word, semicolon.

I’m the truest version of myself through the biggest lie ever told. +++

[igaers]

I've just passed the point of no return. I'm at that dot, my safety, my submission. Everything I say I'm not, everything I say I am, doesn't matter. I am... a few chemical elements, arranged purely by chance. I am... solely whatever I decide to be at this turn of consciousness, and once it finishes and I flicker to the next one, I'm what I decide to be now. 

[igaers]

Despite everything, despite myself, I am not a confrontational person. I'd actually rather choke on my own vomit than subject myself to looking at you in the eye for more than a second. I'm actually exactly that which I hate. I numb myself to the lacerations; I take and take and take the poison until it's all I can spit, all I can breathe. 

That's me. That's all there ever will be of me. 

[igaers]

"There's nothing to apologize for but either ways you're forgiven."

Two lies make a truth.

[igaers]

I'm an easy boundary to push. I'm breakable and weak. I'm bone and skin. I'm bag of gunshot wounds and pure emotion, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. There's nothing and no one I can't stop this for, not even myself, even if I wanted to and I think that even if I could, I think I'd not do it. Because I feed off my own anger. I push myself through it. Like I break, I shatter; like I'm hurt, I kill. Like I'm sucker-punched I can, too, make a knife pierce pumping muscle. I'm breakable but because I am fucking breakable and broken already my edges can cut and will cut and not a single fuck will I give when your eyes melt with the acid I bleed or when you jaw parts between my fingers. There's nothing more dangerously explosive than a man who's been thrown bombs at since the day he was born. 

[igaers]

word vomit

I'm rotten. In. Rotting within the shattered mangled and bloody corpse of once-alive words. Relishing in my dirty fingernails, the meaty thumb, the dry skin pulled in the shape of teeth. I have been eating poetry. Poetry has been eating me. My tongue has hovered and rolled sweetly over every single syllable, lullaby-like, and a hammer has cracked my skull senseless—tactlessly, devoid of any sort of beginning or full stop; kissing, caressing my sweaty forehead and biting my bottom lip with playful anticipation. Hitting my ribs with blunt-ed objects and impacting thickly against a sack of flesh and organs. A momentum of black and whiteness, noise instilled into waves, chords straining into noises, grinding like hips against detached laps. Dirty wordings for the purest moments, wherein I lie and am given love and I throw it away because I don't see the use of it. It's a hit and a missed kiss, the description of an incomplete sentence and the following regret. Hot spit dripping from my chin and the waves coming back to me, tensing me like a whip. Crude verses have shaken me pale and green, kissed and hit, taken my sleep, replaced it with helplessness; have packaged up and sold my limbs; have made me sick and stink of disease. I lie truthfully in my remains, not-bad-not-good-either and spill the words back in the silhouette of repulsive. Offensive, vulgar and vile. Eyeballs snatched out of blind kids.

[igaers]

History repeats itself, somebody says. History is a stone I stumble on more than once every few lifetimes. I go back to making the same mistake, and contrary to popular belief, I don't fail better. I think of green eyes. 

It's about a specific trouble. How he hung on to me like a drug, pursuing the high I was no longer willing to give him. I got away from him, left him to rot and die with no remorse, thinking of self-preservation. Giving up on him is one of the worst things I have done, yet I remain regret-free. 

But I gave him hope. He came to me and I let him touch me; I dragged him and gave in to his lithe voice, the muscles on his back, his tongue meandering, exploring me intently. He is codependent yet he is tantalizing, poisonous to the core. His lips felt my pulse and his hands delved into it deeper, whispering luscious little words I was too weak to say not to. He was willing to give so I grew willing to take, blinded by--I can't say it without looking away--the gluttony. How good he was at pleasing. So I took advantage of him. I thought of the green eyes, wanton and eager for it, growing darker and sleepless, like what I had would soothe him. 

We groped for each other on backstairs or parked cars like shameful youths. He was volatile and all I wanted was his happiness, giving up on mine, feeding him warmth whenever he whined for it. That was the bond we had, nothing more. He thought he loved me, but if it was love it wasn't one I was willing to subject myself to. There was already a story I did not want to repeat. In his spit-slick bruised lips I did not see home. I saw a quick fix for something too broken. I saw myself reckless. wanting to get his hands filthy, make him an animal like the one I'd become. 

