oneword.com

I pay attention to the ratings scrupulously, because the opinions of others expressed in numerical fashion tell me exactly what I need to know to survive in a hostile world filled with terrorists and advertisements. I need to know satistically who it’s popular to bomb or buy.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 03.20.2012 @ 12:23 pm

Thirsty as a cactus under a winter moon, I pull up the canteen and unscrew the cap. The cool spirit of deliverance rises out of the small cistern, and I tip it back, sealing my lips to the rim so I won’t miss a drop. Flowing down my throat is the comfort of water, the pure blood of the earth.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.26.2011 @ 4:20 pm

If I wash away the thought of you, purge the image of your touch; if I melt the likeness of your smile into a puddle of nothing, crush the days in your gaze into a powder fine as dust; if I dismantle the monument of your voice and scatter the stones across the desert, will I be free?

Posted By Brian Slusher On 06.14.2010 @ 4:17 am

I think I will propel myself into the future by making a helmet of tin foil and antennae of chopsticks. I will use my swim goggles for protection from interstellar debris, and formulate a ray gun by taping a flashlight to a caulking stock. My ski boots should keep me from floating away.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.18.2010 @ 4:01 pm

You take it out of the box and dump his lumpy body and its parts onto the table. Apply ears, spectacles, a cowboy hat. Huge blue shoes. Then you roast him, just like the rest of us, in the FIRE OF LIFE. AND DON’T LET HIM CRY–there’s no plastic handkerchief.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.17.2010 @ 3:59 am

At the well I look into a deep and echoing dark that breathes of moss. I drop the bucket into that cool unknown and wait for the splash. I then pull hard on the rope to raise the delicious water that tastes of earth and contentment. It is heavy work, but made easier since it is pure fantasy, as I have never been to a well in this life.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.03.2009 @ 4:29 am

There is a skill to sweeping the floor. You must stroke the bristles across the surface with complete attention and a smooth movement. A good sweeper, watched from a distance, is as fluid as Fred Astaire, and the line of dirt at his feet a chorus of grace.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.02.2009 @ 6:38 am

After the first taste of tea, I didn’t understand why nations had made such a fuss about it, throwing it into harbors, dressing up and serving it in fancy rituals, making it some kind of super sip for the rigid of lip. But in time, I have come to relish it’s bitter beauty, especially with a pound of sugar added.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.01.2009 @ 3:46 am

I dislike the way I sit here trying to think up clever things. It isn’t natural for a man to stare at a keyboard and pretend interesting stuff is happening and typing it out for somebody to read. Then the page turns into a cannon and BOOM! there’s a ragged new window on the world.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.30.2009 @ 3:48 am

However glossy the image may be, I never expect the picture to be what it claims. Yes, there may be a plump child of five sitting in a rocker hugging a white teddy bear and smiling hugely. But look closer. Yep, there it is. Lurking beneath the shine–a skull.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.29.2009 @ 3:46 am

Hearing the waltz from across the street, I thought about my feet. They had spent so much of my life just getting me to a job, a meeting, to a gray location where I would stare mindlessly. I felt compassion for my feet then. They worked so hard, they deserved a waltz! But they wanted to go to the beach instead, so we quarreled and ended up just going home.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.28.2009 @ 3:44 am

I try to be gentle with myself, after the thrashing I gave me back in the 6th grade. I caught myself coming out of school and I said “Sissy-boy, come here!” I tried to run, but I’m very fast, and I caught myself by the collar and landed a solid punch on my nose. Blood everywhere, I said to myself sprawled on the ground, “NOW you know who is boss!”

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.27.2009 @ 3:29 am

Recall the letters with the X’s and O’s. Resend the small ring with the idiot diamond. Take back the memories of the beach-front hotel with the squeaking bed. Tell all songs with the word “forever” to get back to the laugh factory that penned them. Because it’s all defective. And dangerous.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.26.2009 @ 4:14 am

According to Cutout magazine, there are many ways to please your significant other. Household shadows can be sewn together into a handsome couch cover. Leftovers can be converted into sandbag filling to stem the rising river. And if you stand on your head, a frown can be transmuted to platinum.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.25.2009 @ 4:04 am

One mode of coping to mortality is to scream like a siren and wave your arms in a cyclonic motion. Another is to take up a clipboard and start making small notes with a green pen. I like to dress in a chicken suit and dance to ragtime piano. All of these methods are appropriate and ineffective.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.24.2009 @ 4:18 am

Even after my last death, I’m still attracted to ladders. I work to overcome my addiction to rising, but it’s hard to conquer the desire to get above whatever is at eye level, and canyons depress me. That’s why I fear writing: the swoops of ink, the way the T’s ascend so brazenly!

