Flash Fiction for Your Consideration #fiction

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February 12, 2004

     He awoke at seven that morning, knowing that the day would bring him more happiness than grief, and yet he still felt a cold ball of dread in his stomach, sitting there like lead, weighing him down. He knew that swinging his body around and allowing his feet to touch the floor would commit him to getting out of bed, and that standing up and getting dressed would commit him to leaving his bedroom, and that appearing in the house would commit him to staying for her party.

     His daughter was now old enough to drive. She could ask for the keys at any moment, and he would have no choice but to hand them over or be branded an uncool Dad. Perhaps he could throw them out the window? But then that would make it tough for him to use the car himself. Maybe he could drop them in the toilet. That would keep any self-respecting teenager at a distance. Hell, that would drive away most adults.

     But he was merely avoiding the inevitable. She was growing up. Soon she would be old enough to leave for college, to get a full-time job, to marry and have kids of her own, to follow that career or that husband to some city on the other side of the country. He might be able to see her once a year, if she could get away. They might talk a couple of times a week.

     He wondered if she would understand this, that he was not afraid of her driving the car or how much taller than him she might eventually become. He was afraid of the first time that car turned a corner and left him behind, waving, wondering if she were even looking back, the first of many journeys that he would not even be able to watch.

A Poem for Your Consideration #poetry

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I’m still hoping to get back to writing new stuff soon. I’ve got some ideas for rants and essays on here, and I’d still like to practice creative nonfiction before I try to send any out. In the meantime, here’s another blast from the past, selected randomly. Perhaps it sucks; perhaps it will change your life.

Nomad

Last night the moon fell.
It exploded in
A field, gouging depths
In the dark landscape.
Nearby, a cold river
Flowed to nowhere else.

Today he fails to
See the blank hole in
The sky. He walks through
Fields of asphalt and
Drinks bitter air from
Riverless facades.

Cities never miss the moon.

Couching on the grass,
Wrapped around a cup
Of frozen peace, leg
Shot off by dead men,
He collects loose change
And ignores children.

Symbiote from wars
Leeching babies born
When he could stand straight,
He defends his name
From unseen monsters
And dying ideals

When the moon comes up again.

More Flash Fiction #fiction

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     In catching up on all the things I didn’t do last week, I’m still too behind to post anything new. So here’s another old piece of flash fiction. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. Perhaps you’ll have a theory.

     Her lover had come back from the dead and was standing in her kitchen, drinking a cup of herbal tea and eating one of her homemade scones. He was holding the cup with three fingers, as he had done on the mornings after their lovemaking had been most intense and memorable. Steam rose above the rim and drifted toward his face, disappearing in his beard, now flecked with gray and bushier than she remembered. He said

     Hello

     and she screamed. The fear in her voice startled him. He managed to hold onto the scone but dropped the tea, the cup turning slowly one and a half times before it hit the tile and shattered, the liquid spattering his boots and the legs of the table. It spread across the floor like blood, running into the cracks between the tiles where it formed shallow, linear pools.

Missing the Kids–A Poem #poetry

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Today I had to take my son and my youngest daughter back after having them at my place during their spring break. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for nearly twenty years, and it never gets easier. This is how it feels.

Non-Custodial

You wave goodbye as they drive
Away, already mauling video game
Aliens and tapping their feet to
The rhythm of a song you’ve never
Heard of, forgetting their promise to
Look back before they vanish this time.

Or perhaps you sprint madly for the car,
Slam the door and clasp the seatbelt,
Reverse gear down the drive and
Rooster-tail through gravel to the nearest bar,
Leaving them to wave at your taillights
As your façade collapses in their wake.

You cannot betray their belief in
Your stoicism, your ability to take
The separation with blank aplomb.
You must remain an optimist, the
Guardian of their right to devastation.
But you can never cry.

Instead you must spout cheerful platitudes
That echo false in your throat.
They might as well be slogans
Advertising incremental hells:
“Only two weeks” and “next summer”
And “before you know it” and “soon.”

If you say it long enough,
One day you might believe yourself.

February 20th, 2004–Flash Fiction #fiction

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February 20th, 2004

     I signed an online petition today. I don’t know what it was for. Perhaps I was trying to save something. Maybe I was helping kill someone. Maybe it was a petition against me. I don’t know. All I remember is clicking on a button and then shutting down my browser. It was all over in a few seconds, and it might have been the most important thing I’ll ever do.

Here’s another poem #poetry

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I hope all my readers (both of you) haven’t lost patience with my posting some existing creative works here instead of regular blog entries or brand-new stuff. I’m enjoying the time with the kids, and hey, why CAN’T I post some stuff like this if I want? Right? Anyone?

Sometimes

In the barn she floats
And worships motes of dust

Raw and big-boned
Country girl nursed on
Jack Daniels breasts
And corn bread suppers

Contemplating splintered
Nails and virgin beds of
Unspilled milk at breakfast
Falling through her hair and

Never dreaming that
She dreams of pitchforks

Here’s a Poem #poetry

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Alternative

The things that I
Remember most
Are as follows

Erasing a
Colon from the
End of a line

Counting meter
On my fingers
Two by two thrice

And thinking of
That other poem
I almost wrote

About a girl
A teakettle
And six lemons

More Flash Fiction #fictionwriting

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February 2nd, 2004

     A cold front settled in the skies and blew down on their heads in short bursts, rhythmic and hollow like a backwoodsman playing tunes on a half full jug of whiskey, and while their ears turned bright red and the tips of their noses numbed, the band broke into their biggest hit, the one that played interminably on the radio so that the chorus sounded in your memory like an echo.

A Poem for Your Consideration #poetry

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7.

Dog-eared pages read
Like ransom notes for
Borrowed glimpses of
A land that could have
Been but never got
A chance to breathe.

Life garroted us,
Burdens choked us from
Behind until we
Rose like zombies and
Trudged silently in
Lazy circles.

Neither of us moved at all.

Flash Fiction #fictionwriting

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Here’s a several-years-old piece of flash fiction that may actually be an Allen Ginsberg-ish poem in disguise.

February 8th, 2004

     Her cell phone rang, its tinny electronic voice spitting Mozart into the pre-dawn blackness of her bedroom, shattering her vivid dream of eating a hot dog at the opera in Florence while Richard Marx massaged her feet with a butternut squash.