I heard you were lost

Pressed against California costs

Learning what my brother did at twenty-six,

Out in Houston, Texas

where my essence

Is.

Paranoid

So I mold this clay chest,

push ups

and

bar hangs

Stars

fade

and

I play

Words

From the ancients.

All at once:

I was a Mustang

swerving

off the road,

..… a comet …..

only seen through your

peripherals

The whining voice at the brink of exhaustion.

I carve impatience from my baggy

E y e s

Laugh

again and again

Yet I feel that ache

Thumping like sickly love,

mistrust cycling ventricles:

It's never that simple.

Doctors say I'm stressed

Something chasing my bloodline

Exposed veins shine like sacrificial cliffs

Golden rocks with newly blazed moss:

I am bleeding and burning,

Loving

You

sprinting paycheck

after paycheck.

You

Fall

So

Beautifully

From your family tree

Tumbling rapidly in fields of yesterday:

Green eyes undulating like rolling wet film

Flames like sea walls

d i v i d e d

Slowly lashing as i walk impatient

Talk until my lips shut.

December 2012

At the church

Last walk of my light

Vigils lit with tender glows

As if that night we were invited;

A family torn to three

Granted one last chance at humanity.

Without

a

L

I

F

E

L

I

N

E

I find my honest self….

blood scurrying past my face

slowing enveloped

in your sins

Wonder what you were like at 23,

What you fought for before you

Vanished.

I seek life in every breath

Take steps to my origins

Wish to extinguish

Your

Image

.

. . .

.

.

En mis sueños te veo pa

Alli estoy enfrente de la tele

y tú con el cuchillo en la mano

¡Y la sangre!

El día que nunca se va de mi memoria

me despierto con tu cara

En el espejo,

Mideo ardiendo a traves

De mis ojos.

Escucho tu voz pa

Hablando de Morelia,

Y tu infancia.

Mi hermano mayor es tu reflejo

Y yo

Una sombra de tu personaje.

No sé si te volveré a ver

pero sé que nunca olvidaré

los años que tuvimos.

for better or worse.

Foreword

Dear reader, before you dive into the crazy world of Bozo’s adventures, let me share something funny. At first, our hero’s name might seem harmless and even a bit silly. However, if you speak Georgian, get ready — this word takes on a completely different meaning.

But don’t rush to get upset or close this book! These little language surprises are what make the world of stories so exciting. As they say, "What’s funny in one language might be confusing in another."

So, forget about being serious. Open your heart to humor, absurdity, and… zucchinis! This story isn’t meant to be deep, but it’s sure to make you smile.

Enjoy reading, and cheers to unexpected coincidences!

The Adventures of Bozo and the Zucchini

Bozo wasn’t just a weirdo. He was the neighborhood’s official supplier of nonsense. One day, he decided that his true calling was to become a chef — even though his only dish, a burnt fried egg, made his neighbors cry. Out of fear.

“A genius doesn’t wait to be understood!” Bozo declared and headed to the town fair with a giant zucchini he named “The Zucchini Avenger.”

At the fair, Bozo told everyone that his zucchini was a superweapon capable of scaring away evil spirits… and tax collectors. The crowd chuckled, until Bozo started a demonstration. He climbed onto the stage, swung the zucchini, and accidentally hit a giant pie meant for the baking contest.

The pie exploded. Layers of dough, berries, and cream flew everywhere. The respected mayor ended up with a face full of cream, looking like he’d tried on a new mask. Meanwhile, old Mrs. Maggie, who hated pies, shouted, “Now this is entertainment!”

Realizing things were going downhill fast, Bozo grabbed a microphone and announced, “This is not just a pie — it’s modern art! I call it ‘Berry Celebration with Zucchini.’”

The crowd froze. The mayor wiped cream from his face and said, “This… is brilliant!”

From that day on, Bozo became a local legend. And the Zucchini Avenger? It was pickled and sold at a charity auction for a record price. Because Bozo proved that even complete nonsense can be a success — as long as you present it with confidence.

© 2024 Victoria Lunar. All rights reserved.

