Diaspora
A brief history on slam poetry:
Sometime ago, somewhere, slam poetry was started by some guy.
We know for a fact it was a guy, because really, how many funny women do you know?
Men are the true pioneers of comediology, no matter what Margaret Cho tells you.
Until Patrice O’Neal came along, nobody was applying the ‘hard consonant rule,’ and disgruntled feminists everywhere were still saying ‘Chevrolet’ in their punchlines.
In all seriousness, how many women have used a charming sense of humor to get a guy in bed?
That said, not all slam poetry is comedic, or, for that matter, intended as a humorous or satirical work in tone.
Just ask Joshua Chippendale.
If you look, he’s taking the stage right now at the Queen Anne Coffee House. This is August, for those of you keeping track, and it’s the last Thursday of the month (the 28th), so a cash prize was at stake.
For a purse of three hundred dollars, ‘Kermit is the Devil’ has been mercifully retired.
Into the microphone, Joshua’s saying, “The season premiere was Adam and Eve. Everybody says it was an apple, but I bet you anything it was a tree that grew canned nectarines. Honestly, you can’t get those anywhere.”
He goes, “Just to be a little edgy, the producers had Cain kill his brother by cracking a big rock against his melon. A farmer who gets to boff his sister, a farmer who damns himself for all eternity just because his little brother had a really fat yeanling, probably named Jazaniah or something.” He says, “Six thousand years ago, that was pretty controversial.”
He goes, “You ever wonder what Adam and Eve’s last name was? I like to think it was Vansickle. Mr. Vansickle, would you like to suffer thankless physical labor and sorrow for the remainder of your physical and spiritual existence?”
Into the microphone, Joshua says, “During sweeps-week, the big-wigs came down from the studio to the set and had unprotected coitus with all the big-chested extras. This was before women started using crocodile dung as vaginal suppositories. This one chick named Gedaliah, she ate the seeds of some Queen Anne’s lace to induce a miscarriage. Her cousin gave birth to twenty-four pound baby boy named Azariah. In Hebrew, it probably means ‘offspring of a corporate executive.’ ”
Standing on the center of the stage, Joshua goes, “For the first season finale, the executive producer decided to kill off the entire cast, except the eight people of this one really dysfunctional family. The world hated them, and they were painfully naive. You could really identify.”
Looking out over the crowd, he says, “The next couple of seasons were boring, and the ratings dipped, so the producers put the extended family of the original cast in a cage, just to see if they could get out by using all sorts of special effects and fancy pyrotechnics. The test audiences responded well to a towering pillar of fire, and when the president of the network used that same pillar of fire to give the star of the show the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of quality programming, the numbers climbed a whopping 43%. Sadly, they had to kill off main character.” He adds, “Again.”
Into the microphone, Joshua says, “A lot of demographic data was pulled to show the popularity of senseless bloodbaths. Sure, the staff of writers could’ve taken the high road here and there, but there’s something funny about seventy thousand people being slaughtered like autistic farrow. At least, the show’s creator thinks it’s entertaining.”
Joshua goes, “The next several seasons, we spent developing these little things called ‘civilizations.’ Sometime in 1570 BC, the Egyptians drive out the Hyksos, and establish a New Kingdom, on past the Nile into Nubia. They bury Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, a complex network of tunnels beneath the earth.” He goes, “When I was nine, I owned an ant farm. When the sovereign of that kingdom died, they didn’t bury her in the Valley of the Queens with five thousand pieces of treasure. They ripped her body apart. They ate her pedicel with a cup of honeydew. Her name was Sophia.”
Into the microphone, Joshua says, “These civilizations was to ensure that our show didn’t get canceled, that the lineage of the original cast could be there for the series finale.”
He says, “These people farms, as the executives like to call them, were created so that the audience could study our social behavior. We build our Seven Wonders of the Show, and the network president, he has the Goths raze to the ground our Temple of Artemis in 262 AD. He never has taken too kindly to pagan presidents.”
Looking out over the audience, Joshua goes, “In 1896, the executive producer re-establishes what he had that Theodosius guy abolish waaaay back in 394. Apparently, the whole idea had gotten too AthenWood, and nobody likes mind-numbing re-runs. Nowadays, the javelin throw really is Must-See JT.”
Joshua goes, “Of course, every program has its lows and its peaks. Every drama has moments of comedy, and every comedy has dramatic moments. Eventually, all shows are canceled. Unfortunately, some shows aren’t canceled soon enough. Just look at ER.”
Into the microphone, he says, “So here we are, Season Six. We’ve passed our one hundredth episode, and we’ve resorted to recycling our own original source material. The ratings are plummeting. Nobody wants to tune in to Operation: Global Freedom, and the more we syndicate it, the more we alienate our hard-core fans. Frankly, we’ve already seen it, already heard it.” He goes, “We’re a re-run of a re-run of a re-run.”
Clearing his throat, Joshua says, “We’re all castaways here. We’re all on The Truman Show watching The Truman Show. We’ve all eaten our share of cockroaches and beady-eyed rats and the juicy, swollen testicles of an emasculated bovine. We all want the cash prize of eternal life. We all want to be interviewed by David Letterman and Katie Couric. Nobody wants to be voted off the island.
“Me,” Joshua says. “I’m not another Richard Hatch. I don’t give a beady-eyed rat’s ass if the network producers say I just don’t have the ‘look’ they’re looking for. I refuse to crunch the demographic numbers. I’m not asking for much on this reality TV show of Life. All I want is a little acceptable polymorphism. All I want,” Joshua says, “is an entire cupboard stocked to the brim with canned nectarines.”
11:28 AM | Labels: Clones, Jesus, Kermit the Frog, Seattle Strange, Slam Poetry | 1 Comments
The Balloon
The lonely balloon, as red as a cherub’s face, sailed lazily through the expanse of the heavenly blue. For some five days and five nights, it had been a helpless passenger on the weariless wings of the wind, journeying approximately one thousand and seventy-two kilometers, or a little over. Day six, and what helium remained was swiftly being delivered into the hands of the roaring Caecias. Tied to the balloon was a string, a swirling, whirling tendril on this crimson angel; fastened to the string was a note with a name; the name was Amesha Spentas.
The ten year-old boy got the idea from his erudite grandfather one Sunday afternoon. They had arrived home from church, had a light repast, and settled in for tea when the grandfather finally noticed Amesha’s unusual quiescence. True, the boy was prescriptively withdrawn, but today it was utterly recherché.
