Humor

Obsidian’s Edge 12

1:15 pm
Water 2

Water seeks its final solution as it slips from cupped hands.
Does it remember when the earth was without form
and darkness was upon the face of the deep?

The waters under heaven were gathered into one place
and the firmament appeared.
Light was divided from darkness
and with the beginning of light came The Word,
and words, and the world …

… the world of water in which I was carried
until the waters broke
and the life sustaining substance drained away
throwing me from dark to light.

The valley’s parched throat longs for water,
born free, yet everywhere imprisoned:

IMG0035_1

in chains, in bottles, in tins, in jars, in frozen cubes,
its captive essence staring out with grief filled eyes.

A young boy on a tricycle bears a dozen prison cells,
each with forty captives: forty fresh clean litres of water.
“¡Peragua!” he calls. “¡Super Agua!”

He holds out his hand for money
and invites me to pay a ransom,
to set these prisoners free.

Real water yearns to be released,
to be set free from its captivity,
to trickle out of the corner of your mouth,
to drip from your chin,
to seek sanctuary in the ground.

Real water slips through your hair
and leaves you squeaky clean.
It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand.

It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky
and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.

Water 1 (Obsidian’s Edge 11) was published in At the Edge of Obsidian (2005). Water 2 (Obsidian’s Edge 12) was re-written earlier this year for Obsidian’s Edge. Both attempts are interesting (for different reasons) and I am wondering whether to keep both versions. Obsidian’s Edge is the continuing rewrite of the earlier book. This re-write is part of the ongoing revision of The Oaxacan Trilogy.

Obsidian’s Edge 11

1:00 PM
Water 1

Cupped hands cannot embrace you.

Do you remember when the earth
was without form, and darkness lay
on the face of the deep?

You yearned then to be released,
to flow from the darkness,
to flower in the sunlight.

Images and symbols:
flags flying within my skull.
The shrunken head pond
ringed like a bath tub;
fields scorched and dry.

The land’s parched throat
longing for liquid:
water, born free,
yet everywhere in chains.

This mirage of palm trees,
green, against burning sand.
This hot sun dragging
its blood red tongue
across a powder blue sky.

Panting for water, I lick my lips
like a great big thirsty dog.

Words begin with the “Let be!” of light —
and it divides from darkness.

Then comes the world,
the inner waters in which male
and female forms are borne;
when the waters break,
the life sustaining substance drains away,
throwing us from dark to light.

The mid-day sun rides the sky
rolling its dark ball-turret cherry:
blood red wine over and under
this double-barreled thunder cloud.

Bistro 5 Flash Fiction

Clematis

The clematis unfolds bruised purple on the porch. Beneath the black and white hammers of ivory keys, old wounds crack open. A flight of feathered notes: this dead heart sacrificed on the lawn. I wash fresh stains from my fingers with the garden hose while the evening stretches out a shadow hand to squeeze my heart like an orange in its skin. Somewhere, the white throat sparrow trills its guillotine of vertical notes. I flap my hands in the air and they float like butterflies, amputated in sunlight’s net. The light fails fast. I hold up shorn stumps of flowers for the night wind to heal and a chickadee chants an afterlife built of spring branches.
Pressed between the pages of my dream: a lingering scent; the death of last year’s delphiniums; the tall tree toppled in the yard; a crab apple flower; a shard of grass as brittle as a bitter tongue at winter’s end. I know for sure that a dog fox hunts for my heart. Vicious as a vixen, the fox digs deep at midnight, unearthing the dried peas I shifted from bowl to bowl to measure time as I lay in bed. I sense a whimper at the window, the scratch of a paw. I watch a dead leaf settle down in a broken corner and it fills me with sudden silence.
Midnight stretches out a long, thin hand and clasps dream-treasures in its tight-clenched fist. The lone dove of my heart flaps in its trap of barren bone and my world is as small as a pea in a shrunken pod. Or is it a dried and blackened walnut in its wrinkled shell of overheating air? Sunset, last night, was a star-shell failing to fire. Swallows flew their evensong higher and higher, striving for that one last breath lapped from the dying lisp of day. Its last blush rode red on the clouds for no more than a second’s lustrous afterglow.
I lower the delphiniums, body after body, into their shallow graves. Night’s shadows weave illusions from earth’s old bones and rock becomes putty, malleable in the moonlight. Midnight readjusts her nocturnal robes and pulls bright stars from a top hat of darkness. Winged insects with human faces appear with the planets and clutter the owl’s path. Night swallows the swallows and creates more stars. The thin moon hones its cutting edge into an ice-cold blade.

Obsidian’s Edge 10

12:15 pm
Mass In the Consolación

(Continued)

That young man
nailed to his wooden frame,
calling me by my name.

The boy on the cross has the wide open,
jeweled eyes of a flayed Mexican god,
living forever and never quite dead.

