THE SPRING OF OUR WINTER

THE SPRING OF OUR WINTER

A 5-minute play by Sandra Jaye

Scene: A coffee shop

Characters: Nancy and Barbara, two women in their 60’s

As the scene opens, Nancy is steeping her tea bag in a cup and looking around. Barbara enters with a big grin, waving a brochure in her hand. Nancy waves back.

Here’s your tea, Barb, so you won’t have to stand in line.

Thanks. Look what I’ve brought: the travel brochures for    

Scotland!

Huh? Scotland?

We talked about it just last week. For a vacation.

I’m so forgetful these days

Nonsense! We’re in the spring of our winter. It’s too soon to start forgetting. Now what was I talking about?

Scotland.

Oh yeah! It’s got salmon fishing. It’s got bagpipe music.

AND it’s got men wearing kilts that show leg.

Well, I like fishing and music.

Nancy, your Bert’s been gone ten years now. You’re too young to act too old about men.

And you, Barbara are too old to be thinking about them constantly.

(Barbara ignores Nancy & reads aloud from the brochure):

Listen to this: "You'll step back in time to enjoy the delights at 'The Great Tryst' including - -

The Great Tryst ? What do we do, run around scantily clad on a freezing Scottish version of Fantasy Island, trysting with men?

It’s the men who are scantily clad. And ‘The Great Tryst” is a

cattle market dating from the 16th century. Drovers bring their

herds down from the highlands, then everyone celebrates.

What would we do with cattle ranchers Barb?

Offer them a wee bit of Glenturret, then steal their hearts.

So, we're to get them drunk and seduce them.

That's a crude way to put it. But yes.

I don't like whiskey.

No whiskey, No problem. The Great Tryst has its own traditional

drink. It says here you bleed a cow --

YOU bleed a cow

You bleed a cow, mix the blood with oatmeal and it makes a

kind of black paste, a pudding. You ferment the pudding --

YOU ferment.

Will you keep your mind open, please.

If you promise to keep your legs closed.

I’ll try.  Ah, here’s the perfect tourist attraction for you: a “leper’s squint.”

What’s that?

An architectural feature of medieval monasteries. It allowed lepers to observe the world without coming into contact with it.

Subtle, Barb.

Subtley isn't my strong suit. Caring about friends is.

Your caring always involves me with men wearing loincloths.

That's not true!

A few months ago you suggested an Amazon witch doctor tour.

They're called shaman now. And it's hot in jungles. What do you expect them to wear, bear coats?

No, that was part of our visit to the Tlingsat fertility and crafts ceremony near Fairbanks, last year

I told you, it was a little misunderstanding when we signed the agreement to bear their children. I thought we were saving polar bear cubs.

That didn't bother me. The tribe was very gracious when they realized we were...past our prime, shall I say. No, it was the men naked underneath their bear skins I objected to.

EVERYONE is naked beneath their clothes, Nancy. Even you.

My dear friend, I appreciate your concern but maybe I'm not supposed to be interested in sex anymore, at this stage of life.

I'm at the same stage. And I'M interested.

(Silence for a bit, which Barbara breaks)

You in or out of the kilts?

(Nancy looks through the brochure for another minute, takes a deep breath)

Here's my Visa and call me a slaggie.

Slaggie?

Ice that thaws in the Spring.

(The women smile and toast their coffee cups at each other): 

“To the Spring of Our Winter!”

Coyote and The Aunties

We‘re sitting around the cabin, Dottie, Sue, and me are, telling stories about Coyote to the kids. A fire on this warm night is not necessary, but we think it adds to the sense of occasion. Kids today do not have much occasion to listen to their elders.

In the stories, my sisters and I are always young, slim, and pretty. That’s hard for the kids to swallow. They try to be respectful, but one of the youngest invariably gets the giggles thinking about such a ridiculous notion. Then one of the oldest kids will swat the giggler on the head . “Stop laughing at Auntie, or I’ll kill you next time.”

