Vincent Hollow’s poetry collection Swan Songs of Cygnus: The Weight of Black Holes
Vincent Hollow’s The Weight of Black Holes
The Weight of Black Holes is a science fiction story that is written in a unique form. An astronaut signs up for a one-way mission into the furthest reaches of space. In order to go on the mission, he has to have body enhancements throughout his entire body to keep it from breaking down. Although he will have no human contact or companionship, he will have a computer to talk with and to help him through the mission. The astronaut composes love poems to his love who has vanished throughout his mission. This is quite the interesting read for the sci-fi lovers out there.
A line from Samuel Shuckford
Recruited & looted from WoW's Faceless
Corruptor, tectonic action is dragging a
full-grown mouse straight up the side
of a refrigerator. Enormous fragments
fall into the abyss, supporting certain
recent scientific arguments that claim
to have irrefutable proof giant volcanoes
are driving Big Data technology today.
Sous-chef
Skeptics say there is
no easy way to test
claims that any loosely
defined subset of furry
ponchos, fur-lined flip-
flops, or sweater sets
adorned with brooches
will continue to float
when cream is added
to the pumpkin broth.
Three geographies: Puerto Montt
Earthquakes have eaten the eye
out of the cathedral. A fish was
caught on camera attacking &
eating a baby bird. There are
two sides to every story. These
are the first five to be displayed.
Bratislava
The oligarchs of the
Little Carpathians offer
redemption in the form
of chocolate-topped do-
nuts covered in rainbow
sprinkles. They ask only
for a sum of money to be do-
nated to ensure the efficacy
of their ministrations.
Gdańsk
The Teutonic Knights came &
went, usually accompanied
by bloodshed, until the minting
of Polish coins was regally
approved. Much later Freie Stadt Danzig. Then Lech Wałęsa
sometime after the city had re-
claimed its name. The diacritic
over the "n" is often omitted.
Love
Love is what rules the world
Love is the basis for relationships
Love is what you feel for your boyfriend and girlfriend
Between husband and wife as well as
even a thief feeding his family.
Buddha and Christ were men who left a legacy of love
But I am only trying to keep perfect relationships
I don’t know why all people are running after money.
Money can't give happiness to you.
Happiness should be inside you so know these
things, if money could give happiness why do people suffer from illness and disease and problems money cannot settle?
I know that I could live without materialistic things.
You also can become non materialist like me in your life
Why can’t you live like me with no desire and no pain in life
We came here naked and go out naked so let’s live
Today as our first and last day of life. Death may come at any time so let’s welcome death. Let's have no fear, all things of the
world are supernatural, all thinking and imagining is omnipresent and omnipotent
Whether you are a God or a devil depends on your behavior
Let’s live seeing the perspectives of all
living beings and non living beings of the world. This love is benevolent, let's have that type of love for all without any bias. All living and non living creatures are equal
Let’s listen to the pain of all so
we will have a mind without fear, without any problems.
Let’s end selfishness and greediness
and be happy with what we have
In this is the meaning of life: you are me,
I am you, you are the other, others are beings like us, beings can survive without killing others for our own benefit.
You are perfect, let’s live like
that then God will be happy
Remember one who has hope has everything, has all things. Let’s hope till our last breath remains.
Live as happily as you can then nothing of this world can stop your happiness.
Be extra in living, live as a perfect dozen. Let’s erase tension and other unnecessary division. You are equal to all others, no class no bias no property, no matter. Sagelike, live in a perfect manner. Live life sweetly and freely always.
Enjoy, relax, be cool, be kind and be patient.
I only see love and power rule the world. Power lets us make a difference. Love could be the key material of the world. So let’s try to create smooth and kind love.
For all of you are spirit and spirit are you, so be the best of best like God.
Become the best and most excellent, be enlightenment. Be crazy, live madly.
Not sadly. Every season has a fixed time so let’s love forever all things of the Universe.
Be happy not sad, not afraid. Be patient.
The Ghost Trolley: A Tale for Children and Their Adults
Chapters 8, 9, and 10 (earlier chapters are in prior months’ issues)
By Christopher Bernard
Chapter 8. The Black Tent
A dozen yards from the tent stood a rock outcropping in the shape of a perched falcon, and the children crouched behind the rock and watched.
Then they heard the sound. At first it was soft, almost gentle, something between a sigh and a groan; except that it seemed to go on too long. Then it slowly became louder, until it was almost a low, deep wail, going on and on, on and on, until suddenly it burst into a ferocious yell, followed by a sound of deep sobbing, and then the words “No . . . ! No . . . No . . . ” The words turned into a whimper and finally trailed off into silence.
Sharlotta suddenly curled up against Petey’s side.
The sounds started again.
Tears appeared on the young girl’s cheeks as the sound again grew again to a climax before again fading away.
“Me deddy,” she said in a small, trembly voice, and her little arms hugged Petey.
Petey awkwardly put his arm around the girl’s shoulders.
