Imagined Horrors

 

I imagine horrors.

Things too terrible for

polite poetry, run through

my mind as my anxiety

builds.

 

I am riddled with anxieties,

a side effect of the clinical

depression, which makes

doing things,

difficult.

 

The things I imagine happening,

are very unlikely to happen, yet

my mind has no problem creating

scenarios so disturbing I cannot

simply ignore them.

 

I would of course prefer not

to imagine my ears bleeding from a

ruptured ear drum, or slipping and

falling on ice and landing on my face,

knocking all my teeth out.

 

I’d really rather not see those

images in my mind.

Imagined violence, shootings,

death, carnage, fires, stampedes,

once unlikely, now terrifyingly tangible.

 

I have to fly on a business trip soon

and I am extremely wound up about it.

Traveling and I are not generally friendly.

I’m happy to be places, but the getting there

is a minefield of horrible "What Ifs".

 

I know, rationally, that I’ll be fine,

that everything will probably be fine,

I’ll travel without incident, and it’ll be

a successful trip…, yet, I’m not 100%

about it. I’m still worried…

 

That the worst will happen,

and my irrational horrors will come into

being and drag us all to the gates of Hell,

or you know, something like that.

It’s always something like that.   

Best Poem, Ever

 

I just need a minute,

I just need a second,

to get my thoughts straight,

in line and organized,

so I can write the most

super,

awesome,

poem,

ever.

 

Here we go…

 

Blue…,

 

 

No, wait, that was Jimmy Stewart’s

dog; Blue.

 

Let’s try again,

 

Flower of the morning,

blooms like a…

holy shit is that pedantic.

Probably like a fire ball

or something… sheesh.

 

One more stab at poetic glory…

 

 Emily Dickinson was a shut in

and recluse yet she cranked out

poem after poem, handwritten,

in droves.

 

I’m out here in the world,

cold, snowy, at a computer,

and I can’t string two words

together that are worth a damn.

 

Best poem ever…,

best poem ever…, hmmmmmm…..

 

I got it!

It’s brilliant!

Luminous!

 

“The, End”

 

Amazing. (Pats self on back)

Cold Prairie

 

Lingering tendrils of smoke drifted up towards the cold morning sky. Gerald sleepily shivered and pulled his thin blanket up to his chin. He yawned. A thick cloud of dragon’s breath rose. He smacked his lips and rolled onto his right side. The prairie was cold, desolate in the new morning light. The grass covered in slightly frozen dew. It was soundless. 

Gerald rubbed his arms under the blanket but couldn’t get any warmer. He sat up on his bed roll and cursed the chill. He tossed the blanket back and he stood up. Bones cracking as he straightened himself out. He squinted at the rising sunlight as it broke through the gray morning. He rubbed the cold sleep from his eyes. He yawned again. Passed gas. Which startled his horse. 

“Sorry about that,” said Gerald, as he scratched at his scruffy chin. 

His horse nodded and neighed, clomped at the hard prairie. 

“I gotta get this fire going again,” said Gerald. 

He was able to find some small twigs and sticks but nothing significant to really get the fire going. He still had some wood from the old wagon he’d abandoned some ways back. He hadn’t wanted to use all that wood but it was too cold to be conservative. He’d been using the wagon planks as a makeshift bed, or at least something to lay on that wasn’t dirt or rocks. He pulled up his bed roll and broke the plank in two. He tossed them onto the dying embers of the small fire. 

Shortly a flame rose and Gerald held his hands over it. He rubbed them together and wondered if he’d ever get to have a cup of coffee again. He’d used the last of it two days ago. He shook his head and was ashamed at how he’d let this whole trip get so out of hand. From the gun fight in St. Louis, to the bandits, to the death of his traveling partner, his loss of the wagon, everything had gone so wrong. Now, he was in the middle of the prairie, freezing to death. 

His horse clomped at the ground again, looking for some morning feed. 

“Sorry old girl, I don’t have anything for you this morning. I hardly have anything for myself,” said Gerald. 

The horse lowered her head and snorted. 

The frigid wind whipped across the prairie, flickering the small flames into nearly extinguishing. Gerald poked at the burning boards with the toe of his boot. He could barely feel his toes inside. 

A few birds darted across the sky, high above Gerald. He was surprised to see any birds at this time of year. They circled and dove over his head, apparently searching for prey somewhere on the ground, somewhere in the vastness of the endless nothing that the prairie is. 

