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mavthewriter
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Untitled Night Club Poem
by Marc Alexander Valle
The multicolored lights. Bodies grinding and a few fist fights. Anything but actual dancing on the dance floor.
Groups of girls huddled in corners. I see young men walk over. They’re dressed in the style of ‘loose and baggy’ or ‘bad boy I don’t care what any thinks’.
The endless beat and bass. I vibe to the music just in case. They might see that I’m not like them.
The problem with the nightclub was that it was just like my head. Stimulation, movement, nonstop noise and chatter.
The problem was that I believed that these people were somehow more advanced than me. They could socialize and talk better than me.
The problem was with Beethoven. When we were in high school, these people were moving through the bases of dating. When we were in high school, I listened to the 9th for the 9th time, wondering if I would ever create something so sublime in my lifetime.
The problem was with movies. The problem was with filmmaking. The problem was with following your dreams. Which means the problem was with me.
If I could find a time machine and talk to a younger me I’d tell myself, “You have no interest in making art that slow and working as a team. Find another medium.”
The problem is that the world is incentivized to see reality in black and white, and as much as I tried to fight I could only see reality as an explosion of light.
So after one more visit to the nightclub, I decided that time would be more well spent behind a word processor. Written words always had a habit of flowing my way even when they came in cluttered.
Clubbing was no way to find myself. Clubbing was no way to find my niche. Trying to find your place with everyone in a place where everyone is trying to forget is the perfect way to lose your mind and maybe even your convictions.
Beethoven wrote that. Right after he wrote the 9th.
Happy 548 Birthday!
One-and-a-half trips around The Sun today, Emile. There will be no party, but I celebrate all the same.
You are here. You are healthy and strong and absorbing new words faster than I ever could. You were meant to be here and will inherit the world in ways that I could not.
There was a time when my head was a carnival of light, my son. Thoughts, ideas, and emotions all intertwined in a kaleidoscopic feast, and I believed that if I just put it out there, put it on paper or film or on stage, people would understand me. I was convinced I was here to save the world and show them things hidden under the blanket of their fixed views and idealogy.
But no one seemed to care, and I engaged in a protracted and misanthropic self-conversation that robbed me of joy and gratification with even the most delectable of occasions.
It doesn’t matter what they think of me anymore, at least not like it used to. I see the psychedelic-Kodachrome cavalcade in your smile and I am reborn. It makes its way down the abandoned roads of my soul, and some days I think I can see barren fields filled with life again. I ask myself, “How could I ever have allowed others such power over me? How could anyone torture themselves as I did?”
I will be your audience, my son. I will be your witness. I know that if I can do anything it will be to see you in your most noble and extraordinary wardrobe, a tapestry of confidence and sweetness patched together with no visible seams. I will be your champion. The world doesn’t know what they’re in for like I do.
Happy 18 months old, Emile. We’ve come so far in such a short time, and we have miles and miles to go. Sometimes I wonder what I would do for a few miles more.
Mav The Writer: The Lost Years
There’s a time in my life that I cannot write about. There’s no story there that would be of interest to my audience. I even get bored, thinking about it. From my teens to my very early 30s, I neither acted upon nor reacted to the world.
I did my thing. I wrote in various mediums, I went to karaoke twice a week, I read my work at open mics, I had my artwork in a gallery, I went back to school and earned my degree, I experimented in photography, and I worked various low-paying jobs with colorful people. But for the most part it was my lost years. I took no risks and barely ventured out of my comfort zone. I hardly dared to ask out females, fearing what they might have thought of me.
Is time ever really lost? Does the brain collect and process data and turn it into wisdom no matter the circumstance? And do movies, books, and music count as life experience?
I got into a shoving match in second grade, and it’s one of my sweetest moments. Some kid bullied my best friend on the playground. He was high up on himself, because all the girls followed him around during recess. I cursed at him and pushed him to the ground. All the girls came after me and yelled at me. The bully stood back up and cried. It felt good.
The world acted, I reacted, and in turn I existed. Beginning, middle and end.
We grade our lives on curves and our view of ourselves is rich with self-talk rebuttals.
I see no good in those years except that it makes my story different.
To excavate our lives for a happy ending can be a brutal endeavor, but a necessary one if the left foot is to move in front of the right and the right foot is to move in front of the left. I still can’t write a lick about that era.
The 500th Block of Vincent Child: A Flash Fiction
Special thanks to Door is a Jar, who first published the story in the Spring of 2019.
