Single Parent Adventures

A man gives birth to a pair of pliers.
The first thing that happens is his friends punching him in the arm and calling him "mommy", followed by snorts and guffaws.

Doctors repair his dignity and hand the pliers child to it.
The man's dignity gets its own apartment.
The man's friends deride his singleness, call him "Lonesome."

One night while fending off bro punches, the man's doorbell rings.
His pliers child is at the door, remarking that it never asked to be born.
The man phones his dignity, and is advised to deal with the situation himself--it is his dignity's kickboxing night.

Fleeing his friends, the man carries his pliers offspring out to the garage and hangs it on a pegboard with the other tools.
"Goodnight," he says, and closes the automatic door.

His dignity calls, as if it had eyes all the way across town.
"What kind of father are you?"
"I've tried to be both mother and father to the pliers," he begins,
but his drunken friends start swinging golf clubs inside the house. 
There is arguing, shouting, police involvement.
He hopes the pliers won't wake up, hear, and speak badly of him later to his dignity. 
_____

for "Let Us Labor" at dverse

Kicked

So I thought: I'm gonna agitate the gravel,
make like a banana and peel.
I musta had static in the attic;
Daddy's gonna flip when he sees what I done to the Roadmaster.

Oh geez, my leg's stuck under all that mess of metal--
I guess I'll have to leave it and come back or something. 
Not leaving my bags, though, oh hell naw.
Oomf, gawd they weigh a ton.

This sweater is cashmere, used to be yellow, now look at it.
And my head keeps boinging over to one side--
I must look like a real dope.
Mom's gonna have a cow. Whudja do to ya hair? Lookit ya clothes!

Maybe I should go knock on some square's door.
Hi, I'm dead, can I use your phone?
I gotta get somebody to come pick me up.
First ghost on the right! Oh girl, don't start actin' like a nosebleed.

So I wonder if Mom'll have me stuffed into a real churchy get-up
and have some Clyde get up there and say, yeah, she was an angel girl,
everybody loved her, life's gonna be a drag now.
Then cheesy organ music and shufflin' feet and dropped programs and stuff.

I wonder if it'll rain at the cemetery like it always does in the pictures?
My ankle biter little sis'll pitch a rose down on my coffin,
and crank crank crank down I'll go, like a big fat flower bulb.
In the spring maybe I'll pop up again, Ta da! Queen For A Day, what'd I win?

Johnny might write some retarded song about me, sit strummin'
with a tear in his eye, get a new girlfriend in about five minutes, if that.
My social life is over. At school I'll just be The Dead Car Wreck Girl.
Daddy's gonna blow his stack, Mom's gonna have kittens.
 
*sigh* Guess I'll start walking. Er, hopping. I really should've worn flats.
________

for my Fireblossom Friday challenge at Real Toads: Bang, You're Dead.

 

Reconsidering Liars

"Let there be light."
Did you think
He had it just lying around?
The sun, the stars....all made up.

Billy Robinson was an upstate New Yorker of Scottish ancestry,
a magician who reinvented himself
as Chung Ling Soo, Chinese conjurer,
ripping off most of his act from another vaudevillian.

His wife Suee Seen was really named "Dot." 
They weren't really married.
She was as American as he was.

Consider this:
"America" is a construct. 
You start with trees, bears and native tribes,
kill most of them, plant a flag and
Voila! America. Something that wasn't there before,
like a rabbit out of a hat.

You'll argue that it was there, just different,
like "your" card, now at the top of the deck every time,
fanned in the illusionist's hands.

Watch and learn, padewon.
Billy Robinson whipped lather in a mug and shaved off his moustache,
used greasepaint to darken his complexion,
threw on some bright Oriental robes,
and started banking the cash from the suckers who came for his act.

God would tell you,
ya gotta have a gimmick,
whether you call it Manifest Destiny or The Ten Commandments.
Billy's was a stunt he called "Condemned to Death by the Boxers."

