The Passion of Opa

“Vell, since you asked.” 

Opa looked over at Oma and added: “Zey are old enough to know vat really happened.” Oma looked into the hearth and the shadows of her wrinkles danced in the firelight. Opa smiled at us knowingly, white lips framing browned teeth. Nodding, he continued:

“It really vas ze most extra-ordinary experience in my whole life!” 

Opa sat deeper into his sunken leather chair. His movements slowed and then ceased. His soul lost in the memory vaults of his mind, looking for the file with the full story.

Isolated parts of his body jerked as he re-animated and picked up speed:

“It vas, as usual, a cold afternoon. Frau Schraub and I decided to walk to ze Musikverein to attend ze matinee performance of ze traveling Transylvanian Monks Choir. Oh! You should have seen ze Musikverein in zat time. Gilded balcony boxes, gilded ornaments, even gilded cufflinks on ze attendants! Oh meine gott! And ze perfumes, zey were inebriating. Ve men all sat zere drinking in Midnight Vishes, Eve’s Secret and even some vomen dared to vear Pink Depression. Can you imagine vat a disturbance it vas? But zat afternoon, when ze monks appeared on stage, everyone got sober right avay. Ze humility of ze monks’ poise, se-ven-ty-two of zem calmly lining up in rows. Ah. Ze silence rose and zen fell as ze tritonal vibrations began. I tell you zat vibration shook ze gilding off our teeth! Ve felt as naked as god’s children. Ze polyphonies of ze choir weaved new clothes for our beings to become...erk..”

Opa gurgled and coughed. His eyes wandered off and then a rasping sound came from his throat as it always did before one of his 'episodes':

“assamalaitooaaaA alles consumini nihilihomini balangasuuuooorna!”

He turned to us with his elated rictus, his nostrils sniffing the air but just as suddenly, he frowned. His face chalked up.

“For gott’s sake! Argh! Ah vell, anyvay. Frau Schraub and I left ze Musikvereinssaal feeling like babies! New! Nozzing made much sense anymore so ve vent home and sought ze comfort in each other’s arms and...Anyvey! Ze next day, ve found out ze roof of ze concert hall had collapsed on ze monks during rehearsal before ze night show. Ve vere shocked and really, devastated! And, ve vere not ze only ones. Ve vent to back to ze Musikverein to see vat had happened and saw many ozzers from ze matinee audience vere zere. Ve gazzered before ze rubble like lost lambs and zen, yes my little ones, ve did do it like zey said. Ve did tear off our clothes and begin to sing!”

Opa was exuberant, but getting tired. He lay his head back on the chair’s headrest and closed his eyes.

“All of us! Ve sang and ve chanted, mitout a stich as you say, in ze rude Viennese air, while onlookers desperately tried to clozze us. Ve knew not vat ve did. But ve knew vat ve felt.”

Oma seemed to be smiling, even laughing, but it was hard to tell in the flickering light. Opa thrilled:

“Ve vere one voice! Such power...And zen, ven ve finished, ve all collapsed at ze same instant. Some people called it mob hysteria, some a mass hallucination. But I know! I felt it! Zey vere wiz us! Zey vere good to zeir promise.”

Opa’s skin glowed translucent in the firelight. He seemed to doze off but his familiar rasp creaked out announcing the beginning of another episode:

“Nigaliboo vizaminilooya huaka ni boombala ommm mishka nishkaaaAla!”

Opa gagged and his eyes snapped open.

“Ach! It vas amazing but it had its’ side-effects. Zey called it Monk Regression Syndrome, or somezing like zat. Zey said ve vere experiencing ze remaining echoes of shock from such resonant beings. But ve know ze truth, don’t ve, meine Frau?”

Oma finally piped up with her warbling voice:

“Oh, Opa Schraub, enough meine liebe. Ze story is causing me to..um..you know.”

Opa arched his billowing eyebrows at her and looked back at us.

“Vell, meine lieblings. Know zat you too know ze truth, you must excuse us. Ve have some 'communing' to do.” Opa got up with a series of creaks. He gave Oma his hand and helped her steady onto her cane. Opa turned to us one last time: “Remember, ze situation is hopeless, but not serious," and they hobbled off through the doorway.

