Sounds get stuck on my tongue
A few words waiting to be said
Waiting for some truth
As the stress mounts
Real sets in
Unsexiest of worries
About money reel and hopeful
What was can seldom be
Unless perfect storm and
Responsibility
All boats rise with prosperity
But so do they in calamity
And mindless ramblings for wars of desire combat against what’s possible
Until emergency depletes and scramble for purchase on dirt
Hard packed with indifference
Easy to live without the cost of living
Scramble for a place makes mock of all
Until only the memories stand sentinel
Around broken forms
Lifeless
After the fall
fear
When we jump, will we fall or fly?
Nights passed and still sleep has yet to find me
Words unsaid
Unthunk
Undone
Unravel out seeking tether
Weary eyes no match for a weary heart bound up in aching
Telling myself what is
Telling myself what to do
And still my heart pounds and screams
Rocking itself to anything but sleep
The conscious mind says follow the path
Says wait
Says we have a plan and a way and just follow the steps
And my heart cries
But not so schismatic
We are united
Maybe that’s the gift of knowing
To break oneself into pieces which observe and know the whole
Or maybe my tired brain is seek connections
To hold onto any truth to keep from sinking
And maybe I want to sink
Though I’ve seen the dark precipice of death from the shores of drowning
And its not peaceful
So no sinking
But my mind drowns
Drifts away
Untended
Untethered
How to sleep?
Waiting for fate to flip the next card
Was it always this hard…
Probably
It’s easy to forget the sludge dark
When you have somehow managed a bit of time in the sky
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A heart as sharp as a knife
Fear crests in the heart
New
And maybe
And failure that is unacceptable
Crescendo of the possibility
The hope that breathes reality
Unsteady from the dream
The click
Click
Click
Of dominos falling
Of standing stone portents
Of stars weeping and impacts
Shaking the world
What will be
May be
And how to handle the logistical reality
While the heart screams
YES
And runs headlong into the future
The mind plotting paths
Hoping for a few more resources
But building as fast as possible
No schism
Heart and head are goal oriented
Looking towards the long-term truth
That future where need and desire and real talk
Manifest into real arms
Real lips
Safety and shelter
In being seen
Known
And chosen
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Torn Asunder 14.1
Please Visit the site to hear the audio
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We only have freedom to choose when we are not in danger
When we speak from a position of strength, we forget that not everyone has the same privilege. Without a calm place to stand, without stability, there is no safe place to strike out from. It is the most fundamental human need.
Safety and security is more than a good neighborhood or a job. It is the sure thought that tomorrow and for the foreseeable future, there will be enough to eat, there will be a home that does not itself contain dangers, and despite what problems may be thrown at us, we will have a support system of people and seeable graspable opportunities which insure our continued lives and futures.
Most of us don’t have that. At best we have 2 of the 3 and hope that in some far off unknowable future we will be able to start planning for more than today. Most of us won’t make it to that future.
We are stuck on a ferris wheel which we stepped onto, all naive and full of dreams, hoping and thinking that tomorrow will be better. And that’s the best case, many were forced into darker alleys and worse choices by main circumstances.
How do we make it out? As a people, as humanity, how do we stop breaking the hearts and minds of our people just to perpetuate systems which promote the continuous devolution to barbarism.
I don’t know. And it’s hard to think of how to do so. I’m not safe. And it’s only because my broken heart and mind won’t allow me to sleep, that I’m able to get out even these words. All the while, wracked by doubt and worry and fear, thinking about the morning. When it all starts up again.
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Nightmares are also dreams Part 17-Sara
The quiet sets in. Long seconds with only my heartbeat and the rush of blood through my ears to accompany the waiting…the anticipation…but first I tap out a yellow on the wall. Yellow for distress, yellow for, not stop but help.
The gag is unknotted and the soft warm cotton falls away.
Pel…Something in me whimpers with relief, its Pel.
Pel whispers, “Whatever could be wrong, my darkest night?”
Tension eases and the fear of moments…minutes?…before subsides.
“Bathroom please,” I whisper.
With a disappointed sigh Pel unlocks my restraints and stands me up. He does this economically with a minimum amount of touch and briefly I have this flash of what did I do wrong before I’m being marched to the bathroom. The blindfold stays on as he guides me to the toilet and sets me down.
The door closes and I’m alone but I dare not take off the blindfold. Instead I go pee and reach out by memory to get clean. Nothing has been moved thankfully and I am able to wash up without difficulty.
With the water running, I hear voices in the bedroom and I go still. Who is Pel talking to…I strain to hear but the muffled sounds through the door and the rushing water make that too indistinct.
When I shut off the water and knock on the door ready to go back, the voices have stopped. Maybe I was hearing things.
Again the hands that lead me to the bed and place the restraints back on are businesslike and without hesitation. Like I’m just meat. And that more than anything spikes my fear. Pel is constitutionally incapable of not kissing me when he touches me. At least on the palm of my hand or o to my neck, but never like this. Like I don’t matter…
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Sipping heartsblood on the razors edge
When I feel the fear perching in the back of my chest
tongue lolling out of gargoyle visage
heart pumping adrenalin darts
I lean in
embracing the pain and fall.
