Don’t Eat the Blowfish

Tastes like chicken but like everything else it’s not.

The liver is Nagasaki.

The lungs Hiroshima or Jesse James and

Dear Old Death comes to us all but

the quiver is fantastic.

Like lips full of bees.

Like a bucket of glue and no one but you.

Hey Toshi! It’s Number One on the Hit Parade!

Who cares that The Deal is about to go down the Crapper.

Or that we may have to eat the pets.

Elsewhere in the Kingdom it is dark but this is the Shit.

This is the Rush.

Like finding Jimmy Hoffa in the attic.

Like kicking Mother Theresa in the teeth.

Like fifty-fifty at best with tubes in the chest and second cousins eyeing the Will.

Saxophone Heaven

Sidemen crouch in stairwells.

Waiting to make their move.

Microphones hiss.

Like snakes on the take.

Parker crushes his smoke and

Raises the Horn.

This is a Gig Baby and the liquor is Top Shelf.

Remember that time when he played the Grafton?

It was plastic but his reeds were Ricos shaved pussy thin and he blew us all away.

Those were the years of the Arm and the Needle.

When the lights were low and it was all Chalameau and any

God would drop their drawers for a taste of that

Junk Dope Smack Shit.

They are Gentle and Kind and sleep between sets like infants.

Knuckle Work

It’s the End of the Roadshow and

Grace she’s a No Show so it’s

Heidi versus Hitler.

Hello Kitty now a Kittler.

Kill your engines.

There are scorpions between the sheets.

Red liver and organ meats.

Dead Aunts who can see you.

The Furnace below the belt.

You are the first to leave.

You are the last to leave.

Feel the planet move.

Somewhere someone is doing everything.

Show them how to take a punch.

Nighty Night

She lies there.

Choking her pillow.

Breathing.

Scuba Tube.

If I should die before I wake.

She lies there.

The windows are black.

No one sees out.

But something sees in.

Her Beasts.

Her Kin.

Don’t eat me please eat me.

A shatter of glass.

Blood in the throat.

She lies there.

Eyes like the dolls

she hides in the attic.

What Lies Ahead

Most of the birds are swifts.

Once it grows light they slip into trees.

Rattling their leaves like

cheap party favors.

Colton Notch is true north.

Distant and blue.

Waiting to be made.

The light in between honey on glass and

there are men in the fields.

Cows eating grass.

Grateful.

Violent.

Deep in the center of the land.

They have their own Wounded Knees.

Their own Thermopolis.

These humans know nothing of the Wooden Ramp.

The Hammer between the eyes.

They bend to the ground.

Scraping the earth with their metal.

Seeing the sun in their heads.

The swifts bursting out of their beds.

Buzzing the beasts like Spitfires.

Drawn to the circumference of those who know.

What lies ahead.

Pills

I ‘ve become a pile of pills

standing up here

waiting for my refills

I remember my grandmother

and her pills

they seemed endless to me

back then

“do you need your pills”

“did you take your pills”

they’d say and she’d obey

put them in her mouth with

a sip or two of water

her last days were like that and

I was too young to know what

that is like, couldn’t imagine

myself this old

passing my time waiting in line

for more pills for the pile of pills I have become.

Winners or Losers

Perhaps it’s a roll of the dice

Or a coin flip

Or one of those childhood games

Rock, paper, scissors,

But somehow, we end up winners

And/or losers.

It’s hard to tell where it comes from.

Perhaps it’s written in the stars

Or in the lines crisscrossing our palms

The Ouija Board or tarot cards.

Too often it seems like the luck of the draw

Some of us win, others lose.

I remember being given a book about

Andrew Carnegie to read.

Back then they thought that role models

Like that would move us along

Especially those of us who seemed to be moving

Off in the wrong direction.

Needless to say it didn’t work, but I still have

The book somewhere

Gathering dust in some pile of my lost projects

The millions I was going to make, the books

I was going to write, and all my inventions,

Inventions that never quite worked. All this must have been written in the stars.

