Better as a Soloist

He's sitting alone to a plate of cheerios
Stirring the circles in twirls in his bowl
Imagining a life a little less like this
And more like the world of forever ago
Before he had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn
When the future of his past was filled with adventures
When every new day would hold untold wonder
Than clocking in and out and worrying too much
About the stupid things
Like being on time
And making sure to spend enough time with his girl
Or his friends
As he pleases one and disappoints the others
Till slowly all smiles fade from curiosity
When his imagination stretched to infinity and anythings possible
Surely in the infinite recesses of his infinite imagination
He'd find no finite things in store
But his life will be over in just a few decades
And then what happens then
As he ponders the sad and obscure little question
And its a joke that his biggest fear is being alone
Like that's such a bad thing
Being able to judge yourself and think on your own sins
Without being seen down the barrel of a hangmans noose
Slinging up your own elbow, and taking your sweet time to piss
No need to be here for their sake
Just a need to be here to create
No expectations,
And no delayed progress
Just you and the wall and a paper and pencil
But life isn't lived as a solo act
The ensemble exists for the ecosystem
You help them and they help you
Holding hands
Shooting guns
Building nothing
Bemoaning everything
This is the world we have
Where we as a whole can accomplish much
But spend it on highs and false truths
Thinking that your purpose is making a difference
In your little den of horny bunny rabbits
Pretending what, denying the self
A group so you don't have to see inside you
The ecosystem continues it flourishes
You ignore your talents and your possibilites
And you become what you think you aren't
Loveless, tasteless, useless
a gum pile sticking to the bottom of a pair of sneakers
Never a second thought
All of us lost
But all of us finding each other
Thinking on the tower of babel
Finding any excuse not to reach out and grab it
Afraid it'll burn us
Afraid it'll sink us
Afraid it'll break us
Afraid it'll find us
As we hide behind giants
Swim in salt waters
Demand free of dairy creamers
Drinking our coffee with a little less sugar
Denying meats
Treating the cow like its better than us
Fooling ourselves that we are better now
Treating our fellow man like fodder
Lumping the terrors in with the regulars
Lumping the abusers in with the peace keepers
Not letting us go about our business'
Not letting us just be content
With our beef stew and noodles
With our apples and our oranges
Where is that individual you were
Till you kill him just to be done with it
Just to move on
Did you kill your individual self because your too weak
Now you'll holler with the mob
Demand refunds on already worn shorts
Start on vegan diets,
Let your neighbor struggle to carry in the groceries
But oh I see you didn't drop your butts on the ground
God bless you for being a part of the cog in the machine
Thinking your beyond it
Like he said in that movie
They need people like you to point at
While you need to point at them
Its like black and white
and the individual is in the middle resisting labeling
Demanding more self
Where is the middle?
For its much more comfortable sitting on the line.

In Those Moments Before I'm Infirm

Youth go on singing choral arrangement even though the audience is sleeping
They are snug in their beds and dreaming of taxes and when they'll have to shower soon
Taking time to contemplate the opening theme song to long ago show
Dipping a toe in the bath but never sitting inside
They prefer the presence of feet beneath them
Where they can keep an eye on their statuesque poses
Timidly tripping themselves into deeper slumbers
Whilst listening to the youth drone on about forever
Presently the whistle blows and lunch time menus are open
Waitresses gather around to listen to digression
To humor the non-stand up comedian, sitting down to empty plates
Practicing their charm on a charmless twat wearing aprons
Deciphering cryptic ramblings that are hidden with ordering
Timing it just right and praying that they heard it all correctly
For fear of being lashed out at for being moronic
As they pour a long island ice tea
The waitress is thinking of me.
Who sits in front of a computer screen
With fingers attacking lettered keys
Dreaming of kissing the love of his life
Believing himself a solo artist
Cracking the whip upon his heels
But its a padded thing that delivers no motivation
As he finds distractions to counter act his ambitions
Feeling helpless as motivated time is stolen
For friends and acqauintences who want to cut off a piece of his life
Torn between too many plates that the bastard eats out of during lunch time
While listening to dinner theater in the shape of a choral group
Composed mostly of stoners.

