Word Thugs Literary Rag

WORD THUGS - Who the fuck are you?

2007-02-19T17:26:00.001-05:00

Check out the writings from our Thug Contributors to the right and enjoy some "in your face" stylings.

How 'bout you? Think you can hang?

Want to be our bitch?
Get your crap published and not get paid for it, earning a bad-ass rep and credibility as a writing thug?
Submissions welcome: word.thugs@gmail.com

But first, who the fuck are you? One of those pathetic support-group-junky poets looking for an ego-stroke place to publish your crap? Yeah, well you wandered into the wrong hood, home slice.

This ain't no sugar-sweet literary playground full of gushy prose and weeping stories that only your fat momma's gonna love.

This is Thug Turf, bitch, where the writing grabs you by the balls and pulls you in, where the prose smacks you in the teeth and spits in your face! (See example below.)

So if you think you got something to say, if you think you can hang, bring it...

1.) but it better not be boring,
2.) it better have a backbone and
3.) it better have a VOICE, some serious THUG SHIT.

Short stories, rants & poetry (that do not suck, weep, whine or talk about "your fucking aching, weeping, whining soul") will be reviewed. If our group of thug editors can not get past your first paragraph or your first stanza, it's over, baby. If you grip us by the throats and force us to keep reading, shit we'll bring you in as a "made member"! Till then, enjoy the site and go thug yourself.

All sumbissions remain YOUR PROPERTY. We don't want it.

SAMPLE TEASE:

THE WAKE-UP CALL
by
Christopher Pimental

A dark bedroom
2:37 AM

When her cell phone rang, Jan Whitney woke up, one eyelid at a time. When it kept ringing, she rolled to her left, squinted at the bedside clock and groaned, realizing that she had been asleep for only two hours.

"I need you to answer that call, Miss Whitney," a male voice said from the darkness. Her stomach clenched and the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. When she heard the gun being cocked, a lump lodged in her throat like a ball of lead.

"Oh my God, " she blurted, turning towards the voice. "Who are you? Why--"

"Do not turn around, Miss Whitney. Just answer the call."

She froze in place, the word "rapist" flashing in her mind. He was standing right at other side of the bed! "Please. I'll do whatever you want. Just don't-"

She felt the gun press into the back of her skull. "Last chance, Miss Whitney." The unnerving cell rang again and again. "You need to answer that call."

She swallowed hard and reached for the phone. Her hands shook as she flipped it open then raised it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"One more ring and he would have shot you in the head, Ms. Whitney."

Oh my God! "Who is this? Why--"

"Listen to me carefully, Ms. Whitney. If you want to stay alive, you will do exactly as I say. Do you understand?"

Her pulse beat in her ears. "What? Who are you? Why is there a man in my-"

"Miss Whitney, I asked if you understood my question. For your own good, you need to answer my questions exactly as I ask them. Do not respond with questions of your own. Do you understand?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't understand any of this. Who are you? What do you want with me?"

The intruder leaned across the twin bed and cuffed her on the side of the head with his free hand. She cowered, nearly dropping the cell phone. She turned towards him, but he pushed the silenced gun barrel into her cheek, refocusing her attention. The voice on the phone continued.

"I have very little patience for disobedience, Miss Whitney. My associate is wired into this call and is listening to everything I say. The next time you disobey, the next time you ask a question, I will instruct him to break your collar bone. Do you understand?"

She winced, a slow panic building in her gut. Instinct alone implored her to comply.

"Yes," she said.

"Very well, then. Shall we begin?"

Oh my God! "Shall we begin what?"

