gets you. They think you are normal, you’re not. You are splitting apart on the inside.
as you sink more and more into aloneness,
they pass judgement on your actions.
they say insensitive things
like; chill out, take a pill, see a
shrink or they distance themselves.
they think you’re out of character,
they don’t know there is a struggle
going on inside of you, a real struggle
where tears flow and make puddles in
your soul… and nothing works; no Hail Marys,
no affirmations, no nothing.
you wait for an episode
to pass to get relief, that’s if you are
lucky, cuz for some, relief doesn’t come.
you see the severely affected on the streets
far gone, listening to the voices in their heads,
sometimes succumbing to them. It’s a
daily struggle that only those feeling the ache knows. Give a care.
Sheila’s writing style can best be categorized as Visual Poetry, blending emotion and vision into a poem or story of color. Her poems and short stories are featured at Spillwords Publications, Literary Yard, Cafe Lit magazine.uk, Imspired Magazine and Clarendon House Publications Poetica 2 and 3. She is a featured poet at PoetrySoup. Her work is also featured in several anthologies and in the youtube series Poetica 2. She was Author of the Month at Spillwords.
What function does mise-en-scene play in the composition of the atmospherics of a film? Substantiate with examples from the prescribed texts in the paper.
Mise-en-scene is the design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatrical or film production, both in the visual arts through storyboarding, visual themes, and cinematography and in narrative story telling through direction. It can be contextualized as the environment or milieu of the physical setting of an action [as of a narrative or a motion picture]. Light and camera, prompts and gadgets, costumes and apparel wear, pantomime and mime essentializes the abstraction of cinematic aesthetics—-mobilized and virtual gaze of the bodies and objects by sequential cluster or constellation of images [image fields] through kinesthetics of the montage in filmic frame is the canon of mise-en-scene—cinematic movements and cinematic effects within the cinematic tourism vistas; offering endowment of internationalization or hybridization of locales and cultures through cross bordering portability of diasporic films by digital reproducibility in montage or film editing [diffusion, dispersion, disruption, inversion, transportation, recontextualization] technique. The composition of the atmospherics of a film acknowledge negotiation between Albert Einstein and Walter Benjamin which can be explained in filmic language and cinematography. Einstein propounded the theory of the fourth dimension, extrapolating the intersections and overtones of visual and aural dynamics; Walter Benjamin characterizes this interweaving of body and images in digitally technologized reproducibility as the reception-of-a “state of distraction.” Mise-en-scene in a nutshell fosters the fundamental transferrable skills to the production and reception of a film and establishes the pragmatics semantic field of literary history and cultural memory.
Reconsidering English playwright William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the recontextualized adaptation of Indianized film production hybridizes Shakespearean Elizabethan England with the post independence and post colonialism mise-en-scene. “Maqbool” [2003] is critiqued by the directorial sententiousness in altruism of humane temperament which digresses the hegemony of cultural imperialism and/or cultural resistance as resonated in another blockbuster Bollywood cine picture talkies “Agneepath” [1990]. [Lord Hardinge, as governor-general, issued a resolution on October 10, 1844, declaring that for all government appointments preference would be given to the knowledge of English.—the instance of colonialism as symbol of the hegemony and /or resistance of imperial culturalism becomes the quintessential reference in film narratives.] Amitabh is the star cast heroic protagonist, gestures appeasement for the mother as lady of the hearth’s fiery temperament is immortalized with the imperative in the diegetic: “All the waters of Bombay will not cleanse the blood from your hands” resonates Shakespearean dialogism of somnambulistic Lady Macbeth. On the contradistinction, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool [2003] “Pure as the naked new born babe […] Shall blow horrid deed in every eye/ that tears shall drown the wind” in exemplification of treachery of the treasonous felony of Maqbool [slaughtering of Jehangir Khan Elias Abbuji] is the after effects/ aftermath of the seedlings of ambition matured by the profanation in the epiphany of Nimmi and the investigating law enforcement agency to a certain extent. This transgressivity is the depolarized effect in connotative diction that contextualizes futility of nihilistic anarchy in the “Throne of Blood” [1957]. Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth in the “Throne of Blood” [1957] illustrates the fruitlessness of worldly ambition and the limitations of free-will in Shakespearean rhetoric of the trajectory of Macbeth’s downfall—Macbeth’s tragic flaw is not the blind lust for power or vaulting ambition but the hamartia beneath the presupposition; that he was a free agent in a world where his actions are ultimately predestined or circumscribed; that tracks his degeneration from a poet-warrior into a merciless power hungry tyrant; hereby, shifting the mise-en-scene from medieval Scotland to postimperial post feudal Japan. Samurai Lord Tsuzuki resembles the cherubic-angelic saintly king—the prey of assassination by felon Washizu — the superimposed agent depraved of human agency and this masochistic emasculation blooms the impotency in a functionary character.
Since original Shakespearean film productions apparently disharmonize the audience of post colonial Indian subcontinent or Japanese post feudalism, hence the theatre drama has been altered through manipulation and interpolation of scenes, characters, actions, settings and plots—a frontality of presentation, declamatory and histrionic vocalization with rhetorical and visual flamboyance in hybridized performative of vernaculars—either pure and pristine or bowdlerized and indigenized. The mise-en-scene of long shots, deep focus, panning and tracking shots of Western realism and static frame and hard-edge wipe of Oriental formalism coalesces. Erin Suzuki’s “Lost in Translation: Reconsidering Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood” notes, “Kurosawa’s Shakespeare is inevitably—-and fortunately more Kurosawa than Shakespeare. With blunt and vital irreverence, the director has translated Shakespeare’s words into Japanified images, Shakespeare’s lords into Japanified barons […] the spectator scarcely has the time to realize, that the images deafen and the noises colour his imagination, that he is experiencing the effects of cinema seldom matched in their masculine power of imagination.” Nonetheless this hybridization and fusion of mise-en-scene in “Maqbool” [2003] is justified in the language of Vishal Bhardwaj “My film is not meant for Shakespeare scholars […] My interpretation is not text-bookish […] I have tried to remain true to the plays spirit than to the original text.”
How do literature and cinema intersect each other? Explain through the examples of literary and cinematic texts in this paper.
