February is inspiring

It’s not you.
It’s us.
Give me the ‘thanks for playing’ ribbon and I’ll throw it on the bonfire that’s been going since before my teens, warm myself next to its heat, stare into the shifting flames of memory and wait for love’s long arrow to finally javelin through my heart so I can no longer walk through revolving doors.
There’s a coin slot becoming permanent between my eyebrows
Born of confusion and concern
And it’s starting to make me feel like a child’s ride outside of a grocery store.
Love’s February cash register opens up with a loud I-Ching
There’s no paper money, small change is better than no change, and all the coins have the same face on both sides.
Robbing the hexagrams of variety
There are two paths.
One that goes up and one that goes down.
For amusement along the way, object of my affection,
Insert coin here.



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February is VERY inspiring

It’s a shock to find out that I’m playing a little bit part in the movie of someone else’s life.
Because I’m a star in mine.
It’s an abrupt reversal of fortune and a literal turning of tables as I suddenly realize that this is her story.
A minor chapter or maybe just a page in the long story of her winding down.
I’m an echo of what she used to love.
I’m a faded shade of memory that dimly reminds her of someone else and causes what’s left of her ruined capability for affection to twitch for a second reflexively.
Like poking part of a frog’s brain and making the legs kick.
Her heart beat me.
She sucked the silver spray paint off the disposable spoon in her mouth she was born with.
It turned her tongue shiny and sharp.
The acid of four promises cut the spoon into the shape of a fork with white plastic valen-tines.
It’s a cinnamon trident and my heart quivers, impaled on the plastic, trying to beat back around the spears or at least add to the rhythm until it realizes that it’s beat-boxing in a room by itself and it stops.
It’s like I caused her corpse to come to life.
With a smile for someone else she reached out with warm mannequin arms.
I’m not him.
She died again as soon as she realized and like a time lapse flower blooming backward she went away behind petals of defense.

If love’s a competition then I just lost.


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Ah yes. Kids are supposed to be scared.

Lovely. A remnant from back when kids shows were supposed to be surreal and terrifying. I remember some old episodes of Space:1999 gave me nightmares. I remember some old episodes of The Outer Limits in black and white with awful animation that made me quiver in the darkness. I have it on good authority that the television movie of Salem's Lot had young people quailing in their beds for months.

I am happy I didn't see this little gem late at night when I was six. I think it's done by the guy that did all those California Raisin commercials. The Nick Park of the 80s.

Watch on YouTube

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February is apparently really, really inspiring

Teenagers rub together like flint stones
throw off children like sparks
and here, years later, I explain to the new arrival

north from where I gave your mom the willies
and south from where her own lifeline was cut at birth
is a flatline scar
a few inches of equator on what used to be your world
you came from there

and she shines in unbelieving amazement like she's done since day one.


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