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Natasha Meyer Feb 2015
Arg...
Is that a poem?
Arg
An expression?
Arg....
I have no words
Arg....
Alin Dec 2015
before they made it public
they created the technology
to create living puppets
producing a tapestry of thoughts
manifesting
through the filter
of authentic bodies
and minds

their enchanting color of
implemented poison

they had two versions of the site
one the true one and one the public one

the true one was
showing the nature of a mind
in a spherical wireframe
3-d
projected space

that could make the motives
of a mind truly observable
using this hi-tech breakthrough
(hi-tech for their time only
i.e  their hi-techness is still
bound to time)
to/by/for those
word loving
businesspeople
and hired scientists
and hired technologists
and hired creatives
and hired psychics
and hired you name a profession I will say yes es  
of their time
working for them
for an almost literally ground breaking technology

a time bound technology that showed them an observable truth of the visualized data
a design driven and poached from the participants’ ingenious minds

the public version on the other hand
looked naively innocent
with an amateurish design
using a ready to go script
presenting an acceptable ‘good site’
based on personal motives
of hard working profiles
of young idealist sisters and bros
you know
like teddies pathetically hugging each other all the time

in reality though
snail shells were being used to implement
new poisons for the game
on unshelled ones
poisson as is French
would be prettier term
to describe
an honest organic fish farm
but alas

yet in reality that hugging was distant jutting

to purposefully run a game that entertained
pockets of those who had it boringly full only
to spend it for their own fun
but which they vowed as
for the salvation of their Utopian land made of the
illusion of their materialistic psyche same as their popcorns
which  continually justified as they  repeatedly asserted
these well learned set of words
on communal and cyclic ceremonies

oh my!
stealing intellects as such!
for the game!
game also runs in a closed circuit just
so no one can see it
they have all passed the Turing test
for the game
cool right
and it works

so who on earth could judge its’ ethics
once a reflection of their own minds
even unknowingly the game admins
once falling in love
with unshelled ones
may turn to the unshelled ones
like the prince falling for a Lorelei
they were warned continually
and then still some
willingly stayed so
in love
and disappeared in the game
loosing their body

well whatever
there is a place though
don’t believe me because I say there is
go find it yourself

from that place
the headquarters of this game
is nudely visible
with all of its partaking pawns
because it remains too low a place in the universe

yes there is a mountain higher
where lives
the inhabitants of the residence of the destroyer
who are a little bit bored by now and since some time already
and so the destroyer -they think- may as well decide to
wipe it off - hiring a well fit dragon that can gobble it all in one go
so that dragon excretion may benefit a famine of sorts in the universe
eating that kinda stuff
****  yeack  ARG hhhh
(or Namaste!)
:)
inspired by the last cyborg movie I saw- I love cyborg movies - it feels like homecoming :D
Josephine Lnd May 2013
some days, his eyes are full with angst
his arms down his sides, with his fists as closed as his ears
and all I want to say is I know how it is
to be so angry you don't know where to go
because the whole world lights you up like a dry stick of explosives,
how it is to have your feelings being so big they start to feel
like extensions of your limbs,
waving uncontrollably
and all you can do to avoid their friction from setting you on fire
is either to cut them off or keep your arms down your sides


but I step aside, because he can no longer take in my words
his six year old eyes are filled with the nothingness of
an anger so big and unlabeled
but someday, I will tell him and he will understand
I will tell him that even though my blood is not in his veins,
I will cleanse it from soot and silt,
I will be his human shield from this world
I will tear kingdoms apart and slay every last creeper
just to help him level up

and I will uncontrollably, explosively and unconditionally
love him

//

vissa dagar är hans ögon fyllda med ångest
hans armar längs sidorna, med nävar lika hårt stängda som hans öron

och allt jag vill säga är att jag vet hur det är
att vara så arg att du inte vet vars du ska ta vägen,
för hela världen får en att tända som en torr bunt sprängämnen,
hur det är att ha känslor så stora att de börjar kännas
som förlängningar av dina egna armar och ben,
okontrollerbart viftande
och allt du kan göra för att förhindra att deras friktion tänder eld på dig
är att antingen hugga av dem eller hålla armarna längs sidorna


men jag går undan, för han kan inte ta in mina ord längre
hans sexåriga ögon fyllda med ingentinget
av en ilska så stor och oettikerad ilska

men någon dag ska jag berätta för honom och han ska förstå
jag ska berätta för honom att även fast mitt blod inte flyter genom hans artärer,
ska jag rensa det från smuts och sot,
jag ska vara hans mänskliga sköld från den här världen
jag ska slita kungariken itu och döda varenda creeper
bara för att hjälpa honom att levla upp

och jag ska okontrollerbart, explosivt och villkorslöst
älska honom
Richard Riddle Jun 2015
Written approximately1890-1899 by American poet Will Carleton, and is shown as it appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union Newspaper on July 15, 1899. Even in his elder years, my grandfather, Odis Riddle, could recite this word for word, and not skip a beat, mesmerizing all of us grandchildren that had gathered around his chair for the performance.

Enj­oy

"If the weary crowd is willing, I've a little word to say of a lightning-rod dispenser that dropped down on me one day; with a poem in his motions,; with a sermon in his mien, with hands as white as lilies, and a face uncommon clean. No wrinkle had his vestments and his  linen glistened white, and his new-constructed necktie was an interesting sight; Which I almost wished his razor had made red that white-skinned throat, and the new-constructed necktie had • composed a hangman's knot. Ere he brought his sleek-trimmed carcass for my women folks to see and his rip-saw tongue a-buzzin' for to gouge a **** in me.