“Margarita With A Straw” interweaves themes and motifs of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” through mise-en-scene of canonical hermeneutics of the aesthetics and cultural anthropological readings by paradox: gendered expectations and gendered realities. Gender and disability studies of “Margarita With A Straw” can be recontextualized in the montage of filmic feminine narrative of the Victorian bildungsroman in the critical lens of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “seems to be the projection of their own despairs into the passionate and even melodramatic characters, who act out the subversive impulses that every woman feels when she contemplates the deep-rooted evils of patriarchy.” Kalki Koechlin [Laila] the cerebral palsy undergraduate faces rejection and disavowal by the lead singer of the musical society whom both of them workshops. She, nonetheless, casts spectacle and marvel in the wonderment to fulfill a prospective semester to dreamland destination: New York University. Jane Eyre’s narcissistic rage, forlorn depression, habitual mood swings, epistemological anxieties, solitary solipsism as embedded in virulent passion, maverick temperament and rebellious mutiny are implicated to be strains of femininity with the protagonist of “Margarita With A Straw”. As literary history and cultural memory traces us to ponder the literariness of the Brontean novelistic textual adaptation becomes the quest of figurative language of filmic interpretation: “A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed over ripe apples; drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfields and cornfields lay a frozen shroud”—-this dialogism is recontextualized in the spirit of Jane Eyre’s personae as linnet, imp, fairy, sylph, brownie, pixie, sprite, salamander and even a thing; whose clandestine bigamous love affair in Thornfield with Edward Fairfax Rochester blooming by the foreshadowing of fruitlessness and futility is objectified in the subjective gaze of the filmic diagesis as Kalki Koechlin [Laila] consummated into romance and sexual relationship with Jared in New York—resonances of the heroine as corrupted and dismantled sylph like fairy of gendered expectations. In terrains of gender and disability studies, subaltern and marginalized voices akin to the narratorial perspective and point of view in Laila [Kalki Koechlin] culminates the dichotomies by the polarities between taboos and conventionalities or stereotypes and bigotries in context of relationship and wedding, love and romance, puberty and pregnancy. Gendered realities have thwarted the expectations of a betrothal for the feminine disability as harmonized by the unification of the myths: undesirability and asexuality. Recollections and impressionistic readings gleaning from archives and documentaries of the film production incarnate to resurrect marginalized disability voices of the feminine gendered expectations dispelling the myth of undesirability or asexuality.
From creative writing classes with Jared to activism with foible like personage in Khanum, Laila [Kalki Koechlin] reinterprets relationship as if her life visualizes envisioning of the Jane Eyre’s exposure of liberty and egalitarianism when the Brontean heroine reclaims: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will: which I now exert to leave you.” Cinematic gaze of the subjective focus in the close up of Laila and Khanum as depersonalized care-givers of altruistic triumphalism reechoes the allusion to Jane Eyre and St. John River’s associationism. St. John Rivers—the missionary apostle, epitome of pilgrimage to sainthood and divine destination implores in exhortingly assertive tone: “A missionary’s wife, you must — and shall be. You shall be mine; I claim you— not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service” Or even alternative reading would suggest Helen Burns’ and Miss Maria Temple’s as influencers of Jane Eyre’s philosophical transcendentalism sermonizing preachings of morality and integrity, which sanctifies the memorial of their ultimate detachment. “to gain some affection from you[Helen Burns], or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss at me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest.” “ “If all the world hated you[Jane Eyre] and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt ,you would not be without friends”—this aphorism of Helen Burns later leads to fruition in the blooming springfield of Laila with the deep focus and subjective close up of fantasizing despite past of tempestuous upheaval in the brink of discontinuities, complexities, intricacies, ironies and subtleties such as the bereavement of advanced stage colon cancer affected mother and entanglement of detachment by dissociating her camaraderie with the former romancers and coquettes. Walter Benjamin’s inevitability of the on-screen camera to the receptivity of filmic audience extrapolates, “While facing the audience, he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers, who constitute the market.” This filmic language can be relocated in the epilogue of the denouement: “Margarita With A Straw”. Interestingly this expressionistic freedom of choice creates vivid and impressionistic reading of Jane Eyre: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!-I have as much soul as you ,-and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.” Intertextuality of the close critical reading emphasizes that Laila would have a life of alienation in existentialist formalism unless God favours in privileging the bestowal to alleviate her deformity along with redemptive potential of individual agency.
Film critic Walter Benjamin notes of the screen actor’s relationship to the camera never enables him to forget the audience: “While facing the camera, he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers who constitute the market”. Examine the Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times [1936] in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Charlie Chaplin’s trump as silent pantomime of the film production is the flopping mise-en-scene in contrast to the talking pictures burgeoning popularity that diminishes the former’s familiarity. David James suggests that “a film’s sounds and images never fail to tell the story of how and why they were produced—–the story of their mode of production”; in Modern Times the same holds true of the story whose images tell about how they were received, the story of their mode of consumption. Opulence of the mass production of Americana materialistic consumerism stages the grandiosity of mise-en-scene in the departmental store sequences, that projects feminine proprietorship as satirized in the eagerness to satisfy the gamin’s needs and wants harboured by the contrasting daydream of the home ownership by the Trump phantasmagorial spectre.
Walter Benjamin, Paris, 1938
Film critic Walter Benjamin distinguishes between the theatrical and cinematic performances as: “The artistic performance of the stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in stage, that of screen actor, however, is presented by a camera…Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its positions in relation with the performance. Thus in filmic language, close up of the glaring talking industrialist capitalist [president of the Steel Factory Trading Inc.] imperative “Quit stalling, get back to work!” to the misdemeanour of the employee—- langorous solitude of cigar’s privacy is a poignant dramatization. The factory worker not only oversee as omniscient purveyor scrutinizing through digital surveillance but also appears as a magnified ubiquitous mighty power through his focal subjectivity on the screen. Even emphemeralism of the short-lived respite acquired through lunch break is flummoxing when Trump is exploited as a guinea pig on whom the President of the Steeling Inc. thrust to the impetus of experimental Billow’s Feeding Machine. Swashbuckling Charlie Chaplin’s friend Douglass Fairbanks wrecks havoc spotlighting the carnivalesque of the ‘misfit’ which society prescribes as a stint in the sanitarium.
“Science finds, industry applies, man conforms” Chicago’s century of progressive technocracy movement in the epochal boosterism reflect counterveilling pessimistic outlook towards such radical and revolutionary advancement —–automaton replacement of labour market. Trump personae is polarized between the Taylorites’ advocacy for enhancement and enrichment of the labour forces’ practical efficiencies favoured by cinematic exposition and the Edisonian disdain for entertainment of filmic broadcast—–Trump personifies humour, pathos, romance for compelling audience’s gaze. Nihilistic monotony and gruesome grumpiness pervades factory experiences of the assembly lines and firm working stations from pastoral countryside by the cinematic montage form shifting perspectives of spatiotemporality as imbued by cultural memory and literary history —–allegorizing “a story of industry, of individual enterprise——humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” There and then, Charlie Chaplin’s projection of the destabilization of machine-making culture of contemporaneous society achieved spectacle in the marvellous film entertainment industry as depicted by the outcast Trump personae ostracized by the follies of frailties, institutional authorities and dumb luck.
