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Lilith Meredith Apr 2013
All I wanted was a cigarette.
We weren't allowed to smoke.
He knew where to go.

We swept sidewalks together.
Raked sand together.
Talked about life together.

His window was across from mine.
I think he saw me changing once.
Maybe more than once.

He was getting dishonorably discharged.
I didn't think he was a good man.
I didn't think he was a bad one, either.

It had been two weeks since I landed in Monterey.
I only wanted a cigarette.
He knew where to go.

I bought the Southern Comfort and bottom shelf gin.
He carried them with him to his room.
I didn't think anything of it.

We raked sand together.
We ate lunch together.
We watched movies together.

We sat on a makeshift bench by the ditch by the installation fence.
We drank and smoked and laughed.
I taught him Farsi and he taught me Russian.

Russian for "hello" and "goodbye."
Russian for "This is allowed."
Russian for "This is not allowed."

I think he saw me changing once.
He tried to kiss me on the cheek.
I told him no, my boyfriend wouldn't like that very much.

We smoked some more.
We drank some more.
We laughed some more.

It was 2130.
I had to be in my room by 2200.
He said not to worry, I'd be back in time.

I insisted and tried to leave.
I fell to the ground.
He didn't help me up.

I only wanted a cigarette.
He kissed me on the mouth.
I did not kiss him back.

I was immobile.
Paralyzed.
Drugged?

He kissed me again.
And again.
And again.

I did not kiss him back.
I had a boyfriend.
All I wanted was to smoke and drink and laugh.

He grabbed me by the ankles.
Pulled me over the ditch behind the army barracks by the installation fence.
I could hear soldiers coming back to their rooms.

I was paralyzed.
I always thought I would fight.
Fend him off with car keys stuffed between my fingers.

I looked up at the tree branches above me, my watch said 2147.
That was the last time I prayed to God.
There were leaves in my hair and dirt on my arms.

There was something less than a man between my legs.
It looked at me with hate in its eyes.
We swept sidewalks together.

God kicked back and swigged a PBR
     while I was ***** behind the army barracks,
     over the ditch by the installation fence.

He helped me up.
I couldn't stand on my own.
How sweet.

I vomited by a tree.
I was disgusted with myself and him and God.
I wanted to drown in Southern Comfort and bottom shelf gin.

He walked me to my barracks building.
How sweet.
I made it to my room by 2200.

All the girls watched me stumble down the hallway.
I was so violently alone.
Taps wailed outside the window.

