Dose of Life

Your brain on drugs, sunny side up

Twin peaks of beaks bulge and erupt

Orange ash suffocating peppercorn freckles

Preserving the spicy face of morn

Bananas split on whether to partake

An accoutrement procession following wake

Overdosed early bird unfit to learn

Became sober recipe for delectable urns

Perching the mantle above the flame

Addict cracked hulls of misplaced blame

Spread within the pores mourning toast

To life’s preferably disorderly approach

The Curious Cat

Up a tree the child went
After a careless but curious pet
Curiosity got the better of one
The other too worried to allow any fun
So up they went, branch to branch
Creating an elegant, but ephemeral dance
The child slipped and fell back to earth
Without fear, for what it's worth
A few snapped branches but not any bones
Just a sore ass and a handful of moans
Equal in heart, the pet returned to check
To make sure the child had not broken his neck
Together again and safe as of now
The pet thanked with a lick and a loving meow
Then back up the tree it went
Because it was a cat, a curious pet

The Answer - Part 2

The following is the second half of the previously posted short story.

            A week had passed and Janet still had not returned for any of her belongings. Admitting defeat, I had packed all of her clothes into her set of suitcases and placed them along the hallway downstairs so she could haul them out with very little effort. I had also left her a voicemail stating that I would not be home this afternoon, so “if you’re trying to avoid me, then that would probably be the best time to pick up your stuff.” I was too concerned with the only job interview I was able to cement to contemplate whether or not she would actually come.

            When I left the house I was every bit confident that I would make the job interview on time. I had a full ten minute buffer in case anything went wrong, and I did not expect anything to slow my journey into the city, not even traffic. It was the middle of the afternoon and all those that could potentially stand in my way had already reached their destination. I had not accounted for the office building’s faulty elevator, which unceremoniously malfunctioned half a minute after I had entered.

            But I was not alone. A blonde-haired woman dressed in elegant business attire was the elevator’s only other occupant. She was pretty; something nice to admire to help pass the time, and to help keep my mind off of the fact that I would miss not only my job interview, but also my chance for a position at the most prestigious law firm in the city. I made a mental note to sue whoever it was that was supposed to keep this elevator running smoothly.

            I frantically pushed both the Open Door button and the Emergency Call button, with no immediate results.

            “First time trapped in an elevator?” the woman asked distantly, as she tapped the buttons on her cell phone so quickly that my eyes couldn't keep up.

            “I can always spot the newbs,” she added.

            “There’s just some place I need to be right now. That’s all.”

            “Wearing out the buttons won’t do you or the elevator any good. Isn’t that how machinery breaks down? When we push it too far? When we expect too much from it?”

            I didn’t know. And I was confident that she didn’t expect a response. I gave up on the buttons, placed my recently purchased Pineider leather briefcase on the floor, and watched the woman wear down her phone’s buttons.

            “Does this happen frequently?” I asked, curious.

            She shot me a quick glance and then returned her attention to her phone, as if that would make me any less curious about the faulty elevator.

            She finished pummeling her phone and placed it between her breasts. I admired them for a split second and then forced my eyes away. She was wearing an open v-neck shirt that showcased more than half of her breasts. She either enjoyed watching men drool over her cleavage or she had still not figured out which size shirt she wore, and at her age the latter would have been downright difficult to comprehend. I stared at my reflection in the opposite wall panel and thought of all the films I had seen that involved a plain man trapped with a beautiful woman, nothing to do. I imagined all the possibilities.

            “These things tend to work themselves out at their own pace. Somebody in this building knows the elevator has stopped and is working to fix it. You just need to be patient.”

            I nodded, not really paying attention to her words. I was still thinking about her divine breasts. I realized that I still needed to cross off have-sex-with-a-beautiful-woman-in-an-elevator from my bucket list. This might prove to be my best chance. Actually, I had added that to my bucket list only moments prior, but I felt that it was a worthy addition. The job interview was gone. I needed something rewarding to replace it. And this woman symbolized rewarding.

            “What do you normally do?” I asked.

            “I’m sorry?”

            “To pass the time. You’re obviously a frequent victim of this elevator. How do you normally keep from losing your mind?”

            “I do what I’m doing right now.”

