The Four Times Bag Willy Went A’slumber on his Feet       (1664 words)


There’s quite a bit more to say regarding Rip Thayer.
The Slow Man, you mean? That Rip Thayer?
Bag Willy started straightening a bit, turning dead head to head t’ ‘im, saying, There. You have not been listening to a thing I say. You don’t care at all I don’t like that. Do you? You don’t really if you did  your would not have said The Slow Man, you mean? That Rip Thayer, the way you did. How I say things is not important, its what I say that is. And you aren’t listening.
Of course I am. You’re talking about a Rip “The Slow Man” Thayer—you’re talking about that, thinking its got something to do with Sod Martin. Sure I know that. I know what you said, fine. 
Eh get off your high balls already, Brucie.
Bag, please. Brucie is not my name.

No, but it is the name of that guy came up behind you there.
What—who? Turning—scanning—back—there is no one there, Bag.
No, but—made you look! Ha ha heh hey laff laff gigglo—but it could have been, Mr. Sweater—wait wait Sweater is not my name, also, hah! Your name also? Sweater is not your name also? Is not your name also? Sweater. Is not. Is not your name also, I think your name is also, that would be a great name forte you sir-ban Also. Sir Ban Also, A great name for you, sweet. Hachta-pooey.

The first time Bag Willy went a’slumber on his feet:

And then he all went stopped.
Willy!
Bag Willy!
It came apparent Bag did need some sleep, so they taxied him back away to whatever some cheap hotel a block away probably, after pinning to his boots a demand to return tomorrow to resume the testimony regarding Pappy Back-Slloow Mandelly-Cooper why on earth would one retain such a psycho-pomppetoed non-liturgical game-name and that was put up Bag Willy’s front when he returned fresh the next day but, the simplistical porterman ushered him in discreetly warned him on the threshold, there is paper pinned to your boots, M’seur. Let me obtain it. And, as the man bent to reach down, Bag Willy palmed his back applying light pressure so that the porter would not rise and debeak him under the chin as he bent to say over the back of the other no, no, leave it, I want it left there to prove a point, that point being revealed ten minutes later as the also fully morning fresh coffee’d down interrogationist said also there is paper pinned to your boots senor, and Willy said, I know. And there’s a reason. Your big-backed doorguardsmen squad put that on me most insultingly as I passed out that way, and I resent. I resent being thought so dumbo that I would not know to so dumbo that I come back today same weave same rack o’ dumbo bean grasping Ricky that I am and so more much smarter than all around my most times, even though I really don’t look like much’s on my ball, I do know it they do not have to act on it when how the hell can they know it its hidden inside me? I’m the only one who can! 

Darn those piccolos!
And with that Bag reached down swope up the insultationing paper to eyes level, fashioned an airplane from it, and, cruised it gone out of the into of one of the large empty tubules of darkness draping the leftwall. Say, and hear, he was already saying so about a month after Rip “The Slow Man” Thayer presumably quit Sod Martin’s pretend to play bingohall, I went out way to the moneymaker with a big flatheaded Spadea-hoe to start the job of the manual turning of the clods up down and all—and there in the turn, get it or not—a human arm off at the shoulder the hand with a black ball tight in its death-grip.
Bang!

Bag Willy seemed then to shrink back into himself. What he had described had no doubt been a shock. And apparently still was—as he sat there silent. An arm, they reflected—watching him sit there—with a black ball tight in its death grip. An arm clutching a black ball in a death-grip, a death-ball turned up from under the clods first turned up before the start of a winter just endured and now ending. It had been so cold. And the warming had come for Bag Willy wherever he'd been since leaving the sod farm and so. 

