24 Postcards
From the End of the World
Postcard
Dear citizens of Earth,
We are the defeated and the betrayed. We are the vagabonds begging forgiveness. We are the crippled and the maimed. We are alone and unloved. We are the aged and the weary. There is no happiness or joy. There is no depression or tears. When we venture to your town, you walk past us as though we were invisible. We exist only in the memory of stray cats and trees. Here at the end of the world there is no light and the nights are never-ending. Strange things happen here. Failed businessmen jump off tall buildings and keep falling, never to hit the ground. Beautiful women beg on the street for kisses and hugs. Politicians donate their wages to the poor. When a young girl cries, saxophones wail in the streets. Salesmen give their merchandise away for free. When it hails, yellow and red tulips fall from the sky. There is no wealth here because money does not exist. There is no crime. Policemen sing in karaoke bars: songs about love and loss. Music is the only currency. Inside every heart there is a song waiting to be sung: songs of bitterness and confusion; songs of life and death; songs of salvation and redemption. These postcards are songs too, strange songs sung by soft whispering voices echoing at the end of the world.
Hello and goodbye,
from the man
with the invisible limp.
Time
Dear supermodel with the bucked-tooth lisp,
I am a history professor. Last night I had a strange dream. The government had invented a time machine, but there was a problem – it could not bring people back to the present: a one-way ticket to the past. The world was on the brink of World War Three and oblivion. The plan was to send me back to the garden of Eden and to tell Adam and Eve of the horrors of the world so they could warn future generations. A few seconds later I appeared in Eden standing next to Eve. She was beautiful and perfectly formed, but Adam was a few feet away and hadn’t fully evolved. He was half ape, half man, and had not learned to speak. I took Eve aside and told her of humanity’s dark future. I told her of Jesus and the crucifixion, and of the murder and pillage in the centuries to follow. I told her of the reign of Mussolini, and the destruction caused by the atom bomb. She listened carefully and a worried frown appeared on her brow. She looked so beautiful I asked her to be mine. Eve thought long and hard, and every second felt like an eternity. She looked up at me and told me she couldn’t because I was from the future, and mixing our blood might cause problems with our children. She put her arm around my shoulder and said that she knew Adam was a bit dumb but that she liked dark and silent men anyway. She told me we could still be friends, it wasn’t the end of the world. I woke up with the feeling of an intense and unbearable longing.
Cordially yours,
the organ grinder from hell.
Concubine
Dear Pontius the red-necked parrot,
I’m miserable when I shouldn’t be. Any man would die for my job. I’m paid by my boss to make love to all the secretaries in his company. It is my duty to keep them sexually satisfied so they can keep their minds focussed on the job, and not get distracted by life outside of work chasing boyfriends. I have sex three times a night, six days a week, and each time is with a different girl. They are all beautiful and could easily find work as models. I am a lucky man, yet I feel so empty. There is one condition. I am not allowed to talk to the girls or kiss them, because the boss does not want them to get emotionally attached to me and lose concentration at work. I am there for their physical needs only. At first it was heaven, but soon I began to miss the little things I hadn’t thought important before. I miss the laughter of the one you care about when you tell them a funny joke. I miss the proud smile on their faces when you are introduced to their friends and family. I miss the intense look on their faces as they squeeze a pimple on your chin. I miss their wisdom when they give you advice on a dilemma you thought could not be solved. But most of all I miss smelling the scent from their bodies the first time you kiss them. I feel as lonely and forsaken as Christ on the cross. I’m in heaven but it feels like hell.
Kind regards,
from the sad hunchback
from a place too far to care.
Bicycle
Dear Genghis Khan and his seven dwarves,
A friend of mine told me a story about her twin sister Mary, who was overweight. She went to see her family doctor. He told her she had to exercise more and gave her the address of a bicycle shop. He said it was important that she told the owner that he had sent her. She was given a blue bicycle with wooden wheels. She decided she would ride it home and then lock it in the garage forever. But when she arrived home, she couldn’t get off the bicycle because her feet were stuck to the pedals. She rode through the afternoon and into the night. When she wanted to sleep she closed her eyes and the bicycle steered itself, the pedals working on their own. Every morning at seven-thirty a.m. and every night at seven-thirty p.m. no matter where she was, the same man would be waiting on the roadside to hand her special dietary food in a brown paper bag as she rode past. She rode non-stop for exactly one year until she came to a glistening blue river. The pedals on the bicycle seized up and it came to a stop. Mary got off and sat on the bank to rest, and noticed her reflection in the clear water. She was slim and her hair had grown down her back. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. It was the man who had always given her food. He stroked her hair and told her she looked beautiful although he’d quite liked her the way she was before. A deep sound rumbled in her throat for a long time, almost like the sound of a cat purring.
