Wrecking Ball

It's a metaphor for wanton destruction, indiscriminate, total. It levels everything in sight, out with the old, room for the new, the outset of a revolution.

But a wrecking ball is just a machine. A big one to be sure, yet still a tool, a vehicle, a spare part--the last one that needs replacing. It's not the ball doing the annihilation, but the driver. It's not the driver, but the foreman, or the one percent, or the unbearable weight of social change.

It's just a giant piece of forged steel. It's just the end of everything you've ever known.

The Good, The Bad, And The Stinky

It's said to be good luck for homeowners when a carpenter leaves a tool in your walls after a job. They might hide a fish in the vents if they get screwed over for money. It will take years for the smell to dissipate. Whoever built this house went a little too far. At least that's what I'll tell the police.

They're still looking for my partner. I suspect that she and the contractor left town with my money.

In my mind, I can still see the bodies, skin crumbling, bones exposed. The smell of flesh lingers inside my skull.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

The Poet's Life

I sat on the large stone in the middle of the picnic field. I had my notebook out and was busy scribbling away. There were couples and families and dogs and blankets. There was food and sport and laughter and a few tears. The more life unfurled around me, the faster my pencil lurched across the page.

This is the life of the poet. A life of watching. You might call me a mirror, or a tape recorder. I am an instrument.

But life is lived whether we laugh and love our way to death or record others doing it.