Bad Habits and Old Addictions 


Just when I think I've finally lost them

Convinced they'd never find me again. 

There's a knock at my door

Heavy fists pound harder and louder 

Yelling for me to let them in 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions 

Constantly ringing the doorbell.

The Ding-dongs wakes up my weakness 

The flaws in my willpower now exposed 

To the uninvited influence wearing down my resistance 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions 

I buried them away years ago

Must've dug the grave too shallow 

They've escaped and returned 

My resolve losing faith to temptation 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions    

Our association never matured into a friendship  

More of an acquaintance of inconvenience at best 

Stained with bad blood 

Not one breath of trust  

Exhaling  air of incessant suspicion 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions

Where do I find the courage 

to tell them 

I'm more than the sum of my mistakes

I'm not the man I once was

No longer devoid of self-respect 

Or a festering scab on God's face 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions 

Now my subconscious is questioning my decision 

Sending them away may be a mistake

What's the harm in extending some hospitality 

After all they've come such a long way 

I'll tell you why they've gotta get Because one is too many and a thousand is never enough

Now head on down the road 

get your ass out of town

Don't ever think of coming back 

I've fought a long fight to save my soul 

Surrender no longer an option 

Confidence in the faith to stay true to my convictions

Vete Lárgate 

Bad Habits and Old Addictions

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the neon nights of my youth
 

listening to an

old elton john

song

 

thinking of the

neon nights of

my youth

 

where the drugs

lifted me to

endless heights

 

where the drinks

made me invincible

 

where women

seemed to still

be interested

 

where the yellow

brick road seemed

like it was still

possible it always

existed
-------------------------------------------------------------------
drink for courage
 

some people drink

for courage and

others are trying

to cope with the

pain of life

 

some like to unwind

and others think of

the magical powers

they suddenly posses

 

i find it more likely

these days that i'm

drinking to hopefully

end all of this way

sooner than the

powers that be

intended

 

plus, arthritis has

made it rather

difficult to hold a

gun or tie a fucking

noose

 

so, it's either the

bottle or a good

hose and some

duct tape

 

when the bottle stops

helping to write these

poems

 

be kind enough to

check my garage

if you don't hear

from me for a few

days
-------------------------------------------------------------------
the retired life
 

two cups of coffee

 

fall asleep in the

sun like a cat

 

i tell my mother

to enjoy the retired

life

 

she doesn't

 

can't come to terms

with getting older

and not being able

to do certain things

alone

 

i'm always there

to help

 

even though most

of the time she

doesn't bother

to ask

 

i tell her pride

will kill her faster

than any disease
---------------------------------------------------------
wars have been fought over less
 

soft brown skin

 

years of regret

 

a lover's lament

 

it was us against

the world

 

now we can't see

past each other to

accomplish anything

 

wars have been

fought over less

 

and no matter how

much either side

wants to give in

and let the calm

set in

 

pride and the ego

always get in the

way

 

a lack of

communication

will be the end

of us all
-------------------------------------------------------
the smallest nugget of joy
 

you ever noticed

the death poems

come easy

 

but how you

languish over

the page for

love

 

for happiness

 

for even the

smallest nugget

of joy

 

but death

 

that cold reality

 

the cruel mistress

that always laughs

at your pain

 

it's the old routine

or perhaps

 

you always

understood

 

that death was

always a part

of life

 

just a part that

most are unwilling

to talk about or

even consider

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the last quarter century, most recently at The Rye Whiskey Review, Disturb the Universe Magazine, Carcinogenic Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

To deflesh,

the shaman,

the seer,

the mystic

lacerates,

purges,

starves,

punishes,

isolates

the body

of the self.


The poet,

inventor,

entrepreneur

concentrates

the body

of the self

on the solution

of a problem

like a laser

microscope,

to deflesh.


An ordinary,

to deflesh,

removes from

the flesh

of the body

by reading,

by dreaming,

by jogging,

by gaming,

by giving,

by loving.


SACRIFICES, ALL


That pilot brags about

the size of his payload

and he forgets about

chasing a horizon.


He imagines himself

to be a volcano.

Will you permit yourself,

then, to be the virgin?


Oh, those gladiolas

that brightened Pilate’s halls,

like those gladiators,

distractions from trials.


RICHARD FIRST


Across geographies

maintaining emperors

by cults and soldiery


has been a commonplace

matter of procedure

against the populace.


Richard had good PR

since he was popular

among the troubadours.


And today, presidents

who can stay in power

are liked by journalists.