Redacted Corrections Erasing Deletions

I redact my former statement

File it under a collage of work beess

Who are hell bent on being the bees knees

Cautioning the caretakers to take care of the cautionary tales

In one more instance they will remember

But since the pages are blackened out with black pitch

No one can say for sure who said what and why they said it

Determined to stir the hive the drones set out

Collecting up suspicious suspects

Damming them all to dawdle in place

Sidestepping the sidestep, while they collect dust and fall to pieces

Sleeping on park benches while masturbating in church yards

Oblivious to their abominable behavior 

And in the hereafter Lucifer didn't care

And God Almighty didn't care enough to step off of his mount

When the people, those insects, starting stinging the mail men

For delivering them bad news

They wanted headlines that were clean and proper

Like the ones I took away from them before

Here in the wool that was pulled over their eyes the truth lies

It wasn't for nothing that no one got anywhere

We were to busy being done in by imagined wrongs

Where in we made our gravest mistakes

Thinking we were anything but strong

Heaven sent us what it could

As the workers turned into soldiers

And carried rifles on their shoulders

Listening to me mimicking the king

Who really was but the man behind the curtain

Sitting in his own filth and sucking his thumb

So savor this moment while you die for lost causes

When you battle to your wits end and keep on keeping on

Experiencing a long ago foretold prophecy

Flipping through pages as you channel surf to words you want

And we the bees knees keep on going in

Slaving away what we need to slave away

That we might trade our measely wage

For a slice of cheesey bread

Clamoring and spitting on the other

When we all are garbage men

Why do we feel the need to envy one another

Complainers Gonna Complain

In a remarkable turn of events
The whiners continue to scream
No one saw this coming
On the front page of every source
Damming the others to hell
Saying that won't change their mind
Acting as though they are all
That in the end the world revolves around them
That in some way we can't compromise
No one saw this coming at all
Let the people scream out loud
And say what they will about tomorrow
When all the same ole' same ole' happpens
In the heat of battle they will scream at each other
Over the course of trivial and stupid trifles
Amidst the wrong words spoken
Maybe by mistake but they don't care
I am who I am and I won't change
Even if it helps the world
That's what every one says to us
Us the people on the outside looking in
The little few who care too much
The kind hearted wisdom thinkers
Content not to hate humanity
For no real reason
But who choose to forgive
And then chose to forget
The stubborn masses keep on fighting
As if battle is necessity
But when has that ever been the case
The ill willed will still do ill bidding
And those that don't and are angry
Will still think ill thoughts
And then there's everyone else
The other few
Just one or two
Who are sick of all of you.

The Decided voice and Tone for Web Series.

Yeah I know but I wasn't happy with the voice and tone of the others.
This is more what I'm going for.
Still a rough draft.
                                              ~EPISODE ONE~

Origins

As the knives go in and the blood starts to seep over their silver edges I am wrought with a moment of indecision.  The man underneath my blow is half way to dead and with one more push forward it’ll be lights out.   In this instance with a man I had no quarrel with I am faced with this choice.  If I stop now and allow his wife to call the paramedics he will be saved, but if I continue with my forward momentum she will call the police, and she has seen my face, and while her husband is alive she may find it in her heart to forgive me my brutality.    It’s a large if and the face of agony in front of me is begging the question on what I will do next.   I know this because once upon a time I was in his position, wondering what the man who had me trapped in his death trap would be doing with me.  It was a face begging for mercy but wishing for death, whatever would come would end the pain eventually.

This isn’t some random event though.  My knives didn’t find this man by mistake, he is my mission and while I appreciate the frantic questioning in his expression I press my blades in and blood in his throat sends a gurgling sound up so that a puddle of red ooze drips from the corner of his mouth and his eyes show pain for the last time.  I envy this man, this random target I was ordered to elimate.  I envy that his troubles have ended, I do not envy the stupidity that got him in this position.   But as I’ve said I was once upon a time in this position as well.

I remember the day it happened it was overcast and humid out.  One of those days that in appearance looked cool as hell but in reality was hot as actual hell.  That sticky hot that causes your shirt to cling to your back and your skin to become oily and unbearable.   We were sitting in our apartment.   My girl Allison and I, we had just made love to each other and since the A/C had busted we hadn’t bothered to return our clothes.   I was resting my back against the headboard and her slender bare back was pressing against my chest and her hair was bunched up into my shoulder.   

