘no’ he even told me, ‘It’s not my property.’ I said, ‘I might ask at a later date.’ And guess what he said, ‘If you have any intentions to do so, do it now, it may be too late tomorrow for you,’ and I seemed to hear the words, ‘…curiosity killed the cat.’ What does he know that I don’t know? I don’t want to answer that question, nor ask him, perhaps one of the great gifts of God is not to know.

Outwardly unmoved I changed my thinking: to the old of Rome Empire which was spared, and then to Nero who was the result of false teachings by someone, perhaps Seneca; a brutal, voluptuary murderer—and emperor of Rome—who never got to get old, nor his mother or brother. But he was allowed to get raw and crude and narrow in his ways, but not old.

Somewhere along the line he became—himself—the whole of humanity, yes, Nero was all of that, perhaps likened to: Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, Pol Pot, like to like, all these kind of dictators: they all would build a new world, according to their wills. All these murderers call upon the gods, those little gods that only live in their minds, to protect their humble, and victorious affairs: like Obama, he too, belongs to the same order of thinkers as Nero, although with a finer and perishable nature. It is a hatred of humanity, an intangible substance they can’t surmount, even if they conquered the whole world—like Alexander the Great, another murderer, and Hannibal, and Giangos Khan, Taberlane, or former president Johnson who was responsible for killing 56,000-Americans in the Vietnam war, sending 500,000-troops to keep the war machine moving in America, and the industry at full capacity.

It is easy to fill a regiment of thinkers like those I’ve mentioned above and place them throughout the world, like: Saddam Hussein, Nero, and Obama (who keeps the wars going on in the Middle East as if it is a Christmas Present for American Industry), and his kind, but of course this is not what they proclaim humanity wants but he has no choice, but they don’t believe in humanity—they are part of the unalterable conditions of life, they believe in themselves as little gods—and the fewer the better, so they can rule the more, and of course the philosophy they choose to live by: kill a thousand in war, without a blink of an eye, and call it, what you will: National Security, for the home of the brave, and they don’t believe in old age, not for humanity’s sake anyhow, and they hid behind solid brick white doors, they pray the stomachs of the many are weak or become weaker, for us to rule in our dreams and sleep, while they control the waking world. But again I must agree, I am one of the fortunate; I’ve been allowed to grow old, but only by the grace of God, not by those so called elected.

#893 (3-309-2012)

A Night’s Work

Scene: A snowy November evening, 2005. I am walking along Second Avenue in New York City, smoking a big stogy cigar, shopping for Christmas presents, and I spot an old friend, Martin Jose Luis (some ancient Inca last name I think), carrying a bulging bag of materials, he used to live in Lima, Peru, I knew him well then, he was an editor of a magazine. He is trying to keep his undersized hat on his head, it is cold, and snow is falling, it’s about 5:00 p.m., and it gets dark early. He is quite shorter than I am a five-footer.

Like I said, he used to be a professional writer, editor for a magazine, but now works as a car washer at night cleaning men’s cars who work during day hours. He tells me he makes eight dollars an hour, works seven days a week. He works nearly ten hours a day, maybe more, perhaps less depending.

For the most part his customers require him to clean the car, inside and out, once a week.

Martin Jose is eighty years old, he has lived in New York City off and on for forty-years or more, and the past six years he has not returned to Peru. He is not married, his Peruvian wife died several years ago. He does have a married son who lives in Chicago, and three grandchildren, he calls them his: ‘Special rug rats!” Refers to them as: Rug Rat One, Two and Three: and always ends up by saying—when he talks about them—‘Bless their little rug rat souls!”

Martin is short thin, pale, drinks too much I think, and drugs; he has a dark brown color to his skin, he likes negro women, and proud to say it. I’ve known Martin for eons: and when in Lima, periodically we used to get together; he did some articles on my books years ago. He used to be really conscientious and diligent in his work.

I suggested to him I follow him around this evening so I could do an article on him—this here short story (although I’ve not circulated it until now 2012, the reason being, he died in February, and I am now rewriting it in March of 2012, but it took place in 2005), he’s known many people in his heyday, which is apparently long gone. He tells me I can stand by why he does his work, if I give him twenty-dollars; he needs another bottle of wine, or perhaps its whisky. I agree.

DS: What do you have in that bag of yours?

