Temptation

Remember Elmyra from Tiny Toon Adventures? I am essentially that animated little girl.

…which sounds really creepy now that I’m reading back over it. Oh well, no time to backspace. Here’s a new poem. It is called…

Temptation

Fluffy stuffy little sweet puff,
Who would have thunk you were so tough?
So darn cute who could have ever guessed
You craved the taste of human flesh?
When I reached down to scratch your chin,
You separated bone from skin;
My need to give your rump a scratch,
Left three pink fingers unattached.
And as I rubbed your nose to mine,
You gracefully removed my spine.
Something sadistic’s in your brain…
Addiction to inflicting pain…
I simply cannot understand.
After all, I’m a simple man
Who’d love to squish your fussy face —
A longing that may be off base.
You’re just trying to let me in:
Your tolerance is wearing thin.
My affection has run its course,
You’re telling me by using force.
But there are things I can’t resist;
Irate kittens are on that list.
So I might wind up bleeding out,
Face down in a crimson fount,
Missing a head, arm, leg or two.
But hey, what can a fella do?
Like the forbearer of my name,
Temptation is my secret shame.

Oh shit, it sees me!

Landscaping in the Heart of Darkness: An Essay

At some point in time, the hedges, holly bushes, various blooming plants and other miscellaneous flora that form a perimeter around our house transformed from attractive landscaping into the kind of black, impenetrable jungle that Joseph Campbell might write about. I’m not exactly sure when this happened. One minute six years ago, things looked great; I took a moment to look at it last week and Charles Marlow came stumbling out of there drenched in sweat and draped with ivy.

In all honesty, the catalyst to the mere consideration of trimming the verge was a result of our neighbors sprucing up the landscaping around their house. I’m not normally one to keep up with the Joneses, but I also don’t want to have the most blatantly disheveled house on the block. I’m like a mother who refuses to buy her kid new shoes until the old ones separate back down to their basic components, leaving the child standing barefoot among all his covered-foot classmates. When people start to notice my kid because he’s the only one standing around with filthy, bare feet, that’s when we take a trip to Payless.

…wait, what was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, landscaping. As you can imagine, seven or so years of never clipping the bushes, trimming the small trees or slashing away at the other various plants I couldn’t begin to identify resulted in quite a tangled mess. But Mandy and I, being the brave souls that we are, brandished clippers in hand and trimmers gripped in our teeth and dived in with reckless abandon. To even enter this primeval forest, the two us were forced to bury ourselves in a mire of twisting branches and snaking vines, hacking and slashing at everything that stood in our way. Finally, we came across a small clearing in the undergrowth, a space just big enough to begin work in earnest. And so we did.

We were buried in that labyrinth of prehistoric flora for hours … possibly days. Time loses all meaning when you’re in the heart of the jungle. Somehow during the process, Mandy and I became separated. One moment she was clipping a whatchamacallit bush and the next she was gone … sucked down deeper into that dark bramble of death and allergies.

Lost and alone though I was, I decided to focus my efforts on removing the pit of ivy that had somehow developed all along the jungle floor. You know, it has been said that slick ole snake Satan takes a bunch of different forms, that he can shapeshift in order to blend in with a fellow’s surroundings and remain unseen, patiently lurking in the crooks, crannies and crevices until the perfect opportunity to strike. If this is true, I submit that the devil’s plant form is undoubtedly the ivy.

Let’s just go ahead and ignore the fact that ivy is already serpentine. That seems like cheating. Instead, let’s focus on a slightly deeper analogy. On a purely surface level, ivy seems wonderful … those large, lovely green leaves snaking up the side of a home gives that place an air of old southern charm. What they don’t tell you is that all that ivy eventually snakes its way between bricks into foundations, slowly pulling a house apart centimeter by centimeter until it comes crumbling to the ground. It does this subtly, its slow crawl so gradual that you hardly notice it moving at all until it’s too late … you’ve got a ton of plaster, wood and roofing shingles atop your head.

Though it might seem foolish for one man to go toe-to-toe with the devil all by his lonesome, I began to uproot the ivy from the earth one tendril at a time. My meager muscles strained with effort as the serpents clung to the ground, fighting desperately to stay buried. They snaked around my every limb, constricting in an effort to crush my bones and leave me helpless on the forest floor. But I was unrelenting. Driven by the thought of my tiny wife alone in the brush doing battle with all manner of creeping monstrosities, I fought on. After countless hours and endless bloodshed, agony and profuse swearing, I had pulled every last visible strand from its home. My body was wrecked, but I was victorious.

Somehow, Mandy and I came stumbling from the labyrinth simultaneously, as if this chaparral had decided it was finished with us and spit us out. So changed were we by our experiences in that forsaken place that we hardly recognized one another … as if that baneful boscage had somehow twisted our souls in its wicked branches and dug its black roots into our hearts. We went in human but emerged as something else entirely … something dark … sinister.

