Sailing through sheer jagged thoughts
and cool running dreams
The merciless curse of emotion
overflowing the exhilarating streams

Witnessing the chaotic times
of the dark and ancient old
when the mystifying warriors heart
was branded honorable and bold

ever drifting ever more
in this sea without a shore
through this land of legends and lore
ever drifting evermore

Floating ever aimlessly
through translucent waters
seeing the weak of mind from this plane
exiling their sons and daughters

While beasts of burden trudge from within
the midsts of juxtaposing viking ships
ships of war and plague and death
that obliviously vanish within a breath

ever drifting evermore
in this sea without a shore
through this land of legends and lore
ever drifting evermore

Sailing after those laden beasts
that which so arrogantly stray
you see those morbid souls of life
so ominisqueskly carried away

To the ***** delight and warmth
of the strong and merciful earth
Away from this unknown land
Of legends miraculous birth

ever drifting evermore
in this sea without a shore
Through this land of legends and lore
ever drifting evermore


© Crystal Erickson 1999

We’re hand in hand and walking, down where the Camden canal runs away from us
and breaks faintly in spires, under the floating patches of, olive tree, street lamps.
She shivers on her cigarette, smoke watching, a furnace strong and foreign,
like the ******* of the incense in Rome, tracing flaming *** trails.
The bird living in my ribcage beats it’s great and terrible wings
again, and has another. I have her cold elbow fit my palm.
The pigeons obliviously sleep to the draw
of that burning London moon.
The draw I feel moving me.
down into the world
that acts as a cellar
to the one we know.
So much colder
than the heat
is, in her
~

the adderall dripping down the back of my throat tastes like sour oranges. little patches of sooty blackness caress the strange dips under my eyeballs as a sign of overworked modernity eating filth to break the fast of a dinnerless evening. cars... more and more cars... glide up Johnson Street on direction to an anywhere packed with reason and meaning, travel-wrung after hours of work and play like Greek tragicomedies written in an Indo-European language lost to the passage of endless time in the Urals. Trailing behind us, the Cossack signaled for the rest of his entourage to approach a little slower if the city were to be won from the Mongol horde approaching Baghdad at the eastern gate (A.D. 1258) and within the little eyelid movies drizzling through my mind every time I close my eyes, I heard screams and scrambled hashtags pleading for humanitarian assistance.. pleading for a chance to rescue the Islamic Golden Age from the brink of its twilight battle with obliviously obvious tired-eyed savagery reveling in the soft moonlit warmth of Mesopotamian beachsand. Blood was being worn as some sort of slimey undergarment, leveling the entire populace to a place so far gone, the mind could no longer discern the universe as a set of tetris patterns blocked and connected with a light string of consciousness, the light of intense college-student starvation as if tuition were the bloodlands trapped between ****** and Stalin.

There isn't much to be said for the way she used to dance. It was sort of like a jimmied cow-- I say 'jimmied' in the context of a cow, out late, midwestern meadow, center of the winter, shivering... shivering so profusely, it was almost as if it were dancing. Dancing, jimmied, silly, frightened, escapist sentiments pulsing through his beef belly blood as if he were capable of some sort of latent sentience, some sort of ability to discern love from hate, black from white, ethical standards from matters of the spirit. That's the way she danced.

She'd shiver to the beat like a dangling mango, misplacing herself in the music. She would cry a little, too. You could see the tears in her aura, flagrantly asking to be left alone. Flagrantly leasing themselves to the moment and whatever delight the moment could afford.

She asked me; "so, what do you look for in a girl?"
I said: "a decalcified pineal gland."

She jingled her keys in front of me, and smiled. I lost myself in someone elses talking points; across the room, I could hear the chatter of some teenage lip-reader repeating her every word line-for-line. It was 12:58 AM, the Mongols began their destruction of the Abbasid libraries. I just stood there, amazed at the near ventriloquism of this strange pretender. Was he, perhaps, pulling her strings? Was she, perhaps, a puppet? Was there, perhaps, an instant connection between these 2 brains on the quantum level, one effecting the other, regardless of the distance in space and time?

