Cheater
“Sherie,” Tom begs, “Sherie, come back.”
Sherie keeps walking, her sheer, black skirt swaying with her hips as she walks towards the shoreline.
Massive cliffs loom behind them, and one stretches out into the ocean. Atop it sits a red and white striped lighthouse. As the sun sets, seagulls fly in through a window, the hinges too rusted to keep them shut.
“Baby, please just hear me out,” his strides increase.
She stops and he freezes. “Could you just shut up for a minute,” she snaps, spinning around. Her arms are crossed, causing her red crop top to rise. Her sunglasses still rest on her tiny nose. The setting sun colors her hair light brown.
Tom strides until he is a foot away from her, “Okay.”
Sherie slides her sunglasses up over her hair, pushing the long strands out of her face. She glares at him, her darks eyes like two caves a colony of wild bats could flee from at any moment, “Is that all you have to say?”
“I thought you wanted me to shut up,” he says, reaching to take her hands.
She doesn’t let him, “I stopped. So spit out the halfhearted apology. Let’s get this over with.”
“There’s nothing halfhearted about it.”
“Then why is this the millionth one I’ve gotten from you?”
”I’m a different man,” he stutters.
“See, you even have a script. God, Tom, I don’t know why I even keep giving you a chance. It keeps coming back to this.”
Silence. A wind blows through her skirt and hair. He wants to kiss her. He knows she won’t let him.
“Ok. I won’t apologize then,” he says, quietly.
Sherie laughs sardonically, “Gotta give you credit. For once you’re actually being original.”
Tom doesn’t know how to take her words, “Can’t we just go home and talk about this?”
A wave rolls up onto the shore and over their feet. They don’t move.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Fine then. We’re just going to stay here all night.”
Shower Muse
I fictionally imagine myself as a serious writer. When I sit down to write I perch a colorful parrot on my shoulder and wear a plumed pirate hat for creative ambience. I even cajole a temp secretary to take dictation naked while I’m in the shower. All my best ideas come under a hot, pulsating shower. She sits nude and dry, outside the shower and scribes in shorthand my spontaneous concepts and shampoo epiphanies. It’s easier for me to recite to a secretary au natural when I’m all lathered up than it is for me to sit for hours in a leather chair, staring at my computer keyboard waiting for my literary muse to finish drying her hair.
My creative writing process is like watching a silent movie without buttered popcorn or milk duds and woefully stab at composing lines and dialogue for the two-reeler’s title cards. A boring, mind numbing, mental stop-action pantomime if not for my eccentric herky-jerky analogies, similes and metaphors. It’s mental evisceration with a kabob stick. Thinking of the naked secretary helps sooth my concept carnage only marginally.
I haven’t always pursued writing, I used to create visual art, sketches, paintings, sculptures. Most of my artistic escapades are now in the sifted remains of corporate take overs, foreclosures and the refuse bins behind hotels. I’ve been to the creative mountain top... you just can’t find any forensic evidence to corroborate it. I also dedicated 30 creative years to the music business, doing all the hard work associated with mastering a difficult instrument while practicing the music industry’s requisite, predatory self-promotional mannerisms. My reward and Gilead balm for all the sling-and-arrow wounds suffered was the dim delusion of fame and glory about the penniless legend in my own mind. Ah, when giants walked the earth.
The practice and discipline of writing on the other hand, means something. Writing, a craft whose chiseled-out prose gives birth to revered words then printed for posterity and intelligently designed to elevate both society and culture to a higher plane.
So now, in the fall of my life, I’m exercising the last vestiges of my impulsive creative urges through writing. And I’ve recently discovered something important about my last tango with word-smithing: there’s no such thing as mediocre writing. It’s not a game of horseshoes, grenades and nuclear reactors where close counts. No indeed, there’s only good writing and anything else is just plain CRAP.
But I said to this guy, over an early breakfast of pancakes, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, nay but a shovel in my calloused hands. One must clean many stables before they sing Herculean praise of your labors.…
#Challenge #humor #fiction #flash fiction #muse #writing #lampoon #satire #william calkins
Poor Whiskers
I was gonna say “It’s not you, it’s me,” but the more I think about it, it really is you.
You can keep the towels and sheets, but I will have someone come and pick up my dishes and silverware. I’m really sorry I ran over your cat.
