Colors. Pebbles scraping her palms. The painting. In long strokes. He never finishes. Wise drugs working on the edge fo his tongue. The child in her torn frock. Addressing a failing crowd. Liars eager to pounce.

Crayons. Dark lines slowly filling in. The child. In failing underwear. Biting down on the thermoter. Swallowing the mercury. Soft metal running through thick veins. Coiled and venomous. As these bits of skin.

Backwarde in the time machine. Counting nothing. The promise blossoms. Dead flowers. Rain. Choices. Bound to the time machine flesh travels away from us. Spreading its cancer. Leaving bheind only the skeletons.

And dying things I cannot save. Drowned in the lies we use to love each other. Years. Butterflies sneezing. Changes. Negotiating with these time machines too stubborn to admit.

That they were wrong.

Take care with naming the parable. Count your wolves carefully. Make note of your little pigs.

Fairy tales are too much like skin. Asking so much. Proving nothing. Frankensteins on hte verge of sex. Monsters in her weekday. Borrowing from thicker concussions.

Words. In fits of oblivion. Gods debating. Ambivalent saviors.

The mythology of skin in paper cuts. So many gods. So little blood.


Just the nagging ache that accompanies the fear that i've said too much.

And the knowledge that the end to this coma lies within.

It takes too long to remember. Even longer to forget. And it only matter because it's broken. Because I want more than it is.

The otherwise of empty steps. Calm predictions on worn shoes. I was walking. So loudly. Until silent came in vogue. The calm conspirators of frivolous demons as the pavement chirps with so much momentum.

The standard. Absolute strangers plot the maze that is my skin. Piling up walls. Diminishing the solution. The molecules. As ambivalent as ever. Takers. In pale restitution. Rebuild. The cracked faces of dolls we've dropped.

Limbless and naked in the arms of their savors. Their Satans. Their drunk gods with white gloves on.

The man. His soft beard teasing the hairs on her vagina. The premise. Skin the comedy. The rest a drama. Sex is Shakespeare. It doesn't rhyme at all, but looking back you'd swear that it did.

Everything wants a name. The dead are no exception.

At twelve years old she discovered herself. In the shadow of the clothes she'd taken off. It was years still before she would find there was a whole world out there. Beside herself. Full of girls better off without their clothes and men inclined to assist.

Say what you will about the lottery, someone wins.

Sure, everyone else loses. It's like life that way.

Not that dying would be any different.

Life after all, is merely the sum of the skins we're determined to wear and those that we're willing to discard. It's easier she's found if she can forget what she wants and focus on what she can have.

Dialogues in cream cheese. Soften too slowly. Villains say they know. They do.

Maybe everything. Perhaps nothing. It's not the answer that matters. It's how she arrives at it.

The garden still grows though she's not there to water it. The sun still burns though she hasn't seen it for years. In fits of arithmetic is how he touched her. In hernias of algebra is how they made love.

Integers of flesh extrapolating the sum of paradise from dead skin.

She was twelve years old, maybe thirteen when this big world finally began to make sense. She finally learned it wasn't about what she had. All that mattered was what was absent.

One color more. Sheets coming undone. In fits of skin. As if we were alive once. Or something similar. More than just time in its infinite travels. Or the remnants its fire leaves behind.

Just colors. Dots anticipating the sun. In sharp bends of light that break too often.

What was easy is hard again. Preachers on the pulpit blame Satan. But I know, amongst us the devil is innocent.

I see the answers. I just never write them down. I psh the switch on the lamp still expecting darkness.

I'm not alone, but it's too close. Gathering her robots. She warns them tomorrow is arrogant. And we are merely the consequence.

Of lazy gods and spoiled children.

Something like falling asleep. And also like waking up. Trying on the meat. Her underwear red. Her bra too loose. I don't know. Don't want to know. What I haven't seen since this blindness. Mousetraps at the edge of my world killing anything capable of finding the cheese.

