Slave to My Desire

You wake up, head still fuzzy from the previous nights migraine medication and the first complete thought to fill your weary mind is how very much you want some true soul food. You Google your northern state to find the closest joint. It is in the city, past all the construction and broken bridges down town. When you call all your friends and attempt t0 bully/beg them to come with you they will decline your threats/kind offer.
One hour later, you have drug your teenage son and his buddy, sand eyed from their sleep over out of your basement and locked them securely in your back seat. You use the map you printed out in your hand as a visor (the bright sun still hurts your sensitive eyes).
Eli empresses you by knowing every word to "Walk This Way", but when he manages to hit the high scream notes, your bruised brain winces and you turn onto a one way street. This normally would be of little consequences to you but you are now in the heart of the bad part of town, the same reason why a lot of your friends would not accompany you on this missive, and there is a happening over at the venue nearby. You save your self and the still singing kids in the back from a fatal head on crash by maneuvering through a series of parking lots until you realize how horribly lost you have become.
Twenty minutes later, you are back on the right street and bonus, you find a parking spot. You spring from your car chanting "Chicken and Waffles, Chicken and Waffles" loudly to ward off any of the shabby looking miscreants nearby.
The boys and yourself stand there looking up at the empty building that held the gastronomic delights you so craved and scream in earnest, head be damned.
When the waitress at Bakers Square, Heather, who is studying genetic engineering at the collage near by forgets to put in your order for chicken fingers you start to cry. Your son will push his waffle in front of you in the attempt to stifle the unfounded emotional outburst you are having and you will proceed to nam down his syrup coated butter drenched treat while dreaming of hoppin John and greens. When you look up you see the physician who performed your pancreatic transplant enter the eatery, you react by knocking the gooey mess into your lap in your vain attempt not to be noticed.
You stop at the grocery store and pick the ingredients for curry on the way home and remember how much you hate the south.

Possability Boy

Everyone thinks Possibility Boy is possibly a genius. Any day now, they continually agree, possibility boy will make it big. Become a star. "You won't forget use when you are famous, will you?" they ask as possibility boy begins yet another amazing project.
The only one who does not believe in Possibility Boys possible genius is Possibility Boy himself. He thinks they are being too kind. He really isn't gifted at all. He is a fake genius, bluffing his way threw life. He is convinced once he tries to achieve his full potential, he will fail, fall flat on his face, and the people who once admired him from afar, will admire him no more. And so Possibility Boy never really achieves anything. He just sits on the edge of his possible glory and basks in the adulation of his potential.

A Third of a Life Sentince.

His parole hearing was yesterday. The brown eyed inmate was handed down a year and a year. That means he has one more year behind bars here and then a year on the other side of the fence-minimum security . I released him from his job running my warehouse and the only chance he will have to try to talk to me will be during meal time . He is in for murdering his last woman.
I should have written an incident report on him right away, before his hearing, but I was too embarrassed.
Now I am scared.

First Ack

I sat all the way through the advanced first aid training classes without batting an eye. I got up early, drove my sleepy butt all the way downtown through traffic to the academy and found the property appointed spot before the crack of dawn with out incident.
The boring training films were dry and out dated, but I did not nod off. I sat next to a woman with a highly contagious cold and a hard of hearing man who repeated, "What did he just say?", so often I actually only heard every forth sentence. By the end of my sessions I myself resembled a wheezy parrot. Locking lips with a plastic chick who's first name is all I ever learned, (Annie or Anny? is it eh?) didn't ruffle me, nor did rolling around on a dirty floor with sixty strangers. Hell, even the picture montage of gory body pieces the EMS guys brought with, the one of motorcycle vrs car and dude's leg bones pointed in different directions after an explosion didn't faze me a bit. I can now tourniquet a coat rack protruding from your abdomen and differentiate a stroke and a heart attack. If you set yourself on fire or get sung by a bee, I'm good. I can even throw you up over my shoulders and run with you if I decide I must. I just can't swallow.
During the choking segment of training, our teacher just happened to mention the aging population is prone to choking. This is due the the weakening of throat muscles and the gag reflex slowing. This thought totally blew me away.
I am excepting my aging reluctantly. I know I have only more maintenance on my body to look forward to every year. Stiffening joints, osteoporosis, memory loss, I know is expected of me. But the inability to swallow? Please God no.
I spent the rest of the day during breaks in classes at the vending machines testing this lax throat muscle theory.
Nothing happened, other than gas from all the junk I consumed. (I'd whisper to the others in my group when the hard of hearing man's back was turned,"Oh man, does this guy reek!")
But the image of me losing control of one of my two favorite entrance muscles stuck with me.
The very next morning I was in my own kitchen, scarfing down an apple in my attempt to detox my body of the unhealthy chemicals I had binged on the previous day when part of the skin momentarily caught in my throat. I immediately began hacking like a cat coughing up a fur ball. I found myself doing this repeatedly through out the day.
"What is wrong with you?", my family asks every time I began to hork. How could I explain that I have gone all *Margaret Brown on them and it was the beginning of my demise.
Thing is so far it is only slight. I do not lose my breath and turn blue in the face, but I feel food hanging out mid way to my belly. This upsets my self reasoning greatly. Good food should never projectile out of me. The hypochondriac in my has come up with a very lady like hiccup do dislodge any suspended food particles.
"You do have the hiccups very often", my dinner companions will remark. I smile all coy and pat my napkin over my mouth and hork again for good measure, as I nod and look away. I do not eat other meals any longer in public. I had to pull over on the side of the road the other day to re chew the imaginary granola bar wedge that was breakfast.
Yogurt is my new best friend. Except when I forget it is yogurt and I shoot it out my nose.

