5:2, Sometimes More

The day was in bloom with possibility; fragrant, lush, inviting. The sun, just waking, leaned itself on the crest of a mountain for support, but stumbled, spilling itself out onto the forest, painting it gold. Down in one of the winding trails they travailed through steep inclines and perilous walkways, overlooking beds of jagged rocky shores below. They came to a pass where the woods parted and they could see clear through out over the water that separated them from the mountain.

"Whoa, look," Dennis said, pointing. "Glad we called out today?"

"Yea; if I'm going to work it should be for something like this," Steve said, snapping a photograph.

They'd been planning a photo-hike for some time, but life had gotten in the way. Steve had a kid to take care of, a wife, precious little time for himself. He had recently gotten a promotion and didn't want to send the wrong message by irresponsibly taking a day for himself. No one would've known, Dennis had told him. True, but he would have. He was tired of feeling guilty about things, especially where indulgence was concerned. Dennis had received a promotion too, and found it to be too taxing. He believed this entitled him to leisure-time of his own, taking days to offset the disparity between that which was his and that which wasn’t. He evaluated it through the lens of quantity and frequency; work demanded so much time, so often, that surely it was sensible to steal a day here and there.

"I mean, when you think about it, it's bullshit; the ratio is 5:2, sometimes more. Who thought that was a good idea?" Dennis asked.

"Life is about time; it's all we have, and never enough," Steve said as they labored upward.

Up ahead a squirrel leapt from one branch to another, scurrying around the trunk of the tree like a furry insect. It was early enough that there was still dew on the ferns. They glistened in the morning light, long green fronds like fingers, all sparkling and betrothed. In the distance there was the sound of water running, the singing of birds.

A ritual dampness clung to moment, soaking through their shirts, through the air, into the earth.

The fog had already dissipated but it's memory still stuck to the leaves.

Little Things; The Sons of Ivaldi

I expected it to hurt. The needle was hot and its point was sharp. It inspired piercing visions of mutilation - frightful to my boyhood mind. My father held my foot while I cringed imagining the needle puncturing the delicate flesh of the underside of my foot. When I was a kid I always managed to get splinters. It must've been the floors in our apartment, because I can't recall a time I've gotten one since. This was a massive splinter too, a great wooden javelin hurled at my foot by Odin. It hurt badly when it burrowed in; I could only imagine what it would feel like coming out.

After a brief period of poking and scraping with the needle from the back of an orange and black Harley Davidson pin, one he'd probably picked up at a local swap meet, he was able to extract the troublesome timber from my paw. It's interesting to consider how something so small and insignificant could cause so much pain. Hangnails, hemorrhoids and paper-cuts; broken glass.

Wrinkles.

As we grow old our lush youthful heads get splintered with grey hairs. An affront to our imagined immortality. A reminder that we're running barefoot against time's hardwood floor.

It's the little things. Gathering slowly, like ants.

Le Ordure de Toillette

I reread my post from this morning and realized I'd omitted something. When I'd spoken of photography I'd mentioned truth and meaning but I'd only hinted at self-deception. There is deception of others, too. Cropping shots to hide unwanted elements, boosting contrast and sharpness, adjusting color saturations and hues. Often the resultant image is only a vague reflection of the initial capture. There is an element of stretching truth, bending light to fit your need. There is an appreciable dishonesty in trying to depict something truthfully, honestly.

Tonight I had the dinner of champions. As to what kind of champion, I'll let you decide. Having a catlike aversion to the rain, I dreaded even the thought of venturing outside, so I scoured my cupboards in search of a meal. I'd found a can of tuna fish. I checked the label and was delighted to find that it hadn't yet expired. But what was I to eat with it? A can of tuna fish by itself is a meal fit only for a cat. I turned to my refrigerator, and in my rummaging I found expired hummus, dried out rotted basil leaves from last summer, a decomposing lime - probably also from last summer - and ambiguously expired hard cheeses - which had ruined any hopes of a tuna melt. Then I'd remembered: bread! I yanked open the door to the freezer, where I'd placed a stash of sliced bread (nearly a year ago). I pulled out two pieces and threw them into a pan on top of the stove and turned on the flame. This is the way I have to toast bread, because I don't have a toaster; opulence is sin my friends.

