River's blog

he carries a brown paper bag like a cross before him

a talisman

a symbol

worn down to tissues by a thousand wrinkles

swigs from it like it’s holy water Read more »

it's funny how the sun starts running through everyone's minds now spring has finally sprung and suddenly everyone can look up again instead of letting sleet subdue them shuffling through six inches of slush and now that things have begun again they can bring out their daughters and sons and start gardening while the wind wages wars and the streets again begin to thrum

all winter the dusk and the dawn were ditched for this dullness, just the death of the day and then, late, the light wearily crawling back into the sky (just at the edges of our sight since we never looked up) without ever not being dead anymore and giving us no guidance as we crawled out of bed still in the dark which is a terrible thing to do alone and what a terrible time to be alone at all, in the dark and the drear and the dread forgetting how not to be alone at all, how to be more than one

and what a time to start being not so much alone, in that tentative interval between the last snowmelt and the first buds and then you and the grass seeping up all Irish Green around our feet and the first crocuses and you and all the trees blooming at once, arms hung heavy with the temptation to out-flower each other and you under them my own temptation letting me glimpse how I tempted you too and letting it all just happen like the impossiblest truth like without the weight of winter I could look you in the eye and you liked what you saw and the world and all its impossibilities opened with the sky because we could see each other in the sun  Read more »

the notes coming out of a sleek laptop and slipping

in and out of a cord and finally finding their way out through buds pressed to my ear are as strange

as the water i do not want to drink

flat, cold, running in a perfectly straight line with i suppose

some quality similar to a string's scratchy quiver, moving

instantaneously, changing as if without change

to the next pitch

i almost do not recognize that it is a "cello" without

the minute and practiced fumblings between strings

the tremor of a hand

the breath of the virtuoso going soft and just a hair too controlled as the modern instinct,

which is silence, grips him and he chokes quietly on the sound of his voice which might,

had he let it out, have said

my god this is so beautiful but instead communicates all the feeling and sensation he doesn't know he's trying to hold in

through the click of a clenching throat as he swallows his epiphany back

into his chest and down his arm and out through a bow sliding as carefully

as if over skin

and i tell you this—

at least i tell you it doesn't sound

exactly like a cello and you laugh slightly self-consciously and say you know

but it's meant to be played by people— the computer is only a meeting place

between art and practicality so you can hear what your music sounds like

as you write it

try to imagine this song, like,

this same sequence of notes but me playing it, you suggest

and i do Read more »

(Hey folks! I haven't been writing much at all recently, mainly because a slightly less metaphorical version of this poem has been happening to me. I'm hoping to get back in the game. Nonetheless, I'm rusty, and would really, really like some healthy feedback for this piece before it's sent off to the Book Festival contest. Help please! Thanks. -R)

you know her well— she is

the face of liberation

the muse of green regeneration

she is the lover, the drifter, the confirmation,

carries on her back the ponderings and restless wanderings of generations

she is escape, is life, is miracle

she is salvation

is the sweetest damnation

despite her corners she is spherical because she never

begins; she dances to her own vibrations

rises to every provocation

she is yours

they killed her—

put a bullet in her brain band and an axe in her neck

and told you to look away.

put an axe in her throat and a bullet in her head and told you

not to worry.

said, this is what you wanted.

this is what you asked for and it was.

she was creation.

she was— sensation.

was the common thread between warring nations; she was

immensity, was intensity, was contemplation

an entity of inspiration and exploration, she was

an invitation

you killed her—

you suppose you were trying to snuff her out

had a few fights— a perfectly legitimate conflict of interest,  Read more »

It's a Ducati Multistrada (the one we both drooled over sleek pictures of online until people started asking why we were trying to hug a computer monitor) that we load up, wolfing muffins and tea as we work, with dawn just breaking and strings of mist being tugged from the familiarly scruffy mountains. The motorbike is narrow but sturdy, and does not complain as duffel bag after duffel bag is secured to the back. I think her name is Kaylee.

We set off at last, two girls and a motorcycle with the wind tightening our clothes, and take turns driving and sitting in back. Cars zip by us; other bikers hover beside us on the winding Vermont highways as if discreetly trying to race us and we always let them get ahead and "win" because we know enough about structural engineering to play by the rules.