I'm over. I'm already done a long time ago. Puppets are left. So to their strings. I can't stop them from making me dance.

Words favor the liars. Actions favor the strong. What am I? Just the lonely branch at the top of the tree. The monkey with the novel in his hand that no one can read.

Where I was. Where I am. Places like carbon. Duplicating. Coins dancing in pockets.

Waiting for time to stop.

Or for someone to notice it still hasn't begun.

I could go anywhere. If I ever bothered to try. I could go anywhere, but it's so hard to leave where I've been.

Ripe cold sores accuse her lips. Of saying too much. Hearing nothing she begins her journey again. The start and the end interchangeable amalgams better suited to the chemistry of touch. Girl. Woman. Child. I wish I knew the difference.

You can live hard on the quarry of defeated men. Or you can live softly in the velveteen of cowering addicts. It's not the choice that's hard. It's the afterward. Deaf hammers pound mute nails. The wolf exhales on the piglets. Straw houses blown down. All these lives a lengtty fairy tale.

Little girls in the bellies of beasts. Fooled by beds.

No more. antidotes. The lure of the sickness prevails. Dirty clowns smearing their faces. Caught crying again. Nothing to want. Like that. The calm abyss of failing. To be loved.

The artists in our skin carving out the touch. In nervous chisels of the stone. That conceal us. The kill. Words bite enough to suffocate. I wanted to die anyway. I just never expected it would take this long.

Needles in the heart gathered the drug. Extracting. Not giving at all. All this high in my head lasts longer than it should. Broken ladders to climb again and again. Slowly ascending to where i've fallen.

It wants to be death, but it never is. THe wake of stranger's skin contemplating what it will take. Tiny earthquakes of men destroying everything.

I can't remember the last time that it mattered. but I know it still rememebers me. I hear it. Practicing the lies I once worshipped.

I pity all those moments. Forced to explain theemlves to people that can't understand.

The scales that weigh us agaunst the inertia of convenient explanations.

Close enough. Or so the source conceded. Bow ties and tuxedos deciding the shape of softer skeletons. In the when. In the if. Time would allow. Safe passage for such anomalies as us. The cardboard valentine. The metered smile. Approving negligently of the touch. The dress. In long sequences of bourbon and beer. The afterward discarding us. In favor of more potent illusions.

I could die that way. There in the past. But how then could it have happened. I could go there. Tease the grapes out of their shoes. But whose footprints who have led me here.

The angels with their fingers on the shutter. Coaxing dead cameras from their comas. Talking us into thinking we had seen. Heaven. or some place near to it. Where solvent gods still answer questions of skin.

In nightmares we still trust aren't real.

Amuse me. Make it hard to laugh. Soil. Preaching to her toes. Grass. Jesus naming the creatures again. They're still new enough? He begs.

Strong. Bitter words contradict. The melodies of the damned. I was a scarecrow for a while. Lying about what was guarded. To the hungriest. I was straw. And old shirts. No one would want to wear again. Telling the lies the grown tired of.

I was fields. Tall stalks. Striving for the sun.

I could hear their footsteps. Roll in the mud of each decision. Hookers raising their pieces. as the need tapers off. Small flowers on long stems. Hoping the rain will return. Hoping that the rain that has fallen will last.

Her skin like a drugstore. waking up. Tomorrow seems a punishment. The disease more relevant than the cure. Trying on new men.

They're all old she says.

Nothing's changed.

Deafness sour on her parting lips. Her eyes the verb. Her ass the adjective. In short lived narratives called touch.

Done.

The barbarians satifsfied. The clock indifferent. As she sauntered between now and if. The future on its toes. Windows everywhere. To glimpse. To imagine. The names of colors we'd so often used. The past on catapults. Without a clear target.

The deafness. The fungus of her fingers. Spreading. In deep infections. Unreachable itches.

The reservoir. Pennies gathered. In a thousand misplaced wishes. Collecting dimensions. Parallel to the moments. Travelling time in thrusts and jabs. Cutting her wrists with the sharp edges of the sheets.

