Dreams and Dragons (REALLY long) 1/3
Sting Ray
Thought you'd like to know that my e-zine, Dreams and Dragons, is up and
running at http://www.vic.com/~jclark/ . For those of you without
access to the Web, I give you a text only version. If you want a
subscription let e-mail me and let me know.
Note: This is not the full version. It is the same version as what is
on the Web, but what's on the Web isn't "finished," either. There are
still several sections (as you'll see) that are empty. If you would
like to write something for those sections, send them to me and I'll be
glad to look at them. Thanks!
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Dreams and Dragons =A91996
http://www.vic.com/~jclark/
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Contents:
=80Editorial
=80Poetry
=80Short Stories
=80Prose
=80Essays
=80Humor
=80Travel
=80Food
=80Sports
=80Book Reviews
=80Music Reviews
=80Authors
=80Submission Info
All pieces within are owned and copyrighted by their respective authors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
=80Editorial
Hello! I'd like to be the first to welcome you to the premier issue
of Dreams and Dragons. Then again, I'm the only one that can welcome you
to the premier issue of Dreams and Dragons, and it's not even really the
premier issue. This is actually the preliminary premier issue. Anyway,
that's beside the point. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy
schedule to read my zine! (Then again, it must not be too busy if you
have the time to read this... :-)) On with the editorial!
As this is my first editorial, magazine, and foray into publishing
on the web or anywhere else, I don't have many- change that, any
credentials to speak of. I can, though, tell you a little bit about
myself, if you want. I am seventeen, a Junior in high school, trying to
get a job at a bookstore, and I want to be an editor, writer or
psychologist when I grow up. Anyway, enough about me, let me apologize
for this issue real fast. As you read, you might notice that each
section seems to start with me begging for submissions. You might also
notice that some of the sections are kind of bare while others are
completely empty. The reason for both is that several sections I just
added and others I simply could not get anyone to submit for. The
solution to both will come about when I have enough to fill this issue
out and be comfortable about the next one. To the people who are only
reading this for fun, I apologize. To those that might be thinking
about publishing somewhere, I implore you to give me a chance. It could
work!
With that out of the way, let me tell you that, while I don't have
much, what is in this issue is very good, in my opinion at least. There
may be a few things that would cause you to argue that point with me,
but that's the point of opinions, right? Anyway, I hope that there is
something here for everyone, and if there isn't, let me know and I can
try to fill it. I hope that within the next week I can have most of the
sections containing something good, since I'm going out of town next
Tuesday for two weeks. I hope that, after I get back, my mail box is
overflowing with submissions, but I also know not to get my hopes up too
high.
Anyways, let me give you a brief overview of what's in this
pre-issue.
In the poetry section we have four talented poets speaking of life,
love, death and some things you have to figure out for yourself.
For your reading pleasure, the short stories section features two
authors sharing with us a modern fairy tale, a look at what happens when
power becomes all consuming, and more.
Dave Locke gives us his views on plastic bags and their short
comings in the essays section.
A compilation of a thread from USENet, and a "mystery" inhabit the
humor section.
As for the rest of the sections, well, they are most regretfully
vacant. Ah well, life goes on.
Again, thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you
enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed setting it up.
Sting (a.k.a. Jonathan Clark), senior editor, executive editor,
assistant editor, assistant assistant editor, secretary and janitor
("Not on the carpet, you stupid cat!!!!!")
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=80Poetry
I got one poem, it was great.
I asked for more, and then got eight.
Four authors sent me lots of stuff
But, still, this section is not full enough.
If you're a poet, unlike me,
Send me stuff! I'll read it happily!
Here's my address (jcl...@vic.com). Use it please!
I'm begging you, here, on my knees!
With that said, I'll torture you no more.
I'll stop my rhyming. I think someone is at the door.
See Submission Info for details.