As I thawed the cryogenically frozen bread, I wondered what I might pair the tuna sandwich with. I pulled open pantry after pantry, finding oddities like pistachios, honey, marshmallows, pumpkin puree, sugar and breadcrumbs, until I found an aggregate of canned beans; Bush's. They had been the remainder of my surplus rations from last year's burn. It was a playa miracle that I'd found them today. When I opened the can I found pale accretions of fat that had floated to the top of the goo the beans were stewing in. It looked like a cyst had ruptured beneath the lid. I scooped it out and dumped the contents of the can into the pot and placed it on a low flame. Minutes later I was greeted by the sweet smell of success; toasty bread, tasty tuna and baked beans perfumed the air, dancing madly toward my nose.

Dinner was served and I was a tumbledown Toucan Sam.

It was a meal fit for a bum. I know this because now I have bum breath. Which is like cat's breath, only worse. The stale, acrid stench loiters on my lips, lingering too long in the doorway, delaying departure. I've brushed my teeth but it seems to have no effect.

I wonder how long it will be before I have bum bumm.

I await it, inhaling deeply, expecting it at any moment to come up, dancing madly at my nose.

Camera Obscura

I've become too wrapped up in photography to write. It's strange. I recently received a new camera, a Sony a7, and it voraciously consumes all my free time, holding me hostage, taking long exposures with my amygdala. It even follows me into my dreams, where I have visions of snapping serene scenic shots and surreptitious up-skirts, pretty pussy panoramas. It is
a thing of obsession, pornography...I mean, photography. One of the lenses I'd purchased has an aperture of 1.2, which produces a dreamlike kind of bokeh; it smears light like oil paint.

I feel like a giant eyeball, rolling around hard pavement, stopping at times and staring, then stumbling onward like tumbleweed. When a camera is in my hands suddenly the world comes alive, and everything is fascinating. I see things in ways I normally wouldn't. Details, large and small; juxtapositions of objects; shadows and light; textures; colors, or their absence; symmetry and multiplicity. The world presses itself against my retina orgiastically, making lewd advances, talking dirty and wearing lingerie.

There is something lonely about photography, and a feeling of being lost. It is akin to hunting; foraging alone in a forest to find your reflection in something. You roam through streets and trails searching for the thing that speaks to you - that which conveys truth or meaning. You stalk it, survey it, capture it. Once apprehended, you clean it up and trim away excess, make it more ready for consumption. Time thwarts you always, stealing the sun from the horizon, sending the bird flying away, swaying a tree's branches or a flower's petal, dissolving a cloud. In a sense, photography is a means to document loss: the thing you photograph will never again be as it was in the moment you'd captured it. Taking a photo becomes an illusion of stealing back a moment from time. You look at the photo and relish in its memory and fool yourself into believing you are experiencing it as you once were. There is an almost unhealthy dwelling, an inability to let go. An absurd delusion.

Unidentified Falling Objects

Below us, only sky. Moments before we were inside the belly of a plane, contemplating the nearest of futures; its impact on the long haul. It was the second time I'd been in a plane. The first was when I'd gone to California for a music festival in high school. I'd wanted this to be the first time, because it would make for a better story. Sadly though, I hadn't the idea until then - to jump, that is. It all felt kind of fantastical and surreal, like I was in a dream. The plane was small, propelled by propellers, and it buzzed loudly. It seemed to be held together by glue duct tape and thumb tacks. Before I knew it we were at 13,000 feet, wrapped in clouds.

There was a signal and a moving forward. That part was awkward because there was another human being tethered to my back. We shimmied to the edge of the open plane-door, the wind pulling at me wildly, trying to dislodge me from my place. I looked down out of the open door, against the advice of the man behind me. I wasn't afraid. I marveled at how much the ground looked like a map; full of patchwork and hard lines; lush greens and deep blues; the long island sound. Then, we counted to three and rocked ourselves out into the fall.

All of my muscles flapped like rubber as we plummeted, I felt like I was a character in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon. We spiraled through the air with no frame of reference, like angels swinging from a trapeze. There was only the sensation of rushing wind and rippling, a sudden painful buildup of pressure inside my ears. Then, the parachute opened and we were pulled upward - the most physical manifestation of salvation I'd ever felt.

It's difficult to describe. The moment was augmented by the suddenness and the starkness of its contrast to the moment before it. Silence, save for the faint billowing of cloth overhead. Weightlessness, the drifting surrender and serenity: floating like human hot-air balloons.

The realization that I'd been out above where birds seldom soar.

Barnes & Noble Scunts

When I was younger I had a job at Barnes & Noble. It was my first real job, after having worked briefly in an Italian restaurant, and also the Carpenter's union. At the time I'd thought it perfect; I liked reading, I liked the kind of intellect that bookshelves of literature would attract, I liked the calm and relaxed atmosphere. After I was hired I realized how wrong my preconceptions were.

