I blink tiredly listening to parallel pipes push plastic particulates in and out around the factory, while white towers give off billows of powerful pollutants. Cylindrical silos rise echoing a sound like snowy static from an old black and white tv. I walk and watch this strange scene following train tracks that go nowhere and back from there. The train is graffitied with some minor marks and more complicated tags. One roughly sprayed owl covers an old ***** orange car with the words “I wish I could rust away to” followed by red lettered “Itchy legs” and a more elaborate display that says something unintelligible but looks spectacular. Concrete carries the weight of the old train cars. It is cracked partially from the truck drivers and other workers but mostly from the earth shifting as the cement expands over time. Shallow lines in the concrete pursue their parallels. Their more prominent brothers curving and splintering as the deepest cracks cut fully across the back of the factory lot. This is what I watch from whatever time it is to the infinity of night that fills my sight. I am tired beyond tired. Feet sore, body slightly thinning but my mind is beginning to lose its distinct edges. Until, all reality becomes a walk around the factory. There is no yesterday or tomorrow only endless caffeinated patrols, and a yearning for the release of sleep.

I don’t want this dust laden room to become my tomb. However, I cannot abide the outside, a world where lovely flowers still bloom. A sense of sweet smells do not pass through the wooden membrane. Instead, it is the stench of fear and death that wed themselves to my nose.
Children no longer leave their rooms. The streets are far too quiet so, it would be safe for me to venture outside. No one would really bother me, but I am scared, unprepared for anything less than the despair of my self-imposed isolation.
The ***** blue trash can is a quarter full with **** filled plastic bottles, *** covered Kleenexes, and perishables. The metal grate vibrates and clicks as heat tries to press in like an abstract specter. The noise would keep me awake if I ever tried to sleep.
Thirty-four hours is too long. My eyes burn heavy. Sleep would welcome me, but I refuse to yield to that release. Unconsciousness frightens me. I know what dreams might visit me, fictions, and dark fantasies that vaguely recall the painful realities. Perhaps a cup of coffee might save me from those nightmares. I know that I will eventually succumb to the demon of slumber. My dry eyes find water that I did not know existed.” No sleep, no sleep, god please no sleep.”
Memory movies come unbidden. steel breaks glass, metal crunches, someone screams. I shudder as my fingers follow a map of pain from my lower lip down and to the right. “No, no, no, no, not today!” I cry out. Then, recalling the powdered stimulants that I stored in my old book bag I dash up and towards the door, stopping just short of opening it and stepping out to the living room.
“*******, stupid *******, you ******* ******. ****!” I yell as I retreat from the dangerous door.
More tears make a guest appearance on my face. ***** fingers ****** my chipped tooth, pushing it in and pulling it a little way out resisting the urge to cringe in disgust and pain. Till **** and blood pop from the pink gum bubble just under the disfigured tooth. I bite my tongue, till more blood comes and swallow the putrid mixture.
Small shadows slip sideways and back into place as an ambulance rides by my window. My body tremors with a familiar terror. “No, no, not again. Oh god please not again.” A strangled voices weeps. The multi-colored lights of police cars play a strange shadow show on my wall. “Not again, not again.” I whimper.
A thud, thud, thud, thud, sounds to my right, followed by a muffled voice. “Come on man you got to come out sometime.” My fingers fall to a thin scar just beneath my left pec. I trace the scar completely then push against it as hard as I can. Until, my breaths become shallow. “Go away *******, just *******!” I scream back uncertain who I am yelling at.
“Fine” the muffled voice replies in defeat.
“Good, good.” I mumble
Tears threaten to swallow what is left of me. Instead of letting them win I decide
that this has to end. I find a small book of matches, strike the first one and let it burn out.
A small face fills my mind, little cowboy brother. I strike the second one and let it burn  down to my finger. The face returns, and it burns worse than the fire. Mad laughter crackles as heat and smoke fill my lungs.
A shard of glass scratches my left cheek, and I can see my little brothers body crumbled in the passenger seat. I cannot feel the fire burning me. Someone yells in my ear stop struggling.
He tries to pull me out of my room. I punch him in the jaw yelling “*******!”

