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The bar breathes like an old animal—slow, practiced, familiar with survival. Not alive in any holy sense, just functional. Lights dim enough to forgive faces. Music limps between songs. The floor remembers every spill better than the people who caused them. This place doesn’t ask why you came in. It already knows.

Maynard Wells sits three stools from the end. He learned long ago that the end is a confession and the middle is a lie. He chooses the space where no one expects anything from him. His glass is whiskey because whiskey doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He didn’t need it. That never stopped him before.

Mara works the bar like a priest without absolution. She slides napkins under glasses the way you might tuck dirt over a grave—neat, respectful, temporary. She doesn’t ask Maynard how he’s doing. That’s how he knows she sees him clearly.

To his left, a couple dismantles their life in whispers. The dangerous kind—the kind sharpened over weeks. They smile for the room, but their eyes don’t participate. The man worries the rim of his bottle like it might answer back. The woman studies her drink as if it owes her instructions. Maynard doesn’t know their names, but he knows the posture of people realizing love has become labor.

Across the room, laughter blooms too loud and too fast. A cluster of friends leaning into one another, pretending gravity hasn’t started its work yet. One of them—red jacket, restless hands—keeps checking his phone. Waiting. Everyone here is waiting. They just use different excuses.

Loneliness doesn’t announce itself. It sits down beside you like it’s always belonged there. Orders what you’re already drinking. Says nothing. Maynard respects that. Silence, at least, doesn’t argue.

He tells himself he came here to write. That’s the version he prefers. The truth is messier: he came to be seen without being known. There’s a notebook in his jacket, thick with intention, thin with follow-through. It weighs enough to feel like hope without demanding proof. Writers carry notebooks the way some people carry prayers—unspoken, unfinished, still believed in.

The man at the end of the bar breaks open mid-sentence, spilling a story about a job lost or abandoned. The details shift, but the injustice remains solid. He gestures at empty air, arguing with something that left him years ago. No one interrupts. That’s the rule here. You let people speak until they’re done bleeding.

Maynard wonders what would happen if he spoke. If the truth would come out as poetry or complaint. If it would sound brave or just tired. There’s comfort in staying quiet. Quiet doesn’t get corrected.

Memory shows up wearing a familiar face. Orders the drink she used to love just to see if it still hurts. It does. She believed places like this were confessionals. Said you could hear the truth in how people ordered—neat if they were hiding, on the rocks if they were stalling, cheap if they’d already surrendered. She laughed with her whole body. Leaned in when she talked. Made strangers feel chosen. Maynard loved her for that. Hated himself for needing it. They were good until they made a sport out of wounding each other.

A song everyone knows finds its way out of the jukebox. Heads nod. Someone hums. For a brief moment, the room aligns—strangers stitched together by a chorus that once meant something in another life. Bars are good at compressing time. You can be young and old and heartbroken all at once if the music hits right.

Maynard writes: The mask slips here, but no one notices because everyone is busy adjusting their own. He doesn’t fix it. Overwriting feels like fear.

The door opens. Cold air follows a man who looks like he’s already lost something tonight. He orders a double without looking. Scans the room for a reason to stay. Doesn’t find one. Sits anyway.

Hope is quieter than people expect. It doesn’t shine. It doesn’t ask. It sits in the corner pretending it’s fine either way. Hope has learned manners.

The couple beside him stops whispering. The silence is surgical. The woman delivers a sentence she’s been sharpening for weeks. Clean. Accurate. The man nods like gravity has finally won. They don’t touch. That’s how you know something is finished—or close enough to mourn.

Mara wipes the bar, listening without collecting. Maynard wonders how many versions of the same story she’s heard. People explaining their loneliness as if it needs justification. As if it isn’t just another weather pattern.

He drinks. The burn proves he’s still capable of feeling something sharp. The glass leaves a ring on the bar—evidence that will be erased without ceremony. There’s a lesson there. He ignores it.

The red jacket starts talking about meaning. About how everyone is just trying to be less alone. His friends nod like this speech has been rehearsed in a hundred bars. He means it, though. Meaning doesn’t require originality. Just sincerity.

Maynard writes again: Loneliness isn’t the absence of people. It’s the absence of recognition. That one stays.

A siren passes outside, distant but insistent. The world hasn’t stopped just because they needed a pause. Inside, last call looms. The room groans. No one is eager to return to what’s waiting beyond these walls.

The man at the end pays, tips heavy like an apology, and stumbles toward the door. For a moment, Maynard worries about him. Then he remembers: everyone makes it home somehow. Or they don’t. Worry doesn’t change the math.

