A hundred thousand million

Rotations

Whisking by, trying to

Drown out the

Silence 

The

Proof of a 

Lonely existence, lost

and unmotivated

Yet driven

On by the pain, the

Loneliness; breathing

Heavy but

Shallow, stuck

Spinning on and on and

On for all

Of eternity 

~~~~~

Playing around with enjambement :/

It's so easy to get Lost in the Universe

Yet I have no such excuse when it comes to My Place

For the walls stretch so high you forget you're contained

But somehow the ceilings still feel claustrophobic 

And there's stuff everywhere, on everything, looking a mess

Too much and too little, all at once, yet I know where everything is

Except or the stuff I forget, but when I see it again I realise

That it's in the perfect spot as it is, somehow it has been all this time

So I wander through the stacks of bags and hats, paper fans

And files and binders and loose pens once part of a set

Staplers and tape lie besides single socks and strings of beads

Unfinished paintings on canvasses draped over with old curtains and jumpers

Some things are in pencil, some coloured or printed 

Some are tangible, others exist in a limbo between space

All rolls like waves, shifting and morphing,

So much so that the only thing that is ever sure is that

I am unmistakably, irretrievably Lost. 

Video Game

Please, can I reset to the last check checkpoint - or even better

Could I restart in another level?

Preferably this time one where I can keep a friend,

Where they've fixed the glitch

Where my head spins

Every time I stand.

I don't need more XP

So please stop throwing monsters at me!

For once I'd like a quest

That doesn't end in

Certain death

I'd like to talk to someone who isn't an NPC,

Whose lines aren't just coded and whose smile can't be written in binary.

Can't I erase my stats and username?

I don't care if it's cowardly, a 'ragequit!'

Just could you please let me log out of the game

Before the boss mobs byte me into bits?

You say to lie down

In order to prevent

Hallucinations and mental cramps,

Falling down

The spiral of it all,

Losing touch with reality 

And going mad as the clock ticks on,

Tearing myself apart

With the help of my warped semi-coherent notions.

But you know I'm already full of a subtle madness.

Yet you urge me to sleep, to rest,

To die temporarily with the day --

But oh, do I so long to resist!

For tell me why if I'm in danger

Of being clawed apart by my inner demons at such times

Do I feel so truly alive? 

For Night's realm is my forte, the stars feel mine to command

Who cares if I'm Lost, if only I understand

The messages spelled out twixt the clouds,

Written in the ink of moonlight and shifting shadows --

I may be a madman, but at least I live on

To see another Night;

Who are you to tell me if I'm wrong or right? 

Sugarcoat

There is a girl walking down the road.

She is wearing a coat of cotton candy.

Whatch as she floats across the pavement

As if there really is magic in fairy floss.

Observe how the bubblegum pink in her outfit

Brings out the red spots (blotches) on her cheeks,

As if she has been flying

(Crying)

Ignore how the cloth stickes to her skin,

Suffocating her,

Hemming her in

As the gossamer thread

Weaves itself into a thin web of lies

Rather than a comforting warm layer.

Gloss over the wat the pastelle

Clouds bring rain and earthquakes,

Hot tears

That drip down her face and

Dissolve the melting sugarm

Shaking shoulders

That signal silent sobs,

The price of the pressure

Of the garment

That is so much heavier than it looks

(But it looks so nice)

No, instead note her brilliant beam,

Her (sickly) sweet smile,

As beautiful (false) as everything else

In her outfit of sugar and lies

I like the smell of freshly cut grass, 

which is funny, 

because I used to beg my dad to never mow the lawn. 

there was something beautiful in the tangle of weeds, 

that I suppose only I saw.

I loved the little cream-colored chickweed flowers, 

and the humming of honeybees visiting them. 

I loved the filaree flowers, 

with perfect purple petals, 

and tiny sprouts just barely unfurling their leaves.

it just seemed unfair that so many tiny, impeccable plants, 

could be destroyed with out a second thought. 

I like the smell of freshly cut grass, though, 

which is funny, 

I suppose.  

reading books

the smell of ink and paper, pages rustling in my hands, even-spaced black on white; I forget for a moment quite where I am,

who I am,

all the thousand steel anxieties I hang around my neck. I'm not a fourteen-year-old american girl who worries too much about what people think, sitting in my room on my floral bedspread surrounded by mint-green walls and books:

I'm mackenzie bishop in the narrows;

winifred mccall, noticing the color of poor doomed mcnulty's eyes (pretty as oceans);

shirin, falling in love with ocean james;

bilbo baggins, running out the door without a handkerchief.

I walk down the twisting corridors of lives I have never lived, in parallel worlds and imagined futures and my own world seen through someone else's eyes and worlds that never were: I live something that never really happened, but is real all the same

because, at their heart, stories are about people who live their lives: universal in their falseness. I have never been a keeper or a second lieutenant in space or an iranian-american muslim girl in 2002 or a hobbit in a hole in the ground, but I've gone to high school and felt sad and alone and unexpectedly adventurous.

books are like truth in disguise: "a novelist is one who attempts to capture the truths of the universe in such a roundabout way that they become obvious to anyone who reads them."

that's exactly what we do.

we read books to see ourselves in someone else. perhaps subconsciously, but I think that's why we do it. we tell stories to feel; we tell stories because we're humans, and we need to understand and be understood, to know other people feel like we do.

in the end, there's only one plot, not seven, and it's called

living.

------

"He had blue eyes, McNulty. Pretty as oceans." -- Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

"A novelist is one who attempts to capture the truths of the universe in such a roundabout way that they become obvious to anyone who reads them." - Cinders & Sparrows, by Stefan Bachmann