i miss the certainty of us.

the way that we carved our names in picnic tables,

mementos of the defiant proclamations

that we were there, we existed,

we lived loud enough to leave

parts of ourselves behind.

i still marvel at every line etched

somewhere that it shouldn't be.

in the bathroom stalls,

the worn park benches,

the railing of a bridge

overlooking a bustling freeway.

every one of them a piece

of the person who marked it.

the optimistic permanence

of the letters we leave behind.

Mortimer thought, since the day he was bought

that he was the teacher’s pet.

That he‘d hung her moon that first time he bloomed

so’s to keep her from getting wet.

She’d audibly gasped when she tickled his hasp,

and he popped his top in her hand.

(Only it wasn’t desire, but the need to stay drier

that led her to make him expand.)

But the storms were soon done. Out came the sun,

and Mortimer fell from demand.

He fought the good fight, but was velcro‘d up tight

and dropped in a hallway stand.

Forlorn and forgot, his lusts in a knot

Mortimer sagged away from neglection,

covered in dust and dry as a crust,

left to pray for a rainy erection.

But to his dismay, poor Mortimer stayed

bound up and left all alone.

Until one day the sky finely grayed

and the sun no longer shone.

The thunder rolled in, and his teacher strolled in

as the lightning flashed and flickered.

And Mortimer saw, to his horror and gall,

that the bitch was wearing a slicker?

At first glance. I knew there wasn’t a chance. I would go on, and never give it another thought. In the blink of the eye that you caught. We already had a story past. (Wink Wink) As I daydream more often than I do not. In no time at all a whole affair, I would plot. The length of which only being cut short. If something more interesting, I imagine, enticed me into instead connecting those dots.

I know what you’re thinking. And where your thoughts, take you when your mind is not otherwise engaged. In more critical ways. (Wink Wink) Those dreams of grandeur we all entertain. Devoid of the failures that have left our realities stained. You got a pay to play it no longer pains me to say. Comes with the territory. Storytellers explore paradise and purgatory. One can’t be ignored.

We are not so different you and I. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last to fall for, or tell any number of lies. I’ve been your age. Took the same pages. Out of the same book. Fell for the same traps. And was left wearing a similar look. Jaw on the floor. Surprised and feeling like a total rook.

We are all at times consumed by thoughts, lustful, loving, lurid, hateful, thoughtful, and/or loathsome, etc. etc. But only admit to having had a smattering of the most pedestrian. Shaking off anyone suggesting going into any length describing the darkest. Thoughts considered so outrageous and shameful. We‘d never allow ourselves to be heard speaking of such out loud. Afraid they’d be attached to forever thereafter.

So we’ve come to recognize an awkward wink. As all on need do to describe. An innumerable number of embarrassing and unspeakable thoughts. Because all that wink is said to define. Is just as easily denied. (Wink) Says it all in the awkward blink of an eye.

Today was Friday, it was one unending chaos in my mind. I spent the whole day thinking it was Thursday, and I don’t know why it’s such an unsettling feeling to realize you have been living the wrong day, but it is.

I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch, and have been doing that for a while. Yet I feel sicker and look worse. Is it my eyes or my body that’s changed? But it’s a game, a competition, keeping it to myself.

You sit on the floor around my bathroom door between the carpet and tile, like edging on entering. Like preparing to escape when needed. I am putting on layers and layers of different obnoxious lipstick shades, because I own them and never wear them.

You tell me all the things I “must be feeling” in your condescending tone. when I answer with silence, you change strategies. “Well I can’t read your mind. Communicate”.

this feels like a bad dream, like I am being fed lines, and there is nothing else to say. Like I already know what happens and have to let it play out. So I say what I do every Friday to you.

“I am just making it through the day the best that I can.”

The lipsticks are bleeding into each other. I like to think this is a once in a lifetime color combination on my lips right now. I could be kissing someone and pressing this unique shade along their cheeks.

You are pulling open my drawer of pills. “What the hell. It’s like you’re a pill bottle hoarder. These are all empty, why?”

I look into my own eyes in the mirror. She doesn’t look real. What is our next line?

“Oh, I am keeping track of all the meds I‘ve taken. the dates are on the bottles. It’s just helpful for organizing.”

You don’t need to know that they are collecting in that drawer until I can string them on a rope and hang them like decor. It’ll make a real statement: “I’m in pain!”

You shut the drawer making a tsk sound with your mouth. And you run a finger across the surface of my baseboards. I hate when you do that, as if the dust is testament of my failure. in the mirror I give myself a resolute nod, and remind myself I am not a homemaker. I am not my mother. I don’t need to clean my baseboards. But the reminders aren’t helping.

As I am rolling the tubes of lipstick back in color order, I can feel you behind me standing up. Walking around my apartment to observe things. My dusty books, the half-written journals jotted with angry handwriting, empty crusted-over bottles. These socks I have worn for three days, the holes stretching in them. Me.

We are all under your scrutiny.

I feel like a slimy specimen between two panes of glass, under a microscope. I feel like a germ or a mold, something you watch with disgusted fascination as it rots. You make me feel this way, and you do it every Friday.

When I watch my smeared mouth in the mirror, I wonder if it will open of its own accord and tell you how much I hate Fridays and you. Your eyes are lingering behind my shoulder still, waiting for the first mistake to be uttered. But if I speak or remain silent, I’m already in the wrong. I have already failed you with my existence.

