Empathy
is the ultimate art

and I
a man of little identity
complete myself
in the image of a killer's demons.



I've lived another's hell,
and dreamt viciously of my own.

I threw my fist at the desk my face slept on.
My face disfigured under the pressure of misery and tears.

I speak through teeth. "You run away, because you're a coward."

Tears are streaming, unraveling into an ultimate truth.
My lungs prepare, taking in all the air around me.

The words scrape my throat:
"YOU'RE A COWARD!!!"

The message echoes through the house.
It's empty.
It's just her and my hatred.

My chin is soaked.
My expression falls into a flat frown.
The house is engulfed in silence.


I am alone.

"You've eyes that bleed violence" they tell me.

Sometimes I grip my bat so hard,
my chapped nails break into my skin.

I inhale my surroundings
and spit out the excess misery.

They glare at me
as if I were the spawn of Satan.
It would explain much if I was.

A demon..

It's fitting; they all hate me anyways.
That's fine. 'Cuz I hate them too.
Not sure why everyone gives me the cold shoulder, though.

I roam the city vandalizing everything in sight,
maybe that's why.

I've been in every street fight that's come up in the last 13 years.
I've been begged to join in gangs. I don't like those.

Been on the streets since I was 7, back then I was spit on while begging for food.
Resorted to stealing everything in sight in order to survive.
Stabbed a kid for stealing my apple, then realized I had power.
I could defend myself.
Learned to steal from other homeless thieves like me,
got beat up and failed miserably the first hundred times.
Stole a bat at the age of 14.
My weapon of choice hasn't failed me since.
I spray paint **** everywhere I go, beat the **** out of anyone in my way.
Everything I "own" is stolen.
I'm a thief. A criminal. I survive.
People know it, they can smell it, I'm sure of it.
.. Though I've been treated the same since I was a kid..

Maybe I'm a demon of sorts.
So that's my name.

My name's Demon.

Lately I've been feeling someone's presence.
Maybe I spend too much time alone.
Like hell if I care, though. I don't need company.
..
Still..it's comforting..
It's not a ghost. It's someone out there.
It's a girl. She's real.

I used to hang with some alley cat; I'd feed her.
The presence reminds me of that cat.

Maybe she wants me to feed her.
Maybe she needs protection.

I rue the day I began to wonder,
"Who will be the first to insult my dead Father?"
I am nearly 20, and it's finally happened.

Though it would be easy to say
I am tempted to rip the boy's throat out,
I can't.

The path is too smooth, too short;
to which I say:

I avoid as best as I can to take the shortest path,
not because I am stubborn, not because I want to prove anything,
but because the shortest path
-often filled with smooth stones and the scent of roses-
is often the wrong path.
You are tricked into feeling rewarded before realizing you've plunged deeper
into your selfishness.

With every decision there is the offer of the short path,
and with every short path taken,
you become smaller, and smaller,
until the world around you is but a forest of colossal leaves and giant insects.
The world will be too big to understand,
and you will be small, confused, and sad.

You might lie to yourself and say "But I am big! I see what many cannot; I see what YOU cannot see!"

And that is not correct, but it's alright.
Maybe you can die happier,
believing you have not been consumed by your choices,
believing you understand,
believing you are big.

Lie to yourself, it's alright.
If the short path is what you've chosen all this time,
then truth is not what you seek.

Lies should not be a problem to you,

should they?

Sometimes
I scream
and the neighbors
don't do anything.

Sometimes
I shut my eyes
and scream
and the neighbors
don't call the cops.

Sometimes
my body stops functioning properly
and it twists and contorts
and it brings pain
to my muscles
and I scream
but the neighbors don't do anything.

Sometimes
I warn mother
that I will **** her
and I don't want to
but one day I might do it
one day
when I shut my eyes
and scream
I'll hurt her
and my body will tense up
my muscles will hurt
and I'll cry

and the neighbors
won't do anything about it.

It's late.
The day has been engulfed in moonlight.
The clouds are consuming the sky;
the rain is violent.

