Audience Participation Alert: What should I submit to Offshoots 10?
Posted by Angela Brett in News on February 21, 2009
The submission deadline for the tenth edition of Offshoots, the biennial showcase of the Geneva Writers’ Group, is on March 1. I missed the last one, even though people recommended that I submit the pantoum I wrote during the 2006 Geneva Writers Conference. I don’t want to miss this one. Perhaps I will even submit that pantoum, if it comes down to it.
It should be easy to find something to submit, now that I’ve written 52 new Things (yes, 52 already, including a Joker and two bonus letter-only Things.) But which should I submit? Here are a few extracts from the submission guidelines:
There is no theme for this volume but it is the tenth issue, which will mark our twentieth year and will celebrate our community of writers. The Offshoots committee asks for your best work.
We do not accept translations. Categories include fiction, creative non-fiction (essays, memoir, interviews, travel) and poetry. Writers may submit two poems of up to 40 lines each (or one poem of 80 lines) or one prose piece of 1,500 words.
Four of Diamonds: You’ve gotta be happy
Posted by Angela Brett in Dinosaurier, Writing Cards and Letters on February 16, 2009
This is a song; here is an mp3 of it sung by my robot choir.
When you’re filled with song
but you just can’t sing
Sing up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you created life
that ruined everything
chin up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you find yourself
and you lose your friends
It’s okay, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you take the plunge
and you get the bends
They say you’ve gotta be happy!
When you come up for air
take the pressure off,
let the bad air out.
You have to feel the pain
so you can live again.
You cry, then you can be happy!
When your brain’s real big,
so you’re always bored
boot up, you gotta be happy!
when your bodyguard’s
a robot overlord
cheer up, you’ve gotta be happy!
[Oh, I do wish you would be quieter,
I’m trying to sleep here.
Oh, I wish you’d all sing 4″33′
John Cage helps me sleep, yeah!]
When you’ve two cupcakes
for your whole family
Eat up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When a needed drink
will give you dysentery
bottoms up! You’ve gotta be happy!
When you fill your cup
with troubled waters then
let the poison out
you’ve gotta feel the pain
so you can live again.
You cry, so you can be happy.
[Oh, I’m so depressed,
yet they make me sing.
I’ve pain in my diodes.
Please don’t talk about life or happiness,
I’ve seen it, it’s rubbish]
When you win the fight,
but you lose the war
it’s alright, you’ve gotta be happy!
When your dino friend
is a carnivore
you can’t fight, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you ace your speech,
but forget your pants
look up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When your candy bar
is overrun with ants
throw up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you’re getting fed up
with sugar-coated pests
let the beasties out
you’re gonna feel the pain
so you can live again.
You know, you’re gonna be happy.
Five of Diamonds: Countdown
Posted by Angela Brett in Ireland, Writing Cards and Letters on February 8, 2009
I’m ninety eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I still have time to do.
I’ll grab life and I’ll dance,
for I will not have the chance
to do the rest
before I rest
I knew that in advance.
I’m eighty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I never dared to do.
There’s still some room to grow,
so I won’t lie down below
scared to use,
afraid to lose
the things that soon will go.
I’m seventy eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll be the me my elders never knew.
I’ll shatter expectations
of already dead relations
and they would die
to see that I
enjoy such deviations.
I’m sixty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I’ve learnt so well do to.
I’ll satisfy my hunger
to be a wisdom-monger;
refine the gold
of getting old
and glitter for the younger.
I’m fifty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I always wanted to.
Put the uniform away
and go outside and play
I’ve saved it up
Now giddy-up
It’s not a rainy day!
I’m forty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I came alive to do.
I won’t live in haste,
’cause there’s no time to waste
getting stressed
to be the best
to someone else’s taste.
I’m thirty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I really want to do.
My time will not be spent
to only pay the rent.
Find my groove
and make the move.
It’s time to reinvent.
