my boy, he said, gristle stuck between his two front teeth, my boy the trick is to believe the lie you are living.

i get that, i said, whittling away at a branch we had found. pieces split from the blade landed on the stream, floating downward. i’m not stupid you know. i’ve done this sort of thing before.

yes boy, he shook his head, tried with his tongue to get at the gristle. yes, you have but this is a different sort of thing. they’re all wise to our kind these days. you see the stupid ones get plastered all over the news. they even had a documentary once.

he finally fingered his tooth and inspected what had been caught there. it was a between infomercials, i dont think anyone noticed it.

he flicked it away, which isn’t the point. they know we’re out there and we have to be careful. he pointed a thick finger at me, you my boy, you just starting out.

he smiled, new territory for you.

from the surface i need this, i need to trace the line of this fracture, follow it where it goes. does it lead to something solid, somewhere safe, a cave, a tree, a water fall, a cliff? i need to trace the line of this fracture with its jagged edges and angles, with abrupt, haltering steps and rapid shots. i need to to follow it to see if leads to something even stronger than myself and i’ve done much to myself, i’ve armored myself to the point of heartlessness. but what if it leads to something weaker, something broken beyond repair, something that will keep me from breathing, something that will beg to bring me into despair? some dark truth i can no longer deny, some revelation that i’ve always been lost, i’ve never ever begun to be whole.
this is the vile dance, the tripping over. this is the rush of gambling with your soul.

it’s a balance between momentum and pressure. steam rolling forward while keeping the center intact. if you look too closely at anything, inside, outside, your guts or the scenenary outside, focus on anywhere for too long, you’re lost, the momentum gets lost, the center flies apart.

you need to go fast enough to keep going but not too fast lest the centrifugal force breaks it apart.

and by keeping your eyes moving, roving, attentive, alert -but never closed- don’t you dare close your eyes- you just might be able to strike a balance, to find some middle ground that is safe.

but until then, it’s all bare knuckles and clenched teeth and utter complete madness.

it’s like an echo of where you were
it comes so softly but you’ve been gone for such a long time
i no longer know the difference between the memory and the echo and the person
who should be there
an emptiness that yawns instead of you, that grows within me
instead of you, time that passes me by, instead of you
and you think you see me there, solid in stone in my anger and laughter
in my sorry state of worry and stress
a sham of what could’ve been but its the only thing you’re expecting of me
an echo in light of where i once was

completely out of control to be torn to shreds to be everyone and everything to everyone and ultimately be nothing escape into smashed pieces where i can say anything about this i want anything but this one moment breaking lit alight kicked up and flung her smile her laughter her hands her tears her last words a cackle of ghosts everywhere wound pulled open at the edges never to heal what he said what he did promises never kept promises he should never keep over and over lightening like the madness of asking too much and the horror of giving too little and he knows this he knows this of course he fucking knows.

“goddamn this noise inside my head” -NIN, “the becoming”
wires and flesh, machine beast
mechanical heart strings, like strumming a guitar
finding the chord that opens the world, all hope
cold eye stare, hot steel, unfeeling pump, unthinking logic
depraved and loving, the circuitry of incalculable desire
the weakness of being, there’s nothing in being this way
absolutely nothing to the core, tin shell rust yearning, pining
to be cracked opened, to find a way to bleed
(and you want to crack her open to get to all the soft parts, to poke and prod, inside and out, find where it still hurts, to see what you can and cannot fix, to swap out this feeling for that, set this bone in its proper place and shatter expectations, to repair her and take what you need for yourself, swap spit, swap wounds, swap muscle for springs, gears for teeth, vampire mechanic asking for nothing, taking everything and giving it all in return, the blunt joy, the exquisite trauma, the mad laughter of sorrow, the beauty of the lie, something like love but more like mindless fucking, desperate repair, something at angles with everything you both know)