fourfold limerence

 always beaming towards the sky

and shedding shame

from the forgotten feelings of hope

that bind my arms together

It's really awesome that you can ""publish"" whatever you want nowadays due to the advent of the internet

Are you still writing songs

about Jesus Christ and other subjects you know nearly nothing about?

An entire generation that has never felt the atmosphere closing in on them but they have been told their whole life that it is bound to happen,

                     , approaches the event horizon with such indifference.

At home everything is spinning in perfect [opposite] unison

counterclockwise and clockwise and every which way your mind has designated itself to spin.

Time is merciless but it will always remind you of that.

At least I had a few chances to pause

before the clocks disintegrated all their parts

each gear

unlocked from interlocking.

Even in your succinct &breathless ways

I was dissipating endlessly into the grand consciousness.

No longer complicit in aural atrophy

or using words such as "you" or "I"

or brushing hair

or thinking before speaking

or a reversal of the two

or remembering which parts of the machine are sharp and hot.

It is possible to live without these things and the time that enables them.

A Poem about Humans and Birds that I do not think ever had a title

We stare at each other as kids in a novelty wax museum

The birds put constellations in the sky to remind us our skin is a disguise

We burn our vision through each other as the blue flames on your gas stove flicker

Moving through an apathetic suburban hellscape, the stars have no purpose anymore

We touch each other's smooth shoulders as two dolls with their heads ripped off

There are streetlights to guide the masses and the birds keep flocking to higher branches

We peer into each other's glazed-over eyes with pseudo-saccharic smiles

The birds put constellations in the sky and we tricked ourselves into control

excerpt from dinner after 9, march 2024

IN THE SPIRIT OF MODIFICATION:

Nobody grows up or grows old

They wake up on a sodden mattress deep in the July night from a dream they swore they've had before

They climb through a double-sided mirror to their mother's rom

They fall out through a storm drain after thirty minutes' rest

It comes out to a grocery store where the shopping carts have faces

They draw with their red fingertips on the frosted windows

They look down to see blood in the toothpaste washing down the sink

I would give myself to the Earth if it meant to see a fervent change in the parts of me that are unwilling to leave.

excerpt from dinner after 9, march 2024

the fat-horned stag / avian counterpart

The Fat-Horned Stag / Avian Counterpart

august 28, 2023, the title is from a misheard deerest friends lyric. i made this story into a zine with some drawings 

Sometimes I stare down that stag in the forest. I sit in the trees lining the clearing and watch him gallop through the tall grass. I think about how he’s unaware of the knife in my backpack. He doesn’t know what I have planned. He doesn’t know anything. I wish I could be like him. Blissfully unaware of what might hurt him. He won’t ever know. And he silently carries on. I would never step any closer to that stag. I know that when it comes down to it, there’s nothing I could do. Nothing more than stare at him. But it’s not awe, it’s remorse. For remembering what I could do, and why I came out here in the first place. As I duck through the trees and emerge from the woods into a gray city filled with frightened people, I pretend I’m invisible. I continue on the path towards a dull building. It’s shorter than the ones around it, but it’s just as chilling. The frigid air surrounds me and I leave a trail of hot breath suspended in the atmosphere. Goosebumps line my legs, my hair stands up on end, but I continue on the cracked sidewalk. The city skyline never fails to terrify me. Still, I walk forward. Just before the front door, I turn the corner and start sprinting. I run with no destination ever entering my mind, weaving through the concrete corridors of the city. I run with a pattern in my mind: right, left, look back, right, left, turn, right, left, and it continues endlessly. I run with no purpose, yet with great consistency. And I imagine I’m dissolving into the horizon. No one will notice my absence, just like they always ignored my presence. I’m disappearing, yet I still run forward. They won’t even check my unkempt bedroom. My door will be left closed eternally. And I still run forward. The alleyways will become my home. We will be able to recognize each other eventually. Just by the sound of my footsteps and the color of their bricks. I’ll rest, encircled by deep, muted red. I know my legs will give out soon, and I’ll collapse in a heap of uselessness. They won’t miss me, and I still run forward. My body will crumple into nothing more than a sack of bones and flesh, and they still won’t miss me. My hollow bones will disintegrate and I will take flight like the birds soaring off of telephone wires. From the predator, I became the prey. My belongings will follow me into the sky. The old, bleach-stained towel becoming my tail and the knife morphing into my beak. He means nothing to me now, the fat-horned stag. He never knew and he could never know. But I will always know. I can’t forget the pain of being stabbed through the heart with a sword made of flesh, bone, and indigo veins. But he would. He didn’t know that my knife was sharper. The stag in the clearing is forever unaware. But I am not. Even now, they won’t miss me. After I’ve shifted forms completely, born anew into a distant species, they won’t miss me. I’ll always carry the burden of knowing. They’ll say it helps me survive, but I would rather climb into my own muddy, unmarked grave than feel the same way. Your memories will never fade from my pea-sized brain. I’ll remember, if it’s the last thing I ever do. And you still won’t miss me.  

pairs://form

pairs://form (may 21, 2024)

incomprehensible confessions of a terribly lonely sophomore in high school

On my bedside table: a vase of slowly decaying flowers (still bright with splotches of color), two glasses with two straws (one red and one yellow, stretched out too long to fit in the glasses), two cans of flat seltzer water, two bottles of medication, and two empty film canisters. Everything comes in pairs simply as a reminder of what could have been, had I left my thoughts to myself. 

Summer arrived and all I could do was sit in solitary rumination. No footprints on the street to lead me down another path I was never meant for. No strings attached to my fingertips marking every touch and staining my vision.

No colors new, no colors at all, none depicting the vibrance I lost.

One day into summer my bed turns into a sea. Flashing white waves pull me under, wash me up. On the shore [the floor] I lay motionless waiting for the next blow.

“Summer is here and I am stuck in my own thoughts.”

A voice broke the silence. My own. Talking to myself to break the patterns that engulf my daily routine was a habit I had developed over the years. While it was meant to benefit me, make me feel less alone, usually it simply terrified me to the point of which I had to sit in silence to counteract the curse of hearing my own voice echo around my room. 

Countless days I had spent on projects that would never leave the

boundaries of my bedroom lied scattered across the otherwise

bare, wooden floors. They filled me with disappointment, a reminder that 

the past would always be there to haunt me. I could shelve them all, every loose 

paper, every folder, every pencil that had once made an impression on our togetherness. 

“How was your first day off?”

My computer spun to life, the hard drive buzzing with excitement to finally be awoken from its slumber, a mere four hours. Within the unbridled chat rooms were friendships that likely held no meaning to anyone besides myself.

“Good, how was yours?”

And how should I have responded? With a dramatization of the events leading up to my first [barely] human interaction of the day? With a smiling emoticon, providing to others the comforting notion that I was well? 

“It was alright, I went out to the field near my house, you know the one? I think I must 

have sent you a photo of it before. I picked some flowers and made a necklace.”

I knew the one. Left to the confinement of my personal cube, the four walls constantly surrounding me, I had taken a hobby in identifying the locations of the photographs sent through the wires of our interconnected networks.

“Nice (-: Well anyway, I think I’ll go make myself lunch and maybe we can talk more 

later.”

And there it was. The lies began small, but grew rapidly into an unbreakable peculiarity. The only trait I had pride in was one which no one knew. 

Glancing out the window, I saw another pair.

Reflected in the objects, but a pair of people.

Gazing at the clouds,

If only they knew,

How to live as I did.