Frosty Oasis

On a frosted oasis the people all gathered

To shiver and suffer in unison, as one.

They gathered closer for warmth,

All naked and all afraid, and all shivering still.

They tried to survive as best they could but there was really nothing to be said about what could be done

And in the midst of all of their madness they determined that there was nothing left t accomplish but a long and excruciating sort of death

It isn't that they actually wanted to die

on the contrary there was a lot of space for recollection

On all of the little things that made them want to live

But there was no way to beset such hopes into their bloodstream

So slowly every bit of red life

That flowed inside of their veins

Seized up and broke apart in little fragments of glass

That emitted little dust storms all around

And soon they all stood there on their frosty oasis as though they would live forever

But in truth they weren't living at all and there was no where to go

But down to the hell they had set up for themselves

And a sign that said

Welcome to the frosty oasis

We stay together forever

but not a moment longer.

Through a Lens

A flower wilted on his palm as the sun heated its fragile form with it's futile enterprise.  Having been forceably removed from its stem it could not not flourish and instead tried to drink the useless light.  It was a mirage of what it once was and the sun taunted, and the sun mocked.  The flower was there turning its colors to a faded shade like a poorly mentioned memory.  It was carried delicately from its home, across the yard like a specter on a gurney.  It struggled, reaching out a leaf on its stem in a minute fashion so that it could barely be said to have moved at all.  It was gasping and dying until it no longer gasped and was dead.  The lifeless flower was handed to his lover and she adored it upon her kitchen table between her place mats and her napkin holder til its pedals slipped away and its colors turned brown.  When finally it disgusted her and she removed it as broken dust to deposit atop the garbage can.  The flowers life was cut off short.  Its greatest gift, was its curse and that is that it was allowed to bloom.

Fun with Micro Fiction #1

WE MEET AGAIN
If there was one thing he hated it was feeling out of place.  Everything that existed around him was a remnant of how he was supposed to feel.  None of it was his.  At least not in that moment.  It was a recollection of previous occurrences.  It was the memories of well rehearsed incidents.  Ones that closely resembled the absences of his bubble.  It was private within but in front of him he knew everyone had used that toilet seat.

A PIG
A young girl no more than ten started to insinuate to her mother a most grievous circumstance that her neighbor had done.  The revelation had floored the mother so that she felt she could faint.  Of course she did not, for she composed herself with a tight palm flat on the kitchen counter.  She straightened out her blouse and marched to and out the front door.  The neighbor was an older man who hunched over his flowers with a soft jetting water hose.  The mother approached saying, "Keep your damned dog off my petunias you senile old son of a bitch."

NO YOU CAN'T, YES I CAN
A couple sat down to brunch.  He drank a rum and coke, while she imbibed a fine wine.  The buzz came surely as it usually does, and she asked - again - the first question.  "You should have ordered duck."  To which he responded, "But I wanted the lamb."  "No one, really, likes lamb."  She took a swig off the top her glass.  He rolled his eyes.  "Could you not slurp like that."  The lamb tore between his teeth and he stabbed violently at his plate.  "You mean slurp," she brought the glass up and sucked in so that it produced a harsh noise, "like this."  He nodded as he chewed.  Tim continued to pass, and soon their plates were emptied.  There glasses too, again, were very nearly devoid of their poisons.  And she handed him the check and said, "You're drinking us all the way to the poor house."  To which he retorted, "And what about you?  You've had one more than me."  She smiled her drunken smile and tipped back the last drop and when the glass came down she said slyly, "I can't let you win now can I."  To which he then proceeded to order another drink.  Round Four.

A DRIVE
The gun was loaded.  It sat passenger to me as the car sped along at a steady seventy-five.  I had a newspaper sitting along side it.  A convenient cover when I had to stop for gas.  I couldn't bring myself to pick it up.  When I first carried it it felt cold but it weighed down my hand like a hot ball of iron.  I had to get rid of it as soon as I could.  When I finally set out on this odyssey I knew I had to pick it up and I rushed to the car and dropped it atop the leather.  The pistol taunted me all on its own.  Its barrel pointed at me and my thigh.  That was appropriate, and it scared me but not enough though.  My wife, unlike my daughters, deserved to die.