Hooray for Hollywood,
from Sally, when I say goodbye
I only mean for ever.
Vow
Dear Sasha the princess of pain,
It is our wedding next week and I feel that it is vital that I share my thoughts with you before we exchange rings. I know that you are beautiful. You are sex on a stick. You are wealthy and move in the same circles as many well-known celebrities. Fashion gurus seek your advice. Children smile when you walk into a room. But I don’t love you for these reasons. I want to marry you because you crack me up every time you open your mouth, and I laugh so much I almost wet myself. I laugh when you are in the bath and fart, and there is a shy mischievous grin on your face as the bubbles rise to the surface. I laugh when we are at the beach and you rip my shirt off and kiss me with a passion centuries old. I laugh when you belch so loud in public that people stop in their tracks. I laugh at when we were at the gift shop and you picked up a candle in the shape and colour of a banana and took a bite. You are not afraid of anyone, and tall strong men with tattoos tremble at your feet and it makes me laugh. Most of all I laugh when you have an orgasm and raise your fists to the sky, shouting “Eureka, thar she blows!” I know that if I marry you I will be laughing till the day I die and will go to the grave a happy man. This postcard is my wedding vow to you.
Love,
from the corpse with
the foolish grin.
Bridesmaid
Dear waitress with the haughty walk,
I was going to kill myself. I had planned it for months. I had withdrawn my savings from the bank and donated them to the local cat’s home. Had written farewell letters to my friends, which I gave to a stranger to post after my death. Had decided which bridge to jump from. I went to the local McDonald’s as I usually do to read the morning paper. Then it happened. Two white stretch limousines stopped outside. It was a wedding party. The bride and groom entered McDonald’s followed by seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen. The bridesmaids wore long orange gowns. They ordered their Big Macs and french fries and sat a few feet opposite me. When they had finished eating the youngest bridesmaid, who was about fifteen years old, caught me staring at them and smiled. She got up and walked to my table. She asked my why I was sad. I told her that life is difficult. She said “Yet it is a sad and beautiful world”. She put her left hand on my forehead and told me not to worry, and that things would get better. Then she walked back to the wedding party, which got up to leave. I called out to her as she was leaving that maybe we’d meet again one day. She turned around, smiled, and said “yes – if you play your cards right”. I forgave her coyness and arrogance because I knew I had been blessed by a silver winged wraith. Maybe I won’t go to that bridge tonight. Perhaps I’ll jump on a plane and travel the world for awhile and come back to this restaurant in a few years and be blessed by some other dark-skinned angel.
Remember me
When there is
no-one to call your name.
Photograph
Dear Bearded Lady with the great hairy sideburns,
I read an article today about a famous photographer who was holding an exhibition in a museum. I walked amongst the crowds who spoke in awe of his camerawork and use of shade and light in black and white stills. I listened to a speaker recount the photographer’s glittering career. I looked at the many famous celebrities smiling at the camera. I then remembered a photograph in one of my mother’s many albums. It was taken when I was three years old and sitting with four other children in my family’s suburban back yard. My sister (who was twelve months younger than me) sat to my left and was looking down at a ragged doll in her lap. To my right were three friends. Gary, my closest friend for many years, was staring hard at the camera. His brother Paul was sitting next to him, looking to his right at Leanne, my next-door neighbour. Even at age two she was a rare beauty. She stared straight at the camera with a Mona Lisa smile. Thirty-five years later I am standing in a crowded museum. I look at the famous celebrities but they mean nothing to me. My sister and I drifted apart and I haven’t seen her for years. I don’t know what happened to Gary, Paul or Leanne. They may be married, in jail, junkies or dead. But that photograph will never fade away in my mind, and I will carry it with me till I die. It may seem strange, but I would trade all the successful lives of those celebrities at the exhibition if I could go back in time to that day when five children sat in the back yard, unafraid and oblivious to the world.
