A road between two.

I remember how much I used to think about you. In the town where I was young, a winding road between two swamps. Each time the weight of the vehicle pushed to the right and I asked and received the most delightful visions of you in my head. You smiled at me as you reached for my hand. When our fingers interlocked I would tell you,

"I want to be good,"

You would smile and disappear as quickly as you touched me. Now I am anxious for that memory. Someone has tough callused hands around my ankle. A bag is over my head. Nothing is visible and I am so scared of what is about to happen. Who used to pull on my ankles? A teacher once did that with such love, I assumed she was my wife, if I ever knew what a wife was.

These hands are different, they do not like me, they want to hurt me. Other pairs exist in this room. I understand why they want to do this, it makes sense, it doesn't mean that I do not want to run away. The sock shoved in my mouth is making my jaw ache. Bitter fetid tears are falling from my eyes and my nose can smell the iron of my blood mixing in between the muffled sobs.

Ushered and placed in a chair, leather straps go around my forearm. The hat is pulled from my head and I am staring into eyes that see this everyday. I sputter as they rip the tape and then pull the sock out. No words come out, as I make a face, trying to feign confidence. There was that road. Where was that road? Does anyone know the way to go home? What happens when they do this to us? Crying, I bow my head and I feel the initial pressure of the clamp on my pointer finger. The tear is so shocking, like the north sea on family vacations, feeling like I should smile, instead I say,

"Forgive me, Forgive me, FORgive me, FORgive ME,"

A piece of paper has words written on it. Words were meant to be read, but read aloud? I do what they say, it sounds as foreign as Mandarin but I am speaking my native tongue. How many people are going through the same exact moment right now? How many would try and reach back to the time they were young and they felt the soft skin and all the impending mistakes of being on this world for two decades. Remember the sharkskin paper of books being carried to be a productive member of what? A club? A lie? A reason to hate, no one to say good morning to.

As my head is bowed, like Mishima on the day of his reckoning, except I have no one who loves me. People will never be given the grisly, instead a rehashed story that grown ups tell other grown ups when they can't face their own conscience. Granted no last meal, I cannot see the road between the two swamps and I know why.

We have a choice, even if it isn't between life and death.

The Man with no Muscles

I do not use a single muscle in my body. Suffering from hypersensitivity, everything makes me upset, my heart pounds when I see a commercial that indicates the slightest trace of human emotion. Before my father would let in to me, he told me this was called the weak disease. The only way to end it, was to force it out, with fists, belts, suspenders, baseball bats, cheap beer bottles, and once my mother's shoe. My mother had the weak disease too. Every night while I suffered from my affliction, My father, the self proclaimed medicine man, would pummel her till her cries became as silent as the day the door closed and my mother disappeared forever. 

My mother must have been rehabilitated. I had to stay, until my father told me it was okay. Red liquid, the toxins of my body would pour from every orifice as he left me to sit in the living room. After all, even doctors need their rest. Psychotherapy was also important. I had mantras to live by:

I am pathetic. I am a weak minded. I deserve everything that happens to me. How can I be strong? How can I be better? I will change. I will change.

I needed to be bigger. The local swimming pool was usually off limits, but submission, I was slowly learning was unacceptable. I jumped in the pool. I thrashed my body, how could my soft bones and peach weak skin move from one side to the other. Once before this, I had been in water, an ocean filled with needles, people and their friends laughing at me, as I swallowed brackish water, pretending not to notice that I was sobbing, waiting for someone to help me. No one did, for they knew to touch the untouchable will be a gravely ill mistake. I wandered around exhausted until wrapping my arms around the pole of an abandoned harbor, looking at metal and steel. The ocean butterfly out of the chrysalis and into a hot hurting city of immeasurable pain.