I left my hat by the bench by the ditch by the installation fence.
He brought it to me the next morning.
How sweet.
Part II in a series.
Keerthi Sep 2019
on a Saturday morning
casuals to school
on a street
a vendor with a straw basket
selling flowers
two for five
wrapped in a damp cloth
dahlias in merlot and pink
roses in yellow and red
mother bargains
two for three
on silky braids
pink dahlia perched
like a microphone
mother laughs
at the grinning beauty.
Sam Lawrence Oct 2020
camaraderie - much too
grand a word, of course
for the heady unity we'd caught
against our parents
against our school
nonchalantly - against them all
raging round our haughty town
dressing up by dressing down
our Capulets and Montagues
were Trendies versus Casuals
but mostly we were tiny shells
trapped in our semirural hell
united we could stand it best
while hatching in an empty nest
del Feb 2018
maybe there is hope
for the mindless
for the masses
for the apathetic losers
quietly making their way through
passing by with not a dent to the world
normal and expendable
casual onlookers to the big parade of extraordinary
they do not make
they buy
they consume
they digest
and they do not question
however,
if one idea managed to spark
to catch hold of a mind
and spread it
furiously ignite the dynamite
the world will explode
for if all of its normals
its casuals and its expendables
suddenly rose up and took charge
as a whole, yes
but finally thinking
finally breathing freedom
the world will become theirs.
jas May 2020
who
am I? if not another ruined soul amongst these tortures of will
what?
if at all
is there to discover about me,
or if you even care?
when?
is all of this happening if not back in my mind then in this horror of a lifestyle
where?
can I find myself
definitely not amongst casuals
why?
if at all am I chose to exist in this lifestyle
if I am not the one doing the choosing?
Jermon Aug 2020
The fires had laid their rages.
Each with an unbinding twist of flame, foreboding the ethereal into what should never have been, and wasn’t. Illusionary ashes rained the ruins in the minds of those contemplated by the beasts, in casuals and armored black-and-white glamour.
Their scorching gazes, the results of what we have seen in the shattered ebony eyes almost surreal in existence. Treacherous zeal flickered the dying heat, frozen, still.
The fields are strewn with the remains of withered grass and broken glass, each soul wandering, fumbling along the edges, yearning for what it felt it once had had, but the satisfaction is not material. That evades the minds every trickle of sand, fluttering away in blue skies and bare branches, the leaves long within the hearts of the green alive at the edges of the graves of those higher up along the evolutionary line.
The wooden shacks line the border in a picturesque view, the peace and loneliness too grotesque for the weak at heart to grasp. A lone gathering of trees, a shade of green at a time everything else had whitened.
Buried near the construction sheets lie metal rods. They tell of tomorrow, of a day fed and a hand grazed at the toil, for what, though - for a triumph they feel when going after a price tag everyone else with little idea had slapped onto society.
The worth lies in the essence of life of every grain of sand, of every faded blade of grass, every dancing ray of sunlight. These light up the life that binds us in a earthenly trance of tremors.
Yet few have the time to sit back, think and realize, all of us driven in haste and a pitiful greed, the golden bucket never filling, why, no one had mended, or even noticed the hole.
I can feel it trickling away, — sanity, hues of burgundy where I’d painstakingly filled with canary yellow. The dark was creeping in, my path to retardation almost taunting. Too young, we all felt.
The ink splattered walls were engulfing, almost drowning me in its suffocating embrace of seemingly warmth induced facade. Of course, in plain sight, the mind feels it slights itself, the black tears sputtering the plagued coughs, again and again. A reminder, a remembrance. And my thoughts fathom how disregard is capable, natural, even. You wonder if you’re underwater or above air, neither makes not a difference to you, you grasp for their fingers wondering whether their sanity is real. All you know is the half-insanity is blinding, disillusioning. The evolution can never be revolutionary but, it feels, your conscious can’t make out the borders. Laced, maybe, but not drawn. That much was sure.
And we all felt we needed to wake up. Or so we thought, anyway.
Maybe it’s just me swirling in this inferno, and the rest of us are ghosts of memory.
It’s a powerful thing, perception.

05.01.2020
Jermon Feb 2020
The fires had laid their rages.
Each with an unbinding twist of flame, foreboding the ethereal into what should never have been, and wasn’t. Illusionary ashes rained the ruins in the minds of those contemplated by the beasts, in casuals and armored black-and-white glamour.
Their scorching gazes, the results of what we have seen in the shattered ebony eyes almost surreal in existence. Treacherous zeal flickered the dying heat, frozen, still.
The fields are strewn with the remains of withered grass and broken glass, each soul wandering, fumbling along the edges, yearning for what it felt it once had had, but the satisfaction is not material. That evades the minds every trickle of sand, fluttering away in blue skies and bare branches, the leaves long within the hearts of the green alive at the edges of the graves of those higher up along the evolutionary line.
The wooden shacks line the border in a picturesque view, the peace and loneliness too grotesque for the weak at heart to grasp. A lone gathering of trees, a shade of green at a time everything else had whitened.
Buried near the construction sheets lie metal rods. They tell of tomorrow, of a day fed and a hand grazed at the toil, for what, though - for a triumph they feel when going after a price tag everyone else with little idea had slapped onto society.
The worth lies in the essence of life of every grain of sand, of every faded blade of grass, every dancing ray of sunlight. These light up the life that binds us in a earthenly trance of tremors.
Yet few have the time to sit back, think and realize, all of us driven in haste and a pitiful greed, the golden bucket never filling, why, no one had mended, or even noticed the hole.
I can feel it trickling away, — sanity, hues of burgundy where I’d painstakingly filled with canary yellow. The dark was creeping in, my path to retardation almost taunting. Too young, we all felt.
The ink splattered walls were engulfing, almost drowning me in its suffocating embrace of seemingly warmth induced facade. Of course, in plain sight, the mind feels it slights itself, the black tears sputtering the plagued coughs, again and again. A reminder, a remembrance. And my thoughts fathom how disregard is capable, natural, even. You wonder if you’re underwater or above air, neither makes not a difference to you, you grasp for their fingers wondering whether their sanity is real. All you know is the half-insanity is blinding, disillusioning. The evolution can never be revolutionary but, it feels, your conscious can’t make out the borders. Laced, maybe, but not drawn. That much was sure.
And we all felt we needed to wake up. Or so we thought, anyway.
Maybe it’s just me swirling in this inferno, and the rest of us are ghosts of memory.
It’s a powerful thing, perception.
05.01.2019

— The End —