Her skin was like the result of a volcano.
It flowed on, and ebbed to the touch.
At any moment I felt it could
Erupt, and destroy me.
I was conscious of vast oceans
Of molten lava beneath,
As if she masked
Shifting tectonic plates below.
Amidst her peaks and valleys,
Glaciers, Wind and Fire,
Pounded material into submission.
To lie next to this
Reservoir of energy, this
Hot and heavy
Heavenly body,
Rotating and Revolving
To its own rhythm,
Was to dance
With life.

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.

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.

Out of my way! To the right, to the left,
To the ... oh wait, who are you ?
Let's all snap our fingers, and
Yeah you know you feel it too!
It's this crazy loving feeling,
I just gotta run around,
I just gotta tell everyone,
The devil's coming to town.

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.

Hungry I am
Hungry for you
Hungry for me
My hunger is yours
Feed it
Feed me
Feed yourself

I believe that
You'd believe anything that
I told you,
Except the things that
You don't want to hear.
Clearly,
You like being lied to.

Skin, green, blue, brown,
Colors of you, of sky, and ground,
Blurring and mixing as we ran around,
Chasing each other in the golden dawn.

Absent then, in my happy state, were
All the thoughts and fears that now abound,
As I lapped the air as a happy dog might,
Having my life's treasure found.

Running, running, wind and grass,
Then we tumbled and rolled around,
Before we settled our quick heartbeats,
And drew each other into the ground.

I panicked, I cannot say why,
And left you lying under the sky,
Searching evermore for the same fields,
Skin, green, blue and brown.

Fingers through your hair,
Digging furrows in your scalp,
With sharp nails,
Pressing down,
Scarring.
You asked for it.

Pouring through a prism,
Into a fresh soul.

Bubbling up,
A moving mist.

The first sights, and
The first sounds.

She said my sky,
My sky is full of stars.
But look, she said,
I'm looking at them
Through these bars.

Cold waves
Dark clouds
The plants crawling up to me
An island kingdom
Moving rock
Boats setting out to sea

I awoke; I had dreamt
That I had lost it.
I looked for it but did not find it.
It was not where I had last placed it.
I diminish every day without it.
If you find it, you may keep it.

If you stare hard enough at it
For long enough,
It will give up to you
Its secrets.

A grand journey it was!
Sledding and running,
Flying and crashing,
Tumbling into and careening off,
Stepping aside and barging in,
Jumping over and crawling through,
Bruised and scarred and cut and scraped,
But loving every moment of it;
Every terrifying and wonderful moment!

White light
Shining off the lake
From the moon above.

She stretches out her arms
And raises her gaze skyward.

Stepping one foot into the water,
A low soft long moan.

You tiptoe gingerly forward.

Play of sound, waves.
Play of light, clouds.

You crunch the gravel beneath, echoing.

She stops and turns around.

After the fireworks faded away,
And the lights in people's houses went out,
The streetlamp gazed on.

In your raggedy clothes or your fine hall,
Beware! The streetlamp sees all.

Great pain can be liberating.
It can lead to the place where
There is no mind,
Where your sense of limits and boundaries
Is dissolved,
And there is a temporary sense of
Freedom from the world.

I have heard that great joy does the same thing,
But I wouldn't know.

I'm tripping over thoughts and feeling,
Dripping with anxiety and fear,

I'm caught in the mesh of my own mind,
Dropping from a tangle to a trap,

Gotta pull through, cut through,
Break through this accursed wall.

Been a long while since I felt alive;
Feel like I'm living someone else’s life.

I walked into a cave,
And I felt as though my fears
Were like living parasites,
Strange biological grafts,
Growing, pulsing, slimy things,
With Gross and hideous shapes.

Yet affixed to my back,
Dug into my very spine,
Like murderous lichen,
Or grotesque gothic primordial ooze.

Rising, Creeping, Slithering,
Wrapping mouths, eyes and tentacles
Around me,
Weighing me down.

These things,
Grafted on to me,
Hissing, belching and moaning,
Daring me to look at them.

You sit in the corner,
Holding the lamp,
As we circle around the furniture solemnly
Ingesting our medicated alcohol,
Living our life in the intervals,
Stepping out at the end of the party,
One by one,
Out of our minds,
Into the fire.

Somewhere it was
Where I misplaced you.
Now I retrace my steps,
Looking within the
Pools of streetlights,
Hoping I don't need
To look in the dark places.