Martin: Rags, sponges, cleaning material, you know, that kid of stuff. I have to go to their hotels and houses and into their garages, and I have these keys they leave me, and I have this little vacuum, and I have to wash the car and vacuum it, and they don’t have time to tell me anything, all wound up in their own life. They call me on the cell, and that’s about it. It takes me about three hours to wash and clean it; they put the money in the glove compartment.

DS (after entering the first garage at this large hotel, there is a fair size car to the right, bluish color): Yup, I see what you mean. This new Cadillac looks as if it went through the Grand Canyon.

(Inside the car are hamburger wrappings, cardboard containers that say: Big Mac, and KFC, and bottles of Coke, and 7-Up, empty cigarette wrappings, etc. There are also catch-up and mustard packages all about the front and back seat, wine bottles, no cans.) Why do you think he drinks just wine bottles no beer cans, and all that fast-food?

Martin: He’s an Engineer on a Train! He’s used to wine, and always on the go.

DS: Oh, yes that makes sense.

(His cell phone rings, he’s looking for it can’t find it, it is someplace in his pants pockets or overcoat he thinking, he’s putting the vacuum cleaner down and looking for it, but can’t find it. Then he finds it, it’s in his bag…)

Martin: Who’s this?

A Man’s Voice: This is a friend of TC, are you cleaning my car?

Martin: This is Martin!

The Man’s Voice: I know that, are you cleaning the damn car?

Martin: You don’t have to swear, yes, I am cleaning your car right this very minute as we talk.

The Man’s Voice: Make sure you take the panties out of the clove box and get rid of them before my wife sees them, okay?

Martin: I guess so, but don’t give me that: make sure stuff, I can do it, but I don’t want any trouble with your wife.

The Man’s Voice: For gods sake, just please get rid of them.

Martin: Well, that’s better; sure I can trash them for you—again!

DS: Trouble with the customer?

Martin: Yes, he thinks I’m his nigger-goat.

DS: Who’s TC?

Martin: Who do you think it is?

DS: No idea.

Martin: Truman is his first name, that queer, you know.

DS: You know him?

Martin: I know lost of goofballs. Look here what it says on his dashboard, I’ll read it to you:

‘Ernest, Ernest Hemingway

Always liked his own way

He was a little brat, which ate

Dead cats, and I’m glad he blew

His head off, like Sylvia Plath’

DS: Is this fellow a poet?

Martin: No, not really, but he’s always writing something on his dashboard. Things, just things that don’t make any sense; here, look at this you know what this is?

DS: A plastic penis?

Martin: He’s like that queer TC.

DS: You mean Truman Capote?

Martin: You know who I mean, TC, he’s an egomaniacal, sadist, queer, like his fag friends: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsbergs

DS: How do you know Truman had them as friends?

Martin: I never saw one that didn’t like one: like to like you know: heathens, they’re all heathens.

DS: Is this guy a gay person, or bisexual?

Martin: you’re really polite, he’s a nigger-queer, rich too with a wife, Jewish kind of fellow, can you beat that, he has all the ingredients.

DS: It’s kind of stuffy in here.

Martin: Queers, they all ought to be in an aquarium.

DS: How about Poets and writers? Which ones do you like and hate. And what works do you like of theirs?

Martin: Well, is this all for your research.

DS: Of course.

Martin: I like the short story: “Mountain Victory,” by Faulkner. I like the book: “Men Without Women,” by Hemingway. I like Truman Capote’s “Music for Chameleons,” even if he is queer. I like Plath’s poems, “Ariel,” I like Sherwood Anderson’s “Windy McPherson’s Son,” that’s the only thing he wrote worthwhile. I like some of Dylan Thomas crap, he liked his booze like me (he takes a bottle of Windsor Whiskey out from his coat pocket, and gulps half it down). Want a swig?

DS: No thanks, tell me more.

(The car is clean, and now he’s polishing the chrome.)

Martin: Mind if I take another swig?

DS: Please. Go ahead, be my guest.

Martin: I heard you quiet some time ago?

DS (he drank the whole bottle down, and now he is getting unpleasantly pleasant, if you know what I mean, too much to drink, his moods are shifting like a dizzy wasp): I got to get going, looks like you’re almost done with this car anyhow, I got all the research I need.

