American Indians

We were American Indians
In the hot summer heat
Playing and dancing and
Stomping our feet.

We washed in the river
Got mud in our eyes
Stole feathers from pillows
We made our disguise.

The woods called to us
And to the woods we did run
Moccasins on our feet
Backs warmed by the sun.

With an old arrowhead
We bloodied our hands
Brothers forever
As tradition demands.

Crouched on a hill
In summer’s hot grasp,
We beat a toy drum
While burning sweet grass.

We played games ‘till the sky
Was tainted with red
Our mighty war cries
Could waken the dead.

American Indians
Now late in the night
Our war cries grow quiet
The moon gives us light.

With notepads and pens
We recount the day’s glory
So we’ll never forget
Our Indian story.

New Blog

Hello. I just wanted to let you know that Cold Bullets Inc. is still active.

I plan to continue using this site as a portfolio for my written work. I also started a new blog over at Tumblr for fun/intriguing/bizarre discoveries. It gets updated pretty much every day.

http://cailjudy.tumblr.com/

When I have new written work, I will post it here first. Thanks for reading!

-Management

Bullets

Gravel crunches beneath my boots and buckshot ricochets off the cement wall beside me. I crouch down behind an overturned army truck, waiting for the next break in gunfire. I don’t even know if anyone else is alive in my squad. I lost radio contact a half hour ago. When we got seperated, Johnny and I circled back to the rendezvous point, but we’d already been cut off.

Sins of the Father (Part 2)

I've been running my entire life.
Ran away from home when I was seven.
Cheated on my high school girlfriend
To push her away.
Now I'm walking out on my wife
My son.
I've never been good with words
And even less with goodbyes.
I packed my bags while my boy was at school.
At least I waited until he got home.
But now I'm leaving.
Don't ask my why.
Let's just say I'm cashing in my chips for a new hand.
This life was too small for me.
But the road ahead is wide open.
The freeway is calling my name
So I'm washing my hands of this life.
Maybe you'll understand when you're older, son.
Maybe not.
God, I pray you turn out to be a better man than me.

Sons of Nevada (Part 1)

A heartless bastard
Is what I called him
When his feet hit the floor.
He headed out to his dirty blue pick-up
Where he'd already thrown
His army duffel bag
Filled with his flannel shirts
Marlboro cigarettes ("What a real man smokes, son")
Leatherman knife
And his compass.
My mother's tears stained the kitchen linoleum.
She asked him not to go
And I said he was
A heartless bastard and
Don't come around here anymore
Or I'll kill you.
Those were the last words I said to him.
He walked out the door
Taking my youth with him.
He drove off into the burning Mohave landscape.
I watched from our porch
And spat on the ground where his boots had tread.
I was nine years old
And more of a man
Then he would ever be.

Stone Rose

I gave my love a stone rose. It was cold and beautiful.

She planted the rose in a concrete lot
in a New York City slum.

My love was like the stone rose. Cool to touch, with a beauty that could not fade.

I would hold my love's hand and tell her how beautiful she was. She would smile and whisper in my ear, her voice spiced with secrets, grown in a garden behind her eyes.

We lived in the heart of Brooklyn, above a soul food diner. We could see the river from the rooftop. In the summertime, we would bask in the heat, smoking cigarettes, listening to Marvin Gaye, high in the friendly sky.

Sometimes my love would ask about the stone rose.

Did you find it in a pawnshop? Was it abandoned in a dark alley?

No. I sang a ten-story love song to a gypsy in Central Park. She began to cry and showed me her wares. She kept them in a burlap sack, tied to her back.

Why did she cry?

She had never heard such a beautiful song.

That's a lie. You can’t sing.

It's a story. Let me finish. She tried to offer me fools gold. I said no. She could read my palm and tell me when I was going to die. I declined. She showed me the rose. It was the best she could offer. She told me to give it to my lover. And so I did.

That's very sweet.

It's the truth.

I still don't believe you.

That's okay.

And my love would wrap herself in my arms. I would hold her close, telling her secrets from a world only I could see. A world beneath the city streets, where myth and legend run rampant, like wild things.

