Super Collider
I never pulled it off, never rode an atom through a super collider with a nose full of cocaine and a drink in my hand. Never was a bullet, zooming through the city, skin pressed to bone, nerves on fire. Never was an atom bomb, ever-exploding in slow motion, ripping off doors, tearing down houses.
Want. Wanted. Wanting.
I was little more than a sucker-dart shot from a spring-action toy gun, hitting the refrigerator, flopping to the floor, waking up on the sidewalk or in the stairwell.
"Thump, thump, thump" goes a skull on the steps.
Particle physics failed me, along with my liver, and a psyche sadly born lacking Bukowski's famous endurance.
I never made it to light speed, or even close. Collisions, though. There were collisions and revisions, rewritings of mistakes better forgotten. Not as bleak as Carver, nor as destructive as Hemingway. Now, waiting to smash and rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, running around in circles, deep underground.
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Author's Note
This is a nonfiction piece recently published at Gloom Cupboard.
Electric and digestible
way to go, hobie
as an ex particle physicist with a permanent super collider hangover, may i borrow the expression "kudos" from david? i like this very much!
ps. i understand the 'gloom'. i don't understand the non-fiction aspect of this work.
Nice read. Sparse, yet controlled.
Thanks guys!
Finnegan - your comments are particularly (particle - ly?) gratifying.
Cheers!
This has excellent sound to it. It must be great read aloud. For me, it has that feel to it. The first paragraph I could see as a rock song.
Lyrical with a poignancy to it that's gripping. Nice.
I published this under "fiction", but it wouldn't be the first piece with a non-fiction slant that found its way to the fiction section. I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess it could be considered "creative non-fiction." Still love this piece.
Thanks, Allie - I must have forgotten to qualify it in the excitement of the publication.
It's still fiction-y though.
Great, great energy to this piece, Hobie! Favorite line: Particle physics failed me, along with my liver, and a psyche sadly born lacking Bukowski's famous endurance.
A gem.