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Not Lao-tzu's Yellow Brick Road, i - xvi

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the Way that can be mapped leads nowhere.

Karma, Old Dogs, and Fine Men

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“You people remember the thing you learned in science about every action creating its own equal and opposite reaction? The same is true in other realms. All of existence is continually recycled…again and again in infinite permutations. In other words,

i am so fucking unsold

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i am wire i am wiredi am soaking fucking tiredi am sorry i am coldi am so fucking unsoldi am endlessi am statici am past lost time fanatici am wounded i am seethingi am bothered angry leaving.i am metal i am wateri am sister fucking daughteri am nothing i am lazyi am…

Arcana Magi - c.11: Feelings

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The warmth flowed around her, and her heart beat at a calming pace. She felt as though the heat bathed her like water and felt her body cleansing within it.

The Ballad Of Sideshow Sam & The Heckler

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"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T

1918, 1944, 1991, and now

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Disability is indivisibility—all of us could be its members—unlike its affirmative action forebears who remain underrepresented, even as the groups’ selected contestants prepare to retire early, a distributed group whose specialty is American anthropology

The Sally-Anne Test

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Sally-Anne is in a graveyard. A girl about her age and height died two years before. Sally-Anne is digging up the bones. Her parents Aaron and Rebecca think she is at her piano…

Why Aren’t There Fireflies

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There are hundreds of fireflies crackling along the tree line and the old stonewall.

To the prostitutes on Boracay

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. . . not if I have anything to do with it.

Trees Knees

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A young man pushes a stroller filled with a sleepy child. A young woman strides alongside them, her gait leisurely. They are the first to visit the park today. The trees loom, vigilant.

Bert & Ernie: The Pre Nup

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BERT AND ERNIE -- THE PRE NUPBy Roz Warren and Janet GoldenInspired by a recent Supreme Court decision, Bert and Ernie are finally going to tie the knot! Their just signed pre-nup was leaked to us by a Muppet whose identity we've promised not to reveal, in…

Urban Renewal

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Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops

The Paprika Ewer

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Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.

Plato's Cave

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Mick Jagger and I strolled rue Gabrielle in Montmartre. Our conversation spread from apples to shellfish. We stopped for some oysters. Do you remember a time when books were venerated, I asked? I remember a time, he said, when rock and roll was a fetus in the tank of…

The Making of Mermaids

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You ran so quickly for a while no one could find you. Finally, you sent us a report. You had retreated to the sea, you had your legs stitched together, you became a mermaid and were applying to join the school.

Frank Meets Francine

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I interviewed in an hour and didn’t have an umbrella, so I ducked inside the next door I passed. It didn’t matter what they sold, I wasn’t there to make a purchase.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 4

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That night we slept on the floor of Kirk and Maggie’s apartment and listened to them arguing all night about art and life and love. Ah, me, I sighed, the sad soul of America! I thought of Walt Whitman. I thought of Allen Ginsberg.

Corporal Punishment

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When I was a little boy, I had a thing about women’s behinds.

Allergic Reactions #1: Sun

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Well I too woke up and felt bitterly alive once more;outside there was this shining fish scale attack sunliterally smashing itself against the window like a crazed yet determined yellowbird of paradise but it just couldn't smack through the little rows of…

They're cutting the catalpa tree (Catalpa speciosa) in Essen, Germany

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They cut the tall specious tree storms snapped the night in two or three. At times they pause most piously to count each ring of truth, drive nails into the stiff cathartic spine, divine if this unseasoned cigar topiary agrees with its own everlasting te

The Strongman Used To Weep

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The Strongman used to weep alone in hissingle dusty tent at night, all of uscould hear him, sobbing, thinking about theone incredible time in his mostlymiserable life he accidentallybrushed his thick arm…

Dealing with Sudden Melancholy

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Someone who I know only via Facebook and a writer site we both belong to posted a picture of a 12 week old fetus in the palm of a human hand. The message was anti-abortion. You know--how can you consider killing this baby? And the picture was of a tiny, tiny…

A mostly true story about the Coca-Cola Museum

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At work I recommended someone go to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta. I told you about recommending it to someone. “I always wanted to go back there,” I said. “You did? You never told me,” you said.

Arcana Magi Behind the Scenes: Character Sheets

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A behind the scenes look at the character designs of the Arcana Magi Universe.

Fall Of The Twin Towers

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Sitting at an outside table at the Bassett Café on West Broadway, I remember, in the background always the Twin Towers behind me in the photographs from that time And the sparrows in New York, bolder than anywhere working over the scrap

Rosaleen In Mourning

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She hardly twitches. Her face regards the stars. If her body is an object, it is the isthmus before global warming. They want to find the source of the glacier in her eyes that is always melting. Maybe they like a woman who cries.

How to travel with your Demons (3)

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Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.

My Boogie Man

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We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.

1987, What I wanted

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I wanted to watch, for as long as I could, until my innocence, like balloons, disappeared from view.

Unseen (a Five-Pointed Star with Four Streaming Lights Coming Out of Its Back Like Mutable Feathers)

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What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…