Is there anybody hungry?

Is that gnaw even around?

When everybody’s fat

and burger joints abound?

I mean, if addict‘s can score hits

just by standing in a line,

then if anyone’s still hungry

it’s a bureaucratic crime!

Are there any kids still out there

with nutritional wishings?

Can you feel a hunger pang

whist obliviously Twitch-ing?

Or when Welfare pays you better

than the factory down the street,

so you’ve thrown your worthless man away

whose paycheck can’t compete?

And can there still be hunger

in a country so sublime,

that it‘s arming the Israelis

while aiding Palestine?

And if everyone’s invited

cause our borders don’t exist,

should we cry for who is hungry

but who will not dig a ditch?

Forgive me my foolish follies,

I know to you I sound obtuse.

But is emotional intelligence

not put to better use,

by placing useless passions

upon yesterday’s shelf,

and instead giving assistance to he

who cares to help himself?

The face in the fly-specked mirror was a hard one, shaped even meaner by the rusty room. An aura of stagnant humidity lingered behind the stinking mixture of excrement and paper that filled the mineral stained toilet in the graffiti scratched stall; a literal shit-hole. Cyrus Bohannon had recently added his own bloody shat to the odorous pile in the bowl, carefully hovering himself overtop so as not to touch his ass to the filthy seat.

“Perfect!” He cursed aloud. “No hot water!” An undeterred Cyrus shaved in the tepid water anyway, dribbling it disgustedly over his cheap, pink, “toss-away” plastic razor. His toothbrush remained in his pocket, though. He did not pull it out, fearful that somehow the putrid, humid air might carry the shit smell into its bristles. He was successful in washing the sweat from his skin and face, but the tired redness would not rinse from his eyes, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

Cyrus Bohannon’s whole life smelled about like this cankerous Arkansas highway rest stop.

So Cy reached into his other pocket, the one without the toothbrush, removing from it a clear sandwich baggy, the baggie’s bottom a rainbow of colorful pills. His arthritic hands split one of the capsules in two rather deftly before pouring the powdered contents of each half into the hollow made at the base of his left thumb and index finger before tossing the empty halves into the sink’s trickle. Lastly, Cyrus Bohannon lowered his face into the powder and inhaled deeply, feeling the burn that sucked through his nostrils until came the familiar acidic drip down the back of his throat that preceded the rush.

The sun was bright upon re-entering the world, so Cyrus squinted into it, using a hand to shield his raw and red-rimmed eyes. Worn boot heels gave the old man an uncomfortable looking, bow-legged stride, or maybe that was the hemorrhoids, it would be hard to guess between them if an observer were to try.

Cy climbed up onto the cab’s fuel tank, grasping for the grimy Stuckey’s bag he had shoved between the rig’s seats. There were picnic tables close by the toilets, but Cyrus did not care for company so he found a shaded curb near the rig where he lowered himself gently down to the concrete, mindful of the electric pain from his arse-hole. He gripped the greasy bag tightly in his shaking hands, not really hungry but knowing he needed to eat. That was the problem with the speed, you never, ever felt hungry.

Once seated Cy allowed his eyes to close for the briefest moment. On the highway behind him the hum of tires and throaty roars of the “Big-Rigs” zipped along with a frequent and soothing irregularity, that and a warm sun lulling him despite the jittery-tingle of the pills. In a brief, but vivid dream a blinding silence of snow drifted around the Freight-liner’s cab as it slid down Monteagle while a desperate Cy fought at the wheel, the dream so real that he actually heard the lonely whine of air-brakes squelching high-pitched and hungry just before the crash. At the end Cy lay dead in a twist of metal, but he couldn’t be dead could he? Can you be dead and still feel the heat of the day, or the weight of the crushed door pressing your thigh?

“No, you cannot,” he reasoned. But still there came to him the whoosh-wooshing of passing cars on the highway, so Cy squeezed his eyes tighter yet, wishing to go back to being dead, but he could not ignore the cab door moving against his thigh, pressing harder now. Reluctantly, the “dead” being so peaceful, Cy peeked open his unwilling eyes.

He was surprised to find that it was not the door of the cab pressing against his leg, after all. No, it was a damned dog, a lowly mutt that had crawled its way up beside him while he napped, a damned flea-bag stray! Cy “shoo-ed” it angrily, willing it away. And it did take a wary step back, but it did not go. Instead, it whined… the same whine as the air-brakes in Cy’s dream? Cy “shoo-ed” again, and the dog took another step away to where Cy could get a better look. “Just a damned mutt, spotted brown and white like a Holstein cow, long-eared and long-tongued. Ugly, is what. You are one ugly dog!“

Shamed, the dog took a circle at these denigrations, sitting itself down on Cyrus’ other side, but leaning itself up hard against his right thigh this time.

“Shoo, dog!” He hollered it this time, angrily. Once again the dog stepped off, but not far away. Instead it stretched its nose toward the Stuckey’s bag, eyebrows high and hopeful. Cy noted then how thin it was, even for a dog. He pulled the burger from the bag then, tickled when the dog sat down. Curious, Cy put the burger back in the bag, it amusing him when the dog stood back up. Cyrus took it from the bag again, “hooting” this time when the dog sat down once again.

“Well, how about that?” Cy didn’t even realize in his excitement that he was speaking aloud. He unwrapped the burger now, smiling when the dog sat back down. He took a bite, surprised when there was no reaction from the dog, not even a whimper. Not hungry himself, he pulled the patty from between the buns and tossed it at the dog, who promptly snagged it out of the air and smacked it down.

