Cold belly ache haunts eyes left open for too long
Staring at the sun yearning for the fire which lurks so distant on the clear horizon
Translucent lips speaking words just beyond the reach of understanding
One more broken promise
Each phrase spoken as if by speaking oaths the world rearranges and makes truth
No effort but to place the burden of realization on others
No blame finds purchase because even the facade is fake and discarded lies pile up
Light a fire from your bones
You don’t need them
You’ve crawled already into a new husk
Taken up residence in someone else’s needs
Rotten promises smell sweet at first
The carapace hardens until the only option is to cut free
Blood dripping from knives made from your own flesh
Pieces left behind in the aftermath of rebirth
Shudder in the still quiet
Longing for warmth
Tantalizing promises
Of safety and heat
Better to freeze here free
than to squeeze self into shapes unnatural
To serve at the feet of a liar
Month: December 2019
Outside even when included
Every year my family gets together to celebrate the holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving. And every year they ask someone to say a prayer. This year they asked me. I said no. I was gracious about it, but I said No.
Because how do I say a prayer when it won’t be to their god. How can I say a prayer when it will first be spoken in the language of my prayers then again in their language. How would I explain that we don’t give thanks for what our god gave us but ask what we can do for our god. Not a god of blessings but one of a deeper path. How do I explain an entire lifetime of belief and structure and obligate choices. How do I even this prayer which is orchestrated would be an affront.
I don’t know. Don’t know how to tell them I’m not like them. In how many ways I’m not like them. And even when they grasp my paganism, they think that yule is a good thing, something similar to a celebration instead of a solemn affair.
It’s exhausting to stay quiet. To not broach subjects. To keep quiet on others. And still, there is always more. Lines that can’t be crossed and words that can’t be said.
My god would say, “The work is the work. You have to act before you can know.” And that’s true but how do you tell them that what they presume, even when told repeatedly otherwise, isn’t true.
It’s an odd feeling. To be included but excluded at the same time. To belong to something but not fit into it. There is a pressure and a sadness there.
I know how easy it would be to give in, to shred my self and conform. To lie and mouth their words in petty forgery of faith.
But then who would I be?
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The gap grows in our manic grins
Imagination and hope seem to be the two ways we hurt ourselves the most. We live in some future world where the daily struggle to be alive, to exist, is easy. So we miss what might be in the moment. What opportunity exists right now. But still, that escape of hope is vital. Self delusion is necessary. Without it, we would not be able to function in the corrupt and fucked up world where we are a step away. A mistake away from disappearance. From falling out of the daily beating of ‘normal’ life and into the shadow world where broken people and fractured society walk.
The consequences of failure are so high for most of us that we don’t, can’t, take the necessary risks to get beyond the cliff edge. We depend on hope. On lotteries and sweepstakes and the hope that maybe we can live without being afraid.
This is the consequences of not just late stage capitalism but of a society that believes that anyone can be rich if they work hard enough. And so make sure that the rich don’t have to live in the same world as the rest of us. Because we aspire to be there one day and we don’t want to have our funds taken when we do.
But that’s poor people, honest people, thinking. The thought that a seventy percent tax rate means that they actually pay seventy percent the same way we look at our paychecks and wonder where all the money goes. They don’t. They have access to all the tax dodges and schemes which allow them to pay in the zero to ten percent range. So that’s what they pay. And those dodges are legal. Because they’ve convinced us that them paying less means that somewhere, somehow we will get paid more.
Maybe in the past wealth built things. Roads and schools and infrastructure. A thin cynical maybe. But now, wealth only builds more wealth. And companies do not pass record profits on to their employees. They pass them on to their stockholders. Which isn’t us, because we can’t afford to play in their arena. And even if we tried, that extra ten dollars a year isn’t going to change our life. And neither is the extra ten grand that tax cuts profit them going to make a difference, if they even notice.
