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Scott C. Holstad

Scott C. Holstad

Scott C. Holstad

Scott C. Holstad has authored 60+ print books & has published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism, journalism, technology & scientific research. His work has appeared in thousands of publications in over 20 languages including the Minnesota Review, Exquisite Corpse, Pacific Review, Sports Illustrated, the TODAY Show, Yahoo, Long Shot, Wormwood Review, Chiron Review, Southern Review, Poetry Review & Poetry Ireland Review among others. He holds degrees and is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee, California State University Long Beach, UCLA and Queens University of Charlotte. He’s moved 35+ times and now lives near Gettysburg PA.

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bonds are formed, death with the dead, those with no hope, the despair written in their eyes selling bit & pieces of shit called food for an extra sheet to put over their shivering bodies

– Scott C. Holstad

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caffeine buzz liquid thrill, chills slowly going down kinda wicked 'n edgy like legs spread wide in razor wrapped dreams, like looking glass lust on lsd, like wigged out flesh of lightening fear, like fried out bits of lovers angst, i lust at you, i live for you, i want you here w/ me

– Scott C. Holstad

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Counting sheep no longer works. The day comes crashing down on you and you can’t escape it. You go home, have two shots of Jack, look through the bills, fix yourself a TV dinner, watch the Lakers lose another one, take a bath, think briefly of cutting your wrists knowing you don't have the guts to do it, and you go to bed. So much for the sheep.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Fragments of poems are Leaking out through the Blood… If you listen closely, You can hear the sounds of windows closing, locking, being sealed. I believe in you and yours Do you Me and mine?

– Scott C. Holstad

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i want to hold her to me, take away her pain, fear, make her believe someone gives a shit. i want to stroke the nape of her soft downy neck, cover her eyes with my hand, feel her cheeks quiver beneath -- i want to know her, but like one wounded she won’t let them close. she’s afraid to live life at times she feels a feeling similar to one she had as a child but when it appears she pushes the plunger and it disappears.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I'm not Christ - I can't raise the dead.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Language doesn’t do it justice, the body intact yet ready for rebirth The landscape of flowers and secrets left untold.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Naming is power, you know. That's what they say at least. My parents exhausted universal power in first creating me and then in naming me. They created for me an identity whether I wanted one or not.

– Scott C. Holstad

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No one is asked whether they wish To be born. Everyone is asked to die. Life is comprised of the noisy silence One makes of it.

– Scott C. Holstad

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she said i want you to meet him you'll like him really yeah i thought like car crash broken glass rusty razored underwear barbed wire cheer acid fear like walking down normandie naked nightly like tiger claws 'n earthquake falls i'll really relish meeting 'm.

– Scott C. Holstad

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The fact that we are still sitting on and depending on technical protocols nearly a half century old is a testament to the genius of those who invented everything from such inventions, protocols and standards like Ethernet to personal computers that were more than just circuit boards for geeks, but actually had small GUI interfaces, as well as connected devices such as a mouse and keyboard.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We wake up, breathe, live life, often against our wishes and our better judgement. We console ourselves by telling ourselves this is no fault of our own but that doesn’t take away the reality of the pain, the streaming dreams, the utter shock of life, the shattered pieces of survival.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Winter is a long descent Into hell, a daring Kidnapper, on whose lips Rest the word always. Look upon it as the rains Do, leafless trees blowing Earthward like constraints, Shackles of the soul.

– Scott C. Holstad

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woke up with blood on the pillow, blood on the sheets, blood on my breath and blood in my mouth and the coughing started again and i turned to spit at the trashcan and missed and i admired the new wall decoration as i grabbed a cigarette to start the bloody day.

– Scott C. Holstad

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a beautiful girl spoke to me today thru little honey’d whispers dreaming icicles streams of words mouth moving saying much in little tones traveling passionately into distant lands far off hopes stranger’s arms a hoped-for death told her secret

– Scott C. Holstad

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A smile cures all forms of sickness, yet behind many smiles lies a set of very sharp teeth, carnivorous and rarely satisfied.

– Scott C. Holstad

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angry, violent, bizarre, we’re obscene in our lust, oblivious in our pain. i’m a man driven by my passions. sometimes I desire normalcy but then my brain wakes up and i return to reality.

