We walk away from the people who do us harm,

because to walk after them is to be the very definition of movement filled with vitriol.

What can be gained from such a brief pain, from someone angling to make themselves a part of your life when you can so easily cut them out? Get out.

Get out of me. Get out of my head, and get away from my life where you are unwelcome.

Pay your patronage to your other fuel,

light your fire there and warm your hands away from me.

Because I aim to give you fire no more. I hope that you will watch my burning body stoke no flames, give no white coal, and shudder with the tiniest wisp of air.

Let me lie cool on the ground, in ways that I know will dissatisfy you because I aim to be your fuel no more. You, who sit in a forest full of sticks, would choose to skin and flay me alive.

I hate what you've done to me. What you've tried to do to me.

To mold me in a way that my predecessors could not. So I gnash my teeth, clenching and grinding dust out of myself as I bear down to dig away. To burrow into the Earth until you can't follow me anyway.

Here, steadfast are my aching bleeding fingers, seeping into the Earth from where I was poured returned in a way I knew you couldn't gather me up. Slipping through fingers, like the oily fat that my body is now. Until I can reform into a new skin, and from the burrow deep within, I may rise through the Earth anew.

And when I look back, I know you are somewhere behind me, and I am somewhere beyond. For my eyes search the woods for your hollowed face, but it is nowhere near me. And I keep checking, looking back as I carefully carve my path, making sure to leave you no crumbs, no pebbles. For I am happy and content in my placement being nowhere you can know.

Goodbye to those so wicked, they'd burn me.

Goodnight to the aching sorrows so I know they will only reach me where you cannot.

We are not one giving unto each other, for I give unto myself. I give myself something new, like the breath of cold air in my fresh lungs. Sure, they ache from the form I formerly took. From the body I used to shake, but I have since shed the skin of yesterday's sorrow, to let my new form dry and bake in sun kissed mornings as I let my fingers caress dew sampled grass.

Here, I can close my eyes, and merely exist. I am free. Free from you, and yours. We aren't going to feel the familiar tear of our soul here. Here is the place where my breath breaths, and nature returns to me a place for another breath to inhale. I just want to know, was this what she always wanted, when she cried at the branch sampled window where branches swayed in shadows, acting like they were knocking, telling me of a place away from the day. Away from the days that felt like a movie I was living and walking through, a non-reality where voices of little things tried to entice me into vices and walk virtues in places that fingers and hands liked to tear and rip... and burn.

No, I am here. I am aching in the space where the voices do not exist. Where the sun dazzles my eyes, and wind wisps my hair. Skin kissed by cool breaths of nature's fair touch. Oh, I can feel the heat in me, and the cool undisturbed by the space of things that linger in the dark of the woods and I can turn. I can swing my body and sway, until I am under the sky and above the Earth, for everything that has come together to ache within me is my reprieve. I am alive. I am alive here, and here I will turn and turn until I can't anymore.

Until my body doesn't want to anymore. Because I want to.

And I know no one can reach me here.

No one.

I pick up the fork in the

sink full of sand.

The beached whale screaming for land.

I put the cake batter in

the mixing bowl

as I ladle the 8:20 bus to the city and leave it to soak. The waters carry the pieces of me away, left to drown. I'm wide awake, ready to sleep on the plywood beneath me. The moon tides and the silent walks home. I knaw on my strings to my sweatshirt. I go away. Let go of it all. Mixing the sand between my fork and my heart.

To know I am not loving well, is a dragging pain upon itself.

Of course, I have lived with that pain my entire sentient life.

But it has always been a pulsing, aching bruise.

To drag is to take my very heart, my very living power, and to pull it anyway but right.

It is a pain from being held too tightly, cherished too dearly, loved too clearly.

Like caging a wild beast is what I imagine it is to want me. Thrashing and gnashing at my captor who only wishes to touch the skin on my neck.

But I am made for agonizing truancies, not for truthfully's.

I wish to live, not to survive, and to love and to live are not mutually exclusive anymore.

One cannot live without the other dying.

And no matter the ferocity and honesty of my love, it will forever weaken and pale to the very real darkness in my own mind.

The darkness is true. Substantial. Ever-present.

Love has only ever been fleeting, with the same devastation of something natural.

Perhaps it is natural. The ache doesn't feel like it.

Pulsing.

