Thursday’s Rune: 3/10/2022

The Whole Damn Thing

I listened to a song today
it said I want to rule the world.
How did they know?
Before you get all smug and shit,
they said you do too.
Can we both rule
the whole damn thing,
or should we each take half?

How do we do it?
Longwise, like pole to pole
or do we go top and bottom,
like bunk beds,
but with an equator?

Listen, it’s no big ass deal,
but one dumb ass will never
oversee the whole
damn thing—ever!

The very fact that
every motherfucking one of us
wants to be King of the Hill
is the very reason
none of us ever will.

Look both ways for the power that corrupts.
Mind the gaps in geography and greed.

Friday Fictioneers for March 11, 2022

Star aquatic endurance athlete and mistress of the micro-fiction, flash-splash, Friday on Wednesday, the magnifico Rochelle has paired with Lisa Fox to push a prompt for our creative muses to produce 100 words or fewer, from a genre of our choosing, and to write a story for the world to read.

Click on Lisa’s photo to fly over to Rochelle’s Purple Maze and get read-in on the top-secret life of global fictioneers. My story follows the prompt pic.

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox (click for Rochelle’s blog page)

Genre: Spy Fiction
Title: It’s a Living
Word Count: 100

***

“That’s it, Ted. The ad said five hundred a month.”

Bill pointed toward the house, “Interesting antennas. The owners are either aliens or spies. Nice metal roof though. The wooden one burned when the old lab exploded. They’ve added electrical and plumbing.”

“It needs to look like the lab’s back. We’ll piggyback with the comm towers on the house. Nobody suspects a counter intel op in an old garage slash meth kitchen.”

“I’ll go sign the lease. You call in and arrange equipment delivery for tomorrow night. Forecast thunderstorms will provide cover. Spies spying on spies. Hell, it’s a living.”

Look both ways with skeptical eyes.
Mind the gaps in all intelligence.

Click on the CIA floor logo to link up with more fun stories.

***

I need to watch this movie, don’t cha think?

Thursday’s Rune: 3 3 22

Ode to Sexy GCS

Saying it’s iconic is a trite, ubiquitous
marketing cliché to honor nouns.

Yet, certain foods deserve menu pride of place
for meaningful simplicity,

for memories, taste, and community pleasure;
for ingredient brevity, seldom seeking savory mystery.

I salivate composing a poem
to the American grilled cheese sandwich.

GCSs have been around more ‘n a hundred years,
frequent fare served at fun food venues,

including my house, where casual is key
and kiss is a simple, honorable principle.

Why many recipes? Bread, cheese, butter,
and heat. It’s American. Add more and

it’s a melt. If that’s what you want, well fine!
Let Brits have their toasties, jaffles for Aussies,

panini is Italian and bless the French
for le croque monsieur. Nice. But none of that is GCS.

Done right, fried golden crisp with a shell’s
shades of black to yellow-brown, either square or round.

Cut squares diagonally, two isosceles right triangles
for proper holding, touching, and eating (warm to hot).

And kissing if you want. See the colors and shape,
the moist but firm surface.

Pick up with clean dry fingers, opposite the
triangle’s hypotenuse, gently between two legs.

At the right-angle corner, hold it between your
index and middle fingers, and thumb, gently lift

its moist crisp oiliness to your face. Allow it
to touch, to be felt on your skin and lips.

Holding near your nose and mouth, invite
sensual fragrance to enter your nose, slide

it gently between your lips, barely touching,
before being taken into the mouth.

Gently bite it. Feel your teeth crunch through the crust
into the warm melted cheese. Chew slowly, thoroughly.

Swallow the bite while planning the next. No rush.
Eye the stack and plan your next attack.

Look both ways.
Food and sex are both pleasures.
Enjoy.
Mind the gaps, the dips, and company.
Bond with the world.

Friday Fictioneers for March 4th, 2022

Mistress Rochelle is on a twisted tantrum with tilted photos and pictures of leaning towers in the swamplands of Italy. If this photo, supplied by Anne Higa, inspires you to write a story on the straight and vertical, click on the Pisa Plaza picture to gondola over to the Maven of Purple (Rochelle) for the rules and regulations and how to post your square right over there.

My unholy semi-fib follows the photo.

Click the PHOTO PROMPT © Anne Higa to open Rochelle’s blog page.

 

Genre: Historical Fiction
Title: Holy Land for Pisa
Word Count: 100

***

“Drudo, tomorrow we sail for the Holy Land.”

“Good, Gotto. I’m sick of this damn tower. The world isn’t impressed. Every tower in town leans. Merda!”

