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...."

A Wintery Flame

Bursting. Bursting. That is what my soul does against the paper.

And I love him, but my soul can't stop bursting. The shards have pierced my skin and made me rigid and misunderstood, for under that skin lies my lungs and heart barely moving because they are entangled in my soul that takes up too much space in my body. 

I held him too tight, I suppose, against my icy spikes. 

......................A Swarm of Sparkling Bees.....................

I was born to die so I laugh at the beautiful

like it were the art of a cannon ball

consumed with the idea of diving into the sun

Some things cause tears to brim in wells;

 prisms spread the light across rolling hills

but I laugh at the beautiful

queue glass finger treasure 

it's not the time but the measure

that takes you by surprise

 so high that my mind is a watery pit of flesh

together we gather it fast so the wave rushes in

and we laugh at the beautiful

key pleasure light leisure
I smile because you make me whole

Long Ride Home

On the bus I sat next to a handicap girl who danced to the overly loud music I was using to drown out the shakes. I get those sometimes, but mostly around people. They all start to look like eggs bobbling around and I hear the tension of each of their chicks scratching at the eggs' surfaces- clawing and begging to get out. The sound gets kind of numb and dull but there's a ringing inside of my head to sing out over the roar. Everything gets hot and beads of sweat form on my brow right before the nausea sets in. The tremors start in my chest as I constrict my body to try to fight back, but they ignore my defense and squirm through my appendages. Everything begins to fade into a deep well of blackness.

I shiver and my eyes burst open as I reemerge to the surface.

No one has noticed my world crashing and I am grateful.

Slug

My back is broken from the world; it collapses my spine one vertebra at a time to make me small, to make me cower before it. You see, I've lost, or at least I've been losing for quite some time, and it's not the fault of the people around me as much as they want it to be. The truth is I am mushy. I hate to move quickly, I hate to say my funny thoughts, I hate to make people think I am anything more than an equal to the chair that they are sitting in. I need a shell. I need a shell; I am mushy.

I thought I was strong, witty, and fun to be around until I remembered what I was when I was a child. I was unafraid to be ridiculous, climb too high in trees, move a little too fast, breathe hard. Everything from the era of feeling has seemed to dissipate in the monotonous days I am thrust into. I'm not so sure I like the part of me that was aged in the process. That is to say, I have more knowledge and understanding of the world but my wonder did not grow in the same sense. 

I grew up in a bamboo forest where the water rippled past and quenched my soul, and I dug deep into the earth to squeeze the grubs below. I danced in a ridiculously tribal manner swiveling around my walking and no one existed. 

I don't want to be old, and I want to stop getting older because it hurts. While my bones are achy, it gets much worse: I can feel the anxiety of just having to exist in a world I don't fit into piercing my rib cage with such vigor. I've always known that my body would age in a grim way, but I never imagined my emotions to age in such a way as this. Everything sparks this dim hatred, this feeling that I am serving men who don't deserve it. 

I want to make something beautiful on its own, not something I create in response to the suffering being inflicted on me. There is already a natural order of suffering, so why do men take it upon themselves to amplify the pain in every one of us? Pain is treated like a common place event when it doesn't have to be. 

As humans we have to deal with loss constantly, which is something that is inevitable and what makes us all the same. Loss is a natural thing because time and age does exist and we get wiser in this measurement. The unnatural suffering is derived from what is taken from us and while a majority can relate to this, is it something that can so easily be diminished if the greed of the minority was wiped away with it. 

I am here to love and be loved.

I am here to smile and make people smile.

I am fighting for that, but I have been turned into a slug that people are waiting to throw salt on because I move slowly and stick to my surroundings. I don't take a definite shape of the culture therefore I must be ugly. I must be. 

Woman Warrior

It was amazing.

I looked in the mirror and saw a woman.
I've never noticed age in such a way in myself.
My brain in unraveling, swelling and convulsing.
But I, I am a woman.

What's that writing on your everything?

Shipman, I allude you.

No.
No I won't.
Sometimes the world just makes it hard for me to exist.
The problems.
And no one even understands what I'm saying; I might as well be speaking a different language.

I like to be in my underwear and I'm betting you do too.
All of us just sitting in our underwear, hunched over, straining to read a screen.
It's a fact that we are not being sexy in our underwear.
We are existing in our underwear.

I clip my toe nails while I'm wearing my underwear.
I pop pimples while I'm wearing my underwear. 
I am not a sexy underwear-wearer.  And, I suppose, not sexy in general.

Conversation

I keep walking these circle, these monotonous circles. And I can't stop walking in these circles, these circles around you. But you keep walking straight, from point A to point B, so seemingly efficient. And sometimes I cross your line and I nod at you. Mostly because I'm sure I agree.
I keep trying to walk beside you, to walk your straight path, but inevitably I end up in the trench of circles I have paced deeply into the ground. I watch from below, jealously, as you walk your tightrope above me.



You're so beautiful as you dance from point A to point B; a wail, a bellow, a roar of sincerity.