“What’s on your mind, son?” he asked. A simple question, to be sure, but it teemed with hidden signife.
Amesha was thrown on beam ends, to say the least. How did his grandfather have this perpetual knack of reading him like a book? Not anything on your mind - what is on your mind? A specific question called for a specific answer. Daring not to lay eyes on his grandfather, he studied the reddish-amber liquid in his cup for perhaps too long.
“Well?” his grandfather said, gently. He was sitting in his rocking chair, teetering slowly back and forth, but he didn’t lean forward. Like a shepherd confident that his yeanling would come to him, he simply said, “Amesha?”
At that, the young boy’s gaze fell on his grandfather’s staid and somber eyes. Deferring was, of course, labor for naught. Roll the stone up the hill now, and it would simply roll back down again, a work of Sisyphus. His grandfather had taught him better than that.
Amesha swallowed.
There wasn’t a good way to say it, he realized, but then the truth is that way sometimes, Laodicean - you just have to spit it out.
“I’m doubting my faith,” he uttered flatly.
Rocking back and forth, his grandfather sipped his tea, and slowly nodded. Steam curled away from his cup and dissipated in the air between them.
“You were baptized, what, six months ago?”
Amesha nodded.
“Why?”
Quickly, Amesha answered, “To let God know I love him.”
The grandfather shook his head. “Wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you mean?”
“Anyone can love God, and it doesn’t require water immersion for him to know it. You immerse yourself in water to let everyone else know.”
Amesha looked down at his tea, feeling stupid and ashamed, and worst of all, insolent.
“But come now,” his grandfather said. “Surely there must be a root to this unfortunate dubiety.
A worm must burrow into the apple before you can bite through it.”
“Well,” Amesha began softly. “I won’t lie to you. I thought things would be...different, after my baptism.”
“Different?”
Amesha nodded.
“But you’re doing fine in the congregation. Different how?”
Amesha looked up from his tea. “I have no friends, grandpa,” he said. “None at all.”
“And you thought getting baptized would make you, what, popular?”
“Not popular, but accepted at the very least.”
The old man nodded. “I see,” he said. “Of course, you don’t need me to tell you your motives are a bit widdershins. To swim in the sea, you must let go of the balsa; without the balsa, you will surely drown.”
“But grandpa, I am a declasse,” cried the boy. “I’m Ishmael!”
“Now, now,” said the grandfather. “Even the zebra belongs to a genus; without the genus, how would the kingdom stand?”
Amesha sighed. He had exposed his problem, but led himself down a blind alley in the process. He didn’t know what to say. Catechism just wasn’t his metier.
For several minutes, the two of them sat there in silence, sipping tea, trading glances, and listening to the creak of the rocking chair.
Then, the grandfather said, “What’s this really about?” He paused. “Is this about...that girl?”
Amesha was dumbstruck. He truly was transparent, it seemed. Reluctantly, he nodded.
The grandfather smacked his lips. “Well,” he said. “You are only ten.”
“That doesn’t help me,” Amesha replied.
“Hmm,” the grandfather said, scratching his chin. “Have I ever told you how your grandmother and I met, God bless her soul?”
Amesha thought for a second, then said, “I don’t think so.”
So his grandfather proceeded to tell the tale, that some fifty years ago he found himself adrift in a similar boat. But that was not how the idea materialized. It was from a heretical teacher that encouraged her students to conduct a sociological experiment, to connect with someone you’d otherwise never have the opportunity to meet.
“Miss LeFuet, her name was,” said the grandfather, shaking his head, as if lost in a morass of memories. “A remarkable woman.”
Amesha was confused. “So...” he said. “Are you guiding me toward love, or friendship?”
The grandfather smiled the smile of Christ, and said, “If you’re lucky, perhaps both.”
So it was the very next day in the last week of April that young Amesha watched his own messenger disappear in the cirrus-streaked sky. Whether or not this crimson Gabriel would reach anyone at all, or die trying, seemed entirely up to Parcae, if ever the Fates existed, what better mirror of moria than the wandering breath of Adonai?
Three weeks passed, and his hope began to wane. He was the first to check the mail everyday right after school. But everyday, the pillar box contained nothing for the young boy.
Then on the sixth of June (some forty-two days of waiting), a letter came. The return address said 192 Avichi Street, Ulara, Amesha noticed in wonder. But there was no name.
Quickly, the boy hurried inside and up to his room, where he carefully consulted a map on his wall. Ulara...Ulara. Amesha smacked his forehead in amazement; Ulara was over a thousand from his home here in Sokkvabekk. His crimson Gabriel had traveled far indeed.
Amesha plopped himself down on his bed, where he sedulously opened the envelope, as if it would self-destruct if he did it wrong, or too fast.
He removed the letter, and instantly the balm of Gilead filled his nose. He knew all along the odds of his balloon finding a girl were pro rata, but he was a malist by nature, what his grandfather would call a comforter of Job. But he smiled, relieved, savoring the sweet redolence.
Definitely a girl.
The letter read as follows:
Dear Amesha,
Well, well, well! I was out walking my dog, Virago, when your balloon fell to me like a shooting star. Don’t worry, I didn’t get hurt!
Let me tell you a little about myself. I too am ten! My favorite color is black - it can mean so many things, fear, loneliness, confusion, mystery - plus it goes with everything! My favorite food would have to be poitrine d’agneau. My dad’s the chef de cuisine at a fancy restaurant called Tophet’s (maybe you’ve heard of it?), and his is killer. My favorite author is Camus, my favorite novella The Stranger. Anyways, feel free to write back. I’ll be waiting.
Genuinely,
Silbe
Amesha couldn’t help but smile. Not only a girl, but ten also? Ten! What were the chances?
He wrote back immediately. He debated over telling his grandfather, but ultimately decided against it.
Six days later, Silbe replied.
And Amesha wrote back immediately.
And six days later, Silbe replied.
And so it went for several weeks.
And weeks turned into months.
Over the months, the two shared everything about everything, growing together like grapes of the sea ripening on the vine of tenderness.
Then in October, on the first day of October, a letter from Silbe came that said, simply,
I thing we should meet. What do you think?
He, of course, wanted to meet her desperately, but the mere prospect of seeing her in the flesh made him instantly green around the gills. And he didn’t know why.
