The Man In Wolf's Clothing

  The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Agent Wilbur Mulligan stood at the edge of the shoddy wooden structure, surrounded by what was once a glorious trade port for early Bostonians. He wore a black suit that made him look like he was hunting aliens and always had his butterscotch colored hair perfectly combed to the left. There was a soft April breeze coming from the shore that bore a distinct smell of oils and heat. 
  He heard a car door from up on the highway behind him. The road was about ten feet above the platform on which he stood, making him uncomfortable with any height advantages one would have on him. He focused on the image of the Russian gangster, Isaac Barishnikov, as his face and outfit began to warp. Within a matter of seconds his stature was shorter and rounded. He no longer looked like a six foot two government agent that was designed on a computer. The accents were rough though. It was the only thing he couldn't change. 
  Three men descended the stone stairway to the platform. All three were in business suits harboring handguns. Wilbur stood there looking as disdainful as possible. The men quickly eyes the large silver briefcase at Wilbur's feet. The man in front had blonde hair and piercing green eyes, making him resemble a serpent of some kind. The other two were large and built much like the one in front but there slick brown hair and sunglasses made them seem unreal. 
  Wilbur had contacted these men in search for a lead on the disappearance of his older brother Garrett. Garrett was Wilbur's partner in a private detective agency that they opened after the second Korean war. They were part of a special experimental unit that did super soldier tests in hope to make the perfect insurgence agent. Only five participants lived through the experiments. The project allowed them to reconfigure the cells in there body to match any figure that they've come into contact with. Two of them were killed in the war. Wilbur, Garrett, and an Asian man named Matsuki were the only survivors.
  "Is it all there?" The serpent man asked. Wilbur just smirked and grunted, picking up the case. He clicked it open to reveal $70,000 in cash. The serpent man smiled and motioned for one of his lackeys to produce something from their jacket. The man to his right conjured a small envelope and handed to Wilbur. Wilbur handed over the case and gave a slight bow, bidding the men goodbye.

  He quickly opened the envelope as they left, revealing a large stack of pictures of his brother's head, no longer attached to a body. The pictures also showed a man who had butterscotch hair clutching the severed ligament. It suddenly all made since. They had made more and they wanted Wilbur dead. Then there was a chance that his brother left willingly. There was a chance that he could still fix this.
  Just as he was coming to a conclusion on what to do next, he noticed that there had been no car door shut. The men had not left. Something was wrong. He began shuffling through the pictures of gore and bloodshed. There were easily two hundred pictures. Then he found one with something laced into the back. He flipped it over to reveal a paper charge. Paper charges were an advancement made in counter-insurgence that the American government had employed to take out informants without raising alarm. He dropped the sack and ran over to a nearby hovel of boards and boxes. As he ran he twisted his face into one more dirty and hairy, sliding into the hut as if it was the winning hit of the World Series. There was a drastic pull, and then a pop, as Wilbur was thrown twenty feet into the air, landing hard on a pile of trash behind a warehouse off the port. He heard the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut.

When the Future is Yesterday

  I recently sat in on a magazine presentation. It was a local magazine and they focused on the indigenous people of "417-land", putting a distinction on the people. They work around the clock to produce a work of literature littered with ads and stories and places that rip you from where you are and take you to where you could be. I have a personal affinity for magazines with more educational purposes like TIME or National Geographic and if I had to choose I would much rather work there. With that being said I think there is a beauty in the work that they do. It got me thinking about where I could go.

  Jump forward to next year. I'm drudging through my second semester of college and am in desperate search of love. I don't go to parties so my chances for interaction with the opposing sex is limited. I make do with the income from my part-time job at Family Video and I spend as much time as possible at friends' houses. My ambition is rivaled only by my laziness as I do everything in my power to pass my classes and still be an amateur gamer and writing enthusiast. My diet consists of usual college kid things; pizza, pizza rolls, pizza pockets, pizza sliders, and pizza fries. My depression hasn't fully subsided and some days it is a struggle to get out of bed whereas others I cannot wait to carpe diem. The path to being a teacher is truly ironic to me. I can't wait to be done with school so that I can go and work at a school.

