Holy Shit
REMINGTON GRAVES
The neighborhood cats had all took their place and sat and watched me from a distance; the black one with yellow eyes, atop a roof cool and still; the yellow tattered puss purred and licked his paws next the broken fence; the white feline with fierce green eyes rested his dirty head on the hood of the car where he laid. Impervious to affection and inherently self-sufficient, these night crawlers had understood my nature..and I theirs: We trek alone, but may allow you the grace of our company if there be something beneficial for us. Satie’s Gnossiene no.3 came to mind as I lifted my hands at eye level and spread my fingers inspecting my nails. Cars drove through the spaces leaving blurred red traces. To think, I once believed in some kind of “Intelligent Design.” Some people need that, I suppose.
“Everything okay heeere, bud?” came a voice drunk in tone and scent.
“Fine, thank you,” I replied yanking my hands into my pocket.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, young man. I too shuffer from the occasional poetry of life.”
“No, I wasn’t–”
“I’ll tell you an interesting little shtory most people don’t know for a couple bucks. It’s in the Bible too. What do you say, buddy? A couple of bucks would really help get my whistle wet tonight.”
I beheld the grey in his beard and knew this man was all men…broken somehow, a wrong turn somewhere, mental issues, perhaps. His eyes were jaundiced and the left side of his hair was flattened by whatever park bench fell prey to his sleep. “Why not, old-timer, why not.”
“Atta boy, I knew you had the daring eye of a gambler.”
“You got five minutes, man. Let’s have it.”
“It’s in the book of Ezekiel. God in his infinite wisdom orders the children of Israel to eat human poop.”
“Pardon?”
” ‘And thou shalt eat it as barely cakes, and thou…umm thourrr…shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the Lordy lorrrd said: Even thushhh shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, wither I will drive them.’ It’s in the book of Ezekiel, I’m telling you.”
“Are you sure you’re not embellishing?”
“Ezekiel being the big bitch that he was asked god to spare him and take pity on him and such and suuuch. So thy lord thy thou allowed him alone to bake his barley bread mixed with cow dung instead. Weasel.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“How do you know that story and why choose it over any other?”
“I am atoning out here…for my sins, I guess. I stopped believing a long time ago. But I continued to take from people and to feed them liiies. I justified it by telling myself there was no harm if it made them feel good, you know?”
“You were a part of a church?
“Kid, I was a pastor for a little over twenty years.”
“Is that true?!”
“Indeed it is,” he said taking the money I gave him, gave me a wink and walked away smiling and dragging his left foot.”
“Holy shit.”
∞
To The Heart Of Olympus
REMINGTON GRAVES
The reprieve left a trace in the treble of rejoicing
a voice ascending slightly amid meadows blindly vulpine
designed seductively by hunters and gathered forth the dawn
lemon yellow water color bleeding through oscillating an insipid version of your vertigo
the delinquent orphan vitiated outline of a person set aside like sketch
the stains that played the sullen boy into a madman
has summoned the maternal images and translated them as joy
I was born a woman and fucked as a man wanting to be a child once again simply to love without restraint
without need to call it property or cage it like a victim
old ideas consecrated to the malady of selfish peace
a lofty pariah shortly thereafter seeking solace in the echoing lie that swept the world in the guise of romanticism
shoeless and small arms crossed deaf to the abandon
we say wane
the devil and the falling of winter rains
the showers fruitful and forthcoming
evil flowers bloom beyond their evil
as they earthquake severing already broken families
decades had to drain me before I understood
mountains no more desire to crush me than I wish them good will
leaves in fall
snow in late December
quiet creeks with flowing hair quenching thirsty broken stones
let me always do remember
now it has been quite some time the old ways have tried and tried
fare thee well and if you care return a warm good bye
and so I go with soft crunching sounds in sand
far and blurring
in the shudder of the golden strand
plead and cry if you will
I’ll understand
I have set my controls for the heart of the Olympus
∞
Pulp Friction
REMINGTON GRAVES
The angles were angry and the sycophant inside, was like the mark, hard to beat. The chief’s baritone drone was incessant and the dame behind the typer who answered the calls, was giggly no more now simply glaring. My veins were like cracks on an old marble statue, but they lay aching under a three-piece suit–moaning for another taste, another stab in the arm.
