SHOOTING STARS AND OTHER SURPRISES - SHORT STORIES
-On the road again.
-Passing horses riding in trailers.
-Looking through old pages from one of my notebooks and I notice a coffee stain in the shape of Texas so I outline it with my pencil.
-A friendly white bug is crawling round my knee.
-Coca-Cola and Cracker Barrels.
-Somewhere near Baltimore.
-That bug is tickling my wrist now — climbing round my arm hairs and making its way across my hand.
-Glad I did not kill it.
-This little friend keeps letting me know he’s still here.
-Like a lover rolling over in the night.
-Sensual moments make all the difference.
-I’m wearing a pineapple tank top…She would have loved that.
-That bug friend has disappeared.
-I wonder, what made him go?
Somewhere near Baltimore -- 6/29/16
I’m watching live tornadoes on the internet. They are south of Dodge City, Kansas and folks from childhood are posting videos as these twisters move across the blacktop and into farmers fields.
I notice the way the grass frenetically bends in all directions with those grey cyclones in the distance. Stirring up dirt and dust -- ripping roofs off family homes. It is eerily peaceful. Watching these tornadoes. Going home. Straight back to the past.
Upper West Side, NY -- 5/24/16
Photo Credit: Mike Mezeul II - http://www.mikemezphotography.com
"Beauty and the Beast" Captured by Mike Mezuel on May 24th, 2016 south of Dodge City, Kansas.
Once upon a time there lived a bright-colored horse who would trot gallantly around the feedlot where he lived. He would stop and talk to the cattle as they fed on the grain the farmer had spread for them, and the horse would smile his big horse smile. He was a Palomino and he was happy because he knew he had something others didn't. This is why the horse would make his rounds to the cattle. He knew he must share what he had with others. Of course, horses cannot speak or use words like people, so the Palomino was left to feel these things. Every now and then when these feelings would completely take over and he couldn’t keep them in anymore he would whinny. He would stand on his back two legs and whinny as big and bright as he could. "Hiiiiihhhh!" The horse had an advantage in not being able to speak words like people: he had his feelings and he had his whinny and that was all he needed to share everything he had to offer the world.
Even the people who worked on the farm enjoyed the horse. When they wanted to ride him the horse would happily let them ride, because he knew he was offering something to the people only he could offer. He knew they would never ride a horse like him again. A horse that could trot the exact same way he trotted. He knew that whenever people would ride him, they saw his golden mane, and that no horse in any stable on God’s green earth would have the same mane as he. The horse had nothing to hide and shared everything.
One day, a bull broke loose and got into the Palomino's pen. The bull used his horns to corner him and for a moment the horse was scared, but then he smiled, because he knew the bull had never seen a smile like his before. He smiled big and bright, showing his beautifully straight horse teeth and he had no shame. There was purpose in the conflict. Even as the bull over-powered him, viciously and senselessly taking his happy life away, the horse was at peace. He was at peace because he never tried to make sense of who he was or why he was here and not there or why his hair was gold and not brown or why he was a horse and not a coyote. The horse never learned the words of the world and ways of society. He lived his life like a snowflake, floating down and landing where he’d landed, showing his form with no words at all, just being who he was and where he was at that time and never trying to make sense of anything at all. He lived with what he'd been given and that was worth it all.
Years before his death, a bull said to the horse, "You have to go get what you want to become." The Palomino paused, dug his hooves into the ground and looked up to the bull with his big brown eyes and said, “I am all I’m meant to be.”
Hopewell Junction, New York - 1/25/16