Petrified Heart
Love has damaged me and I don't know if it has forever ruined my heart,
Though scars now define me,
This sets me apart,
These old wounds must heal,
I must make a fresh start,
My choices are many,
It's like "Love À la cart,"
Still, love has damaged me,
It has hardened my scarred heart,
Never to know love again,
With a petrified heart.
The Feast
Surrounded by darkness, she moves through the night,
Awaiting the arrival of the lost soul;
Silently, easily, cat's eyes sharp and bright,
She discovers its presence, as black as coal.
She adds it to the collection in her home,
Tying it firmly so it will never roam;
She'll wait for the lean months, and then she will feed,
Its incorporeal flesh filling her need.
[This is a hendecasyllabic rispetto, something I've never tried before. Feedback welcomed.]
i am worth more than
something
(about you)
makes me feel that
i am worth more than
this body
is not a home.
sick about the way that
these veins are all open roads
vulnerable, fragile
the way that my heart feels
(about you)
i do not know
how to form the words
without them coming out
like static electricity
coursing through
never ending, it's never
(about you)
ending the way that
i want it to be
(about you)
but it's supposed to be
about me
and how i am worth more
than just... being
about you.
A Samurai’s Twisted Sunset (excerpt)
Kind then Cruel
Paper leaflets rain down
with less substance than
the ashes of a butterfly -but their potential
holds more weight than the
half-life of two doomed cities.
Track Endings
“I should have ….” Ji ji sighs.
“Coward. You’d never do it,” Baba says.
“I’m no coward,” Ji ji growls.
The 5:15 roars towards them.
“Banzai!” Ji ji screams, living exactly 1.2 seconds.
Baba keeps a still face only smiling briefly when the first check arrives.
bullet train screams
by dust and porn mag
pages swirl morning departs quick
*Note: Ji ji and Baba are slightly derogatory or childish terms in Japanese meaning old man and old woman
Sun Blisters
The brutal August heat of Nagoya feels like it is tearing the flesh from my body as the sweat rolls down my face and evaporates as quickly as the Japanese phrases I thought I’d put to memory moments ago.
A blue and white city bus rumbles up to the curb; a stream of orange Kanji and Hiragana race across the LCD reader on the front of the bus. I wait for the English then climb aboard. I take a seat by the window wondering if I’ll be sitting alone today.
Soon the bus is filled with the tired faces of early rising salary men dressed in dark blue and black business suits. They chat listlessly or read the newspaper in the aisle and seats around me. A squared faced man sits next to me so close I can smell his hairspray and the lingering cigarette smoke.
Looking out the window I see an old woman standing on the curb at the number seven stall. She is hunchbacked and her torso is nearly parallel with the sidewalk. In her left hand, she holds an unfurled white umbrella above her head that casts a tiny shadow along her body. For a second as the bus pulls away, I catch her eyes; two brown rocks sweltering in the heat. In her eyes, all I see are questions, something like,
“Can I live through another summer?
If you enjoyed this excerpt please check out other books by Steve B Howard at the links below.
More books by Steve B. Howard
The Adamantine River Passage
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1988214130/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_gnEizbJV0K6ZK
Cobweb Stories http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y7FPX74
Things You Ran From http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y4VQR3U
A Samurai's Twisted Sunset http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WQGHGL2
All Kobo Books except for The Dead Along the River Speak to Me are currently FREE!!!!
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-dead-along-the-river-speak-to-me
The Dead Along the River Speak to Me
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-dead-along-the-river-speak-to-me
Infinity
I have known minutes that cut like knives,
And seconds that stretched to the horizon and back.
Once, there were a pair of big green eyes
That looked like all the tomorrows I could ever want.
The road ends. Suns set. The fire dies.
This angry churning ember inside me does not.
When I stand on the edge of the precipice
And look out across the disconsolate sea
And look in across the disconsolate me
I understand
And I expand to fill infinity.
She Was Friday
I’m getting antsy. Because I haven’t killed anyone since last Friday, my need for power and dominance is building up to a crescendo. I get in my car; well, actually it is my former girlfriend’s car but she is already dead. To make a long story short, she was Friday. I always labeled my victims by the day of the week that they met their end. The moon is behind dark clouds as I peer through the dead of night to find my next victim. I am excited and quite titillated when I see a young woman at the side of the road looking in frustration at her flat tire.
Her leather mini skirt is hiked up to spotlight her rounded ass as she bends over the tire. But it doesn’t really matter what a woman looks like because it’s feeling control that turns me on and the rest doesn’t really concern me. I am superior and I will show her how to tremble and fear me until the last drop of her blood has leaked out onto the ground. I shiver in anticipation as I pull to a stop behind her and get out of my car. “Do you need help, I ask?”
With a helpless smile on her face, she simpers, “I can’t get the lug nuts to loosen. Would you mind trying?”
She hands me a flashlight and I get down on my haunches to take a look. I turn back to reassure her that I will be able to take care of it and I can see right up her skirt. She’s not wearing panties. This is really going to be an exciting evening. I turn back to her car and she says in her sweet voice, “Here’s a lug wrench that you can use.” That is the last thing I ever know as she smashes the wrench down on my head so forcefully that pieces of bone and brain matter spray in a pink misted arc.
I am now somewhere up above, looking down at the bloody scene and can see a big smile turning up the corners of her lush mouth as she says, “He is Monday!”