Menu
maybe some of us
are still holding on to this idea that things can go back to the way they used to be but I am not one of them when the dead take up residence in your house just to tell you to prepare for how bad things are going to get you know it is over dead war veterans telling you about world war 3 and crying yes ghosts can weep the world should be weeping now but they are in shock bioweapons nuclear war water shortages food shortages death and more death presidents are just presidents always men in offices hiding secrets and pretending to be strong we are all weak we all make mistakes we all pretend that things are better than they are the reality is that we all knew this world couldn't be sustained and now it is too late so we argue with each other but that one stoner from college is still standing on the corner holding up a free hugs sign he is an oddity now we don't know if he might have the virus if he secretly loves trump or biden or if he is vaccine or anti-vaccine but we know enough to know that the love he gives isn't allowed today just hate and the economy is important now nothing is free anymore our souls are paid for our rights are just thoughts that have been bought our feelings have been regulated to the land of fantasy so now the fantasy is death
0 Comments
I have bottled my grief and put it on a sunny windowsill which made it all seem better for awhile sunlight shining through years of tears the sound of rain in the background but nothing has changed my haunted self is tired of the pretenses of life beating around the bush talking to rocks like they give a shit my inner child used to need a hug but now her teeth are razor sharp and those windowsill tears we once worshiped only burns our skin in some abandoned basement in my mind I hold her dirty hand while she reminds me how my rage should be sharper now than her teeth her scabs predate my scars our eyes are the same she said she has found a way to peace and I watch her in the dark scratching her scabs on some abandoned mattress well what is it then? she scratches at my wrist scars like they are bug bites it is her version of a hug we are afraid of basements and the dark and ghosts but we are past that now that our only constant is the dead who throw us into the dark like that asshole dad that threw you into the pool when you didn't know how to swim we can hide out here with the dead until its all over the ghosts cling to us like moths my inner child sits crosslegged surrounded by them an old lady ghost braids her hair my ghosts are standing beside me like they are at a 7-11 wondering if they should even bother I don't know it seems pretty bleak she gives me a hard stare my dead childhood cat baby is purring in her lap I remember being you but you haven't lived my life what makes you think I would want to? and here we are both still here living amongst the ghosts my inner child ready to eat popcorn with the ghosts while the world wars itself to destruction soon, I tell her and she flicks a scab at me while our cat purrs our childhood bedroom window is broken I see my daughter searching for me pretending she can't hear the ghosts my inner child is smiling her teeth glinting in the dark you have already lost her no, I say lost is when you don't bother searching anymore I climb through the broken window cutting my legs on the glass it is dark and I am bleeding the ghosts surround her in the distance I hear her calling for me in her mind I am coming, I reply the darkness swallows every step I take her light keeps calling more spirits my inner child sits sullenly in the basement wondering why no one did that for her my daughter has her headphones on trying to drown out the noise that quiet brings she is in a stranger's house I wonder if I am already dead she looks in my direction I am here, I say mommy is back the liar is still lying
so full of himself he can't see the cards laid bare while I use divination he covers himself in half truths hides in a corner hoping no will notice he is scared I have become used to everything falling away at night I commune with the stars close my eyes and remember everything he did to me the pain that seemed never ending is reversing in this candle light I ask the universe to make things right his wrongs are the dead skin of corpses his words are vinegar on wounds as our daughter weeds through his lies to find out who she is I keep pulling at his barbed wire roots to make sure she won't get stuck like I did I part the clouds to reveal the moon for me and the sun for my daughter tonight I summon the red lightning to cast out the man who silenced us I keep thinking about the world now
maybe it has always been this way and I am just now seeing it how people take and take and take holding marvelous things in their hands only to crush all that is too beautiful to comprehend we are just pulverized messes pasty lumps of paper mach'e some perfect idea printed long ago torn and torn again to make something new we can mold ourselves into something different for we are our own creators but we are stuck in outdated ideas so we subsist as mush bleeding water onto a perfectly good table mourning as we search for something outside just tearing piece after piece again and again only to make more broken things lord of the powers of the moon
