To Be .... To Become

Nick Maynard 

new wine 

A life is a sum of its parts –

and this is the sum of ours…

To be is to become, and in a thousand words I hope to transform you –

a thousand utterances cast upon the wind,

to find a home somewhere deep inside,

where I might find a home…

and be remembered…

and become something other than alone…

I knew from the first moment I met him, that I had known him already…

A lifetime of lifetimes passed/past… I know that I had always loved him… To be with him was to be whole again – it was as if I’d been missing something all of my life – as if I had been holding my breath just waiting to surface, since forever... And now I’d finally found what I’d been missing all this time – in him… I had become whole again… He had saved me from myself, and so now I belonged to him, for him to do as he wanted. I gave him the power to hurt me… And I knew that he would… ‘Whom the gods destroys, they will first make mad…’ And he was the embodiment of god made manifest… The most dangerous and contrary of all the gods... My god… My contrary…  My other half… My better half… My double…

I had thought him into being.

A Thought Form - conceived by a fantasy, brought into being by the force of sheer Will… From that poster I used to have on my bedroom wall – and that picture I tore from the magazine – and the dream I once had so vivid I could have almost touched yhim -

He is desire made flesh –

My desire made flesh…

He consumes me…

I watch him… I watch the way he moves –

the way his muscles move as he walks –

that effortless beauty of him…

The way he wears his hair

his shy downward glance

the soft baby-soft skin of his neck

his perfect shell-like ears... His voice,

His eyes,

His skin,

His smell,

His smirk.

His tenderness,

His touch,

His tension,

His release…

To be and become his sex – his addiction - his attitude - his closeness – his distance – his confidence - his shyness – his sweat – his torture – his dark – his light - his turmoil – his peace – his dreams – his desires…his hands – my hands on his – the way he lie on me – and they way I lie on him – his legs across mine – and his feet in the morning. The small of his back – his thighs – his arms – his chest - his belly and muscle… The cleft between his buttocks and the hair that grows there… And his cock – yes his cock – and the round of his arse – and the quivering – flickering… I see it all… From the perfect diamonds of hair under his arms, to his sulking pout and the way his nostrils flare - and the face he make when he cums… And that knowing smile that follows. His laugh - and my fears - my agonies - my lusts - my loves - my dreams. He is the place where I rest when I am tired of it all… he is my peace of mind. He is my fun – my sleep – my strength and my weakness… He is my past – my present – my history and my future… My living archive - all that is consumed by his truth and his lies, and his beauty, and his ugliness…

He transports me – transform me – makes me want to be and to become altered… he makes me want to become better – to be better –

We never looked for each other. We stumbled into being and fought to be free of the inevitable… Breaking, restoring – forging and growing - into this… Whatever this is… Unhealthy - some may say…

I say…

There are three things I cannot change…

The Past, The Truth and You…

One thousand words –

Six thousand miles –

Two and a half thousand sleepless nights - and long-haul flights.

And counting…

So far away you are now… I can barely hear your heart beating for the sound of mine breaking… So, to try to restore the little I have left, I close my body down… I choose to die another day… My love now dare not speak its name, because to name it would be to give it credence – would give it life… And I want it dead… I have no life… Full-circle again, the whole time turning, to be broken like a butterfly, in this life and the next, until eternity… And I search for him still… An endless unconditional love that hurts so badly, I could dash-out my own brain, to release the pressure it puts me under daily, hours – millisecondly…

Do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the pit of me, my breath – the last…

My soul I sell for fleeting sight For the end of all beginnings, and the start of everything.

I love thee to the last and first

Forever, as day to night

I love thee like no other can or could.

I love thee as pure as I can.

I love thee as passionately as you will let me.

In my grief, and in my future

I love thee with a love I can barely understand

With all my lost saints, I shall love thee with all my heart,

With all my laughter, all my tears - of all my life;

and, in the hereafter

I shall love thee even after, until eternity and beyond.

