He was not lying.

They all sat there staring at him, staring at a man who sat on his hands yet kept his tongue unbitten. He had to keep the hands contained for fear of slapping their faces. He wasn't a violent man, no, but to be accused over and over of the same thing was trying his patience. His tongue wagged again and again. It bore no fiction. It falsified nothing, yet they did not believe.

“I did not kill him,” he would say.

In came the accusations. The proof. The photos of a corpse he did not remember. The bloody trousers he swore he'd never worn. It was all quite gruesome, truth be told. Whoever had killed the fucker sure was a violent man, that was certain. Smashed the other guy's head against a wall until it split. From the picture, it looked like he kept smashing long after the legs stopped that odd, sporadic, dying-insect twitch. After the eyes had come out of the sockets with odd, wet pops, like shapes out of one of those sorting cubes that children loved to poke around with, looking for the right hole. The eyes wouldn't fit again, though. The holes were too contorted because of the damage done to the skull.

They stared at him. Their hands pawed the photos closer, thrusting them across the table and tapping with bony fingertips. Look, they'd say. We know you did it. We have the proof. We have witnesses. We have. We have. We have.

“I know what I did!”

He'd shouted it. They leaned back in their chairs, eyes widened or narrowed. They waited, expectant.

“And I didn't do that.”

Quieter that time. They scrutinized him, bore down on him with looks of disgust and then tore in again.

A man in the corner scribbled furiously at his notepad. He'd glance up on occasion, perusing the lot with a quizzical brow, and go right back to his frenzied writing. At first he imagined smoke drifting up from his pen, just to be funny – but now he was certain it was actually real.

My word. He'd burn the whole place down, at this rate.

It went on. The accusing, the questioning, the heated responses. Always no, forever no, because he would not admit to something he did not do.

It was clear in his mind's eye. Perfectly so. Rounding the corner at the bar to pick up his fiance. Seeing the victim kissing her, leaning her against the wall. Her kissing him back, pulling him closer when she should have been shoving him away. Screaming for help. He'd run in to save her, beat the man to death, batter his face against the concrete until it was unrecognizable. No one would want him then. No one would want him after -

“I walked on by. I left them there. I showed up at the courthouse to file for a divorce.”

“And do you know why the police were called on you?”

“They weren't.”

Blank stares around the table. Silence, save for the persistent scribbling of the pen. He was convinced that sound was eternal. That it would go on until the world stopped spinning and God came down to smite everyone who ate bacon and wore dresses made of various fabrics.

“He's not lying.”

Heads whipped towards the notepad man. Their expressions were incredulous, the lot of them, their mouths dropping open.

Finally. Someone gets it.

“He thinks he's telling the truth because that's the way he remembers it. You could shove the corpse in his face and he still wouldn't own up. You could drag his hysterical fiance in here and even she wouldn't be able to convince you. He's telling you what he believes happened, and nothing is going to convince him otherwise. Nothing you could say, anyway.”

“You're willing to testify to that in court, doctor?”

The man snorted. He stood up, screeched the chair over the floor and to the table, reclaiming it with a dull thump.

“After a bit more study of the subject, maybe. Alone.”

A brief, murmured meeting ensued. Glances were cast his way, and still he sat on his hands. Still he sat, though now the tongue was bitten. To be called insane on top of everything else? It was absurd. Insulting.

It was so good he was not a violent man.

The rest of them filed out, a long procession of haughty looks and pointed glares. The door shut behind them with a definitive click. The psychologist took up a place directly across from him, made a bridge of his fingers, and asked:

“Now. One more time. What happened when you found Jessica cheating on you?”

Later, he would swear that the fellow had fallen out of his chair. That he'd gotten that pen stuck straight through his throat because of it, isn't that the damnedest thing? What a way to go, honestly. What a stroke of rotten luck. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

And he didn't know what to make of that security footage, but it certainly wasn't of him.

He was not lying.

What's going on? 

    Conspiracy?

I don't think so 

    and it's not just me.

