You Can Have Her

At once we would up and hoist our sails

call vast crews and raise fortunes to travel across the sea

to the ones we loved.

As with our hunting and gathering

our odyssey takes a new form.

I'll sit with my torn up socks, my last black pair

feet on a stack of white ones-

looking out the window wishing I could make it across town

not very far

to have a drink 

or all of it

with some Penelope.

But my boats got no gas-

its dead on the shore, washed up.

All of me wishes I could get more 

but I spent my last four dollars on that pack of Wildhorse

which Mike

who quit smoking 

bummed a bounty.

So the crew of my galley will sleep another night

and I wont.

The sails will rest folded,

Th e cauffers have run dry 

and shes run off with some suitor anyway.

More sitting and starring.

400, 600 years ago there would be caravans curving and bending across the plain

hundreds of ships cresting the endless horizon

No destination was too far.

But tonight ill sleep on oak creek because the  pharmacy is within walking distance,

and my floor is covered with change.

Maybe it isn't even neccisary  to get the girl at the end of the quest.

I was always more interested in the mistresses and demons on the way.

and what good would sitting alone on the edge of a bed be 

with the last of your wine 

if you didn't have something monumental to complain about?

I to the suitors-

YOU CAN HAVE HER!

Suitors to one another draw daggers.

the second one kills the first one to flag her

3 and four both bleed on the floor as the lonely one

I

drunkenly swaggers.

Where would I get a fortune anyway?

Crazy Rachelle

There was a girl in Highschool- Crazy Rachelle.

She was some sort of glowing terror. Blond wavy hair, curly at times. Some times it would hang down past her shoulders, in front and in back of them. Sometimes it was all pulled straight back to a knot- revealing the contour of her skull.

Crazy Rachelle only had one smile. It was wide and pulled high, revealing  her gums. White teeth jutting out- straight down, and perfect. This smile almost never left her face. At times it seemed as if she was straining herself, fighting to keep it on. It was a beautiful smile on its own, but guessing its meaning, or having an idea of its function made this a very unsettling contortion of the face.

Resting in barrels above her red-circle doll-face cheeks were two plastic eyes. They were fixed. The girl did most of her looking around by moving her head, like a predator, never dropping its guard. They rarely ever strayed from their factory pre-set FORWARD position,when they did she would look human for a second. But this wasn't some saving grace- she was still Crazy Rachelle most of the time. 

What made me think of crazy Rachelle was a sudden memory that hadn't been remembered even once since it was stored. It was of course subject to wear and tear over the years but one fact (the point of the memory I think) permeated the haze bourn of time- Crazy Rachelle had done something completely crazy. Something terrible. For the life of me I cannot remember what it was she did. I have asked everyone I know if they remember Crazy Rachelle and they all do. But not one of them remembers what she did. Most have a vague feeling, just like me, but wouldn't have thought of it unless I had brought it up.

Im still constantly plagued by this question. Images of what it was that this girl did to give me such a foreboding feeling. They played on and on in my head. Flashes when I wake up, or sneeze.

Crazy Rachelle standing on a lunch table- Crouched over the mangled body of a student. Jeff. Blood all over her smile and entrails in her hands. Those eyes were only glued onto her head to make her look  human. Demon.

Crazy Rachelle on her hands and knees scrubbing blood out of her fathers carpet as he watches.

Crazy Rachelle laughing hysterically with the head of her baby brother submerged in bubble bath. The kicking-furious but creating no shake in her un yeilding wrist.

The kicking stops.

I don't think I'll ever know what Crazy Rachelle did, but I'll probably have thought of it twice by the time I die.