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5 September, 2013

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fiction, prose, writing

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The Metal Man

The Metal Man by Khao Pete (deviantArt)

The Metal Man
JCD Kerwin

The metal man walked sideways, as if he had a perpetual limp, but there was nothing inhibited about his movements; his right leg was simply longer than its counterpart.

He came from outer space, they say. Long ago he landed in the corn and trampled his way to the tavern. He nodded as if to say “hello.” The townspeople blinked, but they never cast him out.

He would stand at the edge of town, his great metal arms lifted high to the heavens, and wait for the stars. Sometimes he would moan; a small rumbling in the back of his metal throat. They say he was calling home. No one ever replied; no distant travelers, no metal men in metal spaceships, no one. He was lost.

That is what they say.

The townspeople were not unkind, but they would walk on the other side of the street when the metal man was near. He was…alien. His only friends were the birds that perched atop his hard shoulders when he waited in the night. When the weather was bad, he would stay in the hay barn and listen to the horses whinnying. He would watch their breaths dance in the cold.

Over time, the metal man watched the town change. He would walk the road and notice familiar faces were gone, replaced by new ones. Time moved slowly, like him, and all the while he stretched his arms to the sky.

The metal man realized he would never return home. So he walked where he had landed—a cornfield once, but now reclaimed by a deep wood—and reached his metal arms to the stars. He waited. And when it began to rain he did not move to the hay barn; instead, he stood and listened as the drops echoed off his body.

He thought of the town that had changed; the townspeople who were kind but did not care; his home that he would never see. He stared all night at the stars and listened as rain beat against him and the world.

When they found the metal man he was rusted, suspended; a resting place for the birds of the forest. To this day he remains in the deep wood. His arms are still raised to the heavens; his eyes fixated on the stars.

They say he is calling home.

(September, 2013)

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15 July, 2013

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fiction, prose, vignette, writing

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Mister Beauregard

Photo courtesy http://www.netcarshow.com

Mister Beauregard
JCD Kerwin

Mister Beauregard has no heart. He keeps an antique, silver watch just above his breast coat pocket, just above his heart, so that the tick-tick-tocking mimics the thump-thump-bumping of a normal man’s heart.

He drives a Chevelle‘69, just to pass the time, as he listens to the tick-tick just above his breast bone, just across his chest, in his powder-blue, Chevy ’69. It’s leftover from the times he drove ‘till sunrise on the strip; ‘till he drove all night chasing phantoms in his vision while he looked at Mars. Now he sees shadows when he stares; he sees clouds when he knows it should be Heaven in the stars.

His eyes are made of glass, they say, because to buy his poor wife’s ashes he had to give his real ones both away. Her ashes sit near the magazines he never reads, and by the urn that keeps the fattest tabby you’d have ever seen. Its name was Max and it chased cedar waxwings in the yard.

He smokes cigars when he drives so far, and the smoke curls like clouds along the Sunset Boulevard. He dreams he’s somewhere that’s neverwhere and notquitehere because he can’t quite see or hear the ticking of reality the rest of us all breathe and fear. He’s someone else who isn’t here; someone who is nevermore…the ghost of Mister Beauregard.

(March, 2012…although I could’ve sworn it was older.)

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5 July, 2013

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Philosophizing Neon Words

Paul Valery said, “Poems are never finished, just abandoned.” I think that applies to at least half my prose. I write stuff like the nonsense below thinking it somehow looks like a completed piece of work in the end. Maybe it does in some ridiculous metaphorical drunken haze. (Check that, maybe that’s how I wrote it to begin with.)

Maybe all my writing is really poetry in prose clothing. I wonder, then, if all writers are really poets no matter how hard they try not to be? All writers are dreamers, after all. Are all dreamers poets? Are they one in the same? That isn’t to say poets are more “dreamy” than prose writers. I’m thinking out loud. Because I’m a thinker. I’m a philosophicalizer. I like to make up words. Words are fun.

Neon City Lights by dazstudios (flickr)

Neon Daguerreotype
JCD Kerwin

I smell like cigarettes and I’ve got a foul after-taste of something I can’t quite place. I’ve been sitting outside this painted neon disco for far too many hours, watching the wind-up toys move by for one more night.

I frown at the lights and listen to robotic laughter. It’s two a.m. and I watch people break through my vision like I’m flipping through photographs. I miss the way you used to laugh.

I’ve got your picture permanently etched into my memory. I think about it on these kinds of nights, waiting for the scene to turn real. Until it does, I’ll be watching these robots, pretending one of them becomes you.

(Nov. 2011)

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1 July, 2013

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fiction, prose, vignette, writing

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Ink Trails

Now that I read this, I’m not at all fond of it. Even after revising the thing, it is, quite frankly, shite. (But isn’t that how we always think of our stuff?)

My paper boat by Aljaz Toman (sharkowskixchaos on devaintART)

Ink trails
JCD Kerwin

We used to sleep ‘till noon on Sundays because on Saturday nights we drowned in Manhattan, drinking each other under the city moon. Just tasting you made me an alcoholic.

You missed Louisiana and crayfish. I promised to take you back to wooden bridges and hot summer days as soon as I finished chasing my dreams. You never waited. I lost you where my eyes turned violet in the dark; the place we watched the stars all night and dreamed we weren’t at all that small.

We made origami from newspapers that belonged to homeless men who died upon the streets.

I remember paper boats in the distance and laughing in the night. We never listened to voices that told us Forever might someday end.

I watched you drift away on our paper ship; I watched you sink and fade, soggy to the sea. Paper ink floated with your hair while your smile became lost among the Funnies.

Now I stand on skyscrapers, sending paper airplanes into the city-sea. I watch them sail away with every memory of you.

(Nov. 2011)

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23 June, 2013

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fiction, prose, writing

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Crumbs of Caffeine

Black coffee by Erik Witsoe (www.facebook.com/ErikWitsoePhotography)

Black, cinnamon flavored
JCD Kerwin

I imagine I’m drinking you, as if you’re made of the magic I find in bottomless cups of bitter black at six a.m. when I’m in Zombieland. I remember you as every bold drop plays against my tongue. I remember the way your eyes looked like saucers; dark brown, brown-black, blackish black: eight o’clock irises. I drink you in the mornings when birds want me to smile; I drink you late at night when moonlight begs me to dream.

I will make memories of you crumble like coffee cake.

(June, 2013)