the office

god, her smile's bright. i wish it had a dimmer switch -- nothing more obnoxious than a woman who can't keep her invisaligned teeth, crescent lips, exotic tongue in check and respect the misery of others. i watch her as she crosses the floor -- perfect ass swaying as she steps left, right, left, right; a perfect military cadence of heartbeat mixed with nonchalant steps unknowingly carrying her further from me at my desk, deeper into my heaving, sweaty, needy brain.
she returns from the copier to glance briefly at my shaking hands hovering over a keyboard that i sometimes caress as i might her breasts. she passes me without really seeing and i follow her with my eyes, vision loping after her like a lion after a fat antelope.

birthday music

the motor churning beside his ear, Robin melded the beats of the escalator to the soulful wail of his own music. every commuter's shuffle added another note or harmony to enhance the simple tune.
incorporating cacaphony had made Robin a wealthy man playing at both colleges and concert halls, but it was this subway dwelling, strings quivering to the screech of poorly lubricated tracks, that spoke to his soul.

boston visit

cloud fingers stretch over us massaging and soothing. billows of friendly, aged faces trace wisps behind - each streak reminds us of einstein and air pollution. tiny size pretzels absorb our anxiety and we begin to relax, just as we begin the descent.

haze still obscures the distances, but the roadways and parking lots stretch below anyway, innocent of our pleading thoughts.

a 23.000 foot roller coaster - the drop is tremendous.

springs of mercy

link gun blazing, toren charged into the fray and quickly dispatched yet another opponent. his stats raised with every kill, plummeted with every death. he rose often. and rarely fell.
the game played fast: players died and respawned and died again. all but toren. he could hardly remember a respawn - wouldn't know how to react had he needed to. "killing spree" the computerized voice cooed at him; his hard work always paid off with a pleasant woman's tone celebrating his tenacity. "double kill" it rewarded when the carnage was swift.

jared wished he held something a little more powerful than the small handgun he wielded as he walked into the schoolyard: something closer to a link gun would be pleasant. though the stats wouldn't be available to him after this encounter, he could envision the results. F1 would reveal him leading over all his enemies. his 17 kills matched with his single death. no respawn this time.

short fiction

the glass cold against her temple, she pored over the text, heavily weighed down slender white fingers with dry pages, flaking binding, yellowed, aging words. blue veins clenched in tightened, bare forearm; delicate bones tapping and retracting in long, exposed foot. laura's days were spent in study – she lounged in window seats and languored in deep grass. the library windows were cold and unwelcoming, only offering a view of all she missed, but the warm grass tickled and discounted the novels: discredited dickens and lambasted tennyson. perfect concentration she found nowhere, but everywhere dissatisfaction.
eyes scanning pages which fingers itched to turn, laura plowed through the greatest works of england and america while slowly aging, gradually losing the blush from her cheek and the fat of youth from her frame.
in the late afternoon, nanny would call her for tea and laura would slouch into the dining room, slump into one of the high-backed chairs, and, with deliberate, studied slowness, sip tea and spread her toast with jam to crunch languidly between teeth small and porcelain.

laura spent her time studying not only books, but people. she read emily post between eliot and proust. while walking in the town, she stopped to stare awkwardly at lovers walking together. laura spent a great deal of time alone. she missed home and mum and disliked the smallness of america after immense england. of course, everything in america was oversize and indelicate; not out of a sympathetic largeness, but due to a spiritual size lacking grandeur. they compensated poorly.

rise up, rise up

spirals crept along her jaw, gained momentum in the smooth transition down quivering neck to rollicking bosom, slanted deliriously through twist of waist and cried softly on joyous union with unending hips. it died slowly on the floor, petered out, exhausted, dripping with the sweat descending from a whirl of soundless motion.

her name was alex and she had been dancing for a long time. hours maybe. years more likely. she was lost in the sounds and in the silence – for her, time was crawling by so slowly that pausing moments in each rhythm took ages to complete, each break was a heartache and she could never recover quickly enough to cease her swing.

angles quaked around his awakening form, paced through his warm limbs to rapidly cooling emotions. slowly he creaked from under soothing cover, stately mannerisms belying pain crouching just below the surface. a wrong step, a slight turn too hard and he was on the bed again, age forcing him low though dignity urged him up. finally, conquest in his eyes, he raised himself and stood erect on the equally aged floor, pine boards rubbed thin through years of meticulous sweeping, decades of clubbed feet wearing smooth the soft wood.

“papa,” she glided over, “papa, why are you so grumblycreaky of a morning? i am already awake for hours before you join me dancing.”

“child, i have lost my youth, yet you throw yours away. why do you wait for my waking before you go about your life? my time for wakefulness is passed. let me asleep.”

“ah, papa, morning is no time for your dreams. come, today we to market!”

and papa agreed, as always, his only child wooing him the way her mother failed to but once. “with this girl, there is no reason, only motion.”

as Dear left the now cold bed, she brought with her no poetry and no delight. she clambered over blankets heaped into mountains and leapt, as from a great height, the few inches to the floor, the same floor that she stumped around all day, all night, all her life. she thought of the child and the man and, as quickly, dismissed them: “fools, they have no idea. they market, they dance, they dream, but no sense they have.”

she limped into the kitchen and lit the fire, the ashes stirring lightly in the sweeping wind of her housedress.

“mother criticizes so much our dreams, papa. why does she hate us?” Holding tightly to his rough hands, she skipped through the festival feel of the market.

“she cannot understand our freeness, child. she has only her hands and they swiftly move to fail her.” He picked at linen displayed on a board piled high with silks and muslin. “she tried to compromise. and fell too hard.”

when she was young, Dear had a name.

“your momma, she painted. did everything, really. she could create, your momma, but then she created too much and she had to put away her youth and turn into an old woman – she never experienced being a mother, only a maiden, only a crone.”

Ilania.

“she used to do so many beautiful things – music and art and love, but she forgot how to do all that when she learned to knit, to sew, and to sit. that is what kills her – the sitting. your momma has no patience, only courage. so, everyday she sits to discipline herself and everyday she ages more, embittered further.”

“what a strange and tiny thing, this husk. corn is never so dry. so barren – why, how could I?”