Dear, cherished readers, what precious few of you remain,

Yes, I have failed you. I have still not managed to summon the muse in any significant or applicable sense, that bitch, wherever she is, must want money or be put out with me or something like that. In her stead, some hermaion has found me this evening in the form of a little white clip binder full of index cards. I took these index cards in my hands, nearly a year ago, on a very trying day of my life, and in a furious and shaky fashion spilled out whatever I could from my consciousness to the cards, hoping for some relief from the situation I was trapped in. What follows is the content of the cards.

A brave man is not necessarily wise I may in fact be ignorant but scarcely naive driving stakes through the chest plates of old heroes and taking what it was that made them great I breathe the magic that is arrogance and my chemicals flood

A biased plane demands an amendment but without a friend only an old soul may still look up at the dawning of a new era in the chests of men and women the dawn comes and still they battle

A torch bleeds its very life into the sucking quills of the nighttime and is never forgiven for its inadequacy a hopeless sob lies dormant in the throats of the masses

A thief may be a good thief may remain a debased person with metals and woods of different pomp may be burnished to their ugly cores and laughter will ensue

A broad spectrum of shallow emotions is a slow moving body that awaits the storm with distaste as a flooded plain cries out for not water but sunlight, dear sweet sunlight

A pulsing valentine until the end of days a gorged phallus leaves vials of procreation self imbued with a purpose little do they know they are the progeny of what does not care, simply does not care

100 pages of sallow faces swallow the eyes of a hushed crowd which has long since ceased to turn its eyes toward perceived mercy a wiser man than most betrays no sign

I have stolen the pills which were not prescribed and which were in a bottle marked tylenol from the hypocrite who will reach for relief long after I am gone and realize that I received none An altercation of emotions awaits all those who seek to be involved

A fire brand of light colors makes a first kiss less subtle and yet there is no love involved henceforth I have ceased to go to the cinema a gloomy kindliness unites all who perceive as the artificial light grows too false, too cheery

A painful memory brought a wince to eyes as they were held vividly open at the time a change has taken place in the body of the man he can better understand why the future hurts him

Calloused are the thumbs of a perverted cackling crowd which hasn't realized it was laid down in the graveyard the soil we watched obscured their faces and pushed us farther away

The light tower by the sea is man's illumination to fight the eyes of the night for why can we not have our privacy why must they refuse us politeness why do the ships yet sink

An awful grating of the bastard's teeth throughout the windowpane makes a poet turn his head and reminisce

A day will come when no more children should be allowed in the coliseum

At the breaking or shattering of an improvised mantra in a poor dear little thing he must only wait and live more and he will see the same thing happen again On and on through the darkness He will cease to find this surprising

An awful lauding makes bitter the envious and will never be given to those without friends a pattern is cut in the quilt of daylight and it lets in mystery by a different name A drum is heard by noon we must depart to battle to battle

At dusk the moonlight hits the eyes of a cat she prowls for reasons we can't see in the morning we may never see her again and this is accepted

The beautiful thing meanders as if she knows not where to go she knows where she wills her flesh to be but she couldn't deny all of her adherents a tiny glimmering spark of hope

 Upon missing its corgo a ship leaves empty and ruminates on never returning ever again it thinks of nothing but the endless desire of its very real heart as it is buffeted by similar blood A fragile child is left to die and no one knows how he feels

A battle standard is harped in the bold sun and glory becomes a very real concept to a few desperate souls who will later die in agony too soon for they have not realized their inner quest In dawn the corpses will be buried and the cycle will continue

Serious issues were presented at the staff meeting pertaining to clothes laundering and discipline, also the refrigerator in the teachers lounge has become too full and would you please start eating other people's food

Betrayed, a once happy dog Breathes in with tongue and innocence I mean true fucking innocence like nothing you have ever seen before Hungry he now lets himself be buffeted towards food and pussy

