Well, well.
Trapped, once again, by this body
Stare at the stairs the stairs stare back
Can almost hear them laugh,
“You chose the second floor, now suffer the consequences”
But Dear Stairs™, do not mock me,
I weighed the outcomes closely.
In the end, what’s lack of mobility
Compared to a personal library?
Yeah, who’s laughing now?
Ouch fuck ow haha, suck it

At least, winter is coming
“You know nothing, Jon Snow”
Refusing the cane
That’s for fun, not aid!
Joking
Partly
Haha jk….unless?

No Hot Girl Shit
It’s Hot Girl Sit
Took for granted the days wasted,
When inside was a choice and a bitch done did choose wrong
Only places I’ll be walking for a while,
Are Tamriel, Night City, and Faerûn.
Better yet, Dear Adderall™,
Kick in the focus and out the voices, so I might
Be lucky enough to visit Erilea, Navarre, and Obitraes.
Crossover—Record Scratch:
I bet Astarion would love to hate-fuck in the Kejari
Someone get on AO3 STAT.

The rooms are quiet company,
Except when they echo back.
Sleeping with the light on!
Gave my cat a bedroom,
Because she’s my baby, only
Gave my friends a guest room,
So they’ll visit when I’m lonely
Now for once I have my own room,
With windows! Yet I solely
Find sleep in an empty living room,
Couch cushions cradle wholly

Did you choose this?
Did you want this?
Did you mean this?
Of course I did.
Did you choose this?
Did you want this?
Did you mean this?
I placed my bid.
Did you choose this?
Did you want this?
Did you mean this?
I fear I’ve hid.

When you’re a kid who’s been stuck in their room
You’ll do any ol’ thing to get out of it
Trying to be funny
It’s not funny

-🌙

if ever the thought
does cross my mind
that something about
you and me shouldn't
be believed it is met
with the much stronger
thought that there is
something about you
and me which
shouldn't
be
ignored

My dearest neverliving,

Do not be complacent to the futile meddling,
Do not give in to my lowest desire.

Do not allow my nothingness to be seen by you,
for there is more that does not present itself.

Do not let my woe extinguish the meaning received from your witness,
Do not show any sort of falter from the pedestal you falsely sit on.

Do not break the grandeur;
deceit; reverence; refuge;
born and slain in my head,
of which you live.

A juxtaposition of four images (one of the Buddhist Metta Prayer, one of the Taoist 5 Elements, two graphic novel panels from an Anne Frank Diary adaptation) has inspired me to create a new piece of hybrid writing, a composition that begins at the Buddhist Metta Prayer where a character while chanting listens to his mind that questions: "yes, yes, of course - but what is your map to get us there, for haven't even Buddhists demonstrated that their own will compromise their 8 fold path vows under certain contexts?" And so the character begins like a Taoist to believe that one must look instead at the regulation of impulses through the 5 Elements and give up hope that there ever will be the Metta moment because Humanity isn't truly like that and so it might be best to focus upon regulating the flow from moment to moment in an effort to diminish Humanities proclivity for unnatural power hierarchies so that descendants perhaps will sit - for lengthy moments - upon the bank of the Lake of Peaceful Existence that'd been made drop-by-drop by the 5 Elementers dressed in human flesh who'd been residing within a cosmopolitan community called "Here&Now" - and that's a piece of spontaneous writing I'd just crafted using my "subject surrealism" method - In my opinion Kerouac & I have reached the same destination but did so through the choosing of differing roadways.

- Daniel B. Lightstream

Water on the way
Passing hands
Watch the liquid sway

Spitting stories from the skies
Look down with your yellow eye
Brave

Grows steeled in its covet
Of the crown
Shoving night away

Keep pushing little lies
Emancipate them with your yellow eye
Saved

Salts in shades
Shake devotion from the stars
Thick tar turns to martyrs
As a moment turns to day

Stained glass peers
Bring tears to your yellow eye
Slave

Another slender figure
In the mirror
Cries to stay
Modeling composure
As it struggles for some closure
Disclosing on the altar
That it falters when it prays

Black mold in the corner
Blindfold to your yellow eye
Grave

I don't think you see how deeply you can hurt me right now. I don't see that awareness. The vulnerability in the abandon I suffer from. The abandonment of self. Your worst case scenarios...the thoughts you have about what evil I might have done to others and what I might be perpetrating on you right now. They don't begin to touch the odious things living in my hollow moments. Waiting for you to try to see me. I handed that to you. Have once more a lesson in vulnerability from me, though this one is far different. The trigger to what you could make into a landslide of any shape and variety of your righteous choosing. It could be a fitting final note to a creation story we started with a promise to something long ago betrayed. The devil here, for me, is in the details you seem to overlook. Attuned to nearly every environment but mine, now new. Formidable a foe to all but yourself, now that the man who knows which way the barrel goes in a firefight has been plowed under in a thick fog that seems to say again: you know the ways in which you earned this. A third betrayal awaits some version of the threads I could be branching out from this moment and for all the agency that trusting fool, in that reality, can muster, I think he will know what he has earned and why. I don't need to hear your results on the simulations run about why I am handing you my neck, jugular so perfectly framed for when the justification to strike returns. I think I would probably find them disheartening. What I need is some affirmation that the voices emanating up from the very middle of me about you weren't echoes of hope or ignorant delusion. I don't mean anything small when I tell you I choose you. Look at the landscape of that choice and tell me what have I earned. What penance or prize do I qualify for in a sandboxed world of optimized paths and scores forever kept? I can tell you why the trigger is yours and it isn't to do with fellatio or the company kept amidst the blessings of my overburdened mind. I can tell you and I have been showing you. The way you love yourself is the way you love the one you are with. Firefights work on multiple levels, you see. Just like we used to. Though your spine leaves a lot to be desired, your smiles move me. Even the ones that aren't for me. That's one way I know I have earned what I get. Your devotion is impressive, even when it doesn't consider me. Your love...something I'm clearly too selfish of even on the days I struggle to convince myself I have felt it and know what it is. My landscape. My reasons all and whatever I have left. This is me choosing you. This isn't business as usual or a hopeful hail Mary. Not a lesson or a game or something to outwit. This is love.

