Mary Jane

The air is soft
it parts the ways
as I drift content
through a chemical haze.
Flowers bloom
and birds fly higher
as jugglers dance
on the high wire.
Beneath me now
the planets turn
the people walk 
the oceans churn.
And me, in my journey
of primordial bliss
seek to traipse over
the moments I miss.
The taking of life
as the stopped clock winds down
marching onward towards silence
and the earthworm's crown.
And still now, I dwell here, 
beneath purple skies
and hide from the hunger
behind my disguise.

Author Notes

World Bank:: disguise, wire, chemical, bloom

Savor the Night

Slipping between the cool sheets
I lie, cushioned on softness.
Feeling the silky smooth fabric 
caress my naked body,
pressing in on all sides
touching me
in all the right places.
Softly, the light fades
outside my curtained window.
The velvet darkness surrounds me.
I’m soon to be
cocooned in sleep.
I close my eyes
and drift to dreams
floating, flying, falling
from the last vestiges of consciousness
into fluid, weightless wonder. 

This poem was published in the literary webzine Writing Raw

City of the Blind: Ballad of a Schizophrenic

In the city of the blind

they say the one-eyed man is king.

But better to see nothing, sense nothing

then to see reality half the time

and distortion the rest.

Better to lift the needle, like Oedipus

and pierce out every bit of misguided sight

Than to see through this dark glass

Distorted, disjointed.

Delusions, they tell me.

When reality sleeps, I wake up from my dream

Alone, not knowing what I did or said

yesterday, to lead me here

But knowing I will find out.

The horror of a mind, fading in and out

in queasy rhapsody.

I pray for the kiss

Of true, uninterrupted madness

To salve me to my dying day.

Newsflash: Cats Are Weird

This is based on an experience I had while spending a weekend with a friend of mine. My friend, who will remain nameless, took me to visit another friend of hers, who she had promised to help trim the Christmas tree. I wrote about this experience in a letter in 2006 to yet another friend, who got a big kick out of it.

I went over to a friend’s house to help decorate their Christmas tree. It was really a friend of a friend, someone I had never met before. They had an immaculate, spotless, large house, and it was clear that they made a considerable amount of money. It was a little intimidating about how clean their house was – mine is always a mess.

I had a good time, but after a while the Mexican food I had so unwisely eaten for lunch started to disagree with me and I headed for the bathroom. I sat down in the bathroom and looked up and was very startled to see a large cat staring at me 3 inches from my face. It was up on a table that was across from the toilet seat. I didn’t know what to do, I felt kind of weird – I’ve never had an animal observe me in the bathroom, being that all I have at home is a ragged houseplant. I decided just to pretend the cat wasn’t there and use the bathroom, since I really needed to go (and it was this need that had distracted me from seeing the cat in there the first place.) So I’m actually, literally, going to the bathroom, and the cat reaches over and puts its paw my leg. So I think, “this is kind of weird”, but it’s a nice cat. I started petting it and scratching at behind the ears. So it jumped in my lap. I’m sitting there holding this cat on my bare lap, with my pants down, and I couldn't help but think it was a little weird. In fact, quite disconcerting.   It is very uncomfortable to hold a cat when you’re sitting on the John. I wish I had not discovered this. 

Meanwhile the cat is purring and rubbing its face on me and being all affectionate, like I am a long lost friend who just happened to turn up in the john, which is sweet, I mean, I like cats, but not on my lap while I’m going to the bathroom. It was ironic because when I first got there I tried to pet the cat and it ran away; it waited until I was in the bathroom to be friendly. Go figure. So anyway, I kind of gently nudge the cat to get it off my lap. It takes several nudges, but the cat jumps down – it walks over to the bathroom door (which I forgot to close completely) and bats it open. I jump up, holding up my pants with one hand, and slam the door shut, fortunately not hurting that cat in the process. But it starts loudly meowing to get out, prompting me to worry if the family and the guests are wondering what on earth am doing to their poor cat in the bathroom. Something unpleasant, no doubt.

