RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Second Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent. – JG *

I learned the meaning of the word “elegy” from the title of Issue #138 of The Uncanny X-Men, the comic book in which the funeral of Jean Grey, Phoenix, takes place. October, 1980: this is where the 1980s truly begin. “Elegy” was the first X-Men comic I ever bought – I missed Issue #137 (headed “Phoenix Must Die!” on the cover – I guess they meant it) by a matter of days. #137, the “Death of Phoenix” issue, went on to become worth hundreds of dollars, one of the most valuable modern-age comic books ever – Issue #138 did not. Story of my life. However, “Elegy” began the eternal autumn that haunted Kenton, NY and most especially Kenton North Senior High School, until the end, until the apocalypse that never came, until that one day when we all kept on breathing and shouldn’t have, couldn’t have.

So, “Elegy”: black leaves blowing across its splash page, Scott Summers’ black thoughts blowing across the other 31 – “This...is pain beyond pain. I never knew a body could hurt so much and still function. I’m not sure I want to call this ‘living’.” We were kids reading a superhero comic. Biff. Pow. Bam. It’s Clobberin’ Time. If X-Men #137 ripped something open in our lives and “Elegy” is what crawled in, X-Men #142, the conclusion of the “Days of Future Past” storyline, is that great beast matured and now slouching toward Babylon to be born. They didn’t even need to give us the actual comic book, the cover was sufficient: a huge mutant-killing Sentinel robot holds Storm in his right hand with a big spear in her back and uses his left hand to incinerate an airborne Wolverine. The tagline? “This Issue: Everybody Dies!”

“Everybody Dies!” Imagine that. That was the selling point. “C’mon, kids! Everybody Dies!” And it worked – Issue #142 sold like crazy. After #137 went through the roof none of us were going to miss out – I wasn’t going to miss out again. If somebody (Phoenix, Gwen Stacy, et. al.) dies and the comic book’s value goes through the roof, what happens when “Everybody Dies”? What is its worth then? How do you calculate that?

Except, if you read X-Men #142 (and I did, literally hundreds of times) you found out that really, nobody dies. Or they did, but it was in the future – 2013 to be exact. That totally super-futuristic time, the year 2013. Storm gets speared in silhouette, Colossus gets killed offstage, but Wolverine gets the flesh burned off his adamantium bones even more graphically than on the cover. That was pretty insane. That was February 1981.

C’mon kids. Everybody dies.

RETURN TO SNAKELAND - First Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent. – JG *

- Jason. Wake up. -

I sit up, still dreaming, my wife asleep at my side. They are arrayed at the foot of our bed, the women sitting, the men standing behind them. They are five in number, a little family – although I remember later that only three of them are actually related. The teenage Girl sits to the left of me, a strawberry blonde in a black t-shirt under a denim vest. She is scrawny and kind of trashy but she has a very pretty, vulnerable smile. She also has a deep gouge in her forehead and a thin red line dug into her throat where she was strangled.

The older woman, the Mother, sits to my right, covered in blood from what appear to be innumerable stab wounds. Underneath the blood her dress is plain, her face even plainer. The older man, the Father, and a young teenage boy stand together behind her, the older man’s hand placed awkwardly on his Son’s shoulder. The boy, kind of punk-rock, kind of skater-ish, is also bleeding but less so than his Mother. Fewer stab wounds are visible. The Father appears nearly untouched but for the blood seeping forward into the front of his work shirt – all of his stab wounds were in his back.

The last – the other teenage boy, the Suicide – is a little older than the Son but, admittedly, it is hard to determine his age because half of his face is gone and his jaw hangs awkwardly from the right side, the intact side. The shotgun took care of the rest. It appears that there may be another figure or two standing behind him but the outlines are vague, ghostly.

-Jason. Wake up.-

Oddly enough, I am more irritated than scared, which is strange considering how much anxiety fills my waking life. I must still be asleep.

-What. What do you want.-

-Tell the story.-

-Why me. Why not someone who knew you. Any of you.-

-There is no one. No one wants to remember.-

-I don’t want to remember.-

-But you do.-

They’re right. I do, and it bothers me that I still remember, and I don’t know why, and I can’t forget.

-But I don’t write about things that actually happened in real life. I write fiction.-

They look at each other and smile sadly.

-No one will believe you anyway.-

Fair enough.

ADIOS, KING: PAUL "GINGATAO" SQUIRES

Paul Squires was an Australian poet. He died on July 28, 2010. I never met him, never spoke to him on the phone, but he called me his friend and I liked to think of him as one of mine. He supported my writing more, and brought more people to my blog, than anyone outside of Maxine Clarke, another fine Australian poet. I used to dream about going to Brisbane after "Richie" became published and buying Paul a beer, but that won't happen now, if it ever could.

Enough! This is Paul's Gingatao blog, with his final posted poem. Here are some of my favorites of his. And if you look through most any of the comments on most any of the posts on this blog you will find him being generous, witty and bracingly direct. He was one of the best, and he went way too early. And he gave this beautiful, beautiful stuff away for free. What a man he was.

SUMMER BREAK / OFFICIAL "FICTIONAL MIXTAPE" POSTED ON SCRIBD

Hey Folks! I'm going to take a break from the blog and "Psychopomp" for the remainder of the summer but, in the meantime, please feel free to download the official "Fictional Mixtape" from Scribd, available right now! Click here and download to e-reader, iPhone, PC, etc. Thank You!

PSYCHOPOMP - CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (Twitter Novel / Keitai Shousetsu)

to start at Chapter One, click here

Retrieved from internet on 5/28/10: http//www.618239.com/find/x17/13954mtcon

The Mueller-Toch Consortium is made up exclusively of ex-Agency men, but it is not some repository for retirees looking to supplement their pensions for a few years until they can come to some kind of peace with their newfound uselessness. The ex-agents that have found employment with Mueller-Toch were all terminated from the Agency for cause: drug or alcohol addiction, unlawful termination of subjects or, most regularly, their methods simply became unsound. With the unusually high levels of stress and the extreme demands upon both the Agents’ professional and personal lives, a shockingly high number of Agents have been discharged in this manner. Several observers have suggested that the Mueller-Toch Consortium is some sort of a sympathetic branch of the Agency, created as a safety net to catch otherwise useful Agents and keep them in employ despite surface issues that would demand their discharge from a recognized government body. Either way, as Mueller-Toch is regarded as a private concern, the outward issues of conduct and method are minimized, and the money is provided by private individuals so public scrutiny is kept to a minimum.