He wasn't ready for that. His soft-spoken words and the whereabouts of his eyes, that lacked any color but the one of his skin, irises filled with doubt and adrenaline. He didn't need that. I saw it despite he didn't. Rose-tinted glass, he didn't see the ache I gave him, but I did. So I got away. History repeats itself but it doesn't need to, anymore, for me. 

[igaers]

I’ve been able to study his body.

The voracity with which he pulls me, ardor enlivened in his hips. The raw lips and broken voice, overworked, rasping around pleas for more. Overwhelmed by the new sensations, muscles moving under the skin in unmerciful momentums, a staccato of thrusts, intervals of time wherein I lose myself and he becomes a part, a piece, and oh is he aching, turning his voice into moans for me. His teeth nibbling on my jaw, sticky scruff scraping mine, sticky lips trapped half-opened as the pace turns wilder, lovelier, and he refuses to stop this time. I can only lie and observe how the he takes me, like I’m everything he’s ever wanted, and be ashamed, because he’s not.

He’s not everything I’ve craved but he’s warm, and that’s halfway there. That’s halfway there, I tell myself, and wrap my arms around him and sink him, appreciate how he shifts his angle and stiffens, shivers, pulsing hotly and matted in bites, spots where the skin is darker and has been sucked, marked, by someone who won’t even dare claim him vocally and be his, equally. I’m not that for him, will never be.

But he’s warm and that’s halfway there. Warm mouth, hips, hands. I taste the bitterness in his kiss, salty and thick when his tongue gathers more and shares himself more than I ever will to him.

There’s a yearn in his watery eyes, and yearn is different to appetite. It’s in times like these I feel guilty. Guilty for a few seconds then stop, and hide those eyes with kisses, or awaken his appetite once more.

[igaers]

lion man's unfinished speech

I am flickering... undecided, a light-bulb that goes on and off, on and off, on and off, about many things I do not care to count.  About myself and others', and others' connection to me. About the broken glass beneath my feet, and how I stomp on it, thinking of you or thinking of him. I lie. On and off, on and off, off to paint my hands red little stripes again.

I can't be monochrome. A single pigment isn't enough for me. So I paint myself again, because I'm an unreliable narrator, and the little stripes are busted knuckles that have gradually escalated, until I find myself pouring. I have beat myself at my own game. I have seen every layer of skin I wear as lazy armor. I have seen the bone, white-ish and weak, weak and broken. I've hemorrhaged on myself and inside myself, lying down on the bulb's remains. Lying down on the dark, flickering, being my only one light. My only one. My dearest companion, that doesn't leave me, despite I do. 

There's no conclusion, no final thought. I'm striped, half-done, gazing at my surroundings, lost.

[igaers]

what's your sexuality?

Ambiguous, oscillating. Part of a spectrum, but not belonging to a single slot. I've wanted and loved all sorts of people.

[igaers]

I'm not made for anyone else but myself and for those I love, albeit the former is something I'm still working on. But people, I love. I do. I love you. That's proof.

I don't know what you want me to say to you.

I can try, though. Every once in a while, the rotten corpse I'm a step from becoming has a taste of thick, piercing, sweetness. It's the quickest way to melt me. The quickest way to touch me, not needing to graze a finger over my skin. A pinch. A lick, that's it, for I'm endlessly famished and more than a drop would turn me vile--or show my how truly vile I am, perhaps. I don't know, I don't know. 

It raptures me. It permeates me on a layer of sweat, and pumps my lungs with breath that will soon, but not just yet, depart. Every once in a while, I have to be tender, like the animal has to stop, and rest, and play. Losing my tenderness is losing myself, further, further, into the depths of an apathy that I'm all too familiar with. 

For you, I will be tender. I'll let you wash over me like raindrops. I will let my lips map your frame, the supple muscles, the rises and the falls. They'll notice how you lie and writhe, in all your corporeal virtue. 

For me, I will be tender, too. Through you, I'll learn to be tender to myself, and more than touch, feel myself, and not abandon my body when it needs me most. I'm made for myself, not my friends, not my elders, not my lovers, but I'll share myself with those I deem careful enough, for I'm just a bony package of muscle, organs, sinew, and blood. Because only, and only if I'm sure they're tender, too, I can be to them. 

[igaers]

System overload. Allow me to malfunction all over your bedroom floor.

