african elephants

its not so much that nothing means anything, but that it keeps meaning nothing

theres no release.

even the best books are dry sawdust

and the heart roars like a lion at what theyve done to us.

like the locked in magic of a waiting, grown up world

now they've gone and i am old, and pirate feet have trod the clean thatched floors of my soul.

the hungry tug of too late

old images cling to you. and the girls that once claimed your substance hang like broken shades across the windows of your mind. at one time here, everythin was mine.

he spit my name out into the spitoon of the world

like wires feeding life into life, white rain, sea wild

like a claw reaching down into some pit of me

the sound of a truly mad oran

he wants to laugh but there isnt time

there is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting.



the animal wail of sickness



bodies in revolt



i'm blind, i do not recognize you, white eyed and snaking against the walls and floors.



and there is nothing inside me but salt, and i am soaking. and there is nothing left but the chalk of my flesh.

i cannot survive this civilized world, i am slipping form. i will disappoint you, i will disappear.

such a bone deep restlessness. i am unwinding.

come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

terrible jibberish, extremely menacing vibrations, splintered memories looming up out of the time fog. We're sitting on a main nerve.

my stomach is a black hole. my jeans don't fit, 00.

i'm weird and strangely cruel. i can't temper, or ground, myself. there is a space in my vision, a warped sense of detachment. a lingering sense of disappointment, a growing sense of apathy.

i have a body in revolt. i'm high, dry. i am lost, and busy letting other define me. i don't know what i am hiding from. i am tired of these petty, pretty words. i welcome sickness into my arms, like something i've been looking for a long time. its hard to tell the difference between reality and dreams, real and not, close and far. i float, above the materials that make things solid and crave sunshine that i can't have, living with tiles and clean lines and bright halogen lights. my skin isn't impermeable, like it used to be, but rather soft and malleable and conducive to heat loss. things, people use me and i let them. i no longer question things. i paint my skin, my hair with bright colors in an attempt to tether me to the world, keep me here and in tune. my muscles are out of touch, my skin blurry. i've lost myself, my boundaries. --ANA september 26, 09



my stomach is 'nice', but i dont believe him. i dont wear jeans anymore.

i'm tired from holding more than i thought i could and never showing.

i cant ground myself either, i keep getting caught.

i wish it was better not knowing.

i've folded myself too many times inward,

all my words become contradictions.

there's a tightness to sight, an ugly emptiness waiting.

i feel anger as if its been handed to me.

nothing's mine.

nothing's me.

i cant speak when they're speaking,

theyre speaking silence and nonsense.

i cant speak when they're screaming--

i feel turmoil.

i am unspeakable

i wonder if any story should remain untold.

i wonder why clean ever feels good.

i wonder how long i could stay locked out,

if what i feel is only a vagueness once explained to me.

i am constantly out of tune, i need Space.

i need to be locked in and held down.

no one here is strong enough.

or as smart as you.

so many people do not know themselves enough at all to say these things.

its a start for humans to be able to critizice themselves with sincerity.

its more than most will ever see.

nothing is lost.

we keep surrendering to no one.



i understand exactly how not knowing feels.

i havent written in years i feel ugly and wrong.



i cant i cant i cant explain at all.

i could use somebody like you

here.



in a garden with strangers



far above the blindingly mundane

it defeats every effort to imagine it

the sublime

the mindlessness of space

that whose presence reduces all else to nothing

both wonder and terror

so many things i cannot feel

beyond our understanding

some occupied blankness

a beautiful fury



you are.



a cathedral quiescence.

a barrier rush, the explosion of atmosphere.

a lifting.

a widening of spaces.

time retextured.

a fearless navigation.

an unpredictable theatre.

a suspension.

an eclipse.

reality, a slow auditory hallucination.

a farm, a dog.

a death.

an old conversation.

a setting.

a sound, a sea.

a push.

a metaphor.

a black and white memory.

a distilled emotion.

a shiver of water.

a whitewashed world.

a hidden function.

a baseless moment.

a detachment.

a crucible.

a tragic weaning.

a rebirth.

an arbitrary fate.

a sense of violence.

a pair of eyes.

a painted stranger.

an epiphany.

