This isn't poetry, this isn't fiction, this isn't a song... obviously not a drawing.

I have so much to say and nothing to say and everything in the world to say... to you.

I can't be your friend.

But I don't want to go.

I had this crazy dream. There were so many people in your house. I felt out of place, but so welcomed at the same time. You showed me a picture of this crazy asteroid that had hit England thousands of years ago. They used it to build the foundations of a church. But it wasn't really an asteroid, it was a spaceship. And it had come from the creators of this universe. But as far as anybody knew, there was never anyone on it. Just a ridiculously advanced inter-universal spaceship that looked mostly like a big ol' rock with some little lights on it. The picture you had was huge and heavy. You needed help rolling it up in your bedroom rug (you had a bedroom rug, your apartment was huge and AMAZING and had this incredible balcony with an incredible view). I cautioned against using the rug, as people would think you were hiding a body. That's how heavy this picture was. I felt like I had tricked you somehow, but not about the rug...

I'm tired of wondering. I'm tired of the emotional drama and the intense complicated-ness. I'm tired of the imbalance, and I'm tired of how much energy it takes for me to manage these feelings. One way or another, it's time for this to end.

Sensual Daydreams and Erotic Nightmares

I dreamt a dream, asleep this morn

And from another dream 'twas torn

The dream was good, the waking bad

Within this dream-within I had

I dreamt of you, dreamed half-awake

There blissful pleasure's form did take

I dreamt of you, that dream I'd keep

But woke while I was still asleep

There, someone else was touching me

Discovered most alarmingly

There, while I slept, there, in my room

A stranger, an unknown for whom

I felt no love and no desire

He was no man, he had no fire

Just grabby, slimy, childish lust

Groping hands, unwelcome thrust

A pleading, sycophantic air

With clammy skin and greasy hair

Limp and colorless and soft

Unclean odors float and waft

Grubby hands caressing me

Weak but clinging desperately

Invaded through my bolted door

Strength, only in wanting more

And though I scratched and kicked and fought

Escape was only gained in thought

Until my eyes again I ope'd

Still I am not as free as hoped

I feel his hands, I cannot move

Though wakefulness is real and proved

True senses penetrate this theme

The layers of dream-within and dream

And so it clings to waking light

The sense that something is not right

Rose

This city has so saturated my life with everything I love that I'm sick of it and want to retreat into those things that I detest. If I see one more mediocre steampunk/tattoo/cabaret/burlesque/top hat/gypsy/circus/twisted vintage-vibe performance/party/gallery opening I'll vomit sequins and bile and bits of feather all over your studded leather corset.
Corsets corsets corsets I'm on this boat and I can't get off of it and I'm marrying my father and all I have around me are corsets with the bones coming out of them and some woman who says she will make me a new one for "varrry goot prrrrice" but I don't want a new one I just want the bones to stop coming out of the ones I have and stabbing me. And the boat has docked but I can't find the fucking gangplank. It was here just a moment ago, but now there are performing elephants in the way. Performing elephants with feathers and sequins spewing from the tops of their heads, shuffling through muck and sawdust and blocking my exit.
I finally give up my quest for the gangplank and immediately find myself on land, wandering through academic buildings. Oh! the womblike safety of a structured, academic life! Go to class, read this, write that, we will stamp your brain with knowledge. You will feel accomplished while accomplishing nothing. You will become accomplished without even trying. We will protect and provide for you. But when the circus comes to town you will not see it. You will hide behind your structure and your knowledge and you will not risk a venture into the strange and unpredictable real world dream world surreal hallucination nightmare fun just stay on campus where it's safe. Go back to the library, back to the dorm, respect the wise advice of your superiors. Bespeckled men in stately robes myopically roaming the quiet halls. Those who live live only in the mind. The in tell ect.
All that talk of emotional risk and I still didn't kiss her goodbye.

The End

...and an encore:

Goodbye, goodbye, my creeping rose
From your tall terrace, heaven knows
You won't see me here on the ground
I'll have to yell and run around
But still your eyes will skyward be
If roses look and roses see
Except they don't; or hear, or feel
Insensible, those flowers real
Waste not your love on flowers, fool
(Unless you are a garden tool)
Romance a woman or a man
And toss all this ridiculous poetic metaphor in the can

Fried Chicken Nighmares.

I'm walking through the park but the path keeps changing and I can't find where I'm going. I get distracted by small mammals in the undergrowth. I think they are squirrels and then realize they are rats. They look up at me as they scurry by. They have human faces. They ask me for apple slices. I pull slice after slice of apple out of pockets I didn't know I had. Secret compartments. Extra-spatial dimensions. The rats thank me politely and patter off. I wipe the apple juice from my hands onto the thighs of my jeans, then raise them to my face for inspection. My hands smell like fried chicken. I find this deeply disturbing. When I move my hands away from my face I still smell chicken. The air smells like fried chicken, the flowers smell like fried chicken, my shirt smells like fried chicken.
I feel… gross.
I raise a hand to my forehead and wipe away a thick layer of gelatinous chicken grease. The smell gags me. My vision blurs. I nearly vomit. I start running to escape the smell and the grease and the nausea. I repeatedly roll my ankle on stones in the path, regaining my balance each time. But it hurts. Grease continues to flood out of me, puddling around my feet as I run. I slip and fall.
I keep falling. It's very dark.
When I am no longer experiencing the sensation of movement I open my eyes.
My entire world has rotated 90 degrees. I am conscious of this fact, but am, nonetheless, unable to orient myself. I am lying flat on my back, convinced I am standing up. My body is floating in a sea of stars.