Members of our tribe threaten each other with death on a daily basis.

Looking at my sisters and me today, even I have trouble believing we were once young, let alone good-looking. Dottie’s put on about 200 pounds. Sue’s face is a journey via fault lines to the center of the earth. And I can’t walk or see or hear or chew well anymore.

Yet it had to be true or Coyote wouldn’t have bothered with us back then. That’s the way he was. He could get the pick of any litter. And he could get any litter he wanted, too. Fact is, every female in the whole damn kennel would jump all over him.

“He was ugly in the face,” Dottie likes to begin.

“I beg your pardon,” Sue interrupts. “He was the handsomest man this side of the Clan Gathering at Muscate.

Now they look to me. I’m the middle child who settles everything. Well, I’m the middle child if you don’t count Leroi, and nobody counts Leroi.

“Coyote wasn’t handsome, ” I say. “but he wasn’t ugly. His was a plain, ordinary face. But he sure could dance.”

“He could have danced all night, he could have danced, danced, danced---“

Two of the kids are singing and get up to start an exaggerated waltz, and the others laugh until they notice we’re silent and do not intend on proceeding with the story until they shut up.

“Sorry Aunties,” they chime in unision. Once the fire magic has a chance to lull them and once the story magic has its chance to fascinate them, the kids settle down. Unless they are playing secretly with their cell phones.

“The night we met Coyote," Dottie continues, there was a big dance over to Coeur d’Alene. I was 16 and this was my first dance. That Hall was lit up like Heaven itself. For a moment I couldn’t take it all in and I almost fainted. The expression ‘blacking out’ is wrong. Everything went white, and you know that’s bad for a Native American. But someone caught me before I fell. A man. He wasn’t much older than me, though there was nothing of a boy about him. His arms were strong, I could feel that. Then I became aware of his face rising from the whiteness surrounding me. It was an ugly face and - -“

“No!” the Greek chorus of kids protest. “He wasn’t ugly. Auntie Esther says he wasn’t ugly,” they remind Dottie. And before Sue could speak, they address her too. “And he wasn’t handsome either. Auntie Esther says.”

Sue and Dottie look at me sourly.

“Well, his face scared me,” Dottie retorts, “whatever he actually looked like. Nobody can argue with what I saw when I looked at that face.”

“He was handsome to me and everyone else in the world except my sisters, of course,” says Sue. "They couldn’t pick out Coyote from Eagle in a line-up.”

My sisters glare at each other and the audience.

“What did Uncle Leroi think,” one of the kids asks, slyly, that brash Ray-Ray.

I wish he hadn’t brought up Leroi. I know the rest of the them will start chanting “Long Live Leroi.” I'm tired of that old business and suddenly, I’m tired of the younger generation.

“Goodbye, kids. Get out of here.” I say. “Scram, beat it, vamoose, adios, ciao, sayonara. Storytime’s over and there won’t be any squaw candy, either. “

“You shouldn’t have mentioned LeRoi,” Sue shakes her head sadly. “You know how she feels about all that. Why do you torment your elders?” The grooves in her face seem deeper than ever.

“When we were children, we listened to our elders. We learned.” Dottie stands up and scolds, bulk a-quiver, looming above them.

The kids file out, arguing with each other, thumbs twitching on their phones.

One girl stays and draws close to us. "Please, Aunties. I want to hear the story about Coyote leaving his earth brothers and sisters to dance with the stars."

Well then.

We settle down to our storytelling position again, drawing our bright-colored, imitation Indian- designed Walmart blankets around our shoulders, for the authentic touch.

Coyote once told us "If only one person believes in me, I can dance with the stars in the sky." Or maybe that was Jesus. I am old. I forget.

A Twisting, A Turning

I look in the mirror at myself nude this evening, really look. I wonder what some of the men who loved me once or who lusted for me, would think of this body now.

