Perspectives on the Fate of Jodie Hicks

"I saw him take a hammer and a box of nails. No one ever saw him again."

"My brother said he was going to find Jodie Hicks. He had just had his heart broken for the umpteenth time." 

"Don't judge me too harshly, but I dated him for a few months. It didn't work out. We weren't right for each other. It was no reason for him to walk into the woods and never come back."

"They say he built some type of fortress for the broken hearted."

"I don't think it's a fortress. He just wanted to get away for a while and other people started showing up. You know how things go viral."

"The truth is no one's seen any evidence Jodie built a damn thing. The boy couldn't hammer a nail to save his life."

"Don't listen to the naysayers. I was out hunting deer one day and I saw it! A giant fortress if I ever saw one. People fawning all over Jodie."

"It's rumored the police found a body that looked a lot like him. They couldn't confirm the identity but the sanest of us feel it settles the outlandish stories that keep cropping up."

"The body was Ricky Smith's. It says so right in the police report and his own mother identified him.  Jodie Hicks is alive!"

"Helicopters didn't find anything but I'm still on the fence. It's nice to think he found some comfort and all those crazy people looking for him did too."

"It might be a cult. I don't know. Jodie was always more of a follower than a leader."

"The girl that did it to him? That's up for debate. Some say it was Martha Higgins, I say it was Cindy Lucas. Cindy had a bad habit of using up men and leaving them dry. She would say it was Martha though and Martha would say it's Cindy. It's how these things tend to go."

"They were all over each other. I never saw him leave Martha's side. You'd think they were attached at the lips or something."

"If he loved Martha so much why did he go to prom with Cindy?"

"She didn't show up; they never went. I think it was the embarrassment that drove him to it as much as the broken heart."

"If you want truth, forget romantic ideas of forts in the woods. His neighbors said they heard a gunshot after he walked off. Wishful thinking is the only thing keeping him alive."

"I still hear his voice when I go walking. I guess you never get over losing a child. Still, I don't think I could bear knowing for sure. It's better to imagine him away seeing the same sunrise in the morning, being around those other lost souls that truly understand his pain."

Funeral Soup

My grandma had a recipe;

If you’ve heard of wedding soup,

Well, this was something different.

She made it when someone kicked the bucket.

I knew when relatives were gone,

As 5AM brought garlic wafting

To my room. It wasn’t pleasant

And I guess that was the point.

Funeral soup was meant she said

To make us thankful. We joked

We’d rather have the coffin

Than the soup. I never realized

How much I appreciated the

Gesture until the day grandma

Herself took ill and died.

It’s impossible to say how

Sad I was that she was gone.

But I knew precisely what

She would have done.

I found an old pot of hers

Under the sink and went to work

With garlic and whatever I could find.

A half-hour past before I tasted it.

Something in the soup was missing.

I leaned closer and a tear fell in.

It tasted like it always had.

Repost from the Raving Moonbat: A Comic I Drew

This is a post from my other more political blog Raving Moonbat. Enjoy!

The Fall

I grew up in a place without trees.  There was no grass.  Yards were concrete and we dreamed of flowers.  Sometimes my brother and I would draw them with chalk.  It wasn’t the same.  We had only ever seen pictures on the TV; they were vibrant, beautiful and far away.  I sometimes touched the pixelated petals, imagining them soft, fragrant, in a vase or garden I could touch.

 

Seasons never came.  In the same way we dreamed of flowers we dreamed of snow or autumn leaves.  A long time ago children made snow angels, leapt into piles of fresh foliage.  There was a oneness with nature in the old films.

I will never forget the day that it was almost autumn.  My brother and I had finished downloading education for the day into our cerebral processors when it happened.  A leaf blew into the yard, just visible out our window.  We rushed to see it closer.  Another fell and then another.  It was a beautiful spectacle.  I raced my brother out the door.

Like children from another century piles of dark brown crinkled leaves lay before us.  I ran with all the speed I could gather and jumped.

Strangely, it was not the sensation I imagined.  I coughed as black dust stung my eyes.  My clothes lit up with the tiniest embers.  The sky was black and growing blacker.  From the distance a factory of immense proportions loomed.  Our leaves weren’t leaves but paper burnt and littered on the ground.

Repost from the Raving Moonbat: Word Verification Fail

This is a post from my other more political blog Raving Moonbat. Enjoy!

Satan for a Girl

He sold his soul to Satan for a girl.

But Satan never owned her soul;

Perhaps her body from the way she looked.

God does beautiful; he can't do that

Lips, tits, hips- the way, her hair swung back;

Seduction's always been the Devil's work?

But the love-sick, scrawny, no-chance-on-earth-but-maybe-hell

Prepubescent adolescent was willing to try anything to have his way.

A soul meant nothing, he was horny. It was obvious who came

Out ahead if he bartered it way. The Devil was a sucker.

Ha ha ha the teen laughed as he sacrificed rabbits, cats, squirrels,

Whatever roadkill or vermin he could get his well-lotioned hands on

In a pentagram drawn on the floor with black candles burning incense -

It smelled so terrible the Prince of Darkness had to like it.

Flames coalesced to form a figure in the darkness and dim light.

Embers smouldered into arms, shoulders, face, hair and breasts?

Much to his chagrin the Devil was a woman like in a movie he had seen,

Was it the remake or original? It didn't matter. He was screwed.

But not in a good way like he wanted with that D-cup hottie.

"I know what you want," she, the devil, said with fire.

The teenager could only stare. He wasn't thinking of her.

Satan was suddenly the only thing he'd ever desired.

"I want you," he found himself saying in a strange moment of courage,

And even stranger moment of speaking to a woman.

"Come with me if you've forgotten the other girl."

"What other girl?" He asked quite truthfully and

Took her hand. It burned as if a branding.

But the teenager could care less; he would have his sex. 

And nothing else mattered.

Choose My Book Title!

Ben Ditmars' chapbook of poetry, Night Poems is now Available on Amazon for Kindle and Print.

Hello loves, I was thinking of a way I could involve everyone in a fun post for the New Year. It hit while writing night poems for my new book. Since, I have no real title I thought I'd write some ideas down here and let you, the beautiful, sexy reader choose one or give your own. Here's what's going through my head.

Bat Ben and the Joker aka Writer's Block

Writings from a Hopper Nighthawk

Nocturnal Admissions

When It's Dark

Moonbeam Baby

Star Tissue in a Battered Sky

A Pen and a Streetlight

Gecko Stops the Cricket Chirp