*****RODENTS*****

"Glimpses: Very Short Stories"

I occasionally find poetry I've written and randomly hidden on my phone and can't remember when or why I wrote any of it. #poetry #amatuerdingdong

“Bed Of Welts”

A light breeze blows

The scent of 

Soft 

Flowering

Jasmine

Through an open window 

Into the dank, dark house

Passed the bags of garbage 

Old newspapers 

Clutter

Junk 

The still remains of the owner 

Moldering on the floor

Up the stairs

Into the bedroom

Over bare mattresses

Flecked with rust golden stains

Then released back out

Into the sickly sweet 

Sun

Of

An

Early

Spring

"Freighters"

There's a music in the machinery
That vibrates
Between the pieces
That echoes
Around the parts

There's a rust around the windows
That reddens
The places
That are separated
By the panes

There's a murmur in the holds
That reverberate
With life
After life
Has left them

As the foundations rot
As the beams weaken
As the hinges break

The freighters sit
In their harbors
Waiting to return

To their seas

“Bright sun is no friend to old books”

A small drip of bright orange ice cream ran over her knuckles and plummeted down onto the picnic blanket. The warm sun cut through the trees hitting the peaks and valleys of her face. Sharp shadows and her soft face made her alternate between beauty and hideousness. 

Her friends eye darted down to the spreading orange mass pooling between her thighs. He coughed a wet mass of green and red phlegm into his hands, eyes watering. 

She looked at him distantly. 

“Are you okay?”

Inside his lungs burned and roiled, rolling over themselves. He coughed again. Red, green, and beige this time. 

“Sure, I’m fine.” He said, his eyes fixed on the drop of orange ice cream warming on his friends pale thigh.

"The Shortest Man In California"

My doubts are compounding

The chorus resounding 

A song I've heard three thousand times

Rote repetition through soft long division 

One after one another in line

Yet I am the stone that cannot be bled

Feet thick as the granite that makes up my head 

My spastic behavior just masks the unsavory 

Words I don't remember I've said

But my lack of conviction 

And memory lapses 

Can't hide all my fears 

And misfiring synapses 

As I spiral out like the last Roman candle 

On the longest Fourth of July 

Here I am

The poor mans sketch of a man

Another short little man

In the western most end 

Of California 

"My Head Is Not My Head”

They keep circling me chanting

“How is my head not my head?

How is my head my head?”

And honestly, I don't know 

There's only one little voice

And it is my own

It's loud and it's yowling

“How is my head not my head?

How is my head my head?”

"Slow Water"

The slow water runs

Through the tangled brush

And the snagged limbs

Of felled trees

Over my body

Down the falls

Into the reservoirs 

The treatment facilities 

And into the bodies 

Of the people in town

Away from the trickle 

Of the slow water

Where I lay silent 

"Bed Of Welts"

“Bone Broth”

Strip off my meat

Strip me down to the bone

Feel my moist warm flesh

Pulsing wet in your hands

Kiss my open mouth

Chew my cracked tongue

Hold my round bald head straight

Pulsing wet in your hands

Make a meal of my cock

Fry the meat with tender herbs

Skewer the tip with soft onion

Pulsing wet in your hands

Cleave my heart in quarters 

Make yourself a hearty stew 

Keep the memory of me

Pulsing wet in your hands

“Invisible Brains”

Her fingers ran over the calcified prominence of its back. The sweet smell of lavender floated in from the window and mixed with low smell of moist bodies inside. The soft clammy flesh just below the exposed bone tensed and it reminded her of holding thawed pork chops in her hand. 

The entire body stiffened and bone gave way to flesh which gave way to the cold dry appendages that curled out from the body on the left and right. 

She momentarily felt white hot excitement flash through her brain and dissipate as quickly as it came. 

The moment was gone and it’s place was the light presence of spring lavender.  

"Wiggle Room"
Hansel, standing in his study looking over the great many volumes of prose and poetry at his disposal, spit on the floor and mumbled bitter words to himself. Outside his grandchildren played on the lawn with his son Archibald's feeble aged terrier Louis, shrieking and screaming and falling about in the way that only spoiled children can. He watched them as they took a deflated ball and began hitting Louis in the face with it. Hansel spit again, this time into the potted begonia his last wife left as a parting gift. They shouldn't be beating on the dog like that, Hansel thought to himself.
Louis had given up and now lay prone on the grass, the bright sun framing his misery in a warm autumn veneer usually only felt in memories.
A loud crack broke Hansel's focus as the children began lobbing rocks at his windows. His study window, the largest one on this side of the house, splintered into a gigantic spider web that sent the sun spiraling into the room in hundreds of directions.
Hansel spit into the spider web and imagined what kind of spider would spin such a beautiful web; would it be poisonous or benign, small or large?
He could feel the spider slowly weaving him into a warm bundle, the enzymes it had pumped into him turning his insides into easily slurped mush, but he didn't care. He didn't mind existence as a malt.
As the web burst sending shards of glass into every corner of the room Hansel watched quietly. He was somewhere else; somewhere warmer; somewhere with meaning and purpose.