OPPRESSION
There was a colonial housewife who had a crush on King George.  She was mad with infatuation.  When independence was fought she swam the Atlantic.  Actually, she just sat in an asylum.

ALOT OF SENSE
A cat ate my dog.  He had been just a tiny little thing.  The dog was all fluff and four paws with four little claws.  In truth not really mine but my late wife's who had died.  I swore I'd take care of him.  Which I tried to uphold but the sign said Tigers were fed at dawn and it was only five dollar admission.  He was small enough to conceal, so it turned out to be a good deal, because to feed tigers the zoo food it was six dollars a meal.  I'd say I felt guilty but even my wife wouldn't deny how happy a hunting tiger must feel.

SEND-OFF
He smashed the bottle across Angeline's face.  The people all cheered as he sent her away.  She sounded her horn and smoke bellowed out of her top.  And eventually Angeline was safely to sea.

APOCALYPTIC MAGNIFICATION
Microorganisms erupted in a panic.  Poor old Janet was dead.   And the neighbors and family were living there but were quickly being stricken by decay.   Those that were left would still wind up dead because they still had the maggots who would force-ably remove them from their homes.

SOLUTIONS
The police could, he thought, shoot him in his shoulder, his arm, in each of his finger digits.  They  could shoot him in his thigh, in his waist, god forbid in his crotch but the doctors could fix that he's sure.  They could shoot him in the ass or right on up it.  In each knee cap or through each calf.  They could blow away bones in all ten of his toes so that he could only crawl away.  Or, he was hoping they would just not fire at all.  But, they shot one and all and mostly missed all the places he'd hoped.  All because he reached for, what they asked for, a measly ounce of dope.

Cat Food (I apologize in advance) - A short Story

"Are you fucking kidding me."  She said.  She moved her hands off the steering wheel to reach over and slug me in the shoulder.  I try to interject to her swinging arms and guide them back to the steering wheel but a nail escapes a fist and I feel it tear at the skin on the back of my hand.   It isn't long after she starts that the car begins to swerve slightly into the center of the lane and the obnxoxious horn of an oncoming frightened car alerts her to the task that she was undertaking.   I try to compose myself and I use my right hand's fingers to massage the bleeding cuts atop the left.

"You don't have to take it so badly."   I try to console.

"Take it badly?"  There's that tone in her voice that I despise.  That annoying tone that says nothing is ever done right.  It's the same kind of questioning, accusatory tone she takes when she repeats what I normally respond, like Why is it bad that you left the toilet seat up? or Why should I care that you didn't clean up your dish?   It's the sort of voice that you don't want to be on the other receiving end of.

"It was just a stupid cat.   You have two others."  I'm trying to be considerate and I figured it was a good thing to remind that although I accidently ran over her eldest cat Kirkpatrick that she still had Tomes and Edith to keep her company.  I know that's stupid of me to think, because Kirkpatrick was the cat she had had the longest.

"I had that cat the longest."  She screams.   "Oh my god."  She puts one of her hands over her mouth and begins her pitiful sobbing into her palm.  Her head jerks and I think it looks like she is about to vomit.   "He was my baby."

To be fair all of our animals were her babies.   It wasn't new that Kirkpatrick was also one of her babies.  If anything he was too old, and he was ready to go.   It was his time, and while I knew it wouldn't be wise to say that, I still figured it was too good a point to not mention.  "He was old anyways, he was going to die soon."

She stares a glare at me that is like brandishing a knife in front of my face.  But the knife is in my face, and I can feel the blood drip over the cut and not only is her eye knife stabbed into my cheek but she is sawing away.  I am probably already dead, but maybe I'm just dying.  Her looks of animosity are like that.