– Scott C. Holstad

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anyway i saw it coming from the rooftops. they said the second coming was heading our way tomorrow’s world today force fed to us in a tobacco colored spoon keep us entertained – content - oppressed. we prayed, friend, and they brought it down.

– Scott C. Holstad

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apparitions of stick people torment me, of skeletal phantoms walking in rain deathly dead stick arms upraised to the gods. i knew one such apparition once, cheated of life by a diseased society intent upon deprivation of body and soul, identity as we would have it. i am haunted at times by what could have been.

– Scott C. Holstad

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As children, we played cowboys and Indians through the fields and forests, looking for foes as though being set upon was the worst we’d face. As children we found horseshoes, dusty hidden treasures buried in dirt, and we’d take them home and hang them on our walls alongside our Farrah and football posters. Innately we knew that someday we’d grow out of this, so mornings and afternoons we’d carry on, content, a real word in our small vocabulary.

– Scott C. Holstad

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as i said her nostrils flared like a white lion, i blinked and she was gone. what one imagines. i dream moldy words. at times she yawned, as i said that, and her nostrils flared most beautifully.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Ashes keep drifting onto my paper, charcoal snowflakes on a minefield of blanks, words bouncing around off each other uttering impotent images of sight sound terror life crying for recognition, narcissistic eunuchs reflecting my face, ruining the snowfield.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Blank paper before me; fresh snow fall, tracks slowly appearing, my future mapped out, my life, my day. Minute by minute, laboriously, every nook, every cranny exposed. This is my true life, I think while wondering what became of the person I used to be.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Bronchial fix, lung lining expanding again, pounding holes, stabbing me in the back, bacterial traitor, wheezing breath from me, giving me the wonderful opportunity to take panting lessons from Rover.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Bukowski was wrong. these words don't matter. you pound them out and send them off and they're gone just like that and all you're left with is a blank screen staring you in the face.

– Scott C. Holstad

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caffeine fixture, liquid buzz, kinda makes the juices curl inside and out like having a pair of powdery legs wrapped tightly around your neck – strong and just a little wicked

– Scott C. Holstad

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chain link heat, a little over whelming some times when the sweat runs down your body like so many open veins jagged and throbbing

– Scott C. Holstad

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dancing with death when he whispers in your ear is a very erotic moment in a man’s life and it may not have happened yet for me but he’s sent his assistants many times to try me out. we’ve all been failures much to death’s disappointment

– Scott C. Holstad

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do you hate yourself i wonder?you can’t expect others to accept you until you’ve been able to accept yourself. sometimes i think i can really feel the pain. i’ve been there, i live there. but if you can make it through, nothing will beat you. you know the madhouses are full of emotional suicides. let’s just take it day by day.

– Scott C. Holstad

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fuck ‘em all. i wear my pain proudly like a loud scarf around some Manhattan bitch’s neck and i hold the leash of the poodle otherwise known as Dead To The World proudly in front of me as it takes a shit on the lawn of city hall

– Scott C. Holstad

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Give me Red Vines and ginger snaps, a triple cheeseburger with bacon. Give me two shots of Jack and an empty bottle on the table. Give me clubbing hard, museums by day and dancing by night, independent cinemas and theaters galore, frolicking in the ocean and jumping from planes. Give me wine, women and whiskey – that pansy afterlife junk ain’t for me. I wanna live life hard. Come on, give it to me!

– Scott C. Holstad

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glazed eyes staring stupid looking at nothing and seeing everything born of and into ignorance what society dictates we consume cattle gathering around learning devices called television

– Scott C. Holstad

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Happiness, I decided years ago, is unattainable and I don’t wish to seek it through the usual methods. Peace is a reflection of our souls, leaving me a non-entity. I cry because people want to feel and I join them in their fears and private agonies and I wish for death and pray for life and hope to God that God even gives a shit and before I die and receive my judgment I just want to help 1 person FEEL, to know what it is to be alive and to ease their suffering as only a tormented soul can.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Have you ever seen somebody die? It’s not like in the movies, not to me. You don’t close their peaceful eyes and pray for their soul. Rather their eyes are full of horror. People say taken in the flower of their youth, how sad yet these people get to escape a lifetime of hell and still people mourn. I laugh in honor of the dead. may they rot in peace.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Hell, they almost broke me. I worked in the back with people whose names were Gomez and Garcia and who could barely understand me. I unloaded sofas, washing machines, a cast iron stove for God’s sake. Nearly broke me. I looked forward to a cigarette break with a madman’s glee, and I was joined by the others, the cigarette the communal language. When I finally finished my community service, they gave me my paperwork to take back to court and on it they wrote great worker, thanks and I felt more satisfaction out of that than nearly all of my poemsies I’ve ever had published.

