Never ending cascading,
Flooding every nook and cranny.
Every hole in every hole in every hole.
The constricted movement and the sweat
That exchanges every time we crash together.
So much depth and drive, it drives me down and down.
Again and again, in every motion of every motion
Of every motion, in every moment of every moment
Of all those (seconds) spent here and now.
You're so deep in.
Drive me home, drive me in.
Take me down the alley,
And bring me back again.
This is by no means up to par, with the rest of what all of you submit on here.
This is merely to show, that although I'm not too versed in the way of writing, I do make honest attempts.
Any criticism is appreciated/expected.
-------
Ancient cobwebs and many a long accustomed home,
Swept away with movements, systematic, precise,
Grinding teeth sequence, the machine's electronic hum
Drum deep within many a mechanized chasm and eerie corridor
The screens, control panels, relays and receptors,
All spring to life with a quiet whir, and gentle ghostly breaths of
Processed air, flowing over circuitry, the coursing of whose energy
Leads through countless snaking paths, intertwining and interfingering,
Brings to me a image so inviting, that as I rise to the gentle
Curvature of it's surface, I feel as though I will fall helplessly into the eyes that
Stare back at me with such timid curiosity, for an eternity wrapped
Within an eternity, content to reflect warmly upon the hidden wealth and
The untold depth that said stare surely holds.
The thought of what such an undertaking might contain,
The risk, and the reward, for the one willing to take the chance,
The end far outweighs the means.
The countless halls are washed in a thick florescent coat,
And the stale air that dwells within their confines is sucked away.
The countless rooms, empty and dead,
Are alight with panels, LED's, and rhythmic pulsation of countless monitors,
Meters, and measurement devices.
And still the wonder, of how the fine simplicities and such intricate complexity
Were collected into a solitary individual both perplexes and captivates me
As I entertain the thought of entertaining,
And as I contemplate the breadth of wonderment,
A lifetime spent with you would yield.
As I settle in, soft black leather at my back,
An endless array of modern marvel before me.
I can feel more than hear, in the back of my mind.
The machines are running, yet again.
Sit a spell and let me tell you how I fell prey to
An all too real image of hell that billows
From the wishing well built up in my head.
Laying restless as the incantations of a madman
Picked at every corner of my waking mind
Cotton mouthed and counted out
I sat marooned, adrift within myself.
Cradled by mountains made of molehills
A place cut off, cast out, and set aside
Every time I think
I've found the way
It always ends up
Just another way
To lose myself.
It's so simple, so minute.
And yet somehow, so enthralling.
Indescribable and unexplainable.
A tactile action, that leaves
Me almost dumbfounded and
Clutching to you like it's nothing at all.
When on the inside, I'm like a drunk
Contemplating a fifth of the Jack.
Restriction at this point,
Is almost beyond my reach.
I sit here now,
Waiting again to feel my feet,
Upon the sun warmed precipice
Of your presence, and ponder
On these events so recent in my mind.
And as I stare out the window,
My mind can only turn to
Just how much more,
Is yet to come.
Relax, and let me take it all in.
The simplicity of this calm winter day,
Has left me tranquil, and contemplative,
Collected, and clouded.
I am folding, and unfolding,
And unfolded, in the settling
Of a ceaselessly wondrous sun.
I smile briefly, watching as it's reaches,
Spindles wrapping ghostly fingers around
The horizon's edge, a final farewell.
Tracing lines in the dust,
Tracing a line from day to night,
I reflect on the recent.
Sensory perceptions rush before my mind,
In a furiously spinning whirlwind.
Leaving me, just a bit drained.
And; just a bit sorrowful.
But amongst that mental tempest,
Hidden away in the heart of the would be beast.
You dwell there, stark in contrast.
Exuding patience, and careful pacing.
You beckon to me from afar.
And through rain and fodder,
Possibility and precaution.
Tomorrow will see me
Reflecting on the numerous
Thoughts that stir up the
Dust in my head, another time.
I will lay down with you,
Deep in the grass,
Head in the clouds,
Hand in hand.
And attend to the business,
Of doing nothing at all.
I can feel the whole world,
Splitting at the seams.
Cataclysmic cacophonous crucible,
Raining down hot slivers of decimation,
The mountain man has blown his top,
And his worshipers are scattering
Like the faces of stars beyond
The ash heavy speech that billows
From his magma caked mouth.
Sky hemorrhaging moisture.
Heart-rattling pulse, on and on he will go.