I have six lanes to my lonesome. I pulse and swim, a new part of me awakens, and the kaleidoscope of colors are bursting at me. Sucking the water, the bromine fills out until my lungs are soggy. I drain the pool and hold the water, a massive tank of urine, bacteria killing, and lost goggles. Heaving and sagging down the streets, an orb, the boy with no muscles, the child with no heart, the beat that sags to silence. He waits for me in his chair. The weak disease is gone, instead of beating it out of me, I fill it up in one balloon and wait for it to pop. His eyes cannot mask the surprise he has for me, the maw of being victim and victor. Spilling his warm beer he stifles back and prepares, but nothing can prepare anyone for a flood. No higher ground, we live on the top floor. 

Spewing forth, my teeth rip from my guns, The water that has mixed with my stomach acids fly in his directions pushing his back against the wall. Sacrum, Lumbar, Thoracic, Cervical, all slowly being pulled North, South, East, and West. His eyes bulge and he is torn limb from limb. When it is all over, I go into my room. Soaking wet and cold. Shivering I find the beautiful cardboard wings my mother gave me as a child. If she has gone anywhere, I know it is up, into a sky where things are better, where love exists an I won't cry anymore.

On the roof, I hear noises, that ever present heat begin to itch at my skin, perhaps a relapse? Perhaps not. I walk to the edge and I fly so high, but first I must swim. The girt, the water, but finally I use my muscles. It hurts but I am not weak anymore.

Ayurvedic City & Atlantic Medicine

Gabriel stepped out of a wounded Lincoln with three other humans in tow. He hadn't expected for Simon to come through with this whole weekend. The two had spent most of their lifes desperately short of funds and now his friend, following in the footsteps of F. Scott Fitzgerald had found money that he now wanted to squander on friends and other people that he had paid to be there.

 Simon never told Gabriel how he had made his money, but when a phone call was made with such enthusiasm how can you question friendship and good fortune, at least one of them had made it out of the slump and there was nothing wrong in enjoying the spoils of new found wealth. Acting foolish was something they had always done and eventually it had helped them to hit payola. The city of built out of Trump and burning money was a little Vegas with more ill repute. Each back alley was filled with more business transactions. A hotel room was the NYSE for a multitude of tastes, pleasure and pain, if there was a difference as Simon said. Not to far away from this gambling delight lived Gabriel, the best friend and the small renter from an apartment just in Croton Falls, close to a nice Indian restaurant that he would eat at on Sunday, the only time he could afford the Sunday lunch.

The Limo had arrived and he had spent thirty minutes passing for it to arrive. It was one of the new models and there was a small scratch on the door, as if someone had dug several keys into it as they were going to pick up some valeted cars and this hulk was blocking the exit. Once inside Gabriel was greeted by three women. One of them handed him a glass of Champagne, on cue. It was all too well rehearsed and Gabriel reached in his pocket for his medication but realized in his fluster he had forgotten it. Draining the Champagne he felt uncomfortable as the script indicated that the two women needed to sit next to him. They chatted him up, a glaze in their eyes, and the third Young woman on the other side, soon slid down the leather as the car was safely on the thruway and opened a silver box with the powder that everyone knew was white. He was offered a bump off of her finger nail and he did not refuse. She smiled at him, and Gabriel could feel a bitter baking chocolate taste on the tip of his tougne when she snaked back to the other side of the ride. He finally had the twenty minute adrenal secretion to ask them their names:

Alena

Alena & Alena.

Alena, in the black cocktail dress, was Simon's girlfriend. She told Gabriel to enjoy the ride and that Simon couldn't make the ride because he was preparing everything at the hotel. "Which hotel?" Gabriel asked. She smiled, "Simon's," and then sealed her lips for the duration of the ride. The girls were pressed upon from Alena to ask Gabriel questions about his life, about his love of Jai Alai, and the trips he had taken around the world before he hit financial rock bottom and had exhausted the insurance money he had collected from various incidents and tragedies.

