What Bukowski Thought

What Bukowski Thought

(from The Poet of Utah Park)

Red wheelbarrow my ass

I’ll glaze your friggin’ chickens

-- with peanut sauce

in my red-hot oven.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 6/19/2011

Bearded Squirrel

Bearded Squirrel

(from Prosthetic Amalgams)

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Kenny A. Chaffin

            Seven years from now a bearded squirrel looking like Rasputin glares at me from atop a fence post along the canal. Yes, the same canal I walk along now. He scolds me saying, ‘Why are you here? What have you done, it’s been seven years?’ I just look at him and shake my head because I too can see the past and say, ‘You think it’s easy? You up on your high post from your future vantage point?’ I spit on the grass in front of the post to make my point. I know as well as him what the future holds and am content with it, for I will have looked back on it that seven years ago and I tell him, ‘The world will know of you!’ I turn and walk into the future.

With the news of Opportunity completing a marathon on Mars I thought it a good time to post this from a  few years back. First published in James Gunn's Ad Astra and then in my collection The Poet of Utah Park

Silent Spirit

The pictures were brilliant

the best ever seen from the

surface of Mars. Then

as it reached out

to touch that surface,

like Adam reaching

to touch the finger of God,

it died, sending only a

nondescript tone across

millions of miles –

a heart monitor flatlined

leaving humanity listening

with perked ears and

waiting on Opportunity.

Kenny A. Chaffin 

BPD (flash fiction)

BPD

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

            It started on the East Coast. Cases popped up from New York to Washington D.C. It spread like wildfire in ever increasing waves. The CDC had no explanation for the disease or its possible contamination vector. No explanation, no diagnosis and no method to fight it even though the symptoms were clear – the blue blood, the obsessive desire to speak in public, the need to take from the poor and give to the rich, and a strange fascination for guns and tea parties. The American Psychological Association rushed to update the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to include Borderline Patriotic Disorder.  

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalyzes Albert Einstein

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalyzes Albert Einstein

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

So tell me when was it you started having these visions of riding a rainbow?

A light beam! A light beam! Are you even listening to what I’m saying?

Okay, okay a light beam. So tell me when did you first start having this delusion?

Oh Jesus and Mary, I’ve told you it’s not a delusion, it’s a thought experiment. I envision myself traveling at the speed of light – essentially riding a light beam – and look around and see what I see.

You mean like you think you are a light beam. Would you say that’s a little unusual. Most people dream of flying or being a sex star, not flying through the empty darkness of outer space.

Space is only part of it, time is the rest.

So you feel out of time as well.

No, no, no. Please listen to what I’m saying. I thought that was your job here, I thought that’s what you do. I suppose next you are going to ask me about my wandering uterus. Now listen, since I was a little boy I’ve imagined flying on a beam of light and trying to understand what the world, the universe would look like if I did.

So was this beam of light ‘penis-shaped.’

Oh Lord have mercy. No, just a beam of light, no rainbows, no penises, no Oedipus complex. Just physics. If I fly through the universe at the speed of light I will not grow old as fast as those I left behind, this is one result. It’s about the shrinkage.

Shrinkage?

Yes, shrinkage of space, dilation of the universe. Thrusting through and everything being relative.

Do you love your relatives as well? Do they fly with you?

No, how many times must I tell you, it’s just me on a light beam.

Ah, I see, self-pleasure. Hmmmm and look at that. My how time flies. I guess ours is up we’ll pick up there next week.

In Word and in Deed (flash fiction)

In Word and in Deed

(from Prosthetic Amalgams available at Amazon)

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Kenny A. Chaffin

They met on the commuter train. Their eyes met across the paired passengers on their way to mostly meaningless jobs. She was like a magnet to him, he couldn’t tear his eyes away, nor could she. When they got off at the same stop downtown, he asked for her number. Within weeks they were inseparable, making the rounds to the clubs, dancing, meeting for dinner. It turned out they lived in adjoining neighborhoods just outside the city. They spent all their spare time together and a few months later they knew they were right for one another. They would be married.

Friends and family joined them at her church for the ceremony. The priest focused on the groom, “Do you Anton take this woman, Ginger for your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

“Do you Ginger take this man, Anton for your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Have you chosen your joining?”

“We have your holiness.”

“Please place your chosen hands in the bonding box.”

Anton placed his left hand on top of Ginger’s right hand in the box between them. The priest placed his hands on top. “You have each freely chosen to be bonded in holy matrimony. I ask now if there is anyone who has reason to believe this bonding should not happen in the eyes of the Lord let them speak or forever hold their words.” He paused for a moment looking out over the full pews. Hearing only silence he continued. “In my power as granted by divine providence and the laws of our state and country I now join you as man and wife.” A hum filled the air and the familiar blue glow emanated from the box as the couple stiffened and then fell to their knees. “The bonder opened to reveal their joined hands, their heads filled with each other’s thoughts, their hearts pumped the same blood.  “You are now one, joined in blood and flesh by God and man, forever, til death do you part.”

Schrodinger’s Cats

Schrodinger’s Cats

(from Prosthetic Amalgams)

They called them Schrodinger’s cats and they never failed to amaze me, even with all I've seen in my long life. The neocat lifeforms were fully designed amalgams of biology, physics and artificial intelligence. It was their behavior more than anything that intrigued me. They would warily approach an electrical outlet as if stalking it and then lap at it with their long blue tongues as if it were a bowl of milk -- the overhead lights flickering with each touch of those tongues.