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# Tim Hrk Lit

A portfolio of other writing by Timothy Herrick

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://timhrklit.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [front page](https://timhrklit.com/?p=64)
- [](https://timhrklit.com/?p=58)
- [Hello and Welcome](https://timhrklit.com/?p=44)
- [Hello world!](https://timhrklit.com/?p=1) - Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

## Pages

- [About](https://timhrklit.com/) - A portfolio of other writing by Timothy Herricktimhrk
- [Four Scenes: Sex & Meaning   (X-rated)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1054) - copyright 2020, held by author Some erotic writing, graphic and explicit. A work sort of in progress, maybe. Please do not read if you are under 18. Hand Job After breakfast she jerked me off. Out of all the hand jobs I’ve had, why does this one resonate? We were on the couch and started
- [THE GUNDERSONS](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1434)
- [Jesus of Nazareth Narratives by Pope Benedict XVI](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1446) - Jesus of Nazareth: From The Baptism to the Transfiguration Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives by Pope Benedict XVI A priest I know who also happens to be a professor of theology alluded to one of the volumes of the Jesus of Nazareth Trilogy by Pope Benedict XVI. They also
- [WOODEN BEADS](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1374) - WOODEN BEADS By Timothy Herrick Written/July 27, 2022 (this may be a work in progress) Main Herricks: Kimball & Josephine (parents) – Children, oldest to youngest: Adrienne, Michael, Kenneth, Suzanne, Timothy, Elaine Catholic. Frequent prayer and communion. I’m totally prochoice and politically ultra-progressive and sexually unrepressed but attending mass multiple times per week, devotions to
- [THE SILVER CORD](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1356) - The Silver Cord By Timothy Herrick Copyright 2022, held by author Prose Poem ~ Memoir ~ Philosophy (Prologue) You know the cord is silver. Unsure of which end of the tether is tied where, but away you haul. At 25, the stride, the strength, you can tug like this forever. At 45, you admit you’re
- [YOUR TRANSITIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1338) - YOUR TRANSITIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD (A prose poem in dialogue) The coffee starts getting better, that’s the first sign. It’s so much better now. Once you have more options than bodega coffee, then you know hyper-gentrification is coming. Hyper already? Any gentrification here is new. It’s a process all right, happens in stages. Only seems like all
- [In The Wind](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1560) - In The Wind (Artist Array/Jersey City USA) In The Wind In The Wind is the first major public arts installation funded by state money in Hudson County. Immersive on a sub-textual level, it’s emblematic of the city’s attitude towards art – artists as citizens and neighbors. Artists are also a benefit, not just their art.
- [Herrick Town](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1550) - Herrick Town I didn’t die at 672 Terrace Drive. I never thought I’d live this long, the funny thing about living one finds out is time’s delusion of elasticity. Your life never feels as long as each day it advances as you expected it should. But a truth as old as time itself is wherever
- [Crucifiers](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1545) - The final nail for Jesus Christ went through the feet. Roman soldiers heard tell of the water walking and the disappearing into crowds to escape capture when his preaching riled temple authorities. Some must’ve made jokes. They taunted Jesus, tossed lots for garments, we know the story. The crowds had called for his public execution,
- [SUBCONSCIOUS CITY](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1537)
- [1-Amazon Authors Page](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1490) - Clock for my Amazon Authors Page. Please purchase my books.
