Daily Poetry & Prose

 This writing is in response to this contest:  https://vocal.media/challenges/the-fantasy-prologue Let's take a stab at it shall we? This is the first draft. Dragon Boy There weren't always dragons in the valley. The words of my father rang in my ears, "as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall not falter..." but his voice trailed off. It had been such a long time since I was at church. The sunlight and the wooden pews. That was before the monsters came. They came in the windows, slowly, like tiny mice, and picked us all up and carried us away. Currently, the mice were clinging to my clothes, about a hundred of them, their tiny teeth biting into my linen jacket and pants. The linen was made for me by the monks at the mission, they had worked for days. Before I headed out on my horse to get to the valley, they gave me about 80 mice in a canteen and told me to let them out, at just the time when I approached the valley. The mice then went about clim...

"Have you ever seen a fan stop?" "What?" I said, so frustrated I could spit. I stayed there listening, not because he was holding my arm, but because I had already been pulled into the magnet, the black hole of this situation. At this point I was caught in the moment, a chunk of debris in a puff of smoke, caught on camera. The train flashed by outside, and the lights and the moving cars played shadows across his face. His icy blue eyes were wild. I sighed. "A fan, a fan," he said, letting go of my arm and waving his hand in quick circles. "Once it slows down to a stop, it kicks back, just a hair, the other way. That's what this is, it's just life, stopping, then kicking back just a little, it's physics somehow." "Okay." "Like life is all this momentum, just couldn't stop all at once, not just stop, there's still some motion left." He was looking out the window now, his voice being drowned out by the train a...

A bird was on the wire, so alone that he stood out against the brick and the wire was drooping from his weight and the designs on the brick behind him looked like ancient ruins and suddenly he dive bombed to the electric box on the side of an adjacent building and by that time a low rider was coming down the alley The Mission Christo church stood on the corner with its neon and its call to hug the world the other church nearby is made of redder brick and has taller towers but I am not sure how Jesus competes with the neon. I used to say I liked to save souls and time travel I thought I was funny, maybe clever and someone once told me that something is bad for my soul as if it was bad chocolate or something and I am not so sure anyone else can inform me about my soul At any rate, looking out over the lake with its clear blue I think I see religion for what it is I think I see the gypsies dancing around a fire I think I burned my hand If there was a small bird living in my heart like a s...

 Every bar in Arizona has a mechanical bull. 

I have a tea tree she bleeds caffeine I listen to her speak like a babbling brook with my face under the leaves sunlight speckles silence thoughts with laughter and strange desires a woman of the world sip, sip sip.

Panthers stalking low to the ground Rubies gleaming in the dark Faces ripped from the library shelves Places nouns and people leave their marks Have you no teeth to chew this gum to memorize the lines before the show The junkyard cars rot there like plums and big fish get caught in the undertow Raisins thrown across the vineyard as if to show that time passes here the wine we drank was sweeter still than mirth as if we are tasting all these minerals of the earth.

The marigold flowers, planted in rows, offered up a stark orange flag. There is that moment when the summer sun is muted. The afternoon is quiet. I notice I am pressing my lips together more, not humming, but holding back. I don't even know what to say to the woman handing me the coffee. The morning is quiet. The people run near the lake, the gleam of their phones lighting up the path as if they are lighting bugs some sit in solitude others gather for a picnic, winding down, it's dark now. Save for the roar of the lake the night is quiet. I went out to see the lunar eclipse but it wasn't there, perhaps that's the whole point.

The imperfect face of the man, the sun reading it like braille hard working overalls speckled with flecks of mud as he sits on the front porch taking one last drink of silence in the heat of the day before dusk settles in. When the sun hides, the insects gather to start their screeching. Their rituals commence in a thousand layers of sounds. Later at midnight, there are no disturbances, just the rustling wind as he walks to where the East-bound road meets the winding  gravel that shoots North toward Memphis like a weaving snake making its way to the underbrush. These summer nights in Mississippi can cause a man to dream.

There's a lot of cars on the street. Each tire seemed to be rolling over the left part of my chest, making me shudder and feel like a pile of gravel. Listening to the white noise, I stood there like a marionette in a denim jacket, waiting for the bus, under the shadow of the sign at the Pawn Shop. Forty dollars was in my pocket and I sighed, thinking of the watch. The woman with the dark hair and huge marks on her face was friendly, kind of coughing and laughing as she took it and gave me the pawn ticket. Under the glass was all manner of trinkets. On the walls hung power tools. In the windows were musical instruments, including a shiny flute. I glanced at it as I left. The two twenties sat together in my pocket, under my fingers, like two shoes in a box. The cars kept coming. Each one was a different color, and every driver was in a different mood. You've got the guy jamming out to Middle Eastern rah-rah pop music, extrapolating sound waves as the drummers whir up a frenzy. Th...

Changing my mind like a change in wind a mile of moments that never begin because it's all happening at once each inch overlapping the distance each blink overlapping the eye Running the machine making animation cartoon characters pacing  growing fat and thin each frame overlapping the film each smile overlapping the mouth because we laugh as we know real change takes time There is no change left I am still the same as I always was

The performers step out into the lights, their shoes in calculated footsteps which they've done many times before, each time learning  until the performance is perfected. Yet there's always a choice when they reach the table: knives or apples? The actors need knives to cut apples, but they could just as easily use their teeth to take a bite. Violence then, does little to solve a problem but often creates more. So are these truths? Is this absolute truth? The performers walk around the table, in circles, like dancers, as their legs cast shadows in the strong lights from overhead I see one actor squint his eyes as if narrowing them to make a decision He takes an apple from the table and throws it into the air, by the time the apple comes down gravity has shown us all we need to know.

Figure skaters spin faster than the slippery fists of muddy fighters flicking the plastic Bic lighter can't make the flame rise any higher than the stars burning in the sky the streetlights too they glow and hiss shining down and casting shadows the blacktop lifts underneath the roaring vehicles that slip past in the night.