  Four more years pass. I'm finishing my first year teaching at Kickapoo alongside my favorite teachers from when I was here. It is quite different from what I expected. I have both more and less control than previously presumed, and I fear I am not as exquisite as I had planned on being. I get along with the students fine but the computers are showing to be more of a hindrance on my abilities than a help and I'm not sure what I am going to be doing for a living for the rest of my days. I finally acquire a girlfriend and we plan on moving in together within the next month. I have tossed around proposing to her, but I have no idea if I'm ready.

  Tack on five more years. I am almost thirty, married to the love of my life, twin boys with a girl on the way, and life couldn't get any better. I finished my masters in poetry and there is talk of letting me teach a class centered on the subject as a communication arts elective. I have never been so well-respected in my life and I'm not really sure how things got so easy. My house is bigger than I had ever hoped, and I had finally saved up to buy a Porsche. Her name is Virginia and she is electric blue.

  Forty more years go by. I am now sixty-eight years old. I have lived with the death of my wife for thirty-eight years. My kids are all through college and working various jobs. My son Malaki and my daughter Au-Riel are both married but my other son Carter hasn't yet settled down. I retired fifteen years ago and I've never remarried. I got involved in politics and am planning on running for office for Missouri. My books have won various awards and gotten me plenty more death threats. Life is hard again. I am lonely, my kids are gone, my wife is gone, and I am stuck fumbling around, barely being able to wipe my own ass. Somehow I miss the days of ignorance and inspiration. I miss the color and the emotion. I am tired, and every single today makes me miss all of the yesterdays.

Between the Lines

 "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." -William Gibson

  William Gibson is a science-fiction writer who is regarded as the father of cyberpunk and even coined the phrase cyberspace. He was born on March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina. He was the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown", which is made up of the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award, for his novel Neuromancer (1984).

  Neuromancer is a book about a former hacker named Henry Dorsett Chase, who also happens to be a drug addict, that is dragged back into the mix of dastardly deeds involving computers when he is given promises of a repaired self and cures for his addiction.

  I really think that I would enjoy this book because I love scenarios that deal with certain "what if" situations, and I have a personal affinity for all thing related to science-fiction or fantasy, especially when the tone is dark or hyper realistic.

"He heard the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut." -Richard Wright

  Richard Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi on September 4, 1908. He was commonly known for writing controversial pieces of realistic fiction about racial tensions and was believed to have had an impact on racial tension in the mid 20th century.

  His book Native Son (1940), was about a young man named Bigger Thomas who is responsible for taking care of his mother and his siblings during the 1930's and finds himself caught up in an altercation with the law.

  I would most definitely want to read this book due to my passion for knowing everything ever and for the sole fact that it would give me an informed glimpse into the life of a black man during the early 1930's.

