I Want You Pierced

Let's find a new place on the body to pierce.
Got all the parts covered that won't end you in a puddle of blood?
Let's try a vital organ next! How about one of your kidneys?
Then you can take the x-rays around, and show people how brave and unique you are.
How about your heart? Most people don't use them properly anyway.
Eventually all your organs will be made out of recyclable plastic. Use them up while they're real.
I like bold statements! Why not drive a nail through the back of your elbows.
Tattoo the hands of Jesus around them.
Everyone has there own unique stamp right? Something to help your mommy identify your body better, after they find you dead in the gutter, where I left you. I want to make you happy. I want you to be a what you want to be. Beautiful, timeless art. Something special and immortal.
Metal and holes.

August 5, 2008

Genetic Parasite

I don't remember the exact moment I knew I must separate myself from you;
I just stopped returning your calls...

You and I were just a dream. You passed some of your dreams to me through the spoken word. Side by side we dreamt of hell. Your hell and mine.
I thought your hell was all I could know. I thought that because your dream was of hell, and I only knew dreams through you; I must dream of hell.
And now I have separated from you, but nothing has changed. My dream is almost the same. I believed the dream you gave me so well, as I believed in you.
In trying to wake from this dream, I gave myself a new name. This name is what I want my dreams to be. But hell has followed me here.
It follows because it is all I know of dreams. I believed it more than I believed in God or love. Because what I learned of God and love was through your words. The same words that have cast a spell over my mind and blinded my vision with smoke.

This is a hard dream to awaken from.
It is the coma of my first life.
I stubble around in a fog, trying to find all the walls I must tear down to gain my freedom.
They are everywhere; and I built them without any windows or doors.
An endless maze of cemented walls with no entrance or exit in sight.
To find my way out I must wage a war against the parasite that dreams its hell into my mind, and feeds its body through my body.
I may never win, but a warrior is willing to fight to the death for his perceived freedom; and I will do the same.
I will search for my heaven here.
I will seek out God inside myself...

In my new dream, all of what I knew of you will be forgotten.
But I will always remember the death of you. The death of all your words and all your parasites.
I will always remember the time when I decided_____ to make Eden my new name.

2-20-09

Back to the Garden

There was something so pristine about that place. The planet did not have to revolve around a star.
The shorelines met the water without a sense of separation, and the people who walked naked on its beaches came; not to find God, but to be God.
In that place, I was fully awake. I didn't need others to describe their vision of who I was to me. I didn't need to defend or justify to my brothers, my right to live. I wanted to stay in the light, but the fruit was just as tempting. I wanted to know; what is God really? Is there a greater truth?
So I took a bite.... and the poison felt so good in my veins that I ate every piece of fruit I could steal from the branches. I fell to sleep under the tree, and when I woke up Paradise was gone. Everything I knew as truth had changed. I ran to the shoreline, and all I saw was a great and dark abyss. Thousands of years will pass as I sleep in this new hell. No one will have the power to wake me up, till I decide to change my birthright.

You're Ridiculous

A few cells shy of mental incompetence.
"A mediocre copy of another man's genius"
I look at you with your scroll of nonsense, and call you ridiculous.
I call you ridiculous, and smile while I do it.

The street lamps dim as I pass you in uncertain recognition.
Only your smell is familiar to me, the rest of you takes the shape of every other passerby.
The sun could not recover your full image.

You are chinuit de remuscari, and should beg daily for your attrition.
You use fustian clatter to disguise your weak resolve.
All this lost time on every attempt; waisted... needful... redundant.

I look at my watch before I see you fade into darkness.
Five minutes..
the time it took me to realize you were no longer in my presence.