an accident.

a monument to such things.



clinging like loneliness.



they are talking, like children, but they are stranded out here

speak to me, they say, again and again

no one is listening

not even me.

nobody cares, and they cant go back home

they have become territorial after years of having things taken from them



with old, night eyes,

waning for

i have to leave this pallid humming place

i cannot leave.

talking trash, and hoarse laughs

they are sharing yesterdays.

they are gunky and cheap

loud and rough

they are giving up pasts

there are horrible memories here

sheathed in old cloth

they rattle inside, angry, eager,

and burn through like acidic animals.

she wasnt smart, it was too bad...

they talk over it all.

i cannot stay.

bye baby, even though we never spoke a word.



he walks slowly and he cries

his shirt stuffed deep in his mouth

he seethes tears and all i can smell is

salt.

and i sit with him--

for that is what i would ask for---

until a stranger comes and stops.

she takes him from me,

she is harsher than I.

I let him go.



He is sitting in a chair real relaxed the way my boys should be but the others here are not like him. The others are glancing about, in and out of smiles that shiver. I watch Marcel, a solid, warm shadow across from me, breathing smoke, with dark hands and long fingernails. He is gentle. He lets me watch him.

But people are moving past and through, people are coming and going. I jump up to join the rush and am stopped. His hands are on me, he is gripping my hand. He says something low and quiet and I do not hear. People are talking around me. He says it again and through distraction comes the words. I grip his hand and pull him up. Turning, his hand is gone, and he doesn't know. Any of this.



I am uprooted.

When did we begin to live for others? When did fear become a way of life? When did this world become a culture of paradise legends and terrible strife?

I have been distilled.

I am not like you.

Sometimes we are born in pieces, and a lifetime isn't  enough time for us to fix ourselves.



I grew up with old painful fairy tales and my back pressed against the wall, gripping that filthy brown rabbit i never named. I grew up with mistrust and hatred. I grew up in the constant snow, alone in the yellow street light, with no one watching. I grew up fast.

So much was forbidden. There were more rules every day.

As a child, i was afraid.

But as a child of this place, i disobeyed.........

And I learned that anger was loud and love unspoken. That was another rule.

I know now, the rest weren't as aware as I was of these things. But for the longest time I thought they understood. I thought that when i held them in my eyes they could hear me. And when they didn't respond, i thought it was only their pride. These people are full of pride.

I know now it was distance.

I know now, I grew up miles apart from them, and the sheer distance rages as deep and far as the night, and not even time can extinguish it.

They could never hear me.



There are ghosts here, i think you were right, but they are only ghosts. only spirits. only minds and hearts. they will not harm me.



I forgive you, for being away for far too long.



I've known what its like to be dead a long while now. No one knows where I am. There's no one looking. There's no one who remembers me. And no one who can hear or see me. If they could find me, perhaps they could touch me, but I don't think they could reach me. No..I don't think so.

People sing about this, in their own words.

I don't sing. When you are so tired like this, you can hardly lift your eyes. I sit for hours here, hardening to stone. It gets lighter slowly like layers of night are peeling away, scurrying from the waking sun. It gets hotter. Rusted bicycle spokes. Mattress springs. Tin cans, wet magazines. Memories upon memories upon memories. It is a strange thing, watching all that you have disentegrate. In time lapse photography, this is me dying. In just a few more hours, the earth will reach up and take me along with the rest. But nothing reaches for me. Some heavy creature perches on my shoulders, ablaze. I watch my shadow stretch away from my feet like black taffy.



Polished Grammar & Good Manners



I don't know why this hurts so much.

I don't know why I carry

on, when I can hardly

breathe.





A strange disease reeks havoc in a small town in Dublin, so scientists at a secret facility test their current project, Nevanar Blood, on the infected. It proves effective. Until the infected, seemingly cured, begin to die off. After only months, they shrivel like weeds and cannot sustain themselves. The scientists call this The Darkening, because Nevanar Blood makes the patients very pure skinned and turns their hair white-blonde, and their eyes become nearly as clear as ice. What they soon realize is that Nevanar Blood also removes human emotion from the patients. This is the cause of The Darkening. Emotionally, they wither. The older ones who have experiences more of life are left with a faint trace of a single human emotion attached to their most significant memory, and they hunt for it with insatiable drive. Nevanar Blood also makes patients mentally and physically superior to humans, but not emotionally inferior.

