Of Love

All of a sudden,
I have room to breathe,
room to see
that's not what I want.
You see?

Being alone does not compare,
to when your presence is felt,
on my skin
my mortal sin,
my mind directly focused on you;
to whom I don't compare,
my better half- quite cliche,
you're my one and only half,
to make me whole
my one to cherish
my one to hold.

Aftermath

Pulsing pain - rapture stained,
from neck to deck of salvaged wreck.
The price of pain too hard to feign,
un-tilled silence stumbles after
jagged violence binds the captured.
What has happened to all the laughter?

A Lesson in English

My Sister.

It’s been many days

Since I’ve seen the graves

The Seas swallow my eyes.

It seems strange, but the grass is greener since the last time I came. No one in my family has been here yet this spring. Two years have passed since I was here. The open ended questions fill my head again. I am an only child but I wouldn’t have been. Maybe if she was born in a time when technology was better? What if I was first and she was second? Hundreds of graves surround her. So close together they seem; I always tread lightly here. Pinwheels and stuffed animals scattered throughout. These children will never grow up; children that are forever young. There is child next to child next to child for a football field’s length. Only the grass grows now. I trim around the edges of the headstone with my hand. Pulling patches out methodically. Then brush off the debris and I stare.

It’s been many days

Since I’ve seen the name

That is all I’ve ever known.

Blurb.

The sultry sheen of shadowy souls
Projecting from the words of prose
Comes love and hate, too rare, too far.
Contemplation quiet in contempt,
Fear of uncertainty and abyssal magnitude
Polarities shift, evolve, implode.
Is this the burden I was born to bare,
Will there ever be room to grow.

My First Murder

Now for a super high chair memory. It is Christmas time and I am sitting in my highchair playing with a porcelain Santa Claus. He is your typical Santa. Red suit with white trim and black boots. Rosy cheeks and a "fluffy" white beard. My kitchen resembles that of the late 70s to mid 80s style; dark wood and linoleum floors. There is a yellow tint to the white walls. The images I see are my hands trying to wrap around the Santa figurine. It's like playing a first person shooter at the age of two and Santa is my gun. I keep playing with him noticing his jolly face and bright red attire. I progressively begin to play more rapidly with the figurine. I start to spin him. He is spinning. He is spinning. This is fun. He is--I spin him off the table portion of the highchair and had sent him crashing, yet twirling, to the kitchen floor. It is a slow motion Baryshnikov ballet of terror, guilt, and silence. I had done it now. I had killed fucking Santa Claus. I had a tender spot for the jolliest of jolly fat men. He brought me presents and all I gave him was cookies and milk. But no the perfect deal was broken, he was dead, smashed into a fuck-ton of pieces and all I could do was scream like the tooth fairy had shot him from the grassy knoll of a planter in the corner of the living room. My parents scattered like an air-raid siren went off. I can still feel the pressure exuding from my lungs and the sound piercing my own ears. Things begin to get hazy. It all fades away.

Don't Eat The Apple.

“WOLF!” I cried at the top of my lungs while pointing at what was really a four-year-old Belgian Tervuren.

Well, it isn’t “me” but instead the five, or maybe a six-year old version of me. My face is beet red as the high pitched scream ravages the rooms and hallways of my grandmother’s house. The bright blue pastel colored walls, almost to the point of neon, reverberate the non-sense noise back and forth. The light blue shag carpeting sprouts between my toes. Slowly my grandmother walks over from the pink walled kitchen and her shoes make a Velcro sound against the old linoleum.

“Oh a wolf is here?” she said. She always had a soothing quality to the tone of her voice. At this point, the screaming stops and the blood begins to retreat from my face.

“Ya Sweetie is a wolf!” I said.

“Oh is she now?” “Have you ever heard the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf?”

At this point in time, the stories I had heard rarely had carnivorous animals in them, although in a few years my mother would read to me, at my request, Stephan King’s Cycle of the Werewolf. It had pictures too. I am still not sure if she wanted to scare me or permanently deter me from asking questions about what she was doing.

So I responded, “No.”

