The Land at the Edge of The World

sleep

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:30:59 -0400

We both gave up on each other a long time ago…

When they come home

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:53:00 -0400

When they come home and march down Main street dressed in their colors spit on them when they pass by and make them feel like they are home. You can not thank them because their pride died on hill 886 next to Stacy Rogers husband John. You can not reason with them because their morality was standing next to the Peters’ son Mark when an incoming mortar round ripped through him at Khe Sanh. You can not comfort them because their humanity took small arms and died in the mud with Paul Kirst’s brother Bobby in the Ia Drnag Valley. They were willing to give their lives for their country, they didn’t know what that meant when they left and now your spit is the least of their concerns.

the last thing I saw as a boy

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:57:00 -0400

She never tried to save herself, she never fought back; only hung motionless, suspended by his grasp. Her eyes were blankly trained on his face, they didn’t see him at all. It was a look of complete surrender, as if she accepted that what was happening to her was the best she could hope for. His hands seemed massive as they tightened around her throat, and as the life was slowly strangled out of her a single tear ran down her face. It had rained the day before and he left her on the damp ground. She did not die alone.

11:24am Monday

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 01:07:00 -0400

The bullet left the gun at roughly 1000 feet per second on its way to the far end of the room. It thought little of the bone that kept it from reaching its destination and continued on its predestined line. There were no physical sensations to speak of, just the feeling of infinity that seemed to stretch on and on. At .35 thousandths of a seconds the lead/tin alloy tore through the gray matter of the frontal lobe. The kinetic energy pulsed outward in all directions obliterating neurons and synapses until it dissipated into the surrounding tissue. The last thing that he remembered as the deforming metal erased his existence was not his wife with whom he had shared the past thirty-three years or the daughter he had neglected to stay in touch with, but an autumn day in 1957.

Modern Vampires

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:49:06 -0400

They love you,

they all love you with broken teeth

and shattered dreams. The boys pretend to be girls

and the girls wish they somewhere else and the snow paints everything

white.

They work and they drink and they smile with broken teeth and

I watch them come and go, into cars into alleys

into doorways. Sometimes I speak to them sometimes I bring them home

and they drink my blood and then go leaving no marks one night I’ll strangle

one of them to see if they are real.

soft sounds that hint at something bigger

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:48:24 -0400

Today finds us again watching a clock, unexceptional in every way, three black hands pacing around a white face, black numbers, black dashes, black trim, white wall. The walls are bare, plain, also unexceptional. No windows, pale florescent lights, no sounds save for the mocking tick of the hands that race themselves in a circle. The world in this room is small and from where I sit I can see every corner of it. The far wall, Asia and behind me the Americas, I guess that puts me floating somewhere in the Atlantic. The clock, the annoyance that it is, is the only hint that my small four sided world is enfolded inside something much bigger. The concept that such a place existing is strange. Why should such a place need to be, here in my small world I have everything I need, master and commander of each square tile of linoleum each cinder block. If I want light then there is light, darkness too is at my finger tips. In such a place I am God, and nothing exists to challenge my omnipotence. If such a place beyond this one should exist, what control would I have there? There I would be small. Unable to even have the final say in actions that direct me. Why should such a place exist? Absurdity bleeds into curiosity and fear starts to grow. What I knew once as truth is now called into doubt. Ideas are dangerous things. The fear that stared small has doubled, tripled and now seems self sustaining. If I didn’t know this then what else didn’t I know, how can I be sure of anything if the construct of the world itself is wrong? The room is becoming smaller, no not smaller but more occupied. The fear that started out as curiosity now seems self aware and aware of me. Moving around my room like great black predator it has become the omnipotent one. It now controls the light, the dark and myself. The walls are now its, Asia and the Americas it has also taken. The tiles, the cinder blocks taken each one by one. The room that once was the world is now a prison and what keeps me here now is what has always kept me here. why should such a place exist? The guard that was once unseen now makes itself clear and all that it had once let me believe it has now taken back. It reminds me that ideas are dangerous things. “When you knew little you were granted happiness, now that you know more you see what is.” “I gave you everything you needed” it tells me, “what was taken from you you took away yourself.” It leaves me the clock as a gesture to say “you can leave whenever you want” but with its tell tail smile it knows better. I made what now traps me, it is infused through me, controlling everything action that directs me, this I know now. The black hands race in circles around the white face. What once seemed so unexceptional, now I weep at its beauty. Why should such a place exist?