Justin P. Lambert's Blog

Like a doll with a missing leg

Or a matchbox car with three wheels

Left, forgotten, beneath the bed

Or in the closet, in a dusty box

What so many memories

That she’s forgotten.

 

I sit here in this toy box of memory

Wanting nothing more than

To be remembered, cherished

Picked up and smiled at

With the careless freedom

Only a child has.

 

But I’m broken, lost to time

The ultimate playdate looms

Just over the horizon, and I’m

Almost ready to give up and

Sigh my last goodbye

To this purgatory.

 

But there’s a sound. A ringtone

My cellphone lighting up.

Her face graces the screen

Her number lit in green

And my tears hide the rest

As I press the green.

 

 

January 9, 2016

The cool breeze in the trees pleases me

while the green scene that’s been gone

so long in between autumn and now

explodes with loads of odes to so many

untold secrets secreted since winter.

And spring brings extreme dreamscape

wonderlands to stand before the door of

our perceptions, except inceptions of this sort

distort all we expect to see, believe, and be.

 

So the cold calm of winter’s balm holds

more before the door than spring brings to

us whose shoes refuse to use and abuse

the paths well-worn and mourned beneath

the snow we know will coat the road and

grass at last before spring bores a hole in

winter’s frozen coat of cold.

 

January 8, 2016

She broke on the pavement like a plaything lost and forgotten.

A year-old lab mix mutt with intelligent eyes and eager ears,

She was playing some kind of game, our screams factored in.

We egged her on even as the grey sedan bore down on her,

our cries interpreted as joy and laughter in the wind-faded rush

Of her pointed canine ears.  She probably expected a treat

to appear at the end of her sweeping run over this alien field of grass

And asphalt, but no treat could wake her when her run was done.

No tear, no cry, no hitched sobbing sigh could wake her

 

January 7, 2016

Watching the sunrise

my head swims with the haze of exhaustion

 

Watching the world wake

my heart trips with the desire to sleep

 

Hearing the birds converse

my ears ache for silence and solitude

 

Feeling the warm light

my skin tingles in hopes of a blanket and pillow

 

Your night is my day, your slumber my dance

Your quiet is my scream, your snore my sigh

But still your dark is my dark and your light my light

A light I rarely see, and a dark I must call home.

 

January 6, 2016

I’ve never seen a baby pigeon.

Yet I believe that they exist.

I’ve never seen a black hole.

Yet science promises they’re out there.

I’ve never seen the wind.

But I can see what it does.

I’ve never seen a photon.

But apparently that’s an oxymoron.

I’ve never seen a sound.

But my ears have rung for hours afterward.

I’ve never seen my own heart.

But I can feel it beating.

 

January 5, 2016

She hobbles into the room

a groan escaping trembling lips

and shuffles toward the couch

 

She turns to sit, but pauses

her eyes crinkling in prophecy

of the pain she knows is coming

 

She gives up to gravity

and flops down unbalanced

on the overstuffed chocolate cushions

 

She lets out a whimpering sigh

and closes her eyes to the pain

shakes her head and breathes in again

 

She has been to the bathroom

She has returned in record time

I woke up with a headache and blood caked inside my nose.

I had a vague recollection of why my face hurt, but only hazy images clouded with at least 12 shots of tequila. It involved a lot of slurred insults my mouth came up with without the aid of my brain and a couple of really solid fists spiked with hulking class rings and backed by plaid-covered arms the size of small tree trunks.

Note to self: as it turns out, it’s not too smart to point out that your bar mates are likely related on both their parents’ sides unless you’re sober enough to dodge and weave a little bit.

I was lying across the hood of my 2003 Honda Accord. As I slowly inched my way up to a sitting position, I marveled at the fact that the windshield was intact. After a few more moments, I stumbled around to all four corners and confirmed the tires were all good too. If I’d gone to the trouble of carrying an unconscious drunk to his car after beating the daylights out of him, I probably would have poked a few holes in the tires for good measure.