"Learning To Walk Again"

She was looking at her fingernails when the man behind the deli counter asked her what she wanted. She looked up at the menu: "warm tuna melt", "Big Bill's Famous Bbq Pulled Pork", "hard salami with creamy Gouda" and so. She gazed down at the assorted pasta salads yellowing in their trays; their mayonnaise bases jelling them into a solid cube like a gelatin mold. The horse fly caught in the case with them was violently beating itself against the glass trying to get away from the congealed "Bacon Macaroni Salad" with the big black serving spoon raised skyward from deep within its guts like so many white flags from so many other failed wars.
"How old is macaroni salad," She said. "The one with the olives and peppercorns, not the kidney beans?"
The teenager behind the counter stared at through his glasses, his red, greasy face glowing under the scrutiny of the fluorescent lighting.
"I think Bill made it yesterday. Hey, Bill! Did you make the macaroni salad yesterday? The one with the olives and peppercorns not the kidney beans?"
There was a shuffle and a cough and Bill, famous around these parts for his signature pulled pork, stuck his head out of the manager's office and let the words "Yeah, sure, I think so" fall out of his mouth in the same manner a goat recalled cud from its stomach up into its mouth. The words sat on the floor in a pile, then he disappeared back into his office leaving only the smell of mid-price cigars in his absence.
"I'll have the tuna melt," she said.
"You sure?"
"I guess, yeah."
"Alright, whatever," the kid said.
She took her number, 45, grabbed a sweet tea and took her seat.
She felt like she made a good choice for lunch. A sensible choice.
She looked over at the illuminated counter full of various pastas. The fly was still there, frantically trying in vain to escape.
She wasn't sure about her choice and inside a growing sense of dread expanded.

"Meeting Opel"

There's something you had heard once, what was it again?
"Cup the balls, stroke the shaft, talk like you're equals."
No. That isn't it. It was more lyrical. Whimsical.
Something that lilted on the breeze like browning autumn leaves.
Caught in an updraft up, up, up....
Then lost in a haze of sepia sunlight; youth woven into perpetual nostalgia, divided by time and strengthened by the distance between.
How did it go? It was simple, right?
"Spit in your palm, spit in his mouth, treat him like an animal."
No?
"Smell his asshole, tongue his mouth"?
"Tongue his asshole, smell his mouth"?
No no no, It's something personal. Something cultural and timeless but still personal, like how no matter how far we drift apart from one another we still come together over home-cooked meals during holidays. Like in old picture books for children. Somewhere in a farmhouse on a hill overlooking a meadow with deer frolicking in a pasture so green it verges on ethereal. There would be smoke slowly curling out of the chimney, and in the back of your brains you just know that an elderly grandmother is inside laboring over an open hearth. Do I smell cinnamon? Apples.....?
No, it was something else, something primal, that's what it was!
"Stuff two fingers up his ass, two fingers up your own ass: Fireworks."
That must be it.
That has to be it.
You get up out of your easy chair, the late afternoon sun creeping lazily through the curtains and you whisk your hand in the dust motes hovering about the room.
The smell of brown sugar surrounds you. Something delicious is nearing ready in the kitchen.
Rubbing your lower back you look to your right. In your head the words "lick it, stick it, prick it" flit to-and-fro.
"Honey," you say. "I had an idea just now."

"And The Rivers Will Boil"

Rodents

- an old woman ruminates on her devolved husband

"What It Is To Fly"

"Here we are," The man shouts. "Brothers, sisters, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, normal, weirdo... All of us a pack of feral assholes." 

He lowers his hands. Beads of sweat racing down his jagged face. Cheeks red, eyes wild, the stubble on his chin visibly unshaven.

"So what do we do? There are a million answers, every one wrong. What then are we to do?" 

Like a carnival barker his arms and shoulders rise and fall; a magician performing slight-of-hand; a tide ebbing in and out.

"None of you are 'right', think about that fact for a minute."

The crowd stands still. A slight wind picks up and the hairpiece on the mans' head gently lilts in the breeze.

"My life isn't worth shit, your lives aren't worth shit," he spits, this time shaken. 

"We're all disgusting pigs; fat, sweaty, filth filled pigs. See?" He reaches into the podium and pulls out a slice of cheese pizza and stuffs it into the crotch of his pants, falling to the stage and sensually grinding his authentic New York style pizza pie into the flooring.