“Perhaps shedding the anonymity of the epistolary relationship is opening your eyes to the reality of the situation,” his grandfather offered.
Amesha shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“And you’ve only come to me now...because?”
Amesha shrugged again. “I don’t know, really. I guess I just wanted her all to myself. Doesn’t everybody need a secret?”
“Arcanum arcanorum is the cloak of Robin Goodfellow,” the grandfather said sagely.
“So, what are you saying?”
“What do you think I’m saying?”
“Are you saying I can’t meet her?”
“No.”
“Are you saying I can, then?”
“No.”
Amesha winced, utterly confused.
“What I’m saying, son, is this: whether I say yes, or whether I say no, you’re still going to do what you want. You’re asking for absolution for something you haven’t even done yet. I can be your Polonius no more. This is not my decision to make.”
Amesha took that as a yes, and sent the letter off.
Six days later, Silbe replied;
Great! We’ll meet half-way, okay? You know how to ride the omni, yes?
Yes, Amesha replied. But where will we meet, exactly?
At Stygian Creek Park, six o’clock. Wear something red. I’ll be in a black dress. Six o’clock. Don’t be late.
Kisses,
Silbe
October seventeenth, and young Amesha Spentas was dressed in his best suit with red tie. And as sick as a dog.
Well, he had most of the day to prepare what he was going to say; it was a four and a half hour trip on the omni to Leh, a small town where the park was located. Too much time, really, Amesha thought, resting his head against the vibrating window. His breath came out in splotches, smearing his reflection, and somewhere between douceur and existential woe, the young boy was lost in the Land of Nod.
When he awoke, he was there. He stepped off the omni, and followed the main street to Orcus Avenue, paying close attention to his map.
Stygian Creek was hardly more than a loblolly, a ditch of weeds and muck, that encircled the entire park. But there was a tiny bridge that spanned it. Amesha took a deep breath, and crossed.
It was a typical park, albeit badly maintained. The merry-go-round, seesaw, slide and swings, all chipped and rusted, comprised the area. Haggard trees here and there stood hunched over half-rotten picnic tables, the branches nearly barren, outstretched like gigantean fingers.
Everything could’ve used a fresh coat of paint; the floor of the park a raking and mowing. It was hardly the Elysian Fields.
Somewhere in the distance, Amesha heard the cry of a single crow, the skreigh of a timeworn chain, and suddenly he was no longer alone. He looked down at his watch; it was six o’clock exactly.
Someone was sitting on the swings, a girl in a black dress, slowly swinging back and forth like a gentle pendulum. He approached nervously, but steadily, like she was the axis of his heart, the lodestar of a vast and nebulous world.
“Silbe...?” he called out, squinting, drawn ever closer.
“Amesha.”
Closer, he stopped dead in his tracks, the sails lowered, the anchor dropped.
“Amesha, just let me explain, okay?”
He didn’t say anything, couldn’t.
“Amesha?”
The girl in the black dress got up from the swing and traversed the distance between them.
“It is me,” she said, taking his hands in her own. “Don’t be angry, okay? Don’t leave.”
“But you’re...”
“Sixteen,” she finished. “Well, fifteen, technically, but sixteen in actuality. I was afraid if you knew the truth you wouldn’t come. Don’t be angry. Are you angry?”
He didn’t know what to say. Standing there, holding her hands, the sun a sliver of orange behind her, staring at her face, it as if words were inexsistent. She was an ebon-haired angel cast loose.
“I’m not angry,” he finally said. “To tell you the truth, I’m just glad you turned out to be a girl. All this time I feared I was in love with a pedophilliac.”
Silbe chuckled. “Women can be pedophiles too,” she said.
“That’s true.”
“Come,” she said, leading him by the hands to the swings. “Let us talk of other things.”
They both sat down and kicked backward lightheartedly.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were so cute?” asked Silbe.
Amesha blushed. “You never asked,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were so beautiful?”
She smiled. “You never asked.”
She was beautiful, he thought. Exquisite. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Does this...change things?”
“You mean the age difference?” She looked off in the distance. “Not for me. Does it for you?”
“Hmm. I don’t know.”
“Look at it this way,” Silbe said. “Now you have a girlfriend with a nice set of nenes and a nappy yoni.”
Amesha blushed.
“Aww,” she said. “You see, you are such a pure heart.”
“I’m only ten,” Amesha said. “Give me time, and I’m sure I’ll be a regular base-minded knave.”
“Oh no. Don’t ever change. It’s adorable. Besides, once a pure heart, always a pure heart.”
“You think?”
“Yep,” she said. “Unless of course you were Satan.” She chuckled. “Hey, what time do you have?”
Amesha glanced at his watch. “Six oh eight.”
“Okay. Six oh eight. You never answered the question, you know.”
“About the age difference? I said I didn’t know,” Amesha said.
Silbe looked down and rearranged the puckery in her dress. “I’m not wearing any skivvies,” she whispered, looking at him with a gleam of dalliance in her eyes. “If that helps.”
Amesha fought not to blush again, but his mind got the best of him, and his face encrimsoned like port-wine. Not exactly sure where this coquetry was going, Amesha said, “You know, I’ve never even kissed a girl.”
“I know. But who said anything about kissing?” she said, smiling scampishly.
From somewhere inside her glorious bosom there rose a deep but delicate giggle. “You know what you are? A clean slate, an unblemished dove,” she said, tapping his nose. “I love doves.”
And her rubicund lips spread to bear the grin of a chessy-cat.
Sitting there on the swings, they alternated back and forth, like two oscillators of flesh and blood. Whenever they fell out of unison, Amesha would adjust his momentum accordingly, so that they fell back in sync. Back and forth, back and forth, two unlikely horologists of vis vitae, watching a jaded sun chase ragged shadows across the Park of Peccancy.
“What time do you have?” Silbe asked him.
Amesha glanced at his watch. “Six twenty-one,” he replied.
“Oooh,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “One more minute.”
“One more minute till what?” asked Amesha.
“Till my birthday, silly. Or did you forget?”
“October seventeenth,” Amesha said. “No, I didn’t forget. At six twenty-two precisely?”
“You didn’t forget, eh?”
“No. Thought I reckon the actual birthdate is different than you told me...”