Mirrors

at the banks

we're counting sand

counting by the bag

Some call it sport

and say it's good

for the mussels

that surface

then like bags

under the eyes

in morning light

ready for us

old birds to pluck

in a clear yule tide broth.

"How many shells, Artie,

have you got?"

"Just enough, Debra."

"For a necklace?"

"No, an anklet."

"It'll do..."

and we shuffle

to the safe

cause the crossfire

is fast setting

in, in Twilight

"Well, well what do

we have here?"

says the teller

and we know

we can't cheat

the central clock

"This is all we've got,"

setting our bags

on the counter

Artie wipes

our glasses down

and we peer

at our loss

"It's been a good time."

"Aye Debra, it has."

11.25.2024

Word Challenge @Knox

Today my sister called me a girl

There was a shock

as if the whole world had faded in an instant

then I had to drive

and pretend like nothing had happened

because, in everyone else's eyes, nothing did.

Seek not the sublimation of weakness—

detest only that which is not truly the self.

Hunt the false lessons.

It is not of me

and will not be harbored within my being.

Intend to fire a bearing

along the faultlines of hate,

to the heart of the matter.

Always trust hate:

our stalwart burden

and most truthful servant.

I came in from the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains

Through blizzards and savage animals called humans

They tried to kill me for my food

And I outfoxed them all

Some froze to death trying to overcome me

In deep snow drifts

Others starved themselves trying to take my food

I crossed great empty deserted desert plains

And wandered across rivers big

Streams and lakes I crossed fluid

Some frozen hard

Wretched winds blew against my cold uncovered face

And would have gotten frostbite if it weren’t for my furs

Beaver, mink and fox

The wolf I wouldn’t kill, it became my only friend

Even from a distance he kept me company

As I’d sit around a 14,000 foot elevation fire

Smoking tobacco and drinking salvaged whiskey

From unattended camps

Staying far away from man’s cities and roads

As best as I could

The wolf would come and peer at me through the dark

As I warmed around my fire

His yellow eyes reflecting wanting a piece of me

Or my meal

Of killed grouse or deer

Which I’d share with him and his mate

The she wolf staying clear

The pair would follow me for miles

And then drop off when I’d leave the boundaries

Of their territories

To the eastern edge of the mighty Sierra Nevada

I came

Looked at it’s dry and deadly peaks

In the midst of August its killer heat

Formidable but I’d find a pass in dead of night

A speck in feared Man’s horizon

A bullet whizzed over my head

I jumped for cover in the brush

My heart beating fast and hard

Another hit a patch by my feet

I lost my care and jumped up and ran

Through the dark and cold altitude night

He or they pursued me up

Until I fell into a gulch

I waited and could hear the approach

Of this specter assassin of who knows where

I could smell his sweat as he came close

Hear his breathing near the edge

I grabbed my Wesson and aimed at him

With starlight and dim fingernail of moon

His shadow couldn’t catch my sight

Shot his head and shadow fell

I grabbed my self and picked me up

Crawled and trudged over there

Feeling in the dark with none else there

But the form, the corpse of him

Who would have killed me for who knows what

He lay there faceless, smelled of death

Didn’t bother trying who it was

Simply grabbed his rifle

And threw it down

The dark chasm of the gulch I’d been

Heard it tumble crack and drown

In the hole that saved me from

A stalker, human man

Hunting me like I were a dog

On and on through the night

I found my way far from that sight

My heart was beating from the pain

Of having killed one like me

Yet feeling glad I’d left his stain

There on the ridge to keep

His flesh for wolves and bones to bleach

Signpost scattered murderous remains

Under the heavens as the mark of Cain

And further proof of my plight of run

From enemy man whose ways I’ve spurned

I am the scoundrel

Set on coals...

Came in to sear my fat...

I always pay the toll...

After a yawning transfixed

Gap

In conversation...

Cosmic slant...

You'd come to say with eyes...

Goodbye...

Goodbye...

Goodbye...

There was a world behind,

Cinched suffering

That's tightly wound,

And all that lies above

Is buried 6 feet

Underground...

And all that lies above

Is buried underground...

