Word of the Day -- Trailer

The back yard was filled with the tiny cars, and the sidewinders sloven skins. The sickly scent of summer gone wrong, somehow. Just--off. Backwards and unloved, the way a trailer might feel devoid of a trail to follow.

It was a depressing state of affairs, all things considered.

Maybe more depressing than the trails realized, having gone off to hunt for more people--different people--to follow them.

Lay Your Head Down

Lay Your Head Down
Peter Bradley Adams





Beautiful sleeping baby -
don't let it pass you by.
When the leaves on the autumn trees all die -
what do you find?
What do you find?

Lay your head down
lay your head down.
Lay your head down
lay your head down

Beautiful sleeping baby -
sail on the river wide.
The leaves on the autumn trees all die -
baby don't cry.
Baby don't cry.

Lay your head down
lay your head down.
Lay your head down
lay your head down

Lay your head down
lay your head down.

Pandora's Box.

I read the graffiti on your wall, hoping for some clue to the inner workings--to see if I can decipher what's going on inside your head, nowadays. I don't know you anymore, but I'm pretty sure we both knew that would happen. You thought you wouldn't change--I prayed you wouldn't, but I knew inside that time takes prisoners, and runs them through the mill until they're unrecognizable as former selves.

It's just in passing, where I think I'll see you. I've still got the mental imagery wrapped up inside of me--that's why it's hard to let go right now. Once we've met in person and I've got my new vision of who you aren't anymore, then I'll be free. It's just the digging down inside, to find who I can't be any longer. It's not you, it's me.

But I'm still Pandora's Box, suffocating at the bottom wrapped in hope that maybe things aren't as fucked up as they seem. That maybe I'll wake up and these past months will have all been just a dream I didn't know I was having. If that happened, I'm not sure what I would do. If I'd even remember long enough to heed the warning. If I would know better with a second chance.

I'm too good at screwing things up, messing up on purpose-by-accident. I'm too damn perfect when it comes to imperfection that it screws with everyone's head. Look for the upside, and the down will come find you, courtesy of my mind. It's just the way I turn, now. To the left, to the left when the world slings right, but we never meet around the corner because you're always just out of sight.

I want to meet up again, to hang out again and maybe reminisce, but it's true the future still looks like this: empty to the point of no return, and no future hopes. Already tried all the ropes, and each one I pull has come untied, from wherever it had been stationed. Fell at my feet, in the bottom of a great pit they call Despair.

There's no way out but up, and up isn't where I'm going.

I met a stranger and relearned the meaning of danger when it comes to mental attraction. I'm waiting to be broken into fractions of who I was again. I knew I gave over too much when it came to you the first time, but I've been told I can't do things halfway, and even though I warned you, I don't think you really knew what you took when you pushed me away from you.

The offer to return came too late, maybe. Or perhaps too soon. I wish we'd talked about it better, that I hadn't assumed that freedom would let you come home to me. You weren't the wild falcon I'd dreamed. Not a second time. Only one freedom flight per lifetime, wasn't it, love? Or am I not allowed to call you that anymore? You're not "love" to me, now, are you? Or are you? I still don't know--it's your past self I hold more dear than you could know. Pain and cure wrapped up in black and white rainbows.

I'm Pandora's Box. She opened it in curiosity, and screwed the world over. I'm made for those with curiosity and a healthy dose of insanity--anyone brave enough to lift the lid gets a treasure trove of trouble. Or maybe not, anymore--if Pandora opened her Box a second time, would there be more malign influences lurking inside? Or is one great failure enough for a lifetime?

I keep kicking myself for trusting, because I'm terrible at it. I know when to pull back, but it's only force of habit, and I tried it too soon, I think. Way back to the first time I tried to make you cry, to see if you were really so attached--to see if I could hurt you at all. The first mistake you made in tangling me up was resisting. Tears tear everyone away. There had to be some pain somewhere, so I made up for it, with my blood and my cries--

Maybe I'm just lying to myself now. If you had broken down, if I hadn't just heard the sorrow in your voice when you were in Florida that one time, would this all have been easier? I move away from the emotions I see in human beings because for the longest time I couldn't replicate them. Jealousy, maybe. But now I'm wondering if it's just mysterious to me, whatever seems most opposite. Most opposed to what I know and can hold.

