Caps Locked, Similar

I think the biggest thing to get out of the way was talking about how locked up I was becoming.  It still governs everything and every choice that I make.  The way that my mind works.  I don't like to think of it as a disability, it is.  Talking to my eternal optimist.  The children are in the classroom.  It's a bit soggy and untrue, but it is you too!

It really is.  Will you dance with me?  We can have a fabulous time, a gorgeous time, a wonderfurousfantabugloriousshanannigonkulous time.  HAHAHAHA  oh yes, oh yes.  No bass necessary if you are willing to cut a rug.  Down butler street to penn avenue to the point and back up the river trail underneath 40th street bridge and up top on 62nd to watch the sun rise.  Kill em, kill em, kill em, ac dc-s? That was a good drum break.

Some things make me smile and I don't want to back everything over it like trying to kill a raccoon you hit at five A.M. If hand outs are coming out lets enjoy them and be one with the weekend.  No?  Obviously, you have no nerves in your extremities because I defy you to try and find hard drugs that are not spray paint and brick based at this hour.  



///Starkey - (Eris)    up from the depths

Don't Say "No" To Me

Who do you really trust?  Who do you believe?  Who will actually believe you???  Who just listens and nods and "yeah yeah yeah, tell me more" fuck you.  Seriously, who do you trust?  Who do you trust who will not try to tamper with your memories later and create new ones because you don't know who they were talking to at that specific time because you were not going out of your way to take down the exact specifics of that particular conversation and the only thing you have to know that it happened are physical artifacts?

Yes, it is weird!  It is okay to say that it is weird, because it is!  Are you drunk?  Are you high?  No, I just want to be sure that who you are talking to now gets your message to who will execute is all.  Long short story: aye, I can't carry on a conversation one on one if it's more than one sentence.  I laugh so hard saying that, but yes, it's getting worse by increments.

I don't know what to do about it.  Half empty, half full.  Maybe I've gotten so good at it that it sounds seamless.  Or maybe a "?".  I am deluding myself.  It rings as true as a tuning fork struck in a wood.  If a tuning fork rings and you are the only one around to hear it, does it make a sound?  Where is the line with you?  What are you really capable of?  I can't help laughing.  What you owe me.  What you owe me is what I want!

I want to dream all of the time.  Sleep all of the time.  Sleep to access dreaming.  Being awake and alive, breathing, is fantastic; breathing has its perks.  I can help people.  I can be of use.  I can have utility.  I can have staying power.  I can create memories for other people.  Dreaming is beautiful.  I cannot create memories or trouble for other folks while I am sleeping and dreaming.  In dreams, I can be whatever I want to be, but spiders come as large as television screens when I'm not careful to set their sizes.  When I am dreaming I can be as sexual and touchy feely as I want to be without creeping out your friends.  In dreams everyone carries a sword.   While you sleep, however, your body dies and consumes itself until your dreaming consciousness ceases to exist.  I have to be awake to keep my dreaming self alive.

That fact burns my core.

I guess what really keeps us the most uneasy is not being able to know who is taking advantage of your constant disposition.  Who is actually helping and who is aiding and abetting the you's you are not aware of that you discover through their paper trail.  If you are, I will find out eventually.  And there will be questions that will need answers.  The pathetic thing is they will probably have answers ready and you will not know the difference.

So what?  Sew buttons.  Kill them all.  Save yourself.  For what?  Conversation with you?  That's a terrible plan.  They are using you.  It's not symbiotic.  Your currency doesn't translate and the currency that does is one to one at best.  An unsolvable puzzle.  Their currency doesn't convert to yours either.  Passing monopoly capital between unmatched sets of Milton Bradley games.  I'll be the wheel barrow!  Okay, I'll be the millennium falcon!  On second thought, I'll be the boot.  And I'll be an iron?

