*Gouge

No matter how hard I try, I can not move fast enough.
I feel as though I'm moving through a viscous substance
and my body is betraying me.

He gains on me, this faceless man.

My heart pounds in my throat, my chest aches for air.
I am unable to scream because I have been silenced by
unimaginable fear.

The knife plunges between my shoulder blades with
searing force.  I feel my life flow down my back in a
warm rush.

I have surrendered to the knowledge that it is over and
now I know what it feels like to be prey in a predators mouth.
Thankfully I fade into a gentle numbness...

I am startled awake, unable to wrap my fourteen year-old mind
around such a dream.

*Disconnected

I enter the cold, abandoned room.  My eyes are quickly drawn to a deep window sill.  There sitting alone, is a telephone.  Perhaps three-quarters of a century old it, has become a forgotten relic of the past....




A sort of melancholy drags through my heart.  I long to pick up the receiver and feel it's weight in my hand, to press the cold hardness against my warm ear, and sense the mouth piece against my lips.
                                                
I would like to talk to a spirit from the past.  What would they tell me, that they were happy here?  That life was too difficult and joy came only in fleeting moments?  I try and imagine the conversations that flowed through this wire.  Maybe a peevish exchange between two disgruntled neighbors, the wonderful news of the birth of a child, the downcast delivery of a death in the family or a covert conversation between a man and his mistress?   

A thousand or more discussions shared through this line, bridging time and space.  Connecting two people with the power of the spoken word.  I find it eerie, in a lovely sort of way that I am completely detached from the present.  I do not want to leave this place for fear that I will be forced to relinquish all that I feel and what emotion that was stirred here will be forgotten - like this old telephone.

Want

A little piece of you carries me through
the lonely places I walk.
You have gone from me now and I
do not know how to make this
craving stop.

Relentless dreams, or so they seem,
fill disconcert into my head.
I surrender to this, your lingering kiss
as you tie me to your bed.

*Fire In My Belly

Mediocrity creeps through my being
and it is an unpleasant feeling at best.
Stagnation has cemented me in this
place of unrealized dreams.

I yearn for a creative explosion, to throw
you to the floor, to strip you naked
emotionally.  To make you feel everything.

I have a desire to expose myself fully so that
you will either love me or hate me.
I will leave no room between for indifference.

I want to render you speechless, yet have
you share everything just by feeding you
my thoughts and visions.

I want to possess and hold you for a moment,
to pull you through an image, to perhaps take
you where it hurts, but don't expect me to heal you.

All this to men and women alike - I want to
make you slip back into the familiar,
yet uncomfortable skin of being human.

*Love, Guns and Other Matters

Memories seek an audience and single me out in a silent
show of my past.  Taste, touch, sound, smell and images
of such fill my head.

I remember the taste of my first passionate kiss, the smell
of my mother's favorite perfume, the sound the front door
of my childhood home made when slamming.

I remember the heaviness of a shotgun and the power it
possessed, the smell of wet horse, my first taste of
Jack Daniels, and the beautiful symphony of a thunder
storm.

I remember the taste of pleasure with a long ago lover,
the smell of hot candle wax and whiskey, the whispered
conversations in the darkness of the morning and the
sheer tediousness of having sex hanging off a tire swing.

I remember touching my two children for the first time,
warm and wet from these childbearing hips.  The loveliness
of their first cry.  The sweetness of breast milk and an intoxicating
smell of baby lotion on soft skin.

Now with the Milky Way above my head, the cold night
chilling my face, I listen to the waves pound the shore and
smell the sea thick in the air.  Chardonnay crosses my lips,
and blankets my mouth with a delightful familiarity. 
I say a quiet, "thank you" to God for a rich life.

Homecoming

Standing within the remnants of these smoldering
walls, I bleed out with each tear that falls.
A sacred place where the ghosts of the past
reach out and speak to me.

A man and a woman talk in a low whisper.
Children are laughing.  The sound of joy and pain
resonates from those who lived here before.
Soon I feel a blanket of comfort surround me,
like lying still in a lover's arms.

The destruction of this house was swift and complete
and no match for any man, however nothing could
touch it's core.
The foundation of this home is solid and
cannot be adulterated.  It stands firm in faithfulness.
Dreams and desires are intact and forever present.

Cremated  remains of meaningless possessions lay
waste in thick ash that cover the surrounding soil.
Gentle yet persistent new life pushes through, yearning
for the warm touch of the sun, in a lovely hallelujah to
the blue sky above.

