The Darkly Golden Room

The Darkly Golden Room

 

W.B. Preston

Stretching to cover the canopy of a dream with a paint filled with the stars of eternity,

the wind spins atop the wheel twirling the clouds across this imagined ceiling.

Wide asleep I lay,

as she whispers tales of the silver skies filled with purple burrowing moles amongst the dirt in the

sky.

And the buckets of rain the hand maidens emptied to try to fill the holes made by the moles.

Recounting the myths now to you, I cry, though at the time I lay still and silent, for her words billow

softly in the golden shimmer of the night.

The ground is so far away from our feet while we paint, no star the same as the last.

We cover the holes the maidens could not, though the moles were nowhere to be seen.

And then she was gone, and I painted alone, but for the light of the stars,

twinkling shimmering pale blue, the clink of celebratory champagne glasses cheered

from across the galaxy awoke me from my bed of light and sand.

The pebbles fell from the side of the bed as I stood

I nearly slipped on the pinpoint grains of light.

Slipping on my cotton candy house shoes I tip toe not to disturb the giant mole sleeping at the foot of

the bed.

 His grand snores shake the room, but the stars do not budge, like chandeliers,

whose light is impossible but whose attachment is unmatched.

She returns, the woman whispering dreams, but now she screams and the mole jumps awake

burrowing into the floor and pulling the ground into his hole.

I grasp for the lamp and it explodes into glowing floating sand, as does the rest of the darkly golden

room,

whose pebbles spin down the moles hole,

downward we twirl, spinning in a whirlwind of glimmering dust and darkness.

She whispers to me, as the orange and purple glow inches over the edge of the dark sphere,

and my freshly painted ceiling falls from sight,

in the wake of a roar, and the blinding light.

Monkey Hubris

Monkey Hubris 

 

W.B. Preston

 

 

 

          Once a monkey sat atop a tree, peeling and eating bananas, in a most unusual fashion, and tossing the peels to the ground beneath. A man walking through the jungle came to the base of the tree, and found a pile of peels laying before his feet. Bending his back and looking high into the banana tree, another peel flew from the top and landed on his face. Pulling the peel from his face and tossing it into the pile, he called up into the leaves, "Hey! You up there! Stop tossing banana peels from up in that tree!"
        
          The monkey poked his head out from behind the leaves, "Toss off!" Yelling down to the man, who by now was becoming increasingly perturbed, the monkey disappeared behind the leaves again, to send another peel sailing down at the man, who stepped aside as not to be hit with another slimy yellow projectile.

          "This is highly irregular." Thought the man to himself as he stood at the base of the tree. "You can't just leave these here, someone could slip on them and hurt themselves!" The man continued, "Why don't you come down and clean this up and we can find a proper place for all these peels!" He reasoned. A half eaten banana sailed through the air and landed directly in the center of the man's forehead. The chattering laughter of the monkey could be heard throughout the jungle.

          Now extremely upset, the man pulled the half eaten banana from his face, sat his backpack down and unzipped it. "You'll be sorry that you didn't listen to reason!" He yelled as he pulled from the pack a small axe.

          "Whatdaya think you'll do with that then?" The monkey's question echoed and went unanswered as the man wedged the axe into the base of the tree. "You'll have a hard time of that, with such a tiny axe!" But the monkey's cries were ignored, as chunk after chunk of the tree was chopped from the trunk. The monkey went on eating bananas and dropping the peels on the crown of the mans head as he chopped at the wood. Each peel seemed to enrage the man further, and he increased the speed of his chops with each insult.

          "You'll tire yourself out before you make a dent!" The monkey yelled down as the man's face turned red, and he began to sweat profusely and his clothes became damp. The afternoon, turned to evening, and the orange light of the dusk awoke the now napping monkey. "Surely he's given up by now," thought the monkey to himself. But as he poked his head out of the leaves and looked down, he saw the man chopping away still, with his tiny axe.

          "At this rate, the tree will be down in time for Christmas!" Provoking the man further, the monkey chuckled to himself, though now it was his own sweat that began to fall. Searching his perch, he looked for something to deter the man's progress, but all he had were the bananas, then his eyes settled upon the pile of peels at the base of the tree, beside the man whom chopped at the tree solidly and steadily. To his right he found a parrot, and the monkey whispered something devilish in her ear. Immediately she flew off with a smirk on her face, her blue and red feathers, gliding away over the orange and purple sky. The man's chops began to slow, he stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow. The monkey watched, hoping the man would give up and leave his tree in peace. Turning from his work, the man looked over his shoulder at the setting sun. He knew he could not work much longer and decided to give it one last go, before he had to retire. Heaving the axe up high he whacked at the trunk with the reserves of his strength and the monkey watched, hoping his plan would develop in time to save his beloved banana tree.

          Then he heard the thundering footsteps of his plan unfurling, and he leaped from his perch and watched the man turn and see the giant hippopotamus rushing towards him. Stepping back his foot landed directly in the pile of banana peels causing him to lose his balance and fall on his back, half submerging him in the mucousy pile of peels. The monkey leapt for joy on his perch, but his celebration was short lived, as the hippo slammed into the now very fragile banana tree, snapping its trunk like a twig and sending the monkey and the tree violently to the jungle floor.

          Pulling himself from the pile, the man stood and looked down upon the fallen tree. Wiping himself clean, he pulled up his axe, tucked it into his pack, flipped it over his shoulder and walked into the night whistling a tune. The monkey was furious at this, and vowed revenge, as the jungle denizens descended on his banana harvest, now easily accessible to the jungle floor creatures. The monkey's eyes burned with tears and went red with vengeance, as he flew into the nearest tree, and silently stalked the whistling man from far above, hidden in the shadows of the moon, waiting for his chance at reprisal over his newly acquired foe.

