Fierce Gold Sun 
 
Fierce gold sun
sits on my chest,
wraps its scorching
arms around my
shoulders. Its breath
singes the hair
on my body.
Is this what bombs
do? What human
being could think
of such a thing?
Creators of
death, inventors
of destruction,
how did you sleep
when the bombs dropped
on Mother Earth?
The blossoming
flowers were not
enough. The roots
ripped from the ground.
Human beings
melted away.
 



One Slice of Toast
 
Drinking water
or drinking tea,
just eight ounces
an hour before
the procedure.
 
I could have clear
soup or clear juice.
One slice of toast
an hour before
 
the procedure.
Nothing else, just
one of four clear
liquids and that
one slice of toast
with no butter.
 
Perhaps this should
be my meal at
least once a week.
I would lose weight.
I could cheat by
eating one soft
or hard-boiled eggs.
A cracker with
no salt at all.



The Last Night



It was the last night
 
I would drive her home.
Even the car was sad.
 
I drove home afterward.
 
I loved for the last time.
I went to sleep for years.
 
I stopped believing in everything.
 
I slept on and on
 
dreaming of the next life.
 
 

Twilight of the Superhumans

No one expected this. Kid in a gasmask helping an old lady across the street, even though the crosswalk is in excellent working condition and traffic doesn’t really exist anymore under this big green radioactive dome, shielding The Metropolis, the pillar of the Steel-Kingdom, held and dominated by the House of Steel, founded by the first man of tomorrow Steelman and fully established by marriage with the Amazonian demi-goddess Madame Miracle, though now it’s King and Queen Steel and we are all damned on this entire planet.

Under the dome, we’ll either die from cancer and other forms of radiation sickness or meet a brutal end in an unnecessarily operatic war of reluctant superhumans and egocentric mad gods.
The old lady never got a chance to cross the street, as a hulking behemoth of tumors once a Gamma-ray scientist landed into the center of the street. Skull faced, contorted super-strong beast howling at King Steel, wispy white hair in a black and red leotard, silver steel S in the center holding a pristine white cape into place, yet you could see he was yellow with cancer, the years of storing energy like a battery but dying of radiation poison this new god yearned for victory at any cost.

He condemned himself to essential death in what was a superhuman arms race. Create new soldiers to usher in a militaristic peace into the world since the great fragmentation between the various fractions of The Alliance. The Peacekeepers would make a comeback and despite the membership not consisting of the original seven champions of justice, everything would be fine and orderly or King Steel believed with cancer eating his brain.

The incredible Brute raised himself up and being a mass of terminal disease with just as much rage and insanity as the levitating being above grabbed the only speeding truck on the road and threw it at the bane of his current existence, showering radioactive isotopes upon the ground, through fissures made by gamma saturated grasps of fury.
 Kid in the gasmask pushed the old lady out of the way but it wasn’t enough as she was struck across the eyes going blind and swallowing another whole and kid in the mask referred to as Robin-Jay by his ailing mother who may have hinted around that his father was once a vigilante sidekick, not that it mattered as a gold chain with an archaic religious significance dangled from the boy’s neck.

King Steel incinerated the automotive projectile with laser vision and gasped as he saw the young lad’s golden talisman. Gold. Another weakness in conjunction with radiation. It was a slow agonizing death this poison but gold like the kryptonite of fiction weakened him like a man of steel from another time.
He looked down at the kid in the gasmask and something caused his spine to shiver for the first time in decades.
	“Son, stay back. We need to be united…God is coming and it’s not a good thing.”
The cancerous mass lunged at his floating nemesis and just like the truck out of sheer impatience from years fighting and fear of the figure below, King Steel melted Brute right on the spot, leaving a charred twisted skeleton not much different than a Dali painting among the broken street.

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, isolated from the East Coast of the radioactive dome had trouble of their own. The Masters of Marvels fully assembled with an army to crack open the dome and take what they needed from the House of Steel to fully win this war. It wasn’t too long ago when the various superhero teams of: The Peacekeepers, Fearless Five, Justice Guard and Supremacy Squad had decided to officially disband and rebrand themselves as one unit…THE ALLIANCE to rid the world of evil doers by any means necessary…even the numerous bands of mutants had set aside their differences alongside many of mentally scarred street vigilantes. However Dr. Universe sat upon his high throne stationed above the roundtable to ensure everyone was equal beneath his vast superior power and knowledge, serving as a force of guidance more than anything instead of being just another demi-god like a certain extraterrestrial with his humanoid resemblance who dared call himself “king.”