He thinks about who he’ll be tomorrow. Which stories he’ll tell. Which ones he’ll bury. This night will shrink into something manageable—a glass, a song, a feeling he never quite named. He’ll describe the bar someday and leave out the important parts because they’re too quiet to explain.

Maynard closes the notebook. Some moments don’t want to be captured. They want to be endured. He pays, thanks Mara, means it. She nods, already turning toward the next confession.

When he stands, the room tilts—not from the drink, but from the weight of everything unsaid. Outside, the street is colder and more honest. Neon buzzes behind him like a dare. He pulls his jacket tight, the notebook warm against his chest, and walks on.

This kind of night doesn’t stay behind when you leave.

It follows you.

My books are available here .

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I think I am done, not in the dramatic way doors slam or glasses shatter, but in the quiet way dust settles after everyone leaves the room and the echo finally gets tired of hearing itself. I say it while staring at a wall that has heard every promise I ever made and never once held me accountable for breaking them. The sentence feels unfinished, like a chair missing a leg, but I sit in it anyway and wait to fall.

I think I am done chasing versions of myself that only exist at 2 a.m., the ambitious ghost, the healed future, the man who knows exactly what to say and never says it too late. I am done apologizing to mirrors, done negotiating with mornings, done pretending exhaustion is a personality trait instead of a warning sign. Even my breath sounds relieved, like it has been carrying something heavy for miles.

I have tried to quit before. I quit love in lowercase letters, quit faith on weekdays, quit hope whenever it became inconvenient. I packed up my convictions in cardboard boxes labeled “maybe later” and stacked them in the corner of my chest. Sometimes I opened one just to make sure they were still breathing. They always were, stubborn as weeds.

I think I am done mistaking survival for success. Done clapping for myself just because I stayed standing. There is a difference between being alive and being present, and I have lived most of my life like a voicemail no one deletes. I keep replaying old messages, listening for a version of me that sounds convinced.

The world keeps asking what’s next, as if I owe it a sequel. As if stopping is a failure instead of a skill. I want to tell them I am not ending, I am pausing, like music between tracks when the silence is part of the art. I want to learn how to rest without guilt, how to be unfinished without feeling broken.

I think I am done bleeding for proof. Done turning pain into poetry just to make it respectable. Some wounds don’t want metaphors, they want time, and time has been knocking patiently while I kept writing excuses on the door.

If this is the end, it is a soft one. No fireworks, no funeral. Just a man setting down what he can no longer carry and realizing his hands still work, still open, still capable of holding something new. I think I am done, and for the first time, it doesn’t sound like giving up. It sounds like making room.

My books are available here .

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I’ve overdosed on goodbyes, heartache, and a darkness I can no longer recognize
I’ve overdosed on indifference, immaturity, and over used cliches I can no longer reach
But my effervescent soul craves something more
I’ve overdosed on circling nightmares, memories of champagne, and meaningless kisses I can no longer feel
I’ve overdosed on bottles of tears, catastrophic losses and unspoken conversations that I can no longer hear
But my effervescent soul craves something more
I’ve overdosed on empty spaces, dead ends, and simplified poetry that I can no longer read
I’ve overdosed on shallow dialogue, winter lies and intoxicating fairytales that I can no longer consume
But my effervescent soul craves something more

My books are available here.

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I’ve stolen a bottle of valium and borrowed the razors edge from my awakening nightmare. I’ve stolen kisses from the fox in the evergreens and borrowed someone else’s heart. I’ve stolen credit cards with a different name and borrowed carelessness from the devil himself. I’ve stolen the answers from a book I’ve never read and borrowed peace from a saint. I’m just exhausted from being me.

When I’m me, people walk away. No one cares what I say. I couldn’t pay someone to listen and my emptiness knows what I am missing. I continue to sit here in the bone chilling dark, with the outline of a pitch black heart. When I’m me, I can’t see.

I’ve stolen a sparkling personality from an angel I desired and borrowed humor from a treasured jester. I’ve stolen money from my tight fisted friends and borrowed character from rambling strangers. I’ve stolen beauty from the broken and borrowed ugliness from the exclusive. I’ve stolen the truth from a lawmaker and borrowed lies from the divine. I’m just exhausted of being me.

When I’m me, people laugh in my face. It’s clear that everyone can take my place. I couldn’t pay someone to wipe away my tears as I am drowning in my fears. I continue to sit here in my ocean of loneliness, with every aspect of my existence is a mess.

My books are available here .

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I fear of never being read.