I am embarassed by the amount of effort that went toward saving me in a bath of love and forgiveness my own guilt makes it all a dream and I plunge, plunge toward oblivion seeking the sweet assurance that one day I really will die

At the end of an impressive tome a very small and thin child demands respect and is kicked in the teeth he spits them out and blood and tears and paper all mix into a cataclysm of simply being small

A tall man has slowly lowered his eyes until he appreciates it little in this way karma has made us all wary of our beauty a girl once told me she was mad at me and I said I don't give a fuck the next day she sat on my lap

A vessel has been chartered for foreign lands by a man with good intentions on the first night of the voyage he clasps his hands to the mast and weeps and weeps and weeps

I won't deny any true allegation as to the theft it was justified and I am willing to accept the rewards though my skin shivers and I am far from pious I will work on it for I know it is wrong.

Breeze cools the face.

In the plaza no one throws pennies at the birds if only they did I would wonder why they did would it be associated with appreciation of lack thereof I wait trying to be as still as I can.

It makes us all jealous and he does not care about his grilfriend I take cues from him and I am slapped in the face I am slapped in the face with a number of new questions that have been shaken into my brain

A blue note waves on the trumpet and begins a whole new harmony as the restless crowd shifts awkwardly from side to side feeling red

At the cymbal's clash they are given some small satisfaction

Automatons are likened to slaves but without feelings and so are animals hushed as they are slaughtered the cosmic whipping boy leaps from soul to soul breathing new meaning into mens' misery

A dark child was born into a sutted wood a beaver eating bark off a tree at the midst of the christening she was given a name after three days and died three days later

the beaver is envied

Appalled and perhaps even curious the man watches his wife play a new game from the shaded trees their coolness making his blush stand out and the deep urgency of a distant drum that is within him growing more and more urgent

In the pit that lies at the center of the forest fortune is to be had and broken like mens souls over pickaxes a long day's work counts its own blessings for a man who can go home to his wife

A throaty rumble is a precedent if you don't take the warning a rising tide of feelings leaves the mind bemused as to simply what should be the next action of cord and sinew and never forget the skeleton

At the edge of two nations the land makes a sudden shift as crows take flight from the ground and spiral into the sky a golden lance is sent from god to remind men what they must do

dragons fight in the meadow

their blood is black

and yellow

An aborted fetus kicks its feet in the blackness of hell and all the morals and madness of mankind cannot do a goddamned thing to save it

it is generally felt that this is a mistake

A crow is held to the bow of a tree as the breeze sways it

A young woman takes the final breath of her struggle 

Rabbits breed fiercely in the meadow

 

Copyright 2007 Gabriel S. New

 

 

Some of y'all might remember "Crucifia." I just had it on urbis.com and I got a review on it that said, basically, that it was a great opening to a story but as an individual piece it left much to desire. And I was like, yeah brother, that's what I do. I write stories that make people desirous. Just when you thought you were through with pointlessly desiring things you can't have. Bang! $ilky $mooth!

No, but it got to me. It really did. I thought that perhaps it was unfair to be leaving my readers unfulfilled in this way. So, for the next few weeks, ladies and gentlemen, $ilky $mooth $tories will be featuring the arduous, glorious, exhausting and exhilarating, sheerly terrifying and bubblingly ecstatic tale of Crucifia, a young woman who lives in an apartment and has a blind cat named Ouroboros. She calls him Oros for short. Our story begins. Our heroine is in the shower.

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     The glass of the shower door was textured, something like stucco, and in reality was not glass at all but was plastic. Decades prior, when the room was first being furnished, the original glass door for the shower had been dropped on the staircase when one of the construction workers suffered a heart attack. He survived, but died some years later in a head-on collision with Crucifia's mother, Adeline, who was also killed. Crucifia, then fourteen, was given over to the care of the local orphanage, where she struggled with depression until she was old enough to be declared an adult. Several years later, she was inhabiting the only flat of the Eben's Cray apartment complex which had a plastic shower door, because the foreman had paid a boy a dollar to pick up a replacement and he came back with the wrong one.