“Whooeee! I reckon you are a smart dog!” Cyrus took out the french fries next, and tossed them one-by-one at the cur, who yanked each one from the air and smacked them all down, just as it had the meat patty.

Fries gone, Cyrus wadded up the bag. The dog sat.

“That,” Cyrus thought aloud, “is really something! I reckon she knows just when to sit. You are a smart bitch, ain’t you now?”

As if it could help, Cy grabbed at a handful of air, pulling himself with it up from the curb. The dog stood as well. Limping his way towards the Freightliner, he glanced back to see the dog limping along behind. A mini-van sailed by on the highway, its children waving at Cyrus and the dog through its opened windows. Cy found himself waving back, though he wasn’t sure which was more noteworthy; children waving at him, or him waving back?

He climbed into the cab then, settling his hemorrhoids into the warn cloth of the Freight-liner’s seat. Triggered, the big diesel roared beneath his boots, shaking the cab like an atmospheric re-entry. The dog sat hopefully below, patiently, its wide eyes looking up at the driver’s side door. With the hissing of brakes and a grinding of gears the big rig shuddered forward fifty slow feet before the brakes hissed again, lurching the rig to a stop. The man climbed back down and gestured toward the dog, who dropped her ears and trotted happily forward.

At sixty-four years of age Cyrus Bohannon finally caught a break. He found his luck just outside of Little Rock, so that’s what he called her. And so that everyone would know, he painted it beside the Queen of Hearts on either side of his cab:

Cyrus Bohannon

Owner/ Operator

Me and My “Little Rock”

i hope it is set aside, perhaps

a title read and then forgotten.

perhaps it elicits a chuckle

before it is gone.

i hope it never makes it

to poetry-workshop tables

surrounded by grad students

and an over-excited professor

talking about the purposefulness

of my line breaks, the perfection

of my enjambment, the beauty

of my metaphors. what did i mean

by this?

i hope it doesn't keep you up

at night, wondering: is the lowercase

"i" on purpose, a deliberate expression

of melancholy or a demeaning

of the self? or is it just a symptom

of my inability to press the shift key

on my computer, because it

"disrupts my creative flow"

or something?

i hope the internet crashes

and burns

and archeologists in a million years

don't try to piece together

the digital fragments of

these words.

i hope they never teach me

in high school english classes:

analysis of form and figurative language.

here's a simile for you:

this poem is like a snowflake.

good for a moment,

but destined to melt

deep into the soil.

life is only precious 'cause it ends.

this poem is only precious

because it is mundane,

easily buried, easily forgotten.

i am not meant to be the focus of

your life's work. i am meant only as

a product of my own

life's work.

do not analyze me.

there is never only one answer,

never only one interpretation

for who i am

and what i mean.

Guess it’s true what they say

You need to go through shit to keep writing

I can feel it coming back

I’m drinking a lot and writing a lot

I see see something in myself

Something familiar

The only things that never

leave or change

the bottle

and the smoke

How long has it been now

Since I’ve really written

Your youngest is almost 3

So yeah that sounds about right

Almost 3 years that I’ve felt like

I’m in a never ending loop of

pain and heartbreak

Unlike what you may think

You’re not the bad guy in my story

I am

I started this

and didn’t know how to end it

I was too fragile

too delicate

I hope you understand

that I don’t blame you

and that I couldn’t walk away

cause everyone always walked away

and goddamnit I love you

Thank you for never leaving me

and staying through

what I know couldn’t have been easy

Thank for being the one who never really walked away

and just helped me though it

Te amo

Y te amaré siempre

They way you let

your alarm play all the way through

cause you know I like it

When you tell me to look at the time

and I smile before I even look

cause I know what time it is

and what’s on both our minds

I wonder if you know that I smile

a little when I hear your chain

hit the desk when you bring your hand down to type

I smile at what you do next

after you use hand sanitizer

I smile when you push your glasses back

with your finger

I smile at every single little burp

or explosions as you call them

The little things

This is love

I saved two of the cigarettes you gave me

Two

You

and

me

I smoked one tonight

while watching

the sun turn into

the lonely moon

as I try and smoke the monster out

I Killed one

Just like it killed me this Tuesday night

now one remains

I’ll hold on to it

forever

in hopes you come back

to make the pair

and return my heart

They always say

Till death do us part

I’ve always said till life do us part

And it did

I’ve been dead since then

What you see of me now

is just a formality

Hi everyone!

If you follow me on Instagram you may know that I haven't been active on social media (other than here, of course) in... a very long time.

However, my goal for 2025 is to change that. I have several large projects in the works, and I am hoping to rebuild a social media following as I work on actually publishing things.

To that aim, I have made an account on Bluesky that I am aiming to make my main social media profile (again, aside from here!). My username is whitewolfe32 (no links, but should be easy enough to find).

I hope to connect with some of you there!

I breathe in your name

and exhale the memories

The silence tastes like metal

It‘s a harder pill to swallow

than the iron supplements that

make me choke up

Now I just choke up at the thought

of what we could have been

of what I need you to be

of what I could no longer be

I wonder if you hear the moon

screaming your name at night

begging you to hold me tight

My dog is named Sable. She knocks on my door every time she wants to come into my room for the night. She leaves me alone when I'm over stimulated and comforts me when I'm sad. She has been by my side longer than any human and knows me better than my closest friends. She is my companion and my commandant. She is loyal even when I don't deserve it. And, no matter how many times I yell and shout when I get home, just trying to relieve my chest of its burden, I am there for her too, always.