A million turns of the wheel.
I’m still stuck in a devil’s deal.
Running these roads in the deep of night.
Two ellipses lend my only light.
What monsters lurk within that dark?
Beasts cut from the manifest of Noah’s Ark,
but who tread the waters through the flood.
Too mean to die, tougher than mud.
If I should slow before the dawn,
They’ll give this job to the next poor pawn.
Scootley-Wootleys are not of this world.
They don’t come in 2 types–a boy and a girl.
There are 16 sexes, 64 ways to mate,
and 3,000 rules on who and whom may date.
Pop-too can’t date Wah-toh, and Wah-toh can’t date Plarks,
but Wah-toh can take Pop-too for Sunday in the park.
Blang-doos and Moracks can only date each other.
Unless a Plark and a Blang-doo have a common grandmother.
The Siskay and the For-noo can only date but once.
But that’s plenty enough, cause it takes the whole of 4 months.
Planning an orgy necessitates a complex algorithm,
plus: blocks, straps, and a composite pulley system.
Just keeping track of it all was making me witless,
til I struck on a policy of minding my own business.
Trees talk.
Share sugar.
Stretch skyward.
Grow,
Compete,
Breath,
&
Eat.
Memorize weather.
Flock together.
Host birds of a feather.
Participate in pacts.
Never overreact.
House strangers.
Call out dangers.
Take things slow.
Never over grow.
But there are fields–
endless fields–
of green zombies.
Who cannot talk.
Who do not share.
Whose competitors
&
allies
are executed.
So they can fulfill a purpose
not their own.
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Trigger Warning” is a collection of 24 pieces of short fiction and poetry written by Neil Gaiman. If you know what a trigger warning is (I had to look it up) you may be thinking this collection is darker, edgier, and/or more risque than it really is. (For those who don’t want to look it up, a “trigger warning” is a blurb that intimates that a work has words or images that may induce a traumatic reaction.) However, these stories are Gaiman to the core, which means they are humorous, clever, and often quirky; but they are unlikely to throw one into catatonia or an apoplectic fit. The pieces include Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who stories, spin-offs from Sleeping Beauty and American Gods, as well as a few homages to other authors, including Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe, and William Blake.
Without further ado, I’ll give a rundown of the included works:
1.) “Making a Chair”: This is a poem about writer’s block.
2.) “A Lunar Labyrinth”: An homage to Gene Wolfe’s work, “Solar Labyrinth.” This short story is about a maze that was destroyed, and that wasn’t to be walked on full moon nights.
3.) “The Thing About Cassandra”: This is among my favorite stories in the collection. What happens when your friends and family start bumping into the girl who you made up as a girlfriend back in school?
4.) “Down to a Sunless Sea”: This was written for a water-themed event. It’s about a person riding in a lifeboat down the Thames toward the sea.
5.) “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains”: This one was inspired by an island off Scotland called Skye, but the story is fantasy with magic elements. A man strikes out in search of revenge and closing, regarding a daughter who he thought had run away. This is one of the most engaging pieces in the collection.
6.) “My Last Landlady”: This is a story, conveyed in poetic form, about a mean landlady.
7.) “Adventure Story”: In the Introduction, Gaiman calls this a companion piece to his novella “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.” However, I didn’t make that connection, (and I’ve read that story.) At any rate, it’s a great story about an intriguing artifact left behind by a [deceased] father whose stories were always painfully dull. It’s told by a mother to a son who is incredulous that his, seemingly milquetoast, father lived through such a fascinating event.
8.) “Orange”: Like several of the pieces in this book, this one is unconventional / experimental. However, it’s creative, and it works. It consists of answers to a questionnaire, from which the reader pieces together the story. One doesn’t have the questions, but most of them are fairly clear from the context of the answer.
9.) “Calendar of Tales”: This is what it sounds like, 12 stories each matched to a month. It’s another of the unconventional and unusual pieces. Each story was spun from a tweet response to a question about a given month of the year.
10.) “The Case of Death and Honey”: Few characters in the public domain have spurred as many offshoot stories as Sherlock Holmes, and this is Gaiman’s entry in the pool. Holmes’s interest in bee-keeping is central to the story.
11.) “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury”: An homage to Bradbury. If one forgets a person, did they ever exist?
12.) “Jerusalem”: This work was influenced both by a poem by William Blake and a trip the author took to said city. The story is about a couple of tourists and the unique mental illness associated with this locale.
13.) “Click-Clack the Rattlebag”: A scary bedtime story told by a child about a different kind of monster.
14.) “An Invocation of Incuriosity”: A story about one of the strange and colorful people one might meet at a flea market.
15.) “’And Weep, Like Alexander’”: A lighthearted story about an “un-inventor,” one who keeps you from having flying cars and all the other promised technology from sci-fi.
16.) “Nothing O’Clock”: This is a “Doctor Who” story. It’s not necessary to be familiar with the series (necessary backstory is provided), but it could make it more appealing—i.e. the inside joke effect.