My legs lead me into an abandoned shed.
the wind is cold. Cruel.
I need to rest.


"It's no use."

A familiar voice shatters my concentration.
A silhouette steps out of the shadows.
The hell..?

Oh.
Bird.

He stands for all I am against.
He's a risky *******.

He had been aiding her in her quest to banish me.
I hate him.

"She's leaving as we speak.
No matter how fast you run, you won't catch her."

..No. It can't be.
He's buying her time, he must be bluffi-

"It's true."

...

"I can let you go if you want. You want to see for yourself?
You want to run, feel the rain slam into your skin,
and see how it gradually starts to pierce your flesh?"

He steps closer to me.

"You want to die trying? Die alone in a ***** street?
You're not human. Nobody can see you but her.
And you won't reach her.
You'll be alone.
You'll die alone.

You're going to die, kid.
She's going to **** you.
It's over."

I can't breathe correctly.
My throat is closing.
My vision is blurry.
Tears are streaming down my cheeks. ****.

My knees give in.
Everything is suddenly so heavy..


"It can't be." I think to myself.
"She's strong enough to **** me now.
I was too late. I wasn't strong enough.
I couldn't get there on time.
..I'm going to die any minute, now."

I can't even blink.
I can't express emotion. It's like I forgot how to.
Tears are flooding my vision.
Suddenly everything is too alive.
..
So many memories..



"I don't hate you.
But she needs to grow. You need to leave.
You are her demon.
You are a part of her.
But she'll never be happy so long as you are alive.
You tie her down, you keep her weak.
All so you can stay alive.

..And even though..
part of you might actually love her.."

No. I know what he's going to say.
I'm not that kind of being.
I do love her. I do.

"..you're still a weak selfish *******."


I break.
"NO!! I LOVE HER, I WANT HER TO BE HAPPY!!
I WANT HER TO BE SAFE!!"

I'm sobbing now.
He raises his voice.

"She's been kept safe for far too long, now, demon!
She wants out.
You keep trying to convince her that keeping you alive
is the only way she'll break out of that shell.
When in reality you are her shell.
You are what keeps her from being happy.
And when she comes to you in times of need,
you lie to her, telling her to do things that only fuel your existence.

You're a liar, demon.
You're selfish and weak.
You're pathetic,
and she knows that."

I can't feel my hands.

There is a pause.
I can see clear again.
I see his boots; he's standing there,
towering over me like some kind of god.

The words crawl up my throat,
barely escaping my lips:

"Yeah..so what?"

I try to stand.

"I'm a selfish little ****, yeah."

I'm coughing blood.
I get dizzy as I try to maintain my balance.
..****..

"I did want her to be happy.
I wanted to keep her away from the humans,
I wanted to keep her safe.
I didn't want her to suffer anymore.
In the end..it was too much.
I didn't know what else to do to help her.
I tried giving her satisfaction in misery.
I gave her the gift of laughter whenever she was screaming.."

I clench my fists as hard as I could.
I felt myself getting weaker as I spoke.

"..whenever she was screaming in agonizing pain
over memories and betrayal!!

I gave her what I understood.
I gave her new urges, new needs,
new ways she could alleviate her pain.

..But it was too much.
She couldn't understand my gifts.
She feared them.
I gave too much. She started to fear me."

I cough again.
Blood stains the floorboards.
My eyes lock in the sight of this proof-
proof that soon I'll be gone.

"That's when you stepped in.
It was the perfect chance, wasn't it?
She was already beginning to see me as an obstacle.
All you needed to do was give that little push, didn't you?"

I look up at him.
He's serious, his head tilted back, relaxed.
He's glaring at me with eyes I've never seen before.
..It's intimidating, but I don't care.
I growl at him,
demanding an answer.

"DIDN'T YOU!!"

He didn't respond.
He lowered his head a bit, looked at my body.
My..


"Wh- no.
No. No not yet, no."

My body is barely there.
I'm fading.

My reason drowned with my screams.
My existence faded with my body.

