Chloe in Kenner, Lousiana #181 (Love)

I heard a cat calling out in agony and fear and hunger in the alley behind the Dollar General and I went back inside to buy it something to eat. It nuzzled my hand as I fed it and I felt the sharp pain of sorrow and the almost unbearable loneliness of sympathy. Feeding isn't saving. Saving requires a more drastic sacrifice from both parties. Then I understood our love, Alex and I wondered if the earth is my home and if the melancholy in our palsied hearts called us toward union or distinction. (Morgan Garrett)

Leo in Aurora, Colorado #180 (Transcendence)

I closed my eyes when I was driving last night. I took my hands off of the steering wheel and my car veered off the road and into a creek. I got out of my car and was waste deep in that freezing black water and for a moment I felt a kind of rabid peace and liberation that I'd longed for but never known. I looked up and saw planets and stars and universes and the whitest eternities full of purity and divinity.
God. (Morgan Garrett)

Analucia in Saltillo, Mexico #179 (Love)

I've washed your filthy feet. I've cleaned the vomit off of your face. I've peeled you out of your pissy pants. I've dressed your wounds. I love you and you don't love me. I love you and I'm sorry for you. Bearing lovelessness is the great tribulation, perdition and illness and I see the broken human animal traveling through the desert for thousands of miles hungering without knowing what could ease their hunger and slake their thirst. I love you. (Morgan Garrett)

Janice in Wheeling, WV #178 (Self Evaluation)

I'm not getting any younger. Looked in the mirror and saw an unfulfilled old lady longing for something but being so divorced from herself she doesn't even know what she needs. My boyfriend and I eating at some sit down chain restaurant on Friday night, coming home to watch TV and drink some white wine. Going to the beach for vacation every summer. Keeping my house clean and my yard trimmed. Watching my weight, exercising and eating healthy. If there isn't more to this life, then it's not worth living. (Morgan Garrett)

Elmer in Dwarf, KY #177 (Violence)

We was drinkin with this slimy old man we met a Ducky's in a Super 8 Motel room. He offered ta buy the liquor; hell, if someone's buyin we're drinkin. Prolly thought he was gonna have a fuck and suck with my girl an I, buy our assholes an mouths with a little Wild Turkey 101. We was all sittin on tha bed getting perty tight an I had this feelin come over me. I watched him leerin at my girl's crotch, had his hand inchin tward my thigh. I had this feelin come over me. All the men in this world jes wantin to fuck and fuck forever. He got up ta piss an I unplugged the TV and follered him. He was lettin loose a that foul stream a piss an I lifted that TV up an caved in his skull with it. He dropped to tha floor an I kicked him in tha face with my work boots until you couldn't recognize him. Came to myself, sent my girl out inta tha night so's she wouldn't get in no trouble and then called the cops.

Someone like me's not fit ta live with decent people. I took two bucks from his wallet and went to tha vendin machine; got some Barbecue Chips and Strawberry Faygo to snack on while I waited fer tha cops. (Morgan Garrett)

Jason In Hialeah, Florida #176 (Self Evaluation)

Castle in ruins and soldiers at the gate. Poison in my belly and a knife in my heart. When I feasted, I starved. When I drank wine, I thirsted. When I died, I rose like a phallus into some kind of frighteningly authentic everlasting life. (MOrgan Garrett)

Anatole in Ely, Nevada #175 (Self Evaluation)

God will speak today. He will speak through my falsehood, my vanity, my throttled body hanging from the limbs of a birch tree. He will speak about the fallen creature called man and He will free his tortured servants from their mortal bodies. (Morgan Garrett)

Jordan in Yellowknife, Canada #174 (Self Evaluation)

Euphoria and Nausea. My blood is poison. The buzz and shriek of insects. Light from the Summer throbbing on leaves and the prairie grass climbing toward oblivion. (Morgan Garrett)

Adamo in Genoa, Italy #173 (Transcendence)

And everyone who's ever been alive is there
in the Holy City of God
The burden of bodies
and life lifted
No one swimming
or fighting the tide
Tenderness without shame
or fear of man

(Morgan Garrett)

Eliza In Laoag, Philipines #172 (Hyperreality)

Tufts of your hair
reaching out like tendrils toward the sun
archways between their fingers
but you're still abandoned
They reach and grab for anything
but the silence of space
and the blood between your teeth is
something very solitary

(Morgan Garrett)

Sandos in Guayaquil, Ecuador #171 (Hyperreality)

First we'll see a closeup of her face. We then see a room with deep red carpet and gray walls. She is sitting on the edge of a bed and staring out the window. There are floodlights to her left and directly beneath her that illuminates her profile, displaying harsh and unhealthy features. Miasmas. God's tiny birds in her throat. (Morgan Garrett)

Adam in Nantucket, Rhode Island #170 (Dreams)

You're in the back seat of the car sleeping, soft as thirst while I drive into oncoming traffic. You wake up and ask me to lay down with you.
(Morgan Garrett)

Claudia in Lyon, France #169 (Hyperreality)

Violence is lovely in the city
But they don't know how to treasure their loneliness
I'd like to sleep in the sky too
and know every fevered dream

Else in Bern, Switzerland #168 (Hyperreality)

Dead children
who stare at the sun
and go blind

Ellie in Wick, Scotland #167 (Hyperreality)

You were a witch
and I was the deep blue sea
I knelt at your knees
and you licked the floor
with a hungry, longing mouth

Anh In My Tho, Vietnam #166 (Hyperreality)

She was still alive when I used to come visit her. When she died I visited her more. She left behind a window and an untended, overgrown garden. All that violence.

Richie in Bristol, TN #166 (Rewriting Pop Songs)

Chantilly lace
and our garbage race
eating shit
till we die of it
Chantilly lace
and a little girl's face
smiling before she
gets all her teeth

Geming in Jilin, China #165 (Hyperreality)

A nude woman chasing dead animals through a large, wooden empty room. Flowers shivering in the lamp light.

Arkady in Novgorod, Russia #164 (Hyperreality)

Two bodies in an embrace, floating above a bed
Starved children running through the streets
celebrating the end of the material world

Vyacheslav in Gdansk, Poland #163 (Hyperreality)

Praying in cemeteries
where the snow is melting
and the clouds are moving
through puddles filled with illness

Usman in Kalat, Pakistan #162 (Sorrow)

A child in bed
End of natural life
Shadows of animals and plants
Fear and no hope for reprieve
Fleeing down flooded steps
Grass in the wind
Seen through half opened windows
Father, blow the candles out

Yannick In Douala, Cameroon #161 (Sorrow)

Mother has died and we will starve. Longing for grace and blessing the mysterious workings of the hand that moves unseen.

Demirkan In Izmir, Turkey #160 (Sorrow)

There were dead bodies and trash everywhere. Filthy water running freely from a broken faucet. The immense poverty of life.

Andrei in Kharkiv, Ukraine #159 (Love)

Your naked body in the shower. The sound snow makes when it's crushed under foot. Washing your hair in the train station bathroom. Your head flung back, appearing to be in a state of profound ecstasy. Tangles of hair knotted on your slender back. I've never loved another person the way that I love you.

Lori in Ashland, OH #158 (Love)

I approached two butterflies mating in our driveway
I thought of you
As I came closer, they unattached and flew away
I thought of me

Longwei In Suzhou, China #157 (Hyperreality)

Children reborn
Mother dies
Muddy creek
Children cry
Sun sets
Forest in the half light

Sandy in Bettles, Alaska #156 (Hyperreality)

That sink is a basin deep enough to contain a nude male body wounded by the lashes of the unjustness of existence. In the mirror your face is always we but I close my eyes until I find a new way to experience the human form.

