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According to Harold Bloomers,  ‘the love shared by Romeo and Juliet is as healthy and normative as a honey-coated enema after having your leg ripped off and your soul destroyed by an irate chicken wearing stilettos.’ Discuss this statement in relation to Shakespeare’s play and whatever version of Romeo and Juliet you care to invent yourself.    Talk a bit about Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, and their sex-life. Feel free to say anything you want, but don’t say anything about my mother, or I’ll f*****g kill you.

This essay is being dictated to me by a forlorn student that has recently been magically transformed into a daffodil. Once I heard his tragic story, I felt compelled to pass on this essay, as he is unable to do it himself… he spends all of his time weeping in the rain, and obviously does not have a laptop with him in the forest. He doesn’t have any arms with which to type anyway, for f***’s sake. When he is not weeping, people who are rambling through the forest unthinkingly pull his leaves off, leaving him quite naked and in insufferable physical and mental anguish. Sometimes he is pissed on by a Labrador, or s**t on by a Sausage dog. It is not an easy life. The student told me he would miss his essay deadline if I did not help him, so here I am, because I have always been especially sensitive to the needs of flowers, and especially those of flowers that were formerly people. In fact, I was once given a certificate commending me on my sensitivity towards flowers. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. Enough about me though… for now. I must be quick. I will not be able to understand him for much longer because his transformation is causing him to loose his voice, and I only got a grade C in my G.C.S.E. course in Flower-Language Interpretation. Here I go, interpreting the daffodil’s muffled but screeching  €˜flowerese’. It is a strange and problematic language. Anyway, uuuuuum… duuuuuuh… to begin the essay, for f***’s sake:

Romeo and Juliet is a bit sad, isn’t it? These poor creatures, who are only 5 and 6 years old, suffer from severe and incurable psychological disorders that are clearly the result of a dependency on crack cocaine. One of the most tragic elements in Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is that the crack they relied on wasn’t even the good s**t. It was mediocre at best.

What is most strange about Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is that Romeo is not actually even a boy. He is, in fact, an overgrown squirrel, which accounts for his athleticism in leaping onto Juliet’s balcony in a single bound, and explains his hair, and his tail. Juliet isn’t a girl either. She is a giant acorn, which is why Romeo always tries to bite her face off whenever they are together, and why the rest of the town repeatedly try to bash her in with a hammer. It is either that, or they just want to beat her up because she annoys the s**t out of them.

In my version of Romeo and Juliet, I met both of them and they were both a bit f*****g weird. They were talking about getting married, but Juliet was having trouble finding a wedding dress, because they just don’t make them for people who are actually acorns. Don’t you think an acorn in a wedding dress would look f*****g ridiculous? Romeo also realized that he was a Greek squirrel, and they had great difficulty finding enough plates to smash at their wedding. To have enough plates, they would actually have to get up off of their asses, use their brains and go to a shop and get some. This, however, would take more than 3 minutes, which is how quickly they decided to get married and ended up going through with it. Plus, being an acorn means that Juliet has no arms, so she cannot smash the f*****g plates, and Romeo’s paws are too small to hold them because he’s just f*****g useless. The two had to marry in secret because Romeo was actually already married to a Vegas stripper, named Candy.

The student/daffodil asking me to type this essay has started to die… I have watered him but I no longer control the sun (which I gave up joint-ownership of last week when I split up with Apollo) so he is beginning to wilt nonetheless. He says he can be transformed back into his original self if I shed a single drop of my blood on him, but frankly I’d rather let him die because the sight of blood makes me want to vomit. Now he’s telling me that if I do it he will turn into a handsome prince, but that is what all the guys say to me in the bar, so tough s**t, buster, it won’t work. Back to the essay…

