My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I formulate infinity stored deep inside of me…

Archive for the 'Creative Flash' Category

The Words, (Or, Goddamn Beauty)

June 13th, 2019 | Category: Creative Flash

She saw the tall willow and started crying, my friend who’s ice-blue eyes never shed tears. I guess there was just too much Goddamn beauty in that old tree, or loneliness, or both.

I knew the words to unlock the locks. I slit her throat where her tears fell, said the words. Beautiful nightmares came.

2 comments

Something, nothing

July 20th, 2018 | Category: Attempted Poetry,Creative Flash

Drugs without the high.

Sex without your sky.

No answers to the wherefores and whys.

You’d give anything for something, an horizon filled with nothing.

1 comment

Music in the dark

May 27th, 2017 | Category: Creative Flash

It’s dark. The room’s dark, the world’s dark, his thoughts are dark. The electricity gave up and gave out last night, or the day before, or what the fuck ever. No more tv, no more internet, no anything if it isn’t running on batteries, and those batteries aren’t long for this world either. So, here he is, in the dark, in his shit-hole bedroom, in his shit-hole apartment. Though, the apartment may as well be on Mars, it’s some alternate reality, he’d need a goddamn time machine to even see it again. He locked himself in the bedroom because it was the last lock left, the end of the line; lobby-door, up four floors, apartment door with its deadbolt. Broken. Broken. The weight of bodies and the weight of time breaking locks and smashing doors until only this last lock, this last door remains. He can hear them scratching, pressing, fumbling against the door and that last lock that won’t hold them back. They’re the tick-tock of the tiny gears inside the clocks that killed Christ. They don’t stop.

He blindly sweeps his hands across the floor, groping, searching. He knows it’s here somewhere, it has to be here. He bumps his hands against a pizza box, fingers grazing greasy cheese, stale bread, magazines, a bottle of MD 20/20. He’ll keep that, thanks much. Blankets, shoes, dog-eared paperbacks, so much useless shit. A t-shirt, it smells like her, the two sizes too big plain black t-shirt she used to sleep in, wore it like a nightgown. Feeling it in his hands, smelling the lilac shampoo and salt-smell of her sweat, simple scents of her, it physically hurts him. Sitting here in the dark, feeling the loss of her all over again, tears sting his eyes. He remembers the sense of peace he felt, always, just being near her. He adored her voice, her thoughts. Her everything. At night she’d slip on her dark shroud, that long silly shirt and nothing else, lying next to him in bed, her arm across his chest, her head on his shoulder. They made love in the mornings, she’d kiss him awake, smiling to say, “Hi there… How’s you?” They’d talk, she liked to tell him her dreams. Mornings were theirs, no matter what. She’d hold him close, knowing he’d be ready for her, ready to be taken deep inside her. He remembers how it felt to fade into her, to get lost in her hazel eyes as she asked him to come for her. He holds the shirt to his face, scent opening the way to memory, so vivid, so white hot and right now. Something heavy hits the door and the memories crumble like ash. Then is gone, she is gone, and that’s fucking that. He sets the shirt near the bottle of MD 20/20, the body and the blood, things deemed sacred.

Digging around under the bed, hands bump into something clunky, a wire running from the clunk to something small, sleek, glassy smooth. Yes and fucking yes, he finally has it, his iPhone tethered to his cozy leather-bound headphones. Old-School headphones, analog, faithful, no digital wireless Bluetooth fuck-all. So long as the phone has some life left, the headphones won’t let him down. Tapping the glass, and the room is bathed in blue white soft LED light, still plenty of spark in this particular battery. They’re pounding on the door now, he slips on the headphones. Soft leather cradles his head, the ear cuffs are big enough, padded enough to turn the pounding into a muffled thumping. Better, better, but he doesn’t want to hear them at all. He doesn’t want to know they’re there. Tap swipe swipe up down up a little tap, and his head is filled with music…

But I got a message from the hummingbird, he gave me a warning in disguise…

Fitting.

Just one question before I pack, when you fuck it up later do I get my money back?

He doesn’t know. He was always scared she’d go away.

I love you for what I am not, I did not want what I have got…

He closes his eyes. No, he absolutely doesn’t fucking want anything he’s got.

Won’t you follow me down to the Rose Parade…

The songs keep playing, reminding him of other times, other places. Thoughts leading to thoughts leading to thoughts.

Oh it’s all just a lost cause…

Drinking champagne from a paper cup is never quite the same and every sip’s moving through my eyes and…

He grabs the bottle of MD 20/20, takes a long pull. It’s awful, Kiwi and alcohol, some kind of nightmarish children’s cough medicine, but it does the job.  Warms his chest, blurs all the hard edges. He feels the floor shudder, an echo of what’s happening to the door.

