Sad Spector Soldier

Wounded in battle

Can’t sleep through the night

Do I desert the war,

or stay on to fight?

Does it matter in the aftermath, which side was wrong,?

When we forgot where we came from, and where we belong?

Shell shocked, witnessed atrocitys, it is too much to bear, for someone so beaten down she’s not really there.

Like a sad specter soldier with the 100 yard stare. I can no longer cry, feel, or care.

Desperatly seeking shelter, but there is no where to hide, because the one who cut me so deeply, was supposed to be on my side!

So who is this enemy who now wears your face?

What happend to the man I knew, before this stranger took his place?

My wounded heart hemorrhages sorrow, knowing that for us there maybe no tomorrow.

I’ll survive and go on; but a part of my heart died today, it’s my last gift to you, as I fade away.

Do you fear the unknown sounds 
that visit you in the night? 
Do the walls of your Bower 
inexorably press in on you?
 
Do you fear what you cannot see 
in the loneliness of the night? 
Dreadful dreams of ghouls and 
ghosts poised to steal your very life?
 
And oh how you strain your eyes as 
you stare at the shadows on the wall? 
And the lies of the day come back to haunt 
you as you lie deathly still in the darkness?
 
Does the image of evil appear before you, 
as gaunt images that pass before your windows? 
Naked trees sway in the wind and 
moonlight flickers, eerie and pale.
 
Your mind is tormented and your conscience 
taunted by those dark secrets kept so well. 
Eyes narrowed like slits; hearts pounding 
as the end draws near, and a throat begs to be cut.
 
Surreptitious thieves ravage the land and 
steal away with their pilfered hordes of gold. 
Do you lay awake suffering in your misery? 
While you whisper and curse those pangs of guilt?

Now Available from Subculture Books!

The poetry and short story compilation Lost Souls in the Fish Bowl is almost finished, here is a list of the authors included in the book:
Featuring: 
Danielle Pia
Dea Allen
Judith Amanda
Khadija Anderson
Little Brother
Martyn Clayton
Gordon Ford
Sam France
Mathew Horvitz
Wyatt Hull
Matt Kalinowski
Marc Ladewig
Carol Anne Lapolla
Glen L. Lantz
Shane Lee
Laura Fay Lewis
Rochelle Luer
Aaron J. Marko
Rita Meacham
Colin Nasseri
Adam Pettet
Richard Allen Saare
Cassandra Sears
Jeremy Silas
Jeffrey Dale Starr
Kayleigh Starr
Sean Starr
Christopher Stone
Bogdan Tiganov
Victoria

you see Lowell walking down the street with a bulge in his pocket

(no you pervert, that’s not what I meant)

its a small shiny pocket knife

it cost him three hundred dollars

he takes it out sometimes while he sits on the phone with clients

getting lost in another world as they ramble on

about the new jet skis they used over the weekend

and he thinks about when he was nine years old

and he cashed in Coke bottles for weeks

to save up for the piece of crap pocket knife

that he had been wanting from the hardware store

he gave up Icees and candy bars for weeks to get that thing

it had “Barlow” inscribed on its side

the day he finally bought it for five bucks

he was beside himself

he walked down the street with a bulge in his pocket

ready for anything

he had enough left over for a bottle of Coke

and pried the top off with the Barlow

the tip of the knife broke off

and years went by

and he made some money

and dropped three hundred bucks on a small piece of art

that he carries around in his pocket

because he vowed at nine

that he would never be broke again

Crazy Willy:  Willy is a modern hippy and eccentric.  Examples and evidences of this truth include the following; Wil, is an avid fan and quoter of the movie Hair.  Wil has recently decided to be free of all unneeded possessions and can occasionally be found dragging his worthless stuff down the street in on orange Rubbermade tote to an unknown destination.  The greatest and truest love of Wil’s twenty-two year long life is the singer Jewel, who he will never meet.  Wil’s options for the summer include either a three and a half month ministry trip to help the poor and unspiritual of China, or go to a three and a half day rave called The Burning Man which takes place in an ugly lakebed in the ugly state of Nevada. 

