I am scared of my heart
Beating so hard
That the blood bursts
Through my veins
What would happen then
How embarassing
For everyone to see me
Covered in blood
It would never do

Smash the frikking screens,
Smash all of them !
Tear down all the wires,
Pull out all the cables !
Pulverize the mechanical minds,
The mechanical system,
The mechanical men.
Is this what you want ?
And what for ?
What's the point ?
You're bugged anyway.

The ticking of the clock
Made me look up;
But instead of its face
A protruding pair of batteries.

I turned it around,
Set it right.

It stopped.

A needle going into an eye,
A hundred nails scratching slate,
The hammering of nail into flesh;
These and a thousand other
Means of torture,
Pale in comparison
To the maximum extent
Of the mundane horror
Of everyday life.

A pulsar, beating away in deepest space,
Sounding out its dead chronology.

The fell beast slouches no more: it is born!
Yes, it is born, and walks among you,
And you see it not!

Like flies they are ****** about,
The churning of the oceans sends them
Spinning outwards, the outer wall
Making its presence felt with
A resistance vague yet firm.

Into this ever widening, pulsating
World, with its
Regularization, like prison bars of time
And space gripping you, parcelling
You into regular cubes, the
Common atoms for the
Common people,
Into this are you ******,
Headlong and without choice,
Without precedent,
Being forced to
Retreat from retreat,
Naked and hungry,
To find what you can,
And salvage what you can,
Of it and
Of you.

I don't want to hear;
I don't want to look upon;
I don't want to feel.

I'm tired of being dragged,
My flesh is worn to the bone;
But my hand is stuck.

Your words, your thoughts, give them to me,
Lend me some fuel for my bonfire,
I'm looking for the waste of human life;
Show me the vanities you admire.

I see them by the wayside, groaning,
Ask them why they do despair.

"Why do you sit here sighing,
When there is so much wonder here?"

It hurts, they say, too bad to live.
The world's taken all they have to give.

One says, "I'm not a coward, I'm not scared
I've seen, and loved, and felt, and dared,

But It's this pain, you see, this throbbing hurt
That'll stop only when I'm ground down to dirt!"

I take the knife and plunge it in,
Tear off my flesh and give it to him.

He takes it, shuts his eyes; a smile.
Leaps in the air, laughing all the while.

I chop off more, hand it out,
To everyone gathered about.

The blood; it washes all away.
The flesh melts night into day.

I silently wish this to be the end,
Of having of my body this way to rend,

But no! It grows back, all of it!
Bone, muscle, sinew, bit by bit!

But I know I am not whole,
I see the big deep terrible wound,
I try to reach it by subtraction,
But my raft keeps running aground!

I turn back each time, giving of me freely,
Wishing only to be drowned.
But the sea throws me back mercilessly,
My true purpose yet to be found.

Fat and lazy I gave become,
With fat and lazy thoughts; what
Lies beneath this guarded self-deception?

I shuffled through the long corridor,
Dragging my broken foot behind me,
Illuminated by the flickering lights above.
The scratching and screaming to my right and left,
The moaning down below.
I could not outrun it, this I knew,
But still made some distance
Before the
Hound
Was upon me.

Sad embers die out;
My muse is on holiday.
Robot writes instead.

Do not be quick to discard
Messy things in favor of more
Elegant, more
Symmetric, more
Ones. After all
(As I have recently learned!)
A baby is more
Beautiful than a
Diamond.
All life is messy, and
Your search for
Perfection might lead only to
Corpses.

What are you talking about?!
Of course I like to live in the past!
Sure, it's painful at times,
But oh so familiar!
There are signposts everywhere;
You don't get lost in the past.
And it's comfortable too,
And so well-furnished; it has
My favorite books and music,
Though I could lose some of the people.
I keep an eye out constantly for
Wear and tear; I fix up and mend the past.
You would like what I've done with the place,
Come visit me sometime.
No, you're right, I didn't always live there;
Before I moved in, I used to
Live in the future.

