a pain-hope career (part 9)

There was water,
and there was Smith
With Smith was metal
and more blood

Kumiko, mixed tears, water
and blood
all in his eye sockets
with each lid's movement

The shadows were gone
The stupid men, were gone
the book was wet
and Smith breathed heavily

Kumiko, sat without his pride. He groped for the book-for a moment, then looked at Smith's knees (he couldn't look him in the eye). "I..I didn't do it. I don't know why, I just sat in there and then I got the book, but I lost, I lost he wraith" Kumiko feared Smith killing him. Smith was a killer.

Smith's eyes made years seem short. Before another word was spoken, a sharp scraping rang from the hall where wraith had escaped. Smith's mouth dropped open as he slowly turned to look.

"It's her." He said.

FIN

The swirling .

It was a mix of color. I had lived there for 12 years, sometimes mixing the colors, sometimes watching them and sometimes staring at the line stretching out forever.

When I was watching the colors I was transfixed...such patterns...light and dark, circling my feet. Somehow they spoke to my unblinking eyes, pointing to the line that led away out from the side of them. They had a voice like metal grinding into trees, but motorless. Like huge pieces of shrapnel cutting through a forest, with millions of splintering voices.

At first I thought they were mindless and random radio static. One day in my twelfth year I tried something.

The colors had been talking.
"Money spilled all over the highway....cshhhhhhhh..cshhh driver dead pedestrians scramble to collect dispersed cash.....shhhhhhhh...today I saw the dhali, he was on TV...everyone was given the vaccine, without any knowledge of it's side effects...."

"Hello." I said.

"cshhhh..cshhhhhh"

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Hello?!" I yelled.

"cshhhhhhhhhhh..."

"What is it's problem," I thought. "I have been standing in this circle for so long. The rest of this area is empty but the circle never shuts up".

"cshhhhhhhhhh...cshhhhhhhhhh....the dog was thought to have been barking needlessly, until the neighbors came closer to see that it had actually trapped someone robbing the residence....cshhhhhhhhh.."

"hello?" I tried again.

"cshhhh...cshhhh....the satellite had been considered useless until the current mission to refocus the lens enabled it to see. cshhhh...cshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...cshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
The dog had not been barking needlessly."

and with that, I broke into a cold sweat. My eyes started to tear.  It had had reiterated something! It did not do that. Were these swirling colors the body of a living being? Had I been standing in a living being for 12 years?

I almost fell. My legs were shaking altering the swirling patterns of color. I had never talked to it, and it had never reiterated anything. I suddenly felt that I might be swallowed by it, sucked down into the colors and never seen again. Fear's hands clenched deeper and deeper into my guts as I struggled for words.

".....uh, can I get you something?" was all I got out.

"cshhhhhhhhh....csh"

This one place had always been, well..home. It had something going on. It had noise and shape. Now that it had intelligence...it was terrifying.

"cshh...cshh....the currency was then considered useless, many German's were actually seen burning it for warmth as winter approached..cshh."

I got on my hands and knees, sweating and shaking.
"Are you in there?"

"cshhhhh....csh..................................................."
silence.

Now whole tears of horror spilled from my eyes. It had never been silent. Never. I could hear myself crying, my whole existence turned in mere seconds.

"WHO?" The voice boomed. Without static, gaps or hiss.

"OH God!" I screamed, falling now to my elbows and knees my hair dipping into it. "Oh God! Oh god! Oh God!"

"What is this" I thought "what are you?" I whispered.

"Who?" The voice came again.

I spilled over onto my side and let the colors flow into and out of the left leg and sleeve of my suit. I was scared and helpless, painfully so. Seconds past in complete quietness, no blur of noise to distract me from the feeling that there was life behind the reality I lay in.

A life that could see me, a life that surrounded me a life that transcended me. The working of my mind ground to a broken halt, fixed on one fear...maybe, maybe I was not God.

My friends

I've got ten albums
and ten people who've heard them
I love each of you
With all my heart.

You know the truth that I do
You feel the same as I do
You know I never lose you
that time and space won't always keep apart.

A sincere embrace

Be all the things I berated you for.
And shaking fingers  point  me away
How long will the opaque mirage suspend

I beg the heat of love brush it all aside
Our bitter  smallness  erase

How small the sanctuary seems
Without the firelight to open eyes
How long do we stare at ourselves

I beg the breath of god breath me back alive
And lift my shortened gaze

We have the things we don't accept you for
Hidden long inside our disease
Knowing I don't change you or give you spell

Turn our faces to you
Your love  and the ways you scare us
Uncross my arms.

I can feel the limit

Somewhere during my cellular division
I looked up
I saw the gasses strewn in beautiful shades
An arc
A mile above my head

Sometime in my bodies young days
I shook to
Find the grey in my beard, thought it was strange
and hard
A mountain breaking in

I leapt and crashed
stretched to find my limit a meter away.

So while the silent invisible goes on
The scene struck here
of jawing masses living in the man made
Should start
and see the limits we live in.

An embrace over my head

I tried looking down on you,
I got nothing but anger from it.
I tried to draw a line round you
But I couldn't hold you still.

I set my teeth on edge
Rigid and angry
And I opened my mouth
Till I was sick of complaining

Exhaustion and confusion
At your high and mighty strangeness

You hadn't changed
I caught a look in your eye
That you wouldn't forsake me.
That you would still embrace me.