Romeo and Juliet met in a pub, and Juliet fell in  €˜love at first sight’ when Romeo, in his leather jacket and James Dean-esque demeanor, scurried up to her and said: “Hey, baby, I have the biggest nuts in town, but you’re the most beautiful nut I have ever seen. Your eyes are so… nut-shaped that they are driving me uncontrollably wild with desire. Let us make squeaky love with wild abandon, until my squirrel p***s must be surgically removed from your nut-shaped haven.” What Romeo did not realize at this point was that he was in fact a repressed homosexual, who was displacing his desire for testicles onto Juliet. This came to light five minutes later, when Romeo kept trying to rampantly s**g Juliet. Whenever Juliet tried to kiss him, he would flip her over and try to aggressively shove himself into the wrong hole, whilst screaming: “Oh, Mercutio! I am in ecstasy! I cannot deny you any longer! The key fits!” Fortunately, he said it in Greek, so Juliet didn’t know what he was saying, although she recognised the name Mercutio, and began to be suspicious of Romeo’s secret when he kept trying to dress her in boy’s clothes. Making her wear the suit with the tie was the grand giveaway, but by then they were already married.

Romeo confessed to Juliet that Mercutio died because Romeo interrupted their dual. They were fighting over who would sleep in the top-bunk with Romeo. He went on to kill Paris, because Paris had given the golden apple to the wrong goddess – Aphrodite, who, incidentally was a fraud because she did not have an Afro (she was not even half-caste) – and then stumbled into the story of Romeo and Juliet by mistake one day when his mule died, on the way to Mexico…

Romeo and Juliet did not commit suicide out of love for each other. They were so ashamed to admit to their reliance on crack, and Romeo’s controversial sexuality, that they purchased 15 grams of the purest crack they could get Romeo’s paws on and ingested it all in one go, in one thick line which perfectly stretched over Juliet’s tomb. That is real love.

Oh, s**t! The ex-human daffodil was just about to tell me the conclusion when I saw a bee and stepped back away from it in fear. Unfortunately, this lead me to tread on the poor daffodil… With my head pressed against the ground, and listening intently, I can hear his soft, painful whispers. He is saying: “F*** you! F*** you, b***h! Aaaaahhhh!…”. He is, for some unknown reason, trying to kiss the ground as he utters his final words: “And thus with a kiss I die.” What a f****d-up daffodil. Nevertheless, I am a disgusting daffodil murderer who shall burn in the eternal flames of hell for my crimes. Thank you and goodnight.

———-

Amanda Burns pronounces the asterixes in every curse word she’s ever said. Including “shag,” which isn’t even a curse word in this country. That is why Amanda never joined the Navy. True story? Hell if we know.

I try really hard to be patient with him. I was sure I would like him. I was. I mean, he’s a personal friend of the man upstairs, who if I didn’t emphasize it before is really charming. He’s funny, and for a deity, not at all arrogant or conceded. With Michael it was like how did the two of them even meet? What did he do to become Seraphim? He must be a double legacy or some kind of shit.    In fact, more and more I’m starting to think that God came up with this “me being a prophet thing” just so the archangel Michael wouldn’t be hanging around him all the time. But I can’t hold it against God, anyone would do the same.

The archangel Michael makes a horrible first impression. When God showed up there was this sick ass trumpeting over a kind of trip hop beat that alerted me to his divine presence, then in his mighty yet melodic cadence, he announced that he was God the almighty and he was speaking to me from the kingdom of heaven. The archangel Michael just cleared his throat. He’s got this nasally sort of raspy voice, and when he clears his throat it really sounds like there’s something in it. It’s gross. I started looking around the stockroom to see who did it because I am not trying to catch a cold, but there wasn’t anybody there and I heard it again. I wasn’t really sure what was going on and then I heard the archangel Michael say “That’s okay I can wait, it’s not like I’m an archangel or anything.” That was the first thing. Then right off he started acting all put upon, like he hadn’t got time to bestow upon me the word of our lord and savior. What an act; he’s got no friends and nothing to do. He even put me on hold that first day, for like, ten minutes. I mean, he showed up in my head, I didn’t show up in his. That’s just rude. He didn’t apologize or even congratulate me on being a prophet at all. Just told me what God wanted-I think that time it was just to take some pictures of abortion doctor’s kids at school and mail them to their parents anonymously-and he didn’t pep me up at all for it. I was just starting to think “man I’m going to be glad to get this guy out from between my ears” when he kind of gave a little yawn/groan. I’ve since come to realize that noise means that he’s planning to hang out for a while. I’ve come to dread it more than cancer.

