Insert Something Profound Here

0530 get up.
0531 dog whines.
0532 dog(s) hungry.
0555 feed dog(s).
0600 let dog(s) out.
0610 back in bed.
0730 shower.
0740 dress.
0750 feed cat.
0800 eat breakfast.
0820 wash dishes.
0840 go to store.
0930 pay for groceries.
0945 arrive home.
1000 put away groceries.
1015 play with dog(s).
1030 give dog(s) snack.
1100 write.
1200 eat lunch.
1230 wash dishes.
1300 water plants.
1320 write.
1500 sweep.
1510 vacuum.
1530 write.
1700 feed cat.
1710 write.
1800 feed dog(s).
1810 watch news.
1830 play with dog(s).
1900 watch TV.
2000 eat dinner.
2030 wash dishes.
2040 play with dog(s).
2100 write
2300 feed dog(s) snack.
2359 go to sleep.

Ichabod Durling Smith

The man in the tight, worn, faded jeans and dirty, sweaty under shirt was on a quest of epic proportions.  The short, skinny man’s name was Ichabod Durling Smith.  No one on this earth hated his name more than he did.  His parents thought it was a lovely name and so did the kids at school, but only because it gave such wonderful nicknames that they delighted in taunting him with.  He’d had ‘My Darling Icky’ and ‘Icky Darling, Oh Icky’ yelled at him so many times they reverberated in his head ad nauseum. 

His mother loved the story of the Headless Horseman, reading it to him every night as he lay in her womb and up until he was old enough to tell her that it terrified him.  He, unlike his family, which included his parents, three sisters and two step-brothers, he could not stand horror, not even having grown up with Halloween nearly beating out Christmas out in terms of importance in his household.  He was terrified of specters and vampires and other things that creep along in the dark even though they’d all explained to him how none could possibly exist and even without their explanation, he knew logically that the quick shadow on the wall in the corner of his eye was just a figment of his overactive imagination.  Still he couldn’t help himself.  His family loved the idea of these sorts of creatures, despite their scientific background.  His mom was a chemist and his dad a physicist.  Each of the kids, save for Ichabod, were following in their parents’ footsteps.

As for the middle name, it was a family tradition, a name bestowed on the last child in the family.  How it originated and what it means is a question best left unasked for each and every member of the Smith family has a strong opinion on it.  They are all quite opinionated actually and most find it more than a tad annoying as many of them lack any sense of tact.

His last name seemed like a cruel joke.  After Ichabod Durling how could they leave him with such a plain, boring name?  To make matters worse, he had no nickname.  There was no way to shorten his name without making it sound like a taunt and there was no way he was ever going to go by his middle name.  So he was Ichabod and it sucked.  His siblings had normal names like Robert, Jennifer, and Mackenzie.  Ichabod wondered sometimes if his parents hated him.

No matter what they thought, it wasn’t out of spite that he chose to major in journalism.  It was a safe field; firmly rooted in the vines of reality.  There was nothing to be left to the imagination and he liked that.  Everything you saw was actually there.  No crazy metaphors for life or renderings of things we knew existed but could not actually see.  No, journalism was everything it purported to be. 

He did spectacular in all of his classes, maintaining a perfect GPA in a program considered to be one of the toughest in the nation.  Every semester he took an overload of classes while anchoring a news program on the college TV station and being an editor on the college paper.  While his roommates were out partying and getting stoned, he was busy working late into the night on one project or another.  He’d heard their whispers which both questioned his sanity and humanness.  Honestly, he couldn’t help his study habits; you don’t have many friends when you’re called Ichabod.

He was in his first semester of his junior year when something strange happened.  In hindsight, he probably should have just blamed it on the long hours he’d be pulling between classes, the TV station, the paper, and fulfilling the community service requirement his school had just instituted, but then in his caffeine riddled and sleep deprived mind, not to mention the overactive imagination that reared it’s ugly head at all of the wrong moments, how could anyone blame him for thinking the blue unicorn with a green swirl on its sides that suddenly appeared in his dorm room at one in the morning on the night before a major test was anything but real?

