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Numbered

Contributed by Charles Dean Walker

I feel it worsen.

The day starts bright, but goes dark.

My days feel limited.

I'm isolating myself.

Don't want to get out of bed.

Don't want to leave the house.

Don't want to leave my room.

Not in the party mood.

No wonder, nobody wants to be around.

I wish my heart would stop.

Never reached this point before.

Wish I could go back in time.

Start over.

To my birth, and end me.

When I'd see the sun.

Life felt brighter.

Now I feel tired.

When it rained it was calm.

Now I get deeper.

A Final Stroll Across a Sinking Hole

Contributed by Mary Wessling

As I gaze upon the dark abyss,

I see destruction and hopelessness.

Within the cracks and jagged sides,

I calm the crippling fear, which lies

beneath the surface, like nature's crime.

Is it hatred, is it glee?

With which I cross these blackened streams?

Even nature has its faults.

And I ponder, will I bolt

if it growls under me?

A quickened pace, escape my fate

Or face a concrete grave

For my eternity.

Due Drop

Contributed by Robert Lyons

I wear truth and transparency like an armor

Never given proper due or honor

Gotten everything I ever was offered

Skin of my teeth, scraped from the pliers

Deniers everywhere but I still press the fliers

One day the buyers will outweigh the mire

Ima get what I desire, better pay the piper

It ain’t hype, you liars are rotten

I’m gonna rip through you like buckshot

Inspired to tell the tales I got lined up

Since I was a little snot I been tipping tables

Shaming the intellectuals with common sense fables

More science was proven in my cradle

Than Einstein and Newton with tubes, numbers and ladles

There is no disputing I am shooting to kill, humbled but rude

Crude english proving I’ve paid my dues, chewing up curd

I’m bored herding this world, bunch of lazy destitutes

When do I get my restitution?

Stripped naked with nothing but the Constitution over my genitals

Sublimely filling my enemies with panic, busted pen tip, Manic

Here comes the energy again, looked in the mirror and cracked it

Light flooding from my eyeballs, blasting everything I stare at

My words flaring up the pad like a blaze in the forest

I better put this out before I burn and waste all in my wake

Don't make a mistake, I'll be back before your next day

I don't sleep, I creep through the night looking for prey

So if I didn't get you presently, better check your histories

Fishing Place

Contributed by Darroll Hargraves

I know a place.

Seldom visited. One old timer said that nobody goes there since 1935.

That was the year the last of the prospectors and miners left. They were there for the gold.

Were they? I have long suspected that those stampeders had other interest. They thrived on the beauty of the mountains, the valleys, the rivers and creeks. The gold was great but the looking and the seeking in places of grandeur may have been the greater pull for many.

Such is the place I know.

There was and is now gold in the mountains and creeks. The history is of interest to me but after days of off-road travel, through boulder fields left centuries ago by receding glaciers, across creeks and snow pack from last winter’s snowfall we arrive at the place.

A preadolescent son is a fine thing to have at a time like this. On a gravel bar, beside a pool in a very small creek. Two cast each and four fish to show for it, confirming why we came.

The grayling are scrappy. Never a cast without a strike, seldom without a catch.

I turn the fishing over to the son and begin to dress the catch. Every fish the same size, fifteen inches. My cooler chest with snow from the snow pack fills up.

Return home with eighty-five beauties for the freezer and winter delight at dinnertime.

Every fish was hooked in the same place, “In the mouth”.