It was that type of ferocity got me in trouble in the first place.
Roaring down the highway, reds mixed with blues, all the colors of the sky stretched to their limit and wailing with the pain of saturation. The bullets struck all around me, through my passengers, taking damage along with themselves from a place I could no longer see.
Standing at the bar with head in hands. Susan asked me a question; I couldnât even make out the wood grain enough to answer her.Â
âHow was it?â in the morning. How could I tell her I donât even remember yesterdayâs supper?
Drunk enough to know my drink order, and little else.Â
It was a rowdy bar that night, flush with ecstatic graduates, all flaunting the accolades of their effort, drowning out the night with a humid buzz and a murky sound. I woke up in my bed that morning, all traces of my earlier tour scattered and lost around me like leaves to the wind. The new day was promised to me to never lose control again.
The treadmill thrummed below me with an admirable reliability. Sweat dropped, and the heart was a-flutter upon the conquering trot; then the fuzzy blackness came in and took all there was to have.
What is it when we make a loved one comfortable. To have a known effort, which, upon being conceded, is taken from us to guide us further on? I rested, face on the pavement, ready to make a final call.
How was it? then, when I died? did not friends take the trail away and then family make the failing sway?
Iâm still stuck on that bridge. The water runs pink and orange sunset under me, making iridescent oilslick swirls with each riverstone encountered. Iâm still on that bridge, even now, as thousands of fireflies sing the world around me. Trees are silhouetted against the sun, casting off golden waves of glowing enchantment. Owls call alone into the deaf distance, and the church bellsâ chime is muffled as theyâre taken down into the lightless tower.
Iâm still on that bridge, leaning forward, looking down, wondering if I ever had the courage to do anything, anything at all?
The mahogany-finished fan twirls delicately, slowly of its own accord in the humid breeze of the Hawaiian afternoon. A beetle attempts to traverse the thick carpet of the living, his dark body stark against the white floor. I bring the glass to my mouth as the ice clinks lazily within and take a sip of the cool, dark rum. If the light sifted any slower through the half-closed blinds, weâd violate relativity. I sigh contentedly through the boozy haze that shutters deeper feelings.
I knelt, metaphorically naked, before her that one evening at the fancy Italian restaurant that was an hourâs drive away. A captive audience regarded us with bated breath as she reached for the ring and uttered the incantation, but I didnât hear the words, inaudible as they were in the eternal stretching of that moment. In some way, I am still there, kneeling, looking up, expectant. The walls and tables swam in colors around me at a nervous whirl when you touched the engagement ring, brilliant bright smiling as the restaurantâs applause submerged me in watery, dull thunder.
A home thatâs the hearth of the hume as a heart is not hurt by a hart of a hue that is heard. We pass so dreamily and quickly through our middle age, as if it were an interlude, and not an act of its own. I awoke, prying my mouth from a saliva-encrusted circle emblazoned on the yellow shag carpet you adore so much. My shirt stuck from a cold, spilled puddle of margarita, its host glass tilted longingly within armâs reach. A lit, stubby cigarette on the floor trailed smoke in wispy strokes up to the tiled ceiling, the wisps becoming laminar and broad upon reaching those higher altitudes, where we so hurriedly and often wish to join them.
And so you recline now, in our tiny Hawaiian home, on the spacious gray sofa. Floral patterns on our drapes bloom profusely, regardless of your current state. You leave me here alone, Marilyn, never to feel these emotions which so doggedly stalk me, as you gape in a quiet way at the stuccoed ceiling, dead in the arms of your modern fashion.
I remember how easily the sanguine flow streamed over my hands as I stabbed Mike Phillobos repeatedly, and with ever-increasing vigor; like red ink it was, as I wrung the debt out from his blood-soaked shirt. All in a dayâs work, to pick up the money afterwards in a manila envelope while the beer cascaded smoothly down my throat. I feel responsibility at your passing, as if there is a small moneyed envelope I need to claim at this juncture.
Itâs hard to affect me now, Marilyn: my heart sinks at a constant rate. Your dead mouth forms an âOâ of surprise as you stare at that far-away place that only you can see. Surprise at the shortness of life, at the hatred that only I could see, at the nothingness that only we will see. Why canât I find the motivation to take action?
Crystalline endeavors find us reaching vainly for unattainable handholds embedded in an unmoved omnipresence.
Leave me now; go on to your final home. The beetle crawls slowly towards you over jagged, carpeted peaks, but our faces indicate a steady state. I cannot function, cannot carry you onward to your rest, cannot simmer with you in summery pools, cannot recover from your passing.