She hits me again.   Clawing at my face and aiming for my eye sockets.   "Watch the road your gonna get us killed."  I tell her, I mean how can one person be so reckless over a goddamned cat.  Its just a cat.  That little son of a bitch used to shit at the foot of my bed, or in my favorite loafers.   And no before you go and think it, I didn't kill little orange Kirkpatrick on purpose.  It just sort of worked out that way.

"Maybe I should kill your fish!"   She says, she sucks up a drop of snot into her nose and I'd almost rather she had used my sleeve or had swallowed it when it reached her lips.  That noise she makes sucking up that yellow thick liquid that crawled down her face made me want to vomit, not to mention it drew attention to itself.  How rude could a person be.

"Why would you kill my fish?"

"So we're even."   She says.

"My fish didn't do anything to anybody."  Which is very true.

"What?!"   She slams on the breaks and I very nearly slam my head on the dashboard except I didn't on account that she lifted her knee up slightly so that I could tell she was about to slam on the brakes and I was able to brace myself with my hands.   We are sitting in the freeway, and the horns are blaring around us and I'm embarassed for her.  Everyone was going to think she was a maniac.

"What, they didn't, they just swim in their tank."

"You had no reason to kill Kirkpatrick either.   He was a sweetheart! You fucking bastard."

"I had my reasons, but that wasn't why I killed him.  I killed him becasue he was laying behind my tire and didn't have the good sense to move."

"So you knew he was there.  And you still kept going?"  She left her mouth agape after that and just stared me down as if hoping I'd find some way to redeem myself, but I really didn't think that was possible.  I mean I killed her childhood pet.   His guts were stuck to the treads of my drivers side tire.  New tires that were now soiled because of Kirkpatrick, just like my loafers.  It seemed even in death that damned cat had found a way to dirty up my stuff.

"I didn't keep going on purpose.  I thought he ran off."

"He has a broken leg."  She informs me, and she was right.  I roll my eyes back in my head to try and recall that place where I had seen him wearing a cast on his left back paw.

"Holy shit.  You're right."  The poor guy couldn't move fast at all.  When the engine turned on he must have felt that rush of panic and he thought I was out for revenge because of my damned loafers.   I wasn't, but it just kind of worked out that way.

"And he's deaf."

"Shit.  He is?"

"He's been deaf since we've been together."   Her mouth still hangs open.  It was as though she were asking me how I could be so ignorant to the medical conditions on little ole Kirkpatrick.   In truth I had no excuses.

"My bad."  I say with a shrug.

She hits me some more and puts the car in drive and we go back home.  I suddenly remember that I forgot to feed my fish today.   Its something I don't forget to do usually, but I was busy hiding the evidence of orange cat off the drive way last week that I forgot to remember to buy the food.   I wasn't going to tell her about Kirkpatrick except she started talking about putting up these posters about him going missing, and offering up money.  Now, I get she loved her cat, but that cat was dead and all those copies would cost money, and a reward on top of that.  I figured she'd thank me in the long run.

"What'd you do with his body parts?"  She asked me.

I wasn't sure if I should tell her that I fed Kirkpatrick to Tumes and Edith, because we had run out of cat food.

Infamous Journey

I'm not exactly sure what this is about
I began it years ago and can't figure out how to proceed
The beginning was botched but there's no erasing
It is seldom that one can really correct it
But truly just build off of what has already come
The plot is etched in stone,
The bedrock that makes up the birth of everything,
Indesctrubible and unforgiveable until the last
When the words don't approach
Diverting from one fresh path
That one hopes will go straight but that seldom does
As it twists and turns,
Like the jagged and ragged path before it
Attached with stitches as we inch closer to the median
But even then it splits off
into  a choose your own adventure story
And its unlimited qundry of a tale because there is no truth
That one can find by flippnig through to the multiple endings
Those pages do not exist and the randomness permeates
And it will continue on
And so I choose the most appropriate path
And hope as I scream and bitch
That it will eventually come into a clearing
But mostly it continues on falling down a rocky hill
Where my body is thrashed upon the stones but not destroyed
and eventually after was dizzying throw over the brush
I slam upon the surface and find that my typewriter
Is clacking and clicking and when I've brushed off the debris
I am in the clear
until the river appears and its currents split again
And a choose your own is present
So you sit upon the shore,
Indifferent to forward progress
But the grizzly bear tears at your arm and throws you in in anyways,
It will not end pretty,
But it will end
A conclusion must be met.

