It's All My Fault

It's all my fault.  I signed up.  They had me type.
Left, right, hault.  Sit, copy - bored.
Ordered "Drop your pants" in the Orderly Room
'cause my unlaundered uniform smelled ripe,
I gave in, my confidence shook - until now, just look:
office factotums of keyboard
everywhere - screens and computers tied on.
Seeing it happen I've been so floored:
my inaction caused all of this gloom
in wage-slaves to the one percent...
Oh my poor colleagues on whom I should fawn,
my collusion was without intent.

It's all my fault, I saw it coming,
What the media's trying to do to us
besides entertain and inform - unbecoming
to show graphic scenes they make such a fuss
of psychic or physical sexual mayhem
or torture delivered in cinema - then, on T.V.,
bought-up home-videos of groin accidents to them
is fare that is favored by us citizenry -
with a musical track.  To those screens'd desensitize
or power'd divide, I admit I'm the one 
who kept silently watching - so must apologize.
With positive passions more our kind of fun
I thought I was gracious in showing some ruth -
but I had forgotten that beauty is truth.

I must claim the fault, suspected we're fated -
the lies were there - should have extrapolated.
The equal chance at happiness we're told we get
when behind the ears we're still quite wet
becomes the need to toil for subsistence wage....
The nice policeman they say kids should trust
gives karate-chop pat-downs, backroom outrage -
not protection or service but a torture bust.
As in families infant sibling empathy,
in society populist sympathy -
and later those arrested in the protests we see -
are put up against the wall by our powers that be....

I'm the one who didn't hold free love together
in a world of possessiveness and jealousy -
though my buddy and I couldn't be sure whether
our girls, having ravished us thoroughly,
couldn't just up and do the same for another;
and, when we asked 'em, heard 'em agree
that my buddy and I could be those other!
Ah, we four had commitment and variety
'til the draft wrote my friend, and he grew quite thin.
So, since one of our girls had an aunt who could cover
their expenses 'til his 4-F deferment came in,
they left.  Four people, each with just one lover -
living as couples in estrangement's sin.

When school, which canceled band and art long since,
to stop phys-ed, but double lunch-hour, tries,
and overeating children make parents wince....
Blame me!  To sedentary stresses wise,
I couldn't my co-desk-workers convince
the balm for our discomfort is Exercise.
T'was sitting, class and office, sixteen hours
a day inspired my half-hour morning jogs,
not my own insight's energizing powers....
Workouts are epicures in stoic togs -
arduous aerobics are invigorating fun
to free sprites from weariness that mind had begun -
I couldn't make it obvious to everyone.

..............................

		Leadership

"The marionetteers of capital
who pull our strings behind the scenes
to drain our strength can't sap it all,"
said the puppet with the shears in his jeans."

.....................

		Inspiration	

When wine country tried my sanity
like a nestless bird with a clear-cut tree
I came to the city for humanity
and a new inspiration for poetry.
The inbound bus was my ship of fools. 
Out its window I tossed my last pack of Kools:
I vowed I'd make, 'til the day I die,
the breath of life my only high -
which now was augmented, to my cost,
by the unavoidability of car exhaust.
...
		Reconsider
With adolescent dreams we bury
so much of human nature too
when youthful premonitions scary
bring mundane fortune into view.

Though by the water's edge lay
a myriad of sphere-cut gem-pebbles
in thier Milky Way arc of the bay -
a particolor night's suns' trebles -

And each colored flare in its bowl
throbs with the starlight of sol.

...

Muhammed

Marnie had linked-in with Ellie and had developed a body suit with haptic feedback features. Ellie was able to render her lost daughter into real-time, similar to holographic girlfriend Joi—Ana de Armas, #KnivesOut—product belonging to the Nexus-9 Blade Runner KD6-3.7. Instructing Ellie to initiate Sareh, a holographic apparition. A digital avatar of Sareh was generated, magically, restored to virtual existence. #Ellie #shortfiction #interstellar #scifi …

Struck by this, Mia telepathically caused the quantum engine to levitate into the air, both hands spaced apart. Similar to teenage orphan and an avid Gunter, Wade Watts / avatar Parzival logged into the OASIS, except without the visor and haptic technology gloves. She had tilted and rotated the sphere like a Rubik’s Cube, visually, assessing the damage of PLUTO. The meteor orb, dubbed ATOM, was still fully functional, causing the working components to glow. #Marnie #shortfiction #scifi #nostelgia

Twin Sisters

I knew I wanted her for a model when I saw the portrait selection at the Portland Art Museum.  She was painted hanging out of the passenger seat of a car waving at something unseen by the museum visitors.  I don’t know if I’m right, but I thought of early Marilyn Monroe.