Martin: If you have to go, you have to go.

#892 (3-29-2012)

Being Born

It is the big unseen, “Woops,” there I am. Someone says, “It is time now,” and mother pushes and tugs and clutches onto the bed railings.

As I come out of her womb, I hear an echo, far in the background, “It is your time now.”

Who said it I don’t know. There is some bloodshed in leaving this nearly one year home, cozy as it was, to enter these enormously larger surroundings. There are of course several moments child and mother collide, a series of little and final evictions, the nurse and the doctors are there watching all this, ready to sign the birth certificate, and asking what the name will be, one to christen this new being, being born, in this primitive savage way.

I am sure many have written on this subject, spoken on it, much better than I, I seek in brief only to recap it, perhaps for myself, I was born because my mother met and exercised the act of passion with a man called my father, a different father than my brother’s but that is neither here nor there, I was born 4:00 a.m., in the morning at St. Joseph’s Hospital, in Minnesota, October 7, 1947. In my case, my father left before I was named, before the certificate was even rolled out of the doctor’s drawer, and whereupon the nurse tried to grab me and replace me with a dead baby so another family might have a live infant, but no dice, my mother saw the scheme, and stopped it. You see she heard, “It’s a boy!” You don’t say that to a stillborn child; and then she never heard another word—and that provoked suspension, and the other family wanted a boy, and so she kept her eyes half open, demanded: “Bring my boy to me!”

Her first baby, some two years earlier, was a boy also, my brother of course, now she had potatoes and carrots. That is, my brother always liked potatoes; I on the other hand, had bright red hair, carrot hair. My brother was christened on the spot. It doesn’t matter how it all began, it all turned out okay, we were a family, but I wonder whatever happened to that other family unit—the two who almost made three, who had the stillborn? They couldn’t say, and didn’t say: “De tar en pojke” (…‘it is a boy! I’m sad for them, but glad for me’).

#894 (3-30-2012)

The Ghoul of; 97 Collingwood Street

Scene: Near midnight, in the dojo where I lived it is quiet, the night outside is still and calm, you can hear a few cars and horns now and then, but calm and quiet for the most part. It is at 97 Collingwood Street in San Francisco, it is the summer of 1968. I am living at the Dojo, until I find an apartment, I am studying karate under the Chief Instructor, Master Goesi Yamaguchi, no one else, black belts or whomever will stay overnight in this Dojo, they have, and have told me time and again, it is haunted. I have now lived here going on three months. I sleep on a couch facing the dojo, and its arched entrance. I am awoken this evening by some noises:

I stood in the archway alone and a bit dazed, listening to the vanishing sounds of chairs being thrown all about, the windows shaking, I tremble some; look out the window, everything seems to be fine, no storm, no earthquake, no anything, I’m the only one in the dojo, the chairs are all in place. Then I think—as the noise continues throughout the dojo—what might be lurking, in the unseen?

Again I walk about the dojo, even up onto the platform, and down again, a casual inspection of the place, but when I moved toward the arched entrance, I detect a presence nearby—a hint of motion, by the wooden archway, leading to my bed, my couch that is, where I sleep. It is approaching the archway: with a triumphed ululation— I call out poignantly, to this unseen ghastly and noxious frightful, and mind-blowing, beggaring description, entity: “Who are you, I’m not afraid of you, show yourself!” Not sure now if this was a wise decision to nearly insult the nondescript.

Now I had delirious company. I cannot even hit what it was like, the uncanny and unwelcome spirit, walked by me slowly, I could see the bending, the impressions his bulk made as he took step to step by me, bone-revealing horror—he must have been huge. The floor showed his ghoulish food prints, as if it were a shade of grey being imprinted with each step he made into the collapsing grain of the wood. It was something from antiquity, desolate, putrid; God knows it was not of this world—or no longer of this world.

Nearly mad, I found myself unable to fight it with the stick in my hands, and although the noise stopped—as if it and been on a rampage—I found myself saying: “Lord, if ever I needed you I need you now, please!” And I said it out loud, and I was not a prayerful man in those days. I did not shriek, but the fiendish ghoul vanished, with his rampage, I could even hear his hideous hallow breathing, as he left.

