A Human Element

Late night writer when inspired.

[irz]

Running Circles

Eight years shuffle forward behind closed eyelids.

Rare now are the nights when words are unrelenting, rattling my skull until I can no longer pretend to be asleep. I am awake now, aloof, lost in despondence and evil inner thoughts, toeing in darkness until it is balled up inside my throat, not quite grown enough to make me gag. Self-pity is tight-lipped and lukewarm, comforting only in the fact that I have been here countless times before. How I have missed this part of hell.

Regularly still, the deficit of words blinds me, my eyes dry. The sun is glaring. People are glaring. In the privacy of a corner, I try to heave out my esophageal lining but the walls remain blank as before. The only hope so that time will prevail, so I wait silently in pain.

[irz]

IYKYK

from sweetheartball

to butterball (eww)

to buttercake

to buttersteak

to buttershake what yo momma gave ya

to butterheartbreak (booo)

to betterdayslikebirthdays

happybirthday butterbae

[irz]

AFK

It's Tuesday without Morrie. Another week goes by littered with news articles. Death fills the gap between my fingers idling across the keyboard--  cold, numb, and repetitive,  like an occupied job waiting to be slit. 

[irz]

Schematics for Liftoff

Saturday is infused with tea, nicotine and new ideas.

[irz]

Surface Tension

As I spend days, toiling about and around the lab (the nauseating stench of formaldehyde), measuring something or another (the position of the closest train door), running validation checks (no calls from her this week, another body on my bed) and what if’s --and if not, then all too often,  idling, half-hours sometimes vanish in the blink of a browsing session. “Your order has shipped...”  “Congrats and good luck, Tom...” “The market closes higher...” How often I’ve stared hard at the screen and foreseen years tick by. A sigh-- the office needs to be locked, the lights shut, down the hall and left, then right. And so forth until this breath ends, the illusion was never broken.  

[irz]

--

Chlorophyll leaves, vacuumed into air. Autumn breeze nips, curls and howls, like a pack of hound-lings-- leaves behind lime green and teeth marred yellow. A cooler draft comes  and goes; the foliage bleeds  orange. The sun sets; the tree branches turn red  with rust, and the ones that remain hold on with withered stems.

Ah, but all my friends are gone.

[irz]

I can’t decide. Because yes, it hurts to hold on. And yes, it hurts to let go.

Bobby

[irz]

Time Spent

I remember clearly the feeling of being whole. But the pain afterward--its long and arduous journey, that is something I am quick to forget. It’s been four, five years now, and I’ve been been meaning to ask, how are you? Who are you now, and have you found love? I wish nothing but the best for you. And I hope, as I wish you--I hope there is someone who will wrap their arms around my neck, whose kiss will outlast the winter here. She--whoever she is, I hope she matters as much as you did to me.

[irz]

After the storm has passed, I looked up to the sky. That brilliant blue, that bittersweet goodbye.

Amanda Lee & Dima Lancaster, A Medley of Songs From Your Lie In April 

[irz]

Uncapped Coke Bottles

The drinks on her breath were muted on mine. Our tongues slurred the space between. She was oblivious to the stragglers on the platform, but I caught several glances. Another pair of late night drunks.

The porcelain tiles were sooty and cracked, the grout stained sewage black. Mice scuffled under and across the rails; and plastic soda bottles lay in the cesspool, showing no signs of degradation. The mess we are all quick to leave behind, these things happened with time.

"Hey, I heard Charlene is seeing someone else," she said, shifting her slim frame against the pillar.

It was a name that often emerged in the confines of internal dialogue. Already, in hindsight, it had become a madness that parts of me survived. And yet when it tried to crawl out of my mouth, it came out lopsided and premature.

"Char-Charlene? Oh..."

She turned. Just then, the loudspeakers sparked to life.

I had good reason to look away. A granular baritone echoed across the station chamber before dissipating into the scantily lit tunnels. His voice reverberated inside my skull during the long seconds after, tripping on nerves, beating against both ear canals.

