Author: Fatesjoke

I am the product of drunken sex, of parents that never knew love and a childhood laced with pain. Never a place to call home, my parent’s marriage quickly broken. Memories are all that remain. Forward moving, I build from the remains and find validation in the act of sex, never realizing that I am …

A lover for a rotation of the moon nothing more, consumption may be filling but just a taste is always better, save your simple words for a simple soul because this is complicated and my mind is an intricate tangle of webs left by the souls of spiders that I stole as a child and …

A sunny day alone in the woods, I think of the time my father walked by my side. Down the trails we went, when I was just a boy. Time spent with my father, doing things men do together. Walking up the steep hills, jumping over fallen logs, stomping through mud. Laughing together and breaking …

click, click clack click       click tick, tock tip tap click       tap tick, tock tick, tock tip, tap click click click clack tip, tap tip       tap tip               tip tip                             tip tock

His leg          l            e              a                n                  s                  against the chair next to him. He leaves it there,       using arms to propel him       to the counter       asking for ice. And I notice       his     shoes          do not match.

So many last kisses, too many goodbyes… Each one the last, “never again” I say as the door closes. As I moved out of our apartment Before I left for work one morning Dropping you off, after the abortion When I let you get your stuff out of storage In our home, begging for one …

Oh, you foul little organ. How I loath you and yet love you all the same. My Jesus, my Judas; my savior and my betrayer. You have brought tears and screams with your vitiligo covered length, bathed in blood and innocent flesh. You have brought life into this world and have caused me to wish …

The winter of my happiness saw the frost penetrate to my core. Another season passing to mark another cycle of my life. It always goes this way though, doesn’t it? Spring gives birth and life, summer a time to celebrate and bask in the sunlight of bliss, as we wait for the inevitable coming of …

Tomorrow is never the day that I think it will be; I always wake up and the world keeps turning, people still draw breath and the questions are still there, waiting to be answered. For every beat of your heart, for every time you inhale, there is something left unsaid until the unspoken words fill …

As it appears in the 2013 edition of The American River Review. Darryl Strawberry was my hero. I remember watching, as he became human on the nightly news programs. I never replaced him as my idol, heroes had no meaning after that, hearts break from more than love. Of all the loves I have had …