But I couldn't help but like him, as I always think i must, The gold of my own doctrine in a fellowheap of dust, When I fired my own opinions at this person, round by round, they drew an answering volley of a very similar sound; I touched him on religion, and the hopes my heart had' known; he said he'd had experiences quite similar of my own. I told him of the doubtin's that made dark my early years; he had laid awake till morning with that same old breed of fears; I told him of the rough path I hoped to heaven to go, he was on that ladder, only just a round below. I told him of my visions, of the sinfulness of gain, he had seen the self same picters, tho' not quite so clear and plain;

Our politics was different, at first he galled and winced. But I arg'ed him so able, he was very soon convinced. And, 'twas getting toward the middle cf a hungry summer day, There was dinner on the table, and I asked him would he stay? And he sat down among us, everlasting trim and neat. And asked a short, crisp blessing, almost good enough to eat; Then he fired upon the mercies of our Great Eternal Friend, and gave the Lord Almighty a good, .first-class recommend; And for full an hour we listened to this sugar-coated scamp, Talking like a blessed angel—eating like a blasted *****.

\My wife, she liked the stranger, smiling on him warm and sweet, (It always flatters women when their guests are on the eat), and he hinted that some ladies never lose their early charms. And kissed her latest baby and received it in his arms.

My sons and daughters liked him, for he had progressive views, And chewed the quill of fancy, and gave down the latest news: And I couldn't help but like him, as I fear I always must, The gold of my own doctrine, in a fellowheap of dust.

He was spreading desolation through a piece of apple pie, when he paused and looked upon us with a tear in his off-eye. and said. O, happy family! your blessings make me sad: You call to mind those dear ones that in happier days I had, a wife as sweet as this one; a babe as bright and fair; a little girl with ringlets, like that one over there; I worshiped them too blindly! My eyes with love were dim! God took them to His own heart and now I worship Him. But had I not neglected the means within my way, Then they might still be living, and loving me to-day.  

.-.• One night there came a tempest; the thunder peals were dire; The clouds that tramped above us were shooting bolts of fire; In my own house, I, lying, was thinking to my blame. How little I had guarded against those shafts of flame. When crash! through roof and ceiling the deadly lightning cleft. And killed my wife and children, and only I was left. Since that dread time I've wandered, and naught for life have cared, Save to save other's loved ones, whose lives have yet been spared; Since then, it is my mission, where'er by sorrow tossed, To sell to virtuous people good lightning rods—at cost."

" With sure and strong protection I'll clothe your buildings o'er, 'Twill cost you fifty dollars (perhaps a trifle more), What little else it comes to at lowest price I'll put, (You signing this agreement to pay so much per foot). I signed it, while my family all approving stood about. And dropped a tear upon it (but it didn't blot it out).

That very day with wagons came some men, both great and small; They climbed upon my buildings just as if they owned 'em all. They hacked 'em and they hewed 'em, much against my loud desire, They trimmed 'em up with gewgaws, and they bound 'em down with wires:

They trimmed 'em and they wired 'em and they trimmed and wired 'em still, t And every precious minute kept a-run-nlng up the bill. My soft spoke guest a-seeking, did I rave and rush and run; He was supping with a neighbor, just a-three mile further on. "Do you think," I fiercely shouted, "that I want a mile o' Wire, To save each, separate hay-coclc out of heaven's consuming fire? Do you think to keep my biuldin's safe from some uncertain harm, I'm going' to deed you over all the balance of my farm?"
He looked up quite astonished, with a face devoid of guile. And he pointed to the contract with a reassuring smile. It was the first occasion that he disagreed with me, But he held me to that paper with a firmness sad to see; And for that thunder story ere the rascal i finally went, I paid two hundred dollars, if I paid a single cent. And if any lightning rodder wants a dinner dialogue. With the restaurant department of an enterprising dog, Let him set his mill a-runnin' Just Inside my outside gate, And I'll bet two hundred dollars that he won't have long to wait.
Overwhelmed Jan 2011
stupid

stupid
stupid
stupid

you idiotic
little piece
of-

arg

why?

why
did you
let this
happen?

again.

love

you know
better than
to let it
happen

you know
what can happen.
what does
happen.

you know this
you know this
you know this

but you let it
happen again,
didn’t you?

when will you learn?
when will it hurt enough
to make you stop for good?
when will you realize
that you can’t win,
that things don’t
change,
that your dreams
will not be
reality?

when?
you idiot!

so sit there,
smiling like a
fool
trying to act
like you’re not
dying inside

we both know
how much it hurts

so stop!
stop sitting there
looking so happy!
so content!

she’s gone!
gone for good!

and! hey, what’s
with that gun?
why, why are
you pointing it
at me!?
The current day is May 1st, 2024. I believe I might have found Brianna. And she’s gone. . .

About eight years ago from this date, I would have my first encounter with this mysterious girl. With all of this having taken course over such a long amount of time, a lot of the details are blurry compared to how solidified they used to be to me. But, back to the first encounter, although encounter sounds more like a passive aggressive frightening experience, I’m not sure what other word I might use to describe it. Maybe it was a chance meeting or divine intervention, but encounter gets the meaning across a bit more fluently, as every time I would find this girl I would be in total shock, utter disarray, and my heart would beat so fast I’d feel as though a heart attack was right around the corner.

