Breath as you go.
Falling through the floor.
Watch as I disappear.
Forget this world as we know.
Ignore the trap door.

I wasn't made for this show.
I never wanted to be sawed in half.
Take me out.
Finish my waste of life.
Gather around for the show.
Do me a favour and ignore the trap door.

I didn't want to be here.
Falling straight down.
You stole my show.
My parashute will get me to the ground.
But you'll shoot me back into the air.
Ignore the lock on the trapdoor.

Sold out show.
Come watch me pull a heart out of a soul.
Watch my mind disappear.
Watch your step, you might fall through the ignored trap door.

I'm not sure if I wanna give you my secrets.
Magicians have plenty of those.
Watch as I disappear.
Nothing left.
Ignore the open trapdoor.

Breath as you go.
Please ignore the bleeding trapdoor.

Immerse yourself until wholly submerged
in my unholy divergence;
Poor form tormented soul - 
Roll your pain in a J
then dip it in chloroform
Embrace my urges to purge
the remnants of sanity,
Spilling and screaming
all these profanities at humanity

Confuddling all posers
with my bastardized prose ~
Please, continue badgering
and nagging me
with your ****-******* menagerie
of trivial drudgery
I’m in misery so
go ahead and bludgeon me
Square in the noggin’
So that I can jog it,
whilst juggling all these nails
from my coffin

I’m awfully harmful and cruel
got these scoffing jealous skeptics
Acting a fool,
coughing up a lung-full of fuel
for all of the putrid mind puke I spew
My mixing *** skull’s
where the ingredients accrue
Just stew with me for a little
while longer though won’t you

I’m a cancer-ridden addler
babbling mad adages,
ravishingly tenderizing my meat
Laced with some dust from space, yes, no lackage/absence of it lining
within my nasal passages see
spun off some of that absinthe
In a cloud of burning trees
Please tell me you feel me

It’s staggering how I’m both crazy batshit,
**** smooth as rotten laxative cheese
Brain’s melting acidic beef
I’m like Randy Savage I got
Bombastic fat ******* in heat
Straight making my **** go flaccid post-weep

Don’t get offended women
just imagine
How painfully average the package
is within my lap that I’m packin
But now it’s wrapped
and I’m ready to fucken
fully send it no cap
My turnaround is lightning fast
In and out of your *** quick as a wink like The Flash

Faces contort in ghastly panic, actually
Dastardly antics unleashed in vast swarms
Plague the masses in pandemic proportions with them massive casualties factually once more
Give ya some relaxing action 
And skull-**** y’all
with such a passion *******
Your corpse falls to the floor
and right through the trapdoor

Candid, my pen-chance enchants
Heavy-handedly inanimate
in suspended animation
Supplant reality augmentation
Machinations of my imagination;
Implicating **** ransacking  
and seafaring through crab infestations 
Wreaking havoc and bequeathing vengeance
I’m a fire breathing grim reaper reeking of ****** ~

- Off is the nearest direction in which to ****
Dissect my ******* with your tongue
Turnt up ******* plumpies in the rumpus 
Just for the fun of it until I erupt
Remember, I’m avid for dismembering appendages
I expect you’re exceptional at accepting
a barrage of septic bombardment
Chance of success: logistics analysis zero percentage
(Cos I done ******* on all those *******.)

Superbly superlative and speculative
So fast on Adderall
I make Mad Hatter’s head spin
Quicker than you can snap: 
Giving your family heart attacks
Smack you in the face, 
While fapping my fabulous lap rocket

Thunderously plundering under covers
Spring-loaded with faux pas’ so hot
Make your mother’s ***** pop out
and say “hello”
like a Jack-in-the-Box

& U kno Those foxy grandmas
be jaxing off my **** -
Bingo wings beckoning me to flock
Choppin’ up rocks round the clock
with the glock in my pocket til I rot 
Undoubtedly
Caught em wit the molly-whop eyeballs pop out they sockets all dramatically
Whole squad **** swap the rod, on God
Blow my whole *** when I start spitting them double entendre fatality snowballs
Zippity-zop like Cosby’s special BBQ sauce
Bet I’ll dip my puddin’ pop and stay fresh with the drip til I drop
Y’all just holler when you want me to stop

Palpable, these **** butts malleable as putty
Barbarically barrel rolling into dat ***
rip it to shreds like confetti
Power Pole extend
Face pressed into your *******
Inhaling the wafting aromatic stenches
of distant French fish factories

Clearly getting dome from your dearly betrothed violently
Now she bridal and my seeds spiraling virally
Vital signs finalizing
Bounce that *** like jello
Swell; I’m in your hair like gel
Now swallow my jollies and don’t bother
Unless you hollerin’ and giving me dollars
Zealots idol my harlotry

If nose goes go slow grow low
Throwing those yoloing hoes out windows
This ***** simply bonkers
I conquer fear me

***** DON’T HARSH MY MELLOW
SWEAR I’LL MARSH YOUR MALLOWS

Buried in the quagmire of questions

the lonely traveler gasps.