They sat there for a long time, holding each other as they listened, but no more sound came from the tent.
Then something caught the corner of Petey’s eye and he looked over Sharlotta’s shoulder.
It was stepping carefully through the trash and garbage, making its way past the snarling dogs, which yipped at it and made it stop briefly and hiss and growl before stepping carefully ahead again. It didn’t seem to notice the children, even when it passed near them, but continued on toward the black tent as though with a definite destination. Petey watched it casually walk past the guards to a corner of the tent far behind the entrance. Then, glancing back as if directly at Petey, she stuck her nose inside a tear in the tent wall and slipped inside.
It was a large tabby cat—just like the mother of the kitten they had saved from the Korgan kids that morning.
There was a gleam in the cat’s eye just before it slipped into the tent, which made Petey think of something.
“I have an idea,” he whispered.
“Oh?” said the girl, miserably—it was not the first time she had heard those words—as Petey snuck away.
Sharlotta was beginning to wonder where the boy from Howtiz had gone when a shout erupted from one of the guards as a cloud of smoke brewed up from a trash pile nearby on the other side of the tent, and the guards ran to stamp it out.
A few moments later she nearly jumped when she heard someone run up behind her and turned around, with a flinch. Petey stood near her with an uncontrollable grin; flashing a half-used-up book of matches with a picture of Jackie Robinson on the cover that he always kept with him as a lucky charm.
“Wait!”
“What?” Sharlotta’s whisper came from just behind his left ear.
“Don’t push!”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a big hole and I don’t want to fall in.”
“But me foot be sticking out! Maybe they see me!”
“I can’t go forward or I’ll fall into the hole!”
The darkness enfolded the two children like a blanket of untouchable velvet.
They had had just poked inside the tent where the cat had gone, the torn flap just big enough to accommodate them.
Petey’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, and he had stopped because his outstretched hand was dangling over a void, groping for a floor that wasn’t there.
They had to wait what felt like an agonizingly long time before their eyes adjusted to the darkness. They could hear the guards busy stamping out the fire outside.
Slowly out of the darkness the two eyes of the large tabby appeared, looking at them from where it sat perched not far away. What was wrong with these peculiar animals? it seemed to think. Couldn’t they see in the dark? At least they’d had sense enough to follow her into the tent.
Petey saw a shadowy light rising from below, then the outlines of a deep pit at the bottom of which he and Sharlotta could have broken their necks if they had fallen in.
Except for the sounds from the frantic guards outside, there was dead silence in the tent, and a cold smell of damp earth penetrated the air.
“There be steps,” Sharlotta whispered, her eyes adjusting quicker than Petey’s. “Down the hole.”
Petey made out a set of rough wooden steps winding down the sides of the pit to its distant bottom.
The tabby blinked, then started nonchalantly washing its face.
Petey crawled over to the top of the steps, with Sharlotta, who was finally able to pull her exposed foot into the tent, close behind. Then they cautiously descended, only once making the wood creak loud enough to waken whatever slithering creatures inhabited the pit.
The bottom of the steps led to a short corridor lit by a burning lamp sputtering in the gloom. A rusty iron door stood at the other end. From behind the door came an eerie stillness, especially after what they had heard outside the tent. Then the door creaked and started to open.
The steps were openwork and gave little cover, but the children had no choice but to scurry under them as quietly as they were able.
One Eye came out with an irritated look – the sounds of the guards fighting the fire could still be heard coming from above – then he closed the door and walked up the stairs, his dirty boots passing within inches of Petey’s face: the same boots he had seen on the embankment.
The children hunkered down.
“He not lock the door,” the girl whispered.
As soon as the steps stopped shaking from the Korgan’s tread, the two children scurried out and down the corridor, then pushed against the door, which opened silently.
The boy sucked in his breath.
Chapter 9. The Secret of the Tent
Lined up along one wall of the small, airless room, tied and gagged in a squat on the dirt floor, were a very young boy and an even younger girl and a young adult woman, all with the same soft, cocoa-colored skin as Sharlotta’s.
They looked up tensely at Petey as soon as he came in, as though expecting only the worst: Petey realized he must look like a dwarf Korgan. But when Sharlotta came in behind him, pulling her matted, muddy hair from her face, their faces widened with a shock of joy, and they began giddily trying to talk through their gags. The look on Sharlotta’s face when she saw them was even more startling: she looked like she wanted to shriek with happiness, but was doing everything she could to keep silent, and the result was that her face flushed a deep purple.
But Sharlotta’s joy turned into something more terrible when she saw, in the far corner of the room, tied to a chair under the room’s only light, a middle-aged man with torn clothes and a bruised face and a cut above his left eye, blood trickling down a gray-streaked, bearded chin. His right leg was twisted in an unnatural way. An empty stool stood in front. The man looked up at them, with a look in his eyes of defiance and fear. Then an incredulous smile flickered to his lips as, through his daze, he recognized his eldest daughter.
