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LJIdol 10: Topic 9: Trolley Problem
Light fades. I stand in the entryway of my apartment like a statue, barely breathing. I hear him shouting again. My hand rests on the doorknob, forehead against the cool steel door. It feels comforting against my reddened face. I cry for her most days. A tear, a caught breath... a lingering look to tell her I'm sorry. She always turns away first.
I ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 7: Where I'm From
LJ Idol 10: Topic 7: Where I'm From
Where I'm From
where I'm from
is under attack
not from without
imagined slights and hidden
terrors
but from within
where fear and hate
scrabble for footholds
and all good people
cry out
and the world
cries out with us
where before we shined
a beacon
now we walk in darkness
where once diversity
now division
where once ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 6: Heel Turn
LJ Idol 10: TOPIC 6: Heel Turn
The old woman makes her way down the familiar block, past crumbling buildings and neglected brownstones. She keeps her eyes on the sidewalk, though it isn't to avoid meeting eyes with her neighbors. No one is out this evening. It's more to shield her aged eyes from the blinding cold. Everyone piling up together on ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 5: Fear is the Heart of Love
Topic 5: Fear is the Heart of Love
The streetlight flickered yellow light as the Shadow passed under its waning circle of comfort. Briefly, he wondered if an observer would see him go transparent under its sickly cast. As quickly as the thought surfaced, it fled a moot existence and the Shadow's mind settled on the deserted sidewalk. Cracked, ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 4: I Skate to Where the Puck is Going to Be
“I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be. " Wayne Gretzky
Everything I do, I do for you. That's not hyperbole... it's actually a painful truth, deep and residing somewhere between my basic chemical imbalance and the neuroses that were gifted to me through the genetic stone-soup that is my family. It's an all ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 2: That One Friend
That summer was electric, a perfect violent storm of youth. We'd been emboldened to live life out loud, challenged to see things differently than the generation before us. We were often without a path but never without the vigor to travel. We were seekers and charlatans, jokers and adventurers, compelled to change a world we knew nothing about.
It ( Read more... ) -
LJIdol 10: Topic 1: I Need the Struggle to Feel Alive
This isn't the first time I've wrestled this demon. He and I are old friends, I suppose. He's as much of a friend as I have left these days anyhow, and he likes it that way. We always tease, he and I, and he always casts his love for me into the ring. We go back and forth with our japes and jibes like an intimate foreplay.
This time the banter ( Read more... ) -
LJ Idol 10: Topic 0: Introduction
Sometimes I feel as if people meet me and then walk away with the distinct and confused feeling of “Well... THAT happened.” When I feel that way, it unerringly makes me stop and ponder the usual existential points as if I'm attempting to win at some sort of cosmic game of solitaire, laying down card after card, attempting to form the patterns that ( Read more... ) -
Clean slate, clean mind
Those of you wandering this way, whether getting re-acquainted or popping in for the first time, through the new season of LJ Idol (WOOHOOO SEASON 10!!).. I have put all of my past work behind a screen for now. Eventually, I will begin pulling things out and dusting them off, but I wanted to start this season with no preconceived notions, no ( Read more... )