Imaginary Friends And Beasts by Purple Mark

 

The scholars sat in their circle like some Victorian Men’s Club
of Explorers, though few had done any significant amount of
traveling except through their dusty books and philosophies.

“I recall a monster frozen in the ice of a Mongolian glacier:
half mammal, half lizard, one hundred feet from head to tail,
equipped with teeth like steel doorposts,” said the youngest.

“Did you see it with your own eyes?” asked a second scholar.
“Well, no. Yet I believe that it was quite real to my friend.”
“As real as us?” A third and the oldest scholar questioned him.

“Yes or rather more real because it was evidence of a world
not available to us. Whereas we are only real in our imaginations.”
“Do you also have imaginary friends whom no one else can see?”

“No. I never have had them, not even when I was younger.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re missing,” said the second.
“So, what did you do with your imaginary friends, if I may inquire?”

“Oh, the same thing one would do with the real ones: explore,
play games, have parties, that sort of thing for hours and hours.”
“Were you so isolated then that you had no real friends?”

“Yes, we moved so much as a child, that I had no friends for the longest time. My
imaginary friends had no problems with moving with me from place to place. Real
ones wouldn’t have done that.”

“How about imaginary beasts?” asked a fourth... “Surely along with your
imaginary friends there were other almost seen things which scampered about. Do
you deny these when you profess the other?”

“Yes, I will confess that I had a veritable menagerie of invisible beasts at my beck
and call when I was much younger. Yet they were something a child believes in,
not an older, wiser grownup.

“Are grownups wiser, though?” the first one brought up to get
back to his original topic: the existence of a fabulous beast within
the daily dullness of a mundane and unfulfilling existence.

“Doesn’t imagination count for more than a dusty factual world?” the first scholar
inquired. “Yes, imagination does count, but not at the cost of denying what is
within and constitutes the real world.”

“I believe that the child is smarter than the grownup, then. He or she is still open
to the world, whereas the grownup is isolated by the facts and figures which crowd
out all the teeming possibilities.”

So, when this meeting of the Scholars like most of their discussions which in truth
were their attempts to reclaim their lost childhoods or rather those things which
kept them young of mind and heart.

---Purple Mark 010812

 
 

Prompt:                                                                         

1. “I recall a monster that could have done this to armed warriors...it was discovered frozen in the ice of a Mongolian glacier half mammal, half lizard, one hundred feet from head to tail, and equipped with teeth like steel doorposts.” Barry Hughart. Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was. (Del Rey, 1984). page 156.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Page Ninety Three --- From the Fire To Carla's Pen"

 

Boogie oogie oogie till you just can't boogie no more. The dog’s whines and yips for treats accompanied the song thundering over the PA system until the night closed in and exiled the sun. We were at the military camp in Yellowstone.

Grumbling, Frazer shoved me over to a chair, the seat was metal and very cold. Apparently, I was the enemy.

“You were captured trying to get into our camp. Why?” My interrogator was a total hard body, a clean-cut young man, very fuckable but not, alas, for an old woman like me.

I gave him a bright smile. “It’s so nice to be with you,” I said. “It can’t be wrong with you at my side, you’re such a magnet and I am,” I batted my eyelashes at him, “I am the steel.” The song ended about then and his expression got dark. I guess he didn’t like being laughed at when he was being a tough guy. Probably one of those men who never asked their partner what they wanted in bed, he just did it his way. A pity.

“She’s not cooperating”, he remarked to Frazer, who was leaning up against the tent post. I noticed he was looking a little thin. I’d have to have him over for dinner soon. The two other soldiers were guarding the entrance from the dark.

“That generally takes some time,” interrupted the Gryphon. A man I knew intimately strode in and filled the tent with his presence. He always had a knack for taking over a room.

I smiled at the newcomer. “Why, Lt. Lyon, I do declare, I never thought to see you here.”

He gave me an amused look. “She’s always been difficult,” he assured the butch young man. To me, he asked, “What are you doing here, Evangeline?”

