Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, b...
Without the hard we stay too soft, and heaven is reduced to myths like life. Theology aside, it’s plain to see that God forbids we get too comfortable.
I was a late bloomer. I was still naïve about what 16 year olds today have known for years. I remember sitting up and taking notice—of the world, my body, others—in a way never before experienced. I noticed boys, or rather they noticed me, at 16...
When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it...
I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.
Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membra...
When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.
I suck the words word-dry to me, assimilated orderly at breakeye speed still hard and harder softer then line-lined book-dry ‘til not a drop of water-blood from oak and elm and authored men is left to whisper “Read…
This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so many remains—I army on, simultaneously ignoring ...
Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to go and after that a jungle, a minefield, a rapids...
This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot of cool black sod.
I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I’ll be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But have no fear, I look good in hats.
At least I could relate to Rose’s sense of adventure and Harriet Jones’ wacky determination and ingrained sense of responsibility. I can stomach the Tardis when my heroines are in place.
The no-booze rule is one of several shams perpetuated by certain religious groups, presumably to keep their flocks in line. After all, what’s a shepherd to do with drunk sheep? So take your medicine, but leave the booze on the shelf. We have a labe...
I am Frustration. I am Memory-Lost. Sometimes I read a line a dozen times before it sticks. My creative force has slipped. I type slower, speak slower, think at a snail’s pace. I’m Life shapeshifted by Post Traumatic Stress, bastardized by Fate.
I wish I could say he was a French professor, a French chef, or even a bilingual tutor, but I can’t. He worked in a factory and spent his summer evenings at a reenactment village as a blacksmith or something equally masculine. But it didn’t reall...
I don’t want to believe in boxes or one-way relationships; I’m naïve, you see. I’d rather moon the moon than flip off a friend, but sometimes I flip so I don’t get flipped. And I still think I’m misunderstanding the Golden Rule.
I speak, I speak, and truth at that. Writers are a curious breed: brooding, fickle, alternately loving and hating their work—and each other. You’re my friend? Don’t pick up that pen!
I don’t know what it’s like to be a friend any more than you do. I think “hard” when it should be “soft,” or “gentle” when “forceful” is the key. Often it’s giving every last drop of blood, then skinning myself and giving the sk...
The unrelenting grip of Soldier’s Syndrome slips finger by slow finger. The marrow’s been affected—emotional leukemia at the deepest level. Transplants of love and friendship aid healing, yet time is still key, and the clock never ticks fast en...
sunset and evening star hunching and bending sleeping and slipping virus pneumonia coughing and crying hope in the small things heaven looks brighter aching and falling earth is still darkness slip into sleeping sleepings of death dead now and buried...
