The Undoer.

I feel you under there getting the bills paid and
riling up the gold fish so that it continues its lap about the bowl to the cat's amazement. And I feel you under there giving the tightness to the spider's web and shaking the air molecules to rattle the leaves of the tree upon which the spider glides and catches the dim recollections of a short life within the glimmer of the fly's eye before wrapping up the prize for sustenance. I feel you under there. Taming the word in order to break up the long term relationship between understanding and action. I feel you under there letting our mindless actions deviate all our conscious wants. Stacking the blocks up very high married blind and garishly fine, up there in the sun and stars and moon. A green diamond up there. A simple mark upon my arm to let me know I feel you under there. A symbol of the knowing, the gone and done it, the tell tale sign, the lessening of dread, the yes and no, of the feeling of you under there. Oh, Undoer undoing everything to make it seem like where we are isn't where we want. Undoing the storm that passed without event to instead drop gracious lightning bolts down on the birdhouse that was the object of affection for the single woman who stared longingly out the picture window at those cardinals and bluejays streaming through the clouds like streamers of the pageant. Undoing the work of the earthworm and leaving the soils barren where we can see that what we do here is futile until there is a realization that we are on a path towards our own undoing. I feel you under there and it tickles.

Paisley Femme Fatale.

Can she be like Anne Oakley reigning supreme upon a braying steed slathering with comic books shredding down upon the trails browning and brittle amongst the bridled adolescent dreams of the boys fallen asleep at last watch. Or could she be like tin girl soldier all arms and legs awkwardly snaking one skinny limb around the corner to carefully replace the cosmos to their sense of order without the penny eyed young man noticing. A perfumed doll of glare and shadow is perched upon a mountain of lacy white pillows and bloody neckties. I'm easily wounded. Her eyeliner's the fur of the puma. I sit with a frilly smile embroidered on my face with the past laid over my brow like a shroud. I could've just said I'd let her take her time. I could've neared the wreckage with the steely gaze in my eyes bludgeoning my surroundings. I could've acted for the Oscar and held the broken hope in my hands like an award. But I rode off into the horizon of a bottle for six months and came out on the other side of the Pacific rim. And the doves are swirling with the future in mind. The dark shapes are waving white sheets and darning the socks that would've been used for the bandits costumes. The ones that would've taken everything. They didn't and I've still got this grin up there where the emotion comes from. They didn't, those bandits, take everything. The paisley kerchief hanging there slack does its slow bobbing in the wind and never unveils the lover that shot me through the heart. Surprisingly, life is going on and that lofty idea still lingers undisturbed and waiting to happen. She waltzes slow through my dream, waiting for me to find her and finally fall in love.

That Man's Dreamcatcher Earring.

Don't look into that dreamcatcher earring too deep. Inside that tiny red jewel lies all the nightmares that tried to get into that man's mind while he slept with a stuffed lamb clutched in his arms. Inside there is the tearing of a universe where the love and loss all come at you together. Arm in arm the insane and the destitute red rover across the yard of your childhood with eyes aglow and dripping iodine stained brown with sadness. The orange streaks ordain you into the ministry of memory loss and catatonia. Your madness roams out upon the dearly defiant desert a thousand miles long and your dehydration escalates into a frenzy while the vultures whisper loving tunes of digesting your body rotting. Your mind is carrion and you are trash floating in a gutter should you look too deep into that man's dreamcatcher earring. These desolate feelings are why he wears it at all times, this stylish dreamcatcher earring. Should he fall asleep, he'd be protected from the cacophony swirling about in the cyclone touching down at this moment. Should he take a catnap he would not be the mouse. His protection is a guarantee that there is a black death rearing it's ugly head for everyone lest they erect a wall about their souls to hold back the chorus of massacre and pestilence. Yes, it seems melodramatic, and yes, it is. But what if it weren't overreacting? What if this man's stylish dreamcatcher earring was the only thing holding him from oblivion? The crimson jewel like a pulsating heart catches your eye for a reason.

Empty Gray Landscape.

On the road westward and trying to keep to the left where the ocean stands silent like a 1920's picture show; black and white and cold. Ashen gray, we all look into everyone else's eyes and keep our lockets clasped with our hearts betting on the failure of the other. Our trip lacks a sense of direction. He's self conscious and she is immutable and the other stands upon the outcrop of tossing sheets like clouds in negative relief. Developing mute tones in the dark room they are three little personalities without working senses. They just want to keep moving for the possibility and hope of it all. Their lives are all wrapped up in folds of taut skin enveloping them like crepe paper. They taste acrid. They would be bitter if they could feel. They are like statues and I have a feeling it won't end well. Because the ocean has stopped and they three stand on the shore in a freeze frame. The reel has stopped and the crowd breathes in a guttural breath of stale air. A realization spreads across their collective consciousness; it's like a mirror breaking. The history was written for failure, for neither side winning. For the trenches to be dug and the stalemate to continue even after the tide has ebbed. There is no way out, these stolid figures in profile seem to say. The closed sign swings in the window of the teller booth while the stork stands there with an infant swaddled in plastic sheeting looking to make a deposit. Looks like another orphan is born through gone-for-broke transactions. Looks like we'll just carry ourselves onward down the road ever westward. Those three sculptures just look forward enrapt with the silence of the sea just there no matter how improbable. These words are unraveling and I'm not here to make sense of them for you.