~May 19, 2008~

Softly... softly
The day spills in from my shuttered window
dreary day; how I am always thinking of you
By the first light of morning I pour over my love letters to you
ones never sent
A best friend would never keep such secrets
my heart is still yours, till I can find another who will make me forget
How can I replace you
I have been in love; never as I have loved you
letting go was never the plan; I just never knew how hard I held on
Softly... I am in your arms as I always imagined it to be
how long did it take me; only in sadness and in parting with you so
Tears long delayed... always
I could lock you away in my heart, but it will kill me
it will kill us both
I pretend I call you and read you this poem;
pretend you whisper, as you always did: you are my soul
Softly... I say to you that all is forgiven
and we go on loving each other, as only we can
But I can no longer act out as a child would
I have made you up entirely, and can not recall who you really were
I have been loving a dream
softly; I will release you from my sleeping world
Softly... softly... goodbye

She

I fold to my own unknowing.
Why the heart chooses,
who; it chooses.
When a look is more penetrating than a needle to my vein.
How clumsy I am made.
Nervously I sit;
try not to look so obvious...
I forget to saver the moment when I am in her arms.
It's only a hug.
She doesn't see me this way...
She doesn't catch fire every time I say something clever.
Her eyes will never trace the flesh of my body with longing.
Yet I covet her to my own detriment.
However the hours, she is present in my mind.
The days that pass between us only strengthens my desire.
The thread of seconds that stitches my heart into knots over why...
How foolish is the human heart;
that it can not tell the difference, and it can not seem to reason....
no matter how many times it breaks.

November 19, 2007

In The Arms of Adoration

It's 5 o'clock in the morning, and his alarm goes off.
I'm already awake.
I already know the routine;

Hit snooze button at least 5 times, wake only half way and pull me close to him, drag naked body out of bed and stand motionless by the window with a vacant expression for 2 minutes...

I listen to the shower run for almost half an hour; sometimes he falls asleep standing up.
He puts his uniform on, leaving it sloppy, but clean.
And then the part of his routine I never understand....

He crawls back into bed with me, not to sleep, but to watch me.
He pulls me to him like he fears he may never see me again and whispers... "I hate leaving you."
In those precious few minutes, I feel as though I'm some kind of one and only...

He really loved me once.

I'd give all my hours, and all my lovers back; to feel again, what those few minutes made me feel with him.

I tell myself to remember that...
and if the time should ever come again that someone adores you as much as he did;
tell him not to go.

March 22, 2007

Motherhood

A small joy swells till the ribcadge hurts and tears of anticipation form.
A living thing; blooming inside... and hope grows.
A second heart beat; another soul attached.
The movement of a butterfly becomes the movement of a fish, becomes the movement of baby girl...
How I cherish all the days that go back to that day;
When I was your cocoon.


May 13, 2007

Surface

With all your bones, will you drag your body out of the depths...
your gills close up;
and now you must learn to breathe the air.
Now you know how heavy your body is.

Now you know the sting of the sun on you bare skin.


July 6, 2007

Forgiven

My heart quickens
I draw from the air a different kind of happiness
into my eager lungs
The moment passes, tears fall; yet somehow my spirit is lifted
Forgiven

written:July 25, 2006

First Touch

Like the first taste of wine on my lips;
The sun in my eyes after clouds and rain.
The prick of the needle before it enters a vein;
shocking and pleasing,
sweat beading in circles on feverish skin
Nothing post has it's power, or pervokes more
emotion.
It sizzles, and everything else is bland;
The first and slightest touch from your hand,
You own me

written:September 13, 2006

There is a truth unspoken in dreams

written: 6.15.08

To whom this is addressed,
The sun seemed to contradict itself today. It was bright enough to have a scorching affect, and yet a chill softly loomed.
Last nights dream of you came as a surprise. I've not dreamt of you since well over a year ago..; when I was still at war with myself and playing puppeteer.
It was a surprise within a surprise, because there was a jovial playfulness between us. You had come to visit me, or the other way around maybe. The rain was constant and warm. In the shadow of this contradiction of the truth between us, lingered a question: Where has all the animosity gone?
But the question lay very distant to the welcoming of your arms around me, and all the affections of an endearing friendship. Do dreams lie?
Only daydreams perhaps, but they are dreams made up.
In my life awake; I feel I may have found my match, just as you said I would, what seems like.....
Hundreds of years I've waited to hear these words, "I can find the darkest part of someone's soul just as beautiful as the lightest."
This was said to me after I confessed a fear of what I become when I get bored. I was warning him as always.
Maybe fear isn't the right word to use when I talk about what stirs in me, when I get bored.
Guilty; exhilarated is more the words to describe.
Maybe I'll kill this too, as I shatter all the fragile things;
and if I should descend into a thousand hells for calling a cease fire between two separate halves of my soul, let me be fully deserving, God...
They communicate to each other like a pair of identical twins. One understanding the other. Accepting the other. Dying without the other.
They operate as a complete and seamless form.
In my dream of us, this same unique understanding opened its eyes at me.
It reminds me that *there* is where exists the thin line between love and hate; friend and foe.
*There* is where both forces unite. They understand and accept each other without the questions or lies.
To whom this is addressed,
I never loved you in my life awake...
but in my dreams we are love and hate united. They pair for a virtue undefined.
I am still the Phoenix. I will always burn my whole world to ash to birth myself anew. I am still the puppeteer; dark and bored. You'll never know if what I say is real or an illusion.
Not in the life awake. Not ever in this life; awake.
But there is an Atlantis after all; and in deep slumberous isolation, I take you there.
I hold your hand and walk with you *there*.
You will never read this letter foe;
but in composing it alone, I am perfectly satisfied.
Happiest with the silence that preceded blissful contradiction... me;
and paradoxical as the midnight sun.
as ever,

