Friday, July 8, 2016

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! 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 grass tickles your neck and you tell yourself again that it's not ants and to chill the fuck out. You came here to relax, so do it. And that means you gotta stop thinking about being chill. Stop thinking. Watch the cloud spirits whip the sky into an imagination playground. Look for shapes, don't think about the grass-tickle ants - ants don't hurt you anyway.

What hurts is the collective insanity. That's what they were calling it, but it seemed too easy of an explanation. Insanity can be charming. Certain kinds of it. Or it can be intriguing. This? What can you call it? There may be a word for it, but you don't know it. A shade of sadness so dark it can shroud the world. 

God, if there's a word for it, you don't even want to know it. It must be heavy. The kind of word that sits in your brain, daring you to speak it. The kind of word you can never speak because it will change the shape of your mouth, the shape of your heart. Just look at the goddamn clouds. Unclench your fists. Relax your jaw.

Try to walk yourself through being human.


BREAK THE BLOG FOR ME! AND GIVE ME SOME STUFF TO READ! Get 'em! :)

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

53 comments:

  1. That is some timely and on-point stuff you've artistically woven there, mi amigo. The last line is both sublime and a gut-punch.

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    1. Collective insanity.... and sometimes the ants are more than ants.... this is a beautiful capturing of the ache in all our hearts this week... thanks for sharing it.

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    2. A tribute to human shame. Love the collective insanity because we're all responsible for each other. :)

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    3. Has anyone else noticed how we often share certain themes every week? I didn't read this before I wrote mine, yet the ants and the overall theme is similar (although mine is probably more oblique).

      Goes without saying, but I love this.

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  2. Charlie couldn’t sleep, despite his comfortable surroundings. After days of sleeping rough, in boxcars, and outside in the cold, dry desert, he was clean and warm, posted up in a comfy bed in Lucy’s parents’ house in suburban Novato, California. He was 1,400 miles from what he still thought of as home, with this girl he didn’t really know that well, with nothing but two changes of clothes, one hundred forty-seven dollars, and a handgun that hadn’t been cleaned since he used it to kill three grubby tweakers in Lubbock, Texas.

    While Lucy dozed beside him, he carefully climbed out of bed. He was naked; she assured him that her hippieish parents didn’t care, so they had sex earlier that night, but even that didn’t help. But as he was tying his shoes, Lucy rolled over and mumbled, “babe, what are you doing? Come back to bed.”

    He replied, his Texan drawl slurring out more than he intended, “Can’t sleep, I’ma go for a walk.” She opened one vividly blue eye and tried to focus on him. “Well, okay. I mean, my folks don’t have any guns, so you’re not gonna get shot coming back. Just be quiet, huh? The cops around here are usually pretty bored.”

    Charlie leaned over the four-poster bed and kissed Lucy on the lips before he left. He took his rucksack, because he honestly didn’t know if he was going to come back, and headed out into the cool, foggy Northern California night. But before long, he knew he would: the neighborhood surrounding the Denton house was pleasant, but it quickly became obvious that he was miles away from any major transit artery. And, concurrently, he realized that he’d be crazy to walk away from this situation. It was maybe 3 AM when he stepped out, but by 4, he was quietly letting himself back in, padding back to Lucy’s room, undressing, and slipping back into her bed. Now, he managed to sleep fitfully for another three or four hours, before waking up to her squeezing his cock, kissing him on the lips, and murmuring, “I knew you couldn’t stay away for long.”

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    1. Man, this is really good, D. Especially the first paragraph and that final sentence of the first P. Taut.

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    2. Yup, he'd be crazy to walk away. Sounds like the beginning of a great mystery/romance.

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    3. Captures that early hours feeling and also his ambivalence so well. Real nice.

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  3. It was as the sun crossed the Virginia horizon, bounced off the sizzling cars on I-95, eventually streaming nearly horizontally through my room’s curtains that I noticed someone’s secret sitting there on the desk where I rested my laptop.

    In that late afternoon light, the shadows of a prior guest’s last message written on the hotel’s notepad showed like filigree etched into fine glassware, like the pattern embossed on the leather of my Justin boots.

    None of your business, I thought. You’ve gotta make it down to the Longhorn before half of Fredericksburg decides they want your rib-eye, medium, baked potato and cold beers. Okay, a little salad, too.

