THE MESSENGER, Spring, 1969, Volume XCV, Number 1. Editor, Jay Belcher; Associate Editor, Sandy Lineberry; Art Editor, Cathy Culpepper; Staff, Adell Blankenbaket, Doug Schroeder, Holly Jones, Kathy Keller, John Voneiff, Gary White, Steve Proffitt.
Published by University of Richmond Publications, Incorporated. All communications should be addressed to THE MESSENGER, Box 42, University of Richmond, Virginia 23173.
Cathy
John
Adell
John
Jean
John
Sandy
John
Anne
Anne
Ann
Photo: Steve Proffitt
caught
Damn the day that begins with half a squeeze of toothpaste!
- screamed I to the silent mi"or; mechanical ''good mornings" dripped from family-like faces"wipe your mouths", I almost said but didn't ... and left the graveyard before moss covered my soul.
It was a cotton-candy morningtendencies toward pinkness, finger stickiness. and nauseathat swallowed all those brave enough to taste such a day. Damn the day that begins on cotton candy!
- mumbled I to a green-faced paperboy whose eyes never read the print that he passed out.
It was a halfhearted afternoon; sat next to Apollo on the 5PM bus - but his words were not his looks and I half wished the tires would flatten to force reactions from the funeral faces; Damn the day that ha/fends on broken down buses!
- blurted I to the sidewalk Santa whose red nose mi"ored a bottle in his pocket.
It was a passionate evening (minus the wine) as we settled to good talk and good love ... and I was Venus ( even though my words weren't my looks) walking back to the graveyard; stepping on corpses whose gasp for life came from a feeble judgment;
kept a question in my hand: What right do they have to steal my Varied Tomo"ows?
John Carroll
Child Fortune ( in passing)
Summer breezebreathing velvet on the sands: I walk on crystal streets, asking if your painted friends can bow in silence make amends to the twisted forest of your hands.
Summer nightthe patterns on the sill
resolve into trickling rainbows: lollipop lines of pathetic sadness shimmering on the pink sheets. Slumber morning/no warning · from the trees.
Summer coolthe jungle of your eyes, in misty remonstration, lies behind the trembling leaves of time and thought. the shadows you bought
with your friendly dreams and easy schemes, and the crooked seams you fought: a battle that was lost.
Summer frostthe pictures on the wall have cost me hours of explanation miles and miles of meditation. I grow weary of your trails, and wish you wintry cold but mellow on a beach of gold, within the lock of autumn's hold, a senseless culmination of hopeless expectation: Sunday's silence stormed.
Summer warmedthe patterns on the will have died, a nervous rule of peace implied, replaced by the sane, three-dimensional plane of Child Fortune's hurricane.
love
love is a steady girl
's thigh riding beside her guy
's insides and love is a faith full wife's depending up on the rest brea(s)t(h) of your life
's child ren who smile(s) while you both
John Lane
Master Thomas Geoffrey
I walked in tow of the boyish silhouette, And passing alleys in streaming light Wondered at the tuft of yellow hair, and yet When at the corner arcade he turned, The blue eyes, burning bright, Explained his being man.
Holly anna Jones
The Sincerity of Austin Whitelaw
When Austin Whitelaw graduated from prep school, his parents gave him a Fiat 2300-S coupe. If Fiat to you suggests the boxy little thirty-five horsepower job that poops along like a lawnmower, forget it. The "S" in 2300-S stands for "Sport" and "2300" is the piston displacement in cubic centimeters. Austin had gotten his hands on one in Italy the previous summer and decided that it was the car to drive. Wound out to one-thirty on the autostrada it was a,s swift and smooth and silent as the shadow of a hawk. He took it up to Genoa and back that weekend, flat out on the superhighway and scorching solidly through the twisting mountain roads of Liguria. By the time he was back, every other car he had ever seen or driven was just a tad too crude. So when he finished at the Academy with a shiny 3.8 average his paretnts had laid out the ten grand for the car.
Austin reeked of innocence, that peculiar innocence of the just so rich. He would earn his own living, apart from the ten or fifteen grand a year his corporate stocks brought him, but he took for granted his ready success in any profession he chose. He took his money for granted, and his mind too -with steady, careful effortless work he could become competent in anything, and he was never troubled with unrealistic yearnings for brilliance. He could never understand the people whose brilliance in studies was automatic, or those whose most earnest efforts were for naught. For the former he felt awe without envy, and for the latter pity without empathy. He went his diligent way and kept almost straight A's. He maintained a good bowling average and read all the books that people were reading. Some he liked and some he didn't, the same as some crossword puzzles he could solve and some he couldn't. Occasionally he wondered what would possess a person to write a book, or to get excited about one. Girls were interesting, he never had trouble getting a date for a party or a movie or a basketball game, and he did not doubt that one day he would meet just the right one and marry her -that went along with the good job he would inevitably hold. But in the meantime they weren't
that interesting, and only a damned fool would risk getting one pregnant. When gripped by lust, and as all red-blooded youths, he frequently was, he discharged it with discreet, businesslike masturbation, catching his juice in a plastic bag so as not to stain the sheets.
It would not even be accurate to say he had a weakness for cars. He got his driver's license at sixteen, because driving was patently better than not driving. He enjoyed the command of his father's Jaguar Mark X or his mother's Lincoln, but an impressive car was gratifying only because he was used to fine things. He no more scorned a ride in a VW than he scorned his dorm room at the Academy. In cars as in all things, he comfortably, goodhumoredly used the midd~ with the confident expectation of better things. To those without his advantages he was unconsciously, inoffensively supercilious. Austin drove fast but never recklessly. He was a good driver, rarely burning his tires or getting a growl from the transmission, but it irked him to operate much below the limit of his skill and the limits of the machine under his fingers. Going back and forth on the turnpike he would cruise at a comfortable ninety (ninety-five in the Jaguar, which was that much more of a high-speed locomotive) and shake his head without rancor at the poor stiffs dawdling around fifty or the maniacs who blew by at one-twenty-five. When stopped by police, he was polite and attentive without quite becoming apologetic. Only the most irascible officers ever wrote him tickets. What he loved about the Fiat GT was not so much the pure, sweaty excitement of speed as the car's docility at such a speed (a docility he attributed to the car, without realizing that less of a driver would not have enjoyed the same cool control) -the car's docility and its elegance.
