...Heavy Soul...

Soul? 

Yea sure, he had soul. 

Man, he was overflowing with it! 

Dude sneeze, yo, 

you better say 

geisundheit twice, 

cause this motherf...

 

Um, yea... 

He be hangin’ some 

serious soul out there. 

Know what I’m sayin’?  

Cuz had some heavy, heavy soul. 

Beelzebub come lookin’ 

to take brotherman’s soul... 

blood better have him a forklift. 

Know what I’m sayin’?

 

Okay. 

So we’ve established  that 

this particular individual 

had a substantial soul. 

A soul that went beyond 

the perceived norm 

when it came to soul 

volume and mass. 

Soul density to the 

   power of infinity. 

Yea, and that 

“power of infinity” 

kinda’ means 

your basic forklift 

ain’t gonna hack it. 

 

What was odd was that

he could have such an

incredibly heavy soul and yet, 

while still in the realm of the living, 

carry it with the minimum of strain. 

To even be able to dance 

with such dense soul without... Well... 

To execute a non-lethal pelvic thrust. 

Truly amazing and yet

totally under-appreciated by the ladies. 

 

No. The inconvenience of 

a super high-density soul 

really only became a factor at 

the moment of death. 

Where everyone else’s souls shot off to 

their respective destinations, 

his heavy soul just lay there and lingered. 

And lingered. 

     And lingered. 

 

Yes, having a heavy soul 

did have its detriments. 

Of course there was that 

slight buzz he got when 

the formaldehyde started to flow. 

Yea, there was that. 

But even that made him feel 

like death warmed over. 

And that smile they but on his face... 

Nah. He’d never smiled like that. 

And that suit they put him in... 

He wouldn’t be caught dead 

   in a suit like that. 

 

Why? 

Well, ‘cause he had too much soul. 

 

And no. It wasn’t all that 

Marvin Gaye spinning away over there. 

And no. It wasn’t all that 

Al Green spinning away over there. 

 

No. 

His soul 

was right there where the hole was. 

Right there dead center of the 

darkest vinyl ever pressed. 

There where the groove was gone. 

Void of voice. 

      Absolute dead air. 

 

Yes, he was a heavy slab of vinyl 

the needle had touched 

one too many times. 

 

Ó05 Jack David Hubbell

 

 

 

 

   ...The Icky Sex...

There was a point in my life 

when girls were… well… 

Just plain icky. 

This was way back 

before they were 

the opposite sex. 

 

No.    Back then, 

they were just 

    opposite. 

You know: girls; 

the not version 

of boys; opposites. 

 

In the history of the 

known world according to 

Jack circa wee lad, 

sex simply didn’t exist. 

There was the wonderful world of Walt Disney, 

and there was the post-Disney world 

where you came to the epiphany that 

there could be more than met the eye 

when you gawked at a one of your sister’s 

   disrobed Barbi Dolls. 

No. Women were not actually 

surfaced with smooth plastic 

in all indiscreet places. 

(Yes. Although my friend Nat 

has confessed he’s had 

numerous inflatable dates 

which fit this description) 

 

There was this one time 

in grade school 

where all the girls were sent off 

to watch special cartoons

and we boys had to spend 

the entire day in study hall. 

At recess, I cornered 

one of the girls by the water fountain 

and asked her what kinda’ 

movies they were watching. 

Her face went ashen white 

and there in her eyes, 

all I could see was, 

“The Horror. The Horror.” 

 

She wouldn’t talk to me. 

Just spun away and past me 

like a matador slipping a 

heavy gonad-laden bull.

Perhaps she envisioned my 

mere touching of her arm 

as having the ability to instantly make 

her belly swell to alien dimensions. 

Yes, all of this merely confirmed 

just how weird girls actually were. 

 

It was around this same time 

that one of my best friends, 

having numerous older brothers, 

confided to a whole group of us boys 

that one of his sexperienced siblings 

had informed him that 

you got girls pregnant by 

peeing in them. 

 

Okay listen, 

I tried to correct him by stating 

I was pretty sure it was something else, 

but he won all the other boys over by 

simply re-affirming the fact: 

“Hey. My brother’s done it. 

He’s peed in allot of girls.” And…

And you would certainly have thought 

the word of such sexpertise 

would have gotten around. 

I guess it’s a good thing 

those girls did get go to special classes. 

Oh yea, and hopefully 

they never went on to date my friend. 

 

Me? I didn’t have brothers. 

I had sisters, and all the trauma they are 

want to induce in a young boy’s psyche. 

Because we had the misfortune 

of having only one mom, 

that inconvenience forced me 

to partake of girly things. 

Tap dance for instance. 

 

Yes. I’m around ten years old 

and I’ve been dropped off with my sisters 

to sit bored and miserable in a room full of 

icky girls with overly spastic heels and toes. 

What’s worse is I gotta’ pee and 

there in front of all these girls, 

would have to ask the instructor 

where the boy’s room is. 

It’s not a question she is used to answering 

but she discreetly replies that 

it should be down a certain staircase, 

in a totally different part of the building. 

A male swimming in a sea of estrogen, 

I mope my way down the stairs damp cavity 

and enter the dark hallway that awaits. 

 

Searching for the light switch, 

I can feel my fingertips passing over 

no end of paper loosely stapled and 

tacked to the length of the wall. 

When I do finally find the switch, 

toggle the lights on, and 

allow my eyes to adjust, 

I find myself accosted by pictures of 

yet more women. 

But wait a second… 

These weren’t mere icky girls. 

These were grown up women, 

and they didn’t have any clothes on! 

You could see boobies and… 

and…     everything!

The entire wall was covered with... 

I mean wall papered with... 

There were hundreds of centerfolds; 

one after another. 