– Scott C. Holstad

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here with you and it just doesn't seem real sometimes and wanting to know you what you look like when I'm not with you what you think when you're in bed at night what made you cry the other day wanting to bury myself inside you and burrow into you can't get out never get out and become you live you be you

– Scott C. Holstad

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I allowed you to destroy me, my self-confidence, my ego, my identity as a human being and as a man. for years i was a shadow of my former self. the pain you caused was brutal and intense but i have a new life and a new incarnation and you’re hardly worth thinking about anymore and being free at last of your clutches, I have a new world to look forward to.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i always like trying to catch a bus in a new city wondering how will i know which one to take and simply deciding this one as it pulls up and looking at the natives looking at me and getting off at the end wondering where the hell i am and how will i get back.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I am intoxicated with withdrawal, paranoia, anger and fear. I live for the moment of meeting eyes telling fortunes – they can’t tell mine and God does that drive them nuts. I confuse people, scare them; they can’t quite get a grasp on me. I just take my meds and pray to the gods for their souls.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I am my own power, my own home with blackened roses gaping at softened slashed easy chairs, furled requiems of silence, yet strength too -- of poetry, of the books, of the gods. I am my Own and I intend to be the keeper of My truth, the slayer of My dragons, the Exorcist of My demons.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i am nothing but bits of paper, grains of sand pressed hot against hard flesh, campfires burning bright against the still night. i am man‑flesh human life walking ~ dreaming, twitching under the noonday sun.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i am sometimes afraid of the loner in me and of what is inside you your need to merge become one to see the world through another pair of eyes I'm afraid i need to retain my identity

– Scott C. Holstad

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I dreamt that I could cut people in half with scissors, see into their souls and then walk with them to church or the grocery.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i drive 160 on the freeway in the hopes of a fiery escape my major x-mas wish and like everyone else i get shit life on a razor’s edge words that kill and guns that don’t

– Scott C. Holstad

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i found out that a close friend had just experienced a terrible tragedy. her fiancé, not yet 40, had keeled over dead on the spot, no warning. i called her and she asked, if i am doing badly, can i call you to talk? i assured her that she could and she said, i might be hyperventilating or something. i told her that’s ok. i'll probably think it’s an obscene phone call and i'll have a good time with it!

– Scott C. Holstad

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i got the fear deep inside breathing hard i run to avoid the glare the pain of the lights the stares intrude invade i stumble up the stairs avoid inquisitive eye contact the darker you are the harder you die and they don't never care – i need to rest

– Scott C. Holstad

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I have to choose, lie down with my choices, make my efforts, try to get better, live to see my sickness not through crazed eyes, but through the eyes of a shared language – reconstructed depths of wholeness.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i haven’t succeeded, the world will not burst into flames at my death, puppies will not be named after me – i have no staying power.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I lay in bed absorbing fear, collecting strength, enjoying the slumberous sounds of solitude. To perish without love, I think, is a tragedy worth knowing.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I long for things. I long for things I can’t begin to describe, but while I am affected chemically, I ultimately need to assume responsibility for my actions and if love counts and life counts then I can’t be a sleepwalker. I have to choose, lie down with my choices, make my efforts, try to get better, live to see my illness, not through crazed eyes, but through the eyes of a shared language – reconstructed depths of wholeness.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I look at the world like frost in a windowpane, confused, unseeing, and I wait for a solution which will never come.I see the world through eyes glazed over searching for relief from the ungodly pain. fuck the stigma. I just want normalcy.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i run from my dreams, romantic they are not. rather full of scream scenes, empty death masks, mutilated corpses, the walking dead, society in a mushroom. i run from my dreams and wake to pain without a god and without excuse – I will myself to move knowing i’m one step closer to death.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I see things differently. Rocks look suspicious to me as do certain hubcaps. Paranoia seeps through my pores, it’s just a part of me. Truthfully, I don’t know what to say anymore. My body is a piece of art; I don’t care about external scars, it’s the internal ones I live with and Satan dances towards me.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I want the guilt hatred hostility shame violence perfectionism biases humanity to flee, jump off the Terminal Island bridge. How many times have I laid next to you in bed with my arms around you wanting to blow my brains out? My grave marks my preference, my erasure, my wholeness.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I woke last night from a nightmare in which I saw a malignant society of pathological liars racked with insecurities, consumed by guilt, screaming for violence and I noticed I was sweating most profusely as I thanked the heavens above that it was only a dream before turning on the light to get a cigarette.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I'll be damned if my family, uncles, cousins fought, bled, sacrificed all on foreign beaches to free millions of people being tortured and killed by insane genocidal fascists AS WELL AS trying to keep the rest of the world safe from these evil monsters, only to find some decades later, flags bearing Swastikas being planted in American soil, if not eventually American political buildings and agencies!

