An Excerpt From My Novel

     

     Not everyone in the parking lots on Baker Street saw the amber-hooded track star, painting her lips with ruby red, sitting inside her drained-yellow pickup truck, dreaming of malls, money, and cologne-drenched men.

     The grocery store supervisor, out on his smoke break, his mind fixated on Billie Jo Wells, the youngest cashier, stood at the edge of the parking lot.

     The postmaster, who parked near the edge of the ball diamond grass beyond the pavement, lay back in his seat after consuming a large slice of cherry cheesecake and a few sausage patties.

     Across the lot, the cable guy slept in his back seat while the company paid for an elaborate breakfast he left largely untouched forty miles downriver.

     Most people on Baker Street saw the long-bearded figure checking his phone, as lunchtime pushed into an hour-long break, but he looked like just another logger standing around wasting time before taking his massive haul up the next mountain highway.

     Across the street, a tractor-trailer sat in the gas station parking lot. The owner, Joe Jackson, sat in his cab eating a snack cake. He remembered a similar town, several miles back, where he'd met a man with goats...and he daydreamed about a life with freedom.

     For a couple hours every week, Joe Jackson was an important man. People counted on him; they waited for him. The rest of his existence, between bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, and a nap in the cab, he dreaded. The hours on the road were never ending.

     There were many times he drifted, driving by rote, sobered by the appearance of a tow truck, a school bus, or a clueless compact car driver going much too slow.

     But the man in the big rig dreamed of goats, fifty acres, a pond, cabin, and barn, off a gravel road in the middle of nowhere.

     And few on Baker Street watched the black-hatted lady, in low heels, pushing a grocery cart with a small sack of dog food. She clutched her alligator purse, ignoring the tears leaking from her eyes. As she climbed into her small white truck, she set the purse down, opened, it and dabbed her eyes with handkerchief.

     She, like the man in the big rig across the street, opened a Zebra Cake, and ate the icing before the rest of the snack. She wiped her hands with the monogramed white handkerchief. Backing out, she floored the pedal and sped out of the parking lot to get momentum to snake up the mountain to her empty house...

     They, the locals and visitors alike, went about their business with waves around the parking lot, but no one revealed their dreams, their hopes, their cares. In Messer's Cafe, in Hamrick's Convenience Store, Grayson's Grocery, and Cogar's Hardware, folks from out of town, like the hiker, met those from deeper in the hollers, hills, and mountains... beyond Laurel Springs and the nine hundred people who called it home.

Mesmerized

throwing bones to the dogs

enticing an audience of legged creatures,

they've all the energy in the world

while i race for a boomerang in the wind

worse than grasping confetti in a parade-

mesmerized by potential.

 

 

Dating in the blue world...2007

Ecstatic...

she faces a screen i have not seen

a blue world on her side

composition flows, the flower grows

both sides blossoming in the side bars

while i have chartered a new vessel

to reach out and touch your picture

you're eating an ice cream sundae

with limerence in the luminescence

you type your mobile phone number 

and i am at one with my credit card

paying for another month of chasing you

this chronic appetite for a taste of the new world.

you sound like yourself on the other end

yes, i am drunk with a common new disease

for every man ever dumped like a stray dog

yearning for more complicated connectivity

the world slows down when i hear your voice

and one of us is captured by the enraptured.

 

While February Lingers

 Gray consumes the air and sky, and blankets the land with white, the wintry one refusing to leave my doorsteps. I labor yet another hour to stay awake, knee-deep in yawning in place, drugged by the power of dim lights and darkening days.

Sleep is like a tender-hearted woman come to cuddle me. But when I wake the chill in my room reminds me that my cocoon is so thick the blankets wrap me tight. Waking is sometimes severe; I am reminded of the tales of old men and old women who lose feeling in their arms, legs and other extremities, as if death slowly creeps up from the toes and feet...which I did watch when my wife's grandmother finished dashing between the veils and settled for the slow inevitable slipping beyond the material.