“What do you love more?”  She asked me.

I remembered that question coming out of the blue, but she everything about her was like that.   She had a habit of surprising me, usually in good ways but then things often would become off kilter.  It was a signal that she was entering the darker side of her bi-polar attitude.

No one could blame her though.  The first time I saw her after all she was on her hands and knees with some asshole slamming himself inside of her.   I was dropping off a bag of product to this asshole drug dealer/pimp.   He was sitting in a back room so that I had to go through the halls of his massive unkempt penthouse.  The smell of cat piss was prominent but there were no cats.    The carpet was soiled so that no one would be able to guess its original color or texture.   And through this lovely den of vice I found him, a bag of coke in my hand and a snub nose under my belt.   His hair looked as though it were drenched in the grease from a shitty pizza from a crap pizzeria.  That kind of grease that if you were to fold the piece in half and squeeze could fill up a glass.   He always wore this white lab coat.   It was rumored he dabbled in creating drug cocktails.   Expirments of his own design that were just as likely to have a drop of salt as to have a drop of bleach.  He called himself the doctor.

“Beautiful isn’t she.”   He said underneath the shaking light of a desk lamp that rested on a table alongside the bed that Allison and this prick resided on.   I turned my head to her as it was hard not to take notice of such a sight.  There was initially already a knot in my stomach at the initial sight, a knot of horror and rage.   This wasn’t how I conducted my business.   It was the act of a circus side show, The Doctors business, a twisted demented version.   He was right though, she was beautiful, but beyond that I saw her misery, I saw the tears.   It wasn’t even a choice, and I made it my duty to rescue this woman.

“How much?”  I said.

“Five hundred a round.”

“No, to take her home.”   I correct.  That’s when he turned to me and sniggered at my suggestion.    But I turned my attention away from Allison and to that son of a bitch and I looked him dead in the eye.  “Something funny?”

Again he laughed, one of those laughs that is accomanpied by the noise of his nose trying to help the air escape a blocked nostril.  His eyes were big and he cast them up and the bloodshot nature of them was evident, his eyes met those of the man behind Allison and he smiled broadly.  To me he said, “What is she worth to you?  A fine pussy like that bring me in a lot of cash.   Suppose I said she’s not for sale, what could you offer me to change my mind?  To make me loosen up by code.”  He laughed again, but his eyes were wild and serious.  The tone in his voice demonic and feral.

“This shipment and every shipment for the next year are on the house.”   I said without a second thought.

“Seems like you’d some of your partners would be upset with you for giving away blow like that.  No profit made from a let’s face it a major client of yours.”  He wasn’t lying.  The Doctor was indeed a major contributor to my growing enterprise but I looked over at Allison again, her eyes were cast down, still exposed, her hips still gripped by that son of a bitch behind her.

“Looks like I’ll have to put some of my own money back into it.   Don’t you worry yourself with my financial predicament.   You got enough on your hands to worry about.  Why don’t you imagine how much more money you can put into your little carnival here.”  I mocked him and he stood up at that like a flash of lightning.

I reached for the snub nose and his hand landed over mine and a smile knife pressed its tip into the bottom of my jaw.   “If you have a problem  with people like me, maybe you should find yourself another line of work.   You can save this one girl, but not all of them.  What then?  Next time you see me what will you offer me to save the next whore?  You think you can come in here with your corn bread smile, your hospitality and small town charm.  You are in The City now boy. “

Inside my heart beat with the force that only comes with the fear of an inevitable demise, but I was usually like that.   Outside I focused my attention and tilted my head forward so that I felt the tip of his blade puncture the first lair of skin.   “Do we have a deal then?”

Instantly he released his hold, and I relinquished the grip on my pistol.  He turned to the man behind Allison and snarled, “You heard the man, get out of her, she’s his now.”

“I paid a grand for this bitch, I’m gonna get my fill of her.”  The client challenged.   The Doctor in a blinding motion through the knife he had threatened me with and it entered deep into the stomach of that bastard.