- [How The West Won Me/The Knolland Parables](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1495) - How The West Won Me/The Knolland Parables By Timothy Herrick What is a New Jersey writer doing writing westerns. The genre is universal now, so such snobbery is ignorant. The western are America’s Greek Tragedies, deeply ingrained in our collective imagination. I think about America a lot, and my westerns I consider prose poems about
- [LOWER THAN ANGELS THE KNOLLAND PARABLES BOOK II (Part TWO)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1487)
- [Lower Than Angels The Knolland Parables Book II (Part One)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1480)
- [FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM AND/OR FACEBOOK](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1303) - FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM / FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK
- [Invisible Vampires](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1455) - Like many milestones and turning points, the transformation into an invisible vampire has no fixed crossover date. How gradual the metamorphosis seems impossible to ascertain, how detectable before 50 entirely subjective and the exact when probably dependent on whether or not you lost your first parent before or after middle age and if after how
- [Look Away (Insurrection Day January 6, 2021)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1091) - Look Away (Insurrection Day January 6, 2021) Copyright 2021, held by author. I love America but despise patriotism. I’m deeply apprehensive about anything prone to promoting or permitting harm. Insurrection Day – January 6, 2021 – the day fellow Americans marched the Confederate Flag into the U.S. Capital building. The entity responsible for more dead
- [SANITY LAMENTS](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1312) - Sanity Laments With writing, the only pleasure is after it’s done. Otherwise it’s writing and reading what you’ve written then editing and reading what you’ve edited. Got it down to a routine, a cycle. Then there's thinking about copy, discussing copy, researching copy, which happens before and during the cycle. It’s all copy really, work
- [STEAL THIS BOOK](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1123) - ~Memoir ~ Prose-Poem ~ Philosophy Steal This Book Everybody knew Steal This Book. No war left to protest, but the radio still played love songs we first heard in our fading childhood. Revolution always makes the most sense to the young. Abbie’s shoplifting secret was nonchalance. Just be cool. Behave like a normal
- [TIMHRKLIT: YouTube Channel](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1295)
- [Waving Familiar Torches (VIDEO)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=990)
- [Visiting Mom VIDEO](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1003)
- [Newark Avenue, West (Reading Video)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=562)
- [Dreamt (Video)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1286)
- [Exchange Place (video)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1283)
- [The 19th Anniversary of the first 9-11 Commemoration](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1250) - The 19th Anniversary of the first 9-11 Commemoration by Timothy Herrick ~Memoir ~ Prose-Poem ~ Philosophy~ Copyright 2021, held by author Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the first anniversary of 9-11. How should we commemorate, what’s the proper tone? Finding again that balance of somber and patriotic, but never too somber not
- [DINKINS](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1203) - DINKINS By Timothy Herrick ~Memoir ~ Prose-Poem ~ Philosophy~ Copyright 2021, held by author 1993 Madison Square Garden David Dinkins. He was mayor when I lived in NYC. I could finally say I lived in Manhattan. Even though it turned out to be another broken dream, you can never criticize someone for dreaming. Misguided, unrealistic
- [Middle Class Moods](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1241) - MIDDLE CLASS MOODS Copyright 1996, held by Timothy Herrick Election day jeopardy. No predicting the whims of my heart or the direction of the electorate. It was Reagan for so long. The Clinton was fleeting but who was really feeling like Nixon instead of JFK? Piano tinkers with the freshness of the air. A white
- [That Feeling of Dreaming](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1177) - I went to see Her Majesty / The court had no suspense / She said, "Dream dreams the dreamer."/ I said, "It's not my fault.” – Tom Verlaine/The Dream’s Dream That Feeling of Dreaming Copyright 2021, Held by Author I’m not admitting that I’m old, but I can no longer deny old age beckons. I
- [TWO YELLOW SHIRTS](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1147) - TWO YELLOW SHIRTS Half-a-century give-or-take between these two yellow shirts. Thirteen I’m thinking in the polo, fifteen at the most – I miss bangs so much – I’m in my backyard garden at my Paramus home holding a zucchini. I grew a few really big ones. Behind me to the side you can see the
- [VINES](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1143) - VINES They whispered to each otherwhat would become lies.Sometimes they called it love.Through the yearsvines grew on their bedeventually trapped their skin. Inside them light dimmed.Sex not a figmentof the imagination,just another secretion.A distraction frominevitable intrusionsof work to doand bills to pay. Thinking made it fasterand money easierto brave the crowdand endure each task.Accomplishment not