    For most of my life this inquisitive nature of mine and blessed curse of turning a phrase paid the bills, put two daughters through college, paid off one mortgage and half of another and let me retire at 62. Besides, who the hell would know or care?

    I reached into my laptop bag and pulled out one of the school kid’s thick soft-lead pencils I started using when the arthritis made it too painful to write with a yellow #2 like other folks.

    I rubbed the graphite equivalent of an illegal phone tap lightly from the upper left to lower right of the notepad. And then I read the transcript of someone’s private life:

    Jax — 8:30
    Pkg Gar 3-24
    Black Accord
    100K
    No cpos

    Well, that was more than the something like Large half pepperoni w/small antipasto no onion I expected. This was more like one kilo, no B12, no glucose.

    Of course, it could be just someone doodling, a mystery writer or some lame fan fic geek still trying to get Crockett and Tubbs in the sack together after twenty-five years. The misspell of “cops” might confirm the latter.

    No, the depth of these imprints showed some emotion pushing the pen. This ghost note’s writer was fairly intense, as least within their own mind.

    Okay, Mr. Retired Newshound, what’re you gonna do? Telling the cute Pakistani girl and the fat Bubba sweating through his shirt down at the main desk might get the ball rolling. And then you won’t be late for that hot date with Ms. Well-Marbled 2016.

    Besides, you’ve had no excitement since you piled a career’s notes, files, plaques, pics and bye-bye kisses into that small cardboard box on your way out of the city room. You know you want one more scoop before all the talking hairdos and oh-so-serious news bunnies set up their lights and cameras to tell the same story for the next three days at Noon, 6:00 and 11:00.

    That’s how I found myself sweaty and squinting into the shadows of the garage across the way from the hotel. I figured its proximity made the place worth a shot. I’d climbed the stairs to the third level and realized why I didn’t chase ambulances anymore. Young guy’s game.

    But those kids lack your chops, Woodstein, I wheezed to myself.

    At column 24 I could feel my heart flutter like an old fire horse’s hearing a bell even after being put to pasture. I had to admit, this was an excellent place for a drop — drugs, kidnapping, extortion — down on the dark far corner from the exit. Down where there wasn’t a Honda to be found.

    My kid taught me how to use my iPhone as a flashlight, so I thought I’d give the scene a flyover and then head on down to the Longhorn before they closed the kitchen. That’s when I spotted the business card in a dark puddle. A dark puddle in a parking garage was no surprise, but the red stain it imparted on the card was.

    Shit. Damn it. Oh boy.

    I turned off the flashlight and hit 911. Two hours later, the cops let me go after I gave them my statement, my cell number and land line at my new home in Florida.

    Yep, that was blood and the name on the card was that of Elise Weston, a Richmond bank exec who hadn’t shown up at work since Tuesday. I left the Sherlocking to the Sherlocks and stepped out into the warm Virginia night. The midnight night.

    I finally ate, though not that rib-eye, dammit. No, on this personal half-pepperoni and small antipasto, no onions. Glad the pizzeria could handle the C-note I paid with. Wiped the worst of the blood off so…

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    1. Man, this is a strong piece and I love the tone. Not quite noir, but not quite not noir. Well played.

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    2. Yeah, Dan's right. Neo noir? Whatever the genre, I'd read it if this decided to be something bigger.

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    3. One last story. One last score. I think we can all relate. Made me wonder why he wasn't calling the story in himself, until that bloody bill showed up at the end. There is definitely more to this story.

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  4. The knife never knew its role as an abettor, as an enabler, as the supporting player and as a criminal after the fact. The knife just knew the hand that gave it sparkling life, that brought it into the light, after lying benign and hidden in the darkness and warmth offstage.

    The knife recalls the first time. The clammy hand tentatively surrounding it too tightly, shaking slightly. It recalls the feel of fabric against its tongue and then the air rushing by before it returned to its quiescent chrysalis darkness.

    The knife knows this cocoon, where it grew into the confident actor, learned the daring dance of sliding its length against cloth and skin in the slash. It felt assured in the grip and thrust where it tasted the salty heat of ultimate anger.

    Tonight, the knife learned for the first time the feeling of being alone in the cold, with no hand to hold, no role to fill except to lie still as lemon light lit the bloody stage where a gun in the first act went off in the third.

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    1. This is awesome. Dope concept well executed, brother.

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    2. yep, dope is exactly the right word.