The white Limo, spat Gabriel and the Alena's at the door. The two embraced him and hurried inside. Simon met Alena with a kiss and then looked at Gabriel, he smiled and then firmly embraced him. The showering of compliments came from every angle of the building. It was a massive black obelisk type building with minimalist furniture. The Trump plaza and Caesars looked rather gaudy in comparison with this hotel and all of the employees in Saris and he noticed that almost every employee aside from the security were women. Each one of their name tags read Alena. Gabriel whispered into the ear of his friend, "What is the Alena thing all about?" Simon shrugged as he ushered him along and then announced before they stepped inside an elevator, "Everything is a Garden maze."

The elevator turned pitch black and it rose to the top floor of the hotel, Simon's new residence. When they all walked in the Champagne was chilling in a bucket and of course on the table were assortments of party enhancers, expensive appetizers, and then a strange suitcase that was stacked as if it could hold one thousand greeting cards.

Simon ushered for him to take a seat, and Gabriel felt a slight envy.

"Have you ever heard of the Indian province of Kerala?" Simon asked.

Gabriel shook his head.

"Well, I spent some time there, they have medicines and massages. I had these treatments everyday and it completely changed my perspective on everything. For so long you and I have been ambling fighting to have control and yet we have no control, have some Champagne," He ushered for Gabriel to pick up his flute and nearly poured to the brim.

" I know this all seems a little out of the ordinary, but to be honest I was heartbroken to see that you are not really doing anything to help yourself my friend, that is why I called you hear tonight, so hard to find you, let us relax before we do anything tonight."

With that Simon stood and extended his hand that was smooth to the touch and matched the tan neckline which Gabriel imagined went all the way down to his paunch. They walked together back to the elevator and went down two levels to what appeared to be a Spa with no names. Inside women all wearing the same name tags as downstairs handed the men two clothes to wrap around their bodies. Gabriel was led into a separate room and led to a table. It was a hard wooden table but felt good on his back. In silence and with pinched smiled a small Golden bowl with a small anteater's spout was placed just above his forehead. Droplets of hot oil began to pour on his head and the heat began to soak away the lines that had grown with each passing year of his life.

Gabriel drifted away and felt conundrums building up in his thoughts as simultaneously as he was relaxing he kept picturing a man inside his mind. They were in a room and there were candles. It seemed peaceful, a place where he once felt happy and refreshed but above that healthy. However a heavy hand came with the long haired man. He would scream at Gabriel, he would tell him to come into his final resting pose. The room would fill with headless people and no matter what Gabriel could never keep up with the rest of the group. "Move at your own pace except for you Gabriel."

A soft voice from one of the Alenas told him that a soft cloth would be placed over his eyes to remove the oil and then he would receive a massage from two masseurs, each specializing on a different part of his body. They ran taut fingers, borrowing into the muscle, a slight sting then intoxicating relaxation. He wondered where Simon had gone? Then forgot when he felt a cramp in his thigh. Cramp to pain. Pain to push. Push to poke. Poke to tear.

His skin tore, bits of sick collected at the back of his teeth, vomiting from the pain as the pale epidermis covering his thighs tore and he saw thick malbec blood stream into a viscous coat and fingers began to press their way into his view. In shock the pain seemed as distant as reaching Nirvana and he watched as the hands split and tore at the fascia as heads began to appear. The hair on his right legs was a dark brown and that of a mans. On his left leg the hair was cut short and felt softer as it revealed the head of a young woman. The two began to free themselves from the viscera and look at him with indifference. They were speaking to each other in a language that only seemed barely audible. Fingers pointing at Gabriel as they didn't bother to towel off his blood. None of the masseurs came back in and he lost his ability to speak. Sporadically they would turn their heads towards him and then away. He tried to cry when the walked close to him. They produced bags. One had a blue powder in it and the other held a ball of clay. The man molded the clay into a cube like mass and the woman poured the powder over it, a thick indigo color. The put it in front of Gabriel's face as he coughed when the powder hit the side of his cheek. The man looked into his eyes and mumbled through the thick clouds of acrid smoke. "Your name is Berkeley Brick Lane Bypass Boğaz, do you understand?" Out of fear the nameless legless person on the table nodded as the two began to dance around him and he watched as his belly expanded and the two walked out of the room and shut the door.

