Old Friends (pt. 2)

         They came to the end of the moving strip, just short of a door. The Count led them through and they were on one of the upper tiers of the rotunda of the Grand Hall. In the vast open space their steps and Dracula’s voice echoed. “This palace can house twenty thousand people but I choose to live alone now—I even dismissed my personal servants a few weeks ago. You and I are the only persons on this entire planet.” He lapsed into silence and Van Helsing said nothing. The radius of the rotunda was over two hundred feet and traversing a quarter of the circle took several minutes.

          Finally they came to a radiating hallway—like many they had already passed—and stepped onto another moving strip. As they got under way Dracula asked, “What do you remember last before I captured you?”

          “I had gone to England—London—to meet a literary and theatrical man. I remember leaving his home one night and a cab approached. I hailed it and got in—the next thing I remember is you torturing me.”

          “You do not believe me but I am indeed so sorry for that treatment. I was in that cab—I had mesmerized the driver and was awaiting you. Some time before that I had broken into your lodgings in Vienna while you slept one night and read your memoir and your correspondence with Mr. Stoker. I preceded you to London and was prepared to act upon your arrival. I killed you—made you undead, like myself. I returned to Mr. Stoker’s home sometime after midnight dragging your corpse. It was a most effective demonstration and he chose to cooperate with me at once. You may be pleased to hear that Mr. Stoker published your memoir—as a work of fiction, I’m afraid. There were some significant revisions—I was instrumental in most. It was a tremendous success and I secretly held a portion of the publishing and theatrical rights. I was wealthy before, but that book made me a fortune. That is another debt I owe you. Careful, now. We’re going to step off at that door coming up on the left—it leads to my personal apartment.”

Advice 4 Singers

Always feed grits to your choir

Because there is harmony with hominy

Written with apologies to Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the capital, son
That would stand your hair on end.
Our Republican reps cash their booster’s checks
Then decide which laws to bend.

Those folks on the hill with hands in the till
Never want their Fox viewers to see
That their public lives are a pack of lies
As revealed on Maddow TV.

Talk Is Cheap

Our English teacher
drove us back from the debate.
We were in the backseat
nuzzling, kissing.

I caressed skin
between bra and panties.

My car was at the school,
and when I drove her home,
she touched my hand.
“Love me up a little.”

I was 16.
I worked with her mother at the hospital.

I said I’d like to…
but I just couldn’t.

She slid away from me,
opened the door,
repeated something under her breath
as she walked unaccompanied to her door.
I think it was
“Talk is cheap.”

VALLEY FOG

Travelling north
my TR3 talking to me
with its low hypnotic growl
Riding the sound
Rolling into Bakersfield
on 99
Clear cold
January morning
Engine heat
warming my thighs
Claudia on my mind
Humming
Shall We Gather at the River

I was
Already honking
in her driveway
Seeing her framed
in the light of the open door
Holding her
still unbalanced
from extracting myself
Kissing her
Her dog Bruno
patiently eagerly waiting
to carry my trumpet case
carefully in his big jaws
The aroma of
Swedish meatballs

Overpass
The highway dipped
then climbed
into
Blind terror
A white wall
A white shroud
Like unexpected death

Old Friends

An old man, incredibly old and maybe no longer a man, but a vigorous man, if such he were, for all of the centuries. He walked the halls of his grand palace and reveled in melancholy, a growing affliction of his spirit.

Castle Dracula was a huge edifice—the North Wing alone extended three quarters of a mile out from the Grand Hall and stood eight stories high by a hundred yards wide. A maze of ballrooms, terraces, stairways, galleries and alcoves, baroque details, stone carvings and elaborate woodwork created an intricate texture of niches and recesses; vaulted ceilings, archways and colonnades pulled the eyes to long distances and deep dark spaces. Automated lighting accented viewlines and cast dramatic shadows, turning on at his approach and blinking out as soon as he passed. It was a long walk, he could have made the journey much more quickly by riding the sliding floors and elevators in the parallel, efficient network of service corridors. But he wanted to think and he felt like indulging the luxury of newly precious time—with only a few hours left to a thousand years of existence, spending twenty extra minutes traversing the palace felt sweet and decadent. And, if truth were told, he was more than a little apprehensive of his mission.

At last he descended the final narrow stairway—below the wine cellars—and came to the heavy iron doors leading to the dungeons. This had once been an important center of his existence but his days of pleasure in tormenting his enemies were long in the past. He took a large ring of keys from his pocket and began trying the different ones in the lock, finally finding a fit with the seventh key. It took him some minutes to open a doorway that had once stood wide, guarded full-time by twenty heavily armed professional sadists. The lock was sticky and he struggled to turn the key, fearing it would break off. Hinges groaned rustily as he pulled the half-ton valves open. The lights from here on were no longer automated and he had to locate the master panel in the dungeon control room. In fact he needed no lights to find his way but he was accustomed in recent ages to operating under custom spectrum lighting to maintain the tone and texture of his skin, and so, not remembering which circuits would be needed, he switched on the lights all throughout the prison.

Found Letter

Found on the ground of a homeless campsite in Chico California...

I don't deserve what I have
But I'm highly gratified for her
I've done some wrongs to her
And she forgives me
I don't know why
I'm trying to do better
I really am
But it's real hard in my head
I've never had someone to trust, still don't
And I've never loved someone that much again, never will again
I want to show her that
I really can change - I did and got smart
I believe I can
And so does she, if she's still here
Thank you, Kay, for being my beauty
I'm sorry for being the beast
I will always love you

Signed
Love
Grizzly
the one who got smart