Scribd Stories

I see in her mottled skin such visions of dishwater pain, The desperately overturned second-hand furniture, stripped bare of our lunch money.

Just clang on the lamp if you need anything, mom. I'll just be lying here, thinking about how small morphine is, And how large life is going to get in six months to a year.

Let us skip, you and I, through certain half-smelted streets; where time and conscience dissolve like watches, and glass shadows catch the first sun's rays fully on their mistaken faces.

On the one hand, we have this couple-so young, so connected, so grounded. The balloon they released together into the Memphis air held two cards in tow as it found its way between their hands and the balloon maker's place.

Looking north up South Water street, the dying stand solid as parking meters, finding finer spirits underground than the ones they were promised.

I could never understand her need to wash His feet; I did not come from Magdalene's world, That nervous sticky world of anonymous diddling, Which mixes its shekels with blood and lies and spit, And leaves its spineless remains In the bellies of involuntary Beasts.

Five disabled dollars later, this man is cleansed- Briefly allowed to borrow some human sunlight On another stranger’s bench.

Somewhere in the white hot core of the Dancer's spirit lie the remnants of too much vision, lies the residue of a thousand broken treaties: lies the child who bartered with discount Angels. She will no longer mistake the gardeners for her Messiahs.

#1 Darkness, and what stays Falls too close to the heart-Poor enough for beggars.

I sit beside the Cuyahoga creek and wonder how he done it- Pursued by motivated Native Americans across the burning Midwestern grass, until he found himself caught between the Devil and the wide blue stream.

The five older ladies have poured their tea again, And look to each other for recognition. This has been quite a summer, yes it has, And Charles and William and my boy Walter Have really taken a shine to their new garden, Says one, steadying her cup for emphasis.

Theodicy is a philosophy which examines God's apparent silence during times of human need. I wrote this piece as if God had returned to Earth and no one even noticed. The first time he said anything, I was slightly amused and wrote it all down on a gum wrapper. (Wrapper's gone now.)

Just expressing my mind.

The fish could hardly be expected to remember us- Two sleep-dusted Ohio boys, working a pole with Brother Blake, methodically plinking the glass of Heritage Lake.

Leaving Iowa behind simply cleared the mind of many a pop idol; Farmers' sons and factories' daughters loved to twist and bellow, flaming out to immoral race records and jungle beats, backlashing furiously in their mudstained carnival velvet.

Spring and breeze and such were oh so powerful then- I fiddled and I fiddled and I fiddled while Rome was still smoking; I danced and I whittled and I climbed and I giggled, and drank the finest of barrelled rainwater.

The Allegheny is an ancient river by most standards- You'll find plenty of evidence that shells once ruled the Earth; It was on this river that my Dad used his first Pearl Killer.

Four small whispers can now leave rehearsal, the last cigarette has been ground to ashes. It was once important for us to kill some Negroes, no matter how many times they claimed to fear God― no matter how pretty their dime store dresses were― no matter how late they were for choir practice.