A sapiens with loose skin I read a history of the world and I’m obliged to report that it’s loosened my skin from underlying muscle and bone. I used to revel in the stretch, love the predictable deformation each time I’d incidentally waltz through a moment and joy would bend my joints with purpose. This history incised somewhere, snuck in and slid right underneath and cut all the fibrous, connective cords. A bridge with its supports blown. Calm: seated, star-spangled skin flaps and sways me sideways just like my thoughts. Routine: walking, reverberations thrum and remind me. Energy: in a sprint, I risk deforming my character, and I can’t be returned. This is what it feels like to be corporeal but find no meaning. My sense of strict adhesion to principles, predictabilities, assumptions is no more. I think we tend to think that the knowledge we seek will bring pearl skin, gleaming and desirable and certainly beautiful. Maybe there’s some Truth to the idea that with sagging-skin age comes “wisdom.”
Collection; unrequited
In autoimmune denial I think my immune cells are silently marching into a dark crystal ball they want to tell my future and to do that they have to attack the truth
Haikus from dark days A cyanide bite Now red tears pour from my side I swallow the pill Drunken wandering Left, left right, thoughts stagger home Eyes erupt tonight I’m medium rare Blood not boiling, but I’m cooked Matter of time, now
A game of chance The dice roll Imagination slithers to Snake eyes The probability is small But big enough to let hope hold on With one white-knuckled finger It aches in every way But it’s better Than the frostbitten ice below Frozen flakes of the cold future Crystalized into something so sharp It deflates a wildly thumping red heart To even think about Its tapered pointlessness
A damned river Even when you drop to your knees and beg, voice flaking with dry words and sentences like sharp gravel pulverized by the punches you’ve rolled with, the lacrimal pedestrian pays you no attention hands you nothing to drink. Gray, canyon-cracked, dehydrated nothing can grow until you water your world.
Where is my mind? Did my burning legs carry it far when it felt so lost I had to run? I’ve been searching Shining spotlights into the dark days I hung up paper signs on every corner “Lost Mind” they read I might be wrong Did I lose my mind? Or does it not want to be found?
A letter to the wind Fold the paper wings over, gingerly But remember, even soft things can cut Kiss the seams with care, and linger Be clever with how you fortify the front Throw the paper plane, respectfully Smile slowly as you turn your nose up And don’t let thoughts of the wind… Linger
To whom it may concern 1. To whom it may concern: I love you, and I’ve wanted to tell you for some time, now. The thought of you is something I hold confidently, comfortingly in the palm of my hand. I cradle it, I move it around so I sense its particular weight. Your presence has a way of resting against the inside of my back, like you’re hugging my spine. It’s comfortable; I grow when I am support. These days, it’s so reflexive to see you and think, “Oh, if you only knew…” It’s natural to feel that if you felt this loved, you’d start loving me, too. It’s a fantasy, like the ghost image sensed between sparse and scratched pencil lines. Nothing inside me seems to care what the artist intends: even against my will, I see what I will. Love, Avery 2. To whom it may concern: Since last we spoke, I’ve dated and become intimate with the meaning of “unrequited”— I showed her my hand, then as dealer she dealt her cards. Now I feel flushed down the plumbing, lost in leaking pipes that taunt me, those cardiac canals will haunt me. But I’m not blinded, sadly. My eyes still fill in the ghost against the pencil lines, still tell the artist’s intent to fuck off. That’s the sad part: I addressed this to whom it may concern. But now I’ve found out the only one concerned is myself. Love, Avery 3. To whom it may concern: The metaphor of a healing wound feels apt to describe the way a scar has slowly formed. There’s no distracting sting when silly air floats by boldly and whispers to my red flesh— instead now, I just reflexively look down, and with my eyes I bow low to the off-color shape that outlines my mistakes. Sometimes when I’m stretched a certain way I feel not a pain sensation but more the somber memory of an infection that left a scar. Know thine enemy; I’m trying… You’re a foe that won with your carefree and clueless sword and like cinderella with a shoe, my scar always will fit your blade. Avery
Compostable hope
