dad’s last joke

my dad owned a bar back in illinois which was apropos because of the sheer amount of time he had spent in bars for work and for pleasure there wasn’t a small tavern that didn’t know him and have a beer ready as soon as he stepped into the neon lit room there was a […]

high heels

i saw a pair of high heels on the side of the road as i drove this morning remembering the night downtown where we stopped every couple blocks to kiss on darkened side streets it took an hour and a half to go twenty miles you smelled like citrus your lips tasted like candy with […]

sonic imprint

some songs take me back to another time in another world so vividly i could momentarily smell her perfume as my nostrils flared it was three in the morning witching hour fittingly enough when i heard a tap tapping on my window brief dreams of poe and ravens instead a vision of beauty to which […]

junkyard

i had an aunt she lived in a junkyard for a spell i liked walking among the skeletons of automotive decay she always had odd signs on the walls over the toilet read ‘my aim is to keep this bathroom clean, your aim helps’ i can’t recall her voice or the color of her eyes […]

midkiss

she would bite my bottom lip sometimes midkiss as she came i eventually came to connect the taste of pennies with her clenching craved it long after she became another she that went away unable to cope with a too busy mind i’d cut my lip just a little close my eyes remembering that rapturous […]

random panties

there was this woman i dated once upon a time a real wild one that could drink ten men under the table she was something to look at with a foul mouth and big blue eyes that could should lightning bolts while she smiled every time we went out together it was a night of […]

there are things

there are things that i wish i remember but i couldn’t say exactly what i will just have to settle for the smell of flowers that occasionally taunts my shredded mind it could be worse sometimes things are forgotten sometimes they claw your brain i will take the subtle hints over the vacuous spaces that […]

soft

it isn’t growing soft as the years continue the tally the odometer reaches towards the upper limits of spatial awareness when i was a kid i got a bicycle and we put a thousand miles on it over the stretch of one summer filled with reckless abandon now as i get old and the distance […]

gaps

she was walking down the road alone a backpack over a shoulder tears in her eyes i saw her approached cautiously she had the look of a deer in the woods that heard a branch snap escape written in her bright blue eyes as she stared at me we made small talk for a moment […]

echo of before

once trust is broken or a secret being told it ceases to exist in the form it once held like capturing the breeze in a jar there is no chance of retaining intent when i was a child i tried to keep a snowball to see winter in summer but all that remained was a […]

old flame

she was an old flame by that i mean seeing her tasted of ashes on my tongue as i sidestepped the charred circle of stone on the floor between myself and freedom she was an old flame now just the blackened bits of someone i used to know coal to stoke another fire indistinct like […]

(un)titled memory

the metal slid between my ribs as if my skin was the placid surface of a pond by the time i felt the pain it was already too late all that was left was the bleeding

(un)titled memory

it was a cold night and the sky was clear as we drove through the winding city streets she leaned across the console and put her head on my shoulder if you had asked me right then i would have told you i wanted that feeling to last until the sun goes supernova and wipes […]

then

when i was ten i would spend my summers at the nursing home my mother worked at none are as honest as children and adults close to death many truths were shared at times i was surrounded by ghosts that didn’t know they were dead yet but they always had hard candies and they all […]

lips like halloween

lost in memories again in how words and art cannot pull the true power of the emotion out because it is so much more than a word or painting fermented and impacted by all senses touch aural olfactory chemically mentally culminating in emotionally the first greeting punctuated with a spike in adrenaline etching the moment […]

loss for words

when they said the phone was for me i felt the cold hand of dread tickle down my spine no one ever called for me at work and if they did they certainly never asked by real name the last time it happened it was the police they wanted to ask questions about a destroyed […]

wandering idly

he wandered the aisles of the store no longer sure what he came to buy and without any money to purchase anything anyway he thought about stuffing it into clothes that whatever it was he came to get he was sure he’d remember positive in fact he came with a craving grabbed a rotisserie chicken […]