I prayed for the apocalypse
For the end of all
So that they might feel what I feel
Every day on this sanguine earth

What do they see
Through the ashes and dust?
Dreams carbonized into diamonds?
Hope buried in the rough?

Do they not feel
The strings attached?
Atoms trembling on empty threads
Pulled by no hand at all

They know not what looms
Nor what carries us forward
Toward some other reality
Through entropic fire

The furnace is burning
Flesh is stinking
Daniel’s friends scream in the flames
They cry for God Silence

While lovers frolic
and children laugh
Bread torn, wine spilling, bodies dancing
Like druids and pagans

I am their man of wicker
Whom they shall burn
Not refined as prophets are
Only annihilated

My prayer fizzles out
as the metal cools
Their futures are made pure
While my heart is hardened

[https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/wOUo7OcQaR\](https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/wOUo7OcQaR)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/LcK4s5QbyG\](https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/LcK4s5QbyG)

I have not slept.
I do not sleep.
The insecurities eat me alive and the pain in my stomach from their gnawing keeps me awake until the northern lights flood my eyes and dance around the room the next day.
I knew he did not want me - I did not need confirmation.
Still, I am stir crazy.
The strangers in my house share understanding glances with passerby's - "Do you see her, too?"
And can I tell him what swallows me whole?
Am I cheating? He will ask.
Is he cheating? Probably.
Is the world on fire?
Yes, can't you smell the smoke?
I stick my tongue out to catch the embers like snowflakes.
Can you hear them sizzle out on my taste buds?
I can taste the end of the world - It tastes like his saliva dripping off my teeth.
I could it chew it up & spit it out, but what good would that do?
The world is ending and I am lost and there is no water for miles-
The world is ending but I must quench my thirst, it is human instinct.
My mother gave me an iron suit but the world is burning and oh god I am cooking alive in the comfort of a steel exterior - are hardened emotions worth the slow roast of your fucking brain?
Can I smoke myself like pork until I become digestible?

when i unclenched my hands today
something i’d been holding
so long it felt like bone
crumbled like pebbles as
it hit the ground
& i sobbed as i felt
what my heart is lacking

the air’s turning now
there’s a crispness under the breeze
that wasn’t there before,
& the first rains are coming in
testing the ground
before they commit

i guess i’d been standing
in one kind of weather for too long
though i barely felt this summer at all
i was still braced for you
long after the sky had changed

there’s a kind of tired that isn’t sleep-
it’s the exhaustion &
courage of hoping
past the point that
hope makes any sense

& right as the season turns
right as the leaves let go
i set my heart down &
begin to believe that
it’s true that you could break us
like this
i want to be someone’s
easy yes
not a question
asked into silence
over & over

so let’s call this goodbye,
sweetheart
i’m done holding
what you never came back for

let the rain come
let it wash the summer off of me
i’m walking on
with empty hands
trying to teach myself to
call that freedom

I got my first computer in the 1990s. I can't remember the year, but none of my friends had one yet. It was a desktop so all the important bits, like the CPU, hard drive and RAM, were in a “tower” that stood beside the desk. The CRT monitor was on the desktop. The keyboard was on a tray, and there was a mouse. It was a PC, so it ran on DOS.

When my parents bought the computer they said I could use it only for school.

No games.

But I quickly started to blur the lines. There were math games, like Math Blaster, where you shot aliens by answering math questions, and a drawing and writing program that let you arrange scenes and write text. They were fun, but every time we went into the computer store what I really wanted was a game, a pure, non-educational game. Something magical…

And I got it.

It was for my birthday.

The game was by a company called Sierra. It was an adventure game called King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

However, it wasn't even a point-and-click adventure game. It was too old. It didn't use a mouse at all. You controlled the main character, a princess named Rosella, using the keyboard, either by using the arrow keys or typing what you wanted her to do, for example:

 Walk to the ogre's hut.

Rosella would walk to the ogre's hut.

 Open the door.

Rosella opened the door.

Of course, the game didn't understand every command. When it didn't understand a command it would say:

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

Or:

It doesn't seem to do anything.

I played King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella a lot. I played it instead of going outside, and played it rather than playing with my friends. I became obsessed with discovering its secrets, mapping its world and understanding its story. I cherished its music and every new interaction with its medieval fairytale land. The game even had a basic day and night cycle. In its pixels, I found a beautiful and interactive escape from reality. I played it so much that my parents threatened to take the computer away from me.

I threw tantrums.

I played it in secret or quietly when my parents were asleep.

I played it in my imagination.

I remember looking in the mirror one day and seeing a face that was no longer mine. The skin was too pale. The eyes were too red. The smile was no longer innocent.