The sharp angles
Of the skyline
Cut my eyes.

I turn away
And fall on to
A passing cloud.

But fall right through it,
And as I fall,
The ground is smooth and patchy.

I see birds,
And little dots going about
Their business, peacefully, below.

And now I am peaceful,
And now I wish
That I had not fallen!

On a cloud,
Floating close by,
I first saw this little girl.
I was a little boy.
There was mist between, and
All around was forming and dissolving.
The currents of the wind bore our clouds
Nearer and farther, and gave shape to all I saw.
The last I remember is just a shape in the distance,
A patchwork of color, of skin and clothes and hair,
Before a crack and a boom,
Of what I now call lightning,
That turns all to white for an instant,
Leaving everything charged up,
Scarred and cauterized,
Sending me tumbling,
Down.

Coming into being;
Is it already too late?
I'll be waiting here.

Summer days
Summer haze
Eyes ablaze
With a flickering desire.

I have not been faithful to reality,
I have been running from it.

Pretending,
That what is true, is not;
That what is not true, is.

This has many reasons, many causes,
All rooted in the past.

To continue means to wait for
Crises of increasing magnitude.
I can either face things
Voluntarily, or be
Shocked, repeatedly, into realization.

Many reasons, many excuses, many
Allegations of unfairness have been
Put forth by my mind, to
Prevent me from taking the
First step out, to
Keep me stuck,
Keep me trapped.

To move forward means
One, and only one thing:
A commitment to reality.

Was I running or driving,
Or was everything else speeding past me?
I saw streaks; thin lines and thick ones,
Punctuated by gaps and other lines.
I felt faint; all emanated from some
Fixed point
Where the parallels meet.
Was I heading towards  it,
Or we're they coming forth from it?
What was it ?
I stopped and floated.

A vessel shaped
In a form I cannot see
Tries to fit me in.

You say you feel alive.
What's that like?

Traveling down yesterday's roads,
In rocking carriages filled with happy people,
While a ticking sound ticks away beneath.

Dark clouds with silver linings
Retreat into a golden sunset,
Past the horizon of my
Less luminous past.

I ride, though uncertain
Whether I am passenger
Or cargo,
Being chained to the seat
For my own safety.

Traveling through time
Requires caution,
Nearsightedness, and a
Generous suspension
Of disbelief.

The slow falling rain of water
Drops below the enduring
Reign of words.
One pelts, drenches, slushes out all,
The other penetrates and hold captive
Long after the remnants of clouds
Have withered away.
Impaled thus on words you seek water
In the growing cracks of the parched desert.

I try to keep them out,
I really do.
But they swarm over me
And into me.
Creeping, crawling
And squeezing in.
Soon it's like I have
A second skin.
That moves
And coats me
Inside
And out.
The whole is indistinguishable
From the millions of them.
I hate bugs.

I kept
Putting off
Life,
Until one day
It had
Passed me by.

What's under this leaf ?
It looks like
A little man.
Come on,
Everyone!
Let's crush him
In turn.

I concede that I
Need not be happy;
I concede that I
Might just be lonely;
That might just be
How things are.
That might just be
How things will be.
But my words still stand;
I want what's due to me.

They had come, all of them,
Answering the call of the gleaming
Spire, mounted atop the tallest
Tower. They stood in
Ordered rank and file, gently
Vibrating to its command, their cortexes
Humming in accord with its
Pulsing stream of information. They
Each had eyes but did not see, they
Each had ears but did not hear.
No, they had long ago
Judged far better the sights and sounds
Fed to them. Those who refused the
Implant were cast aside, being
Indistinguishable from that vile, that
Beastly, that ***** place outside called
Nature.

Ooh, I told you, didn't I ...
... but you wouldn't listen!
The cycles of time march on, they do,
Days, and weeks, and months at a time.