When I do venture out in the arctic air stream, breathing is an invigorating exercise. Bundled in layers upon layers, I feel like a fat walrus. But the cold quickly becomes a friend if I can survive the therapy. There will be no more yawning in place there, as I discover sobriety, released from stupor. Inside too long, stiff and sedentary, one's own society vanishing like a vapor, February's fingers, caresses the aged to sleep, into a fog of the numbing, the pungent, and the loss of control. 

New Year's Eve

her fingers a wax-like fog between posts

slipping silently beneath hills and hollers

she's a teaser in a sheen-like fairy light

as she meets her gentleman callers.

she's not too kind with her hoarfrost breath

freezing our feet, our toes, our fingers

our licorice-red faces observe a wintry death

though our love for her fragrance lingers.

an angel-train drifts and wanes beyond reason

passing through her snow-filled frail forest

our mud-coated boots marking a new season

leaving behind the tales of mere mortal men.

 

 

a still frame

 just heard the lights dimming

electric perfume in the breeze

mascara coloring outside the lines

multiple window wiper fragments 

shattered cell phone glasses

charcoal wings come to take away

the bones and flesh left behind.

stay soft in your heart

 stay soft in your heart, as the rain

 quick in your care, as an embrace

 fair in your features, as a countenance

 reflecting the heart of your maker.

why i cannot sleep tonight

if only one- the one who has been on my mind half the night- reads this, and it changes her, then it has been worth it all. but, if this is for you, another, because God will not allow me to go to sleep tonight without writing this, then accept it.

when faced with what happened in your life...the heartbreaking childhood...because other people made horrible life decisions that could have ruined the entirety of your childhood...and your life...you must compose the story of your survival. the brutal truth. it is there because you must compose- write, interpret, sing, dance- the truth. not a religious blanket thrown over your life so that it looks like everything is fine now. No, you must face every last sentence of it. it does no good to write platitudes, to write around the subject. we do not want your rubbish. you can make it a poetic journey, yet it reflects nothing. vacuous. what does that accomplish? do you think that God is impressed by a piece of Art, a book, or a random collection of something that is not your heart and soul? 

i lie awake because i had to repent. i tried writing someone else's story. that isn't my job. you have to go back and find out what really happened to you...not what you remember happened to you, but all that you went through, including the truth about your parents. 

one of the key verses in scripture reveals that the Spirit of the Living God can and will reveal everything to you. every point, every angle, every place each character in your story has played. even those who have died. and certainly, those who left you confused. God is not the author of confusion. You may have yelled up at Him as you wandered around, and you can be sure He heard your heart. But, did you hear His heart? He wants to tell the Whole story. What good is it if only part of the story is conveyed? 

God wants you to tell the story. All of it. Good night.

Silence in Red

 so beautiful, so tragic

this figure of vibrance...

this lion of ancient grace

slain by blind madmen

in a lust for destruction

in a lust for disgrace.

what Hell has awaken

stains alleys and sidewalks

bloodprints on buildings

bodybags in schoolrooms

lace, bows, ribbons all red

silence the sister of the dead.

An Interlude

 While I am working on my novel, I shall share with you a series of stories in a series called "The Speckled Seagull." Although I have written a fair number of these, I have not returned much to them in several years. I am revising them, re-orienting them more toward the central character- a woman extracted from her childhood in a different land, where she daily enjoyed the seashore, her father's nurturing love, and a time she desperately longs for. The story deals with her life as a woman, a mother,  a wife, and a 'speckled bird," not the common bird. Enjoy these short pieces.

a day in the school house

 she sharpened her pencil...until it filed down to a mere nub. but she was not there, she was watching a movie in her head...remembering the early days when she would walk with her father, hand-in-hand, her wee little one in his- down along the strand...in the days before America. before she lost him. and he lost her.

it was not the best of times, nor the worst, nor the in-between. not, in a sense, much different from anyone else growing up along the seacoast. she expected nothing but his big clammy hand, a cup of the warm stuff, and always that scrumptious-wool-blanket when the nights chilled her father's features so.

she played by the sea, took in it's breath, drank deep of it, and lived in those salty breezes, but as the pencil stub fell from her hand, she forgot herself and fell back into the present, in her place of exile. and as she cupped the pencil shavings in her hand, she glanced at the boys in the back of the classroom and smiled. for one day, they might grow up to be as tender as her father...

the ruddy-cheeked boy in row 4 raised a hand and the girls around him giggled.

