therosettablog.com

Cigarette smoke permeates through John’s  teeth with every breathe, his habit or method (depending
on how you see such things) is to inhale ethanol and to exhale ash. He is alone
in the dark restaurant bar, so nobody knows about the second tour he just came
back from. No one knew his job “marginalizing threats” overseas, nor any sort
of history or biography of him at all. The present place and time was all that
was visible, yet it was the last thing on his mind, the only reason why it was
involved in his thoughts at all was that it constantly followed him, and it
gave John no say in the matter at all. Across the bar a business man (or at
least, what he assumed was a business man, the man was wearing a suit which
means he intends to be in business at the moment)  complaining to the bartender about his second
wife while simultaneously inhaling ethanol, as John is. Oak tabletops and
stools are commonplace in this area because for many centuries oak trees were
treated as obstacles to construction projects, the result of which is beautiful
oak furniture that lines every bar, restaurant, hotel, or business within a hundred
miles in every direction of the town. 

 

“Do you want another son?” A high yet distinctly male voice  woke John up out of his contemplative stateand brought him back to the inescapable present.

 

“Are you flirting with me?” John mumbles without turning an inch.

 

“Son, do I look like a queer?” the voice responded, getting even louder and higher .

 

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen you before, and I’m not even sure what ‘looks like a queer’ means,” John replied. He turned around to see a man in his seventies standing roughly around five feet tall glaring menacingly back at him.

 

“I saw you earlier at French’s, did you get the job?” the man replies.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” John says. He turned around and ordered another Jack and cola. “You’re mistaking me for someone else.”

 

The old man stood silently for a few seconds. “You just get out of prison or something?”

 

Jack rotated himself again and sat silently glaring at the old man for a few seconds. “Yes.”

 

“I knew it, I could see it in your face. Only one thing gives a man that look, and that’s being locked up in a cage. I should know, I spent twenty years of my life rotting away in a cage myself. How long were you in for?”

 

“Eight years.” John says.

 

“Holy shit boy, eight years. When did you get out?”

 

“About a week ago.”

 

“Holy son-uv-a-bitch. Charlie!” the old man motions at the bartender. “Bring this man a pitcher of whatever he’s having.”

 

“He’s drinking Jack and Coke Paulie.”

 

“Did I ask you what he was drinking? I just said bring him a pitcher of it.” The old man turned back to John. “My god son, how does it feel to be a free man?”

 

“It doesn’t.” John replies.

 

“It doesn’t?”

 

“It doesn’t…feel bad at all.” Jack says.

 

“Well no kidding. I have to take a piss, don’t go nowhere I want to talk to you.”

 

The bartender walked over with a pitcher of Jack and Coke down in front of Jack. “I read about you in the paper. You’re that Arabic translator who got kicked out for….”

 

John’s heart doubled it’s contraction rate and his hand shot up and covered the bartender’s mouth.

 

“I’m begging you, don’t say a word.” John dropped his hand. “Sorry about that. But this isn’t California you know.”

 

The bartender smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Enjoy your drink. Just let Paulie talk.”

 

“Who’s Paulie? The old man you mean?”

“Yes, the old man,” the bartender says smiling. “He can be areal asshole if you interrupt him, but he’s sweet as pie if you just let him tell you stories, so just let him tell you whatever story he wants. By the way,don’t drink all of that.”

 

“We’ll see,” John replies.

 

John picked up the pitcher and used
a fifth of it to fill the glass that the bartender gave him. He tilted his head
back and drank it in ten seconds and began to refill it.

“You’re not immortal you know,” the bartender says.

 

“I never claimed to be,” John says back.

 The bartender chuckles
and walks into a back room.

I want to fall in love a city

It ‘s 1:30 AM and Jake is trying to get us some food before sleep time. Nobody had passed us in the last thirty minutes. A man in a suit started to turn the corner. We could hear the clip clop of his 300 dollar shoes as he paced towards us. Jake stood up

“Pardon me sir, but do you think that you could spare some change tonight so that we could get a taco.”

The man in the suit didn’t even blink as he walked past us.

“Sometimes I pretend I don’t exist, but you’re really good at it,” Jake yelled.

We all laughed. Our dog Buddy eats better than us. More people stop to make sure that he has enough food than any other reason.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out my night clothes; an old sweater, a poncho, and a pair of ski pants. Jake and Sal are  nineteen, I’m twenty-three. I’ve been living on the streets ever since I was sixteen years old. I left Mom’s trailer because I couldn’t take living with her anymore. She was psychotic, maybe because she took too much acid in the sixties, maybe her blood was just bad. Whatever it was, she would tear up the house at least once a week and beat the living hell out of me, so when I was ten, I decided to get out of there as soon as I had some money. I ended up leaving sooner than that.

It’s okay though, now I have plans.

Big plans.

Well okay, a plan.

All three of us are going to go to New Mexico to start a mushroom farm. Jake says that he knows a ranch that we can live and that we could grow Psilocybin mushrooms and make some serious money. Or at least, enough so that we don’t have to eat out of the trash anymore.

You would be surprised what people just through away without even thinking twice about it.

Jake walked over to the trashcan and stuck his arm in.

“Jackpot!” he yelled. “sandwich, still in the to go container.”

“What kind?” Sal asked.

“Turkey, sorry babe,” Jake replied.

Sal was a vegetarian, she loves animals.

“Shoot, I guess I’ll have one of the bread slices and the pickle.”

“Will that be enough?” I asked.

“Is it ever?” Sal replied.

The three of us went into our sleeping bags. Sal sleeps with Jake, I sleep with Buddy. He’s my little space heater.

“At least the sky’s clear tonight” Sal says.

“Yeah, look what all those people with houses are missing, I can see Orion’s belt from my bedroom.” I say.

John Jr.'s face was buried in his left hand as his teacher droned on about the quadratic equation.

The Spanish teacher in the next room over slammed open the door interrupting the lecture.