Eden

Make Me Beg

I'll show you what it means to crawl
what it means to need one thing only
love just leaves me hungry
craving
wanting
I'll show you how much I can need
what it sound like when the hunger calls
curses to the thing that feeds me
leaves me
trembling
obsession binds me to such an act
I'll leave the stage in shackles
take my bow in silence
submission
addiction
the needle comes with a body
I'll be what ever you want me to be
lover, friend or mother
I'll let you see what you want to see
just please
don't make me beg

written:March 25,2006

Depersonalisation

I'm pulling my head around on the end of a string; like a balloon filled with helium.
I can see my hand holding the string, but I don't know how tight the grip is.
Always; there's this fear my hands are going numb, and I'll let the string slip.
Away my head will drift...
first across the ceiling, till it finds the door. I will have to watch in horror as the air starts to circulate in that direction. Then someone opens it...
and out I go.
My body standing still, as my soul escapes.
Then maybe I ascend quickly to a very great height; no control of how far up, or how fast.
I am at the mercy of nature.
There is no wheel to steer my fate.
This is what it's like to lose all control... then SNAP! You get your head back!

The 'You Will Never Read This' Letter

Dear Friend,

I know it's been two years since I last spoke to you. No doubt you still tell our other friends whom I also, no longer speak to; how confused you are about my silence.
I wish you could see inside my head sometimes, and know that it has nothing to do with not loving you. In fact you may never understand how much I still feel connected to you, even though I'm quite sure I may never speak to you again.

Today I was thinking about that letter you wrote me. You know... the one you left on my door, just before I moved away without telling you. I still have it somewhere. I only keep the best ones.
In my heart you and I are still dear friends, and will always be such.
If I could make you understand that your sorrow was just too great for me to manage. You cried every night for two years, and then your mother died the morning I moved. I knew it would be the last time I called you to offer my condolences.

You were so afraid of me leaving you. You told your mother that I was like a sister to you... and she treated me like a daughter. Her death was no less sad to me than the death of my own Grandmother... and yet I will still keep my silence. I will still only write this letter... and never send it.
You remember when I told you I just do this. I just drift away like a cloud. No rain in my body... just wind and sky.
I have said goodbye to so many; so maybe it's become too easy for me. But listen.... I don't miss you. I hardly miss anyone I leave except my Monster. Not because I don't care... because I do. I feel you and I are still together. If I had carried you inside my body like I did my monster, I would feel something inside me rip, like a warn out seam.
I guess maybe that is the only way to secure my physical connection. I have to carry you inside my body.

I hope you can feel me writing this to you. My head is pounding as I thump out the words. My feelings are raw and severe.
I think of all the letters I've written like this one, and all the ones to come. Maybe I will put them in a box, and bury them in the dirt, or send them off to sea. A box the size of a coffin.... the death of all my short stories... a lifetime of memory.

