Tag: prose

  • Notice of Discrepancy I

    He lit a cigarette. The small fire agreed to live for a while, the way everything here did — provisionally, and watching the door. Flick ash and raindrop. A siren screamed the alley red and blue. He stepped back into the dark and joined his cigarette in its watching.

    Some doors wait. This one had been threshold patient all night, and he found he could match it — let the hours stand open beside him, going nowhere, the way the rain kept not quite falling.

    goddammit.

    Jacobs back already, the sandwich arriving before he did.

    nothing?

    Ellison let the cigarette do his talking for him in drag and exhale.

    new mexico…

    Mouth full to bursting, the syllables shoving past it.

    the desert is supposed to be dry, innit?

    arizona.

    howzat?

    arizona. flagstaff. as in: not desert.

    Deli-paper crinkle as it skittered to the corner. A belch announcing that dinner was done.

    thought arizona was all desert. you yanks canna make up your mind.

    Ellison let the wet pavement and cigarette answer in hiss.

    Jacobs opened his mouth to say something. No cards left.

    He did, however, sport a new hole in his forehead.

    The door had wearied of staying shut. Someone stepped through, did the necessary thing, and the alley went back to being an alley.

    I’m trying out something new, uncertain if I will continue adding to it. We’ll have to see if it still feels good when I get around to writing more.

    Assuming I do.

    There is a lot of very carefully designed structure in this piece and I hope that it not only holds, but lands right as well. I’m purposefully writing in an uncomfortable style for me to see what happens when I do. The framing rules I used are easy to hit “fail-states” with — underdone, they seem weak; played too freely and they seem excessive in short order.

    Thanks for reading.

  • lark on the morn

    Today I draw dark lines in charcoal on parchment so thin as to air. All gravities pull in your direction and the angles bend true, in teeth-branded skin and hurt so good.

    Head wrapped in linen for better to see. My fingers dance liminal, waiting for the telegraph of dream. Can you see the words writ in water? The ripples cross my dark lines in coal drawn on angle to you.

    Granites love your gravity, antlers turn their curves to thee.

    And, it is in this I apprehend. Waiting on the morning lark to call you into being.

  • Masochism world

    Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

    There was a guy one of my tattooist used to regularly tattoo. It turned out his client was not getting inked, but just getting tattoos for the sensation they gave him.

    “Is he just a masochist,” I asked, having immediately decided it must be true.

    “Not really,” said the Brain, as his typo’d business card proclaimed. “He doesn’t much care for pain. I think he is actively trying to avoid pain.”

    “Explain,” I asked, befuddled, wincing as he hit the nerve bundle near my armpit. “Do you not use needles either?”

    The Brain frowned. “Of course I use needles. He’s getting a tattoo.” He held my bicep firm to prevent me from flinching and messing up his linework.

    “So… why no ink?” I said, taking a drag on my cigarette, for this was back when you could smoke while getting a tattoo.

    “He doesn’t want it to stick around more than scar tissue.”

    “So… Why get one at all if he doesn’t like ink?”

    “He says it makes his pain go away” said the Brain.

    “Riiiight,” was my incredulous response. “Oh-kay.”

    The Brain shrugged. “His business, I just follow his direction.”

    Welcome to masochism world, I thought to myself. Definitely a masochist.

    It is years later, arthritis and old injuries later. The Brain’s client was right. Pain washes the pain away.

    It’s too expensive and no one will agree to doing tattoos without ink anymore, however. They just nod and you can see it in their eyes: Welcome to masochism world.

  • Twilight aching

    Photo by Cornelia Munteanu on Unsplash

    She covers me in twilight aching, as filtered by summer leaves. Shadowed within shadows gloaming slips down, descends, pours over me.

    Blind to consequence, she moves through the weald seamless, with feet drifting on wraith. A kiss on my grey lips passing, breath crisp to the taste and pale fingers linger mists on cheek before she wisps away.

    I am wicker-bound by convention though the distance moves well beyond time.

    Flint for my eyes, sharp, though always blind I must be. They scrimshawed my bones to mask the words from me. Lips set to suture, to trap my voice to me.