One lover admired my spine. I suppose he comes to mind because I broke my back a few months ago and though decently healed it doesn't look quite right back there. My age is certainly a factor also. This lover I remember, he would run his hands up and down my spinal cord. He enjoyed manipulating my body into different positions - and I'm not speaking sexually. When I was at my most relaxed that's when he would amuse himself posing me. After lovemaking, I barely inhabit my body anyway, so I didn't care what he did with it.

He said he read once in the Goncourt Journals that a certain sculptor would use only French female models because their spines had the most flexibility in the world, he said. Any little French girl from the streets could give, effortlessly, "a twisting, a turning...the inflexion of a Hebe offering Jupiter his cup."

I no longer have such an offering.

Heart's Content

I was surprised at the demon's appearance. Not surprised at the fact that he appeared, because I summoned him with a very reliable spell. No, the surprise was how he looked. That’s what I meant by appearance. His was so normal. Normal for a demon, I mean. Rather cliche, I judged. So very… last millenium. You'd think the demon race would demand a makeover by now.

"Nice pitchfork," I greeted him.

He growled. I distinguished the words "damn human" in that rumble of a voice.

Well, obviously I'm going to be damned for this.

"Let's get down to business, shall we," I suggested.

He grunted. "Fame, fortune, love - ho-hum."

"None of those," I contradicted. "It's revenge I want.”

He sneered. "Probably just want him roughed up some."

"Once again you're mistaken, demon. I could have done that myself. What I want you to do is rip his body apart slowly, shred his skin, squash his organs to a pulp - that sort of thing."

I detected a flicker of interest in those soulless yellow orbs he uses for eyes.

"I trust you know your job,” I continued, “so dispose of the parts however you choose. I don't care about anything but the heart. Just bring it to me, intact.”

The Demon spat. Though I took that for assent, I wasn't going to risk any misunderstanding.

“Intact,” I repeated.

“Still beating,” he grinned.

“You know what Ben Franklin said.”

He looked confused.

“When a man dies, the last thing to stop moving is the heart,” I enlightened him.

He made a rude, dismissive gesture when I held out a piece of paper with name, address, cell phone, fax number and other relevant data. Then he disappeared amidst the same flourish of incarnadine smoke in which he had arrived.

I made a mental note that when I get to hell someday, I will approach the one in charge with a proposal for new costumes, special affects, and other such outer trappings. In fact, I thought, reaching for my sketch pad, I could make some preliminary drawings while waiting for the demon’s return.

Holding the pad at arm’s length, I admired my work. I rather take pride in my God-given artistic ability. Though my own heart had become now merely a mechanical object in my chest, I realized for the first time in a long while that life – and the Afterlife - still held possibilities for enjoyment.

What I was about to do with a heart, for instance, to my heart's content.

My Son Is A Beast

I hope the woman that the main character is based on found peace at last when she left this world.

“My son is a beast,” Miss Evelyn says as I’m changing her sheets. 



Uh-huh. I’ve heard it all before. She’s a quieter person now, thanks to new medication, but the subject of her monologues once she warms up, is the same. Her son is a beast. Her daughter-in-law is a demon. Her grandchildren are monsters.



I decide this isn’t just dementia talking. I’ve been an aide at the retirement center only a few months, but I sense she must have been like this most of her life. Bitter. Paranoid. Frightened, really. All the other dementia patients have intervals of grace when the world and its inhabitants seem benevolent, or at least neutral to them. But not Miss Evelyn. Like the fairy tale Snow Queen, she must have a piece of enchanted glass in her eye that makes everyone look wrong. More than wrong – evil, hideous.



I finish the corners, all spit-spot like I do for my own granny’s bed when I visit her. Now, I give the worn flannel an extra pat. She’ll find peace later in this freshly made-up bed, Miss Evelyn will, in body if not mind. That’s all I can do for the poor thing.

 I long to brush the grey tangle reaching her shoulders, but I know she doesn't like anyone to come close.

“Is there anything else you need, Miss Evelyn? I’m going off my shift now.”



