Words Were Our Wings, Now Let Them Be Rifles

Photographer Unknown

You only must aim for the heart.

All Distortion All the Time

Daniel Regan

Would someone please plug my lungs back into the guitar amps

I want to live my life on all distortion all the time

- Derrick Brown

Lost Conversations

PLINEY: "... And in the process I snagged my cheese..."

I Have Already Emptied Myself

Don Bartletti

Howl open-mouthed, terror- and love-filled

- Anis Mojgani

Hand Me Down Tune

Jo Straube

I dreamt of a suit, a suit so fine I dressed my words in
Sewn and tailor made with song in mind, made of melody
Stitched by threads of notes with perfect pitch, perfectly composed
Sound in tune and key, a code of rhythm, and harmony
But when I awoke my coat was worn and my words were plain
Each song that I sang, all the notes were wrong and poorly played
Both my sleeves had holes, my knees were patched, my shoes needed soles
No clever disguise no way to hide my offensive tone
- The Avett Brothers

Exploded

“When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma’am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He thought it had probably been exploded.”
- The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

Worse

“I pretended to be cheerfully busy, entering information into the computer, dusting and ordering the shelves, but in fact my new, rather prurient interest was looking up people’s reading habits. It was disgusting, really. An invasion of privacy, a petty crime of the soul. I’d begun by looking up my brother’s card; now I couldn’t seem to stop. That was my nature, take something bad and make it worse.”
- The Ice Queen, Alice Hoffman