Lament for the Trash Bag

I don't write poetry very often, but when I do, I try not to take it too seriously.  This poem, which I wrote over a year ago, was intended to be silly--in contrast to quite a bit of deep and depressing poetry I heard in a creative writing class at the time.  Nonetheless, even a poem as silly as this can be thoroughly analyzed.  Whether you read it for fun or take an hour to examine each word, I hope you enjoy the break from the lengthy prose I have posted over the weeks.  Of course, I hope you also enjoy the poem itself.

 

I chucked a trash bag into the trash can,

And found myself

Ashamed,

As though I had shattered a moral code.

The trash bag, 

For whom my heart now pouts,

Had procured such an unpromising tear

As to place himself on a podium of uselessness.

Down he went, into the dark,

Mocked—

Surrounded by a new bag

That had pilfered his desired station.

I turned away, showering congratulations on

Myself

For eyeing the sharp tear that had

Misshapen the trash bag.

But then “Shoot!” I shouted.

For I realized,

Had I shown mercy and love,

I’d have mended the tear and given the trash bag a chance.

He, repaired and perfected,

Would have pranced to his station,

And with newfound inspiration,

Thrived for his predetermined purpose.

Instead I left the shamed trash bag

In the dank dark of the smelly trash can,

Shut off forever from bearing trash,

And shunned by an imperfect purchaser.

So I returned to my room, for I thought,

“It's just a trash bag;”

But in this I erred, for a trash bag without trash

Is just a bag.

Animal

I decided to post something a bit different this week.  One of my goals is to try out various genres of writing; thus, I settled on something that strays completely from my normal fantasy and science fiction elements: the Western.  I would consider this story flash fiction, and because of its brevity, perhaps I have not done the genre justice.  However, I have many plans for future Western short stories and at least one novel.  This story also differs drastically from my usual material, as it is written in the second person and the simple present tense.  Because there are so many new things going on here, feedback is much appreciated.  I hope you enjoy "Animal."

Animal

“Listen, Tom, I get what you’re saying,” grunts the man on the left, his greasy and stubbled face contorting as he chews the end of his cigar.  “This…thing has set us back a few hours because of some—what’s that word, now?—delusioned idea of saving the world.  I get it, I get it.  It’s quite the cundrum—uh, conun—quite the fix.  But death?  Come now, Tom.” He pulls the cigar from his mouth, and in the dim lighting spits a wad of dry saliva and cigar juice not far from Tom’s left boot.  “That’s mighty harsh, ain’t it?  Look at things from—“

“From what, Cole?” Tom roars, flecks of spittle catapulting onto Cole’s face.  “From the view of a damned Injun? Tell me.  What did you eat last night?”

“This is one of dem questions where you try and flummux me,” Cole replies, jabbing the cigar between his teeth again.  “Where you know my thoughts and all that.  You can forget it.”

Tom snatches the cigar from his partner’s teeth and hurls it into the dust.  In another moment his apish foot crashes upon it, flattening it to a useless pile of dark leaves and ash.  “What did you eat last night, Cole?”

“Now you got me thinkin’ back.  Might as well be a year ago.” He crosses his arms and leans back against the stony wall, now concealed from the glow of a nearby lantern.  All is silent for a few moments, and then a deep growl trickles from the darkness.  “I had some pork and a side of something or other.  Beans, likely.  The problem wit’ dem beans, Tom—”

“Fine, fine, pork,” Tom turns his back to Cole and begins to pace in and out of the lantern’s light.  “You know where pork comes from?”

“Your questions’ve done me in by now.  Deer, I wager.”

“Your parents done raised you a ninny, Cole.  Listen here.  Pork is meat from one of ‘em grunters.  You want pork, someone needs kill you a pig first.  We eat to live.  Now catching one of the rascals to kill ‘em ain’t easy.  You have to get ‘em and kill ‘em fast, afore they get away.  Now no story tells of some grunter walkin’ up to a man, plump as pie and ready to be supper.  This Injun’s no different than a grunter, only we ain’t fixin’ to eat no Injun meat.  But what we needs is Injun land, and to get Injun land, Injuns need to die.  We kill to live.  Now this creature here, that’s a piece of puddin’, Cole.  Good Lord knows we c’n spend a greatle drivin’ ‘em ‘round like cattle afore we pin ‘em an’ pounce.  But this one comes to us, no arms but fists and some Injun cow sense.  An’ we jus’ let the grunter skedaddle an’ frolic with the others? On my honor, not while I draw breath.  Cole, give me your gun.”

