10 minute walk
In the park there's Gypsy technicians
engineering freedom around the oak trees that lead to nowhere.
And I would have hung around
saddled in the stars titling in the shadow of foreheads passing by.
I would've dragged the constellations nearer to the earth.
A midnight blue scattered around my waist.
Turning gold in the pink flesh of the crooked arms of the moon.
In February.
But,
I'm capturing blood in my head instead.
Dashing mentally into what seems an eternal corner.
Rolling in cross legged nothings of restless meditations and spent cigarettes choked between my fingers.
I am hungry.
And I don't dance very much anymore.
I sigh about it and start to believe it.
Sing it like a song.
Biding my time
battling the urge to break bread under a bridge...
Losing my sense of traffic upon the rivers dimpled wave smaller than a hush- booming-
make room for my eyes caught in the privacy of trash bags whistling against the wind.
The Medic
It started back in the cemetery.
I used to call it a grave yard
But the man there gave me a sour eye.
I think I'll still call it a grave yard when I'm somewhere else
If I remember to.
There wasn't a lot that I remembered that day,
Just walking past stone after stone,
I don't remember any of the names,
Because I started to remember other things,
Things that were not mine to remember,
And somehow were.
There was a fight,
A battle.
Guns and dirt and grenades
And blood.
I tried not to remember the blood
But there it was.
And there was screaming,
So much screaming.
I always saw the worst ones,
Ones who came to the tent with missing limbs.
Some of the men were brave,
But it was always worse when they were screaming.
My hands could feel the cloth I used,
Bandaging, making splints, tourniquets,
The bottles of disinfectant,
The needles to make them sleep.
I blinked,
And suddenly there was a cloud on the hill.
A nurse in white was there.
She was my mother,
But she wasn't.
She just beckoned to me.
I can't, I thought,
I have to tend to them.
"Marcus!" she said
And the memories faded.
I was back in the cemetery.
"Come on, it's time to go!"
"You shouldn't shout,"
I said under my breath.
"What? Come on, baby, let's go.
"What were you doing out there so long?"
"Just remembering," I said.
She was quiet for a minute.
"Really? Remembering what?"
I was quiet for a minute.
"I don't know."
The Cumberland Breeze Moved Still [revised]
We hid under the Mulberry tree that had been scarred by the knives of Southern mischief two summers ago. He was seated across from me on a turquoise antique. The afternoon held its breath for us as he offered me his hand resting palm-up on my knee. And it unfolded slowly. His angled posture was straight, leaning forward to complete the missing half of my triangle. And his eyelids were partly drawn, set meditating on my forthcoming move. When I placed my hand upon his, for a moment, I was a child. I found safety in his comfort, but our love was a wildfire. The shade caressed the mood and from behind its veil of landscape, the sun eavesdropped and he sighed. Sweet molasses lacquered my heart and its beat bellowed baritone. He smiled. Then too abruptly I retrieved my hand from his to salvage a silkworm lost on his shirt. And with that, our moment became a memory We lost grip of our hope. But removed from the chaos happening everywhere around us, we spent one stolen hiccup in time under a tree with each other. And it was perfect.
Required
Due to the unbalanced nature of Daniel Moors' testimony, when the drugs had been almost absent, it was readily apparent that psychological dependence had set in. And at the moment he had desperately needed his vice.
However the young man had luckily had enough lucidity to not antagonize the officers or much move when called for a disturbance in the estate.
Due to his incoherence, his erratic behavior prior, due to the fact that the younger brother was petrified with eyes blown wide and drenched but otherwise uninjured on the patio a social worker was called in.
The parents had lost control. Realized so months ago when their son had punched a wall in an exhausted, irritable state one night.
And as it stood had no means or authority as parents to have corralled destructive behavior and violent language.
Olli had become something of a doll, otherwise unaccounted for in matters of the house, in the instances Daniel sober or not deigned to notice him. Sometimes he was in a hugging and crying mood. Other times he was in a venting mood.
He screamed at ten year old Olli on such occasions.
It was scary.
Even though his screams had demanded him to stay there, in one place, far from him while he was so angry.
His eyes had learned to track the movements of those bigger. Take mental note of how they paced, how long their strides, how measured or how agitated.
And from the very start he'd not trusted Dr. Eddal. Hadn't wanted her there.
From the start a requirement to shelve the entire ordeal as resolved was for the parents to submit Olli to a counselor for care.
Specializing in abused children.
She'd been used to horrible. And in some occasions yes, the children did turn into statistics into her mind.
She could only hope every day, try a little harder every day that those ill-suited tracks of thought never showed.
Dr. Eddal first consulted with Olli late at night, not long after Daniel had been detained and formally registered into rehab. Rather than her regular office it had been in a hospital.
The parents or Uncles, the adult family members were often the most common culprits. But there were always the times-- where, "the brother in his stupors would talk in coarse language, extort the child, blackmail and demand from the child to keep his silence."
"We do not believe physical force was applied."
"Marks designated to be 'with intent' are few and far between. Most if not all are now old and partially healed."
She answered his questions.
She asked her own, of how he felt of what he liked and who he liked. What did he do at certain times of the day and when he ate. How was school? There had been a note that he tried out for his basketball team and had been a rat in the Nutcracker show that winter.
Eddal did her utmost to reassure he was a person. A valued person who'd been undeservedly mistreated. In a way no one deserved to be treated.
And with time, in their eighteen months together she hesitated, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be unprofessional if he considered her a friend.
If it meant his fear of adults all but faded.
Once he'd graced her with his voice, well, she certainly laughed a great deal. She clapped when he showed her the steps for the rat's solo in the Nutcracker. She listened as rules were enforced and the candy and cookie jars were placed out of his reach.
