Monkey

I needed a miracle

So I sunk my hand deep in the bowels of the city toilet bowl

And squeezed whatever was waiting in the deeps of shared sentience

My fingers were sweating like captive cheese

My grip was crushing

I wrenched

I spasmed

I closed my eyes in bitter agony

It was a miracle too large to traverse the narrow tube of my tunnel vision

I was caught there pulling on flushed dreams

Yanking with all the might of a starved chicken and the desperation of a drowning fish

I dislocated my shoulder

I screamed like a startled house cat

I cried like a freshly spanked infant

I stepped back, panting, my hands all full of

nothing

I felt suddenly very silly

I felt I had lost something

Something like dignity or prudence or sanity

Or my sense of humor

I fell face down on the bathroom floor

And cried out to the light bulb to give me back my soul

The light bulb didn’t answer

I dissolved in a salty solution of tears

The man in the stall next to me asked if I was alright

I answered “yes I’m fine” and as I said it I believed it

I kicked the toilet and it made my foot ache in a good way

I walked out of the city bathroom muttering something about lost keys,

and after a few minutes and a few consoling words from a confused janitor

I recovered most of my fallen grace and went on with my day

After all, I decided, it was all shit anyways.

I believe in ghosts,

In the torturous existence

Of hangovers

Who outlived their

Whisky gulunking hosts

Lingering in the chilly interior

Of clandestine model houses

Where nobody lives during the daytime

It’s a curse you muttered under your breath

A shape you made with your mouth

The terrible stiffness of your smile

That made me ask you

Where do you live?

Not here in this house

Though it’s frost has filled the hollows under your eyes

And you exhale its frigid presence with every breath

No, not here in this house

Though you soaked its silence into your pores

And now every word you breathe is quiet, even when you shout

Not here in this house,

Where your fingers and toes are numb

And you have none of your original luster

And your voice doesn’t carry like it should

Where do you live?

You asked me if you could come over today

I said no

You asked me why

I said, “Because I’m happy.”

You said “What?”

I said “I’m happy, I’d like it to last for once.”

I set the phone down for fifteen seconds so I wouldn’t have to listen to your shocked silence.

“Does this mean we’re over?” you were asking when I picked it up again.

 “Does this mean we’re over and done with?”

“I hope so” I said, “I’ve got to go now. I won’t be home tomorrow, call me then. That way on Thursday when I’m sad and lonely, I can listen to your voicemail messages, and Friday when I finally get around to calling you back, we can be mad together. Doesn’t that sound fun? On second thought, maybe you’d better come over now. I’m feeling a bit despondent.”

You didn’t say another word. There was only the harsh KLMP of the phone as you set it violently on the rack.

I rejoiced at the awful sound. I had finally gotten rid of you. I felt oddly guilty but continued to be happy.

I’m going to hold you captive out here in the rain

you want to go home to your warm, dry comfortable house,

but I am making you stand and talk to me

you are cold and wet and miserable, and I don’t care

You think I’m a nice guy because I’m smiling and saying nice things

But you hate me because I am happier than you

You want to run away but I would chase you

You want to hit me but you know I wouldn’t hit you back

You want to love me but you love yourself more

I like being in the rain with you

Together we make such optimists

I hope we die

I hope we kiss and then

The world ends

I don’t want to watch you retreat into the grey night,

Wondering when next I’ll see you

So I’ll stall you with small talk until

We both have pneumonia

And sooner or later you’ll have to admit you’re glad. 

Hi Iris! I’m doing good, how are you?

Sorry for the late reply, I just haven’t been on tumblr in a while.  

THE CITIES OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD ARE DYING OF A SLOW SICKNESS  a cruel cancer of  tongue and intestine

It attacks our livelihoods, meddles with our appetites, we are never hungry but always starved, as bloat fly fat as we are shriveled and broomstick skinny

it confuses us with each other and itself with ourselves until nobody can tell each other apart or knows to guess the subtraction of faces from faces from figures or even cares about the order of operations or to slaughter animals kindly or hum while we soap and rinse our palms

and let us not forget the creeping creeping certainty of our briefness, that simpering sense of selfish unimportance, which from the savage unquiet of the speedway days

it dawns on us suddenly and ferociously

smothering us in imperious self loathing and insignificance

so as to make as doubt and doubt and doubt

warring us down with the improbable but absolutely neccassary necessity

of stopping incessantly, turning inward time after time after time

to reaffirm our own existences

and even narcissistic self possessed and isolated from nature

shrugging painfully as we doubt

as we doubt ourselves again

as we think

I think therefore I am not

As we are unsolid

And we are so knowing

we begin to wonder at absurdity

we think we are figments of our own imaginations

we doubt certain articles of speech and reason

our mind temples collapsing inward

Teach us toward unthinking our own dooms

As if the clock could work backwards

And we could relive, trapping our nonexisting

In a brief segment of time in which we were eternaly rebounded

Or as if we could die and be suddenly enlightened

Of our unbeing, finally understanding these persons

we called ourselves were fictional all along

but the sad madness is the suspension of our sanity

we only understand life well enough to die

nevermind death
I have forgotten it into hollows

under my eyes
where it hides like a parasite

or a benign tumor

or the promise

of a smile

spaceofficer:

The Healing Brain by Eric Carl on Flickr.