We looked at each other and of one accord, snuck up to the crack in the door. As we positioned ourselves, we could hear them harmonizing. They stood there, facing each other, chanting in the candlelight. Shadows grew and stiffened around them, turning first into smoke and then into dark cloaked figures. We froze as the monks manifested and circled our großeltern. The monks threw back their hoods and howled in unison. The walls vibrated with their wailing. Oma and Opa raised their smiling faces to the skies and sang loudly. The monks clawed at their clothes, unfolded their flesh, and began sucking their necks, drinking the vital flow from their song. As the incantations thickened into a feeding frenzy, we fled to hide under our beds, fainting with fear. The next morning we were surprised to wake up alive, tucked in our sheets. We held hands as we went downstairs. The house was silent and smelled of stale smoke and slaughter.

We found Oma and Opa’s bodies in a tight embrace on the floor, naked.. to the bone.

"The Lovers of Valdaro"

FORBIDDEN FRUITS

At first, I was born and I had all I wanted.

Then I turned 1 and was told what I could not want.

And so my longing was born. My belated shadow.

At 2, it was forbidden to whine about longing,

so I learned to hum and sing and whistle and cry.

At 3, it was electric plugs and switches that were prohibited,

so I learned to beg for one more story before lights-out.

At 6, it was colorful candy that was vilified,

so I stuck my fingers in the Hungry Caterpillar book.

At 9, it was lovely laziness that could ruin my life,

so I wrote stories about princesses who had it all and lied around all day.

At 12, it was sultry smoke that was made to look ugly,

so I drew pictures of punk girls smoking cigarettes that they couldn’t smell.

At 15, it was understood that the boy next door might as well be in China,

so I wrote him and he wrote me back.

At 20, I moved out and, finally, I had it all.

By 30, ten years were lost to satisfaction. 

I had had it all so much and so many times

that I was tired of it.

So I broke the last taboo 

in my feminist family

and had a baby.

I breastfed him until he was 2, hoping to satiate his longing,

So then he learned to laugh himself to sleep.

I was pleased he barely whined.

At 3, it was electric plugs and switches, and so his longing was born.

His delayed shadow. 

And my shadow was now layered, filtered & transformed.

The opposite of longing is not the loss of desire,

it is the caring for love acquired.

At 20, he will have moved out and until then,

I will take care to leave room for his shadow when I hold his hand,

paying as close attention to his ethereal as to his material.

And maybe, he can have it all, in a way, in his way, on his way

to fulfillment, never needing to reach the end of his desire.

TRANSPORT

I sit on the toppled tree trunk and await the elephant. The seat is hard and ridged with grot, but smooth from the polishing by repeated bottoms.
A purring, roaring stench of gases rips around me as sleek panthers, creaking rhinos and whinging work horses fart on home to feed and breed.
Soft, sticky slips of air slide down vines, pierced here and there by rare sharpened sunbeams.
The canopy buzzes and crackles with the communication clouds of insects overhead,  zooming blood-suckers collide into the milky-webs of carnivorous mummifiers.

A woman sits on the trunk next to me. Her stench is so strong, I can taste her. A pungent musk emanating from under her clothes fingers its way into my nose, plays some octaves on the organ of my tongue, huffing and puffing onto my tastebuds. Her greying tan skin tones make my palate salivate. I look over and she blends perfectly into the background of flaking mud. She may be well camouflaged but the rancid smell is a dead giveaway.

A camouflaged storm bashes through the jungle corridors, leaves explode, the insects tornado down hungrily. Our elephant arrives and wobbles to a halt. I feed it some nickel nuts. He wraps his muscular trunk around me and shoves me inside. Others are already stewing within, their mumbles faintly echoing the great rumbling stomach. Locals pick the best ribs to sit on. The rest of us grab onto slippery intestines, dangly nerve endings, and eachother. We fuse together as the swelter seals us.
We become a many-headed mass, a puzzle of poking bones and rounded drooping flesh. Coughed, sneezed, expectorated: waves of germs ripple out. Our breaths attempt to skip over them but the germs are patient and hang out, spreading slowly in the dense air.
The mass stumbles about as our elephant barrels and charges, and stops short.

Carne con Ojos - we are a big swaying lump of mottled meat with lucid liquid eyes poking out at the surface.
Every time we stop, I peek through as the entrance gapes and lets in a circle of outside information. A raw red halo surrounds each passenger as they enter. Beyond them, I can see the familiar landmarks confirming the uncomfortable distance to my destination.

At the first stop, I can see the Cooperative Trees in their neat rows, with their perfectly layered branches whereupon the dominant breed tends to their nests. Blue-jean birds, with their rubbery white feet and synthetic feathers. They are carrion birds and can pluck you bald if provoked. Gaggles of them get on the transport as other gaggles get off.

Then darkness and more barreling and charging. The powerful elephant covers incredible lengths of land this way. Then stomps to a halt again.