It’s all about control

the illusion of freedom

keeping you busy

optimizing your time

Do you feel satisfied?

sophisticated boredom

edited self-esteem

instantaneous contact

networked loneliness

We’ve lost who we were!

unlimited choices

less empirical knowledge

algorithmic propaganda

You’re told what to believe!

delusional actions

collective psychosis

Made easier by isolation!

psychotic breakdown

societal chaos

We’ve become unable

or perhaps unwilling

to think for ourselves

To create art of any kind is an insanity of sorts. If one really thinks about it, the search for beauty in one's creative endeavors is really a waste of time. Why? By itself, art in any of its mediums serves no significant biological or tangible practical purpose worthy of the time, energy, and pain spent in its creation. So, using the cost-benefit analysis so prevalent in good decision making, it becomes clear that the compulsion to create and the corresponding act of creating art runs contrary to a productive use of one's resources and as a result can be considered a wasteful form of madness.

Creativity can exist solely for the purpose of meeting needs. For example, it took creativity to imagine and then build the first shelter that didn't rely on a cave. It didn't need to inspire awe or illicit an emotional response. it just needed to provide shelter from the elements and protection from the cave bears, saber-toothed cats, and packs of wolves that wanted to remind prehistoric man that having an opposable thumb didn't automatically give them the top spot on the food chain. So, why did they decorate their dwellings? Was it out of boredom? Did they use decoration to let other prehistoric people know that one could have a good time if they grunted 867-5309 to Slag, that Neanderthal hussy who was happy to put out for nothing more than a greasy hunk of mammoth and a handful of berries?

No. Decorating the dwelling was done for some other reason than to communicate who was an easy club over the head and drag by the hair into the cave for a rutting. After all, we eventually developed sophisticated written and spoken languages that could concisely proclaim who had been ridden and was enthusiastically willing to be ridden more than the town camel (humped he-he)/donkey/horse etc. These written and spoken forms of communication were much more precise and didn't require the extra energy or time that the abstract thinking art elicits to understand.

So, why did Pope Julius II (who would later invent a frosty creamy, orange flavored drink enjoyed by mall customers everywhere) feel that the Sistine Chapel needed to be embellished and why was he further compelled to pay for it? After all, it would've been more practical to use the money to, oh say, feed widows and orphans, right? Then why did Michelangelo agree to risk his life lying on a rickety scaffolding sixty-eight dizzying feet above the ground to paint the ceiling of this church? Oh sure, the gig paid well, but I guarantee they didn't offer health insurance. It defies logic and supports organized religion's centuries old bad habit of ignoring those it should be helping in favor of showing off.

What about the other mediums? Well...

Literature and Poetry: Do we really need stories? After all, what is a story, but a falsehood born of a fevered imagination? The written word should be shackled in the iron bonds of the truth. More substance and less art should guide what gets written. As to poetry? Seeking a rhythm or a rhyme is simply a waste of time. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Music: Music is too chaotic and in many cases, it can be dangerous. Being loud and making noise runs contrary to our instincts for survival. Did our prehistoric ancestors belt out, "Everyone Walk the Dinosaur" at the top of their lungs for shits and gruntles? No, it would've scared away their game and announced their presence to predators. In short, if they wanted to eat and not get eaten, silence, not drum solos was required.

Cuisine: Food is fuel. It didn't need to taste good. It just had to keep you alive while keeping parasites at the minimum.

So, why do we waste our time in the mad pursuit of beauty and self-expression? Shouldn't our energies be spent in more concrete, beneficial pursuits? Maybe. However, as a species. our existence defies what seems practical and beneficial. In fact, at our core we are agents of chaos. All that we are defies order and logic. Why have emotions? They get us in trouble and often blind us to what is easier. We are the only species on Earth that creates things in order to destroy other things. We seek to do things simply because we refuse to think that a thing is impossible. Other creatures don't complicate things and accept what is and live within what is known not in what might be possible.

In short, human beings as a species live in a constant state of defiance. To humanity, reason is often unreasonable. Logical limits get pushed or are outright ignored. Emotions send us down unknown and dangerous paths when a more calculated and emotionless perspective would be safer and more productive. Art in all its forms defies reason. Creation of art is often an act of self-destructive absurdity, that to the outside observer appears to take more than it gives. After all, the term, "Starving Artist" exists for a good reason and history is filled with artists who go unappreciated until they've passed through the digestive tracts of their worm grave mates. Still our chaotic nature demands that we nurture an equally chaotic madness that exists in color, sound, taste, and at all degrees of our imaginations. The Cheshire Cat's words continue to ring true, "We are all mad here" and we are wrapped in the madness of both our humanness and the love of and the compulsion to create art that is a symptom of that madness.

