...she looked at me
with eyes so BLUE
you'd think there was a
sky inside her head
it's a
good enough
sign
to agree with
Death
eyes so BLUE
something about smartphone addiction
I liked her dad
He was an interesting guy
preached all day
long
about smartphone
addiction
while his daughter was on her
smartphone, ignoring
him
“A human life,” he was saying.
“Controlled by a piece
of plastic
with lights. A destiny
completely determined by
a machine
designed by corporations to become
god, to claim souls. How
blind, how utterly and
impossibly blind a whole generation
of human beings can be. To
willingly subject
themselves to slavery like
that. Their thumbs
and fingers always tap-tap-tapping
that screen
as if trying to break
their soul free from beyond. But
it never happens. You cannot
break a door
by merely knocking on it...”
“Whatever, dude,” said his daughter
with the phone before
her face
He shook his head and
then looked at me. This time
I too was looking
at my phone.
“I see she has corrupted you too,”
he said. “Shame. I was hoping
it could be
the other way around
just for once.”
I let the phone
down. “Me? Oh no, I was just
checking my e-mail. I've
sent some poems to
a bunch of publishers and
was hoping to
see a reply or something.”
“Hm, and is there any
reply?” he asked
“No,” I said
He nodded. “How about
a beer?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
think about his future
They had the poor girl lie
on the cold tile floor
and then they all pissed on her
and you could hear them tell her to open her
mouth wide and stick her tongue
out
It was one of the
poorest videos on the site
but the women watching it
recognized the girl
She went
to the same high school as them
back in the day
So
trashy porn is what she turned to
Not exceptionally unusual, but
one of the kids
running in the park before them was her child
Just eight or nine
"You know," said one of them. "Like it or not
it's just a matter
of time until our sons catch wind of
this and then..."
"Oh my..."
"Goodness!"
"The sins of the parents are visited upon
the children. It's not fair. Imagine
the life her poor kid's gonna
have."
"Yeah, our own kids might
very well be the bullies, we'll never know. Like I said,
it's a matter of time..."
"Well, goodness, what can we do
about it?"
"Flag the video?"
"You know it won't work..."
"Oh, I got an idea. What if... you know, what if
we all uploaded sexy vids of us. Um, not
necessarily as trashy as this one
but just pornographic enough. The boys
won't be able
to gang up and bully one if all their mothers
did it... Right? C'mon, let's do it
for that poor kid. Think about his future..."
The other mothers
looked at her
and they kept looking
mute
until one of them pulled out her
smartphone
failing forward
in high school
he repeatedly told her
that he was saving
himself for marriage
and eventually
she left him alone
but after graduation
she approached him
yet again
and this time he told her
that he was focusing on
his career as a writer
they both had their dreams
and they kept dreaming and
fighting to accomplish them,
insisting and getting up
from every defeat
failing forward
as some would say
It took decades but
eventually both of their
dreams came true
they were married
and he still hadn’t struck a deal
with any publisher but
made a relatively okay
income self-publishing
he wrote for a very narrow niche
very trashy erotic fiction
and his lovely wife helped him
with inspiration and research
“C’mon,” he urged her,
“moan a bit harder,
cry some too.”
she did as she was told
as he went around her
with the camera
it was hard work but
at least the German Shepard
fucking her from behind
had fun
dreams of drunk men
the dreams of drunks are the strangest
and often most beautiful
It’s what he
came to think this morning
after he woke up with
the empty glass under the blanket
Surely it was that glass
and the liquor in his guts
that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear
as glass
She smiled at him
with diamond teeth and stooped like only
a professional stripper could
next to his limp body
She rolled him onto his belly
and his limpid, numb eyes
watched her grow an icicle from between
her legs
but they closed by the time
she carved a hole into his liver and
began to fuck him until the
ice melted
That was a nice dream,
he concluded
And tonight he’d go to sleep
with two glasses
and a bottle under
the blanket
childhood’s villain
Father used his fists
a lot
Though never on the kids
On the walls
and the furniture
and the doors
and the mailbox
and the fence
and the neighbors
and random people on the street
and strangers in the bar
and a few times the poor dog
and one time on mother
He was the childhood’s
villain
To defeat him one had
to become a hero
and becoming a hero
took time
And today
after all this time
the villain of childhood
was dead
He died at the hands of
some other character,
a neutral one
A cop who told him to
drop to the ground
and father didn’t
so he got shot
That was it
The end of his saga
Utterly unsatisfactory
anticlimactic
disappointing
just bad
There was no final showdown
between hero and villain
because those things
only happen in
childhood
and childhood had ended a
long time ago
Daydreaming as a profession 