“Well,” she said, trailing off. “You didn’t forget, but brought me no present, I see. Hmm.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t, um, celebrate birthdays. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“Why didn’t I tell you, or why don’t I celebrate them?”
“Both.”
Amesha thought for a second. “Hmm,” he said.
“You don’t even know?” she asked, giggling.
“Well, I thought I did until you asked me.” He looked down at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he
reported.
“So...what religion are you, then?”
“Five seconds.”
“You’re not one of those Jehovah Witnesses, are you?”
“Six twenty-two,” Amesha said.
At that, Silbe leaped from the swing, and cried out, “Sweet sixteen,” spinning and whirling like a dervish, her dress fluttering up around the bare curves of her hips. “Am I a woman now?” she asked, raising her eyes to the growing twilight.
Amesha flushed Titian-red. She certainly looked like a woman, he thought.
“Come,” she said, taking him by the hands. Together, they reclined on the teeter-totters, and watched the fainting sun pull the last of its glow across the dusk-smeared door of heaven. Silbe sighed. “Demi-jour,” she whispered. “The blood of life.”
One by one the stars poked through the canopy of the sky. The two of them laid there, hands clasped to one another’s, contented in somber silence.
“So...what religion are you, then?” Silbe asked, turning to look at him.
Amesha cleared his throat, buying fragile time. “Why do you ask?” he said. “What religion are you?”
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you second. Ladies go first.”
“Okay,” she said, turning back to the sky. “I used to be chthonian, since you ask.”
“Chthonian?”
“Diablerie, basically,” she said flatly. “Black magic, witchcraft, Satanism, whatever you want to call it.”
Amesha chuckled. “No, seriously,” he said.
“I am serious,” she told him.
A couple seconds passed, but all he could say was, “Oh,” slowly loosening his grip on the soft confines of her hand.
“It’s no big deal,” Silbe said. “I mean, I came to my senses.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what are you now? Catholic?” he asked with a wince.
“No,” she said. “Atheist.”
Amesha fell off the seesaw. “Atheist!” he exclaimed. “My God, girl, what’re you trying to do to me?!”
“What’s the problem?” she asked, sitting up.
“What’s the problem?! You don’t believe in God, that’s the problem!”
“So what? Lots of people don’t believe in God.”
Amesha walked back to the swings, shaking his head in shocked disbelief.
“What’s the big deal?” Silbe asked, coming over to him. “It may change how you look at me, but it doesn’t change who I am.”
“How I perceive you is who you are,” Amesha told her. “What else do I have to go on?”
“So, I take it you believe in God...”
“Of course!”
“How could you?”
“How could I not?”
“Look around you, Amesha,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “This world is a horrible place.
The only god you could possibly believe in would be a god of atrocity. Look at what he did to your father, your mother, your grandmother. That’s a god of love?”
Amesha sighed. “It’s...complicated.”
“Says the gobe-mouches.”
“No, it really is,” he retorted. “You’ve read the Bible, I’m sure.”
“Yes, but I had to stop,” she said. “The more I read it, the more I believed a loving god does not exist. And a god without love is like a day without the sun. It’s argumentum ad hominem; logical fallacy.”
“Well...”
“Just look at it rationally,” she said. “Do you know what the devil spells backwards? Until you embrace the devil, you haven’t truly lived.”
“But you don’t believe in a god, neither good nor evil.”
“Well...it’s complicated,” she said.
“Says the nodding niais.”
“Look,” she said. “God according to worldly concept cannot exist. But I refuse to believe in a nefarious deity who gains sadistic pleasure from our misery. I’ve been down that road. It’s a terribly sad way of seeing the world.”
Amesha sighed. “I’m confused,” he admitted.
“Don’t be,” she told him. “Don’t be. If it’s one thing my grandam LeFuet taught me, it’s that you can’t make sense out of a senseless world. It’s like picking a plum from an apple tree. It’s not going to happen.”
“So...you’re a nihilist.”
“Essentially. But how I do loathe titles.”
“So...nothing matters,” Amesha said flatly.
“Who knows? Maybe your balloon never really found anybody at all. Maybe you’ve imaged all of this. I could be a figment of your imagination. You could be a figment of mine. It’s funny. For a long time, I used to think the world was a drawing, and everything I saw was what the audience was seeing somewhere in a great lyceum, teaching the young children the fundamentals of human nature, and perhaps the properties of light, and...”
Amesha just looked at her. He felt shame, but didn’t know if it was for her, or himself. Seeing her bathed in the soft starlight, she truly was the devil and the deep blue sea.
Eventually, they moved to the merry-go-round, and laid down between the bars. For a long time, he laid there next to her, holding her clammy hand, and fought the chill of the night, listening to her talk circles within circles as they spun lazily on a metal disk fixed to a rotating earth, revolving around a sun, circumambulating the center of a galaxy, wheeling aimlessly among a million other spiraling galaxies through a universe poised like a pale of tears on the fickle finger of God.
The next day was Sunday. Amesha and his grandfather had gotten home from church, had a light repast, and settled in for tea, when the old man asked,
“So, how did it go with your...mystery girl?”
“Silbe? All right, I suppose.”
“I noticed you talking with that one girl today, after the sermon...”
Amesha nodded.
“Silbe, eh?” He used to be so good at anagrams...
“Grandpa, was grandma the only girl you’ve ever loved?”
The grandfather shook his head. “No,” he said, almost sadly, lost again in that morass of memories. “A long time ago, I thought I was in love, before I met your grandmother, of course, God bless her soul. She was an older woman, and I was her bodhi tree, you could say. An unconventional woman, way ahead of her time, but I cared for her as deeply as any boy could.
She was ostracized, naturally, and moved far away with the only proof that our love ever existed.” He paused, then said. “But I never would’ve met your grandmother if it wasn’t for her, and you and I surely wouldn’t be sitting here having tea.”
“But how do you know if a girl likes you?” Amesha thought for a second, then said, “Better yet, how do you know if you like a girl?”
“Like?”
“Love.”
“Well,” his grandfather said. “It’s like faith. It can be strong, or it can be weak. It either exists,
or it doesn’t, but you know by its works. Love without works is dead.”
After a pause, the old man said, “So, are you? In love, I mean.”
Amesha shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I was.”
“Let me ask you a different question: do you think God loves you?”