Verno the Inferno, The Little Mexican, And Baby Phoenix: Vern’s The Inferno nickname derived from his brain’s capacity to devour a subject like a California Wildfire.  Asking him a question is to receive an encyclopedia of information that is usually pretty interesting.  Teresa the Mexican likes to cook tamales, spend time with her baby, and be the good wife that Vern needs.  Baby Phoenix (AKA: Maverick) likes to poop his draws, watch Sponge Bob, and pickup on older women. 

Matt:  Matt is creating a comic book.  He is the only person who has me partially convinced that the final two installments of The Matrix Trilogy have any real meaning.  He works at Blockbuster.  His favorite movie is “Superman”.  He was a pre-med student somewhere in Orange County, where he says all the fine chicks reside.  After subscribing to the school of atheism for most of his life he has given his life in devotion to a supposed God who once walked the earth as a table building Jew a score of centuries ago.  His energies are focused on discovering the full truths of the teachings of this dirty little carpenter. 

Dianne, I mean Dianna:  Dianne, I mean Dianna likes to play the guitar and sing.  Her singing style is somewhat difficult to define.  So I won’t.  She likes to travel around, which is why she works for Dominoe’s Pizza feeding the masses like Jesus Himself.  She reads a lot and thinks a lot and observes a lot from the world around her and makes an effort to contribute her share as well. 

David the balding guy from Whittier:  David the balding guy from Whittier is of the computer programming stereotype.  He believes in predestination and kung fu-not karate.  He’s going to Germany to be a missionary, and find a wife named Helga and get a bigger belly.  A somewhat immature disciple of the religion they call The Way he is quick to be a Holy police officer of conversation. 

Crazy Willy, Verno the Inferno, The Little Mexican, Maverick, Matt, Dianne I mean Dianna, David the Balding Guy from Whittier, and me.  We were a cast of characters set on a stage on the side of a mountain around a rock fire pit surrounded by a Vernopedia professed dying forest, under a black liquid April night. 

The saturated Red Man tobacco leaves mixed with the product of my overworking salivary glands and formed the exquisite juice that dribbled down my chin onto my blue Hanes sweatshirt.  As the nicotine filtered through the mucous membranes in my cheek and entered into my bloodstream, whatever magic spell the Indian chief could conjure to alter my then present state of mind, he did.  A head buzz.  Whether increased oxygen to the brain or constricted blood veins or psychosomatic symptoms of expectation a second wind kicked in and soon my boots and socks were off and I was walking through the campfire like an imbecile. 

For hours we had spoken of things spiritual.  The heart of God.  Can a good man go the hell?  Why believe anything?  The stars, the universe, the relationship of all things and the reflection of the Creator Himself in those things.  But you hit a threshold and your mind and ears and tongue can only take so much of this type of talk.  Sooner or later you have to return to the business of being human beings and much like Jay and Silent Bob, this involves dick and fart jokes.  By means inexplicable the deep discussion turned into our own special version of name that tune.  When it was the hummer’s turn to hum he or she would search the memory banks for some obscure song from some obscure movie.  La di did a dad a da duh. The silliness.  Next in the evening’s high-quality variety show we began quoting movies, mostly from the 80’s. You’ve gotta have a poker face like me, dude. Mississippi Mud, Chocolate Eruption, Rocky Road.  Does this suck?  Huh huh. And the night rolled on. 

One by one the sandman picked off my fine-feathered friends.  The sun arose through the mountains that could have been clouds and a new day began.  Good, bad, ugly, indifferent, the night was the sum total of our prejudices, passions and ignorance.  We formed a reflection of the spirit of the Dead Poet’s and danced a tribal dance and ran through blackness and seized the moments and the marrow of life dribbled down our chins, and our heads buzzed. 

Life is our gift and heaven is our goal. As children of God, we are here as creators to manifest dreams. Life is a spiritual battle. The battle is between positive and negative, truth and lies, love and hate, creation and destruction, light and darkness, balance and unbalance, something and nothing, beginnings and ends. It is the sacred duality. The battle is in everyone; the battle with the self and the battle with the world. As warriors in the family of life we are to purge negativity from our lives, our heaven. We side with positivity for it feeds as negativity consumes. We are to out speak lies with the truth and out love hate. We are to create over destruction and keep our torches burning away the night. We are to fill the nightmare of nothing with a dream of something and balance the unbalanced. We are to end endings with beginnings.