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WARNING: I Brake for Plastic Shopping Bags

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"...innocent butterflies of pollution trapped and entangled,"

My Brain is a Pre-Historic Babe Magnet

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Ug seemed kinda down in the dumps so, uncharacteristically for a male hominid, I asked him why he looked so glum. “Ug no find nice girl,” he said, poking a stick in the dirt.

we're already at the movies

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israeli flares light gaza/ casting incandescent nudity/ upon jumbled puzzle piece buildings.

Stretching to Understand

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You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I got…

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

Picture Window

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You call your wife. “Do you see what I see?” you ask.

match point

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two roses her eyes aqua-blue no, blue-green

Assiduity Six

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"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"

Girls U-10 Soccer Yakuza

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“Jesus Christ!” the man screams in pain, and a chorus of “Ewww” is heard from the girls' bench, where the severed body part has landed in a Yoplait strawberry yogurt.

Bloodsport

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At last one of the men on the line bowed his head in a silent prayer for deliverance from what was about to come, then lifted his head and shouted loudly for his fellows to charge.

Illustrated Comments on the Apophatapataphysical Metrics of Cosmic Humor

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(the vast preponderance of dark matter and dark energy discernible in these latter days begins to suggest just how dark the humor of existence is) . . .

Assiduity Two

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I'm old enough to be her father.

Kickstand

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Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

Geode

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There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.

Advice For Aspiring Writers

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Published writers will tell you that the most important thing you can do as a beginning writer is to know your markets! So this month, we'll talk about two of the markets open to you and your riveting but as yet unpublished prose -- Fling Magazine and Clubhouse…

Thanksgiving

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When our kids were very young, my wife and I believed it was important to give our children traditions that they could grow up with. One such tradition that we shared each Thanksgiving was to walk down by the cliffs along the ocean. We'd all go, our kids…

Travis & Jared

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“Now I see clearly my whole life is pointed in one direction — there never has been any choice for me (Travis Bickle, "Taxi Driver").

The Kept Man

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If the Titanic rises from the bottom of the sea, I will meet you on deck, in a deck chair. Fully dressed for a change.

Six Ways to Say Butterfly

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He repeated these six words like a prayer. His only confession.

The Shadow People

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Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,

A Place in the Sun

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What grabbed the mind when you heard about it was the way he did it.

The Nature of Things

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She’s not coming today. She didn’t come yesterday either.

Valhalla After Dark

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In traffic I cry bloody murder, but my bloodlust subsides once I'm in Valhalla. Chip Whitehead wants to see me on the 22nd floor before I start my shift. Charlie and the other suits have been looking at me funny since I sent Chip a memo suggesting the recession…

A Little Load of Paint

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Cézanne sags during a moment of paint. There is an umbrella in the room whose surface collects his thoughts. Outside, in the rain, the grass and garden smell strongly of spring. Fruit litters the table. Light through the window writhes in conversation with shape and…

Grunion Fishing

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As spilled on a sandy Corona del Mar beach/both in moonlight and starlight so lovely/and strangely sad as if receding still

Seasonal Poem

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One of the poems in my collection, One Day Tells its Tale to Another, published December 16, 2012. Available on Amazon. My first book!

Stomping the Big Ozarka Bottle Flat

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I dream of benzene rings/ and polymer shrouds

Crazy Eyes

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The kid with a testosterone chip Instead of a brain

Beneath the Light of an Exploding City

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Under the darkness of their new city. The heave and moan of structures as they breathed and pulsed. Under the darkness of this city, under the hum of their florescent bulbs and the tumbling rattle of motorcars, the wheeze of their machines and the clank o

What I Am

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I am a happy cog