Isabelle in Superior, Wisconsin #155 (Self Evaluation)

Even if I'm a dazzling cupola
I don't like the building I crown
and even if I'm an aureola of light
I don't like the sainted head

Wesley in Portland, Maine #154 (Love)

Good in the heart
Is Ashley
She ran instead of walked
when she
was a little girl,
out of restaurants
underneath a large bridge near her house
and always toward herself

Good in the heart
Is Ashley

Jennifer in Silver City, New Mexico #153 (Hyperreality)

They're both lost and terribly alone in the sky. They've each experienced the sensations of ascension and are individually aware of the limitations of their crest. Hiding in the attic, pressing against the skylight; the human face was crowned with soft, blue light. Anyone who saw this face understood the meaning of the word eternal. Rising, creating countries in the night. Even so, exposing isn't healing and our light remains fractured when we stare at our reflection in the water.

Timothy in Yuma, Arizona #152 (Hyperreality)

I saw God stripped of
His humanity
with stars
wound round His throat
like a necklace

Nate in Washington Court House, Ohio #151 (Love)

If I'd left for home, I'd be there by now but then we wouldn't have looked so long as so steadily into each others faces and disappeared into the dark night as suddenly as the girl's arms who are reaching for something beyond herself.

Faizah in Hail, Saudi Arabia #150 (Violence)

I hope they hang my body
in the city streets
So their children can see
the human body doesn't mean anything
I hope they hang my body
in the city streets
So their children can see
their parent's words don't mean anything
My body is unclean
It's easy to die
but it's hard to be alive
A bird ran under my tires this morning
It's easy to die
but it's hard to be alive

Lisa in Tromso, Norway #149 (Transcendence)

I hope
that eternity is quiet
and soft, mother
I hope my passions
die with
my heart

Luis in Camaguey, Cuba #148 (Violence)

Mankind without atrocities is not mankind as I recognize the term. If human beings were not capable of terrible and astounding things I wouldn't want to be alive.

Karl In Hamburg, Germany #147 (Hyperreality)

They aren't objects for sexual gratification. They're little girls being blown up by bombs, crying in a crowd, watching paratroopers descend as slow music plays.

Bogdan In Aryta, Russia #146 (Sorrow)

This child is going to die here in this bed. Someone call his mother. He's shivering; a dog scared by the thunder and scratching the door to get inside. This little creature's life is just like when you were 16 and walking through the city square. A woman smiled at you as she passed in an automobile and then you never saw her again.

Lynn in Shelby, Montana #145 (Sorrow)

It's like watching yourself leaving on a train. You can't comprehend where you're going and you're terrified but your horror is an ecstasy. You know that no one will accompany you on this trip and you learn to thrive in your aloneness.

Mi-Ok In Inchon, South Korea #144 (Love)

Drifting through the many rooms in my father's house
finding no welcome or rest for my weariness
In the quietest room
I found my lover
and he didn't ask me
why I had profaned our love
He had understood
that my heart
couldn't bear it's weight

Oana In Cluj, Romania #143 (Love)

I wish he would have killed me when I stopped loving him. Loss of love is betrayal and makes the taste of life galling because if I could stop loving him, I could stop loving anyone and that means that nothing lasts.

Andreas in Valera, Venezuela #142 (Sexuality)

My attempt at orgasms were so painful when I was younger that I was unable to achieve one until I was in my early 20s. When I overcame the mangling pulse of oceanic misery, I felt that I'd lost something potent and I laid sobbing in my bathtub, frightened that I'd become human. Finally, I became acquainted with the pain of being alive and agony became pleasure.

Elane in Rochester, NY #141 (Violence)

I was in the living room at my grandmother's house opening up a Christmas present a day late when I heard her crying. I went into the patio room and she was laying on the sofa with white fluid coming out of her vagina.

Barney in Moose Jaw, Canada #140 (Anger)

You're all shriveled organisms. You're all dead inside. Your death wouldn't change anything. The world will go on spinning, shitheads.

Ellen in Hobart, Tasmania #139 (Transcendence)

Birdsong. I stood in a forest and saw a wren flying in the white winter sky; perched on a steeple where a bell once called children to God. For the first time since I'd slithered on my belly on this earth, I thought there might be something more miraculous than pleasure.

Sydney in Winchester, KY #138 (Hyperreality)

Black and white photograph. Faces blurred. Mom sitting on the porch of granddad's house. Darkness behind her, staring from inside the house. Serpents coiling around her ankles. She coughs up blood. A man I've never seen stands in the front yard in the far left corner of the photo and has a gun in his mouth. There are several suns in the sky. (Bevo Francis)

Clint in Glen's Ferry, Idaho #137 (Hyperreality)

So far from fire and it's ancient land. Far from you hiking up your skirt and pissing blood from the pain I've caused. So far from loving and being loved.

Mark in Lime, Oregon #136 (Hyperreality)

A bird is a mountain peak. A tree is an irrigated field. Birds of prey carrying your children off into blue skies to devour their insides. There are no names for anything under God's endless heavens.

Ricky in Avenal, California #135 (Sexuality)

Nail marks on my fat breasts, bite marks on my throat, welps on my back and thighs. Is this how I need you to show your love? Tied to our bed, gagged with a sock, blindfolded. You put my face in the pillow; you straddle my flabby body and fuck me in my chasmic asshole while I sob muffled cries of fleshly delight. This is how I need you to show your love. (Scoughs)

Thomas in Mott, North Dakota #134 (Hyperreality)

Flightless bird flying toward entropy. Craning their necks to drink blood from a bloodless being. Roosting in the branches of a tree that sprouted from an earth that died long ago.

Anna Bell in Bumble Bee, Arizona #133 (Sorrow)

Saw a mural of the Christ smiling and rising in the blue sky; transfigured in the most mediocre way. It was terrifying and heart rending to see salvation rendered so poorly. It reminded me of you. Your exaltation is illness, your rapture is poverty.

Carlos in Grand Rapids, Michigan #132 (Hyperreality)

Pissed blood this morning. Tasted it in my mouth. I'm bleeding to death and I don't have any wounds. Trickles out my anus. Pours from my nose. Flooding from my ears. I'm bleeding to death and I don't have any wounds.

Isiah in Deming New Mexico #131 (Transcendence)

There's a fire out there in the distance. Flowers In the desert, flourishing without water. That's me. Blooming, opening when the sun stands on my tendrils calling the ancient throb of life from the secret, miasmic wound I had before I was born.

Brady in Willcox, Arizona #130 (Hyperreality)

Strains of flute music awaken birds of prey roosting in my circulatory system and they fly along the dried up creek beds in my veins searching for life and starving to death.

Jean in Iraan, Texas #129 (Anxiety)

Desert, shrubs, rocks, scorched earth. Desert is my fear. Aridity. Godlessness. Dead Animals. Nothing lives, nothing is alive. Border between dreams and waking life.

Abegbe in Sokoto, Nigeria #128 (Love)

Walking in the weeds. Broken bottles. Trash. If I were a god unanswerable to man or God, I would strike you dead for the pain you've caused me but since I'm a quiet, lost girl those wounds accompany my beaten and sorrowful love.

Tara in Grand Ridge, Florida #127 (Sorrow)

The fronds of a flowering Palmetto tree. Heartbreaking life bursting from the grieving earth. Roots coiling around the bones of my little boy who drowned in the Apalachicola River in 1972.

Adrijana in Pancevo, Serbia #126 (Love)

I need you to hurt me with your awful, clawing love. Humiliate me, mangle my insides. Just love me. Release me from the prison of myself. Only shattering, shuddering, auroral, entropic love can do that.

Casey in Monticello, Florida #125 (Sorrow)

I heard a pretty girl singer on the radio this morning singing about hitting rock bottom. I've birthed two stillborn children. My husband's a drunk who fucks around and beats on me for exercise. I was born poor and I'll die poor. Who would fucking sing about me? You fucking idiots would rather listen to some brainless 20 year old pretending she's had one hard day in her whole pointless life.

Ae Sook in Pusan, South Korea #124 (Love)

I feel like the water in an atoll
Surrounded by your thin strip of land
You don't occur within me
Instead you're all around me
I can't see where my hands end
And yours begin

Sin in Hecla, OH #123 (Love)

As long as there's longing.

