her skin is smooth, the scars are gone
but little do you know
she acts like everything's okay
yet she feels like she's alone

did you check her stomach?
and did you see her hips?
there's pain inside her eyes
and a fake smile on her lips



-k.l.

the soothing sensation
all feelings, erased
all the people in my thoughts
defaced and replaced
by an emptiness so bold
it's solid in shape
I am lost to its liquid embrace

it brings me to a quieter, simpler place

and I lust for its soul-numbing taste.

Failure is a haunting fear
but fear itself is worse.
A deceitful ghost
like the closed door

keyless

now a wall.

It is in those broken moments we find ourselves,

Torn to pieces, with no explanation –

A dark crevasse molded to fit our shape,

Holding our deepest thoughts, encasing our forgotten spirit,

We tend to allow ourselves to be encompassed by this abyss –

Explaining to ourselves the need to dwell on the darkened past,

Swallowed by its projection of memories,

Sprayed upon the walls of our mind like murals –

An endless catacomb of images, seemingly permanent in their manifestation…



It is in those broken moments, that we find ourselves.

Seemingly unbearable days, leading to sleepless nights,

Dreading the thoughts that creep their way to our dreams –

Resting in an endless adaptation of our subconscious,

Playing out their roles, as if upon a Shakespearian stage…

Each thought, acting its part with tragic precision,

Layer upon layer, scene upon scene…

Reaching back to grasp our inception of reality –

Griping its contents, and strangling the ideas to exhaustion; gasping…



It was in those broken moments, that we found ourselves,

With a weighted world pressed firmly upon our chest,

The ebbing soil began to crumble –

Giving light to the somber path traversed…

Filling the now hollow crevasse with purpose and meaning,

Each memory defined by the silver lining expressed in love –

The fleeting darkness, swallowed by the over-whelming feeling of home…

Finding it in the simplicity of a kiss, and the certainty of an embrace,

It is here that we find ourselves,

In the intricate details and delicate idiosyncrasies –

there was a boy
who got all he ever wanted
one day,
all of a sudden,
out of
nowhere

and then he sat there
with his car
and his house
and his job
and his wife
and he thought:
now what?

and his wife told him
to have kids
and so they did
but when the kids
were born and
grown and
gone
he turned to his wife again
and said:
now what?

and his wife told him
to retire and move to florida
so he retired after
thirty-five years at his company
and moved to a shack
across the street from the beach
(because he couldn’t afford
a house on the beach)
and as he sat one night
looking out at the sun setting
he would turn, again,
to his wife and ask:
now what?

and she told him
to just enjoy all that he had
all that he had done
to look back on his life
and smile
and so he
did

but before bed that night
he turned to his wife
and asked her with all
earnest:
now what?

and she told him
to go to bed
because that’s all there
is to do right
now

and that stuck with him
it was all he could think about
he stayed up thinking about it
all night in fact
and when his wife woke up
she found him out on the front porch
sitting in a plastic chair
watching the sun
come up

she didn’t think anything of it
and didn’t say anything about it
but something had changed in him
something that took him three weeks
to figure out
because that is when
he turned to his wife
one last time
and asked:
now what?

and she told him to answer
his own **** question
for once

this shocked him
and made him angry
so he barked back
that she’d always
had an answer before
where were they now?
where were all those things
to be doing now?

she didn’t know
and his yelling brought tears
to her eyes so he left the house
and she sat their crying
for a bit until
she could pick herself up
and go work on her knitting
until he returned

the boy drove through the sea-side town at twilight
and he could look into the bars and see
dozens of young people drunker than sailors
singing songs completely off key
and genially enjoying whatever
they were doing right then

the boy then drove to the pier
and parked his car ****-eye
across three spots
and got out and walked
across the rickety planks
to the end of that bridge
to nowhere

there he looked out towards the darkened sea
and he could see nothing

not a ship
or a lighthouse
not a buoy
or a feature in the
sky

and there he stayed until the dawn
enveloped him and other souls
began to inhabit the pier

he returned to his car
pulled it out from across three parking spots
drove it out of the parking lot
away from the town
and out towards his shack
across from the ocean

once home
his wife came to him
saying she was worried sick
saying she could barely sleep
saying where were you?
oh god, where were
you?

nowhere
he said
I was nowhere
and for the first time
I finally felt like there wasn’t anywhere else
to go

what do you mean by that?
his wife questioned

I don’t know
he responded
I really don’t
know

I wasn't sure what to make
of this intergalactic space war.
With flying soldiers in old tobacco tins
and bullets made out of fingers.
I took it upon myself, I suppose
to conscript to this chaos,
upon the fluffy terrain.
Some sort of tyrannous Tyrannosaurus,
with a purple top hat
had taken over the bunk bed fort.

I'd made up my mind.
The only thing for it was a straight "Neeeeee-owwwwwwww"
into the back of the villainous lizard.

My comrade in arms however,
felt I wasn't quite suited for this rampant combat.
Although, his reason I didn't quite agree with;

"You're doing it wrong" he said, rather patronisingly.

I guess my little cousin is less of the kamikaze type and more of the tactical warfare nature.