The second time Bag Willy went a’slumber on his feet:


He still sat saying nothing so—it was ventured to ask him, Bag? 
Bag! 
Why—why are you so quiet?
Nothing. Nothing, but they had to get him going to the end. They needed Bag Willy’s recorded transcripted testameentation to the end. Oh, guys—to the and because—I am—I am okay but—Judge Ranier said have it turned in bright-shiny and typo free—it was a hell of a sight to see—you could tell—by close of business today—oh b’b’rak, it’s breaking free, he’s out there in that field, I was shaken, I was shook, I was— 

Good, good. Seeing Bag Willy in full flow, once more they resumed quickly their back-standing jotterdownerinne activity scooping up the merest scat out the fiddlin’ Mouthhole of this Bag Willy as he went on into this; the one one step behind the one one step forward reflected back to his thoughts three or seven—or maybe just yesterday—Bag Willy shewed hisself into the office identification card, in hand. Anyone having information regarding activities on the Martin Sod Farm between this dat that one there and this one I hold in my hand—which have right hand left hand think fast think fast think fast, eh; you damned a’ lick oof a duc’, you know, eh eh—and we looked at each other without words needed, saying behind our eyes at each other, What kind of a person is this come in here for the possibility of our granting them an amount of money commiserate with the probative value of the information they provide, sweet willy; yah, I got you so okay your ID checks out—and all flew up to their respective nows, all very good but, again. 

The third time Bag Willy went a’slumber on his feet:


Again Bag Willy had—fallen silent. Be careful, be careful, do not spook him to run. Time you must give. Like if you hit a key like on that there—yah that there machine over there. Or any machine at all actually. Frustration must not be allowed to rule.
Bag sat there. So say once, Bag? Why so quiet all of a sudden?
And his face’s unchanged. Choose wait longer, or ask again. 
Nothing and nothing and nothing nothing and an’, again. So.
Bag. Why so quiet all of a sudden—not knowing that this second time’s just rammed in against the first time already pushing, really slow—as a matter of fact not at all yet—to the back of h’ gullet. Not knowing. His faces show unchanged—but within’s the opposipette so wait. Again. Wait and wait and any rational truly professional questionagrapher would wait there interminably, as, how can they just sit there so patient how can they just sit there ignored by that monck? He is being so rude to them where are they getting that patient and. As though they know their patience is speaking to them at any onlooker again, they wait three bit more and swing in, stop there—now go halfway closer and; Bag. Why so quiet all of a sudden—slips in again guess what, the butt end of the second ask of that so there, madame, approximate tickle them there now go halfway that distance—heh! Still no damned answer. 
Why is his face’s unchanged oh yes wah wah Billy its nearly your bedtime come on lets his the hay Mr. Sumo—No! 

The final time Bag Willy went a’slumber on his feet:

No no no no no—he must be made to speak!
Bag. Why so quiet all of a sudden—slips in a’splat ta the butt back of the third, then so go halfway that space this time and-o L’; nothing. Nothing. All patience is gone now, but that  must not show so, so wait three short waits another’s for good measure.  
How can they be so damned patient with that slug?
Not’s really, as, Bag. Why so quiet all of a sudden—slips in a’splat ta the butt back of the fourth, then so go halfway that space this time and-o L’; nothing. Nothing—and not to b’bore the swollen out frostbit universe containing you all sweet sister the bucklin’ tha’ brotherman and how many other times you see yourselves in our mirror that way? The sad answer is ‘gain, no again, and no closer 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 ‘gain, no again, and no closer 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 4 3 2 1 ‘gain, no again, and no closer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 repleted an-titioned all out; and these may be placed into any order desired; and so, fat back sass; because of your impatience displayed this way n number of times my God you are really hosed down now Bag hosed now so that wrapped this wat ta’ that day and so after the good night’s sleep the fine weather dished up for this out past their sides, the next day the navelmen declared the channels cleared, and in the pale rise of the sun’s light despite slight overcast no, no storm’s a’brew, his tone saying plain he really meant who the hell said that, say your name, say your name, condemned;
Condemned!
Condemned.
Condemned!
Splat! 