Carmen in Del Rio, Texas #122 (Sexuality)

Setting: A dark blue 2000 blue Ford Focus parked in the desert near the Texas/Mexico border. Budding and wilting. Trembling. Ashes.

“Can you put your hands on it? I won't tell anyone. We can get something to eat in a little bit, just please touch it. I'm scared; alone. Look at how hard it is. Will you touch it? Put your mouth on it?”

Peres In Manizales, Colombia #121 (Self Evaluation)

What grows is what should survive. Species include: wildflowers, weeds, death and illness. We ought to learn to value and cultivate the living and dead organisms that thrive in the ruins.

Laura in Orkney, Scotland #120 (Hyperreality)

Child dead in the garden. Mother squatted in the weeds and birthed him. He was icy cold and purple and blue like a bruise. Drinking blood from the wound of a slain animal, child. That's the acrid taste of life.

Stavros on the Atlantic Ocean #119 (Violence)

“Get back in that fucking crate and keep your fucking mouths shut while we get inspected or I'll slit your fucking throats!”

Ieva in Kaunas, Lithuania #118 (Love)

You won't ever love me like I love you. My love for you is so shockingly true; there's no treachery or deceit, no dissent or discord. Simple as blood in veins and birds perching with daylight on steeples. Oppressive as blue morning skies, sunlight on rocks and conquering armies; I've allowed you to cruel. That's my flesh in your teeth, my blood in your teeth.

Trystan in Ophir, Alaska #117 (Transcendence)

Give me mercy instead of clarity, questions instead of answers. Confuse and confound me, wound and astound me. Give me deepdarkdeathdreams every night and lead me to the overflowing stream in the daylight so that I can drink from the cup of agony and flood. Teach me how to be sorrowful instead of how to be happy.

Noah in Fairlawn, OH #116 (Transcendence)

Fat, impotent, quarrelsome, infirm. Unloving. A perfect candidate for mercy but when I sat in church I feel barren. New songs to be written, new languages to be spoken to express the reckless, overwhelming love of God.

Donald in Albany, OH #115 (Hyperreality)

I found a god in a forest clearing. He was sitting cross legged in the ashes of a temple that was dedicated to him that had burnt to the ground.

“You've starved and longed for my love. Traveled without meaning and without understanding. You've built me houses I couldn't live in and searched for me in places I'd never go.”

Julian in Savannah, Georgia #114 (Sexuality)

You telling me I want to fuck him? On top of all the indignities of life, I have to want him to put his hands of my body and suck my cock? This senseless brute who is as cruel as he is stupid; he stirs my vitals and makes my blood rise? The conquering sexual instinct.

Selma in Hardy, Canada #113 (Sorrow)

Trees outside the window starting to awaken where I'm beginning to fall asleep. Overcast sky. The cancer is in my womb. That's where my little boy came from. He's sitting on the edge of my bed and we wait together for the end of the material world and for the world that doesn't end.

Lynn in Moscow, Idaho #112 (Violence)

Cattle in the pasture. Crops in the field. His sleeping body next to mine. My knife in his throat. Rivers of blood in the human body. I kneel on the banks of that river and drink like a dog until my unwholesome thirst is cured.

Leonidus in Colonus, Greece #111 (Sorrow)

Edge of the forest. Aged and sleeping on the ground. I've been everywhere and found nowhere suitable. Been in houses and never found a home. No rest, no mercy, no respite, no love.

Kell in Vaasa, Finland #110 (Hyperreality)

All of us at the dinner table. Mother serves coiling vines in old iron buckets and gallons of serpent blood. Older brother ravenously devours it and when he finishes it, he puts his right hand palms up on the table. He stares at me and stabs through his hand with a steak knife. Father laughs.

Dani in Harrisonburg, PA #109 (Violence)

I've been in 3 fights with her. The first one was in a field behind school and she got on top of me when I slipped and started punching me in the face until my boyfriend pulled her off of me. The second fight was in the bathroom and I got the upper hand after I got a hold of her hair and pulled her to her knees. I kneed her in the face and busted her nose open. Her friends grabbed me and stopped it. We fought in a railroad tunnel two days ago. She got me pinned against the wall and slammed my head against it. I scratched her face and when she loosened her grip on my hair I punched her and she fell backward over the railroad track. I was about to straddle her when her best friend grabbed my friend from behind and she and I got into it until we got seperated.

Tereza in Opava, Czech Republic #108 (Sexuality)

With my thumbs, I pry your genitals apart and stare into that miasma that the human animal emerges from. I tenderly kiss your bell that rings with pleasure and you arch your back and speak in tongues. I slide my tongue into your caverns of ecstasy; you taste like birth and race memories. I want my mouth to voyage the breadth of your shuddering, sinful body.

April in Oak Hill, OH #107 (Violence)

Four years ago today my dad disappeared. He went to Applebees for a drink, staggered out around last call and drifted off into the lonesome night. His truck was still in the parking lot in the morning. I've always thought Alan Keller killed him. Dad was known for his chasing skirt and everyone says he was with Alan's wife that night. Alan's a pretty nasty guy; probably cut dad's throat and buried him in Wayne National Forest. State Police don't have the time to head out there with a shovel and the dogs. Alan's got to know that.

Jay in Burns, Oregon #106 (Dreams)

Jay in Burns, Oregon #106 (Dreams)
I had a dream that I'd been trying to fuck this elderly black lady for several years. Finally she consented and we mechanically undressed. I gathered her close to me but I couldn't get my pecker hard. She put her hands on it, her mouth on it; nothing would do the trick. I woke up and I'd shit the bed. My wife wasn't too happy about that.

Brianna in Louisa, KY #105 (Banality of daily life)

We were swimming in Yatesville Lake in my Junior Year and my friend Michael (who was really shitfaced) tried to swim across the length of the water and drowned. They drug the lake but they never did manage to find his body. Probably made a nest of mud and rocks to spend his sorrowful eternity in. He never was too particular.

Katie in Colby, Kansas #104 (Self Evaluation)

This is my hell of pleasures. Salt and sweat. Knives and rivers. Darkness descending to touch the earth and the broken backs of men. Mortification is my salvation. (Larva Lu)

Suzie in Rochester, Minnesota #103 (Self Evaluation)

Suzie in Rochester, Minnesota #103 (Self Evaluation)
These are what you've come to fear: the vandal hands of man. Trees, flesh stone, water, soil. All falls.
All poisoned. Was there a time before I was born and before I loved you? I'll move toward that source.

Connie in Springfield, OH #102 (rewriting pop songs)

Heard a song when I was driving into work this morning; it was this fucking idiot English girl singing about how she could find her man “next to” her when “times get tough”. What a load of horseshit. When I got to work I scrawled a few lines as a retort to this sentimental horseshit:
When I'm lonesome and in agony
You'll find him gone
When I need mercy and forgiveness
You'll find him gone
When I'm wilting in the summer sun
You'll find him gone
When I'm hidden in the everlasting night
You'll find him gone
When he wants his pecker sucked
You'll find him next to me
When he wants to fuck and fuck and fuck
You'll find him next to me

Hendrik in Utrecht, Netherlands #101 (Transcendence)

Couldn't leave the house. Couldn't drive my car anymore. Couldn't hold down a job. I was afraid of everything until this miraculous thing happened. I began to want to die. When I no longer desired to live, all my fears left me and I discovered life's dark consecration.

Benjamin in Prescott, Arizona #100 (Sexuality)

I dreamt of licking and biting your thighs. Searching for an orgasm with my tongue in the split between your legs. I took off your panties with my teeth and you kissed my sexual organ that surged with blood and ecstasy. Union.

Autumn in Laramie, Wyoming #99 (Violence)

I think the crops wouldn't grow inside daddy's arid body. Maybe that's why he wanted to kill me? Treat me like a human sacrifice to appease the unnamed gods inside his shadowy self. All I know is that after he finished kicking the shit out of mom, he'd start in on me. After he finished throttling the meaning and mercy out of me, he'd lock me in the hallway closet and it was in there (as I cleaned the blood off of my face with the spare linens) that I learned the value of violence in a forsaken world.

