Trickster-Text Thursday Linguistic Disturbance Post one to five line where language bends, slips, or misbehaves. Short. Witty. Unpolished. Topic: Money Here’s My Offering: I create peace and war.. Destroyed character and life's for greed.. Buried for resurrection.. bled on for protection Your life is body armor in my time of need.. GhoZT STorieZ 👻 #luxintenebris

Poems not fully awake, not fully asleep. Catch the brain in screensaver mode. More writing, less editing. More nonlinear thoughts, less structure. More imagination and exploration. Let the phone drop from your hand mid-sentence. Let your forehead nod into the laptop keyboard. 5:48 AM, 3/26/26 I want to go back to sleep. I’m not fully awake. There’s a skool of thought about writing while in a daze. After the sun goes down or before the sun comes up, you can catch your internal censor slipping, dozing off, napping, knocked out; you can access areas of the brain normally off-limits because security is not alert. Our inner-editors hate having their ugly sleep interrupted. When they’re snoring and drooling and passing gas and you pass them what you’re writing at 5:48 AM, your prefrontal cortex—still groggy and in a hypnagogic state—waves you off (says, leave us be) and leaves you to your own literary devices; you are free to write whatever you like; free write whatever you can imagine. Sleepyhead, this is an ideal place for your head to be when you write: Write when you’re poor, huddled and tired. There’s a certain liberty to it, you writing without you looking over your shoulder at what you wrote. The New York City playground basketball legend, God Shammgod, once swore: his crossover dribble, a move known as “The Shammgod,” was perfected to the point where he could shake and ankle break his own shadow. Thinking like that isn’t done at the height of the day; it’s done when you’re bushy eyed and bright tailed; it’s done when lids are heavy and ideas are a midnight oil candle burning at both ends, hovering over your head like a crooked halo found in a Goodwill discount bin.

after Craven Smith Latisha. Not the short one. The tall one. The one who has the same surname as Steve. I’d watch her go by my homeroom class—walking the halls of Springfield Gardens High School—none of my homies gave her a second (or first) look. Latisha, the tall one, a late bloomer with a cute ass overbite. I’d get weak at the knees when she smiled. I would’ve loved for her to choose me for a semester full of uneven hickeys. But a wet-behind-the-ears freshman had no chance at a twelfth grade goddess, dressed in no-name clothes, sporting a short bob with bangs and a nameplate necklace. Latisha, the tall one, slimmer than a lowercase l. Old Timers would talk about skinny women and say, “If she’s slim, she’ll make ya head spin.” I lost track of my high school crush when Stride Rite went out of business. I’d walk by, watching her sell baby shoes, on my way to shoplift hip-hop cassette tapes out of Sam Goody Music Store. Latisha, the tall one, bailed me out of Mall Security jail with just her employee ID and a beautiful but guarded smile that you’d rarely see. (Because she shied away from her own reflection.) We sat in her Mitsubishi Mirage listening to Babyface and Tevin Campbell. It wasn’t my preferred listening choice—but my newly released TOO $HORT cassette got confiscated. The security guard threw it into a box marked “shrinkage” and made me sign a document marked DNR. I almost died, seeing Do Not Return stamped at the top of the page; it had me on the verge of needing resuscitation. That ban barred me from my boo! That day lives on in my mind, although Green Acres Mall passed away. She still haunts my fantasies and catalyzes memories… Mr. Woolery, a great chemistry teacher, assigns permanent lab partners to the two Latishas in our class. He points at a metal stool, next to the Magnetic Polarity chart, and tells me: “You’ll be with Latisha. The tall one.”

Today centers contact around… being proactive (What does being proactive mean for you?) A small trace. A mark left without explanation. What you offer can be brief. A line. An image. An acknowledgment. Leave it where attention happened to land. Here's my offering: Creating your own opportunities and shaping your own destiny 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾

Day 1 Theme: Fear & Faith Prompt 1 – • Do Faith & Fear Walk Together - Write a poem exploring the tension between believing and doubting at the same time. Prompt 2 • When Fear Tried to Lead - Write about a moment fear almost made your decision for you. Prompt 3 • Faith Made Me Try Anyway - Write about a time you moved forward despite uncertainty.