You're intriguing still, but it's like my first year of college, where I only remember the sun and the sunshine from the beginning, and some sudden transition into windfall and darkness that doesn't make sense. There must have been rainy days sometime in August when I first came out here; why do I only see the glow of gold off green grass? My memories are brighter than they could have possibly been: the present doesn't shine half so bright, and tonight, it's not shining at all.

I'm locked into recall that won't let me go. I should be doing something constructive, not destructive, like remembering, but I can't seem to help it. If I was spelled into forgetting, maybe things would work out. But I'm cursed into holding onto the past until it fights back and strangles me in revenge. I wish I could renege on the past, but maybe I wouldn't go back as far as you think--maybe I'd go back farther, and take away the time when I learned how to swim, just to see if I'd end up in the criminal justice system.

Maybe we might have met sooner, then, and this ending could have come about when it didn't matter so much. I could have fought with loss over study hall quiet time instead of while trying to prepare for exams. I don't need this memory, but it's so much like last year all over again. I'll tell you right now--losing her and losing you is the same.

I had a class the day after she said she never wanted to see me again. I don't have any recollection of having been there, but everyone says I was. I don't have notes, no date, no proof to myself--I might have been drunk on confusion and insensible. I don't remember anything from that week, and the memories of the month are hazy. What is it about April that makes my memory lazy? This is the time when recall likes to fuck with me, to see just how much it can take away before I start to go crazy.

I'm not as balanced as you might think. And I knew I gave too much away from the start. It's an art form, learning how much to keep, and how much to let go. I've never had much practice; everyone abandons me. I didn't have to learn when I was young because they always returned those pieces.

But I can remember when you were sleeping in my bed, when I woke up and had to go get my head checked out, for a shrink to tell me what she thought was wrong with me. I was in a green room--hunter green--with scratches on the wall and a red Barbie high heel lying in the middle of the desk that was between us, on a little scrap of red paper that could have been a pretend rug. She started to ask me about leaving, and loss, and I broke down for the first time in front of someone since I don't remember when. I had to escape.

Dissociation is a fascinating talent--you can become anything you want, and the outside world can't touch you. /the thing is, it mostly only works when things hurt outside, like when you're taking knives to your skin. Then the magical workings of your mind let you go inside, deeper, where it's safe. Where you can't feel anything anymore. Your outside goes comatose, like you've overdosed on safety.

She woke me out of my trance with her hands--not touching but searching, just waving at me until the motion took me from where I wanted to be. Away. She asked what it was, and I told her it was nothing, nothing. Studied the rug until I could keep the tears at bay, and then I looked her in the eyes to say it was all part of imagination. That I was doing what I could to keep life interesting. I didn't know how very right I was, back then, but now I do know, mostly. She let me go after telling me chaos was part of what defined me. I don't think she lied to me.

Broken into two halves--one part that never wants to be alone, and another that can't catch enough solitude. Where you're alone, you can't be hurt; am I right, love? (That word again--you'll ask me not to say it, I'm sure, but for now you're not here, and I don't have to answer to your fears anymore.)

Word of the Day - Intersection

The crossroads came to a point. There was a sign, right in the middle. The gods stood there, just looking at the small metal and wood sign.

"End?" Jenna inquired.

There was no one around to answer.

"End?"

The woods echoed back, like they were laughing.

"End."

Maybe no one could hear them.

The intersection point was empty by the time the gods found their bearings to start, again.

Word of the Day - Gadget

It's been sitting on the top of the sink for ages, now. Just a little green and gold thingy-ma-jig. Something left over from the Wonder Years, when things actually happened. Exciting things, y'know? Like that time when you and I took out the Evil Henchmen in One Fell Swoop. That was a great day.
That little thing, that little green and gold thingy... Damn, I don't even remember what we called it.
Guess growing up makes you lose your imagination, and your sense of magic and mystery.

Word of the Day - Iron

The swords clanged together over the Arena sands. Once, twice, a third time. They came together, and apart, and the two women holding them drew back, panting.
Athena stood up straighter, and brushed sweat from her brow.
“You’re improving,” she told her student. “But keep your guard up!”
Mirium nodded.
“Then have at,” Athena said, and came in, her overhand chop aimed to cleave her young pupil in two, if the young woman should miss.