     It was this door which Crucifia now stood behind, visible only as a muted, pale outline of herself. She faced away from the showerhead and allowed it to rinse her hair, long and raven colored, then turned off the water and stepped out into the steam filled room. She wiped the condensation off of the mirror and then stared at her features for a long time, pursing her lips and drawing the humid air in through her nose. "You are simply a pariah," she said to herself, softly, in a sweet, condescending sort of tone. "You have no fame."

    She had no brothers or sisters, and her only living relative was her uncle, who had come back from the war a broken man. He had been in a jungle, smoking cigarettes mixed with cocaine and throwing grenades into tunnels, when Adeline was killed. He had come back to Eben's Cray to find Crucifia sleeping under a highway overpass, and a few weeks later the two were sharing an apartment. With what was left of his combat pay, he had bought her some new clothes and paid for her to see a dentist. She found a job in a coffee shop, and he found work as a mechanic. Gradually they grew together, and just as gradually grew apart, and one day Crucifia set out to find her own lodging. "I'll still come visit you, Uncle, I will." she said to console him. "I'll come visit you every day, if you want." He was gruff and cold, producing a package of tobacco from his grease stained vest and setting a match to a rolled cigarette. Samuel was his name. When she was gone, he cried.

      Crucifia got dressed and went to the kitchen to prepare her breakfast, three eggs and a few slices of bacon. When the food was cooked she placed it on a white plate with a red edge and poured herself a cup of black coffee. Cooking was one of the first things she had learned when she had moved in with Samuel, and she had taken pride, day after day, in growing better at it, and making sure there was a hot meal on the table when he woke up and when he came home. She still took great joy in it, as she took joy in many of life's small pleasures, as a token in the inner machine which vended her sanity. Every day, she strove to find new tokens to feed the insatiable mechanics of the thing, inserting some small vice or liberty which would generally have brought disapproval from the nuns at the orphanage.

     Every morning she would tear a new page out of her leatherbound bible and feed it to the fire. Then she would strap on her high-heeled shoes, light her cigarette, and step out into the cold grey morning.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2008, Gabriel S. New   

 

       

 

So picture this woman, lounging on a bed of silks, surrounded by handmaidens and mirrors. Gold bangles and precious jewels drip from her skin and glisten in the sun. Her features glow beneath a fine aura of perspiration. Her servants are agitated, tripping over themselves to do their tasks with haste, hesitating and doubling back on their paths with faltering steps. They wring their hands and clench their teeth, their sweating faces and disarrayed garments reflecting their anxiety. They wince when they pass the mirrors, which are brilliant with the sun's light.

    The woman, by contrast, is resigned and calm, a laconic smile playing over her lips and in her eyes. She is the subtle epicenter of an earthquake of human activity. Her features are not striking, not particularly beautiful, but they are accented by an atmosphere of power which has little to do with the servants. It is this atmosphere, which she carries with her, that has intoxicated many of the men and women who have passed through her life and made them helpless to her gravitational pull. She is the cynosure of all eyes, and yet she meets none, even when she snaps her fingers and says something, softly, in Greek.

    In a moment a young girl, about twelve, falters through the door with a tray of dates and lays it at the woman's feet. In an instant the monarch recoils and then slaps the girl, hard enough to leave a stinging red mark. Tears spring into the girl's eyes. She gathers the tray and exits as quickly as she can, returning after a few minutes with a different tray, a tray laden with figs. She bows and begins to exit when the queen beckons her to come closer. Timidly she draws nearer to her mistress, flinching when the woman reaches out a hand and caresses the reddened skin of her cheek. Then the woman pulls her down by her arm until the girl is laying on the bed of silks, quivering throughout her slight frame, unsure of what to do with herself. Then the queen begins touching her, teasing her with her fingers, as only a powerful woman could do. The girl has no choice but to lay still, her small chest heaving, restraining the urge to sob. Then the woman reaches for one of the figs, laying nearby on a table. She rubs it between the girl's legs and feels the infant body squirm against her own. The other handmaidens continue about their tasks, grinding mascara, polishing he mirrors, pretending not to notice what their queen is doing.