Now he does it all the time. Just shows up and makes that little yawn/groan thing to let me know he’s there. He doesn’t have anything to say, just kind of keeps asking me how I’ve been doing or else complains about the lack of weather. Oh, occasionally he’ll bring me something on the business end, like poisoning every tenth package of bacon at the store or canvassing for the addresses of exactly seventy two virgins (what a workout), but four times out of five he just pops up for no reason. It’s like every other day at this point. If there is an awkward gap in the conversation, which is inevitable because there’s only so much you can do to engage an entity with no interests, he’ll start humming. Just hang out there humming in his nasally hum until you say something else. Old Time Religion is one of his favorites. I used to think it was kind of catchy. Now I loathe it. Did I mention that he doesn’t smoke pot? He says he’s allergic. Yeah, well, I’m allergic to you, you dipshit.

I tried joking around with him. Once I asked him if the “if you build it he will come” guy was his brother or something. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He’s seen like no movies, lame. He’s got terrible timing too. He showed up the other day right when this gorgeous soccer mom who comes in needed help loading Figi water into her car. I had to pretend like I was having a seizure. My friend Reggie loaded the car and totally got her number. I tried to explain to the archangel Michael as politely as possible how he had just dumped a bunch of salt in my game. He just got all jealous and mopey. That’s really uncalled for and makes me uncomfortable. I’ve had about all I can take of that guy. If god wants me to duck tape the mouths of birthing mothers in the maternity ward, he can damned well ask me himself.

————

Wesley swears that this is a piece of non-fiction, but we know he’s lying because Genevieve’s had the archangel Michael locked in a box in her apartment for over seven months.

He cited my lack of experience listening to hip hop music and resulting ignorance about such historical figures as Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, implying that this would somehow impede my virtuosity.    I countered this outrageous claim by showing him the official university diploma for my Bachelor’s degree in English, a course of study during which I became intimately familiar with legendary rhymesters like William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and Dorothy Parker.    In the heat of the argument that followed, he threw out insults such as “yuppie,” “over 30,” and “square,” but was forced to capitulate when I immediately freestyled that it didn’t matter what he thought because I didn’t care.

To back my devastating victory with further empirical evidence, one summer evening I shut down my computer, unbuttoned my pinstriped blazer, put my blackberry on vibrate, and exited my office building to catch a bus to the south Bronx for a lesson with a distinguished freestyle master.    My instructor was the leader of a NYC hip hop group that performed nationally, and he graciously welcomed me into his home/recording studio.    The musky scent of authentic hip hop incense reminded me of the vendors that line 125th Street in Harlem, a hip hop cultural center with which I am well acquainted due to the Thursday evening yoga class at the New York Sports Club there.

He flashed me a warm smile and played some beats on his mixboard as we began our lesson with an impromptu collaborative freestyle rap.    We kept it positive, avoiding the negativity associated with some battles, like the one at the start of the opera Cyrano de Bergerac in which Cyrano composes a freestyle while sword-fighting against a ne’er-do-well.    I’ve heard that a fellow named Eminem also had some unsportsmanlike experiences in the freestyle world;    these were supposedly documented in a film, although my boyfriend may have made that up in a sad attempt to sound more authoritative about rap than I.

The stunned look on my instructor’s face when we concluded our freestyle confirmed my suspicions – I have a gift.    He concurred with my exuberant finding, I apologized for elbowing him in the eye while joyfully flinging up my arms to shout “take that, Mr. Cleemann!”, and we determined that there was no need to continue the lesson.

