It all began on a typical day, in a typical town, in a typical grocery store. Pushing through the aisles with a squeaky wheel, the Man passed boxed meals, shiny and new. He passed sugar free. He passed just add water. He passed and passed until he reached the end, squeaking all the way. He looked down at his empty cart and felt inside the same expansive emptiness. In his stomach and in his life. Inside a store with thousands of products designed to satisfy his hunger he was alone and starving and squeaking down the last aisle. Abandoning the cart in the frozen foods he began to run, but not run away. He was running and running somewhere, but where? One clear goal was out the automatic doors… far from the boxes and instants and prepackaged. Inside a fear welled up threatening to implode within him and destroy his life. His steps became panicked, the strides long. With escape just moments away the outside light blinding him, he held his breath not wanting to take any of this store with him out there. 

It was in this moment, one foot in the safety of the store, one out into the wild, that something caught his eye. A quarter machine. The Man stopped and starred into the glass at what this machine held seeing his own reflection, seeing what it could be. Reaching a shaky hand filled with adrenalin into his black jeans the Man pulled out two quarters and placed them into the slots where many quarters had been before. The dial turned with ease and with a click click clack. It was that moment, there in a typical grocery store surrounded by typical men, that the fear faded with the dropping of a little plastic bubble, that the Man was able to look out the doors and know that everything was going to be ok. It was that moment that the Mustache met the Man. 
:{)

#mikebrown

I turn on the television set to a cbs all-seeng eyed lie, only seeing what I'm told to see. Drowning in a sea of the information age, without the information to save (the only real information we crave). Only told what I'm meant to hear as I'm lead like a steer to a McDonald's McDouble dollar menu struggle. Beef, it's whats for dinner as the police kill my brothers in the streets in some secret scheme, like from a bad "American Dream" we will never wake up to see. The All-seeing iphone strapped to a liberal white face disgrace in shock a people stood up for it's fallen son, even as the Sun falls on the "Land of the Free." I would leave, but this blood soaked sand is my home and without Us they win; they have always won with the deck stacked like bodies, their calling card. For me it is easier, my white skin a free pass to buy snacks at night without fright, but my brother has to fight for even this stupid right? Is this what America has always been? A land of sin? Of greed? Of blood and dead and slave? Take is the way we behave. Land where freedom rings the bell for another funeral of a nameless black man- except they have names now behind a #mikebrown, white girls tumblr screens becoming America's only true journalism. Irony? And ebony. A war of felony, perpetrated in Our neighborhoods. Where it always has been. The war on skin. If we read a black book we could find the numbers, the names. The people we would meet whispering words like MOVE and Black Wall Street. Police dropping bombs, but why would we bother to listen? We don't care about our brothers, our sisters. Our fellow humans in the streets standing up against our foes. How long until your child, your son or daughter lies next to Aiyana Jones? How long until you are throwing stones? How long until you are rotting bones because justice failed to see you with her blind eye? This same eye you turned, America, keeping your cool while drinking a Siren's non-fat-soy-light-iced-White-mocha. Drink it down America while the ship runs aground and listen to that sound of chanting in Ferguson- that is Liberty.

He comes to you at rest

with outstretched arm in judge-less greeting

beckoning, a light, a guide

dead and alive;

like you

a god, a demon

an angel in waiting

the ageless servant of the moon

with wings or horns adorned

his face a mask

comforting

leading you to the end

a new beginning

Death is his name

yet alive you follow

in darkness, through the hollow

toward the unknown lands 

of forever tomorrows

the path of the Psychopomp

I heard my favorite song today while lying in sleepy sheets.
The rhythm a beat steady and live and pumping.
We sang it together me and you and us.
A metronome disco techno throbbing thumping.
It felt warm and safe in those notes played
wrapped like arms around my waist.
Like yours, very much like your heart beating, your breathing.
Along with mine too, breath in air mingling dancing.
Like the good songs few words and simple.
Perfect syllables uttered in beat and time.

