Fan Dance

Propelling air in

spinning bursts

to cool parts

unquenched with

coolness.

Simulated summer

breeze blown directly

at the legs, feet and knees.

A dress twirled up,

shorts flapping,

wind tickling.

Turn over,

show the other side.

The joints.

A dream of a blessed

breath rinsing the heat

from the skin come true.

Smiling when the fast

air snakes up and over

the body, through hair.

Eyes closed, a gentle wind

caressing eyelashes, sweat

vanished from the brow.

Cool drink.

Good memory.

Slow dance.

Bread & Butter

            “The first woozel to get the Purple Beguzzle will be crowned champion of all the enchanted Woozel of the fair and black woods of Eldar,” said the wizened High Grasshopper, Menenga. 

           

            The Woozels gathered at the foot of Ant Hide hill at the feet of the wise and powerful High Grasshopper Menenga. They each hoped that this would be their year to obtain the adoration of the other Woozel’s by completing the trials and hold the Purple Beguzzle close to their chests. 

            “I’m going to do it this year,” said Hickfar

            “You say that every year,” replied Cagnee

            “This time, for sure. I’ve been really working out. Feel my muscles,” said Hickfar.

            “Dude, don’t be weird. I’m not touching your muscles,” said Cagnee.

            “Don’t be afraid. They won’t crush you, too hard,” smiled Hickfar.

            A Plesnucket sounded, announcing the arrival of Lord High Valmordica, King of the Woozel’s and bearer of the sacred crest of Eldar. All the Woozels stood at attention as his chariot of octane horsemobilius pulled him toward the thrown above Ant Hide Hill. It would be the Lord High’s duty to start the hunt for the Purple Beguzzle by banging the ceremonial headless corpse of the most recently executed prisoner against the water bell of Algar. Algar of course being the former and now defeated enemy of the Woozels.

            “I’m so freaking excited to get this thing started,” said Hickfar.

            “Dude, you have to relax. If you get too excited you’ll explode,” said Cagnee.

            “That’s just a myth. No one is going to explode from excitement,” said Hickfar.

            Hickfar wiped the small beads of sweat from his forehead as Cagnee lit a smoke stick.

            “The purple beguzzle will be mine. I’ll put in on my mantle so me and all the hot babes can look at it while we do it in front of the fireplace,” said Hickfar.

            “Dude? The babes? You’re not going to get any babes. All that Purple Beguzzle is, what it really is, is a tool to keep all of us in line. Every year they trot us all out here like our whole lives are just meant for this one moment. It’s cowfernicus crap and you know it,” said Cagnee.

           

            The Plesnucket sounded again as the Lord High Valmordica took his seat on the thrown of the Vanquished and the crowd cheered. He mildly waved at the people and yawned slightly. His Princess, his Queen, the beloved Saramay, took her seat next to the Lord High and waved to the masses of Woozels. They immediately went crazy for her. They cheered and yelled and threw the pink petals of the marcar flower at her feet.

            “Oh my god she’s hot,” said Hickfar.

            “Pssht, like you’d have a shot,” said Cagnee.

            “If I win the PurpleBbeguzzle I will totally have a shot with her. I’ll just have to eliminate the Lord High and sidle up next to her. I’ve got some pretty smooth moves,” said Hickfar.

            “Smooth moves? You once crapped yourself in high school when Stalicy, captain of the cheer squad accidentally touched your arm as you passed each other in the hall. You don’t have a chance,” said Cagnee.

            “Seriously, dude, why are you crapping on everything I’m saying? Can’t you just be positive for one second,” asked Hickfar.

            The High Grasshopper Menega quieted the crowd and started explaining the hallowed and sacred rules for obtaining the Purple Beguzzle. Then he moved on to the part that gave every Woozel a tingle up their spine. It was a speech every Woozel knew since their hatching time.

           

            “Those worthy of honor, worthy of the heavy weight of pride, shall therefore seek the majestic Purple Beguzzle. It’s pulsing power will fill their eyes with the hope for a new harvest moon and invigorate the constant unwavering spirit of all Woozel kind,” said the High Grasshopper Menega.

