The Eclectic Art and Words of P.B. Wells

The Darkness Has Never Lied by p.b. wells

I have lived most of my life on a wing and a prayer.

though I could never tell you whose wing or who the hell was supposed to be listening.

God, fate, blind luck, some half-drunk bastard working the controls behind the curtain.

take your pick.

I always figured you accepted what came through the door.

the good stuff never stayed long.

the bad stuff dragged in a chair, put its feet on the table, and asked what was for dinner.

I have done things I cannot forgive.

not even now.

not after all the excuses have gone stale and every pretty lie has been stripped to the bone.

I have seen things no one should see.

not soldiers. not doctors. not cops. not children. not anybody.

things that crawl behind your eyes and wait for three in the morning to start moving around.

still, I carried on.

that is what people say when they have no idea why they are still standing.

I carried on.

then came these last few years.

the slow knife.

the long sickness of it.

and these past few days the whole rotten thing finally showed its face.

no disguise. no mercy. no goddamned shame.

just cruelty doing what cruelty does best.

and I am done.

done praying.

done bargaining.

done pretending there is some compassionate bookkeeper balancing the suffering against a future reward.

there is no justice in the sky.

there may not even be a sky worth looking toward.

and humanity?

maybe extinction is not a tragedy.

yes, amor fati has claimed me at last.

let it come.

I am done believing, but I am not done breathing.

not yet.

I will sit here in the Fortress with the Admiral sweating in the glass, Stella waiting cold beside him, Jimmy singing somewhere in the room, and those few reliable friends who never promised salvation.

they will be my wall.

not a great wall.

not enough to win.

but enough to make fate work for it.

I will sit in the darkness, because the darkness has never lied to me.

it has never asked for worship.

never promised justice.

never claimed everything happens for a reason.

the darkness simply arrives, pulls up a chair, and stays quiet.

that is more kindness than most gods or most people have ever shown me.

A Partial List of What We Buried by p.b. wells

we made America great one grave at a time.

that is the part they leave out between the flags, the hymns, the brass bands, and the cheap speeches from men with clean hands and dirty souls.

the Wampanoag were first, or close enough, they fed strangers who later learned how to steal land with a Bible in one hand and a musket in the other.

the Pequot burned in their villages, and we called the smoke settlement.

the Powhatan knew rivers, corn, seasons, the old language of earth.

we knew hunger, greed, and how to rename theft destiny.

the Lenape watched their home become someone else’s map.

the Haudenosaunee built councils while we built excuses.

the Cherokee had newspapers, courts, farms, a written language, and still we marched them west until the road itself started coughing up the dead.

the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Muscogee, the Seminole, each carrying songs older than our little republic, each told to move, bend, kneel, vanish.

the Lakota followed the buffalo and understood freedom better than any man who ever wore a powdered wig.

so we killed the buffalo too.

the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, Sand Creek, babies in the snow, and soldiers cutting trophies from bodies like butchers gone patriotic.

the Navajo walked the Long Walk.

the Apache were hunted because they refused to make obedience their national anthem.

the Nez Perce tried dignity. we answered with pursuit.

the Modoc fought from lava beds because even stone made a better promise than Washington.

the Pueblo kept prayers in adobe and silence.

the Hopi held the sky in their ceremonies.

the Blackfeet, the Ute, the Paiute, the Shoshone, the Comanche, the Osage, the Tongva, the Chumash, the Coast Salish, name after name, bone after bone, each one different, and that was the unforgivable crime.

different gods. different clothes. different dead. different ways of loving the morning.

and because they were different, we decided they did not fit inside our bright white lie.

we have always loved freedom after we finish deciding who deserves it.

that is the rotten trick.

we build monuments over screams.

we teach children about pioneers but not the people pioneered over.

we say greatness like it is a clean word.

it is not.

it has blood under its nails. it has teeth in its pocket. it has treaties stuffed in the bottom drawer with the other lies.

America was not made great by slaughter.

it was made haunted.

and the ghosts are still here, standing in the wheat, the cities, the suburbs, the reservations, the prisons, the churches, the schools, the goddamned shopping malls,

asking one simple question:

was different enough justification to kill us?

