Higher.

Hey, man.

Ever been stoned outta your mind before?

They say it takes a time or two to get used to the feeling of drowning in open air, but I don't bother clearing it up. I like the way death feels, inhaled.

Oct 30 2007

I'm sane in my own mind
but that's not saying much.
I also think purple and orange go well
and banana splits are gymnastic tricks.
I'm sure I don't know
a stronger, higher being.
Self control I often overlook.
Mediocracy is a form of self-abuse
I happily heap on myself.
I write quotes at the end of tests
without ever citing an author.
I live in the water
and pain makes me wonder.
I grow outside myself too often
but sometimes not enough
and it burns like liquid ice.
I was infected in my youth
a virus called infatuation broke my defenses
plagued my body.
I thought I'd fought it off
the doctors said I could go
but a second outbreak's coming
without a hospital in sight.

Touch of Grace.

Yes, I'm looking at you.

No, I can't see you.

Maybe it's because none of us are quite real. Or maybe it's because only I am.

Maybe it's all one fearsome nightmare, bleeding all shades of red and blue and violet. The extra life in his eyes, the sense of self he was always missing - it's there. His body is slumped with grief, but he seems taller somehow. He feels whole in a way no one ever truly does.

What are these tricks, then?

The meaning of lucid is sane. When one dreams and does not know it, one is not lucid. One is not...sane. Maybe I'm dreaming then. I'm dreaming my own death - his death. Yours.

What is this insanity? These dreams none of us can wake from. The nightmares that have us all trapped in the floorboards, smelling hell's flames below but not quite ready to fall yet. Because when we fall, we'll all just wake up, won't we?

Unless the dream isn't one and the nightmare actually is. IF it really is your little brother on your front lawn with huge slate eyes that can't see anything anymore. because maybe that experiment of yours has discovered it's got some fangs after all... And maybe instead of killing you he killed your shadow instead.

And let's suppose your shadow was your soul, your better half. Where would you be then?

Dead? Lost? Destroyed?

Reborn.

But you couldn't have done it alone, because no one can kill his own soul.

So now you're seeing thing and hearing things and I belong to you or you belong to me if you believe in the sort of thing you swore could never exist.

Which leaves one to wonder who is speaking when all of them are out there, crying over the crumpled body of a black-haired boy. Because, who would think someone as perfectly demented as us could use the touch of grace?

Boy.

Once upon a time
there was a boy who loved.
Once upon a time
he loved.
And once upon a time
the one he loved was destroyed
in the name
of love.

Once upon a rhyme
there was a boy who lived.
Once upon a rhyme
he lived.
And once upon a rhyme
the life he lived was destroyed
because of life.
For life.

Once there was a time.
Once there was a rhyme.
Once there was someone
worth your pity.
But not
anymore.

A pretty business.

Have you ever seen the aftermath of a battle? Not an exceptionally bloody one...not one that turns the tide of war. Just a battle, as ugly and nondescript as they come. It is nothing to call glorious.

Victors and losers alike both have dead...both must search for the bodies. The earth will drink many liquids, but human blood is too thick for her to swallow. It soils the surface, taints the water, drives the animals away, or draws them in as the case may be.
If it's hour or days later, there might be some difficulty in identifying comrades...especially those already looted and missing defining traits...like a head.

Bodies left out have a tendency to bloat, expanding under the sun until the size of the corpse matches the size of the stench associated with it. You can taste the smell on the air, if you try hard enough. Associate each wound with a weapon - the mostly severed head from a badly wielded sword; the gutted man a byproduct of any host of of pole arms; lost legs, chariot spikes; squashed skull, over-enthusiastic horse hooves.

War is not a pretty business.

Dear Love.

Dear Love,

I'm breaking up with you.

No, I don't have to have a reason but I'll give you one anyway.

I'm tired of all the lies. I'm tired of all the waiting. I figured I'd finish things the right way, since I couldn't figure out when they'd even started.

So, love, here it is.

I guess I'm setting you free, but don't forget how the middle of October feels when the weather is cooling down, and the air bites. Remember to yourself the chills that run through December, like a child nearing Christmastime. Play with the past as intent for the future, the way promise-makers do on the first of January.