Now, I am outside. Panic fills every ounce of my being. I struggle to climb back in my burning room.
A stranger yells “stop him.”
I scream. “No, I have to go back in, let me go. I can’t be out here.”
Despite my struggles I am forced to watch my sanctuary smoke and burn, until water squelches the last bits of angry orange.
With the wooden walls now broken, I break to.
“Please come back, I am sorry. Please come back.”
Only the soft sizzle of some nearby ember answers my pleas.
I realize that my photos have being incinerated. There will be no more pictures to help me see my little buddy. The night ends, as an ambulance carries me away. I am strapped in, certain that no happy place awaits me.
A strange thought  come unbidden, and I ask the EMT sitting next to me “do you think they will let me have a padded room. I can’t be outside.”

I sit observing all those strangers scurrying from events occurring during the day. Still stuck in place, I guard this space securing the most unsecured spots. In a daze I look away to see nature ruling the distant landscape.
Trees with no leaves only spindly fingers form wooden web like structures, competing for space with their sisters and brothers who sport full bodied broccoli colors. White cumulus clouds streak across a turquoise sky racing other grayer layered stratus and cirrus vapors. I long to follow, flying as fast or faster than those amorphous beauties.

My pupils contract coming back quickly so I can focus on where my attention is supposed to be. However, my mind wanders and my eyes follow. Weird humming wires bisect the skies. Gone for a moment, I force myself to return.

I hear next to nothing. My sight affirms said silence. Closer than my cloudy kin a flattop building mimics blacktop shapes and colors. Cars clutter the cigarette strewn parking surface. The gravely parking lot cracks like a fault line leaving little fractures where thin green plants perk their heads up and out, sprouting from the concrete covered earth.

Near day’s end I find my focus again. Strange reflections wobble in dark windows as employees drive in to replace their almost friends. The shift ends and I follow strangers out. The herd thins as we diverge on different streets taking our own roads home. Nature follows me back to the hotel sweet, then to sleep, and finally into my dreams.

The lines don’t cross. They never cross. Like connecting the dots, he pulls one string to the next. This is the only way he knows how to make sense of a senseless world. It is geometric. He points at the points placed by the power of his imagination. Then he twirls them in every possible angle. “There is a deeper truth in this,” he swears.
For fifteen hours he has stared at the puzzle. Cursing, and circling, every corner he could conceive of, seeking ultimate truth. His blues eyes blink with the powerful pulse of unrelenting fatigue. Soon he will succumb to slumber. This obsession may wane for the night. Although, he fears that in the morning he will lose the patience to pursue this line of reasoning.
Loose leaf papers filled with colored equations lay scattered across the room. He mumbles, “Sleep would be good.”  Instead of going to bed he clears the clutter from the frigid floor. Pushing his papers to the side. Then watches as they lift off the ground and float gently to the left and right. Dust particulates dance in the air, swirling and glittering in the morning glow.
The white t-shirt he was wearing comes off then his tight blue jeans go as well. “This will allow the free flow of blood to pass unconstricted throughout my entire body” he thinks.
“The answer is somewhere here,” he stutters. Slowly he seats himself on the floor, shivering as his naked flesh settles on the cold concrete. His legs curl and cross each other. Closing his now reddening eyes, he begins to breathe slowly. In and out and back again repeating and repeating the same breathing patterns, he focuses. Letting his consciousness float inches away from sleep, uncertain on which side of slumber he is sitting on.
Smooth round stones of various colors and sizes fill and form a shore in his mind. Then a pool of glimmering water appears from nothing. No scent exists here.  Aluminum foil wrapped potatoes are scattered all around him coinciding with an itch forming on his left foreman, diverting his attention for a minute. The landscape begins to dissolve, and he struggles to regain control. Bit by bit he regains control breathing in and out and back again.
His skin vibrates, or twitches, he is uncertain. The rhythm remains consistent. Thin lines of blood cross his entire inner body. In and out and back again. The shape from his room reappears with a white glowing sphere circling it. In and out and back again.
Inside the sphere a speck forms then disappears then forms again. In and out and back again. He wonders were this is going. Where does all the meaning in the universe come from? In and out and back again.
Is flesh the meaning or is it spirit. In and out and back again. Is life death and death life. In and out and back again. Is time a true measure of my existence? In and out and back again. Dam, what does the shape mean?
A small hand pushes his shoulder jerking him to the left. The world shifts colors. They pool and rock phasing into a grey scale then return to their original color, then shift back and forth for a few minutes until they settle into the original color scale. “That was like adjusting the color in a tv,” he muses.
Suddenly, a thin white light explodes piercing his retina, causing him to shudder in pain. In and out and back again. Why? What? Why? How? In and out and back again. The pain of uncertainty gnaws at is being. Fear begins to tighten its grip but he is too deep to withdraw.
Every book he has ever read appears fluttering freakishly fast opening and closing like a strange mousetrap. In and out and back again. Every experience he has ever had replays and is reintegrated into his being as he struggle to return to true consciousness. In and out and back again.
For a second the breaths stop. He can hear the words “in and out and back again.” A finger of light pushes its way into his mind pulling out strings of lights. He forgets all that he is and was. The strings explode and spread like a million lasers. Each lasers latches on to a book and pulls every words into him. Then he becomes himself again. Another round of lasers explode from his brain. This time these strings of his being reach out. Each one exploring the world around him. Just as he begins to feels like there is nothing of his being left the lights fling back like an overstretched rubber band and smack his brain with even more information.
After what feels like hours of this exploding and reforming he opens his eyes. The shape no longer cloud his thoughts. He jots down a few notes. After a couple days of intense study he adds to and passes the notes on to a friend. The friend reads them then passes them to, and again and again. Someone adds something new reshaping the ideas, then passes them on as well.
Years later the ideas comes back to their beginning. The young man reads a new book. He smiles as he absorbs the new ideas that linger in the mix with his old ideas. He sits down to breathe in and out and back again assimilating and integrating these new things into his being. In and out and back again.

