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wounded_integers
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in a silent way
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giving up isn't giving in. it's saying, "i see the way the world is, and i choose not to fight battles i stand no chance of winning." i used to think there was some nobility in defeat. i don't believe that anymore.
wounded integers keep on climbing. they multiply. they trip over themselves like clumsy whores, lost in a maze of their own design. they've misplaced the blueprint. and when memory fails you, all that's left is the stumbling.
sometimes you run into someone else on your way down, and they don't fall over, and you're steadied for a time. sometimes you wake up on the floor with a dagger of pain in your soft midsection. some call it a belly. some a barricade.
every lover is a liar, selling bracelets door to door. each naked wrist that's lied to leaking blind trust from every pore.
you are what you are
and i am what i am
and we are everything
and nothing at all.
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130124
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... |
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unhinged
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entropy_paste
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130124
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... |
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in a silent way
|
some days getting out of bed is like trying to drag a grand piano through a strange city with a length of rope wrapped around the instrument and a fast-burning cigarette for company. the cigarette isn't for smoking; someone of indeterminate gender holds it, lights it, and lets it burn between the fingers of an outstretched hand. they stand just close enough that i can make out most of the broad outlines of their body and thin tendrils of rising smoke. i'm meant to get to where they are before the air eats the cigarette down to the filter. i pull the free end of the rope over my shoulder, and strain, and slide forward against my own momentum in tiny increments.
i hear something that sounds like fabric being torn somewhere far behind me. it's the fraying of the rope, creating the illusion of progress when there is none.
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130125
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... |
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fir3cuB3
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what the fuck
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130125
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... |
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fir3cuB3
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wtf
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130125
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... |
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in a silent way
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(only you can determine for yourself what the fuck is and what the fuck is not. i wouldn't presume to know.)
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130125
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... |
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in a silent way
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should go to bed. keep wasting time instead. put it off because of the obstacle course of psychic shit that needs to be negotiated before sleep can happen. same old story. if i tell it to myself enough times, i might be able to wear myself down to the point that it stops sounding so familiar.
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130126
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... |
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in a silent way
|
need more hours to piss away, and claws to scratch that deepest itch until it bleeds indifference.
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130127
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... |
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in a silent way
|
rust_is_just_the_metal_weeping. and there's that sound again, high-pitched, keening, familiar. it wants to be fed. the more i try to starve it, the louder it gets. go away. find another pair of ears to subject to your hungry song. i'll starve myself if that's what it takes to dent your resolve. we'll grow weak together.
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130128
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... |
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in a silent way
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last_night_i_saw_your_face, doubled over with anguish, as if a face could be the body it rests on. and i wanted to touch you, but my wrists were bound in barbed wire. so i set free my breath in the frozen night air, hoping it might reach you and carry with it something meaningful. and i watched it scatter and fade like the weakest mist, solving nothing at all.
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130129
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... |
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in a silent way
|
rain melts snow
feet turn to slush
and break apart
the violence of stillness
too dull to be brilliant
too brilliant to be dull
slow moist engine, underpowered
rouses a fragrant shell
of gristle and bone
crouched in punishing light
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130130
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... |
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in a silent way
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botched
every effort
every sure thing
the safe approach
leads to nothing of any real value
the risks
yield no lasting reward
the ladder
sends wood slivers into skin
like uneven bullets
from a homespun gun
a rigid ladder
leans against a vertical surface for support
a rope ladder
is hung from the top
swinging like a pendulum
relentless
in the repetitive logic of its movement
the ladder i climb
does not lean
is unsupported
does not sway
rungs break apart at random
not that i'll fall;
falling implies
having a place to land
or something to fall into
there isn't one
there isn't anything
i go on climbing
until my knuckles meld with my palms
following a steep incline to nowhere
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130201
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... |
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in a silent way
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apparently feet and wood have something in common. they both want to break.
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130201
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... |
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in a silent way
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four eyes pass between a few blinks and fuzzy thoughts. how does that happen?
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130202
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... |
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in a silent way
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eyes become hours, and they all slip away.
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130202
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... |
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in a silent way
|
here's another one of those stupid snake-eating-its-own-tail modes of thinking. i can make it better. i can make it right. or, at least i can get across what i meant to say. what i mean to say now. what i've wanted to say for years. not to elicit a response, exactly...but maybe it'll mean something. maybe it'll resonate on some level. maybe getting across what was always there, just waiting for a venue of expression that never came, will somehow be worth all the trying and failing. or it would at least be therapeutic to purge that, and to know it was finally heard, regardless of the outcome.
but what's the point? i tried to make that connection years ago, and it was snuffed out, slapped away, shut down. you can't force someone to let you in. you can break the door down, but by the time you get inside they'll be living somewhere else, and all you'll be left with is an empty house to inhabit. might as well make it your own. hey, that chair looks pretty comfortable. fuck it. i'll sit down a while. put my feet up. see who comes to knock on my door. it's my house now.
the roof needs some work. could use a fresh coat of paint. i'm not sure i like this wallpaper. the toilet's been backed up for years. this bed isn't big enough for me.
but it's my house now. so it'll have to do.
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130203
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... |
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in a silent way
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i don't know why i still care about these things. i don't know why they still sting. i don't know why i'm so stupid. if i did know, well...i'd be a much smarter person. and then where would we be?
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130205
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... |
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in a silent way
|
sweaty and spent after giving what little i had to offer last night, i wanted to curl up under cover of a dark shadow and hide. but that wasn't possible. so i went through the motions of trying to pass myself off as human. i felt less like a cornered animal, and more like a vampire in the sun. i'm just not much of a social creature anymore. but apparently i can fake it well enough that no one can tell the difference. so there's that.
