Imagine A Planet

I try to imagine a planet with no predators.

It must necessarily have no life.

Only life competes for resources:

to continue living, to dominate,

some will struggle, will give up, give out,

will be vanquished, will perish, die.

The Universe had no life for eons of time,

and presumably no conscious life to measure it,

but only the building blocks.

Life could not have survived the conditions,

when all was elementary particles creating heat,

explosions, all in chaos, when all was molten or void.

I try to imagine life having never been.

What would that Universe be?

Rock, dust, the nuclear furnaces of stars,

and the empty vacuum of space;

Quarks (Up, Charm, Top,

Down, Strange, Bottom);

Electrons (Electron, Muon, Tau);

Neutrinos (E, Muon, Tau).

There are no grasshoppers, no trees.

Nowhere would there be birds or bees,

no hair or blood, no ears or eyes,

no death to fulfill, no demise.

The great events in history

did not occur, no mystery

did fascinate our curious

minds. There simply never was us.

Imagination

for all it destroys, so it

creates everything

All rights reserved ©2020 Todd Franklin Osborn

I Blossom In Autumn

I wrote this poem for a poetry challenge, of sorts. My Twitter friend, Laura Schmidt, of Voyage Of The Mind, launched a Poetry Day for Monday, July 20, 2020. She's an excellent poet, and her work on Seasons, the theme of this year's Poetry Day, inspired me to write this autumn themed one. If it's good, I credit Laura for challenging me to excel!

I blossom in autumn,
and that's backwards, I know.
I expose my life's inner core
the closer to the snow
I am. When summer is closed,
my closet opens anew,
and I rummage its depths
for petals, deep red and blue.

I thrive in the crispness
of dry, cool, metal air.
I long, in cloudy wanderlust,
for the sight of trees, all bare.
Their pointed, bony fingers reach
to clutch at the starry sky,
to fairly move the sun's arc,
bidding summer's heat goodbye.

I blossom in autumn
with the other flowers shriveled,
their pistols all fired
and their folds all now leveled.
The crush of life's potential
will renew in spring afar,
and until that day, my hopes will chill,
and freeze, us where we are.

Murder

This one has some strong language in it. It's a short I wrote while sitting in a park, enjoying a nice autumn day. It's really strange where the mind goes. I was most likely influenced by then recent Drumpf-era news items, and was feeling pretty sad for we human beings who actually still give a crap about each other. 

The crows began increasing in number, and at first, I gave it no thought. I had been reading in a park on my days off for a while, when there were nice days, enjoying the mellow late summer air, which then became a crisp fall air. I would always go in mid-morning, read for a couple of hours, and then return home for lunch. I held to a kind of ritual: my three block walk, sitting down on my favorite bench, sipping my tea, looking at the trees, listening to the bird songs, then diving into my book, which at this time was Virginia Woolf's The Waves. I didn't notice the crows, at least not apart from the other birds, until my ritual was well established, perhaps 50 pages into The Waves (I was taking my time with it). One day, however, there were about six or seven crows that I suddenly heard, then looked up and saw, a few on a nearby power line, and a few more in the tree roughly above my bench. They were quite noisy that day, cawing loudly as if in intense crow conversation. It actually sounded a lot like an argument. I fixated on them, already being distracted from Woolf, and found their traded banter fascinating.

Over the next couple of weeks, their numbers grew, and I eventually would leave my book at home, deciding to study the "text" of the crows instead. I would listen intently to different groups, and occasionally two individuals would dominate my attention. One day, I arrived at the park at my usual time, initiated my ritual, and within seconds dozens of crows arrived, and kept arriving, and I watched them pour in, feeling more than slightly concerned in an "Alfred Hitchcock" sort of way. As they struck up their conversations, I estimated that there may have been hundreds in the vicinity, not merely dotting, but lining the power lines, and filling several trees, too. Their voices blended in an indistinguishable cacophony, and I sat taking it all in as best I could. I was entranced by it, if also a bit frightened. After several minutes, I began to hear familiar sounds. I could have sworn I heard consonants and vowels occurring in between the bedlam of noise. I tried to mark when I heard one: "there's a distinct P sound; now an S; there's a T...an R...a long O." At first I tried to understand whether it was spelling something - a foolish notion, I thought. After dismissing this, realizing that there were likely far more of these sounds happening than I was able to perceive, I suddenly thought I heard a word amidst the din. I could swear I heard the word "why." I listened even more intently, and heard it again, then again, and it kept popping up, not seemingly in rhythm, but none-the-less more and more distinctly enunciated.

