Musings Over A Plate Of Fish And Chips

            Fry with ketchup, fry with tartar sauce, fish with tartar sauce, but never ketchup on fish. Naturally – a fish doesn’t know what a tomato is. Maybe we could adapt the tomato plant so that it could grow under water. Whole plantations on the ocean floor when the dry land is all being used for cities and strip malls. Rednecks become wetnecks; seasons are irrelevant. I imagine great movements would clamor for a complete return to the waters from whence we sprang millennia ago. Would it be devolution or a return to our roots? And where would the farmers go next? 

The World

            The world, now that’s a big place. You got oceans, you got continents, you got the atmosphere. All of it spreadin’ out in a hundred directions, a hundred reflections, and you just got things everywhere. I mean just look at a map, man. Things everywhere. I don’ know bout you, but I sure feel better knowin’ that Eustis Maine exists out there. It’s real, physical, lyrical, know what I mean? Only thing is, unless I’m standin’ on Eustis it’s just an abstraction, just a contraption. Only thing real is the patches my feet touch down on. Still, the world’s real.

The Umpteenth Try: A Play

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the fourth try.

[Crowd cheers.]

Branius [screaming]: Godmaker! Since I last stood here I have been to the end of the earth!

Godmaker [placed on a round dirt island in a miniature lake, sitting on a wood chair]: Three words, then.

[Branius is outraged, but collects himself.]

Branius: Infinity. Murk. Clamshell.

[Godmaker shakes head slowly.]

Branius: Wh-

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the umpteenth try.

[Crowd reaches for peanuts.]

Timothy: Please?

Godmaker [scratching his arm]: This time, a defense. A lawyer’s defense.

Timothy [clasping his old hands]: Please.

Godmaker: Anything else?

[Silence.]

Godmaker: OK. Perhaps next try.

On The Same Level

The moment I walked in my room, terror seized my entire body. There was a wasp the size of my teacher’s face mole, buzzing around frantically in circles. It was big, black, and heinous. And it was in my room, and it was accelerating. I remained still. Could it smell my fear? Did it know I had never been stung before? Now, it was banging up against the window ferociously. It just wanted so desperately to get out as much as I wanted it out. And so I opened the window, and let it buzz along into the spring sunlight.

Some more 10 word stories

1. Chew. Swallow. Chew, chew. Swallow. Take a walk. Wait…Poop!
2. Mom said to make real friends. The teddy bear winked.
3. She fell. Arms in a cast. She met broken-leg-boy. Destiny.
4. The star saw the earth and fell down in ecstasy.
5. I wrote chapter one. Things still in progress. The End.
6. It found the sweet spot. The bastard sucked me dry.
7. Can’t sleep. Rum and milk. Now, I’m drunk and awake.
8. She shouted. He nodded. She left. The deaf man cried.
9. Tiny Tot crawled into the cupboard. In there, unimaginable possibilities.
10. How am I like a goldfish?! Wait, what’d you say?

Kelly, Just Like Me

            Kelly came out a tadpole in a green pond. All the tadpoles swam in contented circles.

            Kelly became a frog and pulled herself onto land. She learned to catch flies with her tongue and listened at night to the gravelly croaks of bullfrogs.

            Kelly thought of the green pond when she saw two mother frogs fight over a place to lay their eggs.

            Kelly gave in one night to a bullfrog.

            Kelly liked to swim, closing her eyes on the surface of the water. But soon she was filling with eggs and fighting for a laying spot of her own.

EndBac

She sprayed EndBac compulsively. If it could kill germs, it could do anything. Kill bugs, kill odors, deodorize armpits, clean sheets, the lot. EndBac was sanitization in a can. She thought.

But then she started getting welts all over her body. Her hair turned orange. Then she turned into a tiger. Wrong. She did not turn into a tiger. That would be stupid and pointless. But the EndBac did bleach her hair and burn her skin.

So she went to the doctor and told her what happened. Yes, it was a female doctor. Then the doctor turned into a unicorn.

Correlation ≠ causation

People assumed he had something to say. He just stood there looking expectant. The sky grumbled dissent with a passive-aggressive overcast pall. It spat a few plips on the pavement, but not enough to darken its color or change the air’s smell.

And still he stood. Microphone at chin, elbow crooked meekly, eyebrows raised in helplessness. More and more busy commuters gathered. If he were actually speaking, no one could have cared, but this was strange: a mute with a megaphone?

He coughed a little. People waited. He burst into tears and the sky opened up.

Everyone got wet.

Some get super powers, I get...

I was walking down the street one day when a truck carrying toxic waste swerved to avoid hitting another car. It toppled over like bulky cartons of milk. Except they were metal. And they hurt. Glug glug glug, toxic waste spilling all over me. Except I didn’t die. I woke up in the hospital. An anomally, I heard the doctors murmur. I tried to prop myself on my elbows, but instead of feeling the sterile hospital sheets under them, they thrust up into the air. I was all of a sudden aware of my body. And my head…was on backwards.

Just keep driving

It was four o’clock in the morning and I was driving these hooligans across the bridge to the city.

“RAGE! RAGE ON THE FREEWAY!” My friend stuck his head out the window.

Goddamnit. I had already been up for 42 hours and wasn’t really sure if I could handle driving over a large body of water on a flimsy piece of suspension-held concrete.

“LET’S GET SOME MUSIC ON IN HERE!” My friend starts dancing violently. He’s riding shotgun.