SIGNS


The philosophers,

poets, and scholars,

workers of the mind,

invented Mankind.


They made Being firm

by creating terms

and categories,

the mythic stories,

right words and patterns:


They shaped God Saturn

and then mere planet:

Elements: Senates:

Beauty: Gram: Language:

Society: Beige:

History; Prisms:

Patriotism:

Sin: Geography:

Self: Heredity:

Time: The unconscious.....

The list is endless.


These concepts define

our world by their signs.


THE CONJUGATION OF AGING


Years are no series of jumps across gulfs.

We pass through life on a conveyor belt,

paying little notice to the timelets

that pace our course on the running machine.


We only slowly accept we're the guests

of Is, Are, Was, Were, Be, Being, and Been.

Our exercise machine slows then ends

before we realize we've reached the When.

BREATH

 
I go through from inside to the outside deck via the automatic doors of an impossibly large ship. Just beyond handsome wooden slats beige that meet white painted wrought iron dividers topped with a teak rail, are nothing but waves, the waves of the salt sea. I sit down and watch the horizon line. Some birds appear birds that are tropical and that follow the ship. I wonder then where and when they rest, and it puzzles me. I sit in a chair with faded orange cushions. A woman comes out and her dress is long and is a print decorative and unapologetic.

 

 

 The wind makes it to dance.

 

 

I wish I had a camera, she says, because I would get you take a picture of me. My dress is part of the wind and I look like a bird. Can I sit next to you? I don’t want to bother you.

 

 

Sure.

 

 

The woman says she is from the Carolinas now, but lived most of her life in New York City. I am no Southern Belle. Her intonation denotes that she is not below such, but rather more expansive, even cosmopolitan.

 

 

She remains on my left. A man approaches from the right but I don’t see him. She does. She says to him, You are one fine man. I have had my eye on you. And what a head of hair. Every time I lay my eyes on you I can’t take them off. Other men just don’t compare.

 

 

I look over, turning my head right to a forty five degree angle. He is a bit shy. He has flyers in his hand and is smoking a cigarette. I handed out these flyers advertising a party and I put the wrong information and now I have to go around and hand out the new ones. A pain. But I’ll get it done.

 

 

He takes a long drag of smoke into his lungs and exhales. The woman and I look at him and then glance out to the sea. By the way, he says to me, pointing to a table messy with wine glasses and beer bottles, an industrial strength ashtray with half its metal lid missing, I don’t know you but wanted to mention that you handled yourself really well in the midst of that fiasco last night. My husband and I were watching the whole thing. Bravo. Admirable.

 

 

I have no idea what he is talking about because he has mistaken me for someone else, which is a pattern, which is something that happens often.

 

 

Thanks but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t even near here.

 

 

He is surprised. I breathe in smoke. The woman breathes in smoke. He breathes in smoke again. We are all thinking.

 

 

Say, I say, What was it all about anyway? Sounds intense.

 

 

Abortion.

 

 

Abortion?

 

 

Ya. There is a group of women here that think the new anti abortion laws are great. I could hardly believe it from anyone, but from women makes it worse in my mind. I was so angry.

 

 

He is political. The non-Southern Belle with the beautiful dress nevertheless says something but I can’t make it out for a gust of wind, wind somehow like a breath exhaled by the sea skies. I am generally apolitical, though I have a few ideas here and there that lean left. I let them talk.

 

 

He listens to her and is upset about something and then voices his disagreement... They continue on though and are friendly but there is still some problem. Yet, they seem to find common ground on other things, more than not. Their voices fade out. I am thinking. I wonder what will happen if someone mistakes me for a person other than one that had a gift of oratory in debate, or attended an information technology training weekend, or someone who worked construction in the north of towns for a company that I, in reality, had never even heard name of. I wonder some more, about other things similar that have also happened, like the man who identified me as the person who Did not deserve one bit what Lisa and them did to you…no way, not you, who is a good guy and they are wicked evil and I am sorry you had to go through that..

 

I don’t know any Lisa or group like that.

 

 

But so far the reviews of the persons that are not me but look like me are good reviews.

 

 

I wonder what would happen if some authorities approach and say simply, Can you come with us please, and though it is a question on paper, is not a question in real life but a statement, and I have been mistaken for someone who did something, well, bad, untoward.

 

Two men come out and sit beside me on the right. One is of German descent. He told me this before. He chews on his cigar. I am a fisherman, from California, he says, as if simply continuing a days old conversation.