At the University of Eastand West Austin elected physics and engineering as major fields. He did well in all his courses, scrupulously memorizing his der, die, das paradigms and cranking out a freshman termpaper on "Sartrean Exegesis of the Novels of Conrad," but it was science that he enjoyed. He always enjoyed the feeling of competent accomplishment. Literature and the like left him up in the air; he did the work and
Henry H. Roberts
got the grade but always suspected that the germ of the experience had eluded him. Science was more accessible to his imagination. You took a problem and threw in your knowledge and cranked till an answer came out. He never had to go away without an answer, though it sometimes kept him up past midnight. It was just as Inar Bass had said. lnar was an art major with a lot of weird ideas but basically a nice guy. Inar and Austin were in the same dorm their freshman year, and Austin sometimes shot the bull with him on weeknights after his studying was done. Once they were talking about utopia~ -they were doing Thomas More in English 101, and Austin had read Erewhon and 1984 in prep school -and lnar had said, "This Utopia stuff is actually a batch of crap. People figure they'll be happy once they've got it made. That's what's the batch of crap. For a man who deserves the name, happiness is a right that he stands a chance to win." Austin had liked that. Inar talked over Austin's head a lot, but that was one time Austin understood him, and liked what he said. He could see a man wanting to write books if he could say things like that so that people could understand. lnar Bass the only intellectual or artist that Austin could be friends with. He painted naked women that Austin thought were good. You always looked at the faces of lnar's women, at their eyes, so it never seemed dirty that their things were hanging out. And when they talked, lnar wouldn't always go on about art and poetry but would really be curious about Relativity and the Uncertainty Principle and things. It was always "I'll explain Objective Correlative to you if you'll explain Planck's Constant to me." lnar was a real person.
Sometimes Austin talked to lnar about women. Austin would hear all the big fraternity men in the dining hall Sunday morning -or more often Sunday noon, at dinner -talking about the girls they'd done it with that weekend and how so-and-so was such an incredible piece of tail', ; ,and he would worry l,because his own sex life was no where near so prodigious. As often as not, he didn't even have a date on Saturday night, and when he did she was generally some nice girl from physics lab or the Canterbury Qub who would be affronted (Austin supposed) by a dirty word, to say nothing of a hand up her dress. One in particular, named Cindy, was very exciting to him. She had reddish-brown hair medium-long and curly and a shy, misty face that would have made Austin think of a squirrel (albeit a lovely squirrel) had he been one to think metaphorically about girls' faces. When after a movie of whatnot he took Cindy back to her dorm, he would turn off the car and wish that he knew the right things to say; and she would smile her timid, toothy smile and lean toward him to kiss; and wlten they had kissed, not knowing where to go
from there, Austin would climb out and step around to open her door. And when she was gone he would be aware of the bunched demand of his body and he would have to scrounge up another plastic bag before he could sleep.
Austin talked to lnar about women, and about Cindy in particular, and lnar told him that most of what the frat men claimed at Sunday dinner was crap. Either it was all hot air, and hence crap, or it was real but vacuous -guys just using a girl as a pleasant instrument for jacking off, which was doubly crap. He told him that in sex the instincts were usually quite reliable -"Not just yours, hers too. Specially hers. When in doubt, leave it to the automatic pilot." He told him that sex for a man, the sex urge, was a day-in-and-day-out thing, especially for a young, strong, unmarried man -that if it wasn't women it was jacking off, and if it wasn't jacking off it was wet dreams, that in any case, it wasn't anything to worry about -but that sex for a girl was different. Most girls would only want it when they were really crazy about a guy and even then care had to be taken to keep it transcendent and beautiful, and because of this you must never take a girl except in love, and you must never take a girl you would not be ready to marry if a baby came, because a baby was a special thing to a girl (as it ought to be to a guy also but too often wasn't), and to expect a girl to kill her baby or give it away or raise it without a father was a tem"ble thing. Austin listened to all this and understood and felt very warm toward all the men and women loving in the world. Briefly he wondered why lnar did not become a preacher, as well as he talked, but then he remembered that Inar had not said anything at all about God,just about people.
After the opening of the second semester Austin made another friend. This was Conrad Cooley Wade, who had become Inar Bass's roommate in the mid-term shuffle. Second-semester freshmen whose grades were good were allowed to have cars at East and West and Austin had brought his Fiat back with him from the post-exam recess. At rust C. C. Wade, who was a party boy and much apt to boast of his conquests at Sunday dinner, showed little interest in lnar's earnest, stick-in-the-mud friend, though he too was a physics major and was periodically wont to a* help on homework problems; but when, by chance, he discovered that Austin was the fellow with the 2300-S his brotherly love found a natural nourishment. He had owned an old MGA until he wrecked it and was presently tooling around in a green Mustang fastback with a formidable power option. He was entranced with the sleek Italian grand tourer -''Whitelaw, I'd give my left nut for that bomb of yours."
Such unabashed admiration for one of his posses-
sions made Austin fatuous. Often on Saturdays after that, when their morning classes were done, he and C. C. Wade would drive out into the country and put the car through its paces, taking turns at the wheel, and afterwards sit sipping beer in a roadhouse and talking the fine points of driving. Sometimes they took Wade's Mustang but most often the Fiat. C. C. Wade was at home in sports cars. He knew tricks Austin had never heard of, like throwing a car through a curve in a four-wheel drift to shave down the margin lost in braking, and how to slap your tail around a comer with sheer acceleration in the so-called "Zagato Stomp." Wade drove with a fierce, untrammeled exuberance, as though he would live for a thousand years -or would be dead by sundown -and Austin envied this exuberance, and emulated it.
Once he got to know Conrad Wade, Austin had dates almost every Saturday. Sometimes it was Cindy, but except for her he had stopped fooling around with Canterbury Club girls. Frequently he dated girls that C. C. Wade knew in Autonomyville, the nearby city. They would drive their separate <;81'8,because Wade did not like to be back-seat driver in front of a girl, but they would go to the same movies or parties or whatnot and afterwards go to an apartment that Wade kept in the city. This was against the school rules for a freshman, but he did it anyway, using it strictly on the weekends for heavy dates. Wade's parents were rich but not as rich as Austin's, and Austin started helping Wade with the rent. Austin also chipped in for a fifth of Scotch each Saturday though he himself seldom had more than a couple of drinks.
