Lake Summers

The reflection in the water and the way the clouds moved overhead, quickly, scaling the sky like a puff of smoke, it all just culminated, I suppose. I had no other words for it, and that seemed to be happening a lot more lately. The way everything revolved around me seemed to take my breath away at every instance that it could. A drop of rain off of the roof and into the dirt after a short shower, or the wind blowing a palm frawn in the middle of the day, or just some people walking on the side of the road when the heat is coming down, heads looking down and up every now and then; everything struck me in a way that reminded me of the absurdity of life. Camus had already written that story though, so what did I have left to fill in at all? Even if it didn't matter, couldn't some one still ask for the meaning back into it? Maybe, and that was the key word really.

Maybe.

Last night the world rushed by. The sky was dark and the clouds just covered up any stars that might have shone that evening. So all there was was the darkness of the sky and the light that reflected off of it. Amber, dark amber, though, light sometimes and even a little bit purple. All the colors came together in a strange way that made it feel as if I wasn't just in the backseat of a car looking out the window, fireflies of orange light passing by over my head; streetlights. No, it felt like a dream. I put my head back and the moon was covered slightly behind the clouds. No stars next to it, but the trees passed by in front of the moon, blotches of black capillaries, veins, branches in front of it like big, black masses. And what was I to do in that instance? I felt as if my life was just a dream again, my vision the camera. I was used to the feeling but, still, every time it came back around I was still alienated completely from myself, disassociation, depersonalization; it wasn't terrible. No. To be honest I felt as if I was just where I was suppose to be, the only place that I could logically be, in fact. And knowing that I was suppose to be there warmed me. Yes, the only place that I could have been and the only place my feet would have taken me.

Patterns and all that. It'd all reflect in lines of light against the metal gleaming off of the buildings. Was this it all just fast forward to the center? I had always hoped that the tape of my life would always play, though. But oh well. The glass was mostly blue but in one of them, the golden sun reflecting like some ones spirit flying out of their eyes, gold and burning with passion. I scratched at the stubble on my frown feeling lost in an empire of working humans, lost in one of their tunnels. Then I smiled; no one knew! No one in the world knew what exactly was happening here but me! I the only one who could actually feel everything that was defining this moment in the infinite loop of time. It melted in the back of my mind as I stood there, trying to decide whether or not I could walk up and ask where the printing room was. (Something beat through the air, through me, between the gap in my heart beat. It rang with a low and slow pulse, a bass note in the very back of my soul.) 

Sunday morning, steamy out of the cup and light falling in through the windows in rays of white, white purity. And nothing was making a sound, sleeping in on another lazy day, trying to keep ahold of their dreams with the tips of their fingers. That's what I had been looking for: something small and concrete to put some gross amount of meaning in instead of everything that was vague. Maybe that was it.

Morning was coming, and hopefully everything would be on time.

Eyes Like the Rising Sun

The sun rose that morning and it was as if the sky just took a breath out for once, minty green as if some one had just brushed their teeth. Only it was that kind of wind that blows in after the rain had set in, in the morning, rushing in with the dew and the clouds as they all retreat further on into the horizon, past the milky twilight. Nothing went to plan any day that it was, whether or not the morning sky was red or yellow or orange or blue, it always turned out the same. My eyes opened up just like any day, and I rolled off of my bed onto the floor feeling like a newborn baby rushing out onto the floor and into reality. Everything was back and it was the same old dream I always dreamed when I was awake. Five in the morning and wondering whether or not I should go back to bed, get those few extra hours in until it turns into several, until it's 12 or 1 in the afternoon. That was the plan, that was always the plan, but it didn't turn out that way. I felt as though there was dew outside of my window, hovering over the forest, like a cloud that I could touch and swim in for myself. The forest was calling out every name on the face of the earth but no one was listening. We were all sleeping. I was sleeping. You were sleeping.

How would we find anyone if we were all so opiated?

