for Izzy

i did a push up with you on my back at a house i'd never been to before 

at the end of the night you thanked me for coming

you said it meant a lot to your friend who was my friend too

you were his best fried and first friend in florida

you brought tres leches to his house one time for desert

we ate it and liked it and criticized it

you brought your roommate and i thought he was smart and your boyfriend

it was raining that night, i remember 

many details about you, even though we only met twice 

i want to keep the parts of you i found nice alive in this world

because this world always needs more nice things

and i want to be a necessary force in this world until i don't need to be anymore and

when im at another house for the first time i will attempt a pull up with you wrapped around my back

things i found buried in the sand at st. simon's beach in georgia in june of 2021

half a peanut shell

a folded band-aid

our feet at that moment youre standing still and a wave goes over them and water starts to recede

not love

you used to live within memory

it contained images you could touch

the way she touched you

it contained you 

most of the time, 

and that one time

i brought you dried mango

i know you'll like it

because it's not too much of anything

music that sounds like that

like the future

a past holding the best to come

it would feel different if you touched me again

none of your skin cells would be the same as last time we met

you would smell different

but maybe wear one of the same t-shirts

now im imagining something extremely different 

something that maybe you'll be like someday

we wont't know each other

it will be new

and boring maybe

good to each other

Machine Safety

Presence sensing device 

Die 

Feeding

Two-hand control device

Automatic feeding

Semiautomatic feeding

Manual feeding

Guard

Die enclosure guard

Interlocked press barrier guard 

Hand feeding tool

Jog

Operator's station

Press

Repeat

Exposed to contact

Presence sensing device initiation 

Trip

cool lizard

it is not inside

it is always

somewhere else

on the floor 

under a reptile light

clenching my head 

it feels good 

like you did it

i asked for this

slow warm breaths against my upper lip

im invisible

jim's headphones are tangled

tiny drama

my excitement

Resignation Letter Template

I am writing to inform you that I am no longer interested in working at ______. Today was my intended last day. I will not be returning tomorrow. I sincerely apologize for any difficulties this may create for anyone.

I felt I was doing work without purpose. Having no windows to look out of agitated me. My health is beginning to suffer. I won’t get into that. Please only follow up if absolutely necessary. 

Signed,

__________

                                                                            8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:8:

I am leaving for new problems. If I keep going in this direction my current readership — made up of nobody, or myself at most — will get tired of constant variations on escapisms and descriptions of dimensionless textures emitted from fluorescent office lights — engulfing and punishing yet small and concentrated as an image seen through a key hole — experienced within a head atop drooped shoulders atop a flattened office chair seat cushion. I was tired of it from the beginning. 

Sometimes I grow conscious of the way my toes wriggle inside my shoes and feel an impulse to take them off. I initially wrote “strong impulse,” but the falsity of that adverb immediately made itself felt. I feel nothing strongly. 

The laptop light is washed out in this tepid fluorescent bath. I think about and feel sort of vague yearning toward the idea of a laptop light that is warm and singular in its blueness. A laptop light creating a slight contour with the inanimate objects surrounding me in a small bedroom. A cherished and coldly loving laptop light.

I will sleep fifteen hours a day. The nine waking hours will be experienced in a dream state indistinguishable from the other fifteen. Being awake will feel like a reflection of sleep — the appearance of sleep but different on the inside — and give rise to expressions that would be against company policy in this windowless office, where I am both too awake and too asleep, deprived of dying as much as of living. I am tired of talking about the devoid windows encasing concrete walls and the fluorescent light filling the sun’s absence. But there’s something in my eye and I can’t resist scratching. My contact fell out. I left my sweatshirt at home. I want to travel maybe.