 

There are many rules where I come from, about fishing, I offer. If you get caught out of season they can impound your car, your boat, basically anything.

 

That’s right. Where I go also it is the same. Your Canada country population can fit into my California by the way. And, he puts his hand in front of him to help his point, and makes a gesture of some sort, There are rules for a reason, and they should be obeyed. It’s to protect the poor fishies.

 

I laugh inwardly at hearing this big and otherwise tough guy, chewing on the thickest cigar I have ever seen, say, ‘fishies,’ instead of ‘fish’.

 

Beside him I see another man. His face and affect, clothing and something about his general aura remind me of an old friend who committed suicide. Joseph Campbell said that once you reach over thirty everyone you meet will remind you of someone else you already met. True enough. And then what about fifty? What happens then? Maybe unless you are an extrovert, you don’t want to meet anyone else.  This man looks like the suicide had he lived another decade or two. The man wears a collar shirt, a golf shirt or something close to one. Non-descript haircut, average height and weight if there are such things. I sense he is not an asshole though, but rather an okay guy. The suicide was also kind, especially as the world goes. Golf shirt is thoughtful but thinks about worldly things. He is talking to someone on his right about points, aero plan, miles, and he keeps glancing at his phone. This mediocrity consumes many people, perhaps the majority.

 

I breathe deeply, drawing the tropical air as if right to my stomach. Then I take a drag of nicotine and chemicals in smoke and bring them just as deeply in.  I don’t really want to talk to any of these people, one way or the other, but there is nowhere else to go to smoke. Its hard maintaining, to coin a phrase, ‘lonership,’ upon a ship. Someone apparently caused a fire on a balcony and there is no smoking any longer on such personal outdoor spaces. Everyone pays for the sins of one. Plus it’s gotten late, and alcohol is a strange thing, - it loosens the mind otherwise inhibited and lubricates the lips. People say things they otherwise would not. I don’t know that I want to see or hear or know what waits dormant in most peoples’ minds and behind their lips.

 

The ship continues at eighteen to twenty knots, but it feels much faster than that in my guts and blood and bones. Maybe I am too sensitive, empathic towards the immediate and not so immediate environment. Luckily, a song sounds, and it’s Fleetwood Mac. It’s somehow soothing, a calm against the cacophony. Almost everywhere I go, they play Fleetwood Mac, because there is something universal about it all. I listen. I listen then to Stevie Nicks as she sings Dreams,

 

Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining

Players only love you when they’re playing

 

The wind picks up. A storm is beginning but they don’t close the area. The man with the exemplary  hair excuses himself and goes inside. I am back with the bird-dress lady, who is kind and articulate, animated and eccentric and quite beautiful, statuesque. She speaks of many things seemingly at once. America. The Black experience. Diasporas. Education. Employment. Travel. Relationships. Even diet and nutrition. And hens, ‘Hens,’ which I sought clarification on, and was her designation for women that, as she put it,… talk gossip, talk cheap talk, talk nothing but shit and lies about others, people that spread darkness and not light, not realizing that their darkness is going to come back and visit them double-fold in time…

 

 

It begins raining hard.

 

 

That warm tropical rain.

 

 

The wind pushes it into the deck area.

 

 

We stand up together. She is tall by any metric. But I am taller.  She asks me if she can hold my arm to go inside, and it is windy, for the breath of nature has become much more pronounced.

 

 

I guide her inside at her request.

 

 

Where is the woman’s washroom, she asks.

 

 

I don’t know. I know the men’s is here. But I have never gone to the woman’s washroom. She walks with me to the stairs and I ask her if she will be okay to find one.

 

 

Yes.

 

 

I ascend the steps and she disappears down a hallway. I would normally offer to help her a bit more, to get there, but I have then begun worrying about many things, half formed fears, mistaken identities and the faulty perception of people, even of good people. I was thinking of storms, of politics and division, of life and no life, of health problems and health care, of alcohol, tobacco, and vessels that travel in the night through tropical storms strong.

 

 

At the top of the steps I was not out of breath, yet I paused and took a deep breath anyhow.

 

 

Then I began to make my way to my room, walking alone under one green electrical sign after another that illumined the way. I could feel the ship rocking back and forth more than usual, a ship perhaps five or seven stories high and housing more than three thousand people.

 

 

The night storm had gathered so much strength by then that I could hear the winds whistling even from the inner corridors of the boat.