Spewing his rage, fiery hot into the night.
On and on his anger will burn,
Without reproach, no end in sight.
Well the red sun's setting and I'm lookin' to find
A little something to alter my rhythm and rhyme.
A fifth of the fire to offset this ceaseless yearning
Turned savage hunger, looking for the answers
To a question that's bitter spit match-lit and realizations leave
Me reeling and rolling and retching and roving and just
A bit too calloused and numb to feel anything more than
Dimly lit desires through rudimentary frame of consciousness
Distorted carnival show through frosted glass panels that
Goes and goes and goes and spins me a' round the bend,
To fall endlessly down, down, down.
Consumed in watery pacifier, I will let everything slide
Until this peacemaker turns hostile, spitting fire and spewing
Verbal molten liar's speech in the air with a rumble and a roar
And no small amount of indignant anger, immolation set free
To take me under and leave me like ruddy sediment
Deep down in the bottom of the creek-bed run dry.
Skin sun baked and absorbent of solar warmth.
Peppermint stripe epiphany causes abnormality.
Condensed-soup-can-confession leading to talks over
Cool Lipton drinks that bend light waves through pitcher glass
With caffeine distortion that scatters them like pebbles on a lake bottom,
Spider-finger-spindle-spinners dancing amongst their murky reach,
Entwined with one another in a dance of devils turned darker.
Sinister intent hidden away for now as the sun hangs low like
An indentured slave against the dimming horizon.
Find me in the early morning, underneath
Vanilla sky panels and whitewash lights
That burn bright as the sun in all directions.
Let this burden of longing turn bleached fossil
Under their methodical gazes, while you lead
Me by the hand into a world that's both familiar,
And still in so many ways unknown.
Any comments are appreciated. Places that need improvement would be appreciated more.
Note: this is my first attempt at prose, so bear with me.
---
1:
The sun beat down on young Rennie Ellsworth's exposed back like a bullwhip. Skin that was already roundly burned from four previous days of toil, was baking to an alarmingly deep shade of red. As he swung the rusted hoe in his hands overhead, weight feeling more and more like that of a sledgehammer rather than a farming tool, the exquisite pain that erupted from the hollow spot between his shoulders was enough to make the boy's already tired eyes well up. He dropped the hoe to the ground, and wiped absently at them with one dirt-smeared hand, teeth clenching momentarily at the salty sting that greeted this. As he drew the hoe up again, trying his best to ignore the fresh ripples of pain that shot through his nerves and tired muscles like liquid fire, it's rusted and chipped head shone dimly in the light of the merciless dictator bearing down overhead. The work worn head and weary bolt fastening looked as tired and spent as Rennie felt, and for a few moments he stood there, gazing at the way the light barely refracted off of it's surface, like the pallid light of a sacrificial moon on some sort of relic from a long ago civilization. In this moment, the simple brilliance that is a child's mind took him far, far away. Lost in minute thoughts and pondering, he was allowed a brief escape from the hell that had been the last few days out here, subjected to backbreaking labor in cruel August weather. He was nothing more than a boy of twelve, when you got down to it, a little boy denied a childhood through the magical whim of fate, and as he stood here in the heat and the muck it was more evident now than ever just how young he really was. For just a bit, he was permitted to stand, looking like a makeshift scarecrow from the roadside off to the East, waves of rolling heat filled to the brim passed between him and the road and made his feet run in place like watery paint-strokes.
2:
From over on Rennie's right, a tiny satellite radio was cranking what his father referred to as "The Skyn." through a chorus of static and fuzz. Still captivated by nothing more than a twelve year old attention span, he looked like a living statue in the relentless sun. Unaware at least for now, of his father's eyes, that had as of late narrowed to nothing more than reptilian slits burning with in a dimly lit gaze only attainable through days, perhaps weeks, of binge drinking. And, unbeknownst to the kid and the ol' lady, tweaking his ass off in the chicken coop; when it was raining particularly heavy that was. He always made time for the monkey on his back when he was lucky enough for the rain to really kick in.