Jim Meirose’s work has appeared in numerous venues. His novels include “Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer”(Optional Books), “Understanding Franklin Thompson”(JEF), “Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection”(Mannequin Haus), and “No and Maybe – Maybe and No”(Pski’s Porch). Info: www.jimmeirose.com @jwmeirose

So Neat in Out-of-Date Cursive

It's too easy to forget who you are.
No different than pretending
someone didn't call you
the wrong name, while the grocery list
you wrote so neat in out of date cursive
is folded in your pocket,
like a note telling when you'll die,
and you're only scared to read it,
because it proves your memory 
isn't what is used to be,
leaving you
to swear as you remember
the empty salt shaker waiting for you
to get home and complain 
how you had nothing to say
on the birthday card you signed
for a co-worker.


Stamps Used to Cost Fifty Cents

His books are falling down
in price, while the shipping costs
soar like an eagle with its eyes
focused on something we can't see,
and here I am, grounded
next to another poem-
its wings broken or growing,
depending who you ask,
but I'm incapable of flight,
knowing the sky intimately
only in my dreams, where my fall
part of waking up.


Finding Ourselves

Too often we're looking for ourselves,
even though we were never lost,
and the treasure map just an old napkin
we forgot for years in a pocket
of our best clothes, while we never bought
those shovels because we couldn't afford
those plans for self-improvement 
through gardening, leaving the dirt 
to wait just a little longer for us.

fingers of the hairdresser

part I.

around my head is a pony that changes shape.
the crystal daylight kisses my tail
                                        and is forgotten.
the color of a dewdrop stings.
the plow is a mothball of song
                                              in
creamy stucco for
                           benthic pilgrims,
                           for
                           sky’s burning feet.
the blowgun is a mace
                           for maori who care to notice.
above tablelands crawling boulders
                                                pick fights.
handsome and benighted,
sugary and cracked and limpid
                                   as a devilfish,
a noose is pulled around weeping.
museums in-
                  sist on
pan-
or-
amas
not dead. tank convoys,
                  butter pats,
                  sequined eyelids,
                  barrel-chested animations
threaten my good name.
                                             the handle
                                             of messiah
dances with cupcakes in his hands.
i am finished when anemones soil
                        the water and clownfish
                        die.



part II.

there is something.
               listen to bravery
as a suffocating
        kodiak
searches for ice floes.

                                         tides are unguarded by gravity.

whiptails smell ancestors in every direction
and they usher along the squeaking pebbles that could
have filled
buckets. so even though
                               the fingerprints
                               weren’t 
mine, they moved like my hand dipped in
                                                                      butter.

part III.

once kings were graphics for birds of paradise.
the flannel crisped in
time;
cavities
in
be-
havior
were glass-
bottomed
boats trailing horse latitudes. the volcanic
puppets
are still iceland without strings,
tristan da cunha
                  without wind.
i am forced to listen to roll-
                                          ing wagons
of the donner (bless the noisemakers) party.
where are the women who sell candied yams
? where is the perfect sprinkle
of a coma-diet? which element, do i guess, is
filthy enough to chew?

part IV.

queens were publications of cassowaries -
thick fibers of falling clouds. chicken 
                                                    little.
at any throat are ribbons of the maypole.
the scheme of taffy bites down
                                              hard
                                              here in
                                              this jagged
sequestration of rice.
poor sacks. prisons of agriculture.
a sign for evacuation is not to be taken seriously.
scraps of
heredity
never
cancelled out
in-
fes-
ta-
tion. my coconuts lost bargaining power once
they hit the ground. beetles
                                     sang
of                                  the sharpness
loud
knives. little bones pressed in cages
             were beating hearts. little test
             tubes were songs of another
             monkey. my contrapuntal history
             is a burlap finger in ice.

part V.

singular attention is drawn to the caustic
                                                             veil if
it minimizes your image or
a bagful of mussels never escape.
when you eat that fruit
                                  salad
there are deviations for vegetables:
i call you one.
                  through pekoe tea
the apartment you live in
                           is cherry soda.
with the wash-
ing
done
         your caramel eye-
                                  lashes
are underwear closer 
than                               all the
                                        dirt in the world.