            The crowd closed the incantation with the usual, ‘Hiwatcha’.

            “I love when he does that,” said Hickfar.

            “I wish this day was over already,” said Cagnee.

            The Woozels moved to the start squares drawn in the dirt along the bottom of Ant Hide Hill. There was room enough for eight woozels in each square. They took their starting positions as the Menenga watched the sun move across the sky. It had to reach its optimal apex for the official start of the hunt.

            Hickfar was in a crouched position, licking his lips in anticipation. Cagnee was just standing next to him, watching Menega perform the swaying ritual.

            The Lord High Valmordica hoisted the headless corpse and on the signal from the High Grasshopper he tossed it into the water bell of Algar. Hickfar took off like a lightening bolt as Cagnee sort of started walking while the rest of the Woozels took off in a mad rush into the black enchanted woods of Eldar. Hickfar looked back over his shoulder.

            “Come on Cagnee! I’m not going to win this alone!”

            “Whatever,” said Cagnee and he sprinted to catch up with Hickfar.

                                                -------------------------------------

            This is what I write when I can’t quite come up with anything profound. I wonder if Hickfar will win the Purple Beguzzle? I hope he knows that all that beguzzles, isn’t purple. And what of Cagnee, will his apathy get the best of him? It’s the sort of story that always floats around in my head. Imagine if it was my bread and butter though. Pretty cool right?

Cereal Cringer

            Harold cringed at the mess he’d made. There was milk and cereal all over the floor, the carpet and the edge of the couch. He picked up the cereal bowl and found the spoon wedged under the TV stand. He returned to the kitchen, back to where the argument started and grabbed some paper towels from the counter. He hurried back to the living room to sop up as much of the milk as he could before it set or got sticky or did whatever it is that milk does when you spill it on stuff. Thankfully it was only a corn flake cereal and nothing with crazy fruit combinations or giant marshmallows. Cody didn’t care for overly sugared cereal.

            It was a long time coming for Harold, the mess he’d made. He could tell Cody hadn’t been happy for a while now and she was doing her best to put on a brave face in front of their friends. She worked a lot of hours at the hospital these days while Harold struggled to just find a job. He’d been laid off from his job as a supervisor at the Coffee Copy. A combination Coffee shop and copy service. Harold thought he had it on easy street there until management realized the reality of a paperless society. They closed four months after opening. Cody said Harold could live with him until he got back on his feet and he moved in that very week. That was 19 months ago.

            This morning Cody started in on him about shaving. He hadn’t shaved in nearly three weeks and his facial hair was getting terribly unruly. She also mentioned the College tee-shirt he’d been wearing constantly for the past four days. He just didn’t feel like changing it. It was comfortable, even if it did have a big mustard stain on the front. She nagged and nagged and nagged at him about all the things he was doing wrong and his only response was to hurl the cereal bowl across the room and stand there chewing the last mouthful with his arms crossed across his chest.

            Cody had it and grabbed her keys and stormed out of the apartment leaving Harold to look down at his bare feet. He’d made a mess out of it all. Two nights earlier he’d accused her of cheating on him, even though deep down inside he knew it wasn’t her. She wasn’t cheating on him. She cried and pleaded and swore up and down that she’d never do something like that to him, that she loved him. Harold felt like a monster, manipulating her feelings that way just so he could have something to feel good about.  

            Harold cleaned up the rest of the cereal and put his thrown bowl in the sink and leaned against the counter. He saw his own reflection in the glass of the cabinet face and realized what a total wad of poop he’d been.  He’d been so lazy and careless with Cody. He’d just made the naive assumption that she’d always be there to take care of him. He closed his eyes and listened to his heart beating fast and hard in his chest. He’d hit the bottom of this relationship and knew it was time to stop being a sponge and get back on his own. The first thing to do was to shave. Cody was right, he looked like an ugly bear with shit matted in his fur. He cringed at the thought of shaving it all off and how much he’d probably cut his face up with the razor. But sometimes, restarting your life comes with a little bloodletting. 

