Busy, Busy, Busy

Sorry, the past couple of weeks have been crazy with work, but here is a little something for anyone that might still read this ever.

Visage
An image of myself in glass
a figment of me, faceless.
Is this what others see?
Are there even others?
The beauty of the world's for me,
begging me to see it.
In nineteen years I've seen so little,
such a fraction of a whole.
Even one percent would stretch
the bounds of my memory,
so I'd need some nineteen-hundred years
to see everything I wish to see,
to be everything I wish to be.
And I will never quit until
I reach this goal,
I've forsaken me.
I'll be nineteen-hundred in my passing,
and if not place me
beside the golden tree,
and I will find another self to call my own.
One day I will penetrate this earth
to never rise again,
but today I rise once more.

MoD for Alex (or anyone else)

Memory Loss

        I laid awake all night, in my unassuming bed, in my unassuming house, thinking about the entirety of my life. I couldn't stop thinking about my mistakes, good points were much harder to bring to the surface tonight. Any other night my thoughts were of happy shit, or at least neutral, but tonight the black cloud loomed about me like a curtain, signaling my demise.

          Tomorrow was the day I would be forcefully given my cause of death. I couldn't do a damn thing about it, I had a “hazardous job” so for liability reasons, they were making all of their employees take the test. They were doing it as a proactive way to not be required to pay out if an employee were to die on the job, because they “should have seen it coming.”

         I sat up in my bed, resting my face in my hands, as my mistakes flashed through my eyes. I thought about the drug trafficking mostly. That would be something like twelve years ago now, that I got caught, at least. When I was thirteen I got pulled into a cartel by my best friend; I thought me and him were going to work together, but now I know he just needed someone to toss into the flame when things went to shit. And let me be very clear about this, things went to shit. The inside of my eyelids flashed with altering red and blue lights, visions of officers leveling rifles at my door, of me trying to simultaneously hide twelve kilos of cocaine, knowing full well I wouldn't be able to, and also trying to run for my life away from the police. If they caught me, I knew my life would never be okay again.   Luckily, this assumption was mostly brought on by the sheer amount of coke in my brain; my life was okay now.

         Then, as if called upon by outside powers, the most irate moment of my life flickered in my mind, I tried to suppress it, but it had arrived. I was sitting, cuffed and chained, sweating, nauseous. I was going through withdrawal alone in my holding cell and the only thought that could be sustained in my mind was how no one had bailed me out yet. I had a ton of friends, a ton of contacts, one of them had to have caught wind that I had been caught. There was no one in for me for probably about a week, maybe it had just seemed like a week, but one morning I was awoken by the ripping open of my cell door.

         “You have a visitor.” A sharp, blunt statement by a cold-faced stout man in blue. I stumbled the entire way to the visiting room. My legs had grown so weak, I hadn't stood in days. I rounded the final corner, into the small booth with the thick glass and the phone. Who was sitting there? It was the one and only Brian, my best friend. After a lengthy bit of conversation, it had all dawned on me. “How did they catch me?” I asked very suddenly toward Brian. Silence.

          “How the fuck did they catch me Brian?” His face twitched, wrenched to the side the slightest bit. He blinked twice, I remember this moment precisely, the moment I had been left with no friends in this world. A week later, I had been given a break, fifteen years, Brian had been given a life sentence. The prick deserved it. Ten years later, I was out on parole, and I got a job with a Municipal Waste division far away, they were the only ones willing to hire me after my release.

I stood out of bed and walked into my living room, a sudden, surging sense of happiness rushed through me as I clicked the light on, seeing the five bags of dog food and the dog bed I had placed in the corner, with the assembly of toys and the collar. “Two more days until I can afford the vet bills,” I thought, “Two more days until I have him.”

          Thinking about how I might go about dying was all I could imagine for the rest of the night. I didn't think I was ready to know, it seemed like when you knew, you couldn't live your life anymore, people just became a prisoner of this machine. At some point, I drifted off, but the startling buzzing of my alarm in the morning indicated to my achy body that I had not gotten enough sleep. No matter, today wasn't a work day anyway.

         As I drove to the clinic, I felt an odd peace with the situation, maybe it wouldn't change anything, or maybe it would change things for the better, somehow. When I arrived, the directory board read all of the different groups and people coming in for the day and where to meet. Third from the top read “Municipal Waste – B7.” Navigation through the halls was easy, and as I stepped into B7, I searched for Jason, my co-worker and probably the only friend I could actually trust since the whole cocaine fiasco. He was easy to spot, standing against a wall, well over six feet. He towered above the crowd of sullen, tired men that were the majority of this town's Municipal Waste crew. We leaned against the wall in silence for a long time, probably at least ten minutes. Neither of us had a thought in the world we wanted to burden the other with.

         “You watch the game last night?” I finally choked out.

         “Nope, couldn't, too nervous.” was the quick, deliberate response.

         “Yeah, neither did I,” I admitted, then added, “It was probably a shit-show anyway.”

         “Yeah.” his voiced trailed off just in time to catch the yelling of the clinic technician at the front of the large room.

         “When we call your name, please promptly make your way through the door to my left, from there you will be directed into one of the OracleWorks chambers. Follow the instructions given by the technician inside of the chamber and this entire process will go smoothly. Thank you for your cooperation.” It was an icy, heartless way to lead us into this situation, I felt. As I looked around the room though, it appeared most people weren't the slightest bit nervous. A man to my left rambled on about some famous woman's rack, some men across the room appeared to be throwing money into a pot, gambling it seemed. Probably on who gets the best or worst death. How could this not be a big deal to these people? “Alright, the first ten patients are Randy Adams, Joseph Alvarez. . .”

           “Great, “I thought, “Alphabetical order.” My last name was Thomas; I would be here for hours. I sat there for maybe an hour, watching happy people go into the chambers, and solemn, serious men come out. It finally hit them, but not until it's too late. Every man that came out made me more and more nervous, and by the time my name was called, I had seen only one man come out happy, and a handful clearly accepting of their death. The pot of money had gone to a man who was speaking rather loudly about how he was going to be eaten by sharks, so I assumed the pot was based on the most interesting death.

         Finally, the time came, my name was called, and as I pushed off of the wall and turned toward the front of the room, Jason placed a hand on my shoulder. I stopped for a second, and provided him a small nod, without turning my head. Thoughts or fires, car accidents, train wrecks, every awful death imaginable pushed their way into my brain as my feet led the way to the room. Once inside, a technician stood beside a flat, white wall. In it there were two holes, one round, and big enough for a finger, the other rectangular. It was obvious the function of both. I didn't even try to listen to the technician as I placed my finger deep into the abyss of the hole. A small prick, followed by a rush of acute frost. A small bit of whirring could be heard behind the wall as I pulled my finger from the hole, and nursed the small prick with my mouth.

         Waiting for the slip of paper felt like days, but it eventually printed out, face-down. The technician took it, read it, and then looked to me.

         “Do I have to read it?” Was my response to the technician holding out the slip of paper.

         “I'm afraid so.” It was an odd answer and didn't inspire much confidence as my hand reached out, trembling, and snatched the tiny slip. I turned it over very quickly and read the result aloud.

         “Memory Loss,” the words flowed easily from me, I repeated it ecstatically “Memory Loss!” The technician looks quizzically at me, looking almost disturbed that I was relieved by this. “My mother has Alzheimer’s, isn't that genetic?”

         “I believe so.”

