Adventure to Bizarro World

"So what if I've had eleven beers tonight?" fumed Darryl, crumpling up another aluminum can and flinging it across the room. It landed in the cat's litterbox and Baby spat and hissed.

 

"What're you, trying to drink yourself to death?" demanded Olivia, his girlfriend of ten minutes. "If i'd known that was what you were about, I never would have committed myself to your happiness."

 

Darryl blinked. What the hell was this woman, who had just walked through the door an hour ago, even talking about? After snorting up two lines of blow that he'd had in readiness on a pocket mirror, she'd proclaimed her undying love and then passed out. When she awoke, a few moments ago, she had started carping about how much he drank! If he'd wanted scathing criticism, he could have stayed with any of five ex-wives. How could he get rid of her? he wondered. Where did she even come from? She couldn't even get his name right.

 

"Dirwood," she cooed, "when are you coming to bed, honey?" He rolled his eyes,

 

"Who are you?" he asked. He startled, then stared at her with sudden appreciation. She was a dead ringer for the classic vocalist Patti Smith, a gorgeous, sultry, dark-haired creature whom Darryl had always lusted after, back in the day. As if on cue, Olivia suddenly began crooning "Because the Night," until finally, like a spring-wound toy, she ran down.

 

"Tomorrow's our anniversary, honey," said Olivia in a syrupy voice.

"Hell," said Darryl, "I only just met you.."--he checked his watch-- "...seventy minutes ago! Where did you even come from?" he

asked.

 

"From the constellation Gridiron," she replied, then she added coyly, "Do you want to see my Big Dipper?" Darryl frowned, looked closer at Olivia, who now resembled Daffy Duck. Darry shook his head, looked away.

 

"Olivia," he said, "you've changed."

 

Olivia's face suddenly assumed a feral, rodent-like expression and she said, "We're pregnant again, Dirwood."

 

"What's that to do with me?" he demanded.

 

"It takes two gametes to make an embryo," she reminded her boyfriend of 24 minutes. "We did the dirty," she told him.

 

"I did not..." he began, but she cut him off.

 

"You weren't the biggest," she said, "or the hardest, but you were the best!"

 

Swollen by the magnanimity of her words, Darryl preened, threw his arm about her narrow, Patti Smith-like shoulders, and said, "Olivia, will you marry me?"

 

"Of course," she purred, and threw herself into his embrace.

An hour later, Darryl and Olivia, accompanied by their five children, boarded a three-stage rocket bound for Bizarro World, where everything took place in  reverse.

 

"It'll take 430 light years to reach Htrae (Earth spelled backwards)," Darryl told his wife of 84 minutes. What do you want to do to pass the time?"

 

Olivia smiled slyly, then replied winsomely, "Well, Dirwood, we could work on making more ybabs," and embarkation was begun.

Asphyxiation

Entrapped,
not within an empty matchbox,
not within a dungeon
in a castle with a moat,
not within an anchorite cell whose door
has been sealed by a Luciferian foe,
not in an attic with the shadows of lunatics
long imprisoned by a usurping lord,
not within a hole
dug for a corpse
but within a concept,
bred by a culture that nauseates,
asphyxiates, 
appalls.


Menace

The menace of losing my home
looms.
I’m sixty years old whose youth
had flown,
whose health is beginning to feel 
morose,
whose grip on life is loosening,
is loose.

I should have suspected where I trusted,
I’m bruised.

My back, like trees, is marked,
not by circles,
but by stabs
that measure the breadth and depth of a life
ravaged by all sorts of treacheries.

I thought my sixties would bring respite
from toil and strife,
a humble hearth, 
with home-made meals
and an ageing dog,
a tranquil phase
before the everlasting repose,
I was wrong.

John and Elvis Are Dead

John Lennon and Elvis Presley are dead
and George Michael followed in their trail.
I think that artists should be spared  
such tragic exits.

John and Robert Kennedy were shot in the head.
Martin Luther King Jr had met with a similar fate.
I think that pacifists and thinkers should be spared 
the hunter’s bullet.

Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded
by her cousin, the niece of King Henry the eighth
though both had royal blood in their veins!
 
Jesus Christ was crucified with a couple of thieves
for having declared his genuine kingship.
I think that the quest for the Holy Grail
will last until the end of days.

