hrdlicka - poetry from the newspaper

God save the artists
the paints, the pencils
the sculpture, the canvas
the attraction, the alienation
the conflict, the vandalism
the artistic subtley that hides controversy
between the brushstrokes
prostrate figures covered in barbed wire
in the middle of a city divided between
war and fascism
works meant to to educate and communicate
a mission to oppose violence and uphold peace
inspire hatred
expressions meant to provoke the audience
to question, to confront
meet anguish, pain, and misery head on
in battle
the religious symbolism seen as the blasphemous taboo
among believers who call themselves just
God hate the artists
because they see truth buried in lies
and mold it for our eyes to find.

summer - from music

"Promise me we'll stay besties for life!" Amanda squealed, hugging her best friend Lindsay tightly to her.

"Promise!" Lindsay sobbed, wiping her nose on Amanda's black gown.

The girls had just graduated high school and were heading off to colleges on opposite sides of the country in just three short months.

Amanda pulled away and grabbed Lindsay's hand. She wiped her eyes and smiled. "We have to stay friends," she said to the other girl. "We know too much about each other!"

Lindsay nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Like I'm the only person who knows about that time you made out with Penny Simon's boyfriend in the boy's bathroom last fall."

"Lindsay!" Amanda whispered, slapping her arm. "I told you never to mention that again!" She tossed her hair imperiously. "Besides, I got some dirt on you too, don't forget."

Lindsay stiffened. Her hand grew cold and clammy in Amanda's grasp. "Oh?" She licked her lips. "Like what?"

"I know what you did last summer..." Amanda breathed in Lindsay's ear.

Lindsay jerked her hand away. "That girl drowned, I swear!" Her tears turned from tears of sadness to tears of fear.

Amanda's eyes narrowed in confusion. "What are you talking about... I was just kidding."

Lindsay's heart rate slowed. She sighed and forced a laugh. "Of course. So was I."

Amanda's lips twitched into a smile. She threw her arm aroun her friend's shoulder. "We'd better get going or the party will start without us."

"Yeah," Lindsay said, letting Amanda usher her out of the auditorium. But her mind was still on that girl from camp last summer, the one who no one had liked. What was her name... Ophelia? Oh well, it didn't matter. She was dead and gone and as far as everyone was concerned, she'd simply drowned in the lake.

god is... - from phrase exercise

I hate the yeti
mild cheeses dance
on fat tires
horny butter is real
my hair
I try to run
you gotta try to see limes
time is sand
there, you can sail
my brother, my butter
god is the shit.
yuh.

by Alicia, Mary-Margaret, and Parker

what we do best (clean edit) - attempt at a monologue

The interrogation room was cold and unforgiving. Zeke sat snivelling in one corner, his massive hands cradling his head. His feet were splayed out before him, both all but torn completely from their respective ankles. He'd had a working-over, that was for sure, but I wasn't sorry. Zeke had tormented me from day one simply because he was bigger and older and smarter. Well lookie how the tide has turned, buddy. I'm not Farty-Artie anymore. You can call me just plain Arthur now because I am finally your equal... No. I'm your superior. It took some doing, but I've finally beated you into submission, brother. Scared?

I squatted down beside his hulking frame and wiped his blood from my knuckles onto his shirtfront. I heard his breath quicken. I could tell what he was thinking. It was just as clear as if he'd spoken it out loud: Here it comes, that final blow that will send me straight to Kingdom Come. I watched my reflection in his watery beetle-black eyes.

"Well, Zeke," I said, offering him my hand. "Do we have a deal or not? Your life for the location of the Legion."

He opened his mouth, breath whistling through the gaps where I had knocked out his teeth earlier. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, had known since before I took him into this room and beat the crap out of him. We didn't have a deal.

"No deal," Zeke wheezed. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back onto the gray cinderblock wall behind him.

I sighed and hung my head. A look of mock pity melted my features. "It's too simple for you to wrap your fat head around it!" I said to him. "Do I have to make this harder so you'll finally give up this stubborn act?"

He didn't answer, just sat there panting like the animal he was.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulle dout a dog-eared Polaroid photograph. Zeke's eyes grew wider as he gently padded his pocket. He stopped breathing and stared at the photo. I had him right where I wanted him and I felt downright giddy about it.