By the late morning, we've crossed the bottom tail of Lake Champlain into New York. We stop for lunch at a fast-food joint in Utica. The open bike does little to contain sound, but we blast pop-rock songs on the radio anyway and ignore the disgruntled looks when we pass through cities. Time blurs between Maroon 5, Adele, Green Day and One Direction, who we argue about (you like them; I don't) in the way that people argue when they don't expect to convince anyone of anything and don't really care. Read more »

i have people

stored up in side of me like

things i keep little glass cases, or in pockets and hidden places

but never take out, like a series of

just-in-cases

& sometimes i'll take them out to look at their faces

& they're nice faces, kind or beautiful or both, but

but none of them are here

& none of them are holding me like someone who needs to be held, not like someone

that it might be fun to hold

& none of them are real,

really

but you know, they all hurt.

i have people

lined up in my heart in neat little rows

& columns and no one can see it but the

columns i stand on are shivering

like cold and breaking bones

i have people who i suppose i might want

one day, if all the rest of them weren't there, too, looking on

from the bowels of my soul like bitter ghosts

although, of course, they aren't bitter because they don't know they could be

i have people i love

& people i have loved

& people in between

& people i have known & might have loved, or 

wanted to love, or just wanted to be loved

by—

i have them stored up like apples for winter, like

lifeboats on a ship that may or may not be broken, but that i don't want to seem

paranoid enough to check.

i have them all inside of me & god it hurts, Read more »

I used to hide things

under tables, in antique boxes and secret drawers

gum wrappers, stone pendulums

tiny

toy

horses

I used to hide things 'cause I thought

folks might come snooping

back when I thought my parents didn't trust me

before I made a dish with vodka in the sauce

and my dad left the room

with a distracted "try not to drink any."

I used to hide my magic tools

wands, crystals, tarot cards

because I thought they only worked if no one knew

they were there

& now I don't think they work at all,

and my friends see them every time I go for a pencil

but it's okay— I say

I only keep them 'cause they're pretty.

(I don't generally think off YWP as my little journal, and I don't normally spew nonsensical excitement like this, but I am nonsensically excited right now.)

HOLYshityouguys. I've officially decided poetry slam is my favorite thing to do (screw dating, martial arts, games, comedy, writing holed up in a melancholy teen-cave, everything. Screw romance— matter-o-fact, get me married to slam poetry right now). Evar. So much that I'm babbling like a hyper twelve-year-old.

If nobody picked it up, this was the best poetry slam I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot of seriously amazing slams). I placed right behind a national slam champion (HOLYshit) AAAND (SUPERholyshitzles) he wants me to be on a slam team with him and some of the other crazyawesome slammers. I'm going to ANOTHER slam next friggin WEEK. The whole slam was crazy. A really big and really talented turnout. I didn't expect to place at all.

I'm over the moon right now. I actually caught myself skipping on the way out. (I never skip. Evar.)

I also won a little pamphlet-book called The Sock Monster. :D

I am a teenager.

i'm sorry, i should say we— are teenagers. all of us from twelve to twenty,

i speak for all of us— because, being a teenager,

i have the audacity to think i have the right to do that.

(i was being sarcastic just now—

we tend to do that a lot.)

you've heard a lot about us. you've read a lot about us. you know

a lot about us. particularly psychologists.

here are some things you know about "the teenager":

one: we are extreme. particularly when it comes to drama or neuroticism. 

every loss or misfortune that befalls our dynamically delicate lives is apocalyptic in proportion and the trauma is permanent damage. any good luck and suddenly life is perfect.

give us the slightest taste of something to fight for and you'll find we won't shut up.

two, we know we're right.

all others in the room are sheeple— in our (often angst-ridden) contemplations, we alone have found the true way to look at life. all others are fallacies, all others have never felt what we feel. have never understood what we understand.

This is fact. This we know.

three, we hate authority.

all the rebelliousness we have is directed straight at the people who think they can tell us what to do, the people who think they know what's best for us.

we're growing. we're quickly becoming people of our own. we're big and able to make decisions but for some reason we find that most things about our lives have already been decided.

the only solution is to make more decisions than our superiors, which means most of them are going to be wrong. it's considered a necessary sacrifice. Read more »

(A monologue from the perspective of my character in my theater troupe. She is twenty-two, rides a motorcycle, wears combat boots, has very Catholic parents, is very lonely and is afraid of heights.

Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this monologue are purely those of the fictional characters and do not represent the opinions of me™.)

        Why is everybody so STUPID?

        I know what you'll say— oh, honey, have faith in people. You're just frustrated; not everybody's as dumb as you think. Okay, fine. I don't care. Just explain ONE stupid thing to me— God. What the hell are you people thinking? There's a stupid GUY in the stupid clouds, watching you? I mean first of all, that sounds like a psycho stalker, and anyway he can't be watching everybody at once, but second of all PEOPLE CAN'T FLY. Come on, we've all tried. So, what, God's a bird? God's a friggin' bird that can make more than one opinion at once? Read more »

now more than ever, i —understand—

the plausibility of "no regrets"

& i regret almost everything i've ever done but there is no grudge

i can hold

no guilt i have to bear, no torch

i ought to carry, no pugatory fire i feel at all inclined to throw.

no sabotage, nothing to commandeer

it's not a disguise like it used to be, when you see me happy

& it's not any kind of shield, because I'd like to be

approachable, see, & i find no reason 

to hold a grudge.

(Happy Poetry Month! Who else is writing a poem a day?)

hey you, remember how you'd sit

by the side of the highway under the apple tree & 

throw apples at cars

& you always missed so nobody cared

hey, remember how the wind was so strong that day

by the side of the highway that even though it was spring &

the blossoms were holding on tight, they all blew away like butterflies

& it was by the highway so nobody noticed

hey remember how the guy blasting Tyga

on the highway threw his beer can out the window without even looking, &

it hit you right in the chest & you've got a scar

& you never showed anyone so nobody knew

hey, remember how the apple tree was

sort of your hiding place & you'd tell it how you were broken &

you were the world's dumpster, but

you didn't tell people

so when it came, nobody could help

(Note: a revised older piece, formerly entitled Glorious Is.)

finding no glory or victory in the news channels,earth/sprung 

triumph out of her own breast/earth sprung up

stillness & the smell of goodgooddirt/earth

sprung!

the sunsprung leaves/bled/mud in gratitude.

flies, it seemed, came out of nowhere, & found their own favorite circles of air still

waiting to be

glid on.

the world bled mud for gratitude

i thought to have seen more children than did show

laughing in the  blidmud/but

i suppose

there were lessons to be learned in desks

& when they come out again, it will be raining.

while the earth bled bliss in the blidmud and the sky

kissed the cloud on the cheek like thinking & the mud

sprung up blud into the above & the air

smelled like dirt-likegooddirt

there didn't need to be trumpets

there didn't need to be parades. there didn't even need

to be flowers, even,/yet.

glorious is, was, was when the earth had decided to spring the sun

& the sprung sun/spun the world to special

& sprinkled sparks &

strummed our chords in all the simplest, in all the right ways.

(go back & just do that C major, don't

fancify just play us some

completion)

glorious is flies.

there is so much mud on the ground. all of the grass sags

& the clouds birth motherly shade

& the sun is not so visible

& the trees droop a little & the air smells

like dirt/ &/

it is glorious Read more »

happiness contracts. on the first day i am happy about my life, then my town, then my home, then my bed, then the sun that hits my face in the mornings, then the feeling of the end of a good dream when you're just waking up and the sun is on your face, warm and not overpowering. eventually, i will get all the joy i need from the way my finger moves as i come to with the sun in my eyes and the photons are refracted from my subtly shifting skin and my knuckle makes that little click that means "i'm here", and it reminds me of a noise i heard in the dream i had, and it was a good dream, exciting, with someone i love in it but all you really remember is a certain feeling in your throat and chest and then the sun in your eyes chases away the memory of the feeling and leaves only a lazy peace, early in the morning.

the same situation is not monotonous if you find something new within it every day.

A story idea that's always appealed to me: entitled "The Crossing Guard."

They're everywhere. Standing at the crosswalks near the schools every day, stopsign in hand, waiting. They're there in the rain, in the snow, in the blazing heat with those heavy traffic vests. They often look a little strange, or a little lost; some of them are clearly there because it's the only job they can get. Some of them talk, some don't. Some make jolly conversation and some sulk or glare. Some of them act a little shady, or follow you to the library, or ask you for money, or what your favorite color is. You smile or nod or say "thanks" in a rushed sort of stranglement and move on.