The Immovable Noise of Curious Deafness

The cars, the engines, the

sirens, the creaking floorboards,

exhaust, construction, trains, planes,

the chatter, the birds, the wind, all the noise in

the world causes a different

sort of deafness.

A deafness of the mind,

of the spirit, of the heart.

A hearing of everything,

but hearing nothing.

I thought of it while looking

at one of the rocks on the

fringes of the train tracks,

amid the roar of near-by

traffic and the disappointed

conversations of Monday

morning commuters.

A rock, nothing special about

it. It’s hued in grayish, purplish

colors and wouldn’t make a

geologist excited. Not a specimen

for the mantle or museum.

What I marveled at was the fact

that it was there. Unmoved.

This non-descript rock of

unknown origin hasn’t moved

in years. It has sat, quietly

against the noise of the world,

the chugging of trains, blustery

winter winds and summer rains.

It has sat still. Patient. A silent

passenger in time. 

I wondered what it had heard in

its patient silence and if I could

ever be still enough to hear it

too.

And be strong enough to bear it.

American Morning

The morning of the 5^th of July

is ridiculous.

Sulfur odors still linger

in the air and the rising

sun shows the scorched

Earth left behind.

Garbage cans are ripe with

the spent shell casings and

firework caskets of American

revelry.

No over-sugared cup of

coffee can replace the

bitter taste of a work

day morning after

a Thursday holiday.

The silence after such

an explosive night echoes

the cruelty of a life in a

cubicle. No American dream

being fulfilled in the trenches

of the American worker bee

life. No matter how much

we, “Ooh-ed” and “Ahhh-ed”,

at the bombs bursting in air.

There’s no Friday morning

liberation from the tyranny

of the corporate machinery

that provides us with the meager

scraps of mediocrity to

survive on.

It’s greatness we yearn for

on July the 5^th. Something to

impress our founders with, as

if to say, look what your fight

for liberty has wrought. Yet,

I sit, in a cube, in the silence

of a nearly abandoned office

clacking away at a keyboard

on another American morning.  

As it Were

            “So I was all like, yeah. And she was all like, whatever,” said the teenage girl I passed on the street.

            “For serious,” said the other teenage girl.

            “I’m totally texting her,” said the first teenage girl.

            “OMG Bitch, riiiiGHt,” asked the second teenage girl.

            I turned my head to look back at these two girls who were furiously texting. I was reminded that these girls weren’t too unlike the girls I once knew, except the girls of my generation had to write out their messages via paper and pass it around to the other girls in the class room. And if it was summer, forget it. You’d never even hear if there was a problem. Although I’m pretty sure some of those girls could hold a monster grudge all summer and unleash it the first day school was back in session or when they bumped into each other at the school carnival near the Nauseator.

            You remember the Nauseator, that ride with the terrible 80’s hair band rock blasting out through cheap speakers overhead. It was like a mini-roller coaster that just went in seriously fast circles past murals of snow wizards and scantily clad barbarian women. The whole ride smelled like burnt popcorn throw-up and children’s tears. It was run by that one carnie that knew where to score the “good” H. He’d hit on the youngest and likely the least dressed girls, offering them a “free ride”. I think he’s a Senator now.

            I recently made a reference to a young cousin of mine about women’s liberation. She was fiercely defending her desire to be left alone when she got to college and didn’t want any excessive visits from family. I said that she wanted her independence, to be a Mary Tyler Moore as it were. She looked at me blankly, not having the slightest clue about Mary Tyler Moore or what she represented during the age of Women’s Lib. My young cousin never lived through a time when women were just asserting themselves in the workplace. For her, Women’s Liberation is something she’ll hear about in her woman studies course.

            I often wonder about Women’s Liberation. I say this only because of my continued use of internet dating sites. It would seem that there are a lot of women between the ages of 25 and 30 with excessive tattooing and facial piercings. I am a man lost in time when I see that. I never really “got” the whole body modification thing. I thought about getting a tattoo, but I could never find anything that appealed to me in any real way. So I’m inkless and I’m fine with it. These young women though, with huge tattoos over the tops of their breasts, extending up and over their shoulders, to their necks and onto their backs, with rings through their noses and sparkling studs in their cheeks has me completely miffed. The word demure is one lost to history I guess. It would seem every young woman has embraced the empowerment their foremothers worked for and have blasted off into the stratosphere, without in some cases, knowing anything about their foremothers. I’m sure there are plenty that do know what MTM stood for and others like her and they are simply expressing themselves as individuals and I have no qualms with that. You go, girl.

