In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley. No one believed him, of course. They knew a man could not simply spread his wings and fly. Because a man had no wings, and that was really the point of it. But he insisted he had done it. “Just because no one saw me,” he said, stretching his arms up to the sky, “Does not mean it didn’t happen.”
No one was convinced.
“I flew,” he continued, “From one side of the rift to the other. Over the canyon. I soared above the ground and floated in the sky.” He...
"Well shit, that didn't work," the conductor said.
He walked around the wreckage, pulling out passengers. Women, mostly. The men waved off his advances.
One gloriously attired woman emerged from a smoldering welt of torn metal as though she were departing at Poughkeepsie. Nary a scratch or displaced hat-feather.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on," the conductor thought. What he said was, "Ma'am."
The day was still high above them, children kicking rocks along the tracks. The conductor scratched under his hat and wondered, well what the hell now?
A man sitting in the...
"what is it," he asked, "With people today?"
"Well, that's a fairly broad question, isn't it? There couldn't possibly be a sufficient answer," I started to say. I got as far as "We..." before he started back in again.
"No no no no no." The volume doubled. "NO NO NO NO NO NO!"
"No what, dude?" I tried to sip, but my glass was empty. Worst service ever. If I could just catch the eye of the damn
"NO!" He grabbed my arm. "Don't be this, like, moral relativist. Some things are better than others, and people used to read...
I love you.
The last thing he told her before taking a drink from his soda, setting it down, taking a deep breath and then wandering straight into the traffic that killed him. Family legend says that he'd lost a lot at the tracks that afternoon and then on the final race, he'd won the mother load.
Happiness like that for a compulsive gambler can be too much. The take was huge but the win was too much and he went out on the highest of notes. Plastered to the front of a dump truck.
The newspaper clipping has it...
I was born inside a leather and land lace tomato breast. My father was a blues singer and my mother was a vegetarian prostitute. My toenails were always brittle, and my ribs aplenty. However, my vertebrae had a slight curvature, which lent itself to future sideways glances--both coming and going.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. It wasn't always rainy inside of my leather and lace tomato breast womb, but occasionally some foreign government, or Delta slide-playing red rooster would seed the environs of my leather and lace tomato breast womb. Seeding has been outlawed m]for military use by...
"So anyway that was what he said yesterday and she wouldn't agree with anything he was...."
The sound drifted away as he continued to stare straight across the carriage. It was the same every morning, she would complain about everything that happened the day before, all the way in on the train, and then again that evening, all the way home.
He, well, he would do the same as always every morning, stare straight ahead at the woman directly across from him. She was beautiful. Here light browne hair rested neatly on her shoulders as she read what seemed to...
The pistol was cocked, ready to go. The grip felt odd in my hand, and the barrel kept dipping down towards the ground. What would happen if I actually fired the damn thing? I was afraid it would fly back and smash my teeth out.
Nevertheless, I wrapped both hands around the grip as I had seen countless times on television and tried to steady the deadly steel. It wavered like my resolve at the sight of my nemesis, sprawled and harmless looking on the couch. But the second he awoke, he would look less like a sleeping kitten and...
We waited for the curtain to go down, some patiently and obliviously to the palpable tension between Fran and I. Once again she'd tried to force me to go into the final act without the correct props. Once again she'd sabotaged, or rather tried to sabotage my costume. But I wouldn't be held back. I was going to upstage her no matter that my backside was revealed to the entire audience. She thought I wouldn't turn and face her? Apparently she was unaware of my tenacity and forgot that I'd seen her in action before. To that end, so to...
It never speaks,
it barely breathes,
it never fades away,
It sucks you up, then spits you out,
leaving you behind.
It tugs at your heart,
then casts it out like trash.
it walks and talks with others,
but ignores you completely.
It cast it's line,
and pulled you in,
then threw you to the sharks,
you spun in it's orbit,
only to fly out and land on your face.
it left you for things,
pieces of paper and plastic.
it orbited your world once,
the left to spin through another.
that is the behavior of the void.
She loved that old house. It used to be one of the very first churches built in the tiny town that had disappeared around it. Then it went up for sale and the woman had jumped at the chance to buy it. The renovation was long and expensive but as she stood inside the finally finished building she thought that just maybe it was here little slice of heaven on Earth.
Smiling, she let the vaulted front door close behind her and turned to move to the brand new staircase that lead from the entry foyer towards the upstairs. Putting...