"Sarah, turn on the news!"

The teacher felt a bit of contempt for the portly woman who not only interrupted her class, but called her by her first name in front of her students.

"Pardon me, MISS Stevens, but can I have a quick word with you?"

Both the teachers walk outside. After about one minute, the math teacher barges back in, hastily turning on the television and slapping the channel buttons to find a news station.

"...the aftermath leaving 130,000 dead. The city is still burning, but the fire will most likely have to burn itself out as civilian firefighter crews are unlikely to go into the middle of a war zone..."

The television began to fade in Johnny's mind as he stopped paying attention to the front of the room and slowly unzipped his bag to pull out a comic book.

Just as he was about to open the book, a small hand slapped onto his shoulder.

"Johnny! Oh my god, those people are dead. It's only time until they come and kill us too."

He turned around to find a small blonde girl tearing up and hyperventilating.

"Nah, we're good," he said to her. He turned around to open his comic book but was interrupted once more, this time by a hairy arm that came over his shoulder and latched on to his side under his chest, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

"You ready to kill some chinks John, lets sign up!"

John tried to struggle out of his classmates grasp. "Let go please."

"Queerbait."

"Christ, I wouldn't mind this place getting shot up a bit," Johnny thought. He quickly darted his eyes around fearing that he whispered his last thought out loud, but he did not.

He opened the comic book to the dog-eared page and began to read:

"You know you won't get away with this," the generic brunette in the top right corner squealed. "He'll get you, he always gets you."

The smiling villain took out his knife and held it up to the light over his right shoulder.

"But you won't be alive to see it if he does."

The last panel has the dead woman laying on the floor with the door open in the background. The villain starts up his car.

Johnny flips the page wide-eyed.

"Sick of acne? This is what you've been waiting for!"

The back page is blank.  Two more advertisements are splayed out on the back cover.

14 DAYS BEFORE THE BOMB

"Ever since all of us here started using stimulant packs 3 times-a-day, we started fighting the Chinese instead of trying to reason with those crazies, and the fifty-nine states in the union are all deciding to make nice again, all of us in the house have jobs and are in wonderful spirits." said John. "Why, just the other day, Mindy was telling me all how nice things have been lately compared with how things were five years ago. What did you say again Mindy?"

Mindy was a thirty six year old blonde woman who was heavily padded with make-up. Unbeknownst to her, this habit made her look even more like a thirty-six year old, rather than a twenty-five year old, as she presumed. "Five years ago," Mindy  began, "nobody in this entire county was happy at all! Not even a bit!" She sat down hastily on the plastic lawn chair in the corner of the living room and it teetered backwards, then forwards again. "But by God, if life isn't great now! There's always something on the news to watch, everyone has money and can finally afford to eat in restaurants on Friday nights again, and the Dodgers finally broke their hundred year World Series drought! If this isn't the life, what is!"

Grandpa was sitting in the corner staring gravely at the television set. A blonde woman in her twenties was speaking with a blank expression about the latest offensive in Chinese Alaska. "This girl shouldn't be reading the news," he uttered. He squiggled slightly higher up in his chair. "She doesn't have the slightest idea what the hell she's talking about! I bet she just thinks about what she's going to do after she's done reading the pretty flashing words on the screen. All the while, its 'thousand killed' this, 'ten-thousand killed' that." He put his hand to his mouth and began coughing violently. He lit a cigarette.

"Dad! Don't smoke in the house! Do you want all of your grandkids to get the lung cancer?"

"Lung cancer? Lung cancer is the last thing that these kids have to worry about. Hell, my mom never put stimulant  dust in my cereal and I went through life just fine! Why do you need to be sprinkling that crap on everything? For one thing, it taste terrible."

"I don't know Dad," John interjected. "I think it tastes just fine. It's a bit bitter, so I can see how it might taste bad to someone who likes to eat nothing but sweet things." John's face crinkled into a smile.

"Oh our Daddy always had quite the sweet-tooth, didn't he," Mindy said before smiling and rubbing the old man's shoulder like one would a shaky dog with it's mouth open in a wanting smile.

Grandpa's face spun into a frown as he pushed Mindy's hand off his shoulder. "What? We were talking about your kids!"

"We were?" Mindy said inquisitively.

"Weren't we?" Grandpa asked, now forgetting his original point. Although he remembered he had something very important to say.

The television flashed, "BREAKING NEWS! CHINA INVADES UPPER 14 STATES!"

"Oh no!" John said, looking somewhat flustered. "You don't suppose that they would come into the lower states, would they?"

"We're all dead, thank God" Grandpa said quietly to himself.

One of the children spoke. "Does this mean that I don't have to go to school tommorow?" With this sentence uttered, the rest of the children began to get excited.

"Ya, do we have to go to school tommorow Dad?" John didn't say anything. He was currently going through an experience akin to a lightbulb being turned on that had been stored in a closet for twenty years.

Jack and Marion took their seats in the nosebleeds with their six-dollar beers held firmly in their respective hands. Marion’s eyes were still bloodshot and his speech was still slurred slightly, but he was functioning acceptably by Chicago standards.

 

“Damn mon, it’s freezing out. I’m gettin’ ice in my dreds, I t’ought football was indoors.”
“Wait, you’ve never watched a football game before?” Jack inquired.
“Jah, I watched one once, but it was in an arena.”
“That’s called arena football.”  
“What’s t’a difference?” Marion asked.
“People actually care about football,” responded Jack. A few people sitting next to Jack and Marion started to chuckle. The game started and the two began slowly sipping their beers in attempt to make them last as long as possible.
“Who’s dat guy trowing da ball.”