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    3. Very creative description from the knife's perspective. I want to say awesome but Mader beat me to it making me feel completely inept. :)

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    4. Agree with everyone else, plus I'm in love with the rhythm, cadence, and sheer lyricism of that last sentence!

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  5. It almost seemed like sport at a higher level. Some miles away, Oakland was alight with protests against the OPD’s refusal to press murder charges against an officer. Tim would have liked to join in; he enjoyed a good riot as much as the next malcontent. But he had bigger fish to fry. Luanne and her hacker pals had dug up the home address of the guilty party; a pleasantly modest tract house in Hayward. So the two of them rolled up on the spot at about 3 AM, with a few jerrycans of gasoline and a book of matches. They hoped to burn the whole place down. They didn’t know, or care, if he had a wife, or kids. If anyone lived, maybe they’d learn something from it. If they didn’t, tough shit, this was war. They didn’t care that even a token investigation would easily reach a conclusion of arson; if anything, they WANTED it to be clear that this was an act of war, retribution, street justice. They were sending a message of defiance, reminding the authorities that the same could easily happen to any of them.

    So Tim and Luanne lingered for a moment, in the front seat of that stolen Ford Focus, smoking a joint, before he flicked the smoldering roach out the window, in the direction of the trail of gasoline he had trickled between the curb and the gallons of petrol he and Luanne had splashed all over the outside of the house. Thankfully, it was close enough to start the ignition he was aiming for. He started the engine and threw the transmission into neutral, but lingered a moment longer, to watch the trail of combustion run up the lawn to the walls of the house. Luanne was jogging his arm, hissing “Go go go, no, wait, shit, goddamnit!” As the flames darted up the trail of gasoline and split off, engulfing the house in flames.

    Tim waited a moment longer, until the man of the house opened the front door. That was it: he rolled down the window, barked, “suck on this!”, and fired a few shots from his trusty old Beretta in that general direction, before throwing the transmission into drive and peeling out, as Luanne hissed, “GO GO GO, muthafucka!”

    It was frustrating, not getting to watch that arson play out. Tim wished he could have posted up on a nearby hillside with a pair of binoculars, but there was no time. He and Luanne ditched the car in Berkeley, and walked the rest of the way home. At least, once they got there, at some ungodly hour, they smoked another fat joint, had some truly mind-meltingly good sex, and fell asleep in each other’s arms. The morning after, they heard about their crime: their intended victim, his wife, and eight-year-old daughter were all killed in the inferno. Luanne’s younger brother, Raymond, gave them the slightest bit of side-eye over his bowl of Cap’n Crunch, but her older brother Jacob gave Tim a smile and fist-bump, and only said, “my man”, between bites of his cinnamon sugar Pop-Tart and sips of coffee.

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    1. To paraphrase Rihanna, a tornado's meeting a volcano, and something has to give.

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  6. When I was growing up, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had to sleep in separate beds. They couldn’t say the word “pregnant” on television.

    Now, you can go to YouTube or Facebook, and click a button to watch someone, lots of someones, bleed out and die, right there on screen.

    I know all the reasons… shining sunlight on corruption and wrongdoing stops it or slows it down. That’s the theory, and one I believe in, most of the time. But I worry about copycats, on both sides of the law, I worry about kids and adults getting jaded. And I wonder how and when we’ll all be able to make it stop. And if.

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    1. It is a big worry....as society becomes accustomed to seeing people dying....is scares me....

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    2. Thanks for stoppin' by Mac....

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    3. People were more shocked by the toilet flushing in Hitchcock's Psycho than the freaking shower scene! People (okay, Americans, lol) be weird.

      My take? We see the reality of violence and death and it makes us turn our backs on it all the more. I think we should shine a light on it every time it happens, ugly and gut-wrenching as it is. Don't flinch.

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  7. The dream--it was always the same dream--was coming more often now. Almost every night, sometimes twice a night.

    She’d learn to control herself. Wake herself up just before the soul-shattering scream.

    But she still woke up in sheets wet from her sweating, from her fear.

    Her husband would no longer sleep in the same room, much less the same bed. He’d grown tired of explaining the bruises and black eyes.

    She knew, if only she could hold onto the dream for one second into consciousness, she knew it would stop haunting her. One second.

    But the psychiatrists, the sleep labs, the quacks, none of them could make it happen.