Gerald tucked his hands under his armpits and shuffled back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to stay warm and get some blood flowing. He knew he couldn’t last out here for long. It was a long ride back without proper winter clothes and provisions.  He didn’t want to die.  And yet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live either. His traveling companion of all these years, John Roberts, who died at the hands of those vicious bandits; his wife back home would be inconsolable. Gerald wasn’t sure he was brave enough to face her and tell sweet Mary that her husband was dead and buried in a shallow grave near some small town, too small to even have a name. He didn’t want to think about her face, scowling at him, for taking her husband away from her on some fool adventure. Gerald knew it was all part of the risk in the cartage business, but he’d never had to confront it himself, until now. 

The horse clomped again, impatiently. Knowing that it was time to get a move on. The sun was rising fast and daylight was wasting. 

“Just a little longer horse,” said Gerald, “Just a little longer to let the fire die down.” 

Gerald stood over the fire. He looked out over the ground, staring out into the morning.

_______________________________________________________________________

The Great Get In

 

All ready for the Get In?

The world famous Get In!

Where we all Get In and Get It

and it’s all gotten.

No one is left out at the Get In.

 

Bring your balloons,

Bring your Orangutans,

Bring you bright puffy pants,

bring your light up kazoos,

it’s all perfectly fine at the Get In.

 

The Get In, started by those,

who couldn’t Get In, for those

others lost in the crashing waves

of social acceptance and popularity.

The Great Get In is for the getting.

 

I got in the Get In once,

It was great, for a time,

I mean, electric monkeys and

solar powered sex toys aside,

it was a pretty okay time.

 

The Get In secret knock was

extensive, and needed a lot of

practice, including the part where

you had to do a lot of leg lifts to

get in the Get In.

 

Plus, I mean I was still me afterwards,

I didn’t really get in anywhere or

anything. I was just, a part of a little

thing that Got Me In, but was truly

just temporary.

 

Now that I think about it,

The Get In was pretty exclusive;

poor weirdos don’t go to Get Ins,

right?

Poor Weirdos make their own parties.

 

With cheap wine and stale chips,

six packs of convenience store beer,

cigarettes and dope, and the only

getting in is a state of mind,

not a place.

 

I think I will skip the

Great Get In this year.

I’ll just have my whiskey and

water, my small crowd of

weirdos, and we’ll laugh together.

 

Forget I brought it up.

 

 

Let Them Eat Cake

 

                There was cake in the breakroom. Joanna hurried with the other employees to try and get a slice. It was a home-made cake one of the associates made from scratch. It was only a slice Joanna wanted. She was still on her diet but a single slice of dairy free chocolate cake couldn’t hurt. 

                She followed Janice into the breakroom but got stuck behind her. The breakroom was already crowded with nearly every excited employee all clamoring for a piece of cake. Melissa, who made the cake, was trying to cut pieces evenly but she was being rushed by the manager, Sharon, so the pieces were not uniform. 

                “Please, there’s only so much cake to go around everyone,” said Marilyn as she took a tiny bite of her piece of cake. 

                That skinny bitch doesn’t deserve any cake, thought Joanna. She eats like a damn bird. An apple or a salad and then off to yoga every day. Joanna just hated Marilyn and her perfect little butt. Marilyn was only 24 years old. Joanna felt a little guilty for hating Marilyn solely due to your youthful health and vigor. It wasn’t fair. 

  Janice grabbed a paper plate off the counter and passed one to Joanna. At least Janice was nice. She and Joanna had sat near or next to each other for years. They didn’t talk a lot, but Joanna considered her a friend. Or at least, friendly. 

The crowd begging for cake was diminishing as happy employees were digging into the chocolate frosting delight. They stepped out of the breakroom and headed back toward their cubby holes of work to eat their cake, like some wild animal that had just captured its prey and was taking it back to its lair. 

Joanna got a look at the remains of the cake. There wasn’t much left at all. Melissa was licking frosting off her fingers as she was cutting pieces. Joanna thought that was gross but she wanted something sweet so she could look past Melissa’s grossness. Joanna had worked so hard all month to make the year end reviews and hadn’t received so much as a pat on the back or even a thank you from management for all her work. This little slice of cake would be enough to get her through the next quarter of her unrewarding and unfulfilling job. 

“I’m sorry Joanna,” said Janice, “I got the last little piece.” 