         “That means I have a life ahead of me, doesn't it?”

         “Probably, but not necessarily, sometimes the results can be a bit ambiguous.”

         “Nonetheless, I feel better.”

         “Good.” As I left the chamber and exited back into the large room, I noticed Jason was not against the wall. I had assumed he would have been called in while I was, his last name was Twain. I sat in the seat nearest the door to the OracleWroks chambers and waited for Jason; I was sure his results would make him more easy.

         Less than a minute passed by, and he exited from the door, wearing the same dumb smile I'm sure I had upon my exit. We walked in a mulling silence as we walked back to the lobby, neither of us wanting to belittle the other's readout with a selfish exclamation of our own. Finally he broke down,    “What was your readout?”

         “Memory Loss”

         “And you're happy about that?”

         “It means I probably have a long time to live, if nothing else.” Jason thought about it for a second, then with a nod of agreement he added.

         “Makes sense, I got Loyalty”

         “That's wonderful,” a deep sense of fulfillment, exposed by wide eyes and similar smiles, filled the air. We walked out of the doors slowly, and a sudden sense of contempt washed over me. Inside the clinic was pristine, white, everything had a certain degree of valued beauty to it. But when I walked outside, I saw the broken city that I resided in. From said city, hundreds of men walked into the clean, oddly beautiful facility. All of them were stable, all of them were at the very least contented living in these heaps of stone and mortar, bleak and vague against the gray sky. These men, normal by all measures and the building, immense and daunting in comparison to most of the buildings around, and by all measures, perfect. From this structure, left hundreds of broken beings, all of them as imperfect as the city they left earlier that day.

         “What used to be where this clinic was?” I directed at Jason.

         “You don't remember?”

         “No, since I came here from prison it's been a Death Clinic.”

         “It was a movie theater, why?” A deep sense of regret washed over me at the acknowledgment that something else had once been there, something useful, or at least enjoyable. The realization that something was sacrificed in order for this Death Clinic to surface was a brutal truth.

         “And what was that, across the street?” I pointed to the now boarded-up shop that sat on the adjacent corner.

         “Oh, it was this lovely little coffee shop, went out of business a few months ago. That certainly was there since you've been back form jail.” His voice had a distinguishable questioning quality to it, like he was trying to ask me why I was suddenly so interested without being direct.”

         “I haven't come into town much I guess. What was that big one there?” I pointed to the tallest building in sight, probably around ten stories, with 'FOR SALE' banners hanging on each side.

         “I believe it was Adams and Adams Insurance Company, they were growing pretty steadily for a while, but their branch left town a few years back, no one else want to buy the property in a town that's on such a steep slope to death.” Nearing the end of his sentence, his voice started to slow, and trail off slightly. The gears were turning in his head, he was understanding why I was asking. I stood still, staring blankly at the horizon as he fidgeted about, and finally turned to look at the Death Clinic. “The Machine is killing the city, why? How?”

         “The Machine is not killing the city, at least not consciously. By definition it doesn't have a conscious, but how would you describe the demeanor of pretty much everyone else today?”

         “Devastated, probably.” I nodded my head in agreement.

         “If you knew you were going to die by something accidental, something that could happen anytime, tripping down stairs, or a car accident, would you have any drive to show up to work tomorrow?”

         “Probably not.” Jason's voice reflected his full understanding of what I was saying.

         “And even if you could muscle up the willpower to go to work, would you want to work somewhere that you had to look at the exact spot that caused probably the most devastating moment in your life?”

         “Absolutely not.” Jason took a breath in, then made a half-assed motion with his hand, which I understood to be him signaling he was going to walk to his car. “You know, you're pretty smart for a convict.” This was probably the most common idea I heard while in jail, that I was too smart to be a criminal, or maybe just too smart to be caught. I gave Jason the exact response I gave everyone else.

         “I was valedictorian of my high school and, until I got caught, second in my class at the local community college.” I had caught up to him by this point, but he was just a couple steps ahead before.

         “Impressive; so what you're telling me is you think that the Machine is indirectly killing off people?” He said this statement as we were passing a newspaper dispenser. I looked at today's headline

         “Two die in plane crash.” I read it aloud.

         “What?”

         “Hold on a second.” I payed for a paper and flipped through it until I found the obituaries section. “What percentage of people do you think die from old age nowadays?” By this point I had already made it to the obituaries section; in it there were two columns, one labeled Predicted, the other label Unpredicted. We stood there for a couple minutes as I studied the section critically. Jason was clearly restless by the end, seemingly he was still waiting for the answer to what it was that I was doing. “Okay, so the total deaths were about even, fifteen predicted deaths, all accurate, and thirteen unpredicted deaths, though I wouldn't consider that a large enough margin of error to base anything off of. Both categories have ten deaths that are either old age or natural causes, both split 5 and three, but opposite; the unpredicted side has five old age and the predicted side has five natural causes. That's still not really that pronounced. However, if you add up the ages of both columns, the Predicted column has a total age that's 135 years less than the Unpredicted column.”

         “Are you now implying that the Machine is actively killing people with some demonic Machine will?”

         “No not at all, merely that we may not have considered the implications of knowing one's own death. There's no doubt that for most people, knowing it is stressful, maybe even depressing or angering, and all of those things weigh on the body heavily. A constantly stressed body is less effective at fighting illness, less focused, less able to rest, stress alone can cause high blood pressure, cause accidents to occur, any number of things. Have you thought maybe the act of getting your death readout could change your cause of death?”

         “How so?” I could tell Jason was getting restless, it seemed he was ready to be done with the conversation, so I tried my best to wrap it up quickly.

         “Let's say you have an average guy, not particularly healthy but certainly not particularly unhealthy, and let's say he should have died of old age, but the Machine prints that he will have a heart attack, in a very ambiguous way. The man then simultaneously wants to zero in on exactly what it is that is going to kill him, as well as averting his heart attack for as long as possible, once he is pretty sure that's what it is. He stresses about his diet, exercise, and even about his stress, which just causes his blood pressure to increase more and more, ultimately giving him a heart attack. Before the readout, he would have been fine, but the added stress from the readout actually caused the death.”

         “Right, well, I'm going to head home, I'll see you tomorrow.” Jason turned quickly towards his car, walking very quickly in case I had anything to add.”

         “Bye.”

         I walked the streets for a little while longer, thinking about how the Machine might work, about how sharply it had demolished the economy of the surrounding area, and wondering just how many death predictions, and subsequently how many lives it changed since its installation here. I wandered the streets for probably about an hour before the thought came into my head to visit my mother, I figured I should probably get acquainted with my demise.

         The entire drive over was thoughtless. My body drove as my mind did absolutely nothing, and this persisted all the way until I walked into the room where they kept my mother. The room was dark, a bit dreary, and held the smell of death. Not just this room specifically, but the entire facility just reeked of dying people. That said, I hadn't seen my mother in near a year and a half.

          As I turned the corner into her room, I saw the normal blank stare she had while watching TV, it was reassuring, because the last time I had seen her, she forgot most of my extended family. After that, I got scared of what was going to happen to her and I stopped showing up. It was a ridiculous decision, in retrospect, but people do crazy things when faced with death. Even if it's not their own.

         “Who are you?” She sank back into her bed and her eyes grew wide with fear. I was afraid of this exact reaction.

         “I'm your son.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she visibly depressed the switch to call the nurses. I decided it might be better to hold off on talking until a nurse could help sort this out. The nurse rushed in moments later, and stopped quickly as she noticed me. With a small nod, she moved around me and herded me into the hallway.