Bored.

Uninterested.

Fingers and toes. Eyes and lips. Clay pots drying in an empty oast. Hardening so long.

Just to make the falling matter.

Structure. The dark counting toes. Fingers. Naming the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. As it comes from behind her. In quick autopsies of the moment the cause of death is determined.

Delirium. Torn parachutes carry on fingertips of wind. Feign flight in their falling.

Candles sweat. And cameras bark. Half way up broken ladders. In buildings on fire. On dolls we once thought real. The skin falls off. And I begin to love the skeletons that they are left.

Awakened by the sun. Closing my eyes again. Trying to see.

The blood on those pretty pitchforks. Panties searching for their pussies. For their periods. Blood and children all the same to skin. Flaunting the obvious. Men and gods the same when you're a woman. Easy to manipulate. Lost in a seas of tits.

I think Satan was right when he said man shouldn't have free will. It's wasted on us.

Can't wake up. Peel the polish from her ass. In chokes of color no one sees. Can't fall asleep. Dissemble the skeleton. Label the bones. For later. When war is tired enough. To consider surrender.

Lost.

Life is just this. These hours. Doomed to contemplate all the things that haven't happened. Life is strong. It goes on and on. Life is fragile. It's constantly tripped. By the footprints we made before it found us.

I am lost. Too far ahead. Waiting for the world to catch up. Telling lies I already know they won't believe.

Now. Like a guillotine. Comes crashing down. Headless aggregates assume the limbs left behind by the dead.

Dominoes deciding whether to fall. The giant clinging to the vine. In bare combustibles. Love is a target. We just random throws of darts.

I was looking back in time. Seeing it look at me. In years that had already happened. Still no truth emerging from the fates we'd shared.

I was casting spells. Working the magic of the timeline. Pieces of tomorrow spilling into my potions. The paradox blossoming into somewhere new.

We were creating each other. In places neither of us had been. High on the drug of missing ghosts. Crippled hearts that walk. Only to return to the graves they never saw dug. Bodies. Corpses on the edges of the decision that would make this timeline stick.

There are so many others that would be better, but this is the one that I want.

Alone.

Wearing tomorrow against my thighs in whispers of when. Time was still some place we had in common.

The little lies time tells to make us happen. All the ways in which we never do.

It's different now. I am. Different. Life. Pieces of brick. Crumbling. Still enough to walk upon. Fall down. Quietly. Scrape knees already skinned. No injuries. Just muscle visible. Still.

Stubborn bones. Arguing with the bandage. Useless cycles. Heal. Tear again. Until only your own words know who you are.

It would be naive to say I've ever known anyone other than myself. It would be weakness to admit how often I've wanted to.

Know them.

Be known by.

Matter. At all. After the night is over.

Matter. What is it?

Just pieces of oblivion endlessly making us smaller. Matter. Fragments of forever whoring the lie of touch.

That I could feel. The bony shape of trust. The morbid density of lust. Or repair the the balloon before it pops.

Matter.

My molecules invading his.

Like we were already back there. And the future couldn't stop us. Because everything had already happened.

I'd like more choices. Two aren't enough.

When I choose not to decide no one listens.

He has the road maps on his ass. I just didn't follow it. Now I don't know where I am, except that no one else is here. I shunned those little conformities. And now I've been shunned by the bigger ones.

I think god sells lemonade on the side of road. In wooden stands. Out of plastic pitchers. Like any child would. Broke and naive to the conditions of humanity. I think god is the big bad wolf in all those fairy tales where children get eaten. Cut his belly open. Save them. Save everyone.

From the paranoia. The hysteria of those that would try to control us.

I think love isn't that different. Serving best only those that would abuse it. Taking advantage of the rest.

I think I'm thirsty. And I'd gladly buy any one's lemonade. Including god's. if it could cure my thirst.

But I'm just silly like that. I want results.

