[x]

Noticed in CommittingI started committing suicides. They were small at first, but more grandiose as the months passed.
At first, I came up with basics: wrist slashing, hanging, overdose, jumping off a building, and stepping off in front of bus. They were all very mundane, really, and if not done properly you just end up living very, very painfully. It was after those routine ways to snuff oneself that I began to get creative.
There was going into a biker bar nude and starting fights with drunk bikers. And when I say "fights", I mean with a knife in my hand. That was a fun night. Everyone was freaked out and angry at the same time. They all wanted to kill me, but they didn't want to touch me either. Eventually, though, they did.
Oh, another good one was sneaking into one of those giant dump trucks at a quarry and letting them dump tons of excavated rocks on me. The driver of the loader always sees you just as it's too late and tries to stop the load.

Auditor of the Ashes"I am an incalculable rhythm of distinction."
Those words being uttered from the other side of the cubicle wall were not expected, but they could not be labeled as "unexpected" in my inventory of daily expectations. "Is that so, Rod?"
"I am a paradigm of undiscovered configurations."
This second phrase fell on me as the first. "Well, that may be true, but you know how much they love it when you talk to me over the cube wall like that. I hope this audit project hasn't finally pushed you over the edge."
"I am a master of untamed neuropathic swings."
It was that statement, I see now in hindsight's tremendous focus, when I began to worry. "Oh, you're the Jonas Salk of neuropathy now? I thought you were an accountant?"
"I am the King of Spades, and I have an ace up my sleeve."
I heard his chair push back, the plastic wheels rolling across the plastic mat, and his Oxfords made a few taps on the mat until they transitioned to the carpet. He was go

Living AnticipationWhat she craved was hunger. It took a semester for me to learn that.
She was an exchange student from Italy, a college sophomore, and I was a grad student assisting her ESL class. The class was mandatory her first semester in the States, but she didn't need it. She didn't need a tutor, either.
So, we were lovers.
Every Wednesday, in my far away apartment in Brooklyn, we met and made. Every Wednesday, she would arrive on the N train from Manhattan and let herself in. I left the door unlocked all day, because she would never give me a time. Answering her phone was her lowest priority. All the world could wait for her, it seemed to me.
When she arrived, it was always with a kiss. There were hardly any words at first, just her on her toes and me leaning down to meet her. She was 5 foot tall and all of nothing in weight, and never would I call her beautiful. She was pretty: olive skin and brown hair on youthful frame. Her ac

Hot Chocolate and Redemption"Because I'm a bad person, that's why."
Tammy's words stunned Ryan into silence. They'd had three good dates, and now this was her reason why she wouldn't go out on a fourth date. She'd been nothing but awesome, and this seemingly irrational rationale for rejection had him curious.
"I've seen you do nothing bad. You've been great with me." He leaned back in his chair, and took a sip of the coffeehouse's mocha hot chocolate. Her expression had hardened in a way he'd never seen before.
"That's because I don't let you see that side of me, Ryan. Listen, you were really sweet and persistent which is why I went out with you, but I'm cutting this off before it goes too far. I don't want to hurt you, and this will hurt less than you finding out what I'm really like." He noticed her hardened expression and flat tone shifted slightly during the last sentence, and they both showed him some pain. He decided to play the card she'd just handed him.
"If you're so horrible, why be ni

If you love her...lookpast
tired feet
and the hop-scotch marks
of time
through
binding fears
of the last lover
to wrong her
under
brilliant layers
of preservation applied
in mirrored morning tasks
into
the little girl
who wants to ask you
to hold her good-night

mumbled piano musingswhen I hear
a Steinway
or infant grand
the tiny space
between the strings
it seems where
God would resound
upon a wooden
hammer's strike
if only inspiration
and divinity
could be tuned
by a guy
from the Yellow Pages

to whence I always returnI stand
staring at your stars
lost in radiance
missing my own

Peaches and LemonShe was unrecognizable.
I knew exactly who she was, but only because I knew her back before she decided not to be just another unrecognizable girl.
For a long while, everyone knew her. She couldn't set foot in this town without a 'hey', 'how are ya', or a 'great to have you back'. Now it seemed she rated more of a glance and dismissal.
But, yes, I remember when she decided that it was all about being known and being popular. We were just kids, mind you, barely teens, when she came into my yard.
"Artie?"
"Ya, Peaches?" I called her that ever since I caught her taking a peach off one of our front yard peach tree a few years prior.
"I don't want to be Rachel anymore. I want to be Raquel." She always had a dramatic way of saying things, and she added a lot of, I guess you'd say, flourish to the way she said her new name.
"Oh, okay, Peaches. I'll let everyone know."
"You're no help and no fun."
She was wrong on both counts.
Well, maybe not on the second count.

stay upnight flies over land
sleeping dreams
worries aspirations uncertainty
curled up under covers

some survive in dark
keeping wheels in motion
or haunted by memories
a graceful odd collage

prelight awakenings
jumble the dim peace
bringing electricity
to silent lines

the night closes shop
delights hidden by sun
majority rising
the magnificent go to slumber

(dedicated to all of us who would choose to live after the sun sets)

CharlieI had a stalker.

