Cold Rambler

Another car wash Another gas station Another coffee shop Another neighborhood pops up overnight Why am I bothered by all these things? When I know neither this town Nor this world belong to me I’m just passing through Gone and quickly forgotten As the streets and the roads Fill up with more and more People who Will soon be gone and forgotten Just like me   Daniel Slaten writes short stories and poetry in small notebooks and on sticky notes.

If you carry initials after your name You cannot write poetry You must first figure out everyone’s woke-ness  Achieving perfect symmetry  In an environment of smug confusion If you are wealthy Don’t you dare write poetry If you are poor You can write it  Because you are powerless  And no one listens If you rhyme  You can write poetry You will aggravate everyone Your words a self-fulfilling prophesy  In harmonious contempt Write poetry that is amorphous Incomprehensible and perplexing The vapid will be transfixed by you And the scholarly will ignore you Your attempt to occupy  A gloomy or cheerful preoccupation In poetry   Are hopeless pathetic The harmful effects  Of your human derivative waste On our environment Don’t waste your time Poetry is not your thing It is not meant  For your type of person And what are you doing Listening to what you think is poetry?  You live in dissonance with poetry Plans should be made  Subsc...

We soon found out that Native Americans were the bad guys. We watched the Hollywood portrayals of the cowardly braves deserving of death and the brave, honest settlers who rightly prevailed. If propaganda is successful it won’t even be recognised. And successful it was for a long time. That is not to say that all ‘indians’ were good people, that they never committed atrocities or preached hatred and abuse. But the power was so disproportionate that they could be no equivalence. The scales were already tipping over. To pretend balance was possible would be a distortion. Then there were the Nazi’s. No one now thinks that their arguments of superiority, of paranoia and racism should find an open ear. But ears were open then. Wide open. And eyes were closed to  enslavement, starvation and death. That is not to say that all Jews, Slavs and gypsies were good people, that they never committed atrocities or preached hatred and abuse. But the power was so disproportionate that they could be...

They found a body with the Spring thaw. Down in the woods across the street. Behind the drug house on the corner with that Jim Morrison poster  draped over the front door. A female we are told. But the papers are mum on the rest. A human popsicle along the walking path the kids use to get to school. No word on who discovered it, or why the entire street has been  taped off. Nosy neighbours  treating it like their ticker tape  parade of rile and rumour. And the hungry bears are up now, looking for that first meal of the season. While the junkies stumble by. On their way to needle park. With that hard dry mouth wanting  that makes you smack your lips  and gives away the prize.   Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, Cold Rambler, Zygot...