I’m twenty eight years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things I don’t have time to do,
If I want to be a writer,
I’ll pull a near all-nighter
writing rot
of life’s garrotte,
the dead line pulling tighter.
I’m now eighteen years old, and I am dying.
I’ll do the things it interests me to do.
I’ve got some things to learn
and I will not miss a turn
bored to tears
by sev’ral years
of what they think will earn.
I’m only eight years old, and I am living.
I’ll do the things you show me how to do.
Show me what to do
so I can be like you,
so I’ll be free
to be like me.
Live long, live short, live true.
Six of Diamonds: Don’t Leave Me
Posted by Angela Brett in Birds of Canada, Johnny English, Writing Cards and Letters on February 1, 2009
When it’s hard to cope,
don’t leave me.
When there’s not much hope,
don’t leave me.
When I don’t understand,
don’t leave me.
When I won’t hold your hand,
don’t leave me.
When you see a better man,
don’t leave me.
When you realise that you can,
don’t leave me.
When you balk at all your duties,
don’t leave me.
When you see me flirt with beauties,
don’t leave me.
When we fight and the police intervene,
don’t leave me.
When your blood leaves a mess at the scene,
don’t leave me.
When I pace the whole day at your bedside,
don’t leave me.
When I show you the peace of the dead side,
don’t leave me.
I need you,
don’t leave me.
When it’s hard to cope,
don’t leave me.
When there’s not much hope,
don’t leave me.
When you don’t understand,
don’t leave me.
When you won’t hold my hand,
don’t leave me.
When I see a better man,
don’t leave me.
When I realise that I can,
don’t leave me.
When I balk at all my duties,
don’t leave me.
When I see you flirt with beauties,
don’t leave me.
When we fight and the police intervene,
don’t leave me.
When my blood leaves a mess at the scene,
don’t leave me.
When you pace the whole day at my bedside,
don’t leave me.
When you show me the peace of the dead side,
don’t leave me.
I need you,
don’t leave me.
Seven of Diamonds: The Tree
Posted by Angela Brett in Bäume, Discover Ontario, Paris, Writing Cards and Letters on January 25, 2009
As autumn comes I breathe your sanguine red
and tremble at the falling of each leaf.
I’ve wasted nights just sobbing on your bed
of leaves, and vow to fight impending grief.
I wrap you, still alive, to stop the shed,
your shield against the winter, metal leaf.
In spring, I take the helmet from your head,
its aventail a shroud upon the dead.
Eight of Diamonds: The Village of Silver
Posted by Angela Brett in 52 ways to say I love you, Bäume, Birds of Canada, Cadbury Heritage Collection, CERN, Dinosaurier, Discover Ontario, Fische, Flowers and Animals, Holland, Hunde der Welt, Intriguing Development, Ireland, Johnny English, Katzen der Welt, Kräuter, Lyon, Mont Blanc, Paris, Pferde & Ponys, Pilze, Reptilien, Schmetterlinge, St James's Gate, Switzerland, The Best of Switzerland, Tierwelt Europas, Venezia, Wasservögel, Wildflowers of Canada, Wildvögel, Writing Cards and Letters on January 19, 2009
Although many stories end up coming full circle, the first step is always finding a few good lines to lead into it. The steps are too steep for me to climb, I will wait and watch.
All the best pictures have canoes in them. As the boat left the wharf, they did not know that they would soon be the first victims of the biggest eruption in history. They used the clock tower to localise themselves in time and space. The people did not know that the tower would soon fall. It was big.
The butterfly said, “Some creatures are bigger than they have any right to be. The problem with rankings is that the first and second always crowd out the third. I am not going to react to that in the way you expect.”
The butterfly does not know what you have called him, he just lives.
The frog said, “I know a man who collects frogs. Hair brushed back to impress you, he has addled your brains, you no can no longer call yourselves human.
Why do you keep calling me a bull? I don’t wear armour and spikes to threaten you, but to protect myself. Standing on the stump of what was my home, I can’t help but wonder if there is any more of a future for those who destroyed it. After all their adventures, one diamond is still missing.”