Don’t you know that I love you? A loud cracking of wood that he feels more than he actually hears. Sometimes I feel like only a cold still life, only a frozen still life… He feels their foot steps, smells the shit and piss and death. He puts her shirt to his face one last time, pure, clean, safe smells. He fills his mind with her, her smooth pale skin, warm hazel eyes, eyes to lose himself in and never come back. Hands on his shoulders, rough hands, teeth at his throat, pain so bright. Still, he doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t stop listening to the music.

that fell down here to lay beside you.

10 comments

A Dream of Bread

January 29th, 2016 | Category: Creative Flash,Random Thought

Last night, I dreamed I was a refugee from a war-torn Sarajevo of long ago. I set a lonely camp on the side of a deserted road, I hadn’t seen a single human being for what felt like years. Perhaps I was the last? It was oppressive, I was scared. All I had left to eat was a single loaf of bread. Just bread. I built a fire, stoked it high. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m cold-cocked by Oprah Winfrey with the butt of an AK-47. Everything went black for a moment, I ended up flat on my back. When I could finally focus my eyes, I realized Oprah was standing over me, holding my bread. She could see the hurt in my eyes, the confusion. I knew because she looked at me apologetically and said, “I didn’t want it to come to this… I LOVE bread.”

I woke up silently screaming.

5 comments

At least, it isn’t nothing

April 08th, 2015 | Category: Creative Flash

She’s gone, save for in my dreams. She’s with me in my dreams. Always in my dreams. Only in my dreams.

It’s not the same, just the whisper of her voice, her laugh. It’s just the ghost of her kiss, her touch, as if felt through a thin layer of gauze. I gently brush the tips of my fingers across her lips. If I could just let go, just fall completely into my mind, I could feel the softness of her, her tongue caressing my fingertips. She lays her hand on my chest, feels that my heart beats fast and strong and only for her. My heart is pounding as she lays next to me, in that non-place, that place that isn’t a place, where your mind goes while your body sleeps. She drapes her arm across me, holds me close. I don’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else. She feels like home. I say to her, “I don’t want you to go away.” “I won’t,” she says. “I’m right here, don’t be scared,” she says. Being there with her is everything I want, all I want, and I am scared, scared she’ll vanish if I simply breathe too hard, if I look away at just the wrong moment. She holds me closer, kisses me deeply. slow-like. I close my eyes, lean into her, get lost in the kiss, in her…

…and I wake up. Vivid dream to unwanted reality in a blink. My heart is trying to beat its way out of me, through muscle and bone and skin, like it wants to be free of me for once and all. I wake freezing, awash in cold sweat. The room is dark, quiet, lonely. She isn’t next to me. The room may as well be in some hotel, or a hospital, it doesn’t feel like home, and I don’t want to be there. The wheres really don’t matter, without her, the wheres feel the same. So much sameness.

Waking and loss, sunrise and pain, they hold no difference. Still, before the waking and loss, the sunrise and pain, at least she’s with me in my dreams, and that’s something. At least, it isn’t nothing.

1 comment

Contentment

January 28th, 2015 | Category: Creative Flash,Zombie Erotica

She laid next to him, close and safe against his back, her arm across his chest in that comfortable way, that intimate way that makes him think of love and sex and peace and sleep. Before her, he didn’t truly know the feeling that’s slowly washing over him, contentment, something others come by so easily, so honestly. He could find contentment in other ways. Contentment by way of opiates gently passing through a needle, rushing into so many scarred veins, or behind a bar, for six bucks a glass of his favorite clear liquid, or between sweat soaked sheets, lost in some woman who isn’t her, but these things are just lies dressed up as contentment, just poor actors in a miserable off-broadway play. He’s done these things before, knows now that it’s all just a bunch of nothing that leads nowhere. He hadn’t met true contentment until he met her, until he looked into her eyes, eyes the color of sunlit autumn leaves. He saw in her eyes his present, his always. He knew he didn’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, ever. He feels that way right now, as she pulls him toward her, her chin gently pressing against his neck, two puzzle pieces locking into place. With a shudder of anticipation, he knows that they’ll fall asleep and in the morning they’ll take off each other’s clothes, he’ll fade into her, get lost in her body, her eyes. He feels like he knows his tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and it’s all so beautiful.

He doesn’t know that things have changed, that the world isn’t the same as it was just yesterday. He doesn’t see that this woman he loves more than the world has turned pale, doesn’t feel her heat against his back like he should, nor the rise and fall of her plain old terry cloth robe. He loves her so much in that robe, it’s nothing that’s supposed to be seductive, just cozy. She’s the sort of beautiful that just is, the sort of beautiful that makes terry cloth look as alluring as satin. She pulls him closer, wraps her leg around his waist. He doesn’t know that just as she snuggled against his back, a mutinous clot of blood lazily floated its way toward her heart. She pulls him closer, tightens her embrace. He smiles, thinks he knows what’s next.

