The blood is in the water. But the water is warm and the blood is my own and when you bleed out slowly the feeling is earnest and soothing. They say sharks can smell the sweetness of injury from miles out to sea. I can’t envision them motioning a snout to the currents, sniffing like caricatures but I can see their shadows from above, casting sleek shapes along the imaginary seafloor. I sense them circling. Like ghosts. Like memories. Silent as knife blades.

I used to think I could only write when I was depressed.

Now I know it’s just that I can only write well when I’m depressed. 

Goldilocks was a thief, a snoop and a vandal yet her only reputation was for her hair.

borsch

paper bag stained with borsch

a greasy- bloody drip just slightly too pink

the old man left his dinner on the table

drove the wrong way up an offramp

and killed himself and a stranger in an oncoming car

A punctuation.

A punctuating sound.

A punch.

bee brain

There’s a bee in my head.

I can only speculate as to how he found his way in.

I feel his little footless appendages.

Rummaging around.

Reading vibrations to see deep into the grey custard suspending my thoughts.

I imagine his expressionless face.  

A helmet made of eyes.

Anticipatory.

Hunting, restless. Agitated. Searching.

Moving so jaggedly, so constantly, his body hums a note.

The sound of desperation.

Flowers developed overtime into blooms to drive him wild.

Luscious, vibrant, pungent, velvety specters.

Is it painful, like hunger?

Is it intoxicating like lust?

I pity him.

Constantly occupied. Never satisfied.

His existence is a curse.

lessons learned in learning lessons lessens the learnings we have learned

I need to experience the universe again.

I’m not sure if I feel anything.

I panic at the point of it all.

The certainty of death.

I ponder the meaning and meaninglessness of each day. 

My head is filled with black coffee.

I want to add that splash of cream.

A moment of richness.

I can see it.

Ribbons of white, rolling satin which appear to move in slow motion through the darkness.

I little thing that cannot be undone.

A drug experience.

A horror.

I want to be left feeling different.   

Looking different.

Being different.

too

Anything becomes painful if you have too little or too much.

Fasting and hunger, desire and destruction.

A scratch.

A loving emotion.

Any drug or intoxicant, tonic or medicine.

Too little eye contact.

Too much rain.

Comfort is the feeling of control.

We place ourselves in positions we feel to be just the right measure.

Then.

We get bored.

And tell ourselves it’s sadness.

Woefully we cut ourselves up inside.

Because life with too much comfort and not enough pain is painful too.

Sometimes you just know things.