Yogurt

This delicious jell is refrigerated and sealed in a plastic cylinder. The foil peels off; the culture spits and burps. You dip your spoon in and pull it out.

On it is a blubbering mass with chunks of fruit encased within. Strawberries stare at you like red eyes as it enters your mouth. It looks like a great chasm when you open it to admit entry. Stalactites and stalagmites hang at the tips of the cave.

The yogurt slops inside. But you don't chew. You just slurp it around for a few seconds, enjoying its chilled refreshment. Then you swallow. And it just slithers down your throat, uncaring.

For it is the most indifferent of all the foods, since its milk body was warped by bacteria. Afflicted with sickness, disfigured beyond recognition, the former milk now wishes for death. You should be only too happy to oblige.

Peeling the Orange

I held the orange in the palm of my hand. It was of a deep, lusty hue. My mouth watered in anticipation of its luscious center. It had something I desperately needed--rejuvenation.

My fingers dug into its crust, prying away the peel like some strange predator unhousing its prey. The orange made sickly squishing sounds as I rent the skin, my nails delving into its marrow. A crisply sweet citrus smell wafted up my nose. I lay the pieces off to one side. The work was slow, but steady. I came to the north and south poles of the sphere and went to work on them.

The stem was unearthed--a limp, stringy tentacle that threatened to encircle my finger and choke it. Fortunately, it remained lifeless, dangling and swaying insipidly.

Eventually the outer layer lay in a jumbled heap on the counter top, looking like a shattered orange-white jigsaw: a grizzly puzzle even for the most gifted surgeon. The skinless body stood, undead. White arteries trailed all over its hulk: veiny, crawling things that pulsed sickeningly.

Still hungry, I brought myself to separate the sections, telling myself that this is the way of things. Slowly, I dug my thumbs into the quavering flesh and ripped the body in twain. It sprayed its viscera helter skelter, droplets rained on my hands and fingers, and the tissue resisted with an awful friction. There is no sound so abnormal, so nauseating, so excruciatingly unbearable as the sound flesh makes when violently rent asunder.

I stood there, quickened in breath and failing in health, staring at the result of my labors. My hands were sticky, stinking, dripping. And the corpse lay there accusingly: tortured, violated, molested beyond recognition.

Slowly I backed away: overcome with revulsion, dazed with misgiving. And, waiting for the sirens to come take me away, I thought about what I had done.

A Brush with Fatigue

I heard an automated audience choke, livid with laughter, as I pushed the stage button in memory lane. And the obscene sea roared in response.

Their insipid waves are necessary to ease my pain while the reaper, Fatigue, licks me dry. How he crowds me; how I wish to slaughter his haunting form.

My fists beat boomingly on his crab shell, which returns unsatisfactory raps to my enraged ears.

How he clings, claws clasping my heart and throat. Shrieking oranges fade to purple and then to red, and the pressure steams upward from my abdomen.

Beady, black, crustacean eyes stare back into mine, black with the sleep I crave, but cannot earn. Its antennae drift, lazily across my skin, slowly as if submerged, drawing shudders from my breast and goosebumps to my suffocating skin.

As I implore my higher powers to brush him off, pleading face teared, the audience just roars dumbly back.

Untitled

I'm tired of the razors that cut my face, causing little beads of blood to pearl and gurgle. Pinpricks of guilt that burn but don't clot. I want safer razors to sweep across my cheeks, clearing them of yesterday's shadows.

But the blame lays in my unsteady hands.

How Tired.

How tired I am,
Of insecure women,
Though society makes them wrong,
Who don't desire our dirty work.

But we throw our dishes,
At their Mexican heads,
And abuse them greenly.

Oh what a graveyard,
Lonely and somnolent,
What a song it rings,
So sleepy.

they never wanted the alarm to ring,
We hated in the darkness,
but darkness grew,
With us.

they held us,
But we bit,
and bloody teeth,
Proved,
they hate theirs.