An armor encased master with a bionic heart wrapped in a mystical purple cloak wearing a spectrum of rings adhering to all the colors of a rainbow, it was a hard won battle against Atlantis but the war was far from over, he once foresaw that in his sidekick Jimmy Jett’s magic eight-ball glasses, even after they defeated the House of Steel, the Mutates who had left Earth to terraform Mars and renamed it Planet Z after the Z-gene which bestowed their powers would return with much greater force, which ultimately formed an alliance on a nigh omnipotent level.

What could be considered as God was coming which spelled the end of everything they originally fought for. There would be another mass extinction on a planetary level rendering the existence of battle between good versus evil quite meaningless and the good doctor and his illuminated colleagues couldn’t manage that which is why he sent the bat-shit crazy one to finally execute that cancer ridden warped alien who started out as just a good old Michigan farm boy only to find out he was “gifted” with a power from beyond the stratosphere. The Alliance was never meant to hold and usher in a utopia like they wanted and eventually they dismantled it from so much in fighting after the execution of the villains, then the toppling of sinister global regimes and finally just usurping these small minded yet narcissistically engineered societies which only further plagued the human condition and the eco-system itself.

The Atlanteans of course had something to say as did the Amazons who after their pantheon was taken out make a hasty alliance via marriage with the House of Steel spawning demonic descendants which would have Steelman’s powers yet none of his weaknesses though those abilities would be diminished the genes from the mother would make up for it and this concerned council which consisted of the best and brightest of superhumans who were more human than human with the exception of the designated executioner Knight Shadow, the typical rich boy scenario only it was more sexual for him…a trip to see Dracula, wetting himself over a blood sucking scene with something that wasn’t urine, embarrassed socialite parents rushing out of the theatre to be gunned down by political protesters screaming “Eat the rich!”

There was something more erotic about his costume and implementation of extreme violence than brutal street justice, just ask his sidekick Squire…oh you can’t…Arachnakid had suffocated him within his own web of terror, in an effort to be more man, than kid so he could join the big league of superhuman killers and eventually get a seat at the king’s table.
Dr. Universe sighed as he stood to greet the rest of the incoming counsel, he wouldn’t tell them of hopelessness of the situation nor how it was completely useless to officially decimate not only Metropolis but to engage in battle against that which created them in the first place, but he would tell the story of the egg.

The herald soared the space-ways. A slender chrome being encased in a field of celestial upon a disk made of the matter as his skin and surrounded by the same field of fire. He had a name once and sometimes wondered if he had truly been born a man or what sort of inferior abomination from a backwater forsaken planet did, he hail from? 
He could barely remember the words to articulate, but remembered the number zero-zero, whatever that meant. There were fragments, one of a nihilistic shaven headed monk hellbent on proving the meaningless of existence by exterminating his sect with his forbidden lover whose name was Shal…and before the executioner’s laser axe could come down on upon their necks, RAI-SHI arrived…swirling series of electric storm clouds and obsidian armor. The dark seed of what really governed the various forces in distant and unknown galaxies.

The planet was ripped apart, as they were suspended in space as RAI-SHI shed the armor and implanted itself into what remained of the planet…a hovering quasar pumping egg containing the darkness of the blackhole, then reborn after shedding its original husk, it turned to Shal and Kul (was that his dead name?) who were remade as two chrome heralds to search out the eggs hidden on other planets so that RAI-SHI could prolong itself for millennia more without exhausting precious cosmic power or warfare which would have more than likely included weapons made of gold, the weakness of his race and there were offshoots upon other planets he knew of.

Kul soared alone as Shal panicked, dismayed by the fact she couldn’t breathe air, ripping her own chest open to expose her lungs in order to breathe. He saw her exposed torso about three hundred years ago as headed toward the Earth to herald it’s destruction and engage in combat with the inhabitants. 
RAI-SHI the machine god who created a series of techno-organic bodies in various planets incubated in these eggs, naturally it had enemies ergo its inhabitants were engineered to be hostile to defend the eggs from various invaders yet somehow there were obstacles such as a planet’s own eco system building its own series of defense mechanisms to subvert control from the artificial deity’s agenda.
Professor Z, sat in his levitating chair on largest built earthen tower erected onto Martian terrain. He communed with what could only be conceived as god and wept in silence as they went through a cycle of eternity experiencing the births, deaths, and rebirths of universes. He didn’t have to make amends for Weapon Zinn anymore and gladly shut down Pablo’s brain with his near limitless healing ability and plethora of adamantine bones which was a combination of diamond and platinum capable of scratching through any surface yet incapable of being rejected naturally by the human body. 

Adamantine like gold was still a weakness for RAI-SHI and Pablo also known as Raptor had too much of an independent streak.
Dr. Universe hovered above the Earth, tears streaming down his face knowing that this was the last time he would ever see it, conjuring a web of crisscrossing energy surrounded by a fleet of Copper-Giants (fully automated but operated by the original Copper Giant on Earth full of cancer and hiding down below King Steel’s utopia). The fabric of space and time ripped open, an unholy alliance was to be made as tenacles protruded and the albino emerald eyed Octo-King and Queen emerged.