************************************************************************
Chainless in the Heights
by Ray Heinrich
the water system
has broken down again
the first letter of spring
still hasn't arrived
your old poem says it's easier
to water trees outside your head
i wish i knew what you meant
i keep this picture of you
right inside the door
waiting for an answer
************************************************************************
Forbidden Liaison...
by Amy Melissa
As quickly as we said hello
we whispered a quiet goodbye
We stood there teary eyed
trying so hard not to cry
One last hug, a final kiss
then it was the end
Silently I sobbed
as I pulled around the bend
I watched you turn to around
to watch me drive away
All the words were spoken
there was nothing left to say
I watched you wave goodbye
as a tear rolled down your face
Those images of you
I want so badly to erase
At night I walk thre streets
and stand staring at the stars
I walk along the lonely beach
and drink lonely in the bars
I struggle just to sleep and
I cry out in the night
Without you in my life
my life just is not right
The phone no longer rings
no more knocking at the door
Although I wish you could
you don't come around no more
We played foolishly with fire
and yes we did get burned
We did not know the pain
and how sadly we have learned
Goodbye my friend, goodbye
I shouted through my tears
And wished you nothing but the best
for many many years
It was heaven while it lasted
now it is the end
Remember that you'll always be
my very special friend.
Amy Melissa June 19, 1996
************************************************************************
This is Not a Poem
by Julie Schillinger
this is not a poem.
this is a flower that grows in the grass
if the lawn has not been mowed
for a while
if the weather is perfect
sunny and warm
not too cold
with just enough rain
a tiny aster-like flower
burnt orange
growing low to the ground
it stays for a day
or two if no one steps on it
or cuts it down
and then it is gone
this is not a poem
about a flower
it's about something else
************************************************************************
The .357 Magnum of Your Love
by Ray Heinrich
loosening the safety
pointing the muzzle
squeezing the trigger
bleeding to death
from the exit wound of your love
hemorrhaging
from the hard-on of your heart
in the flash of the police camera
the pieces of skull shine white
and the bits of gray are the brain
that just had to try
the 357 magnum of your love
************************************************************************
Son's Suicide Attempt
by Karen Wood
to hold him close
to hold him tight
where do they go
into the night
why can't i reach him
why can't he stay
i cry for him
to come back each day
did he see things so different
didn't he feel me reach, touch, hold
who was pulling him
what was he told
what did he see
that made him want to leave me
wish he would have stayed just one more day
maybe tomorrow.......would have been ok.....
karen 1994
************************************************************************
Duck
by Ray Heinrich
quack
************************************************************************
Cold Lazarus
by John A. McCoy
Corpsicle,
Chilly in here,
Less than a hundred kay,
Metal fractures like talcum rock,
Roses shatter,
Like glistening, smoking red glass,
And dead meat waits forever
For a miracle.
Is there a me in this non-rotting brain?
Do thoughts superconductively spin
Darkling daydreams and coffin nightmares
In the insulated can of frozen pork?
Am I alive in here?
How long?
How long can the juice last?
The company promised me a cure,
A miraculous return from the undiscovered country,
A two-way ticket.
The only sure-fire, certain escape route from death.
They promised.
I believed them.
Why not?
I was dead anyway.
How long has it been?
What is happening out there, in the light?
Has the company folded?
Have they turned off the coffins?
Have they reneged on their word, ruined my only hope,
Have they killed me?
How will I know?
I need to fight back, I need to email my congresscritter,
Yet I have no modem.
Do I even have fingers?
The promised me whole body storage,
But I am dead,
They have made promises to a dead man.
Can I sue?
Is this all there is, this empty hum of cold nitrogen,
All there is, forever?
Was there colour?
Was there ever...
Am I thinking?
I think I am,
I think I am thinking, thinking I am.
Thinking I exist.
It is dark. I have eyes like marble.
They do not see.
Can a static visual cortex decode anything anyway?
Can any company really promise to keep me suspended
For the millions of years it might take
Before a cure is found?
Are they betting civilisation will fall,
Before they have to make good on their false promises?
If they find a cure,
A cure for death,
A cure for frozen, fractured cells,
Will that crowded new world need
Another failed writer
Who can not speak their language?
They promised,
What can I do if they don't deliver?
I am dead
Am I not?
************************************************************************
Ducks
by Ray Heinrich
quack
quack
------------------------------------------------------------------------
=80Short Stories
Are you a storyteller? Do you always have a ghost story to tell
around the campfire? Have you ever wanted to write your stories down?
Do you write out your stories? Well, would you like them published?
Send them to jcl...@vic.com and I'll read over them, tell you if I like
'em, and then publish them!
