A Whiter Line

I


damp breaths seem to slow time
as it trickles down the drainspout
yearning for moonlight's company.
it all whispers with colorless reality
that creates a superior,
more peaceful/deadly
silence.
none of it waits for anything;
none of it truly needs dreams or any progression:
it is a creator of these things
almost masterful.
it is your life,
and on the perfectly chosen surfaces,
it draws a whiter line.



II


it seems you're always getting off a bus,
or walking down a narrow and familiar path,
or thinking about the apocalypse.
you think it's all so beatuiful
in the form of an old and sickly gray idea.
you think about why you are pacing,
heart-skipping,
thinking,
fearing as you step out into the rain
and nervously run
your sticky fingers through your tired hair.



III


nobody ever took care of those old leather shoes.
they think they used to be black;
perhaps they were happier that way.
a snake wraps it's way through each one,
and perhaps the shoes are content with that...
but I doubt it.
the shoes are creatures of burden,
damned to the inevitable duty,
the inevitable torture.
sometimes you may see an old shoe
resting where shoes are not expected to be:
beside a dumpster and covered with mud,
strung up on a power line,
face down on the dirty road...untouched for months.
the happiest shoe has never left the box.
it is alone, but it is much more than content
as it dreams silently
and lazily in the dark.
these old leather shoes are not happy,
and they won't be:
they're being trampled into despair
one
****ing
step
at
a
time.

just like you.



IV


he's nothing but another figure,
another masked winter-clad object
wearing black leather shoes
to anyone
or anything.
he's desperate
he's calm
he's waiting for something
and he doesn't know what that something is
or what it might mean
or weather it's a dream
or a story
or a poem he read/didn't read.
nothing flashes but the odd reflection of an eye moistened by time,
and nothing notices.
he's young, he's old,
he's dying and growing.
"He's just you, me and everyone, and that's about it.
Just everything and nothing. That's all."



V


thoughts.
they're all shapeless, horrific entities
that bleed words and begin/end the lives of their own kind.
they grow with time,
oozing into each other as a viscous,
everlasting fluid.
they switch,
divide,
or fester like wounded beasts
that walk down the same old-but-not-forgotten road
(sometimes with black leather shoes.)



VI


You know, I've been making my way down this same road for what seems like my entire life.

It's never the same day, never quite the same moment, and never quite what I expected it to

be, but I always hit the same man-hole cover with my left foot twenty paces from the

sidewalk when I step off the curb to cross the street diagonally. Even when I hear a car

coming (not a very frequent occourance, I will say) I make a point of waiting and taking

those perfect 20 paces to the man-hole cover. When my foot lands on it it makes a small

noise. It's never as loud as I want it to be and it never makes as much of a note as I want

it to, but it's that ritual that makes time cease to exist and brings me to a feeling of

lucidity.
Or maybe I'm crazy.
They always said I was ****ed.
I come back from The Place every day and I go the same way every time. Maybe I'm afraid of

change. Maybe that's why the ants on that road come out of the same five cracks year after

year.
Or maybe I drink to much.
Or maybe it's all because of The Place.
Maybe I'm crazy...

I don't see it that way.
It's just that I like to smile about the wrong things.



VII



he knew she was infested.
his ill seed had found it's way, oh yes
yes it had.
he'd have dreams of the damn thing
it would come out of her and crawl,
smaller than a pickle jar lid,
toward him
moaning with desperation through the lungs of what must be hell.
the bastard had 'venom and a sick mind'/'honey and a miracle life'
it intended to live
it intended to kill, eat, breath, die.
it poured blood as if it was made of it
as mucus snapped
as thought dripped away into thought.
better kill the damn thing
better try.

it seems it never worked that way.
the thing lived.
the thing began.
just as human, but less healthy.

it was the end of reason,
and nobody ever knew it.

we all figure it still bleeds somewhere,
covered in mucus and breathing
in a raspy truth.

it's birth.
let's not forget it.



VIII



"You know,
you'd think you could paint a whiter line.
But that's not true, see?
You can't.
It can only be drawn."



IX



in a basement,
the tables and chairs deteriorate quickly...
or so it seems to the dweller;
the dweller with a sick liver.
time moves more quickly,
slower,
a more tired perception draws the leaves in,
somehow.
the paintings on the walls are nothing but imagination
here.
here where we all belong
at some point or another.



X



he's getting home,
you can call it that.
only nightmares here,
only such beautiful creations,
such beautiful art...
it's life within walls.
that's where it must stay.

here is a place people like to say they dream of,
but they know they were never smart enough
creative enough
to think of it.

here is a place that sings in sepia
and thinks in splotches
of what would be rot
if only it cared about itself.

here is a place where slippery clutched hands
feel at peace
feel right.

he's here now.
he's gazing at his creation.
he's gazing at life within walls.

home.