K.I.L. Team

  Now was the time. PMB and I were code named the Korean Infiltration Leader team, or K.I.L. team for short. Puppymonkeybaby joined the force three years ago, just after my internship turned into actual employment. We both started as field agents and were quickly placed together. They called me Bull-Moose Party because of my distant relation to Teddy Roosevelt and in part because I look like him. We had now been tasked with dismantling the nuclear situation in North Korea.
  PMB deployed just before me, right above Kijong-Dong. We had received intel that Kim had been using the location as a front for an underground nuclear sight. I grabbed my parachute with a BMP embroidered on the lip, strapped in my .50 cal revolver, and followed suit. It was nighttime and our stealth bomber was nearly invisible. We swiftly descended to the ground and met no opposition. PMB pulled his heat sensing goggles out of his diaper and placed them on his muzzle. He always wore a pink bow on his tail for these missions. He said it gave him good luck. He was easily the greatest agent I'd ever seen.
  After routine checks of a few of the buildings, we found one by the crappy Eiffel Tower rip-off with an elevator. It asked for a key card but PMB ripped out the device and it took us down promptly. Th elevator was see-through so we got a good look at the facility as we descended. There were hundreds of men armed with rocket launchers and hazmat suits. There were three large battle mechs at the far end and a large straight walkway to the control panel for a massive warhead. I knew that we'd have to fight our way through them some way or another.
  I turned to PMB to tell him we should be stealthy but he jumped through the glass before I could. I knew I couldn't let him go in alone so I had to jump out after him. There were flashing lights all over the place. It looked like a silver disco club decorated with a nuclear holocaust. PMB killed seven soldiers before I even hit the ground. They noticed us rather swiftly and began firing missiles at us. Puppymonkeybaby pulled out his gatling gun and began stopping the projectiles mid-flight. I also stopped quite a few with my revolver. After a swift period, we had slain all of the rocket goons.
  Then, not even a split second later, one hundred ninjas appeared from various vents and corridors. PMB and I began sprinting to the missile. He was grabbing swords and slaying ninjas left and right with his inhuman agility, whereas I had to rely on my vastly over sized handgun. The ninjas almost overtook us but PMB finally used his laser vision and finished them off. The ninjas scattered the floor from end to end. Then they began beeping. Every single one was a bomb. PMB activated his super speed and defused all one hundred of the bombs before they could detonate.
  That is when the mechs activated. They were each twelve feet tall and mounted with a gatling gun and rocket launcher. They formed a defensive perimeter around the hundred foot missile. PMB was about to pounce when they all began to move together. They met in the center of the pathway and formed a ring. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Kim Jung-Un himself jumped into the middle of the robots. He was easily ten feet tall himself with a stomach the size of a smart car. He was wearing nothing but a sumo belt bearing the North Korean flag. He extended his arms to either side and fused with the robots. He turned into a twenty foot, mechanized, Korean, ninja, pig. He spawned two eight foot katanas and charged.
  PMB jumped up and pulled his six foot katana from his diaper and engaged the brute. I began running around to the back of the beast but the samurai-like armor seemed to have no weak spots. PMB was holding his own like Yoda fighting Dooku. He was flipping and spinning and cutting. I began firing my Revolver into a small chink under Kim's right arm. The giant began to cry out in pain as PMB followed up by chopping off the ligament. We had gained the upper hand. The robot began trying to step on me out of desperation and I lost my rounded glasses in the tussle.
  Then he picked me up and I thought all was lost. PMB jumped onto his head and stabbed straight down. The body grew limp and fell to the floor. We had won. I ran over and set the bomb to detonate without launching and we climbed out. PMB activated his pocketcopter as we ran and we flew. I heard the explosion in the distance as a single tear fell out of my eye. We sang the "Star Spangled Banner" all the way home.

A Piece On Six Word Memoirs

Caloric intake doesn't mean a thing.

Black, gray, pink; my favorite colors.

Dad is gone, mom isn't here.

Wrenches, screwdrivers, still can't fix it.

A strong mother challenged by Atlas.

They don't get it, do they?

Diving right in. Please love me.

Bones crack below roaring car engines.

Fix son cereal, change the world.

All us nerds will rise up.

Forged in fire, softened by love.

On the Record

"One war at a time." 

-Abraham Lincoln

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." 

-Nelson Mandela

"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." 

-John F. Kennedy

"With great power comes great responsibility." 

-Ben Parker

"Daddy needs to express some rage." 

-Deadpool

"You can't just make me different and leave." 

-Miles Halter

"No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful." 

-Wade Watts

"I've gotta go see about a girl." 

-Sean Maguire

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world." 

-Robin Williams

Writers as Readers

  I'm going to be real here, I'm about to spoil some books into the ground. If you have any desire to read these books without knowing some of the larger plot twists then you should skip the paragraphs beginning with their names. 
  My favorite book is easily Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It is a book about a bunch of nerdy shenanigans between a depressed anti-social gunter with no money and his friends who turn out to be far different and vastly similar all at once. Let us start with your most pertinent question: what in sam hell is a gunter? Well I am going to tell you. In the year of 2012 the OASIS is released. It is a virtual reality gaming system that was designed to be able to grow indefinitely by user contributions. The man who creates it kicks the bucket and leaves all of his fortune to who ever can find the easter egg hidden in the game. The players who seek this out are deemed gunters. This book is my favorite because it is littered with nerdy jokes, nerdy references, nerdy love stories, and nerdy social awkwardness. It is a bundle of joy and despair and badassery that cannot be ignored by modern readers.

