Friday, March 31, 2017

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.

I wish the world had a big-ass volume knob, old school, like the one on your grandpa's belching radio. The kind you can use to silence everything with one sweep of the hand. I'm getting tired of turning the world down one click at a time. I'm sick of having injustice shoved into my brain - it's too damn loud.

If I see another phony smile filled with thousands of dollars worth of dental work, I might just have to send someone back to the dentist. I won't stoop to the level of the lying masses, though. 

Free passes or no. It's just not worth it. 

There are only so many hours you can spend, neck-cricked, staring at ceiling tiles and wondering. It makes you the wrong kind of angry. Not a productive angry. An angry that ricochets inside you, leaving vast areas of hurt and damage. You can't let the anger out, though. Got to keep it bottled up like fireflies that burn your retinas. Mutant fireflies. They burn like napalm.

Big suckers.

I'll stand and let the wind wash me, but that only works for the outside. How do I blow away the anger? How do I stop reading about terrified people living terrifying lives and then go about my business living mine? How can you do that? Doesn't it chafe at you? Aren't you rubbed raw yet?

I imagine myself at the top of a mountain, ready to fly. To stoop like a falcon and let the wind buffet me. Let it shake me so hard that I can't even hold onto a thought. 

I know I got on the ride, but now I want a refund for the ticket I bought. 

Snake oil, endless toil, polluted soil. Well, well. Haven't we learned a goddamn thing? My four year old knows more than most of the adults I know. Be kind. Clean up your things. Don't lie. Never, ever lie. 

That's the one I can't understand. The smallest transgressions leave me guilt-ridden for days. Hell, I beat the shit out of myself on a regular basis for things so inconsequential that even I know I'm being crazy, losing my grip. 

What can I say, I was born into the middle of a cross-country guilt trip. 

But the lying. Is it that some folks don't have that inner cricket? Or is it more than that - a sticky wicket? Are we even playing by the same rules? Are we even in the same game? Does it matter? 

I think it does.

It takes a little man to attack with petty grievances. To lash out at those who have the audacity to try to tell the truth. The truth makes you uncomfortable? The truth makes everyone uncomfortable. That's part of the reason it's so important. 


Seems to me like there are too many folks happy being comfortable. And you can argue and try to dissuade. Shuck and grin while you plan how to use your vacation days. You can hold on and tell yourself that you'll be safe as long as you keep your head down. It won't work. We're all fucked. And I'm not burying my head in the sand. 

If it's going to happen I want to see it coming. Maybe then I'll understand.

#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...

Friday, March 24, 2017

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.

You can get as mad as you want - hell, your head can explode and I'm not going to be able to stop laughing, I know that, laughing like the goddamn devil handed me a plate of fancy cheeses.

It will start off with a chuffing, a goofy grin I can't control. While you intertwine your features, yearning to be droll. 

Then a chuckle played off as a cough. Gentle. Soft. 

But there's a point where, Jesus Christ, you'd have to have no fucking soul not to laugh at that. A man puts himself on a pedestal so high. And I don't claim any physical rigor, but I'm two minutes quick on the flash fiction trigger.

So, that's why I'm laughing. That's all I wanted to say. It's like the whole world's goldfinches, and you're a mangy old jay. 

#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...

Friday, March 17, 2017

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.

He couldn't stand the noise. The noise is what did it. And it wasn't even an awful noise - no scraping, screeching horror. Hell, he'd liked the noise at first, but it never stopped. It never fucking stopped. In white-trimmed sitting rooms with sheer window dressings and fancy couches, the noise ate at him, making him question his resolve, his sanity.

And he laughed and smiled with the rest, well-dressed. He presented a good public figure. He was loved by all, but, sometimes, in a twitch of moonlight, his mouth would twist - and you could see that it was winning. 


No one else heard it. That was the rub of it. He'd established that quickly and then clammed up so as not to sound crazy. He had to pretend that nothing was wrong. 

That he couldn't hear it.

And that is how we find him here, wrapped around a bottle of whiskey, naked, with both guns in reach - praying. He's damn near begging. 


"Something stop the noise."


#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...

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Mirrors

It's hard to see what you really look like. Sometimes, the mirror is forgiving; sometimes it's a magnifying glass for everything you hate about yourself. Sometimes, it makes you wish you could live forever. Sometimes it makes you wish that you were alone so you could drift off into an endless blackness, guilt free.

Those are the hard times. Because you know - you can smash the mirror and scatter the feeling. The shards will be so sharp your blood will reach the ceiling. And that's something. That reach. At least you leave a mark - until the landlord sends in the poor cleaning women with their buckets of bleach.

They won't get all the stains, but enough for another whitewash refrain. The new tenant will never hear the echoes of pain.

Then there're funhouse mirrors. They don't mean shit to anybody. They twist us up inside and out. Make us wonder what we're all about.

I'm gonna start carrying a hammer. Smash every fucking mirror I come across. Keep bitching, build myself a cross. Don't be cross. I'm in charge of me. And calling it your job don't make it right. Boss.

See?

Writing is a weird addiction. So much lost in the brittle friction. You open too many veins, and you never see the mirror straight again. That's the deal you make. Most times you lose. Occasionally, you win.

