Before I counted the notches in my skin,
There was one who started it all.
Red hair like fire and quite taller than me,
I called him my friend that's all he'd be,
Notche one doesn't have a name,
For I was merely a babe.
I grew up that day, unknowingly so,
Of love unrequited, to notches they go.
Notche two is quite a nice young man,
But unconsciously reminds of inadequacy in that I am.
Notche three is the big one,
He started the counting
And made me start doubting.
His notch draws blood of self affliction,
And brings on the punishment like an addiction.
Notch four was quite nice, a little quiet for me,
A bit quirky,  but he smelled good to me.
I played wife in hopes of reality,
But it was just my own fallacy.
Notch five one-uped everything,
And now he is dying of disease with no cure.
I had hoped to come into his life and make it more.
Now I'm not sure if I will see him anymore.
Notch six was my first love,
He makes me want to *****.
Notche seven is the one I can't get over,
He's ruined everyone else for me,
The worst part is that he'll never be mine.
Oh how I want him to be mine.
Notche eight baited me,
I thought I had a catch.
But his hand was down another girl's pants.
Notch nine is the freshest,
But my feelings are in repression,
For it wouldn't be fair.
Notches ten, eleven, and twelve are yet to be met,
Each are deeper as they get.
Notches and notches upon my skin,
Of love unrequited to notches they go.

******* the notches on grandfather's pistol
Black birds in the blood sunset
Oh, sad American night
All heroes die in the end

Ross was good,
Part-Choctaw, Part-Saskatchewan,
he'd sniff the air for his direction,
could spot a pebble out of place,
understand broken twigs.

He loved to work at night,
backtracking was a skill,
garroting his specialty,
he had fourteen dings.

Part-Celt, Part-Heinz-57
I understood similar things,
my notches stand
at just under ten.

Michael Louviere was a man of the people,
Who held in his hand a book of the law,
And outside his belt a gun for his safety,
But never would he have used it for ******,
I'm told he helped many but never killed any,
But Sylvester Holt did not believe it,
He said the actions of one create a whole guilty people,
And he took the matters into his own  hands,
And killed poor young Michael for serving his people.


So I'm sorry young man, you been born with white skin,
In a world with the permissions to ****** and to maim,
But just to have freedom depends on your name,
But if you think its good I suppose ill let you,
Work for a cause that is just out to get you,
And keeping in line with the others before him,
Sylvester took the bait and the hook nearly gored him,
But the worm could've lived it was just his misfortune.


Sylvester laid down with a bullet in his chest,
And the gun in his hand had a burning hot barrel,
He assumed death was better than life and life only,
But in his last second he pulled out a small knife,
And cut in his gun small violent furrow,
It was then that he realized this all wasn't worth it,
He saw those two notches and handed himself in,
To a lifetime of no pain and and unwoken rest.

Valor Gates poured her younger siblings cereal, they sat at their broken kitchen table.  The cereal was stale and she wasnt sure if the milk was spoiled.  Her anxiety was through the roof, her mother hadn't come home last night.  It wasnt anything new, her mom was a drug addict, she would go out to the club and not come home, sometimes not even for days.  She wouldnt call, or text to let Valor know she was okay, or where she was.  She couldn't even call the police the times she went missing for days, because she knew they would call child services, and they would take the twins from her.  Angela Gates was the typical ****** mom, got pregnant at sixteen, she had no way to support a child except through her now ex boyfriend Charles,who she had cheated on, hence Valor.  Charles had sacrificed his teen years to try and raise Valor, he'd been a father to her, and she loved him for it.  He left six years ago, a little bit before the twins were born, they also weren't his.  Valor at ten years old had taken on the mother roll when the twins were born. She'd even named them, Andrew and Abigail.  She thought of them as her own.  She taught them how to read, she'd taught herself to read.  She taught them how to tie their ripped hand down shoes, she hadn't learned tell she was eight.  She taught them how to ride a bike, she didn't know how.  She taught them how to swim, she'd never been to a lake or a pool before that.  Valor went to school part time, then skipped the rest of the day to go to her job at the hardware store.  She got payed minimum wage, her paycheck went to the bills, and the small portion left went to the groceries.  She got the twins clothes from the shelter, or from neighbors whose kids had grown out of them.  She hadn't gotten any new clothes, or new anything since two years ago when Charles bought her some clothes and a cheap ipod for her birthday.  Those gifts had meant everything to her.  Valor sat down in the broken stool by her little brother and patted his little blonde head.  The twins were beautiful Andrew was tall for a six year old with short blonde hair and giant blue eyes.  Abigail was just as gorgeous, she already had thick hair to her tiny waist in tumbles of blonde satin, her eyes though were very different.  One was as blue as Andrews and the other was the same mossy green as Valor's.  Valor wasnt a blonde with blue eyes, she saw her self plain with thick long brown hair, and shining mossy green eyes.  She worked out to stay fit, and she didnt get to eat much in fear that the twins wouldnt get enough food.  She dug out a small cheap phone that Charles had boughten for emergencies , the small screen was blank.  Her mother hadn't stumbled into the house and to her room like always.  Valors heartbeat picked up two notches and sh could hear the blood rushing in her ears.  She had a anxeity disorder that also gave her a bit of OCD.  Her OCD was extreme cleaning.  Everything had to be neat, she thought it was because her life was in such disaray that the one mess she did have control of had to be perfectly in place.  
She debated weather she should call Charles and ask if he'd seen her.

