What Comes Out of a Cake [1st revision]

A relatively tiny fly expertly navigated some neon tubing on his way to [well let’s be honest the fly doesn’t really care where he’s going]. Still he weaved in and out of the fiery green cursive like it was nobody’s business [when, clearly, someone owned the place; someone paid for the words ‘Miami BBQ’ to be written in gaseous script]. All this fancy wingwork had little value when the legend turned the corner on a humid city night and submarined down the street – not even vaguely self-conscious – holding his bold weapon down below his waist like the protagonist in a Western or the good guy in a sci-fi or the tattooed guy in a porno.

Splat went the fly after being fried against the non-lit tubing extending to the dot in the i. The legend stepped on its remains and inhaled deeply. The night was humid but the temperature was just right. Neon green always made the legend happy, always made him feel distant in a good way. The neon green air allowed his spirit to roam around about 3 feet outside his body in all directions, and sometimes he’d tell me this in no uncertain terms: “Let me tell you man when the light is [light neon green], I feel like a machine that just got lubed up real good or just got simplified you know? I feel like I had a thousand working parts and now there’s only fifty and everything is running smoothly, no kinks, no rust, no friction you know? I feel bigger than myself, not you know fat or anything but I feel my spirit come outside of me and just roam around like I’m more flexible or something; like I’m a force outside of my body.” His eyes got so big as he spoke about the spirit escaping momentarily; I felt something just listening to him. I tried to duplicate the feeling then and there and my attention to his words wavered slightly. I tried to feel what he was talking about but we were just sitting in his kitchen and I guess both of us were pretty rusty rickety machines.

I liked the feeling of my bare elbow cocked and leaning against the shiny plaid tablecloth. He did the same with his arm as we sat there chatting. The table had been cleared and Missy came by with a sponge to pick the crumbs up and take the paper plates and the plastic forks.

“I didn’t want to lose that feeling you know? So I stopped in one of those little bars on the street – nothing fancy nothing new and artificial.”

What I took this to mean was that the bar hadn’t anticipated outdoor seating or the luxury of beautifully bracketed windows that could be removed when the weather got nice so people could look in and it’d be all upper middle class and spineless.

[happy birthday brother]

Pest Control

The cows shuffled in the fields and summer dew coated blades of summer grass and made tiny rainbows for tiny insects stuffing their faces in the dirt searching for culinary treasures in a pesticide minefield out in my meadow. All this was boxed in by a water-logged wooden fence built long before the most recent batch of cows swept over the fields. So the lightshow persisted. The sky turned grey and the vista wasn’t even close to where the Old Guard had set their lowest expectations. Such is the lament of the downtrodden technology chief as he comes out of the ‘pen, camera flicker-flashes assaulting his eyes, cable news sitting in the cat[fish]bird seat. They salivate with half the story in one hand and half the story whirling around in a pesticide-saliva monsoon that washes all the little vermin back into their holes (hopefully cracking their necks and killing their dreams) ruining their afternoon scavenge under the dew rainbows. in. my. meadow.

We are all profane, she exclaimed – so I spun her around and dipped her down and then we released for a time and did a little jig with our hands to the whitest beat in the tune and maybe moved our feet a little and swung our hips in a measured manner to the right to the left and back again and since we’re advanced, we would spice it up with a right-right here and there; then we clasped hands again and pressed against each other and maybe mouthed the words but I didn’t sing out loud because that would kill the moment and she sang out loud and we both loved it for reasonably different reasons. The sky quicktimed in a glorious gradient of blue to yellow orange red purple and the climate followed suit from pleasant to warm cool summer-night and still.

A long walk to the long table with the one microphone in the middle took the cows by surprise. They pecked at the ground and meandered towards it solemnly, agents in tow. The cow who had it the worst, we’ll call her “Sam,” had black eyes and on this awful day, Sam’s eyes hurt a ton. She approached the microphone and nudged it with her nose, a low feedback puff filled the air. She sighed. Her tear ducts swelled. She nudged the mic again. Blood pumped viciously through her veins. Then she regurgitated the scandal in most uncertainless terms: there was the cheating, the lying, the late nights, the gambling…the whoring…the fraud, the gluttony, the pain, the psyche, the mortar, and the incidents of larceny.

After the press conference everything went back to normal: bees flew around and the army of insects scattered in the dirt in the grass forest and it rained and everyone spit and moist hairs sloped down everyone’s backs and the mud mixed with the pesticide and everything went down all around her but without her she’d been cut out – excised for being too ambitious, for letting her naively-formed dreams transform her permanently. Now she’s gone to far to go back, and gone to far to go forward.