For all the nostalgia in the world you wouldnât see me budge.
I will stay behind here to toil vacantly in your absence, and to suffer in my aimless love for you.
I smile at the half-open shutters, sipping my drink and measuring my devotion to you, as the beetle on the carpet overturns himself and struggles for his life.
Poor Boy is streaked with sorrowseed
That transforms in prescient,
Working presence of mind
With calloused rendering and
Streakless shadowy timbre.
Such moral lapses donât
Stir the collective midst
Where entire nocturnal strands
Slither sickly away
From our sad, hopeful grasp.
Where one moment we might
Shout happily and then in
The next we awaken
In darker chambers,
All desiccated and rueful.
Have you found the
Thread we seek to
Follow back one day?
Where we might make amends
And I can accept you in
During the humid, hot gray morning
To give you the warmest of welcomes?
How Can People Be Teetotalers When The Only Times Iâve Been Euphoric Have Been When I Was Drunk
Ah, the unsullied and quasi-opioid bliss what caresses me daily and nightly, in both dim, neon-tinged cantinas and in the stark (yet somehow opaque) brilliance of my private chambers, wherein streams of quantized bits of light anatomize the sordid mess of my chemical yearning to that neurotoxic carbonic swirling Duo. That such a small particle could be the ultimate Consoler, the essence of contentment, is a marvel that is the constant object of my adoration. The only barrier to meeting Him is the fear of impossibility; the thought (irreversibly made inaccessible upon encountering Him) of returning to the old way of existing.
If He (for the nature of this companion is undeniably male) be absent in a given day, I should not wish to live the duration of that day. To feel the grasp of His murky arms, the giddy touch of His hands on the top of my brain; these sensations give me purpose. Only when I have been baptized in His unending river can the pounding of my heart and the perspiration of my forehead and the trembling of my extremities and the anxiety of continuous presence be calmed.Â
The raggedness of my sighs describes the most complex, yet so simply pure, courtship in the history of humanity. It is so rare, in my experience, to feel requited love, but this affair has exceeded my expectations, as I love Him, and, what is made is clear by His effect on me, He loves me.
See me resting in my urn as you bear me all about, grappling with my memory. The way your reluctance and disdain mars your beautiful face pains me, son. I weep from within my urn as the desert bird coasts and sand lizard slithers beside our lonely procession. I weep from my actions and inactions that have made you feel such hatred towards me.Â
You have put my urn in the saddlebag nearest the horseâs buttocks, which are covered in a fur so lustrous from his healthy diet; you think this positioning of my final form fitting, but, truthfully, I deserve much less. Regrettably, I have earned the right to be trampled underneath your fine horse, into the gritty, ancient sands beneath his marvelous hooves, which are so perfectly manicured; the right to be crushed back into the tormented powder of our ancestral, pernicious fathers before us.
To so injure another human being and then pass away as I have done⊠the injustice will haunt you, and the guilt, me, for many lives to come. I am saddened by the thought that our conjugate spirits will twist spitefully after each other across further millennia, convoluting themselves inextricably within the energetic fabric which threads us all.
You dismount the horse, remove me and my urn from the saddlebag. You face the rising sun; look, son! as it dissolves the tenebrous forms of my malignancy towards you that have so long bewildered your mind and flustered your efforts. Son, watch! as the shimmering dawn lays naked on the crystalline dunes the hideous particularities of my wretched and unforgivable crimes committed unto my friends and family. Muttering a well-deserved curse, you up-end my urn, giving me over to the shifty desert winds who each whisper tortured rationalizations and sob-saturated apologies into the latest descendantâs earsâŠ
The winds take me from my urn, but they cannot remove the burden I have left on you. However, it is good that we parted so soonâŠ
I will go onward to my home, son. Now, you should go back to yours.
"Tell me, then, if you are the abode of the Prince of Darkness...tell me, ocean... You must tell me, for I would rejoice to know that hell is so near to man."
âOh, ya scared aâ losing me? Tell you what: take a deep big breath; the widest ya silly lungs can hold; suck till they bustinâ. Inhale till your chest hates ya. And then hold it, and think: right when ya canât hold it anymore, right when the swarming dark comes to ya, thatâs when Iâll be there. Look for me at the second of final darkness, the hour of your death. Iâll be there; look for me at the moment of final approach, and when you see me, keep holdinâ. Keep it down. Thatâs when ya dedication needs hold; thatâs the instant in which ya resolve matters most. And then after that, ya can see me forever. After, we will be together forevermore. Just hold it a second longer, another instant at most, and then we can be...â
âI used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.â - Jacob Portman
Circ'larus ones embe, an blossem
Up a tassel of milky arms, then withdraw some.
