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Overloading the Machine

How Solemn!

one stone is turned under

moss grows rolling sing sly
and the family knows
mum's the word, shush is the flower
too rain wet to tell
two ways around
the Beside are
aside, "in the lobby, 'ist' is an insult"
and seaside, "don't bury your brother"

as a whole,
people seem to like parts
and troubling between them;
the middle way
is way up there
where some sandy signs lean.

We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. [...] I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...] "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget. "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway belle's for thee." The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.

-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition