| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
 Posted - 07/19/2009 : 21:57:09
|
These towns and cities, their roadside-joint signs
offering loans, steak-dinner specials, cheap beer
and happy endings. Tawdry saloons where the husband
sleeps off last night's booze 'til late afternoon
while his wife cracks whip on the lunchtime waitresses.
The 25 mph speed limits that power-mad locals cops
love to nail you for breaking by two miles per hour.
A library with a single public internet computer,
closed on Wednesday, the librarian tinkling her bell
when your half hour is up. The tow truck driver's
stories about ancestors who prospected and hunted
in the nearby mountains before the town existed,
his truck lurching until your guts are in your throat.
Churches everywhere, all shapes, sizes and denominations,
their spires rising above the low-slung houses.
An elderly woman dragging a barely-working sprinkler
over burnt-dust ground toward her failing roses.
The JFK Bar in Anaconda, the Club Moderne, most of
the houses dark by ten at night. The lonely Chinese
restaurant, grease on the windows, the scotch-taped
menu with prices crossed out and revised. There's
a hot tub at the Trade Wind, water pistols to squirt
cold water at each other when the steam and the beer
lull you to sleep. All the hidden guns that you feel
and never see, if you're lucky. And every woman you
meet and feel something for is either married or has
a boyfriend who is due out of prison any day now.
Like those storefront signs that promise so much
and deliver so little, people, too, may present a facade
which invites and lures and, ultimately, proves to be
bright neon next to the dark blood of the truth.
It's a story, then, they're telling, and you listen
knowing it's so, that it's a way to shine up time.
Five miles outside most of these towns there are
wolves, bears and mountain lions, stalking old paths
among trees that remember a time before the river.
There are rocks with fossil traces of snakes and snails,
stairs that lead you down to miraculous limestone caves.
A smelter's smokestack survives the smelter as the town
survives its departed and dead, the sun sprinkling its
broken promises upon the sunken public graves.
DL |
 |
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 07/22/2009 : 21:14:24
|
| Eve's a superstitious chronicler of his days. Won't change the things he's named. She has fire in her eyes and a rolling pin in her hand. A temper like loose mercury. She reaches for the coffee beans in their twist of brown paper, the grinder with its tiny aromatic drawer. He tips back in his gravity-defying chair. Folds his knuckles up under his prolific chin. Of course nothing is what it seems and...all is as it should be. His peppery grin, his profile split by divination. His legendary shenanigans. His cracked-in-half laughter and well-worn wings. "Save everything! he says. |
|
|
|
Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 22:37:30
|
Reading Rilke on the strand at MacDonald Beach,
a Vietnamese man fishing on the old wooden pier
asleep beneath a parasol. I'm too alone in the world,
he wrote, yet not alone enough to make each hour holy.
A fish taking the hook would ruin the poetry of this day.
|
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2009 : 21:07:41
|
| Cormac's Wake. A dangerous man crosses the border. His life was a fiction. Colossal with grief. A quilt of chilled lillies. Memorial wreaths. Folded roses and icy carnations. His Faith on gilt easels displayed for the crowd. A rosary with tears and candles. |
|
|
|
San Diego
Swinger
515 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2009 : 17:48:36
|
Tell me what you see.
Don't write to a line and don't lie.
Mickey Newbury |
|
|
|
BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2009 : 21:25:58
|
Ice box. Wringer washer. Homemade hot chocolate
syrup with vanilla flavoring. Black cow. Sugarbabies.
Mary Janes. Bazooka. Sugardaddy. Small wax bottles
with koolaid inside. Wooden stoves. Stringing
tobacco with a table full of food waiting for workers.
Splattered watermelons (to see if they were ripe).
Homemade ice cream (pineapple). Teaberry gum.
BIG old BIG old cars, but new at the time.
Going to the fields at 04:30. (Why?) I guess to
beat the heat of the day for a little while, anyway.
All of the children taking a bath on the wrap-around
porch... in the same washtub. "The Lone Ranger" on the
radio at 5 p.m. and my grandfather sitting in his
rocking chair with one leg thrown over one side.
Three (table full) meals a day. Wonder how she did
it. There was peace and harmony on the old place.
There's nothing there, now, except these memories
and hundreds more.
I felt safe there.
Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end ....
We'd sing and dance forever and a day..
Those were the days ....
Oh, yes ....
those were the days.
BGee
|
|
|
|
Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 00:41:41
|
Compassion is a blossom one day, a knife the next.
The blossom opens, issues a scent, enables us
to learn the heart of people we have yet to know,
remembering ahead to our meeting in a world
we only imagine. The knife is what cuts into us
for caring at all, while around us the pain
of living gathers. Hope is sharp, draws blood.
You cannot have the blossom without the blade.
Being wishful, we suffer. Sweet humanity,
the song we dream of singing.