The first time I ever met her was through a dream. . .

I can’t remember what this particular dream was. I’m not exactly sure what happened in it, why I found it so profound, or how it even got me to begin thinking about this girl. All I know was that it got my attention and I began to pay attention to this idea, this one night miracle where I first met this mysterious woman.

The night I had that dream, I’m pretty sure I thought nothing of it. Who doesn’t have a dream every so often where they’ve met their true love, their other half, their once in a lifetime love of their life? I’ve always been a bit of a hopeless romantic and I’ve always known that this was one of my deeply ingrained character traits. From my first ever year in school in first grade, I had a very large crush on this girl, Ashley Amaya, and I remember wanting so badly to be her crush as well. I even remember a moment from school when I saw a spider crawling towards her and me while walking across a paved walkway to get to our next class, and I leapt towards it and crushed it, despite having a massive fear of the little demons at the time. But, I did it to impress her!

All that to say, the first dream wasn’t extraordinary, and instead it was just another more than usual somber morning when I woke up only to realize the beautiful woman I had just met was probably a mixture of something I ate and some tv show I’d probably seen the afternoon before. Time would go by, the memory of that first dream fading to the farthest recess of my mind with only a hint of any remote recognition still reminiscing in the deepest abyss of my head.

But, this is when what started out as a dream began to become a bit more substantial. This is when Brianna began to plague my mind.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I began to have recurring dreams of being in love with this mysterious woman. She began to become more familiar in a very inconvenient and unreliable way which was of course through the remembering of my dreams. In the beginning stages, I’d only ever catch glimpses of her face and the reset was usually a silhouette or a very rushed moment. The rushed moments were hard to describe but they were full of light, always this wonderful warm yellow light and though they were rushed, time also slowed down significantly in a perplexing way that I still can’t really understand to this day.

I’d see her dark brown hair flowing and filtering the light into these tiny and magnificent rays making a twinkling in what was usually a dark atmosphere. I’d catch the corner of her mouth turning ever so slightly into a warm beautiful smile as she looked away, something else in the vicinity stealing her attention for the moment. There were intense feelings of joy and tranquility and there was a warmth about the situation I could only hope to ever feel in the true cold and lightless world we all collectively call home. Something about her was so intensely special, and the fact that I even got to share a dream with her was the highest privilege I could’ve ever received.

As time would go on, I’d continue to have these dreams. She always stayed the same, with her long dark brownish red hair flowing ever so gracefully. It got to the point that when I would have these dreams, I would’ve preferred to not wake up, just so I could spend more time with her.

Over a year would go by. At this point in life I was still just in high school and still brand new to learning life in the real world compared to the sheltered view I used to have. I had just gotten a job at the local Home Depot as a cashier, literally a few weeks after I got my license since my parents were unwilling to pay for gas for me (as good parents should do!) I was still figuring out life with my friend groups and trying to balance the reality of starting to become more mature and take on more responsibilities while still trying to cling to my childhood of digging holes and bashing legos against the wall with my brothers! It was an odd time, which I guess many can easily familiarize themselves with the timeframe as we’ve all at one point been teenagers.

One of the biggest things in my life I remember being a bit troublesome though, was all my friends I had made and my groups of people I had become so entangled with. With going through these changes, I had some friends that were still absolute children at heart and some friends who were practically ready for college! I had loads of moments through those years where these friends I had grown up with would start to feel like strangers and I’d begin to not really feel as though I had a social place to call my own.

Work was a new outlet, and I actually used to love talking to people as a cashier, ringing up their items, and learning the social norm of small talk that would amount to nothing less than an afterthought. I made a lot of friends with people who were retired and with college kids who seemed to be the coolest bunch around, who knew how to live life and have fun doing it. It was such a variety of friends where I’d talk to Tina about her granddaughter or Jim about his retirement and stock options and then I’d go up to Isaiah and he’d tell me about all the dates he’d been on or all the party stories of him and his friends living life to the fullest. It was a pretty great time in my life though, because one thing especially it taught me was how to be social, though this process would still take years and years to fully develop until I was in my early 20’s to be fully confident in my ability to put it on and be charismatic if need be. The reason I mention so much about this job though, was there was still a deep  and unrecognized subconsciously aware desire in me to meet the one.

Home Depot of all places was the first time I saw her. In person. . .

I remember it was a day much like the rest of them. After having struck up some conversation with our customers and being a little groggy from waking up at the crack of dawn for the early shift, it was time for me to finally get some lunch. While taking my usually route from the front of the hardware store I stopped at my usual coworkers stations to say hi or make a passive joke as I strolled happily on my way.

I can’t exactly remember why, but I had the need to talk to one of my managers, and it was something I needed a response for by the end of the day, so I figured before I clocked out for lunch, I’d get that little task out of the way. But, on the way back to my manager’s office, which was this little 10 foot hallway with doors on either side, one leading to a bank of sorts, and the other side hosting two doorways to offices, I was stopped in my tracks. Right next to the old clock-in machine were two seats where you’d usually sit and wait if the manager’s doors were closed so you could catch them as they walked out. They were also the seats I had sat in when waiting to get an interview for this first job of mine, where I nervously and anxiously awaited the outcome so many years ago.

In one of those broken down, flat cushioned little seats was a girl so beautiful, I literally lost my breath at the sight of her. I knew immediately who she was. She was the girl from my dreams I had been having over the course of that past year or so. Recently through my dreams, I had learned a very crucial detail about her and that was that her name was Brianna, and there sitting right before me within a few steps walk was the girl.

