The truth is I just want to talk to you
I miss you
I don’t know what to do
I am lost
That is the truth

I need you I look for you I call for you
Where are you when will you talk to me
I heard that the mongol hordes killed all
who did not submit. I heard they executed
five percent of the world’s population
Then I heard it was more like ten percent
But then again there were a lot less people in the world then
and they did some good things too
I heard that people are naturally evil
and that’s why they swagger and leer about
I heard they’ll rape and pillage you if they can
That’s what they say, the bodies, babes, bastards
I hear that what we have here and now is a miracle
This beautiful lull in the all-pervading violence
Just a mass-shooting a week to let out a little spleen
here and there
What a deal!
Please talk to me please tell me
it’s not too late
to seek a newer world, a better one, one where kindness thrives
Please tell me we’ll walk together the road to freedom
Please tell me
the age of the conquerors is leaving us
and now we’ll floating waltz on apolitical serve-the-community bureaucracy and situational 30-minutes-to-safe-and-sound comedies
Tell me war is slipping away like a victim of dementia, forgetting what it thought it was while subtly realizing life goes on without it.
Tell me we can and will gently, and without having to close the coffee shops and their eclectic and stretch-you-but-not-too-much playlists, do what’s best for everyone.
Tell me you’ll be my girl and we’ll be safe and thrive in a world more interested in joyful shared creation than the way a gutted man’s wife and farm belong to the one jerking the blade up, through the entrails, to the lung cavity.
Some kids we kill and some we keep, depending on age, gender, whim.
Tell me you’ll be my girl and it’ll be nice for us —
sharing a life both fun and wholesome
Talk to me, if you would please
I want to hear what’s on your mind in your heart beneath your smile shining so bright

Author: AW
Editor: BW
Copyright: AMW

That part of you goes all the way down
And it spreads all the way through
And it is private and thus difficult to talk out
And it is something you share with almost no one and thus hard to work out
For all these reasons, it is really cruel and wrong to hurt someone here, in this way.
They cannot escape it, and often they live their whole lives without being able to address it, so it turns gangrene and what should be beautiful and sweet and cuddly is dark and broken and shameful and so lonely, so uncuddled, so lonely all the way down and all through.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

Where is my girl in this world
Where is my friend without end
Where is the smile that piles
iself upon itself like a python
coiling, gathering, smoothly flickering
with his or her long elegant pink forked tongue?

I need you in the nighttime and all day too
I ask for you where my heart sinks down all through
the mushy entrails where I my guts order my fate
Would you come along please before it is too late
for me to unwind this mistake
unwind myself to become myself
And live here and clear wide awake
And shiver no more on stone shelves
a thousand miles beneath
the garden and its sunshine smile?

277.
The many dragons are still on Dragon Island, where you and I have only dreamed. No, I’ve never been. Never seen the craggy-columned basalt ring surrounding the flat-topped sparkling-granite Speaker’s Stone. Nor gazed upon the soft meadows dissolving into a hundred amorphous islands as the long arm of the Vorgas Fjord wanders into the oldest governing body/convention (the Alþingi), in the oldest place of government (the Þingvellir). Does a fjord make itself known? Does a fjord have its say? Does a fjord influence the politics of its day and of days gone by? Well, if ever a fjord performed such un-fjord-like wonders, that fjord would be the Vorgas Fjord.

I will tell you, and it becomes anyways apparent in cracks and fractures and cracks and crevices and nooks and nicks and nooks and crannies, that the Magic Realm had already at the time of our telling a long and healthy tradition of that most perfect of philosophical / metaphysical positions: a Something Deeperist faith in Pure Love. So why, you might wonder, were follies the likes of the now mopily and even a little ruefully sidelined Blaise Pirouette and the desperately advancing Momrath Bellingworth — or, I guess, Bellingworth Momrath as we originally had it and I suppose must continue keeping it — even possible?

But don’t you see? Haven’t you known ever since we met? A human can spend fifteen years obsessing over Something Deeperism and Pure Love and still lack adequate wisdom. So why can’t a collection of interrelated civilizations who’ve spent a couple thousand years musing upon and even formalizing and codifying Something Deeperism and Pure Love contain a number of reckless fools, careeningly indifferent to the Truth of Something Deeperism and Pure Love? Are not the infinite strands within a single mind an easier organizational project than the ten million infinite strands between ten million minds?

The dragons are, on the whole, pretty mellow, pretty gentle, pretty wise, passing sweet. A thousand years of safety, security, health, adequate wealth, study, reflection, meditation and a cultural consensus around and spiritual practices yearning after Something Deeperism and Pure Love are generally good for a body. Still, no dragon is his or her own idea — let alone the ideals of their books of law and love, and it is difficult to not succumb to some spiritual laziness when everything’s so safe and pleasant and easy for so long and wide and great. That is to say, not even the dragons are as wise as you and I mean to be when we feel the cool spring air and bright morning light on our face and in our lungs, when we look out onto the canyon so deep and redrock where we’ve come with our parents, cousins, and grandparents: a little day trip, a couple hours caravan in three big bug-faced vans; an infinite stretch of wonder wrapped up in companionship and dotted with chicken salad with green onions and celery chopped up fine and also pickle relish in there with the mayonnaise and complimenting the Pringles; yes, I believe it all adds up, I believe it all gels in the blue sky over the rocky desert abyss.

