Are They Ready?

ARE THEY READY?

by

Anthonystjoseph

     “I don’t know? Do you think they’re ready!?”  “I’m not sure myself; but I think they’re ready.”  “I hope they’re ready; hey, I hope he’s ready!”  “Well, if they’re not ready, they better get ready!?”  “You said that right!?!”

By

Anthonystjoseph

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The Betrayers'

THE BETRAYERS

by

Anthonystjoseph

     There are many in our world who will try and betray your heart…  They smile and they cajole, looking for a hole.  They are trying to get in and commit original sin.  Sin of betrayal, sin of a lie, they will smile in your face, until you die. 

     Now there is an old trick that I will reveal, that us masters use to keep our true heart sealed.  We open our hearts, but it is all a ruse.  You must be gifted, you must be one; you must carry the blood, of the original son.  The trick is easy, if you carry the gift; if your heart is not true, it will cause a rift.

     When you see the betrayer, come for your heart; you open that portal, to the gifted part.  It’s a part of your heart, they think is true, but that part of your heart, is only true to you.  They strike it like a snake, as you stare and watch; then you close the compartment to that gifted heart swatch. 

     You walk away unwounded by the betrayers’ fangs.  Your true heart is free of the intended venom.  You carry on your mission as the snake waits for you to fall, you walk away unwounded as they thought you would crawl.

By

Anthonystjoseph

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BONUS TRACK: The Dove Pimp

THE DOVE PIMP

by

Anthonystjoseph

    So let me tell you about this Dove issue I have…  I sold my home a few years ago and just decided to travel the country and write.  I was tired of the tread mill of work and not doing what my heart desired; which was write and write only.  So I settled in this Mexican Village a year or so ago just to concentrate on the writing.  I call it a small Mexican Village because it is quaint and most importantly very small compared to what I’m used to.  The milk cartons at McDonalds in this town say ‘Leche’ (meaning ‘milk’ in the Spanish language) and half of my movies on Netflix are made in Latin Countries and spoken in Spanish.  Now I speak Spanish to a certain point but when the guy who works at your local Walmart doesn’t speak English; I feel you have the right to say you live in a Mexican Village. 

     Now the village isn’t that small; as in they have every fast food restaurant you can imagine, a Red Lobster (one), a JCPenny, Sears, Dillard’s, and I think I saw a Macy’s in the small mall that I’ve never been too.  I refuse to go to their version of a mall because I don’t want to break down in tears crying over the fact that this is what they consider a mall…  I mean I’ve shopped in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Germany, Egypt, etc.…, I cannot bear to go into their small mall and get the overwhelming depression that would inevitably set in considering the kids that have to grow up in such a condition of depravity. 

     So anyway, I settled in this small village to just concentrate on my writing.  I leased a two bedroom condominium with cathedral ceilings, I always need cathedral, I’m very tall.  The front patio is surrounded by huge six foot brick walls covered in stucco.  So these doves like to perch on top of these walls and then start their cooing that reminds one how closely related they are to that ‘rat of birds’ called the pigeon!  Well, if I have my front windows or my front door open, these first cousins of the rat bird the pigeon cooing will reverberate through my whole condo with its high ceilings which seem to amplify said cooing.  It drives me crazy!  It is so loud with the echo effect of my high ceilings that you can even hear it over the television.  Based on the loudness of their cooing I can tell you exactly where they are on my front wall. 

     So I had to spend a while training them that this is not their home and they are not on the lease!  Well one day, the mama dove who had been training her daughter or son dove about their favorite spot and has gotten tired of me running her and her kids off comes back to perch!  But this time she comes back with ‘back up’!  I walk out because I hear the cooing and this time she doesn’t fly off!  This hoe stares me down!  And then I see she has what looks like a dude dove standing next to her.  I’ve never seen him before but he has a real ‘f-you’ look on his face and he’s clearly eye balling me!  I think I see a knife strapped to him under his wing!  I try to shoo ‘em off and they just stand there; she looks like she’s about to fly off and I swear the ‘dude dove’ tells her, “Don’t go nowhere hoe, I got this!”

     Now I happen to have this rare ability to talk to animals; I know, I know; it’s a curse and a blessing.  So this dude dove looks directly at me with one eye, because you know they only have one eye on each side of their head, and he says, “Listen you raggedy Negro!  My hoe’s been working this fence since before you got here and my family has owned this corner for ten generations since this place was built!”  I look at this ‘Pimp Dove’ and cannot believe he thinks he’s a match for me, ME!  But for some strange reason he is curling the hairs on the back of my neck.  We stare each other down like were both in some sick Quentin Tarantino horror film and he doesn’t budge.  I decided this called for a new tactic.