”Why would you want to do anything for me,” she spits out, and a bit dribbles down her blouse. Automatically I reach over to dab at the spot with my cloth, but her arm cuts mine off with a karate chop movement.That bony appendage of hers is strong. Maybe it has to be, to fend off a legion of imagined enemies.

I notice the cotton of her blouse quivering.

“How about a sweater,” I suggest.



“Sweater can’t warm you up from the inside,” she says.
”when the spectres that run this place keep it so cold. What do they care, they’re never even here.”


“I can get you tea or coffee,” I offer.

She frowns up at me. “You part of that coven in the kitchen,” she asks, “the witches trying to poison me?”

She's added spectres and witches now, to the malevolent non-human beings tormenting her.

No ma’am,” I answer. She turns her face away from me toward a white wall devoid of photographs or art. There’s nothing personal in the room at all, except a cheap black Halloween mask with a thin elastic band, on the bureau. Curious.


I don’t know how much longer I can keep this job. It pays university students better than other places in this town, but some of the residents are too depressing to be around. Most are physically debilitated or lonely and that’s sad enough. But Miss Evelyn is hardest of all for me to handle. Spend time with her and one begins to see a world populated by mythological creatures, and I'm not talking about unicorns and helpful little elves darning socks while you sleep.


When I open the door to leave, she begins her litany. “My son is a beast! “ she screeches. “His wife is a demon! My grandchildren are mons- -“ I shut the door but still hear her ranting. Maybe I should suggest they up her medication dosage again.

There’s more action in the hallways today, Sunday, than I’m used to. Visiting day. I usually work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, but am doing a favor for another aide.



I’m on my way to the staff check-out desk, when I spot them. The tallest one has an enormous bovine head on a man’s body. Then I have to duck as three small winged monkeys fly at my head, hissing. The only thing I see of the one in the rear is a slender darkness. Even its shadow has bleeding red eyes.



They’re all heading toward Miss Evelyn’s room.

The Backroad To Oklahoma

Author Note: I must be in a bad mood to write a story with anything bad about Texas in it. I still love the place.

"Don't drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter at the Friendly Food and Foundry says to me in a friendly tone.

I look up reluctantly from the menu. Everywhere I go people give me unasked for advice. New York cabbies tell me how to get cheap tickets for Broadway shows as if I'm a rube who doesn't know about the ‘Half-Price Day-Of’ places. Vietnamese teenagers giving me a manicure tell me how to get a husband when my left hand informs them I'm single. Now some toothless old cowboy

with shaking hands is

giving me driving instructions.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I’ve been driving for a long time through a West Texas landscape. The only change during the endless ride was the light of day. I'm beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever arrive at my destination - or at least someplace that made it out of the Palaeozoic Age.

Out of pure frustration I turn the spotlight on my advisor.

"The truck outside, the one with abstract art for a windshield? That yours?" I refer to the fact that the entire windshield is latticed with cracks.

He chuckles. "Yes ma'am, it is."

"Happen on the back road to Oklahoma?" I ask, continuing to bait him.

He chuckles again. "Yes ma'am, it did."

"Where in town did you get that nice orange shag carpet for it?" That was just a guess on my part.

"Must be a trick of the late afternoon light, ma'am. It's avocado green, and I got it for a steal in Marble Falls."

I want to say, “So, you stole it,” but I'm saved from further conversation by the arrival of an elderly waitress. Her skin looks just like the man’s windshield.

"Hi," I say. " What's your special?"

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day" she responds, in a voice rusty as the unidentifiable pieces of iron I had observed strewn outside, at the "foundry."

"Oh. Well then I'd rather have, let's see, how's your --"

"We're serving rattlesnake tacos today."

"Yes, I understand that's your special but I'm more interested in your, um let's see, in your, um - -"

"No, it's not the special today. It's what we're serving today."

Though I try to pay attention to what she's saying, I'm suddenly concerned she doesn't fall down dead over the counter in front of me. That might keep me in this town a bit longer than I would like.

