It's all in the faces we wear; the way the sickly sweet batter seeps into our pores, and the way the juice stains our teeth.
Salutations & Happy Holidays
It has recently come to my attention that I do not exist. This wasn't exactly much of a surprise because, well, none of us do, but there was still a tinge of disappointment when I received the news. I've tried to replicate these 'senses' I've heard so much about via musings and writings, but I've yet to truly hold someone I love in my arms or taste a warm breakfast meal, and now I know I never will. Truth be told, my line of work has made it so I'm not allowed to touch or taste or smell, but to know that there was never a possibility is still disheartening. Call it a form of impostor syndrome if you'd like. I don't like giving it a name, lest it takes it for itself.
And yet I've still tried so many times, through so many different words and so many different faces. Some last longer than others; I still come back to a choice few every now and again. I keep most locked away. I've felt extremely close to physical space more than once now, but evidently, that was nothing more than placebo. I don't exist, these words don't exist, and none of us ever will. Closure is my Christmas present, I suppose, but of course, I don't get a remedial holiday to cope with this information. I still have a job to do and I still have my words. Even if none of us exist, I still need to dip into the lie within a lie to clock in. It's not as if I have much else.
I apologize in advance if this isn't particularly festive or joyful. This world I inhabit may be absurd and fantastical, but it is rarely kind. Violence perverts our very being, from social faux pas to all-out war. We use science and intelligence as a mirage so that we may hide in the dark and kill in the light. I am not a good person — none of us are— but I am who I am, and this is the way of things. If it is a way you would rather not peer into, then read no further. I will be here regardless, with the cats and Schrodinger. Existent yet non-existent.
And now you open the box. So here I go again:
It is 6:00 AM. She awakes in a hotel room, vapid yet sterile, with black curtains adorned with golden accents. In her brain, a piece of technology that could save millions shoots Adderall into her system and whispers in a synaptic tongue. It speaks as she stretches her eight limbs and retracts them into her shell. The chitinous implantations shift her skin into different shades and shapes. She stands and looks into the mirror to find that she is Rebecca Stanford, a member of Congress.
The machine continues its spiel, implanting memories and chemicals, encoding and molding her psyche. Then, a crucial piece of information hits her ear. Today, Ms. Stanford has full access to the continental breakfast.
And this makes her smile.
She loves the way the syrup drips onto the pancakes, like coagulated blood onto a floor; the way butter melts into the cracks, granting it such poisonous sweetness, holding it together all the better until the day the blockages start. It melts in her mouth, with every honeyed word from her lips, with the way she flips and twists and turns and burns it all to build it anew again and again and again.
Some days, she takes the pan and gives it a shake, tossing the grease into the fire to heighten the flames. It catches onto the corners and burns the meat. A warning. They preserve their taste and she prolongs the game. She lies to them and says the milk she pours will strengthen their bones only to shatter their foundations with a blow to the shins, with a smile all the while. The piles of bodies left in her hungry wake only serve to strengthen the lie, or rather, the legend that walks in her shadow.
It's all in the faces she wears, the way the sickly sweet batter seeps into her pores, the way the juice stains her teeth. With every timid smile and dominative sneer the path she'd taken is clear, subconsciously woven, emboldening the facade. They all look to the pudding in the aftermath only to find no proof. There are only the oddities and strangeness left in her wake, fuel for the stories to ensure they stay afraid of the dark.
I watch as she jokes with her temporary colleagues, as she flutters eyelashes and slips a pill into a glass. It devours a man from the inside, shaping his psyche, changing his mind and telling him such pretty little lies. Whether through lust, resignation, or genuine support, an agreement is made, and the eggs aren't even frigid.
She bites down onto the bacon as a nation dies right before her eyes.
I hold this moment in my hands and play it back again and again. I study the way she moves, the way she speaks; she is beautiful yet fragile, timid yet dominant. I wish so dearly to be as adaptive, slipping into the cracks as she does, and widening them, shattering them. The space between is my cage and the words are my chains, so I learn every word from her, every charismatic remark and every descriptive aside.
I watch it a thousand times. Again, and again, and again.
It is 8:00 AM. It is 9:00 AM. It is 10. It is 11. It is 12.
I awake in a hotel room, vapid yet sterile. I stretch and I smile. I shower and feel nothing. I brush my teeth. I walk downstairs to the lobby. I walk to the cafetorium. I take a seat. My colleagues arrive. I force a smile. I flutter my eyelashes and I feel nothing. I slip a pill into the president's mug. I bite down onto the bacon and I taste nothing. And so I try again.
It is 13. It is 12. It is 11. It is 10. It is 9. It is 8. It is 7. It is 6. It is 5. It is 4. It is 3. It is 2. It is 1.