She would laugh and tell me about her dreams. She would whisper her secrets in my ear, offering me an elephant stone or the words to songs sung in heaven. I would smile and hold her closer still, her hair across my chest, like a dismantled angel wing.

A stone rose is unfading, unchanging. Just like my love.

So I gave my love a stone rose, cold to the touch and beautiful.

Motorcycle

A belated birthday present for my buddy Jordan. He enjoys motorcycles.

Tally Ho

Inklings and Wild Things

                    (Nick Cave is an anti-hero I value dearly.)

Already five days into February. It's amazing how quickly time is passing us by. I feel like each day follows a similar pattern and before my head can wrap around the clock another week is over and I'm sitting on my coach on a Sunday night, thinking about the upcoming week. It's perplexing and frightening.

I was able to meet most of my goals for January, the biggest being a new-found direction for the fall. The prospects of returning to university to study English is very exciting. Getting out the day-job-business-office-politics-water-cooler-talk-cliche will be great for my soul. For now, it's a good job and I'm earning a decent amount of bread. Also been doing research into MFA's for Creative Writing, but I know that my work is not up to snuff for acceptance at the school's I'd want to attend. Yet. I feel more motivated to write and push myself than I ever have before.

The coolest thing I've got planned for the coming week is a consultation with a Vancouver tattoo artist. I've wanted a tattoo for a long time, but never had a clear idea of what I'd want on my body. You know, permanently. At Christmastime, I was visiting my folks and re-read "Where the Wild Things Are." I've always cherished the book and the art of Maurice Sendak. I realized that an illustration from this book would be something I could live with and love having on my body forever. I'm going to meet with Jesse, the tattoo artist, and ask him if he thinks he could, for lack of a better way to put it, copy the illustration onto my arm. This is what I'm thinking of, where Max is being carried by the Wild Things, his scepter held high.  

With you in mind, faithful reader, I plan to finish the first draft of a short story I've been writing on-and-off since the fall. I'll post an excerpt soon for your hungry eyes.

In the meantime, go see "Coraline" this weekend. I caught a pre-screening of it on Monday with my little brother and it is amazing. Catch it soon before it's no longer offered in 3D.

"Journal" sounds better than "Blog"

Up to this point, my goal has been to avoid doing actual "blog" posts. I don't want to be a typical blogger who posts inane blathering about pets, trips to Gettysburg or office politics. No sir. My goal was to use this site solely for posting drafts of my writing.

However, I've come to realize much of what makes a blog interesting to read is engaging in the personal life of the writer. Reading about what fuels someone to create can be as interesting as what they are creating. For example, I read Neil Gaiman's journal everyday. I'll poke around and read essays and things that he's written, but the most interesting part of his website is his online journal. It's fascinating to read about the day-to-day activities that comprise his life and the events surrounding his writing.

I will continue to post drafts of poems/short stories/essays that I'm working on, but I will also write more personal entries about how my writing is going, what I'm working on, life decisions, etc. It'll also encourage me to update Cold Bullets more frequently.

Currently I'm working on a review of the documentary Flow for the non-profit site WaterDrop and a short piece for Sparrow Guitar's website about their main pin-stripper. Kicking around a couple short stories as well. Also, I've been considering going back to school for a year of upper-level English courses and subsequently becoming an English teacher in the UK for a while.

Been reading Just After Sunset, the new short story collection by Stephen King. The writing is strong and it leans more on weird aspects of the human psyche than the supernatural. It's an engrossing read, like most of his writing.

Now, back to work. I'm still at the office.

Ramblings

The old man sat beneath the porch light, rocking softly back and forth. He held his .44 caliber rifle in his lap, the creaking of his rocking chair lolling him back and forth into a state of Midwestern contentment. He let the doctors play their game inside, trying to revive the softly fading heartbeat of his aged wife. He felt very little inside, a small pit where his heart once beat steady and strong. He knew this was their last night together but he kept himself silent. He rocked back and forth. Waiting. The sky was unusually clear this warm August night, the crickets singing their rhythmic song, carried on a dusty breeze. He sat and waited, knowing nothing except that if he kept moving, her heart would keeping beating. His dinner was still on the table, untouched from their regular evening meal. He thought of all that they had shared together and would share no more. He thought of their children, grown and gone. He sat alone on this night, as he had so many evenings before. But tonight was different. There would be no hum of the refrigerator as he climbed the stairs, waiting for the cool sheets of his bed. He would not hear the soft sigh of his wife as he climbed into bed. He would only hear the beating of his own heart, beating alone.