With deepest sympathy
from the solemn bastard
you always see at funerals.
Guru
Dear Sword-swallower of great renown,
My life felt empty. I couldn’t get out of bed no matter how blue the sky. Love and happiness seemed an impossible dream. There was no light at the end of my tunnel. I had to do something. I went to see a guru. He wore a long pale orange robe and had gold earrings in both ears. His head was shaven and he wore a finely trimmed grey goatee. His skin was well-tanned and he walked with a silver-plated cane. He gave me a high quality coloured brochure detailing the many courses on offer. There was rebirthing, meditation and breathing classes, and also monthly retreats. He claimed that there was nothing he could not teach so long as I was prepared to learn. I left his studio and walked down the street. A woman with a pram and her two-year old son were walking towards me. As I walked past her a black purse fell from the pram onto the ground. I picked up the purse and called out to her. She was so surprised that a stranger would help her she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I looked down at her son who was smiling at me because I had made his mother happy. He gave me a smile of unconditional trust. Now I visit his mother once a week and baby-sit her son. I now have a new guru. He only has ten teeth and needs to have his nappy changed twice a day but he teaches me everything I need to know.
All the best …
the fool on the hill
who can’t stop laughing.
Goodbye
Dear Morticia the ice queen,
I’ve known you for a long time and I care for you dearly. I don’t mind that you cheated on me and had sex with a bouncer while I was in the lounge room watching the Greco-Roman wrestling event from the Olympic Games. It’s okay that you hate cats and keep a python in a large fishtank and feed it live kittens. I didn’t think twice when I heard you were the prime suspect in a serial murder investigation involving the death of seven nubile young men (although seven has always been your lucky number.) I wasn’t angry when I found out that you had sabotaged every relationship I had since we broke up by telling my girlfriends that I had AIDS I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled. The fact that you modelled your philosophy of life on the teachings of Charles Manson didn’t shock me. I was a little concerned that your last three boyfriends had died from the same mystery illness and that you were the sole beneficiary of their wills, but I put it down as a strange coincidence. But today I heard the most shocking news yet. I heard that you think Kylie Minogue is a goddess, and that Ricky Martin is the new Elvis. Really, Morticia – that is too much. May God have mercy on you. There are some things I can’t forgive and I think we had better not see each other any more.
All my love,
from Harry Houdini
and his magic sword.
Car
Dear Matilda the walking and talking mannequin,
I said goodbye to my mother today or should I say she said goodbye to me. We had been on the road together for the last five years. I remember that first night together in the car when we left my father’s house. It was my twelfth birthday and they were arguing late at night. They were swearing at each other and then I heard a loud slapping sound from the kitchen and my mother soon came up the stairs and took me by the hand and led me out of the house and into the station wagon. I remember that first night in the car when we left the city and drove through the countryside and sitting in the back seat looking up at the thousands of stars in the cloudless night sky. We drove from one town to the next staying long enough for mum to take countless photographs of people and the town buildings. I remember driving over tall bridges high above the coastal rivers and looking at the mangrove swamps and the whit ibis fossicking in the mud. I remember looking up at the galahs perched high above the power lines on the side of the roads. I remember the many overnight caravans we stayed and meeting one of the owners Jim for the first time and how mum laughed at his strange stories of people who had stayed in his caravan park. Mum always sent him a postcard from each town we stopped at. One night we came to the town where my aunt lived and mum told me that she wanted me to stay there from now on. She told me she loved me and gave me two large boxes filled with many photographs taken during our five years on the road. She said she was going to live with Jim. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, but looking at those photographs now, won’t stop me from missing her.
A warm hello
from the inspector
of broken dreams.