Word of the Day - Acoustic

The way the music sounds — echoes, really — inside the empty dance hall is beautiful. It ricochets off the walls, and around, and around. The boom box on the floor shakes with the power of the words it’s putting out.

And you– you stand in the center of it all, with your head thrown back, kneeling, your face upturned, like you’re frozen in time.

You’ve been sitting there for the past half hour now, and I keep wondering, as I look in through the doorway, if you’re still thinking about me.

Word of the Day - Hysterical

I heard the laughter out in the hallway, and opened my door, just a little. Just enough to see the dark carpet and the white washed walls. Just enough to hear that girl keep crying, start screaming, make sounds that should have driven her mad, to keep hearing inside her own skull.
It's the way she sounded when I heard her boyfriend broke up with her.
The way I imagine he sounded inside his own head when she left him at prom for someone else.
I guess it's the way you sound when your heart breaks.

I don't want to grow up.

I don't want to grow up. Matty said he wants to. He said he's going to be a fireman and rescue people and run with the dalmatians. He told me he was going to buy a house and sleep in a different room every night and watch all the Batman movies in a row. Matty said that when you're all grown up, you can do anything you want.

I told Matty he was wrong.

He laughed. Everyone else laughed too, and said that, of course growing up is really important and of course grown ups can do anything they want.

Matty was mad at me for a while, but then he started telling me again how he was going to stay up until midnight and sleep in as long as he wanted when he was grown up. He laughed at all the little kid stuff I told him I still like to do.

He said playing with Barbie dolls and plastic trucks is something only babies do anymore.

I'm not a baby.

Matty said I was if I kept doing that. He said big kids don't do that. Big kids do grown up things, like the sitting thing, and talking over drinks of coffee.

I told Matty my parents don't do that.

He laughed and said all parents do.

They don't, I insisted.

He got mad then, and I was quiet. I don't like it when Matty gets mad at me.

Matty kept telling me about how great being not a kid was going to be. I listened. He talked. He's good at that.

But I still don't want to grow up. I want to be a kid forever. If I ever grew up, even a little bit, I wouldn't fit in the hole under the stairs at home.

It's where I go when the stinky man visits.

The house gets all hushed up, and he starts screaming big, ugly words at nothing. Mom doesn't start screaming until he finds her hiding spot.

She's too big to fit under the stairs.

And he never thinks to look here for her.

I wish she did, though. I don't like the screaming.

It makes my ears hurt. And when he's gone, the air smells funny, like the toaster got left on too long again.

Mom always cries about being grown up. If she doesn't like it, I don't think I will either.

I want to stay a little kid.

Matty doesn't understand.

It's safer.

I Believe.

I believe that parenting should be a licensed skill; if you don't pass the test you don't get the kid.

He came to school everyday with some type of injury or another, from great big, purpling bruises on his forearms to a split lip or sluggishly bleeding cuts. Never all at once, of course, but he was always injured. I never really thought much of it at first; he was a very active kid and most of the boys in our class had minor hurts from sports practice every day. But unlike all the other competitive, athletic boys in my class, Andre wasn't on any sports team. He was much like me – a real bookworm. That's how I got to know him, actually.

We both wanted to borrow the same book from the library – Redwall by Brian Jacques. He picked up the book before I did, and I perked up, like I always do when someone else shows interest in the type of books I enjoy reading. We started talking, or maybe it's more correct to say I talked and he listened, making little sounds of agreement or disagreement at odd intervals.

Before I left the library, I'd picked out another book to read, one he suggested after I discontinued my monologue in order to breathe. It was a science-fiction book by an author I'd never heard of before, and only a long time after I read the book did I understand what an uncanny parallel it held to Andre's own life.

The book I read was titled Starfish by Peter Watts. In the book, an odd collection of child molesters, rapists, psycho-maniacs and violent crime artists get stuck at the bottom of the ocean – a place that eventually becomes their sanctuary. Among them was a young woman who'd been abused since childhood.

Andre reminded me of Lenie Clark.

The two of us, Andre and I, became close that year. 'Friend' isn't what I would call him – I had more of a superior-inferior relationship with him than the equality that 'friend' implies. It was more 'protector and protected' between the two of us. We sat together at lunch and I got him to come to school early every morning so he'd be out of the house before his father and older brother woke up.

