Sounds Familiar...

"That still-twitching bird was so deceived by a window, so we eulogized fondly; we dug deep and threw it's elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole, and we rushed out to kill something new so we could bury that, too."

With those lyrics, the Weakerthans describe with uncanny accuracy how, when I was maybe six or seven, my brother, cousins and I found a dead crow and had a funeral. We made it a sort of play-pretend game. Looking back, that seems a rather morbid game for children to play--all false sadness and how we even named the corpse.

We called him Blackberry.

I wish I had been genuinely sad.

I tried to dig him up a year later, when I was eight or nine, but I couldn't find him.

"Hypocrisy": A Brief Narrative Comprised Mostly of Implications

Hypocrisy. He mouthed the word to himself, tongue molding the word slowly, as if it was tangible. Closing one eye, he shoved the other to the barrel of his shiny silver pistol. He preferred hooks and knives, but the guns had to be cleaned, too. Blood on the barrel. He hated that. No, he loved it. It spoke of purity. Someone had just been refined. Work was getting done; heaven was being populated. Or hell. Probably hell. He smiled. God was being satisfied.

Her mind was wandering. But wasn’t everyone’s? Her Bible lay open in her lap as the pastor’s voice echoed through the walls of the church. The sheetrock walls were stark against the red banners, bearing messages like “Prince of Peace”; “Lord of Lords”, flowing in silver script. She jumped. Settling again, she looked around to see if anyone else had been startled by the pastor’s sudden bang on the pulpit’s fake-wooden surface. They hadn’t. Embarrassed, she tried to focus on the words being preached. She knew she wouldn’t remember them, but in all honesty, she didn’t really care. She was here, wasn’t she? She donated every month, didn’t she? She was doing her part. Work was getting done. She sighed. God was being satisfied.

Her name was Mandy. And she was next on Mark’s list. Not particularly important in any way; just next. Mark smiled slightly. Mark and Mandy. Cute.
At the moment, Mark was standing at Mandy’s window, watching her. Well, not exactly; it was too dark to actually see her sleeping form on the bed, but he knew she was there. He knew because he had watched her come into the room. He’d watched her kick her black business flats into a clean corner where the white carpet met the whiter wall. He’d watched her pet her black dog on her blue queen-sized bed. He’d even watched her change out of her church attire: a black mid-calf skirt and a dark red blouse.

She changed into an oversized T-shirt, which he knew she usually took off later in the night, frustrated with the feeling of the seams pressing into her skin. These details were important. Everyone overlooked details, but not Mark. He wanted them, all of them, and he wanted to collect them himself. With his own eyes. He knew she was there. He knew it tonight, and he had known it for the past four months. But it wasn’t Mandy’s nightly habits that drew him to her. No, it was her need. The need she didn’t know she had. The need to break from her dull complacency. Hypocrisy.

Mark clenched his fists, feeling his nails bite into the palms of his hands. He ground his teeth, spittle bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Slowly, he drew his tongue across his lips. He itched to begin this job, just as he itched to begin every other job. But he was a smart man; a disciplined man. He would wait for the right moment to begin every phase of this refinement. These things took time. He would take his time, and do his job well. With one last glance at the dark window, Mark stalked off into the night. Soon it would really begin.

Top Ten Most Overrated Things (a rare note of attempted comedy)

1.High School Graduation:

Whoopdi-frickin-do, we didn’t flunk out. I can see why the students themselves would celebrate, just for being done with school, but what’s with all the ceremonial “congratulations”? It’s saying something about our society’s standards when we are so elaborately congratulated for not flunking out of an education series that is pretty much required. College graduation? Yeah that deserves to be a big deal cause for the most part it’s a choice--much less “required” than high school--that requires purely personal discipline and self-control. I know I know, in some cases parents are “forcing” their kids to go to college, but by that time it’s really up to the student. They could still get enough of a job to live on etc. without a college degree. But without a highs school diploma? Generally if they want any quality of life above a fleabag apartment and a factory job (or prostitution and drug sales on the street. It really comes down to personal preference there), they’d better graduate high school.
(Disclaimer: this entire list is spoken in generalities; I realize there are some exceptions to everything I say.)

