Five By Five Hundred

Seven writers, each contributing five hundred words once a week, for every day of the week. Beyond that, we'll just have to wait and see what evolves.

[fivebyfivehundred]

Deadline

Deadline http://wp.me/su0Aq-deadline

You have reached the deadline. You are now dead. Forget what gods you naively prayed to in The Time Before You Died, because those gods cannot help you realize this new lack of future. You have been forsaken. Perhaps there will be mercy, but don’t get too comfortable with any one hope in particular; you are lucky to even retain existence, the ghostly ability to appreciate the dank murk of…

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Tray Table

There is a plastic placemat suspended from the seat in front of me, now kindly supporting the weight of my near-sleeping brain. I had every intention of using the molded-in cup holder to keep a whiskey drink from tumbling during the bumpier portions of this flight, the hitting-more-air times, but I’m much too tired. I’ve been listening to Beethoven or whatever else this airline deems to be cultura…

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Seasonal Beer

I don’t have an opinion on flavors saved for special occasions, now that I write about it, which is half the purpose, don’t you think? To discover the pieces of myself I don’t need? The arguing unnecessary when I don’t believe my side of the debate in the first place? I’m not a fan of random pumpkinness, but that’s a specific instance and should not fill in for all winter, spring, summer, and fall…

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Cider

Cider http://wp.me/su0Aq-cider

There’s a lukewarm pot of cider on the stove, homemade, strong enough you can taste the liquor flavor, not so strong it matters. It’s mostly ignored for the countertop bar, one half of the sink lined with plastic, filled with ice, a nice selection of cheap and less cheap bottles for do-it-yourself concoctions. Despite the DIY, I still adhere to BYOB, Guinness for me, last year’s lost memory all I

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[fivebyfivehundred]

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie

In my insatiable gluttony I devour disappointment like Zebra Cakes, not much nutritional value, but I love the taste, buy in bulk, apparently have a sweet tooth for sulk. I could at least pretend it has some health benefits, a homemade oatmeal raisin type of pain, mixed with these two hands, baked at the exact right temperature for however long the recipe reads, for if someone else says it’s okay,…

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Stuffing

Stuffing http://wp.me/su0Aq-stuffing

We played soccer while the turkey slow cooked, with the Mexicans from the kitchen who half wanted to celebrate their newfound Americanness and half were happy just to have a full day off finally. We watched football later in the day and wondered if there were more traditional sports that could be played, the Pilgrims’ ping-pong, Columbus’ lacrosse, a Viking type of tennis, snowballs thrown over…

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Diamond

Diamond http://wp.me/su0Aq-diamond

We’ve cut pieces of the earth up as stars, a great pretending where each outstretched hand is a stand-in for the sun. Watch how the flowers grow as we pass our thin fingers over them; see the petals drink in our life, green all around and through, down to the roots; admit you feel the warmth that breathes out from this fist, pulsates with each cold hand shook. And like the stars it is born from…

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Ice Cream

There are only so many flavors of sex, the best always the original recipes, homemade concoctions meant to combine all your favorite tastes in one sugary mouthful. The metaphor can extend to toppings and creaminess, high and low quality, scoop size, brand and price, but all I care about is how nice it makes me feel, life’s little dessert, a sweet release at the end of a too-long day. It doesn’t…

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Election Day Haiku

No sonnet today, but don’t let that crushing news stop you from voting!

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Pillow

Pillow http://wp.me/su0Aq-pillow

Lullaby and goodnight and goodnight and I think this is a corporation I could run, the progressive shunning of light. If they let me I could keep statistics on who needed how much, whose lack of hours were sadistic and whose were just sad facts in their overworked life experience. At least make me a foreman, watching the floor from an upper office, all the world’s employees dreaming for me, a…

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Nyquil

Nyquil http://wp.me/su0Aq-nyquil

Put me to sleep: I’m drunk on my weakness, in need of being needy, a grievance to those who would ever hold me or hold me back or hold back my hair if I were a girl or a hippie or something new. I’m a bit delusional, and not just from the drags. I’m addicted to the next step in every situation, my fix a sheer lack of gratification; only, when I’m in the act of my wish fulfillment I glimpse cracks…

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Rowboat

Rowboat http://wp.me/su0Aq-rowboat

The priest or the deacon or the sexton or whomever I was meant to listen to astutely told me secrets about God, that eternal Jerk, and I slighted Him by lowercasing his Gs, Js, and Hs until it hurt something awful to look at his picture on the abbey wall, the one he took of himself by the hill while on his vacation or mission or whatever the kids are calling it these epochs, for if god is in the…

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Gravel

Gravel http://wp.me/su0Aq-gravel

There were once great rocks in the world, large and undocumented, allegedly, though I don’t have much evidence that it was ever any different from today. There are impressions, massive cracks and chasms, fissures in the world suggesting tumult and upheaval, and I assumed that there couldn’t be chaos without first order, but maybe we’re moving towards the greatness, the opposite of entropy, and…

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Music Video

Bitches be doin’ whatever bitches be doin’ when you pay them a day rate to subjugate themselves for the male gaze. The visuals are extraordinary for 4-minute social commentaries made to persuade bored office employees to blow their low wages on mp3s. I may not know art, but I know that this isn’t art, the equivalent of a musical heart attack, bass boom cracking in the back of a Cadillac in a low-i…

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Turnip

Turnip http://wp.me/su0Aq-turnip

I am out of words, as if I kept them in an empty jam jar, long since scooped clean, any hint of former inhabitants soaped and rinsed away and set out to dry by the kitchen window. And I don’t know where to buy more, the chain grocery store around the corner only stocking so many as to serve their dull purposes: pound, off, sale, fresh, frozen, produce, dairy. It serves me right, thinking I could…

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Pancakes

Pancakes http://wp.me/su0Aq-pancakes

These are the best goddamn airport pancakes I’ve ever tasted, my fried egg insides dying the griddled batter yellower, matching with my sure, why not, orange juice. There’s a ham steak, too (only $12!), but my eggs and syrup can do nothing to alter the color of this pig flesh, pink and dead, pressed together in one bite. I always eat that way, a little taste of each food on every forkful, no great…

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Shaving Cream

I hate shaving. That is my poetic diary entry of the day, it seems. Leave me be, face leaves, grass of my cheek plains. I am not the mower you would have me be. I do not reap or sow, only grow and grow and grow and grow from nothingness, and not the abstract nothingness, the word on paper concept, but lack; growth from no, growth unbidden, growth unwelcome, tangle of wiry life from the void, a…

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