I tied together
a few slender reeds, cut
notches to breathe across and made
such music you stood
shock still and then

followed as I wandered growing
moment by moment
slant-eyes and shaggy, my feet
slamming over the rocks, growing
hard as horn, and there

you were behind me, drowning
in the music, letting
the silver clasps out of your hair,
hurrying, taking off
your clothes.

I can't remember
where this happened but I think
it was late summer when everything
is full of fire and rounding to fruition
and whatever doesn't,
or resists,
must lie like a field of dark water under
the pulling moon,
tossing and tossing.

In the brutal elegance of cities
I have walked down
the halls of hotels

and heard this music behind
shut doors.

Do you think the heart
is accountable? Do you think the body
any more than a branch
of the honey locust tree,

hunting water,
hunching toward the sun,
shivering, when it feels
that good, into
white blossoms?

Or do you think there is a kind
of music, a certain strand
that lights up the otherwise
blunt wilderness of the body -
a furious
and unaccountable selectivity?

Ah well, anyway, whether or not
it was late summer, or even
in our part of the world, it is all
only a dream, I did not
turn into the lithe goat god. Nor did you come running
like that.

Did you?

Thread knuckles into notches of your spine,
you were mine.
Held down as carotid fought hard,
to keep open your eye.
Staring vivid as clouds overtook.
I can taste you through your musk,
hear the quivering in your thigh.

Stomach acids crawled into your nose,
and petals bloom. Belly aflame,
throat bleat with each beat.
As vision tunneled from expanse
to pinhole spindle of our room.
Bared teeth like a wild animal,
eyes wide with excitement.

If you could breathe a word your smile soon'd fade.
Porcelain comtesse *** undress with maroon'd face.

Wee Angus McSporran, the world's most accurate marksman, is deployed  to Afghanistan and Iraq as a ****** in the Royal Scots Guards. In spite of his diminutive stature (4ft 8in), we see him skilfully shooting men, women and children by the score, convinced they are terrorists and a threat to our freedoms in the West. He becomes emotionally involved with the gigantic ginger-haired Pipe Sergeant-Major **** McKnob, the loudest piper in the British Army and a famous poofter. We see Angus and **** in some of the most explicit ******* love scenes ever shown in a mainstream movie (tastefully filmed in soft focus and sponsored by KY-Jelly).

When **** is blown to smithereens by a roadside bomb planted by American freelancers in order to implicate the Taliban, Wee Angus goes into deep depression and becomes obsessed with his skill as a ******, often shooting "allied" soldiers in so-called "blue on blue" friendly fire. After each shooting we see the image of the ghostly dead Sergeant-Major appear as in a dream, his kilt a-swirl and his pipes wailing a tragic dirge in scenes reminiscent of Braveheart.

When Wee Angus triumphantly notches up his 500th **** (including over 75 US military personnel and several important Afghan politicians), the British government decide it is time to withdraw him from active service. In order to gain patriotic press coverage in the run-up to a General Election in Britain, it is agreed that Wee Angus shall be awarded the Victoria Cross by HM the Queen.

We see Wee Angus, in full regimental uniform, marching up the Mall to Buckingham Palace to receive his medal, his telescopic-sighted ******'s rifle looming heavily on his childlike shoulder, being cheered on by crowds of thousands of wellwishers. Tragically, when he is crossing the road in front of the Palace, he does not hear a new environmentally friendly eco-diesel double-decker London Transport bus approaching (his hearing has been seriously impaired by the noise of battle) and he is mown down, his scream being amplified to eardrum-splitting levels of horror. The camera lingers lovingly on his crushed body and we see scenes of unimaginable grief in the crowds who have taken Wee Angus to their hearts. His lover, the strapping Pipe Sergeant-Major **** McKnob, appears as an angel and weeps by Wee Angus's squashed corpse.