Compostable hope You’ll sometimes see a treehouse dangling in the air, But dangling feels, deeply as a swing at its inverted apex, like the wrong word. Although the tightly packed, insightfully architected Wooden planks with no cracks for water and no room to fall – Slabs with such beautiful gradient shimmer that your breath runs away And your eyes jog along their ringed, concentrically grained roads – Craftsmanship worthy of megamansions poured into the construction Of a temple to childhood, innocence, frolicking frivolity – A skylight seamlessly blended with shingles, serendipitously Forming a hole for twinkling starlight to tickle the floor – Although the tightly packed, insightfully architected Wooden planks with no cracks for lacrimal tears and no room to fall Project out over the world below and cast shadows and capture light, And compose a view torn with love and care from a fantasy. You know the trunk is firm, and planted, in both biological And metaphysical senses of the word. Truly rooted. –––––– – – – - - - As it turns out, when the universe was nascent and had cosmic-scale axons Still seeking their myelin caress, It received universe-class training as a little-universally-big league pitcher. The pitch of choice, as it were, was a curveball. Straight-up 12-6. It’s hypnotic, watching the universe step onto the mound; Dig its cleat into the well-trodden cleft between rubber and dirt; Load up energy and tension in itself and its observers, the potential building. Eyes flutter shut for a brief moment, an exhale imperceptible except by intuition. The glove covers cosmic hand and fingers, obscuring a configuration you need Baseball Sign Language to read. “It’s a fastball,” whispers intuition. You’ve seen this pitcher before. You’ve faced him. You’ve spent so many hours of your waking life with eyes glued to reels, Spinning spinning spinning, you know what comes next. Always. Our biggest, unpalatably friendly giant curls up his left leg, Briefly joins the flamingo species, striking the most remarkable balance. Leg extends, gives surrounding bouncing O2 a razor-thin paper-cut. The ball faces second base, and you’re squared up. Fast-twitch fibers at the ready. And you start spinning. No, sorry, that’s the ball. The ball spins! Now your head spins. Our universally revered little-universally-big league pitcher threw us a curveball. Your eyes pop. Straight. Out. Because that tree trunk suddenly has an irreparable gash in its side. The 12-6 sliced clean through. Your roots, your core, the pillars of your existence are shaken Because your treehouse wobbles. It oscillates. No one has ever encouraged you before to think about the utter terror Encoded right into a sine wave. Nothing can reveal the elasticity of twine soul like a sine wave can, When it decides to pluck your heart out with a twang, And starts slinging it back and forth as it’s functionally meant to do. Soul, like a soapy bubble, follows and threatens so probabilistically to burst. Back, forth, back, forth, back back back forth forth forth back forth back DON’T DON’T DON’T FALL. Please, please don’t fall. With heart gone, blood a truant, there’s only one fluid left to lose. Tears. Please, please, please you beg. You’d speak the words if you could, But there’s a waterfall flowing frontally down. Irises color the down-destined river, their spectral rainbows Reflecting along undulating elongating swirls. Please, you cry. Please, don’t fall. This treehouse of magnificence – This castle of creation and palace of mundane paradise. This house of the humans who give everyday existence its sense of home – This Napoleonic defense, this mammoth moat, this untragic tower, This seed germinated by sedition against our little-universally-big leaguer – Against his Sadistic, Satanic, Slimy Stochasticity. Yes, a truly UnRandom House – Please, you cry. Please, don’t plunge. This treehouse into which you’ve packed your most precious belonging: Hope. And it will fall. - - - – – – –––––– While detestable in certain high-schoolian contexts (Not so unlike our now-infamous pitcher), It’s tough to deny that biological systems possess A certain conservational magic to them. Net nil. This is true for biological systems of any scale. Physical systems, actually, too. Even pitchers, no matter which twisted way they choose to throw the ball, Are bound by forces more terrifying than their fluttering butterfly parents To conserve their energy. Let’s don our hardhats And climb the abstraction ladder we can’t help but lean against. By some conservation law they teach you also in a high-schoolian context, Momentum gets conserved. And so the ball flies. Of import to this discussion is that this phenomena occurs Irrespective of the pitch and behavioral manipulation. So here’s the derivation to fill your cheat-sheet, Something you should know so well as to locate topographically in cerebral folds: When curveball strikes, And tear falls in a constructively destructive and beautiful waltz with your treehouse, And wood and water hit ground, Here’s the thing: Something will grow.
Some fleeting reflections on a plane flight which felt distinctly riddled with metaphors for life.