My vision is struggling between the shed I stand in,
and complete blackness.
And the..
the image of that ******
observing me;
he probably feels accomplished.
I try as best as I can to stay.

"I can't go!
I can't!
I love her! I do.
I.. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..
I'm sorry, ****, I'm sorry..

Forgive me for keeping you down..
I'm sorry."

I see him walk back, letting himself be consumed by darkness,
like some legendary hero.
Like some ******* god.

I feel nothing of me left.
I'm torn between cursing at the guy and apologizing to her.

"Keep her safe." I manage to say.

He's probably gone.
I wonder if he heard me?
Maybe I shouldn't worry.


. . .

"I'm watching you." He thought,
sliding the tip of his pencil
across the decaying wall.

"I'm watching all of you."
The pressure breaks the small twig.

Images of eyes condemned the broken palace.
Both guard and prisoner being cursed
by the child's anger.

It was a school of brats and pigs.
Just a huge ******* portrait of the world that would soon eat him alive.
His canvas. His hell.

His temporary world.

"Memento mori."  He whispers,
in a language as dead as my hopes and dreams.

I laugh at his ignorance;
I'm as immortal as they come.
I'll live in memories and the grass,
I'll haunt the **** out of this place, out of your place,
out of this whole **** stained island.

I don't just ******' die-
I live forever.
I live just to drag you all down
when you won't be able to do the same to me.
Hell ain't gonna take me, either.

I'll be the scariest ghost you'll ever know of,
because I'll never find enough peace
in haunting all of you.

So I won't be going anywhere.

My burden is the gift I have carried since birth:
A criminal who loves me so;
he would claim the lives of everyone who has done me harm.

But I cannot let him out,

for He is I,
and I am Him.

If I am, He is not,
and once I am not, He is.

My story is that of two lovers who cannot be,
without the death of one.

“There was something about that house..” She said,
drifting into moments non-existent.

“That old house, with low, low ceilings.
..The german furniture..”

In the realm of this woman’s memories,
the sky was tinted crimson for the first time.
Rings of smoke embodied the souls of evil men.
Men who knew nothing of death, of the intricate concept of being.

The light engorging in his pupils,
an old man thinks:
“This year will be carved into the marble walls of history.”

The man’s statement echoed in the trees, in the strings of existence.

The woman, now part of the crimson sky that adorned her skin,
remembers the suffering in the way a man remembers a deceased lover’s smile.

Children, creatures and materials burned without color in her eyes.
Their voices muted, the crackling sounds replaced by Mozart,
“The Day of Madness”.

It was the least she could do to be safe in a shattering world;
to dream without the dangerous colors,
to fill a sudden void with familiar sounds,
with fragments of anything she considered to be home.

“I never went back.”
She returns from the pool of memories, dripping in truth and lies.
Her frown decorating her mouth.

“But I know
after the chaos,
the house was just a pile of ash.

A pile of ash and misery.”

I am not known.
I am kicked out of every restaurant.
I am scorned through the love I give.
I am given poison as meals;
I writhe in pain and they are amused.
My heart often forgets it's purpose,
I am in everyone's way.
I am my classmates' dinner,
a fallen petal burning under the sun.
I am honest and nothing,
a saddened wolf,
destroyed by sheep.

Under the skipping light of a tree,
In caves of snow and childhood
on rooftops decaying under the moonlight
That is where I exist
I am not known.
I am kicked out of every restaurant
I am scorned through the love I give

I am the son's daughter.

My island is a destructive one

I wish to eat away at it’s demons,
I wish to make this island alive.

I want to destroy it;
make it beautiful again.

The palm trees will shiver in fear, in pleasure.
They won’t know what hit ‘em.
The quivering mountains will spout words through tears.
“Why am I changing?”

And I will stand at the peak of love,
and scream back at the land:

”You are becoming free!!”

The dangers will crumble away, the soil will melt into itself,
creating itself,
giving birth to itself,
once more.

It will crave for moments suspended in time,
to be


The Living Island.


And so it will become.

