Five or Six Months

Ellipsis

There was always the urge to continue the writing, to add to the seemingly endless plot of my fictionalized existence. To slit my cerebral wrists and spill the ink onto the page relieved the daily stress of the physical reality. To write became a beautiful distraction. Not even the drugs could transplant me into a garden of thought such as what the ink does to me. I have to consume words and burn them into thoughts and write write write, everyday, I have to drink the ink so I can later regurgitate my own biological, single celled words and wipe them up with paper.

 

But of course my urge inevitably becomes satisfied, and I will not have to write for about a week at the most, and after a week of wading through a hazy dream state the words come back, they grow like mold in the aqueous membranes of my subconscious and I have to dig them out with a pencil and paint the words on the paper.

 

Burning the hours of the clock away with a match, smoking a pipe of ink dipped tobacco at my escritoire, facing my typewriter like an opponent. I thrust my fingers like daggers at the keys in hopes of breaking them or bashing my fingernails inward and puncturing a vein of ink until the paper is marked. I need to paint upon the canvas, I need to add color to the plot. I procure the mellow dream drugs.

 

There is an obscure, hedonistic outlook in the core of the pill that is dissolving in my stomach, and the pleasure flows like a river through my tangled being. I chase the pill with a cut diamond glass filled with deep blue ink. The words bleed down my throat and settle in my stomach, like water on sun drenched sod. Beautiful thoughts fizz to the scalp of my hairs and bounce around in my skull. I smile at the euphonious breeze that seeps around the trees like water and tides through the windows and into the house, where it walks around like a ghost. The words materialize before me like a prism of ink and float around the room in vague teasing motions, finally directing its attention to me and the typewriter.

 

A brief sensation of an old memory washes over me, and the memory digresses into a dream, and the dream a sentence, and I reach for the keys and crash upon them like waves of an ocean filled with thick, dark ink, and the keys tap in obligated accommodation to my raconteur fingers, and the words spill like water and ice and then the cut glass is dropped and the diamond glass shatters and cuts my fingers and I bleed and bleed and bleed the black ink, the mainline to my fiction is punctured and I spill my mind onto the paper and I can feel the pain leave me as I burden the paper with my pain and my wonder and my ink.

 

The wind rushes into the house and arouses me like a physical being, and I stand up alarmed, the chair falls at my feet, and I rush to the window and scream out into the dewy night, the frogs croak back in raspy burps, the air is warm yet it cannot be trusted. I feel the memory swell like a bruise in my head, it grows and pulses with a life, it frenzies with plot, and I remember that the memory is in fact a dream, I vomit the last of the words out into the moist grass below, a rabbit skitters and dashes away, smeared in ink.

 

Stomach satisfied, I grab the pile of words inked on the crumpled

yellowing paper and toss

them like pigeons out the window.

***

A flowers soil is just as precious

as the acid in my stomach

Swallowing sod

secreting secret gardens

in my scabrous appendix

mud flows

like mucus discharge

efflorescent loins

sprout seeds

across the valley

visions of the moon

reflect off of the water

the trees talk in the night

when the sun sleeps

and the air is still

and quiet

our floating whispers

entangled in the web of lies

waiting for the spider to

come and

reply

*It was time for school.

...the Professor of Persuasion loathes perfection.

'If you can get your point across and live your life without being stopped by the occasional error,' he says behind his peach wood throne and shaded glasses tinted neon alabaster moon dust, 'then it is you who is flawed.' 

Flawed? What is flawed? Is it a clock off cue? Is it my lack of understanding or my mask of apathy? 

I leave the lecture and step outside into the cooling air, and light one. The Professor's words

Why, I ask and puff silently, why does there have to be uncontrollable factors such as flaws?

I walk with my face leveled to the horizon to the dorm room. The building is silhouetted before the setting sun. I slow my stride to offer my time to the only tolerable part of the day. The moon watches quietly in the bruised sky as the sun drowns in its own glory. I go into my room up the nineteen stair steps. The room is dark and empty. I toss the bag of books onto the floor and I fall into the couch stained with brew and bosh.

What the f**k is a flaw? She asked me once, not aware of the simple definition, unaware that She and I or Anybody else could be considered not good enough based solely on a simple flaw. But she, SHE was the Antonym of Flaw. She was ignorant of what perfection even was, or beauty, or GLASS eyes made of sawdust, impeccable, and toes like carrot roots. She was a sure thing,  a Girl of no judgment or discrimination. She flawed in her oblivious perception to her own perfection.

So I told her what a flaw was. Biggest f*****g mistake. 

[sic]

Into the fridge travels my weary hands and reveals after a mere reach into the frozen abyss a clouded bottle of BREW. I crack it open with my eyelid and empty the contents into my table of contents (-- I am referring to my lack of holy bowels of steel and kidneys of concrete--)

On the television screams faces but I shut them off. On the couch is a cat I have never seen before and I go over to pick it up and put it in the hall hoping it will stray down the nineteen steps when it claws at my opened hands and paints three bleeding horizons across my palm. I scream at the damn thing and its ears bend backwards in fear and hisses in annoyance. It wings its paw at me and sprays a violent hiss. It gets me again but on the wrist and I give it one good punch in the head and it vomits an unholy scream. I grab the damn thing --I am a man, for Gods Sake -- and I carry its convulsing body to the window and throw it out. My hand and wrist burn and bleed and I pluck a black nail out of my soil skin and toss it onto the ground and go back to the fridge for another cold one and I get one, of course I do, and sit back on the scene of the crime and rest my head on a cactus feathered pillow and suck away at the bottle of BREW and think again of the Flawed World...

[so it goes the story stops here]

I told her what a flaw was, and she started to notice all of mine.

Now I am the one who is flawed, who has been labeled.

I am more aware of her awareness to my my flaws and she is aware of my awareness to hers. She casts her eye of question over me. I remain horribly, uncomfortably aware of my eternal status of ME

What does she want?

NOTHING.

Not you. It was never about you. It was always about

HER

     ...and words will not get you over her when words is all but what you consume and s**t back out...

Your body becomes comfortable in the soil

Saturating skin like osmosis leaves from 

oiled trees and a wind with a foul breath

when a diamond cracks 

that is when you will silence your 

greed

walk on, walk on like you are right now, walk like you always have

keep up the pattern and keep the tires burning

[sic]

So then comes the sudden epiphany. 

It comes and continues throughout the span of consciousness and dies only when memories burst.

Outside. The Moon listens to me.

I walk into a cafe. I have a feeling, a tickle of a dream or a memory. I have been here before. I purchase the ginger ale in a can. Swallowing the ale outside in the salty breeze is sweet and serene as it dissolves into nothing inside my being.

In an alley I light a long red cigarette and I blow bloody clouds out of my face. A girl walks by, she has an unfamiliar face that I recognize. She stops and looks at me. I recognize her from my writing class and I smile and wave and continue to excrete pulmonary smoke.

“Hey” I spray the word, and smoke dissipates out of my orifice.

“Hello.”

***

Oxidizing thoughts 

And the Chemical Reality 

In our 

Dreams... 

 Wake up! 

There is too much 

Happening For you to ignore the Light! 