- [THE CAT AND THE CANARY REVISITED](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1117) - THE CAT AND THE CANARY REVISITED Your canary lives in a golden cage that you polish with the blood of new born lambs. She refuses to sing and waits for the night you leave her cage door open, so she can peck holes in your eyelids while you dream. Even though the mice are gone,
- [The Falling](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1087) - The Falling A tree in the forest falls. If no one is there to hear, does it really fall? We always ask the wrong question. It’s not how we know, but why. Life is both tree and forest. Like psychedelic drugs or fulfilled desire, nature soothes the brain. This oneness feels so real; as true
- [JET PACK AUDIO ONLY](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1005) - http://timhrklit.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Jet_pack.mp3
- [THE FATHER INSIDE HER](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=1000) - The father inside her, like a skeleton made of knives, bled her tissue until she collapsed into an apron and walked into the room supporting a tray of food and drinks. She grew a mustache and threw footballs at horizons. Watched television with deep understanding. Created factories, gave out jobs like they were sainthoods. Then
- [Personal Loss: Drinking vs Smoking](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=966) - Personal Loss: Drinking vs Smoking Personal Loss: Drinking vs Smoking I quit drinking because of diabetes, I don’t miss it, maybe not never but never as much as I miss cigarettes… second perhaps drinking may be, but not a close one when I consider tobacco… smoking’s the best… I miss drinking less than I miss
- [MEMORY ERODES](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=963) - A fragment hinted. Suddenly vivid. Now visits. Memory erodes what could have been happiness. I've seen that staircase before, the light on the landing. Down the hall, behind a closed door, whispers become shouts. Dead pets pervade the carpet. I turn around and it's the window and the back yard, which shrank by increments as
- [WHISPERED DISCUSSION](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=961) - No raised voices. No sobs of fury. Just whispered discussion. She locks the bathroom door. He sits in the leather chair by the light bulb, with his beer, cigarettes and ashtray. He listens to nothing. Ideas can be broken down, but an itemized analysis would be meaningless. Emotions are just particle heavy vapors swirling like
- [The One, Two, Three](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=959) - By Timothy Herrick Copyright 1998, held by author The last bar on beer can alley, the name the town gave to the outskirt road where all the bars were located, was The One, Two, Three—a flat-red box of a tavern in between an old Episcopalian church, and a tattered, slash of woods, beyond
- [The Muscular Christ   ](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=956) - The Muscular Christ The Muscular Christ suffered for His Father’s unseeing eyes. He was sent to experience the world’s futility and bring a moral code to replace the innocence His Father’s fallen creations ignored. They nailed him to the cross behind the altar in the church where we grew up. The blood from the
- [COULD HAVE WON THAT WAR](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=947) - COULD HAVE WON THAT WAR by TIMOTHY HERRICK Copyright 1996 by Author, Timothy Herrick On August 15, 1993, at the Van Saun Park Duck Pond in Paramus, New Jersey, Marlene Owens died. Her death was Bob Schnieder's fault, the unexpected result of a practical
- [Dislocations](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=70) - Visit Dislocations
- [Paramus Punishments](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=936) - Paramus Punishments Written 1989-1990. I wrote this while living in New York City, a symbolist purge of some childhood memories. I One day, everything
- [Dreamt](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=911) - Dreamt I dreamt the whole night through. I dreamt I was dreaming of you. I knew the first was a dream but the second caught me unaware. I really believed you were there beside me in the bed, while above the earth of sleep our anxiety had fled; We danced across a rainbow sky, made
- [BIKINI AND  KITE](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=902) - BIKINI AND KITE She was wearing a red string bikini and flying a kite. While kite flying is pretty common in Liberty State Park, a two-piece bathing suit, thin as a shoe lace, is certainly a garment that is out of the ordinary. She looked great in it too. Her body was designed to wear
- [Empathy & Stupidity](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=898) - Empathy & Stupidity Without love, there’s no intelligence. Without empathy there’s no place for love to begin or intelligence to grow. If you feel empathy only for some, you’re stupid; you haven’t nurtured empathy enough to encompass all. You’re in the majority. Stupidity is easy, seemingly comfortable, keeps the powerful in power and the status
- [World (Elvis Poem)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=896) - WORLD Elvis's hair obeyed his head. His lips could curl, snarl with desire and compassion. He wanted to believe what his parents told him. Validated Rock and Roll by serving in the army. Faith in the Assembly of God, driving a Cadillac in the everlasting image of the resurrected Jesus Christ. Sent him to Hollywood
- [One Life and You](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=867) - One Life and You Live your life, you only get one. We’re born knowing the difference between your one life and you, but not the distance. That life here, here in the world, seems like one if you only consider atmosphere, water or land. Maybe the moon, nearby planets. No say whatsoever about family or