Last night the truth was in the bottle. It may be a tad bit cliché, but the stripping away of my cognitive functions was a relaxing endeavor. Okay, there’s nothing cliché about that last sentence. Still, there I was past the crowded living room, cluttered with soda cans and people, past the small kitchen and the three guys playing cards, past the three wine coolers sipped through a straw, and the mixed drinks, pass all that there was the truth.
Dropping the regular essence of me, I slid behind the idiot clown. I tripped and stumbled, babbled and mumbled. My emotions unguarded, I spewed love almost as much as I spewed chunks of a greasy sausage pizza with little chewed up black olives. It was fun. One moment of not thinking. One moment of not dealing with the concrete and the abstract, the struggles and oppressions, my realistic paranoia and dark observations. I plopped limply down on the couch then slid off the side of it jokingly. The ground shuddered with a soft thud.  My friends laughed. I laughed. The truth is I like the sound of innocent laughter. It is a relief. All those synapse spitting out calming fluids. Till, what little stress that was left disappears.

     Before that the truth was in caffeine induced writing frenzies. There were small interludes of creativity swirling around dark depressive moods. I pushed and prodded the black keys as if I was chipping away chunks of stone on a marble sculpture; exposing myself and my truths.

     Someone told me that to be a great writer doesn’t require me to suffer. I thought it’s a good thing they’re not mutually exclusive, because the truth is I was suffering long before I started to write. The doubt which comes from learning more and more bled me to the verge of insanity. Maybe it was vanity that pushed me to seek the truth.

     Before that the truth was in quiet walks. The strolls down old dirt paths and memory lanes, crossing the mental traffic of past and present. I lingered at the jagged grey sparkling stone markers, sitting on newly grass covered plots, just hanging out at the graveyard because it was quiet. I wasn’t some emo kid. The truth was that I just preferred the quiet. It was the same reason I raced through the day to get to the night. Night was as nonjudgmental as the pine infested graveyard. No harsh sun glaring down. No strangers staring at me until I had to turn my head to the ground. The truth was the quiet, and the quiet was liberating.

      Before that the truth was in books. Kernels of wisdom locked in works of fiction. Little leather bound universes creeping in and transforming my mind.  Now, I prefer biographies; back then I loved the fantasies. Though in truth all nonfiction is fiction, because all reality is perceived relatively and written thusly. So, I stashed book in my back pack and back tracked down old alley ways to read away the lonely days. I sat in those dark corners, the dusty gravel biting my big bubble ****, but I was there for the quiet.

      Before that there was science. Beakers and Bunsen burners burning out atoms, and chlorophyll. I never really felt I had a talent for their postulates or formulas. Yet their subtle certainty, mired in uncertainty was appealing. They offered ever evolving truths. The strange transition from one logical position to the next and I was willing to adapt to any new facts.

