Birds. So many birds. I mean, I like birds, I guess...but not these birds. These birds were dropping doo-doo on my head. Twice. It's a freak accident of one singel bird drops doo-doo on your head, but three? Three piles of doo-doo? In my hair? This will not go unpuncished. I called my dad, he seems to know how to get rid of every annoying animal out there. " Dad", I said when he answed the phone, "Dad, I;ve got a bird problem in my yard. They're doo-doo machines! Every time I walk out pf my house, especially on Fridays,...
You can count me out, I said. I am not doing it. No. I left this years ago. I have a life now, I told them. No more of this stuff for me- I'm out now.
Of course, they pleaded. They always do. But I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders in movements perfected over the years. Please, please, please! We'll give you anything you want.
Never any creativity, really. It was all the same thing. They were small. They wanted to be big. How did their little prods affect me? They were merely molehills aspiring to be mountains,...
The first day of school and he was already in a fight. Mark sighed as the three seventh graders approached him from three different directions. His electric blue eyes took in the boy in front of him, a lanky kid with a bulbous nose and mean eyes. Beside him, another boy stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, a sneer on his face. And behind him, Mark knew, was the last boy, a slack-lipped teenager with dull, incurious eyes.
“Lunch money,” Skinny said, holding out his hand.
“No,” Mark replied coolly as he sat back in his black...
They lay like glass shards, scattered on the floor. Their unblinking eyes frozen pleading into nothingness. The atmosphere was as quiet as the darkest hour of midnight. It was still, as if nature even knew itself that there was no life here.
I took a step. Into this horror room.
My foot caught a flag, a great red flag with a swastika emblazoned on it.
This symbol was the representation of this cruelty
No life deserved to be here.
It was the nipple that made Clara blush. The rest of the artwork was intricate and exquisite, the calligraphy simply sublime. But her eye kept creeping back to the nipple. The nipple belonged to a drawing of a girl, peeking around what appeared to be a silk curtain. On the opposite page was drawn a geisha in a beautiful red kimono. Unfortunately for the geisha, the girl opposite her stole all attention.
What was this strange little book? Ancient pornography? It didn't seem titillating enough for that. Despite the nudity, the images had an innocent undercurrent, taunting, but not provocative....
I met my wife in an elevator, stuck between floors. We planned the rest of our lives while we waited for rescue. She wore plaid; me, my typical blue jeans and T-shirt. She was coming from work, me from school. I seem to recall it was something in her eyes. The way they watched me shift, the way they followed the movement of my lips as I explained why I was still single at 30. The deliveryman pretended not to notice us, and we thought that was the funniest thing. He stood under 5 feet tall, and for over 3...
"Ohh..." The word escaped my lips as a awe-struck sigh. The island was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. Bulky, mountain-like rocks dotted with dark green trees, surrounded by white sand, and water the color of the clearest, bluest sapphire imaginable. As we flew nearer to it the air became sweet and clear and filled my lungs. The breeze rustled my short brown hair. I tucked myself into a ball and executed a perfect mid-air summer-salt. I watched as the water came closer and closer. This place, I could tell, was magic.
Savouring words was a joy to him. Illiterate for many years; he learnt to read and write late in life. His appreciation grew from prose to poetry to haiku. Others laughed that he swallowed a dictionary. He did not understand the derision. Loving words, enabling communication beyond speech seemed to him a peerless gift.
Then he discovered etymology. Suddenly connections between ancient languages and modern English brought a deepening joy and fruitful satisfaction beyond any other pursuit he followed. When some spoke he understood unusual words and could name the orinating language;
I put my heart and soul into everything I write. Snaps, anyone who reads the things I put on paper, learn too much about me...
They will learn how much I feel, the things I've lived through, the things I've endured.
I'm I really ok with someone, anyone knowing me that well?
Strangers reading my works, I don't mind. They don't know me from Adam. But people that know me, even if it isn't very well.
Reading one of my stories, my poems, they will get to know me, on a level I'm not sure I'm ok with.
I put...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He inspected it, rolling it over, back and forth in the palm of his hand. satisfied, he pocketed it and kept walking down the street, a whistle blowing through his thin lips.
He stopped at a newspaper stand and debated over the local or the national paper. He glanced from side to side down the street and asked the man working there if he had anything more adult.
The clerk gave him a knowing nod and reached under the counter. The dapper man pulled at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt. He...