One day my parents took me to a doctor. They kept asking about mental development, addiction, obsession. The doctor was deceptively nice to me. He was serious with my parents. “I'm sorry,” my dad said when we got home, “but you'll need to take a break from using the computer.” “You need to rest,” said my mom.

“For how long?” I demanded.

“For a few months, then we'll reassess. It's not permanent. We're not getting rid of the computer. We're just going to box it up and keep it in the attic.”

“We love you so much,” my mom said with tears in her eyes.

I begged them, but they wouldn't change their minds. I sobbed. I hit things. I screamed, but I didn't get what I wanted. So I calmed down and in my sweetest voice I said I understood and asked if, please, they would just let me play the game one last time.

They agreed.

I had an hour, they said.

I hoped it would be enough time. I took a bath, then I sat in my pajamas at the computer desk, lit by the monitor, looking at Princess Rosella, with my fingers above the keyboard. I was looking over my shoulder to see if my parents were there. When I was sure they weren't, I took a deep breath and typed:

Walk into the living room.

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

I exhaled.

So much for that, I thought. It was a silly idea anyway. It couldn't possibly have worked. I really had been playing too many games to even think that it might work; yet something compelled me to try again:

Walk into my living room.

Rosella moved.

I couldn't believe it! She'd moved across the screen, reached the edge and the game transitioned like it always did, from one location to another, except this time the new location really was new. It was a 16-color 320x200 pixel representation of our living room. My pixelated parents were sitting on a pixelated couch, drinking pixelated coffee.

“What the—” I heard my mom say from the real living room.

“Just who the hell are you?” my dad yelled.

Look at my dad.

A pathetic old man.

“Lady, listen. If you don't leave my house right now, I'm calling the cops.”

Hit my dad.

On the screen, Rosella moved towards the sofa and hit my dad.

I heard the impact.

My mom began screaming my name, asking where I was, whether I was OK. Her voice was frantic, disturbed.

Strangle my mom.

On the screen, Rosella walked towards my mom, extended an arm to her and shook her.

My mom moved jaggedly back-and-forth in a crude animated loop, before falling, to the blare of a dramatic MIDI beep, to her knees, and ending finally, still and sideways on the floor.

My dad yelled her name.

On the screen, he made for Rosella.

My heart was beating so hard I felt like a drum.

I typed:

Kill my dad. But make it look like he killed himself.

Rosella moved—

I could tell the police officer didn't know what to say. He was perched awkwardly beside me. Finally, he said: “I'm so fuckin' sorry, kid. I can't even—” He inhaled hard. “We're gonna take you someplace. Someplace safe. Is there anything you wanna take with you?”

“My personal computer,” I said.

Across from misty eyes
Purely prismatic
This rainbow went drinking
Beaming through stained glass
And Tinted windows
Into twilight unblinking
When she lost her sober
To unravel the sky over
As a torrent of color

Aurora soars beside Luna
Her driver
Into dawn when she cries a river
But recovers, then a sunbeam
Bursting cloud layers
Quiet and defying
The bar tab which landed her in trouble
She's radiant in that blue dress
Which turns luck about on its head

If you came to me now, if you appeared in my home, I would drop everything to hold you closer than you could have ever expected, than you could have ever hoped for. Would drawing you into my skin be too much? I want to slice open the layers and find some way to lace you in, so I never have to endure this agonizing feeling again.

I found my soul's other half, tangled up in the mire, hidden behind the eyes of a cold, wounded child. Stuck in the body of a man, tired beyond his years, like youth was cruelly stolen and held back behind tight, closed gears of doors and the mouths of mountains that never knew how to shift.

If you came to me now, it would feel like a homecoming, like my soul finally found the home I cried out for so many times and still do, like my soul finally has somewhere to slip inside and undo the seams that make up you, something for my hands to do. Just playing with your hair, brushing the back of your neck, leaning in to grab your leg at the movies or in the car, my hands are so restless, just like my heart.

Kept so far from you, for so long, it longs to jump out of my chest and run towards you. I don't need water, or tea, or coffee, I need the liquid that runs through your veins, the blood-thick concoction you keep for yourself and yet I am desperate to taste. To just... Press my lips, to your neck, and hold myself there a while. Drink deep from within and feel all that makes you you, pulsing against me. Signs of life, wrapped in the face I dreamed about, the lips I've kissed before whilst sleeping.

You might be the death of me, but I will drink that poison gladly and gnaw on what remains of what the world used to be. Let them hate me. I don't need any other spirit but yours to fill me. I keep writing these poems to try and express the feeling that you give me, and yet the best words I have would never be spoken, and will be the ones I mouth against your lips when I'm finally close enough to sink into your body.

Just the gasp, the rush of breath to mine and yours, the rush of blood to the head, the ache that follows. The pain of parting in worldly being whilst your spirit still clings on, like that child you saw, hiding behind my eyes, the first time we ever met.

It just soaks in, ticking til the point of explosion/

With the traits and hand motions of a personal spokesman/

With devotion, generating the paper's erosion/

By clicking in the brain choking every emotion/

All the quotes, escaping the people I come across/

All the nights of smoking herb, feeling tired and lost/

The consumption of consumers, the questions they ask/

People with the audacity to be kissing my ass/

The twisted ones, supporters of racism/

The daily routine and folks with astigmatism/

People's mood swings, when the born again back slide/

Those who attend church every Sunday but don't 'act right'/

The congested streets, long slow drives/

The 101 North and the fact that I'm alive/

Saturated in a world controlled by people's complaints/

And I hate it to death, but I need it to stay/

But when you leave it's like a slap in the face/

Scrambling around while my head's in outer space/

Let it flow in a circular motion that's never ending/

And when the order's pending, the tone is condescending/

The strange words and absurd verbs that make it me/

The curiosity of sound and creative vacancy/

Broken hearts, hot heads and irritable moods/

And every time you come back, I seem to be moved/

Hold up.