An Absence of Choice.

He awakens in a sweat and looks in the mirror. He is looking more and more like the man who is doing it in Mulholland Drive. It's because of that poor thought in his mind that keeps coming back. Like a lazy susan in a diner stooped upon a dead highway; those sickeningly sweet desserts revolving, coming back again and again. Here is the idea: there is a woman out there with no face. There is a woman out there with two scalps and no face. There is a woman out there without eyes to look into, without tongue to form syllables, without cheeks upon which tears spill over; with none of these but a personality like a whip still. This plagues his evermore tormented soul and he awakens over and over thinking of what this could mean. What would become of him if should she walk in the door with hairstyles done up well. If she should storm in full of spite and begin her diatribe on his worthlessness; all these words pouring from a hole, an absence. All these arguments irrefutable due to the untraceable nature of it all. How can he defend himself if there is no source? If there is a black hole where there should be a target? No, he won't do it, he'll just sweep the iridescent blue box into the soiled paper bag and he'll keep her in that fantasy where she is falling in love and where the suicide and murder has yet to occur. He will be the torment, he will be the ghost in the hallway. That difference between loss and gain is blurred when there is a choice. She'll stay back with her visage like mist and he'll continue pacing in the alleyway wondering when the wall will crumble to reveal his plan.

Sunken Rainbow Voodoo.

I thought that the dark arts would give me some sort of perspective on that which stalked me in the night. Waking upon cool nights with a lightning bolt teasing my chin, my hair prickly and brazen, my eyes dance fantastic. My toes are lost years of my life keeping me afloat. My ears lean out over the chasm of the sonic landscape like tormented antennae. My skin is a blanket of oil billowing out over the surface of a sea unknown and uncharted. All the organization under the surface fights and breathes and longs to see the burning coal of a sun once more before sinking to the depths beneath. My hands are crooked gangsters screaming down lost highways towards the nuclear glow teeming upon the horizon. They lost their motivations to two bit bookies years ago, their direction askew across the torment of a bet that took everything. My feet are tired junkies spilling their guts in methadone clinics, unable to take themselves anywhere. The needle crowded with disease looks like a parole officer in the effervescent moonlight. My brain looks out across the jagged water from the lighthouse with a toothpick hanging from its mouth. The toothpick is a method of acting that helps to lose a sense of being. And two voodoo dolls just fell down from the heavens. And the darkness gathered and I felt a pitch in my belly like an ocean's swell. And a rainbow broke through the clouds and a pattern of reds and browns categorized the landscape before me. These teeth are men with batons beating back the riot and these eye sockets are rubber bullets leaving welts. The blood rituals are the only things keeping the daily melodrama from wreaking havoc upon my normal mind. Each of these vestiges of sanity, these sunken and spectral dolls, are like delicate strings holding up my swaying heart. The meaning of the ceremony is lost amongst the feathers and claws and tired moans.

The Grief Family.

They remember like it was yesterday, The family Grief. The tired moments waking up in the dim twilight wishing it was morning, getting the coffee ready so no one collapses in a waste leaving skid marks on the pavement of the kitchen floor. The grandmother keeps time with a cane across the swept tiles and pretends that these people were what she had hoped of her loins. The mother awakens with a gasp and stares into the depth of the ceiling without remorse. The father gives a sideways glance to his faithful wife and knows that today will bring nothing. The young boy rolls restless in the sheets keeping time with his ever present heart. The toddler writhes in his onesie feeling an absence unknown like the coming of an entire life without premonition. Something like the inescapable has descended upon this family; a net across a dog frothing and tongue lolling with eyes all keen with understanding of what won't happen anymore. And the matriarch that is this grandmother sits, statuesque and stony, in the sparkle of the immaculate sideyard with a psyche prone to control and tight grasps. They all get up in sync, a sort of marionette show with strings and cogs and tears that never come out but lay within the bearer to stay where they are. I can't seem to figure out what is making me feel so frightened, thinks the young boy as he lifts his hand to his face. I've felt something like a phantom across my mind for years, thinks the mother as her Clinton suit coat wraps her shoulders like a shroud. I know that this is the one track I'll be on for decades, thinks the father as his cup dangles from his finger shaking. These pajamas make me what I am, thinks the toddler as his toes wriggle and dance in their impersonation of a cantor. This. Is. For. You. Grandmother we've gotten you something to make amends. You don't know what I've felt this last century, you've no way to atone for what I feel is missing, thinks the grandmother as a collection gift passes into being from the only people that will ever love her tired heart. They've been trudging ever so presently into being what they are: something that is buried up in personal tragedy and pawns that moved without their masters. A game like a pinball machine and the family Grief looks into the silver balls coming towards them like glistening eyes in the tunnel. This life just bounces them about and they rattle. They drip their insides out when the other isn't looking. Just tip the bottle to the dregs and you'll see a bit of their sentiments roll out like daggers. There is a well of feeling underneath the foundation of this house that roils and trashes. These tired souls just walk unsteady and unlikely upon the trembling skin of their past and wish for the best with entrusting eyes. It keeps them upset and waking up and lost and feeling unkempt. The barn burning of the past is gone and they're left with clinical ambience to miscalculate their passive aggressive gambits. The poker game just goes on and on. The grandmother knows she'll never go all in while the rest just keep their faces sewn up tight.