At the next stop, my ride's viscous maw slurps open to reveal the noxious Flower Fronts. Giant blooms, larger than our elephant, plop open their purple pink and puce petals to entice us with overwhelming odors of sweetness and distilled favors. Brightly confused hummingbirds sip at the forbidden drops before being sucked in by the slobbering sinuous stigma. Bloom-tenders hover about outside. This species dedicates itself to the flower: after a long morning ritual involving much licking by the stigma, the tenders apply petals to their sculpted bodies. But beware! One wrong-way touch of their shimmied velour outfits can end in grievous injury. Their footwear involves long heeled stinging thorns. Even their prattle is dangerous and can strip your bones before you know it. Only nectar zombies get off here.

Knowing my stop is next, I use deep jungle leeching techniques  to move to the exit: I bite into the salty fleshy mass until my skin is released from mutuated suction. I have to repeat the process in the total obscurity until I reach the fetid pedestal by the out-hole.
Passengers are screaming to be let out, others groan from the depressurization bubbles that push, pop and squeeze through them. Little gasps of rotten banana and aged kaki fruit break out of the bubbles then dissipate.

"Faces" © Lilia Mazurkevich

Finally, my stop. I struggle with the others to separate my limbs from the general mass and dive out with the ejection cycle.
Steaming and jumbled, we pick ourselves up and apart. My skin prickles with habitual distaste as I witness the inevitable lump of random limb that sits congealing to the ground. Some poor sod is going to have to get a graft.

I gather up a deep breath of river pong. Even the black furry flies and tough corner crocodiles can't keep me from enjoying this. I know this river, this is my way, my territory. My friendly neighborhood stench. I dive in the thick waters and let my traumatized body float downstream as the glowing leaves above wash me with their cleansing songs of clorophyll and oxygen. Breathing deeper and stretching out of transport compression, I ignore the unidentified tangles of roots and eels that bump and nibble my fingers.

A foreign bird flits into my field of reverie and calls to me with clipped squawks. My neighbor. Ever-present. I can never tell whether she appreciates or loathes me. I've never seen her blink. I've never seen her ruffled. 

I scramble up the banks, mud squelching between my toes. I stoop through the hole into my home, dripping all over the floor. My hair is pouring water down my legs, tantalizing and also slightly annoying. I should dry myself but first I must turn on the air conditioner quick. My skin prickles, but this time- with pleasure.
I flick on all the house lights, the answering machine, my computer, the t.v. and throw a meal into the microwave.
Hummm Sweet Home!

photo © idogu

Happy New Number 201102

numerical alchemy
music of the spheres
yearly incantations of renewal

a looking glass year
as two jumps into the whole
and splits into ones
ones bounce off each other
and become impregnated with potential too

---
one winter to another
the purity and terrible beauty of life at a standstill
momentum lulled and colors buried deep
we wish you tenderness

---
one spring and another
eyes and leaves open and shut and finally...blooms exploding to seed
the wheel revs up, colors alight and stick to the surface
may you humm with fresh energies

---
one summer so another
the complicity of heat, sharing of fullness
the apex critical with buzzing, beings plump with desire
this wish is for us, you and us, somehow somewhere, celebrating and cerebrating and coeurelating together


---
one fall to the next
resuming movement, gaining speed and vision
the harvesting of mature dreams, the raking of old and faded ones
we wish you the strength and solace of understanding



one to one to one to one
to
two to one to one
to
two to one to two
to me and we and us and you

the dance of the cycles spirals on
may the flow be with you

Jerry’s Games

“You’ll get square eyes” shouted Jerry’s mother from the kitchen. “Why don’t you turn that thing off and do something else?”

“There isn’t anything else!” screamed Jerry. Only four years old, but already he was back-talking like a teenager.

Thirty years later and Jerry was still hunched over a gaming screen. He tapped his square-rimmed glasses against the side of his head and chuckled as he remembered his mother’s warning. His slight smile faded as the game turned and he sighed thinking she should have worried more about his posture.

‘The hunchback’ was his nickname throughout most of the gaming parlors in Las Vegas. Jerry wasn’t really that hunched but it came to him automatically when he sat down to lose money. Or to ‘recycle paper’ as he called it in front of his daughter, Emily. Bright as desert dawn, the little 6 year old wasn’t fooled. But she appreciated his funny shame. Jerry’s wife, Linda, appreciated it much less.