Oh, and by the way, your sister and I are flying to Reno to get married. We’ll send you pics.
Somewhere at the Bottom of the Morgue
Everything is dark.
Smells foul—reeks of lost ambitions and broken dreams
In some kind of box
Don’t know if I’m dreaming or not
Sounds and swirls echo
Whispers of Everyone I ever loved
and Everyone I didn’t.
I want light
To feel it–the soft warmth of early morning sun
To see it–sunbeams split through leaves
To be it–the only escape.
But there is none.
Just me
and my ghosts
that I took with me
my ghosts
that I keep in me
my ghosts
that are me.
Just me
and my ghost
somewhere at the bottom of the morgue.
Reaper’s Little Drummer Boy
My reaper’s little drummer boy
Made of bones and string
Dressed in red and green
Beating his drum to the march of death
Fire scorching his ankles on the bridge to the end
He beats his drum to the march of death
Hair falling and eyes burning left with no breath
His hands stitched with hair, creaked and cracked
My little drummer boy
Dressed in the garb of red and green flames.
Marches to the beat of his own drum,
His carrying song beats through Eden.
Down the hills and through the fields
All the way to the throne.
Hades judging the souls tipped an ear to the rhythm.
No pain would save the dead
From the rhythm running through their bones
My little drummer boy
Falling apart at the seams
dropping and crumbling
His ashes and bones sinking to the river
His drum rolled to the throne leaving silence in its wake
Persephone tears were forsaken for his making
his path all the way to death’s door.
Oh my little drummer boy
How you leave ashes in your wake
This is a piece I wrote about a year ago and had someone else post because I didn’t want to share it myself. I’ve changed a bit over the year and whether it’s good or bad I’m going to post it because I like it
Republican Elephant
He sits on the end of a shelf.
His companions, mostly, are bears - teddy-bears -
(Named for Teddy Roosevelt, twenty-sixth American President.
A Great President - a Republican).
Like the Elephant,
Mascot for the GOP - the Grand Old Party -
(Younger than the Democrats).
The party that in the nineteenth century gave us Abe Lincoln,
In the twentieth Eisenhower.
And now? The Twitter King.
Our Elephant was a gift for our first-born,
From her maternal grandfather
Following a trip across the Pond.
’So she learns how to be
A proper little Conservative’
He explained.
A good toy for a toddler.
No moving parts, no hidden pins, no sharp corners.
Soft, pliable, comfortable -
Non-threatening in every way.
If only I could feel the same about the Donald!
Childhood days are past.
And so, until the next generation comes,
Our Republican Elephant
Sits quietly on the shelf, with his friends.
But he failed, you know -
(If he really WAS meant to teach our daughter
The merits of Conservatism).
Red-stated Republicanism
Holds no attraction for her. She IS a Red -
But strictly according to British political hues -
With a splash of Green.
A feisty young Feminist, Eco-warrior, Socialist,
Furious to be denied a voice
In last year’s BREXIT Referendum.
Disappointed in those who - In her judgement -
Cast a vote for her future, based on their past.
Like an Elephant, she will NOT forget.
Our Elephant says nothing.
He sends out no tweets.
He makes no promise
To make America great again.
To build a wall.
To give US our country back.
To take back control of our borders.
Will she pass on this Presidential Pachyderm,
Resplendent in his bright hues of red, white and blue,
Stars and stripes - or Union flag -
To her child one day?
Don’t hold your breath.
But if not - we’ll always save a place for him -
Amongst the teddy-bears.
Commentary: Ah... politics. Tricky. Whatever you say, you know you're going to offend someone. I have American friends who are Trump supporters, Australian friends who think all politicians are as bad as each other, and British family members who are indifferent to politics altogether. But - for me - politics does matter. I wrote this in November 2017, around about the time of the first anniversary of Donald Trump's election victory. Now, three years, I'm still struggling to come to terms with the ramifications of the twin electoral upsets of 2016 - the election of Trump, and the British BREXIT referendum. I know I'm not alone. As I post this - in August 2019 - the Amazon forest burns, Iceland loses a glacier, civil unrest in Hong Kong continues, the American President seemingly exhibits Messianic delusions, and thanks to our own 'mini-Trump' Prime Minister, the threat of a 'No Deal' BREXIT on Halloween (You couldn't make it up!) draws nearer. Politics matters. We don't need elephants to remind us of that.