Once upon a scattered verse, I woke inside a sentence that refused to end. Ink dripped from the ceiling like old rain, letters crawling the walls, whispering my name as if they knew me better than the world ever had. The room was built of margins, left and right pressing inward, and every breath tasted like dusted books that had not been opened since their spines learned how to crack. I could not tell if I was young there, or old, or neither at all. Time doesn’t matter when no one is watching. I carried a pen like a dull blade, hoping if I pressed hard enough it might finally cut through silence. Outside the window, the moon hung crooked, a pale editor with nothing to say, and the stars looked like misplaced punctuation in a sentence no one bothered to finish.

I wrote because the quiet was too loud. I wrote because the walls leaned closer every time I tried to speak. I wrote about rivers swallowing names, about lovers who forgot the sound of their own laughter, about graves filled with unread prayers. I wrote until my fingers bruised purple, until the paper drank me dry, until my heart learned the steady rhythm of erasure. But no one came. There was no knock, no breath beneath the door. The world moved on with cleaner hands, scrolling past my life like an advertisement they could not skip fast enough. My words lay stacked in neat little coffins, titles etched like headstones, waiting for eyes that never arrived to pronounce them alive.

I imagined readers the way children imagine ghosts, half-hoping, half-afraid, convinced they were near. I pictured someone under a dim lamp at midnight, finding themselves inside my metaphors, feeling less alone because I had bled honestly. But imagination is a cruel lullaby. It tucks you in and leaves the window open for despair to climb inside. The nightmare deepened. Libraries turned their backs on me. Bookstores locked their doors with polished smiles. Even the wind refused to carry my lines, dropping them in gutters where rain smudged meaning into gray apology. I watched my poems age without witnesses, their voices cracking like neglected instruments left to rot in quiet rooms.

There is a special kind of decay reserved for unseen art. It does not scream; it wilts. It curls inward, questioning its own worth, asking if beauty exists at all without a gaze to confirm it. I felt that rot settle inside my chest, a slow mold growing over hope, soft and persistent, impossible to scrape away. I tried to write lighter things—sunrise, redemption, hands finding hands—but the words knew better than I did. They sagged, heavy with the truth that joy still wants to be witnessed. Even happiness grows lonely in a vacuum. Even miracles want applause, or at least a quiet nod from someone who understands.

So I returned to the dark. I described nights that chew on your spine, mirrors that refuse to reflect anything kind, dreams that end right before salvation. I became fluent in grief, conversational in despair, because sorrow, at least, kept me company. It sat beside me like a loyal stray, sharing its bones, never asking me to stop. I wrote my name again and again, afraid it would disappear if I didn’t. I tucked it between metaphors, hid it under enjambment, hoping someday someone would find it like a pressed flower in an old book and wonder who I had been. Legacy is a fragile thing when no one is listening.

The nightmare showed me the future. My notebooks boxed and labeled miscellaneous. My hard drive failing without ceremony. My words dissolving into obsolete formats. There was no obituary for the poems, no footnote acknowledging their effort. Just silence, vast and unmarked, stretching farther than language could reach. I screamed, but it came out as sentence. I begged, but it shaped itself into paragraph. Everything I felt turned into something beautiful, and that was the cruelest part of all. Beauty with no witness is still beauty, but it hurts like loving someone who will never learn your name.

At the center of the nightmare, I met myself as a child, holding a notebook too big for his hands. He looked up at me and asked if anyone heard us. I searched for an answer strong enough to survive the question and found none. So I lied. I told him yes, someday, because hope, even when false, is gentler than the truth. When I woke, the room was the same. Morning did not change anything. The world still spun without my voice, and my poems still waited, patient as graves. But I sat up anyway. I picked up the pen. Not because someone was watching, but because stopping would mean the nightmare had won.

I write for the unseen. For the maybe. For the never. For the chance that one day a stranger will stumble into my darkness and recognize it as their own. Until then, I haunt the page, a ghost made of ink and persistence, dreaming of eyes, dreaming of touch, dreaming—still—of being read.

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My best friend is a blank page.

Once upon a broken heat I learned that loneliness does not arrive loudly. It does not knock or announce itself with ceremony. It seeps in, quiet as dusk, and takes a seat beside you as if it has always belonged there. I remember thinking that friends would come naturally, like breathing, like weather, like something no one ever had to explain. I did not know then that connection was a language I would struggle to speak, that depth would be my native tongue while most people preferred simple phrases and quick exits.

I tried to make friends the way everyone else seemed to. I smiled at the right moments. I laughed when laughter was expected. I learned how to talk about nothing at all for long stretches of time, though every word felt like gravel in my mouth. I wanted to ask the questions that mattered. I wanted to talk about grief and meaning and the way memories can bruise you without warning. Instead, I learned that too much honesty empties rooms. People like the idea of depth until they feel the pressure of it pulling at their lungs.