Some fleeting reflections on a plane flight which felt distinctly riddled with metaphors for life. Each in the mask of their own molecule, perfumed scents flying unexpected lives. Some sit in first class. Some sit wedged between some others who were given unfortunate slices of life. Some dealing with nascent life intentionally. Some intentionally but originally without intention. Some purely without intention. The occasional, but honestly expected, bump. The terrifying lightning bolt that extends its gnarled, oxygen-deprived blue finger down down down Crack Flash Silence. A phone’s battery slowly dripping down, volume attenuates like receding hope. Recline at your neighbor’s expense, although can you call them a neighbor if you can’t see them? Which do you prefer, the window, the middle, the aisle? You’ll need to have been a passenger first if you want to strain and hold close a heavily informed opinion. With just one flight, paradox flies in your face. It’s rare when you can really be connected to the world, that damned WiFi. The shorter the plane ride, the more fortunate, although some of the shadier folks like the serenity and the seclusion. I’m inclined to think masochistic their desire for unending flight. You are, however, a unique kind of masochist if you spend your time watching the seat-back embedded map. Oh my word does time crawl so, so slowly. Tasteless things to chew on. Well, the crunch might be nice. But will those pretzels and nuts ever be filling? And it’s hard to know if your neighbor has an allergy. Well, it’s easy to know but hard to find out. By which I mean it’s hard or even undesirable to ask. So it’s hard to know if your neighbor has an allergy. Probably best to not think about it. Lips go desert-dry. The experienced passenger spends not an airborne moment without Aquaphor on hand (in pocket), ready to bring comforting moisture to an uncomfortably de-fluidified set of lips. Some of us fear this time terribly. Some get more used to it the longer they go, having begun as children with a freshly-born Build-A-Bear to hug crushingly tight to their chest. For some, the slightest hitches spell doom, although for the weathered travelers not much has the capacity to raise the heart-rate; well, perhaps on the furthest end of the spectrum some experience a heightened heart-rate out of excitement instead of terror. Turbulence has such a thrill, does it not? The safety card is there if you choose to look. But if you choose to look you also might wind up rather unsatisfied with the crude drawings of plane entering water, earth, fire but surprisingly no air. The simplification seems sinister. So it is advisable to look at the safety card, but only to look and not to read or even glance at its contents. Proceed at your own risk; you must sign the waiver before takeoff. The cup of styrofoamed liquid fidgets nervously, any unexpected (or even expected) bump has the potential to send it flying. All you can do is keep your arm a combination between loose and tense, absorb the shock however you can to spare first and foremost your new white t-shirt and beige pants, second and foresecond maybe your neighbor, maybe your neighbor’s electronics, maybe the maintenance man or woman in the afterlife who’s going to see the stain or maybe the person in life 2.0 who’s unfortunate enough to encounter a not-wiped-up-in-the-previous-life puddle of cold or warm but definitely staining liquid. Yes, this one’s a bummer. All it takes is a glance across the aisle to see and become engrossed in one traveler’s head nestled into an adjacent traveler’s shoulder. Would you like a plastic glass of complementary barely champagne? It really is a step up from the service we provide to other passengers sitting behind the strange curtain, which can only really be attributed to tradition if we’re to consider its implications in the context of modern progressive thought. What’s more comforting, a pilot piloting or an autopilot piloting? Sorry, it was probably most comfortable not to even ask the question. C’est la vie. Sometimes the plastic seat backs have vestiges of older days and past lives. Who on earth would be dialing, and who on earth would they dial? The Amazon of the Sky Mall. Perhaps on lengthier flights your shoes come off. It generally works. Sometimes the stink sucks for someone. But not always, so it’s not worth worrying. Unless the air-conditioning is cruelly cold, in which case you suddenly discover the magical and physics-breaking warming properties of shoes. It’s amazing how the white but combustive noise blends into the background. It’s amazing how money can pay for its mutability. But it’s not muting. It’s antithetical matching. You match the noise of life’s engine with money then spend money to pipe more sound that’s elegantly composed and hopefully overtakes the unquestionably chaotic grumble sitting just outside the double-paned plastic that sometimes, somehow, contains an asphyxiated insect inside. The bathroom line. The puzzle played by puzzled people who puzzle over where to stand to avoid never-acknowledged but always-cogitated unfortunate and awkward contact between body parts that in another context shouldn’t touch unless there’s mutual consent to call it dry-humping. It’s anyone’s guess what the bathroom will be like. Sometimes it’s an achy yellow. No, the light. Sometimes it’s a party-bus blue. Those are the best. They really do accentuate the cheek bones in front of the mirror. It leaves you wishing that damned WiFi would work so you could snap a picture and send it to friends and maybe if you’re