8/8/1988 (Dixie)

Life Before Children (LBC).
What was that?

Dim memories surface, then sink back down, like jewels in quicksand.
There they go, those memories...
No, wait!
Sports car leaps out of the mud, blue and gleaming. It grows large, sprouts wings and soars into the clouds. Disco music suddenly fills the air. Oh, oh, Aretha Franklin, Hot Tuna, Boz Skaggs. Waylon Jennings pulls up the commune on a magic carpet. What's that smell? Marijuana, the ocean, plumeria, lasagne. Motorcycle surfaces in roaring splendor, makes a mess, shouts sex and possibility. Sunday sighs, nothing to do but sleep in.
The jewels settle down, dot the surface, and sink
into 8/8/1988.

Death Sat Alone at the End of the Bar Hunched Over a Beer - Maya

Of course, I knew who he was. Who wouldn't? The black hooded cloak was obvious enough, but the long scythe leaning up against the bar was a dead giveaway.

You know, I might have expected to get chills or be struck dumb, frozen in place, but it wasn't like that. He wasn't scary, not like you'd think.

I'd just walked in, shaking the rain off my coat and stamping my boots on the doormat when I spotted him at the end of the bar. i didn't even stop to think about it, but hung up my coat on the rack and took the stool next to his. The thought did cross my mind - who was he here for? Was it me?

"Hello, friend," I said. And then I got the my biggest shock of the night. When he lifted his head to look at me, I saw that he wasn't a he after all. Death was a woman.

She had thick wavy black hair speckled with silver that fell forward out of the hood when she looked up, and her eyes were the bluest blue I'd ever seen. Our eyes locked and neither of us looked away.

"Sometimes I hate my job," she said. No preamble, no social chit-chat. Just that.

"I'll bet," I said. "Who ya here for? Am I allowed to ask?"

"You can ask all you want, I won't tell you. Can't."

"Well, then, can I buy you another beer?"

She looked surprised. "Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."

We sat in companionable silence for a while. It was - I don't know - comfortable somehow. And the funniest thing? No one else seemed to notice.

Prompt, 10/3/09 - Death Sat Alone at the End of the Bar, Hunched Over a Beer

Death of a Beloved- Maya

Alone in the house

for a week,

I thought about it.

What if this were

my permanent condition?

Not a little break, a respite,

a rare chance for solitude,

but the way, the state of being,

the everyday condition.

Finding the house locked up

every day when

I get home from work.

No one to cook for.

The handyman chores hired out

or left undone.

 

It is not a question

of maybe,

but rather one of when.

And who.

 

For one of us

will face this.

Jane Kenyon knew it. 

She wrote –

One day it will be otherwise -

And it was,

for her and Donald Hall,

she succumbing to leukemia,

and he left to write

his poems alone.

 

I loved this week,

the house quiet and all mine.

No struggling over who

gets to use the iMac now.

Cooking and eating

what I wanted

when I wanted it.

Peaceful late afternoons

in the hammock.

 

But always, always,

lurking somewhere

in my mind, the knowledge

that what is treasured now

could be despised later.

 

The death of a beloved,

a ghost of the future

haunting the house.

Maya, 8/29/09, Prompt: Death of a Beloved

A Wellspring of Spirit - JohnD

Prompt: A Wellspring of Spirit 08/22/09

We were down thirty-five to seven and Randy kept saying “Let’s go. We’ve got a chance.”

Let’s go? I laughed at the absurdity.

“The Hell with it!” he said finally. “You guys have given up. I’ll run it alone. I don’t need any of you."

I was offended. I think we all were. We were trying, but we were realistic, too. Randy was in la-la land. It seemed we were all in agreement: if he wanted to run it alone, let him. At the snap of the ball, we braced ourselves temporarily for the Mustangs' charge, but then, with very little fight, we let them slip through.

With his right arm, Randy tucked the ball tight into his body. I guess the Mustangs couldn’t see the ball. If he had it, of course, we would be protecting him, but we weren’t. They looked elsewhere, but nobody else was running or doing much of anything Then it was too late. Randy had momentum and they didn’t. He flowed through their defenses like water over stones.

Thirty-five, fourteen and we were back on the field in four minutes. Randy tried to get us pumped up again. Nothing! We were impressed, sure, but one lucky run wasn’t going to win the game. Now, the Mustangs were ready for him. He wouldn’t fool them again. He didn’t. He ran. Again, we did next to nothing for him. They were on him like a pack of wolves. And though they brutalized him, they didn’t bring him crashing to the ground. It was more like they crushed him from all sides. Out from the middle of that, he twisted and flipped around, hitting the ground running. He got hit again and again, but he harnessed the impact of each hit and catapulted himself forward to a fierce and motivational touch down. Thirty-five, twenty-one.