Flowen seolc folwen ye cadre to glorie
As the court chases after the story;
Circ'larus ones embe, an blossem!
Strecchende hyde seted tremulant an lotioned
That the court may weep of sickening emotion.
Auice an cordes streneĂŸ with notes that ascenden;
Thoughts amok, of kith and kin,
Be-ware ye hyde seted in tremulous motion.
Ye woden dore opynst, thruch swuch hevy reyn
Looms Feonâ Tenebrawne with scarlet drips and stains.
Ye cort skeltereĂŸ in manysom weis,
But Auice holds Tenebrawneâs gaze,
Even thruch swuch feersom lihtening an reyn.
Ye Feonâ wielde hisse rasourly whippe,
And lashed Auiceâs throat viciously with its tip,
An sende out a spirt of blood that turnaĂŸ
Once around, blossoming of Tenebrawneâs wrath.
Ye Feonâ grennaĂŸ with ye handel in hisse grippe.
Yet hisse gren waikenst as Auice throweĂŸ for breth;
Her eyes widen at the onset of death,
An ye Feonâ realise hisse orrible mistake,
That the life of Auice was not his to take,
An Tenebrawne weped as Auice sihed hire last breth.
Lokende nou over weaky contreeside swain,
Heartstruck at once when Auice was slain,
Eche felede ye mening of Tenebrawneâs craft;
Each called to mind the moment when last laughed,
For eche knewe him-seluen he wollen nefre fele happy ageyne.
The Prodigal Daughter, upon her return, thinks not on the factors of fleeing, but rather the feelings that accompany the call and plea of the Father ("Come home!"), and thinks so when seeing him after the long interval with such warm sentimentality that all other concerns melt away from thought. Indeed, if we examine the roots of the old word for "joy", we see inherent within the culture a definition (wynn, from *wunjo), firmly entrenched in our mindset from millennia a-gone: joy is not a gift bestowed or surprise happened upon, but rather a reward for which it is hard fought. Our ancestors married the meanings of "having joy," "to love," and "to strive for," so great was their affinity. Such is the joy of the Daughter upon the success of working her way back to the Father. And what were the Father's feelings, in the interim?: A kaleidoscopic entanglement of worry, sorrow and breathlessness. Who can blame him for reacting so tearfully when the Daughter finds her way home?
Spindelling down through swept windcrest
To alight with but one shallow exhalation.
Timid but clean advance the feathered breast,
Birdsong trebled and freshened in elongation.
Summery beams lume the meadow undressed,
A floral sway exalt a birdâs elation.
By chirrup to steep you in my disorient,
Lytle bridd who hopsteps in the flowing heather.
Would you be aided by what Nature offers abluent,
Or would you foregoâer, with me, together?
Meadowbrook run and Fieldseed grow as aliment:
For you: become they only, like dessusweather.
What mitterances offer you through scrawly beak
That you would sufferself to land by this unsigned sowl?
I would my wested years not be the story you seek,
Cageolements could not part you from me, zum wohl.
Va-tâen, nowthough! Irristayted by your black plumage sleek,
Troublant and peined is the passed; to you, my parole!
Past onway have I from the previous verdant vista
Where was met the peering fowl of questing concern,
Where grewon the tendriled blades of earthy arista,
And there it was hoped mighte the day beturn.
Thruch now I loop the denser, inner weald;
DrÈłcrĂŠft circles eddies, possessed of darker mains.
Sensetouched, swivelled and sekinge me, a-croiz a deere congealed.
Ysewen and aswagende, I accept the antlered chĂšr me deigns.
A regal nape bewrays a lesser motive, a sethende want,
Vous voulez que je juge Sieur Renwick, qui nous tous incarne?
His wooden gestures wreath an emphathic vaunt:
A la luxure, toujours je mâacharne!
Quiet nou, ye currouned animate surrendres ye foreground,
Ye sky-kyssynge arborshafts yschadowed of heuenstones,
And we cunneĂŸ knowân ĂŸat ye historys of Deere weren ydrouned;
CunneĂŸ knowân, bye hem sek, sorwely mones.