I don’t consider this place or the the people voluntarily entering it each day necessarily my enemy, necessarily bad, or even very different from myself sometimes. I just want to distance distance myself from them. I don’t know why exactly. I don’t know anything exactly. I don’t feel anything exactly. I’ll think about it more after I leave. It will enter my head in a tent in the state park across town on a July night —  soon or some other year in my twenties — while the sound of cicadas and passing trucks illicit a memory of the almost living hums and clicks of automatic doors and machines calibrating themselves, and a thought will float up from inside of the 300 people inside that windowless building, of people in other windowless buildings with lights that snuff out the existence and possibility of loving laptop lights in solitary rooms, and I’ll think, and I’ll think, and I’ll think, and I’ll focus on a bug.

the best i can hope for

a cancelling out to pure tones
a reconciliation  of clash
the producer's dream 
inside the wrong person 
everything seems lost

alligator roadkill

the hot pavement

felt nice

on his cold belly

until he got

hit by a semitruck

on cruise control

going 

sixty-five mph 

in the sun

he dried up

to the size and shape of a turtle

and the wind blew him back into the water

then he didn't feel anything

without a family to bury him 

he soaked up the lake water 

of whose comfort he ventured from

and swam away in every direction 

where semi trucks never come from and never arrive or drive over

the condition of being nowhere

 

traversion

youtube recommended page after breakfast 

three videos then back on mattress 

roll over to the right, the left, the right again

pull the blanket up, get hot

languidly shakingly reach 

toward space bar atop desk

listening to music now at least

listening to music going 

nowhere always

inhabiting distances never arriving

at absolutes always still 

here and always here because i crave everything now

i can't wait and i can't walk but i can crawl 

towards the next as it shifts

into the next further 

distance never arriving

im here i say can't you find me?

around the corner next to the gold car

don't you see it, don't you see me next to it?

i can hear you can't you see me

can't you?

"audio and video tapes discovered after vehicular suicide locked away by family"

 friday is everything i wanted but never got

not that i get it on friday,

i just feel the absence 

of all these things 

at once

call it a slow death 

each moment spread out

a little bit longer than the preceding one

for example

this moment one lasts maybe fifteen seconds:

she turns her head toward the the apartment window

face illuminated by the refracted afternoon light

obscured from me by falling brown hair

a thousand days later that same moment lasts an afternoon:

for six hours my eyes fixed on the same window

watching the sun crawl into and out of view again

it already happened, all of it

the machinations of the vhs player of my mind are dusted and worn

the tape is translucent after thousands of playbacks

the picture on the screen is becoming smaller and the sound dimmer

due to the proximity effect

as my futon sinks from my body 

further into the shag underneath the window

away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, 

only a landscape for someone else's life to fill

this week every day is friday

 wake up from a nap feels like i am somewhere else

curl my fingers into a ball in front of my eyes still i dead

remember and now now is being stretched into something i am to think

this week may last forever, every night every person in my dream

what a beautiful face on each each to remember forever at night

when i do remember forever i do remember forever

this week i am getting what i asked 

it is stretched out and painless

showering street lights 

warm and golden

around and over on the side

feels the same 

convince myself otherwise

around and over on the side

fluff my pillow

concussed and shallow 

scuffed concrete and no story to tell

it is no phone calls, no text messages,

a futon, tail lights, 

seven fridays to remember the meaningful moments up to this point now which is becoming less and less pointed and the moments less momentary: the vanilla cone chocolate with rainbow sprinkles now thinning out from each successive streetlight, the rain on the beach now thinning out

it's a thursday and a friday and like the others i have nothing to do

i will go in a nap and really, really, i really mean this, i really really mean this 

on this week i am experiencing everyday as friday and i tell my coworkers excitedly 

it doesn't matter and really it's fine

i text you when i get home that it doesn't matter and really it's fine

then put my phone in the abandoned desk 

then the futon again and not waiting for a reply but going

going in a nap and really it's fine

i have enough memories to go forever and you're in them

meet me at the reflection pond

yeah

by the library

ok 

i love you for the future

microphones

manufactured with

proximity effect in mind

gain in mind

sensitivity in mind

pickup patterns in mind

polaroid, solenoid, cardiod, omnidirectional minds

shotgun the mind

plugged into a source of phantom power

listening tirelessly until unplugged

i let the dream die again

facing the wall

i am a loathsome creature

i am all i am

i am all person 

nothing to be proud about

a thousand times

a thousand eyes mocking

deservedly 

i am no longer actively participating in this or that

there are spaces between things

things happen when they vibrate the air filling these spaces

i happen by sitting very still

a thing can't exist without vibrating

some things vibrate very quietly

those things exist still

the intangible 

expansion and contraction 

of ribs

i will remain 

a small and listening thing

until you read this

i'll know when you do

at that moment i'll move my hip toward something

and you'll know when i do

duty

i will leave town and tell no one

i will stay in town and tell everyone i left town

i will convince you 

it can't be that, other than miserable. a book on your shelf. ambience working on things. a bird bath. five days of no rain. loneliness. 500 PowerPoints sleeping together. with synchronized breath,  a spinal twist. make it up to me. a smile. torsion in the ribs because of happiness, lost thoughts,  hazy streets,   past dark