Faith suffocates, belief stifles

and he seeks answers no more.

He regrets he walked into a one way trapdoor.

Her mouth: the trap door.
It pulls you in and screams for more
and now she's flirting with disaster,
playing with fire and burning faster.

Her latch is weak and opens easy.
You'll always lose when she gets greedy.
Also stemmed from her abyss:
the self -respect of a dying fish.

Oh, it comes and goes, but here it comes.
We better latch the door and ******* run.

To shake dust from my pretty
child
i must mystify minds while, molding
pre-paved tile patios:
give the sheep’s pen a four wall construct
A-RISE above the morphic
and bellow, to comfort the feet.

Im stabbing quarters into my activation plate’s extra exhaust
to ignite something.
Spit some carbon –

Manic moments, move a myles like me to the metaphysical mirror.
And it is not this one that reflects,
but to the duties my appendages embody i –
lack expects.
Do due – Respect.
to this Chthonian carriages; my dermis quite the copy cat.

to say the body is made in the images
of a cosmic titan is overly abstract.
The big bang was an aftermath of a flatline,

“so whatchur telling me is that even the void gets tired?” (it says)

my guilt was relieved of its cage and given
new duties.

Project itself on a man with open eyes
searching for answers.
Close that third mind and let them
truths seep from the almost always
clogged sinuses.
Snore even.

Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.
I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.
I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing.
And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything.
If only I could think! If only I could feel!

I give the rat my dollhouse at night.  our basement has a disease.  my brother brings a flashlight to dinner.  mother says poor devil to the poor devil she can’t stop eating.  I have my own language that in hindsight is an age gap.  I am so heavy.  I jump and water gets out of my way.  between you and me, sister sees me coming and throws herself on the trapdoor we’ve made a game of rolling eggs over.  father shares a hat with god like there’ll be something in it.

~
if you're feeling sinister tonight, come inside the darkroom. picture yourself pouring over mental images of a demure young botanist, loitering around the trapdoor of nostalgia, kissing someone new for the first time.

now imagine she is conscious and clustered in titillating blur, her smile beachy and airborne, with only the slightest suggestion that something troublesome is lurking underneath.

can you see her double exposure? totally tranquil, she poses with an arsenal of poisonous plants, as if she’s already slipped their venom into your tea.
~

Movie ticket,
cinema stub,
two halves torn apart
by the fickle fingers of the screen attendant:
he looked up at me with a smile-
one learnt from a handbook compiled by the words of some corporate type,
who dislikes his job, you can tell from his vibe.

“The receipt's in the bag”,
I requested it to be in my hand,
customer service fingers are always painted a day-glow green,
hideous talons of the fake queen,
traced from the princesses of the TV-silver-******-fake-TV screen:
she looked up at me with a smile-
one learnt from a magazine of ink,
nothing more than lies disguised within the wholesome typography imprint.

Carrying nothing but a wallet,
“would you like a bag sir?”
I am carrying nothing but a wallet, of course I would like a bag,
what do you take me for:
she looked up at me with a smile-

Wait.

Her intriguing trapdoor smile concealed
perfectly straight teeth that,
through the gap in her mouth,
spat out the shop floor script,
as if a Shakespearean soliloquy
equipped for the stage,
not this retail trade.

"I can tell you that Dada was a leftist,
anti-bourgeois, non-Art birthed from WWI
and not some aleatory root to postmodernism
off-shot from a lurid acid rain.
I know that diffraction can be seen
on horizons in the early morning hours
of summer along smooth or dentate curvatures
and that it can have hues of blue, purple and
a soft-handed massage of orange that gingerly
applies pressure to your retinas with sugar-water.
If only eyes had lips that opened and closed.