Hiding Places

What happens when you lose

Your hiding places

And you must

After all these years

Move things, things you piled up

Put aside for another day

Sure you would need them

Use them

Two of this, two of that

Things you barely remember

Half empty, half full

Hiding away until now

And now you reach in

Reach over

Pull things out and try

To think of what you can do

There’s the rubbish of course

Or other places

New hiding places to set them aside

Again

Prizes you can accumulate against need

Against an uncertain future

Hiding places you won’t have to face

For years or

Maybe you’ll never have to do this

Again.

---

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, Literary Heist, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing and Highland Park Poetry.

   That tall order
       fell on its face
Drew its Last Breath
           And turned over to 
                   Look at the Stars. 


In Wonder 
        I Wonder
                Bliss is sometimes
        where I fall,
                 resting with
            All the Sky
                    a part of my
                       heart.


My Sizeless glance 
      Wakens the fall
       into a natural lift.
     Behind  the  window
   this was outside my reach.


So   Safe   to   have 
           no future 
   Looking back on what I 
                    had. 


fallen  without a Past to 
          drive my rivets
       to  steel ,   another
                       Day ahead
                   winding Down my
                Belief in Self, 


Until  time  loses its Last 
          Rhyme  spent  to 
  impress myself more than others.


Until homeless grows a new
        home in a forested walk.


The moon peeks around a
Big tree as the ground is
      Softer than I had been used to
in the concrete world. 


     I'm  stopped  by  a  feeling
 of  exhilaration 
         accelerations compensating 
      with tangential swings to keep 
   us apart  in  a
 Dance, that joins our souls, 
to feel good about this. 


       Good  has  my Back   or 
was that you    for neither Lack.
       Sung becomes singing


     The  Invisible  evaporates
 to make a   delicious flavor
                pleased


     I'm  fallen    to Rise    Like 
               Breathing 


                     ♡
by John Edward Culp

C- Caring is a good Character
R-Resilience is the path to actualizing Recognition
I- Information is Important
S-Sense speaks Sanity
T-Truth is Thorough
I-Initiating an idea is an innovative Inevitable
T-Teaching is Technical
I-Introduction makes understandable a subject Interest
N-Nature is the observed Norm
A-Appreciation encourages Accountability


D-Defining your purpose is a life Decision
E- Encouragement is also useful to Empowerment
P-Purpose leads to Profoundness
T-Training people is a part part advancement's Totality
U-Unity is Unbiased
L-Love Subtly resist the power of Lies
A-Availability is the engine room to Advancement.

 Foreclosed
  
 Withdrawal shoulders folds along mouths
  
 staged tales fault us.  They coffer
 day’s issue, the chance randomness 
  
 arranged when we leave cautioned
 a house our growth each door leads to.
  
 All for themselves now, it’s dread
 their kingdom announces
  
 in counted nights yearning
 for song under the old roof’s uses
  
 while as out of an encapsuled globe
 Xerxes himself would approve of,
  
 we sit new rooms alone and suggested.
  
 -
  
 The enlisting sepulchre

 Out of windows 
 gloomed light insurrects 
  
 incompatible suddenness 
 rotted with years
  
 soundless worlds
 pretend to.
  
 It peals and strips
 ripe notions to death
  
 where drunk and various 
 pronouncements
  
 soft eyes took care with 
 as ears proclaim
  
 the glass between them— 
 our palms their hands
  
 a mausoleum traces.

Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of intersubjectivity in the poetic encounter with place. He celebrates the confrontations between self and locale and the challenge that occurs in the fomenting of identity and independence. You can find his work in such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, Down in the Dirt, Mineral Lit Mag, ODD Magazine, Thorn, Green Ink Poetry, and Unique Poetry Journal among others. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next generation of poets.

HERO VS. VILLAINS

“Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

So, Martin Scorcese compares Marvel movies to theme parks. And honestly, what a mood.

True, this isn´t exactly the newsworthy material, Ricky Gervais discussed Scorcese´s top-notch diss of superhero culture movies during his monologue at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards.

But it recently popped up in my recommended videos because the Youtube algorithm works in mysterious ways and got to thinking – is it just about shallow screenwriting and the allure of cheap CGI action, the mindless fun?

And I realized that the problem of Marvel storytelling runs even deeper than the genius director conveyed to us out loud – that it heavily influenced the type of novels we get to read – and it´s not exactly Marvel´s fault … Not entirely.

