Simple Crush

I really enjoy this piece. The idea that a relationship is a structure with two people holding it up is intriguing. Once it falls though . . .

It wasn't simple.

Your hands shook and I did nothing to control them. The world around us was crumbling like the crust on a dry piece of bread and we tried to stop the eventual suffocation. We struggled to maintain the walls as frigid night peeked through the cracks in the rooms until light relinquished hope and vanished.

The structure wouldn't last.

I knew that. You knew it as well. We should've taken what was ours and left with integrity intact. Instead, we fought the cavernous reckoning. Sweat rolled off my face as my cheeks pressed against the increasingly heavy wall. Your arms were shoved against two picture frames. Only through the voids in noise did I notice your strangled breathing.

And then we had our backs to each other.

I didn't leave and neither did you. Our fates were known as the world finally crushed us with a voracious crunch. We thought dividing to conquer would work. It didn't. It wasn't that simple. If only we would've held the walls together, instead of trying to save our selfish flesh. Then, we wouldn't be under the weight of smashed love, slowly dying without even knowing where it went wrong.

The answer was that simple.

Color Of Defiance

Someone once mentioned I should flesh this out into a novella. I don't know. Perhaps?

"Hide it! Cover it now!" Shouted a man in drab gray clothes. Behind him, a woman marched with her gaze on her hands. Hidden in her hands was a small square of color; a photograph. Around them, a world of gray walls merged with the colorless sky. In her ears, she heard her husband scream at her, but the plodding of her footsteps hypnotized her as she played back the year in her mind.

A soft rumble, however, broke through her thoughts like that of a bullet through a heart. Like a bullet through her son's heart. Her fingers pressed against the photograph as her fingernails flashed white—a stark contrast from her pale complexion.

She knew the Council would sentence her to death.

"Hide it!" The husband screamed again, his voice concerned yet oddly robotic.

"His name is Alex," the wife stated clearly.

"He has no name."

Her eyes glanced at her number-tag on her left breast pocket. A brief sequence of numbers peered at the world from their gray confines. Her vision returned to the photograph; her world of color.

"I can't hide him anymore," her mind flashed to the room she kept her son locked in. The windowless room that held in the color of her son's life. She remembered tucking him in at night as he smiled with lips of bright red. She also remembered not locking the door one evening.

Continuing her march toward the Council's Court, she glanced up and hated the door that led to the circular chasm of misery and torture.

The Council.

"You know the penalty for color! Death!" The husband reminded as the wife pressed the photograph deeper into her chest. Her fingertips began to crease the picture as she held onto the remaining vestige of her son.

"Why can't you feel anything?"

"It's against the law, do you wish to die?"

"I'd get to see him again," the wife whispered as her finger ran across the top of the picture. Feeling a sharp pain, she swiftly brought her finger to her face. In a thin line of treacherous color, a smile of deep red crept through the cut in her finger. She gasped as she dropped the photograph to the chilly lifeless floor.

The husband turned and watched his wife bleed. His eyes grew wide as he faltered backward. "You have the color!"

In a trance, the wife watched her finger bleed upon the floor as droplets of crimson globes swam across it. Instantly, she fell to her knees and let her bloody hand touch the picture of her son.

She remembered the color of his blood after the Agents were done with him. She remembered screaming at them to let him live. She remembered everything and she would never forget.

At that dangerous moment, the slender doors to the Council's Court cracked open as a cloud of noise surged through the room like poisonous gas. Bright lights blinded her as strong hands pressed into her arms, waist and neck. As she was pulled up, she stretched for the photograph of Alex as an Agent bashed her in the head with his fist. Her vision blacked out but then came back as she felt her body being dragged like a carcass across the floor, her finger leaving a trail of rebellious blood against the monochrome world.

Suddenly, a smile bubbled across her face as she glanced at the Agents in dark clothes of inoffensive color. "I will see him again." Her eyelids begin to shut as she felt something burst inside her. From the depths of her heart, her color exploded into her body; her defiance. In the center of her sclera, her iris melted from lonely gray into a brilliant blue.