How easy it is for you to sway within the hammock of health.

You shift and swing with balance and rhythm,
As your god pushes you with imaginary hands,
And you rejoice with zeal,
Afraid while you feel.

But me, I fall because I've lost my balance,
I can't sway like a sealed cocoon, like you,
back and forth.

I fall because I've accidentally rent that cocoon with my freakish toenail. It is overly sharp;

I never trimmed it.
My leg kicked as I slept. It rent the barrier, slim but earnest, the somnolent heart, and the blood, flew into my face.

How I drank it;
Oh...how I drank it.

Can I Snatch a Second

Can I snatch a second of eternity,
To analyze uncertainty,
To grow in comprehension,
And lessen testy tensions?

Eternity is always jealous,
Of the moments humans relish,
Of the instants they hold dear,
Though entrapment loiters near.

I wish to bask within the bubble,
Let the world reduce to rubble,
Drifting without weight,
Upon the palm of fate.

But when I over-linger,
It will clench its hateful fingers,
My tranquility will be burst,
And I will know great thirst.

Letter to a Loved One

Be careful that you don't confuse courage and masochism. The two can sometimes appear as one. The utter disdain of bodily pain, that savage lack of fear in the face of harm, is often attributed to bravery.

But let my laden clouds douse, for a moment, your perspective with mine. Holster your umbrella and bare to me your naked nape. Feel my didactic kiss coldly pepper your skin and summon goosebumps.

Humans are infinitely complex creatures beneath our simple routines. Sometimes we are pushed, but other times we thrust ourselves into the scalding fire. The natural, human reaction is to withdraw, but at times we do not. We like the pain; the stinging tears it brings.

We mutely watch as our flesh boils, like fascinated students of anatomy. We watch the scars form on our bodies from a neighboring perspective, though it is ourselves we mutilate. Pride, abhorrence, self-pity weld together into a high-browed romanticism that is sweetly poisonous to reason. It is a deadly nectar.

Oh, the liberation this nectar brings! What release there is in tragic downfall! How easy it is to shirk responsibility and cloak the soul in ennobled scorn! There lives a fear that causes one to wholeheartedly leap, frantic with adrenaline, into the very maw of despair. Its appetite is insatiable; it rarely frees its prey. Its nectar is its appeal, and death is never enough.

Sensation

Sensation,
Is a wintry whore,
That covers her breasts,
But exposes her core.

I'd stumbled into,
Her lusty den,
She was waiting to cloud,
My mind again.

I wasn't drunk,
Or in between,
Just utterly misled,
By a pensive spleen.

My thoughts were a puzzle,
Broken and scattered,
And morality's picture,
Was confusedly shattered.

My eyes met hers,
And unable to remove,
I stood rooted in place,
When she started to move.

She rose with dignity,
And I stood there mute,
My body responding,
My mind in dispute.

She laid me to rest,
With premeditation,
But my head spinned round,
With mortification.

I swooned in a daze,
Fluid with fright,
Sad recollections,
Did painfully alight.

But Sensation just smiled,
As she pursed her lips,
And her rosebud descended,
And my hands grasped her hips.

When the Lights Stop Flashing

When the lights stop flashing, my countenance sinks. I feel an ebbing life wisp through the air, ruffling my mind. Someone's granddad just died.

When the lights stop flashing, I sigh as I drive. I'm heading somewhere important, but my presence lags behind. Someone's wife just died.

When the lights stop flashing, I hear my mom's voice. Her sensitive lilting irritates my conscience, and I rage it away. Someone's mother just died.

When the lights stop flashing, I think of my youth. I wonder when it left and adulthood came. Someone's child just died.

When the lights stop flashing, a smile tugs at my cheek. A profane contentment warms me within, and I feel gratitude. I am very much alive.

