(To Anita)
Secret Missions
She kept her words to herself
eyes closed
moving her lips
believing with knowing
the far tint of stars
above the city roofs
long walks
in the peace of night
after pausing in a quest of answers
she knew more than the teachers
hammered by repetition
and their stamp of pride
her writings
finding an audience
to her surprise
her papers fluttering in the wind
with angel wings
on thousands of missions.
GOD, THE WAY TO DIVINE LOVE A Psalm-inspired prayer for God’s way to Love: “Show me Your way to love, O Lord, Teach me to love like You, with a heart that’s pure and true....” My heart is true to you my Heavenly Father. I have witnessed pain in many ways in my heart. Without you, my heart refuses to continue in life. You have restored my love for you each morning. Each day when the sun rises and the cardinals sing. I whisper to you my love and praise your Holy name. It is your grace above all else I received from You. You remind me that my life has not been empty, But rather full of joy, and, serenity, and grace. Your grace has released me of much suffering. Many times I have knelt at the altar of lights. It is the warmth of Your divine goodness I found. I have seen the stars and the moon shining bright. It has been in the cool early morning I pray to You. Each prayer there is mercy which fills my heart. Each breath and each heartbeat reminds me of Your divine nature in which all of creation breathes. My heart beats slowly, as I listen for Your whisper of love.
Avianics
Slightly south. Woolwash
Lagoon. This is the black
swans’ waterspace. Their
movement full of grace,
calming, better than yoga
or deep breathing. & across
the water two raptors, prob-
ably black-tailed kites, para-
llel paths & then a sudden
plunge, swirling, turning &
turning in the gyre, a perfect
double helix courting ritual.
They near the ground. Any
smaller bird goes running.
Children may resist the bug to experi-
ment at times & get adult authority
but their great rental yield is
inspirational & transformational
so I Entreaty for Your Collaboration
in Reception of a Help validating &
prioritizing old-growth forest remnants
& never went to the authorities.
My agonist aunt writes
To dampen the effect of sex
pheromones on the mixperson
when making a cake concoction
from backyard grasses & pain-
reducing medicines, it is often
efficacious to include infusions
of green tea with bee honey &
Citrus limonum to reduce any
antagonism &/or destructive
conflict arising in nearby gynes.
An / epic art / fraudster tells all
Here in the Tampa Bay area, the
big-eyed children — alluring,
at times unbelievable — deliver
a musical version of caveat emptor,
swinging easily into the melody
even though their grasp on the
words is a bit rough at times &
the wifi on the property isn’t al-
ways effective. Still, being able
to sit in a lawn chair & listen to
intermittent music is better than
adhering to the mitigation hier-
archy. Maybe reset the network.
Or, perhaps, calm down, lie flat.
A common phrase among
scientists & students is that
a cartel exists, induced by
climatic & anthropogenic
factors, & that could quite
easily cause changes to the
serotoninergic & immune
systems of linguistic search
engines. But more research
is needed — another common
phrase from the same cohort.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- to try harder i usually have to be pretty fucking close to drunk off my ass to try to talk to any beautiful woman i don't know i remember a night in a club back in my twenties where i approached this gorgeous black woman and said some gibberish she laughed and told me to try harder i laughed and said something stupid enough to make her smile and tell me to go get her a drink when i came back she was making out with some other guy apparently, i wasn't drunk enough for the beer muscles to kick in but i did enjoy her amaretto sour ----------------------------------------------------------------- the locusts happiness is one of those rare events anymore i treat it like a comet or the locusts it's not what i want in my life, but i suppose it's just the way it is they say money can't buy happiness well guess what neither can being poor ---------------------------------------------- in cowboy boots drove past a woman mowing her grass in cowboy boots i smiled got home to find my grass being cut by the cousin that molested me as a child i don't think you'd call this a smile -------------------------------------------------------- the lines of pain trace the lines of pain on this broken face the sweet caress of your bloody fingers may it be the last thing i remember -------------------------------------------------- looking for trouble it's been years since i went out drinking looking for trouble the last time that happened i was taking a girl to go buy crack at seven in the morning after a long night of drinking and fucking around in some strip clubs looking back i probably should have had her buy some for me J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Rye Whiskey Review and The Asylum Floor. He has a new book out with Casey Renee Kiser from RaVenGhost Press, Altered States of The Unflinching Souls. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
experts i’m surrounded by experts wherever i go in my walk-around listening-in days they appear out of nowhere carrying their wisdom and give it out to all who will listen just recently i’ve encountered an increase of them sharing their knowledge vocally like the woman on my local jetty telling her friend how to fix up her marriage the man in a park giving information to another about buying a rental property the boy at a beach explaining to his mate the trick to skimming a rock on water the guy sitting with coffee in café instructing a young bloke on what to do with his money the girl in a busy bakery advising her friend on what to have for lunch and on it goes more and more every day in every way these fabulous experts directing those they’re with on what to do and how to do it i thought to myself while on the bus yesterday i don’t think i’m an expert at much and while i’ve certainly done plenty of things in my life doing things doesn’t make one an expert but with so many experts who have so much to say i don’t think the world needs any more so i’ll keep walking-around and listen-in when i can to the experts and their expertise Stephen House has won awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s been commissioned often, with 20 plays produced, many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts to Canada and Ireland, and an Asialink residency to India. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His poetry is published often. He’s performed his acclaimed monologues, ‘Appalling Behaviour’, ‘Almost Face to Face’ and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ widely. His play, ‘Johnny Chico’ ran in Spain for four years.