 

 

They sounded like spirits calling out diatribes, rhetoric, pleas, strange joys plus metaphysical pains and warnings, all songs and long wild unabridged strange poems in the middle of a living dream. It all mixed together in my brain and spirit, and I thought of the sea and its vast expanse, of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, of how it rains, the sometimes pregnant sky birthing endlessly through time and cycle its own waters, and how the wind often takes these and places them everywhere, blows them with a breath, and they land sometimes in drips and drops like tears across and down windows, mostly never seen or noted, but having existed nevertheless.

 

There are spirits simply everywhere, and I think to myself then that many of the dead so-called are more alive than the living.


 

When winter's embrace arrives,
Softly stirring from slumber,
Like a hushed lullaby sung by gentle winds,
Yearning for the familiar path of old,
Guiding us towards the new.

Like the courageous battle of dawn against night,
I witnessed mama's presence, fierce and overpowering,
As she crushed the boy and his mother,
With a force that echoed through the air,
Sucking the light from their souls.
She attempted to bind the elusive breeze,
But all she saw was the breeze binding her,
Within the confines of her modest bamboo kitchen.
Moments passed by, yet the tangled threads above remained oblivious,
To the elusive vapor that perpetually emerged,
From mama's fiery stick that dances with flames.

But in the end,
That flammable liquid quelled her burdens,
And the threads warmly welcomed their companion,
Transforming the walls into a canvas of darkness.



Are you a soul, a being enraptured by melodies in this vast world? Yesterday, my mother's voice, like a bare tongue, unraveled a prophecy within me. It spoke of a looming day when those who cling to the insignificant beats will be drawn towards the allure of the most enchanting tones. On that last day, drums shall resound, reverberating throughout the realms for all to hear. Yet only a select few shall surrender to the rhythm's irresistible pull.

But I question if this day bears the weight of judgment's hand, a day where girls and boys, women and men, shall race swifter than a fleeting sparrow. I beseech not for our presence in witnessing such a day, but for our transcendence, away from its grasp. For this day is known as "Nafsi, Nafsi," a whispered call to depart, where no companions can remain. It is a mystery, where strangers move alongside one another, their true selves concealed.


In the depths of our hearts, we crave a tranquil oasis, where peace flows like a gentle river. Like the sweet embrace of a mother's love, unity is the tapestry that adorns our deepest desires. 

Our nation, once plagued with turbulence, yearns for the soothing balm of harmony. Fear shall not bind us, for we possess the courage of steadfast warriors. As we kneel in humble reverence, our prayers ascend like fragrant incense, seeking divine intervention for our heralds.

Together, we must forge an unbreakable bond of trust, as solid as the earth beneath our feet. For the lands we tread upon are vast, stretching infinitely towards the horizon, beckoning us to summon our leaders and beckon forth their unwavering support.

THE LAST MAN STANDING (1)


I rise with a white flag in my hands for peace
But shown up with a sorrowful smile
Which holds none but my country's name.

On my face there is a tint of jeopardy
And scribbles that widely cover it
Such that I look no more like a human being.

With my tone I feel the waves of agony,
And in my heart, there is an emblem of death
For I alone has fought and vanquished my woes.

Say, let it be as it is, and If there is still life 
Then, there is still hope even with a bloody heart
Cause the last man standing is one with might

But let be know that death is of no exception
Thus even the last man standing today
Is likely to become the first blood of tomorrow's war.

By  TAOFEEQ IBRAHIM (Newborn Poet 4)

Salmon Fish                                                                          

Salmon; salmon is a fish. She laughed to herself with her hand to her mouth as her fish husband gracefully swam shimmering with his briefcase and big shot suit and he quickly went out the closed behind him door, it was that quick it was almost so quick that he stepped right through the door, it opened and closed so fast, leaving Frieda amazed and amused and thoroughly in the pure dot of the moment; until her boys rushed in and noisily moved time forward again. As time restarted she dabbed and dabbed her chin and got dot after dot of red from this bumpy thing on her chin, that itched maybe or maybe she just picked at it because she knew it was there—but her hand went out and touched each boy’s head, and they headed out to catch the bus and Frieda watched as usual as the big groaning filthy First Student yellow bus came and stopped and reared and opened its mouth and toothily swallowed up her boys and now her boys were gone into the guts of the yellow school creature, but Frieda, being twelve and just short of forty at the same time, could not worry about the swallowing toothy bus that came every morning in the spring chill and she turned from the window with her tissue to her chin and went back in the bathroom and stripped nude with the blood dot oozing on her chin.

