Salty Plums {LOWWC}

She's leaving, silver and slick, going empty stomached rather than risk some sort of sickness. The puffy topside of the clouds are bouncy; cupcake tipped pillowy little safety nets. Of course this isn't the case though, and if you fall you'll find they are pretty illusions, like great ideas you don't have the drive nor the means to bring to the light, to grow upwards and out to bear fruits for all to enjoy. Like the orange tree on the street you'd snag treats off of in the hot summer sun in between a game of football and a game of basketball. It's more like a Romanian circus out here than you'd believe, the inner workings. If you have the coin to stick your feet up in the historical section, you might be greeted by velvety purple drapes, shimmering or possibly off-colored, fuzzy and warmish but not soft to the sensitive touch of an artist. Disappointingly empty out here. Left you sort of hanging like the bruised flaps of a roast beef cape you took to heart would help you soar over and off together with. That's what the saleslady said. A syrupy sweet sip pressed from a small bite if picked at the right time; you use your nose, your eyes, and your secret sense. It is a deep deliciousness. But the drapes they're stained with years of the shameful descent of every glossy sphere that has arrived here, the kind of shape that gleams and reflects all of the hope cast upon it, formless and eager to roll into its' place. Just don't let it roll over the edge, too much too soon and we'll have a body overboard. She sometimes knows she's out of control. One may feel as if these are the curtains they have come to part, carving this grand golden turkey, glossy and plump, sitting there practically sweating.

The rooster puffs his chest out but he's still a chicken. Can't stand up to anything more than a worm or a similar sized chicken, a classic case of frozen nuggets. Step on them with your commando boots. Nuke them in the cosmobox and they'll be soggy, but edible. The peacock preens in importance and worthiness but is a flightless bird with no thoughts other than the constant command to fluff itself. And for a beautiful lady, there are so many bad places to fall. This city is full of so many edges. Brass and granite. Cement, porous like bones, cracked and crooked like teeth. Not the same artificially endowed chompers people proudly pull their lips back to display here, but teeth that don't see the dentist unless there's really a risk of poisoning the well where your family has to get its' water from. There are so many fossils underneath this town it would show the La Brea Tar Pits as the prism glimpses into a lost eternity that they are. The city, all sharp edges of steel and concrete, they cut but not sexy like a silhouette, stark obsidian black against indigo, slipping off mysteriously on a three fingered fin grab of the worlds last Yangtze dolphin. Translucent and pure, an opal or a bubble you blew when you were small and light, floating and only popping after bobbling well past squinting view. You're a star. Probably somewhere in the trees, caught in contrast to your lost breath when you could still get the air knocked out of you just because you went for it. Neon plastic parachute men to save the world, when you're small and the worlds' ravines are endless adventures, rather than barren death traps. You can't see the streets or the stoplights when you're little, you just arrive at far off places that in memory are more real than what you could actually commit. Like a shoe shine on your teeth to widen that grin. They'll gloss like a new Polaroid, instantly vintaged like it didn't happen, at least definitely not here, or anywhere that I know of. I'll do it myself, no need for someone else to commit this to memory, along with all the sins and crimes afforded by their daily allowance. What's true and what have we imagined. Dreams die as soon as we wake up. They only last 15 minutes if we're generous. We stuff our ideals as soon as we see that sign. Stuff it wherever it will fit. If you fall, there's no catchers mitt to pocket your dense body or acrobats net to wrap you by your flailing limbs. In this business, it isn't so much if you fall, it's when you fall.

A glow slinks down a spiral staircase with a beautiful tail like a gold painted pig. Like a sparkling bead of sweat sneaking its way out of a dark heavy cover, blue but more white than anything else. It's dark and this car is chugging along surprisingly strong, for I haven't taken this little camel to a watering hole since a day that I cannot remember. It couldn't have been too long ago though, my time frame is just non existent. And it's uncertain just where we are, but we will wait this breaking point out. Hold your weapons with their points out, survival of the fittest is alive and thriving and we're both throbbing as the steady street ladles us with the gentle textures of poured asphalt. In the distance it shines in its' silver lining, if you look straight down you can see little rocks and that the rest is just tar. Is this that sign, or is this just another chance falling to fate within view but far too distant to find it's fleeting contents. It's disintegrating inside the earth. I'd rather be within your bell jar. The sticky comforting confines of your marmalade mucous membranes. Your skin's just as clear as mine. I've been taking too much liberty with my allowances. It's been more like, a problem, if someone were to point it out. Why I couldn't pounce I haven't figured out, but my blood is sick with yearning. There are words I can't pronounce and don't know how to use, but I've saved them. Neither of us were handy like a pier-arcade claw machine, slinking a nerveless finger across each piece of cloth within the vicinity of our idea of everything.

It was seen by me also, but it fell too far off to ring a bell; disappearing with barely a trace, like an old tree falling alone in a forest of its own. They saw and it happened but we're not talking about it. Nobody present really cared. But this, I feel it in my marrow, the richest part of what I've tied to here. Suck it out and revel in its' golden roe, vultures of private moments. Always trailing an ailing animal, crumple-headed, observing it until its' last undignified moments. That's when they'll swoop in. They'll pick at you and watch you through slitted eyes as you tailspin in the unmistakable descent into total system breakdown and eat you in jagged manic shreds and greasy greedy gulps, starting with the best parts until you are devoured. It's nearly impossible these days to go out like a cowboy, and especially one that anyone will go the measures to remember. It's drenched in my soul, saturated and thick with cholesterol, clogging the drainpipes to my brain, this organ already thick with nitrates and hormones. Who here really knows who has supreme control. If I believe, will we live? It's fine either way, smooth and perfect. Our world's all topsy-turvy and no one can claim the title of being completely right long enough to have their jersey hung above the rafters, out where heroes send home-runs and Champions hurl the orange sun towards after the final buzzer tells them they don't have to fight anymore, tonight. You have about as much time as your sand filled time trap gives you, about 3 minutes to grant lavishly. Nothing breaks down to what it looks like with your hopeful glasses on. Forget about what you thought they'd grant you in this city paved in gold. There hasn't been anything left here since long before anyone would admit to remember. About memories, they're a lot like dreams.