    One morning she awoke after dreaming three times, and she was exhausted. Utterly. Completely. Exhausted. She stumbled to the kitchen for coffee. While she waited for the machine to warm up, she fell asleep, standing up, and lost her balance.
    When her face hit the floor, she woke up, but she remembered. She remembered it all.

    She remembered a hall of mirrors, each reflection slightly different than the next, but they were all the same. And none of it was real. That was the message. She was a figment in the imagination of someone who was a figment of someone else’s imagination, and on and on, and it all held together as long as everyone believed.
    It was doubt that killed her. It was her doubt that killed us all.

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  8. “Catch a falling star…”

    The skies were dark as a moonless night could make them. The Milky Way made a stripe from one side of the horizon to the other. The cold mountain air was punctuated by persistent mosquitoes humming in his ears.

    When he was growing up, his mother explained to him how shooting stars were good luck, a kind of light show put on just for those who saw them.

    His father explained what bad luck they were, that they were falling angels who had sinned against God and Creation, and how he must pray never to fall so far so fast.

    “And put it in your pocket…”

    While he waited alone on the mountaintop for the meteor showers, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

    The left hand found his wallet, the right his keys and pocketknife. The wallet no longer held the means to achieve his dreams… canceled credit cards and three one-dollar bills weren’t gonna take him far.

    His right hand caressed the knife, remembering his grandfather teaching him how to whittle, how to make a whistle from a twig. Sadly, there was nothing to whittle this far above tree line.

    “Save it for a rainy day….”

    The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he realized the lightning storms were about to begin. He sat down. Lightning and falling stars in one night had to be powerful magic, right?

    The first strike hit a boulder about a hundred yards to his left. The boulder shattered.
    He did not hear the whistle because of the thunder. His eyes were wide open, but his ears rang, and when the meteor, the tiny meteor, fell, it fell through his skull, his brain, his chin.

    He was long dead by the time the rain came. And when the lightning found him, it melted his knife, his wallet, and his memories.

    “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…”

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    1. This one's elusive, enigmatic. I might be overthinking, but it seems to me there are so many ways to read it.

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    2. I agree with David. There are many ways to read the story. Definitely makes you think.

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  9. I shot a stereotype today. Those stereotypes can be such assholes. You ever stopped to stare into a stereotype’s eyes? Creepy, that’s what I’m tellin’ you. You can tell how weird they are, just by lookin’ in their eyes.

    And you know what stereotypes do? Shit man, I can’t even talk about it it’s so disgusting. Trust me. Those stereotypes got no reason to live. God don’t like no stereotypes.

    Somebody’s gotta DO somethin’ about all the damned stereotypes. They’re friggin’ EVERYwhere. Can’t get away from ‘em no matter where you go. There oughta be a law.

    What’s that? Nah, you lie. You’re a stereotype. You say I am a stereotype? No way. I’m original and real. I’m pretty sure. Stereotype. Me? Nope, I’m the chosen one. God don’t choose no stereotypes.

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    1. So true that it's almost funny. We are stereotypes but you Leland are definitely an original!

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    2. Perfect use of humour to make a real and even angry point. Satire, in other words. Thanks for this, Leland.

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  10. I once thought the monsters only lived in my head but they never stop coming. Relentless by nature they stalk us. Growing in number every day, learning our strengths, taking advantage of whatever they see as a weakness. These creatures will never stop because we are them & feeding the beast is human nature.

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    1. Bam. Mad power. Short and hard. I like it.

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    2. She writes with a creative force--no weakness here! Wonderful and succinct.

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    3. Yeah, short but loaded with impact.

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  11. He let himself go, opening his emotional floodgates. The woman was just another woman. A car-park attendant with a musical ear. He'd heard her voice through the windows of his car: a tune he knew well but an obscure one nonetheless.

    "That's Hong Kong Garden, isn't it?" he said, opening the door to his Ford.

    The woman looked puzzled. Guilty almost. Maybe she hadn't even noticed that she'd been singing aloud. But he'd the hearing of a hawk, his mind quick to identify the melody of almost every tune he'd heard since he was a boy. It was almost a super-sense for him.

    "It was Siouxsie and the Banshees. Very late seventies, wasn't it?"

    The attendant smiled uneasily, nodding. "Yes," she said. "I heard it less than an hour ago. It was on a quiz on the radio. It's become a bit of an ear-worm." She shrugged. "I can't stop myself."

