old Mas

The window was propped open again, letting in the fragrant stink of the city waft into the room. A breeze brushed past the old clock, plastic, hanging on the wall, stopped and with an inexplicable coffe stain on it; none of the orderlies or nurses knew where it was from, when it was put there-- perhaps it had always been there. The zephyr continued, flowing through the lungs of the man on the bed, arthritic hands struggling to put on the thin paper slippers. He finished pulling them on to the sound of sirens. They reminded him of music, from his childhood.

As he stood up, there may have been tears in his eyes, or perhaps they were blinking in the dust carried through the window.

Voices faded into his ear

"... to let souls in, God knows what he means..."
"... don't know, he's kinda..."

They faded away as they reached the door

The face of a young woman leaned in

"Hello Mr. Danson, would you like a walk today?"

His voice creaked like old hinges, long bereft of oil.

"If you don't mind."

She helped him up, when his knees refused to bend, she grabbed his cane from the table by the bed, handed it to him. He hobbled to the door, slowly regaining his balanced, knuckles white on the head of the cane, at least where there weren't liver spots. As he walked into the courtyard, brick walls blocking the life-force of the city, he stopped, suddenly. He looked over the door, at the faded sign, as he peered at the faded letters, he asked the woman what it said

"Saint Mauterstocks... Retreat."

He noticed the hesitation, ever so slight, and took off his glasses, moved his head.

" I was in the War, you know; a sharpshooter. I lived by these eyes, you know. I may be old, but I'm not dead yet. What's it say?"

A sigh.

"Saint Mauterstock's home for Dementia and Alzeimers Patients."
"Well, which am I?"
"Well, Mr. Danson, we're not really..."
"I suppose I can't remember how long I've been here, so I suppose it's Alzeimers. Boy is this spring air refreshing!"

He beamed at her, standing as tall as he could, back crooked, dingy robe around his frail figure, and she found she couldn't tell him it was winter. He shuffled to a bench, and sat down. He tried to listen to the birdsong, but realized it was the sirens he had heard earlier.

His bright eyes stared at her, boring into her skull

"What happened?"

"A horrible accident, but let's not worry about that now"

If she had dropped her smile, it would have shattered. He allowed her to steer him back to his room. He needed little help getting there, the "spring air" seemed to have woken some part of him, because he didn't seem to forget things like he had yesterday. When he got to his room, he unjammed the window, and closed it with some dificulty.

"I thought you always left your window open"
"I think I'll give up on waiting for souls to fly in for now."

His smile made her turn away; her shiver had very little to do with the temperature in he room, surprisingly cold. She turned up the thermostat when she left.

The nurses in the break room were clustered around the single TV, they hovered around it like moths around a streetlight.

"...heard the only fatality was an infant..."
"...so horrible, the mother must be..."
"... right through the red light, just no way..."

The chatter died down as the story wound to an end, and segueing into a cat litter ad.

Back in his room , Mr. Danson stretched, smiled. He felt like he had a whole new life inside him. The sirens outside faded away as the hours passed, and he was feeling better than he had in... years, really. His memories were almost coming back, and he was smiling. The next morning the nurse walked in, he was already out of bed.

"I feel like I'm a new man, today, maybe some more fresh air will be good for me, eh?"
"Of course Mr. ... Oh, Danson, so sorry, I've been out of it all day, didn't seem to get much sleep last night..."

"Not to worry, we all get old. Look at me-- I've outlived Methuselah!"

She looked at him, his innocent eyes.

She sat down, suddenly out of breath.

He listened to the sirens, and he remembered his childhood. There may have been tears in his eyes, or perhaps they were just bright, early in the morning

"I wish I could be young again, just for a while, but I suppose it's impossible, isn't it?"

She looked at him, couldn't meet his eyes. He laughed.

"Well, there's no time like the present, now is there?, no point in wishing on a star."