########################################################################
Ambition
by Geoff Wilcken
The sick man looked at his watch again at 3:52. He had looked at it
hours ago, and it had been 3:52 then. The second hand snapped one notch
forward in its neurotic way, and the sick man looked at the people
around him in the waiting cubicle so thoughtfully provided by the city
bus system. There were six or seven indifferent people around him, all
anonymous, all silent, and practically faceless, for the sick man did
not want to look at them; he did not want to know who they were. Five
billion insects crawled about the planet below him, and he did not care
to find out anything about any of them, least of all these six or seven.
Seven, he thought. Eight counting the fetus inside the pregnant woman,
who was young and looked as if she thought she had a life ahead of her.
Foolish mortals, he thought. And he hated it most when the fools seemed
to be right. Nothing annoyed him like an accurate fool.
For he was of the other brand of fool. He could be medically
classified as certifyably inaccurate. Nobody understood the weight of
inaccuracy on his back any more than they understood why he had given up
on the future. The people who claimed that tomorrow would be a better
day bothered the sick man as much as those who claimed the same for
yesterday. It never was. The worst were the idiots who declared that it
was his responsibility to make tomorrow a good day. They felt power over
their lives, or at least they wanted to. Foolish mortals. He had given
up trying to make them understand, for talking to healthy people was
like talking to a brick wall, a cement wall, a huge cement tower built
around the slab of cement on which he stood, a huge cement tower that
loomed over the bus stop shelter like a man over an amoeba, like an
amoeba over a man, like a man over and under a man. He looked up at the
roof of the shelter, towards the sound of raindrops pelting the cheap
tin alloy. The other people blocked his view of any window to look
outside at the inclement but very appropriate weather. The sick man was
an inclement person.
Rustling and milling startled him until he, too, heard the sound of
a huge vehicle approaching, and that was the end of his thousand-year
soliloquy at the bus stop. It was finally 3:53, and he joined the
pile-up of bodies clamouring outside the narrow double-door. There was a
hissing sound as some anonymous gas escaped from the hydraulic door
system, and the people escaped into the bus like air from a bellows. The
sick man rubbed his coin between his fingers before dropping it into the
receptacle, a funnel, a test tube, so that it could join millions of
other coins in a journey to the safe womb of the bus company's bank
account, where the coins would fertilize each other and produce
offspring, the quarters and dimes breeding to produce pedigreed
specimens of Transitus dieselii, the lesser striped city bus. As if
there weren't enough of the beasts roaming around the streets already,
he thought. Buses outcompeted the bicycle in the mass struggle for
survival; they daily flattened bicyclists against buildings, ran them
off roads in their indifferent and sporadic pushes to the right-hand
lane to take in more parasites, making their wide turns to block all
other traffic, especially the small, the weak, the unfit. That was the
problem with Darwin and his survival of the fittest; the fittest were
never pleasant people. Years ago in school, the people who could run a
mile in under seven minutes had always been indifferent, if not
scornful, toward him. The football players didn't have to be nice to
anyone; they had already risen to the top of life, notoriety, a
priveleged rank among students that allowed them to yell obscene things
at anyone, post centerfolds in their lockers, and step on the occasional
freshman without serious incident. They had all gone on to professional
football by now, each signing his "X" at the bottom of a multi-million
dollar contract. The rich had already inherited the earth and cut the
meek out of their wills, and the sick man was too sick to be anything
but meek in a bitter sort of way. The enormous diesel engine roared and
belched poisons into the air like a person with intestinal problems, a
person who had gorged himself on success and triumph on the roadway of
life. He remembered the many occasions when he had had the misfortune to
be blasted with bus exhaust; it didn't matter, because he could do
absolutely nothing about it. The bus was mighty, large, and powerful; no
one could impose any construction of manners on it. Might doesn't make
right, the sick man mused, because it doesn't have to.