- [Sidewalk Sale](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=844) - Sidewalk Sale Way in the past, I was just a kid. Sidewalk Sale at the mall, the Bergen Mall, an outdoor mall and in fact I don’t think the enclosed mall had been invented yet. Paramus became the land of malls, but the Bergen Mall was the first of its kind here. Paramus had no
- [Conflicted Orison](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=840) - Conflicted Orison Keep pessimism away from children. No nihilism before high school… please! Pretend optimism reflects reality best, embodies good sense even if untrue. Life is not just difficult but impossible. Our destiny unknowable, now and forever. We exist in ignorance mind, body and soul. Hope for heaven, prepare for hell… or accept whatever nothingness
- [Mom's Eyes](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=736) - Frail… motionless save for the slight breathing astonishingly unlabored… but so slight there's more death than mom in the frailness on the bed, that body who used to be her. She barely eats any more the aides tell me. She’s in hospice care. She seems on the verge of recognition, but still weak, resigned. I
- [Visiting Mom](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=729) - Visiting Mom Mom, 97, fell between Christmas and New Years, breaking her hip. She’s been in the assisted living memory care ward two years now. Before the tumble when I use to visit she’d be dozing off in the common room, where the electric log in a faux fireplace never burns but still glows red,
- [THE COURTSHIP OF JOSEPHINE & KIMBALL (MEMOIR)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=724) - THE COURTSHIP OF JOSEPHINE & KIMBALL It was 1947 and America had saved the world. The generation that had known the hardship of the Depression throughout their childhood, then the honor of sacrifice during the war years, were eager to begin living what they expected to be the good life. Helen Josephine Bergere, who went
- [Mid-December Snow](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=569) - Mid-December Snow I made sure to walk in the early morning before the flakes turned to freezing rain, that falling New Jersey slush stings your face and eyes with a hissing chill not yet ice. But now the only sounds other than the hush of snow are a distant truck and my quiet trudge. Soft, white, cold…
- [Contact](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=684) - Let's Get in Touch Name First Last Email Number Message If you're not a fish leave this field blank:
- [Airport Taxi](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=22) - Airport Taxi (a Prose Ballad) by Timothy Herrick Copyright 2010 held by Author She waited at the front door. The airport taxi in the driveway only honked once. Everything had been said—either in a shout or a whisper—weeks and days before now. They failed at his attempt to remain middle class. After he explained the
- [Waving Familiar Torches](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=523) - Waving Familiar Torches The only thing better than a lack of introspection is its total absence. Make an oath, pledge allegiance, join a frat. Find a formation to march in, another war to wage. Faith in the flag provides a visceral satisfaction even one God denies believers. Our Father knows what is in your heart
- [The New District](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=359) - The New District You’re drinking a $3.00 tea in a waterfront café, the only one here old enough to remember the warehouse it used to be. 35 years ago, you loaded and unloaded trucks outside this same space. A job that paid $3 more than minimum wage. You stunk of carbon monoxide. The ache in
- [That Same Love](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=387) - That Same Love You could feel her anger like a blazing red aura around her eyes and shoulders. Talking into her smart phone, her voice loud, but constrained. “How could you behave towards your wife That way?” That same love that made her seethe, today less then a year ago unseen beneath the table made
- [Dreamless Waking](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=454) - Distant lightening, slow thunder, rain as soft as bubbles popping. Wakes her too, she presses closer. I smell her hair, kiss her neck. I’ll forever remember her warmth in these shadows. That sleepy sigh from deep inside, her moan as her hips slide. No other secret worth knowing. Breathing steadies together, eyes close, another dawn
- [Commerce Still Ancient](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=445) - Commerce Still Ancient You warmed up to idols, then bought or bartered sensuality for pleasure, enjoying life until the money ran out and the years wrinkled skin and depleted muscle. Nothing was left that could be traded, so you uselessly wonder when your limp first appeared and your eyesight blurred, as if identifying a
- [DYLAN SUMMER 91](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=513) - DYLAN SUMMER 91 Keeps a foolish heart hidden in a tabernacle of pride. Father taught you to acknowledge pain but endure. Mother fed you from her soul, let you taste a joy never again to behold. The last time you dreamt, another president held office. Trains still passed through mountains. There was a river filled
- [SIPPING INNOCENCE](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=504) - SIPPING INNOCENCE Letting go of balloons. Pink and red rising, finding the sunlight and fighting the wind. Simpler days, dream soaked nights. Fruit never that sweet again. Turning around, turning away, hearing the sound of running and it's your own feet. It's not a yearning that inspires these recollections; but an aching for those moments