         “What relation are you to Laura?” She did not skip a beat, as so as we were out of earshot, she started in.

         “I'm her son.”

         “Her son? It's been well over a year since anyone has visited her, where have you been?” I decided to lie and give the easy.

         “Jail.” She nodded, and then ushered me back into my mother's room.

         “Laura, this is your son, he's here to visit you.”

         “I have a son?” My mother's ignorant, drugged response struck me like a knife. She was much further along than I had hoped, even with no medical knowledge I knew she was not long for this world.

         “Yes, I recently got back from, umm, Africa.” I lied again. What did it matter to me? She would probably forget it in an hour anyway. The nurse gave me a reassuring pat on the arm as I slowly approached the seat next to my mother's bed. She accepted the idea that I was her son, I could see this, and we talked for a few hours. She didn't have much to talk about, having forgotten most of her life, but we managed. Generally the topic on the television was what sparked conversation, and even though this entity no longer felt like my mother, it was still nice. At the end of the visiting hours for the day, I decided to bring up a fearful topic.

         “So, I got my Death Reading today.” I said this with a wavering voice, and little conviction. I had suddenly felt this was not the correct route to take, but it was too late.

         “Death Reading?”

         “Yes, there is a machine that can tell you how you're going to die from a blood sample.”

         “Seems like more trouble than it's worth.” My mother was always strong with her opinions, and it would appear even though she forgot most of herself, she didn't forget that.

         “Yes, well, I would agree. Here.” I handed her the slip of paper, “This was my readout, I was excited at first, but now I'm not feeling so great about it.” She grabbed the slip from my hand, and read it with much effort, and I could see a tear form in the eye closest to me. Opening her arms, she beckoned me toward her, and as I leaned in, she embraced my head tightly. We stayed that way for what felt like years. My entire childhood came rushing back to me from the warm embrace, and then it ended. She let my head go, and I sat back upright. I gave her a hug back, stood, and began to leave.

         “I'll see you soon, mom.” As I left the room, I noticed the nurse was still in the hallway, so I beckoned her over. “How long does she have left?”

         “Maybe a few months, it's hard to tell.” I sighed deeply and acknowledged the nurse with a slight smile before turning and leaving. That night was flood with thoughts of death, of dying like that, without dignity and without any idea that anyone cared. I didn't like it one bit, but I managed a good night's sleep somehow.

          At work the next morning, Jason approached me very quickly, with an air that expressed he had something to tell me. “We have to cover two routes today.”

         “Only two?”

         “Hilarious, yeah, twenty-eight people didn't show up today, and four are. . .”

         “Are?”

         “Well. . .four died.” I grimaced, but dismissed the thought with the idea that it would've happened anyway. Today was too special a day to worry about that sort of thing. I wore a dog collar around my neck, today was the day I took in Jack, a stray dog on my garbage route. I had a vet appointment at seven to get him his shots, and enough food to feed him for months. It was long into the day before Jason said what had clearly been on his mind all day. “So I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”

         “Yeah?”

         “Yeah, and I agree, that Machine probably causes a lot of deaths that wouldn't have occurred had the Machine not interfered.”

         “How'd you come to that decision?”

         “Well, I thought about it in the case of an accident. If I drive everywhere. . .” he paused for a second to load a bin of garbage into the back of the truck, “I'm going to be constantly stressed, “ and another, “and when I'm stressed, I can't get a minute of rest at night.”

         “That's pretty common.” A bag of trash broke as it landed in the back of the truck and splashed on my face. I turned and stood away from the truck for a few seconds.

         “Exactly, so in turn, if I'm stressing about an accident, I'm going to be tired every day, and the more tired I am, the more I'm going to stress about that accident.” The truck had started to move before I turned back and hopped on, so as I caught up, Jason extended a hand to pull me onto the back again. Once I was up, he continued. “And eventually, I will be tired enough to make an error behind the wheel, maybe falling asleep or something like that, and it will likely kill me.”

         “Yeah, sounds about right.” I was still attempting to get the taste of garbage out of my mouth as we pulled into the next neighborhood. When we started loading trash, he started up again.

         “But do you figure it could happen the other way?”

         “What do you mean?” The collar caught on a trash can and I stumbled for a second, but I caught myself.

         “Well, let's say you get a death that isn't really an accident, say you die by an STD, the Machine doesn't say which one. You get a ton of stress relief because you feel as though you don't have to watch out for an STD except when having sex, and how often is that really?” This stopped me for a second.

         “Odd choice of death.” I chuckled a bit under my breath.

         “It's just an easy example, anyway, so you drop your guard a bit, getting really relaxed with most dangerous situations, but then, one night you drunkenly decide to do blood brothers with a good friend, that friend happens to have something he doesn't know about, and you catch it. Then you are dying because you weren't stressed enough, really.” He loaded in the last bin of the street and we hopped back onto the truck.

         “Yeah, I guess that could happen too.”

         “You seem a little bit depressed, man. You usually like the philosophical talk.”

         “Yeah, I'm not so sure I'm so happy with my death anymore.” I leaned off the side of the truck to see what street we were on, it was Poplar Street. The day was looking as though it was going to be a long one.

         “Honestly, if it means Alzheimer's, I wouldn't be enthralled by it.” There was a long silence after this. To be exact, there was five streets of silence after this. “If you need anything ever, just give me a call and I'll do my best to help.”

         “Thanks, that means a lot.” We continued the day, talking about my mother and diseases and the Death Machine. We both decided that nothing good could come of that machine, that it just emphasized the impending feel of death. No matter how far off your death seemed, once you knew what it was, it felt as though it would happen tomorrow, and I was a clear indication of that. Finally, the street I had been waiting for had shown itself; Maple Street. It was the street that Jack always approached me on, and sure enough, about halfway down the street, there he was. The truck driver pulled to the side to give me time, it was our last street and we were a little bit ahead of schedule, so he could afford to allow me this.

         His silver-gray fur wavered and refracted sunlight in a perfect varying pattern. I had no idea what breed he was, but he had a very strong build for a stray. For five minutes I sat on the curb with him, and he sat right next to me the entire time, even when Jason pulled a bit of food from the truck cab. When it was time to leave, I strapped my collar around his neck with ease, and led him over to the back of the truck. The truck shifted into drive, I could hear the transmission clunk, and from the back of the truck fell a clump of lead piping. I tried my best to avert it, but it landed directly on Jack's head, though it was a glancing blow. He wavered for a second, and then half-laid down, half-fell to the ground. I heard no words from this point on, I freaked out. All I could do was sit in the street beside Jack. He was still breathing, I figured he was just unconscious and it would be a trust issue that we would get over when he came to.

         “You might want to take a step back.” Jason started in with this, but by the time he had finished, Jack had awoken, and with him, all the rage of a confused and threatened wild animal. He latched onto my throat, just hard enough to puncture the skin, but not hard enough to crush anything. I heard Jason yell something and heard his footsteps toward me, then saw him, lead pipe in hand, rushing Jack. It had already occurred to me what was about to happen, but when I tried to voice my concern, nothing but air and blood escaped my throat.

         Flipping onto my side, I saw the last bit of the battle, Jack had just torn into Jason's leg, deep, and Jason responded with a blow from the lead pipe to the side of Jack's head. Both stumbled back, both were clearly done fighting. Jason made his way over to me, and asked if I was okay. The blood trail he left was larger than mine. When he caught me looking not at him, but at said trail, he looked back as well, as realized what I had only seconds before.