She is alive 

And She speaks 

To you In her Foreign tongue 

That's true 

Glue and all 

 Teeth the color 

O'Blue in the Fall 

 Silently She 

Thinks about You 

And you don't even know it 

 There is no question 

About the comedy 

Behind the pain 

How unfortunate it is 

To only live the soul 

Of this ghostly planet 

Through one tired Perspective 

The only memories 

Are in the soil 

I remember your eyes: 

Like looking at The Sun 

Saturated spheres 

Of incandescent Sorrow 

Burning in my eyelids

Horizons

That glow in the Night 

Bulbs like 

Fresh flowers 

From the wondrous 

Earth 

O, how I long to swim 

 In your sight 

In your eyes 

A mellow bright 

The Moon defies 

Look up at the Stars 

That's where we come from 

That's where we'll Go 

Drink the ink 

And spill letters of wine 

On our own Carpets 

Piss prose on the

Toilet seat

Oxidizing thoughts 

And the Chemical Irony 

Of all our Loves 

 And of all our Lives Past, 

Present And Future.. 

Even now 

You cant afford to

Waste a blink 

On the beautiful Truth

Right in front of you 

Because one day 

All of us will be gone 

And the Earth 

Will not even remember us 

Bathing in the sun 

 And laughing

[One month later]

...The Professor of Influence loathes [everything]

I awaken from a ninety seven league deep sleep

upon the surface of the hardwood desk. 

The class is 

OVER.

I grab my notebook, glance at the only thing I wrote:

I have finally found you

but you are forever somewhere else

I dream of that place. . . 

I pour cement on your heart 

to maintain the illusion.

Outside, the film of my brain illuminates a lime colored green, O light, Sweet Lights o' Dawn drawn against the blooming grass, Green with Golden hues of the reflection of the Suns newly arrived presence. 

My thoughts become scrambled in the wake of the Sun. 

My dreams unscramble

themselves

like bruised purple veins under Jupiter's 

storm.

[All of this is but a story]

I stand up and humanize and harmonize with everything at once. The film of my brain glows red from the light of the brick walls being sucked into my pupil like a psychometric black hole. Thousands of misshaped bricks stacked and topped upon each other, growing bright in the ripening morning, alive with crimson influence. 

The flowers glow as well, their scent laced with sexual undertones 

of silent memory..

I walk back to the alley behind the dormitory building to get my pack of Crimson Cigs. I imagine them not being where I left them, and going on the next few days without them. I think also about the possibility of someone finding the CC's and give them to the police...

But alas their existence in the core of my buttered brain remains true, like a mirror in my mind, I move the stacked bricks and find the Cigs. I pop one in between my lips and light it. The blood clouds birth and then dissolve in the wind, the smoke sucked out the opposite end of the alleyway. The veins in my body swell with a memory. No, it is just a dream, not a memory. The dream flows through my body, and the Dream fills my lungs and pumps crimson clouds into my heart and I blow out the smoke. Red clouds, O sleepless red Clouds. They float toward the stratospheric ceiling Blue, and it is a great contrast of colors, Red and Blue.

And then the Sun casts its animated gaze upon me. . .

Bright -- too bright, and I place my Ray Bans 

that I stole from the mall upon my nose,

(My Nose, My Nose, My Kingdom for a Nose) 

and I see an augmented reflection of my

gaping eye -- magnified by perhaps an ocular reticule of 7.

(Seven -- Sevin)

             7777777

“Hello, Sevin.”

The voice floats into my right ear and dissolves out my left before my brain can register it; I am fascinated with this enhanced portrait of my eyeball right before my very eye, lost in wonder staring at this vague lens with my eye painted upon it, the vague lens and the vague detail of the lights

ghostly parallel.

I forget about the voice.

“Hey a*****e.”

I turn and flip her off. “WHAD'A'YA WANT?”

“Gimme a RED.”

I give her one, her her her her her, she she she she lights it with my my my

orange BIC lighter

Bloody clouds emanate around us, pouring like a fountain out of Mara's nostrils.

Her eyes become pregnant with Crimson Influence. 

Her lips swell in allergic Influence. 

Her  bosom SWELLS in tempting INFLUENCE. 

I scan my eyes all around her and at the Void around us. Damn, there are rats around us with little hearts in them and there are birds flying above us taking s***s and there are things Alive everywhere, a red ant crawls in a meaningless existence, but it Crawls God D****t, and there are People, precious and disgusting people [peep hole] everywhere, and I scan all of this with my 

synthetic eyes, 

authentic skies reflecting lens

O Cruel Valley 

The Sun 

grows hotter every second but 

we persist.

She says to “Say SOMETHING.”

My tongue dances, 

“I can't think of anything to say that is worth saying whenever you are around. I can't even breathe. You see through my black veil, you hammer my shell until it cracks. I want you here but I want to be alone so I can think of you. So I can imagine being sprawled out upon your mattress tongue, under the starlit sky, or is that just your teeth? O the galaxy of your breath, every Particle of Nonsense you call Words is artificial. You ask me if I want you [today] even though I wanted you (yesterday). My dreams surface to the iris of my ocean, they float there for you to find. I caught all of Her fish and set them free, but I am going to eat Yours, O Blonde shimmered Mara. In the evening I cast a line and hooked onto your sun, and I tugged and pulled with every fiber of my being until I reeled in the entire Universe, and you are in there, and I am in there, and everyone and everything is in there. Even though there are a trillion parallels to this life, I would still choose you over your reflection in the mirror. I will peel your skin off and layer by layer until I reach your beating heart so I can place my lips upon it and kiss your melody.”

She drops the Red and stomps on it with her decaying Converse until the 

light goes out.

“Lets go,” she says, and pulls my hand until I can't remember or even 

wake up.

(two months later)

Sanctimonious scriptures

sleep in the sand, dreaming of being read. 

Salvage the visions and keep them in your eye pockets. 

Swallow kaleidoscopic organs and hallucinate volcanic memories 

and jewels exploding into your colorless irises. 

Collecting rocks instead of coins and 

leaves instead of dollars and living off of the air that is free. 

Gulls soar the skies to see the spark of the sun ignite the life in the world. 

Melting rubber and eating sand is the daily thrill. 

Bugs crawl again in between the cracks in our skulls and also on willow roots. 

The Moon is always out. 

You swim in the ocean of salt and ice and expect to be swallowed

Paranoid of contact though there are eight billion souls disappeared forever

The birds still fly and the bugs still crawl but the clocks don't ever tick. 

The Moon is always out...

Mara had stopped talking to me. She avoided me at all costs. It took a bite outta my heart, but it was alright I guess. I started to see her sister, Audrey. She was tad bit more psychedelic in my eyes. She was absolutely f*****g gorgeous, and absolutely f*****g insane. Who isn't insane in this world, though?

[void]

I wrote this poem and stuffed it in Mara's mailbox:

Prologue --

Smiling sharks flash 

their teeth

for the coming strobe

The queen

copied the

seahorses

     wardrobe

Get out of the water!