It was clear as a bell by the time I noticed another word: "you." It occurred not long after "why," and that's when I began to discern a rhythm. I started counting the seconds, or beats, between the end of "you" and the beginning of "why." I made it as about 6 beats, as if it was a line from a song. I was sure this had to be some kind of aural hallucination, but then I heard another one. The word "this" came as an offbeat in comparison with the rhythm of the other two words. I was so freaked out at this point that I felt like leaving the bench, but couldn't bring myself to do so. As I tuned my concentration more intensely on what I was sure was a message of some kind, and fully believing that I must be completely mad to think so, I heard the word "are" between the first two words. "Why are you.....this....?" Holy shit, there was a sentence forming: a question. The fragment kept spinning within the aural tornado that I was unable to stop myself from hearing. My senses began to turn to pure emotion, to a kind of manic feeling, yet one so dripping with dread and revulsion that I began to cry, tears streaming down my face while the last few words came suddenly, within seconds of each other. I finally heard the entire revolving question, like a vinyl record skipping, or a looped audio file, and I sat in horror, glad that I was alone in the park so that no one could witness the agonized look on my face, and my limbs folding up to my torso, and no one would call 911 to have medical professionals cart me off to the loony bin. The hundreds of crows had crowded around me, had chosen me, to ask, "Why are you fucking destroying this mother-fucking planet?"

All rights reserved. ©2018, 2020 Todd Franklin Osborn

Swan Dive

Here is a poem I wrote in 2014, when I really thought I would never feel love again, either toward another, or coming from another. That may sound like sad hyperbole, but I remember with clarity the defeatism that was my life then. Writing helps you hold on to these things. Life is a little better now.

Love is falling from a great height, plummeting toward Earth at high speed,

yet it's taking forever from my particular vantage point,

where I stand poised like a Greek archer with my bow,

arrow pulled back, awaiting the perfect shot.

She falls as gracefully as she lived, her long neck pointed straight down,

and lovely white, feathered body stretched out behind her. I can only watch.

I can't save her, nor was I the one who made the kill.

My arrow, tuned to my one open eye, follows her descent, ready to seal the deal,

my arms slowly adjusting the angle downward from my original position,

the right angle attitude straight up toward heaven,

as much directly away from Earth as it could possibly be.

Is she always falling, eternally? Will she ever reach the ground?

My flexed muscles are taught, holding the arrow in place, cocked, fingers cramping,

the tension running from my arms through my shoulders, down my back and into my legs.

I feel this tension everywhere at once, and even my mind blazes with my irrelevant task,

to deliver this load into the lifeless, falling corpse, like a gun with only blanks in a movie,

like a staged fistfight where the blows are faked, yet the audience flinches,

believing that one of the fighters is the victor, and one the vanquished.

Somewhere in the distance, and at some time in the future, Love must strike the horizon,

but I never get to see, and I never know it's done.

I stay fixed to my target while I still have life, stretched in purposeless, quiet agony,

always waiting for the moment when I'll know when to release.

All rights reserved. ©2014, 2020 Todd Franklin Osborn

Remedies

This is a poem I wrote circa 2010, not long after a separation heading to divorce. It was an emotionally rough time. I was not just writing these words. I was feeling like a non-person. I didn't know who I was anymore. Most of it is free verse, but the end was meant to be a sonnet. I'm not sure whether I achieved the form well, but I had been reading Shakespeare a lot and was keen to try.

Alone with my thoughts -
these pesky, all-too-familiar fantasies both console and unnerve me.

I'm uncomfortable in my skin,
feeling more like my body

is just a suit I wear, but don't really inhabit.
Where, then, is the real me?
Are these thoughts all I am?
I need the easy distractions of life to scatter my mind,
to make these thoughts diffuse.

What are the remedies for a lonely life?

What is the elixir, the concoction of which we must all balance

between ineffectiveness and overdose?

Money, not originally essential for us, has become so.

We trade work for coin and paper, yet how we value labor

is seen in greed-maniacal slavery to the dollar.
"Having" turns one toward an unsympathetic disposition,
and "having not" binds one to a state of no volition.

Beauty can fool the mind,
luring the eyes to subjects not always worthy of the gaze.
What we excitedly prize as substantive,

of which we lend much talk and attention,

may merely be inconsequential eye candy on closer introspection.

Sex, like food and shelter,
is in the hierarchy of needs.
It covers one like a blanket
and good psychology it feeds.