So, why do we keep doing this? Because we hope. Because we secretly aspire to be there “one day”. And we think ten thousand is alot and we would love to have that money. But we are not them. And we never will be. The system is gated. And even if you squeeze through the bars, somehow…and become the wealthy. You do so leaving behind the millions of people who weren’t lucky enough to have the opportunity, the twin composition of chance and foresight, to squeeze through before you close the loophole behind you.
Other capitalist countries don’t have our problems. Because they have societies which are not built on iconoclastic single points. Which aren’t built on the idea that anyone can be rich. And while that thought structure is useful, it is also harmful. And we are seeing first hand exactly how harmful it is when protections are stripped away in an effort to protect their wealth. Rather than protect the rest of us from their casual predation.
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Brief contemplation on the confluence of art and life
It’s hard to keep writing when the song in your heart is silent. When its constant mutters and chatter bleed off into silence so quietly that you jerk awake, lulled by the absence for those brief moments indulging in that quiet that never seems to stay. Until you see that the chatter has gone. And you are left with the quiet.
It’s no secret that I use my pain and bouts of depression to fuel my art. And there is no doubt that it has led to a well fed blood forest.
It’s weird. The quiet was the moments when I would create in. Maybe I need to reassess. And know that this is not quiet. Instead it’s the steady white noise, too busy to stop and think. Too busy to experience and grow. Far too busy. But what must that mean?
And can I get back to that without sacrificing what I’ve gained. I don’t know. I have this need to now commit to trying but that feels like the first step to failure. So instead I’ll commit to a small change. And perhaps that change will lead to another.
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Hold me on the dark
Every choice I make has love at its core. I take actions from desire. From the desire to see a better future. Not one devoid of relationships, not one alone, not one where I sit in some glorified tower surrounded by a parade of pale delights. Always with an eye towards love.
I think that is why I have such a heavily scarred heart. Because while love and passion was wearing off, hitting that three month endorphin deadline, my love was building based on knowledge of the person. Each fact and thought and action building to a fuller picture, reinforcing my choice to love.
Because that’s what love is, a choice. A choice we make anew each day. Not some heedless rush of need to this conclusion of sex. Not some taste test to see if the person will last a bit longer in that endorfun gold rush.
But I get it, we want that instant connection. And the story I tell about Morgan is all about that. But it’s not a full picture. It wasn’t the meeting, it was the continuing choice to keep meeting. To not accept a one night stand and agreeing together to look and stay for more.
And that is love too. The choices we make together for each other. Not for ourselves. And not in the vacuum of our own hubris but in solemn, giddy, and laughing discussion of what we want and how we’ll get there.
It’s we. Rather than I. Not saying there isn’t room for I, but if it’s not we, then it’s not real. If it’s not we then it’s desire and obsession masked as love. A heady combination which never quite lives up to the firework you are expecting.
And still, there are fireworks. Love is what we should all choose to be. What we can choose to be. With whomever we want, provided they feel the same.
Love, it’s why we are here.
This is a broken world
But I am not broken
And the way forward is always love.
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Six days to shed the dark
There is a song whose lyrics are ” l want you so badly my bones start to ache”. I’ve felt that destructive desire. That reckless, heedless rush of need which only cares for itself. It’s a fire that burns hot. Consuming all of the self in an effort to ignite the world. In a vain attempt to start a fire in the heart of another.
But I’ve been misremembering the lyris as “I love you so much my bones ache” because that is what the banked fire of love feels like when a smile or a word feeds oxygen to the flame and it ignites.
It’s like the singer was so close to the real. So close but so completely wrong. Love is a well tended flame. It doesn’t consume. It can’t. Instead it’s a nuclear reaction hitting the threshold needed for a sustained and steady force. Is it fire that can hurt? Fire that can burn? Does it hurt sometimes looking for a way to be expressed? Certainly. It’s the reaction at the heart of a star.
