Scribd Stories

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.

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.

Pol Pot's deflowered now who used to ride a water- smooth buffalo and kill onetwothreefourfive million traitors Justlikethat -- Jeezus, he was an awful liar, and what I'd like to know is how do you like your despot now, mister Death?

and with each passing day he shoulders the weight, as if he were the only strongman left in his own heart's circus-

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.

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.

I picked up my first stray when I was five, and it promptly died. He was a fine catch, as strays go - Strong in spirit, eminently playful, relatively grateful; But he soon discovered the highway the hard way, And I discovered that traffic does not slow down for grieving boys.

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

Pilate is doomed to clean his rifle forever- The walls will not forget these nights. If you decided to brave the waters of sanctioned terror, be sure to wear your Christ; should you decided to share your scraps of hard-won Gospel, sharpen your sword against the bars.

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.

Do not whisper near them, sweet children, for war is loud. Men who served with General Anzio Find time for the occasional Bingo And find that corn on the cob can be quite the challenge.

We should all sweat long enough to meet the man who beat the law of averages. This man is not the sum of his words, but the total of his actions. The books grow colder, the papers scatter, the disciples pray elsewhere; but the teacher (oh! the teacher) is still with us.

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

she never once minded the dust, as he carried them both into town, his mind filled with thoughts of discounted hardware.

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.

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.)

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

Now it is a vineyard, like so many others;/But when you taste its wine, you drink the blood of your brothers.' From Red Hill, a French folk song. I let someone else do the driving for a little while- I watched the lines blur behind us, each racing after the next, towards some vanishing point just beyond the Stuckey's sign; I am abandoning Red Hill again.

This is where the desperate stitches begin to take hold - In the wary edges of unproven cloth; In the delicate fears of virtuous women, In the fevered robes of noble soldiers.