Author Archives: samuelbartholomew

Utilitarianism

Should I write because I can
or only when I have something to say?
Do I write to build the facade of a writer
or because I need to express my thoughts
and feel I do that best in written form?
If the latter, why doesn’t my journal suffice?
Do I need my words to be read
and appreciated by strangers?
But writing is an act of faith
in the permanence of
the words being written,
and inherent in that faith is a trust
that someone will (eventually) read
and enjoy what’s recorded.
Is art a selfish process then,
used to inflate the ego of the creator,
or is it all presumption,
undertaken by those who
think they have valuable insights
that no one else has had?
Why do I even ask these questions?
Writing makes me happy, so I write—
but even that is rather utilitarian of me to say.

I’m From

I’m from “work hard and you’ll succeed,”
from purple mountains and thumb sticks,
from haystacks and mutnicks,
from Pokémon and Power Rangers,
from picture books and Animorphs.
I’m from the smell of brine salt and cattails,
from catfish and rainbow trout,
from sagebrush, scrub oaks and aspens,
from glacial lakes and star-choked skies.
I’m from analog signals and black and white screens,
from libraries and late nights.
I’m from tackle football in the snow and Hatchet.
I’m from “Country Road” and “Lose Yourself,”
from aleternative, punk rock, and post hardcore.
I’m from wooden playgrounds and DOS,
from prison-pipeline gangs and Sunday School.
I’m from Y2K, September 11th,
and first generation Xbox controllers.
I’m from Hobbiton and Hogwarts,
I’m from $1.00 Big Macs and Fufu Berry Soda,
from Blindside, Smith and Edwards,
and Western Family.
I’m from public schools
and Mrs. Felt’s AP English Class.
I’m from Robert Frost and Harper Lee,
from my best friend’s living room,
and even from the Bible Belt.
I’m from these and a thousand other places,
and I still visit them sometimes
in poetry
and in my mind.

Mythology

We set my phone’s alarm ahead
then said our prayers and went to bed.
The beeping woke me from my sleep
when the event was at its peak.
I thought that dreaming changed your mind,
but if it had you were too kind
to tell me so, and so we crept
past the room where Ayden slept,
unlocked the door with with quiet hands,
and gazed up at the bloodred sands
a quarter of a million miles away:
the wolf-god Hati’s ancient prey.

From the starry depths of Mimir’s sky,
in the cloud of myth it hides behind,
God’s single, crimson-shrouded eye
rolled over the world, cold and blind.

Timeless

When I lay here with you 
like this
I feel as if we’re boulders
touching in a mountain stream,
and time rushes onward 
all around us,
fast with a Spingtime thaw
or slow with slushy frost—
now choked with leaves 
and broken sticks
now thundering by 
in seething foam.
The seasons blur before us
and wash the world
downstream
around us,
but here we are
like boulders:
languid,
immovable,
and timeless.

Sagebrush Kings

The sagebrush kings
with bony crowns
patrol the mountainside,
pacing well-worn paths
and pausing periodically to watch.
Ears high,
eyes straining,
nostrils wide,
they keep their silent vigil.
A sound,
a movement,
an unfamiliar smell
is an invitation to a war
that they can never win.
A huff calls the retreat
into their scrub oak strongholds
where they’ve ruled
for countless seasons
and forged their gaudy diadems
on an anvil made of caution.

Conquered Mountains

There’s clarity that comes with height
when we pace the top of the world
where only the wind
and the deer live.
We place ourselves above civilization,
which looks both physically better 
and fundamentally worse
the farther away you move from it.
The tar-filed cracks in broken pavement,
the gray, oppressive clouds of smog,
the constant noise of our machines
fade as you climb until
the world is laid out before you 
in distant, unobtainable perfection,
and it’s hard to know why
no one else down there can see 
with perfect clarity 
the obvious solutions we have found
to humanity’s most persistent demons 
when we’ve climbed and conquered mountains. 

Where’s My Mommy?

Oh, I killed her! I had to! What would you have done? I knew what she had done to Mary! Yes, I knew! I knew Gertrude had gone mad, had drowned her young daughter as she dipped the bucket into the stream to draw out the water! 
“Gertrude,” I asked my sister later that day, “Where is Mary?”
“I killed her,” she said. “I drowned her in the stream this morning.”

Oh, the horror! The inexpressible and incomprehensible horror I felt at learning that my dear sister was capable of such a senseless and evil act! It was almost too much for my soul to bear. 

“Gertrude!” I said, glaring into her eyes and shaking her roughly. “You tell me what you’ve done! Where is my niece?”

Gertrude stared at me as if unable to comprehend how I had misunderstood her.

“I killed her this morning,” she said with a look of confusion in her eyes. “I drowned her in the stream.”

I know what I should have done, and I know what you will say I should have done, but what would you have done? Gertrude was my last living family member, and I thought that she had certainly gone mad. Turn her in? It was the furthest thing from my mind! Of course I mourned for my dear, sweet niece, Mary, but how could turning in the deranged Gertrude atone for what had been done?