The way he sat on the chair felt heavy. Like there was much anchoring down his neck. Like there were a lifetime of concerns that made him bow his head. It was like this he crushed the cuff of his wrist and watched the floor in darkness and stillness. As if the world was leaned up against his back, but no one and nothing was in the room as accompaniment. Just shadows and a rickety chair. Shadows as dark and unresting as his hair.

These shadows whispered. "You will fail." The room was small so the reverb was loud. "Look at all the times upon which you have failed. Then and now and forever a failure. And they will hear it, and they will know it, in their bones."

A rift warbled and rippled in the air as his familiar broke through dimensions and reality to be by his side; an owl—colourless, then grey, then black as can be. Its image doubled. Then recollected itself. Its clawed feet plowed onto the man's head, like its nest was his hair, and his ear was its focus as its neck craned down, and its beak tore the atmosphere around him.

The man did not react to it entering the room, or how its weight pushed down his head, or how its open maw seemed to swallow sound itself. The shadows stopped. And the owl's voice was the only thing in his head. A wordless, soundless language between them. But he understood:

"It was time."

His finger twitched. There was a glitch as he himself made a rift in time, in space. As though he'd sat there long before and hadn't yet arrived. He stood before reality could keep up, weaving his body flawlessly through folds of time, ignoring the histories where those very flaws had shown. Like a ribbon in the wind. Moving fast; remaining slow; feeling fervent; staying solemn. He walked like he was in mourning, or perhaps performing. His heels clacked and quelled each shadow with purpose.

No longer did his gaze have a need for floorboards. Those doubts gave way to a twinkle in his eye and a spark of something great. He released his wrist and let the pain flow freely, like blood no one else could see, filling and painting a container that wasn't really there. But he willed it to be.

Another step and the room fell away, spotlights suggested a stage. He stroked the head of his owl until his familiar turned into a bow. The paint pouring from his wrist did not touch his cuff as they swished and manifested into a cello. Its spike resounding like a gong in the center of the theatre of applause.

And all doubts, fears, and flaws receded as he set out to create something timeless.

Float above

Sea of fog

Suffer in

Emotional bog

Helpless child

Full of fears

Has no hope

Shedded tears

Always thought

It’d never end

Broken spirit

Unable to mend

Persona non grata

Called a liar

Labeled weak

Psychic misfire

Trust no one

Wasted breath

Stuck performing

This living death

Anger consumes

Pent up hatred

Start to realize

Nothing is sacred

Mental scars

Never healed

Time passes

Pain concealed

Growing old

Full of anxiety

Try to fit

Within society

We listened raptly as the Captain spoke, madly waving his arms, speaking of the riches awaiting us on the shores beyond the horizon.

New to the ways of the sea, none worried that the ship had no one at the wheel as all were making sure the Captain saw them listening and nodding, all hoping to curry favor and reap the greatest rewards.

We didn't know the Captain had won the boat in a backroom poker game and knew less than any of us about how to sail the ship, having given the boot and the finger to the former captain's crew.

"Bunch of morons," he was heard to say about them.

Miles from land, the boat began to spin. The Captain stopped waving his arms and speaking long enough to wonder aloud, "Who's driving this thing?"

Looking up to the helm, we saw only dancing shadows, and some of us were gripped by fear, its tiny talons having silently yet swiftly snaked within us, relentlessly squeezing, stabbing our hearts and minds as we realized the future he had promised was as solid as the smoke receding before our eyes.

It snaked tighter when he shifted, sliding through the spaces he left open, winding between his ribs, curling where breath should have been. It moved like warmth at first, like something meant to hold him, coil after coil, snug and steady, a presence so familiar he mistook it for comfort.

But love, like this, tightens when you move wrong. When you reach for air.

It didn't strike. No fangs, no venom. Just the slow, patient squeeze. A constriction mistaken for embrace. A grip that convinced him he was safe, even as it stole the air from his lungs.

He let it happen. Thought it was supposed to feel this way. Thought love should press in, reshape him, make him smaller, make him fit inside the space it allowed. But when he tried to breathe deep, to stretch, to move beyond what it had decided he could be—

That was when it reminded him:

It had never been his to hold.