“We’ll return with holy cargo from Calvary in Jerusalem for this Square of Miracles. Pisa will be famous. The excursion is funded with riches we took from Sicily.”

“We’ll never be known for our towers, Gotto. What bounty shall make us heroes?”

Gotto grinned. “Fifty-three shiploads of dirt.”

Drudo whines, “We battle for riches. We spend blood-won bounty on shiploads of dirt for a cemetery in a swamp. The tower is a better idea.”

Look both ways.
Historical truth need not make sense.
Mind the gaps in the foundations of towers.
Fame comes as much from failure as from success.
(It could have happened like that.)

Click on Superman straightening the tower to read other creative stories.

About one year after his birth, Galileo was baptized in the Pisa Baptistry of the Square of Miracles in 1565. And yes, it is historical fact. 53 shiploads of dirt from the Hill at Calvary in Jerusalem for the cemetery.

Essay: Neither politics nor religion

I had started a different essay for this post when my wife informed me that our 43-year-old daughter asked this question. “How can these people talk so calmly about nuclear war?” Calmly? I needed to get caught up on the news. Who is calm?

As we discussed our distant past, Yolonda said, “You know, when you would go for a week of nuclear alert, I never thought much about it. It was your job. Nuclear war was simply your job.” She’s right. I was the Radar Navigator (bombardier) on a nuclear armed B-52D either at Carswell Air Force Base (AFB), Texas, or later at Andersen AFB, Guam (and at other “satellite” locations).

At that time, we were in the midst of the “Cold War.” If Russia (or any country) launched a nuclear attack against the United States, my crew would be in the air within minutes, turning north to strike pre-determined targets in the Soviet Union. Basically, WWIII.

I told her, “I know exactly what damage nuclear bombs (or missiles) can do.” For eight years, it was my profession. For one week each month, it was my life: 24/7. The concept of nuclear war was real, possible, conceivable, but even then, somehow unthinkable. We did not believe it would happen because we would retaliate in kind. That was called second strike and we had plans for a third. The strategy was called mutually assure destruction (MAD). It was real. It was then.

Through my elementary and high school years (Cuban Missile Crises), through Viet Nam, and on up until my first day of pre-flighting and “cocking” a loaded B-52, the threat of nuclear war was impressed upon me repeatedly. Doomsday was both a reality and a joke.

Today I read that Vlad P. has threatened the world with nukes if anyone interferes with his war on Ukraine. The no love lost between Russia and Ukraine goes way back, but the point is the threat. He could nuke any nation in the world—and certainly in Europe.

I’ve also read that Russia may use nukes against Ukrainian resistance. These people are fighting for their right to exist. The only thing Ukrainians want from Russia is to be left alone and to live in peace. But Russia does not care. Their excuse? The Ukrainians don’t like them. Dah?

While it would be unprecedented for nukes to be used in such a limited conflict/war, Ukraine lacks the wherewithal to assure Russia’s destruction. We, on the other hand, in conjunction with our allies could provide such assurance. I would like them all, especially Vlad P., to believe we would.

On the lighter side, in 1964 (age 18), I sat in a theater on a Strategic Air Command base, and I watched this movie (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). Little did I know my future would not be so funny, although I confess, I did my best to make it so.

Look both ways and take a side.
Mind the gaps between the wars and push for peace.
Morality is not a spectator sport.

These four clips from he movie are short.

Sammi’s Weekender #250 (mannequin)

Click the WWP prompt graphic to open Sammi’s blog and read more writings of poetry or prose.

No, no, no.

She didn’t know,
she couldn’t see my loss,
drained of outward expression,
emotionally spent, I sat — still,
a heartless, brainless mannequin,
my skin ripped by her words.
I was not, as she accused,
an automaton. I loved her.

My brain and heart were not sapped,
but hope seemed impossible.
Suicide seemed the only answer,
an escape from daily pain, the way home,
to bring order to irreversible chaos.

My mind: bleak, grim, sullen:
I walked to window,
I cried, broken, never again to be me.

Look both ways.
Reality isn’t always as it seems.
Mind the gaps, nothing is perfect.
Into every life, some sadness, some love, some hope, some loss.

Thursday’s Rune

Discordant Disguise: Tiger is Gone

I was searching for past experiences,
memories of an impossible back then,
when I wore younger men’s clothes,
and I carried a smoking coolness
now long hidden
behind my taste for tranquility. Memories, vague feelings
not fully forgotten I want resurrected.

It was for writing project research
that I strolled into a huge game arcade
in northwest Austin.
A pay-to-play place, a land of profound noises,
a nightmarish field of dreams without payoff.
I saw few protective parents and a grand or two
with kids (school?), fewer still couples
who seemed pointlessly confused,
and me, one lone but alert and somewhat spry,
out of place, no longer young man
who had stumbled onto hearing aid hell.