 

Jack thought about the question for a few seconds and responded “that’s guy is called the quarterback, if he doesn’t throw the ball fast enough, the other team is allowed to jump on top of him.”
The people next to Jack and Marion started to chuckle again. Jack looked over and saw two boys, wearing blue Bear hats and jerseys who looked around sixteen or seventeen years old with about twelve empty off-brand beer cans (obviously snuck in) below their feet. A few minutes later, the quarterback threw the ball to the wide receiver, who caught it, took a few steps and was hit by a defensive linemen who looked like he was twice the size of the receiver. The ball shot out of the wide receiver’s hands as he slammed back first into the grass.
“Oh!” everyone in the crowd simultaneously yelled, including both Marion and Jack.
“Wow,” Marion uttered with astonishment.
“I know, big hit.”

 

“No mon, I mean everyone yelled ‘oh’ at the same time. T’ere’s a lot of interjections in dis world, but everyone yelled ‘oh,’ even me, someone who’s never been to a football game before.”
The underage drunk sitting next to Marion, leaned over to Marion and put his arm around him.
“That’s the because football brings people together man, you and me, your friend and that chubby guy over there, me and her, hey baby!” the kid smirked while a woman walked down the other aisle. The woman didn’t respond.
“Yeah screw you too you uptight…what was I talking about?”
Marion turned to Jack and gave him the wide-eyed “what is up with this guy” smile. Jack smiled back and leaned towards the kid and chuckled “team spirit, unity right?”
“Oh yeah, like I was saying, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like, or even if listen to that wussy Rod Steward shit, if you’re a Bear fan, you’re my brother.”
“I like it mon, can I get a beer?” Marion asked.
“Of course you can get a beer brother. John, give this man a beer!”
The other teenager sitting next to Jack and Marion leaned forward “Yo, I think we drank all the beer.”
“Shit! What the hell, why’d you drink all the beer?”
“Dude, I only had four, you had eight,” the second kid responded.
“Haha, oh yeah,” laughed the first kid.

 

The game went on to the fourth quarter. Marion and Jack sat watching the game and listening to the kids yell and scream with authentic passion every play. By the end of the game, Jack and Marion were screaming with the two kids.

 

There were ten seconds left in the game. The quarter back yelled "hike" and dropped back at the thirty yard line, hurling the ball into the corner of the endzone where a Bears receiver jumped into the air over the defender and dragged both his feet inbound as the clock expired.

 

The ref held up both his hands and the whistle blew. The jumbo-screen read, “TOUCHDOWN!”
The entire stadium erupted with pure, unadulterated joy. No war had ended, no major world change had come to pass, no, it was something much more important and relevant to the average citizen of Chicago, Illinois. The Bears had just won.

 

The four seatmates wrapped their arms around each other and jumped up and down. Their row was filled with high fives and back slaps when for that one beautiful moment, the world was perfect.

Marion chuckled. “All highly irrelevant.”
Jack smiled back at him, “that is true.”
Marion looked down at the seat in front of him with the smile of a boy who had just had his first kiss, then he looked back at Jack.

 

“I understand football now,” Marion told Jack.
“I’m glad you do” Jack responded with a smile.
The two walked out of the stadium reliving the final play until they were back home in their apartment.

“Hello?”
“Hi, is Jennifer there?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Jack, from the bar.”
“Uh huh, hold on a second.”
The phone went silent for a few seconds before Jack heard faintly on the other end of the line.
“Some guy from a bar.” “Who?” “John, Jack?”
“Hello?” Jennifer said.
“Hey it’s Jack, from the watch shop.”
“Yeah, hey Jack, what’s up?”
“Not much, my friends got a couple tickets to go see the Bears, but he couldn’t go, so he gave them to me. You want to go with me?”
“Ahhh, I’d love to, but I have to study, midterms are in a week.”
“Umm, okay, some other time I guess.”
“Sure, definitely, call me in a week, I’ll be free after all these tests are over with.”
“Okay, see you in a week I guess. Good luck with your midterms.”
“Thanks. At least you got the tickets for free, right?”
“Yeah, good thing. Bye”
“Bye. *click*”

 

A few days prior to this phone call, Jack took a cab to Soldier Field and bought two upper-level tickets to watch the Chicago Bears play the New York Giants.

Jack didn’t know why he told Jennifer that a friend had given him the tickets. It was a pointless lie. He pondered what aspect of his subconscious made this superfluous sentence come out of his throat. “Maybe I wanted to come off like some guy who was too cool to buy tickets for a date? That’s pretty stupid,” he thought. Jack kept thinking about this for an hour, although he recognized the futility of the exercise.

The sound of keys being jingled in a door lock broke Jack’s self-destructive thought loop.
“Jaaaaaaaaackkkkkiiiiiieeee! I’m home brudaaaaaaaah!” Marion yelled. The door slammed behind him. Jack got off his chair in the kitchen to see Marion with blood shot eyes and a big grin on his face.

 

“I was at, I was at my cousins place,” Marion managed to stutter out.
“I thought your cousin lived in Jamaica.”
“What? Ohh hahaha! No man! This is a different cousin! Haha, cause you t’ought, my cousin who sent me the Bob Marley poster…haha, no man! Different person all toget’er mon!”
“You okay Marion?”
“I smoked, just, just a little bit.”
“So I smell.”
“Haha, so I smell! Dat’s funny mon! So I smell, haha, I’ll remember dat. Don’ you worry though, I’ll give you credit, hundred percent man.”
Marion’s antics put a smile on Jack’s face and he stopped over analyzing the conversation between him and Jennifer.
“Hey Marion, do you like football?” Jack asked.

If Sue didn't rue, then what would she do?
Accrue what is true and change her world view?

Subdue and confuse? Redo and renew?
Could it be the debut of a whole brand new Sue?

One imbued with the peace construed from her beasts
long overdue is an understatement, or at the least

she has made something new and well if she still rues,
at least she livened herself with a new brilliant hue.