"It is said that action is the birth of Manyness
and that non-action brings one's soul back to the Sage Mind,
the universe of Oneness, the cup longing to be fulfilled and how
upon brim overflow it longs to be empty once again
because of the relationship between Yin and Yang
and how one cannot Be without the other
and why perspective can change "full" to "empty"
so that the vicious cycle can never truly, truly end.
The difference between French Vanilla ice cream
and plain Vanilla is the degree of creaminess.
Fill up a bathtub and let it soak into my skin.

"There is no way for me to avoid being prolix about the things
I speak about in normal, day-to-day conversation. Science and reason
have accursed me to traverse this reality with the utmost care and precision
of language and society has forced pseudo-logic down my throat like
a bird screeching as it is forced past my pharynx and larynx.
Its sounds are amplified, beak-blared from my nostrils, and its wings are violent,
stretched against my neck skin, creating a pale-skinned, ship anchor image from my shoulders up.
I'll try to sing for you when you reach my trapdoor, I don't wish to eat you.

"I do not believe in anything because with everything comes a something,
a reason for its being. They are, 'from reason,' 'in reason,' and/or, 'for reason.'
There is no escaping this thought.
There is no escaping criticism.
I will find the Truth, mathematically calculated to infinity
from knowable circumstance and perception.
I will know everything and I will believe nothing."

light a candle on the run
build yourself for demolition
relapse before you even drug
**** a pale horse with intuition
insecurities and fear,
all clear

**** it all, detach
strike a match!

fight a fire on the sun
change yourself a lifetime mission
relax before you cut the plug
thrill a discourse on disposition
insecurities and fear,
all clear

****!
it's all a trap!

She lived in a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
Looked down on the cold blue waters
In fair weather, and in rough,
The smoke that curled from her chimney piece
Was snatched away by the wind
So couldn’t obscure the window where
She stood, and her eyes were pinned.

She saw the gaggle of soldiers
Rise up, and out of the marsh,
And remembered a past encounter,
Their treatment of her was harsh,
She snipped the lock on the window, then
She hurried to bar the door,
Raised the trap to the cellar, and
Slid down to the cellar floor.

She lay in hopes they would pass on by,
Would ignore her humble home,
Would think that there was a man nearby
Not a woman there, alone,
She knew of the fate of others who
Had invited the soldiers in,
For many a soldier’s bairn was born
The result of a soldier’s sin.

She heard them muttering round the house
And tapping the window pane,
Beating a tattoo on the door
Till she thought she’d go insane,
They’d seen the smoke from her chimney piece
And they called, ‘Hey you inside,
We need to shelter the night at least,
It’s wintry here outside.’

But still she lay on the cellar floor
As quiet as any mouse,
She wasn’t going to let them in
To her tiny little house,
She heard the crash as the timber gave
Away on her cottage door,
And heard the thump of their feet above
As they stomped across her floor.

She heard the sound of their puzzlement
When they found the cottage bare,
‘Somebody must have lit the fire,
But now, they’re just not there.’
She heard them smashing her crockery
And drinking beer from her ***,
She never had enough food to spare
But she knew they’d eat the lot.

Down below was a musket that
She’d kept well oiled and cleaned,
Along with a horn of powder that
She’d felt worthwhile redeemed,
She found the shot and she rammed it home
There was nothing left to chance,
The first to open that trapdoor would
Begin his final dance.

The night came on and they settled down,
Above, she could hear them snore,
She wondered whether they’d go away
When the sun came up, once more,
But then, sometime in the early hours
She heard the trapdoor creak,
And a pair of eyes were hypnotised
As they saw the musket speak.

There once was a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
It’s now burnt out, just a shell without
A roof or a door, it’s rough,
While down in the cold blue waters
Lies a woman, drowned and dead,
And up on the bluff, a soldier’s grave,
Buried, without a head.

David Lewis Paget

Prohibition came, but not to Whiskey Hill.
A man has got to eat; a drunk must have his fill.

Old Abner dug a basement before fall
Beneath the milking barn at night;
Dug down and mortared up a wall;
Bought copper sheets and hammer-fit 'em tight,
Disguised his vent holes in the stall
By countersinking posts to keep them out of sight.
Set down a trapdoor and a sturdy stair,
Strawed the lot and penned up his old mare.

In all he did, he didn't tell his wife a thing;
He reasoned there was money to be made...
More than the crops would ever bring,
More than the eggs the chickens laid,
He'd be enriched by moonshine in the spring.