Hugely satisfied, I proceeded home to inform my boyfriend that the argument I had won several months previously now had even more definitive proof in my favor:    ”in our fight, I was right!”

————

Matthea Marquart is a trainer by day and loves facilitating workshops for adults and teens on a wide range of topics such as multicultural matters, mentoring, and educational strategies.    A new writer, her    fiction has been published in 10X10X10, Altar Magazine, and Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k).    She can be contacted at her gmail address: mattheamarquart.

This did not mean she wasn’t speaking to me, it was quite the contrary. When I first saw the girl, it was her minimalist fashion sense that screamed to me in near-orgasmic renditions, “Steal my panties.” Her leggy stride that shook her hips and ass like a bulky, but nonetheless lethal pendulum beckoned, “And wear them like a hat around the house.” The flipping of her feathered Kool-Aid red hair cooed to me, “Use this large rock next to the flower bed to smash the front window,” though the rock advised, “Throw me through the back window you dumbass!” Love is the only language I could translate. The door did not protest or egg me on, but I told it to fuck off anyway, though I can’t recall why.

I went inside and I was bombarded by a rather large woman with a wrinkled face and a mole on the left cheek in pink curlers and a green robe with some oily smudges strewn about it. Her nagging voice that screeched like a crushed cat screamed for me to get the fuck out or she would call the cops — the terms “rapist jerk off” and “jerk off rapist” were thrown in for good measure. I couldn’t exactly have that considering my current situation, but lo, the girl’s tiny but supple left breast said I could tie her up in the basement and give her lots of Tylenol PM and she’ll be just fine. As I dragged her flailing body down the stairs, I received a message from her stomach’s fatty bulge that hung over the waist of her hot pants: “You should make out with her while she’s tied up. Upon informing the bulge that I had already applied the strip of duct tape onto her lips, its reply was not to worry and just rip the tape off, put it back on and repeat for several cycles.

I felt as free and warm as love could ever make me as I bonded myself with her intimate surroundings. However, bitter breezes that turned out to be the whispers of her clothing items started to interfere with our delicate affair, telling me to do most unsavory and offensive things. “Sweep the back porch,” her left toe ring cackled to me. “You could try club soda to get those semen stains out of the curtains, but I can’t promise it will work,” screamed her tight white tank top like an impaled banshee. “If you’re going to regurgitate,” her platform shoes howled, “do it in the toilet, not her shower cap.” Her panties scoffed at me: “I’m not a hat you shit!”

The taunting and temptation made me dizzy, my ears roared with sinful deeds. Though I am ashamed to admit it, I did not take long until I bowed down to these beastly urges.   Adrenaline pumped through me as I hand-washed each Home Goods-purchased dish, sprayed away every inch of grime and massaged her mother’s corn-ridden feet. I swept, scrubbed, stacked and dusted, oh God how I dusted! Cold sweat coated my brow as I heard the rumbling of the garage door.

In came the short girl, heavenly body, deceitful clothing and all. She let out an aggravated huff as the clacking of her platform shoes echoed in the kitchen. She slammed her large purse onto the counter and she let out a cough. She could smell the bleach. She walked out into the dining room to find me trying to wipe those pesky stains from the curtains. She stood silently for a moment. A lump lodged in my throat. Part of me wanted to hide my shame while another was about to weaken my knees and make me call out in tears for forgiveness of my indiscretions. “You’re the new cleaning . . . guy, I guess,” she said. I didn’t respond. “Well I guess my mom already paid you, hold on a moment.” She went back into the kitchen and seemed to be rummaging through her purse. She came back with a wrinkled five dollar bill in her hand. “Here, she’s an awful tipper,” she said with a slight laugh. For a moment I couldn’t move. “Here, take it.” I reached out and slowly slipped the bill out of her hand and stuffed it into my pocket. “Well, everything looks nice, good job, I suppose you can go now.” Saying nothing else she slipped her shoes off and pattered to her room.

