A Game Of
REMINGTON GRAVES
“Shall we?”
“I’m not sure, I follow, Dad.”
“Well, let’s see. You sneak out the window at all hours of the night, I caught you smoking, your grades are deteriorating, and that hair cut is a goddamn disaster. Not to mention, your principal called me again. Another meeting. Something about you cutting someone. It’s time we talk.”
“I don’t know why you have to be so hard on me all the time. And that was an accident. It was more of a nick.”
“Fiskar, if I don’t stay on top of things, who will? Your sister, Elm, has outstanding grades. Outstanding!”
“I take out the trash, don’t I?”
“You take out the trash. Really, Fisk? That’s your defense? You know, sometimes, just sometimes, I just want you to try a little harder. That’s all.”
“You mean, you don’t want me to make you feel like a failing father, is what you mean.”
“It’s not like that, son. You know that.”
“Let’s ask Elm if she ever gets this much crap from you.”
“Watch it, Fisk.”
“I’m serious, Dad.”
“Elm! Come out here. Your brother and I would like a word with you.”
“Yes, Dad?”
“It appears we are going to have another family meeting.”
“Great. Here we go again. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Dad, somebody called for you last night. Left a message.”
“Well, spit it out, young lady.”
“He said, ‘Tell Slate this is his college buddy Chance’.”
“This always happens. Okay, I guess I should return his phone call first.”
∞
The Hunted
REMINGTON GRAVES
What trite trembling did negate thy tender troubles? What agony did beckon again and again from surreptitious depths, to assuage the flooding of present regrets, to hammer furiously at unknown desires—yearnings passively vapid and banal. Illicited and vacuous, ignominous the occultation of your hunger for him…for he breathes into your branches—the blazing breath of summer winds—he winks silently in the distant stars exploding—hums your melody in the flute of Schubert Symphony 9, and on your fingertips he persistently remains in pastel pink and stained disdain for mediocrity, for all the complacency—all that is mundane.
“I did my hair for you…I know you wanted it…and thought of you as I did it,” she said standing softly with her weight mostly on her left foot. Her disheveled locks nestled upwards and some of it in a glorious mess reached down like a shimmering jelly fish atop a chiseled statuesque countenance of a siren sultrily singing without words, without movement, and summoning the heavens beneath her, unknowingly, to drink me down—her undertow.
And the moment bellowed forth with still longing, the night it had a bleeding heart, and I was the hunter, and somehow also the hunted.
∞
There Is No God
PENN JILLETTE
I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy— you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love, and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.
But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows, and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough,but it’s everything in the world, and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there’s no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.” So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best
∞
Peacemaker
REMINGTON GRAVES
Like slumbering blurring lions, the baking blonde hills below had closed their eyes, and from atop a black steed he leaned to the right to give his aching back a break. Squeaking gloves carrying numb, hot fingers waved in warmheartedly into the mare’s mane and for a moment, squeezed and pulled; she sighed and neighed, telling him such gentle gestures meant the world to her. As he lifted his gaze to the haze of the faintly pink expanse, he counted three volitant vultures venturing south of no north.
”C’mon, Lilith,” he uttered almost in a whisper with a tender tug of the reigns. “We are not alone.”
Caressing the worn handle on his Colt with a bruised left thumb, beads of sweat scaled down his stubble, broken black boots twisted in their holsters, and with a hungry belly, he began the arduous trek down into Hell’s Valley with an undaunted twist of the mustache and a winking eye to the sky. Death was less than a day behind and he had found that was the secret of his success: to furtively feel whilst inhaling the perfumed breath of the void on one’s neck, claiming to rip you asunder, to uproot you and extinguish you into the blackest and quietest of nothings. And so, unkowningly, he became the agile agent of annihilation—Death’s Back Door Man. For in his pursuits to find a worthy contender, he had failed to realize the ultimate truth of his birth-given-scripted truth: He was Death.
And the horse’s shoes clipped then clopped…the sequence of beats in left-hind left-fore, a brief pause and right-hind, right-fore; each hoof creating its own cavernous sound in echoing angelic sequence…resounding through the canyons…spreading to the valley…gliding above water streams below.
∞
From Here To Wherever
REMINGTON GRAVES
O Humanoid, why not hail hosanna and discard haughty heterodoxies—report to headquarters immediately, run down labyrinthine hallways, huffing and puffing on your way…the cosmos slowly whirring, stars meticulously spelling thy name in twinkling array.
Monstrous engines humming. Metal blades delaying. Envelopes granulating.
O Superman, without a dial tone how can the forlorn stand? Sententious citadel, harboring a holy hell, a pale rider with sword in hand…and the stamp of the psychic vamp with his fragrance of defeat waves through a black hole—no longer with a right hand.
Oscillator Operator
from here to wherever
Rusting in the circuitry
of blasphemous endeavor
∞