"I lifted it," I told him, reveling in the crestfallen look on his swollen face. "Right when we first met outside that bar tonight. You've taought me well, brother." I glanced down at the photo in my hand, running my fingers on the image of a small girl in a pale pink dress, her wicker basket of Easter eggs clutched tightly in her gloved hands; my niece, Rochelle.

"I'd hate to have to hurt her. She's so beautiful," I said, showing him her smiling face and the blood trails my fingers had left across it. "We've never even met, but I know she'd like me. I imagine she'd think me a... funny uncle." I laughed in his face, spattering him with my spittle.

"Don't you dare!" Zeke said, mustering up a last ounce of vehemence, just like I expected he would.

I curled my fist around the photo and punched him. His nose crunched beneath my hand and his head snapped back and hit the wall. I hope he saw more than just stars: I hope he saw whole constellations, planets, universes.

"So," I said as he squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed at his nose to try and staunch the flow of blood from his nostrils. "Do we have a deal... buddy?"

"Okay, okay," he gasped. "Deal." He held out a trembling hand.

I grinned. "Great." My palm slapped his, passing off the now hopelessly crumpled photo of his daughter. he hugged it against his chest and breathed a sigh of relief. He shouldn't get too comfortable. I was only just warming up. No, Zeke wouldn't leave this room alive, but he just didn't know that yet. Who was I to dash his hopes?

I leaned in close until I could taste his stale breath on my lips. He stunk of beer and vomit. "Where's Dad, Zeke? Where's the Legion?"

Zeke took a deep breath. "Dad's - "

"Don't say another word, Ezekiel."

My blood ran ice cold in my veins at the sound of Dad's voice just behind me.

I rose slowly, keeping my eyes locked on Zeke. That traitor had the nerve to smile. He thought he'd won again, but he was wrong. God, he was wrong.

I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the knife concealed there. I hadn't had to use it 0n Zeke; brute force alone had done the trick well enough. I pressed the safety latch up and the blade snapped out.

"Looks like our deal is void, Zeke. I get to kill you after all," I said to him; then, to our father, "It seems you've ferreted me out. Thanks. You've just made my job so much easier. You know what they say about birds and stones, right?"

I turned to face the man who had created me. The man who had stolen my life, my love, my family away. The man I hated above all others.

His eyes were still the deep navy blue that I remembered and were hidden behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His hair had grayed since the last time I'd seen him and had thinned considerably. He was dressed as he had always dressed: in a button-down shirt and rediculous tie. Today, it was forest green with tiny hammers on it. He didn't look like an assassin. On the contrary, he looked more like a science teacher. But the gun in his right hand aimed at my stomach said otherwise.

"Ezekiel," our father said, looking down at his eldest son.

"He threatened to kill Rochelle!" Zeke whined, appealing to our father like he'd really care. It'd only taken me five years living with that man to realize that he didn't have an ounce of compassion for family in his body. Zeke had been around him much longer than I had. Hadn't Zeke known how callous and unfeeling out father truly was? I could almost feel bad for my brother if he really was that stupid.

"I said not another word!" Dad yelled.

Zeke fell silent at once. He had always feared our father, just as I had once.

Dad turned his gaze upon me. "You think killling me would give you all the answers, do you?" he asked.

"My mission is to locate the Legion," I said smoothly, but I could tell he didn't believe me. He never did.

"Julia doesn't want anything to do with you."

"Who said I wanted to see my wife?!" I screamed at him, advancing a step and raising the knife. "I want to know where the Legion is so I can burn it to the ground."

Dad paused and stared at me, squinting his eyes in scrutiny. "Look at this monster I've created, Ezekiel... I always knew you were the better son. What went wrong with this one?"

A snarl of rage escaped through my clenched teeth. Stupid old man! Didn't he understand that it wasn't me who had gone wrong, but him? I was never strong enough, fast enough, smart enough. He never saw my potential. To him, I was just a kid standing in the shadow of his big brother, his glorious, saintly, prefect big brother who wouldn't know true power if it slapped him in the face. It was my father who pushed me towards someone else I could look up to and learn from. Someone else who nurtuted my natural talents and created this so-called monster you see before you. And I'm powerful, Dad. I'm great. I'm better than I ever could have hoped had you never abandoned me. And I think if you'd stop feeding Julia your lies, she's believe me and come crawling back on her belly, begging me to take her back because you are nothing compared to me. Bow to your master, old man, and admit defeat at the hands of your superior.