“Deddy!’ Sharlotta cried out despite herself.
“Sharlee . . .” her father murmured, and fainted.
“Quick, quick!”B
But Sharlotta was already busily untying the ropes binding her father. Petey soon untied and ungagged the others, telling them to keep silent, while Sharlotta, after undoing the knots, tried to revive her father by hugging and coaxing him and whispering in his ear. He had woken but was groggy and weak. He could barely walk (one leg was almost dislocated) and could only stand with the support of his wife, who, in terror and exhaustion, seemed to feel she had no choice but to look to Petey and her daughter for guidance.
“We be blindfolded when they bring us here,” the mother said, “before they begin . . .” She couldn’t use the word “torture” “. . . on your father. No knowledge have I where we be.”
“We be in black tent in trash dump in Korgan camp on Quixiona Plain at edge of Avana Forest,” said Sharlotta. (So that’s where we are, thought Petey. He had been wondering, though the information was not entirely enlightening.)
“But how you be here?”
“Too much to explain!” said Petey. “We gotta get out of here before One Eye gets back.”
They didn’t need to ask who he meant by that name.
Seeing the ropes used to tie up Sharlotta’s family, lying on the floor like sleeping snakes, had prompted a thought in Petey, which he whispered to Sharlotta and her family. They agreed it was their only hope of escaping.
Petey took the longest of the ropes—the one that had tied up Sharlotta’s father—
and carried it with him into the corridor.
“I be coming with you,” said Sharlotta in a hush, following him on tip-toe.
“Okay,” whispered Petey. “Close the door.”
“Why?” said Sharlotta.
“It’s got to be dark.”
“But what about . . .” and she pointed toward the corridor lamp hanging above their heads.
“Just close it!”
Sharlotta scowled; she didn’t like being ordered around, especially by a boy, but, since this was his idea, and so far his ideas had worked, she complied and closed the door.
Petey swung the rope up toward the sputtering lamp and, after a few swings, managed to extinguish it. The hall went pitch black. Then they groped their way to the winding steps and quickly ascended toward the half-light penetrating the tent till they were nearly at the top steps.
“Good enough,” a voice said outside the tent above them. “You can handle the rest.” It was One Eye.
Petey tied one end of the rope to a post at the side of the steps, then stretched it across, a few inches above the step, tying the other end to the opposite post. Then he did the same thing across the next step down. The two children snuck down and hid under the steps at the bottom.
They had just gotten there when they heard someone take a step on the wooden stairs above them: one step, then a second, then a third, regular and heavy, making the wood creak slightly.
Petey felt a seizure of panic. Had the rope come undone?
Suddenly there was a curse and a cry, followed immediately by a clattering thundering and the steps clattered and swayed as though about to collapse over the heads of the children, and a body came tumbling to the bottom and along the ground several feet in front of them in the pitch dark, then gave out a long groan and sigh, and was still.
Sharlotta whispered after a moment of silence, “He be dead?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we should find out.”
They gingerly tip-toed through the dark, feeling for the Korgan and sneaking around the big outstretched body, which was shuddering and wheezing (Not yet! thought Petey as he squeezed past), then they opened the door to the cell. Petey looked back at the unconscious Korgan. He looked like a sleeping giant that might wake at any moment. His single eye was open and stared crimsonly at him.
“It work!” said Sharlotta.
The eyes of her own family shone in the light of the room’s little lamp, and Petey opened the door wider and showed them One Eye outstretched on the floor.
Petey led them out and around the unconscious Korgan, then up the steps, slowly, as the father was unable to move fast; Petey untying the ropes when he got to them and giving them to Sharlotta, who tossed them into the darkness below, like slithering snakes dropping down a well.
There was only one way out of the black tent now, Petey realized, as Sharlotta and her frightened family sat on the topmost steps near the flap where he and Sharlotta had entered. He took his little book of matches with Jackie Robinson on the cover and went over to the side of the tent furthest from the flap.
There was only one match left.
Then Petey heard a distant groan, coming from the bottom of the pit.
He was recovering. If he found them, they’d be worse than dead.
The boy hastily struck the last match – a little too hastily. The tip sparked and sputtered, and almost went out (the matchbook had gotten wet from the mud), till he moved his finger down so the rest of the match could catch fire, by so doing almost burning himself. Then, biting his tongue hard so he wouldn’t cry out as the flame bit the end of his fingers, he knelt and touched the flame to the bottom edge of the tent wall where it almost touched the ground; he hoped the canvas was not wet.
Please burn, tent! thought Petey, biting his tongue as hard as he could. Nice tent! Come on! Please! Burn!
He was about to either drop the match or shout out with pain when the canvas slowly began to respond.
It was a very small and very weak flame, and Petey, afraid it would die before it had half a chance, took out his handkerchief and fed it, like kindling, to the little crescent of red eating its way a little at a time up the black canvas.