By the time the year had ended, I'd broken my promise to him that I wouldn't tell anyone else about his abusive family. He insisted they were getting better, but I didn't believe it. I told the guidance councilors at school, and after that, Andre didn't talk to me.

He was around in school for another few weeks, and then just stopped showing up one day. I don't know what happened to him. I'm not sure I want to know.

Starfish has a special place in my heart now, though the main character for me never will be a blonde girl – it's always a slightly scared looking boy with dark hair and a few bruises the size of an adult's hand dotting his body.

I'm going to kill him.

Will you help me? Help me make it a little bit of hell. The way you've been talking to me, I know you know what it feels like, to be empty, now. And I've wanted that back for so long.

I know exactly who broke it, the night under the stars, by the water, when Blue Eyes told me I wasn't happy. The night that things took a turn for the strangers in my life. And I've just been walking on since then, moving forward the way forward motions moves.

Sideways, always.

So, here's an invitation, doll.

Come with me; help me kill a little reminder of past. You know the way I feel about memories--or you should by now, if I had remembered to tell you. (Which I know I haven't. Maybe I'll recall it tonight. Maybe I'll remember that I wanted to forget. We'll see.)

You can hold him down, let's say.

You have the willpower, I think. But not enough anger inside to do what I want to do.

I'd never seen him cry, before, only heard the tears in his words. I want to see what it takes to unleash the flood.

He told me, doll, that once upon a time, he cried always. I never had a chance to see it; it was always me, standing out in the rain, with his arms pretending to shelter. I've had enough.

I want blood.

I want to hear him sob. Not beg--fuck any begging. I just want to see the changes inside, the way you can see when you look into their eyes for the first time. Like crimes are happening, all at once. I'm too tired to be thinking clearly, but I still have the urge in my fingers to make him beg for his life when he's on his knees.

I want to make him bleed. Just fingernails, first. Abrasive, callous. Anger tastes like sawdust, when your mouth has gone dry. Just a little more, poison, hollow inside. Choked.

He wouldn't cry, not with my hands around his neck, twisting. Not with knives against his skin. But, doll, I know what would make him give in.

Listen, now. Here's the plan. You find a way to be in two places at once. Hold him down and get with me, and make me bleed. He can't stand it when people hurt, which is why he's been so good at forgetting. But living in the moment is a curse--make it worse by coupling the stranger with an old friend. In the end, I'll have him dead inside, the way I died.

You can help me, doll.

We can bring the madness down, again.

Once Upon A Daisy

Once upon a daisy
Once upon a chair
Once upon a wise-man
Below an ugly bear

Hopping in the windows
Shadows on a wall
Sleeping in the cinders
A shadow starts to fall

Once upon a madhouse
Twice under your chin
Thrice beside an old man
Drowning in his gin

Black and gold and yellow
Blue and white and green
Mauve and taupe and cellos
Beginning every spring

After noon’s upon us
Once the ship has sailed
When rhododendrons breathe
This waking world has failed

Drinking in the daisies
Fallen in a chair
Cursing with the wise-man
And dancing with his bear

Rarely do the present and past selves get along.
There is nothing I love about the self I was years ago, and nothing of the me now could the past self find redemptive.

You're getting the gist, I guess. Or maybe you're forcing words to conform like the normal human being might. The differences between past and present are slight, but the future changes us more than we've ever been ready for. It's a step out into the then that becomes now. How is no longer a question, just a statement made to indicate this predicament can't go on.

Someone came up to me on the street, held out a hand and told me that I should take a chance - that stranger-danger was really fear on steroids and that we had more to fear from androids invading this place than anything we might make to hurt each other. I took his hand and time be passing maybe lasting I found a lover, hidden in a man who wanted to be a boy.

Once upon a time there was a rhyme that reached all the children, and I was the one who couldn't listen because I was too busy telling tales that others heard and failed to understand. Failed to not believe - the child who ran away from home to escape the droning monotony of family life and fell into a dream world instead. Living there, everyone I knew was either dead or dying, and there was nothing I couldn't do (except for flying; wings are banned below, doncha know?)

