Cause We Really Are

The short stories, poetry and art of Mark Earl.

[waywardmermaid]

[more-markearl]

In The Rose Garden

the night we met

i was a lost puppy stumbling

through a rose garden

and found an orchid.

-

the haze of my mind may have

eased my ability to speak.

we talked for hours,

huddled, sharing our complexity

under the tightly wrapped petals of convention.

-

but i had to leave.

when i was gone we talked everyday;

pollen and hormones sent through wires.

-

i made it back to that garden

and i found you again.

-

when i can i escape from the yard

and i run as fast as my puppy legs will carry me,

stumbling on occasion,

to nestle under your elegance

and talk.

-

every time i smile like an idiot.

happy

to be next to such beauty,

huddled together,

while the roses watch

envious or ignorant.

-

[more-markearl]

Original Photography.

Models Featured:

Top is Kassie Carpenter, Middle is Hilda MacKinnon, Lower Middle is Mark Bray (man without shirt). Bottom is Ian Radloff

[more-markearl]

how i wish i could smoke sunshine

i let allison carve an eye on my back a ritual, a metaphor in my own language with my razor and my blood you always get cut by the ones who love you and those nights with her and cody are the most i get of love here drunk. three cigarettes filling a porch with smoke and joints breaking into a catastrophe of a building and sitting in the office of doom getting drunk.

and stupidly i call lo thinking i can talk to her, like she's my friend and we talk like we're friends at this point we only really talk about when im getting there what i'm going to do with my shit and i say "it's all going to the dump" and i kinda mean it and she says "i'll sleep on the couch, you can have the bed" like i'm just an old friend crashing for awhile i don't think i can be in that house with her at night even if we were in different rooms i think i'd sit on that porch like i have a hundred times before and smoke and get drunk. until i fell asleep in that yellow chair and wake up in thick fog engulfed by the grey monster that eats arcata every morning

so next i'll call steph stupidly and i'll ask her if i can sleep on her floor but she knows im the devil knows when i say the floor i mean her bed then she'll make up some shit about her job and say she doesn't know if i can crash she's probably right not to let me but i try anyway stupidly i'm in love with her

and after that inevitably doesn't get me a place to stay i'll text hilda and i'll pretend to be more broken then i am and she might let me sleep on her couch she might want to fuck too which i would do because i'm weak and a night with someone else not just me a night with a warm body next to me would be sunshine on my heart

but i'm weak and i might stay at the house and plead with lo to sleep next to me in the morning i'll hate myself then i'll walk to a friend's house to get as fucked up as i need to be to face her as i pack my shit into boxes load it into a trunk and watch her disappear behind me as i pray to a god i don't believe in that i might actually forget about her

[more-markearl]

Another Dystopian Poem

This is 1984: sitting in a bar believing in the machine waiting for everything to go black. i'll never love a woman again, just sink me into another glass.

Sipping on Victory gin, dressed up for the scene talking straight at the telescreen hoping they hear: i'm a patriot, i love big brother, and i light my Victory cigarettes with a government lighter.

[more-markearl]

The problem with drawing a line in the sand is with one breath of air it disappears.

James Spader in The Blacklist