Remember The Time
I Used to Love H.E.R.

Just The Two Of Us
Happily Ever After

Paris Nights/ New York Mornings
The Corner
There Goes My Baby
Ms. Fat Booty
The Beggar
Isn't She Lovely

"Hey Soul Sister"
Maria, Maria 

Spend My Life With You 
For The Night
Ms. Philadelphia 

One More Chance
Ms Jackson

Oh Shelia 
You Got Me
Again

Why Georgia 
My, My, My
I Wonder 
Could It Be I'm Falling In Love 

I think it's better, this way
Each day gets better
Just to be me
To Remember I'm in peace

Day N' Nite
This is your life 

Goodnight, Travel well
Heaven, here I am 
Came and take me

Sweetest Goodbye

Pushing thru the darkness
Closer to me
she says
here is gone

follow through
Grey sky eyes
About an hour ago
I hear the bells

Zak and Sara
you and i both
on love, in sadness
the sound of settling

this is my song!

O.k.-- this is my first story post. I'll admit, this is not an original story. I wrote this a couple years ago for a creative writing class I was taking. It is not a true story. Hope you like it.

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It was just one of those nights. You know what kind of night I'm talkin' about. One that pushes life back into perspective. The one you look back on and then wish you didn't. I call them balancers.

It could be as subtle as losing something. Your keys, your wallet. Not the end of the world, but it might help you realize something big. It m≠ay remind you that you had all your money in cash and now from then on you should only carry a certain amount at all times. Or you can't get into your car now that you lost your keys, but now that you're at the mechanic getting a key made, you might as well fix up that dented bumper.

Potentially, your balancer could be as damaging as a relative dying. Your mom was in the hospital for her routine chemo. No biggie. But when something goes wrong, she dies on the spot. And so notes serious doctor so and so. Serious doctor so and so calls up you, her next of kin. She had died rewriting her will, so it seems that your inheritance goes to her abusive ex-husband instead of you.

It's the kind of thing that happens only when you least expect it. The night that you're walking down the dingy, badly lit street in the neighborhood that your parents warned you about. Every other night you'll look around; have your guard up. But not this night. Tonight, your thinking about the comment she made about your haircut. You're hoping your dad remembered to pick up your new boom box from the UPS warehouse.

You're in the zone. Not paying attention to the dangerous looking mob that appears to be materializing behind you. If you'd noticed you could have pretended to call someone and come up with a comment like "Gee, I'm sure glad I remembered to bring dads GUN with me tonight," to keep them at bay.  The group of scary looking guys behind you would instantly disappear. You would've thought yourself witty for coming up with such a clever idea. You would have to laugh about it with your friends on AIM that night.

But you didn't notice. Not until the guy with the dodgers cap comes up to you and ask if you got any smokes. You start to say "no," but before you can even get out that one syllable you get grabbed from behind. The dude that asked you for the cigarettes grabs your hood and pulls it over your face. He presses it against your mouth, causing you to panic, writhe against the steely grip of the two guys holding you from behind. They're pulling you into that standard, inner-city alley, the one with the hobos warming their weathered hand over the fire barrel. You're a strong guy, normal build and around five foot nine, even though you like to tell girls that your five eleven. You fight back, but how much could any tenth grader do? They push you up against a wall, with one guy holding each arm and one guy spitting words at you. He's obviously high. You manage to get an arm free and give one of those jerks an elbow in the gut. This doesn't go over well with his buddies. The one with the hat lashes out at your face. You hear a cracking sound. Your nose is broken. The one you hit gets out his knife. Crap. He starts slashing your arm, then your stomach as you fall onto your back. You try to put your hand out to stop him, but all this gets you is four fingers on your left hand. "What the hell?" you think. You didn't do anything terrible. Nothing to deserve getting stabbed. Suddenly it stops. The thugs ran away, only after taking your phone and iPod though.

And so there you are. Middle of the city, bleeding out in generic alley number twenty-three.  You recall your biology teacher saying that it can take anywhere from days to a couple of minutes for the human body to bleed out when it takes wounds like yours has. You try to roll over onto your stomach. Ouch. Crap. You forgot. The thug cut your hand up pretty bad. You try to roll over the other way. You can't move your arm. Its probably broken. Or maybe they cut a major artery. Maybe you're just to weak to move period.

You almost smile. The one night. The one night you aren't paying attention. You always pay attention. You suppose that this is what happens when you don't. You wonder if you're going to die. Will you see your life flash before your eyes? Okay, now you do smile. "Only in movies," you think. "But hey," you think. "This is kind of like a movie." You chuckle quietly to yourself, only to find that it hurts to do so. "Tragic," you think. "Here I am, paying for the consequences of being stupid and I can't even appreciate the humor of it. After that thought you feel yourself losing energy. As you slip out of consciousness, you wonder: will I ever wake up?