Further Reading
Lawrence Howe’s Charlie Chaplin In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Reflexive Ambiguity In “Modern Times”, College Literature, Winter 2013, Volume 40, No. 1, pp. 45—–65.
Examine the relationship between literature and cinema in the context of intertextuality with references to Macbeth and Throne of Blood.
“Kurosawa’s Shakespeare is inevitably—-and fortunately——involves more Kurosawa than Shakespeare. With blunt and vital irreverence the director has translated Shakespeare’s words into Japanese images, Shakespeare’s lords into Japanese barons […] the spectator scarcely has time to realize, as the images deafen and the noises decorate his imagination, that he is experiencing the effects of cinema seldom matched for their headlong masculine power of imagination.” Film critic Jerry Blumenthal suggests that Throne of Blood was no pale imitation of Shakespearean tragic film Macbeth but “a serious, dynamic and autonomous work of art.” The scenarist’s vision is constant with Kurosawa transforming poetic language into visual imagery. New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther found the adaptation to be “grotesquely brutish and barbaric” since Kurosawa’s cross cultural and cross medium adaptations of Macbeth is neither merely a grotesque Japanified version of Shakespeare’s tragedy not a tragic transposition of the play’s essence into the universal visual images, rather, it stages a historically specific negotiations between traditionalist Japanese and imported Western culture. Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth in the Throne of Blood illustrates the fruitlessness of worldly ambition and the limitations of free-will in Shakespearean rhetoric of the trajectory of Macbeth’s downfall—–Macbeth’s tragic flaw is not the blind lust for power or vaulting ambition but the hamartia beneath the presupposition and preconception that he was a free agent in a world where his actions are ultimately circumscribed, that tracks his degeneration from a thoughtful poet warrior to a merciless power hungry tyrant. Samurai Lord Tuzhuki resembles the guiless King Duncan “whose virtues plead like angel trumpet tongued” is assassinated by the treachery of the felon Washizu through theatricality of a naturalized chain of events since Washizu is even depraved of free human agency and this emasculated masochism blooms the impotency as a merely functionary character. Frozen Washizu’s grimacing face of the warrior mask, Heida’s possession by the spirit of the cinematic apparatus and the zeno’s paradox. The use of long shot, deep focus, panning and tracking shots emphasize the realistic style championed by Kurosawa’s Western contemporaries such as film critic Andrew Bazin and director Houston, while the use of static frame and hard edge wipe comes from Japanese cinematic practice. Peter Donaldson suggests that the juxtaposition of Western realist and Japanese formalist traditions in the Throne of Blood represent Kurosawa’s temptation by, but ultimate disavowal of “Westerns modes of representation and Western values.”
Agneepath mafia don Amitabh’ sanitizing and disinfecting of hands as oblationary obeisance in mother’s presence as a gesture of appeasement is ironically bemused by the filmic dialogue quoted from Shakespearean theatricality that “all the waters of Bombay will not cleanse your hands […]!”—-obvious and succinct lines of Shakespeare from the sleep walking scene of Lady Macbeth. The commercial Hindi pot boiler chooses to borrow lines from as canonical a figure as Shakespeare—-a unique appropriation, intertextuality and absorption of the conjugality between Shakespeare and the Bollywood mainstream Indian cinematic film production and reception. Nonetheless Shakespeare’s Jacobean England did not harmonize with the post colonial Indian subcontinent since the plays were being altered through interpolation and manipulation of scenes, characters, actions, settings, plots—-a frontality of representations, a declamatory and histrionic vocalization with a rhetorical and visual flamboyance in the hybrid performative mode of vernaculars—either pure and pristine or bowdlerized and indigenized. In 1844 Lord Hardinge, the Governor General of British colonial India, passed a resolution assuring preference in government employment for those who acquainted with European Literature; might be implicated as an act of cultural resistance , upstaging the hegemony of the imperialist Englishness. Maqbool [2004] postcolonial and post independence reimaginings of literary heritage turning war torn Scotland into Mumbai gangland presided over by the aging Jehangir Khan Elias Abuji and his right hand man Maqbool. Vishal Bharadwaj critiques: “My film is not meant for Shakespeare scholars […] My interpretation is not text bookish […] I have tried to be true to the play’s spirit than to the original text.” Treacherous transgressivity of Maqbool is the after effect of the seeds of ambition challenging manhood through the feminized sexuality of Nimmi. The transposition and illustration of the utmost graphic and aural scene is visualized in the dramatization of “Pity like a naked new born babe […] shall blow horrid deed in every eye/that tears shall drown the wind”
Further Reading
Erin Suzuki’s [University of California, Los Angeles] “Lost in Translation: Reconsidering Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood”, Literature/ Film Quarterly, 2006, Volume 34, No. 2, pp. 93-103, Salisbury University
Poonam Trivedi’s [University of Delhi] “Filmi” Shakespeare, Literature/ Film Quarterly, Volume 35, No. 2, pp. 148-158, Salisbury University.
Examine the Americana production of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise in filmic language.
Thelma Dickinson [Geena Davis] and Louise Sawyer [Susan Sarandon] is best reviewed as a feminist manifesto [the heroines are ordinary women driven to extraordinary ends by coercion of patriarchy] and as profoundly antifeminist [the heroines are dangerously phallic caricatures of the macho violence they are supposedly protesting]. This entertaining and picaresque tragicomedy is a vivid portrait of contemporary Americana where women are still struggling to redefine their individualities; it is a symbol of feminine inconsistencies. Louise Sawyer [Susan Sarandon] and Thelma Dickinson [Geena Davis] are symbols of mimetic female escapism —-urgent undercurrent of American society that seems to cultivate a mostly unfulfilled yearning for women to run away the boredom and sexual entrapment which they are condemned; ie Jimmy [Michael Madsen]’s infatuation disillusions the romance in the former and Daryl [Christopher McDonald]’s eroticism exasperates the amorousness of the later. J.D. [Brad Pitt] exclaims Thelma’s husband as an asshole which she confesses in the affirmative of “he is an asshole. Most of the time I let it slide.” Connotes the burlesque of the pun and staccato humour in the screwball tradition. Burglary of Thelma stunningly shocks Louise , who later reunites through mingling in the spell of exhilaration as the screwball couple goofs to ride the motorcycle together as outlawed persona. Thelma and Louise have no flashbacks and flashforwards, and hence bereft of voice-over. The butchering Harlan and the escapement of the girls from the investigating police is the fissure launching parallel montage in the sustained and fleeing to facing off at Grand Canyon. Thelma after murdering lies inert on a motel room, then sits in a glaze by the pool; Louise after the theft of the money sits on the floor of another motel room in a stupor.
