this is the story of how i break free.

a bright white light
pours on my face
as i open my
eyes

i wake up
in a room
i hear faint voices
barely audible

i touch the
white walls and the soft
carpet floor

soundproof.

there are only
one thing here:
a recording turntable


this whispering sensation
continues
as i put the dial
on the vinyl

it buzzes
and cracks
and pops

then finally,
one whisper
emerges from the record

"im afraid to die"
"...my blood on such a *blank carpet"
this piercing voice
only sounds once


faces emerge
like blankets of
empty white void
made known to the world

"im afraid to die"
the intensity grows
i scream and wail
mourning the lost souls

i turn off
the tape
recorder
thinking it
would all go away

i only wanted
it to go away
but wait, why
am i the one always
running?

running from who i am
what i want
what i love
gone.

piercing waves of
screaming
just constant screaming
in the dead silence

im afraid to die

i look
to the tape recorder
it was off

it had always been like this
all the time
i soon realize
that one voice
was always my mind

(b.d.s.)

We’d been waiting in line at Chipotle for half an hour
when you turned to me and said
“If we have to stand here for five more ******* minutes I’m throwing myself in the deep frier.”
I told you that I figured a person could stand just about anything
for ten seconds
Then when that’s over,
you just start on another ten seconds
Our burrito bowls would be here right away
if we just took it ten seconds at a time
So the first night I slept in your bed,
as you kicked me in the side as punishment
for a night’s worth of nightmares dreamt too close for comfort
Each prime number punctuated by another jab I counted
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
One month later at Tim Horton’s I ordered you breakfast.
A sesame seed bagel lightly toasted with butter.
It’s two shades too dark
and when I came home you told me
as far as you were concerned we both belong in the garbage,
slammed the door in my face so I counted
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
Ten weeks before, woke up to knife elbows
slicing into my ribs saying I can’t sleep
So you played architect and I was Pompeii
Finally touching me for the first time in centuries
The dust rising to reveal relief as tangible as ruins themselves
I leaned in to brush my lips against yours,
hands rushed up my cheek and you pushed me,
Just a little too roughly into a forest of flannel sheets and recycled oxygen
I felt thankful that at least you were touching me
In a way that if I tried hard enough I could perceive as romantic
You rolled away like ocean’s waves pushing against the dams of my eyelids
One audible leak and I’d be sleeping in the bathtub again so I counted
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Eight days later at my parents’
Edith Piaf was on my turntable
Your borrowed vape in my hand
I should’ve probably been crying,
But my mind has only ever had one track and missing you took precedence over tears.
Wanting to go back to you feels gross.
It feels wet
It feels nauseating
Why do I want to go back to a place
That was once a home but is now just an apartment
where I pay rent in my ability to sidestep the landmines scattered across floor made of eggshells?
I love you because when you saw me have a panic attack for the first time
You held me until my muscles felt like they hated me a little less
I don’t because when I walked in on you ******* your ex girlfriend
Your thunder shook my tree branch shoulders
So hard that my boughs convulsed and burst the twig capillaries in my eyeballs.
I love you because your stepmother is younger than you are
And that’s just really ******* sad.
I don’t because you say you never did anything that would warrant “this kind of behaviour”
As if loving you had landed me in detention
I love you because you once felt like home.
I don’t because you changed the locks.
1, 2, 3,
For months I told myself that we all crack under pressure
But once I saw that my tremors were coming from your faults
I realized how deep trembles are felt
Love is not an earthquake
Love is not painful
Love is learning how to come home again
Love is ******* magic
I will not delay its happening by wasting another ten seconds on you.

the earth spins sweetly
like a turntable in a sun-lit living room
or the hem of a long skirt in july

the best things in life are free

the sing-song laugher of the birds as i sip my morning coffee
the smell of fresh rain and wet concrete
the curve of the sky late at night
as i stare emphatically into the stars
hanging low to the wyoming plains and sage

how fantastic it is to simply **be

Contrasted
Occlude
Nutation
Turntable
Reclusive
Apathy
Portmantea­u
Oedipus
Soliton
Inerrant
Tricorn
Inculcate
Ovoid
Nowhere

:/noun/ käntrəpəˈziSHən; A relationship between two indications when a Thing with affirmation of another are also a negation of the affirmation in the opposition of the other.

I’ve sat within that crowded room.
Elbows, like the knobbed tree branches of a forest,
sway with mirth and freedom.
Yet, my heart lost its fire long before.
And as I sat, I sighed the rousing air
of the room with carouseling dancers,
and felt that no one was there; not even myself.

There are many things that solitude can inspire.
We desire what we can only hope to have again.
Yet, how lucky am I? I dream of things I’ve never known.
I see her hug his hip to her hip, whisper in his ear...
What did she whisper?
He will tell one dear friend,
and that friend,
will feel what I feel – a burst of elation, a drop of envy – a deadly cocktail.
And that friend will go on and wonder, “What if she were mine...”
And I know because I was that friend who tasted her in his words. And dreamed.
I dreamed until the dreaming kept me awake
until the dream cannibalized other dreams
until the dream put visions of her in the clouds
until the dreams, dreams, shattered-my-soul!

I was the one who told my friend about her.
I crafted her beauty and charm with such power to disarm, using my silken language,
and he tasted her essence in my words.
So, now I sit here.
I sit here in this room filled with carouseling couples.
I can only sigh,
as I watch her dance.

Removed from paper inner sleeve
shiny black disc
catching light, rainbows across the groove
carefully placed on turntable's
spinning platter
to keep finger marks at bay
spinning, 33 1/3
snap, crackle, pop
the needle takes flight
leading in to
the rumble of bass
crash of high hat
singer's lyrical weavings
a density of sound
the smell of vinyl
a whiff of aging cardboard sleeve
artwork fit for a gallery

Happiness is only a word.
It was created to help differentiate
between real smiles and masks.

