My Mind Lives On the Outside

This is what I will do:
I'll get myself into a dead-end job - a supermarket cashier perhaps - and rent a basement apartment I can barely afford. You know the type, empty for years and reeking of damp; bare, rough wood flooring and wallpaper peeling to reveal the reddish brick beneath. It'll be empty except for a can of beans and a loaf of bread (two weeks past its sell by date), and whiskey, and an old wooden record player. I'll listen to Tom Waits as I read Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and strike the walls to watch them bleed blue with faded potential.

The Inked Blade

Just as painters live for their art, poets live for theirs. But for a writer it is more so. For a writer, the wriitng will take on not only a life of their own, but a personality; a whole seperate soul. A writer can converse with their pieces, argue with them... feel jelous of them. Sometimes you might tell him his words are beautiful, and you'll see a shadow briefly cross his face before he responds with a 'thank you' and a smile, stretched too tight to be true. Eventually he will become angry at his work. He'll stop writing; he'll tear up old notebooks in the hope he can forget the words seemingly carbed into the inside of his skull. He'll snap all his pens and pencils, so they can never damage someone else's life as they have damamged his. He'll drink, so the letters dance blurrily before his eyes, and phrases drop off to lie forever incomplete in the dirt - so he never has to be the one to write them down.

All this, simply because he knows he can never be as beautiful as the words he writes.

The Banker's Veins

Money is the blood of society.

The Room In The Asylum

The room is plain, that's an understatement; pale cream walls and bare floorboards, worn smooth by a thousand footsteps. A single bed is in the corner, neatly made with biege sheets. A desk stands opposite it, upon which sits a cup filled with pencils and biros, a stack of paper aligned perfectly to the corner, and a notebook. A small wooden chair is tucked under it. Above the desk, a shelf holds a dozen books, spines facing outwards, all lined up like soldieres with no one to fight. A laptop lies at the other end, wires carefully rolled up and sitting beside it. A bottle of water and a box of graham crackers are the only other items on the shelf. Not a single picture or poster adorns the walls. In fact, they are completely free from decoration of any kind. Everything with its purpose. Everything with its place.

This is the place that entropy goes to die.

The Embrace

It's just that sometimes when I breath you in, I swear, the whole Universe could fit inside my heart.

The Insanity

Look at these crooked fingers, the dirt embedded beneath my nails. My guilty hands, the marks on them, the way I never know where to put them or what to do with them. They are proof of what I have done and have never been able to do. This silence, the stillness of my body beneath the great blanket that is the night sky, the quick, quiet moment between heartbeats. The way my heart aches for people I don't know. How I can go days wondering why I am the way I am, the person I am. I am not dissatisfied so much as I am curious. I have always been curious, always wandering, always searching, always finding new unrequited love, always breaking. Waking up and wondering if I've woken up. Waking up and wishing I hadn't woken up. Waking up and waking up again and again until it is no longer a tedious 'something', just another something that everyone else does and doesn't think twice about. The way words can turn me black and white. The way words can change blue into a darker blue. The way words are feelings are subconscious thoughts are my voice, recorded and played over and over again, projected from a loudspeaker, announced from a moving vehicle allowing only parts of me into your ear until my voice becomes just a fleeting sound, a tunnel wind, sweeping past you, pulling leaves and debris along with it. These are some parts of me. The crooked parts. The parts that make you look once and maybe twice but never three times. The parts that make me feel disconnected and connected again in the strangest way. Like we're all so confused and curious and afraid of what is coming and what isn't. We're all so caught up in romance, in tending to our needs, watering our plants in the evening, fixing dinner for one, mostly. But to this day I feel like my eyes are only temporary ones, they will fall away when I am fast asleep and I will wake up with baby blues that know how to see the world the way it is supposed to be seen. Eyes that won't misinterpret bone for beauty. Eyes that don't stare at suns that were never born, or read books that were never written. Eyes that will see the inside as it is and the outside as it will always be; temporary.

The Insomnia

Life is so precious, even now.

The Lost Girl

Beneath a Saraca Indica tree, the sorrow tree, you sat alone wondering and wanting to ask, but you remained still and silent, listening to the heavy sound of fleeting birds. "I live in a small town," you whispered, "not too far from the city." This city, the city that you would frequent, where nobody knew you but they knew who you wanted to be; it became you, your life, your family, your friends. This city was everything to you. Not the people, but the streets, the culture, the cracks in old, weathered pavement. The yellow, blue, orange, red houses. The marketplaces lit only by sunlight and diverse fruit. Each day you brushed your hair, tied it back, wore that old green shirt with the brown and yellow buttons, those boat shoes, and walked through the city, smiling with your tongue hiding behind your teeth and your fingers crossed behind your back.

How could you lie to the city the same way you lied to me? They trust that you will stay, but you are a nomad. Wanderlust in your heart, singing devil in your ear, whispering "Won't you stay?"

The Whiskey Glass

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.” I suggested gently.
“Child,” you shook your head and took another sip. “Child, what you should understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.”

(Image by : RENO, www.rinothebouncer.com)

The Untitled Prose

We went out one time with his Dog, Suzie, catching birds. Suzie’s a fantastic bird dog, he said. He let her out of the trunk and I looked at her and I said: You know, I don’t believe Suzie’s feeling too good. He looked at her and felt her nose and all. Said she looked alright to him. I told him, I said: I just don’t believe she’s real well today. We set out and hunted all afternoon and killed not one bird. Started walking back to the car and he says to me, Bill says: You know, it’s funny you noticing old Suzie was not feeling good today. They way you spotted it. I said: Well, Suzie was sick today. Suzie was sick yesterday. Suzie has always been sick. Suzie will always be sick. Suzie is a sick dog.