The Man in the Fortress by p.b. wells

I sit in my Fortress of Solitude.

no grand battlefield. no presidents. no ancient empires. no gods.

just me sitting here in the dark with a bucket of ice, a single glass and the Admiral.

this is just me holding court with myself, the Admiral, and whatever ghosts and demons still know the address.

I cue the music. low.

beginning with Pachelbel’s Canon in D major.

this kind of evening requires only instrumental music. no voices other than the Admiral.

maybe it is the tedium of the headlights sliding along SR 9 that brings the realization the world has become a goddamn lunatic asylum.

and yet somehow the music still calms me, the rum still numbs me, the chair still holds me, and the night still lets me think.

When it comes to war, Hollywood usually gets it wrong. So do most "leaders" who claim victory, claim credit and who never walked one goddamn foot on an active battlefield. Yeah, it's really starting to piss me off.

War Is Failure by p.b. wells

war is not courage.

I know, that sounds like the sort of thing that gets a man called a coward by people who have never felt a shell land close enough to make the teeth in their head feel rented.

but there it is.

war is not courage.

a man dragging another man out of the line of fire, that is courage.

some nineteen-year-old kid standing his ground because the poor bastard beside him has gone blind with fear, that is courage.

a nurse with blood up to her wrists, trying to hold pieces of a stranger together while the whole world acts like a slaughterhouse, that is courage.

but war?

war is the failure that comes before all that.

war is the bill for every bastard in a suit who could not find a chair, a table, a sentence, a little goddamned humility.

war is what happens when men with flags and swollen egos decide difference is a crime.

your language. your god. your dirt. your dead grandfathers. your side of the river. your old map with the pretty lines on it.

hell, we have killed each other over less.

we stack boys in mud and call it necessary.

we bomb cities flat and call it strategy.

we bury children and call it collateral damage because plain words might make somebody vomit into his polished shoes.

no matter the cause, no matter the anthem, no matter who started crying first, war is failure.

sometimes it may be forced on you. sometimes you may have no choice but to fight the bastard kicking down your door.

but don't dress it up.

don't put perfume on a corpse and call it glory.

the ones who start wars are failures with offices, failures with armies, failures with microphones, failures who never seem to run out of other people's children.

and maybe we should quit bragging about being the peak of evolution.

when was the last time one pack of cats slaughtered a million other cats because they prayed wrong, voted wrong, spoke wrong, looked wrong, or lived on the wrong side of some imaginary line?

cats hiss. cats claw. then walk away like arrogant little kings.

us?

we build graveyards, write speeches over them, sell postcards, teach dates, raise statues, then we do it all over again.

Jeri in the Dark by p.b. wells

I sit in my Fortress with the lights low and the night pressed hard against the windows, as black and wet as an old crime scene.

that is when the past starts picking the lock.

it never knocks.

it comes in smelling like smoke, perfume, bad judgment and something sweet I should have forgotten a long damn time ago.

Jeri.

her name still has legs.

it still crosses the room in the dark like a woman in a black and white movie, all shadow and full lips and eyes that know more than they said.

film noir, scream queen, the kind of beauty that made a man sit up straight and lie to himself about being in control.

she was one of the lucky ones, or maybe I was, for even getting close enough to burn my fingers.

the fairest, or near enough that memory has never bothered to correct itself.

she dated my best friend.

she was his.

then, like an idiot, he dumped her.

I still don’t know how a man looks at lightning and decides he’d rather stand in the rain with an empty hand.

then we came together.

briefly.

awkwardly.

two fools drawn together by heat, hunger, loneliness and that low animal music the body plays when the brain has gone out for cigarettes.

there was passion.

true passion.

not the postcard kind, not the clean little movie kind, but the kind that leaves a dent in the wall a bruise in the memory and two sweat-drenched, exhausted bodies.

still, he was there.

not in the room, but there.

between us.

in the silence after a kiss. in the careful way we touched. in the way guilt lay down between us like some sour old bastard ordering another drink.

we wanted it.

we damn well did.

but wanting doesn’t always win.

sometimes awkwardness has stronger hands.

sometimes guilt gets the last cigarette, the last word, the last walk home.

so it ended.

no grand tragedy. no crying in the rain. no screaming in the alley.

just two people backing away from a fire both wanted but which both knew would cost too much.

now the years sit around me like empty bottles, and my Fortress grows quiet, and the dark brings her back when it feels like being cruel.