And boy had he been L-U-C-K-Y lately. Drought had been rampant for so long, that he'd not had the ability to safely spike up on the junk. He had shrugged it off at first with a nervous and sweaty chuckle. But after a week solid with no rain, the craving and the fear had really set in, and there was no more chuckling from young Rennie's drug addicted father then. Shakes, fever, lack of sleep, all plagued him in the following days and nights, that blurred like the pages of storybook being thumbed through way too fast. Time drug on for him, each days end found him one step closer to the edge, looking at the shed when he skunked past it in the warm but not necessarily hot February sun like it was an otherworldly chapel that could heal the blind. He'd linger sometimes, and consider locking himself in there, and tweaking out until his body just quit on him. The wife would find him with the crotch of his pants wet, and his mouth dry as a bone, and so what she and the kid depended on him to survive the coming winter? He was about tired of responsibility anyways, and even more tired of seeing those two walk around HIS farm like a couple of thickheaded kids on holiday while he broke his back to feed their ungrateful stomachs.
After two weeks with no rain, right when the monkey on his back had been ready to snap, ready to go ape-shit-crazy, the rain had rolled in from off West on a breeze that felt to him like the very breath of God answering his prayers. The sight alone had been enough to make the man feel like crying and dancing at the same time. And although he hadn't at the time the first few raindrops pattered the ground, he had done plenty of both that night in the coop. He had laid up against one of the wire framed coops with no attention spared to the livestock that inquired with chirps and chatter. Saliva was trickling down his face in a sickly crisscrossing path while tears that poured from eyes far too wide streamed down his face in salty trails to mix with the thin spit on his chin before dripping onto his flannel shirt in light, smeary globes. He hadn't been dancing that night, no. But he had been twitching and shaking a good bit. As lightning struck out on the barren land opposite of his own, the man looked more like some pitiful creature lost and afraid doubled over in pain and confusion but also completely defeated, rather than Rennie's father. Once he thought for a moment, he calmed down. The tremors and shaking became nothing more than tiny tickles in his muscles, and the crying had stopped. Then the man had looked into a little metal tool box where he hid his hypodermic needles, and found that he was all out of juice. That was enough to send the tears, the tremors, and the crying back in full force. He howled like a deranged lunatic in the height of the storm, bashing his remaining hand against the support stud of the coop, oblivious to the scarlet spray the flung itself with every pitch of his work worn fist. And before the night was over, before the rain had stopped, a good section of the coop would smell of vomit and urine.
That was four days ago, and now he sat beneath the shade of an old crank out roof mounted to a two person car-seat he had salvaged when his old Dodge Pickup had finally kicked the bucket. Hidden under the dusty veil, he watched had watched his son work the field, and had drank away the dull tinging pain that had arose in his gums. He didn't know it, but most of his teeth were rotten down to their very core, and the pink flesh around them poisoned to an almost amazingly large degree. He took one last swig from his current can of the 'Bud, and tossed the empty can like a dead carcass in a pile that had steadily grown to over seventy cans in the past four days. He briefly considered the idea that he might have an alcohol problem, and then shrugged the thought away with a listless bit of laughter that rolled out of his numb throat like the creaking of an old horse-drawn-carriage. "Li'e my pop us'd to say. The only 'rouble with booze is when you run out" And with this half-spoken half-vomited phrase, he picked up another can and raised it to his already soured breath, eyes sucked deep in his sockets like, appearing only as narrow ghosts of what they used to be, and drained half of the can in one raspy gulp.
As he sat back in his misplaced car-seat (what he liked to refer to as "The Head-Honcho-Throne") and settled his beer in the cup-holder he'd welded himself, he noticed that his boy had stopped tilling. He looked for a moment, drunken brain cells straining to understand just what the kid was up to. And after a moment, it had finally registered. The kid was slacking off again. He was ALWAYS slacking off in some way or other. And as much as he hated the thought of moving from the cool shade of "The Throne", the boy would have to be reminded just how important it was to get this field done up right as rain again. God knows his mother wouldn't do it. That scraggly wash-up of a woman was either too busy to deal with him, or too damned caught up in her gossip with Laney Smits old lady about the town's occurrences. Maybe after this was over, and the harvest came in later in the year, he would ditch her for some tall drink of water from up North. One like from the magazine's he sometimes thumbed through out in the coop, when it was too quiet to shoot up. "New millennium, new car, new wife." he thought suddenly. And after a moment, he found the parts of his brain not yet rotted by the meth, nor numbed by the alcohol to be in agreement with this rad new philosophy. He nodded absently, and then remembered the boy, just staring at that damned hoe like he had all the time in the world. He was always catching the boy caught up in some nonsense, be it chasing lizards instead of milking the cow, looking at ants with that stupid magnifying glass instead of weeding the vegetable garden, or those books of his. Those damned books. Just the thought was enough to spark the rage waiting just underneath his deteriorating physical form like a long forgotten landmine.