Down below Knight Shadow, tumbled out of his armor, still clad in helmet and chainmail. His gauntlets grasped King Steel’s flowing white hair and forced plasma bursts into his ears which even though he was dying of cancer and severely weakened still only annoyed this far distant descendent of RAI-SHI. He tore from his world’s finest ally the symbiote which once belonged to another insect influenced hero, disintegrated with sun-vision, and tore the Mystic Hamsha Eye which clasped his attacker’s cloak together and crushed it beneath his cracking white boots.

“Without the manufactured symbiote and Hamsha, you’re nothing but bone and meat Wayne, how did you even conceive a plan of this pathetic magnitude would work?”
Knight Shadow tripped over himself and grasped a short golden sword. 
	“It wasn’t intended to work.”
King Steel boisterously laughed at the display of futile resilience.
	“I’m not going to launch myself at you, we’re not young and stupid anymore.”

Knight Shadow stood still with the sword at his side observing his once best friend turn rigid as his flesh and organs slide off his skeleton.
Kid in the gasmask stood over the corpse.
“Well, kid…what’s next?” He rasped.
Kid in the gasmask removed his mask, his skin shining brightly in the sun over the cracked radioactive dome.


	“The name’s Golden Boy, now melt me down into a colossal bullet and shoot me into the head of God.”

Humans

They give you 
happy pills
to make you "feel" safe
while they manipulate you
with cookies
to steal your mental freedom
so that you trust people
you never met
or will meet.

Humans.




Porn blows your trust

Porn uses
the ancient Oxytocin 
trust building blast
in this day and age
as a tool
to build trust
with media
you shouldn't trust,
rather than building bonds
with real human beings
that want to live 
together with you
instead of through a screen.



Unconditional Love

Unconditional love:
love beyond measure.

the worms 
eating your flesh
as they crawl into your casket:

be their nourishment
end their suffering,
let them take your body.



True love




What’s More Insane?

What's more insane?

Shamanic wisdom,
Choosing a direction
based on the way a stick falls,
the earth's rotation,
and interaction with living DNA?

Or 

"Culturally accepted knowledge,"
choosing a direction
based on some A
I embedded in a digital map
whose very existence
was created by corporations 
who want to 
turn you into 
an Orwellian product?





Prepare the youth

The APA recommends
babies remain alone
on their back
in crib

not for their health persay
but to prepare them
for an isolated
cold
digital future,
"warming them up"
for the lonely 
digital winter
to come
with no human connection:
the singularity



TBHQ for Freshness

Keep the citizens
marching alone,
getting their 
comfort from food 
grown to ensure
the most satisfying pain,
sweet to the taste buds:

The members of 
a preserved society 
don't know
pain and death 
give life.

TBHQ for freshness,
keep the citizens
"fresh" and asleep
unaware of the suffering 
embedded in their tasty treats,
how the American dream,
the dream of comfort,
is always realized
at the expense of 
someone else's pain
and exploitation.

And don't you dare
let the citizens
know.
Keep them meek 
and asleep,
yet alive --
marching forward 
in the game of 
trading death
without 
rational consent.

beat me to the punch
 
i got my nerve
up once to ask
this woman to
marry me
 
i never got the
chance to find
out the answer
 
i guess her wife
beat me to the
punch
 
and on days
like these
 
cloudy, gloomy
a forlorn sun
dying on the
horizon
 
hesitation has
cost me plenty
in this lifetime
 
luckily,
my patience is
finally starting
to wear thin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
missing the batteries
 
watching the people
again
 
got an old john prine
song on repeat in
my head
 
the minutes slip by
like a clock that is
missing the batteries
 
i see little glimpses
of a dark future in
each of the strangers
that go by
 
i remember a little
boy that never wanted
to get old
 
he knows now
 
suicide was the only
option to make that
possible
-------------------------------------------------------------------
these old hands of mine
 
you can cut
the tension
with a knife
 
her smoldering
eyes and these
old hands of
mine
 
i gave up on
these dreams
years ago
 
the tragic
romantic in me
never gave up
hope
 
hopefully this
one breaks me
for good
----------------------------------------------------------------------
flows the brightest
 
open your third
eye and sink
into the void
at the time the
neon flows the
brightest
 
it's a journey
you have to go
on by yourself
 
the most beautiful
woman of your
memories will
greet you there
 
and explain your
failures in a way
that you no longer
will find the need
to hate yourself
--------------------------------------------------------------------
the evil spirits within
 
my imagination likes
hard liquor the best
 
anytime the proof gets
over 100, the evil spirits
within me like to start
dancing
 
trace every scar with
their tongues
 
sometimes i'll close
my eyes and i can
come down from the
cross and actually
enjoy the view