        pollution makes the sane hateful

        your car speakers told me something 

        in that camcorder video

        about seine rivers and eternal meanings 

        timbres of extended guitar chords in open tunings

        tires gripping the asphalt

        displacing peaceful gravel

       

        i really did have have a home

       

        

        inside the other place she drives her Honda Civic        

        in  side

            sane

            berserk   

                in side

                consolable

            Bl 

                in side

                d Rage

            Magnificence d

            Magnanimity 

                polaroid 

                "sheer madness"   - the shopping cart vlogger

            f

                light

devouring

    a devouring

        of

of                    

                    of

                                    of

        

everything means something to me and it always hurts a little

the pursuit of nothingness

the rise in popularity 

of fasting and meditation

both of which confer 

a feeling of less self

the pursuit of nothingness

a seven year old girl whispers to her cat

"okay? you're always okay"'

and i cry about that and all the other

seven year old throughout the world

consoling soft animals after grown ups step on their tails 

on their way to their bedroom offices

like bedroom music production studios

but with sharper angles and fewer blankets

the summer i quit my day job and fully focused my attention on distracted thoughts

you mean more to me than i show

at night i replay the image of you turning your head away from me

then i get closer

the creases in your neck the perfumed red sox t shirt

then i get closer 

the cracks in your smooth lips

then i get closer

to your wet regurgitating heart

then i choke a little and wake to what actually happened

you flew to ohio and had your chest cut open and ribs broken

that actually happened 

im not imagining this

this isn't another misremembered dream

you actually had open heart surgery

and the scar 

a half-inch thick purple line running 

crudely

vertically 

down 

your chest

fading

a little more every day

as my presence in the external world -- 

no , that won't help -- 

just remember i'll try 

the night i lay on your coffee table and sang salt by alex g while you did something in your warmly lit room 

my angel my black heart

your lovely face

remains quiet, says your peace

your ugly honest face

the most beautiful thing ive ever seen

the last empty silence

the harmony of your wisp cheek 

the last thought i will think 

reclined against the apartment tree

the anxieties of my past life

given up by 23

to a girl doomed to dream

just like me

 crying monotone

the man with the pale yellow shirt standing in the median was me for a moment 

me was nobody

for a moment

ambiguous grey bring no rain 

silver breeze will you sift away?

beneath my inside to defrost under disguised sunlight

outside i confusion her message to stop and rest 

i don’t understand

    “There is nothing to understand.”

what is nothing

    “Nothing is everything.” 

so i have to understand everything

    “You have to understand two things: 1. Yourself 2. The fact that you are nothing”

ok — .. — .

nature never stops trying hard 

light can't help illuminating 

light isn't inherently good

because of light we can see forests burn and penguins die

because of light there was an eclipse 

because of light i have to wear glasses 

what light manages to find this room

deserves to shine on my wrought spun dreams

i woke up in that mood again

for the 278th time this year 

try to remember forgetting the origin of lost memory the end of the beginning white to grey black to gray 

life is gray

settle for trying a little harder, everyday

no

that won’t work forever...

im not addicted i just like the smell 

of burning herbs transience, 

moonflower —

my soft anesthesia blade

wallow wallow 

you said

less than words 

a greater language 

wrapped me in ambiguous details

oooh 

let me focus in

im hallucinating 

ahhh

inside over around under — out ——

(flesh)

OW

im sorry... 

