producer note: the following episode contains moments and words which some eyes and minds may feel to be appropriate for audiences whose years and maturities exceed that considered, well, more mature than immature? This heads-up is probably not necessary but you never know these days. Thank you and happy reading. Love, the little epic in the ether production crew – you see, we were in the midst of fixing up the next episode but Grill Master YoYu had a complaint about his location in reference to the guests who were sitting on a deck on a lake, plus a few other technical difficulties that seemed to descend straight from an alternate dimension though not the scary kind. Well, that ought to do it for us from us for now, and we do appreciate your incredibly deep patience wells. We now return you to this sort of substitute episode:
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Coastal town felt the battle turn fruitless.
The growth on the rocks scripted stench
that clogged every mask that came
within a long toss – even the salts,
men who knew hand-to-hand combat
drama with serpentine sea creatures
that existed only in nightmares
for those who never parted from land
– even they, meaning the salts,
even the salty ones could not face
the presence; waters, no longer blue,
and no joke but the joke coming under
a categorical table of the most
tasteless the most inconsiderately
tasteless could utter in any social
setting, would say the waters
could come anything close to greenish.
Boats, tipped on their sides, oars
trapped in the merciless clutches
of sloppy but ancient ebb, now
blended with the rocks as well
as sections far out there so as
to seem perfectly camouflaged
to even the trained, veteran,
artistic, photographic eyes.
Kate spent most days in tears.
Rested her once-buoyant face in arms
that once were slim and evoked
the desire of many a male mind
to have to restrain those arms and use
brute masculinity to do it
while plundering what had to be
exquisite womanhood – well, those arms
had lost their butter-gold
tonality; wore, like her aging face,
the distinct pallor of defeat,
of a mind no longer stumbling
over furniture and itself
just to greet each brand new day on the coast.
The mind now plodded and did stumble
but from clumsiness of apathy
that was far along in maturity
and not the slightest bit clear.
Couldn’t quit the compulsive thoughts
in which scenes from past seasons coldly
highlighted the glow of romance,
that in those days felt indomitably
eternal, impossible to see
any way the tones and times could change
or deteriorate; permit the entry
of a harshness that touched others
but never her, even though the actual
number of nights the clichéd sweet
nothings were exchanged in the cafes
and patios, under the moonlight
that was no fool – knew how cool coastal
styles were – to play those scenes
in a spirit of perpetuity,
helped her to not notice the tentacles
that so gradually began to sprout
from the black crags. Instead of releasing
the bitterness that kept her blind
to the one road she still had access to,
because she wasn’t all that old.
But the situation deepened
into the dire, and she let the mood
pull her lips that once beamed gaiety,
into the shallow gulches that began
to crawl like raw silver webbing
in places of her forehead and cheeks
that the ancient artists and poets
would use to paint valley and expanses
gilded in priestly garments of gold
and supping from dishware brimming love.
Even her recourse to the bottle
could not much longer sustain her
sand castle. Last vodka bottle.
All the juices flushed into
the chasm, as her shaky fingers
clumsily tucked her sweaty hair – hair
she’d not washed in over four days.
Never envisioned she’d come to the point
she’d not bother to cleanse her pussy.
It emitted excess body stench.
Not the scent of sexual
satiation. The last time took
a high place but fought the futile
pressure to recall when her lover
– the one far from this place, far from her,
a puff of smoke-filled soap bubble – well,
she loved the tender and the dreamy
angles of romance, and tended to shut
the alleyways of her hearing and her
fantasy capacities whenever
he would suggest a new idea;
something outside the norm, their norm,
as it would be unnecessary
to suggest something within it, because
he’d just do it and her reply would sign.
She tended to lack appreciation
for harmless games that featured force
that wasn‘t real force. He’d indicated
interest. She’d destroyed it. One toss
of her head. She recalled she’d wondered
why he’d appeared lost in thought;
that the fleshy frenchings had thinned.