– Scott C. Holstad

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i'm still waiting for someone to kick in the groove wake us up get the juices flowing and you know the shit gets more stale a little more square every day and we're diggin our own grave jumpin in head first and still we cry out for leaders to take us away start the groove over but the tunes are the same doesn't really matter where you start.

– Scott C. Holstad

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If I killed myself now would I make the papers would anyone care I already know the answer to that besides it’s irrelevant

– Scott C. Holstad

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In the space of two mere weeks, I have come to know the meaning of life. I won’t share it with you, because we all have to find our own meaning. Camus was right, though. Sometimes, I feel just like Meursault.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Indescribable. Met my match at long last. I can’t end it with grace and I can’t give a damn. We live this life as though we were already among the dead; perhaps we are.

– Scott C. Holstad

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It's had about a thousand lives in it, some brittle and cold, others quaint and lively. The wallpaper's peeling and the pipes are rusting. The shingles are breaking away, falling to ancient earth but the hearth still smells of warm breakfast, eggs sizzling in their beds, toast crisp with strains of raspberry jam, griddlecakes tanning themselves, milk being topped off. Somewhere there is a rumbling, a truck bearing gifts of furniture, a car with parents cooing to their young and calming the family pets as they speed on to their destination.

– Scott C. Holstad

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it’s not that i think sandals are for hippies and it’s not that i think they’re a west coast item only and it's not that I don't appreciate kind gifts. it’s just that when you wear sandals you have to clip your toenails.

– Scott C. Holstad

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I’m feeling much better now that I’ve found my mind.

– Scott C. Holstad

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i’m sleeping next to no one or no thing except the mirror and the only thing i see in the room is the reflection of the person i despise the most

– Scott C. Holstad

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i’ve been reading poems by notable poets about cows * sheep * pigeons * fish * deer & the like & honestly it makes me ill. i write about what i know: big cities, street gangs, the homeless, food stamps, death & suicide & i wonder who reads this boring crap, who gets inspired? I want it hard edged, baby, poems on razorblades cutting through skin, tendons, even bones, poems that make the blood flow & run deep in real rivers of life.

– Scott C. Holstad

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lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been mellowing out a bit and at those times my wife lovely reassures me by saying, no, you’re still the same uptight bastard you’ve always been

– Scott C. Holstad

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Like long lost love abandoned in forgotten letters, you lose yourself in others, and dream their dreams, become their aspirations. When you look in the mirror, you see a black blank picture of Them staring back and you vow not to before giving in once again.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Love is an object that is difficult for me to sink myself into, to grasp and hold; it evades my touch and others sense this. I am termed cold, mean, irritable, overly serious many times over. I wish to walk arm in arm, hand in hand, without your fears pervading, without my feeling that others are staring; I wish to lose the fog and retain you, your essence, your radiance, your strength. Truthfully, I don’t know what to say to much anymore. Satan dances backwards for me, people are worried about my body, my art. I don’t give a shit about the external scars, it’s the internal ones I live with.

– Scott C. Holstad

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maybe it’s just my imagination but I can smell the stench of a decaying humanity wallowing in the throes of hypocrisy, apathy, misery and I take a DEEP breath before stepping out.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Moods invent the man. I am a creation of turbulence, a rider of an ongoing merry-go-round.

– Scott C. Holstad

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My advisors tell me I've been poisoned and that I do it to myself, but their tongues speak only half-truths, for I was born to suffer, and that is truth incarnate.