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, Terror House Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review and Mad Swirl. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Family Tree

This time of year I envy the treeless families

Their empty yards, dying and dead grass

Waiting for the winter coming on and

Spring not far behind

But us tree families spend our time trying

To clean up after our family tree

Our ancestry, its ancestry on display

So there we are, rake in hand

Piling up the debris left behind by just being

Being there

My family tree with its high branches

We like to look up to, and

Some low branches, so low I need to

Bend almost in half to get by

And then there’s that part we’ve cut away

Over the years, a regular bald spot looming

Larger and larger

Something I’ve inherited, like trembling hands

And these malformed feet

This time of year, walking backward raking up

Conjuring up connections to this

Mysterious ancestry, piles of leaves

So much to clean up

That

I envy treeless families.




                        Leafmeal Lie


At 10:06 this morning a leaf fell from the maple

Out front. Saw it from the couch, looking out

The storm door. It fell, it floated down ending

Its season, its cycle on the ground under its tree.

It must have started like the others, a bud-like

Growth, the kind squirrels will eat in the Spring,

But it survived, grew, felt all the Summer heat

And the drought, the wind, the heavy downpours

And then this Fall weather, the chill, the falling

Away of its many companions. Then at 10:06

This morning it ended its cycle, its seasons, it fell

Floated to the ground to await its fate. Perhaps

It will be the mower turning it to mulch with

The rest, or maybe it will blow up the street, mix

With other leaves, get raked, get bagged, get

Carried off and composted miles from here, miles

Away from its tree. Or it could just blend in, lie

Flat, avoid all of my attempts to get rid of it, and

Then lie flat as it gets colder, begins to snow, and

Spends the Winter wet, frozen under the snow

Till Spring returns – and I’ll be sitting here on this

Couch looking out the screen door, waiting for

Something else as momentous to happen.


                   Cramped

No need for an alarm anymore

Or any of the other sounds that

Used to wake me: the sound of

My sons getting ready for school

Or my wife crashing away, trying

To fix our world before heading

Off to fix the world of her work.

No I don’t need any of those any-

More, this morning I woke up to

Leg cramps. My left shin, or was

It my right cramped into a pain

Strong enough to wake me, get

Me up hobbling around the room

Hoping to end it, to satisfy what-

Ever imbalance that set it off. It

Worked, I was up and the cramp

Toned down enough to walk on.

It was morning and I was up for

The day, without an alarm or any

Of the other distractions that played

That role. Online they say that my

Cramps are common for aging adults

And athletes. Never was an athlete

So I fall into that fifty percent of sixty

Plus year-olds who suffer these cramps.

It’s good to know I fit into the statistics

With about half of my group. I’d like to

Picture a chart somewhere, some med

School showing the percent and perhaps

A diagram of an aging cramped shin

Waking an aging adult instead of his clock.

Hotel Eternity

TO EXIST BETWEEN ETERNITIES WILD 
NOTHING LIKE THE EYES OF THE SKY 
AXIS INFINITY DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE BLISS 
COME FORWARD WITH YOUR VISCERA AND VIOLENCE AND SHARE MY WINGS
UNLEASH YOUR SPIRIT BENEATH THE RAMJET 
ALLEGRO TEMPLE OF THE NIGHT SKY 

A NEED FOR MIRRORS AND COUNTLESS SKIES 
SHAKE YOUR INFINESSENCE SLOT CANYON 
HIGHBREATH NARCOTIC ERUPTIONS CLOUD NOTHINGS 
EXOTIC PULSE A NAME BEYOND DESIRE SEMAPHORE SIN 
PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK TALKING TWILIGHT 
INTO A SPHERE OF YOUTHFUL SYMPATHY RIDES THE THIEF OF YOUTH 
THIN AIR ADDICTIONS MELANCHOLY BODY SACRILEGE TATTOO HIGHWAY INSOMNIA PUNK

TEENAGE BLOOD REPETITION OF A THOUSAND HUNGRY EYES
SOMETIMES WE ARE ALL ETERNAL IN THE CONSTELLATION OF MIDNIGHT MOSAIC FACTION

MY GREEN UNQUEEN GALLERY CRUSH HYPERRITUAL AUTUMN CRY 
OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE AND A DUEL
SOME TALK TO MEN WHILE OTHERS TALK TO GODS
DANCE IT VISCIOUS RIDDLE OF THE SANDS CHAMELEON CHARADE 
STAR CODE CHALICE
ASK THE DESERT ORACLE THESE POISON DECLARATIONS THE REAL UNREAL CONVERSATIONS WITH A NEW REALITY
NATURE’S SYMPHONY DRAFT INTOXICATION