      Before that there was god. I was his egotistically elevated idiot child. I could converse with adults on their level because in this they were as juvenile as I was; those ancient books that no longer make sense to me. Then it was the emotion of loving unearned certainty. The comfort of cowering beneath the awe and love of an all-powerful and all-knowing father figure, I called it the truth.

      Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, cause a life’s worth of anxiety was hounding me the truth was in the music. Soft sounding syllables serenading me to sleep, moving to the rhythm of a calmly flowing beat. The music gave me something to focus on. It was a converging point to calm the chaos. Once in a while the music would play out some story or point out some struggle. My Tracy Chapman that was the truth.

       Sleep was preferable to the waking madness of daily living. So, if I was tired I slept. People used to make me feel guilty about it. However, I realized that sleep healed the body and the mind. Sleep let me dream. Dreams let me do things beyond reality. They directed me to grand fantasies, or pointed out painful truths about myself. I could wake up crying, or I could go to bed sad and wake up content. That was the truth.  

       In-between all these things I pondered relative and certain truth. Was it constant or changing based on perception? People passed, none returned. I got older. Now my teeth are starting to rot right out of my face, but I still devour information; listening to the wild tales of strangers. Sometimes, I trust too much, other times I trust no one.

      The truth is I exist, amidst whatever this existence is. Beyond that I cannot clearly define this reality. What is the truth?

Dark is the heart of the cosmos that beckon us. Racing waves of solar energy. The ocean ripples with moon's reflections. I wish to drown in the yellow orange hydrogen furnace. I wish to drown in the shiny brine that reflect the same shade as my hazel eyes. I wish to drown in love, in awe of all the wonder this reality has to offer. Let it swallow my poetic soul, leaving only a lite littering of poetry in my wake, and I will die a contented fool.

He smokes. Lips pull thin white clouds of relief into his lungs but when he is done he will head back in to the dark den of machine men. There used to be better days. Now strange alchemy has turned his soft body hard, smooth skin wrinkled, white teeth cracked and yellow, and soul into a mutilated mess. The fence vibrates with his passing frustration as one foot cracks the corner. Would have been a ****** mess if not for the tight steel toed shoes, that add about half a pound a piece. His fatigue weighs so much more. A heaviness stops him at the door. It is like he is walking in a world of gravity set at twice the normal rate. Safety goggles, lunch lady hair net, and ear plugs have become his nighttime uniforms.
“Five hours and twenty-three minutes to go.” He recites like Dustin Hoffman’s rain man.
The mechanical madness beckons him in with a thud da dud, thud da dud, thud da dud.
“At least it is a midnight shift and not a hot summer day shift.” He thinks as he shrugs off the last remnants of his reservations.

Journal

I sleep in in pools of sweat, awakened regularly by nightmares. Body clenched tighter than a rusted vise. Still, the nightmares are more pleasant than my waking hours.

Journal

It is late in the afternoon and I finally have a second to jot down yesterday’s nightmare, sleeping and waking. The dream began with a strong feel of reality to it. I was lying in the trench half asleep; my body folded awkwardly in the dry dirt corner that I had cleared for myself. My journal pages were scattered all about. Many discolored, some with dirt, some with blood, and others simply with the wear of time. The ink on each sheet was blurred to the point that I could not make out any of the words.
The only disconcerting thing was the quiet. I could not recall this much quiet ever, at least not for many months. There were no explosions or tinging of bullets bouncing off our make shift metal trench tops. I heard no one making lewd jokes or screaming out their night terrors. My voice had been stolen as well but I had no clue as to how or why.
I looked around and found no one, not even Billy or Captain Owens. At first there was a sense of panic, but I finally relaxed. I was alone. There were no machine guns or artillery firing, no one screaming orders. I could sit here and read my books in the sweetest solitude anyone has ever known. I gathered the unbound journal pages around me, and put them in their proper place and order. Then, I pulled out and old copy of Grimm’s fairytales.
Without warning I felt hot hands pulling on my, shirt. Hard fingers crawled struggling across my back and chest trying to pull me down. The harder I struggled the more their grip tightened, pulling me down faster and faster. My body was slowly being swallowed by the earth. The dirt consumed me inch by inch, stealing every breath I had and replacing it with clots of mud. I could feel worms trying to burrow their way into my skin. I coughed and sputtered in horror.
Despite my terror, I thrashed against the earthy hands. My eyes were clouded dark brown. I could feel fingers clawing at my face. Then there was a sharp slap stinging my cheek. I clenched my fist to punch the earth. Even so, I was still unable to see anything or breathe. I raged against whatever it was.
Then I heard Billy shouting, “Get up you idiot, it’s a gas attack.”
I scratched at my face struggling to find the air, until I finally realized what was going on. My face was covered by a gas mask, and Billy was yelling at me.  I fixed the mask properly to face and took stock of the scene. Everyone in the trench was either struggling to get their gas masks on or helping other soldiers, who were stumbling around blinded by the green gas cloud, attaching theirs. One man was even putting a large strangely shaped mask on a horse. Panicking, several of my compatriots rushed over the top and were mowed down by enemy planes. Amidst the chaos I stood stupidly, still not helping at all just coughing and wheezing. I turned to look back at my spot and in the foggy haze I saw dark brown dirt arms receding back into the ground.
A part of me wished those hands had strangled me; a part of me still does.