Further Reading
Harvey R. Greenberg, Carol J. Clover, Albert Johnson, Peter N Chumpo II, Brian Henderson, Linda Williams, Marsha Kinder and Leo Braudy’s “The Many Faces of Thelma and Louise”, Film Quarterly, Winter 1991-1992, Volume 45, No. 2, pp. 20-31, University of California Press.
That first day we drove for almost ten hours, from Edwardsville, Illinois, a college town just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, bound for Washington, D.C., to celebrate the Fourth of July, and to do our part for drug reform. We had a modest caravan of older model vehicles; I rode in an ancient VW bus, with its many windows and bench seats. With me was Rod, the driver; his wife Teri; Stevie, Rod’s best friend; and little Kay, who subsisted for the whole trip on amphetamines and cigarettes. She weighed about ninety sexy pounds and had propounded a dating philosophy that stipulated, “never sleep with the same person twice in a row.”
It wasn’t a gentle ride: the bus jostled over the contraction joints in the highway, frequently tossed us high enough to bonk our heads on the ceiling of the vehicle. As we traversed states we’d never before visited, our joy was lessened somewhat, because in the back of our minds was the question of whether the old VW would successfully make the 1,600 mile round trip without breaking down.
It must have never occurred to us that we might get stopped by the police or the Highway Patrol and be asked to account for the huge amount of marijuana that the vehicle carried. It wasn’t for sale; it was for personal use, but try explaining that to a cop. Nor would it have made a difference; we would have been busted for possession and in the light of the stringent drug laws of the day–the 1970s–we could have spent years behind bars, doing hard time. We were generally buzzed all day long. A joint after breakfast, a reefer at noon, acid or MDA along about suppertime, and a weird assortment of inhalants like amyl nitrate and other chemical oddments throughout the night.
At length we reached Virginia–or was it West Virginia? I could never tell where one left off and the other began. We cruised along the Parkway through the Shenandoah National Forest, just as John Denver began singing “Country Roads, Take Me Home,” on the radio. We all smiled. The trees, the painted sky, the pines, and the mountains were spectacular, as was the sunset as we pulled into a camping site.
First thing we did when we arrived was to settle in, which meant, take more drugs. As night fell, everyone sat cross-legged before a campfire and got high on psilocybin, the so-called magic mushrooms. Long and slender, they tasted really awful, like spaghetti made from shit. So we dredged the “shrooms” in honey someone had brought, and they went down much easier. When this sparked our appetites we ate marshmallows and weenies, toasted on sticks. The small talk was, of course, profound. Nobody had thought to bring a tent–we were too busy getting our illegals together–but fortunately it didn’t rain on our trip. Everybody settled back in sleeping bags–some alone, some in pairs–and drifted off. About five a.m. I awoke, sensed a presence unfamiliar to our little group. I looked up and there was a huge–or so she seemed to me– white-tail deer, a doe, nuzzling through our supplies. Armed with a bag of dried apple rings, I approached the beast and offered up a snack. She sniffed the bag suspiciously and then advanced and took a ring. I fed her half the bag and felt at one with nature. She drifted back into the underbrush.
Looking round, I spotted a passenger from one of the other cars, an older guy–by about ten years–named Glen. He was yet at the campfire and was quietly burning twenty dollar bills in the flames. Seems his parents had recently died, leaving him twenty-five thousand dollars, and he was “mad at them” for leaving him alone. And so he was systematically incinerating his legacy. I let him be. He was in and out of mental hospitals and most people thought it best to cultivate different friends. How he rated an invitation to this trip I couldn’t fathom. Perhaps because he sold LSD for a living.
Next day found us all in Maryland, Georgetown, in fact. We got a late start and wound up staying a night with a friend of one of the other drivers. Several of us huddled around a picnic table with a young man of about 14, who lived there with his parents. Where they were nobody knew. In the 70s the drug culture was widespread; seemingly everywhere. Even here in Georgetown, in the very shadow of the nation’s capital. His parents, as I recall hearing, worked for the federal government in some clandestine capacity, the CIA maybe. He was very voluble on the subject. So perhaps they were out peeping through keyholes or over transoms, all in dutiful service to their country. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, secret agencies were not held in high esteem.
The young man was holding court, a joint in his hand, and was waxing nostalgic about “the drug paraphernalia” back in “the old days.” Stevie and I smiled at each other, hearing this high school freshman “reminisce” about days gone by, about a time during which he was almost certainly in a crib. Someone produced a prodigious watermelon and we all devoured it; Glen even ate the seeds, probably in an effort to get back at his parents.
At length, next day, we arrived in the nation’s capital. “Yeah,” exhorted Bob, another driver, “We’re going to Carter’s house!” And so we did. We walked the length and breadth of D.C., stopping at the Capitol and admiring Statuary Hall. Bob showed us how, if you stand on a certain spot, you can hear everything being said in the room, even whispers: an acoustic phenomenon. The first thing I noticed about Washington D.C. was the proliferation of cops. At the landmarks they stood about five feet apart, forming a kind of human wall. They were all nice, invariably polite, mostly very young, but there were so many of them! Being the ignorant, Midwestern savages that we were, we offered to get one of the young cops high. What else would a ragtag agglomeration of humanity like us do? He took it all in stride, politely declined. “Okay, man, that’s cool,” croaked the other Bob, who was a college Sociology Professor and a group leader and so, presumably, should have known better.
We visited the White House, stood outside and grasped the bars of the black metal fence that surrounds the estate, stared in at the grounds and shouted for “Jimmy” to show himself. As we toured some of the other, older edifices, we saw enormous, medieval-looking buttresses reinforcing the walls, as you might find at an old cathedral. Professor Bob shook his head sadly, said what a poor reflection on our country the sight of that was. We were awed by the Lincoln Memorial, but couldn’t get within a hundred feet of it. It was barricaded with a rope with little flags on it that were flapping in the breeze. As always, there was an army of police, guarding the Memorial, lest any citizen get too close. In the movies, the actors always get to climb the stairs, to practically touch Lincoln’s hand, like in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” “I’ll bet that Jimmy Stewart could have gotten in,” I heard someone behind me mutter.
One of our group’s stated aims and the nominal reason for this trip, was to declare for the legalization of marijuana, and we therefore intended to visit the office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). There was considerable resistance across America to this effort at the time; this was before states realized they could make billions off the pot industry. Remember, most gambling was illegal back then, too. Today you can buy your lottery tickets at Quick Trip and get your gambling fix on your cell phone.