Everyone applauds. A woman in the front row weeps and raises her hands up in a sign if praise. Children set off sparklers; bumpkins shoot their guns. 

That night everyone orders pizza for dinner, and the pizza is good.

"Hors-d'oeuvre"

The pork purée sat atop the pile of uncooked shrimp while I stood there staring at the mess of sour meat. The shrimp were thawed but unpeeled and as I looked into the choir of little black eyes I half-expected them to begin singing. In my head I heard two dozen tiny voices harmonizing an acapella version of Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit'. I imagined them crawling out from under the jellied pork filth that coated them, some even forming small hats and canes from the pink paste, and launching into a conga line. 

I promptly sat down my glass of white wine and turned the oven up to 500, then slid my upper body onto the baking rack and sighed. Today had been a bad day.

"A Sack Of Hot Dogs Fucking A Bag Of Meat"

It was humid and sweaty as the sack of hotdogs took off its' pants. The bag of meat growled sexily. Outside emergency sirens wailed, someone yelled something and stray dogs howled. The bag looked nervously towards the closed drapes.

"Don't worry so much," said the hotdogs. "I come here to fuck all the time, no one's gonna mess with us."

The bag slipped off its' robe, exposing the lumps from the various meats that filled it.

"I like what I see," murmured the hot dogs as it rubbed its' nubby hotdog ends up and down the bag, letting splashes of warm brine slop over it. 

"I've never done this before," said the bag. 

"Don't worry, I'll be gentle." 

The hotdogs pushed one frankfurter out through a tear in the bottom of the sack and forced it deep inside the bag of warm flesh. It poked into part of a pork chop, then a chunk of stew beef. 

The bag wiggled and writhed, the sack pumped and groaned.

The heat was making the meat sour and the hotdogs ripen. The friction created more kinetic heat, and the smell thickened.

The sack yelped as the bag went limp and they both lay there: a sack of fetid hotdogs on top of a bag of spoiled meat, both oozing onto the floor.

"The Princess Special"

The cake was almost neon pink, somewhat incandescent and undoubtedly full of processed granular sugar. The man behind the counter smiled. 

"Is that the one you want?" He said, voice unnaturally chipper and, considering the subject matter, too enthused. "Most little girls like that one. We call it "The Princess Special"."

I paused. Technically I was here for my nephew's birthday cake, but maybe this is the cake he'd prefer. I barely know him. I barely like him. 

"What else do you have?" I said. 

"What does he like? Is he a sporty kid or a nerdy kid?" 

I had to think. 

"I don't know him much, really. He's a fat little pile of garbage. He has diabetes but my sister insists he has a normal cake. I just need a pile of baked sugar."

"We have sugar-free alternatives, if you'd prefer that?"

I didn't care enough to bother. I didn't like my sister, I didn't like her son, I didn't want to be in the generic cake section of the generic super market.

"Just give me "The Princess Special" and two dozen donuts," I said. 

I took the boxes and went to the check out. I passed by the deli meats and bought a pound of pruiscutto. I figured that he could eat that too. Maybe he could have a heart attack for his tenth birthday.

Happy birthday, princess.

"Sing A Little Song For Me"

"Which one?" I asked

"It doesn't matter, I don't know... Whatever you prefer," He muttered.

Outside I could hear kids playing, cars passing by, airplanes coming and going to places I'd probably never see.

"Have you made up your mind yet, goddamnit, we don't have all day," he growled impatiently. 

Inside was dark and dank. Stained carpet. Cockroaches eating the bedding, hatching in the sheets. Have you ever entered a room and wondered if someone had been pissing on the floor? This was one of those rooms. 

"Hurry it the fuck up, I've got a life to lead."

I pulled my legs up to my ears and began singing "Come Fly With Me".

He relaxed and we continued. 

Outside were people living lives; inside were cockroaches shitting on the carpet and eating the wallpaper.

"Fossils"

Outside it rained. Inside the radio played. A constant rhythm of 60's pop songs poured from the speakers and fell to the floor like beef through a grinder. 

"I'm going to work," He said, satchel thrown over his shoulder. 

Jefferson Airplane piled on top of The Animals.

She looked up from her coffee.

"Alright, have a good day."

The Everly Brother 

"Everywhere"

The popsicle melted down the front of her hands. Cold pink and orange seeped between her fingers and pattered silently onto her oversized floral dress. Her eyes wandered across the street to where a few children shrieked and chased each other.
Her tongue, a squat moth eaten protrusion, slowly drug itself upwards against the soft multicolored sludge she could barely contain within the industrial grade waffle cone gripped in her hands.







"How To Ride A Horse"

"The Insides"