livelier than christmas ornaments
             shattering,
salt and pepper snakes observing
                             pentecost
is the fir tree caught on fire. but
no one on the face of civilization
                          will listen if i
                                                 have
global                                      aphasia.
and gingivitis is
a
yellow drool not to be traded for
persimmons or
oleander       or
bottlenecked blood going northward.

part VI.

luxury quakes/small eyelets are untied/ wounded
basilisk/ sand unperched to drift/seventeen hours
and no baby/ tears are muttering/ soft beans don’t
need midwives/the car hisses a sliding coatrack/don’t
fear the penumbra of any fool/image of goatcheese
and i shrivel/we pick crescent moons/
                       the sky waits for fingernails/
surgeries in greenland and antarctica/sun-browned
furniture/poodles vomit at curbside/one polyester-
wheedled touch/one picture of dorian gray/ one
for the money/ and my nose ziplocked/ passenger
pigeons/moas/great auks/dodos/incognito/and we
have billions.

part VII.


that symbiont has exposed herself to self.
that matador waits for blood and capes.
that southern conference of bishops is sissifying birth
and piliated woodpeckers are the souls of silence.
and the aquifer percolating –
and the tongue dyspeptic –
and the ugly confluences of spittle and chess 
are where my napkin ends,
and stitches of the penguins’ wings
are dreams of the night.


bird province

small concrete confections slurped through prehistoric teeth
are the crumbs of castanets gnashed too wildly.
they fall like feather,
float like rain in a wind that is chocolate and
vanilla and brick.
in a somewhere of temperature and
breadth and pressure
and whispers of crying,
dreams are infantilized
that clutch like skunk stink
with colorful warnings.

i said to you that limitations are folded
into prerequisites of dying; that cold
noses are a prelude to suffocation;
that passenger pigeons never really
disappeared. and
bird pain, nonetheless, jimmies
a lock on time, and look
what dinosaurs have become in the
midst of extinction. soporifics
blight the need for breaking mirrors
although i could use some bad
luck to pat down a new grave-
site
or to compress minor delusions
into the speak of a helium balloon
that bellyflops and spits without fear
dripping from its eyes. and when
i pass the tungsten and bitterness
flooding the road, a caramel color
is a flightless ditch and
my knuckles are butterscotch
tasting of rain. hold your screams,
I’m not listening. the fabric of
lamplight pours off your plucked skin
and witches tell 
tales i can’t ignore when forests
are broken and i see you hardening in mud
at the mouth of a river.



homecoming

i wasn’t afraid of the wolf,
it salivated like a warm sponge
and lowered its head like a bull.
there was a current in the water
singing past palisades;
timbering sunlight.
and i was sure that coming home didn’t
require a key or fishing for loose change.
the canoe wouldn’t take me that far, anyway.
i could’ve carried time in wheelbarrows
if clocks were, in fact, hands without bodies.
or weight scurried down pointless years,
and chimneys had never smoked.
the sundried cats i see are apple cores
grown cerebral in asphalt.
mercury still measures temperature but
no longer poisons.
there’s too much rubble here to cascade
only from skyscrapers bent and chewed on but
boots are water cannons
and insects are filigreed and heavy
with the muscles of condors and
carnage plummets from the sun.
forests are always in the way:
i’ve found a blanket of painted burlap with
the crispness of fog:
when i find a door half open, half decided,
i’ll re-schedule a greeting: lift a hand
in a gesture of morning; bring down
the axe on the rest of the day and asphyxiate
with one lung in my hand.
there was a cold front waiting for me;
the breath spirited away and
buried itself like a spore.



mechanoreceptors

the prison suppurates in shock;
creased with jacketed stone.
carry the dentist’s drill.
                 spill a caravan of sand.
i can’t fill a fleshy hand with bone -
the
cavities
sing in a vacuum. i will replace
blood flow for breathing; i will suture
a bull’s snout to a faceless minotaur. and

then
i’ll spit proteins to gel in
atmospheric grease,
resonating like wind
                           chimes.

cauldrons are ripe with recipes:
bluefin tuna on archaeological expeditions:
those ocean trenches dry as stone.

sundown is waiting for me as
a canyon buys time: the purge
of a mirror is the fear i want.

and maybe
the morning’s butter can slip
                                              down
                                              my fingers
in cataracts
    and billfolds and
                                  euclid’s elements will
stay still until they are finally counted.    