This hot prickle constricting air in lungs
eyes bouncing looking for a way out
until I take that action that makes me feel like screaming and hiding and running all at the same time
then it tramps down to quivering smiles and anxious waiting
cause
as ever
my fears are bound up in the uncertain possible of what someone else will say when I ask or say that thing that scares even me
waiting for the Yay or nay like a gladiator looking at the crowd
waiting to be butchered or to live for a few minutes more
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Waking lucid
Sip these last notes
Bitter though they be
Knowing the stanza ends
Knowing the next song you will choose
Knowing the next song you will play
Knowing that these next steps
Next choices will be informed
By what is in your heart now
Not fed out of necessity to keep living
But out of the need to be alive
It takes so long to arrive
So long to become
That when it’s time
Embracing it
Is the hardest thing to do
Fear is a guide
Weighing all consequences and only fear keeps
Then step forth
Embrace the brave heart
Step into a future without the confines of the same
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Need to stop waking at midnight
You know what the worst part of beginning to fall in love is? Well, really two things. The first is how fragile it is. You are right on the edge of something and you can sense it coming and maybe you slow it down, hoping you can control it this time(I’ve never been able to). But you also know that at any moment before you begin the fall, it could all blow away like candy floss in a harsh wind.
The second is that, while you try to guard your heart to whatever extent you are able, you know you are at the mercy of another person. And you feel the echos of the past, reverberating forward. All those times it didn’t work out.
And you’re afraid.
People who haven’t been looking for a while don’t know what it is to find and love and lose, over and over again.
Or if you remember, it is through a haze. Or maybe you don’t overthink it.(I envy you that).
But, I’m afraid. Not of before or while. But of the potential for after. I’ll do whatever I can to not have an after. Though, usually, there is nothing to be done that I’m not already trying.
I try to spit in the face of my fears. To do what I fear. But this existential dread at 2AM. It’s hard to face.
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Remembering dreams: not always great
I woke from a nightmare.
I was in my childhood home. In it, there was a man who lived with his parents. He was both me and not me. Like I was riding in his head and knew what he was going to say but I couldn’t make any decisions.
He lived in the house and it was just him living his life. The whole time there was a vague unease. Like everything and everyone was subtley off. It seemed that this man’s parents flinched from him. Everyone he met seemed to interact kindly to him but all with a vague air of fear almost. And I feel it too. This vague pressing sense of dread fills every action, look or words.
He took his parents out for a drive. And he told them he wanted to show them a house he was going to buy. The father was in real estate and he knew there were no houses in the area up for sale and their fear ratcheted up. He told them not to worry, that he knows of a house about to be available.
He turns a corner in a street in my childhood neighborhood. And points out a large grey house. 2 stories with a covered carport. There are a couple of cars out front and a woman gets out of one. She is crying and has a bundle of red roses in her hand.
Someone from the house meets her on the driveway and they hold each other and cry. There are no ‘for sale’ signs on the house or any indication that it is or will be up for sale. It hits me and the parents at the same time. The only way to know that this house will be for sale soon is to arrange it. This guy who is me and not me has killed whomever is in the house. I’m shocked and incredulous. The parents are scared and less shocked. More resigned. Like this was something that they were hoping wouldn’t happen Again. Like they have been living with this secret monster for years. They drive home.
Then there is one of those jump cuts and the man who is me and not me is talking to someone on his porch. The parents are there but they seem like caricatures. I am no longer in the guys head. I’m watching in the third person and also feel trapped.
The guy who looks like me invites the guy in. He feeds him and paralyzes him. Informing him that his meal was his last guest and did he enjoy it. The parents seem to waver then like they aren’t there. Like I’m in this me/not me’s mind and he sees the parents but they aren’t really there.
He invites in people and kills over and over again. And I’m trapped watching him. I can’t wake up. One of his victims gets away. I, somehow, am then seeing through the victims eyes. I nudge the person to certain places in the house. Places he can barricade. Me/not me hunts him. And victim/me starts to panic. We close a door but it won’t latch and we put a small metal step ladder in front of a door, under the handle but the serial killer hits the door in such a way that it pops it open. We slam the door shut on his hand and he howls in agony. The victim opens the door and pulls the killer halfway in. He pounds the killers skull in with the door pinching the skull like semi hard candy until a part of it breaks away and there is a little boy version of me/not me. There is also a apparition of this person’s mother who talks to the boy. Telling him what to do.
I/victim run and we get away. As we run I, but not the victim, hear the ghost mother telling the boy to eat up. That he needs to heal and eating this brain (his adult brain) will heal him. Like he’s some kind of immortal monster trapped in some pocket dimension reliving his life and death over and over again.
The victim gets far enough away and I wake. Heart pounding. Full blown panic attack. From a nightmare.
Pelgris 