He learned to ferment mash from an old book,
Soaked down a bag of corn and let it sprout,
Waited twelve full days before he took a look,
Cracked kernels, poured on water, boiling hot,
Then pitched the yeast and left his hidden nook,
And all the while kept his mouth shut;

Seven days and Sunday passing by,
Old Ab could wait no more;
Ate supper quick and told his wife
He'd one more feeding chore...
Stole to the barn and shoo'ed the mare aside,
Pulled up the vent posts from the floor,
Climbed down and lit a fire inside
Beneath the still to let the vapors soar.

A thrill began as drops began to fill the jug;
The fore-shot blended in as Ab forgot
That methanol would poison off the slug,
So when a shot he took, his breathing stopped.

Above, impatient Molly stamped, then paced
Hungrily in her pen, shoved to reach her hay
And dropped the standards in their place,
Plugged tight the vents, above where Abner lay.

When Hildy woke, her husband still was out;
She walked down to the barn, no sign to see;
And thought it odd the horse was out...
The cattle lowing hungrily for feed.

The sheriff came to have a look;
No luck had he,
Old Hildy sold the place and moved away.
Where she went and how remains a mystery.
A cousin bought the place: house and barn and still (unseen).
His sons, exploring, found old Abner in the spring
Beneath the horse's paddock where he lay.

Each day, we carry our names through urban terrain.
For every letter laid out and shining atop the cityscape,
a thousand more become garbage scattered in darkness.
Yet I'm courted into thinking I'm on the right street
by algorithms selling dopamine down Sideways Alley.

Too soon after bearing my soul on the infinite scroll,
tourists flock and flap to get at the itch on my back.
Their words cut deep like plastic knives at a banquet.
Their hearts warm like the walls of an empty fridge.
Breadcrumbs left behind only lead to the trapdoor.

Those in luxury estates who threw paint on a throne -
their patches of land fertile and thriving up to the gates -
offer tips on organic growth that can build into empires,
while those packed in high-rise blocks act like bandits,
egos painted loud on knock-off flags hung to balconies.

What am I in this black hole of corrupted competition?
Views above the skyline only provide anxious thoughts.
Occasionally, I find answers in unseen neighbourhoods.
An outstretched hand holds a glass of chilled apple juice.
Now we go round each other's house to share fresh fruit.

I’m blowing smoke out of the chimney in my lungs
My tongue’s an ashtray for songs that have never been sung
My head’s a duel flame of a battle yet to be won
My heart’s a furnace in the trapdoor in the sun
All that has to be done
All that has to be fun
My fingers run, this is the smoking gun
Trapped like a nun, in a hustler’s pun
Flesh weighs a ton, this is the smoking gun

In the eye where I am
where there's peace,(so to speak)
I take out the album which I carry in a telegram and in those few stunted phrases,
my heart again blazes with desire,full of fire and of want.

This is punishment for me and I see retribution in these lines,
times though be far are near as I wear out my eyeglass making pass after pass at the words on the clipped sheet in my hand,
telegram and the full of memory man and the eye carries me on to the storm that levels all in its path,
I shall weep for this no more,bring the winds and let them bore through me and the rains to swallow my tears unshed.
I am led like the goat to the pipers of Pan.

I am the telegram becoming the man and the album's a plan to destroy me,though the Devil employs many vices it seems that nothing is fixed and there's a swirling of voices which melt into one,(am i to be that one?)
This saxophonic cacophony within which I am caught teaches me, what once before I was taught,
I'm a prisoner in the dock and the black cap is on and the 'beak' up ahead says,'you're going to swing John'
And the beggars and tramps and those bums that you meet on the islands of midnight where the ne'er do well greets you with,'lend me a dime' all make some time to come to the show where I swing to and fro and...look at my face all bloated and blue,
(it's only make up,but what can I do,poor ******* I am)
and the eye winks at me,winks at me as if I could see the joke in this,it is funny though, that one feels so tall as the trapdoor opens and you begin the fall
but then it's snap, crackle and pop
full stop
dead end.
telegram sent,

I'm going home.
stop.
end.

Trying to unwind the cobwebs that wheel around inside,
trying to disappear but I know it's useless to hide.

Out of the golden triangle,
looking for angles,
am I obtuse?
but it's all grist to the mill
which no longer exists
and that is my only excuse.

