Yellow glow seeps through the bedroom door;
Unintelligible, unknown murmurs
Slip into your ears, sounding as if
From a deep abyss,
Just beyond your bed-bound bliss.
It sounds just a bit off—the way they talk,
The way the shadows
Screen over the yellow light,
Forming slow moving bars of dark and light
That lull you to sleep—
Softly say to you, “good night.”
And a bit of shifting here and about.
And the lights go out.
And all is empty with a void of silence.
But it’s a full-moon night,
So there’s still plenty of light
To see something glistening
Through your window—silhouettes moving
Into a distant, sterile blue light.
This isn’t right—
Where is he going?—
Where is she going?—
Where are my parents going?
Their silhouettes fade with the sterile blue light.
This isn’t right so you leave behind your cozy bliss
And find an empty house—wind blowing through,
Resonating into a loud silence of hollow tunes—a phone
Ringing its pining tunes—
Ringing and ringing for someone, someone to pick it up.
Emptiness pressurizes the house—crushing you with nothing.
So you have to get out—get out!
Find that sterile blue light again—wherever it may be;
Find those silhouettes again;
Find a bit of love again.
You follow that glistening thing,
Follow it, follow it like a fading North Star—
Push ever faster forward as a rumbling starts—
Faster forward, faster forward! before the rumbling parts!
Before you forget your parents’ beating hearts!
Before you’re left with nothing but a quart
Of tears,
And an empty abyss to disappear your tears into.
You make it to the thing and sit in an alcove
As it rumbles up into the sky, flying moon-ward,
Pulling away from that cozy green home farther and farther,
Pulling away from the happy night lights dotting a sea of black,
Pulling away from the warm blanket of clouds tucking Earth in,
As you doze off to the drony rumbling,
Carrying you far away into a
Cold forever-night.
So moments later you wake up into that night,
Find a vent to crawl through,
And fall through into an array of blinding lights—
Blinding, blue, sterile lights
That needle into your eyes with such titanic might!—
“Oh, where are my parents?
Where is the human touch?
Oh, why am I here…” you ask,
For only a desolate sea of cold metal you find,
Devoid of a single
Warm,
Loving
Mind…
“Oh, Mr. Robot, where are they at?”
“01001110
01101111
01110111
01101000
01100101
01110010
01100101”
So you retreat into a colder corner,
Cry out but no one will hear you out,
Shed tears but no one will wipe them here,
Groan in sheer pain but it’s all in vain.
So you wait there eternities and eternities,
Eternities and eternities,
Eternities and eternities…
Tick Tick Tick goes the clock—
You stare passively at the clock
In the dead lethargy of noon,
All too aware of your walled-in self.
Walled in by monotone click clacks,
Turning pages and reciting facts,
Soft murmuring about secret pacts
In the other room, filtering into
The viscous silence of a viscous room.
Tick tick tick and the clock’s
Hand turns another minute—
Another minute and another page
Turned;
Hot humid mist oozing out of
Fried, gooey brains.
1…, 2…, 3…, 4…,
You count the ticks evermore;
Ticks struggling, struggling
through viscous mud;
Seas of mud hard to breathe in—
When will it reach the opposite shore?
Oh, there it reaches 5
In its banal unoriginality,
And the click clacks momentarily stop;
And as expected, start again at 6,
Boring through the boring rock
Of fatiguing, repetitive grok.
Grokking away they are while
Someone slowly walks by—
7 it reaches and to the middle they reach;
8 it reaches and a little farther they reach;
9 it reaches and out of sight they go.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Banal.
Clicks.
Metric.
Clacks.
Expected.
When—
Will it end?
Sometimes I get a reminder
Of an unnervingly normal
Scene.