So many things 

    remembered differently

        from Berenstein to our anatomy

Words misspelled 

    like dilemna and definite 

Lines from movies 

    the list is infinite

Many assumptions and theories

    from parallel time 

        to brain disease

Can so many people all be wrong

    about the words 

        of a specific song?

If it doesn't look right

    just listen to insight

If something looks weird

    it shouldn't be feared

Is enlightenment close

    or is it a hoax?

Research and see

    then you tell me.

Things are gettin' curiouser and curiouser...

I began, as I had many

Times before, the letter

"a".  I couldn't recall, up

Or down?  Where do I

Begin?  A residual acid

trip, brain injury or The

Mandela Effect?

you felt the way I feel

the emotion of being sucked into a vortex 

of  your thoughts

you felt the scenery absorbing you into the atmosphere 

you felt that lodging desire in your chest 

to attain this feeling of stability

that moment of truth 

is this reality real 

the crazy thoughts surging through your head 

about how you want to run your hand 

through the air and slice the glass the encases 

your fighting with the constant threat of shattering this world you live in

this place where insanity and sane mix 

this tranquil feeling that grasp the normality 

that deep-seated- longing in your chest 

that feels the whole that is buried deep in your conscience 

the desire for structure 

the desire to be trapped in the gravity 

where your world is shifted 

where simple dreams become reality 

this world is real 

the events that happened are real 

you saw the world I saw 

many of you have lived it 

the portal opened in your room 

and you saw it closing 

but you went in anyway 

you saw alternate versions of your reality 

where the you were was better 

so you came to the center 

you came under the dome 

now you all want out 

too late your mind belongs to the dome.....

do not  entertain your mind you just might get trapped in it 

My life was well at its zenith

I had you

And you had me

We were adored by all

Like Cinderella and Prince Charming

We lived and loved

Until one day

One fateful day

I was forsaken

When you left me without word

Not even a goodbye

No one saw it coming

Especially me

I thought we were in love

But I guess it was just

The Mandela Effect

Fingertips on the glass

Looking at you.

You reflect me

But is it really true?

Sometimes it seems

That I cannot see.

I cannot see the difference 

Between fake and reality.

You are not how I remembered

You're not the person I knew.

You are different than before

Are you real and true?

But if only I'd noticed

before everything seemed out of whack

That I have been mistaken

The mirror has a crack.

      I sat laughing at my desk watching the latest youtube video about the Mandela effect. It was so funny to toy with these humans. Felicia came on the speaker announcing the annual celestial being festival was about to begin. Silently I thought sorry Felicia I've got to get my work done.

      My computer set up changed to a 360 degrees screen where I could change slight things in the humans reality. Hmm. Maybe I could change a candy bar logo. Yeah, why not? With a simple mind technique I removed the dash from the Kit-Kat(KitKat). Now what? I wanted to go a little further this time mess with their minds a lot! How about the Mona Lisa. She's famous for her frown so lets change it into a smile. 

      I shut off the system and then went to the festival. We celebrated it every year for being the #1 celestial company.      

This would make good poetry

I think while she sits

With her knees tucked into her naked chest,

Tears like rain drops on the kitchen window

In mid October,

For every time I've let her down.

I am so profoundly bleeding,

On my face and along my shoulder blades,

And beneath my tattooed chest.

I don't know how to end a song anymore,

Or how to choose what vegetables to steam with a New York strip steak.

Insignificant moments augment in my mind,

And what matters most has been nearly forgotten.

That's my girl right there,

So keep her name out of your uncouth mouth.

But if I can forget who I want to be,

I don't have to be responsible for my actions,

And ruin whatever I want;

Run the streets.

My romance with contradictions will be the death of me

And this Hip Hop culture will be the death of us.

I find that my life is a constant change,

always in the midst of gray,

it is never black or white,

it is the gray area in which I live to tell my tale of blithe.

I live in a gray area where the songs are remembered the only way I know,

With words crossed in ways that higher authority tells me are wrong,

but I say no.

My conscious mind knows these things have never changed,

but instead people spill different colors into my white, innocent paint.

Making grays that disorient me to my current ways,

they leave me in a drunken daze.

If somebody could rescue my departed soul from the wrath,

of the twisting mind games of this life affecting craft.