Your make up

will run

faster than you can

     say

HEY

Pictures of laughing

jelly fish

tangled in 

her pubes

latched to

the bubbles

Stuck below

The queen screams

in delight when

the shark

succeeds in

      relieving 

its  

hunger

But my zipper is gone 

sunk to the bottom of her 

fish tank, 

    rusted, not golden anymore,

but rusted

I remember that one day when you gagged my mouth and poured 

Root Beer down my poor, vulnerable nostrils. 

I will never forget how drunk I got off of hating you (b***h).

Swimming in the mud 

is all we ever really did

when we were awake

(an interlude)

…

For He who grows silent 

Under the screams

of Her symphony -- 

remember

to chew

your

teeth and swallow

your knuckles;

before the song ends --

stand up and bow 

prematurely and the throw a 

middle finger to the shark

But what does all of THIS mean?

exactly?

(?)

Your thoughts may be boiling buried under your

sockets, trying to accommodate 

the stereophonic sounds being sported spontaneously

sprouting several sophomoric seconds of silent Solitude

Certitudes bay blowing blue bubbles like a submerged jazz instrument

throwing all of your tendons out the window

for the taxis to flatten...

(After you pissed me OFF, I tossed your cat 

out the window, but at the time I was drunk

and I wasn't thinking about

the possibility of

causing a 

car accident)

But your ocean is filled with flattened moons

already caught and reeled in from the pulsing starry sky

left to moisten and swell and mold underwater

*

Epilogue -- 

The Shark made a home out of your heart & your lungs

Your eyes are dug up holes, black,

six feet of excavated soil

and bone fragment

and gray matter

I can't even look at you now

without shuddering

I was invited to a sushi restaurant

and I declined the offer. 

But I did go, 

sat at a different table, 

and watched my would be 

hosts dine on pieces 

of You and chuckle and 

choke on raw cuts of your Wardrobe.

I ordered a Root BEER.

[I make myself laugh]

...but then time comes and makes me forget.

[one month later: I had gotten really sick a previous month ago; nearly lost my mind and perception of truth: the drugs had gotten to me -- they made me cough up ink]

I had stopped writing because the typewriter had gotten itself jammed and now there was nothing to do.

At the liquor store, Jeff Ritkins told me about a job offering at the library.

“Government position, eh?” I said.

I thought about it for a brief moment, turned the idea over in my head right then as I was handing Jeff the bottle of brew. I imagined myself surrounded by books, I thought of typing up a resume, I thought of the interview, and then I ended the thought with the fact that I wouldn't pass the drug test.

Jeff rang up the beer and I paid him, revealing my thinning wallet.

"Come on Sev, think it over, it could be a great job for you. Since you keep saying you hate school and all."

"Jeff, even if I were to apply for a job at the library, they would drug test me and then that would be the end of it."

Jeff bagged the beer and handed it to me over the counter.

"Sev, if you got an interview, that would be a done deal for them, they'd take one look at you and after reviewing your professional history, after you tell them who you are--"

"Who I was."

"What?

"You said after I tell them who I am. I'm not that person anymore."

"You could get the job, that's all I'm saying."

"They would still drug test me though. It's a government position, not some drug store clerk job."

"F**k you too, Sev." He smiled behind his rims. "What is it that would make you fail the drug test? You sniffin' the snow?"

I took off my sunglasses and met his gazing question.

"No, not at all. A little earthly remedy called cannabis. It's what fuels my writing."

Jeff released a suppressed laugh.

"Ahh, you f*****g degenerate, get outta here and go write a book."

"Have a nice day Jeff."

I walked out into the parking lot, out into the f*****g sun, and I sucked that bottle dry.

In the car, I had thought of a great idea for a story. A true piece of literature, one that would be printed in thousands of magazines. The theme and subject matter may strike a controversial tone, and may also be horridly morbid, but its good enough to get me back on the wagon of writing. 

Driving and sipping on yesterdays near empty Miller, I laugh at the people. I laugh all the way to my damn, desolate den. I had plotted out the story as I was trying to locate the right key to my front door. I even came up with the last sentence. It was perfect. It would make people laugh and scream  and cry and s**t their pants all at the same time.

I finally chose the right key, (as how I could never find it before was odd to me because it is the only red key) and went into the house. I tossed the empty bottle on the pile of its relatives.

At the desk I sat and faced the typewriter, silent yet screaming at me. Tempting me to just do it. Just do it. Just f*****g do it.

I put a finger on the A key and then remembered instantly that the ribbon was still knotted  and I cursed myself, shouting into the dark silence of the room, left the desk and fell on the couch and went to sleep.

In the morning the idea for the story dissolved out of my ear and onto the rough couch material. Gone.

My stomach made an attempt at a joke and then twisted itself into a knot of pain.

I fell onto the floor and crawled to the fridge for a bottle of beer. Sifting through a smelly swamp of brew. I got to the fridge and opened it and a pound of cherry pie fell on my face. There was no beer in the fridge.

Outside the sun was trying to talk to me. I realized then, standing out on the dying grass, that I was the only person in the world thinking about the sun. The sun replied, burning black orbs onto the surface of my sight, and it said to go f**k myself, or go write.

I went inside and sat at the typewriter.

Knots.

Black knots.

In the evening I walked around the glass to pick the Sears Achiever off of the lawn. 

When I reached out to pick it up, I realized that there was an unfortunate cat lying dead and broken and smashed under the typewriter.

I shouldn't try to write when I am drunk.

The phone rang for the first time in six days as I was rolling a joint. 

 I didn't answer it.

The smoke wafted in rejoice.

 Sleep knocked on my door and I answered.

I awoke.

   I fell asleep.

I dreamed about Ladies swimming deep in the Lake.

    I woke to the sound of dogs barking

I fell asleep to cats meowing.

I need a new ribbon.

I answered the next phone call two days later and a foreign sounding voice tickled my ear.

"Go f**k yourself. Or go write."

I dropped the phone on the floor, but only because I wanted to make the situation more authentic.

(three months later)

My (reptiliac singed) scrotum cowards into the tainted cave of dank tangled shame unbeknownst to the thick lantern gravity of this sorrowful sphere we call our Dream World Earth. Women here are aware of the amphibious structure of their own clammy orifice, and stuff it full of wheat and nickels to smuggle into the bathroom where the party begins without us Males. The derogatory phallus is a species of its own entirety, basking and drinking in its own conceited attraction. The thoughts that we recycle are brilliant in their own eye, like the pulpy translucent flesh of Her iris after she swallows my own. The color of the atmosphere is lost in swelling mouth from space, black with the void of extraterrestrial question marks. Where does ones thoughts go after the brain shuts down? Do they simply retire into the soil to be converted to mush and worm food?--or do they simply float back to the cloud in the ripening sky ?  

I have lost all capability to care. My third leg walks on its own foot, thinks with its own head. Spurting colors no eye can analyze or even begin to contemplate. The fibers of my swelling lust stretch to accommodate the leather glove of her own fishes mouth, her euphoric pinked out hole. Where is there a care to spare? I put it in but there is already a pear inside. Whats that doing in there, Miss Baudelaire? Your smile ricochets off of my face and hits you hard in the optical fiber button, producing radioactive spasms in your pear pocket. Smoke issues and blinds but tugs like a queer hand into the chasm of your moist galaxy. Taste it, she says.  