The pair walked into the bar two doors down from Jack’s repair shop andsat down at a slightly dirty round-table with used coasters still stuckto the wooden surface.
Jack told her the story of his boss, how his house burnt down and howhe moved in with his Rastafarian neighbor. She told him how she wasn’treally making any friends in college and how her best friend in theworld was in New York and that she only got to visit her once every twomonths.
“Wow, I wish I had a friend like that who I cared that much about.”
“Yeah,” she replied. She looked down somewhat sadly. Jennifer quicklylooked back up at Jack and smiled. She took her half full pint of beerand swallowed it in four gulps.
“Come on you pansy, drink up!”

 

Jack tried to drink his beer as fast as her, but he was going muchfaster than he knew how to drink and ended up pouring beer down hiswindpipe. He sputtered up beer and Jennifer laughed at him.

 

“I like you already Jack, you’re a funny guy.”
“Ha, I’m glad me almost choking to death amused you.”
“Oh it did, good job.” she smiled.
Jennifer looked at her watch. “Oh shoot, I have to go. Actually I had to go fifteen minutes ago. Hey, you like footballl?”

“Yeah, sure.”
 “We should go to a Bears game sometime, I’ll teach you how to drink a beer.”
She wrote her number on a coaster and handed it to Jack.

 

“Make sure you call now, I need someone to make sure I don’t go crazy from isolation out here.”
“I’ll make sure of it” Jack smiled.
They said their good-byes and went in opposite directions when they walked outside.

 

Jack stumbled into Marion’s apartment with a big smile on his face.
“What’s with you mon?”

 

“Marion, I’m in love!”

It is common knowledge that the more one looks at their watch while they are working, the slower the workday will go. Jack’s work went especially slow because his job was to repair gold watches all day that he could not even afford to buy for himself. Sometimes he had easy days and no repairs needed to be done in the shop, but today was not one of those days. He had in his hands the State Senator of Illinois’ eighty thousand dollar diamond encrusted watch that stopped working for an unknown reason.

Jack opened up the watch and found what at first glance appeared to be flour caked onto the gears and preventing the second hand from moving forwards. Jack took his smallest tool in his bag out, which was basically a thin metal toothpick for situations such as this and removed the obstructing substance from the gears of the watch. By the time he was finished fixing the watch, he had accumulated a small pile of white powder on his desk. He looked up at one of the wall clocks and both its hands were on the 12.

 

“Just in time for lunch” Jack whispered to himself as he got out of his chair and walked out of the repair shop to the food court a block away.
When he returned, his grey-haired manager was waiting near the front door with his arms folded.
“We need to talk, into my office, now.”
Jack was a bit nervous at his boss’s stern tone of voice, but he couldn’t think of anything that he had done wrong, at least not lately.
“What’s the problem Sir?”
“Can you tell me what that line of white powder is doing on your work desk?”
Jack’s heart jumped into his throat and his stomach sank into his shoes as he put together the pieces in his head.
“That’s not mine, I took that out of the watch that I was repairing.”
“The senator’s watch you mean?”
“Yes, the senator’s watch.”
“How stupid do you think I am Jack? I heard about McKlinskey’s watch repairman’s cocaine problem, but I never thought you would be a cocaine user too. Get out of here and don’t come back, you’re fired.”
“This is bullshit, you think I do cocaine?”
“Explain to me how cocaine would get into the governor’s watch.”
“It’s not a water proof watch, all he had to do was spill it on the back of the watch and it would make it into the gears.”
“Well, we’ll just ask him when he comes to pick up his watch.”
“He’s not going to admit to something like that, just give me a drug test, that would prove that I don’t do cocaine.”

 

The manager moved his head to the left to make sure no customers could hear the conversation and then closed the door to the repair room.
“I told you that you’re fired, get your things and leave.”
“First of all, how do you know that it’s cocaine?”
“I think I know what cocaine looks like.”
“How? I don’t know what cocaine looks like, it could be powdered sugar for all that I know.”
The manager looked at Jack and then looked back to the pile white crumbs on his desk. He then walked over to the desk, put his finger in the pile and touched it to his tongue.
He looked up at Jack then he put his finger back in the pile and dabbed it on his tongue again.
“It’s flour” the manager said.
He looked up at Jack, whose mouth was hanging slightly open because of the ridiculousness of the current situation.
“Do you want the rest of the day…”
“I’ll see you next Monday” Jack interrupted.
Jack stormed out of the complex.

 

“Flour, are you kidding me? Flour. Jesus Christ” he muttered as he walked out of the watch shop. The wind nearly pushed him over as he walked outside. He took a few steps and then landed hard onto the ice.
“Do you need any help?”

 

Jack looked up, it was the same college girl that he bumped into the day before.

 

“Well hello again” Jack quipped.
“Do I know you?”
Jack thought about this question for a few seconds before he answered.
“No sorry, I guess I thought you were someone else” he lied.
“Quite a nasty spill you took there.”
“Yeah, you’ll never believe what just happened to me.”
“Do tell” she spoke through a smile. “Do you want to drop in and get a beer? You look cold.”
“You know, beer only makes you think you’re warmer.”
“As long I think I’m warmer, that’s all that really matters then” she replied. “I’m Jennifer by the way.”

“Nice to meet you Jennifer.”

Jack sat down on Marion’s couch while Marion sat on a chair in hiskitchen plucking on the strings of his vintage maple guitar. Jackclosed his eyes and let the music slowly wash over him. His musclesbegan to relax and he sighed heavily. In a few moments, all of theevents of the day were forgotten and Jack felt at completely at peaceonce again.

 

The music stopped and Marion walked into the room.

 

“What’s on T.V. brotha man?”
Jack looked up at Marion and smiled, “I wasn’t watching anything, I was listening to you play guitar.”
“Haha,I haven’t had an audience since I was twenty. Whatchoo want fo dinner?I can cook up some jerk chicken. Jerk chicken fo my favorite jerk whoset his house on fire! Hahaha. You want some wine? I just got dis redfrom Napa Valley."

 

Marion turned around and began to walk to the kitchen.

 

“it’s expensive, but mon, it’s wort’ it, truss me.”