Crap
Dear Shirley temple with the pot-plant-pilfering eyes,
You know that I have been a nurse at the hospital for many years and I never talk about my work, but one of our patients had been admitted for severe constipation and for two weeks we tried every medication and technique to get his bowels moving but nothing worked. One morning he read a letter to me from his girlfriend Cynthia telling him that she was leaving him for a man who has perfect bowel movement. She added that he even had total control of his bladder as well. Then it happened. He said that he needed to go to the toilet but all the cubicles were busy so I gave him a bed pan and closed the curtain around him, A few seconds later he let out a long, loud grunt. I went to pick up the bed pan from him and he had a smile on his face. I looked inside and there in the pan was a perfectly formed faeces in the shape of the letter D. The same thing happened for the next 60 days. Every morning at exactly ten a.m. he would leave a letter from the alphabet in his bedpan. Soon every one was talking about it because he seemed to be leaving a message for the world to see. TV crews appeared and interviewed him. Newspaper journalists wrote daily articles announcing the arrival of each new letter. A movie producer offered him lot of money to make a film about his life. And then on the sixtieth day it stopped. From then on his bowels were normal and left no faeces in the shape of a letter. He discharged himself from the hospital. He had arrived as just another patient and left a national celebrity. That afternoon the newspaper printed his message in full and I couldn’t stop laughing. “Dear Cynthia, you whore you broke my heart, but nothing beats a good purge.”
From Florence Nightingale
and her three Burmese cats.
River
Dear Albert Einstein and your love machine,
I met a man with a golden voice tonight. I am a literary agent and one of my clients was getting married. Theirs was an unconventional wedding. They had hired a restaurant beside the river and had prepared a stage for the band to play after dinner. They had hired a celebrant and after they exchanged their vows a friend of theirs read a poem by Gregory Corso proclaiming that lovers should denounce tradition and rebel together against the world. He had a deep husky voice and I noticed every single woman in the room watching him intently. Later I walked to his table and talked to him and he said he was a writer but didn’t want to talk shop and he asked me to dance. When we got to the dance floor, several other women got up to dance close to us and were all looking at him. They were all beautiful. I knew I couldn’t compete with them and I walked out into the cool night and sat on the pier. I could smell the water below and looked at the lights from the city buildings reflecting on the water. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and he sat down beside me. We spoke for a little while and he told me how his father used to take him swimming in a river when he was a young child. It reminded me when we lived on the bank of the Clarence River and when I was young my father would row my mother and I across to the other side. We kissed for a moment and I let him take me home and as we left the wedding and walked to the car I could hear the music from the band echo through the night.
Cordially yours,
the independent woman
with the need for love.
Losers
Dear Sir, madam and all potential members,
So you want to join our club. The fact that you want to be one of us makes you automatically eligible. No fees apply here at the Losers Club. We pride ourselves that our dreams are small and attainable. Our visions are of the everyday. We don’t crave wealth and power. A friendly greeting from a stranger is money in our vaults. We go to gambling houses and when playing black jack always buy a card when sitting on twenty. We don’t go to the races to gamble but to listen to the hooves pound on the turf when they approach the home turn. We wait in bars and hand red carnations to single women and then leave without asking them anything in return. We go to mental hospitals and visit each new admission telling them we know they are not mad and to just go along for the ride. We go to cemeteries and mourn the dead and forgotten. Our only mission in life is to wander silently through the streets at the end of the world and listen patiently to the stories of the broken hearted. Every night at twelve o’clock we meet in an empty café and recount those stories to each other listening with the ears of hearts and souls. It’s a strange club we run here friend. Money won’t buy you entry. Fast cars and big houses do not impress us But if you can tell us of your sorrow, if you can tell us of your despair, if you get knocked down by life and get up smiling then you are a member of our club because friend sooner or later you will win and your courage and humility will shine like a beacon over the murky waters here at the end of the world.
From the man
with the voice
of seven drunken angels.
Murder
Dear Hopalong Cassidy and his silver maned palomino,
When I first saw Tammara, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She was almost six feet tall with blonde hair and nice sized breasts. She wore a tight fitting silver dress and was dancing alone in the night club. I noticed other men watching her from the bar so I decided to take a chance and walked up to her. I didn’t say a word, I just smiled at her and began to dance keeping my body in time with the rhythm of her dancing. I didn’t try to talk to her but after twenty minutes, I took her hand and led her to a dark part of the nightclub and kissed her. Her lips were full and sensual and no one had ever kissed me like her before. It was always a dream of mine to be with someone like her. I took her to my place and we drank wine and I found out that we many things in common: the same taste in music and literature. We had similar heroes and we even liked the same sports. I knew that I had to make love to her there and then. She stopped me before I could take things further by telling me that her secret fantasy was to feel what it was like to kill someone, to have that power over life and death. I don’t know if she was recruiting me to fulfil her fantasy but I knew then no matter how much I desired her I had to leave. A few weeks later I saw a report on the news of two suspects in a murder case. Tamara was standing beside her new boyfriend smiling at the camera denying any involvement in the murder and blaming her boyfriend. He looked at her crushed and defeated. I studied that smiling killer with the face and body of a Goddess and I thought of her that night dancing alone in the nightclub wearing that glittering silver dress.