    Then the queen notices something moving in the tray of figs, sliding, coiling, shuddering. It protrudes from the center of the pile, scattering the fruits to either side as it emerges, its forked tongue flicking against the air, its ghostly yellow eyes watching nothing and sensing everything. "cerastes, cerastes," she coos to the girl. She places the fig in her mouth and then carelessly flutters her fingers in front of the serpent, irritating it until it strikes.

The little girl weeps, and weeps, and before long the mistress is dead.

 

 

Copyright 2008, Gabriel S. New     

   

      Magdus thanked the lord every day that he wasn't born one of them. They made him sick to his stomach, and he couldn't help himself but to stare at them through a crack in the window blinds as they passed by, hobbling on crooked limbs, some on crutches, some in wheelchairs. Their spines, grotesquely bent, rendered most of them permanently hunched toward the earth. Their grayish skin was thin and tore easily, and some of them had flesh grafts where their vertebrae had broken the bonds of their bodies. Their faces were those of tortured animals, melted and deformed beyond the semblance of humanity. But they had come from human mothers.

   Magdus had no friends besides Crespus. Having spent most of his life indoors, he was pale, and his gut hung in front of his frame like a useless appendage. His arms were thin and covered with black hairs. He would wake up around noon and assemble a sandwich of white bread and bologna. If he were planning on going out that night, he would pull a fifth of bootleg vodka down from the cupboard and take several shots of the fiery liquid. "Long live the Republic" he would say with bitterness. Then he would light a cigarette and walk back and forth, fixing a hard gaze at nothing in particular. It was very dangerous, what he did.

Crespus was the opposite of Magdus. He was tall and dapper, a good dresser and a quiet personality. When Magdus would drink too much and scream at the despot on the television, Crespus would sit calmly, smiling the timid smile of a saint and fixing his gaze on the crumbling plaster wall behind the antennae. He was the elder of the pair, but he appeared much younger than Magdus. They had gone to school together, they had sat in the back of the class together, and when the draft was reinstated, they had both tried to kill themselves in the school bathroom together. Another student, one of the more privileged kids that had made their lives hell, had delivered them the ultimate insult by finding their bleeding bodies in the end stall and dragging them, one by one, into the hallway. They had been rushed to the hospital, revived, and declared unfit for combat.  They were the only boys in their class to survive the conflict. Most of their recovery was spent in the asylum with the deformed people.

 

Crespus would write and print the paper; Magdus would distribute it to the loyal subscribers and spend hours attempting to strike up conversations in speakeasies and feel out new customers. It contained the information that the people craved; news from the front, along with words of encouragement, words of hope, and most of all, words of dissent. "For purposes of secrecy," Crespus would write, "it is impossible for us to name our sources of information, but I assure our readers that these sources are legitimate and accurate." The paper was utter bullshit. Crespus would write it all without standing up from his typewriter, a cigarette dangling from his lips as they moved soundlessly, dreaming up stories that sounded like they could be true. It didn't matter. All the news that was ever on television was that the Republic was winning the conflict, and it wouldn't be long until all the brave soldiers could come home. Half the able bodied males were drafted as soon as they turned seventeen. The paper paid the bills.

 

 

Copyright 2008, Gabriel S. New

If anyone has any questions about this piece, please ask me.

They should definitely be paid attention to. I think it's irrational to expect someone who is drastically younger or drastically older than you to have an equivalent thought process. Sure you can get along, and you can get along in bed just fine. But the age difference will alter your relationship, for better or for worse. I mostly date nineteen year old girls, and we get along perfectly. I was in a relationship with a fourteen year old girl once; and it was an utter disaster. She wanted to go play with her friends. So there can be both positive and negative consequences of large age differences-it would be a mistake to pretend that there isn't a difference.

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