A bemused smile came across Jack’s face.
“Napa Valley? Classy, I’m used to Thunderbird.”
 “You got to appreciate da fine tings in life mon, God give us dem fo’ a reason” Marion responded from the kitchen.
Jack thought about this for a second. “True. Very true.”
Marion came back from the kitchen with two glasses of red wine.
“Lessee, is da poisoned one the left or right hand. I fo’get, you pick, haha.”
Jack chuckled and took the glass on his right. “Right hand, must be the right choice.”
“Ahh, you may tink so” Marion responded, “But it’s my leff hand, it’s just look like it’s on the right.”
“Well, which person’s right is actually right?”
Marion thought about this for a few seconds and responded, “Everyt'ing is relative mon.”

 

Jack peered into his glass and spun it around a few times.
“My uncle told me that people do this because wine taste better while revolving.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”

 

Jack took a sip of the wine and an explosion of strawberries,grapes, and a few other flavors he could not put his finger on coveredhis palate. He breathed out and an entirely different flavor came outof his mouth. This time it reminded him of pine trees after a longrain. His eyes went wide with astonishment.

 

“How you like it?”
“It’s, it’s really good” Jack managed to sputter.
“Stick with me mon, I know what’s good and what’s bad, and dis, dis is good” he declared while pointing to the wine.
Jack and Marion both took a few more sips from their glasses and Jackmoved to the side of the couch, Marion sat down at the other side. Theyfinished their wine and Marion walked back into the kitchen.
“So you want some jerk chicken or what?” Marion repeated.
“Sure” Jack responded.
Jack looked into his empty wine glass and turned it upside down in hismouth to get the last drop of wine from the bottom of his glass. Herecalled the events of the day, but he no longer cared. For somereason, he felt happy, although he felt had no logical reason to be.

“Dis is good” Jack mumbled to himself.

 

Jack stood outside of his apartment complex with his non-burnt belongings in briefcases next to him. No other apartments were damaged, so Jack was the only one talking to the fireman who was writing down Jack’s account about what happened.

 

“You ever just have one of those days?” Jack sighed.

“Yeah,” replied the fireman, “like today, some idiot tried to dry his clothes on his heating duct and it ruined my entire day because I had go and put it out and stay there afterword to take his statement. How’s that for one of those days?”

“You don’t have to be such an jerk about it.”

“Such a jerk about it? Listen you ungrateful piece of shit, I just put out your apartment and instead of a thank you, I get called a jerk? You know, this job is stressful enough without people hounding me. And…and….”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t know firemen were so sensitive.”

“That’s okay. People forget you know, we’re people too. Even though we look strong on the outside, this job gets to you, you know?”

“Sure…”

Jack looked down at his two suitcases sitting next to him on the snow covered sidewalk. He was able to save some family photographs and most of his good clothes, but the rest was ruined. He didn’t even have time to take out his television, which was now too burnt to function.
“You okay bruddah?” Marion called out to Jack as he was walking towards him.
“Yeah, it’s just stuff right?”
“Haha, you got it mon.”
“The only problem is now I have to find another place to stay, and I don’t have enough for a hotel, so I’m probably going to end up at one of those six person rooms at one of the Westside hostels. They said its gonna take a month to fix up my apartment again.”
“Nonsense! You stay with me ‘til they fix your apartment.”
“Really?”

“Sure mon, s’long as you pay half the rent.”
“Haha, sure sure.”
“No, but seriously, you’re payin’ half the rent.”
“No worries Marion, I’ll pay half the months rent. I’ve never lived with a Rastaman before.”

"Bruddah, you in for a treat."
“Bruddah, you in for a treat.”

The mind's a terrible, fragile thing
A menagerie of air
One peek inside and you will find
The reasons for despair

But if you let it be, my friend
And don't let it tear or bend
The entire world will be yours
To decide how to spend

Emptiness knows no bounds
A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy
And so on and so forth
An eternity builds on an eternity and it keeps going

 

And I don't know about you, I'm sure you are better than me

 

But I am a copy of a copy of a copy
And my copy is a  copy of a copy of a copy
And there is not enough space on all the paper in this world
To write the proper amount of copies that is truly

Necessary to understand this point

Can you cease to be a copy
Is it possible to break free
I want to break free
I want to be unique

Tell me I’m unique
And I will cease to be

Back in his apartment, Jack rubbed his wrapped palm back and forth on his thigh for half an hour in a vain attempt to scratch it.

 

“Stupid…hemp wrap.”

 

He tore the green bandage off and threw it in the trash. There were little green flakes stuck in his wound that he would have to pick out one by one.

 

“I make it myself so you know it’s good bruddah” Jack jested in a very poorly executed Jamaican accent.

 

Jack looked around his apartment to see his wet clothes still on the floor. Instead of looking for three quarters, he opted to place all of his clothes over the large heating duct next to his bed. Jack then decided it was probably a good idea to make himself chicken soup and a bag of popcorn (the two easiest things in the world for a cullinarily challenged bachelor to make) and sit down and watch T.V. for a little while.

 

The combination of the smells of soup and popcorn was overwhelming, making the whole apartment smell like a homeless shelter/movie theater. It was this overwhelming smell that caused the overheated heating duct to go completely unnoticed until Jack’s bed caught on fire and the smoke reached the living room.
Jack looked up to see smoke billowing over his head.

 

“Shit.”

Jack walked into his apartment freezing cold. He got out of his wetclothes and opened his faux-hogany desk drawer to get the requiredseventy-five cents to operate the dryer. He opened the drawer but therewas nothing in there.

 

“C'mon, not now, not now.”
When Jack stuck his arm into the drawer to try and find a few quarters,he instead was greeted by a stabbing feeling in his right index finger.

 

“Ouch! Son of a….”

 

He pulled out his hand to reveal a large blue thumbtack stuck firmlyinto his finger. Jack gritted his teeth and yanked out the pin, whichcaused him to bleed profusely out of said finger.
Jack opened the drawer under the drawer he opened previously to pullout his first aid kit. He stuck in his left hand and felt five moresharp pokes in the palm of his left hand.