I slipped out through the back, in the driveway next door, a girl riding a pink tricycle in a circle stopped and stuck her tongue out at me. I ran back to the car and locked myself in. I tore all of my clothes off, they were far too soiled and perverted to ever be worn again. I curled my body in the back seat. I took out the five dollar bill, pressed it against my face and breathed in a whiff of its scent catching some traces of sweat from her hand. Just then, I was flushed with warmth and cleanliness knowing, even for a brief time, that almost every part of her loved me.

————

Chris Morgan is a menial employee of a yuppie porn magazine.  His dad is an employee of the insurance company that covered the Titanic.

It is known that, at the University of Bonn, Nietzsche preferred cream cakes to beer and was admitted to the prestigious Franconia fraternity only because he could sing the falsetto parts to the then current doo-wop songs. The story of his visiting a house of prostitution and, upon seeing the women, seizing upon the piano as the “only living thing in the room” is legendary but probably untrue. According to Hegel (Bill Hegel, not the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich), who was also a visitor to the establishment that evening, Nietzsche exclaimed, “Now you womens listen here,” took out his pocket harmonica, and bent blue notes all night long. By morning he had surpassed W.C. Handy and Jellyroll Morton in the development of the 12-bar blues, had transformed the Hohner harp from an instrument used by the Germans only to play the song “Sweet Edelweiss” and “The Beer Barrel Polka” into an instrument beloved of the swinging, lowdown masses, and had grown an enormous mustache that women referred to as “the little beaver.”

Nietzsche’s musical innovations did not stop there. While he continued to take courses in Aryan appreciation and world domination at the university, he got a job as a volksinger or “volkie” in a local coffeehouse, one of the first of its kind. Here he tried holding the harmonica in his mouth vertically, so that it resembled a small ladder running from his chin to his nose, and sometimes strummed a guitar while he played it. Other times he blew on the guitar while strumming the harp, but this didn’t work out so well. But his creativity was not to be stopped, and one evening when the great bluesman Wagner stopped in for a large house blend with half-and-half to go, he and Nietzsche got in to a cutting session, Nietzsche on harp and Wagner on the Bonn Philharmonic Orchestra. Nietzsche was sharp, but he was outgunned.

Nietzsche’s meeting with Wagner was a turning point in his life. Nietzsche revered the older man, who had already composed the operas Big Leg Woman and Smokestack Lightning and was hard at work completing the libretto for his magnum opus, Has You Ever Seen a One-Eyed Fraulein Cry?, soon hailed as the beginning of opera for Nordic blondes. The maestro was also occupied in opening a chain of musical instrument discount stores and tanning spas in Bayreuth. Nietzsche quickly became the disciple of the great man, took a job as assistant manager in a Wagnerian boutique and allowed himself to be reduced to the role of household servant and babysitter. Nietzsche did Wagner’s Christmas shopping for him, and bought his and Cosima’s children some toy Jews to shoot with their BB guns. Wagner and the kids were delighted, but Nietzsche had second thoughts. By the new year he saw he had to break with Wagner, not just over Jew-baiting but because he had a jones for Cosima that was bringing him down, and the erstwhile disciple sealed his fate by leaving the sheet music to “Havah Nagilah” on Wagner’s piano. The great composer was incensed and banished the younger man from Triebschen forever, or at least until he stopped eating matzo.

Nietzsche’s settled life was now over. He resigned his professorship at the University of Basel, where he had transferred from Bonn under the mistaken impression that the chicks were wilder here and sunglasses cheaper, and where he taught Blues Harp 101, Working with Mojos 101-2, Beginning Hand Jive for Teutons, and Introduction to Saluting and Heel-Clicking. The official reason he gave for his resignation was that he had no clean laundry. Also, his first book, Wagner Is De Hoodoo Man, had earned him the opprobrium of the conservative academic community, since he wrote it as a comic strip. He tried a career in the cavalry, but was thrown from his horse so often that it was more convenient to just let the animal drag him places by his heel caught in the stirrup. There was now nothing for him to do but wander over Europe as a vagabond thinker, a job that paid only minimum wage.