Jeri.

beautiful Jeri.

the lucky one. the fairest. the almost.

and I sit here, old enough to know better, but not yet dead enough to stop remembering.

Before It’s Too Late by p.b. wells

he came home with the city stench stuck to him, the stale breath of meetings, some middle-management prick’s voice still crawling around in his skull like a roach with a necktie.

his shoes hit the apartment floor like two dead animals.

the whole goddamn day had been one long miss.

missed deadlines, missed lunch, missed dignity.

outside, sirens worked the avenues. somebody shouted three floors down. a bus sighed at the curb like an old beast too tired to die.

he wanted a drink. he wanted silence. he wanted the couch to swallow him whole.

then he saw her.

not waiting like a trap. not dressed up like a magazine lie.

just there.

barefoot, beside the open window, leaning against the wall, hair loose, a glass of wine in her hand, the room warm with something he’d been too blind, too busy, too goddamn selfish to notice.

she looked at him like she had been standing on the far side of a locked door for years.

and that did it.

not the office. not the boss. not the emails stacked up like unpaid sins.

because a woman can lie beside a man night after night and still feel miles away.

a man can pay rent, take out the trash, buy the coffee, sleep in the same bed, and still leave her starving.

not for diamonds. not for gas station roses.

but for a hand on her back in the middle of the day.

for a kiss that is not a prelude to anything.

for words spoken awake, with the lights on, with the television off, with no excuse and no audience.

he stood there in his wrinkled shirt and cheap tie, ashamed of all the nights he had mistaken proximity for love.

he had touched her body and forgotten to touch her life.

that is a hard thing for a man to know about himself.

harder still to say out loud.

but he said it.

not cleanly. not like some handsome bastard in a movie.

he stumbled through it. coughed it up. made a mess of it.

told her he was sorry. told her he needed her. told her he loved her while the city kept grinding its teeth outside the window.

when she stepped into him, he held on like the floor had vanished.

later, they sat on the kitchen floor with their backs against the cabinets, the refrigerator coughing beside them, the sink ticking one drop at a time like a cheap little clock counting what was left.

he did not fix everything. men like him never fix everything in one night.

but he stayed.

he let the silence stand there without trying to murder it with jokes, apologies, or some heroic bullshit.

he listened.

that was more than he had given her in a long damn while.

so say it before it’s too late. before the coffee goes cold. before the mail piles up. say it while the whole damn city keeps pretending tomorrow is guaranteed.

say it by the sink. say it in the hallway. say it with your shoes still on and your miserable day bleeding out behind you.

tell her she matters while the dishes are still dirty. hold her where the ordinary light can catch you doing it.

because love is not some rented room you stumble into after midnight.

sometimes love needs a Tuesday evening, a dirty apartment, a ruined man, and one honest sentence dragged up from the bottom of his cowardly heart.

For context, you may wish to read "Zippy," available on my DeviantArt gallery. One year ago, Zippy left me.

From Zippy by p.b. wells

I wasn't looking for a home. I had the street. it had rhythm and rot. it had the kind of silence only empty bottles and late-night drunks understand. but then you showed up with your hands full of worry and that dumb soft voice, like you were talking to a ghost, you hoped would listen.

I watched you for days. you smelled like coffee and deadlines. you walked like you had bricks in your pockets. but you looked at me like I mattered. so I walked in. simple as that.

