Instalment One Hundred and Forty Eight

The On Paper Poet presents Rhymes For Your Eyes Only.

This poem’s a poem for only your eyes to read.
If you try and speak it aloud you will be mislead.

For now is the time for you to let eyes to lead.
It’s harder to say then any poem you have ever read.

For all the pronunciations you see, that they take turns and alternate.
Not big or small changes mind you, they are just moderate.

You are the boss, take charge, it is all yours to moderate.

But just when you think it’s one rhyme it’s not, it is the alternate.

Lined up in rows, is this eye rhyming content.

Mind and mouth will have rows and not be content.
Wrap it up in bows, it is a wonderful present.

But take your bows quick should you choose to present.

Loud and clear, make sure your voice does project.
Should you try to master this difficult project.

To many errors your audience will be subject

If you should tackle this difficult subject.

Your ego to ridicule, you must willingly expose.

The end is near, fear not it’s getting so close. 

No scandal for you, no silly exposé.

For on this last line trust me, the poem will close.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Seven

People wanted to call them zombies but they weren’t, that wasn’t fair. Then we all would have been zombies once. There was no zombie plague. It was a good plague. Is there a word for a good plague? Sweeping mass construction? Applauselypse? Dogastrophe? Holoclaps.  I guess not. The virus, is that word correct? The virus infected 90% of the population. Total worst case scenario type scenario. Dis-bloody-aster. But turns out it wasn’t, not for 90% of us.

Faster reflexes, increased brain function and muscle mass, mild telepathy. Faster, smarter, stronger. A super human virus. Everyone tried to catch it so they developed a vaccination, no that’s wrong, an incubation I guess? We all took our shots. And waited. I was always pretty smart, so no worries here. Those who couldn’t catch it, they moved slow, thought slow, talked slow. Well, compared to the infected. So they got angry. They called infected braincases, brains for short. They lashed out. Slow, violent and yelling ‘brains,’ you can see where the name came from. “The kind thing to do would be to kill them,” I said, “is kind the word?”

“Why aren’t you using your telepathy?” my son asked me. 

“Brains,” I said.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Six

Continued from Episode One - Lost for words

Black as Noir 

Episode Two - A nun's litany

The floor show was winding down when I walked into The Sisters of Easy Virtue. These girls put the put the art in tart and the dame in fundamentalist. They were known as the Bad Habits, not for the outfits they shed but because no man had the willpower to quit ‘em. They worked the room like pros, they knew whose pants were bulging with money rather than affection. I headed to the bar and went straight for the Hail Mary, flashing Kitty’s picture to the waitress.

“She ain’t here Mister; looks too chatty for our convent. We’ve taken a vow of silence don’t ya know!”

This dame could chew gum and crack wise at the same time. I slapped ten of my best prayers on the bar to see if I could take her confession.

“Yeah, I seen her round only she don’t work here no more, got scared bad when some heavy came looking for her, said he was her brother.”

Her brother huh? I hadn’t got the run around this bad since I failed to find the lost sailor, Red Herring. And this case smelled twice as fishy.

That’s when I saw her, running for the backdoor.

Next week – Cat Scratch Fever

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Five

When I grew up, and it does seem so long ago, everything had a big label on it. It was simple, easy and clear. Most importantly, I believed it.

PERMANENT

Big letters on top of buildings – Permanent. The happy family who lived next door – Permanent. My happy family – Permanent.

I never questioned it, didn’t ask even once, so I can’t say for sure if anyone else even saw these labels. I assumed if it said Permanent to me, it did to those around me too.

So it came as a shock when those labels started to yellow and weather. Passing a building that ‘had always been there’ when the big Permanent capital P crumbled from the façade and landed at my feet. When the family next door got divorced.

I grew unsure and started to examine my family and the labels on them. They still said Permanent but the heat of my fear had the labels peeling at their edges. The glue was brittle, and I toyed at it’s edges, like a tongue that can’t leave a bitten cheek alone. I tore at the label on my father and it came away in my hand.

It had only been temporary.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Four

I was getting by making Ends meet. Making Ends meet wasn’t easy, never had been, never would be. But I had to do it. If I didn’t, I’d starve. We’d all starve. The Ends would see to that.

Sure, I could just get a Beginning to met an End. Beginnings were naive, wide-eyed goofy suckers, you could set them up with any old End. It was as easy as a Cake Walk, a dessert I’d invented for these situations that actually walked up to tables and served itself. But we all needed the Beginnings. Beginnings meeting an End made everybody sad, so I couldn’t go setting those guys up together, it ended in tears.

But making Ends meet... Ends knew what they were like; sad, bitter little bastards full of doom and gloom, obsessed with death. Why would they want to meet another End? They didn’t. So I opened a bar where Ends met their Ends. Ends would drink to each other, nothing they liked more than toasting another End. Then the cake would walk up, distract them for a moment, and before they knew what happened I was bundling them off together, drunk, into a cab. Two Ends finished.