The entire store was mismanaged by an eclectic assemblage of overseers, some of them well meaning, some of them neither well nor meaning. The store manager was mad - mentally and emotionally unstable - mildly impaired with some sort of back problem. Always flushed and lightly sweating, she worked with a crooked spine in a store full of flat-backed books. How taunted she must have felt.

Then there were our customers. They were predominately elderly, and almost always uncooperative, as though looking with a magnifying glass for imperfections: searching for something, anything, to be dissatisfied about. Now, I don't have an issue with the elderly, but my quotidian surprise at their behavior still boggles my mind. The other portion of our customer base were teenagers, who were an equivalent source of frustration. They would leave entire aisles in disarray, books thrown haphazardly across the floor or jammed into the shelves all out of place. Their favorite was the sex section, from which their giggles, oohs and ahhs could be heard from neighboring rows in all directions. We'd routinely have to chase them away - but as soon as we'd leave they'd reaggregate like horny gnats.

The wages were worse than paltry, they were insulting. Something like $6.25 an hour. But this, and everything else I've mentioned, wasn't even the worst part. The worst part were the nightmares. To this day it's the only job I've ever had that induced stress dreams - and I have had much much more stressful jobs than working in a bookstore in high school. I'd dream that I'd be working the customer service desk and someone would approach me and ask about a book. When I'd arrive at the place I knew the book to be, I'd suddenly realize that I didn't know how to read. The cost of being found out at this point would be great and grave; I'd be fired; an illiterate bookseller? The overwhelming helplessness and confusion crescendoing with the customer's impatience nearly inspired palpitations. Other nights I'd have dreams where whole sections would be organized to some abstruse schema completely impenetrable to me, and I'd be tasked with getting it in order before closing, while everyone stood waiting for me to finish.

The only saving grace were my coworkers. We had a rotating cast of consistently cool characters. Some were friends, others became friends, one would eventually become a girlfriend. One person in particular though, had been especially shunned. He was an older guy, the store's custodian. Everything about him looked weathered and worn; his clothes, his skin, his sagging eyes, his unkempt hair, his overall I don't give a fuck demeanor. He subsisted off of coffee, cigarettes, bagels and pretzels; I never saw him holding anything else, except for maybe a mop. His teeth seemed to jut out of his mouth life a cliff edge, from which all his words suicided. He seemed to always have a dark cloud of smoke about him. Others thought him strange and perhaps a bit creepy. Perhaps he was. But I found friendship in him. He was an old rocker, a maven on the guitar; master shredder. He'd lived the life of a rock star and worked a string of odd jobs that had led him there. His exterior was only a partial truth. He was intelligent, sensitive, quick witted, wise, sharply sarcastic and shamelessly sardonic.

We had a friendly epithet for one another: scunt, or, scumbag cunt.

We were a source of unabashed candor. We hung out outside of work and shot the shit, shot pool, had drinks. He always gave good advice, always had some nugget of obscure knowledge he'd found hiding under a dark rock. I often think of him.

He was a friend.

Snow Angels

R.I

It came away in flakes. Overhead, an invisible cheese grater gnawed away at the clouds with little mice teeth, sharp as scissors. They walked arm in arm through the cold on the way to her apartment. It had been some time since he'd seen snow, and watching it now, he felt more connected to it than he could remember. The coldness, the slow dance downward, its inability to keep shape, to stay white; succumbing always to the uncleanliness of civilization, of dirty gutters; pissed on and stepped over.

"It's strange how we see the snow when we're children," she said, wrapping herself tightly against his arm as they walked over snow covered concrete.

"Yea."

"When you're little it's like the snow is full of magic," she said.

"Like cocaine, for kids."

"It's all snow-days, snowball fights, and hot chocolate," she said.

"And sledding, and igloos," he said.

"Snow angels," they said, at the same time.

"Pretty different now, huh. No one wants to get their clothes dirty, or get cold or wet. No one wants to dig cars out of 3 feet of snow and scrape ice off of frozen windshields with those cheap blue plastic scrapers," he told her. "I remember as kids, for a few dollars, we'd do it for hours. We loved it."

There was something mystical about the snow in New York City. It had a kind of a dampening effect, coaxing the chaos into calm; somehow quieted, as though it wore a giant pair of white ear muffs. Even the sound of the crunching seemed to swallow itself as their feet punched through it.

The blinking streetlights looked like glowing Christmas ornaments hanging from giant metallic branches. Occasionally a car passed by slowly, as though drunk, sliding more than driving. Once night had fallen the city had grown tired and slumbered, all tucked in under a big white blanket.