Wade's girls in the city were young career or business-school women, not at all the sort of young ladies Austin was used to. The iJrSt night they went to the apartment Wade and his girl retired to the bedroom after an hour of T.V. and a few drinks leaving Austin alone on the sofa with the other girl. Austin looked at her. Her make-up was a tad loud for his taste, but it pleased him to note that her honey-blond hair was natural. Her carnal charms were decidedly carnal and charming. He said:
"So you're from Richardson-Riley?" -a local secretarial school.
"Unh-hunh."
"You want to be a secretary when you get out?"
"I guess."
"I thought maybe you might want to get married -sometime, I mean --I wasn't making any suggestions."
"Oh year. I guess it might ... Sometime."
"You enjoy the movie?"
"Unh-hunh."
"Didn't you think Hoffman was really great?"
"I guess. He was pretty cute."
"But I didn't understand some of the songs. I mean 'Sounds of Silence' is really beautiful, but what do you think it means?"
"Oh hell, sweetie, let's don't talk."
"What do you want to do?"
"Mmmm -guess."
Once Austin took Cindy to C. C. Wade's apartment after a party, but it was plain to see she was different from the girls Wade knew. Instinctively he didn't try any of the things the other girls had accustomed him to, but neither did he need the plastic bag again. Girls like Cindy were the best to talk to, and someday he'd want to marry a girl like that; but in the meantime the others were great for a good time, and to brag about in the cafeteria on Sunday.
On the way back from the apartment Cindy said, "I don't think you should hang around with Conrad Wade-so much."
"Oh? What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. It's just that he doesn't really act like a gentleman -not outside. He's kind of attractively repulsive, like Mephistopheles or a snake or something."
"I know what you mean. But he's a damned nice guy and he knows a hell of a lot about cars."
"And you didn't used to swear so much."
The week before spring recess Austin asked Cindy for a date. It had been a month since he had taken her out, though he talked to her after class almost every day. When he asked her she looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Austin, but I'm going to a party with Inar that night." So Austin got a date with one of the city girls instead, and gave C. C. Wade five dollars toward a fifth of J & B.
After an evening at a night club and the now mandatory three hours at Wade's apartment (during which Austin downed considerable more than his usual quota of alcohol), they dropped the girls and started back along the snaking ten-mile stretch from Autonomyville to East and West. It was closer to dawn than midnight. Wade was in the lead in his green Mustang, Austin trailing by several lengths. They were driving fast but not dangerously fast. Then at some point (neither could later remember just where) Wade goosed his accelerator and pulled ahead several hundred yards.
"What's that bastard think he's doing?" Austin wanted to know. He's not leaving me anywhere, I'm a better driver and I'm driving a better car!" And with that he tromped his own gas pedal and watched the speed gauge slide up over a hundred!
It had been raining earlier, and the night was still wet. Austin was slooshing through the curves like a fast pitch breaking away from the batter, but he stayed on the road and he was gaining on Wade. The curves were getting meaner but sailing out of each
one he caught a glimpse of the Mustang's orange taillights. Then he crested a rise at one-ten in fifth gear and there was Wade below him, brakelamps burning bright. "Got you, you bastard!" he gritted, as he stomped his gas and swerved to get by. And there in front of him, as pale and chilling as a skull, was the car Wade had slowed for to let out of a side street. At speed like that he smacked into it in the act of seeing it, with no time for any reaction at all, and he spun off into darkness to the sound of a giant -boot stomping beer cans. Much, much later, it seemed, the faraway wail of sirens told him he was not dead.
For a long time he was just vaguely conscious, as though floating face down on the surface of sleep, to lazy to roll over into sunlight. When he finally opened his eyes he was in a hospital bed and his father was near him.
"Hello, Dad."
"Hello, Son."
••rve been out for a while, hunh?"
"Two days."
"Jeeze. It feels like a hundred years."
"Yeah. Your mother and I were very worried, but the doctor said he expected you to pull through."
"What did I do to myself?"
"Mild concussion. Cuts and bruises. You'll probably be out by the end of the week."
"That's good ... What about -the people in the other car?"
Mr. Whitelaw was silent for a moment. Then he said, "they were killed. A man and a woman. He was killed outright. She died on the way to the hospital."
"Oooh. That's bad. I reckon they'll have to do something to me for that."
"We'll have to see about that. I've talked to Dave Andrews." Andrews was Whitelaw's attorney. "He doesn't think they can prosecute you. A rainy night, those people pulling out of a side street like that. It was an accident. Tragic but still an accident."
"But, Dad, it was my fault. I was driving way too fast and I wasn't thinking what I was doing."
"Well you'll probably lose your license, and your car is certainly a write-off, but he doesn't think they can get a prima facie case of manslaughter out of it. Wet as it was there weren't any skid marks to go by, and the only witness is your friend Conrad Wade. The way he tells it there wasn't anything you could have done to help it."
"I see. I still feel bad about those people, though."
"Sure, Son, you're bound to. But you can't let it ruin your life."
"Yeah."
Dave Andrews was right. They let Austin plead guilty to speeding and pay a hundred dollar fine (which his father righteously made him pay out of his own money); but the manslaughter charge was not
pressed.
After the hearing Austin and C. C. Wade went to a bar to sip beer. Wade was treating the whole affair as a feather in Austin's cap. "Yep, Whitelaw, you're not a man till you've totaled a car or two. When I cracked up in my old MGA I was unconscious for a week. I'm still carrying a steel rod in my thighbone from that wreck."
"But you didn't kill anybody."
"Nope, that's a fact. I just went out stoned on my ass and drove off the road."
"It's different when somebody get's killed."
"Oh, shit, man, let's don't get the weeps. Those twerps had no business pulling out in front of us, that's all. But I gotta hand it to you, it took balls to pass like that. What were you hauling, about onefifty?"
"More or less."
"Like I say, Whitelaw, you got balls."
Austin was tired of talking to C. C. Wade. For the first time in several months he needed a long talk with Inar Bass. But Inar had hitched down to Hangman's Shoal for the spring recess and would not be back till the following week, so Austin just lay around the dorm and drank too much, he even refused Wade's offers to go out and get laid with some Richardson-Riley girls. When Inar got back Austin went to him and told him everything that had happened. How he'd let Cindy drop because the city girls were more fun. About the nights at Wade's apartment in the city. How he'd killed those people because he was ashamed to let Wade out-drive him. How Dave Andrews had smoothed it over, and not let him tell how it really happened. He told it all, without watering it down or dressing it up. Inar was a real person, and if you were going to dress up the truth for Inar you'd just as well not talk at all.