  My second favorite book is Looking for Alaska by John Green. When I finished reading Looking for Alaska, I was angry afterwards because that's not how you end a book. You can't kill off my main character's love interest and not provide me with an answer to whether or not it was a suicide. That's just a dick move. In all honesty, the book is beautifully and crudely worded while maintaining the interest of the ignoramus and the intellectual alike. It is a study in love and despair and grieving, taking you through the life of a boy named Miles as he falls in love with a girl, proceeds to make out with the girl, and then falls apart because she dies. Bundles of joy from John Green, folks.
  I think that it is important to read alot because just out of these two books I have received worlds of inspiration. I firmly believe that the more you read the more effectively you write. There is something to be said about the fact that authors like John Green, Ernest Cline, Stephen King, Maya Angelou, John Steinbeck, et cetera, were all well-read. After all, there's no sense in expecting people to read your baffling and bullshit if you aren't willing to step into theirs.

Release of the Lonely

I felt no shame about masturbating. Thanks to Anorak’s Almanac, I now thought of it as a normal bodily function, as necessary and natural as sleeping or eating. 

I've always been one for shock value. Whether it be in the form of comedy or gratuitous horror, I have found it to be a necessity that you do something to maintain a reader's attention. I have truly never found a bit of random dicktitude (my made up word for the action of dicking around) to be of negative affections. It is easiest to get your message across when your readers, or listeners, are paying attention. Even in our favorite books I can guarantee that we have all had to skim through some less than interesting groupings of monotonous lettering. One of my favorite examples of throwing a curve straight out of left field (I know nothing about baseball) would be the section of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One devoted to the importance of masturbation. It reads like so:
AA 241:87—I would argue that masturbation is the human animal’s most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it’s doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn’t first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or “knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom”). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe. 
It wasn’t one of Halliday’s more popular theories, but I liked it.
Now, whether I choose to agree completely with these words I feel like there is something to be gained by them. In listening to what he has to say it is easy to see the oppression us nerds have come to face from those who deem us unworthy of attention or sexual activities. This could be taken a step further to say that, on the whole, we aren't even considered functioning members of society by most. I know that personally I've had to adapt to a number of different social norms to obtain any kind of companionship. We aren't allowed to be us and masturbation is just one form of coping. Even if you are against it you have to admit that it's better than getting drunk or being high all the time. We thrive off of the noble sacrifice of adult performers and sleezy internet perverts. We make bank on the devices in your pocket and the words in your head. Now I want you to think about all of the people you have oppressed, you can't say that you haven't because at one point everyone has, and tell yourself all the ways you could've made them a little less lonely.

On Pillows

  The room is full and lonely. I sit up and admire the mementos of camaraderie. The times passed that brought me solace in company. I see the Statue of Liberty and the time I went to New York with friends from school. I see the debates trophies and all the acquaintances that provides. These are just a few of hundreds of small things I have kept over the years. With all these memories of other people, perhaps the loudest memory is just behind me. I turn to lay back down and peer at the fluff and cloth that I have become so dependent upon. It at first reminds me of years of pain. As a child I always isolated myself from people, and I suppose I still do, for any reason that struck my fancy. I cut off friends because I hated losing people. Rather ironic is it not? I cut off family because I saw myself through their eyes as nothing but a disappointment. I cut off the world entirely that lay outside the four walls of the room in which I was assigned. 