"It's not so bad now though," she said. "Quiet nights at home, wrapped up in bed, watching it fall...there's something about the falling."

"Yea."

Duodecimation

A mix of maladies; a multitudinous melancholy.



Tired eyes worn as worn out socks.

A ticking mad cyclone clock.

The stopped gap

- gaping -

never stops.

Marching X's fixed like stitches on

a wound that's always wound

...around, ...around,



the exfoliative wobbling wearing it all away.

The Good the Bad and the Fugly

I'm not built for this kind of thing anymore; the excess, the indulgence, the madness. The weekend whirred by at an alarming pace, hastened by the absence of a clock. I'd forgotten my phone at home for the entirety of a day, and boy did I get lost. It's amazing how fast time will run when you let it.

A piece of priceless advice: don't drink more than 2 mimosas at brunch on a Saturday. Once you go hurtling over the second and grab at the third with lecherous giggle and a feral grin, well dear sinners, your are in the hands of the Drink - a god who is always angry on Sunday.

Waking with pink elephants pirouetting on your skull isn't the easiest way to rise. In fact, it's one of the most painful. The pounding stampede, how mercilessly it tramples over peaceful thought, sending violent vibrations down into your stomach as tectonic plates start to shift, and then, before you know it, you have an eruption on your hands - sometimes quite literally.

The worst part of all is that there's no known cure. You must assume a horizontal position and rot, like a sweating mime playing the part of a poisoned dog. If you partied hard enough, you'll likely have little memory of what you'd said or done, and you'll lie and wonder who you may have offended or where it was that you lost your hat; how you got home. Oh how you'll swear you'll never get meet those elephants again, never oblige their trumpeting call. Until of course, you do.

The only thing I remember for sure is my interaction with the bouncer. I had excused myself with some friends for a breath of fresh air and some quiet conversation in front of the saloon. Upon seeking reentry the doorman asked me for identification. Surely he'd seen me walk past just moments ago. Was this a joke? A test? This was the test - a showdown. I looked at him and he looked at me. As we stared at one another I have the distinct memory of a wispy spaghetti western refrain playing faintly in the background. A tumbleweed may have even blown by. A bead of sweat rolled down my grizzled face and I saw his fingers twitch nervously as he awaited my next move. Don't just stand there and sweat, I told myself, draw! I plunged my hand into my pocket and in a flash my wallet was out in the air. With the help of hours of heavy alcohol consumption I was able to experience the scene in slow motion. Carefully executing each move I was certain I had him outmatched. With the wallet pressed firmly into my right hand, my identification was nearly ready to be presented. I had him right where I wanted him. I glanced at his hands and saw him lifting the flashlight, his thumb moving toward the button. I had to be quick. My left hand postured like a cobra and lunged fiercely at my California driver's license. Victory, I thought. But then, disaster struck; something was wrong. My hand misjudged the distance and fumbled, my fingers crashed against the wallet like breaking teeth and clumsily latched onto the credit card. Unable to stop its momentum as it ricocheted away from me, I watched in horror as my hand delivered the credit card to my adversary. I saw the imperious smile smear itself over the bouncer's lips as he pressed the button and discharged the blue bullet. Gunsmoke. The sulphuric smell of defeat; the death of revelry.

"I asked for your ID brother."

"I know, I missed; look, here it is," I said, with my flaccid snake-tongue.

"I'm sorry, you're done here; you can't go back inside."

BLONDIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Exhaust

He walked through darkened streets as though sleep walking. The sun still hadn't risen and feral cats stalked unwittingly noisy mice while raccoons plundered garbage pails that waited for loud trucks to empty them. Bent street lights, like giant metal canes with blaring cycloptic eyes, stooped a bit lower to peer at the desolate sidewalks below. The wind whipped, lashing his exposed skin, sending cold threats deep into his tired bones. Exhaustion plagued him. He was drained from the late nights and early mornings. They'd bled him dry, tapped him like a maple.

Up in the distance, at the next corner, a man stood smoking a cigarette. He smelled him before he saw him, that acrid smell of smoke spreading itself menacingly across half a block's length, sailing on the air to assail his curious nostrils. If smoke were a person it would be pugnacious and loud; a child with a penchant for violence. Memories formed like faces in clouds as the smoke diffused, blooming fragrantly inside his head; of his parents smoking in the car with the windows rolled down in the winter; of a girl he'd dated briefly who'd smoked; of the smell of it on clothes; on skin. Years ago, when he worked in a computer repair store, he'd learned how easy it was to identify a smoker just by opening their computer. The computer was often tarnished, lightly yellowed and faintly smelling of tobacco. Upon opening the machine he'd see all of the internal components coated in sticky, darkly-colored resin. Sometimes, the computer's glass display would be permanently stained, all the color temperatures a few shades warmer then they would be otherwise.