And I'm jumping to several conclusions
it's a hell of a long way to fall
I could  always of course stay in this room
banging my head off the wall.

I hate you.

You told me once hate has no substance, there is nothing to gain from it, not enough meaning in it for a good enough reason. You told me hate makes no sense as an emotion, that no matter how I try to explain it will never justify anything as long as I say hate. I told you I hated everyone, you said no, you don't you just think you do because you're a cynic and I won't bother reasoning with you.

I hate you.

You were probably right, that I didn't really hate everyone, because now I know I don't—I hate you, and only you, because you've captured everything I value and imprisoned it within the cage of your heart, twisted every breath of shadow into light so I have no more place to hide, carved the memory of you into my flesh until it sank to my bones and echoed in my being until my soul knew nothing else. No one expects me to not hate you because you've shackled my wrists, chained to your throat, locked your fingers around my every breath and molded the air into the shape of your mouth, you insufferable, selfish boy, how could you sink your claws into my chest and steal what I intended for another, selfish, selfish, you are selfish.

I hate you.

I hate you for confining moonlight in the hollows of your bones, for melting the stars into your bloodstream, shredding the blanket of the night sky and dipping them into your irises, digging your hands into my skin, gorging your name into my palms, letting yourself sink into my being, how could you let yourself be a part of me? How could you claim the right to tear me apart, to open me like a rusty zipper, to peek inside just to see what I hide, you greedy man, greedy, greedy, you are greedy.

I hate you.

I hate you for the warmth of your hands around mine, the soft, lilting caress of your voice overlapping mine, your smile, full of understanding when nobody else has the same gift for me, your calm a marble wall, unyielding before the crashing waves of my frustration, you selfish, greedy man, I hate you, I hate you, listen to me and rage with me, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

I hate you.

I dedicate every waking moment to picking out your flaws, inspecting them, prodding them, forcing them to grow into something that resembles repulsive, knowing all at once that it's all futile. Convincing myself you are worthless, you are nothing, you are all that I hate, and I wonder if there is even the tiniest chance that in the future I could look at you and know there is nothing I want more than to leave your vicinity rather than ache for the distance to be closed like a trapdoor on the secrets I keep beneath the bowels of my heart. I wonder, I  wonder if one day I could breathe easily with or without you, rather than feel your touch and die for just a second then revived by the butterflies in my stomach.

Even butterflies can have knives for wings, you oblivious creature, I hate you.

I hate you for not knowing, I hate myself for not saying anything, and maybe I can thrive on hate, and ignore the other side of this darkness, pay no heed to the gentle cackle of fire laid deep in the hearth where I keep burning myself, as if one day I would stiffen into a dark crisp and disintegrate with a single touch, maybe I can keep hating and maybe this loathing will solidify into an impregnable shield, but knowing that it will keep getting harder and harder, more and more brittle, until I crack over the edges and shatter like shards over you.

How right you were, you selfish, greedy, oblivious man I hate you, I hate you, I love you.

I wonder if there really is a difference.

Trapped we’ve been, believers
and non-believers alike, in this dungeon
- a room full of venomous vipers
- a hall that in the not-so-distant season
of economic lepers, here was where a patient recovers
- hope was glistening, hope was a reason
to hold on, to holding on

Honey-cured tongues scooped,
facts fudged and frothed, truth looped
Alas! we’ve all been duped
Instant change, six months quickly pooped
- rights became wrong, right stooped
- wrong became right,
- villains became heroes overnight
- immorality is might
- and quest for justice a seeker’s fright
This side, this race, these islands of many beaches white
- oft said as worth one’s dying for, one’s lonely fight
suddenly plunged deep into this Pitch Black night

Here Dark prevails, dark thoughts are tools
to maim the wise, the good. Pedestaled mules
treat us like canned sardines – fools
who locked themselves jam-packed inside
but left the key mindlessly outside
now Hope is flickering, seems to hide
After all the sacrifices far and wide
Is this all that there is - a place to deride?