Some friendships began brightly, full of promise, like candles lit in dark rooms. We shared music, secrets, fragments of ourselves we did not show the rest of the world. I believed that meant permanence. I believed that once someone saw you clearly, they would not leave. I was wrong more times than I can count. People drifted. People changed. People decided my sadness was too heavy to carry, my silence too loud to ignore. They left without cruelty most of the time, which somehow hurt more. There is nothing to fight against when someone simply fades.

I mourned those friendships in private. There are no rituals for the loss of the living. No headstones for people who stop calling. No ceremonies for being replaced quietly. I replayed conversations late at night, searching for the moment where I became too much or not enough. I wondered if depth was a flaw, if craving meaning was something that needed to be cured. I tried to make myself smaller. I tried to speak less, feel less, need less. It never worked for long.

Then came the deaths. Real ones. The kind that do not return your messages because they can no longer hear them. Names that once filled rooms reduced to photographs and past tense. I watched people I loved disappear into the earth and into memory, and something in me hardened and hollowed at the same time. Grief rearranged the furniture of my mind. Every loss taught me how temporary everything is, how fragile every connection becomes once you understand it can vanish without warning.

After the funerals, the world expected me to continue as if something fundamental had not been removed. Conversations returned to normal. Laughter resumed. But I carried ghosts with me everywhere. I heard the dead in quiet moments, felt them in the spaces between sentences. Their absence became another companion, one that never asked me to explain myself.

It was then that the blank page became my closest friend. It waited for me every night, unmarked and unafraid. It did not judge the darkness of my thoughts or ask me to soften them. I could tell it everything. I could confess the resentment, the envy, the exhaustion of trying to belong. The page absorbed my words and held them without recoil. Ink became proof that I existed, that my inner world had weight and shape.

I began to understand that writing was not a hobby but a form of survival. When people left, the page stayed. When voices went silent forever, the page listened. I poured my losses into sentences and watched them transform into something almost bearable. Metaphor became a bridge between my pain and the possibility of being understood. Symbolism allowed me to say what I could never speak aloud.

I crave depth because shallow water has never taught me how to swim. I crave conversations that leave marks, that change you slightly after they end. I want connection that acknowledges suffering instead of avoiding it. I want friendships that understand silence as language, grief as history, and sadness as evidence of having loved deeply. This craving has cost me people. It has also saved me from living half awake.

The solitude did not leave, but it changed. It became quieter, less cruel. I learned to sit with it, to let it speak. In the absence of others, I became a witness to myself. I documented my own survival in paragraphs and fragments. I learned that being alone does not always mean being empty. Sometimes it means being full of things no one has asked you to share yet.

I still lose people. I still grieve. The blank page is still my truest companion. But within this solitude, I have found a strange, aching honesty. I write to remember the dead, to honor the friendships that could not stay, to speak the truths that make others uncomfortable. I write because depth demands expression, and silence would kill me faster than loneliness ever could.

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Embrace the tremors

Once upon a midnight fear, you will not see the echoes of my tears, because they learned to walk softly, barefoot through the house of my chest, passing clocks that cough and calendars that bruise. This is how the story begins: the way sleep explains itself to the sea, with a hush mistaken for mercy. There was a town once, built entirely of punctuation, comma streets and ellipsis alleys, where laughter leaned like tired lampposts and rumors kept bees. I lived there briefly, renting a window, watching the moon practice apologies in the tin mirrors of rooftops. Satire was the local weather, a persistent drizzle that made even statues blink and reconsider themselves.

One evening the ground cleared its throat. Dogs began writing letters to the dark. Teacups clinked like nervous teeth. The earth—an old poet with arthritis—shifted a word and cracked the sentence. We called it an earthquake, because we are afraid of naming confessions honestly. I was carrying a pocket of stars then, contraband hope wrapped in a receipt, when the tremor bowed politely, like a waiter, and asked my name. I gave it a nickname instead, because truth grows shy in public, and the nickname tasted of copper and rain.

Stories fell from shelves, their spines sighing as they hit the floor. A map unlearned its borders. My shadow slipped on a metaphor and laughed, which felt briefly illegal. In the dust I found a childhood still warm, still breathing, counting marbles like prayers. Satirical saints wagged their halos and said this was character development, selling postcards of ruin with inspirational fonts, while a sparrow stitched the air, threading silence through rubble until the silence held.