Looks didn't matter and neither did deoderant so I just put on a shirt and some pants and boots. Every now and then you wake up like the wind and you just want to rush out there into the sky as much as possible by running as much as possible until you start to lift into the sky. Maybe that would happen. When I took a step outside I felt like everything in my life came down to maybe's, and whether or not that would change depended on small weights that effected the entire system of gears or pulleys, some sort of mechanical image, any, really. but just small fractions of weights, hardly enough to change that maybe into action, but just so. I looked up at the sky (pasty gray and somewhat dark blue and stuck inside of a misty cloud walking into the forest,) and realized that so much action has been due to inaction. I sighed and ran through the forest once I reached the trail.

Green, red, and blue, just like that, one two three whenever the urge comes up. And why not? I think too many people chain themselves in the idea that they can't do something. Chains made of excuses, what people would think, how society would react, effort and money. What did it matter? And why should it have to be a forest? Or the morning?

I woke back up onto a beach. The wind stung my face, washing it clean like marble like a cold, metal brush. I didn't know, my eyes were heavy and I felt like I was asleep. Would you come up in the tide? I feel like, if you did, it'd be something better than driftwood, some secret treasure that's been underneath the dark water for years, decades, centuries. But not something ridiculous and obnoxious, something simple and nice. Something that you could look at and put a life to it. I've always wanted to do that.

One day I'll go on a road trip with everyone and write a story for each barn or tractor or broken-down vehicle I see. They'll all be about people being people with mild emotions. Maybe one person will be bipolar. Another will lose his head. Maybe even one will have multiple personalities, but probably not.

One day I'll wake up from this, right? Not that I want to or need to. I like it here. The wind always blows in. You can watch it sweep in from the sea. Slow and beautiful like dew.

Title Title

The tree in the back of your house.. I'm not sure, I've been thinking about it lately is all. One time I woke up; it was morning, but it didn't matter what time it was. It was one of those days where the sky was just all white and gray, like a solid gradient from one end to the other, stuck with neutrals and completely colorless. Every now and then, when the wind blew hard enough, a rush of rain would come down. It wasn't sad, and I know it'll sound sad coming from me, but it was as if the sky was trying to keep itself from crying and the wind was that whisper in it's mind telling it to let go of any restraint, to just experience the emotion fully. But I promise it wasn't sad; it was beautiful. Maybe all of my romantic ideas are misplaced these days, attached to the earth and it's seasons and tides. I sat down on the ground and it was wet but what did it matter? When the rain came down I would close my eyes and breath in the air.

It was cool, and the rain on my tongue was so fresh and pure.

But after every gust of rain, everything would glow. The green greener, alive, almost. It shimmered in the white light and it was as if the entire world before my eyes glows with a fogginess that enveloped me. The leaves sparkled like emeralds and jade, if those stones had any spirit in them. I closed my eyes for a little bit trying to lose my mind, throw it away into the darkness of the backs of my eye lids so that I could find it again and be reborn in this place. Another gust of rain came by as I fell into the shadows of my mind. After it stopped, I could distinctly feel the droplets evaporate off of me slowly, leaving a cold finger print of moisture where they used to be holding me. When I opened my eyes the sky was bright white and the tree in your backyard glistening as if it were you coming out of the shower. For the first time I felt completely made new, even if I was the same as before. Just as if the same me had walked out of one place and walked into another place, another birth.

You knocked on the sliding glass door and when I turned around you just shook your head. It's as if you know everything, but you'd hate that. You'd rather I know everything.

But I'm smart enough to know that if you have as much curiosity as me then you still have so much to learn.

Nothing

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Are you alright?"

"No. Heh, I'm not alright. At all."

"What's wrong?"

"I'm never alright. I'm always on the verge of something but I never take off-"

"Li-"

"It's because I'm afraid. I've always been afraid. Afraid to show everything that's inside of me, afraid that I might show something that's not even real. Once it gets down to the point where you're questioning your own memories for validity.. I don't know."