I switched them off to mask needlessly
amplified din down to merely survivable decibels
as excruciating blares from hundreds of electronic games
simultaneously competed for my attention
with blasts, bangs, zips, loud inhuman screams,
and other onomatopoeic, nonsense of
computer generated junk sounds funneled
into my resistant ear canals.

Flashing lights
from each mad machine making them all the same;
flat pops, grunts, and groans,
melding into one pot of brain numbing total sensory
overload, paled by screams too fake to be scary,
making unappealing demands of humans
to pay for the privilege of interacting
with computer generated absurdities
charging each equally, about a dollar a minute.

I won some games on a vintage Williams
electromechanical pinball machine,
then promptly lost them while discovering
how much faster the silver balls fly around,
how slowly my flippers and tiltless taps responded
to my now vastly reduced reaction times on
the bumper-filled clacker playfield,
sixty years since I last pressed play.

Are we having fun yet? No one asked.
The eyes of others looked unsatisfied
and bored except for the few youths
unaware of being had by the unreal stimuli.
If a man with a gun over there was firing,
no one would notice except the victim.
I did not find the kid I was looking for.

Look longer for lost ubiquitous games played by great-grands.
Find the genesis of brain numbing entertainment.
Look both ways for bar zombies that refuse to die.
Mind the gaps if you dare delve into a past that will never exist again, except in the souls of the old players.

Friday Fictioneers for February 25th, 2022

Our own Wednesday morning moonbeam, Rochelle, in conjunction with Roger Bulot has set the street carnival stage for the final February Friday Fictioneers frolic with ethnic food, fun, and dancing in the street. Click on Roger’s contributed picture for a magic carpet ride over to play where growing older does not require growing up and purple is plentiful.

My mundane mindless myth meanders about the crowd in the 100 worried words below the prompt photo.

Click on the PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot for a taxi over to Rochelle’s page.

 

Genre: Bazaar Fiction
Title: American Men
Word Count: 100

***

“There. Blue baseball cap, Ray-Bans, running shoes. Passing the Greek Jewish food. Go!”

She approached. “Hello, mark. Remember me?”

He lowered his shades and made eye contact, then noticing her cleavage, “Ah, I’m afraid I, um, ah…”

She touched his bare arm. “I’m, Chloé. Last June in Paris?”

Embarrassed, he felt blood and sense drop from his brain to his groin. He felt a nudge from behind. He turned to look. When he turned back, she was gone, as was his wallet, watch, and even his sunglasses.

He thought, I should have known at the lower-case mark. My name’s Bill.

Look both ways on crowded streets.
Mind the gaps of décolletage and keep your eye on the ball.

Click anywhere you like to find the other wonderful worldly contributions to read and comment.

Sammi’s Weekender #249 (recipe)

Click on Recipe to check out other’s writings on Sammi’s menu page.

 

Make it So

Kitchen? check!
Hot oven? check.
fixin’s? double-check.
recipes, bowls?

Got ‘em to go.

bakin’ pans
yeah boss!!
ready to roll!
gots crunchie munchies.

pack a bowl, pizza’s comin’.
“Hey, you gunna bogart
that stash all night?”

Look both ways when you pass the bong.
Mind the gaps and lower the lights.

Friday Fictioneers for February 18th, 2022

Yet again, two of our favorite jolies femmes have teamed up to conspire with a cat, to inspire me to find fewer than 101 words of micro-fiction for Friday Fictioneers. Dale delights us with her cute and clever bookshelf cat photo. Rochelle, Madame cat herder extraordinaire, challenges us and guides our stories. I thank them both.

Click on Dale’s cat-that-reads photo to prance on over to Rochelle’s page for all the latest ‘nip.

Genre: Feline Fiction
Title: The Prints of Paws
Word Count: 100

I’m telling you, Francesco, we’re the greatest predators, evah. We can kill them. Everything becomes ours. Look around. Cameras, computers, food, catnip galore. All ours.

Gabriella, stop. If she finds out you’ve been peeing on her books, she’ll blame me. What if she tosses us outside? I know how you love the cold. And that’s not ‘nip. It’s pot. Let’s hold off until Spring.

I can pee wherever, my chicken-feline-friend. How many cat books do you see? None. Let’s get into her account and order cat books.

Here she comes. Look cute. She’s got her camera. Stardom beckons.

Look both ways if you love animals, especially cats.
No shelf is too high, no corner too dark.

Inspired by I could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano (and other cat books soon to be showing up on Dale’s account and TBRs).

Click on the sweet le félin to read more stories inspired by the cat on a shelf.