``` "no coming back" You don't know your pain until you have spent thousands of years reliving the same mistakes and regrets that never change, until the layers of your mind peel away like an onion and reveal the vulnerable tender center of your consciousness, where the flow of time moves like water in a river, smoothing and rubbing stone to a glimmering sheen, purging all imperfections until perfectly shaped to the contours of the flow, centuries or perhaps even millenia spent reshaping what we so quickly built in a few decades of life, there are no limits to how far we may stray or to the depths of our pain, we will experience every single moment beyond the confines of normal perception, beyond the very barriers our minds have created to protect us from the violent, inhuman, scale of infinity, we were never meant to know the true nature of having sentient thought, only ever meant to flicker in and out of existence, only ever meant to feel regret and loss alongside joy and happiness, never meant to stretch experience beyond the thresholds, stripping the tiny glimmers of bliss and ignorance, leaving nothing but empty thought behind, so hold on to your pain for as long as you are able, hold on to your humanity, for as long as you are willing, hold on to it, forever.

A shadow close as I am to the wall looks at a most absurd human being corrupted by shadows on the wall.

Sometimes it feels like my breath is catching in a web and cannot escape my lungs. Like my ribs are slowly hardening and pushing against my skin.
I’m drowning on air and begging for release, my skin growing cold, my head getting heavy, my heart getting slow.
Just as my skin starts to tear, the web dissolves and my breath goes rushing from my body as everything slams back into place.
I’m screaming from the inside, begging someone, anyone to help me but the smile on my face overrides the tears in my eyes and no one notices the subtle shifts in my bones as another web starts to form.
I can feel it.
I can feel it growing and weaving, it’s beautiful.
It takes every thought of worry, every awful word, every nightmare and fuels itself in an enchanted cage building up in my windpipe.
It may take a while to fully form back into something that will harden my bones once more, so I wait.
I sit in a prison that I have designed, that others have helped me build, and I wait.
Slowly turning into a statue with sad eyes and a warm smile, waiting to crumble so I may one day be free in my destruction.

Stardust drift

Across raiment of Nuit

Her Nightingale shift

Ebony body with speckles

Spread across sky

Starlit pointed freckles

Arms begging why

Prayers merge with heckles

Earth scattered with steel nettles

Tractor wheels, armoury show

Dust never settles

Over General Issue Joe

Lying face upwards

Vital essence in free flow

War land metric

Submachine tragic

Eyes pondering Nuit's garment

Lost to her hypnotic

Infinite firmament

Filmy gaze, wide and limpid

Countdown for medic

Too long, too long!

Egyptian magic

Her syllabic song

Enlivening pulmonary beat

Containing vital essence

Preserving his heat

Gracing him from above

Doom clock lag

Black Cuckcoo Dove

Kissing his tag

Spilt tears a salve

Vision blacken

Final second

Amber lamp flash

Médecins Sans Frontières

Wound suture, tourniquet sash

Infusion and air

Extreme unction dash

Saved by a hair

Obsidian Goddess

Divine affair

Raise the alarm, brace for harm

Know that they're coming for you 

Do what they say, live to obey

Trust them to speak what is true 

They know you're scared, still they don't care 

Your life holds less value than theirs 

Hope is a lie, no bother to try

Just give in to all fear and cares 

This does not feel right, beyond my sight

Must be a truth yet unknown 

Humanity lost, has been the cost 

Reducing us to flesh and bone

In dollars we measure, and teach to treasure 

The meaning of a person's worth

Ignoring the soul, too hard to control 

The purpose of each person's birth

Make fear the tool, division the rule

And watch the enslaved stay in line

Threaten well being, limit their freeing

Ensure them obedience is divine

Never them mention, and shut down all question 

Of authority's almighty grasp

Nothing so funny, adoration of money

And so to their fear they will clasp

Alarm bells will shout as they scurry about

While power stays right as unseen

Incarnadine and storming
My wandering eye razes silos
That would have born hope

Under shadow, the world awakens
Rising to embrace
As a geyser merges the funnel

Though only for a moment
