Prose

Shadows     Even the wind was somehow hot and thick that June evening. Standing in front of the old bowling alley, my favorite old dirty Misfits t-shirt glued to my back with sweat, the oppressive night air seemed to somehow diminish all thought and reasoning, almost as if these record high temperatures were melting my brain. Finally, after enduring this for hours, I decided that I’d had enough and was going to do something...

The year they took our pennies away I watched goodness die In an Ice storm. It blew across the country, Spurred on by frozen hearts.   In the year they took our luck away, So that they could nickel and dime us To death, The ones who warn us against hell Unleashed it in our cities.   In the year that Abe Lincoln Went out of circulation, He was replaced By a lily-white frost That...

I couldn’t see the snakes. When they came at night, Puffing and hissing around my bed. I slept on the ground Without a light Other than the stars. Glowing softly over my head. Beauty above. Death below. To sleep was an act of faith. Closing your eyes When well you know That fangs are coming. And sooner or later, you have to pee, Wearing chains.     Such a life does something to you. It...

Freedom covered me in bubble wrap To protect me from life Because that stuff would surely kill me. It took a while before it was safe to feel again. To look at my face in the mirror and count the bruises. It took a while before I believed That smiles were not a disguise To hide evil.   Freedom didn’t come with a map To help me find my way back home, Or to navigate...

Crunchy Pudding             “I’m so damned hungry.” I mutter to myself which makes me smile just a little bit. Momma used to always ask me why I had conversations with myself. To which I would always smirk and reply “If I want an intelligent answer to my question, why not ask a genius?” I have always been sort of full of myself, even at a young age. Somehow, I could take a problem and create...

Misrepresented. The artistic renderings Had cast me as a saint. Separation Makes the heart grow fonder. But it doesn’t teach you how to paint A man you never really saw. The one that left never came back. I did.   No firetrucks came To put out my burning life. It was consumed like wood, hay and stubble. Deconstructed By hellfire missiles. As I sort through the rubble, At the bottom of that pile Is a...

i dreamed you wanted to try again even in my sleep i disagreed you and me together the same odds as before i'd rather run than continue to stand in one place where i'll never get better you or my future, which means more? goodbye, love, 'til we meet again   -N. Trepiak

Gentle waves, lapping at the shore. Pushing sand, swirling shells, knocking edges off of broken glass and sanding smooth the rough tree branch. This is the sea. The sea and me had a meeting today. Just a look and a little touch I thought. I’ll go down gently and rest my fingers, maybe the whole of my hands in her gentle kiss. She laughed. Splash. Her bounds are not a respecter of my person, particularly...

The land that lay directly behind me as I painted this distant view from a lonely rolling ridge on California’s central coast belongs to none other than Neil Young, and having learned this I couldn’t help but recall a recording I’d recently heard of him singing the old Woody Guthrie tune This Land is Your Land:   As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “no trespassing” But...

He burned hot and bright like a distant campfire, like candlelight. He’d laugh his howling little cackle that pulled you into his slipstream as you made your way along the path, down the makeshift rope, repelling over the edge of the cliff and dropping weightless into the crystal cerulean waters of the rocky cove far below. Everything made him laugh. And almost everything he laughed at led you to math, calculating the odds of survival....