The Iceberg

On the other side of the mirror is an iceberg where backward souls have come to roost. The ocean streaks her fingers across its belly every chance she sees, catching the tireless beneath her fingernails and scraping them down to her palpitating chest.

Resignation is in their stranded hearts as they indifferently loiter, their idle fingers aimlessly doodling in the sun-burnt snows, and no cry of fear or remorse escapes their thickened throats.

It is their accusing eyes that shiver back at you from the icy glass as the freezing waters fill their lungs and stain their onion skins blue. It is their blurry faces that haunt your murky reflections and disturb your jealous admiration.

The iceberg is slowly melting under the sun's reflection. The freezing waters have begun to rise--are now flooding through the mirror, urgent and crystalline. The ocean throws her whole weight behind the supreme flow.

She carries forgotten bodies through with her, littering living rooms, an undignified intrusion. They float on the currents, bleached debris, and are pitched to the floor like frozen lumber where they infect the carpets and stain the furniture.

Gray Skies

I love the gray shroud that buries the head and demands nothing. Sunny days boss one around like a perky supervisor. You can't meet its eye because it blinds. It hands you a schedule with a million tasks on it. And I always forget to clock in.

I love the unappreciated sludge that weighs down the active and buoys up the tentative. Its lethargy compliments me. It doesn't care whether I stand or sit. It doesn't bash its yellow boots through my windows if I choose to stay indoors.

I love the nonchalant vapor that banishes the clear blue with moody gusto. For blue is too innocent a color for me to live under. It smacks of senselessness. Give me the clouds' loaded pollution, and I'll inhale its harmony.

I love the low-lying, slothful miser who is both willful and stubborn. It is like a bruised old man who refuses to die in order to dismay his vulturous offspring. He knows he'll never get a proper funeral, and so he intends to live indefinitely.

Banners

Banners are unfurled,
Marked with hasty ink,
And brandished above the mob.

Banners are unfurled,
That lead the way,
To blood and change.

Banners are unfurled,
Whose meanings are felt,
But rarely understood.

Banners are unfurled,
By thinkers that yelp,
Like hungry dogs.

Rust

A sinister memory,
Wrenched the reins,
From the driver's grasp,
And sent the horses mad,
Foaming and shrieking,
Eyes rolling.

And then I was off,
Lashed by odd feelings,
Menaced and moaning,
Assaulted by the senses,
Whose refined weaponry,
Had hurriedly displaced me.

Old and undone,
I had lost my way,
In a conjurer's fog,
Where the sound clotted,
Where the light bled,
In hazy eddies.

Something,
Was sludging,
Through the murk,
Dreamily detached,
Druggedly vacant.

Something,
Was wandering,
Senseless,
Directionless,
Emotionless.

Something,
Was suckling,
Through the baleful swamp,
Studied in despair,
Steadied in step.

Then the Rust,
Lodged in my nostrils,
Stopped up my ears,
Coated my eyelids,
And coarsened my throat.

The Blessed

The world's face is a strange motley of comely and homely features whose reality betokens barbarism. The blemishes are repugnant and distracting, but the amiable qualities are equally arousing. Here is a face to be loved or hated. None cursed to behold it may feel indifferent or in between for long. The world's face is such.

Those who hate it view it closely--mere inches from its posterior. Their pupils dilate as they register all the grotesque imperfections their detailed inquiry yields. They process data individually, weighing and judging piecemeal using sophisticated instruments, then move on to the next subject with the thorough precision(though not the detachment) of a scientist.

Those who love it view it from afar. They relish the figure as a connoisseur would a work of art. They are able to appreciate the whole because they do not linger on the specific. They use their emotive senses, absorbing the world's face in a breath and letting it fill their bodies with the most sanguine appreciation.

Society requires both haters and lovers in order to maintain balance. For all skewed societies are totalitarian in nature. This is undeniable.

The world shows its face to few. Most people will live out their time compartmentalized, with no inkling that such a thing exists. As a result, the blessed(or cursed) minority face the hardship of isolation. It is the individual's constitution that determines whether (s)he will overcome or be overrun.