I followed a crack in the street the way one follows a river that already knows your future. It led to a theater with no roof, where clouds rehearsed tragedies and understudies called thunder. The stage manager was a patient ant keeping notes with crumbs. There, a woman named Gravity sang lullabies in a minor key, braiding ankles to floors and memories to doors. She sang of falling as pilgrimage, of bruises as stamps in a passport, and I stamped willingly. Dreams queued politely nearby, holding numbers, waiting to explain themselves. One wore my father’s coat and smelled of winter and oranges, and told me to forgive the ground for wanting to move on.

The quake softened, a loosening hand. Buildings exhaled. A piano found its missing leg and forgave the floor. We swept metaphors into piles labeled Later, Maybe, Never, and pretended this was normal. At dawn the sky brought coffee; steam rose like a forgiven rumor. I wrote apologies to the cracks and they wrote back, unsigned, saying they only wanted to be heard. I pressed my ear to the street and listened to the earth practice empathy.

I left town with a suitcase of aftershocks, each one a small bell. On the road, satire waved from ditches holding signs that promised detours to meaning. I laughed, then slowed, then listened. Time limped afterward, hands bandaged with patience, agreeing to walk slower for the wounded. Neighbors traded sugar for stories and salt for names we forgot to say. Mirrors learned manners, tilting their faces to flatter survival. A philosopher in the square juggled apples and dropped questions on purpose, saying certainty bruises easily and doubt is a feather mattress. Children chalked hopscotch across fault lines, jumping from Before to After, their laughter forming a bridge no engineer approved.

Bread rose despite instructions. Yeast preached resurrection to ovens. We ate metaphors warm, buttered with relief, crumbs mapping constellations on our shirts. Someone toasted absence and clinked a glass, and the glass forgave gravity again. I mailed a letter to the future without an address, only a mood. The stamp was a leaf. The postmark read, Whenever you’re ready. The future replied with a dream wrapped in newspaper, smelling of ink, the headline screaming that I survived myself.

Night rehearsed gently then, a lullaby with commas for stars. The moon stopped apologizing and listened. I slept with my shoes by the bed, in case the earth asked me to dance. Now the town is quieter. Punctuation has grown gardens. Ellipses bloom like pauses. Cracks are filled with gold because we learned a trick from old bowls: breakage can be an instruction manual. I keep the bells from my suitcase and ring them when words grow stubborn. They remind me that movement is a language, that fear read slowly is only a letter begging for context. So I write softly, and the ground answers softer still, and if the page trembles I breathe ink, count heartbeats, trust margins and footsteps, trusting that even endings are temporary shelters humming quietly while we learn balance beneath forgiving skies.

My books are available here .

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Every drink has a confession

At the Jackknife Tavern sits a man, drinking his loss of love away. Beside him come and go a myriad of faces, men and women with lives sometimes down and out, perhaps sad, at times inspirational, always human. These are friends and neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers… Each with their own story to tell. The poet remains on his barstool, taking notes and creating art from life. Award-winning author and poet Braeden Michaels treats us to his eighth collection of prose poetry.

Available on Amazon! 📚

My books are available here .

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Available on Amazon!

Play the link! This is a song about my book!

https://suno.com/song/35278878-1910-4b84-9c22-6191f7d52dd1

📚Once Upon A Rain, She Bloomed

Between shadows and memory, one woman’s diary elucidates relationships come and gone, those who helped shape who she is from the inside out. Turning the rain into something beautiful, the opening petals of a rose now blooming.

Veteran poet Braeden Michaels crafts his seventh collection of poetry into a mold of vision. Like pages from a twisted fairy tale, he narrates using his unique poetic style and perspective, first dissecting emotion before reconstructing and reimagining each one.

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Unapologetically Unashamed

I drown in my cravings, flames from your lips, and the desires from your tongue. I glare at my weaknesses with swollen tears. I hunger something that my emptiness won’t ever touch. I grip on to my fascinations and urges with insomniac eyes. I carry my loneliness on my sleeve and unapologetically unashamed for wanting your luscious skin.

The circle of my friendships get smaller, I make my myself distant the closer I get. I promise you, you will wish we never met. The hello’s will turn into goodbyes, I will make sure you can’t see the rain from my eyes. I will share more truths and you will want to run. Don’t be surprised of the person I will become.

I sink in my yearnings, scattered fantasies and the desolation inside. I dwell in my painted circles, faded memories and the opaque skies that leave me stranded in the bitterness. I am slightly disconnected, partially detached, and withdrawn from the cracks I wish not to see. I displace the stained hindrances and sanguine complaints within my state of consciousness.
I am unapologetically unashamed for longing for your sentimental touch.

