Busted Imagination

I think I’ll step into the rain that isn’t falling and wallow in the mud that isn’t there.
I think I’ll fly in the sky to the rainbow that has the little man who is never really there.

I’ll fold my wings on blue and lay my head on red like a bed and talk to the little man.

He said, “As true as you are on blue, none of this is here.
And there!? There is where your careless mind entreats you to retreat. To here!
So, that you hear this is neither nearly there nor here but merely in your head.

It’s a bit of fun for a while though non-existent all the while.
Denial in a file left behind reality in the mind.”

Gaining in Age

Something happened and its too late for me to fix it.
Time moved and I was too stuck in the future to see the present

How was I to know that my best chance to experience new things would be so short?I look back to see who I was and I’m surprised.
I was young and I didn’t know it.
I was less than I thought in many ways and more than I expected in others

The events of a lifetime happened while I stayed inside
A mind working too hard to prepare for a life that could be
While the bits and pieces of people around would have made everything more

Where is the lesson and the new life?
Where is the chance to change it?
Even now it’s not apparent
Mine is a perspective ten thousand miles above
Looking down at the many paths that I won’t walk.

When you’ve got writer’s block…be stupid.

Prompt: Time

Clock, watch, time telling device, waiting, rushing, stressed, wasting, watching, holding, feeling, unleashing, tracking, stopping, understanding, managing…

Can one wash time? Does it get old? Does it get dirty? Is time a person, being, condition or setting? Is time a physical place? Is it an object? Is it quantifiable? Is time a beast? If time were a beast, would it be a carnivore or herbivore? Would it hunt or forage? What would be the effects of its hunting? Would time need to hibernate? What happens when it sleeps? Can time travel through space? Does it use mass transit? Is it eco-friendly? Where else does time go?

Time goes to the sports bars on Thursday nights because that’s the new Friday and Friday’s the new Saturday and Saturdays the new day of rest. But he takes the bus because he doesn’t have money for carbon credits. Time likes to hang out with his pals on Thursday because his beatches won’t bother him when he’s with the crew and they’re all beasts anyways who eat whatever is around when they get hungry. So the beatches don’t bother him on Thursdays and he like Killians because its red. And on Friday he knits to get action from the gorgons.

Does time have a girlfriend? Some being who is in the same time gentrificus classification? No, after-all, have you ever heard of a beast that was a girl? Of course not, wooly mammoths are the only girls around here and they died millions of years ago along with the cockroaches and the faeries. So, time is an eco-friendly boy without a girlfriend because all the wooly mammoths died a long time ago and there’s no use lingering on the past. Time has to live in the present. Didn’t you hear, there’s no time like the present? And it’s Valentine’s Day and Time won’t get a present from his girlfriend because she died shivering in her massive knickers a long time ago. Poor girl.

Midlife Crisis

I’m sending emails to everyone I know in the business. Anyone who owes me a favor. It’s a message from a once corporate zombie. I gave up myself for the sake of a secure future. And now the illusion has been stripped away. My security was unceremoniously cracked last week when the company dropped a third of its workforce. Ten years bought me one-month severance. And now I have to face the person inside me.

I can’t type these emails anymore; these coward’s requests for a lifeboat that I don’t deserve. It makes me sick to see myself. I can’t imagine what my wife thinks. But I guess she gave up wanting years ago. Sacrificed just like I did.

God, I feel like I’m staring into a black hole. It’s just waiting for me.

I turn at the sound of the door creaking open. My wife is home with the groceries. I pretend I don’t notice and shuffle over to the refrigerator to grab a distraction. I begin to pour a glass of orange juice as she arrives in the room.

She doesn’t know yet. I can’t face her with it.

“Hi honey,” she says.

I respond satisfactorily. She unpacks dry goods. I continue pouring the juice. The skin on my arms changes to a reddish color with the heat of the truth that is weighing on me. The monster is pushing through my façade. The room begins to blur and I can feel the cold orange juice spilling from the glass over my fingers. I can’t hold this up. I brace myself against the counter and breathe to regain composure. But I fall apart instead in a fit of coughs and gasps for air.

I wake up to the sterile white of hospital walls.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dumbest Thing I Ever…

The dumbest thing I ever saw was a bike commuter get hit by a vehicle at 14th and 3rd. I woke to sounds of skids and screams escaping in through my third floor window. I’m used to the whirl of ambulance sirens since my building is near a hospital but they never whine on for minutes like this.

Curiosity excused me from my bed, half asleep, to peer out a crack in the blinds. The first thing I saw was the helmet teetering listlessly between lanes. A creek of thick blood trickled slowly across the pavement, seeking the city sewers. I opened the window to see more of the scene and shivered from the rush of early morning air. Leaning in further, I took in what I’m calling an anti-miracle. A bike commuter had somehow slipped on something in the street and slid into an oncoming sedan. He had lost his helmet in the process and cracked his skull.

I stood, staring stupidly. I was in shock because I had never witnessed death firsthand, especially not one so impossible. This everyman’s ride up whatever ladder he was on was stopped without notice. And now the EMS crew was at the scene, taking him off the market for good.

Several paces back, corporate onlookers rushed to a central point, stumbling over each other to feign offers of help before artfully pushing through the crowd to the L train.

This was enough. I stepped back, tripping over my alarm’s cord. I reached to move it back to its place on my bedside table. It read 6:05am in deep red LEDs and I thought of Newton’s law about actions and reactions and deep red blood. The implication is that there is purpose to everything. But what purpose for Bob the bike-riding businessman is there in this accidental death? If God makes the miracles, does Satan make these?

FEAR

Caught, covered and carefully carried;
The thief of my dreams appeared.
Can I contain this, a carriage for my fears?
How long will I remain a victim of inaction;
Paralyzed by thought; deprived of my satisfaction?