The nameless legless person pulled himself off the table and dragged his tattered appendages down the hall were he hoped Simon would come to his rescue. Simon was standing outside the door laughing with the Woman and the Man, "No I assure you, I have it all from here, he just needs a good shower and he won't pose a problem," He said this whilst making direct eye contact with the nameless legless man that had a name that was fading from all of our memories. Simon picked up Berkeley and dragged him into an onyx room and he looked above to find a shower head the size of the entire room. "Have you ever had a steam bath with lemongrass and Artesian water?" Berkeley shook his head. The water and the steam began to pour in. "Your friends certainly are displeased with you, I do not like the name they gave you, and although I am just as begrudged by you I am not a fan of the name they gave you," He turned in deep consternation as the water poured all around him and the new nameless legless man began to see his legs take shape again. He watched as pinks, greys, and reds began to spindle together and his skin began to form at the points of exit. Simon was moving all around the shower clasping two Champagne bottles as he continued on his thought process,

"My name is Simon, you should have a name that starts with an S," He continued, "Yes, I know, perhaps Sour, that would be fitting don't you think?"

He leaned into the newly named Sour and brought his face up against the befuddled and confused. Sour began to cry and nodded his head, beyond acceptance of the paranormal, the pain was fading away and he knew how much this was supposed to hurt but he felt nothing at all. Simon continued to dance as two Alenas walked into the room and helped Sour to his feet. They led him down a long hall to a room with no windows. It was obviously late and he saw a pair of jeans neatly folded and a sweater. He put them on and the door opened to reveal another Alena. She ushered him out and onto an elevator. 

At the bottom they were in the lobby again and she handed him a small bag with a tiny plant inside it. She showed him outside to the long limo. "Have a nice evening sir, and remember I made those scratches on the door,"

The car peeled away and Sour passed out.

When he arrived home he could see the dawn breaking. Sour got out of the car and it peeled out back onto the road and he was left to his own devices. He walked up to his door. A beautiful envelope was pasted to the door. He opened it to the smell of Lavender oil that had been sprinkled on the unread note. As he unfolded it, it read : 

BOOM.

Sour did not know which Idea was better, to run or to remain where he was.

Dotted on the Dashboard

Steven always had his way to telling the truth if not with slight embellishments and positivie additions to make the people he talked to feel better about themselves and the oftten desperate situations they found themselves in.


He once sat on a train and spent the entire trip talking to an elderlry Woman whose son had died in an awful car accident while inebriated taking the lives of three of his friends. Although the death was a cause of over indulgence and impatiences Steven tried to steer clear of  letting the woman concentrate on that painful revelation that her son has essentially increased his chance of death exponentially the moment he turned the keys and started the ignition. He imagined the cold icy street must have made the bodies more easy to look at for the Police Officers on the seen, frozen and not rotting as if they had been driving through the woods of the bayou. Steven hated to indulge those what ifs and realized that geograhphic location did not make up for losses. He like everyone else on the planet had felt the awful hunger pangs of loneliness and betrayal. Steven though rarely ever tried to tell massive lies and was usually quite good and treating his fellow man with kindness.


Several days  into the new year something unusual happened to Steven as he rode on another train and came close to his destination. It was up north and snow lay atop of the other greys and hazy blues that tended to float up in the frigid winter sky and lightless buildings that were only but a few as we went towards his car.


It had barely even registered on instinct how he had gotten off the train and walked up on set of stairs crossed 10 meters above the track and then down another set of concrete stairs only to find himself just a few steps away from his vehicle when his heart stopped in a panic, in a fear of which he was not accustomed to often.


From the other side of the parking lot he saw a person naked, cold and by themselves sitting on the asphalt which must have clung to the skin like fly paper. An icicle dropped and the form across the way did not even move his head. Steven noticed because his fear had paralyzed him. He stumbled to get the car open and raced out of the parking lot. He blasted the heat and then dialed the police explaining to them that he was worried that someone with serious dissability  seemed to be nude in the parking lot. 