"You're the monster, not me," I spat as I lunged forward with the knife.

He pulled the trigger. The gun went off before I had the chance to think. the bullet ripped through my stomach. I staggered and dropped the knife. I felt Zeke scrambling for it behind me, but I didn't care. Nothing he could do to me with that thin blade could compare to the agony in my gut.

My hands went to my abdomen and came back sticky with blood. My blood this time, not Zeke's. It took a second for it all to sink in before I fell to my knees with a groan. Blood trickled from my lips. "Son of a..."

I tried to look up at my father, but my eyes wouldn't focus. Darkness was closing in on me from all sides and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't will it away.

Dad squatted down before me and got in my face, like I had gotten in Zeke's back when I had been in control, back when I had been powerful.

"We all know that monsters do best, don't we, Arthur," Dad whispered. "Kill."

sequencing - dream

Cain stood on his brother's grave and looked down at the worn stone impassively. A lily wilted and died in his fingers. As he let the stem slip from his grasp, the wind blew, scattering the petals. Cain watched them turn to dust in the balmy air.

A bird sung. Cain looked up. The gravestones had closed in upon him surrounding him like stone monsters with wide-open mouths of spindly gently curving teeth. He took a step back, then another. The lamb on his brother's tombstone opened its sleeping eyes and stood, shaking the moss from its solid fleece.

Cain turned and fled, stumbling over gravestones that jumped to put themselves between him and his destination. When his hands touched the dirt, chains sprung forth from the earth to capture him. Fine filaments wove around his head like spider webs and attached to his fingers.

The bird continued to sing a melody that made Cain's head hum with the echoes of the notes as they faded in the stale, dead air. He searched desperately for the source of the beautiful music, breaking free of his bonds, even as they tugged on his limbs, urging him to stay still.

A tree as fine and as glorious as the one from which grew the downfall of Ada, shuddered to the surface from some deep unknown beneath the ground, turning over the glistening dirt and tearing out clods of grass and flowers with its massive trunk as it rose.

Cain stopped running and stared in awe as the branches raised up to praise the Heavens and the roots dug deep into the bowels of Hell itself. The birdsong came from the leaves; the wonderful hues of green that sunned themselves in the misty light. Apple buds blossomed and grew into fruit as big as Cain's head, their shiny crimson exteriors bleeding colour into the lifeless world.

The branches swayed, giving rise to another song, this, a somber dirge, and upon the needle-thin branches sat three birds: a small sparrow with black wings that seemed to glimmer with some celestial incandescence; a dove with pink-rimmed eyes of blood red; and a mangy crow, his once sleek feathers disarrayed and his chest concave with malnutrition.

"Pick," said the Rook above the growing din of the birdsong. The Seraph turned an inquisitive green eye upon Cain as the Crescent ruffled her downy feathers indignantly. "Pick," the Rook demanded, shuffling along his branch.

At the base of the tree appeared a box. The front was all glass and the interior was blindingly white. A girl was inside, huddled in a corner with her legs drawn up to her chest. She raied her head and stared at Cain with sad, pale eyes. Her mouth moved, but he couldn't hear her over the birdsong, which had reached a screeching pitch like the metal gears of some vast machinery grinding together.

Cain fell to his knees and crawled to the box, pressing his face against the glass as she did the same on the opposite side. Her lips formed one word over and over again. Trapped. Trapped. Trapped, the birds sung. Cain put his hand to the glass. She offered him a thin smile and raised her hand to mirror his.

Suddenly knowing exactly what needed to be done, Cain stood. With his hands, he grasped one of the tree's thick lower branches and pulled. The tree shrieked with pain as the branch cracked and the ground split open and fell away, leaving Cain, the box, and the tree on an island with roots that stretched into endless black space.

Cain gripped the branch in both hands like a baseball bat and swung towards the box. The glass cracked, relfecting her face like a kaleidoscope as she wrung her hands, impatient to be free of her prison.

With a grunt of effor, Cain struck the window again, this time shattering the glass into a million pieces that flew through the air, nicking him with tiny, sharp edges. From the hole poured forth a multitude of butterflies, mingling with the glass shards that dusted his skin. Cain cast aside the branch and threw his hands up to protect his face and fell to the ground.