         “I guess this is the end, huh?” I gave a very weak smile as opposed to nodding. He did his best to prop me up against the back of the truck, got my head elevated, at least, and also managed to grab a seat beside me. Once I was sitting up, the thought of Jack invaded suddenly, and I glanced at him. He had been standing bleeding from the head, and fading in strength fast. Without a warning, in his eyes there was one thing, concern. As he stumbled over to me, his eyes darted back and forth between Jason and me. He laid on the concrete beside my leg and placed his rather large head on my lap, and I could do nothing but pet him. Jason had gone limp a couple seconds prior, and I know that I am due to do the same very soon.

         As the last of the blood needed to keep me conscious drained from my neck, I could think only of my mother. Her laying in that hospital bed for years, with no past, and no future; she would never remember that I was supposed to see her again, or that I even existed. Within my hand, Jack's knotted fur felt like freedom, and I watched him drift away as I, myself, did the same. This was my passing moment, and it was easy to accept.

I'm Back!

I apologize for my silence for the better part of six months now, but I am back to try to entertain a couple people. I've been in an awesome mood the past two weeks (Following the worst mood I've ever been in the week prior) and I've been feeling like I might actually do sweet things. Here is a poem that I wrote today.

*Disclaimer: The poem sounds kind of sad, but trust me, it's a rejoicing poem.

And I Will See You Through a Veil of Orange
The sun breaches the bulwark of the horizon
I am nothing but a svage
writing recklessly, abandon
I have no hope of delectation.
Watch me as I burn,
a single tinge of nothingness;
you watch me as I purge.
A word alone,a  key to me,
A key to free my mind.
Existentialist at best,
At worst a sullen poet.
I break bridges of the world
to fly higher than the rest.

A unity of thought exists
somewhere, sonehow, within a box
of syllables, no meaning
tied to a wire taught.
Drifting in the oceans
of sands long forgotten.
I am but a lonely man
and this is all I've got.
A page of words
a blackened heart,
a carapace of butterflies
around a core of rock.
Beautiful at first, but
I'll leave the both of us with want.
I'll drive us mad, I promise you,
but this is all I've got.

The tragedy of life, it seems,
that i can't prove you to me;
and so i'm apathetic.
Simulated happiness
and acted bits of rage
the truth is I feel nothing
but the ticking of the clock.
Involuntarily, for sure
but overall that changes nothing.
I am still a lonely man,
and you're still a fascination.

Fuck Finals

Almost missed a final yesterday, luckily I've got a sweet professor. It's 6am, I've got another final in 8 hours, I just wrote this.

Seeping In
In the silence of my thoughts
a quiet ticking of my watch
I can hear the seconds ticking by.
The solemn siler's waning cry
averts my eyes, with fear of focus
my spine, it fizzles, cracks and pops.
I'm shutting down for good, I'm sure
but somehow I embrace it.

The dark of night seeps in around me
a crack of white sunlight breaks free
on my wall cast shadows number three
my own, a chair, below a tree.
The slightest wind rumbles the boughs,
the lip of darkness falling down.
My floor is where it makes its home
and I lay there, where light can't reach.

My bones, they crack and pop as I
awake from slumber, open eyes;
I find myself a place to hide
from the advancing of the spectral tide.
But the light, it is invasive,
and I find that I am bathed in light,
so I stand to greet the raging sun
with no fear that it will burn me.

Hello again

Feeling sweet. I cleaned my room today, and the weather is beautiful. Smiles are coming easily to me as of late, and I read through my book of poems again today. I really like this one, and I don't know why I never gave it the merit it deserved. This is the first thing I've written in a while that I can look at and say with confidence that it's a good piece.

Oh Creator
Oh Creator, I am calling, can you hear me? Are you listening?
Could you cauterize my open mind, for the culture outside is killing me?
I can't maintain this constant guise
that I'm okay with catching shit cause I attempt to be half-interesting.
Can't you make the world a tinge more colorful and lovely?
I'm tired of this black and white monotany that is this life,
I want to meet more souls who try their best to make things beautiful.
I want more blues and reds and spectral wavelengths wrapped around me,
and I want the blacks and whites to disappear from life completely.
And gold can suck a dick cause gold epitomizes greed,
and purple sends the royalty to openly oppress the freed.
Green embodies constant growth, but in the end it's constant need,
blue a sign of constant shifting and of instability,
and red is nothing but aggression, killing innocents and opposition,
those just wanting to be free.
Oh Creator, I am calling, can you hear me, are you listening?
Could it be the cadence of the population can't control the colors
deep inside our souls, and though you've made a world so beautiful and tender,
you must hide the lot of it behind the shade of black and white?
"A boring world is safe" is why the interesting are scary?
Fuck your preferences and values and your inability to let us go.
A death of colors, reds and yellows shooting out is what I'd rather
to one behind a drape of black and white that hides my soul.

Dies Irae

Found this gem while I was looking for a file I had just saved. Kind of crazy what sort of things a computer can just toss back into your life. I must have wrote this early in Fall Semester maybe? It's a fun little guy.

Would You Trade Your Brain?

I saw a boy

by the school

a textbook in his hand

a fire on the ground

I asked him why

he seemed so keen

to break the binding

rip the pages

sacrifice it to the flame.

He looked at me

with eyes so dull

and speech so sad

“I look to trade my brain

for a chance to be cool”

was not what was said

but what was heard

was what was understood

with pain.

I grabbed at his collar

and pulled him closer

sneered at his face,

he jeered at mine

silently, inwardly

but so notably.

“But your figure's so frail

inept to compete

with the trials of nature

around you.

And your perception so slim

as to pass by a being

inbound to harass you

attack you

dispatch you.

What would make you think

that your only advantage

keen mind

is something so cheap

to be burned in a pit

of paper, of glue, and of asphalt?”

The boy looked terrified

at the man in his face

as I glared back intently

desiring an answer

but none would come.

So I continued my progress

to turn this young boy.

“And would you trade

a kidney for a friend

maybe half of a liver

a lung on the side.”

The boy shook his head no

his eyes still intent

filled with life

and vitality

with no sense of the world

with no sense of regret.

“And I would guess your the sort

who is so self-involved

you'd be willing to trade

a thousand bad days

with lessons learned

for a single day

with no dilemma

no problems.

You would trade a thousand worlds

filled with creatures

so rare and beautiful

for a thousand companions

who will drift and sway

and stab your back.

But you don't know

you're just a child.”

I dropped the boy down

and stomped out his fire

left him cold and alone

in that desolate lot.

But I saw him again

a few years later

on a school day

tobacco in one hand

and a beer in the other.

So I asked him again

“Have you traded your brain

for a chance to be cool?”

A laugh was my answer

and all the I needed

for a final reprisal

a payback, an ending.

Some would say

before that day

he lacked a brain already.

I would say

I liberated a mind

imprisoned by day

confined.

The irony being

the great liberator

a book, a blunt hit to the head.

Oh my word, the color green

So spring is starting to set in finally here in Erie, there's no more snow, for about a week now probably, and the grass is growing back. The Temperatures are still lower than I would like, for the most part, but I can't complain. In compliance with how beautiful it is out, I wrote a poem about nature, with an aptly gay (and also temporary) name.