"Can you just tell me what's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that I've the same place that I was four years ago, walking through these woods feeling completely sorry for myself and on the verge of crying, but not, because some one might see and I'm afraid that they'll see how I'm feeling. That's why I always tell you I'm alright, I'm afraid that you'll see. I don't want anyone to see, I have this sick fixation with everyone thinking that I'm something mighty. I enjoy to be the one people go to, at least some people. I have this obsession with being the level headed one that can always help. If I ever tell you I'm not alright then.. I don't know. It's trust, it's all about trust, and I don't trust easily. I don't even know how I can be the level headed one, I'm so all over the place with my emotions. That's why people love me, because I try, but I'm never alright, there's always something underneath my skin, or my bones, or my organs, eating away at any happiness there is. It's because no one knows, no one knows anything, the humiliating truth. We're all hopeless, I think.

"The thing is that I'm just a kid trying to be an adult and I feel as though I missed my chance to be a kid. Don't feel bad though, you can't make a time machine for me."

You and Your Tongues

How many times do you have to look up to the sky and give her a smile then a kiss to start to realize that every inch you take in this ride is another second from the life you could have had? Does it even bother you or reach your senses that everything has just been lost in every second? All the possibilities that exist, have ever existed, or will ever exist, forgotten, trampled over, and murdered by inaction and impossibility. Maybe so, maybe not, I suppose either way the game would have unrolled the way that it did, whichever way that might be.

The last time I saw you I wanted to communicate to you the beauty of your own mind, or of every mind, but not just that, feed your ego almost, see if I could get it up and walking again, even though that seems to end sadly for the most part. (All greedy and greasy by the end of it as if I fed it some shitty hamburger rather than the fine truth.) So what now? Nothing lasted, nothing will last, and I can't help it, but I feel as though you and everyone else and everything else is just a person walking further and further into the horizon until they're just tiny ants on a hill, diving back underneath the dirt and sand and disappearing, as if they were never there to begin with.

I thought that it was time to have a smoke and I didn't even smoke; I would have had to bum a cigarette off of some one, and God knows that would be a lesson of bitchiness for myself. Only women can bum off of people and get away with it; they can pull at their hair and make their eyes shine a if it's nothing. Guys can't do that, so I sat back down into the couch that I was on after getting a refill of coffee. It was terrible. The sun came in through the window and everyone else was just passing me by without a thought on who I was or what I could be, or the thoughts that jumped around in my head. But I wasn't being selfish about it; I do it all the time, even though I try not to most of the time.

I look at all their faces glowing in the sun with sweat and stubble, or old makeup, and I try to think about all the amazing thoughts that must be in their head rolling around with laughter. I can only apply my thoughts into their heads, though, and every time I've ever gone up to some one to ask about it, as rarely as that is, the person has always looked at me like I was some sort of asshole asking to mine the brain cells out of their mind.

These days everyone's defensive; the funny thing is that they actually think it matters.

So I took out a piece of paper and just let it all down, the real nothingness that I was actually thinking about. I mostly think about nothing important, after all, just little segments of visions from a story I have yet to actually create, like some sort of vision into the future of a story, the future of my story; I didn't know, and that didn't matter either. It poured out in groups of words upon words, like bubbles in the surf of the sea that gather around each other as the wave rolls in, and staining the shore.

It was a note to some one, I'd tell you I didn't know who but the real truth was that I knew exactly who it was to, who it should be to, who I wanted it to be to but didn't have enough courage to actually give it to them. I knew that I'd end up keeping it for myself to read, like some prize of cowardice that I could look back on when I'm older and hopefully laugh about because I ended up happy either way. It ended in fake letters, just scribbles.

I looked back up into the cafe and everyone sat there bored on a computer or talking to each other about interesting things, but I knew no one, and all my friends were busy.

I sighed and finished my coffee, then decided to find a secluded spot in the woods some where or walk to the beach to lay down. I decided on the beach; less people bother you there.

Template of a Dark Night

It didn't matter; the wind blew either way, you little whisper of a person past the stones near the streams that ran throughout the mountain. Head resting on clouds and looking up at the stars that regained supremacy in the sky once more, after dragging down the sun giant. I'd watch it dwindle pass from the window of my room. Every time they sank back beneath a wave in the clouds, I'd say a prayer that would never reach them, never reach anyone. And when I was 14, I stopped sending them prayers and wishes every night, and then every week, every month, until now. Eventually the stars fell down forever, and the sun. The only thing that remained was that clouds and a constant maple sky. I believed it was because my wishes stopped holding them up, and I knew it.

