RE Going To California copyright ROBERT CRAIG
RE Prague at Dusk copyright SAM VAKNIN : Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. Until recently, he served as the economic advisor to the government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

JOHN HORVATH Jr

Gene Pool

Here is how dead sperm seem proper--massed along one wall, 
mass of fate-completed souls that wait no longer, dream no more,
yet smile some. This old petty chieftain from generations gone;
already faded at the edges, the newest wedding group has members 
of its entourage entombed or becoming nameless unless, centered 
mid some mass along another wall--a cousin's face twice removed
on aunty's side edges into consciousness--that looks like . then edges 
back toward namelessness. How comes this namelessness 
to an image in a photo kept and is that namelessness at all akin 
to some stranger's namelessness on some city street.
Unlike unto that degree that bitterness engendered it. 
Here is that sister who married ill, already nameless to the centered
couple's seed; there is that imprisoned uncle, "heretical Crescence,"
and such bad sheep as have adjectives stamped upon the observation
of them--informal fallacies hidden in the shadows of each snapshot
smile; Imagine someone saying to them, "good that you could come," 
and just before the imagemaker commands "stand firm" one brother 
refuses out of an all-but-forgotten affront the other brother's hand 
in friendship. Almost a fight breaks out and they are separated 
so no longer is there this family left and that, on the right; one 
family now the wedding photo seems to suggest. Almost a fight
in every family photo on this wall. Almost a fight. All ten to forty
of them were alive, bound together with measured or unmeasured 
time, reasoned or unreasoned motivation, perhaps a willingness 
to die for each other, dead now, or dying. On this wall amassed, 
they surely slowly die,
losing their meaning.
"Who is that, Daddy?"
Shall I lie..