poem from "Shards": Maudie Cobwebs

"Your children too good to play with my boy?
Best believe I'll remember this slight!"
Said Maudie to her stuffy neighbor one day
And she forced a laugh when that woman's son died.
"He got a fever and it serves her right
I won't be bakin' no sympathy pies for her type."

"The world done me wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse!"
So when Maudie inherited a Funeral Home,
she lived there and she drove her own hearse.
She was a poor pregnant waif 'til a family will gave her wealth
But she kept her curtains drawn and her new gowns to herself.
Poor Maudie Cobwebs.
She never goes out.

"The world don't want my little son,
He came out of wedlock, you see.
So he's gonna stay right by my side and safe."
'til one day in the mirror, only half-shocked
the boy saw he'd grown horns, tail and a furry frock.

Maudie sang:
"The world done us wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse.
I'm gonna make a house of this funeral home
and I'm drive around in a hearse.
I don't want no smilin' visitors.
They'd just scream when they see my son
I don't want no charity to give or receive ,
because when I was poor there was none."
Poor Maudie Cobwebs
She had not a friend.

Hardship, they say, hardens most shells,
but it can widen the hearts and minds of the toughest lot.
But for Maudie, they say, it softened her skin,
hardened the heart and it made her brain rot.

Poor Maudie, livin' like a corpse.
Poor Maudie. What could be worse.

"The world done me so wrong, so bad and long.
I'm gonna do it one worse,
Don't need no love, don't want no friends
I've already got son, home, and a hearse."
Her boy done changed to a demon
Her house a southern tourist joke.
If you see her phantom, don't make a meeting.
Maudie is an unpleasant ghost.
But that's just Maudie Cobwebs' way.
She was a bitch, long before she decayed.

Site Announcement: Most exciting news!

Hello, dear readers and friends!
I have an exciting announcement.

My non-fiction blog of reviews and, well, non-fiction shall be merging with this site.
You read right! This means less site hopping and more reading for you. (And me. As having so many different locations to juggle can be a petulant task.)

The next announcement, after a silly hiatus from updating, I am back!
Expect an update at least every Saturday.
As of now, you will be surprised about what you get. It could be poetry, micro-fiction, my usual short stories, fiction excerpts, non-fiction articles or even art! Stay tuned for more whacky Briarisms.

Also, I value your opinions as my readers, so never fear to contact me or leave a comment. I cannot promise I will respond to everything due to time constraints but I appreciate each and every one of you and will surely try to show you love!

Love,
LB

poetry: from "Shards"- Serpent's Milk

I call the spirits
To burn my sins, to penetrate.
But all the sweating
and dancing does not sway Fate.

"Please possess me,
Make me pay
in cruelest turns and blackest pain.
For all I hurt,"
I cry and say.
But their answers hiss all the same.

"The serpent's milk.
The serpent's milk.
Only the hurt can serve you it."

When I crossed her,
four shades darker
fell upon my chains.
A shadow slithers--
won't come hither--
as I lie prostrate.

They whisper to me
"You cannot, through rattling
Snakes and your holy beads,
Earn from the crossed, pity."

"Then please help me earn
Please, spirits burn
Even if I must cremate whole,
For parched, charred clemency."

The serpent's milk.
The serpent's milk.
Only the wronged can offer it.

Take my heart and
bravest parts to
feed the fire high!
Grind my bones
to chalk your homes with
apotropaic lines.

"When lunacy stirs you,
Turn 'way from the Moon,
go to your harmed kin in the nude.

"Drink from their cup.
Drink from their cup.
You may heal.
You may die.
But only your victim's cup will suffice."

Only your cup will suffice.

(c) 2013 Luz Briar.

poem: Red Spot

If I dwelt forever on the red spot
I would be washing twenty three and a half hours
Sobbing for a half.
If I broke forever at your belt
I would not have survived a month under your thumb,
let alone a day.
If there were no bird songs in the dawn light
I would have remained in the twilight counting shadows
and my waking dreams.
If it were not for the stories told
I would have spent every waking minute in Hell
sleeping on a cold floor.
If I refused to cover bruises
And wore them before others, their eyes would be
Mirrors to the past.

ODE TO JOY: Part 1- Table of Contents with Links!

If any of these links are broken it is because I either found the chapter too atrociously written for human eye and am revising it, or because Izzy stole the chapter and hasn't returned it to me yet. Pooki can be quite mischievous, after all. More Ode to Joy is coming. This is not the end. Izzy still has much trouble to stir up.
 