With all my love as ever,
Eden

Collapse

I saw you, a worm... dying in the sun
your writhing body reminded me of love
where is you head worm... I thought
where do you hold your pain?
what is the memory of your life...
I never stopped to look
It happened very slowly
You would twist inside my head like licorice
then something inside me will collapse...
no one else will notice you there
I returned to find you flat against the sidewalk
and the magic spell was broken

The Word 'alone'

Round
the circle in a room full of rectangles
I trace my fingers around your beautiful, invisible lines
I hum a song to the transcendence of my head
Vast
you have so many possibilities
it is an ache
it is the violent need to scream or laugh
a secret fills the room like jasmine
Warm
you are a burning ember of hope and love
I curl up in your open arms
I stretch myself way out, to fill all the cracks of your floors

Climb

Rush... pulse... climb
rush... pulse.... rush
Steady... pulse... love
steady... climb... up

Ready... set... love
rise... up... rush
steady... up... rush
climb... steady... come

Rush me... shake me... come
make me... make me... love
rush... rush... sun
climb until you come

The Obituary

"If some lives form a perfect circle others take shape in a way we can not understand or predict. Loss is a part of my journey but it has also shown me what is precious. So is a love for which I can only be grateful."

These words in today's Statesman... The obituary of Joseph Mackey O'Steen.
He was my step brother. I've known him since I was twelve... and he was a shape I understood well. His darkness and my darkness came from the same place. Is it so hard to understand suicide? My mother and his father want to believe it was murder. I guess that would make it easier. Then they wouldn't have to realize the part they played in shaping his darkness. Or that they spent all of their money, time, and energy on my lost cause of a sister, for whom they both obsess over; but couldn't spend a few precious moments to call a son... or any of their other children to make sure they're still alive.
And so we come to the anger part of my grieving.
The part where I not only grieve for his loneliness and abandonment... but also I grieve because I have not really allowed myself to grieve!
It shows me how many steps backward I've taken on my path to healing my own past wounds.
In the past week since his death I've gotten sloppy drunk four times! Sunday was the most hung over I've been in ages. What does this solve? Even in my sloppiest state, I refused to grieve. I have spent the past two years being conditioned by "The Machine"... on how to not experience or show any human emotion that isn't positive. Fake everything. Look the part. Only talk about the client. If the client is being negative, change the subject to something happy.
Now I find I'm torturing myself once more. Hating myself for feeling grief. For being angry. To be what they want... I would have to cease to exist. I would have to numb my whole being with pills and self help tapes!
Yet on the other end of the spectrum is my journey to understanding a Toltec way of thinking. What a contradiction my life has become.
At work: the secretly bitter machine, who is judged and judges.
At home: the self accepting warrior. Moving away from self hate, towards perfect love.

I am not surprised that my brother killed himself, Mother Earth. I suffered beside him... I suffered alone. I am not ashamed that I grieve for his life, instead of his death. I am not going to apologize for my anger, or hold back my tears. And if I get a little weird or say the wrong thing, I won't punish myself for the satisfaction of "The Machine".
If Joseph had come to understand what I have... I would not be reading today's Obituary. And I will use his death as a reminder....
I must keep going. I must keep fighting to live.

Eden

It wasn't hell after all

It was the chill of the morning air
the black bird piercing the silence without an echo to his cry
It was a sad expression acknowledged quietly in the glance of two passing strangers
the dog that hid under the porch to die alone
It was the old lady waiting patiently by the phone for someone... anyone to call her
the only child left on the playground
The pain is too precious to me
I thought I saw you kneeling at the end of my bed
the blackest wings stretched to the heavens
It was the final breath before you passed into the night
the beauty of birth can be found again in death

Death Whispers Nothing

I watched the sun in its bright orange half orb... going going... then as the last of it went down, I imagined a hiss like wet fingers on a candle's flame; quickly grips the wick.
I know he's in the room with me... patience everlasting; his eyes full of wonder.
The window pane reflects at me, a thin broken woman holding a knife at her side; blood trickling down her delicate wrists.
I gasped when I looked at her... long, stringy wet hair clinging to wet naked flesh.
She was once the shape of sensuality; now the flesh barely covers the bones.
Behind her... he is standing.
He walks with such grace that I am reminded of a slow dance between lovers.
I will dance with you...
I think hes says, and then he wraps his big strong arms around her tiny little waste.
Slowly this dance becomes an ominous thing right before my eyes... it is more like the mating mantis.
Stupid bitch...
I think of her.
You opened your veins for him... so.... dance you stupid bitch!
It wasn't as romantic as I had imagined.
The dance was cold and filled with shallow remnants of an empty life.
His hands against my rattled bones became violent... and he ripped at me with his words like lions tear at the corpse of an antelope.
It wasn't the soothing kiss of a lullaby, or the hush of clouds drifting over snow covered peaks... it was violent.... so violent that I could feel the flames of hell lick the backs of my heels; then laugh.
And then she dropped in front of me... her eyes rolled upwards... violent... screaming death!

