Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

The sky is falling!

Or actually, the sky fell.

Yesterday it fell through my ceiling,

Landing square on my slug bug.

Ice from an airplane experts said.

I say the sky’s playing games with me,

And he never said no tag-backs.

Though she’s not my husband, nor even my lover,

she’s an heir to a special part of my heart.

I know she’s alive,

but the distance that separates us is an ocean,

and it takes far too long to sail home.

My suitors are not but worries, anxieties, fears

that visit me every morning and every evening.

I know the moment she comes home they’ll flee

like dust in the four winds.

I fear she faces many trials and monsters harm in women’s clothing,

and that she will come home one day,

but I want her home today.

They covered their eyes in the bright sunlight, forgetting how such light could sting after so much darkness. Every color, every smell, every sound overwhelmed their senses, but they didn’t dare go back. Five long months the two of them had spent in isolation cells, and the wash of faces and bodies shattered them to the core. Still, they held hands, so they would not be separated again.

Five months of watching personality cult propaganda, five months of pacing around their cells, five months of losing time. Now time was theirs. Now the world was theirs. As for their souls, they had forfeited those long ago to the one Person the government could confiscate them from.

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, also titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn’t dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

“Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it’s broken.”

He swore. “the shop’ll be closed in the mornin’.”

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

“Santa” checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad’s gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.

I left the vestiges of my thoughts on the branches of the trees,

Some of my memories linger on the gold and ruby leaves.

Though my feet stand still on concrete floors,

My mind wanders through emerald greens.

My nose breathes in the air within this cramped room,

but I only smell the crisp air in the fields.

I turn my head, and I swear I feel the autumn wind

stirring the ends.

Soon my body will be reunited with my mind,

Soon.

“I opened my eyes and looked up at the rain

And it dripped into my head,

And flowed into my brain.”

Shel Silverstein

Every step sounds like a waterfall.

Every stop a crashing shoreline.

I feel like I need a towel

every time I nod,

and a bucket every time I shake my head.

So, don’t ask me another yes or no question,

or end this twenty question game.

Truth or Dare, then?

I’ll tell you the truth,

I’ll never look up at the rain again.

The windows thought they knew what rain sounded like,

They did not know it sounded like men falling from the sky,

Quiet men in trench coats, ties, and bowler hats,

Standing straight up like pins,

So they’d fall that much harder,

Staring off into space as if falling from the sky

Was a perfectly normal way to go to work.

What does tomorrow taste like? Does it taste like ripe strawberries from the garden? Does it taste like sour grapes?

Does it taste like rainbows? Like clouds? Like crisp mountains? Like fertile valleys?

Or goes it sour at the sound of war, like milk past the expiration date? Does it lose its flavor like hard-headedness? Like a love forgotten?

What does tomorrow taste like? Do I decide?

Is a house of kaleidoscopes,

Solid colors,

Stairs and stairs and stairs, that sometimes lead nowhere but

Down.

Windows always show partly cloudy days,

And a living room is nothing more

Than a stepping stone

To exploration.

At least one room is filled to the brim with balls,

But I’ve yet to discover Randall Munroe.

And the neighborhood?

Don’t even get me started.

When I add a cat to a thunderstorm, I’m supposed to get a wet cat, right? This time I didn’t. She’s been shedding like crazy, long after the storm’s over. I think something’s up, something…unusual.

Cat’s have always given me the impression that they know more than they let on. They’ll argue with me over the weather, but when I try to get their attention, they’ll just wiggle their ears as if the reception’s bad. Then they’ll take naps on my lap like they care about nothing else, and then suddenly they’ll interject their commentary into my conversation.

Do they really hate each other like they imply when they hiss at each other? Do they have secret meeting places? Dry ones? Force fields?

Perhaps, they’ve kept it a secret all along. I think they’re from another planet. That has to be it. Cats, my friends, are aliens.