Apparently Bubba and T-bone were better men than I.

My head was still swimming from the alcohol, but a glance at my watch told me I’d been out for a good three hours already. It was the darkest and quietest part of the early morning when only paperboys and idiots like me were out and about, so I fished in my jeans pocket for my keys, already dreaming about my soft bed at home.

The keys weren’t there.

I probably should have guessed the bartender would have kept them. Old Barney’s pretty conscientious when it comes to that. And, considering I wasn’t even awake to ask for them on the way out, it made sense that he hadn’t given them back to me. But I was still pretty pissed.

After a few fruitless minutes cursing out the blank wall of the bar – now long closed for the night – I pulled my shirt tighter around me, stuffed my hands deep into my pockets, and resigned myself to a long walk home. I lived about three miles away, barely a blip in my Honda, but quite a trek for two legs still wobbly from the tequila and a head that was pounding with every breath. To make matters worse, it was just cold enough to be irritating. Nothing dangerous, just uncomfortable. And comfort was hard to come by at that moment.

So I started walking.

The first half mile or so was uneventful. The bar is situated in a crowded commercial section of town where storefronts and three- or four-story apartment buildings seem to have been dropped in a heap and scrunched together like a child’s lego creation. During the day, it’s noisy and busy: easily the most interesting place to be anywhere within ten miles of this tiny dot on the map. That night, it was silent and still. Kind of creepy, actually.

But after about a half mile, the buildings start thinning out and the houses get a little bigger. Most of them are old, dilapidated farm houses or cookie-cutter 3-bedrooms that popped up in the 80’s when a factory in town was at its peak. These days, though, half of them were vacant and the other half were heading that direction. In between the houses, unkempt yards stretched back to taller grass and then, like a swaying brown wall, the wheat fields began.

Miles and miles of wheat in every direction except straight down the only road that led into and out of town. If you brought up Google and looked at a satellite image of our town from about a thousand feet up, it would look a lot like the body of a violin with the road coming out both ends, perfectly straight for miles east and west. And surrounding the violin, for about as far as you can see until you’re up to about 5000 feet, nothing but wheat.

The wind sawing through the wheat grew louder as I got about halfway home. At this point, there were almost no houses on the road. Here and there a mailbox popped up out of the tall weeds of the roadside, next to a thin dirt track that led back through the wheat for as much as a mile before ending up at one farmhouse or another. I couldn’t see any of them from the road, I just assumed they were there.

There were no lights either. Just the half-moon, with a few wispy clouds scudding past it.

But the wind in the wheat kept me company. And the crunch of gravel beneath my feet.

And then, suddenly, there was something else. Another sound that appeared in between two footsteps and in a momentary lull in the wind.

It was a breath. And the unmistakable sound of a tongue licking dry, cracked lips.

I stopped and spun around so fast I nearly fell over. My head pounded with my pulse and my eyes shot open wider even though all I really wanted to do was close them and go to sleep.

There was nothing behind me. The moon wasn’t really bright but it was more than enough to see someone or something if it was there with me on the road. There was nothing.

I slowly turned back around, scanning the wheat field to my left, making sure not to make a sound. Seeing nothing, I looked back up the road in the direction I’d been heading and then off to the wheat on the right as well. Still nothing.

Now, my breaths were moving in and out faster and my heart was racing to keep up. My ears had turned preternaturally sensitive to the point that I could swear I heard a sleeping sparrow burp. But I still couldn’t identify the sound that had startled me, and I didn’t hear it again.

Until I started walking.

This time, after just a few steps, I heard the same thin, raspy sound again. It sounded like it was directly behind my right ear. The hair on my neck stood on end and I whipped around to my right, my arms coming up ready to defend myself, but nothing was there.

