I made some adjustments to the site this morning. I added hourly news bulletins to assure that I would no longer have an excuse for not writing.

I am profoundly affected by the events within my life and the bloody politics the outskirts of conversations.

But what is truly frightening is the lazy ignorance, the fog of war, the eventual surrender of oneself to the media. To allow it to overtake you, or to say that you do not have enough time to listen to the world destroy itself shows an increasing disinterest in oneself and ones own personal environment.

Your garden becomes more important than your country. Focus not on the developing Fascist state, but on adding an additional bedroom to the existing foundation of your tract housing unit.


I frequently hear people say 'I just cannot listen to it anymore'. That they're threshold for political turbulence is at such a miniscule level does not disturb me, but the easy way in which politics has broad shouldered the average American is truly dangerous in a democracy. That we have chosen consumer goods over the welfare of our own people speaks volumes about ourselves and our level of commitment to this society.

There are limits of course. Some choose not to listen to the incessant barrage of headlines that offer despair, murder, death and corruption alongside Baseball statistics and fad diets. I am not advocating eliminating all free time and dedicating oneself solely to advocacy rather I offer up this challenge: To start a dialogue with someone that has a different ideology than yourself.

If you are not registered to vote, register. If you do not know anything about what is going on, get informed.

You will continue to become marginalized until you respect yourself enough to empower your existence.

Thank you and now back to the pabulum of American Idol.

Willing to Die for Diebold

Jim spotted him as he turned the corner just passed the restrooms. After he splashed water on his face,feeling slightly psychotic and ill, he spat on the burgundy carpet and slithered into the next hall. Steaming hot he pried his way through the crowd casually nodding to the imposing beat.

He played it off like he didn't see him at first, kept his eyes on the gyrating ass in front of him, and played the role assigned to him by the beat, orders he was under an extreme obligation to perform. He felt the vibrating ring in his jeans pocket of his cell phone pressed against another young rump as the record changed, phone vibrating away in the cross fade.

But he did spot him. The guy at the far end of the floor was moving now, barking orders into a much smarter looking cell phone than the one Jim had, this one had a chrome finish and made the user look lethal and important.

Jim had no choice now but bury himself further within the crowd, become part of the sweltering heat, melt into the crowd and the amorphic mass it inhabited. He leaned over, bending towards arms and flailing hips, legs and hair, permed and straight, naturally curly and artificially colored.

Sweat clung to his face and dripping into his eyes, not allowing him to notice the new accomplices the man had gained which now flanked the crowd on either side with arms crossed revealing gold rings, broad elbows and neatly-trimmed facial hair.

Jim wouldn't see this until a few minutes later after acquiring a different t-shirt and hat from unwilling members of the crowd. He caught the movement of one of the bouncers in his peripheries and lept to the ground immediately. Instinctually he grabbed the nearest tanned female ankle he could find, and pulled the unwitting accomplis onto the floor. She screamed as the first shots were fired, dispersing the crowd.

Jim was now standing with his new dance partner at his side, staring at the group of men whose words were consumed by the deafening beats. They spat on the floor and raised their arms in a violently inviting way. Gunfire was heard after the record was stopped by the momentum of the dead DJ falling onto the sole turntable.

Jim's hand was gripped tightly on the stranger’s hand when it went limp and her body fell to the floor without a sound.

"So you wanna talk to us now or what?" The man Jim first spotted outside of the John screamed as he walked over to him grabbed him by the hair and threw him to the floor. "There won’t be a fucking paper trail in those voting machines and that's final, my bosses are very inflexible on that one."

The Cocoon

Unfold my cocoon and let me out
Touch me soft and wrap me up inside you
Fold me deep within your arms and love me forever
Hold me so close that each breath that escapes me rushes into your lungs
Butterflies escape my mouth when I speak to you
They come from my soul and into my belly, up through my throat and flutter across your body.
Set me free and let me go.
Unwrap the cocoon and set me free.

-Shireen Kachwalla

Slow Motion



Usually I can get it out of my mind.
Focusing on the guilt and flying free of
all the passion and the lust.
The sheer pleasure of it all.
The depth at which it travels envelopes every
part of my body and takes my breath places
I had forgotten existed.
The hands traveling up and around, touching,
rubbing, moving all over places which seem
foreign to me, yet so very familiar by means
of habit.
Making all that feel new and exciting,
bringing back to me the warmth, the sweat,
the breath.
The slow motion
I feel everything...everything.

-Shireen Kachwalla

From the Dearly Departed Maybelline Anderson:

Aunt Maybelline, or "Mille" as she liked to be called, would like to thank you all posthumously for attending this gala and lavish funeral. She paid a generous amout to Smithfield and Co. Mortuary to assure that you, the distinguised guests, would all get sufficiently "tanked" as she would so eloquently put during the afternoons spent setting up her will, informing the frankly stunned constituents of Smithfield and Co. while taking periodic swigs from a monogrammed brass flask.

"I want them all to remember me by not remembering the funeral itself" she would say, punctuating the last remark with a buoyont tug on her flask.