A River Gorged Through My Heart
I'm sitting on an edge
and two hundred feet below me
water torrents from the hilltops
water torrents from the snow melt
and it breaks eternal silence.
The orangish sky is fleeting
it is running form the clouds,
there's fallen trees from broken boughs,
brought on by feet of snow.
The view is mostly brown and white
sometimes green from thin spread pines;
but the palette is forgiving,
it almost hurts to look away.
And as the orange fades to red
while the moon rises behind me,
the running water's noise idly reflects
from across the cliff-side to another.
As the fading light leaves me in darkness,
a flickering red illuminates this page,
and a bath of smoke obscures it.
Momentarily, I sigh
as the sun slips down below
the stale horizon,
and I can't help but smile
as I walk back to the prison
the keeps me from this beauty.

A Present

So, I have two pieces of writing to update for today, one is a poem that I don't remember writing, and the second piece is the second part of the short story that I posted in January (for you, T-Mack). Enjoy them both because I actually like them, no matter how depressing they are.

The Man in the Midst

In my mind I see

burning buildings

shattered windows

broken bones and bleeding wounds.

Rampant hatred plagues the air

along with sorrow

and despair

and at the center of it all

sits a lonely man

grinning

watching

waiting

vacant

and this man sees the world as not a moveable thing

but an intangible force

locked into his head

his master, his warden, his worker, his slave.

With a single movement the world would rupture

break in upon itself

so the man sits still

afraid to lose all that he knows.

And he grows older

grows sadder

angrier

and edgier.

One day he decided

to step into this world

from the place that he knew

to the things that he loved

and standing

stepping

the world around him wracked as his foot fell

to the ground below.

Before his foot touched the ground

lights, as bright as stars

sounds louder than

a supernova

but he could not stop

his foot was falling, he was falling.

When he landed

he fell not on the soft grass

in the city

he knew

but on black rock

stripped bare

carcasses of buildings

stood sadly against

the foggy horizon.

The man took a step

to join the world that had

been his custom to watch.

He loved this city

this world

galaxy

universe.

But his only attempt

to become what he loved so dear

had destroyed everything that he knew.

Admittedly, pretty sad, so have this oddly inspiring post-apocalyptic piece.

Untitled

         A stretch of anguish was inked onto my face as I plummeted. The water below me gurgled with a blackness that could delve into your soul, take you apart and rearrange you. I knew this going in, why did I take the risk? What was so important?

         The thick fog of the sky refracted the sun's light in all ways, left the sky a darkish yellow sort of color. With a accents of red and maybe some purples, sort of like a sunset but this happened all day, and all over the sky. It would be a wonderful thing, except for the fact that I knew that when it came down to it, that sky was the reason I wore this mask, it was the reason I tried to lumber over the dilapidated piece of metal that had fallen across the river. That hunk of rusted-out iron that, in retrospect, could not support my weight.

         A nice, sharp piece of the metal seemed to have ripped my leg open on the way down. Sensation runs through my right side. A cold, electric sort of feeling that permeated to the deepest reaches of my bones. I could feel the blood run out, quicker than it seemed it should have. By this point, my heart had stopped. I had no saving grace, I would hit the water, and I knew that I didn't know what would happen on the other side. The lenses of my, admittedly, bulky gas mask showed but a small portion of the world around me, juts a glimpse. Even with that small amount, I knew I was fucked.

All I could think about was how far I had come since the drop, the adversities that I had survived, the discoveries that I had made. They were seemingly all for naught; I knew that this fall was a step in another direction.

         I had watched the capsule fall from the sky, from my four-story house, tens of miles from the epicenter, the drop point. At the last minute, I could hear news reporters say that we were being quarantined, that no one would be allowed out for decades. A lovely sentiment for everyone else, but for anyone effected by it, let's just say that if I were to ever meet the people that decided to quarantine us, I would get my revenge. I had so many thoughts of what I would do to them in these short weeks.

But I watched the missile hit, right at the center of the city. We all expected an explosion, but there wasn't really one. In a matter of seconds, a thick gas expanded to encapsulate the city, in almost its entirety. Here and there a man-made spire projected out from the top of the gas cloud. There were no screams from inside the city where I was, it was just silence. The gas that spread killed its victims without discretion, in mere seconds. It was such a powerful toxin, no one was expecting this sort of thing. And then the second capsule came, careening directly into the existing gas cloud. In a few minutes, the gas had taken on its yellowish color, from its previous white hue, and had began to spread. This was the last moment that I can remember not through the eyes of my gas mask. It was nothing but silence, nothing but serenity.

         Through the eyes of my mask, I sat in my house for days, watching the yellow cloud expand for the first. Watching it slowly overtake the landscape, creeping eerily toward my house. Within twelve hours it had reached my back door, and my life would, or could, never be unmasked again. My brain slowly shattered to pieces throughout the next two days, before the looters reached my neighborhood. Their slow progression into the suburbs could be seen from my hilltop. They would loot and burn down any remainder, they had no use for shelter, in their idea. They would kill anyone left in the house, steal the food, while staying in the house until all of the resources had dried up. Then they burned it to the ground. A gross misuse of common resources, but there was quite a large number of people doing it. I guess some people just go crazy during a tragedy, crazier than us normal people could even imagine.

         Normal today is certainly a word without meaning. To me, normal used to be a nine to five office job, a house in the suburbs, and a low-calorie diet. Now, normal for me is being half-naked, covered in bruises, cuts, scrapes and living by a fireside, constantly moving. I eat on odd days, usually only when I happen upon some kind of civilization. Trading has become normal, you give someone a shirt, or perhaps some sort of service, in return you receive some water, maybe some sort of soup. If you're lucky you get to eat every other day. I had a few weeks when I was lucky, and a few more where my luck couldn't have been worse.

The first weeks were rough, systems were crude still, and people were generally unwilling to trade. Everyone felt as though they had what they needed, seemingly, everyone except me. You see, the looters had gotten to my house a bit prior to when I expected, I had to leave with nothing but the clothes on my back. Even still, I barely made it out without them having my head. The streets of my suburbs were desolate, lined with either bodies or withering people. These days everyone is withering to nothing. At first, it seemed like we would be able to make it through this mess, but every day that went by was harder and harder, and it seems unlikely that anyone will make it long enough to make a difference. We would all like to see the endgame, but none of us really believe in it at this point.

         I spent the first few days after being chased out of my house feeling almost ashamed of what had occurred. I, like everyone else around just kept my head down, watched the dying die and the thriving thrive. Yes, there were certainly those sorts who seemed to flourish, at least in comparison to others around, in this desolation. People who pulled others together, created ragtag groups with a common goal. I even encountered one group that sought to rid the area of looters, but that turned into a full-fledged war. That is actually what chased me from the familiar neighborhoods that were near my house, an all-out war between two unforgiving sides. A war between sadists and paladins, but I didn't stick around long enough to see who won. The fires seemed to stop, but they could have simply moved over the hill.

         Others that flourished created little villages, communities of civilians, all trying to hold on for as long as they could. I never could figure out where they got the means to start. Most villages had crops growing, or in the very least on reserve, a decent water supply, containers, shelter. Organization seemed to arise in days, and I had trouble keeping just myself alive. These people could amass armies in a week, it just didn't make any sense to me. I've encountered a whole lot of people in my several weeks of travel, but never once have I been inclined to follow any of them, and I would have to assume that none were inclined to follow me.

