Category: Competition

I take a good long stretch as I awaken to another predictable morning; sun shining through the window, birds singing in the backyard, my breakfast ready and waiting, a warm bed in which to return. Basking in the sunlight, I close my eyes and begin to meditate when I am jolted by the throbbing pain of you stepping on my tail!

“My, you two girls would fight over anything,” the exasperated, harried step-mom sighed, as she admonished them about the importance of sharing and being kind and that patience is a virtue, and that all good things come to those who wait, and just about every other homily that she could think of to make them realize how selfish and child-like they were acting, trying to steal each other’s food.
“Ok,” she relented, looking into their beautiful, soulful brown eyes, “more kibble and doggie treats coming up, but no more fighting, you hear me?”

Driving I catch sight of the port of Piraeus, the small lighthouse, canopied tavernas, yacht and dinghy rocking like pendulums keeping time. Greece even in winter has the subterranean vibrancy of an ancient culture, I feel at peace.

“It’s Valentines day,” his sister told him as he stroked the edge of the portrait he kept next to the small, heart-shaped, blood-stained note containing the words “rejected” and “nothing more to live for, thanks to you.” While he looked at the finger her ring used to occupy, all he could mutter was “Yeah, I know.”

Every Friday night for the last 20 years, the party girl made the rounds at the local bars, getting smashed, singing karaoke, and finally, at closing time, selecting the lucky guy to take her home where they had wild, random, stranger sex.

Now pushing 40, as she sits alone at the bar, used up and no longer attractive or desired, she asks the bartender, “Where did everyone go?”

Uninhibited by staring faces and oblivious to the infidelity in her voice, Mr. Large beamed a smile that chased both ears. His wife could never really tell if he believed her or was simply preoccupied with the accessibility of beer (probably the latter she supposed quietly, economizing on breath).

Hitting the window of the time machine, raindrops blurred Charlie’s view of the condemning faces watching him depart, and he felt the flow of the controlling medicing. He knew he would soon stare into his younger, fearful eyes, feel his own cold grasp around his throat, and, paying the price for his crimes, his breath would mingle with old air, fading at last into the darkness of the night’s past.

Gluing the pieces of the broken flower vase back together, she wept uncontrollably. If only she could glue the shattered pieces of her heart back together, she sighed through her tears.

The storm had been going on for days destroying everything in its path, but in the midst of all the commotion and struggle the remaining two strangers fighting for their lives looked into each other’s eyes’ and the winds ceased and the clouds parted. They knew that from this day on, their lives would never be the same because they had come this far together in the battle against nature and now they were the only hope for keeping man kind alive.

My hands wouldn’t write what I wanted them to, so I went at both of them with the largest hammer I could find in the house.

As I slipped in my own blood and fell towards the floor, it occurred to me that the pain I felt was more satisfying than any poetry I’d ever scribbled down on the blue-lined tear-streaked pages I called a journal.

He woke up underneath his desk, still clutching an empty bottle of whiskey. He dumped it, smoothed down his hair and shirt and sighed before opening the classroom door to let his students in.