    He closed the door behind him, blipping the locks on the doors. The mirrors swung back, flattening themselves back against the windows on the doors. "Maybe you should give Rick Astley a try? Substitute one ear-worm for another?" He stepped closer, looking more closely at the woman. She was grey-haired and petite, her uniform suiting her well. She had a nice smile too, now that he'd broken the ice.

    "I know that this sounds corny," he said, smiling back at her reassuringly, consciously mirroring her behaviour. "But you seem very pleasant and I'm here until tomorrow. Maybe you'd like to compare memories for a while when you finish your shift here? I've a meeting at the university tomorrow and no plans for the evening. I could buy you a drink and we could see where things lead after that. A meal perhaps? You no doubt know where the best places in town are. I'm hopeless; if it's not a big name place I'd not have a clue!"

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    1. What a smooth operator you are! LOL

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    2. Ha! Uh-oh, I got "Never Gonna Give You Up" stuck in my head now. I should add a link and rickroll you, Morris! ;)

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  12. “I don’t understand why you are so against this!”

    “Why wouldn’t I be?!” He jerked the tie from around his neck and tossed it carelessly in the direction of the basket. His aim was terrible, but then he knew she would always be there to pick it up for him so he didn’t have to try.

    “I have a college degree. It feels like a waste to not use it. I could be doing something meaningful with my life.” She picked up the tie and sat down on the window seat. “Instead, I spend my days picking up your laundry and tidying up after you. I make meals neither one of us wants to eat. I feel useless. I want something for me. Why can’t you understand that?”

    “I worked hard all these years to give you this home,” he gestured to the four-poster bed suit that cost as much as her first car, “to make a good living so you can have nice things. We don’t need the money! Why go back to work now?”

    She tossed the tie in the basket, walked over to her dressing table and leaned on it. The dressing table he insisted she get because the mother of some rich college kid he went home with one Christmas had one. She straightened up a stray makeup brush before she spoke. “It’s not about the money.”

    He sat on the edge of the bed taking off his shoes and socks. “Then what is it about?”

    She found it hard to put into words. She felt empty inside. In her effort to create a life that felt safe, she had bartered away all the good parts of herself, all the parts that made her interesting and fun to be around. She gave away her independence for financial security. She subjugated her opinions to those around her to keep the peace. She stopped making decisions based on what she wanted. His needs always seemed to matter more. Somehow she had given all the best parts of herself away to create this life she now doesn’t even want.

    “I want to be able to look back on my life and say I made a difference. That people’s lives were better because I was there. I was a part of it. I want to be able to help people who are struggling find a better life. Why is that so hard to understand?”

    He stood up, walked over to her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Well, you make a difference to me. Isn’t that enough?” He kissed her on the forehead then left her standing as he went to turn on the shower.

    She stood in the middle of the bedroom, his clothes strewn around her on the floor, and watched him walk away from her before she had a chance to answer.

    “No, it’s not.” But she knew he wouldn’t hear her. He never did.

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    1. Oh no!! Someday she'll make him listen--she has to! Loved it and hope you continue with these interesting characters.

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    2. Quietly heartbreaking. The fact that men and women still relate in this way, that male privilege allows it, all of it. But a wonderfully paced portrayal of that.

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  13. She was window shopping. Except she wasn't.

    She seemed almost to glide down the wide street with its mid twentieth century storefronts and angled parking on both sides.

    Her gaze was downcast but occasionally flickered upward, from demure to shrewd in an instant. She was using the windows as mirrors, vigilant as a Serengeti ungulate. Somewhere in the great unfurled blanket of America her foes made headway, through fields of corn, along dusty back roads, cold and relentless in the mountain passes, their gait steady and their footfalls unbroken, their antennae quivering like seismic needles.

    Eyes on the glass where her own reflection lay superimposed on a naked pink mannequin, she collided with someone. A kid.

    "Whoa, sorry, ma'am," he said. A polite kid. Twelve or so.

    "It's okay, son," she mumbled and went to pass him.

    "You ain't from here, are you?"

    "No, I ain't. But I must be going on my way, young man. Please let me by."

    "I know about you. I hear the same sounds you do."

    Her dark skin rippled with ice. Her scalp crawled with invisible ants. It felt to her as if she'd woken from a nightmare, only to find the neighbour was a killer while all the time she'd been wary of the parade of furtive strangers who passed her home. No, worse. She had no idea which one of those things was true.