On the plus side, we now have the kind of well-groomed barren landscape that would be the envy of any respectable homeowner.

(Note: A version of this essay originally appeared in the May 1 edition of The Itawamba County Times in Fulton, Mississippi)

Pffft. Seymour only had to deal with one giant killer plant. Try juggling a dozen of those things, Krelborn.

Future Stuff No. 3 and The Fifth Sonnet

Today, my ongoing series are crossing over: Future Stuff and Sonnets have met, shared drinks, went back to one or the other’s house and made sweet, consequence-less love. But wait … there were consequences. DIRE consequences. Spoken of in hushed, fearful tones, the child of the passionate night has been called …

The Walking TV

On stilted legs it glides throughout the home,
Following the viewer from room to room.
The homebound now need never be alone,
It is always there with you in the gloom.
It knows exactly what you want to watch
Because it is always watching, too;
Knows when to crank the volume up a notch,
And keeps record of all the shows you view.
At night when you place your head to pillow,
Close your eyes to shut out the daily stress,
It lurks bedside playing smooth jazz down low:
Strains of soft sax like a lover’s caress.
Deeply dream of all the things you have seen
Wrapped in the flickering glow of its screen.

“I will always be with you,” it whispers through the static. “Always…”

For more sonnets, click here, here, here or here. For past Future Stuff, check out this and this.

The Fourth Sonnet

My series of terrible sonnets continues. If your feeling masochistic, you can read the previous entries here, here and here.

And now, the fourth sonnet. It is called…

Patience

Each of us is supposed to get a turn:
One after another as we arrived.
Please do not take my comments as a spurn,
But I’m not really sure how you’ve survived.
The system that’s in place is quite complex;
There’s lots of moving pieces on the board.
It is no wonder that you are perplexed:
Only the sharpest minds can count to four.
Alas, I fear it is a product of our world,
This constant spinning globe we call our home.
Stop for a moment and it comes unfurled
Tossing waves of ocean and mounds of loam.
Therein lies the lesson for you to learn:
Even the earth itself awaits its turn.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is apparently the most brain-melting puzzle known to mankind.

A Worthwhile Sacrifice

You know…sometimes…there are some people who are just…ugh…I don’t know…Something I can’t express in words, only frustrated grunts, long puffs of air and sour, face-twisting looks. You know what I’m talking about, right? That’s what this little bitty story is about. THOSE people. It is called…

A Worthwhile Sacrifice

So, like, I got to the counter and told the guy behind there that I wanted a little extra butter but not too much extra butter because it makes the popcorn all soggy and stuff and that I wanted a little extra ice in my Diet Coke but not too much ice and then, like, he just burst into flames. I know, weird, huh? At first he opened his mouth like he was going to scream and stuff and I could see a bright light in there and then he just suddenly burst out in flames. Oh, and it was totally gross. It totally smelled like burning hair because, like, his hair was on fire and everybody was running around screaming because they didn’t know what to do and little pieces of his skin and stuff totally flaked off and got all over me. It was so gross. I was totally screaming about it and I could swear that dude was smiling at me as he burned up. I know! I know! Like he was happy he was all burning to death and totally messing things up for me. I know! And guess what? They totally canceled all the movies for the rest of the day because of it, even though I had already bought my popcorn and everything. Totally ruined my day.

Can’t this guy, like, think of anyone but himself?

(NOTE: A slightly different version of this story appeared on the now defunct short fiction website, Flashshot.com. It was a great little site run by a single dude with way more dedication to his craft than I could ever muster. I’ll always miss my daily dosage of super-short pulp fiction. RIP, Flashshot.com.)

So, I’ve been watching a lot of 80s cop movies…

The Captain and the Equal Sign

Equal Sign leaned back a little further in the metal chair as the captain continued his verbal tirade. The seat was intentionally uncomfortable … handpicked by the captain from the worst batch of rejects the world’s most despised metal chair factory could produce so that anybody unfortunate enough to find himself seated in the captain’s office would have to suffer from a numb, achy ass right along side his bleeding ears and decimated sense of pride.

But Equal Sign’s ass had been in this chair so many times it was practically as warm and cushy as his childhood bed. It didn’t bother him one bit and the captain knew it.

That just pissed him off even more.

“Goddam it, Equal Sign! Wipe that smug grin off your face or I’ll wipe it off for you.”

Little droplets of spittle went flying right into Equal Sign’s face, but he didn’t change his expression.

“I ain’t grinnin’, cap.”

The captain loosed a curt, bewildered guffaw.

“The fuck you aren’t you piece of shit. I know water when it rains and shit when it stinks and I know a goddam smug grin when I see one and that’s exactly what you’re givin’ me right now.”

The captain slammed the palms of his hands against his desk, causing the towering stacks of backlogged paperwork stacked atop it to quiver with fear.

“I guess you’re feeling pretty damn proud of yourself, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

Equal Sign took a sniff of air and said, “For what?”

