the friction the rope causes as it slips through the hands as fast as life.

in with dilation, out in the flash of a stopwatch to the right-hand side of the decimal. the first thing i remembered was the contraction, or being the source of one.

light was dimmed by some quasi-translucent cushion. it was keeping the oxygen from coming in, but i still had my source. it hurt getting pushed out like a convict with no friends or relatives in a vast, numbing world. no possessions to speak of. not even knowledge. i just wanted to cover up. get incubated, that sort of thing.

the rest was a flash of dirty diapers, molding my own feces, scraping knees, loving god, hating god, and fucking.

the rope is blistering my hands something awful, and from the edges, i can tell they’re starting to look like boiled lobster. that rush you get when danger eclipses your thoughts with panic subsides for a split second. the last thing i remember was flinching.

a drop seeping through the ceiling, avoiding the envy of looking in from the outside of a skylight. dripping into the tub where the finish is flaking off like chips of cracking drywall and paint. pausing on the ringlet of the drain, perhaps terrified of the meat grinder on the other side.

it slowly passes away to a place where none return from, in a pool of eternity. some call it purgatory, some call it hades. the river acheron, the river styx; infernal imagination damning desire with consequences administered externally.

(from another plane.)

plateaus where we wander with smoky apparitions affixed to our shadows. the ground caves in around our feet, and the drops besiege them like wildfire.

mindful, not of the future, but of the present. i am embattled in woes of life too grievous to overlook for the imminent suffering of the future.

an inhalation…

vermin swinging from the rungs of my ribcage. salting my lungs as if they were slugs waiting to curl up or be stomped on. in the spotlight of humanity’s disgust,

i stare upward in pinches of pain.

curtains fall over my eyes, tickling them like loose eyelashes. and you can see the light trying desperately to tear them open like the sun burning eyelids, causing them to turn red on the inside. i can feel the skin at the corner of my eyes wrinkling in reaction, flooding with tears excreting the saline that has built up in my body.

smoke billowing out of towers can be seen from my window, and i dare not open it.

it’s the holy spirit reclaiming the first born, extending itself forward like a serpent coiling over itself. charging with reproach, i see the souls it has soaked up fading away.

the flower with the technicolor petals dictates the garden. the others try to change their colors, or exchange them with other flowers. bald, naked; their envy stresses them. the stem thickens, and the wind bows them to the ground threateningly, as if holding their face, at the neck, into the dirt and suffocating them.

their petals start to yellow and brown; now the technicolor flower is a magnificent centerpiece amidst a gathering of cadavers. it forces them to tend to it’s needs, ration their water, as it wrests all moisture from the soil.

the plot looms like a storm cloud on the horizon, but it is welcomed by the mass in relief. they gather and sway, as if pushed by an unfelt breeze, plucking the petals from the technicolor flower. dividing them up, and flaunting with headdresses, they proclaim their strength in numbers.

the crime of beauty can be found in it’s procession of tyranny.

failure is my body contour on a rorschach. the image repeats itself. it has been seen in tidal waves that decimate developing countries, and tear children from the arms of their families sweeping them out to sea. in a lullaby of crashing waves, they are smothered in coves of rock. noticed in the pieces of skull detailing the brain melted in the back of an office chair, where political dynasties have engraved their future.

the crops is scorched to a shriveled stub, like the pruned skeletons of mummified legacies. the desire of legend results in myth, and mythical desires are the concoctions of vacant minds alluding to a greater existence. one need only venture into a cemetery, and single out an unfortunate site to disturb it’s contents to find the evidence of life’s dreary truth.

i would love to live by a phrase; a single caption indexing a glorious chronicle on our bleak time line. but there is time for rebuttal, and each page note categorically descends to the term of origin. our focal point.