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My Brief Career as Sloganeer for HAP

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I needed a job. They needed a writer without humanistic moral qualms to create slogans for the Human Annihilation Project

Word Burglar

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Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

A Love Letter To The Glasgow Transport System

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Skulk like a lovespun spider in a record store corner on the orange formica subway car

Weather Channel Music Writer

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He can become anyone. If he wants. He'd rather not but it's not his choice.

Exquisite Now

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In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

Miranda

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...cinched the handcuffs.

Where's My Phreakin' Nobel Prize in Physics?

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Where I went to college, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a physics lab without hitting a Nobel laureate. I know–we tried. They finally made us stop–it wasn’t fair to the cat.

Professional Judgment

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Biting my tongue instead of lashing red stripes

When Dreams Come Knocking

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“What are you doing after this?” I asked, faking a self confidence I didn’t truly posses at fifteen. I didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t old enough for any of the clubs they’d go to. I’d heard that fans sometimes followed the band to an after-party.

Assiduity Twenty Five

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" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

Submission guidelines

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Somewhere in her the name triggers/ a grainy chain of Cheech & Chong

The Cost of Love

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I was, so I was told, the product of much hard work and a lot of invasive procedures. Initially, I'm sure my parents were making love, but then came the slog, the repeated failed attempts at getting one of mother's millions of eggs fertilized. Those tadpoles just couldn't…

On The Day That Norman Mailer Died

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Hollow as spit over rock Was the mood in the library...

A True Story?

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A couple, an unlikely match, came together for a brief interlude of time. It was marked, almost a kind of bar code; beginning, middle and almost end. Almost end was not "the" end because it was seemingly fated that they continue the journey through life, if not together, at…

Hemingway On Trash Day

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The morning sun rose up over the flat prairie, and the powdery snow crunched as you walked on it, and the air was so crisp it hurt as you took a breath. That is good, I thought. That is how you knew you were alive, and I was truly very alive, and there was not much to do so…

Buy Me Some Peanuts

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The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

Twenty Questions

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Did you take out the trash? Did you water the ficus? Did you cancel the cable? Did you take my black sweater? Did you tell the neighbors? Will you get the friends? What about the cat? Will you send me a Christmas card? Will I tear it up? Did you know…

Isn't It Funny How Some People Don't Think They're Contemptibly Stupid?

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[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.]

I/ Robot

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in case something went wrong

The Tour(ette's) Guide

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There is a woman in here- I am never alone- but she is fully clothed in Detroit Derby Dolls gear and stands at a modest seven inches tall.

Pastiche No 19

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Remember Ben Nevis? Trying to reach the summit,seeming to take forever until it seemed to take a second,some song (not heard before or since) playing maniacally on someinstrument in our heads,or maybe it was just in mine.Familiar …

Where There Be Monsters

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“C'mon Billy, don't be s-s-s-s-scared.' said the voice coming from under the bed. Billy looked over the side and saw a pale white, bony right hand with it's forefinger beckoning him protruding out from below. The nails were yellowed and cracked. And long. Very, very…

the sensual tactility of tall buildings

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There's a nice line in M. Tafuri's essay “Architecture and Cities in the United States 1870-1910” concerning the relationship between land values and building costs:“… whereas the simple parceling-up of surface lots is the product of an elementary…

Masquerade

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. . . music and dance, theatrical performance of tragedies and comedies . . . a primeval orientation, celebrating the cultivation of herbs and vines . . . ritualistic use of intoxicants, to remove inhibitions, to liberate participants . . .

Stuffed Shirt

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It was the losers’ bar in my neighborhood.

My Fuji Red Banannanana

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She had some fascinatingif incongruoustwins of swing hips.Her eyes made me thinkof opium densof fast women without a twitch,the sweet despair of gentlemen loserswith their 19th centuryhandbooks of moralityand witchcraft. But she only wanted mefor my Fuji Red…

(2) 77 Words (pcs.)

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The sometimes shiver that arrives from awkward silences and the more often cold that comes from midwestern winters.

Bike Gangs Show Sensitive Side With "Baiku"

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Some guys ride hills up and down, Then stop to terrorize small towns.

God on Paddy's Night.

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Paddy's night arrived in the manner of finding a half torn fiver, initial anticipation usurped by disappointment before a chancer's edge suggested some craic might ensue after all. A great crowd had gathered somewhere else, for under Hill street bridge…

Southbound

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Maggie leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the Greyhound bus window. Over the river and through the woods, she thought watching the snow west of Interstate 95 melt away into skinny pines and palmettos. Brunswick 2, Jacksonville 70, slid by riding a …