God Am... (A Verbal Tryptich)

God Am…(A Verbal Triptych)

God, am

I…

Homeless?

I ask the man tiptoeing by

Steeling his jaw, avoiding my eye -

Does that sound like “hopeless” to you?

Do your roofs and your walls and your stark white halls

Lead to bedrooms and bathrooms and centralized heat?

Am I incomplete?

Am I to be disregar-dead?

Discar-dead?

Dead?

Would it be better for you if I were locked in a zoo

For you to see and feed and gape

Whenever your mushroom-cloud religion

Blew enough shit off the walls of your

Texaco bathroom heart

To see that

Although I have no house

I still have a smile, a mother, an opinion…

Goddamn!

God, am

I…

Gay?

Will I be beaten to a pulp for wanting sex on a rope

For fitting X’s with X’s against their dark sexes

And not the lascivious brand the magazines tell me to

Fuck?

Am I outta luck?
Am I doomed to perform-

A smiling monkey by the organ grinder

That plays its part to earn its hollow bread

But the bread-giver locks me away

From the light of day

And wills me to stay

Til I can behave

Must I scream rage in their eyes

While their arrogance dies

And make them realize

That it’s not for them to decide

Who I love?

Goddamn!

 

God, am

I…

Alone?

When the door shut this time

There was no slam

Just a resigned click, a sigh, a cell-door goodbye

Shutting me inside

With no place to hide

Covers up to my eyes

As I watch the closet door slide

Slowly

Open

Exposing the only place in the house

Darker than this room

Where monsters that look like me hide

Where I alone reside

Did I send you outside?

Goddamn.

--Eric Marley

November 2010

He Tree and She Tree - Short Story (true?)

He Tree and She Tree

He Tree: My, but you’re beautiful

She Tree: You’re just saying that because we look alike, except I have more fir.  

He Tree: (Laughing) You could be right, but you’re still beautiful to me.

She Tree: Even after all these years?

He Tree: Maybe even more so now.

She Tree: Isn’t it interesting, how we came to be here? I came from a cone dropped from my mother tree, who has long since fallen and been reabsorbed into Mother Earth. You came from far away over that hill, after a Raven dropped your cone right at this spot. What made that bird do that?

He Tree: I think I will never know, since Raven isn’t usually interested in cones. But I’m glad he did.

Then there was silence for a while. This silence lasted for maybe seven years as they stood peacefully smiling, with their branches touching. They stood, feeling their roots intertwined. They had grown together to the extent that they could not tell, deep in the earth, which roots belonged to which tree. On warm days, they felt a tingling sensation all the way up, from their deepest taproots to the newest branches; nourishment from the rich forest soil. The seasons came and went. During the heaviest storms, although a disconnected human could never sense it, She Tree leaned just a little closer into He Tree, who protected her from the coldest blasts.

One early Spring day, She Tree said to He Tree: Sometimes I am sad to see the children we created all cut down.

He Tree: I am too.

She Tree: But even though they were cut down, I can see that our children are coming back to us. They are growing again.

He Tree: You are so observant, and it is so like you to notice something beautiful and cheery like that.

She Tree: Thank you. When they get taller, maybe we won’t feel the wind quite so strongly. That will be nice.

He Tree: I was just thinking that same thought!

Then there was an easy silence for two months before they spoke again.

She Tree: Do you think we will make it through many more winters?

He Tree: She Tree, I don’t know what the future holds. Our children came and went and now they are coming back. The deer and elk came and have only come back a little. The tree fairies haven’t come back at all since the road was built. The humans make it hard for me to predict much. Mother Earth is sometimes silent to my ears.

She Tree: You’re right about all that.

He Tree: All we have, my beautiful partner, is every minute, one at a time. Our roots are deep and strong. Mother Earth feeds us both all that we need. So far, we have been strong enough to withstand humans, beetles and wind, although we lost some branches to the cold. But it is hard to say.

She Tree: Well, all I can say is that I love every minute we spend together, here on this hill. And one day, if one of us falls, I hope we both do, so that together our bodies can nourish our Mother Earth, the termites, the ants, the grubs, the ferns, the grasses, the mushrooms, the voles…

He Tree: I love you, She Tree.

She Tree: I love you, He Tree. Hold me for a while, will you, for this moment?

He Tree: For as long as I shall stand, my love.

And that is how I, a human seeking re-connection to Mother Earth, found them on this beautiful Spring day, the echoes of their ancient conversation ringing through the ages…

--Eric Marley

May 2011

Devil Dreams (Prose...but true story)

Devil Dreams

I awoke again after dreaming of devils

and worse yet I was one the main one

and I saw the good people of the world

and it was my job to make them bad

and I got bored tooling around the world all invisible

and although your private pain brought you tears

I saw you being kind

and making yourself vulnerable

and reaching out

and loving those that were already mine

and I said “no way” when I saw this

and I had no body

so I got one

and I came down here and I met you

and I tortured you where you could see me

but you didn’t care…

you just looked at me with those eyes

those eyes that are the kind of blue

that Tahiti wishes it had and said,

“I love you.”

And now I am disarmed.

