he says he'll make me his martyr

if i beg him,

that he'll let me feel religion 

if i let him turn the hem of my shirt inside-out,

kiss the cotton out of my mouth,

and spit fire.

he makes fists out of my fingers

until i am back alleys and barbed wire

ready to storm heaven

when his trumpet calls.

he says we were made to make god tremble,

to make kingdoms fall.

so i let his lips linger on my skin.

he tells me to give up

so i give in.

he says my kisses are penance

so i repent on silk sheets,

worshipping a faith

that's got me down on both knees.

no sleep

and the churning in my stomach 

tells me i should be asking for forgiveness,

but i've only been praying for keeps.

he drinks

the blood in my palms

instead of washing them clean,

talks vices into psalms

and scriptures into blasphemy.

i feel sin in my ribs

and him on my lips,

trying to pull purgatory

out of my hips

until i am all fire and brimstone.

i don't know if i want to believe.

he says if i give more, i'll receive,

that even if my faith shakes and my back breaks

he won't leave me alone.

i hit dead ends

and thin walls

to drown out his voice.

i pour my veins into

vessels just to hear

white noise.

he says

he'll make us legends to believe in,

that we'll do too much evil to die in vain.

he abandons me once i am his.

he never tells me his name.

I hold stones in my hands and lucidly wonder where to cast them, knowing that the direction I throw them in could effect every known dimension, and every world within them, and every known period in time for good or for bad.

I'm standing in a darkened room with seemingly no end in any direction, little dots of light, some bigger, some smaller, scattered everywhere; some small spheres floated and spun around an invisible orbit. It wasn't until I had dropped a stone by accident and heard what seemed like thousands of screams echoing inside my mind when that stone crushed one of the small floating spheres, that I realized that I was looking at the universe in miniature size, as if I was monstrously large, even larger than that of stars. And I realized that the stones that I held were Death, and that I was the Reaper, the Harvester of Worlds. With horror the stones slipped from my hand, crushing stars and worlds, even universes, and in the end causing a chain reaction that made the room explode with light, and then go completely dark.

- Michael Hall

we act as if our past can be forgotten-

as if we can just cast our memories like stones-

as long as they're thrown into the sea

the crashing waves will erase our history

but does our past really ever leave us alone?

there will always be scars beneath our broken bones

our past is here,

our past is there

our past is everywhere

we're engulfed by old memories-

transparent ghosts

hiding in our cupboards

sneaking into the pockets of our coats

my mother once told me

whenever she eats cheese fries

she always remembers her proposal date

the day he asked for her hand in marriage-

she remembers

because that's what they ate

i wonder what she thinks

when people sip their drinks from fancy china

and speak of north carolina

where he broke their unbreakable vow-

two words can slash open a dam of memories somehow

maybe she cries

maybe she dies a little inside

but all i really know is

she loves cheese fries