Then, at four, they disappear. Nobody thinks of them after that. No one really thinks of them at all, but between four PM and seven AM, they don't exist. Only they do, really. I may have mentioned that they sometimes look or act a little strange. I'm sure they each have a story. Maybe it's a happy story, likely it's a sad one. Maybe it's a love story, or a beggar story, or an inner-demons story. Who knows? I'd like to.

So go forth, and find me a real or an imaginary crossing guard. Create a blog entry. Use the tag: Crossing Guard. Tell me where they go at four. Tell me why they are who they are. Tell me what they're like, and what they like, and how they're here. Make them people.

(BONUS: if you want super-kudos from me, and want to maybe make someone's day, try interviewing a real crossing guard and telling me a true story! I'd be as excited as they would be.)

Most of us are just getting to the age when sometimes they don't step out into the road for us anymore. Sometimes, though, they still do.

a chain is a chain is a chain.

it might be sparkly but you are still tying yourself

up

i think of you & i understand dead

i don't understand mommy i don't understand sweetie i don't understand

i am in love & i don't know who with

i am deadened & i don't know who by

i am excited & i don't know what for

i am in love & i don't know why, but hun

i understand you

you need more

sparkle in your life & i don't know why it's harder for

you to find but i,

you know, get you

& i know sometimes you don't want to be

gotten

i get that it's not all you need & there's no shame in-

volved but hun all i'm saying i guess is that if you ever really

need to just

be understood, well, you can't

scare me off

maggie and milly and mollie and may

went down to the beach to play one day

milly? milly, it's me. are you there

mils, listen now you gotta talk

to me. talk to me milly. say some

thing oh please i don't have too long

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

molly are you there

it's me it's me i'm here i promise

molly are you there, molly you've got to get

out. get out now. now. there was something

on the news

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

milly i can't. the walls, the wall

crumbled. mills i'm stuck

i can't get out, milly you need to find maggie right Read more »

tell me, won't you, did you see

the lady in the boxwood tree;

she rained on you & she rained on me

& she rained a song in a minor key

for me, for you, for free

now there's the space of a bottomless sea

'tween now and the days of the boxwood tree

she's locked the door, but not tossed the key

on rain & songs in a minor key

for me, for her, in her tree

she loves you as dear, as dear as me

though you too have left the boxwood tree

in search of ways to be big & free

& now she cries, she cries a sea

for her, for you, for the tree

I don't know quite who she could be,

living up there in the boxwood tree—

a muse, or love, or a rush of glee

but her song was sweet and her song was free

for us, for the world, in a minor key

she wanted to go across the sea

to see how others think and breathe

she'd be beautiful & alone & free

far, so far, from the boxwood tree

from me, from you, across the sea

but she's not quite sure, so she waits, you see,

still raining there in the boxwood tree

alone, hoping for you or me

to come back for her rain & her haunting key

for me, for you, for free.

it's not an addiction to danger.

people always say that. they expect me to have a nice, creepy, choreographed and practiced evil laugh.

it's not an attraction to destruction either. it's not my enjoying the death and pain of the little things I burn.

people always expect me to laugh.

it's not channeled aggression, or aggression of any kind. it's not even

a little bit negative.

there is nothing inherently furious, anyway, in the chemical process of rapid oxidization.

nah.

it's joy.

it's a dance. 

it's art and science and spirituality all wrapped together, and it's always different and it's never over and it's only

beautiful.

so I sit sprawled with the woodstove open and stare for a long time, adding and subtracting objects. so you tell me how that is more evil than sitting

sprawled with Facebook open and staring for a long time, adding and subtracting comments. you tell me.

so I found out that bread will burn. birthday candles eaten

all the way down to the nothing, big beautiful black holes perfectly round like gravity,

like etiquette.

the gradient from dark to pale on the rims of the craters on the crust, just you tell me how that isn't art.

how that isn't mathematical perfection.

it's not frustrated desire, it's only

artistic fascination; when the flames get little and blue-purple and low and oh so hot and they flow along the cracks instead of flickering and they carry oh so gingerly gold flecks like in

eyes— how is that a destructive tendency? how is that

angry?

don't worry, mister. Read more »

finding no glory or victory in the news channels,earth/sprung

triumph out of her own breast/earth sprung up

stillness & the smell of goodgooddirt/earth

sprung

the sunsprung leaves/bled/mud in gratitude.

flies, it seemed, came out of nowhere, & found their own favorite circles of air still waiting to be

glid on.

the world bled mud for gratitude

O sweet spontaneous earth

i thought to have seen more children than did show

laughing in the  blidmud/but

i suppose

there were lessons to be learned in desks

& when they come out again, it will be raining.

it's such

it's such

a perfect day

while the earth bled bliss in the blidmud and the sky

kissed the cloud on the cheek like thinking & the mud

sprung up blud into the above & the air

smelled like dirt-likegooddirt

there didn't need to be trumpets

there didn't need to be parades. there didn't even need 

to be flower/s, even,/yet.