Journal

Dreaming darkly, I dared to climb some jagged precipice. My hands were dusty with gravel and moist with sweat making, each grip harder than the last. Barely a foot below my feet the sharp stones began to crack and shift. A section of the mountain started to move rolling into the shape of a clenched fist. The sound of stone scraping stone stung my ears. The fist pounded upon the side of the cliff shaking loose rocky bits, then larger bit of rock as well. Grey and black speckled stones pelted my head dangerously fast. Foolishly forgetting my current task, I raised my hands to protect myself. With no secure footing on the rock my weight pulled me backwards and I fell straight into the sharp stone hand. The monstrous hand shook me side to side.
Then I heard a moaning. At first I thought it was me, certain that in some concussed manner I was making noises without meaning to; however, I was not. Even though, I was hanging upside down by one leg, I could still see the face of the cliff very clearly and very literally.
One rock eye opened, up then the other, blinking rapidly as if they had not been opened for a thousand years. The irises were grey and jagged like cracked stones, but the pupils seem to be like a mirror. Inside I could see two reflections, one overlaying the other. The first was a young man, clean cut and shaven with warm hazel eyes and a smile. The other was an older man. His face was much leaner. The hazel eyes were bloodshot with bags so deep under them that you would swear he had been punched in the nose. His hair was now worn recklessly, and thin **** covered his face.
Staring fiercely at me but with a tinge of pain the mountain cried “my arrrrr ou hirtming meee?”
Without thinking I laughed. The indignation was obvious. The mountain’s eyes glared at me. Then another stony hand exploded from the rocky formation. Clenched in a fist the new limb violently pounded its own face, clearing a clutter of loose rock and dirt away until an orifice could be seen. Then it repeated “why are you hurting me?”
Before I could stop myself, I laughed again. Infuriated, the mountainous creature shoved my left foot in its newly formed mouth and bit down hard. I screamed in agony. Then I woke up. My entire body was pulsing with pain and my lower left pant leg was wet again. I tried to pull the fabric from my skin but stopped when an intense pain shot up my leg. I was bleeding again. Where the hell was the medic?
I was no expert but, I was pretty sure my leg was not supposed to smell like rotten eggs. I tried to stand but stumbled. Angrily I pushed off against the side of the hole and managing to rise again, only to wobble and fall face first in to cold wet dirt. Chewing on a bit of blood and mud I shuffled around in the dirt for a while trying to get up. I spit out the dirt but was too afraid to call out for help. Suddenly, I remembered why. I was the only one left.
      Last night we all went over the top. Captain Owens held the barbed wire back as we rushed over the rough incline. Bits of brown earth exploded around us as we pushed forward. Most of my mates moved faster than me. Billy was blasted and fell four or more yards from my feet. I pivoted around his bullet riddled corpse. Screams of rage and terror sounded in the darkness. I think, I managed a couple more yards before a bullet cut clean through my calf.  Even with a bullet in my leg, I managed to make it a little further until I slipped on some blood slicken grass. I tried to brace myself but fell face forward into a lump of warm sticky something.
When I realized I could not stand up, I began to drag myself backwards. The enemy’s bullets sounded a strange earthly percussion around me. Inch by slow agonizing inch across the cold, ******, muddy earth I managed to drag myself back down into our dank hole. I found my corner and decided to wait for help. I am uncertain if someone will come to help me.