Hurrying, I flush the toilet at finally open the door and the cat runs out of there like a rabbit bolting and I hear the people in living room laughing. Fortunately, when I went out, I realized they were laughing at a joke someone told, and not my ridiculous experience. Thank god it seemed to go unnoticed by my host, because explaining why you were in a bathroom with a cat that tears out of there as if all hell broke loose as soon as you open the door would be quite awkward. Cats are weird. I know that now that I have my own cat. She has fortunately never tried to jump on my lap while I’m going to the bathroom, though she does like to watch, for some odd reason. Cats are just weird.

Reflections on Betrayal: An Essay

So I found out about this case in Kansas where a prominent lawyer, who was a partner in his firm and had a father who was a District Court judge, was just arrested for trying to solicit sex with a minor. You can read the story here. Apparently, he sent child pornography to an undercover officer that he thought was a 14-year-old girl. Then he arranged to meet her, with his car full of sex toys and pornography. Clearly he intended to take advantage of her. This is a terrible story - it shows that you can't trust anyone, and it brought back bad memories.

The memories I'm talking about are from high school. When I was in school, I had a friend who was very active in his church. He was a born again Christian, and was always talking about Jesus. He was very sweet. He was one of my good friends, and we talked a lot about things. I sometimes grew frustrated with him because he was always trying to convert me to the (born again) Christian religion, but for the most part, we got along.

I only lived in that town for a year. Then I moved away to another state. So we didn't keep in touch, but for the time we knew each other, we were good friends - or so I thought.

Anyway three years after I moved, when I was a junior in high school, I heard the news. My friend had been arrested for molesting children. He was molesting the kids in the daycare of his church. He had been doing it for years. All the while we were friends, he was doing this, and no one knew.

It was shocking. The thought that I could know someone so well, and it turns out I didn't know them at all, was terrifying. I started looking at everyone in fear. Wondering what their secret lives were like. It shocks me that a person could be so religious and seems so nice and be a predator in reality. This article brought it all back. We truly don't know who the pedophiles are. That's what makes it so scary. They can be someone who is well respected in the community. They can be your coach, your priest, your friend. Sometimes the actions of a person can't you completely off guard, and you had no idea if they are really the person that you think they are.

Any Given Sunday

The faithful gather in their ornamental pride
Heads bowed neatly, all in a row.
Like the headstones in the cemetery outside.
In the graveyard, insects creep
Scuttling unseen, they consume from within.

The choir in the church
Drowns out the sound
Of a thousand mouths chewing
The voices in church ring out higher and higher
Rising and falling, seeking glorious heights.
Until one sour note sounds, almost unheard
Then another note falters
And another until
The choir fades
All is still…

And the munching goes on.

After the Husbands Left the Table

Excuse me, but for just one brief moment I saw behind that bright lipstick smile, fangs, bred for biting jaws lowered, like a wolf, hungry to be baptized in hot, sticky blood. I thought for just a second there I saw curved talons neatly curled under  your filed nails, so  elegantly painted. So much paint we wear, don't we? Ruby lips and shadowed eyes, beige liquid to conceal every blemish. We can't be seen, we must "put on our face." Oh, all that war paint to get it just right. And on your finger, too, a diamond. How lovely. Diamonds are hard, you know. They use them to cut steel. Oh, now they've come back. What is that, honey? No, I'm fine. Excuse me. Just had a little too much wine.

True Confessions: The Dark Side (Creepy story Fragment)

From the time I was in middle school, I have enjoyed daydreaming about killing people.

I think it started because I was teased a lot in school and i used to daydream about getting revenge. I would think about getting my parent's gun and coming to school with it and blowing everyone who hated me away. I liked having those daydreams. Often, I would daydream about killing random people.

Sometimes I would look through my younger sister's books that had pictures or photographs in them. I would daydream about killing the people I saw. I would fantasize about strangling them slowly or stabbing them, or tying them up and torturing them. I developed a game - I would take a pair of dice and write down methods of murder and the roll the dice to pick which way I would kill each person, then enjoy thinking about it in detail.

By the time I got to high school, I used to think about it all the time. My mom found a notebook I had kept about my murderous fantasies, and freaked out. She brought me to a psychiatrist and I had to convince him that I was only writing fiction. My mom never really trusted me after that. I was lucky that this was before Columbine or I would have been in more trouble.

