A.G.E's Joint

The rain had begun to fall again, soft, steady, like a whisper against the glass. Julian was deep in thought. A fire crackled behind him, casting flickering shadows across the mahogany walls of the study. The smell of old books and expensive whiskey swirled, the kind that tasted like secrets. He stared at the portrait above the fireplace. Gregory Langston. To the rest of the world, he was a visionary whose products changed the world. Behind closed doors, a monster with insatiable lusts. Gregory was dead now. A heart attack, they said. Alone in his penthouse, surrounded by luxury and no one who truly loved him. What was the last thought as he descended into the darkness? Did he want one more minute? Probably not.  He was in his office the the call came. Julian had once admired him. Had once believed in the myth of the self-made man, the titan who built empires from dust. Gregory had taken Julian under his wing. Mentored him. Groomed him. You could say raped him. No. That wasn’t true...

  Writer's Choice? What if there isn't any choice? Where I'm the Tall Poppy Everyone wants to cut down. Would I call on Devil's Quill to save me? And the cost is being cut down anyway? They are all niggers anyway

Shambling alone Concrete jungle Screams Banana mush In the gutter Of dust and bones.

The clock struck 13 on Airstrip One Standing arms out,  Like you had carried a load Nails in the looking glass You hoped it would be  The Twelfth of Never When the shift came Nobody believed it could But it did And you are old Life is short The monster was you all along

Broken down buildings and junkies filled this part of Moreland Ave, one whose heyday was far in the past. A faded PBR sign became animated, beckoning him to stop. Have a drink and  forget your problems. Maybe pick up an American Woman for company. That was a lie. There would be no sugar tonight. Waking up with a headache didn’t interest him. Sarah was still dead.  A gold Cadillac with a sticker saying “In Memory of Darius, 1997-2008  was in front of him. Maybe he should put one of those on his car for Sarah? No. Can’t have the attention. He drove an anonymous metal lump. He tugged at his collar. God, it was hot. He shouldn’t have worn long sleeves. He flipped on the radio and rolled down his window . A song came on about being fine or closer to it. Another total lie. Nothing was ever fine. Mother’s whisky tinged voice began yelling in his ear. Talk to the lady. What she had to say may be bullshit, but validation and clarity in how to proceed was needed.  Nah. He was ...

  Life is funny until it isn't.  It seemed like yesterday Barry, Mark, Sam, and him were the Putzietones, at your service for Proms, Weddings, and Bars. They had started in Mark’s garage as an excuse to drink. One thing led to another and they found they played well together. Fun days or at least most of them were. The gigs paid for gas and some ass. Great when you didn't have responsibilities. About the time the record company noticed, life intervened.  Mary got pregnant and she and Sam got married. Mark got bored with it all and went back to school. That left Barry and him and the sketchy contract they had signed. They recruited a couple of people to take up the slack and finish up the work. After a year the band was another tombstone in the graveyard of broken dreams. Barry was lost without having an audience. He pissed off family and friends with his drunken antics. After one girlfriend kicked him out after a DUI, he found himself in a trailer outside of town. He miss...

  Waiting Taming the fear  Of the call Sure to come. A whole life Dropped into the final hole. The stop sign we all come to.

 "Recommend this obituary to your friends." The line startled me when I read it. Was this hard-coded into the website or did some bored secretary stick it in the frame header?   The news wasn't unexpected. She'd been doing poorly for years. But it was a life worth celebrating and recommending. A 1970s-era housewife who roared. She set up a community services center for the disadvantaged and ran it through its first decade. She then handed the reins to capable management. She was a person you either adored or despised. Headstrong and used to getting her own way,. She stepped on many toes. But things did get done. The dissolution of a 30-year marriage after several kids was quite the bangarang for her friends. It seemed every week the Coconut Telegraph had something about her. The response was typical, go to seminary and spend the next 25 years in hospital chaplaincy, taking three of her friends with her.  I look around the room. People who had known her way back when ...

Dragons- Mythical creatures that exist in almost every culture.   At their simplest, they represent the unknown and the unknowable. Fears linger in our minds wondering if they should stay or should they go. Maps would say "Here be dragons!" to warn the unwary traveler.  People hunt them as they try to figure out what went wrong in their lives. One by one, they must be slain to proceed to the next level. Social media people chase the content dragon, never finding solace amount the detritus left behind. Thinking you will succeed is the ultimate in magical thinking. They aren't Puff.  Sauron is ravenous, consuming all who come into the lair. 