Journal

This morning as the sun was slowly rising, I managed to pull myself up just enough to see the barren landscape. The grass is gone, the trees are gone. The earth is a massive wound, scattered with bullets and ****** bodies. Thankfully, the gas attacks had robbed me of my sense of smell, or the stench would have killed me. I think, I was slipping in and out of consciousness.
     As I was trying to pull myself out of the hole, I saw a red wolf running through the dead earth. A sharp spasm of pain set my whole body a spark, and I cried out. The wolf turned his head scowling and growling at me. Even though it was many yards away I could see it eyes. The irises glowed forest green, piercing me with an almost accusatory stare, as if to say this is all your fault.
We sat in a holding pattern for several minutes before it realized that I was no threat. Then it slowly sauntered over to the nearest corpse. After a few carefully placed sniffs the wolf began chewing on the face of the corpse. Even though, I should not have been able to, I could hear the crunching of the bones and the squishing sound of flesh being gnawed off the dead man’s face.
I closed my eyes for a second, and everything changed. There was no wolf, the chewed up body was nowhere to be found. In the distance I heard the sound of several wolves howling and running towards the ****** battlefield. I lost my grip and slid backwards onto a thin line of barbed wire that ripped my shirt and tore strips of flesh from my back. I would have screamed but all I could muster was a soft whimper and a moan before I passed out again.

Journal

I don’t know why I bother. It hurts so much. My lips are chapped, my skin is fevered fire, and the blood I have lost. I should be dead. I would have shot myself, but apparently in that mad dash I lost my bayonet and pistol.
Last night, or was it this morning, whatever that last time I passed out was, I dreamed I was sitting in an open field. The earth was quiet growing and glowing with lush green foliage. The clouds were cotton ball cumulus forming a white, light blue, and grey chimera. There was a shimmering pond of pure blue water. Not clear but blue water. Inside the water I could see a distorted rippling version of the sky.
Within the watery reflection a black dragon danced in and out of the cloud. Its scales rippled silver, grey, black, and green as the beast twisted and turned with more grace than a world class contortionist. Its sinuous body straightened as it burst through another batch of clouds, dispersing their massive puffiness into tiny little puffs of white, grey, and light blue smoke.
I turned my head from the pond to see if I could spot the monster in the sky, but it was not there. My gaze found its way back to the pool were the beautiful beast was getting closer and closer, but when I looked back up it was nowhere to be found.
Again my vision returned the blue body of water. Ripples began to rapidly form on the surface and collide with a loud and thunderous crash. The dragon was closer in the reflection but still nowhere to be seen in the air.
      I could feel its breath at my back and see its teeth in the reflection. Its long snout curled in a viscous grin.  The mouth dripped steaming acid drool burning my skin. Two rows of teeth filled the top and the bottom of its mouth.  The outer rows were jagged and yellow, while the interior rows were dark brown and flat.
By the time I realized that I should, run it was too late. I felt the fierce face of the famished dragon envelope my torso and chomp down. My body convulsed with burning agony. I screamed, as I felt the furious beast chewing and swallowing me. I awoke to the sharp stench of sweat, ****, *****, and ****. My pants were stuck to my body, and I could not stop shivering. I manage to find another pair of pants. Painfully I struggled to remove the contaminated britches. Switching out the ****** and ****** pair for a slightly cleaner pair, I sat mute.

Journal

The sky is dull grey with no clouds. It’s just another dreary day, so if this is anyone other than myself. Then let me say hello or goodbye. It’s all the same in the end. We come and go in such a rapid succession that it seems almost pointless. I do not know the exact whys and how’s. I am starting to think there is no rhyme and reason. These dreams waking and sleeping are no worse than the horrors of reality.
It could be real or not, I am uncertain. As I write this, I feel I may die soon. Which means that it is up to you to figure out what all this means. Because, I am tired of struggling, searching, and hurting. I am tired of the bullet, bombs, and bayonets. I am tired of seeing my friends bravely face down a gruesome death. I am tired of the darkening of my soul. My spirit is too heavy with the horror of it all, but most of all I am just plain tired.