Inar listened to all that Austin said, and when he had heart it all, he was quiet for Ji while smoking on his cigarette. Then he explained that we all commit our crimes and that some crimes are worse than others but that all crimes have to be paid for and that a man with outstanding debts was something less than a man. He drew the distinction between crimes of volition and crimes of negligence, and explained that the customary penance for crimes of negligence was restoration and sincere apology. ,._
And then there was another cruel silence, after which Austin said, "But how do you restore a smashed skill? And how do you make a sincere apology to a tombstone."
Inar smoked some more. "I don't know, Austin. I just don't know. For a thing like that I expect you spend the rest of your life apologizing."
"Yes, I see, Well, thanks, Inar."
"I don't guess I helped you much."
"I don't guess anybody's gonna help me much."
The ruin of the Fiat had been hauled to the back lot of a service station a mile or two from campus. Austin walked over to look at it, one gusty afternoon when the sky was like concrete. The left front quarter was mashed in flat on the engine well and the whole frame was bent out of shape. The windows were all cracked. Austin ran his fingers over the jagged star where his forehead had struck the windshield. "Jeeze. I'm lucky to be alive. Sorry about that, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Luck was in the wrong car that night." He stood looking at the car for a while more and then he walked back to school, while old newspapers beat about his legs in the wind.
For the first time in his life Austin was doing poorly in school, C's and D's creeping in insidiously. He no longer game a damn if he solved his physics problems or not. One afternoon when he should have been in lab he met Cindy by chance in the Student Union automat. He bought her a cup of coffee. The corners of her mouth twitched, a flickering trace of the old toothy smile. Her eyes were big and serious.
"Where've you been keeping yourself, Austin? I haven't seen much of you lately." There was no rancor in her voice; she was on his side. It felt painfully good, like the stirrings of sensation in a numbed limli.
"Oh, I've been around," he replied. "I haven't been doing much lately. How've you been?"
"I've been O.K. I've been dating lnar, but not steadily. He's a beautiful person ... I heard about your accident. Are you O.K. now?"
"Oh sure, I'm fine. I hardly have a scar to show for it."
"I'm glad."
"I can't stop thinking about those people, though. Whatever the judge said, I know good and well it was my fault."
"But it bothers you. That's a good sign. It wouldn't bothe1 Conrad Wade."
"No, I don't guess it would. Inar said the penance for a crime of negligence was sincere apology. But he didn't know how I could apologize for what I did. He said I'd probably spend the rest of my life apologizing. That's a hard thing to do."
"Yes, it is. I feel sorry for you, Austin. I feel sorry, but I don't guess there's much I can do."
"Thanks, Cindy. Listening is something."
That night Austin lay awake thinking. He remem-
bered the discussions he used to have with lnar. "I'll explain Objective Correlative to you if you'll explain Planck's Constant to me." Life was like literature. Literature and the like always left him up in the air. He did the work and got the grade but always suspected that the germ of the experience had eluded him. Science was more accessible to his imagination. You took a problem and threw in all your knowledge and cranked till an answer came out. He never had to go away without an answer. He groaned and made a splitting noise. Why wasn't life scientific?
Still later that night he poked his head in C. C. Wade's room and asked if he could borrow the Mustang.
"Sure man. Anything for a fellow helldriver. Where are you going at this hour of the night?"
Austin amazed himself with the glibness of his lie. "I'm feeling horny, so I thought I'd go into town and scout out some tail."
"Good man. You want me along?"
"I'd rather not, if you don't mind. Sometimes a man's just gotta do it on his own."
"Sure, I gotcha. Here you go. The short, silver key is my apartment if you want to use it."
"Thanks, C. C."
Austin walked out to the parking lot jingling the keys. It was a lousy thing to do to Wade, but, hell, he had insurance. The Mustang felt strange to him. This was a big chunk of brute power, where the Fiat had been all long legged grace. He took it out to the turnpike and headed north. Once he got out of town he had the road to himself and he let the cur run flat out. The bridges flashed over him like brief shadows. He opened the vents and let the night wind batter about in the cockpit. He was building his resolve. Finally his purpose was certain and he zeroed in on the next row of overpass pilings that came racing up the road to meet him. His stomach turned cold and his heart pounded precariously, but his foot stayed mashed on the accelerator and his mind was already at peace.
"They'll think I fell asleep at the wheel," he thought.
Then came the terrible impact that tore the car half in two, and all that he had ever thought in his life was so much red and gray slime, splattered and sticky on the road and rapidly drying.
Austin Whitelaw had apologized.
Jay Herron
And Tomorrow
I. And now, Dawn
And the horizon explodes, Fragments pierce the shade And radiance warms the earth's soul.
The crystal knives leave nothing hidden.
The dew-ridden buds And garbage-ridden tenements Are sliced with equal zeal.
And the rose and the slums awaken.
II. And Noon
And the power-girded sun ascends to his throne. He bellows a direct order.
The rose wilts.
The slums melt.
III. And evening
And the steam of the afternoon rises.
Heat subsides, only stone remains faintly warm. Last lingering tears of sunlight stream
Down Mother Earth's cheeks.
Leaving only shadows on banks of rouge.
Opaques become translucent, And a web of mist entangles itself
Comfortingly around the transient fears of the day.
A pensive and complacent aura settles, Brought only by evening's soothing balm.
N. AndNight
And Mother Earth cries herself to sleep with golden tears. A cold shallow atmosphere moistens the petals ... And the molten slums are hardened. And the earth awaits tomorrow.
Sandy Lineberry
Words are the Subtracted
A silent symphony is hard to memorize. Tongues and scribbling fingers cramp
At the syntax of the eyes.
Words are the subtracted curlings of an evolving lathe, The rubble and dust of a sculptor's craft; But along the silken cool of a spine The fingers find their own messages etched in, As lips too along the belly of a chin.
Let the bound books burn, the blood writes on In a script known well on the far side of sleep; But little I fear, can fingers learn Of the dialogs the eyes keep When the lips adjourn.