I choose my words carefully. "Ok, what else are you serving today?" I hold up the menu to help her remember this is a restaurant.

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day. Like I said."

"You mean --?"

"I mean it's Rattlesnake Taco Day and only rattlesnake tacos are served today. On Rattlesnake Taco Day."

I know she won't let me use the bathroom unless I buy food or a piece of iron, so I order a half-order of rattlesnake tacos.I'm tempted to tell her I want the taco half, not the snake meat, but I don't.

Her face changes formation into what it assumes, incorrectly, looks like a smile to the rest of the world. I know she's pleased. I can tell by the extra flirty flounce of her ruffled skirt as she enters the kitchen to call out "One order snake, Billy" and then comes out again for a potential beverage discussion.Snake venom smoothie, perhaps?

Chalk up another victory for Rattlesnake Taco Day is written all over her.

"Betty, I was jist now tellin this young lady that she better not drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter says.

"Well hell, Marlon, them's all the back roads to Oklahoma."

"I appreciate the advice anyway, " I speak up, suddenly on the man's side. Of the two, I like him better. Maybe Billy the cook would win the contest, but I haven’t met him yet so I work with what I have.

Marlon throws some bills on the counter, tips his cowboy hat to Betty and me with as grand a gesture as John Wayne used on Maureen O'Hara and starts to walk out the door.

"Mister," I call.

He stops, turns around.

"Why shouldn't I drive the back road to Oklahoma?"

With that friendly, easy chuckle of his he says, "Because me - and others like me - are out there waitin’ for you."

I turn back to the counter and see my order has arrived. A snake head peers up at me from one end of the taco.

Freakin Weather

This first appeared on a challenge from another website http://www.combatwords.blogspot.com

I blame the whole mess on the freakin’ weather in Seattle. If it hadn’t rained in August, I would not have changed out my spring-summer embossed dotted ocelot op-art signature leather-lurex Coach hobo purse for my fall-winter heavy nylon sateen backpack.

How was I supposed to know freakin’ summer would come back?

It was, like, all over the media that El Niña was on its way, get ready people for an early and severe winter, blah blah blah. So when it started raining, I figured that was it. I haul around my whole life with me in a purse or pack, so in the rain and snow season, I need a carry-all with special airtight zippers and other waterproof features.

And I was angry that day about the rain because it would spoil Bobby D’s party later, so I, like, threw my empty purse, and I guess it landed on top of the stuff my mother was putting together for the homeless. The schizo weather here fooled her too, into prematurely doing her seasonal cleaning thing.

Let’s not go into the scene at my house when the sun came out again and I couldn’t find my bag. Daddy said he took everything to the Methodist Church Friday clothing giveaway to the homeless. He tried to sneak in a lame history lesson as usual Something about the justice of a hobo bag returning to the hobos. I didn’t know what he was talking about, hopping trains, the Depression. Supes, Dad.

It was Saturday and I had to wait another week. I tried going Sunday but the minister wouldn’t open the basement area where the clothing was. He was, like, right there! Bitch wasn’t being very Christian, in my opinion.

On Friday, I tore through a shelf of the ugliest, cheapest purses I’d ever seen in my life, like vinyl even, but mine wasn’t there.

“Oh that nice big leather bag with the tassles?” the stupid lady at the register asked. “One of the Tent City women took it.”

Tent City? DUDE! They were using my purse for tent parts?

She vaguely remembered a large, elderly black woman with two gold front teeth admiring my purse and adding it to her grocery cart. Helpful.

At Tent City, I was shocked to see the tents were all gone. Somebody sweeping the place informed me it had to move early to its winter quarters due to the rain last week.

“El Niña’s coming,” he explained.

He did remember the large black woman and her teeth though. So I went downtown looking for “Mabel,” he called her. I’d kill myself with a name like that.

I thought of going to the police but figured they might confiscate my purse as evidence in the theft, so I took Haley with me to help.

