Tag Archives: prose

.Manowar

“I miss you, too”

Only those words hardly reached me. They fell from her mouth and smashed on the ground like dinner plates from unsteady shelves and, similarly, all I felt was the residual regret of knowing that I now had quite a mess to clean up because she misunderstood me.

The words were, “I misused you”
And what’s worse is that I intend on doing it again.

But this is where things begin to blur a little bit because her leg was wrapped around my waist like soft, porcelain hook I couldn’t seem to escape and I found that very disorientating. My left palm was on the small of her back pushing her into my abdomen and the other hand was hiding in the coils of her dark hair. Her hair was so impossibly long. I imagined her floating lifeless on top of the ocean with that hair dangling miles beneath her, beneath the waves and swaying so slowly in the water like poison ribbons from a man-o-war. And I was swimming straight towards it.

I had a fistful of these dark, poison ribbons now in my right hand and I used it to direct her head inches from my face. I looked into her light blue eyes and all I could think is that they are not deep enough to drown in. Hardly enough to even splash around in temporarily- like a child. I craved the murky bottomless dark of brown eyes. Thats what I needed, a quiet place to drown. I brushed my thumb against her soft bottom lip like a fish hook and I turned and let her teeth sink into the back of my neck creating a vast wound. The type of wound that is not so easily compressed and soon, great rivers of dark red fluid began to fill up the entire club and all I could distinguish was arms, so many arms moving in so many directions. Frantically snatching drinks from the bar and dragging them back to thier mouths like chameleon tongues. Arms flailing about and tangled with other arms. Wrapped around bottles, wrapped around bodies, wrapped around purses, pushed against bathroom stalls and shoved down throats. All I could see was hundreds of arms splashing around above the blood red tide issuing from me and great, bloody waves crashing over their heads, submerging them entirely and the coils of her poisonous hair covering the place, tangling and collecting bodies. Every-bodies body, but not mine. I could swim right through unharmed. And I remember that feeling brought me so much dread, as all I wanted was to die silently in those ribbons but for some forsaken reason I was unaffected and I used it all to my advantage like a clownfish living momentarily in anemone.

I used every piece of her body. Every strand of her hair and every drop of her blood and I swam away and left her floating lifeless on top of the ocean.

Collecting bodies.

Every-bodies body but mine.

I need to find a quiet place to drown.

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.Fishtank

Picking up lunch today for work, I watched a fish push hopelessly up against a tiny glass tank inside a fancy restaurant.  I guess as humans, we have a tragic knack for keeping other creatures contained and the sight of this caused a worm of regret to start tunneling away through my abdomain. I grew sick. I guess that I may have associated it too much to my current situation; Feeling like nothing more than just a charming decoration for something or someone that merely just appreciates your sacrifice.

If I was a mink or a fox, I would have been skinned and drapped over a prestigious shoulder blade at some upscale event and if I was a koi fish, I would currently be floating hungrily inside of a small, cloudy pond outside of some suburban home. Begging for mercy. But because of whatever chemicals,  math, physics or deities designated me to this specific body and mind, I live here and I am me and this whole thing confounds me and twists my insides into cats cradles.
Of course I shouldnt be here in this restaurant feeling mirrored with a helpless fish. I should be somewhere lost in a blue ocean floating oblivious. But certain fates tower over me and rip me limb from limb.
I am perpetually flustered by the gritted teeth of a limitless sky.

I continually wake up to a tightness in my head,  and in my lower abdomen and groin as if my organs are cowering into one another for safety and withdrawing further and further from the outside world. My head is weighted and foggy as if pieces of my dreams had stowed away from wherever I went to have them, and hidden somewhere on my clothing, they followed me back into my daily life.

I felt an insufferable desire to peel back 3 layers of earth to lay them gently back over my body and close my eyes and finnaly feel rested.

The familiarity of every day life, once delicious on my tongue as an ignorant child, is now sour, repugnant and unending. 

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.X

There are few things more tragic and repulsive than complacency. It is a brick walkway to a docile and stagnant soul.

Dont waste time on something that doesn’t make your heart beat louder and your hands tighten thier grip.

The minute you grow tired of any person, place or thing; destroy it.

A body and mind that becomes motionless with dull contentment will grow roots and await the interest of vultures.

There is always a better life.

ALWAYS.

Go fucking get it.