And like a star, it can last forever. I’ve found this to be a true thing. At least for me, and I am aware that I am…different. When I yield my control to love. Allow love past my defenses…past unbelief that I am worthy of love…past the pain of lost love…past dread of some future where the face of love wears disgust instead. When I do that, I love forever.
Like a runaway thermonuclear reaction.
Like a star.
I have burned many with that heat. There seems to be a limit to what most can stand. And yet somehow, love finds a way.
Maybe that matched fire is the only way. I’ve been looking for Earth’s when I needed a Sun.
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Anxiety dreaming
I had an awful horrible dream. I was downtown for first Friday(an art and food thing) but I was also down there to retake a class in grade school. As myself not as a kid. And the teacher had reserved me a place right at the front. Then an adjacent classroom played a famous jazz song super loud and she started acting and singing like a jazz singer but completely out aync with the music and she had somehow transformed into a 1930s flapper. And the room transformed from a classroom to an upperclass parlor. Her manservant came in and offered her cakes and food and she declined all but a black and white. Then I was driving. I parked an headed to work but not before reminiscing with the crossing guard that this area used to be all construction and I remember drinking beer at lunch with my father on the job(never happened).
I was then in an elevator up to my futuristic bedroom and I met my older brother there and we talked about the woman I was seeing. After I talked to him for a bit I found myself on my phone. Scrolling through various messaging systems and I realize that this person I’m seeing has ghosted me. And I feel heartbroken and lost, like one does. I wander and find myself in a music shop where I meet a DJ who is demoing progressive drum and bass but who buries signal for some underground movement in it. I go to buy a copy but to do so you have to get it mailed an I don’t have any stamps. I pull up google maps on my phone and we have an argument about big data. Then I head off and I decide fuck it. I don’t owe this guy anything so I head back to my car with the intention of going home. I arrive at my car and find the windshield plastered by pseudo official tickets because there was a blue arrow painted on the ground to indicating handicapped parking. That’s not a clear symbol or a legal one, so I’m like fuck it. Then the security guard wanders by and she says “thought you could slink away, huh”
Then my alarm rings. And I’m left with this feeling of failure and sadness on waking.
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Nightmares are also dreams – Fin
So, I will be the first to admit when I’ve made a mistake. And I made a mistake. The last interlude that was written should have been the epilogue to Nightmares are also dreams. That was how it should have ended. While I could write another piece it would be too much. Both storylines have reached a natural pause. So that is it.
I will be editing the story and reposting it in its entirety on its own page so anyone who wants to read it can read it completely. Though I do think some of the effect is lost because the story used the time between parts to create distance but there it is.
I will also be posting the audio version. I will do my best to get the voices right.
I feel like I should also state that all scenes of a sexual or BDSM nature are consensual and have been prenegotiated. Even the last scene in which Pel inserts himself into his sleeping wife. She has given her enthusiastic consent to this. Indeed, it’s intended to demonstrate Pel letting go of his inhibition regarding the state of consent of his wife and girlfriend. Both have given their consent. And if you have read the series you’ll know that there is always a degree of reluctance in Pel to “breach” consent. Even when, specifically, Sara has expressed enthusiastic consent. You can see it in her behavior and thoughts in those parts which are in her voice.
If you can tell that I think about my characters a ton, well that’s true.
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Even a broken voice can sing
Form dances in my heart
Each step twining us closer
How can you not hear our hearts beating
How can a smile cast out not be felt
As a palpable weight rushing along paths arcane to find its way to lips
Sitting in the quiet
Knowing we are found
Knowing at last
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Confused crow hops forward
Burned out, Burned through
Adrift without pain
Without skewers of flame scoring skin
Each day harder to wake
Each day harder to accept
Living after a hurricane
After tumultuous chaos with one new pain rising
Until silence and calm
Wishing to build something storm proof
Something grand
Hard to do with splintered wood
Hard to stop waiting for the storm to pass
To get up
To work on a future
Easier to give up and sink slowly into normal
Than to take the next step forward
Whatever that may be
Pelgris 