He takes the revolver from the holster at Cole’s side, and his monstrous footfalls along the murky footpath fill the minute cavern with a raucous din.  He approaches you through the darkness, a voracious shadow, unseen and unheard but present.  The conversation had instilled in you some sense of dread, but now all thoughts and fears are fleeting, and some sudden sensation of serenity settles on your heart.  It remains there even as the footfalls grow louder but fall with less frequency.  It remains as he halts an arm’s length before you, hinging on the half-circle of light cast from the lantern hanging above.  It remains as the cold click of the gun’s hammer creeps into your ears.  For a reason you do not know, you shut your eyes.  You wait.  Stale breath slithers through the air, across the space between you and this supplier of death.  You expect the frozen bite of the weapon to pierce you, but instead you hear the distant sound of Cole’s voice: “Down the years ‘head, when you ‘aflect on this, you’ll ‘amember the blood of this Injun was on your hands.” You open your eyes, and see half of Cole’s body beneath the light at the other end of the cavern.  In his eyes there is pity.

“Yes,” says Tom, “I know.”

He takes a breath, places a finger on the trigger, and—

Reversion--Part VI

Josh did not know what to say.  Windows of the past were suddenly open to him again, and he saw everything clearly through them.  He vividly remembered leaving his mother after their argument, getting into his car, and driving to Simon’s house.  It had not taken long, he had heard, for the city to be separated from the outside world, the wilderness where the “barbarians” lived.  Although many things were now revealed to him, he attempted to recall what events had led to the coma.  There was blankness, but not because there were no events to be found.  They had existed sure enough, but these events were cyclical.  Mind-numbing.  Did they even qualify as events? He had cast himself into a vegetative state by living the life still present in Simon, never deeming it necessary to find the will to stop, from the day he had arrived at Simon’s house, to the vague day of his loss of consciousness.  So then, was it lack of food?  He remembered eating more food than was healthy for him.  Lack of water?  Simon had had a refrigerator with a water dispenser, so it would have been difficult to die of thirst.

“Josh,” his mother said, her face twisted with worry.  “Josh, are you all right?  I know, it’s a lot to take.”

He breathed long, forced breaths, tears still in his eyes.  Then he set down his tea, cast his arms around his mother, and hugged her with all his might.  “Mom, I’m so sorry.  I am so, so sorry.  I hope you can forgive me for what I did.  I was so stupid, and I should have listened to you.  I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Josh,” she said, patting his back, “you were forgiven before you walked through the door.  I love you more than you can ever believe.  It’s as close as you can get to unconditional.  I can’t hold what you did in the past against you.  I don’t think any loving mother could.  I’m just so glad you’re back.”

They held each other for some time, weeping about the hurt of the past and the joy of the present.  Outside the window the bleeding sky seeped into the western mountains and willingly gave itself over to a sheet of navy, strewn with the ever-glowing jewels of the great expanse of the universe.  Josh peered out of the window, over his mother’s back, and watched as the last light of the day vanished.  There is such beauty in nature, he noticed.  It is a beauty that most people fail to recognize after growing accustomed to its presence.  The sun rises and falls, rises and falls again.  Sometimes the wind blows, and sometimes the air is still.  The sea, which was once there when you were a boy or girl, will be there a decade from now.  But the beauty is never lost; the person loses his perspective of beauty and is attracted to something else.  And since nature is no event, but a constant, there is nothing else for man to do while viewing it but reflect.  When he recognizes that this reflection is either hurtful or apparently unbeneficial, he finds something to numb him.  Like constructing the largest building imaginable. Like enclosing himself in a space with four tall walls.  Like watching TV.  Thinking that he brings himself safety, he actually loses himself slowly until there is nothing left.  Taken to its natural conclusion, the person becomes like the pale and prone roommate on the floor of his home.

Josh suddenly remembered Simon, and in the blink of an eye, he knew what he had to do.  He released his mother.  “I don’t mean to be rude, but there’s something I need to do.”

His mother looked astonished.  “Are you all right?  You haven’t even touched your tea, and I haven’t made you any food yet.”

He shook his head.  “What I have to do is more important than food or something to drink.  I’m not leaving for good.  Please don’t think that.  I’ll come back, but there is something I have to do first.”