& it's spring

glorious is, is, only when the earth had decided to spring the sun

& the sprung sun spun the world to special

& sprinkled sparks &

strummed our chords in all the simplest, in all the right ways.

(go back & just do that C major, don't

fancify just play us some

completion)

glorious is flies.

& here i lie

on my own in a separate sky

  Read more »

she's, you know, one of those people— the kind you can just sit and watch while they

go places.

sit there & watch her happen.

(she knows what love is but she loves not.)

watch her be happy with nothing. that is,

she trusts everything except things.

she is blithe, she is knowing, she is thin, she is in the café

she does not show her knees.

her weather is drawn

accross her shoulders like a shawl, sprinkling occurence.

her boots will melt the ice she makes.

her feet— skitter along the world.

she doesn't hate.

nor does she ruin—

she simply does.

people picture her old, old and white and crinkled up like paper.

but no, she's as young as day, she's got four tattoos and yes, one's a skull;

she's one-quarter Hispanic and smokes a pack on weekends

she chases snow down like rain, throws little fits at salt

she is blithe, she is knowing, she's perfect

she makes mistakes

she's beautiful

her feet skitter along the world.

it seems these days like you're always

finding ways not to be o--

k, ways to make life he

     ll for your--     self but really it's not anybody's                             
                                                                                          -sed.
fault. not even yours, because see that's the way we were rai-

it seems these days that you starve

yourself for the the things you w

ish for so you can wish

a little loud-er-er. i hate that i hate that you're taking things into your hands because i know that that means that you're going to be go

ing.

moving off the reef we built to keep our shadows

out & i hate that i hate what's best for

you, you know. you

know why.

            hun you're going to think i wrote this for someone else.

& someone else is going to think this is for them but there's only so much no

thing that i can do.

babe i worry. 

i don't ever want to put you in the same room as a loa

ded gun & i hate that i think that way but i do.

babe i keep saying "i hate" but i don't hate people. Read more »

(click)

In a way it all made sense. The way events worked out-- call it karma, call it fate-- it all just fit. In an odd, twisted way, maybe this end was actually and truly the best one.

No one was happy about it. No, no one at all actually liked the situation. But then, no one had really done anything to deserve a happy ending. This isn't a story about good deeds that get rewarded, or even about heroes that make ethical mistakes that they regret so much they don't have to suffer the consequences. No, this is a story about real life. That short, sharp-spirited thing we live in and the truth is simple: it's not forgiving. Every book with a suddenly perfect ending, every single one, ought to be classified as fantasy. Because in the real world, you have to clean up your own messes or break your back trying. In the real world, your problems are yours to deal with.

Now, while I tell you this story, I don't want you making assumptions. Don't assume that nobody dies. Don't assume that all the problems get resolved, or that all the weirdly foreshadowed mysteries ever get revealed. Don't assume that the main characters hook up, or that any of us are particularly pretty, or that any one of us comes out of this as a better person. Don't assume that everything magically gets... fixed.

See, ever since my life got this interesting, that's what I thought. I made all of those assumptions, all of those mistakes. And in a way, that's how things went wrong. I was always expecting to get... saved. The world has keepers, you know? I thought if there was a problem at all, someone in charge of that sort of thing would come and fix it. Well, no one does. You dig a hole, the earth doesn't just close it up again. And usually, you can't get out. Read more »

harps are singing, angels are

crying, trumpets are

exploding gold on the 

lowly & 

there is a general feeling of

expulsion as the back retreats from the sunset of naivete

and light

sinks

from the faces.

there are promises draped on the backs of chairs like

expensive coats & we do nothing but

sit awkardly on them & wrinkle the hems.

there are parties celebrating stone-throwings

the apples do not bloom.

go on & wear your white silk tie.

go on & eye

waitresses, dancers, avant-garde models &

men & women tied up in caves.

