4 Hour Hard On

Heading to the Oregon Coast
for some R & R, and Surf and Turf.
Be back in no time, with a wicker
basket full of conch shells, and
many fish stories!


Sea you soon,

DM

Chris is never going speak to me now

After my getting caught for stalking him,

Standing behind a palm tree

In front of his apartment.

I called him twice today.

He answered this morning


And said we were cool, but it was too early in the morning

To really talk about it, so now

I’ve been waiting all day

For him to call me, because I told him

To give me a ring. His apartment

Is so awesome with the blinds and that tree


In the front of his door. I remember a plum tree

In my yard. They were wet from the dew of morning,

But that has nothing to do with Chris’ apartment

That I stood outside of. How

Could I have been so stupid stalking him

Like some crazy ex-lover? I’ve called three times today


And left a message telling him today

How sorry I am for standing behind that tree

Like a nut, watching him

Through the blinds. He’s cute in the morning

Sounding bewildered on the phone. Now

What am I going to do? I love his apartment


About as much as I love the futon in his apartment

I helped him put together last week. Today

I think this is like the sixth time I’ve called now.

When he saw me standing behind that tree,

He ran like hell. It was about three in the morning

When it all went down. I love him


And think about him

Every minute of the day. His apartment

Has rented, black, leather sofas. He sleeps in the morning

And doesn’t get up until noon to start his day.

Think he’ll ever forgive me? Gee,

I really scared the shit out of him. Now


Here I’ve been all morning calling him

At his apartment trying to think now

What I can say or do. Maybe I’ll buy him a plum tree.



Shane Allison's brand new chapbook, entitled
"I WANT TO FUCK A REDNECK" is available from

Scintillating Publications.

Naomi And Nostry

4 SHARDS
by John Bennett; (c) 2006
All Rights Reserved



A WAY WITH WORDS

You've got a way with words, people tell me, a gift, but they don't ask me to dinner. Sometimes they drive by the house and crane their necks, hoping for a glimpse of who knows what.

I began to feel obligated. Like I should give them something. Something more than the writing. Perhaps a holographic image. Yes, that would do the trick. I'd project a holographic image onto the front porch late at night. I'd have it pacing like a caged animal, slightly bent at the waist, puffing on a pipe. They could drive by and say, "Look, honey, he's thinking!"

Her husband would grunt. Give it the gas. Get her home and fuck her blind. Snap her out of it. Show her what a real man is.

Maybe I shouldn't do that. Do I really want my holographic projections breaking up happy homes? Most likely there'd be children involved.

That's something else that bothers me. It's always middle-aged women driving by. Or being driven by by their husbands. In a scenario like that, we all lose.

Where are the young ones? Not terribly young, say 25 or 30. When's the last time one of those knocked at my door?

It's not all it's cracked up to be, being a writer. It's the saddest pleasure. A high percentage of us take our own lives.

If you only knew what goes on in our heads.



HIT HARD

I know I've been hit hard when the writing stops. The writing is all that sustains me in the illusion. It doesn't often happen. But sometimes I get hit hard enough to think maybe I should let go of the illusion.

It's illusive, the illusion. The word itself has been rendered rotting tripe in the hot sun by the psycho-babble crowd. But behind the veil of every word lurks a reality. Yes, yes, reality too, tripe in the hot sun.

Here's the point: I may be using the wrong word. In fact I'm sure I am. Why the fuck did I say that? If I'd been properly potty trained in some creative writing program, I would go back and edit that out. If I'd been properly groomed I'd scrap everything I've written to this point. But that's not my style. I tend to lunge on.

Check out, that's what I meant to say. Check out of this fucking mad-hatter world. When I'm writing I'm in another world. I'm an illusion within an illusion. There, I've swung back around on it.

I'm working over illusion. The word illusion. I'm mauling it, making it mine. I'm reshaping the language so that I can talk to myself.

I've got no hope left. Except for the occasional ground swell of bitterness when I get hit hard. Well Jesus, why do I set myself up for it? Usually it has to do with love.

Love and bitterness, two forms of hope. I've just had the illusion of love torpedoed and it tilted me into bitterness. Leap-frogging from one wobbly stone of hope to another, slick with moss in the swift creek of life.

Writing is all that sustains me, not bitterness, not love, not hope. So what am I holding out hope for?

I want out.

But then there are the small children and dogs. Sometimes just watching my blind, diabetic dog peeing in the back yard with her nose in the air and her ears back, or watching a small child's face light up for no apparent reason, sometimes then I want to cry.