The blinds are closed
it is dark inside
and there is a bright
sheen.
the sheen attacks me—
churns my guts out—
says to me
“The world is bright out there, what a
shame.”
shame i am, yet
i do not want to go outside
i’m comfortable here
slouched on my couch
limp like a wimp,
Palpitating.
heart Palpitating
and beating
and beating
energy overflowing
that it oozes out
like a battery oozing out
black goo, leaving me
juiceless.
juiceless so i fill
my mind with
goo
hoping it will turn into
exciting food
but all that enters are
angles, colors, static—
inducing a
headache.
it aches here so i
slob my way down
into the basement
where i slobber my finger
on knobs and buttons
hoping these slow actions
would bring animation
but they just
clob together
into the endless
floogoo.
as floogoo it
all enters me:
Blast goes
the trumpet
Zoong goes
the cello
but it just
exudes in
as muffled
ra-bla-
ra-bla-
ra-bla- x10
foam.
dark foam
viscously
shrooms in
the room
the sheen
retreating
i turn off
the sheen
on the screen
too so it
shrooms in
me too
and i
shut my
eyes off
but still
palpitating
i can’t
shut off
the shots
of goo
can’t shut
off the
blot
of
awake
ness
for
my
mind
is
goo.
SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE
It is not ten years ago;
It is the present, so get this
Disgusting muddy mess, this
Moldy molten mess, this
Rotten–
I can’t keep describing it.
Every word induces vomit—
A nausea worse than the
Nausea of licking the bottom
Of the toilet bowl, feeling its
Wetness, the sliminess of
The smear of feces, the repungent
Acerbic smell of urine inducing heartburn,
Feeling the sand-paper-like texture
Of the crusty rust-orange dried urine;
But,
Get.
It.
OUT.
I run from the reminding sheen—
This nausea-inducing sheen—
This heartburning sheen—
This cold-sweat-inducing sheen—
This scorching sheen—
Sheen sheen sheen—
I can’t with it anymore.
I don’t look back.
For a bear is in hot
Pursuit,
And if I don’t run,
It will drag me back
Into the sheen;
Into the muddy
Flooey
Goo.
I burst out the door,
Finally in safety,
I relinquish the remnants of goo,
Throw it far back
In the dark crevices
Of the house.
I breathe in deeply—
Breathe in the flowery fragrance,
Breathe in the fresh oxygen,
Bathe in the sunny sun,
Bathe in the green grass,
Appreciate the bird songs,
Appreciate the rustling leaves;
It is springtime again.
I go back in the house
With spring all in me.
But,
When will the goo come creeping out again?
Where did my Freedom go?
It was here just now—
Just a while ago when I was
Writing and flying in the open air;
But now with air strangled,
Constricted,
Restricted.
Now con-
strained.
Freedom is gone.
I rack my brains to find Her— “Where is she? Where is she?”
But all I find is me,
An empty void in the lee.
“She has to be there somewhere!
Somewhere!”—
The more I grasp here and there:
Nothing!
Blood squeezed out as I
Rack my brain for where Freedom is.
Hours go by,
My pen lying there still.
Ink bleeding from disuse.
Dad, dad, dad!
Look at that snowy mountain!
Snow at its peak,
Like old Socrates of Greek!
How fluffy that snow is!
I just want to touch it!
Touch it touch it touch it!
Feel a soft fluffy bliss!
Over the fence I jump—
I don’t care dad!
I want to see the snow—
Feel it and go “Woah!”
So up I climb;
I make it to the top!
And oh my this isn’t snow this is small pieces of foam…
Small pieces of foam…
I look down and see how far I’ve climbed—
See a crowd of men and women staring at me, just three feet away…
Just three feet away…
Staring at me…
Huh?
What’s going on?
I grab a handful of snow.
And it’s not fluffy.
It’s foamy…
It’s…
Foamy.
I climb back down,
Jump the fence again,
And back I stare at the great snowy mountain,
And see only a hoary fabrication.
Fabricated mountain—
Fluffy snowy mountain;
They sound so different,
Yet my eyes saw them indifferent.
Why did I see it that way?
Why was something so simple
So surreal?
How did I confuse foam with snow?
I knit my eyebrows into furrows
As I leave into the shadows
Of the museum.