Direction isn't just forward
It is nothing to elaborate
to miles and tasks.

Tell me about the Ace of Wands!
Tell me about the Ace of Wands!

This has been poorly imagined I admit:
The sunny penthouse
Open to the breeze
which presses and sways
through the sliding glass doors

Upturned champagne bottles
set in buckets of melting ice
A crystalline view of the Pacific
Or dusky Vegas lights

Strewn silken sheets
A **** carpet you can grab on to
The myriad of variations under a rising Moon

Yet Leather and Ecstasy are no where to be seen.
And though I wasn’t thinking of Sardinia
or of the Amalfi
That is a great idea

ROMP
noun
1. a spell of rough, energetic play.
2. a farce.

Eventually
(An earth-sign cusp is slow no matter how much air)
Eventually
creeping into my mind’s eye
(Thank you Time)
was my dodging of the slow-moving bullet
Alas, the lumpy bed in Hollywood awaits
with serviceable sheets
Encased in variations on a theme of
brown everything
A soul death in faux wood paneling
Someone else’s earring on a
grubby carpet floor
that offers you
burns for your back that won’t heal so fast
if that’s what you want
There’s the opening of the door
on the purring refrigerator
to look at cold nothing
And think nothing
Cystitis is on its way
And yes,
Too much dust

Don’t get me wrong
I have no real issues with dust
I have stood
Alone in the semi darkness before
In such a living room
Staring at this luminous particulate
On album covers
and in the glare of backlit windows
Floating in a beam from
a ceramic thrift store table-lamp

I was on my way to find the bathroom
Where a pair of pink ******* lay
drying
in wait for
me

Bachelor dust
Is old
I can write my name with my finger
in that which rests
upon the turntable’s hinged cover
In case you don’t remember
What they call me

As I’ve said
I’ve got nothing against it
Ask the dust
Go ahead
Ask it
Resting quite comfortably
on the bookshelves
If there are bookshelves
As if it had
something to do.
I ask it why?

my invading molecules subdivide
and grow more comfortable

Dust?
Why do I smell the stench of
chaste virgins and ***?
The intoxicating odor of foxed letters from an epistolary exchange regarding:
One Fair Maiden and the Devilish Pursuits to  Compromise Her Virtue?
The Opinions and Observations of Fallen Fruit
Here: The woman and her only true
possession
And Here: The sticky absconder who smells of fish.
They meet.
She blinks.

The dust replies
It’s a simple plan:
The Dear Lady is to be led
Astray
by pretty words and unspoken indiscretions
her dowry in the end, useless
She’ll be banished to the counties
To be a governess
or the
Bored companion
of the only living relative who will
Admit her services
Unpaid in silver coins
He is Blind and his Cook has left
Dyspeptic
Disagreeable
Cheap
and Mean.

She is Ruined.
Perhaps she will escape
to Italy
and die
Alone
in the sunshine.

The dust tells me another story
The same century still
This time, a miscreant princeling
surrounded by Trifles
Picking up one bob and then another
Preoccupied by uselessness
Perhaps a strawberry
Perhaps more claret and his mistress’s left breast
Tonight will be the scullery maid
Who will lose more in the end
Than she could ever possibly imagine
Tossed out of the kitchens
to Providence.
God bless Her.

The dust tells me
It’s mercantile, my dear
It’s all transactional
But look at me
I’m here for a time but am easily
Agitated and
Airborne
Aeolian driven
Ever blossoming fugitive clouds of swirling devils
Interstellar Reflection Nebulae
As you can see
I’m never in one place
So I say keep it movin’.

Magdalene watched Mary
bend down to put on the LP.
The Beatles. They’d saved

up and bought it together.
She took in Mary’s stockinged
thigh showing through the slit

in the side of the school skirt.
Mary placed the LP carefully
onto the turntable, with her finger

put the needle arm down onto
the vinyl. The music started up,
Mary stood up and sat next to

Magdalene on the single bed.
Magdalene sensed her there,
her thigh next to hers, her

warmth, their knees almost
touching. What did your Ma
say when you said you bought

the Beatles? Magdalene asked.
She said nowt, Mary replied,
but Da said it was a load of

***** and where did I get
the money from to buy it?
John Lennon's voice sang

over the twanging guitars.
Magdalene said, did you
tell him we bought it together?

Mary nodded. Her hands
pushed between her thighs,
her young face lit up by

the room's light. Don't you
think Paul's a dish? Mary asked.
Magdalene shrugged her

shoulders, studied Mary’s
knee where a spot of flesh
showed through a hole in

the black school stockings.
She wanted to move closer,
kiss the cheek, place her

lips on the skin. She breathed
in the borrowed scent that
Mary wore. Said she'd liberated

it from her Ma's room. Mary
talked of the boy they'd met
in the woods above the school.

Tried it on so he did, she said,
over the guitars and Lennon's
loud voice. Magdalene wished

she could put her hands where
the boy had tried. I put him
straight, Mary said, kneed him

where his fatherhood might flow.
Mary moved up and down on
the bed in response to the music.

The bedsprings complained.
Magdalene sensed the movement,
took in Mary’s behind going up

and down on the bed cover.
Glory be. She wanted to kiss.
Needed the hand to touch Mary’s,

the skin to join up with hers.
Downstairs a voice bellowed
to keep the ****** noise down.

Mary sighed and bent down
to turn the **** the thigh
revealed in the skirt's slit,

the spot of flesh through
the hole in the bended knee.
Magdalene captured the image.

Hid it in her memory bank for
later, for bedtime, for the cosy
pretend hold, maybe more if in
her dream she was lucky and bold.