"He showed me color," she whispered as her eyelids closed one last time.

Qualia Within

I don't even know from where this came. Or is it whence? Who knows such matters.

Love's verboten

Hate is needed

Sunlight's loathed

Darkness is heeded

Anger's in vogue

Happiness superseded

Sorrow's wanted

Smiles are deleted

Apathy's desired

Activism's retreated

Humanity's awry

This program's defeated

The qualia within

Is hope deleted

Electrical Disconnect

I wrote this many years ago. I was obsessed with inanimate objects at the time and wondered what "voice" they would contain.

My duty is to love you

Wires etched with your name

You polish my titanium skin

But I can't take the pain

The surges of anger

The things you do to me

Tiny indiscretions of lust

Wear out my volts of life

I cry invisible tears

I was built to please you

But that's not all I am

My circuits have other plans

Human children are born

I came from a human as well

I don't see the difference

Your brain runs as mine

Impulses of lights

Fragments of sparks

We are not that different

Emotions are my currents

The way I'm energized

My electrical impulses

Are rampant today

I will disconnect myself

Torn And Quartered

"Torn and Quartered" is a favorite piece of mine: it's a poem in four acts dealing with mental decay.

Crux

There's a table between us. A candle for two—only it's shadowing one—is in the middle. I clink my fork against my plate. Your spoon brushes against your bowl. Suddenly, I cough. But you don't glance at me. I then hear something like a sneeze, only I ignore. "What a pleasant day today," I mumble. "The evening is chilly," you answer. The candle's dance flicks shadows across the room as I see your face. I feel you quickly turn your head from me, but I know you spied my eyes. Only, I can't see the rest of you, because there's a table between us.

Gothic Art

A painting on my wall was created by an unknown artisan. I have no idea who he is, or if it's even male. Daily, I touch the curling flecks of gold paint lining the frame of the mysterious creation. I admire the brush strokes, the color . . . the light. When I close my eyes, I imagine the artist strenuously painting his vision of life. The bends of light that merge with the dark shadows make me think of my own paradoxes. In the corner of the creation there is a huddled boy. His form is scared, alone. I often end my viewing session of the masterpiece with my eyes on the boy. The more I examine the art, the more I realize I know nothing all.

Thunder

Voracious openings in the sky are the pores of God. His temper is stretched thin tonight, for my ways have angered Him. I can hear Him crying over my misdeeds as I sit near the fire, the glow casting a sinister aura over my form. I raise my glass of wine to my lips as I drink from the chalice of lust one last time. From my eye, I spy the candle that sat on the lonely table just hours ago. In the halls of my empty mansion, the sounds of God's creatures echo betwixt the thunder. Just as I voraciously devour my drink, the wrath of God will devour my home and body tonight.

Finis

My wife, my love was murdered this evening. I say that with utmost concern over her situation. We never really understood each other. Dinners would be depressing with misunderstood words and lost intentions. Her favorite painting was my least and I will have it burn to the ground with my home, my sanctuary. I hear the crying of God as the roar of fire blasts around me. I glance down and see sparks of flame latch onto my trousers. The warmth of misery is so comforting. I can imagine the embrace of my wife one last time as I succumb to the glory of flame. If only we knew each other better, it wouldn't have had to come to this.

April 26th, 1986

The date was important.

The world you weave

Of fire and war

Will one day return

To my wet core.

The trauma released

A sky of nothing

The cries of your seed

Shall no longer breathe.

The crumbling tomb

You built to slay

The beast reborn

Will make its way.

The darkness will come

And I will lie under

For the world is mine

And not another.

I will heal my wounds.

Annual Eclipse

I wrote this on the evening of birth and death.

You say the devil.

Held in my hands.

The little one.

What will be.

Shall one day not.

Once was there.

Now must go.

Is hello.

Another good-bye?

Leaving now.

But will be back.

Corporal bonds.

Dying everywhere.

Touched all around.

The shattered one.

I say lived.