Of the Lost Soul

If a tree falls in a forest and I am around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Lost soul

A lost soul wanders the halls here

Up and down the halls                                                                        (a lost soul here wanders)

Every day, dark and night                             (the halls up and down wanders here a lost soul)

He said. She said. They said.

He said. She said. They said.

To be a friend you needed something. You needed something that you were not, but you had to find it.

To be a friend, you must have a friend.

To have a friend, you must be a friend.

To be a friend, you needed something that you were not, but you had to find it because to be a friend, you must have a friend.

I tell them, the they, of the friend I once knew who led us to childish games of name-calling. It led to no friends.

This, the they said, was bad.

Fred

Fred has finally returned, but she’s developed a new habit.  She smokes flour, says it tastes good, sends her to universe Q, where my friend is pope and rules benevolently.  Flour cigarettes do nothing more me but make my nose itch, which is aggravating because I can’t sneeze.  Have you ever dealt with a nose that itches, but produces nothing?  Fred’s very fun when she’s high flour and I get a lot done.  Flour does her good and she does me good because Fred is my imagination.

Hello Fred, thank you for returning.  Please don’t leave me again.  You do me well, make me happy, productive, imaginative.

Compelling nothingness

Someone tells me I have to try.  They say I have to do more than try.  I want to, but no is infinitely more compelling.  The far easier method is to lie here, waiting for something to happen.  Nothing will though because nothing ever happens.  I try, I really do.  I force myself, but ultimately I return to lying about because nothing is more appealing.

Humaness of Memories

Memories assault

Inflict invisible wounds

No god answers my plea

None dare respond

I am not worth it

The humanness of my is

transparent, absent

None understand, comprehend

The assault continues

as I seek an eternal

solution.

Waiting

It flees from me like a child flees from cough medicine.  I run and run, mentally of course because I haven’t the energy to physically run.  So I lie here in wait.  Waiting for something.  It or death.  Today I don’t care which arrives first.  Without creativity I have nothing.  No use, no purpose.  Writing is my sole purpose in this life.  It is all I can do that has worth.

Red and Black

The red had a different feel than the black.  No barrier or line of demarcation foretold of a difference.  But that changed nothing.  They felt different and that was the first thing she noticed.

Musical Memories

Music calls.  Each song holds a message.  Good or bad, dredges up old memories, feelings.  Incites longing, nurtures desire and feeds want.  Nostalgia compels distaste for future.  The song is the cause.  But like the mouse it beckons until caught in the trap.

The Singer and the Voice

A single voice fills the silent room.  It sings, but there’s no music.  The words cannot be distinguished.  It sets the tone of the room, nonetheless.

Disarray that makes sense to only one.  An outsider sees heaps of nothing.  No care or regard for any possession.  One sees order.  Prized items and things of meaning placed carefully in seemingly haphazard piles.  Things of no meaning stashed out of view.  Necessity holds a corner, begrudgingly granted.  Strangeness shrouds it, gives necessity a yellow aura.  It never had need before, never offered an invitation.  Necessity spent years sulking in the corner.

The voice continues, bouncing off the walls, stark of meaning and piles of necessity.  The only accompaniment is the growing tick of the clock.  It falls silent on occasion, but never fails to remind of boring necessity.

Needs and wants are useless.  Do is the only thing of importance.  Action conquers stasis in a swift boxing match.  The result leaves stasis drooling and bloodied, unconscious on the dirty mat.  There are no cheers.  Everyone bet on stasis.  Entire fortunes lost with a single throw of the clenched fist.

Does do care?  Ought it?  Is it really fair that all want their money back?  Does ignorance warrant special treatment?