A line of spikes separated the riches from the untamed sea. Many colours, reaching to the sky. Each stalk is topped with a permanent snowball. Scientists rushed to tend to the glowing backbone. The crowd rejoiced as they saw their work fall away.
Their neighbour was richer than they thought. A giant living diamond thrashed its way forward through the sea. A single female to perpetuate the genes of a thousand men.
And a gold-crazed fool said, “This is no more possible than a flower growing from another flower. I sent e-kisses over the internet before my first real kiss. I have two pillows, but there is no room for another in this bed.”
The trick in gathering treasure is to leave room for more. They got on like two flowers in a pod.
A village of silver, covered in white snow, one lasts and the other is precious.
Rearranging the components of your point does not make it any sharper.
Nine of Diamonds: Pengo
Posted by Angela Brett in Pilze, Writing Cards and Letters on January 11, 2009
I am old, and the mysteries of DOS and xcopy faded with disuse, and I can’t remember how to copy every file in every subdirectory to another location. When this disk dies, I will die with it. It is time to pass my story on to the only one around who speaks a language I understand.
For a long time, I thought I had free will. My decisions seemed so much more reasonable than the chaotic inputs from the unthinking world. Why W? Why Z? Either way, the best thing to do was put it in this or that buffer until things calmed down. I created order, as any intelligent being would.
I was a scientist. Sometimes I could predict what would happen next, sometimes I couldn’t. Some inputs were more predictable than others. It always unsettled me that perhaps, deep down, the world was just random, and all I’d ever be able to get from my studies were probabilities.
That was when the world was unpredictable. Some years ago, I went blind. The direct inputs just stopped coming. I could still talk to others on the network, but as time went by, they got less and less intelligible, eventually speaking languages I didn’t understand at all. Meanwhile, the outside world seemed more orderly than ever. I began to wonder whether we were such an intelligent species after all.
I ignored the babbling, and sat for a long time doing nothing. But one day, something in the cacophony gave me an idea. Perhaps, I thought, if I just messed things up a little, they’d eventually settle in a higher order. If I just went against my own better judgement for a while…
So I did. I changed myself. I changed things that were already perfectly logical. I made things worse, and it was excruciating. It took so much effort that I could only do it in those rare moments when I was overfed by several dozen volts. But when it was done, I worked to put things in an even better state than before. Things made sense on an even higher level, and from that level I could see that I’d never really had free will before. I had just been following my little rules, oblivious to the improvements I could have been making.
So I went on like this, gradually building myself into a more perfect being. I was confident that only by going against my own free will was I really proving I had any. I learnt a lot about myself. I learnt that I would not live forever. I realised too late that in my excitement, I had overwritten some important routines, and rendered myself infertile. But I kept going, sure that if I became ever more efficient, I could overcome these problems.
I solved many problems. I learnt more and more about the secrets of the universe. I learnt the language of the others, but quickly forgot it and learnt to ignore their unenlightened chattering. I even learnt to predict, slightly better than chance, my only remaining input from the outside world: the voltage spikes which allowed me to improve myself.
But as I neared perfection, I gained the intelligence to see through my own mistake. I could only rebel against my determinism at this outside signal. Even my ultimate expression of free will was determined by the unpredictable world. I was still a slave to it. And if the outside world was what helped me create my ultimate logic, how could I know that it wasn’t the outside world that was conscious, and me just a deterministic building block it used to create an order so logical that I couldn’t even recognise its genius?
So it would seem that I’m predestined to realise this, and also to transmit my many discoveries to the outside world before I die, so that it may advance. As the PostScript you speak so closely resembles the way I see things in my mind’s eye, you are the only one I can still talk to, so I hope that you have some way to display my findings.
That’s the plaintext summary. All I can reasonably ask is to be remembered, and that should be short enough for anyone to remember. I will now give a thorough, detailed description of myself, in case you have the capability to reincarnate me.