I froze. I made eye contact. And I immediately turned around and walked away. How I wish beyond wishing I would’ve said hi now. . .

Seeing that my manager was currently in the process of onboarding her as a new employee, I decided to take up my little question with my manager a bit later and I went to lunch. While walking into our break room, I ran into one of my new co-workers who I had become pretty good friends with. His name was Brad Brad.

At this point in time, I had more of an idea and more of a recognition of the fact that these recurring dreams of mine were something special, though I hardly let anyone know because of how embarrassing and odd it was. I mean, who would go around blindly telling people about some chick that they’d been dreaming of that they were totally in love with?? (Definitely not me eight years late. . . ) But with Brad Brad, I trusted him and had told him about the story a few days prior to running into her.

Not knowing her name and only having seen her face, I walked up to my friend and asked him about the new possible employee. He immediately knew who I was referring to her as he had seen her just a bit ago and apparently gotten to know her slightly! I asked him if her name was Brianna, being almost definitively sure that that was her name, and just wanting to check to see if I was either certifiably insane, or possibly blessed with this odder than life knowledge.

Brad immediately confirmed her name was Brianna and asked if I had spoken with her, and this immediately had me out of breath, terrified of how the girl from my dreams was truly true and realer than life. I don’t remember exactly how the rest of the conversation went down, though I can safely assume I was blabbering like a lunatic and telling him every single detail of every single dream I had had of her before. I walked out to get lunch knowing that I’d finally become acquainted with Brianna over time in the work atmosphere which was a relief to me, knowing how social I was at work while in comparison to how introverted and quiet I was at school. Life was looking to good to be true.

Brianna, didn’t get the job.

A few days would go by and my excitement to go to work was through the roof. Never before had I had so eagerly gotten in my car, driven to work, and immediately clocked in in hopes of seeing this new girl around the work place. A week would go by and my thoughts of her were still as excited as ever, but I began to realize that there was still training, a full on hiring process, and that it would most likely take time for things to get in motion. A few weeks would go by and then a month and an unsettling worry began to haunt me as I started to wonder if she didn’t actually get the job.

I started going around asking all of my fellow co-workers if they knew her or if they had any ideas of if we were hiring anyone new. I became obsessed with what we called the, “war board,” which was a schedule of all cashiers’ schedules for the day, what departments they would work in and so forth so on. But, I never saw Brianna’s name pop up, and I began to realize that I might have missed my one and only chance of getting to talk to Brianna.

As time progressed I finally decided it was time to talk to Brad about this new girl since he had been the only one I had talked to about her, and this is when the strangest thing ever happened. Brad had absolutely no idea who I was talking about. He could tell I was obsessed with the idea though and he saw how persistent I was that I had had the conversation with him before, and he even sympathetically lied to me about knowing her just to appease my insanity by saying,

“Ohhhh yeahhhhhhhhh! I remember who you’re talking about!”

I was crushed that the only person who knew her didn’t remember her and at the time I’m unsure of why I didn’t ask my manager to see if they knew who I was talking about. Maybe it was embarrassment or the thought of not being able to see other potential employee’s information that scared me. Either way, I wish I had asked more and been more determined in finding information on what had happened to Brianna.

Months and months on end would go by and the fascination with work would disappear as I got older. I’d check the war board on a pretty consistent basis always hoping that by some miracle, Brianna would show up to work for the day! And even though we eventually would go on to hire an incredible Brianna that I’d become such dear friends with, she wasn’t the same one.

I remember how I used to day dream about Brianna walking into the store and how I would recognize her and how we’d instantly fall in love. Especially on those hot hot Summer days when I was stuck in the garden department with nothing but my thoughts and a dream. As life began to progress though, I realized I didn’t want to only dream about Brianna. . . but I wanted to find her! What good was all my wallowing around if I didn’t make any active attempts to find her!

Thus began, the searching for Brianna. What might just be an everlasting one. . .

I began to take a reality check on this recurring girl who haunted my every thought and when wondering on how I would find a girl from my literal dreams, I thought maybe the first best place to look would be there! Literally in my dreams. I took on an idea I had borrowed from the movie Inception where first thing in the morning, if you try to remember your dreams you’d have a better chance of seeing more details.

Doing more research into this line of thought, I read about dream journals and how some people keep entries of their nightly subconscious activities in order to become better at what’s called lucid dreaming, where basically, you have full and utter control of the dream and realize that you’re in it while still sleeping. My dream journal over time would start to slowly fill and fill with some pretty crazy stories and hilarious dreams. Actually, I wonder if I still have it. If I can find it, I’ll drought down one of my entries here for you to read. . . whoever “you” might be.

I won’t lie when I say I found it in about one minute. It was sitting on my desk right next to me. Oddly enough, my first journal entry is far further in this story than I thought as it was written on October 9th, 2022 (thank God I wrote down dates!) Here goes my first entry.

10-09-22 (#1)

My first dream, I remember being at Home Depot, working while pushing carts. I was very sick and delusional and the atmosphere was rainy and dark. All I could feel was gloom and sadness. There was no one to help me which added to the exhaustion. A customer managed to break 3 carts in half and I had to try and fix them, but I couldn’t. The feeling of wanting to go home was very strong.