H. Roberts
H.
Sharon Morrisett
Heartbeat of a Man
Cool stones flower everywhere
As you walk the blossoming thruways of this our land
Stones and rocks aimlessly
Mushroom up
As you write gentle pastorals in gentle (h)arbors * *
I mean stones big
cold, indifferent stones
Life goes on yes
Somehow there is beauty in unlikely Places. a crazy-Quilt. I see them always of stark stones
Tragedy & Life goon
The pungent salt of my New England sea
Blows cool mist over hot stones.
Karl David
Norse's Daughter
I.
Norsksdatter
Child of the North: Cold many years; Cheeks
Sun-gentled Winter white.
Eyes
Blue-Big Blue cold Nordic glacier crystalline, Stare bland and cold.
A northern storm gave birth to you: Snow-white hair
Wind swept Purified Cold.
Autumn darkness falls. The encounter is overThe day has passed. Now it is dark. My fingers yearn to touch; My arms would enfold but close on nothing; My senses yearn for feel But my mind calls up only faint remembrance -She's gone from my sight and briefly out of my life.
Somber, dark autumn falls. This day ......... is dead.
m.
Prisoner to Time-1Beckoned onwardTrudge onNever ahead; Always just behind.
I'm tired-drop back for a rest. How long it's been since I was touched With that healing touch that soothes the lonely acheFleeting touch
A shimmering memory.
Prisoner to time-1Beckoned onwardTrudge onNever ahead; Always just behind.
AloofNow-
IV.
Eyes crowded with unashamed tears, Chest muscles ache from lonely fears, Winter frost has touched my hair; Stand a stranger in my lair.
Aloofnow-
From moorings once which bound me tight, Aimlessly roaming in winter's nightWishing to be bound once more-(too brief) Too brief and soft-too brief-too brief.
Aloofnow-
C(laselesslywandering the winter's night Round and round my memories slight. Shimmering away at twilight close Last remembrance ember glows.
William F. Cale
V.
A prison I erected for myself, The law I brokeI broke myselfIs written in my sinew.
I broke the way things are with me
For fear-of what?
Of what?-myself.
For fear, I broke the law.
A door I slammed shut for myself For lack of faith, Of faith in law, In law of human nature.
The door is closed, the way is blocked For lack of love?
No. what?-of faith-
The way things are they should be.
The way things are can change I've foundI wish they weren't-
I'd know you now
If only I had known you.
I broke the way things are with me
And were with you And now-no more-
Can see your face no more.
IT had been with her since childhood (unfaltering, relentless, dominant) a constant companion in play, shame,and tears.
Though her hopes had been dimmed by reality, her love's loves repelled by her remoteness; ITwashersilentfriend, (inconspicuous, invisible, omnipresent). the sun. insipient of
sheltered IT night revealed IT crowds, routines, noise and action, no longer able to escape into the false warmth of day she saw her life as it was: desolate hours, hours of fear, anger, remorse, and finally, submission she was old no longer pulsing with vitality waning ebbing shrinking from her first innocence to her last revelries of pain it had guarded, hovered over and, killed her.
she lay aLONE in her silk-Lined grave. it was no longer hidden in darkNESS.
Adell Blankenbaker
Poor Seymour
John Lane
As the curtain rises, two men are seen on stage sitting in chairs side by side.
SEYMOUR Don. (pause) I feel silly up here.
DON Aw, don't worry They (he points to the audience) don't care about Lil.
SEYMOUR Like I do? Are you crazy? They (points to audience also) care about her more than I do_ and they don't even know here. But that's why I feel silly up here. Being that I'm married to her I should be the one who cares It's like the world is upside down. But is it really I or they who care at all about Lil? That's the question I'm trying to answer.
DON Either you ask them (pause) or you ask yourself.
SEYMOU,R (stands} I know about myself and how I can or can't care about her; but, as for them (points}, they wouldn't say anything anyway. (goes and sits downstage left) It might involve them. (he shakes his head}
DON (stands} Well, that's their business. But you're my brother, Seymour. You came all tliis way out of anger; and I think I oughta have a right, no matter how small, to be confided in.
SEYMOUR Yes, but you're forgetting one thing. ( stands}
DON What?
SEYMOUR They'll still be out there. (points during a pause) And they're going to learn as much about it as you are.
DON Well, I'll go shut the curtain.
SEYMOUR (pleadingly) No, Don. Let them listen. Maybe they can learn something.
DON All right. (he sits)
SEYMOUR I suppose I should begin by saying that all characters herein descnoed are purely fictional. And that neither_
DON You don't have to go through all that. It's not all that horrible.
SEYMOUR Oh, so you think not, huh? Listen, Don, if you were Lil, do you have any idea what I would do to you?
DON No, but I guess you'd get kinda angry.
SEYMOUR Yes, you're damned right! And if you had ever gone through a day with Lil, you'd know how angry! Or even a day with your Marleen acting like Lil. Do you suppose I would catch a train all the way here just for the fun of it! (angrily) Now tell me!
DON (stands} Of course not, Seymour. Listen, sit down and we'll talk it over. Fair enough?
SEYMOUR (more quietly) I guess so. (sits)
DON Now just tell me what happened. ( sits)
SEYMOUR (dejectedly) OK, OK. You know when Suzy's birthday is, don't you?
DON Sure, yesterday; right?
SEYMOUR Yeah, yesterday. And when did I get here?
DON But what) that got to do with anything?
SEYMOUR (impatiently) Last night. Put two and two together, Don. (pause) There was a small party some kids in town gave her.
DON So what? How am I to know anything? Should I read your mind?
SEYMOUR (angrily) Oh, shut up and let me tell the story. (pause) I was sitting in the den reading the paper while the kids were having the party. Here, (he stands) let me show you. I'll play Lil and you play me. React the way you would if Marleen did this. Let's say the audience is the birthday party:__ anyway the odds are someone out there has a birthday today
DON Get down to the story.
SEYMOUR (pause) But my Suzy is out there.
DON (he stands) OK, then sit down, Seymour. Forget it.
SEYMOUR No, I've got to show you what happened. You're me, right? Pretend like you're reading the paper (Don sits down again and pretends to be reading) and I'm Lil walking in. Remember the audience is the party. Hey, Suzy, (he overacts, shaking his fist) It'll make you fat. (he turns back to Don) Now what would you do?