17.) “Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale”: This is from “Who Killed Amanda Palmer?” Palmer is a cabaret-punk singer/songwriter and Gaiman’s wife, and the aforementioned booklet consists of a series of photos of Palmer looking deceased with brief stories to go along. This is one of the stories that could stand alone. It’s a fairy tale of the adults-only variety.
18.) “The Return of the Thin White Duke”: Another fairy tale, this one about a Duke that strikes out on a quest for adventure in order to rescue a Queen who doesn’t need rescuing.
19.) “Feminine Endings”: A story about a human statue—by that I mean one of those people who deck themselves out and stand on a box in the town square in touristy places in many parts of the world.
20.) “Observing the Formalities”: A poem about one who doesn’t get invited.
21.) “The Sleeper and the Spindle”: A take on the story of “Sleeping Beauty,” but from a different point of view.
22.) “Witch Work”: This is another poem. I believe it’s the only one that’s not free verse. It’s about the life of a witch.
23.) “In Relig Odhrain”: This is a true story about a saint, written in free verse.
24.) “Black Dog”: This is a spin-off from the novel “American Gods” and it features that book’s protagonist, Shadow. You don’t need to have read that book, but you might have a greater affinity for the story if you have. It should also be noted that this is the one piece that is original to this collection, and it’s one of the most substantial pieces in the collection. i.e. it gives fans a reason to pick up the book even if they’ve read a lot of it from the original source.
I enjoyed this book. Gaiman is a masterful story-teller. Whether it’s one of conventional pieces based in established worlds (e.g. “Doctor Who” or that of Sherlock Holmes) or one of the off-the-wall, experimental pieces, these stories and poems are a pleasure to read.
I am!
Am I?
What I?
Who is I?
I the me, or I the lie.
Where resides this sly I?
Is it fleeting and formless,
or seemingly seamless?
Somedays you see me,
but can you know me?
How can you know me?
If I’m “X,” the unknown?
A grounded plane
that remains unflown?
If I’m a tank
of grinding gears?
A blanket woven
sum of all fears?
I the river.
The bag of molecules
varying year to year.
In flux.
A current pulsed
through a wire—
a live wire.
Whose hum is felt
down a stringless string.
Sail words through the dead of night
When no one can see wrong from right
Cause all the world is shadow gray
Free from the harsh light of day
The light, a white-hot burning truth
Sears like a rotten, broken tooth
Stripping secrets to full nude
Until dusk writes them subdued
Once there was a dog and a man.
The dog chased and the human ran.
The dog got leaner, the man fitter.
But sometimes got bit, and being bit got bitter.
Chased, one day, a bone in hand.
The man devised a clever plan.
Raising the club, he flung it aside.
The dog caught its meal in mid-stride.
From that day on man carried meat.
To offer dog a tasty treat.
Dog, it seems, had trained its master.
No more racing to get faster.
Thirty thousand years then past.
Pavlov trained at dog at last.
Humans are slow, but can learn.
As the world, in due time, turns.
The whisper of two hands sweeping
A pre-dawn impatient auto beeping
Early morning bicycle horn
Its character croaked, old and worn
The tout calls, raspy and rhythmic
Some birds sing, and others mimic
Relentless, the screeching squirrel
Rattling the battling cats so feral
TING-TING, spatula on kadai
The sizzled speech of things that fry
Twenty talks held in ten tongues
The bounce of distant bongo drums
Puttering auto struggles for speed
The angry whine of steel wheeled steeds
Meanwhile Ladakh’s Martian soundscapes
The silent swish of saris draped
Snapping crackers and mortar booms
The thumping of neon nightclub tunes
Clacking high heels against sidewalk
Bantering bands of drunks cross-talk
Rolling shutters and clicking locks
The beep of setting cellphone clocks
Then nothing but the croak of frogs
And howls of nighttime alpha dogs
Said Socrates, “Oh, those poor bastards, for they think they know.
“I may be an ignorant slut, but I know I know not.”
[I paraphrase.]
My point, if I have one, is that “know” is an overused word.
Stinking up the discourse, like a bloated, floating pig turd.
[Remember Jim Carey, in the movie “Liar, Liar”]
“I object, Your Honor”… “Because, it’s devastating to my case.”
It’s a refrain seldom stated, but oft implied.
It works quite well, if you only talk to one side.
Fault us not for we’re wired to be certain.
If the cave wall shadow might be a tiger,
you don’t wait to see whether it’s a mouse.
That said, we’ve evolved these huge honking brains.
Our prefrontal cortexes might withstand the strain–
of asking:
How do I know this?
What if I’m wrong?
Might my mind deceive?
Facts: cherry-picked or strong?
a slow kick
flipped it over
jiggling
not yet rigid
soon to be brick block
unyielding and unmoving
but dissolving
as sugar cubes in hot coffee
and when no trace remained
ubiquity