Despite that my usual work is painting high-priced portraits for the city’s makers and shakers, politicians and business people; I knew I had to paint her.  Didn’t matter if I didn’t sell anything that I painted of her, I’d be happy to keep anything with her in it.  She had an aura which came through the dead canvas.

I checked the artist of her painting – it was George Shaw, somebody I knew well.  As soon as I got home, I asked him how to contact the woman in his painting.  He told me he would check with her to see if she wanted to contact me.  This was highly unusual because most models would welcome a new client without screening him first.

My obsession with the unknown woman kept me fidgeting at home hoping for her call.  Fortunately she called quickly.  “Hi, this is Janice Fellows.  George said you’d like me to model for some paintings.  In all honesty, I’m in high demand, but I’ve been keeping Fridays clear in case something good comes up.  You should be happy to know that you are in high regard among other local painters.  Let’s get acquainted this Friday, say at 3, and see if this works for both of us.  If it works out, bring your paints in case you want to start.”

I had a client meeting about a portrait of a much married tech multi-millionaire who wanted a painting with his adult children and his much younger wife.  Didn’t care, even if it cost me a five figure commission, I would not miss meeting Janice.  She gave me her West Hills address, a couple of miles from my place close to Portland State University.

It was three days until Friday.  Keeping my mind focused on my projects while awaiting our meeting was hell.  I felt like a teenager with a burning crush.  When the time came, after a mile or two of walking to Janice’s house, a very different woman met me at the door.  This woman was clearly older than Janice, had mousy brown hair, a bit of a paunch, and a pock marked face.  She could tell from my face that she was not what I expected.

“Hi, I’m Janice’s sister, fraternal twin, Jody.  You must be Frank.  Yes, I know we look nothing alike.  One of us is the brains, one is the beauty.  I’m obviously the beauty”.  This last was followed by a cackle.

“Now that you’ve heard my standard joke, here is the reality.  She does the modeling which brings in plenty of coin.  She isn’t dumb, but uninterested in the business end.  I do the buying, pay the bills, collect the money, do the accounting.  Between the two of us, we do alright.  She is always late to her meetings, it’s not a bug it’s a feature.”  She laughed at her joke again, while I tried to make sense of the situation.  “Want to sit down, have a drink, or discuss politics while you wait?  By the way, her fee is the going rate.”  At the time, the going rate was $100 per hour, more or less.  As an independent contractor she didn’t get Social Security or unemployment pay from a client.

Given those choices, I asked for a Scotch.  We ended up talking about painting and art in general while we waited.  After a while, Jody said she had some business to take care of and went through a door marked “Business Office”.  I finished my drink, and after a few minutes Janice came out to usher me into her studio.

If possible Janice was more than I expected from the painting.  I very much appreciate soft, voluptuous female flesh, and Janice had it in abundance.  She asked in a voice like honey “What do you want to do today?”

I almost slipped up and told her what I really wanted to do, but instead said “How about I take a few sketches”.  She agreed, and I spent a few minutes with my sketch pad.

“Janice, how do you feel about plein art?”

“Frank, I don’t leave my house.  Jody takes care of everything so I have no reason to leave.”

“It’s too bad; I’d really like to paint you at the beach.”

Janice laughed, and went to a trunk.  She pulled out a folded coastal backdrop with crab shells, a mix of different colored sand, with waves in the background.  Think you can paint me now?”

She was dressed quite modestly, so I told her she wasn’t dressed for the beach.

“No problem”, and with that she completely disrobed and went to her wardrobe and put on a swimsuit.

I did what I could to hide my arousal.  She looked and laughed again.  “So you are happy to see me.”