An undeserved end - by THUG MIKE E. CLICK here for More

2007-02-19T17:23:00.000-05:00

the rain..

the rain lashes down
upon my weary head,
soothes
takes
drowns

what i've always said,
this death
creeps
into my sunken bed.

swirling
dreams
capture my desires,
a calm so violent
catches my lonely breath,
held forever
is this it

the undeserved end?

before i've slept,
wept
or even dreamt
is this all i've got to send?

colours fade

suffocate
obscure,

ambers form the embers of my heart..

the irony

tonight of all nights
when i need it most

life.

i feel it
choking

fading fast.

swirling
nightmares
capture my desires,
a calm so violent
catches my last thought,

held forever
this is it,

the undeserved end.

i'll sleep
never weep
again
nor dream

forever
sleep.

the rain..

the rain lashes down upon my weary head,
always soothes,
takes
drowns

what i've always said
this death
creeps
into my sunken bed.

run to my side

gone..

alone..

my undeserved end.

{sympathy's symphony.2007.(orig1994.)}

Word THUG Featured - James Odden - Click here for more JAMES

2007-02-06T18:14:00.000-05:00

Shimmering
by
James Odden

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

she glows
soft skin
tingles
hands
cup box
gold paper
and bow
waited months
for what's inside
diamond earrings
cut
from rough

the banks of hell
in Sierra Leone

young child
seven,
maybe eight,
skin stretched
tight over bone
left hand
severed
statement
to the village
about control

lured to the trade
by promise of tape radio
earned nothing
for months
until gnarled fingers,
scraping through sand and slate,
found promise
in a gift
~
she opens the box
smiles wide
washed clean

Word Thugs Featured Writer - THE VERSE - Click here his cafe profile.

2007-02-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

THE GREY TWILIGHT

by

The VERSE

the grey twilight is the in between, the too scared to live and too scared to die spot of life. a coward's nest. a true living hell on earth where all doubts and insecurities cause you to stop feeling and living and become distant to all that you love. are you there right now? who put you there? did it hurt that bad when they drove their words right through you? how long you plan on isolating yourself here? are you that afraid to feel joy and pain again? you know i'm looking in the mirror right now asking myself this, that's right, a warrior and an angel stuck in the grey twilight like a tractor in the mud spinning it's wheels. it just happened one day and wrapped itself into years. i was on fire and couldn't be stopped. i even scared the devil and made that bitch hide deep in the depths beyond the grey twilight, but that mother fucker crept back in through my doubt and insecurities and strangled me very slowly through time, hell i thought i was dancing with an angel for awhile and then she moved and i saw my face in the mirror and felt the pain of 10 years hit me and ride my heart all at once. the paralyzed notion to stop living overcame me and begged me to enter the grey twilight like a coward and turn my back on my responsibilities to the world. i want to go to sleep and not wake up but that would be too easy. the truth is i have been blessed with a gift that has cursed me and i haven't had the balls to face it. my gift is my pain and i was a born leader that chose to play the role of a follower. within every leadership position no matter where, comes great opposition and critisism, any asshole can break a great man down and say what he should have done to prevent his failures but that same asshole will never have the balls or the heart to get in the arena and take those failures in and taste the pain that comes from that fight to do great things. alot of shouts come from the grey twilight but they are faint farts in the real light of things. somewhere along the way, i decided to stop taking the falls and the failures and did the easiest thing you can do in the face of all adversity, quit. 1000 days floated over me in the blink of an eye, i look back now and have no clue where it went, i just know it went fast and is gettin faster and if i don't get my grip on it, it will drag me into the grey twilight forever. i decided when i woke up this morning that i am a great writer, one of the greatest, a voice of a generation, a light for those that are broken and lost, a home for the homeless. and why am i these things? because i decided i am. it's that simple. you ask what gives me the right to say or even think this? take it up with god. this chose me and i've fought and struggled with it long enough, this is who i am and my victory comes with embracing it in all its pain, lonliness, and ugliness. for a long time i wanted nothing to do with it but it wants me so fuck it, i am here and no longer in the grey twilight and if you don't like my non conventional way of writing with poor punctuation, then i suggest you get used to it because i was born to break down systems and rebuild them for a better way of living, might as well start with the commas and periods. you fuckers that get bent out of shape over it never wanted me in your conventional world anyway and those of you that embrace it, i love you with all my heart for seeing beyond the commas and periods and helping my message rattle the spinal columns of an uptight twisted system that so desperatly needs a new vision and a new voice. i have been on the bottom too long, now it's my turn to taste the top. i am lonely, i am scared, i am broken, i am a vagrant, i am a lost, lazy asshole with the heart of an angel, i am a writer with a voice that is standing before you as honest as i know how to be and i am willing to fail for a new beginning, i am my dreams and i lay my fears to rest in the grey twilight.