I picked the spots I liked. didn’t ask. didn’t explain. top of the dining table? Mine. that beat-up recliner? Mine too… once you were in it. I’d sit on your lap, just long enough to remind you the world wasn’t all bills and regrets. you needed a heater. I was warm. we had a deal.

that window at night? that was my cinema. no plot. just cars slicing the dark, the occasional deer running from headlights or a raccoon running from nothing. you’d shuffle through the house like a ghost, mumbling to the walls, and I’d wait for you to settle so I could come do my job: silent company. soft purring. the whole goddamn spa treatment for a soul I knew was tired.

you scratched behind my ear like you meant it. not many humans do things like that. not without wanting something back. but you just… did it, like it was the only way you knew to show love, without asking for anything in return. I liked that.

I felt it coming. the end. the slowing. the stillness behind the stillness. my legs stopped listening. the dark got darker. but I stayed until I couldn’t.

and now you sit in that chair like you’re waiting for a ghost. you stare at the window like I did. you shuffle through the house like you’re made of sleep. but I was there. I was there. and you were good to me. better than most.

don’t let the silence fool you: I didn’t just vanish. some part of me is still purring right there, between your damn ribs.

remember me.

In the Fortress Again by p.b. wells

it has been too damn long since I sat here in my Fortress of Solitude with the night pressed against the windows like some old drunk looking for a place to sleep.

no noise. no demands. no little disasters chewing at my ankles.

just me, the Admiral, the dark, and a strange little bastard I derisively call my mind wandering off without my permission.

where will it go tonight?

maybe somewhere grand. maybe the edge of history. maybe the graveyard where old rulers rot and new fools stand in line waiting to become ghosts.

or maybe I’ll just think about dinner and how it tasted like regret with a side of cardboard.

maybe the Colts. maybe the Bears. that brain-strangling draft that made grown men stare at the television like it had just shot their dog.

maybe the babbling buffoon in the White House starting and bumbling another war while half the country claps and the other half checks the exits.

maybe a sunset out in the Midwest, that wide, holy bastard spilling gold over the fields like God had one decent idea left in him.

maybe television, that glowing sewer where talent goes to be shaved, powdered, and sold back to morons.

maybe Congress, that marble zoo full of spineless little men and women who would sell their mothers for a microphone and a good poll number.

maybe I will finally begin my educational series for people who cannot tell a communist from a socialist from an anarchist, and decide the punishment should be three books, one dictionary, and a month without internet.

or maybe I will write about the difference between a MAGAt and a maggot.

no. too easy.

one has two legs.

the other has an excuse.

or, maybe the Admiral and I will just sit here. the only sound the clinking of ice cubes and the pouring of a bottle.

yes, it’s 3 a.m.

by p.b. wells

I have walked through history with dust in my mouth and blood on my boots.

I was there when a sharpened stone ended the first argument.

I was there when kings learned poor boys could be traded for borders.

I watched empires rise with marble teeth and gold prayers, then rot from the belly like fruit left in the sun.

Rome burned. Troy burned. cities nobody names anymore burned so clean even the ghosts left.

I saw men march under crosses, flags, moons, eagles, and every holy excuse ever stitched to cloth.

they all said God was with them.

funny thing.

God always seemed to be on both sides until the screaming started.

I saw boys run into cannon fire because some clean bastard called it honor.

I saw mothers dig through smoke and brick for pieces of children while speeches were written miles away by men with soft hands.

I saw trenches swallow a generation.

I saw camps where the air itself looked ashamed.

I saw cities turned to ash in one bright flash.

and after all that, after the graves, the flags, the medals, the prayers, we learned not one goddamned thing.

we still hand the keys to the loudmouth evolutionary dropout.

we still cheer when some swollen tyrant points at strangers and says, there, there is your enemy.

blame the foreigner. blame the poor. blame the darker face. blame the wrong prayer. blame anything except the bastard picking your pocket while promising salvation.

I have watched the whole sorry spectacle. kings. generals. presidents. holy men. businessmen selling patriotism by the barrel.

they build monuments with stolen bread.

they build statues tall enough to hide the bodies.

and the people clap.

Christ, how the people clap.