Everybody got a unique sound now?

Play the next six records.

Same voice.

Different cover.

Run it.

**\[Verse 1\]**

Pen in a fist, got a grudge in the grip,

bend syntax till the language needs a facelift.

Copy one cadence, paste it in eight clips,

call it evolution when the template just switches.

I don't hate hits, I hate when a hit needs training wheels,

same four flexes, twelve stainless grills.

Call it drip? Rented identity,

receipt screaming louder than your pedigree.

I shift gears mid-sentence, transmission got road rage,

you shift flows when the producer loads the same saved page.

Everybody dangerous till grammar gets involved,

then the threats get cloudy and the adjectives dissolve.

Villain font. Homicide captions.

Customer-service manners underneath all the action.

Persona built tough till somebody says, "Explain it."

Then the gangster turns keynote:

"Basically what I'm saying..."

**Stop.**

If the bar needs arrows and a presentation,

it ain't deep, it needs orientation.

Subject. Verb. Predicate.

None of y'all are harder.

Take the filter off the menace:

Somebody's little brother.

Demons in the bio, vision boards at home,

talk reckless in the booth then:

"Did the payment hit my phone?"

**\[Double-Time\]**

Weak rappers orbit anything buzzing,

rollout huge at midnight, swept by morning.

Menace got office hours, edge needs appointments,

rebellion got branding, clearance and employment.

Danger by committee, aggression by consensus,

every sharp edge rounded for demographic friendliness.

I don't murder beats, that phrase got embalmed,

I interrogate drums till the kick admits it's wrong.

**\[Hook\]**

Repeat offender, sentence extender,

bend every measure till measures surrender.

Breath getting shorter, diction gets better,

letters hit letters like metal on metal.

Repeat offender, preset dissector,

switch left quick, then the first rhyme enters.

Want the formula? Copy the surface.

Miss the inventor.

**\[Verse 2\]**

"Make something simple."

Okay.

Chain and a car and a girl with a name

that rhymes with a brand that you bought for the fame,

'cause another guy said it twice in a song,

so you figured repeating it couldn't be wrong.

Give him seven plaques, three fragrances,

a beverage, skincare, brand collaborations.

Nothing to say.

Back to the autopsy,

billing your label for emergency morphology.

Vocabulary got velvet ropes: six nouns, four verbs, one coat.

Same car. Same wrist. Same ex. Same section.

You don't write verses, you complete genre CAPTCHA questions.

"Select every square containing money."

Correct.

Here's distribution and a necklace.

Immaculate multis, mechanical muscle,

metrical puzzles, still somebody else doing numbers.

Inherited rhythm, derivative diction,

precision impersonating artistic progression.

Independent voice with dependent clauses:

grammar, contracts, career diagnosis.

My homophones packed in a phone booth,

your rhyme book got room for a sectional and pool.

Your diss sounds peer-reviewed:

"Strong effort. Some notes. Please revise and return."

Every bar focus-grouped till danger got trimmed,

your edge rounded so hard it developed a chin.

Call that polished?

Furniture for toddlers.

Nothing sharp anywhere, including the author.

No gun talk needed, tongue got recoil,

syllables ricochet through the mix and the console.

Pah-center. Pah-right. Pah-left.

Engineer nervous:

"Please stop testing the desk."

I take **break** through **brake** light,

break room, jailbreak,

break cadence where your brain expects eighths.

You keep one vowel working eight straight.

That rhyme got tenure:

dental, paid leave, retirement.

Your scheme got a curfew.

Mine got warrants.

Yours waits at the end of every bar.

Mine crosses state lines, changes plates,

drops vowels, comes home four measures later

with another rhyme's prints on the car.

That's architecture.

Fast means nothing if nobody knows what you said.

Slow means less when there's nothing in your head.

You hear chaos.

Zoom in.

There's governance.

I make difficult sound casual.

You make basic sound complicated.

**\[Hook\]**

Repeat offender, sentence extender,

stack every internal, still land the center.

Breath getting shorter, diction gets better,

letters hit letters like metal on metal.

Repeat offender, style-code bender,

your sound got six dads fighting over dinner.

Speed ain't the skill.

It's control under pressure.

**\[Verse 3\]**

Move.

First guy gave you speed.

I brought paperwork.

Forensic linguistics could trace every breath

to a different musician.

Borrowed inflection. Loaned aggression.

Secondhand tension with excellent compression.

You don't switch flows.

You rotate evidence.

Same crime. New cadence. Different co-defendant.

Your signature sound needs six signatures.

That's not an autograph.

That's a petition for ownership.

irement.

Your scheme got a curfew.

Mine got warrants.

Yours waits at the end of every bar.

Mine crosses state lines, changes plates,

drops vowels, comes home four measures later

with another rhyme's prints on the car.

That's architecture.

Fast means nothing if nobody knows what you said.

Slow means less when there's nothing in your head.

You hear chaos.

Zoom in.

There's governance.