"Not after you just queefed out 35 cents! I don't want that metal taste in my mouth, and I'm going to eat at Giuseppe's tonight." 

Well do something with it, she demands. Her demand isn't a suggestion in the air where it floats freely, unanswered, unriddled and Why don't I open a window darling? Even the birds can have a glimpse of the maniac characteristics of my depressive damaged trophy, a golden microcosmic statuette of salvation and secret sexy sin called Audrey Bloom Baudelaire [addicted to no substance at all, unlike her sister]

I'm not in my right mind to attempt an escape right now. Phallus is awake, his eye blinks blindly but he can smell the salt in the water, can feel the pulse in the air, reverberating from her slimy core. Posters on the wall from things time swallowed already. Change the subject now.  

"Have you ever thought of redecorating? Its awfully, hmm, early 90's in here." 

Again the demand to feast coils from her tongue and the hand of Her forces my Head down into the jungle free from tangled string and chord and abundant in falling fruit.  

"I have to ask about the purpose of the pear." 

Tomorrow in the morning I brush my teeth and scrape the remnants of yesterdays dinner from my mouth. It be a cleanse of the acidic pulp from the mouth in between her thighs, the lustful organ she refers to as  Little Audrey. Oh, for crying out loud. I brush away in hopeless despair and not even the bristles can rid of the lodged pear.  

Following the orgasm of the future, her breath not even expired from her Lips (down there), her heat scented words folly an image of doom in my mind. What if these sin-packed activities of Mid Moon Night render me a Father? Who is to blame? Phallus thinks with his own mind, he spits with his own tongue but it is I who entered him in the dance competition. It was I who shoved him in the donkeys eye, pink with saliva from mid morning drools. But it was her who forced me down. Down there in the desert of nothing but her pink sand, and every so often a rock, a pretty little plain rock to distract you from the mindless humps of existence, I and myself only flip the rock over to see if there is any bugs underneath but there is only more sand. And right as I pulled out, tongue swollen, Phallus tearing at the eye, the sand sprayed a gaseous hiss upon my very sight of realization. What have I gotten myself into! What will I get myself into next? 

The jewels of yesterday shine before my third eye, optics developed before my current body even existed. I can see how harsh the sun can be if you lied to the moon. 

I recall the events from the previous evening as I gander around, lolly gaggin' thru the streets. My skull clicks as I bounce along the concrete, the sound of void echoing a dull resonance. Lack of sympathy and empathy, lack, lack lack; why is there nothing in my brain? Why aren't there thoughts our hopes and dreams and fears? My eyes blink and swallow the colors, my brain ticks and tocks in blank apathy. I light a Crimson Cig behind a Starbucks and reel the contraband into my lungs, feel the empty spaces in my head dissolve into ink...

I feel like writing a poem. I can taste the metallic influence surge through me like sand in an hourglass. In the Starbucks bathroom shitter I write this poem: 

I took a picture of you once, when you were asleep

The contrast, color, and hues mellowed my heartbeat

My face smiles in a different reflection, a foreign mirror

Reflecting lies that glow with beautiful fear

I smiled at the mirror and it fell off of the wall

Unhooked and shattered

Who is the fairest of them all?

I took a shard of the broken glass

And slit myself a desperately needed tear

My blood surges through the both of us

Just like wine does through a plastic straw

I can feel the melodies fizz in my veins

Clotting with the precious expired oxygen

That sounded out your glorious lungs

I can finally breathe now that I am dead

Freely I float in a sea of wonder

And the only thing I have to fear

Is trusting another one of your mirrors

When your concave heart succumbed to its own beat

I felt my astral cord strum and break

And I float away

Up, up, up

And sat on a red cloud ignited by your sun

To watch your heart rain glass all over the soil

And the lakes overflow with your salty lust

Gills of fish clot and scab and heal and time peels away the old

Up here there are no unnecessary vowels to be heard

Only the warm symphonies that blow like kisses of steam

And the music that echoes out of your broken heart

Vibrates through the fog to find its way back to me

Fifty two thousand octaves up in the sky

I smile like an infant when I feel your song

Nestle into the warm sand of my memories

Maybe we can walk along the shore

And collect the shards of our past

Maybe we can try again

Maybe we will fail

But maybe we don't give a damn either way

Its all the same dream tied together

With the endless strands of your hair

Blue with the Lunar frost

The thread of both our souls have become knotted

Together we swim in Tranquility

The water is cold but I have you here to blanket my concerns

And warm me with your solar eyes

Locked together in our void

The key has sunk to the bottom 

And settled in the blind sand

We are lost in each other

And then I notice that there are still

Pieces of glass stuck in your hair

And like a violent sneeze storming in my mind

I remember that none of this is real

But rather a thought confused with a memory

A black tear seeps out of your eye

And all at once the tide carries you away

And I am left with only the shards of our dreams

I bump into an old friend, Dennis Morgan, after leaving the bathroom.

Dennis Morgan is now a celebrated film director (I haven't seen any of his movies; I don't watch TV). We were good friends in high school, but as we got older, the women in our lives seemed to pry us apart like sutures on the slit of our friendship. I recall a screenplay I wrote when we were teenagers and Dennis decided to turn it into a short film. It was a minor success among our minute group of friends. 

Dennis and I chat about our lives now in brief. He says he is shooting a film right now in Berkeley, and that it is going fabulous. I pretend to act proud of him and provide fake enthusiasm. 

He asks me what I'm doing nowadays, and I hesitate to tell him that I'm still in school, that I am usually unemployed, and spend the days smacking my typewriter with a joint in my mouth. I do not want to sound like a degenerate loser, so I say that I work at the local library. 

He smiles and nods and notes that the job suits me, knowing that I am a writer and such nonsense. I feel the lie lurk behind my eyes; I feel like it is obvious that I am lying to him. Dennis' eyes probe mine, and I see it in his that he is aware of this. He smiles again.

Dennis mentions that he wants to get together to collaborate on some writing. He wants to write the 'story of his life,' apparently. I nod in vague agreement, and Dennis rushes off to go take a s**t. We trade phone numbers and I walk out of the Starbucks and swallow a valium. 

As soon as I turn the corner I realize that Dennis is going to read the long poetic bullshit I wrote on the stall wall.

Stopping for a riddle in the park I sit in the nourishing shade and write. I don't leave until the night. My notebook is almost full.

O silent memory 

Please do not fade 

I need your presence  

Even if it is but a fog 

The incandescent vision of here and now is existent amongst the luminous breasts of warm friend and silent memory Mara (Audrey's sister) who, long ago, sought a remission of retired friendship, a withdrawal from our coffee scented love affair -- with Tea Smoke flowing in the air, a ghostly presence in my mind. I can not even remember her face, only the flow of color from her hair into my eyes, forever tainting my soul.  

Mara sleeps in my dreams.

(one week later)

Across the street from the school I get a call on my phone after class. Its Dennis. He tells me to come over to his apartment. He says he wants me to write his biography, knowing that I am a writer. Dennis tells me he has rented a hotel room for me in Berkeley, and that I am to stay there for an indefinite amount of time. Most likely until the book is finished. I say okay. 