Smoke needs to rub itself against all it touches, to leave its scent. Perhaps motivated by its ephemerality, its incessant shapeless shifting, it desperately clings to everything, everywhere.

Alive again on an unwashed shirt, or a woman's hair, the tips of fingers, or caramel colored teeth.

Frozen

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.

There's a line from a poem written on his arm. It's the only part of him that can be seen, hanging limply from the autopsy table.

A white sheet draped loosely over his body, like a hastily made bed.

The gurney squeaks in the silence while it's wheeled. Like a frail locomotive, its echoes haunt the room's darkened corners and then dissipate like steam. No one is here tonight. Nathan, the head mortician, called in sick. He has a bad case of the flu, which catches quite easily in these cold months. I'm surprised I haven't come down with it yet.

I hadn't ever considered how lonely and cold a morgue feels in the winter, until now. It's the opposite of body heat, you know. You can actually feel the death pulling the warmth out of you, slowing you down, making you numb.

In the 19th century they'd invented waiting mortuaries, prevalent in Europe, Germany mostly, inspired by fears of premature interment. How hopelessly macabre to be employed in such a place. To sit and stare all day at putrefied flesh, inhaling the sick stench of rotting carrion and decay, while attentively watching for signs of life from a crowd of cold cadavers. How cruel and crushing of a concept to the human spirit.

But also, how poetic.

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Alarm

I remember the unmistakable feeling of seeing something we weren't supposed to, a fugitive nightmare cut loose into the night, spilling itself over black asphalt. We peered out through the darkened window down into the street. Thirty men, maybe sixty, had gathered outside, all of them shouting and brandishing weapons. Some held bats and rusted pipes, others had wrapped thick branches in barbed wire. A few of them clutched bricks and stamped their feet. We could hear glass breaking somewhere in the distance, just out of view. Car alarms whooped and screamed, banshees, their flickering lights pulsed like wicked metronomes for the mayhem.

"My knees hurt," she said. "How much longer?"

"I don't know," I told her.

Standing in front of the mob there was a man who wore a mask. It was orange and had a strange insignia drawn on the front. At his feet, painted in argent light from the lamp overhead, was a young girl, no older than 12.  Her hands were tied, mouth gagged. Terror had rendered her still and doe-eyed. and I could see her face was swollen and waterworn with tears. Dried snot and mucus bubbled around her nose, her hair held tight to her head all wet with sweat and worry.

"Bahaadur! Where is all your courage now?! This girl's death is blood on your hands," the man wearing the mask yelled, revealing something sharp and shining.

"Oh my god, he's really going to do it," she said clutching my arm. "Where are the police? Why aren't the police coming?"

We shifted our weight to drop a bit lower, to avoid being seen.

"Bahaadur! Are you ready for a reckoning?" the man outside continued.

I couldn't think. My mind was lost inside a labyrinth made of dead-ends and one-way streets. I couldn't explain to her why the cops wouldn't come, how no one would. I could tell by his voice who the man outside was; that's when I knew the young girl's life was irretrievably lost. I couldn't stop my hands from trembling nor hide my obvious discomfort. My blood ran cold and I shivered dreadfully. I could hear my ice-cube heart crack and pop in my chest.

The orange-faced man grabbed the young girl by her matted hair and sternly pulled her head back. Smiling, he pulled her hair aside, revealing a thin, pale neck.

"If you won't listen to me Bahaadur, maybe you will listen to her," the man said. "You will get to listen to her tell you how it feels to die."

He pulled the gag from the girls mouth and she screamed out: Papaa.

Wooden Swords

You must find the prophet. That's the last thing she'd said to me before I lost her. We were in the woods - it was nighttime - and the woods were dark, and cold, and we were ensnared. We couldn't find a way out. Al Jeaire held his hand against his lips, informing us we should remain quiet; that if we did not, they'd hear us, and if they heard us they'd surely kill us. So we crept along, crouched in the darkness like tigers, our teeth cringing each time a twig snapped or the leaves crunched beneath our feet, hoping the sounds wouldn't alert our pursuers, intent on our capture.