WORD THUG FEATURED WRITER - J.R. MASTON (Click for more by J.R.)

2007-01-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Golgotha's Day (Iconoclast)

I have laid out funeral robes

I intend to wear for my burial,
when they come to wrap me
in all things I have done

after whipping me raw
with all things I cannot change

… this is my day …
the moment when I will make
storytellers' heads spin

they will tell my fables

and housewives will remember to repeat them by rote

my death will form two millennia

sandals now old
always meant to patch them
never got the chance,
so busy running around, spreading rumors
thin as the hair on my donkey's ass

now they will have to bear me
through the dusty streets
a bent thing, sigh of a man,
promised meat on the bone

so what if I die a man's death?

who will mourn me?

a people, a generation, a tired throng
who will kill again and again in my name
to avenge
one death
just one
mine…

the death chosen for me

this robe is old, too
it is patch-worked, faded, tied to the strands
of my disparate faith…

I'm the iconoclast

I'm the one who tore
the rotted fabric of religion's current

I rocked the boat in shallow river water
just to give a baptism

They may make a golden statue of me, an icon,
something to hang above the crowds and say:

this, this is the generation's sore mouthpiece!
this is the dream, blind meat,
rotted to appease your empty mouth!

There is nothing left to do, I've washed my final toes
by the sodden reeds on mud-lined river
the last cup laid aside, to spurn the wicked

time has come to go, leave this garden

long path to Golgotha
think I'll take it
one step at a time

WORD THUG - FEATURED WRITER - DEBRA MARLAR - Click Here for more work by Debra

2007-01-30T17:13:00.000-05:00

and she frolicked in angelic beer shit

bukowski said
the reason he'd stayed drunk
for ten years and wrote poetry
was not because
he was so good at it
but because
they were so bad at it.
then he went on to talk about beer shit...

my point is,
who but the most shallow among us
gets wet when reading meaningless poetic prattle?
or pretty flowing adjectives
wrapped in mind numbing platitudes
floating them off to places
where no-one could possibly reside?

not i, said the little piggy.
i want to stay right here
feet firmly planted in the journey.
i want to read trials and tribulations
of the human condition doing the odd thing,
the morbid thing, all things
large and tiny. i want to nod in agreement
over another writer's latest lament.
i want to read about drinking and cussing and fucking
and everything in between.
know what i mean?

i'll even pardon the rhyme if the write is real.
give me poetry that is raw, makes me laugh,
describes for me the stink of beer shit
verses that break my heart,
but i'm begging you on bent knee,
upon a marbled,
glittering
lovely
inlaid
exquisite
sumptuous
divine
beautiful
gorgeous
sainted
voluptuous
sensual
ethereal
heavenly
floor.

don't give me bullshit poetry i can't digest.

© Copyright 2007, Debra Marlar

A Rosie Red Valentine

2007-01-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

OK. Not a good poem, but definitely a thugging. Screw you, Rosie.

Rosie sweeet Rosie
why won't you be mine?

You're hot love and kisses
my true Valentine.

Your soft voice like petals
all Rosie and red.

Your blood-sugar high
my candy in bed.

But they tell me today
that my Valentine dreams

Are ill fated visions
as clearly it seems

Your tact and your wit,
your forked razor tongue

are reserved for another
of which I'm not one

So my moves and my game
aresure to be whacked

We're two different Train Wrecks
on opposite tracks.

Lame as poem by Train Wreck Pimental
the Train Wreck rolls, on and on...