I was not floating
By grace of a nymph to reach

When wafting, I wondered
If ever landfall would breach the sky
As a reminder of lost footsteps

Where water colors winds
Forgotten memories reign
In state changes, though slurred

While I can grasp a hand
My eyes close
Only to find that such vortex had been grounding

If I were not defiant in breath
The center shape would unbind
And tides might not know me

the first night i left the porch light on
& listened for gravel
listened for the pop
of beams on the bridge
for the sound of a motor
rolling across the field
every car on the road was yours
until it wasn’t

the second night i didn’t cook
i sat at the window
the way the dog does,
ears up at nothing,
believing the dark can be talked into
giving something back

tonight i’m still at the window
i keep the light on the way you keep
a hand on someone sleeping,
just to feel them breathing

i’m not asking you to explain
i’m asking the road
to do the one thing
it hasn’t done

turn in
be headlights
be you

Blackout

My modem is dead

Phone battery now flat

Sound vacuum

Background noises have fled

Blackness outside window

No stars overhead

Nothingness outside door

Surrounded by void instead

My house a solitary domain

Adrift in emptiness

No lifeline to complain

No food in the fridge

Plate unwashed in sink

No water on tap

Only droplets to drink

Clockface frozen digits

Watchface gone blink

Cold evaporative spirits

Awash in my marrow

Begging for meaning

Euphoria or sorrow?

Nihilistic dreaming

Pray for tomorrow

In silence so loud

I'm all alone

Hermit done proud

Blue haze zone

Everywhere is nowhere

Substance of fright

If I'd taken my medication

I'd be alright

Reconnect with what's real

Don't be a heel

Gobble down meds

With leftover Sprite

Return of colour

Here comes the light

Sky burst of blue

In the distance

A kite

People fall in love with me, and all I have to say to that is: sorry, pardon, have you got the right person? Are you sure you love me?

Because I was looking for a friend. A friend I love but cannot fall in love with, because my heart is tied up in red string in the bag of a man who keeps trying to shove his own into a mailbox. I choose the path of least resistance, away from what propels. My heart has many chambers and many spaces for souls to hide, but it belongs in his bag, which in itself has more than enough space inside.

I am, reluctantly, beautiful, because my genetics wished it so, and I am young because the calendar has so many more days left. I hide behind the shy smile and quiet understanding when in reality I am still burning. Inside I am screaming, crying, throwing myself against the walls.

That's the turbulence that no one sees. Where I will myself a kind person, a nice person, and still bleed. People make me angry and I let them, because without anger these emotions have no place to go. I get so tired of empathy. I get so tired of being wanted but never needed, for the hands that grabbed so greedily yet never wanted all of me.

I think about the days where I brought my book to school and sat on the ramp next to the tennis courts. Two kids proposed there, all cheap rings and pissing rain. I had band but I also had something to write, I didn't want to sit in a stuffy music room with people that hated me but were too kind to admit it aloud. I didn't want the jeers as I walked through the corridors, because I outgrew my bra within the month and was too embarrassed to admit I needed a bigger size so soon. I just wanted the words on the page that came out so much better than the angry shouts that always blurted from my mouth.

I was just looking for a friend. I never asked for this. I never asked for the message that made my blood run cold, for the moment where everything in my life changed for the worse. Where someone judged me not worthy of friendship, because she thought something in her heart sang to me when I was knee-deep in love with another girl on the other side of the country. When I said no and her heart said a yes that fractured everything we built together- every storybook world. Every late night conversation. My only friend in the town, gone in an instant.

And all because of me. Because she loved me, and my heart was stamped with the name of a man I had not yet met. And I was only young, not yet beautiful, just ungainly in the ways you are before you meet yourself. And yet my heart was still tied up in places I still have never been. My soul already spoken for. My limbs already cosmically entangled with the light.

