My quarry shambles off the bus. His lanky frame is lost inside a long black coat. He adjusts his head cans, then buries his hands in his pockets. He nods to the beat. His feet stride with the rhythm. There’s a lovestruck couple up ahead of him. They take up both lanes of the sidewalk. He mounts the boulevard and breezes past. He doesn’t see the pedestrians for the people. The scope of his vision narrows to the crosswalk. He doesn’t bother to look both ways. He doesn’t see the traffic for the cars. Continue reading Bulletproof Cupid
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Multiverse Man
The volume went up as the Guest of Honor stepped into the party. Then the lights went down. Scarves found their way to the banisters. Layers found their way to the floor. Buttons were undone. Belts were unbuckled. The Guest of Honor peered into the coat room. His was the coat that made the pile spill to the floor.
When he ambled down the hall, heads peered up. People watched from their blind spots. Arms uncrossed. Footing shift. The guests repositioned themselves to stand full front to him. Their guards went down. Heads began to nod. Eyes began tracking movement. The guests started to promenade from social click to social click. Everybody was open for business.
Compartmentalize
Wheels turn. Gravel pops. It takes a while for it to come to a complete stop. Something has been delivered to the main gates of your Imagination. Its snout casts a long shadow over your Ideas. Its wooden mange creaks in the breeze. It’s a three-story stallion looming over the birth place of your fiction. Guards report whispers from its nostril. They report the sounds of footfalls and metal unsheathing. Suddenly the horse, is all that your Ideas can focus on. Continue reading Compartmentalize
A Part I Was Conceived To Play
When I was in my mid-twenties, I wrote a lot of pieces like this. Positive affirmations that came from very dark places. Leave it to me to find cobwebs in the arch of a rainbow. There was a sincerity to being insincere. An acknowledgement of how I ought to think, had I not been governed by fear.
I’ve always been an introvert playing at extravert. This circa-2004 piece must have been written hung over, on the day after a party. I can only imagine what I had done to inspire it. Continue reading A Part I Was Conceived To Play
Breaking Up With Your Story
You clock out of work. The punch card weighs heavy in your hand. You go straight home. Your Story has been waiting up, pacing the apartment, peering through the blinds. There’s a pair of empty wine bottles in the sink. Incense sticks line the coffee table. They’ve been ashed all the way down. Candle wax has dripped across the varnish. Three empty sleeves of Girl scout cookies lay crinkled on the couch.
What It Sounds Like
In just a few days Minnesotans will be given the choice to amend their constitution to deny gay people the right to marry (a right they didn’t already have). Civil rights issues don’t usually get put to a vote. Imagine what would have happened if Brown vs. The Board of Education had been put to a vote. Do you think we’d have integrated schools today? What about if Affirmative Action had been put to a vote? I didn’t think so.
Open House
Follow the dolphins into shore
Follow the power lines into the city
Follow the spot lights downtown
Follow the breeze into me
The balloons dangle from every street sign
The streamers swing from every fence
There’s a landing strip of Christmas lights
I spared no expense Continue reading Open House