“How could I stay away? I was reflecting on the buffalo meat and the venison cooked on the embers in your lovely terrorist camp and I just couldn’t resist, the smell was too strong.” Even in here, the stench of slaughtered animals was overwhelming.

“We’re not a terrorist camp, Evie,” he countered mildly.

“Well, you are certainly terrorizing all those buffalo and deer out there.” I said. I bent my head sideways to indicate the wide open spaces beyond the tent flap. “How do you like it? More, more, more, that’s all the government thinks of in what is laughingly called our democracy. We don’t need another missile silo launch site, and even if we did, it doesn’t need to be here.”

Gryphon leaned over me, placed both of his fine strong hands on the back of my chair, just behind my shoulder blades and got his face within inches of mine. “You know the threat, it’s got to be done and we’re relocating the big animals as humanely as possible, and we’re as sorry as you not all make it.”

“As much as I don’t want to upset our happy home, husband, you should know me by now.” I stretched my neck up to kiss him.

“You can ring my bells anytime, love, but I have a job to do and I will stop you and your bunch of crazies by any means possible.”

I smiled at him with steel. “You can try, honey.”

He stood up and addressed the two guards. “Take her back to the entrance of the park and drop her off, she can find her own way home from there, she’s used to it.”

I regretted to see his mouth tighten at that. We were going to have to have a conversation about that soon.

The two young men, ooh, no, my mistake, the young man and young woman lifted me up with a hand under each armpit and I waved goodbye with my free forearm. They walked me to their jeep as another Hit of the ‘70’s paraded by our eardrums and were as good as my husband’s word, dropping me just outside the park entrance, where the protesters were encamped.

I could hear my colleague, Bryan, doing his nightly speech. I always enjoyed it, as he usually paraphrased Shakespeare. Tonight he had chosen Hamlet.

“To vent or not to vent, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler for the U.S. to drill down and vent the Super Volcano, thereby potentially blowing us all to kingdom come, NOW, or to raise our voices in protest, and by our protests, stop their dangerous plans, and wait. Wait and hope that this sleeping volcano rests in peace for another 100,000 years, NAY, if not forever as this ball of rock we live on cools.

They cannot guarantee their plans will work, or even assure us it is necessary. The changes they chart in topography may be normal, they can’t be sure. But what we can be sure of is that they are risking all our lives, and not just ours, here in the U.S.; but the entire world’s with this mad scheme of theirs.”

He continued and so did I. I was exhausted and needed to lie down. I had gotten what I went for and we were going to need another council of war soon. Bryan was just appealing to the popular reason for what the army was doing at Yellowstone, but there were more important issues at stake.

---By Carla Blaschka, 1/2/2012
    Written alongside Purple Mark Wirth, Philip Bernier-Smith & Jennifer Reed Schonberger at The Bauhaus.

 
 

Prompts: Page 93:                                                                         

1. "Grumbling, Frazer shoved me over to a chair, the seat was metal and very cold."John DeChancie. Starriggers. Page 93
2. "'That generally takes some time,' interrupted the Gryphon." Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Page 93.
3. "On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked on the embers." Henry Wadworth Longfellow. Evangeline. Page 93.
4. Various Hit’s of the ‘70’s heard while we were writing.

 
 
 
 
 

Overwhelming The Mastodons by Purple Mark

 

“The molasses in the gingerbread is overwhelming the mastodons,”

she said over the first necessary cup of coffee of the day,

her head still half-stuck in her morning’s dreamings.

While across the room a man had the reverse thing:

all of his dreams had faded and all his hopes had vanished,

all his life henceforth was a dreary and tenantless mansion.

She wondered at this point in her life perpetually half-awake

between the world of her dreams and the so called Real world.

Why only yesterday she had been beneath the trees,

“After being so hot, to get into the -- into the -- into what?”

she went on rather surprised at not being able to think

of the words for the trees, the woods, the forest or even leaves.