Her lips brush his neck, gentle caressing growing rough with desire, with need. She won’t wait for morning. She’s going to take him tonight, right now. She’s never wanted him so badly, her entire body writhing, her loving embrace pinning him against their bed, a butterfly pinned to a cork board. She’s going to take him inside her, slowly, deeply, violently. She’s going to pull him into her more deeply than he’s ever experienced, bringing him past the point of choice. He feels teeth against his neck where once were lips and kisses. Teeth press through flesh, through muscle, scraping against bone. She’s bringing him to climax, wants him to fill her with liquid-fire, with life. She’s on her knees, straddling him, back arched, swallowing what she took of him, blood running down her face, over her bluing lips, into her cold mouth. She’s the picture of demented ecstasy, arterial blood spraying against her body. Still warm blood dripping from the ceiling, sticky cooling blood pasting curly strands of chestnut hair against her face.

Whatever pain that was screaming at him, telling him he was alive, is now but a whisper. He feels hot wetness blossoming around his head, running down his chest, yet he’s growing very cold, very sleepy. She’s laying next to him as she was, lapping up blood pooled behind his ear. He doesn’t know that similar scenes are spreading throughout the city, he doesn’t even know for certain what happened to him. He does know that all he’s ever really wanted, since their first date, a blind-date, seemingly a forever ago, was to fall asleep next to her until he quit breathing. He quit breathing not long after her unexpected kiss, all that’s left is to sleep.

He always thought his final breath, his final sleep, would separate them, but not so. The sleep he’s expecting won’t be quite final. Soon he’ll wake, and walk the night with her, his always. He’ll see the night sky at her side, he’ll learn a sort of contentment completely new to this new world.

4 comments

To find her

September 23rd, 2014 | Category: Creative Flash

For my angel

There once was this turtle, a quiet fellow, he didn’t have lots of friends, but not because he was unfriendly, he just felt like he ought to be somewhere else, with someone else. Feeling like that all the time, no matter who happened to be around, it made him quiet. He thought he couldn’t be wrong, a feeling that persistent had to mean SOMETHING. Otherwise, nothing could possibly mean anything. Still, these nebulous others, they escaped him. The feeling that where he was wasn’t where he should be made him a little crazy, and he was already a little crazy. So, he kept looking, and waiting, but nothing came to him. Nothing, until one night.

One night, he looked up at the clear dark sky in total exasperation and saw a star, one brighter than any star in the sky, brighter than any star he’d ever seen. It had to be it, the other place, the other turtle, he had to get to that star. It was only a matter of how… He’d once heard tale of some lunatic turtle who convinced his fellow turtles to build a living tower of turtles… He didn’t remember the end, but no matter, it was a sign! Divine Providence!

So, he gathered the town and explained that there was beauty in the night-sky, beauty to be claimed by turtles! He explained about the tower, and the star, and that once he reached the star, he’d help pull the rest of them up. So up they stacked, up up up… until he sat at the very top, near enough to almost touch the star, near enough to see… an angel? The quiet turtle who reached so far blinked, stretched nearly out of his shell, just to see the angel better, just to know she was real. He was almost there… Almost, but not quite. At the bottom of the stack, several turtles began to chain-sneeze. Within seconds, the tower had crumbled, turtles falling this way and that.

Having been at the very top, the quiet turtle fell very far, very hard. He finally awoke on the ground, dizzy, visiom blurred. As the world started to clear, he saw her, a turtle he’d never seen… wearing a teal-blue scarf. She was beautiful, like the angel. She walked toward him, “Hi!” she said. He said, “Hi back…” When their eyes met, he finally knew where he belonged.

2 comments

Finding

August 31st, 2014 | Category: Creative Flash

People don’t pay much attention to turtles. They’re slow, they’re boring, they’re pointless. They’re definitely not predators, and not apparently prey either. They’re like an antique end-table; kind of of interesting to look at if you bothered to look, but you don’t, because why bother if the rest of nature is like a giant LED HD tv compared to some dusty old end-table? This, of course, is exactly what turtles want people to think. They don’t want to be noticed, and they know how to make it so. Turtles go unnoticed because they know deep, old magic, magic old as the sun and the moon, magic people have never known. They know the magic, and they cast the spells that keep their settlements unseen. Untouched. Safe. Turtles have their cities and their secrets, both of which people will never know. Well, they’re not supposed to know…

There’s one settlement, The Emerald of the North, named so because it’s lush, green as the brightest emerald any person has ever seen, yet it’s surrounded by ice-capped mountains, bitter cold lands. Winter grew around this place, it’s turtle magic that keeps it warm and fertile, and completely invisible to people. When The Emerald was founded, quite unexpectedly, the cold had not yet come.