            I stepped closer to the back of the elevator, back where she stood. She eyed me defensively.

            “And what exactly are you doing right now? You don’t seem to be doing much.”

            “Is there something I should be doing?”

            “I don’t know. I’m the newb, remember? This is your territory. Paint me a picture of your journeys up and down the faulty elevator.”

            “I usually keep to myself and keep my mouth shut.” She proceeded to zip my mouth shut with an imaginary zipper and then flicked her fingers as if she were tossing away a key. I don’t think she realized that zippers don’t need keys, but I still realized what she meant by it. I nodded in acknowledgement and returned to my previous spot next to my briefcase. I had irritated her to the point that she clearly never wanted me to speak again. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. I had already proved that with Janet. I wasn’t going to be able to pull this off. This woman wanted her privacy and I would give it to her.

            The woman’s breasts vibrated. I assumed it was because of her phone and not some weird medical condition. If it was a medical condition and not her phone, I probably would have ripped open the elevator doors like the Incredible Hulk and fled as quickly as possible, just in case it was contagious. But it was her phone, thank goodness. She retrieved it and once again began wearing down its buttons, which was apparently how she preferred to pass the time. I would follow suit. I pushed each and every elevator button numerous times, mainly for shits and giggles, though I did expect something to happen at some point. Nothing did. If somebody actually knew this elevator was stuck, that somebody was taking their sweet ole time doing something about it.

            I once again gave up on the buttons. When I turned around the woman was glaring at me, much to my surprise. What the hell had I done? And then it slowly dawned on me. I was pushing her buttons. This was her elevator. This was her territory. This was her happy place, and I was invading it. I briefly considered the notion that she was the actual cause of the faulty elevator. That she had planned it in some manner, maybe even working in conjunction with the “somebody in the building” that was supposed to be fixing it. I decided that that would be too much trouble for a woman who couldn’t make enough of an effort to buy an appropriately sized shirt. I stared at my reflection in the opposite wall panel and thought of all the films that involved a plain man being murdered by a beautiful woman over a simple misunderstanding, a simple, unnecessary act of fate. I didn’t want to imagine all of the possibilities.

            She returned her phone to its cushioned slot and proceeded to stand opposite me, glaring as if I had offended her in some manner. And perhaps I did. My happy place was my king-sized bed. If somebody I didn’t know invaded it, I would most likely be upset, as well.

            “I’m sorry,” I stated sincerely. “I won’t touch anything else. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

            She seemed to sense that I was being truthful about that. Her glare slowly dissipated, though she continued to stare at me, which made me slightly uncomfortable. I looked up at the continually blinking fluorescent light and thought of all the places I would rather be and all the things I would do in those places, such as fishing on the lake near my family’s summer home, an activity clearly stated on one of my bumper stickers.

            “You’re here for the job interview,” she stated.

            I returned my attention to her a moment after the light stopped its blinking, after it decided that it wanted to shine more than it wanted to fade away. I finally noticed that she was tired, physically and emotionally. I finally understood why she rode the faulty elevator.

            “You don’t want to work here,” she added unemotionally.

            Her breasts vibrated again, which I didn’t enjoy as much as last time. She sighed and retrieved her phone.

            The elevator suddenly came back to life and hummed with satisfaction. Too bad neither of its occupants was satisfied. I watched the woman as she stared in dread at the circular floor numbers as they lit up, slowly but surely, one after the other.

            I pulled the Emergency Stop button, effectively halting the elevator. I then snatched the phone out of her hands and threw it against the back wall panel, shattering it into so many pieces that she would need a magnifying glass to find the smallest pieces. 

            The woman stared at me, shocked at first, but then a smile slowly formed across her face. It was a beautiful smile, despite the fact that it was one of those closed-lipped smiles, a defensive smile. This woman clearly found very little enjoyment in her life. But I knew of a way to fix that. I stepped forward and kissed the woman. She didn’t seem to mind, so I kissed her again. It didn’t take too much tongue wrestling for me to realize that something was wrong. I pulled away from her and glanced at her closing mouth in time to spot braces. Braces! She wasn’t too fond of my reaction to them, but she also wasn’t surprised.

            “It’s okay. My boyfriend doesn’t like ‘em, either,” she said.

