Good and evil. Black
and white. They're falsehoods. The truth?
We're so many shades.

Watch the world
Watch it spin
Spin through space
Spin the days
Days flying by
Days creeping past
Past your fading hair dye
Past your uneven fingernails
Fingernails without paint
Fingernails hiding yesterday's filth
Filth you have clawed out
Filth from the insults
Insults thrown your way
Insults seeping into the air you breathe
Breathe hot ash
Breathe stones and sticks
Sticks that bruise
Sticks constantly breaking
Breaking in two
Breaking you
You can only dodge so many
You have to fall sometime
Sometime there will be collateral damage
Sometime soon
Soon you will move to slowly
Soon you will meet the ground
Ground will not cushion you
Ground that only cares to spin
Spin as the earth moves on
Spin without a thought for you
You can fall
You can whimper
Whimper at the pain
Whimper for mercy
Mercy to stop the sticks and stones
Mercy in any form
Form a shield
Form then appears
Appears so unexpected
Appears a friend
Friend with a hand outstretched
Friend lifting you off the dirt
Dirt steady beneath you
Dirt that watches the days pass
Pass from humiliation
Pass into peace
Peace the world is still spinning
Peace a warm embrace
Spinning
​Embrace

Cold are the eyes that stare into you now.
Lashes adorned with a powdering of ice,
glimmering gently in the lantern light.

They are a thing of beauty, yes.
Of that, there is no doubt.
But their darkness is just as undeniable.

Twin pits on a blemish-less face,
that threaten to swallow your very soul,
dragging you down into their bottomless depths,
and enjoying every moment of your howling shrieks
as you disappear forever.

My fingers traipse lightly across the keys,
attempting to tease from them some sort of miracle,
an order of words that delights and astonishes,
blows the mind of all who read them.

They try again, and again.
Growing desperate with each attempt,
but still ending up with piles of unkempt prose
that hold no more meaning than the explicit letters making them up.

I sigh,
closing the computer with a shake of my head.
Maybe tomorrow will be better,
​and the words that I'm searching for will finally be within my grasp.

Lights shine above you.
The audience lays ahead.
Now, what will you do?

I've never understood time.
We all pass through it,
some sprinting ahead with full knowledge of what's to come,
ready to embrace every instant,
while others seem to make each step painstaking,
creeping ahead almost in slow motion.
You look behind you,
and they've barely left the starting gate,
while you're halfway to the finish line already.
It makes me wonder whether they are savoring their time,
measuring the weight of every decision before it is made,
or if they're terrified of the future,
and are only try to postpone whatever's in store for them
​in the days ahead.

There's a point that my brain gets to, when
it's had enough rational thought
and problem solving to last
it for a while. The
tissue turns into
mushy, gloopy
blobs, and the
words just
stop.

The human body is so incredibly fragile.
A tad too much pressure here,
a knick against an artery there,
or a twist of that joint,
and they fall apart like poorly constructed dolls,
a pile of limbs at your feet.

How simple it is,
to sever the connections between the mind and body,
let the eyes roll around in immobile sockets,
as they silently scream,
trapped inside a shell of flesh.

There is just something about knowing each tiny part,
the bones, veins, ligaments,
and recognizing how to alter them just so,
to cause the most destruction all at once,
or draw their end out as painfully as possible.
It makes you feel like a god,
with dominion over these puny mortals,
who are so easily torn apart,
like ill-fitting puzzle pieces.

The earth fell silent and still around me,
falling heavily onto my shoulders
as if it had suddenly stopped turning.
Light glinted off of the metal and glass,
and heat still fell from from sun's rays,
but I felt as if each sight had frozen for a moment,
just so I could experience it properly.
Even the birds had left off the next notes in their songs,
leaving a long pause stretch in their wakes.

Are we somehow sustained, by these small
screens in our hands? One vibrating
cry, and our attention is
theirs. A strange maternal
instinct. A buzz and
we pull them out.
Oh look, a
message.
Yay!