Dear Subscriber,
Here’s a poem I wrote last season of the witch. Dedicated to the lone subscriber to my serial “Auschwitz Dancer.” I think he’s a Russian hacker who loves to laugh at Nazis.
We writers are also alone, but never lonely, as we always have other writers to bring us back to so-called “reality.”
A WRITER ALONE (villanelle)
A writer alone with thoughts of purpose,
Climbs inside your head to do it some good.
You must think between ego and chaos.
If Love is God, and God is Love rejoice!
If hate is you, and you are hate, it’s mood.
Beware and think before becoming choice.
A writer alone knows death is constant.
Destructive beast and a power crude.
Fatal is the weapon and holy fount.
Writer/reader, life/death, love/hate, power.
Changing all your thoughts into divine food.
A rose the truth of a holy flower.
The words die on the page with you alone.
And a writer still grows a soul anew.
Wear inside and outside the killer crown.
Speakers and images confound the Age.
Laws and writing belie the public rage.
Fatal is the weapon and holy fount.
Wear inside and outside the killer crown.
Copyright 2022 by James Musgrave
Here’s a sample messenger convo with one of my depressive artist friends who lives in Norway. She’s actually a therapist, so when she goes into depression, it’s usually a doozy. She is featured in my erotic fantasy, Orkidedatter. I think Norwegians are always depressed, but it’s just a theory. In this instance, Climate Change was destroying the farmhouse she had to sell, and she was facing divorce and living alone for the first time in her life. I try to bring these depressive folks out of it with my “brand” of humour. I also sometimes work the V.A. suicide hotline, from which I wrote my fictional portrayal of this job in one of the stories, I’m Goin’ Down, in my Silver Medal winning collection Valley of the Dogs: Dark Stories. Having attempted suicide twice, myself, once after being raped at twelve by six men on an overnight fishing jetty in Seal Beach, and once in a drunken stupor while married to my first wife, I can relate to the depressed mental state very well.
Here’s this morning’s exchange between us:
The French make fun of the British “humour,” and vice-versa. French love sadistic slapstick. Brits love satire and sarcasm. We in the West like. What the fuck do we like? Never figured that one out. “The Simpsons”?
We can have a suicide party in Oslo. Get all the depressive bullshit artists and we can slice our throats when the Northern Lights appear. We might get on some WiFi video or something.
Excuse me. Aurora Borealus.
The Buddhists set fire to themselves during the Vietnam War.
We can tell them we’re Buddhists, but we won’t be. You can wear a Viking helmet. I’ll wear a Sherlock Holmes cap. Ari can frizz out his hair like Einstein.
We’ll have a count-down with the blades to our throats, and do it at the exact same time they send up the rocket to explore Europa for 5 billion dollars but no money for the arts. LOL!
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SLICE! Oh, the wonderful spurting blood bath of artists!
I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I knew I’d brought her out of her funk because she laughed her ass off. If you think that’s depressing, just read about Patty Duke’s life!
Finally, my own short story, Dr. Stanford’s Fear, which is now shortlisted to be on Kevin Frost’s great podcast channel, has Anne Sexton as a character who comes from the future to my gothic horror asylum in 1901 England. This superb story The Seventh Wife’s Confessions, by M. E. Bronstein, is based on the French story of “Blue Beard,” who is one of the early serial killers of damsels.