But tied to money, it comes with a price.
One can be a slave to one's desires.
Once sucked in, once will not suffice.
The flames are only fanned by more fires.

Love endures but does elude as well,
And it controls but cannot be controlled.
We wrestle in its Heaven, and it's Hell.
Abandoning it only tightens its hold.
To say that it is worth the price of pain
Is as irrelevant as breathing water.
None have lived without this emotional bane.
It has been thus for every Son and Daughter.
Just as the teacher is forever taught
So are we always alone with our thought

all rights reserved. copyright 2010 Todd Franklin Osborn

Annoying

“My name is @ñ*¥     I'm aleven     they dont like me much cuz I get on there nervs     its not like I try but everwun dusnt like me and that makes me mad and then that makes me not like anywun and so I try to make poeple mad cuz they make me mad to but I dont care     my mom likes me more than anywun else but she says I need to shape up or ship out and that makes me mad and then I say to her that I dont like it when she says that     I dont have a brother or a sister and I dont have any cusins or ants and unkels and my dad left a long time ago cuz he told my mom he cudnt do kids     my mom says hes a asshole”

*

“That asshole left me alone with a kid he never had any intention of raising! I never dreamed that was happening then. I was in love, but I'll never make that mistake again. Andy was a headache from the word go. When he was a toddler, he'd sometimes yell for hours until his voice went. I stopped trying to stop it after a few months, cuz nothing I do would change it. I took him to doctors and he never would scream like that for them. They wanted me to keep him on these drugs they gave me but I didn't think that was a good idea, cuz it never helped, so I finished the drugs off myself. It helped me more. Maybe they meant them for me I don't know what the f**k went on. I did my best with Andy but I have never been up to the single parenting thing. I need a life, so I always made sure I had one.”

*

“my teechers are meen to me and the other kids dont like me and I hate them and I hate scool but I still try to lern things but I havent lernt everthing I need to no     I never had any frens cuz I never even want one and I just stayd in my room wen I was littal and if I want to go out then I wud just go     I told my mom I can do wut I want and I can git my own food and I can go to bed wen I wanna and she didn’t hafta do nuthin for me cuz I no she didn’t like havin ta do stuf she didn’t wanna do”

*

“When he turned 11, Andy changed. He was always hard to deal with, more stubborn as he got older, and he was always stubborn, asking too many questions, demanding too much from me...too much time, too much energy, too much, too much...I can't keep up with it all. When he was 9, I remember him walking in on me gettin' it on with this guy I met...just some one night thing...and Andy just stood there. I told him to get out, I said go to your room, go to bed, but he wouldn't budge. He giggled a lot and the guy I was screwing almost stopped but I told him just ignore him. The guy thought it was too much havin' my 9 year old watchin' but we were under the blankets. Andy couldn't see nothin' and he was gigglin' fer crissake! But then at 11, that was it.”

*

“I left my house cuz my mom sed I cudnt stay there no mor so I just left and I sleep wherever I want to now and I steel food wen I need to eet and I pee and poop in the woods or I go to the comunity center     they let me go in there an wash myself  sometimes poeple give me food just to make me leev and I dont wana be aroun them anyway so I go”

*

“He ran away three weeks ago and I couldn't get him to come back if I tried. I couldn't be happier, actually. He'll be ok, as if anyone in this whole town would give a s**t anyway. He knows how to survive. Hell, that kid'll outlive the f**kin' cockroaches! I just plan on livin' my life now, just like if I didn't even have a kid, cuz I haven't had enough fun. God-damnit! There's some serious partyin' to do! Not that I ever let Andy stop me, but now maybe Dale will move back in with me again. Like I said before, Andy put a crimp in my sex life, that's for sure. He'd usually just knock on the door, and say he's hungry or some s**t.”

*

“I bin doin ok but poeple are startin to get more mad at me wen I come aroun     The polis tried to take me back to my moms but I didnt even go in     I sed ok I'll go an then they talkd to my mom and she lookd out at me an winkd an I new she was sayin she wud make sure Id stay but she new I was gonna leev agin     She says Im anoyin but we both see eye to eye”

*

“They tried to bring him back. They said I had to provide food and shelter for him, and that I could be brought up on charges for not reporting him missing, for child endangerment. Those f**king hypocrites just don't want him running around the town annoying everyone! As far as I'm concerned he can come and go as he pleases, but I'd rather him go than come.”