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130209
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... |
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in a silent way
|
it was all a_waste_of_time. so i'll make wine from the ashes of every misguided impulse and wasted moment, and i'll drink that mutant liquid down, even if it makes my stomach turn. might as well get something for my trouble.
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130214
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... |
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in a silent way
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i wake up screaming with my left arm numb, convinced i'm having a stroke. my heart is pounding so hard, it's going to explode in my chest. i'm dying. i'm going to die, with all the lights in my brain switched on so i can experience the whole thing in horrible, vivid detail. i'm fine. i'm fine. i'm fine.
keep telling yourself that.
i wish i had someone to hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay. that's not going to happen. i don't want to do this anymore.
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130220
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... |
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in a silent way
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all's well that doesn't end at all but stretches out like a yawning smile of a ditch to trip and fall into and dream of nothing while the ground offers no more answers than the air around it. same old song and dance. different shoes. same old creased pants. different blues.
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130506
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... |
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in a silent way
|
the world is not round. the sky is not blue. the sun's a mirage. the circle is you. in the absence of a finger, i'll trace you with my eyes. and we'll live to become all the things we despise.
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130517
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... |
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in a silent way
|
there's room to move, but no place to hide. and only strangers visit, to talk of things with no shared history to give them meaning. there's no point in asking who's there when i already know. it's just another version of me. another xeroxed self, losing clarity in the rendering.
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130525
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... |
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in a silent way
|
now there's panic in the brain sometimes dressed up like a physical harbinger of something near and awful. a look it never quite managed before. not this way. i mentally shake myself, a half-dead dog ridding itself of accumulated water. the lights slam back on, stubborn as they are. somewhere there's a voice without a larynx telling me all i'm doing is postponing the inevitable. whatever it is. whenever it's going to get here. whatever its method of transportation.
stop moving and weigh yourself down with the moisture of words, then, says another voiceless voice. maybe i will. maybe that isn't bad advice. better to be heavy with words than fleet-footed without them. right?
right.
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130901
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... |
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REAListic optimIST
|
Inspiration traipses across the edge of my vision like a bird of prayer, feasting on creatures of fancy, shitting on the instruments of my occupation.
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130901
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... |
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in a silent way
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not all days are created equal, but the last several seem to be born of the same laugh. not faeries. like things expelled in the course of laughing. not pleasant or unpleasant. just there, and then not there, and then there again.
so_it_goes.
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130921
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... |
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in a silent way
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teeth now. teeth have a lot to think about when they have nothing to do with themselves. they stutter and kick rest away a time or two before retreating, filaments of clam falling back into shell, made hard by something older than years and wise enough to keep its predictions vague. vague is what now looks like. vague is easy enough. it doesn't burn like sun on snow. it doesn't soothe like the large poultice of another sleeping someone, doesn't ask or tell or infer. it only is.
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140116
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... |
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in a silent way
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after teeth it was breath. breath was the thing it was. breath i take for granted, always there, always its self-sustaining self. it made me question its indefatigability, which should be a word if it isn't. i'm pretty sure it is. i'll take it for granted like i took breath for granted, until i didn't anymore, until i sat up to keep from stopping a reflex that wouldn't have stopped flexing on its own, but don't tell it that because it might get some ideas, might put on weight just to see how it feels.
it wasn't breath for long, and soon it'll be something else.
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140126
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... |
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in a silent way
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after breath it was face, that cream-coloured neck-dwelling papier-mâché. it was something about the left side. the left side being a side to pay attention to is something that goes back years and miles, to that night of singing about a new companion. maybe it goes back farther than that, to the night of a violin doing a distressed cat squeal and a war of glares passed from person to person by a reluctant intermediary. i don't know what it is about the left side. but that's the side it usually is. it was the right side a time or two, and just the realization that it wasn't the left side again was a strange thing to be covered in. realizations can confuse themselves with bedsheets that way. they won't keep you warm, but they can talk you into believing they might, for a time.
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140207
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... |
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in a silent way
|
something should go here now, but the motivation to feel properly wounded isn't there. it's strange to feel your heart shrug when you were expecting immolation. strange to sense the indifference of the messiest part of you when you were sure it would dip a cigarette in the flame so it would have something to smoke while watching itself burn in the cracked mirror of your chest. i wouldn't even mind the heat on a day like today. this goddamn winter just won't end.
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140325
|
| |
... |
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|
in a silent way
|
after face and the left side, it was numbness. then it was the sensation of falling. there was nothing to fall into. there was something to fall off of, but the sensation was into, not off of, and there was no getting away from it in the few long seconds it was there.
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140326
|
| |
... |
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in a silent way
|
after numbness and the sensation of falling, it was being watched. realizing you're being watched has a way of making perfect sense of everything and giving a queasy answer to every question there was never enough courage to ask, but only in that one specific drifting place. anywhere else and it makes no sense at all, doesn't answer anything, is just something secreted from a paranoid sweat gland short circuiting in the brain. and who would be watching anyway?
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140330
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| |
... |
|
|
in a silent way
|
i am an animal
carrying two broken teeth
that don't belong to me
yours the hand that put them there
yours the hand that takes them both away
i was gone before i left
and now i'll go on living
in the husk of who i was
and wonder
where did i go
|
141221
|
| |
... |
|
|
in a silent way
|
for a while there were insects, frenzied in their directionless flight. now there's nothing. but nothing doesn't last. nothing's just a placeholder with no ambition at all.
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170624
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