Before I went back to sleep on that sofa-couch that looked through the archway and into the dojo, where the apparition pressed so hard into the wooden floor, I said to him: “We’ll have to share the dojo,” and that was that, the last I ever said to him, or heard from him.

#895 ((31March, 2013) (12:28 a.m.))

The Vanished Tomb of Ancovilca

Prelude: High up in the Andes in the Valley of Canipaco, of Peru, from what is known, as the House of Falcon, came the Hanan Chanka era, which lasted for about 1500-years. It was a race of warriors that drank the blood of their enemy, from their skull caps. From this line came two gods, great warriors: Ancovilca, whom had the teeth of the lion, and Uscavilca, who had the thumbs of a great giant.

The Valley of Canipaco is four hours from the city of Huancayo, and the Mantaro Valley of Peru, 10,500 feet in the Andes, eight hours from Lima. It was said, both of these gods: that they were entombed within the cliffs of the Valley of Canipaco, within its many encircling tunnels, and that within the caves resides the gold filled tombs of both warrior-gods, and in particular—in this case, we are referring to the Tomb of Ancovilca. And thus, this is where our account starts and ends…

His clothes were of gold, somehow he knew that; two days without water, or food, exhausted, dizzy, about to drink his urine, but what was the use, his heart rapidly beating, rapidly breathing—g-forces had taken over (his blood had thicken, his kidneys were hammering against his backbone, they would collapse soon, so he figured) too much carbon dioxide.

It all stimulated respiration (less air), in the dark, silent chamber tomb of the once warrior-god, Ancovilca.

He recalled how it all took place: first he had opened the chamber door, and poisonous gas had hit him hard, where organic materials where inside this tomb? He questioned in his delirium, ‘…of what, from what?’ He could smell methane. He had fallen to one knee—he remembered that, covered his mouth, had a kind of half conversation with his mind, he was dizzy, not sure if he woke up, or what, but here he was, on one knew dizzy. And he was now trying to track it backwards, put it all back together: what took place. He had found one of the two tombs, he knew that, and it was Ancovilca’s tomb, somehow he knew that also. He considered he was excited, yes more than excited, immensely exuberant. He went inside to explore it, no, he hadn’t at first. First he had moved the wall stone in front, only two inches, then it activated somehow, something, and it opened by itself, then—and then the stone behind it, closed the chamber back up, imprisoned him, as he had fallen to his knee, that’s what happened, how long he was on his knee was any man’s guess: but he was stationary, or had he fallen to sleep and woke up and was back on his knee? It all was a bit confusing.

Whatever the case, he never got to see the contents of the tomb. “Yes, that’s how it was,” he told the voice in his mind. He had no matches, no flashlight, he was, he knew he was the first to have ever entered this chamber in over a thousand years, “Damn,” he said, “I should have come with someone, with a flashlight, oh yes, I left it outside the doorway that’s why I don’t have it, I had to pry the door a little, I put it down, was spellbound by the discover—yes that’s how it was.”

He had scrambled around the cliff caves or two weeks, with his wife and guide, Alfonzo, he now wondered what they were up to, down in the little mountain town-ship, perhaps having breakfast, waiting for his return. He had told them it would be three days and he’d return, be back, this was the third day, morning of the third day. He could see the glow from the dial on his watch it was the morning of the third day, it was all burr but he made it out: 8:00 a.m., August 28, 2011.

Several minutes had passed, now he remembered, gone over again, the size the chamber, he knew it was halfway big, he measured it, one wall of it anyhow, it was twenty-feet, he didn’t remember when he measured it, he just knew he did.

Now as it had been for going on three days: he listened to the intense darkness. It was as if it had breathed, as if it was breathing. That is when he had reached forward, yes forward, several minutes ago, on his hands and knees he had moved forward several feet, he had reached out, felt a foot, and it was as if it felt of flesh, no wood, no, a combination perhaps, but it was not mummified. Then clothes, he felt gold, yes a statue, or mummy he told his mind, the voice of his mind. It was gold he felt, but he got a reverberating echo from that voice, and it said: “No, no…nooo!”

Embodied, no emboldened by the thought, he stood up touched its hips, it seemed to relax, it was more than a statue, more than a mummy, “No, no….oo!” said the voice within his mind, within the immeasurable blackness of the chamber.