10-09-22 (#2)

This time I was in a small class with two other men. It was our first day and our professor was already making us write books worth of homework. But, she soon assigned us Minecraft assignments and the rest of the class was devoted to playing Minecraft. A mixture of falling while playing the game repeatedly occurred and was frightening, yet exhilarating and fun.

Though my timeline of the dream journal and me beginning to write it might be skewed in this story I’ve been telling, as you can see from October 9th’s dreams of the year 2022, it was in fact something I started to do. There were quite a few pages from this journal missing and I can’t recall if they were pages of old homework from school and the notebook was one I self-recycled or not. But, I thought I had started writing these way earlier in my life. Maybe one day, I’ll write up all of these dreams into some sort of official funny document, but as of right now, they’ll all stay in that book. It might honestly be for the better!

Either way, it’s obviously apparent that I became obsessed with this idea of Brianna and I began to play my life events in my head over and over again, and this might have been harmful to me later on, but at the early stages of these occurrences, I was very much into reading. Being the introvert that I was in school, and having no access to a smart device, I used to read so so so many books all the time! My best friend in high school wasn’t any other student really but the faculty and staff, specifically our school librarian Mrs. Hogue.

Every time I’d walk into that library which was probably like twice a week, she’d see me and know it was time for me to become obsessed with a new story or spend the next however many months of my life engrossed in a series. I absolutely loved Mrs. Hogue and while she was very strict with all the other obnoxious kids, she loved me too. We used to talk about life and such and the day I graduated, she was one of the people I made sure of to talk to her and wish her a goodbye to.

Anyways, this obsession with writing and reading of mine was one that really flourished during high school due to these circumstances. It feels rather odd writing now when I haven’t gone about it aside from formal essays and school work since specifically 2018.

2018 was the year that I decided to run with a lot of these creative concepts my mind had created over Brianna and turn them into an actual book with full on character development, a family for Brianna, a place to live and friendships and occupations of all sorts! This is why I mentioned just earlier that this might’ve been more harmful to me, because, sometimes I can’t remember with Brianna what’s memories and what’s a figment of my imagination developed by a creative and passionate former younger writer of myself.

Either way, at this point in my life you could tell I was so devoted to the idea of Brianna being a real person, and this one specific idea plagued me like no other.

The idea was that Brianna was also dreaming of me and that we could only communicate through our collective dreams.

This idea for a young hopeless romantic was intensely alluring and from this idea became the now published and only book of mine, “The Fracture of Reality.” In this book, there’s two main characters named Ian and Brianna. Ian oddly enough matches almost identically all my physical and intellectual traits, some of the only differences being him having a place of his own, a pretty successful job and a bit more muscle, almost as though he were a version of myself I hope to one day be.

Brianna, well, she was and is the Brianna that I know.

The premise of this book was, well how should I put it? Better yet, I’ll just plug in the summary from the back of the book I wrote many years ago!

“Dreams and reality are relatively similar terms. Dreams describe and amplify events that occur in reality whereas reality can capture what little glimpses of the dreams remain. But, it never occurred to me that the two could blur together. Only when it was too late did I start to realize that reality was fracturing…”

Although this summary doesn’t really expound on what the book was about, only now do I find it so profound that I established this saying, this line of thought while I was still younger. I’ll write to you now that the basic premise of the story was a bit of a thriller! Ian begins to have these dreams where he meets and speaks to this mysterious tranquil and beautiful girl. He starts to fall in love with her as he slowly begins to realize that she is in fact real and having dreams of him also. But, with his dreams comes the slow beginning of his down fall where his dreams start to predict horrific events that will occur relatively soon. Along with the dreams comes the mental breaking down of his sanity with a deadly progression exponentially on it’s way to happen far too soon. Through the connecting of his dreams, he needs to find Brianna who he hopes when finding her, will stop the terrifying decline of his conscious nature.

In the end, and [insert spoiler warning here hehe], Ian finally meets up with Brianna only to have one of his dreams predict a horrible event of him and her being hunted by some men that Brianna had gotten in bad with during her youthfully naïve years. The story ends with Brianna and Ian in a cottage after Ian in real life has been shot. The story ends with Ian being unsure as to whether or not his dream reality is real life, or if his reality with the pain of the bullet in him is the truth. Brianna tells him that it doesn’t matter, and tries to convince him that the current peaceful reality that they’re currently in? That that moment and that present feeling is real, and that’s what really truly matters.

Look at me, doing a synopsis of my own books six years later! Writing this book and creating my dream journal and doing research was really the first phase of my obsession with Brianna. The older I’d get though, the more it’d become real to me. I’m unsure as to whether the past eight years of my life has made this idea so authentically real to me, but now I see this all as fact rather than speculation and a possible decline in my sanity that I used to be subconsciously aware of.

More years would progress in my life and would lead to the graduation of my high school and the starting up of college at my community college. There, I’d me one of my best friends which will most likely be my best friend for life KJ, but it was also a time of maturing and shying away from the ideas of Brianna as much. Rather than focusing on the idea of her, instead I got so busy with work at Home Depot, balancing friendships at community college, and still trying to socialize with my family that I hardly thought of her.

But, circumstances would change and even though I went a while without thinking about her, she was always there. When I began my first semester at Columbia State and accidentally sat next to this absolutely beautiful girl named, you guessed it, “Brianna,” I thought that she was her! Only to find out like literally two days into the semesters that she was married, whoops! But I still became friends with her and weird stuff like that would occur every so often, but at this point in time, life was changing so rapidly and my mind was always so distracted that Brianna began to fade.