ONE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS

One-dimensional characters or flat characters do not change or grow from the start of the story to the end. Their purpose is to highlight the main character, to be a plot device, or a tool, and they typically are simpletons with a one point of view on life – they only see one dimension – hence one-dimensional characters, hold a simple and small perspective about life or the situation in the story. Their character is often used as a literary device to keep the narrative moving – many times when the script has written itself into a corner, or the writer has run out of effective ways to move the plot forward.

Now, Marvel, from the three-hundred and seventy-two movies total from which I´ve seen eighteen, does not suffer from one-dimensional characters on the hero side of the story. All the good guys go through trauma, they learn, they grow, they develop new opinions (ehm-ehm- some of them).

Marvel has been criticized for sucking at writing an effective villain but the problem is not the villains, the problem is the root of the Marvel storytelling – the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad.

One would think that they would take their own advice and write all the villains the way Loki is written – which is the reason (not the only one, yeah, Tom Hiddleston is awesome and all that) why audiences flock to him so much. He has a strong motivation, he´s smart and his character is a rainbow of personalities – just like a regular human being, which makes him likable and most importantly, relatable.

But Marvel is not the inventor of one-dimensional characters.

William Shakespeare is.

Benvolio from Romeo and Juliet, Gertrude from Hamlet, Shylock from The Merchant of Venice very effective plot devices with one stubborn character feature that poses an obstacle to the protagonist.

However, Shakespeare didn´t have Hollywood studios behind him to balance out the lack of personalities in his stories with raging beam in the sky and generic CGI armies. To give a complete experience to audiences, he had to support the narrative by creating strong protagonists, interesting antagonists, and villains with complex personalities (Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Portia). And when you do that, your story not only allows for the one-dimensional character to make sense, it makes it even more immersive and realistic – because we all know that one blank person who is just sort of … there. Existing, with one opinion on all the debatable, morally grey, complicated stuff we deal with in life.

And that´s why people will never have such a raging allergy if a Marvel movie turns out bad and will keep watching them and paying for the next one and the next one and the next one.

Low stakes, low damage.

Now compare that to a show heavily driven by character development where there are no villains and heroes like the Game of Thrones. 

Feel like re-watching it? No? Me neither. And no one can blame us. That show became un-rewatchable due to replacing the complexity of the human heart with a hero vs. villain storytelling and adding some explosive Marvel-type action as the final lethal, cyanide-like icing on the cake. 

IN BOOKS

All the teenage apocalyptic series. Thank you for your time, good night.

….

I really didn´t want to get into this but there is no better example than the popular doomsday book series where children hunt each other in a world that no longer resembles a rational society. And they gave us all the subsequent movie franchises in which those very same teenagers are at least twenty-six years old, of course.

However, there is a silver lining on the horizon in a form of Shadow and Bone. I´ve never read the books but the popular fantasy book series The Grisha has been picked up by Netflix and the first book has been adapted in a form of a limited TV series.

And if the source material is as strong as the adaptation, we might just be plunging out of the lazy storytelling brought about by the likes of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.

DOES I AM CECILIA DO BETTER THAN THAT?

Cecilia used to think that being born to a small fortune, accompanied by chrysanthemums on the way from the hospital and surrounded by exploding fanfares of affection, would set her up for a never-ending life of lottery wins, parades without rain, and smooth slides on the slopes of adoration. She never realized how slippery that slope of adoration was. Maybe money was not the root of all evil. Family dysfunction was. 

An Excerpt from I am Cecilia by Zara Miller

As promised last time in the first article, I would reveal a little bit behind the story and the inspiration behind writing this YA novel.

The hero vs. villain in the Marvel movies is something that was always on my mind and tried to avoid during writing. Blurring the lines in the protagonist/antagonist/villain/anti-hero characterization. Not just because it´s a lot of fun but because it makes for a rich experience.

When you find yourself disliking the hero yet rooting for them anyway, or loving the villain yet understanding that they have to be stopped – the writer is probably doing it right.

I am Cecilia is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/I-am-Cecilia-Zara-Miller-ebook/dp/B094519D7T/ref

You can follow me on Instagram @zaramiller_author, or on LinkedIn under Zara Miller for more news and swoon-worthy fiction content. Looking forward to meeting you all!