New Novella
Hi everyone! I've just released my first novella. If anyone is interested, you can purchase it on Amazon. It's titled A Walk Through the Years by Eric Johnson
Again, I want to thank everyone on this website who've posted challenges, gave me feedback on my work, and followed me. Because of you, I've been able to push myself over the last couple of years.
I'm really proud of this book and I'd love to know your thoughts, if you decide to read it.
Thanks!
|Hi•Ku•Pik•Throo|
Inspire someone
Invoke creativity
Translate the divine.
•
Inspire someone
Expand actuality
Bestow the Sublime.
•
Inspire someone
Show them how to learn and make
Render worth in mind.
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Inspire someone
To truly be a someone
Let their brightness shine.
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Inspiration lies
In the well between your eyes
Just express yourself.
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How to make real art?
First express your truest self;
Then you show your work.
Born
Born? I was born three months premature at the Mercy Hospital in Melbourne Australia.
My father and mother every birthday would tell me my father held me in his hand like me an incubus, small and impossible yet alive.
I was born on the cusp, on the edge, by pure chance and luck I the only son.
My mother for a time was a humidity crib being three months premature and dying twice, which became some sort of family myth.
Myths surrounded by family and the circumstances of my birth.
When my father saw me for the first time, cradling me like some God in a single hand, he and a mate of his decided to celebrate my birth, heading down to a pub in the city.
To wet the babies head, meaning to celebrate the birth of your child.
The pub was normal but upon leaving the pub was not and I have heard it and heard it a thousand times.
As my father and Doug his mate walked out of the pub in this city of Melbourne, the black steps shiny marble, trimmed with gold, a car pulled up and a man got out.
A fella beside my father was confronted by another out of the car and shot six times.
Now not to be morbid, but I was told the blood flowed, down the steps, as the fella died, and my father could not believe how much blood a human body could hold.
The assassin,task done, was a killer, a killer absolute, pointed the gun at my father and his mate, and said 'You didn't see a thing did you?.
Both said no. So many times my father has said I was raised in violence because of this, this act, and he may have been right but I am still working that out.
And so I was born and like a kaleidoscopic film I was told every year of my birth.
But I really think my life, my birth is commiserate with the violence in the world, like a juddering jack in the box played out every day.
Me? I went on to live, still living now, and do I believe the myths of my family carefully told every year?.
Answer is yes, yes I do, because I am still living it.
I’m No Lesbian
I am not a lesbian, she thought.
She knew she wasn't. She insisted to herself she wasn't. It was an honest denial, even though she worshipped and admired women--as a species unto themselves. She was proud to be one. Exalted. Enraptured by estrogenic brilliance.
She thought about women--what they do for the world. Women conceive and make new human beings! They are feminine, from their lactation and nurturing of our babies to their very anatomy--receptive. Held fast within the mothering of the bosom, one is safe. Welcomed by the exclusivity of the vagina, one is the chosen one.
Women give of themselves without hesitation. Put themselves second... then third, fourth...last... They offer what's left--of food, attention, and love--even when wanting, themselves. If God is love, it is woman who was made in His image.
Yes, she loved women. Yes, she loved being one.
She recognized what a woman brings to a relationship. She knew how a relationship is defined by a woman's contribution, input, and even insistence. She knew that should the biochemistry between men and women be deconstructed, hers stands alone as unique, counteracting all of the harm brought into the world by the wizardry--the necromantic alchemy--of men.
She knew women to be magical creatures, so there was never any need to search for unicorns.
She knew how women love. She knew women who love men. She knew women who love women. She knew women who love both. She knew women who love themselves. Thus, she knew what love is. And she knew who God is.
If God is love, there is no God without women, she thought.
When a woman dies, she surmised, there is a moth-eaten hole that remains, ruining the entire wardrobe shared with men.
She thought about her body. Her body as a woman. How a thigh brushing the other is not a mating call but a celebration of her temple. Her holy temple, she thought, and then she would laugh. She felt alive. She felt important--even crucial. She felt real. She felt the Earth rotate around her, even as the men fall off.
She had a clear vision of the world's men and women, perched on her pedestal, placed there by Divine Authority. She watches with women's eyes. She weeps with women's tears. She shouts with women's cries.
No, she thought, I am not a lesbian. But I sure do think about them a lot.
jolie femme (a drabble)
Leaning into the Lotus, she grinned at the officer or gentleman.
"Nice Ride. What you lookin for, sweetie?" Her skirt, more of a suggestion than actual apparel, showed more than it didn't.
The ghost of a smile drifted across his thin lips. "Directions, mostly."
She made nervous small talk after he let her drive. "You know your foot's as long as your arm from elbow to wrist?"
At the hotel, she followed him to his suite.
He wasn't a gentleman.
When her body was discovered months later, the coroner had no idea how pretty of a woman she once was.
No Greater Love
The autopsy, if a physician had been present that morning to perform one, would have cataloged her death by schistosomal hepatitis and its complications, biliary coccidiosis, and fascioliasis, not the assumed congenital bronchiectasis and bilateral pheochromocytoma.
He couldn’t understand the words or their definitions. All he knew was his mate was dead.
Twelve years together they enjoyed. In that time, they ruled as no other pair did. Their children, now grown (are children really ever grown?) were not present at her death and he understood why.
It was no longer safe to be here.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, balms the hearts of those who have the luxury of time to listen and mourn.
He did not.
She was unburied, uncared for, and unmoving. These were his facts of his new life without her. He did not enjoy the hand life dealt him, but he understood what was required of him. His mate would have the respect of a Queen, even in death.
And with that, he made up his mind to punish those who thought differently.
By sundown, they came.
First in pairs, then in packs.
What they wanted was unthinkable to fathom. The price they would pay was going to be high for even the thought.
They would fight, for it was their job to act so.
He would fight, for it was his duty to act so.
Spectators came, but kept their distance.
Death was in the air, looming near, and ready to fill long exhausted quotas.
What was to transpire required no external authorities to monitor or regulate.
What was to transpire only required a body count that the early dawn could authenticate.
He positioned himself between his Queen and the marauders.
His love for her demanded this of himself.
Only the felines with acute night vision witnessed the intensity of the largest male hippo on the plain defending his dead mate from a score of crocodiles throughout the night. Those downstream wallowed in the blood from the battle and knew not to stain themselves with the remnants.
The carcasses of 12 large crocs, each bitten in half by tusks 18 inches in length and 6 inches at the base, detailed the ferocity of the species.
The river belongs to the mammals. Dead or alive, it would remain that way.
Love dictated so. Death would accept no other option.