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Sunday, August 31, 2014

Reasons Unknown - A Short Story

The boy was but nine when he happened upon that cliff face.  Whatever it was that brought him there he could not say.  A voice in his dreams and when he awakened he found that he was bare foot, and nearly sinking an inch into the snow. It was indeed the middle of January and he was dressed simply in his pajamas, which were a pair of soft cotton pants with the design of some heroic hero whose face littered his comic book collection.  His top was of the same design, indeed a matching set his mother had just gotten him for Christmas not a month earlier.   It was peculiar and dangerous that he was dressed as he was and in the location that he was.  Not only was the freezing air biting at his exposed skin, but his toes were quickly numbing.  Not only was he on the edge of a terrifying cliff but it was a location he had never been before.  
When he turned about to inspect his waking surroundings there was a towering lighthouse.   Icicle’s like cavernous stalactites dangled from its upper railing.    Some nearly touched the ground.  It was littered and pelted by the falling snow which seemed to be falling sideways due to the strength of the winds.  The side that wasn’t hit and stood exposed to the air was made up of thick white bricks.  Some were chipped, and most were whole.   He hugged his arms tightly around him as if to confine the warmth inside of his bones, but in truth it did not help, and his only survival instinct led him to the base of that lighthouse.  He wandered about it in a circle for there was no reason to feel that he needed to escape the pain because he did not feel anything.  Surely his feet were frostbitten by now he figured.  Surely they were black and dying.   He felt as though the second he stepped inside that lighthouse, if it was even warm, that he would lose each toe.  That each one would stick to the cemented ground and rip apart from his body.   So he wandered around at a decent pace, but not a hurried one.   It took many minutes, and he in truth felt light headed, that he could pass out at any moment, but eventually the door was in sight and it was opened.
To his astonishment his toes were only a pink red.   They were not frozen to death.  In fact they soon began to regain their feeling in a matter of seconds.  Despite the fact that the door had been left open the lighthouse itself was heated, as though someone were still in care of it.   He wasn’t sure how that would be so, because inside it was littered with cob webs as if no one had been inside it in ages.  His cheeks, limbs and appendages felt fuzzy as the life returned to them, and he let loose his hug and let his arms dangle at his sides.
“Hello.”  He ventured a cautious greeting.  His eyes cast about searching for anyone who might hear him.   Above him an infinite staircase extended skyward until it arrived what he assumed must have been heaven.   “Hello.”  He said again.   He stepped about the center cylinder that the stairs wrapped around and there was nothing, but he did see a flattened surface above where the stairs stopped and then continued.   One last time he looked around this bottom floor to see what it was he could see.    Only old crates, and old tools, long ago rusted sat on the floor.  When he was satisfied it was only these old remnants he found a foot on the first step, then another foot on the next, and he alternated as he ascended into heaven.
At that platform he found a bed.   More to the point he found a dusty old mattress.   He moved toward it, and the boy laid a hand on its surface and the springs squeaked under the pressure, and the bed bounced momentarily before coming to a dead stillness.   A stillness like the rest of that place.   Beside the bed there was an old wooden end table.   On this end table which was long ago water logged rested a picture frame but no picture.  This he found the most eerie, and the most peculiar.   His nine year old hands lifted up the frame, and he was careful.  His hold was delicate as though the thing would disintegrate into dust if he pinched too hard.   It was turned over in his hands, over and over its blacked old surfaces collection upon its dust impressions of his fingerprints.   This frame he sat back down and he looked more on that platform.
A simple looking barrel sat on its side, resting against the continuing staircases railing.   A torn and ripped tarp sat randomly on the floor.   On the walls of that area were more empty picture frames, and it was as though no one had been inside in a good long while.  This he knew to be truth, but the heated spaces seemed absolutely trivial.  The boys mind could not figure to the upkeep of such a place that was obviously internally in a state of decay.  That was all that was left to see here, so he found a hand on the railing of the stairwell and he continued to move to the higher floor, for he could see another flattened surface just above.  As he went, and just for curiosities sake, he uttered another halfhearted, “Hello.”  And listened as silence responded.
The next floor was a study of sorts.  Or an office.   There was a single barred window sitting just over a terribly large writing desk.  It too suffocated below dust.   As he approached there was something he noticed.  A large pair of hand prints perfectly placed were on the writing desks surface.  Atop this desk was a layer of dust so thick that it was as though it were a lair of soft snowfall.  His hands he placed into the hand prints, and they indeed were nearly triple his size, as though they belonged to a giant.   His mind thought of such fantastical things as giants, and he wondered if that was who was here.   Someone who needed the warmth, but the sheer mythological nature of his height made him want to remain hidden enough but not suffering from the cold.
Removing his hands from that place he took the index finger of his right hand, and moved it to a point amongst the dust.   He traced a line and then another, and then lifted his finger to start some more lines, and just for fun he wrote, “I Was Here.”  He smirked at the words and very nearly turned to leave to continue his exploration, and then as if the dust were move away by nothing words began to take shape all by themselves.    When it was finished he felt his heart begin to race, he felt his hands trembling, and his eyes searched over the words that read, “I Am Here.”  Instead of turning to run, his nervousness gave way to a more general curiosity.   Then he wrote, “Hello.”  To which the dust moved about to read, “Hello Devrin.”  The boy took a step back for this was his name, and how could anyone have known of his name, especially this apparition that rested inside of a long dormant lighthouse.
