Spell of Invisibility

Photo credit: Image by loulou Nash from Pixabay

to become unseen first remove your clotheen
this spell does not work on your tutu or muumuu

if you’re a kid don’t you dare become bare
spells come from hell so you have messed up
get back dressed up

now that you grownups are naked it’s time to get bak-ed
find some prime chronic and smoke it like tonic

repeat that last step, beth, but this time with meth
now crunched, dude, you got to get krunked

repeat that last step, bloke, but this time with coke
now blowed, vato, you got to get throwed

and now you’re ready to go, baby
and i don’t mean maybe

walk out on the street
go on
no one can see you
but take it slow, bro

note: avoid invisibility cloaks. your feet hang out.

for Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest

Trapped In My Ancient Fear

When I was very young, I had a fear of incarceration. Shown above is a photo of me essaying an early escape. I believe that this fear stemmed from a previous life. When I was leafing through an old magazine as an adult, the following advertisement struck a deep chord in me.

Yes, I was a cockroach in my previous life! If it was good enough for Kafka, it’s good enough for me. (Although, to be precise, Kafka told us he was an ungeheures Ungeziefer or “monstrous vermin.”)

Yes, a cockroach, probably trapped in a roach hotel or motel, and then next a baby human locked up in a crib, my parents turning me onto my back all the time, which happened to Kafka as well.

Strangely, I’m only at peace now, at night, sleeping in an adult-sized crib and crawling over the bars and out to the kitchen tofind a snack. If my wife turns on the light in the kitchen, I scuttle back to bed.

My wife, to give her credit, was good-natured about this ancient fear all through our honeymoon.

for Go Dog Go Cafe Tuesday Writing Prompt

Your Restaurant Reviews…

…in 100 words!

Hello, again. Today we’re in Paris, to review the oldest restaurant in town!

No, not Le Precope, opened in 1686 in the present 6th arrondissement. Instead we visit Le Trou Dans Le Mur, opened in 1466! Enter through a hard-to-find hole in a wall in the neighboring 5th arrondissement on the city’s oldest street, Rue Saint Jacques. Take care; there is road construction going on.

Here you will find four tables, attended to by a Vietnamese family of eleven. I recommend the Cuisses de grenouilles, so fresh they must have just hopped out of the Siene… More in next 100 words.

for 100 Word Wednesday

smile

not to be recursive or meta, and i’ll only do this once, and i’m probably not the first, but writing this first thing on a nice monday morning is making me smile.

for The Weekly Smile

Going To Sea

Walter leaned way over the table.

“Sign me up!” he said, his words weighted with emotion.

“How much do you weigh?” the recruiter asked.

“Not enough to weigh you down. Come on, I want to be in uniform when you weigh anchor.”

“So what do you weigh in at? You look like you weigh a ton. That can weigh against you. Be honest. Weigh your words. I’ll weigh my decision accordingly.”

“Look, believe it or not, I’m on a whey diet.”

“That weighs in your favor. Our cook is always looking for a way to get rid of his excess whey. He serves a lot of curds to the crew.”

“Way out. Any way you slice it, I want in. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way the wind blows. Get me in any which way. And by the way, by way of explanation, I was born this way.”

“Son, you’re doing this interview the hard way but I’m going to give way and let you get your way because we’re short a man and we’re about to get under way and we’re going in harm’s way.”

“Wait, what?”

for Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Going Back

my dad was on parole
which was a rigamarole

then he goofed up
but then he fessed up

and back he went to the Big House
quiet as a mouse

i know how he felt, it was a bummer
like with me at the end of each summer

for The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest

Family

Marcia and Andrew were not getting along; their marriage seemed to be lacking something.

Their therapist, the nose-ringed, tatted, red-haired Tatiana, made a suggestion, which worked beautifully for their relationship.

They adopted.

for Three Line Tales

tainted air

“Come in, my boy,” said Professor Goldbaum. “I have a new invention to show you.”

He indicated the gramophone sitting on his workbench.

“We have one of those,” I said. “Lots of people do.”

“I’ve added something to mine,” he said. “I’ve told you before that the air is full of words and music. This machine can pull them out.”

“How do the words and music get into the air?”

“People in the future put them there. My discovery of time-overlap allows me to grab them. Listen.”

He strode to his machine, twiddled knobs and levers, and suddenly a talking-and-singing voice filled the room.

The voice was harsh and annoying. So were the words:

“Marco got that big blast
When I blow it at your back
You don’t got a xxxx-xxxxxx chance
A full clip up so close flame touch you
Colors, uh huh, ragged up, uh huh, how I live
Call a Lyft with my piece
With a xxxx MAC-10 we jus’ do this
Claim they killing xxxxx while I really xxxxxxx do it.”

“Geez, Professor,” I say. “Can’t we just listen to your Au clair de la lune again?

photo: https://morguefile.com/creative/GaborfromHungary/47/all _DSC7987
for FLASH FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER

First Contact

Here’s a photo of the first alien to contact earth – presenting himself as a dude with long blond hair and noticeable hips. A Viking effect.

We see him standing in front of the US DOD Intergalactic Message Board, which has been designed to facilitate communication between the Free World’s military and whichever extraterrestrials, using binary code. We are told that after studying the board for some minutes, the alien, named by the press “Eric the Blond,” requested that in addition to all the 0s and 1s, we begin using some 2s.

for Twittering Tales

Water

Water is stable. It can sit comfortably in liquid form, unemployed, for ten billion years, unchanged, given an agreeable environment.

Contaminates may intrude, but that’s not the water’s fault. There may be leaching, but blame that on the oxygen atoms in the water molecules. Nature not nurture.

Water changes to steam betimes, or ice. Waters of this planet, naturally phlegmatic, may be incited to violence by the moon or coriolis force or a cliff that must be plunged from. However, perhaps the only example of mischievous waters are those that replace their protium hydrogen isotopes with deuterium, creating the amusing “heavy water.”

for GO DOG GO CAFÉ TUESDAY WRITING PROMPT CHALLENGE