My grandmother sits down on a wooden framed chair with white leather paisley print inserts and motions for me to sit across from her. I sat down in an identical chair at the tall dining room table with what I perceived was a tablecloth raincoat due to its yellow plastic appearance. Impairing my field of vision was a rather large house plant, and by rather large I mean obnoxiously large, that is some cross breed between a pine tree and a palm tree. That damn tree served as the "bird in the house omen" for my family for so many years, but that story is for another time.

My grandmother is a semi-heavy set woman with short white hair. She dresses like a grandmother too. You know those grandmother type outfits that are based on one singular color and rarely differ in style from day to day unless it’s a holiday of some sort. She adjusts her thick glasses then takes a sip on the straw almost falling out of the Ginger Ale can. She would later tell me about carbonation, but I insisted it was the bubbles that pushed the straw up.

“When I was a young girl,” she said, “my father told me about a boy in his village who cried wolf.” He told me that Edward, a young boy, and he used to play together after they had finished their chores for the day. They tended the live stock, cleaned their rooms, made their beds, and brushed their teeth. Sometimes wolves would try to get at the livestock during the night while everyone was asleep. Around this time, the wolves had become a big nuisance to the villagers. Everyone was on alert for these deadly creatures that seemed to lurk in every dark crevasse of the surrounding forest. So the young boy Edward was out in the field one day just like any other day. Until he started screaming, “Wolf!” It was the cry of this one word that sent a panic through the whole town. My grandfather, my father, Edward’s father, and masses of other men from the village sprinted to Edward’s position in the field. Edward still bursting out with intermittent cries of “Wolf” broke into laughter as the men came barreling through the tall grass of the field in sight of him.

“Hahaha, I got you all, fools!” Edward said. All the men start yelling at the boy in some sort of mob unison.

His father said, “You shouldn’t cry wolf Edward if you keep it up one day there will really be a wolf and no one will come to help you.” He turned his back on his son and walked with the rest of the men back to town.

The days pass by and once again Edward plays his practical joke. The men from the village all rush to the field and once again Edward laughs at them all. “You shouldn’t cry wolf Edward, if you keep it up one day there will really be a wolf and no one will come to help you,” Edward’s father says again.

So fall soon approaches and wolves become more aggressive knowing that food will become more scarce in the winter months. My father was in his field helping finish the harvesting; his field was in the opposite corner of the village from Edward’s family’s field. Once again the cry came, but this time the cry was not answered. Edward cried, “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! WOLF!” For what seemed like hours, but no one came. Then the cries stopped. Ceased to exist. My father thought Edward had tired himself out screaming or maybe just gave up. When dinner time came a new cry stirred from the lingering light on the horizon. It was not “wolf” and it was not Edward’s voice. It was his father’s voice. A cry of such pain and sorrow that the villagers ran to the sound. My father was first to arrive, as he was the fastest in the town. Edward’s father was on his knees with the torn and tattered corpse of his son pulled tightly to his body. Tears streamed down his face as he yelled, but not a loud yell, one of those inaudible yells when the pain is so unbearable the body and mind cannot communicate the feeling.

“So there really was a wolf?” I asked to confirm my five-year-old logic.

“Yes, there was but Edward had lied to everyone so much, that no one believed him,” my grandmother responded. She then proceeded to make me a milkshake since I had somehow remained silent and listened the entire time without interjecting my usual barrage of questions and concerns.

For the next few weeks, I was scared a wolf would eat me in my backyard and no one would help me because we had high stockade fences, that obviously only wolves could get over. Other than that I knew I should not lie. If I did, no one would help me when I was in trouble like Edward.

During the twenty years after this time, I have lied. I am not George Washington. I don’t even think George Washington was George Washington. “I cannot tell a lie”, good old George said. I think political lies started this country. I digress; the point is that I have lied since my grandmother told me that story. I can assure you that every time I lied and I got caught, I thought of Edward in the field. Lies are the wolves of the world. They sit in the darkness until they are big enough to feed on their own. Or maybe they hunt in packs. When that wolf comes out you will wish you have told the truth.

Short #1

“There seems to be some misunderstanding, I am not supposed to die,” the woman in the hospital bed said. The room was the traditional sterile white. The silence in the room after her last syllable is stark.