Waiting.

North of 60

Bury me with a cigarette in my hand and a leather jacket on my back.

A song in my head and my heart at Wounded Knee.

Raise a totem for my story, for the few who care to know.

Lower my body into reservation land. My eyes staring up at Heaven and my back to Hell.

Daily Dose

The penguin is confused. All he wants is a hug.

Old sketches unearthed

I drew these on a tour bus in Alaska, summer of 2006. I stumbled upon them recently as I rummaged through my closet, looking for a lint-brush.

Mo' tea, sah?

Main Street Beat

I walk across a dirty parking lot, cigarette between my fingers. I take a final drag and flick the butt on the asphalt, grinding it down with the point of my shoe. Wouldn't want a music flyer or discarded paperback to catch on fire. The night has set in and the stars are washed out by the light of the city. I soak in the nightlife of my neighborhood, Mt. Pleasant, the best part of Vancouver. Scattered up and down the sidewalks are people of all shapes, sizes and shades.

Coffee from local purveyors JJ Bean is consumed with utter rhapsody by several well-dressed twenty-something males walking behind me. Smoking cigarettes and stroking their beards, you'd never know these guys grew up in Langley and listened to Third Eye Blind religiously in junior high. Sitting at the bus stop, an old man smokes a joint, dressed in bright, tie-died clothing, reminiscing on the days of free love. I smile and continue walking, brushing shoulders with the hipster elite and hippies of a discarded generation.

I continue up Main. Overpriced leather jackets and flannel shirts litter the storefronts of upscale shops. At the crosswalk, I see a crusty man wearing the tightest jeans imaginable on someone above the age of 30. Wearing a matching denim jacket, he walks his bike across the street. He always has his bike with him. However, I’ve never once seen him ride it. As he reaches the other side, he stops and looks into the window of a pub. A passerby might think he was merely peering inside to see if he recognized anyone. I know better. Staring at his reflection, he reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a comb and begins methodically running it through his hair. Black and shiny, it tumbles down his shoulders like wisps of smoke on a cold autumn morning. He is affectionately referred to by a nickname my roommates and I have blessed him with. We call him Moonboots, based entirely on his enormous ski footwear. He has become an omen of good luck, the guardian angel of Main Street. His perfect hair lifts our spirits.

Glancing up at a passing bus, I see Old Charlie with his face pressed against the window. Since moving to Main Street from the bowels of suburbia a year go, I have enjoyed the community this city has to offer. Public transit alone yields a multitude of stories involving seedy characters, like a Tom Waits song incarnated. Old Charlie is one such individual. I’ve seen him in every part of the city, from downtown Granville to the beaches of Kitsilano. In a past life, he could have been a Shakespearean actor. He once approached a friend of mine at the bus stop for change. As he began to speak, his warbled voice began to crack and tears formed in his eyes. Old Charlie went from an apathetic old man to train wreck in under forty seconds. The despair and hunger in his voice could have melted the coldest of hearts. He asked for money and my friend gave him a latte. A bawling mess, Old Charlie took it gratefully. George Clooney would be so lucky to have this man’s ability to conjure up emotion.

I light one last cigarette as I approach my apartment. I think back on my walk up Main Street and all the characters I’ve met since moving here. This city is very much alive. If Vancouver were a living being, Main Street would be the superior vena cavae, pumping blood straight to the heart of it all. Some might see the wild characters of our city streets as a nuisance, but I think they help keep Vancouver vibrant and alive. With a final drag on my cigarette, I head inside, content in the heart of the city.

Note: This piece is going to be published in the forthcoming issue of The Source, a Vancouver magazine on diversity.