Later on, I started feeling enormously guilty about my fantasies. I would pray to god to help me stop thinking that way. But I would always give in and indulge in those daydreams again.

I am a nice person who would never hurt anyone. I have restricted my daydreams to imaginary people now, so I no longer daydream about killing real people in my life or celebrities. But after seeing a movie, or tv show or reading a book, I sometimes fixate on one character and spend time daydreaming about torturing and killing them, usually strangling them, that seems to be my favorite.

I am pretty sure I would never do this in real life. I don't really want to hurt people. In fact, I am a pretty caring person. I care about my friends a great deal. Everyone thinks I am the nicest, most compassionate person they know. I always listen to my friend's problems and have been told many times that I am so sweet and loving.

I am. But I have this terrible secret, this dark side.

Why it's great to be an atheist

There are many reasons why it's great to be an atheist. For one thing, you are no longer held back by religious teachings that make no sense in the real world. For example, when I was a Christian, I was taught that gay relationships were wrong and that all gay people were going to hell. This seems to make no sense to me - my gay friends were compassionate, intelligent, and genuinely loved their partners. They didn't seem sinful to me. Yet I was made to believe that they were all terrible sinners that were going to hell merely because they loved people of the same sex. All this because the Bible says, in certain places, that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people are going to be condemned by God. Because this antiquated, self-contradictory book written by ignorant primitive people said something, a whole segment of the population was evil and was going to burn in fire for all eternity. That is very sick. When I was a Christian, I knew that this was a sick teaching and that it was disgusting. Yet because I was a Christian, I had to believe it - I had to believe that all gays were evil and were going to hell. This made it very awkward for me to be around my gay friends. I was taught that I had to save them by making them no longer gay. I had to turn them heterosexual, which of course is impossible.

And that leads to the next reason why being an atheist is wonderful. You don't have to worry about converting people. When I was a Christian, I was always afraid that my friends and loved ones were going to hell. Many people in my family and among my friends were not Christian. Therefore, according to the Bible, I was taught that they were going to suffer in fiery agony for all eternity. I was the only thing that stood between them and this horrible fate - I must convince them to become Christians as soon as possible. Well, my arguments did not convince them. Therefore, I had to live with the belief that all my loved ones were going to be separated from me for all eternity, and worse, that they would be suffering for all eternity. I couldn't understand how I could be happy in heaven, surrounded by angels, while my loved ones are being tortured in hell.

Another wonderful thing about being an atheist is that I no longer have to be afraid. As a Christian, I was constantly afraid of what God would do if I didn't please him. I was also afraid of going to Hell. Every time I had doubts, I felt guilty and frightened about them. I knew, or thought I knew, that if I lost my faith I would go to hell. That meant that I had to avoid certain books and conversations. 

Anything that led me away from my religion or challenged my beliefs had to be evil, and I had to avoid it if I wanted to stay in God's good graces. If I lost my faith, I would be burning for all eternity in agony. This made me scared to think and to use my mind to question what I was taught. Because of terrorism, religious terrorism, I was afraid to think and be my own person.

Another reason why I'm happy to be an atheist is that I am now free to be the person I want to be. I can be good and do good things without having to be motivated by hope of a reward. Now when I do something loving or kind, I'm doing it out of love or kindness, not because I want to make brownie points with an invisible God. I think this makes me a better person than some Christians. (though it may be arrogant for me to say that) Many Christians going around doing good deeds do so only because they want a higher place in heaven. Some churches teach, for example, that a person achieves a higher level in heaven for every soul that they save.

Finally, my mind is free - I'm not constrained to believe certain things or avoid certain conversations. My thoughts are free, and I am no longer a slave to religious dogma. I can study things like science and evolution without being afraid that they will conflict with my religion and therefore lead me to hell.

Being an atheist is absolutely wonderful. It is the best decision I ever made for myself. I feel so sorry for Christians who are caught up in the misery of religion in the way that I was. I hope that they can be set free. Being a Christian was a nightmare. Now I am finally free.