DON I don't know. A one minute speech isn't going to tell me a thing about Lil.
SEYMOUR But don't you see? She's trying to imply how fat I am. Maybe she's right, but she knew that before we got married. She shouldn't have married me if she's that way about it.
DON (stands) You're sounding like Huey Long. Every man a king. Aren't we allowed any queens?
SEYMOUR (sarcastically) Queen Lillian S. Livingston. Ha! Do be serious.
DON You don't have to be so self-righteous.
SEYMOUR OK, then shut up and let's finish the scene. (Don sits) Now how would you react?
DON I just said I didn't know.
SEYMOUR You're messing this all up. React or it won't work.
DON It won't work. Just tell me.
SEYMOUR OK __ ( he sits) You've got the first scene, right?
DON Yes.
SEYMOUR Well, I reacted.
DON How?
SEYMOUR I got mad, simple. I know what she meant to imply.
DON Did she say anything else?
SEYMOUR No._ wait! I forgot to give you the key to the entire story.
DON What's that?
SEYMOUR (he stands with his head down, dejected} She's running around on me.
DON All right, now you've got something to work on. Can you prove it and get a divorce?
SEYMOUR Divorce? Are you kidding? And admit defeat?
DON All right, but you just said she shouldn't call you fat.
SEYMOUR Sure, it's something I can't help. I can't control my own metabolism; but her __ she can certainly control her actions.
DON But do you know for certain she's playing the big leagues?
SEYMOUR Positive.
DON Then what are you going to do?
SEYMOUR (sullenly) I don't know.
DON Well,just don't do anything irrational.
SEYMOUR Oh, you know me, Don. I wouldn't swat a fly. It's just that I've got some thing now I wish I could forget. (pause)
DON OK __ so go ahead and finish your scene. (he nudges Seymour to the left)
SEYMOUR But you didn't react.
DON Sorry, I'll try again. ( he crosses to the right and sits)
SEYMOUR (he backs up and comes in again) Hey, Suzy, don't eat so much; it'll make you fat.
DON ( he tries to appear angry) Ah_ Lil_ Ah_
SEYMOUR (pleadingly) Get mad!
DON Damn it, Lil! {he gets up) Don't keep saying that (he falters) Whatever Suzy wants to eat should be her own business. (he runs out of energy)
SEYMOUR Good, that's close to what I did. And now you see why I'm here?
DON Not completely, but I get the general idea.
SEYMOUR Good. (pause) But listen, Don; I've got to get out of this mess. (frantically) She's been getting on my nerves for years, and __
DON (tenderly) Sure, Seymour.
SEYMOUR __ And now her playing big league all over town. I've just let it build up too long, I've got to get out! I've got to get out!
DON But aren't you a father, Seymour?
SEYMOUR Sure. Sure.
DON Well, what about Suzy?
SEYMOUR Nothing is more important to me than my own life. Nothing. __ everything else is secondary, even Suzy.
DON That's true enough, but I think you're taking a one-sided view of the thing.
DON OK, now Suzy. She's got to be brought up. And you're responsible. Oh, I know, it was just a romp in the hay with Lil. That's what I thought when I married Marleen. Just a romp in the hay. But there's a hell of a lot more than that to marriage.
SEYMOUR I know, I know. But I didn't think twice before getting married.
DON (he brings a chair beside Seymour and sits) No one does, Seymour. It's a hit and run game. You never know if you've got a chance until it's too late to back out. Like in your case. In my case, it was different. I took my chance like every other man on earth, but I hit pot luck. My marriage is good. Don't you see? I took a chance in Marleen like you in Lil but I hit luck __
SEYMOUR (he stands) OK __ but don't rub it in.
DON Don't you see that it is too late to back out, because now you've got an obligation to Suzy. Run out on Lil all you want, but go home and take care of Suzy.
SEYMOUR But I'd have to live with Lil. And that would be the end of me. I've been squeezing the trigger tighter every year (pause) and if I stay much longer, it'll go off.
DON (he shoves his hands in his pockets, turns, and crosses away from Seymour) Marleen's the same way.
SEYMOUR {he turns his back on Don) But you just said-
DON I know I just said (shyly)-but they're all the same, Seymour __ (he turns and points) and don't let any pretty fool-headed girl tell you otherwise! (softer now) Don't you remember when Dad told us that.
SEYMOUR Yes.
DON Don't you remember him saying that all women just prostitute their bodies to men?
SEYMOUR (amazed} What!
DON And that men are bastards in stealing it?
SEYMOUR (astonished, he sits down) Lord, no. I don't remember!
DON Well I've learned it.
SEYMOUR Through Marleen?
DON No__ through our mother __ (he stands) You see Seymour, I grew up more aware of temperaments than you. I noticed things easier because I was the youngest and had to perceive quicker to get my share. (he kneels beside Seymour) Don't you see? I grew up with a better understanding of the discrepancies in females. (pa.use) Do you remember getting beaten by Mom?
SEYMOUR (subdued) Yes.
DON Well, I remember your beatings too __ and maybe better than you. I remembered those welts on you long before I was old enough to get them. I grew up knowing what not to do. And I can see a little bit of her in every female I've ever known. (he stands) The only thing satisfying about it, Seymour, is that it's in degrees. Marleen has something of our mother in her because they are both women, but thank God, she doesn't have much. Still, in a way, if she weren't anything like our mother she wouldn't, or even couldn't, be a wife to me. And I find lots of love in her because she isn't like me, and I don't expect her to be.
SEYMOUR (sarcastically) It sounds like a soap opera.
DON Maybe so, but, damn it, it's the truth!
SEYMOUR All right, why don't you get off your throne and explain yourself then.
DON You don't have to be so snotty. (he stands) I'll tell you __ and I'm gonna lay it on the line. Did you for a moment think Dad was perfect?
SEYMOUR Of course not.
DON But you kept talking like Lil was the only bad one in your house. ( he points to Seymour) Listen Seymour don't think for a moment that you don't have a bit of bastard in you just like your old man.
SEYMOUR I didn't say_
DON __ the hell you didn't. Don't give me that stuff.
SEYMOUR OK, OK, (he jumps up) so I'm a bastard, huh? And Lil's an angel?
DON I didn't say__
SEYMOUR The hell you didn't.