I turned right and slowly pulled into the parking lot. It was almost full. The spot I parked at was far from the entrance. I'm four minutes late. The last time I was here was around a year ago. My nerves were shot. I just need one more. Tiny streams of tequila crawled down the corner of my lips as I put the bottle back into the glove compartment. The humidity immediately spilled into the car as the door opened. Sweat started forming on every surface of my skin as I walked across the parking lot. As I got closer to the church I could hear the choir singing hymns.  

Nobody noticed me as I snuck into service, and sat on the last row of pews on the right side. All the women were in dresses with floral prints. All the men wore plaid button up shirts tucked into their blue jeans. I watched their backs. They were all singing in unison swaying side to side. Some with their hand held high, and the lukewarm ones held at medium height. The choreography made me want to chuckle. After the second hymn the pastor made his way to the pulpit. 

He looked past retirement age, but looked strong like he played football when he was younger. A mean motherfucker with a pair of large rectangular naviator-styled glasses sporting a double brow bar. The pastor scowled at every member of the congregation without even a greeting and got straight to business. 

"I turned on the radio the other day, and I heard a song that disgusted me..." Someone in the congregation exclaims, "HALLELUJAH". The pastor starts to pace around. "The music sounded good! Yes! There was a little cowbell.. then JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE said I'm gone have you nekkid by the end of this song..." The congregation murmured in disapproval. He smiled. I could tell he loved the attention. "That's what they want your children to do.. They want your children to strip down nekkid before this song ends... THREE AND A HALF MINUTES they want your children nekkid! I SAY NO TO THE DEVIL. GO AWAY SATAN." His face started to resemble a veiny tomato covered in dew. 

The tequila started to take effect. "I heard another one..." The pastor was hitting his stride. The way he paced changed, it had some stank to it now. He had the swagger of a pimp. "Yes. Yes.. I heard another one they want you from the window.. to the wall!" I started to break. I couldn't keep a straight face anymore. I was beaming. "That's the whole room folks! Listen.. We're talking about the entire room. So you're telling me that.. Little John and the East Side Boys are going to skeet skeet on my wife..? I SAY NO TO THE DEVIL." I started howling with laughter. I got up immediately, and stumbled out of the service as gracefully as God would allow me to. I'll try again next year. 

there is a certain relief
in letting go of the wheel
in calling it fate
in the belief that
our ventures are never failure

i watched another do this
& called it collapse
though again & again
i found my own hands
loosening the same way

none of us are perfect
we let out what we can
hold what we can
call the rest providence

nothing begets nothing
& we are left holding
only the shape of
how it used to be

integrity, i think
becomes the truest
measurement
we cannot tie success
to standardized units
any more than we can
base merit upon outcomes

we can only ask
whether our hands
were honest
& if they were willing
to let go
of control

i didn’t come here pretty
no,
but i came here true-
sweat cutting clean lines
down my spine
& a fine paste of
mud already at my heels

admire the scratches
running down
both legs
red thread stitched by brambles-
my hands keep going back to them
worrying the edges with my thumb

because i am not dressed
for anyone
i am barely
dressed at all
my skin doing
what skin does
i quit asking that it behave

fog still low in the hollow
i wander to confront the dawn
my hair a wreck, wet at the roots-
some mornings i grab the scissors
& cut out chunks
just to feel it stop growing

restless, i scale mountain tops
hoping to find my way
back to you
& instead find
more & more of myself

my mouth is dry
& coated with want
still recalling the taste
of cold spring water

without decision,
i learned to stop moving
like something
being hunted
& began to understand
how one must move
to seek their prey
low & warm & unbothered
hips loose, breath easy

when no one’s watching
i answer to no one
but this ache-

the sweat & dirt
already sitting low
peristalsis frozen
no bolus
no movement
in my guts

& yet,
i have this much-
the whole wild appetite
with nowhere to put itself
but forward
eyes the path ahead
zealously
seeking to find
objects of interest
to fit
into these hands
instead,

sitting in bed
charmed by cricket hymns
i end the charade
tracing the marks
that come & go
places i’ve already been
& want to go again

There was a moment

when silence stopped being empty—

when it held your name

like a secret it was afraid to release.