*Up north when I was young and could swallow successfully I worked in a bakery. Margaret Brown was an elderly woman who would come in during the summer, a coat covering her dowers hump, wearing a scarf, and gloves. She claimed air conditioners upset her system. She always had a lemon bar because she found them refreshing. She did not come in for her coffee once for a week. When I asked her why see told me she had stepped on an electric cord in her apartment and it had upset her system bad. She did have the good sense not to sit on the same side of the room as Old Smeller, the grizzly bachelor who only dressed in bib overhauls and bathed yearly, maybe. I now wish I had been kinder to that crazy old bat.

Local Woman Snaps

Neighbhors say woman kept mostly to herself

Munkay shown here with innocent son.

"She is the mischievous sort, you know, like dressing scare crows in her family's clothes and posing them oddly around the yard and all. Never seen the cops there much anymore. "Used to though, few years back, there would be cops lights flashing and ambulances over there at all hours... but I was under
the impression that all changed lately."

"I used to send my own kids over her house", another neighbor said. The kids would always come home smelling of maple syrup and sore from something they called "Sumo Mama". Never gave it a second thought."

"She once forced me to taste 4 different almond cakes once. I went home and told my mom right away. She told me I couldn't hang out in a 4 cake house no more", said Jordan aged 9.

"Pure trash", descibed those who wished to remain anonymous claimed. "You could hear shots often and see flames coming from over there."

This is what channel 4 eye witness news reports about a local woman that snapped earlier today in the cold January morning hours.

Witnesses seen the mother cavorting around at the water's edge before the alleged incident occurred. The suburban mother that goes by "Munkay", was sighted in what appears to be a uniform.

Smiling the woman stands in the sub temperatures and hams it up for the jeering on lookers, oblivious to the frightened look in her kids eyes.

"He said he wanted to go in the frozen water", the mother quoted later, although clearly the disturbed woman pulled him in by the hand.

"It all happened before I could do anything." said the boys father a milliscend later. "I mean there were law enforcement everywhere. "

The boy emerged onto the ice first much to the waiting crowds relief. But where was the villainous mother?

"YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME", the woman's other son exclaimed at the scene. "That retarded woman turned around and jumped back in the water again!"

The woman was last seen walking briskly off past the authorities half dressed. "I will not run. Frozen stabbing pain? No. More like kitten tongues" her parting remark. If seen consider this woman highly dangerous. Do not try to apprehend her. Your safest measure is divert her with some hot chocolate.