Janice scooped the small end piece of the cake up and put the whole forkful in her mouth. She got a little frosting on her top lip. 

“There’s no more?” 

“I’m sorry. It’s all gone,” said Melissa, still licking her gross fingers. 

“I didn’t get any,” said Joanna, “I didn’t get…any?” 

Melissa stopped licking her fingers and stared at Joanna. Joanna’s face was beet red as her eyes teared up. Janice was smacking her lips as she licked that lingering frosting from her upper lip. 

Joanna dropped her empty paper plate to the floor and rushed out of the breakroom. She ran past the other co-workers, who were all laughing and eating their cake, to the woman’s bathroom. She rushed into one of the three stalls and slammed and latched the door behind her. Her mouth bent downward as she started to wail and the tears streamed down her cheeks. She leaned against the closed door, looked up at the distance acoustic tiles of the ceiling and sobbed. 

“Why,” she sobbed, “Why can’t I get any cake?” 

She banged her head on the closed metal stall door. She felt it sting the back of her head and she cried harder. She put her face into her hand and turned. She sat on the toilet and sobbed deeply into her hands. 

“I just wanted one piece of cake,” she cried. 

She sniffled and wiped the snot from her nose. It was a lot of runny snot and Joanna snorted. She pulled at the toilet paper and wadded it up in her hand and blew her nose into it. 

“God damn it,” she muttered as she wiped her running nose. 

Joanna heard the faint sounds of screaming coming from the office. She heard people running. She wiped her nose again and sat up from the toilet. She stood by the closed stall door. She could hear a thudding noise. The bathroom door burst open and Marilyn and Melissa were locked in a strange wrestling pose, hurling their bodies around the bathroom. Joanna stepped back from the door as Melissa was slammed up against it by little young Marilyn. 

“You bitch,” yelled Marilyn, “How could you poison us!” 

Melissa pushed Marilyn back against the sinks and up against the mirror, which cracked. Joanna was peeking through the slit between the stall door and the frame. 

“I hate all of you. I hate you all. I want you all to die,” yelled Melissa as she mashed her hands into Marilyn’s face. 

The manager Sharon, stumbled into the bathroom, she was covered in vomit and blood all down the front of her Lane Bryant top. She fell onto the cold tiled floor. Marilyn and Melissa kept their fight going and stepped on Sharon’s back and head, stumbling around the bathroom. Bashing into the stall again. Joanna crept back into the corner of the toilet stall, but could see the feet of Melissa and Marilyn still jostling about. The footwork seemed to stop abruptly as Marilyn make a strange gurgling sound. 

She fell to the floor near Sharon’s body. Melissa seemed to stagger for a minute. The water from the sink came on. It was quiet except for the running water. Joanna opened the stall door. Melissa was covered in blood coming from her mouth, staring into the broken mirror. 

“Melissa,” asked Joanna. 

Melissa turned around and flipped Joanna the middle finger. Her eyes rolled back and she fell on top of Marilyn’s still body. 

Joanna stood in the bathroom staring at the carnage. Listening to the running water from the sink. She looked down at the three women with whom she had worked for years and realized she really didn’t know them at all. She finally was able to muster the strength to leave the bathroom. 

Out in the offices, it looked like a plague of God had been wrought upon the Egyptians. Everyone was dead, with bloated throats and faces frozen in the last moments of their fearful lives. Joanna walked over the bodies of her co-workers and got her purse and jacket from her desk. She put her jacket on as she crossed the pile of still corpses and went to the entrance door. She opened it and stepped through quickly. She closed it behind her and locked it. 

It was starting to snow outside. Joanna walked through the parking lot to her car and opened it. She got in and sat behind the steering wheel. 

“I’m glad I didn’t get the cake,” she said to herself. She took out her phone and called 911.

 

               

Worn Smooth

 

Worn smooth,

like pebbles

tumbled in the turbulent

rushing waters of a

raging river.

 

The rough edges,

rounded and shaped

by the currents hurling

the pebbles downstream,

to the delta.

 

A basin of smoothed

stones, under the water,

no surface resistance

left, no hard-craggy faces

of stone muttering their complaints.

 

The pebbles and stones

driven hard against

each other, against the water,

against the ravages of time,

come out clean on the other side.

 

A stone picked up off the river bank

by a curious child,

and put onto a bedroom dresser,

under a photo of a smiling family,

“A Day at the River”.

