March 1862

March 1862

your reality is determined by the length of your existence. think about it. when you are born, first, the world is white noise and loud colour vague abstract shapes that speak of a before. before your consciousness, in dark empty black, and you are shaped by the knowledge that there are things in the world much, much older and greater (although, perhaps, at this point you do not know the concept of time, of greater or less than. equality will come later, if you’re lucky.) as you grow so does your reality and all the things crammed into it places, people, faces, times, dates, appointments and things bound for forgetting. pinky promises, the day the Transcontinental Railroad was started, how many people died for freedom before it became something worth living for. places in a country that used to be far away but is now cut by great swathes of railroad, metal tracks crisscrossing like the intersection of thoughts. and if you tried, you could be there in five hours. that’s of course if you can afford it, something else that came along and changed you- flashlights, scattered flowers, and idle hands gone. no more shadows on the wall unless it’s you, late night backlight illumination with your head in your hands the art piece that humanity claims, calls it “a portrait of an ordinary person, work number #7581454” belonging to the collection of insanity. perhaps you could afford it, a one night vacation in Bangkok, Thailand, Paris, France, Salzburg, Germany, Austria, Vienna anywhere but here where the only display is a glass case you’re too tempted to break collections of moments, knickknacks, strands in time that cling to you like threads from the old shirt you used to wear because it matched your eyes. does it match them now, when you are old and reality has grown dim beyond the hazy spots you reach to see? metal tracks you walk along, one foot in front of the other, reciting dates and times and words in languages you cannot remember how to speak. the train’s coming and your reality is reduced down to what it was meant to be; a single spot, bright light tunnel vision against the sky. from start to end it tastes like hope, a journey from one end of the earth to the other. a railroad being built inside your mind.

what kind of person are you?

he said what's wrong? i don't know, i'm just not much of a morning person. it's not the morning, he said gently. oh, well i suppose i'm not much of an afternoon person then either. but you're not a night person, he said. i know that much. well i'm not much of a person in general, i think.

a motorcycle heading west on a highway

A motorcycle heading west on a highway is what I am, bright headlights and flashing handlebars. Who can look down a road and not think, some day this will all be gone? It is the night almost morning between today and tomorrow, the closest I can be to seeing the future. In the future I think I might be alright. Right here on an empty highway, clinging to stay on as we go seventy, eighty miles and I scream like I have been for the past two hours; I screamed because the words meant so much, those words saved my life and I could finally finally hear them. Tonight a band that did not know me played in front of thousands of people and I was one of them. Lungs gasping voice hoarse I screamed in what could be called the closest approximation to one, one body held together by the emotion and one thought- "stay alive." On a motorcycle heading west on an empty highway at midnight, the clock resets to 00.00 and the day is infinite, we are infinite, and the bright headlights will tell no one if we pull over to cry at the beauty of it. We are alive and we are everything the world has to offer, we are one and infinite and this must be what was meant when the Lord said let there be light; someone flipped on a light switch and suddenly everything got a little bit brighter and the world was enough to bear. Thank you.

extract longing; hold it. disclosure, full between your palms.

thought.

is abstract.

chase it.

the way you write.

poetry.

lines.

dividing line.

in two.

cross lines.

fold through.

like paper origami.

cut and hold.

a snowflake.

a real snowflake.

quick.

before it melts.

a passing glance.

hold it.

wait.

for the train.

abstract extract.

thought.

sunday mourning

it sounds like a piece of poetry, the way my grandparents talk as we drive through what used to be a town and they point out things that used to be- there was a gas station, a store, a school, that used to be a drive in theatre and we’d go there on the weekends- there was a fire engine, remember? and all the kids would pile in and it’d take you for rides around town but with memory comes regret because then they say that they used to spray DDT, things to kill the mosquitos when really they were killing us and the conversation goes dark, quiet until we drive past the place where my grandmother used to live we have to stop, quiet for a second until she can talk because it was two years ago to this day (in May, the spring always was pretty) and she can smile for a second while she tries not to cry. you never really grow up unless you grow old and she feels so old, so alone even though we’re standing right next to her. my family has a history of mental illness and addictions, suicides and things we could never really escape. we drive around in this ghost of a town so nostalgic that it hurts and god, we’re all sick inside our minds. we can feel it in our bones.

how did you get those scars?

(nietzche’s horse’s eyes pt. one)

cats and curling irons and accidents I say, rattling off excuses in a list three pages long when all I really want to say is knives and needles and scissors and my own two hands, I did this I did this I DID THIS LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME THAT THIS COULD BE ANYTHING BUT MAN MADE, ANYTHING BUT BROKEN AND ABUSED. THIS WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT AND NEITHER AM I- I CANNOT BE WASHED AWAY OR HIDDEN. LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME THAT YOU DO NOT SEE YOURSELF, REFLECTED IN THE BEAST WITHIN MY EYES.