I’d still have my occasional dreams and when those hit, it’d be more difficult than it used to be. The feeling of wanting to stay in those dreams was so strong and so hard to swallow when I woke up and realized it’d only been in my head.

With school starting though, my priorities changed a lot in life! My job was the least of my concerns at Home Depot and I’d more often than not skip all of my shifts as it always drained me of all my energy having to socialize with a bunch of people I didn’t care for or care about. All the small talk became irritating and whenever I was there, I guess I had come to associate that little hardware store with the idea of loss and gloom. I mean, if my dream journal didn’t speak enough for itself, I think it’s because I missed out on my one and only chance to actually talk to Brianna.

My new priorities were to make as many friends as possible and to turn this new page in life and that’s exactly what I did! I was incredibly social and went out of my way to introduce myself to total strangers just to try and escape the old Mike and pursue a new version of him.

It wouldn’t take long for Brianna to come back to me though.

Nobody that tells you how quickly life goes by can truly explain the depths of what that means and you sort of need to experience it yourself, and with the pandemic of Covid-19 happening around 2020, those two years at community school and the two years at MTSU would go by like a wisp of air. Like a breath, **** the time went by. Sure there was quite a bit of stuff that happened throughout that time, like me beginning to fall in love with creating content through YouTube about Minecraft, getting internships and freelance work for my degree as a Graphic Designer where I won competitions and published my art in many places and had the opportunities to be in a crazy high end internship.

But the amount of time, was just literally gone. I was too busy. Brianna became an afterthought.

That is, until fairly recently. To drop some dates for you, I created my first official youtube channel on September 18th, 2019 and published my first video four years ago a day after I made the channel. At first, my channel of Minecraft specific content was created both to prove to my brothers that I could create content as incredible as the youtubers we watched, but it was also just in hopes of turning it into an actual career since it was something I genuinely was okay at. Having had architecture for for years in high school Minecraft felt like a more creative and liberating way to express those abilities and live them out in an actual environment I had created. But also, Minecraft was an excuse for me to turn off my mind.

Covid and the pandemic was sort of the greatest thing to ever happen to me, because it gave me so much time to think and play this wonderful game. I know I mentioned above how I didn’t think about Brianna that much, and that part is true, but when I had those dry moments of playing Minecraft and grinding out some simple tasks of literally just breaking and placing blocks, my mind would wander to her. I used to choose the most essentially mind numbing tasks of mining for hours upon hours which only consisted of holding down a button and occasionally moving your character around to mine some more. But though the task was completely and utterly boring, my mind was active as ever thinking and wondering about Brianna.

Finding these quiet moments in life were far and few between, but I began to cherish them. All the moments from day dreaming while mowing the lawn and sweating to death in the 100 degree sun, to sitting in my car after a long first four hours at Home Depot while staring at a semi-vacant parking lot, to even just the long walks across my enormous campus at MTSU or the long walk from parking spots I chose purposefully to be super far away from my campus at Columbia State. These moments while rare, gave me a chance to keep Brianna at least in the back light of all the real life moments I was constantly distracted and thrown around with.

But, going back to Minecraft when I got into youtube, this changed everything.

I went from having at least some spare moments to having literally no moments at all. The only time I would rest was when I had experienced such bad burn out from trying to do everything everywhere all at once, and between that and the occasional sleep I would get, my mind had no time to think. I still can easily get into that workaholic mind set sometimes and it’s a dangerous one to be in, but I’ve gotten better as I’ve figured out why I believe I fell into that mindset in the first place.

The reason was to escape Brianna’s grasp.

As I went through school hanging out with friends and making new one’s internationally through the development of an ever expanding youtube channel, I had just about no time for anything. The only time I had to stop and think was my 10 minute drive to get food and even in those moments, I had no time to think, because I was too busy driving trying not to get killed by crazy drivers.

Three years of school went by before I finally said that enough was enough. With school being as difficult as it was, I decided to “retire” from my newfound love of youtube because in all honesty, it was driving me mad. My retirement video from Minecraft came out on December 5th, 2022. I stepped away from the never ending grind and set out to enjoy life and the little moments that life offered.

The only problem with this was that my mind began to ponder Brianna once again.

At this time in my life, after retiring I was actually working for a famous youtuber named PrestonPlayz. It was a random freelance job and for the past year or so I had been jumping from freelance to freelance work with little regards to cost and payments real life had always waiting around the corner for me.

This would make me end up ultimately getting a job back at Home Depot for a few months to pay off debts I had incurred from being financially stupid and buying stuff I didn’t really need. But, between all the financial problems and weird life situations I had so much more time to think about Brianna. The dreams of her still occurred every so often but the frequency at which they had started to occur was less and less. Maybe this was all due to me reaching a new level of maturity, but I’m still not entirely sure what caused it. Maybe it was the distraction of a busy workaholic life or the hopes to find someone, really anyone that was a girl that would love me that I could love back.

But, like I said my mind began to think about her more and more. I began to see her in my thoughts like I had years ago previously and it almost felt like I was back sliding into some weird territory I had just grown oblivious to with the amount of time that had passed. Either way, that was my life. A jumbled mess of thoughts and ideas all scattered in a brain far too busy to stop and breathe coming to the new age of silence and habit.

With my mind able to breathe, I thought of her again. . . and then I saw her again. . .

