On the Road to Happily Ever After
This is the story of a Hillbilly Cinderella and her Seven Deadly Sinful Dwarves, as they travel to Oz, find a few shrunken heads named Dorothy, burn a few witches, and end up back in the cornfed and bubblegum Promised Land of Nowhere. Of course, if it is a good story, it has to begin with Once Upon a Time, and since there seems to be no better location to make a beginning, this story begins.
Once upon a time, in an era after 1939 but before the dawning of Time, there lived a young girl named Spacie Hue. This girl was the adventurous sort, in love with the animals and the world beckoning her. Armed with a deadly smile, she fought against bear-baiting and the lynching of elephants before she even left the county. Slowly, she came to know herself as a crime-fighter. On her good days, she was a superheroine, and on her bad daze, merely mortal. Everyone, who meets her, loves Spacie Hue.
There are nightmares filling her head with sadness and loneliness, which visit her, no matter what time it is that she tries to sleep. They know her schedule, and make her accountable for all the shadows. Checking in with her, these demons treat her as if she is their front desk clerk. They demand clean towels, free telephone, and wake-up calls. Open the floodgates. The demons and closet midget ankle-biters have come home to roost.
Talking to the sun everyday, of proper course and direction, for a goddess, life was easy, that is, until she met the Dwarves. Suddenly, the workings of life became complicated. It was not so easy to tell the difference between right and wrong, the act and the crime. We are on the road to Happily Ever After, with the Bitch, the Coyote and the Groom. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. The albatross around my neck reminds us to keep forging through the ghosts, and looking for a home. It is difficult to talk about the sun, without mentioning it. Eavesdropping, the sun is all eyes and never hears a word that you say.
The wanted posters appeared on the city streets, after the first crime. Although the drawing was sketchy, it was apparent that the world was on the lookout for a gang of little people, wearing beards and singing. Soon, the news stories were filled with news about our villains. Out of the midst of the night, they would appear on the street, raging and ranting in a pack of expletives and flamboyant flatulence. No longer are the streets protected from invasion, and nowhere is safe from terrorism.
Write about an early dream that has remained with you. Give us the child’s eye-view, and describe the person who dreamed the story. Later, write it in third person. My nightmares make their home out of my subconscious. I try not to remember anything, actually. All my memories are cluttered with violence, abuse, and the Other Side. I am always chased or assaulted in one manner or another. I guess that this is the price one pays for being a hateful victim. By a route obscure and lonely, haunted by ill angels only, where an eidolon, named Night, on a black throne reigns upright.
“You are a cactus-squeezing lost motherfucker, aren’t you, Jack?”
Eidolon means a phantom, an ideal of an image. Now, don’t you feel stupid? The setting of our story happens to be a dream within a dream, and you are the owner-spectator. Many writers find that poetry is an excellent outlet for dealing with their feelings of trauma, caused by public tragedies such as the attack on the World Trade Center, participating in rush-hour traffic, or private traumas like death and divorce. There goes my disguise fading into the sun.
I will not grease the wheels of anarchy! I will not slip out behind painting number four, there is a hidden stairway there, if you didn’t know. Hemingway would laugh, as you tear up words in my face, and set them on fire. The meaning of life is one big publicity stunt.
“If somebody accuses me of doing something that I didn’t do, the first thing that I would do IS do it.” says the bald man with a moustache sitting on the barstool of Sancho’s Broken Arrow Thinking Place. We are hanging with the Rainbow Credit Card Family, and the homeless with cellphones at the latest craze, Del’s 100th Flying Monkey with the chocolate ghost residing in the alley. Welcome to Cold Facts Avenue, in North Manure, the Disunited States of ShameriKKKa. Get out on the street and say something. Say it loudly. I think that we kissed Revolution goodbye about a month ago. Hello, Dirtypaintbrush. Everything that I do makes me smaller and smaller. Sooner than later, I am going to disappear from the sun. Beam us up, Scottie. The birds have flown too high. Karma seems to be making her rounds. I really hope that we have told you the trustworthy Truth. Take a picture. It will last longer.
“Oh, I don’t believe in God, so I cannot be saved from the mess that we have made, and innocence has all but faded.” He says, repeatedly in the form of a mantra. “I have made the same mistake over and over again. There are doors in this house that I will never open, ever again. My war is not with God. It is with his public relations team, who are downright annoying and presumptuous. I am not borne of untested virtue! Talk to me like I mean something!”
Welcome to the mess that I have made. Crucify me. It is a natural high. I beg forgiveness, and I caught the Devil on a bad day. “Just lease your lies to the cheapest angels of the night.” He said. “Stop blaming yourself for the Eden that never made you a neighbor.”
Pain is the cost of life. We mean to say that we are ready to die. Another sassy fashion statement. We love to love the broadside of an iron catching us upside our excuses. Time was created by the Gods to torture us. If I had a tattoo, it would mirror my Widow’s Song, verse for pitiful verse. I would make no excuses for money. I promise never to tell a lie. The ache of my sadness makes fountains out of my eyes, and movie sets out of my lies.
“Could someone much bigger than me, please come over and knock the reality out of me? Battery acid is not your mother. I love you. Stop choking me. I love you, stop choking me, and understand me. Why are you doing this? I love you. Please, stop. I love you. Please. You are choking me. Please stop. I love you. Damnit, please stop killing me again and again, I love you. STOP! How could you hurt me like this? Why are you doing this to me? I love you. Please stop.”
“You have cactus on your scalp. Don’t move. All of the Injuns love you.”
“You think that this is funny, don’t you?”
“Not at all. I am stone cold serious.”
“Do we need to remind you why we hate you?”
There is a blue-colored phantom residing in my home. I don’t so much want it to go away, as to start saying something that I can understand. No Person’s Land. We are making time with the effigy of the last Aborgine. Look at all the things that I have. Look at all the rights that I possess.
“So much for treaties, I tell you, they are after our scalps!”
“Shut up, damnit, Sancho, I am trying to think,” says Don Quixote.
“We are never going to get out of here, if you keep snapping at me, like that.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to leave after all,” Don Quixote says, with a devilish grin dancing upon his face.
“I hate when you do this.”
“Do what? I am not doing anything. I am just sitting here, looking out the window.”
“You are thinking.”
“Is it a crime to think, now?”
“For the most part, yes, it is. You should read the newspaper or something.”
“Art that is out of alignment just doesn’t make sense to me.”
“What do you know about culinary arts?”
“I don’t know anything, but that you have to get that knife out of my ribs.”
“Give me the loot!”
“I don’t have the loot, you numbskull! I have told you before. We are searching for the loot. You have the memory of Commodore 64, I tell you.”
“I feel like we have been wasted, all day long.”
“I guess that would all depend on your definition of wasted, now, wouldn’t it?”
Trying to outrun a pack of really pissed-off native Americans, who, while riding Buicks and Impalas still pose a threat, our misfortunate pair fall into the hands of the Devil. The forecast said partly cloudy. They did not expect a torrential hailstorm. Unannounced and undiminished by shyness, the thunder broke open over their heads, smacking their senses against the canyon walls. Golfball-sized bullets shot out of the skies and into their eyes.