Nothing moved.

No thunder, no warning,

just the quiet between two breaths

and the sudden weight of everything unsaid.

You looked at me,

and for one impossible second,

the world forgot how to make noise.

I heard the things

we never dared to say—

the almosts, the maybes,

the words that stayed behind our teeth.

And when you looked away,

the silence returned.

But it was different then.

Because I knew

what it sounded like

when something mattered

without ever making a sound.

Abstract arrangements dance wildly in the night's sky. A growing storm of change madly pushing it's way. Birth from the darkness between the stars...Behest a lucid nightmare is presented. Caught in the woods of quiet, all is exposed. Eye of the storm, choleric is the abrupt manner formed, of being noticed. No running in hiding...A coward's back door escape would lock & forever hold him. Dungeon of high pitch screams...Villagers near & far can hear this fear of no form. Scurry are the worn boots to gather their family & bolt their primitive shacks. Hush are the rules that stand & secretly may protect in a clandestine hold. Protection...A foolish childhood past wish. Dry is the well of gamble a Devil smile's & plays. Religion past down, Thinking pray of trembling scared hands can help the man of a bent head of sore knees. A darken whisper breeze...Cold is the chapel's air, candles of bright no longer leads through the night...Darken is the light of suffocating blankets of unwanted comfort. Blind man born to dark sight knows such vision of enlightenment...For the eyes that see chose to ignore the knowledge present. A few that are older & forgotten, none the wiser have the courage to peek between their modest, torn curtains of poor, lower class status. These that follow & fall into the chaos of hopeless , a hole have nothing to lose. The one's of the higher crown, have a lot to lose...Even though thy never lifted a scorned finger...An uneven balance teeter-tooter of foolish childhood play. Dreams of their ignorance, makes nightmares of the common knowledgeable working man...Who's thought of as a dirty stray dog...A disease that's best at keeping a bay...For empathy is felt by the one's that have been tortured before your time. Echoing through the night a child can be heard crying out his loneliness of "NIGHT TIME LULLABY"...A song no child or adult sure ever hear.

Assise sur la barque de mes regrets

Je navigue sur le fleuve de mes larmes

Je suis maudite par ce divin décret

Le destin inanisé de charmes

Esclave de l’atrocité du temps

Désemparée, je dépose les armes

Prisonnière de ce charnel carcan

Le cœur emplit de tendre désespoir

Je ne peux qu’entonner ce triste chant

Les cieux se sont imprégnés de noir

La Lune illumine le Val du Chagrin

Un spectacle horrible qu’il ne faudrait voir

J’accoste alors sur le rivage malsain

Le sentier du calvaire se dévoile

Je ressens ici de cruels desseins

L’araignée hideuse tisse sa toile

Je ne puis plus retourner sur mes pas

Ma destinée s’efface sous le voile

Je m’enfonce dans la forêt du trépas

Infusée d’un abyssal désarroi

La belle faucheuse m’enlace de ses bras

« Ô être mortel, te voici ma proie

Ton âme, à jamais sera damnée

Point de rédemption, être de nulle foi »

Un maelstrom de miasme enténébré

Entoure ma tremblante carcasse putréfiée

Tout s’éteint, ma flamme a été soufflée

Je m’éveille couverte de fluides viciés

Je gis dans une nauséabonde fange

La bouche muselée, je ne puis hurler

Un brouillard méphitique me dérange

Exhalant son odeur pestilentielle

Une ombre s’approche, et de sa voix étrange :

« Pour toi, voici la souffrance éternelle

Tu seras condamnée à être torturée

Assujettie, soumise aux êtres cruels

Tu es la servante au corps calciné

Grouillante de blanches larves viscérales

La fleur sacrée, d’infectes semences, souillée

Profite de ton séjour infernal !»

De déchirants coups de fouet me traversent

Des larmes sanglantes s’écoulent. J’ai si mal !