The window was open. Just a bit. The darkness wheezing in careless and distracted through a lazy mesh. It was getting warmer. The seasons change for some. Their environment the detonator. The seasons change. Stoic and uninterested in how we are affected.

She watched. As her skeletons tried on their new flesh. Certain some would fit. Or at least, that she could make it so. The puke of skin paramount in all her decisions. Both selfish and selfless.

She wasn't sure she'd ever been the latter, but assumed there must have been moments. When even open windows still couldn't see. What was right in front of them.

And that she had determined was her only advantage.

A lie is only as good as the person who tells it. They're seldom told by good people. But when they are I listen.

The window was barely open. The darkness wasn't even listening to what I had to say. I was trying to write. Pretending that I could.

Close that window and still still see. The people on the other side of it. Become that glass that knew. What was so close. So far away. Lie again. Say I could see. What mattered most.

Or ever had. Tried to mean anything.

Little explosions more than enough to kill everything.

Charmless curs on their way to oblivion. Their gods in choker chains. Pets. Nothing more.

Rag dolls in sequin gowns. Rotting stages for thoughtless soliloquies. Shakespeare farts and Bible diarrhea fill this toilet of a country. Say the lie loud enough. Eventually people will begin to believe.

Devils wearing their white wings. Gods with deep pockets.

The choices overwhelm me. Choose liar A or liar B. All the power belongs to the wealthy. Though there are more of us. Sad little children hiding under mother's dress. Fucked hard in the head when daddy comes calling.

The fact that people think they have a choice. Worse yet that they think there is a good one. Raped in the ass or raped in the cunt. Is there a discernible difference?

The idea that people still tout our disappearing freedoms. That soldiers die protecting rights we no longer possess.

Even the right-wing should be angry.

But no one ever is.

I was god once. Situated in the heavens. Stark and calm. Bits of midnight like treason. There's no way to be a god. Other than betrayal.

Show me your heaven. I'll show you mine. So many gods to argue with. As if even one were listening. The difference between then and now lost in my definition of why.

What god would knock on my door? Only to run away before I can answer it?

I am god. As much as any human is. Deities created in our image. Never having to die. Never having to look for heaven because it's waiting for us.

Eliminate death and everyone is happy. Eliminate blame and everyone is christian.

I was god once. Before all these blunt Edens began to manifest. I was god and I heard the prayers of women and men. All searching for something that couldn't be found.

Cotton candy tells her where to melt. Distribution of gods. Kind and malevolent. In the resolve of mediocre chemicals. The man wearing gods' gloves. Fingers drawing samples of her. Pieces of pussy. Prozac if you're old. Heroin if you're young.

I could sleep if I wanted to. If you would let me. Close my eyes without still seeing. The fingers of life pointing. As if it matters what I say.

The octopus with so many arms still cannot hold. Or ever hope to touch. All the raindrops her body decides must fall. Sorry is the wolf who cried pig too often. Now no one believes him. When there is something to kill. While the boy is praised.

The hunger is easy. Absolute. One dimension to the person. Taste. The sour of not saying anything. The rubber between her teeth filling up with poetry.

Puzzle pieces. To assemble. Looking like people.

It's only natural that the fish should swallow the hook.

The urge. Selfish as it is. Stems of skin emerging from below. Pop guns and headless barbies our summary outline of the world. Even if I could learn, who could teach this deflated boat to swim. Life is random. And people do forget.

Those demons write their encyclopedias. Turning weakness into fact. The truth is whatever you wish to believe.

We must isolate it. Bits of bacteria on a swab tip of cotton. Each word an experiment. Desperate for gods loud enough to define it. Urgently to prove it can't be done.

If there is time in which we live then there must also be other places. If we can count how many. We can count how few.

If there is time at all. Ripples in the universe to tempt the lost. Into going places they don't belong. And thinking they can stay there.

The truth is only a distraction on this path to knowing. What I want.

And if I can't go back because I was never there. No one can remember my mistakes.