The boy shrugged again. He reflected back over the course of the last year; feeling left out, getting baptized, and still feeling left out; finding Silbe and meeting her face to face. It all felt like some huge test, and there was no way to know if he passed or failed. But as to whether God loved him? “Well,” he said. “If he does, I honestly don’t know why.”
The grandfather smiled that smile of Christ, and, taking a sip of tea, said, “I think that’s the best answer any of us could make.”
11:11 AM | Labels: Faith, God, Love | 3 Comments
Ziusudra of Henryville
Our ride starts in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the day, in the middle of our protagonist’s grievously pathetic life. This is no hyperbolism on the part of your narrator -- we really are on the sweaty back of beyond -- about forty miles from Topeka, to be exact.
If God were to expectorate on the flattest, most stuporously boring patch of dirt covering Earth’s face, it would most likely rain on the residents of Henryville, Kansas, USA.
That’s where we are, in case that slipped by. But don’t take my word for it. Just look at the water tower in the distance, looming over the defunct jungle gym, painted against that Norman Rockwell sky.
As we go along, there will no doubt be many questions that you -- the reader -- will want to ask. That’s unfortunate. If you find yourself drowning in something too far-fetched for belief, the only lifejacket I can toss you is the PFD of faith -- bulky, cumbersome and sometimes filled with duck feathers, it is perhaps the ‘Mae West’ of the spirit’s fruitages, but you know, it gets the job done. If by some modern inconvenience you don’t subscribe to transpersonal relationships, maybe you shouldn’t be on this boat.
Still uneasy? Pretend I’m Vic Perrin, if that makes you feel better. Pretend I’m talking to you in the familiar voice of Walter Cronkite. Just pretend Jeremy Irons wasn’t tied up in contract negotiations with Siemens AG -- a reference which will date our story and elucidate itself around the 100 page bookmark.
Are you ready?
“…During the journey, your time machine vehicle will slowly rotate backwards and may stop momentarily…”
The seatbelt isn’t really necessary, but try telling that to the National Safety Council.
We’re casting away right here, right now, because it was on this very day, at this very moment that God decided to pay our protagonist a personal visit, and the truth is, your first encounter with the Almighty Creator of the Universe always seems special to you, no matter how hackneyed it is to the rest of us.
What made this visit extra special for Jiant Moondrake was that it was directly preceded by his first victory over the Nefarious Slug Gang of Breitenbush.
This was a battle and not the war, as the adage goes, but a well-earned surmounting nonetheless.
It had taken Jiant Moondrake several weeks, and lots of experimentation, but he finally captured their leader, Rosie O’Donnell, with a grapefruit halve filled to the rim with Smuttynose. Without her leadership, Jiant was confident that the remaining members of the Nefarious Slug Gang of Breitenbush would think twice before messing with his Jubilee Watermelons. By itself, the beer hadn’t worked, nor had the grapefruit. Or the copper or lava rock or coffee grounds.
But the hollowed out half of shaddock with Old Brown Dog ale?
Silly lesbian gastropod.
Even if slugs are technically hermaphrodites, Jiant can’t help but think of them as feminist PETA members.
General Rosie hadn’t crawled into the Smuttynose and drowned, as was slug custom. She merely poised her fat and slimy body on the rim of the fruit, no doubt drawn to the delicious aroma of the Willamette hops. Jiant set the bowl down, and took out his packet of diatomaceous earth. It was hard to do, but he tried to make direct eye-to-optic tentacle contact with the oozy pickle.
Jiant was alone -- just him and the mollusk behind the high school, surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of hay-rolled fields. He was kneeling on his haunches at the perimeter of the garden, which may or may not be environmental art, when God pretty much materialized out of nowhere like a ninja, only without the white smoke composition.
“You’re not going to kill it, are you?” He asked.
Jiant jerked, turned around. He thought it was Meteor, thought it sounded like his voice, but when he looked over his shoulder he saw someone he quickly mistook for David Carradine: the long gray hair, the time-carved face, the hitatare kimono. He was dressed like a noble warrior straight out of Kagemusha, sans facial hair.
Jiant said, “Wha?”
“The slug,” He said. “Tell me you’re not honestly going to kill a poor, defenseless creature.” He asked, “Are you?”
He even talked the way David Carradine talked, slow and deliberate, careful to enunciate each syllable of every word.
“Aside from decreasing your odds of growing an award-winning watermelon, do you think that poor creature has done anything to deserve such a horribly violent demise?”
Jiant Moondrake said, “Who are you?” Adding, “And yeah, as a matter of fact, this poor creature has been a major thorn in my side. What would you have me do? Lull it to sleep, then squash it underfoot?”
“I’d rather you do nothing,” the stranger said. “Just leave it be. Let it live to fight another day.”
“Just leave it be? So it can ravage my garden all night? No thank you,” Jiant replied. Looking the stranger up and down, he said, “Who are you, anyway? A new resident here on the work-exchange program?”
Stepping closer, the stranger said, “What if God were to appear before you, right now, and beg you kindly, as a personal favor, please, spare the life of this wonderful creature?”
“I would tell him I’m an atheist.”
At that, Jiant opened his packet of diatomaceous earth, and sprinkled it directly onto Rosie O’Donnell’s mantle. He watched in amazement as the jagged skeletal remains of microscopic creatures tore and lacerated the length of the slug’s soft and squishy body. He watched as it recoiled and convulsed, losing its grip on the rim of the grapefruit, sliding down into the ale where it disappeared in a nebulous cloud of thick mucus.
When he looked up from this nauseating display, the stranger was gone. There hadn’t been enough time for him to cross the distance between here and the back door of the high school, but he was definitely nowhere in sight. Jiant was definitely all alone. He scratched his head in confusion. Apparently, nothing had witnessed the pivotal desiccation except his own wide, green eyes and the falling pink sun.
By the time Jiant had finished burying the snotty corpse of his adversary and erected a proper burial mound, night had draped itself like a tarp across the semicircle sky in economy twilight.
Back inside the school, Jiant peered down the hall toward Meteor’s room. The light wasn’t on, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, as everyone in the Project kept odd hours and daily schedules, setting their watches to their own atomic creativity.
Jiant called out, “Hey Meteor,” and his voice went bouncing down the long dark corridor.
A few seconds later, a rectangle of white light tumbled through the doorway across the checkered hall, painting itself against the adjacent row of lockers. There came a shout, “Yeah?”
Jiant yelled, “I just killed Rosie O’Donnell!”