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.The Bird

Is longing only achievable with knowledge of a target for it? I wonder if a small bird kept in a childs room instinctively dreams of open skys even through its ignorance of them?
Yes. There must be something burried in the soul of all creatures which makes them feel unbearably culpable of thier disguarded fate, even when unaware of it. The same instinct that causes me to be crushed by the weight of places I’ll never go. The longing that makes my heart ache for passion and love, which I certainly know nothing of. Perhaps I’ve kept myself intentionally bereft all this for so many years that my daydreams have become deep-rooted and habitual. I wonder if maybe it is not a matter of instinct, but of compulsions born from continuously running from everything I secretly desire. Perhaps it is all my doing. Suppression is, after all, the main culprit behind all compulsions. So here is what’s left; Twenty-nine years without fascinating journeys abroad or whirling, singular love stories. Twenty-nine years of self-inflicted disillusionment.

Outside my window, I can hear the rhythmic juxtaposition between the scraping sound of the wind against the top of the lake out back and the grinding of cars on the highway pavement about a half-mile down the road. Car alarms and birds chirp flirtingly back and forth to one another and burrow themselves into my subconscious – to be used in dreams at a later time. My desires and fears tangle into one another like the most insufferable fabric that separates life, awaiting just past my windowsill, and my all my years of abandoning it to pursue an existence compiled of nothing more than vivid daydreams with images taken from books I’ve read and pictures I’ve seen. Yes, even my fantasies are stolen.

I thought about writing her today, but my body would certainly cripple and my fingers would snap in all cardinal directions. This is one of the many inconveniences Ive collected through life. How could I write her as such a tangled, broken mess? And what, anyway, would I ask of her? ‘I cant have you back, but please dont go away’? The foolishness bubbles up beneath my skin and I may as well just smash my face endlessly against the blank page in front of me and have whoever finds me – snapped and splattered – mail it to her, still dripping dark red with my insecurities.

The inconveniences I’ve collected through life drape fittingly about my limbs.
I wear a hideous fabric that only she would adore.

I rummaged through my head for memories to live in.
It was 5am the other night that I found her standing at my door. Im still not entirely sure how she got here. A strong current must have ripped her from her life and the undertow must have dragged her towards me, down to the bottom of the world where I make my home.
I watched as she took a drag of her cigarette. The dull light from its end revealed her eyeliner, diluted and pooling grey beneath her eyes. I wished she wouldnt cry but it makes my heart ache for her. The only thing more lovely than her misery was her happiness and I felt greedy for wanting it all. It was her curse that she would have such a wonderful glow, even under duress. The whole ‘rest-of-the-world’ surrounding her was pitch black and meaningless to me. I’m amazed that shes here. Im amazed at her tangled, wet blonde hair and I’m amazed at the new cuts on her hands. We sat on the dock over the lake and talked about the futility of modern romance, the deaths of our fathers and the dismantling of whats left of our sanity.

These are the memories that allow me to live here alone. Twenty-nine years of nothing else suits me just fine. These daydreams – and my garment of inconveniences draped over me to keep me warm.

She spoke about a crooked, old, wooden house in the dark that visits her at night. A reacurring dream she had or, perhaps its a coping mechanism that allows her to participate in this world, but as she rests her head at night, she wakes up frantic in that terrible place.
The house represents a rusty safety-deposit box in the back of her mind and its inhabitants were thousands of traumas and tragities she suffered through life pieced together to compose scowling, putrid creatures that live in the attic and, at night, slither thier raw bodies down the steps to tangle themselves in her blonde hair.

I feel as if that is where I first met her, in the den of that creeking, old house.
That den was the eye of a great storm that streched the expanse of her entire life. We lived there – so temporarily – among the dusty books on the shelves, and we traded them as if what we couldn’t express through tongues or our bodies pressed against one another could be effectively spoken through those pieces of literature. But I knew I had to leave soon. I did not belong in her dreams no more than she belonged in the home I’ve made for myself at the bottom of the world.

That is the curse of a disobedient mind like mine. The drive that constantly lures me to her – To a life I know nothing of and a love that finds me unsuitable. Is the same drive that pulls me away, trembling and guilt-ridden. What was I doing in that old house? How did I find the key? What brought me to that den burried deep in her mind? Did I come there to dangle the illusion of safety in front of her?