I have walked the same road for centuries.

different boots. different flags. same mud.

same hate. same lies. same little men standing on the backs of the desperate and calling themselves giants.

and I am tired now.

bone tired.

tired of courage shoveled under speeches.

tired of sacrifice chopped up into campaign music.

tired of decent people worked hollow while silk-suited parasites lecture them about duty.

still, some stupid piece of me keeps looking for us poor dumb animals to grow up before we strike the match and call the fire progress.

Make the Exit Ugly by p.b. wells

don’t let the bastards take you quietly.

not the doctors with their soft shoes and clipboard faces,

not the priest waiting in the hallway like a salesman with one last brochure,

not the family whispering around the bed like Death has better hearing than the rest of us.

fuck that.

if Death comes in wearing a clean suit and smelling like flowers, tell him to wait outside.

tell him you’re not done spitting nails at the ceiling.

tell him there are still debts unpaid, lies unchallenged, songs half sung, women remembered, enemies outliving their usefulness, and one last glass some son of a bitch forgot to pour.

the world wants you tidy when you leave it.

folded hands. closed mouth. washed face. no trouble.

but you were trouble when you came in, red-faced, bloody and screaming, dragged from the dark like a wet little lunatic already pissed off at the world.

so why leave like a church mouse?

kick the sheets. curse the pain. laugh at the machines. make the nurse shake her head and the relatives stare at their shoes.

let them say he was difficult.

good.

let them say he would not accept it.

better.

let them say he kept swinging at something nobody else could see.

best of all.

because Death has enough quiet men stacked in the earth, enough obedient bones.

make the exit ugly.

make it loud.

make it honest.

make it memorable.

make it yours.

and when the dark bastard finally reaches for your throat, lean close with whatever breath you have left and tell him,

not yet, you miserable motherfucker.

Everyday Advice From a Common Bastard by p.b. wells

first thing,

when you find yourself in "polite company," leave.

don’t explain it. don’t apologize. don’t stand there holding a sad little glass of something with fruit in it while some well-fed bastard discusses the market, his boat, his goddamn renovation.

just go.

smile, maybe. or don’t.

there are worse crimes than being rude. murdering some gloating, gluttonous, arrogant prick is one of them.

now,

before you lower your pants in any public restroom, inspect the paper situation like a man checking ammunition before the last battle of a stupid war.

I learned this on May 7, 2026, in a "superstore" that was not super in any way known to God or plumbing.

there are dates that live in history. Pearl Harbor. the Kennedy assassination. the day I looked over at that empty cardboard roll and understood the cold machinery of fate.

also, on a related note,

never speak to the man in the next stall.

not even in desperation. not even if your life has become a brown emergency and your dignity is hanging by one trembling thread.

silence is sometimes the last clean thing a man owns.

in New York, never trust a bar restroom that makes you go downstairs.

nothing good lives below a bar except old pipes, wet floors, broken locks, and the kind of smell that makes a priest lose faith.

as for politics,

never engage in such a discussion with a true believer wearing his ignorance like a red carnival hat.

tell him to fuck off, then walk away before you start thinking reason is still alive somewhere in the room.

reason left early. probably took a cab.

at society parties, wear a loose jacket.

a man should always be prepared for weather, a beautiful, kind-hearted barmaid, war, and the sudden need to liberate a good bottle from people too rich to deserve it.

Camus Cabernet Sauvignon rides nicely under the left arm if you keep your face solemn and nod like you are pondering the future of civilization.

and finally,

never vote for the lesser evil and call it virtue.

evil with a good haircut is still evil.

evil with a flag pin is still evil.

a smaller pile of shit still draws flies.

that’s the whole lesson, really.

leave early. check the paper. don’t talk through bathroom walls. avoid stairways beneath bars. never discuss politics with morons. steal only from the comfortable. and don’t shake hands with evil just because it washed one finger.

take care and be well.

Staircase Memoirs by p.b. wells

I was the spine of the house, the hard crooked backbone holding up all their velvet, silver, manners, promises, and the rot underneath.

they wore polished shoes here. they came up my steps smelling of cologne, cigars, brandy, roses pinned to black coats, powder on the throats of women who had already learned how to smile while dying inside.

