Joey Delgado

NIGHTSTANDS

i guess this is a testimonial
the room is too dark for it to be conversational
no angsty teenager here, just a grownup
a man of thirty, can you believe it
thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty
flirty thirty, dirty thirty
not me though
i’m wordy thirty
words in the supine position come easier
but they are difficult to read
believe me they are even more difficult to understand
the light from my Ikea lamp is dim
as dim as the memory of me buying it
or maybe it was a gift
speaking of nightstands with packed drawers
unspeakable things in the top one
junk in the bottom
the bottom drawer is speakable
courier bag filled with books propped up against nightstand
blocking bottom drawer
guess top drawer is most easily accessible
cigarette smoke floats past my screen
filters words these innocuous words
who enjoys that
don’t people enjoy meat
but i don’t have any meat to offer just steamed veggies
you like? steamed veggies cauliflower broccoli carrots
should i open that top drawer
you want to see the meat
i know you because i know me
okay let me snub out my ciggie
love the way it sounds being crushed against the ceramic ashtray
pulling open drawer
can you hear it sliding on those little plastic wheels
gonna close my eyes and reach in
pull out the first thing i grab
oh my
this one’s a doozie

© Joey Delgado 2013

Hey, my name is Joey and sometimes I scribble things that I like. Sometimes. I like this one, hope you do too. I try to write things that hit me emotionally, and hopefully the readers as well.
My Twitter address is @JoeBobsThoughts

Townsend Walker

Prose Poems

What He Knows

     George is lying in a pool of water.
     When he regains consciousness he will not feel his right foot. He will wriggle his toes, but he will not know if they moved.
     He will see rocks and sprouts of green. He will not know he is on a deserted cobbled street.
     His skin will feel numb because the water is cold. He will not know the water has a pinkish hue.
     His mouth will have a coppery taste. He will not know what is in it.
     His nose will be assaulted by an acrid rotting smell. He will not know he is responsible for the odor.
     He will hear an irregular lapping sound above him. He will not be able to raise his head to see the mongrel dog drinking the water.
     He will be able to turn to see another dog approaching.

A Life?

     Charlie was a mean lad. Charlie was a mad lad. Charlie was rad bad.
     Charlie clubbed a buddy, then his aunt.
     The judge said, “Jail or Army, lad?”
     Charlie got to go to war. Charlie got to kill. Charlie saw lots of things.
     Charlie got a medal. Charlie got to come home. Charlie is the man.
     Charlie’s on the street now. Scuffed boots falling off his feet now.
     In the throat, Night Train. Up the nose, cocaine.
     Charlie was the man.

Facing Down Danger

     Danger hung around O’Neil’s florid face. Like it wanted to be invited in. “Come on,” O’Neil said. He wanted it, wanted to look it straight in the eye. That’s the kind of man O’Neil was. Adrenaline, fist on flesh. Pounding out his heart’s despair, abandoning mind to body.
     It wasn’t clear to those in McSorley’s why O’Neil didn’t notice that danger had half a foot on him, was twice as wide and was holding a knife.

© Townsend Walker 2012

Townsend Walker is a writer living in San Francisco. His stories have been published in over forty literary journals and included in five anthologies. Two of his stories were nominated for the PEN/O.Henry Award. His website is www.townsendwalker.com.

Nicole E. Hirschi

THE LIFE OF THIS WRITER

A Writer’s lot—
full of drama and harrowing acts
caused if not by our own minds
to write about
then in our lives
so that instead of fiction
about life we can write.

We refuse to Journal
because we crave
approval from someone else—
someone from our time
who finds our lives
so unbecoming
that they know not
how to judge us.

Our unsavory rudeness
reflects our hearts—
lashing out at those
whose opinions matter
great and/or small
Because it is they who haven’t
the answers or cares
we seek.

If the world were in harmony
there’d be no writers,
no sorrow, no hatred,
jealousy or broken hearts to exist,
For nothing
would need to be written.