“The fuck!”   The man exclaimed unsure if he should remove the knife or not.

“Get up Allie, you belong to Mr. Harrison here now.”  He held his hand out to her and she took it and crawled off the bed.   Then I reached for a long yellow dress that I assumed to be hers that was draped on the back of the chair The Doctor had been sitting in and threw it on over her head.  She found her way into it and stood in place.   She was afraid of me.

Back in the bedroom where I hold her naked body against mine I respond to her question, “What do you mean what do I love more?”  The question coming is a sign of another depressive state.   When I walked out of that hellhole of an apartment with my arm calmly on the small of her back I could feel her heavy breaths.   In a place like The City you usually expect things to get worse.    A lowlife would buy someone from another lowlife.  There were no levels this place didn’t sink to.  Truth is I had no interest in sleeping with her.  To me she had the potential to recover herself, get out of this place and find a way to forget things.   I may have found my calling here, but not everyone was so lucky.   Every facet of this metropolis was corrupt and if you didn’t step in line with the seedy philosophy you were broken down and destroyed.  That’s what Allison was, destroyed.  She’d heard stories of people getting their start here, with big eyes of ambition.  What they didn’t tell you was what you’d have to do to get there.  Or what you’d have to do to stay there.  She was an easy target.

“Do you prefer your job over me?”   She continues, and I listen and feel to her breathe in front of me.  The job she referred to her was a line in the drug dealing business.   My cousin got me hooked first.   When I was at a high school party after some shitty dance this two bit dealer came by offering the kids blow.   I took some but never partook.   I held onto it, and then decided to test my luck.  I offered it at twice the price the dealer had charged, and I offered it to people who wouldn’t be caught dead dealing with no “bottom feeders.”   People were willing to pay more to avoid their reputations being sullied by being spotted with the wrong people.  In a matter of no time I found my niche.   That isn’t to say, as The Doctor clearly illustrates that I continued only dealing with the cleaner cut of the junky community but it did mean that I developed a reputation as an approachable gentleman dealer.   Soon I wasn’t only selling to the people with clean reputations but those people who were too scared to seek out dealers on their own.  The chicken shits who thought every drug dealer had a side business in murder.  I was there in.  But there comes a point where you can’t grow anymore, my small mid-western home wasn’t growing any bigger if anything it was shrinking.   Not only on a traditional economic level but in our little underground illegitimate business we were seeing clients drop off and disappear.  Hauling ass to the next towns.  That’s how come I came to be in this place.  

Despite the terrifying crime rates, people still came to The City in droves.   And so I knew I would be set for the rest of my life.   “I love you more than anything Allison.”  I said, and I wasn’t lying.   “My job, is like my hobby.  You love your hobbies, but you don’t want to screw your hobbies, you can’t.  You can’t hold them either.  But you enjoy them.  There it is.  My job I enjoy, you I love.”

She was silent.   All I could hear was her breathing.

After the rescue we ate a late dinner at a dive bar.   The lightning was shit, but she had whispered that she didn’t want to be seen by anyone who could have possibly known her.  So we went two blocks too far and sat down to a pill of beef fat with a side of beef trim.    It was shitty food, but she devoured everything on her plate.  I didn’t blame her, her cheeks were gaunt, and her skin clammy.  That psycho path hadn’t kept his girls fed, and up and down her arm you could see the injections he forced upon them.  I would later get the full story, how The Doctor had his employ a few good looking twenty somethings, all of whom were beautiful examples of the male sex and he sent them out whooing tourist and coeds.   Luring them back to one of The Doctors safe houses were he would be waiting with a bag full of goodies guaranteed to get them jacked.    He’d keep them around injecting them with heroin until they craved for it and needed it all on their own.  Those that wanted to leave were allowed to but almost all of them came back, suffering withdrawal pains.  Prisoners of an addiction that wasn’t even their own.  The track marks on Allison’s arms told the same story.

At that dinner I told her, “You know after this, we can get you out of here.  You can go back home.  To your family.”