Do does not want.  It has no need.  It simply is.  it does because that is life.  It goes to work, pays the bills, feeds the family dog, kisses the wife after a well-cooked meal, pats the kids on the head, impregnates the wife again.  Do does not know because it does.  Do does nothing.

Life begins, life ends.  The cycle requires nothing, yet do goes about because of nature, habit.  It cannot stop.  Do continues until it dies, keels over from something.  It never wanted to reset, not even when frail.  It did not ask to live.  Do died because it had to be done.  In death, do was done.

Every do continued.  Mindless drones.  Instilled with directions to do.  Nothing would change because do always did.  Do never thought, never said what if.  Because do never considered possibility, it never sought after.

Necessity is a waste.  It allows for the sloth.  Do never wants for something because necessity is a waste.

Want is dangerous.  Want asks eternally.  Want can never be sated.  It encourages red, calls upon green.  Nothing comes from want.  But do does not know this because it never wants.

What does the voice want?  The singer wants money because it needs to live.  It wants to live.  The singer wants attention, which it needs to inflate self-worth.  The voice demands nothing.  It has no need or want.  It does because that is what it is supposed to do.  It knows of nothing else.  It thinks of no alternative.  Voice is an instrument.  It does because of another’s want, need. 

Do does not think of the fairness of this.  The voice has no voice and wants not for one because it does not know want.  It simply is.  But the voice is not static.  It does because that is what it does.

The singer and the voice are intertwined, forever linked.  The voice does not know this.  The singer does because it needs and wants.

They cloud the vision of the singer.  Visible invisibility.  The singer does not know this because it knows what it wants and needs.  The voice has clarity, but sees it naught because it does not think.  It merely does.

Which is better?  Does the singer claim superiority because it knows?  Because it wants?  Does necessity make it better?  Is the voice better off because it does?  It has no need or want.  It needs nothing because it does not know want or need.

Who can judge?

Who dare determine superiority?

Do cannot because it does not think.  Is it fair to let stasis decide?  The singer will side for itself out of necessity and want.  But does it need superiority?  Does it really want it?  How does the singer know what it wants?  How can it determine its needs?  The singer sees both as necessity.  It is necessary to want and need.  Need and want lead to something greater, but it never finds that something because it does not know its needs and wants.  The singer does nothing while voice does without though because it has no need or want.  It seeks nothing more than to do.

Who dares to place judgement?

Memories

The memories of long ago fade

but the pain of yesterday lingers

Its memory more vivid than the sun

Chimera in disguise

Smile flashes, brief

unexpected mirth

unsettling expression

unease consumes

Control long lost

Chimera in disguise

Blankness washes over

bleak expression

customary desolation

manageable stasis

Desire hides

Exhilaration

Exhilaration provides

progress

fiery mind

bubbles popping in joyous celebration

Exhilaration fades

forever

with hope

black

The Goose

My neighbor has a goose.  It strikes me that it must mean something.  I must write something about this strange pet.  But nothing comes to mind other than city regulations on pets.  Ought that mean something?  Show something about my inner self?  Perhaps it says I follow the rules too much.  But I thought I liked to break rules.  Rules, or rather customs are cumbersome.  I don’t like customs.  They confine, inhibit creative thought.  I don’t like the conventional.  I want something unique and different.  Something from the heart, not from the brain.

Ordinary

Roses are red

The blank page taunts

All the good lines are gone

But that’s okay,

I prefer the extraordinary

Because they’re outside the box

Untitled

Newness is overrated

Fresh start a waste

Nothing begins anew,

once set into motion.

Only destruction

can follow.

Scars

Every scar is a memory, starker than everything else.  Even when they succumb to the ravages of time and nature, the memory holds fast.  Each is a mark of existence.  They are a testament to the manner in which we live.  They tell the truth when the mouth does not.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

creamy peanut butter
concorde grape jelly
slathered with hope
smeared without care

chubby cheeks spew familiar breath
full of carefree giddiness
lost whilst the sun sets