Marked bullets were loaded into rifles wielded by stooges in costume;
the weapons were rigged not to fire,
but Chung Ling Soo would appear to catch the deadly missiles with a china plate.
However,
the sun and stars are slowly burning themselves out,
and the rifles became worn with cleaning.

Bam! Bam! And down went Billy, right there on stage.
"I've been shot," he said, in astonished perfect English.
You can look on Wikipedia today and find Chung Ling Soo's whole story.
Do you think that if he had stayed Billy,
kept his moustache,
and sold tam o' shanters in a shop all his life,
that anyone would remember him now?

Let there be light,
how ever it is made, and how ever far it has to travel
to get here.
________

Lizzie Borden

He cut himself shaving.
Yes, on the couch. He was cheap,
and bought those disposable things 
that are just a golden invitation to bloody accidents.

On the couch because he was too cheap to run any water.
Goodbye, horsehair sofa!
Now I can pitch that hideous thing.

No, you're right, that doesn't explain Mama.
Meteor shower, if you ask me, and you did. 
Through the open windows, of course.

Fall River, home of the snoopy neighbor
and the bigmouth gossip!
How am I supposed to live here, after this? I'm a victim.

Go on his computer, he had loads of enemies on Instagram.
They could have just blocked him!
No, it wasn't a murder, it was razors. You're confusing me.
Who does a girl have to kiss to get a Diet Coke around here?

That axe was already broken.
Bridget tried to chop down the equestrian statue in the town square with it.
Maybe she doesn't like horses, how should I know?
Hire bog Irish and that's what you get.

Look, do we have to do this right now?
I have a date for duckpins tonight.
(Mimicking the interviewer) "This is very important, Miss.
Seems like you'd want to clear this up, Miss."
I bet you don't get invited to many parties.

*sigh*
All he ever said was, "No, Lizzie. I forbid it, Lizzie."
Put a nickel in her and it was always "Listen to your father, Lizzie."
Now the cat's got his tongue,
wherever it is.

I have rights, you know.
I want a lawyer, one of those ones on tv 
that stands there and goes, "My client is innocent of these ludicrous charges,"
"This is a gross miscarriage of justice!"
and like that.

Maybe he stepped on a land mine.
Yes, in the middle of the parlor. 
There could be a rhinoceros standing there,
and Bridget would be all "Wut rin-aw-srus? You mean that wee horned thing?"
So, yes, a land mine. As if she'd take it out to the bins without being told.

I'm done here.
This isn't exactly CSI Fall River.
Your own people keep tromping through like a herd of retarded elephants,
every one of them a size twelve or better.
Anything that was here is gone.
Yes, including the razor.

See ya in the funny papers, Sherlock.
Oh don't look so down in the dumps.
I'll put a kick-starter thingie on my Facebook page 
to buy you a new magnifying glass.
Your eye will look THIS BIG when you look through it,
and then you'll see I didn't do it and you'll be all "So sorry, Miss," and I'll be like, whatever.
_______

 

Revenge

Her man didn't understand
about the ghosts she said she heard.
The knocks, the noises,
the whispering voices--
impossible. Absurd.

Her man didn't believe in anything
he couldn't hold in his hand.
Such a feckless
show-me skeptic--
such a fucking man.

What was the thing that scared the children,
made them leave their room?
A creaking beam,
a childish dream?
Or maybe, just the moon!

At the stairs he declared there was nothing there,
then was pushed from the back.
He split his head,
now he's dead--
that's just a natural fact. 
_____

for Kerry's "Superstition or Science?" challenge at Real Toads

Poor Werewolf

A wealthy werewolf wearing worsted and a Windsor tie,
wondered whether I'd witnessed a wench -- his wife.

I said, she whispered to me that she can't stand stubble--
which, for you, I think, means trouble.

On Wednesday last, she wandered by and slept
with me; and when the werewolf heard -- that worthy wept.
_____

for Marian's letter W prompt at Toads