The neighborhood

[Nazz]

OK.
In a tidy rambler out in the breeding grounds of country and Exxon, baldheaded tattoos marry for money and join gangs to get a blood crash course. Out by telephone pole # 11002, a dandelion pushes through pavement, celebrates its youth in spray-painted chemical suburban sun. Smiling faces and honor trickle down just as far as you can see, up into the foothills, across the shining sea.

It's all random funk anyway-- truncated, elongated, confiscated. It goes underground for a while, comes up a dandelion under spray-painted sun. I have this adrenaline and all these buttons to push. I'm getting an education.

Show a little compassion, fellow soldiers. If you've never been the power determined to hold onto itself or the power determined to dislodge it, then welcome to irrelevance. Welcome everyone. Learn how to shoot straighter than the neighborhood. Pick some blackberries. Watch the spray-paint wars on cable. Fly to Arlington and pay your respects to a God of chaos-- something the mercenaries will never get. Crank it loud. The world is waiting.

[Lightning Rod]

as is often the case, mark, I am transported by your vignette

for some years I have been trying to develop a style of poetic prose

it's not as easy as it looks

you are an inspiration to me in this

of course jack k cracked the ice

these pieces are like clean puffs of hemp

[Nazz]

Thanks Clay. Inspired(?) by a suburban military-related double murder I read about in the paper. Wisdom and young, willfull confusion are married in war like no other phenomenon.