            I smiled in amusement. Why was I not surprised that she had a boyfriend? It seemed that every woman I wanted to bed had a boyfriend. Even girlfriends of mine had boyfriends.

            She reached into the space between her breasts, the space where she formerly used to carry her phone, and withdrew her business card.

            “But if you think you can grow accustomed to ‘em, you should give me a call,” she added as she handed the card to me.  

            “Anything else you keep in there?” I asked. She smiled and replied, “No, that’s it. We all have our limits.” I nodded in agreement, though I was sure her breasts could have properly secured many more objects. I wisely kept that observation to myself.

            I set the elevator back in motion as she knelt down to collect the pieces of her phone. When the elevator stopped I politely let the woman go ahead of me. I followed her halfway down the hallway, to the law firm that I could still have an interview with despite my tardiness, before I stopped to decide if this was really what I wanted. The woman entered the law office and was instantly berated by an older man. In response she simply showed him her broken phone. Not only did I turn around and leave – via the staircase, not the elevator – I also threw out the woman’s business card. This was how Janet had saved me. I learned through her departure that if I was going to be stuck, then I needed to be stuck on my own terms. The world had already forced enough of its own onto me. From this point forward I needed to assume full control of my life. 

            In the end I had no regrets about Janet, the woman in the elevator, or the job interview, mainly because by the end of the day I had found the love of my life – and because Janet had stopped by and taken away everything that would have reminded me of her. Instead of heading straight home after my elevator ordeal, I stopped at the pet store at the plaza nearest my house and purchased the puppy that should have already been my dog of two or three years. It was a female Rottweiler, Pit-bull mix, so she would probably grow up to be a terror, an adorable terror. But I didn’t care. No matter how much we wore one another out, we would not give up on one another, and, in turn, we would never find ourselves stuck. Those were terms I could live with.

The Answer - Part 1

The following is the first half of a short story I've been working on. The second half will come shortly.

           We had fought for two long, exhaustive hours, but unlike professional boxers we were not throwing punches, we were throwing insults. This was something new that Janet and I did. Before moving in together, we had never fought. We had never argued. In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think we had ever had a substantial disagreement. But things were different now. And as I sat alone at the dining room table, staring at the bowl of fruit in front of me, I wondered if things would always be this way. I wondered if Janet and I could go back to the way we were. I did not have an answer. And either ironically or poetically, perhaps both or possibly neither, my inability to provide answers was one of the most significant issues Janet had with me.

            I wasn’t insulted that Janet thought I could never provide an answer to an issue I faced alone, an issue she faced and sought out my advice on, or an issue we faced together. I was a man, a human being. Do any of us really have the answers? I wasn’t sure we even knew all of the questions. Janet had questions, though – far too many, in my honest opinion. But I loved her. I wanted to be able to provide the answers. Perhaps I couldn’t. Perhaps I didn’t know enough. The only thing I currently knew was that moving in together may not have been the best idea.

            I needed a drink. I stood and entered the kitchen, where the steak dinner I had lovingly labored over still sat untouched. I may not be able to provide Janet with answers but at least I could provide her with fresh, home-cooked meals. I took care of her – not financially, as I was currently one of those in-betweeners who could never seem to catch a break. I cooked. I cleaned. I ran all of our errands. I did all of those things that, according to society, she was supposed to do. In a recession, depression, or any other uninspiring economic state all societal roles go out the window. They no longer hold any sort of value. Everyone – male or female, young or old – does what they must to survive. For Janet and I to survive in this house, in this economy, I had to play the role of the housekeeper and Janet had to play the role of the moneymaker. I had accepted my temporary role in this partnership. I had only assumed that Janet had, as well.

            I settled on a glass of water instead of my usual bottle of beer, as I did not want my judgment hampered this evening. I drank half of the glass and then returned to the dining room table at least partially refreshed. I set down the glass next to the bowl of fruit. I may have been alone but that didn’t mean that the fruit bowl and the glass couldn’t enjoy each other’s company.