Shane in Florence, Kentucky #98 (Banality of daily life)

My girlfriend and I tried to knock over a liquor store in 2007. The plan was, she manned the door while I held up the cashier. We rolled into this ancient spot off of the parkway that I knew wouldn't have cameras and I stuck my gun into the face of this older black guy who had a bad stutter. He stammered out that “the money's in a drop box under the register” and he reached down there, raising up quick as a cornered rattlesnake with a shotgun that blew a hole in my right shoulder. Then he turned the gun on my girl and shot her in the stomach. He walked over to where I was leaning against a wine rack and started smashing my face in with the butt of his gun. When I came to, I was handcuffed to a hospital bed and they told me that my girlfriend had bled to death on the floor of that joint. Bet that nasty old prick waited a while before he called the cops, sat down in the middle of the floor and just watched us bleed.

Elle in Elko, Nevada #97 (God)

This fucking idiot suburban housewife who I volunteer with at the soup kitchen with is all the time going on about how much “peace Christ brings into her life.” I feel like telling her that Christ wasn't peaceful. Love isn't peaceful. He didn't wander this tortured earth to bring peace to our lives, he came to challenge and destroy us with reckless, rabid, otherworldly , annihilating love so that we can be reborn into a kind of auroral transcendence.

Bairavi in Nagpur, India #96 (Love)

That pain stayed hidden even from me until I met you. The pain that was unconsciously birthed when the agony of love called the cosmos into being. I love you more in sickness than in health, more in sorrow than in joy.

Jason in Harrisonburg, VA #95 (Hyperreality)

I saw stray dogs devouring a deer carcass the other day when I was driving. I saw children being stoned to death for the sins of their fathers. “Drink that fucking pondwater and die like an animal longing for light.”

Andrew in Jellico, Tennessee #94 (Self Evaluation)

I mangled your gentle heart. Tore through the ventricles and atrium with my merciless teeth. I've burned the crops and poisoned the water. You thought you could redeem me with your warmth and safety and love but I'm too reckless to be saved. Hunger and thirst.

Cliff in Pierre, South Dakota #93 (Hyperreality)

Dying fish are stapled to my wall. Children are on fire and are vomiting dark gray nimbus clouds. Hundreds of suns are in the sky and the earth has been rendered sterile from the overwhelming heat. The wicked creature that ruled the earth before the flood has returned from the abyss to wipe out the animal mistakenly called human.

Ken in Decatur, OH #92 (Banality of daily life)

There's a lot of flooded roads in this county. Been raining for 2 weeks straight, thereabouts. I don't give a fuck. Lost my job 6 months back. I don't have to get out. I've been sitting on the porch in the afternoon, getting shitfaced and watching this whole fucking town get washed away.

Porter in Martin, KY #91 (Hyperreality)

Did the serpent in the garden flood the forest or fertilize the soil? I've seen miracles in muddied water. An old lumbering beast rotting in a shallow pond in the cat tails, thrushes making a nest in his hair. Children crawl from his stomach covered in gore to look for mercy and love in a lost and forsaken world.

Anna Lee in Cayce, South Carolina #90 (Transcendence)

Is that a fire? I set one of those. It has left my bruised vessel in ruin and scorched my broken body. I don't want to feel better. I'm not afraid of the little death that is all of ours to share if we strive to claim the destruction that will be our salvation.

Willy in Lafeyette, Louisiana #89 (Sorrow)

Frost and weeds arriving to strangle and lacerate the flowers. The frailty and innocence of Bellworts fills me with horror and a kind of somber awe. Man's estate.

Katherine in Rockville, MD #88 (Sexuality)

Hands between her legs. Out bodies throbbing with love. I lick and kiss her thighs while she pinches my erect nipples. She turns me toward the walls of the cave and claws my back with her jagged nails. These are the kind of things I dream of. The fall of man.

Angela in Elizabeth, OH #87 (Sorrow)

Water flowin toward my loss. My girl on the banks of Storm's Creek after a heavy rain. Wonder if she saw her reflection in that muddy water? I was yellin at her from across the yard while I was weedin the garden “Get away from that Crick, girl; you're like to get kilt” and as I was yellin I saw her lean over too far and get pult into that surgin creek. They found her face down and on the shores of the lake with algae and frogs eggs in her hair and spirit delivered from this world.

Kelly in Teays Valley, WV #86 (Dreams)

I had a dream last night about an aged preacher trying to plant a garden in a cemetery in Mexico; tearing into the barren desert floor with a rusted pitchfork. The sky was shuddering like film that was decaying and the preacher sat down on a tombstone. He started speaking in a grave, moving Southern dialect but I forgot most of what he told me. The last thing I can remember him saying before I woke up shook me in a profound way: “Be the announcement of God's love.” I woke up feeling incapable of doing that.

Larry in Kitts Hill, OH #85 (Self Evaluation)

You know that dog that's blind in one eye, always on Rosewood Drive eating trash? That's me. Wandering this world without vision or meaning, just trying to not get killed.

Antipater in Cimmeria #84 (Fairy Tales)

I saw father in a waking vision this morning
He was standing on the deck of a ship with no crew
Traversing a throbbing, turbulent, limitless sea

He called out to me over the hiss of waves:
“You are slumbering in a land that will remain dark
Until ecstasy nests in your lonesome body

The knights have been killed in foreign lands
The king enjoys the quiet sorrow of his empire
My tired body has been broken against rocks

No one is returning to bring the light
Call if forth from yourself in the endless night”
(Kelsey Bee)

Elpis in Cimmeria #83 (Fairy Tales)

Cleansed of my body by shrieking, supernal waves
As I tried to swim toward that distant homeland
Where the earth is ravaged by gentle love and light
And the children are both sea and horizon

Fish my decaying body from the raging sea
Resurrection; crops bursting from stony winter ground
Cleaving, like sturdy vines to the stakes of endless life
Learning to love in the darkness as well as the daylight
(Kelsey Bee)

Hypatia in Cimmeria #82 (Fairy Tales)

I dip my hands into the River of Life that flows
So surely and swiftly from a source inside myself
Gather hush from moonlight and silence from the water
Smear mud in my wound, the primitive wound of birth

Release the rabid, savage beasts from their prison
Shatter the tablets of the law, tear down the idols
Set fire to the city in my ravaged heart
And learn to live in the ruin and the rubble
(Kelsey Bee)

Xenon in Cimmeria #81 (Fairy Tales)

Wash the dead man's blood from my hair in the creek
Hold me so close, I feel like dying
Aged hands clasping by fire's ancient light
Hold me so close, I feel like dying

Chased through dead forests, hunted by dogs
Hold me so close, I'm afraid of dying
Bruised by the cold and starving to death
Hold me so close, I'm afraid of dying
(Kelsey Bee)

Theron in Cimmeria #80 (Fairy Tales)

Press my eyes, sister
and force me to drink poison and grief
Until I have visions
Of the land where we go to be redeemed

Mother and father
Have taught us the value of sorrow and longing
I came to understand
Renewal, earth, menstruation, pistil and stamen

Salvation is in the dirt
That nourishes the seed and not the flower blooming
Blooming is just
The first graceful flush that conceals decay and rebirth
(Kelsey Bee)

Zopyros in Cimmeria #79 (Fairy Tales)

Moonlight. Let's have more than our share of the night.
Swallow it, take in huge lungfuls until we gasp for air.
When you kiss my frozen, blue lips and a death blooms
You'll finally know how sorrowful are the ways of man.

