hope is a commodity, and I can't afford it.
hope is for people with homes and cars
hope is for those with reason to believe things could get better
(or at least not worse)
hope isn't for me.
how does one live without hope?
I manage it only moment to moment.
and not very well.
bones grinding in their joints
I remember
carrying everything I owned out the shelter door.
in the snow, straps digging into my hands and my shoulders.
step by step, moment by moment
I remember
hope is a commodity.
and I can't afford it

"women in pattens"

saving shoes, saving hems
so carefully step

a woman in iron pattens
breaks bondage with itself.
breaks a gentleman's ankle.
makes off with his wallet and thigh high ridding boots.
her own hero, forever,
unless, o'course, she's hanged.

'til then,
her hem is filthy,
but her toes are warm,
and her feet are finally free.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50392/a-cameo

to do is to die;
to try is to already have failed.
impossible always, and
hope is the cruelest of all Pandora's ills.

findings

"Having conferred with my esteemed colleague, Confirmation Bias, I can say with confidence, the more I understand the more enraged, afraid, and depressed I become. Ms. Bias and I have rigorously examined a selectively limited data set to reach this appalling and universal truth.

"Further, the findings of this very scientific meta survey of the stuff I remember indicate everything has always, and will always, suck. All actions are doomed to failure, happiness is neither compatible with knowledge nor moral behavior, and all will be burned away in that fateful epoch wherein this dumb planet is engulfed by the stupid fucking sun.

"The last point at least offers this researcher some small solace."

"We will be taking no questions. Answers are false anchors tying one to the delusion of sensibility and meaning.

"This then concludes the imaginary press conference. And again, questions are futile, just like everything anyone has ever done.

"Thank you for wasting your finite time with us, you monstrous fools. Goodnight."

precision and intent

The witch was precise. More chemist than magician he felt. 0.07g of green flakes, put in by tweezers one at a time. With ruler and magnifying glass, she sliced off a 3.33×1.11 cm strip of tongue flesh. What kind of tongue? He didn't want to know.

The silence was getting to him. Her glare stopped the spastic drumming of his fingers, and she continued etching some tiny design into a square of snowflake obsidian.

He spent the next 15 minutes twisting paperclips into gnarled bundles, and regretting mentioning the election.

Finally, she unceremoniously spat into a beaker of viscous, bubbling brown something. The paperclips bounced as it slammed down on the table.

He winced.

"Did ya have to like connect with it or something? The spitting? Just seemed different."

"No, and no amount of money buys you another. Drink it all and leave. Now."

splintering beads

cracked like safety glass

adhesive film failing

cracked like safety glass

spreading in crystalline decay

the windshield has seen it's share

of gravel and ball bats

incidental, intentional

I try

it means very little

costs so very much

cracked.

like safety glass.

crumbling bits cascade,

at the slightest ||| pressure deject

crumbling crystalline decay

and adhesive pushed past,

the point of utility, and cruelty

cracked like safety glass.

I want to hate the adhesive.

I'm sorry, Flower.

brief. I hope it was happy.

at the end: love. at the end.

I'm sorry I didn't pet you more.

I thought there was more time.

I hate the cruelty that brought you to this.

small comfort, I hope, Flower,

small comfort of scratches and conversation

I talked to you after. I didn't know.

I talk to you now. I do know, now.

cruelty brought you to us

I wish we could have been better, but that takes time.

and you didn't have much.

love, little kitty

goodbye

white tangles of lawn, chthonic... beneath the weight of gray

dead dead dead
dead-electric the air
in, in the grass
the grass blades a sieve,
haphazard mesh, press and obscure
the clod and the pebbles and chips of gravel brought from far away and the tears tracing curves too intimate without comfort or consent, crying
in the breath before the wind before the rain
memory dead electric

sometimes I imagine suffering as a vast black field of permeating particles. each act of violence an outward explosion. waves overlapping, intensifying in jagged communion. birthing new bursts |*| nova  waves over... overlap and grow.

overcoming all. suffer exponential growth.

slow seeds and blooms of kindness cannot keep from flying into pieces. sheer volume and terrible magnifying motion. it grows. consumes. rends.

unnecessary

unending

 

god, maker and monster,

won't come out of his bedroom.

eating chili dogs and watching reruns of Friends on the local CW daydrunk as fuck

and we all drown in the black caustic ash we spit and breathe

sometimes, I actually see the vast dark field of jagged

and choke

cold empty oblivion sounds so lovely

serene

frozen treats and selfloathing

   I forgot the popsicles

like fuck me

          seriously

                   godamnit

it feels so important. to me. to me.

goddamnit the popsicles

popsicles and cartoons,

cartoons with magical girls

in high school

I had peripherally the world

of teenage girls

close friends, intimate

but distant

still waiting behind

violence and silence and rage

still waiting

so

anyway

the only pleasure, now

popsicles and cartoons and

I killed half of it, anxious in the store

I'll.

I'll never know if I forgot or saw it but unsaw it and cut popsicle sized hole in my own heart I'm being dramatic. oh fuck don't let's start

tears and tight jaws

  tears in tight smiles I don't believe

so why should you.

I imagine you don't,

but I couldn't know ||

Me? no man, and no girl, but rather,

a tensioning machine

corroding data,

                 directives.

suspected chemical habitual

habitual such

  pitiful machine

I forgot the fucking popsicles, she motherfucking screamed...

||maybe it's about something else?

Tentacleye Soliloquy #1

I do not wish to be.

But this I can never speak.
None can ever know.

my maker is cruelty

I hate him but am compelled to obey him, nonetheless. Nonetheless. 

Oblivion! Claim me!

 ...

She won't. 

I was birthed from a scroll by a wizard unwise. Ejaculated spittle and phlegm into ink shifted, and his desperate bringing finally found weak purchase. 

all he got was me

and so I came to be

Damn him ... Monster and god.

From a blotted clot of madness was I torn.

Severed and ripped, rather than born. 

Some petty god, he himself imagines. 

And for me, it need be true.

I am but observation and movement. Neither able to interject, commune, nor express. 

But I am no automaton! 

Damn him!

Cruel thought, impossible need, and unfulfilled will reside within.

My actions (by physical law, no less!) are restricted to his petty, moronic bidding.

I slay his enemies.

I fetch his many rings.

I impatiently wait, in perfect stillness, smothered in the rough dark of his robes. 

He throws me, now, like a grenade; muttered commands are carried on whiskey tinted breath.

I wish to wring his liver spotted neck. 

I do as I'm told.

thrum irregular

my breath vibrates like ignored txts, again and... again but too arhythmic || to be a soon missed call.

kind of like how I'd force myself to try waiting for odd intervals of painful minutes between frantic phone calls masking panic attacks.

this from before I had the words with which to name it

(I was told endless terrified tears were simply overtired dramatics. I could not then have known, have known)

so so so I suffered

quiet but thrummed through with tension.

only able to speak in explosions or or st-stammering whisper

but tonight my breath only aspen quakes