I didn't know his name but I'm sure he knew mine.

I called him Charlie.

He always had a camera hanging from his twig thick neck and he cradled it in his hands; a wispy finger stroking the shutter release. His dark brown hair was a curly mess and his shirts wrinkly and thin. He had the most perfect eyebrows, sweeping and gentle. He must have the most captivating eyes, I thought every time he'd glance my way. We'd never made eye contact. Charlie preferred it that way.

He came into the bookstore once a week, not to watch me leaf through the used books or reach high to shelve the approved ones, but to actually browse them. He

Street Corner DrowningI drowned her in her own regrets and moved her off my street corner. She didn't belong there, like that little turquoise car Matty once bought used. Yeah, it ran great and had power windows. But, it didn't fit. It was an eyesore on the curbed canvas of our street's patina.

That's what she was: an eyesore. She never wore her feelings on her sleeve because they restricted her range of motion, she said. And I wondered what she thought she wouldn't need stiff elbows for on this block.

When the dawn would break in such a fashion that light actually streamed, she should have glittered with the fine sheen of mistakes she'd made. But she was mu

Blue Smocking in the True Essence of Time"You have no idea what time is going to do to you."
The girl was certainly no older than me, certainly. In fact, she looked at least ten years younger than me, and her dark blue, smock-like top the drugstore chain made her wear at the register made her look even younger and more childish.
If I allowed myself a moment of superficiality right then, I would have said there was nothing special about her: not her hair style, not her face, not her body, not her smile, not her eyes or even the tone of her voice. In fact, there was something slightly non-pleasing about all those elements of her, but I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly why. Maybe everything about her was just a little "off' by the world's standard of what was beautiful and what wasn't. Regardless of that, though, I realized that at 2:00am, when I was the only customer in the store full of everything a person could need at 2:00am, it was an odd thing for her to say to me as I walked in and passed the che

the way of two heartshe can't touch her distance

all the while
she ruminates on existence
commas
and non-dairy creamers

he just resides
on the edge of potential
long pauses
whole milk upbringing

she sees him, near-sighted

he acts in solid ways
rarely speaking, yet
reliable
and unaware lumbering grace

she just resides
on the peak support felt
in his rough hands
bringing her up, whole

they see. they are.

haiku- some girl's fantasyform under satin
sleeps, waiting for rough hands' grab,
take push fill, coddle

Never finding the stars"I've never found the stars, for they were always too poetic for me to reach."

I looked over at her, admiring her form highlighted in the window by the moon. "You've never found them? Are they not right there in the sky?

She turned her head towards me, away from the night heavens, and her fine, frizzy, mist of humidity-curled hair blossomed slightly in the moonlight as she did so. "These are just distant representations that tell us where they are located in the galaxy, Charles. They are simply the same as a portrait of the night sky or a sonnet written about twinkling celestial bodies.

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SnowOlivia lost herself in the snow. Sitting on the porch, watching the snowflakes fall from the Missouri night sky, she she let her vision drift into their crystalline reflections. They were the only things that the weak porch light captured. The yard, the garage, and the now-silent hen houses were as dark and elusive as the storm-ridden sky.

There had been so many hours, and so many patterns since her father had left. She had spent days on the side of barn. With flourish, she could tell anyone who would listen on how the barn had been built, and how towards the southeast corner they had run short on longer boards and the pattern of the woo

Every Angel Deserves a Child"I can't feel the unfurling of my wings, Daddy."
I was not her father. I had entered her life when she was two years old, and she called me Daddy since she never knew her real father. Her mother's death two years ago made me the sole, living parent of an eleven-year-old, and I never felt like I was the right person for the job.
"What do you mean, Asrin?"
"Mom always said that when puberty started I would be the swan that emerged from the ugly duckling. She said I would be able to fly gracefully towards my dreams. But, I don't feel it."
As much of a woman as she was becoming, she was still a child. I wanted to answer her question, but I really had a hard time discussing her blossoming womanhood in the middle of a laundromat. Her pretty eyes were pleading with me, but I told her we'd talk later.
Janet had told Asrin a lot of things before she succumbed to the cancer. The last week or so of Janet's life were morphine-induced fantasy, I think.
Janet and I had met during c

Take a Pass"So, you want to be famous again? You want to be cared for again?”
The girl who spoke the words to me was about ten years old, had reddish brown hair down to her lower back, and the most adorable set of freckles dappled across her nose and cheeks I'd ever seen. I hadn't said a word, but she had just walked up to me at the bus stop and asked the question.
I didn't want to answer, so I asked a question.
"Is that a question, or an offer?"
I should have anticipated her response.
"Can't it be both?"
The wind blew slightly. Her hair was tousled by it and glinted in the sun. She didn't belong here in this neighborhood. We were surrounded by industrial buildings and tenements. Her straight teeth, clear skin and new clothing spoke of the well-heeled suburbs. I was here because I had nowhere else to go, but a child such as this was never seen playing here. Part of me envied her potential, her youth and her possibilities. I was surprised when