im sorry

i dont what to say other than im sorry

 

everyday i have to scroll further down the messages app to see your name 
the only person with a contact photo
a big smile
today was shit and im exhausted
i screamed on the way home
bought beer& envisioned further screams
nocturnal intoxication
it's not worth the money
\ how can anyone live alone
in constant revolt
anger loops in my head 
sleeping on the floor 
dousing dreams
asexual wet dreams
sonic daydreams
the nightmare underneath
a snare drum to carry me off 
no, not to heaven my angel
i don't think anyone's gone to heaven
ever
i think jesus sits in the gold dry clouds alone
disease free 
& i caught a glimpse of the sleep in his eyes the goop the earthworm 
sleepy jesus 
baby i understand
he's tired 
of never getting tired
& soon, maybe tonight, 
i'll see him in the corner of my bedroom sobbing
& we'll share a smile

 the openness of a morning

without pressure

i lay my head on your soft lap — 

repeat a mantra of patience — 

urge myself to be centered — 

spring up and mumble about having to work on something run away and intentionally don’t turn around to see your dejection

stare at my computer screen

frozen by regret in the present moment

now on my cold lap sits a laptop and cup of coffee

things that can remain warm for a few hours and few minutes, respectively

i am perfectly centered 

and i smash my head through the computer screen in a show of my enlightenment 

and to mimick your soft lap

pixels mutilate my face 

something isnt quite right

 Tried to get ffucked up last night and failed

whats the cosmic significance of humiliation ?

im left with an almost-hungover feeling of stickiness

And the pumpkin bread was left out in the cold.

its a sign from the gods, or just a few people 

that didnt know any better 

if i saw you on the street today i would say "what a pleasant surprise"

my hobbies include // lucky to be me

hanging small objects from ceiling fans 

redirecting my trajectory abruptly while pacing

sometimes enjoying fruits

smashing guitars in my imagination 

bounciness

soft intimations

experiencing exercise-induced religious experiences

   

self mutilation

/selfmutilation

//selfmutilation

///self mutilation

 

forgetting 

------

cloud gazer self mutilator rotting string holding up memories hanging from old tree branches -- to see our lives as theatre with no god director and everyone's a bad improvisor -- i am losing interest in this show --  i hear the tapdancing troupe in the basement below i blast through the wrought iron door i broke my knuckles bloody fucked in the process of joining the madmen beneath the madmen beneath and i let out the secret i held above for so long and in my search for air eternal something changed -- now we stare into cob webbed corners, a widow delivers bread on tuesdays meanwhile the air above burns my lungs as i let go now i would say i want to kiss your forehead and fall asleep haha i want to smash my forehead against the cobblestone wall and bleed the gloom thud of a solitary headbutt -- the ears ring bleed the music recedes bleed light headed now bleed lighter now bleed cloud head bleed fading now fuck my life

 

until i see you 

sweet dreams

i am lucky to be me

untitled 1 / narcissist

     going insane is the solution        cameron   

going insane is the solution        cameron    

                going isnane si the solution        cameron    

            

        gioign snaine is hte lostuoin        cameron

    gongii naesi si het slutoin        cameron

                

                        one day i will be whole

  

b oo 

                                                  

i give up      

yellow dress

i remember more colors last year:

my pink shirt on easter 

your yellow dress you wore when you got back from the other side of florida

where you spent so much time

did i ever explain to you how the color yellow makes me feel?

for a moment the world stops spinning and meshing 

for a moment the greyscale blear dream 

stops

and i smile at how yellow talks to your skin and says

"i could live inside you forever"

i take the yellow dress off

and lay next to you

—warm —

you ask if im okay

i say for now

what i did on my birthday

every 15 minutes I started to cry 

i had a breakdown at work and took a clients kitchen knife into the bathroom with me to cut my wrists

i felt unloved and unlovable 

my parents are out of town and no one here knows that it’s my birthday 

now i’m alone in my bedroom getting wasted

every night, every night that i sleep at least, i have had nightmares with you in them

in all of them i’m being mocked, ridiculed, estranged, spited, cheated, and hurt. when i wake up from them it feels like something is ricocheting inside my head 

i am 22 and have to put down my pen 

the tremors are starting

it’s my birthday and thick clouds hang cover the sky

the rain will come

later

manual labor for the last two weeks

manual labor for two weeks to come

a breakdown today

i am 22

this year i will dig a hole straight down into the earth and

my disappear into it 

they will setup a monument around my deep dark hole

you’ll visit it every year on my birthday and cry

and i haven’t had anyone to tell about our problems 

my hopes

that rain comes
memory expands
vision weakens
i die a little 
i die a little 
i die a little
dance