Let me pause here to say I’m not a garden-variety drunk like some of the guys at the bar I’d left half an hour previous. Sure, I’ll overindulge on occasion, but I’m pretty sure my liver isn’t crying “uncle” just yet. And I’ve never blacked out, had hallucinations, or in any other way experienced the really bad side of drinking. So, to feel and hear that breath behind me, then turn around to find nothing there…

That’s disconcerting.

“Who’s there?”

In my mind, it came out as an angry yell. But in reality, it was more of timid squeak. I swallowed, cleared my throat, and tried again.

“Who’s there? This isn’t funny, man. Come on, give me a break.” I’m not sure why I decided to go with the reasonable-guy-just-out-for-a-stroll persona, but it felt right at that moment. That is, until I heard it again. This time, in front of me.

I spun back around and another frightened noise escaped my lips. There was nothing there, and I suppose I’d come to expect that at this point. But the sound had passed right by my right ear as if someone was standing right next to me, trying to tell me a terrible secret.

I felt the surge of adrenaline that only dead-on terror can bring on. Wobbly or not, my brain got my legs moving and suddenly they were pumping away at top speed. I sprinted up the road heading toward my house, the cool night air pumping in and out of my mouth like the bellows of a forge.

After a minute or so, my poor physical condition won out over my panicked mind and I slowed down, clutching at my chest with one hand and the stitch in my side with the other. I stopped and bent at the waist – hands on knees – to catch my breath. And I took the opportunity to glance behind me.

What I saw erased any thought of my pounding heart or sore side.

It was about 30 feet away. Not running, exactly, but moving with determination toward me, At a speed I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun for long. The dark figure was seemingly human, except it wasn’t. It was too tall and thin to be a regular person. And something about the way it moved… shuffled along is probably a better way to describe it.

And there were the eyes.

Dull, red orbs shining malevolence out of a shadowed face. And every few steps, they’d blink out for a split second before refocusing on me.

The last thing I saw was the slightest hint of teeth in a maw of a mouth too big to reasonably fit in the thing’s face. Teeth that were a little too long, and far too sharp to be human. And a tongue scraping across those teeth with a hunger. The raspy sound met my ear and – thank God – broke my paralysis.

I spun around again and set off at a dead run toward my house. The remaining distance disappeared quickly as my protesting legs, lungs, and side took a backseat to my hyperactive brain and adrenal gland. I’ve never run so far so fast in my life.

When I finally reached my house, I turned into the driveway without breaking stride and bolted past the house to get to the back door I always left unlocked. Rounding the back corner of the house, I stopped quickly and finally dared to peer cautiously around the corner to see if my pursuer was close.

No one was there.

I waited for what must have been 20 minutes at least, staring down my driveway just waiting for that horrible thing to round the corner at its determined shuffling pace and start heading toward my house, but it never came. After a while, my frontal lobe started asserting itself and telling the rest of me that it had been nothing but an alcohol-induced hallucination or nightmare. That it couldn’t possibly be real. And, although I had a lot of trouble actually believing that in my heart, it sounded really good to my head.

So I went inside, took my clothes off, and fell into bed with a heavy sigh. I fell asleep almost immediately.

The next day, I woke up around 11:00, drank three cups of strong coffee and ate a couple scrambled eggs, then hit the road to go pick up my car. By that point, I’d all but convinced myself that what I’d experienced had been an aftereffect of the alcohol and nothing more.

I kept telling myself that as I walked by the weird break in the stalks of wheat on the right side of the road about a quarter mile from house where it looked for all the world like someone had turned off the road and crashed through the wheat at a good pace. I repeated it to myself when I passed the spot where I’d first heard that eerie breathing sound and saw another unexplained spot where someone or something had pushed out of the wheat and onto the road.

And I was repeating it like a mantra by the time I got back to the bar, retrieved my keys from an unhappy bartender who recommended I keep a low profile for a few months, and drove home.

Go to Kickstarter and pledge $1 or more to help a dedicated writer reach his incredibly audacious writing goals for this year!

