2 Minutes. Go!

#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...#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...

I am the blood from the slaughter. I am the glint off the huckster’s gold tooth. I am the sound of time imploding. I am filled with obsessive thoughts that bounce around inside my skull like buckshot. I am relatively strong for a weakling. I am relatively brave for a coward. I am the one that people seek out, and I don’t know why. I have been marked, but I don’t know where the mark is.

I am nailed to a cross of indifference. I’m fucking my life up fine without your interference. I am not a spy. I am not a crook. I have no security clearance. I’ll never be everything you want me to be, even if you give me a fair chance. Apathy and spite make everything right.

I am right. You are wrong. Care to dance?

I am a vessel of hypocrisy. I smell like old clothes. I hate myself, but not as much as I hate the rest of you. It could be worse. There’s that. There’s always that. Things could be worse. I have a shitty car and first world problems, but I don’t have dysentery. Not even a little bit.

I look at the sky and think pretentious things. I say things I think I believe and try to pretend I’m not pretending. I am my own harshest critic, and I cut myself way too much slack. I try to be good at the things that really matter and fuck everything else.

I’m a good dad. There’s that.

I am selfish and churlish and full of shit. I am the all-knowing jackass in the back of the room, throwing paper airplanes and making sarcastic comments. I am flip and arrogant. I know. A nun told me. In tears.

It was quite a day. Hell of an event.

I am too smart for my own good and too stupid to do the smart thing. I am just smart enough to always make the wrong decision, even if it is the right one. I am tired of the first person. I hate writing in it. I’m not fond of living in it. I’d rather live in the second person and talk about your stupid ass.

I’m not blind to my faults. I might be blind to my strengths. I might have more of one than the other, but I’m not saying. I am an explosion of red-winged blackbirds over a sunlit field. I am the bobber riding the gentle waves on the water’s surface. Potential? Stasis? It all depends on how you look at it. Aces.

I’m NOT a racist. There’s that.

I don’t care who you have sex with. Your sex life is none of my business. Do your thing.

I am scared, and I know you are scared. I keep telling myself things will be OK, but I’m not so sure I believe it. I’m afraid to check my mailbox ‘cause it might explode. I don’t know who I’ve pissed off – probably a lot of people. I’m small change. I’m nothing. I don’t even warrant an exploding mailbox.

I’m the guy that wrote all those books you tell yourself you’re going to read and never do. I’m the guy you expect to be really interested in your stupid job. The irony is not lost on me. But I don’t say a word.

Blasphemy.

I am typing these words that don’t even matter. They used to matter to me. I’m not sure anything matters anymore. I’m that guy glued to the news, masochistic chatters.

I don’t want to be a statistic. That would mean I exist and shit.

I want to be the puff of dust from a heron’s feet as it lifts into the warm air, searching for safer places to hunt. I am always aware. I am not so different from myself. You are me and everything else fits neatly on the shelf. Right beside your bowling trophy and your overflowing ashtray. Right where the books would be if you were more like me.

Don’t be like me. It’s not working out the way I thought it would, G.

#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...#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 stream is maybe eight feet wide, but it’s deep under the tree on the opposite bank. You can see the bottom in your mind. You’ve mapped it out with lost lures and broken line and fish caught and released. You probably don’t have it perfect, but I bet you’re closer than you think. It’s been many years. You’ve stood, braced against the rushing water, for many hours. There are brookies in the stream. And you know where to find them. That seems both just and unjust.

So many things do.

But, today, it doesn’t matter. You don’t care about the fish; it’s about the ritual. Because the old man is dead, and that doesn’t make any kind of sense. But he wouldn’t want you listening to some bullshit preacher talking doggerel and nonsense. He’d want you here on the stream. And it’s where you can still feel him beside you. Still smell the cigars he smoked to keep the bugs away – even when there wasn’t a bug in sight. 

Sometimes, you gotta hold your vices tight.

You flip the bait into an eddy and watch it dance for a second before it sinks. Your finger on the line – you’ve done this a hundred times. A thousand. A million? A lot. A whole fucking lot. And this was the old man’s favorite spot. So, it is both surprising and expected when you feel the tap, tap, tap on the line. You set the hook gently, and then it’s all focus. Time disappears and it could have been thirty seconds or a minute, but suddenly you got a nice little brookie finning by your boot and, for a second, you don’t know what to do.

And that makes no sense. Until you think about it.

Who are you going to tell when you’re packing up the car? Who’s going to give a shit about one fish – even though the colors were so deep? So rich. No one cares. It’s just a fish. But he would have cared. He would have asked if you’d taken the barbs down. How much of the hook did the fish get? Did you have to take her out of the water?

The car is waiting where you left it, but it’s a truck because it’s yours. It’s not an old, brown Dodge Colt. It doesn’t smell like horehound. It doesn’t smell like anything. There are a few worms left in the can on your belt and you dump them by the car. Strictly for the birds. You hear him say it. And that’s enough. 

It’s a damn sight more than you would have gotten at church.

#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.

BTW, I debated not doing it this week. But Rich would have thought that was stupid as shit. RIP, brother.


Of course the sun sets at a different time down by the water, glistening. You see them damn hills? They say there's gold, but I sure haven't found any. I've found wisps of time and goodness. I've lived years of horror over the years. And years of horror in a day. This isn't a competition, no, it's just the American way. And I'll bite my tongue as my daughter pledges her allegiance to something when she doesn't even know what that means. I can't wait until she's old enough to get my point. 

But there are so many things to be angry about, and you gotta glance at 'em sideways to see how it's funny.

See a woman in the ER screaming in pain. Feel the cold heat of the white. The goddamn white. Beds, shoes, clothes. Everything is white, and it's terrifying. And the woman is cold, shivering. And the doctor is twelve and you about shit yourself. And the woman's red dress stands out, stark. Like a blood clot. And she screams and it sounds like some kind of divine torture you don't understand. And you recoil, filled with a morbid fascination, as the doctor raises high in the air - fresh from the woman's vagina - a tiny Velociraptor, inert and silly in its plasticity.

And the doctor looks at you. And says: it's not real. And you laugh.

I know, you say. Ya maroon.

#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...