A shout back, “How did it feel?”
“Anticlimactic!”
Jiant didn’t want to disturb anyone else, so he headed back to his room, which wasn’t so much a room as it was a gymnasium with a twin-sized bed set dead center on the half-court line.
He turned out the lamp attached to an extension cord strung out more than seventy-five feet across the gym floor, and plopped down in his rickety little bed.
After a full thirty seconds, he sat up and yanked the lamp back to life, positive sleep would not come easy tonight.
He was brimming with a bubbling confection of guilt and inspiration -- an electuary of sugary afflatus vaguely concealing the bitter shame of committing brutal violence.
Sprinting to the far wall, Jiant flipped on all of the overhead lights, showering the whole room in a harsh fluorescent glow. He then sprinted to his work station next to his bed, which was one of the thick black tables taken from the science lab, complete with nonfunctioning sink. Quickly, he spread out his materials: polymer clay, five shapers, and a pasta rolling machine. Grabbing a handful of Super Sculpey, Jiant ferverishly kneaded it, then began rolling a big glob of it through the Imperia like an oversized pizza dough.
Working with the clay for a few hours, he had crudely fashioned a human bust, nearly complete with facial features and spaghetti clay for a devilock hairdo. All that was left was the mouth, so he grabbed the shapers, using first the angle chisel, then the cup round, and finally the taper point.
There.
Jiant stepped back from the sculpture, nodding approvingly.
Done.
Satisfied for now, Jiant sighed. He’d been a victim of sculptor’s block for a long time now, and getting his hands dirty again felt amazingly satisfying. He flipped off all the lights, silencing the bumblebee hum of surging electricity, and plopped back into bed. Rolling over on his side, he slowly opened one eye and thoughtfully studied his new creation in the soft blue moonlight spilling in from the second story window like a river of sanguine hope. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of inerrant beauty, he realized, but then, neither was its real-life model.
Jiant Moondrake closed his eyes and rolled over, putting his back to Rosie’s Contract Stiuplation, and, artistically assuaged, plummeted into a deep and restful slumber.
10:57 AM | Labels: Mooncalf | 0 Comments
The Vail and the Bloom
Here on the darkness of this city street, we can hear the sorrow of piano keys, like the flutter of wings, unlocking the cold of life’s throes, if we close our eyes and listen, we can hear the drum of pounding feet, of our hero running toward us in the falling rain, soaked and freezing, singing to the top of his lungs, “Your sins into me, Oh my beautiful one,” he sings, running straight past us, “Your sins into me,” running, we turn and watch, a blur of color on a colorless night, splintered by the blood of heaven and electric halos of light, and the girl, she’s coming up on the left, locked away in a building, on the ground floor, so safe behind bars, behind bars, so defenseless, and so our hero runs, straight past the 77th Precinct, his feet pounding against the sidewalk, his boots splashing the muckholes of God, and running, running, running, fluttering in the darkness like a psychotic butterfly, he will beg for her forgiveness, and on his heels, the sins will splash into our face, and if we want to, we can feel them, all of them, melting off of him, here in the darkness we can try to understand, all of them, spilling away as he runs, as he makes room, and as he runs, we can listen to the beat of his heart, follow the rhythm of suffering thumping like a jungle drum, “Your sins into me,” our hero sings, “Oh my beautiful one,” he sings, “Your sins into me,” and up ahead, one city block, a man staggers out of a bar, followed by another, and another, in a quivering organization of chaos, pushing and shoving, and laughing in the rain, and if one man falls, so will another, and into the gutter they both will tumble, eyes dilated, with cigarettes poised in the air, directly in the path of a speeding taxi, one man sits, while the other sobers up in the headlight glare, and climbs to his feet, fluttering to safety in the cold of life’s throes, while the taxi driver, fiddling with his radio dial, distracted by the EAS announcement over the airwaves, is oblivious to the silver and cold, to our hero running and running, like the flutter of wings, leaping into the gutter, pushing the drunkard out of harm’s way, absorbing his stupor, swallowing the carcinoma in his liver with one simple touch, and, smiling, he takes the impact of the taxi head-on, bending at the grill, cracking against the windshield in a spiderweb of glass, flipping end over end, crumpling across the roof, the trunk, smacking and rolling onto the pavement splattered with rain and blood, of happiness and sadness, of life and death, of sin and repentance, of forgiveness and love, and the men on the sidewalk, lost on life’s throes, won’t realize what happened, nor will the driver, though for the former, the lungs are as clean as a newborn’s, free from various tars and by-products, and the latter, the damage to his car disappears right before his eyes, metal retaking its original shape, broken glass coming back together, and they won’t know what happened, for by the time they look up with clearly distorted eyes, the street will once again be empty, playing only the sorrow of piano keys dancing along the raindrops, but the rhythm of pain is still beating, like the flutter of wings, undaunted, running and running, begging for her forgiveness, for our hero, he looks up, closes his eyes against the rain, and he can feel it, opening his eyes, he can see it, the white fire in the sky, the falling nuclear star, shooting toward the earth, and our hero, he outstretches his arms, singing, “Oh my beautiful one, your sins into me,” and falling, racing, shooting through the wind and the rain, all of our sins melt and bleed away, making room, and the missile impacts the heart of the city in a beautiful bloom of fire and heat and radiation, and our hero runs, arms outstretched, into the fallout, hoping against faith, rising and falling, sailing and sinking, against this burst of fiery judgment, against all that she is, against all the he was, against all that we are, and he runs into it, wrapping himself in silver and cold, singing against the deafening waves of destruction, shouting, crying, “Your sins into me."
10:46 AM | Labels: Tank | 0 Comments
Post aut Propter
The light above me hung there like a broken halo, an oblong circle of cadmium yellow splintered by the darkness of night. The crown of my head was pressed into the lamp post, and every time my heart beat, my skull knocked against the knurled and tarred wood. I coughed, feeling blood sluice out of me, flowing across my skin like warm milk. Some of it had poured into my boot, and it was thick and slippery between my toes. My sock was soggy, and quickly cooling in the November air. I moved my right arm ever so slightly, and a jet of warmth spurted onto my face, a small rivulet of blood trickling down the slope of my jaw and pooling in the crevice of my mouth.
