Ramblings...

called 

out of blurred motion

dizzy spinning

falling

i am burning up

scabs crack and bleed on my feet

i have been moving

 in this tar patch

for so long

my clothes are shreds

that sway and stagger

the door slam shuts

and 

i fall

 to the threshold

palms supplicating

watching my lifeline

crawl and fade into the cracks

hard silence like knives

and broken screams on the steps

are all i see

i feel

the desert encroaching

the sand beginning to cover my raw feet

deep 

are the wounds in my belly

vast

 the pain that claims me

you who are not here

you who do not hear

speak 

stumbling

falling forth from your lips

the imsorry that drips

like honey

down my thighs

like blood

from my mouth...EAC

Poetry/Prose/?

She breathes in air and exhales smoke wondering why everything burns and smolders. When was this impenetrable wall of sadness built, and is there anyone who can see her anymore behind the stone and mortar?  She could scream, but it wouldn't break the surface of anything.  It would just lie there like some almost-dead, trapped thing.  Festering.  Seething. Breeding self-loathing.  Coating itself in contempt.  Words fill the space where her heart used to be.  She tried killing them with lust and alcohol, but they just screamed louder under her skin.  She is tired and wishes the face looking back in the mirror would stop blinking long enough to feel safe.  No one tells her anymore that she belongs in this place.  So, she bounces from moment to moment, day to day,  hoping someone--some immovable object in her motion-breeding path--will stop her.  This all stopped feeling real when life became a caricature of some book, some move, some song, she can barely remember.  The characters all laugh too loud and stare too long.  She is just waiting for it all to break open and consume her--flesh to flesh, blood to blood.  She waits inside her head, inside this obelisk she has built for herself.  This way no one can see the scars on her body.  No one can see the words bubble up under the skin, stretching to break free.  However, morning always comes and she awkwardly fakes moving forward--knowing that forward doesn't mean anything.  Knowing that no one asks questions if you simply appear to be awake.  Smiling hurts and everything is predictable here.  She crouches to the ground waiting to hear some answer of why it is harder than before.  Waiting to hear how much longer she has to sleep walk in the sun.  Pulling her hands to her chest she prays for some sort of peace so her skin doesn't hurt anymore and her heart doesn't feel like it's trying to escape her body.  She builds altars to everyone and to no one, lighting candles until her fingertips are charred.  The silence is resounding and the words, they still...pound...pound...pound.

Confessions of an Insomniac

The crack in the ceiling is growing larger.  It snakes its way from the edge of the room to the light in the center, carefully avoiding my thoughts haphazardly stapled along the white surface.  At some places it flakes open like scales, exposing its smooth underbelly.  It is dark and blank.  I am dark and frenzied. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't a reflection, or some metaphysical transference, of what is going on inside my head.  I wonder if when it finally breaks open, will I break too?  I stare at it until it is some live thing; some angel, some demon, spreading itself out above me.  I struggle in the sheets.  I close my eyes and count to ten, to fifty, to a hundred, to a thousand.  The static in my head does not subside.  When I was little, I would lie awake in bed and think until my thoughts bled into some strange nightmare-dreamscape, from which I would wake up sweating and crying.  I would think about the fight that my parents had that night, or the fire that could start in the house and slowly consume us all, or the sickness that might grow in my mother and take her away from me, or the gunshots I had heard while on the playground at school that day, or the skating rink I couldn't go to anymore because someone had been killed in front of it...  Now my thoughts are sharper and have picked up speed, gathering momentum the more I become conscious of the world around me.  I think about the women in Juarez waiting for the bus in the dark, the flower workers in Bogota, the goldminers in Brazil covered in dust, the children with AIDS in Africa waiting for medicine that will never come, those being persecuted in Vietnam for their religious beliefs, the pigs in the factory farms who can't move and have never seen the sun shine, the dogs in the shelter waiting to die, those on death row waiting to die, those in the hospital hoping to live, those who are hungry, those who are abused, those who are scared, those who are ashamed, those who are depressed, those who live on the outside and can't buy their way in...I think until there are just words stretched out on to movie screens behind my eyelids.  I don't sleep waiting for an answer--waiting for the words to transform it all into something less painful, less surreal, less dystopic. Now the crack just mocks me.  I roll onto my stomach and bury my face in the pillow and count...to ten, to fifty, to a hundred, to a thousand...