 

“Ah! Mother of God!”

 

He pulled his arm out of the drawer and found five more largepushpins stuck into the palm of his left hand. When Jack pulled thosepins out of his hand, blood started pouring down his left arm.Squeezing his left hand in a fist to try and stop the blood flow, Jackbent down and started to open the final drawer, but then closed itshut.

 

Jack walked outside and rang his neighbor’s doorbell. His neighbor,Marion, is a tall Rastafarian man with dreadlocks down to his waistkept in place by a red beanie. The Rasta man opened the door to findJack with blood dripping down his arms.

 

“Hey man, I need some help.”

 

Marion looked down at the blood dripping down on the floor in front of his door and then looked back up at Jack.

 

“Look mon, I know we cool an’ ev’ryting, but I ain’ helping you getrid of a body. If you jus turn roun’ now, I won’ say nutin’ .”
“No, I just cut my hand. You got anything to wrap it with.”
“Oh, tank god. You know I always got a wrap or two handy mon. Come on in mon, your bleeding all over my welcome mat.”
Jack looked down at the dirty blood stained green-brown piece of fabric that he was standing on.
“Sorry.”
“No worries bruddah, lets get you fixed up.”
Jack looked around the apartment while Marion was wrapping his hand.Everything had a green brown tint to it. The wall behind the T.V. had afive foot by ten foot tapestry of Bob Marley made entirely of shades ofgreen.
“ Hey, that’s new, when did you get that?”
“Oh, my cousin send me dat for my birt’day, you like it?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
“Jah mon, an’ guess what its made out of.”
Jack glanced up at the picture and looked back Marion.
“No….”
“Yeah mon, hundred percent hemp.”
“Get out of here.”
“Seriously.”

 

Jack looked around the apartment again. The rug looked like it was madeout of the same material, so did the curtains, the blanket on thecouch, the pillows, and there was even a light green tea cozy.

 

“What in this house isn’t made of hemp?”
“Hahaha, not much if I can help it.”
Jack looked down at his hand to see it being slowly covered by a light green fabric.
“Hold on a second, are you wrapping my hand in hemp?”
“Haha, yeah mon. Don’ worry, I made it myself, so you know its good bruddah.”
“Yeah definitely.”

Chapter 1
The year was 2003, the country was killing a bunch of brown people in some God forsaken desert, and life was uneventful as usual for a man named Jack Turner.

 

Jack was staring deeply into his four-dollar gin and tonic, stirring it over and over and over again with his little black straw while herested his head on his left fist as he leaned tiredly against the bar. He was lost deep in existential contemplation, but thanks to the lowlevel of intellectual thought around him, Jack was able to maintain a conversation with his friend using only half his brain stem and hisadrenal gland. Jack left ten dollars on the bar and got up and started walking to the door.

 

Jack, like many other unfortunate lonely pasty white Americans, needed to be loved in order to justify his existence,  and being a pasty whiteAmerican, he had no culture to become immersed in, ethnic or otherwise.He felt very, very alone.

 

Jack stepped outside and was greeted by snow flying sideways slapping at his cheeks, turning his whole face bright red. He lit a cigarette and began walking forward with his face turned downwards in order to avoid the wind.

 

“Yeah yeah, fuck you too Chicago” he grumbled with the cigarette stuck firmly in the corner of his mouth.
He continued walking for a few minutes with his head down when he ran into someone, causing both parties to fall into the dirtybrown snow.

 

“Sorry ‘bout that, here, let me help you.”
Jack got up quickly and extended his hand to a heavily bundled college girl with longstraight brown hair and circular wire-rimmed glasses.
“Thanks.”
The girl turned around and knelt down to pick up the papers that she dropped during the collision.
“Here, let me help.”
Jack picked up the papers and noticed that they were pages to a book in progress.
“You writing a book?”
“Yeah, well, sort of.”
“That’s pretty cool, what’s it about?”
 “Nothing really, I’m not really a writer.”
“That’s okay, I’m not really a reader.”
“Well, it’s about a country girl lost in a big city, kind of a fish out of water type of story.”
“Oh yeah? You a country girl?”
“No, I’m from Los Angeles.”
“No kidding, I happen to be from the big stink as well.”
“Oh yeah?” the girl looked up smiling at him. “What part?”
“Pasadena, you?”
“Palos Verdes.”
“Ah, rich girl huh?”
The girl looked back down “Sorry, I have to run.”
“Oh come on, wait a second” Jack called out as she was walking away from him.
“Nice meeting you” she yelled back at him while walking away.
He watched her walk away and then turned back around and startedwalking slowly back towards his apartment. He stopped again and looked back to watch her round the corner.

 

“You see? This is why you’re a miserable, lonely prick,” he mutteredto himself as he continued his walk towards the apartment building.

Always there is banging on the walls! 
What is it today?
Is it a savage beating at the hands of another goon?
Is a man pulled straight from the asylum?

It could be nothing pure or holy at this ungodly hour of 4 in the morning.

The voices of the outside world crescendo
pouring over me
knocking my head backwards
purging all thoughts relating to my own endeavors.

The whispers of the world awake me from my sleep
 

Alex was eating an ice-cream cone on a hot June day, walking down a side walk in a not so busy part of town when suddenly, a man bumped into Alex's shoulder. Alex said, "excuse me." The man responded by smoothing out his hair, opening his eyes extremely wide, and stating this:

"God damned, I can't write, draw, or speak very well on most occasions, but I sure can think well. By God, if you could only see and hear the things that I think, you'd know just how god damned smart I really am! And when you passed me on the street again, you'd turn and look at me and say, 'Well look-it him! There goes one of the greatest thinkers that I have ever had the pleasure to know!'" Then the man turned and continued walking, never looking back.

After that brief statement of opinion, Alex decided to leave the city.