You don't hear the sirens of the ambulance and cop cars. You don't feel the latex covered hands ripping your Gorillaz t-shirt off in the fluorescently lit ambulance. You aren't awake to feel the ever-so-joyful sensation of being pulled up by your broken arm, onto your sliced-up back.

You wake up the next day at around two PM. Your dad is sleeping in the chair next to your bed. You move your hand, pushing the pain button attached to your finger. Three nurses immediately rush into your room. Two of them reposition you in your bed. "Ouch," you think. Then you realize that there is no ouch. Just numb. The last nurse shakes your dad awake. He stands up diligently, as though he had just drank three espressos. They rush up to your bed. You find out that it isn't the next day. It's actually the next year. You had been in a coma for fourteen months.

"For what?" you wonder. Your hand me down phone? Your outdated, cruddy iPod? A year gone. And just because some people decided that it would be fun to fuck up someone's day. What kind of screwed up society do we live in that people almost die because others don't feel like living legitimately. "A bad one," you think. But the only thing you can really think about, is that all of that wasted time came from one tiny moment. From one second of savagery. From one bad night.

"Que Cera, Cera"

Well, since this is my first blog post, this may come off as more of a journal entry than a story so just bear with me.  yesterday was February 7th, a.k.a, Superbowl Sunday. Of corse there were parties to attend all over the city but i decided to go to one with my friends, the one being hosted by the girl ive had a crush on for a long time, but i'll get back to that.  Yesterday was not a day completely full of fun that i wish it had been.  A couple of days ago a dear friend of mine had fallen into a coma, and had not woken up since, and yesterday, he went completely brain dead and they ended up pulling the plug on him.  It was a heart breaking moment to have another friend snatched away from me so quickly.  

CHAPTER 1

My father is a supernatural creature. He feigns humanity, imitating those who surround him, and he does so quite well, if I may say so. It took me many years to first recognize the signs, ignorance and naivete shrouding me from his true nature.

Now before I delve into the particulars that led to my shocking realization, I must first let you know, Reader, that I do love the man and will continue to do so be him homosapien or something else. I cannot hold his natural form as a fault against his character, he is a swell man, pardon me, creature, to know.

To recommence the story of my "awakening", as it  has come to be called in certain semi-circles and octagons, my suspicions were first aroused by the cats. It started with one, a black cat who made a home for himself on our porch. He was quiet, refrained from eating my mother's flowers, and proved a wonderful neighbor. None of us in the house paid him any mind. By the next week there were four cats, varying in color and appearance and not nearly as quiet as the first tenant. The end of the month welcomed ten more. With such an inexplicable number of cats now living directly outside of my house, I started to search for a reason why. Initially I assumed that they were two opposing cat gangs who had moved onto the same turf and were recruiting members to prepare for the imminent gang war, as is always the case in such situations, but a few minutes of observation proved that theory false. These cats were waiting for something. For a moment I thought that someone in the house had taken to feeding our feline friends but my mother's dislike of cats, my indifference, my sister's disdain for full-grown animals, and my father's dog preference proved that an impossibility. This left but one other option in my always rational mind… magic. There must be something magical happening in my house, something otherworldly, something just waiting for me to discover it.
With this new tidbit of information, I began a new round of observations. I watched closely for when the cats appeared and to where they wandered. They arrived on our porch at night and circled the basement windows… the windows to my father's lair. This is when I knew whatever magical thing that was occurring in my house took place there and my father was involved. Cats  do not lie.

Today was the first day of my debate tournament that will be held in SLA at 3:30. Today consisted of writing a case in less then two hours to debate and finding out the rooms and judges for each team that will come. It is a particularly stressful day to be able to get everything done in time for the mini tournament that will be held on Tuesdays. This is part of my capstone and is a major step in creating more oppurtunities for students to debate. It will help everyone get prepared for the tournament next week at the Bell classic, which has teams from the state of Pennsylvania debating at all levels.

One night, when I had no sleep to brooklyn, I saw a sign that read, "Welcome to Paradise, Home to Jesus of Suburbia." Faithfully, my friends would Stand By Me with their 21 Guns. After a day or two in "Paradise" I told my friend Alejandro, I did not want to Comedown, because I felt like a Basket Case. Then, it Crashed Into Me I knew I had a Bad Romance because I was Thinkin' 'Bout Somethin' and All Of The Lights went off in the room, then went on a few hours later. About the third day, the Brass Monkey dropped off a letter in which I opened immediately. The letter started off like all of my letter's with Dear John. Soon after I read the letter, I wrote one back starting with, Hey There Delilah. In the letter I told her "to stay Just The Way You Are, because you know I would catch a Grenade for you, and When I Come Around the Paparazzi will be following me." But now that my dream is over, Its time to go Back To December.