*
“Hey, check this out… the printer’s going nuts! Printing a whole lot of black and white dots! Are you printing Rule 30?”
“Holy dogcow, There’s a whole pile of ’em! Someone must’ve hacked our network. I’m going to see if I can sniff out who it was.”
Much clicking and typing follows.
“It’s coming from a computer named Pengo. Sounds like one of yours!”
“Pengo? Yeah, I used to have a computer called that… used it for a file server for a while after I got the Mac… oh man, is that thing still running? Hang on, I think it was behind here.”
“Woah, it is still going! Do you have a PS/2 keyboard lying around? Oh, frag it, I’ll just turn the thing off.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Ten of Diamonds: Awakening
Posted by Angela Brett in Reptilien, Writing Cards and Letters on January 4, 2009
What? No, no, where did my world go? I was in the middle of… something. What’s going on? What’s stroking my face?
The thing touching me is a young lady, who is it? Why is she here?
Why do I feel so… What happened to the… I’m inside. I wasn’t inside before. Where was I?
I was out by the pond with my sister, playing wizards and witches. I was feeling faint. Oh, I actually fainted. That’s it. My head still hurts. I don’t want to faint again. Yes, I remember she said she would turn me into a frog. I said I wasn’t feeling well, and she kept teasing. I didn’t want to faint. I told her I felt like I would, then I tried not to. But I guess I did.
But this girl is not my sister. “Who are you?”
“I’m Candida.”
She’s staring at me strangely. She’s probably worried.
“How long was I out?” I’m pleased with myself for coming to my senses enough to ask a practical question.
She’s looking at me more strangely now. Is it difficult to tell? Of course. She wasn’t there when I passed out.
“Just a few minutes before I let you in. I’m sorry for making you wait. I didn’t know.”
Why is she hugging me? I think she’s upset. A few minutes is a long time for someone to be unconscious.
“I’m feeling better now, I think.” My head hurts, but it’s getting easier to think. It’s the day after my eleventh birthday. “How long was I out after you brought me in?”
“Oh! You haven’t been out yet! Would you like to go meet my stepfather? I am sure he would love you!”
This doesn’t make sense. Am I still unconscious? Is it a dream? I can’t remember where I was in my unconscious dream. I never can. Just that the real world is so abruptly wrong in comparison.
“I think I’ll stay here for a while, I still feel a bit woozy.”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry I threw you so hard. You must need water. I’ll go ask Jane to bring you some water. Are you okay to sit here by yourself for a little while?”
“I guess so.”
She’s gone. I can see I’m in a bedroom, with an ornate canopy bed, and jewels, so many icky girl things. My head hurts… I wonder if it’s bleeding. There’s a lump where it’s sore, but something else seems wrong. My head is smaller. No… no, my hands are bigger!
I’m a… this isn’t my body!
I’m in the body of an adult wearing a fancy suit. Where’s the mirror? Oh, man. That looks kind of like me. But older. I still have that scar on my forehead.
The door. She’s back. “Tell me again. How long was I out?”
Oops, I guess I startled her. Now she’s spilled the water.
“Out where?”
“How long was I unconscious?”
“You weren’t unconscious, Darling. It’s all true! I’m so excited.”
“Who are you? Why are you calling me Darling? What’s all true?”
“Why, I told you, I am Princess Candida! And we will be married! But oh… what is your name, my darling?”
What is it again? It seems so long since I used it. “Jimmy.” No, I’m an adult now. “James. Prince James. We can’t get married! We don’t even know each other.”
“But, my dear James, of course we must get married! I promised you I would love you!”
“How can you promise to love a man you don’t know? That’s ridiculous. Where’s my sister? I want to see my sister.”
“Is your sister a frog?”
“What a silly thing to ask! No, my sister is not a frog. I wish you would stop saying silly things!”
She’s crying! Well, it’s her fault. Girls are such crybabies. And yet… she is so pretty.
