hunched over the sink vomiting blue
toothpaste bubbles, gagging. i need new toothpaste, mom.
this stuff makes me sick. it tastes awful.

she shrieks. absentmindedly i touch a toy telephone
and memories rush at my eyes, all the things
she ever bought me. she is screaming. when's it gonna
be enough, huh? It's always wantwantwant with you!
where does it ever go? what did you do with any of it?
it was all a waste!

some indescribable feeling. a hand reaches up my
belly to my throat and makes a fist.

i am a parasite.

there are boys in the house. i try to lock
the doors but they get in anyway. one of them has a gun.
one of them shoots me in the face.

i see myself fall, half a doll's head open like
a bloody casket, mouth a black circle, one
eye gone. brains glug
onto the kitchen floor.

i have a gun. i shoot the boy that killed me
in the chest and i am alive again, held together
with a tight gauzy…

We have beer gardens at many local events. Centrum music, the Wooden Boat Festival. People have to show identification to get into the beer garden and must keep the drink in there.

I want to start a Sober Garden as well as a Beer Garden. Let's have a substance free area, roped off, for families and those who are choosing not to use substances, alcohol, opioids, tobacco, meth, whatever. At the events with families, the Beer Garden is roped off, but let's rope…

Am I the only one who, when walking around town, has noticed all these young folks telling each other "Happy Valentine's Day"? Even older folks, I presume being business owners trying to mollify the politically correct crowd, are expressing themselves so.

Well back in my day, before all these librul SJW types began their War on "Merry Saint", that's exactly how it went. Everybody used to greet each other, "Merry Saint Valentine's Day," and then perhaps paused…