Short Folk #17 & #18: Forever and Predator

 Note:  I'm posting two short ones today in an effort to try and catch up with my buddy James, who is doing a 30 poems in 30 days project alongside me on his blog Bottomless Lakes. You can find it on the link below and to the left.  I'm about halfway through Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicles and I have to say its incredible. Both of these pieces are definitely very influenced by it. I'm into the book in a way that goes beyond my analytical writers mind and into pure enjoyment. And that's why we read, right?

In other news I'm sporting the gnarliest black eye of my life today after a bungee cord snapped off the kayak I was putting on my car and the metal bit recoiled and hit me just below my left eye. I'm lucky it didn't blind me, and now I look like I joined Fight Club, which is what I'm telling everyone anyway.  I took my anger out on the fish as my buddy Gary and I caught some very nice rainbow trout today at the lake. After I post this we'll go back to the cabin and grill 'em.  Tough life, I know.  Enjoy.

Short Folk #17: Forever

The boy lay awake in his bed thinking about forever. He was 10 and for all he could remember this was the first time he had ever thought about forever. In the half-moon shaped room an aquarium against the curved wall bubbled away and his younger brother slept with heavy breaths in the bunk above him.  Forever was such a chameleon thing to think about. Think about it for a short time and it’s comforting, you imagine loved ones. You imagine an eternal continuation of all the things you enjoy. But then really think about forever, stare into the never-ending of it, the no-rest of it, the eons and eons of time stretching forward relentlessly, the total lack of cessation. Think too hard on that forever and it will keep you up at night. It will scare you as much as the first time you thought about it, 10 years old, in the half-moon shaped bedroom, with your brother’s heavy breathing in the bunk above you and the aquarium against the curved wall bubbling away the nighttime.


 Short Folk #18: Predator

The trout at his feet struggled against the curved hull of the boat. He realized then that he was a predator, floating on a lake full of predators, in a world full of predators, and who knows, maybe even the planets spun after each other with their own murderous gravity.