AM

i.

in the curtained radio room static

replaces air

chest, breath, existence — 

sunken

the ceiling fan keeps time

for one more measure, one more measure, one more measure,

until The Unbearable Song is written and i am carried away

through thin layers of beige dry wall

ii.

my only friend

the singer 

humming quietly underground

with perfect pitch

hoping no one will hear

in the room below, i press my ear to the ceiling ...

iii. 

sound fills air

air fills lung

inhale 

now,

never let go

soon I will disappear

for the jokes

for the missing words

for the uncomfortable awareness 

of avoidance

of uncomfortable eye contact

for embarrassing moments

i've had enough of everything

except desperation

blank space

i don't know that i don't know that i don't know that i don't know

soon i will disappear

 I know I said I wanted to leave but I decided to stay to see if you’d realize what’s wrong and what eats my language sometimes and just buzzes around me like a single gray note never ending with sinister percussion — the gray that haunts me incessantly 

"salt"

hey

who are you?

what are you trying so desperately to be?

it’s doomed and pathetic

and sometimes even sad to see:

you find elation

one day out of thirteen

struggle you struggle me struggle weeeeee — 

goes your head

but remember!

you’ll never be the best 
at anything

tho keep trying anyway 
to create your world 
of colors and sounds and sweat

and don't forget to love the real world

of rivers and black bears and death

inside my dark room

today it felt better to sit in my dark room than to open the blinds
though it is harder to see and harder to perform the simple tasks
it is easier to focus
on the the computer screen, the sounds from my speakers
in the dark
it is easier to hide
and forget about the hollow in my gut and the vast bright world
behind the blinds

in the crack of the sidewalk

i exist on my terms of solitude — 

it’s safe and unchanging — for now

but soon the walls will rot 

soon the walls will fall down — 

the walls i built walls

of many, many layers of cardboard

to protect my solitude

it's cheap and it's all i have

so out of blank-minded desperation, 

so out of fear that has come full circle into machine-like stupefaction 

i glue together layer after layer

with the disappearing purple glue-stick 

my nanny bought me

before i left for college

but it's florida

and the rain comes every afternoon

and it easily soaks through each layer

and so here come the bugs — 

they feast, chewing through every layer 

faster than i can lay it down

and so here come the birds — 

they feast on the bugs

they scratch me up pretty good

they don’t mean to, but they do

i'm surrounded by cockroach legs and bits of cardboard

i lay shaking

the owl atop the stop-sign watches me

and i watch him 

and that’s all, we just focus on each other

the owl and me, his big eyes 

and my big stupid body

and that’s enough

to focus on one another, that’s enough

and when it's later and the rain has stopped

when it’s cool and damp

i lay atop the sidewalk

i feel every contour and gristle

small things could be like great mountains and canyons 

if i weren't so big

in a few hours the sun will come up

and warm what’s left of me 

and i’ll use what’s left of me 
to try again

until i’m small enough to live 

in the crack of the sidewalk

that time i gave myself carpet burn and laughed at my reflection in the mirror for about three days and thought "ill never be insane enough," and that's good, that's sensible, that could make my mom talk about me on the telephone a little more and my grandma sleep a little more at night and my sister a little more okay with me godfathering her kids

I have a voice

it screams my head

it makes my head go Shrkkkkgaahhhhbbllllllaahhhrrrpphhhhsshhhohh

like a head across concrete

and

giving up hope seems quiet and peaceful

and

sleep is almost always better than awake

and I’m beginning to believe what the dreampeople tell me — 

at least i can hear the rain

the bedroom floor feels harder today

pain with every motion 

in crooked hips spine and brain

pain even when still

you’d give up too

so i’ll just try later

it’s later

time to lie and manipulate

like my severe depression

severe

Depression

pushing

or pulling

me into the cheap dirty carpet

the air tastes sterile yet unclean

i crawl over furniture to outside

to wet heavy air 

it makes no difference 

something still pushes

or pulls me

at least be original motherfucker

twist me motherfucker

twist me 
please

it makes no difference

back inside i cover myself with a huge blanket

and it’s warm

almost too warm

i find my ear pressed into the cheap carpet

looking for the pulse of this hard fuzzy ground

only to find the tiny desperate pulse of itself