Lieku

"No Money Down" (heh)
"No interest for the first year"
Dive on in and drown.

Highku

Where you find yourself

After climbing a mountain

Or going up stairs.

The Shadow of the Axe (Part Five)

(Originally posted Thanksgiving 2008)

Cesar and his turkeys crept up the stairs from the dank basement into the kitchen. A chill ran down their giblets when they saw the oven door leering at them out of the darkness. It quietly taunted them, "I've known your kind. And I'll know each and every one of you too. Just give it time. There's no use fighting." It was a curiously verbal oven. Or so it seemed.

Cesar mastered himself, gobbling under his breath; ultimately he had no quarrel with an appliance. "Focus," his inner voice said, "on the task at hand. Down the hallway, second door on the left." He floated down the corridor like a barnyard ninja, axe in hand, nerves taut and ready.

And then a muffled sob pierced his ear like whatever it is those people at Claire's use to pierce ears with.  Cesar wheeled around back towards the kitchen, signaling the others to follow. And there was Sylvester sobbing and beating his fists impotently on the oven door.

Cesar didn't hesitate. He swung the axe with deadly grace, artfully detaching Sylvester's head. "Fool!" he hissed.

The other turkeys were frozen, transfixed by the spectacle, horrified by the bloodied axe and the malevolent Cesar. His gaze turned towards theirs and it was as if he was basting them with fear. The tension couldn't hold, something had to give.

And then light invaded the kitchen like a blitzkrieg. There stood Farmer Earl decked out in longjohns and his Colt 45. "Dumb turkeys" he said softly.

And then he started to shoot.

----------------------------------------------

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Keep an eye on your turkey; they're crafty beasts.

The Shadow of the Axe (Part Four)

"Honey?"

"Scnixgh-uhngfff"

"Honey!"

"What?" Farmer Earl rolled over and tried to open his eyes, but the art of sleep and the mysteries of physiology contrived to make them curiously unresponsive.

"Earl, there's a noise in the kitchen!"

Well art and mysteries be darned to heck, nobody messed with Earl's abode, which he lovingly called Chateau Jones. His eyes flew open and without needing to think his body left the bed and his hand reached towards the antique box under his nightstand. The box was black except for some gouges and chipped edges that it had acquired through more years of service than Earl even knew. The box and its contents were the one thing that the cranky old farmer had received when his pappi had died so many years ago. There hadn't been any money and the land had passed to his older brother Josiah who had quickly sold it and used the proceeds to move to the city, a longstanding dream. That golden dream had turned to pyrite within a year when the bottom fell out of the real estate market after the dumb government forced lenders to make bad loans to underqualified applicants. No matter to Earl, who had never cared for his elder brother's self-indulgence (or his explosive flatulence for that matter). And anyways, Earl had gotten what was of real value, the worn black box, his father's treasure and his grandfather's before that.

He silently reached inside.

(to be continued)

The Shadow of the Axe (Part Three)

(Originally posted Thanksgiving 2008)

That night the frosty wind made moan. The earth stood hard as iron. The farmhouse stood unlit, Letterman was over and even Conan was asleep. It was the second watch of the night... but nobody was watching. Nobody save for Cesar and his ill-tempered cohort. Yes, they were watching the farmhouse with icy malice.

And the clock ticked.

Cesar quietly contemplated the razor edge of his axe and lost himself in a dream wherein he danced a perfunctory tango on the sharpened apex of steel, which plunged down cruelly in either direction. Yet he danced unconcerned. His partner was a shadow, a mere vapor, perhaps death itself. No matter; he danced as unto himself.

"Cesar!"

The calling of his name startled him out of his morbid reverie. He knew that it was time.

The band of turkeys advanced on the house from the side opposite the bedroom where Earl and his wife lay asleep. The old-fashioned cellar door was never locked. The turkeys knew this from the regular poker nights that they held in the farmhouse basement. And so they slipped in, as quietly as tea infusing hot water, as lethal as eating the wrong kind of mushroom.