“Can’t you wait for your father?” she implored him.  “He’s hunting, but it’s getting dark, so he should be getting home soon.”

“You’ll have to trust me, Mom.”  He stood and walked to the door.  “I’ll be back soon, and then we can live together, as a family again…until I find a way to be self-sufficient.”

“But not too self-sufficient,” his mother said with a chuckle.  “You’re a good man, Josh.”

Josh smiled thankfully.  “I’m glad you think so.  Now I need to go.”  He opened the door, prepared to walk out, and then looked back at her.  “Oh, and I meant to ask you something else.  I see you have the Bible, and that is not unusual, but what’s with the fantasy-fiction and Transcendentalist stuff? Where are you hiding all the sci-fi?” He laughed.

“Sci-fi?  Why would I read stuff like that?  I’d rather read something about what our world should be like, rather than what it could be like.”

Josh pressed the front door of his home open and stomped into the living room, not surprised that Simon was too busy to heed the noise.  He walked directly in front of his friend’s sight, through the shimmering screen, and with force he brought his foot down upon the black projector against the wall.  The device shattered on impact, black shards deflecting off of the wall and glass skidding across the wooden floor.  At the moment of the screen’s failing, Simon visibly disconnected from his zombielike intercourse with the game he had been playing.  Only a surge of testosterone or some other chemical instilled by human progress can explain what occurred next.  Simon leapt from the couch, burning red in an instant.  He fumed, and his eyes bulged threateningly.  Without restraint of any sort, he stalked toward Josh like a man bereaved of his family by a murderer.  He shrieked, without gauging the loudness of his voice, “I haven’t saved for like three hours!” and grabbed Josh’s shirt, throwing him against the wall.  “What are you doing, you son of—”

“I’m being the best friend you ever had!” Josh retorted, grabbing Simon’s arms and pushing him away.  “I’m saving you from this…thing.”

“That was all that I had!” Simon screamed at him.  “Do you realize that?”

“Of course I realize that!  That’s why I did it!”

Simon glowered and backed away from him.  He returned the couch and placed his face in his hands.  “I put so many hours into that game.  And the projector cost nearly a grand.” He looked up at Josh.  “So what’s going on? Are you out to ruin my life?”

“I didn’t need to,” he replied.  “You did that without any work on my part.”

“But what am I going to do now, man?” his friend asked desperately.  “What am I supposed to be doing?  There’s nothing.  That was all I had.”

“There’s more than you can imagine,” Josh answered.  “More than either of us can imagine.”

Simon shook his head dubiously.  “No, there isn’t.  There isn’t.  I have nothing, no one.  Without that, I’m—”  He then noticed the other housemate out of the corner of his eye, lying on the floor.  “I’m alone.  Um…he’s been asleep for a while now.  You’d think the yelling would have woken him up.”

Josh took a few steps toward his seated friend.  “He’s not asleep, Simon!  Ok?  He’s not asleep.  He’s dead, and he has been for a while.”

Simon stared at the body with a revelation of unrepressed terror.  “Dead?”

“Yes, dead.  You’re hardly different, Simon.  You’re not any better off than he is.  I wasn’t either, a few hours ago.  Have you heard yourself since I broke the projector?  You make it sound like it was your ultimate purpose in life.  But it was an object.  It was something that man made.  And when you thought it was doing you good, it was slowly cutting you off from—everything out there.  The world.  It was cutting you off from joy.  True joy doesn’t lie in large buildings with many stories, or in extra-large fences that stress how much of an individual you are.  True joy doesn’t lie in video games, or anything else that numbs you to the world and yourself.  It lies in community, in being with others, in simplicity.  But even if you can’t have those things, I think I’m starting to see that nature is one of the most important things in life.  We have totally severed ourselves from it, but it’s not too late to go back.”

“You’re talking like buildings, and video games, and all of that, is evil,” Simon argued.  “Do you really believe that?”

“No, I don’t.  It’s what we do with them.  It’s what we make them into.  They become like gods to us, and there’s not room for anything else.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Simon asked, rubbing his temples.