- [Thoughts on Depression (a work in progress)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=458) - The shrink used to say, when you get depressed, ask yourself what are you angry about. You identify what is making you angry so you can do something about it. This still works, but has become less effective as the years multiplied between now and the instigating crisis that first sent me to psychotherapy. I am
- [Moonshoe](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=479) - Moonshoe
- [Jersey City Scenes: Anecdotes & Observations](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=473) - A very random work in progress. Apartment Building Fire About 3:00AM the fire alarm is going off. Then from down the hall I hear a knocking, knuckles on the metal front door of a distant apartment. I stick my head out my door, hear somebody yelling help and run to the neighbor. He
- [RINGO AND POPEYE](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=466) - RINGO AND POPEYE Using a string tied to a stick, and the stick propping up a cardboard carton, my brother caught a red breasted robin by putting bread on the grass underneath the carton then pulling the string when the hungry bird flew down and pecked his way under it. Our brother told my sister
- [Delicate Freak](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=447) - No longer a flower or even dainty, she’s now just a delicate freak, sweeping litter and leaves off the steps of her house, muttering about how young people dress. When there’s a tattoo she hates as much as that memory she can’t avoid, she shouts invectives practiced for years in that office job where she
- [Few Facts](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=305) - Few Facts If words were objects instead of feelings transformed into sound, the things you say would upset me. The world values how many people you possess, the size of your garage, the number of cars inside. Integrity is deluded solitaire. Compassion counts only by its market rate. The difference between truth and reality
- [Prerogatives & Priorities](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=442) - We loved each other, but I was loyal to love and she was loyal to me. I loved love more than I loved her. She loved security more than me or love. What she felt I felt but then we had to ask that feeling what exactly we had. Love replied: “I am neither therapist
- [The Death of Paglia (the Cat)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=440) - The Death of Paglia (the Cat) I arrived home on Sunday after spending Thanksgiving in Virginia and Paglia was making this noise that sounded like the howl that usually precedes his coughing up a fur ball, but no fur ball was forth coming. I opened up a can of cat food and he ate
- [The Devil is Amish](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=431) - The Devil is Amish Out of the cradle, then lighting a candle next to the bed where she lays, her lipstick red and the cigarette menthol. The air humid with perspiration, years before your lives were in your phones and your phones were in your pockets. The Devil is Amish, you’re hardly squeamish, but you
- [Certain](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=409) - Certain I know that you know that I know you love me and I know that you know that I love you; but your train ticket is round your responsibilities abound so please stay away now; our love can survive another goodbye, but not me. Copyright 2015, held by author
- [THE CITY RULES](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=405) - THE CITY RULES The city rules all citizens in its realm. Like an iron goddess of fertilty it pushes you with an invisible hand, demands from you a sense of purpose. You can walk the streets all day and all night and not hear a polite utterance. Your heart thrists for warmth and your
- [Somebody Snapped](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=401) - The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting
- [When It Rains](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=393) - When It Rains It’s been so long since you broke my heart, that I hardly ever cry anymore when it rains, and I pass a couple sharing an umbrella laughing at the secrets that used to be ours. Timothy Herrick – 2013 Copyright held by author
- [Unfaithful Servant  (Sheridan, Vampyre)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=368) - Unfaithful Servant (Sheridan, Vampyre) Being an immortal parasite had gradually made Sheridan sullen and depressed. When he first met Francois Varcuic he thought being a vampire would be the coolest thing in the world. Now, it just seemed pathetic. Sheridan was brought across in 1979. He was eighteen years old. He grew up in
- [Voyages from the Heart and Soul](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=292) - Too much emotional cargo on this sinking ship. All women have tempting lips. Every Holiday inflicts recollections. Each day, a thousand new ills, from the affection category. How do you get it all packed without breaking the lock? Her flesh is translucent. Ascends then fills the sky. Across the ocean, garbed in clouds, her breasts
- [PULL](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=281) - PULL Sitting, one light on in the room, carving a violin from a log. I realize it’s not the wood or the blade but the longing I need. Without its pull my spine would shatter. Like water or air I could collapse with ease. I loved her, the
- [Remarked](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=231) - REMARKED The way I remarked on the shadow and light in a painting of red and yellow roses in a glass vase on a white table cloth made her acknowledge my sensitivity and perception. She asked if I cried at movies. Honey, I cry at breakfast-- sometimes it's just how the milk changes the color