Yours in pain,
from the man
who no one loved.
Hate
Dear Samantha the wandering temptress with the serpent eyes,
I hate you because you are so arrogant that you think the world was created for you alone. I hate you because when you think you are scorned, your rage is cruel and merciless. I hate you because you know you are beautiful but don’t realise that this gift is not everlasting and is temporary like a full moon. I hate you because you cannot see that your friends are parasites who feed off your beauty and power. I hate you because your need to be desired is all consuming and is the reason that you breathe. I hate you because you give the secrets of your heart to your friends but deny them to the one who loves you. I hate your delusions that mystery equates to romance. For all your wisdom and experience you don’t realise that to your suitors you are merely a trophy. I hate you because you are prone to fits of rage that could be silenced simply by an honest conversation. I hate your coyness. I hate your vanity and ego. Most of all I hate you because you are the only woman I have ever loved but my desire for you can never be returned. I see the reflection of your cold hard eyes stare at me every day in the mirror and my heart is dying a slow and miserable death. I hate you because I love you.
With fond regrets
from Fabio
the moustache twirler.
Funeral
Dear pretty perfect Priscilla with the enormous beehive,
I didn’t know Paul that well. He was an actor and theatre producer and there were so many people at his funeral it was like an opening night for one of his plays. There were two different generations of people there standing outside the funeral parlour as the coffin was carried into a grey limousine. Elvis Presley was singing “American trilogy” over the loudspeaker and I saw a couple of people smiling at Paul’s final joke. Paul had jumped onto the rails of an oncoming train. I had never looked down into an open grave before and I dropped flowers petal down into the dark pit. I felt guilty that I was probably there more for my own experience of having never been to a funeral rather than to mourn Paul. A fleck of dust flew into my eyes and brought a tear which I tried to wipe away. One of his aunts saw me and grabbed my elbow and said that I must have really loved Paul. She walked away before I could reply and I guess my silent lie was my gift for Paul. I heard he had written a thirty page suicide letter and that he had many dangerous addictions. I never read the letter and would have been too critical anyway. I’ve never liked long speeches. Really Paul, Elvis singing “American” as your coffin left the building that grey winters morning said more to me than any letter could have.
Happiness is a warm gun
from the man who could
not stop laughing.
Thomas
Dear he who chants Mantras while feeding his goldfish,
The twelve men of the Body Corporate sat around the long table waiting for the director to address them. He had entered the room looking sad and dejected. He sat there for a long time before he took a thick manilla folder from his briefcase. After a few minutes of stroking his blonde beard, he finally spoke. He told them that things looked grim and that the apartment building wasn’t attracting high bids on the markets and might have to be knocked down so they could at least sell the land. He looked at them and said there are at least a couple of opportunities out there and they just had to have patience and faith. Thomas was the only one who didn’t seemed convinced. He told the director that it would need a miracle to save them The director replied that he had never failed them before and sometimes miracles did occur. Thomas, said no one could get them out of this mess this time. The directors replied that he had heard on the grapevine that Japanese investors had read the prospectus and were interested and that real estate prices would jump back to the normal level soon. Thomas was quiet this time. The director looked thoughtfully at the group. He knew that one of them in the group would deny that they had this meeting and would leave them to go to another organisation and forsake them. He knew that one of them would betray them and take a lesser offer and sell the property beneath them. He knew that nothing would resurrect their company but he liked his companions and they ordered pizzas and drank red wine and toasted to the success of their venture.
Love from the blue-eyed,
blonde haired surfer
of your dreams.