Sage wisdom says not to approach the world of the living once you've died, but words of wise men have always lied where I've been concerned. I learned early on that bending the truth works well enough to get along when the song's on repeat. I touch what bits of reality you haven't forgotten yet, and I weave my wings out of words that I've heard others refuse to say - the day I find a word I can't use I'll give up my wings to literary misuses.

What you don't know is that one day I'll be down in the underworld for a playdate with Hades, and maybe then I'll fuck up the security system, just for fun. Cerberus likes honey cakes, but doused with opium and he'll be flaky as a guard at best. And Sisphyus' slavery might be cut short early if the mountain accidentally plateaued. Or if someone introduced machinery into the scenery. I'm willing to come storming in to break the chains that keep them from gaining the freedom they don't deserve.

I met a boy who said he couldn't win - said he was nothing but a sinner who could walk in daylight when he chose. A boy who claimed the devil kept a corner office reserved for when he arose from the deepest circles of hell, ready to retire to the mired conditions of below. I still don't believe him - not about sin or sinners, because he's still a beginner in life, even if he knows more than me. See, I've done, touched more places in people than I've yet to be held accountable for, brought down for. I know the taste of wrong, and the way bad notes jar a perfect song, and I still haven't found those in my wild child, yet. But don't tell him. He likes to think he's all that.

There's no one who knows the taste of cold metal like I do - no one who drew on the canvas of skin the same way I did and could say it wasn't painful. Wasn't wonderful. .
That there wasn't something hidden within that made up for the sin that collected on this doorstep, that was hidden in step, in time, in rhyming nature with the nurturing fools that cared enough to use and use and run. (The way the sun does, dontcha know?) And even though I think I've learned from the boy who came around, the one who shook up this part of town, I'm still in classes on occasion, taking over what Ive failed to take in. I'm still learning the offbeatness, and the sweetness of sorrow scented bleeding. Hey, be a doll. Pass the bandaids - it's still seeping.


Even god debates that sometimes, though. She’s one of those who just can’t seem to be content with anything less—more—than the status quo. (But the status is NOT quo, is it? Just visit the downtown slums sometime and have a moment of peace and quiet with the bums who still talk to the thirteenth air molecule to the right; it’s a sight more sane than any other place I’ve been.) She’s been hitting up the reasons and the seasons and pretty soon she’ll be back home in bombshell fashion, with a last minute cry of victory as if she’s gotten something done. God must be a masochist because she made the world with free choice, and once given a voice the human race couldn’t help but deface her, and tell all these lies that maybe she’s just a man in disguise. They don’t call the world mother earth for nothing, but this god we won’t pray to has given way to a vision of derision and disillusion so deep that even children aren’t given to belief anymore. And now for god, even waking up is a chore, sometimes. When the dawn rises... You know each day has new surprises, but what’s it like for god, when she knows the ins and outs of every word that’ll ever be said, and the life cycles of everyone who isn’t quite dead yet. There’s nothing to wait for when you know the end, and it’s so damn near, but the young tragedies who walk the earth can’t even hear it coming.

They say insanity is only mind deep...but I know it reaches through to the very core.

Insanity - true insanity - is very rare.

It's prized. Feared.

Talent separates the good from the great.

Insanity separates the great from the brilliant.

Word of the Day: Obsolete

It’s the old fashioned, back road that follows through when it says its going to do something. By gosh and golly, you say you’ll be here at ten and you actually show up? That’s so old, so far gone, far away–you do what you say, and I laugh in your face, because we all know that waiting was not intended to be a promise made to keep. It’s one of those things you just say you’ll do, like saying you’ll help with my math papers, and then you don’t. Because I don’t’ really need help, and you don’t’ really know what it feels like to love.

Imaginations.

Blond hair in a mohawk, the band around his forehead, bangs falling down and over. The red hatch marks--almost gone native--under his right eye. Shirt off and black pants. Multiple piercings in the ears, glittering triple industrial piercing, crossed.

The pressed tattoos--wiccan symbols crushed against pale skin.

The girl with black and red hair. The pierced eyebrows, and black--so much black. Like the chieftain's daughter.

Haunted by a song? Haunted by a notion that you absolutely must do this.

The two drunken lesbians...heh.

Get into a car with two people you don't know. And one you barely do. How do you know each other? We're mental arts people.

And the black boy, in tights and a pleated skirt, held with the black and silver belt, ripped mesh shirt and all the lines on their faces, like war paint. Some kind of clan mask, in tangled mobs of x's under their eyes.

