Dream #73 Artemis / Nature #Micro Fiction

Tags

Artemis, Digital Painting, Dream, Original Micro Fiction, Phil Gennuso

digital painting by phil gennuso

She is walking through the forest, a fantasy, a garland of flowers, tulips, on her head, a larger garland, roses, around her waist, small green leaves and twigs in circles, on her ankles, bow and arrow across her slender shoulder. Her feet as feathers, skin, natural, unadorned, deep and real.

The woods are clear but misty, is it early morning or dusk?, it alternates, sunlight flitting, slanting, darting, caressing, through the leaved trees, blinding vision, then opening eyes, then shutting them again. Blinking.

As nature’s beauty moves between light and darkness, alone, free, unpossessed.

Artemis, wild, true, constant princess of the wood and flower, playing tag with sun and moon, forever young, forever innocent, forever alive and steadfast, with us always, as long as one last untouched wood remains, one last natural flower blooms, one last heart, large or small, beats deep in the wilds, the wetlands, the lake.

Dream #114 Rod Serling and Ted Cruz #Micro Fiction

Tags

flash fiction, Micro Fiction, Rod Serling, Ted Cruz

collage by phil gennuso

They were caught in a time warp, a celluloid zone of contradiction and gothic, macabre and colorful, sinister and patriotic, forever repeating themselves, over and over, vote after vote after vote, the sound, loud and insistent, hard to distinguish whole words, or sentences, while others, more distillate, viewed the tape with alarm, and sneering and jeering and shock, feinted or otherwise. Children were stabbed and shot, people were left to starve, women were cast aside in alleyways and highways to be plundered, the unemployed found no solace, the homeless no roof, while they toasted, and contributed and met, and read from gilt edged bibles, and randian tomes, and drank consecrated wines, imported, at that.

It was strange, something very surreal, distorted, an unintended painting.

—-

Only the director here was not Rod Serling.

It was not even David Lynch.

It was Ted Cruz.

Two Friends #Flash Fiction

Tags

flash fiction, Two Friends

visual collage by phil gennuso

Two Friends

When I met him he was a bit strung out, a bit me, myself and I, and hard to understand. I hardly recognized my friend and what he was saying but still, there was someone there, inside, I thought I still knew. At one time, in the distant past, we were very attached.

He always was a magnetic type, he could attract people without really trying, which sometimes bothered me. But that was ok because now he needed people more than anything else, though I doubt he realized it.

His girlfriend had gone South, literally, and so he was just hanging out. Heavy on the drug scene, heavy on the alcohol scene, mostly light stuff, but almost incessantly. It gets to the point where nothing else exists, driving through the world, high as a kite, the world in a blur, not really hurting anyone, but time is passing by.

I had known his family for quite some time, but now that his parents were gone, I knew he did not have too many people to turn to. I felt somewhat of a responsibility for this dude, though I didn’t really like the feeling. That was my libertarian phase, a common phase for my time and crowd and I thought every path had to be self discovered. I did not want to interfere with anyone, not even close.

That was my philosophy anyway, but what do you do when someone you are connected to somewhere in the past needs something you may have? It was not something I really wanted to do, my irritation showed. I am not sure I really helped. The money was the easy part in a way, even though it frustrated me because I knew deep down that someday I would need that money myself, and that he would probably piss it away.

He rarely appreciated it that is for sure. So what do you do in that case?

It just finally stopped when we got to the point where we almost killed one another.

It almost destroyed me, it was like Cain and Abel, we were caught up in this ancient myth, as if time never stops its circles, its webs of deception.

Maybe that is what had to happen. Maybe it was already ordained somewhere, in some faraway place, from some faraway time. Yet still it hurt, deeply, very deeply.

You see this friend, this man, this human being, was my very own twin brother.

Branch Davidians Koresh #Flash Fiction

Tags

Branch Davidians, David Koresh, flash fiction, Waco

original digital composition by phil gennuso

Inside the smell of fear is palpable. The young women and girls, clutch the younger girls and babies. Koresh has promised the immortal, no one will forget us, ever.

Koresh, the son of god, will summon them before the noon lunch. He will pick one girl to have sex with first before the sermon, his custom, his religious ceremony.

Outside, the police are losing patience, sirens, horns, agencies. The world waits, so many days, what is going to happen, in Waco, Texas. The cold war is over, the new war has begun, springing, native, from wild American soil, cultures of zealots, everywhere, religious freedom.

None of the Davidians will leave, transfixed by the impending apocalypse they have been waiting for their entire life. This is what they have come for.