The motel is hardly a motel. It actually isn't. It's the cheapest rented cell sized room with a three inch gap between the door and the dirty burgundy floor and a shared bathroom/shower with 5 other rooms. Checked the drawers and found a single use puncture pouch of cherry flavored lube. Luckily, not a bit hungry, nor is my sweet tooth that severe. Set me on fire and watch me flake away, I bet I don't melt, she almost taunts. Only witches accused and abused melt at a flimsy stake. A shame it is. They were probably the smartest. And possibly the prettiest. Someone noble should have saved them. Unless they really looked like witches, which in case, let them sizzle. Sorry to say, but not everyone can be saved.

She has feathers hardly scorched through her flights to the sun. Desire has the flavors of the rainbow, but if you mash them all up at once, it's little more than fruity pebbles. Sugar rush 90s flavor anonymity, but we will eat it up and ask for more. Wanted more, more than what this glitch in this cats cradle ladled in a mush flavored mash up is giving us, or we'll take more of the same, maybe introduce a new color to our palettes. As long as the morning has something to cling to, like an old sticky jolly rancher. Sick over plastics. Sleepy over synthetics. Why weren't the planets, aligned? And if you say they were, why didn't you tell me then. A little sad to think about now, if all the efforts of our solar system and chance working together there to be viewed out a little miracle window can barely get a mention, how could you say anything else was full and solid. I would've lied, but I wouldn't have meant it, and you probably would've known it. Haileys' comet blasted by. I saw it and the memory makes the little tubs in my head want to sway and overflow, just a little bit out the edges, as if caught on a window washers rigid diving board smacked and rocking against a Chicago skyscraper. Congregated at my elementary school, everything was where it was supposed to be; we gathered there at night and watched it whizz by, and goodbye. Placed carefully with the nimble fingertips of an old knitter, if only we had been so lucky as to have a sweater to pull at the ends of and unravel. We could have strangled each other, classically and hopelessly in love, dying in each others' embrace, and pretend we were the first ones to do it like that. I wonder how achingly perfect or pointlessly thrown together the first suicide pact was, sadly we haven't much of a perspective from here. We could play some special vinyl and do our best. We'll hide out and later rise like the bubbles in a glass of champagne, like steam after a volcanoes done spewing and has a few new land masses to show for it. My favorite holiday is the one we would spend together, blended with wounds that we've only half mended. If I don't like it, I'll re-gift you like I've always had so much I've got doubles of everything.

Who here is not bleeding from a serious chest wound. Born on a battlefield, birthed in the jungle, braced between two fortunately intertwined and reaching trees, like they both wanted to be themselves but were forced into union. Separate beds like some upper class anglos', yet still painfully tangled. I want a girl who just couldn't dance for another. Girls with any splattering of color can shake and dip, activating your saliva glands, opening your veins and arteries to shovel blood as you need it. Thick salty blood charging too rushed to gurgle. Groove, and are the grooves completely slick and smooth?The average Jody can't lay brick or even mix mortar in a bucket. Knowing this, we can safely say we're safe to stay here because this guy with the soft grip won't be relocating anything to anywhere. Just bust a move if you've got one, but we will not wait all day. Sounding like broken records, a few all played at once, some hipster yelps and sticks its' sore thumbs out at my face...so I politely spit. I was right in my departing, but I was still the one that left the scene. Ripped up fragments like magazine pages, still glossy like the first day opened, crisply parted; stiff and taut, and if you turn the right page, you'll get a blast of something sweet and cheap. Dotted across the seas we've never seen, on an island live our personal martyrs, in form crystallized into eternity. There the water's slow and clear, so you can see the dangers I've kept you from.

reply to post by LizardSlicks


Hi Lizard Sticks. I took a stab at reading this. It is very verbose and poetic like, with a lot of analogies. I actually liked your voice in the story. But, here is the thing. It is a very hard read. It's not something that just flows. It's really jagged, like the skyline cut across the dark night sky in that cityscape. You definitely got the idea, but I think you took it over the top. Just my personal opinion, you're a great writer, and others may enjoy the style. It just didn't keep my attention like I wanted it too, because it kept jumping around so much.

reply to post by SubAce


Sub Ace, thanks for the read, the praise, and the feedback. I've seen a couple of your other posts tonight in this forum, and It's good to have someone giving their critical yet kind view in contrast to most everyone elses approach of branding every attempt posted as an instant classic or some kind of masterpiece.

reply to post by LizardSlicks


Even though I enjoyed, this - for me - was a very complicated read. I loved your analogies but perhaps it was just a wee bit too many. You are a very good writer, very verbose, and I look forward to reading more from you.

S&F.

reply to post by LizardSlicks


Nicely written.
You know I think I like this story more so than the other entry you've posted.

Much more detail

Good stuff, keep it coming.

reply to post by LizardSlicks


Hi, wow you've certainly got ability. It would take me months to produce something with as much in it as this. Some fantastic stuff in there and you absolutely have fulfilled the brief but sometimes less is more.

It doesn't really apply here due to the whole point being analogy, but for future use 'Orwells Rules of Writing' is worth looking at.

reply to post by merkins


Thanks, I looked up Orwells Rules. A good refresher and very useful.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Thanks for the read. Cool new avatar