Shower time; alone relaxed long drawn out shower time. Fish belong in water but she had not been born a salmon she had just become a salmon when she married him but now it was time to swim, swim up the torrent of water raging down the falls from the chrome plated wide many holed showerhead hissing rushing foaming at the bottom; she turned the lever, hit the shower button, and here came the water she heard it while she was still dry she felt it when she was still dry not a salmon and here it came it came all over her all hot down her between her breasts and it hissed into the tub around her feet and she began. Salmon swimfish, here comes the water, Salmon swimfish, when you gonna jump in the brook, her husband had told her over dinner when they met a hundred years ago at the ages of twelve the water flowed he said they had made fun of him in school that way Salmon swimfish but he showed them all becoming the high powered lawyer, as the water flowed down between her legs but she always thought of him as Salmon swimfish as he swam away to his job after kissing her with his big cold fishy lips how could a person have such lips, well maybe he wasn’t really a fish but his lips, thick, gross, cold, and slimy—she scrubbed herself hard to get the kiss off her without knowing it was because she wanted the kiss off her and her finger went over the bleeding lump on her chin and she thought inside the cone of shower water as it sluiced the blood away, what about having this lumpy thing removed?

Would that end my life like I’ve been thinking? Or would it really be the right thing to do and Salmon swimfish might even like it and under cover of the rush of the water she soundlessly chuckled leaning to get her feet sudsy sudsy sudsy and tickling rushing leaning, water over her back, to get her little tiny shortnailed toes. She should ask Salmon swimfish what he thinks; and being knowledgeable of everything he would walk her through the whole procedure. First they’ll give you a shot in your chin to numb it—in the comfy chair you’ll be in—with a big super bright doctor’s light splat in your face, and words came around her cutting off Salmon swimfish, words she’d said yesterday, more real than the words from Salmon swimfish because his words had not been said yet but her words yesterday had; the past is solid, the future is mist; she had said sometime yesterday, oh at lunch, Yes! What fact it this, she had  asked this new woman Carolyn; please distract me from this surgical procedure in this rushing falling water rinsing me what fact is this you have spoken of?

Office coffee mugs contain fecal matter, said Carolyn; these were words; words said yesterday by who? Who? Who? Oh, yes Carolyn. The new twelve year old heavy jowled new office girl said those words in the solidified actual past of yesterday; and yesterday  Frieda was not in the hot shower having a shot from a long needle in her chin the Salmon fish would explain to her once they reached the misty future when she was told about the fecal matter. And the only thing it could mean is that people were not washing their hands after they wiped. She had noticed more than once that after an unusually messy sticky bowel movement a small smudge of feces would get on her thumb when she wiped. But she always washed it off in rushing water like the shower rushing water that she turned her small face up into, one last time to get its warmth, and then she turned off the faucet after washing her hands the same way she was reaching down and turning the lever to cut off the shower, pulling up a thick sheet of absolute silence, except for a few final drops and a throaty deep bark fart from the perforated chrome drain between her feet. But maybe not everybody washed this smudge off.

Maybe not everybody washed after they take a crap, maybe in a public toilet room they only wash if someone else is in the room and they don’t want the person to think God how disgusting that person didn’t wash after they came from the stall; if there was no one else in the room maybe half the time at least the person wouldn’t bother washing up at all. There’s no one to see how disgusting you are, no one in the house and the front door bolt thrown home, so step out of the shower and towel off unseen and if no one else in the world sees you toweling off, are you really toweling off? Like, if a tree falls in the forest with nothing to hear it does it make a sound? If I don’t see any fecal matter on my mug is it really there? At the table, in the lunchroom, after Carolyn had said this fact Frieda had said nothing but just wide-eyed dipped her face, mouthed her drink straw, and sucked up some soda. She toweled off her arms and her breasts and her back and her ass and her cunt and her thighs and all the way down from there before Carolyn dropped the next bomb.

And my brother Ricky told me too, said Carolyn, that while we’re asleep we inhale dozens of insects and spiders that live in our beds, too tiny to see; Frieda said God you make me gag—how can it be? She sat on the cold toilet lid and toweled off the bottoms of her feet; maybe, that is, she was doing this—because no one was there to see it. As she rose and moved nude through the room toward the mirror to admire her cleanliness, with no one seeing her or hearing her, was she really there? This froze her a minute as the tree hit the forest floor and the mirror showed her the shower had stopped the bleeding from the bump on her chin, and Salmon fish came up behind her and said the next thing the good doctor will do, is after fifteen minutes and your chin is good and numb, he will come with a pearl handled gleaming razor sharp scalpel and cut into you; blood will come; he will have a blue surgical mask over his mouth and nose and there will be a nurse with one over her mouth too, her hand full of white cotton to dab off the blood; they will wear clear masks over their faces so as not to get spattered with your biohazardous filth; and Frieda looked away from the mirror because she had seen no blood and wanted to keep it that way.