Someone gave us directions to the “Yippie House,” located in some backwater neighborhood in D.C., and we thought we should pay our respects, as one group of freaks to the freaks-in-residence. It was reportedly an old, ramshackle, disreputable building, so what could go wrong? After driving circuitously for an hour, we found the place. We stepped in. The first one we met was a yip named Mousie, who had just taken a shower in a bathroom that had no door and no shower curtain. He gave us a tour, wrapped in a blue, threadbare towel, while dripping on the uncarpeted floor. I was getting sort of hungry so just out of curiosity I opened a huge refrigerator, an enormous, upright, coffin-like white box. The only thing inside was a ten gallon stock pot of boiled cabbage. My appetite quickly fled.
The walls of the Yippie House were battered and none too stable. Plaster and other debris littered the floor. Kay, walking as in a daze, lit a cigarette, gobbled more speed. “I don’t know,” she said, just to be nice, “I kind of like it here.” Next she placed a hand on the nearest wall, leaned into it a little and instantly the wall disintegrated, raining plaster, lath, you name it, down onto us. Someone–I don’t remember who–reached out and drew Kay clear of the catastrophe. “Gosh,” she squeaked, “I think I need another cigarette!”
We were eventually directed to the NORML office, somewhere on one of the alphabet streets: K Street, B Street, whatever. The Director of NORML proved to be an insufferably straight suit who wouldn’t allow marijuana in the office. We stood in wonder and blinked at him. He told us about some rallies and demonstrations the organization was sponsoring over the Fourth. Professor Bob, the only one amongst us that had any real money, gave NORML a generous donation. We left, a little baffled, and way too straight.
Sometime later that day, sexy Beth, from one of the other cars, and I wandered off from the group, a harbinger of our undoing. We promptly visited a dimly-lighted bar, replete with lots of walnut trim and plush leather seats. Sitting at the bar on this hot July morning, we ordered up mugs of beer. We drank gratefully, then took turns buying each other rounds. We hadn’t eaten, so in seeming no time we were comfortably buzzed. A stocky, very young cop joined us at the bar, began entertaining us. I can’t recall what he was talking about, but whenever we disagreed with him, he’d stop talking and then ask us pointedly, “Do you know everything?” We had to admit we did not, and he’d say, “Well, there you go!” winning the argument by default. We drank a lot of beer, but that cop got really snookered, consuming glass after glass after glass. As he drank he began to speak of the “Black underbelly of government.” I remember that although we didn’t know what the hell he was talking about we nodded earnestly at his remarks. At length we left the bar, leaving the young cop behind, stumbling drunk and ominously pointing his pistol at passersby.
We next visited Lafayette Park, where multiple rock bands were setting up for their evening performances. Beth glided drunkenly to the Reflecting Pool and peeled off her shoes and socks and soaked her feet in the dirty water. “Ahh, that’s cool, man.” She sighed. As darkness fell, I began to wonder about our traveling companions: where were they? I hadn’t seen them for at least eight hours and hoped they weren’t in any trouble. Hoped they hadn’t tried to get any more policemen high. Everywhere we went, everywhere we looked, people were getting buzzed. We drifted up to a group of women who were preparing a protest march and they were passing round huge, stainless steel bongs and small, soapstone opium pipes. We greedily accepted them in our turn. At length the women assembled and marched raucously down the avenue, in front of the White House; I looked up and was surprised to find Beth leading the march, arm in arm with the group’s leaders, shouting and dancing along. After the march ended, Beth rejoined me, remarked once again, “Man, that was cool!”
At one end of the park, the bands were making final preparations to simultaneously play rock melodies from their respective stages. Though it was fully dark now, Lafayette Park was lit up like a Vegas hotel. Finally the bands began to play. Beth and I were standing before one of the venues, getting mellow to the beat of a Jethro Tull tribute band. They were just launching into yet another rendition of the same song, when I felt a cold frisson of energy run down my spine, a real jolt. I looked over at Beth, who was nodding to the beat and asked her,”Say, did we do any acid tonight?” She looked at me queerly, then shook her head sadly and said, “Yeah, we dropped some, about five hours ago.”
“So that’s why they’ve been playing “Locomotive Breath” for like four hours, huh?”
She grinned and it crinkled her nose. “I think that’s the only tune they know,” she replied, still smiling. But next they began a cosmic version of “Thick as a Brick,” which they seemed to play twenty times, and ended their set with a rollicking version of “Aqualung.” Then the guy playing the Ian Anderson part of the songs ceased playing the flute for a moment and grabbed the mic. Sweat was dripping off his face. “I want to announce that Paul McCartney died in a plane crash tonight.” He waited a beat and when that got no response, added, “And Van Morrison was killed in a motorcycle accident in Dublin.” When that still didn’t get a reaction, he said: “John Denver perished tonight at the Checkerdome in St. Louis, Missouri, when the Zamboni he was driving skidded off the ice and overturned and crushed him.” And with that, everyone clapped and cheered the purported demise of John Denver.
Finally, at around two a.m., our buzz was wearing off and we sought a place to lay our heads.
The grounds of Lafayette Park were filled with tents and sleeping bags and blankets. One cat even had a small mobile home sheathed in a riveted stainless steel exterior and from the smoke and the aromas, was apparently cooking weenies and burgers. Too tired to eat, we spread our blanket on the ground and quickly fell into an exhausted sleep. In the distance, the bands played on.
But our rest didn’t last long. Some guy with long raven hair and a nose ring–rare in those days–shook me awake. “C’mon, man, wake up,” he urged. “The pigs are arresting stragglers. Hurry up, get it together, take your chick and go east.”
Nodding my head groggily, I roused Beth, pulling her off the ground by her belt loop, and said, “We gotta go!” Mumbling incoherently, she complied. We staggered off in a direction that I hoped was east. As we quitted the park, I glanced back and, in the light of dawn, beheld a phalanx of mounted police, with bullhorns and dogs and all the rest. Suddenly an amplified voice bellowed out: “Leave the park now or we’ll turn on the hoses.” And sure enough, some of the cops had huge fire hoses tucked under their arms.
We spent the next day in a futile search for our companions.
“They left without us, man,” opined Beth. I was hugely skeptical.
“They might leave me,” I pointed out, but they would never leave you 800 miles from home.” After all, Beth lived with both Bobs in a college house back in Edwardsville. It appeared to me that it would be unspeakable to abandon two of your companions–and one a housemate–with no money, no ride home, with dim prospects indeed. But, that’s exactly what they did. Beth knew them far better than I.
“So, what do you want to do?” I asked her.
“Right now I want to get some food. I’m hungry!” I could hear her stomach growling. “You got any bread?” she asked me.
I riffled through my jeans and turned up seven dollars and a spent book of Food Stamps. “All I got’s a pocket full of change,” Beth disclosed. “Man, we’re so screwed.” In the meantime I had finally gotten my head wrapped round the notion that the bastards had really left us; they didn’t know if we were lost, hurt, sick, or even in jail! What a bunch of pigs, I thought. But I tried to paint a brighter picture for my traveling partner. “Let’s get some food,” I said, and we repaired to some nameless and forgettable burger shack and downed nearly six dollars worth of shakes, sodas, fries and of course, hamburgers. You could buy quite a lot of fast food with six dollars back in 1977.