– Scott C. Holstad

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My playing fields were comprised of a black and white universe – cold/hot, light/dark, heaven/hell, right/wrong – this, my guide, my birthright. Something was buried in the back of my soul – the signs were all there but no one knew, no one could tell so when I eventually went over the edge, it was meant to be a lesson learned.

– Scott C. Holstad

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nighttime, the pain returns rippling mind effects disunity lust objects found like shower breeze crashing down on a beaten psyche; disjointed love turns evil with the night

– Scott C. Holstad

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no one sees, no one hears cries of despair not very dreamlike; a sense that we’re all robots controlled by psychotic state of mind these days. Orwell wasn’t far off, just a few years.

– Scott C. Holstad

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normalcy? an answer to a crossword puzzle question my body bears the strain of a suicide wannabe the look in my eye turns people away humanity frightens so easily that the words bubble to the top of the lobotomized

– Scott C. Holstad

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of course i have learned over the years that my fantasies are always better than reality and i leave it at that.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Oh God, don’t you want us to live, to stop killing ourselves? Will they come to see me when I die? Which begs the question, what about now? They say you need other people in your life, but do they need you? Do they?

– Scott C. Holstad

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oh great, more Really Important People sitting down beside me with their damned mobile phones to screech in LOUD voices condos resale values, great new stock options, frequent flyer miles, who is fucking whom… actually, i think the rest of us are being screwed by these social leeches but god they look good don’t they

– Scott C. Holstad

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on sale today we have Doubts, Insecurities, Depression and Guilt for reduced prices, in this section Self-Hatred, Suicidal Ideation and Anger. that section there has Betrayal, Inferiority, Hostility and Frustration, but in the back, the best … Confusion, Apathy, Paranoia, Irritation and the beloved Need-To-Kiss-Ass-At-Work all on sale for very, very low prices…

– Scott C. Holstad

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one night i saw the black widow crawling on my bed and the fear coursing through my veins felt like the best kind of hell

– Scott C. Holstad

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Orange fluff ball, Rocky is an 18-pound marvel of love, so fluffy, he looks like he’s 26 pounds. He scares the local dogs just by sitting and staring at them. Rocky’s there for me when I get home, purrs when he wants to, leads me to the food bowl when he needs to, licks me in an attempt to heal my wounds, loves cellophane, red ribbons, left over chicken. Rocky, my best friend, is my orange fluff ball, and I wish I could share him with the world.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Outside, the birds sang to each other, words of wisdom, clouds of the finest smoke, a mob of blue jays descended on the bird feeder, the light still peachy. If there are lessons to be Learned and gauntlets run, If you remain holy, The seed will be taken right from your hand.

– Scott C. Holstad

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People tend to get nervous when you stare at them. They are racked with enough insecurities as it is. They always look away, glance back quickly and look away again. Some part of them melts and as they attempt to gather themselves, their flesh forms puddles at their feet.

– Scott C. Holstad

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pictures of life grinding to a halt decorating walls movement in dead motion limbs askew mouths stretched wide in motionless scream. art as we see it – feeling it’s another story. so does art imitate life or does life imitate A—R—T and where does it end – on cold walls before disinterested observers?

– Scott C. Holstad

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pound for pound, the best one of the bunch, a fighter, scratcher, pit bull, she can nail ‘em to the floor in one second flat, her body’s beautiful, but her mind’s a work of art, whirling madly, twisting and turning, she’s a REAL woman and she won’t let you forget it

– Scott C. Holstad

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reality is often little more than a mirror reflecting visions made of ice and steel cold permanent and carefully contrived.

– Scott C. Holstad

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seeing is believing they say and if boundaries are limitless are we? or is existence twofold and doomed before the sights are set and if so does God really weep for humanity and must we continue to seek sustenance through escapism and do sporting events in all their microcosmic glory refute the tenets of nihilism or should we simply accept and wallow in our ignorance unbearable lightness of being creatures who feelwhat -- I don’t know

– Scott C. Holstad

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she dreams dreams wrapped in unknown skins. sweat scented covers are tossed aside in her urgency. she dreams recklessly of reckless abandonment in a dark, dank world.

– Scott C. Holstad

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she had this inherent need to create a new identity for each and every occasion, to become someone different every day to mask the emptiness, the pain of true isolation. If you tried you could smell the death surrounding her; a dead soul is black regardless of what it may be wearing.