I heard the formal dinners below.

the crystal clinked. the knives flashed. the laughter rose in careful little bursts like trained birds.

then came the talk.

Land. Money. Politics. Marriage. who was sleeping with whom. who was failing. who was drinking too much. who would inherit. who had become an embarrassment and needed to be sent away quietly.

every family has its little songs of murder. most of them never need a knife.

there were weddings here too.

flowers, lace, candles, a trembling bride on my landing about to walk down and hand herself over like a signed receipt.

everyone smiled. everyone lied. later, I heard the same bride coming back up with a split lip, a dead look in her eyes, and a husband downstairs explaining to the guests that she was emotional.

there were parties.

sweet Jesus, the parties.

champagne, piano music, heels slipping on my steps, hands under dresses, mouths in the dark, young men with predator grins, old women whispering poison, servants moving like ghosts carrying trays through all that expensive filth.

I heard a girl cry in one of the upper rooms. I heard a man tell her not to make a scene. I heard money fix things that should have burned the whole place down.

I heard a shot once.

then silence.

then footsteps. then somebody praying not because they loved God but because they were scared shitless of consequences.

children ran up and down me too. they laughed. they hid. they grew up into the same hard faces and cold hearts as the bastards who made them.

and now?

now the house is gutted.

the wallpaper hangs like dead skin. rain leaks through the roof. the windows stare blindly into nothing. my railing is splintered. my steps are cracked. I carry only dust, rats, wind, and the weight of all that happened here.

no violins now. no candles. no perfume. only mold, ruin, and the long black breath of abandonment.

what do I see?

I see the truth after the costumes are gone. this place was never beautiful. it was only decorated.

what do I feel?

tired. cold. meaner than I used to be.

but not surprised.

people came here dressed as civilized creatures, and left behind the same old stink people always leave behind:

lust, greed, cowardice, violence, regret.

I go down and down into the dark center of it, circling what is left, and if the dead still gather here at night, I understand why.

hell likes old houses.

and old houses remember everything.

Warning: This is a late-night, spur-of-the-moment, still-under-the-influence creation. That's the only way I can even think about the concept. If you have never watched the 1973 film "Soylent Green," you likely won't know what in Hell I am talking about.

Going Home Soylent Green Style by p.b. wells

watching Soylent Green with the Admiral sweating in the glass, I sit here thinking maybe the future doesn’t arrive with flying cars or silver suits or some clean little miracle from a lab.

maybe it arrives with a government clerk handing you a form and saying, when you’re tired enough, we have a room for that.

going home, they called it.

soft music. pretty pictures. a clean bed. the last kindness dressed up like theater.

and hell, part of me understands it.

that’s the dangerous part.

because life can wear a man down until the walls start whispering and the bottle looks like a priest who finally tells the truth.

but once a society builds a beautiful door out of here, it starts pushing people toward it.

the poor. the old. the sick. the inconvenient bastards who cost too much and complain too loud.

call it mercy and you can sell anything.

call it dignity and the murder looks polished.

maybe going home is a good idea only when the soul decides it and no one profits from the ticket.

maybe it is evil the second it becomes policy.

or maybe I’m just drunk on spiced rum, old cinema and the rotten suspicion that humanity will always find a way to turn even death into a business model.

the Admiral hasn’t said anything.

which, for once, is probably wisdom.

Flak! by p.b. wells

writing is flying a B-17 over 1944 Berlin with one engine coughing, a cigarette dying between two fingers, and every small bastard on earth aiming at the sky.

flak from morons.

flak from MAGAts.

oops, same damn thing, different hat.

flak from the rhyme police who think a poem has to jingle like a ‘60s radio ad.

flak from teetotalers who see a bottle and start praying like it just crawled out of Hell.

flak from holy rollers with clean collars and dirty little fantasies, telling me God hates my language.

tell God to send edits.

they keep firing.

boom.

boom.

boom.

little black flowers open in the air.

they think they’ve got me.

they think I’ll turn back, apologize, write softer, rhyme nicer, kiss the proper rings and thank ‘em for saving my soul.

but the old bird keeps flying.

rattling, smoking, patched with bad mornings, bad nights and worse decisions.

and I’m up front grinning like a lunatic with both hands on the yoke.

below me are the tidy little towns where poems wear neckties, anger gets shaved, and truth is castrated.

so I open the bay doors.