2.Expensive Jewelry:

Unless one is going to use it as currency, why does it matter if a diamond is real when it could be replaced with a crystal or even a rhinestone and look exactly the same? Granted, it wouldn’t look the same if you took it to someone who knows precious stones and asked them to examine it, but for general intents and purposes (like wearing the jewelry), it has the same effect. It is unlikely one is going to run into someone who a) knows diamonds/gold/rubies/whatever well enough to tell their authenticity with the naked eye, b) cares enough whether or not one’s jewelry is real to come up and closely examine it, and c) will look down on you for being a cheapskate if your earrings aren’t “real”. So, if you like that bracelet and you think it goes well with your dress (or if you think that giant earring would really complete your pimp ensemble), who cares if you bought it at a garage sale for two bucks?
What about a gift, you may wonder? If you have the money and you want to show someone you care, isn’t expensive/real jewelry a good option? It depends on the recipient, I suppose. Personally I think that anyone, provided they are lucky enough to have the funds, could go out and buy a diamond necklace. I think gifts are more meaningful if they are homemade with the recipient in mind (“I know you like the smell of gasoline, so I made you this gasoline-infused pillow so you can enjoy the scent as you go to sleep.”), or if it’s something of the giver’s that has meant a lot to them (“This sock was my late father’s; I want you to have it”), or something of the giver’s that the giver has noticed that the recipient likes (“I’ve noticed how you’re always eyeing that yamaka of mine whenever you come over. I’m not Jewish and you really seem to like it, so you can have it.”), or something bought by the giver strictly because it reminded them of the recipient (“I was at Target and I saw this rooster-shaped colander and I thought of you, cause I know you love chicken pasta.”). However, if the recipient is someone who really loves or collects valuable jewelry/precious stones, nice jewelry would be a good gift. Not because of the price or authenticity, but because it is of specific interest to the recipient. In short, as far as gifts go, it is the thought and how-well-the-giver-knows-the-recipient that counts, in my opinion.
Again, I speak in generalities mixed with my own personal opinions.

3.Internet Phones

Are we so addicted to facebook that we just HAVE to get our fix of status updating THIS MINUTE? We can’t even wait until it’s appropriate to open the laptop, or even until we get home (gasp! The inconvenience!)? Will we go into excruciating withdraw if we can’t google “can Egyptians grow facial hair” RIGHT NOW? Need to get directions someplace? The number for “Larry’s Ink” so you can ask why you’re getting the finger from every Chinese person who sees that character you got tattooed on your face? Need to know what time the pharmacy closes so you can pick up your pinworm medicine? Want to compare gas prices so you can find the cheapest place to fill up your SUV that never leaves suburbia? It’s a phone. Dial the operator. If (s)he can’t answer your question, (s)he can give you the number of someone else who can.

4. “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

Don’t get me wrong; it’s an awesome song. I do love it. But there are many songs that are just as awesome yet far less famous; some of which make a bit more sense. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble relating to a bustle in your hedgerow. Don’t worry, Rob; I’m not alarmed. And the guitar riff? Yes, it’s really cool. But it gets old when every guitar player and their mom learns it and sits around playing it, hoping people will notice how awesome they are.

5.Angry White Bands

We know, we know. She left you and it broke your heart. And you have such a macho-man complex that you have to scream unintelligible sentence fragments about hardcore things like drugs, suicide, murder, and rape into a microphone while your friends bang on heavily distorted instruments like children with pots and pans to get back some of the masculinity you lost when you realized that you weren’t quite the self-sufficient male that you thought you were.

6.Organic Food

I don’t care how many green-thumbed scientist nerds have sliced and diced produce. Health nuts spend twice the money on pesticide-free apples, and yet, in general, it doesn’t extend their lifespan by that much. Sometimes not at all. I’ll eat my bug-sprayed apple (oh, here’s a revelation: I’ll wash it.) and if, down the road, I suffer significantly from the pesticides, I’ll spend the money I saved by not buying overpriced organic produce on whatever medical procedure is required to treat the problem. However, in the likely event that I don’t suffer any health problems due to consuming non-organic apples, I could spend that extra cash on whatever the hell I want. Or put it in a retirement fund so in my elderly years I can lounge by a pool and laugh at the health nuts cause they spent so much money on organic produce they can’t afford a nice living facility (let alone in-home care), and so they have to live out those extra two years in a crappy nursing home. So no matter what, you’ll certainly be no worse off in the end than the health nuts for eating non-organic produce. You might even come out ahead. But hey, if it makes you feel better to shell out the extra cash for a banana with an earth-toned label that reads “Organic!”, be my guest. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

