Picture perfect family,

Hiding all the lies.

Picture perfect memories,

A band aid for the truth.

The image of a loving grandmother,

Who's important to you today?

Shadowed in a cousin's perfection.

Hidden by biased love.

The reflection of a joyful father,

My god how much you've changed.

Daddy's little girl is what people used to see,

a stranger in her eyes is now all you'll ever be.

A photo of a model family,

what people would crave to be.

But the photo is a lie,

why can't people see?

A family filled with mind games, judgement and pain,

Always being told to be strong but wait,

you're wrong unless your opinions are controlled.

What kind of people punish you for having a brain?

People supposed to love you but i guess that we can negotiate.

You're opinions are always wrong, your silence is gold.

Twenty years it took to see there wold never be a gain,

Twenty years of misery and twenty years of hate.

Twenty years to understand i'd never fit in your mould.

Sometimes you have to live life in the rain,

Your support is no longer craved when there are stories to create

and a better life without you is what is foretold.

my dog sleeps upon another

mattress

the same music pours on and on

the same dynamics

1:52 a.m.

naked below the waist

behind this table

scar across my left finger

has sealed the gap

to a kind

of fissure

my skin pale from lack of daylight

money burning fast

hair combed back neatly

a class act all the way

outside I can hear the bar

downstairs filling with college kids

and I don’t feel bad for skipping college

or

the last half of high school

now, 14 years later from those classrooms

those kids down there could buy and sell me

within seconds

but I have a nice television

and a modern stereo

some pages published

out of Reseda

and a lust for failure

unsurpassed

by anybody.

I know that I've told you before,

But if you know,

If you're sure,

I'll ask you to refrain,

To keep it inside,

For my age

I seek not to hide,

Yet I do wish for others

To have a fair try.

If you guess right,

And I hope that you will,

Then perhaps you'll be surprised

Or maybe not, still.

I'm what most would call young,

Merely a child,

But, believe me now,

I'm not quite as wild.

So give it a shot,

For you have nothing to lose.

How old would you be

If you lived in my shoes?

"That's quite amusing," she says, shaking her head.

He sighs, frustrated at how this woman seems to have an unexplainable authority in this territory, a place as foreign to him as the deep end of the sea.

"Listen, I've told you as much as I know. I was never well liked, which accounts somewhat for my lack of knowledge," he spits back. "Besides, if I was of any value, do you think that the king would have let you get away with me?"

She was "Head of Prisoners and Punishment" to his lordship, Thomas Blackwell.

He would not dare give the aforementioned man such a title, as such actions would be similar to those of a traitor, and he might as well be as unfaithful as a spy. His king would tolerate no such thing, mainly because Mr. Blackwell had come to power because of a wicked turn of events, and, in reality, had no claim to the throne he created out of nothing.

"I will send forty legions of dragons, trolls, and dwarves upon the pitiful country you have called a home for the past twenty-five years," she says, her voice strained. "You must understand that you have to surrender the information that we want, that we need..."

"How do you propose that I do such a thing if I do not know what you seek to discover?" he argues stubbornly.

"I do not believe that we are progressing through this in such a manner that I could call valuable or even purposeful."

The lights flicker dramatically over the face of Ms. Rebecca Stone, casting strange shadows. Her fingers, gently tapping on the table in front of her, look odd and bony.

A look of mild impatience is found on her face.

In front of her, you can find Mr. Jackson Oliver, a well-built young man. However, the lines that tell of aging are already faintly present on his face. Stress and worry had always been part of his life, and they had certainly taken their toll.

"The lights shall flicker and die, the water shall run dry, and all souls shall lie down and never rise in the kingdom you have known if you are not careful," Ms. Stone warns. "Your young bride shall be one of the last, so you may see her suffer. Perhaps I'll have your precious king kill her with a promise to spare his life. Magic may have died in those lands, but here, it is strong and powerful."

"Have you no feelings, no soul?" he says. "I've told you what I know, nothing am I hiding."

She tires of this talk, this horrid dragging out of events. A small creature is summoned, and Ms. Stone herself exits the room.

As far as he can tell, the little demon now in the room stands no more than two feet off of the ground, and cannot be more than a foot long. Its deformed head is frightening, and its sharpest teeth are as long as four inches. A tail protrudes from its rear, looking somewhat like a barbed whip.

He call tell that torture is all that can come.

I met him over the summer. At a camp. When our time ended we went home to our separate towns a 5 hour drive from each other. The rest of the summer we just spent texting each other. Skype, FaceTime, OOVOO, at least thrice a week.

Suddenly nothing. I thought my phone was broken, that something bad had happened to him.

One month

Two months

Three months

Suddenly a text.

"Hi, how have you been."

Like nothing had ever happened. Being polite, I answered back. The whole weekend was just like old times. And then nothing

Until a few days before Valentine's Day.

Rage.

I felt so much rage and anger.

And so I thought screw him.