We went through the posing and lighting until we were both pleased.  I spent the next hour painting.

When finished, I got ready to go.  She grabbed my hand before I could leave and said “I like you, why don’t we get really happy before you go.  You won’t be charged for the extra work.”

Her very comfortable couch got a strenuous workout.  She inspired me to perform like my long gone teen years.

On my way out Jody gave me a very lecherous look including winks and asked “Want to schedule this for the Fridays into the future?”

I managed a strangled “Uh, yes.”

George knew about my meeting with Janice and called me later that day to ask about it.  I told him that it went well.  After a pregnant pause during which I suspected George was expecting something a little risqué, he said “Uh, good.   Glad it went well.”  This made me wonder about George’s sessions with Janice.

The next several Fridays seemed literally magical.  Janice looked different every Friday and not just hair, lighting or makeup.  Her nose changed size, both up and down.  After wondering if she could be too voluptuous, the next week she was slightly, but visibly thinner.  Whenever I would think of an outdoor setting for a painting, she would pull an appropriate backdrop out her trunk.

Did imagining her behaving as we did every Friday with her other clients bother me?  Sure, but one day a week with Janice, was worth all week with someone else.

At the same time, I got closer to Jody.  She was so intelligent and charming, her looks ceased to matter.  If we talked about something as boring as weather, she could quote outstanding world rainfall or heat statistics.  She was an expert on all the areas of art – painting, writing, acting, all of it.  She solved math puzzles for fun.

After the fifth modeling session with Janice, I invited Jody out to dinner at my place.  After eating, we started telling jokes.  “A priest, a parson and a rabbi go into a bar.  The bartender asks ‘Is this some kind of joke?’”

Next we went into dirty stories.  I surprised both of us by telling her “You can sleep here tonight if you want.”

The next morning I woke up with a different woman – Janice.  I jumped out of bed and yelled “What the hell!?”

Janice said “The short answer is that I’m what you might call a witch or a really good hypnotist.  I can appear to people any way I want.  It’s called casting glamors.”

“I don’t believe it.  You and Jody pranked me.  You switched while I was asleep.”

“You think so?  Then how about this.”  Jody appeared where Janice had been.

I spent a couple of days in a catatonic state.  During that time I had a lucid dream.  It took place in Janice’s apartment.  I wasn’t there, but I could see what was happening.  Instead of Jody going into her business office, it was Dinah who had a crush on me in college.  I hadn’t treated her well then, so I yelled at her “I’m sorry, I treated you badly”.

She looked around and said “It sounds like you Frank, but I don’t see anyone”.  Dinah’s clothes and appearance slowly morphed into Janice as she went through Jody’s office and through a door into Jody’s studio.  I was in the studio, but I woke up before anything else happened.

I knew then how and when the Jody to Janice transformation was hidden from me and I remembered that I had never seen them together.

Coming out of catatonia, I realized how fortunate I was.  Now it’s Fridays with Janice, and other times with Jody.  Rather than try to make sense of it, I just accept that I’m the luckiest man alive.  I don’t dwell on what Janice does on days that I don’t see her.

Before meeting Jody and Janice, I was a twice divorced sad sack chasing money.  I now know that I can accept and give love.  I’ve cut back on some of my lucrative work, and do pro bono or inexpensive work for poorly funded charities, houses of worship, and uplifting murals.  The Art Museum now has a small room with a permanent exhibition of several paintings of Janice and Jody.  They should be shared with the world.

+



       Where dust devils 
     walk  between 
   the tree stumps 

As I pass this century 
  once again  I smell 
    Dinner  beside my 
 Great-grandchild's
Children.

      Far beside
   the roadways
between us & them
Dust devils walk
    beside
       petrified
           stumps.

Was my lunch finished
     over pure cold
       Sips of
         liquid
           Joy?

"Lovely Sky, isn't it!"

A disturbed
     thought passes
        brushing the
          grain of
            Rock
from an old
          tree.

Just like you and me,
   An old habit of
        Life.

"Did you finish 
                your lunch
                 , Dear?"