- [Tough Love Killed Kurt Cobain](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=227) - TOUGH LOVE KILLED KURT COBAIN Tough Love Killed Kurt Cobain. Magnified The World by suggesting some denials are not sweet. A shot gun blast replaced Heroin wings; Heaven descended without the flesh. Media’s no cult but a way of life for everyone. The answers were money and fame—the trailer home purity of flannel plaid and
- [Our Trip to Your Home](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=193) - Our Trip to Your Home Snakes spiral like socks in my shoes. A bird bites my hand when I go to close the window. I woke up after dawn for an early escape from this house of your formation, where freedom of will is the ultimate desecration. To me this place and your past are
- [Holy War](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=184) - Ambushed through adolescence by obligations to the social order. Grew up to be fools, obeying concealed greed. From basic training to final defeat. We tried to prove the heart can succeed in solo command. Alert the generals to disband the forces. The status quo has spiraled into chaos. Hump your sword, sir! Enemy’s within. War
- [Before We Even Know](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=169) - Before We Even Know by Timothy Herrick Copyright 2011, held by author Her bedroom window overlooks a mighty river. Distant red lanterns glide slowly in the dusk. The breeze dries our skin and I see her eyes again, remember caresses, tender and sweet. Her kiss, delicate as a humming bird’s peck at first... then the
- [Our Trinity](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=164) - (For Nancy) Our Trinity The mystery of father, son and spirit being one —touching the soul, being the soul— now lonely but joyous, lost between infinities seeking an end to anxiety— it’s why her love fills me with dance. The band on stage playing for us. The radio on in another room, playing for
- [GONE](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=160) - GONE The times are gone when the car would break down and father and son would push it home if they could not repair it on the road. Electricity was a miracle. Even that was minimal. The family displayed the stars and stripes every holiday. Father wore hats, feared nature but felt he had a
- [The Other Kids](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=155) - The Other Kids Furry hands sing nightmares. Sounds the same but the voice is not your own. It’s beyond the end of your arm and within the television screen. You do believe in the promise of a place where the air is free. Innocent of Nixon. Satisfied with less. Lessons of alphabets and numbers
- [Alternative Deceptions (novel excerpt)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=125) - Alternative Deceptions (novel excerpt) by Timothy Herrick Copyright 1999, held by author CHAPTER ONE My brother’s mini-van turned off the Forest Avenue Exit. The overpass curved over the highway, lined with stores, strip malls and gas stations. Then we headed down the two lane suburban street of our home town. I can’t remember when
- [IN THE PARK](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=144) - IN THE PARK by Timothy Herrick copyright 1992, held by author In the park we talked about our love. For you it was over; for me, obligation is an untreatable tumor. We ate fruit and drank iced tea. You spat out a piece of cantaloupe. It landed on the grass and was
- [I Knew Death Dwarf](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=139) - I Knew Death Dwarf From across the table I see Death Dwarf’s eyes narrow then widen. The smile never changes, never disappears. Lights my cigarette. Suggests Bourbon without ice. Never wants to talk about my day, my work, my friends. Only mutual urgencies. I’m walking to forget. I’m walking to calm down. I’m alert to
- [Catholic in Paramus (memoir excerpt)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=120) - Catholic in Paramus (memoir excerpt) by Timothy Herrick Copyright 1999, held by author Sister Henora blew her nose several times a day. After the nasal expectoration, she studied the handkerchief, which she kept in the billowy sleeve of her habit. She would snort out snot into the white cloth, then just stare at it for
- [PICNIC (short story)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=110) - PICNIC by TIMOTHY HERRICK copyright 1998, held by author I pull into the K-Mart parking lot and see her glance at her watch as she paces by her white Saturn. She’s brought the mutt, who is looking up at her with his tongue dangling out his snout, ears erect and tail swaying rapidly
- [Downward Spiral (short story) ](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=88) - Downward Spiral by Timothy Herrick Copyright 2002, held by author He remembered something, maybe it was from when he used to read books or one of the Humanity classes he took before dropping out of community college, about how life is a circle and birth and death are connected and in the center of
- [The Brave & The Bold (short story)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=80) - The Brave & The Bold by Timothy Herrick Copyright 2003 by author, Timothy Herrick At the beginning of this summer I went to my Uncle Patrick's funeral. I had not seen my cousin, Sean, his son, for over a decade. The last time had to be right before or right after Hinkley shot Reagan. Was
- [VENERATING  (short story)](https://timhrklit.com/?page_id=29) - VENERATING BY TIMOTHY HERRICK Copyright 1999 held by author That morning, Steve’s wife, Natalie, already dressed in her typical wall street get up of blue blazer, knee-length, dark plaid skirt and white blouse, sticks her head in the bathroom while Steve dries himself off from the shower. She tells him she will be home

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