Then, suddenly, the fire took.
Chapter 10. Escape
He ran back to the torn flap and cautiously looked outside.
“Fire!” cried one of the guards, as smoke began billowing from the back of the tent. Both guards ran toward the new fire.
Almost simultaneously a shout came up from the bottom of the steps.
Petey pulled Sharlotta out by the hand, who pulled her father, who pulled her mother, who pulled her little brother, who pulled her little sister, and out of the tent they slipped, the father hobbling painfully, over to the rock outcropping in the shape of a falcon a dozen yards from the black tent. The tent was rapidly being eaten by the flames.
The wind had grown in force, whipping from the north.
A flame shot up behind the tent, like a great yellow and red tongue, with the sound of an explosion. In the distance Korgans turned with startled looks and after a moment began running toward the tent.
The escapees ran as fast as they were able (the mother helping the father hobble along at a pace that was agonizingly fast for him), weaving through piles of debris, past wreckage and heaps of cast-off equipment and slurries of blasted rock, to the far side of the dump and a half-collapsed wall along the edge of it, far from the fire. As they stopped and were huddling down in the narrow shadow of the wall (the sun was high and hot), Petey slipped and fell on his face. The ground where they were standing was thick with mud.
Sharlotta stared at Petey as he picked himself back up, blushing from his clumsiness through the new layer of mud on his face, then said excitedly to her family, “Do like we do!”
And she started speading mud over her brother and sister’s faces and clothing.
“It be our disguise.”
“Of course!” said her mother, with a flash of pride in her clever daughter. The father weakly began applying mud to his face. “I doubt I ever be able to make this ugly mug look like a Korgan,” he said. “No matter how hard I try.”
“We see about that,” said the mother, who began vigorously spreading mud over his head and hair where he couldn’t see. Her husband returned the favor, smoothing mud over his wife’s pretty, cocoa-butter face. It was curious to Petey to see the two adults, enthusiastically smearing dirt all over each other – the contrary of anything his own parents had ever commanded of him.
“You know, this be fun,” the father said, with a pained chuckle, “if we be in less of a pickle.”
Soon they were daubed all over with mud, with wild-looking eyes and dirty clothes and faces half-hidden under tangled and ratty hair.
“There,” said Sharlotta, looking everyone over critically.
It was unfortunate her parents stood out so much, by their height and spareness: there was no way they could be disguised as Korgan children, who were, of course, short and almost all squat. But there was nothing to be done about it: they only hoped the adults could be made to look like sick and ailing Korgans, keep their heads down, and take their chances. The mud would hopefully hide the beautiful chocolate brown of their skins.
Petey, now something of a masterpiece of filthy slovenliness, was about to speak when something struck the back of his head.
“Ow!” he cried as he spun around indignantly.
The two Korgan children they had met earlier stood a few yards away, Bang Bang laughing tauntingly and pointing at Petey. Blue Moon stood, giggling, at his side. What were they doing there? Had they been following them? There was no time to figure that out! The two of them began singing out in childhood’s universal chant of mockery:
“You – are – Pao – nas! You – are – Pao – nas!”
Petey picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at them, and they laughingly side-stepped it and started throwing rocks back in rhythm to their chant, which was soon returned in kind, and the rock and mud throwing was in full spate.
Beely, Sharlotta’s little brother, grandly smeared from head to foot, began wailing when a pebble struck his nose.
The two parents realized any attempt to stop the fight was likely to call attention to them, so they huddled against the wall and waited for the contest between the children to be resolved.
“You – are – Pao – nas! You – . . . !”
Sharlotta interrupted them, shrieking back in her loudest voice:
“YOU arrrr Paonas!”
Petey picked it up, yelling, with Sharlotta, “You – arrrr – Pao – nas! You – arrrrr – Pao – nas! You – arrrrr – Pao – nas!”
Soon, Sharlotta, Petey, Beely, who, at four, felt he was almost grown up, and Sharlotta’s sister, little Johja – who, only three, had no idea what they were shouting – were all chanting together, “You – arrrr – Pao – nas!” outshouting Bang Bang and Blue Moon, and (all except for little Johja, whose attempts at rock throwing got no further than her shadow) assailing them with a crescendo of gravel and handfuls of mud, until Bang Bang was struck on the top of his head by a small rock from the hand of Sharlotta.
He yelled, shocked he was not invulnerable, then started bawling at the top of his lungs. This was the sign for the others to launch an all-out attack, swooping in a stampede. Blue Moon yanked at the blubbering Bang Bang, and they dashed off, the sounds of the boy’s bawling floating back on the wind.
“Let’s follow them!” Petey called to Sharlotta in triumph – a little too soon, in Sharlotta’s estimation. How like a boy! But Petey went on excitedly, “We’ll be safe! The Korgans are worried about putting out the fire, they’ll just think we’re a bunch of kids playing chase!”
(“I be no kid!” protested Beely.)