         After fleeing from my area, I decided to head toward the river, yes, the one I was currently falling into. I figured that the cradle of civilization in any area was a moving water source, so that is where we would naturally start again. I had no idea that the water would be like this. Blacker than the night sky and more volatile seeming than I ever thought water could possibly be. In my first few days of being at the river, some spots where the black had not quite made it to still persisted. They were now long gone, but when they were there, you could see the multitude of rotting everything just piled on the bottom of the river. Slowly dissolving from the water in the river I assumed would allow us to regroup. The villages along the river did tend to be longer, but that's likely just because most people had the same idea as me. And in one of these villages is where I made my first critical mistake.

         It had been well over a week since I had eaten, and a man in one of the villages could see this. We both knew that he could not simply give away his food, it was a valuable resource, so we struck up a deal, my shirt for a portion of his food. This was agreed upon, and we both left happy, but that would soon change for me. I had no idea what the air did to exposed skin, It hadn't effected the tougher skin that was on my hands, and I hadn't quite noticed the effect on my neck because I couldn't see it. After a day or so of having no shirt, I started to notice that my arms were becoming slowly redder, this was the start of the end I suppose.

         I continued on my way, from village to village, trading what I could, but never again a piece of clothing. By the second day, my chest felt as though it were decently sunburned. The skin felt brittle, and flaky, and anything that touched it was painful. Not the sort of intolerable painful that makes you walk like an asshole, but enough so that it was uncomfortable to wear clothing. I noticed the change in my skin color pretty quick, and tried to find people who would be willing to trade for a shirt. The only person who was willing and able to give such a thing to me was a dying woman. She had failed to obtain a gas mask after hers had sprung a leak, and the atmosphere was slowly but surely killing her. There comes a point in your traveling after such a tragedy that you have nothing left to trade except for yourself, and on a rare occasion, perhaps a trade skill that you posses.

         It was certainly the oddest trade request I had received. I suppose that dying people like living company, and dying people with items to trade could obtain said company. It's not a very proud thing to be doing, but in these times, sometimes the warmth from another person seems like enough to subsist on. It's not, but you understand what I mean. If I had one regret about my life before the drop, it would be that I didn't take up carpentry. That would have been quite possibly the most easily trade-able skill you could have in your arsenal. Getting back to the dying woman, she insisted that I spend the night with her, and that in the morning I end her life. In return, I could have the little that was left of her stores of food, and any of her late husband's clothing. She claimed that she was done, she could no longer live in so much pain. She assured me before we started the night that everyone in the village knew what was happening, and knew not to punish me in the morning.

         It was possibly the longest night of my life. Throughout it all, my gaze drifted idly to the sharpened blade that sat in a sheath beside the bed. She wanted me to not have to get up and wake her in my gabbing the knife. She wanted the blade to be thrust in before she awoke. She viewed this as a better alternative to the coughing fits, and the slow move towards sudden and brutal insanity. I would have to agree with that sentiment, but it did not make my job any easier. I decided to set aside everything that I would be leaving with beforehand, she agreed with my reasoning that I would not want to stick around for very long. She understood exactly what she was posing, she knew exactly the dire straights that I was in.

         Her breathing was labored and heavy as I laid in the bed next to her. We had finished, she had gotten what she wanted. One last night, and I stayed in waiting for the sun to rise above the horizon, and refract its light across the thick haze. Waited as her breathing the tiniest bits more and less labored. Listened to her lungs deteriorating slowly, and listened to the toxins entering her body. About midway through the night, she rolled over, her upper body overlapping mine. Her hand fell onto my shoulder, and grasped it ever so slightly. Her emaciated body fell so lightly onto my chest it felt only like a pillow. Her face tucked into my collar, and my far hand grasped the handle of the knife in the most stressful of manners. Laying there, beneath that alive dead woman with a knife in my hand was, alarmingly, probably the most intimate moment I have had, that I can remember. It's impossible to explain the surge of emotions that coursed through my veins, or the painfulness of my grip on the knife, or the degree to which I payed attention to her wheezing and her coughing. I was waiting for one last good breath.

         After probably an hour of waiting, I heard it. It was distinct, it could have woken me up from the deepest of sleeps. I could feel her lungs fill, her heart pump one good pump of blood to the rest of her body. And at the very end of that breath, I sunk the blade in. I felt her forehead tighten on the skin of my neck, and her hand on my shoulder grasp just a little bit tighter. The blood immediately started flowing, it was useless to try to dodge it. I decided it would be better to wait for her grasp to cede, and that only took a couple of seconds. When I stood, escaping from her now cold grasp, most of my mid-section was layered with blood. I didn't care in the slightest. I assumed that this would be an odd thing, that I would feel dirty and broken, but it didn't. I felt almost happy, pleased that I could help another human being out, even if that help was helping them die a little more comfortably. Before the woman went to sleep, she told me her name was Anna.

I gathered up the couple pieces of clothing and the bit of food that I had set aside. The night before. I ate a few scraps, and buttoned a shirt onto my torso. I wouldn't help, within seconds I realized it was too late. A deep burn penetrated through my chest and back and singed, my bones and internal organs. It was too late for me, too late to try to use a shirt, in retrospect, too late to save myself.

         Every day progressed like a hellfire, every day my skin turned a bit redder, a bit more painful. Skin started to flake off in small amounts, and a few days after the fateful night, I could feel the deep-down permeation of the haze. It started with simply burning my skin, but by this point, my skin was about as burned as it would be. Now, the burn started hitting muscles, bone, organs, whatever it could reach to, every movement seemed labored and painful, but I somehow still forced myself to do it. Something inside of me seemed to believe that I could make it through this. At this point, I realize that once it starts to sink in, there is no returning. Nothing you can do will save you, not the most advanced gas mask, not the thickest padded clothing, not even the will of god. No, this was a man-made creation, this suffering was formulated in a lab somewhere and at this point there was no longer a damn thing anyone could do about it. This beast of a creation has been let loose and it will forever drift, driving men and women both into endless torment.

         There came a point when I could no longer visit civilization. The way structures looked to me and the way that people looked at me, it became all to scary. Eyes became the gazes of demons staring into my soul, houses became monstrosities that blocked the sun and the warmth. I knew that the way I saw things was not right, but I couldn't help but feel the way I did about it. Every thought was an impulse and every decision was made on a whim. I stopped eating, just simply because for some odd reason I lacked an appetite completely. My stomach always hurt, so maybe it was simply because I could not tell the difference, but either way, it doesn't change the fact I wasn't eating. Sleeping became arduous and some nights impossible. I could no longer venture into towns to find reasonable, surrounded places to sleep; the people were scary, the way they looked made me feel like I was standing above a pit of daggers, ready to fall. Instead, I took to sleeping wherever I happened to fall over for the night.

         Every time I stopped I noticed how badly my organs were screaming to me to stop whatever it was that was happening to them. I knew exactly what was occurring, but they couldn't; no brains to guide them. The haze was seeping in, and cooking them alive. My muscles were melting, I could feel it worsening every day. They would provide little protection from the haze to my insides, and eventually, the haze met them. Small holes were likely forming in the sides of my stomach, I was positive that at some point I would make a move and my stomach acid would burst from me. In the back of my head I was almost hoping for it, thinking it might be a faster way to go than this. Every morning it was a lengthy decision as to whether or not I wanted to get up. Every morning a part of my brain just told me to lay there and die, to let the earth wash over and leave me cold and empty. That thought was always stifled into the back of my head, I knew full well it would likely be easier, but something drove me forward. Some sense of misguided hope or perhaps just the instinctual drive to live as long as possible.