She let her fork slide out of her hand and stared at me with her dry eyes, and shook her head, “Please don’t.”   It was a look of pure unadeltered terror.   Whatever was waiting for her back home was enough to make her find her current predicament a better one.   I backed up my words and assured her that she would be safe with me and that she should stay under my supervision for the time being.  If left to her own devices she’d be back with The Doctor not in a matter of weeks, but days.

It was a week after she moved in with me that I found her in my bathtub dressed in that yellow dress.  The water was cloudy red, and the slits on her wrists were huge and done with exact precision.   If I had been moments later she would have been dead, but I saved her.   It was while I sat with her in the hospital that I realized I cared so deeply for her.   After she had first awoken from the sedatives they gave her, she wouldn’t look at me.   Not out of being ashamed, but because she was angry that I had saved her yet again.    It didn’t last, I fell asleep next to her in an ucomfortably padded hospital chair two nights in a row never once leaving her side, and something in her changed.   I had brought her back from oblivion, and she had met, ironically, the one good guy in this city.  That was before I was watching men choke on their own blood.  Back then I was sympathetic to the fools, like Allison, who let the bright lights and tall buildings seduce them.  While the claws of men like The Doctor rose out of rain gutters and gripped their flesh and dragged them into darkened alleyways to be forgotten.  But Allison was safe now, thanks to me.

To My Mother

To my mother
That wonderful creature who brought me here
Through the countless struggles
Into this great unknown
To my mother
A wondrous person
A familiar face in a world full of strangers,
A guiding and welcoming light,
That guides me back on home
To my mother
The first person to believe in me
Who looked into my eyes and saw into the future
A real fortune teller in a world of frauds
To my mother
The most caring and delicate woman I'ver ever known
To cradle the pain
To hold the hand
To compliment and comprehend and listen to my rambling
The only one who gave a damn
When no one else would even humor me
To my mother
I would not be who I am without you
I could not be without you
And if you were not here to guide me
I don't want to imagine what I'd be
I say to my mother
You showed me to show kindness
You forgave after a fight
You let it go and kept on going
Realizing that life kept on going
Through pain and miseries
To joys and smiles
To the ends of her earth and back again
To see us as who we are
Who would never spend a cent for herself
Who would never give time away that she gave for us
A wonderful wife
A wonderful mother
An all around amazing human being
Deep down inside the most beautiful heart
That is colored lovely red and beats with understanding
Understated talks about nothing in particular
And even though the rules required you believe
Even though the script dictated everlasting unconditional love
You never deviated from the way
Always and always believing
Never "just" listening
You raised wonderful kids
And I wouldn't want to be another adult than what I am
I know this sounds like its about me
But I could not would not be
Not without you
Not even a little me
And I'll apologize for all those times
That i found myself in anger
All those times I threw my fits
And raged on far too long
I hated seeing you in pain
Hated seeing you upset
But I know I did it a few times
But you always showed me
That its never worth holding on to
That we should spend more time in laughter and joyous love
Than wasting it away with feelings of betrayal and bitterness
You mean the world to me
Don't ever let them say you did it wrong
Because you raised me just right
I love you
To my mother.

Empty Lemmings On The Far Side of Commonality

In the absence of my conscience

I will replace it with marbles

So that in the empty spaces

The metallic music blasts in my inner monologue

So that I am deafened to the rebukes

Safe from harm from those that harm the meek

Disgusted by the appearance of their lapels

And they who were persecuted

Cannot hear to be done harm to

Cannot fathom the ends of the earth they were brought to

As the fuzzy insults and silent curses are lost

Replaced with a static ringing

That constitutes all of communication

As they stare into the abyss before them

They are indeed crippled with moronic fear

But they and I and every one else we'd like to hope are us

We don't know what is to be fearful of

After all they spoke in Adult fashion

Indiscernible from one ear to the next

And we all, them and I, we look about ourselves

And thinking within

What is it without that we are fortunate enough to be brought here

For all we know this was all a game

That there's a pot of gold on the other side of this rainbow

Yet as we take our next good step

Fooled into going because the pushers wore smiles

We only feel the faintest and briefest of pain

As face meets earth

And skull learns rocks are rough and unforgiving

In this final act of our stupidity

The marlbles in our brains fall out

Loosed upon the crack desert highways

Were buzzards and curious children gather them

When our corpses are long but gone

Quickly forgotten,

But our useless knowledge was there

For them to swallow and let loose their own moral compasses

And the cycle goes on

Till we all get to that place

Falling off the same cliff

Right onto our damn face.