[igaers]

I want to dunk my head into the air waves of your soul, hear its vibrations lull me into sleep. And I want to snort upon its contents. I want to snort upon your conscience. Allow me to dunk my head into the pools of your restless heart, and to drown in the blood it exudes. Allow me. May my nose dribble against that fiery hot liquid of life, and may my throat choke on your existence. And when I awake, we will be two bodies floating in the pool’s glistening waters. Our leaking love will spiral red all the way to it’s murky depths. Can we turn this whole place red? Can we?

[igaers]

thought #2

I like things that are raw, and disgusting, bloody and mangy, the sort of words that make you think of slabs of meat and giant butcher knives slicing violently through them, only to end up talking about love, sugary and intoxicant with its purity. 

I like violence, and I like softness.

Some people really say it for me, what I want to say, and nail it right down. Their words are visceral— they cut through me, and all my organs spill to the ground. But they also caress my cheeks, and kiss them, and they love me. 

I like it like that. 

I like it like that.

[igaers]

Monster Concept #3

I'm the destroyer, corrupter, dirty sneaky lyin' rat your were warned about. You didn't listen, did you? Because now you're here, on my palms, crying, aching, dripping like candle wax and reeking of need. Need for life, need for lust, need for love; I'll give. You'll barely even notice how I open your wounds and scratch them with my fingernails like a curious cat.  I'll push, push, and drag, then pull. Like god, I too am merciless, and I too am bored. There's no romance in an abrasive, bored, violent lover.

But isn't it beautiful how I eat away the flesh in chunks and lick the wet, filthy remains of you?  my lips lingering on your skin, both of us in silence, my arms pulling you closer. A modern art sculpture for the lewd and desperate. A breath of fresh cigarette smoke in the space wherein we fluctuate together, fickle and half-gone. Self-immolation, it is called, in the shape of a deadly addiction. 

[igaers]

scrapes of an apocalypse survivor's journal

"You kept whispering to me, as you faded away, that life has always been something worth cherishing. In times like these life is all I’ve got left. I’ve got no possessions but my beating heart and even that is at risk. With every intake of breath there’s the chance someone will push it all out of me."

"I shoot the bullet and it spits metallic dust onto my back."

"It’s a new not-so-new kind of routine. The desert’s my cubicle. Death is my annoying boss. This raw flesh and these guts are the traffics lights telling me where to stop and where to run, no backwards glance."

"You told me life was something worth cherishing. I call it my stupid instinct not to work my lungs when at the bottom of the ocean. Humans will do anything not to die. It’s caved into us."

"I miss the sound of your voice. Or anybody’s voice that isn’t broken up into puzzle pieces by the glitchy audio of the vintage radio."

[igaers]

self-portrait of the lion man

With a string of sentences, words, and letters, shall I create, capture, onto my palm, my face, disfigured like artwork born from Picasso’s cubism. Made from the thickest air I am and my wounded, rounded eyes know no one they wouldn’t make look twice—or maybe it was my lips chapped, lonely, or the nose, broken, bloody. More than once have my eyes and cheeks met fists from those I should respect, less than once have I hit back. Because I’m made of air, and I’m made of fear, and of dead useless tissue, because it’s been forever since my face has felt more than pain, or being held by my skull’s bones.

Oh, and are my eyes full of sadness.

[igaers]

Monster Concept #2

I know it’s a matter of perspective. Perspective is hell, fiery and destructive but also molding. Every scar is its own personal patch of it. It’s a matter of climbing to the other side of the wall and seeing things a different way, and getting better.

But it’s a lie. It is bullshit humans are capable of doing things right five seconds after the match has been lit. During those first few moments we are pits ablaze and that’s okay. Whether our knuckles are bruised or our eyes sore is up to us. Bitter emotions are monsters when recent. They’re hounds biting with steel-like jaws into your neck and dragging you toward a cliff while tearing the skin and piercing through muscle, layer after layer of it. But after those moments the animal lets go and you’re left with a bloody floor beneath you and a wound that keeps dripping. Stay still. Force yourself to jump that cliff right now while you’re almost dead. Force yourself and fall. That’s called cheap advice.

Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I’ve seen the strongest emotions eat people alive. My only notes have been a knife or a bullet or a rope or a empty bottle.

There’s nothing sweet about hopelessness. There’s nothing sweet about a hunter’s teeth down your throat. It’s not sweet. It’s not nice. Not good. It’s not romantic, either. It’s not alright. It’s sharp rocks after you’ve crawled your way up that wall. The worst monsters are not under your bed, but inside your brain.