Touch that child's hand, see him pull away?
There's bile in his vomit and blood from his anus
flows into the reckless, lonesome river of night.
You finally know how sorrowful are the ways of man.
(Kelsey Bee)

Sophus in Cimmeria #78 (Fairy Tales)

I sleep face down in a pond
Bulrushes sprouting from an old wound
A sora gracefully lands on a stem
With a baby serpent in it's bill
Hops down and beats it lifeless
Against my emaciated body
(Kelsey Bee)

Thais in Cimmeria #77 (Fairy Tales)

Hunger and thirst and longing, Mother
Naked feet on the frozen winter ground
Ravenously drinking from mud puddles
Hands broken and torn by labor and lack

I've been killed by father in the forest
He threw my tiny body in a blackberry bush
Thrushes that nested in my heart resurrected me
And I returned home to lay primroses at daddy's feet
(Kelsey Bee)

Pelagia in Cimmeria #76 (Fairy Tales)

Sister waits in the clearing with Plague and Famine
For the dark red Harvest moon of God's love
To ravage her flesh like a rabid animal
And annihilate the world of man inside her

A cathedral is being erected in her heart by unseen hands
Spires meant to pull suns from their orbit
A child who died is lying on the cold, stone floor
and wild animals are devouring the body in a frenzy
(Kelsey Bee)

Nereus in Cimmeria #75 (Fairy Tales)

On the road I met a god with burnt black skin
and the symbol of a full moon on her forehead
She asked if I could cure her of her godhood

I pulled her close to me and caressed her
Ran my mouth over her wounds and scars
And loosened the solar systems tangled in her pubic hair

She gave birth to a disfigured, strangled child
Who rose from the temporal valleys of death
and sat on her lap while she gently wept
(Kelsey Bee)

Hagne in Cimmeria #74 (Fairy Tales)

Mother and father are hunting for me
But I'm hidden where they can't search
I'm concealed in the stinging nettles and thorns
And the deranged ecstasy of endless night

Corruption and birds of prey sleep next to me
And I drink blood with wild dogs
The gentle decay of Autumn
Trees and animals dying
(Kelsey Bee)

Sergei Eros in Nature's Fatal Shadow #73 (Love)

Lost
Hells of human beings leading underground
Lost
The Luceferic “I” doesn't want to be found
Lost
Erect phallus, Santa Maria's kiss
Lost
Uncontrolled passion, orchestra of the abyss
Lost
Cursed blood and black moon chants
Lost
Witches sabbath and the savage dance

Found
The incarnate Christ on the Jordan's shore
Found
Seminal atoms unlocking Monserrat's door
Found
The serpent of embraces who binds and unites
Found
The serpent ascends to heal the Israelites
Found
God in the sun of the Nazarenes
Found
Bird and serpents coupling to redeem

(Sergei Eros)

Sergei Eros in the atomic hell of human beings #72 (Love)

Lilith howling in pain
created for the abyss
Disfigurement, desolation
and a thousand mouths to kiss
She lays you down next to her
You feel the rock cut into your back
You feel loneliness and hunger
Longing and less and loss and lack

Chorus:
Hands to tear and wound
Mouths to bite and chew


Crawling from an ancient river
She causes the waters to flood
Watch that muddy, violent water
Run red with her menstrual blood
Her mouth on your sexual organ
You can hear the dark, throbbing call:
“Chastity is a crime here
Fornication is law”
Chorus
(Sergei Eros)

Eleanor in Clearwater, FL #71 (Transcendence)

I was born lame. I always thought love would heal me. From the act of believing that love was capable of healing, I became entirely well in a timeless area in me that was beyond my self.

Vince in Frankfurt, KY #70 (Dreams)

I joined an Antiochan Orthodox Church near my home some weeks back because I had begun to feel alone with my love for God and that feeling of being so intimately fused was almost too heavy a burden to bear. I sat through the liturgy, felt quite welcomed by the congregation but somewhere inside I felt this barren, broken feeling when I was in the Cathedral. A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was struggling up a craggy hill with thousands of other people who were cloaked in an otherwordly silence. When I finally managed to climb to the top, all I could see in the distance were many more treacherous hills with many more thousands of people climbing them. I woke up and sat on the edge of the bed; thought about hurling myself out of the window. I wondered if my longing for joy and unity wasn't a sterile, false bond put in place to try and make man feel less alone and if maybe God and vitality could only be found in solitude and sorrow?

Lykos in Cimmeria #69 (Fairy Tale)

I asked the night sky
Where has the sun gone
How come He takes away his light?
The dark birdsong of grackles
Moon's fatal glow on the spikenard cluster
I've drank from the endless sea of longing and night
(Kelsey Bee)

Diodotus in Cimmeria #68 (Fairy Tale)

My mother told me a story about a child who could fly to try and comfort me and help me fall asleep. Instead it made me melancholy. I pretended I was slumbering and when she left my room I wrote this poem about him:
"It breaks my heart
to see him flying around
When I feel so low
down here on the ground
Falling lifeless from dead branches
Starlings and thrushes
Who in the haze of eternal night
Ate berries from Buckthorn bushes"
(Kelsey Bee)

Epiktetos in Cimmeria #67 (Fairy Tale)

Sister is lost in the Boreal Wood
Barn swallow nesting in her icy heart
Flown North with the wind to mate
Secret blossoming in tiny wombs

Her body decaying in the Roseroot leaves
Search for her in the darkness
And you find migrating birds flying
into thorns and bodies in torment
(Kelsey Bee)

Acacius in Cimmeria #66 (Fairy Tale)

Animals coupling
in the darkest forest
Bite. Blood mixes
with savage blood
How can someone
love me, mother?
There is no me
to love.

(Kelsey Bee)

Jeremy in Mount Airy, North Carolina #65 (Rage)

You're a mediocre human being; a dilettante in everything you do. You're unable to give of yourself; you can only give the illusion that you are. This is why you are and will remain a stunted person, an aborted human being who is mutilated and mutilates as they pass through this world. (Anthony Washburn)

Becky in Dunbar, WV #64 (Self Evaluation)

I have my grandmother's cheekbones. The gaunt face of someone who submits to life. Her renunciation was loving and mine is devotion to myself and fear. (Chris Hodge)

Luc in Deering, OH #63 (Love)

My dark heart calls for blood; calls to the lonesome and desperate to devour it and become inflamed with terrifying and redemptive love.

Paul in Allentown, Pennsylvania #62 (Hyperreality)

That girl with the high forehead who is standing in the parking lot with her boyfriend has a nest of yellow jackets in her throat.

Allison in Fairfax, Virginia #61 (Violence)

I shot him twice in the chest. He slumped to the floor. I laid my head on his chest and my hair soaked up his savage blood.

Samantha in Bend, Oregon #60 (Sorrow)

Life hasn't been too kind to any of my brothers. One of them died in a drug deal gone wrong. The second killed his wife when he found her with another man; he's serving a mandatory 40 years in the pen. My youngest brother got leukemia when he was 8 and died 6 months later.

Ansel in Hazard, Kentucky #59 (Self evaulation)

I flatter the devil with every word that comes out of my mouth. I looked in the mirror a couple days ago and I saw leprosy eating away at my skin. I started clawing at my face, trying to find the person I was underneath all the layers of atrocity and pain. I ended up just scratching my face up pretty bad; nothing really changed. Hardly anything ever does.

Elizabeth in Ogden, Utah #58 (Dreams)

I have a recurring dream where I'm sitting on the hood of a 94 Dodge Shadow that is driving down the highway at a dangerous speed weaving in and out of traffic. My legs are spread and I'm topless. With one hand I'm squeezing my nipple and with the other I'm fingering myself. When I try to look back and see who's driving the car, I always wake up.

Clemencia in Chiapa, Mexico #57 (Sorrow)

Life has teeth to chew up girls like me. When you think about me you think about my big red lips on your lips and my hands on your body and my crotch writhing in the darkest moonlight and calling you by your secret name saying: "fuck me." (Christopher Feltner)

Abri in Port Elizabeth, South Africa #56 (Love)

I was wise enough to no longer expect your letters but when I gave up hope for them I gave up something vitally alive inside myself. When you stopped gorging yourself on my flesh you had learn to love my failures and my frailties instead of my strengths and successes and you were unable to do so.