Alternative 3rd Person Opening to Web Series.

EPISODE ONE: ORIGINS

            The pair of them laid together so that their intertwined limbs were hard to differentiate.   It had been a dreadfully smoldering afternoon in mid-July and they were uncovered underneath a whirling ceiling fan.   There was no one else about them, so that they could only hear the labored breaths that came after an impromptu round of rigorous sex.   Clive breathed Allison in and pressed his nose into the nape of her neck with a sharp inhale.   Her creamy soft skin was comfortable enough for him to lay in for the rest of eternity.    If he had had the choice of how he’d die, he knew that he would want it in this place, with this women, in this position.   She let out a slight moan, and reached her lips to his, and after a few wet pecks she brought her eyes open to his.  

“Hello.”  She said.   And he responded just the same.

“You aren’t ready for another round are you?”  Clive asked her.   In truth he was hoping she would say no, for he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to go again.  

She said, “Maybe.”  Letting out a small but faint bit of laughter.  She pressed her body into his a little more.   Clive loved the way her smile couldn’t be hidden, there was always a trace of a grin in the curve of her mouth.   In the lines against her cheek and brightness of her eyes he felt a soothing hope that he never felt anywhere else.   This embrace would have been enough for his lifetime, but the saddest part about it was that it would of course have to come to end.  He squeezed her tighter, his open palm against the small of her back so that her spine moved his fingertips like a wave as she shifted herself again.

Then her expression changed as her eyes looked back into her mind for a way to phrase her next words.   He saw the expression before, and it frightened him.   It had been awhile since he’d seen it and he had begun to think her non-erasable grin was going to remain but unlike what his imagination had hoped for, she was now thinking with deep concern.    “What do you love more?”  She finally said.

Web Series Rough Cut of First Couple Pages of Episode One

This is a novel idea I had but I thought it'd work good as a web series instead, and I figured I could write it inbetween working on the sequel to my YA fantasy novel.  This is just a preview though.

EPISODE ONE:  ORIGIN

“What do you love more?”  I’m not sure why she asked me that.

“What do you mean?”

She gives me a half smile and shakes her head and returns her attention to the blurred images that pass us by on our drive back into the city.  We had been gone for two weeks.   I had brought her back to that Midwest farm town I grew up in.  I had introduced her to my parents and to my surprise they took to her quite well.

            She often what do that, ask me a question and if I didn’t understand it she wouldn’t repeat herself.  So I did what I normally did.  “Between what and what?  You can’t ask me what I love more without telling me what my choices are.”   It was a logical point to make and I cast my eyes over in her direction and her head is leaned against the glass of the window and she still wore that half smile.  She’s beautiful.

            A few seconds pass before she responds to me with the briefest hint of a sigh.   “There are only two things you love in this world Clive.”  She holds up two of her fingers to illustrate the point, but she never casts her eyes at me.  Pointing at one finger she says, “Me of course.   And your job.”  

            I would argue with her but she is for all intents and purposes correct.  Letting a small chuckle escape me I tell her, “You.”  

            “Bullshit.”  She playfully responds.

            For a moment though I feel concerned.  It wasn’t so long ago that a phrase like that signaled the start of another one of her depressive states.  A crippling time where she saw no beauty in anything, a time when the blurred images outside were frightening and unwelcoming.   When the world wanted to chew her up and spit her back out.   It was in one of those states that I found her in the first place.

            “Its not.”  I defend, and I mean it.   I continue with, “In my opinion the love for a person is different than the love of a thing.    My job is like an object, like a hobby.   For instance you love painting, but you don’t lust for it, you don’t need it to hold you, or to save you.   But when you paint its another piece to the puzzle that is you.”  I pulled it out of my ass but I think it sounds decently romantic and right.

            “Well played, sir,”  She says not looking at me, but her hand finds mine and she wraps it in her fist and squeezes gently.   The feeling of her warm creamy skin soothes me and I squeeze it back.  

