When I was a kid I was afraid of Johnny Cash. His music hit like a storm, so that the mere mention of his name was enough to conjure up black clouds and whirling winds in my childish mind. I didn’t know him, had never even met him, but when a girl in my class said she was related to him it was enough to send chills down my back. Country music was what my family tuned-in to in those days, and Johnny Cash was country music (all others, to include the hillbillies before and after, being mere imposters). Such was the living legend of “The Man in Black” down where I am from.

It wasn’t the prison associations he fostered that frightened me, nor his priestly black, frock coats, nor his towering physical presence, nor even the deep bass of his voice, although any of those things could be scary enough in their own rights to a seven year old. It was his aura that unnerved me. It was the reverent way that people I knew and respected spoke about him, as though Johnny Cash was the Resurrection itself, or worse, that he might have actually sprung from that other place that we were not allowed to talk about. Johnny Cash seemed larger than life back in the early 1970’s, and capable of any and everything. For instance, my Memaw would say with certainty to everyone gathered around her television set that Johnny Cash was the very devil himself come up from Memphis, and this as she sang and clapped along to he and Mother Maybelle picking out the Wildwood Flower. How is a child to process such oxymoroneous (I just invented that word) behavior?

Later, when I was in my thirties, my wife and I moved to Hendersonville, Tn., where Johnny and June had a house on the lake. I saw them while shopping at the local Lowe’s one day, she carrying a list as she scurried up and down the aisles, he struggling to keep up on the little electric handicapped cart, his bowed head humble and gray. Any unresolved fear I harbored was lifted at the sight of it, he being so obviously near his end, and yet I felt that same shiver I’d felt when my little classmate, Angie Cash, had told us all so long ago that she was somehow his kin. I never would have believed that day in Lowe’s that Johnny could somehow survive June, and looking back on it I wish he hadn’t. Her death left him even more broken than the turncoat, ”keep up with the times” country music industry had.

Johnny is gone now, and it is still debatable which direction he traveled from Tennessee, north or south, but he left behind a discography of greatness to remember him by; a plethora of songs to remind us in their simplicity and lyric, from rockabilly to gospel, that our time here on Earth is short, just as his was, and that there is something worth considering after… maybe even something to fear.

Just how high is that water, Momma?

She moves with gentle breath

into smooth waves of sound,

languid and dreaming of

sleep.

The mirrors mimic her face as

she collapses within.

Words form, then vanish into liquid and vinyl.

She watches the moment before she slips away.

Blanketed by space, alone.

Her spirit struggling to push against the crushed blue velvet fabric of time.

She bursts suddenly into helium and carbon pieces. scattering instantaneously across the universe. She watches without firmament the eruptions and fractures of a brilliant moon, intoxicated instantly by weightlessness and snow.

One heartbeat and the heat returns to her body.

As she travels back through tunnels that hold the shadows and memories of her life, a gasp.

Like the first breath of a child. Every moment of light creates a distance and forgetting

until nothing is left.

Nothing but white walls in a large empty house.

Life is a Beast

Against

this thin

ribcage

It beats;

checking

every

orifice

for Its

release!

I keep

my lashes

tapped down

like blinds

as a

Safety:

Its, yours

and mine.

Life is a beast

oh how

It beats

with wants,

with needs;

It's tied

to my

fingers

and toes,

with red

bloodied

leads;

I breathe

in and

try to

call out,

call It

by Name

and It

surely

harks back

to Me

Social

animal

that It

portends

to be;

Not as

house guest

but as

full

Veto

member

Life is a Beast

It pounds

Its fists

at the

Temple

and how

head and

heart aches

with all

It seeks,

and then

Negates.

28 JAN 2023

I provide my service, and then they pay me, or they don’t. It makes no difference to me. I murder their children, or I don’t. That makes no difference either, because, you see, piping is not about the money. I buy nothing. Merchants can offer me silk gowns or mahogany chairs, jewel-studded mirrors or plates of finest porcelain. I have no home; I have no need for a hoard of bric-a-brac. Neither do I need coins for food or drink, or lodging, or ferrymen’s tolls. I have my pipe, and it provides.

When they give me money, I throw it in a river.

Piping is about power. A town feels distress because there are locusts, or barbarians, or pathogens or drug addicts. Or rats, of course. The problem becomes a plague so that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put their peace together again, and then I am there with my offer. It can all go away, for a fee. Money can dispense with nearly every ill in our world if people have the will to part with it.

Sometimes, I am accepted, and the contract is fulfilled. I play my melody and lure the bad things elsewhere—often to another town, though the desperate rarely ask questions. I do my work; my patrons give over the demanded sum. They work so hard for that money, and then they must watch me waltz away and hear my jingling pockets.

