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 May 2016 Sade LK
NV
 May 2016 Sade LK
NV
BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP TELLING PEOPLE,
THAT NO ONE WILL LOVE THEM UNTIL THEY START LOVING THEMSELVES.
YOU HAVE TO STOP PLANTING THIS IDEA IN PEOPLES BRAINS THAT THEY ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE,
JUST BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN STRUGGLE.
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
Sixes.
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
I open all the windows at night
and let the frigid canyon wind wrap me
like a sheet

It's never cold enough,
truthfully

There's never enough justification
to sleep next to some(one)thing
warm

It lets in all the mosquitoes
and the ******* squirrels
wake me up with their
idle chatter
each and every morning
but I like it.

The comedown's most always
(never)
worth the high
(So I'm quitting stimulants
and other people)

But then I remember
that when the music
resolves
it's almost always
worth the wait

so I think
"Just one more day,
then,
just one more beer,
just one more roll of the dice-
they're bound to come up
sixes
sometime"

I could sit
here naked in front
of this typewriter
and tell you
about how I'm the wind
about how I'm a good guy (no really)
about how I'm a ******* (really)
about how i am                            (an artist)
i am                                                                              (a martyr)
i am                                                                                                           (a fool)

But frankly I can't think of anything I am
that I really believe any more.
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
Magpie alights on the eaves
tonguing a bitter wild berry
***** head left,
right,
decides against this spot
and relocates to a new one
out of sight.

Autumn happened today,
again.
Same as every year.
I was under the shade of the porch,
coffee in hand,
and smelt a change in the taste of the wind.
It's been at least ten degrees cooler
and I've donned the first piece of warm clothing
since April.

Magpie perches on the red wooden
fence on my right,
still gently squeezing that berry-
as if testing its ripeness.
Head ***** left,
head ***** right,
magpie flies away.

The leaves will start to turn this week.
Maybe next.
My coffee is lukewarm now,
same as the air.

Magpie sits in the yard
and carefully sets his lunch down,
prods his beak into the soil,
picks it back up,
and buries it for later.
Magpie flies away.

A rush of cold air sweeps through me.

Same as every year.

I rise and walk,
mug in hand,
back inside.
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
Skinny
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
I was born tall and thin
and pink
like a ****** steak.
I cried until I could run
and then ran
like a lunatic,
screaming peals of laughter
and destroying
without guilt
as kids do-

and still I was
skinny.

I was skinny in elementary school.
The other kids took to football
and dirt bikes.
I was still pink
like an underripe
tomato.

I grew up tall and thin
in a world for shorter
and fuller people.
With crooked teeth and
glasses.

I was skinny in middle school.
When the other kids started to build muscle
you could've played my ribs
like a xylophone.
You still could.

I grew up tall and thin
and frustrated
like a ****.
I never fit on public busses
or in the little plastic desks
at school.
My feet stuck off the end of my bed.
They still do.
I slouched and hiked my shoulders up
so as not to obstruct others'
line of sight.

I still do.

I was skinny
when I first fell in love.
What she saw in me,
I can't say.
I was tall
and thin
and crooked
but I wanted so badly,
just for once,
to be the right shape
for her.
She was rather short
and had caramel skin.
We made an odd couple.

I grew up tall and thin,
a square peg in a world of round holes.
I'm skinny today-
a pinkish wisp
with a skinny soul
tucked away behind dark sunglasses.

I was born skinny.
And I'll probably die skinny
too,
and make a tall,
thin corpse
for a much
shorter,
wider
casket.
 Sep 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
If I had back every dime I've ever frittered away foolishly,
I'd be rich
for a day.
 Aug 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
I drove while she slept.

We were both tired,
******,
maybe a little drunk still.
I had the music turned up
to try and convince myself I was awake enough
to manage a ton of galvanized steel on fire
down the highway.
Somehow she still managed
to wrap herself around my arm
and breathe easy.

We got back to my place at the other end of town
and she curled up in my bed
and might as well have been comatose.
I lay there for a few minutes contemplating how warm she was
next to me.
I think I fell asleep smiling.

We made hurried love for the first time
just after dawn.
In honesty, I could have been better.
I should have been better-
but I have a tendency to **** these things up
when they go right.

I cooked breakfast while she sat
and told me about her family-
hash browns and eggs.
Butter in the pan, flame at medium,
stir occasionally.
Simple.
I must have been distracted,
kissing her cheek
because all the same I burnt them.

It felt like an omen.

We ate what we could salvage
and then I drove her home.
 Aug 2015 Sade LK
Andrew Dunham
she paces down the dimly-lit corridor of a modern day ***** den
in a corner apartment, situated on the intersection
of **** carpet and depraved junkies
she knows she was raised better.
guided over heaping masses of humans
cigarette butts
and the burnt carpeting they create
she knows it's only getting worse.
her hands are clenched in tight fists
awaiting the moment
when she can finally loosen up
she knows her father loves her.
her fingers run along the wall
awaiting for a familiar feeling
something to remind her of something she loves
she knows these walls are nothing like her bedroom.
she and he sit down before a snowy television
he reveals a plastic syringe
beneath flickering florescent lights
she knows it's late.
he flicks his lighter and burns the needle
to sanitize it
leaving a layer of burnt black butane
she knows it's still *****.
laying down, a the warmed needle is placed on her arm
she ties her little league shirt tightly
around her forearm
she knows her father wouldn't be pleased.
after leaning back
she's reminded of her last flu
by the initial feeling
**she knows nothing now.
 Aug 2015 Sade LK
Charlie Chirico
What if you're the addict that has accepted the first step a long time ago, while lines tallied up against years, and once familiar folk have given up hope long after patience; there's you first squatting in the corner of a house you barely know, with people you just met, and you shoot water in your veins, now on bent knees, praying this water is holy enough to ease the pain. The immaculate fix.

Arms outstretched, facing east and west, needles as big as nails delicately caressing the flesh and resting on sweaty palms, emaciating by way of lust and fear. No Will. No Power of Attorney. No Will Power.

They say Adam walked with Eve in the garden, and it was Eve that bit the apple. But you never hear the part about Adam killing Eve with silence. Adam was the snake. And of course above, and beyond, omnipotence comes with the added responsibility of design. "Would you consider yourself a Type A personality or a Type B personality?" The doctor asked.

One suicide and one admission to the psych ward should always be coincidental, but in case it's not and silence becomes deadly you must keep a straight face. Let the guilt mentally choke you, like a murderer choking the life from their victim. You look around the ward to find that there are no staircases. But empathy and keeping that straight face will lead to discharge, and programs, and twelve steps.
And you know when you get to that final step, it takes only one more
to push off and fall away.
 Aug 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
want
 Aug 2015 Sade LK
JC Lucas
I want to lay with you,
roots grown together,
tired from the day
in a bed of clover
under mother moon
with nowhere to be.
The leaves would begin to fall,
eventually,
blanketing us from autumn's bitter cold
and the scorns of obligation.
I want to drink you through my nose,
your primrose perfume twinged
with subtle notes of leaf litter.

And when the whim to rise finally
lifted us
the grass beneath would be matted
and combed
in the shape of yin and yang.
Been a while. Here's some sappy *******
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