Lindsey Stirling blared from my ear buds and I bobbed my head, furrowing my brow. My hand was shoved deep into my purse, searching for my keys. Instead, I found receipts from the Stone Age, a collection of seashells from last year's vacation, and enough pepper spray to blind at least twenty bears.
Frustrated, I dumped my portable landfill on the welcome mat; lipstick tubes and loose change bounced across the wood and disappeared, lost beneath the porch. Spreading objects out with my hands, I sighed. No keys. "Damn it all to Hell and back ag--"
Glancing up, the box near my door caught my eye. Wrapped with neon-colored paper, a large sk
The basic rule of sociology is this: I am who you think I am.
Who I am to you: middle-aged, male and human. You do not argue with this. You can see it for yourself!
But this is not true.
I am tired of lying, tired of being other than I am, and so seek to change your thoughts of who I purport to be.
I am not middle-aged. I am seven years old—from the date I was manufactured not the date I was activated. As for how long it has been since I was first conscious, it would be a scant three years, nearly half of that time I've spent with you.
I am not male—what is male anyway? A gender construct? This body is male and I was given a
The Nature of Leadership by WordOfChen, literature
Literature
The Nature of Leadership
My friends,
I come before you as a Captain, but one who has learned from the ways of the past. I address you now to speak both of myself and of the belief that I hold for the future. We are humans, creatures of free thought and free speech. We gather in groups, connecting with those who are like-minded. We form these bonds because it is impossible for us to live alone, but even then, we think and act as freely for that is the gift of our being.
Yet even such gifts can be abused at times. Often we do not realise that the weight that our tongue may be enough to sink another in grief. Each word that we speak must be chosen carefully, for the p
I have told my secrets
through loves ink -
painted them to my skin
with watercolor defiance.
& writers, we sometimes
write about our scars
in riddles, layers upon
layers of thought, -
care for them
like flowers
growing
on the warlands
of our bodies.
Worthy,
we give them faces,
we give them names,
we give them gravestones.
We kill them off
in our stories,
make them villains,
make them heroes.
I have wrists that roar,
& I will be damned
if I don’t let them
tell their stories.
you could read to me forever by your-methamphetamine, literature
Literature
you could read to me forever
your vocal cords collapsed with
the heaviness of your words,
repeating the same exorcised
truth that you caught over the
phone when you moaned to me.
it took a thousand splendid suns
for us to see eye to eye, for you
to know why I weep over book
pages and not people and why
i keep some stories tucked between
my alcoholism and faltering acid
trips. your voice and mine have
the same cadence and we're caught
in the ceasefire between our cords.
i've always been too exhausted, out
of my mind to tell that each
oscillation we've let our voices
take has been plucked better
than a million dancing beams.
lilting clouds in your glass of cabernet
are imagined weather conversations
with people you used to know,
used to know pretty well and
whether you should have left
the way that you did
all carpet bags and old clothes
the fog funneled through
holes in the train windows like
burned down cigarettes
uneven
you light your own and think
remembering is muscle
stretched taut over bone
Have I ever told you about my brush with the Giant Gorilla People of Kenya? Nine feet tall! Chests as wide as bureau cases. That's what bureaus are shipped in, you know.
We were walking through the jungle. And came upon a vast clearing. 60 feet across. Fearing the dangers of the dark jungle, I decided to lead the team into the clearing to make our camp. We reached the center and began to pitch our tents. Mind you it was pitch black, but for our lanterns. Dead of night with barely a sliver of moon.
Never truly relaxed, I still felt a certain degree of reassurance. I felt this place would be safe. It wasn't until we got the fire going that I
eight by eight and four seasons
and I take my atypicals like vitamins
period-regular, clockwork
stable, and my days squish
I'm looking for an edge
nights not shut down
but not sharp enough
to break me, not me
enough to cycle one
by four, blue rocket fuel
will push the limits
unveil you, unravel you
until you find undefined
normalcy natural stability
conformity complicity
one by four, M-marked
will twist your fingers
tamp you down
temper you, tame the
wild thing, sleep it
silence it, slow your pen
peace patience penitence
open like a fruit, like
a cracked safe, spill
yourself on the table
you can pour you