I haven't heard from him since then and I don't know what I'll do if he calls or texts me again.

Probably hunt him down and slap him.

I kept tapping the surface, then the sheet of ice cracked into a spider’s web traveling forth and prostrating toward the sun-smeared white expanse, driving the cracks into the feet of the chromoly sky until the cracking sounds gave way to the warm water beneath the sheet, and I dove on in.   

I woke up at 2 a.m. for no reason except nerves. I read, writhed, pondered weird pains in my body. I watched the windows of the door, each screw making their rounds, peeking in, watching my body waste here with a pulse. A deputy walked by, ducked down and slid some postcards under my door. I’d finally started fading when I saw the blur of him stop outside the door and send the mail through. I reached for my glasses and looked at the postcards. My sister had gone to a store somewhere and had two postcards made, one with Angel and one with Diablo. Angel was on her back looking up at me, her little paws curled into her chest, her smile. The other was Diablo, in the back seat of the van, both of the photos were from my facebook page. Seeing Angel made me stand from the bed, my bare feet on the cold floor in my boxers, in the cold of this place. I stepped over to the wall and pressed my back against it, let the cold punish me for not being there when she died. I slid down to the concrete and stared at the photo. I ran my finger down her blaze, adorable and white, running down her forehead and snout, her eyes so loving. “Angel.” Tears hit the card. I held it and cried, then I sobbed. I grabbed the one of Diablo from the slab. I flipped them over. She wrote that she thought I could use some friendly faces to keep me company. I set their faces on the floor in front of me. I hadn’t seen their faces in months. I’d never see Angel again. And I knew I’d never see Diablo again, I sensed it. I looked at his eyes, one blue, one half blue, his short fur I could never escape, his movie star smile. I kissed the postcards and held them over my heart. I sat there and bawled. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t, I couldn’t give this place my rage, I wouldn’t let the hacks know I was in pain. I stared at the postcards here, in a jail cell, my bare back frozen against the wall, my heart dead in the eyes of my little girl, dead in the memory of Diablo. I sat here and cried until I was out of tears, and I had to stuff the postcards into my legal mail so I wouldn’t look at them. I dressed and sat on the edge of the slab without blinking. The screws walked by and I sat here, I sat here and I wanted to bring death to so many people.   

I watched the cell become brightened at 5 a.m. A stark brightness, a dead brightness that is nothing short of sterilizing. I watched the zombies walk by the door for meds and razors and breakfast, and at 9 a.m. I was sitting in the day room watching the outside and it was bad today, more than depressing, Helena, much more. Four guys sat at the table to my left talking about Camaros, a Chevelle one of them had and lost, a ’66. Outside nine jumpsuits walked the concrete, Mexicans in threes twice, Mexicans in twos and one speed freak. I went back to the cell and stayed here all day and night. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything but think about what used to be.  

If it can make you stronger

it can kill you

personally, I like

the sentiment

but respectfully disagree

Sunday in the diner

walking in, a homeless guy

hits me and my buddy

up for

one dollar

to get a dollar burger

my buddy waits by the door

and I think about it

the homeless guy mentions

something about showing me

some kind of homeless card

or crazy card he has

and I pull a five-spot from

my wallet

he snatches it:

"Thanks, man. You're badass."

He walks off and I follow

my buddy inside and he looks at

me and smiles

I scratch my protruding gut:

"Tell me something I don't know, motherfucker."

We laugh and get our booth

order and eat while I watch

more homeless out

the window

peppering the outside

full with the scrubbed-clean

after-worship crowd

as they begin to pile in

for breakfast

I think about them

clean like soap

every Sunday

the industry of Christ

if we want to truly

help the homeless

and kill the national

deficit, provide true

and humanely

accessible health care,

and all the etceteras

that follow these,

tax the churches

but I take my thoughts

of these dead horse thoughts

of all this

and watch the sunlight

battle through

a bright grey sky

and the coffee

begins its coursing

while I remember all

the love and hate

and platitudes and

erase them from my

mind at once

and realize that because or

in spite of

everything around me

I am happy

and think back to my favorite

Nietzsche quote:

The Trouble With Happiness

"Now everything I touch turns out to be wonderful. Now I love any fate which comes my way. Who feels like being my fate?"

Johnny rode into the city every day with his mother, where she dropped him off for exactly two hours. Johnny liked his mother. Johnny’s father had left them when Johnny was seven. His father left because Johnny’s mother cheated on him with a younger man. Johnny was sixteen now, and he lived with his mother in Pacifica, because his mother had married a rich man. She wasn’t attracted to Ken, but he loved her intensely. They had been in Pacifica since Johnny was twelve, but it was a month ago when he started riding into San Francisco every day with his mother. Johnny had a problem with stealing. He stole almost everything he could and sold it at school. He stole Ken’s watches, his new shoes, money clips and rings. Ken was eighteen years older than Johnny’s mother, a beautiful blonde with the face and body of a woman half her age, and it had Ken trapped. They pulled Johnny out of the system for home school, which really meant he was done with school. Jenny wasn’t a teacher. She wasn’t much of anything. She was restless in her marriage after trying to play it straight for three years. Johnny knew she had a guy downtown, but he didn’t care much about Ken. Ken was an old man screwing his mother, plain and simple.

