An Open Letter to Rush Hour

Dear Rush Hour,

I understand your excitement at your release from the work day and your frustration at wanting to get home but I have to say that our relationship is starting to bore me. You leave me sitting for at least 30 minutes waiting for you to move or show signs of life.

At first the rush was exciting and I got caught up in your slow, easy pace. Now I see you for what you are: a carbon monoxide emitting, smog addling, fossil fuel wasting time leech. And it’s not just your environmental impacts that are starting to hurt our relationship, we also want different things. I want to go places and see things; you want to clog the roadways and slow life down interminably. I can’t see us working out.

Not only do you waste my time, you push me around. I feel abused when you don’t let me change lanes, merge, or make it through the stoplight ahead. Furthermore you never remain consistent, you are everywhere I want and need to go. You block exits I need to take, you place construction zones on streets I need to use, you close lanes when I least expect it. Worst of all you put “Turn Only” lanes when I need to go straight and “No Turning” lanes when I need to turn. Why do you have such a personal vendetta against my vehicular freedom?

As much as I want to understand and help you, this situation is beyond my ability. I suggest you seek help. Find alternative routes of travel, seek out public transportation, and find support in a carpool. I hope you see the error of your ways soon, and make an effort to change. Please, don’t count on me to be among the masses of victims you consume each day across the country. I’m finished wasting my time sitting and waiting for you to move.

Good Luck
Kate Taylor

Broken Flight

Wings fluttering hard
Against cement
Flecked with obsidian
This cuts my fingers
Turns them white with torn layers of skin

Tiny wings:
Colored to hide in wooded secrecy
Stand proudly against the drab grey of the morning
Shadowed pavement cold
Inches from the blinding sun

Small and helpless
Wings softer than silk
Are trying to fly
Panic desperate
Faith and fear
Keep you fluttering
Beating your wings

Tiny
Cannot fly
Your soft body heaving hard
Again
And again
Against the shard-walk

You are not strong enough to live
You will die soon
As Darwin dictated
You will have to sacrifice yourself
Waiting anguished
Extinguishing in pain
To serve another creature

Waiting pain
Quietly and quickly end it
Save you
By killing you

But is it right of me to take your life?
Which you seem to cling to
As you cling to my finger
In my cupped child-hands
You spend your energy
Not escaping

Soft wings
You leave cold dust on my hands

I am cursed
Steinbeck’s simpleton
You are soft
Contact comforting

Was it mercy that I killed you?
Is it ever mercy that kills?
Can you forgive me for what I did to you?
I’m sorry

I wish I could have seen you fly.

Greatest Site EVER!!!!

So boredom has dictated that I find something to do on el inter-web. This said I scowered Google for something worth my interest. Lo and Behold I have found the Holy Grail of RANDOM!!!!

http://www.superbad.com/ - it makes no sense, you randomly click your way through a series of webpages/images but it is infinitely fascinating because it has no logic to it. It goes on forever. Long Live Surrealism!!

http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=artifact565 - the origins of SuperBad. it all makes sense.

if that doesn't suit your fancy pick something else
http://www.bored.com/

Curiosity killed the magic.

The smell of rain is a magic in and of itself, especially here in the desert. Probably because rain is a kind of magic, the wetness as it falls from the sky like a rite of purification. For centuries literary masters have taken the ideas of rain and run with them. Off the top of my head I can’t think of an example but I know they have. The smell of it, before and after the rain, has inspired authors and poets as much as the rain itself.

Of course, being captain curiosity I had to find out what makes rain smell. I felt sadly robbed of the magic when I found out it’s the smell of bacteria. You can buy it in a bottle. I think a little part of my soul just died. Damn you science!!!

Here, see for yourself. Science kills a small part of the magic of youth: http://www.weatherchannel.com.au/WWSM/images/0003/GlobalImages/30933.pdf