You're left reeling, wondering, staring,
As your phantom plans unravel.
Don't make these plans, I told you,
Don't fall for wishful thinking!

Yet it felt convenient at the time,
To deny these uncomfortable facts,
That gnawed at the edges,
Persistently. And so you
Brushed them off,
Distracted yourself
With Toys.

Now those distractions have faded,
And it stares you in the face;
What will you do?

I saw a whole army of wretched souls
Led on to do wondrous works ...
I made my way to their leader,
One shrouded in a dour cloak,
Who urged them forward to do their works,
And asked him, "how is this possible?",
He replied, "These are all those
Who wanted to **** themselves ...
All I did was to convince them, instead,
To give their lives to me."
I stared, mystified, as these long columns
Made their way through the world,
Overcoming with ease those who clung
Tightly, bitterly, long, to their illusions.

A meandering course,
Accumulating, weathering, eroding,
Depositing, overflowing, separating,
Whose end and journey are
Composed of miracles.

Like tears in the rain,
Embers in a roaring fire,
My thoughts among theirs.

I think you do not recognize it
For you have become used to it,
And internalized its patterns.
Everything is falling apart,
But not simultaneously,
And at different rates;
So you may pretend
To find stability
In the rhythm
Of failure.

Periwinkle bloom,
Overlaying what remains
Of an unlived life.

No, I'm not ready yet!
Please, you don't understand,
There's been a terrible mistake.
Yes, I know this is the right
Address, I was supposed to come here,
But I'm early, and
It wasn't supposed to be this way!
I know, I know, I said I wanted it,
But that was some time ago,
That's not who I am anymore ...
... no, open the door, stop the
MACHINE! Before it crushes me ...
... I'm up against the
Wall, and it won't be long now, but
Just a few moments more?!

Recessed hollows, within the
Ridged and furrowed tree, with its
Rotting bark, its thorns with no
Remaining bite, its fallen leaves
Raked to a neat pile, and
Rocked now with the
Repeated blows of a dull axe.

It rushes away from me, I to it
Around me grey mush, dark space
But there, a smooth plane stretching out both ways,
The White Wall

In the dimness I see others around
Me, going about their ways, but
Do they not see or do they
Not care at all?

I move vigorously, but stay in place
As does everyone else, but
Is this enough? Am I not
Supposed to fall?

To fall towards it (or away from it),
I make painful progress. I cannot judge
By parallax whether I draw nearer or
Not, to the Wall.

But I must. I know I must,
Make it here sooner or later,
For when I am silent I do most
Clearly hear its call.

Sit and tap away;
Messages fly by like rain.
What am I seeking?

It's my fault,
Of course,
But I don't see
What I could've
Done differently.

He muddles his way
Through all the
Puddles.
She stutters, mutters, and
After a moment,
Sputters.
He spies, shies away, and
Lies.
She sighs, hides away, and
Cries.

Some years ago, before my
Mind established its iron
Tyranny on the rest of my
Body, and the futile
Revolt that was led by my
Heart was easily suppressed,
I dared to ask this simple
Question: are there
Things out there that have their
Independent existence, or does my
Mind insert itself between me and
Reality, and invent these things as an
Illusion to prevent me from seeing the
Truth?

Hey you!
In there, in the mirror,
Looking doped and looking sleepy,
I loathe you!

Hey you!
Beginning another dreary day,
With no plan for your escape,
How I loathe you!

Hey you! No feeling, no
Feeling at all ...

Sitting here in my head,
Staring into the wall.

Rift opening up,
Stretching apart hands and feet,
About to fall in.

Watercolor trickles in from the edges of the window,
Smudging out the clear sky.
I flee the angry bucketfuls of oily paint,
That splash and smear the smooth floor below.
Finally I can run no more,
And I am pounded into red, white and brown,
Adding to the beautiful photograph below me,
Stretching out to the horizon.

These eyes, and
These hands, they
Tell me, I must
Change
My life.