So today I woke up and thought that I remembered that my girlfriend  has had hepatitis b and spent a good few hours worrying that I would be forced to stay with her for the rest of my life or live like a leper before I called my mom to make sure I had my vaccinations and she says "oh, you have hepatitis" very non chalantly before casually asking if I have jaundice or something, I said no ma, then she told me I was fine, after that I realized that my girlfriend doesn't actually have anything and even if she did I would be fine because I've been vaccinated, later, this girl that I knew text messaged me saying that she missed me and wanted to see me because she was visiting town to go camping with her friends and that she was at the airport so I immediately believed that she was trying to get me to pick her up so I told her "I can't pick you up at the airport" and she told me she wasn't asking me to which made me feel like a jackass for a little while, afterwords I went to a psychologist who told me I was clinically depressed right at the end of the session so I left thinking about that, then I visited my girlfriend's place and we went to sleep around midnight until I woke up to a man child yelling at his girlfriend for taking some guys numbers at a party,  so I went back to my place

also, I bought chocolate sunflower seeds, they were tasty

"Summit"

I seek high mountains from across the sea
For I am goat-footed, sure-footed, fleet.
I take steel crampons strapped upon my feet
And toss them to the lee-side of the tallest peaks
Laughing.
I am Mallory of Everest and all who scale K2
And nothing, neither avalanche nor ice
Will keep me from the spiritual heights.
I have my Wings now and we will soar so free,
The hawk and falcon will succumb to me
Come and scale it be you friend or foe
And we will to the greatest mountains go;
Climbing without ropes or even fire
Pushed along by skill and God's desire.

-Carl Estrin

The famous machine, as it has come to be called, is a really handy invention. It boosts self-esteem and gives ordinary human beings a sense of history and place in the world.

The machine is famous for telling people who they are related to in history, someone famous. I am related to Nero, famous burner of Rome. That's what I learned from the machine.

Working the famous machine isn't very hard, all I do is take a hair, open the hair placement container, and press a button. The button is red and it says "GO" in big white letters on it. It's really rather exciting to see it for the first time.

********

"Oh, this is quite exciting!" Margaret Sospiro exclaimed as she was sitting on the big fuzzy chair sitting opposite the machine. She is sixty years old, slightly older than our usual clients, but not unusual.

"Quite!" I reply excitedly. "Quite exciting indeed!"

"Indeed!" Margaret says back to me.  "I bet I am related to Cleopatra!"

No one ever hopes they are related to Ghandi or T.S. Eliot.

I pulled the lever, and the machine started to give the low pitched whir that I have become so accustomed to. Five minutes later, I activated the Christmas lights that I draped on the side of the machine.

"Oh my! How pretty!" I hear.

"Pretty indeed!" I say.

Eventually, the whirring stops and the results come out on a piece of photo paper:

"ONE MATCH: JACKIE RANKER"

I look over at Margaret. My boss tells me to say congratulations after every result.

"Congratulations, you are related to Jackie Ranker."

Her excited face drops slightly, still hopeful.

"Who is Jackie Ranker?"

I pause, accidentally.

"He's a famous musician Margaret! You have very musical genes, do you play an instrument?"

"Why yes, the violin, ever since I was a little girl." She replies softly with a smile., the way sweet people do. "Isn't that nice? A famous musician in my family. What instrument did she play?"

"Guitar" I tell her. "He was a famous guitarist."

"Oh, isn't that nice, classical?" Margaret asks me. She picks up the water bottle next to her, takes a sip and puts it back down.

"Modern guitarist actually, electric." I say.

"Oh my," she leans back slightly. "Like rock music?"

"Exactly like rock music." I smile slightly.

Margaret's smile disappears and she looks me straight in the eyes.

"I hate rock music, it's all noise. They never pluck the guitar, all they do is strum up and down and up and down and its only 3 or four chords. It's not music, I don't know what it is. Am I related to anyone else."

I pause for a moment and go quickly behind the machine. I pull out  a week old result I stored near the wiring and walked back around the machine.

"Well look at this! You are also related to the Bishmarkov family, although less so than Mr. Ranker, they are very distant relatives of yours, but they were Counts and Countesses!"

Margaret immediately lit up again. "I knew it! I am related to royalty!  Wait until the girls hear that I am related to the Bishopkov, who is again?"

"Bishmarkovs" I say with a smile.

"The Bishmarkovs, famous Russian Lords, they were prominent during the 16th century...Countess Margaret."

"Ooo, Countess Margaret! I like the sound of that!" She looks down at the paper. "How exciting!"

We talk about half an hour and she tells me a little bit about herself, I tell her about myself.

I gather my wits. "So, did you have any siblings growing up? Any brothers or sisters?"

Her smile fades again. "I had an older sister, but she ran away when I was eight years old and never saw her again."

"I'm sorry" I say, putting on the most sympathetic face I can muster.

She sighs, and takes another drink of water. "I'm going to go, but it was nice meeting you, and thank you for doing this for me."

"It was my pleasure countess" I grin. I bow.

"Oh, aren't you cute. Take care now."

"You too Ma'am. Goodbye.

*****

My boss never comes in until the end of the day. He never shows up during business hours.

"Any interesting ones today?"

I pick up Margaret's results by the famous machine and show them to him.

My boss looks at me sternly. "Did she know?"

"No," I say.

"What did you do." He states quickly.

"I Counted her."

He chuckles and puts his hand on my shoulder. "Good man, good man. You know what to do Nero."

He walks into his office.
I pull the lighter out of my pocket, hoping Jackie Ranker's aunt will have a pleasant week.