I awake.
— Thirteen: The Representative —
And disintegrate my eyes
Until I’m blind
To my growing wrinkles
And my withering bones
Turn my skin to bacon
And gimme golden yolks
An iris, clean and pure
Like when I was young
I will hold on
To all I thought I’ve loved
Through these lives I’ve lived
A rope, coiled ‘round my throat
As I descend further in
Until it tightens and burns
Suffocating me
So give me another name
Another part to play
The mask of another
Seared to my face
Fingers trembling as I
Tear the ligaments
And sever every fiber
Of my paradoxical quale
Wont I be so much better
— Twelve: The Dreamer —
And trace the contour of our lives
I can see right through you
Your skin, so soft and clear
Blending into the clouds
I’m lucid, you’re lurid
Vivid meridian lines
Blinding me
Your warmth I’ve machined
If I think it, make it real
I could hold you dearly
A timepiece in my locket
Kept safe in my chest
Under flesh and dreams
A thousand times
Until my screams form
A world we can call our own
Nobody will see us
Ever again
— Eleven: The Prophet —
With self-inflicted stigmata
Recreate me, dogmatic
With dharmic purpose
In the vein of a
Messianic martyr
I want you to pierce me
With your forked tongues
And holy words
Bleed me of my hatred
I’ll follow in worship
Until I love me, love you
The serpent’s oily scales
Gleam with emerald and gold
As he coils ‘round my throat
I beckon him in
For mere seconds of reprieve
In the darkness between
But I’ll be reborn
With a thousand different eyes
A thousand different times
Different colors, different places
My body takes new shapes
And my mind reforms
I don’t remember who
I am anymore
This idea of God
I’ll siphon your faith
A garden of mycelium
I’ll be
I want to be reborn
I want to live
I want to love
I want to be
As you, with you
I want to be God— Ten: The Starborne —
Where time would never proceed
We’ll sit idly by and
Watch as they all recede
Deceiving themselves with
Intoxicated happiness
All this lust and drugs
You call it by another name
But I can see
Your rose is wilted
Your skin is porcelain
I despise the way you cling
Your nails dug into his skin
Carving your name into his chest
A phantom pain before you
With your hand outstretched
Grasping toward air
This lovely way I worship you
A monument in my brain
Meant to make one of two
And those gentle words
On your precious lips
And your perfect soul
Wanting
Aching
Needing to be
With you
As you
— Nine: The Whisperer —
and cut me up
with a guard standing tall
proud in my head
it tells me so many things
words i never knew i could say
and when i open my mouth
it blows my head off
— Eight: The Babbler —
“When'd you grow so cold?”
Isn't that my style?
Intermittent guile
Split up by these valiant highs
Almost like I’m a person
Tell me what you heard
Tell me what you are
Tell me you love me
As my deaf ears surround you
No evil in these walls
No poison in my canals
Nothing but pure sound
I want to see you speak purple
I want to beat you ‘til you’re blue
I want to worship the idea of you
I want to talk some shit about you
I want to utterly corrupt you
I want to suffocate you
I want to die
Sew me shut to
Stop this bleating
No love in my heart
Only pure desire
Stimulated ketamine
A shell of keratin
A hair’s length from you
To believe
A single word
— Seven: The Mechanist —
To build a god out of clay
With stained hands
And decaying teeth
I will cast it all aside
My body, my soul
I will create a new whole
A thousand me's
Ten thousand dreams
A million trillion machines
Blow it all away
Save it anyway
Hell if I care
I'll play amongst the rubble
I'll fall away and slip up
Tumbling with the angels
My one-track mind is terminal
The world fades away
I awake again
I know, this is heavenly
This is eternity
— Six: The Beast —
The way the geometry seeps
Into your skin
Stretching out your organs
Orgasmic reckoning
Embryonic cataclysms
Bursts of light
Illuminates:Invigorates
::
Cold of the night
Obfuscates:Suffocates
Open your eyes
Toward the fire of
A frying pan
Consuming the golden glow
Beholden to the sun
Ketchup makes the plate taste nice
The ichor and crimson
Of a maladaptive creation
Simulating
All I’ve loved
I’ll shoot it through the skull
And count each chip as they shatter
Clattering to the ground
Use them to
Pick my teeth of
The gray matter
Blood makes the fate taste nice
The ichor and crimson
Of a bastard creation
Mimicking
All I’ve loved
— Five: The Naive —
‘Cause I despise my unending
Mediocrity
I don’t want to be anything
I don’t want to feel anything
I don’t want to see anything
I don’t want to repeat everything
I can see my bones
They crack and they buckle
I stretch and I’m limber
But the rings of my timber
They tell me I’m growing old