I'm sorry love, and I am. It's not a lie this time. They come to my lips too easily, to my fingertips. I don't bother trying to stop them when I realize it doesn't matter, but three little words that kicked me every time I said them...

Or typed them...

Let's go back to a courtship where I didn't write to you for three days because fear touched off a light inside and warned that I was losing myself. Let's break down into something less real, like these elements forced into periodic slots in a table men built on a whim.

Let's not be ourselves. That should be easy for us. We've spent enough time doing that already into the moments when I see my face in your eyes and wonder, who the fuck are you?

Because I'm tired of these lies I tell myself, like I could end up knowing who you are. Like I think I'm capable of greatness when really all I can do is imagine it, then write until the great pours from me into someone else's being. I'm a writer, not a person. I'm a star, not a human being.

And you know, I still miss him sometimes, even when I'm with you, but I feel like there's almost obligation to forget, and yet I can't because he's a man and you're still a boy.

I don't know where the difference is when he knows less about the world than you ever had, but it is there. Maybe it's locked on the child-like assumption that everything will be all right, and the choices that we make will only affect others. And only in the long run.

I want to be back in control again because I gave over too damn much too fast. Too much at once, and now I want it back because I lied to you and I lied to myself when I had one face and now the restless second self wants to come out and destroy.

She hasn't signed the death warrant yet but it's still in the works and eventually... Eventually it'll come to pass, the way everything else does.

And maybe if you wait long enough I'll forgive you for things you can't control. Maybe I'll forgive you for not being blond and being two inches too tall. Maybe I'll give in and let it go that you have good vision but can't carry a tune.

And that you go to school in Canada, not here.

Because I think, given enough time, I could forgive those things. But it's the eyes, love. Your brown-to-black eyes. Those I'll never forgive.

Maybe if your eyes were blue, or if you were blind - maybe then things would be absolutely perfect. Or maybe just less real.

Reality follows me. We're close enemies. She's my stalker. Maybe too close. I'm her lover. Best friends, forever.

But your eyes aren't blue and you aren't blind so even when you aren't aroused as all fuck I can still see myself in your eyes and every word I say comes out like a lie to myself.

I can't do it anymore, love. I can't keep telling lies to my reflection. She's the only one who always accepts me for who I am, instead of who I pretend to be. I still owe her. She hasn't said anything, but when I stare into your eyes, her disapproval stares back.

I'm more afraid that one day she won't. That one day I'll be all alone without even a reflection to comfort me.

So -

Dear Love,
I'm getting rid of you
now
so I can save
part of myself
for when we
are finally
disillusioned.

Two faces of a coin.

My reflection does not approve of me.

-
-
-

I go by the mirror and avert my eyes. I can't stare myself in the face. It's not like all the pictures. those eyes are dead eyes, frozen in time. These eyes are live eyes and glitter like water. Or glass over mud.

I can look myself in the eye, but it's like looking into another part of another soul and having questions asked and my mind read. Looking into my eyes is having to face the person who ruined lives for nearly half a decade, and still can't seem to stop. Looking into my eyes is having to stare down a mistake in identity I never imagined I'd become. Looking into my eyes... That's being judged by the self I'd always imagined I could become, the self my parents think I've become, the self that idiots dare to trust and idolize.

But they are misled, mistaken by the surface tension. they don't read the current under it all, and they don't see the lack of humanity. Or the fouled attempts to rebecome one of them.

I never give my heart halfway and when life first said "fuck you" I fucked it back and jumped off the ledge, trusting sheer insanity to confuse Fate long enough for me to get away.

It hasn't failed me yet.

But lurking inside, there's that possibility -

And even though I'd fuck the hottest girl in the school, I still think I'd have to do it with the lights out so I won't see myself in her eyes. So there won't be my own face there, making accusations about this life and carrying the stony silence of judgment over heavy breathing and high sighs.

-
-
-

He says he can't look himself in the eyes, like there's something hidden deep in there that he can read. he always look like he is on the verge of tears when he's so near the edge I can feel his body trembling so fast it's not visible.