I like prepackaged TV news
The one where the rest of the world has the blues
And I’m inside listening to tunes
The radio helps blot out your cues
 
I know that everything is fine
interests rates or rates of crime
Go to bed quarter past nine
when will I finally draw the line
 
And turn off the news and go outside
And live the life that’s truly mine
A disputed national borderline?
The sky is blue, and I feel fine
 
The news does not have relevance
convoluted ideals that make no sense
To me the grass and sun that shines
Makes more sense than a crawling line
 
Flashing on my silver screen
Abandoned homes and fallen trees
But all the time the world’s outside
I really thought that I had tried
 
To pay attention when the sun shines
And to ignore the TV’s pointless cries
The evil always makes us sigh
In countries put far out of mind
 
For my own good I’ll disconnect
And give my life a new respect
And realize what’s really true
Not on the prepackaged TV news
 
The T.V.'s off and I'm alive
I remember now my neighbor's eyes
All that I have still left behind
Is still here after the flood has dried

As the Crows' Nests Comes Crashing Down


.............

A new nest had to be built
A Competition was declared
Between the members of the crew
With an unspecified prize to be given by the Queen herself

Professionalism
Artistry
and Structural Integrity
were the key components to be judged
                    
.............


The captain is sitting quietly
Enjoying his tea
While those idolizing self-crafted beauty
Pound away at the material given to them

From the navigation room
Lined with red velvet
A single man walks out onto the deck with a cup of tea in hand
He looks around

The first-mate is nowhere to be found
The crew believes that he -- the first mate
is who they have sworn their loyalty to
but the first-mate, wishes only to be second in command

The true Captain calls himself
"A Navigator"
"Such a nice day"
The 'navigator' thinks

The Captain
doesn't care much for building,
rather, he enjoys the feel of being in the midst of the builders
who are slaving away, creating oak towers, for a slightly better view

the crew is climbing their woodwork
held upright by a few workhorses for the Captain's pleasure
No natural force
Could topple the combined strength of the crew holding the base

the wood-workings of the new nests --
are so beautiful
intricate
and astonishing in their complexities

That the captain
can never turn away for long

"This tea is very sweet,"
The Captain thinks to himself as he pulls the cup away from his lips
he has been sailing quietly
so far.

The old leader walks back inside
wipes the love from his eyes
as he grips the circular carving in front of him
and braces himself.

"Those ambitious carpenters
couldn't possible understand
this left turn
I am about to make"

..................

The crew
Never knew what hit them
their nests
all crack and fall

..................


The Captain walks out
slowly, as the 'navigator'
onto the deck
as a foolish wheelman


"I turned too sharply
I am sorry
Build again
and you will be on top again!"

"If you never give up
You will create a beautiful nest
The most beautiful nest
will get the Queen's upmost accommodation!"

Who knows, maybe soon
You shall have this ship!"

Oye!
Nay!
The crew screams at him
reluctant, surprised at the brash words

Ten minutes later
Building and fixing
on the seaworthy ship
Begins once again


"Such craftsmanship."
The captain thinks to himself
"And what fine tea
The crew has picked up this season."

"I did not enjoy this before
but now
it tastes
mouthwateringly sweet"

The ship sails on
waves break --
unnoticed,
in the ocean

The 'navigator' climbs
to the old crows nest soon to be replaced
The captain stumbles backwards at the top
towards his course-mapper

The mapper was on the old crows nest
The entire time
"I see we made a new adjustment, I'll write it down"
states the Mapper to the captain

The navigator
Chuckles
And plots the new course
"What a funny man the captain is."

He thinks to himself
With no negative connotations
attached to his thoughts
none at all

"What's wrong with me?"
The captain asks
"Captain thinks, rarely speaks"
The mapper replies, still looking down at his new adjustment

"The crew
is left out in the rain
and the sad thing is
That they never seems to complain

Or if they do
It is in vain"
The rain pitters
and patters

splitter splatter
splitter splatter
The two old sea-dogs
walk back indoors

"This is my ship you know."
Captain states curtly to the mapper

"Of course sir"
The mapper states through a smile
As he slowly draws
The new course adjustment

A few hundred miles away
The Princess leans towards her Mother and Queen
 in private
 she whispers

"When
 is that CRUSTY
 old man going to get here
with MY tea?"

"Be patient" the queen smiles.
 "And watch your mouth
young lady."
"The captain always gets his shipments here on time."

“I need advice,”one playwright speaks
softly to the other
“This script is just a bunch of lines
None more important than the others

I’m afraid my play just makes no sense
And what it lacks in relevance
It has in spades with false pretense
Will you please give me your two cents?”

The older man picks up the script
And glances for a while
After he finishes act two (the end)
He looks up with a smile

“My young friend I am also writing
A play as well, to spare reciting,
It’s in act four, after the fighting
A character discovers no underwriting

His credit (and yes, I am still citing)
Morgages and horseback riding
In an effort to make life coinciding
He discovers two comets colliding”

“Two comets?” the younger interjects.
“Metaphorical last respects.
To his career, and a few suspects
He took in hastily, to direct

“Too direct?”
“No, as in ‘to direct’
One “o,” not two in that respect
He made a stage, trying to perfect….”

“Character? What? Tell me what to do!
I reached the end here in act two!
Metaphors are luxuries I cant afford!
Will you help me now? Have I struck a chord?”

“More than you can even know.
This play I started, some years ago
Was also once stuck in act two
And I was hasty, just like you


And I was hasty just like you
Deperately churning horse’s glue
Out of pretty, pretty, horse’s shoes
So yes, I will give you something to use.

A conflict that will ruin it all
In a public exhibition hall
The backlash will create such a squall
No fluff will stand, save one cottonball.”

“One cotton ball, but why?”
“Stuck in your character’s hair
He lets it rest
He keeps it there.”

The two stare at each other for a while
One bright red, the other smiles
The older one starts to speak
The other does not try and feign meek.

Cotton! Meteors? Keep it all!
I do not know what will befall
But if you speak one more word I swear to God!
I’ll hit my head against a wall!

The young playwright storms outside
Play in hand, filled with young pride
The older writer takes it in stride
For the young playwright chose him to confide

“He’ll be back, I guarantee
When in the middle, of his act three”

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