Rorshark, a 19 year old infected boy saved by Nevanar Blood, seeks fear. He was an orphan, living constantly in fear, so he yearns to feel it again with the unquenchable, senseless Nevanar drive. Rorshark is always looking for fear, so he gets into bad situations. He finds cocaine and starts snorting it at a crack den, and becomes addicted becuase he takes so much because Nevanar blood ups tolerance. He also feeds off the feeling of empowerment. When the den is raided by cops, he has already done too much cocaine and goes crazy with all the fear, and falls out of a 4-story window. The cops call the paramedics and he is taken to a hospital where the SheDoctor works. Rorshark is hermorhagging internally. SheDoctor is confused and disturbed by his blood. She happens to be the daughter of the head scientists who created Nevanar Blood, so even thouh she is secretly a sociopath, she got a prestigious job as a doctor and has a private clinic. She takes Rorshark there once she has gained his trust and the trust of Maya and Yenna, his two closest friends and fellow survivors. The three stay in the clinic, hiding, while Rorshark heals (rather quickly) and SheDoctor studies him. They fall in love. It is okay since he cannot feed off her emotions since she has no strong emotions. Instead the three Nevanars learn to drain movies, music, and books of their emotion......?





whispers in the grass

uneven and alone and

given to the world,

restlessly.





Because the whole place smelled like gasoline and sawdust, I remembered

I knew she sat there in the dark, her heart going slowly, cradling her promise

This place was full of them, I know that now—it was a refuge

But there is no mourning for a people so small, no light left for the old.

Because the whole place smelled like gasoline and sawdust, I remembered:

in the beginning I needed a journey; for the rest there is a home.



water ebbs on limbs

tides flow out, pulling

a song for children

weaves the night with white voices





shut inside stone, caught unnaturally

the blaze is cavernous, tireless, undistracted



promise me you won’t go searching, turn and turn to find the thorn, sleeping in webs that you’ve woven, soft and relentless, like spiderwebs.



industrial rain

a grinding in the deep

the movement of gold in the branches

a meadow turned a sea

and men become strangers.



Hunter child

trampling the wounded

those crippled by fear

and flame.

Hunter child

dreaming softly

in the dark.

Hunter child

born a wild thing

of moon flow

and poison speech.

Hunter child

always running

doesn’t know about that kingdom

he once belonged to.





Destroy the paths, unmark the forest

low in the mist

the moon swells to birth the night

its children know the shadows

we find those who run

morning, quiet, lures them

into their game 





caked Playdoh, wet paint, and coconut sunscreen

everything that tells you you’re wasted and old

years of games and running in circles

the ways we self-destruct.

return to the places you find when you’re lost

tell me the weapons you have chosen





We turn to the uncompromising hands

the only equal punishment

rivers that carry the residue of rage and strength.

These storms charge to fade

to live is inconsistent

There is a rush beneath us

immune to this silence

dont you see?

the motion  to mute the world

is unflinching.



Sugar on the rusted on the harmless

Common loves discarded and soft again

Spaces our hands know

Knowledge left in our bones

Old, untouched, turning in the dusk

Marks held there in the white

Life confined to memory



Deep voices and cigarettes

To children with their small words

Bright lit eyes behind dusty glass

Seams in the silence

One word left to break us

We see clear now, we are familiar

Our traps are now our masterpieces

Life tells more truths than we know



Have I wasted my ink

Tell me, inaudibly,

We were built to kill, it’s natural.



