20140129: lodger, trumpet, toast, bar, submarine, survey

The lone lodger surveyed the empty bar and gave a toast, intent on submerging his mind in drink like a submarine in the ocean, hoping the hazy pressure would crush all memories of the strumpet.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

who am i?

Sometimes you just want to stick it to The Man. Motivations are unclear, but here we are, dressed in criminal black, holding up the lobby in a posh hotel. I'm not sure who we are. I'm not sure who I am, but I'm there with the best intentions. I want to stick it to The Man.

I step outside and keep walking until I can see the top of the building. The penthouse suite built on stilts seems to hover above the roof of the hotel. I reason that if The Man is anywhere he is in that penthouse. So I grab it. I grab the penthouse with my telekinetic powers and rip it off its stilts. It's too late when I notice the suite is built in the shape of a cruciform. I've already dropped the penthouse, caving in the roof, and the evil that the cross had sealed therewithin the hotel begins to spill out. A hoard of contorted humanoid forms erupt from the torn roof and descend the walls of the glass building like a swarm of spiders.

I run into the lobby of the hotel, and inside it is thick with miasma. The glittering gilt and clean lines are gone, replaced by oil slick swirls of nauseating color. I try to navigate the building that has now lost all sense of spacial reason, where doors lead to rooms with more doors.

I don't know what I'm looking for, but I am stopped when I reach a room where the rest of my team has gathered. Standing in a circle facing the center of the room, no one bats an eyelash when I join. They continue to argue as they had been doing before my arrival. Everyone is shouting irrationally, and it is overwhelming. Through the din I hear strings of coherent words, but the statement "my birthday is June 31st" catches in my mind. Because from what I know about my teammates, all of their birthdays are June 31st, which I just realize is odd and statistically improbable. Heck, even my birthday is June 31st.

But my birthday isn't June 31st: my birthday is July 21st.

My vision frighteningly warps in the nauseating smog of colors to panoramically encompass all the faces of my teammates at once. My mind begins to drown in the cacophonous noise.

"You're not real!" I shout, adding to the noise, trying to maintain my rational mind by giving a voice to my thoughts. There is no such thing as June 31st. "You're not real!" I shout repeatedly. This can't be real.

My perspective nauseously shifts again bringing my point of view outside my own body. I look down on the circle of shouting people from slightly behind and above my own head. I can see the short crop of my mousy brown hair. I can see my body is tense as I continue to try and shout over the others. But that body is that of a thirty-something, handsome, white man. My birthday is July 21st not June 31st. I am a twenty-five-year-old, Asian female. I am not who I am.

"We're not real," I whisper, and the room suddenly becomes quiet as everyone shuts up and snaps their heads. They turn their gazes upon me, upon the spot above my white male corporal form, with wide frightened eyes.

What does letting life happen look like?

My first instinct as a sound bite-loving, modern female, master of the hyperbole, is to say "a hot mess," but that's not exactly true.

It looks more like an untamed rosebush in summer. Its spindly branches droop in every direction lacking the sturdiness and form of a rosebush attentively pruned with purpose. Consequently, the blooms aren't as impressive either. I'm looking at it wondering if it's not too late to start pruning it now, but my inherent apprehension toward deferred gratification has me wary about sacrificing the already existing buds and blooms. After all, no one can argue against the fact that a rose is a rose.

20130413: swimming, snail, lido, sled, bandage, stamina, justice, chimney

The day after Christmas you'll find him at the lido, but he won't be swimming. Floating on his back, his frosty white beard spreads out on the surface of the water like a thousand thin tentacles. The water wraps around him like a soothing bandage cooling the friction burns from shimmying down chimneys. Time seems to crawl at a snail's pace as he wonders if there really is any justice and meaning in in his work. He'll float on, recuperating his mental stamina until it's time again to hitch his sled.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

Masculinity: Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain, a time-aged bad-boy with a devil-may-care attitude and a healthy bite of sarcasm, eats his way around the world.

i dream in technicolor

I ride in the backseat of a vintage car with creme leather interior and an exterior painted in the most retro powder blue imaginable. It's a blue so dated that it feels like we could just disappear into the spotless sky on the horizon as we drive down this stretch of long flat desert road. With the windows open, the dry air whips my long black hair as we tear through the rising heat of the pavement.

We pull into the parking lot of a brick motel. The red "MOTEL" sign juts up into the sky like a beacon.

20121128: laugh, cocktail

I know it the moment you laugh, covering your braced teeth with your milky cocktail, our relationship will be like them: a late start and achingly painful but potentially perfect.

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20121002: trellis, porridge, map

She sits at the table eating her breakfast of porridge and thumbing through a travel guide to France. She traces the Seine with her forefinger on the map inside.

From the kitchen window she can see the unkempt trellis rose. Thin and spidery, it looks nothing like what she imagined it would when she had planted it.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

Your tomorrows were the palest shade of dark

Your tomorrows were the palest shade of dark,
translucent film over many yesterdays;
mine, brilliant, and blindingly white, and stark.

Dauntingly concrete, taunting me to leave a mark,
my tomorrows threatened, blanked, and blazed.
Your tomorrows were the palest shade of dark.