I would have liked to tell the departed nightingale
that Jesus is alive and well
and none is dead
because they continue living in our heads.

lifetimes ago
 

i remember wishing

upon a star as a child

 

i'm still waiting for

that wish to come

true

 

i know i'm patient

but fuck me

 

my childhood feels

like two or three

fucking lifetimes

ago

 

when i see them

these days i don't

bother to make

any wishes

 

fool me once...
--------------------------------------------------
a hamster wheel
 

the constant race

 

have or have not

 

first or last

 

rich or poor

 

it is a hamster

wheel that has

no stop

 

not even with

death

 

i still know dead

people gone for

over twenty years

still getting mail

 

it is why i stay

within the fringes

 

out in the margins

and creases of life

 

you can't imagine

what you can get

away with when

no one is paying

attention
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
the years apart
 

the muse has

slid back into

my life

 

i think the years

apart weighed

on each of us

 

it reminded me

of just how big

of an asshole i

can be at times

 

it also taught me

how much a sincere

apology can mean

to someone

 

now, i never thought

of marriage or children

or even being allowed

to get close enough

for anything

 

but now, given this

crazy world

 

all these options

seem to be on

the table

 

should be an

interesting

summer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
in hindsight
 

and of course

 

just when i start

to think about

having a wife

or whatever

in my life

no one is

interested

anymore

 

in hindsight

 

i'm sure this

is how it was

meant to be

 

loners don't

suddenly have

a spell of good

luck and the

perfect wife

appears and

utopia ensues

 

life is about

learning to

swallow the

hate and pain

and pretend

waking up

the next day

it will all

change
-----------------------------------------------------------
be careful what you wish for
 

death is

creeping

closer to

my door

 

my mother

has already

cheated

death

 

twice

 

i doubt

i will get

that

fucking

lucky

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is stuck in suburbia, plotting his escape. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, The Rye Whiskey Review, Disturb The Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Returning to Lidice 

Before I knew how to run, how to swim, how to dress and tell the good from the bad, I learned how to take care of the gardens. Most girls and their Nivea-nurtured palms had nothing on my dirt-christened hands. 
I was christened all right. First, by the Catholic Church at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick, ten miles south of Lidice, where I grew up. Then I was christened by my grandfather's unforgiving gardens.
"You need to learn the value of hard work," he used to say to me. Of course, he knew a lot about hard work. Helvance was a small town near the Nazi-obliterated village of Lidice. The land was stained with blood. And my grandfather never made a difference between who was manly enough, adult enough, or tough enough to hear what he had seen. He was progressive like that, you could say. No discrimination in the department of permanent trauma. 
"We have to pass the story down. Otherwise, history will repeat itself," he used to say to me. As soon as I learned how to walk, I took care of the blood-soaked soil that would spur all the treasures necessary for a family to survive winters and enjoy summers. 
“You work, you reap the benefits,” he used to say to me. I think I hated him my whole childhood. 
The lesson of misfortune that happened on this soil was carved into me and forever stained my innocence. 
"Why don't we leave?" I would often ask him. 
"Because we know how to withstand a storm. It doesn't matter whether it's a storm of bullets or a storm of nature. We endure." I learned how to harvest pear trees. 