When I get home later that night, lightheaded from sucking on some broad's areola cigarettes, I check my mail. There is a returned submission from some literary magazine. My eleventh rejection in the month.

I go in the bedroom, to the corner I use as an office, and I sit in front of the desk and breathe in the gloom. My heavy helium eyes settle on the typewriter. It looks dead.

In two weeks I arrive in Berkeley. On the drive up I was accompanied by a stray ginger cat whom I named Cat, three cases of Miller, two fresh packs of Crimson Cigs, an eighth of psychedelic mushrooms, and about a pound of ripened marijuana. This was all necessary for my spiritual aura, for my third eye (I) was crusted close for about a week, when I had endured a sobering state of excessive odd jobs to generate the cash to supply all of these spirit remedies -- and my third eye hadn't seen the magnanimous light of Solar day and Lunar night, for it had been a sleeping all the night, cowarding in fright of a world of bleak and bland and hazy rays of casting stupor suppressed around slick souls, hungry for sleep and aching to breath in the dreamy air, the dreamy ghost of the Crimson Cigs which forever will haunt my soul and force me to pry out my lies and my truths, to bleed them onto a scalpel tray of canvas and ink and write away the time. I also brought my Sears Achiever typewriter, complete with a fresh ribbon.

Whats write is right, I always say. 

I cannot at all recall the drive up to Berkeley. 

I don't even know how the f**k I made it there alive.

In weird horrible Berkeley I stayed and read in the hotel under the yellowing light of the lantern, the words of the old book inked with time upon the pages whispered to me a remedy to the hell on earth -- the truth, it said, is all in the words. The cat purrs at the salt shakers I stole outta the kitchen to keep my insurance in (keif), it purrs at the window at the birds in the air (birds with no envy), and enjoys its questionable existence. I read and extract phrases that lick my soul. Cat doesn't leave me alone rubbing itself against my legs and I toss the senseless book aside and pet the damn thing. 

The winding winds wince while I do as well in the dark when I take my s***s, silently surprised at the coins dropping outta my a*s into the cooling refrigerated water of the gentlemen’s toilet, pissing orange pulp out of my lemon head in the shadowed cube of privacy. Lyrics written in pen on the stall walls (did I write this?), making joyous reference to love and sex and lust, as I s**t out what once was a presentable plate of breakfast essentials. Static (in my lonesome heart) is the best song on the radio these days--ain't no beat that can match the decaying pulse of my aortic valve or the throb of my citrus stick at night when sticky memories revolve unresolved in my dream wheel--images drawn that cant be erased--lips that will never speak to me and will never be tasted by my own or teased by my mouthy microphone joking her loin and flesh. 

I'm living in my own infinity, within the limits (limits?) of my own inward spectrum. I try going outside but a crazy old homeless broad with scabs for eyes screams at me that Ill die of choking on sand and she screams and points with her knobby fingers, crusted and callused and tipped with seminal sap and sphincter scented nails cracked. I go back in the hotel room and fall into a nap. I dream of drowning in an ocean of sand. 

In my room I drink from the glass and let the alcohol swim in my innards like foreign fish: I can almost taste the fire, a placid desire on the tip of my tongue. Acid expires into my lungs and bursts sacs of nitrogen (No!-not the fish!) my favorite dish cannot even compare to the nostalgic burn in the core--like the Earths belly. I look outside the window down at the street congested with people, so disgustingly congested with people I cough up a humane ball of phlegm. Contemplating existence and death and what not (the basics). Swallowing people day by day and then spitting them back out like seeds to eventually sprout again. All we are is a bunch of seeds. 

I sport a pen but I no I am no good at the word anymore. I play along: 

The light laughs against my skin 

Porcelain glass grows hairs 

Forget about the doors 

You are the entrance 

Don't look so bored! 

O sullen indignant heart 

Spurt a laugh or more 

The horizon cant distinguish 

Between night and day 

Seven days of pain 

Extinguished 

In Berkeley 

I swallowed your stomach 

And s**t out a 

Beautiful sandwich 

Made out of vagina 

And perfume 

--also mustard 

I make myself giggle and feel a shard of glass manifest in my lung. Coughing, coughing makes the glass dissolve back into sand, and regurgitating the rough particles back up my throat makes me choke on the sand with no hope and I try to spit but only specks of salt spray and hiss off my tongue like a jet of jizm off of a sprocket c**k shooting cogs and sand onto a damp valley of c**t I cant understand, (I am running out of time, I am going to expire!) and right as I am about to black out the obstruction in my gullet gives way and out flies an hour glass... 

A new phase

corrupts

the shell of

the sun

Lunar light

ferments

our thoughts and

boils our

toxins

and sprouts

the dream seeds

left in our

pillows

But the sun is

blind

How ironic

It can only see into

the blinding void

of itself

but it can't see your

color

The fluorescence

in your voice

tickled my

eyes and

made them

seek

your watercolors

spilled in your

hair

left there to

bask in its

shiny residue

Your skull

is the shell that

hides the sun

and when you

dream

the dawn blinks

on our morning

garden

“ The solar

magic trick “

I laugh and

recall

all the

dice

rolled

and the marbles

collected

and the kisses

traded thru

time

in the memory of

our silent

eyes

The only

magic trick worth

applauding for

is the trick

of your voice

and how it sang

so bright it

caressed the clouds

and your eyes

that whispered

the secret

story behind

them

to

me

(three days later)

Cat wakes me with its claws. I sit up and pet it, whispering to it lies and truths that don't even matter to cats. A commercial on the television shows a girl I once knew. 

I recall seeing her face in a dream called past life past time past memory past illusion of perception -- a magic trick called time, the rhyme of sneezing clocks and broken locks and angry hawks and pink chalk and getting c**k blocked -- all in a days inhale. 

The trees are already existent in their own self perception, just like the phallus is, just like the pen is, spurting ink. What would a phallus write, if it could? Would it come to the realization that it cant possibly sketch a tree or even write a word? No, the phallus is an archaeologist, an excavator, a tomb raider, a womb raider I should say. I had sex with Mara in a tree the other night in a heartbreaking recollection. We stretched into each other like branches and entangled or loins and climaxed on leaves. In the tree, the actual act on intercourse became too literal, stoic almost, because half of our attention was diverted into trying to not fall out of the tree and snapping our delicate necks. We climbed down the tree naked in the withering twilight and continued our game inside the house. 

The intense feel of moist c**t sliding against my phallic avatar was lucidly euphoric. Mara's vagina was like a sopping sponge of warm pedals, a multilayered rose that kissed my libido and made my prick stretch to reach the stars in her internal galaxy. She put it in manually with her hand, and suddenly it disappeared, buried in her ripe garden. Seemingly, there was no phallic arm, or either the drooling, famished rosy lips of her magical c**t, but only us, the both of us merged into a single entity of soulful love and physical lust. We danced into each other against the beat of our hearts, synchronized our pulse into a sex song. It was great while it lasted. 

Leaves of lust in twilight's bloom 

There is no Where to be seen 

Trees sprout dust over times gloom 

There is no Thing to grow green 

Mara had an overwhelming lasting effect on me. I want to believe that I fell in love with her (rarely is she mentioned in this account, only in brief spurts, partly because to recollect her beautiful face is similar to shoving a cactus in my a*****e). I want to believe that. I would like to believe that she loved me as well. I don't even think I should write this tidbit. Even to write her name makes my heart quiver. O, Mara...