  I would stay in my room and play with Legos, usually Bionicles. Sometimes I would play video games. I say sometimes because I was often grounded. My pillow quite often saw the worst of me. I would cry into it, scream into it, beat it up, and sleep soundly it. The pillow became a sort of benchmark I suppose. It began to symbolize so many different things. It has supported my entire life so far. I love too hard and care too much and the only thing that has let me hold onto it indefinitely is that shitty, crumpled, blue pillow from Wal-Mart. I suppose you can infer a number of things about me from that. I'm a hopeless romantic and I guarantee that there are enough dried tears on my pillowcase to fill a small pond. 
  With all that darkness in mind it has long been a symbol of hope and security. There is a lot of achievement in returning home and lying down and feeling your feet breath a separate sigh of relief. The highlight of my day is lying down and letting the words flow through my head and listen to the thousands of poems and stories that fill my brain that could never all be transcribed. That pillow has heard more of my thoughts, opinions, and words than anyone in my life ever will. I know that I am at my happiest when I am burrowed in the solitude of cracked memory foam and broken zippers. My pillow is shitty. My pillow is blue. My pillow is from Wal-Mart. I love the hell out of my pillow.

The Good Fight

  As I fall, I thought nothing would catch me. The miles there were between my falling face and the ground with which I would soon grow intimate. This fight was not one of rage or pride but one of passion and love. The man before me is dating the love of my life. He is a disrespectful brute with no regard for others and a lack of concern for the value of a female. He also happens to have just punched me square in the face. Now I am not small I would say but he is considerably larger than me. I finally made contact with the ground, feeling a buzzing in my hears and getting dizzy as my head bounced off the cement. 
  I jumped up as quickly as I could, not completely stable but also unwilling to show weakness. I swung at where I knew he had been and caught him in the jaw. He did not go down but he was obviously shaken. My head was still spinning and I barely notice his next flurry of punches in time to get my hands up. He drew back for a big hit and I was able to hook him in the kidney and gain some ground.
  He was on the wrestling team and I was a boxer, so I knew where I had to keep this fight. He quickly realized that he would be too slow for me on our feet so he tried to tackle me. My head was beginning to clear however and I just barely moved. He whipped and whirled and I hit him right on the temple. I pictured the times he had beaten her. I heard all the times he had diminished her. I felt all the times he had broken her heart. I smashed his face in a little more for every little thing that entered my mind. 
  I began to notice that a crowd was gathering around us. The air was crisp and the sun was hot. My fury lightened and the world rushed back in. I stood back from his unconscious body, smelling the freshly cut grass and absorbing the cries of appraisal coming from the mass of flesh around me. And I felt bad. I had never wanted to be the guy that humiliated somebody else. I had promised myself that my fighting was only for self defense and letting off steam. 
  I sat on the curb as he began to stir. That is when she showed up. She looked at me and then at him and back. She had always doubted my ability to fight him. I stood and smiled and walked over to her.
  "You don't have to be worried anymore," I said, "it's over.
  Her eyes began to water and I spread my arms for a hug. A tear rolled down a bruise under her left eye, no doubt left by him, and she left out a few sobs. She slapped me. She never said a word to accompany the humiliation. She just smacked me in the face and ran over to him. 
  I stood there with my arms hanging, taking the brunt of the rejection. I wish that he would get up and just kill me now. I close my eyes and picture being lost, ending all of this and being happy. I picture him getting up, slamming my skull into the ground, and ending my suffering. I convince myself that if I dream long and hard enough, it will come true.

Of Freedom and Conformity

i know of a place

behind the skyscrapers

beyond the billboards

here lies luxury

between mountains

over hills

a life much different 

a pop-up book of contentment

hidden behind their promises

it is between the pages

under the rubber tires

clenching onto freedom

yet here i stay

like a clockwork soldier

under a blue collar boot

King For a Day

If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel out the blur of words.
I'd make us speak in rhythm,
Communicate with our emotion,
And think from our hearts.

If I were in charge of the world
There'd be no blood shed or conflict.
A paradise with fountains
And free nachos.

If I were in charge of the world 
You wouldn't have hate.
You wouldn't have disease.
You wouldn't have poverty.
Or "it's a dog eat dog world."
You wouldn't even have sadness.

If I were in charge of the world
A kind letter, a handshake, a hug, 
Or even a smile would be a vegetable.
All altercations would be tickle fights.
And a person who sometimes forgot to say please,
And sometimes forgot to cover their mouth when they sneeze,
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of the world.