The secrets here of the unknown are no longer kept.

Most see carelessness and neglect where I stand.
A home forgotten by the unforgiving hand of tragedy,
but I see this as the place where the beautiful things dwell.

*Heavenly Body

...and so it seems I have been stripped of
everything I thought was real.

Wrapped only in a pure robe of intense light,
my perfect naked form is illuminant. 
Gone is embarrassment, flaws and imperfections,
being discontent.  An indescribable joy and
absolute love is all I am capable of feeling.
The word "beautiful" is too anemic.

I am torn from this dream and thrown back
to the here and now.  In the bed of pain and
and aggravation that I have made for myself.

I turn my head and watch my young children
sleeping next to me, their sweet faith and innocence
exposed in their quiet slumber.  Even if the rest of
my life is filled with strife and grief, it is alright -
I have tasted heaven.

A Way With Words

Juxtapose:  to put side by side or close together -
jux'ta-po-si'tion  n.






This was the word I woke up with on my mind this morning.  Words have much
meaning to me but I didn't have the energy to over analyze the word and how it applied to my life.  No, instead of that, I started to ponder the power of words.
For instance, one adjective can be replaced with eleven other words that have
the same meaning.  Case in point:

deliberate adj.  intentional, conscious, willful, considered, planned,
calculated, intended, purposeful, premeditated, designed, unhurried

Some words seem to have more bearing then others.  Choose the right ones
and I'm ignited with desire, a yearning to have or want more, perhaps even, to
love you.  The unfortunate side of the human tongue is hurt.  I can be thrown into a
world of pain when words are chosen to provoke just that.  Then I will
hate you and feel sick anytime my eyes behold you, so be careful and choose
what you say wisely.   Once spoken, you cannot take words back and you may,
very well, end up eating them with nothing to wash them down.

Sensuality of Sweat

I steadily ascend the steep incline,
waves crash on the unforgiving rocks below.
The air is thick with the smell of salt and
wild fennel.

I am wrapped by a blanket of heat
from the sun baring down on me.
Perspiration escapes the nape of my neck,
travels down my back like a lover's deliberate
touch, as he runs his fingers down the length
of my spine.

That was a memory long forgotten,
suspended in the corner of my mind and
now shaken loose, it slams into my
heart with amazing force.

*The Fall of the Butterfly Doll

She came protected in a plastic box, clothes of a princess and perfect hair that
smelled like fresh berries.  Her pristine state did not last long, her descend to
discard was rapid -  just a matter of days by the hands of a six year-old tomboy.

She emerged from her plastic case in the back seat of the car and was immediately
thrust out the window to experience "turbo speed".  The sheer velocity proved to be too
much for her wings, they snapped from her back to fall on the side of Hwy.1, to be picked
by Cal Trans at a later date, I'm sure.  Then followed, one or two days later, the loss of her
her left leg while being forced to execute over extended splits.  Finally, the next day, she
was unceremoniously decapitated.  Her head lay on the floor board of the car next to a
bubble gum wrapper, half a blue crayon and a 1989 penny.  I felt sorry for her so I picked
up her head, took it from the car and impaled it on a dead, thorny stalk of the rose bush
outside my front door.

A couple of days later I peered out the family room window to find two seagulls
picking at the wiper blades on my car.  I opened the front door to scare them off
but they wouldn't budge.  I armed myself with the first thing I could find - the doll head.
I hurled her at them and broke up their party.  She landed between the wipers, stuck in 
the space where the windshield meets the hood and there she stayed for three weeks,
driving up and down the central coast with me.  I bet that girl traveled at least five
hundred miles, she never bailed and didn't complain, the perfect passenger.

Finally, I grew tired of looking at her face and at other times the back of her head,
a mess of purple hair flying everywhere.  Pulling into a parking space at work one morning,
I plucked her from her resting place on the hood and wedge her between the "In"
and "Out" pipes of the soft water tank outside the back door of the building.
That was two months ago and she's been there ever since.

*The Mermaid and Me by Ron Hamburg

The 5 year old mermaid princess knocked on several doors. "Hello is there anyone home?" No answer because every year in the poor, South Central LA neighborhood, maybe 6 or 8 houses hand out candy. We spoke of the haunted alley, the mop head goblin, and the dark scary porches. We held hands. "I love you daddy!" It was Halloween night.

*Apology

Thank you for your forgiveness. 
I am not fully aware of all the times
I have broken your heart these last forty-
four years.  But they are many...

