Beam Me Up. Jim Beam Me Up.

Keep close and listen now: those that know you will be left to wonder as you ascend up the tractor beam. Who were you? Where are you now? Did they ever know you? Well, now the answer is clear. Probably not. For one thing, they never thought you to be the type to be abducted by an unidentified object, let alone a flying one. And in the darkness of the trembling woods, no less. And they're sure you'll return with a corncob pipe swinging from your toothless gob while lisping a diatribe of accusations. The conspiracy theories will tumble from your mouth as if your esophagus was the favorite playground slide. As if the the nations children were all just minute details in an overwrought plan designed to make us believe science fiction had taken you for a ride. You took a Star Trek. You went where no man had gone before. You lost fifty dollars to a space card shark and dived to the bottom of an ectoplasm fifth of space vodka. Good for you. When you're watching the documentary film the fringe director arranged to cast a light of derangement upon your structuredly unstructured plight to the chagrin of your family lawyer, notice the glimmer of amber light in your eyes moments before the pine sways eerily to the futuristic whir of the cataclysmic obstruction in your life, to the start of your eccentric life of ravings, the stop to your melodrama of mundanity. Notice that you had a light in your eyes like coils within the toaster as your breakfast slowly burns. You had something annoying and subtractive fleshing itself out in your mind even before this tragedy of interstellar proportions descended upon you. You were something all unspun and poorly dealt to begin with. Jean Luc Picard had nothing to do with you.

Well Done. Burnt.

Use a crayon to edit me out. For my celestial insides are orbitting too fast. They should not be published. My flap waves in the wind whilst the careening shipwreck of a life continues to confound. It's a white flag for a feeling. It says I give up. These tiny bodies are squishy and give way easy to the touch but to no avail. They still scare me when I feel them move around and making plans. I truly am sorry for what I said but I apologize as the dramatic drips off me like pinstripes. The tommy gun kicks back in a mist of pain and pink and those figures in the distance fall indinstinct amongst the tent sites for the wicked and abandoned. I can't seem to squint hard enough to make them out; the daily inconsistencies are the ever strengthening force of the blurred life. Each day keeps me wondering how to live. I know that it is a step by step process, this binding of the hands to get work done. Yea I know that it's continuous and winding. But there must be a chart somewhere that predicts the eliptical path each piece of myself will take. It can't just be random can it? Or are these tenuous journeys of essences just random flashes in the night sky? Is the sky falling just to reveal yet another endless dark expanse just behind the previous one? The curtain could be burning down but the audience just applauds enthusiastically as the flames reach the first aisle. I'm inside a building eating itself up and I can't help but cheer. I love it.

Thrasher: On Death and the Clean Slate.

Within his mind there are two states: one where he is dead and another where he is vomiting all his past out upon the clean slate. It's either one or the other for him, posthumous or empty. There he is: Thrasher. A writhing bit of this world shaped like a human and wrenching the depths of the comic carnival up to the surface for the ooooooo's and aaaaaaah's of the crowd. His countless chins tell a tale of mispent youth where motorcycles ushered in an era of LSD mind benders and screaming aside bonfires to the pulse of a boombox emitting static and fog. He wandered the desolate landscape of a stricken valley. He transcribed an account of something unspeakable. He tore his hair out at the roots for lack of a thing to do. And his skeleton was left behind because the slate just wouldn't stay clean. It was marred from the beginning. He was already dead to it. So this duplication of selves recieves it's reason through the trials of a man with a passion all burnt out. Thrasher is a tough sack of shit and he lost his pension when the warehouse collapsed. But that was just a premonition. To him, it all happened before. The naivete and the disillusionment are waking dreams. Within Thrasher is the coming together of the babe and the geezer for one last wrestling match. And this bout? Oh this bout is the one that determines who gets to pin the Death Notice on the front door of Thrasher's gut.

Yes this is the Way.