“Look, I don’t know if you even know this, but I was in a coma.  For three years, Simon.  I woke up earlier today and was confused about where I was, what had happened to me, and what my purpose was.  I left our medical hut and found my mom in a small village west of here.  She told me that I had been in a coma for three years, but she didn’t know what had done it to me.  Since waking up earlier, I have been piecing memories and ideas together in my mind, and although I’m no doctor, I think I understand what put me in a coma.  Imagine a person who must always have something to do.  He plays video games for hours on end, but then he gets bored of them.  So he watches a movie or two, and then finds that he doesn’t want to watch anything else.  Then he sleeps.  When he wakes up the next day, there is a sort of new freshness, and he desires to play the game again.  So, everything continually goes in circles until all his distractions are exhausted.

“What does he do then?  Well, not much.  Eventually he’ll either need to pretend that he is having fun with something that’s completely boring to him, or become bored by doing nothing.  You see, we have too many things to do.  We hurry from one thing to another, and since there are so many things to ‘enjoy,’ we never fully enjoy one thing.  We’re so busy—I don’t even know the word—‘worshiping’ all these things, but when we’re tired of them, we’re lost.  This may sound insane, but I think that the person who gets in that place just withers away—or in my case, goes into a coma.  He shuts down, because he doesn’t know how to cope with this…nothingness.  He has spent his life constantly doing something, and when there is nothing to do, the emptiness can be felt in his soul.  That is what put me in a coma, and I think that is what has killed our housemate.”

During his speech, Josh had felt that Simon was unaffected, having been absorbed for too long in his game.  But Simon released a long sigh and made eye contact with him.  “Everything about your coma was true?  So all this stuff that the doctor was trying to tell me wasn’t just an exaggeration?”

“So there was a doctor, then, who checked on me?”

Simon nodded.  “I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to him, except every now and then.  Some of the things he said—you know, about emptiness, and shutting down and all—were very similar to the things you just said.”

“And what did he say?” Josh asked curiously.

His friend swallowed.  “He said that doing too many things can be unhealthy, because one day all of those things will lose their meaning.  That can lead to depression, and that depression can lead to heart failure.  Sometimes, heart failure can lead to a coma.  Since you feel you have nothing to do, you have nothing to live for.  And if that becomes severe, then your heart can fail, even at a young age.”

“Then that really is what happened to me,” Josh said, somewhat relieved.  “Simon, most of our community is doing what we’re talking about.  You can feel it while walking down the street; you can see it by looking at the tall fences around the yards.  Everyone is separated from everyone else, and if they don’t let anyone into their lives—well, we’ve seen what happens.  Does this mean anything to you?”

“Josh, even if it does, what could we do? Seriously.  People are going to think we’re crazy.  They probably won’t even listen to us.”

“Yeah, you know, a lot of them probably won’t,” Josh replied with irritation.  “In their minds, they’ll probably react the way you did in this room just a couple minutes ago.  But if we can help just a few people, don’t you think it’s worth it? I ask you again, does this mean anything to you?”

Simon rose to his feet and stood before his friend.  “If I’m going to be honest with myself, as much as I hate to admit it, then yes, it does.  Josh, for the first time in years, I can feel my heart beating.  When you broke the projector, you broke my mind—but in a good way.  It’s hard to explain, and it may seem strange, but it’s like you unplugged me from death.  I’m so glad you were given the chance to live again.  I have a feeling that without you, many people would have died.”

Josh smiled.  “I hope we can make a difference.  We need to try.  Are you willing to help me?”

“Of course,” his friend agreed.  “This sounds like a better purpose than what I had before.”

After contacting the cops and alerting them of their deceased housemate, Josh and Simon began to travel across the community, telling people the story of Josh’s revival from his comatose state.  They had begun this with a powerful fear of rejection, but as long as some listened and avoided the lifestyle that Josh had fallen into, then they would count their attempt as a success.  There were initially many speculative listeners; in fact, some people rejected them at their front door with the excuse that they were too busy watching TV.  But over the course of time, people heeded the message delivered by the two friends, and they also began to warn other Builders of the potential danger ahead of them.  There were many stories of these messengers, telling of the desperation with which they longed for their people to see what was wrong with their society.

Some did not have to do this with words.  For a story has been told of one man in particular whose house was backed against the great wall surrounding the city.  He traveled outside the gates with a mallet, arrived at the portion of the wall that separated his backyard from the land of the barbarians, and read on the tough stone the word “Tolerance.”  With a great sum of strength, he lifted the mallet into the air and smashed this portion of the wall to pieces.

THE END