– Scott C. Holstad

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She told me that a friend of hers had heard of me and exclaimed “he’s disturbing to read.” now i like that – “disturbing to read: -- like popping pills or pushing the plunger down, like big knives and rusty razors. i’m fucking disturbing – let me disturb you too

– Scott C. Holstad

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she wants to to be loved for a few hours at least. I look away, people need peace. it’s raining hard outside; lives are breaking in the storm.

– Scott C. Holstad

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She watched the smoke from the cigarette ooze slowly up to the ceiling, form into a nebulous cloud above her head like some miniature L.A. and then glanced at me. “Open the window, the room smells.” As I struggled with the lock, I noticed the cracks in the pane looked like so many veins in her wrist, pulsing, throbbing, making rivers of passion and death.

– Scott C. Holstad

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So little of what we observe is Actuality. Do we see/hear the words pouring forth? Are they Truth? I wish and hope but my future is predestined per my parents’ belief and that is denial and death, the deepest pits of hell, the thorniest of crowns, no sympathy, simply guilt, pain, anguish and lament. Call me your Anti-Savior and I’ll take on your pain too.

– Scott C. Holstad

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so there we are, golden drones droning in unison. this is the West man, the pinnacle of civilization. this is where it started man. Come visit my culture. come culture my vision. we all own Automobiles here too. 87 greyhounds died in a fire today. someone lost some bucks.

– Scott C. Holstad

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sometimes it’s the senseless feelings which overwhelm you, the despair and frustration which build to dangerous levels and the subsequent release, the cigarettes, alcohol, nameless fucks, nights spent in the drunk tank. the cats howling outside the window know this and they act accordingly.

– Scott C. Holstad

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spent some time gittin juiced on the junk you know and the poems would come thick and black, coffeelike, a little bitter you know and when the pores started jiving and all it'd be time to git on down and groove, let the words flow forth, try not to suffocate, live one more day.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Strangers frighten me. They remind me of you. Blood spills into the tub. Cramped quarters. Essence of fire. And garlic. Sweaty palms and images of the Diva rock me. Is it too late? Is it? Strangers frighten me. I dance puppet steps killing me hundreds of times over and over; I have a sickness to battle with you always there waiting.

– Scott C. Holstad

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Sure, I’ve written about women and sex and madhouses, just like Bukowski did, but I’ve also written about many other topics, often utilizing other stylistic methods in doing so. Bukowski would probably have been annoyed with the rambling tone of my poems in Cells.

– Scott C. Holstad

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sweat streaming killing hard in over kill i wake up screaming . there’s nothing to be done but go at it again

– Scott C. Holstad

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That's why angels prefer to come here on faint ancient nights when the moon is at half-strength and the cats howl their hunger. The venom plaguing us seems miles away.

– Scott C. Holstad

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The day began simply enough, cigarette in hand, coffee, black and bitter, wadded up newspaper, and after I got out of bed You were there too, and you wanted to debate the meaning of existence, but I couldn’t at that moment Outside, the birds sang to each other, words of wisdom, clouds of the finest smoke, a mob of blue jays descended on the bird feeder, the light still peachy If there are lessons to be Learned and gauntlets run, If you remain holy, The seed will be taken right from your hand.

– Scott C. Holstad

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The few who are ballsy enough to actually live wind up in madhouses, tortured by actuality. We all wind up in the same place anyhow … food for unseeing worms.

– Scott C. Holstad

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The street outside my window is one of a million likeminded Los Angeles streets. Taggers, homeless, families and lovers, thieves and beggars, running children and old women, churches, bars, corner stores, Spanish, Cambodian and Armenian words and accents. I want to hug my street and all within, to feel the throbbing pulse beating its steady rhythm.

– Scott C. Holstad

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the words on the paper im readin are blarin out at me loud an angrylike tellin me there's no end to the recession theres no jobs theres no peace theres no hope man an people wonder why i do what i do? an bums are bummin lights from me and babies are squintin up at me an my coffee is rupturing my gut bitterlike an i guess the world is kinda like the coffee sometimes – ill be suffering thru both tomorrow.

– Scott C. Holstad

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there are no fucking miracles aside from the fact that i’m still alive and far too many other people are too - why in the world people aren’t throwing themselves off bridges in droves i’ll never know

– Scott C. Holstad

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There are two of me now, old and disfigured, new and disheveled. A crinkled, yellow newspaper balled up in the fireplace, spidery face, rotted jaw, sewn and resewn.