Eternal happiness
conflates within us
only after extreme grief.

Writers record
events of our time
kept for the future
to remind.

The loneliness of one
confiding in the voices
of the mind
is ours, and ours alone—
like Atlas,
the world is on our shoulders
and we’ll have it no other way.

Drugs, abuse
or suicide
often plague us—
we, who seek the truths
of ghosts and living dead
for answers and stories
we most often do not find.

We seek in other places
those answers to our
screaming questions—
our desires that burn
our fingers as we write.

When we have exhausted
every resource, we begin to cause
the drama and grief
of those unknown
to experience, the outcome
of which they never tell.

Delving head first, we then understand
that their lives of horror
are most assuredly killing our souls.

Redemption is only found
not in the light as some will say,
but in the quiet—
the darkness—
where voices
are forever silenced.

© Nicole E. Hirschi 2012

Nicole E. Hirschi, MuDJoB's first guest writer two years ago, writes when Muse and Time agree with her. Also known as CJT (and variations thereof), her short flashes can be found splashed acoss the 'Net and in a number of books as well.

Guest Writer: Stephen Stribbell

A Halo of Flies

Dead, it is white all around
Biting cold, buried in the frozen ground
Icy silence inside my eyes
Bodies bloated, attracting flies.

Often thoughts are not recorded; the movement of time is something we can
sense but never see. Is it greed that spurs the soul on through life, the eternal want of more?
A mist swirls and disguises the painted symbols on the walls. It is suddenly dark.

Insane laughter resounds throughout my head
Yet there is no smile upon my face
Voices calling me to empty rooms
The walls don't care what I say

I am Stephen. I am becoming words on paper. I am that which is and that which is not, depending
on how you wish to consider me. Changing shape, texture, patterns: a fluid, pulsing and flowing like
blood sinking slowly into the page. Drifting through the sheets, into the dark, the black, is void. Nothing.
Picture a moment frozen in time - in space, a steady clicking, millions of revolutions per second. I congeal. A life: images imprinted on burning retinas, a collection of hopes and dreams, torn and fading on rotting newsprint.

It's eerie when everything moves - molecules, not love
Light on the face, shadows for eyes, bodies in black
Is it true that we only live for the reproduction of DNA?
Faltering steps tick by like an old clock, an hour gone:
It is lost, and can never be again.

Why are you shivering, Stephen? Are you cold? Is everything dying around you? Can you feel the slow decay?
Why don't you do yourself a favor and draw the cold steel through your wrists? Listen, Stephen. Listen to us
laughing. Can't you cry anymore? The pain is getting worse, isn't it? The frustration is unbearable, you know
it is. Don't you wish you could die? You can't shut us out for even a minute! And we're laughing!

Insects and worms are climbing the walls
The laughter, increasing in intensity, echoes through the halls
A halo of flies for the son of society
Crawling in my eyes. I cannot see.

© Stephen M. Stribbell 2010

Stephen Stribbell is a self-proclaimed "Artistic Mercenary," practicing his creative skills, which include visual art, music, writing, and theater, to survive in the brutally hard underbelly of the world. You can find some of his work at http://www.thinkingten.com/profile/StephenStribbell.

Guest Writer: Michael J. Solender

Never to Call Your Name

Your words are the sparks that I use to immolate myself in a defiant and purposeful act. You use them like Spackle to cement meaning into the tiniest cracks of our relationship, unburdening yourself of their bile and ensuring I will carry their weight.

Like knotted nylon cord, the not so bon mots from your pouty lips circle my ankles and climb skyward to my ears before settling in my brain to rattle in a dissonance of your creation.

You can't help yourself, your mother was born before you and the trappings and placement of that birth laid forth your destiny. You needed me only to complete the second curtain of your three act theater.

