and there are places where there’s peace to be found and streams that tickle the under soles of our feet but i can’t bring us there. i choose mountains and gravel and steep cliffs that threaten to swallow us whole and you said, why all this when we can have more, and i sputtered, no this is all there is, this is everything, the maw and yawn of a harsh sun, the vast open plain where the cracks never end.

the spectacle of tentacles and heartbreak and loosened teeth. i saw this. i saw this upon the hull and wept. barnacles and mermaids and sirens and bloated dead men gouged eyes strewn across the reef. did you forget me? did you finally forget? or has the wound scabbed over into the semblance of something whole and sturdy and alive. the living, ah that’s always the rub isn’t it? between the storms and longing and flogging and the walls of the brig: the choice between living and weeping, carrying on and throwing up, swimming out into the sea or drowning to the shore.

you remember this. or is it you remember this, or something, or that and the other and the something else that had forgotten you before you could. or the running, the pawing, the scratching of some memory dear and vital and true but long lost.

To live a reasonable life. A reasoned life. Of measure. Of lulls and consistencies and triumphs. Of awakenings and yearning and starry night skies. of bustle and progress and the occasional pitfall. Or moment of respite. Of clamor of joy. To live.

the silent revelation, i have seen you before. stop dreaming of this, the scars, the scars are simply too much, too thick, too tired: i feel nothing. and as of consequence we move but are immobile, we drink ourselves hypothetically but do nothing. we strive but do nothing. here you are, incompetent and lost. here you are, dancing in a fun-house mirror clean and spiteful. here you are, alone with rags for skin. here you are, gone into the oblivion you so desperately wanted

the glorious wonder of who you are. what a specimen, what a fine product of battered egg yolk and ruthless semen. he raped her you know. he raped her and beat on her afterward blaming her wanton ways for the quickness of his prick and there you were conceived after much fucking and haranguing and spittle and desperate might. and look how manly you turned out to be! how grand! an exquisite reflection of your old man, a bloated funhouse mirror. he would’ve been proud son, he would’ve been so very damn proud of you.

there is not enough mourning in the world for the person i could’ve been.

again i was without my shadow. she traipsed ahead of me, bounding stairs and i was amok. all purple and superfluous, an extravagant limb, vestigial appendage. and when she reached the top of the stairs, she smirked and i was left haggard. exhausted, i grasped the final footfall and she knelt beside me, my shadow and i, and whispered, “i shall become you in the end, with nothing to follow, not even the sound.”

a thought-fence. one of each, for each strand, hair strand, broken, follicles run amok. a tattoo stain, henna porn, in the apocalyptic rain of chernobyl. born again, in the chemotherapy of christ, the placenta of the lamb, over and again, over and again, hospital walls with spittle, horrific globs of i-was-once-here-but-gone-too-soon-too-soon. carry over the one, but then the other, and two by two we go into nefarious places holding two by fours and nothing more, shit house. and to think, to think, once more and again, like loose teeth for a fairy.