Most read stories

The Prodigal Son

13321332 views22 comments00 favs

A minute later, a shadow appeared across the left-hand page of the book.

More from The Chronicles of His Demise

13321332 views1515 comments99 favs

Dread and drudgery sour each day

Breaking And Entering

13321332 views00 comments00 favs

Do you know what it is to crave something? Of course you do. But this was different. This was beyond craving.

Island Numbers

13321332 views00 comments00 favs

an island hidden in the sound holds treasure

I Don't Know How the Nights Can Be So Long When Life Is So Short

13321332 views44 comments44 favs

I will always remember that picture of you in your bright blue summer dress, with your arms spread out against a wooden fence in Central Park.

A mere second is enough...

13321332 views22 comments22 favs

This was why the man on the bicycle was still in time to turn his head to her because he thought it was his sister who lived in California, because she wore the same jacket and in his inattentiveness almost ran over another cyclist.

Things that blow up

13321332 views00 comments00 favs

For as long as John could remember, he loved to blow up things. It started back in grade school with firecrackers and cherry bombs—he would put them in toys, tin cans, shit like that to see what would happen. Then he advanced to stronger stuff, M-80s. Skip and…

The Duke of Travel

13321332 views1515 comments77 favs

...he had that same grin, better than a racy French picture.

Weld (St. Petersburg Blues)

13321332 views11 comment00 favs

There's one graveyard for the part-timers and another for the full-timers. Ours is a little nicer, but we're still all going to hell. Do you remember St. Petersburg? No, you're memory's not that good.

Fibers(next:our world without ice caps/yipes!)

13321332 views1010 comments55 favs

The light they love to hate so much is always pulsating within each life; the unbelievable color sword of what happens next when any two people find each other in their hearts and all pretense is somehow gone, for at…

Control

13321332 views44 comments22 favs

Paul and Mary Jo lived in an apartment at the top of a long, dark flight of stairs that were so high, I remember as if it were yesterday thinking, the night she pushed him down the stairs, he would surely be dead by the time he hit the landing at the…

Preacher Alphonse Jicklo

13311331 views55 comments11 fav

Samson was also somewhat in hopes that his son Jason would become engaged in this minor capitalist enterprise and 'turned around' in his life.

and we can only hope

13311331 views00 comments00 favs

When I was alive with you inside me, I discovered briefly and finally how to fly. Up near your ceiling as I floated around the universe with widening eyes, like a butterfly, like a god, like a bird with golden hair at my neck, like a speckled moth infla

black

13311331 views11 comment11 fav

my soul is black and it's deep like heartbreak and heavy as stone and as thick as ink and it is pressing on top of me like last nights one night stand like dead weight so that I can't lift my arms or spread my legs it feels like I am walking through mud but it's…

On A Carport in Bethlehem

13311331 views66 comments55 favs

I can hear soft rain

Away From the River

13311331 views88 comments77 favs

Tiny poem

Things an Old Person Would Say

13311331 views55 comments55 favs

Obituaries aren’t as much fun as they used to be.

enchantment

13311331 views22 comments11 fav

I remember taking you to see all these sexy movies because it really built up the passion in you. I loved what you did to me when we got back home after those movies. That’s when we were just trying out our dating wings. I don’t know if you knew how

Of the Terrible Angels and Their Fleshy Conduits

13311331 views1515 comments99 favs

Other pathways are more satisfactory. They are more closely attuned to music of the other world. Even so, the heat eventually burns them up.

4:09 and American Music

13311331 views1010 comments33 favs

If you knew everything, you would not be able to sit on tropical balconies at 4:09 A.M., discovering a book and then the world for the first time If you were part of the spiritual set, and could astral travel far and wide, but neglected to open the door…

Dreamless

13311331 views66 comments33 favs

We call it the alley of the shadows, the low sunless concavity of earth between the stalks, the acrid scent of the ripened arrow-points.

The Lonely White Elephant in Rome

13311331 views00 comments00 favs

the gambling priest stands in the morning fog/red moon hangs in the sky/the army of seven houses marches over the hill

Noir in cadence

13311331 views1010 comments88 favs

...hup hup hup...

Waist Deep in Tissue Packs

13311331 views22 comments22 favs

It didn't matter if they burned or not.

I Want to Leave You With My Passwords

13311331 views77 comments44 favs

I mean let's be real.

Elevator Music

13311331 views66 comments22 favs

Of course, no one can control what goes on in an elevator.

Scanner

13311331 views66 comments33 favs

The Bearcat 101 was a police scanner popular with a certain type during in the 1970s. Daddy was that exact type. I found the Bearcat in his apartment after he passed. His illness was a common one, the process gradual, implacable. No red and blue…

The Fat Man and the Magician

13311331 views22 comments11 fav

The Fat Man took a sip of whiskey, then replaced his glass on the table next to his fedora. …

Coalheart

13311331 views11 comment11 fav

He is sleek with hearts and I see a different name etched onto each one.

Never Catch Me Alive

13311331 views00 comments00 favs

We walk with our heads down, maybe 15 of us, moving under a sun that has grown to encompass everything. Everything is in hues of orange and red like a bloody eyeball on fire.