Tag: cliche

The quiet city

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Downtown is quiet, abandoned for the holiday.
We get out our skateboards and own the sidewalks and streets for a day.
If we tried this during the workweek, we’d chased by the cops. Maybe even caught and arrested.
No cop cars. No sirens. No noise at all but the sound of our wheels grinding up the pavement.
At the end of the day, we get in our cars and go home.
It takes hours to get home, dodging and weaving the skaters and thrashers filling up the neighborhood.
They work Downtown, so they’d rather stay out here.
Goddamned clueless amateurs.

The Future

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Even though security is almost completely done by biometrics, we still call it “handing over the keys” when you buy a car.
The dealer syncs your vehicle’s scanner with your retinal pattern, thumb print, voice print, and everything else that identifies your biological uniqueness.
No keys at all. The strip of metal with the logo on the keychain is just symbolic.
We also still call them cars, even though they’re not much more than automated floating bubbles these days.
I step into the bubble, wave my hand, and I’m off.
Yes, we still call it driving when it’s really riding.

Apartment Circus

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I couldn’t stand to see the carnival rust in the junkyard, so I bought it.
How you fit all that into a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan, well, that’s my secret.
Kids line up at my door, and I sell tickets to the rides, the midway games, and the various tent acts.
At first, the Condo Association protested, but now they’re all in the show: the fat lady in 5H, the super’s a sword swallower, and 16A tells fortunes.
It’s a good crowd tonight.
I adjust my nose, check my floppy shoes, and lead the clowns into the center ring.

The Silver Star

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When I was a child, my sister and I had to do our chores.
Each chore meant we got to lick a star and stick it to the calendar for that day.
Red ones were little chores, like doing the dishes.
Blue ones meant more, like vacuuming or walking the dog.
Silver stars were for mowing the lawn.
At the end of the week, add up the stars and get an allowance.
I went to the crafts store and bought a box of silver stars, filling the calendar with them.
The stars added up to me getting spanked and grounded.

Edison The God

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Thomas Edison invented a time machine.
Some say it was really Westinghouse. Others say Tesla.
Nobody sees them anymore. Imagine that.
With his time machine, Edison brings back advanced medicines, powerful weapons, and amazing technologies from the future.
He recruits the most powerful minds from the past.
Edison is unstoppable.
With his unsurpassed knowledge of science, he has rendered himself immortal.
We call him “The God of Menlo Park.”
Why he keeps coming back to here instead of remaining on his journeys, we don’t know.
It’s sentimentality, I suppose.
He frightens us, and we have no choice but to obey.

Swine Flu

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The Big Bad Wolf didn’t care about this whole Swine Flu scare. He was hungry.
So he huffed, puffed, and coughed for about a minute.
A window opened in the straw house, and the first little pig laughed.
“Caught a bad case of the flu, wolf?” he asked.
The wolf grabbed at him, but his muscles were aching badly and he missed.
Two more pigs walked up behind the wolf.
One hit him in the leg with a piece of wood, and the wolf fell down, howling with pain.
The other pig hit him in the head with a brick.

Stick it to The Man

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Things are always getting worse for me and Joey.
Joey lost his job. My hours are getting cut back. The apartment’s a wreck.
Nothing ever works out for either of us.
Joey’s always saying we gotta stick it to The Man.
But Joey never says how we’re supposed to stick it to The Man.
What glue sticks it to The Man?
Do we use staples and thumbtacks?
And what exactly is “it” we’re supposed to stick?
Joey says I’m too literal.
I say Joey needs to provide concrete examples.
He shrugs.
Is this how The Man sticks it to us?

April White

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I knew this girl. Her name is April.
But she was born in May.
Her full name was April White.
Except, she was black.
Her whole life was a bunch of opposites, one after the other.
Some folks could handle them and others couldn’t.
I thought I could, but each time I thought I knew her, she turned out to be someone completely different.
So, when we were supposed to be coming closer together, we ended up drifting apart.
Until one day, she was gone.
Or was I gone, and she was where she’d been all along?
I’m so confused.

Maggots

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I was in the hospital, laid up with a broken leg when the word got out that zombies were on the loose.
No guns. No machetes. Just fire extinguishers and the occasional bone saw.
That’s when it hit me.
“Maggots eat dead flesh,” I said. “Release a bunch of maggots and they’ll eat the zombies.”
The nurse went down to the stockroom and brought out three trays of maggots.
“Is that all?” I asked. “I was hoping for huge barrels full of the things. Maybe fill a moat with them.”
No.
Bar the doors. And pray the army shows up.

Ringing

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Tom lets the phone ring for a while before picking it up.
“Robots give up after four rings,” he explained. “If my friends really want to get me, they’ll let it ring ten or eleven times.”
The phone rings. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times.
“What about robots who are your friends?” I ask.
For just a moment, Tom’s look gets dark. Angry.
“I have no robot friends,” he says.
Maybe today, but it wasn’t always the case.
Somewhere, deep in a lab under New Mexico, a mainframe caked with dust and spiderwebs.
Memory banks silent, filled with sadness.