Billowing, unbidden like a lark,
your tomorrows were always in a wispy haze;
mine, brilliant, and blindingly white, and stark.

Like a slender curl of smoke after a single spark
that quickly fades to black as it strays,
your tomorrows were the palest shade of dark.

But from our perpetual yesterdays I had to embark
on today, where on its cusp tomorrow stays,
mine, brilliant, and blindingly white, and stark.

I feared through the clock's sweeping arc.
Have you made it here to meet my gaze?
Your tomorrows were the palest shade of dark;
mine, brilliant, and blindingly white, and stark.

15. 20120728: brass, race, fatigue, hot plate

Commanders inspected rooms with fervor in a race to get the barracks up to standard before the top brass arrived in pressed fatigues to inspire morale in a group of soldiers wherein the only loss of spirit was a result of their confiscated hot plates.

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14. 20120727: rumor, medicine, stars

Rumor spread like wildfire saying that you had let the devil possess you, and that's why you could never, and would never, come back. But I waited for you every night under the oak tree. I knew you'd come back to take your buried treasure: a lunch pail filled with decaying clippings from forbidden publications, a collection of snail shells and pebbles, an old medicine bottle filled with sand, and an indecent photograph of your mother wearing almost nothing, laughing.

And when you came to claim your treasure I could see that your dark eyes that had once sparkled like stars burned with hellfire.

Then you said, "I've seen it, John. The ocean. The water is so cool, and the sun is so bright. Did you know the sun is just another star, but closer? Imagine, John, all those stars, burning."

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

13. 20120726: dragon, word, toilet paper

Word on the street was that Mr. Li had called the cops on Ronny Hooser's party. So they, the young, the fearless, and the righteous, had silently gathered in his yard to TP his home.

As if, despite the muffled shuffles of their feet and the hushed tones of their words, the energy of their quiet concentration blared on an alternate level, Li stirred from his sleep to see toilet paper streaming across his bedroom window.

Thin paper, backlit by the soft exterior lights of his house, danced like a dragon ascending, rising up towards the heavens. So with awe Mr. Li witnessed the beauty of youth's fearsome vindictive spirit.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

9. 20120624: soap, dusk, bandit, ink, idiot, fish, danger, revenge

Bandits fish at dusk, when dark spreads like ink across a page and the moon sits in the sky like a thick round of soap, for idiots with no sense of danger and no taste for revenge.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

8. 20120623: carousel, fatigue, tartan, wheelchair, news, hand, scallop, door

All those years together I thought that you couldn't make my heart beat faster than you did when you kissed me on the carousel on our first date, my hair catching on the button of your hideous tartan jacket.

But then there was that accident.

4. 20120616: reform, increments, parliament, lift, doughnut

As a portly, aging member of parliament it would have served him well to be more concerned about the bill in his hand that proposed a reform of his salary increments. But inside the small space of the lift, away from eyes that criticized, he was just a man and his doughnut.

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

1. 20120613: fur, high jump, coronation

Somehow it seemed appropriate for her to put on her fur stole to watch the coronation ceremony on the television. He looked a lot shorter on screen for a man of his stature and status. She stroked the pelt around her shoulders as she wondered if that rumor about him was true: an illicit love affair with a Ukrainian high jumper?

To the list of other pieces inspired by random words.

At Twenty-Something

There is something about being twenty-something that makes life seem so substantially overwhelming. It's a restless spirit that's different from that of being a teenager. I always thought that being a teenager would be the ultimate stage of feeling stuck, but the older I get I feel that life is like slogging deeper and deeper purposefully into the mud in hopes of finding solid ground.

At least as a teenager I thought it was just a part of adolesence. It was a phase, a necessary transitional stage in life. I was going through puberty, and as horrific as that was I at least had the belief that whatever was on the other side was going to better. I thought at the end of puberty I would emerge as an adult. As a caterpillar metaphorphes into a butterfly, I thought I too would become this other person that would bear very little physical resemblance to what was. Unfortunately, it was just a misconception.

The First Day of Spring

As the weather gets warmer and everything outside begins to bud and grow so does my anxiety. I feel that tangled mess of emotions begin to coagulate in the pit of my stomach, which I know will only gets worse with the rising temperatures. And I know by high summer I'll feel like nothing is right, but the post-winter anxiety is the worst. There is nothing worse than the fear of the impending feelings of worthlessness, not even those feelings themselves. By the first day of spring it's official, I can't help but dread those coming summer days when I'll feel irritable, inadequate, and completely alone.

A Story in 420 Characters (or less including spaces)

On a morning so cold that even the air has frozen in place, I and a portly stranger, for a moment, share a square of sidewalk. In his hands is a to-go cup from which he sips and exhales deeply. Seeming more bizarrely intimate than that goodbye kiss, I hesitate to inhale his breath that lingers in the frigid air. The chilled breath, a taste like chocolate milk, assuages the bitter tang of breakup over morning coffee.

Masculinity: Sudo Genki

Sudo Genki, Japanese entertainer and retired MMA fighter and kickboxer, looks especially impressive dressed as a salaryman as he dances the robot.