Dizzy

I wake up and my legs are like reflections of legs in moving water. I haven’t left sleep yet and the world still feels like a dream. Sleepovers don’t afford you much sleep and the deficit pushed back like a steady tide.

The world was still uncanny, weird and sickening. Felt a kind of empty, maybe unease- part of it cause I was hungry. Yesterdays food was good but today my mouth was dry. No one else was up and its impolite to leave early. My friends cat bothered me for a bit of food and then she wasn’t bothered. Something was off so the best thing to do was to go with the tide. The waters wash over you, you’ll flow and float all the way up eventually. I dripped backed to sleep.

January’s Ashen Afternoons

Hard edged and glass cold, the weather covered for 12 o’clock while it sneaked up on us. Someone rolled around in tidal sleep and moaned like a sea creature.

They spoke while I put my legs up to steal the warmth off the window grills; someone played the sunlight off their watch – “CUT IT OUT”. My brain seemed to melt, who was that and didn’t I have an exam to get to? The agony of waiting I thought while looking at my watch; productivity had to wait till tomorrow. Some weather needs to be savored I think while miming swishing wine around. I thought of cake I ate back in 9th grade. It was purple on an afternoon that smelt just like this.

Doors slam. An engine is kicked to life. Tires squeal. I imagine a scooter, speeding into darkness. I returns to the ingenuity of plants, to the magic of light but someone’s voice grew irate. “I grow green horn on my back. It’s all keratin so I’ll need your nail-cutter”. I tell her it’s in the bathroom. Was there really a black and white photo of a bespectacled man and a copy of Anna Karenina in there? Sometimes you imagine these things.

A chair falls over, Beach House blasts on an abandoned phone and I see a copy of cloud atlas under the couch. Someone kills a lamp and I remembered how a friend would print Chinese labels to put on glass bottles. “Adds character” he would say, “It’s the same shit but new, full of meaning probably.”

Instant Crush

The past’s a broken mirror

Cut yourself while you put together

an image now clearer.

 

I saw my memory that doesn’t die

You’re someone I used to know

Things go awry

When your near, memories flow

Why do you have to be someone I used to know?

Yet Another Story About You

You should have known then, that this day wasn’t going to be like any other day. You remembered that day well, when you lent back and stared at the revolving fan and thought that this was the beginning of a story, a story about you.

You were like any other cubicle slave- you went everywhere in overpriced cabs, you saw the world through your corner office window. You were a success or at least that’s what you liked to tell yourself. But one day began a story, a story about you.

You’d picked up your phone and called your fiancee Linda, but she didn’t answer her phone. You called all your tie wearing friends but they didn’t answer either. You walk to your closet but no coat would stay on. You walked down the street and no one saw you. You walked and walked and found a village when you no longer had shoes.

There they saw you but said nothing, after all this is a story about you. You stayed amongst them; maybe one day you’d be one of them. You listen carefully to their silence as they sipped tea and smiled, their little mustaches smiling too. You realize the sun was setting and the villagers fleeing.

You are soon alone in the dark dirt road with a million stars above you. You don’t care, you aren’t afraid, after all, this is a story about you. You walk towards the bright crescent moon above you, off the road and into the fog you hadn’t noticed between the trees before. You don’t know where it goes because this is a story about you.