The 500th Block of Vincent Child
by Marc Alexander Valle (mavthewriter)
Vincent Child watched as the young man assaulted the old man across the street. He wasn’t sure if it was a robbery and didn’t know what to do if it was. So he stood still, watching the young man grab and shove the old man in front of the tenement on the narrow one-way street.
Vincent looked around. No pedestrians. Only him and the two men on the sunless block. A knot formed in his stomach and he could feel the cold breeze more intensely, cutting through his black jacket and tan pants. The men continued to struggle.
He wished he hadn’t turned this corner. Yesterday, he turned onto another street. That was his usual route for the last ten days as he substitute taught for an eighth grade teacher at Jackson Middle School. But he’d read an article that said that if you change certain routines in your life, you can change your brain waves and create positive thought patterns. So he turned onto the 500th block of Chester St, a slightly downhill block of apartment buildings and tightly parked clunkers, then he crossed the street.
“Give it,” the young man said.
“No!” the old man said.
The young man punched the old man, who fell behind a parked Cadillac. The young man crouched down. Vincent could see neither of them now. He could hear sirens getting closer and wondered who they were for.
He looked around again. A woman pushing a stroller walked his way. He believed that she hadn’t seen the struggle across the street, but he figured she would soon. And when she did the woman would believe that he was a coward. She would tell the police that he did nothing and the news would quote her as saying, “No one did anything. He just stood there.”
Vincent pulled his cell phone from out of his jacket. He turned it on and waited.
What icon do I press? Do I call 911? Are they already coming?
“Help!” he heard from the old man.
The young man was standing back up. “Stop!” he said, looking down and kicked.
“Give it.” He kicked again.
“Hey,” Vincent said. “Hey!”
The young man looked over. “I called the cops,” Vincent said, raising his phone to the young man. “The cops.” The siren were blaring and getting closer.
The young man crouched down again behind the Cadillac.
“What’s that?” the woman said.
“I don’t know,” Vincent said, “Two guys fighting.”
The woman shook her head and kept walking with the stroller.
Vincent kept looking at her as she walked away, then turned to the Cadillac.
He could neither hear, nor see either of the two. He turned back to the woman with the stroller. She was nearing the corner. He turned to the Cadillac. Still no commotion. Then back to the woman as she turned the corner. Then back to the Cadillac.
“Hey,” Vincent said.
No response.
He turned and started walking down the block.
“No! Stop!” he heard someone say behind the Cadillac. “No!”
It sounded like the young man. But it could have been the old man. He wasn’t sure.
“Hey,” he said.
No response. No commotion. Vincent backed closer to the corner.
He heard the sirens, blaring and getting closer.
The cops are on their way. I’m late.
They were blaring and getting close.
I’m sure they’re coming here.
He turned the corner.
“A 67-year old man was beaten to death yesterday on the 500th block of Chester St. at 9:00 am. Police were alerted by neighbors–
Vincent Child put down his phone on the desk. The incident he saw took place at 7:00 am. A full two hours before neighbors called. It’s impossible to have been the men I saw. He exhaled and stood up.
The seventh grade students would be arriving in ten minutes. He’d wanted to avoid seventh grade. He heard they were bad this year, but he was sent to cover one period after his break. The teacher’s lesson plan was at the center of the desk:
Students will be wrapping up their projects on How My Community Feels. If finished, tell them to post drawing on the corkboard. Some students are finished. Have them read a book.
Vincent walked over to look at the drawings. Most drawings had children playing. Some had children with family. A few had people arguing. But in one drawing there was a man on the ground with another man standing above him. Vincent read the words below it:
I saw a man get beat out my window and no one did nothing. Makes me scared.
Vincent looked at the image again. At the edge of the paper, a woman in purple held onto a yellow stroller. Behind her, a man dressed in a black jacket and tan pants. The man in the black jacket looked back at the two men with wide eyes and an open mouth. He saw “Period 3, 7th grade” labeled at the top of the paper. Vincent was in period 2 now.
The school bell rang.
Vincent took his black jacket and hung it in the closet. He doubled checked his pants and saw they were blue today. The students could be heard down the hall, yelling and getting closer. Part of his job was to serve as hall monitor in between classes, but he could only stand still, listening to them yelling and getting closer.