feeling bold to an other of profoundly nerve-wracking but adrenergic significance. As a man with a bladder full of tepid airline coffee everyone drinks to combat the low air pressure, you curse evolution for neglecting the penis bone and curse Darwin for even incepting you in the first place with the curse-able concept of evolution, because in ignorance man finds bliss. You are, of course, a phallic pendulum subject not just to gravity but also to the buffeting and differentially temperature’d air on which this flying life floats. And as a woman you curse the lack of penis bone, and you curse the lack of a lack of a penis as you wonder what on earth you’re to do with the material science marvel of a toilet seat, two pancaked planes machined with precision: plastic, and urine. And there are mile-high fantasies. That damned sound of retribution as you press the button and suck away your waste. You don’t actually know where it goes; you secretly hope it gets dumped out from 30K+ feet and you don’t really mind whether or not it disintegrates in the air before landing on what’s likely farmland (because that’s what most of the land is like; empty except for things that keep us from being empty). Maybe you secretly or not secretly hope you’re unexpectedly over a metropolis and the air failed to do its dissolution job. That would be comical. Perhaps you’ve been bestowed with the either very-minimally or very-maximally existentially taxing duty of sitting next to an emergency exit row. At some point you’re required to give some sort of verbal confirmation that you’re willing and able to perform. In the minimal case, you potentially pay one action potential’s worth of attention and concern. In the maximal case, your bestowed responsibility precludes the other experiences of this flight from shining in their glory and horror. Ah, then the hunger seeps in. Of course there’s not much to do about it unless you planned beforehand or don’t mind the packaged items of questionable origin – as a rule of thumb, nothing so flawlessly replicable ought to be ingested. And of course, we can’t forget the ambition. The bag made extra-heavy with books. And if operating systems bore weight, the operating system bent down extra low under the pressure of many and heavy-worded documents. But, laughs the low air pressure. Closes the eyes. Drifts, drifts, drifts... The ascent and descent are inevitable. Usually harmless, occasionally traumatic if you’ve been granted permission to have a cold or otherwise compromised sinuses. Every seat-back has an icepick for your ear, in case your request for a cold was approved. And a jolly strongman whose sole mission in life is to swing that pick with precision bounded by one half the diameter of your ear canal. Those, I would submit, are the most fun flights. If you chose the more reflective of the seats, and can see out the window, and clouds decided not to come today, and your vision is sufficiently good, and your neck sufficiently flexible, maybe you get a glimpse of the hyper-urban super structures and the other super structures and patterns and fluidics that underlie them. Maybe you, for a moment, reach a point of ultimate understanding. You perceive a level of abstraction attainable only to the Gods. Note Bene that it’s the Western norm to consider God a deity residing in the sky. It is, of course, only fitting that even granted all the above Bernoulli probabilities resulting in Heads, you reach clarity primarily on the descent. And even that is more beautiful when night obscures the colorful details and all you see are the lights.
Sugar
Sugar I don't particularly like sugar It's not that it doesn't taste good Because lord knows that it does But people forget something Sugar and dopamine aren't the same thing I know it tastes good But where's the feeling good? People eat sugar when they're happy Sugar when they're sad When they're down When they're up It's like tiny wings And your thumb Thumb for up Thumb for down Thumb even when your joint Hurts All you want is the streak Enough of the graceful lows And all the sudden you're flying sugar Highly addictive - an obsession The sugar obsession Is because it makes them feel Sugar makes you feel And I can't feel So why Would I want to eat that sugar That's going to make me feel ill Feel gross and glutinous and Globbering and gahhhh!!! So...what's my sugar? Everyone needs sugar Without it you're confused You can't think Can't walk Can't talk Things stop. Making sense My sugar is the real sweet stuff You could call it slightly Cannibalistic Or you could call it Vampiric Or you could call it The obvvvviously better of The two options for The first of four on The Meyers Briggs They're really the same Your dopamine just happens to come from Consuming something that's abundant 7 billion times over The other beings blessed (?) With walking around this Giant, giant bakery Replete with the pastry chefs in white hats Glazed, sugared bread lining white shelves With clear glass coverings to block the Urge we all have To stick out our hands Grab the sweets Oh, they taste so damned good So see I get my sugar in a secondary way Most people eat sugar I eat people And when they're not around I get hungry But the problem is that now I have a diet And nothing will satiate it Except for the Dopaminergic human Who rings the bell when she walks into the Bakery. Who smells the sugary air Whose pupils dilate Who's overwhelmed by the choices Who experiences Who feels Something maybe like elation That's my sugar And now I'm trying to Cook for myself And it's not working