Atop an old skeletal corpse I'd found a rusted sword and an old wooden shield studded with dull metals and rotted leather. Al Jeaire had forged a makeshift bow that was enchanted by the village sorceress, Aratha, whom we'd lost hours ago. We were nearing a lake then, and the red moon, hanging ominously overhead, had been reflected in the slow waters, waving on the glass surface like a flag. There'd been a bright light, and the sound of something moving through the air with lethal force, sparks and then the sudden emergence of flames. The warlock Venkgnath, and his minions, had found us, raining down flames and black magics upon us. Aratha had turned and conjured an aqueous djinn that wrapped itself around her to protect her from the blast. She summoned great deluges of water, sending them arcing at our adversaries in tumbling tsunamis that crashed into the dense wood, uprooting trees and earth.

In the commotion, scrambling to escape, we were separated. I was alone in a vast stone courtyard, surrounded on all sides by thick rock. Around me stood giant statues, stone golems and glaring gargoyles, all malevolent and mad. Out of the corner of my eyes I swear I could see them encroaching as I approached the obelisk in the center of the yard. This is where I was told I'd find the prophet. The obelisk was as tall as a house, elaborately covered in strange markings and symbols that began to glow as I neared.

I placed my hand on it and saw the stone guardians around me rouse, their eyes too beginning to glow. The structure before me began to recede into the quaking earth, producing a deafening crumbling sound. Once the earth had fully swallowed it, two stone wolves leapt from the crater and howled.

One looked at me and said:

It has been prophesied that you would come, and also, that you will not leave.

I Love You

He wrote her, and he shouldn't have. Their time together was no more, but the crashing nostalgia and wetness of the memory bled through his shirt and clung to his skin. He was choked by the thought of what they'd had - by what he might not have again. The abject silence of his apartment was a crime of omission.

Everywhere he ran for refuge he was greeted by a visage, a virulent remembrance of better times. The pale glow of the computer screen illuminated the longing, the emptiness that ached inside him without outlet. Sure, he'd found others - ones who were able to distract him from the loneliness and desolation of those grey skies - but their influence was meager and inconsequential. They didn't have what he needed: they were incomplete pictures, vaguely out of focus and poorly composed.

The last time they were together, in Sonoma, was the last time they were actually really together. Things had gone awry - as things had had a habit of doing - but he was happy with her, even in their unhappiness. Just having her near him was enough to quell the ache of loneliness, the ennui of existence. With her, he didn't feel alone. There had been a misunderstanding and a fight - words poorly chosen, ideas poorly expressed. Their skin had been goose-pimpled then, small tacks and sharpened edges all around. If they could, I wonder if they'd take back the things they'd said then...the things they'd done.

What they had allowed to happen had been an essential component of their undoing, their inevitable and regrettable separation. In retrospect she's become a kind of standard, one that future relations and prospective partners will be measured by. Often though, they'd fallen short of what was there, then. The love, companionship, understanding, communion, warmth. The physical intimacy.

Each time he ventures out yet is unable to find what it is he's looking for. Sometimes he'll exempt himself entirely from the search, choosing to spare himself the heartache - the swelling sense of mediocrity.

Other times he'll fall victim to wistful flares of nostalgia; listening to old voicemails just to hear her say I love you.

Sticks and Stones

I'm trapped inside a zoo. Everything here is a bit fuzzy, yet it's all placed precisely in between the lines. They say I'm "twenty-percent" crazy and only ever overzealous.

There are about two dozen of us in here - I'm the last. They use us like prostitutes for their pleasure and play, to make their lives easier; to make the infernal spinning more bearable.

I can hear others, too, in other cages, but their cries I cannot understand. I am told they look different than we do, but their purpose is the same. Our captors make us mean and base - into expletives - and hurl us at their opposition. Sometimes we bounce off, but more often, we imbed ourselves like splinters into aching fingers.

By my Semitic ancestors I was told that I would be made a weapon. I realize now that I'd prove them right when I would later become part of a political party intent on razing the world.

They breed us, orgiastically, hoping that by mixing a great deal of us together they'll produce something that will better suit their needs. I mentioned I am the last, and with good reason: they have little use for me. I don't work well with others. I'm like a nuisance insect incessantly buzzing, made to wear a muzzle. So I must always be looking at the same time forwards and backwards, ever ready to defend. At night, I'm woken by the ones softly whispering my name in their sleep, and I cannot help ask quizzically: why

I've come to believe we have no actual existence, we're just meaningless mouthfuls of air.