I wore red shorts, black and white striped t-shirts, baggy over-sized Vanity Fair thrifted sweaters. I liked being alone. I liked people, but I just liked to be alone. I'd go to public libraries in other cities. I'd sit on benches at foreign parks, stayed to watch the shift...renouncing sun, rising moon. The shift, faithful shift...it moved me in such a way. A way that from the start I decided on never intending to describe. Obliviously attentive I observed everything. Shaggy-haired pre-teens skateboarding past grassy hills. Society-stricken women jogging along directed pavement. Fleeting array of arrival and dismissal. Me, sitting. Cold, happy, miserable, lonely...reading the words of anonymous others. I didn't feel alone when I read. I read all the time. I'd sit in my car on some parking-space in the midst of a small town plaza, in front of my drive-way sometime past mid-night, on the streets that could have been avenues. I'd sit and write. I'd write myself away. For nothing. For everything. For the sake of my time, for the sake of my happiness. My being. I was self-seeking through printed form. Feelings. They confused the **** out of me, especially when I wouldn't feel. And is that really even a feeling…the feeling of absence? The feeling of feeling nothing. A non-existent possessive emptiness. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be a writer. A poet. A librarian. An old silver-haired woman with a daughter and a son, and eventually grandchildren. A grandson named Ted and a granddaughter named Valentina, which I’d with warm grandmotherly charm sooner-than-later refer to as  ‘Teddy, dearest’ and ‘Valentina, sweetest’. --- And a lover. My lover who grew old with me. My lover who’d stay up to drink tea with me every God willing night. A great father to our children; a grandfather who’d take little Teddy dearest and Valentina sweetest out for bike rides. I wanted to be a cantante but I didn't have the voice for it. I was too average to be a model. A porcelain face didn’t suffice. More than necessary I’d hear strangers whisper, “doesn't she look like a doll?” The familiars, “dear, you are such a doll.” It was flattering. I hated it. I felt just as plastic as I looked. A doll. A cold plastic life-less porcelain doll. But then…I’d feel high. In it’s purest sense, so high…I could just take the world by clichéd storm. Conquer the dreams of my ancestors along with my own. There were times when I was invincible. I was complicated, and simple. I longed for nothing more and nothing less than a full stomach and a full heart. My organs were always half-empty. I’d stare at the stars, the moon, the sky. The laugh-lines of my father. My mothers illuminating youthful eyes filled with brightness that later in life resembled more of puddles from spring left-over’s. I’d look at my own, through the reflection of satin glass mirrors. I wish my eyes were story-tellers. I wanted a brighter smile. I wish I didn't think so much as I did. I wondered…what would life be like without a face? More sensitive, perhaps. I often times felt crazy. Unsanitary. Pathetic. Never bitter. Always misunderstood. And oddly enough, blessed. Fortunate. I believed in God. Enough so to capitalize His name. I had faith. I was grateful. If I had a million dollars, I’d off and buy the church I attended and give it as a gift to the pastor. Even then, hell as a final-inning wouldn't be eliminated. I wanted a better life. Everybody did. Nobody admitted it. Nobody talked about it. And if they did, I’d yet to hear them out. I would like to know, who, if anyone, will ever care enough to hold a beaten strangers hand? I was sympathetic. Internal. Introspective, and optimistic. I’d more than often refer to myself in the past tense. It just felt better. I liked it more that way. The imagery of a youth gone too soon. I made sense, none at all. And at times, I didn't feel the need to. I was nine-teen. Living in my own worded future. Living, that’s all that counts. All that matters. I’d be better someday. That’s what I’d tell myself. And maybe I would. Maybe I would end up being an actress, or a model, or a poet, or a wife. None of these things mattered, but maybe someday, somehow, I would. I’d wake up and live the life of being alive. 99.9, 8:29. And so…I left. And cars raced against streetlights. Seconds raced against minutes. Time was this never-ending race,
and I was just racing against myself.

we
are
so
used to looking at the sky
with
rose-colored eyes,

obliviously
burning
of
catastrophic
sun.