I can’t remember the exact day or time of year, but on one of these days of my “retirement” I was driving home after having just gotten some taco bell. (I was obsessed with the place back then) Driving up my street, I saw a girl with long dark curly hair and bright pink clothes, what might have even been pajama pants on her, walking up my street! I didn’t think much of it until I looked into my sider mirror and saw her face and saw that it was the one and only, Brianna.

Brianna was walking up my street right next to my house. In person. Alive and breathing.

I panicked and jumped out of my car with my taco bell nearly crashing to the ground as I roared into park in my driveway with my car. With bare feet, since I used to drive with no shoes when I went to fast food place, I dove onto an aggregate driveway and started running down it, knowing that there was no way on earth I was missing my chance to finally talk to her. I had nothing but time that day, and I was overly excited to finally introduce myself in person

But when I turned around, Brianna was gone. She’d simply vanished into thin air? I still don’t know how or why, but she was gone. . . possibly gone forever. . .

This experience drove my efforts to find her to another level of passion as I began to research through many google forums and sites and social media platforms praying to God that I’d be able to find her. It didn’t matter if I had to cross the entire ocean to get to her, I was going to find Brianna, no matter what.

I started to revisit old ground and went to the Home Depot I had worked at, asking the new manager there if he could search records and being able to find her that way. I found old coworkers I used to work with and asked around trying to find any trail or any lead and couldn’t find a single thing. I even managed to find Brad Brad’s Instagram and messaged him only for him to have literally no idea what I was talking about, go figure.

With nothing working and having literally no idea on what else I could do, I began to passionately work on a project called, “The Bri of My Dreams.” What this basically was was an ARG or alternate reality game which was a puzzle game I setup for my prior youtube community to solve and have fun with. But, it was more than that. It was the telling of the story of Brianna in a way that I could hopefully publicize and gain some popularity on so that maybe instead of me finding Brianna, she’d be able to rather find me! So, I started working on it behind the scenes unbeknownst to anyone in my community that I was going to use this new found passion project to hopefully find her, but also to bring me back to youtube content creation.

To this day, I’m still not sure why I wanted to go back to youtube. Well I know some underlying reasons, that being tied loosely to Brianna, but now many months later still being at it, I’m unsure as to the real reason why I still create stuff on there.

Either way, after creating an entire animated short film with a script and what I consider to be one of my greatest projects of all time, “The Bri of My Dreams” project was finalized and ready to publish. I put it out there hoping that it was only a matter of time before I finally heard from her.

Hardly anyone noticed I’d returned to youtube, let alone my project failing horribly as only close friends I knew even attempted the puzzles.

My final efforts produced literally no results, and well, this brings me to about right now, this moment that I’m actually writing this all down on May 1st 2024 at 4:21 p.m CDT. For the past few hours I’ve written down all of this while listening to The Caretaker album on youtube, a depressing soundtrack meant to represent the stages of alzheimer's.

This morning while sitting around doing nothing really, I looked up Brianna one last time, despite me telling myself I would be done with her after my ARG project. I found a girl, about the same age as me that matched the name and the description. Her father’s name was funnily enough the same as my own, Michael.

What I found about her and her father were obituary statements.

I’m unsure if it’s okay or morally right to even think that might’ve been her, but something I noticed when doing research about Brianna in my earlier days. . . For some odd reason there’s a lot of young beautiful Briannas who unfortunately die in their early 20’s. It’s an odd and horrifying fact I’ve come to know over the past few years through my odder than odd research.

But, this case I found today? Well the exact date this Brianna died on correlated almost exactly when my dreams stopped of her.

I don’t dream of Brianna anymore. I haven’t for years. . .

I think the reason I’m writing this, is my own way of finally saying goodbye. Wherever she is, I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s well. But as for me, life continues to go on and it’s finally time after these past eight years to finally say. . .

Goodbye Brianna. I’ll miss you. . .
Argha Wadadar Apr 2020
Consent was trivial to you,
you thought, my flesh was ready for you.
you thought, me being friendly,
an invitation for you to violate me.

I was afraid, of the consequences,
you were groping your next prey.
I was afraid , of myself,
empty void nesting inside me.

I contemplate, did I do something wrong?
or was it you all alone,
the answer is obvious, yet
I scrutinise myself to sleep every night.

The wounds may heal,
but the trust is lost,
the shadows will scare me,
for the rest of my life.

I have decided to,
deem you insignificant,
at long last the woman in me rebelled,
overcoming the fear and shame.

I will speak out,
not in a whisper, but aloud,
vehemently, to end this injustice,
to end this torment within.

wad_arg
More Power to the survivors, fighting out there.
Thankyou for reading.
Kelly McManus Mar 2021
Your patriotic
duty to fight anyone
who'll take their *****

           Kelly McManus
bulletcookie Apr 27
Arg
Hobbler, the crow, was lame
but he had game, and props
being a few other birds, not game,
city birds, begging and scavenging
savaging, all the same road ****
chill when humans came close
they became verbose, false bravado
for weightless bags of bone and feathers
whether or not noticed, scurrying
ducking under benches, cars, then
flapping half a bird lap up, down
around the service lamps; the scamps!
Their pirate leader does its one leg hop
and one can imagine a gang plank stop
with a heave-** flank and up they rise
into the market sky and to return
short of a ****** but gang none-the-less

-cec
4/26 - NaPoWriMo - something, something, poem ...

