Stephen B. Bagley's Blog, page 18

Scene from a Farewell Party

"Scene from a Farewell Party"

She had waited all evening. Waiting for the time to be right. Or a miracle. But he stood on the other side of the room. He never walked her way. And she knew he left in the morning for New York. This night was her last chance, but her last chance for what? She didn't know. She couldn't begin to hope, but she knew the perfect words she wanted to hear.

Most everyone else was dancing. Hopping up and down to a manic pop single, but the beat of her heart took all her attention as it drummed a rhythm of fear and hope.

All the way through high school and college, the time had never been right. She had been with Kent and then with Richard. He had been with Laurie, Joanne, and Jenny. But now they were both unattached. What kept this from being the time?

How long was she supposed to wait to hear those perfect words? Or had their time already passed? She knew some things got lost. People grew up. Passions faded. A fire couldn't smolder forever.

They had exchanged glances. Significant, perhaps, but nothing more. They had never been close friends, just friends of friends. They had kissed once in a gazebo in a summer rainstorm, but his cell phone had rang. Joanne was looking for him. Richard was looking for her. She ran all the way back to her cousin's house, soaked to the skin and spent the rest of the vacation suffering from a cold and hiding in her room. He tried to call her several times, but she never took his calls. They hadn't spoken since.

Another song started, more frantic than the last one, but she couldn't hear it over the slow drum in her chest.

Somehow she pulled away from the wall. Somehow she took a step and then another. Four steps, and she reached in the middle of the room. If this had been a movie, he would have met her halfway, but it wasn't. Among the dancers she was alone.

The next step was the hardest. But the rest were easy. She reached him, put out her hand, touched his shoulder.

He turned, his ready smile fading as he saw her.

She couldn't wait anymore. Now. Now before her courage failed her.

She pulled his face to hers and kissed him.

If it had been a movie, he would have laughed and kissed her endlessly. He would have said, "I love you," the perfect words she wanted.

But he didn't.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Too long.

Panic filled her. This wasn't a movie. This was real life, and their time had passed. She was a fool.

But then he reached out and crushed her against him.

He said, "What took you so long? I've been waiting forever."

As it turned out, those words were perfect, too.

(Copyright 2017 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved.)

Passion

Passion
By Stephen B. Bagley

If I could, I would seduce you
into poetry. I would run
feathery words over the bare
shoulders of your muse, touch gently
the moist secret places of your
metaphors, delicately brush
your lips with similes and plunge
rhythm and rhyme into your soul.

I would take you past the threshold
where passion and structure meet, where
one image means the difference
between indifference and glory.
If I could, I would do these things
and do them long and do them well
until when you heard poetry,
you would gasp, don’t stop oh don’t stop.

Excerpt from Undying by Stephen B. Bagley & Gail Henderson. 
Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.  Purchase Undying at Amazon Purchase Undying at Barnes and Noble

Pagan

Pagan
By Stephen B. Bagley


And then she said into the stillness:

I will not be guilty anymore.
You can keep your original sin,
your pretty garden, your sly serpent.
They can suffer for Adam if they wish.

But I will weep no longer for Eve.
Keep, too, your tree, the trap baited
with lovely fruit. I have sufficient
guilty knowledge to last my life.

Finally, do not think that you exile
me into the wilderness. I go
willingly. There, I will find honest
trees, wise beasts, and innocent waters.

And I will worship the earth and sky
with gentle dances of green rhythms.

Excerpt from Undying by Stephen B. Bagley & Gail Henderson. Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.  Purchase Undying at Amazon Purchase Undying at Barnes and Noble

Crawly

CrawlyBy Stephen B. Bagley

Ourscientistssay we annuallyeat one pound of bugs
Our open snoring mouths attractthem, these many-legged insects
They drop, squirm, fly, scurry,crawl, skitter, and fall inside
I think about what theythink about our caverns as
they descend, are ingested, digested by the moist dark
they sought for safety andhow like them we are
as we crawl towardthings that willfinally endus.
Excerpt from Undying by Stephen B. Bagley & Gail Henderson. Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.  Purchase Undying at Amazon Purchase Undying at Barnes and Noble