The nurse calmly walks in, “Honey, you ain’t gonna die, and you know it.” She is wearing those weird foamy plastic sandals that have become a fashion trend of late, Crocs. “Lemme take your blood pressure,” the nurse said as she wrapped the cuff around the woman’s arm.

“Anderson, what’s your first name,” the bed ridden woman asked the nurse.

“My name is Marie, and you know it,”

The weak stream of early morning light began to break over the horizon and peer into the hospital room.

“I don’t know anything, I am in a hospital and I am sick. That’s all I know. I was fine one day and the next day I’m lying on my bathroom floor cold and naked,” the woman told the nurse.

“Honey, you are, I mean were sick. You had a stroke and you fell. We are monitoring your heart and you fractured your hip when you fell. Some things may still be a bit foggy but that will go away.” The nurse said finishing her tests. “Call me if you need something.”

The woman lies still in the hospital bed. Rails of the hospital bed containing her even if she had wanted to leave. The hospital staff bustled down the corridors with an assertive quickness. There always seemed to be something happening outside the woman’s door way.

“Hello, Mrs. Walsh. How are you feeling today,” the tall man asked as he entered the room as he folds over the metal cover of the clipboard.

“I’d be a lot better if you would just let me go die at home. People go the hospital to die and I do not want to die in a hospital, I’d rather be in my bed or couch, hell, I’d rather be back on my bathroom floor.

“Now Mrs. Walsh”
“STOP calling me Missus, my husband died years ago and I have no association to anyone to fulfill the title Mrs., “the woman interjected. She began to fidget in the bed and looked away from the doctor towards the window.

“Well. What would you prefer to be addressed as?”

“Alice.”

“Okay, Alice you are not going to die, you are, however, still recovering from a stroke. Your hip is also badly bruised and there are small hairline fractures. This has happened to countless people and they have recovered, just as you will, and live a completely normal life,’’ the doctor said.

Alice Walsh turned toward the doctor and looked at him sternly. “I am ninety-one years old, doctor, what part of normal life do you think makes up my normal day. I have watched everyone I have ever loved die. My husband came to the hospital with stomach pains and left in a casket due to an aneurysm. My son died when he was twenty-five to some rare form of cancer, hooked up to more tubes than a church organ, and was a small sliver of what he once was. My other son died three days after in a drunk driving accident. Everyone is gone. People come to the hospital to die. Or maybe they come here to be proven dead...officially.”

The doctor saw the pain in her face, the sincerity in her eyes, and said, “That is true ma’am but you still remember them and can cherish the time you had with them. I am sure they wouldn’t want you moping around for the rest of your life.”

The heart monitor had doubled it pace since she had begun talking. “I would like to be left alone, please,” Alice Walsh said. With a flick of her trembling hand, the doctor was gone.

Mr. Hyde

The monster ruins all.
Lurking within until
It seeps to the surface.
Creating chaos and
contaminating the
very things that
the true self sustains.

Fever-pitched
Carelessness crept
To all those
unaware.

Chicago Coursing

#13

The dark gray fog sweeps down the alley ways of Chicago. Another year has crept by at a monotonous pace. The air is bitter with spite. Sleet slides sideways with an impaling touch across my bare skin. The hunt. She moves with a snail’s pace it seems. A woman of the streets. Just like the rest. It seems I know what she will do next before she does. The dull roar of the “L” swoops down the street.

This one though has a stride about her. She is about 5”6 with long wavy blond hair beginning to matte down around her neck. Her overcoat shines from the streetlight’s gaze. In her hand is a crumpled and tattered piece of paper. One she has been carrying for the last 3 weeks. She doesn’t know what to do with it other than to clench it in her small fist until there is somewhere to turn it in. Her name is “Sandy.” At least this is what she goes by out here.

Three more blocks and she’ll make a left into the shithole of a bar called, The Shake. Never seen the inside of it, never have wanted to until tonight. She’ll make the 13th. My veins feel like an overstuffed sausage, soon they will break containment. She makes her entrance. In the distance sirens race away to some street, to some problem; the key being away.