“How do you know me?”
“Why would I not?”
“Do I know you?”
“You do not.”
He found his finger writing and the dust parting to respond to his inquiries.  But he found that he was running out of space to write properly on the desks surface, but just to the other side was a wall that was layered in even more dust.   He thought perhaps this would work just as well.   His feet led him there and he ran his finger against the wall.   “Can you still see this?” 
“Of course I can.”
“Did you bring me here?”  He asked, for it was indeed the only question he had wanted to ask the most.  His heart seemed to stop.  His thoughts seemed to freeze.   The anticipation bubbled upon inside of him; his anxiousness was evident upon his expression.  His eyes were wide in waiting.
“I called out to my son, hoping he would listen.  But you are fine as well.  You his offspring, but he does not hear me.  You do hear me.   It is well that you do.   Will you do me a favor?  Will you – “Then just like that they arrived at the edge of the wall and the words did not continue.  There was no more space he figured for this ghost to write.  The nine year old boy was distraught, anguished that he could not see what it was this strange figure wanted him to do.  This figure who claimed to be his father’s father.  This ghost who said that he was his grandfather.   When he moved about that platform he could not find another surface to write, but then he had an idea.  He had one last spot of hope on his mind.
With a flash of speed he didn’t know he was capable above he returned to the stairwell and descended the way he had come. The bedroom had an end table with dust that he could write on, though its surface was small he couldn’t imagine the ghost would need more space than it housed.   In his bare feet and all their slick nature did not mesh well with the surface of the steps and he found himself slipping with still more than half a way to go.  It was as though time was suspended that his body soared for a finite infinity until he crashed hard into the platforms surface.  On his head he felt the blood pool about as the crack seeped forth.   It was just over his left eye and his nose as well.   The pain was excruciating but his goal had been more important.  Somehow he found his footing even though the blood from his head wound seeped into his eye.  
Upon the writing desk he wrote, “I’m back.”
In smaller letters as though it knew the space was once again limited, the invisible grandfather wrote, “My favor, there is a trinket in this lighthouse.  Will you bring it to my son?”  The boy nodded that he would, forgetting that that was not how the ghost responded.   In the remaining space that was available he wrote as small as he could, “I will.  Where is it?”  Then there was no more space.
His eye stung from the blood.  And he felt dizzy, his equilibrium off balance due to the blood loss.  He stumbled back a moment and looked around, but there was no other place the ghost wrote.  Even upon that spring mattress no more words appeared.  He felt beside himself with confusion, with worry and with pain.  He was furious at himself for falling, for hurting himself, for now it was throwing off his pursuit.   Where once his mind had a singular goal, now it had double.  He wanted to feel better, to return home and fix his head, but he also wanted to remain and see the quest out.
When he turned himself toward the stairs that moved onward, in that pool of his blood there was drawn an arrow pointing toward the stairs.   He smiled, and then stumbled as he walked on.  His ascent was difficult and cumbersome but he found his way up and up to the office platform.   There was nowhere here that he could see any sort of trinket, so he moved on half-blinded by the blood in his eye, and half-blinded by the lack of blood inside of him.  He kept moving nonetheless.  Up and up he climbed, his legs moving him till he came to a door that when opened sent a rush of freezing air against his face.  The snow pelted him and his superhero pajamas.
The nine year old named Devrin collapsed here however.  Exasperated by his ordeal.  His mind a cloud of ambition and foggy bewilderment.   The cold air had made it harder to breathe, had made it harder to move.   Soon he would be joining the ghost of his grandfather.  The man who had called on him to complete this action though he was only a boy and he could not.   The cement surface was cold on his chin and he tried to move to get more comfortable.   His ear resting and freezing instead and his eyes felt heavy.  They fluttered a bit, trying desperately to stay open but then he saw it.   A horseshoe.   It was plastic and obviously a child’s toy.   This must have been the thing the old man had been speaking of.   He tried to reach his hand out, and his arm extended just barely, and as if out of strength he just barely mustered he gripped it tightly in his nine year old fist.  That was when he blacked out.
The boy awoke in his bed.  Tucked tightly into his pajamas.   He lay there a moment, as if assuming it was some kind of hallucination but then he frantically sat up and looked about him.   He was indeed back in his real room.   The entire thing had to have been a dream he figured.  He sighed relieved, but there was a hint of disappointment in his heart.   For he had never known his grandfather.  The old man had died long before Devrin was old enough to have known him.  From the sound of the stories his father had told him, the man had been quite young indeed when the old man threw himself from the top of the lighthouse.  About Devrin’s age he reckoned.  He thought about the stories he was told as he laid his head onto his pillow. 
There was something rough underneath the feathered thing, and he moved the pillow aside and saw there upon the bed, that same blue plastic horseshoe.   He brought his fingers to his forehead, and he felt the place the scar had been, and it was still there, but there was no blood crusted upon his head.  No red stains upon the pillow or the bed.   Though he knew his father would be asleep, he lifted up the horseshoe, threw the blankets off of himself and rushed out of the room and down the halls.   There was indeed some reason for this all.

