ROMANCE AT SHORT NOTICE
© 1997 NIN

My day yawned like a verbiage; it stretched just as bad. The marauding rays of sunshine have started to quell the remains of the night. Morning and I have never been in good terms all these excruciating years - it behaves like a thing which unbearability is grandiloquent - happiness. I dislike Morning because it stops my night, and it retaliates by repeating the very arbitrary action over and over just to get me mad. Hatred is the only thing alive when all else have been put into symmetrical decay. We always need some kind of icing for this cake named Life.

The insincerity of the dry season kicked me into bouts of melancholic longing for the rapacious monsoon. The azure tiles of the bathroom reflected sunshine as stoically as soldiers marching on a hillside with those heavyweight backpacks. Outside, breakfast was some deceased poultry and a moody cup of coffee. I tried to munch to the tunes of Stairway to Heaven and a volume of detective stories in my hand and an absence of consciousness - but the latter is a thing that doubles up its obstinacy to stay whenever it detects your intention to get it dismissed. I failed. On top of that, two houses away a revered parrot was jumped at by my cat. I spent the rest of the hours preceding noontide arguing senselessly about the merits of Reason against the bird's owner, who was entirely devoid of even some uncommon commonsense.

The borderland of the brain, where all monsters are made, then became quite vacant when the clock stroke twelve. I contemplated upon the beautiful aspects of Life that the bird and the cat have pulled me away from - my bottles of floor cleaning agents. I felt distinctly like gates that are not found on their hinges. I tried to objurgate the growing anger by pouring a second cup of coffee over it.

Disillusionment turned the computer on. I was told to write something indecently bordering on Love; I turned my head inside out and still could find none. The occlusion of my mind on its own account whenever we came to this subject was as reliable as Morning is to obviate the night. I sat there thinking of the hum of the processor and the auburn ingredient of the mug and the glowing end of the cigarette and the miauw of the cat and the seven percent of pine oil on the floor and I couldn't connect any of them in any way to anything that is any time called Love. I sat there brooding and the blank screen blinking and at last the first signs of an upcoming darkness obtruded.

Dusk might be the hour of the defeated, but under the mutilating sway of an end of a day I caught a glimpse of a firefly - one that has no need for Edison surely is a champ in whichever possible world.

And I went to bed wearing nothing but contempt. It was a fanatically hot night.

ABOUT THE MORROW
© 1996 NIN

Somehow the night air seemed too satisfied with itself. It kicked every other thing's butts. Friday has never been so cocky.

"Will you cry for me if I die?" Roman asked.

"I can't," Laban said. "Nothing personal."

"You can't?"

"Sorry," Laban said.

Roman let his eyes fly, riding the smoke that danced wildly starting from the tip of his cigarette. Foggy thoughts went through the gangway somewhere inside his head. They must have their genesis, Roman hazily wondered. Only where, what? The rain has stopped, leaving burnt sienna pools here and there along the dirt road. He hated rainy season.

Frail heads were safely asleep. The nightwatch, though, still had to brave several more biting hours before daybreak.

"Wish I were home," Laban said to nobody.

Roman wished he were, too. Only he wasn't sure where home was.

"Funny that it rains and you sit here. You always slept with her when it rained," he said to Laban.

"Your mushy head," Laban retorted lazily. "How's she doing, by the way?"

"Fine. I guess."

"She'll cry when you die, if that means anything," said Laban. "She cries for whatever comes her way."

A glimpse of a spectral wife for a second took place in both heads. Roman's wife -- or so both called the little woman with long hair streaming down her back, a little brain populated by nothing they could understand. Suddenly the rain hit the thin roof again. Like mad cats trying to eat each other.

Roman tossed the burning cigarette to the water.

"I guess I'd better go," he said.

Laban didn't move an inch. He studied his own right thumb as if it were the most interesting object found on an archaeological site.

"Tomorrow," Roman said, looking at the rain.

"See ya," said Laban.

His eyes briefly followed Roman's back that got wet as the man walked slowly across the mud and slicing the curtain of water. With an almost automatic gesture he touched the knife he has been holding all night.

Tomorrow either he or Roman would not go back alive. Just for the little woman with the long hair who was probably crying already that night.

DISCOUNT
© 1994 NIN

"Darn!" Mr. Benyamin shouted out loud. Mr. Nurdin, squatting at the other side of the fence, weeding his garden, almost got his little heart leaping to the soil. Both of them were already beyond the exciting age in life. Two post-middle-aged men, loved gardening, nothing much else to do, only tranquil mornings and Sunday is everyday.

"Sorry, old pal," Mr. Benyamin looked at his friend sheepishly. "I'm a little irritated."

"Anything wrong with the kids?" asked Mr. Nurdin.

"Kids? Nothing. Nothing new, anyway. I was thinking of their mother!" Mr. Nurdin leaned on the fence and got himself ready for a private conference. Mr. Benyamin regretted the fact that he had kindled the neighbor's curiosity, but he couldn't hold himself back. "I'm driving her to the shopping mall this afternoon," he said.

"I see," said Mr. Nurdin.

The spoken words were so clearly full of a mutually understood meaning that Mr. Benyamin thought he actually saw them italicized across the fence. He sighed.

"Those darn shops," Mr. Nurdin said, melancholy crept into his bones, "And the discount offers....."

".....A whole day of hell...." said Mr. Benyamin. ".....an empty purse and a long way back home!" Mr. Nurdin said.

