It Was In The Water

It Was In The Water
By Douglas Strong

Quarantine rose with the rows,
piled in ditches and the backs of trucks,
asleep behind hospitals and pews.

Her hand was a pebble in mine as we chose our way,
under barricaded bridges and scarred streets

--weren’t home when we first heard the news--
anchors report the new flu, and
the report of gunsmoke into crowds whose
only crime was not want but need.
For shots ran dry as the vaccines pumped
clean; not clean like an operating room but clean

as a life reamed from the corpse.

Smoke like souls wound veils while wind
picked muddy paper and leafy plastic bags up
in spirals like eddies of a river
from the street. I pushed her behind me
so that she wouldn’t see the skinny pale vagrant prostrate,
arms stretched stiff crucifixion wide,

pointed towards us from the sidewalk.

Papers Found While Re-flooring The Living Room

five

our brave soldier

was the last

over the fence; the rusted wire

cat scratched through her fatigues,

and she died two weeks later,

with an arched back like rigor mortis

in a motorless parking lot

i could see hollow eyes watching us as we ran from the fence,

slender tendon fingers entwined in the chain links

four

our smiling neighbor

was stealing food

and caught a bug; a spider

bite racing black up his veins,

and he died spare minutes later,

with eyes frosted mustard gas yellow

in a rusted red, shallow playground

i could see hollow eyes watching us from the schoolhouse windows,

two emaciated silhouettes illuminated by the orange evening sun

three

our quiet priest

was the first

to be strangled; bent twig fingers

emerging from the dark behind him,

and he died as we ran,

with a croaking sound

in a smoking, shrouded parish

i could see hollow eyes watching us when i locked the front door

moonlight incandescent off the ringed slickness inside their vacant sockets

two

my boy

i can see hollow eyes atop slender figures watching me now

three of them are tall and one of them is small

one

i

am alone

in this house; no one to

sit next to or talk to or hold,

and i think i am done,

even as i write

in an isolated house

i can hear windy whispers shadowing me now

promising that they’ll take me in if i’m feeling lonely

[rough stuff] Burial Moon

Here is a little bit of something I just wrote, and did a quick edit of. I told Kevin about a new writing technique I've been trying and while I like the results, I would like to hear what you guys think of it. Is it more interesting than the way I'd been writing before? Worse?

Uhm, anyway, here it is.

Rain bothered.

Rain bothered. Jack didn’t think rain served any other purpose nearly as well as it served to annoy. Rain rivered down the glass of his windshield, smearing the lights of the lampposts and the passing orange tail lights floating by his car. The radio blared, static and fuzz drowning Cobain’s pained crooning.

Phrenia, Bilateralis, Chapter Four

Her eyes opened. Sunlight streamed in through the window. She slid off the bed to her feet, stood, and stretched. It had been a dreamless sleep. Fortunately so, she thought. What if she had dreamt of the real world?

The Old Oak Tree We Never Sat Under

phone calls when all was dark outside.
your voice was soft; but not a whisper.
this; when the last thing i thought i could be
was not alone.

smile and widening eyes and
excited pronouncement of my name.
sweatshirt armored arms wrapping
around me.

we talked for miles on cracked concrete,
on the shoulder of the road that split
my second home in two. tell me if
you remember too.

if you do,

look for me
under the eaves
of the leaves
of the old oak tree
we never sat under.

Twisted Strings, Tendons Red, and Heavy Memory

A great burlap sack, hanging on the edge.

Held up by a few pieces of string,

I think it will rip. What’s in there? Memories

of autumn yellow, orange, and red;

the green leaves of summer brown and dry

on the ground. But it did fall, a torrent

of forgotten rotten apple cores, a torrent
letting loose all over my head. Sharp edges
worked through and sawed at the shrink wrap. Dry,

brittle from the heat, it gave way. I found strings,

tying together past and future, known and unknown, a red

knot of tendons in the present. I caught memories.

I lied. It wasn’t on a pallet at the depot, I found the memories

locked away in her journal. My knife was fingers, to torrent

her scrawled thoughts into my mind, word by word, reddened

faces dampened with tears, given willingly. I rubbed the edge

of the pages with my finger until I cut them, high strung

on emotion. I rubbed blood wherever my name appeared and watched it dry.

I can’t easily explain my madness, why I prefer my cereal dry.

Locked in her diary was where she kept her memories.

Mine stewed at the bottom of a well; bucket held by strings

too weak to hold on. I keep falling in; water washes me down in a torrent

like a spider down a drain or children caught in a river. On the edge,

looking down, is her. Eyes wide in horrified confusion. Red

is the color of blood, her and mine. Laceration is red.

Who killed the sun in my head? I did. She did. Do stars ever dry

out? Fry out? Die out? Could she or I? If I stand at the edge

of my grave, can I look down and see my body, memories

shrink wrapping my arms and legs together? I struggle to grasp this torrential

pain, inability to forfeit the road ahead to the road behind. Strung

together to where the minute hand has already been. Time the strings

that loop up under the sawdust smelling pallet. Red

hands, rough and calloused from lifting the past’s steel lockbox. I torrent

books and movies mostly, but music too. Old things, cobwebbed and dry

from years ago, still weigh down on my harddrive. They’re my memories,

unable to drift towards dark Elysium. Off the ocean’s edge.

Watch; the waterfall torrents along the edge,

over twisted strings like tendons red,

snapping dry when the water stops, from heavy memory.

Phrenia, Bilateralis, Chapter Three

“Sibyl, wake up.”

Phrenia, Bilateralis, Chapter Two

“I have a cousin who lives in Flannerytown,” the barkeep said. “His name is Taylor Annocene. He runs an Inn.”

Sibyl nodded.