Here Dark prevails, dark thoughts are raging bulls
But behind the door, I know the Great Light rules
Peep through the keyhole, see the fire
burning. Just one lit candle in straits dire
Strong winds blowing, to put it out with hate
Rush, before that last flame dies, we should not wait.

once
my daddy took me to a clearing,
a shrouded cedar and pine
hideaway,
overlooking the distant mountain range,
sticking up like morning hair.
it was sunny,
flowers sprung out of the ground at our feet and
fought their way through the
grass.
he led me to a stump,
"this is where i write when i cant think."
i nodded and took it all in
with open eyes and a
wide mouth, hanging like a trapdoor.
it was beautiful;
the mountains in the distance creating in my
wild imagination
castles like the ones where giants lived,
in the stories that spilled from his lips.
he opened his arms wide like wings
at the highest part of the arching hill,
he closed his eyes and the breeze tousled
his wheat hair, flowers softly caressing his
ankles.
the scruff above his lip and laying on his chin
shined gold in the drifting daylight sun.
he took a deep breath
a humongous breath;
deeper than any i could ever take.  
"this is where i go when i cant
breathe."
you could hear the echoes of swift trains,
screaming past in the valley
from
Truckee,
carrying chills along with it
every time i heard them.
i never liked that sound.
it was a cacophony of shrieks.
he held my hand
with fingers ten thousand oceans larger than
mine,
and took me into the thickest, deepest part of the woods
where it was dark
and the smell of pine viciously attacked your nostrils,
like a rabid dog.
he let go of my hand,
i let it fall dejectedly to my side.
he slumped down into a pile near the roots of the tree,
a different man:
tired and trying.
he sighed.
*"this is where i go to sleep,
when your mother has had enough of
me."

Personally, I think we Australians and Guests
Have lost the War against the Terror of Coffeeism -->
The sheer, unadulterated Facts on the Ground
Indicate to me a whole new Generation of
Spoilt little brats and bratettes immune to Reflection -->
A Generation of "Can-Doers" and "Will-Doers" and, my favourite:
The "F**K-you-I'm-going-to-try-to-do-it-4-myselfers."

Bully Beware ==>
I may have stuffed up when I wrote the
"Poem" about nothing leaving the 20th Century -->
What I meant was that WAR (my God-given special
assignment/atonement) needed to be contained
within the struggles of MCM - MCMLXXXXIX.
All the Great Inspirations and Fundamental Studies
Had/Have/Will Have already been scrutinized -
Only the Fine-Tooth'd comb was needed to untangle
The knotty issues and remove the well-hidden
Vermin infecting our consciousness through the
Trapdoor of the sub-conscious -->
Eventually - and I certainly didn't think it would take so long -
Not only should we by now have Tagged and ID'd
The Parasitic TICKS, but also rid ourselves of the more
Communicable LICE at the end of the School yard.

I’d rented out the basement  of
A house I used to own,
I hated renting places
I preferred to live alone,
I wasn’t good at choosing all
The tenants I would get,
And this guy was a doozy
The most eccentric of them yet.

But I must admit, the money
Paid the mortgage, right on time,
And I looked toward the future
When the house, it would be mine,
So I put up with his foibles
And his funny little ways,
He would sit down in his basement
And would disappear for days.

He had a little doctors bag
He wouldn’t be without,
With signs both astrological
And Druid runes, no doubt,
He always took it with him
When he wandered down the street,
Come skulking back, and talk about
The ******’s that he’d meet.

I knew something was going on,
I heard both screams and moans,
Seep up from out the basement
With the creak of drying bones,
At night they used to wake me up
And I’d lie there in dread,
And wonder what that movement was
Beneath my poster bed.

One night I crept on down and stood
Outside the basement door,
And heard strange voices muttering
Not one, but three or four,
I heard him raise his voice and say
In tones both harsh and grim,
‘I didn’t say you’d have your way,
But you can enter him!’

A peal of ghoulish laughter then
Rang out behind that door,
I bounded up those steps, ran like
I’d never run before,
Then lowered down the steel trapdoor
That sealed off that stair,
And laid the carpet over it,
You’d not know it was there.

I put up with a week of thumps
And cries of ‘let me out!’
But put my face close to the floor
And whispered, ‘Hey, don’t shout!
You keep those demons that you raised
Locked in your doctor’s bag,
Or maybe they will enter you,
And then, if so, that’s sad!’

I waited for those sounds to die
For upwards of a year,
Then poured a ton of concrete in
To seal that basement stair,
The house has sold, a Mr. Bould
Paid not enough, no doubt,
But said, ‘there’s not a basement there,
I’ll have to dig one out!’