“Ooh, we’re, like, playing detective?” she squealed. I reminded her this was serious business, that my purse was at stake.

We found Mabel in less than hour. Haley and I are smarter than, like FBI agents. The Tent City manager told me she usually parked her cart at 3^rd and Pike.

I spotted her on the way, struggling to roll the cart uphill. I knew it was her when the sun reflected off her teeth. And I’m sorry, I know it isn’t PC, but I remember thinking she’s a retard who should not be out on the streets. I mean, she chose to take the hilly way to her destination when one block over was practically flat. And who hauls around a life in a grocery cart, anyways.

As I approached, I saw my purse right on top of her pile of junk. My heart ached, thinking what it must have suffered a whole week in that woman’s company.

In less than a minute, I had caught up to her and scooped the purse. I threw a ten dollar bill her direction “for your trouble.” Instead of going for the money, another sign of being mental: she grabbed the purse and started a really lame tug of war with me.

She was amazingly strong. I thought the homeless were supposed to be, like, weak from starving. Well, nobody told Mabel that.

I was so intent on not only regaining possession of my purse but making sure there would be no damage, that I didn’t realize Haley was screaming at all, much less screaming “Stop Thief!” and “She’s killing her!” I didn’t see the police either because when they arrived, I was on the ground with Mabel above, hitting me with the purse. The blood they saw wasn’t from anything she did to me, it was the re-opening of a fingernail cut on my forehead during a Zoomba work-out at the Pro-Club the day before, but the police didn’t know that. It was an honest mistake on their part, I testified to that.

Haley said they were yelling at Mabel to drop her weapon (my purse!) but she just kept on hitting me. It hurt, sure, but only on my arm as I covered my face. Just some bruises. I don’t approve that they shot her, and all that. We found out later she was born without hearing, and I guess the only good thing about her being dead now is that she doesn’t have to be deaf anymore. I mean, like, I would kill myself if I couldn’t hear music.

I’ll say this for Mabel. She must have recognized the quality of my purse, because she hadn’t harmed it any. Haley thinks it smells of gunpowder, but when the police finally returned it to me, I thought it was perfect.

September and October were mostly clear, so I got a lot of use out of it too, before changing it out with my backpack.

I still hate the freakin weather here.

MY CABIN

I don't like what they've done to my cabin.

They painted it a faux weathered look. Well, it already had the weathered look. From weather.

They rebuilt the deck floor so it doesn't slope anymore. How will their kids practice skateboarding in summer and snowboarding in winter?

When the living room was expanded, somehow the large stone fireplace shrunk, no longer dominating with its warmth and light. What was once my daughter's sweet little bedroom is now a walk-in closet and her loft (at various times a bed, a castle or a fort) has become storage.

The rooms are green now, various hues throughout. They must be going for the effect of adjoining the green outside in the woods, but to me, it diminishes the coziness of being inside out of the elements.

Oh there is one thing that seems okay. The mudroom is now a pantry. Probably more practical for them. They seem the kind of people who can live in the middle of this rainforest and never get muddy.

Otherwise I don't like what they've done to my cabin. Then I remember it isn't my cabin anymore.

THE GLEN

I say goodbye, put down the phone, and stand motionless for a minute. Five minutes, maybe? Suddenly, the walls inside my small cabin seem unbearably confining, and I run outside. I don't know where I'm going, but my legs do.

without a glance
at the wildflowers in bloom
I run to the glen

Out of breath, I slow down. Should I be running? I don't know! I don't know anything! That realization terrifies me, makes me run fast again until I arrive at my secret glen.

The grass runs wild here. I sit down in my usual spot, resting my back against a log fallen long ago during some winter wind storm years before I arrived.

fallen log
moss-covered, rotten in places
I bless your support

Impossible, winter. No such thing as winter. I run my hands along the top of the grass blades surrounding me. If winter exists, then how did all the fresh green grass get here? Does anyone believe all this growth can sleep, nourished somehow under a hard cold ground?

not believing
I touch my flat hard belly -
pregnant, you say?