To fill the empty hole inside, this strange land, without a past to hold you fixed, your feet rooted in the thousands of years of time, culture, no, here, shifting sands, sandstorms, dessert storms, so many lost, soulless, longing.

The signal at last is given to go.
Was it from the President, to crush the impeding religious rebellion?

The fire and the gas fill the hole inside of all of them and gives them a new heart, divine blessed by Koresh, fire running through their arms and legs, as if new and consuming the holy sacrifice thus fulfilling the prophecy. Koresh is right.

That lonely place inside of the Davidian, a homelessness of the soul, that breeds so many zealots, to gather, so many lost pilgrims even among the skyscrapers of Houston and waves of grain and streets of gold, and gospels of success.

He has shot the false messiah, the false Koresh and took his rightful place as the head of his flock.

Born of the eternal apocalypse, the saints of years ago when fires shot across the earth and diseases wrecked civilizations. That is when Koresh was born, to be savior, noble star, path to heaven, Koresh divine.

And at this last moment, Koresh is transfigured, into a pole burning, a corpse on file on a crumbling stake of wood, that crumbles to burnt ash, the offering to a zealous god.

He will be remembered as long as history lives, he promises, his last words.

They are his acolytes, his silent acolytes, for as long as words are spoken.

Dream #105 Pencil Feminine #Micro Fiction

Tags

flash fiction, Micro Fiction, Visual Composition

digital composition by phil gennuso (click to enlarge)

She is a long thin pencil, pale arms, short cropped hair, punk style, handbag, very long, long legs, strolling, large strides through the center of the mall, heads turn, heels clicking on the tile.

Much too tall for me, I am thinking, she must be from a different place, not from this town, though this is a city, I have never seen her.

It is difficult to feel the feminine, to get a sense of who she is and where I might belong, in her arms.

Though I doubt my existence has ever crossed her mind.

Or likewise, any of the unknown onlookers, nonchalant, but intense, very intense.

The Project #Flash Fiction

Tags

Micro Fiction, Original Flash Fiction, Project, Romance, Spring

original digital collage by phil gennuso

They loved to slip away on lunch break, especially when the sun was beginning to turn warm and the air was sweet with early bloom, and not too hot and sticky.

The project was going to be a fairly long one, and so they expected a natural rhythm, and ebb, a flow, a crescendo, a flare, a denouement. That is just the way projects went, in his opinion.

She wanted to be sure that if a physical relationship developed, it did not follow the same contours, it did not last as long or as shortly as the project. It had to have something to it, something beyond the sheer beauty of a day lived, a day experienced. Though she would not know what that something was, exactly, she would feel it, intuitively. Of that, she was surely confident.

So, they just continued, when the sun was sweet, lunch in the small woods a few miles away, not far from the farmer’s market, the clear blue sky, hidden behind the trees and early flowers. They even crossed the small stone bridge, quite vintage, across the Raritan River, which sometimes, poetically, overflowed, after very, very heavy rains, and filled the marsh, as nature ordained.

At some point, of course, when the sun turned too hot, they went their separate ways, followed different paths, finished their project, in essence, did the jobs they were paid to do. They were pros, after all.

But for quite some time, after the project had finished, when he was on a different contract, a different assignment, a different place, he would remember the smell of her soft perfume, the scent of the tulips, the light breeze, that is what remained of the project to him; the software itself, faded away, into the thousands and thousands of lines of code, floating, churning, doing their daily jobs, mundane, unknown, unknowing of spring days in a soft breeze, tulips, bright cool suns, pretty dresses, and just a hint of perfume.

Dream #68 Girl Looking Down #Flash Fiction

Tags

Collage, flash fiction, Love, Micro Fiction

Her hair is dark and stringy and long. She is turned slightly, head slightly nodded, eyes mostly closed. Her lips are touched with red, with the faint hint of a smile, a smile that is hard to describe with words, a smile that seems to know more than she is letting on.

Her skin is dark, perhaps it is deep tan. She is wearing a tee type pullover, you can see her neck and some of her arms. There is a glow.

She is attractive, though not in a way you might think. She is not a glossy model, with glossy lipstick, and airbrush. No. Hardly. She probably would not advertise most products, unless they were natural. She is pretty, in a unique way. She is a woman.

I am chasing her down hallways I should not be in, looking through windows I should not be looking through, knocking on doors I should not be knocking on.

On rare occasions, I can vaguely see her face looking through a window with blinds, from an adjacent apartment, perhaps with her mother or an older woman in the background.

I think, if I find her, it could be dangerous, I am not sure, I am not sure why.

Sometimes what starts innocently enough, can become distorted and distracted, unintentionally or not.