I killed by the millions.

"We are standing by a wishing well."

She was always so beautiful.
Her hair hung, and her voice rang in my veins.

She once told me that poetry was for the weak.
My smile bled, and I knew she was torn.

"Who has consumed you, maiden?"
I needed to know.
"Your body." She smiled.

This woman is dead.
And her death will be the birth of me.

I loved her with every inch of my being.
She loved me with every inch of her genitals.
The *****.

I offered her the moon, the stars,
the magic that never came to be,
I offered her the sun, the clouds,
the person I never came to be.

"I'm wishing..", She spoke into the endless pit.
"I'm wishing..",   the well spoke back to her.

I too, wished.
Nobody spoke back to me.

You are filling me.

"To return.."
You speak through teeth,
Understanding escapes me.
Is this an order..?

"To sway.."
The letters reach me, carried in your breath.
Suddenly, I know.

"To sway..",  I think.

To sway.
My mind slips, and you take me.

"Where am I?" I think,
but the words do not form.

There is a universe creating itself around me.
The decaying white enveloped the swimming curtains;
they are suddenly so relevant..
As if they've become part of  what is happening to me.
I can almost feel the planets forming in the space of this room.
There is a universe creating itself around me.
The light is changing.
The dark is engulfing itself, writhing.

"Writhe.."
Your voice finds me again.
I was becoming lost in myself, into my new universe.

You ******, I comply.
I return to you.

"Good girl."
My head falls back, and I feel my tongue unlearning language.

You dig into my ribcage.
"Good girl."

And I return.
I return to you.

You become violently generous,
teaching me the language of a lost body,
the loss of control.

My mind is nowhere to be found,
I am lost, my hips are not obeying my mind.
The dark is spiraling slowly into me,
I can feel it's warmth pressing me into recklessness.
I manage to vocalize your name.
It's all I understand now-
You.


Unbounded by your touch,
I lose myself into you.


..



"Wake."
I hear you speak.
"Where am I?" I finally ask.
"Back."

And I return.




I return to you.

”You ain’t nothing in this town, kid.”

I slid my hands in my pockets, slouching
just like mother told me not to.

“You’ll be crushed by the others.
They’ll do things to you that you’ll never forget.
You ain’t never gonna live ‘em down.”

What this guy doesn’t know is
back where I was from,

I wasn’t anyone either.


“Best ‘o luck,
though luck ain’t savin' you here.”

His legs led him into the blinding sunset,
into the city of ruins and graffiti.
It was like fire.
A calm, consuming fire,
enveloping the dying buildings,
swallowing his silhouette.

I’ve yet to understand why my mother gave birth to me.
I ran away from her
away from everything I understood.
and now I’m lost
in a pile of the same ****
simply located elsewhere.

I don’t belong here.
I don’t belong anywhere.
The world is too beautiful for me,
and it’s inhabitants are the source
of all my misfortunes.

The nails of rabbits are coiled around my neck,
Shimmering, I exhale into the night.
My breeze trickles in the vespertine space.

Voices claw at my spine,
they climb up my throat,
they silence the thoughts.

they cradle me,
they sing to me.

They tell me I am not human.
My mother is nothing.
They plan
to take me back home.

They say I am formed by the one with willow cuticles
they tell me I am of branches and wild coyotes
They tell me mother's honey is weaved with lies.

The nights are enveloped in my breath.
I dream of flowers and milk,
my hair sparkling in the midst of a windy October.
The leaves crushing beneath my steps,
The wind carrying my soul away.

The soil swallows moonlight,
My pores inhale the aura of my fantasies.

I wake to grasp my place is not here.

Mother is not fond of the flowers I pick;
Her name dances beneath my tongue.
I never open my mouth so it never spills out.

My heart aches...
and I wish to leave.

"There will be a cascade of voices and feathers
the night your mother falls.
She will utter a curse upon you before leaving."

They spoke to me.

"Your heart will wither
and you will inhale our breath.
You will jump the tallest garden of blue waters.
Your body will grow weary before leaving.."