David Lewis Paget

Handclaps, trapped, you are another clapped out hasbeen fading on the subtle regret of a haunted dancefloor,that echoes to a trapdoor of your reflection ,deep on a stained echo of  a fatigued stand up romance  fall at the feet of saints part time actors on shadows of downbeat sadness ,that chance meeting fall out from insight to quicksand that pours on a sinking fragrence of pitiful sadness and tide tiredness of desert slipstream and fragile happiness to upturned madness ,undressed to a ****** round of applause that maps teach us to follow to a statue frozen and silent .

I have never looked at someone and said to myself, "He's the one." At least, not until I met you.

It was scary. The thought dawned to me in an unprecedented manner. There were no precautions. But I remember sitting in a slightly crammed convenience store on a hot Thursday afternoon. My mood was a bit tipped over, what with the lack of sleep and the surge of patients at the Emergency Room the night prior. But I waited for you there. Because we both wanted to fill our stomachs with something it could churn on. And when you sat there in front of me, no my heart didn't skip a beat. Instead, even more frightening is that, I felt time slow down.

I can still remember clearly to this day how your eyes glowed as you watched the cars pass by from the window. And when you were about to meet my gaze, I pretended to be exhausted, so I threw myself across the table for a quick nap. There our elbows touched. And it was that moment that I felt anxious of your presence near me. Why am I afraid of you, I asked myself. I mean, I just met you.

But I was careless at that time. I had forgotten how affection towards another can bloom fast. I became easily comfortable, of talking to you, of being undeniably haggard, and of being grumpy. You allowed me some space in your heart, so I opened mine as well. For no definite reason or intent, I let my guard down.

Our conversation went smoothly for ten minutes now. I looked at my watch and saw you didn't have one, so I made a comment, that I get attracted to guys with a sleeky wristwatch. I recall now, I made a few more comments about your hair, your body, and even your uniform. But I was just throwing off my opinion for the sake of keeping the conversation going.

As we reached the fifteen-minute mark of being together for the first time, I did something that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. Because without thought or hesitation, I held your face. Briefly. Just trying to remove a debris. Just looking straight at that debris, not thinking of the consequences of my little touchy gesture.

However...

Right after this moment, I felt a wave inside my chest. I was having palpitations, and not the pathological kind. I just felt my heart beat faster, and faster, until I knew for sure, that the feeling was how the novels called it --- love at first sight.

I thought to myself, "He's the one." It was the kind that came unexpectedly, that's why I hoped the feeling would beam bright. I was excited of course, yet equally frightened, knowing that a candle that burns twice as bright dies twice as fast.

Indeed, our story unfolded in that manner. It was no fairytale after all. It wasn't scripted by Nicholas Sparks. It was the kind of love that didn't thrive. The kind that avid fans of happy endings will ache for. And so in the days that followed, I found myself fading from the euphoria, which happened right after you told me that we just didn't fit right.. I figured that I cannot force us to be together because it was becoming unrequited. It was, after all, only love at the first sight. The spark in seeing you again just sputtered out, and faded. There was not enough fuel to make a flame.

And now, I am sitting in a slightly crammed convenience store on a hot Thursday afternoon. With my mood a bit tipped over, what with the lack of sleep and the surge of patients at the Emergency Room the night prior. But I am not waiting for someone anymore. I just want to fill my stomach with something to churn on, before I find myself falling for the wrong trapdoor of that thing called love at first illusion.

Mistress seems strange,
Taught to read lines,
A voice, practiced, undermines
A mistake, replaced, small change,
Out of Their pockets into silver sockets that
Shine when it Rains.

She's under a roof,
Need not,
want not,
the handful of proof,
That when the crowd gets loud,
They paint her Red,
But the Stage paints her White.

Mistress seems different,
Trained to believe, to perform,
Playing the part was significant.
Ignore the cracks,
a pleased crowd comes back and
She'll get her pay, so long as
She sticks to the way she was raised.

She found the trapdoor.
It led to the boy whose fingers
Were scored from
Scripts he'd never written.
He spoke off cue,
though she thought him kind,
There was salt in his wounds.

He capsized the boat.
A stage that'd been sailing,
but barely afloat.

Mistress is gone.
Her life turned around,
As she took the hand of the boy,
who promised she wouldn't drown.

I am alright
is what I say even when I have flashbacks everyday of the intimidating looking paramedic carrying me into the ambulance car as if I’m shattered porcelain.

We’re alright
is what my mom says even when she leaves the house she constantly calls and when we aren’t in the same room she repeats “Kelly? Just making sure you’re alright”.