They shared the silence for a while, ruminating, for the millionth time. "Women," Mr. Benyamin said, thinking if he had the word italicized and/or underlined as he had wanted his friend to decode it. "Women," Mr. Nurdin echoed. And his word was audibly carrying across the exasperation. Mr. Benyamin hated the fact that he couldn't master this skill.

"I bought dozens of socks and a new pair of pants and God knows what other useless things last week when she took me to the mall," Mr. Benyamin said. "What a curse being a husband of a woman who shops."

"Oh, you should see what I got at the end of last month," Mr. Nurdin said. "Splash cologne, ties, shoes.....Boxes of soap "for men"....Just because they shop like their kind, they think we have to do the same."

"We should stop this madness," Mr. Benyamin said.

"You could say you get a headache or something," said Mr. Nurdin. "That way she would go by herself and you don't have to put up with gadgets that you will buy just because she buys things for herself. Or, you could still go and don't buy anything at all for yourself, to teach her a lesson."

"I wish I could," said Mr. Benyamin.

WAIF WATCHER
© 1999 NIN

I'm watching tonight someone who is the color grey. She is ashen. She is agony in person. That girl, the lost girl, the long lost homeless lonely hungry cold girl, knows when life is grey sadness runs waterfalling, goes down and down the splash drills some holes in time.. Time has not seen much of her but it has seen enough and so has she. Nothing is so fluid like a heart and she wants it caked packed tightly shut and sent to whoever has an address anywhere but there, maybe God. She heads windward. She vaguely senses that there the street is marked "God". She has been fined for jaywalking more than once but right now it is the last thing that crosses her mind. If she still can call that wailing little wiseacre a mind. If it is something she could own.

All around, people go rush rush rush and everyone is in a cocoon. They call life a business. To justify that they keep on busying their tiny little souls with something that otherwise has no meaning. They always complain of lacking time. They always say they need a rewind. But they do not. They dare not. Because once they do life will be a business no more. Most of all they fear that one day life will turns out an adventure. That girl, the lost girl, the long lost homeless hungry cold girl, knows that. Life has not been a business to her, it flows its own way and she moves along. She is forever lost because she never knows the way, to her every way is the way and that was probably the cause of some of her pain. In a democratic business she is a minority of one. Election day is every day and her side loses every time.

Now the hum of the crowd reaches her ears like a strange hymn. She hears that every day yet instead of getting numb she gets clearer noises every time. There is a boy she loves. In the crowd because he would not dare to venture outside by his own. She has the knack of being able to choose the worst among a few options she has been offered and she has chosen him. She could not complain. She thought she would get a home at last and blur herself inside the myriad. Of course she was wrong. She knew that yet she let life take the lead and when she started to pack her heart to go she was mad at herself for getting surprised to see how much she bled after all. So she walks on, heart and blood and all, not searching for anything this time, she moves just because she moves, she has never asked questions.

But she is so tired and to go on she invents destinations. The one thing she doesn't know anything about is God. So she thinks of making God her why, her what for. When night falls and she finds darkness blankets her warm, she talks to her God about anything she doesn't find words for, anything that swims across her mind maybe she doesn't own. She cries waterways every time and wonder if God is a cat because the being seems to be always taking a nap. Some people pray. Prayers are usually answered and the answer is usually no. Humans never fail to fail anyway, so they keep on praying, it is part of the business they call life, the life they call business. That girl, the lost girl, the long lost homeless hungry cold girl, knows that. It is twice as painful to know and to do the same anyway, but she is too sick to think of the alternatives. She lays down now, face wet like a riverbed, her eyes turn red. It is a tuneless night.

Passers-by never stop to wonder why that girl, the lost girl, the long lost homeless hungry cold girl, stays there on the bridge as Saturday night paces away. But some do take a glance and say how selfish she is to die when there is a full moon.

DOG, Ph.D.
© 1992 NIN

Morning, and I am a god. Sitting here at the balcony of the third floor, watching the world below and its dusty passage, a dog like me could feel like life is worth a scornful bark.

Human!

I agree with you, the world is a wonderful place. Too bad it also has the worst of all germs knowable: humans! Like a blizzard, they do nothing but to make other creatures hate life.

Not that I hate them. Forever believing their own lies, humans think dogs are their mute sidekicks, slaves to their kind, dumb loving companions -- not I, yet they know not this fact, and that I know it makes me feel better. When I feel better I feel I am better than them. When I feel I am better than them, I could afford not to hate them. Not too much, anyway. Since they don't deserve such a big thing.

Life is noises here. Nothing makes noises as much as humans. Now we dogs do bark, but we will never open our mouths and show our fangs for nothing. We must have a valid reason. Most often than not, the reason is our human's thing. I doubt that I would talk this much if I don't live with a human family. I would not have so many excuses to bark if I live in the woods.

The sad part is, they don't understand this. How many times they scolded me for making noises? I had stopped counting, it breaks my heart once in a while. I told them there was a suspicious creature on two legs and a miniskirt crouching behind the door as my human's wife talked with her husband at the door of their bedroom. They told me to shut up. I told the wife that the fish man sold her a bag of shrimp that were too dead, she told me to shut up. I told the husband that the newspaper boy yanked his football shirt from the dryer, he told me to shut up. Since then I only said something when they already saw the something themselves. And they told me what a useless old mutt I am. See what I mean?

The silent cloud of dust is there under my balcony.

A morning and one of hopefully many in my life. A blithesome philosophy in my head. They are bad enough to eliminate each other. One day probably I could stay in a world where there is no human alive.