As Greg Stillson awoke one morning from frightful dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a Trump supporter.

The usual hangover headache of drowsiness and fog, his pre-coffee brain was gone, replaced now with a crystalline certainty about the world. Where previously much had been shrouded in mystery and doubt, now, he felt only a morose calmness. He knew the grand conspiracy of deep state design. He knew vaccines were evil instruments of the Devil. He knew global climate change was a hoax. And most importantly, he knew Donald Trump was sent by God to lead his chosen…

Every step I take reminds me
of when I was six
and had a rusty nail
stuck in my foot,
only I can't take this nail out
and look at it,
ask it where it came from.

That's not true though,
since the nail in my foot today
is in my heel
and not in my arch
up towards the ball joint,
and this pain doesn't leave
little splotches of blood
on my floor for me to find,
each one a tiny meal
for the universe, an appetizer if you will.

Also, this pain won't heal.
It's just there, part of…

SATIRE

It’s not all wine and roses inside the White House since the Trump Administration was ousted by Joe Biden’s landslide victory. According to anonymous reports from a Secret Service agent, who for the purposes of this interview, wished to be identified as Ronnie Crump, there are some decidedly disturbing situations routinely taking place behind the White House walls that are being hidden from the media.

Below is an exclusive interview with that Secret Service agent:

PT Correspondent: Hello, Mr. Crump. Thanks for agreeing to speak with us. So, you’ve mentioned to our screeners that there are reasons to be concerned…

~after Oscar Wilde

The artist has lost
the abstract sense of beauty,
thinking it more autobiography
than poetry, an excuse
to expose scars like a scaffold,
and then request applause.

Beauty is simply beauty
as sea is simply sea,
no allegory residing
within the sun or the sky.
A body is born,
and a body must die.

The artist cannot escape
the terror of his words.
A life wasted
trying to describe
the invisible mystery
of an oyster shell moon,

and the exact symphony
chorded by the wind
blowing through the illuminated
quivering blades of grass. …

~ after Toni Morrison

The dark has many colors,
variations as splendid and mysterious
as the many minds that hold it,
this definition of blackness,
of midnight, of the new moon.
It may as well be a rainbow,
this thing people fear.

America is a good garden
for guns and grave diggers,
things that sprout
like dull and colorless tulips
from soil that never birthed
anything other than blood.

America is just a water mark
left on a mahogany desk
in the vague shape of a tooth,
something that aches
and whispers freedom
beside an inkwell,

a slave holder scribbling
We…

I drove past that old barn every day
on my way to the big box store
where I’d spend my hours
cultivating heel spurs.

It sat out there in the flat earth
of a farm tilled field
long grown up with waving weeds,
its slattern roof exposing its bones

against the backdrop of green hills,
and a sky smeared with light.
A silo gleamed like a rocket nearby,
ready to be launched toward Mars,

if you ignored the rust in its ridges.
The calm serenity of this place
was so picturesque, it seemed torn
from a photo album found

in…

The first thought in my head virtually every morning I wake up is, “I should just kill myself.”

It’s been this way for years. Ever since I was a teenager, I have struggled with getting myself motivated to start my day. I’ve never been much of a morning person. I’ve never been much of a people person. And generally, I have come to terms with the fact that this existence is meaningless, and the pursuit of income through a daily grind of a career for some soulless corporation does little to add depth to my life.

I don’t believe in…

We’re coming up on the 18th anniversary of the release of St. Anger, Metallica’s most critically panned album. Although, at the time, its reception was more of a mixed bag, today it is widely considered their worst record by fans and critics alike. People just can’t get over the production choices on the record, namely the sound of the drums, and more specifically the sound of the snare.

To many, it’s apparently an unforgivable sin that on a high profile release from a top-tier recording artist, they chose for the snare drum to go ping! instead of pop! …