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.16.2009 @ 4:04 am

He was tired. He had been up for countless hours, staring st the TV above the chairs. He decided to wander into the parking lot , just to move. Outside the clinic, he heard a loud bang in the distance, and he barely turned in its direction. “That,” he thought, “is that.” And it was.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.15.2009 @ 10:49 am

Looking at the meter, I was confused by the tick marks that defined the percentage I had used my life. I referred to the manual and foundered among the full-color diagrams, but all I could fathom was I was low to a certain degree and needed to expand, like the universe.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.14.2009 @ 4:29 am

There are many offers I have entertained. One had to do with captaining a raft across the Indian Ocean. Another was predicting which apple would fall into a lake. Perhaps the most attractive involved re-telling the Odyseey so that a fly could understand it. I got halfway into the first line when my audience buzzed off.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.13.2009 @ 6:22 am

My favorite scene in Romeo and Juliet is The Balcony Scene, where Romeo comes out of the scented bushes and declares his love. And then Juliet, startled, pulls out a rocket-propelled grenade and fires into the darkness. Then, after the blast, she finds a shred of his tights and mouths “Whoa!”

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.11.2009 @ 5:21 am

At dusk, I sometimes sit on the front porch and watch the lawn dissolve from its solid green into countless blades of grass. Then these grasses are spread with a chocolate smoothness, so gently I miss the moment when they disappear again, swallowed in night. Then I say “See you soon, Uncle Walt” and dissolve, too.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.10.2009 @ 3:59 am

Of all the channels I’ve watched, I have never found one that transmits the programming I crave. I have seen nudity, profundity, even a talking horse, but what I really want to see on the screen is the moment when the spirit leaves the body. Not some hokey projection or superimposed nimbus. I want to see the essence ascend triumphant!

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.09.2009 @ 3:55 am

From where she stands, the drop seems infinite. She can’t even see the bottom, the shadows have filled in the chasm so completely. She slips one shoe off and nudges it over the rim. It glides into the silent emptiness like a size-six prayer.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.08.2009 @ 3:46 am

If I were in charge of the last dollar, I would hold it up to the light and peer into its foliage until I discovered the last unicorn living within its green preserve. With a pocketful of sugar cubes, I would walk towards its ivory horn, right through Washington’s wig, and disappear.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.07.2009 @ 3:55 am

I try to avoid thinking about winning. I laugh as the game progresses, look away from the score card and hum. The problem is the laurel of victory hovers before my eyes each time I roll the dice, and if that crown were made of barbed wire, I would still want to screw it onto my head.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.06.2009 @ 2:59 am

Let’s pretend we are firemen. I’ll get the hose out of the yard, and you pots from the kitchen we can use as helmets. We’ll get the ladder in the shed and run around the house screaming like sirens. Then I can carry the dog to safety and you can give him mouth to mouth. No, you!

Posted By Brian Slusher On 05.04.2009 @ 3:52 am

In the corner of the yard, something flutters. I walk towards the forsythia bushes, to get a closer look, but nothing. Then I see another wiggle in the air to the right, by the daffodils. I run this time, but nothing. I’m beginning to think I’m going nuts, then a yellow spring of wings scribbles just past my nose, and my heart flutters.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.04.2009 @ 11:09 am

If you use finger paints right, they will cloud into whirls of amazing surprise, and the colors will mingle like strangers at a great party but they won’t get lost in each other, and they’ll settle into a beautiful conversation about the way dogs sing in the rain. And be sure to say Goodnight to the host with only a rainbow fingerprint.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.03.2009 @ 3:57 am

If I had a purse, it would have a clasp like a vise, and I would want it covered with big spikes, each filed to an extreme point, jutting out from it at all angles, even from the handle, so it would jab me as I walked and remind me how rich I am.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.02.2009 @ 5:19 am

The level I aspire to is beyond the reach of a rocket, within the scope of a hopping ant, near the height of a dancing dinosaur, around the edge of a frantic accident, below the needs of a happy glacier, and just close enough to be unaccessibly adorable.

Posted By Brian Slusher On 04.01.2009 @ 4:47 am