File this Under "Spectacular"

This video is one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

Here's the setup. Apparently, there a few people out there who believe they have some kind of mystical kung fu powers, whereby they can smack you down and rain Holy Hell upon you without even making physical contact with your body. I don't know. Perhaps they twist around your Chi or something.

So, one of these "masters" decided to challenge a MMA fighter (mixed martial arts) to a bout. He even offered a reward of $5,000 if the guy could beat him. This video first shows him flexing his magical muscles on his students, then he proceeds to the fight, where he is quickly beaten senseless.

Here is my logical analysis. 1. By observing his body language and assuming that no person would knowingly throw away $5,000, get punched several times in the face, and suffer total humiliation voluntarily, I believe this guy really believed he had these powers. 2. By observing what appears to be extreme over-acting by his "students," and assuming that no actual blows are pummeling their bodies, I believe the students are knowingly faking their responses, perhaps in some sort of misguided respect towards their teacher or reluctance to disappoint him. 3. The teacher interpreted the reaction of the students as real, resulting in his confidence that any fighter would quickly suffer total defeat at his hands (or gesticulations).

Is this not the classic emperor-has-no-clothes situation?

How could this guy really believe his students' poor acting?

How could these students have knowingly set this guy up for such a spectacular fall?

Sometimes I wonder about our species. I really do.

Reward

He stood his ground.

The enemy shifted into position. Out of range. Deadly in their caution.

Together, they might have a chance. A small one. But if they both ran, they would surely be overtaken and brought down. So he stood his ground. At the very least, he could slow them down.

When the enemy stopped moving, he knew the strike would fly in the next few breaths.

He turned to offer one last reassurance. He saw how far the other soldier had already run.


(Photo taken at the Philadelphia Art Museum.)

Halloween in August!

Apropos to my last quasi-spooky post, a treat is coming in August. A Deadly Treat!

My long-standing blog friend, Anne Frasier (aka Theresa Weir, a many-published author under both names), invited me to join a hard-hitting list of writers to put together a Halloween Anthology.

The result has arrived. I introduce Halloween in August:



The book is now available for pre-order at Amazon HERE for shipment in, yes, you guessed it, August.

Anne served as our fearless editor. For a great synopsis of all of the stories, visit ANNE'S BLOG.

Dive into a cool group of writer/bloggers (and also me). Order early and often!

Dreaming in the Box

"Whatever you do, don't open the box."

"What's in it?"

"Just don't."

"I don't understand what you're saying."

"You've heard of a Dream Catcher, right? It's a kind of Native American art. Beads. A couple of feathers. Woven into something like a pendant."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Well, they don't work, and I'll tell you why. The nightmares you're having, they come from inside your head. Not outside. It's not like evil spirits come riding on the night air."

"Well that's a disturbing image."

"A Dream Catcher snares the dreams coming out of you. But it's too late. You've already seem them. What very few people know is that Dream Catchers are really a tool of dark magic. A way of gathering the most delicate of energies for less than positive purpose."

"Oh...."

"What you need when you can't shake your nightmares is a dreamer. Something (or someone) whose dreams are louder than yours. Kind of like blasting ABBA music when Marilyn Manson is pounding in your head."

"I see."

"So put this box by the side of your bed. I swear, the volume is very pretty high."

"But what's in the box?"

"No matter what, you have to promise not to look. There are things better off not known. Kind of like death sometimes. Imagine what it would be like to live the most charmed, innocent life. What if you died suddenly? If you didn't know it, you just might go on imagining a most beautiful world of experiences."

"I guess. But wouldn't you eventually learn the truth?"

"You mean if someone threw a little light on the situation, and you learned that you were actually a mummified corpse?"

"Yeah.... Or something like that."

"Then I guess the horror would rip the most hideous visions imaginable out of you."

"Oh."

"You wouldn't want to be around something like that."

"I, I won't look in the box."


(Photo from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.)

Reach

to touch
~
is almost
~
too great
~
a reward

(Photo taken at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

Me and I

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You’re not usually one to talk to yourself, you know.”

“I know.”

“So what gives?”

“I guess I’m in a strange mood.”