Hell

I woke up in a white room. No, that's not right. I regained awareness. I was sitting up. I hadn't been asleep. I don't know where I had been.

I was sitting on a ledge. My feet didn't touch the floor, but I wasn't high up. I could hop down easily if I wanted to. For the moment I stayed put.

The room was incredibly white. Bright. Very clean. It was about the size of the kind of closet that would call itself a walk-in if it was vain and grandiose in thought. Closets don't usually think though. There were no doors or windows. There was no visible light source… despite the brightness.

What the fuck.

Directly across from me there was a rack hung with a random assortment of coats. Each hanger had a little numbered ticket on it. The room had no doors or windows. I must have crawled in through the… huh, no vent. Where did the coats come from?

I waited for an indeterminate amount of time.

Nothing changed.

I gradually became aware of an uncomfortable urge to urinate.

...

"Hello?"

...

I jumped down from my seated perch to further investigate my situation. There wasn't much to find. The room was smooth and featureless. White. Still no windows, no doors, no vents, no loose tiles or floorboards, no trapdoors, no secret passageways behind tapestries or paintings, no tapestries or paintings for secret passageways to hide behind.

No toilet.

Goddamn I had to pee.

At this point I knew it was futile, but at this point I had figured I may be trapped for a while so I kept searching. I didn't want to be swimming in a puddle of pee. So, anything. A sink, a bucket, a wad of paper towels, a wine glass, a helmet, napkins, a hole in the ground, a spade to dig a hole, a makeshift crowbar, a battering ram, a plastic bag, ANYTHING!

...

"Heeeyyy!!! Anyone there? I GOTTA PEE LET ME OUTTA HERE!!!!!"

Ugh, I felt like I was going to explode. I tried not to think about it. My bladder bursting and liquid waste spreading infection through my pelvic region. All that acidic yellow invading my bloodstream and going to my brain. Oh god.

"GODDAMMIT LET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE, CAN'T ANYBODY HEAR ME?!?!?!?!?!"

...

Silence.

What the fuck?!

...

Coats. Coats are absorbent.

The thought was hardly formed in my brain before I vaulted myself at the coat rack, ripping coats off hangers and piling them on the floor. Once I had a reasonable pile in the corner of the room (slightly bowl-shaped, with the most absorbent materials on top, I'm no fool), I unzipped, pulled down, and squatted.

Oh thank god! Bliss beyond any measure. Golden relief shining down from heaven. Orgasmic in magnitude, magnificent in ecstasy! My life had been saved! Jesus himself swam before my eyes, blessing me, offering me absolution for my manifold sin of "holding it."

The glowing stream of divine love and forgiveness gradually abated. And there was silence.

Silence.

Then voices. Far off at first, but getting closer. "Just give me a second to find my ticket," "Yeah, I just want to get my jacket, can I get my jacket?" "It's the black wool peacoat with fancy buttons..."

I looked down.

There on top of the pile, soaked in the aftermath of my explosive jet of urine... Black, wool, peacoat. Fancy buttons.

Oh.

Shit.

Their faces started coming out of the walls. They were angry. They could smell my shame. I ran, my pants still around my ankles. There was nowhere to run, but somehow I kept going. The room must have been stretching. But they were always just behind me, snapping at my heels. Finally I tripped. It had to happen. It was a miracle I made it as far as I did, with nowhere to go, and hobbled by pee-pants. The faces came at me from the walls, screaming and snapping!

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"

And I woke up.

I woke up in a white room. No, that's not right. I regained awareness. I was sitting up. I hadn't been asleep. I don't know where I had been...

Cat

There was a very small cat. It was like a tortoiseshell cat, except instead of being black and brown and tawny and gold, it was black and green and purple and blue with a white underbelly. This cat was fluffy, but half-starved. He wouldn't eat. So his fluff made him look like a normal-sized cat instead of the intensely scrawny thing that he was. I somehow felt responsible for this cat. He was at my friend's house, I was there for a party or something, but he didn't really belong to anyone. When I pet him I could feel how tiny he was. Nobody else was really paying attention to him.

My Learned Friend

One night as I lay dreaming I did see above me the whole contents of the universe shining brightly. Every star, every planet, every galaxy revealed itself to my eyes in clear and sparkling detail. Distant galaxies, usually faint and frail and small, now did appear large and luminous as the fullest moon. The whole of the night sky was aflame and glittering.

Photo source

As my sleeping eyes observed this spectacle with awe, the heavenly bodies began to swing and sway, interweaving in an intricate dance. When I screwed up my focus to perceive the patterns of their movement I saw the shapes I had first taken to be stars and galaxies in fact more closely did resemble living cells, bacteria, wriggling and shimmering across the sky, making war with each other, dying at the edge of a indefinite blackness.

Photo source

And I did desire to seek my learned friend who reads the heavens and understands their movements and their meanings. And I did desire to ask of him what laws govern the stars, making them appear to be as life devouring itself. But he was nowhere to be found.