His hair was curly, an Afro against his head.

What is it with Alexander?

Delight in the little wonders...

Envision a past from a different perspective.


When do you begin to believe and when do you begin to forget--

What did I want to have happen?

S. M. L.

do you want to kiss

to make out-of-this-world under the stars

get the covers pulled back

to where we walk side by side

on the shores of your mind

not mine.

do you want to imagine

to build something new-and-improved, a never-before-seen preview, exclusive, limited edition

meander along the stories of creation

that stem from your memory

replayed backwards

(and downside up)

In your voice, I find my words.

I was hoping for design, not destruction. Art, instead of abhorrence. Vanity in place of viciousness. But what I really wanted was a lover who wouldn't leave.

Do you wonder why I asked you? Hidden away inside a hotel room, remembering all the faces, all the places, all the people who have left me behind--I had to ask.

Are you going to leave me?

Just not in so many words. I haven't dreamed your leaving, yet. Just dreamed the day when you break down in front of me and cry. You've been a whisperer for all of us so far. From the long walk when I wasn't sure who you really were, til now.

I think you've found me, too. I just wish I had more from it, to the point where fatal attraction wasn't tied up with desire. I want to want innocently again. To want closeness for closeness' sake alone. My own history kind of ruined that possibility for me.

You're helping me rebuild a world where things like that are possible again. I don't recall asking, but I'm glad anyway. Just please...don't leave me. I've had too many people turn their backs. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I've still got a child's heart--I'll never understand loss the way guarded adults do.

Your breath tastes like gasoline.

I don't like it.

Reminds me of being laid out on the driveway, trying to claw through the pavement to escape.

Get away from me.

I don't like remembering.

This is a postcard poem VI

This is a postcard poem

addressed to a missing

soul, someone I once knew,

who never knew I knew

everything important -

it's okay, I promise

and things won't go wrong,

just let the world happen

to you - try to be free.

This is a postcard poem

to tell you how lovely you

looked in the cafeteria

that afternoon, standing

and staring into the crowd,

looking for friends

and right before you

turned to leave, I wished I

had the courage to tell you.

This is a postcard poem V

This is a postcard poem

to recapture the warmth

of a friendly hand on

your shoulder and the

gentle voice that says

"You're better than that"

but I'm beginning to wonder

if that's a warning or

if it's a promise.

This is a postcard poem

written to tell you that I

know what it feels like

to fail on purpose, and

still be mad at yourself

afterwards, and yeah,

it sucks but every

moment you can learn from,

take the chance - improve.

this is a postcard poem IV

This is a postcard poem

in awe of experience

and bravery, of power

and independence, of

promise - both kept and

made with intent-

of the beauty contained

within and the people with

the ability to see it.

This is a postcard poem

about how damn much

I enjoyed your bits of

past, captured for the

world to see, and

recall in collective

memory, like I had been

there, had known the people,

had really lived.

We sink into these words because they're easier to use than trying to explain exactly what we two are.
I'm just glad that it's not possible to morph into one without signing something. Otherwise...I might be worried.

This is a postcard poem III

This is a postcard poem

written to a break up

song, or maybe a

suicide song, a giving

up song even though

I'm not the giving up

type and I don't think

you are either if it

comes down to it.

This is a postcard poem

to warn you about the

ice outside, and to

suggest ice cheats

because it's still

raining, and we're

due for more slippy-

slidy until the whole

world is encased.

I wanna meet

the next person

whose first time

you steal

Fare thee well, Blue Eyes.

It's strange, to go back through past histories and realize that I can't remember so many of the little things. I'm constantly surprised at how easy it is to forget the Big Picture for all the details: how easily a man's face fades into obscurity while his mental unbalance remains at the forefront.

Did I ever know Blue Eyes?

Of course not.

I just pretended him into a world where I knew all the rules; that's all this ever was.

The first thing you learn about promises is that you shouldn't make them. They have this way of coming back and biting you in the ass. Or on the throat, tearing it out so that you can't breathe anymore.

Sadness and anger don't mix well. Or maybe they mix too well. I'm just here, feeling like I should be crying, but my eyes are too damn dry and I can't remember what that feels like, to have the calming wetness of called-for tears.