So they went by, one, two, three, four. Like dominoes of colors from green to yellow to brown to white. And each time they went by the people would walk out into the day or the night or sometime in between when everything was either white or gray or black, dressed in dresses and suits of red. They'd go out there underneath the sky and look up and sing their prayers into the sky together, hoping to lift the stars back up from beneath the mountains, lift the sun from underneath the still water, and lift the moon out from beside the grass. What I thought it was, was that none of them said anything about anyone else, just about themselves. I sighed and let the world be for once when I was 18.

Became a person and thought more about myself.

He He He Him He's

You'd walk across the floor without even touching the ground, feet first above your body in a shade of blue that sent water spilling across your face in beams of light (white and cyan,) like the color of your eyes. It was the first I saw that day, before the sun really rose, more like twilight before morning I supposed. The air was cold and crisp and went through all the blotches of people as they wandered, endlessly unamused. She went by quickly enough, and I saw only a brush stroke of her face float by me. I turned around and ask where she was going and where she had been, but she didn't turn back around or answer me. It was as if her voice had been drowned out by the tidal wave of quietness. I turned back around after watching her and saw off in the distance multitudes of people wandering around mindlessly throughout the desert, or the oasis, or the mountains or the rocks or the dunes underneath the sky with it's porcelain stars and milky spiral galaxies. I'd watch them and their never-moving faces, their gliding eyes drooping down from their faces, glittering in the minimal light so that their eyes look more like large rain drops.

Porcupine top-hats gathered themselves around their heads like little flying, black specks around the skin of their foreheads, just spinning there back and forth. They all seemed to turn at once towards me and I felt my eyes widen as the pupils shrunk, all in a matter of seconds, just evaporating the life away from me, sucking it out of my open palms. I made eye contact and it was as if some sort of sinister breath came into me as I watched myself turn green at the sight of their rotting, orange flesh. I then had the distinct feeling that we were all ghosts running about in the desert of the back side of my Id's mind.

I was off and running into the furthermost reaches of the horizon, my hands stretching up into the sky and curling like fingernails into the blueness, into the yellows and the oranges and the amber light coming off of the treeline. (It was then that, inside of my mind, I sat down and began to meditate for awhile on the subject of mental union, and then continued to break off and dive into a deep prayer of thankfulness to the unconscious you behind all images.)

The rubber of my shoes left black prints on the sidewalk as I bolted forward into the steaming suburban metropolis that is Smalltown. Heat waves rose eating away at my tread as I felt everything come on and through me, and we were still in the desert but so much further away than before and it was then that I forgot about how time rolled on in a simple way and just embraced the now that was constantly inside of my perception, inside of your perception, in all of our perceptions. It sang there, sitting like cardinal in a canopy of green leaves and orchid buds, just smiling into the air and the sun as it shined on.

I kept running through each and every thought that could have changed my mind about the world but never really did, just dug me further into the hole that I was already in, that being, self denial. But they picked me up and sent me flying through the air and the stars and the planets as they sparkled like pearls in the sun floating there in the infinite sea that is space and time. And then it all melted away from me again, leaving me like the sea water leaves a shell that it had fallen into before, but was now flowing away and out of it as the tide pulled them all back in.

Oh Shammmanomen Moooooononnnnnnnn, MushuuuuMushuuuuuMuuuuuushuuuuuuu!

Thank you, thank you!

You Tinted

It was morning and the sky was bleak with muddy blue clouds and a pale white sky sobbing beneath. It was also the day that they crucified you, right there above where the old church used to be. Near the graveyard, but closer to where the playground was before they tore it down. I was wearing all black, just a jacket and some jeans. Everyone else brought suits and dresses and veils and umbrella's in case it rained. It did, but I didn't care. It didn't matter, especially then. At that moment nothing mattered because I felt like it was all over. For everyone else it was only a chunk but for me it felt like part of my being had been taken away, just bitten off by some mad shark as I swam towards the shore, away from the ocean that I was drowning in.

