The pilot's off the wagon and on the sauce,
leading his pod to rot on the rocks.

She said I'll see you later and I said why not.
Steak dinner, body massage, whatever gets you off.

Short of breath and out of my depth.
Low on cash and I don't want what's next.

Wrung out, tapped dry, limped ****, heavy sigh.
Asking Gungan questions like, "are we gonna die?"

The minutes of the hour, day, week, year, decade, lifetime . . .  
grains of sand slipping too quickly through a hand trying desperately to hold on.

For what purpose?
To fling into the eyes of our enemy?
To add to a castle that will wash away in the tides?
To feel like we've got some semblance of a grip on this intangible thing called life?

We're all just holding on to a fistful of nothing,
and we're holding on too tight.

There's always someone waiting in the corner
with only shadows as company.
A blind spot in our vision.
Breath we convince ourselves to be wind.

Nebulous shapes in the darkness,
eyes playing tricks again.

We close them and rub to erase any trace of a glimpse,
only to look again and be enamored by figures moving in light.
We gawk wide-eyed, panting, grasping out as far as we might.

He wears a cloak of invisible voices,
wove from the frequency of silent screams.
Ruler of the space between waking and dreams;
He is the Yellow King.

Fear not what you can't remember,
though His kingdom is obscene:
A place of waste and decadence
trapped beneath perception,
sewn with hidden seams.  

He takes his toll,
unbeknownst,
at the liminal space between asleep and awake;
collecting your soul,
bit by bit,
inch by inch,
until there's nothing left to take.

"We're I'm from, there are lots of bears. Raargh! Lots of big animals - monsters. You know?"

"Hai. Montsuras, desu ne?"

"So we have guns. Lots of guns. Pew pews. To shoot the monsters."

"Oh, okay, I ****."

A drunk Oregonian explains to a Japanese bowling-alley bartender the myriad nuances and complexities of what it's like to live in the American Northwest, and he does so with an affected accent vaguely approximating the one that most Japanese have when they speak English.

A Floridian who shares a table with them lowers his head and puts his hand to his brow while muttering, "Jesus ******* Christ."

His words are pretty.
His words contain worlds of swirling color and sound that swell up to drown out doubt and uncertainty in those who hear them;
sweet to the point of toothache.

His words are performance.
His tongue —a contortionist—
bending unnatural ways to produce sounds that soothe and calm and placate.

But don't be deceived by such pretty things,
for his words are poison.

The craziest thing about a bridge is how it connects two things that have no business being connected.

It's interesting, the informational and cultural exchanges that result from such a bridging.

("Interesting" is an antisemantical word: void of meaning. Just filler, really. It doesn't mean anything.)

A bridge is a tool of conquest: allowing one land access to another, so that it may be subjugated.

A platform for seemingly well-meaning goats to impale and destroy any gatekeeping trolls.