At other times, I am refused. The people clutch their bills and coins and suffer on like the fools they are.

And sometimes, more often than you might think, I meet those who are not only fools, but thieves. They lack humility. I perform on my pipe; they cheer to be free, but withhold what is mine.

I drowned the children of Hamelin. I led them to the Steinhuder Meer, all of them dancing and laughing for fifty kilometers, even as their shoeless feet bled on the stones of the road. I played my pipe and they danced into the waves, giggling even while the mere filled their lungs and they died in water scarce over their heads. The muck, too, obeyed my pipe and swallowed their bodies below. The thieves of Hamelin might have found their children with ease if only they had known the tune.

I play those notes myself, whenever my work brings me nearby. I stand on the shore with my pipe and all the dead children rise to float on the waves. I play, they bob and I can hear their parents’ wails on the wind; I pause and listen. Once the cries fade and the bodies sink, I move on to the next plague in the next town.

The world is large, and I know many tunes.

I wanted this

Heavy metal wall

Sharp splintered cell

The hot sweet smell

of sex and blossom

Black blank hallway

Ready to be blushed

knocked and bruised

by the intimacy of art.

Swift and naked

Bare to the crowd

I saw it all

As it is

Aware

Actively

I am here

Ink on every form

Not for money

Not glory

Only to grip a solid place in time

Mine alone

Mine to die

Laughing as I fall

The way

You felt

Inside of me

Laying right

Beside of me

Your teeth

In my skin

As your

Fingers go

Deeper in

My nails down

Your back

Ready to

React then

You look in

My eyes

Ripping at

My thighs

Tracing your

Tongue

Until

I go numb.

You

Spin me

Around

And throw

Me down

Slide inside

And take me

For a ride.

Wrapping his heart

In a cloak of comfort

The warmth of her love

Burns deep in his soul

Filling his days and nights

Are thoughts of her

Her smile, her scent

Her touch, her love

Brief but blissful

Moments they share

Are but a taste

Of what's to come

For these two hearts

Share desires alike

To love and be loved

By one like their own

Should coming days

And passing nights

Bring comfort and warmth

To these loving souls

Each of them

With cups running over

Will finally have found

A place they'll call home

F. Tipa

John did not know what the hell he was doing here; or perhaps he knew all too well. He sat as he watched the woman fix him a drink at the bar. The woman, a mere stranger an hour ago, flashed him a perfect teeth smile. A perfect smile, yet he could not overlook that her nose and teeth were not aligned. It didn’t matter, somehow this woman made him more horny than he has been in years and harder than he ever remembered being as a teen.

She strolled over to him, her natural gait both predatory and sexual. She handed him the tumbler and flashed her smile, “Here dear. Your poison with one less rock, but I assure you, the bourbon is of finer stuff than that swill you were drowning yourself in back at the bar.”

Her name was Joy, or that was at least what she told him it was. John felt that it was a lie or at the very least a feint. He was still puzzling how she stirred this level of lust within him. He has been around women that have been more attractive, he had passes made toward him by women that were willing to be mistresses, yet he passed each and every time. Why stray now? Why her?

Joy sat across from him, legs spread. John’s eyes stayed on hers though, even as his mind played out how if she lifted her legs just a few inches more, he would be able to gleam the type of panties she was wearing, or if she was wearing any at all. He was surprised by how turned on he was just to uncover that simple mystery. When was the last time he cared what his wife wore underneath her clothes. He figured that sort of sexual tease died in him a long time ago. Why did he stir to know what Joy had under her dress?

“John, do women in general get soaked under your gaze, or is it just me?”

Joy’s comment caught him off guard. “Excuse me?”

Joy laughed easily, it tasted of honey and sex, “Your eyes. Your penetrating stare. Within ten minutes talking to you in the bar, my thighs were soaked, just from you looking at me with those gorgeous eyes. I cannot recall the last time someone could fuck me with just their eyes. It is a rare and wonderful thing.”

John dusted off all of his memories of his old lovers. None reminding him of his eyes playing an overly important part of their couplings. He thought of all of the times making love to his wife, when they still made love. He thought of all of the times when they just fucked, then the times when they just fucked around, never a mention of his eyes doing anything to stir her. For a moment, it seemed like something was missed. Was he looking at Joy in a different way? He didn’t think so. “I’m afraid that has never happened,” John replied a bit chagrined, “or somehow I was never aware of their effect.”