- Z

Twuth

Some things are just true, like how a plant needs light and water to survive. Or how we need oxygen to breathe. Why is it then, that competing truths can occupy the same space at the same time? How can each be true? I asked myself this as I stood overlooking the mountains, two California Condors cut the sky above me, carving it with their serrated oil-black wings. They never flap them, never call out, never cry. They just glide for miles, riding the sky like paper airplanes made of ash. Below, past rows of trees and fragments of fallen rocks, the ocean hugged the shore, whispering sighs to the sand. Bob Dylan's harmonica howled from the headphones around my neck, singing to a small Japanese camera I held against my eye.

Two truths. How can a thing contain two true contrary truths? My mind was buoyant but sinking, two-faced monsters rolled dice and gambled on my grasp. I was at odds. With everything, everyone, everywhere - myself, too.

What was it she'd said about the sea? Has there ever been a body more rife with symbolism; what greater mirror? After all, we are sixty-percent water - sixty-percent mad, murky and unfathomable; beautiful, mysterious and dark; gentle yet severe; fraught with danger and delight; coming and going always, forever hooked, forever affected by the crescent of a pale and distant memory.

"Did you get it," she asked.

I held my breath and tried hard not to move. I pressed the shutter, waited for the camera to close its eye, and when I looked up, the ocean was gone.

"Yea, I got it."

Mirage

It looked solid but my hand passed through it like it was water. I was in the desert standing before an enormous mirror, at least fifteen feet high, decorated with intricate glimmering lights and exquisite flourishes all around the frame. It was unlike any other mirror I had seen before; this mirror reflected what it saw. It pulsed and glowed and blinked, peering out with its giant rectangular eye into the infinite darkness of the desert night. Others passed by and I watched them change inside the reflection. One man, a rather old gentleman, scantily clad, with red hair and large furry boots, was transformed into a youthful red mare as he passed - or galloped - by behind me. There was a woman who came to me, moving toward the mirror, holding a small basket of dead flowers painted gold. I watched her reflection as she approached and saw small thorns sprouting out from her skin, which now took on a leafy shade of green. A deep red spread across her face, and by the time she was next to me it had petaled outward like a rose in bloom.

"Why aren't you changing," she asked, staring at our reflections.

I looked at her quizzically. I didn't know. I'd been standing there for several minutes now and couldn't discern a change. At first I'd thought that maybe I had been standing in a poor spot, one that the mirror couldn't see, or that I'd been standing too close, or too far, but no matter where I stood I remained the same.

"I'm not sure," I told her. "It's strange."

She touched her reflection on the mirror and gently ran her thin fingers across the soft petals of her face. Those yellow eyes painted on her rosy cheeks almost looked like butterfly wings. Her reflection carefully plucked one of them off and turned to me, extending it as if I were to take it. When I turned to look at her beside me however, no such offering was made. I looked at her confusedly and through our silence we each seemed to say:

"Do you see that?"

Turning back to the mirror I saw that it was beginning to tremble violently. The flat silver surface had become marred with turbulent waves that swelled and crashed into its frame. The lights started pulsing to an unknown rhythm, one familiar yet unrecognizable, like some alien morse code. It drew the attention of other passerby's and soon a crowd of dusty revelers all stood gazing at the glass where the woman stood handing me her face. In the distance the sound of hooves boomed toward me like an echo in reverse. From the shaking mirror emerged a golden horse with the head of a dragon. It leapt whinnying out of one reality into another and stood before me with its head lowered in supplication. The creature's mouth and throat glowed as it inhaled, as though it had swallowed a star.

There was the dreamlike feeling of something out of place. The moment began to feel nightmarishly mercurial, swirling around me capriciously, threatening to capsize. A strong wind caught the clips of a nearby flag, jingling them against the pole, sounding out like a collar on a bounding dog. There was the smell of fire and burning sage, gypsy hymns igniting the silence like matchbooks.

The woman beside me bent down to touch its head but her hand passed right through it, like it was water.

It looked up at me, rubbed its face against mine and purred.

Now I understood.

Hot Buttered Schokolade

He’d arrived at the theater early. Richard was supposed to meet him before the show - at the bar across the street - for a quick drink, but given the quantity of alcohol Richard had consumed the night before, he wasn’t going to make it. It was a time-honored tradition of theirs to go see the annual showing of Groundhog’s Day on Groundhog Day. This time though, Alfred stood outside the theater casually - and also conspicuously - swiping through his phone, perusing lists and looking for someone to call. In this scene it was dreadful to be caught looking bored, or worse, alone. He phoned a friend and killed half an hour getting caught up on the latest trials and tribulations, reminiscing on the old stories of lust and deprvaed indulgence, the nostalgic echoes of their past. Looking down at his watch, he realized the movie was about to begin and quickly ended the call.