Finally
I will return home.

"It is then you will live eternally amongst us."

I was once a child to you
now
false seeds woven into my heart;
you treat me as you would a withering flower.


The cuticles that surround mine.


I lay unforgiven in your eyes
to actions not mine.

At the sight of me,

I die into the image
of a  pair of lungs
incapable of serving it's purpose.


I wish you knew me as the creature I truly am;
The crawling servant.


The lungs who not only take in the air you breathe,

but sing with words bathed in honesty.

I can’t concentrate with all this sweat surrounding mine.

I let go for seconds it seemed,

and the world died into me;

reliving it’s good times.

And I loved, mindless,

like lost kids.

Like you kids.

I loved blindly.

I saw his tongue..press against his lover’s skin..

and slide up to her shoulder.

I was drowning in their image,

tracing the outline of their bodies.

The crowd of lost kids pushed and shoved through me,

denying my presence.

My soul twisting, writhing.

His eyes shut unevenly,

losing their way from reality.

His nails dug into her..

I..

I had never seen such a sight.. so close.. so real..

I was shoved into the visualization of energy itself.

I..I’d never felt so alive;

as the night in which I died.

I howled on the mat of dissolving particles.
The floor decorated with her essence,
her scarlet fluids.
How could they do this to her?

"I love her."
The thought filled my soul.

I felt my insides stretch,
as the cubicles between each of my teeth enlarged;
my mouth flooded with fangs.
My pupils,
they consumed the color that filled the windows to my soul.

I clutched my chest and choked on the sounds of a beast.



I became monster.



I recall a deafening sound erupting from my core,
my surroundings dripping out of sight.
An ambience of dream.

My body ached not of but for pain.
The kind that adorns your skin with shades of sky and ocean,
grass and blood.

I recall ripping sounds, and thick liquids banishing the clear scent of the city,
bathing me.


I remember running.


The memories come in flashes.
I could see dim orbs of light, illuminating a street.
one orb..
two orbs..
three..

I ran past, my head turning constantly to glance behind my shoulder.
They were chasing me.
As they always have.
A realization clicks into place,
and my knees collapse in sync with the moment.

I felt my insides shrink,
as the cubicles between each of my teeth shriveled;
my mouth flooded with gasps.
My pupils, they died into the pool of color that filled the windows to my soul.



I clutched my chest and choked on the sounds of a child.




I became her.

"Ah took a swing."
He said.

His profile raised,
he drops his head to his left, to face me with his lazy eyes.
I was becoming forgetful second by second
of the dull bulb that hung over my nerves; our skin.

He bared his teeth intentionally, it seemed.
"And cracked open his skull."

His eyelids would always droop down.
But he had wild eyes.
We had a description once,
"Satan's eyes." she said. Right before having another seizure.
T'was a god-crazed epileptic; just our luck.

"But ah didn't see 'at.
Y'see, it ull 'ent black. But ah wus swingin'.
Ah know ah was.
Ah felt'et."

He was lying. Those hits were too spot on.
Intentional. Angry. Mad.
Ravishing.

"Ah know y'like me doc. Ah c'n see it in ye face.
Ye legs.
'Ey shake when ah speak 'bout how they bled."

My legs shook..
His voice trailed off into a raspy ending, a whispered sound.
"How they begged."

The inside of my mouth was flooding with saliva.
..How embarrassing..

He smiled.
"'Ee should be ***'nis, ye know. We'd make a pretty couple."

There was a pause, almost too long, before he blinked slowly
and opened his eyes to observe a crack on the wall to his right.
He had complained about it before,
"'Tis too ******' noticeable." He'd say.

He wanted it to be like the other walls.
He wanted it to be neat and gray.
So it wouldn't be excluded, so it wouldn't stand out.
So it wouldn't be treated differently, wrong.
So it wouldn't suffer the injustice of the majority.

He hated things being out of place.
Mostly because he was sick of being out of place himself.
Ironic, I'd say.
He had a passion for making a mess out of his victims.