It was a transitionary period: from indulgent negligence to authoritative.
She reminded him it was out of love. She reminded that it was his decision and his alone to see Daniel, to contact his older brother-- his older brother with an illness who had hurt him, who had known so to some level-- when it was safe. Safe for Olli physically and safe for Olli mentally.
She only saw him twice-more after the eighteen months were up.
Three years later and she'd have to correct that.
Setting her purse on the seat beside her a coffee mug had been slid into her hands.
"Thank you ma'am," Daniel said quietly.
Olli had allowed his brother to borrow his phone to call for a consult.
The boys' parents were at the moment, at Olli's school for a conference about recent behavioral issues. Before they were to realize the younger son had set them up to leave.
"Everyone else thinks I was hallucinating what I saw on that road. I'd be a little less pissed if they at least gave me a chance to speak."
"I'd read about that in the papers. You claim to have seen--"
"A ghost maybe, best way I could think to describe it when my head had been cut clean through with my windshield mind you."
Daniel Moors was terse but otherwise composed. He kept his temper and sighed out his frustrations.
"So," he continued with an obstinate shrug, "I hired three high-school freshmen. Okay, two freshmen and my brother."
Quiet Passion
My mind was so far gone walking was becoming difficult. The want and urge, the newfound duty to use my pen and paper, to dive deeper, slowed me down. It whispered in my ear and attempted to persuade. It wanted me to sit, to sit in the middle of the sidewalk and write.... But I couldn't. I was too much of a coward.
The one I call NOTHING!
Maybe if there is a black hole somewhere in my mind I could name it NOTHING!
I could put inside all the times I got hurt by bullies,
the time I got lied about love,
the time I cried and still cry for him,
I could add the fake world I live,
So I name you NOTHING!
Because love,sadness,fake means nothing
Nothing without having a chain reaction.
I add my memories as little one,
Cause I feel nothing.
I add my failures,
The times I trusted people,
The time my heart broke more than once,
But mostly time,
Because of the word time,
Because all lasted like it was never there!
So now I name you NOTHING!
I never knew time could take all like it was nothing!
So now you are in the little black hole,
The one I call NOTHING!
Time for a change!
I used to think with a depressive mind but I realized something through the years. Why do I have to be bad or feel bad about something or someone? Why to make myself nervous, have angry issues, be sad face etc.? I have my health, I live, I breath, I barely make it with money and try to help homeless people, I have a house, have a job and the only thing I need to keep up with my life is me, myself and I and my positivity of how I'm gonna treat every freaking bad step on my way. I can fight it and I'm not gonna let it get me! Time to catch the toxic air and all the bad days and turn them into good one and healthiest! :)
[R E D U C T E D]
The first time I saw the young man, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘the patient’, was when he was brought to me in handcuffs. He had an air of gloom I have yet to see in any of my patients. The photo that was shown to me and the man in front of me were like 2 different people. His lush brown hair had turned white and his attractive face had become skeletal.
The first week was spent without much progress. Most of the hour went on in an absolute silence and observation as he seemed to search the room. As if looking for something hidden. Occasionally he would listen to non-existing sounds and tremble. As it was my job to determine if the patient suffered from a mental illness or if he was sane enough for imprisonment, I decided to give him the time he needed to open up.
On the second week, he seemed to get more comfortable and started to open his thoughts to me. He spoke of the night in the woods and the horrors that had made the headline news that next morning.
His opening statement was, and I quote: “There are things in this world, doctor. Horrors beyond our wildest nightmares. And I have seen one of it.”
I pondered if those ‘horrors’ were manifestations brought on by stress or perhaps a genetic predisposition towards schizophrenic disorders? I don’t remember his parents mentioning anything about ancestors with similar disorders. But who knows. Maybe it happened further than the family remembers.
The patient continued by stating how it all begun during an intoxicated round of truth or dare. One of the victims, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘victim one’, took out a piece of paper and dared him to read from it. He continues by recalling that he found the page strangely old looking and hideous. There was a text written on it in red ink. The patient questioned the victim what book this was from. But victim one simply told him it’s from some old box he found in his late grandfathers attic. It sounded creepy, so he brought it on the drinking excursion.
So the patient read from it a sentence, one he can not remember, as it was in some foreign language. But as soon as he finished the words, a lightning struck near them on the ground. He swears that he is not lying when he describes it as green and almost soundless. His blood analysis seems to confirm that the boys were not on any kind of mind-altering substance, safe for beer. A greenish black smoke rose from the place of impact and started taking on a human silhouette. From it formed a creature of grotesque shape. The patient seemed to sweat profoundly upon remembering. He describes it as, and I quote: “Barely looking humanoid, with a strange demonic twisting on it’s skin.” If one is to imagine his hallucination, the face only contained a mouth with rows of dull teeth, outstretched in a spiral towards the height of trees. Its hands were intertwined appendages of what he only described as, and I quote: “tentacles from an octopus.” Hysteria soon erupted between them. Screaming and yelling. Only victim one, that brought the page, seemed to bow to the ground for the creature. The creature grinned from one earless side to the other. That is the last thing the patient is able to recall before waking up in that same spot, with a knife in his hands and surrounded by the dismembered bodies of his friends. In a more grotesque manner than any horror film he had ever seen.
After this couple of weeks, it is my professional opinion; after spending all this time with the patient, to declare that the man known as [R E D U C T E D] to be psychologically insane and should be put under immediate supervision.
From some deep part of my mind, I have also decided to include a piece of unrelated information. In spite of the new heating installed in the office, I could feel a cold in the room as the patient told his story.