But he had outwitted the bus. Wits, intelligence, creativity, and
genius could occasionally defeat brute force, the sick man wished. And
he had all four, and had used them to contrive a solution, a partial
solution to the large problem of the planet overrun by nasty, noisy,
greedy parasites who constructed obscenities like New York, Shanghai,
Moscow, and many smaller ones, all pimples and warts on the skin of an
embarrassed and self-conscious Earth. He could not take care of it all,
to be sure. No one can change the world, he often said, but one can
always keep one's own corner tidy. He would rid himself of his sickness
through an ingenious feat of exothermic chemistry, a set of equations
and reactions that would ordinarily be held as meticulously guarded
secrets by justifyably paranoid governments. He had succeeded where
others had failed. He had the hydrogen, the nitrogen, the plutonium, the
hexacyanoferrate, the paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde, he had put the lime
in the coconut and he drank it over the rocks.
Months of painstaking chemical research in his basement, surrounded
by acids and aldehydes, bases and barium salts, tubes, beakers, books,
and a picture of a naked woman, sleepless nights puzzling over valences
and nuclear forces, all of it culminated in this day, this day at 4:13
as he climbed off the monstrousity onto the street on which he lived. It
was lined with conventional, unimaginative, vulgar houses, with an
occasional apartment complex that stood over the neighborhood in its
ugliness. He hurried up the concrete strip broken by weeds and heaved
upward by geological forces and tree roots. He sprang up his stairs,
unlocked his door, and burst inside, not stopping to look at the
television or the refrigerator, but striding confidently and exuberantly
across the kitchen and down the stairs to his laboratory not of evil or
goodness, only purpose. He opened the final door and looked upon his
array of beakers and solutions. Standing alone, isolated on his
converted workbench, were two tightly stoppered bottles, labeled neatly
and grandly. He had devised the formula with exquisite patience and
meticulous care. Once the ingredients had been prepared, the remaining
process was very simple: he would pour the contents of both bottles into
a large electrolysis pan, and apply standard house current to the
mixture, with the pan as cathode and a zinc rod as anode. He joyfully
removed the stoppers. The eletrochemical reaction would leave a
fifty-mile wide crater where this obscenely crowded city had once been.
He carefully poured first the yellowish liquid into the pan, then the
clear, viscous one, making sure that not a single drop was wasted. He
made a final check of the electrical wiring, making sure all of the
wires were connected. Everything was indeed prepared. All he had yet to
do was insert the crude but effective plug into the shyly reluctant wall
outlet. The two slots and the hole for the grounding pin made a
terrified face at the sick man, who smiled. The outlets had always
regarded him with that frozen expression of fear, vaguely reminiscent of
the famous painting by the Norwegian-- what was his name-- Oh, yes,
Munch. Edvard Munch's lithograph with the five billion curving lines of
existential anguish. Had he paid up his electric bill? Yes, he thought.
He had paid the utility company extra just to make sure he would have
electricity to power his moment of triumph, the perfect basement bomb.
He would conquer his sickness by destroying it in the only possible way.
It had to be done. There was nothing for it; it had to be done. He
whistled an air by Handel as he carefully brought the cheap, homemade
cord across the floor to the socket, a wicked martyr completing an
electrical intercourse; this was the moment. His moment.
He plugged the apparatus in.
After five seconds, he rose from the comfortable spot on the floor which
he had chosen as his last mortal location.
The chemical mixture had turned to an innocent blue, and only a pale
smoke wisped from its surface. He assumed he had miscalculated
somewhere, somehow, that he had committed some further inaccuracy. There
was no time, no universe in the dark and sparingly lit basement
mortuary, only a picture of a nude woman smiling back at him through her
air-brushed eyes as if she had known it all along.
########################################################################
The Old Woman and the Lions
by Andrew Dabb
Once, deep in a valley surrounded by high peaks and rolling hills,
there was a village. Now the village was not large, but it had a
blacksmith, and a cobbler, and a pastor, and a proper mayor and so it
could rightly be called a village. And in this village there lived an
old woman, so old that her bones creaked when she walked and and her
hair had all fallen out long ago.
Now this same old woman took a walk, staff in hand into the hills
every day after her noon meal, and returned every night, just before
dusk. Her son worried about his mother for there were lions in the
hills, and her daughters pleaded with her to stop her walks. But the
woman was old and set in her ways and would not stop no matter how her
children begged.