Jenny would drop her son off at the wharf with forty dollars. She would pick him up at the same place in two hours, because she said to be there. And like clockwork she was there, Monday through Friday. Weekends were spent taking long drives or flights with Ken in his small plane. Johnny understood why his mother stayed with Ken, but he was apathetic, even while flying above the grids of trees, precipices and jade green fields of California’s coastline. He didn’t care. And Ken was pissed because when Johnny quit school the stealing stopped, and he was convinced that Johnny wasn’t a troubled teenager, that he was nothing but a fucking little con-artist. But there was Johnny’s mother, vibrant and gorgeous. And Ken knew that even the birds in the sky wanted to fuck her, and that he was lucky to have her, even if she had no true feelings for him. He’d already been down that road with his ex-wife after thirty years of agonizing bullshit and arguing. Johnny’s mother was a nymphomaniac, it was no secret. Ken reaped the rewards of it. He knew he wasn’t her dream guy or anything, but he would never do any better and he was smart in that regard, and knowing this only made Johnny care less about him. Not that Johnny mattered.

But what mattered to Johnny was Chinatown, and the glory hole in Chinatown. He’d made his way there out of boredom with the tourists in the wharf, with the boring food and the fucking sea lions. And walking down a street in Chinatown, a dirty old man had talked him into stepping inside, into giving him twenty dollars for a woman to wrap her lips and tongue around Johnny’s sex through the other side of a hole in the wall. Johnny could hear the women moaning and sucking him. The only rule being he couldn’t seek contact with the woman on the other side, which was fine with Johnny, because it was a way for him to remain unabashed on his own, though it became an addiction for him. He learned the schedules of the women, and sometimes he would go back in half an hour and spend his other twenty. The old pimp started calling him Johnny Rocket, because his favorite glory hole woman had told the pimp that Johnny’s cock was tall and red and perfect, but Johnny took it as a nickname because of his speed in getting to the spot from his drop-off point, and it never occurred to him that the pimp had no idea where he came from.

What Johnny couldn’t do was come up with a reason for his mother to drop him off closer to Chinatown, so he told her that he had met up with some friends from the old neighborhood on Fillmore, and that they’d been meeting up there every day and walked the streets and talked to girls. Jenny bought his story, and dropped him off there while she continued on her way, sometimes giving in to him and handing over an extra twenty of Ken’s money. And there Johnny walked Chinatown waiting for his time slot with his favorite girl, who sucked him dry with her mouth and hand, whose teeth he never felt once, who got him so hot he would masturbate at night to her, sometimes three or four times before he went to sleep. In his heart he felt she was a black girl, because he had seen her walking from the back of the building once after he’d been there, and the feeling was undeniable, but in his mind the woman had long red curls and electric pink lips, and he would kiss her while she touched him, then she would turn around and press him into her, before she appeared on the other side of the wall to finish him off in her throat.

Weekends were torture for him. His mother was more collected about it, because she had Ken to tie her over. Ken sensed that Jenny had something going on the side, but never mentioned it. The truth for Ken was already real enough, and his love for a woman who didn’t love him back was the ceiling for his reality. Johnny knew his mother’s type, the lost artist. The young painter, sculptor, the singer or the writer, and most of them had been in and out of his life for the five years after his father left. They moved in for a month, drained the bills and the fridge and his mother’s pocket, didn’t work a real job, took up the living space with canvasses or instruments or typewriters, while Jenny either tended bar or answered phones, or both. But Jenny needed Ken, and Johnny needed her. But Jenny also needed other men to keep herself floating mentally. Johnny had heard her tell his aunt over the phone that Ken was a great lay, but never turned her dial all the way around, and Johnny understood it.

Monday came again and again Johnny was there with his twenty ready for the pimp, who took Johnny’s money and opened the door for him. The pimp looked in and told Johnny he had to walk up the street, because the pimp had grown to trust Johnny, and his favorite lady had become used to him, and had even missed him on a certain level. The light flipped on next door and he heard her purse hit the floor. The pimp was gone now, there was no door cracked, nobody to be just outside to look in on him if they chose to. He saw the light from the bare bulb come in from the hole at his waist. He felt her turn to lock the door on her side. He dropped to his knees there. He got an eyeful of her from back to front, from face to feet, and he heard the pimp unlock the door. Johnny stood straight and stared at the wall in front of him, his cock through the hole, his eyes closed and his brow filled with sweat, him harder than ever down there, as Jenny worked her mouth, tongue and hand over and around the hard, young sex she had become addicted to since before her first husband.