Mercedes in Beckley, West Virginia #55 (Sorrow)

I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks before my 16th birthday. The daddy was a shit for brains 18 year old drop out who talked me into snorting oxycontin at a party and then fucked me when I was half out of it. God there's a sort of sick loneliness in this world and even when my mom and daddy and that fucking junkie were desperately trying to talk me into having an abortion I kept thinking about how it was gonna be nice it was gonna be to always have someone with me that I love. In the soft glow of an early fall evening I was carrying groceries in and felt this cramping pain in my stomach and I collapsed in the driveway. My mom called an ambulance and they hauled me off to the hospital; the whole way there I was hemorrhaging this rusty brown blood and crying softly as I felt my child dying in my agonized womb. When I got to the hospital, the doctor told us what I already knew: I'd lost my baby. That pill head fuck up really dodged a bullet when he knocked me up, huh? (Chris Hodge)

Ferdinand in Pasadena, California #54 (Rage)

Your well will dry up, it's easily exhausted. You'll find yourself a wilted thorn bush, your outer appearance mirroring your inner ugliness; fat, poked with purplish veins and cellulite, adipose and formless drooping flesh masquerading as breasts and the coarse hair on your face that macrocosmically represents the tiny hairs that cover the bodies of winged insects that spread pestilence and plague by virtue of their uncleanliness. A fitting comparison; you're rotting inside, your breath stinking of disease and inward death. Your kiss is like devouring rancid meat.

David in Mitchell, South Dakota #53 (Self evaluation)

My dad almost always came home from work drunk and saying real weird stuff. He never hurt any of us or got mean or violent; he was just talkative, I guess you'd say. There's one thing he said to me when I was 11 that stuck with me. We had just gotten finished eating dinner and I asked him if it was OK if I went to watch TV in my room and instead of answering me, he put his hand on my shoulder and said: "Son, don't believe people when they tell you to love other people and try to live a good life. It's just some bullshit they drill into you. That's all you'll hear when you grow up; bullshit to make you a productive, easily managed member of the community. Life's more complicated than that. I've looked all over the world and inside myself for what they call love and mercy and I haven't found it anywhere, so I really think that it's just some fairy tale they try and sell you that you need to wake up from. Be a better man than I am, don't let them throttle your humanity out of you."

Marcus in Regina, Canada #52 (Redemption)

Only a wounded physician can hope to heal. Someone who has experienced the hurt things inside man and knows where to direct his scalpel; someone who knows what to remove and what can be saved. I've drank from the galling cup of sorrow, swallowed pain to it's dregs. I want to be healed and I want to heal.

Chuluun in Darvi, Mongolia #51 (Sexuality)

As the full moon rises I'm reminded of your menstruation and I drink from the great river of blood gushing from your ovaries. (Billy Pizarro)

Bao in Hong Kong #50 (Love)

I searched for someone to fall asleep in and I found you. When I finally awoke, I realized I was in the wrong place and lost in an immense desert with no food or water. As hope finally left me and I knew I was going to die from my thirst, I found the freedom and exhilaration that I had been so desperately seeking. The ecstasy of being lost to this world; so lost that all search would be fruitless.

Timothy in Issano, Guyana #49 (Transcendence)

If I have to hear another complacent pig's claim to enlightenment I'm going to puke my fucking guts out. I moved down here to get away from that. My allegiance is with the lost, the desperate, the failures, the traitors; people who understand that transcendence isn't a commodity and doesn't come without a thousand difficult renunciations, including the renunciation of yourself. I'm looking forward to disappearing from the face of this earth. I think I'll just stay here and become a savage; eat human flesh, destroy the false civilization I was born into inside myself.

Vladimir in Voronezh, Russia #48 (God)

...and God cloaked in the measureless mysteries of heaven and time without end must have shattered his Divine heart when He made form from Chaos. A heart has to broken to spill it's contents and so we're the blood of God's wounded, lonesome heart.

Leon in Rome, Georgia #47 (Love)

I sware to Christ that woman is never gonna bear me a child. If you did an ultrasound of her womb, I just bet you'd only find anthracite developing in those caverns she has up her crotch. Even so, when I pull down her dress and rediscover the mystery of her ancient black aureolas and swollen nipples my heart throbs with painful love. (Pony Bones)

Elijah in Rome, Georgia #46 (Hyperreality)

I got lost when I was hiking near Keowa falls and had to make camp in the forest at night. I got shook from my muggy slumber by the sound of female laughter and the smell of flesh being burnt. I crawled out from under my sleeping bag and saw a bonfire in a clearing in the distance. There were several women circling the blaze waving something in the air and chanting in a low, deranged monotone. I crept through that dark forest so that I could get a closer look. The women had stakes in their hands and they had placed the heads of men on the point and the men's bodies were roasting in the fire. One of them called out: "let's throw the heads in the creek and watch them flow to the river of life" and they made started to make their way through the darkness in a frenzy toward that unnamed stream. Me? I got the fuck out of there. (Pony Bones)

Frank in Rome, Georgia #45 (Visions)

I was driving back from my aunt's house on Kingston highway really late last night and I heard this sound like hundreds of thousands of people were screaming and the deafening blare of trumpets. I knew it was Gabriel's horn and God's army preparing to destroy the lost creature called man. I pulled my car over and headed out into the woods to wait for the end of the natural world. (Pony Bones)

Gale in Rome, Georgia #44 (Violence)

My ex boyfriend used to hit animals with his car on purpose. One day he was driving me to work at Pizza Hut and he hit this puppy who wandered out into the road. I thought about just getting out of the car and walking to work but I didn't because I was always afraid of him. (Pony Bones)

Kari in Stavanger, Norway #43 (Love)

I came from a dark and ancient land to demand shocking, shameless love from you; love that is frightening because of it's validity. You withdrew from me when you began experiencing the pain of losing your self, the pain that borders the vast frontier of love without end. (Billy Pizarro)

Amy in Tallahassee, Florida #42 (Self evaluation)

Mimosa trees remind me of where I came from but they can't follow me where I've gone: into the darkness of the outer world away from myself and away from my salvation that I've incidentally forsaken with my brutal, willful ignorance and fear of pain. I must have been planted to flower annually but I wither in the howling temperature of love.

Edgar in Toledo, Ohio #41 (?)

I'm writing a paper on medieval Christianity for a university course. Here's what I have so far, let me know what you think: "The basic Medieval attitude is one of reverence, not because life wasn't harsh or that the wrath of God didn't stalk the earth but because they had to come to accept even these as something miraculous and moving and speaking of the Divinity. Everything throbbing with love and misery under the sun had a secret name and in their innocence and purity they were frightened to speak it or even know it."

Agata in Arica, Chile #40 (Love)

It must feel good to be the transgressor; I envy your lack of empathy and your disregard for my pain. To imagine that I could hurt you like you do me causes waves of dark pleasure to vibrate through my body.

Stelios in Thessaloniki, Greece #39 (Transcendence)

There's a fucking dreadful sameness in this world. People seeking comfort, trying to do anything they can to not feel bad. Mediocrity. I don't want to feel better. I'm not afraid of the little pain and the little death that accompany my blooming in the silent, everlasting stillness of the darkest most sacred night.