I am alright
is what I say even when I have to look away when the clock strikes 9:27 am because that’s when everything suddenly went black and then spotted white.

We’re alright
is what my mom says, a single parent paying MRI scans, emergency room bills, antiseizure medication, the neurologist, the neurosurgeon, the epileptic neurosurgeon, without a cent from my father, and her worry lines are piercingly more clear to me.

Does anyone really wanna hear the truth?
I rub my fingers across my head imagining ripping out the millions of neurons lighting paths across my brain. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to worry anymore.

I’ve kept my mouth shut because it’s polite but I want to tell everyone who’s pretending to be my friend because they feel sorry for me to ******* because my health is none of their business.

It all catches up to me when I sit in the hallway at Cincinnati Children’s and I watch kids with tubes down their noses and needles in their arms and think to myself:
I can’t be one of them, can I?
This can’t be real, can it?
But I guess I’m alright.

The meds make me feel foggy, like I’m somewhere between awake and asleep.
Where my mind feels like it fell through a trapdoor and into a vacuum.

If it was up to me I wouldn’t leave the house. The only places I feel safe are in the nurses office or in between the 4 walls of a hospital with my mom holding my hand.
That’s what seizures do. Turn an 18 year old girl into a 5 year old, wanting to run in a closet and slam the door so nobody has to see it happen again.

No going down stairs alone, no locking the door when showering, no getting drunk at parties, no driving, no living your life.

So you wonder if I’m alright? If alright means seeing my mom cry for the first time in years, if alright means sleeping 3 hours a night, if alright means having to rely on others because I can’t do anything by myself..
Maybe I’m tired of lying.
Maybe I’m not alright.

I died once,
just to see what it was like
(it doesn’t matter how,
so I won’t bother saying)
my curiosity had bested me
and so I did what I had to
in order to see

Like Thomas,
my dying eyes were flooded
by white mice and roses,
all in constant motion as my
eyelids finally shut
although the darkness had
embraced me absolutely,
a kind of clairvoyance
unknown to me picked me
up and swept me away
still blind, I found my footing
and I waited
and waited

Silently, a light broke above me,
falling thickly onto my shoulders
like condensed milk
and then, from somewhere
a voice spoke, tragic and booming:

“YOU’RE EARLY.”

I winced at the reverberations
echoing into nothingness
I couldn’t muster any reply
beyond a half-trembling shrug

There was a quick snap,
and the peculiar feeling of standing
on a trapdoor that’s about to drop
and, at last, I was back;
returned to my mortal coil,
gulping breaths of air
cold and deep and new

i once had a teacher say to the class "use this free time to space out"
and i couldn't help but laugh and wonder
the dangers of that activity once i ventured into the depths of my mind.
see, a good idea that was not for me.
i've spent enough countless moments and wasted time in my own head to memorise how skipping away into it went.
you do not skip, first off; a tightening rope bounds your legs and demands you to stumble into an endless pit.
rain plummets like bombs upon your unfeeling grey skin,
and a dark shadow's sharp nails dig into your chest
and leave a gaping hole, unwilling to be fulfilled.
your throat closes like the door behind you, so there's not escape,
no screams ready to echo off your prison cells walls,
no hands steady enough to reach out for an exit,
just the blind mistake of opening up a trapdoor,
like an alleyway where you live in fear of each corner you turn into,
and falling into the arms of laughing silhouettes of embodied tears,
whispering lies of how you'll be safe with them,
dimming the light and muting all sounds until
only your thoughts can keep you company,
burning static and fuzzy against your aching brain,
and handing you the long list of reasons
why a smile shouldn't be on your face.
so teacher, may i laugh again at the suggestion,
and shake my head in disagreement,
because believe me,
i do not want to live through that
again.

The river’s still up in the park,
and brown, drowning the swingset,
eddying around the bottom of the slide,
like a trapdoor out of childhood.
I never needed one. I used to dream
of the waters sweeping over my head
and now I remember the way blood looked
circling the drain, fainter and fainter
pink and then gone, lost forever.
I wonder how it would have felt,
to never know the deeper pools,
to never be dragged down into the darkness
that lies beneath the surface,
the unending roiling of the sea inside.
I bite my tongue, turn the saliva red,
so that even my mouth is full of dark water,
and I keep the words to myself,
trapped behind the blades of my teeth,
locked in the viscous fluid behind my eyes.