Unsteady The Course By JPR

Codeine kept the train rolling, as the booze just oiled the gears. While those chance encounters fueled flames of a nonexistent passion.

That billows a smokestack’s tracing reminder of that which is a thriving future’s ghost within the making.

The sparks in vain are my attempts at a delusion.
That I was ever truly in control.

The edge is blissful, the crash just a consequence of this existence I chose.

Monsters are nurtured through the bastards of malice as eventually the lash reassembles a familiar burden and cherished scar.

It used to be an accessory, now it resembles more of a crutch.

Pick your poison with your burial plot.
Last stop: another flower bedded within the stone garden’s memorial.

Worship false Gods, never lost souls and broken artists.

What used to be, are but remnants of good intentions and sorrowful regrets.

None of which is left of me.

JPR, is a southern gothic writer. His work has been published in Horror Sleaze Trash, Piker Press, Disturb The Universe, The Dope Fiend Daily, Spill The Words, Impspired Magazine and Fearless Poetry Zine.

His work is always unfiltered.

It Is What I’ve Become By Jimmy Broccoli

I wake up in my own vomit –

It’s on my shirt - it is all over much of my pants

and all over the floor around me –

it’s beneath me – I’ve been laying in it all night -

I wake up in my own vomit because that is what I do now

It is who I’ve become…

 

I’m lying in my living room floor face down and don’t remember coming home

“Fucking Hell”, I say aloud to a room empty, other than me –

I don’t even have a dog…

 

The motherfucking next-morning mirror doesn’t lie –

I look like fucking shit – my reflection is an advertisement for being a fucking loser –

I am not mis-categorizing myself – I know what I am

____

 

“Another pint, love?”, I say to the bartender –

She looks at me with a sideways glance –

“Just one more, love” I say – “then I’ll be on my way” –

She smiles and I tip her a fiver

 

As a boy I played with tiny cars –

metal, some of the doors opened –

and I played with trucks –

trucks that went over sand and mud in the backyard –

I played trucks and cars with my dad –

He died a few years ago

– we didn’t speak for years – but he tried – he did his best –

I have no remaining ill-feelings towards him –

he tried. and I loved him, I suppose –

it’s what we do, I think

 

“Last call” the bartender announces to the few of us left…

I walk home slowly because the world seems a bit of a blur –

Tomorrow I’ll wake up to a spinning room – I’ll wake up to vomit –

because that is what I do now – that is who I am –

and I’m okay with that – I’ve come to terms with it

____

 

“I wish your life was better”, the man says – and I can barely hear him…

“I’m okay mate”, I respond as I try to get up from the sidewalk – and I’m squinting because the morning sun is fucking bright as fuck –

“I’ll take you home”, he says – “what is your address?”

“Cheers”, I say – and this is the last memory I have until I wake in my bed

 

It’s a fucking workday – I’m late, but I make it…

My boss is all up in her tits and I don’t know how to respond –

“Fucking hell”, I say – and it doesn’t go over well –

An early day home for using profanity at work – I’m okay with that –

I stop by the mini-market for a bottle – no, I stop by the mini-market for 2

“I fucking got this”, I tell myself aloud as I walk home

“life isn’t fucking shit”, I say aloud – and I’m not convincing anyone…

____

 

The neighbor’s dog is fucking loud as fuck in the morning –

barking like fucking titties in a fucking twist –

“Shut up”, I respond – “shut the motherfuck up”, I say –

 – and the dog continues to bark…

“I need a fucking drink” I say aloud

 

It’s Thursday, and I’m sober until the end of the workday –

On my way home I stop at the pub –

“A double”, I say as I pull bills from my pocket –

“A double?”, the bartender asks, as she looks at me like she’s worried

“I’m okay, love”, I respond to a question that wasn’t asked

I light a cig and look out the pub window as if there is a purpose to look out the window

____

 

“It’s because I’ve got a big motherfucking dick” I say to the small congregation around the bar

“That’s it!”, the bartender says as she escorts me to the front door –

“I can’t help that I’ve got a big motherfucking dick”, I slur –

she smiles at me like she’s empathizing with a dog –

“Okay”, I say – and, then, I stumble home

Because that is what I do nowadays

It is who I’ve become

____

 

It’s 4:00 pm and I’m off work early for appearing intoxicated on the job –

“I’ll have a double”, I tell the bartender –

She looks at me, hesitantly, and smiles –

“Okay”, she says – “one, and then you go home…”

“Yeah, one”, I say – and I almost hold to my commitment

 

It would be different now if he had breathed –

So different now if his breath hadn’t stopped –

If I didn’t see my newborn son turning blue…

And have to watch his mother fall apart as I was falling apart –

If he was still with us…

If only he was still here –

Fucking hell. Fucking fuck all of it.

Fucking fuck it – fuck all of it

He isn’t here anymore – she isn’t here any longer –

Why? Just why?

