“Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.” – Carrie Fisher
Continue readingDaily Quote: How to Find Heaven
addiction
Time for Rehab (flash fiction)
It was all too much for Grayson.
On the TV screen, images of car bombs exploding in the nation’s capital and other various cities triggered his anxiety. Nothing was happening in his city – Philadelphia – just yet, but it was only a matter of time.
“Do we have any left?” Grayson asked his girlfriend, Thea.
“No,” she said. “I’m putting my foot down this time. Now is not the time to be doing Anvil. Look, I know you’re freaked out, but let’s just chill.”
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Real Pain (a poem)
drugs alleviate pain
from terrible torment
but that’s before craving
sets in, like an ogre
dragging at my brain
making me feel shame
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Chains (a 6-word story)
Unbreakable (a poem)
to say we were lost boys would be cliché
but clichés have ways
of cementing truths into language
like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief
who stole my innocence
& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &
perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &
if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,
merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands
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God’s Polaroid Camera (a poem)
For my father
in the dining room, action figures were imprisoned in a green vase, and you returned from prison with my uncle, looking slimmer
from pushups in sunbaked yards
mustache and dazed look gone, down on one knee, arms open wide & smiling with teeth I learned were fakes
I thought you were fake, too
unrecognizable, a stranger from a blurred past we no longer spoke of, only at grandma’s house, when we opened letters decorated by your brother with cut-outs from Marvel comics
& were told you were away on business –
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Nostalgia (a poem)
Nostalgia always comes with a bit of bad memory
back in the day, I remember life being calmer
but who’s to say?
My father stumbled in stadium parking lots drunk back in those days
+ I still had depressions that didn’t seem to go away
So what’s so different ’bout back then + the present day?
(Photo by Ajeet Mestry on Unsplash)
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City of Dogs (a short story)
Cindy parked her work truck in the shade by a McDonald’s and took a big bite out of her Quarter Pounder. Her lunch breaks were always interrupted by phone calls — the endless calls from dispatchers. Today was no different.
When her phone rang, she turned down the Brad Paisely song on her radio.
“Hey, sunshine,” said Marcus, the dispatcher. “Feel like catching any more dogs today?”
It wasn’t the call Cindy wanted to get. But at least it wasn’t the call, the one she constantly feared getting.
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Spirit & Flesh (graphic art)
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Rock Bottom (a poem)
Alcoholics like to talk about rock bottom –
the moment they recognized the bottle is filled with lies
the moment when they open their eyes
+ know they don’t have to drink anymore
I hit bottom in a rehab far from home after unkind words
from a social worker who told me
I was running from life – but that’s in the past
I’m still running, I know not why
the sky is falling, fireballs shooting like comets
+ I think this recovery thing is never over –
it’s a life-long process that can’t be defined
by our constant categorizing.
(Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash)
