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Overloading the Machine

Loved Poem No. 2

Of all the things
to be careless, the
distance chose you,
became rough with
a haughty splendor
unseen since your first
days of pen and pulse
and pendulum strokes
of maybe she will
and maybe she
don't. Always a
nice chin to keep up,
an appearance neither
too wet nor too
yours. Come, share with me
these dancing streaks.
I don't feel like leaving
before I know
the brush.

Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.

-- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

This page was last modified on 2011 December 20. "Loved Poem No. 2" by John Sullivan is Copyright ©2003 - 2011, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.