The circle of my friendships get smaller, I tend to make others uncomfortable with the things I shouldn’t say. I promise you, I will belong in your past and know you won’t stay. I expect no response and the late replies. I will make sure you won’t see the pain in my fragile eyes. I will be more open and will tell you how I feel. In the end, we will find out who was real.

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Cracked Sky, Tearful Moon

In this cracked sky
I am meant to burn in your stars
fall in your arms with my eyes shut
whisper my dreams in your ear
reach for your pitch black secrets
and feel the magic from your tearful moon

In this cracked sky
I am meant to entwine to your untamed scars
breathe in your heart pounding shadows
serenade my breathtaking desires
reach for your defenseless clouds
and feel the silhouette of your tearful moon

“Your love is awakening, my vulnerability isn’t shaking, and our love has a spectacular view, I had no idea I would fall in love with all the parts of you”

In this cracked sky
I am meant to graze your rattling fears
carve out the magnetism from your eyes
mutter my fantasies within the moans
reach for your tragedies with my tongue
and feel the agony of your tearful moon

In this cracked sky
I am meant to melt from your invincible wind
breathe out my uncontrollable love
grip on to your bellowing fascination
reach for your deepest and venomous sin
and feel the drops of mourning of your tearful moon

“Your love is absolutely real, where my senses are heightened and I can truly feel, I love what we have become, the tears of the moon disappear as we fall deep in love under a smothering sun”

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Prologue to my new book coming out soon!

Jackknife Tavern

11:32am, situated on the corner of James Madison Boulevard and Whitman Street. I am sipping emptiness on the rocks in the scowling part of town, Jackknife Tavern. I’m sulking in the chestnut colored booth throwing darts at the bombastic God I use to love. I continue to taste the kisses of my skeptical past and shake hands with the skeleton of my future. I raise my clenched fist, “Hey brother, can you pour me another? If it’s not any trouble, make it a double.”

A Marylin Chambers look a like tapped me on the shoulders with an indecent proposal. I shook my head with a chuckle and a sleazy grin. “This isn’t a joke, I can only pay by the minutes or the number of strokes.” She disappeared like a magician with the smell of her perfume turning into an aphrodisiac. I swallow loneliness like an amber ale. Isolation is my best friend without a voice. I tend to make a midnight rendezvous with yours truly but my left hand shouts “I’m quite over zealous” and the right hand whimpers “I’m quite jealous.” I only tend to acquire sparks with jumper cables.

Between noontide and the teardrops of the moon, the carnival weaved in and out of the cavern. The hooligans are tap dancing next to the jukebox, the husbands are window shopping, the cut throat whistle stoppers are juggling negotiations and plastic speeches. The jamboree was full of exaggeration, plagiarism, copycats, and satan’s storytellers. I could hear them drinking the tears more than the alcohol.

2:35pm, the regulars and bystanders strolled in with folktales dripping grief. Cigarette smoke reeked of melancholy and satire. The ambiance was filled with extravagant bar tabs, sobbing cliffhangers, romantic comedies with the mourning saxophone playing in your left ear. If you listen close, the excuses and irritation can be heard in your right ear. A pint of desolation will taste sweet and a shot of despair will run down your throat faster than a horse at the Kentucky derby. It’s a relief and a head scratcher that we call it happy hour.

5:45pm, the eyes are dry and my stomach grumbled. The gin mill is as empty as my crooning soul. I can never make out the lyrics but I get goosebumps when I hear the sorrowful piano. Harper Guthrie struts in with his graveyard black t-shirt with the phrase “You can get this body for $19.95 for one hour, but if you act now I will make you as happy as a sunflower” printed on the front. Harper is jammed with acidic antidotes but will sell you antidepressants, antibiotics, and antisemitism.He talks with his wandering hands and pleads innocent until proven guilty. He will boast about his latest purchases, meaningless job title, and the abundant cash flow problem. He serenades to the audience that he drinks to happiness. Unfortunately, he’s been charged with terrible humor and convicted of lying to himself.

7:15pm, Jackson Bryant fumbles in with his auburn acoustic guitar. He glances at the minimal crowd from the undersized stage and begins to strum. Out comes a raspy but yet a smooth sound “You can find me in the dark trying to grip the wind, you can find me feeling lost not knowing where to begin, you can shout from the depths of your lungs, you can point your fingers at me and forget the person you’ve become.” Heads turn and faces become pale as if they seen a reflection of themselves. The song ends with the spectators clapping their hands rapidly and shouting out his name. He continued to play his set as the crowd was quite allured by his presence.