Ripping Off the Band-Aid Remember the roller coaster of emotions you felt as a kid when you fell off your bike or did something else to earn yourself a scrape wor- thy of a Band-Aid? I remember falling off my bike and skinning my knee more than once as a child. At first, I felt the rush of pain as my knee hit the gravel, followed by the burn of peroxide once my mom began to patch me up with her first aid kit. Then, after we both blew on it, I felt the cool relief of the Neosporin and a Band-Aid to protect the wound so it could begin to heal. In some ways, grief was like skinning my knee. After the initial pain and shock, I covered up the wound after the funeral with pleas- antries and a return to daily life in an attempt to heal. But just like wearing a Band-Aid, at some point, you need to rip that thing off and expose your wound to the air so it can finally scab over and fully heal. I had been dealing with my grief on a surface level up to that point, only allowing myself to know the depths of my heartache. It was finally time to excavate my sorrow and bring my pain to the light. I decided to join the Young Widows Grief Writing Workshop and braced myself for the necessary healing that only spilling my emotional guts could bring. Our group’s first virtual meeting was on November 8, 2021. Five of us shell-shocked widows assembled on Zoom, and Joan quickly introduced herself and explained how each session would work. We would start with a short poem or writing excerpt and then be given about twenty minutes to write how we felt about the writing, followed by each person sharing what they had written with the group. Before Joan gave us the writing prompt, she asked each of us to introduce ourselves. It was awkward enough to meet for the first time online. Add the fact that each of us had lost our spouse within the last year, and you could cut the anxiety with a knife. Thankfully Joan had run these groups for a while and did a wonderful job holding space, including silence, for us to begin to open up. The introductions were as painful an ordeal as you would expect. All five of us widows were in our forties, and each of us had kids. In comparison, I felt lucky only having one child who was now a teen- ager versus the other women struggling to piece together their lives while also caring for one or more children under the age of twelve. Even though my situation was slightly different, for the first time since Al died, I felt truly seen and understood. Some of the women had a spouse die from illness, having to experience the added pain of watching their husband suffer for months before passing away. A couple of the women were like me, having their significant other stolen in an instant. After our round of introductions, it was time to complete the writing prompt. The assignment was deceivingly simple. Joan asked us to free write for twenty minutes, using the phrase “This grief is ” followed by a description of our feelings. I grabbed my purple-and- gold embossed journal and proceeded to bare my soul. Oh boy, here goes nothing . . . This grief is debilitating. This grief is insidious. It seeps into every thought, every move, and every breath in my lungs. This grief is selfish. It won’t allow me to take my mind off it and comes back with a vengeance at the slightest hint of joy. This grief is sad. More sad than I’ve ever felt in my life, and I’m scared to feel this way for the rest of my life, but I’m terrified to let it go. This grief is lonely. I don’t know how to connect with others sometimes because they don’t understand the magnitude of my loss. This grief is haunting. It fills my nights with thoughts of him. With longing and regrets and desires to wind back time to have our love all over again. This grief is awful. It sucks the life out of you and makes you wish you were dead. This grief is a part of me. Like a scar I’ll never get rid of or a wound that won’t fully heal. This grief is surprising in its depth and complexity, and magnitude. It swallows anyone and anything in its path. This grief is special because it’s shaped by the love I had for him. That’s why I cling to the grief some days in remembrance of him. This grief is necessary to honor my pain and my experience. I need this grief if I ever hope to deal with the terrible thing that happened to me and my son. This grief is confusing. Some days I can talk about Al and laugh, and other times if I catch a glimpse of his picture out of the corner of my eye, I’m enveloped in tears. This grief is strange that way. No rhyme or reason. No predict- able pattern or warning. It’s just raw, primal emotion of a love lost and a heart broken in two. What comes of this grief? I hear it wanes over time, but at this stage, I’m skeptical if it’ll ever go away. I looked up from my journal after reading my piece to the group and was instantly comforted by the all-knowing eyes of other women who also had been thrust into the rotten club of widowhood. For the next twelve weeks, I showed up to our grief writing group faithfully. Some days I dreaded attending because I knew during the session the pain of my own loss and the loss of the other women in the group was inescapable. The fact that my grief was inescapable in these meetings was the unexpected gateway to my healing.