With his hands he felt the outline of its lower torso, his hands slid over the gold, the thing was several feet tall, he moved one foot back as it seemed to move one foot forward it self, and stood even more erect. Then a hand, its hand, clenched him—tightly, and he felt something stiff go into his back; that all was several minutes ago.

His wife and Alfonzo, found the tomb early that afternoon, it was open, wide open, and his body lay there dead, it was as if his kidneys were smashed to pulp, and the tomb was found completely empty.

#896 ((April 1, 2012) (12:30 p.m.))

The Rabbi’s Son

A young man, named Alon Jr. Or, his father being a Rabbi by the same name came at the age of twenty-three years old, from Tiberias, Israel, in that summer of 1982, to pursue his studies at Colombia University, in New York City. He was scanty supplied with money in his pocket, and took lodging at a cheep hotel in Manhattan, high up on the seventh floor, a gloomy back room of an old building—more like a studio apartment next to a stairway that lead up into an attic, and which in fact, exhibited an old cast-iron fire escape in the back of the building, right outside his window. Had his father known, had he seen the environment his young son lived, it would have looked unworthy to have been the place of such a fine and decent family member—who had a fair start in life, and especially a son to a Rabbi, and which, in fact, exhibited the outcasts, the grim of the city. The young stranger, Alon Jr. who was not unstudied, in the learning of his country (neither lacking in words proper for any occasion: substantial expressions as required in meeting and maintaining acquaintances), recollected now at fifty-three years old (some thirty-years had passed), the ancestors of his family, the poets and the great thinkers, politicians, warriors, the ancients. He pictured David Ben-Gurion, Arial Sharon, King David, and Solomon, as partakers of the immortal agonies of establishing his homeland, I mean to say, his Israel— and here he was.

These reminiscences and associations, had often, too often had a tendency to dishearten Alon Jr., it always had, ever since he had arrived in New York City, some thirty-years ago.

To a young man out of his normal surroundings, caused Alon to pick up with the ill-furnished apartment, in a gloomy hotel to save money, desolate he wanted friends. It was Virginia who cried out to the youth, and won his heart, a remarkable beauty of person, and he kindly endeavored to give her his breath and heart, now all these years had passed, and it still made this Rabbi’s son gloomy, just to recall it, to pull it back from its hidden chambers, and look at the bright sunshine it left. Somehow every year round the holidays, he mechanically did this, it was a cheerful moment in his life, before the drugs and the alcoholism, and pert near aids had expanded its fostering influences, cultivated his way of life, to where it became his way of life, and Virginia, she had left long ago.

And as one thing leads to another—as we all know and can attest to: a bad habit is gained in less than month, and too often, chased away only after a decade or two has come and gone, if ever; thus, he never did make it to the University, and he became old, working odd jobs. His father long dead had commended his protection to the old prophets, but he Alon Jr., never read his holy books while living in New York City. Or, not improbably, he might have once or twice, or on special occasions, but only in fragments—did he read those ancient writings of his forefathers.

Now living on the streets making gurgling sounds to the young men and women passing by, living under a cardboard box, no longer with immortal spirits, sung his song unceasingly as if it was embodied in marble, a simply song he heard his Irish friend sing, the one that slept nearby him—James, often slept nearby him:

“For they are jolly good fellows,

For they are jolly good fellows,

For they are jolly good fellows

That nobody can deny…”

As Alon awoke at 5:00 a.m., as often he did, looked out of a peephole in the cardboard box house he had build in an allay—after hearing sounds of a light conversation, a figure of a homeless dog emerged into view, and it showed itself as to be of no common breed, tall and thin, one could see its ribs, sallow in eye sight, so it appeared. It come into view, perhaps the animal was beyond its middle term of life (as Alon himself was), although having a face marked with youthful days; he made observations in regard to himself—in comparison, discovering they were seemingly inhaling the same air, occupying the same ground, nearly the same space, and I repeat, in the middle term of life.

“Here am I, my father’s son. What would he think?” he told the voice of his mind.

“Here doggie,” said a young woman, with her young man by her side, near the alleyway. And she took a fancy to the dog, by the impression she made to her young man, she wanted to keep the dog, care for the old fellow, a fair stranger indeed, a human sister to mankind, touched the dog lightly, and the dog approached her side, she most sedulously started hugging the dog, started to treat him like a chief treasure.

