Author: ludlumdrive

The Perfect Buffer

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Word on the streets growing up, if you accidentally swallowed a fruit seed of any type, it hold grow inside of your stomach, cut through your brain and pop right out your head like a red balloon. It would grow, grow taller then the Eiffel Tower, touch the skies and say the Hail Mary’s to any plane going by and birds making their nests. I wonder if there were any fireworks or wind blowing with amusement once they heard the first leaf fall.

I drunk the lemonade, not the kool-aid but lemonade for a while, sipped from the champagne glass as I vividly recall giving in to the tune with zest; yes, I did. Bought it cheap!

It was one furious nightmare that rented a space on my brain, free of charge; it made bed and wouldn’t let go. I dread its inner existence. Those fears were rampant and real. They would curl up through my vains, pervert my soul and take stock of it, parking themselves like automated rocket blasting through an open field. I mean, the thought of I walking around like a scarecrow with a tree popping out of my head, made the batman retreat into his cave in a jiffy. Nevertheless, it drove my bus.

I would patiently roomage through the fruit, painstakingly picking the seeds up, one by one, so none would see the daylight out of my stomach. It was a choreographed pungentry dance of fear, sans the horse off course, never witnessed.

I would play this dance religiously until I was grown enough to know better. I grew up and started reading, and the buzzer went off like that. I came to realize it was only a tattletale, an unpleasant story but how it came to be, is a mystery as the story itself; no one knows. I was told to, like countless other children and assumed it was common practice. Whatever it was, didn’t stop me from loving fruits. Like one annoyed rebellious child, I rolled out the dice, sprung to action and did just the opposite; I went for it and didn’t look back. I went for the fruits, so much so they are my muse, my meal, my zen, my handkerchief, my handbag. And as I was cutting an apple yesterday and came across this, I wondered if a tree would finally pop out of my head if I ate it. In the age of corona, it would perhaps be the perfect buffer.

Hello August 2020

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It is I looking at the universe and wondering were July has gone and who gave you permission to introduce yourself, August. Four months to the new year, I heard. Hello, glad you are here. Hope you brought some good news.

As if I could touch the ending, the invisible lane hoping all the burdens wiped away by the artist brush stroke, would be left at the curbside. As if all, one heavy, embroidered year that has been 2020 tidily arranged on a bucket of rocks and left by a construction site, would be done on earth as it is in heaven at the click of fingers. But as scripted on the book of life, stories will be told and carried over at turn of the page and dropped like one hot BBQ chicken coming off the grill. It is a given. It won’t just be discarded like an empty suit or used paper napkin at the dinner table. It will still be there sitting in a corner, dejected like a maggot waiting for another soul to devour and moons to touch.

We are all anxiously awaiting the death of the doom, the apple falling in the bright night bringing joy to pupils who wished the year was here today so, they could bless the freshly minted with a smile, cuddle it as their best toy and won’t let go. They hope to ring in the old glory that once stood. I hear hearts pumping, loud, louder, kicking and gesturing like a Radio City Rockettes but time is the essence, it will tell. It won’t be stingy but I suggest we invite faith to trail right along to easy up our burdens.

Pretending we have not, fake it isn’t but real it will be with scores of uncelebrated milestones, places to visit, family reunions to settle. Unless we are Him and we are not, handicapped by our own shortcomings we wait patiently with ease, unable to remove the entangled rope but sitting quietly at the beach, we hear the sounds of the boombox, the new wave majestically washing ashore, the page turner that will give us a new tune.

Miss Katherine

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Don’t call it a movie. A fib. A lie. Call it alive. Alive we are. Alive we will be, tomorrow is always here, a tale for the historians it is going to be. So, how you will tell the story to your grandchild, the script will dictate. Tomorrow!

Flicking through the three hundred sixty five pages New York Times bestseller, the title reads, when the world stopped, like a Broadway musical. An hand embroidered stitched letters on the back of a tablecloth.

It wasn’t me or you or they, it was us, all of us. It wasn’t black, white, brown, yellow, gray or pink, it was us. It wasn’t I speak Portuguese, you speak English, yo hablo Espanol, je parlais Francais, Io parlo Italiano, oh sorry no I don’t speak German; it was us. Yeah, who cares really?! It quivered. Who? What?! Us. The world. Stopped into complete oblivious, paralyzed from the waist down, naked like a prostitute on the corner street, baked like sweet potato left despondent on a dark alley by an unknown martian masquerading as Hercules.

The plot wasn’t without a hole but it was real. The town’s people were up and arms, mystified, ready to eat crow but came to their senses long enough to demand answers. Who in the name of the Holy Ghost could have committed such atrocity but it was too late. Hitting the break they couldn’t, the beast was already out driving like a drunken squirrel and stopping it, would have been as clever as trying to call a lifeline on who wants to be a millionaire. Huh?! Yup. A task. An episode. A job. Last I heard, whatever it was, took off line zippping down like Elon Musk spaceship leaving folks stranded on the banks of the river Jordan drum beating themselves to death. Who in the moon years would have the answer? But just like a flashlight, folks heard a cracked voice peeking through the bushes, turned around to see the town obnoxious chatty charley blabbing that miss Katherine might. She might, he said but why? “I don’t know, she might; cause she was the only one left boozenapping”, he replied.