And it means nothing…

Less than nothing…      

You are not here to hear it…

Or to see what I have written about you and me…

                        To be and to become whole,

                        To be and to become alone again is to look into that hole,

and wish you could slumber there until he returns again,

and you can be and become once more…

And eighteen words remain to say one last thing…

I’ve used up nine… So I can whisper, nothing.

Let's Do Lunch

by Copper Rose

iced tea

The rain battered her shoulders, her head covered by yesterday’s newspaper as she slipped through the door of Giovinci Consuelo’s Bistro. Patty scanned the conveyor belt of her mind to pin down the perfect excuse for being twenty minutes late. Being late. Something she wasn’t proud of. Her mother used to tell the ladies at coffee klatch, “Patty will be late for her own funeral,” and they would laugh, knowing it was true.

Gaze flitting left then right, Patty searched for a glimpse of Amy in the sparsely populated dining area. An excuse had yet to expose itself. She started to sweat. She jumped when she felt the hostess’s hand on her forearm, jolting her back to the moment. “Table for one?”

Patty scrunched up the side of her face, shook her head, and then flicked up two fingers. She even laughed out loud at how it reminded her of the peace sign, which was what this luncheon was all about. She’d bumped into Amy outside the nursing home as Amy was coming out from visiting her father. Patty was on her way in to visit her mother. The chance meeting had caught them both off guard and in a hurry. After realizing how long it had been since they’d talked to each other, they’d pressed their cheeks together in an awkward hug. Amy had said without hesitation, “Let’s do lunch.”

It wasn’t an in-the-mail-box invitation but Patty found herself saying, “I’d love that. The Bistro?”

“Sure. This Saturday? 2:00 so we miss the 12:00 crowd?”

“See you then.” Patty didn’t have a hammer and didn’t nail it down; the invitation. Instead Patty had nodded as she ran off to convince her mother aliens had not stolen any money out of her wallet. Amy ran off to who knows where. Probably having an affair with her dentist. Or better yet, the Deliveries R Us guy. Come to think of it, he was awfully cute. Patty took out her little black book and made a quick entry.

The hostess led Patty to an empty booth, where it turned out, an excuse was not necessary. The view overlooked the street. Neon kaleidoscopes formed on the sidewalk, the pavement, the clothing store window across the way, blinking—blinking sighs of relief. It wasn’t often Patty was first at anything. She smiled, something she hadn’t done in a long time. 

The server waved a hand in her direction as she held up an iced tea. Patty grinned, nodded and was soon sipping the cold drink as she flipped through the old yearbook, smoothing her finger over each senior picture. 

The server came with a second glass of iced tea. A small drop, condensation on her glass, dripped onto the page.  She grimaced at the wrinkles it created on the picture of Amy’s face. She swiped it away with the side of her little finger causing a tear in Amy’s forehead. 

“Oops.”

Patty tried to smooth it out but the rip became bigger, now showing red through the tear, from the band instructor’s shirt on the adjoining page. Patty’s finger pressed down too hard and Amy’s head separated from her neck. 

It had been forty-five minutes, with no sign of Amy, that Patty sat in Giovani Consuelo’s Bistro sipping iced tea. Just sitting there and sitting there sipping iced tea. Patty kept glancing at her cell phone thinking she’d missed Amy’s call detailing why she was running late. Thoughts appeared on the conveyor belt, thoughts about respect and responsibility. Thoughts about entitlement. How some people got to be cheerleaders and other people didn’t…

“Can I get you another glass of iced tea?” Patty jumped when the server touched her shoulder, breaking into her reverie. 

“No, thank you. I thought I was supposed to meet someone, but I must have gotten my dates mixed up.” She pulled a five dollar bill from her wallet and slapped it on the table. She slammed shut the cover of the year book, and scooped up the book hidden underneath.

The server caught a glimpse of the familiar book tucked under Patty’s arm. “How to Cast a Spell – Just In Case.”