Cloud Roots

Beneath sands lay secrets, beneath secrets lay we the keepers of our own hidden lights like rays reflecting off pale pebbled deserts, or the shifting flowing waves curling round the curvature of the earth, wrapping and coiling and twisting in to form you and I dancing to the rhythms from the sky, bouncing with the undulating invisible drum beneath the roots of the clouds, drinking from the lakes of a star, whose river follows everyone where ever they are, painting shadows on the ground soon to be erased, the great artist, creates and destroys at once ad infinitum.

The Missing Pocketbook

The Missing Pocketbook

W.B. Preston

Today of a dream, I forgot to see you, in your sun tinted dress fit snugly atop your waist, I wondered, did you call? But I was in a mad rush to the hospice, for Bunnie forgot her pocketbook in a drawer on the third floor of room seven. You know me, rushing about downtown, eyes fixed on cement and street signs, the cross street was eighth. I knew the hotel clerk would be trouble, peering at me from behind rimless spectacles, he huffed at my suggestion. I simply needed to get into the room and search the drawer, but he was stubborn this one, insisted on a few coins for his trouble, which I would not have begrudged him had he not been so unseemly about the entire affair. I washed my hand when I got up to the room. The window was open, yet the room lay shadowed for it was a quarter past noon, I must have missed the bells of St. Thomas as I scurried through the alleys to O st. A bark from below the window caught my ear, the dampness of the bathroom someone had recently showered, though Bunnie had told me she was alone here, and she had checked out this morning , by eight. The clerk would have mentioned if someone else had rented the room, I doubt it, the bed sheets were strewn about, no one had even remade the room. Had Bunnie been here with someone else, I wondered and lurched for the drawer, nearly pulling it from its bedside night table. A bible but no pocketbook.

This must be when you rang me, you had been waiting twenty minutes for our lunch date that would never come to pass. You must understand that Bunnie needed that white pocketbook, and she had sent me to gather it,I had no choice. If I had been in a better state of mind, I'd have called you from the room, but the barking dog and the missing pocketbook, the knock at the door snapped my neck around. I cracked it open slowly and peeked through the doors edged. The large nose of the clerk shone red in the dim hallway light and he huffed at me again. It seems five minutes was too long to be searching for a small pocketbook, yet I was desperate to find it. I know what you would say but I only had to please her, I could not stand the judgment of her eyes, pure and gray.

Quickly I rampaged the other drawers while the clerk, arms folded watched, though I knew I would not find the pocketbook, for she had told me which drawer to check. I was about give up, hang my head out the door and be on my way when I spotted the shoe behind the bathroom door, just beside the wastebasket. Dull yellow heel with white lining, I recognized it from the night before, it was Bonnie's friend Grace, she was drunk before I had a chance to take a sip. However, twirling the shoe in my hand as I rode in the back of a cab to Llobo's, I recalled that Grace had been driven home by quite the sober man with the thick mustache poorly trimmed that it gave him half a smirk, though I'd forgotten his name, he seemed unimportant at the time.

Llobo ran the bike kitchen on fifty-first, as you'll recall, his hands always greasy, he rubbed them in a towel and watched me as I made the walk towards the garage. I could tell he'd be no help at all, though he did remind me of my lunch date with you. I rushed into his office and rang your mother, but she said you'd been gone all afternoon, to meet with me. I dream of those thin sandwiches with the avocado, and the crème sodas to go with them, I half missed the lunch more than you. Llabo handed me a beer in the garage, and we leaned back against the workbench and sipped from the bottle under the shade of the garage a little after one. Llabo talked about some latina he picked up across town, a kid fiddled with the spokes on a bike, and from time to time Llabo would jump up, mad as hell and slam his beer on the bench, kicking over to where the boy worked, he berated the poor chap about proper manufacturing technique, something about the price value, though I didn't blame him, this was his livelihood for christssake, though the boy probably was only paid a few coin. I sort of admired old Llabo, the way he brought in the street boys and put them to work, taught them a trade, they could make good money fixing bikes, everybody rides in this part of town.

Llabo went on and on about his Latina from the night prior, though I didn't listen much, I really just needed to know about what happened when he ran into Bunnie. Turns out he didn't so much run into her, as run over her. After listening to his story for thirty minutes in that steamy garage, often interrupted by the poor workmanship of the street boy, he finally gets around to telling me that he nearly ran over Bunnie, Grace and the mustachioed man with the smirk, while riding with the Latina on his bicycle handles. The whole thing sounds like some kind of farce, but it's true, every word, he described the smirk to a tee. He said Bunnie had the white pocketbook then, cause he saw her take it out and give Grace a cigarette. Llabo said she was so drunk she nearly burned herself with the cigarette tilted from her lips. Poor Gracie, she'll never stop, they say it's to do with all that business with her brother, from a few years ago, I don't know why Bunnie doesn't take Grace to see her analyst, I bet it'd do wonders for the confused girl. Llabo said that Bunnie told him they were going to the smirk's hospice, so I was back at square one, although I had a few more pertinent clues.

The first was that Bunnie was a liar, the second was that the room was made out to the smirk, not to Bunnie. So back I went to the hospice looking for the Smirk's real name. The clerk huffed before I could get my second foot in the door. Donald Meede, it turns out, though I still don't know if that's his real name. I remembered he called himself Donnie, he let the name slink from beneath that mustache. Now I hadn't spoken to Bunnie since this morning, and it was nearly three by the time I had gotten all this information and spun around the city twice, I needed to talk to the girl, and get some answers straight. So I rang her studio, and to further my anger I was met by the voice of a man.

“What do ya want?” What do I want? Shut up and put Bunnie on the phone! Is what I wanted to say but I’ve never been one for confrontations, I politely requested Bunnie. “She's dead!” He barked and hung up the phone.