7.Sudoku

It’s just like any other puzzle. It has nothing to do with the numbers; if you’re good at Sudoku it doesn’t mean that you’re a math genius (maybe you are. Don’t know, don’t care. The point is, the two aren’t connected). Just because it has an exotic-sounding name doesn’t mean it’s any more effective than a crossword puzzle or a Rubix Cube. It might even be less so. Crossword puzzles expand vocabulary as well as exercise problem-solving skills, and Rubix Cubes have pretty colors. And, retro is coming back, so there’s a plus.

8.Things With Touch-Screens

Touching an icon on the screen is not any easier than pressing the “enter” key, but it seems like it because it reminds us subconsciously of when we were toddlers. Mommy said, “Which candy do you want?”. We would boldly jab at our coveted item with a chubby finger and demand, “That one!”, and enjoy the immediate results that took almost no effort on our part.
And, you uptight technology nerds, how many times have you scolded us free-spirits for getting fingerprints on the screen when we borrowed your phone or ipod? And now you all have the latest touch-screen things, and it makes you feel so smart. I was touching screens long before you, you hypocrites. What, you can get fingerprints on the screen, but I can’t? You think your fingerprints are better than mine? Of course, now that it’s YOUR idea, it’s ok. Go ahead and touch those screens like toddlers. I’ll be pressing the “enter” key like an adult.

9.The Personal Lives of Celebrities

Who. Cares. I’m not even sure what to say about this one, cause I cannot fathom why people care about what parts of Angelina Jolie are fake, or drama in her and Brad’s relationship. “Zac Way-To-Cool-To-For-The-‘H’ Efron and Vanessa Whatsherface are dating! Oh, no they’re not. Wait, yes they are! Oh, never mind; it’s been ten minutes. They broke up again. HOW SAD!”
Honestly, people…why?

10. Any Kind of Vegetable-Infused Body Wash or Lotion

If you want to smell like a cucumber, go buy (a non-organic) one for a fraction of the price, cut that sucker in half, and use it like a deodorant stick (goes on clear!). Gee, I wonder why people don’t do that. Maybe it’s cause cucumbers hardly smell AT ALL, and what little smell they do have is the scent of wet grass. Then why have they started putting cucumbers in soap-like cosmetics? What do you think they do with all those cucumber-slice-eye-pad-things after the rich chicks leave the spa? That’s right; they shove ‘em in the blender, dump them in the leftover plain body wash and lotion, stick a translucent label on a transparent bottle to make our minds subconsciously go from “clear” to “water” to “refreshing”, and overprice them at $10.99. Hey, it’s a rough economy; can you blame them for exploiting the gullibility of unique-scent-obsessed consumers? Really like that cucumber body wash but don’t want to risk being said consumer? Buy a bar of soap, slice up a cucumber, and go nuts (the matching deodorant comes free with the cucumber, if you only slice up one half).

My Twisted Poet Tree

I’m still afraid of so many things. Maybe if I was put into a box and frozen for a few years, my heart would get frostbite, and when it thawed pieces would fall off and with any luck, they would take some things with them. Or a doctor could remove them carefully with sterile clamps and scalpels, all neat and orderly, and sew me back up with nice orderly stitches in a straight orderly line. That would be so much better than what I have to do. So much better to be orderly. So much better to be neat and clean.

But instead I have to reach into myself and rip out the pieces. It hurts it hurts it hurts so much but if I leave them they will rot away there, and take the rest of my heart with them. Maybe it will be less painful if I refuse to write it. If I never again see it before me as ink on paper, in my clumsy script. Maybe I will forget how to write those three letters in that order, and so forget a bit of it.

Every prayer concerning it I’ve put into bottles and hung from my tree. I have lots of things on my tree. Empty bottles of wine, fragile teacups, shiny silver trinkets, sparkling baubles and things that glitter in the sunlight. I have carved things into its wooden skin; words and phrases and pictures and symbols like pale scars in the rough, dark brown hide. A heart is there, with my initials on one side and a plus sign in the middle and a blank space on the other side. I’ll carve my future husband's initials there when I know who he is. Even if I have to come back from miles away.