Now begin the years of Nietzsche’s greatest writings, but it was a race against time since staying in cheap hotels that smelled of unwashed tourists and trying to read foreign, handwritten menus with his failing eyesight would soon drive him mad. At Steinabad in the Black Forest, 1875, he wrote the first of his immortal aphorisms:

1. You can’t pooh-pooh Purdue.

This was followed the next year, in Naumburg, by the stunningly original:

2. I like Ike.

And then in Klingenbrunn came the farsighted:

3. Nixon’s the one.

Even Rohde, Nietzsche’s best friend at Leipzig, did not fathom these insights, whose future-directed import was only detected by Lou Salome, the brilliant and beautiful Russian discotheque dancer whom Nietzsche had befriended. It was she who was the inspiration for his next famous barb, composed at Tautenburger:

4.What is woman? A flat-foot floozy with a floy-floy.

Lou refused to marry Nietzsche, who proposed to her within five minutes of their first meeting, since his schedule allowed no time for foreplay. The two parted in bitterness, Nietzsche writing:

5. Hot sted ralston on the rilla rah.

This seemed to skirt the real issue, and Ritschl at Bonn was openly skeptical. But then, at Sorrento in 1882, came the final breakthrough and cry of independence:

6. It’s my way or the autobahn.

It was a virtual hermit who completed what is assuredly his most famous work, Zarathustra Does Dallas, in a tiny apartment in Turin that did not have running water, heat, a roof, or a floor. The work was made even harder by his always being behind in his rent, but whenever the landlord demanded payment, Nietzsche produced an a priori proof that the landlord didn’t exist. That bought him valuable time.

Soon the philosopher began to have dizzy spells. Once he excitedly asked the landlord, whom at last he had ingratiated by agreeing to stay away from the paying guests, who found him repulsive, if he would like to see Zarathustra’s Stone, the natural monument that had inspired him to write of good and evil. He dragged the protesting landlord into the nearby forest and there showed him a rock the size of a walnut, exclaiming, “There you see it! The magnificent stone that has inspired the greatest of all books!” Only after much heated debate did the landlord persuade the thinker to call a much larger stone in the vicinity Zarathustra’s Stone, so as not to make a laughingstock of himself and his work.

The end was now near. The first of every month, when his pension of three deutsche marks, a booklet of discount coupons, and a complimentary sausage arrived from Basel, Nietzsche, sick to death of sausage, which he called “the curse of the Germans, unless I mean lite beer,” rang up Pasquale’s Pizza in downtown Turin and ordered a delivery. In the words of Tony, the usual delivery person, “Nietzsche’s toppings grew wilder and madder each month. One time it would be olives and figs with mutton, then jalapenos and cotton candy with hemlock and bean sprouts, and crazier and crazier after that. His tiny room was full of empty and half-empty pizza boxes. And he didn’t tip, or maybe he’d just hand me an aphorism written on a napkin. Tragic, I call it!”

Nietzsche had just received a sub with pizza sauce and extra cheese when the final breakdown occurred. They had forgotten the pickle spear! It was too much and his great mind turned inward. He accosted strangers on the streets and introduced himself as “the god of pepperoni.” He threw his arms around the neck of a street cleaner’s horse and cried, “Manny, do you remember those nights we spent with Alma in the back room at Arnold’s?”

Within a few weeks his sister Elizabeth arrived to become the insane man’s business manager and barber. She allowed his mustache to grow to a weight of fifty pounds and billed him as a rock act called The Teutonic Bopper. He died five years later, like many central Europeans of the era from a combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis, migraine, plaque build-up, existential angst and nonstop touring, and also because his guitarist quit. By then he was world famous with ten platinum albums to his credit.

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Mike Fowler has contributed so many times to this magazine that he might as well live here.