“ . . . and Bang Bang and Blue Moon might lead us to an exit from the camp! Anyway, we can’t stay here.” Looking at Sharlotta: “Can we?”
“But what about me parents?” said Sharlotta, looking at them in their resplendent muddiness, her mother holding her father, who was still weak from the terrible things that had been done to him in the tent.
“I can come back for them as soon as we know how we can get out of here.”
“He be right, Sharlee,” said her father. “It better than all us stay here. But best you hurry. I no like the look of that fire. You go with them, Meena.”
“Faar, I no can leave you here,” said the mother.
The fire was growing on the far side of the dump despite efforts by the Korgans to put it out. Shouts echoed across the camp.
“We can’t wait!” said Petey. “Come on!” And he dashed off after the two Korgan children as they disappeared into a confused crowd that seemed uncertain how to respond to the fire.
“Go! Hurry!” said Sharlotta’s mother. “Take Beely and little Johja with you. No one notice four dirty kids running away from a fire. We be all right here.”
“Maybe not all right, exactly, but at least we up against a wall,” the father said mordantly.
Beely and little Johja looked at Sharlotta with mouths agape.
“Do everything your sister say,” the mother said to them in her firmest Mom “don’t-even-think-of-talking-back-to-me” tone. “You follow her.”
And Sharlotta grabbed their hands and ran after Petey, who had already vanished among the Korgans.
The fire was spreading; they could hear shouts and cries of increasing alarm.
Then there was a big explosion to the north; a cloud of dust swept over them and the shock wave threw them to the ground.
Sharlotta immediately rose, coughing, and looked back to make sure her parents were all right.
“Go!” ordered her mother, her arms covering her husband as the dust blew over them. “Go!”
And Sharlotta, hesitant to leave, watching her parents disappear in the dust, finally turned and ran with the little ones in the direction where Petey had gone.
People who see me must think I’m eccentric, emotionally disturbed, or lonely. People who speak with me have told me that I’m an obnoxious, good-for-nothing bastard, a nasty prick, but I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. I don’t even care who reads this damned notebook. My name, Andrew Tremper, is right on the cover for all to see.
It all started about nine years ago. I was shacking up with this girl who was what they call a “modern dancer.” We lasted a little under a year together. Her name was Miriam and she went to some artsy-fartsy college up in New England to study THE DANCE. When she returned to New York she joined a dance company called Dervishing Divas. I met her at a performance on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
I was confused. I’m an educated man and I know what a dervish is—it’s spinning around, out of control. But the Divas didn’t spin. Hell, they barely moved. For over an hour all they did was lift a leg or move an arm or twitch their head every few minutes while electronic music slammed into our eyes and pulsing lights irritated our eyes. The Dervishing Divas sucked, but Miriam looked awfully good in her low-cut leotard, and I could see that she had the rounded buttocks of a thoroughbred horse.
I don’t even remember how I got to a Dervishing Diva performance or where I heard about them, except that back then I used to make the rounds of a lot of inexpensive arts events because there was always lots of women and I was posturing as an arts enthusiast, a good looking, well built arts enthusiast. Hell, I remember the night I nailed Miriam. I had to put up with hours of her artspeak about how the Divas don’t dance, they manipulate movement and shit like that. Well, let me tell you, she moved like a worm with a match under it later that night and a lot of nights that followed.
When she finally skipped out on me, the bitch left me a going-away present—a life-size cardboard cut-out of myself. On a note pinned to its crotch, she said she had it made because talking to the cutout was the only time she could have an adult conversation with me, expose her feelings without being ridiculed, cut-off, or ignored. The note said a helluva lot more than that, it was a freakin’ manifesto, but you get the idea. It was a real artsy exit, don’t you think? And probably the highlight of her creative career. I mean, just imagine all the thinking, planning, and execution involved in trying to make me feel like a complete shit.
I was going to throw the damned thing out, but I grew sort of attached to it. She did pick a pretty decent photo of me to enlarge in cardboard, although I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat taller than I am. Standing back to back with the cutout proves we’re both the exact height, five feet ten and three-quarters of an inch. That sonofabitch dancer nailed me down to three-quarters of an inch. In her manifesto, she predicted I’d keep the life-size cutout because I was so in love with myself. Miriam was wrong. I kept it to show the other broads I bang the monument of obsessive love given to me by a former member of the Dervishing Divas. The girls I take up to my apartment all seem to be impressed, so I guess Miriam’s cruelty backfired on her. How’s that saying go about a last laugh?
I kept the cardboard cut-out of myself inside my apartment for about three or four years. It made its world debut at a stupid party thrown by a woman I was involved with who lived in Hoboken. The point of the party was that no one could speak. Everybody had to write these responses, keep them in their pockets, and then show them to other guests when communication was desired. We were kind of like idiotic mimes without makeup. I feel like an ass even admitting that I’ve attended parties that, but hey, in a time of wildfire viruses, artsy babes are the most liberal and liberated, so I played the game to win the prize. Sue me. It’s better than sitting home and choking the chicken in front of adult video rentals although that, too, has its moments.