Just keep driving. Eyes on the bridge. Don’t pay attention to his dangerously close hip thrusts. It’s all good. Live a little.

Where Did It All Come From? Why Is It Here?

            Sometimes I go to the supermarket down the street and wander the aisles without a cart. Soon, even the plasticky hues of packaging look savory. Food is heaped in plethoras everywhere I find myself, from the stacks of fresh baked bread in a back corner to food from every continent frozen into position in cardboard boxes. All around me people walk down the aisles chatting through their cell phones, never seeming to see any of the delicious treats that their hands automatically feel out. I could spend fifteen lonely minutes looking through little plastic windows at peanut butter-filled pretzel pillows.

Fiction

            The sun fell slowly out of the window, leaving his desk in dark monochromes. Still his pen scratched the wanderings and ruminations of his main character, and with each twist in the plot the imagined man grew. He wrote of old men rooted into the sides of mountains and seductive women swaying in wheat fields.

            Finally he closed his desk and stumbled into the moonlit streets. Around him the street lamps towered into flaming torches and from a side street a dark woman emerged. He squinted and exclaimed, “I have just written you.” “I know,” she said, touching his collar.

Deal Breaker

Whaddaya say, Jonesy? I say we go down there and just do it. Once and for all, ya know? Whaddaya say? And then after that we can just go down to Rudy’s and have a pint with the fellas. It’ll be like nothing even ever happened. Aw c’mon Jonesy, don’t poop out on me now. I’m gonna hafta slap ya ‘round. Your father would be so proud o’ you right now. Don’t you wanna make your old man smile in his grave? Goddamnit, Jonesy. Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me do it. I don’t want to—[gunshot[. Godfuckin’ damnit.

Value of chickens

Let’s say you get some use-value out of the chicken. It can be direct, like eating chicken wings or indirect, like eating a wolf that ate the chicken. Or it can be non-consumptive, like chicken-watching as a hobby.

Maybe it’s non-use value. Like you are just really satisfied knowing that chickens exist in the world, even if you won’t ever use one. Or maybe it’s nice knowing you have the option to use it or watch it.

Or maybe the whole universe doesn’t revolve around humans. Nah. If you can’t eat, watch, pet, or play with chickens, there’s no point.

To Cure Cancer

            Harriet’s grandmother died from pancreatic cancer, so she decided to dedicate her life to finding a cure for the disease. She got to medical school before running out of money. “Be a nurse,” people said. “It’s much more practical.” She nodded and found a job at her hometown hospital, but she wasn’t motivated there. Her thoughts instead wandered to finding a way to shrink herself to do hand-to-hand battle with cancerous cells. A man recovering from a stroke found this out and asked her, “Why have a dream only for the sake of having a dream?” Aghast, she shrugged.

Sweet Thins

Multiple grains of goodness
Texture of baked deserts
And the ability
To placate the salt sensors
Of my insides
Those are the wheat thins though
And you
Pretty girl
Are my sweet thins
When we snack together each day
My sweet thins
Through the stars and sun’s return
Your lips are the salt
My body may have lost
And the yellow box
On my desk
Lists every ingredient
Like each was immediate
Grainy and good
Is what’s inside there
And outside in the air
Our words spin around
And around
And around
Around
Sweet thins
Swim around
In the air

Insert Cause Here

I’m gonna dance for 98 hours straight until I have to hold my eyelids open with toothpicks!
I’m gonna run fifty miles until my legs give out, I fall and I shave my kneecaps on the asphalt!
I’m gonna strut my stuff down the runway until the spray tan and five layers of makeup disintegrate my skin!
I’m gonna eat as many burgers and milkshakes as I can in four hours while trying super hard to suppress my gag reflex!
It’s gonna suck!
But remember, everything is for charity!
And if you support my cause, it’ll all be worth it!

Chill Out, Dude

“Hey dude, we should probably get going soon.”
“Yeah, I just need to get my jacket, hold your horses.”
“The horses aren’t rearing to go, it’s fine go get your jacket.”
“Whoa, what’s with all the hostility?”
“What? I’m totally calm. What are you talking about?”
“There’s really no need to raise your voice. Just chill out.”
“I’m completely chill. Will you please just go get your jacket already?”
“You don’t sound chill.”
“Goddamnit—“
“See! Profanity! You are so not chill.”
“SHUT UP and go get your jacket!”
“Okay, okay. Sheesh. Have you considered anger management?”
“Well, I will now.”

Remorse

Everyone was a whole lot nicer than Tom had imagined. This comforted him a little bit. After all, he was here. He was a normal guy from a normal city who had a normal job and well maybe having a wife in a vegetative state wasn’t so normal. And yes, that’s probably why he ended up here. He never thought of it that way, though. It seemed like an interminable sequence of events, the last culminating in his heroic (figurative) pulling of the plug. Well, there were worse places to rot away for the rest of your life, he supposed.

Lyrics

When the midnight looks all right
When the noontime takes flight
When your hands are the color
Of nuclear waste
 
Over the steeples and
Over the preachers
Over the beagles and
Over the sleepers
 
The miracles are under our feet
The miracles are underneath our feet
 
The nations are breaking scales
The banks can’t move the snails
Cuz everyone’s hands turned green
And you don’t care in the least
 
Into the corners and
Over the mourners
Around the borders and
Over the groaners
 
The miracles are under our feet
The miracles are underneath our feet
They are underneath the ground