            I’m sure I’ll see a few of these young women over the coming Independence Day holiday. By the way, it isn’t much of a Holiday when you have to work the day after your nation celebrates its independence from tyranny. What’s that about ‘Merica? I remember the Fourth of July as one of those super kick-ass holidays when it seemed like summer would go on forever and lighting those Black snake fireworks on fire and watching them grow on the sidewalk was quite possibly the coolest thing ever in the history of everything. It was a contest to see which Black snake would grow the longest. (Hm, it would seem that’s still a contest between most men). As kids, we’d run around like bat-shit crazy monkey’s with our sparklers, waving them around like lunatics as Uncles drunk with beer and fire and beer would light ever more dangerous fireworks. (When you could still buy them in Illinois).

            Those two teenage girls really sent me on a rant today. I should text them to thank them for this meandering riga-ma-roll.

            “Whatever.”

            

If She Only Knew

            Howard didn’t realize he was dreaming about her until he woke up in his bed alone. The dream didn’t seem sped up like so many of his other dreams. This dream seemed to operate in real time, minus the cut scenes to other events he seemed to have been narrating. The fuzziness of the dream started to close in and Howard wished he hadn’t woken up. He was really enjoying the dream life. 

            It was because of her. The way she felt in his dream. She seemed so very real. He could feel the softness of her skin and the gentle curves of her body. They were naked in a large bed, lying with each other; discussing how it was that they got to be naked in that large bed. The room was lit by the morning sun reflecting off the ocean and Howard could hear the subtle sounds of the surf rolling up against the beach. There was a misty morning grayness to the room, but it wasn’t dark. It was cozy, with light wood trim, maybe pine.

            Howard could feel the sheets against his own nakedness and the weight of her body against his as they lay together. Her curly, wavy, sandy blond hair was so clear. He could smell the sea water in it and feel the softness of it against his fingers as he brushed it from her smiling face. They spoke to each other in loving whispered tones.

            “How did we get here,” she asked Howard.

            “I think we were wading in the ocean, near that big red buoy,” said Howard.

            The dream turned into a memory within the dream of Howard holding onto a buoy in the water, the sky was showing the signs of a very early morning sun just coming up over the water. She was wading out to him, getting her clothes wet. Her green windbreaker had water lines all across the bottom and she was feeling silly. Howard could tell but he reached his hand out to her and pulled her close to the buoy. He sat her on the edge and he stood in the water in front of her. Howard was still holding her hand and looking at her blue eyes. The wind was blowing her hair about and she was moving her head to keep her eyes on Howard. It was quiet except for the barely audible sound of the waves moving in and out.

            “I want you to marry me,” said Howard.

            “No,” she said, “I can’t marry you.”

            “We’re doing things in reverse aren’t we,” asked Howard.

            “I think so,” she said.

            Howard returned to the bed where they were lying. He held her very close to him and she held him. Her skin was delicate and Howard caressed her up to her breast and felt its youthful smoothness. She smiled at him and laughed.

            “It is in reverse. The physical passion, the comfort with each other, the ease. After all these years. It’s backwards,” she said.

            “So you will marry me,” said Howard.

            “We are married,” she said.

            “I guess it is backwards then,” said Howard.

            They embraced and pressed they’re nakedness against each other. Howard felt her breathing, her passion for him expressed in long contented sighs. He felt at peace. The white sheets were rumpled around their bodies. The sun reflected off the water and through the windows casting a light morning glow on the walls of the room.

            Howard had woken up. He knew who the woman was in real life. He knew she lived far away and that the dream was just that, a dream. He dragged himself from his real world bed and remembered how soft she was and how he wanted that softness in his life more than anything in the world. If she only knew.