The heavy oak door with stained glass almost wants to stay shut. The stench is thick and I can feel my nostrils constrict to ward off its full blast. Somehow the bar seems darker than it is outside. The monstrous derelicts of duties crawl into the booths and seats to waste more of what little they have. The floor seems like some sort of blind carpenter’s joke. Almost every other plank in the floor is gone leaving Sandy wobbling in her clear high heels. She sits at a green leather covered stool at the bar. Most of the stools are worn out and cracked, and the farthest one seems to have had a run in with a St. Bernard or German Sheppard. The bartender approaches her.

“What’ll you have?”

With the pale glean of sweat and sleet coating her face like tarnish engulfing bronze bars. “Tonight seems your night,” she says.

“No night is my night sweetheart, I’ve got a woman and she’d cut me quicker than you do you duties.”

“Vodka cranberry,” she says.

The bartender chuckled as he made her drink. We both knew vodka would lessen the smell of the alcohol. No man wants a drunk, and they definitely don’t want to pay for one. I can see a good profile of her from the booth. At the back of the bar, there are what seem to be two older regulars. They are too far gone to be of any consequence other than moans and groans. The one on the right bobs up and down almost drowning his beard in his beer stein. The other one sways back and forth with a somewhat rhythmic quality to it.

Everyone is pasty white. Not enough sun gets through the stained glass window from five in the morning when the doors open and four in the morning when it closes. She is unsettled by something. Oh, Sandy. It is that little note you have.

“Glenlivet, 18 years, on the rocks.”

The bartender nods and walks back to the bar. He dusts off the bottle from the mantle in back of the bar and pours out a glass. The first sip warms my insides and creates a chill that shoots from my ass to my brain. As he returns to the bar Sandy looks back to find the way point on the other side. Hook, line, and sinker. Her feet slowly walk towards the booth. Under the brim of my hat, I see the edge of the electric red skirt that is now exposed.

“Tonight seems your night,” she says. Must be the Ice-breaker they teach at Hooker University.

“How so,” I make sure not to look up.

Sandy leaned forward putting weight on the table. “Well you’ve come to me, and that is what matters,” she says.

“Well, you’ve come to me, actually.”

“Well, well, aren’t you the smart type,” she says with a smack of gum in her mouth.

“Have a seat, it’s a free country. Now, I guess you may be right Ms...?”

“Your pleasure. Certainly, we can find one of those, now can’t we?” she says tilting her head to the side trying to get within my view.

“I, I don’t know if you’d be up to the task, to be certain I would guess that someone like you would shy away from certain aspects.”

“I can do anything you want,” she says.

“Oh I do feel this may be more of a challenge than you would assume, “

“I do like a challenge,” she says. Sandy released her white-knuckle grip on the piece of paper and moved to put it in her purse.

“What’s that?” I asked motioning to the piece of paper.

“Oh this, you don’t care about this, hell I dunno why I even carry it around with me,” Sandy says.

“All the more reason to share.”

“Just something I found slid under the door of my place a few weeks ago, probably some asshole playing games with me,” she said. Her face begins to flush a little.

I reach for the paper. She hesitates but gives in. How likely. The piece of paper is special to her. As I unfold it I notice it is thick and rigid. The tattered quality is the bottom section; it was torn off from a large piece. The note reads, "Tonight you will die." The print is in a bright red ink. I look at her wide eyed.

“When did you get this, again?”

“A few weeks ago,” she says finishing off her third drink.

“Well, the good news is you aren’t dead, eh?”

She laughs. “Yeah, not that funny of a joke though but in my line of work, nothing is that funny really,” shaking her head side to side as if I will confirm her statement and put her to ease.

“Well now it’s getting a little late, should we get a move on?”

“Sure, honey, “she says.

“You got somewhere we can go?”

“Ya, got a place down the street,” she says getting up and putting on her over coat.

We get up and walk out. The wind whips down the street making our pace quickened. The building Sandy lives in is an old two flat. The downstairs in unoccupied and she lives on the second floor of this rickety brick colored construct. The stairway smells rancid; the downstairs must have been a squat for the random homeless of the neighborhood. Her apartment is somewhat nicer than expected. Nothing too fancy, I doubt she lives here. It is just an “office” of sorts.