In the final scene, reminiscent of the closing minutes of Slumdog Millionaire, the massed marching pipe bands of the Assembled Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards appear as if by magic and the entire crowd cast all inhibitions to the wind and indulge in a life-enhancing Highland Dance and Ceili around the Victoria Memorial facing Buckingham Palace. The film ends with a heart-breaking shot of the Queen coming out on the balcony in front of the Palace and having a fatal heart attack with the shock of what she sees before her. Prince Charles is seen gleefully rubbing his hands together in the background: at long last, he is King! *(end titles shown over a shot of him groping Camilla's naked sagging ****)

By : Cedric McClester

I remember those games
That we used to play
I remember them all
Like it was yesterday
One two three red light
First you ran then stayed
You either won or lost
By the mistakes you made

Boys played rough games
Girls Hopscotch and Jacks
Until they both discovered
That opposites attract
Then the boys couldn’t wait
To get the girls on their backs
To get notches on their belts
For their number of sacks

I remember games like
Hot Beans and Butter
How you’d say it three times
Like you had a stutter
I remember when I put
Those games away
And I recall the new ones
That I learned to play

Boys played rough games
Girls Hopscotch and Jacks
Until they both discovered
That opposites attract
Then the boys couldn’t wait
To get the girls on their backs
To get notches on their belts
For their number of sacks

I remember them all
I remember their names
See we all grew up
And learned different games
For different rewards
We had different aims
But that’s how it is
For guys and dames

I’m a little bit older
But my soldier is *****
And as it gets bigger
It’s easier to detect
And the girls I approach
Often lose their self-respect
When the third drink goes down
But hey what the heck

The boys played rough games
Girls hopscotch and Jacks
Until they both discovered
That opposites attract
Then the boys couldn’t wait
To get the girls on their backs
And get notches on their belts
For their number of sacks

Are you sound of mind?
Addicted to dandelions
like the ocean is to ice.
Wait outside the blood bank,
learn how to write dialogue
and make saccharin spines.

My journal is a tangle of spines,
keep an open mind
help me box up my ****** dialogue.
I’ve always been a fan of dandelions
etching paths along the river bank,
streams within the winter ice.

Buckets of camphor ice
relax the notches in spines
as we wait in line at the food bank.
Thoughts of jawbones on my mind,
the taste of dandelions
and organized pre-scripted dialogue.

Backhanded blue dialogue,
counting the vanilla crystals of ice
blowing the smell of cinnamon into floating dandelions.
My hands handle happiness spines
with the peace of mind
of money in the piggy bank.

Let's rob a bank
shooting quiet malleable dialogue
through an altered state of mind.
Your ribs are two sheets of ice
ivy wrapping around our intertwined spines
crumbly blowing breaths of dandelions.

Second hand dandelions
build up in the river bank
muddy trenches around spines
whisper outspoken blue green dialogue.
Three pounds of dry ice,
warm water vapour at the back of my mind

Store buy your dandelions, bear in mind
that the West Bank is covered in ice
and that spines speak their own muted dialogue.

Up from the ground did its trunk shoot,
Anchored deep by its twisted roots,
Spreading out its branches went,
Bending down with their leaf and flowered blossom scent.

Its old rugged bark clothed its wood,
There for 250 years the old tree stood,
Near the path walking way,
Where the local people would walk each day.

Down upon the old tree seen,
Against its bark the sunlight would gleam,
Except in its notches and crevice marks,
That covered portions of its bark.

How its branches in the wind did sway,
As some of its blossoms upon the breeze did sail away,
When at that moment heard the tree,
The voice of the wind softly speak.

Have you ever seen such beauty as she?
Whistled the wind to the Cherry Tree,
See the beautiful maiden below…
Wrapped in thou blossoms that you have grown?

Tell me tree… is it not so…
That thou blossom beauty comes and goes?
Yet among you is a blossom I do see,
That loses not its enchanted beauty.

The tree looked upon Libby then said to the air…
Indeed - beautiful is the maiden standing there,
Oh yes… she has bloomed into a special piece,
A truly molded masterpiece.

And it is true… her beauty stays,
Not carried off by you the wind… or damaged by the hot sun rays,
Her beauty that she does maintain,
Is neither damaged by the insects nor washed away by the rain.

How I do wish… said the cherry tree,
That this one blossom would stay with me,
Yet sadly the tree said… “I Know
Like all the other blossoms… this one too must go.”

For a gentle breeze shall come along…
And sweep her off her feet… carrying her along,
For such a beautiful blossom… with a precious heart display,
Is bound to be picked… and carried away.

For beauty such as hers… is rarely seen,
It comes but once in a lifetime… as it always seems to be,
Then the tree asked the wind… “What’s the name of the blossom that grows?
The one that we speak of… that stands below?”

Then the wind gazing down,
At the blossom standing on the ground,
Then said softly to the cherry tree…
“They call this blossom… Liberata Marinilli.”

I'm sickened
And saddened

It pains me to look
At all of the people
Old and young
Happy and sad
Skinny and fat

To see them and know
They are
Or were
Nothing more than
A notch
On some other's belt

That pretty girl
A notch

That lonely old man on the
Park bench
A notch

Your mother, my father
Notches

Your future child
A future notch

We're all just
Playthings
At another's expense.