Once we shined, in factories

Strong and tightly wound

Around an unraveling core

Enough shook us free

Stop, think about the places you find

When you are set loose



the dead will plead for second chances

cry for places with mislaid names

the key is now buried

a hundred years have passed

and strangers are given a new task



our dream into the summer

uprooted

cast into the world

our cities left behind

vast and shrinking

the world a heartbeat away

I say to you,

what do you remember of happiness



I saw the children, running, vanish,

At the mercy of disguised promises and dreams

Who sat blind in taxi cabs to feel part of the rush,

            And ran into the streaming traffic to get caught up

Who spent summers in motels with their rum and their playing cards,

            And made mistakes until they no longer loved each other

Who were accused and punished and then abandoned,

            For not taking part in the charade

Who forgot the worlds they once built from bed sheets and books,

            And so they painted their faces and learned new words

Who crawled out windows and down fire escapes and through wet pavement yards,

            And vowed to tell their stories once they'd left this place

Who lingered in subways and train stations to watch the world wake up,

            And then let the swarm pull them in again

Who got used to the wind and the way it burned in their wounds,

            And fell just to pick themselves up again

Who climbed into the night into the nightmares of hell,

            To surrender, and then fade, life a heartbeat away   

Who clung to each other in the dark early hours,

            Saying It's been a while and Don't ever leave me

Who exiled themselves in the white brilliant sun and grew filthy but fragile,

            Singing songs despair conjured up,

Who fled cardboard kingdoms with their bare feet bleeding,

            Trying to gather themselves as they splintered.





once I was done

I lost all my feeling

swept away inside me

sent flying

like dust

time is lying

the countdown is ending

begins to rust

I can see her eyes

inside to her shadows and

colors dissolved by

watery emotions

questions and motions

who are you

why are you holding me

is that blood

that dark crawling creature

are we alone yet?

are you alone?

routine fights friction

your fighting the closing doors

you hate all the soft voices

why all of a sudden can I see the smiles

is it the stranger that betrayed me

who found me?

a blurred thing, no shape no size

who brought me here

why can I only see his eyes?



Wooden planks

Unexpected blanks

Suburbia ranks

Rainbow fish tanks



Monday morning wake-up call

Wednesday brunch you hit the wall

Thursday evening reception hall

Friday night you’ve killed them all

                             

Hunter child, young, still blind

A dying race, a wild kind

Hunter child, he’s hard to find

His restless hands, that wicked mind



Termite life

Ancient strife



I wake up in the backseat of my car,

The windows rusted with frost,

The radiator coughs but can't breathe.

And I remember the morning we woke up, only four.

And I think, all endings are abrupt.



I flick a lighter close to the glass,

Watch the frost peel back from the flame

The way a crowd splits and runs from an explosion.

And I remember the morning they cornered him,

closed in on him like hunters would a lion.

And I think, we unknowingly dig emotional ravines.



I can smell peppermint and leather here,

The cold sun lays dustily in the air

And I remember the morning we sang Christmas songs over the car radio

The quiet roads electrified by decorations

The traffic lights and deli sandwiches and the ceran-wrapped cookies

And I remember the feeling of closeness,

      how it burns out the deepest winter.





wake in a tangle

and the light crawls in

seeping like paint into the shapeless dark

of dreams.

the windows are frosted,

the light is glassy and cold

and the radiator coughs but can’t breathe.



this could be that morning we woke up,

only four.



A tiny flame whips its tail

in a quiet, windless frenzy

and the frost on the window curls and peels back

like water repelled by a marble

Distaste.

Displacement.



This could be the morning they closed in on him,

the way hunters corner a lion, but never should.



This room smells like peppermint and candle wax,

but mostly dust.

It glitters in the shaft of light

cold winter sunshine.





Born ancient

Crooked, quivering limbs

in slight winds

Slowly they reach,

climbing upon those past.



i feel like crying, how uncharactaristic!



  rage in gender.





Welcome to America.

people are different, they get treated different.



Thanksgiving sucked.

Christmas was worse.

Woke up at 7 am, vomited. Woke up at 12 to my aunt (annoying) and still feel acid on my teeth after brushing them three times. no ones awake, grandparents have gone to see my aunt, who wont let my uncle see the kids (messy divorce) and that's sad but theyre both crazy.

I open some presents, unnecessary ones like socks and sweaters. I had told them not to get me anything. But I wear the sweaters around the house to humor them. The socks are actually pretty nice.



Relieving, being with the people you love.



this town is small and i need to get out

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\\

“

The night phosphorescence of cities, the lifelong shedding of skins…



The oily blue smoke…



Metamorphosing, the one in the other, longing unconsciously for autumn…



The pilot lights flash in the field outside…

”

Dream Into the Summer

Secret Cities, Uprooted.