Elliot in Rome, Georgia #38 (Self Evaluation)

It's hard to believe that I was made in God's image. Arrogance, disgust and rage. I see myself in past lives. Always alone, sick with melancholy and living meaninglessly. (Pony Bones)

Stanley in Rome, Georgia #37 (Sexuality)

When she brought my lunch to work she put an envelope in the bag that had several of her pubic hairs and a photo of her laying in bed wearing a fishnet dress with no panties on. She waited at my desk for me to open the envelope and I looked up after examining it's contents to see her smiling. She held her hand out and I took it; she led me to the bathroom and locked the door. She unbuckled my pants and pulled out my pecker and started jerking me off. I pulled her shirt off and unfastened her bra; I slowly kissed her nipples and slid my hand up her skirt to grab her buttocks. I pulled her panties down, picked her up underneath the thighs and slammed her against the wall. She pulled me inside her and we fucked like the first sinners in this ecstatic world. (Pony Bones)

Paul in Birmingham, Alabama #36 (Transcendence)

The reptilian brain is aged, rigid and can only conceive of a decaying reptile god. I want to kill the dying serpent god in me that serves a civilization in ruins. I want to be reborn into an almost painful flood of light that shocks and awakens with it's auroral, everlasting fullness. (Lance)

Alan in Prophetstown, Indiana #35 (Hyperreality)

I woke up to the sound of screaming two nights ago. I looked out my bedroom window and saw a mob of people about to sacrifice a teenage girl in my backyard. They had her splayed out on my patio table with three of them holding her down while one of them brandished a bowie knife. As he was raising it to plunge into her, I opened my window and yelled out "I'm gonna call the police" to which they replied "Do you want our crops to die? If so, go ahead and call them." We need a good corn yield this year so I shut my window and curled up next to my girlfriend in bed.

Dolores in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin #34 (Sorrow)

I haven't left my apartment in 3 years. My dad does my grocery shopping and runs my errands but he's getting older and I worry about what I'll do when he passes. I was married to a prison guard for 6 years and he used to beat me for exercise. Beat me cause food was overcooked, cause I put a glass on the table without a coaster, cause I couldn't bear him children. Everyone around us knew what was happening; it's like we were watching a train heading toward a bridge that was out but we were powerless to stop it. So fear just became a part of my life until I finally had a nervous breakdown. He left me and I went to stay with my dad. My step mom got "tired of living with a crazy person" so dad rented me an apartment downtown. I'm looking out the window now; we got 6 inches of snow last night.

Andrea in Lawrence, Kansas #33 (Dreams)

I saw my mom in a dream last night. I dreamt that doctors could bring somebody back to life for a few minutes and me and my husband decided to do that for mom because I really longed to talk to her again. They unearthed her from this great tomb where the doctors told me that everyone in the world was now buried. They sat her in this metal chair and she sat there quiet and grave. I asked her if she could see us and she said no, she couldn't see us. I kept trying to ask her questions about the other world and she'd give me brief, vague answers. She didn't seem too interested in talking with me but was really excited to talk with my husband. Finally, I said "mom, it's time to go back" and she said she was ready and happy to be going back. I woke up and felt more grief than I had ever known was possible.

Imen in Tunis, Tunisia #32 (Love)

I don't want you to ever experience the kind of pain that my love for you brings me. I do hope that someday you can love someone as much as I love you and I suppose that this sort of reckless, ghastly love calls for sacrifices on the altar to the dark and handsome god within us that both tears our breasts and makes us whole. (Billy Pizarro)

Otis in Rome, Georgia #31 (Dreams)

I had a dream about you last night. You were laying on a bed in the middle of the woods at night. Encircling the bed was a fire that never dwindled or grew larger. I could see you off in the distance and struggled through the briars and foliage until I reached the edge of the fire. You called to me from the midst of those flames and told me that this kind of fire won't burn me and I crossed the threshold of the blaze. I found you so full of longing and tenderness, nude with your legs arched. I crawled into bed and we coupled. After we finished I took your hand and told you I was gonna take you from this lonesome forest and you shook your head and answered that you couldn't leave because this was your homeland and the world that doesn't end. I put my head in my hands and softly wept. I woke up crying like that. (Pony Bones)

Scott in Rome, Georgia #30 (Hyperreality)

I was called from a vivid nightmare where I was swallowing iron ore and the pitch black misery that being a created thing entails yesterday morning by a piercing bird call. A large black bird with passion red trimming on the tips of his wings and a knife sharp bill had perched on my bed post. I was seized by terror and couldn't move. He hopped up on my bed until he rested on my abdomen. He plunged his beak into my yielding flesh and I shrieked with pain. He gored me, ravenously swallowing all my grief and agony until there wasn't anything left of me. (Pony Bones)

Christine in Rome, Georgia #29 (Self Evaluation)

I'm the tares among the wheat, the seed that fell among the thorns. I wandered through the thicket at night driven by hunger and thirst and harrowing hallucinations until I found the sea. I stared out at the expanse of reckless water, forever thrashing and foaming and stretching from horizon to horizon. Even there I saw an end. And so, I understood that hell is not being able to perceive eternity in all things and knew that I was destined to wander longer in fearsome lands. (Pony Bones)

Edward in Rome, Georgia #28 (Violence)

Here's a beatitude for you: when I was 7 I strangled a little girl in my neighborhood just to see what killing somebody felt like. Never got caught and never lost a minute's sleep over it. Never felt God's love and never went looking for it. (Pony Bones)

Sandy in Rome, Georgia #27 (Sorrow)

I wish I could drink from the river of forgetfulness and oblivion that flows through the endless underworld. I'd forget about daddy's hands on my young body in the darkest hour of the night. I'd try to forget about all the meanness and savagery in people's hearts so maybe I'd be cleansed of all my disgust and feeling of being fucked and ravaged and annihilated by the hands of man. (Pony Bones)

Chelsea in Rome, Georgia #26 (Self Evaluation)

God has poor representatives on this earth. I'm one of them. No love, no mercy, no goodness; that's me. Just nights without end, false suns and dead rituals. (Pony Bones)

Solomon in Rome, Georgia #25 (Visions)

I had a waking vision of the end of the mortal world. I was on my knees in a never ending desert and I somehow understood that I was the last man on this sorrowful earth. There were menacing gray clouds in the sky and behind them there was a red yellow flickering of a great blaze like the heavens themselves were on fire. The earth split open and there was a great sea filled with the blood of beasts stretching before me. I jumped in that sea and swam toward eternity. (Pony Bones)

Lilya in Minsk, Belarus #24 (Love)

At the beginning of a thing is it's end. Just past the kiss and first flush of love are the tears and the sorrow of knowing that your heart is too arid to love another person. There's a vast continent in my body where my love for you was. (Billy Pizarro)

Alex in San Jose, Costa Rica #23 (Self evaluation)

I moved down here 6 months ago from Missouri, thought I'd try to start a new life. I end up following myself everywhere I go, though. I've never been able to outrun myself yet. When I wake up in the morning and go to wash my face in the sink that same motherfucker in the mirror is staring back at me. Being away from home and having so much time to myself has made me sure of one thing: there's something in this world that everyone else experiences that I'll never be a part of.

Amber in Rome, Georgia #22 (Sorrow)

Life's harshness has affected one of the girls in my foster home differently than it has me. She's duplicitous and cunning and although she's brutal, her violence is subtle. The family dog killed a possum and laid it at her feet. Her face grimaces with pain when she is asleep. I compulsively wipe my hands on my skirt. I knot up the material with my hands and wring it through my tense fingers. (Pony Bones)

Edward in Rome, Georgia #21 (Hyperreality)

I'll kiss your eyes but they're closed. When I was 11 years old I saw my neighbor die. He clutched his broken heart and fell backwards through his screen door. They buried him in the street and covered his body with asphalt. The smell was intoxicating and sensual. (Pony Bones)

Arch in Rome, Georgia #20 (Sexuality)

Piss is running down my pale legs. Every time I see flesh exposed it makes me come, come, come. I get so excited when I masturbate that I piss all over myself. I wish I could locate the dark fields where your arteries form. I love those deep blue rivers. (Pony Bones)

Sandra in Rome, Georgia #19 (Violence)

His wound was as large as a star. Every time he coughed, a river of blood would strangle him. I drove him as fast as I could on the highway at night. He never took his eyes off the red blinking lights from the radio tower. (Pony Bones)

Andrew in Rome, Georgia #18 (Love)

Her bruise is gold That means it's starting to heal Bathtub Your sweat My hand between your legs A very soft slow kiss Our arms are bound When we wake up from our sleep Blood on your lips My skin Our bodies in bed I'll stay in you Your bruise is on my waist too (Pony Bones)

Mark in Rome, Georgia #17 (Hyperreality)

I saw a little dead girl in the forest this morning. She was gathering little blue and yellow flowers for her mother so that her tears will be less bitter. (Pony Bones)

