Used To

I’m crushing time into cubes of ice and sucking on their edges. Don’t worry about my enamel, cuz it’s grounded down, and grinding out the memories inside of my mind. Like a storage of untried cobwebs and festering mousetraps, my faculties of marbles and jacks collect and connect like hands on a clock, meeting across the rods of their bodies. Fleshly painted with matching tips and counting. Call me cab, I’m drowning in every alcoholic night filled with pestering dance and song. I can’t seem to get along. We don’t get along. Not like we used to... used to...

Summer Reading With a Slight Chance of Rain

Currently, I'm reading Faulkner, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Chabon for my "summer reading," but I think that I will venture out of my mind for awhile and enjoy comedy. Reading these books all of the time depresses me. Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" is comedic at times, but the grisly mood that follows each character's dialogue overshadows the story with darkness. Every time I read it, I feel like I am in the southern part of the United States, where trees form the perimeter around a limitless field of tall grass, and it is raining all of the time, but not the drizzle rain, it's dark, heavy, gloomy rain. Rain accompanied by flashes of lightning that strike down in the distance. Far, but not too far. Loud, but not mind dwelling... anyways...

Hiking in Santa Monica Mountains this Thursday. It should be fun. Maybe I'll watch some cartoons in between now and then. Tom and Jerry, or Looney Tunes. I miss Animaniacs.

The Electric Dance Conspiracy

I climbed into the inconspicuous lavender gray caravan; it’s headlights peering into both eye’s iris. In the dashboard glow of the van’s interior, I fished the phone from my pocket and made a call. On the other end, the voice responded with news of distress. The driver and I thought about our face options: altruism, apathy, indifference, but then genuine concern rose into our cheeks. She turned the steering wheel to the east direction, then four blocks later, to the west direction where it stayed until the search and recovery team was assembled. One arose from sleep, the other from a shower, and the two originals, including myself, detoured from our quest, diverged onto a path full of flashing lights and raving sound.
I remember the pearl white lane changes and crimson brake lights that guided our fifty-five minute drive into the streets of downtown Los Angeles. The rest of the night went as follows.

-Sixteen year olds dressed down from dinner party attire.

-Carnival sounds, and blazing orange bulbs on spinning indigo saucers.

-A steel perforated gate and electric lime roadblock.

-The inside of an “open 24-hour,” International House of Pancakes.

-Valencia orange juice in a glass.

-Handprint bruises wrapped around our rescued companion’s neck.

-A lacquered black grand piano sitting in the lobby of a twelve-floor hotel.

-Fishnet stockings pulled up over thongs, and tucked under harlequin skirts.

-Stairs and an elevator, an elevator and stairs (semi-spiral).

-The frost-like charcoal eyeliner under a blonde’s eyes, her gilded locks falling just before her shoulders, elbows slightly bent into the cherry blossom pink dress that hung a foot above her knees. A bright yellow modish corset flowed from out of her dress near her hips and rested above her shoulder tops. Her translucent bubbly heels that looked like shoe molded out of boiling water rose with the giddiness of ten thousand school children on a first day of class.

-Her eyes catching my stare through the mirror.

-The drive home, completely dozed.

Masking the Unmasked

We sat bundled in the shirts on our backs, renouncing our premature return from a night of alcohol and thought. Headlights zigzagged behind us and we ducked into the marble darkness near the chilled muddy earth. Like a mould casted from the raw iron of heat and political distemper, we buried the lives of few shadow walkers under layers of psychological realism. What remained were ten page tributes to these figures’ motion based stereotypical lives. Their stories, sunk into my imagination much like a tattoo on the skin; deep, but mutable. In the cold frost of the air, I sat buckle-kneed waiting for a moment that would outlast my momentary sensuous pondering. Potentiality. The same feeling came to me in a Starbucks Coffee, while reading a Michael Chabon story about penning a superhero for cash. Metaphorically speaking, superheroes don’t have to save the day either. It’s a choice. A beneficial choice. Then, as soon as I put down the warm tea I thought to myself, “Why did I think of this?”

Christopher Uller

Colours

I do remember a few things. The lights changed from sapphire to magenta and the music pounded our ears. Cool tones from B flat arpeggios rocked our hips left and right, right and left, then back again. Amidst the fuss and static of it all, she grabbed my hip and detected our similarity. “White people” dancing is a sign of togetherness and supposedly made room for small talk. The blacks in my eyes dilated and the drink’s milky froth spilled over our shoes. L.A. Water. She asked if I was “religious” and I told her the truth. The loudness of it crossed my mind, but I couldn’t escape the flashlight and the debased floor mop. It grew hotter and hotter, until we left that floor. Outside and across the street showed the giant martini glass with a cadmium yellow underline. The stars hid from the night, and our group of seven walked through the alley and onto the asphalt. Our ride was waiting. On the seat in the van, my sweater laid. It was electric blue. Still is.

Christopher Uller

I Hadn't Recognized You There

The phone rattled and buzzed and broke out in song.
The woman seated next to me handwriting her crossword score turned and asked,
“Are you going to answer that?”

Christopher Uller

Living in a Cage

Each scratch at his back peels the cauterized skin up over itself. The flakes fall, lifelessly to the hardwood floor where they'll be swept up with lint, pubic fuzz, and deposits of God knows what. A man named Raj once told him that it wasn't good to write in the first person. He said nobody cared enough. Third person is confusing, but keeps readers at an "interested" distance. Away, far away from the involving mechanisms of the mind. The sense implied by "mind" suggests that it is a location rather than an object or device. Thinking as a pastime, or scratching as prosperity? The flakes continue to float. His “teres minor” experiences subtle throe just as the “humeri's head” clicks into place.
Females of sun soaken faces pondered at what had occurred. Why had his back gone completely red? No one could tell by the looks they had given. More importantly than not, his phone glowed when he smiled. Muck from the tube had laid in him, but the length of his palms were burning for blood. He woke up days after. His tee shirt stank of cigarettes and women. It didn’t quite pull over, but he saw through it.

Christopher Uller