Not all animals are so wild if born into the cages.



Cages for the Critically Tame.





        Nothing ever needed fixing.



Close your eyes

Count to ten

A reminder that we can feel again

A promise we made

And took to the grave

A song we heard

The prayer of the brave



Sunlight cradles her face, her bare feet rush though the air.

The sand smells like the heat, and

the heat smells like rust and cigarettes.

The picnic tables smell like ketchup and baby powder.



We lie in the grass and feel bugs crawl into our palms.

We are mountains down here.

We wait for the world to wear us down

so we can speak from the level of all things.





Promises, shortlived like our childhood endeavors.

Apologies, each more transparent than the last.

We didn’t trust what was so easily spoken.



If she was upset, she might plant herself

in my room, just to share the space, fill it,

and I would let her.



I’m trying to tell her, words will always strip you bare.

She observes me with her wild eyes, the night wind tangling her hair.

I can see the fault lines tragedy has carved under her skin.

She smiles hard at me, she’s on her knees, forgetting the sin.

She tells me she, at last loves these places she’s been.



Far above the blindingly mundane

It defeats every effort to imagine it

The Sublime 
that which reduces all else to nothing

It is the mindlessness of space

an occupied blankness, a magnificent fury

simultaneously wonderful and terrible

It is so many things I cannot feel





Spiritual Cannabilism

The Consumption of Idols



Brutality of Royalty



the children we once were rush up to the surface

I stare at myself, parts of my face

superimposed on the darkness outside Starbucks.

Jazz fizzes white electric

in the sea of my mind.

Subways screech underground.

The city has a pulse

of neon and footsteps.





Interpret the Atmosphere



The Crescendo Of Time



  Redefine the Instrument





pacific wound





We are all on the same stage,

building cardboard worlds,

so when we laugh at you,

you can laugh right back.









all the children are insane



mouths sewn shut.



It spoke to him of aloneness,

a vast, insipid place of exile,

all the doors locked,

all the inseperables separated,

thread by thread by thread.

A place of blinding malice,

governed by a sick thing in the thundercloud canopy,

relentless and highly industrious,

tending to its tiny universe,

picking it apart and piecing it together.

All eyes that see but do not understand.

All the work of a single mind,

a hundred thousand smaller lives extinguished.

He pinched them between his

forefinger and thumb, delighted by this

strange thing blood.



He speaks slow to get his words right.

His existence became entirely inward after she left.

He is tucked inside himself, eyeing the world

carefully from all angles,

devoting days to small tasks

here and there

which he completes with

horrifying accuracy.

It’s his survival technique,

and I enjoy drawing him out of it,

like a turtle out of its shell.



Sir,

the people are unraveling,

uncontrolled

like spools of thread!





prisons of green felt and marble

bridges built under the sea



A century will draw the color from the walls

the way disease will do to the sickly.



paperweights



“genius boy, what do you do to fight the lunacy”



Chameleon Businessman Beneath One Thousand Roaring Suns





I told her, “you belong alone, like the crazy people at the Summer Carnivals.”



my rabbit with no name, he loses stuffing when I hold him like this.



And she became a part of the Infestation.



House of the rising sun

lazy waking life

faded old man

And a cardboard box of stored identities.



All I Want in this World is for You to Come Home.



Kid, rule your heart

Show me you know

    where souls go to wander 



Here in the end we are still awake

dreaming of water bugs and river mud

and we can still hear those horseflies,

little kings of the air.

and we can still feel the burn of being stripped bare.

Here in the end we are still awake

dreaming of what we could have said

afraid to try and take the things we fear

might be taken from us instead



christmas morning children

a hundred thousand march

their bodies sealed like angels

in brilliant winter starch.