The man was irritable and groggy as he rubbed his eyes and turned on the bedside light in response to the boy’s excited cries, but on sight of the horse shoe he was anything but irritable.  His eyes looked up at the boy and down at the trinket.   “I had one of those when I was a boy.”  The man said as his eyes were filled with uncontrollable tears.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Weary Road - A Short Story

The man wore a pair of black sunglasses that were in all honesty too large for his face.   They were cheap looking, plastic and crooked.   Despite their limited value they did their job well as he drove his old Volkswagen bus down the empty desert streets.   The unbearable sun cooking the rest of his flesh upon his face but not the area surrounding his eyes.   Already his face was tanning a pitch far passed necessity, so that the spaces around his eyes were pale in comparison.   This he did not care about, whether or not his face was evenly darkened, and properly colored.    He had to reach the other end of the desert for the empty vast spaces of it all were starting to cause him to become nervous.  It was as though the apocalypse had already arrived and he had not been aware.   As if all the life on the earth had been swooped up into the heavens by the almighty hand of the creator and he had managed to slip through the crack in the fingers.
A clanking sound emitted from the engine block and the bus shook frantically for a moment until he shifted into a higher gear and all went as quiet as it could.  It could never be too quiet, for the bus had seen many days, in fact many years.  It was the product of a bye gone era, stinking of weed and piss.   The only remnant of its previous owners.   The carpeted floors were stained with god only knew what but the man cared not to figure.   There was only one reason to own it, and it was that it was cheap, and it could get him to where he needed to go.   His end destination he had nearly forgotten, some new home he was going to, some woman he was destined to meet.   None of that mattered either, for there was only one purpose now to find civilization once again.
He took a quick glance at his fuel gauge and satisfied with its place felt a relief on his heart.  There was nowhere worse to be stranded than in the middle of this dust field where the only company was the beating heat of an unforgiveable sun.   He thought about the cliché’s of such a place.  The picked clean skull of a bighorn, the heat waves upon the open air, a solitary vulture pathetically eating the carcass of some mouse.   He saw the cacti and the cracked earth, a man dragging himself and praying for water or a quicker death than what was coming to him.  This place was a certain kind of hell, and he would not remain any longer than necessary in its torturous climate.
Before him the sun began to descend, and the passage of time seemed to quicken as the light faded from bright to dusk.  He felt the cooling relief of the air that was once heated by the stars fire, but now free to simmer down to its normal conditions.   Even though the cooling began to take effect, and even though the sun was no longer burning his eyes he kept those large rounded sunglasses on the bridge of his nose.   They sat askew, dangling to the left but he never adjusted them knowing that they would fall right back to where they were.   Into the passing of the night he kept them on, and he kept his eyes glued to the headlights beams as they guided his bus forward and onto the blackened wasteland.   Both hands gripped the steering wheel in iron fists, and he could not bring himself to remove the sunglasses, for out of nowhere danger would reveal itself when he was but a millisecond distracted.
That was when the deer showed itself.  A large buck with antlers that rose up into the void of black just on the edge of his headlights.   It only stood there a moment, just in the man’s way enough that he had to swerve to the left to avoid it.  He muttered a curse to himself toward the deer.   The buck had been the first sign of life that he had seen and while he was grateful that something living would be out here, it had also startled him.   Though he knew he would not be able to see the deer in his mirror he adjusted it anyway, staring into the abyss of darkness behind him.   Then a flash of a browned body was in front of him once again this time on his other side.   Another buck with antlers that vanished away beyond his high beams.   A cloud of dust kicked up as he veered off into the desert floor off from the paved way of the highway.  The fist locked tighter on the steering wheel as he found his place once again.  Then he found his foot against the brake, and the brake its way to the floor.  
In front of him a mighty buck stood with its deer horns pointing skyward into full light.   The tires squealed to a stop just a couple feet from the deer and he jerked forward rattled against his seat belt, his face swinging forth and the bridge of his nose cracking against the steering wheel.  He brought his palm to his nose and the blood poured out against his hand.   The red ooze interlacing his fingers.   His right eye saw clearly into the spaces in front of him as the lens had broken out save for a small dangling shattered thing that rested in the corner of the frame.  The man could feel the blood dripping down about his mouth, he could taste it seeping in-between his lips.  The deer stood demonic and frightening in what limited light his bus cast.    It did not move.