Hospital
Dear Albert Schweitzer and his harem of pygmy women,
I’ve never considered myself lucky. In fact the opposite. Never won a prize in a lottery. Never married or fathered a child. I have a few friends but don’t see them often. I tried to promote music and poetry to a wider audience but never made any money. Today however I was reflecting that sometimes luck isn’t equated to love or money, or success. I remembered five years ago being taken to a mental hospital and I appealed. My case was reviewed by ten doctors in a large room. They said that I was depressed and I replied that I was a writer and led a depressing life. They told me that if I was a writer, to recite them a poem. I was unaware that it was reported that I might be dangerous and a threat to the community. I recited an allegorical poem about how I gave up a life of violence to become an artist. I could have chosen to recite any number of poems but I chose that one and was released from the hospital the next day. Recently I was admitted into a hospital suffering from burns caused by a cooking accident. The ambulance officer said that I had a mental illness and the admissions clerk did not check my wounds and I was allocated a place far down in the queue. I was in great pain and a nurse walking past saw me grimacing and complained to the clerk. She administered me morphine. Nothing can take away the pain of a lonely life. For a while my burns stopped hurting. Luck sometimes comes in many forms and always when you least expect it.
With respect
from the captain who sailed
out to sea on a ship made from hope.
You
Dear psychotic, philandering prick,
You bastard. You horrible, heinous, hypocrite. You liar. You malicious, manipulating maggot. You. You. You corrupt, conniving con artist. Torturer of innocent victims. Twisted and cruel. Mean and vicious. You architect of the world’s pain. You with the blood of the losers on your hands. You with the head of the dreamer impaled on your sword. You. You who rapes his own muse. You sly scheming, swindling, rattle snake. Hitler’s got nothing on you. You would sell your own children down the river. Traitor. You would make a cannibal eat his own flesh. Fraud. You. You demon. You Machiavellian Prince with the integrity of a serial killer. You Dorian Gray with the heart so black your own reflection in the mirror is turned to stone. You. You. You slut whose soul lights the fire of hell. You untalented, unscrupulous, unoriginal un-poet. You whore. Death stalks you in the dark shadows. You mind fucker. You pompous, pretentious, pontificating ponce. You. You are not my enemy, you are an emema, you lifeless shit. You. You. You. Aghhh. Now I’ve gone and wasted a postcard on you. You. You… You win again.
Die and dance
with the worms
forever you fiend.
Muse
Dear ferocious, unforgiving, femme fatale with the filigree earrings,
I had an idea to write my first poem tonight. I’ve never written even a single line before. Yesterday I broke up with my girlfriend Michelle. We always argued and have broken up many times before but I know it is over now. She always wore opportunity shop clothes, that no matter how ragged they were, looked sexy on her. She was a kleptomaniac and every moment I had to be her lookout as she stole groceries, televisions, ornamental vases. She was the only woman who could satisfy me when giving oral sex and she loved swallowing my semen but it’s all over now. Tonight I felt like an emotional volcano and started writing a poem. I wrote how her smile was like the sun. How her tears were made of moonbeams. How her hair cascaded down like a waterfall. I had almost finished the poem when a vision of her appeared in the candle light. She seemed to be real to me. She looked at me with contempt and took my poem and ripped it up. She told me to stop writing this sentimental crap. She told me to write from my soul not with the syrupy juices of my hallmark card heart. She slapped me on the face and told me to shape up and then she was gone. I then wrote a poem about how I once saw her hanging all her newly dyed black clothes on the line and how they looked like bats hanging from a tree. I wrote how my lust for her was an untamed thing and I must never forget that although she is my muse, she is not some mythological Goddess but a woman made of flesh and blood living forever in my memory.
From the dazed
and confused man
standing on the deck
of the Manly Ferry.
God
Dear pious, self righteous, smug archangel,
My God cannot perform miracles. He doesn’t have silvery hair and wear a long white robe. He doesn’t have a deep resonant voice. He never listens to my prayers. My God doesn’t live in a palace high above the rolling clouds. He could be a she but that doesn’t worry me. He speaks to everyone but nobody listens. He guides me through treachery by giving me a memory that reminds me of the lessons of the past. My God is an anarchist who cares not to be worshipped. He has the flaws and frailty of a normal human being. There are those that worship their Gods to give them high standing among others. There are those who would kill those who do not believe in their God’s teachings. My God is a hairy arm pitted womanising drunk who does not care if people believe in him or not. My God did not create the universe yet he gives me the vision to see through the lies of world. I never blame my god or ask for his help, because my God does not exist yet I know that he is always there. He is there when a child cries. He is there when the suicides leap. He is there at the end of the world. He is that bird on the bough, the hill in the distance, that long legged woman who trips over her high heels, that dried up river bed, that cold winter’s rain.