After that, we were all believers. We drove, rushed, fought, fought, and fought. We lost: thirty-five, twenty-eight. But we were a wellspring of spirit. The crowd went wild. I mean wild, absolutely wild. And they were mostly Mustang fans, on their own field. I think we gave a lot of people the show of their lives. Later, I learned that folks heard the cheering from that field almost two miles away. It was the greatest loss ever. I’m proud that I was a part of that.

“Let’s go! We’ve got a chance.” Randy was right about that after all.

No, no, no! - JohnD (2 min.)

Prompt: No, no, no! 05/30/09

I had nothing to say to Betty. She’d been talking for 12 minutes non-stop. I knew because I kept looking at my watch over and over during those 12 agonizing minutes. I was thinking about going out with the guys: my friends, my buds. That’s what I really wanted to do.

Betty and I had been together for a year and a half. It was our senior year in high school and I’d grown tired of her.

There she was rambling on about something, and I hadn’t been listening to a word.

“Well?” she finally asked.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know what she’d been talking about. She glared at me in disbelief that I wasn’t answering her.

I didn’t like the look she was giving me, so I said, “No!”

“No?” she demanded.

“No, no, no!” I screamed, wondering what I was saying “no” to.

“You're saying ‘no’, you don’t want to have sex with me tonight, after you’ve been pestering me for sex every day for a year and a half?!”

And then she left.

Equal Parts Light and Dark - JohnD

Prompt: Equal Parts Light and Dark 05/02/09

I love you. You have often asked me why. Lately you ask me a lot. It’s difficult to answer. Well, at least it has been difficult for me. I often turn it around and ask you the same question to try to get the attention off of me and to show you how difficult it can be to answer the why-do-you-love-me question. You just look at me like I’m crazy. But you still expect me to answer why I love you.

“But you can’t answer it either!” I protest. “Why do YOU love ME?!”

“Yeah, yeah!” you’ll say, “Now, answer the question. Why?”

It’s to the point that I don’t want to say I love you because you’ll immediately ask “Why?”

The frustrating thing is that I’ve given you an answer on several occasions. I’ve said, “I love your overall style. I just love your way.”

Then you usually say something like “Style? What? What about my style?”

And then I say something like, “This, this what you’re doing right now. I love the infuriating way that you insist that I answer a question that you can’t answer yourself. I love that about you, damn it! I absolutely love it. I love your style. I love you. Now, shut the hell up!”

At that point, you usually start giggling and say something like, “So, no, really, what about my style do you love?”

And at that point, I usually storm out of the room in a huff. Then I try to recover; and I do; and my heart grows stronger; and I think, “Damn, I love that woman!”

All the same, I’ve been thinking that I should come up with a list of things that I love about you. Hopefully, that will satisfy you and you will shut your piehole about this why-do-you-love-me trash.

I think the key to my love for you is that you are equal parts light and dark, and that’s great! If you were more light than dark, you’d probably be too sweet for my liking and I’d have to kick you to the curb.

I love the lines in your face. They give you strength. You look like you could take a solid punch and come back fighting.

I love the way you hang up the phone on solicitors.

I love the way you dress so conservatively and yet so fashionably.

I love that you feel humans are compulsive in nature and not to be trusted. You don’t even trust your own judgment. I love that.

I love how you’ll help someone in trouble before you have a chance to think about it, but only some people, the rules to which I don’t yet get.

I love the way you ignore the homeless. I mean, you don’t even acknowledge their existence.

I love the way you throw a Frisbee, cook oatmeal, smile, sneeze, laugh, and cough.

I love how you don’t apologize, ever.

I love you, damn it! I love you, so accept that and leave me the hell alone!

Promegranate: Melinda Jean

Hanging. She had only seen it in the grocery store, but now in this tree of dark bark and the golden leaves mostly gone, there they all hung, like rosey pink lanterns. She wanted one. She always wanted one, the beauty of those glistening seeds held by the toughness of blushed leathery skin. And here it was on the very branches, the source, she thought. The craving filled her chest with heat. The tree stood at the edge of a deck, someone else's house. A small tree oddly shaped as it had twisted itself around the exterior walls, leaning. She studied how many, and tried to judge if someone would mind. More than a dozen and the shapes varied, small nut sizes to large ones higher up. The fruit attached itself to each branch in odd ways so they weren't all symmetrical like apples or oranges, but grew in sideways, their bottoms pointing in every direction. What if they were promised, each one to a different person, the unique shape of each placed in the perfect hand of one equal in beauty. She saw one that pulled her, she reached feeling the promegrante in hand and as she tugged it held tight and to pull harder might splinter the branch. She withdrew and felt the air deflate in her chest, a sadness. Leaving it would mean something was missing. She turned to find a door.