*

“I went to scool yeserday an everwun bood wen I came in an I flippd em all off an sed I wasn ever comin back agin an they clappd     the principel yelld for me to stop an he sed he was gonna call my mom an I sed I dont live there anymore an he sed what am I doin an I said nothin' an I ran away”

*

“The Principal of Andy's school called. He left a message, cuz Dale is back, and...you know...we were busy! His message said that he was gonna call the authorities and report me. Motherf**ker! He's nothing but a fraud! He never gave a s**t about Andy anymore than anyone else but now he's gonna act like he cares. He's an asshole.”

*

“I ate some chiken stayk that this guy orderd     He sat there eetin an I just watchd him     he sed get lost but I stayd and then I started screemin how hungry I was an affer a coupl minits he left     he sed he shud spank me     I sed only my dad can do that an I never even saw him ever even wuns and the guy drove away an I ate his chiken stayk”

*

“Andy never knew his dad, and I always told him how lucky he was. I haven't seen or heard from that rat bastard since the day Andy was born. I have no idea where he went but I hope he's far, far away and stays there. I had a lot of guys over the years but no one ever stuck around, until Dale. I mean, most of 'em I didn't want 'em stickin' around anyway, but the good ones never did either, until Dale. Me n Dale were shacked up for a couple a years...almost a couple. I’m really glad he’s back. He makes me really happy.”

*

“I went way out from the town an there was a house that lookd like nobody livd there     I went in an there was a guy there an he was reely sick an he cudnt move an talk so I decidd to stay there     he had a frigarader an it had a lotta food in it an he had a kichen an plats an everthing     he had a bathroom to an I washd up     the guy trid to grab me but he cudnt move an he made funy gronin sounds     so I just sleepd wherever I want an in the day Id go out an play an look around an at night Id eet somethin an sleep and use the bathroom”

*

“The police came around again and I said I can't keep track of him. He just goes where he wants to go and I can't stop him. They said they could arrest me for neglect. I told them prove to me he's been neglected. He has food, he ain't complaining about being hungry or havin' nowhere to sleep. You find him, I says, and prove to anyone that he ain't perfectly happy being out doin' what he wants, and then if he says I neglected him you come and take me away. They said the school called them too, and that I should be caring about his education. I said he used to go to school all the time on his own, up until he turned 11, and they treated him awful...talk about neglect. The kids called him names and the teachers too, and he still went and he was doin' ok too. Maybe you oughta, I said to them, maybe you oughta go talk to the principal and see how they treated him. I think he's better off not being in that school, just like he's better off bein' off on his own. He'll do ok, I told them, he'll be fine wherever he is.” 

*

“I livd there with that sick guy for a whil but then wun day I came home an he wasnt movin' at all an I said stuf to him but his eyes was closd an I thot he must be ded     I was hungry so I ate some food an then I thot I better go tell somebody that the guy is ded so I went to town an to the polis an I told em where I was stayin an how that sick guy died”

*

“The police have my son in custody, an 11 year old boy in custody. That's what they called it. I said what did he do? What did you charge him with? They said truancy, he ain't been to school in days, and then they said there's more. He's been stayin' at some shack out in the woods and some guy died there and Andy came in and reported it. I said, s**t, what, do you think he killed the guy? They said, we don't know yet, but we're investigating it. Then I heard Andy right through the phone screamin' just like he did when he was a toddler. The police said I had to go get him.”

*

“My mom caym to the polis stashun and fot with the polis bout me     she sed I was to much to handel to much for anywun to handel     that I was better off on my own     I told em I didnt wanna live with her why cant I live out in that house in the woods where that guy died     they sed I cudnt do that an I screamd som mor so they held me tight an gave me a shot an then put me in jail     my mom wasnt there wen I woke up     they sed she sind som paper with som lady who was gona pick me up in a littal wile”

*

“I'm free now. I don't have to worry about him anymore. They wanted something legal so I signed him over to the State. They said they still might press charges against me, I said, f**k that! I ain't worried. He'll get taken care of, or he'll run away again, it's all the same to me, cuz he's not my problem. I found out a real f**kin' pisser though. I still can't f**kin' believe this s**t! I mean, what are the chances? What are the f**kin' chances? That guy that died out there in that shack that Andy was stayin for weeks........that was the asshole........Andy's father.”

All rights reserved. ©2018, 2020 Todd Franklin Osborn

Head Game

This is a short I wrote after having an odd dream about being friends with one of my favorite recording artists, Julian Cope, whom I have never actually met. The dream had incredible detail, which, unusually for me in this case, I remembered very well after waking.