So I am going to lose this body someday

and I am taking careful notes because one day

I will stand in front of the One who makes it all happen

and I am going to march right up there, sister

I mean I am going to the front of the line

I am not going to be a “good citizen”

I am taking cuts

Because I am going to look god in the face

and I am going to recite how much you’ve gone through

and I am going to tell he/she/it to knock this shit off

and I mean RIGHT NOW

because you are the best thing that I have run into on this floating ball of rock

and you are the closest thing to what I felt

when my mother’s milk was running down my cold throat into my warming tummy

and you are the closest thing to what it feels like

to be a puppy cradled by a 4 year old boy on Christmas morning

And you are the kind of good that makes all the bad say “whatever”

and throw up its hands and walk away kicking rocks…

And you are…

just…

you…

and I love you…

and I always have…

and in my dreams

I came here

a devil

just to meet…

You.

--Aspen
2010

Me Plus Me (Short Prose Poem of Essay-ness)

Me Plus Me

“How do you live with yourself?” she said with a disgusted look on her face as she turned on her heel and stalked away, indignant at my observation.

“Well,” I said to no one in particular as I balefully watched her go, “it has been a long and interesting story.  I first met me about 41 years ago in a hospital in Covina, California.  I think my mother was there when we met, but I don’t think my Dad was around.  I was quite taken with me at an early age, but I didn’t always return the interest.  Sometimes I even felt snubbed by me, so I would get discouraged.  We were merely acquaintances for a long time, maybe thirty years.  We saw each other often, but didn’t really communicate with one another at all.  Don’t get me wrong - we weren’t enemies, but we weren’t the best of friends, either.  And then one day it happened. I saw myself across the room and I looked back.  Our eyes met.  It was then that I decided to pursue me.  I tentatively asked me out on a date to the movies, and to my surprise, I accepted.  I think we saw “A Beautiful Mind.”  Afterwards, we drove to the top of a tall hill that overlooks our town and just talked for hours and hours.  From then on, we sought every opportunity to be together, becoming almost inseparable.  Sometimes I would surprise me with pies, or take me on long hikes in the mountains.  Other times I would just hold my hand and stare at me for hours.  In time we fell and love and it simply made sense to ask me to move in with me. So I did.  Since then, life has had its struggles; the money problems, the doctor bills…but all in all, I’m just happy to be living with me by my side, going through life, almost as one.”

When I finished my story, my antagonist was long gone.  So I turned and looked at me with love and slowly made my way through the noisy crowd.

Three To One (Prose)

Three To One

She walked out tonight

Three steps to the door from where I sat

Three

To

One

The door handle turned with a click

Like a trigger hammer being pulled back

She looked back with a sigh

That wisp of hair in her eye

At a man that had written his own eulogy

And hated every word of it

The compression the door created in the room

As it closed

Squeezed the air out of my heart

Made it turn from red

To a deep, cancerous purple

Shriveled and vein-y

Like an old prune wrapped around

A

Coal

Black

Pit.

I sat where she left me.

The air

Became stale

Smelled of piss

Was filled with tight, selfish sounds

Oxygen tanks

Choked laughter

Too much being pushed through an opening

Too small to handle the volume

I never moved again.

--Eric Marley

December 2010

The Last Ray (Prose-y Storylike Lil Number)

The Last Ray

You came to me when I was a dormant seed.

It was the beginning of March; there was still snow in patches on the ground. I was cold, sleeping under the soil.

Many rays of sun slipped past sullen, reluctant clouds and melted the snow, and sometimes warmed it enough by the time it reached me that I stirred, but still I slept.

Over many days, more rays came as the clouds grumbled home more frequently and the soil warmed, but not enough to wake me.

And then you came, the Last Ray.

I remember still the moment you came. One moment I was content to be a seed forever, and then in the next instant, with your warmth, your energy, remaining a seed was the last thing I could ever do. Something stirred deep within me, and with a tiny sprout, I changed forever.   

Other rays would come, other nutrients from the soil, birds and leaves. These would all nourish me in my growth. I’ve made peace with the cacophonous cloud people, for they bring me the water I need to live.

But you, my Last Ray, will always be special to me. It was you that made me see that I couldn’t remain a seed, but could be so much more; that it was my destiny to be so.

I will always love you for that. 

Thank you.

--Aspen
2010

Rock (Prose)

Rock

“Don’t like me yet

Because I don’t know what I am doing.

I am not floating on top of the sea water

or even on top of the sea weed

I am a rock that got blown off the cliff above

and into the sea below

and I am sinking

and it’s what I do

and I cannot be saved

so don’t even try.”

These were my words

But you did not listen…

You reached your hand into the water

and you grabbed a sinking rock-

Not because it was pretty

but because it was sinking-

and it is your job to lift things that are drowning

apparently

and you do it

you do your job

and that’s good

because I am a rock-

a single brown pebble that once was on a cliff

but blew off

and I was supposed to drown

and I felt undone here

and I didn’t know what to do

and I was scared…

The sea

In all its vastness

Makes a little stone like me

Quite invisible

I would have just melted into the sea floor

and that would have been ok with me

but you said

“Stop it

I don’t care.

All I want is for you

to be ok

with you.

So don’t worry about me

Just be you.”

And so I sit on your shelf in your beautiful warm home

and I know you could have put more shells up here

or some artists dream

but instead

you put me there

a small, brown rock

so I came to know that I too

am beautiful, in my way.

And it is because of you.

--Eric Marley

December 2011