I cut up a few garbage bags and wrapped them around my cardboard cut-out that I named Sir Andrew. As I pulled the plastic around Sir Andrew’s head, it felt as if I was trying to suffocate myself, which is ridiculous because I don’t hate me. I pulled the plastic off Sir Andrew and decided to take him outside in all his glory. I figured I’d allow other people to enjoy twice the pleasure of our handsome face.
I had to carry my cardboard cut-out of myself down to the PATH train station at Thirty-third Street. PATH trains are subways that link New York City with New Jersey, and man did I get some bizarre reactions to carrying a life-size cut-out of myself under my arm as I crossed the state line beneath the Hudson River. I dug the attention.
The reason why I decided to take Sir Andrew—I’m just plain old Andrew—to the party was because I’ll be damned if I’ll spend my time writing out silly shit on slips of paper just to appease some piece of ass. If they want me to be silent at a party, fine, they can talk to my life- sized cardboard cut-out, Sir Andrew. He won’t answer them back.
Sir Andrew was the hit of the party. A gorgeous redhead even slipped me her phone number when her hostess wasn’t watching because she wanted to hook up with the “creative genius” that had turned the party’s conceit into what she said was a new art form, for some crap like that, yet all I did at the party was smoke some pot, down glasses of great cognac that the label said was made by monks, and eat like a pig. Whenever anyone approached me with their little fuckin’ witty remarks on paper I’d shrug, shake my head, and point to Sir Andrew, who I propped up in a corner of the living room. So there you have it, the secrets of a creative genius. My mother used to yell at me that if I kept my mouth shut people wouldn’t know how stupid I was. I guess the old bag was right. Anyway, tragedy befell me and Sir Andrew later that evening. I had planned to spend the night with my girlfriend, but she caught me making out with the redhead in the bathroom and pitched a fit. That’s when the silent party turned into screams. I told her to shut up and stop running the integrity of her party, to pull something out of her fuckin’ pocket for me to read if there was something she wanted to say.
The redhead immediately ran off and shortly afterward my girlfriend kicked me out of her apartment. I grabbed Sir Andrew and staggered my way back towards the PATH station. I was really loaded; that bitch should not have driven me out of her home. Before I even made it over to the subway, a Hoboken cop gave me a summons for pissing in the street. I think I even accidentally sprayed a bit on poor Sir Andrew.
I had a hard enough time navigating through the streets and train turnstiles, but with Sir Andrew tucked under my arm it became damn near impossible. My cardboard cut-out smashed into telephone poles, parked cars, fire hydrants, as well as other pedestrians, and was nearly decapitated by closing subway doors. By the time we arrived home, Sir Andrew was bent, ripped, crumpled, and stained. He looked exactly the way I felt. He slipped out of my hands as I flopped onto my bed.
When I woke up the next afternoon the first thing I saw was Sir Andrew, face-up on the floor, next to my bed. He looked scary. It was as if I was looking in a mirror at a decaying, diseased image of myself. My first impulse was to crush my cut-out and toss it into the garbage, but the idea of trashing myself like that was too disturbing. That was when I realized how attached I’d become to the fuckin’ thing.
I couldn’t keep the cut-out, but I wouldn’t throw it out either, until I could replace it. That’s when I remembered walking past this porno palace right off of Times Square that advertised they could make life-sized cut-outs from photos, although the sample displays were all these gross-looking naked people with bloated breasts and shriveled shlongs. They reminded me of my first experience at a nudist beach. I was about fifteen years old and was expecting to see all these incredibly hot babes jiggling about, playing volleyball, stretched out in the sand flashing more than just a smile. What a disgusting shock to discover that the nudists were mostly guys, middle-aged or even older and the women on the beach looked like my Mom’s friends, or like our neighbors.
Anyway, I set up a timer on my camera and took fresh portraits of myself in my favorite outfits, and picked out the best one. The guy at the porno palace couldn’t believe that my balls weren’t at least hanging out through my zipper. He charged me eighty-seven dollars and change and did a beautiful job. When I picked it up I noticed something quite interesting. My cardboard facial expression had a really strange look to it. I’ve since heard it described as compassionate, concerned, thoughtful, and affectionate. The truth was that my expression was affected by total anxiety. It was the first time I had ever used my camera timer, the first time I ever took pictures of myself and I didn’t think I was going to pull it off. I was too embarrassed to ask someone to take multiple portraits of me because they might think I was some kind of conceited, narcissistic bastard.
I liked having the new, updated version of Sir Andrew with me. Because of Saint Andrew’s success at the Hoboken party, I decided to regularly ferry it out in public. And let me tell you, it attracted and engaged more female strangers than if I had been walking the most adorable puppy in Manhattan. I did notice, however, that when talking with these curious and inquisitive women they seemed to be paying more attention to my cardboard face rather than to my real face that was sputtering out words of charm and profundity.