My problem is that I am driven. I have a certain level of willpower that most cannot honestly claim. However, many with this degree of will power become rigid. I am fluid, because directing much of the energy i have is a undeniable sense of empathy. This makes pursuing a world of materiel things highly detestable, because I know these things come at the cost of our humanity. So my pleasure comes from the consumption of art and knowledge. I am a strange **** that strangles the seeds, and softens the earth of your subdued minds. While you keep trying to grow straight like the rest am trying to bend you so you can see around OZ's curtains. Good luck,

It is the soul of the night that devours me. Hours spent in silence frightens, enlightens, and bores me. Nature spins in all her soft cool glory. Little pools of water lit by lamplights. Cold fences swing in and out in time to the shifting masses of shift workers. Trucks come and go at random intervals. I am tired, so deep in the fatigue that I require crippling amounts of caffeine. I am a stimulant fiend. Barely functioning as me, more like a specter of me. I watch the world from my comfy shack, letting it spin me back. Dipping in the solace of solitude, I search the universe for truth. Eyes cast everywhere, mind running wild, I ask the night for answers. Its silence says, find it yourself.

I leave them behind, staring straight ahead despite their pleas. The starry night beckons me. It promises to set me free, so I leave. Cries of anguish echo in the nether realms, part past part hell, where the darkness instills itself.
Nighttime brings terrible dreams, but daylight is where true nightmares come from. My boots disturb the grey cement kicking up clouds of dust. Smoke obscures the empty spaces where ****** faces once laid. Scarred flesh painted red with life’s fluid.  Blood oozes and drips down the now cooling skin, then flows forming a small red river with tiny tributaries. All this is captured in a greyscale distortion.
I missed the moments of violent percussions. The sounds of man-made thunder crashing and smashing everything in sight. I was only here for the aftermath. Still, that is enough. Dark blue body bags hold the terror of two twins decimated. Gaping wounds appear as if something had been chewing itself free from their stomachs. Normal skin rolls into mangled and exposed muscle then becomes bone. What a sick alchemy of flesh.
Their faces follow the same empty stare. They almost look alive. Eyes open in accusation, pointing in a parallel direction. I can feel the full force of their claims as they silently scream “Why.”
I cry, but my tears come just upon the edge of numbness.  Anger, and sorrow so extreme that my mind cannot handle it. I disappear, pretending that these are merely photos. I immerse myself in the delusion that this is a thing of the past. I am not here. They are not there. With a digital click, the camera becomes my emotional filter.
I stumble, a step away from losing what is left of my sanity, then cross the threshold in reverse, till I am outside. A small woman cradles something in her arms. It is a charcoal baby doll. Tears streaming the woman screams, holding that incinerated thing, but it’s just a doll. Black flakes fall, baby doll’s clothing turns to dust. I cough it in and out choking on the musk. I am grateful that it is just a broken doll.
I feel fear bringing me to edge of insanity. Her screaming seems strange. Her eyes look deranged. The doll’s legs have little calcium protrusions. Do burnt bones blacken? It’s just a doll. Scorched porcelain doesn’t look like skin, but it’s just a doll. Please let it be just a doll.
I pull myself from the situation. Detach what is left of my impartiality from my sanity. This is just a picture. This is just a job. Auto pilot takes over as I keep clicking photos, leaving any sense of self in the past.

Can’t Sleep

The heat will not let me sleep. Sweat pouring into my crevices as I move my seat back and down. Twin trickles slide down my temples. The exhaustion tickles my already fuzzy and tingly brain. Thoughts become clouds creating new forms of stormy confusion.
I need one hour to at least regain my rationality. I roll to the left slipping my black shoes off, because I sleep better barefoot. I roll to my right, shifting the keys in my side pocket so they won’t stab me. Still, I cannot sleep. I roll down my window and place a small black jacket up, to block out part of the sun. The white interior reflects some of the heat but not enough to let me sleep.
The weatherman promised rain, but I would settle for snow or sleet; anything to reduce this heat. I close my eyes to try breathing exercises. It doesn’t work. I try making a blindfold out of a shirt. It doesn’t work. I try daydreaming to relax, but it doesn’t work.
Now I have to go to work. I am sure I smell like smelly car. It is a beautiful day and I am sure the night will be quite gorgeous as well but I got a fourteen hour shift ahead of me and I am dog tired. ****, I wish I had been able to sleep.