            The towering buildings of The City look like miniatures from our distance.   At that point I merged onto the highway having taken the backgrounds per the request of my sweetheart.   The limited forest doesn’t interest her anymore and she finds no beauty in other commuters as they fly passed us in a rainbow parade of different models.    At that point she turned her face to me, resting against the headrest of my leather seats.

            “I’d be dead without you.”  She randomly says.  I’m frightened more now, a sense of dread is looming over her and it only means a rough few weeks ahead for me.   But she isn’t lying.   One of my usual clients was running a home for hopped up coeds who unsuspectingly trusted his charming demeanor and gave into the pressures of his charisma.   It was only after he had them hooked that he used them for a side business in prostitution.   Normally I would have left the situation well enough alone but I saw her standing there and I paid him the fee to get a few moments alone with her and we talked.  Nothing else but talked.

            “Don’t say things like that.”  I beg her even though I know its true.   I wanted to kill that bastard when I heard the stories.   More so when I saw the scars.   He didn’t look out for their well being and one girl had even OD’d and he had the others carry her down six flights of stairs and lay her corpse next to the dumpsters in the alleyway behind  the building.   She would have been down their next.

            “I’m sorry.”  She tried to smile but not even a half showed.  I gave that son of a bitch the remainder of his product for free in exchange for her.   He snickered at me and gave me  a knowing glance that he assumed I’d take her home and abuse her myself, only to discard her when I had my fill.  He was animal, a rabid animal.

            I squeeze her hand as the buildings of The City are no longer miniature but towering skyscrapers that cast their shadows down upon us.   When once the sky had been cloudless and baby blue it was now all but lost.  The sunlight vanished behind the behemoth structures of steel and stone.   It frightened her this place, but it brought me peace.

A Light Story of Imbeciles

When the sand turns into glass I will cut my feet and bleed a thousand seconds just to be with you
Despite the dissatisfaction the cause gives me I will picket with you and carry signs that weigh ten tons
I'll take abuse but never give, never delve into sadism even though you are a satanist,
I'll scream on the inside and smile on the outside and convince myself of my everlasting lie
Containing my sarcasm is like asking me contain my fecal tendencies, it is only human
And the average minute in my life lasts for twenty seconds and I'm dying far too quickly,
Tie me down, please, I need a reason to remain in this upright position
Give me a piece of plaster to blow my nose with and when I go to it, it sticks with it,
Suffocating me in three different ways, I only know what the first was, but the other two the preacher man promised were there
In the giveaway, I'll getaway but only at the end of my driveway, as they drive away
Disintegrated under the magnifying glass lens that sits in the fist of my illegitimate children
All you died far too young and took to many antacids
The insects will march like soldiers on parade and will twirl there antennae like a bunch of nasty flamboyant villains
While the last remaining ghost decides to hang itself,
But my feet will still be bleeding out, and I'm sorry I bled on you but when I bleed I bled and bleed again
So treat the bees with respect and give the grandmother the right of way
Just don't get to go to temple and say the words of the holy one lest you forge yourself in buttered toast
Catastrophe will be your host
So go in you are otherwise indisposed while the little ones topple over
And give you no sign of remorse.

A Career on the Other Side

Listen as they clue you in on the last resort you should have never got
The place behind your ears that you forgot to wash
After all, where else would the clue be except on that coin
To suffice all the items that are on your bucket list
To claim the calamity in the clouds that whirlwinds the way
Topside you see the cataclysm but under here you see naught
Caught up in the cordless endeavors of adulthood
Even before that a boyhood fantasy of conquering it all
Slaying the beasts and feeding the birds on the lake
Tranquility after brutality while the butterfly does what it can
As blood spills and laughter mixes and marriages end and then begin
New ages after each birthday where hapless wishes are not answered
But completely backsliding the backhanded ways of thieves
Liars and dice swindlers on the wheels of morality that spin out of control
Take the patience out of the patient and make them quake and fear
Quivering beneath the unwelcome hands of the clock face
Fearing the reaper in the back of the house
Underneath the guise of shadow puppets that harmless wear friendly faces
While they slink out from beneath the frame of the bed
Listening to the clues of the last resort that they never should have had