sugar of lead, in my tea

realgar red, crystals pressed

in talisman against my chest.

plutonic bronze,

the blade with which I shave,

so carefully, so rarely.

still though, thin skin, was bled.

a cold, grey ghost

in a cold grey room

not else

Your skin is formed from cells commiting suicide and in the process filling with keratin. The world would tear you apart if you weren't continously killing pieces of yourself.

imaginary lights

 I wanted to imagine, the lights flowing across these three faces in dark rooms held some significance.

Chet on sporting forums, bold blues and lost yellow draping languid against his skin. Ironic, this muddied against melanogenic responses to solar bombardment.

Cindy’s pale grey face lit with thin white text against black backgrounds. Distorted skeletons of poesy dance in teary eyes.

Across Carrol’s shining black eyebrows, green highlights flit. Rapid green text evolves against a black background.

But, I mean, really?

A kaleidoscope of vacillating colors vary across their faces and screens. Some come from the aesthetics of aquaintences, of strangers. Some are broadly constructed to sell objects and ideas. Some are simply the misbent accidents tired fingers.

The void is not infinite.

Possibility expands at the fastest possible speed. Functionally infinite, the cosmos will never grow beyond, cannot be unaccounted.

Vast potential, most of which remains, and ever more and more, is nothing.

Stillness and iterative possibility dance at a distance: like in junior high, and exactly as telling.

The void automatic devoided of meaning. It is all and every thing: mostly nothing though.

It is the absurdity of our lives on a hurtling rock headed nowhere. Trapped not just by the gravity-well, but we bedrape ourselves in chains, and a cumulative weight of empty smiles.

It is everything and nothing because nothing inherent holds importance. The incomprehensible vastness of all: hold commiserate the smallness of our existence.

The absurdity || and remarkableness thereof.

Nervously he straightened his long yellow tie. Dim comfort flushed in silk across his fingertips.

It wasn’t fair. He hated these things. He hated his mistress.

Larry hated the very notion that he might lose her. He owed her everything.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!

The word ranged across his mind; volume and mass oscillated, but the trend was upward.

It wouldn’t be long. He knew. All these loud men, that smorgasbord of grey and black suits, sooner or later they would do it.

“Well, WHIP ‘Em OUT! Come on boys!” yelled that soused shit-mouth, Greg Gibson.

Larry could not fucking stand Greg. He hated the loud fuck, no doubt. More than that though, Larry hated how beet red his face was getting.

Clarkson already had his monster out. The mass of the thing…

Soon, Larry was pressed on all sides. Tentacles and liquid shadows brushed against cold glowing chitinous exoskeletons, and so much more besides.

When the cages were torn wide open, when the slaves scattered across Mr. Callister’s garden, only then did Larry assume his immortal form.

Larry and his almost nice suit, his sagging skin, that ugly blob of a nose, immolated from within. In his place, floated a seahorse like creature built out of flame, shame, and self loathing.  

At least the slaughter was satisfying, sort of.

Rochelle and the Widow Mrs. Gardens

Another day, another dollar. Oh shit, overtime. Dollar and a half.

The rough bricks bite into my ass, but that hurts a lot less than my fucking feet. Smoke slips pointedly down my throat, relief.

I put the one-hitter away, and light an actual cigarette. Stupid fucking ruse has me smoking again. Oh well. It’s not forever. Fuck, I hope it’s not forever.

Try to remember, I try to remember… did I get to the peas or the green beans. Peas and it’s just two more shelves before I slide into the lazy half of the shift. Fucking green beans, 8 more shelves to stock and rotate.

Fuck I want this shift to be over.

Wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to walk. God I miss that car. Worth it, hard to remember, but it was worth it.

Oh no. Champaign fucking pink, goddamned auto-car. Mrs. Gardens! oh fuuuck. There goes my whole fucking day. There’s no fucking way she could get here alone without the fucking thing. I hate that fucking car. Haaaate.

God I miss mine. Riding dirty in the sunshine, careless and in between, safe and…

“Afternoon, Ralph,” she said shakily.

I bite back my tongue, and say, “No ma’am, Ralph’s not here anymore. I’m Rochelle. Remember?”

“Oh. Yes, of course. You look just like him, dear. That’s good. He was too pretty to be a boy.”

I die a little. My half cigarette falls amongst many others, plus that crushed purple bottle cap, and the dime some dick glued to the sidewalk.

Slowly, so slowly, we walk towards the sun washed automatic door. An air conditioned zephyr seems to revive her. She tells me, “It’s canned goods today.”

It usually is.

She has time to tell a cute story about her grandbabies. We walk. She has time to tell me a mildly racist story about her accountant at a cocktail party, again. 

This time, punctuated with a casual, “Oh, he died.”

Eventually, we make it to the canned goods aisle. And there it fucking sits:

my cart, stacked high with family sized cans of green beans

and my will to live pooling out onto the floor

“Oh no. Ralph, we forgot to get a basket!”

The dream wasn’t real. Was it?

It was just some new downer with a fun name, right? One of those “research” chemicals the DEA hasn’t gotten around to outlawing.

I want more. I need more. Worse, worse than the first time I tried cocaine. (Bought a gram. Blew through it in an hour or two. Fat eighties rails. Heh.)

Freebase. Caught the dragon. Slept for days.

The gardens, o fuck, the gardens were joy incarnate. Most of ‘em anyways.

Some were so sad but so beautiful. Fucking flowers spelled out a tragedy Shakespeare couldn’t have comprehended.

I mean, goddamn, I just don’t have the words.

And that cave, where the wind whispers Hypnos…

The waking world is all pain. Tight muscles. Desperate thirst. Twisting hunger.

I’m not sure I’d survive another dream like that.

I’m not sure I care.

- found written in an otherwise blank notebook at the saddest estate sale imaginable