DON ( he turns away) Wait a minute. ( short pause) I don't want to argue about it. I'm just trying to help you out.
SEYMOUR All right, but how can I love a woman who's catting around town?
DON Listen, I'm no Dr. Spock for babies. It's really your own problem. I'd just as soon let it drop right here.
SEYMOUR But I don't want to go home. When Suzy begins to understand __ which she might already __
DON Now you're coming to the point. That's how this whole thing got started.
SEYMOUR Never mind, it's getting started __ How am I to end it without stepping on too many toes and without a divorce?
DON You're asking too much. I can't tell you how to straighten out your marriage. It's a loner's business on both sides of the fence. Marleen couldn't tell Lil how to straighten you out.
SEYMOUR But__
DON_ and don't think you're perfect.
SEYMOUR (softly) Don?
DON Don't you understand? For Heaven's sake!
SEYMOUR (dejectedly) I think so.
DON All right. Let's run the scene again.
SEYMOUR (in a daze) Huh?
DON The scene_ run it again?
SEYMOUR OK. (begins to cross to the left)
DON No, this time 111be Lil. You play yourself.
SEYMOUR(he crosses right and sits) OK. (he pretends to read a newspaper while Don backs up)
DON (he comes in trying to act feminine) "Heh, Susy, don't eat so much. (he looks at Seymour) It'll make you fat."
SEYMOUR(still reading "newspaper") Aw, Suzy, eat all you want.
DON (he stops, but then decides to continue the scene) But, Seymour,you don't want Suzy to be fat.
SEYMOUR(absently, still reading) She'll haveenoughboyfriends.
DON Not if she gets fat.
SEYMOURShe won't?
DON Not if she keeps stuffing her face with all that chocolate and ice creamlike she's doing now. (he begins to get carried away)
SEYMOURLeavethat decisionto her.
DON But aren'twe here to guide her?
SEYMOURSure,sure,(he puts down the "newspaper, "gets up, and walks downstage) Suzy__ eat all you want. It won't hurt you.
DON (carried away by Seymour's indifference) Don't eat all that, Suzy!
SEYMOURDon't listen to her.
DON (to the audience) Whydon't you kids run out and play softball?
SEYMOURAnd wearoff some of that fat, huh?(he crosses upstage and sits)
DON (cynically) I neverthought of it that way. But that's not a bad idea.
SEYMOUROh, shut up.
DON Tell me to shut up?
SEYMOUR ( speaking slowly, deliberately)_ And stop referring to my weight. I'm sick and tired of you implying I'm overweight, you skinny bitch!
DON Well_!
SEYMOUR Well, what? Well, why should I have married you? Listen, that's a good question. (he turns away from Don) A very good question!
DON Don't call me a "skinny bitch"! (letting Seymour act) I'm no such thing.
SEYMOUR (he turns back to Don) You are a skinny little whore bitch. That's what you are.
DON All right __ all right. So I'm a bitch. If that's the case, then you're a fat bastard.
SEYMOUR So you've finally admitted it! You think I'm a fat bastard!
DON (realizing Seymour is no longer acting) Seymour!
SEYMOUR ( still looking away) Don't "Seymour" me. Seymour what? See more fat?
DON (backing off) No.
SEYMOUR Sure! I'm a slob! Why don't you just come out and say it?
DON Listen-
SEYMOUR Shut up! (still looking away) You remember when I met you; it was at the races, right?
DON Seymour?
SEYMOUR Let me finish __ and I was one tier below you, remember? And you dropped a program __ and I picked it up and gave it back to you, remember? And then you invited me to your place __ Jmt I didn't go. I guess I should have gone and learned what a slut you are __ but I didn't (pause) Oh, it's my fault, I guess I should have known by then. (he turns and sees Don and pauses, shocked) __ Don?
DON Listen, I, ah, I _I think I understand
SEYMOUR I might have begun acting __
DON But you didn't act the ending.
SEYMOUR Yeah, but I wasn't really acting. You were actually Lil for a while, but you can thank God you kept your senses __ or I might have __
DON Might have what?
SEYMOUR I_ (wearily) I might have killed you.
DON I told you about that before, you've got to get hold of youself.
SEYMOUR (despairingly} Oh, my God!
DON But, you saw me as Don in the middle of your frantic speech __ instead of Lil, right?
SEYMOUR Oh, no no!
DON And you came to your senses when you saw me?
SEYMOUR No, that's where you're wrong! (pause) You were Lil! Even when I stopped shouting.
DON (in amazement) What?
SEYMOUR Yes, Lil! I know you don't believe me. I wouldn't expect you to. We're from the same womb, like grass from the same earth; but you're not Lil's husband! (calmer) 1 see now. She's not scaring me away. I'm scaring myself away. Even if I have a perfect right to run away, or maybe even to kill her, now the anger is standing outside at its origin, making a futile attempt to justify itself.
DON Get rid of her!
SEYMOUR Oh, so silly. A grade school boy's answer to a calculus question. It's not that simple.
DON Seymour, let's reason out this thing. You've dragged yourself down too far and I'm going to try to help you out of it.
SEYMOUR I'm in too deep. I can't get out.
DON But it's possible.
SEYMOUR How?
DON We're going to do the scene one more time.
SEYMOUR (cautiously) What?
DON Just as I said. Do the scene again. I'm going to be Lil, and you play yourself. Just like before. But think before you answer, Understand?
SEYMOUR Yes.
DON (he walks away from Seymour and turns to audience) "Heh, Suzy, don't eat so much. It'll make you fat."
SEYMOUR Aw, eat anything you want.
DON No, Seymour. Slow down. Think.
SEYMOUR (he pauses) Eat anything you want, Suzy.
DON {dismayed at Seymour's incompetance) No!
SEYMOUR Well, that's all I can think ofto answer.
DON (in dismay) OK, well let's go on.
SEYMOUR Listen, Suzy, what you eat is your own choice.
DON But don't you think we should have a right to advise? She's our child and I think we ought ot have the right.
SEYMOUR Yes, but it's her belly.
DON But she's living under our roof, and eating the food we buy her. -29-
SEYMOUR (angrily) What do you mean "our" roof? Who in this house works his fingers to the bone to earn it? Who? Tell me who? Tell me who works twelve to fourteen hours a day putting food in her mouth and your mouth too, for that matter. (he turns and faces audience) Listen to me Suzy, because I'm the one who kills himself feeding you while your mother has her pimps working all over town. And don't say __
DON (pleadingly) Seymour?
