Steve B Howard
Bio
Steve Howard's self-published collection of short stories Satori in the Slip Stream, Something Gaijin This Way Comes, and others were released in 2018. His poetry collection Diet of a Piss Poor Poet was released in 2019.
Stories (119/0)
My Friend the Buddha at Four Years Old
I can feel them pulling on me. One pulls from the ground and the other pulls from the sky. I don’t know why they are in my backyard. The one in the ground wants me very much. The one in the sky wants me too, but he is worried. I think that maybe they are God and the devil. I don’t know why they are fighting over me.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Humans
Shoe Horned
I rolled out from under my newspapers and cardboard tent thinking maybe today I could paint the changes into my life that I’d been dreaming of for the past fifteen years. I saw it all in my mind, but that’s about as far as it went. Under a little ray of sunlight that shone down into the alley I called home, ugly blotches and swirls or ink ran out onto the paper. I was trying to capture the change I wanted in my life, but I couldn’t get the picture to slide from my head down through my scabby arm and out of the pen onto the paper. It just wouldn’t come. Knowing my life as well as my art was at a stand still at least for today, I put my pens away and stepped out of the alley and into the street to make my living.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Humans
M.A.R.S.H.A
“Six fingers? You must be mistaken Mrs. Landers. I did the Pre-Gen diagnostics myself and there were no indications that of cellular degradation. Radical mutations such as those are impossible except in cases of prolonged exposure to either nuclear or ultraviolet radiation similar to that one would experience on Terra levels one through two-hundred and twenty. It was stated in your husband’s profile that neither he nor any of his family members had ever been exposed to these types of radiation. Could this information possibly been falsified?”
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Futurism
Algorithms of a Break Up
I’ve attempted to re-create it, if that’s the correct word. I’m not sure about the terminology. I mean, I’m trying to basically de-construct the destruction or maybe reverse-engineer it. I don’t know. I mean can an event, a past event, be reverse-engineered or de-constructed? I’m going to attempt it. I have to.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Confessions
Homo Deus and My Head-Spinning Moments
I’m actually re-reading “Homo Deus” by Yuval Noah Harari. If you aren’t familiar with it or him, he’s the historian who wrote the best selling “Sapiens” a few years back which told the story of Homo Sapiens based on what we know from 70,000 years ago up until the present. “Homo Deus” is more of a futurist take on what humans (at least some of us) might become in 25–300 years or so.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Futurism
Beyond the Break Lie My Broken Dreams
He paddles out of the calm marina into the dark open ocean chop that chills him despite his thick wet suit. His long board cuts cleanly through the water with each powerful stroke. Four hundred yards away a small red light atop a buoy bobs in time to the current. He pulls hard towards it. A typhoon south of Kyushu is pushing huge waves over the break, but he can’t see them in the early morning darkness yet. He can hear the roar though. Out to sea the horizon is just starting to turn blue.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Humans
Half Hearted
Roughly fifteen miles into the trip, heading towards the backside of Seattle, he said, “Take 509, it’ll be faster.” And maybe it was. I liked dropping down off the hill on the north end of Burien. The dark shadowy greens of the Douglas Firs lined the freeway here going into the city. I could see the changes of spring began to green the banks of sluggish Duwamish as it slid quietly into the Puget Sound.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Families
The Naked Surf
Harvey stood on the cold winter beach in Northern California, white longboard pointing to the sky and bare ass pointing towards the bluff behind him. He watched the waves roll into the bay, breathed the air, noted how the wind passed his ears, absorbed the weak winter sunlight, and shifted the coarse sand between his toes. He also watched the violent vibrations running down the length of the brand new pier that sat in the bay as an ugly insult to the ocean. Large waves slammed into it and rolled onto the beach. Observations finished he entered the frigid water and began paddling out to the break.
By Steve B Howard2 years ago in Humans