            I began to wonder what Janet was doing upstairs. She hadn’t made a sound, not a peep. She typically made it clear how she felt by rearranging furniture, or by destroying it – usually things that I owned; nothing that belonged to her, as would be expected. But I had heard nothing. No rustling. No creaking of the floorboards. No unnecessary breakage. The more I thought about it the more I worried. What could she be doing up there? I needed to find out. I downed what was left of my glass of water, stood, and strode up the stairs, continually reminding myself not to say or do anything that could make matters worse, not that I knew what any of those things were.

            I reached the bedroom to find the door closed. I placed an ear against the cool, polished wood and listened intently, but I still heard nothing. Either Janet was doing nothing or she had finally mastered the seemingly lost art of silence. If I had to guess, I would say that it was the former. I lifted a hand to knock on the door and then realized how ridiculous that would have been. It was my bedroom as much as it was hers. I didn’t need to knock. I didn’t need permission to enter. So I twisted the surprisingly cold doorknob, opened the door cautiously, and stepped into the room.

            Janet sat on the edge of the king-sized bed, staring at a framed photograph of her and I at her office’s most recent Christmas party – I quickly learned that professionals found any excuse to liquor themselves up and do things that they would later come to regret, things that Janet seemed to be drawn to lately, things that I suggested she not become too fond of. Beside her on the bed was a suitcase half-filled with clothes that she wore on a regular basis.

            “After everything, you’re just going to give up?” I asked.

            Janet stood and placed the framed photograph back on the nightstand, face down.

            “I’m not the one that gave up.” News to me, a cold hard fact to her.

            As I approached the suitcase she strolled around me to gather more clothes for the suitcase, not once making eye contact with me. I removed the clothes she had already placed in the suitcase and returned them to the dresser.

            “Must you make everything so difficult?” she asked.

            Janet returned to the suitcase, neatly stacked the clothes she had retrieved, and then stepped away to gather more. I returned a moment after that, realizing this time that the suitcase was one of mine and not one of hers. It was either an honest mistake or a part of her believed that she would return. I foolishly believed it was the latter.

            “You know, we never got a dog,” I said. “We always talked about it. I don’t know why we didn’t.”

            “Sheila volunteers at an animal shelter on the weekends. I’ll give you her number.”

            “We can afford to get a new dog, a puppy even. I have the time to train it and keep it in check.”

            Janet returned with more clothes and leaned around me, pressed against me, so she could reach the suitcase. I removed her previous stack to give her as much room as possible. As she pressed against me, her left breast cushioning her, I caught a whiff of her shampoo. It was strong, as if she had recently showered. I instantly felt intoxicated. The worst part was that she didn’t even need an elegantly fruity shampoo to smell like a goddess. Her natural scent was intoxicating enough. The shampoo only intensified it. This helped me realize that I could not do without her scent in my life, that I could not do without her. It would be difficult to let her go. She might have to kill me to effectively end the relationship.

            “Your time would be better spent doing something productive,” she said. “A dog would only slow you down. As if you haven’t been slowed enough already.”

            “What is that supposed to mean?”

            “It’s a common belief that actions speak louder than words. And they do. But there’s one thing that speaks louder than action: lack of action. Your inability to act to improve your life and improve our relationship tells me everything. I know exactly where you stand.”

            As soon as Janet finished placing her new stack into the suitcase I removed it and stepped away. She moved to gather more clothes from one side of the dresser as I stuffed the two stacks I had into the other side.

            To make my job easier I had left the dresser drawers open so I wouldn’t have to constantly open and close them. This is something that burglars did: open drawers one by one starting at the bottom, and then leave them all open once finished. Closing drawers was a waste of valuable time. I wasn’t necessarily trying to save time, just buying myself some more while my brain worked up a long term solution to my current predicament. Janet accidentally bumped into the drawers and groaned in disapproval in my general direction.

            “For Christ’s sake, you’re not even doing it correctly.”

            Janet placed the new stack she had onto the bed and then proceeded to fix all of the stacks I had put away, because I wasn’t obsessive compulsive enough when it came to stacking clothes in dresser drawers. I moved to her position and took the stack she placed onto the bed and returned it to where she got it.

            Janet returned to the suitcase empty-handed as if to remove a stack of clothing from it, only to find the suitcase empty. She finally realized what I had been doing.

            “Dammit, Mike.” Janet sighed, then strode away and left the room. I zipped up the suitcase and placed it with the rest of the set on the floor in the back of the closet.