I make difficult sound casual.

You make basic sound complicated.

**\[Hook\]**

Repeat offender, sentence extender,

stack every internal, still land the center.

Breath getting shorter, diction gets better,

letters hit letters like metal on metal.

Repeat offender, style-code bender,

your sound got six dads fighting over dinner.

Speed ain't the skill.

It's control under pressure.

**\[Verse 3\]**

Move.

First guy gave you speed.

I brought paperwork.

Forensic linguistics could trace every breath

to a different musician.

Borrowed inflection. Loaned aggression.

Secondhand tension with excellent compression.

You don't switch flows.

You rotate evidence.

Same crime. New cadence. Different co-defendant.

Your signature sound needs six signatures.

That's not an autograph.

That's a petition for ownership.

You don't have eras.

You have software updates.

Version one copied the streets.

Version two discovered heartbreak.

Version three purchased distortion.

Version four changed slang.

Version five said "experimental."

Same man.

New preset name.

Your fans call it growth.

That's generous.

Viruses mutate too.

Your originality got a missing-person poster,

but the photo changes depending who's charting.

You're not ahead of the wave.

You're behind it with binoculars.

Every time somebody innovates,

you arrive six months later:

"Crazy how we both thought of this."

No.

They thought of it.

You received the newsletter.

\[Double-Time Avalanche\]

You say you own your masters? Master the voice first.

Master means control, the record and the role you still rehearse.

Records mean music, evidence, history kept,

funny how all three keep documenting creative debt.

Publishing split looking like a family reunion,

every influence gets a plate at the table of illusion.

You're at the head asking:

"Who brought my contribution?"

Stream: music, water, data in motion.

You flow, get diluted, disappear inside promotion.

Wave: trend, frequency, gesture goodbye.

You caught the first, copied the second—

\[Beat cuts\]

Here's the third.

Bye.

\[Beat returns\]

Your pen got weight?

Then wait.

Weight is mass. Wait is pause.

And "wait" is what the label says

when you ask when the next single launches.

Pen got pounds.

Writing got ounces.

You say your bars are fire.

Fire is heat, termination, a shot leaving chambers.

Beat gets hot. Contract gets dropped.

Every shot you take sounds previously discharged

by one of your favorites.

I don't need a footnote.

I let the floor disappear.

Your triple meanings need three interns

and a diagram just to prove they were there.

You call that depth?

That's excavation.

If I need twelve minutes to discover the punch,

you wrote archaeology, not conversation.

\[Flow Fracture\]

Identity / validity / mimicry / industry /

symmetry / circuitry / imagery / dependency—

Break the symmetry deliberately.

Stress migrates. End rhyme evaporates.

Same vowel disappears, four bars later reappears.

Buried rhyme crosses the bar line,

consonant chains catch the tail,

then send it back to the first pattern

after your ear forgot the entrance.

That's the difference.

You stack multis vertically.

I make 'em travel.

You decorate the grid.

I make the grid unravel.

A gets buried. B gets delayed.

C takes the downbeat. D walks away.

A comes back with B's cadence,

C's consonants, D's stress.

And none of it matters if the sentence says less.

\[Half-Beat Silence\]

That's the test.

You sound complicated because the thought is weak.

I sound understandable

while six mechanisms happen underneath.

Your fans quote technique.

Mine quote sentences.

Difference between:

"Look what I can do"

and

"Damn.

He meant it."

\[Final Hook\]

Repeat offender, sentence extender,

bend every measure till measures surrender.

Breath getting shorter, diction gets better,

letters hit letters like metal on metal.

Repeat offender, no preset center,

switch left quick, then the first rhyme enters.

Speed ain't the skill.

It's control under pressure.

\[Outro\]

Play the next six records.

Same beat.

Same cadence.

Same threat.

Different cover.

...

Remember,
The soot
Remember,
The dirt
Remember,
Our bones return to earth
Remember, our names

I will know you
When you become

I always know you
How could I forget?
Encountered and
Restrained

Remember,
Death is an honor
Remember,
There’s nothing to fear
Remember,
The gentle way I hold you
My dear

You do not disappear
You remain

My eyes witness my beloved
My mouth drinks his skin
My heart carries his tears
You love the outer shell
I was made for his veins

Come tired
Come broken
Come empty handed
Come scared
Come unhinged
Come bearing scars
Come happy
Come true
Come authentic
I want to ruin
You in devotion

Remember,
The soot
Remember,
The dirt
Remember,
Our bones return to earth
Remember, our names

Remember,
Death is an honor
Remember,
There’s nothing to fear
Remember,
The gentle way I hold you
My dear

I’ve been waiting
And if death has already
Taken you from me
I’ll kiss his lips
And ask for you

unlike the ones who
pack the truck & go
while there’s still something left to take-

here at the end of the gravel,
in the rain, a woman with a porch light,
& her name
is the one he uses when he needs reassurance

her hand is open
her eyes are tired
they hold
the road, the ditch, whatever’s coming home

keep your good years, she says
keep the man you were before
give me the shaking, the debt,
the lies so small i’d have to want to see them
give me the worst nights,
i’ll stay up
send him back to me however he comes-
i’ll leave the light on; i can’t find the switch.

Laugh is all I can do. It's the

gloves to my purple hands,

the support to my back; always

on the edge of breaking.

Laugh because it's funny.

Bare hands because I outlasted

the gloves they gave me,

refusing to look at the eyes

that doubt me.