The bus’ horn blared out; its annoying screech beckoning the creature to leave but the deer remained.    He laid down his hand upon the steering wheel several more times but the creature was not hindered.   It stared empty toward the windshield and the man stared right back at it.   He relented that the noise would do a thing.   He revved up his engine and when it did not move, he push on the accelerator taking it out of park and he moved toward it.   But it did not move.    With the blood drying on his face he rotated the wheel so that he could bypass this obstruction but then the deer moved in front of him.   It eventually came to the point that he rested against its fur.  
The deer blew out a mist of fog from its nostrils to signify the degree in which the temperature had fallen.   And it stared.   The man looked about him into the darkness, and he was afraid.   It was as though it were some apparition from the bowels of hell, and he began to figure that maybe the apocalypse had begun that he was indeed in the final stages of the human race.   This was his tormentor his accuser for the rest of eternity.
He shifted into reverse and slammed his foot down peeling out and leaving a black streak from his tires down the length of the highway in front of him, and then when he was satisfied he’d cleared enough space he forced it back into drive and began his escape.   The man left the road and bounced about in his seat as he navigated the cracked and empty earth driving at excessive speeds, praying it would free him from this place.   The void had to end at some point; he had driven all day, for most of the night.  At some point he had to come to freedom, to civilization, his silly notion of the end of the world could not be truth.
Then the buck stepped into his light, and he moved his steering wheel and hit his brakes so that he slid to a stop on his side so that the deer was just before him against his driver’s window.   He sat still as the beast moved forward its head tilted so that its antlers pointed out as if to skewer the man.   A tip scratched across the glass and the man sat in a trembling trance.   But he waited a moment to see what would become of this action.  The deer tapped the glass again, and again.   Its tapping quickened until it flailed like mad against the window and then the barrier began to crack.  Then it cracked until it shattered into a hundred pieces, and the cold desert air moved against the man’s face.   His breath pushing out before him.
It was then that the deer stopped.  The demon quit its attack and simply walked away into the night.   The man was dumbfounded a moment, his mouth releasing his labored breaths.   The blood was crusted against his hand, against his face.   He moved his fingers around in front of his eyes, and felt his face.   He turned and looked at the shattered glass upon his seat and his missing window, and the absent animal who had accosted him.   His fear turned to fury and he threw his bus into drive and he wheeled himself about so that he faced where the animal had gone, and he drove in search of it now.   That son of a bitch wouldn’t get away with it; the animal had messed with him long enough.   Somehow it’d found its way in front of him all those times.  Somehow its speed was superior to his vehicle, that its four legged hooved feet could move it faster than his engine.
The sunglasses barely stayed on his face, his one free eye un-obscured by the tinted hue of the frames.   While his other eye was half in darkness, facing into the darkness, but he still did not care.  If by chance the thing jumped in front of him again he would not stop.  When he was satisfied he’d exhausted one direction he began to move the vehicle to face another.  It did not even matter how far removed he was from the highway now, for now there was only one purpose to his existence.
That was when he struck the beast.  As if an apparition before him it was there, and he struck it hard but it did nothing to it, and his van flipped over its back and he was deposited upside down with a shaking crash, and the engine hissed, and the tires turned feverishly against that cool desert air, and the sunglasses fell from his face against the roof of the bus.   He coughed and groaned against the dust and through the pain.   A bloodied hand found his seat belt clip and he released himself, just barely catching himself as he fell from his suspended state.   Out of the broken window he pushed himself with each foot, barely able to use his hands, forced to do his best his elbows and he lay there against the dirt.  It was freezing cold.
The buck walked about to him, and it sniffed at his bloodied face.   The man noticed an antler was cracked off from its head, and then he noticed the pain that seemed to pass through his stomach, and he lifted his head to see the long piece of horn cracked off into his body.  The deer licked his face, and tasted the blood on his lips, and then it licked again.   The man noticed that it stank as the pairs breath meshed together in the cold.   It wasn’t just the air that was cold, the man noted that his body began freezing as well, as if something inside of him was ceasing up.
             He was well enough dead before the mighty devil began to devour him.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Falcon Scotch - A Short Story

