Obvious Agenda

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  • Dead Weight

    I could feel the death in his arm more than smell it. It pulled his entire left side down with its paralyzing weight. His shirt sleeve was filled with a thinness, like a deflated balloon animal that had slowly untwisted itself. This used to be an arm. At the bottom hung his hand, about as functional as a ball shoved into a tube sock. The skin at his fingertips had already started decaying. The dark purple mixed with the bright red of his calloused flesh like a blood orange.

    When he stood up, the arm swung like an elephant trunk, swaying and searching for dexterity. He brought it back under his control by tucking it into the pit of his good arm, sending the errant limb to sit in the corner. With this pose he could mask the death with a casual nonchalance.

    I wondered why he hadn’t cut it off. Wasn’t it more of a burden? Was he really keeping it for mere aesthetics? Of course not. He was keeping it because it was his arm. He was letting the pain and the necrosis slowly creep into his heart. But, it’s his. It’s his arm.

  • That Concrete Heat

    We stopped in the middle of a concrete desert. Or maybe we were just getting started. Either way it was hot. My skin was sticking to the ground like a tomato left to rot. I was sliding from place to place in the slick heat, but pieces of my skin peeled off on that rocky surface.

    I had just spent the past hour trying to get directions from an overly articulate feather and all I’d managed to figure out was that we’re visitors here. I know that we belong somewhere and that somewhere certainly isn’t here. Holding onto the tiny pebbles for extra traction, I yell at Ant to get me one more beer.

    “We need shelter. This sun is going to make us crack.”

  • Control

    Sometimes a man mistakes isolation for dominion.

  • Bound

    Tied up or going somewhere.

  • Caged

    “The lions and the tigers used to be the kings of the jungle and now they’re kept in zoos. I have a feeling that we’re on a similar path.”

  • Sorry

    During a not so distant bout with insomnia, I became extremely bored – more bored than usual. The standard pacing, staring, thinking, writing, reading, and listening to music was not enough. I needed something new and I knew better than to wander the streets (recollections of admonishments from authority figures), so I decided to write letters to people – people I didn’t know. I opened up the phone book (remember those?) and picked a name at random. My first letter was rather pointless and rambling, but it was fun and during it I had an idea for a better letter. I decided to write apology letters to these complete strangers. Sometimes I kept them short and vague like, “I’m sorry I bumped into you on the street,” but I often wrote long and elaborate stories. Then, I mailed them. I have no idea what became of them, but thinking about how these people reacted keeps me up at night.

  • Forked

    You know when you’re down to that one fork? The one that’s the least dirty? And you keep using that fork because you don’t want to do the dishes. You’re faithful to that fork.

    Maybe this is a metaphor. Or maybe I just don’t want to eat with my fingers.

  • Work

    I’m working on things and I’m working things out.

  • Leaving Town

    We’ve been waiting for four hours. Stuck between welfare users and child poppers. The black grime of addiction makes my shoes stick to the floor. I raise my voice just enough to carry over the crying children to trade numbers with the unemployed man next to me. A ten spot and six minutes later we’re at the counter.

    The government toad croaks something unintelligible and locks her glassy eyes onto me. I dive in, “My friend here and I need papers, official documents.”

    She looks down at the pile of forms that I’ve amassed on the counter. She apathetically slides them closer to her.

    “You need to see a judge to do this.”

    “Since when?” I ask.

    “Since the beginning of time.” Fuck. Apparently this office has outlasted the Parthenon, the Mount, the motherfucking Light and the Word.

    I summon my most authoritative stare. “Put me on the phone with the capitol.”

    I wait on hold for 20 minutes for a 5 second reply, “You need to see a judge.”

    I take back the papers, shove them into my duffle, and we move on to the next DMV.

    After three more stops we finally land our new ID’s at a small office in the suburbs. Thank Moses everyone named Goldberg, as of now, is honest in the eyes of a mostly Jewish community.

    With our new identities we are free. Ant and I jump in the cruiser and leave this godforsaken estuary behind.

  • You Lovely Island

    West Side Story makes less sense to me now.