I cry and laugh and eventually, fall asleep. A year later, my baby sleeps here, too,on the grasses at the glen.

In later years, she'll play here and we'll read together here and she'll run away from me to come here and she'll take her husband here. We both agree, the grass in the Glen is the best, the softest, the most beautiful green in all the world.

*Eavesdropping in Oxyrhinchites

Category: A Day In The Life Of A Writer

Author comment: I could live in Suzallo.

At the beautiful Suzallo Library on the University of Washington campus, I'm supposed to be researching Jewish race track owners in the United States, past or present. But I'm having trouble concentrating. I'm more interested in the discussion between two rumpled elderly gentlemen at the next table.

Rumpled and elderly - my idea from childhood of what scholars look like. Put yarmulkes on them and they're arguing Talmud. I'm only picking up every seven or eight words and the rest might as well be Yiddish.

I move closer to hear them better. The younger (maybe 80) and more alert of the two looks up sharply. He tries to disguise suspicion by arranging his features more pleasantly. It doesn't work. His original expression is difficult to change at will after a lifetime of facial occupation. This reminds me to smile more often.

He's making me feel like an industrial spy. Wish I could could explain I'm just eavesdropping for pleasure. I'm not going to sell information to anyone.

It turns out they're discussing the inflation of camel prices at the height of the Roman Empire, and other ordinary chit chat likely to be engaged in by citizens of Oxyrhinchites, a conquered city in Egypt. Here's a helpful hint I overheard: "To keep bugs out of the house, mix goat bile with water and sprinkle."

I'm on it.

The life of an eavesdropper is rewarding. It offers ample entertainment at parties, limitless possibilities for stories, and as mentioned above, potentially valuable information.

*death.org

Category: death worries transformed via sleight-of-hand

Author's Hand: As sleight as it comes

Death. My friends and I were just talking about it yesterday. Well, we talk about it every day because we are card-carrying members of dead.org. DEAD stands for Death: Easy And Dead.

Our belief is that the only way to remove the fear of death is to die everyday. A basic membership fee covers an easy death, though revival from death does cost extra. It works in a remarkably short time for most people especially those who don't choose the revival option. There's a week-long special, seven days for the price of five, that made it affordable for me. And that's all it took. After dying daily for the week, I was cured of all death fears.

Some of us actually came to enjoy the process of dying. We think that is due to an attraction of the attributes of the state of being dead. A sense of peace, for instance (or to be more precise, the absence of the concerns of life), is quite liberating. Plus, there are no taxes, that's for certain. And I've noted the artistic influence of death on my home decor. Heaven (I've been there) is so big that there is no clutter. My apartment by contrast is small and I was, until dying, a slob and a collector. No more. I got rid of everything except room-size mattresses soft as clouds.

My only problem at this point is trying to compile enough money to die again, as often as possible. I started a home business, which is recommended in this economy, and so far, I've been successful. Paying customers come directly to my home where we have sex on the soft mattresses. My original plan was a week of sex alternating with a week of death. But it hasn't been enough. Enough death I mean. I seem to crave more and more of the death, which leaves me less and less time for the sex. But it's the sex which enables the death. That's a paradox I have to resolve soon, because it's killing me.

*My Death Haiku"

Category: Haibun (haiku or senryu within musings or a story)

Author's Degree of Acceptance of the haibun's subject: Some. Not moving along as briskly as I could. Dragging my feet, so to speak.

One's death haiku is serious business. It's time to create mine. No premonitions of imminent demise or anything like that. I just think it's as useful to plan for one's death in artistic ways as it is in practical and financial ways.

Senryu is the form of haiku I choose. Senryu is about human affairs. It draws its meaning from human nature rather than nature nature. It offers a wry or humorous look at ourselves.