Joseph Lennox stood on the steps of his front porch and stared at the majestic falcon that was flying wildly across the twilight sky.  There was an orange hue about the clouds and it turned them a purple grey color that looked rather picturesque.  Over these strange formations the silhouette of the bird passed over again and again.   He brought himself to a seated position and pondered it a moment, and it flew as if it had no plan, and no purpose.    In fact he thought that maybe it was lost, and unaware of what to do next.  The frantic patterns it moved in up and down, then diagonally returning to the center and passing through and just against that strange and beautiful purple sky.  Then it stopped flapping its wings as it swept up on last time and halted in mid-air as if frozen before plummeting to the earth.  There was a tuft of dust that came up about it when it hit just feet away from Josephs position in the dirt and gravel of his driveway.   As if not believing the sight he pondered it a moment, dumbfounded that this thing had once been tearing up that twilight sky and was now still and lifeless upon the earth.
When he came to his senses Joseph Lennox moved from his spot on his steps and at a steady but frenzied pace he approached the broken bird. Once it was at the tips of his boots he leaned down and lifted it up to discover that its chest still rose and fell, rose and fell.   He dropped it in a moment of shock and it fell with a lesser thumb against the gravel.   He swore he heard a bone snap but he reached down and scooped it up again.  Now the worry entered his mind that after its tremendous fall he had now killed it by dropping it but a couple feet to the earth.  Its wing hung off to its side, suspended in the air as if the limb of a dead body, and it wobbled back and forth as Joseph rushed it inside of his small house.
There were no other people inside just the empty air of nothing and the sound of his leather boots stomping against the wooden floor boards.   He threw his arm to wipe a collection of dishes from his counter top.  The metal ones clanked and panged against the floor while a few ceramic plates and bowls shattered, but he cared not for these materials.  With his mind on the dying animal we stepped over the broken pieces without a second thought and proceeded down hallway and into his study.   There were several bottles of various liquids upon his counter bookshelves but fewer books.   There were some army manuals, survival guides that he had held onto during his war days but nothing that concerned him now.   He took a glass that sat next to one of these bottles and he poured himself some scotch.  He perspired slightly from his movements from the frantic rabble that was in his mind.   With one throw back he swallowed down the liquor and stepped out of his study to enter into his wash room.
On the top of the sink were small pill bottles of various medical remedies but he did not reach for these his hand found a roll of medical tape and he quickly turned about and headed back to the wounded bird.   For a moment he watched it to see if its chest still rose and fell and while it indeed was he could tell it was much longer between each breath.   His hands moved quickly and he adjusted the broken wing so that it was lined up properly as much as he deemed he could and he wrapped up the feathered thing with the medical tape, securing it in place.   After he was done with that he moved the falcon’s head gently with his hand, and it looked pathetic and sickly.   Its eyes staring off into an unknown place.
Joseph couldn’t help himself, and a tear slowly escaped the corner of his eye.  Even though there was no one else there to see him he quickly wiped it away as if he were afraid God would have seen the fragile state of his heart.  The orange twilight shone through the window just barely, as night began to show its full head, and the light in the room darkened.   There was a small metal lantern with chipped red paint within arm’s reach and he acquired it quickly.   After striking a match and its small yellow flame burned for a moment and began to eat at its stick he brought it to the wick of the lantern and lit the thing.  With a swipe of his hand the match was extinguished and the light of the lantern lit up the area around the birds face.  
He watched as its black little eye moved about in fear, as it was immobile – possibly paralyzed.  The falcon watched Joseph and possibly felt his hands upon its chest as the man tried to bring it back to life.  And Joseph saw that look of fear as a stranger; maybe a predator turned it every which way.   He thought about how afraid it must have been being stuck in that position.   Itself a predator of the skies but now a wounded useless piece of meat that would be picked off by wandering coyotes.
It was hard for Joseph not to contemplate the other animal he had rescued after it had been mauled by a raccoon in the night.  The rabbit had been a dark grey color its ears tall and rigid.  The look in its eyes was not unlike the falcons, a look of defeat in preparation for dissection.  Joseph had come outside due to its violent scream, a high pitched squeal that had roused him from a dead sleep.  And when he came upon that dark grey body barely visible against the moons light he quickly gathered it up knowing that its attacker was watching nearby for the disturbance of the man to leave.   That dark grey colored rabbit had been heavier than the falcon and had been far more injured than the bird, and since he had managed to save it he assumed he would have no trouble with the bird.   But perhaps the two species genetic make-up was too different, but he didn’t care.   His task was simple.
It took several days but every new morning Joseph discovered the falcon in a better state than the last.   Even when it could fully stand upon its talons, and could not fly away it did not fear the man.  True in its first moments of recovery it was afraid and tried to strike at Joseph with its beak, but soon came to realize that it was alive now because of this creature and if it had wanted to feast on its feathered flesh it would have already.   As the falcon healed it became gentler screeching a welcoming greeting as Joseph entered the house and as he exited.  
The man had brought it pieces of fish or a dead rodent he had found in his yard.  The falcon being the predator that it was welcomed this feasting time and choked the different meats down, and then Joseph having fed the bird its fill would retire to his study and another glass of scotch.  He would stare down the bottom of the glass as it sat against his nose and he’d ponder what to do next.   When he was satisfied with his next thought he’d set the bottle and the glass down on his bookshelf and return to his next course of action.
Then it came to the day when the falcon fluttered about in the air a moment above the counter and he knew it was set to return to its hunt.  That the beautiful majestic falcon could soar over another twilight sky and snatch up unsuspecting victims in its talons.  When it would tear away the flesh and innards of some field mouse and satisfy its ravenous appetite.  Returning itself to its hunter instincts given to it by the Lord God.    He could not have expected such a bird to remain inside of his home so he carried it – as it had come to let him do – to the porch and he set it loose into the air.