Re-establishing the base of trust is one of the hardest parts about attempting to return from a compound fracture of the mind.  If what you were doing got so far out of line that you wound up with part of your consciousness sticking out of your skull, you have screwed up badly.  Whatever fail safes and flags you put up inside your head to prevent it were somehow run down, knocked over, ignored, or invisible and you may have slowed or performed a rolling stop near them, but all in all the cumulative effect is you blew past them and we are saving you from ultimate destruction with the emergency brake.  All fins out.  Take it as close to an atmosphere as you possibly can without landing.  Slow down and listen.  That sound you are hearing is not silence.  That sound you are hearing is alarms screaming at the tops of their electronic lungs.  Wires burned through carrying too much current.  Stop, listen, breath the scent, make some damn corrections.

Yes, we can live like this, but not for long.  The clock stopped four days ago.  You are still sitting on a volatile warhead.  You cannot defuse it without killing yourself, but you can build a new clock.   Get to work!  We are not easily convinced, but individually each of us is.  I won't say "no" to you.




///can you hear the sounds they make when they scratch against the floor?

That Instant

you realize you are not ready to reengage with society at large on any scale just yet.  The insulation is there not just for their sake, but your own as well.

Schizophrenia

I am afraid to say anything because I am not sure where I am.  It's scary as hell.  Scary as all get out.  Who is listening?  Please, do not take me away.  Bring everyone because you are going to need them to fill the body bags before I get to you.

I am terrified.  It is horrible.  Things got very far out of line.  Very far out of acceptable lines.  And I let them go and part of me is screaming and shouting you deserve this.  YOU DESERVE THIS.  YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING.  How could I?  Everything sounded and seemed better and better and more and more and not in the way bipolar can take you down at the backs of your knees like a length of pipe or baseball bat and before I knew it I was running with my head in front of my feet and telling them we can do it and we kept tripping and we've got it and tripping and we've got it and then the best to hope for could have been a solid and well orchestrated face plant.  Instead we kept chasing our own head with our feet and doubling over to seem more normal and more joyous and more grateful and happier than what was actual and we chased our dragon of normalcy without acknowledging our unique chemistry and fears and rage and bottled and sold and bought and told our way to a somersault.

Have you ever broken your nose and deserved it?  I thought I could pull it off.  It was too good to be true.  I am in the middle of a hard reboot and I have someone racing up my ass asking if I am okay.  I am not.  I am horrible.  Every other thought through my brain is fucking killing someone or myself.  I know you believe you are helping by asking me if I would like to play games or go out or eat food.  No.  I would like to sit and process what the hell is going through our minds.  Because I don't want to play games with you.  I want to drive to your house and buddy up for a while and then stab you to death.  I want to cut the skin all around the circumference of your face and try to tear it off in one piece and then dangle it in front of a mirror.  I don't want to be cheered up.  I want to shoot my father dead between the eyes with a single .762 round and then burn his house to the ground.  I want to grab my brother's right hand and stick it in garbage disposal and flick the switch and see if he shits himself.  I want to laugh until I can't help it and let a fart loose.  I want to dislocate someone's elbow again.  I want to say hello with a headbutt so dead on we both see stars while exchanging pleasantries.   I want to sink my teeth into something.  Not that I cannot feel, but if you're going to break my nose, break my damn nose.

I've been over extended.  We have been.  In ways we could not imagine.  The tax is heavy and still you have to smile with it.  I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS.  Work problems.  Choking on the vomit of a successful swallow.  Could be a decent way to go.

I am in an unfamiliar place where a physical pain tolerance means nothing against a mental pain tolerance.

The best way I can describe it is being 30 seconds out of sync from everything that is happening around you and that is when you are already clued in from days of study and suspicion against yourself that actually turned out to be true.  Once you've finally caught up with your goings and comings and your committee and friends and other friends and put everything together... the closest you can get it is a true time barrier.  Inside the moment you cannot see anything.  Thirty seconds out you can see the overlap.  One second out from thirty you are back in the moment and present.

