Racing toward the end. Anxious words. Each one worse than the last. No structure. No clarity. All just a huge fucking mess. I told myself I'd swear less. Simply to make the times I do have more impact. That is just a category of words. I should shake up my language enough to include and exclude other words consciously. Subtracting words is unnecessary in any case other than socially unacceptable words in a tasteless fashion... unless I use a certain word way too damn often. Use a synonym. Talk like a writer writes. Speak with entertaining inflection and careful word choices. Distract others with a tone of voice that is at once commanding as it is trustworthy.
On edge. On the precipice. Drop a stone you would not hear it land. Too far for the sound to carry.
Look up from the bed. Our secret whispers unheard of in the outside world. There is no outside world. Just as they are excluded from ours. We don't exist and neither do they. Full moon up in the sky. Thrown through a thin layer of condensed water molecules and aerosol sprays to give it the hue it carries. Full color spectrum around the edges, bright. Window at my back, I am slouching under the sill to avoid the discomfort of leaning on it and the blinds, odd repeat pattern reflected down. The real moon, the biggest and then a soft gradient downward, opacity changing with size and it becomes a tiny circular like a star drawn on the glass. But I move the whole system changes like a serpent or a dancing woman. Hear the teleport noise and wish it were the real thing. Not a veil. The illusion of proximity despite grand distance. The ultimate magic trick. The disappearing and never returning magician.
Photographic evidence. There is none. I take no images of things anymore. Used to have a passion to capture everything in a day and then to be able to look back on that day. Perhaps a journalistic approach. Although writing tells a truth a photograph cannot on its own... a description and a placement in a story... why this is or is not an important image... what happened right around there... what it makes the person think of... but the picture itself is in more accurate detail than words could describe. I could conjure up such grandiose descriptions for an image though your mind will probably fill in some of the blanks on its own. The image I show you will always be slightly different than the one I described to you. Even if it is great detail. Even if it is the same image described and shown.
beneath your skin
you are also a skeleton
a wire frame to hang the meat from
strongest muscle of the body, the tongue
bone-crushing anxiety
somebody is suffering
water weight
crushing houses
----
Hold my hand in this soft light.
In defense of my questionable sobriety.
See Times Square in the rain.
We passed midnight to get there.
Boisterous hair.
Barber shop and man talk.
Nothing expensive.
God damn waste of money.
It's dead anyway.
A plane ticket is alive.
It is the promise of something glorious.
Something like an impenetrable stare.
Something glowing like a crystal ball.
The image stares back at you through the mirror.
Apparently with a mind of its own.
Some days it seems there is no connection.
Reflection has a life of its own.
A parallel universe where that plane ticket was never a question.
It had to happen.
Distance traversed.
In thankful succession.
All dreams quenched of thirst.
Living moments, lively childhood.
Kill the adult in you.
Live the life.
but you can't fuck somebody sarcastically.
just this once have a respect for yourself.
walk around the city
without falling
into cement
clear contempt
forgotten chant
monks in monastery
suddenly begin speaking of apocalyptic visions
breaking 80 years vow of silence
this is something ridiculous and fearful
ending with a grand family plan
to spend it all
on charity
or burn it in piles
insurance will cover us
for our charred memories.
the skeletons in the closet
are our own
and our bodies fall into spineless piles.
spend the night comforting the lost
be a compass for the directionally unsound
hear the sounds of a distant storm
never trains or cars anymore
just deafening silence
it sounds like what a graveyard looks
it feels like an evil lung inhaling
smells like vast empty longing
because it won't happen
it is simply too abstract for that love to exist
finding self in rhetorical classes
write the stories for others
for the friends and not so negative
cognizant of dwindling species
all feeling effects of stupidity
widespread panic and the media is only a source of lies
creature comfort for creatures without other creatures to find comfort in.
let me mindfuck you
then return the favor
if it was good for you
I'm fine.