Joy laughed in disbelief. “Well, go ahead, sit there, sip on the whiskey, and please keep fucking me with those fucking, gorgeous eyes.” With that, she reached down and in a single, fluid flourish, she pulled off her dress. All she was left in were her heels, her perfume, and her smile. No panties to removed. Her thighs did seem to glisten.

John felt his heart pounding in his ears. Felt his cock trying to pound free from his pants, twitching in a way as if reaching for her. Felt the memory of his wife and felt his guilt for being here melt away. All of their years of blissful matrimony, followed by all of the years of painful matrimony, followed by all of the years of indifference and reflex mechanics of marriage, melted away. If Harriet ever found out about this, she would probably barely care, or so he tried to tell himself. All that was left of the passion in their love was embers, if that. No, an ember, that John finally grew too tired of trying to shelter so it didn’t die.

John watched Joy’s fingers explore all of the parts of her he wanted to explore. Her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs. He watched her tremble, as if somehow his eyes were groping her, fondling her, were indeed fucking her.

She gasp before her fingers entered her sex. Her wetness was audible. John growled at the thought of a woman being that wet for him, and he hadn’t even done anything yet watched her. He took a sip of the whiskey and Joy whimpered. She was right, it was good poison, but his hunger now was the poison between her legs.

“Tell me,” she panted, “what you want…”

John could barely hear her request over the pounding rush of blood ringing in his ears. It was almost an anger that he had never felt such lust before. So much wasted time. “I thought you said you wanted my eyes to fuck you? Haven’t they made it…”

Joy let out a high pitched sound. It wasn’t a moan, it wasn’t a scream per se, but the sudden tremor of her thighs mixed with flow of sweet fluid pour over her fingers from her sex told John all he needed to know. He tried to take a sip but all that was left in the glass was the water from the ice. He set the glass down ready to get up as he watch her prop herself up, dangling wet fingers as evidence of his crime.

“Well, what I want,” Joy mummered in wanton tones, “is for you to show me if more than just your eyes want to fuck me.”

John stood, undid his belt and fairly slowly pulled down his pants. He let out a sigh being free from their constraints, feeling the cool air engulf his hot, engorged cock as it sprung free. Joy took a few steps toward him and pushed him lightly, a lead to fall back into the chair. Her eyes were all lust and hunger and wantonness. For the first time, he felt like he was being fucked by a lover’s eyes. He would never forget the moment.

“Stroke it,” she whispered, as she fed him her fingers.

His hand followed her command, slowly stroking his cock as he always stroked and John moaned in a way he never did when he masturbated alone. He moaned because he couldn’t remember the last time touching himself ever felt this fucking good. He moaned because he couldn’t remember how sweet a woman could taste. Harriet was always uncomfortable being tasted.

Joy moaned and pulled her fingers free and laughed, “I believe I am more of a glutton than you.” She kneeled down, making damn sure her breasts pressed against John’s legs, making damn sure he felt how soft they were. She pulled his hand away from his cock and replaced it with her own. They moaned together when she brought her lips around his head. She sucked and stroked him in want over obligation. She feasted on him as if he was doing her a favor by letting her. Her lust poured over her lips, until she was overwhelmed with it.

Joy broke away from her sucking and awkwardly climbed into John’s lap, slapping her sex against his; kissing him hard and deep. Before John had a chance to gain another breath, Joy worked his cock into her. They fucked with everything they had. Their cock and cunt, their hands, their eyes, their lips, their moans. John didn’t know where the orgasms started and ended. For the first time for as long as he could remember, he couldn’t tell where he ended and his lover began.

When it all subsided, Joy kissed him softly, yet even deeper. When she finally broke it, she looked deep in his eyes, “I hope you don’t need to leave soon. I want to know how tenderly your touch can be, even if your eyes cannot stop fucking me.” Joy got up and walked back over to the bed, fell on it, turned and waited to see if John would join her. Joy cooed at the first of his tender caresses once he did join her and smiled.

~~~

John watch Joy slip her dress back on as easily as slipping on a second skin. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, John. I wish we could do this again.”

John was still drunk on the magical, lust-filled night, “So I assume this was a one time thing, then?”

“I’ve only had my heart broken once. I how found flash fires of sex preferable to the complications of love. I will admit though, I will miss how well you fuck with those lovely eyes of yours. I still don’t believe you that no one else has ever mentioned it.”

“Nope, before you, I am not sure I was ever aware that such a thing was possible, especially by me.”

Joy smiled, stepped closer, caressed John’s cheek, and gave him a final kiss. “I am positive I will never forget them. Your eyes fucking me will haunt me ’til I’m old and grey.”

With that, she left him alone, with a new found arousal, but nowhere to direct it.