You Will Know What to Do When the Pigs Come

You will sit at your desk when the eye twitch starts to happen. There you will sit, working on the quarterly report, trying not to think of the camera's recording your every unconscious nose pick while you pretend the one hundred and seven eyes you employ have better things to do with their time then gaze at you to see if your hair today is parted in the middle or at an angle. Then, out of left field it goes. Squint. Squint. You will ask yourself, "Did I just do that?" And more important, did the camera's catch it? Has the team up in A control now labeled you as Popeye you will wonder as you have difficulty finding the auto center on your Word document. Then no longer able to trust your now spasming eye's depth perception, you click on every icon on your header the and your report will take twice as long to write as usual so by the time you step out of your office for the day your staff will have heard about you unmanageable facial tick and speculate on weather or not you have suffered a mild stroke or are just hitting whatever is in the bottle you have hidden in the second drawer of your desk. In the saliport you make eye contact as best you can with the guard in front command before you leave the facility, you will nod to on your way out and remind yourself to pitch the stretched out faded "lucky" purple leopard print panties that turned out not so lucky after that drunken tailgating incident, just encase tomarrow is the day you are picked for a strip search. Under your breath you practice saying, "Ya, I used to run every day but, with this job....my body..."
On your drive home as you wait in traffic with one hand clapt over your spastic eye, the conversation you had with your supervisor about the average times a corrections employee will be under investigation in a year will replay it's self then. "Times in a year" will echo through your head, as you try counting how often the neighbors dog has barked in the middle of the night, and wonder if the you should stop snow blowing around your home so foot prints are easier to disconcern.
Over dinner you will use your napkin much more often and remind your boys to chew with their mouth closed, cause if someone is taking notes, manners will be under the positive column thank you. "Wear pants dammit!", will be your mantra as you go from window to window compulsively closing what flimsy drapes you have. You will drag out the dark blue sheets and vacillate for half an hour about the tackiness of hanging them up all collage like but will decide against it due to drug dealer vibe hanging bed clothes emits.
When you finally sit down with your lap top you consider to stop blogging but then remember the name in your drivers licence is spelt different than what is on your site and you relax enough to watch a rerun of "Cops" of which you will take notes, rehersing phrases such as "I don't know who's that is!" and "Please Officer! Just this once!" Everyone on that program is arrested while wearing stained t-shirts and in dirty houses so you spend the rest of your night bleaching your laundry and scrubbing your kitchen. You will pick up your phone and dial your church to hang up before anyone answers just for the benefit of your phone record.You will fall asleep exhausted right before your alarm clock goes off the next morning, and you will not remember where you put the coffee last night, so you will spent 40 minutes rifling the contends of your newly organized cupboards and lose the shower time window so you will shuffle back into work with the worse bed head ever. Leaning against the garbage receptacle you fall asleep in the saliport, with the front command just on the other side of the Plexiglas. (At least your eye will not be twitching when it is closed.) When the sound of the steel doors open and wake you, you will be confused and not remember if you where coming or going.

You will be proud when you have the sense to e-mail your report to the warden instead of hand delivering it to avoid any awkward face-to twitchy face small talk. Smiling a smug little self satisfied smile you lean back, eye now at half mast and reach for your water bottle, in the second drawer, that is now sitting a quarter of an inch to the right of where you left it last.

Sweet Release

"You really hurt me. I mean I'm not good at talkin about how I feel, but you hurt me bad."
I looked up into his moist brown eyes.
"What do you mean?", I asked him.
"See it's like this. You didn't tell me things had changed. I showed up and you were not here."
"Yes. Didn't anyone tell you?"
"You. I needed you to tell me. You could have told me when we were together here on Saturday."
His full bottom lip trembled when he talked. Then he took of his glasses and wiped his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to compose his next words and his countenance.I wanted to tell him I just didn't care. I wanted to tell him he was wasting my time. His emotional display meant nothing yo my soulless self. I wanted to tell him just to shut his mouth. But I knew he needed to say these things. I could pretend at lease to listen. But only so much.
"That's not how you do a man. I thought you were different..."
"But you are leaving anyway", I said looking at him sideways. I could no longer bring myself to look at him straight on.
"I looked out for you from the start. You know that," he tossed his long dark curls indigently.
"I could have got in serious trouble for Saturday. It could affect my future."
"I'm sorry. I should have told you myself. I did not mean to get you into trouble." I gave him that.
"I care about you. I really really do. From day one I have."
I wanted to scream no. no. no. no. no. stop. shut up. shut the hell up you are making this worse. There was a time when I would have loved to hear this. Back before now. Way back. The time when men like him said this shit just to get into my pants.
"This is inappropriate."
"I can do things for you. Woman like you are few."
"Your parole hearing is next week yes?"
"I can DO things for you."
"I'm going to fill out the release paper for you right now. If you show up here tomorrow, you will not get to your hearing."
"This hurts worse than catching a cap."
"Good luck on the outside."
I still don't know what he wanted.

Going Under

The sun was warm on her face as she languished on her kick sled facing south. There the contented woman sat, a slight smile played on her face as she reclined, occasionally opening her eyes to peer at the blaze orange tip ups off in the distance guarding the family's other fishing rods. The fish were not biting hard that day, but she did not care. A ways behind her, in the blue patched fish house her husband had made years before the boys sat in their shirt sleeves close to the heater. It was too crowded in there for the woman, so she ventured off on her own and relaxed, her reveries broken occasionally by the sound of the harmonica, or their fighting. When her husbands snores became too loud, she would stand, and whip a snow ball back at the shack, then return to her own peace. As the day grew on, so did the rumble of snow machines, and all terrain vehicles.