     I use my quick thinking and go back into my house and get my broom!  I run outside my house and head for the fence; I charge at the dove hoe and the dove pimp with all my ‘crazy’ on full blast for extra effect and the pimp loses all of his resolve and takes off quicker than his hoe!  Just like a pimp; left his hoe in the lurch.  His punk butt reminded me of the ‘Pink Pimp’ in St. Paul, Minnesota where I grew up.  The ‘Pink Pimp’ was a famous pimp in St. Paul who drove a pink Cadillac, wore a pink suit, and a pink hat with pink feathers…  He just disappeared one day; he was all talk, most likely went to jail…

     Anyway, this dove pimp flew off so fast trying to get away from this crazy Negro with a broom that I couldn’t help but laugh.  And let’s just keep this part between me and you; I think I heard him call me the N-word, not Negro, the N-WORD!  But I did hear him tell his ‘dove hoe’, “I think you’re going to need to find another corner babe.  And don’t think I’m going to cut your feed quotas for my babies.  We got to keep it moving babe; you know I love you, now get to work and find me another corner.”

     Sometimes I wonder if these doves are trying to torture me for all the doves I killed as a kid with my Benjamin Franklin 22 Caliber Pellet Gun.  Yes, I have a colored past which you will read about here shortly in one of my memoir excerpts that I will publish here soon.  I killed so many birds as a kid with my pellet gun until I killed that one Raven…  Wow, I will remember that raven my entire life; he was so big, so majestic.  And then when I found out later in life that Ravens were monogamous, it broke my heart!

     Now days, when I hear the cooing of one of these first cousins of ‘rat’ birds, all I have to do is walk out of my front door and they see me and take off.  Every now and then they force me to get the broom to just check and see if my crazy is still on…  But I got ‘em trained.  This is my world.

     I once went on a white water rafting trip with some of my fellow Cadet Candidates from West Point’s Preparatory School and had the greatest time of my life.  Navigating the swiftly flowing waters in the rapidly moving river through the rocky and narrow turns with my friends was an amazing adventure.  We were all in our red wet water suits with black trim and yellow wet water gloves while the rapids were just dangerous enough to not let you think you were in trouble but at the same time led you to believe that you were conquering the world, and I was!  At a certain point the rapids got so intense as I saw a group of people out of the corner of my eye on some rocks on the shore of the river just watching us.  The fun I was having was so great and needed to be shared!  I looked directly at the people on the rocks and raised my hand covered in its bright yellow wet water glove high in the air and waved at them with the biggest smile; comfortable in the fact that my friends and I were handling the waves. 

     When we got to the end of the rafting trip; everyone at the cabin where all the rafters met to turn in their gear continually smiled at me and laughed and said, “You’re that guy!”  I had no idea what they meant or what they were talking about; with adrenaline rapidly flowing through my veins I just smiled back at them, I mean, people have been saying ‘you’re that guy’ my whole life.  Finally my group of friends and rafting buddies came to a room where they had ‘pictures of each rafting group’ that had come down the river on display for purchase and a token of remembrance of each rafting groups trip.  I looked up past all the smiles from the staff in my direction and saw my rafts picture.  There ‘I’ was in this picture with my friends in our raft navigating the rough rapids.  As ‘my friends’ faces were knee deep in struggle and partially covered by splashing water while oaring through the rapids, I was the one high above their heads with my long arm stretched to the heavens waving at the camera with the biggest smile on my face and a huge yellow glove, my glove, stealing the entire picture as I shone with glee.  My friends all said to me, “Way to steal the moment Anderson!” (we went by our last names in prep school)  I said ‘what?’ as I looked at the picture which highlighted me and me alone, again I smiled.  I was just waving, smiling, and saying high to some strangers on a rock!  I did not see any camera at all; but here again, the camera always seems to find me.  And once again, don’t hate the player, hate the game; this is my world!

Anthonystjoseph

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My Relationship With this Entity You Call God

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS ENTITY YOU CALL GOD

by

Anthonystjoseph

     As a child, I listened to my mother in her seemingly foolish relationship with this entity she referred to as ‘God’.  In my intelligent but childish mind I basically ignored her ramblings in the same manner that I ignored her when she spoke of Santa Clause or the Boogie Man.  I knew that she was being deceptive in her storytelling but for some reason I believed everything else she said.  My mind had taken on a force of its own in ignoring her claims of an ever present and all powerful God.  What kind of fool would believe that some cloud came down and made love to some virgin who then gave birth to this particular clouds son whom the cloud let be nailed to a cross and so on and so on…

     I really just let my mind wander to its own thoughts whenever the subject of her God came up and basically twiddled my fingers during Catholic services which thank God were only forty five minutes long on the average.  I also think I allowed myself to experience my first episodes of enduring walk-ins because I still cannot tell you about any of my time as an Altar Boy!  Although I can tell you that I was never touched by any priest whatsoever.  And I am still slightly upset about that on some level because the only thing I ever got from a priest was a football on Christmas and my question to you is; WAS I UGLY!

     Now without getting into the embarrassing and hideous truth that the Catholic Church now mandatorily moves their priest around every few years and the simple truth that it is a contrived method to help and hope the abused kids forget the perpetrators of alleged abuse…  Let’s get back to me.  But before we get back to me and the meaning of this piece; I do have to mention the nuns in Catholic School and my understanding of this Penguin attired beast!  When the talk show host Phil Donahue came out with his show on Lesbian nuns and how the Catholic Church was riddled with them while having his panel full of lesbian nuns who came forth and spoke on the rampant sex in the convents and the truth of their nature…  I immediately knew all of these nuns were speaking the truth because I knew them!