            When I arrived back in the dining room, to what had become the place where I could think most clearly, I had expected Janet to either be breaking something or rearranging something. She was doing neither, because she was no longer in the house, and her car was no longer in the driveway. A couple of months prior I had installed a GPS tracking application onto my phone for both my car and Janet’s car. I did not do it so I could track her – I trusted her much more than a man should ever trust a woman. I did it just to see if I could. Tonight, however, I would use it to track her. I needed to know where she could go without a fresh set of clothes.

            I drove for twenty minutes on familiar streets to an apartment complex predominately recent college graduates. The township neglected this area of town, for reasons unknown to all, so the lack of streetlights worked to my advantage. Janet would not be able to see me even if she had made an effort to look, even if she had known she was followed. After a moment I realized that I would not be able to see her, either. Luckily, I caught her figure in an apartment on the third floor. She was in the company of a well-maintained young man. They gazed at one another the same way Janet and I did when we first met, when we were still discovering each other. I watched, heartbroken, as they touched one another in ways that I had become unfamiliar with.

            I briefly considered continuing my journey after her, confronting her in the presence of her new lover, but then I thought better of it. I thought of how hard it was for me to change myself, to alter all the habits that held me back, that stunted my potential, and I realized that I would never be able to change her, especially not her opinions of me. And even if I could, I would have to change myself first. I would have to prove that I could be a better man. As I drove back home I came to believe that she had not only effectively killed the relationship, but that she had effectively killed me. But I was wrong. She saved me. I just didn’t know it yet.

Introductions

I'm currently taking a creative writing class at Penn State. One of the first assignments was to write five different introduction paragraphs for any particular story. I decided on a scene from an unwritten film of mine, a film far down on my list so it probably won't be written any time soon. I'm posting the first three introductions, mainly just for the sake of posting something. I wasn't a fan of the final two introductions, so I don't intend on posting them. Enjoy.

Intro 1:

            “I know it’s late, sweetie, but we’ll be home soon.” My mother, comforting me as usual. But I don’t need comfort right now; I need sleep. It’s been five hours since my father’s insanely boring invite-only science conference began. The final two of those hours were spent watching my father trying to evade a torrent of nonsensical conversations, courtesy of all the lower level associates desperately seeking attention from the scientific community’s most powerful man. And so here we are: a deserted residential street in South Philadelphia, one hour past my bedtime. I’m three years old, by the way. You don’t want to know how three-year-olds respond to lack of sleep. It’s not an event worth witnessing, much like the event that will begin in three seconds. An event that begins with a careless driver running a red light and slamming into my mother’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee. An event that ends with the death of my mother. Despite my mother’s well-intentioned, comforting words, she was wrong. We would not be home soon.

Intro 2:

            If my mother’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee was a front-loading clothes washer, then the glass from its broken windows would be the clothes, and our blood the detergent. The vehicle rolled more times than I could count – but I was only three years old, not much of a counter. Invading light from the waning gibbous moon informed me that this mini tumble would most likely not end well. When the vehicle finally came to rest I didn’t care to know how many times it had rolled, only why my mother sat motionless with a look of death flooding into her eyes, blood pouring out of an extensive gap in her forehead. I felt numb, not because I was severely hurt, but because I was scared.

Intro 3:

            Two hours spent involuntarily measuring my father’s ability to evade nonsensical conversations only to further be held back by a red light, perhaps the longest red light I’ve ever encountered. Traffic lights in Philadelphia can be frustrating; green to red in a manner of seconds, red to green in a manner of generations. I could sense that my mother was as frustrated as I was. She stared at the bright red circle as if she was conversing with it telepathically; convincing it to end its ever-recurring life so she could get home and enjoy at least one glass of wine before bed. It listened and instantly vanished, allowing its green friend another brief moment of purpose. My mother pulled into the intersection without any hesitation, free at last, only to be blindsided by a careless driver. Our vehicle rolled more times than I could count.

The Return

I started this blog many years ago and really didn't do much with it. Lately I've been itching to get back to it. It's been five years since I've posted anything and will begin posting a variety of things very shortly. All previous posts have been deleted, mainly because I want to start fresh. I hope you enjoy what's to come.