Karen in Rome, Georgia #16 (Violence)

I walked to the gas station across the road from the shelter to get a pack of smokes. The cashier looked at me funny. Yeah, that's right bitch; he beat the shit out of me again and now my face is all fucked up. You ain't gonna win any fucking beauty prizes yourself, with or without two black eyes. (Pony Bones)

Thomas in Rome, Georgia #15 (Banality of daily life)

My car broke down in the Taco Bell parking lot and I called for a tow truck. The driver and I made friendly chit chat while I rode with him to the garage. He said he was getting off work and asked if I wanted to go get a beer. After a few drinks, he asked if I wanted to do some more drinking back at his place and I agreed. We were sitting on his couch talking bullshit and he started rubbing my thighs. I let him take my shirt and pants off, responded to his kiss and his frenzied hands searching for my body for pleasure. He pulled me into his bedroom and climbed on top of me. While he flopped around on top of me my mind wandered. I looked around his filthy room and then out the window at the darkening winter sky. (Pony Bones)

Anna in Butte, Montana #14 (Hyperreality)

I saw a really bad wreck on the way to the grocery store this morning. A beast with 5 heads, each with a mouth full of blasphemies emerged from the underworld to destroy the lost creature called man. A semi truck collided with the creature as it stalked State Route 188 looking for mothers to violate and children to disembowel. The beast was instantly destroyed but the semi driver lived and crawled from his cabin to ravenously drink the beast's blood. (Mutwawa)

Ploy in Phuket, Thailand #13 (Unrequited Love)

Waiting for him In the afternoon Wait for his flesh for his blotchy red arms Damp with my sweat Body brown from the sun I wait in bed All alone with my pain Under the thin, blue sheets With my hand between my legs The fact that he doesn't show Doesn't break my lonely heart It's just that it represents the more universal theme of abandonment and isolation (Roger Young)

Arthur near Dayton, OH #12 (Sexuality)

My girlfriend and I are gonna get married when I get back from my overseas trip. We're staying in a motel near the airport because I have an early flight. She's sitting at the edge of the pool dangling her feet in the water and smoking a cigarette. God, I long for her flesh. I take her by the hand and we go back to the room. Just past the threshold, I grab her from behind and pull her swimsuit bottoms down. My hand slides between her legs while she leans over the bed and takes off her bikini top. She turns around and shoves her tongue down my throat while she grabs my stiff member. I mount her and our bodies are fused and frantically searching for ecstasy and other worlds.

Rupert in Munich, Germany #11 (Violence)

I set a fire in my bedroom last night and those flames rose to swallow our home. My mother and baby sister died in the blaze. Dad asked me why I did it and instead of answering him I looked out the window at the leafless, gnarled branches of a dead tree bathed in moonlight. (C Lavender

Samuel in Brisbane, Australia #10 (rewriting pop songs)

We get more horseshit pop music from the states over here than you'd believe and I hear my share because this girl I work with has it blaring all day at her desk. I really hate that fucking Maroon 5 song “One More Night” so I thought to rewrite it and left my revision on her desk as I was leaving for her to discover in the morning: “One more night/ Of living meaninglessly/ Your fat body/ Forever longing to have/ the loneliness fucked out of it/ One more night/ of living in the corporeal world/ Passionless and lukewarm/ Loveless and not loving/ Always away from/ yourself and others"

Michael in Pittsburgh, PA #9 (Grief)

I was diagnosed with stage 3 Carcinoma 6 months ago. It was small cell, so the doctor's didn't recommend an operation. I've been through 3 rounds of chemo and after this latest round they did a Pet Scan. The cancer had metastasized; migrated to my Pancreas. I got so tired of watching my wife struggle to care for me, so I checked myself into the hospital. It's right by the river and in the evenings I go out to watch that dark water endlessly flowing. I wonder about it's source and the destination it rushes to. (Kris Perry)

Eduardo in Rosario, Argentina #8 (Violence)

That scumbag my sister married beat her for the last time yesterday evening. She came over bruised and bloody; clothes torn. My nephew and niece were with her. I comforted her afflicted heart, laid them to rest in my bed and found him staggering out of some rough little bar. I picked up a large, jagged rock from the street, ran up to him and started smashing his fucking face in; by the time they pulled me off of him his face was mangled and unrecognizable. God, there's some kind of deep wickedness and a sense of something that's been lost and won't ever be found on this earth.

Lloyd in Dumas, Texas #7 (Redemption)

"You little fucking shithead, if ye ain't your father's boy then ye prolly sprang from the loins of the devil hisself. Yer idle and full of meanness and yer gonna cover this world in shit an ugliness jus like your daddy before ye." That's what momma was like. Used ta lock me in the attic when she had a mind to and sometimes she'd just leave for days when she got in one a her moods. I'm gonna be differnt than that with my kids. I'm gonna try ta make this broken world a little less lonesome for them; try to see to it they're not as lost as their daddy is. Try to make the miraculous mystery of life everlastin hard and real for them.

Tomas in Ensenada, Mexico #6 (Comic and the absurd)

Came home and found a giant pile of steaming human shit on my mattress. Went to the icebox to have a beer and calm down and found a piece of paper with a drawing of arched legs with flaming red genitals in the center with an X through them drawn violently with Permanent Marker. There was a caption that read: "I hope it was worth it!" Guess I'm never going to learn to keep my fucking dick in my pants or my stupid fucking mouth shut. (Jeff James)

Frederick in St Paul, Minnesota #5 (Banality of daily life)

These two younger guys wearing orange hunter's ski masks broke into our apartment when I was at work. My wife came back from her mother's and surprised them. One of them shot her in the stomach and the other started screaming at him "What the fuck are you doing? Let's just get the fuck out of here." She's in intensive care but she's been conscious a few times and was able to give a description of them. (Josh Black)

Jeannie in Pocotella, Idaho #4 (Violence)

How do we kill this world in ourselves? My husband is upstairs, shot through the throat with a revolver and my boy is drowned in the bathtub. I'm sitting in the driveway with the car running and the snow pouring from the white winter sky thinking hard about the pathless road to God. Salvation. (Mark Johnson)

Micah in Summit, KY #3 (Violence)

Aint never had a fuckin hard day in your life, have ye? Never been beaten like a dog and had your face ground down in the gravel till you beg for the kind of mercy that doesn't exist in this broken world. I sure as fuck have and I thank the Allmighty for ever beatin I ever got; beat all tha sentiment and worldliness and hope out of me. My stepdaddy used ta beat me every day jus for exercise and that brutality jus became a part of my life. I kindly wondered if God might come and fill all tha ugly spaces inside me but he jus never did, now I'm out there somewheres in the cold night hurtin someone like I've been hurt. (Harry Cloud)

Alexandria in Rennes, France #2 (Sexuality)

There's a lamp at the edge of our bed. I'm sitting next to it with my panties off, smoking a cigarette and waiting for him to come home. I anticipate the savage pleasure that his body will bring me and I slowly glide my ring and middle fingers in and out of my secret wound until I throb with ecstasy. I hear him open the front door and I put the the cigarette out, prop myself up on my elbows and ache for his caress. Joy of man's desiring. (Christopher Feltner)

Stuart in Augusta, Georgia #1 (Dreams)

Had a dream last night that I was back in my grandfather's old house. I was asleep in the bed in the basement and my grandmother who died 6 years back slowly descended the stairs with a vase that didn't have anything in it. I tried to speak to her as she approached but I couldn't produce anything other than these paine, moaning sounds and I realized that these sorrowful calls were my grief over her death. She laid down in bed next to me and touched my face and I started crying softly. Overwhelmed with my loss, I leapt out of bed, opened the sliding glass door and ran out into the muggy summer night until I reached the banks of the creek that bordered their land. First light was breaking through the night sky and about a hundred yards East there were 3 dogs tearing viciously at a dead body that looked a little like our neighbor. I jumped in that creek and never came back up for air. (Microwave Windows)