Babel

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  • A Cup of Coffee

    Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

    Black winds chase across the manmade
    canyons as Carter leaves the bus station.
    Towering structures hover all around him,
    as snow comes billowing down the shafts
    of darkness. While on street level, designer
    dream worlds in which stylishly dressed
    mannequins play act a high-style life of eye
    popping riches, appear in storefront windows
    everywhere, as shadow shapes bundle past
    them from every direction, paying them no
    attention, going every which way in a flurry
    of commotion.
    The big city, Carter shivers. He has to find
    some work here. Nothing going on in his
    hometown since they closed the plant down
    and shipped the whole kit and caboodle to
    Mexico, leaving everyone, jobless, and hopeless.
    It was scary, this giant city, where everything
    was too big and everyone was in a hurry.
    “You can’t let life bring you down!” The
    Preacher had told the congregation. “You
    can’t let fear hold you down! You have to
    move on! The Hebrews were afraid to go on.
    They were afraid of the desert! They were
    afraid of the danger! They were afraid of the
    unfamiliar! But they couldn’t go back to Egypt
    and despair. Moses made them go on. Moses
    said ‘Trust in God!’ So they followed him.
    And God parted the sea for them!”
    There were beggars everywhere, families dressed
    in rags shuffling through the cold, their faces filled
    with fear. There were drunks, and what looked like
    dead bodies huddled up in doorways and shady
    looking characters watching him from alleys.
    Carter had to get inside somewhere, get out of
    the blizzard. He had to get his bearings, get his
    head together. He slipped in a diner and sat at the
    counter. Everyone looked like sleepwalkers. The
    counter seemed crowded with ghosts and phantoms.
    “Coffee” he told the waitress who looked at him
    askance like the only reason he was there was to
    get in her hair.
    “Trust in God and the seas will open!” The preacher
    said. Well there was no going back to Egypt, Carter
    thought, that was for sure. There was nothing there
    anymore. That door was closed, the lock changed,
    the bridge to it burned. God better part that sea soon
    for him, Carter knew, or he’d drown in this big city
    with the rest of them.

  • Paper Moon

    BookCoverImageForeWord Reviews
    Clarion Review
    LITERARY

    Paper Moon
    Rex Sexton CreateSpace 978-1-4791-1967-7 Five Stars (out of Five)

    Renowned surrealist painter Rex Sexton is also a highly regarded writer, imbuing his fiction and poetry with the same startling vision and mastery he displays in his artwork. His newest novel, Paper Moon, dazzles with words, just as his paintings do with form and color.

    Sexton tells the fictional tale of aspiring teenage artist and poet Ithiel Ingbar as he comes to grips with a transient lifestyle in the underbelly of Chicago during the 1980’s. The author checks in on the course of Ingbar’s life intermittently over the next twenty-five years, concentrating on brief, pivotal moments. Displaying a dramatic flair for the poetic, Sexton produces images as vivid as dreams and often as feverish as nightmares, all in the course of describing “life noir” as lived by Ingbar.

    Graduating from a job shoveling coal in the train yards to “day labor slug” on museum security duty—not for the money, but for the art-school scholarship that comes with the job—Ingbar observes life at its darkest and most bizarre. Social commentary swirls with wordplay as Sexton reveals the seedier side of life, that place somewhere between “nowhere and no way out.” Bruce Springsteen screams “Born in the USA” in the background while prophetic words written on the wall of a jail cell fundamentally summarize the young man’s existence: “I walk among the lost … where chasms have no bridges over bottomless abysses.”

    At twenty, Ingbar suffers a traumatic occurrence that has a lasting effect on both his psyche and the artwork he creates. Through his paintings and poetry, he examines his complicated history and circumstances, seeking to understand life’s enigmas. His art becomes that previously missing bridge connecting reality and fantasy. Existentialism battles theological doctrine. Sometimes confusion reigns; at times, lucidity prevails. The subconscious mind that comes alive in Ingbar’s dreams makes its way onto his paper and canvas in what Sexton calls a “mindscape of amazing grace.” “Artists live where all dreams end,” he says. “Truth, Illusion, are a dance of apparitions. You try to capture them. Smoke and mirrors are what you usually get—but sometimes life’s magic.” It is impossible not to consider the autobiographical nature of the author’s statement.

    Sexton creates a dizzying madhouse of a world that exists beneath the surface of “normal” life. The topic itself feels unfiltered and raw, yet the presentation is remarkably precise. The descriptions are extremely visual, and the cadence so perfect sometimes that passages beg to be read out loud. Fans of Coleridge and Blake will not miss the allusions and undercurrents, and those who grew up in the Catholic Church will recognize the source of certain of Ingbar’s private hauntings. Sexton is both clever and creative, and Paper Moon is refreshingly intense, unusual in its complexity, and disquieting in its revelations.
    Cheryl Hibbard

  • Razor’s Edge

    Hotel

    Razor sliced clean – his too-quick smile
    was your bad dream.
    At night, in the Hood, when the street lights
    glowed, blood flowed. Sometimes you
    could hear the screams.
    Razor was a friend of mine
    He would slice you anytime
    For nickel or a dime
    Fifty cents for overtime
    Stop the poem! This next stanza is a
    disclaimer! I never knew anyone named
    Razor! Or any other psychopath who
    would steal, cheat, murder for profit
    or pleasure! I’m making this up!
    (Can’t get bumped off or sued by a whacko!)
    OK, I grew up in a slum. But I moved on.
    I saw nothing, heard nothing, remember
    nothing, know nothing.
    I keep company, now, with the cream of
    society: bankers, brokers, politicians,
    the titans of industry and commerce.
    Maybe I shouldn’t write about them either?

  • For Every Season

    For Every Season
    Summer heat, the town asleep,
    I walk empty streets in the
    hallowed light of a full moon
    night. Above me, the stars sparkle
    like gems in the heavens.
    All around me a jubilee is celebrated
    by the crickets as they perform their
    nocturnal rhapsody – to accompany
    the lullaby the hushed wind whispers
    through the leaves of the trees which
    canopy the winding lanes which
    wander up and down the hills and
    dales of our small town.
    Come the dawn is there a reason to
    go on? I wonder.
    The days shall go on: full moon,
    new moon, Autumn, Winter, Spring,
    Summer again, world without end.
    Round and round the planet circles
    the sun, time passes on, life moves
    along.
    Tomorrow morning the Plant shuts
    down. Our lives shut down and soon
    comes a ghost town.

  • Unnamed soldiers: secret heroes, great causes, death and glory

    Napoleon Crossing the Alps
    Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

    We all watched and maybe even loved stories of great heroes – kings, queens, generals – leading their armies to victory or glorious defeat. Each country or culture has its own such historical names that may have existed or not, and there are international names acknowledged and respected internationally. Nevertheless, we know about Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon and so on to name some less politically controversial names, but what do we know about all the nameless foot-soldiers that fought in the first lines?

     

    This post will be dedicated to these people and their portrayal in literature and in media, more or less contemporary. (more…)