No one heard the squeal of tires on the other side of town as two cars collided. Head on. Well sort of, head off, but no matter.

***

“How about we do lunch?” Jan said to Patty when they bumped into each other at the post office.

About the author

Copper Rose perforates the edges of the page while writing unusual stories from the heart of Wisconsin. She also understands there really is something about pie.

Ben-Gurion On The Hill

by Neta Shlain

water

David looked up at the grey sandy hill with its poorly scattered vegetation, saltbushes mostly, and wiped his bald head. What was left of his once marvellous mane now tickled the inside of his ears with wetness. Sun was getting high; he placed the cap back on and began ascending followed closely by ministers of defence and agriculture.

     David might’ve not been a man of grand height yet his physical abilities could be compared to the more agile and much younger members of the Knesset, not that there were many of them. Quickly moving his short legs, he felt a sense of freedom rising in his chest, that same freedom that most of his dear ones left in Poland were denied. Tears welled up, he inhaled deeper and fastened his step still followed closely by the overly tired ministers.

     Finally, they reached the top. ‘Here it is!’ David extended his hand exposing an armpit soaked with sweat. ‘Here it is,’ minister of defence collapsed on the dusty ground, ripping a bunch of leaves from the saltbush and placing them in his mouth to create saliva, another hand grabbing the chest. ‘What is this?’ Red like a crab, minister of agriculture pulled down his hat to hide his eyes from the sun.

     ‘Ha Negev, my friends. Nothing defines a human more than the ability to make wilderness arable.’

Waking up to Life

Boris Glikman

drink: a cup of blackest coffee

A woman with a gun in her hand demands of me and my companions that we provide good reasons why life is worth living—otherwise she will terminate us.

I think to myself: This is the very question I have struggled with for so long and now I am being forced to provide a definitive answer. Do I make up some fancy reason and perhaps escape with my life? But if I lie, then my life is not really worth pursuing. 

How many times have I dreamed and read about this kind of a life-and-death situation and convinced myself that I thoroughly understood it, assumed that I knew exactly what it felt like? And now it has finally happened for real and this time I cannot wake up nor close the book. 

I realise that we all have to go some day, but no one can ever accept that it will happen to them. Death is something that happens only to other people. What a pity it would be to go on a brilliantly sunny day like this, when the whole world is pulsating with life and every cell of my body is screaming out with the desire to live. On a day like this, I want to shout out "I AM ALIVE!!!!!" from the top of the highest mountain. How much more fitting it would be to leave on a cloudy, sunless day with the sky shedding cold tears. No, this doesn't feel like the right time to die! But when is the right time to die? How can one tell that one has accomplished all that one can accomplish on this Earth? 

To make the most of my existence, I really should try to cram it all in, all of my life, into these last few remaining minutes, the way I used to try to squeeze in all of the information just before the start of the exams. Now is the time to live my life to the fullest degree, like I never bothered to before.

Yet this fear of death that I am feeling right now is out of all proportion to the joy and satisfaction that life has brought me so far. Why does my life seem so dear and precious to me now? Is it because only now, on the threshold of death, does the vision of ideal life appear  to me, life free of all the illusions that have previously brought me down, illusions that only the proximity of the end can destroy? Is it because that only now can I see life as it really is—cleansed of all the grime that besmirches and distorts its true visage, unshackled from all the trivial annoyances that make life such a tedious grind to bear in day-to-day existence? 

It is as if, during the day of my existence, life concealed her features with dowdy garb and only now, as midnight approaches, does she shed her frumpy dress and stand before me in all of her natural, radiant, shining glory, revealing her most intimate, most treasured, most beautiful secrets. 

In the distance, I see my friends being finished off—obviously their answers weren't good enough. Almost certainly they all used the "My life is unique" defence and it didn't work.

My thoughts are racing now, desperately searching for a solution: Should I make my reasons stand out from theirs? But I am a person just like them. Wouldn't making my reasons more striking imply that my life is more valuable?

