Category: writing

  • so many

    in the shadow
    i am so many

    i am bone knife
    i am blood dream
    i am antlers inked
    i am rust scream

    if there were a love
    i would disbelieve
    for i am so many
    in the shadow
    unseen

  • that lost

    that lost generation on 
    the corner of 6th street
    and some unrecalled cross
    half lives forgotten
    at cigarette butt curbs
    run sticky with
    mad dog spilled
    waiting for the bloodsport
    to find its fill feeding
    the maelstrom under
    paint-me-black decks

  • EFA

    I am toying around with a writing idea that I’ve thrown out to other people because I like the idea of it, but have frankly been afraid of trying myself solo. With a writing partner, possibly. Solo? It seems well outside my wheelhouse.

    As previously mentioned, I think I should overcome these reluctances of mine to go outside my usual writing and just do things that seem hard, but ones that also use my “natural voice”, whatever that might mean.

    (more…)

  • now we are again

    the things we did in
    the ruins of forebears
    along rapids back then,
    scaling backwalls by
    the falls with flowers
    in our heads

    like those tools left out
    in the rain, my friend
    blood washed to rust in 
    our time flowing over
    to the big river in
    concrete broken gutters

    now we are bloodless
    again

  • sometimes i am also downtown

    sometimes i am also downtown
    in all undercity and brick
    cigarette sidewalk sewer perfume
    seedy bookstore, street chic boutique
    standing, selling streetcorners
    hey, gotta a dollar? i pay you
    back next week

    a river runs down the length
    of my side, flowing swift and wide
    sometimes i am also downtown
    along with all this nature inside

  • Unresolved

    Jeff stopped slogging his parka bundled pine green self and stood stock still, which would have been fine if the wind hadn’t been blowing and the chill threatening to turn my cheeks pale to grey and my gaze had been down on account of those things, all the while leaving me wishing for a scarf that none of us had. I was focused on doing the not-ass-over-teakettle dance, looking at my feet instead of his Levi-denimed butt. There wasn’t much to look at there, not that I swing that way anyhow.

    He risked the wind-penetrating cold to point with his mitten ahead. Knowing Jeff, he held a single forefinger extended inside, though no one could see it no how. That’s just the kind of guy he was, pointing at things when it made no sense to point.

    There was that razor crust of snow, curled to sculpture by the wind, polished and shaped to stone. Alone, that wasn’t all that interesting or, honestly, something we hadn’t seen a thousand time in our cold trek seeking some kind of shelter from the long winter. I almost slugged the S.O.B. for wasting time for us to get out of the storm. Then I saw what he saw and wondered if they might not let us back if we went back to the stadium, made our mea culpas and offered to pay for the damages neither of us was responsible for except by way of association.

    Below that iced blade of frozen snow was blood.

    A lot of blood.

    And I fancied I saw some boots that might otherwise be worth corpse-robbing to acquire, but all that black, already frozen sanguis was a mite discouraging, if I am being entirely honest.

    Those growls coming from the neighborhood of those boots help none either.

  • nothing flint

    scrying of flint eyes
    finding in them

    nothing
    .

    distant ridges call horses
    home with the wind
    blow mane black,
    tangle mane dun —
    storm, she is rising

    rise now painted walls

    first sky tears fall
    determined, there is
    nothing, there is
    nothing in those
    flint eyes at all

  • i dream in paper

    i dream in paper
    walls thin of shadow
    under a pastel moon
    hang barbed of wire
    set singing on wind
    these long cold of night

    scatter you pink
    scatter you wine
    down by the riverside

    steal heart my bone
    folded pale of pale
    i dream in paper
    under a pastel moon

  • Door

    [Originally posted on sceandugenga.com, January 14, 2021]

    “I wouldn’t open that door, Vern,” Larry, holding up a hand in the general direction of the door but not looking up from his calculations written hastily on a yellow legal pad. “My guess the reason that those yahoos can’t be found is that they messed up this” — he pointed to a glyph on the frame around the door — “was supposed to be the inverted form. Chances are, they ended up right in the lap of Nyarlathotep instead of in Kadath itself.”

    He shook his head at the revelation. “Poor bastards had no business messing with this kind of higher math.”

    Note: I am taking a short break from posting new material and am tossing out a few older pieces as explained here and here. Thanks for your continuing support.

  • Moon

    [Originally posted on sceadugenga.com, September 8, 2020]

    She painted the sky with stars, hands aglow with the dust of aeons.

    “It’s the best medium for art, really,” she insisted, though the Raven didn’t need convincing. He’d played a bit with light himself after it burned him black. Dangerous, absolutely. But there was nothing quite like stardust for conveying vast, open space, nothing that came close.

    He nodded and winked while deciding what the next trick he might play on her brother, Wolf.

    She returned the wink. “Here’s an idea that might help…” she started.

    Note: I am taking a short break from posting new material and am tossing out a few older pieces as explained here and here. Thanks for your continuing support.