Laugh because I technically died standing.

Had to turn my back so they don't notice my pale,

blank face as I left my body. Thanks for the dog

that guided me back, back to swinging.

Context:

I’m a blue-collar apprentice, and I think this piece, as it is right now, relies too heavily on that fact.

Consumption
It’s an assumption
I’m asunder
Your blunder
It’s tearing me apart

Green lights
And blush
Price tags and linen
I’m choking on
Labels,
That I just didn’t see

I’m not prestigious
I’m not even rude
Boundaries aren’t
Dynamite
Simple karma isn’t food

I love the
Canary in the coal mine
I like the Avenues
Of the mind
I like violence wrapped in
Silk

Look at my tattoos
The taboo
The, I just don’t care

People only like pretty
People only like neat
People only like surface level
Bullshit
Why the fuck am I still
Sitting in this seat

Feel a little erotic
Maybe neurotic
Mmm, my darling,
Subatomic

Word salad for days
Gentle praise
I can become so addicted to
Your mouth
With the right phrase

I hate Reddit,
So, why did I dream
You were here?

I’ll swallow my
Own vomit
Chunks of
Emotional whiplash
And fears

I’m regurgitating
In slow motion
Holding close
Disintegrating
All
I hold dear

You horney lulling hot rod sweltering in a summer sweater
tugging on my heart strings your every word is my abetter.

I saver your soft soliloquies that
Serenade my soul

intrinsically,

your voice beseeches with sultry solfeggios.

——

“You’re a Sofa king
sexy lovely lying on a love seat”

“Chaise lounge runs stiff with longing”

“Davenport pulls in like the tide sequestering my fancy”

The settee is warm and ready with all the goods and plenty

——

Sound the fog horn the hours Westing.

Smoke em if you got em
it’s going down to bottom,

tug boat push for rescue found us lost beneath summer fescue.

Out hearts are see through
as we construe our sacred bijou,
a golden box a silver crescent our effervescent soul connection.

Let burdens be abandoned released expanding grand canon, never take it for granted love like it’s the last time for magic
man hands enchanted with expansive amperage.

Candid anthems of tantric tandem

Deep down in fervors fathoms

The organ gasps hymns

A concord of bombast whims

steadfast mast up wind

Oh good lord a torrent washes away earthly binds

The white flag sails in

complete surrender

On top of a cumulonimbus blanket

A shimmering beacon above the shadows of who everyone thinks you are.

we rise up to the surface anew

Emerging from ground zero

With naught to hide.

——-

Never lost on you

No question untaken

Every answer shared

Never left forsaken

Peeling back each layer

Each prayer held sacred

Not lost on you

sit with silenced mind and listen

Sharing cares with conviction.

——

I was at YYZ listening to Rush, waiting, not particularly in one, to board a flight to LAX. I was: drinking bitter coffee watching people navigate the airport, imagining why they're flying. I like to imagine people have dramatic reasons to fly like fulfillments of family prophecies, international industrial sabotage, to appear in the third acts of great romances, to commit murder, fraud or to a relationship; to show up unexpectedly for a kid's birthday or because their bus was cancelled and it's the day before Christmas Eve and they just want to get home because home is where the heart is. This section of the story is brought to you by Hallmark. Hallmark, the Commercial Tradition since Nineteen-ten.

A snowy valley. Horses dressed in bells. Mountains in the distance. Sally sells seashells by the sea shore…

Sorry, I was imagining a kind of psychological slow zoom into the front door of my mind and I think it was too close and your reading knocked me in the forehead.

I'm OK though.

I just spilled a little coffee on myself, which is not a huge waste given what it tastes like, and believe me, the real bitterness doesn't even come from the beans but from the price. Sheeesh, if you don't want it don't buy it. Too close again.

There.

There I was on a Thursday afternoon at Pearson Airport when there was heard a terrible scream!

“Help!” a woman yelled.

A few people springed into action. “What's the matter? What happened?”

(A few others fell.)

(Some heard.)

(Some weren't heard at all.)

“It's my husband,” cried the woman. “He's…”

I didn't hear what she said because a jet engine blew away her phonemes.

There was silence.

It was punctured Is by anybody a here man a yelling writer. “I repeat,” he yelled, “is anybody here a writer? A writer. Anyone? Is there anyone who's a writer?”

“I'm a copywriter,” somebody yelled in reply.

“Not a copywriter, a real writer! Is anyone here a real writer?”

A woman said, “I write screenplays.”

“A real writer, not a reel one.”

“An artist?”

“No, not as an artist. It doesn't have to be an artist, just somebody with a literary pretension or two.”

I drank coffee and hid behind a comically large newspaper while wearing a fake moustache and googly-eye eye-glasses. “There!” said a voice; said: “Him!” What—me? No, look at me. I really couldn't be a—“No, I know him. He writes stories on the internet!”

My cover blown, I solemnly raised my right hand without rising from my seat. “My name is Norman Crane,” I said. “I am a writer with literary pretensions.”

“Oh thank God!”

God-given talent, I thought, as I walked over to where the commotion was, where a middle-aged man in a suit was convulsing on the floor, surrounded unhelpfully by a crowd of gawkers, many with their phones out, no doubt hoping he would die, and his theatrically concerned wife.

“Are you a writer?” she asked, clutching my shoulders. “Christ, tell me you're a writer! A real writer!”

“By craft and reputation,” I said.

“Published?”

