Lenny, by chess venis

People always askin about you. When you'll be coming up.
I should wish I'd stayed down with you, but I don't.
Sometimes I wonder what we would have found at the tunnels end.

"We aren't lookin for gold, baby." I remember you sayin.
"We're just lookin for a way out."
I got out, Lenny. I forfeit the mission of finding the end,
And I got back to the surface again.

We were down there for years, moving toward something.
"The trick is to keep the path to the end," you would say.
"If we leave half through, we'll just end up back where we started."

Turns out, you were right about that.
When I crawled into the sunlight, - dirty, hungry, a bit beat up-,
I found myself right back here in Fairfield.

This farm holds my life, every hour, save my time with you,
Searching for the end of a tunnel called "Hope."

Hope has been a legend forever.
When life has got a person beaten down,
a friend will likely say: "well, at least you still have Hope."

So The oppressed, depressed, or just simply pressed,
will go to the edge of the tunnel. They will take a step in,
Then a step out. Flirt with it, tease the idea.
Set round and stare at it till the feeling of being uplifted embraces them.

Then they will leave the tunnel's base,
Having now come to terms with the way life is.
Keeping the pursuit of what may be found within Hope,
A journey for another day.

You walked in, Lenny. Into the darkness.
Not a second look back. - the first was to make sure I was behind.-
Walking through Hope is done in compleate darkness.
Sometimes the ground is smooth and dry, sometimes two feet full of muck.
Some places are vast, enough for echo's to mimic our breathing.

Once, the tunnel was getting so small, we could not walk side by side anymore.
You sent me through in front of you.
I needed to slide along on hand and knee, or even on my belly.
I don't know haw far. I didn't know what was ahead, or if you were stil behind.

I kept hearing the sound of water running toward me.
I was expecting to be drowned any moment.
By the time I could stand again, I was ready to drown.
I waited for you to catch up. I waited for a really long time.

"Maybe Lenny gave up, went back?" I thought.
"Maybe he drowned in the water I never encountered.
What should I do? Seems like such a waist if I give up now."

I was about to keep walking, further into the darkness,
When I heard you crawling, then standing, and walking up to me.
"I think we are through the worst" you said.

Perhaps I should have said something.
Maybe a brief explanation would have been appropriate.
I should be sorry for just leaving you, but this is not an apology letter.

I need to pass my life in the light.
I need to know you are still looking for the end of the tunnel.
I need the option of rejoining you to be something I consider everyday.

Our Requests, by chess venis

We all asked him to go. Then we wanted him back. But by that point…

We were teenaged at the time, rash to make decisions and quick to change our minds.
A large group of us would hang out at the train station.
We never actually boarded a train, the station was just where everyone wanted to be,
because that’s where Danny was.

Danny was well liked and respected. He was fearless, clever, and protective of us all.
If a little kid was being teased, all it took was a warning from Danny
and the bully’s would back off. He didn’t only protect us from others,
but sometimes also from ourselves. If he caught one of his friend doing,
or even thinking of doing something destructive, he intervene weather invited to or not.

One day some punks from a few train stops down the line came to our station.
They started to tear apart the station, kicking down the hand rails, spray-painting the walls, knocking down the support beams with a baseball bat.
Before anyone knew what was happening the thugs started throwing kids down long staircases and in front of moving trains. Then they left before anyone knew what to think.
Danny was the first to react. He made sure all the injured were treated, and all the dead buried. Then he met the rest of us at the train station.

I’ve never scene anyone so angry. He was mad that it had happened at all,
that he couldn’t have stopped them. Now he wanted to fight, and the rest of us
encouraged him to. “It will happen again if you don’t go.” We told him.
“There will only be more mass destruction!” Danny boarded a train going
to a place none of us knew anything about, and somehow we felt good about this.

Time started to pass. We heard a little of him at first, it didn’t sound good.
Nothing seemed positive, it became hard to listen to, so we stopped listening.
Our lives carried on, making Danny an ever distancing memory for most.
Occasionally someone would remember that he was still over there,
and try to remind the rest of us. Sometimes my eye would be caught by one of the
“Support our Danny!” signs we mad when he first left. Now the sign was faded,
dirty, and sitting at a nearly abandoned train station.

One day we got word that Danny was coming back to us.
I tried to get a large group to meet him at the station, but as everyone else was busy.
I ended up being the only person there when he stepped off the train.
“Where is everyone?” He asked me. “Well…” I explained hesitantly.
“The kids from Student Counsel are in a meeting, disusing ways to
take little kids lunch money without loosing their vote.
The Academics Club is in the chemistry lab, developing new narcotics,
that haven’t yet been declared illegal by the government.
And the Cheerleaders are throwing a rally to support the legalization of murder.”
He looked at me a moment. “This is what I’m fighting for?”
He said getting back on the train.

I asked why he was going back, what he was accomplishing over there,
and when he would return for good. Danny never answered my questions.
Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t understand. Maybe I seemed ignorant to him.
It was an awful place, just a few short stops away, and I knew nothing about it, none of us did.

I sat at the train stop every afternoon, just waiting for Danny to come back.
Six years had passed since we had been vandalized.
When Danny left people stopped hanging out at the train stations, but this changed one day.
I was sitting alone, like always, when a fellow with big ears came and sat beside me.
"It’s time for Danny to come back.” Said this fellow. I agreed, but nobody else seemed to care. “We will make it an issue.” The strangely optimistic fellow explained.
“People listen and make a big fuss about things declared “issues”.
We’ll say that bringing Danny back is an important issue, then people will listen.”
This was a crazy concept, but surrounded by enough truth to seem plausible.

