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