3.
Arthur Ellsworth, or "Mad Marty" if you'd known him before he flunked from High-School, had never seen the need for books, nor the useless sissy ideas that sprouted from reading them. He had spent most of his two years of high-school doing one of two things, when not out on suspension for getting just a bit too friendly with .
Game season saw him playing defensive lineman for the Wildcats, whose slogan "We're Real Wild Cats!" had never held much enthusiasm for Marty himself, nor his team-mates for that matter. Besides, all Marty really enjoyed throug about being on the team, was the corners it allowed him to cut. At least, it had. One day he'd bent the system a bit too far, and the heavy price he'd paid was expulsion. He'd been found sleeping in the locker room one day by the principal himself with the playoff game against the the local Wildcat Rival, (dubbed "The Red Skins") on the line. On being woke Marty promptly gave the man a nice peaceful display of the finger before rolling over and curling beneath a Letterman's Jacket. Once again comfortable, he nodded off with the words "Mad Marty" spread across his broad shoulders in thick felt letters, and a Wildcat, the logo of a team he no longer served, caught in an eternal leap from the jackets dark blue and white colored fabric tilted towards the roof of the locker room.
When the winter's presence settled over the area and the first frost rolled in with a quiet sigh, he could be found pursing another hobby with the most intense of labor. Winter Fridays often found Marty out necking with one of the cheerleaders at Lake Walefont. Susan Michaels, his good ol' on-again-off-again through the last two years of his stint in public schooling, could be found with him often on such nights. Her chilled breath could be seen from afar, spilling into the air like train-smoke as Marty's rough sun-tanned face rubbed with a noticeable friction against the crook of her neck.
But in his entire stay at the local high-school, it was the books that really grown to be a thorn in his side. They had been the subject of his initial struggle with his education from the very start, and his inability to read in high-school had only further strengthened this already sprouting dislike (and on occasion, dimly reasoned fear). The damned things had always made him far more aware of a fact that was always dimly burning in the back of his head like a tire fire that refused to die down completely. The fact was, Arthur Ellsworth was a blue-gum idiot, and he knew it. But the books...the god dammed bitch-manuals, they had made it all the more apparent. And that fact, coupled with the fact that Arthur Ellsworth was a man very much inside the bubble of insanity, spelled nothing but trouble for Rennie, as his old man reached for a solid steel wrench with one scarred, but still stable hand.
Sit with me a while.
Let me see you, seeing me.
Eyes with indescribable depth,
And unparalleled in their ability,
To make me feel so alive, so
Significant.
Let me fall into your gaze,
And travel endlessly down,
Through ocher halls and amber corridors.
Awash with exhilaration, and brimming
With wonderment.
Meet me face to face,
And let me drink you in,
A cosset without words,
That puts my head in the
Clouds, and my soul to the
Celestial network beyond.
Can you please tell me,
Where did our paths diverge?
Caught in this tempest
Like a ship struck ill-fated on
A course far too late to change,
I'm left feeling empty and afraid,
And I'm wondering just would it take,
To turn back time, push stop then hit rewind.
If I could, if only I could, surely I would.
Waiting at the docks,
The ocean speaks in metaphor.
Ebb and flow, rise and fall.
Waves will take, and they will give.
New moments washed ashore,
Unfamiliar faces, unknown destinations.
Drawn in the saturated earth.
As I leave I wonder,
When will your face
Be the one I see?
Sitting just like I remember it,
Warm and familiar in
The golden sand.
No matter how long it takes,
Know my friend,
I will wait for your senses,
To return you to me.
Spit out the bitter black ash.
It all comes down to a moment's flash.
Hold to your grudge like skin to bone.
Picking at sores better left alone.
Fester down the cavities like all consuming fire.
Let yourself labor to expose the filthy liar.
Lay back with a filthy lead head full of dread.
Never-mind being mislead because it's all said and dead and done
A thousand times before beneath a thousand ceaseless suns burning
For a thousand weary worshipers in a thousand dying worlds
For a thousand different reasons for one fleeting season
Full of life and living and toiling and quandary that's all just
One:
Torn strips of memory flash through his head like a film-projector run mad. For a moment he can practically smell the burning oil, and taste the coppery under-taste of his own blood as it works its way up and out of his throat.