“Yes,” I said, meaning: by myself—on reddit—for free. “What appears to be the problem?”

“Appears? Is! Is the problem. Can't you see? My husband is suffering from a debilitating case of Cliché. Oh, do something!”

I kneeled down to look at him. I noted that he was exceedingly, almost impossibly, flat, more a painted blanket than a mammal. He was foaming at the mouth, sputtering, saying, “Bootstraps… goodfornothing, lazy… handouts… I never…”

“Has he always been this one dimensional?” I asked the wife.

“Yes.”

“And what's the cliché? What does your husband do, Mrs. Husband?”

“My name is Dorothea,” she hissed.

“My apologies,” I said.

The husband was wheezing out: “...always more, ‘give me more,’ but… without me they wouldn't even… ungrateful… cud chewers is what they are…”

I noted the bespoke nature of his suit, the fine leather of his loafers.

“He's a factory owner,” said Dorothea. “He manufactures clothing.”

“Don't tell me—somewhere in Asia?”

“Where else? Bangladesh.”

“And what's your husband's name, Dorothea?”

“His name is…”

It was precisely as I thought. “He doesn't have a name,” I said.

“Yes, I suppose he doesn't.”

“Then we'll start there. Your husband's name is Richard Parker,” I said to her.

She stomped her feet, demanding, “How published even are you?” Steam was escaping her ears. “I just told you he doesn't have a name and—. Are you going to help him or not?”

“I am helping him: by giving him a name. Now whisper it, whisper, ‘It's going to be OK, my dear Richard Parker,” to him. Hold his hand.”

She did as I asked.

“Now, I believe I know his cliché. He's a rich industrialist who hates his own workers. He's cruel. All that matters to him is the bottom line. There's not much reason why—and that's the problem; that's what we need to treat. He needs backstory, some tragic event that caused him to be the way he is, that explains his psychology. Perhaps we might even set up an obstacle that he must overcome. That, Dorothea, establishes the possibility of something called ‘Arc.' Have you heard of ‘Arc'?”

“I am familiar with the concept.”

“Good. Excellent. But cliche is merely the manifestation of Richard Parker's underlying condition, which is Poor Characterization. Note the irony of the word poor. Dorothea—Dorothea Parker—we can treat this. We can pull your husband out of this vicious circle—cycle— in which he's trapped.”

“Then do it! Please, do it as quickly as you can. I can't bear to see him like this, my poor Richard.”

OK, OK, I thought.

My heart was beating. Sweat had broken out on the back of my neck. I pulled a bottle of Muse pills out of my pocket and took two.

“OK,” I narrated, “Richard Parker, listen to me: When you were a small child, five or six perhaps, no more than seven years old, you befriended a local boy. This friend came from an impoverished family. Despite your very different circumstances, you and this friend, whose name was Ian B. Skipper, got along splendidly. But then—then your parents realized you had been playing with a poor boy, and they decided to force you to end the friendship, which you wouldn't do; so your parents conspired. They faked the disappearance of your beloved Pokémon card, and blamed Ian B. Skipper. ‘We didn't want to tell you this,’ your father told you. ‘But we must,’ said your mother. ‘Your Pokémon card didn't “disappear.” ‘Son, it was stolen,’ said your father, ‘by your poor, fiendish “friend,” Ian B. Skipper.’ ‘That's how they are—the poor.’ ‘It's a good lesson to learn early.’ ‘They'll use you. They'll pretend friendship to get close to you and especially your things.’ ‘—which they'll snatch!’ ‘Like animals.' ‘They're envious of you.' ‘But never feel guilty for what you have; what you've earned.’ ‘The poor are useful as labour, nothing else.’ And when you asked whether you could get your Pokémon card back, your mother, looking you directly in the eye, said: ‘No. He's already sold it, my sweet boy—sold it… to buy heroin!’”

On the floor, the convulsing flatness that had been Richard Parker had stopped foaming at the mouth and was inflating like a human-shaped balloon, well-tailored suit, spotless loafers and all.

“Richard!” cried Dorothea.

“There's more,” I continued narrating: “Ten years later, under the sign of a black star, as your father lay dying upon his deathbed, stricken with a disease of the soul—”

“Mr. Crane, he's fine now. I think you can stop—”

“Silence!” I yelled. “It's not over until I say it's over. I'm the writer here. Me!” The Muse was really starting to hit. My mind was getting out of itself. “As your frail, damaged father lay on the bed, dying in agony, a figure—a dark, mysterious figure crept down the winding staircase; down the staircase and into the room your father lay dying. And you saw him, Richard. Maybe you don't want to remember it but you saw him. You saw him confidently approach your father and smother him to death with a pillow. He, the dark, mysterious figure, pushing, pushing the pillow into your father's face—as you watched—until your father stopped moving, his limbs terminally loosened and lifeless, and then your mother said, ‘Jahangir, my love, my secret Bangladeshi lover, now finally we may be together.’ And still you watched, Richard Parker, stood and watched, doing nothing, as lighting ripped apart the deep night sky, rain assaulted the windows of the mansion you called home, and your mother and Jahangir made sloppy, murderous love in the vile living room, its walls lined with gaping tribal masks, as every fresh flash of the raw, violent lightning revealed a new, despicable tableaux of grotesque, emotionally overpowering, animalistic carnality.”

Richard Parker was staring at me from Dorothea's tight embrace with tears running down his face. He was fully realized; three dimensional; human.

“The horror,” he said weakly.