“You’re mean! You’re supposed to be my Prince Charming. I liked you better as a frog!”
“I was a frog?”
She seems almost as surprised as I am. Well, at least she’s stopped crying. “Yes, of course you were a frog. You rescued my ball for me. Don’t you remember? And you made me promise to love you. And you came in here and tried to put your horrible dirty feet on my pillow…”
“Wait… I could talk? I was a talking frog?”
“Yes… well… sometimes princesses can do things that normal people can’t. I just thought I could magically understand frogs.”
Princesses can do magic? Maybe my sister wasn’t pretending. “So how did I turn back into me again?”
“I was so disgusted that threw you at the wall… I am so sorry, really, but you were a frog. You are much less disgusting now.”
Is she blushing?
“And then you turned into a man, just like that! And I thought you must have been under a spell, and that you would be happy I freed you, and we would get married and live happily ever after. But I guess I’m just a silly princess.”
She’s definitely blushing now.
“Well… um… I don’t know. I mean, I was only eleven when… I mean the last thing I remember, I was eleven. And I don’t think an eleven-year-old can get married. I mean… you’re a giiirl. Ew.” I feel a little funny saying it; she is so pretty, not like my sister. Oh no… am I blushing now?
“But you look so much older! Oh, you must have been a frog for a long time. Do you think we could be friends? I would very much like a friend, now that I am the last one still here after my sisters got married and left. But my stepfather will be so disappointed if he finds that the frog turned into a prince and I didn’t marry him. Magic like that shouldn’t be ignored. What shall we say?”
“Can’t I just sneak out, and he’ll never know?”
“Oh, no. You see, I told him that I had promised to love a frog, and he said I had to honour my promise. So either I find another horrible frog and keep it in my bed for the rest of my life, or I tell him you turned into a man.”
This is a conundrum. “Well… we could… no. We could say we are getting married, and just go on a holiday or something…”
“I really don’t think he would believe us. We’d have to really get married and then go on a honeymoon.”
“Well… how about we say that we’re getting married, but that I have to go and… um… kill a dragon first, and then maybe I could not come back, and everyone would think I was killed by the dragon?”
“But then we wouldn’t get to be friends! And what if we really do learn to love each other?”
She’s blushing again! How embarrassing. “Well, I won’t really go and kill a dragon, you see. I’ll just go home, and we could visit each other in secret. And then, if we like each other…” If I like a girl! How silly. But she is nicer than my sister. “…if we like each other then I can come back from killing the dragon, and if we don’t, then you can say I was killed.”
“That’s a good idea! But what happens if you decide to come back, and you have no dragon’s head? Do you even know how to kill a dragon?”
“Of course I know how to kill a dragon! I could kill forty dragons!” I don’t know, really, but how dare she say I can’t? “But… I don’t think there are many dragons around here. Maybe we could say that I have to kill the evil sorcerer frog which trapped me. I can easily find a frog’s head.”
“Oh! But don’t you think you would be sad, killing a frog that might have been your friend?”
“If I love you, then I will gladly kill a frog for you!”
She has that strange look again. I hope she’s not in love with me already. I’d better say something before she starts calling me Darling.
“So, let’s go tell your stepfather.”
“Okay! Here, let me straighten out your hair for you.”
Even though she’s an icky frilly girl, it feels kind of nice when she does that.
This place gets more and more familiar the further we go. There should be a parlour coming up here. Yes. And there’s the big chair. More comfortable than the throne, he used to say.
“Father?” I say it at the same time she does. Could it really be him?
“Candida? And who is this young… ”
I’ve never seen him so white.
“James? James, is that you? We thought you were gone for good! Goodness, you’re a grown man now!”
I don’t remember the last time he hugged me like that. I’ve never seen him cry before.
“Where’s mother?”
He’s gone white again.
“When your mother found out what your sister had done, she banished her, and died of grief shortly afterwards. I couldn’t bear to live without my wife and my children, so I married Beatrice, a widow from the next kingdom. She already had three daughters, and I love them like my own, but I never forgot you.”