Long nights where sleep never came,
you dared to walk into the the ugliest and
painful of places, where even brave men had
feared to travel.

My love for you is incredible and
will always be until I die,
and even then, that love I hold will
become absolutely pure.

Invisible Me

Hello, I am your new neighbor, I met you last week.  I don't expect you to remember me
because you would not hold my gaze and dismissed me abruptly when I introduced
myself to you.  Were you having a bad day?  Was it me?  Do you even care to know
who I am?

I am an ordinary woman, with dirty-blond hair I cannot tame, a crooked smile and, below
my left ear spreading down my neck, a birthmark the shape of the continent of Africa.
There is, of course, so much more about me that you will mostly likely never know.
I surely noticed you and since our brief meeting you fill every waking thought I have.
Your handsome face infiltrates my dreams.  I cannot escape the image of you, nor do
I want to.

I see you now walking up the up the stairs to the front porch that we share, the only thing
we have in common.  I covertly watch you behind my shuttered window.  I do not
exhale in fear that the breath that crosses my lips might give me away.  I hear your door
close behind you.  Walking over to the wall that separates your loveliness from me, I
press my ear to the cold plaster, and listen for you.

*K.I.S.S.

Everyone is familiar with the acronym "K.I.S.S." (keep it simple stupid).  Well, I'd like
to but can't, especially when it comes to conversation.  I have the bad habit of giving
entirely too much information about myself, and tend to dish out multiple views
on a subject matter.

Now, if conversations were actually kisses, mine would be long, drawn out and
complex.  I have been accused of taking the listener on a ride around the barn,
through the orchard and back, only to end up sitting on the fence.  I need to coral
my thoughts and harness my tongue, then it would be a better "KISS" for everyone.

*A Belief Lost

I met my soul mate on February 12, 1996.  On June 16, 2006 at 11:55 a.m., he slipped
from my arms forever and at that very moment I forgot how to breathe for a week.

He was a dog.  A canine with amber eyes and an old soul.  He understood me all
to well.  Our love for each other was unconditional.  In his eyes I could do no wrong
and neither he to me.  No jealousy, no judgment, no surrendering of expectations.
Just two souls enjoying the uncritical pleasure of each others company.

Do I believe that soul mates exist between a man and a woman?  Personally, I do
not as human nature is too selfish and crude.  Selfishness breeds disrespect and
and a deep love cannot, and will not, tolerate such.  Call me jaded because you will never
catch me holding my breath, ever again.

Ain't I Precious

My thoughts run deep and fast at three in the morning.  A time when the world outside is quiet and I can think without distraction.  Light from the kitchen pours down the hallway to a picture on the wall of me when I was eight.  Standing with a neighbor boy, I'm wearing cowboy boots, cut off jeans, bathing suit top and a baseball cap.

Not that I didn't like having girls as friends, I just had a hard time relating to all that which was soft and lady-like.  Now that I'm a woman, I still find it difficult.  I had a mare once that was sweet and affectionate one minute, only to turn and drive me through the fence the next.  That has been my experience with girlfriends.  Shopping malls and beauty salons are foreign territory for me.

While most women love books of romantic love, I always preferred the raw and the tragic.  One story I enjoyed was of a cowboy in Montana who got caught in a
blinding blizzard a couple miles from his home.  He lost his sense of direction and didn't
want to make the fatal mistake of pressing forward.  He slit open the abdomen of his horse and crawled inside to keep from freezing to death.  In the morning, when the storm had cleared, he found his way home only to slip on the ice and hit his head on the crude metal boot scraper bolted to the porch.  He bled out right there at his front door.  That's what he gets for leaving a bar at 2:00a.m. in foul weather.  He shouldn't have gone out drinking in the first place. 

My eyes now fall on a current picture of me taken nine months ago outside a nightclub.  A friend took it with a disposable camera, enlarged it and gave it to me for my birthday.  He said he like it because I look happily exhausted.  Funny, I don't remember feeling that way, or for that matter, what I felt at all.  I have more often been a friend to the opposite sex than a lover.  It's okay, I gave up the idea of being a sex symbol like Marilyn Monroe when I was fourteen, I knew it would not happen.  Although I clean up real pretty, have the manners of a debutante and the grace of an angel at times, I have never once been called precious by a man or anyone else.

About Random Shorts

ran'dom  lacking order; haphazard.   With the thoughts that flow from my mind and my unruly misuse of grammar, I will attempt to write short stories and prose.  I tend to write fast and furious so what you see is crude and unedited...I'll get to it eventually.