Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: drabbles

22/Aug/2013

Quarantine

There is a giant circus-like tent hanging over it, ridiculously. See-through plastic windows have been clumsily sewed to the sides. Red graffiti tags adorn the hemline. The ship’s been out there twenty-nine days now, a stone’s throw from the harbour, and officially we need to wait another eleven days. There are no faces staring out at us from the windows, we know we need to burn it on the fortieth day, and we are anxious to. But rules are rules. On the forty-first, the ship will shrug its sheets off, hoist its ropes up, unfurl its cloth and sail away.

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21/Aug/2013

Crimes of Style

Every criminal shall be fitted with a new conscience, as their old one must be malfunctioning. This will make them feel properly awful if they attempt to commit an immoral or unlawful act; this feeling will spill over to certain acts of buying or appreciating “bad” brands. If, despite these measures, a criminal is caught committing more crimes, they will be fitted with a new moral and aesthetic compass, which will let them better discern what is “right” and also what is “cool.” If trends change, the implant will gradually change the brain.

You may also volunteer for this treatment.

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20/Aug/2013

The World Shatters

The world shatters, no piece larger than a clenched fist is allowed to be. The world was awful and big. I am tiny, I can fit inside a suitcase, I can make myself smaller, I can fit inside your pocket. They left the moon alone. The big dark looming shadow of the planet is no longer upon its visage, every night is the full moon, and I can see all the new pockmarks and craters. Micro-scopic. I have to learn them anew. I am floating in space, unfolding myself, gravitating toward the moon. I would like to think I am.

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19/Aug/2013

Red Clown Nose

He is very adamant that he be allowed to keep the red nose on for his passport photo and he starts crying. He ignores that the tears do not smear his make-up one bit. He claims between gulps of air that this nose is part of his religion, his culture, part of his twelve steps. But he knows it is just for play. Like there is a strict line between what is for real and what is for play. He is worried that if he takes the red nose off, the black-purple around his eyes won’t come off with it.

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18/Aug/2013

Tribal

If you scan deep enough, deeper than where the blood comes from, you will see where the ink spills out. It finds its creases and grooves, and it flows down the inside of your skin until it reaches your ankles, where it fades out.

If you look at the sky, you will see where the ink runs, you will see patterns in the criss-cross, and you will know the names of the brightest lights.

Everybody’s blood is the same colour. However –

You and I stare at the sky the same way, we have the same tattoos hidden under our skin.

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17/Aug/2013

Statue

There is a statue in Whale Park, inconveniently placed right next to a big wall like some shady dealer. It has too many teeth and they are all too sharp for something that supposedly is modelled on a human being. The statue tells me about my future, if I ask it, two truths about my future plus one lie. It’s always one line about my family, one about money, and one about love.

And I guess this is me, hedging my bets that the one about love was right, because I can’t control my father’s heartrot. Will you marry me?

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16/Aug/2013

How Little Girls in Schoolyards Lie

Is it true that, at the bottom of a deep well, with your eyes adjusted to the darkness, if you look up you will always see stars? Down where there is always night unless the sun, directly above, reaches down for you?

The answer is no, there are no stars, they kept you here with only the gurgle of water for company, no bucket or ladder or sky, stone lid above your head. Once a day, the sun reaches for you, but it only has a minute or so and it is not enough.

She said they would be back.

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15/Aug/2013

Freeverse Smiles

Our metaphors fuck like we do. My poetry leers and wants to know what it can do to yours. There is a smile on your face that is both innocent and not at the same time. Coy, devious. A soft purr hangs in the air, poise of a cat ready to pounce. You smirk, and you lean against me, and you move your leg an inch more; that is a pounce. I kiss you progressively: cheek, corner of mouth, lips. You beam. There is an innuendo in here, somewhere. There is want. There is a stupid grin on my face.

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14/Aug/2013

Doppelgänger

Your death seeps through from that other world. That place where the colours are different and your doppelgänger is dead. Don’t worry, I say, people in alternate realities must die like flies, surely, but your body temperature still falls. Your eyes are less green today.

I try to save me, you ask me why. From the circumstances given, it is not entirely clear which question you are asking, but I answer: “I love you.” I excuse myself to go to the restroom. I lock myself in a stall. Some of my original colours seep through when I cry this much.

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13/Aug/2013

Slow Now

You want to move your body. The electric signals traipse down your spine to the right muscles, jolting them into sluggish action. Far off in the distance, something happens, a man gets shot. An eternity after that, you find out. The photons reach your eyes, they are translated, distorted, flipped, until you see what happened. By that time, it has already happened and something else is happening. You don’t know what. Your leg finally starts to move. You actually don’t have time to think about it, but you know you are living in the past. You can never be now.

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