Twisted metal sculptures leap out from the abyss, shattered glass glinting like diamonds in his mind's eye. He can recall through the radio playing a happy little tune, some old pop song or other, as the machine beneath his feet buckles and bellows. The accelerator is stuck (It's not, a voice says, barely more than a whisper in this mental theater) and the trees ahead stand like a stone wall. the impact alone will be-
How did that song go? he wonders.
The trees are racing towards him now, but his heart lays still in his chest.
"I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car"
Soon. Very soon.
----
The machines in Room 1405 of the Bradford (MI) Sacred Heart hospital chimed away at regular and mostly out of sync intervals. Their haphazard chorus did not so much as unsettle a person as it did annoy them, and as Laura Thompson entered through the large stainless steel door she found her subjection to the electronic ensemble instantly unpleasant. Her head immediately began to throb in time with their syncopated emissions, and she once again wondered why exactly she had gone through the trouble of going through med school. It seemed that a fairly large clutch of her past had been spent training to become a doctor, and while it hadn't exactly cost her financially (her father being a rather adept player of the stock market), she still felt a bit robbed. When you spend years preparing for a job, when you dedicate yourself to learning all the in's and out's of human anatomy, nutritional values, and the fine line between the common cold and something like Meningitis, you lit out of med school with a diploma fresh of the printer and the notion that you were about to see some of "the real action".
The reality of it was that most doctors got out of med school and found their dreams and notions of solving all manner of rare sickness and out of the ordinary cases quickly dashed. Real medical work amounts to repetition. The same diagnosis could be applied to almost eighty percent of the people that were ran through the system daily. Drink lots of fluids, take aspirin for fever, and get plenty of rest. If the patient was a kid, you also had to add in the monotonous stroke of the wrist on a absence excuse. Being a doctor amounted to plowing through day after day of the same exact thing, running over each patient with a fine toothed comb. Laura recalled often what she had heard from an introductory lecture, fresh into med school. "He who does not practice is never prepared when his time comes." She had seen many people scoff at the off color anecdote, but for whatever reason or other, it had stuck with her.
So here she had settled after med school, in the sleepy little town of Bradford, Mississippi. (Population: 1215). Combing through day after day of runny noses and slight fevers. Drink fluids, stay home, plenty of rest. Day in and day out. She always liked to imagine this process as the mental equivalent to keeping a blade sharp. In her head as she went throughout the day, she would catch not-quite-there images of silver scraping whetstone, flashing in the warmth-less light her minds eye cast on it.
Nothing out of the ordinary, except for a case of Cholera a Chinese man had contracted. And even then, he had been just fine in only three days. Nine months later, she still found herself swiping at that block of stone. How long, she wondered, until the hand that wields the blade gets tired? How long until I just give up and die from the repetition of this place?
She didn't know much about the man she was going to see in Room 1405. Only that he'd been in a bad accident. To all the nurses knowledge, he had been unconscious ever since coming back from surgery. The slicers had put him mostly back together save for his left leg, which had been torn completely off in the car-wreck he'd suffered.
The door swung open and she found him looking tranquil, staring out the window at the stream which ran off to the hospital's left about a hundred yards away. In the dark of the room, the machine glow coupled with the moonlight that spilled in, making him look both dead and alive at the same time. He shifted his gaze to her and regarded her with deep brown eyes.
"Hello" he said, words soft and feathered.
----
Comments/critique/hate-mail are all appreciated.
The variable to my heart writhing away, her name was Amber-
Thats twice this has occured on these forums...
Her name is in the poetry, it fucks with me but-
Christ man, this is a great piece.
__________________ This lamentation of me, is just an imitation of me. Who I am and what you see, you will never know.
I love this imagery man!!!
Dude your flow is so nice, I favor the rhymes that consist in their reason.
Some people drift but, this is just tasteful and I say hell yeah!
__________________ This lamentation of me, is just an imitation of me. Who I am and what you see, you will never know.
This old familiar sinkhole opens up,
It's sanded gaping maw wide in anticipation,
Catching sweat and screams and fear alike.
I'm slipping down into the old familiar hole again,
Doubt stretching over me like a thick felt blanket.
Hope is just a ghost that is getting tired of trying.
These thoughts are restless and refusing to still,
I am alone in the dark, as all the old nicks and cuts
Open wide again.
Walls close in around this weary soul.
That still refuses to succumb to overwhelming weight.
Fear eddies and flows through in palpable bands,
Chilling this exasperated body to it's core.