PART 1
1. Preface
2. Infant Sorrow
3. Madness in the Blood
4. Brigid's Corset
5. Family so Odd
6. Lucy
7. Charles
8. Doctor Felix Knottingson
9. Complications
10. Breakdown
11. Treating the Earl
12. Two Things
13. Test Subjects
14. First Drop
15. Maids Seem to Run
16. Izzy

Ode to Joy-10.3: Izzy

10. Teatime Travesty

ii. Izzy

“WHERE IS THE BEAUTIOUS QUEEN OF DENMARK!”

The voice woke the earl from his sleep.

The first horror that struck him was the thought of his mother ranting and raving.

He saw that the sun was quite down and lit a lamp to navigate the halls. That voice had come from downstairs.

“Mother!” he called out.

The royal red of the hallway revealed itself as his lamp light chased the shadows. His deep voice carried through the mansion.

He reached the spiraling staircase but halfway down a shaky singing voice raced up. This is when Orion slowed his step and his voice sped slightly. A maid?

No, the maids were quiet. They went about unseen. And this voice was clear and certainly not modest.

“Oh, what an unquiet grave!

What an unquiet grave!

Unquiet grave!

Unquiet!

Grave!

Grave!

Grave!”

At last his lantern showed him the person ascending the stairs as he descended.

The words to his own poem-- stashed away in private, vowed never to be published—sung to him by a strange voice. The light revealed the face of a woman. They met at the middle of the stairs. When the light revealed her in the full he saw that she was wearing a pair of rat ears on her head, her hair flaxen white. Her body was donned in a fur suit that lessened at the chest to  peak at her cleavage. Her arms bare and her legs in long pink stockings. And in her hand she held a giant rat tail that trailed from her bottom.

“My favorite poem I read!” she exclaimed in a clear voice. “You are quite a poet. But a tad depressing. Perhaps a sarcastic ode to one of your abusers would be nice.”

Orion blinked at the woman. Her eyes looked almost red in the darkness.

“Can I help you, miss? Perhaps if we work this out I won’t even ask why you’re dressed as a giant rat.”

She gave a small squeak, “I am a rat! It’s me! Izzy.”

She did not look like anyone he knew. “Is this a silly joke of Brigid’s?”

“I am not a joke, my lord. I’ll have you note I am very sensitive. Just like you. So you best not make jokes at my expense.”

There was even that garish pink bow on her head.

“I see the beauteous queen of Denmark looks sleepy. So I put your mother to bed for you.”

“What?” Orion jumped into action, pushing past the strange woman.

He was on the ground floor and rushing to his mother’s room. The door opened easily and the image of his mother sleeping peacefully in her bed was the only thing that kept Orion from reacting violently to the strange girl on the stairs. Deanna lay with her black hair obscuring her face. The gray at the roots were hardly clear in Orion’s lamp light. He swiped the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The earl leaned down and kissed his sleeping mother’s forehead.

When he returned to the stairs the girl had her long nails in her own teeth, biting, shaking. “I did good?”

“Izzy?”

“Yes,” she answered, batting her eyes.

“Go back to the pet room and in the morning you will not be five feet tall. This is one of my fits…Goddamn it.” He pushed past her and stomped up the stairs.

“Why don’t you love me!” Izzy called after him.

“Because you are a figment of a deranged mind.”

He could hear swift footsteps following him. Izzy slipped in front of his path and held out her hands. “Is this about the pellets? I could not find any other place to go. I know it’s very unbecoming,” she gestured daintily and pulled at her own tail in anxiety. “Will you forgive me?”

“You are a rat. You make pellets. There is no need for apology. Now kindly let me alone.”

“But you will need me soon…” she gave a soft sigh as he walked past.

“I’m not entertaining this. Tomorrow the new medicine goes.”

“She hasn’t much time, Orion…” Izzy gave a sad noise. “Deanna…”

When Orion turned he saw that there were tears in the woman’s eyes.

“She has wished a guardian for you.”

“…How dare you speak of her so simply and…” he stopped himself. He needed to stop speaking to a figment of his imagination.

“I am your puca,” Izzy giggled.

Orion turned away. His studies in University had leaned heavily on Demonology. He needed no definition of a puca. When he turned around to see the woman again there was darkness where she had stood. A large white rat crawled over his shoe and scurried off into the hall.

“A new way to lose my mind…” he spoke to the empty hallway.

