2 Minutes. Go!

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.

If it were a face, you'd punch it. If it were a memory, it might be that one afternoon by the beach when the beer was cold and, somehow, you were charming. If it were a nightmare, it would be one continuous scream of blood - sinew, flesh hanging from spiked parapets. 

If it were a puppy, you'd hold a sock in front of it's face and you'd laugh. You'd fucking chuckle. If this were a western, you'd win a belt buckle. Bucko.

If it were a woman, you'd treat her just well enough that she wouldn't leave you because that's what your Deddy taught you to do. It it were a religion, you'd be handling snakes...

Before you pass the poluck plates. 

If it were real misery, it would be one thought repeating: one thought, one thought, one thought, one thought. Until it fucking drives you insane. Until you'd do anything; any chemical to the brain. 

Better than a bullet?

If it were an animal at the zoo, it would be the lion with the bad leg that fucking no one ever goes near. 

If it were an emotion, it would live next to fear. So near. Close enough to keep an eye on it, but always slipping into shadows...

Vapor.

The Butcher. The Baker. The Candy-ass faker.

#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... 

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.

This is the thing you do to still your mind. You put your fingers where you know your fingers go, and you just do your thing. Flow. Don’t worry about it until somehow you’re ahead of it and even you can’t explain how it works. Or why. But it does work. And it’s always there. In any kind of whether. That’s not a typo. Don’t do that. I’m trying to tell you what it means. It’s important … for you to have a place you can plug your brain into that just empties everything out. Sometimes, it twirls it up real nice or paints it out extra pretty. But it pretty much just gets it out. And it is the thing that stills your mind. Because, when you’re doing it, you barely have time to think about anything. You’re only thinking about like seven things. Tops.

Which is nothing for you.

Don’t try to tell me about fear of the blank page. Maybe that excuse works for you. Not me. The blank page is an invitation – freshly fallen snow waiting for boot prints. Let’s go make a snowman. Maybe that’s how you still your mind, and that’s just fine with me. Whatever gets you to where you need to be. As long as it doesn’t hurt me. I’ll hurt myself – type it out and put it on the shelf. Someday, people will wonder why the fuck I bothered. If I’m lucky. But this isn’t about me. It’s not about you. POV can be tricky – trying to force someone else’s foot into your old busted shoe.

This is the place you come to celebrate. It’s also the place you come to mourn, grieve, rant, explode – fuck that snow up any way you want. That’s the beauty of it. You want to build an ice castle? Fucking do it. You want to track bloody, muddy footprints through the snow? Do that, too. Folks will judge you, say you have a twisted imagination. Meanwhile they glue themselves to screens charting our nation’s disintegration.

We’re all just stumbling along. You might find it on that blank page. You might find it in a song. You might find it on a field or in a stream or a streaming movie, but it’s always been there. All along. You gotta look for it. That’s the tricky part. You put your ass in the seat, wherever or whatever that may mean – literal or metaphorical – you show up and you plug yourself into whatever brain-reset device you prefer. I gotta warn you, though, some resets are rougher than others. And when I say I gotta warn you, I might be saying that if I had a time machine, I’d go give the young, pissed-off me a little advice. But he wouldn’t have listened. So, why should you?

Such silly, human things we do.

It’s time to leave now. To unstill my mind. To let the hornets back into the hive. You? You do whatever feels right. Them? I’m not responsible for them. I hold myself accountable to this blank page which I have sullied with my pseudo-intellectual snow fort. You can come play with me if you want. But you better bring a lot of snowballs. And don’t tell me you couldn’t make them. Because anyone can make a snowball. It may suck, but you can do it. 

If you try.

#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... 

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.

1,2,3,4 ... you are chicken.

You could feel their eyes on you. Hear them whispering. He won’t do it. He’s chicken. C’mon chicken – on the count of four. One, two, three, four …

And then it was red and black. Eyes closed tight, but the sun shone through. You jammed your fists into your eyeballs to add some sparkle to the red and black background. You could still hear them. You did not close your ears. Even if you could, you would still hear the voices.

One…two…three…four…YOU ARE CHICKEN!

And it hurt. And you didn’t like it, but you looked up at them and made the clucking sound and then they were laughing. Somehow, the laughter hurt worse than the teasing, but at least it seemed somewhat normal. Look at me! I am a human boy with people who must be my friends because I clucked like a chicken and they laughed.

You didn’t buy it. But you didn’t deny it. Pantomime shit. It got you through the night and it was everything. Getting through was everything. Bobbing and weaving and dodging what you could. Taking most of it straight to the brain. To the heart. Hearing them counting.

