Our bravest contributors have shared with us some of their more earnest efforts from the misty past. Scary Bush should not be reviewed while in the process of drinking liquids, and the reader assumes all risk.
Also, I thought I'd do some art work
Daniel M. Shapiro
Beaver Girl
Elizabeth Evenson-Dencklau
With your machete cut hair
dyed like the rainbow
bleached like a pair of mom-style jeans.
You adorn yourself
with baby bows and furry hats
while guitar picks hang
around your neck.
Your immaturity glows
like x-mas tree lights
and your toothy smile
annoys me.
Flat as a trencher,
body like a 12 year old--
yet all of these are superficial
and I wouldn't even care,
if it weren't for the fact you have him.
Alone
Lauren Gordon
A Conversation
Gayle Towell
What the hell do you want?
Peace and happiness.
Why?
Isn't that what everyone wants?
No.
Well surely everyone wants to be happy.
I know some people—some very disturbed people that prefer pain.
But does not that pain give them happiness, however perverted it may seem?
No, it only gives them pain.
Certainly they wouldn't have a preference for pain if it did not give them any pleasure.
Who says pleasure is happiness?
Well I think when one has pleasure, one is happy.
Are you so sure?
It seems to me the two should go together.
Why?
Just because.
What are you saying?
Absolutely nothing
They why do you speak?
Untitled
Kristin LaTour
This Rain
Gregg Murray
This Rain
hath been long
at the teat of my sorrows.
Swearing, cars, and dirty magazines
Rachel Van Blankenship
Garbage
Lynsey G. (Age 16 or 17ish, maybe? Don't judge me!)
I feel that I am drowning in filth,
But in truth it's pouring from me.
These fragile fingers are all stained black--
But maybe I'll scratch myself free.
Inside their smiling faces,
I delude myself to see
That they are all love-infested
And they're breathing down on me.
The smiles crack their sugar bones
And shatter their beaded heads,
But still they lie me gently down
On the pillows on their beds.
And the dirty words they speak to me,
The rainbow-lies that they have said,
Rip the sky from every eye--
Their lies fall on one half-dead.
I laugh to hear my troubles fly,
And smile to watch the sun,
But when I lie awake at night
I curse .every. .fucking. .one.
And when I close my eyes to them
The obscenity fills my bed,
And their faces burst inside my eyes--
They haven't killed me yet.
Nicole Oquendo
by Mike Shier
magic words
sometimes getting older
irresponsible daredevil
yellow beeswax people
grace
isolation
darkest immortality
waking black hole
prescription skylight eyes
chromosome decay
flameless untruth
Mike Shier
by Nicole Oquendo
is fingertips
bound to kill
eventually distance counts
rifles half
my heart
pale cinched measure
chest cracked
candle undulating
open to
mahogany
and tandem
paranormal decor