(—there is nothing to see behind you.

there is nothing behind you at all.)

snap, crackle & pop

got thrown in the flames;

they jump like corn. the angels

cry like babies.

angry, hungry babies.

bits of world flake off like bits of butterfinger.

in the end, though, space is a vaccum.

in the end the chaos is silence.

please, please stop teaching me things.

knowledge is just a list of things that are impossible &

i hate to see it grow.

in the end the candy flakes of was-ness

get to visit the sun.

there was a little you-i,

you know, sitting on the overcrowded bench in the cafe that is-not, now, or under a streetlight

all that time, just waiting.

a little u-eye that dwindled but refused

& i mean refused, like a brick wall or a wedge or constipation,

to budge.

there was a little yew-i we stood under and laughed at life and shit

and the kinds of people we could and couldn't be.

we were an and/or;

not entirely together or seperate.

we were an n/a.

& there were things i never gave back to the you-aye, things i never gave back

at all. i kept them like trophy scars and old things

you keep thinking, someday, you'll have a use

for.

it's so much easier to get drunk on the city

at night, when every car is reflecting fifteen

lights, and the music and perfume and the

strange air blow through your mind like a word being

whispered

now, it's unusual to remember being so

high up, after all the time you spent disbelieving

in luck, and it's hard to to forget falling so

far down, even after you tried getting 

played around.

try going back in time, now, going back in time

to the cable cars and rosemary trees

try going back in time, now, if you've got the time

to the buildings bright white and all the windows

flashing fifteen lights

these days you never really think about your

better times, when we were happy to communicate in

riddles and rhymes, and nothing was so complicated 

like this, and we were fools in a foolish state

of bliss

do you remember when we did things like

not give up; do you remember forgiving just because

you're in love; these days we're afraid and doing it

all half assed, do you remember when things

wouldn't be like that

let's try going back in time, now, going back in time

to a simpler state of being

try going back in time, now, if you've got the time

before the maybe and the might and my running

after fifteen lights

so here i am again sittting still while you,

you swerve and dodge madly in front of me and i could maybe raise

one eyebrow and say, "Where are you going?" in a sarcastic, slightly patronizing,

what-the-hell-do-you-think-you're-doing tone of voice but maybe i shouldn't.

here i am sitting still and trying very hard not to become

the bad-guy here, trying very hard not to be angry so that your ridiculousness

will be all your fault, and wondering why i should bother because you're going to be

all weird-and-rushed-and-scared-of-me no matter what i do.

i am sitting here still 

and watching you shrink. it is difficult

to tower when your confidence is crawling next to my foot

& i could stomp it with no effort at all, even if i won't.

so here i am sitting still across the desk from your insecurities that came to call

and kind of finally kind of telling them that they're not my problem anymore,

or shouldn't be. how can you be sorry for anything

if you keep on doing it?

here i am sitting & fidgeting and trying to throw you a what-the-f*ck-is-going-on

sort of expression but not wanting to come across as too agressive but knowing it won't matter anyway but trying again to think of something that might help

but coming up empty. 

here i am standing awkwardly while you

teeter/totter/sort of try to be nice and i try not to look

too damn confused but know i'm failing and i know what is going on

& now you're leaving the room with nothing  resolved because i'm just that scary.

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"uN     ac

ceptable!," she says and the words i think are

—> out of           coming—>

my mouth.

iN the morn

ing, all

morning,s

i ask, "is today 

the day to go

mad?"

maybe  /to

/mo

        /rrow will\

be\

    a\                             /conv /Enient, and all.

        \better time. more/

iN the EveninG;

i am less

mo

ro

se and only frUstrated                            — ual madness                          

                           ID              all

& i scatter the res              over

                                 the fl

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blue will be skyless

and teens will be highish and, well,

everything is melting.

bullshit will come and go.

values are supposed to be what sticks with you but, really,

none of them make sense.

i am beginning to hate being strong.

i am beginning to dream of wavering.

i am about to give up on this, this pointless paradoxical

stubbornity.

green, green is grassless.

victims are hapless. i am never there

in time.

none of my facades matter except to make me scary and

i am beginning to dislike being scary.

my feet are groundless and, well,

everything is melting.