Yellow Paint

I watch the clock to slow down time and relish in the time between seconds one, and two, and three, and four. It dilates time and takes the edge off of the ants that file beneath my skin to emerge from my pores. I feel the beat and burn of each moment of existence between all of those seconds that tick like a metronome to the beat of my quivering organs.
I need to move somewhere where it rains more, and maybe there's a beach- I don't care. It wouldn't be the kind that you take your yammering kids to for spring break, but the cold kind, where you dig from clams in sweaters and jeans rolled up at the ankles. I would tow my bucket and shovel up and down the lovely coastline as the brisk air licked at my rosey nose and cheeks. I've learned that some nights you can't run away from in the rain; some nights you have to sit at home and eat Van Gogh's yellow paint to make your insides feel happy again. We'll try anything, Van Gogh and I.
I bet you think I'm crazy, but I can hardly feel sometimes. Scalding shower, brush your teeth till your gums bleed damage, nothing too serious. For the past bit I think I've become a supernova about to birth into a blackhole. At least I hope I become a black hole and not a neutron star as I wish to warp space, not just live a dense, heavy form ghosting through space. Then again, what does that have anything to do with this loss of sensory? My explosive life somehow seems tied to it though, and so maybe my metaphor will have stretched as far.
I feel as though I'm whining too much about myself though, so maybe I'll change the subject. There was a man walking the curb, picking up cigarette butts to take the bits of tobacco to make a cocktail, hand rolled cigarette for himself. Is that life so bad? To have something you care about so much that you walk the streets piecing together a dose of your desires? A person that cares that much about anything impresses me. To want is an asinine emotion. How do you decide what to want? A thing that is worth wanting...
It's difficult to know what you really desire until it tells you no.
No. It's such a difficult thing to hear and possibly twice as difficult to say.
Fuck it all so we begin to think for ourselves. Fuck it so I can ingest my toxic, yellow paint, because maybe, just maybe, it will make a difference. Maybe it will take the "no's" away; maybe it will take the want away, so we don't have to roll those cigarettes to be romanced by life. Maybe it will liberate us from the shackles of the metronome of time.

Merigold Couch

There are two beds in our little home, yet we sleep every night nustled against each other on our old, warn in, marigold hued couch like pieces of an elaborate puzzle. My soft curves cap the rigid angles of his appendages as his stubbly beard and whispering winds tickle the nape of my neck.
Every night he removes the mask from his face, one of many facades he upholds for all the different people, and hangs it in the closet before letting me caress his soft, warm, real flesh.


You put too many noises in my head at once;
I need more processing space
the area I exist in-
you fill it
with hums and whistles
basses and thuds.

Stay here,
stay here in the daylight
as we animate together
and apart
in sync.
We dance!
Together to a constant
hanging melody with the hopes of
one day flying. Away. Away.

We can find the silence in the rain
and the warm, moist breaths
of one another.
As we brush cheeks and eyelashes
like lovers,
we are lovers.
Lovers in this dream.

Is reality more than a conglomerate of perspectives?

I fell in love with your words instead of your smile; your veins and not your eyes.

This is not a love story, nor a story about love, and maybe it's not even a story at all, but rather the expressions of the mind as they try to conceive a reality that is tangible and livable. I drank five shots. I feel like I should be pretty drunk, more than that I still feel nothing. I still can type like a sober person and all of my thoughts seem sober, just a little heavy handed, however, much less than the me that didn't have five shots.
Time's still splitting to me. It's how the two parts of me live- in different time experiences. It allows me to have this dialogue in my mind, with myself, that is. It is what causes me to syphon all possibilities on a moments notice. One me lives in reality and the other independent of time. That part of me, the independent, is what allows for objectivity; it fights the subjective me that's tied to all the currents.
Is anyone else converting this oxygen into carbon dioxide or do I pant alone?
The dreams that seem to blend into the daylight are what makes this all the more confusing. Am I dreaming of the other realities I exist in? The realities that are close to the truth of mine, but only slightly off by the words chosen or lack there of.

Avert the gaze, avert the gaze; he'll fleet, flutter, and fly away. But me? I am immortal.

The Tide of Tiny Forests

It's the manic state that drives the body to sweat with tremors in the night. The point when you lose control of the things you want and the things you are and trade them for adrenalin is where you find your nights becoming days and your days becoming eternity. There's no rest, only the castles of sand built in the day light, destroyed by the tides of the night.
The addiction rises with the season to whatever the drug of choice is- alcohol, marijuana, love, cocaine, lust, money, acknowledgement. The wants fight the terrors.

The acute awareness of loneliness romancing the ages. That freedom only exists in and of itself and is bought with one's life, for and of itself.

Where lies the conversation of the souls? Laced in our carefully selected rhetoric that displays whit with no substance? It's the synchronization of the brain and it's emission of waves and chemicals that dance in the open space between our eyes and mouths. They flex the heart; tighten the chest.

I  am a rock, to not be moved, to stand alone for the ages- another ripple of the earth's meaningless jolts. The composition of my placement is nonsensical and inner destruction does ensue and spew onto the crust a new callus of skin.

Whittle things down until they're small and lonely. What once was a forest is now a field of angry, useless stumps.