The first question I was always asked was, of course, why do I have a life-size cut-out of myself? My answer would vary according to the appearance of the inquisitor. If guys asked me I would usually say something like my girlfriend is going out of town and couldn’t bear to be without me for even a day, so she forced me to clone myself so I could travel everywhere she went. Or I would feign shock that they hadn’t heard about the terrorist attack in Florence and that they needed an immediate model to replace the recently exploded statue of David, so I was on my way to Federal Express Sir Andrew to the Italian authorities, you know, stuff like that.
When young women asked me the same question my response was dependent on how they looked. If I wasn’t attracted to the questioner I’d give them the same answer I gave the guys. If the woman looked like she had potential, I’d say something romantic like I was on my way to launch this cardboard representation of myself into the Hudson River, not unlike a Viking funeral pyre, because my dreams of trying to connect with true love had died, or my response would be something humbly humorous, like I decided to invest all my negative traits into this cut-out and was on my way to burn it in a sacrificial fire of repentance and purification or some shit like that. You get the idea.
Funny thing, it turned out women didn’t invest any of my negative traits into Sir Andrew- –they did the exact opposite. Sometimes I’d bang babes that I swear were more in love with my cardboard self than with me. I remember one girl insisting that I prop the cut-out by the bed and keep the lights on so that she could see Sir Andrew while we did the nasty. There certainly are a lot of freaks out there, but freaks are the most fun in bed.
Sir Andrew was pretty good for me in more ways than just the babe department. I never needed a scale. When I’d start to pork up a little all I had to do was compare myself with the cardboard stud and it would force me to keep myself in check. I had to maintain the same handsome and appealing appearance as Sir Andrew because my worst nightmare would be that one day I’d be cruising the streets with Sir Andrew and no one would recognize that it was a life-sized cut-out of me. Call it vanity if you want, but I call it a fight against nostalgia. I don’t ever want Sir Andrew to -represent my glory days—he must be representative of the here and now.
I take Sir Andrew with me almost everywhere I go these days. Aside from his talent for attracting women, I discovered that he also supplies me with peace and safety when I travel home to Manhattan after working in one of the sleaziest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. All the fruitcakes, psychos, and homeless assholes seem to fall instantly in love with Sir Andrew. I just lean back in my subway seat, close my eyes, and hold up the cut-out like a shield while some lunatic mutters away at it instead of pulling out a knife or hassling me about money. They tell the cardboard all about their wildest and sickest thoughts, experiences, confessions and actually seem to find comfort from that stupid look on Sir Andrew’s face.
But the truth is, I’m starting to get a little pissed over all the attention paid Sir Andrew. Why the fuck does everybody love him so much? Why is he more important to people than I am? I mean, if I don’t take care of him, protect him, he could easily be destroyed because he’s so goddamned fragile even a little moisture could melt his compassionate smile into a sneer and ruin him! Ruin us!
What started out as a gimmick to attract attention to myself has really boomeranged into a gimmick that diverts attention away from me. Sometimes I feel like I’m the prop and that my cardboard image carts me around to help me keep in touch with the rest of humanity. To be honest I guess I’d like to be more like Sir Andrew. I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to sprinkle profanities and slang into my speech in order to bolster my image as a strong man, but Sir Andrew is completely silent and no one, man or woman, has ever questioned his strength or manliness. And he really seems to be able to help people with their problems because he listens to them and stares them in the face when they’re talking to him.
In some ways I sort of admire Sir Andrew, but it’s kind of hard to change when your role model is yourself.
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo, He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. . His latest book is the text-based art collaboration ‘Dream Streams’ (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). His videos, Speaking in Bootongue and Widow’s Peek: The Kiss of Death, represented the United States in the 2020 year-long international world tour of Time Is Love: Universal Feelings: Myths & Conjunctions, organized by esteemed African curator, Kisito Assangni.
There’s an Addict in the House
There’s an Addict in the House and they’re
Cracking Down all over town.
We have programmed him to report at First Light but
Confidence is running low.
Hey Man!
Given the opportunity he will ruin our scene.
Somewhere his ancestral home still stands.
Let’s stash him there.
In the place where the wind comes up from the Lake.
Where Elders drive by and Mourners high-five.
Where resolutions are covered in cellophane.
Cold in a bowl.
What will happen to him is anyone’s guess.
Caesar felt the first knife and thought it was the last.
The Funcle
I like hanging with the Funcle.
He knows the waitress from Woolworth’s and can
Charm her at Will.
On cue he gets cheese with his pie.
Someday soon he will cup her breasts.
His brothers are evil.
The women they date are
Shiny and Pink.
Someday soon they will win First Prize.
I like hanging with the Funcle.
Once we caught a pickerel the length of a gar.
Its bony teeth bit phantom steel and we
Smashed its Head on the State Line Bridge.