I know I've burned through a lot of time.  In terms of erasure.  I'm not sure which one of us is doing the erasing lately.  This is very dangerous.  Very unacceptable.  By lately, we mean in the last months.  It's no good.  We are not a head case.  We're sliding that way.  I'm not sure how to correct it.

The last thing I want is to become a danger to folks I know.  I think it may have something to do with pressure and trying to fit forms you cannot fit.  Entirely possible.  It is good to draw distinct lines between never cross and sometimes cross.  Without never cross there is no you.  And without sometimes cross there is no me.  And that is good.

Dear (_____)

Dear naked sleepers,

I understand the struggle.  I understand your frustrations at sleep overs.  I understand the hardship when sleeping on a friends couch after a fun night is the only option.  I get forgetting you've wriggled out of your clothes under your blanket when you've had a platonic friend spend the evening a few feet away.

Above all, I understand your Winter.  I know the fakers are out there.  The ones who say they sleep naked, but really only in Summer and really only on some days in Summer and really only under certain circumstances on those days.  They don't get it.  They've never walked halfway to the kitchen after waking up in the middle of the night and turned back because they would rather be thirsty or go hungry for the rest of the night, then put on pajamas or sweats or clothing of any kind.  They've never turned back halfway to the ice cold bathroom because they'd rather try to hold it til morning than dress themselves only to undress again.  Once clothes come off for bed, that's it!  I will not put them on so long as there is a sleepy cell in my body and not a minute before my alarm demands I do!

naked sleepers, I salute,

Sincerely,

a brother in arms

Dear (_____)

Dear gender,

You can be fairly inscrutable sometimes.  Naked is power one day and object the next.  Homogenous is ideal one day and acidic the next.  Every other other week is another other.  One day art, one day pornography, one day enslavement, one day revolution, one day torture, and the next day pretension.  One day humble strength, then brutality, then "think of the children", then oppression, and the new home dynamic.

I know we can't all agree on what you should be or are, but can you please subscript your presence with over the counter instructions so that people, uninterested in exploring you, looking for an easily bottled, prepackaged consumable, can understand why they are feeling any one of the many particular effects of your consumption in that form and when to seek outside help.  Can you at least include a disclaimer?

Otherwise our discourse will, for the rest of human time, be jammed with people wondering why they are pissing blood and going blind & shouting at the sky about it every time someone takes off their clothes, wants to be seen for who they are and their intrinsic value, or does something slightly outside of the bell curve "by and large" norm for whatever gender is inside them.

I know you are impossible to simplify completely, but instructions and a solid list of symptoms could go a ways to help people understand people.  Or at least cut down on some of the unnecessary screaming and shouting.  I understand the pamphlet will be long.  And the people that don't read will continue not to.  I think it is fair to hope improvement would be contagious save for the incorrigible, vapid, ever present, tumorous nodules, consistent with a body of seven and change billion cells.



Sincerely,

the internet

That Instant

you sneeze on your computer screen and everything turns into rainbow dots, but you're "awww, cool" quickly turns into an "aw, gross" when you remember each beautiful rainbow lens of light is just booger sauce and electrons.

That Instant

you realize your sense of humor has dried up and, while experiencing humorous thoughts, the window has closed and those thoughts are going to land face down on the street below, shoved through that closed window in a spray of glitter and entrails and, though funny to you, the humor is still upstairs inside your room, the end result being a cryptic crime scene and you will have to wait for the window to open again.

At The River Near the Lowline and Clarity

Looking at my own reflection at the river, a wolf's head mask in the crook of my arm, I wonder how many there are like me.  I wonder how many times I can roll the dice with instability before an immovable object meets an unstoppable force again.  I try to skip rocks.  I try to bat rocks with an aluminum bat given to me as a gift after I left the last one I had at home, bent into the shape of a boomerang.  I wonder where I am going and if someone out there is going the same way I am.  If we will carpool together and shout at each other, trying to figure out where exactly "there" is while the driver tries to figure how to get two wolves out of his car and regrets being a Samaritan.

