Monday, April 11, 2011

Secrets (No Father Should Hate His Son)

Here is something submitted anonymously at TellMeYrStory:
"Secrets:
Secrets are meant to be told. I have many secrets, some people know most of them others have less of an idea. They know about the drugs, random sex, dreams and fears but there is one secret no one knows. Or at least I have never told anyone before. It's not my secret but I know it, I found it out. He didn't do a good job of hiding it. I think everyone who needs to know knows but I'm not sure, its not talked about just quietly accepted. The scariest thing is I know I will never speak of it but it eats me. I want to know answers, I want to know why. I want to know how it makes him think of me. If he thinks I get to live the life he wanted because he didn't take the chance. It isn't a bad secret but now that is has been quiet for so long, it makes me hate him. I hate him. It has also taught me that you can love someone and hate them at the same time. I wonder how this knowledge I have of him will affect me later on as I continue to grow up. I will keep hating him but I will keep his secret. If I tell, if I address it everything will fall down. The delicate house of cards he has built up making his life would fall apart and I am one of those cards and my life would come crashing down. If I told, I don't know who would still love me or hate me. I would ruin everything, the perfect white picket fence lie he has created would be gone and he would hate me. He isn't allowed to hate me. No father should hate his son but he would hate me and I would continue hating him. He can't hate me so I keep his secret. I keep hating him."
Here's the poem:
No Father Should Hate His Son

I have many secrets
The drugs and dreams
The sex and fears.
They are meant to be told.
But there is one
That eats me.
It’s not my secret,
But I’m hiding it
For him.

I hate him.

The scariest thing is
You can love
And hate
At the same time.

The life he has created,
The perfect white picket fence
I found out, was a lie.

His life is a delicate house of cards,
He has built up
To fall apart.
He isn't allowed to hate me,
And he can’t love me
Because I am one of those cards,
With him and his secrets,
I will come crashing down.

I hate him.
I will keep hating him.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

How I Became A Destroyer

TELL ME YOUR STORY
Here is the rough draft  the beginning of a short story submitted to me by Eric Rodriguez. The story is called "How I Became A Destroyer."

Veins are in the hedgerow bordering the blankness of his house – he thought, at last piecing together a memory of the previous summer, at the age of seven; seven, a magic number. Seven, a sexual number, and jumping to six, or seventeen. But, before seventeen, he is eight years old at the bay window of his childhood home in the green outlets of his empty green town, looking out.
At the bay window, in the back of his house when he was seven and named Seth, he watched a ghost of a boy, naked, caught in sunlight by the hedgerow bordering the backyard. This boy, a ghost or walking birch, all milk and erect at the bush, about nine or so. It is noon, and boys look youngest at that time – perhaps this was an older man naked in the yard, beckoning, and Seth liked this thought too. But, this ghost boy, about nine or so, eludes time altogether, and stands erect at the bush in the yard of Seth’s childhood home. This was one day, for one moment, of the summer at seven.
Seth is eight, and at the bay windowsill, still, gazing at the hulking roots of the hedgerow, like curving cocks fucking the rich soil. Veins are in the soil, then – veins, gateways to his growing up, to his bathing in the waters of another boy. He had a brow full of anticipation. A boy, sweaty, would come along to his backyard and they would mix sweat. They would beat brows. Disperse in sun-filled cornfields – two boys caught in stalks.
Each morning Seth would behold an image of Hatshepsut and breathe out a prayerful of glossolalia. His boy would be sent forth by Hatshepsut, mother pharaoh. His dream boy would be sent to him by Hatshepsut, the stately elm tree in the backyard. Seth decided that if he were to invoke the gods, they must be living ones. Hatshepsut was the pharaoh become goddess, an elm tree in his backyard. In return of his morning songs she thought beautiful, she’d send him a boy from the milk of the clouds.
Seth is eight years old, in cut off shorts and shirtless, waiting for his boy at the bay window of his childhood home. In seven minutes his boy will appear at the hedgerow. Seth does not know this.
This is the dream of a boy living nowhere, America. A boy will come from an elm. He will come in flooding like the Nile. Every boy in America who dreams will dream of another boy, flooding in like the Nile. Every boy dreams of the Nile.
Seth realizes he must bleed the veins in the soil onto Hatshepsut’s trunk for his boy to come. “shem, shim’lau, sheh’lau.” Seth thinks Hatshepsut likes words that start with the ‘shh’ sound. Seth walks, unshod feet and unshod chest, from the back door to the hedgerow. He walks to the cocks, ridged and twisting into rich soil, and kneels, tracing a finger along fiber. There are veins in the ground pumping red into the expanse under his house. The red brings the Nile. All gods are suffused in the rivulets spuming from a yearly promise. All boys, like Seth, want the Nile pouring down their necks, running down the smalls of their backs, licking the canals between their cheeks.
He will exhume a heart from the soil for Hatshepsut, his great mother goddess – the elm tree.

Here is the poem:

How I Became a Destroyer

He is piecing together the memory
Of a ghost boy,
The red Nile running from his veins.

The blankness of the boy he thought beautiful.
The boy from the milk of the clouds.
Naked, caught in the sunlight.
Tracing a finger along
His curving chest.
This is the dream of a boy.

All boys who dream of another boy
Want be caught in his flood,
The twisting and growing of his back.
All milk and dreams, he stands
Naked, sweaty and beckoning,
Erect at the bush.

Waiting for his boy.
His dream boy,
His childhood dream,
In cutoff shorts and shirtless.
His veins pumping and flooding
With sexual anticipation.

The red Nile pouring down his neck,
He must bleed into the soil,
For his heart to bath in the waters of another boy.