~~~

John looked in his glass of bourbon, swirling it slowly, feeling frustrated and empty and alone. He didn’t want to go home yet, there was nothing waiting for him there but silence or empty conversation. John had half hoped that he could find some way to bring some life back to his marriage with Harriet after his tryst with Joy. There were a few moments where they almost found something lost, but too soon they fell back to old routines. Joy was true to her word, he had never come across her again. Never at this bar, where she first introduced herself after catching him take her in. He thought it was just a glance, “With eyes like yours, you can fuck a lady like me with just a glance.”

He remembered her whisper that to him, while they were in between sessions on that hotel bed oh so long ago. He ordered another drink. It had been about a year, it could not have been already two. He let his eyes wander. He suddenly wanting to feel...something again. They fell on the various women drinking their sorrows away, or drinking to amplify the joys of their moment. His eyes didn’t feel like they were doing anything though.

The door to the bar opened and he watched a couple of women walk in, joined at the hips and their shared kiss. When they broke their kiss, the pair showered the bar with their joyful laughter. One of the women was his wife, Harriet, the other, he had never seen. His heart caught in shock and surprise. John’s mind replayed the last few decades of his life with this now stranger. How did he miss this? When did it start?

There was a fluid of emotions rushing through him. Harriet seemed so...happy. When was the last time she seemed that happy with him? He felt a pang of guilt. How much of that was his fault? Neither of them ever recovered from being childless. They both wanted a family so bad. When they ran out of options to have their own biological child, he could never convince her to adopt. He could never get her past feeling broken. She closed him out.

John turned into the dutiful husband. Tried to be supportive. Tried to understand her pain. Tried to reach her. The chasm slowly grew though, whether they wanted it to or not. How many years have gone by since they’ve truly shared happiness. When was the last time they shared some of the ‘for better’ and ‘in health’ over the ‘for worse’ and ‘in sickness’.

John looked down at his empty glass, he didn’t dare to have another one here. He watched his wife and her lover until he was sure they didn’t see him. He thought it was a kindness to let Harriet have her happy moment and not confront them here. A part of him envied and wished he still had the means to give her that raw joy she showered the bar with. He almost forgot just how lovely she was when she was happy and reachable. He almost remember what made him fall in love with her so long ago in the first place. He paid his tab and slipped out of the back door. More lost than he had felt for a long time and he has felt lost and alone for far too long.

~~~

John sat in the kitchen, nursing a drink, wondering if the pair would come back here. He wasn’t suppose to be home for another couple of days. The meeting in Atlanta was such a failure that it ended prematurely. He almost went to a hotel instead, but in between the bar and where to go, he thought home was the best choice. Either she wouldn’t come home tonight and have one last night of believing she had a secret or she would come home and they would face it together. Suddenly knowing a hard end was coming was not comforting. Funny that he should dread this, even though their marriage has been on life support for years. John heard the garage open and felt the lump in his throat grow. He suddenly wish he did go to a hotel. He was not ready for this. Not ready for the end. Not ready for letting that final ember he has painfully kept burning alive to finally be extinguished. Yet he knew it was over. Forcing the marriage forward would truly be a lie now. Perhaps it has been all these years anyway.

Harriet was standing in the doorway. Even though there was a look of worry and guilt on her face, he could still see the happiness from earlier radiate from her. It crushed him that just seeing him erased that joy and replaced it with worry and guilt.

“John, why are you home? I thought you were gone until Sunday.” John swallowed down the bile rising in his throat as he took in not her words, but the tone. A mix of shame and concern and even a bit of anger. It crushed him, and he wasn’t sure quite why.

“The meeting was an absolute failure,” John said, it came out as almost a laugh, “and yet in hindsight it perhaps was the better part of the week.”

“I am sorry John...do you need to talk about it?”

John took a breath and cut to what the conversation needed to be about, “I saw you tonight Harr, at the bar. I was there when you entered.”

“Oh…” the sound came out so small, soft, meek, and ashamed.

“How long, Harriet?”

“With her?”

“With anyone,” John tried to sound calm.

“Too long,” she whispered, tears welling up, “but with Jill,” she said the name as if forced to, “nearing four years.”

Four years with such a secret. How did he miss this? John thought to himself, only to follow it by perhaps just not wanting to see.

“I am sorry, Harr,” John replied, with a sorrow too deep to understand, “sorry that you had to try to keep such a secret from me. Sorry for whatever went wrong with us.”

She was crying true now, but they were tears of guilt and shame, she mistook his words.

“Harriet, I am not mad. A bit surprised, more than a bit sad, but it is a sadness that I think we both have suffered for too long.”

“But, I cheated…”

John, held up a hand, “I am no saint. I did too.”

Harriet looked surprised and suddenly hurt, “Really?”

“It was a one time event. I am not quite sure what happened, yet it did.”

Harriet chewed on her lip, “You were tired of being alone. I shut you out and you were one to crave intimacy even if your eyes always hungered for a bit more.”

John laughed, “My eyes hungered for more?”

Harriet smiled, “You have dangerous eyes, John. You always have.” She smiled again, and then she frowned, “but those eyes could cut in their hunger too. After a time, they can become a weight on the soul. Your actions may always been noble, your eyes always screamed what you needed or wanted though.”

John lost his smile. One last shared moment. One like it use to be.

The silence remained until it was too awkward.

“Where do we go from here John?” She was leaving it to him.

He chewed on the word. What he wanted was gone a long time ago.

“I want you to be happy, Harriet. If that is not with me, so be it. Perhaps this way, we can at least salvage a friendship of a sort. Better that than what we’ve let us become. I miss you being my best friend, if I can get a facet of that friendship back, well at least that is something. Tell me, now that I know you’ve been with Jill, do you have any desire not to be with her? Hell, it’s been four years, Harriet.”

“No, I care for her deeply. I...love her in a way I never thought I would ever feel again. We helped each other heal in ways neither of us thought could heal.”

“Then, that is what matters, Harr.”

“What will we tell the family?”

“Whatever the hell you want to tell them. Tell them it was my fault if it lessens the blows on your end. I’ll tell my side whatever you are the most comfortable to tell them. They don’t matter. You matter.”

Harriet started to cry, “You can still surprise me, John.”

“I try,” was his only reply. He tried to smile, even though his heart still broke for them, for her, and for himself.