   ....the sweet and beautiful pain you have blessed my apathetic soul with. 

...I believe that Mara came into my life only to cut open my soul for me, so that I would know that the blood inside is mine to spill at my own will, to do as I wish. (I have fallen deeper into the chasm of my mind, and Mara is not here)...

I decide to take a walk to get my mind off of things and onto others...

I end up crossing the Bay Bridge into Frisco.

[I buy a bottle of wine and get sorry drunk]

And then I saw Her...

It was the evening and it was euphoric to lay my sorry eyes upon her. I consumed her glorious presence from across the street. She was waiting at the light, about to cross the street -- the opposite of my direction, and I just couldn't possibly allow that to happen. I stood back against the wall of a cacophonous restaurant filled with excited eccentrics stuffing their famished faces. I hid in the shadows and watched her like I was alone in the movie theater. And then the light turned red and the show began.

Her legs are absolutely their own being, they are the concentrated subject of her entire body. The pair of her elongated limbs transports the rest above her body, which is like a perfectly crafted clay figure, sculpted by none other than God Himself. Her feet are a careful juxtaposition hidden in moderately fashioned shoes. Her body floats across the concrete crosswalk like an illuminating orb, painting this sumptuous illustration before my very eyes. I watch in hormonal glee as her panoply of breasts jiggle in opulent grace. Her presence was astounding and unbelievable, and it stung me like a damn bee.

Who is this woman?

Her legs appear toppling the curb and she stands straight with an erect neck and long dark hair that curls like smoke around her glass face. She reveals a red lighter and a single cigarette from her jacket  pocket and lights it right there. She is five feet away from me, and she doesn't even notice me, lighting her crippled cigarette. 

Oh, if I could trade places with that cigarette " if I could have this sweet, wonderful woman set me on fire with her tobacco kiss. I close my eyes as her smoke sails into my scent, and I breathe it in and savor it. I open my eyes and she floats and stands next to the restaurant window and looks in at the excited eccentrics and smokes before them. I pity the oblivious entourage of hungry imbeciles, for they cannot even see this miracle of beauty standing right outside the window.

She turns and looks at me with insouciance, smoke appearing in gusts from her hand. She smiles, an ineffable form of interaction, but nonetheless quite sufficient for my standards, as being a poor, filthy Irish boy lost in the big city. I toss an attempt at a hello and she smile and turns away, sucking sweet life into her cigarette, revealing to me a gorgeous callipygous behind. 

At the curb she stands with a lithe composition, and a few insignificant persons pass her by nonchalantly and let her brood and smoke, forgetting her instantly as she disappears out of their vision. I watched all of this in the same dumbfounded position that I had sustained for the last two minutes, and at last I feel an urge to confront her. It grows like a fire, not in my head, but in my core, I can feel the urge to further interact with her, I want to talk to her, I need to hear her sweet voice whisper me the secret contents of the mind behind that impeccable skull and those chatoyant eyes.

I walk up and stand behind her. She turns away from me as I am about to open my mouth and treads down the sidewalk. She tosses her cigarette upon the concrete and it lands in a perfect penumbra.  I reluctantly let the proximity grow between us, and I quickly look around me to see that nobody is looking, and I pick up her cigarette and cradle it in my palms, like the jewel that it is. The ash stains my fingers, and I consider it an excellent pastiche on my palms. The cigarette has the opulent crimson of her lipstick puckered upon the butt, and I place it in my lips and suck at whatever spark is left inside. 

I can feel her fade away, and her presence disappears like when you know a television is turned off.

In a mad dash I start down the sidewalk. I can see myself in the third person, or the perspective of the passing cars, seeing myself gallop like a mentally handicapped individual, and then I picture a police cruiser spotting me, insinuating me to be a potential lunatic, and desist the anxious amble on the sidewalk. I stand in front of a warmly glowing coffee shop, and catch my breath. I see her standing inside. She is buying a coffee, I can see her adroit fingers extend out and wrap the cup that is being handed to her from an insignificant, and do I see the beloved insignia of a sharpie pen inscribed on the plastic, the very name of this animate immortal?

She turns toward the door and I nearly trip trying to hide myself from her vision,  and I turn away and look up at the purple, bruised sky -- a sweet, melancholy, vespertine sky. I hear the door open and close, the ring of the bell, and the orchestra of her footsteps. The music is cut short, and I hear a chair scream against the cold concrete. Assuming she is seated, my heart drops when I realize that I have a sure chance of confronting her and talking to her. I look quickly and cautiously at the wrought-iron table and the pair of chairs and find a vacant lounge seated directly across from the Goddess's throne. I envision myself sitting before her, serenading her with my masculine charm. In my head I can hear the sweet chords of her voice, being strummed only for me. I can taste her mellifluous laughter fly off her tongue in response to my witty humor.

I have to confront her.

Suddenly I become aware that she is aware of me, and I turn and look into her eyes, and we make ecstatic eye contact. She smiles again at me, her lush red lips bisect naturally, revealing the warm den of her mouth. Her teeth, like pillows, make me want to curl up inside her mouth and lay upon her tobacco tainted tongue and smoke from a long wooden pipe.

The dream from her eyes puts me in a buzzing daze, and I find myself moving towards the vacant chair, my legs are moving completely on their own without my approval, and I grab the seat and pull it back with an impulsive hand, and I find myself sitting right before her. Her presence, at this intimate proximity, is what I believe standing on the moon would feel like. 

She nods very callously, and her hair dances in the gentle zephyr of a breeze. She doesn't say anything, only sips on her coffee and looks at me with the stars in her eyes. Her hands cradle the coffee cup, and I can only see the beginning of a name: Ves--

I feel my mouth open on its own, as if the voice of my father had possessed me. The quixotic greeting I had heard my father say to many women, “Hello there, gorgeous.”

Again the smile, but nothing else. 

“The night is so lovely tonight, but it is in no way comparable to your allure.”

She casts her eyes down at the table, and drinks from her coffee. There is a prolonged abeyance that follows, and from the both of us there are no words to be traded. 

I have offered my polite address! Was I not courteous, was I not civilized and cultivated? Was I being vexatious to her, intruding or imposing my foreign presence upon her? What had I done wrong?

“Well, you do not have to be ignorant of my pleasant conversation.”

She only looks out at the road and watches the cars drive by. I sigh.

“So you're one of those women, huh? Who thinks of themselves of having a reputation higher than that of a god status? Well, I can tell you, babe, that your looks aren't going to be around forever. One of these days you're going to be rotting away, you're going to look like a wrinkled sack of voided innards, your brain is going to mush into apple sauce, and your legs are going to shrivel to the bone. You will be as pathetic as my shoe.” 

I smile in satisfaction at my harsh syllogism. The woman looks at me with serene eyes, perfectly calm and oblivious to my hate-fueled rant. She smiles again. I scowled at her, focusing my eyes on her like a rifle scope. 

I said it again, “Pathetic as my shoe.”

She looked at my lips and blinked in wonder.