"Uh...may I go to the restroom?"

"Why, of course, Billy. Take the pass and don't forget to sign out," she chirped.

the ruddy-cheeked boy left the room and the class continued working on a mathematics assignment meant to stimulate their secular side. she moved up and down the aisles, careful not to brush any chairs. the students worked feverishly, their pencils squeaking.

"You have ten minutes."

the ruddy-faced boy opened the classroom door, but it did not close. for behind it stood a man in a white collar, and that ubiquitous black outfit they all knew too well. for here at Saint Anne's Preparatory School, the children expected the bellowing voice to find their room, one time of the day or the other.

Father McCallister loved every one of them like his own children. but even more, he loved to read to them, just as his father had read to him. and when he saw the face of the still lovely teacher, he sighed. for she too knew what would come next...every one of them would try to finish early, and their scores might not be as good as the next class. they would enjoy themselves, listening to his tales as he spun them wildly through the air, and they were taken back to a time even he did not remember...a time when sailors sailed into ports of distant lands...

and that made her happy. happier than she had been for years. happy, remembering her childhood...before the boat, the nun, and the long voyage away from Prince Edward Island...

but when the bell rang, and she grabbed her purse and Doctor Scholls from under the teacher desk, she remembered to where she was returning, and why. and she held the purse tightly, her hands clasped like fingers around a throat, and she had a flashback...and saw the face of the child...her child...and the face of the stranger she had once called "love." 

the fallen

in memory of the thousands killed in the streets

one wanted to make his mother proud-

blessed with quick reactions, quick feet,

he excelled on a field his oppressors ignored

until he wandered into the wrong alley.

one wanted to make her father proud-

so she studied to show herself approved

and walked into the night with no hijab

with every student from her neighborhood.

one wanted to live a life divorced from the past

driving down I-95 following the lights home,

the smell of cigarettes and dull perfume

and a photo of her cousin on a cell phone.

one wanted to spread joy as a cosmetic surgeon

to fix the smiles of thousands of damaged children

in a world so coarse, cold, and unforgiving

she stood against the sea of oppression and fear.

one wanted to be the strong one, who stood up to evil

though his parents pleaded with him to stay inside the house

he boldly proclaimed: If i don't go, nothing will change.

so, he slipped into the night, into the crowd and gave his life.

the fallen, all of them, so numerous in the street

the people, gunned down, lives cut short by hate.

An adolescent's dream

 written during my adolescence

It whispers down on angel's wings,

 raising hands to the shattered sky

this wintry canopy of velvet white

leaves a spark of tears in my eye

the snow globe whirls round and round

like dream and song and sigh

but far from here you are, my dear 

so in my heart, my very soul, i cry.

If you will but seek your inner desire

you'll find that the longing is there

for i am deep inside your heart

embodied in my every prayer.

So come away from where you hide

And join me so that we may be One

And we can leave our pain behind

Like the setting of every sun.

A Note

 Just a quick note to say I will not be posting political pieces anymore as my audience clearly does not like them. It was an attempt to provide a steadier stream of prose while I am composing poetic fiction.

 I'll return with poetry, prose and poetic fiction another time. Currently, I am writing a novel. Later, this summer, I will hopefully have an author website and a creative project available there.

 Until next time, enjoy the 100 plus posts I have written.