Rigamortis

It's a cold, metal table and it's icing his back. There's no circulation; there's no blood, except for in his black fingertips and deep purple elephant ears. All that mattered is taped down and glued shut: his bright blue, enchanting eyes, his dinosaur teeth rimmed with metal, his heart that lapped up blood steadily for decades. There's nothing but a casing, a void, a volume, filled with embalming fluid. A body suffering of rigamortis. A cold, naked, hard body. A patriarch that ruled over 4 houses, that sat at the head of the table each night with a piece of buttered bread beside his meal, now lying on his back with nothing real left in him.

A good man died this day.

Posterity

What happens when I don't have class anymore?

When I'm not made to create, made to create those class things?

I am good at creating class things.

Usually the best.

But now, what about now? 

What will I make with these hands?

What will I see with these eyes?

Now that it's not a competition, I'm the only one competing. 

Well, competing with the world, but I don't think of it. 

Who will I create for?

Will I create for me? For selfish me? 

That's what it is now, and that's why it's my secret.

Will I create for someone else?

I hate the thought. I dread the thought. 

Not because I mind, but because I'll never get it right. 

My desires and feelings will always spill onto the paper.

What good is that too anyone if I can't control it?

¿Qué hora es?

Time is a double edged sword.

Although saying that may have just made my thoughts cliche and pointless, I feel the necessity to explore the duality of the paradox of time; a theme that has been rewritten and replayed to infinity. Time is very important, and when people fail to believe that my time is important, I steam. I've spent a lot of time thinking about time. More than I can be comfortable with after all of my conclusions.

Initially, as in all beings, time was infinite in itself. It's a necessary thing to experience oblivion, to disregard the offenses of time. To live in a moment when it is just a moment to be forgotten, a moment that doesn't have to be anything because you don't know that you run out of moments. It's bliss, but you are unaware. And although it is a necessary blank slate to build perspective on, it is also one of the greatest human flaws.

Our consciences are birthed into an illusion of immortality. Because time is a moment. And a moment. And another moment. Time, in our realities, is a serious of moments strung out so quickly that we don't even notice it, but, instead, mistake our frame by frame life for fluid body movements and 12 hour increments. It takes years to finally scope the proximity of time. Time is complex because it is arranged in fractals, and while it can be broken down into an infinite number of measurements, I believe there are two ways it should be analyzed that pertain to humanity.

Forever.
Time is grand, so large I cannot think of anything appropriate to describe it. It would be as impossible for me to explain as it would be for you to understand. I can't conceptualize eternity because it's not part of my entity. I won't experience forever so I cannot relate in any manner to this form of time. All I can do is acknowledge and appreciate its existence. The only thing this sort of time is good for, beyond the work of scientist and the likes, is a tool of measurement and comparison.

Lifetime.
We are not told as babies and toddlers that we were meant to die. We are not taught anything on the subject, really. We cannot be told about the abstractions of life because there are too many uncertainties that provoke the adult mind. Adults cannot answer the wondering child's mind so we must learn on our own.


This is what I have learned:
Time is constant; time is everything. The snippet of time that is allotted to me is nothing. A single burst of freedom. And what for? There is infinite time, so why was I only given 100 years? Is it the greed of the gods or is it a favor of them; my body will get weak and feeble. My first realization was just that: time is nothing. Then there's my second realization: time is all I have.

I'm petrified by the idea that I have wasted so much time. When I realized what every day, every hour, every second actually meant it threw me into hysteria. There were days at a time that I would refuse to sleep and use all means to keep myself awake. I wouldn't watch movies or spend time on the computer because that made time happen so much faster. It was as if I could see death approaching from 70 years away with every stride of the hand.

This was dramatic, I know, but I was a teenager.

Time should be valued because it is precious. Especially other people's time. When other people are willing to sacrifice any of the minuscule amount they have been granted you should be bubbling with appreciation for it.

Moreover, when people value my time, I adore them; when people don't value my time, it literally sends me into an anxiety attack... with tears, purple lips, concrete lungs and the works.

Make it mean something.

A Memory These Eyes Have Seen

"I can't do this," she whispered.
"If someone comes through that door, you won't have a choice though."
The wooden chair that Sara had been sitting in for the past two hours clung to her bare, shaking legs. She stared at the doorknob the whole time she talked, not noticing Alex's strung out appearance as he conditioned her to kill. Sara's head pounded with decisions while her fingers traced the cold metal on her lap.
"Here, take some of these," Alex advised, tossing her a bottle of blue pills. Xanax.
She snapped out of her daze just in time to catch the plastic bottle whirling strait to her abdomen. The pills sang two notes as she shook the bottle twice and Alex kissed her sweaty cheek.
"You know I've never shot a gun," Sara said a-matter-of-factly. A bead of sweat brimmed her brow for several seconds and then rolled down her fevered cheek slowly like a slug leaving a glossy trail. "Well?"
"It's going to be okay," he breathed into her ear.
In a swift motion she opened the bottle, shook four little blue pills onto her clammy palm, and threw them into her throat without a drink.
"It doesn't matter anyway," she retorted. "Get some sleep."
"Sleep?" Alex puffed. "You know I can't. Want to smoke?"
A single nod was all she could conjure.
He swung the baseball bat off of his shoulder and sat it on the couch beside him.