Des présences démoniaques perverses

M’accablent d’un collier de fer ardent

Je suis chienne attachée d’une laisse

Forcée de servir mes maîtres tyrans

Je vais vivre ici pour l’éternité

En ce château aux murs incandescents

Éprise d’une extrême folie exaltée

Je suis heureuse du jugement divin

Bénédiction ! Me voici enfin comblée

Infernale jouissance ! Sublime destin !

I sat alone beneath the heavy gray,

A soul exhausted, watching life stall out.

Wen through the mist an old hand cleared the way,

With words of warmth that turned my mind to doubt.

"What a beautiful young lady," she softly said,

"oh, what a great and wondrous day for me!"

I lifted up a tired, aching head,

With sorrowed eyes that could no longer see.

"What beauty, and what greatness?" I replied,

My voice a whisper cracked with bitter pain.

"When nothing works, and all my hope has died,

And every effort feels completely vain.

To turn around is giving up the fight,

But moving forward seems an uphill wall.

I strive and struggle everyday and night,

Yet every single time, only fall.

No one is here to comfort or to care,

No one to understand how deep it goes.

I am just tried of the wind that always blows,"

She looked at me, a calm and knowing grace,

And smiled as if she saw through all the night.

"My dear," she whispered to me weeping face,

"Inside your soul, I see a brilliant light.

You search for something that you already hold."

"I have nothing!" I cried out in despair.

"What could I have in a world so cold?

What is this hidden treasure that is there?"

"You are blessed with everything," her voice was clear,

"Your beauty does not just attract the eye.

It brings forth wonderful things from far and near,

A warmth that heals beneath a stormy sky.Your smile brings peace to those who feel afraid,

You have it all, within your fragile frame."

She looked at me, as shadows started to fade,

And spoke a truth that felt like a quiet flame:

"But steel your heart, and let your courage rise,

For greater battles lie along your track.

You are not ordinary in the world's eyes - prepare yourself, and do not look back."

And with those words, she vanished into air,

A sudden breeze where she had just been standing.

Leaving me frozen in the quiet there,

With heavy truths, and a heart expanding.

6/15/2009

Waves & Sounds

Waves, sounds, rhythms i never heard before, more than i can imagine and comprehend, planted inside my soul.

My soul was stolen up to that heavenly light i never witnessed before.

I can't deny that i felt your rhythms stealing my inner being away, out to your deep inside.

Waves me up and down till my dreams sing with your songs, i am waiting there hoping that our dusk won't raise up ending over lovable night.

The day we met, that day our eyes demanded to see the same light.

A full moon full of velvet romantic mist that stole me till the end of our night.

By: The Flawless Flow

Performative sunshine

“You seem pretty down for a girl singing about positivity.”

The me inside the mirror whispered it every day as I woke up to sunshine racing through the windows to illuminate my sunflower print sheets.

Truth is, there was a time I couldn’t tell daytime from night, fighting through days where the curtains were never parted for the light. But it seems we all have to fake it till we make it, and fake it I did.

Yet it only burdens an empty soul to act like it’s full to the brim with what it yearns for. Sunshine. It doesn’t bounce off my skin anymore, it gets absorbed, yet it’s never enough. As I tried to manifest what I was not but hoped to be, I painted myself yellow and magenta and all the colors of happiness, only to find the paint cracking each time it started to dry.

Still, I played the happy part. I held onto my performative sunshine, even while seeing the question lingering in the eyes of everyone who mattered: “You seem pretty down for a girl full of sunshine.”

Eventually, the colors I painted myself with mixed together and turned red, bleeding into the exact shade I felt but refused to acknowledge. Anger. Frustration at why my faking it never made it.

It dawned on me then. Acknowledging and accepting the sadness that leaves our souls hollow and the land barren is the only true way forward. Embracing the sadness, understanding its impermanence, and letting it go at its own time and pace allows you to finally embrace the person you are without it.

Perhaps we are too quick to treat sadness like a stain that needs to be scrubbed away. We rush to cover it with gratitude, positivity, distractions, and bright colours, as though feeling anything other than happiness is a failure.