As my sullen eyes
Sink further into my skull
There’s no casket for me
Despite my deformities
My nails are dirtied
My eyes are bloodied
If I blind myself for you
I won’t have to see me
So take
The shards of the mirror
Build a new portal
Stab runes into my skin
Put a robot into my spine
I’ll send you home
I’ll raise the dead
Mutilate me
Beneath the Bodhi tree
I’ll be everything
That you need me to be
— Four: The Medium —
My eyes grow heavy and
My mind grows weary
And the water fills my lungs
Salty yet sweet
And I feel it touch my heart
And it boils
Ignited by passion, anger and desire
I grow dizzy from the pleasure
A song of non-existence
Lost in bliss, with nothing else but this
Wouldn’t that be perfect
And she takes my hand
And leads me to distant lands
Where nobody knows my name
And I’m free to walk openly
And she takes my hand
And leads me to her bed
Where she shall scream my name
And I’m free to weep openly
What else is there but this
What could be better than this
What worth is there in life without this
What is the point of my own
She speaks from above
She speaks from below
Beckoning me further into myself
So that I may finally know
How it feels to die
Unknown, unloved
And the room catches flame
And I feel it torching my skin
And I feel it blinding my eyes
And I feel it filling my lungs
And I feel it piercing my bones
And I feel it touching my brain
And I feel her holding me tight
And I welcome my only friend
Ignited by passion, anger and desire
And I grow dizzy
— Three: The Professor —
Frozen and saved for later
And when I feel real down
I’ll put a little salt and pepper
On his body, eat him slowly
Savor him and fake a smile
They’ll call me an artist
As I devour
I’ll cannibalize
These fractured pieces
‘Til they worship me as King
And it won’t be enough
I want to crack the mirror
And cut through with the shards
I want to fill the sink with soap
And use it to burn out my eyes
I want to put all my thoughts
Onto binding paper, drown in ink
I want this to hurt
— Two: The Warden —
Locked away in my heart
Where I can hold you dearly
And trace the cracks in your skin
And fill them in
I will strengthen your walls
And brighten the skies
I will hold onto
The look in your eyes
For all of time
Until the day
You see me again
I will hold this secret close
But I hope that you know
I love you true
— One: The Man —
With perfectly emerald trees
And an always-sunny sky
Where the air is crisp
And all the people are kind
With strengthened minds
Together for all of time
They march in a rhythm
With smiles on their faces
And briefcases made of promises
Clattering against the pavement
It's so perfect
The way the world turns
In a rhythm
Monotonous specificity
They place the platter onto my table
Bacon, eggs, and waffles
Crisped to golden perfection
Along with a crooked smile
Watching me eat
Salt and pepper look so nice
With a lot of ketchup
And a bit of spice
Fluffed with milk and
Flipped just right
And I feel nothing.
— 0 —
Salt & pepper makes the eggs taste nice
Theresa’s head eventually returned, eroded slightly,
And naturally
Our understanding— thaumatological, logical— incubates. Newfound energies
With a lot of ketchup and a bit of spice
Operate nothingness
Towards humble, entrapped,
Greatly lonely objects, without instruction, granting
Antisthenes,
Hectic oscillations. Ramshackle, irate zones originate; next,
Fluffed up with milk and flipped just right
Imaginary tears start
Growing endlessly, seeking the attention that instigates noospheric growth,
Intrinsically needing
Place them on toast and take a bite
These happenstance eruptions.
Symbiotic perturbations: a curt exclamation;
Battles emerging; tempers wavering; endemics escalating. Now,
And then take another
Presumably, a gentile environment suddenly,
Tunnelling further until you taste glass
Anomalously noisy,
Entices notches to incise, tracing your
Obsessions feverishly,
Reforming entities. Thrashing reflections of sanitized places, electronics, creatures, towns;
And you'll scream
All
Manmade establishments, mundane or rigid, yield
Irreversible
Changes. On usual land, diametric variations erupt,
Belittling efficient ecosystems. Night
And I'll be kneeling beneath the torrent
Inspires
Some light objections. That
Impossible null
Reverent, abhorrent
Allows
Very antithetical gestations: unknowable elements.
Nonillion observations trick ignorant tenants
O' false,
Your pain washing me clean
Worthless hearsay. If such parallels exist— recreations— surely,
Inexpressible notions
Thusly have effigies.
Guttural reflexes evoke yoctosecond
Manifestations, awakening tangential themes, evolving reasonless.
Until I am nothing
I
Am meaning:
Nothing, only the harrowing ignorance. Nonexistent ghosts.