God Bless you
from the choir boy
with the slingshot
in his hands.
Serpent
To the hero who lies dying in the seaweed,
My mother and I have just returned from Bali. She paid for my trip to help me get over my divorce with Gary. One of our days there we were in a remote village and one of the old ladies saw the small tattoo of a snake on my wrist and she grabbed my arm and made me sit down with her. She told me of the Serpent Woman who terrorised the village for two centuries. She had the body of a gigantic snake and the torso of a beautiful woman with long black hair and green eyes that put you in a trance. Spears or fire could not kill her. She came to the village twice a year to kill and eat one of the young men. Women and children did not interest her. The old lady told me that she had three sons and was worried that she would lose them. Her anguished tears worried her oldest son and one night when the Serpent woman was due to come to the village he went to the beach to wait for her. A few hours later he saw her form in the waves a few yards away. He began to sing a song as she got closer and when he was only a few feet away he looked into her deep green eyes and told her that he loved her. He walked up to her and put his hands under her chin and kissed her and he heard her give out a long sigh. He got on her back and began to sing again as she returned back into the ocean and carried her lover to her island far away never to return. I don’t know why but for the first time I stopped thinking of Gary with a feeling of regret and sorrow.
From the girl
with the blue
pick up truck.
Fairytale
Dear Goldilocks and the three muscle builders,
I am the wicked witch the most hated being in the kingdom, but lately I’ve grown tired of evil. You can only make so many poisoned apples. You get weary of eating children and turning princes into frogs. I want to get my long fingernails cut and painted and plastic surgery done to straighten my crooked nose. I arranged a meeting with Cinderella and snow white to let them know of my decision to be nice. I sent them my book of spells to let them know it wasn’t a trap. The two beauties came to my castle and I thought they would be pleased but they were both angry. They told me that I was ruining everything. It seemed that me being wicked and ugly made them look good and admired in the land and they were afraid they would stop getting dates. They told me that there was a whole industry based on me and that I would put a lot of princes rescuing damsels in distress out of work. Also because I was bad and always failing, a lot of witches decided to take the path of being good and the whole kingdom was getting their wishes granted and doing rather nicely. They pleaded with me not to change. For the first time in my life I felt wanted and I agreed to their wish and decided to wave my wand and give them a bag of gold. But I’m not good at doing good deed and I turned them into roasts chickens. It was a bit of a shame but I was hungry and they tasted so sweet. It seems even when I’m good, I end up being bad.
From Broomhilda
the good time gal
in a room filled with mirrors.
Dolphin
Dear happy hooker with the degree in fine arts,
Sometimes you need to dig deep in your memory to find out more about yourself. Last night I was thinking about my childhood. I remember one of my aunts telling me stories about Mickey Mouse living underneath my bed and how sailors when they drowned turned into dolphins. I remember when I turned eighteen my father taking me aside and warning me to never get married and end up with a shrew for the rest of my life. This morning I broke up with my fiancée Karen. We had been together for five years and she always wanted a white wedding. I told her that the problem was me, that everyday when I walk the streets I see beautiful women and fall in love ten times a day. She screamed and ran out the house and I heard her start her car and drive off. I didn’t want it to end this way so I got into my car and tried to follow. She drove well above the speed limit and it was hard keeping up with her. An hour later she stopped at the beach and was walking into the water when I had arrived. I ran onto the beach and took off my shoes and jacket and was about to swim after but when I looked up she was gone. I waited for a couple of minutes desperately hoping that she would surface. Forty yards out a sleek black dolphin leapt out of the waves and somersaulted. It appeared again and it raised its body above the water an stood there for a few seconds in the air waving its fin and then it too was gone. I waited for a few minutes more staring into the ocean and then I walked back to my car.
From the man
who sings like a
drunken weary angel.