Maybe it wasn't as depressing as I remembered, but I was pretty sure. The church bell rang mysteriously. That's when I think you took your last breath. I wasn't sure, it was as if you were dead the entire time, but maybe I just wanted it to be more powerful than it really was. Either way it was, though. When I tell the kids I'll tell them that's when God snuffed you out, his hand in front of your mouth and closing the nostrils of your nose heartlessly and mercilessly.

We'll all pray to life in the garden every morning and wait for the sun to rise to know that it's alright to be alive. And on rainy mornings we'll run in the rain and praise your name. I hope that's alright with you. But I won't have kids, so I'll just do it myself. It seems a lot more lonely that way, but that's alright.

One day I'll learn how to get you back to where you should be.

After it was over everyone cleared out with those black guns pointed towards the sky. I stayed around until I was threatened and decided that it would be better to live. Besides, the way the light glinted off the ends of their barrels reminded me of the eyes of angels. I didn't know why. It all seemed to white and glorious, but I suppose that's how it always is. No one likes to proclaim to be the bad guy, only thugs and dirt. But the real sinister men and women are holy, are beyond gleaming in the light, glowing, even, with their own inner beauty. Do you get it now? It eats away at those around them; that beauty is hungry, it's toxic, it's unnatural. That's where we all went wrong. We looked at it with dazzling smiles and eyes of awe, and all it did for us was rot away at our hearts, at everyone's hearts.

Now what do we have left? What used to be flowing magma is now a hardened, cold diamond.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. That was the most boring. The morning will probably be raining, so if you want to see me I'll be out running along the old trails through the woods, behind where we used to meet. Near the lake and all. I'll look for you in the water, and you can look for me in the trees. I'm sure we'll find each other in between.

Your Eyes are Watching You

"Open the box; inside there is an unmarked tape. Your instructions are to watch the tape carefully looking for any sort of mistake, and every one that you do end up finding you must write down and record. Next, you must mail back the list of mistakes to the post box (PO Box 19904,) and, once reviewed, we will mail you back your results. Depending on what mistakes you found and the number, you will learn your level of cynicism, as well as your general likes and dislikes. In order for the tape to work, do not try to be nice or well mannered and sincerely disclose ANY and ALL mistakes you find in the film.

Thank you and have a good day.

-Intelligence Corporations, Inc."

That's all it said. When I started the film it was a boring piece, just little bits of home-made videos from some guys childhood. To say the least, I was very disappointed, and that's what I wrote down in the note that I returned to them. "This move, if you can call it that, was extremely disappointing." I never got a reply back, but it didn't matter, I know that I'm a cynic, and I really don't see much wrong with it. On the bright side, I'm almost always right. On the realistic side, what is right isn't generally very bright. So, my bright side is a bit dim, but either way, there's light.

I never ended up taking it down either, it's too big a part of my life at this point. Taking it down and hiding it again would show nothing, just the will that I've lost in embracing it as a part of me. And I know that might be dangerous, but I think that it's better that way: to know what is and isn't a part of you, to accept what is and isn't, to make things that aren't are, and to make what is isn't. It won't come alive, just be content with that at least.

And just for your information, the end is happy. Relatively so, at least. Well, happier than you'd expect. It's always happier than you expect in the end with life. Maybe not in a day, but by the end of the week it's better. Always at the end of the week, at least.

Just try not to mind me so much, it works out. You need more rest. I miss waking up with your chestnut hair near my face. I wish that you would just stop rolling on with every idea in your head so freely. Don't fall into what I always fall into.

We can only handle one of that.

The Trees and Songs

The trees used to be greener, and less flies went throughout their lingering bodies. Now everything is a bog, almost a swamp, most of the time. It rains just as much but God doesn't come out and clean away all the dirty tears anymore; I suppose he either got lazy or tired. The only difference between the two are their connotations though, and either way he decided to take a nap during my life time. I used to run through the leaves, though, back then he could still play tag in the wind, and I knew how to listen to his voice as it went through the leaves and flowers and ferns. Marco-Polo or something along those lines, only the blindness was the camouflage of the woods, and the shade of the trees.

It was like I'd always win in those days, even if I lost. 