I let the ugly little blessings fall.

one for the frauds.

one for the saints.

one for every idiot who thinks language should behave.

cruel?

yeah.

heartless?

sometimes.

fun?

you betcha.

the flak keeps coming, the flak keeps missing, and I keep flying with fire in the gut and one more beautiful bomb left in the language.

The Past Is Never Gone by p.b. wells

there are nights when the wind laughs.

not out loud.

worse than that.

it laughs inside the walls, inside the glass, inside the little wet meat of my skull.

and I sit there, one worn-out man with a drink in his hand, grinning back at it like some poor bastard who has finally been told the pistol on the table has a bullet with his name on it.

good.

about time.

not weather. not thunder. not some holy choir warming up behind the clouds.

no.

this is better.

this is the old rot finally splitting open.

this is the lie standing naked under the cheap yellow bulb.

this is the moment I have carried in my mouth for years like a razor blade I was too proud to swallow.

I remember the room. I remember your hands. I remember the truth trying to crawl out while you smiled over it.

I was the ultimate witness.

you wore that practiced little smile while the truth bled out behind you.

you thought nobody knew.

you thought silence was safety.

you thought time was some kind of bleach that could wash the stench off your pretty hands.

oh, you beautiful, arrogant, stupid bitch.

time doesn't wash anything.

time keeps receipts.

time sharpens knives in the dark.

time sits at the end of the bar wearing my face and ordering another drink.

I knew you.

I knew your face. I knew your voice. I knew the soft little music of your lies coming down the hall.

and you knew me too.

don't pretend.

don't give me those wide eyes.

I have fed on those eyes in my sleep.

I have kissed them. cursed them. chewed them like gristle.

some nights I woke up laughing. laughing so hard I thought my ribs would crack open and birds would fly out.

no, no, no. not good birds.

big black ones.

hungry ones.

the kind that knows where the bodies are.

you locked your mouth like a snake keeps poison behind her teeth.

you thought it made you safe.

no.

it made you lucky.

for a while.

that's all.

and I kept quiet too.

but mine was not fear.

mine was cultivation.

mine was watering the grave.

mine was sitting in the dark with my rough hands folded like a lunatic saint, waiting for the first worm to break the surface.

the damage stayed. it fed in the walls. it got fat on the dark.

it learned my name.

it slept beside me. ate with me. watched television with me. stood behind me while I shaved.

I could see it in the mirror over my shoulder, smiling.

and now the wind is thick with the sweetness of it.

I could lick it off the walls.

I could bottle it and drink it warm.

this is not justice.

oh, no. justice is a courtroom word, a clean word, a word with polished shoes and soft hands.

this is better.

this is revelation with its dress ripped open.

this is revenge. revenge walking in slow through the front door while I sit there, a man almost ruined by waiting, giggling into my glass.

this is the old lie being dragged naked into the light by her ankles.

and there you are.

still trying to stand there like nothing happened.

but I know what happened.

I know what you did to me.

I know what you buried.

I know it all.

and I have waited.

how I have waited.

I have waited so long the waiting became a religion.

I built an altar out of it.

I lit candles.

I whispered your name into the dark like a curse and a love song and a joke only hell understood.

and now the moment is here.

fat. ripe. breathing.

in my chest.

under my tongue.

in my teeth.

crawling up my spine wearing spurs.

and I am happy.

do you understand that?

happy.

not healed. not clean. not saved.

happy in the ugliest, purest way a man can be happy.

nearly insane with it.

shaking with it.

cherishing it like a newborn monster held close to my chest.

so keep your silence, milady.

hold it tight.

press it to your throat.

it will not save you.

the wind knows.

the dark knows.

this broken old man knows.

and now, finally…

everyone will know.