One, two, three, four…

Why are your pants ripped? What happened to your hand,? How come it’s all purple? Why do you flinch every time I talk to you? Are you getting in trouble at school? Do I need to call your teacher?

One, two, three, four…

Maybe you should just cluck at everyone. The kids at school. Your mom at home. Just own it. Become the chicken boy. Pluck your own feathers for fun. Let them plunge a knife into your breast. Something Shakespearian in that.

The Bard knew all about bullies.

Smart chicken.

#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... 

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.

Open Bracket, Closed Bracket.

I don’t want to be fenced in. Literally or metaphorically. I don’t want you telling me where to stand or what the barriers are. I’ll just try to climb out and find a place less confining. That’s me, undermining. And I understand that your intentions may be good, but let’s not be misunderstood. You have an agenda or I wouldn’t be braced and bracketed, lectured and straight-jacketed.

Don’t tell me the barrier is there for my protection.

Can’t you just open things up a little bit? Can’t you just give one tiny little shit? Or admit. That I might know something and that we might be able to govern ourselves with a little guidance. We’re pretty astute.

Keep me out of your cattle chute.

I like ellipses. Lots of freedom there. You can go damn near anywhere. Brackets? They lock you in and the walls get thin and you start thinking … where did it all begin? I’ve got my beginning. I’ve got my end. But it isn’t providing any insights and, lord knows, I try to listen.

I try to keep things open and keep the ellipses flowing. But the bracket police are always right around the corner. Get back inside where you belong! But I want to smell the wildflowers, how can that be wrong?

I’m going to stop using periods. Every sentence will end with those three beautiful dots – every action open to interpretation and extended periods of thought. You can keep your brackets. You may be selling, but I can’t be bought.

The silence after the music stops…

It’s quieter than everything you’ve ever heard before. It’s more than silence. Because there’s no noise, but there are also ideas and colors and pictures shooting through your brain like crazy bees. Sometimes, they hide epiphanies. If you’re open to it, you can pull out a symphony.

Because I’m all about extending that song and that silence. I’ll keep it going and going. Until the next song starts and sometimes even after that. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and that’s why I like it so much.

Some people start talking right when a song ends, and it drives me crazy. I want to say, “hey man, you’re missing the best part.” But I know you’ll just say that the best part is done. The song is over. And I can talk for hours about those few silent pulses after the last chord rings out. I’m not going to be able to convince you. And I don’t have the energy to try.

Go ahead and talk over the end – I’ll just start at the beginning and play the whole thing again. Call me stubborn; I’ve been called worse. And I know some people understand. You can see them everywhere you go. They get that thoughtful look on a shy-smiling face. And you just know. They’re in that place. 

That silence after the music stops.

#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... 

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 water ran thick and fast, brown like chocolate milk. Bobby looked at the water with wonder and fear. Above him, he heard an eagle cry. The eagle was not happy with the water. Nothing was happy with the water. Adults watched the news and talked about rising floodwaters. They saw images of the massive flow tearing trees from the banks of the river they had all trusted. It was shocking on television. It was downright terrifying in person.

Bobby knew this stretch of water well; he had fished it for years. Normally, you could throw a spinnerbait across to the other bank if the wind was working in your favor. Now, the other bank was a ghost, devoured by the appetite of the water. He would not be able to throw a lure even halfway, and, if he did have his rod, he wouldn’t have attempted to throw anything in the water. It would be an insult. And there was a part of him that was convinced the water would pull him in, too.

Most people weren’t worried about the fish, but Bobby was. He tried to think about it rationally. He knew that things like this happened. He knew that Mother Nature tended to take care of her own. But he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on beneath the turmoil on the surface. What do you think with your tiny fish brain when the slow, clear water you are used to is turned into a churning nightmare?

He wanted to reassure them. And he was too young to realize that this meant he really wanted to reassure himself. Sure, folks were losing their homes. Jeremy’s trailer was already gone. Somewhere downriver. They’d never find it. Bits and pieces of it would wash up on the shore miles and miles away. He wondered about the baseball trophy they’d won. Maybe a big bass would eat it. Maybe it would be lodged in a tree or picked up by the frustrated eagle trying in vain to spot something shiny in the chocolate sludge.

He knew it was time to head home – there was talk of evacuation even in his neighborhood now. His mother would be worried sick, but he’d needed to come look at the water. The water had always been there for him. It wouldn’t be right to abandon it without so much as a goodbye.

The sun was dropping now, and Bobby picked up a long stick. He threw it into the river where it promptly disappeared, end over end, sucked into the maelstrom and confusion. He tried not to imagine that it was a house, a trailer, a car that was in the wrong place at the wrong time - maybe with someone trapped inside it.

He tried, but he failed. 

#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...