“A second one, love?”, I ask – and she pours me a second with an empathetic grin…

She smiles at me – and it’s the highlight of my day

____

 

Sometimes there is nothing a man can do –

Sometimes the way things are – are the way things are –

A fucking short draw of the fucking straw

 

I watched his face turn blue…

 

“A double”, I request – and she smiles and prepares my drink –

“You be careful”, she suggests – and I tell her I will be –

“An’ no more talkin’ about your knob to the other customers, eh?”, she follows with a smile

“Yeah, I can do that”, I reply

 

There will be vomit on my shirt tonight – and on my pants –

and all over my wooden floors -

If I remember how I got home, I’ll be lucky –

And I don’t care – I don’t really fucking care –

His face turned blue – and he died – and she left me

 

It’s who I am –

It’s what I’ve become

 

It is what I’ve become –

And that is just how it is

Jimmy is the author of three poetry collections, "Damaged", "Rabbits", and "Boy". He enjoys walks along the beach and playing with puppies".

Project of a Lifetime By Taylor Dibbert

He underestimated
The damage that
The gaslighter
Had done,
She told him she was
Getting better
And healing up,
She told him
That the gaslighter
Was firmly in the
Rearview mirror,
Where ex-husbands belong,
And now that he’s
An ex-husband,
He knows that
The reality
Was always
Far more complicated
And that
Recovering from
A toxic relationship
Is the project
Of a lifetime.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. He’s author of the Peace Corps memoir “Fiesta of Sunset,” and the forthcoming poetry collection “Home Again.”

Relics Of A Forgotten Trial By JPR

 

Do you desire her confession even if it means her blasphemy?

Stacked or stretched, hung from the rafters.

If the pain is exquisite we shall admit any truth as the guise of the father is a poison of  non-acceptance. 

History does not lie as we choose to bury what does not suit the false product we sell.

How many did they murder in the name of mass insanity?
Love is not fire’s brutality, as to erase is the nature of the scourge that is the lie-forged truths of so-called organized religion.

Lust is nature to take in dungeons what should be embraced underneath the full moon embrace as the Goddess is equal in truth what the ignorant will always fear.

What is free in spirit will always be held within contempt of the repressed.

Dance, my children, around the flames to embrace the night and lives past.

Dance to spite the true pestilence of that which must exist in past tears of bound oppression to remind us.

Mass logic is suicide to all original thought.
Remain free and forgive nothing.

JPR is a southern gothic writer his work has approached in Fixator Press, Piker Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Red Fez, Fearless Poetry Zine, Disturb The Universe, Sava Press and The Dope Fiend Daily.

Underneath Black Sails By JPR

Sailing towards infinite horizons, to take, never to ask.

The enslaved fear, as is their nature of their idiotic devotion.

Freedom is within the wind's uncertain destiny.

Gods within nature, never a looming immortal’s throne.

Dark skies promise nothing but always favor the bold.

For a wolf commands respect and hate equally.

Violence is a tool wielded correctly.

Is used sparingly for its promise leads even bitter hearts to take caution.

Love is but an ember of a fool's fire whose thirst.

Leads them to drink from a beautiful chalice filled only with a salt water's promise.

The seas command only themselves, as do I equally in return.

Sunsets are but markers to a journey that knows the uncertainty of a mortal's desires.

Truth is a constant, time forever an enemy.

Choose wisely your direction.

The compass eternal never does lie.

JPR is a southern gothic writer.

His work has been published in Svartedauden Zine, Piker Press, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Fixator Press, Spill The Words Press, Sava Press, Fearless Poetry Zine and here at The Dope Fiend Daily.

His work is often dark and always unfiltered.

Benediction By B. Lynne Zika

For six days I’ve laid abed,

nursing pillow and blanket,

waiting for the air to say, “Get up!”

No calendar calls me.

Each time I practice the delicate catechism of silence,

another word slips away.

On the sixth morning

I march the interminable driveway

to park garbage pails two feet from the edge of the road.

When Evan wakes, pulls on his coveralls,

kisses his sleeping wife,

eases slipping gears into first, second, third,

pulls up beside the curb of 3817

and lifts the lids,

no two-week-old stench will assault him

or leave his wife shouting, “Go bathe!”

when he walks in the door at six.

That is all.

Let the gods decide if it’s enough.

B. Lynne Zika is an award-winning poet and photographer and a retired editor of closed-captioning. Her father, also a writer/poet, bequeathed her this advice: Make every word count.

Coffin Rock / Within The Bottle By John Patrick Robbins

There exists my escape as there lies my demon's embrace that beacons for my return.

Seduction is within the eyes as my freedoms are locked within this ever tortured skull.

So I believe I will grab a hammer as I strike until I desecrate my canvas.

In dark tides slow albeit steady arrival I sit upon this dead-end shore.

A prisoner to my own process, a slave to choices that slither ever silently.

I can spawn chaos and ultimately destruction of oneself is a truth's ultimate course.

You desire that which I cannot control.

A straight razors surrender to the passion spilled.

Why paint in black and grays when I can just as easily paint with your blood.

Linger upon this mortal precipice to awake broken, to admire the byproduct of my destruction.

It lingers with me as its promise of death holds no illusion.

The killers allure, the poisons fire.

It all awaits as often demons do.

This battle is far beyond me.

For my fate was sealed within the flames from the start.

Where there is smoke, there most certainly is...

JPR, is a southern gothic writer this is his work and that is all he cares to share beyond this point.

Past victems list.

Disturb The Universe, Medusa's Kitchen, Fearless Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, Punk Noir Magazine, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Piker Press, Spill The Words, Impspired Magazine, The Dope Fiend Daily, Sava Press.