Go. To yourself, run and embrace all that is you. You'll find no more of yourself in me as I burn it away. Each tiny bit of you vaporizing from matter to gaseous smoke as the temperatures soar to incalculable heights. It is not my pain you will feel and those receptors of yours are long since dulled of any agony other than your own.

You'll wonder and turn to those that find advantage in their twisted friendship with you, yet to discover what screams and emanates from your soul. Comfort not though will you find, rather the heat will begin to build and tear at your flesh as it has mine, though your blood runs cooler, icily coursing in vascular precision around and around the beating mass where your heart should be.

Come. Come back to where you might be able to save yourself. It is too late for me but shed not the first tear crocodile or other as that acid will etch on what remains of my emptiness. Hollow and void, burned out and charred, though at least absent of anything you have touched.

Run. Run like the breeze created by ten thousand butterflies as they flutter towards the impermanence that awaits them. They are my accompanists in the flaming symphony I have created with your vitriol.

Wait. Wait on eternity’s doorstep and then wait some more and then more still. Your dawn rises. It is there for your succor.

© Michael J. Solender 2010

Michael J. Solender is editor of On The Wing, the non-fiction online magazine from Full of Crow. He writes a weekly Neighborhoods column for The Charlotte Observer and contributes frequently to Charlotte ViewPoint and Like The Dew, Journal of Southern Culture & Politics. Solender’s micro-fiction and poetry have been featured online at: Bull Men’s Fiction, Calliope Nerve, Danse Macabre, Dogzplot, Gloom Cupboard, Right Hand Pointing, Shoots & Vines, The Legendary, Metazen, Writers’ Bloc and over a dozen other venues. His essay, Unaffiliated, will be featured in the upcoming print anthology TOPOGRAPH, New Writing From the Carolinas and the Landscape Beyond, published by Novello Festival Press in the fall of 2010. Follow his blog at your own peril here: http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com/.

Guest Writer: Coraline J. Thompson

Death Knows No Mercy

My life, a delusion,
At least to me,
Was to him an experiment –
A plaything to mold and shape
To cut and create
Until the perfect woman stood
Ready and waiting to please him in every way.
Independent as I was
My subconscious rejected his ways
But as time is king in all games,
Eventually, I succumbed.
I lost my independence
Somewhere along the way
My head, oh my head, such things inside me said,
“Who are you to think you can be
Greater than he, your husband, your king?”

My imperfect thoughts
Of an imperfect me
Tore me down into the depths unseen.
Beauty and grace
Were no longer mine
At least not in his mind.
Anti-depressants did little to stymie
The tears falling, falling, falling.

Enough to fill a pond, a lake, or a river
My tears kept flowing steadily.
“You’re nothing, no one, and never will be.
Forget yourself.
Be one with what he needs you to be.”

Internal flames raged within
What was left of my soul
Tormented, afraid, and losing
To his mind game-minions from hell,
I could hear their voices
Chanting victory
While my blood turned cold.

Something died
Or maybe someone. My soul?
Nonetheless, something died indeed.

Empty

A shell, a robot,
Programmed for his pleasure.

Empty

But inside emptiness
Lurks
A creature
Much worse than that of a woman’s scorn
Something that thrives on emptiness,
Soul-less,
Destroyed,
In a shell.

My memories were lost in time.

Months drifted by
A haze-filled sky
Cloudy eyes
Sleepless nights
Alone
But still his perfect wife.

The thing lurking
I knew not
Sought control, crowned itself king
Over a carnage-strewn battlefield.
“Kill him,” it breathed
Into my dreams.

Possessed
By demons
Created them he,
That used my right hand
For their bidding –
A slash in the dark,
The rip of shared sheets,
The gurgling struggle,
A cry, “Help me.”

The devil within
Shifted seats as
My old self?
My soul?
Was resurrected with
Each stab into the heart of
The man who killed me.

© Coraline J. Thompson 2010

Coraline J. Thompson is a writing mother of two. Find more of her work online at Striking Writes.