– Scott C. Holstad

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There's a big hole in people, even the long legged ones, and they eat and eat because they don't want to die; at least they want to revel in their misery for one more day, and they look back at me with suspicious eyes and then they go back to their dead life and dream of peace and love and compassion, and I continue to stare at them in a blurred stupor.

– Scott C. Holstad

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There’s this space in our lives that we attempt to fill with more space and the nothingness grows larger while our lives get smaller, a fact we can’t seem to accept very well. So, we take walks and we work and we go to movies and basketball games and church and we Exist in our nothing lives and when we die a speech is made and we are forgotten once again, only more permanently this time.

– Scott C. Holstad

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they are a little more solid even in the exquisite nakedness of their existence and they glory in their reality and read music and dance poetry on the sidewalks and in the lavatories of bombed out buildings. we take their words and cup them in our hands and we take their lips and crush them to our selves and dream the dreams and think of sands and faraway places and wish for death and pray they see IT soon.

– Scott C. Holstad

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They closed the transient 5th Avenue Motel and now where will they go? They came from all over to stay for a night or a month or whatever they could afford, however they can afford it – and now it’s gone, broken windows boarded up, chain link fence surrounding it like it’s a dog with scurvy. The transient hotel drained pale, pissing in an empty ashtray.

– Scott C. Holstad

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They gave me killer pills that knocked me on my ass for a few hours at least so I wouldn’t have to hear the godawful screaming. I’m exhausted and my blood boils and there’s nothing I can do. There was another life that seems so long ago and I try to reconstruct images, events, people, all just dreams tethered to the knife in my soul. This is my cross, my dagger, my napalm, my dance of the dead…

– Scott C. Holstad

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They’re telling me I need to change my appearance; I may look unnecessarily menacing to people. That it’s the shaved head, beard, black leather jacket, black t-shirt decorated with blood, black jeans, black Doc boots. Now I’m supposed to turn into some preppy punk, internalize any appearances of aggression, regress to high school when I underwent the same BS and all this to avoid inviting unnecessary potential hostility and confrontations. What they seem to ignore is if this is true, it doesn’t bother me one damn bit. I’m happy to kick the shit out of anyone who doesn’t like my jacket. Then again, maybe that’s the attitude they’re trying to eliminate….

– Scott C. Holstad

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Things remained in a type of stasis for the next couple of days, but I was bored. I wished I had a favorite Bukowski with me to read, either Women or Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which he’d been cool enough to sign for me once when I’d been over at his pad in San Pedro. I missed him. Still couldn’t believe he was gone.

– Scott C. Holstad

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today is a good day for murder love hatred sex violence drugs revisionist attitudes anarchy of the sense letters and the like teatime exists in the MinD snarling underground day addiction

– Scott C. Holstad

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today, suffering from drawn out hangover, the world ran dry. Bukowski died and one third of the world's winemakers will go broke.

– Scott C. Holstad

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violence is so american violence is pretty girls guns ‘n danger rape, murder, ‘n mayhem tv above all eats us up ‘n spits us out tells us lies we willingly believe

– Scott C. Holstad

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War is the true Nature of the world, a dog with matted fur lapping eagerly at the bloody Nile, wagging its threadbare tail the entire time.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We are the people in cheap hotels and tenement housing walking down side alleys talking to ourselves. We are the people the pushers the whores the crackheads the gunrunners the bangers the pimps the homeless the outlaws the crippled the freaks the damned. Drink to us my friends for we are the forgotten.

– Scott C. Holstad

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we dream of peace and tranquility, the day when we no longer despair but our self-imposed angst cannot be avoided. we can't run. it won't go away. the noises i hear in my hell are very real and i'll continue to exist in an interested sort of anguish, looking for bloodstains on acid free sidewalks.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We look through the sights, squeeze the trigger and the toy soldiers go flying, dying hard but smiling in the process. The toy maker should be laughing the whole way to the bank but Nietzsche said he was dead too.