Hey what what what are you doing?
Put that effing knife down!
This isn't how it's supposed to end,
This isn't why I came to town!

You wanted to see me, I'm here now,
Instead you just screaming at me, asking how
I'm gonna find all the money to pay you back,
This is out of whack!

My system's compromised, yo!
I'm running on empty,
I got no money for gas,
But I got plenty
Of blood in my veins
And you're gonna see,
I'mma make it rain,
Until I bleed.

And then you'll be stuck,
Look at me while I smile,
Throw your hands up and say, f*%$,
Where were you all this while?

Stone columns,
Half illuminated,
Half in shadow,
Hiding behind them
The numbers,
The ciphers,
The unknown,
The shadowy figures,
Massed,
Waiting.

They're busy trying
To fill your life
With greater comfort
And greater security;
But they don't know
That comfort's not what
You want at all.
Do they even suspect,
That you would give up
Everything!
For the slightest chance
Of bringing into your life
The slightest meaning?

I betrayed myself
I hurt myself
I cast myself down into the well;
After all it was I ...
... I deceived my self.

I crawl from
The flaming wreck,
Over the burning sand.
I reach out for water, but
Gather only rocks.
The water has moved away,
Just a little bit further.
Always a little hit further.
I crawl until my hands and face bleed.
When I give up,
Lie on my back,
Stare into the sun,
A pitcher of the sweetest water!
All this while I had not asked.

As we drift away, pulled
Apart by the centrifuge,
I wonder why the rope that was meant
To hold is together,
No longer does.
But I know why.
It stretched and twisted
And then, lacking care and
Attention, slowly
Frayed, until the rope was but
A few tenuous threads.
Seeing this we knew not to
Reverse what had happened.
We could have built a new rope,
There was still time;
But we chose to watch mutely
As each thread snapped in turn
And withered away.

The fervent quest I felt I had been on
Reached a desolate dead end.
I cannot see where to go from here.
I fear I must know retrace my steps,
A long way back,
And join the rest
On their well-trodden paths.

You feel when you should think,
And think when you should feel;
No wonder you're depressed.

I had a dream, in which I asked
Why I was so unhappy,
Why my life turned out the way it did,
When I clearly wanted something else.

I was shown a mistake I made,
A long time ago,
A terrible mistake, I now perceived.

When I saw this,
The sources of my problems
We're clear to me; the path
Of my life since then
Was clear to me.

“But”, I cried out,
“How can I change this now?!
How can I fix this?"

No answer was then received,
And I realized,
That I was far unhappier
Now
That I knew.

For better or worse,
When I awoke,
I remembered the pattern of this dream,
But not the mistake.

A great mist may lift,
And clear out entirely,
If you could only fix your gaze
On the tiniest dot of light
That has found its way through;
Then you might find it expands
On its own, until
The mist is no more.

I am cursed;
My wound is larger.
But therein lies also
My blessing, for I cannot
limp along like everyone else.
I must heal myself or die,
There are no half-measures for me.

A grid, a blank canvas, a blank man.
There, out on the grey moor, under a darkening sky,
Welcoming the fog, and the
Growing disquiet that howls in the distance,
Circling.

Say he went to the mountain
To settle a score.
Say he went under the waves,
Right down to the sea floor.
Say he ran away, and don't
Call no place home.
Can't get what he wants,
So he keeps wanting more.

I can get over the things
That other people did to me,
But how do I move past
What I did to myself?

A smile, a thoughtful glance,
A meeting of eyes,
The slow emergence
Of a self.

Time to go
Around the sun again.

Can I get off this ride ?

What's that you say,
A non-refundable ticket?

In that case might as well make
The best of it.

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.

Oh, look, the sun came up again; but
You already knew that, didn't you ? Waiting
All through the night, by
Moon light.

And yet you say you would like
To bet on it not doing so tomorrow ?

I must leave you then, I have to
Get on with my work.

I feel you are more in love with
The idea of darkness than the
Darkness itself, since you have
Never seen it.

Chug along,
Don't make too much of a noise.
You want to make an impact,
But you don't really want them to find you,
Do you ?
Do you want to be seen,
Or heard,
Or felt ?

I've figured out, perhaps,
The problem of my
Procrastination, which is
Nothing more than a
Denial of
Reality.

Within a floating
Bubble amidst the glowing
Chaos of an exploded star
I spin
In ever shrinking
Circles
I spiral
Towards a black destiny

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.