You made a beeline for

A circumcision of the truth...

What tempted out your ghost

Was reconvening on my roof...

This wraith...this power slave

That called out from it's awful roost

Was what the deprived pixie dust

Had slathered out in sheer disdain

Of mirror cracks

And candle wax, and all white walls

Where orphaned port

Holes breed...

I am the scoundrel

Set on coals...

Came in to sear my fat...

I always pay the toll...

We talked and swung

Under a dying twilight star...

Your hungry lighthouse heart

Beamed out like headlights

On a roving phantom car

That flickered in and out of

Physical existence while so desperately

I clung to steering wheel...

You'd come to say with eyes...

Goodbye...

Goodbye...

Goodbye...

There was a world behind,

Cinched suffering

That's tightly wound,

And all that lies above

Is buried 6 feet

Underground...

And all that lies above

Is buried underground...

11/25/24

Bunny Villaire

"Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with differences."__Lois Lowry, The Giver

The small single-person capsule sliced it's way across the cold, soundless, vacume of space. Inside its cockpit a young man of about 24, Scott Hughes was boiling over with excitement. He was approaching the goal of his starry excursion!

It was designated XP3609 in the boring scientific manner; to everybody else including Hughes it was called Neo Terra. The planet appeared Earth-like so someone was needed to explore it. Scott Hughes jumped at the chance.

Neo Terra, like Earth, was the third planet from its sun. This fascinated the Earthling who wondered if The Almighty made every habbital planet the third from its sun. This train of thought of course assumed the planet was indeed inhabited. He certainly believed it could be.

There were those who believed it might not be. Heck there were still those who believed space was fake and that the Earth was flat. At this moment there were people sitting on the couch at home who were utterly convinced that Scott's entire profession was a sham cooked up in a movie studio by shadowy forces.

The sudden wailing of a sensor brought the space man's attention to a small screen to his left. Three boggies became visible. "Hot Dog!" he exclaimed as he ran a hand through his blond feuxhawk.

He looked out of the metallic cigar's bubble canopy and saw triangular, black objects speeding toward him from near the planet's atmosphere. From the nose of each there was a yellowish flash and then the poor spacecraft was buffeted.

The astronaut realized with a sense of dread that he'd been fired upon! The spaceship became a missile as it dipped downward and plummeted through the planet's atmosphere turning into a scorching hot projectile. Hughes made the sign of the Cross and blacked out.

Hughes regained consciousness to the sound of a dozen beeping, wailing, alarms. He shut them off so he could think. Right now he felt like Fred Flintstone after a long day at the quarry. His hand retrieved a cellphone looking device from a pouch on his spacesuit. He pressed a button and was enveloped in blue beam of light.

He looked down at the read out and was relieved. He'd be sore for a while but had suffered no serious external or internal injuries. The next phase would have been to launch a probe and see if he could breath this world's air but the ship was so mangled the hatch wouldn't open and it took great effort for Scott to open the ship's canopy and when he did tiny fractures formed a network in the glass.

The radio was shot too so no phoning home. With a great sigh the spaceman exited his derelict ship and threw on his heat resistant, orange poncho. Only now did he discover something amiss with his vision that the med-scan didn't register. He could see just fine except there was no color. He felt like he was in a sci-fi movie serial from the 1940's. Everything was in black and white. He'd have to wait until later to figure out what happened to his peepers. He saw a civilization of some sort in the distance. He'd have to make his way there.

He didn't get the chance, for a skiff of some sort zoomed to the crash site and he was grabbed by armored humanoids. He was shocked by this and also that he could understand them. "Farbo-1547 reporting in. We have the shades bearer."

"The what now?" A big beefy hand smacked him to the metallic floor the skiff. He took it as signal to shut up.

Many of his hours later Scott sat alone in a darkened prison cell within the Ministry of Planetary Unity, this world's religious order & governing body. He'd been taken prisoner and was hauled before the beaurcratic clergy. He learned then that his vision was perfectly fine. The words of that hooded council still boomed in his ears.

