Valiant Scribe
A literary hub giving voice to the voiceless by retelling the human experience

We all struggle through life just trying to get by. We are all human, we are all sinful, and we are all innocent.

Midnight, screeching vehicles — School girls, screaming — to a truck                       abduction here, cyber fraud there—no jail time.

sitting in this soft world to listen my senses draw inward bringing a blanket of quiet under a night sky...

Old age does have its perks. I don’t have to take off my shoes going through security when I fly.

Let me be remembered, not because of what I did or didn’t do, not for what I said or didn’t say, not for how much money I earned,

“Private!” I yelled. Midland: “What did you call me?” “Private Foster. I’m your sergeant. You’re not near Midland. You’re in Iraq.”

“As a child, I never imagined that one day I would see the Mountain devoid of snow and I don’t know when will I see the musk deer and the...

Until then, I long for my father to find rest, to fly away on the wings of a dove,* which is perhaps masquerading as a crow...

They killed a man whose words still echo forgiveness in the spaces under the Walnut Street Bridge, even the unspoken ones they know not...

I wanted to leave this earth, join you and your son. You wanted nothing of it. Sent angels to rip up my passport, keep me in the country.

An adjective people throw around when feeling energetic or unfocused. A joke for most is a reality for me.

The last time I passed by the house it was derelict and overgrown, regressing to an Irish-style wilderness.

I walked where Passenger trains Carried lives and Their once warm, Now cold, dreams And I was part of Each life, now gone To ether and mist

as we kickboard our lives across imaginary lines our hearts tied up in plastic bags drifting out to sea.

I am expatriate, my motherland, the one that birthed and then betrayed me, no longer my home. No songs of redemption, no longer

Her writing became bolder. In the long, lonely hours alone, she ruminated over the fate of those captured.

The forest never sleeps and also cries for redemption, the soul of the Amazon, the trees of life-giving air.

Meth, opioids, other street drugs claim a spot on the pavement, offering communion with the concrete, the dark like a stern overlord,

I’m sorry.  I didn’t recognize you, in the soiled coat and blue jeans, shuffling along the subway station, praying for money from heaven.

“If there is no God, what is left?” he interrogated himself.  He stood motionless in a warm, dry wind, felt himself falling into an eternity