“His daugher has been working for me for the past ten years, but she’s since decided that she wants to return with the money she’s made, and start her own Inn in Flannerytown. I think that idea is ludicrous. But I’m not going to stop her.”

“Alright,” Sibyl said, “I mean, I understand.”

He gave her a dull look that implied that he understood what alright meant. “I’ll fetch her right quick...” he turned towards the counter, behind which was a doorway. He cupped his hands, and shouted, “CAROLINE!”

Goodnight, Horselover Fat

An unfortunately one-sided relationship,

Isn’t it?

to read an author’s work.

I was halfway through his book when it happened;

a golden beam shot from between the valley of the pages,

striking my forehead.

Following the path hewn by the beam, I drifted,

into the deepest reaches of his mind;

finding characters who lived in him, were a

part of him. He shared these shards,

With me!

though he didn’t know who I was,

we hadn’t met, not in a police station, or while

brokering a deal for a new identity.

It was as if I’d boarded a bus, and sat down next to him

by chance, and he’d leaned over and started talking

telling me;

that we don’t know what’s real, that our senses

might be lying to us. He said a pink beam, reflected

from an Ichthys necklace, had imparted wisdom

onto him. He said that nothing could exist without

god, and then leaned in to add that he wasn’t sure

he even believed in god.

But it wasn’t on a cacophonous bus; it was in a book.

Written on the page was his heart and his soul, and I needn’t have any

compunctions against looking in.

I wanted to meet this man, to shake his hand and to say thank you. And,

I wanted to chip away a piece of myself, to show something of mine, like he

had shown a piece of himself to me.

So I started my computer;

listened to the hum as wires tsk-

tsked and the disk drive spun;

online, I found his books that I’d read; followed the link

with his name, me being excited enough at this point

to look up any book signing tours to find out when

I could just tell him

if nothing else

that I loved his books. I discovered his name,

which was not Horselover Fat, although he called himself that once.

His name was Philip Kindred Dick, and he was

born in 1928, and he

died in 1982.

Golgotha

"To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far."--Cecil Rhodes

We gathered on the dock and watched it; a flaming ship,
trailing smoke and sloughing strips of steel skin.
Fins of gashed and guttered ripped hull like lips
slipped from skeletal metal bounds as infernal seraphim
with wings of zealotry. We were sure that the war
would never reach our streets and cluttered homes,
yet streaks of light and our defeat showed our error.
Foreign men and women from distant stars come
to tell electric tales of how our far and distant
orbit holds promise for cracks of ore and molten
veins of golden currency. They promised to shatter
our castes and social bonds. Shackles of we were given, platinum,
until our grandchildren grew thin and old to watch the tugs
pull our blood from the earth and churn it all together like mud.

Still haven't seen that movie.

There was a movie poster in my best friend’s basement,

of a white mask with melting empty eyes,

the open, gaping mouth in a permanent

wail. In the dark, the face floated and

the poster around it might as well

have vanished. That image fed

the first nightmare that

I can remember.

Figures

in caliginous

robes drifting up

towards me, from

void, at the bottom

of the basement stairs.

Their flight did not elicit squeak

or screech from the wooden steps.

Their outstretched sleeves contained neither

hands or fingers. And although their pursuit was

sluggish, their empty, distended mouths, confessed

that I horrified them. My existence was just an occult

depravity. I thirsted to scream. But because they could not,

I had to wait,

for when I

woke

up.

Where I Used To Live

empty cans of chef boyardee
contents divorced from the can
into spotted blue plastic bowls
chocolate milk in a tall glass
sweet on the tongue and later sour in the stomach

streets between stacks of cluttered
newspapers
most older than the eldest brother
there’s enough room on the kitchen table, between the towers,
for the bowl, the glass, the steel spoon, and the empty can

stained carpets
hairballs lonely and unattended
scattered wind-up toys from happy meals
a cracked window behind the television and a speaker system,
whose wires have never been connected

a pink room upstairs with flares of flowers on the bed’s quilt
a blue room too, a blue sweatshirt forgotten on the floor
the other three rooms stuffed
with boxes of magazines and stained gold necklaces and expired
coupons for food lion and walmart

christmas tree in the study though
it’s fall and the tree’s been there since winter’s freeze
winking red light on the wireless router
like a single christmas light or from a life support system
for the computer long dead on the desk

a ripped alimony or child support check
under the keyboard
from a tall lawyer I used to see
and
you want to see again

Phrenia, Bilateralis, Chapter One

The Exitus Stone glowed. It had no specific hue or tint, it simply glowed, and when one gazed upon it they were sure that it was a light source, even though at night, it would provide no illumination to objects around it. In the days Sibyl had already spent within Phrenia, she’d never gotten used to the Exitus Stone’s unique properties.

why am I going back to this?

I guess it is because this is such a nice platform for, like, putting a story up in a place where you guys can read it quickly.

I guess I'm realizing that tumblr isn't the be all end all, and that when it really comes down to it, I prefer hearing from people I know about the stories and things I write, rather than no one at all.

And this website just feels so much more casual. This isn't a professional place by any means, so if I want to, I can just throw up a rough draft of a thing and not give a shit because I know it's just friends that end up here anyway!

Fantasy

Jeanne was the one who’d invited me down to the woods that night. Tall, slender Jeanne, with sparkling bottle green eyes and silky tanned skin, and a smile that never really went away, even when she was mad or upset. Who was I to say that I didn’t want to go.

The Beginning of the End

The last pieces of brick and shale jumped down the slope in smaller and smaller arcs to land on the concrete around Keiki’s feet. He was still on his back, his heart beating at the inside of his ribcage as though it wanted to be free. He could feel a pain in his side and he pressed his hand against it, softly through his jacket and shirt, and winced. But, he thought, it might just be a bruise.