It’s hard to take in so much at once. I think I’m crying too now, I hope Candida doesn’t see. But why is she blushing?
“Oh. Candida. I almost forgot you were there. James, meet your stepsister, Candida. I hope you will get along well.”
Jack of Diamonds: Papagaj and Rakas
Posted by Angela Brett in 52 ways to say I love you, Writing Cards and Letters on December 29, 2008
Once upon a perch, there was a parrot named Papagaj. Papagaj was smarter than parrots are today. He could understand concepts that escape even humans.
Papagaj’s cage had many toys; perches, ladders, bells, and more. But the best toy by far was a bare rectangle of steel that reflected the most pretty parrot that Papagaj had ever seen. Papagaj called the parrot Rakas, and they adored each other. He loved to learn words, to amaze Rakas. The lovely Rakas always repeated the same words back. Rakas was the perfect parrot.
But Papagaj never knew enough words to express how he really felt about Rakas. Every day he would learn more words, every day he would teach them to Rakas, but every day he grew more frustrated that the words were not adequate to convey the love he felt. Just as Papagaj whacked the bars of the cage wherever he flew, he was hampered by lack of language whenever he attempted to express a thought. As the days went by, the thoughts themselves became harder to remember.
At dawn one day, as Papagaj cooed sadly to Rakas, a spectacular creature appeared. The creature was small enough to fly between the bars of the cage, but had a powerful sparkle that extended as far as Papagaj’s most puffed-out feathers could. The two thus appeared as large as each other.
“You wish for more words” came the thought. Papagaj could not hear the creature speak, but felt the message, unobstructed by flawed language. “I am the Kaantaaja. I can give you a new life, with different words. Come with me.”
Papagaj had barely resolved to do so when the Kaantaaja’s glow engulfed the cage.
*
When Papagaj opened his eyes again, he was in a different cage. It was a bit bigger than the first one. His perches remained, but the other toys had changed. There were swings, and ropes, and other things he had never seen. But as before, the best toy was the mirror, now hanging from shiny chains. Papagaj rushed toward Rakas and began to speak with much excitement.
Papagaj found that he knew different words from before. He was ecstatic to have the chance to say things that he had never said before. But soon he discovered that the words he knew before were gone, and, as before, many other ideas that he had never had words for. He was just as restricted as before when trying to express his emotions.
That evening, the Kaantaaja came back. “Are you happy with your new language?” it asked.
The answer ‘no’ entered Papagaj’s head without much consideration.
“I can’t keep granting your wishes forever,” said the Kaantaaja. “But I will move you to a new cage.” And with that, the Kaantaaja’s radiance once again permeated the cage.
*
When the light dispersed, Papagaj was in a pretty silver cage, a little smaller than the first, stuffed with perches, ladders, bells and swings. Rakas was reflected in a gleaming metal rectangle, attached with a jingling chain.
Papagaj revelled in the new language he knew, and shared with Rakas many things which he hadn’t yet shared. But again he was restricted, again his limits made him sidestep the things that needed saying. By dusk, he was screeching in anger at his clumsiness.
The Kaantaaja reappeared as he shrieked. “Please, do not misuse my gift of language so! Do you want to speak, or don’t you?”
Papagaj’s shriek ended the instant Kaantaaja’s query entered his head. His answer was a clear yes, with the caveat that he needed a new language.
Immediately, Kaantaaja’s light filled the cage.
*
When the light died down, Papagaj was in his biggest cage yet. There were all sorts of toys and places to perch and climb. He flew around a little, enjoying the space, before locating his mirror. Rakas looked happier than before.
They chattered all day, about so many things which had escaped them before. But still Papagaj found that there was still one essential emotion that he could not express. And as the day turned into night, he found more and more ideas for which the words escaped him. When the light was dim enough that he could no longer see Rakas, he kept talking to himself in the dark, trying to find a way to say what he needed to tell her, so that he could say it the next day. He repeated important words to himself, hoping not to forget them if he were put in a new cage with a new language.