---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------

Afte­r I Finally Got Some Sleep

I awake, slightly sweaty. Eyes blurred, sleep dust crusting up. A lump of sorrow fills my gut. I recall arms around someone I loved, holding on to her. I recall love. I recall happiness.
It is all an illusion. That soft skin lay only within the realms of dreams.  Vividly she appears to me. Her smile, her long red hair, her *******, the softness of her belly held gently with interlocking arms. Her voice is only a construct of my memory as it tries to put together the specifics of that wonderful dream.
What a dream girl. Maybe she was that girl from that tv show I used to love. The last dream like that she was a girl I knew fourteen years ago. If I could I would go back to sleep, trade in the coldness of this reality for the wonderful love. But it is too hot, and I have to go to work.

Blades of wet grass slide softly across the bottom of my feet as I stride across the rain slicken yard. There, barely ten feet in front of me sits an echo. A small boy with goofy looking black rimmed glasses, and thin brown curly hair, sits planted firmly on a makeshift rope swing twists around and around, winding the swing up, than spins in circles as the tension in the rope is released. Smiles, and laughter play out in the shiny day. Innocence wearing its sweet face. The unknowing a better fruit then the bitterness of truth.

I turn away to see a shaded landscape filled with vine trees. Their thin string things whipping back and forth in the wind. Another echo haunts my heart. The young boy, no longer bespectacled runs, jumps, and grasps a handful of vines. He swings in and out of a fantasy world. He is alone in a world crowded with imaginary friends. Pirates swashbuckle as he and the lost boys of Neverland fight and fly. Now the tree rots from the roots tilting at an uneasy angle, and is slowly dying.

A dog barks out into the evening sky as the last bit of the sun’s rays disappear.  The new night is marked by the howls of several other canines. They feel like mournful howls. My mind slips back to younger days and I recall how I would rise at five in the morning to walk both of my dogs. Such sweet shaggy friends, very wary of strangers but oh so loving to me. They are both dead now.

I slip a photo out of my wallet and stare at the crumbled visage of my grandpa. Dark glasses cover his old eyes, but there is a playful smile edging its way across his face. This is, was the face of a happy man. Now, he too, is just another dead thing. I am just another dead thing.
One step becomes another as I make my way to what is left of the old two port garage. Its dulled colors seam to match my mood perfectly. Cracked windows and grey broken siding marking its age like the rings of an old dying oak tree. Small and large rocks painfully embed themselves into my toes and feet. This was easier when I was lighter or at least wearing shoes. I stare at the decimated building imagining the way it was before time ate it all up; standing sturdy with a dog house to the right of it and a car, tools, toys, and other potpourri parked safely inside.

Then, I remember the sawhorses. Those old things with white paint chipped or chipping away. I rode them like unsaddled horses until my **** and ***** ached. Swinging light brown cardboard swords like I was a hero fighting monsters, never realizing the real monsters were human beings.

They took this from my family, those stupid bankers with their stupid mortgages. There is so much history here. Shades and shadows of the past to interact with. Sensations to stir passing passions. A tear coalesces, followed by a stream. I struggle to suppress it.

Squeezing my sore toes together, I pick up mud in between each digit. The cold sludge feels good on my dry skin. Suddenly, I realize that this is it. This will be the last time I ever come back here. A part of me wants to cry some more, but I refuse to yield to that part. These feelings are merely specters of a past long since departed.

The specter of the small boy stares at me from a distance, and I can’t tell if he is looking at or through me. Can he sense my pain or see my disease? My stomach is swelling while I’m stewing in a sea of sewer smelling tumors. I can almost feel the cancer eating me up from the inside. White cells massing like a mad army to march on my various organs. Each ***** slowly consumed until enough fail and I fall. It makes me so ******* angry. While greedy business men plague the world with their wicked intent, extending their lives with wealth and perpetuating human suffering, I have to die.  

I slap myself. The stinging warm pain prevents me from becoming too immersed in my own grief. I refuse to yield to this depression. I go back to the vine tree with a glint of mischievous intent in my eyes. Hands outstretched I charge forth fast and furious. My fingers grasp several thin slips of dried and dying vines. It is only a couple of feet off the ground but for the briefest of moments I fly back in to Neverland. Then the vines snap, I crash into a small ditch, busting my ****. A jolt of pain passes from my posterior to my neck, jarring my spine. When the pain passes I laugh, my face filled with a childlike smile. I guess I’m not dead yet.