i am insane

Nothing is out of place.

This house is perfect.

Old King brought me inside it, and like a child replaced by another, it became vicious.

Old King stayed with his books and did not come out.

I was alone with it for years.

Alone with the screaming house and the cat.



The dust of his body covers this place,

the air hot electric around me.

The house is trying to hurt me,

but it is only air and memory.

I ignore its violent electricity.

I allow the vile thing its space.

I am moving through it,

a speck in its bloodstream,

and I have never been so alone.

Everything passed.

Such quiet here,

fetus-quiet,

the quiet of the unborn.

A quiet that knows no absence

of anything.



I remember

all their hands staining me.

I remember

that word isolate.

I remember

the streets overrun, the car exhaust,

the land ripped open and wailing,

in pain or ecstasy..



Old King's Castle calling...

an insipid place of exile.



Its perfection stagnant.

After ages of admiration,

it lays thickly in the air.

There is madness here, distilled,

still ghosting through the halls.



I stored the darkness and the whispers,

the faces in the curtains and the leaf shadows.

I kept the sky, bruised and healing slowly in the sun.

Dawn surrenders like it seduces,

releasing layers of its pigment like garments.



they wait for the flaw to manifest

i suppress the urge to rip skin and roar

they back away from me on stilts with wild spinning circus eyes,

they are hysterical and raucous

but you look at their eyes and the world is unmoving hard and black.

you look at their eyes and everything stops,

like a wrench was thrown into the machinery.

everything stops.

Insanity. A low place in the forsaken deserts of the mind.

I stop or am stopped.

Anger seethes up inside of me, filling me like chemical suds.

I choke and drown and wake.



Tar the stray is grimy,

the color of grease.

little animal of war, with talons

to announce its every entry

and mark its every path.

Tar comes close and the nuclear explosion on his nose begins to leak acid and

he begins to disintegrate.

those black splinters in his pale green eyes.











Life like that, that floats along the surface like pond scum, is itching to be disposed of

We are exiled inside ourselves

something nested amongst arteries and veins, disguised, that reigns over our decisions pulsing, primitive thing controls the reflexes triggered by pain, shock, thrill,.......... monotony

her tone vaguely defensive

hysteria still hummed in the air

The screen door hammers back and forth and doesnt close

thick, leathery wrinkles invaded by light

too big spaces and the empty seats

my throat closes up

hear Tar coming back to me

Loneliness is a lack of direction, not affection.

Back on the top step.   

Autumn is littering the treetops, the horizon is gold and still. I am a thief. Small words read clearly in their eyes. I am the worst kind of thief. I have stolen nothing. But whispers fit like keys into the kingdom of denial. They refuse to listen. Summer came and gave me walls again. Quiet days spent in the labyrinth of father’s house. I tell him we are in Dublin, and this is his castle, but somewhere inside lurks a ferocious creature that cannot be slain. I tell him we must hide from it. Father looks up from his books, smiles at me, and says my name like he hasn’t seen me in a long time. Unspoken, things seem to lose truth.         

Heavily, I remain on the step until night.       

The moths congregate under the porch light, slamming into the bulb and buzzing frantically. Bigger ones shove the others into the dark, who flutter around blindly until they find their way back. It’s a cruel world, I think, and there's only so much room.

Tar leaves through the rip in the screen, sliding out of the light.

could feel it bumping against my palm, a tiny, hot creature

The watery slant of moonlight illuminates a strip of the kitchen—the two metal sinks, the green counters, the discolored linoleum.

I am complete, and so I lack purpose.

I feel entitled to be angry at such a realization, but I cannot muster any anger.

Instead, a blurry image appears in the slideshow of my memory:

A perfect day, with nothing weather and shifting lights.

I am crouched on the road, the tar bursting open in the

august heat, the sun swelling at my shoulder.

I am forgetting what was lost.

Can hear the water gurgling in the pipes.

the insect excitement that the dark harvests.

The leaves rush against the screen.

Hear the tiny dials in the clock gaining momentum.

In the dizzying dark, memories brighten,

voices clear.

I am suspended



An empty cage is despressing,

the silence maddening.

There is no company in this black place.

Fear streaks through sinew like electricity,

erupts without invitation.

Corridors do not end,

corners shrink to pinholes that swallow you up.

The floorboards grow soft and collapse beneath your feet.

Floods of insects swarm down

over your walls,

the minute become overwhelming.

They trickle in soundlessly;

you feel them first, then you hear them.

Your skin flares and you try to shrivel out of it,

away from the thousand prickly legs and feelers.

You try to wake up.

Wake up.





I can tell 4am from 5am and 5am from 6am. i can tell you what the sky has seen from the flush of its cheeks.

i have gotten to know the world.

i am locked here, by what i cannot tell you, all i am sure of is that this is a resting place, inherited from the dead.

the longer i stay, the worse the threat. the stronger the pull.

dreams flood the mind like chemical insanity.

i am dead.

my green couches, thick wrinkles invaded by light.

the kitchen floors.

the marble halls.

blood pooling.

i am dead i am dead.

the scum in the tub.

the shore in winter.

shots from the forest.

he is out hunting.

big mahogany doors that stay shut.

blood rushing.

i am dead i am dead i am dead.

my childhood screams from the photos on the walls.

my skin burning.

i hear everything as if out of memory.

i am dead.









THE END.