She thought she behaved admirably well,
considering that though he’d seemed absent,
a placidity laying over his face,
pupils large and dark – to learn, one eve
as they cuddled on the sofa, the scenes
he’d played in his head, behind those
dreamy, romantic eyes. And now,
nothing was running, needing cleaning.
As the vodka level
lowered in the last bottle
and increased the red in her eyes,
tears began to roll on her cheeks
and she did not bother wiping them,
letting them drip to the bar
in the den from where she watched motion
increase in size and in rate
– knowing – not believing but knowing –
she was about to see something so
horrifying yet so fascinating
that so few would – yet not have the chance
to do what one would most want: to tell others.
She would see but never tell what she saw.
Neither could she admit to anyone
the twinge of jealousy for the chopper
occupant. It appeared from nowhere,
or it seemed, like its sanded chrome glint
materialized from the plain blue wrap
or sheet or curtain, floated for the shore.
The house – her house – in the chopper’s
direct trajectory. Coming to
get her? Coming to save her?
Or knowing nothing, intention to land
where the sand was firm and broad
like a dance floor; where volleyball
nets were set up; where wine coolers
and daiquiris and bloody maries
and fresh fruit juices were abundant; those
days when friendship and romance
appeared as one fused
body of beauty without flaw.
The spurt of envy
spilled when the gigantic tentacle
lashed from the rocks or a pool
behind the rocks, and the suction cup
tip snagged the chopper and the chopper
disappeared within the arm and the pilot
had somehow squirted out and plummeted
into the sea, and just then the tentacle
with the chopper crashed back under
the surface; another, thinner tentacle
appeared, dove straight for the pilot.
Kate envied because the pilot
at least had the chance to tell
of the fantastic thing because he’d
have a radio. But the twinge
was quickly relieved when the first
fingers broke through the boards,
the splintering quickened her heart;
she downed the last swallow of vodka
and several tentacles took her wrists
and her ankles; she was on the floor
and her resistance was part
genuine and part pretense and she
realized why her last and long lost
lover wanted to try some of this.
She’d have to admit that she was
confident in guessing she’d prefer the feel
of rope – nylon or hemp – or leather,
to these tentacles, their suction cups
scratched and the flesh
was slimy and not that warm.
Kate’s clitoris certainly broadcast
the broad glow of enlightenment
about all of this and none too abstractly.
And then she saw a different tentacle
appear from the darkness and she thrust
her sex outwardly, in lost lust,
and twisted in anticipation
when the tiny nostrils like a micro-hippo
flared, but unlike a micro-hippo
and more like something amphibious,
a red tongue appeared from a horizontal
opening and she would’ve had an orgasm
if the creature’s head would go on in
and rub her, because it had to brush
and rub as it began to nudge her panties
aside. But she didn’t orgasm. Because
just when she was most exposed,
the creature’s head snapped back – pulled
from its quest; arrested pursuit.
Not only did the creature’s head
snap as though punched, it shrieked, just like
these kinds of creatures do in movies
about creatures who sport those timeless
tentacles, screeched and squealed so loud,
and her arms were free. Legs too were free.
And the creature scurried away
and she heard it say, “girl you need a bath”
And those words did not make her scream
and she’d probably not screamed as she did
if the event featured the tentacle
departure and the words from the creature
to which those tentacles were attached,
from which loins and torso – as well as
a creature has a torso – had the event
been confined to that tandem act – but she
had no more hope and she’d emptied
the bottle of vodka and knew that she
was about to witness more destruction
and the destroyer being a form of life
completely alien to anything henceforth
outside of the imaginations
of cinematographers; and she saw
a flash of the future in which she
was alive and another aware
that she’d been this close a witness
and had survived, not because of how much
she had in the department of brains
and wit but because in the deteriorated
condition she long lost incentive
for rehabilitating, her sex had become
so repulsively skanky an alien
sea creature was forced to seek escape.
Timmy the Scribbler 