         Whatever it was, it brought me here, to this bridge. The thought crossed my mind that if I could leave the effected area of the blast, I could get help. I could make it to the edge of the poison drift and someone would be sitting there to pick me up, take me to a hospital, and fix me. So I walked in one direction. Said direction brought me to this fallen bridge, this contorted, rolling piece of metal that extended flaccidly across the expanse of the river. Driven by some mad desire to get better, I began climbing. It hit me about halfway across that it had been at least a week since I had food or water. A momentary lapse in concentration led to this. The rusted piece of metal I stood on collapsed, and left me careening towards the vile waters below.

         With one final play-through of my short time running around this barren landscape, and one last painful, labored twist of my body, I felt the black waters take me in. I hit like a brick, and the shockwave had my body paralyzed before I was even completely under. I was within the river's control for now, until I could move again. As my head passed below the flow, my mask filled instantly with blackness. I inhaled lungfuls of the fiery substance, and swallowed twice as much as my body regained even the slightest bit of control. After the passing of what seemed to be an eternity, my arms moved hastily to my mask. With kicking feet and ripping hands I managed to pull the mask off, and I somehow even managed to float. Unfortunately, the control of my limbs brought an unfortunate side-effect, the feeling of the water demolishing me, taking me apart piece by piece.

         I began to swim to to shore I planned to get to by crossing the bridge, everything hurt. My already-dry skin began to show legions, and slow trickles of blood popped up here and there. My vision was barely trustworthy, I could feel the water eating away at my receptors, but there was nothing I could do. My insides were aflame, moreso than they were previously. It took what seemed like days to reach the shore, but here I am now.

        I had felt no previous pain that matched the degree of this one, in scope or in debilitation. My entire body is on fire, I have been dipped in magma and left to struggle with it. My clothes, yes, without them to keep the water in, it will run right off. Take every bit off, every piece of clothing is off, lovely, what to do now. My body aches, my body is dying, what to do, what to do.

Run, run to the edge of this haze, run until they find me and help me. The land is aflame. Every step is like fire upon my body, slowly reducing me to ash.

         So I ran.

         I ran for days, months years, never looked back, but when I did, I found myself not a hundred feet from the river. I fell to my knees, there was no hope. I could feel my mind growing cloudier, my skin sizzling. With every breath I could feel the air breaking down my body, moreso now than ever, the pain permeated every pore of my body as I fell backwards onto the barren, gray earth below me. Even with my distinct lack of good eyesight, I watched the haze float by above my head, drifting in whatever direction the wind took it. I knew what the haze did, it made maniacs of men, and cowards of heroes. It reduced anyone exposed to it to a paranoid, hallucinating mass of madness, just before it choked them to death. Legions in the lungs was most common death now, the blood infiltrated through cracks and holes and drowned you. I silently mocked the haze, I knew it wouldn't get me.

         I pulled my hands in the line of my eyes one last time, exposed bone and disintegrating muscle were all that remained. With the last bit of my energy, I lifted my head to look at my body. I could see a number of my internal organs, only for a couple seconds as my vision faded to blackness. I was alone now, alone in a realm of black. I could feel the acid in my intestines working its way out from the inside, as the acid on the outside worked its way in. The pain at this point was almost non-existent, I was going into shock. I took one final breath, felt my stomach rupture, and released that breath with fervor. The world looked warmer black. 

Hopefully someone made it to the end of this

Finally

I've finally got around to posting some of the pictures up here, but I've been really really busy, so I don't feel too bad about it.

 Those windows are normally at least waist-height.

 A friend of mine atop the gorge

 Gorge from below

 James Barr #1

 Josh on Fancy Friday (I was totally fancier)

 Randy getting shit done before mid-terms

 James Barr #2

 The light in my basement

Marles Barkley

I like this one because everything except Steph moved while the shutter was open, so everything else looks like ghosts.


Admittedly, anyone looking at these has probably already seen them on Facebook, but the ones here are probably higher quality and such, or at least I would imagine they would be.

Hiatus

So yeah, I stopped posting in my blog for a little. The way I saw it, I was in physical contact with anyone who actually reads this, so an update was sort of unnecessary. Since my last post I finished my first good roll of film and got it developed, I'll upload those photos next post because right now I am tired. Good night.

Hah

Funny, the way life works. I have been inspired to write something nice lately. I have noticed that almost all of my works are either depressing, angry, or revolting, and I felt it was high time I did something that was a bit more upbeat. I spent all day just thinking of ideas that could be turned into something nice, and I couldn't help but think of terrible, awful, depressing things. A week ago, I was grasping at straws for ideas for things to write about, but now I turned down every single idea that is similar to my normal writing style. Though, I mean, it would bother me more if I felt as though I was inflicting feelings on anyone with anything I do. When it comes down to it, my works will never help somebody through something, they will never inspire anyone, they will never contribute to anything. I am a mediocre writer at best who chooses to write in tacky styles and/or about things that no one wants to read about. Like an open-mic night poet that makes everyone in the room feel uncomfortable. Nonetheless, enjoy (or at least humor me) some shitty thing I wrote.

Orchestrated Disappointment
There was a little boy who sat calmly by a creek
Every day he spent so silently, listening to the birds and listening to the trees.
The orchestrated song of nature that resounded around his head,
the rustling of the wind upon the rocks and leaves and flowing of the water.
And some days he felt inclined to try to join the beauty,
but the only sounds that rose from his throat were groans of pain and sadness.
One night he lay beside the creek and stared up toward the sky;
he saw a shooting star and wished upon it witha  twinge of hope.
His wish was not of wealth or class, but he wished only for a voice.
His intents were just to join the woods in solemn song,
but soon he would learn that wishes seldom end up well.
In the morning he felt inspired to leave the creek,
he wanted to unite the world.
His expedition started as he marched upon the city.
The words flowed so fluidly and perfectly, they seemed to have no end.
He made a thousand friends and passed through school with but a thought.
He was hired on the spot to fill the slot for global peace.
With his iron voice he set the world at ease.
At first the world remained apart, but they slowly integrated.
With help from his solid words and phrases he pulled the strings that tied the world,
strings that were perhaps a bit too strong; a steal thread run round a mouse,
and to the forefront of this unity, this universal sense of self.
Was thrust the boy who wished upon a star,
and as the boy, now turned a man, gazed upon his world of peace,
he wanted nothing but to sing along with birds and creeks and trees.

Fresh Air

This week/weekend has been externally boring. Luckily for me, there's a lot of shit going on inside, so I can sort of entertain myself by tossing my own shit around. Try being crazy sometime, it's a little bit awesome. I have this awesome little feeling the past couple of days that I am no longer in control of my life, and frankly, I don't give a fuck. It appears I am back, because lately I have been doing a lot of not giving a fuck. It's wonderful to feel apart from everything around me again, it's just how I am used to operating at this point. This weekend was the culmination of the fact that Ghana isn't happening, I don't have the money, but my dad provided an alternative, so it is very possible that I may go to Haiti over the summer. Wherever it is doesn't matter, so long as I am helping.

*Let it be known, at this point in the post, Asher Panik got a nose bleed*

So, I guess, the point anybody reads this at all is likely just by the off chance that I have written something, or maybe people actually care, or maybe nobody really reads this anymore. Any way it goes, there is one tiny little thing that I have written since last post, at least something that is not my graphic novel, which I have been doing a lot of work on. Excuse me and the fact that everything I write is seemingly untitled.