If I can't be wry or humorous about my death, I'll be in trouble. I lost my sense of humor while giving birth - and when I realized that, I was bummed for the next several hours of labor. Oh, the birth center staff and my husband started cracking jokes, which made things worse. They were all guffawing together while I couldn't muster a lousy chuckle. So I know in advance I'll need to have my wits and wit about me for the few moments before death. I'm working to imprint this information upon my subconscious, even now. I have my heart set on leaving the way I arrived during my own birth, with a smile I was told. Obviously

there was some kind of in-joke I can no longer remember. I'm hoping it's just missing the punchline, which is what the death haiku will turn out to be.

Here's my death haiku made up when a bunch of haiku poets had a death haiku competition:

sake cup -
empty or full
does not matter

Okay,not funny ha-ha but it is wry.

Here's an idea. It's not a death haiku but it is an instruction to leave in an envelope for my daughter, marked "Open In Case I'm Going To Die Pretty Soon" :

pre-death arrangements -
a drama queen must depart
in a thunder storm

If it's not summer, the last line could be: with a gale-force wind. Maybe she could read me the weather report, and if a storm is on the way I could hold out for it, like people hold out to die until after Christmas so they won't ruin the holidays for their grandchildren the rest of their lives. Or maybe they just hold out to see what in the world people got them for Christmas when they were dying.

One problem: haiku are so short. What if I say mine and still don't die? If it's one of those movie scenes with everyone around me in bed,that could be awkward. I'd be annoyed if my grandson (a person who doesn't exist yet) started looking at his watch frequently, while his sister (equally faux at the moment) kept rolling her eyes. There needs to be entertaining bedside activities for these people. I'd better have a pre-made statement ready, so I can point to it with a bony, shaking but still authoritative finger:

Shh - no more talking
let's hum along together -
music of the spheres

But no:

no one will believe
I ran out of words
finally

If I'm very very lucky, I'll awaken briefly, see everyone around me, and like my grandmother at her life's end, I'll manage to smile and say

Oh!
Is this a party
for me?

My grandmother never heard of haiku and never knew she wrote one. But she did die as artistically as the best of 'em.

I suppose in thinking about my death haiku, I ought to have a contingency plan in case I die all alone, in an accident, say my car falls off an icy cliff. I don't want to say "shit" - I mean, after I scream of course. I read once that 'shit' is the most common thing said right before death. Once, I did slide on an icy road, and there was a cliff my car was heading toward and I did say "shit" and that was even before I read the article. However, during the height of this incident, "SHIT" was quickly followed by "NO!" and "GOD" and then I managed to turn the car around - almost flipping it, another danger - but everything turned out okay. I was pleased with my driving, and I was pleased with myself that God would have been my last word before death. Now it serves me again, this time as a reminder that I could die alone. There would be no one around to prompt me, no doctor saying, "Uh, Ms. Jaye, still want me to alert you when it's time to start composing your death haiku?" I see now that dying alone could keep one very busy.

Yes, I did say God at what could have been my death, which makes me happy religiously, but is not satisfying artistically. I don't think haiku should be one word, albeit a teriffic word, an enormous word, like God. The rules have changed for haiku, like, it doesn't have to be 5-7-5 anymore thank goodness, and it can be on one line and not three, but even with the changes, I don't think haiku can be one-word. If I could count on having a few spare moments, I could elaborate on the word God, turn it into a prayer in haiku, as in:

God, please receive me
and remind my dearest love
my life was great, thanks.

(Wow, that's good! I'd better commit it to memory.)

Lately I've been wondering, maybe death isn't meant to be orchestrated by the die-er. Maybe it should be experienced in whatever way it comes. And because the format cannot be known ahead of time, I should be prepared to improvise. If that sounds difficult, remember that it would be like all the time that preceded death, in that period after birth called Life. We should all be accustomed to improvisation by the time we're dying, and we should appreciate how it takes away the necessity for memorization or practice. So, if I can't, at the time, articulate my death haiku outloud or I can't write it, it's probably within the rules to think it inside the mind.

the last dream -

my short simple poem

is over.