I scoot out the chair, and I notice the woman is digging in her coat pocket, and she takes out a bind of index cards and a pen. She scribbles something stupidly with her stupid hand. She clicks the pen and tears out the index card and slides it across the table. I stand up, ready to walk away, assuming that the note 

simply reads, F**k You. But I don't see any obscenities inked on the card, as F**k is a very noticeable word.

With a smooth grab I pick up the card and read it with a bored expression:

I'm sorry, I'm deaf. 

I respond to her with a burning smile of embarrassment, and I wave a quick goodbye at the flawed beauty 

and pace away in reverse serendipity

The taste of tobacco dissolves 

in my mouth and I don't look back

The moon disappears behind a cloud 

and I am still alone.

***

(The next day I awake in the park devoid of any retrospective recollection. I spend the whole day wandering around on LSD some Korean girl gave me (I don't remember if we had sex or not) -- It was a good trip until I got lost and ended up crossing the Golden Gate Bridge instead of the Bay Bridge. It took me a while to get back to the hotel in Berkeley, and when I did I spilled the ink)

I can smell the coincidence in the air 

 There is the answer

   lurking everywhere 

   Lurking, hiding in plain sight

   Lingering around for the flight 

  Waiting around for the fight 

You're face is on the wall 

 Sometimes a flash 

 Is all there is at all

 A brisk of tongue 

 Licking my ball 

 Inhaling your hair 

 Into my lung 

 My memory

 Is tall 

 And temporary 

 Are our 

 Calls 

 And cries 

 Your despairing 

 Fall 

 Of all the times 

 I Tried 

 Not one of them 

 Was noticed 

 Not one at all 

My worried mind 

 Strives to 

 Meet yours 

 Somewhere 

 Up in the air 

 Where You sing 

 Without 

 A care 

 In the world 

      

I wake up 

 Drink and 

 Hurl the dreams 

 Into a wooden bowl 

 Carved from 

 Spite 

 And might 

 And wonder 

 And bright 

 Splendor Secretly 

 Carved In the 

 Silent shadows 

 Of the night 

 When eye of 

 The Moon is bright 

 As he licks 

 His spoon 

 Of stars O light 

 When mind blinks  

And I can pray 

To the moon 

And actually feel 

It listening 

And I whisper words 

About your hair 

And your 

Sass 

And the 

Moon 

Grows pale 

When I 

mention your 

P***y 

 And 

Your 

  A*s

     *

I decide to get some air.

Outside the cancer in my vision deteriorates under the suns casting glance. Pupil yawns a tired look into the sky, opulent iris searches for some relative color but finds none. The same sky to bless me with its oxygen blue; a proxy hue reflects from the moon, awake and aware in the neon noon. The clouds help themselves to handfuls, ceaseless in their morphing blows, incognito portraits of fluff and snow. For an entire year the clouds hold me in wait and watch, a kind trade of curious gazes in between solar splotch and schizoid lunar phases; a dance of the gods before my eyes -- gaseous thoughts fizz in the skies (the clouds concentrate) and ruptures a drop of blood that falls like a jewel out of the blue wonder (the sky is aware of its scars) and lands upon my upturned globe, smiling. There is no other way to breathe than by looking at the vast emptiness above. 

Night. Sand in between my teeth. . .

Consciously the clouds fade and make way for the stars, shed only a single tear from the sun, dried into red ink upon my cheek: the moon tries to speak, but its throat clogged with dust and rock that tastes like lust starved into talk, hastes in its vowels and coughs up a towel of red white and blue -- wipes away the time from his lips of spittle and attempts a series of songs and riddles to test my knowledge of insanity. The moon is impatient, as am I, and we both fall asleep. Perhaps the moon is tranquil, sipping from its own sea. As am I.

I recall a terrible dream I had last night in the uncomfortable hotel bed:

My typewriter has become aware of my nearing absence from time. It knows because I type it. I can type as fast or as slow as I want to, and the words still ink the page in the same way. The words will always be there, one way or another, even if my brain dissolves under the influence of the universe. Even if all the clocks in the world stopped, the words would still be floating in the air, like a pollutant.

In the bedroom lies Mara, naked on the bed. I can smell her from here. She's starting without me. In the hallway I can see the light of the bedroom wash the carpet, revealing Mara's shoes.

Mara calls for me, the sound of her final plead slithers through the shadows. I place a new piece of paper in the mouth of the typewriter and begin to type. The words come like a fire, and I can't stop even if I wanted to. 

Mara yells from the bedroom and I can see her now, lying on the bed, an eager expression on her face concentrated on the ceiling fan. Oh Mara, if you knew we had all the time in the world. I finish writing my last words and leave them in the typewriter, for whoever sees it first. 

I call out to Mara that I am almost finished with my writing, and I notice the clock on the wall has finally stopped ticking. For five years that clock had gone through a million revolutions and with each tick it made a sound that suggested repairs were needed. Mara had told me time and time again to fix the damn thing or just by a new one. But of course if she knew what I knew about time, she would never had bothered me about it. 

I reach for the clock and take it off the wall drop it in the garbage. 

Again my nose picks up a trace of Mara's activity in the bed room and I can feel her unnecessary impatience resonate the house. I call out to Mara that I am coming, that now is the time. I pass the typewriter and take one last look at my words. The ink is melting down the paper in long streaks, the straight line of my final script spilling down the page in black tears.

I smell the gasoline, and I call out to Mara, “Hold on!”

I rush into my office where all of my words are, safe in the folders from my youth and the files of my work. My stories, my facts, my lies, my vows, my love. I gather them together and carry them to the fireplace in the bedroom and dump them atop the gray ash and the coals of yesterdays fire. I grab a match off of the coffee table and spark the light. The single flame will be the only thing to truly consume my words. Go and have a nice read, I whisper, and toss the match onto the papers. 

Mara yells again, this time a hint of desperation in her voice, and I go.

In the bedroom Mara holds the red jerry can with both hands and pours acrid globs onto the pillows of the bed. She is on her knees on the bed and her bare thighs glimmer in the false light of the lamp. Her breasts hang from her skinny body, soaked and shining in the gasoline. She looks at me standing in the doorway and sighs, seeing my clothes are still on, and here she is already nude and covered in gas.

“Honey, hurry up, please.”

I take a step in the room and peel off my shoes. I set them next to Mara's shoes in the hallway.

“Mara, we have all the time in the world.”

She finishes soaking the bed and shakes the can, showing me there is still enough.

“See, I didn't use all of it.” Mara sets the jerry can next to the bed and points at the lighter on the nightstand and smiles.

She walks over to me and all I can smell is her desire for the fire. Her eyes consume mine like a flame and I can see the spark in her eyes, I can smell the sulfur on her breath, and she reaches her arms around me and embraces me with her small, nude, slippery body, and scratches my back with her nails, like matchsticks. 

I kiss her on the lips, and we both melt. She pulls at my pants and my shirt and all at once my clothes have evaporated off of me, and then it is just me and Mara in the room.

And then it begins.

We fall on the bed and a splash envelopes us into one being. She lies on top of me and licks at my neck, shifting her hips in an extreme way, searching for the stick to start the fire and she finds it, and I find her, and like magnets we are connected, and the fire is growing inside of us, our mutual friction escalating to the flame of our eternal love.