– Scott C. Holstad

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we love and hate with equal madness

– Scott C. Holstad

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we met shoe shopping and she asked me out. over drinks she said aren’t you going to kiss me? when i dumped her over the phone four months later, she told me i had been a lovely person to love.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We share this moment not through touch but our eyes, yours brilliant, shining, willing, wanting to know feel the pain, understand, mine dead to the world, a bleak history of empty files

– Scott C. Holstad

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we sweat through our doldrums somehow, sheer insane boredom; society can no longer focus and my poems keep drying up and blowing away.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We wake up, breathe, live life often against our wishes and our better judgement. We console ourselves by telling ourselves this is no fault of our own but that doesn’t take away the reality of the pain, the streaming dreams, the utter shock of life, the shattered pieces of survival.

– Scott C. Holstad

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well it’s almost noon and i've done nothing all day, all my great plans shot to hell, of getting up at 7 and writing 3 new poems 1 new story 5 letters of sending out submissions to 4 new magazines and making several phone calls all by noon – so i'll just keep drinking coffee and reading from the stack of books on my kitchen table and maybe i'll go catch a flick and maybe just maybe i'll get half as much done tomorrow.

– Scott C. Holstad

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We’d sit on the porch of the tenement watching police cars whisking by and ask questions, then go wander to the food bank and the thrift store hoping to score a dollar shirt. She asked when’d things would get better. I asked the same question.

– Scott C. Holstad

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we’re a community full of signs, the Billboard Generation, tell me you love me and buy me a beer. is my breath fresh enough? is love really love? is death really death? i want to be jealous but i’m an artist.

– Scott C. Holstad

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What I mean to say is no, I don’t want her back, just words hanging like leaves from a tree limb, nothing can bring her back anyway; words wouldn’t build her bit by bit, piece by piece, she’s gone, and there is strength in knowing that. Maybe the longing will ease. Maybe the seconds will lapse into minutes. I’m not Christ – I can’t raise the dead.

– Scott C. Holstad

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what society dictates, we consume, cattle gathering around learning devices called television, mouths opening wider while addictive morsels of consumerism are violently jammed into us and we lose more bits and pieces of our collective identity daily.

– Scott C. Holstad

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When I turned 15, my father let me drive our old ’66 Chevy Impala and I was finally able to get a “real” job – at a fast-food restaurant. Where else at that age? I never stopped working. For most of my life, I worked a good 15-20 hours a day, for years, and I made the mistake of thinking I was damn near invincible, only to eventually find out I wasn’t.

– Scott C. Holstad

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when it’s time to break down and you’re lying in bed fighting off the urge to scream, when you’re lying there shivering, it’s not the memories that keep you going. instead it’s the dreams and the cats blaring evil and godlike into the blankness. at times like this, it’s best just to sit back and let what is be.

– Scott C. Holstad

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when they look at me and ask how could you i want to tell them how fucking easy it is you just need a little sickness in the head and an i don’t give a shit attitude

– Scott C. Holstad

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when you despise yourself and everyone else in the world, you just give up, say fuck it, and pray the fuckers will accidentally press the big bomb buttons

– Scott C. Holstad

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Which is worse? The horror of waking up alone or the horror of waking up next to someone else?

– Scott C. Holstad

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why do they think that when you are occupied reading the L.A. Times or perhaps a fine novel that in reality you are dying of loneliness and in specific need of their company?

– Scott C. Holstad

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Winter, and You are the only Possibilities in this World. Paper, pen, Teeth, bones, and skin, The future is now. How will you make This work, snowflakes Against the window, Every ounce of pain Like blood on my lips.

– Scott C. Holstad

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You could see it in her eyes – pain made them very deep. Everything about her reeked of death – that gorgeous skin, haunted eyes, porcelain breasts – death masking a soul just marking time. People wanted to get into her. She just wanted a grave. Some wishes eventually get fulfilled.

– Scott C. Holstad

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You cried out in your sleep last night, steel toe boots doing dances in your head. It’s raining now and no one cares. Palmetto trees stand guard outside. He died last night, actually at 7:45 this morning. Will you cry? Will you?

– Scott C. Holstad

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you look your woman in the eye and kill her by telling her the truth or you turn away and let her see what she wants. i try not to shake too much when i turn the lights out and the sobbing begins

– Scott C. Holstad

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You’re like a book I hate to read, a story I want to skip through to the end. You take my soul and blow me straight into hell. I’m high on wigged out poems, short shorts that don’t stop. Am I dead? I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S REAL! What about you?

– Scott C. Holstad

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