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College. His stuff has appeared or, is forthcoming, in Helix, Rabid Oak, The Blue Collar Review, Call Me, Rise Up, Old Pal, and others. His collection “Dead Calls and Walk-Ins” chronicles his work as a taxi driver several centuries ago.

Why


Why is the only question
that possesses no answer
and is the only retort for sons
born into this life so unsure.

Why is for the philosophers,
lacking any explanation of the essence
of what it means to truly suffer,
and to find oneself inside mile high fences.

Why is for the cowards,
afraid of the dangers of knowledge
hiding inside hospital wards,
instead of free falling over the edge.

Why is for the hopeless
seeking truths that speak only in lies,
as all logic becomes helpless
force feeding propaganda into our eyes.

Why is for the lost,
when even the cold crawls beneath the covers,
paralyzing the mind with frost,
permanently burying secrets under fresh powder.

Why is an answer without proof,
such as how ages pass by so quickly in youth
during their quest of spoken truths,
despite the extraction of each wisdom tooth.

Why cannot change the past tense
and grant time to a supernova sun,
so why make the end of each sentence
the end of one’s big question?




Byproducts of Our Environment


Byproducts of Our Environment


We plugged the hole
in the ozone with the rubber stopper
that once clogged the ocean closed,
as round and round we go,
swirling counterclockwise like coils
in this Pacific toilet bowl
we call home.  



 burning book


flame ate the paper. white sheets torn off the spine and thrown into the hell of the home. ink bled as it is
consumed and coughed up as smoke, escaping the mouth of the brick throat. storm clouds, with no rain,
blow slowly away. the wind is white hot. the pages become black. the embers fade. another page is written.
another moment of fire. Inspired.   

Not the One

By Taylor Dibbert



Clear eyes,

Chin up,

Like,

Henley said,

Bloody,

But,

Unbowed,

Turns out,

She wasn’t,

The one,

After all.

Life

I always thought life was easy.
But now I know life is tougher than the hardest rock.
It keeps getting harder.
But I'll keep fighting on till it's over.
If life is a war then am a soldier. 

I find myself doing things I swore never to do when I was younger.
I see myself doing what I condemned other people for doing.
I keep finding myself under bad influence that I find difficult to manoeuver. 
I find myself giving in to the pressure around me. 

I kinda feel that my life is about to take a new turn.
I feel my life is about to change. 
But everyone around me seem to be asking me if I'm actually ready for the pain ahead.
Voices Keep echoing.
Asking if I'm ready for the pain. 

I've got a lot of friends and foes.
Some praying not to see me fall.
And others praying for my downfall.
I've been on the highway speeding.
Afraid of ever crashing.
I see myself on the battle field.
With no commander.
With no weapon for defense.
Wondering whether to quit or to keep fighting. 

I know I've made some decisions am not proud of.
I know sometimes regret is impossible to overcome. 
But sometimes it's better to regret things you've done than to regret things you haven't tried. 
So I keep working hard to correct my mistakes.
Because working hard is what successful people do. 

Many people have been asking who I am.
I keep telling them am just a boy with empty pockets and a bag of dreams. 
A boy that has been through a lot.
A boy that has seen it all. 
A boy that has cried streams of tears. 
Shed tears of blood. 
Been to hell back and forth. 
Been through many rise and falls. 
Trying to make it to the top. 
Trying to be the best my generation has ever seen.