Like animals in love, we dig at each other, bite, kiss, claw, scrape, pound, embrace, squeeze and hold. Our legs slip around like jelly, and our hair tangles together, knotting us together. I can feel the tide come, I can feel her waves vibrate from beneath, and I grab the jerry can with one hand and pour the remaining gasoline over Mara's back, and it spills onto me like rain from God, it fills my mouth and my eyes blur in ecstasy, and I can feel Mara's waves clash inside her, and her tide is dragging me out into her ocean, and I let it go, I let it carry me inside her. 

Mara thrusts her hips onto me and I do the same, powerful thrusts of love and lust, I can hear our skin slap each other, the gasoline amplifying the songs of our love, and I feel Mara reach over and grab the lighter, red in the white of her beautiful palm, the answer to our questions, and she leans into me and whispers the only fact of life I have ever known.

“I am you.”

I close my eyes with the sound of her voice hanging in the dark void of my mind and I can hear  the flick of the lighter, and the flame is like a hot breath, moist on my neck, whispering its only answer into my ear.

Later that night I smoke the last Crimson Cig and climb to the roof of the hotel via the fire exit.

I sit upon the ledge of the building, atop all the concrete bugs and glass castles, at the peak of the sky, where the clouds rain silence upon the city. I hang my feet above the night life and poise poetry at the people positioned at the base of it all. It is a nightly practice, spilling my thoughts onto an audience of moving lights.

I breathe in the stars and whisper to the moon. My prose dissolves before it leaves my mouth, and evaporates in the chill of this blue evening. A film of mist breathes on my bare skin and the wind playfully threatens to push me off onto my deaf audience. I scream at them below, I scream my name and ask them to listen but they are but mere insects to me. And to them, I am just another secret star in the sky that hasn't been found or named.

The great lapse between us has rendered my words incoherent and unintelligible, I lunge my words like bricks at the people below. But they don't listen. There is never a response. Maybe the birds pick up pieces of my prose and fly away with them to their hidden nests. If only I had wings.

A pigeon lands next to me on the ledge and shutters like a robot, quick, rapid movements and eyes that blink like a camera. The bird purrs like a feline and pecks its beak at the insects below. The frenzy of the activity glows in the small black eyes of the bird, and I bid the winged animal a Good Evening. The bird ignores me and falls off the ledge and sails the air with its wings.

  I procure a favored stringed instrument and strum away melodious lies and truths that echo louder than my prose can, yet I combine the two elements and spawn a glorious symphony. It satisfies me to a point of rejoicing splendor. Nothing can bother me now. There is only me and my music and my words and the stars and the moon.

  In a trance of musical hypnotism, I bleed my soul out through my fingers and it screams in triumph in the guitar. My body converges with the strings, the frets become stepping stones through a trail of minored melodies. All is one, all is calm, all is now.

  A sharp hiss slices the air like a whip and I am stunned; a string has been stretched and plucked to its limit, and popped, hangs callously like a flaccid string of yarn. Disconcerted in a burning, malignant manner, I drop the hollow, wooden body of the acoustic guitar and watch it fall, past the quietly frozen windows, to the sea of cowards below. There is no magnificent conclusion. The pigeon returns. I am happy.

  Finally I hear the clash of the music below, and a horn issues in reply.

[one week later]

It has been an infinite paralysis of time spent here, and I have not once seen Dennis. I don't know if he is missing, dead, hiding, arrested, or if I have seen him and just don't remember it. There is a thick cloud that grows in my mind and absorbs any trace of recollection. I feel that time is laced in the oxygen, and as I breath in the poison, my soul cringes.  

I have to write.

Have I begun to write Dennis' biography? In the morning I wake to pages and pages scattered around the room, under the pillows, beneath the table, pinned to the wall. I study them with keen horror and hilarity. None of it is anything about Dennis, (of course it isn't) it's just a bunch of delusional poetry, probably produced by all the drugs. I pick one up and read it:

  Still I cannot find what 

I have been looking for, 

every teasing sculpture 

turns out to be false, 

the anatomy of the confused

soul must write down their 

madness in order to appease it, 

like a dog to be fed, 

like a c**t to be fucked

How violent is the nature of the world, 

the monstrous laws that govern 

our thoughts and our actions, 

the sand in our skulls and the wax in our eyes

one day she opened her eyes and saw that everything she had done was wrong

Some days the callous of memory grows thick and radiant like her pulsating pupils

and she remembers she has to forget.

(a voice somewhere says: it is the sixth month of inebriation) 

I pick up another one and read:

The wordless mouths of 

sleep speak in tangled 

knots of vowels

They dream

together of

tracing their hands with

fountain pens

and reading their

palms to

find the next

road

The illusion of myodesopsia is 

burnt into her wine colored 

eyes and she gets sick

with every sip.

(she should have never have done that)

I drive back home. I have nothing left to do but laugh at myself.

* * *

  I memorized your sense of humor

and you laughed at my anecdotes

I cannot think anymore with her voice falling

out of the open slit of the sky

Blood and puss and diamond seep

from the wounds

that we lonesomely created

the playful mutilations we traded

The questions we posed for one another

Her desires were painted differently

My thoughts were too big for her to breathe

She screamed her pain onto the floor

and I slipped in it

falling in the pool of wandering words

What is a thought but gas?

Why does the color of your voice

shine so chromatically?

Do I even find myself with a care?

Through my fingers slide the only choice

and it slaps the ground in wonder

If we ever found ourselves together again,

lying to each other about our future,

we would ultimately

preach about the past of every thing

and every single second that has succumbed

to the choking grip of

the worried universe

I can taste the metal

as it singes through my skull

in hopes of awakening

in a farther land

where the memories do not float like ghosts in the dark

There are hopes and desires to be fulfilled

but the reality of persisting time weighs heavier on the scale

The bullet tore even through your diamond

and the splinters of the rock

punished your selfish fingertips

If you were to turn yourself inside out would you see who you really are

or would you just fall back into the void of thought

where you have hidden me with all of your

broken jewelry

I can't keep up anymore with the jokes

the stolen anecdotes

The invisible rules posted all around me

for everyone to read who has an eye

Water can splash like lava if you told it to

And I close my eyes to avoid the

perspiration of emptiness

There are no dreams to fill

the ever growing space

inside

the wondrous lies that seep out of your

porous brain

dissolve

***

When I get back home I find that the door is unlocked. I push the door open and there sitting

in

the gloom

I find Mara,

smoking a Crimson Cig. 

She says 

Hello

and blows me a bloody kiss . . .

Author's Note

...
collected ink

Reviews

[Ariana Omnomnom]

I finally finished it, I loved it.
Very good.
Never stop.

[Chenin Marie]

I am thoroughly impressed. Your writing style is so different and it is refreshing to read.

[Chadvonswan]

Thank you very much. I try my hardest at nonconformity

[Chenin Marie]

success haha

[Gaston Villanueva]

Your way of expressing thoughts never disappoints me and I admire how you connected older works.
Keep it up General!

[Chadvonswan]

Thanks alot, Colonel! Write some more stuff as well!