    ***

    They found the body of the young boy out in the desert. Shallow was too kind a word for the rudimentary grave. Facile would be more the truth. He had been strangled to death and before the authorities could perform their cleanup the turkey buzzards had dined on parts of him.

    Only the coyotes had watched his killer dispose of him, and their stories that night danced with horror and glee, carried on a slight breeze to the ears of nearby farmers but never rendered into any human tongue.

    ***

    There came the sound of distant marching from across the plain. Surefooted, purposeful. The sun had slid below the far off hills and the overhead blackness met the opalescence of an oyster sky through varying shades of blue. The evening was so still and quiet that the marching seemed amplified, as if a great army was striding at impossible speeds, a renegade army intent on something appalling, for when does an army ever intend otherwise?

    ***

    "The arc of history makes this a momentous time. The predators just became prey and they will be more angry now, not less. They will place the blame on their prey. In the parlance of our times, they will double down. Be vigilant, my sisters and my brothers. Do not allow them to pervert the tale, as it's a tale of hard truth and deep pain like no other. Now go, and hear my words echo in your hearts as you walk the sorrowful roads of this vast land."

    The people gathered in the park left in small groups. Something about the old man felt right. Some said he was a prophet. Some had yet wilder theories. Some scratched their heads and abandoned conjecture in favour of beer and music and the loving warm arms of their companions.

    Only the stars and the fireflies knew for sure, and neither was telling.

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    1. and those invisible ants! Loved the build up about the predators becoming prey and then telling us it was in a park--did the woman in the first section live near the park?

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    2. beautiful... and the last line is pure magic....

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    3. Okay, I don't normally do this as it's no longer my baby once it's sent out there in the world.

      But my take is this: The main female character is a black woman trapped in a white environment somewhere in the South. After experiencing the worst that white America has visited on her, her family, her friends, her community, her race, she can no longer tell whether her perspective is real or paranoia. Hence her terror when the young boy tells her he feels her pain, essentially. She can't trust him, so she kills him. But the advancing army she imagines she's hiding from is, in some way, perhaps not literal, real, and the wise old man in the park is there to warn everyone of this fact. That when the predators become the prey, however briefly, they hit back all the harder.

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  14. I never think about Chicago, not anymore. Except like today, when I catch the scent of it on the Midwestern wind. War has a scent to it, like tear gas and patchouli, testosterone and blood, gunpowder and sandalwood and sweat and trampled earth; the unameable smell of ozone in the air. It stirs an ancient memory, sets off a longing, like a drug addict’s Jones, stirring the soul with a yearning for power or freedom or change or righting some wrong. The drumbeats feel like heartbeats, the anthems ring out clear, “If I had a hammer, let freedom ring; the speeches and the rally cries, you’re sure you’re doing the right thing. But at least, you’re here.”
    But when blood runs on the asphalt. It’s not different from an oil slick, it’s dark like pudding and pollutes. The wings of freedom get trapped inside our duty/versus favorite picks.
    When do we abandon us against them? When do we lose our lust to win?
    Can we stop being righteous
    And learn it’s about Just Us?
    Can we stop talking sides
    In order to WIN?


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    1. What a great cry to rally together. I loved this--I want to sing. Shades of Whitman.

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  15. Many years after that Zapruder film, I remember marching out to the middle of campus and singing Bob Dylan’s song, ‘Blowing in the Wind’. It was the middle of the Vietnam War. Then a few hours later while reading poetry, we had a Cold War drill and dove under our desks. The answers are blowing in the wind ever since the sixties. Blood is the same color but it moves around flowing from sea to shining sea above the gulf into Dallas. My parents took us on vacation and showed us Dealey plaza. They pointed out the sixth floor of the Texas School book depository and the X on the spot near Elm Street. All I wanted to do was go swimming in the Holiday Inn pool.
    Hate is the same. I describe hate as unyielding, unforgiving and unnatural--the opposite of love. The people want to uphold the second amendment –they have rights but this is where my description is limited. Lot of years since the sixties but you should ask one of those vampire authors for a description. They write bestsellers about this stuff. I think blood is red for example-- but they know it as crimson. Could have something to do with the heat—maybe the wind....

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    1. And to bring it all full circle, Dylan stole the melody for "Blowing in the Wind" from the anti-slavery African-American spiritual "No More Auction Block."

      Thanks for this, Eve.

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