Strange Place

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Jack loves the drugs. The drugs love Jack. But Romeo and Juliet don’t belong together.

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As if something is missing words echo existing madness. They’re always persisting. Lost self with bad habits. Identity ravaged by guilt which has managed to linger and damage the hopes meant to manage the goals I’ve established. The wind blows with a whisper. Crisp hands filled with blisters bleed black ink, sinister. Fear to blink for the monsters sing from the darkness. Ringing shrieks last the longest. Haunting freaks from the back of the mind, begging me to head for the shadows each time. Like felines ask to be pet and loved with hidden agendas to capture and mug. Iron bars, no free will. Screaming from inside of glass jars. Not a peep, air is still. To a crisis I speak, my intentions are weak, suicide is too bleak, but I shiver. Floor boards creak as the demons stalk me. I always escape. Is running my fate? Surviving is great, but what will it take to live? To choose what I give? To stand along with things I love and insist I’m not caught by the whiff of a flame? A rose by any other name. Why can’t I admire without sacrificing my brain? Am I…

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Echoes in the Walls

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Still I sit at the center of the hall facing where I’d go if I moved. Time has become irrelevant in my world. Whether it’s been a few minutes or a hundred years isn’t discernible. There isn’t a day or night to tell. There isn’t anything. Nothing changes in this place.

The region I’m in is filled with empty pods. No sight of dead clones anywhere. Indents riddle the wall opposite the pods more frequently, visible from one another. Yet, no door. No exit. No escape. No anything. Never anything.

I’ve decided to sit and wait. My attempts to kill myself are fruitless. My attempts to starve fruitless.

Finding and end to this hallway. Fruitless.

Finding a living clone. Fruitless.

Deviation is nonexistent.

I’ve been consumed by madness many times over just to regain….

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Sobriety

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Jack writes about his journey in stopping marijuana use.

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I’ve been a pothead on and off since I was about 15 years old. Began with marijuana. Eventually landed on ecstasy. Even dabbled in psychedelics. The only one I kept returning to was marijuana. I easily let go of all the others. Returned to marijuana so often I’ve defined it as addictive behavior. And I put no blame on the cannabis itself for my constant return. I’m the one with the addictive tendencies after all. Theoretically, I could have gotten addicted to anything from alcohol to gambling or sex. It just so happen to be this because it was the first. It happen while I was the youngest.

I quit for many years. Since senior year in high school until the middle of my college years. When I got back to it I’d only use every couple of months. About a year in it was as frequent as every weekend. I felt creative using it and enjoyed the feeling. It gradually leaked into the rest of the week. Maybe something left over from the weekend would get used on Wednesday. It wasn’t long before anything left over was used the following Monday. As I got more used to doing it regularly it became such a part of the daily routine that I began looking forward to it. Eventually trying to stretch the same amount through the entire week. By this point I managed to get high each day micro-dosing. As my tolerance grew I was less affected and left wanting more each time. I began buying twice as much each week. That kept me stoned Sunday through Saturday. From then on it’s a tolerance building game.

And then I’m getting high to feel normal.

The days I don’t have it I feel anxious. Depressed. Desperate. Bored. I think the boredom is the worst part. It’s maddening. Whenever I try stopping, boredom turns me back around. It’s so easy to access marijuana and instantly make all things fun and exciting. The all natural boredom killer. For a low price have a blast. But I only think this is true. I don’t function sober because what I used to call sober is the state I’ve reached now while high. High when normal, normal when high. I’m paying to avoid boredom withdrawal. The cannabis does nothing but keep me stable. It’s the only way I…

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Travel Traders: Desert

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At the tail end of their first journey together, the couple finds themselves starving and freezing in search of the desert kingdom to make their big sale and find shelter.

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We’ve been out here for days. Six. Wandering. No sight of anything. No site or anything. This desert goes on and on. Our water supply is running low. Our stamina is burning off quicker each day.

Our tents have kept us warm during the sun’s intense rule of the sky. We’re on the move again at the start of the frozen nights, following the glow of each others lanterns. But even the lantern oil is drier with each night. With the dark comes harsher sandstorms trying to steal the air away. Yet, the goal has all but…

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Internet Fire

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Absent minds caged in present bodies

Rage that festers misplaced and rotting

The stench of hate with blood clotting

Boiling crazed surface bubbles

Quiet pops and explosive rubble

Crumbled structures,  knocked dominos

Struck and assured lightning,  double

Tipped trucks and sequential events

Rocked by repent stuck in events

Loops of screaming heads

Transcend red colored vents

Splattered from the massacre

Of high horses in fire set

Blazed internet

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Travel Traders

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A traveling trader tells the story of how his wife joined him on a journey.

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Crackling embers and creaking crickets fill the silent night. Branches sticking from the dirt holding up wolf meat to be licked by the flames. Martha’s been quiet for hours. She only leaves her tent to turn the meat and returns.

I keep rubbing a smooth stone along the edges of our swords. It seem to lecture her every time we barely survive a battle. “Attack and dodge!” I tell her repeatedly. She assures me she’s doing what she can, but I fear being witness to her death. We barely escaped today’s encounter with our lives.

We couldn’t retrieve the treasure the golem guarded or its heart. We were too exhausted to continue. Running for our lives was what we had left. An entire day wasted.

At the beginning it was just me taking these month long journeys to track and retrieve expensive treasures from across the land. Martha didn’t my elongate absences. She’d complain and request coming along to help. She’d say, together we could watch each others backs and go where I wouldn’t dare alone. Eventually, I had no choice but to agree. We trained for…

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