“If you must write of assassinations, rape, and Ophelia suicides, speak the speech, I pray thee, poetry in your breath, metaphors on your tongue. Remember how glad Iago was to think on Othello’s fall. How, with smiles, Hamlet prepared his uncle’s death.
Shakespeare and my Demon schooled me so: Be not afraid of happiness. It is often the soul of murder.”

That's a quote by Ray Bradbury that I read one time. I've always loved it.

The Day You Died

Wrote this one several years ago when I found out that my Aunt Thelma had passed away.

The Day You Died

The news hit me like freight train
When they told me that you died
Tears came without ceasing
And I did nothing but cried

I could fill the oceans
With the stories that you told me
It seems life won’t give me a break
And steals my loved ones slowly

My soul's a terrible vacuum
I’ve become an empty void
My prayers are silent on the wind
My hopes and dreams destroyed

Easter was the time of year
I favored above all other
Memories that once held me close
Now desert me like a lost lover

You were my favorite aunt
And I will mourn the loss
Of both the family and the friend
Who through death's river now must cross

Fire and Ice

New poem. Still horrible. I may use it as a basis to make a blank verse poem.

Fire and Ice

Your hair kissed by flames
Eyes tempered with ice
Wrapped in your arms
Always felt so nice

We run hot
We run cold
Girl, I cried when
Our love turned old

If indifference is
The opposite of love
We've never been that
Always wanting friendship or blood

This leads me to believe
How we act is to disguise
The true feelings left behind
The ones we cover with lies

Everything is Broke

This is the first draft of a poem. It took all of five minutes, so don't judge too harshly. I know, it sounds sappy, angry emo kid. It probably is. Leave a comment, or don't. Without further adieu.

Everything is Broke

The world’s gone grey

My soul’s caught fire

Nothing in my life

Has ever consumed me with such a desire

A long for the days

Wrapped in your sweet embrace

When I could see you

And touch your face

I’ve tried to hold back,

To keep my emotions in check

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do

For even just a peck

Frivolous things fill my time,

Trying to drive back the memory and pain

If only something would work

And keep me relatively sane

Frustration

Ok, so I may re-tool my blog. Still include fiction but branch out to other topics as well. In that spirit today I'm going to discuss one of my frustrations with Ubuntu.

Before I go any further... I love Ubuntu. In an age where one must choose between Microsoft which charges too much for software and Apple which charges too much for hardware (and doesn't allow you to use their operating system on any other hardware); Ubuntu is a wonderful (read: free) alternative that can do almost anything you want.

My frustration comes from my inability to easily uninstall Evolution (the email reader that comes with Ubuntu) You can uninstall the program, but that requires you to uninstall Ubuntu Dashboard. So I hope you have shortcuts to everything on your desktop if you do this. However reinstalling Dashboard automatically re-installs Evolution.

I came to Linux to only use software I wanted. And not have to uncheck all the stupid updates for the program I don't use. Oh well, rant over.

Back in the Saddle

Collin sent me the link to his new blogspot. That reminded me that I already had one... among my many, many forgotten blogs I've started and stopped. But this one is special because it has always been an outlet for my creative writing (sometimes funny, sometimes scary, sometimes obscure). I'll go through my notebooks and see if I have an fresh stories to post. I like to write a lot about a nice little Truck Stop in Bliss, TX. Lucidia County to be specific. It's completely made, so are all it's characters. If they happen to be going through the same situations as you... well I can't help it if you live in my head. My best friend knows that I don't even know how my stories are going to end until they do.

I think I may start posting some of my old fantasy work.

Peace, Love, Puma.

Break Stuff

Something I whipped up just now. Enjoy

===

Ever have one of those mornings? The kind where you look in the mirror and no longer recognize yourself. On mornings like that, I stare at the stranger in the mirror and wonder what his story is, how he got to be in my bathroom with my face. I want to ask him why his eyes are blood shot and why he looks like the world has crumbled. He's not supposed to feel that way... I'm not supposed to feel that way.

I throw the tooth brush holder at the bathroom mirror and the glass sprays in a thousand different directions. Three of the shards nick my face... nick the stranger's face. I smirk, that condecending one that I get when I know I'm right and the other person is wrong. I win, I destroyed the stranger, except that he's hiding in the next mirror.

By noon, I've successfully destroyed ever single mirror I own. I've even swept up the glass and thrown it away so that the stranger can't jump out of the shards. My smile returns. It's been weeks since I've done that. No smiles, no happiness. Those things are reserved for the good people of the world. And I'm not one of those good people.

Sure everyone down at the Truckstop thinks I'm a saint. They've even taken to calling me 'Preach,' pretty soon everyone in town used that name for me too. They only see what I let them. Nobody wants to see what's under the surface. That would scare them.

Stacey Lee has tried. I don't even let her in anymore.

I wipe my hand across my face. It's been nearly a week since I've shaved. No one says anything, no one will say anything. Not on a day like today. I turn twenty-one as of 5:23 this afternoon. Stacey Lee is supposed to take me some place tonight. She joked around a couple of years ago about taking me drinking on my twenty-first birthday, she never reckoned I'd take her up on it.

But today I will. It's one of those days where I don't want to follow the rules anymore. I'll leave in a few minutes. Stacey Lee will be at the Truckstop, she's always at the Truckstop.