                                                   ............


by  John Edward Culp 
     Saturday morning
     January 20, 2024
      ♡

Life as a Virgule ‘n Caesura

for N. Karfakis, G. Kokkinidis, and C. Batmanghlich

after Philosopher and Poet by Giorgio de Chirico (Italy), 1916 C.E.



Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
– S. Kierkegaard
(excerpt from Journals and Papers (1843))

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
– F. W. Nietzsche
(excerpt from Twilight of the Idols)


   I	The Virgule: Either/Or

Either an Adapa (Adam) to the all-knowing Ea (Elahi); Or a covenant-breaking Judas to one Christ (one the cross) / Either with a silver spoon in the mouth (devoid of dichotomies ‘n dilemmas); Or abandoned on a raft en route to a Pharoh’s spouse / Either the golden throne in a king’s/queen’s court at a palace; Or a joking jester hired to amuse the populace in the town centre / Either an epic with the protagonist being rescued from an eternal torment; Or a ghazal summersaulting in a poet’s throat / Either a blue-tale in hieroglyphs on the pyramids’ walls; Or a spirited-eye painted on the noses of the triremes / Either a newly-hatched chick reduced to fodder for ants on the forest’s floor; Or the twins suckled and raised by a she-wolf, Lupa / Either the cipher engraved on a clay ‘n stone ‘n emerald ‘n glass tablet; Or a bead of ink on the nib of a scribe’s quill pen. 

   II	The Caesura: – Hyphenated

   The sunyata took to an intermission – some portion of the debris took to the milky way ‘n sun ‘n earth ‘n moon.1

   A juvenile boy ‘n girl are all liberated, id est, devoid of hunger ‘n intimacy ‘n what ‘ve you – lo ‘n behold, a gleam from an apple dangling from a branch of a tree.

   Irtiqa is an aficionado of “slow ‘n steady wins the race” – hold thy horses, one man has devised a wheel ‘n A.I. ‘n more as the catalyst.2

   The schools of pink salmon ‘n rainbow trout follow the pulsations of the river – a hibernation-eloping brown grizzly bear steals a micro stock from the overflow.

   The horse ‘n cattle ‘n sheep are all sophists in the cherry blossom-‘n-beebalm-laden fields – the multithemed snowflakes in billions ‘n gazillions terraform the territory into a tabula rasa. 

   The folklorists have the camp ‘n bonfire all prepared for the twinkle-twinkle little night – an empiricist in a laboratory somewhere has the lenses of the microscope cleaned to debunk the age-old pompous oratory of (anthropomorphic) Devas ‘n Devis.

   One Vyasa’s convinced of conceiving a magnum opus in an ovulating thalamus – one Ganesha’s > keen on a game of hide ‘n seek.3




______________

1. Sunyata (Sanskrit): Emptiness/voidness/nothingness. In the classical Hindu(ism) teachings, ‘Sunyata’ is a school of thought that advocates a non-intrinsic nature of things/phenomena, i.e., things/phenomena are subject to the phenomenon of flux (change/transmutability).
2. Irtiqa (ارتقا) (Arabic): Evolution.
3. Vyasa and Ganesha – the epic of Mahabharata: According to a Hindu legend, Ganesha (Lord of Wisdom) only agreed to being a scribe to Vyasa on one condition: no breaks while dictating the said epic.


Stairways ‘n Catwalks

for Nikolas, George, E. Rahim, and L. Jacobs

after Homage to a poet (Omaggio a un poeta) by Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (aka Giorgione) (Italy), 1477–1510  C.E.



We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.
– Confucius

The pen is mightier than the sword!
– An English Proverb


   I

‘Round the rear end of the red-bricked bungalow,
the (fire escape) stairway spirals like the Fibonacci sequence
– 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, … – bearin’ thirteen odd stainless-steel steps.

[
‘N < thirteen odd thousand years or so ago,
our very own Dear Mother Earth took to walkin’ the catwalk
to step away from one long age of the ice age (aka Younger Dryas)
      – like a feisty protagonist of an epic poem –
‘n fashion for us, homo sapiens, a canopy to breathe ‘n breed under.