photon upon sonnetawash in a language-like light
where every written word is
historical projection
beamed infinity-bound
towards the outer edge
ceaseless juxtaposition
photon upon sonnet
illuminating electrons
interstatic connectivity
verses bound to image
refracted by hope
of educating the young
the same light
stars that guided immigrant ships
sun that dictated the planting seasons
speaks untold truths
to be harvested in aerials
hearts
eyes
each ray
a coddling legacy
by it we are told
by it we are warmed
by it we are born
by it we are one
(this is a collaboration with *disrhythmic . The original concept and starting lines are hers)

floss my losshaunting residual
plaqued enamel
residue of our trysts
tarnishing my savor
of all the future
that I may bite
brush fluoride useless
buildup left
only heartstrings
wound and bound tight
to floss my loss
aching for anesthetic
and pull
sacrifice a wisdom
to remove you
uncrowd the jaw
an extraction from
my orations
when done
simply
rinse

true end of day - infidelities, indiscretionsdew drop madness
warms the dry with
eye pulling wetness
that charms the evening-gowned ladies
to the coat-check and
out to waiting cabs
for a ride
to your hotel room
for a ride

blood gun super sponge
soaks up shot corral
draw forth from the passion
of knowing pretending nothing
behind this door
on a spring night morning
when fools frolic
above the industrious'
dark and coffee-filled waking drive

lust insidious bolsters
the unyielding hi-fi
infidelity indescrections for
trapped lonely citizens
wrestling with these hours
when the crust cools
moisture drops onto tender folds

rush to expulse
need to hold inside
the only way to satisfy
before
the true end of day

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Submitted: September 29, 2012
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Honesty on a flat-topped shingled roof (vignette)

by *enigmaticsmile, Sep 29, 2012, 4:01:55 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

"Baby, if you were the stars, I'd lay and watch you all night." His words were roof-top spoken, and five stories above a Brooklyn street.

She didn't notice, though, because she was tuned into every noise beneath them: Radios, cars, buses, bikes, steam lines, subways, fans, air-conditioners, televisions, power transformers and a high-up plane were lapping up her consciousness and weaving a lovely blanket of humanity where she could stay warm.

Cold was his distance on the aging roof. She realized a long time ago that his love had fallen for an idea, and that she fit that idea in form only. The short, dark-haired girl with glasses motif was one she wore well. He lived on that ideal: every evening of their lives together he would heat up that film-covered, plastic tray with the neatly organized concepts of her in the microwave of his mind and enjoy it bit by compartmentalized bit.

But the variable of her heart was incalculable in his equation. Knowing that what she loved was not the stars, but the amazing human equation festering beneath this rooftop was beyond his lofty vision. So, he watched the stars and she closed her eyes. He focused himself on the world above, while she closed hers and let the trappings of human existence enter her through the vibrations of building below.

Two uncrossed lovers, one star-bound and the other soaking in the human pretense, shared a patch of Kings County above and below where they longed to be...

Honesty on a flat-topped shingled roof (vignette)by *enigmaticsmile

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

~~love 0 0~~

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

sad 1 1

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~fernandezshe Oct 14, 2012

is this love at its natural death?

Denying that it doesn't exist anymore and living in hypocrisy that it is still mutual, though both know and feel that what is happening is a lie... (that makes it mutual then)

oh sadness.

*enigmaticsmile Oct 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Yeah, it's not a happy piece. And maybe it was never love. Maybe it was always a mutual attraction to what could be and not was.

~fernandezshe Oct 14, 2012

if that was never love, then both of them were masochists. being stuck there and living and satisfied with their wishful thinking

*enigmaticsmile Oct 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Well, I dunno. I just captured them as they were in that moment. I haven't created their whole back story.

~Steroids98 Oct 5, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Eloquently phrased.
And not a drag of a read either.
Well organised and colorful imagery.

Love this.
You my dear get the honor of being
THE very first out of Few written peices
That have ever entered my favorites.
I only keep images and pics.
But this, by far is deserving if I do say so myself :S

*enigmaticsmile Oct 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you very, very much.

But I think calling me "dear" is a bit much.

I don't usually get called that by other guys.

Regardless of that, thank you.

~Steroids98 Oct 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

No... Didn't mean anything of that nature with that. Didn't realize your a guy... The whole Alias sounds a bit benign in the fem department.

So I just assumed. But either way, Dear generically is used for courtesy.
But in our present world, Can't get away with that I guess.

*enigmaticsmile Oct 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

It's okay. I was just teasing. The affection is fine, and being the first piece of lit in your faves is an honor...

`thorns Oct 3, 2012 Writer

As other people mentioned, this is a beautiful piece with a wonderful focus on the relationship issue.

BUT! I think it would be a lot stronger without the ellipses. They're distracting, ineffective (in general), and really drag down the piece (for me personally). Make them periods or commas as needed and you'll see this piece, and your other pieces, flow better and appear more confident.

*enigmaticsmile Oct 3, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I have made your suggested change. Thank you for the feedback!

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Honesty on a flat-topped shingled roof (vignette)

Honesty on a flat-topped shingled roof (vignette)by *enigmaticsmile

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