He hummed a tune under his breath, there might just have been tears in her eyes, or it could have been the wind.

lighdt

As the clouds rolled by, I wondered

What if they were floating palaces, or great machines?, gears of hydrogen thumping to the beat of the crystalline steam engine ensconced within its silver-lined depths; and I dreamed that one day a ramp is extended to me through the fog of the early morning, and it carries me up through the sky, and I watch as a pen falls from my pocket, and right as the foamy grey door closes behind me, and I see a princess of the clouds, and she's blindingly beautiful, cerulean skin, and blazing sky eyes, and when she pulls out a cigar from her overalls, in the hazy, smoky air of the too-solid room, my spirits fall like my pen when her mouth framed in yellowed teeth rumbles out in the voice of the head foreman, and I sigh. My dream worlds never seem to work out right, but my sigh attracts the attention of the girl sitting across from me, and our eyes meet and we smile, and I think to myself that I don't really need dream worlds, and I think about my life as it is, and my house on the giant red turtle Magorl, and my flying pet tree, and the girl sitting across from me, delicate cranial tentacles of red and orange, that catch my eye as they bioluminesce into the congealing dark, and I decide that my ordinary life is good enough.

Danz.

over and under and out she flows
and into and out of and away she goes
with highs and mids and dangerous lows
you wonder what it is that she does

perhaps she waits
finds the rich and dates
calculates mortgage rates?
laughs at the young men she just baits

could be anything, anything at all
could be hiding a monster, ten feet tall
could be a cardboard cutout, anything at all
could be Cinderella, back from the ball

And you'll never know, you have no mouth to speak
can't pronounce any word, with only a beak
you'd love to dance, but prey on the weak
a monster is you, and what do you seek?

someone to feel
a person to be with
but she's just your next meal
and you're just a myth

feeling ornery

Lack of sleep perhaps, is what this will be attributed to, when II regain my noraml mindset, but who is to say that this isn't truly who I am? Question of the day, would the world be better with no drugs?

I wrote my college essay, but I wrote it poorly, it's really an extended whine more than anything, and what of it? I don't even know. I like fiction, hard fiction, real life wothout facts, like this:

It's easy, too--you start with some mood words:

Blackness, despair, and no more zebra cakes...

Then introduce something interesting:

The walls exploded inward as the tears ran down my face. The lizard was dead, and the cat, too, perhaps forever-- I could hardly see from the laser lights beaming around, the scythes of gold, from the tips of their guns, and the blood, the dank stench of the death of creativity, the scourging and felling of life itself. Perhaps death itself too; I don't know, and as the bulletzs scream their murder at me, perhaps I never will.

I would cry, but the phoenix stole my tears, and I sold my hope for a new heart for the rhino.

They bullets travleled infinitely slow, and I remember when this happened to the turtle, and it's hope, but then euclidian geometry smashed away its brains, and I can weep now, woth the force of the suns, streaming their tears into oblivion as the contemplate the distance betwwen them ,and they know it's futile, and they explode and O!, how I cry, and the rivers pouring from my segmented jewel eyes is a waterfall weighing down these infinitely slowing bullets, and it seems as though fate has taken pity on me, but I know it hasn't it is choosing to prolong me forever, ever tortured, and quite frankly, I only regret one thing, and that is classified, but it makes me sad, and there in the colours is the answer, mania, the opposite of depression, and the zebra walks up, and I forgot it, but now I know it again and it takes me away from the evil, but it follows me, everywhere, and there are still no zebra cakes, in all existence!, but I console myself on the vulgar obtuseness of sunshine and honeydew, and they all die in the end, but fate hates me, and never any more zebra cakes, except when in my madness I kill the zebra.

golden

now the trees were gold, too: he'd accidentally leaned against one of them earlier, when he'd tried to reach the old man, the old man that did this to him; all he wanted was some money— enough to keep him out of debt, so he could go back to painting; now he was stuck in this beautiful monochrome land, and the gold was still spreading through the air, the wind, already reaching devious tendrils through the core of the land— but as he got to the hovel, he saw that it was gold too, and as he cried, his tears all turned into gold, and this was the same time as the ocean crept into metallic splendour, and as his feet froze into wondrous alchemy, the last of the birds across the globe landed, and was consumed, and the sun dimmed with his vision— dimmed over the golden land as it was made gold, and no more through pale glass windows was illuminated the book in the old man's cottage, and the stars faded as God looked in surprise at the tinge in His fingernails