My sensorium was shutting down, searching desperately for a foothold. What was left of my sight was essentially a descending cone, narrow from the halo falling wide to the earth, encircling me, my own spotlight, my own private sun. My hearing was also trapped inside this cocoon, but was halfway gone; my left ear was reaching for anything, but my right ear was a ringing vacuum of sound, pulled inside out, under water, under blood. All I could feel was divided bilaterally, a straight razor of warmth and cold cutting diagonally from my shoulder to my leg. My body quivered with each beat of my heart, a tightening convulsion in the back of my neck. I watched as my chest rose then slowly fell. With each exhalation I felt new blood spill from somewhere deep inside of me.
“…You don’t even know how lucky you are…”
At my right side, my fingers combed through cold blades of grass, hunting for the smooth plastic of the video camera. Every move of my finger pulled at the tendons in my forearm, shifted the medial head of my tricep. The muscles twitched along my shoulder, and more blood poured out of me, the sound like vomit slapping wetly against the ground.
“…In the Dark Ages, many Christ…i…a…n…s thought that the Pope of Rome was the Antic…h…r…i…s…t…”
At my left side, I felt the cold feather of fingers against my wrist. The way that I was lying, with my head fixed to stare straight up, I couldn’t see anything except the ascending cone of yellow hanging against the velvet night, a perfect composition of flat angles and endless dimension. That same halo of light was now starting to resemble a pineapple ring. So, in truth, I can’t positively say anyone was kneeling next to me, but I could feel the change in the air. It was like standing under a noon sun when a cloud decides to steal the day. The touch was delicate and soft, like a breeze that drops the temperature a fraction of a degree. It felt like the fragile hand of a small child.
“…My fidus Achates…why can’t you see your g…o…o…d fortune…?”
I also couldn’t say whether or not the voice I was hearing was real, a common problem of hallucinations. It sounded like many people speaking at once, phonating like parrots or robots, layers and layers of soulless words, all at different pitches and tones. For the most part, the voices were in flawless synchronization. Every few words, though, one or two of them lagged behind, pulled at the flow, giving the whole voice the effect of a warped record.
“…Scripture concludes that the Antichrist is a ‘man of sin.’ Hence, these men of sin have run the g…a…m…u…t, from Judas Iscariot, to Hitler, to Stalin, even Kissinger. But these were all proven untrue, as you and I both know, and skeptics of the Book have really taken advantage of this to m…o…c…k the prophecies that are, in fact, very t…r…u…e…”
It was slow and deliberate, a demonic chorus trapped inside
my head. The way I heard it, I was reminded of the talking books from my youth, running at sixteen revolutions per minute.
my head. The way I heard it, I was reminded of the talking books from my youth, running at sixteen revolutions per minute.
When this thought materialized, the child’s hand at my wrist altered in texture, in weight, from a delicate feathery touch to something coarse and heavy, a beastly capsule pressing against the pulse in my cephalic vein.
Adjusting my eyes, I slowly lowered them downward in a methodical line connecting the faint pinpoints of starlight poking through my cocoon of zero time. I saw the thick head of a mule, its giant outstretched ears looming over me. A thin black forelock was curled between two red eyes, gleaming like polished shooter marbles. As I focused on them, the redness drained from the sockets, rivers of bloody tears falling down the mule’s snout, forked by either nostril into smaller streams. The eyes became solid white, opaque and lifeless. The mule opened its mouth, began forming words within its whinnying and grunting, the winding down of a chorus into a hoarse bray of human speech.
“…The name of the Wild Beast that you will ride to the top of earthly kingdom power is 666...Another way of writing W is VI…Therefore, WWW, as in World Wide W…e…b, is transliterated six hundred and sixty-six…”
My fingers touched the camera, and began probing the many different textures for the protrusion of the record button. I didn’t know if it was on, if it was still recording, but I couldn’t take the chance. I eased the camera around, pointing the lens toward the blackness of the open field, and rested my palm over the microphone.
“…Do I look like Francis?” the mule asked me.
My tongue was thick and heavy, sponging all moisture from my mouth. I replied, “Yes,” but added, “though that was a little before my time.”
“And yet, my question was not lost on you.”
In the distance, I could hear the merciful wail of an ambulance.
“Causality of phenomena will still be established.”
My throat was a clenched fist. If I squeezed hard enough, the words would slip out between the fingers. I squeezed, and the words, “We’ll see,” came out in a whisper.
“You know that you will not die,” the mule said to me. “…post aut propter…”
The siren was close now, maybe at the end of the street. I connected the stars again, slowly upward, focused on the street light without blinking until my eyes burned and my pupils glazed over in tears. The sensation of the hoof lifted away, blood coarsed freely through my wrist. Mere feet from me, I could hear the gravel crumpling beneath rubber tires, the abrupt amputation of the siren’s squawking. I closed my eyes, searing the cocoon wide open.
Can you still hear me?
Yes.
Why?
Because I wanted to tell you what my intention was.
Your intention…
I didn’t think I would die after this or by means of this. After this or by means of it…I will positively live.
When I opened my eyes, there was a flash of lights, a flash of people. Where there was nobody, there was suddenly a small crowd. With the EMT’s swarming me like wolves, I felt like big game, laying there wounded and vulnerable, an overweight moose with broken legs. Police officers were now towering over me. The world was moving under water.
I don’t remember it, but afterward I was told that I kept muttering, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” over and over again. It’s an old mantra of Tibetan Buddhists, and apparently, I kept repeating it while I was in the back of the ambulance, all the way to the hospital. I don’t know why, exactly, or even if I did. What I do remember was being set onto the gurney, lifted into the air, and seeing not more than ten feet from me a little girl in a red jumper dress. She had short blonde hair, and her bangs were pinned back with a bobby pin. Beneath the red jumper she was wearing a blue and white plaid shirt, with puffy sleeves and ruffles. In the crook of her left arm she was cradling a baby doll. Even though this moment lasted just a few seconds, I can carve from my memory a sculpture with amazing detail. I remember that the baby doll actually resembled the little girl who was holding it, though their outfits weren’t identical. I remember that the baby doll was wearing red booties, but they were sewn on, fake. I remember that she was partly made of cloth, partly made of ceramic, and that two of her fingers were missing, so that what was left of her hand looked as if she was signing in ASL, I Love You. I remember that the little girl was barefoot, and she was chewing gum, smacking it loudly from cheek to cheek.
