May 2013
This evening I can feel the fingers of Migraine - black to the bones and crawling with snakes - as they push my eyes forward.
This is pure seduction, the pressure. I can see it - my frail, jagged optic nerve resting between the first and second finger like a cigarette. With each drag Migraine takes, a flash of brilliant pain (high-beam, spotlight, strobe, flashbulb) skitters across my field of vision. I mistake them for rabbits.
And the chase is on. Mechanical dog, mechanical bull, mechanical rabbit of pain like firecrackers, in slow motion. Half-time signatures flutter again as the thing made of snakes inhales my eyes. I guess I am making love to it.
The rain is coming in waves, marked by drops you can count on your hands, in intervals of five minutes. It comes and it fades, mimicking the snake-monster-thing living in my skull, huffing everything I see, getting high on the fumes of the images I feed to it: this paper, these words, blue pen and black sky.
There is a similar sensation in my stomach. I tried to drown butterflies in decaffeinated coffee, and they are fighting back, with constant pressure on the flexible walls of my insides.
They are hungry but know that they must wait three-and-a-half days to eat. They are taunted by words - short responses. They are teased by intense surges of memory, and by smiles that stalk the underside of my brain (have they seen the snake-monster?), waiting to submerge themselves in the calm, reflective water of my face. **** those ripples. They fall down my spine, from the base of my neck where Migraine has made his nest. I shiver.
I am made of ink, rabbits, rain, and butterflies tonight. These shapes I force my pen to draw are serendipitous, falling randomly (rain drops that have collected on the leaves of a tall tree but remain long after the sky has finished sobbing) atop the heads of unsuspecting strangers and one beautiful girl. Why does she always carry that **** blue umbrella?
The answer, of course, is gray matter and black memory, more harsh than my last cigarette will be, four days from now. The answer is experience, drought and flood. The answer is in Migraine, who makes up one third of my soul, and the soul of every human - although he may pick up a different face and hobby.
The answer is that I don't know the answer. I will not until she sets aside that artificially colored canvas reality-shield she carries, and talks with me. With the rain falling on our heads - hers filled with memory and brains, mine with whimsy and Migraine - the mechanical rabbit will come down from his track to dance at our feet, to kiss our rain-soaked shoes. He will lead us to puddles we can jump into.
Splash. Glorious Splash. Migraine is receding to his nest and the butterflies have taken one step closer to contentment. The rain falls, the ink falls with it, and sanity once again speaks to me.
I've missed you, old friend.
This is pure seduction, the pressure. I can see it - my frail, jagged optic nerve resting between the first and second finger like a cigarette. With each drag Migraine takes, a flash of brilliant pain (high-beam, spotlight, strobe, flashbulb) skitters across my field of vision. I mistake them for rabbits.
And the chase is on. Mechanical dog, mechanical bull, mechanical rabbit of pain like firecrackers, in slow motion. Half-time signatures flutter again as the thing made of snakes inhales my eyes. I guess I am making love to it.
The rain is coming in waves, marked by drops you can count on your hands, in intervals of five minutes. It comes and it fades, mimicking the snake-monster-thing living in my skull, huffing everything I see, getting high on the fumes of the images I feed to it: this paper, these words, blue pen and black sky.
There is a similar sensation in my stomach. I tried to drown butterflies in decaffeinated coffee, and they are fighting back, with constant pressure on the flexible walls of my insides.
They are hungry but know that they must wait three-and-a-half days to eat. They are taunted by words - short responses. They are teased by intense surges of memory, and by smiles that stalk the underside of my brain (have they seen the snake-monster?), waiting to submerge themselves in the calm, reflective water of my face. **** those ripples. They fall down my spine, from the base of my neck where Migraine has made his nest. I shiver.
I am made of ink, rabbits, rain, and butterflies tonight. These shapes I force my pen to draw are serendipitous, falling randomly (rain drops that have collected on the leaves of a tall tree but remain long after the sky has finished sobbing) atop the heads of unsuspecting strangers and one beautiful girl. Why does she always carry that **** blue umbrella?
The answer, of course, is gray matter and black memory, more harsh than my last cigarette will be, four days from now. The answer is experience, drought and flood. The answer is in Migraine, who makes up one third of my soul, and the soul of every human - although he may pick up a different face and hobby.
The answer is that I don't know the answer. I will not until she sets aside that artificially colored canvas reality-shield she carries, and talks with me. With the rain falling on our heads - hers filled with memory and brains, mine with whimsy and Migraine - the mechanical rabbit will come down from his track to dance at our feet, to kiss our rain-soaked shoes. He will lead us to puddles we can jump into.
Splash. Glorious Splash. Migraine is receding to his nest and the butterflies have taken one step closer to contentment. The rain falls, the ink falls with it, and sanity once again speaks to me.
I've missed you, old friend.