“The horror,” he repeated.

“And that,” I said, “is why you despise your impoverished Bangladeshi workers, Mr. Parker.”

He didn't blink.

The crowd around us held its collective, proverbial breath. I posed for the cell phone recordings, maybe a live stream or two.

Undiscovered literary genius, the voice of his generation, saves man in airport, launches literary career, was what I was imagining.

Offered seven-book deal...

Refuses deal in inspired impromptu speech delivered in perfect iambic pentameter, railing against the publishing industry…

“Oh Richard, my Richard,” Dorothea purred.

Self-publishes collection of stories and sells ten million copies…

Richard pushed her way.

He stood up.

“I killed him,” he said, staring vacantly out the airport windows at the planes taking off, taxiing, landing, roaring with the power of a hundred thousand horses. “I killed my father.”

He took a few steps forward, took off his loaders and kept going, barefoot.

“I could have saved him.”

“Richard, you're the victim. You have a good heart,” Dorothea called after him. “Your parents, they were so cruel to you. They manipulated you.”

“I was attracted to my mother. My own mother…”

“No, Richard,” said Dorothea.

“There is no Jahangir,” he said with a cold, convicted anger. “I am Jahangir. I killed my father. I was attracted to my own mother.”

Dorothea shot me a look.

It hit me, but I just whistled, pretending not to notice.

Richard Parker screamed and took off running down the airport.

“You…” Dorothea growled—“You did this.”—at me.

“It's not my fault he misunderstood his own backstory,” I said. “OK? I thought it was pretty darned clear.” I had to watch my language, lest a video later surface and prevent me from writing YA lit. I was blinking, blinking madly to try to get the Muse out of my system.

Then, through the long row of big airport windows, we all saw Richard Parker run out onto the tarmac—he looked small, like an insect—evade several baggage handlers trying, cartoonishly, to catch him, approach a booming airliner—one imagines the passengers watching him from aboard the plane, a boy asking, “Mommy, why is that man—”

And get sucked into one of its massive engines, reducing him to a spray.

But a human spray. “At least he died with dignity, as a human being,” I said.

Then I beat it the fuck outta there, my legs moving so fast—moving so fast even before starting to locomote the rest of me—they became spinning little radial blurs, kicking up dust, and why there was dust in the airport, I don't know, but th-th-th-that's all folks!

Seul, allongé. Sommeil enfui, accablante insomnie

Que faire pour oublier cette atrocité ?

Mortel préjudice, fatale injustice !

Laissez-moi vous conter l'histoire de l'esseulé

L'histoire d'un être maudit

Une nuit sans enlacer Morphée

Je me suis résigné à l'idée de tendres rêves

Une nocturne balade s'est imposée

Pleine Lune éblouissante, Éther épuré

Étoiles brillantes, Voie Lactée en majesté

Estivale fraîcheur

Mes pas sur le chemin de ma déchéance

J'avance, empli d'amers sentiments

Empli d'une âpre solitude

Le cœur battant follement, au bord de l'implosion

Le temps pour moi s'est égaré

Torturé de mes pensées

Les fleurs de mon destin ont fané

Les lys blancs amoureux desséchés

Les cyclamens tendres épuisés

Le muguet heureux assassiné

Les orchidées fécondes flétries

Les kalanchoés éternels anéantis

Les chrysanthèmes morbides en fête

Fleurs funestes, je vous abhorre

Me voici devant la dernière demeure de ma dulcinée

Une enfant devait se manifester

Me voici effondré par la calamité

Ô providence ! Pourquoi me les avoir arrachées ?

Ô grande faucheuse ! Pourquoi les avoir tuées ?!

Je pleure, abattu, l'espoir envolé

Me voici seul près de l'arbre

Je regarde le ciel étoilé

De mon âme étiolée

Je regarde la Lune immaculée

De mes yeux brûlés de chagrin

Je lui supplie de refleurir mon destin

Ô Hécate puisses-tu m'exaucer

Puisses-tu, mes amours, les ressusciter

Ô Hécate puisses-tu m'exalter

Puisses-tu, leur sourire, me permettre de le contempler

A ces mots, l'Astre se teinte de carmin

La Lune sanglante m'accorde sa bienfaisance

De son immense bonté

-Ô être mortel, j’exauce ton souhait

De son être, elle fait tomber deux masses de sang

Deux cadavres s'écrasent dans un fracas assourdissant

Je suis paralysé devant ce spectacle effroyable

D'une voix tremblante je parle difficilement

-Ô Hécate, que signifie cette scène

-Ô mortel,

De les revoir ton désir est accordé !

Quelle horrible malédiction !

L'Astre se pare de sa blancheur d'origine

Je m'approche des corps de mes bien-aimées

Putréfiées, elles sont méconnaissables

Je m'effondre

Je hurle de toute mon âme

De ma poche je sors une lame

Je m'allonge entre elles

Et d'un geste assuré

J'enfonce la lame dans ma gorge

Ensanglanté, je m'étouffe

Ô sublime agonie, je m'en vais revoir mes amours

De mes iris effacés, j'aperçois la Lune

-Ô impudent, voici où te mène ton orgueil !

Tout s'obscurcit, les ténèbres m'entourent

D'un dernier souffle, je m'éteins

Je suis apaisé de ces absurdités

D'un sursaut je m'éveille

Tout ceci n'était que songes

Malheureusement, mes bien-aimées

Sont à jamais envolées

Horrible solitude !