Turn the page

Closing The BookBy Stephen B. Bagley
It surprised me when I swept offall the books on the shelf. I thoughtI had long since spent my passionin purchasing your faithless heart.
You feel uncertain of our life,you tell me. What you mean is yourbetter love than me may still beout there. Why settle for less here?
So go. Leaving is how you showhow little you care, how littleyou understand the rarityof love in this non-fiction world.
If this were a story, you wouldcome back broken, and I would letyou love me or even betterintroduce you to my new love.
Since this is not, I will pick upthe scattered books and set them backon the shelf, being careful to setyours to one side to box later..
Excerpt from Undying by Stephen B. Bagley & Gail Henderson. Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.  Purchase Undying at Amazon Purchase Undying at Barnes and Noble

Hitches with Floozy

Ran into a few hitches with Floozy Comes Back. Should have expected them. However, it looks like I will have to push the publication date back to June or July. Maybe the end of May, but I think it unlikely at this point. Just don't think the editing and proofing can be done as well as the necessary new material produced.

Also, graphic selection is going slowly. I used my favorites with the first book, and now I have to find new favorites. In this case, the millions of selections available really slow down the process. Wish I had illustrator skills and talent. Of course, that would something else for me to do! My plate has spilled onto the table and showering on the floor.

But that's the life of indie author. Wouldn't have it any other way. Or would I? Is that possible?

Anyway, by the end of March, I should have a handle on the publication date. Will let you know then. Now...have a good week! God loves you, and I like you. Well, most of you.

Excerpt: "Taking Aim at Cupid"

Ordinarily at this time of year, I make a few disparaging remarks about Valentine’s Day, or "Passover" as I call in my house, but never within earshot of any of my Jewish friends as they do get the joke, but they don’t think it’s funny, and I hate it when they get all Samson on me.
But this year, I’ve decided to direct our attention to that clothing-challenged archer who wings around shooting people with arrows to make them fall in love with people guaranteed to ruin their lives. I don’t understand Cupid.

Oh sure, I get the metaphor that love is like a sharp weapon that pierces your spleen and makes you hemorrhage to death while your loved one runs off with your best friend, but beyond the obvious, what’s up with him?

He's strange. Has little tiny wings on his back.He flies around more naked than the birds who at least have feathers. He has nothing to protect him from the elements. (People thought that the mythmakers were saying Cupid carried a quiver, but actually they were saying he shivered.)

Supposedly, Cupid was the son of Venus (Goddess of Love) and Mars (God of Candy Bars). That's the accepted story, but other myths say he was the son of Heaven and Earth, Venus and Vulcan, Night and Ether, Venus and Mercury, Strife and Zephyr, and Venus by herself. The point of this is Venus got around, and the Renaissance mythographer Natale Conti says Cupid's parentage was uncertain. (Conti would go on to have a short-lived career in the Renaissance version of the Maury Povich show.)

It wasn’t until Cupid was in school that he learned his parents were mythical and didn’t exist. The other school children used to mock him by saying, “Your daddy's a myther; your mama's a mythssus." At this point, he took up the bow and arrow, but the school counselor disarmed him and sent him to military school where he was ignored because no one wants to look at a naked person all the time.

Not that his life was all bitter solitude. In fact, while carrying out one of his mother’s bizarre revenge schemes—Venus had depths of crazy that even my ex-girlfriends don’t have—he met and stalked a beautiful woman by the name of Psyche, who was a soul sister. (That’s a clever joke because Psyche is Greek for “soul.” Get it? Ha ha.... Well, fine. You try making jokes about love gods and see how easy it is.) He stalked her because he accidentally nicked himself with one of his arrows; there's some sort of lesson in that, but let's not take the time to figure it out.

If Cupid wrote a tell-all memoir, he would feature his mother. Here's this story as an example. When Cupid was a little boy, he stole honey from a bee hive, and the bees stung him. He cried and ran to his mother Venus. She laughs and points out he is also small like the bees and he delivers the sting of love so his pain is justice.Then she kicks him back outside. Listen, if that's not movie-of-the-week gold, I don't know what is. Move over, Joan Crawford, there's a new hanger-shaker in town.