Many of the rocks hit the tips of breakers and sink.  One of us trots off to find a stick, because the only thing better than being good enough at whipping rocks across the waves, skip tip skip, is belting one clear across to the other shore with an eardrum pounding snapthud.  The other of us continues to troll the river edge for something shaped more like an atmosphere slicing star ship.  Found.  Away it goes: skip kip tick tink tock thock plop splash!  Mid-river.  The current continues.  I can't see my face, looking down.  The angles aren't right.  The light is not just so.  The sun is not cooperating.  Statistics tell me, with time, the chances only get better.

Thinking about how people find their perfect match.  At least, their better half, I worry that my best half may be a copy of me.  Should I meet myself, the fusion would be fantastic.  Impossible.  Incredible in its perfection and destruction.  Volatile and serene and volatile and serene and so far off of the periodic table as to exist for fractions of fractions of fractions of seconds, recorded only by some sort of quantum, liquid gas cooled, calculating machine, monitoring a torus of plasma whose only hint that the collision was made successfully is a slight fluctuation in its surface hundreds of meters in circumference, yet to be invented before its shear density of particles blew apart and ceased to exist.  Insofar as that, I am satisfied to be alone.

Happy and satisfied are two different things.  The instant of happiness would be without measure, however, exceptionally brief.  As much as I would like to, as much as I say it is the only match capable of closing my circuits, I know it is ... I want to say that I know it is not true.  Doomed.  I laugh typing that.  The two "oh's" in the middle make me giggle.  Dooooooomed!  Of course not.  Should you meet an element that can absorb nuclear decay and heat.  I wonder what quantum decay looks like.  I meet so many people with so many names and I know none of them.  Some of them, yes.  None of them, also yes.  Always at distance.  Minding the fence.  Minding the facilities.  On the off chance they might be me.  On the larger chance I am still myself and they are not.

A moat.  Sometimes the bridge is there.  The gates open and ambassadors cross.  I don't know what madness is.  Is it sleeping to protect yourself from yourself?  Is it sleeping to protect others from yourself?  Is it believing the best thing you can do is offer shade inside a bunker, outfit with everything you can desire and hold dear, in the shadow of your fusion climbing toward the exosphere?  Recite: I am here, this is what I wanted.  I am here, this is what I wanted.  I am here.  This is what I wanted.  Few things truly scare me, in life.  I would like to never meet my, atom for atom, better half.  Inside that reactor would lie our mutual, exceptionally violent, end.





///Groove Armada - "At The River"   ~ tempo and brass and sand and waving, not drowning.

Dear (_____)

Dear chance,

I never know who exactly it is I am going to meet or where, for that matter.  At least, with the drug trade, it is a calculated risk.  Alone often?  Yes.  The benevolence of strangers.  I like to believe they are taking a risk too.  Each one is a gate to a new network.  An interface.  Thrilling and horrifying in its own span of minutes.  No safety nets.  Out of network.  Fringe.  Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak...  or flesh.  Every time you walk out that door you may not come back.  I hate thinking about it.  So many dice rolls.  I never thought I'd reach, or understand, a place where high risk, high risk beyond my control, was the way forward.  Trying to figure out what's inside the black boxes I meet is tiresome.  I worry for the day I read one wrong.  I have no idea how that game ends.  I don't traffic in violence anymore.  I wonder if I had to, if I absolutely had to, would I have enough time to realize I had to and turn the switch inside me, hidden inside a safe inside a safe inside a safe, before the game ended.

Sincerely,

a glass combination lock wired to a dead circuit switch hooked up to fifteen piezoelectric crystals encased in a three inch thick asphalt sealed... beside the infrared lens array connected to... feeding into a phosphorous anti-warship grade mine.

P.S. safety first.