I am irrefutably driven by the bleakness of this life and cannot help but to call out to her, endlessly, from below. From the bottom of the world where I made my home. I sing to her like a caged bird in a small childs room and what could I bother to expect? Of course I could not expect her to stand outside of this terrible cage of mine and be content. And what would happen if she awakes in that forsaken old house at night? My arms would fall short desperately reaching out to her through my rusted bars.
They would cripple and my fingers would snap trying to hold her and keep her safe.

Twenty-nine years of disguarded fates and barren fields. Twenty-nine years of waiting in that den holding an old skeleton key and calling out to something I instinctively know awaits, yet am still unable to bare. Something that I somehow know of, but still couldn’t possibly fathom.

I threw the blank paper away and went back to the windowsill.

I still sing to her from my cage. Even through my ignorance.

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.Fog

Monday.
The clouds have apparently grown suspicious of our actions down below and sunk down into my city. They peer into our empty streets and into our bodies, in our mouths and lungs, and spread themselves through town as if an obscene, thin cotton. This sky-sludge has no business down here. In fact, I doubt it could even bare life below and the curse of discovering its own mortality. No, it should stay put with the idiocy and ignorance above, far from this city and the terrible lights illuminating the far worse.

It makes me think of the fear. Not to say that the fog instills fear in me, but that I suddenly fail to see a difference between what haunts me and the dark sky thats been dragged down here to surround me. They both start as a light, inevitable nusense but gradually tend to seep into every corner of the world, including those hardly yet discovered, and can grow so black and omnipresent that the world as you may have known it (even just a day ago) is hardly recognizable and scarcely perceivable.

Ah, so thats it. This thick paste of the atmosphere has come to mirror the pitch black of that which is happening inside of me. It’s come to crush me. Stepping out in this dark city tonight feels as if the God’s are shoveling the entire sky down the back of my throat. It’s the same feeling I had in my dream, watching K fall off the balcony, and hearing my dads voice outside my bedroom door saying “I’m sorry”. Its like the fog is not enough and I’m suffocating on the entire universe and all I can hear is a muffled voice from outside,
“Christian, I’m sorry. Alright?
…..Can you hear me?”

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. Trespass

Its sunday, just like any other day, and a million storms whirl through my head. I am disinterested in the becomings of today and I show no mercy for the ambitions within them. I feel low and unbearably drowsy as if all my dillemas now swing from my eyelids. I can feel, as if in the very air around me, that life itself is insulted and disillusioned from my insurmountable boredom and lethargy. I convince myself that its mere coincidence that recent days have been so especially gloomy. As if the sun has been appeasing its appetite with strong helpings of clouds. Such gluttony is not constricted to only man, you know. The rivers consume more than their share of hopeless bodies dragged slowly downwards. And the mountains, with their militant lonliness, set out to toss all trespassers from atop thier peaks as if to fill its summit relentlessly with the same lack-of-everything that I am composed of today.

The street is entirely black save for dim lampshades from windows with backdrops of glowing TV’s. The lights bow and turn low at my arrival and I walk past a million blank stares from the windows of the houses. I have yet to feel true solitude and they have long since heard a knock on thier door that came without ill intentions. And yet it is me who feels intruded upon and not the figures staring from behind the open curtains. It is me, alone outside, who feels betrayed and trespassed. Me – without a true home yet infinite places I’ve laid my drowsy head to sleep. I have dreams of tossing every blank gaze, stupid smirk and entitled, rotten carcass off the cliffs. And I stand as a mountain with the same blank, apathetic eyes as they fall away. I dream that I am the great waters pulling down the prestigious, glorious bodies. Filling their lungs and pushing all of me down into thier full, spoiled bellies. In dreams I am the insatiable gluttony of all nature.

In the mind of a young boy, the future is negligible and life draws out so far into the distance that it hurts your eyes. You watch things die but can place no empathy for to be a child is to be part of the dark clouds above on gloomy afternoons filled with moisture – Filled with such possibility. And to grow is to fall violently to the earth into pools of filth and rusted pipes. Dirty rooftops and sickening alley ways. And it is just as much a game of chance, for some of us land in great pastures to flourish with all the necessities of life and others fall to the sewage and rot of the earth. Some land on great cathedrals and others drop into the bleakness of the oceans as one impossibly small molecule that barely (yet certainly) adds to a enormous amount of nothingness. Terribly aware that if it had never been, there would be a million other “could-have-been-something-else’s” in its place to participate in the inevitable tedium. The intolerable scheme-of-things.