She didn’t want to see the blood that Salmon fish is talking about or will be talking about or maybe had just finished talking about. She hadn’t even decided yet if she would have the growth removed as she went through the door into the bedroom with the king size bed and all the pretty modern furniture around in all the pretty modern hues; she pulled on pretty panties, put on a pretty bra and kept on going busying herself as the surgeon cut all around the growth she didn’t want to know he was cutting so before you know it there she stood, all ready for her day at AD&D. She sat before the vanity to brush her hair, forgetting there was a mirror there, and as she saw herself the surgeon said there! Here! I have it! It’s off! And she looked away from the mirror as he held the little poor bloody lump of flesh up with tweezers for her to see, and deep sorrow filled her; it had been part of her; she had always said she would never have it removed why had she now why had she now? The poor little thing, it’s just a bit of flesh. Where will it end up? It is part of me it is me give me it back; and she glanced across the mirror accidentally, a moment of dread hit when the mirror came around, but her chin thrust out showed her; they had removed nothing.

Her finger came up. It was still there and it was not bleeding; and so Salmon fish swam backwards out and she looked up at Carolyn and took her mouth off her straw and swallowed the last of the mouthful of soda and felt herself thinking like a hammer drop what kind of brother Ricky does this woman have? Feces? Spiders? Bugs? In my lungs? My mouth my throat my lungs my tongue. Then, all at once, this woman Carolyn looked like she was choking; she had taken a big bite of her sandwich and it wouldn’t go down and she was trying to talk and talk but it wouldn’t go down is it stuck? Would one of them have to Heimlich this Carolyn? And then from her mouth might pop a small bit of bloody flesh that had just been removed from some woman’s chin, and it would lie there on the table and Frieda would feel her chin and—no!  

But Carolyn successfully swallowed her throat full of food just as Frieda’s finger felt the chin bump and there was nothing on the table but trays. Frieda dipped her head and took a last suck from her straw and realized she was finished. She looked good in the mirror. Frieda was lucky she did not look her age even though her fortieth was coming and she thought as she rose putting down the brush what will Salmon fish get me for my birthday?  She stood in the bedroom walked with her tray with the crowd and got rid of the tray into the niche of the wall and went across the bedroom and switched off the light silently and came to the elevators and all the doors opened. What would that Carolyn’s know it all brother Ricky tell her if she could meet him and see him maybe he doesn’t exist, maybe he doesn’t because I’ve not met and seen him; what would he tell her if he is real, about how a lump in the chin gets removed?

Would his story match Salmon fish’s or would it be more or less painful more or less bloody what is it with this Ricky, Carolyn thinks he knows everything. Frieda wondered one instant if her bright eyed the boys were safe at school and is Salmon fish sitting at his high gloss desk reading some paperwork as he rubs his chin thoughtfully squinting? How often does he remember or think of the fact she will be forty years old? She closed the bedroom elevator doors and stood there walking down the hall getting where she was going down the stairs off the elevator toward her cube, and thought the bump on her chin will be forty too—but what about this? She went out to the car—she sat in her cube—they say every seven years all your cells have been renewed—is she only seven or less years old? The very cells of her?

The car came into drive, the screen filled with numbers scrolling up all green and the car took her toward AD&D. Maybe she was right when she thought everybody probably feels like a kid. Maybe she was right, as the poles clicked on by and the wires from pole to pole dipped and lifted dipped and lifted as the car moved toward where she really was right now, sitting blinking at a computer with a small forgotten lumpy bump on her chin as she drove toward the tower where everything always was; Salmon fish wise, that is. Isn’t this right, isn’t this how it is? Isn’t this right? Isn’t it?

Jim Meirose’s work has been widely published. His novels include “Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer”(Optional Books), “Understanding Franklin Thompson”(JEF), “Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection”(Mannequin Haus), “No and Maybe – Maybe and No”(Pski’s Porch), “Audio Bookies” (LJMcD Communications), “Et Tu” (C22 press), and “The Private Adventures of Fresh Detective Gerdulon” (Alien Buddha Press).   Info: www.jimmeirose.com @jwmeirose