On this night a lot of other events that were occuring were taking the attention of the police and rightly so because they usualyy involved a victim and some for of violence whether self inflicted or provoked or un provoked.


Steven drove in circles, the thump of his heart pushing against the adam's apple. He knew the Police in this area would heed the call and check out the situation that lay back in the parking lot. Stevens plan was to make a few circles down a state road and then watch from afar how the police would handle the situation. He parked his car far rom view and took a look and watched as the police stepped outside of the car and approached the pale and nude figure. One Policeman seemed to be a bit trigger happy and had his gun drawn and he could see the police officers talking with the individual. It was hard to guage just exactly what the gender of the person was but oddly they all got back in the car and began to drive away, with their lights off, incuding their headlights. His car parked in a lot by a small bodega was next to several others which drew attention away from the car he had turned off and then ducked resting his head on the warm fabric of the passenger seat of the car as one of the Policecars stopped. The officer got out and walked straight up to his window.


Panic was an understatetment as the policeman opened the door and leaned down one knee and tapped Steven lightly on the thigh. When he looked up two police officers one a man and the other woman were both looking at him with an ambiguous stare that ran cold waters into the bloodstream of the boy who made the call.


He asked if he could help the officers and they both shook their heads. He asked them if the young person in the parking lot was okay, they both shook their heads again. "Is there something I did wrong officers?", The two uniformed individuals shook their once again. One of the officers, the man Steven thought as his fear continued to grow opened his mouth and from his left hand produced a small glass. Like a black tar or molasses it slid down his cheek and began to accumuate in the empty space of the cup which should have belonged in someones house. He would expect police officers to have something more like paper cups, in lieu of the fact that glass could be used as a weapon. The black syrup finally reached a point were you could say when and they held it out to Steven. In shock he could do very little and made no movement to take the substance from them. 


"This is not going to hurt you, but you need to accept this, so please take the glass," the Female officer said in a voice that reminded him of a warm fireplace and not the eerie situation that was occuring before his very eyes. The officers then stood up and a hand was placed on his shoulder as they both walked away.


When the Police officers neared there car they did not get back inside but continued to walk down the drark street, he immediately shut the car door and and fumbled to start the car and was thinking about breaking the speed limit by triple. His keys were gone and now staring at the hood of his car was the individual. It looked like him, nearly exactly like him only it was bleeding at the forehead and had no genitals as in a lapse from the fear because of the oddity of its nature he took his eyes off the form standing before him. It was clearly sentient, obviously intelligent, but abovce all, extremely powerful as it had convinced Police Officers that a sexless nude human like shape was of no concern to the general public in the late hours of the evening. Steven wanted to lock himself inside the car but with only his frightened emotions he did not think anything he could do would help him escapse from this nightmare. He resigned to his fate and asked the creature, "What do you want?" It looked as him and then opened a car door and sat down on the Passenger seat, clearly unused to the decaying warmth of the fabric, but not put off by it. When Steven closed his door, the creature had taken the glass and looked at the glass and allowed it to circumnavigate itself in a cyclical motion that made Steven rife with fear, panic, and hate because he had called only to help this thing and now it was causing him a great deal of anguish.


"What the fuck do you want?" Steven finally said abrasively, thinking that aggression might evoke more than chilling indifference. The creature then slowly turned his head, Steven glanced at it's face as the skin ruptured slightly into an open cut and blood began to trickle down his cheek and quietly landed on the nude thight of the creature.


"Did I do that?" The creature nodded and Steven felt strange, "I am sorry, it is just I am scared, I didn't mean to hurt you." The creature spoke for the second time, "There is no reason for you to apologize to me, you could not have known how our relation to one another," The creature said matter of factly but with a slight kindness that made the words more palatable.  "What are you?" Steven asked.


