Father’s Day

What would I say to my father on this day? To a legacy born in violence, pain, lies, and cruelty? To the disease he has handed down that I must fight again?

My reality has never been a 50’s T.V. Sitcom. I will never know the peace of a quiet, ordinary life, and I can’t wallow in what might have been.
I exist in the present and that is enough.

If I could look into sober eyes, I think I would tell him despite the rage, anger, and tears, I have seen beneath his mask. I have seen the vulnerable parts, the pieces of kindness and compassion he desperately clung to and the reason why he could never totally walk away. I saw the damage and now I see the soul desperately lost and losing more and more of his reality. Yet, I see the glimmer of hope that always remained, like a life vest too small to offer salvation. For that glimmer, I can say “I forgive you”.



The Scent of Fog

Ok it took a bit longer — graduations, ugh! 100 words…here ya go!

Heels clatter passed me as the fog swallows my will. The thrill of being something else pulls. I follow. “I will be gone with the mist, for I belong to it. ”

The wind bites, but I’m not afraid, should I be? “Sit and I will tell you of hoar’s frost.” Visions swim in my head. My blood is her blood. Nausea. “Shh, it has to be.; a knife glimmers. Blackness.

It’s noon, I am alone, branded. The fog coats me in diamond dust. She will return and we will go together where the fog sinks back across the bay.


No this isn’t my micro fiction piece, just a little poem inspired by fog on a lake and my longing to be suspended in it.


It came over me when I fell asleep in your arms.

White vapor, softening reality
Until all was gone.

I feel your strength and know I’m safe drifting in the vapor.

Will this fade from me? Or will it blow away with the breeze?

Will the sun’s hot rays punch a hole in this serenity? Nothing lasts forever…

can it?

How to write a better horror movie

I think there was something right about the censors in the early age of movies. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trampling on anyone’s freedom of speech or pen. What I am talking about is ingenuity. By restricting so much of what could be seen, writers and directors were forced to be creative in getting their audience to imagine the action. Simply showing everything is boring and lazy.

Look at JAWS it was a blockbuster hit “because” we didn’t see the shark often. And why was that? Because the darn thing was broken and forced the director to be more “creative”.

Tonight, I am in the mood for a good horror, mystery, or something dark but elegant; nothing with blood & gross out scenes. It seems that with modern day horror-mysteries there alway has to be the inevitable dumb blonde, topless slut, and death & dismemberment.

Watching the remake of The Fog is case in point. They had a wonderful basis for a searing, creepy trick-o-the-mind suspense: the fog itself. But, instead the director/writers take the easy route. They “gross-out” rather than allow the audience’s over active imagination do the heavy lifting for them.

Sure some of the scenes are beautiful: glowing fog eerily moving across the bay, cloaking everything in white. But then they go for the over-the-top knocking and brutal slayings of seemingly ordinary citizens. It all becomes a farce quickly.

I miss the days of Midnight Lace, when directors and writers had to be much more creative because of all the things they weren’t allowed to show.

In this day of anything goes, it’s too irresistible for the movie industry to throw everything but the kitchen sink in to try and tantalize the ever-shortening attention spans of the American movie goer, which grows lazier with each successive onslaught.

They leave the visual effects and CGI techniques to make up for a poorly written plot. What they have forgotten is that we viewers have a wonderful, lurid and paranoid imagination and we should be allowed to exercise it. If they would, they would find they have a far better movie.

Start with a good storyline, engage the audience’s imagination and then don’t cop out on the ending.

To that end I’ve issued a challenge to myself and my fellow writers to write a micro-fiction piece with the word Fog as inspiration. By it being “micro” it gives us only a precious 100 words to tell a complete story and engage the audience’s imagination. Results tomorrow.