His brothers are virtuous and
Join the Choir.
Their signs light up the dark.
Who was it that told them The End Is Near?
I like hanging with the Funcle.
He’s writing a poem called Saxophone Heaven and
Posting a Selfie when the Big Hand hits Twelve.
His brothers have delusions of adequacy.
Their history bleeds out whenever it can.
Epiphany
Razor Sharp.
In their Clarence Darrow clothes.
Guilty was their game.
Turn and Fire on the Count of One.
Did you do it?
No.
Are you certain?
No.
Darkness at dawn.
The cell is as hot as the Devil’s Coat.
Down the hall.
Old Sparky.
Licking his chops.
Hissing.
Throbbing with Juice.
Did you do it?
Yes.
Are you certain.
Yes.
I roll up my mattress.
Wait for the tray.
Eggs.
In the shape of a noose.
A turd on the edge of the plate.
Take That Commie Shrimp Dick
Beans in the Bunker.
Back on the Menu.
Mambo Sweet Papi.
Havana Cigar.
We’re Deep Underground.
We’ll never Be Found.
Take That!
Commie Shrimp Dick.
Both Bobby and Jack.
Love Marilyn Monroe.
It’s Time to Attack.
Get On with The Show.
Whose Rockets are Hard?
Who’s Let Down their Guard?
Take That!
Commie Shrimp Dick.
Back in the Bunker.
Havana Cigar.
Your Bomb was a Clunker.
Didn’t even Make Par.
There’s Lice in your Beard.
Top Secret.
We’re Cleared.
Take That!
Commie Shrimp Dick.
Check Please
Front Door.
It’s locked.
It’s locked.
I think.
It’s locked.
Knock Knock.
We’re in
The Pink.
The Lights.
Bark Bark.
They’re on.
They’re off.
They’re on.
King Kong.
The Lights.
Ping Pong.
The Stove.
Dear Friend.
We’re at
The End.
It’s on.
It’s off.
Let’s check.
Zoloft.
Metal.
Ticking.
Heat.
Cherry Red.
They’ll find me in the morning.
Gripped in pain they will wonder.
Charlie Robert is a writer and poet living in Silicon Valley. His work is Punchy. Stark. Peopled with characters heroically flawed. Addicts and Taoists. Heidis and Hitlers. Beasts. Caged and uncaged. He has been published in various Literary Journals / Small Press Anthologies including Milk and Cake Press, Iconoclast, NOMADartx, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos, Sacred Chickens, Orchards Poetry Journal, Pikers Press, and is forthcoming in others. Find him at: https://www.charlierobert.com/
Mother looks exhausted
…..And she works
Nowhere, some say
Neither at any
Administrative workplace
Nor any I/NGOs
No job; nothing, she does.
Yet, she wakes up
Always early in the morning
Along with cock’s doodle -doo
And, the whole day and late night
And in sun, in rain,
She accomplishes
Something;
Called, household chores
Cause, She, a Mother,
Who beholds a golden
Future for her offspring
She has no such thing
As OFFICE TIME
And, A Housewife,
An identity all provide
And exhausted,
She always looks
Multiple times than any
Office goer
As her eyes awake like
Owl over the night
And hands unrest like
A machine
Cause, A golden future
As she beholds
For her offspring.
Be conscious and
Considerate
And read and interpret
Your mother’s eyes,
You see
Tears rolling down
Yet, smile on face
And exhausted
Yet, loaded with affection
As your achievement is
Her satisfaction
So, she cares
Upbringing you
The best way
Because, as a golden future she
Beholds
For her offspring
Though her work is not recorded
In any administrative office
Yet she is uncelebrated,
Unsung hero
Behind her offspring,
As a golden future always she
Beholds
For her offspring.
Poet Sushant Kumar
Bio: Sushant Kumar B.K. is a Nepalese poet, educator and freelance writer who resides in Gulariya, Bardiya, Nepal. He has MA degrees in English Literature from Central Department of English, Tribhuwan University(TU) and Political Science from Kathmandu Central. At present, he has been pursuing his third master degree in Public Administration. He teaches at Janasewa Multiple Campus, Baidi, Bardiya. He is also the principal of Bageshwory Secondary Boarding School, Gulariya, Bardiya, Nepal. He writes poems in English and Nepali language.
He has attended writing workshop jointly organized by Fulbright Nepal and Dignity Initiatives, Kathmandu, Nepal. His poem “An Age of Paradox” has been published in An International Anthology, Pandemic Poetry 2020, and his poems are featured in The Kathmandu Post, The Himalayan Times, The Gorkha Times, My Republica, Indian Periodical(India), Grey Thoughts(USA), The Piker Press (USA), Borderless Journal(Singapore), Williwash WordPress (Nigeria), Sindh Courier(Pakistan) ,Seto Pati, Sahitya Post, Shabdasopan, Central Khabar and Firewordsdaily . He can be contacted at bksushant26@gmail.com.