Untitled
Harbor me
until I see
the days no longer passing endlessly


Depressingly short, no? I didn't have much time to write this week. Between being pretty much deathly ill and actually having good weather a few days ago, I haven't been in one place for any length of time for a while, save my bed. Asher out.

You fucking gave me anal blood.

A rather hilarious turn of events has occurred. It would appear that me and my roommate share enough things so that when one gets sick, so does the other. This Monday, I experienced a horrible burst of being sick, and it turns out he suffered the same sickness back home (he went home for the weekend). One of the symptoms of this sickness, in an almost purposely comedic facet, happens to be bleeding out of the nether regions, among other things. When I told him I was sick on Monday, we shared symptoms, though at first neither of us mentioned this aforementioned one. I was almost forced to explain to situation to him that night however, when I decided to, at midnight, change into my oldest, most worn out underwear and my least favorite pair of pants, and after doing so, he affirmed that the same thing was happening to him. Today was more of the same, runny, clogged nose, sore throat, headache, disorientation, and of course, the red menace. I got tired of it by tonight, and my roommate came back into the room after playing hockey really drunk. After a few exchanges, he asked how my sickness was going, to which i responded "You fucking gave me anal blood." Hilarious story, as I see it.

This is the sort of thing I write when I am sick/disoriented.

Untitled
There was a little boy who sat calmly by a creek,
every day he spent so silently listening to the birds and listening to the trees.
The orchestrated song of nature that resounded around his head,
the rustling of the wind upon the rocks and leaves and the flowing of the water.
And some days he felt inclined to try to join the beauty,
but the only sounds that rose from his throat were groans of pain and sadness.
One night he lay beside the creek and stared up towards the sky;
he saw a shooting star and wished upon it with a twinge of hope.
His wish was not of wealth or class, but he wished only for a voice.
Intents of his were to join the woods in solemn song,
but soon he would learn that wishes seldom ended well.
In the morning he felt inspired to leave the creek,
he wanted to unite the world.
His expedition started as he marched upon the city.
The words flowed so fluidly and endlessly they seemed to have no end.
He made a thousand friends and passed through school with but a thought.
He was hired on the spot to fill the slot for global peace.
With his iron voice he set the world at ease,
At first the world remained apart, but they slowly integrated.
With the help of his iron voice he pulled the strings that tied the world,
string that were perhaps a bit too strong; a steel thread run round a mouse.
And to the forefront of this unity, this universal sense of self,
was pushed the boy who wished upon a star.
And as the boy, now turned a man, gazed upon his world of peace,
he wanted nothing but to sing.

Outburst

Today I punched a punching bag until every single one of my knuckles was bleeding with the arm that has a cracked scapula. Make of it what you will.

Pick your poison

        Too bad that I am smart enough to realize that drinking isn't gonna help, really. Most days I watch the people around me engaged in superfluous interactions, their lives filled with stupidity and instability, but the one thing they always seem to retain is a smile. Occasionally one of them will actually respond when I talk to them, they'll tell me that they're jealous of my head, my comprehension, but they don't understand the price that comes at. I have yet, in my life, to have the nerve to tell one of these rampant, ecstatic idiots that they can't possibly understand the awfulness that spreads throughout the body from having a full understanding of everything that is going on. The ability to see past facades, the ability to step back and judge objectively, to solve inherent problems, weigh on the person like a ton of uranium chained to your back. You can feel it killing you inside, but there's not a thing you can do to get away from it.
        Countless Times I have been told of how lucky I am to have these ability, but never once have I responded with how I truly feel. Never once have I told anyone that I am jealous of their happiness. But jealousy is an odd sort of thing. I hate everything about the way that i feel all the time, but I know enough to realize that when it came down to it, I'd rather have my intelligence than not. I would go so far as to say I might rather be worse off. Be so intelligent that I no longer lie somewhere in between humanity and pure machine, I would rather be a savant, devoid of any connection to those around me, but so utterly brilliant that an impact on the world would come easy. Funny, it seems I desire an affliction, probably, but perhaps once you've gotten past humanity, life gets easier. All humans strive for in life is happiness, ever single person is driven by the need to procreate and the desire to be happy, but look around. What are the two hardest things to accomplish in this world? Or the first world, at least? It would seemingly be a mate and true happiness. We are a species of masochists, if not sadists. And this probably all goes back to the most basic topic of this rant, intelligence. The ability to step back and see what's fucked up is not a common one, so while the majority of humanity afflicts each other with nothing but pain, I will watch from my vantage point, see how silly it is and be utterly unable to do anything about it.
         I stopped drinking yesterday, I got tired of being unable to write because I was always drunk. It is pretty clear to me which one I would rather be doing, so I'll deal with my misery sober. In the words of a close friend of mine, I am no Hemingway. Once sober, poetry seems to start sneaking out of me in small capacities, so, for the four of you, maybe, who read this blog, and probably the one that has made it this far into the post, here are both of the poems I wrote last night.

Ill-Fitting
Why is it that it seems
every movement that I make
urks the hell of those around me?
I am just another man, or so i thought.
So I can't help but entertain
ideas that I may not.
When I wlak by a crowd
every single eye looks into mine
and when I extend a hand
to reciprocate my name again,
no matter who it is,
for a time they're left bewildered.
When I sit alone a stranger never
seeks to interact.
But I find myself consistently
dropping words to those who sit alone.
And even when I throw a bone
to those in need,
to those distressed,
their nervousness beseeches me,
as if I wore a shirt of ribs
or held a femur club.
I will never understand the fact
the every human wants some interaction,
but every time I try to fill that role,
I'm given nothing but resistance.
No, I must be something different.

        I'm going to be direct about this next one, though likely no one has made it this far, it is (pretty obviously) about myself. The problem dictated is no longer what is wrong with me, but a catalyst has some hold in its outcome still. I'm paying respects.

A Tempest Tragedy
Who would've thought the man
that withstood all types and strengths of pain
would find himself a useless heap
left but to try in vain
to resist inflictions of despair
to try not to refrain
when confronted with the girl
who sat down beside him in the rain

      I would bet no one has made it this far, which is ok. If you have made it this far, I respect you for tolerating my ramblings of madness. This blog is hard to write when I know that less than four people read it, but I suppose it gives me something to put my feelings into words with.

Upswing

Well, it appears that I'm doing pretty damn good. Thanks (oddly enough for me) to the invention of drinking heavily, I am a lot more content. When I'm sober I'm happy and when I'm drunk I'm happier. It's a lovely little thing. I have been creating lately, but it hasn't been writing. I decided that since my first tattoo is just on the horizon (looks to be coming around mid-march), I decided to invest some time in that and solidify what I want. I would show you guys, but I don't have a scanner here at school, so I guess you'll see it when it is permanently attached to my body. Frankly, you would all hate it anyway, so I'd really rather you not see it until I can't do anything about it anyway. All you haters can eat a geyser of dicks. I have, despite the consumption of my time with drawing my tattoo, managed to crank out one tiny little poem, dedicated to my dorm hall and its 5000 leaks.

Untitled
It would appear to me
that this roof above my head is leaking
meant to be my shelter
from elements that try to break me.
I find myself a little lost inside this place
as the structure begins to cave,
and the elements invade.
The destruction of this aegis
has left me to see the world
just like everybody else
and admittedly, it scares me.