His thoughts were connecting like dots, synaptic, cosmic robots, zipping through his head like shots. Little laser beams. They take off like rockets and careen through the heavens like drunken freaks on roller skates. It was fine until they slammed headlong into a planet or two with the gravity of mass graves. For the victims of ungentle genocides, or tides that lifted the misty massiveness of rolling seas higher than the knees of tall gods. Gods that hopped like electric frogs when their feet got wet from the moving water.
I thought about what he often said about being dead, and, in my head, I always responded the same way, by saying nothing. On the outside, I nodded, smiled, and lied away the discomfort hanging in the air with some generic insincerity or another.
Oh brother! When will false platitudes become more shameful than articulating unappealing truths?
A gossamer thread runs through the room like a hyper child, or a wild and sly hyena with an eye for needlepoint. Or other forms of art.
An old car hung in the balance. A mechanical acrobat with a battery pack and room for luggage. It dismounted the off-ramp and ploughed through a fence, knocking down the only street lamp in the area before tearing off into the dark. The place was a park before the dogs took it over. Now it’s a place for canines to go and bark the skins off of the trees.
Ol’ Beef Bones has been avoiding the spot for years now. He used to take his kids there to play on the swings and slip down the slide. Not now. He and his family stay inside. The neighbourhood ain’t what it used to be by any stretch of the rubber band.
Stretch out a few more hits, hold out your hand, and reap the benefits of another tightly twanged tune about a tuna you met in the can. You can’t learn that stuff in a school.
Remember the day Grandma took the dog out behind the barn for the last time? She just sat there in her favourite chair, stroking his hair until Uncle Reaper dropped by and she died. Rover lived on for many more years, getting scratches behind the ears from Grandpa and the remaining members of the crew, even you.
I'm not sure if you remember that far back, though. But, by that age, you had already conquered a continent with your charm. And guns. I have to admit that I didn’t really agree with your approach of detonating nuclear war-heads so far into that episode about the core values of an apple. At least a lot of innocent people hadn’t been born yet.
I thought about bringing this up the last time we sat there stealing glances at the yummy ladies as they passed by on Fallout Beach. I didn’t want to ruin the mood with my attitude, so instead I went to bed with a chubby girl who had no head. I didn’t realize it had been vaporized in the blast, and that I’d been trying to get frisky with a sexy memory. It didn’t last.
All hands on deck; she still had a neck.
The pills were small and bluish. Something called speed, I think. I took four or five, and they didn’t make me go any faster. I still got caught by the police, fleeing the scene of what could have been a much better time had I not chosen to open my mouth in a yes at the first offer of an altered state. You were the patient one and decided to wait for the next round of mind-altering clarity.
My thoughts ran angry, chaotic circles around my head until the hours talked it down, and I took some water and a long nap.
Things that grow in dirt and dung guided you far from such synthetic discomforts, and you smiled serenely at me through the glass and kept me company as time passed. Thanks for walking me through the consequences of my many impetuous mistakes. And thanks for meeting me at the gates of soul-prison when I escaped. Afterwards, you took me far away from repeated disasters of a similar type.
The toughest spider in the room had a tattoo of a man on its chest. It also smoked cigarettes and operated behind an intricate web of intrigue and deception. The pictures on the packs of smokes didn’t scare it at all. The spider had a whole parlour full of tricks, and everybody in the game was welcome. Especially Mat.
Sometimes a person just has to duck out and run. Forgo the lurking spectre of impending fun, and flee. Avoid the siren-song of promised pleasure; deny dreams of desire and debauchery, and turn tail. So that’s what happened.
The birthday party was somewhat of a disaster when the guest-of-honour made a midnight decision to ride an iron donkey to some faraway place. He’d done the same at his wedding earlier that year, so it wasn’t a complete surprise to those in attendance.
They drank and got down until the sun came up, then fell down and slept the pain away. Birthday Boy had to hop aboard the night train to get home this time. Once a year is plenty for that kind of stunt, but it's a tough habit to kick.
Boats, floating lazily across an azure sea in the middle of a warm day. Some were long and wide of beam, with sails, while others were short and motorized. There were some that looked as though they rivalled any mansion on earth for luxury, and others that were obviously a little worse-for-wear. They bobbed contentedly on the gentle, shimmering water, regardless of their differences; going this way and that, seemingly with no real direction at all. Just glad to be out fulfilling their collective obligation as boats. They did it well.
There was a ceremony near the day’s end, about an hour before dark, to celebrate these floating marvels. Then the city went to bed.
And that’s about all I have to say about that.
They gave her so many warnings over the years that it became something of a running joke among the members of the community. She had the good sense to ignore every last one of them. Instead, she charged headlong into adventures inspired by courage and optimism, and wildly surpassed even her own craziest expectations.
She doesn't have the time or inclination to tell them all how wrong, weak, afraid, and stupid they were.Her success in all endeavours reminds her, and all who doubted her, that the perceived foolishness of her past was anything but.
As they grow grey and forgotten behind their fears and limited vision, some of them still gossip about that girl, the one who didn’t have the good sense to heed their faulty wisdom. Had she listened to their bad advice, they could have been responsible for murdering the dreams of a child.
Shameful.
They tiredly shuffle on, and, deep inside, non-refundable mountains of regret weigh down their souls as they inch ever closer to the grave.
Leaves fall from the trees as summer leaves. Maybe that’s why the season is called fall. Autumn is pretty colours and walks under an umbrella in the rain; fall is a door closing on the best part of a year.
The leaves float down onto autumn grass, which is green again after many months with little or no water. My thirst for sunshine grows stronger as the wet winter months wash happiness away, to store it in some impenetrable fortress for safe-keeping. Spring eventually takes it from the hook, dusts it off, and drapes it over our sadness when sleeping plants and faltering psyches wake up for another season of smile.
His thoughts, not drawing dot-pictures now, but conclusions. They wrestle with the confusion of certain delusions, illusions created to convince the self of a reality we know we’d rather avoid. Illusions deliriously dancing to a tuneless tune of windless words whispered weakly into an ear that only hears that which allays its fears. Heads buried in the sand suffocate eventually.
I suppose you could say "yo" to a yo-yo, but where will that get you, though? I suppose it can’t say no if you’re about to piss into the wind. Would you even listen if it did? How seriously is one to take a sandy-headed wind-pisser who talks to yo-yo’s, bro? It depends on one’s perspective. And from where I sit, Eeee equals ME scared.
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