“So now for the money, it's 500 bucks,” she says.

“Okay.” I handed over her note I still hand in my hand. She looked at it and rolled her eyes setting it on the nightstand near the bed.

500 dollars, in the front pocket of my jeans. I pull out a stack of cash and count off 500 from the top and hand it to her. She begins to strip down to her lingerie. Now is the time. I reach into my other pocket. I pull out a piece of paper. It is torn at the top. I hand it to her. She takes it looking somewhat perplexed. I watch her eyes as she reads over it. "And I will be the one to do it." The color in her face drops, she is almost to panic mode. They all have done this, every time it is the same reaction and the same ending.

She inhales to scream and I cover her mouth with my hand. Her eyes like deer in the headlights and her breath is caught.

“I did say there would be certain aspects of this that you might not like,” I said throwing her down to the bed. I push my knee down into the small of her back and pull my knife from its sheath on my belt. The sheen of the sharp serrated blade reflects in Sandy’s eye. She begins to squirm and scream. The nearby passing train muffles her cry but I can feel the horror channeling through her body.

I slash her throat. The sound was that of a butcher separating animal parts for an order. The last sound Sandy makes is a gurgled scream. The blood sprays across the wall and begins to pool on the bed. I wipe the knife off on the sheets. I reach for her purse and open her wallet. I pull out her I.D.; her name is Angie Federa. I slide it into my wallet. I see my badge, officer # 3486. 365 days a year I am a hunter, some nights the prey is just different.

Only

I grew up lost in
imagination.

I loved the art of War.

My parents looked tense.

It was a small ranch house
in the suburbs of Chicago.
Voices and emotions
shook its foundation.

A lonely only child
learned how to play.

It must have been Eighty-seven.

The light blue carpet
served as the mighty seas; to navigate
battle ships.

With no opposition
I had to play both sides.
Days that are foggy memories
years that were participants of
locked doors and muffled yells.

I remember my parents
alone a lot.

They had a way of being there;
not together.

An only child has to create,
the opposition for their play,
for others there is no need
to pretend.

Alcatraz

Surrounded by shifting seas
Cloaked by mist
Turtle-green collapses
Into black and blue.
My jagged shores show no hope,
Bleak days wind away
Into struggle; my captives have
Long since gone.
Decayed bodies reminisced
By crumbling mortar.
Days wasted away
To fragmented thoughts
Scared faced bumpy birdmen
And pretty boys, Found
Hallowed halls of interrupted behavior
Lead along the trails of blood.
Misfortune, misdeeds, and misadventure
Continued to cold
Calculated conviction.
Eighty-four thousand tons
Of burnt orange steel structure,
Staggered peaks across the horizon.
The streets that held
The hipsters of old
Now pave the tour bus lane.
Saw the best minds
Of my generation
Howl in the City Lights
Here before the gold rush,
Here when it is gone

Carlin

Along with an amazing career as a stand-up comedian came an insight into the world around us.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much , and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digesti on, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.



George Carlin

Freewrite

I find myself lost in the mix at times, the decayed nature swirling around me. Swallowed into the shallow holes along the road. Carelessly careful and content on contingency. The mind wanders left and slowly banks right, only to come to the same little footsteps imprinted in the snow trailed of the claws of a raving darkness. A beast appears in the brush; it shall take a heart and consume its entirety. Full-stomached and continuing an age old waltz. The beast eyes me as friend and as foe in one glance. An ever-changing world view, perspective; cranky-eyed and wandering for one, all... everything. Can something wild be tamed, changed, or contained? Care not, for what can one do with care? Can care fix the world before it's torn down around you? I find no solace in uncertainty. A calm strikes down with the fury of a tidal waves, let it be and remain the same. The beast can consume you. The beast may leave you. You have stood with the beast and that is all. If eaten, the beast survives; if left, both survive. Whether separate or joined. For now the darkness walks beside me. In me. Is me.

Here's to the...

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!” Jack Kerouac

Here's to the mad ones.