The story around the founding of The Emerald goes that a group of turtles, just ten friends, five ladies and five fellows, decided they’d leave home and walk to The Edge of the World. They were, of course, mocked, as no such place could possibly exist. Every turtle knew that the world went on forever, forever and ever. If magic knew no end, why should the world have boundaries? This was the thought of turtles at the time. Still, these ten turtles insisted that if they just walked long enough, and far enough, they’d reach the much laughed at, Edge of the World.

So, they said their goodbyes, some called them the stupidest turtle-folk ever to be hatched, others called them whimsical adventurers, brave enough to follow their hearts. With such chatter at their backs, they walked. They walked for what felt like a century, they lost count of how many starry night-skies they slept underneath, and how many orangey sunrises they woke to, but this meant nothing. They just walked, and walked, and kept walking, determined to prove that they were whimsically brave, not stupid.

They walked, and walked, and walked a little more. I say a little, not because they did, at very long last, reach the Edge of the World, but rather, they just stopped walking.

One day, they stopped to graze on the green grass under the shade of a majestic oak tree, the largest, most magnificent oak they’d ever laid eyes on. After their lunch, which was delicious, they went for a drink from a nearby lazy stream, the slowest stream with the clearest water they’d ever seen. This stream was so clear, the turtles could plainly see, and have conversation with, the stream’s resident fish. The fish, who all spoke in unison as is the way fish speak to air-breathers, invited the turtles to say and relax, just for another night. “Stay!,” they said. “You look tired!,” they said. “Rest!,” they said. The turtles were tired, and they did want to rest, so they stayed. Just the one night, they agreed with each other. Except, it wasn’t just the one night. The turtles would wake for breakfast, the green grass under that gorgeous oak. They’d go for a drink from that crystal clear stream, walk along its bank, talk with the unfamiliar fishes. This could take half a day, maybe more. After all, turtles are turtles.

After the breakfast and the libation and the walking with the talking, the fishes always repeated the same three statements. “Stay!,” they said. “You look tired!,” they said. “Rest!,” they said. This went on in the same way for two weeks, until the turtles all realized something. They realized that they enjoyed the grass and the giant shady oak and that stream of water like glass, and talking with the now familiar fishes. They were happy there, finding the Edge of the World didn’t seem any better than staying right where they were. They walked enough. They stayed. They stayed, fell in love, built turtle homes, started turtle families. Their journey to find someplace very old ended up creating so much that was new.

So, don’t overlook the little things, the seemingly mundane. I think turtles can feel magic because they actually bother to stop to see it. You’ll probably never find The Emerald of the North, turtles are too clever for that, but maybe if you take the time to search, and stop long enough to see it, you’ll find magic too. Maybe you’ll find it, and make it your own, and keep it safe from the cold that always comes to call.

4 comments

Perfect oblivion

August 04th, 2014 | Category: Attempted Poetry,Creative Flash

Kissing her is perfect oblivion, but not cold darkness, it’s an oblivion of white hot light. Sound stops, worries stop, being worn away by clicking wheels stops, and all that is, is right now and always, and all that remains is touch, and heat.

Her face is so warm against his, her skin like silk. He kisses her gently, yet intensely, lips searching, finding, caressing one another, the light only getting brighter.

He wants her to know his heart, that she is his love, his home, his heart’s only desire, he wants her to know these things through touch alone, touch without words.

His limps embrace hers deeply, drinking in the feel of her, disappearing in her, his love, his home, his right now and always.

Kissing har is like being enveloped in white hot light, and he longs for that perfect oblivion.

1 comment

A fragment from a pocket-universe

June 12th, 2014 | Category: Creative Flash

Skip all the befores, skip to right now. Skip to him holding her close, feeling her steady breathing against his cheek, the rhythm of her heart-beat lulling him to move closer. He feels the heat of her, like he’s lying next to a star that spun into his orbit, she envelopes him in white-hot light. She’s so bright, so completely there, a celestial flame that burns away everything; fear, loneliness, the knowledge of clocks and death’s certainty. Everything burns away save for his intense want.

He wants to touch her, to feel every inch of her body, the secret places that make her burn hotter still. He wants to be pulled into her, to get lost inside her. She takes him without a word, their eyes communicate in a language that has existed since the beginning of everything, before sound and voice. The spark of his skin against hers bends space and time, creates a pocket-universe, a decadently exquisite place where she asks only that he come for her, and he does, always for her. She asks him to come deep inside her, to a place in which she feels him, and he feels her, and nothing else matters.

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