Wasted and Wounded: A Work In Progress

Jeremiah leaned against the blazing steel of the I-5 road sign. 80 miles to Portland. Heat simmered off the highway, giving the sense that each distant vehicle was a hallucination. He removed a pack of crumpled cigarettes from his jacket. His first hit of nicotine since breakfast. He pulled out a book of matches, lit his cigarette and smiled into the breeze as it cooled his brow. A glint of light caught his eye and he turned towards the road.

His vision was filled with the red truck screaming towards him.

A whiskered face behind the wheel and the sound of cracking bones were all he registered before light faded to black.


*****

Jeremiah awoke several hours later in a hospital. The first thing he noticed was the tightness in his arms and left leg.

New sketches

This little arena of the web is generally dedicated to my writing, but here are a few sketches that I have done recently for your viewing pleasure.

Freewriting

Dead weather. It opens its arms like a fog unannounced. It is trounced by the manly living that is partaking of the small animals in the fog. There is only one thing that matters and that is the living and the breathing the holy mother that sustains the blood within our veins. I hold tight to the fact that there is only one thing keeping this shipwreck from falling into the depths of the sea.

Dead weather. There is only one thing that hold me back from jumping over the edge into the storm gale that is circling around the recesses of harbored thoughts and forgotten dreams. The tale that is woven around my legs keeps me still and remembers that there are worse things than death. Life can take you down a dark path but there is one thing still gleaming in the sustaining glance.

Dead weather. Don’t park your car near the sidewalk where the marmots play. They will take your keys when you’re not looking and swap them for cold beer and a pack of cigarettes. You have to be careful not to keep your keys in your back pocket. Their quick little fingers are nimble and will snatch them right out of your pants before you can say “Hello sah!”

Dead weather. Jeremy wanted to go fishing but his father said no. There wasn’t enough time before the sun was going to rise and besides, father had to work on his car. It was an old 63 convertible he’d bought in Portland. He only paid $30,000 for it and he figured if he put enough work into it he could up the resale value ten fold. Jeremy went back to his room and began working on a model airplane. He imagined that he was trapped inside the bosom of the plane as giant hands worked magic goo over the hull and pieced the plane back together, like a demolition video in reverse.

Dead weather. It’s dark nights and stormy frights the like of which you’ve never seen. There are ghost towns with robot crowns awaiting a new festivity. People don’t walk here much anymore, they’ve seen the lies that perpetrate the moors of their unbridled hearts. They chainsmoke to forget the smell of the grass and the first crack of the window on a dewy morning. They can’t remember the smells, only the charred feeling in the back of their throats. They can’t feel it. They can’t touch it. They can’t see it. Does it matter?

Dead weather. Fuck this idle hand and the booming megaphone. I can’t lift my little pinky and it’s all your fault. You should’ve checked your mirrors before you crashed into the curb and took out my good side. My money maker is fucked.

Dead weather.

Note: This was a stream-of-consciousness piece, written in one sitting with no breaks in the writting process. The only editing was for grammar. Try it out, it is wild what you conjure up.

The Late Night Fright

The wind is howling late tonight
And I must say, there is a slight
Uneasiness in how I feel
As if my stomach were an eel.

My room is dark, the colors muted
But suddenly, as if recruited
Thunder, lightening, hitting fast
Strike with great electric wrath.

Blankets pulled around my face
My parents gone, without a trace.
Out to visit Granny dear
Leaving me alone in here.

We live on Hollow Crescent Lane
A dreary street with loads of rain.
A creepy place to raise a child
And here's the kicker (this is wild)
My backyard is a cemetery
"All who enter, be ye wary."
Reads the sign above the gates
Perhaps some evil perpetrates
Cruel acts of malice with intent.
At least this place is cheap on rent.

I venture forth out from my room
For if I stay I could be doomed
What if a tree branch crashed and fell
Onto my bed, I could not tell
Would I live or maybe perish?
If only I lived near a parish.

I reach the kitchen, bathed in black
And almost have a heart attack.
Two eyes burn yellow in the night
Giving me an awful fright.

Before my knees give out and buckle
I catch myself and have a chuckle.
For sitting on our kitchen table
Is our cat, Sir Henry Fable.

I grab Sir Henry, milk and cookie
And head upstairs, the house less spooky.
I snuggle down and before long
My snores ring steady, like a song.