9 Minutes

An anonymous ski-mask narrator exposing the world's worst public transportation system is what we now have on every channel. You ever hear of The 9-Minute Rule? It's the rule whereby if you drop something (like a candy bar) you're about to eat on the ground you have 9 minutes to pick it up and eat it before the germs come. That means your candy bar could be sitting in a puddle of Hepatitis blood and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy vomit for 9 full minutes before the germs get to it, and you can stand there staring down at your candy bar in the puddle of blood and vomit for 8 minutes and 55 seconds before picking it up and eating it. Once I knew a fella, though, who dropped his candy bar on bare sidewalk and picked it up 3 seconds later and ate it and still got sick. That's the dilemma of a liberal who found out his dog was a conservative. The guilt of having roasted grasshoppers and watching their hoods turn red. Gotta go to where they doff their shoes before entering. Get the kids obsessed with some little thing or every little thing. Those are also all parts of The 9-Minute Rule. Subsets. Clauses.

- The End -

22nd

Old man's brought the dog home, and the old man's rapping our glass front door with his particularly twisted walking stick. Inside, we wait on the sofas, wait for his shouting to begin, tap our toes. Tonight it's only night because the day has failed to pervade a steady rain. Love has reared a typically ugly head, and tomorrow stretches like a fanfare to gum on the streets. No wonder there are cigarettes, you can hardly pick your battles without picking them improperly.

He decided on a rash of anxiety to top off his relaxing weekend in the countryside. A run up and down the library's stone stairs and no sweat on the brow, something stuck in the throat. What was the terrible answer to this the worst of questions? Where does he belong, this spinning spitting sunray of a salmon of a man? The other day in the forest while walking he was approached by a zombie squadron of the old, all of whom had a different question and different waffles to their smiles. He's not quite cut out for this, he's got no eyes for the future. There's those lights away out there, but the sadness is too complete and the burden in the belly too much to burble. Leave home too long and there's no way back. What's the definition of that face down there that windowways, has it got a beard or is it a woman lost in rude shadow?

How could they not want us to take pills and hole up in abstinence and ignore entirely the love of good people when there is so much wrong with every ember, every idyll. You've got your babbling brook, now go back to town and get a boat to put in it my fine-tooled man with your off-putting devices, you filching eyes from our favorite mists, our favorite clocks ticking their favorite times. There's the lights, but they have no comfort, not even the bittersweet brand. Not tonight anyway.

- The End -

70 People Say

My brother had been six months here, and I think never once did he wash his clothes. He was plenty grumpy from never leaving the house and never being close enough to a bathroom. He always thought someday he'd feel different but here he was here, and not only here he was here but here he was here at 97. That's an age, can you believe it? An actual age of a human being. People say: how are you, I know you, very nice to see you. That is, they say that, the ones of us who can carry on a conversation without talking about our long-dead friends or long-dead brothers or sisters or long-dead fathers or mothers. My brother wrote letters to all of them, those lodged in our past, while I begged out of writing letters. I didn't have anything to say to anyone. But even though my brother could write like thunder down the paper he'd absently fold the letters and stuff them in his pockets. I was washing his clothes for him because I had to do something to keep the motors grinding, at least grinding, and I could never remember he stuffed his pockets with letters, so he was finding his letters washed into tattered crumbling wads that fell apart if you tried to unfold them to retrieve the words. "You're not mad at me are you?" I'd ask each time. "They're just words," my brother would say, after saying "WHAT?!" a lot. Then he'd say: "And how am I supposed to send letters to dead people anyhow. You might as well wash them in the washing machine, it's as good a way as any to get the letters into the ether and on their way to the dead people." I wish he hadn't said that. What a thing to say. My brother was six months here, but six months on and I'm still pausing to look into the washing machine for ten-minutes-or-so stretches before the clothes go in. Looking in it for what I don't know. But I used to peer in washing machines as a toddler thinking they went somewhere. And I'm only one year younger than my brother so I'm almost back to being a toddler. So that's what's up. I'm looking for the dimension doors where the letters get posted to the dead people, the doors (or windows) my brother was implying. I'm looking every other day because I'm good about laundry. Yes, I'm looking. Something about those tiny holes.

- The End -

113

113 degree heat today and inside the car feels like a comet. My, that's okay, she's got her substantial lemonade and knickers dragging icicles. I for one haven't been able to lift them, so that counts for icicles. I know I shouldn't say as much. It's the heat piling frustration when I should let it sap frustration and all other strengths.

- The End -

4:30 AM

I don't see how they could hear anything, for example me dragging a chair across the floor or walking about at 4:30 AM with that snoring going down fan-wise down in their apartment, it all stuck in the cracks, the snoring and the chair both.

- The End -

780 Wishes

Once upon a time, she was The Princess Of 780 Wishes. That was down 1,704 wishes from where she had begun. She had also begun as a scullery maid, but she had casually freed a more-than-generous gnome from a well. The gnome wasn't full of trickery, he was grateful for being saved and more than indulgent. When he granted her 2,484 wishes the scullery maid-soon-to-be-princess kept saying: "Are you sure? ... Are you sure?...