Fewer still are those whose nature forces them to transist from love to hate or vise versa. And once set, the transition is by no means permanent. But during the reversal's timespan, the feeling is absolute. These are the most dangerous of the gifted because their temperament is a tempest. They are fiery hosts to absurd bouts of irrational behavior. They shift from each extreme whenever their plagued reason wills it. This is because they have viewed the world's face from both angles, and the knowledge has driven them mad.

Our peace is a whorish mistress. We are ever searching for that gray purgatory that lies between ecstasy and despair. Our exhausted brains are on the verge of fainting.

The fortunate pitch their gypsy tents at the crossroads between both worlds and are swept to each extreme amidst brief periods of meditation. We sell our wares to rash travelers. Yet we see them off with a dark knowledge brooding in our hearts, with our souls imploring them to flee.

We are the ones who will never find comfort in the words, "Thy will be done."

My Negatives

This is a list of imperfections I have found in myself to date. As time marches, the list will be modified as I address my flaws and divine new ones. This list was made for the purposes of self-improvement. I have tried to be as honest as possible with myself and hope to grow accordingly.

1) I am an alcoholic.

2) I set standards for people that no one, including myself, can possibly meet.

3) I push away everyone that loves me, then feel sorry for myself when I am lonely.

4) My sexual experiences have been unsatisfactory because they occur infrequently and because I have been too drunk to cherish any of them.

5) I am an escapist by nature. I throw myself toward anything or anyone that can divert my attentions.

6) Sometimes I am overly confrontational. At other times, I shy away from it.

7) I am often arrogant to the point of intolerance.

8) I play video games too much.

9) I am overly critical of my own as well as others' actions.

10) I find it difficult to apologize, even when the fault is mine.

11) I have dandruff.

12) I am dissatisfied with society but am too jaded to do anything about it.

13) I am one to hold a grudge.

14) I have ascetic tendencies.

15) I take too much pride in my own intelligence.

16) I never read contemporary authors, always sticking to the 'classics.'

17) I let minor things irritate me.

18) I place too much stock in other people's appearance.

The Meaningless

The Meaningless,
Is a culmination,
Of abused privilege,
And fallen ideals.

Its shadow,
Makes one shiver,
As it pricks the pride,
Unnaturally.

It lives above earth,
In our upright institutions,
And in minds that smile,
Pointedly.

The Meaningless,
Is a culmination,
Of abused privilege,
And fallen ideals.

It inhabits,
Drunk bedrooms,
On pale, empty mornings,
Whispering drowning oaths.

Its honeyed despair,
Winks from the eyes
Of The Meaningless brain,
Slumping smiles.

The Meaningless now bang,
Their bloody knuckles,
On the underground's,
Velvet door.

And already a fool,
Has cracked it open.

Stranded Eyes

My hand,
It likes to be forced,
When it hovers,
Indecisively,
In the vacant air.

To reach a dead end,
And backtrack,
To the remaining path,
Is the surety,
That evokes the security,
To press on.

Why look back,
When all paths,
Have been explored?

Forward,
Is where stranded eyes,
Must stay fixed.

Carrots

They lay in the plastic,
Helter skelter,
Destined for consumption,
Blurred in containment.

I open the packet,
It stretches and gives,
A jagged tear gapes at me,
And a baby root beckons me.

Its moist body,
Chills my lips,
As it juts,
From their pursed bouquet,
Like an orange cigarillo.

With a dry crack,
The stem is snapped,
Severed beneath the pressure,
Of my dutiful jaws.

Sweet crunching bits,
Rotate about my mouth,
Rhythmically churning,
Like snowflakes in season.

They disappear en masse,
Sinking into my gullet,
To be melted down,
An automatic reflex.

Such nutritions,
Are released,
Dormant,
In the womb,
When nature's goods are compressed!