It fluttered about in front of him at eye level a moment and swooped back and forth as if saying its fair well.   Joseph waved it on to the higher sky, smiling at his success at bringing the thing back into its element.  The falcon screeched a farewell and climbed into the spaces in front of him.  That was when Joseph removed his sidearm and took one shot at the thing that sent it plummeting back to the gravel in a cloud of dust.   He took a step forward, and holstered the handgun and the chain attached to it bounced a dark grey rabbit foot against his thigh.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Reading the Headlines

Just in,
We cannot listen to anymore of your mouthing off
In actuality we will listen however
Because like a bug drawn to a daring blue light
We will sink our teeth in,
And open up our ears,
Till we are zapped and not killed but terribly irritated
We'll seek revenge for the action
Soon the swarm of daring insects attack
Then there is nothing but to wait
Just in,
Do not worry the hippo with the hip displacement
Though it can't move much more
It'll still thrash about in desperation
Breaking its bones to show off its sizeable destruction
Then when all is said and done they will flatten a few birds
And when the rest of the world is shocked
The hippo will just yawn and fall asleep
Because why should they care at all anymore
Just in,
I'm not sure what all the fuss is about
But if you are angry I will be angry too
Because we are yelling at the top of our lungs
I will welcome the agitation with open arms
Embracing a circle-jerk of emotions
Just because I don't want to be left out
For if everyone is saying it 
It has to be the truth.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Some of My Recent Annoyances

What can be said of opinions that havent' already been said.  We know that like assholes everybody has one, and that assholes especially have them.  We are far to easily offended and insist on stating our own opinions as fact when we rebuttal someone elses view.  Or if someone offers a different point of view to our own we are quick to attack them, and tell them that they are wrong.  But then again who is right.  It is another thing we are easy to do, say that well its just my opinion.  Then where is the offense coming from exactly, why do we feel the need to state our opinions and say that it is just our opnion when it is plain it obviously is our opinion because when you are offering a viewpoint that is your own it is an opinion.  Perhaps you can back it up with various research and facts, but others can then come up with their own research and facts.  And then thats when the debate begins.  That is when the argument starts and mostly over stuff that honestly in the grand big picture doesn't matter.

This brings me to the points I wish to discuss.   A few things that keep cropping up over social media or in general just on everyday interactions.

I'll start with a couple big ones.   It is my opinion if you want to send people off the hook, and get them really pissed off and free to come up with the most hair brained excuses just talk trash about smoking and guns.   There is hardly anything else you'll bring up that people will become excessively pissed off over than when you question their insistence on smoking cancer sticks, or owning firearms.   The minute gun control is brought up the immediate response someone on the opposing side has to bring up is that the government wants to take away our guns.  Wants to walk in and take our property, this is hardly the truth.  Gun control does not equal removal of all weapons, its simply making them harder to get, having more extensive background and mental health checks.  No one wants to hear this.  Whats so wrong with more regulations?  If you are in your right mind what do you have to fear honestly?

Smoking is another one.  It was a few years ago that an old classmate of mine remarked about the ads that played before movies and how he didn't understand how someone could keep smoking after seeing such an ad.   Sure enough a smoker saw this post and had to defend their addiction.   I'm all for someones right to smoke, go on knock yourself out, smoke to your hearts content.  But don't act like its not gross.  You are inhaling smoke, smoke is the offshoot of burning things to nothing.  Scientific studies and the surgeon general have warned us that its bad.  How can you be pissed off that someone would comment that smoking is bad, when it point in fact is bad for you.   I don't care if your fathers father smoked cigarettes all their life, they are still a cancer risk they still contain toxins.  When smoking was banned in restaurants and public places it was a good thing.   Yes your right to enjoy your cigarette wherever you chose was trampled upon but considering that what you smoke is poison, it isn't fair to make other people have to inhale the same smoke.  It was a good decision on the part of the government.

The not so environmentally friendly are my next irritation.  Thesre are the people who act like they are saving the planet one properly thrown away cigarette butt at the time.  Who talk about how good they are because they pick up after themselves.  Let me tell you somehting, you are good for doing that, but you are not the problem.  Why not pick up other peoples trash.  Why not volunteer to plant some trees or clean up pop rings along the beach.   Why not stop getting your pets drunk or high, because they do not like it.   You are not one with nature because your mind is altered and you've reached some higher plain of existence.   and you don't have to be arrogant about it.  You aren't saving the world by cleaning up after yourself you are doing a common courtesy.