“Julian Cope and I were at his Holiday Camp, a resort on a 5 acre plot, with several long two story motel-style buildings, some apartments and condos, a 4 star restaurant, swimming pools, weight rooms, a spa, and plenty of parking. These kinds of places were very popular in 1983, although it was certainly interesting that Copey would have bought in to one. It was just the kind of financial portfolio diversity that one might expect from Zoo records management, but not from Julian. This would seem to me to have been the kind of thing he would have despised.”

“We were just having a conversation about future renovation plans when he received a call from a young woman, which he took at the front desk. His desk manager gave him the message as we sat in the lobby, a spacious one with earth-tones and blocky, rather unattractive furnishings. He talked to the woman excitedly, and at times even furtively, flirting giddily while I sat waiting, his eyes glancing up to meet mine, and then his head whipping around, barely preceding the rest of his body. He looked a bit like a teenage girl on the phone rather than a young man in his mid-twenties. After their conversation, I found out that it was his ex-girlfriend on the phone. She was coming to visit, and was bringing an ‘attractive friend.’ That is how he described her to me, apparently reporting verbatim what she had told him, complete with eyebrows raising, a tantalizing voice inflection, and what I instantly perceived as scare quotes, although I believe he probably meant them sincerely. I began to wonder if I had a very interesting evening ahead of me, or merely a tedious one.”

“Julian continued to talk to me about his ex for the next hour or so, interspersed with plans for the additions and updates to this newly acquired property and reminiscences of other events that had brought him to this moment in his life. The Teardrop Explodes had only recently broken up, and he should have been starting his solo music career, but to the surprise of many, he decided against it. I began to feel fidgety about meeting this friend of his ex. He still hadn't told me either girl's name, just useless background information that my brain processed as mere filler, and thus filtered out. I know he talked about her a lot in that hour or so before their arrival, but I just don't remember what it is he told me.”

“We were still in the lobby when the car drove up, and Julian suddenly became very animated, a huge smile on his face, and his arms and legs flailing about excitedly. He clutched the arms of the armchair in which he sat and sprang up, lifting his feet up and onto the cushioned seat. Then he jumped up and ran around toward the door. I hadn't even had a chance to look at the arriving ex until we both came out of the double glass doors, Julian running out and me following. It was a convertible of some dull color, perhaps dark red or brown, and it was parked on an incline near the Holiday Camp sign, almost facing down, as in to a ditch, from our vantage point. There were 3 people in the car. A woman driver, a woman in the backseat on the passenger side, and a figure all in black in the front passenger seat, wearing a wide and flat-brimmed hat with a small bowl.”

“I was still behind Julian when he clutched at his head with both hands, and almost sank to his knees, screaming, ‘Nooooo! Noooooo! Not The Spanish!’ He then began running, still screaming, out to the left of where the car was parked, out toward the parking lots in the motel section of the resort. I immediately followed, wondering what on earth ‘The Spanish’ meant, and why he was so horrifyingly upset by seeing his ex and her friends parking their car, and not even bothering to go out and greet them. As I ran to try to catch up with Julian, he was flailing his arms wildly, still shrieking, ‘Noooooo!’ I tried to yell ahead to him to stop, but he presumably couldn't hear a thing I said.”

“Once we had run well past the ex's car, out into the mostly empty lot beyond, Julian banked to the right in an arc that put him on a direct course with a large, old 4-door luxury car, like an Oldsmobile or something. He opened the passenger side back door very swiftly and jumped in. He closed the door just as I approached, and he was still quite hysterical, flapping around front to back and side to side in the comfortable, roomy luxury car backseat. I opened the door and poured quickly in, shutting the door behind me, feeling the intense silence of the interior in contrast with the sobs and grunts of this poor, sad rock star. I grabbed him by both arms as he continued his incessant low wailing. ‘Julian,’ I yelled over and over, shaking him slightly, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. He was looking out the front window of the car, vaguely in the direction of his ex. ‘Julian,’ I continued, ‘it's going to be alright! It's going to be alright!’ I repeated this like a mantra and gazed into his eyes, waiting for him to acknowledge mine. He began to settle down, and I kept repeating, ‘it's going to be alright,’ despite the sinking feeling that I had no idea if it was. Finally he stopped his ranting, which had decreased to a mere mutter before ending, and without shifting his head at all, his eyes moved to meet mine. We stared at each other for a long time, but I have no memory of coming out of that car.”

All rights reserved. ©2019, 2020 Todd Franklin Osborn