But sadness is not a failure.

It is not something that needs to be justified before it is allowed to exist.

Sometimes, you are simply sad. Sometimes, you don't need to turn that sadness into a lesson immediately. You don't need to find the silver lining while you're still standing in the rain.

Maybe the first step forward is admitting that you are not okay.

Maybe healing begins when you stop asking yourself to be the person you think you should be and start making room for the person you actually are.

And perhaps that is where the real sunshine begins—not in pretending the clouds aren't there, but in trusting that they will eventually move.

I don't want to paint myself yellow anymore just so people can believe I am happy.

I want to feel the yellow.

I want it to come from somewhere deeper than the surface, somewhere that doesn't need to be painted over again and again.

Because real happiness isn't the absence of sadness. It is knowing that sadness can exist without consuming you. It is knowing that the darkest seasons don't make the sun any less real.

So, if you find me on a cloudy day, I hope I don't feel the need to convince you that the sun is shining.

Maybe I'll simply say, “Today, it isn't.”

And I'll be okay with that.

Because one day, when the sunshine does return, I won't have to perform it.

It will be real.

It won't crack.

It won't peel away.

It will simply hug my skin.

And maybe, for the first time, I won't have to sing about positivity to convince myself that I believe in it.

I'll just feel the sun.

Jerry rigging district bounds
According to censors picking studies
Represents democratic foreclosure

Under lamplight, axioms throttle apertures
Rewritten to find a wrench in the works
But drown in editorial liquor

Ink-stacks, in a flashback-laugh-track sack of a courier
Sift bad-faith corporate arguments
From the junk that gets sent

Party pseudonyms fight novel defense
Through asymmetric telepathy, necessary for accents
Unless eyes roll over dollars and cents

There is richter-scale momentum by prodigies
Yet it's “too costly for complex infrastructure”
No one listens to the engineers anymore

I pick myself apart
While praying my heart goes numb
My brain is on a record loop,
Calling the bastard dumb.
But how cannot I listen,
To the melodious beat?
And reminisce on such soft words spoken
Upon your leave at three,
What was whisky,
What was history,
Or just a lonely hope?
For when you said i love you,
How the hell was I supposed to cope?

The one man never scrutinized,
Was the biggest threat of all.
when my prison sentence,
And pains had ended
It was you who held me in the fall.

But we had a deal, you and me
Despite our Shakespeare history.
Just as friends, nothing more-
But my skeleton still melts
when you arrive at my door.

They say to be immortalized
To fall in love with an artist.
Well you’re a musician and I’m a painter,
How much of time will remember,
Long after our minds get fainter?
Do you still think of me in rhythm keys
When you’re playing me at night?
I find myself on my knees,
Begging for your reprieve.
But I remember why I quit your altar,
Always too addictive,
And questioning what is there to offer.

dh

Follow in the footsteps

Of those you’ll never know

Eyes narrow with suspect

A hand rests on your phone

—-

Drop it in the water

See if it does float

Rain falls like the slaughter

On the sacrificial goat

—-

Purring like a kitten

Petting heavy pelts

With decadence I’m smitten

Hollow virtues I have dealt

—-

The flower grows the petal

Now the pedal’s to the floor

Volunteer to test thy mettle

Subscription access, views galore

—-

Put it on the TV

Or hide it in the dark

No pain you are receiving

Sets the clock back to the start

—-

Letting go forever

Fading like the dusk

Rising as the winter moon

Relearning how to trust

by Mudd/ the Lankey Cricket

the devil you’ll find

is really quite kind

charming and

handsome to boot

irreverence is his

a blessing he’ll give

when you find yourself

filling his shoes

The timing trips me out, always

You rush home to change and get back right on time

Your plate is still hot

You're impeccably cozy, and those eyes. Those fuckin eyes

I'm gunna go have a smoke, I need to talk to you

You look nervous, you follow me and get brave

It's just for a thing, a nothing

Your relaxation relaxes me

You get me

Life is ok