2 minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. 

You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

There's a sublime redundancy to it. You smile, grit teeth, think about the things you did back when you were whole, before your brain decided enough was enough. Over and over, day after day. You smell vanilla and you feel hot, sweaty rivulets run down your back. You are suddenly cold, but you don't know why.

She's standing right in front of you, and she's yelling like a drunk hooligan. You laugh, and that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. That's why you do it. She stops and stares at you, great fire-lights of hate and fear radiate from her eyes. You don't know how she does this, but it scares the everloving shit out of you.

You shrug, shoulder your bag, and leave, knowing you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what the fuck happened and not getting any answers. No rest. Probably for the best. Keep telling yourself. Maybe someday you'll believe it.

Thanks for stopping by! See you next Friday. HEADS UP - my folks are visiting, so I won't be commenting as promptly as normal. But I'll be back. :)

Simple

It's as easy as falling off a skyscraper. As easy as Pi. You walk in late at night, dark clothes, you don't move fast and you don't move slow. Become an invisible droid, one who skirts the edge of night without leaving a trace. An apparition.

There will be a big to-do when they find out. Huge. Practice your shocked face. You're going to need it.

2 minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. 

You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

The amp is cutting out. You adjust the tape that holds the kink in just the right position, wipe sweat on your forearm. Something hits you from behind, but it's not heavy and it doesn't hurt. 

The sweat is a problem because it makes playing the guitar like trying to wrestle a rake covered in oil. And the smell. At least it's your smell. Which sort of covers up the couches, salvaged from alleys, soaked in bum piss and worse. 

There is a group of dudes who just keep staring at you, but fuck 'em, you'll deal with that later, they can't get close to the stage. The stage is where the drunk folk dance, laughter and anger rolling off them, waves of pleasure and fear and cheap perfume. 

The guys from the back come up and you stop playing. Let the fucking kids dance. Just let 'em dance.

Thanks for stopping by! See you next Friday. 

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. 

You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

Along the road, bright lights flash on and off, the sensation is much like being in a bad rave. It is disorienting, and it doesn't match the soundtrack in his mind. He has cast back, past college, past high school, he has gone to the small, thatched place in his mind. He thinks about it and he looks at the kid who lives there and tries to find some commonality. 

The kid worries too much, but he just wants everyone to be happy. Tension has a smell he recognizes. A sweat, fear smell. He doesn't know how much more he can take. The anxiety is overwhelming even though he doesn't have the words for it. 

His mind sticks on one night, long past. After practice. Dark. The police stopped him after a mile or so. He explained that no one picked him up. The cops were empathetic and took him home. No one mentioned that he had to walk home most of the time. No one mentioned much of anything.

He shakes it off and keeps walking. No one will pick him up this time. 

Thanks for stopping by! It's independence day here in the states, so I apologize if it takes me a while to respond to each piece. I will. Have a lovely weekend.

Do you remember?

Walking on hot blacktop. Playing tetherball. Staring at a line of ants for a really long time. Making a sling shot out of a branch and a big ass industrial rubber band. Risk. Being happy to eat pizza and watch movies with your friends sans drugs and alcohol. Filling out magazine subscription cards for the mean lady down the street. Lying on the grass, exhausted. Running around in a circle until you are dizzy. Playing kick the can. Getting your friends together to pretend to play instruments to really lame pop music. Stealing quarters from your parents’ change jar. Kissing someone for the first time. Holding hands. Spending lots of money at 7-11 for candy and soda. Not ever thinking about how that soda and candy was crap and poison. Jolt. Pop rocks. Saying the school dance is lame and you don’t want to go. Going anyway because you really do want to go. (The dance was lame.) Listening to your Dad’s old Beatles records obsessively until you know every song, even the weird one’s you won’t understand until you are older and more experienced with drugs. Playing kickball. Getting in a fight and being really scared. Reading old Chip Hilton Novels that your Dad saved. Hating Fireball Finley. Lying on the couch and watching TV when it really was a beautiful day and you really should have been outside. Smoking your first cigarette and trying to act like it was fun. Getting the hang of it. The simple joy of your slender fingers launching the butt into a swirling nicotine comet. Explosion of sparks on the street. Lighting an M-80. Throwing it. Realizing that your Mom is sad and you don’t know what to do about it. Hating someone because they are better at ping pong than you are. Swimming in the summer, lying on the warm concrete. French fries and frozen Three Musketeer Bars. The old guy who lived down the street and walked home every afternoon with a case of beer under each arm. Being kind of scared that there is someone in your house/closet even when you know that there isn’t. Getting into arguments that seem to dominate everything. Usually being wrong. The freedom of the hours away from adult supervision. Skate ramps. Pick up basketball games. Being in really good shape. Running really fast. The simple, pure act of running and being so swift. Playing football in the rain. Mud. Wanting to go to a party so badly that the need for it threatens to eclipse the entire universe. Watching goonies a lot. Hating and loving with equal purity. Not holding grudges. Swimming in a pool you are not supposed to be in. Jumping fences. Rolling down hills. Ice blocking. Discovering masturbation. Being ashamed. Taking sips of your dad’s beer while the two of you watched a game that neither of you cared about. Enjoying it. Realizing that everyone is fucked up in their own special way. Living, aging, losing sight of the luminous past.

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. 

You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

Everyone was just standing there, looking up. It was natural, and you didn’t fault them for it, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look. Your eyes scoured the pavement, charting fault lines and old gum and a parade of ants that seemed unfazed by the sirens and screaming.

It’s not like you didn’t know what was going on. You could hear the bodies when they hit the ground: a wet, final thump. There were news helicopters and soldiers, surveying from the sky, bulging along the sidewalks. You tried to make it to the corner, but one of them just missed you. You stopped. The grunch of it turned your stomach.

There was a man in a uniform asking you things. Getting more and more agitated.

“What the fuck happened here?”

But you just shook your head with wonder.

Thanks for stopping by! I don't have regular internet access right now, so I apologize if it takes me a while to respond to each piece. I will. Have a lovely weekend.

The Cheese

The skittering beams of light seemed playful; this was progress - just a few hours earlier they had been terror - helicopters, blades chopping the light, waiting for him to make a mistake. It passed. Now, the light was thin and giddy, girding the apartment pretty. He thought of halos and wondered; he smelled an unidentifiable smell. It didn't smell like anything. But it sure as hell didn't smell like nothing. The mint in his mouth was too strong. He tried to spit it at the trashcan and a Newport skittered across the floor, trailing sparks.

This was funny. He laughed his ass off. He laughed until his face froze, contorted into a visage that felt wrong. Forced. It felt like he was wearing some kind of mask, like he was the mascot - he didn't want to be a fucking mascot. He looked at his hands and traced the veins up his arms. There was a baby crying somewhere in the building. It hurt him in a way - in a place - he never would have expected. He hadn't known it was there.

He is you and you are him and you're both a part of the madness that is we. That's confusing, but who wants simplicity? Not me. I want to step into the mud without testing its depth with a stick. I want to feel myself sink slowly into a mass of sludge until it fills my mouth, ears, nose, my everything. Until I am the mud and the mud is me. Strange as that may be - there are stranger things for us to see.

See ... you gotta figure that your brain is like a card catalogue put through a wood chipper - Dewey decimal madness. It's shredded in there. Or filled with holes. Either way, it's become something like cheese; you slice off the outer skin to get through the moldy parts - down to the pale, good parts that remain to be eaten.

You fucking grate that shit.