Ode to Joy-10.2: Maids Seem to Run

10. Teatime Travesty

ii.     Maids Seem to Run

Orion seated himself across from the maid and his wife. He was this once willing to hire a woman on the spot simply because he dreaded meeting a stranger’s eyes. After the fiasco with Amadeus surely the whole county was talking. Though the virtue of the maid who ran away, Bri reminded him, was fair and she would likely not gossip of her last employer’s home for this would ruin chances employment elsewhere.

Bri always showed him the practical side of things.

Another practical reason to live with her.

But Bri was aloof in the conversation, allowing Orion to interview the new woman with improvised questions.

“Of course we trust you with the baby. We would just prefer she remain in Julia’s watch most of the time. She is still so tiny. I do not even joke. Her head is about this big.” He picked up a tea cup.

That was when he saw it.

The tiny white creature crawling on the floor, standing up like a person to stare at them. Instead of screaming, Orion nudged Bri.

She gave her sudden laugh and this made the maid jump.

Orion felt his insides coil into a knot. They would not flex even as Bri’s words repeated to him in his head.

“She laughs at everything,” he told the maid.

Lately Bri and Orion had become more forthcoming to their staff, especially about Bri’s bizarre laugh.

“Oh yes. I apologize. It’s quite strange but sometimes I laugh for no reason at all, dear.”

Orion folded the napkin on the table into origami as the women spoke and the large rat ran about the room as though it were her own. Her little pink bow was her crown. He saw tiny pellets left in Isolde’s trail. Orion flicked his origami rat under Bri’s nose.

“That’s adorable, muffin. You’re very talented. Isn’t he just darling?” Bri asked the maid.

To Orion’s surprise the young woman seemed charmed. “It’s a mouse, isn’t it?”

“A rat,” Orion corrected with purpose. “We get them in these parts. The size of cats. Legend has it they can grow to be the size of a baby horse in Dartmoor.”

“Yes, Dartmoor is frightfully haunted,” the maid fueled the fire without knowing.

At last Bri’s large eyes widened and she seemed to see the rat at the door as it scurried out.

“Pardon me, dears.”

Orion watched his wife exit. She did seem rushed and so he made an excuse for her, “Probably maternal instinct.”

The maid nodded, a pleasant smile on her face.

Orion liked her. He gave her a smile back. At this moment his stomach had coiled and knotted and his heart was speeding from the earlier panic he felt but with no more purpose. The thoughts had left and yet his body was reeling from the unpleasant experience. “Well, Miss Summers. I am pleased to welcome you on board here. We like to communicate with our staff and we do prefer you to be comfortable. And…”

He felt the tension reach its peak.

“Excuse me.”

He lifted his tea cup, pinky up and lost the contents of his stomach in it. When he thought it was finished he closed his eyes. But another wave hit him and the water and tea of the day spilled into the tea cup.

Orion picked up a napkin and cleaned as best he could.

“I apologize, miss. It’s not contagious.”

He lifted the whole tray from the table. “My wife will get you a fresh tray.”

The woman’s face was frozen, unable to give a reaction.

“Make sure my mother gets put to bed on time,” Orion reminded Bri.

He was lying in bed while his wife felt his forehead.

“Teatime Sick. Orion’s own recipe. If you were feeling ill, why did you not tell me?” Bri grumbled.

“I certainly did not know I was going to vomit into my tea cup, dear.”

“You need to rest. Take your sleep aid.”

“I cannot. The new doctor told me to avoid anything that wakes me or sedates me.”

Bri blinked at her husband for a long time. “That makes no sense. Half the time the problem is you cannot rest. Without those things, what control do you have?”

“I do not know. Did you catch that horrid monster?”

“No,” Bri spoke tearfully. “Poor Izzy. She’s going to be smashed by someone’s foot or eaten by a cat. She’s a pure blood domestic. Imported from Scotland. Never been wild in her life. Little princess.”

“Princess Rat. I remember that tale. The Brothers Grimm told it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She gets eaten.”

Bri frowned and swatted at Orion with a wet rag that she set on his head. “In a few hours you should eat if you can. Settle your stomach. I will make sure Deanna is taken care of, do not worry.”

“Sometimes she hides in places they cannot find her…” Orion called to his wife as she left the room.

He lay back down in bed and looked to the opium pipe Bri had left on the nightstand. After five days of purging it felt as though he would be trashing his suffering simply to go back to the opiate. But his addiction called to him. And he had been chasing sleep off and on for the past few days. Such purging had made little difference.

And so Orion gave in to his oldest enemy and friend.