When the Noise Dies by p.b. wells

I started in the dark same as most of us do, groping around with a desire burning in my chest like it knew something my head didn’t.

that’s the joke, isn’t it?

the desire keeps pushing you forward while the mind sits on an overturned crate smoking cheap cigarettes drinking cheap gin saying, kid, you don’t know a goddamned thing.

and maybe I didn’t.

I was told I was too young, too green, too full of moonlight and bad ideas, like youth was some disease you were supposed to apologize for.

I was told I was just dreaming.

you bet your ass I was dreaming.

because the people who laugh at dreams usually traded theirs for a payroll check, a tired marriage, a television glowing in the dark like a false little god.

I was told to get practical, get serious, learn the rules.

well, I looked around and the rules looked like shit to me.

all the fear, all the wanting, all the names and cities and women and failures and nights that felt like they would never end.

and half the time I was too busy just holding myself together.

still, I wanted it all.

the whole broken carnival. I wanted roads with no maps. I wanted train stations at midnight. I wanted strange bars in strange towns with strange women where nobody knew my name and nobody gave a damn. I wanted to stay young enough to believe the next morning might actually mean something.

that’s the real sickness, maybe.

hope.

dirty, stubborn, ridiculous hope.

and love, too.

that flashy little bastard.

love standing there in the corner like the grand prize at a rigged county fair, smiling like it’s worth every busted tooth and empty pocket.

maybe it is.

maybe the whole rotten trip is just stumbling through the dark thinking you’re headed nowhere, thinking you’re a fool, thinking you’re late, thinking you missed the turn years ago.

when all along you were just becoming whatever and whoever the hell you are.

and you don’t even know it.

that’s the killer.

you think you’re lost because nobody hands you a clean map, because wisdom doesn’t come with a brass band and a bottle of good whiskey, because getting older doesn’t mean getting better, just harder to fool, harder to kill with pretty lies.

so if it’s all some long crooked lesson, if one day I wake up gray and wrinkled with a little more sense and a little less fire, fine.

when the noise dies. when the fake kings choke on their advice. when I can look back at myself and say yeah, that dumb son of a bitch was wandering, but at least he was moving.

because all this time I thought I was failing, missing the point.

all this time I was stumbling in the dark with my bruised, tired desire and my empty pockets and my glorious lack of a plan.

and I never even knew it:

that it was the only way to find anything worth keeping.

Loyalty by p.b. wells

Loyalty is a dangerous word.

it gets waved around by men in suits, by men in uniforms, by loud bastards on podiums who never seem to be the ones bleeding for it.

they tell you to love your country and maybe you do. maybe you love the rivers, the back roads, the tired little houses, the cracked city sidewalks, the old woman buying canned soup with shaking hands, the kid on the bus with big eyes still dumb enough to believe this whole thing might turn out decent.

that’s country.

government is something else.

government is offices, orders, flags pinned to lapels, smiling liars with polished shoes, greased mouths, and a talent for making cruelty sound like duty.

and sometimes the two walk together. sometimes they don’t.

that’s where the real test comes in, not in the parades, not in the anthem, not in all that swollen patriotic horseshit people love to perform for each other.

the real test comes when loyalty to your country and loyalty to your government split apart like rotten wood under too much weight.

then what?

then you choose.

choose carefully.

because great nations have gone to hell that way. great empires too. not always because the enemy was stronger, but because the people got stupid, or scared, or lazy, or hungry for permission to stop thinking.

they confused obedience with honor.

they mistook submission for virtue.

they handed their conscience over to uniforms, to slogans, to loudmouths promising safety while setting the goddamn house on fire.

by the time they figured it out, the jails were full, the streets were quiet, the truth was bleeding out in alleys, and the flags still waved like nothing had happened.

so no, they are not always the same.

country is the people, the soil, the broken heart of the place.

government is the machine.

and when the machine turns against the heart, you better know which one deserves your loyalty.

because history is full of graves dug by people who chose wrong.