Changing of the guard, a refresh,
Doesn’t matter if its love or hate,
take it in stride, and do the best you can for each other.

Heading to Charlotte Friday night to compete in my third State championship for pinball. Each of the past three years ive dropped in seeding (8th, 9th) and this year 15th but happy to be included with much better players. Tournament will be on Saturday and cant wait to watch all the good play on display!

“Without you, without me, your the end i can see,” she sang quietly to herself while tending to the shipping line. Boxes continuously flowed in her direction, she checked against orders, moved them down the line. He senses were dull here, a bright fluorescent light seared into her retinas. The smell was off a few bits though although it somehow morphed into an almost metallic taste in her mouth.
Last night she walked through a field of roses, the thorns gracing her open arms with small pricks, the smell of blood, also metallic. Her copper hair streaked silver in the moonlight that managed to pierce the atmosphere. She stopped to gaze up for a while. She had heard the tales, of a sky full of stars, a sky full of light. Hard to imagine what it would look like. Finally she came to the bush she had been searching for,  She plucked two purple rose petals and sealed them in a tiny flask, It would be the right amount for the medicine she would need to make later. Always careful to only take what she needed she walked back through the slightly painful rose path, a few hours left before the trudgery would start. Time to rest, and maybe if she was lucky to dream of stars. 

Let down your small walls and take care to step gently,
The anger inside the color wheel isn’t all red and tyranny.
Be wise and slow, be kind and know,
Have time for the answers and things that are shallow,
Sing songs to a friend, sing songs to your enemies,
Or sit in a corner and stand in the center,
Be scared of nothing except the things you can control,
Choose wisely or randomly, but stay true to your vision,
And let down your small walls and take care to step gently.

6.

Somewhere fifty miles east of nowhere sat the factory. Its silver smokestack, a lone cylinder spanning into the sky puffed a steady stream of black. Once or twice a day a bird would wander into the toxic cloud and plummet to its quick demise. At the base of the factory the poor children would collect the dead birds and sell them for souvenirs. It was a horrid affair. But the authorities understood that the children needed to eat, so they turned a blind eye.
Mr. Caspers sometimes watched them from his office window. He wondered why they bothered? The sickness would smother them all in due time after all. Still his lot in life was to produce. And so he did.
He looked to his desk, a strange metal apparatus with ascending steps to a large projector powering up.  Such wonders he could imagine. He grabbed the film marked Annapolis and smiled. It was a new one just delivered. They didn’t get much in these parts of the world. Not anymore.  He took the metal cylinder, careful to not harm the celluloid inside.  His fingers shook as he adjusted the focus and finally after much fidgeting found the moment, sighed, flipped the switch and sat down for a respite.
The girls skipped. 

It is really hard to be better than we were made to be.

End days.

Snow sits silent on the east coast as a deer walks past.
Fires rage wild on the west coast with furious blast.
Politicians talk, conspiracist tell lies,
Global warming must be a hoax, the idiots’ voices rize.
And the common person in the middle alone and devout,
Tries to live their best life, no reasons to pout.
A consumption of resources until there is nothing left,
The earth needs a lawyer or judge to protect it from theft.
And the sun rises tomorrow, so many lost,
And the sun rises tomorrow no matter the cost.

5.

“This is the sound of a television blurring all the oxygen right out of the room,” the mother said as she casually glanced at father, a man mid forties, smoking his third cigar of the evening. Their young boy Jasper sat on the carpet in front of the tube, half watching the news show on the screen, half playing an imaginary game with his fingers, the air shadows of a setting sun, and occasionally with the dog who ran through the room.
“Hmmm” father said. He took a long small drag on the cherry smoked tobacco. 

She wanted to scream. But she ironed the blue dress shirt, its uneven levels of remaining fabric pressed between steam and a squeaky board, with no verbal complaint.

Mother bit into Fathers neck late that night. A small bite, one of affection and hate. It did not pierce the skin but made him turn his head slightly. He grimaced a little as he moved her hair to the side of her head. His breath still carried the smell of tobacco. She never thought about how unusual it was for her husband to smoke. No one else did anymore. But he was her husband, and she knew very little about him anyways. 

They met on a plane, a journey to one of the newly freed areas . When you disembarked from these flights the customs agents would steal your money, but it was an accepted practice. The cost of flying the friendly skies. He smiled at her then, at least that was how she remembered it. He had taken her hand and walked her through the turnstile past a pretzel stand onto the cold icy tundra of Scanton, Pennsylvania that day. It was a choice, one she made willingly and a few months later they were married. Later they moved into the red brick house, identical to all the others on the street. 

Sometimes, she knew that Father kept things from her.  

He held her neck tightly as he made love to her then.  She thought of the pretzel stand they had passed years ago and wondered if they tasted as good as they smelled. 

The crashing wave is more than a line in the sand,
Challenging all preconceptions and mastery of the land,
Pachinko blings and needle nose pliers in the repairmands hand,
It’s time in the listing light, to take a stand.

Outside a girl skipped down the street. She wore a polka dotted dress up high around her waist. The summer air stuck to her like maple syrup on a waffle. Her hair was done in pony tails making her seem slightly younger than the sixteen years she had spent on Earth. All across the street girls came out from their red brick houses, and skipped. It was that way that summer. A strange occurrence, but one doesn’t question what the youth does. No one understands them anyway.
As the girls skipped it would become increasingly clear that some of them strained under the weight of clothes and hair accoutrements. They persisted in this activity regardless, less concerned for their health then the precise movements and form they sought to perfect. One of the young ladies, a girl from Charlotte, North Carolina held tight to a southern drawl as she sung a song none of the other girls recognized. By the end of the summer they all knew the words. 

“‘Cause I don’t want to throw rice

I want to throw rocks at her

She took the only love I had

No, I don’t want to throw rice

I want to throw rocks at her”

The song was written by a famous singer of old times. Dolly Parton. It really had no place in the current world, but somehow it intertwined with the girls skipping, became some sort of anthem and meant more to them then the skipping itself. It was a strange summer after all. The girl from Charlotte, North Carolina, would marry later that year, a young prince or vice counsel or some such was the one to court her. He asked her to throw rice at the wedding, a family and ancient tradition. She obliged, but kept a small rock in the seam of her wedding dress as a precaution. That is how the story goes at least.