Weightless in the air, muttering “Om Mani Padme Hum,” the little girl looks at me and says, “Hoist with yer own petard?” She had a Southern accent, but it sounded unintentionally deliberate, the speech impediment of a lazy child. I remember looking at her squinty eyes, and then also squinting. I remember thinking that her hand must’ve been the delicate touch I had felt against my wrist, that maybe she was the one who had called for help, the figure I had seen when I stumbled out of the darkness and into the light, the one who had watched me stagger all the way from the middle of the field to where I collapsed in the street.
Rolling backward into the ambulance atop the gurney, I remember straining my neck to gaze longways at her, our eyes meeting in the hollow of my barren, blood-spattered chest, her tiny face framed by my red-soaked boots.
She said to me, “I hope ya come back real soon.” She said, “I hope ya figger out how to make rain stop.”
And then, like the overwhelming relief that surges through you when you wake from a nightmare, the doors of the ambulance came swinging shut.
11:03 PM | Labels: Live Bait | 0 Comments
The Fifth Column
The greatest difference between Democrats and Republicans is that a Democrat knows when he is lying.
You can assert the same juxtaposition between men and women and I daresay Betty Friedman and Sigmund Freud would be challenged to disagree.
Truth without a cost? Love without a dream? And they wonder why the little circus has broken down.
Recently I became casually embroiled with a man I once thought I admired, which is rare, being that I am something of a misogynistic philogynist.
What I mean is, men are rather crass and irritating, a lot like Republicans. And while I totally support women taking up the bow, I would never allow them to trade one breast for that perfect bull's-eye -- folktale etymology be damned, with Janet Dykman as my witness.
Digression aside, this right-winger in question had the audacity to attempt a connection between equal rights for same-sex couples and the social acceptance of bestiality, which, as ignorant as it may sound, is not surprising to anyone who's ever heard Sarah Palin speak publicly.
Of course, even Rand herself condemned homosexuality as 'immoral,' which is by all standards an inconceivable, bubbling fountainhead of contradiction. (you're welcome, paronomasia).
The irony of Palin is that she represents women's greatest opportunity of earning the twenty-three cents on the balance of every dollar while simultaneously threatening the complete breakdown of the Atlas Society. But maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who sees Palin's 7-inch ankle strap platform poised over every little American girl's chance for equality, threatening to squash the 90 years of honest progression earned on the backs and knees of the Activist Movement.
All I'm saying is don't be surprised when McFarlane Toys crafts a Sarah Palin action figure complete with rhinestone panties, daddy issues, an M-21 sniper rifle and a layman's abridged version of the Second Amendment.
The greatest thing about this election is that you don't need a political IQ to have a strong opinion. I'm living proof of that. I waded through most of my life in neutral waters, thanks mostly to a very conservative Christian upbringing, and even now, having climbed onto the shore of reductionism and causality, I would never claim one path is right over the other. In truth, I subscribe more regularly to The Republic than I do our sacred Constitution. For all I know, our affiliations with India are stronger now than they were eight years ago. For all I know, our current President will be remembered quite differently in my grandchildren's history books than the cowboy caricature our media depicts him as today.
Like Obama says, this election strikes a very fundamental chord.
On the left, you have the silver tongue, and on the right, the heart of gold.
Uneducated Americans want to vote Democrat because it relieves them of undeserved, inherited guilt, and they want to vote Republican because they want to fuck Palin. Illogical to be sure, but that's what happens when your country's educational system ranks 18th out of the 24 nations on the UNICEF Study Panel. For me, the issues of sexism and racism come full circle here, completely at odds and in opposition with another. Unfortunately, the connection between homophobia and zoophilia will remain a mystery to me, but if you have the time, feel free to ask your nearest Republican for some insight.
You can assert the same juxtaposition between men and women and I daresay Betty Friedman and Sigmund Freud would be challenged to disagree.
Truth without a cost? Love without a dream? And they wonder why the little circus has broken down.
Recently I became casually embroiled with a man I once thought I admired, which is rare, being that I am something of a misogynistic philogynist.
What I mean is, men are rather crass and irritating, a lot like Republicans. And while I totally support women taking up the bow, I would never allow them to trade one breast for that perfect bull's-eye -- folktale etymology be damned, with Janet Dykman as my witness.
Digression aside, this right-winger in question had the audacity to attempt a connection between equal rights for same-sex couples and the social acceptance of bestiality, which, as ignorant as it may sound, is not surprising to anyone who's ever heard Sarah Palin speak publicly.
Of course, even Rand herself condemned homosexuality as 'immoral,' which is by all standards an inconceivable, bubbling fountainhead of contradiction. (you're welcome, paronomasia).
The irony of Palin is that she represents women's greatest opportunity of earning the twenty-three cents on the balance of every dollar while simultaneously threatening the complete breakdown of the Atlas Society. But maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who sees Palin's 7-inch ankle strap platform poised over every little American girl's chance for equality, threatening to squash the 90 years of honest progression earned on the backs and knees of the Activist Movement.
All I'm saying is don't be surprised when McFarlane Toys crafts a Sarah Palin action figure complete with rhinestone panties, daddy issues, an M-21 sniper rifle and a layman's abridged version of the Second Amendment.
The greatest thing about this election is that you don't need a political IQ to have a strong opinion. I'm living proof of that. I waded through most of my life in neutral waters, thanks mostly to a very conservative Christian upbringing, and even now, having climbed onto the shore of reductionism and causality, I would never claim one path is right over the other. In truth, I subscribe more regularly to The Republic than I do our sacred Constitution. For all I know, our affiliations with India are stronger now than they were eight years ago. For all I know, our current President will be remembered quite differently in my grandchildren's history books than the cowboy caricature our media depicts him as today.
Like Obama says, this election strikes a very fundamental chord.
On the left, you have the silver tongue, and on the right, the heart of gold.
Uneducated Americans want to vote Democrat because it relieves them of undeserved, inherited guilt, and they want to vote Republican because they want to fuck Palin. Illogical to be sure, but that's what happens when your country's educational system ranks 18th out of the 24 nations on the UNICEF Study Panel. For me, the issues of sexism and racism come full circle here, completely at odds and in opposition with another. Unfortunately, the connection between homophobia and zoophilia will remain a mystery to me, but if you have the time, feel free to ask your nearest Republican for some insight.
6:38 PM | Labels: '08 Election, homophobia, McCain, Obama, Palin | 0 Comments
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