Coffee & Words

Chasing fulfillment
down a dizzy street
Each streetlamp dim
Anxiety suffocating
darkness
growing slim

A dream seems like sleep and awake forgetting
A sad smile replaces love in a lonely setting

A coffee and a few words is all that is between us

In the air
laulling calling tender laugh
foot prints in the grass
a steady stream
lumbering tumble bubble bath

In between
buzzing fuzzy feel
heart and eye heal

a steady stream
a steady stream

a dark tale (rough edit with all the mispelled words and mess)

A tell-tale heart beats through the floor of the house next door, but this is a much darker tale than that. Where the fairy tales tell of wonder, this tale will dash it to the floor, smashing like a head of lettuce. Though a tale- you will have to let it suffice. For the real story, a story without the colorful sceanery and the qiup of a well penned line, is dark. It is dark with old blood on black fire chewed walls, slowly crawling towards the floor to pool and congeal and drown a lone black sugar ant searching with his tiny antenne for a scrap of meat. Dark like the eyes left starring- caught in the last moment of a longing. What darkness did those eyes see now? THey wouldn't see a golden light in a tale like this, only the black fire and the bbq stink of burned flesh... and black pooled blood.

In a place as fucked and messey as this, the awkward limbs and rigid flesh, one had to dream dark nightmares. Ones that happened in the comfort of your own home. The shit- the blood. The ripped photos of seared lovers, faces melted and distored into grotesque creatures capable of actng on dark impulsses. BEasts like that were for fariy tales- this is something much different and much darker. Something much more real.

THere was passion- no one can deny that fact. You could say it was passion that fuled this dark thing, before the smoke, and blood, and smashed lettuce head. The passion ran bright and fresh as it crashed into the reclaimed oak floor boards- splattering with a startling smack-
Now it sat laying like a molded head of lettuce, the only color in the whole stinking room. It hadnt been enough fule to burn the death from the neiborhood, and they would be found. When they did they wouldnt find the mingled flies and maggots feasting on starcrossed lovers. No this was no fariy tale of young stupid love. This was the real love story of Stacy and James, and Johnathan.

There in the kitchen.

A common enough place to find a knife, yet finding it broken inside the neck of Johnathan might suprise you. The papers would read weeks later, HE had been stabbed 46 times post mordim. The holes, dark claw marks on his soiled sweater vest, dark plaid shirt still tucked in one one side, he might have looked nice- handsom- if not for the caved in half of his head. He still wore the nardstrome calogne she loved but you couldnt smell it over the death. The pants had burned away along the lower half of John leaving melted polyester.

The walls that still held wallpaper displayed photos of smiling Stacy hanging on John at LAke Eola park last summer, after the church picnic. HEr mom Leanne and stepdad Paul. The neice she loved so much with the straw hair and tomboy knees. THey had all been witness to Johns death with the knife that had carved the Xmas turkey. They had slow cooked it all day, basting it with Moscato and cranberries. The blood almost looked like cranberry sauce as it lay dark and cold. It seemed unreal- almost like a fairy tale- But they dont make fairy tales about this kind of love story.

And we can call it a love story for what greater love is there than Death? Always there to welcome and kiss and say well done. The feeling so strong. The rage so hard. The violence so total. There is still a love story here yet it lacks the mystery to capture the mind in fariy tale. The deed is plain. The killer known. There was no hiding beneath the floorboards. No neat set-up. Just blood and love and death. Each beautiful in their own way. Each ugly. Complicated.

I must confess this is a tale of two loves and twice the death. Each sad. THey lay there entwined in a way that suggest one had to witness the others life leave in horror. One from the knife, the other from the poissoned wine that used to be in the bottle that crushed Johns head. The emerald green casting erie light. It is a story with details that mimik the fariy tales yet are wholly different. And yet the same. Two lovers are dead.

Another thing I must confess is the Mystery. For it was a strong hand that embraced Johns as he died, and still layed there in stiff comfort. Stacys smiling face looking down at the two wedding rings cutting the bloated fingers of James and Johnathan.

There is no moral. There is no neat ending. The mess and reak littered story has nothing to say to you except the world is dark as fuck sometimes. And complicated.