The Rook laughed. Cain looked up into the withering branches of the tree. Dead leaves rained down on his body. "Wrong choice," the Rook said. The Crescent shook her head slowly as the Seraph turned away, unable to face him any longer.

Cain looked back toward the box, hoping she'd be there, ready to embrace him. But the box was empty save for a satin pillow in which the impression of her head still remained.

highgate (or the act of being grossly verbose)

During the day, Highgate Cemetery was peaceful, a little boring perhaps, when compared to the Highgate of the darkness. Night-time is when the spirits come out to play. Ghosts of wailing women search the yard for their children with rake-like fingers. The hungry dead rise from their tombs to feast on the blood and flesh of the living. Witched cast spells and conjure demons to corrupt the hearts of men. All this under the cover of darkness provided by clouds over a full moon.

But it was daylight when I ventured through the wrought iron gate into the historic cemetery, a perfectly safe time to enter, though the gate had been closed and the latch fastened. Determining it to be purely accidental that the gate had been left shut on such a beautiful morning for walking, I had no second thoughts about lifting the latch and slipping inside and closing the gate behind me once more.

Hands in my pockets, I began to stroll, taking in all the lovliness of the grounds as they spread ou below me. Trees flanked the grassy hills on all sides, their sweeping branches shifting in the wind and their brittle leaves whispering some long untold tale of nature. The tall and generally unkept grass rustled against the grey slate of the grave markers like a rattling breath.

I inhaled deeply. The air smelled of fall: of dead leaves and sunshine. My feet crunched in the fallen leaves as I walked the tiny, stone-lined path between the plots, admiring the aged stones and the romantic epitaphs engraved upon them in the flowery chiseled script of skilled hands.

One grave stone in particular had always scared and fascinated me equally every time I laid eyes upon it, and I felt my spirits sink as I turned the corner and saw it at my feet, a low, square stone, small and mossy with disregard. "I'm not dead, only sleeping," the epitaph read and then below that, the three chilling words that filled my heart with unimaginable dread: "Wake me up."

But what frightened me beyond measure, even more so than the strange epitaph, was the crude eye carved deep into the stone above the words. It was about the size of my palm, its almond-shaped lids containing an iris so dark and so large that hardly any room was dedicated to the whites. Three thick lines sprouted from both the top and the bottom in straight lines, giving the eye the appearance of having been drawn by a child. But there was nothing remotely childish or innocent in its sinister gaze.

I shuddered in the brisk October sunshine and pulled my sweater tighter around me. As I started to turn away, something caught my attention. The eye's dark iris seemed to glisten in the light as my shadow moved from over top of the stone.

Nothing could sate my curiousity, not even my unease, as I stooped down to further inspect this anomaly in the stone. I held out my hand and pressed my fingertips to the eye. A chill passed through me and I could feel the little hairs on the back of neck rise one by one. A cold trickle of sweat ran down the small of my back. My stomach turned.

Quickly, I drew my hand away and all feelings of disquiet immediately fled. With a sigh of relief, I looked down and found my fingers stained by with a dark red liquid. Horror surged through me once more like rolling thunder. I rubbed my fingers together, smearing the red into my skin and, as it dried, sticking my fingers together.

Blood.

that's the way i like it... ABSURD

Parker: I'm mad at you, you know.
Andrew: That's the way I like it.
Parker: Pardon?
Andrew: I said I've got a locket.
Parker: Oh? What's that got to do with anything?
Andrew: Everything.
Parker: To do with anything?
Andrew: Exactly.
Parker: I see... But I'm still mad at you, you know.
Andrew: I know you're mad, but I didn't know you were British.
Parker: I'm not.
Andrew: I knew it!
Parker: Knew what?
Andrew: You're not British.
Parker: I'm not? Then why do I talk like this?
Andrew: I don't know, you're crazy!
Parker: (jumps up)
Andrew: Do you have something you want to say to me?
Parker: (sniffs Andrew) You smell like babies... Do you have something to say to me?
Andrew: Yes... I'm a werewolf.
Parker: Well that's a relief.
Andrew: Why?
Parker: I like cats.
Andrew: Oh good, me too... Which reminds me... I ate your cat.
Parker: Jelly Bean?!?
Andrew: No, the other one... With the ears and the tail...
Parker: I only have the one.
Andrew: Oh, then it must have been that one.
Parker: Well, now I'm mad again!
Andrew: That's the way I like it.