By noon a shanty town had sprung up around her. The group to her right turned a foot ball game on their portable TV. And yet she sat in the middle of the lake, lost in her own little world reading the thick book in her lap, jigging her line. When she wrapped her mitter around her face she could not see anyone, could not see anything with the bright sun shinning down on her except the bobber between her shearling lined feet. When the hoots of the pack of men to the east caused her to lift her cap and watch as they landed a beautiful large fish to the frozen lakes surface, she grinned and tilted her head back and pulled the wool down around her eyes farther. After the men whent back inside their fancy deluxe fishing contraption they had drug on to lake with next years model ATV, she waited and then flung snow balls at their tip ups to spring their warning flags for her own amusement.

Slowly it became quiet again in her little world. As the day wore on her hand reached down for the Thermos at her right And her finger became wet from the water her coffee was sitting in. She ate her pocket of ginger snaps and tapped her foot along to the Areosmith song her kid was butchering on the mouth organ in the windowless shelter behind her. Her foot make a splashing sound and she sat up to look at the puddle that was soaking into her feet. The woman, now fully awake, jumped up and yanked off her head gear and scanned her surroundings. The wooden fish houses, closer to shore where still standing, but without a single automobile next to them. A few ATVs were along side the plastic or canvas portable shelter, but other than her family's large truck, there was not another car. She ran as fast as she could, screaming her husband's name as she sloshed and skidded back toward were her family sat. "Wake up! Wake up! GET OFF THE LAKE NOW!


Her husband stuck his head out the door and blinked with confusion. 8Two minuets later, their fish house loaded into the back of the truck without being disassembled totally, she watched her man, and one of her sons speeding off the lake, truck doors open , the water from their wheels welling up in their wake.


She grabbed up her fishing rods, and threw them on her sled and took a different course from her husbands to shore. **She kicked that sled as fast and as hard as she could, leaving her oldest son to run behind her.


The man and the boy were already at the boat landing, securing the items in the bed on the truck when she made it to shore, her oldest son at her heels. ***The ride home was quite, the adults shame thunderous.






*If you drive with your doors open you have a better chance of surfacing if you break through the ice.

** I had him chase me, because he is not good with the sled and if I would follow him like I wanted to do he would not go as fast and might run into black ice not knowing the danger

***Today we were the stupid people we make fun of on the ice every other year.

All My Friends Are Aliens

I go out looking for aliens. I walk slow. You might say I walk too slow. But someone once said they envied me for my lack of pace. I walk even slower, just to make sure. Always a day late and a dollar short. Always a day late and a dollar short. I make a wish and it escapes my cold mouth like a fish swimming through the blue river sky.
I walk as slowly as I can. Avoiding the cracks. I don't look back. It is my only plan. It is my only care. Please don't stare. I know they are out there. Aliens. Conceald in clouds. Out of sink. Above the horizon. Below the radar. Disconnected. Graceful. Shy. Watching me from way up high.
All my friends are aliens.

The Neibhors Cheered When The Party Ended

"There you are! Glad you could make it. Welcome. C'm on in. I'll take your coat. I'll just throw it.., well I'm just going to let it drop right here. I'm too tired to bother. Wanna drink? I got some flat root beer? No? Well lets go into the living room eh? You know Crazy Steve over in the corner. Debiziale brush some of those candy wrappers off the arm chair there ya? Everyone else introduce yourselves to our new guest, if any of you are awake. I'll yell down stair and get the others up out of the basement. You comfy now? Good. Want some semi melted Christmas peeps? They are left over from last night too. Mind you eat around the dark pebbly parts. it might be shrapnel from the fire crackers they were melted with. No, I already took the tree down, or the kids did last night. Stripped it, dragged it out in the back pasture and poured gas on it. Yeah you should of been here. After we bought dinner with all our miscellaneous gift cards from the holiday- Oh it was a spread. Funky cheese, gravlox, strange fruit, shrimp, prime rib-but anyway, we "toasted" the peeps with firecrackers and then wrapped a sting of Blackcats around the tree and set it off with a bottle rocket. Oh! It was glorious! Wait. Where are you going? Don't you want to see the slides of what happened when I brought out the "back room Wisconsin deathbox pyrotechnics's? Ok then, you better be here next year. Happy new year anyway."