Black blood flows down his carved wooden face,
a river of coal dust waxed with carmine;
human hair, coffee colored skin,
the air heavy with burnt copal.

Trapped by the ring-master
in a never-ending series
of unforgiving circus acts,

my live-wire mind:
a pinball
bouncing within its triptych
from thought, to word, to deed.

Five hundred years of mixed tongues
whisper their multi-lingual
tale of a golden-haired god
walking out from ghost ships,
their illusory sails,
silhouetted in the sunrise.

Trapped beneath sultry snow,
the old god buried beneath the local volcano
belches his bitterness in lava and ash.

Obsidian 9

12:00 noon
Mass in the Consolación

1
This is not a normal church.
The lady in front of me opens her blouse
and offers her breast to her youngest child
who sucks there, noisily, greedily.

The old man behind me
holds a roll your own smoke
in the palm of his hand
and closes his eyes in ecstasy
as he draws in the marijuana,
holding it between tongue and teeth.

Three dogs, tongues lolling, discover
the bitch in heat who came here for sanctuary.
They chase her up and down the aisle
as the high priest doggedly murmurs
the blessings that uplift faithful hearts.

I have heard these words before.
Bored acolytes pass the anointing oil,
present the sacred wine.
Flowers and candles adorn the altar.

When the old man kneels for communion,
night breath lies whisky thick
on the high priest’s tongue.

I drowse during the sermon:
sacred words, secret worlds
open like oysters;
a laying on of hands;
footsteps leading nowhere .

Seculae seculorum:
that hard, crisp sound,
white and sharp,
like the inside of an apple
when strong teeth
penetrate the outer skin.

Candle flames caress the unwary,
bringing an artificial peace.

Yellow light marches across the altar.
The room warms up with song.
Wide open staring eyes.

That young man
nailed to his wooden frame,
calling me by my name.

Bistro 3 Flash Fiction

Blind Date

You couldn’t see the holes the doctor drilled in my head when he thought he was a woodpecker. You were oblivious to the bland, black splinters sprouting from my fingers and my neck. Unseen and unheard, the ladder-back drowsed its feathered siesta as peace descended to the cluttered attic of my mind. When push came to new love, the bluebird couldn’t find the old silver ring I borrowed from the curtains. How could you care about its failure to sparkle in the sun? When you ran your fingers through my hair, you cut yourself on a feather’s edge and my shirt rose up in the air and flapped with sudden writing, as red as blossoming flowers. You sensed their crimson dampness, but couldn’t see the petals turning skywards to a pallid moon. The clockwork mouse ran down the tower. The clock struck the chaos of a universe at sixes instead of sevens and we knew we two would never be one. You tapped with your white stick on the sidewalk, but before you drove away, you told me to keep my pity for falling leaves, for sparrows in winter, and for the defenseless chickadees who quest at the feeder and leave in fear of the kitchen cat with her dogged stealth: a game of paws and pause, crisp and silent through the green hair of the grass.

Hare and Pair

Hare and Pair
With photos
by
Clare

“Hare is the Lord of all he surveys and none can dispute his right … ”

Some do, mind, in spite of hare’s propaganda, for moose, raccoon, deer, Northern Goshawks, owls, and the neighborhood dogs, though these are usually kept on a leash, all make eyes at hare as he sits there, on the edge of the lawn, seemingly unafraid.

Hare can run. He can run very fast. He thinks he is the fastest there is. So he just sits there.
“I AM the fastest,” he boasts, and none can gainsay him.

Chipmunk knows he’s not the fastest. Mind you, he’s not that slow either, over short distances. Chipmunk is fast, but he’s also very, very cautious.

“”Is the coast clear?” he asks.”I’ll just pop my head out and have a little look.”

“Coast’s clear, dear. Heave ho, and out I go.”

“No one about. Weather looks nice. I’ll just go for a little run.”

“Off I go. Won’t be long, dear.”

“I’ve found something nice, dear. Some fresh new bedding. I’ll bring it home.”

“I’m on the way, dear. Pop that kettle on. Stretching like a long dog: I’ll soon be home.”

“Oh darn it! Forgot the groceries. I’ll have to go out again.”

“Wow! Some nice little goodies stuffed in my cheeks!”

“Hello, dear. I’m back. Give us a kiss.”
“Come in then. Kettle’s boiled. We’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

It will soon be all quiet on the southern front. The chipmunks have all gone. But the hare just sits and likes to stare. So he’s still there.

If a picture tells a thousand words,
this photo essay is 12,280 words long.

Obsidian’s Edge 8

11:00 am
Mist, Mystery, and Magic
Baños de Oaxaca

The steam soaks everything.
Fundy on a foggy day is not this dark.

Fundy 2004 003.jpg

A face looms through the mist
A hand taps me on the shoulder.

The masseur points me
to the next room:
he is a brown man, totally naked …
… he takes a step back,
startled by my whiteness.