"Your eyes do not decive you. We rid this world of color long ago, Outworlder. Colors made things look desirable to others and this caused wars and strife.

"If all looks the same then nothing is more desirable than another, thus no one covets what he cannot have. No man is ostracized because he looks different than another man. In this we've eliminated racial division and greed."

So appreance was not the only thing he had in common with the denizens of Neo Terra. They had similar issues throughout their history and were just as eager to make everyone forget them.

"But how did you erase color from this world?"

"We did not erase it! We simply made it unseeable. Our Wisemen constructed a great platform just outside the boundaries of our world's sky it allows our master star to beam upon our world without it creating color.

"Such was the Will of The Cosmic Master."

"Was it his will or the will of a political hierarchy of religious zealots?"

That was the question that had caused him to be dragged down here and beaten until his bones nearly broke. He was a heretic and blasphemer. He was the Shades bearer. This was a universal label given to anyone from "the color worlds."

Scott Hughes got the uneasy feeling that these beings didn't last long. It was plain the Ministry was corrupted or at least sorely misguided. Colors were the devil & anyone who might introduce the concept back into play were demons. Not even the workers at the station above were aloud to see color; they wore lenses that prevented them from doing so.

Scott recalled reading a story one time, HP Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space. it was about a purple fog that corrupted all it touched. That is what he was to these people.

Foot steps on the hard Rock floor ended his contemplation. "Who's there?"

"Chribissa, Daughter of Holy Jailer Gruvod. I come bearing your evening meal, OffWorlder."

She slid it through a slot in the door. He was happy he couldn't see what color it was. "Is it true you are from a world of color?" she asked, her voice inquisitive.

"Yes."

"It must be dreadful."

"No. Color is wonderful. It's so wonderful that we named a fruit after it's color, Orange."

"How can something wicked be so wonderful?"

Yikes. That was a question that cut deep. Scott saw in his mind the first ever woman on Earth sinking her teeth into a piece of fruit that was off limits.

"Color is not wicked, Chribissa. It was created by God to be enjoyed! He even used a prism of colors to seal a pact with an ancient man on my World."

"Who is God? He must be truly evil if he created colors."

"I think your people call him the Cosmic Master."

She grew indignant,"Cease this blasphemy at once. The Cosmic Master willed for colors to be taken away that all might be unified! He wouldn't will it gone if he created it!"

"Haven't you at least wondered what you look like? In color I mean. What complexion is your skin? What hair shade do you possess. Aren't you the least bit curious?"

"No! That is vanity. I'll not be swayed from my faith by a shades bearer!"

She stormed off and Scott tasted his food and discovered it was agreeable.

That night he thought about the irony of his surname, Hughes which sound like hues. Yes! Surely this was no accident. He knew what he must do. He also knew it would mean him giving up his life. His Savior had dine that for him centuries ago so could he be expected to do less?

Days later he managed to escape on his way to final sentencing and he hijacked one of the military craft. He was piloting the alien tech on pure instinct. He wondered as the craft lifted up if was one of the trio that shot him down.

The ship soared into the sky like a raptor bird in flight. It didn't take long for others to pursue but he out paced them. His face was grim and his teeth were gritted. He pierced the stratosphere and saw the space platform he had come to destroy! It was a marvel. It was basically the galactic equivalent to a black and white camera. He rushed forward and crashed into the platform. It exploded into oblivion carrying him and the Ministry's blind devotees into the Afterlife.

Down below color returned to Neo Terra for the first time in centuries. It nearly blinded the inhabitants but their eyes soon adjusted. For 23 Earth minutes the entire planet was silent.

It is the nature of things that when you give someone something they've been deprived of for so long they usually lash out at those who deprived them of it in the first place. Such was the fate Benito Mussolini and such was the fate of the Ministry of Planetary Unity. Their followers turned on them like starving junk yard dogs and red was reintroduced to that planet via blood. Away from the chaos of the burning temple a certain jailer's daughter saw herself reflected in blue pool of water surrounded by green gras s. Her skin was milky and her hair the color of the night sky and she cried out, "I'M BEAUTIFUL! I AM BEAUTIFUL!"