Author: B Willard
Editor: A Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

It takes a while to stop a rig running down the hill
It hurts a while being gutted by a curving fish knife
so that your innards plop out onto the bright clean white-tan square-cornered concrete
with little flecks of smashed glass glinting the summer sun every which way

I’m really sorry, though I can’t quite remember anymore what for
I feel sleepy like a small child unable to keep his eyes open
on a grungy old matted light green carpet in front of a giant wooden TV like we had as the 70s gave way to the 80s
Why didn’t anyone put him to bed?
And now one side of his faces smooshes into the rug — his open mouth drools on the dusty carpet with its squished-down swirling (like a battered toupee)
And so asleep he mindlessly breaths and drinks in that icky old rug
Someone should’ve put him to bed long ago!

Goodbye
I meant the nice parts
Or at least I wanted to
more than I ever wanted to do anything
which I think counts as love
for humans mortals creatures

I’m sorry but mostly just sad
to say goodbye like this

I had wanted to know you
I will go now
I will pick up the sleeping child
and put him in his cozy bed (though admittedly not shaped and decorated like a race car, as is one of his friend’s)
And then go back to the living room and turn off the giant wooden box with built-in side speakers
Then I’ll go over to the kitchen, in linoleum, yellow swirling vaguely flower patterns, all the plastic countertops held in place with grooved metal edges. I will turn on the overhead light. I will not turn on the little black and white TV (all in black and white plastic; a small screen, but still a pretty big butt). I will sit at the kitchen table where we have grilled cheese sandwiches with Campbells tomato soup while watching Charlie Chan on the little black and white TV. I will sit there and write a little note that says I’m sorry it came out wrong, that I didn’t just tell you that I always wished to really get to know you, and then stop! and let you decide how to respond, and that now I’ll be off and I wish you the best and goodbye for now

I love you
I don’t know why
I don’t know if I could be who you need
It would’ve been best just to tell you the first part; the other two parts are understood anyway

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.
[Mark 16]

But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee
Because Peter is hiding in shame, having betrayed Jesus three times before the cock crowed — as predicted — ?

Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus. Mary was a common name. The “Magdalene” part probably means she was from the fishing village Magdala. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus exorcises seven demons from her. The idea that she was a prostitute is a confusion introduced in 591 by Pope Gregory. She was one of the women who supported Jesus’s ministry, so many suppose she came from at least some wealth.

Mary the mother of James the Younger might be Mary Jesus’s mother’s sister; or maybe not. James the Lesser or Younger was one of two disciples named James, the other being James the Greater or Older.

Salome is sometimes thought to be the mother of James the Older.

Mark mentions all three women as being present at Jesus’s crucifixion.

Only the Gospel of John claims that Jesus’s mother was present at the crucifixion, so I’m going to guess she wasn’t there. But I don’t know. And what would she be doing instead?

Sunday

Two women with grown disciples and one
who I don’t know if she had kids or no.
With spices sweet they’d dress his corpse. He’d won
his race and finished — as all who come and go —
not merely last, but dead last. Noth’in do’in
but spicing, mourning, and remembering.
Remembering when! Yet here in the tomb:
A young man sits in white, affrightening,
though saying: Affright yourselves not! This Jesus
is risen. Tell the others — Peter too:
He fucked up, but people do.
What could they but tremble and be amazed?
What were they but women at a friend’s grave?
In silence, preparing dinner for those
who’d spent three years of short lives at his side.
Afraid to speak what she now knows,
one Mary of many struggles to find
an answer. Searches through her heart, and seeks
their eyes. Her heart, their eyes: All glance down meek.
Not heart nor eyes explain what heart and eye
did feel and see at that stone where he did not lie.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

It occurs to me
in so many languages
sounds along the lines
of mama
mean mother, mom, mommy, mama
meaning that
since time immemorial newborn babies have had the audacity
to name their mothers
and their mothers
have had the humility
to go with it

what has me wandering the wharves
looking for crime without purpose
and love without affection
what squishes my blue sailor
tight-weave wool skullcap
down around my bronzed crown
what pulls my strong thighs and sculpted ass
into my white linen sailor bell-bottoms
what squeezes pimples on my legs
and ashes a slow cigarette over my victim’s mangled torso
what drives me on from port to port
always ready for a drink a cunt an ass a knife a murder and theft
stashed into my memory chest
kept to incriminate me
someday some golden day
some wonderful final day
on the way to the gallows
where my corpse will shit and cum and piss itself
one final time
one final victory
over the rules and regulations
of my time and our place

Querelle,
I despise you
I loathe you
I condemn you
I remember you
I miss you
I am sorry for
what we were
and what we became
for
what we knew
and
the conclusions we drew

Querelle,
I want a do-over
I want God again
and someone who cares
I wish for friendship
and a justice as kind and gentle
as the red sun sinking in a blue and yellow sky into the soft waves blue now gray now steel now stolen when
we were young
and proud of our bullshit
bullshit’s always proud
of itself

Querelle,
I am sorry
We misunderstood one another
and the rest
That was our pleasure

Querelle,
I’m tired
and alone

Querelle,
What now?

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

They listened to some fool