The lights brighten and the crowd cheers over the sound of the opening music.

"It's time to play Family Feud!" shouts the announcer. "Give it up for Steve Harvey!"

A man in a handsome suit steps out. He smiles at the crowd before him, his instruments of justice, keen to mete out their cruel punishment of public humiliation. As much as he loved his job in the old days, influencing history in the worst and best of ways, he also loves his new, streamlined process, and working with the public rather than against it.

God of Family Feuds and Avenger of Evil Deeds

Sits on the couch,

With a bag of chips,

Watching Sunday football,

A score for his team,

He yells and chips go flying,

And tells a dolphin to bring him more chips,

The other team scores and he stands up,

"NO!!!!!"

He calls for his trident and smashes the TV,

Then he goes to do some fishing.

Minerva was not a princess from a storybook. She knew that. 

She also knew that at one point, when she was small, she had been a true princess. But she was one no longer.

She admired the ones her mother read to her from the thick tome that sat on the sitting room table. She grew curves and sprouted like a beanstalk. Her hair flowed down her back and was often pulled back with a faded pink ribbon. Her mother looked upon her with eyes that seemed to grow more hollow with each passing day. Instead of truly seeing her only daughter grow amongst her sons, brazen and strong, with jeweled irises and black whorls of hair sprouting to their shoulders, she saw her life slip away from her. 

It had already been taken away from her once before.  

 It was intended for their lives to be veneered by normalcy. The weepy town on the outskirts of the kingdom of Lenaria was often undisturbed. The only thing that truly sent ripples through the staunch little compact homes with thatched roofs was the birth of foal to Edward Curr’s brilliant white horse. Horses smelled to Minerva. Her brothers could not get enough of them. 

Then a man with a scarlet cloak came to their door when Minerva was alone, thumbing through the storybook with its stained and yellowed pages. The day was bitterly cold, but she was too lazy and tired to shove her feet within her silken slippers. She opened it without a tinge of caution and was met with the face of a man with whorls of dark hair that fell down to his shoulder and perfectly framed his squared face. His jewled eyes shone brightly in the overcast sunlight; the right was blue, the left was green. His lips split into a careful grin when he gazed into Minerva’s deep brown eyes. 

“Your mother did not lie when she said you would be here.” He told her. He took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re the spitting image of her.”

“Naturally.” Minerva spat dumbly as her tongue went numb. Her heartbeat quickened as she remembered the dagger that sat in the strongbox. 

“You really do not know who I am?” The man’s brows sloped into upturned arcs of disappointment. 

“I know exactly who you are, Father. Don’t come back.” She slammed the door in his face, turned on her heel, and turned her attention back to her storybook.

i was made from pink glass that were drained of manzana, passed by my prima's lips. we sit on our lacquered front porch steps, enclosed with the white picket fences that housewives dreamed of while 

    they smoked Camels at 3 a.m. with their hair in pincurls. 

we dance to cumbia, a beat i can never truly get the root of, because according to maria-jose, with her straight dark hair and her pan moreno skin, that's what she calls herself, i guess. i'm white as the picket fence, of course i can't get the beat, 

    my wings have not yet spread. & i have not learned to fly above the cemented grids of my town & watch as their picketed lives fade away. but my wings have not spread. the skin beneath my premature feathers itches. 

  but i must wait in my white picketed world, myself, for the very right moment, until then i will press my lips to those smooth spigots of pink-glassed bottles & drink the amber blood of apples.

Reading has taught me there is a wick inside your head that you can light at any time, anywhere. You open a book, you light the wick. You walk with the candle through a portal to another dimension inside yourself and into the minds of others-complete strangers. Not only is it informative, educational, expanding that intellectual horizon of yours, it can be fantasy, scary and romantic. It is endless, and it is proof that your mind if infinite like the universe. Reading has saved lives, helped impoverished children pass the time, educated many on how to survive and keep others alive, documented the beginning of time, the generes, the subjects go on and on. It is our way to communicate. We speak, we record, we read, we write, we talk, and the cycle continues. It is written imagination and thought, and power. Our ideas are golden, and no book or work of literature should be banned, censored, or burnt. That is purely criminal. The mind has every right to be liberated through creative expression of written thought. It has no restraints, no one has any right to build a damn across the words that flow from ones mind to paper or electronic device. There is a story that has impacted my life, many actually. And most of them are the tales from the Bible. Parables, fables, fiction or non, what have you, you can't deny they are beautiful stories-heroic, inspiring, sad, and encouraging, full of faith and hope and pretty good advice! Any religious or spiritual book I feel is pretty important to help one find their way and guide them throughout this journey every human has to endure and you need these "maps." These tales of hope and perserverance. Of light, and of love, and most importantly of truth. Who to avoid, who to embrace. As a writer too, getting to write and read your own works is very cathartic.

Love and affection

Two of the things I miss

What once was something I was use to getting

Now is no where to be found

It seems so hard to find someone

Who wants the same

With so many out there that’s been hurt

Will there ever be someone that is willing

To take that chance and want to show

That they to want love and affection!?

Never stop looking cause there is someone

Out there that is waiting for you!