Daithi

  

Can you see life in scenes?

if we are observant, we can reflect on the past and re-imagine scenes, memories written and internal, that tell the story of our stories. many of those scenes have primary and secondary veins running through them, like a complete organ or system that one can visualize as part, section, whole, and even sinew. The latter is our bridge, or connection, between the perceived scenes that, like a chain, make up that story.

everything from our experience can be a relatable story for an audience. so, each scene that teaches a lesson, reflects a truth, or encourages one, we can add that scene to our testimony of life lessons.

the same is true for fiction- written or oral. every author tries to tell a story that has continuity, or what we used to call "flow." It is crucial, for the audience, if the story flows...every paragraph slipping into the next, with or without transitory images, words, or phrases. 

so, in the revision process, we can look at those scenes we write where the story "went off" and figure out if we can place one or two, or all of those scenes somewhere within our story.

someone older and more experienced argued that nothing written cannot be used for that story. it may not be in the first five minutes, the first chapter, the first 10 pages, but the idea, or the entire scene may be useful. and upon further reflection, you may find that the scene or idea is better suited for something you composed earlier. That has happened to me multiple times, including a scene that was dramatically creative but did not fit my current novel. Instead, it fit a series of off-the-wall pieces I have strung together as a skeleton for another novel, a comic piece like Catcher In The Rye.

we need not contain this revelation to literary writing either. the idea can be applied to long speeches, business proposals, policy statements, or bills for congress...

Waking up in the Accelerated World

 Like waking up from a dream where you had to fight a fire with whatever clothes could suffocate the flames...I woke up with a sense of urgency to put words on a screen. There is a fire awaiting our graduates and there is no mechanism to put out the flames. No mechanism that does not come with hard work not gathered from the statistical and analytical interpretation of printed pages. 

We are now living in "The Accelerated World." We can no longer just print off a page of whatever Google, ChatGPT, or Grok...an AI entity...responded to our queries. We not only have to interpret that dissemination, we have to do it in a way that defines our answers, that expands our parameters, and that leaves us a loci to build upon a theme. That may sit well with those of us who have accumulated a particular vocabulary or developed a deep sense of analytical discernment, but not those fed a juvenile education lacking those elements enabling the student of life a modus operandi to assimilate themselves into a world where the answers to the questions we ask are beyond their comprehension.

Why am I racing to put out the fire in the dream? Because we have a vast under-achieving class of people who cannot enter the level of thinking necessary to master the AI-influenced world. The system will inherently fail on a greater level as the new world accelerates. Without a rebuilding of the education system in light of that new revolution, we will be producing that underclass, that peasantry, that settles in the basement of the performance charts. 

Because learners are at such a dark disadvantage, those individuals must take the reigns of their own education. The teacher, without proper re-education, cannot be the agent of change since they have been wedded to a now failing approach. The way to enable the graduates of tomorrow to reach the level necessary to succeed in this new world requires critical analysis skills developed from a much more sophisticated and rigorous vocabulary development, with a reading level no educator proposed before. The student must read not two levels more but at least ten levels more than any graduate level entry student. They must reach a vocabulary level and critical analysis skill set we now expect from our doctoral-level students. Unfortunately, for today's secondary teacher, it requires that the intransigent system be removed from the equation so the student may excel. 

The fire is upon us, students, and your goal is to put it out with knowledge you must assimilate. You must rise above the copy and paste and build an intellectual base within that will weather the coming times when intelligence is paramount...or you will be relegated to the peasant class.

all the world was in black and white

the world was different some fifty years ago

when photos were glossy, but harder to picture

and you didn't have a second time to shoot

to frame the dark, the light, and the subject.

when Chronkite would say "that's the way it was"

and nobody watched past one in the morning,

i played with a Kodak hidden under the Pine

the finest plaid-wrapped present in the 1970s.

truth comes out following the finishing of a roll of film

like the photo of Santa's cookies where i drank Santa's milk

when we watched all the people a-passin' the peace

and the pretty girl beside me kissed me right on the lips

back when all the world was in black and white 

when we didn't have a clue about the absence of color

i captured a moment of everybody's time

in the window of my very first Kodak camera.

 

the endless melody

 when the music still surrounds 

then envelopes

the lines of your heart...

the cross beat

yours...and mine

shard-white shatters

scattered strands

cold silver tables

side by side by side

breath and bone 

the white cotton and the linen garment

one rising one settling both surrendering

one passing into another

one taste of afterlife

one drop of finality

passage.