I'm not asking you to save me, but maybe just turn your eyes away.

i like to stand in front

of the mirror

stand up/sit down/stand up/sit down

and watch the light die in my own eyes.

fasinating,

that buzz

of human consciousness before the deafening crack

the string

of tightness in our chest-

stretch stretch snap

the psychedelic colors,

my blood

like lsd bouncing blue blue black

In simple stop watch

calculation,

One hour is 60 minutes

. . . .is 3600 seconds. . . .

3600000 milliseconds.

But 5 minutes added,

here and there

throughout the 24

in a day,

is Twice that.

I'll ponder That.

Next time,

I'm thinking

of melted snow

in July. . . .

on a sailboat

out the window

in Greenland harbor.

05.28.2023

An hour challenge @JohnAulus

After many hours, many long dark hours, something like consciousness returned, and I began to try to make sense of what had happened. They are still cleaning scrubbing the floors and ceiling from our remains. i was a mess.

I recall in my teens crying into pillowcases, whenever something grave would happen, fearing that God was finally taking my death wish seriously and issuing it always at the worst possible moment, when things were starting to go alright... But then it dawned in the morning, that it was only farce, construed to make one pathetic and humbled in hindsight. As it be, we know not what we want, but blunder like mules in the dark with our shadow burdens along the pathologic. While I pulled my soul together, following the most recent pyrotechnics, I saw that you read my letters by the firelight... and cried. Though no sadness contained therein... to be sure only a sharing of thoughts. All four binders in one night! I was truly impressed.

The pages add up night after night of letter writing. I was delusional, even then; i appreciate your leading me back to my essay in Prose on evil. Haha! that bit about having snapped long ago, or long before, made me laugh out loud at this self, and as luck would have it, the irony of life. You've been examining iron fists lately yourself.

That is the box.

I had a fantasy. Yes i. I went behind the Iron Curtain. I wandered the Old City, a place I vowed not to go back to, though it was not me who had been there before. So, notion in itself, this a great breaking of barriers. I spoke there with one renown Alexander Luria. I had always thought that having stores of miscellaneous knowledge readily at hand (as to names, numbers, dates, events, whatnots of historical significance) were hallmarks of high intellect and in any case utilitarian in conviction to build an argument in conversation... he blah-hah-ed it as mnemonics (memorization requiring applications that even the average might attain results in...). The vagueness of my thinking he applauded as leaving room for doubt and inquiry (he was a neuro pathologist) and reminded me that in last materialization i was born in the year of the Solidarity Movement and Postmodernism, fragments which had drilled into my psyche the importance of "having a concept." I was comforted for an undefined moment. But I walked away from our tête-à-tête over thé with a fire under foot none the wiser, staring into my calloused palms seeing no concept... only empty hands.

You see how pragmatic my imaginings! i quote Voltaire: "Everyman is guilty of all the good he didn't do."

Failing to act, failing to act that is the phantom spur of the artist. And yet, i recall the wisdom underscored in the sacred texts:

BG 4.18: Those who see action in inaction and inaction in action are truly wise amongst humans. Although performing all kinds of actions, they are yogis and masters of all their actions. The Bhagadava Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 18.

That must be why i am so committed to understanding the wasting of Time.

A thing which i know we are beyond. Thx for transcribing thoughts with me <3U

Waves

Your love

Washes over me like a wave.

Its intoxicating how cold you feel

So, I decide to go deeper.

Step by step,

you rise, caressing my waist.

Inviting me closer to your heart.

And so,

I listen.

Watching as your surface breaks,

crashing in and out of the sand.

Swimming in an ocean so blue,

Gods in the sky wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Because they aren’t the ones who are drowning,

Gasping for air

Just a message in a Bottle

Sinking to the floor.

Vices

I find myself staring at the mirror,

wondering if we are who we see inside.

our eyes are some distant screen

viewing life as some series

with yearly season releases.

Life is life and yet it feels as if

we are subscribing to a plan

with no terms and conditions,

only hidden fees

at a fixed interest rate.

The streets we’ve once made

Are crumbling with every step

We’ve taken towards humanity.

Chaos is the new religion

And hashtags are the new apostles

spreading the word.

What can we trust

if not what’s in front of our eyes?

Would God have a filter

If she had her picture taken and posted online?

We stumble through a city

Hellbent on an apocalyptic thirst.

Injecting our dreams and fears

With double tapping hearts.

Who should we blame

If we decide our vices?

We sell our souls

Our vices so priceless.

Modern Day Religion

Would Jesus forgive our sins,

If he held a cellphone in his hands today?

Would he swipe away on Insta

And like every Mary Magdalene along his way?

Or would he be like every other sinner

He chose to save,

And pull out his phone and start recording

His reflective crucifixion?

How can we love our neighbors

When their death gets us the most views

Most sell their souls online

Hopping in line, waiting in queues.

If belief is word of mouth

then why are there temples of gold

Followers of God

The quickest to be sold

Is a crown of thorns

heavier than your phone?

Or does it weigh more than

The forgotten books of old

A book of beliefs

rewritten a thousand times,

would the souls taken

by these words

be saved by something so divine.

Let us pray,

Amen.