The masseur gestures.
I strip off my shorts
and lie on the marble slab.

Incense caresses my brain
with its subtle invasion.

The massage begins.
Slow karate chops:
the heartbreak
in my muscles
begins to break down.

The masseur hums as he moves.
He drives each note home
with pounding fingertips.

I am the piano.
He is the maestro,
rippling the keyboard
with manipulative fingers.

Beethoven’s storm scene
in the Pastoral Symphony
must feel like this
in the Liszt transcription.

The music accelerates.
I am swept away:
a rudderless ship
on a sea of wild sound.

My abandoned flesh
releases itself to cauterizing
currents of earth and air.

Fundy 2004 004.jpg
My spirit overflows.
Eyes closed, drowsing,
my grey sea of grief
transmutes into
a river of gold.

Bistro 2 Flash Fiction

Bistro

LJ sat at a table in a dark corner of the Bistro. He held a plastic bag in his hands and moved what looked like dried brown fava beans, one by one, through his fingers. A priest at prayer, his lips moved in a silent mantra as he counted the beans: ” … twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.”

Robin and Will watched him closely, looking for the telltale signs that would announce LJ’s return to his former life.

Same-sex couples danced through the Bistro. They avoided this one corner that formed an oasis of severity amidst the gaiety and noise of Carnival celebrations.

“How much does he remember?” Robin looked at Will.

Will shrugged and the two men exchanged worried glances.

A whooping conga of men dressed in garish, feathered costumes that revealed more than they concealed, approached the table where the three friends sat. The conga came to a stop in front of them.

“Now what have we here?” The leader asked. He turned to his followers flashing a white, toothy smile.

“Let’s see what you’ve got, darling,” he reached towards LJ’s plastic bag.

“Don’t touch him,” said Robin, rising to his feet.

Three large men broke away from the line and two grasped Robin while the third put his arms on Will’s shoulders and held him in his chair.

“I’m warning you,” Robin said.

“Shut it,” said the leader.

LJ closed the plastic bag that held the twenty-nine fava beans and put it in is breast pocket, next to his heart.

“Don’t put them away, darling, they look delicious,” the leader grinned his enormous grin. He was a big man, not tall, but broad and heavy. “Give them to me, I want to eat one. C’mon, I’ll just pop it in my mouth and suck it.”

The Conga crowd roared their approval.

LJ got to his feet. He was a small man, but wiry. The night-fighter, they had called him. He was the one who slipped out at night through enemy lines and knifed the sentries. One hand over their mouths, one hand on his knife, all sounds extinguished till they relaxed, lifeless, then that one quick twist of the knife and the ear-lobe severed as the dead man was lowered to the floor.

“Wanna dance?” The conga leader wiggled his hips and ran his tongue over his lips, then puckered a little kiss.

LJ’s face turned red, the veins engorged, and his eyes stood out. Nobody saw him move, nobody ever saw LJ move. He grasped the Conga leader’s windpipe with his left hand and drew him forward until they were locked eyeball to eyeball. LJ’s night-fighter knife lay flat across the man’s jugular.

“LJ, no,” Robin screamed. “Not thirty.”

LJ kept staring at the man he held. His knife disappeared.

“You’re not worthy,” he said, leering into the Conga leader’s purpling face.

Will and Robin breathed a sigh of relief.

Obsidian’s Edge 7

Room in my Mind
10:30 am

My latest alebrije
wags his tail and flicks
forked lightning
from the forge of his mouth.

His ancient mocking spirit
slowly emerges
from the trickster wood.

Made from scrap metal
by the man down the road
who recycles old scraps,
Don Quixote sits on the reinforced
toecap of a workman’s old boot.

Two spent sparking plugs
join to form his body.
His presence lectures me
on the ages of gold and silver
long since past.

“We exist,” he says,
“in an age of recycling.”

Shadows double
themselves in the mirror:
recycled lines of shade
carve the shower’s glass.

Wary of shade and flame
I stand in a dust-
laden beam of sunlight.

Motes in my mind:
flesh and blood chessmen
play their game,
dark squares and light.

My neighbour has six cats,
two children, and a tulipán tree.

I bought her youngest daughter
chocolate, and she showed me
how to play a simple game of cards.
But the pack was different
with the three
ranking above the queen and jack.

I throw away my threes and lose the game.
She laughs at me and calls me tonto.
She is ten.

Nochebuena,
single and double petals,
crimson and cream;
cempasúchiles,
flowers of the dead,
guide their footsteps
leading my lost ones back to me.

I think of milk bottles placed on a concrete step.
When I go out in the morning, sparrows have pecked
the silver tops to get at the cream.

Memories: once open doors
now slowly close.

Keys no longer turn in the locks.
Sleep gathers in forgotten rooms,
falling like dust on silken flowers.

My mind drifts in and out
between sun and clouds.

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