Illusions and Delusions

I turned out all of the lights, started a scalding shower, and sat in it with my eyes closed when he left. It was something I needed- the darkness, the sounds of the delicate water being rushed through the pipes to hit me, a moist warmth. A forced return to the womb of the maker.
A warm night rain simulated to match the heaviness of my heart. The rain swaddles us into our caves of existence; it makes us scamper like rats in what momentarily doesn't feel like open space. It curves the anxiety of possibility of contact if I use it to my advantage.
The open space belongs to me and I can see it when I shut my eyes: I'm walking through a lush forest in a light drizzle. My hair and clothing make a fleeting attempt to repel the droplets before surrendering to its persistence. I'm alone. I'm alone with my curiosities and my keen ability of observation.
The rain soaks into the skin of the trees and the crust of the earth creating a brilliant contrast in the warm ethereal void.

I am

vacuous, i suppose
utterly empty
and entirely void
of all except
the disgusting wallop
of a heart in tune
with the steps that
echo down the street.
against the tree
do vision fly of
ambiance and lullaby


I push the last of the air in my lungs into great bubbles that race to the water's surface to explode and disappear all at once before I emerge from the bottom of the tub nose first. I leave most of me submerged letting my hair snake around my face, framing it like a lion's mane. I think the water's too hot because my skin is red and livid, but I can't seem to feel much at all- neither internally nor externally. Inhale. Exhale.

The weight is saturated in the parietal lobe, but is being extracted and dispersed through the frontal.The sound, however, is untraceable; it radiates deep through my brain simultaneously in a deep roar and a potent squee. Over that I hear my detached heart thudding the soft lullaby in response to soothe the pain,   'I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.'

Bronzed Moons In a Socketed State

Every visual experience is unique to its own; I will never see through your eyes and you never through mine. We sit so tightly together, but our universes created through our consciences will never collide. Instead our intricately programmed realities exist symbiotically in a moment of eternity.

They call it consciousness, but I know it's really a constant monologue. It's my brain quietly discussing with me the chemical triggers it is experiencing from every sensation. Sometimes it speaks in words, but's it's mostly an aurora of emotions and flashes imagery from distant memories. I don't mind it. I like it.

The more dense the input, the more rapidly the monologue expands. Another process for this cranial squish.

Black Bird

"Why is it not okay that I want to die? Other people are allowed to want to live, and I don't see the difference frankly."

"That's selfish," replied Mal.

"No, it's not. Everyone else is being selfish by making me feel tied to this body, to this time on earth. It's not like I feel this in bursts of emotion, but rather, philosophically I don't believe I belong here nor do I want to."

"It's selfish not to spare the mourning of so many because you're too weak."

"Weak? Weak. Heh."

"No, it's true Em. You and I both know it. The only reason you really want to die is because you think there is no purpose, so instead of fighting for a purpose you want to disappear."

"It would have been easier on everyone else if I died an infant, or before, deep in my mothers womb, and best if I had never existed in the first place."

Mal froze, " you can't mean that..."

"I can't, yet I do. My existence is irrelevant aside from the emotional connections I've made and what do those mean Mal? What do those emotional connections really collectively mean in the end? That I existed? I don't care for that."

Emory took a breath. "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill myself or anything." She wiped a trickle of blood from her nose. "But you were right about one thing: I am weak. When this bleed stops can we just forget the nightmares and go back to sleep?"

"Since the nose bleed's not over yet.... What do you think really happened to Nadyia?" asked Mal shyly.

"If I knew I would get a lot better sleep," Emory said while refolding the cloth the use the clean side. "Mal...."

"Yeah?"

"Everything is going to be okay, you know? Sure, I don't think this suffering is worth it, but since I think you are worth it, and for some reason you don't mind the suffering, I live another day. You don't ever have to worry about being alone." Emory wiped her nose off one last time then pulled the sheets over the both of them and then turned away from Mal and pretended to be falling asleep. Instead she stared at the knots in the wood until they turned into suns above a golden field. 

In the distance, on the next hill, a silhouette burned into the horizon. Emory waved a small wave to get the person's attention. It turned toward her. It was Nadyia. It was Nadyia! Emory began to wave both arms back and forth and Nadyia seemed to see her at first but soon turned away.

"Nadyia!" she cried. "Nad!! It's me, it's me! It's Em! Please wait up!" She was now jumping up and down, but neither her words nor springing body seemed to be enough to catch Nadyia's attention.

Emory began running through the waist high weeds but there was not distance to be gained. 

"Nadyia!" she screamed hurtling over the big bushes and taking thwaps from the small ones.

In an instant Nadyia whipped around and began charging full speed straight toward Emory. As the gap began to diminish Emory realized that the shape she was so sure was Nadyia was something much darker. A petrifying fear left Emory motionless as she began to be able to make out the beast. It's face had two columns of eyes leading to it's crooked beak. 

On two limbs it raced at an alarming speed toward her; Emory turned to run, but within seconds it was ten yards away when, abruptly, two shimmering black wings unfolded from its torso. In one swift movement it lifted off the ground and penetrated Emory's abdomen with it's razor sharp talons taking her high into the sky, towards the suns. Her ears began to burst with sharp pains and as she slipped in and our of consciousness.

Emory gasped a final, painful breath and let out a scream.

She opened her eyes and realized she was sitting up in bed. Mal was still shaking her sweat drenched body.

"Stop... Stop... Stop," she managed to mutter through her heavy breathing. " I'm awake. It was just another one. I'm alright."

"Em, you're not alright. You're covered in sweat! You shot up with a blood curdling scream. And look now?! Em, you're nose..." Mal handed Emory a new rag to catch the fresh, raw blood. "You're not okay Em. Just be honest with me...."