Michael Caldwell, Poet

Michael Caldwell has spent over five years abroad, exploring 25 countries on six continents. His writings have been published in four countries on topics such as apple picking in Australia, the merits of celibacy, and meditating in India. Locally, his writing has appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego City Beat, The Espresso, Downtown News, Hillcrest News and The Lavender Lens. This year he won the Topic writing contest at the 17th annual Southern California Writer's Conference and participated in the Black Travel Writing Symposium held at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation from the University of Southern California with a BA in English Literature, Caldwell spent a year teaching English in Japan. The adventures recounted in his travel memoir Sex, Drugs and Neurosis, hail from these experiences and subsequent solo travels throughout South East Asia. Excerpts from Sex, Drugs and Neurosis are scheduled to appear, this fall, in the literary magazines Sable and BMa: Sonia Sanchez Literary Review. Caldwell is currently shopping the memoir to prospective agents. He and his wife, Amy, are very much in love. In his free time Caldwell plays the drums and percussion with whom ever will let him.

LAP

The longhaired lynx laughed and lifted her lecherous limbs literally onto Larry's… lower levels.

Lacerated with longing, Larry's leer was lewd and lingering. His lifeline loomed large and leaked lust. He licked his lips and laid a lump of greenbacks along the length of the lady's leather clad leg.

Like lightening she leapt to her feet and latched Larry's wrists. Dislodging a business card from her lingerie she lobbed it at Larry. It landed at his left foot and he leaned to lay eyes on it. L.A.P was all he could read.

"You'll need a lawyer," she said, "Los Angeles Police."

Deep Space Sleep

Dear Abby,

My mother was an avid reader. She especially loved science fiction by writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, etc. Every night she would read a chapter to my brother and I before we went to bed. Inevitably, the stories riled us up, and in order to get us to go to sleep, my mother devised a game called deep space sleep. Covering our heads with the sheet or a pillow our mother would rub our legs to let us know she was still there while my brother and I pretended to be in hibernation, hurling at light speed through deep space. Not wanting to upset our imaginary ship's computer program and age before our time, my brother and I would lie still feigning sleep until we actually fell asleep. Our mother would then turn out the light and leave the room. Some parent's sing to their children or rock them to sleep. My mother played this game with us, ever since I can remember, and it worked for years.

When I was six, my parents had a baby girl. One Sunday afternoon when my sister was supposed to be knapping, I heard her stirring and went into her room to investigate. Knowing she should be sleeping, I covered her face with a blanket and rubbed her leg until she went to sleep. Then I left the room and went about my playing. About half an hour later, I heard my mother screaming for my father. The next thing I know, the neighbor, Mrs. Smith, is at the house saying she will take care of my brother and me as my parents rush off in the car with my sister. The following day they told us our sister had died in her sleep. Crib death they called it.

My parents had an ugly divorce just over a year later and my mother made it difficult for my father to see us. I didn't know it at the time, but he blamed her for our sister's death, saying she was irresponsible. I'm 35 now, and my father recently passed away from complications associated with diabetes aggravated by alcoholism. I've never told anyone about the game I played with my sister. Should I tell my mother now?

Sincerely,

Despondent in Deep Space

What I Don't Want to Say

There is a recurring dream, a terrifying bowel-loosening dream that awakes me when I need sleep the most. It is horrible in the way that untapped potential is. A petrifying phantom, it hovers at the fringes of my consciousness violating my R.E.M. and menacing my predawn hours. When I bolt upright sweating and gasping, the images in my nightmares aren't of pointy fanged monsters, slime oozing aliens or weapons of mass destruction. Rather what my mind's eye conjures are gray shadows, gray like the matter of one's brain. And what terror it fosters on my subconscious mind is the inability to communicate, to relate all that I see, smell, hear, touch and taste, the inability to express what makes me an individual, the inability to express myself. What I fear is that this blob of gray stuff, the stuff of nightmares not dreams, is trying to tell me what I don't want to say to myself, that I don't have what it takes to lacerate my vein and spill it on the page like a bloody Rorschach test for the discerning public to decipher, that I don't have the muscle to wag my tongue in a manner fashionable to the popular ear, that I don't possess the tools to construct worlds and universes and populate them with believable characters. This is what I don't want to say. This is what I hear in the night. This is what I rage against in the light. This is what I will fight to overcome, must struggle against with all my might, because I can think of nothing more horrible than to allow my nightmares to usurp my dreams.

The Angry Red Ant Reminder

I am the Eucharist for the biting insect world. By my flesh and blood they sustain and nourish their bodies. What sin exists, what salvation can there be for an insect, I do not know. Yet I am their sacrifice. Did Lucifer forsake heaven due to an aversion for bugs? Pictures of paradise neglect to show these creatures.

Has the homosapien crawled from the sea and advanced through the ages of evolution in order to provide the mosquito breakfast? Have I endured countless incarnations of karmic rebirth, finally arriving in a body with a brain capable of self-realization and contemplation of the almighty, just to be lunch for a sand fly?

The modern man with his shroud of technology is presumptuous enough to believe that he is beyond the food chain. Yet the deer tick, bedbug, or angry red ant are reminders that life lives on life. Man is not immune, exempt or particularly special. To a horsefly we are all just dinner.

The Earth Moved

The Earth moved when Atlas shrugged. Pessimists and doomsday prophets trumpeted the initiation of Armageddon.

When Atlas shook, the earth moved. "Wolf!" Cried Chicken Little.
"The sky is falling," replied the wolf, and the boy said, "the better to eat you with."

The earth moved when Atlas shuddered. The wealthy got a free ride. Children, the elderly and the trusting picked up the tab. A Chinese mega conglomerate purchased Starbucks, McDonalds, and Coca Cola, and the triumph of capitalism was complete

When Atlas shivered, the earth moved. George Orwell sat up in his coffin. Dubiously elected politicians initiated pre-emptive attacks on other dubiously elected politicians and disposed of their administrations. Construction crews worked around the clock bulldozing collateral damage into mass graves. Their tombstones would be hastily erected strip malls that teemed with popular franchises, which drew "good" consumers, those who (still) paid with greenbacks stained with blood.

The earth moved when Atlas sobbed. Squandered resources, self-interest groups and fanaticism of all kinds tugged and tore at the thread of life, ignoring the common fibers and ripping out the stitching that not only made the fabric unique, but, what was later learned, ultimately held it together.

When Atlas sighed, the earth moved. What started as a proud chip on his shoulders had turned into the weight of the world. Tired and disgusted, Atlas put the earth down. And the earth moved no more.

There is Only One Dog

You dog! Mangy mutt! Mongrel! And you call yourself man's best friend! You are a companion to no one but yourself, following the pack when it suits your designs, leading or scattering it when it doesn't. Howling your barbaric yarp at the moon, proclaiming your righteousness, your piousness, your worthiness of worship. Yet you snap at the children and wag your tail for the warmongers. The pop-eyed bag lady prostrate in filth will praise your name while scratching sores infested with your shed fleas. The thin man dying of cancer will look into your dark eyes and be deceived. You bare your teeth and people think you are smiling. What else does a dog do besides satisfy it's own desires?

How long the deception has been perpetuated. How long the flames of fear have been fanned. That poor vilified snake was telling the truth. We've been passing through the looking glass living in a wonderland of lies, yet when we hold you up to the mirror and view ourselves simultaneously what we see is the reality of the reflection. We were your best friends. We fed you, fueled you, stroked you and housed you. But the looking glass doesn't lie any longer. Your day dog is done. We are God. I am God. You my friend are a dog.

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