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)