At night the darkness would come up like high tide; slowly and upon you without taking your notice until it was there, all of a sudden, winking out the last bit of light at dusk, and whisking it away underneath the canopy of trees with a bright red flash, followed by amber light dwindling into cold slate, and eventually foggy black. The crickets would come out and sing into the stale wind, and the owls would call out, quietly, though, as they crisscrossed from tree to tree looking for anything on the ground to eat. Sometimes you would see two orange orbs blinking in the window, if only for a second, before disappearing into the bleak darkness of the woods. They looked like ghosts when I was a kid, and that was enough to make them into ghosts, the ghosts that followed me everywhere, waiting for me to fall asleep so they could sneak in and steal my body away from me in my dreams.

On nights like that all there was left was the ideas in the palm of your hands and the hopes that you had enough willpower to keep up a shield around your room, so that they didn't know who you really were, or what was inside of you.

Back then I was always waiting for the day that I could kiss lips like orange peels. 

Still am. We all are, and constantly.

My Demi-Gods

They stood like crystal mountains, glittering in the sun.

One day a tribe of humans moved into their domain, and constantly notminding, the mountains stood still and watched them move about and set up camp and eventually a town. Though, the tribe of humans had looked upon the mountains with greed, and one day they came up from the mud and climbed the mountains to chip away at their heads and bodies to build houses with the crystal stone. Though they could not penetrate the stone, the mountains were covered in mud that hardened, and stained the crystal black and brown.

(And the scary thing is that we all are. We'll let them climb over us and push their shit into our faces, let it sit there until it's part of us, and we'll be different, changed.)

He in Mid Air

I can't tell, can see; the shroud lifted from you so fast, like a smog sucked away in a flash. And it's good like liquid sun in and around the air, breathing with each intake of air (fills your lungs and you're a new you, a better you, a sullen you and a brimming you filled with glee on the edge, riding into the sun, into the end of the horizon with a black cape and you're gone. You're God.) (Was I the only one? Somewhere in the leaves looking out- a flash from the sun? lightning and storm? An image from the future of your eyes forlorn? Who knows, who knows, only the sky and the clouds, and they don't tell you until you reach up and kiss them on the lips.)

We would dive in, crystal blue around us and swarming, swirling, lazily and slowly, but fast enough for us. It'd grab us up and lick us clean, pick our minds, wipe them down; it would scrub our souls. I remembered it's touch each time the ocean curled around my toes on the beach; no one could see me, and I was alone. It's mostly like that. The sun smiles back, you're in it; are you? Can you smile with me?

Tilting Thistles

they sparkled in the daylight with red serpent teeth, (glittering at me from afar, safe and shoved into sheet metal like coals in the graveyard, in the garbage dump-you know it and I know it, like little bearded men with wild eyes that you fall into when they stare at you from afar, wondering who you are in your nice liuttle suit with nice little glasses and nice little shoes, their hand holding the heat as it fall off from the flame they've started in the pile of trash that they live in. But do you thgink it's even different? The only dfifference is that you kid yourself and they live in the future,) threatening as they glided across the marble floor, inch by inch with my quivering fingers (little spasms and shakes like a baby that had just been born, skin pink as a pig, face scrunched up into agony that it had just been born.) And to be honest it didn't attract me any more than the tin can that was crushed on the side of the street as I pulled into the forever empty lot that is your driveway. Eyes arry, mind you.

For God's sake, calm down, it's all the same. And why should it matter if it is?

Either way it is, God damn it.

But that's alright.

No matter what the van pulled into the alleyway last Tuesday and we're all rollingin it like pigs. We're all pigs, and who wears suits anyway? Only those capitalist kidder; they won't be taking their money to the games. But God bless them and everyone. But I remembered, the dark metal glinted in the dusk sun with that one orange eye, burning ferously like all the tigers in your pocket, ready to snap with tiny metalic fangs. And those leather cowboy boots with that black hat. Oh, whatever, whatever, at least your hair was like dark-roasted coffee beans in the afternoon sun.

But tell me when the sun has set what more you have in your wallet or your pockets or your hands. I give it all just as much worth as salt and ashes.