Our bellies filled and our ablutions performed, we went out to the highway heading west. The cars just flew past us, giving us not a second look. Some of the drivers even laughed at our predicament or flipped us the bird. After a half hour in the torrid July sun, Beth groaned, “We aren’t going to get no ride, man.” I looked at her, at her pretty blue eyes, her tight jeans, her gorgeous face and radiant blond hair. “You get in front and face the traffic,” I said. “They’ll stop for you!” And sure enough, five minutes after reconfiguring our hitchhiking arrangement, a large, heavy car typical of those manufactured in the seventies, stopped for us. It was blue and emblazoned upon the hood was the word, “Continental.” So we’d bagged a Lincoln.
“Where you kids headed?” asked a paunchy, balding man in his mid-fifties.
“St. Louis,” chirped Beth, relieved by the respite.
“I’m going as far as Dayton; that help you kids out?”
“Yes, thank you so much,” said Beth. “That’ll be a good start.” We settled back in the Lincoln–luxury at our fingertips–and reveled in our posh surroundings. Whereas we may have preferred to sleep after our ordeal, the driver–who introduced himself as Charlie Bridger–conducted a monologue that lasted the whole 350 miles. We learned all about his four kids and his law practice–Real Estate, “None of that nasty divorce business”–and his private jet. Just outside Dayton, on the Interstate, Charlie stopped at an upscale restaurant and invited us inside. “Thanks, Charlie, but we’re not hungry,” Beth lied, not wanting to impose further on his generosity. “Baloney,” returned Charlie. “You kids are broke, now ain’t ya?” We said nothing. “Come on, it’s on me. I hate to eat alone,” he added persuasively.
Feeling rather conspicuous in our dusty travel garb, we repaired to the restrooms and worked to regain some semblance of respectability. “Order anything you like,” enjoined Charlie, back at the table. We both modestly chose cheeseburgers, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Balls!” he exclaimed. “Order something expensive,” he went on. “You afraid you gonna put ol’ Charlie in the poorhouse? Well, don’t worry. Some sum’bitch real estate tycoon in Akron is coverin’ this tab.” We looked at him questioningly. “Same one who paid for that Caddy out in the parking lot,” he added smugly, forgetting for the moment that we arrived, not in a Cadillac, but a Lincoln. He had, during his monologue, told us her owned a specimen of each car.
We ordered up and ate our fill. Drank our fill, too. Charlie ordered no less than three bottles of Champagne, all on the real estate tycoon from Ohio. At length, we parted company, but not before Charlie foisted fifty bucks on each of us. Afraid for Charlie because of his questionable sobriety, we convinced him to spend the night in a nearby motel.
By now it was nearly eight o’clock and the sun was plummeting in the west. We stood with our thumbs out and, in the gloom, even with Beth in front, garnered not an offer of a ride. Finally, a heavily-laden white van drew to a stop and the door slid open. Standing in the opening was a man I would in later years come to recognize as Vice President Dan Quayle. Or his identical twin. We hopped in without a word, we were that tired. “Where you children from?” asked Dan, who continued to stand, even after the van began moving again. We told him. “SIU–in Edwardsville?” he repeated after us. “I hear that’s a heathen school.” He tsk-tsked softly. Beth and I exchanged a glance.
“Heathen?” said Beth.
“Yes, but I love you children all the same,” conceded the man, who introduced himself not as Dan Quayle but as Ty Gardiner, itinerant preacher! At last I glanced around the van, which was filled with fresh, pink, uplifted faces, a radiant smile upon every visage. “Are these…” I began and Ty nodded and smiled. “Disciples of the Blessed Father, Mother, and Holy Spirit, Amen!”
“Amen!” chorused the masses.
“How close are you coming to Missouri?” Beth finally thought to ask.
” ‘Bout four hours from St. Louis,” replied the preacher. “We hail from Indiana,” he added. We arrived, but only after three and one half hours of arduous proselytizing. “We’ll give you a place to sleep tonight,” offered Ty. We gratefully accepted his hospitality, eating a late supper at one of the flock’s homes and then sleeping on the carpeted floor of his wonderfully air-conditioned living room. Next morning we slipped away, leaving behind a thank you note on their fridge. By 6 a.m. we were on the road again. We parked ourselves on I-70, some 280 miles from Missouri.
This time we had luck–if you can call it that–straight away, flagging down a bronze colored Mustang. He stopped his car about 100 feet away and that should have given us some inkling as to the driver’s character. But we jogged to the car and he beckoned us in.
“We’re on our was to St. Louis,” said Beth. Silence. We settled back in the seats and looked expectantly at him. But he sat stiff as a board, saying nothing. Another hint. Another inkling. He simply floored the accelerator and down the highway we sped. I glanced out the window and saw that we were nearing a state park: recreation areas, camp grounds and the like. He stopped at the entrance to the park. I looked at him in his rearview mirror. He had a dark scowl and jowly cheeks, but I could tell little else about him. Suddenly he barked out,
“Cash, grass or ass!” apparently setting the parameters for our continued journey. Beth and I exchanged a glance; she frowned, then piped up:
“We’ve got some pot, man…”
“Not the option I would have chosen,” he remarked in an oily voice.
“Hey, we don’t have any bread,” she protested.
“Not my problem,” he said matter-of-factly. In the mirror I could tell he was grinning malevolently. Menacingly.
“Then I guess we’re all out of luck, then,” said Beth. I heard a dry chuckle from the man.
“I was hoping to get to know you a little better, Honey.”
“I’m not your honey,” she snapped, “and you’re not getting any ass!” He smirked into the mirror.
“Let’s get out of here,” she muttered, and grabbed the handle of the door. But at that precise moment, he floored the gas pedal, throwing us back in our seats. He turned into the park and sped down the tree-lined path, the pines just a blur as we flew by. “What are you doing, man?” Beth demanded to know. He said not a word, but drove steadily forward till at last he took a sharp right into a dense copse of conifers. There, hidden beneath a canopy of foliage, stood a small rustic cabin, constructed of logs. He stomped on the brake, propelling us forward, into the backs of the front seats. While we were recovering from the shock of apparently being abducted, he exited the car and swept open Beth’s door.