This whole misunderstood pitbull craze.  I find it funny that we need causes that we don't feel hopeless with to feel like we are making a difference.  I'm all for animal safety and rights, but no misunderstood pitbulls are not the same as warn torn countries.  Are not more important than the bombings in the Gaza strip or the terrorist group ISIS.  Its not just pitbulls there all sorts of stupid small causes that people take up.  And let me tell you something sitting around on your ass is not going to make a difference, talking about how you support or don't support something is not going to make a difference.  Not bettering yourself for higher paying wages is not making a difference, wasting your money on music festivals, on DVD's, on bongs, or on make-up or concerts is not making a difference.  here's where I fall in.  I sit around on my ass and I see the horrors of the world and it frustrates me, it motivates me to want to write to strive to be good enough to be paid enough to make some sort of differnce I dont sit around and bitch on the internet about these atrocities becasue I haven't done anything, and I feel like I can't make a huge difference yet.  I want to succeed in order to be able to make a difference.  Money is an important part of this life, and it makes the world go round for good or ill.  Not love, not good vibes, or good intentions.  With some action it helps, with some money it helps.

Lets talk a little bit about Israel and let me be fully honest, I dont know all thats been going on.  But if you are a christian and you are being told to support Israel no matter what, and you are a proud supporter of "pro-life" causes well you can't do both.   You can't say you love babies, while you support a country who is killing many many children and innocent people.  You can't be pro-war and pro-life.   There is no excuse, if you are pro-life it doesn't end with abortion, why not go look at some of these kids who are having limbs blown off or who are in indistinguishable pieces and don't tell me you care about life.  You hypocrites.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

A Letter, Robin Williams

In one of his stand up specials the late George Carlin cracked that suicide wasn’t an easy way out it was hard.   While he found the humor in the situation of leaving notes, and what not as usual with most of the things Carlin spoke about there was a level of seriousness to it.   Yesterday the world lost one of the greatest entertainers to this tragic end.  What must have gone through his mind to make him determine it would be better to feel nothing ever again is beyond me, but I know a decision like that could not have been made easily.   Robin Williams was 63 years old, if suicide were any easy thing and if it were true he dealt with his demons most of his life then he would not have made it as far as he had.   How many times do we have to push through till we are too tired to push anymore?  Can we absolutely judge someone for this final act when we do not know all the circumstances?  The answer is ultimately a no.   In this life we assume that when someone can make us laugh or who can entertain us every moment of their existence is a happy person, someone who has no need to battle demons, no need to feel pain for absolutely no reason.  That’s what depression is.   Its not about feeling awful over something, that’s grief, or regret, being a depressive is feeling low all the time.    Somehow finding a light in your life, only to feel as though its simply covering up the shadows of your existence.  It sounds sad, and maybe it is, but it’s a part of many people’s lives.  I cannot judge Mr. Williams decision to leave this life, but I can mourn it.

I’ve been trying to think why this particular celebrities death bothered me so much more than others.  Or why the death of a man I didn't actually know should bother me – as with the case with most celebrity deaths.   Maybe in some way he was a part of my life.   As a child growing up in the nineties I was treated to many films that Robin Williams did that were pointed toward families and children.  Hook, was one of my favorite among these at the time.  For the longest time.   I think it ultimately sums up what he meant in my life, he showed that even as an adult, even as someone who at the start of the film could have resembled my own father still had a child's heart deep down inside.  After all the cynicism this world has to offer Mr. Williams showed us, at least through his movies that getting older could still be exciting and full of awe.   We didn't have to age to be the grumpy old cuss’ that were expected to be.  We could age and be zany and sporadic and maybe annoy the hell out of people, but we could be that.    Then there was Mrs. Doubtfire and in its way featured a similar journey, the cynical father, the loving and bewildering nanny, and ultimately discovering it’s the same person.  There’s Flubber, Toys, and so many other works during that time that I can remember.  It was as though he were our crazy uncle who we got to visit on screen.  Of course he had his dramatic roles too, but while those are mesmerizing it’s the silly high energy performances that struck me the most growing up and are the ones that I find myself reflecting on.   Then I cannot leave out the Genie from Aladdin, who was quite possibly unlike any other animated character we had seen in an animated feature.  He was undeniably an icon.