(to be continued)

The Shadow of the Axe (Part Two)

(Originally posted Thanksgiving 2008)

The wind cut less sharply amongst the trees, but that wasn't why the turkeys were gathering there. No, it was a different kind of cutting that had their wattles all a-quiver. The kind of cutting that left their wattles and snoods next to the bloody axe in the yard while the rest of them got innapropriately touched and shoved in an oven. But not this year. This gaggle, brood, flock, gang of hardened turkeys wasn't going to take so much as a word of friendly advice from the farmer much less a blow to the head. And so they gathered.

Not being much for words they milled around and made gobbley noises. It was a combination of nerves and very small and easily distracted brains. But when Cesar arrived with the axe their focus got razor sharp... like an axe.

"Brothers," he intoned, "the time has come to bury the axe." Cesar paused, looked around with and intensity that only a large, flightless bird can muster, and then spat towards the farmhouse. "The time has come to bury the axe in Farmer Earl's back!" he roared, though in truth it just sounded like some spastic and overly ernest clucking.

No matter. The other turkeys understood his words. They understood his grim truth. And any sense of mercy or philosophical resignation on their part had died along with Phil the year before. Earl had to die.

(to be continued)

The Shadow of the Axe (Part One)

(Originally posted Thanksgiving 2008)

The sky was brooding over the stubbled fields like an angry mother hen, just waiting to criticize the rural landscape with sleety derision. Cowed, the cows kept close to the barn door, which was open. They were not interested in picking fights or suffering the consequences of being too big for their, um... britches. But the turkeys? Now they were a different story. The turkey's didn't give a damn about the poultropomorphic sky. Chickens weren't their allies anways, certainly not come November time. And so the turkeys wandered to the pine windbreak along the edge of the field, sauntering casual-like in small groups so as not to attract undo attention....

(to be continued)

At the Airport: A Gropeku

Reaching and fondling:

Lonely TSA agents

Search for love at work.

Haircuts

My wife gets mean with scissors

And flies at folks in fury,
Hacking off their sundry hairs
Until they are less furry.

SNIP!!!!  snipsnipsnipsnipsnip.....

She's like a chihuahua without meds

Attacking people's heads.

Grope Away

I go to the airport
Whene'er I feel lonely
To get tingly feelings
From agents with wands.

They put me through scanners
And leer at my x-rays.
They pat down my privates
As if I've done wrong.

They need a good slapping
For they have forgotten
That we're not the problem
(But they just don't care.)

They'd rather prod me
Than risk offending
The dears who love terr'rists
The people at CAIR.

Prose For My Wife

Posts here don't need to be poems, do they?

Because there is something I'd love to say

But I don't really want to put it in verse.

I love you my dear. And I try to rehearse

This in actions every hour, every day,

Sometimes better and sometimes worse,

But knowing just how much I'm blessed;

You're a  gift of grace at God's behest.

Spudku

Crunch, crackle, crunch crunch

Potato chips resonate 

Each time you chew 'em.

Abiding

I had a piece of beef for lunch
I put it in my gullet.
One day I hope to grow my hair
And sport a rockin' mullet.
Life is great and changes come
But some things just abide
Like odor in the kitchen
From bacon that's been fried.

In the North of Iowa (sung to the tune of "What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor")

Went on a trip to the north of Iowa
Went on a trip to the north of Iowa
Went on a trip to the north of Iowa
Early in the morning.

Not many trees in the north of Iowa
Not many trees in the north of Iowa
Not many trees in the north of Iowa
Early in the morning.

But there were fields in the north of Iowa
But there were fields in the north of Iowa
But there were fields in the north of Iowa
Early in the morning.

Folks were great in the north of Iowa
Folks were great in the north of Iowa
Folks were great in the north of Iowa
Early in the morning.

Post-Election

Elections do not solve problems;
They just open/shut doors
To possible solutions
And inanity.
This year is no different.
The real Messiah 
Works other channels.