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.Clocks

There is a dusty old wooden clock in my apartment atop a small mini-fridge that brings so many memories of my past and it has certainly become just as much a part of my history as any scar or birthmark. It used to chime loudly everyday at noon and again at around 6 p.m. though, it hasn’t chimed in over a decade, or at least I don’t think it chimes any longer. Maybe I’ve grown so accustomed to its sound that I no longer hear it. There were days long gone now that every chime seemed to be a signal that I was getting closer and closer to where I am now. Today, at one point in time was a future and everyday you see is the future eternally whether you know it or not, and you’ve dreamed about this very day before.

It’s all too apparent now, as I look at the dusty old clock that played such a part of my childhood. Indeed, I used to dream of this day. Only, in those dreams I had fantastic imagery of silver cars that drove themselves and great monorails extending the entire county. I had the love of my life and all lives before this one and we were together as great vines of ivy grow into each other and tangle themselves until one is indistinguishable from the other. I had smashed all my enemies and watched as their blood crept back into the horizon like a deep, red ocean tide. There were towers that poked holes in the sky and reached distant planets in one simple elevator ride. And there was wildlife that spoke to us with great prestige and distinction and all of this was clear and very certain to me back then.

This clock has run out of ticks and tocks and chimes and bells many years ago and I sit still and watch it as if it might start to move on its own. It watches me, too, and if it could wonder, I assume it would be wondering why I don’t move and why I’m staring as if I’m waiting for an answer.

Still, we challenge each other while small flashes of memories go off in my head like random lights on the tops of radio towers.

One.

And then another.

And then nothing.

And then another.

The rest of my room is unkempt and filthy as if it was rebelling against me. As if it was giving me an attitude, knowing I would retaliate by also showing how much of a mess I can be.

But, the clock atop the fridge waits for its chance. As all of time awaits us all. And every moment will eventually be soon.

There are so many parts of me hidden in the inside of that clock. Perhaps even my entire life. Ah, But what better metaphor for the way things should have been and used to be than a dusty old clock? All of us at some point were so incredibly far from where we are at this moment and still farther yet from where we will be soon enough….if it were true that this was how you measure life; not by how many clocks we’ve outlasted or how many ticks and tocks and chimes and bells we have collected, but how many of our dreams we have endured, then it is true that I have lived and will continue to live forever. Fortunately this is not the case, for in my lifetime, I have dreamt of millions of things but not yet have I put a single one of them to use. So these irritating noises continue still to be consistent, strategically placed reminders that we are being measured still. Time is a badly manufactured ribbon that may or may not suddenly fall off into pieces as it’s unraveled from the spool.

Needn’t I remind you that you are living your very last days right this moment? What was aching you yesterday is either destroying you right now or just a dull breeze that carried and tapered off from far, far away.

Today, I choose to choose nothing. And I let all my dreams and all the clocks in the world crumble and collect dust. Just as you may choose not to correct your hair or clothes after a strong gust of wind knowing another will soon come. And looking around, you recognize that the rest of the world is frantic and foolish trying their best to keep themselves together and correct their hair and clothes and steady their feet after being blown off their path. Hurriedly racing back to find where they started. Yet, I choose nothing. Today I let the furious winds blow me off course and tamper with my clothes and hair and realign my footwork and I stay complacent where I am tossed.

You have no choice but to give into what ails you. What you endure will either be the end or a great, new path paved with all the dust of every crumbled clock and stagnant old dream.

Because on some eventual today, I will be riding inside of a freight train or maybe an airplane and all around me will be tumultuous winds. Except I won’t feel a thing from where I sit, motionless inside a peaceful cabin. I will be heading far, far away from the foolish people trying with every ounce of their being to keep themselves together after every gust. With their lives just erratic and tumultuous as the wind.

I will be gone and I assure you, friend, that I will never look at another clock again and I will have my peace.

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.X

Confinement doesn’t interest me. I confine myself enough, I don’t like when the world decides to do it to me. I have no interest in parks and trails or places that seem to state that you can play or explore, but you can only do it here. I partook begrudgingly in the education system and pursed my lips as it told me that I can learn, but only what (and when) they are willing to teach. I resent art galleries and museums or even magazines and advertisements that tell me that beauty exists, but only within the confines of these walls or pages. There are things that can be studied without words.
If I have to be confined to this soul, I should not have to be confined to the madness or brilliance of other souls. I should be as mad and brilliant as I see fit.