The captain’s voice raised to a hyterical level. A dude three states over could have heard him.

“For the fuck if I know, detective! For whatever kind of grand mess you’ve made of my city. You’ve blown up half the town; arrested the daughter of one of the city’s most prominent businessmen; broke Einstein knows how many regulations; got your damn picture all over the internet news; I can’t even flip on the Facebook to check and see if my wife’s sister has dropped dead yet without seeing your goddam picture slathered all over everybody’s fucking updates. The mayor’s breathing down my neck and the pastor of every goddam church in the nation is calling me up to tell me I’m going to soaking in the warm shit of Satan’s anus for what you’ve done. You’ve made a mockery of this department detective. Made us all look like we’ve been sittin’ with our thumbs up our asses for years. Is that what you wanted, detective? Was that your fucking goal this whole time?”

Equal Sign laughed.

“Nope,” he said.

The captain fumed and stormed across the room to the window overlooking the whole of the Mathematics Department. With a quick jerk of the cord, he pulled the blinds open … or, more accurately, pulled them from the window entirely.

“You see all those hard working symbols out there, detective? Doing their jobs, playing by the rules? That’s called mathematics, detective. Plus sign out there has put in 30 years. Division’s pulled eight more than that and lost his wife in the process. All on the level; all according to the standard equations.”

When he turned back to Equal Sign, the captain looked exhausted.

“Do you honestly think you know more than they do, detective?”

Pushing up from the uncomfortable chair, Equal Sign calmed a few waves in the sea of wrinkles rolling across the front of his aging suit. He briefly tried to recall the last time he’d had it cleaned … a fool’s errand.

He looked the captain in the eye and said earnestly, “No sir, I don’t. That just ain’t me.”

Then he turned to leave.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“To do my job, sir.”

Equal Sign had his fist on the door handle when he stopped. Even though he knew better … knew he shouldn’t poke an angry bear just as it was about to roll over and go to sleep again, he couldn’t help himself.

“Captain,” he said, “You wanna know why the folks out there like me?”

For the first time since the detective had stepped through the door, the captain’s voice was less than a full shout.

“And why is that, detective?”

It was a good thing Equal Sign’s back to was to the captain, because that smug grin had stretched across his face again.

He said, “I get results.” Then, he escaped through the door before the captain could start yelling again.

 

He may be stirring up a lot of controversy, but damn if he isn’t a fine cop.

The Plan

The Plan

One day she decided it was time to go;
Just hop in the boat and begin to row.
But because there wasn’t an ocean nearby,
She figured she’d have to take to the sky.
Space, she decided, is the best place to be.
Far better than life at land or at sea.
Jedi are cooler than both people and sharks
Death Stars more sweet than reefs, beaches or parks.
Now most rockets require doctors to build
And because she no nary doctoring skills,
She turned to Amy, her friend who wore glasses
And also always earned herself passes
On science tests, so she’d know just what to do…
The way one could build a spaceship or two
Though in truth, one was really all she would need …
A single metal, space-rip-roaring steed
On which she could ride to the cosmos aloft …
A journey not for the timid nor soft
Nor the faint-hearted, which of course she was none.
Tougher than dog poop left out in the sun
Is what she was, although she’d likely abhor
So blatantly nasty a metaphor.
Now, Amy — bless her — took the time to explain,
That her friend might really want to refrain
From DIY space trips — they’re all hit or miss:
She could go with a boom, sizzle or hiss
None of which, of course, would be very much good.
So, in her opinion, she really should
Stay here on the ground where she was born and raised
Live planet-side for the rest of her days
Like everyone else. That’s just normal, you see.
But normal was not what she wished to be.
She wanted the greatness inherent in space;
Be able to get up in a dude’s face
And be like, “Yeah, I’ve been all up in the stars;
“Seen Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter, Mars…
“Even Pluto. That’s right, the one you neglect.
“I’ve seen it. Ate lunch there. I won’t forget
“How awesome that place was. Better than farting.
“Which is, by the way, why I’m departing.
“No, not to fart … to be in a place that’s new.
“Some place where I don’t have to look at you
“Or all of the other dolts running around.
“Frankly, all you freaks are bringing me down.
“So, I’m taking off … literally, you see.
“Do not expect to ever hear from me
“Again. Because I plan to never return
“To this dung heap world. Now, help me adjourn.”
Of course, hasty girl, she neglected to think
Just how deeply her epithets would sink
Into the heart of Amy, standing nearby,
Mouth all agape, tear falling from her eye.
Red and offended, the girl spat on the ground.
Said she didn’t want to see her around.
“If I do,” she grumbled, all up in her face,
“You won’t need rockets to travel to space.”
Then off Amy went with a huff and a curse
And our heroine felt quite a bit worse
Than when she first figured she needed to go.
Believe it or not and wouldn’t you know,
Now that she was right back where she began,
A boat didn’t seem like a terrible plan.

Well, this doesn’t look all that complex.