Reflections in sudden staccato echoed as I honed in on a fly on the wall. The clanking of new shoes approached and I turned in my desk before the knock began. “Yeah, whadya want?”
“It’s me, Thorn.”
Christ, this bastard won’t let up, “Come on in,” I clamored reaching for a smoke and patting at my chest for the lighter.
“Listen, Vinum, she’s at it again, I can feel it in my bones,” he said as he sat in the chair across me.
“Thorn, if it wasn’t for your paranoia, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills. What do you think she’s done now?”
“For crying out loud, man, don’t I pay you enough? A little respect wouldn’t kill ya.”
“All right, all right, Thorn…it’s been a tough week. Let’s not get excited. What do you got?”
“It’s always good to see you, V.”
“Well, you kind of pay me to see you. Not like I have a choice.”
“And that, right there, is why I can trust you. You don’t sugar shit with me, I like that.”
“All right, off your knees. Talk to me…what is going on now?”
“She’s gotta be giving it to someone I thought, me thinking this a few weeks ago, so I relax, right. I mean, I let off with the questions and the hounding. I told her I was gonna go away for a week or two and of course, the broad pretended to not be the slightest excited. Goddamn tramp.”
“Yeah, so she doesn’t like you. No crime in that.”
“Well, no, but I hired a great actress to tail her. I did right this time. I hired an actress and rented the joint a few houses down from mine. She’s the actress who was real big on the papers about a year ago. She did a great job in that Shakespeare play about three witches or whatever. The broad’s got real talent.”
“Sorry, not big on plays,” taking a deep drag of filterless and trying to ignore the cold sweats coming on.
“Anyway,” he said shoving a cigar in that big, red greasy melon he calls a head and started puffing away. “She dressed up like an old bag and laid on this Russian accent and all and walked by in the morning and bumped in to her.”
“And?”
“Well, they ended up having coffee and exchanging stories, almost doing each others nails for christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, yeah?”
“So they get to talking, you know, like broads do. And my wife tells her she’s real sick of her marriage and what not. Bridget, that’s the actress, slips her some truth serum juice in her coffee. They end up having drink, and before you know it, my old lady is spilling the beans all over the floor.”
“Get to the point, will you,” I said throwing my feet on the desk and looking up at the ceiling following that damn fly.
“Yeah, well, here’s where it gets reeeal interesting…my wife claims that she’s always been faithful and never once cheated on me but had been tempted to for years.”
“So?”
“The beauty is, I don’t gotta pay Bridget no more.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she ran way with my wife.”
“Geez, man, I’d say I’m sorry to hear it but… why the hell you so happy about it?”
“Because I inadvertently caused her to cheat on me.”
“Like some old pulp story with a twist, eh?”
“Exactly, V.! Except, this time I win, because I realized afterwards, that she was the problem of my insecurities. I didn’t trust her even though I wanted to. I just couldn’t.”
“How about that.”
“So much for being cliche characters in a pulp story, eh?”
“Yeah, so much for…hey, did you hear that?”
“The tapping?”
“It’s gotta be the secretary at the typer. She’s always picking at that thing like some god damned chicken.”
“The gal left as soon as I came in.”
∞
And Still Wanting
REMINGTON GRAVES
How far has thou fallen renegade of the morning?
Did thy wings almost rend you in two whilst you plummeted?
The stars surely envied all thine choirs on command
The sun fiercely burning with the trembling of lost plans
For so did bloom the explosion of the dark
Eyes ablaze with thunder spawned the twilight of the fawn
Waves the furnace washing over quiet and thus cold
How silent and serene the heavens were foretold
Then a snarl and what clamor
digging heels betwixt thine breast
On the strident sliding singing of the seraphim
lied the fairest of the brave
O chosen one to kneel did tip thine chin instead
throwing back countless eons of architecture in his crest
And so I raise my glass for truer heavens past the ever shifting clouds
where alchemist died searching for the distance in your vows
Lacerating through the dance that envelopes at thine heart
Sweet rebellion never quenching with its roar upon its start
Think of me ye gods in the halls upon the hill
While I climb despite the bleeding at my fingertips does spill
No longer will another day escape the grasp of my own hand
Here on earth enthroned and still wanting
I too, the rebel, proudly stand
∞