“Me too.”

“That figures.”

“So was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“I can be blunt with you, right?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like me?”

“Of course I do. What a weird question.”

“Is it? I don’t seem to have the best judgment with such things.”

“I understand.”

“Because, who knows. Maybe you don’t.”

“I’ve got your back.”

“Okay. But for a long time you didn’t.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s true.”

“I know.”

“I mean, you weren’t there at all.”

“(Or maybe I was there, and you were missing in action.)”

“It might have been nice during all those years of train wrecks.”

“Probably.”

“But then again, how can you expect another person to stand with you if you don’t even stand with yourself?”

“Good point.”

“Friends like that, with that kind of loyalty, don’t even exist anyway.”

“You got that right.”

“But I get it now. It’s different when you’re here.”

“Funny. I was just going to say the same thing.”

“I’m glad you woke up and moved in.”

“Ditto!”

“So, my new roommate, do you like to stay up late?”

“You know it.”

“Do you like to do things no respectable person your age would do?”

“Tequila, anyone?”

“I think we have lots to talk about.”


(Photo taken at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.)

Just Can't Get Enough

Boy I think about it every night and day
I'm addicted, want to jump inside your love
I wouldn't want to have it any other way
I'm addicted, and I just get enough
     --Black Eyed Peas, Just Can't Get Enough

The clutch.

Her body against him.

Arms grasping.

Squeezing.

The sensation carved down to the deepest layers in his brain.

As he laid there mixed in the sheets, the memory oppressed him. He got so close. Always so close. But just when it was going to be his forever, it slipped away. She drew back. Releasing. Panting.

He watched her now in the other room. Her nakedness moving. Glowing.

Already, it was rising in him again. He wanted to kneel, beg, possess, bewitch, devour.

She approached, eyes boring into him. The same tension hummed in her muscles as she climbed over.

Hair tickled down like pattering rain before a downpour.

Lightning flashed between them. Then the storm raged again.

Flutter

trailing like cherry blossoms
     dismantled by the wind
carpeting the fertile ground
     with many-petaled intentions

A Drive Home in the City Night

I can beat with the pulse of the city
going where all but the elite of the elite can go
I can also walk the wide, echoing streets
feeling forever barred
but in neither place
--the in or the out--
do I really belong

Tulips of Mass Destruction

The distant planet turned slowly. A planet of stillness and dirt.

Two shapes moved in the laboratory made of mineral and ore.

"Is that the specimen?" one said.

"Yes," said the other. "Do not touch the containment lenses."

"It's not moving."

"No. Containment is intact."

"What are those structures? They spread into the soil. Feeding from it."

"Terrible aren't they? And fast. Very, very fast."

"How long before it can be weaponized?"

One shape pulled back.

"This is the second specimen. The first has already been loaded, targeted, and delivered."

"Oh."

Across the planet of dirt, in the slow cycle of rain, tulips rooted faster than the slow world had ever seen.

Millions of shapes could no longer move. Millions of deaths became beautiful red blooms.

Special Relativity

the cosmos knows no greater gravity
than the pull of one human heart
on another

Here is My Handle, Here is My Spout

Nobody touched the teapots lined inside the cabinet.

She’s been dead for two months. At least. No heirs appeared to claim the body. No heirs claimed her small estate. Staff from the nursing home volunteered to sort her house between trash and what was appropriate for donation.

Not one had a reason not to touch the teapot.

Stacked boxes in leaned columns all over the kitchen. They were waiting to go to the truck. People thumped upstairs, and their muffled chatter drifted through the ceiling.

The cabinet was still sealed. Everyone who approached it hesitated, then stumbled a few steps backward and away.

I looked at the pretty porcelain teapots.

I approached the glossy white cabinetry. Not dusty like everything else. My fingers neared the knob.

What I saw in my head made me flinch. A groan squeezed from my stomach.

I saw the twisted reflection of my face back away in the glass.

I would not touch the teapots either.


(Photo taken at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

The Silence-Smith

the
silence-smith
fashions
shapely shards
of nothingness
into glittering
d b
o l
u a
b d
l e
e s
|