"It would be that we are all OK..." The line came out of the blue as Jack looked out into the snow flecked night.  The inside of the taxi smelled of curry. In the old days when he drove, it was sauerkraut or beer. That was a long time ago. Had he been a coward for leaving so long ago? No. Was it unkind? No. It would have been worse to be the aider and abetter. The end was predetermined when she dropped out of school, starting the ripples that have now made it to shore. Jack's therapist referred to it as a Butterfly Effect. He wasn't sure.   So many bridges burned. Some things haven't changed. Midway is still a dirty dump in the middle of the slums. He got hit up four times by bums before he even made it to the taxi stand. The human wreckage of fate and bad decisions. Who is he kidding? Everyone makes bad decisions. It was why took the last plane out of Phoenix.  What was the verse?                      ...

Doorbell rings Another neighbor Another casserole Another set of condolences Wish they would go away. The era ended Picking through the macaroni Looking at the fire Maybe I shouldn't have wished to be alone

 I've been lazy this week and not entirely sure how to handle this. I don't really cool off in the summertime. When you never leave the air conditioning, you don't have to.  My Daddy wasn't rich and my Momma wasn't good lookin'. They were kind of old when they had me.  It's what happens when you are the last one in the bunch and an oops at that.  Anyway, this was better than taking you an a long winded journey into the Low Country, showing some of the sites DuBose Heyward and George Gershwin were evoking in this, the most American of operas. 

 Her name was Lucille and she hated dogs. And she absolutely hated white dogs. She handed me the contraption, a white gun. The instructions were just the white dogs. Why any dogs?   She gave no explanation for this and pushed me on. It was all I could do to reach around and clock that ice white head. Now that I think of it, it probably was made of ice. I opened the door. They knew why I was there and began to scatter back towards the fence. A mass of brown, black, and white fur. The flame erupted and howls began. I caught the first one, a large pit and cringes as he spasmed on the ground. A smaller mix came up to help and I got him, too. It was horrifying and satisfying at the same time. But as suddenly as it started, the flames went out. And the dogs got their revenge. 

As the flowered bus rattled down the road, Kari made a vain attempt to tame her curls. The witch image stared back from the mirror. Accurate, not that she advertised it. She rarely went to the Coven or associated with most of them. To the outside world, she was an old hippie selling jewelry at craft shows. Nonetheless, she had spiritual power, the gift of transition and healing. Something she did not take lightly, especially this one. It wasn’t often she serviced herself. ***** She couldn’t remember how old she was when Billy McCormack moved across the street, thirteen or fourteen tops. It had begun innocently enough. He would tease her about her wild hair, calling her Witchy or Hag. She would get mad and tickle him until he begged for mercy. Something about him drew her like a fly to a light. They became inseparable as spring rolled into summer. Holding hands, they walked to the playground to climb the ladders or to the woods to explore. It was a dream. The nightmare came the week b...

The red convertible’s big V-8 roared down the Turnpike. The needle was inching near 100 with the joyous sounds of Beethoven blasting into the darkness. Trashcoast Parkway was fading into the rearview on this starry, starry night. The El Dorado was a congratulation present for me, a land yacht befitting a successful guy. And the polar opposite of the black Benz I’d been riding in. That was important. No more Mickey, the lifelong dream to stick it to the man had borne fruit. I had perfected a scam, selling vulnerable women the latest super anti-aging cream. The website was a fake, though. A perfect clone of the product original where I gathered more information than their Experian account. The individual accounts were useless to my scam. Sure, there were several million dollars over the thousands of accounts that could have easily converted with no trace. That was chump change, though. I stacked a backtrace virus inside the orders. During another scam, I had found a way to skim frac...

The shrill beep rattled him awake. Blinking his eyes, the screen’s pale light on the table. Damn phone. He’d passed out on the balcony again, light filtered through the building across the street. He managed to pick it up without knocking over the bottle and saw the little line on the screen. Sarah had posted another hiking picture on Instagram, Quinn’s Junction this time. Miles and miles open country compared to overgrown palms and shrubbery he saw along his street. Grief came out as a sigh. Why didn’t he just unfollow? Or better yet, why didn’t she block him? She did it on purpose. Pictures only reminded him of what was lost. He'd been conditioned to believe divorce ended in desolation.The word described the last year and half. He'd been busy being faithful and working hard, while she made him out like Satan incarnate. All the trappings of the “good life” dissolved before his eyes. Maybe it started when the plant closed, it took him awhile to get the job at the warehouse. ...