But what does the tormentor want from us? Honest, straightforward replies or singular, elaborate explanations? How can one justify one's existence? Where does one begin? I have no need nor reason to justify my past, for it is already gone and she can't take it away from me. In any case, I am powerless to change it in any way, no matter how much regret I might have about my past actions, and so what is the point of trying to justify something that cannot be undone. Nor can I justify my future for it hasn't yet occurred and is therefore of unknown nature, lacking any reality. It follows then that I am only in a position to justify the now, the immediate moment during which I am alive. 

Should I appeal to her humanity, her compassion? But is there a more futile endeavour than trying to find a speck of goodness in the heart of a stranger? What is morality after all but some intangible, nebulous substance that we can only hope has found a safe refuge in the breast of fellow man. The only thing that prevents some total stranger from shooting you for no reason is a vague, insubstantial concept of conscience, invisible to the naked eye, as well as to any vision-enhancing instruments. That is all we can rely on for our protection from mortal harm. 

It is now my turn. I go in and face the interrogator. In a voice devoid of any tone, she commands me to present my case.

"Life is hard, really hard sometimes" I reply, "and a lot of times I don't want to go on struggling against the unyielding, overpowering forces. Yet I want to continue living. That is all I can say. I want to live."

The interrogator gazes at me with an empty, impermeable look—a look lacking any human expression, pondering her answer.

Just as she is about to make her pronouncement, I wake up to life.

About the author

BORIS GLIKMAN is a writer, poet and philosopher from Melbourne, Australia. The biggest influences on his writing are dreams, Kafka, Dali and Borges. His stories, poems

and non-fiction articles have been published in various online and print publications, as well as being featured on national radio and other radio programs.

 

Chorus

by Roger Noons

a tot of rum

Seven minutes after leaving the car park, we had completed our review of the food and wine at Something Fishy; exhausted the comments about our fellow diners. I switched on the radio.

‘… ocean blue

and our saucy ship’s a beauty.

We’re sober men and true

and attentive to our duty.’

    After turning down the volume, I said. ‘This takes me back, Greg.’

    ‘Mmm.’

    ‘It was during that week’s performance of Pinafore that I discovered you.’ When there was no response, I continued. ‘We were so engrossed in each other, taking every opportunity back stage. I missed my cue twice on the Friday night, Prompt had to call me. Maurice was furious.’

    ‘Always took his productions seriously.’

    ‘Those bloody costumes, it was a devil’s own job to get my hand inside your trousers.’

    ‘I wasn’t in HMS Pinafore, Simon.’

Another piece from Roger, one of our regulars.

Icy Paradise

by Jo Dearden

frappuccino

The guide book blurb sounded promising:  A mountain train journey to an icy paradise. The hotel concierge was persuasive. ‘You can’t leave Interlaken without going up the Jungfrau. The views are quite spectacular. A breath-taking experience.’

The day began with breakfast on the terrace and the warm sun on their backs. It was still quite early but many of the other guests were also enjoying the delicious hot coffee and croissants looking out across the lake in front of the hotel. The water gently lapped against the wall below where John and Alice were sitting. Tinkling cow bells resounded in the clear, refreshing air. The tranquillity was intoxicating. No-one seemed to be in a hurry to get on with their day.

‘Switzerland has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth in the summer,’ Alice said as she gazed into the distance at the snow-capped mountains with lush green valleys below. ‘I’m so excited. Just being here is one of the best things I’ve ever done, but going to the top of the Jungfrau, well that must be on everyone’s bucket list’. John slowly sipped his coffee. He seemed slightly edgy this morning, not quite himself. Alice wasn’t sure. Perhaps she was imagining it.

            The small mountain railway station was packed with skiers. Alice felt out of place. Rucksacks, woolly hats, thick socks and sturdy boots were everywhere. The temperature outside was a pleasant 25 centigrade. Perhaps it would be cold at the top of the mountain. It hadn’t really occurred to either of them that they might need warm clothing. Alice wasn’t even wearing socks and her summer trousers suddenly seemed very thin and flimsy. She shivered. ‘Let’s come back tomorrow,’ she pleaded, but John had already bought their tickets.