CROSSING OVER

Some people think the world of man is hideous. Usually people who think like this also think things could be better. So, they fight. Not fight, exactly, what most of them do is hunker down in refusal. All this does is make things worse.

The thing to do is shift gears and drive off into a world all your own. There's no reason to feel guilty. There's no reason to fear you'll be found out and punished. There's no way anyone is going to recognize where you've gone. If they did, they'd go with you.

Once you cross over, you'll have more happiness than you can bear.



INVISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE

He scared himself more than anyone else. Not more than he scared anyone else, more than anyone else scared him. And it made him seem odd to others. People were forever telling him he didn't make sense. Then they'd pick out an example of someone who did and they'd say: "He makes perfect sense." It could have been a she as well as a he; it wasn't a gender thing.

He wasn't sure what sense meant. The people who were held up as examples of perfect sense inevitably had a bland smile on their faces. They were fully insured and were working hard toward retirement. They voted and sent their children to college. They celebrated birthdays and decorated their homes with strings of blinking lights at Christmas. They watched the evening news every night to keep abreast of things.

He puzzled over the mystery of sense. He looked around. He saw flag poles with two or three and sometimes more flags hanging from them. Flags of the nation, flags of the state, POW flags, corporate flags, all in descending order. He saw people taking pictures of themselves with cell phones held at arm's length and somehow emailing them to loved ones who printed them out and stared at them. He saw six-lane ribbons of freeway teeming with traffic surrounding and burrowing through cities.

The people in the vehicles on the ribbons of freeway were either talking into their cell phones or taking pictures with them or tuned to the news. Some of them were surreptitiously snorting cocaine up their noses or toking on a joint, popping pharmaceuticals or buzzed on after-work cocktails. A minority smoked cigarettes, but if their windows were rolled down and traffic was ground to a halt (as it often was), they received sour looks and sometimes snide comments from the passengers of other vehicles.

He finally concluded that sensible meant fitting into all this. He got a cell phone and a computer and tried to take a picture to send to himself. But he couldn't figure it out. He went to see his cell-phone salesman and the man shook his head in disbelief.

"What's wrong with you?" said the salesman. "Of course you can't take a picture with this cell phone. You can't even play games on it. This is a three-year-old cell phone, it's obsolete."

He left the store, embarrassed. He stood on the corner of a busy intersection and watched the flags flapping on the courthouse flagpole. He thought about turning himself in.

At home, he pushed various keys on his cell phone, looking for games. But the salesman knew what he was talking about, there were no games on there. He turned on his computer and a window with his picture on it came up.

How did his picture get on there? Did someone take his picture with a cell phone when he wasn't looking and email it to him? Under the picture was a box asking for a password. He tried for over an hour to figure out what the password was, but he wasn't a cryptologist. He gave up and went out to sit on the front porch.

In the fading light, tiny birds were swooping and soaring, feeding on insects invisible to the naked eye.

Poem by Shane Allison; (c) '06, All Rights Reserved


After I filled out an application for a job,
I went by Chris’ to see if he wanted me to go on a food
run. He said he just ate some Subway two hours
ago. He must have freaked out when he saw
Me. I think I crossed a line I wasn’t supposed to cross.

I’m used to sitting in the parking-lot waiting
for him to get off. Last Friday he sat waiting
for his girlfriend after he got off his job,
but the bitch never showed. He looked as if
he was cross with her. As I was eating my food
from Larry’s Giant Subs, I saw him starting to
walk towards me. It was an hour

past twelve I guess. I yelled,

"Chris!"

in the late hours.

I asked him whom he was waiting
on. He said, "my girlfriend." I told him I saw
him waiting and looking furious. She does a crap job
being his girlfriend. It smelled like fast food
in my car. He’s the boss

at a bowling alley. The boss
gets the most hours but he doesn’t
have to work. His folks own a fast food
chain. He calls and keeps waiting
for his girlfriend to answer. Bitch needs to
get on her job and get a hold of Chris’ keys.

I saw her once. She looks all right. I only saw
her silhouette, though. I wish he were my boss.

I quit my retail job
‘cause the manager was a bitch and I hated the hours.
When he finally breaks up with her, I’ll be waiting
in the wings, and we’ll sit down and eat Chinese food
and talk about our future together. They give you so
much food at the Golden Dragon. I think I saw

Chris and Crystal there waiting
in line for egg rolls. I crossed
the street to avoid them at nine
past the hour.

I think I would be a great asset at his job.

I would do one hell of a job.
I’m dying for him to be my boss.

I’ll be waiting in the hours eating fast food.