I learned a lot working in his garden. I admired his silent strength and his loud beliefs. I hated his burdens and his ancient personifications of youth. 
The pear trees were his favorite. So incredibly unresponsive to so many habitats, yet they subdued to his will and let him mold them into whatever he pleased.
He molded me, too. I became firm. Ready to withstand a storm of the world. 
“What if I choose to leave?” 
I was eighteen and eager to see the world, to study. 
He shrugged. He never acknowledged it as betrayal, but he didn't want to imagine that someone would leave the grove and grow beyond its borders. My grandmother encouraged me. 
“Go. You can always come back to your roots.” 
Of course, she would say that. She loved her roots. Spent forty-five years fertilizing them. But I didn't blame her. She was abandoned, and the land saved her life. Listened to her pain and accepted her tears without ever letting the salt infiltrate the fruit and spoil it beyond repair.
"The worldly possessions don't matter," he used to say to me. "It's only a matter of time before we're reduced to the state of a catastrophe like we were seventy years ago. Nothing will matter. Except for family and Mother Nature.” 
Was it a promise? A prophetic challenge? 
"You go and enjoy your life. But don't lose sight of what's important," he used to say to me. He packed three pears in my backpack. Reminded me that France and Belgium cultivated them but could never really nail the taste. He reminded me that the colonists brought pears to the American east coast, but the unique agricultural conditions killed the harvest. The pear trees thrived in Oregon and in Washington – North Pacific East. 
“If you want to go, you should go there. Always stay close to the land that can adapt.” 
Even when I thought I was making conscious decisions, his opinion was more important to me than my happiness. Because I wouldn't have survived without his tutelage. Without the values, he installed in me. I settled in Oregon. Portland was as close to my garden as I could imagine. I dedicated my life to literature and a small garden. 
Then, the worst possible thing happened. 
We were reduced to nothing. An imitation of life we used to have. For the first time in a long time, we united to survive. 
I wanted to go see him. Five years was a long time to be away. But I couldn't. I didn't go when I could, and now they canceled all flights. 
I waited. And I waited. Consoled myself with pears that never tasted the way they did when he served them to me.
Finally. Restrictions were lifted at least to some extent.
When I was waiting for a connecting flight from Atlanta to London, masked and miserable, I saw a bowl of pears on the front line of an airport restaurant. Of course, no one was eating in that restaurant. No one was eating the pears. I wish I could pull down the mask and ask the staff if I could have one. What a strange wish to bite into fruit at the airport. 
Who would ever in their ever-loving thought ask a waiter if they could have one of their decorative pears to go? 
No one. But that was before. Now, with empty halls and empty hopes, I would give anything to be able to tear the mask apart and have a pear. 
I was terrified and invigorated the whole flight to London. Stayed in quarantine for fourteen days, according to their regulations. 
“You have to hurry,” my grandmother told me on the phone. “He doesn’t have much time.” 
If I could erase the pandemic to be able to travel fast and tell him how right he was and that I'm taking back everything I ever said about living in the middle of nowhere, I would.
Now everyone lived in the middle of nowhere. Their houses and apartments were their nowhere. The streets were empty. Nowhere was suddenly everywhere. Nowhere engulfed us and suffocated us. 
 And the people capable of growing their own edibles were the true winners.
I survived. I arrived in Prague. Another fourteen days of quarantine. By the time they let me out, I sprinted to the nearest grocery store at the Hlavna Stanice, the Main Train Station, and bought the freshest, French-imported pears I could pick from the bunch. 
I boarded the train to Helvance, admiring the harvest I was bringing him. 
The train stopped at Lidice monotonously going into the station as my cell vibrated in sync with the screeching brakes. A text message from my grandmother.
“The garden is yours, now." 
He will never be able to say anything to me again.

FOREVER CRYSTALLINE

The happy sleep in another country,
while I read again my diary
of all the years we never had,
precious as a flower to a dying soldier;
when love is over, you should starve it, they say,
but I prefer my own futilities.
Our silences hid a snowy forest,
at its heart a walled garden with a dead fountain.
Lying at the bottom, a shining white stone:
dreamwater turned to salt, crystalline forever. 


SAFE HARBOUR
For Claudia

The world had dragged me behind it –
a stubborn dog in a lifeboat – 
while opportunities floated past
like unnamed islands on a map,
hidden in the blank spaces. 
One must have been what I hoped for:
a paradise behind a reef
with endless joys to discover
and fulfilment of my cooling dreams.
Eventually, while I floated
lost in that long dying evening,
the moon threw light on the dark places
and I knew I had found it long ago;
the island I searched for is you.


OXYGEN DICTATORSHIP

One eye watching the emptiness all around
and the faded sketch of hostility above,
sleeping whales are boundary markers
suspended vertically just below the surface,
cordoning off a hemispheric dream space:
half of each gigantic brain awake
while the other dives deep in the subconscious
pursuing unimaginable prey
hidden in the limitless expanse,
until the need to breathe calls them back once again.

DANCING IN THE DUST

Mr Bedford’s shop was a treasure house
of dusty old things on endless shelves.
I used to dream about the gramophone,
imagining people in 1920s clothes
climbing out of the horn to dance the Charleston
by the till to scratchy old records.
Many years later my brother bought the shop
to continue the dancing in the dust.

S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in many magazines, and in March 2023 leading US magazine Rattle included him as one of seventeen contemporary Irish poets in a special edition. In May 2023 he was long-listed for the Erbacce Prize out of 13,000 entries.