Mutiny

 
In her grip, tightly wound like the vines that wracked her brain,
a lonely fellow - but by no means a loner - who sat and watched.
He pushed against the fingers and sipped gin,
the weakness of his one hand
unapparent, and he was sometimes tempted to resign to his fate,
let the wrinkles envelop his face, snuff him out mid-sip.

And in the winter it all smelled like antifreeze, but he froze
just the same, buried in warmth and drowning in the ice that
populated it. No shovels for this blizzard,
just lies and lukewarm cocoa
fresh from the living room table - all done in spite, or hatred
for the finish and it's smooth, caustic reverberation.

When it thawed he felt her grip loosen, capped the alcohol and,
swallowing, prayed for the motion and the violence, like before.
She had sinned for it all, draped herself in it,
and now the weakness in her
bled out, soaked him - and he was glad to feel it, know the sign,
and know that at last, it would all be the way it was.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Foo Fighters, Breakout

Hunted by the American Dream

 
Hope woke up in New York City, and despite the shattered-glass-gleaming of the Hudson and the miraculous, grey-pitched avenues leading to and from the homesteads of fate, she couldn't call it home.

Try as she might, the clock kept ticking, leaking seconds as it was throttled under the pressure of the necktie. Hope cried every midnight, trying desperately to learn to bear the first dark cuts the simmering blackness took at her sanity.

One afternoon, as Hope sat down to lunch, the clock still beating its loud, hissing rhythm, the gods spoke to her.

"How are you feeling today?" they asked, their efforts to feign interest evident in their drought-dry tones.

Hope barely looked up from her sandwich and replied, "Tired, and sick of this place."

"But Hope," the gods whimpered, "can't you look past the blistering monotony and see the possibilities?"

Hope took a bite of her food and chewed slowly, digesting this thought while her saliva slithered about, making quick work of her bacon, lettuce and tomato. She stepped back, out of herself for a moment, to try and find what the gods had meant.

She left herself behind - mid chew - and strode down those aged avenues, through the tunnels that latticed in the underground and up the high rise elevators to see what blinding magnificence lurked at the top.

She returned to her table, finished chewing and swallowed with an unglamorous gloick.

"I fail to see the promise you've instilled here," Hope bluntly told the gods. "Perhaps it was all used up by the immigrants in the early 1900’s."

The gods were stunned. "But didn't you learn any lesson at all?" they asked anxiously.

Hope wondered for a moment. "Well," she said, "I suppose I did." She paused to compose her thoughts. "I learned that you can shake the tree until the mistakes fall out, but then, it's always easier to grab up each morsel than to keep caring for the tree."

This is not the response the gods were hoping for, and they became most upset by Hope's refusal to buy into their optimism. One of them reached out a hand, pointing at Hope, and laid his finger to rest right on her heart.

"I'm sorry, Hope," he said. "You heard the horns trail in, but then you let them explode in sizzling grayscale and trail out. This makes you unacceptable for our purposes."

He pushed, and with a slight twitch of his shoulder some invisible projectile ripped through her, sending blood flying like crystals, shredding the peace of the still apartment air.

Hope's body hit the floor with an unfortunate thwack, and suddenly she was outside herself once more. She stared down at her body, still as a monument, and as she watched the blood trickle across the hardwood, she heard the clock slow and, finally, stop ticking.

"That was uncalled for," she said. Then her face curled into a smile. "But I much prefer flying to this shitty apartment."

With that, she turned and rocketed away, leaving the gods speechless in her wake, and before they could react and reel her in, she was gone.
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Oh, the Quick Links I have for you today...

Anthony Kirchner has been busy lately, tacking all sorts of new things up on his blog, Not Microwaveable.

Glen Binger has two poems published in Camel Saloon.

It might have happened on a Monday, but it's still awesome: Peter Richter posted a very poetic new piece.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Rilo Kiley, Silver Lining

Resale

 
I buried a thousand things in the yard the day you died. You always used to tell me, "No item is worth as much as the man who owns it," but you never explained what happens to said item when the owner dies. I assumed it goes up in value.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Dethklok, Thunderhorse

Good news, everyone:

 
Have you heard?
They've just done
The unbelievable,
But what many call
A necessary measure.

Have you heard?
We, the people,
Have been given license
To be crackpots.
Not that we needed it.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Brandon Boyd, Here Comes Everyone

300 characters

 
This is something I wrote on my cell phone last weekend when I couldn't sleep and ended up being awake for 34 hours straight. In any case, the "Notes" application on my phone has a 300-character maximum, and that's how this spawned. Intro over.
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Ache to the sounds of retch and spit and The Wrestler at six ante meridian layered over upstairs infomercials and feet sliding on hardwood losing what little traction they had to fits of slumber or sick or shuffling so wake up can be at eight and things can rest safely back on the handle for a week.
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And what do you know! Quick Links for your reading enjoyment.

Glen Binger has a review of Eric Beeny's latest chapbook, Snowing Fireflies, at The Broad Set.

This month's issue of decomP brings us an eye-catching poem by Lucas A. Gerber.

Also from decomP (last month - it's old, I know) is a piece by Tres Crow that I can't stop reading.

Anthony Kircher's newest post - an insect-inspired haiku on his blog, Not Microwaveable.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Termanology, Watch How It Go Down