As the night begin to fade, the exchange had less of a bounce. Solitude was a fog prancing in front of our bloodshot pupils. I wrote “Goodbye, Goodnight” on a vanilla napkin and handed it to the gargoyle next to me. It was time for me to face the chorus in a song I didn’t want to play. Thirty five years ago on this melodic day, I married a ballerina that is still spinning on her tip toes of my crippled heart. The King of kings took my queen away. She was plagued with a disease that had no cure. I’m done praying to a God that doesn’t listen. All I know how to do is to fill up my glass with destitution to try to take away the overwhelming misery.

My books are available here .

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Headstone Prophet

Greetings taxpayers, screen wanderers, and head nodding citizens, let’s dive into the ramifications of ignoring the siren of western civilization, where the infrastructure has had a crack for generations, the colors of the flag have become evanescent, where celebrities are glorified more than soldiers, where the all mighty dollar has more value than life,

Let me introduce myself, I am the Headstone Prophet, the accountant of distractions and destruction, I don’t see black and white, gender, classes, or status, I see authority and figureheads with meaningless titles serve themselves rather than society, I see inflation and corruption welded together to spark the genocide, I am the soothsayer that is gawking at the cemeteries, counting the caskets, I wear a tattoo on my middle finger that reads “The new world order doesn’t deserve a quarter,”

Behind closed doors, the henchmen are sipping on wealth mumbling “if you aren’t rich, you will become my bitch” and the others are ranting “if you aren’t in the grave, you will be my slave,” the catchphrases are lightning and the thunder to their ears, the powers that be want division among the dwellers, they crave disunity and friction, for every label there is a asterisk and a war,

It’s time to pay close attention to these staggering numbers, human trafficking is up twenty percent, the dishonesty among politicians is up a thousand percent, the media will twist the truth fifty percent, the longer you are glued to a screen the quicker you will forget the american dream, in the end the government cares about you is zero percent,

I am the headstone prophet, I stand before you to be the alarm, I stand here to wake up for those who are asleep, I stand here to deliver the most important message of your life, I stand here to hopefully avoid counting your coffin,

My books are available here.

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Excerpt from “The Raven’s Poison”

Between the blackouts and the vertigo
Slurred discussions evaporate in the smog
Excuses and cursed words creep in
Empty words reside at the bottom

Even the bloodshot moon cries

Between the collision and the stars
Sound of the gin on the rocks washes away
Sarcasm and coughed up memories
Acceptance of losses linger in the cold

Even the bloodshot moon cries

Between the anger and the doubt
Brick walls rise inside my head
Drowning in the misery and sadness
Reveling in the toxic moment

Even the bloodshot moon cries

Between the strangers and ignorance
Conversations vibrate and tremble
Loneliness staggers among the silence
Bottled up screams whisper

Even the bloodshot moon cries

My books are available here .

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Once upon a midnight fear
She took a sip of corrosion
Debilitating manners and quirks
Fumbling through a frenzy
Gliding inside hallucinations
Staggering outside the commotions
A recollection of mourning


Stern exchanges melting
Comments and remarks growl
Sentiments dressed in black
Treasures whispering hush
Ripping dead skin with caution
Crumbling faith turns into dirt
A recollection of mourning


Hunger flexing with animosity
Greed panting with saliva
In holy matrimony with the raven
She tasted the hollow bitterness
Numb and disgusted by the poison
Infuriated with the toxic rants
A recollection of mourning


Provoked by exasperation
Anxiety wrapped around her neck
Choking on sour corruption
Addicted to the murmurs
Inhaling the virulent winds
Wounded by a malicious tongue
A recollection of mourning


A catastrophic touch bellowed
Infatuation hung as a disaster
Benevolence was a chewed up dog bone
Loneliness exhaled rapidly
Sympathy was a an old rag
Love was just mucus from a cough
A recollection of mourning

My books are available here .

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Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone —
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:
Be silent in that solitude
    Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
    In life before thee are again
In death around thee —  and their will
Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

For the night — tho’ clear — shall frown —
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given —
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever :

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish —
Now are visions ne’er to vanish —
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more — like dew-drop from the grass:

The breeze — the breath of God — is still —
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy — shadowy — yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token —
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries! —

My books are available here .

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Certified Playboy

I pause to deliver my twenty two bold face lies with a smirk. I pause to hand over my ten percent truth. I pause to reveal my entire identity. I pause with doubt and confidence dancing hand in hand. I pause with disgust and trepidation swelling. I pause with deceit and manipulation twitching in my indistinct eyes.

I am a certified playboy with a bronze grin. I am a storyteller with an agenda as long as a manuscript. I am the best seller with sparkled charm. I have a gift of being selfish without you knowing. I am smooth as silk and hide behind my misery.