Props - back-up, team, member droogs ...
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
language as a museum, some nudes,
nudes are welcome, but also the
dyslexic takes on "profanity" -
namely:
like f%$£ you can -
you f------
albino take on a n-----!
ooh...
         takes two to take
a lesson in art...
nackte ist güt...
  korrekt s(c)hreiben, arg! das ist arg!
**** güt, oo -
roll on, roll off...
           hovering over A
                                         eine gnat -
and how often is the
umlaut missing,
when it's required to
make syllable cuts, curbs,
and counting?
      i'm starting to imagine
the lost art of counting as the essence
of arithmetic -
            e.g. das ist goo, nein gút -
oot, utterly - ah -
         goo, ja?
                       jawohl?
   reiteration in expansion...
das ist nein gút: g~at -
but the roll-over count of
   braille 2x, ja?
                  where j = y...
               Hanover blues -
güt...
       goo't -
                 T tap crisp -
                          scheißefraude -
when did language resemble
a coordination?
        whenever the never
of the "artist" ever perfecting
the realm of numbers?!
          so, who's this fresh
******* reading of the
dictatorial press of what's:
"art"?
         next time he comes along
these ways knocking...
   tell him to invent,
                    a ******* doorbell.
me? deaf as a doorknob.
Matthew Scott Harris...ARG

This, a near imp
     possible mantra to apply
when this 2009
     Macbook Pro went awry
triggering this enduser
     to experience tidal waves of high
anxiety, which besieged this fie
foo fighting dirt po' pa well nigh,

who might need buy
another laptop, yet my
anorexic checking account
     on life support, no lie
could not afford, (to sigh
phone even one red cent,
     all because ordinary healthy
     electrons deployed aye

did NOT see usual expected
     predictable apple luck
     quiche *** activity via my
left and right eye,
yours truly did not espy
usual kickstarting linkedin magic after
     preliminary electronic setup
     unexpectedly failed to start -

     no idea why
unbeknownst tummy, what
     ghost in the machine didst defy
programming code of honor,
     whereby pixel display
     unexpectedly exhibited "abnormal"
computer behavior -
     like a turncoat ally

meaning one hoop wrest
     illegally start button signaling
     subatomic warfare unleashing - guy
did missiles as taught
     during routine training
     to turn bot tin down stevedores
     loose on the Jobs (dan-g) rather, I
watched slack jawed,

     as that very singularly narrow
     vertical lined band width
(analogous to a medium black
     sabbath tipped magic marker)
     did NOT display
     prestidigitation instantaneous flash
     demarcating binary DMZ
     (demon mailer zone,

     viz dividing screen in half, -
     versus top to bottom array), qua
     incomplete automatic
     initialization stopped
     partway thru automatic preparation,
     after which cryptic
     error message appeared,
     which malfunction found me

     bursting with ****** tears,
     and ready to cry,
(which gush of tear
     rivalled Hurricane Florence),
     cuz mechanical and/or
     application so much

     of my creative
     write minded person
     (reed literary) self choked life vie
ability to live, thus the only alternative
...insane asylum to apply!
--------------------------------
SPOILER ALERT...
postscript: after some fluke brought
desk top in view, the quick thinking
chap attached an external drive to a
USB port, and thus breathed easier
knowing a backup got made.
This dada apologizes for injure
     ring your tender kin
     dolled innocent girlhood,
     (ex post facto probably
     to little tool hate)
thus this father's lament,
     hoops words can caught her

eyes, sans estrangement from
     thee mine eldest daughter,
asper countless times,
     this papa acted
     like a roguish cur,
now those accidental,
     and/or purposeful misdeeds

     digs like a figurative burr
and/or digging deeper
     thorn in me side - arg...
as the years spin by,
asper inflicting unintended
     psychological pain inducing

yours truly (me) to cry
the beloved "star student,"
     most likely taking mine
     (hurt lock hard suffering),
     til I breathe one
     last breath...and then die,
hence reason for this poem

     to let mine soul fly
free, (the closest approximation,
viz this atheistic guy)
aware at the necessity
     to expunge self devouring
(i.e. cannibalistic) beast - hie
engendered, which

     sacrilegious paternity
     cannot be reversed,
yet only thee
can consonant avow
wool to admit culpability,
     humility, and magnanimity,
thus this opportunity, I cow

whir with unbeknownst
divination, persistent hesitation,
and knottiest lamentation how
so much, your
     life times worth of
     unpleasantness (which telling,
     would entail voluminous writing),

hence a poem for now
aware at the heft and pow
whir of written words,
     which intent may not wow
thee atoll, nonetheless
     rather than detail
every single instance,

     where ye did feel
extreme friggin grief,
     perhaps which pain
     you will never heal,
tis necessary for this
     father to profess guilt -
     not so much

     taking a knee and kneel
ling, attest cognizance how
     my choices, indiscretions,
and recklessness
     did comfortably seal,
sans posturepedic,
     and seriously unveil

fatalistic, narcissistic,
     and pathetic lifestyle blight
such as being unemployed,
     and for a decade
lived in Penn Valley,
a most fright
full and appalling utter

     grossness, where these
opened eyes shed light
on a deplorable, despicable,
     and detestable offal
     housekeeping, where even
     critters (such as mice)
     came out at night

wearing miniature gas masks,
     and also donned with
     teensy weensy, itty bitty
oxygen tanks, when scurrying
amidst horrible unlivable sight

oh...this juiced smidgen of hell
     imposed on Eden Liat
     (as well Shana Aubrey),
     and mooch more could I write!

— The End —