DL |
|
|
|
Bill Smith
Windchimer
2390 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 01:51:58
|
| It was a dark and stormy night. |
|
|
|
rodeo
Swinger
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 03:28:21
|
| ...the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind... |
|
|
|
BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 11:35:10
|
The road was long, and the journey was bittersweet.
More sweet ... than bitter. The first fork in the
road was for him; the second one, for me. Sometimes,
in the middle of the night, I have long pondered
whether I should have taken the second one first.
I suppose that, just by asking myself that quesion,
I already have my answer. The road was long.
BGee |
|
|
|
Bill Smith
Windchimer
2390 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 12:20:35
|
She was mad. I made her mad. She pulled over to the side of the road in that torrential rain and told me to get the hell out of the car. Then I reminded her that it was my damned car!
She cried. She touched the softness in my inebriated heart, and I held her and kissed her. I promised her that I would by HER a car that she could kick me out of.
We went home, drank more wine, and lit a fire. Afterward, we lit a fire. |
|
|
|
BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 17:49:09
|
Wow - Howwww, BillyBoy.
WOWWW-HOWWWWWWWW.
BGee |
|
|
|
rodeo
Swinger
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2009 : 13:41:05
|
"We went home, drank more wine, and lit a fire. Afterward, we lit a fire."
I woke up suddenly...realizing I was alone, I rubbed my eyes, pulled on my slacks and walked into the hallway where I smelled an old familiar smell...one that I thought I'd never smell again...could it be...?? |
Edited by - rodeo on 08/11/2009 13:41:58 |
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/15/2009 : 16:23:37
|
| ...Eve steps out of Adam and trips over yesterday's newspaper. Rain drips down through their leaky roof. Plink, plink, plink into pots on the floor. Adam leans up on both elbows and yawns. Shakes the salty stars from his hair. So reliably alive! His fingerprints everywhere. A thread of smoke from the brand on his flammable heart rises like incense into the air. Eve sets the bread and fresh butter before him. The chipped crock of sticky fig jam. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 12/16/2020 18:16:05 |
|
|
|
BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2009 : 23:44:15
|
The walk out into the dark parking lot was the same
as always. Shadows. Sounds. And, very eerie.
Sometimes, the parking lot lights were on, and sometimes
not. Tonight was a "not" night. She almost always
found someone who could watch her until she made it to
her car. That was not the case this night. Her
heart began to beat faster and faster.. until it was
pounding in her chest. He wanted her to park far
away from the building because the car was...new. She
could never understand how he put so much emphasis and
importance on things ... instead of her. It had
become a common thought lately that he might have taken
out a Double Indemnity insurance plan on her life. She
had moved that thought to the forefront and intended
to see if she could learn the answer to that.
'What was that sound', she thought. That pounding on
the pavement that sounded like footsteps was screaming
in her brain. 'Run', she thought. But, she couldn't.
She was frozen in time and found herself unable to
scream. This had to be a nightmare. She stopped
suddenly and turned around.
It was him !! HIM ! How could she ever explain
why she was so terrified....She waited for him to get
closer, walking through the shadows of the night to
get to her side. She sighed and glanced down for a
second or two. He took her hand and, when she looked
up, he saw shock on her face. It WASN'T him, the
one that she loved. It was ... it was .... she screamed,
just before she fainted into his arms.
BGee
|
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2009 : 16:45:25
|
| Saving paper. Blocks of cedar in the steamer trunk at the foot of their high iron bed. Soon everything smells like his forest. Makes Eve want to knock him down and fall on top of him, it does. "I'll tell truer stories," Eve says. "Not yet..." Adam says, eating his chowder out of the pan, and feeding the script through the shredder. |
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/23/2009 : 16:23:34
|
| I live down the road from you. On clear nights you can see my house from your house. From your front porch where the viny roses grow. I know where your room is. You're sleeping there now. Or you're awake. This is just to say... |
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/23/2009 : 16:29:23
|
| Santa Ana in a vacant parking lot. The Cloud 9 Shuttle arrives on time with its cheery sunshine and palm tree logo. NO RESERVATIONS NEEDED in Cloud-9-Blue letters on either side. The Driver's cap at a jaunty angle, hanging on the rear view mirror. He ignores the fern-like flames twining around her ankles. He reaches through the open door and pulls her up the WATCH YOUR STEP stairs. She's fishing through her pockets for the fare she can't afford. Fire engines wailing up and down the Coast Highway. |
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/23/2009 : 16:32:30
|
| "The spread-open fan of memory..." he says. "Fragrant jasmine in the courtyard. Pointy stars. And you...waking up from your drama-full dreams. High cheekbones and stuck-up nose, hahaha..." |
|
|
|
Ailinn
Windchimer
2249 Posts |
Posted - 08/23/2009 : 16:35:21
|
| Like Baum's Bazaar on the prairie. Finger bowls and silver call bells...salt cellars and their magic like. What was it he said?... "Now we can cross the Shifting Sands..." |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
|
The Nightly Vigil