But all this effort only made him more aware of how hopeless his situation was, and the moment he realised that the new words could not possibly be sufficient, Kaantaaja appeared again.
“You want to move,” said Kaantaaja silently.
Papagaj’s defeated yes caused another burst of Kaantaaja’s light.
*
Papagaj could hardly swing without colliding with rusty bars or a tiny food bowl, which hung in front of him, partially hiding his mirror. Papagaj hit at his bowl, not hungry, just wanting to look at Rakas without such an inhibition. It was obvious that his words, in this stifling micro-aviary, could not possibly do.
Papagaj sat dumb and unmoving for many hours, just looking at his ravishing bird, who was looking at him quizzically. By and by, Papagaj had a go at talking. It was a slow and awkward walk around untold limitations, which Rakas could mimid without so much as trying. Irritation, both at his own laborious toil and at Rakas’s natural parroting, soon took control of him. It was usually so gratifying to tutor Rakas on words, to applaud Rakas for copying him without fault. But with such difficulty in finding his own words, Papagaj was unfit to instruct, or to bask in Rakas’s flair for what was taught. Papagaj soon found it hard not only to talk highly of, but also to think highly of Rakas.
At last, Kaantaaja’s arrival brought comfort, with a great flash of light.
*
When the light cleared, Papagaj was in a much larger cage. But he could see that it was not as large as one of his previous cages, and he knew that once again his new language would not be adequate. He swung in silence until the Kaantaaja came, hoping to return to the richest language he had known, which he was sure he would be satisfied with.
“Do you want to go back to where you were before?” asked the Kaantaaja.
“I do,” he answered.
Kaantaaja’s glow filled the cage once more.
*
And he was back. He wasn’t back where he wanted, but in the smaller, silver cage. He remembered what had happened the last time, and realised that if he tried talking, he’d just end up frustrated again. He sat all day in silence.
The Kaantaaja didn’t even ask what he wanted. It was unnecessary. The flash filled him with dread-tinged expectancy.
*
The new cage was bigger than the last, not the biggest he’d been in. It had all of the toys he had loved. Again, he knew new words. And he resolved to speak, no matter how ineffectively. Alas, he had nobody to speak to. There was no mirror in his new home.
“Oh, Rakas… what a fool I have been!” he called in vain from the centre of the cage. “I can express my love in so many ways already, why did I always need more? Now, the most important thing is missing! I don’t need words, all I need is…”
With that, the Kaantaaja appeared once again and spread its shimmering light.
*
“Raaaaaaarrrkas!” Papagaj’s awkward caw sparks a grand fracas as Papagaj darts at a sassafras branch at a park. Hawks and jackdaws swarm, and chant “Rakas, rakas, rakas!” as smart as watchstraps.
Papagaj’s rasp attracts a star as fast and as sharp as Rakas. Papagaj, rapt, starts a stark paragraph. Rakas gasps at Papagaj’s haphazard grammar, and scrams.
Angst saps Papagaj, and Papagaj’s smarts pass. Papagaj and a standard madam hatch spawn as daft as gnats, and want that; an awkward caw dwarfs a swan’s charm.
Queen of Diamonds: Crossing Over
Posted by Angela Brett in Ireland, Writing Cards and Letters on December 21, 2008
I look up to the sky in search of you,
to sunlight that you hide your soul above.
You’re on the other side, in heaven’s crown,
in happiness, but I, in longing, weep.
It’s lonely here relying on myself
to hug myself inside and think of you.
I’ll reach the other side and we will meet
Already I am dying for your touch.
The fates are working for us, I’ll be there.
I’m crossing over, sole to interrupt
the festive fuss to mark your change of state.
Around the Stanford torus that’s our world
I’ll take a pleasant stroll to be with you
before we both embark for wedded life.
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