In no time the platform’s of the train station were flooded with people
insisting that Danny come home, and finally, his feet stepped off the train and into the crowd. Danny’s eyes searched the unfamiliar faces around him. His hands were prepared to fight,
but there was nobody here to fight. His legs were ready to run,
though he would never again need to run from anything.
He was not one of us, or one of them. Nobody knew who this was,
and thus we didn’t know how to treat him. Danny never really came back to us.

Something’s can’t be reversed. Some train’s don’t return.
Instead, they’re track is taken over be a different train altogether.

We all asked him to go.
Then we wanted him back.
But by that point Danny didn’t really exist anymore.
I’m not inclined to say if sending him was a good or bad decision,
I just hope next time we will be more carfull with our requests.

Blameless and Unexplainable, by chess venis

Someone should have told them, warned them
that the family home was in jeopardy.
It was the house of Mr. Thomas Dream and family.
Thomas thought himself head of the house,
though to keep peace with his wife, Amanda,
he pretended that the house-hold operations
were shared responsibilities. I feel it’s reasonable
to wonder if Thomas knew the severity
of the threat against his home?

Could the possibility of eviction
be one of the many secrets he kept from the rest of the family?
Is he to blame, and if not, who?

Thomas and Amanda have three children.
William, Grace, and Joy now stand at the curb
with suitcases in hand but no place to go.
A homeless fellow passes, ringing a shine bell.
Little Joy reaches out to grab the bell,
but the homeless fellow pulls away,
making the children confused.
Their parents told them they could do or have anything.
William had surrounded his life around this concept,
Grace found liberty in it, and Joy could only be made happy
with material possessions. Now they had nothing.

On one prior occasion, a long time ago, the family budget
had collided with the family motto, but the children’s father
fixed that situation. He noticed one day
that the neighbor’s roof was in need of repair,
and offered to help fix it. The price he quoted
for his services was extremely exasperated
for the amount of work he would actually provide,
but he assured them that he would pay most of it back soon.

He promised them “If I don’t pay back the money in a few years,
you can start taking pieces of my own roof.”
Thomas Dream never though that he would not be able to pay,
though the neighbors had their doubts.
The neighbors saw how the Dream family lived,
constantly wanting more, never satisfied.
So they lent Thomas the money, while measuring his roof
for sections that fit their own homes.

What the family never knew, because Thomas
failed to mention it, was that this was not the only time
he went the neighbors for money.
In the years that he meant to pay them back,
he instead asked for more, until most of his home
was promised to the neighbors.

On one occasion Amanda became suspicious.
She was about to re-paint her kitchen when Mrs. Jones,
the neighbor lady from across the street, intervened.
“You can only paint the walls green.” Said Mrs. Jones.
“That’s my favorite color, and really those walls do belong to me.”
Amanda was infuriated by this and demanded
explanation from her husband. “That’s silly.”
He assured her. “Of course the kitchen belongs to us,
well most of it anyway, but perhaps we should
paint the walls green, if only to keep peace with the neighbors.”

Is was strange for the Dream family to be at odds with their neighbors.
Until recently they had been known for their hospitality.
Amanda had often invited neighbors to dinner parties,
and was the first to welcome newcomers to the block.
Perhaps this is why the neighbors did not begin collecting
pieces of her house. Something changed in Amanda, however,
when Thomas acted suspicious of those around them.
So Amanda stopped inviting the neighbors to dinner.
She built a fence around the front lawn and had the phone line
disconnected. Feeling snubbed by the Dream family,
the folks next door appeared on their front stoop one morning,
expecting to collect the bedroom furniture.

Desperately, Thomas and Amanda scraped together
enough money to pay them, and send them away.
Next the family from across the street came for the kitchen appliances.
Again, the money was collected, and paid.

Grandfather Dream was the next person to appear on Thomas’s stoop.
He was much more welcomed at first. He sat in an old
rocking chair to rest his tired old legs.
Amanda was feeling safe in her home.
She thought that there was only one neighbor that they still
owed money to, and she already had this money saved up,
until Grandfather Dream made an unexpected request over brunch.
“I came for my money” He said nonchalantly.
“I’ve been giving you a little bit of money for the last fifty years,
and now in my old age I can’t work anymore, and need to
collect all the money I’ve give you to hold.”
Thomas had not held this money, he’d spent it all.
On frivolous thing’s, on house hold need’s, and on
paying back the family’s debts.

Thomas though at first that he would simply not pay the old man,
but Amanda insisted. Grandfather Dream took all they she had saved,
just before the neighbors came for the roof.
Then more neighbors came for the floors,
the walls, kitchen cabinets, everything.

The parents got old and one at a time began to die
as the house was taken apart, but the children never grew up.
They kept their youthful ignorance, spent money that
wasn’t theirs to spend, until they found themselves on
the curb without a home. Somehow their life, liberty,
and happiness had been taken away, but they couldn’t figure out how.

Now you know how this storey goes,
from beginning to bitter end.
I hope someone can decide who is to blame.
The silent head of a falling house?
Children always wanting more?
Fearing friends and closing doors?
Or a sick old man in a rocking chair?
It is such a shame to lose the home of dreams,
and worse still if it all end’s up being blameless and unexplainable.