Once upon a time,
A starry night,
A forgotten world.

Once upon a time,
Laughter heard,
Smiles traded.

Once upon a time,
Timeless reality,
Clock ticking obliviously.

Once upon a time,
Damsel in distress,
A fearsome dragon.

Once upon a time,
A Prince Charming,
All shining armor.

Once upon a time,
Timeless love,
Endless happiness.

Once upon a time,
A promise broken,
A clock rewound.

Once upon a time,
The spell of ages,
Heavily obscuring.

Once upon a time,
An open window,
Tendrils of smoke.

Once upon a time,
A fiery beauty,
A timid monstrosity.

Once upon a time,
Love forbidden,
Lives forsaken.

Once upon a time,
She fell in love with a dragon.

She's the kind of girl who'd take a pregnancy test (after drinking two venti iced green teas) at a Starbucks restroom. She's the kind of girl who'd come close to overdosing on antioxidants and diet pills. She's the kind of girl who'd drink cheap velvet wine to the point of senselessness and obliviously karaoke to Radiohead's Jigsaw Falling Into Place at a distant city bar on an Autumn Tuesday night. She's the kind of girl who'd still be holding your wrong-doing hands underneath the sheets atop your bed at 4:03 AM.
She's the kind of girl I'd be if I had more of a heart and less of a mind.

Have you ever woken up one morning
With an overwhelmingly existential anxiety
Surrounding the inevitability
Of loneliness and dissatisfaction
With love as society has made it out to be
And the reality of the meaning of the word?

Nearly every single one of us humans,
If not all,
Dub ourselves "alone"
While simultaneously and obliviously relating
To each and every man or woman
Who has and will ever exhale
Into the earth's atmosphere
Unaware of each other's potential and ability
To connect with one another.

Our breaths conjugate
As they are ejected from our mouths,
As our feelings should,
Yet it is not as simple
It is not as simple as an involuntary respiration
Though it should be
It should be!

Why should I,
Another breather on this planet,
Feel as though my emotions
Are much too obscure and unfathomable
For a breather much like myself to comprehend?
Meanwhile in the other room
A man is breathing in the same air I am
And he is feeling the same way I am
-"alone"

There are things
Only a trained eye can see
While others
Go through life so obliviously

To see your loved ones
Die in a car crash
A thousand times
Dying over and over
Because the images just won't leave your mind

A body burning
In an oven
Begging for someone
To save him
The heat slowly eats
Away at his skin

An unknown person
Faceless
Nameless
Skinned alive
Lies in a meat cooler
Blending in with
the animals
Who shared the same fate

There are things
That only a trained eye can see
A pool of blood
With no visible source
The grim reaper
Has taken his hold on you
And you can't run
From these delusions
That plague
You

Through a split lip
red foam,
froghopper froth
fizzing, haemoglobin, half-life
sitting thickly-thick,
on a paving stone.
Looking like Clinton’s cards
think human hearts
are shaped like.

But mine’s an artichoke
a watery phloem thistle core
folded in fronds and furs,
bristles of cowlick baleen,
sailing, ship-lapped bark,
darkness and birdcages.

Mine’s a rigour-mortis pill bug
potato fly, oddball, ***** slug
an ammonite, a butterfly tongue,
a bending toe curled in ecstasy.
Exponential shell chambers and septums
ending alongside everything.

And the guts of my heart
incessantly churn mechanically,
maniacally and obliviously rhythmically
Keeping me malleable
soft,
moving,
un-enveloped by beetle wings.

Just like the platelets
of my hardening spit-heart
are, blackening blood,
amber caught bugs,
clay in mud,
elliptical,
eclipsing.
Nothing

like we think it is.