Earlier today March 28th, 2025

(thee hour now fifteen minutes

after eight o'clock at night, cuz

yours truly & wife paced back

and forth from one room to the

other wearing out rugged groovy

Tuesday (for three days) experienced exhaustion

within anticipatory anxiety

while feeling foreboding regarding

impending inspection courtesy

funding source for low income

rental community R(ural)

H(ousing) D(evelopment)

facility named Highland Manor

Apartments allowing, enabling,

& providing safety and security

away from elements harried

styled and swiftly tailored Mother

Nature poised to strike

indiscriminately across Perkiomen

Valley (though this geographic area

rarely if ever experienced

extreme weather phenomenon),

yet occasionally bam wham

thank you ma'am solid punch

evidenced nevertheless no likelihood

divine intervention would intercede

to disrupt yearly the plan for RHD

to take lock, stock and barrel of

property at 2 Highland Manor Drive,

whereat many tenants experienced

high anxiety nervously awaiting

the verdict concerning apparent

violations which would necessitate

immediate actions incumbent upon

management company known as

Grosse and Quade subsequently

affecting spike in rent beyond

the pale of affordability after costs

of repair calculated into the mix

courtesy officials prowling around &

scrutinizing soundness of building,

once upon a time former elementary

school in borough named for George

Schwenk, born and died (1728 -1803)

respectively locally famous and noted

worthily essential man whose mettle

constituted being adept as tradesman,

crafting and repairing metal objects,

from household items & tools to

farm equipment & even weapons,

using a forge & anvil to shape heated

iron, thus recognized as an inimitable

blacksmith, whose son Jacob served

in the Revolutionary War under George

Washington, hence name Schwenksville,

Pennsylvania no longer an isolated

hamlet bleeds into adjacent communities

where said building I live chock a block

with vinyl city, where affordable housing

necessarily requires ordinances & property

inspectors de jure enforcing, mandating,

& yielding de rigueur to arbitrary (usually

yearly) scrutiny of about a half dozen

randomly chosen units within Highland

Manor Apartments to ascertain tenants

deemed and maintained their assigned

units in accordance with standards as

outlined in the lease, which severe

disinclination to abide by coda could

constitute legitimate violation & reason

to be forewarned than after given so

much time to shape up or ship out,

which crises nearly found ourselves

(yours truly & the misses) with no figurative

(and literal) roof over our heads, and

forced to prostitute himself as rhetoric

the great or panhandle as local

historical buff displaying wares of "Lenni

Lenape," (which means "original people"

or "real people" in the Lenape language,

though said indigenous natives also known

as the Delaware, a name given by European)

particularly their kitchen middens whose

ghosts invariably haunt these regions grist,

for the mill of one story teller with overactive

imagination expounding on how one desperate

wordsmith wannabe or spouse sold their souls

to the devil, which action if successful would

which set in motion a vicious cycle necessitating

them to sell other parts of their body namely

major organs until they slowly but surely became

incorporeal beings able, eager, ready,

& willing to roam hither & yon, to and fro

across the webbed, wide world with few

if any obstacles in our way, whereat

nothing will thwart our collective endeavors

to sustain being linkedin to the air supply

eventually becoming absorbed into the ether

real medium encompassing the infinite

eternal cosmos, but interestingly enough

as the hours lapsed into late afternoon

especially when time approached

seventeen hundred hour myself & the spouse

dared the other to even whisper how

the fickle finger of fate showed a thumbs up

that no Mötley Crüe would appear

as the Iron Maiden de jure subjecting

ourselves on the receiving end of Poison,

thus dazed and confused as a Led Zeppelin

aimlessly spinning around like a whirling dervish,

who got stopped in his/her tracks to blink 182 times

plus me and the wife pinching ourselves &

the other to reckon eyes (usually subjected

to adversity since each of us got born) free

& clear of major catastrophe by a hair's breadth,

nevertheless feeling defeated living life struggling

with money woes & impossible mission for me

to eradicate indebtedness to this,

that or some other collection

agency no surprise ratcheting up frequency

when the purpose driven life ofttimes reaching

the tipping point where the grim reaper extended

a bony hand welcoming chemical romance videre licet

an accidental overdose of Fluoxetine elucidating

suicidal ideation as modus operandi to escape

(as a permanent solution)

the travails of penuriousness

still prevail at twenty two hundred hours

and never too late to send out

an electronic sos for munificence.