Is there a color blacker than black? I want the kind of black where I can't see my fist coming. I want to punch the walls until my fingers splinter. Sew my mouth shut so I can't talk anymore. You don't even know me, and you think I'm a bore?

Imagine how I feel.

Who's to know what's fake and what's real? Who's cares anyway?

Maybe this would all be easier if I could start over. Get super interested in college football or barbecuing.

You can watch football with crushed hands.

If you're reading this, you should hate it. I do. A grown man should have something better to do. Some kind of legacy. Something true. Something true that matters. Some garnish for the plate. I'd go back in time and get into real estate, but it's too damn late.

And the worst part? I'll tell my girls to do things that are meaningful to them. And they might end up in the exact same place I'm in, bitter and running out of time. But at least they could take their kids to Disneyland.

All the other kids go. And the adults I know? It's only a few thousand dollars...

Motherfucker, please. I feel guilty when I buy a burrito. Something tells me I wouldn't enjoy the Mickey they slip you at the princess show.

No mirrors for me. That's the lesson here. I want to be a hermit crab. I want to smell like seaweed and move from shell to shell so no one can recognize me.  Maybe go back in time and convince some corrupt "doctor" to lobotomize me.

I tried doing it myself, but it didn't take.

Let's take a moment, count the mistakes. Unable to provide for family? Check. Unable to grin when others do? Got that going on, too. And I never have been able to smile through the bile. Lord knows what that's cost me.

I've never understood why Van Gogh would cut off an ear. Seems insincere. I'd gouge my eyes out so I'd never see another mirror.

Don't sweat it. It's all a joke, and you don't get it. Neither do I. And that's fine.

Never trust a punch line.

Friday, March 10, 2017

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.

It's hard to see underneath all that paint, but the house is cramped and broken. New, but crippled from it's infancy with a kind of fake cheer and chipped veneer. Like something is just off - you can stare at it and look into it and you see great expanses of black. You fear the house, but you are not afraid of it. You are sorry for the world. 

That God saw fit to make such a girl.

And you can clean the cobwebs from the corners. You can decorate and make it sparkle, but it's still a squat little house bulging at the seams. Moving, ever so slowly, to a place where only sociopaths dream. There is a path to the house. 

She would do anything to take it.

The neighbors won't even walk by. They don't talk about it. The other houses smile and grin and close their shutters. Try to avoid the collateral damage of the repugnancy which is bringing down the market value. 


The fucking market value

And still, forever more, until collapse, the house will sit on the top of a hill that doesn't deserve to be called a hill. The colors will be too garish. Birds will stunt and flutter at the proximity. Rain will swerve around it. 

Because she has the kind of blankness that makes you shudder. 

Board the shutters.

#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...

Friday, March 3, 2017

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.

I awoke to the rumble of a country train, standing in the shadows of a subtle summer rain. It's a place I know well. A place I go to all the time - sometimes in reality, but mostly in my mind. But I can see it. Most of my internal wanderings lead me to dark, blurred, and confusing places, but there is only birdsong and tranquility under the watchful gaze of the train at the place where the stream runs through. 

I'll show it to you.

You need to go under the tracks to get to the hole, and you can fish under the tracks, but I've never caught anything there except backstory and proclamations. Small scratches and paint sprays that are still rural enough to be about love, written in a teenager's hand. 


I am convinced that, someday, I will catch a monster under that bridge, so I stay a while, longer if it's hot, but there is often a light rain. Why? I don't know. Perhaps the fish gods know that I don't visit the bend by the railroad bridge with any evil intent. I visit with barbless hooks, and I walk slowly. And I never allow myself more than four fish.

When you step out of the bridge's shadow, you see the bend. On the right, treefall and chaos. Swirling eddies and it looks just about impossible to fish. 


It's not.

You can sink a piece of corn, a fly, a worm - you can let the eddy dance it round, on the surface or deeper down. And you will catch trout. And you will always, always miss one fish. Or catch it and break your line off. No doubt at all - under the limbs that reach out like spectral fingers into the black water ... there are fish in there that can stop your heart. 


The water is as clear as my thoughts are muddied, half awake. The water under the tree is deep. Deeper than you want to find out the hard way, so stay back. The stream is about fifteen feet across and there is a canopy of trees. I like to fish the bend in winter most of all, when there is snow, and the trees match my mood. 

Past the tree, the water flows gently and careful casts will let you swing your bait around the corner, and you can catch trout all day. Sometimes rainbows - most of the time, this is where the brook trout go to play. And they seem to know that I won't hurt them. That I just want to say hello and then send them home. 

You can hear the train from a good ways off and, when it passes, the thunder is inside you, but it doesn't faze the fish. They are used to it. The fish at the bend by the railroad track know the rhythm as sure as they know that I'll always be coming back.

Dream or not, that stream is waiting. The trains are running and time is irrelevant. The fish are steady, and every pause is pregnant. It is a real place, I promise you. I can see it clear as the pure water I splash onto my face on warm days.

Now, it is time to go to work, the dream's already fading. But I know it will be there. Always. Waiting.


#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...