They come here every year. They come in droves to see the battlefields where good men gave their lives defending their land from the invading horde. They tromp over our sacred grounds, "ooh!" and "aah" at our homes - those that survived - and snicker at the descendants of those good, defeated soldiers who sound so different than them, yet speak the same language. But, their money is good I guess. And, looking around at the world today, at he end of a Republic turned fallen Empire, I can take some satisfaction that their hubris will soon be as dust...
The man wrote to the woman down by the river Yo. He had finished in the fields and his brother was calling from the high hill.
"Young!" he screamed "the soldiers are here!"
The man dropped his pen. The notepaper, pink and full of tiny perforations the man had made in the shape of a lotus flower, flew in the direction of a crane's nest. A young bird who was wading blinked at it. Soon, it began to rain.
The soldiers carried out the brother and left behind the others. A girl ran to the river for the pen as...
Gavin was gloating. "Enjoy your final moments, Kevin ... maybe use them to wonder how I found you. Good-bye ..."
He dismissively gestured at Paul, his personal bodyguard and hitman. Paul, with an expression of a stone, drew a nine-millimeter out of his coat and pointed it at me.
I had to stop him. "Paul, I can give you two very good reasons not to pull that trigger."
Paul said nothing. But he also did nothing. "First: I know where Kendra is."
That got his attention. He still didn't move, though. "She's in China, which you probably already know, but...
He didn't want to fuck her when he met her. That would have been too easy.
She had this way of pausing at the end of her sentences and looking up at him, teeth together, but lips apart. Her lips were plump, but small. Her eyes were hooded. Her hair was falling down from the top of her head.
She wanted him to fuck her. But he didn't really want to. It seemed to be something that she expected from him, and he wasn't one to do what was expected of him.
That fact that she didn't know he didn't...
While Bach and Bethoven echoed in my ears, I slowly, stared at the monarch butterflies soaring in the fresh, thin air that surrounded me. I bit my lip, and then grabbed at them, but an unsuccessful attempt. I laughed and laughed. I doubled over, when I saw a man in a kyak capsize, and fall deep into the depths of the water. It felt calm and natural, sitting here, looking at the trees, the water and the sunset. A white butterfly, out lined with black-blue colors, flew in, beautifully flapping it's wings, and landed on my shoulder. I glanced at...
Aangekomen op het kruispunt keek ik naar rechts.
En naar links.
Links lag mijn bestemming.
Een dag vol kennis en testen.
De weg naar een opleiding,
en een goede baan.
Onderweg naar mijn toekomst.
Het stoplicht springt op groen.
Iik de vrijheid tegemoet.
It was a shock to the system, moving out of the city. I had always thought I belonged there, amongst the grime and the noise and the grey. It seemed right to wake in the morning to the sound of garbage trucks and too-loud television.
Adam had been right. I knew that as I turned off my iPod and, lifting my headphones, listened to a beautiful moment of silence. The air was still and cool, the day clear and bright. I wondered if there were other people somewhere in the valley below, hidden by the trees. Perhaps I was alone...
Stepping slowly off the train, my eyes adjusted to the black blanket that cast itself over the old town in nowhere France, about three miles from the border of Belgium. Having no clue where I was, I tried to recount the previous events by fitting each individual awkward happening side by side, hoping their grooved edges matched so as the picture might unfold as a panorama landscape in my mind. Then, and only then, I might be able to tell myself why I had woken up in the black night, on a train in a foreign country that speaks a...
The disco ball turned on its dusty axis, shining pixels of glitter light across their worn faces and twinkling in their liquid eyes. Eyes that darted to the front door when someone walked through. This hotel bar was the opposite of pretension, the only tension coming from the anticipation of meeting someone to make the night less lonely.
He came in for a beer--procrastinating to book his hotel for a corporate conference plus budget cuts at work meant he had a room at a low budget hotel. All the eyes followed him as he took a spot at the bar....
I walked down the street with my pants around my ankles, arms akimbo, doing the Super Bowl Shuffle with a boombox wrapped around my ears. I had picked up 20 D batteries at the store, and if I was going to do something, I was going to do it right.
With the screaming vocals of Ronnie James Dio blaring from two overworked speakers, I strutted along the Santa Monica Pier. Rather, I did the Penguin Push all down the boardwalk. It was times like these when I was proud to say that I could rock out with my cock out....