Cupid and Psyche had their problems, of course, as any couple does when the man likes to soar around naked shooting people, but eventually they did marry and had a daughter whom they named Voluptas for no good reason. (She was also known as Hedone, which doesn’t seem any better. I can see Venus standing on the celestial porch hollering, “Voluptas Hedone, you get yourself back in this house right now!”) She hated her parents, mostly because her father’s lack of modesty meant she could never have sleepovers at her house. She left home at an early age and lived a wanton life, but no more so than any pop star or Congressman.

Mercifully, Psyche faded from history (or mythistory) at that point. Cupid, however, showed up a few more times, but marriage had changed him. He now carried two set of arrows, one gold-tipped set that brought love, and another lead-tipped set that brought hate. Some scholars think this is a pointed commentary on marriage. Other scholars wonder why we’re talking about this and think we should get a real job. The other scholars are often grumpy.

Anyway, I want you to think about all this when you get a card with Cupid on it. If you do and then find your Valentine’s Day is a bit less happy, then my job is done.

(Excerpt from the forthcoming Floozy Comes Back. Copyright 2017 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. Please do not copy without explicit permission from the author and publisher. Thank you for reading.)

A Progressing Floozy

I meant to mention this a few days ago, but I officially finished one fourth of Floozy Comes Back. In fact, I have more than one fourth of it done; 72 pages are in place. Need around 200 to make a book. Hoping to get another 10 before the week ends. Today was really productive.

And how does this work? I'm moving columns and articles over. Retyping and editing material, adding to old material, increasing length. Cutting jokes that are dated, and adding new ones.

My plan to to have the writing done by the end of February. Then the editing and graphics selection begins. I have scheduled March for that. If I keep to this schedule, I should publish in May.

Looking forward to having a new book!

Excerpt from Undying

Metamorphosis
By Stephen B. Bagley

In the failure of his life,
he stirred the ashes,
recognizing each mistake,
his lover there,
his career here,
his hopes scattered
by the brutal wind.

He stood and spread his arms.
His hands couldn’t hold
—he dropped them.
His tongue couldn’t speak
—he spit it out.
His skin flawed and torn
—he sloughed it away.

That which he didn’t need
he would not keep;
all things have a time,
even humanity.

He raised tentacles
to the night sky,
roared his fury
as the ravens circled above,
craned his sinuous neck
to see the town below.

His lipless mouth
curved into a smile.
She would wake to terror,
she would see her unfaithful heart
beating in his grasp,
and her screams would be his lullaby.

(Excerpt from Undying. Copyright 2016 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved.  No copying without prior permission of the publisher.)
Buy Undying on AmazonBuy Undying on Barnes & Noble

Excerpt from Floozy Comes Back

(From "Clothed and Happy" in Floozy Comes Back.)

Have you seen that show “Naked And Afraid” on the Discovery Channel? It’s a (so-called) reality show where they drop two total strangers—a man and woman—into a harsh wilderness environment with only one item apiece. Neither item is clothing.

You might think this is a recipe for hanky panky or whatever the kids are calling it these days, but after a day or two with the couple being bitten and stung by hordes of hungry insects, sunburning in places the sun really shouldn’t get to, feeling ravenously hungry and desperately thirsty, having their bare skin slashed by vines and plants, limping on feet bleeding from thorns and bruised by rocks—hanky panky is the last thing on their minds. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the show is sponsored by the Clothing Manufacturers of America after seeing what clothes and shoes protect us from.

Of course, the Discovery Channel blurs what needs to be blurred; you’ve seen more skin at the beach or the lake. And since these are not supermodels, the skin you do see isn’t skin you’d necessarily want to see—if you can follow that.

“Experts” give them a Survival Rating at the start and end of the show. By choosing to participate in such an insane and life-threatening situation, it’s obvious the participants have the survival skills of deranged lemmings and the intelligence to match. I suspect their family trees are more like telephone poles.

There’s a lot of drama as the two discover that they not only have nothing in common with each other, but that they want the other participant dead. And possibly cooked over a slow fire. Because it’s the 10th day and all they have had to eat was a couple of insects and some grass that tasted like...well, grass.

(Read more in the upcoming Floozy Comes Back, copyright 2017 by Stephen B. Bagley. No copying without prior permission from the author and publisher. Thank you for reading.)