Now in this same village there lived a miser. Though he didn't call
himself that, thinking his profession more noble. This miser collected
gold from those people too poor to pay it, and so stole food from
families and milk from babes. Every night the miser would count his
coins reveling in their shiny beauty; and then, his exuberance spent he
would lock the coins away in a strong box and place the box under his
mattress. But the miser was afraid, so afraid, that someday someone
would find his strong box. So early one day he hiked into the hills and
found a dry spot not to far from the village but far enough he would not
to be seen. Here he dug a deep hole, tearing his hands against rocks;
but he did not care for the beauty of the coins overwhelmed him. In the
hole he placed the box. But before he covered the box, the miser opened
it and began to count. The shiny gold, radiant silver, and mesmerizing
copper flowed through his fingers like water. He was so enratupred that
he never heard the rustles in the bushes or the lion's snorts as they
approached...
The next day the old woman took her walk, staff in hand as she
always did. But this time she came upon the torn body of the miser and
the blood stained coin box. The old woman had lived long, and faced
death before, and so she simply walked back to the village and told her
son, who told the mayor, who came into the hills himself to fetch the
body and the box. The miser was buried in a plain pine coffin. Only the
old woman and the village pastor attended and his money was given to the
church. In the end it bought enough food to feed the poor for a year...
Now in the same village there lived a baker's daughter. This girl was
young with apple-red cheeks and a quick smile. But she was always passed
over by the young men for her cousin, a wispy pale-haired maid who paid
her suitors no mind. At first the baker's daughter tried to draw the
boy's attention with sweets and all sorts of delicious foodstuffs But it
would not be drawn, for the emotion of the heart was stronger than the
hunger of the stomach. Then she dressed herself in all sorts of
provocative clothing. But the men paid her no mind, for the lust of the
loins was no match for love in the soul. Finally, she reasoned she was
not the problem but in fact her cousin was intentionally drawing all the
young men away so the baker's daughter would never have a husband. And
so the baker's daughter plotted and planned, conspired and contrived to
kill her cousin, and thereby have her choice of husbands. One fine
summer day the baker's daughter invited her cousin for a walk in the
hills, the cousin accepted, glad to get away from all the suitors, and
the two girls strolled out of the village. Part way into the walk the
two maidens met a strapping young traveler from beyond the tall
mountains. The baker's daughter showered the young man with compliments
while her cousin kept quiet. But, as had happened in the past, the boy
took no notice of the baker's daughter and immediately asked the cousin
to accompany him into the village. The cousin, who had become enamored
with the youth, accepted readily and the two lovebirds walked away
leaving the baker's daughter behind. The baker's daughter stood on the
path and watched them leave, all the while thinking of new and more
vicious ways to kill her cousin. So engrossed in fantasies of knives and
poison, swords and guns was she that the growls from the shadows and
light steps of the paws never reached her ears...
The next day the old woman took her walk, staff in hand as she
always did. But this time she came upon the mutilated body of the young
baker's daughter. The old woman had lived long, and faced death before,
and so she simply walked back to the village and told her son, who told
the mayor, who came into the hills himself to fetch the body. The
baker's daughter was buried by the village pastor in the presence of
most all the town. Her mother wailed, her father cursed, her brothers
and sisters sobbed uncontrollably. Even the quiet cousin cried softly;
but, with the young traveler standing by her side comforting her she did
not cry long...
Now in this same village there lived a man who had so much gold
that it was said he gave golden coins at church and had gold teeth in
his mouth. This same man was no more than three dozen years into his
life, but already had resigned himself to spend most of his time in bed
and only moved when wheeled around by a servant. And even though his
legs were good and strong soon he could not walk on them, and even
though his arms were firm and able soon he could not even lift a slice
of mutton to his mouth, and so had to be fed. One day the man made a
strange request of his servant; he asked the hired man to take him into
the foothills so he could hear the birds sing their relaxing melodies.
The servant agreed, he lifted the rich man into his wheeled chair and
pulled and pushed until they both stood on the top of a grassy knoll.
The rich man closed his eyes listening to the birds sing and soon was
fast asleep. The servant however had strained himself heavily on the
journey, his breathing came heavy, sweat poured down his face, and his
heart beat in his chest like it was going to explode...it did. The rich
man slept well into the night while his serving man lay dead at his
feet. And so relaxed was the rich man that he never heard the lions
approach, nor did he smell death in the air...