It Ends

... and the feeling is just as intense as when it began;
but in a different way.
The pain is a sharp blow to the throat, with a cast iron skillet.
You want to believe you were not creating fiction this time.
It was not just another manic episode...
you look around inside the twisted world you call your head, but you see nothing that isn't all made up.
Flesh is real.
Flesh is the only thing I know.
It's the only thing I can touch...
everything else is just an illusion.

It ends...
and then,... it begins again.

Phantom Limb

Fire was my lover
but rain became my soul mate
The storm sings of victory now
I sit at the edge of my breathe
I wave to the edge of a knife
that bleeding limb for which I never had a use for
The wind was once my mother
heaven cry, that I may never know how to burn again
There is a sleeping muscle inside my body
Phantom...
for I can still hear you beating there

Trigger

If I told you there is a common word you could say, but I don't know what it is, yet if you say it... it would set me off in a way you wouldn't want;
would you be afraid to speak to me?
Would you...
with your trigger finger, want to find that little word?
Want to speak only common words, because your curious.
Say what ever comes into your head, from sun up, to sun down... knowing it's just a matter of time.
It's just as single moment with one single, solitary word.
I think I know what you would do, ya gun happy cowboy...
So let's just cut the shit, and get down to business!

I will tell you how it was won...

but I will also tell you how it was lost.

What seems like a maze to you, is simply a matter of paying attention.
The ebb and flow responding to the moon.
There is no mystery here; you just had to find the rythm.
You didn't have to ask the questions to see the answers.

It was won because she was read without asking.
No expectations were wanted, and none were given.
The silence was more inviting than the drive to know how to fill it.
The cup empty... was not a pessimistic attitude.
He understood her; accepted her.... and they went about their days just knowing.

It was lost because she had to speak to be noticed.
Her expectations grew as the silence became deafening.
He needed someone to worship him, and she was not religious.
The boredom became a living thing. Pacing back and forth, looking for a reason to strike!
In time they found more hes and shes to dissect and discard.
But they were always hungry. Always needing to feed.

This is not a complication. It embodies neither love nor hate.
It is simply that matter of human nature come to past, that has been mutated from an old world of simple things.
There is too much food. There are too many toys to play with.
The best you can do now... is to grow inside of it... but never let it grow inside of you.
Learn to get everything you need from just yourself, and you'll never have to need.

I will tell you how it was lost...

But I will also tell you how it was won again...

I Trust You

A deep and penetrating trust. The kind alive in an unreachable part of the mind.
You can not know the affect you have on me. It is cast and lurking in the midnight corners of my soul.
You have stirred in me, something I can not place.
Something I dare not touch.
A growing seed of desire...
You are awake inside me. A luminous demon.
A quiet vampire.

It's lonely at the top...

...and it will probably get more so.
I knew I was headed this way, before I knew.
I wrote about it, but didn't understand what I was writing.
Like a blind child scribbling out pictures of the shadows that haunt his inner vision...
but I didn't want to really believe it.

I screamed it out, and sounded so passionate about my knowledge of things.
It took more than knowing. It was hidden behind feeling.
There is a glass wall between me, and "them"; and I know not the language to speak to make them understand.

I was told I would feel connected to everything once I completed the course...
I must have missed a step.

"Wendy? It's only make-believe, isn't it? That you and I are..." Peter Pan

And so it is. What is the harm in pretending?
Fantasy.
So many are afraid to know what is yours, and even more; for you to know what is theirs.
There is a secret kingdom in us all...
it is where we truly live.
It is where all of our fragments come together, and are made whole again.

It's only make-belief Peter Pan...
it's only in my mind.

It means nothing

I've heard the story so many times. I almost wonder if it's on automatic re-play.

