Monday, December 26, 2022

Strawberries













There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

—Edwin Morgan

Friday, October 28, 2022

Yvonne the Inept Con

 My actual conversation with a scammer on Facebook Marketplace...





Thursday, September 1, 2022

TP 2068

[As read by Rod Serling.]

 

Eugene Thomas Peterschmidt exits a Hobby Lobby with a snarl of pure disgust. At one time, a tall and lean specimen of six feet, he’s now about 5’8”, which pisses him off. He putters along in his golf trousers pulled up to his nipples. His pants are smelly—obviously because Courtney forgot to add detergent again. He’s also pissed off because, for one thing, he had to go inside a Hobby Lobby. Secondly, now he has to go to Walgreen’s, the thought of which also pisses him off.

 

He scratches his bald head and brushes loose the Band-Aid he’d used to cover one of his many red and purplish sores.

 

“Goddamnit!” he says. What’s more, it’s a brown-colored person Band-Aid instead of a regular white person colored Band-Aid… because it is 2068.

 

“Idiots,” he thinks. But he is not thinking of any race nor class of persons. They’re all mutants, after all—everyone but him.

 

All he knows is: this entire situation, his Band-Aid falling off whilst running errands for Courtney, his musty trousers, this filthy parking lot, being bald, being old, probably having a racing stripe in his tighty-whities… All of this is unacceptable, and someone is to blame.

 

He does not look bolth* ways before crossing into the parking lot.

 

A freckled teenager wearing a backward UNC baseball cap straddles his bike on the curb, chuckling to himself in audacious spite of the old man.

 

“Heh heh heh... Why would you go into public with that scabby melon?” the kid wonders. He glowers at the geezer doddering across the street.

 

Eugene Thomas Peterschmidt, once known as TP, pays the kid no attention. But he knows him all too well from a different time—a different dimension, just inside… The Twilight Zone.

 

*Yes, bolth. 

 

Thursday, January 27, 2022

BDHI

(Bayer-Day Happiness Index)*

The BDHI is assessed on a 10-point Likert scale with 10 being highest. The metric only applies to the very moment the assessment is made, inclusive of all concurrent variables impacting a person’s happiness. This entails environmental factors that affect immediate sensory perceptions such as comfort level (e.g., attending a conference in which the room is cold as fuck), general mood (e.g., annoyed by present company), and physiological status (e.g., well-rested, happily buzzed, remorsefully hungover, gassy, and so on). One’s BDHI assessment is subject to continuous fluctuation and volatility, as the reported score only pertains to the now.

Extreme psychometrics on the BDHI spectrum are: 1 = suicidal; 10 = ecstatic.**

*  The BDHI was developed by Chris James Bayer and Chet Robert Day circa 2021.

**   Bolth1 these scores on the continuum are very rare because they indicate a willingness to die (in the moment of crushing despair or nirvanic elation), but for opposite reasons.

CJB: “How are you today?”

Chet: “In what sense?”

CJB: “What’s your BDHI?”

Chet: “Oh. It’s about a 7.5.”

CJB: “Got it.”

1 Yes, bolth.