I move through the interstitial layers, I smoke in the basement, I write in the margins, and grow in the cracks I'm lost and I'm looking, all around the edges, and I'll never find more than a crumb because it's designed that way They say I've lost thirty-percent of my mind, but not the main part I'm only seen when there aren't many people around, I'm only heard by accident I don't speak, unless someone speaks to me, but w...

It's so noisy during the day When all the humans are out with their planes and their trains, trucks, guns, and boats How do you think during the day when all the humans are out playing music, sky-diving, motorcycle riding,  talking real loud through surround sound How do you sleep during the day when all the humans are out  power-washing windows and building new roads, yelling at children, and dogs and rogues. How do you...

My first crush was a fat boyHe had beautiful green eyesHe played the pianoHe is gay - of course, he isBut I think that's part of why I loved himHe didn't need anything from meNot enough to behave badly.My heart squiggles around nervously in my chestEvery time the phone ringsDid some creep get my number and want to harass me?Is some bill overdue?Does my boss want me to work today?No, it's just a silly little telemarketerTr...

Robbie punched the button for a bottle of orange juice with his right ring finger, a checking account, and tapped his watch. The watch blinked red and flashed ISF. He did it again and again with the same result. I can’t believe I’m out of cred. He pulled his screen from his backpack and opened the work page for the vend store he was in. “Dust mop floor,” was the task at the top of the list. He tapped it. The screen lets h...

I just answered one of those calls that I get from the Vet Center the day before I go in for an appointment with my counselor. One of the nice things about having been in a war is that I get a free shrink for the rest of my foreseeable future. I remember seeing Dr. Sydney Freedman on M*A*S*H when I was a kid. There was an episode where Hawk-Eye was sick with a cold, that was psychosomatic because a friend had thrown him o...

Large ice blue eyes towered over my head, bullying me into accepting his reality. Of course, I nodded, agreed, appeased. I changed the accounting codes facilitating the theft of expensive cases of wine. The whole company set its sharp teeth against my unwillingness to let him steal. My thoughts about his "reality" rumbled like angry thunder through my hidden emotions, causing my face to tick as I typed. An hour later I le...

Tonight, I can not sleepBecause the eye of the Universe is watching meThe strands of the fabric of everything weave through my thoughtsAnd pull themselves through my breathThe voice of All rolls over my tongue In the unfathomable blathering of wavesOr maybe it’s just insanity, some specter of my own makingContrived subconsciously so that I will feel chosen or safeBut chosen by whom? A god long forsaken? Why?Yet this Prese...

Lately, all the food I eat tastes like nothing. I might as well be fueling a lawn mower, or eating dirt like a plant for all the joy eating gives me. That might be part of why I'm thin. My mom would say my slight build is because I'm unhappy, and when I find a good man I will find joy and gain a lot of weight. Well, she wouldn't say that, but she would talk around it. She wouldn't say skinny people are unhappy, anymore th...

Lee handed his eight-year-old daughter a shotgun loaded with a pumpkin-ball. She couldn't shoulder the heavy shotgun correctly, and the pumpkin-ball had less than the range of a football field. It was safe enough. His thinking was that he would send Eloise down one side of the hill while he quietly went down the other, hoping that she would scare all the deer his way. She would believe that she was a mighty deer hunter, w...

The scanner beeped as I ran it over the red box of cigarettes. I looked up at a boy with thin whiskers. "Can I see ID? You look kinda young-ish," I said with a smile. He fumbled with his wallet for a moment and I awkwardly looked at the young man. The driver's license snapped down on the counter and I scanned it for a birth date, not the expiration date, there it was. Eleven, thirty, nineteen-ninety-four. Is he old enough...

A bookkeeper silently tapped away her life at the see and saw of what they paythey say the meaning of life is to make the fat man fatterbut I doubt he even lives for thatShe taps away at numbers swirlingon a dark rainy night of Halloweenwith numbers blurring, she grits her teeth just outside a costume party is whirlingWhirling revelers reel and wheelthrough an eighty-five thousand dollar shin-digthe lights are right and t...

My purse swung off my shoulder and plopped into my office chair. I went for my coffee cup. Then I noticed the barbecue sauce splattered all over the file cabinet. "Eww . . . this is really gross and weird," I thought as I cleaned it off. The thick red sauce splatters were clinging to tables and desks and file cabinets. Hand-prints told me that someone had eaten a sloppy meal and fondled my cubicle. Weird. A day passed. An...

Joyce tapped a pen against the IRS Auditor’s desk nervously. The dark haired auditor was quietly reading from a stack of papers. “So, this year you have worked in twelve states, earning $448,227 dollars from 37,000 some odd hours of work this year.” The pen tapped faster. “Yes, that is correct.” “How many identities have you sold this year?” The pen rattled against the table now. “Just five.” Joyce stopped beating the tab...

Patrick leaned against the inspector's big white truck. It was a Chevy with an extended bed and cab. "I sold Bruce this truck. I got it from this place where I used to work in Nevada, a place that grew onions. They sprayed the ground there with sulfuric acid. The acid worked against the alkaline salts in the the ground and made the soil so stuff would grow."  Patrick patted the truck as he said. "This was a spray truck. I...

I love drunk writing because I say things I’d never say sober. I go home early from work because I feel like hell, nothing contagious, don’t worry, you won’t get sick . . . it’s just that monthly woman thing that makes me tired and cranky and pathetic, but beer and tequila makes everything feel alright. Have you ever tried Patron chased by a Blue Moon or two, yea . . . all my worries have faded into a blur of numbness, ye...