When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every e...
Those of us who have seen violent death up close, who have seen what high-powered bullets can do to living human tissue, have a horror of inflicting that nightmarish, never forgotten damage on a fellow human being. Perhaps the only more terrifying pr...
Sometimes being vulnerable as a child is not knowing what lies ahead. We think our choices will make a huge difference in our lives because our parents and other elders spend so much time making sure we think before we act and make our minds up about...
And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what cha...
Yes you're getting your tattoo." I threw my arms around Dad's neck. "Thank you!" "Hey," Mom said. "I'm the one who had to persuade him it wasn't turning his little girl into a streetwalker." "I never said that," Dad said. "No?" I said. "Cool. Cause I...
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice And she said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device' And in the master's chambers, They gathered for the feast They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can't kill the beast Las...
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and ...
Howl pointed a shaky hand up toward the canopy of his bed. “That’s why I love spiders. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, again.’ I keep trying,” he said with great sadness. “But I brought it on myself by making a bargain so...
He looked up to the gods but never accepted their eternal superiority. For better or worse, plotting their overthrow was the only aspiration that stoked the fires of destiny. Such an exalted ambition was worthy of a man who had long accomplished the ...
When we observe trials and tribulations in our world, there's even more reason to lighten the heavy load. Sometimes life gets tough and it's disheartening. Never mind happiness; what we genuinely need is joy! God didn't intend for us to be sad or ser...
So what’s your name?” the stranger asked. Tarrah pulled his shirt away from her head and held out her hand. “Tarrah. Tarrah Reid.” He slipped his hand into hers, his cheeks stiffening as he held back a smile. Tarrah sighed, knowing exactly wh...
I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look...
Huh," Leo said. "Well, if you ever get off this island and want a job, let me know. You're not a total klutz." She smirked. "A job, eh?" Making things in your forge?" "Nah, we could start our own shop," Leo said, surprising himself. Starting a machin...
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive, and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone...or at least, h...
Doubtful, but it did work... "Annabeth?" Percy said again. "You're planning something. You've got that I'm-planning-something look." "I don't have an I'm-planning-something look." "Yeah, you totally do. Your eyebrows knit and your lips press together...
When you really love someone, you think about him all the time. No matter where you are or what you're doing, he never completely leaves your thoughts. When you're apart, you want to be with him. When you're together, you're conscious of every move h...
He rose up over her, intending to enter her when she suddenly sat up and shoved at his shoulders. He fell onto his back with a grunt. Shara was on all fours, her hair tousled, as she crawled toward him. In all his millennia of life, he had never seen...
But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, hab...
The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to de...
The secret is,” I say, whispering right into his ear, “that yours was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.” “But I’ve never kissed you,” he whispers back. Around us the rain sounds like falling glass. “Not since third grade, anyway...
Mrs Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first finger-bowl. The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit...