“Get out!” he ordered. “Both of you.” He had somehow magically turned up a gun, a heavy, ugly black revolver. And he was aiming it at point blank rage, at Beth’s pretty head. “This way,” he muttered, waving the gun carelessly. We fell in line, preceded him up a short flight of stairs and into the cabin. It was already unlocked. He told us to get against the far wall. When we had complied, he turned and locked the door. He pocketed the keys and turned to regard us, his prisoners. “Okay, you,” he growled. “Take off your clothes, all of them!” Again he waved his pistol in a menacing fashion. He was a tiny man, no more than five feet in height, weighed perhaps 115 pounds. He looked remarkably like an emaciated version of Richard Nixon! There was something a little surreal about all of this, as if we’d gotten caught up a cartoon or a comic strip. A Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic book. I was just unfastening a button on my shirt when Beth said, forcefully,
“No!” We both blinked at her in surprise.
“Whadda ya mean, no?” demanded the man. “I’ve got a gun,” he reminded her.
“I don’t give a shit,” Beth retorted. “You got a gun: freakin’ use it!” His mouth fell open but no words came out. Clearly he hadn’t expected any such resistence; this was not in his script. “You probably can’t even get it up!” smirked Beth acidly.
“I can so…” he began, thoroughly flustered and waving the gun at the floor now. Acting on pure instinct, Beth stepped forward and kicked him solidly in the crotch with her size 6 Keds. He gasped, curled up into a fetal position on the floor, and the gun discharged, leaving a crease in the pine planks. I rushed forward and seized the pistol, handed it to Beth. I hated all firearms.
“Ooh,” he groaned plaintively. “I think you really hurt me!” He held his hand over his privates. Beth didn’t deign to even comment on that remark, other than to note that it must be a “small injury.” We stood and stared down at the writhing figure.
“What should we do with him?” I asked rhetorically.
“I think we should just shoot him,” Beth suggested. The man’s eyes grew wide as he seemed suddenly to appreciate the position he was in. The gun in Beth’s hand seemed to have grown larger.
“But,” he protested, “I never touched you. Never.”
“No, but you were going to,” Beth pointed out.
“Well, he’s right, in a way,” I chimed in. “You can’t execute a man for bad intent.” It was a bit of a specious argument, but I didn’t want blood on my hands; things were rapidly lurching out of control.
“But, think of all the women and girls he’s raped before. This wasn’t the first time: he had a plan, a technique, a method. He had a gun. He had this cabin; it wasn’t even locked; he expected to use it. He’s a bad dude. He’s a freakin’ predator, man!”
“I promise I won’t do it no more,” the man croaked pathetically.
“Damn straight,” muttered Beth, narrowing her eyes at him.
“I got money,” he said enticingly, and held out his thick wallet. “I got a car. I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go. I’ll take you all the way to St. Louis,” he promised. I perked up a bit at that.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“I think, Genius, that the first chance he gets he’ll drive us to a police station and turn us in to the cops. Or he’ll drive off the road and wreck his car, then claim he was hijacked by some looney hippies or rogue criminals And that’ll be us!. We can’t trust him.”
“So, then now what?” asked the little man, still lying upon the floor.
“Yeah, now what?” I echoed. I was clueless.
“We will take your bread,” she decided, snatching the wallet from his hand. “And you will lend us your car for a while, yes?” she asked him mockingly.
“Sure, sure,” he said eagerly, handing over the keys.
Finally, we were set. To forestall any immediate pursuit we took the man’s clothing, including his shoes. We looked at him, a small, wimpy, ageless but pathetic figure. There was no one else in the park as far as we could tell, and since the cabin was several miles from the highway we figured we’d get a good head start. Back out in the hot Indiana sunshine, we climbed in the car, motored slowly back down the path and then westward, toward St. Louis.
“This is all right,” I said happily, driving carefully, growing accustomed to the unfamilar controls. “Now we got a ride home.”
“Wrong,” declared Beth. My expression posed a thousnd questions. She said, “Eventually that little schmuck is going to contact someone, an official, an authority figure of some kind. Next he’s going to explain how he was just being a nice guy, a good Christian fellow, by picking up two kids. They turned out to be carjackers and took all his clothes, his money, and ripped off his car.”
“But we can tell them how…”
“Won’t matter. We can’t tell nobody nothing! He’s The Man,” she pointed out. “They’ll never believe us, two hippies with pot on their breath…” I immediately breathed into my hand, sniffed my palm. “…guy like that’s probably got a wife, a couple kids back home in LaGrange, or wherever. No. We’ll put a few miles on it, dump it somewhere and then beat it.”
“You mean we’ll have to keep hitchhiking?” I asked bleakly.
“No, man, we’ve got like five hundred bucks. That’s more than enough for two bus tickets home.” I gladly nodded my understanding and she just smiled knowingly. We ditched the Mustang in the parking lot at a Kroger’s in a little town named Falso, then repaired to the nearest Greyhound station, only four or five blocks away.
One would think that the bus ride on the last leg of our journey would be the denouement, but no. The unsuspecting riders hadn’t anticipated anything as tumultuous as Hurricane Beth.
The first thing that perturbed her was the fact that she couldn’t smoke on the bus. “Hey, I’m an American,” she cried loudly. “I’ve got rights.” But to no avail. So, getting no solace from tobacco, she proceeded to get her buzz from tiny ecru tablets, called White Cross, a sort of low-grade speed, a poor-man’s Black Beauty. She ate them copiously. And, abetted by the delusional power of the White Cross, she became animated, speaking up loudly, and often.
“Hey, man, do you think that asshole ever got free?” she asked giddily. This outburst was followed by admonitions from some of the numerous other riders, most of whom were senior citizens with blue hair.
“Ssh!” they reproved her. “Keep quiet,” they said.
“Hey, I’m a citizen,” she hissed. “I’ll talk as much as i want to!” They met her glare with frozen faces and tight lips of their own.
“Can’t you be silent?’ an elderly woman implored. At length, this exchange was cut short by the bus rolling into the parking lot of what amounted to yesterday’s version of the modern convenience store. More of a general store than anything else, it sold locally-raised honey and pecan pies and peanut rolls and popcorn and, of course, cigarettes. Beth flew from the vehicle and hurtling through the door, bought no less than three packs; back in those days that cost her maybe two bucks in all. Next she assumed a position to one side of the little store, out of the wind, and proceeded to light up one after another. Not a user of tobacco myself, I did pause to join Beth and smoke a joint. Finally, her batteries recharged by the infusion of nicotine, Beth calmed down and raised no more alarm.
Arriving in St. Louis in the early morning, we immediately sought out transportation back to Edwardsville. Never before had the promise of home seemed so sweet; I couldn’t wait. Unfortunately, we discovered that the first bus to Edwardsville left no sooner than six hours later. Resigned to our fate, we collapsed onto a bench in the small station and ate our hamburgers and fries. I longed for a tooth brush. The sun still hadn’t come up when we passed into a dreamless sleep. When we awoke, the bus station was a circus: Hari Krishnas proliferated, handing out books, sticks of incense and pieces of candy. We stepped outside.