Meanwhile, the man was thinking of obscure facts:

the coiled cobra over the third eye of Egyptian Initiates

shows that it can reach out and strike at what it perceives.

Reality was a curious condition full of seemingly pointless

diversions and facts and it all depends on one’s perception

of its nature to find one’s place within its scene.

---Purple Mark, 01/02/12

 
 

Purple Mark's Prompts:                                                                         

1. “The molasses in the gingerbread is overwhelming the mastodons.” Karen Elizabeth Gordon. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed. (Pantheon Books, 1993). page 107
2. “All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes that had vanished, all his life henceforth a dreary and tenantless mansion.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems. (Signet Classics, 1964). page 205.
3. “The coiled cobra representations of the third eyes on the foreheads of Egyptian Initiates shows that it can reach out and strike at what it perceives.” Mark Booth. The Secret History of the World. (Overlook Press, 2008).
4. “As she stepped under the trees. After being so hot, to get into the - into the - into what?” she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word.” .Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass. (Signet Classics, 1960). page 155.

 
 
 
 

Pinpricks By Carla Blaschka

 

Trapped in love. Like butterflies on display, pinned for the pleasure of the owner.

She kept track of his travels on a map on the wall in the kitchen, one pin for each city. It was colorful, that map, as colorful as his stories. With his stories he always brought back souvenirs. Proof, she assumed, of where he'd been.

The soiled panties in his suitcase were also proof. as was the phone number written on a napkin from a downtown hotel.

Here, in town. Not, just to be clear, in the town he said he was in this past week.

He got looks, she knew he got looks. "Ladies all love him, so beautiful he is," a quote she remembered that fit him perfectly. But she thought he loved her, only her. How stupid not to see that the very charm that won her heart came from lots of practice. There had been other incidents, but he'd always talked them away.

She listened to the high-pitched squeal and sent her transmission. Finished by fax, on one of his own sales order forms. She ordered him out, with a guilt upgrade, if he had any in stock.

She stared at the map and felt the many colored pins sticking out of her heart.

---By Carla Blaschka, 12/23/11

      Written alongside PurpleMark Wirth at the Elliott Bay Cafe.

 
 

Purple Mark's prompts:                                                                         

1. "If you'd like, you can start your transmission after the high-pitched squeel (sic) that will be your cue to make a statement about yourself..." Antero Alli. The Akashic Record Player. (Falcon Press, 1988).
2. "Her skin is white cloth, and she's all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart." Tim Burton. Voodoo Girl: The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy And Other Stories. (Rob Weisbach Books, 1997).
3. "Then comes at speed Margaris of Seville, who holds his land as far as Cazmarin, ladies all love him, so beautiful he is." Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers. The Song Of Roland. (Penguin Classics, 1964).

 
 
 
 
 

Random Poetry Found While Packing -- 15

Eight Seconds

I found myself staring at her fingers and lips
while she spoke. Words faded in and out my ears
lips and fingers phases out and into my sight
possibilities danced through my body.

I desired to taste her gleaming supple lips.
Glancing at her hands then her fingers, I noticed
no ring on the ring finger. Hmmm.
My eyes lingered a little longer before gazing into her eyes as

John Carter did when he firs spied the “Moons or Barsoom.”
Wetting my lips, I sized up the strength of her digits.
lithe and knowledgeable. My ears wandered back
to the softness of her voice. Her words came into focus

As I listened intently of dreams, goals, and family lineage,
when and how her people came to America. She spoke
of quietness and simplicity of living in the ever present now.
I savored each word like drips of honey off a wooden spoon.

Her tones warmed the emptiness of my eardrums.
Words faded in and our as I touched her with my mind
Her fingers twined through my fingers.
I feasted on her words with tongue and teeth.

I think I wrote this poem in 2005. I found it (8/27/2011 while packing up my apartment at the Manchester Arms, 1412 Summit Ave) in a rejection letter from poems I submitted to a Poets West reading series at the Frye.