"I  am essentially you Steven, and it is  I that is in far more trouble," He continued, " You see I like the snow very much and I know that I should not have been there like that in the parking lot, I could have frightened not only you but many other people, I should have hid in the woods, I just have waited so long for this moment that when you came off the train in my excitement I felt like I was at the Cinemas, I truly do love the train when it stops, the light is intoxicatingly beautiful and the sound of the horn beckons in the arrival of people to a destination unknown, I do not even know where you are going Steven."


Steven now thought this creature was childlike and clearly some anomally and allowed himself to be calm by searching for a subject other than the creatures origin or why it was sitting in his car that had now started and was idling as warmth began to slowly seep trough the fans that were dotted around the dash. 


"What is inside that glass?"


The creautre picked it up, and looked at it,  and then answered with a smile, a rare smile that was genuine and infectious , "It is ink." The form in front of Steven then giggled and and the top of it was then too sealed in glass,


"Why do you have ink?"


"I do not have Ink. This ink belongs to you Steven and when you choose to use it the glass on the top will remain sealed so it will not spill, I hope you find it useful as it has helped me so often in the past. Steven you must excuse nad I must apologize as this all seems a little out of the ordinary but I fancy a swim and you must be exhausted."


The creature then held his hand out and Steven gave his as well. The individuals hand was ar warm as Florida and felt strong. 


"What do I do with this, ink?"


The being got out of the car and began walking away,


Steven looked up again, "Please!" he stammered on, "What do I do with this ink?"


"Steven, my heart, that is not for me to decide nor would it be right to give you any suggestions, it is yours."


With that the form who had drastically changed Steven's life in a matter of only moments dissapeared in the direction of the resevoir and Steven found his keys and drove home. When he unlocked his door and walked into his Warm apartment and looked at the glass, he felt compelled and as this sensation began to take roost inside him he drank the ink.


It was ice cold but extremely delicious and as he sat down in his kitchen to wrap his head around the evening he could have sworn he heared someone turn the page of a book.

XXXMAS GIFT

Being that we owe 799 Billion bux, we need a little Yuletide Joy that caters to Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer and Bernie Madoff.

bit.ly/5PjjKa


Thanks Northpole


Happy HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOLLANDAISE

The one eye ब्लिंक आय डाउन इन थे गार्डेन एंड दी माय चिल्ड.

Fragments of memories and a bubble map of ideas stemming off of one main point. Change is coming, has come, and is in  the process of doing its very own work right now.

Angela only knew one thing, she loved her electric hero and bundling herself up into the shape an egg. She would shut her noise and as fragments of her skin grew dry, the white noise took away from the street outside and the people walking, stopping to smoke a cigarette, or even make a comment ऑफ़ polite gesture.

The first time she was suspicious was as gentle अस a hand on the shoulder. From the smoking creeping to get away from the mild cold two men from across the room wore false smiles and a false hand could go on the shoulder. She wondered how it could have ever gotten so bad that their was no way to admit that the warmth that comes from the genuine human touch was simply gone.

When you hug a good parent, it feels electrifying and now we walk around doing it to just about anybody for the sake of the fact that our periodicals to living  life our dictated in a small room and printed on glossy paper. Every ten or so pages their is a sample of cologne. It makes me laugh when I think of someone rubbing a magazine across their neck or thinking their germ covered hands वों't catch anything more than a trace.

I remember when snow fell too and I carved a name in. She was a beautiful princess but she was not real to me nor the frozen droplets of नतुरे that slowly carried her away in the wind and the lights from the house made the lawn look as if it were made of porcelain, one step in the wrong direction would bring everything crashing down. Miniscule cuts but plenty of blood.  And we watch movies about people that would suck that blood just to stay an inch ahead.

Wonderful words from Rya

Rya♫ wrote:
> I find that incoherent rants are best for me,
> personally
> on the other end of the spectrum, I found that
> writing cooking recipes is pretty therapeutic as
> well
> they are so systematic & have purpose
> fight the entropy!
> or not