“Here, take a sweetie,” said an impossibly tall man with a bald head, a ground-length frock of kaleidoscopic design, and wire rimmed glasses. The candy looked a bit like little lumps of mud-colored Play-Dough; they contained who knew what. We politely declined. “Please,” he implored again, “take a sweetie.” Once more we begged off. “Take the damn sweetie!” he rasped angrily, actually stamping one sandal-clad foot in the dirt.
“Okay, okay,” said Beth, finally relenting. The Hari Krishna smiled benevolently.
“You a good little mama, Miss,” he said serenely, then turned away.
Part of the excitement was the imminent rock concert being held at the local arena. “Who’s playing?” I asked someone inside the station. Smiling the drug-fueled smile of the 70s’s teenage rock enthusiast, he replied,
“Jethro Tull!” Beth and I exchanged a glance which said, “This is where we came in,” or maybe, “Been there, done that.” The time passed, like kidney stones, but at last we boarded our bus, bound for home. This phase of our adventure passed without incident; Beth was still heavily into her White Cross dietary supplements. I could see her hands trembling.
After we arrived at the Edwardsville Greyhound Station we started walking towards Beth’s home, less than a mile away. Beth lived in a home known as “Hale House,” the name a cheap ripoff of the famed “Hull House” of Chicago, founded by Jane Addams. But there the similarity ended. The house was located on Hale Street, in the tony section of town, hence the name. The home was owned by Professor Bob, the Sociology teacher. Several of his students stayed there, for which they paid rent. Bob, in his turn, used the rent payments to pay off his mortage, thus accruing all the equity. In light of Bob’s Socialistic, citizen-of-the-world, share the wealth persona and affected liberal personal philosophy, this seemed a tad hypocrical. It reeked of a nonconcern for his fellow man. He did in fact boot everyone out later, when he decided to get married. But the kids, being kids, seemed not to mind, and relished getting high there every night on his sofa, watching Saturday Night Live and Monty Python. Bob was their mentor, their teacher, their guru.
Arriving home, Beth fitted her key to the lock and pushed through the front door. We found everyone–all those who had abandoned us–there, looking a little guilty, I thought. “Hey, what happened to you?” asked Professor Bob earnestly. “We were worried about you!”
“Were you?” I asked dryly.
“Sure,” said the other Bob, stepping forward. He grinned; his rodent-like eyes bloodshot, his pupils widely dilated. “What did happen to you?’ he persisted. Measuring him with my eyes, I replied, loud enough for all to hear, “We got left behind by a bunch of self-involved, selfish, indifferent peckers!” This remark seemed to take all the oxygen out of the room and left everyone standing around, staring at their shoes. But not Beth. She giggled and hugged each one of them in turn, then cried, “Let’s get high!” Turning to me, she asked, “You have to leave, right?” I nodded curtly. Clearly, we’d had more of one another’s company than we’d ever bargained for. In fact, I never had much more to do with any of the denizens of Hale House or their subsequent acolytes.
Before departing, I rummaged through the returned luggage and found my bag; I riffled through it and discovered that my watch, my pen knife and other artifacts, including all my drugs, were conspicuously missing. Dismayed, but unsurprised, I silently shook my head. I lived more than a mile away but no one offered me a ride. Big surprise. I left without another word.
Clopping down the porch steps, I set off down the tunnel of cottonwoods lining either side of the sidewalk. I got some distance away before I heard the slamming of car doors. Turning back, I observed a cluster of men standing about, clad in windbreakers with the letters FBI and DEA stenciled on the backs. As a unit they approached the house, walked up the steps. I paused for an instant, watching. Then the agents, wielding firearms and bearing a battering ram, pounded with their firsts upon the door. Loudly. Silently, I turned away and just kept walking.
To Lucifer my conscience treks a path Down upward spirals built in temple’s hull Such lullabies of orchards are his wrath What harvest’s feed spurs echoes of the skull? Do I walk back and back across the seed? Plentiful with their bewildered light’s star And I, the gardener tempted by need Throw careless handful at soils endless scar In a theoretical where is up? For I swirl a revolved product again Directionally paralyzed mix up this great bed, a flesh, felt like acids hot rain But, like infinity I am not scale So I, alone, staggered, walk this trail.
Walks with his eyes closed, And hands in sashes; Leaves limpid footprints everywhere, When the kerbs croak, As if at night; Tries to be abnormal Even to the abnormal, Till guilt catch up with him— Umber empire chocolate: If chewed quickly off, No bitterness would linger On the buddiest tongue.
He starts on his bike, In deliberate swerves, Waddling in puddles black With skins of mud, Unfeeling When bits of grits snap into his shanks in fits.
At the store he stops, Stooping for a plant whose voice has taken flight, Whose sheen has dimmed Like his granny’s eyes. At home he fidgets, Feeding her with vitamin pills, Then wash them down with a nozzle Refitted from the muzzle of a favourite gun. At night he talks to her In kinky gutters, Fearing that the brine of his tears Would soak her dead: On the brim of the night, At the height of her desk. Quick as a travelling sand, Frail like a buckling band.
He sings only when it thunders So that no one hears his howl.
Sail In
All are sailors in winds, Rigging the bunts of umbrellas, In shapes of Guns, cigars and forearms. But some are only eaten away, Gnawed by the gusts, Into turbid pieces. The wind, At the palimpsests of their emaciation In my mind. But under stirs Fake leaves wave too, And some songs sound better on reflection. Then I’ll view them as stories of mine, Written in malaport style and the very Wrong voice, Thus from which I move on to a next, Better one to compose.
The rain wafts, Dyeing the paves black As if ink Into a flattened pool.
I REWRITE THE FUTURE IN THE SKY, HOPING FOR A NEW TREE
I rewrote the future in the stars hoping a new tree to sprout out And a new story to begin, wishing the rainbows to duplicate the earth
And its habitats like stars in the sky painting the future was necessary for you because tomorrow may be too late and our fruits also withered like a lifeless vegetation. Peace and justice will find its way to the throne of power and all those whose ears are made of steel will be melted in the ever glowing fire of fulfilled dreams Those whose tongues denies the truth must therefore assemble with open confessions and my countrymen will no longer be a bunch of thorns on my flesh
And expectations for a clean environment of metaphors hanging on the sky, the day will soon come and a new generation shall be birthed into this world of we mortals.
Casualties
Yesterday I leaned on a couch, And today am on a journey to see The casualties of my poem. My tongue fell into the hole of my head, And pains like tapeworms slides into view To shield me from darkness.
A tree standing without a head Is my hostess on that plane That swallowed the sky and Rebirth’s another casualties.