    Waiting on the fires, mists’ kiss watching, twilight aching over me.

  • of evensong

    sunlight shining through old growth woods
    Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

    All that could be seen was ankle; your ankle, in fact. My face was against your bare calf, warmed in the golden glow of early summer evensong atop the old elm-crowned hillock, your fingers tangled in my hair. Narrowed of focus by my heavy eyelids, dreamy for ebb and flow of cicada drones — narrowed so I could drink in that ankle of yours, the sight of which being mead that made my head dizzy drunk and the linger of a kiss honey sweet.

    Someone hummed a tuneless song and I never did discover if it was you or me. But neither of us moved in the fading day’s heat. Not wanting to break the thralling spell, I just lay there, feeling the pulse of your blood against my cheek as I bathed in the vision of your ankle and the massage of your fingers in my hair.

  • Hollowman

    I’ve gone hollow, with dusty cobwebs occupying the empty space inside. If you were to loosen the black leather lacing that holds everything inside, you would be surprised at the void that greets you.

    I don’t want you to be shocked. So, consider this fair warning if you elect to look inside just out for the looking for any curiosities you thought might be tied up inside. Some other thief or thieves have already lifted the everything of what used to reside there.

    Ahh, is that disappointment I perceive? That long, gravity-trapped face dragging to the ground, where once a smile was to reside, turned to the upside down?

    It’s not my preference to be primarily hollow, I assure you. My clockwork heart was quite the thing, I promise, before it was taken from me. Even the spleen filled of ideal was taken from me. I am quite empty, you see.

    With all parts cannibalized for the sake of entertainment of others, only my eyes remain to reflect the void within. Waiting for something that long has a been and unlike to be again.

  • Product

    reflection of woman s eye on broken mirror
    Photo by Ismael Sánchez on Pexels.com

    Everything is prop or backdrop on the stage for our play today.

    Check our vaseline smiles in the mirror before calling for “lights” and the sodiums flicker to life and set the world aglow.

    Pull on the masque, assume a pose. Adjust after checking the screen that mirrors the scene. Set, snap and print.

    Pat each other of the back when nothing slips and we have captured a plastic essence pristine.

    Then file it away as just another charade of former days, anxious to apprehend the next.

  • Kind

    I wonder whatever became of Kind. She drifted away like a mote on the wind one summers day, flitting here and there before in the distance she did fade, leaving neither full lips or ashen hair to guide the way to where she went on drift. Perhaps she burned away, like any dream does when the sun shines on something at such length — and so wan she was in the begin, that slim girl Kind. It was a wonder she had not been consumed years ago.

    I check balconies in the gloaming; I inspect the shadowtall oaks, gnarled in the their age. But Kind is no where and no when, our pale empress aloft on the wind. I miss our lady Kind, and the delirium euphoric that she did bring.

    And I wonder at where she took her drift.

  • Morning coffee

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I don’t mean to be no trouble, but I am thinking of dyin.

    He sat across from me, sipping his percolated coffee with one or three too many fistfuls of coffee thrown in “for good measure”. If you were to believe the tall tales he tells, he uses an old sock to filter out the biggest of the grounds, but I think that’s probably bullshit. Or it might not be bullshit and I’m just hoping that it is at least a clean old sock he uses for the purpose.

    (more…)

  • On the drift

    They never mention it in books, of course. The travel guides, I mean. They never tell you just how far you can, on average, walk in a pair of shoes before they start to fall apart. Of course, not all shoes are built the same and there’s going to be some variability in how well they will wear, but I’ve found you can maybe walk five hundred miles on fairly even asphalt in a pair of sneakers before you might want to keep your eyes open for your next pair. Boots meant for hiking? Maybe twice that, but you had better not rely on there being any tread to give you traction that last two hundred miles, give or take. Still, boots are my go-to, though they tend to weigh you down more at the end of the day than something more athletic.

    Of course, you’re rarely given the choice of boots or sneakers while on the drift. More often than not, you have to accept what you come across and, obviously, the mileage on a worn pair of footwear is significantly lowered.

    But beggars can’t be choosers, as my gran would say.

    (more…)