…

‘N we fashioned all manner of Stairways ‘n Catwalks
– one or two odd Zeuses ‘n Heracleses ‘n Helens ‘n Achilleses 
‘n Medusas ‘n Perseuses ‘n Rostams ‘n Sohrabs ‘n Ramas ‘n Ravanas.
											]

    II

‘N I walk the catwalk scrollin’ up the steep anti-slip steps
– which feels like strollin’ up an elongated perron
to one Buddha’s Temple in the Tibetan Himalayas –
to arrive before a wooden cedarwood door on the 2nd floor
– which makes you want to pronounce افتح يا سمسم –*
I push the copper handle down,
‘n the reverberations from my plantigrade + digitigrade footsteps
have already set the pull tab on the zipper off rattling
of my half-opened black mamba-black cowhide leather postman bag’s
– which projects a notion of a rattle on the tail of a rattlesnake’s–
‘n unlike the venom from one mamba’s or rattlesnake’s mouth,
the verbosity from one mighty fiery dragon’s mouth
– occasionally hibernating inside the belly of my زنبیل –**
is far more intoxicating and indelible than any kinds of poisons
from one or two solenoglyphous or proteroglyphous or opisthoglyphous fangs!

   III

‘N the past twelve odd thousand years or so
of the red blood cells + white blood cells duo
has rather rendered my intellectual-metabolism
immune to [its] persevering strikes ‘n bites—
‘n I grab hold of it by its ovulating throat
– with my pulsating thumb + forefinger + middle finger;
which feels like one Horace pronouncing “Carpe Diem” –
‘n make [its] شہ رگ take to walkin’ the catwalk-of-words***
to pay an homage to one Confucius
in the spiral of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, … – thirty-four+ odd lines!



______________

* افتح يا سمسم (Iftah Ya SimSim): Open Sesame.
** زنبیل (Zambiil): Bag.
*** شہ رگ (Sheh Rag): Jugular vein.
Le Voyage

for Nashwa Y. Butt & Umme A. Ali

after Road Trip in the Woody by David Michael Hinnebusch (U.S.A.), 2017 C.E.



     The Green Belt

     He pulls the car over; too fast and too close to the green belt (wide dividing strip) in the middle of the dual carriage-boulevard. The car/rikshaw (tuk-tuk) drivers, motor/cyclists et alia become instantly occupied in their heads (the ones that sit on their shoulders) with making-a-meal out of the sudden break on his part. Time has come to go, pack your bags, hit the open road; our hearts just won’t die, it’s the trip, keeps us alive. … So many miles; so many miles, he turns the volume all the way down on “The Trip” by Still Corners to zero. 

     The Qalam

     He hysterically starts looking for a qalam (fountain) pen) inside all the immediately visible and accessible storage compartments – the glove box, cup holders, ashtray holder, door side pockets, storage trays on the dashboard, et cetera. But, there’s no sign of a stylo ((fountain) pen) or a pencil. Swearing follows, heedfully: “GOD DAMN IT – I curse this bastard habit of relying too much on the lead and ink and paper! I CURSE IT!” The heavy shower has stopped, but his mind has left the windshield wipers waving at him. The out-of-the-blue cloudy and rainy post meridiem forces him to reminisce about the drizzles and streets and walks and drives in Leicester, UK; the evocations render le voyage (the trip) into a grey day.

     Miniature Automata

     As a last resort, he takes to the micro keyboard on his Samsung smart phone (he’s a bit old school in that regard; not a great aficionado of the modern technologies and gadgets and IT): “… . And sometimes, the muse does transmute into a rather petit jealous/possessive toddler; she WANTS it all for herself – as an infant on breast-feeding WANTS both boobs for him/herself! … And as such an instant manifests, life – of an artist/poet – comes to an utter halt; and then, the power of co/m/motion-in-inertia takes control of every facet of life; and as such a moment transpires, … .” Midway through recording the aphorism (in the default proprietary Notes application), the phone battery dies on him. The phone charger (with a detachable USB cable) and/or the portable power bank is not to be found anywhere either—neither on the car floor, nor in his tan leather mini briefcase, or in the shalwar/kameez (trouser/shirt) pockets. “The day before, before taking this vahana (ride) to the TOYOTA Service Station, I’d removed all the petit accessories – just in case, the servers couldn’t resist the temptation of nicking my property (a commonplace here – stealing),” he’s solved the l'énigme (the riddle). Swearing follows, mindfully: “GOD DAMN IT – these good for nothin’ miniature automata! I CURSE ‘EM!”