This somewhat shattered Alon Jr., mumbled to himself out loud: “Had I, as I am, approached this couple like the dog has so closely, my life might have had to pay a dear penalty as circumstances demand: treated harshly…they may even had called the police…” henceforth—a little melodramatic he was, yet he feared and felt he must be consigned to the sole charge of this cardboard box—until they left. And here the dog was bestowed with kisses and perfumed breath, from this fair lady, with all the tenderness of her manner, strikingly expressed on this hound, she even rubbed his eyes “Go forbid…” he said in an envious tone, or was it justified? Who’s to say?

(Say what you will but this dog seemed to possess the pair, without even one look at the cardboard box which surely they would have guessed to be a home of a homeless person, perhaps called: vagabond, who needed as much help as the dog did, for as yet it was scarcely sunrise: and no doubt, I am much among the rest: that is to say, I have so over-looked the peopled world, for fiction, and this story of course was and is inspired by non-fiction, and I can just imagine Alon peeping his snake like head and eyes with a hiss nearby that hole in the cardboard box, at the faint-hearted behavior of this couple, or perhaps to many, kindhearted. I cannot define the image of this homeless person any better than a: figure, loomed grimly in a nightmare; a victim of the times, no more than a scarecrow to onlookers, who see but dare not, or wish and do not or cannot acknowledge the brutal forces of the era on the human mind and body: whom if given a chance, might pleasing partake in a magical change, like the dog did, if only someone with denser substance would notice them.)

#897 ((April 13, 2012) (11:30 a.m.)) Inspirit in part by the homeless people of NY

The Demon’s Hideout

(Minnesota, 1990)

Un-humanized—that is what was happening to my cousin, that is what was taking place the summer, evening he knocked on my door and told me what was taking place in his apartment, he even told me, “My wife’s a witch.” And I suppose that is what happens when you meet the devil’s henchmen, his demonic forces with open arms, and lithely, his wife was doing just that, and she with them were dragging him into their web.

Indissolubly interwoven is how I refer to this transformation that was taking place, first his wife, now him, what made him come to me though? I’ll never know. This all was inexpressively shock to me—I didn’t know what to say, after he had knocked on my door, and told me what he told me, it was as if some good kind force had taken over his spirit for the moment: I kept a flat effect on my face, but an empathetic one with my eyes, I listened for the most part.

When I walked into his apartment at his request—his apartment building being across from mine—which one could see, had he or I looked out of our windows, on the second floor, at one anther, had I been standing in the kitchen and him in the bedroom— as I walked into his apartment building, and then directly up the flight of stairs, and through the door, being openly in his living room—erect, he demanded I tell him where the henchman was hiding; the best reasoning I could get out of him for the cause was, lack of sleep on his behalf—an intruder, invader for the most part, and it irritated him.

A visage that now met my eyes, was a large picture on the wall, it took no more than a few minutes, “He’s in the picture of the lion.” I told him. He looked at me as quizzical, with a tinge of reserve, but more than willing.

He had undergone a fearful change, thus, he quickly took the picture down, and the unwholesomeness, the dark chill that had swept over apartment, like a dark cloud crossing the moon at midnight, vanished, curved, as he put it in a hallway closet, outside of his apartment, and locked it.

“Oh yes, yes that was it,” he said “my wife’s bed was being lifted up last night by the demon; she’s a witch, a witch.” Perhaps that was part of the reasoning he’d not mentioned, being a cause for eviction of the demon; who’s to say?

“But you refuse to leave, you needn’t stay here if you don’t want to be married to a witch,” I suggested. There was no response. It wasn’t I caught on, a matter of leaving; it was a matter of eviction of the demon who was taking control, so I gathered.

But before this all took place within the confines of his living room, I had for a long moment continued looking at the painting—in the eyes of the lion, with the most acute and penetrating glance I have ever been fortunate enough to produce, and likewise encounter, for it equaled mine.

It was all evil with unwholesomeness, putrid, unclean. It is a wonder I told my voice within my mind: that I had been able to identify it so quickly, God was with me: and I had remained calm throughout this whole tribulation, or call it experience.

The unfortunate demon clutched both hands—I’m sure, for this occurrence was an intolerable sting, it was his refuge.

#898 ((April 13, 2012) (11:30 a.m.)) Inspirit by actual events