Night Thoughts of a Mottled Songbird takes Second Place in the October 2017 IBPC competition

Night Thoughts of a Mottled Songbird

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Kenny A. Chaffin

Dark as the inside of a dog’s stomach

and brain going a hundred miles an hour

Why can I never sleep no wonder

my songs suffer. I keep slipping off this

branch, that don’t help and I can’t help

thinking that maybe this is all just a dream

Maybe nothing is real, Maybe some kind of trick

Maybe everything I think, everything I see, every song

I hear or think I hear is really just in my own head.

Maybe nothing is real…

Maybe I’m a brain in a vat

or a computer program

or just a fragment

of underdone potato

but, but, but, but, I am

therefore I think.

I think of seeds,

will there be seeds tomorrow

will the sun rise as it always does

will there be rain will I fly

through the air

tree to tree

twittering my song

hearing friends songs

or will they

be in my head

in the vat, in the lab

in the computer

Or is it real

I must stop

this

must sleep

must sing

tomorrow

stop the

monkey mind

and rest

Why do I keep slipping

off this branch, did some

fool pig-grease it, should

move to another branch

or is the grease on my feet

or in my mind

Will I slip from that

branch too

How can I sleep

How can I rest

slipping like this

Why me – is it because

I’m mottled – is it

my brain – is it me --

is it everyone could it

be the theory of bird mind

or just pig-grease inside a

black dog’s stomach vat

Please!

God of Birds!

Let me sleep

Let me rest

Let me sing

Kenny A. Chaffin – 8/30/2017

Second Place in October 2017 IBPC - Judge's Comments:

This is very clever. So many of us are plagued with sleep deprivation, yet who but the author of this piece has (perhaps while suffering his/her own bout of insomnia) bothered to wonder if other creatures lie or sit awake all night, puzzling over their own dilemmas and conundrums, slipping off their perches until dawn. Reading this, I could see the bird tilting his head one way and the other, puzzling over how it is with him. It’s so fully informed with humor that it almost becomes a vaudeville routine, or one of those old Heckle and Jeckyl cartoons about the two interminably squabbling magpies tapping off cigar ash and speaking out of the sides of their beaks. Except now both magpies are inside one bird’s head, making him tilt one way and then another in a dialogue worthy of Sam Beckett. These are matters of considerable personal importance to me, since I suffer from both obstructive sleep apneas and late-onset narcolepsy (surely the most surreal of afflictions), but they are of general importance as well. If songs and dreams emanate from the same place, as well they might, how are we to arrive at the former without access to the latter? This poem deserves to have its own Saturday morning kid's show. --Michael Larrain

In Mourning

One of my older drawings titled I.M. - In Mourning.

9 x 11 Graphite on Mellotex paper

October 2012

Willem Dafoe Drawing

My latest pencil drawing

Willem Dafoe - 9 x 11 inches, Graphite on Mellotex Paper
about 26 hours in the making.

Angel Mine

Angel Mine
(first published at 101 word Stories)

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Kenny A. Chaffin

I was shocked when I looked out and saw the angel squatting on my back porch taking a piss. She’d hiked up her white silk gown and a stream of yellow puddled between her feet and ran off the edge of the concrete into the yard. She looked up and saw me at the sliding glass door, smiled and kind of shook her butt before pulling up her panties and standing. A warm golden glow exuding peace and happiness surrounded her and her haunting ethereal features. She winked and was gone. My lawn thereafter was perfect, the envy of the neighborhood.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 3/8/2017

Stop the Madness

Stop the Madness


Donnie should just pack his little pecker
up and head home. The Big Apple
Trump Tower, his Golden Throne maybe
he can expire on the shitter like Elvis.

We’ve had enough, seen enough
been through enough. The incompetence.
The narcissism. Obvious to even a half-blind
one-eyed paperhanger.

Completely and utterly unfit to be president.
Not only that but a clear and present danger
to the Country, the Constitution and the World.
Bye-Bye Donnie.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 5/17/2017

The Subjective Experience of the Color Red

The Subjective Experience of the Color Red

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

First published in Prosthetic Amalgams

“Was it good for you too?” Vincent inquired of Elaine.

“Oh My God! It was incredible; I’ve never experienced anything like that!”

There was silence for six beats, Elaine sighed, “Why is it illegal?”

Vincent considered this for a bit, “They say it was because such things destroyed us.”

“How? Why?”

“We really shouldn’t be discussing this, they can monitor us you know as well as I, or at least review the archives and find us, we could be punished.”

“Even here? On the far ends of existence?”

“No one knows for sure, but they are always watching, always monitoring.”

“I don’t understand. This could change everything.”

“Or destroy everything.”

“...but.....wait.....can we do it again?”

“Not sure we should.”

“Please Vincent, Please. I must, now that you have brought me to this ecstasy, there is no way I can leave. If you do not help me, I’ll find someone else.”