And he still says he's used to fucking with the lights off, so I guess the fact that he's never reached for the lamp I leave on is a good thing.

I've always been able to see his face and his eyes.

Those eyes of his are gorgeous. They terrify me, but it's a fear I embrace in the hopes that one day I'll learn not to fear.

That one night I was over him, I made myself meet his eyes. I always look in the eyes when I speak, but never when I fuck. And still his eyes terrify me enough to forget myself. To be in the moment.

I've learned to love the moment. Except when his eyes are dark enough that my reflection appears and it's one of those times when I want to look away, or better yet, shake him until he tells me exactly what he can call beautiful about this body he's laid claim to.

All possessive, self-inflicted rituals aside... There is nothing for him here. And yet he remains. I wonder how I am so lucky.

Then his eyes fill with that undefinable emotion, right under the tears, and as my heart aches, I wonder how I am so cursed.

Tears.

I won't forgive you. You make me cry, love, and if there's one thing I cannot forgive, it's a boy who makes me cry.

Hurts too much alone. I've been carving your name places it never should have gone. Skin isn't the same as stone, and I'm burning up inside. Please - don't leave me like this. It's one final kiss of desperation gone wrong, something you knew all along.

You scare me and I hate you every time I think I love you, I run through all the reason to be afraid of you. Ashamed of you. The way your touch makes me convulse like I'm dying inside, drying up inside.

But every time the phone rings, and every time a bird sings outside when it's nighttime, not bright-time... I lose a bit of fight, then, and it's not all right, then because I'm moving on faster than I think I should, and faster than I thought I could. It's what happens when fear gets in the way. At least I can breathe today.

Not like when I lost my mind inside the web of lies and crime; I don't do time that isn't on a clock of my devising. I'm advising you to back away before I make you pay for what you're doing, what you've done. It's not the end, you haven't won.

If I say I love you, it's not the lie but it's not truth. The youth is euphemism at its best and emptied streets are just the rest of what's been left behind for us. Maybe just you, and I'll go on, go home alone and cry quiet, the way I do when I think too hard of you.

Something in silence bring the tears on the heels of too-young fears. I sit in the dark and hold my own hand, just cry and cry and cry and -

You're the boy who made me cry. I won't forgive you, and I don't lie. I won't forget you, can't forgo the memory of what made this so. Say your farewells if they mean truth, and then let go promise of youth. Forgive the rage and leave the daze but heavy words have made this maze. Time doesn't mend a broken heart; just duct tapes pieces that fell apart.

Cut.

These lines
feel like absolution
like if I make enough of them
tomorrow will be better
because it can't be worse
than today.

Parrot the Poet.

Friend and I commenting on another friend's Facebook status. My replies:

Black Knights found in the stars
above the wars fought for maidens' hands
across the desert's plain, deserted sands.
It's just a word - four letters long
and the meaning moves along
with every step
Black Knight takes
and every heart
that Black Knight breaks...
But it's still just a word, and you bend it
to our will
because inside us still
we hear the beating of a single heart
inside these walls
we've yet to part
and fall away into the sky...
We made this love,
you and I.


A touch of stars to the burned down
the crown of bloodied thorns
across a brow
a man laid low -
to raise us up, you up
into the stars
it's only wars, up there
it's only more, up there
it's only gorgeous, up there
and who knows it better than a star
like you
touched down from afar
planet somewhere out there
without knowledge of despair
and heartbreak
dreams unmake themselves on earth
but the planet of your birth
sings songs of sanity
and so pretty soon
so sings the moon
and all the stars above
they call the words,
down to the birds
who herald the dawn
with love.


You're a prism -
maybe light in a prison
split into a myriad of colors
reflecting into waters that were calm
once upon a time.
Once upon a rhyme
maybe thyme when I'm cooking up a recipe
that includes you being there
when you're really here
inside my mind running circles
like you knew the track wouldn't end
and couldn't bring yourself to stop
anyway.
Some other day you'll stop by a sign
and repaint it red
say it wasn't dark enough
or high enough
or fly enough
to care.
From here to here to there
and sometimes now it sings
the way the morning does when you're here.
Or there, or everywhere I am.