Before she had time to think, the mountain train came bustling into the station. John pulled her through one of the doors and grabbed one of the double wooden slatted seats ahead of the woolly hat brigade. The train lurched forward with such a jolt that some of the rucksacks and skis clattered to the floor. Alice looked out of the window as the train trundled out of the station. Swiss chalets were dotted amongst grazing cattle in the ripe fields. Wild flowers cascaded down the hillsides like floral water falls.

In the distance Alice could make out a black shape in the side of a mountain. It beckoned eerily with its icy stare. ‘Look John.  Is that where we are going?’ she asked nervously.

‘Yes, I think so. The guide book said we would be travelling through the North face of the Eiger to get to the top of the Jungfrau.’

The sun disappeared behind a cloud as the train approached the gaping rocky hole. Some of the other passengers gasped as a gloomy darkness descended on the carriage. Alice clutched John’s arm. She felt claustrophobic travelling on the tube in London. How was she going to cope with this, she wondered? She closed her eyes as the train entered the mountain tunnel.

The interior lights flickered and came on. Sighs of relief could be heard as newspapers rustled, drink cans popped, and bags of sweets and crisps crackled. After a few minutes, the train jerked violently as it seemed to turn a sharp corner and slowed down to almost a walking pace. This was the narrow part, which Alice vaguely remembered reading about. She could hear a child crying at the end of the carriage. She looked out of the window. To her horror, all she could see was rock, brown, jagged and menacing. It appeared to be pressed up against the train. Any moment they would all be crushed to death.

Alice felt a few tears beginning to prick her eyes. John grasped her hand. ‘Don’t worry love. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Just think of the view.’

He was right. The train emerged from the blackness into dazzling daylight. They all tumbled out of the train, almost tripping over one another.

‘I feel as though I’ve been on a terrifying roller coaster ride,’ laughed Alice.

Exclamations in a variety of languages echoed round the tiny alpine station as the vast icy plateau greeted them. Its brilliant whiteness was blinding. John and Alice stepped gingerly onto the glittering snow. Skiers swished past them as they slithered in their inadequate summer shoes.

‘Let’s see if we can get some lunch over there,’ John pointed towards what looked like a restaurant in the distance.

‘But our feet will get wet. We shouldn’t have come John. We’re not wearing the right clothes.’

‘Oh, come on, we’re here now. Look there’s a path over there.’ John grasped Alice’s hand as he led her towards the building.

The warmth was overpowering as they staggered through the large glass doors. John managed to find them a window table. Alice kicked off her wet canvas shoes and glanced at the menu. John’s mobile started to ring. ‘There’s no signal here,’ he said as he got up from the table and walked towards the entrance.

Alice sat drinking a steaming cup of hot chocolate. She looked at her watch. John had been gone for nearly an hour. What was he doing? She went outside but knew she wouldn’t get far in her light summer clothing. She asked a few people if they had seen a tall, blonde slightly overweight 35-year-old man wearing khaki chinos and a denim shirt. As she stood shivering, wondering what to do, she heard a shout. A man had been found. He had slipped and broken his ankle.

The journey down the mountain was a hazy blur. An ambulance was waiting with its blue light flashing. As John was lifted up on a stretcher, his phone slipped out of his pocket. Alice picked it up. A message popped on to the screen. It was from someone called Jane: ‘I can’t wait to see you.’ There were several kisses underneath. Alice let go of the phone. The glass screen shattered as it hit the ground.

About the author

Jo Dearden trained as a journalist with the Oxford Mail and Times.  She did a degree in English Literature with creative writing as a mature student. She co-edited her local village newsletter for about ten years. She also worked for a number of years for the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. She is currently attending a creative writing class., which is stimulating her writing again. Jo lives in Suffolk.