It was like… Oooo. 

      It was like… Wow! 

            It was like… “Gee willikers!” 

                  And it was like… 

“Gee w-w-willikers!” 

 

I sense I’m being redundant, but, Gosh. 

Who would have thunk that girls

could ever evolve to look like that? 

 

I became a die-hard tap dance fan after that. 

Yep. I was always the first one in the car. 

Spent allot of time going to the toilet, 

whether I needed to   or not. 

Matter of fact, as I find myself, 

yet again seeing all those 

   naked women 

arrayed across the wall, 

I’ve once again gotten a 

sudden urge to visit the men’s room. 

 

Honest.

   I’ve only gotta’ pee. 

        Nothing else. 

             Trust me.

 

“Gee gosh-golly willikers.”

 

 Ó05 Jack David Hubbell

 

 

   ...Sound of Hate...

It was the sound of hate. 

It was the sound of violence. 

It was the sound of  

“I, as a human being, 

so despise you as 

a fellow human being that 

I want to bring you pain.” 

No. 

Beyond the desire to bring pain. 

To damage you. 

To disfigure you. 

Yes… 

hatred has a sound. 

 

And where do you hear such sounds? 

Well, I’ll tell you. 

Ever been to Omaha, Nebraska? 

 

Er… no, I’m 

not trying to imply such a 

brutal sound exists to emit 

throughout an entire city. 

This sound… 

This sound is selective. 

Sometimes you listen for it. 

Sometimes it searches you out. 

 

It’s a warm summer night and 

I’m sitting in a convertible passenger seat 

traveling North up the Radial Highway. 

There at the corner of Parker Street 

lies an expanse of grass. 

There on that grass, 

some twenty odd men are 

arrayed in an arc around 

two young men at its center. 

Two young men who stand some 

eight feet apart with chests heaving;  

their sweat smeared skin glistening 

under the halogen street lamps. 

 

Though they still stand, 

one young man appears injured. 

He hold his right foot up off the ground 

as if some great trauma had befell it. 

The two men had obviously been 

fighting for some time and one of them 

had had some crippling blow dealt to him. 

And yet… 

And yet this would not sway his hatred. 

Would not override pride nor 

   give way to caution. 

Such was his embrace 

   of hate. 

 

Though limping severely, 

he lunges forward towards that 

which he must achieve reprisal. 

 

And it is at this moment that the car 

within which I ride passes 

the corner of Radial and Parker. 

 

And it is at this moment 

that I can no longer see… 

   but still hear. 

Precisely at the moment of passing, 

   I hear the sound. 

 

It is the sound of one man’s fist 

slamming into another’s face. 

 

Slamming into another human’s face 

with such velocity and force 

as to make the sound of… 

 

How do you describe 

such a sound? 

 

How do you describe 

such hatred? 

 

How? 

 

Ó05 Jack David Hubbell

    ...Deadly Dogma...

Within the annals of dogdom, 

certain individuals 

of the human persuasion 

place very high in the column 

marked "Canine Genocide". 

Yes, there at the top of the list 

concerning such mass murder 

lies the infamous name of 

Thomas Alva Edison. 

 

Mister Edison involved 

with the holocaust of

man's best friend? 

You might ask how I know this. 

 

Well, if you paid attention to your dog 

   (as I do mine), 

you'd know that Canis Domesticus

have maintained an oral history 

   since the dawn of dog. 

This must be oral as 

all written history via 

paw-scratch calligraphy 

unfortunately perished 

  when the 

libraries of Alexandria burned.

This    and the fact that 

no Rosetta Stone has ever surfaced 

to explain the strange markings 

   on my back door. 

 

So when my dog talks, I listen, 

and he's personally conveyed to me 

that dogdom had no friend 

   in Thomas Alva Edison. 

 

Now apparently the holocaust of 1890 

began a few years after Edison 

met a certain Nikola Tesla. 

 

Tesla had conceived 

and brought to bear 

the electric principle of 

alternating current or 

as my dog refers to it,    AC. 

 

This was a vast improvement 

over the puny direct current that 

Edison had been using to 

   run his light bulbs. 

 

Yes, Tesla's process was superior, 

and Edison hated him for it. 

It was a blind hatred and 

Edison would go to no end 

proving to the world 

the absolute horrors of 

alternating current. 

 

He began his defamation of Tesla 

   prior to 1890, 

but it is on this date 

that he decided to proceed 

to the final solution. 

It began on the streets of 

West Orange, New Jersey, 

and spread from there

across the nation. 

 

Edison had his men 

pay young boys 

to capture dogs off the street 

and have them brought to him. 

Here he would then take 

these dogs to town halls, 

have them stand 

on large metal floor plates, 

run wires to their ears and switch on 

the dreaded 

alternating current. 

At each consecutive town hall meeting, 

yet another 

     and another dog 

died convulsing 

upon the provided stage.

 

All because Thomas Alva Edison 

so hated Nikola Tesla. 

This and that he, Edison, 

could not and would not admit 

that he was wrong 

and that Tesla was right. 

 

Such is the power of dogmatic belief. 

 

And so, my dog and I sit there 

while an AC powered light bulb 

hums above our heads.

A quiet moment passes between us, 

and finally      

he speaks. 

 

"You know, 

an awful lot of dogs had to die 

just so one man 

could make his point.

    His flawed point. 

And I'd just like to know... 

Do humans have men 

who would send 

other men to their deaths, 

even if they knew that their 

reason for sending them 

    was flawed?" 

 

At this, I take pause, 

reach down and gently

scratch him behind the ear. 

 

"Yes," I say. 

 

"Yes. It happens all the time, 

but as in alternating current, 

we as humans 

 

can always 

 

change direction."  

 

© 05 Jack David Hubbell