Babe – /bāb/

1.) A description.

a.) Look at that babe, she’s out of my league.

2.) Term of endearment. Personally preferred over the childlike ‘baby’

a.) Hey babe, I missed you.

b.) Can you please make me some coffee, babe?

Ball and chain – /ˌbôl (ə)n ˈCHān/

1.) Playfully derogatory name for the wife. Occasionally used in jest, usually when under the influence, never intentionally in her presence.

a.) Best I call it a night and head home to the ol’ ball and chain.

The crocodile isn’t very adept at hunting, but when deer flock in fear, forever ignoring that lonely spot, outside, that could have saved them, what will save them?

Once upon a time it did not occur to the Aristotles, the cherries on top of all the intelligentsia, of the horrors of slavery. On the contrary it was deemed to be a necessity. They read more books than me. Wrote more books than me. Thought way more than me. But am I to judge?

Buddha, twenty five years after ‘enlightenment’ could only reluctantly allow a woman within his Sangha.

The earth used to be flat. The world fashioned into a globe at the expense of a dead body upon which stands the church of science.

Once upon a time we fed warriors to lions dragged out of jungles. For Royal entertainment.

What and who has made us less sadistic? Not more books surely. Not the intelligentsia surely. Who are the deer amongst us that drive us towards the spot no crocodile or tiger can reach? Who are these saviors? How do they see what a hundred years of contemplation by a dozen geniuses have missed?

Please answer the following questions with as little forethought and as much plain truth as you can muster. Be quick and be bold! There are no wrong answers, only tedious detours on the road to self-awareness.

For what celebrity, performing artist, dance show contestant, or professional athlete are you most frequently mistaken?

Do you allow family members to define you, and complete strangers to criticize your core beliefs, or do you shrug and go your merry way?

Ignoring for the moment issues related to stretch fabric and muscle mass, what is your secret superpower?

What historical figure—coloratura soprano, pro-bono defense lawyer, reclusive spinster poet, eccentric scientist, tragic queen, or victorious general—is your go-to guy?

Where do you find inspiration—the play of dappled sun and shade, a mighty oak, clouds like sheep that ramble across the sky, a green tendril, the sound of waves that crash on the beach, the written word, or the toothless smile of a newborn baby?

The rough hemp noose gives another inch. Your bruised trachea crackles. Smells old and strong. Dipped and cured in some furious nutritive. You know the taste. The local intoxicant of kerosene and turpentine. It grows wild on the outskirts. Not even. The fraction of. The numbest hollow of breath. The muscles in your lungs tighten at instinct. Force them apart. Leave a gap and tighten. Your handler whoever they are tonight or today. You can’t tell how many days or hours has past. Hesitates with a private knowledge. The low necrotic murmur of his laugh. Private enough for you. Tightens in your bowels. You know this knowledge of the grasp, the subtle trust of the fingers. The flicker of gloved fingertips that stay to long across the skin that says they know. The flexible skin along the back of your throat hungered pulled and buckled. But buckles the rope to the strangle collar. Its weight makes you buckle your knees. Don’t buckle them. Pull your back straight. But the luscious breath like dark lurid wine. The pressure like wet rust, like a gentle tourniquet. The sigh trapped deep in the throat cannot rise. You couldn’t force it out. 

One day I remember walking down to Seaton’s, the corner drugstore, to pay the utility bills, slow summer day, rather long letter to post, the air out salubrious somehow I can’t now seem to explain, yet a lugubrious senescence settles over me as on my walk I feel myself aging.

I waited at Seaton’s small post office window for the clerk Amelia to weigh and post my letter, and I also purchase a half page of stamps. “Drugstore Cowboy commemorative page,” Amelia smiles.

I then browsed the aisles for knickknack knockoffs, picked up a last-second gift card, and waited to watch a strawberry malt whipped up for a little girl, the pink stuff spilled from hand held lade ladles handled delicately – Amelia’s vessels of oak and wool woven sails as she spun the concoction. Here again I feel a portage of age from one bondage portal to my next epochal position.

In other words, I felt upside down, the company store closed, and caught up in Gas, Oil, Electric, Water, and Phone Bills, living in an age of fossil-fuel habits, in a diseased society. Ridden in and on, no cure here, piece of the old neighborhood, now dead letter drugstore while drone dreary mosquitoes fill the air with gewgaw.