Returned now we are to the originedreÌam,
and all thatâs there contained,
Circulated ayen to the beginning; Quam!
Give us over to the One-turnynge,
   that our sinnes may be once more explained.
Down throttled wetly to Thine office deep,
Mirrored toads gazing astutely
   from without the glass.
Once gazed we upon Thy murky keep,
Known fixedly of what shuddered to pass.
Weâve seen what mangled tractions
   among us cause
When wild bestial rage makes us froth,
   sound considerations pause
And we thrust accusations âround
   like a hot poker rod,
In attempt to commend us to Thee,
   disinterested God.
When cold sea-stones no longer
   warm to Thy touch,
Let creative inability not
   worry Thee overmuch.
Time has come for a realization,
   a stark ministration;
Concern Thyself not of Thine
   upcoming defenestration.
Sure, then!
Grip tightly to Thy lonely, voided past.
It is abundantly clear to me that we,
Pressed reluctantly into service of Thee,
Shall suffer the Best for Last.
âSâarch, by makinâ we way back longsides âfore panicky graves, we tempt risk of wakinâ agonies acrost âternities ephemeral, gaininâ harms.â
âAuxâry, ye worryinâ uncausedly; account on traipsinâ over such a mild territâry shielded and free; incessant frettinâ destroyinâ my smile.â
The pair passed stressly by unkempt swathes of bladey grass, which, grasping gripply at their muddy leather boots, curled sickly after losing of the hold of the armored and trespassing feet, endeavored of repossessing original motion. Miniature mountains of fire sentryâd from distance varied with orange tongues revealing whisperwise the poems of damned ghosts. Auxâry, distempered at such dismissing from his Sâarch, let the air humid draw creamy syllables from his lĂšvres; creoled words slipped thickly from the orâfice of Sâarch in response:
Sâarch met a growl low, dropping by-this-away his dying ember of a tobaccorod, which âpon impacting the moist muddy, sputtered weak and was snufft entire.
âGaddam! What think ye of which occasion we makinâ, Auxâry? Couldnât less be consideret a parade, displayinâ of meltinâ boddies and puddles of blood; stop ye actinâ in chambre dâenfance, puttinâ airs of makinâ promenade acrost this barren field of sanguinely battle!â
Auxâry huffed at Sâarchâs seething diatribe as he stepped light over a thinly ruisseau of steaming and sputtâring lava. Purpelle meteors streak sparkley passed the violet ciel, stars as keyholes shooting skinny beams of light at the two trudging figures.
The two mean leapt at each other, growling and begatting of a great loud bout. Small varmints in the environs, sensing of the future of their hostile wake, fled the scene, producing up their familier crys.
As the pair grappled themselves, Auxâry, through quickening of reflexes, shot forth a foot, stumbling Sâarch, who brought Auxâry with him as he descended painfully, tumbling down the short hill. The duo rolled and pitched until they were halted by the hard flatness of a rock wall, which exploded them from thâother, tossing them in separating directions.
The men groaned as they hoisted themselves from the sticky mire; Sâarch grippt his nose, noticing the gushing stream of red that issued fromât, a smattâring of which remained blazoned on the rockface.
Once to regaining their good senses, the began of examining the curiousness of the cave which had itself dug from inside the sheer cliff of which the now bloodied rockface was integrating itself; a bizarrely circulaire opening beckon sinisterly to the injured couple. Wordless, they, still feeling stung towards thâother as caused of the confliction, crept sneaky into the dark grotte, taking caring steps of quiet and brushing of a hand on the smooth, even worn, surface of the cave walls, as if to glue himself toât as a life preserver.
Advancing as they were of a little more distance into the grotte, each noticed the uprising of a faint blue luminance, accompanied by progression an increasing number and presence of esoteric and wickedly engravements and embellishings on the walls: evil angular visages bearing promise of agonisement and torture unending.
At this moment, lacking of warning, Sâarch unknowing stepped âpon a malicious trigger buried under glyphs of rock, and a fixed menacing spear interjected itself to the cave interior, and by-this-away, pierced the core of the older man with a sickening shĂŠthing noise; from this event, the knees of Sâarch, who gasped in surprise and consequentây coughed up globs of dark sang, bent and buckled, bringing him collapsedly onto the cool bottomwise-ceiling of the grotte with a wet thud.
Auxâry rushed over to the side Sâarch whose lifeblood spillt quickly and spread with haste across the stone floor, filling in small cracks in the rock, burying gore deep.