Ice cream afternoon

Red salty air

Sidewalk eyes

Wind tangled hair



Beezlebub

Blasphemy

Bumblefuck

Binge

Blow

Blindness

Bent

Beloved

Branded

Before

Bark

Biological

Beat

Bile

Byzantine

Bumblebee

Bury

Breathless

Beneath

Brick

Blasé

Burdens

Bubble

Bruise

Beyond

Bone

Black.





at the end

Unusual

worn

pale

Inside

You only

tucked into

clementine brilliance.



he would not



Skin and

the way

tilted

attention

and



Snapped

others pass



deftly

compact caught

speaking soft

glance and glance

away

At the end

moved

still

slow



there calmly

slumber struck

Motion catch

strange if

ever recognized

vague go

into until

I set

shell white

wanted

move



Stop

about if

instead

express lace

straight reaching



Nothing have

Not but





sound seperates like spider wire

And the radar dissolves

Old and clear bubble symphony

spin spin spin trap.



Danger, glass beauty

thermal dust

sunglasses reflects criminal universe

spin spin spin trap.



And we wake up in the brick dawn, terrified by the things we could be

And on all sides we’re surrounded by the touch of memory



Darling, you are old

and your life has been sold

and they’ve ripped you like paper

and dug up your soul.

Darling, don’t you remember

the sound of the sick?

Darling, don’t you remember

the ache for the dead?

Darling, don’t you know we'd never leave you

despite the things we've said?



love is something the machines can’t say

He doesn’t realize how this boy is giving him away.



Her eyes are rimmed in black, hard to reach. The way she looks at you is unsettling, enough to convince you she’d just risen from deep chambers of your heart with fistfuls of your secrets. She looks at me and turns me inside out and continues on her way. I remember how she moved, like a feather on a breath of wind, fastened to a whim.



Reality is shredded, all sense caves in upon me. My mouth has been sealed. I suffocate. I fall and fall and claw for the strings that have been cut. I am small and the space is big. These are ancient fears, ripped up from deep places.



That place, sharply turning at all times, jumps from beneath my toes, and falling, I swear, I could see for miles and miles and miles.



That was centuries ago. There had not been a year to the earth yet. The seas were still dry, sunken craters. The sun still in its shell. The sky lay blank above us, not ready to relinquish its child. For a long time, there was nothing. Only a silent force that tread along the plains, gaining momentum as the earth lay in a calm, stagnant warmth. All the time we could feel its tremble. The first storm was a hollow cry of earth. Thunder, distant and cavernous, paced the sky. Restless, a far reaching voice, but harmless. Thin, streaking rain stung the desiccated land. White vines sprang out across the sky. But then the thunder faded back, the rain ceased, and the lightning stopped. The quiet dark that followed made it seem like a dream. The entire span of plain screamed with life and everything went out. Even the stars, blooming softly from their high perches, shrank back into darkness' eye and the earth plunged into shadow. These are the memories of earth, buried in low places.



They have laid their hands upon the trapped, they understand with a terrible clarity all that remains unspoken. There is an anger simmering only beneath the surface, an instinct they fight to disregard. Sleep does not silence their conscience. They are too familiar with the rhythm of suffering, the unexpected attacks of guilt that anchor their hearts in memory. Witnesses of the helpless are branded the helpless when they resort to self warfare. These are the victims, the trapped and the unspoken. Those born wretched in the mud will never feel such self loathing; never experience the delirious struggle against their own weakness.



This is where I trip up, caught in the slow, deliberate undercurrent. This is where all direction is forgotten, sinew abandoned. I streak though a smooth mosaic of the shattered sun. This is where I go deaf. I am suffocating, panicking. The river is lithe, industrious, unaware of what struggles against it.



The smell is a thousand years of sin and it’s spreading violently. Memories to endure. My stained floral wallpaper, my unfinished dinners. These tilted bare wood floors. The lights crawl out of the ceiling, wire skeletons of coppery creatures. I am listening for the refugees, the monsters misunderstood. The handholds shift, a generation is exiled.



Rosemary is not a quiet girl she has much to say. She does not answer to gilded smiles, she does not tolerate tight conversation. And it is true, what she says, everything seems worse in the dark.



time tears through us



Campbell finds corners no matter where he is



                            because my skin falls away like paper Mache



                            Seven years of winter, of grey rain and sludge. The city was swamped,  the people stayed inside. But the grayness crept under the doors. A layer of smog covered everything until the city bore the gleam of human teeth darkened by grime.