What exactly am I going to do?

Within one year (August 1, 2015 to July 31, 2016), I will write 365 poems, 52 flash fiction pieces, 12 short stories, and 1 full length novel.

The end result will be four books:

“A Diary in Verse” – 365 poems written in a year
“A Flash in the Pan” – 52 flash fiction pieces
“Unresolved Issues” – 12 short stories
and the novel.

Each book will be published via CreateSpace and Amazon to create print and eBook versions.  eBooks will also be made available through other online retailers and print versions will be distributed via mainstream print book retailers as well as libraries.

Am I crazy?

Perhaps a little, but that doesn’t mean the idea is nuts.

Here are the specifics, if you’re interested:

Poems: No word count requirements. No thematic or structural boundaries
Flash Fiction: Anywhere up to 2,000 words
Short Stories: Anywhere from 2,000 to 50,000 words
Novel: Anywhere above 50,000 words

Why I’m doing this Kickstarter campaign

As a lifelong writer, the idea of writing poetry, short stories, and novel-length fiction isn’t new to me or my friends and family. And that’s part of the problem.

What I’m attempting to do with this Kickstarter Project is to provide myself with both an incentive and an undeniable level of accountability for completing an incredible array of creative output.

You see, as most writers know, the idea of writing and the fact of writing often miss each other.  It’s fairly simple to want to write, but putting your butt in your seat and making it happen – even when it’s hard – that’s another story. (No pun intended.)

So, the money from this Kickstarter campaign will provide adequate financial backing to create undeniable accountability on my part: With the money in hand, I have absolutely no excuses left as to why I cannot dedicate the time and effort needed to complete the work. Plus, it offers an opportunity to expand the marketing efforts behind the work so that more readers can enjoy the finished products when they are done.

What can YOU do to help?

By all means, pledge your support at any level you’re comfortable with. It’s all greatly appreciated.

In addition, if you have any ideas for poems, stories, or a novel, that you’d like to see explored, let me know!  While preference has to go to supporters, I’m interested in any ideas you have in mind that you’d like to see written.  Part of the magic of this kind of project is the fact that it’s not really possible for one guy to come up with enough good stuff to make it work.  But with all of chipping in?

It’s going to be awesome.

 

The moon rises in a clear blue sky

Even as the sun races westward.

It’s an interloper for hours

A trespasser hovering over the horizon.

Playing tug-of-war with the tides

And with the emotions of men.

It’s a lone sentinel at night,

A burning mirror gliding across

A glimpse of eternity with pinpricks

That are millions of years old

And probably dead by now.

Only controlled by its shyness.

Every month it slowly peeks out

From behind Daddy’s back,

Jumps into full view for a happy instant

Then retreats to the security

Of invisibility and predictable patterns

With just a sliver of brilliance.

Oh, how we love the sun:

Bright and whole day after day,

With heat to burn through clouds

And light to shine through worries,

With the power to light the dead moon

Even as it sleeps through the night.

But oh, how we love the moon:

Broken and uncontrollable,

Weak and yet undeniable,

With the guts to burn through

The eternal night alone, in the cold

Even though, it’s almost never whole.

And how we hate to see the moonset.

There is a feeling that infiltrates my soul

Every now and again.

A feeling that leaves the edges cold

And the insides spent.

A feeling that closes doors and shades

Both inside and out

So light and warmth of the bright day

Can’t quench the drought.

This feeling steals in on a whisper.

It never, ever shouts:

It’s quiet and stealthy, an unseen blister

You can do without.

A feeling that builds in silent expansion

Like a bubble of gum

To demand the most extravagant ransom

Knowing you can’t pay the sum.

It’s a blanket of storm clouds in November

That stays still for weeks.

A feeling that smothers and puts out the ember

Making the strong weak.

A feeling that corrodes a steel determination

Leaving it for rust

A feeling that brings to its knees a nation:

In God they trust?