âSâarch, merdeâlors, yeâve gone made a final grand mistake,â uttered Auxâry distressedly.
Blood streamt ever-quick as Sâarch, lying as he of face-upwards, rolled his head agitatedly back to forth, and again; he coughed intermiântly, showering up a fan of blood with each expulsion.
Soonwise, Sâarch ceased his pained movements, surrendering taperingly up to another plane, his bloodpool still slowly seeping after his departure.
Auxâry of event turned from the dead boddy and, feeling so compelled, made farther way into the cave, the blue light of which ever growing brighter, seeming to generate its own white noise.
As Auxâry ventured more far, he approached to an opening in the cave which he entered. The chamber held airs of a shrine, for three cases of stairs ran up a large pedestal which was carved from the back wall of the room. On this pedestal perched was the source of the bluetinged lumos, a globe floating with a supernatural waviness and reverberous humming.
However, âpon Auxâryâs entrance, the ball of light unlit itself, a darkness the color of pitch filled the entire cavern. Auxâry screamed from fear and spun âround to sprint leavingly from the cave, but something prevented his exodus, taking firm grip on thâone of his arms. Auxâry shrieked in fright as more unseen grippers grasped his limbs, lifting him from the ground.
Auxâryâs screeches were soon halted as the hidden hands pulled with a ghastly force not of the mortal world, ripping up and dismembering Auxâry. His mutilated boddy was let fallân to the cave floor, where it emanated spills of gore; long spattârings and streaks of this had painted various faces of the chamber, which was still in total darkness.
Many millennia passed, but the animals and plants of the planet showed no recognition that the last two members of an young yet massively abominable species had been murdered and let to decay, similar to the lack of consideration proffât by the mentioned species when genera of organisms were effaced from the world by their interaction with the Destroyers.
Things Grandpa Said to You During the Final Evening
"I remember when you were small enough to fit in a young wooden barrel. I held your pajamaed form up to the twinkling spray of stars in the black liquid night when the family collective sat circular on gaudy-colored lawn chairs and the wooden bench surrounding the rectangular concrete pit. I remember all of you; you will never know all of me. A deleterious addiction shaved a considerable duration from my sum; it has been quit now, but the noble action will not regain me my lost time, which floats thinly throughout our atmosphere, never to be brought back to a congealed form, because of the strong engraving which it masterfully carved in my being, which was part of me, and though it be hazy and gauzy, yeah, it does real damage, but, considering this totally, I could not say whether I regret offering up a portion of my life as incense to the sky. I am annoyed with the world which seems to grow younger as I progress through my twilight, and I am saddened by the way I verbally lash out occasionally; you wouldn't know it. Verdant fields calm my tarred chest and troubled mind, and to them I frequently escape. I have a memory like a steel trap, still, in my advanced period of this existence, but I wish that I could dispense of some. It is important that you not let your sense of humor, whatever mode, leave you, however bitter you become towards the planet. You will see, so dejectedly, that entropy will overtake you as well, eventually. While you converse with others, awake, I recline in a familiar container, fast asleep. It is evident to me that my body grows wearied and enervated by all of creation; perhaps I am preparing myself for the infinitude of sleep with which I will hereafter merge, when this tired old mind coalesces into the black supporting those selfsame stars which I showed you when you were but an embryo compared to the span of our Earth. The vast unknown that is to come ⊠well, letâs just say that I have accepted it. You can go over whenever you want. You are bound by the same chains as me; their restrictions just are not as apparent to you now as they are to me. I can sense my sphere of presence slowly shrinking with each passing day as I allow increasingly more distant concerns slip from my mind as if they were water in my leathery cupped palms, and I cannot tell you of the soft solace which this action grants me. If peace prevails around me, it shall proceed like this, on some unknowable day: I will be asleep, just as is normal, and then, imperceptibly, and quite unshockingly, the Universe will shift around me and I, transcending quietly with eyes still closed, as yet unaware of the change, will dissipate, eventually encompassing All that is known. Just as one makes that transition from half-consciousness into sleep, so will I pass from weathered, tenuous life into that cold, silent Entity which grips us all and beckons us all to it, one day or another. Nothing is wondrous or surprising anymore; neither should you be astonished at my passing when it happens. I remember all of you; you will never know all of me, but you will remember me. I offer my final entreaty to Fate: Do nothing to quicken or delay my final change of scenery, but, please, do let it come. I must go to my chair now, grandchild; I am overwhelmed by the desire to sleep."