I pause with friction and distortion entwined within the gospel. I pause with morals placed in my back pockets. I pause with principles and precision hidden in the crevices. I pause with certainty and authenticity running parallel with my darkness. I pause with the picture torn and shredded.

I have a lethal license in zigzagging and swiveling. I shelter my obscure secrets. I have stashed away my troubles, difficulties and mistakes. I suppress my clouds and fog. I tucked away my accidents and splotchy incidents. I locked up my realness and credibility due to the storm of fears. The pleasure maker in me is drenched from loneliness is too afraid to remove the mask.

My books are available here .

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Second Hand Smile

I was born with a second hand smile from the sunset. I walk with a tiny wheel in my pocket that won’t roll and converse with a novocaine tongue. I have a brother that uses me as a punchline in off color jokes and a sister with suspicion waltzing in her eyes. I have a mother who was buried at the Brookside cemetery under a choked up moon. I count my blessings rather than my drops of misery. Every now and then she looks at me says “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your second hand smile.”

I’ve tried to turn off the waterfall and dive into the river of flames. I’ve tired to stare into my silent villains and face my inward wars. I’ve tried to run from the screams but I am still in this seared skin. It feels like I’m never going to win.

I was born with a tattoo of a tear on my left cheek. I fumble through the streets with my blood not moving a centimeter. I have a snapshot of my apprehension and a voice that no know wants to hear. I have a mother that appreciated the words I tucked away from the heartless universe. Every now and then she looks at me says “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your second hand smile.”

I’ve tried to shrug off the heartache and walk away from senseless battles. I’ve tried to keep my swollen chin up and to listen to the fireflies in the pitch black. I can keep running in this burnt skin. It feels like I’m never going to win.

I was born with doubt flickering like a light on the inside. I stumble throughout the darkness gripping on to the glow. I have fluttering secrets and camouflaged my excuses to try to erase away the damage. I have a mother who wore a grin throughout her scowling hours. She defied being defeated nor broken down. Every now and then she looks at me says “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your second hand smile.”

I’ve tried to lose my biographical sighs and replace my intuition with logic. I’ve tried to step into my perspective and turn my head to see another view. But all I can feel is you. I have no where to begin. I’ve learned to accept that I just won’t win.

My books are available here .

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Lukewarm Coffee

I found the most reckless line in your diary. “I know you can’t remember, all I can feel are the tears of September.” l was mesmerized by the details of the most piercing moments until I realized I was the subject. I was perplexed and the inner light began to fade. I found a line that shredded my heart into pieces.”You are the avalanche I could not see, you won’t be awake when I leave.” I glanced through the suffering and the realization is settling that you see me as a self absorbed monster.

You drank lukewarm coffee with a ballad crying in your head, rearranging the lyrics, forgetting all the things I said. You replaced conversation with an awkward silence and grand expectations. Perhaps you and I sat on quicksand, never making a solid foundation. You wanted me to crawl inside your mind, sit indian style, and look for your missing smile. You never mentioned, you craved endless attention and you didn’t get what you deserved. If I didn’t love you, can you tell me why I’m so hurt.

I found your latest entry in your book of fiction. “I know you forgot about my horrendous childhood, feeling lost and misunderstood.” I was fascinated with your chilling imagination with minutia painted with your fingertips. I was bewildered and the answers began to become in focus. I found a line that cracked the outer shell of my soul. “You are the villain in this horrific tale, because of you I have failed.” I am done tasting this bitter and water down concoction.

You drank lukewarm coffee with complaints, criticism, and tirades surrounding your silent skeleton. You are the playwright, weeping dramatist, and the author of colorful exaggerations. You are the puzzle, desiring me to put you together, believing in the everlasting, wishing for forever. You are numb from the waist down, with your feet barely touching the ground. You blame me for that earth shattering tragedy. I will love you until the end of time despite the fact you are no longer in love with me.

My books are available here.

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Tear’s Autograph

I’ve kissed your mysteries with amplified eyes
I’ve kissed your dead secrets with bloodshot lipstick
“And now the love story takes a curve, seeing I won’t be the last and was never the first”
I’ve kissed your metaphors with agony in my throat
I’ve kissed your afternoons with scalding black coffee brewing
“And the now the love story cuts me deep, I’m not myself and see you in my sleep”
I’ve kissed your tragedies with a sea of glitter covering up your sins
I’ve kissed your lying mouth with my ignorance sealed
“And now the love story is coming to an end, now my life can truly begin”
I’ve kissed your piano concerto with whispers fluttering in my ears
I’ve kissed your villain with accusations stripped and shredded
“And now the love story fades into my past,
no longer do my tears have your autograph”

My books are available here.