 

A smoothed, worn stone,

a reminder of time’s passage,

of memories lost in the haze

of human time. In the river

of human memory.    

Lost

 

                I walked in through the mist, waving the vapors away from my face. I stumbled about in the cloudy nothingness. 

                “Hello,” I shouted, “I think I need some directions. Hello?” 

                My question echoed through the nothing.   A pickle-ball court appeared through the evaporating fog. 

                “Pickle-ball? I’ve never even played pickle-ball. They’re using a real pickle it seems,” I said as I watched two faceless players swing cheese doodle rackets at a pickle, which bounced back and forth over a gooey looking net. 

                “Ick,” I said, “Looks like snot,” I said. 

                I kept my eye on the pickle-ball court and I continued to move through this strange void. It was eerie and scary, but all too familiar. I called out again for some help or some direction. Another scene coalesced through the wispy vapor. 

 I happened on myself, at an 8^th grade party. It was in someone’s basement, or a basement of some sort. I was trying to be cool. I watched myself try and step around one of the pretty girls in my class while she was sitting on a bar stool. She swiveled on the bar-stool just as I was stepping behind her and she kneed me right in the crotch. I watched my young self cringe as her knee made the connection to my nethers. I saw our collective 8^th grade embarrassment sweep over both of us. Her shock at kneeing me and my shock at having been kneed and then the flush of blood to our faces. 

“What the hell is this,” I asked, feeling the same sort of embarrassment the 8^th grade version of myself was feeling. That poor little me. Coolness was just too far out of reach but I couldn’t admit it yet. 

“Hello,” I shouted again up through the ether, “What the hell is going on?” 

I felt a sharp slap on my shoulder and I spun around. There I was, staring back at myself.
 

“What the hell! You scared me,” I said.

“Yeah. Well, sorry,” I said back to myself.

“Where the hell am I,” I asked. 

I rolled my eyes at myself and sarcastically exhaled. I spread my arms out in front of me as if I was presenting some sort of exhibit. 

“You get it yet,” I asked myself. 

I looked around in the mist again and saw more scenes of my life playing themselves out. The embarrassing ones, the childish ones, the sexual misunderstandings, the regrets accumulated over my years. 

“I’m lost in thought, aren’t I,” I asked.

“There you go dumbass. You figured it out,” I said back to myself.

 

I shook my head in understanding and put my hands on my hips.

 

“God damn it,” I said. I put my head down and looked at my shoes. Which were rapidly changing because I kept thinking about buying some new dress shoes for work. But I hadn’t been able to decide on what kind I wanted. 

“God damn it,” I said again,” How long have I been in here?” 

The other me looked at his wrist. He wasn’t wearing a watch. Because I don’t wear a watch. 

“I think it’s been a solid twenty minutes of you standing in the shower, just staring off into nothing,” I said back. 

“Son of a b…,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re getting pretty pruned,” I said, “You should probably get going.” 

I looked around the vastness of my own mind. 

“Do you remember what I came in here for,” I asked. 

“I think you were wondering why you can’t seem to meet a nice woman and fall in love and all that junk. But frankly, you’re like always thinking about that so we kind of ignore it,” I said back to myself. 

“Well that’s a fine howdoyoudo,” I said. 

“Yeah, well, it’s your head so… yeah,” I said back to myself. 

I shook my head at myself and took a deep breath. 

I turned the shower off and grabbed my bath towel. I started drying off and mumbled, “God damn it”.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68702422@N02/33277397084

Gossamer

 

The new year,

thin as a baby’s gossamer

blonde hair barely swirling

in the wind.

 

Light as a spiderweb,

yet capable of supporting

immense weight and new

burdens.

 

A thin, wispy new year

has started and its threads

are still fine and strong,

unblemished by use and time.

 

The new year loom being operated,

by swift fingers, unbloodied,

and sure, deftly looping and

sewing the edges.

 

The spool of thread,

eons of prior material

repurposed, pulled thin again,

sorted and set.

 

Fine lines of blues, reds and greens,

woven together to make a tapestry

of a new year, another banner to

hang in the great hall of time.

 

The images and scenes,

too new to be clear,

the edges however, sure and sturdy,

a hemline for what’s next.

 

Formless string, endowed with

hopes, doubts, fears and joys,

tears, laughter, blood and sweat.

Majestic threads all.