Ring..

The timer.

Ring..
Ring..

"See ye t'morrow doc."

Ring..

My legs were planted to the ground he smiled on.

Ring..
Ring..

..I think I love you.

Ring..
Ring..


Ring..

I rattled the birdcage,
the empty thing sounding, the ripples filling the air;

I was taken by it's sensitivity,
the echo and lingering of my touch.

My body drifted it seemed,
into lands untouched,
the untamed oxygen filling my lungs.

I was home.

New bones leaped out of my skin
and I was fast and unfeeling in my feet;

I carried the lungs of a lion-
To breathe in all my eyes took in;
and my strands were the blades that caressed the soil underneath my hooves.



I lived for moments long and vivid,
and took them with me the second I woke.

Now I live forever in lands I call my home.

Vilify.
The scorned shush of a teacher,
The little mouths and eyes.
From my mouth flies the liquified hatred.


Vilify.
I, blessed with the sight of a mind.
The spark of life.


My friends shake me violently,
My friends pull me distant. They pull me distant..

(My guardians express)
The facade of lovable interaction.
The parade of peaceful living.


Vilify.
Contorted, writhing.
The music bleeding through, uncomfortable and in position.

The strands of black brush my sleeping eyes.

Vilify.
In the midst of the slow convulsion, I sleep.
In dreams of dark and colors seeping through outlines,
I see ticking, tocking, a king and fox.


Vilify.
The monsters trickle in the stage, and I sing for them.
I amuse them, and they hate me.



Vilify.

The twisting of necks,
It was a dark, dark day.
Their outlines colored neon and screeching.

And in harmony the voices tumbled out of their throats.
“It was like the marble statues could speak” she said, observing the choir of lucid figures.
“What are you talking about..”  My words trailed off as useless things, lacking existence.

Then, they soared in a fountain of liquified color, spiraling towards the nothing.

Lucy’s short hair hung, and moved as if there were wind.
I felt no wind.. Was there something she could feel, and I did not?
Something she knew of? Was all of this making sense to her?

Then, it rained blue. and red. and green and purple..!
And the..tigers flew..in to bestow..a kiss upon the..lips of the..prin..cess..
The panther’s diamonds, at the flash of light, the sparkling sudden..

My sanity became obsolete.
And Lucy and I were free.

You transfix me quite, young child.
And though I find myself drowning in the pit of fire that fabricates your gaze
there isn’t a moment I do not wish I could die in it.
..And let my demise be brought closer and closer to me;
as my skin burns ever so slowly.. until my body is completely engulfed in the fire of your passion.

I love you Jane Eyre.
**** me.

You had tulips and roses,

pansies and jasmines.

You fed them all your attention,

all your love.

You used to say

you could hear the bellflowers chime..

I never found the harmony,

but I encountered the aura that was

your rejection.

**** your flowers.

Water me.

The same boy who injected doubt in me
appeared in an insignificant cloud of life’s happenings.

He had a bad day, he said.

And I was saddened by the lack of devotion in the air,
in his lungs.

He drifted off into the peculiar slumber existing only in the most meaningless of moments, and began telling me of a girl who took his breath away.

I, being the small one, “the lowly peasant” and his majesty would say,
questioned myself again.
” Am I..pretty?” I intended to ask,

My question just barely escaped my lips when the sentence had already tumbled  out of his:


“You’re beautiful.” He said.

And he doesn’t know it,
But it did wonders to my soul.

The circles that throw out of me,
like fragments of useless things,
my vision-
they settle, it’s curtains half closed,
on the sight of the things above me.

They are the collected dust of years and existence,
and I am an observer.

I look at them for a while, and then I go away.

I go away to sleep.
I go away to shut my curtains completely.


But when I go away, I come back.
and things haunt me before falling on the blanketing things that keep me warm.

I am understanding the concept of love.
When you love, you fall.
When you love, you fall.
When I love, I will fall.

My Mother and Father are falling.

But they stop falling when I look at dust.
Everything stops falling
when I look at dust.