Jerry’s favorite thing to do after a hard day of gambling, was to bring his daughter on a sunset roller-skating round of the neighborhood. His back would straighten as he would get up on his wheels, ‘2x2’s he called them, old-school skates. Emily preferred the more modern inline skates.

The first time they ever passed his childhood house, Jerry pointed it out. “That’s where Daddy grew up.” Emily scoped out the surroundings and as she wheeled around her father, she questioned him about his childhood: was this the street he played on? How many friends did he have? What were his favorite games?

“There is nothing else!” Jerry screamed. But in the silent absence of response from his mother, while she played her daily bridge game at the kitchen table, Jerry gazed blankly out the window at the boys who passed by on roller-skates. Jerry had no such friends. Only the children of his mom’s bridge partners who would sometimes come by. They would play silently side-by-side, destroying each other on the video screen.

It took Jerry all the courage he could muster to rent the skates at the roller rink. Eighteen years old, but with the longing of a four year old, Jerry took to the rink and closed his eyes. His back relaxed upwards and he wheeled, for hours. At first he just let his weight bring him forward, round and round the rink, but eventually the blaring Michael Jackson tunes woke him up and his feet started to weave in time.

“Isn’t it dangerous to skate with glasses on?”

Linda was sixteen and very sweet. She would have to wait another sixteen years before getting bitter.

“You been at it, haven’t you?” Linda began the tired old conversation like a ritual. Jerry had run out of all excuses and any explanations. He just looked at his wife, her exhausted face and clothes coated with waitressing and cleaning dreariness. He simply replied with his usual white flag: “I’ll make dinner.”

“You’ll end up losing more than just your games.” Linda was beginning to sound like a television public announcement. But Jerry couldn’t help it if he woke up every morning feeling luckier than the last, hungrier and impassioned for the potential fulfillment of a win. If he could only add another zero to his last big win. It was only a few months ago but odds were Lady Luck, or ‘Esmeralda’ as he thought of her, would release her little hunchback soon. All his years of praying silently would pay off and the big big win would allow him to do something else.

Jerry slouched into his seat at the Paris Las Vegas casino. He always avoided the high-rolling area around the ‘Salon des Tables’. He was superstitious about pretension. He wanted Esmeralda to notice him for his humility. He placed his bet and as his glasses slid down his nose, he heard the comforting finality of the croupier’s call: “Les jeux sont faits.”

Nothing more to do but wait.

When Jerry finally turned off his gaming console, he sat in the dark and listened to his mother’s friends babbling and clinking and shuffling. A cloud of mentholated smoke hung at the door. Feeling the emptiness growing around him, Jerry quickly turned on the television and stared.

“Well, this is something else,” thought the four-year old. “Isn’t it?”

All You Do Is Done To Be Undone...................... (a skip-rop)

Es la hora
de devolver la
dignidad
a si, tierra

Hemos cogido y ahora escogimos
nuestro debido en la semilla
Olvidar antes de nacer
division, sumacion,
hem' crecido
mas grande
que
el nido
ahora volamos o callamos
desde las perspectivas
mas altas
los nuestros funden
y se confunden
desparecen
hasta
que en muchos
somos uno

y nuestra bola
si que mola
JODER
y tu, puto chulo
mordiente el culo
vete a la mierda
o hazte compost
pero con respeto
hombre
siempre con respeto



(respect to La Mala y Bebe)

Summer night's wish

Last night I made a wish
a deep wish, with a roaring heart
and a face pressed against the night sky.

The stars were moving.

They fluttered and flashed shooting sharp red sparks
saudering the sky from point to point.
Planes connected the dots and
satellites held up giant webs to catch the constellations.

We, prisoners of a dark orb, count up the points.

Who is winning? Who is reveling in the bigger picture?
Who can draw an exact portrait of the vast night face from memory?
fugitive moments of oneness

The step from you to a star is simply a question of fusion.
Fuse-one, refuse none, all alone

As the giants dip out of sight and north becomes relative,
new stars rise over the horizon, riding red carpets,
lining our wishes with smoke-screened promises.

We are closer than ever to the stars and yet
they remain just as distant.

When we wake in the middle of the night,
what twinkles back our eyes, what hums the dozing song?
Images glimmer, smiles making money.
Windows reflect, transparency for our humility.
The doorway lets in love, random and true.
The roof remembers Pandora and sits tight.

Last night, I went out and watched the sky dance
as the dogs wailed an ode of yearning to the bony moon
and I hummed along to the crickets rubbing out a drone
to rub into our dreams.

Last night, I wished upon a plane.
And my heart and face and stars and gods
laughed and wept
until finally I slept.