~~~

John took a sip of the whiskey and let it burn his mouth before swallowing it. He was surprised how lost he was in the world two months after the divorce. He was tired of the questioning from both his siblings and his in-laws. Harriet wanted to wait to tell her family everything, knowing some of them wouldn’t understand, but she felt guilty knowing John was being beaten about it, blamed for it.

“Hey stranger, mind if I join you?”

John looked over and saw Joy. In spite of himself, his heart pounded a bit.

“The seat is yours, although I believe you said I would never see you again?”

Joy shrugged, “Surprises happen. I see your hand is lacking a ring now.”

John looked down, his thumb still missed fidgeting with it, “It seems my wife had another love. Life goes on.”

“Sucks doesn’t it. Letting them go even when you still love them in your broken way?”

“Exactly.” John wondered if Joy’s broken heart she hinted about required her to let go her old love as well.

“That is the other reason I liked you, John. Your eyes and that you would eventually do the right thing and let Harriet go and be with Jill.”

John paused, and looked at her, “I do not believe I ever mentioned my wife to you and I definitely know I didn’t mention Jill.”

Joy actually blushed, “Well, Jill is a friend of a friend. I met the pair of them at a party. I am sorry to say I knew of your wife’s affair before you probably did. Like I said, I’ve had a broken heart before. I pick my lovers by knowing if they have broken heart themselves, even if they do not know why they are broken.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he took another long sip of his drink.

She put her hand on his thigh, damn it that it felt wonderful to be there. He didn’t want it to feel wonderful. He didn’t want what Joy seemed to too easily stir within him. He wanted to cradle his pain and loneliness.

Joy laughed, “If you trust nothing else from me, trust that our night together was not out of pity. By the way, my real name is Hope, my middle name is Joy. My parents each wanted to name me each of those name. My mother wanted Hope. They struggled to have kids. I was their only one.”

John’s heart lurched. Wondering what the world would have been like if Harriet and he did successfully have a child. They probably would have fought over names similar to Hope-Joy’s.

“Well Hope, would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”

“How about right now? I’m famished! But, is it possible for you to calm your eyes down?”

“Not sure. Since I don’t know that I am doing it, and my ex-wife confirmed I had dangerous eyes, and the fact that whether I want to or not, I find you irresistible, probably not.”

“Well, in that case John, perhaps room service would be the better way to go,” Hope said with a sultry smile.

“Perhaps you are right,” John replied, laughing an honest laugh for the first time in a long time, “but what about the complications of love?”

“Who said anything about love, John?” Hope smirked, “That said, perhaps dreaming about those eyes of yours have left me pondering if they would stare at me with the same intensity when I am old and grey?”

Hope seemed to almost blush at the thought. John’s heart skipped a beat. He quickly paid the tab and they left the bar hand in hand. As they walked through the doorway, John kissed Hope deeply, suddenly feeling that the doorway was just as good of a place to let a relationship begin as it was a place to end one.