A Ball - Memoir excert. For a class. Rough Draft!

A BALL

My brother and I sit on a pile of snow looking at the yard in a certain sort of light.  It’s that dim sort of winter day when the sun is obscured behind those dark clouds that smother the earth in the snowfall.   I’m much smaller than him, standing to about his waist.  He and I are both bundled up and I feel like I’m being swallowed by my coat.   My hat is too big so that it is tilted over one eye.   I look like a bit of a pirate as though that half of my face is covered by an eye patch.  My parents are off to work somewhere.  At the secret places they go when they have to leave us with grandma and grandpa.   We have been living in their house for a couple months now.   We said goodbye to our old house before the snow got here, and I snapped it behind my eyelids like a photograph.   The leaves had started to fall off the trees and there was a great tree that i felt like I couldn’t see the top of sitting in the yard next to our brick red little shed.   That was it.  I couldn’t remember much about that house except that it was sad and sort of busted.  My mom was crying about leaving that house, but it was only a house.   She said something about the memories and how little baby Jordy was once there until his cries were heard no more.

But we aren’t there and when I turn my head away from my grandparents farm house and to the white covered yard my brother and I look at the unlimited quantities of snow that we can use to finish our mission.   “Are you ready?”  He asks me, I responded with an “Mmmhmm.”  And when I struggle to stand up in my great big snow boots and am lost in the unlimited elbows of my winter coat he takes pity on me as he always does and helps me to my feet.  Luke keeps me close now.  He always had but now it was like he was worried that i would disappear.   If I fell down he would pick me up, and if I skinned my knee he would rush to find the band-aids.   But he doesn’t talk to me much.   That is not one of his strongest areas.   But I can tell by the gentle shoulder he lends me, and I hug an arm around him as we walk through the crunching snow.

He leans down to start the ball.   It isn’t long before it becomes a boulder.   He continues and I just sort of look on.  There isn’t much that I can do.  He is bigger and thus stronger than I am.  He rolls it but I trail behind him.  Stepping into the footprints that he leaves behind inside the areas of lifted snow that he has made when he rolled the snowball.   Then he suddenly stops and he grunts, and pushes the huge ball a little more.  His boots dig into the dirt and disappear beneath the snowfall.   “Help Aaron.”  He says.  It is not a command.  

I hesitate because if he can’t do it how can I help.  “I can’t push it by myself anymore.  Help me.”  I turn around and look at the trail and he has made it so far around the yard.  The train track of snow is so far.  I had nothing to do with that.   The path he had made was all his own and here I was now.   I had been useless but now he needed my help.   He was a god to me, and a god did not need a mortals help.   He lets go of his pushing and grabs me by my arm and directs me to the snow boulder.  He places my mitten hands upon the wall of the snow and he tells me to push as he does so in demonstration.   

Something miraculous happens then.   It moves.  Together he and I, we as brothers, Luke and Aaron we make it even farther.   I’m helping.  My feet dig into the snow just like his and I imitate his grunting, and we are working as a unit.  We have pushed this obstruction farther than I could have thought.   It starts to get tougher but we keep going.  My feet dig in more, and so do his, and my arms get tense just as his do.  We push on through, until we can’t push anymore.   

Around the yard the train track loops around in crazy motions that overlap like snakes around one another.  Much of the snow has been picked up like a vacuum and absorbed into our monstrosity.  And he lifts me up then and sets me atop the snow and stands beside me.  And although I tower above him I know it’s only because he helped me, and I’m not better but equal because my feet are not touching the earth and his are.   

We could accomplish so much he and I.   There was no need for anyone else.