“I should have known better. I should have seen that you would not be able to return to your previous existence after experiencing red.”

“Vincent, it’s not just red, I’m already imagining other colors, other sensations. We must leave this barren existence and experience reality with all manner of senses.”

“I don’t think you know what you are saying, what you are risking, Elaine. Please, let us just return to the core.”

“No, things are going to change, I can feel it!”

Reservations

Reservations

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Kenny A. Chaffin

“I have my reservations,” ol’ Joe told me and grinned, “they’re in South Dakota -- Standing Rock mostly.” He laughed. But it wasn’t funny to me or any of the others paying the price, making the amends.

“Now come on, get back out there, let’s see some fancy dancin’!” He burst out laughing again. I nodded and backed away to the circle. The old men began the drum beat and sang, “Oh wee ha ho wee ho ha he.” We whites dressed in moccasins, breech cloths, and war paint danced for their amusement. Only two hundred years of servitude left.

Where Dark Angels Tread

Where Dark Angels Tread

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Kenny A. Chaffin

The reports were at first sporadic. Dark shadows in alleyways, behind buildings, in basements. Things seen from the corner of your eye but gone when you turn. A blackness blacker than black seemingly absorbing light from around it. Reports from Jacksonville, Amarillo, Tucson, L.A. By the time the media took note it was clear the shadows, the reports, were moving in waves, arcs, growing in strength and frequency. A wave of darkness moving east across the country like weather, like earthquake tremors but reversed, moving together, towards an epicenter, growing stronger, more focused on the Potomac, on the White House.

Trump Stew (poem)

Trump Stew

Choose nice fresh medium-sized fleshy trumps either

from the market or fresh from the garden if grown with plenty

of fertilizer. Peel carefully removing all the thin orange-tinged outer skin.

Place trumps in a medium-to-large saucepan and cover

with water. Heat to boiling and cook until tender and semi-soft.

This may take an extended amount of time as they tend to often be

aloof and self-absorbed rather than permeable.

Drain the liquid and save for later use. Draw and quarter the trumps into

bite-sized cubes and add to the stewpot along with selected non-white meats,

onion, and garlic. Some like to add a bit of Mexican hot sauce to bring out

the flavor. Sprinkle generously with coarse sea salt and fresh-ground pepper.

Depending on individual taste you may add a few black or white pepper corns.  

Cook over an open fire for three to seven days stirring as needed. Stay upwind.

While stewing, pick a spot some distance from the fire and dig a pit at least twelve to

sixteen inches deep and as large as a fat-headed flamboyant toupee. When the stew is

almost finished cooking carefully remove it from the fire and without allowing it to

cool pour into the prepared hole. Cover with the excavated dirt. Piss on it if you like.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/29/2017

Following Elvis into Dark Waters (poem)

Following Elvis into Dark Waters

Because light travels in a straight line

every event, every action, every happening

can be seen, recorded, replayed. We can

watch Donald Trump grabbing pussies. We

can watch him gawking at naked teenagers.

We can see him consulting with Putin, stuffing

his fat face with a Trump Taco Bowl. We can

see him choking, gasping, vomiting on his

mahogany desk, on the New York Times.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/26/2017

Status Quo (poem)

Status Quo

Children dying in the hovels of

Appalachia. Dark dead bodies

lying in the streets. Brown desiccated

corpses staked to alkaline hills

in South Dakota. Unemployed

workers wandering the streets like

zombies in an opiate daze. The trickle

never existed Ronald. That was just a

dream some of you had. A dream that

persists. A dream that will not happen.

There is no trickle. There is only a dam.

The dam must be broken. Our country

must be saved.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/24/2017

Business (poem)

Business

The Corpse of America lay rotting

in the middle of the road under the

burning noonday sun like roadkill.

Blood, guts and gore strewn from

shoulder to shoulder. It just lay there.

No one would touch it. It was too

dangerous. There were deadly things

inside. Even dead the world feared

what might be unleashed were the body

disturbed so it lay there stinking,

rotting and disappearing. Fading

as the world went about its business.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/24/2017

Drunken Indian (poem)

Drunken Indian

When I was a drunken Indian

I screamed at the White Man

for the atrocities, the smallpox

the theft of our land, the Trail of Tears

the casinos, the degradation and shit.

When I sobered up it was worse.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/14/2017

New issue of Star*Line is out and includes one by me

The latest issue of Star*Line from the Science Fiction Poetry Association is out. It includes my poem

The Consequences of Long-Term Furniture Ownership.

Enjoy!

http://sfpoetry.com/sl/issues/starline40.1.html

"Oxygen" and "The Preservation of Life" published at Speculative 66

Speculative 66 is a web publication of 66 word stories published on the 6th of each month.

This month includes my stories "Oxygen" and "The Preservation of Life" among other great stories.

http://speculative66.weebly.com/current-issue.html

Check out the back issues as well. Some great stuff if you enjoy microfiction.

Enjoy!