Young Writers Society

Was kinda looking forward to this a while ago, so I suppose I'll give it a whirl. It's doomed from the start, but so it goes.

#1. Asinine

She called herself Bonnie
but it seemed desperate, like
naming a flower Fragrant or your first son Max.
She swayed her svelte hips and touched her
soft lips and stared into the distance beyond
when she asked if I wanted this to go.
Her sultry breath, sweet on my skin, soaked into my hair
like cigarette smoke--my clothes like stripper glitter.
Am I a good person because I didn't say yes?
Am I a bad person because I couldn't say no?
"I can't" was all I said. "I can't" and my thoughts
focused on those words to make them true.
I needed them to be true.
Bonnie--sweet Bonnie--sniffed and took my cash
slipped it in the strap of her shoe and
sauntered off to someone new.

#2. You always go home alone

The stars reel or maybe it’s my gait walking upward on clouds shifting underfoot like a Lilliputian microcosm and the telephone wires pull me down like kitestrings--kitestrings right?  Give me reprieve and I’ll pluck down those never-lonely bastards Gemini and Pisces and tie their limbs and fins together like hydra heads or woven teenage legs in countless twin beds in sanctuaries far from existential crises fabricated to keep me occupied because

there is no myth and
there is no romance and
non-fiction is only fascinating to elementary school children who haven’t yet found a reason for escape.

#3. Married young

She stretched nearly nude under the covers
the cotton dangling limp across her familiar body
and snored as the moon found her slatted, slanted,
hot breath and dream shrugs and elbows jutted.
I slipped from the bed and went for a smoke
and found a possum perched on the garbage can
wild eyes and wild hair unblinking and unceasing it
shimmered off into the darkness. I wanted
to chase it off for good measure, but it would sneak back
when I wasn't looking, to pick over scraps and morsels.
I watched the smoke slither from the cigarette
and pause outside the window to look in
on her sleeping, worlds away, suddenly transformed
into Circe.

#4. Displacement

Ben was five pounds four ounces
and never really gained much more than that.
He smiled pretty pretty when my wife tickled his nose
and coughed and shivered little staccato tremolos
at night. I could hear his voice, yet unlocked, asking
for mercy or reasons why. I cried
or didn't, it doesn't really matter
what happens in the dead of night.
We got a dog and thought it cute
to name him Xavier but it was just a pain
to raise a dog in a childless home like
a swing set or a crib watching you except
Xavier had actual eyes that questioned why
and where Ben had gone. Oh goddamn it,
don't expect me to know you stupid dog
and I kick him and hug him at the same time and
now there's not one of us that isn't afraid
of each other in this fall of a house. And there isn't a child
named Ben that I don't blame blame for it all because we need
so desperately need something to feel but fear.

#5. Debriefing

They dropped a 4,000 kilo payload on us at dawn.
I spent 48 hours in the drink and listened to men die.
They shut up 20 hours in, though one asked me
to take his dogtags home to his porch swing little brothers
and his weeping windowsill mother.
His big fat bloated blue arm left it at that
circa 32 hours, sir.

I spent 48 hours wanting to see my wife again.
In 48 short hours, she was born over and over in my mind
each time greater than the last until her brilliance blinded me
like the noontime sun and her hair unwound
in rivers (freshwater, mind you)
and her breasts were these melons that sheened with ambrosia and
just these perfect nipples, I tell ya, and her skin was cream and
she had a thousand arms when she sat cross-legged between mine eyes
and the moon and in my mind
she was the stuff of legends.
Of legends, I say.
How could I, then, return to her?

Even as I heard the rescue chopper,
I tried to drown myself.
(500 rpms, the last sounds, whopwhopwhop!)

But
as you already know, Doc, it turns out
it's harder to do that than to face great expectations.
Biology always gets in the way of divinity.