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. Hummingbird

I felt a rapid presence inside me.
Dire one – winged hummingbirds dreaming of thier nectar.
They all cry out “I am what’s lovely about you!”
Indeed, the parts of me still alive with passion. The parts that know not of all my shortcomings. And they flap about on cold tile floors with sturdy dreams and certain prevail in thier bellies.
With thier eyes focused on the tall blossoms. Nothing is ever so clear. Nothing glints so blindingly.
No gold, No silver, No sunbeams bouncing off the sea.
They are parts of me consumed with deep hunger and naivety is the glands watering thier mouths.
The birds cry out from the cold floor.
But I mustn’t feed them, nor lift them to their nectar for they are what’s lovely about me. They are my passion. Thier hunger is my muse.

But, years go by and thier calls go quiet and they lay still.

How selfish am I to be such a masochist! To suffer my physical body to such proportions merely in order to feel so alive internally. How naive am I! For now I see the two go hand-in-hand and here I sit with neither.

Just dead hummingbirds and dried, crumbled old flowers.

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.Toy

The best of our days consisted of me watching her take drugs and staring off like she was a wolf that heard a small creature off in the distance. She waits to piece together it’s location for the hunt, but it never shows any promise. At times I feel like she could quit the chemicals if she wanted but it’s that promise of a good hunt she can’t seem to shake for the life of her. The problem here is that she will never realize that she is the one being hunted.
The sun pulls itself up over the horizon, back from the end of the world, and I hold onto her like a small child holds a kite. But the drugs were wild gusts of wind and on certain days, I felt as if I’d “accidentally” let go of her string. It grows tiresome and I am not such a small child anymore. I guess you could say that was my addiction: my inner child had passed long ago and following on her little “hunts” made me feel as if I was visiting it’s grave site. Filling her needles for her was as if I was giving it flowers and holding her hand while she nods off was like a little prayer uttered.

It’s crazy how my body and mind simply refuse to work together. Sometimes she repulsed me and I only loved her with my mind. Like the way she took the breath right out of my chest the day I saw her standing so awkwardly in the bookstore seeking out a novel she had been talking about for weeks. It was the strangest thing and I couldn’t fathom how her body could even naturally assemble like that. Her legs were crossed and she stood on her toes with her back arched and twisted. Her arms were straight in front of her but clasped inside out and tangled. Like an ancient statue with a million small pieces knocked out, barely holding itself together. Like any day now she would crumble into dust and thousands of years of history would dissolve into a pile of dust. How funny the mind works that I could fall so hopelessly for a mere stance.

Other days, I loved her with only my body and I felt nothing more. It would remain that way for weeks until I caught another glimpse of something that made me come to my senses. She was a helpless old toy and the memories of my youth threw her around as if I had never grown. She couldn’t stray very far.

But I made up my mind one night while we headed back over the bridge towards her place. The passenger seat was pushed back and she was curled into a little ball. She was so small I could barely keep my eyes on the road. How does something so lovely wander so far off and land here with me? I wasn’t even sure if she was still breathing, it had been a long night and she certainly pushed her limits. I couldn’t concentrate, I would look away from the road and stare at her sleeping until I felt the tires meet the grass, then I would correct the vehicle and stare at her some more until it happened again and I did this almost the entire way home. I wanted to keep her like that forever. I decided I would leave that night and never come back. I couldn’t imagine things ever getting better than that exact moment and I wanted to make sure that no matter where I went from then on, no matter who I was with, I would always have her sleeping so beautiful in my head and I could find peace.
I carried her into her apartment and placed her on the sofa. She didn’t move a single muscle until I started to walk away and her little awkward fingers grabbed at my pant leg without even opening her eyes. She was so weak that her hand just fell right off as I walked away. She was a helpless little toy and I had grown old and bored of it. I had realized tonight that the memories of things you once loved are much stronger than things you still have. Love is like a loud roar and people grow so used to it over the years that it eventually blends into the background. The same way people that live near great waterfalls no longer hear it. I carefully created a situation and a woman that I could hear loudly and love forever. This was the only thing that made sense.

People these days naturally put up walls to protect themselves. You can’t blame them, the world is a cold place and survival of the fittest has never been so prominent. But sometimes, its not the walls that you have to worry about. Sometimes they are placed there for your benefit. You could build a great mansion with all the walls me and her built from each other and the rest of the world. But all the items decaying in the crawlspaces behind her walls made this great palace uninhabitable.

I locked the door behind me and tossed the key to that great home down a sewage drain.

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