The next day the old woman took her walk, staff in hand as she always
did. But this time she came upon the shredded body of the rich man, and
the cold corpse of his servant. The old woman had lived long, and faced
death before and so she simply walked back to the village and told her
son, who told the mayor, who came into the hills himself to fetch the
bodies. The servant was buried in a pauper's grave by the pastor's
apprentice. But the rich man was buried with all the luxury his fortune
could allow, his coffin was finely made and guilded with silver and the
bishop himself came from across the mountains to deliver a eulogy. Only
the old woman and the man's son attended the event. But many, many, more
arrived when it was time for the will to be read...
Now in this same village every year there was a great lion hunt,
when all the men from the village would take their muskets into the
hills hoping to bring back the head of one of the roaming cats. One year
a hunter came from across the mountains to join in the hunt, his face
was scarred and wrinkled and his beard was tinted with gray, but still
the man held his gun with the sort of bearing that commanded respect.
The hunters were called to the village square and each man present was
given a partner at random. The stone faced foreigner ended up being
paired with a young boy on his first hunt. The hunter and the boy
traveled up the slopes at a leisurely pace for the hunter had told his
companion that he always killed what he hunted and that none of the
village men could match him at tracking or marksmanship or woodslore and
so no hurry was needed. The two men paused at midday and took a light
meal of bread and cheese. After the repast the hunter launched into a
story about how he had, single handedly, killed one of the great brown
bears that roamed the high mountain cliffs. So engrossed in the hunter's
tale was the boy that all the world seemed less than a dull hum, and so
engrossed was the hunter in the telling of his tale that his keen ears
dulled, and his sharp eye blurred. And so neither hunter nor boy heard
the soft rasp as tongue licked lip, nor the crashing of the bushes as a
lion sprang...
The next day the old woman took her walk, staff in hand as she
always did. But this time she came upon the tattered bodies of the
hunter and the young boy. The old woman had lived long, and faced death
before and so she simply walked back to the village and told her son,
who told the mayor, who came into the hills himself to fetch the bodies.
The hunter was sent back over the mountains in an oak crate. But there
had not been much left of the young boy, and so the boys father decided
that instead of burying the remains they would be burned. And so the
boys flesh turned to ash in the presence of his family, the village
pastor and the old woman, and many tears were shed at the abrupt end of
so promising a life. That year not one lion was killed, and no village
man had the pleasure of boasting of a good hunt...
Now outside this village there lived an old shepherd who tended the
sheep of a wealthy family. Every day the shepherd would walk with the
flock into the hills, and set them to graze on a large patch of heather.
And every night the shepherd would herd the flock back into its pen, but
just before locking the gate the old man would choose a young lamb and
slaughter it. Now this was not part of his wage with the wealthy family,
but the flock was the largest in the valley and a few lambs would not be
missed. So the shepherd cooked the young mutton and gorged himself on
the flesh until his stomach was near to exploding. One day, as summer
was retreating into autumn, the old shepherd shooed the flock back into
the pen earlier than usual. Wolves had been howling on the ridges, but,
more distressing, the first chill winds signaling winter had rushed
through the canyons into the valley that day and the shepherd, knowing
that soon the flock would be taken back to town and he would have no
tender mutton for the winter, had grown distraught. So that night the
shepherd chose three young lambs fresh from the womb, and slaughtered
them. He roasted them, and seasoned them just the right way and then
while the flesh was still pink set to the shanks, and legs, and sides of
meat like a starving man. In the end only the bones of the lambs
remained and the shepherd his stomach overflowing with food collapsed
outside his hut, deep in slumber. His stomach churned, and growled at
being so near bursting. And so loud were the noises that they masked the
roar of a lion and the heavy breathing of the approaching beast...
The next day the old woman took her walk, staff in hand as she
always did. But this time she came upon the mauled body of the aged
shepherd. The old woman had lived long, and faced death before and so
she simply walked back to the village and told her son, who told the
mayor, who came into the hills himself to fetch the body. The shepherd
was buried in an unmarked grave for he had no family of his own. The old
woman saw him to rest herself, the parson being too busy for such common
folk. And that year every new lamb born to the wealthy family's flock
was born dead...