The two children torn from a most beloved mother.
Moved across state, far from their birth... and the torture of distance and time.
I can't bear to watch. It seems so real to her. She believes this lie now... prtending that I don't know the truth.
Always the one who was betrayed; the one who got played.
Such a cross to bear.

And here is the real story.
Mother of four, takes up with only one in the middle of the night.
She leaves her babies crying.
She leaves them to the wolf.

Two weeks she is gone.
The eldest left to care for the younger ones... but what does she care? She has with her, the only child she wanted.
The wolf takes the eldest into his bed.
Makes her wear the mothers clothes... treats her like his new wife.
The only relief she finds, is the babies crying in their beds... fear of the darkness.

When mother returns, the wolf decides he wishes to leave... taking the babies with him.
She knows that he is the wolf.
She can see his wolf eyes, and smell his wolf breath.
But she lets him take her babies anyway.

When they are gone; the eldest tells the mother... this is what the wolf did.
So she gathers the eldest and her only child... and drives across the states, to force the eldest to beg for forgiveness, for letting him be the wolf.

This is the story...
hers
and what is.
and it means nothing.

It changes nothing.

I just say it..

Maybe I shouldn't... but I do.

and it doesn't even occur to me to be bothered by that anymore.
Everything I've been practicing, is working.
That stupid nagging voice telling me what a bad girl I am...
gone.
And most people have always been surprised by me...
but this is different.
I'm not trying to justify myself,... not even to me.
But what will it do, if I keep going in this direction?
Will I lose empathy?
Have I already lost remorse?
It really makes no difference if I'm understood by you...
even if you knew what this feels like;
you would never have the courage to be me.

Fear

Afraid of yourself.

Knowing that you could be that kind of person.
The kind that makes people fear.
Your face is like a mirror to them... it may reflect an image of themselves, they don't want to know.

Everything is intimate. Every line has been drawn so thin.

Afraid of the thoughts you shouldn't be thinking.
Hell, is going against yourself.
Hell is hating yourself for being who you are.

But I am no longer afraid.
I will make my heaven here.
Nothing will be too intimate, and there will be no lines.

I will not deny myself, that which makes me happy... because the world is driven by fear.

Sleep

The the one thing I can fall in and out of, without feeling guilty.

driving nails into the 'ol nog'n

... it's her...
She never calls me.
It's late, so it must be an emergency!

"hello?"... her voice sounds like she's in a panic.
Is she dead? Did she finally die?

Lunch.
That's it?
All that panic in her voice over lunch...
Why can't we just talk like regular people?

What will she complain about this time...
rehab? maybe her dog has a cyst.
Hurry up. My stomach hurts every time you mention something from my childhood.
What could we possibly have to say if we eat a whole lunch together...
I hope there's lots of people and noise to distract us.

Wait... "who's getting married?"
Maybe she thought I just didn't hear her, instead of... she never listens to what I'm saying.
Again I have to tell her... "She never tells me anything!"

Is this the woman I longed to be close to?
The one who makes my stomach turn and my head hurt?
She used to make me laugh...
She used to be so funny.

It's been almost 2 years since I've seen her, and she only lives 45 minutes away.

Monday.
I will be happy to see her, no matter how much it hurts.

Like An Old book

Ever open an old book and the smell of the paper triggers something so deeply familiar to you, but you just can't place a memory to it.
You turn the pages slowly, taking in the scent... hoping a mental image will come; but nothing.
You run your fingers across its weathered pages gingerly, as if it were made of thin tissue... and something new occurs to you. You never really felt this book before. You read it so many times, and you loved all the words... you loved the story within it, but the book?
Now that there is history written in its smell, and the pages have worn thin; you suddenly feel it. It becomes a treasure to you.

Ever look at a face you've looked at your whole life... and realize you haven't been paying attention?
Something has changed, but you just can't place it. You study the new creases, but that's not it.
Is it the faint bluish circles that have formed under weary, restless eyes?
You touch it. Examine its illusion of youth... but nothing comes.
Maybe you wash away the mask you apply daily with little thought or care. Maybe you smile and try to remember a time when the only way you understood beautiful, was by the definition of others.

It's not the same; is it?
The older face.
The older book.

But somehow.... it is.