It is scary to anyone including myself who may suffer from any sort of depression.   We are scared, shocked, and I think if Robin Williams can’t handle it, how can I.   It is important to remember that we are all of us individuals with our own journeys.   We all deal with our shortcomings, our fears, our histories differently.   Our yesterdays are not all the same, as will our tomorrows be different.   My outlet has always been to write, so that most of my stuff is bitter and sometimes quite dark but its as though I’m letting someone else experience it.   I’m sure Mr. Williams chose to make us laugh because in some way he wanted us to feel better, and it would make him feel better, but it can be exhausting shouldering the happiness of a crowd, of an audience whether it be one other person or thousands.  Some of us give so much of ourselves to lift up and hold up others that we forget to let people lift us up, or we forget that we need to lift such people up in return.    I’m not saying these are the thoughts that ran  through Williams’ head but they could have been.   None of us truly know what someone else is feeling, and the world is a cold unfeeling place, so that most of us, most of the time feel numb.

My inner child will miss you Robin Williams, and I will not let the part of me go.   I think even if it was a small influence you have had an impact on millions of lives.  Young and old.   I believe that your work will hold the test of time, that many of us can go back and feel like we are laughing for the first time.  Many of us can go back and shake our heads at your off the wall bonkers style and we can smile for a couple minutes, and stretch it out to a couple hours, and hold onto that feeling for a couple days, to a couple months, to a couple years, and if we do that enough maybe we can be okay.   You are not saving us, but you are giving us a few extra moments to reflect and save ourselves.   I’m being sentimental but many people do not realize the impact all this movie going can have.  That there are real people inhabiting those characters on the screen, there are real emotional places they are drawing from.  That the catharsis they bring us, just as reading a book, or listening to music, can give us breathing space in our lives.   Robin Williams wasn't the only one who gave that to us, but he was one of the main ones, at least to me.

I celebrate your work.  And I hope to share it one day with my own children, and while I’m sad that I will not see another film of yours I know that when I look at my film collection I know right where I can find you.   Good-bye old friend, may you have found your calm.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A Link of Random Thoughts

a mustard stain ran down his shirt
in all actuality it ran from his lip
to his chin and then down his shirt
but the details don't matter
but they do for a spell
but spells are for magic
or good grammar they tell
and then there's a time
when first there was not
just a remnant of a rhyme but the same word
shirt, shirt
and then it gets odd
and the mustard is forgotten
as the mind wanders forward
as though it had legs
legs enough to move it
down a road 
hopefully on a clear day
for a brain without a membrane to cover
or a skull to secure
is a brain that wouldn't last a day
let alone even an hour
and hour is sixty minutes
and my life is a show
not unlike reality tv
but less real and more honest
without the showboating of a dozen halfwits
a constant barrage of camera angles
but all point of view shots
as i move through the house
and swipe away at a fly
who simply buzzes because it was made to
but by who and for what purpose
other than to help break down the dead
who most are secure underground
in giant wooden boxes
that were far too overpriced
and then the minimum wage restrictions
come up to my thoughts
not nearly enough made to do all the things i thought
to travel about the globe
that god spins while it sits on his desk
where he's writing the next chapter
a chronicle of the world
he says it a tragicomedy
you'll laugh as much as you'll cry
but most people won't cry at the movie
the adaptation will be all wrong
they would have to cut out more than half of it
and i'm not sure it could be crammed into a two hour run time
but lets leave that to the professionals
which was a good movie
but i'm not sure I can stand to listen to the same cliches
batter away the same mistakes
id like to bake some little cakes
then there's the rhyming
which is good timing
as its time for me to retire
from this rant
not from life
that's a bit to presumptuous of you
wouldn't you think?

A Small Tear of Rain

Oh, what can you do with a rose that is wilted
But, whose thorns are so embedded
That to be loose of it would confound your senses
Do you simply tear it out and let it fall?
Do you trample it under foot or let others pick it up?
Is there a possibility that someone with a green thumb
Can save it and nurture it and keep it in bloom?
Keep it colorful and strong
And not mind the blood.

Oh, what do you do with horse with a fractured limb?
Do you take it out back and put it down with a shot or two?
Can you keep it going since you always need to travel?
Is it cruel to push it as it tramples on?
When all it wants to do is rest and recharge.
Maybe if it could only take a moment to breathe
Maybe the wound wasn't as bad as it seemed
But the rider is brutish
And the rider is stubborn
And the rider just wants to keep going
On and too long

Can the canopy of a dying forest sustain life?
Can the falling leaves properly hide the prey
So that the simple predators don't swallow it whole
Is there not some other place
Where branches like arms can keep the sun at bay
Can conceal in camouflage the hides of a few birds
Is it wrong to think nature wants them to die.

If tomorrow comes will the light still shine
Will the simple candle light be enough to survive
Is it too late to turn back time
To simple whisk the feelings into a stir
To hope it doesn't explode on your shirt
To hand over the tools to a proper chef
To postpone your own demise
But save just one other life

Oh, Its high time the lies met up with the truths
Time the butterflies found a flower that soothes
More than the rose that chips away like dust
Oh, Its high time the pain was met with good grooves
Time the sane found something with stronger hooves
So that the injured thing can hobble on
Oh, Its high time you and I
Kissed the canopy goodbye.