     Oyster & Pearl

     He hits a petit lever ‘round the right side of the wheel console and a petit blinking amber light (in the front and the back) instantly puts him back on the road; and he rushes – oh, he KNOWS how to RUSH – as if a rabbit desperate to get to his ovulating mate. All the while, he works hard to retain the musings in his head (the one that sits on his shoulders) – as an oyster keeps a pearl safe in its belly – until he reaches the 7/11 (a local equivalent of TESCO Express) at TOTAL Parco – he urgently borrows a cheap notepad and a cheap ballpoint pen from the server at the checkout counter, and resumes securing the dictation from la muse: “…, the matter/s-of-rumination/s transcends one’s intellectual/cognitive realm; one’s ‘free will’ even cannot come-forth as a redeemer; one’s only left with the choice of bearing witness to the tapestry of an orgy of alphabet/s and memories unfolding before one’s very sentient being!”



Biography
(Wordcount: 149)


Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up and educated in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. He is a poet-philosopher and literary translator. His new collection of poems is titled Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse, 2021). He has translated selected ekphrases by Lorette C. Luzajic into Urdu – compiled into a chapbook, Lorette C. Luzajic: Selected Ekphrases: Translated into Urdu (2023). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. His poems (after Amin Rehman) have been showcased at an Art Exhibition, Bleeding Borders, curated at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie in Alberta, Canada. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and Tagore. He enjoys learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities/towns on foot. To learn further about his work, please visit saadalipoetry.com, or  www.facebook.com/owlofpines.

———————————————————————————

seeking ghosts

i sometimes think

of my life as trying

to play jazz in a

world of strip clubs

and heavy metal

i’m a neon light

weaving through

broken glass and

burnt spoons

an old man on a

porch seeking ghosts

that may or may not

have ever existed

the lonesome howl

of a saxophone in

the rain

frank always had a

way of making me

stop and ponder just

how deep did i want

the pool to be

it’s a birthday

spent in a cemetery

but it’s not the

tombstone i was

hoping for

———————————————————–

another excuse to get depressed

i come from a long

line of radicals

irreverent assholes

hell bent on drinking

away the pain

let’s go fuck like

the fish in the indian

ocean

let’s go dance naked

on the north pole

let’s go march through

the streets of los angeles

chanting for a better

tomorrow that doesn’t

exist

another birthday

another excuse to get

depressed

another night spent

alone

———————————————————————

the never-ending chaos of the world

it’s every night

alone in bed trying

to sleep through the

pain of life, death,

old bones and the

never-ending chaos

of the world

there’s a part of

you that longs for

death more than

the other part is

willing to take

three steps into

the great wide

open and live

a little

there’s no room

for broken souls

any longer

they are being

replaced by robots

and dogs that need

batteries

there’s no gold

at the end of any

rainbow

not even a little

fucker dressed

in green

—————————————————————–

ever dreamed about dunking

i remember being the

only white kid on my

basketball team and

we were at a summer

camp as a team

and one of my black

teammates noticed i

was the only white

kid that wasn’t in

the free throw finals

he asked why was that

i said you guys never

allow me to get in the

paint

i have to stand out here

and shoot threes all game

let’s have a three-point

contest and see who the

fuck wins that

i then asked why there

weren’t any black guys

in the free throw finals

he didn’t answer

instead he asked me

if i ever dreamed

about dunking

i said no

have you ever dreamed

about being automatic

from thirty-four feet

he laughed and asked

have you

i chuckled and said

i don’t have to dream

that

i’m good from wherever

i am in the gym

he dared me to shoot

from where i was

forty feet from the

basket

i took two dribbles

and let it fly

i banked it in because

i could

——————————————————————–

take secrets to the grave

the spanish princess

and i trade war stories

of childhoods torn apart

way too soon

and i know each confession

is a test of my loyalty

but she knows i take secrets

to the grave if asked to

but she also knows i am

capable of burning bridges

and completely erasing a

soul from my memory

with a snap of the fingers

her eyes are smoldering

and she wishes to smother

me with her breasts

i laugh and curse all

the miles between us

one day, before the

tumors take us all

we will meet

lock lips

and come back up

for air a few days

later

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

Stoops to Conquer

            I live in a relatively affluent, highly literate neighborhood. I like to think I’m highly literate, but I’m certainly not affluent. I bought my apartment before Brooklyn became hip.