No, it could not atone for it. I knew how Mary had died, but I would not lose my sister too! It was an accident. That’s what we said! It was an accident, and we buried her body in the church yard. Gertrude slept easy nearly every night thereafter, but she would sometimes awaken in the dark and pierce the silence with a wailing cry of “what have I done?” I moved in with her, being a widow myself, and cared for the lifeless shell that had once been my sister.

Then, one night, I discovered what woke Gertrude sometimes in the darkness.

I stared into my mirror, thinking of all I had done as I got ready for sleep when I saw a the reflection of a figure standing behind me. I turned around and saw nothing. 

“Aunty?” a voice spoke.

My eyes grew wide with fright, and my skin prickled up in goose pimples.  No one who hasn’t heard – or thought they heard – a voice in the darkness can possibly understand what it does to you! I froze in my bed and couldn’t move. 

“Aunty?” the voice said again, and it was unmistakably the voice of my departed niece, Mary!

“Aunty? Where’s my mommy?” 

I screamed and bolted from my chair. I grabbed a fire poker and put my back to the hearth. 

“What do you want, demon?” I shrieked, tears filling my eyes.

There was no answer. I shook with fright and felt faint. I looked around the room and found nothing. After checking under my bed I stood up and saw, standing in the doorway, the pale and translucent spirit of Mary, holding the very bucket with which she had gone with Gertrude to fetch the water. Fair Mary, with her golden curls and perfect little face. Gertrude’s fair Mary!

I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe! I have never been so horrified in my life! Here was the beloved niece my sister had murdered! Here was the victim of the murder that I had called an accident! Here was Mary, back from the dead to exact her vengeance on my well-meaning soul!

The fire poker fell to the ground, and I gathered my wits to meet death with dignity. I started when the apparition spoke again. 

“Aunty, where’s my mommy? She did a bad thing. You did a bad thing,” she said, stepping toward me.

“I’m sorry, Mary, please! Please, I’m sorry,” I blubbered, hardly knowing what I was saying. “Your mother is all I have left – your mother -”

“No,” the child interjected sweetly. “No, you’ve got me, Aunty.”
Thus it began! For weeks Mary was there, in mirrors, in shadows, in the doorway at night! I couldn’t sleep! I couldn’t eat! I couldn’t live like that! Dear, dear Mary, returning from the grave each night to torment and haunt the aunt that had kept her murderous mother from being brought to justice! What would you have done if you had woken from a fitful and brief slumber each night to find the bucket – Mary’s Bucket – placed on the foot of your bed? What would you have done if you had heard the voice  that whispered every time you went to pick it up “Where’s my mommy?”

I told her Gertrude was in the other room! I told her she had gone insane, I told her to move on to that world which belongs to the dead, but Mary would not. She grew more frantic in her entreaties that I bring her her mother. I began to feel the effects of the haunting and of the lack of sleep. I began to feel irritable and tired. Tired of life, tired of Mary – tired of Gertrude.  

“Where’s my mommy!” the child yelled one night in a voice so loud it cracked the mirror in my room. 

“I’ll bring you your mommy!” I cried, getting out of bed and stepping toward the doorway. Mary held the bucket out to me and I took it. I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, then made my way to Gertrude’s room. I found her sitting on a chair facing the door. 

“I knew you’d come for me,” she said, looking past me. 
“Oh, I’ve come for you!” I yelled, and sprang upon her. 

I placed the bucket behind the chair and grabbed a fistful of Gertrude’s hair. I tilted her neck back and sliced and sawed and hacked her head off into the bucket. When I was done I lifted the bucket and held it out to Mary, who stood smiling in the hallway. 

“Here’s your mommy!” I shrieked. 
Mary took the bucket and looked inside.

“There you are!” she said happily. 

She laughed and curtsied, then skipped out of the house, leaving me panting in the room with Gertrude’s lifeless and headless body still sitting in the chair.

What would you have done? You say I’m mad – I tell you I am not! Where is Gertrude’s head? You haven’t found it! Your dogs haven’t found it! No one will ever find it, for Mary has it! The child hasn’t bothered me since. She hasn’t visited my cell, and I’ve slept soundly knowing that Gertrude and Mary are together now! I’m not a murderer! I don’t deserve to die… and yet, I already know your verdict, jury. I already know that my pleas are in vain, for I see her now! I see Mary standing there in the doorway! There! Right there, with the empty bucket in her hands! Don’t you see her? Don’t you hear her? Listen! Oh, dear God! Listen!

“Where’s my aunty?”

Sailing

I love falling asleep with the windows open
when it’s warm outside and the breeze
is playing with the leaves.
It stirs the grass, the blinds,
the chimes we bought in Nassau,
and my mind. It carries a scent as it sighs
through the trees and into my room—
a green scent that never sleeps,
but tumbles, ageless, from one tree to another,
from one town to another, from one end of the earth
to the other. It cannot be seen,
and so engages only my other senses:
smell and sound and something
deeper, something primeval,
like the force that drives migrations.
It calls me like the ocean calls a mariner.
I lay in bed and wonder where the breeze began,
where it goes, and what it does in between.
But then I remember;
I already know what it does in between.
It stirs the leaves, the grass, the chimes—
imbues them with its scent and is, in turn, imbued.
It stirs me as I lay in bed,
and, slowly, I drift away with it.