Beaming down from heaven, a globular iridescence feeling green but with orange teeth. My Entrance Exam. Where my tears are meaningful and the dark umber hues of this room are shades of what is to come in their life. Dangling wooden limbs attached with coils of copper slowly emulating the movement of an alien with hands like night lights. A halo splashing a tawny glow of verdant neon upon facial ridges and cavernous wrinkles. This room is multiple choice. The fourth choice is all of the above and it must be the truth. A Number Two Pencil with a single leaden eye scrawls passionate essays of listening skills and comprehension; a yellow cyclops on a stupid rampage. But the meaning is lost and there isn't much to be said of this simple test that will determine my entire life without even asking what will become of me in my day to day journey through this pretense. Here: You hold your arms this way, with your wrists loose and your hands dangling. Here: You let those oceans swell past your eyes and drip endless and salty down your bright cheeks. Here: You paint your mouth like fire. Here: You are on the verge of passing. Passing a loved one in the street. Passing the crevasse where the fauna breeds and has it out for you. Passing into another whatever it may be. Passing the point of no return: An Entrance.

All the Rest Mixed Up.

And here are the pieces of ourselves arranged in a pleasing manner. So that we can feel ourselves pull slightly. Draw tight the strings of our hearts and knit them together. A pattern that will strain each part of that emotive muscle equally to avoid emotional bankruptcy. Tie ribbons around the ends of each finger. Attach the loose ends to the trembling branches of the family tree so that we will know our way through the brambles of history and fate. Set fire to the funeral pyre and let the light reach into the depths of your chest all taciturn and delicate. Don't bear the weight of the world alone while the birds dice the gray canopy of clouds into manageable sections with rain for tears. Tend to these pieces with a simple bow upon your head: your mind all wrapped up like a gift to the one who gets you.

Dreams of Space Child.

When he was a child he had facial recognition surgery and they sent him up way too high with a knapsack full of tired ideas. The dishes were all dirty and his mother spent hours scouring the silver with a look of shock on her face. For there was her child blasting off into oblivion with teeth like razors. The moon spilled across the night like a glass of milk and still she cried; spilt milk be damned she couldn't get over this. Spatial trinkets floated about his withered little suit of clouds in zero gravity. He wakes up with the landlord wailing on his door. Sitting up in his soiled bed the detritus of his existence surrounds him like an interstate gut splatter. Where was his mother now? Had he ever returned from the empty vacuum of space? The answer is hard to come by when he reflects upon his life. He sweeps the kitchen floor and avoids the clock while the teapot reaches a boil. Ever so slight are his steps across the expanse of this rented room. As if each step was another statement in an argument defending the worth of his life. He looks through the skylight and has a panic attack remembering the look of the lonely planet we all live on through the space port as the rocket swept him far away.

Coal Condenses Into Diamond.

Their pieces are of the same puzzle but the pieces are too many and doused with lighter fluid. Their arms intertwine in crooked serious paralysis as a match is held between his thumb and her forefinger. Just as when they first looked into each others eyes; that drop of a feeling like the piano falling thirteen stories with a cerulean backdrop of pulsing strobe skies fast forward. In love for the first time and the last, just so quick that it couldn't be taken for anything but an offensive measure. Strike anywhere and yes, that is how it was. Everywhere they went their love was aflame engulfing the maps of their cities and homes until every urban silhouette was on fire. There was no escape because they had it all and nothing would suffice for they would tear it all down. And their map became ashes. And their story became legend. And their loneliness became the past. The search party looking for completion found the orphan there in the woods and we're holding each other close and it's not all in vain. Years dispersed the histories over decades and there they had a life and a marriage and a black mirror omnipotent told them their lives were predictable. And like a trumpet falling on a flat note after the solo where the musician just stopped having that blue glow after quitting the heroin, the heart steadied then hiccuped and it didn't have it anymore. Something unnameable was gone and it was irretrievable. Their love is the lighter fluid and their fingers work together to flick the match. With the flame dropping down upon the pieces their lives flash before their eyes and they are there in there forever. Their romance was a run-on sentence and they will be edited down because the lives of the irrational will be documented in a logical fashion and the smoldering remains of this thing that was a puzzle completed and taken down will go down in history as something digestible and succinct.