I’ll go back to where I spent the longest and went through the most and was innocent and romantic and dark and fallen. The place my life changed forever. Many times. Where I longed so much for things out of my reach. I’ll come back and say to my ghosts, “See? It all turned out alright.”

I’ll carve his initials next to mine, and a symbol of closure on the tree. My ghosts will play here, whispering in the branches and swaying the memories of the pretty things that once hung there, catching the light. They will float upon the roof and watch for shooting stars; easy, lucky, free. They will be at peace, because I’ve come back to tell them that I’ve found my place. Life won’t be perfect, but I’m no longer lost. My ghosts will know that and rest. My tree needs a name. Something as sparkling and romantic and magical as it is. In some foreign language; something silver and glass and transparent colors. I love my tree.

And I like boxes. I like to hide things in them—little things—and forget about them so when I find them again and open them it’s like finding old friends. Once a boy brought me two turtle eggs he’d found in the woods. I put them in a tin box with some warm, wet tissues and shoved the tin to the back of my dresser.
I don’t know how long it was until I remembered the eggs. Actually, to be honest, I didn’t even remember them by myself. I was being forced by maternal powers to clean my room, and I happened to find the box. Even then, I couldn’t remember what I’d put in it.

I opened the lid. There was a baby turtle inside, scrambling around on his slippery metal floor, all lost and confused and shocked by the sudden light. The first light he’d ever seen. And I was the first face he saw. Not that it matters much with turtles, I guess. His brother egg was dead, but that didn’t make this one’s survival any less miraculous to me. I’d hatched a healthy baby turtle, almost completely by accident.

There in the damp dark, where I’d left him forgotten, God developed his transparent claws, his quarter-sized shell, his soft, baggy skin, his tiny tail, and his efficient little beak with which he tore through the rubbery eggshell. And so, there in a metal box amid wads of soggy Kleenex and a miscarried sibling, a little life began and lived for days—possibly a week or more. He shouldn’t have been able to breathe; the box lid was sealed and secure. He had no meal to supplement his tiny strength after birth. It was certainly with no help from me, his negligent foster mother, that he survived. His ever-watchful, ever-loving Father cared for him.

I named him Rocky and fed him wet dog food in a ten-gallon terrarium. He liked to sleep under dirt and peat moss, and when he was lethargic I would put him outside in the sunshine for awhile.

Winter passed and Rocky stayed in my warm room, bypassing the normal hibernation practiced by the rest of his species out in the cold.

When summer came again, I took him back out to the woods, to the pile of rocks where his egg was found. I admit I was worried about him; worried that he wouldn’t know how to survive in “the wild”. But as I walked back to my house after setting Rocky free, I remembered how God took care of him in the dark places when no one could see; when no one even remembered or cared. God would take care of him now, out in the sunny woods.
And, because “are you not more valuable than many sparrows?”, God will take care of me too, in the dark places and in the sunshine.

Though Her Sins are Many...

Your grace is a thing I can’t comprehend,
So I will hate myself instead
And spit on this precious freedom You gave,
As if it’s just part of some bargain we made.

Why do I keep going on as if
I could bleed enough to pay for this?
Or if I could make my scars match Yours,
I’d owe any less than the lowest of whores?

I look up from scrubbing these wounds to find
That You have sorrowfully knelt beside.
“Why are you troubled?” Your whisper’s a mourn;
“Here now are My feet, My hands and bones.
I died so that you could stop living this way,
And, though scars remain, your sins are erased.”

Praises Far too Simple

I sang no dirge at Your birth, my Lord;
Though You were born to die.
Only praises on my lips, oh Lord,
When for me You were bled dry.
Such mercy You’ve granted my soul, oh God;
So tenderly stitching my wounds,
Though I deserve the pain, my God,
For what I’ve done to You.
But now guilt need not drag me down;
The tears in Your flesh hold claim.
With gentle love You found my eyes,
And softly You whisper my name.
How can I resist Your call, my Love?
How can I stay away
When You tell me I am beautiful;
Cleanse shame and ease my pain?
Your words are my soul’s healing balm,
Like oil that soothes the skin;
For by itself, it’s cracked and dry,
Until I soak You in.
I never can phrase it just right, my Lord.
I never quite know what to say.
But I know that I miss You painfully
Whenever I wander away.