We're a masterpiece, bent and broken
snapped and spoken for
by the same Knight who made the Night before.
Black Knight comes and
Black Knight calls and
Black Knight's breaking down the walls
that you've put up and which you told me
were breech-less, speechless -
maybe only therapy.


Just fair warning -
god hits back.
The plague that struck Egypt
was just good old jealousy
maybe hypocrisy
and idiosyncrasy building
what buildings tear down nowadays
in the ways of the forefathers
the four fathers
that fathered a youth
uncouth and untrained and unrestrained
so filled with what we term passion
that they forgot the future
as they looked to the past.
Only when they saw the now again
did they lie again
to the last
thank god, thank god,
we're dead at last.
Like love is a plague and the dogs are drunk
baying at the moon again
it's soon again
we hear the loons again
calling on the lake.
Under that moon again,
just you, again...
Just you and me...
And then.


It's only destruction if it isn't creation
and the station is set to nine-sans-two.
It's just me, without you
when you aren't there
and I care - or I cared -
once upon a time, but that's just fantasy now
and if I had a dime
for every look you gave me
that meant something almost true
I'd have no change
because that's not in you.
Or me, if it comes down to it.
This is hallucinogens
done in sanskrit
a transcript of a work we both forgot
it's only rock and wears
the tears of an age away from sanity
and vanity
to expand itty-bitty spiders
going up the water spouts -
down came the dregs of life
and forced the spiders out.
It's like life, moved over again,
singing clover again,
in Dover again like before the war.
Oh...the war.
I've told you this, haven't I?
Maybe from before I remembered
you don't care.


And just later,
maybe I'll shine my eyes
and go up to ask you
if you'll kiss me concrete
the way you wouldn't
when we were discreet
and the streets were humming
with the pounding of blood
in the months before
we both knew you should.
Or shouldn't.
But that's still just once upon the air
neither here
nor there
nor anywhere really.
I'm just truly, madly, deeply
drowning in the ocean
because the water's frozen
it's only a commotion
when the desert's overflowing.

Blackbird

There was a bird, sitting outside on the maple tree's lowest branch the morning things changed. It was a small blackbird, so dark it was almost blue in the light from the rising sun. It sang, but it sang to greet the dawn alone. No other birds answered the solitary chirps, and eventually, the little blackbird went silent.

She sat on the branches of the old maple tree and stared at the sky, as though looking for answers.

Little Anna Maria watched her from her bedroom window. Anna Maria watched the little blackbird, the way the blackbird watched the sky.

"Anna?"

Anna Maria did not move.

"Anna, what are you watching?" Her mother knelt beside the wheelchair.

Anna Maria closed her eyes. "The bird," she said.

Anna's mother sighed after a moment. "Still nothing," she said to Anna's father, who was standing in the doorway.

"They said it could take some time," Anna's father said.

Anna's mother stood. "It's already been years."

"She'll speak again," Anna's father said.

Anna Maria watched the blackbird who watched the sky. The silent blackbird sang again, but when still no other birds answered, she flew away.

Anna Maria wished she could do the same.

Chaos Theory.

Chaos is our birth into the real world. A step in the wrong direction for the right reasons. An empty soda bottle overstuffed with air. A room, drenched with soap bubbles, glittering and bouncing around because they refuse to pop. The air is clear, and it's past midnight. Past time when sleep should have come to visit. I'll pay for this tomorrow. Or later today. Tomorrow has already arrived, despite how timeless the night seems.

Failed experiment.

These are smoke signals sent from way, way up above. A source of faith, a hint of trust, a wellspring of forgotten love. Or was it enduring? I've gone mad procuring the final element to cement this world in place. Too much in haste passes us by. Begone days and take this melancholy haze of misting with you. It was just wishing anyway on any well we happened to pass. The grass grows taller in another's yard where another farmer is in charge. Maybe their cattle have less lard than our own. But time has shown that we have grown out of small and thoughtless children into world weary earth searing shambles. If rambles upwards, onwards, outwards, on... Don't stop me with a tear-filled yawn. At least try to cry so we both know - just you and I - how much of a failure this experiment really was.