"Good for her, I guess." I cast those words out into the bitter distance.

She fiddled with the leather charm on her wrist. Her nails chipped away at their fresh red polish.

I slipped her sleeve between my fingers and tugged.

"Let's not wait around. Why don't we walk over to my place instead?" I asked, stopping short of a breath.

She looked up. Was there something in her eyes? I couldn't tell. She was slow to smile, but nevertheless smiled, then nodded and brushed a corner of her eye.

Without another word, I took her hand. We hurried up the steps, past the mezzanine, toward the streets, without ever breaking stride, away from the mess we are all quick to leave behind.

[irz]

Spill ink, not blood.

Bobby

[irz]

When you start measuring the distance in years, you have to ask yourself how much farther are you willing to run.

Gerald

[irz]

Gerald, What You So Mad For

A wall, its dimness stood looming behind the sclera-white screen. A pair of eyes blinked. Fingers twitched with uncertainty, like stragglers fidgeting on a station platform, waiting for a train of direction. The pine-scented candle sitting on the desk wavered. I looked onward, trying to answer its question. A second sip of bourbon didn't help. Then, the far wall called, where the mirror hung. Its reflection stared back. He calmly withdrew from the keyboard, pulled open the drawer beneath. Two dollar Bic lighters, and a gunmetal Zippo. Half a carton of Newports, and a pack of swishers. A box of Strident dwarfed the envelope of Listerine thins. It was the 5-millimeter that rattled out. He thumbed the safety and slowly pointed it through the plane. "Go on," he said. "Start writing."

[irz]

Coldline Bling

If the night is idle, when silence calls. If my hands are unsure, but the guitar is tired of stuttering a broken song. And if I pick up without greeting or prompt, then inevitably. Inevitably, the conversation will drift towards you.

[irz]

To Be Sick of Itself

If the night is idle, when silence calls. If my hands are unsure, but the guitar is tired of stuttering a broken song. If I pick up the pen without greeting or prompt, the conversation will drift towards you. It is sick, I tell myself in place of others. I am sick, I say. Just sick. Sick of being so sick. Sick of everything, it seems, but the word itself. Sick enough that the word practically writes itself. And the act of writing has become treatment in of itself.   It is miraculous--the conversation-treatment, that is. Considering how a word loses its meaning to the repetition of its sound, it is nothing short of a miracle that I am still droning on and on. How similar I am to mother. Oh God, how annoying I must find myself... How thick-skulled I have to be to not realize yet. But it is what it is. And while I haven’t quite come to terms with it myself, I suppose I am how I am.

[irz]

VHS Woes Before Dinner

The general drew his sword and rallied his legion before the opposition. The front line trembled, the soldiers restless and ready to die. He made his move soon after, kicking his leg. Horse neighed and rider bellowed. The effects of their guttural cries, however, were lost to interjecting static. And I lost interest in the scene. The name of the historical battle was stamped in bold red characters–that much I could infer. I started work on deciphering the black-and-white bands running across the screen. They ran angry and wild, unpredictable, stochastic. I didn’t give chase for long. The scent of saute sauntered over from the kitchen, eclipsed by pungent garlic in oil. The mixture of aromas roiled my insides, and yet the raw feeling could only be described as immature, incomplete. Amidst the chorus of yelling, swords clashing and my stomach growling, I maintained discipline and waited for the rice to finish. I could smell the moment that came right before the cooker went off. A warmth filled my nostrils, and something in the war shifted. It embraced and rounded the edges of the chaotic smells. It rushed to fill the gaps in between–packing and packaging, and then proceeded to present it to my brain as a conglomerate whole. The table had long been set. Now, finally, dinner was served.

[irz]

A faint clap of thunder. Clouded skies, perhaps rain comes. Will you stay here with me?

Yukari Yukino, The Garden of Words (2013)