As he hung up the phone he watched an attractive woman dressed in black pass by and enter the theater. She looked like she might be a few years older than him, at most, but she was well kept. She walked with a casual nonchalance that was also attention-seeking. She’d seen him notice her as she passed, her eyes trained on her reflection in the glass window of the boutique beside the cinema. Alfred didn’t notice her noticing him, but he did notice that she was alone.

Standing in the popcorn line, looking up at the mirrors affixed to the ceiling at a near perfect slant, hanging like television screens on which he was the star, he saw her in line behind him, half a dozen people back. He ordered a bag of popcorn and what seemed to be a whole liter of Dr. Pepper. He suspected his subsequent bloat would match his debt; an inverse relation, he thought. As my funds recede my waistline exceeds. After relinquishing a crisp $20 bill and receiving a meager $2 change, he stood away from the line by the restrooms, the woman in black in full view.

He wondered how he might approach her, what he would say. Something witty perhaps, or charming, maybe something insightful and poetic to show he was sensitive, clever and artful. The more he observed her though, he began to get the impression that she might be immune to such advances. Her face had a kind of weathered look to it that suggested she'd had her share of hard winters and long falls. Her posture conveyed a dignified rigidity, an almost impetuous recalcitrance. No, to make this work he'd have to be direct, no bullshit.

He let her pass first, so he could follow her into the theater and place himself beside her, avoiding the chance she might separate if he tried to inveigle her before entering. After counting to twenty he walked in and found her sitting in the 7th row of a loosely packed theater, with an empty seat on either side. Smiling, he moved up through the aisle and, motioning to the empty seat at her left, he said:

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

"Oh, no, go right ahead," she said, waving her hand.

He sat down and saw she'd just opened a box of Raisinets. "You know," he said, "the historical origins of chocolate-covered raisins are unknown."

She looked at him, a bit perturbed, but not wanting to be rude, and flashed a convivial smile encouraging him to proceed. The movie will start any minute anyway, she thought.

"Yea, it's strange, they think it's German: they called it wenig Schokolade Ball," he said.

I bet you looked that up on Wikipedia before you sat down.

She wasn't impressed. This wasn't working. He was bombing, hard. Panic set in. His heart began thumping loudly in his ears. His chest felt tight. This is it, he thought, it's time to bring my A game:

“Listen, I'm going to be frank with you; you look as equally pathetic and lonely as I do - if not moreso. Would you like to suck my pee-pee through this bag of popcorn that I’ve conveniently cut a hole into?”

“What?!” she said, unable to conceal her astonishment.

"Well, I was just thinking we could turn this dry crunchy bag into something hot, buttery and salty; a savory treat at the behest of my man-meat," he said chuckling.

She wasn't amused. She glared at him.

“Oh, my mistake. It’s just that you look like the type,” he said.

With a loud bang, she slapped him across the face with her box of Raisinets, sending small schokolade balls flying into the air, raining down on a theater full of moviegoers. It sounded like someone had popped brown paper bag, and it startled everyone within earshot. In a deep baritone voice someone yelled out "Chocolate Rain!" Others groaned and turned around in their seats leering back at him.

She yelled, "Get this creep away from me, someone, please!"

No sooner had the words jumped from her mouth than he felt the firm hands of someone strong and sizable wrenching him up from his chair. Before he knew it, he was being forcibly ejected from the theater and dragged into a darkened alleyway.

"Think you're funny talking like that to a lady you sick fuck?" the man asked. "I'm tired of motherfuckers like you; today I'm gonna teach you a lesson in etiquette."

The man, tossing him onto the floor and stepping out from the shadows, revealed a menacing muscularity, like a pit bull's. He was colossal and intimidating, with eyes like eight balls, stinking of ferocity. He pulled out a pair of cuffs from his back pocket, clamped Alfred to a sewage drain, and slowly began to undo his pants. Alfred began to scream out and tugged at the cuffs with savage futility, trying madly to break free. The man slammed a fistful of Milkduds into Alfred's mouth and said: "Chew on this, bitch."

Taking a half empty bag of popcorn that lay on the floor next to the dumpster, he tore a hole in the bottom of it with his now erect and formidable penis. His cock looked dangerous, like a miniature version of himself. Through a mouthful of sticky schokolade, no one could hear Alfred's muffled cries as the man injected butter into his butt.

Then, the man bent down and whispered: "They call me - the butterer."