     I dealt with many of these nuns and the pain that they inflicted on us children under their care!  As I watched the show I heard the death growl of Joan Crawford and her repressed lesbianism that drove her to her own form of madness and heard her scream at me in the screech and voice of a nun!  I heard the voice of nuns who taught me saying things to me that now clearly came out as, “No more wire hangars!”  I had been whipped by nuns with wooden rulers more than I had been whipped by family members for various infractions…  I actually recall the incident of being taken out of my third grade classroom by paramedics on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance where I was taken directly into surgery and had a plate put under my right eye due to the lack of supervision or care that a nun was supposed to provide.  I myself knew watching that Phil Donahue episode; nuns were women who were capable of seriously ominous acts.  They were miserable people. 

     If you want the truth on nuns and priest I will give it to you in a nutshell.  Men who were homosexually inclined as well as women who leaned towards the same spectrum of human sexuality in the old days had nowhere to turn if they didn’t want to face the burden of telling their family the truth about their sexuality.  If you didn’t want your family to realize that you were a forty year old man or woman who still wasn’t married and that something was supposedly ‘wrong’ with you and you were Catholic; you joined the convent or became a priest; problem solved!  Thankfully, we as mankind have progressed past this point although I am sure some in Italy and other parts of the old world still feel the need to hide in the church but in America I think we have gotten past this point.  But here again; back to me!

     So I’m living my life and walking my path and not giving two pennies of a thought to this Santa Clause, Boogie Man, God, or Devil that my mamma told me about with that same old lying tongue that she told me about all of them…  Now granted, as I’m walking my path I am continually and completely avoiding this rain cloud that is following me throughout life steadily grumbling, ‘I know you hear me boy!’  I don’t hear nothing but my laughter and joy at the wonders of life and multiple cries from my existence when the laughter stops on a regular basis and just attribute the oft loss of laughter to life itself. 

     Well eventually I have no choice but to realize, there is a black cloud over my head and my head alone that is frigging talking to me and appears to be angry…

     Okay, let me go back to me as a child and more so when I denied the existence of a God and laughed at the possibility.  As I said, I really just spent my time in church twiddling my thumbs and living in a world of imagination; I figured since the people in church were living in a world of imagination, I may as well do the same thing.  I sat there in my pew next to my mother thinking about anything and everything and wishing I could nod off and go to sleep but I had too much energy.  Still, to this day, I was and am glad I was born into a Catholic family because it was only an unbearable forty five minutes! 

     Now we do have to keep in mind that I still had this ever present, and as my learned friends would say, omnipresent black cloud that was following me and getting increasingly annoyed that I was ignoring it…  And as my ignorance of the cloud continued, it continued to get blacker and blacker; I even think I heard it talking to itself at some point saying; ‘this little no good non listening speck of biology is going to hear me one way or another and I do not want to have to introduce his little ignorant ass to ‘another’!’  Well, I continued on about my life and felt at ease ignoring the cloud no matter how much it stepped in and bashed me in the head or the eye or rained on my parade.

     I always knew the cloud was there and at a certain point I truly did start to feel and realize that the cloud was sentient and actually capable of thought but I still felt the presence of mind to ignore it.  I even started to loosely challenge people as in, do you yourself see a cloud and is that what you’re referring to as ‘God’.  I will never forget when I asked one of my first best friend’s mother who was really religious about this creature and character she called God; a creature that she openly, outright, and completely believed in.  She even talked of the Holy Ghost!  I said to her in a quiet living room with my best friend whom was her son sitting next to me as we were only fourteen years old.  I said, “Tell me about this Holy Ghost that you say you catch?”  She said, “Well, at first it grabs you,…”  She didn’t and couldn’t go any further because I burst out in the loudest and most, shall I say it, diabolical laugh!  I couldn’t believe this sane woman would say something so stupid!  Are you kidding me!

     Flash forward thirty years and you wont believe it; that messy ass Holy Ghost snuck up on me when I was half asleep!  I can’t tell you what it was but I can tell you this!  SOMETHING HAPPENED!  I can’t tell you what happened, but I can tell you this; it was INCREDIBLE!  It’s clearly and obviously one of the chapters in my memoir that is remarkable but it was something so special…  Now here again; back to me and this particular exploration of how I came to be me at present.

     So, as this young child I couldn’t get into the idea of some looming figure controlling everything…  But one thing I did know as a child; I had done this whole thing before!  Yes, I knew at the age of three of four years old that I had lived before and this was all just another trip at the rodeo!  This is one reason I never took anything too serious in this life as far as ambition is concerned…  I remember around four or five years old looking at my mother and thinking, ‘yeah, yeah… and who are you!  Because you certainly aren’t my mother and I have no idea why you’re telling me so’.  I even found myself staring into the mirror around this age wondering who in the hell I was looking at because it was not me!  It was certainly not the ‘me’ I was use to looking at when I looked into a reflecting glass.  Life had taken a serious turn where I was concerned and it was clearly my mission and plan to figure out what had happened and what was happening!

     I would not settle with questions to this riddle; I would find the truth.

By

Anthonystjoseph

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