SEYMOUR Shut up!
DON Seymour, please
SEYMOUR Shut up! I'm talking to Suzy! Don't ever listen to a word that bitch (he points toward offstage left) every says. I make the money./ feed you. Listen to me! And don't forget it!
DON Seymour!
SEYMOUR I said, shut up! (he turns sharply and strikes out with his fists; there is a sudden black out; a bit of rustling is heard onstange; then, a slow curtain.)
A Dentist is a Dentist is a Poem
the mask: my friendfound jumping off that bridge get it over withmy sentiment, not nostrum, command; but, no, sir, it doesn't hurt, I think, I thought, three ages of roses agoand the laugh now was then: my superiority when contrasted with those 37 waiting ignorants throughout your cries for "Elmer's Glue - " wondering wither Wenceslaus and mending endings to ~nd the mends, amends, amensI think. I thought. I thank: it's been a gas
Holly anna Jones
Rust Sonnet
night in silent numbers. crowds that know no passion, birth below painted landscapes, or death inside a closeta spider prowls the dinner-plates, eight-legged Diogenes; it senses ants upon the cake-crumbs, or flies resting in the sugar: they sleep when the sun does not spit ultra-violet through the clouds, nor when the day sprawls eight-legged and sightless on this city, nor when the cuttlefish spreads its fingers to cull desperation from our people.
John Carroll
It Sinks
Lift up the hem of your apron
And gather the shavings and curls
That you left as you passed through the doorway. The oldest, the grainy and darkened with mold Were the hardest to shed Through the well-used lathe. But the door was a size
And you were a larger. Being prodded from the rear And dragged by the procaine Of miniature roses
At the throat of a wad of yellow lace. Your film was scraped away. You took in the darts of your Best convolutions, And faced the next door
With an apron full of sawdust.
Sandy Lineberry
mad harold & mary
mary dreams waiting in the night for mad harold and whispers to herself prayers of the jungle mary waits dreaming of love with mad harold while winter forms crystals on the glass of her window
mad harold walks with ropes around his ankles and screams with the music of the softly singing jungle mad harold 'sface is twisted by the crystals of the window and mary's cries of passion die longly in the jungle.
Jo Buni~tte
And Morning Was Yellow
Anne Bromley
I died yesterday -SUICIDE. And like any good ghost I've come back to haunt the place where it all began. It happened a long time ago -like kindergarten. Five years old -I always wanted to explain things; but the problem was that no one listened to my explanation. So I took up drawing pictures -and for a five year old, I was pretty good. When I came home from school, I'd lie down in the grass and look up -and I didn't see a blue sky, white clouds, and an airplane -like everybody else. No, I saw faces -funny, fantastic faces that made me laugh on the inside without laughing on the outside. And I'd dream of carving those faces in stone -but being only five years old I had to settle for a white piece of paper and a crayon as my hammer and chisel. And so I would draw -and it was the sky and the clouds and the faces and all the things inside of me that needed saying. That picture was all of me, and its beauty was mine. I put it under my pillow at night, and it would flash a million times in my mind.
In the morning I would take that picture to school with me -not to show anyone -but to have near me like a best buddy. They say that your best buddy knows you well -who knew me better than that picture?
School was a funny place -we sat in brown, square desks in a brown, square room that was cold and -stiff. I kept wondering if genius came out of brown, square desks. I wished that my desk could be red and I thought that maybe wishing hard enough would make it so.
My teacher, Miss Johnson, was a little strange -she made us write with big, black, bulky pencils that put cramps in our fingers. I hated those things -because they were stiff, like the desks. Stiff meant hard and immovable. At five years old, I preferred a yellow crayon. I knew that if you put a yellow crayon in sunlight it would melt enough so that you could bend it in the middle. That crayon was a little like me at five years old. No, big, black, bulky pencils don't hen in sunlight.
Miss Johnson tried to get me to wear a black tie to class -"Johnny, wear your tie like you're supposed to."
"But Miss Johnson, it chokes."
''That doesn't matter -it looks good."
How do you argue logic like that?
So school had its hangups, but there was one part of the day that compensated for the rest of the mess. That was Drawing Time. I'd whip out my paper and crayons and wait anxiously for Miss Johnson to give us the signal to begin. One morning she said, "Children, today I want you to draw a picture of a typical morning." How I had waited for this! I knew exactly what I was going to draw. Now, Jimmy drew a red barn with a red rooster with the sun in the upper right hand corner and a flower in the lower left h a n d c o r n e r J e r r y drew an airplane -why? -because Jerry always drew airplanes. But me -I drew faces. And morning was my favorite face. I drew it yellow -yellow clouds blowing in a yellow wind. Yellow -it was the way I felt about morning.
So Miss Johnson walked among her little geniuses: "Jimmy that red barn is very good -very symmetrical -you'll be an architect some day, I'm sure. Susie, how sweet -a little boy on his way to • school -you've got talent, child. Jerry, another airplane?"
Then, she got to my desk. My heart was pounding a mile a minute, because I knew this was my best picture.
"Johnny, what is it?" Pain.
"Miss Johnson, don't you know morning when you see it?"
"Really, Johnny, it's much too abstract. Try doing something like Jimmy. Now get a clean sheet of paper and start over and be SPECIFIC."
The next day I wore a black tie to school.
The next day when I looked up at the sky I saw blue sky, white clouds and an airplane. The faces had disappeared, because all the things inside of me had already been said.
The next day I threw away my picture and drew a red barn with a red rooster with the sun in the upper right hand corner with a flower in the lower left hand corner.
The next day I sat in a brown, square desk and my fingers were cramped from using a big, black, bulky pencil.
silent is the blue
Vibrant is the pink that seduced the weakwilled day ... slowly yet passionately ... screaming "day is done!"
Angry is the orange that seizes the body of day and hurls it against the wall of night ... to die a violent death gently.
Compassionate is the yellow that licks the wounds of day ... caressing the broken body - singing it to sleep to the muffled music , of quiet and calm. and ...
Silent is the blue that transcends an ugly death (pain now smothered in cloud blankets) ... to a meaningful demise unbeheld by fools.