            One advantage to living in a relatively affluent, highly literate neighborhood, especially one full of brownstones, is that people are always leaving interesting books on their stoops. I like the randomness and serendipity it adds to my reading life. Stoop finds have introduced me to such wonderful contemporary novelists as Julie Otsuka, Ottessa Moshfegh, and the Finnish comic crime writer Antti Tuomainen. I’ve also caught up on classics like Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, as well as several sixties suspense thrillers by Charlotte Armstrong, a new name to me.

            A few months ago I was walking on Montgomery Place, a block I briefly lived on before buying my current apartment. On a brownstone stoop I saw several paperbacks. There was a Cormac McCarthy novel—no thanks, not my bag; All The King’s Men, a great book I’ve already read twice; and a few Harlequin-style romances. I figured this stoop was a bust, but then I noticed a copy of my 2016 collection Autobiography Without Words.

            The title of my book is a metaphor, of course, but when I opened the copy on the stoop it was literally without words. The cover was the same, with a photo of me as an adolescent clowning around with my friends, but the pages inside were blank. Well, not all of them.

            After about 20 pages there was handwriting in cursive. It took me a while to get used to the handwriting, but when I was finally able to read the text I saw that it was a bunch of short stories. I read a few and thought they were quite good. Nothing like my writing, mind you, but excellent nonetheless. Truth be told, I thought these stories were better than my own. They were funnier when they were supposed to be funny, and more heartbreaking when they were meant to be heartbreaking. I gleaned that the writer was a man, more or less of my generation. Many of the stories were about childhood, just like mine, but if I thought I had a miserable childhood, it was nothing compared to this guy’s. He made Gorky’s childhood seem like a walk in the park.

            I was baffled. What could have happened?

            I figured there must have been a misprint; somehow blank pages were bound in the cover for my book and apparently sold to an unsuspecting reader. Since few bookstores will deign to carry my books these days, most sales are online, so the potential reader couldn’t have discovered the problem until the book arrived in the mail.

            But why didn’t this person return the book for a refund? Did he actually take the title literally?

            And what then inspired him to start writing stories on the pages? Don’t get me wrong, I think of writing as a form of collaboration with the reader, and I was glad to see this reader actively engaging in that collaboration. I just needed to make my peace with the unexpected situation.

            Who was this reader, this writer? Did he live in this brownstone? Should I ring the buzzers and try to find him?

            But even if I did find him, what would I say? It might be awkward, no?

            I decided to move on. I took the book home and read the rest in one sitting.

            I remained baffled, but I decided to put it out of my mind.

            Shortly thereafter, I started getting emails from literary magazines. It seemed that whoever had written these stories had sent them out for publication under my name. There were a few rejections, but most were acceptances, and from more high-profile journals than usually publish my work. Should I inform them that there was a misunderstanding? But why look a gift horse in the mouth? So I let them go to publication. After decades of trying, my name finally appeared in Granta, but the biggest coup was surely The New Yorker. Friends and acquaintances congratulated me on the new turn my work had taken. But my newfound modicum of fame didn’t last very long. After five or six publications, the counterfeit Peter Cherches stories dried up.

            Still, maybe I could use this turn of events to my advantage. Maybe some of those journals that had never previously given me the time of day would start publishing my real stories. So I started sending my own work to these top-tier publications.

            I got personalized rejections from all of them. Most took the same tack. They thanked me for my continued interest in their publication, but wondered why I had changed my style so drastically from the work they enjoyed so much.

            Well, at least I had my fifteen minutes of minor literary fame, I consoled myself.

            Then I bought a blank, unlined notebook, wrapped it in the cover of my subsequent book, Whistler’s Mother’s Son, and left it on that stoop on Montgomery Place.