Cacophony

Hey, it's crowded in here. 
I've got one's scaly dry elbow in my ribs
and another's Manolo Blahniks on my toes.

What? What? Speak up.
Tell me which one you want and I'll try to find her. 
Goddess knows if she'll be available, presto, just like that, though.

Whoa, back way the hell up.
Is that any way to talk to a child?
Okay, now you're patronizing me. I'm not twelve anymore.

Come and get it, sugar.
No wait, don't. I'm to old for this.
My parents are always telling me what to do, and now you.

Wait...what? I'm having trouble concentrating.
Talk to one, another might grab the mic and riff. Check it out:
the 754 ages of woman all talking at once behind my calm smile.
_________

for Sunday Muse #73.

Fermi LeBouche

Fermi LeBouche killed his wife. 
It was done thus:
"Here's what I think..."
"What you have to understand is..."
"So I told them..."

Neighbors noticed she seemed unhappy.
Then tormented.
Then dead.

One look at her lying there, bleeding from her ears
was all the gendarmes needed.
Fermi was arrested, tried and sentenced to the guillotine. 

"Monster!" cried the crowd.
Down came the awful blade. 
Someone grabbed Fermi's head from the basket.
"In my opinion...."
"Let me tell you something..."
"What you don't understand is..."

Fermi LeBouche's head kept talking.
It criticized the executioner's methods.
It held itself blameless for the death of Mrs. LeBouche.
It told a series of very tired old jokes and laughed itself giddy.

Month after month, his head kept talking.
"Why, in my day..."
"That reminds me of the time I..."
"If you want to know what I think..."
Finally, a soldier returning from the wars was riding on a wagon 
with Fermi LeBouche's endlessly loquacious noggin.
On and on, opinion after opinion,
story after story,
unsought advice after unsought advice.

They say that Fermi's last words were
"You can't kill Fermi LeBouche with that little thing..." 
but though he never admitted it,
he was badly mistaken.
________

for Camera FLASH!

 

MIDWEST-4-2313

The woman who wouldn't stop talking
caused the telephone to kill itself.
For weeks after that, the operator stalked the talking woman,
fantasizing about pushing her in front of a train or a bus,
and the disturbing glee she would feel--
the drug rush of wonderful silence.

Day after day, the operator imagined scenes of accident,
murder,
the stupid woman strangled with her own tongue.

However, a repairman began paying attention to the operator.
He brought her movie tickets and hard candies;
he admired her to no end, and rarely spoke.
After months of quiet dinners and good manners at the cinema,
he tried something. She let him.

In the intimacy of afterwards, she began to confide in him.
She told him that ivy was her favorite plant, crows her favorite bird.
Further, she confessed her hatred of the talking woman to him,
and how she had been following her and planning cold-blooded murder.
He said nothing, and she loved him for it.

Unfortunately, the repairman never came by for her again.
Her number disappeared from every directory in the city,
and moving men came to take her bed away to the lunatic asylum.
With no place to sleep, and no man to confide in, she began to pace,
muttering to herself all night. 

Desperate and cracking, she appeared late one evening at the talking woman's door.
"May I use the phone?"
The woman only gaped at her, finally saying simply, "It's dead,"
but that should have been obvious, given the repair truck at the curb,
parked there for so long that ivy had begun to wind itself possessively around the axles.
______

Dialed up for Magpie #274

Rich In Words

I am rich in words,
but words are shadows.

Every beautiful thing I can twist out of nothing
is just the fuck-you of a joke prayer.

The lens of the eye is a bald liar--
refraction masquerading as color,
upside down on the back of the brain

like love, like sky 
the blue-black
of rotting
card sharps.
_________

What the fox said

Rooster guarded his white brides;
strutted 'round the yard with pride.
Cockadoodle-doo, Rooster,
cockadoodle-doo.

Fox said, "Rooster, let me in.
Let Fox Confessor hear your sins.
Let me save your soul, Rooster,
let me save your soul."

Fox and bird went off alone.
Fox ate meat, spit out the bones.
"Never sin again, Rooster.
Now, where are those hens?"
______

this was meant to be for Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads, but I blew the 43 word limit, ending up with 59. Even G Man would say I overdid it!