Vincent looked over to the drawing again and studied the face of the man with the black jacket. He had the vertical face his mother always said he had and noticed shaky lines to make him look more scared. He put his head down and took a deep breath.
Vincent turned to the door again. He could hear the kids coming down the hall, yelling and getting closer. Yelling and getting closer.
Marc Alexander Valle ©2019
Twitter, Instagram, Youtube Channel: Mavthewriter
The Santa Poem by Marc Alexander Valle
(Feedback is welcome)
The Santa Poem
My brother told me that Santa doesn’t exist. He showed me where all the gifts were stashed. G.I. Joes were everywhere. I felt a thrill throughout my body. Finding that Santa doesn’t exist is a double-edged sword. Your childhood is almost over, but now you have the advantage in gift begging. You can manipulate your parents into getting you what you want, and now you have someone to blame when you don’t get it. I’ll probably lie to my kids about Santa if I ever have any. When they find the gift stash, I’ll still lie to them. One Christmas, our dad made us leave a can of beer for Santa. He said that he wanted to see if Santa would drink it. The can was empty in the morning.
The Ride by Marc Alexander Valle
“You guys want to stay here and watch Transformers,” my dad said. “Or do you want to go on a ride?”
My older brother voted to stay at the department store to finish the episode on a big screen color TV.
I voted for the ride.
“Well, you guys have to figure this out,” my dad said.
I turned to my brother, “I want to go on a ride.”
“I want to watch Transformers,” my brother said.
“I want to go for a ride!”
“I never saw this on a big TV.”
“What’s the ride?” I said to my dad.
“Well, you’re not going to see until you get on?”
“I want to go on a ride,” I said to my brother.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
“But you’ve seen this one,” my dad said.
“Yeah, we saw it!” I said.
“No.”
“Come on!”
“No.”
“I want to go!”
“No!”
I want to gooooooooo!
He looked over, “No.”
I turned to my dad: “I want to go for a ride.”
“Well,” he said. “Since you guys can’t decide, you can watch this at home.”
“But it’s gonna be over then,” my brother said.
“It’ll come on again.”
We went on the ride. It was a five-story, downward spiral car ramp. The one we were always going to ride if we wanted to leave the parking lot.
Hour of the Muse: A Video Poem
Hour of the Muse. A video poem that I wrote, directed and performed in.
Chauvet Cave: A Video Poem ©2018
A video poem written and directed by Marc Alexander Valle ©2018
Inquisition: A Video Poem by Marc Alexander Valle ©2018
A video poem that I wrote, edited and performed in. All photos from pixabay.com
Rest Stop: A Flash Fiction Video by Marc Alexander Valle
A video that I wrote, edited and performed. All photos from pixabay.com First published in The Drabble (https://thedrabble.wordpress.com/)
The Chestnut: A Video Flash Fiction by Marc Alexander Valle ©2018
Meditation and Gratitude
(The real names of the people below have been changed.)
For the first time, I leaned in during our dedication of merit, the part of the meditation session where we dedicate our sit to someone or something.
“I’d like to dedicate the merits of my practice to those who have shown me kindness and compassion. We often forget that in a jungle of hurtful people, there are those who still help.”
I didn’t say it exactly like that. I never speak as clearly as I write, but I finally spoke out because I meant what I said.
Most of my life, I’ve focused on negative people. I’ve often referred to them as “my enemies”. I thought that if these people were not in the picture, I would feel respected and understood.
My Buddhist reverend stresses the importance of compassion, reinforces it through repetition. It took years of going to practice for it to finally seep in. People have been compassionate to me, and I only wanted more from everyone.
Pam was the only person who talked to me in high school without me having to open up first.
Albert helped me when I was trying to make a movie. I wanted to be known as a young man.
Donna invited me to a party at age 23 when I hadn’t been invited to one in years.
Tanya set me up on a date when I couldn’t even get a hello from a woman.
Gabriel helped me be more confident about myself when I did get more dates.
Professor Dan sat me down and helped me set up this blog.
Ellen is my friend today and is always on the lookout for potential career contacts.
Mom and Dad did so much that they cannot be thanked enough.
I can’t owe it all to mediation. Meditation was the tool. I chose meditation because there was something in it, something I needed to sharpen my awareness and love of myself. I helped Marc first. Then, the door of perception opened and allowed me to see the things I needed see at the pace that I could bear.
I don’t know how I made the choice to help myself. Somethings will always remain a mystery.
Mavthewriter 