supreme lord of waters you have made yourself known your sigil a sign in the night only you know how I open in the darkness my mind always searching for some other realm it was you that gave me that dream the one where I was falling and you who whispered pretend it's a roller coaster and I will take you for a ride I forgot to imagine the rails so I fell to the green sea I laughed before waking and heard your voice telling the others not to confuse me so you want me to let go and drift with you in your astral travels just promise to keep me flying because I can't swim I will give you offerings on monday when the moon starts to show I will keep space in my head open for you when I sleep the light of the moon is enough light for me shine in my window take my hand when time is out of my mind a dead war veteran warned me several months ago about the taliban taking over afghanistan he let me feel their fear as he slipped through time I saw them in the airport as he tried to comfort them as invisible as me he said it was the beginning of world war 3 he told me to shout it from the rooftops but I didn't want to be that person on the side of the road holding up a piece of cardboard that says it is the end of the world so today I did normal things when nothing is normal anymore I looked at all the discarded masks flung about the Target parking lot and I wondered where my dead war veteran friend was now if he was mad at me for not starting a revolution he told me something else about a train derailing an attack or a take over that is going to happen soon I just keep thinking about those masks laying everywhere trodden with footprints how careless we are with everything we are the human stain upon the earth we look the other way and keep saying everything will be okay maybe death will make us smarter from now on
I am going to imagine all the things that can't happen so they will because the status quo is misery watching the world obliterate itself is too fucking depressing so come with me on this ice cream brain freeze while we roller skate down hills on acid it is summer and I am a kid my pockets are filled with candy and rocks I have found in the shape of things no one else can see but me I am walking small town streets smelling ocean air my fantasy is laced in the latest book I have read, charlie and the chocolate factory everyone's favorite part is when he finds the golden ticket but my favorite part is how all his grandparents lay in bed all day and how grandpa joe imagines all these wonderful realities for charlie while everyone else sadly subsists on cabbage soup that was the real golden ticket because we all know willy wonka was a crazy asshole there was a time
when I blew on dandelion fluff making wishes that would never come true hope was enough to sustain my ignorance my innocence and it was pretty and I was a child in some fucking meadow where birds were singing like a disney movie it is grimm now like those fairy tales where if you wore slutty red shoes and liked to dance you danced yourself to death my patience is wearing thin on this bullshit world and all the cloudy confusing lies that aren't even as good as opium lies that smell like shit on the hottest day and are written by journalists that flock to whoever feeds them we are all starving for truth I keep imagining those scrawny baby birds sitting in a nest with their tender beaks open for worms blind baby birds just waiting and tweet tweeting away as the world dies this propaganda shit isn't like growing a victory garden it isn't rosie the riviter making a muscle it is men in suits scrambling to cover a lie so take your medicine the latest fashion in bioweapons now that it is leaked we all have to take it or we all will die don't bother praying this is man made humanity is the source and humanity will pay an old friend sent me a link to this house I used to rent it is all gutted nothing but walls and floors for sale now this husk of home on long island even then I was sad living on the street marilyn monroe used to vacation on a newlywed in this tiny cabin it was supposed to be a beginning but all I can remember is the black mold growing in the basement and the silent days of endless longing in the spring tiny worms fell from the trees and caught in my hair and covered the street I tried to imagine they were silk worms but it didn't work so I stopped taking walks I tried to get a job at this place that made grave stones because it was beautiful in a way I couldn't describe but ended up working at trader joe's instead all the customers were mean and I cried in the stock room during my breaks I made a friend who hated it there as much as I did one day while I was sitting on an empty pallet smoking a cigarette day dreaming about being a famous writer she pointed out a dead sparrow in the parking lot and asked me to save it I held it in my hands imagined it was alive and it flew away she smiled and said I knew you could save things at night I went home to a man who didn't speak his stony silence was not the wedded bliss I had imagined so I started writing to kill the the loneliness I wrote about a girl that was a changeling with a fairy mother and a demon dad that was never around I never finished it I never finish a lot of things when we moved they told us the house was going to be torn down I kept finding these baby possums under the porch I saved them in a shoe box and took them to an animal shelter they didn't want them but took them anyway I bet they died because I never found their mother I looked and looked but she hid under the porch I bet she died too from sorrow as summer comes to its end
bringing forth more chaos and death it reminds me of another time when summer was ending my best friend was dying of cancer I was on the brink of divorce still in denial that change was coming those years when I was still my daughter's world I was reading her fairytales in my bedroom on a summer afternoon when we heard a cracking whip of thunder we went to the window to stare at the black clouds when the thunder got louder I remembered to count to see how close it was we saw the red lightning as we were turning away to go downstairs a lightning bolt hit a group of trees in the yard a burst of fire blooming on a branch one tree split I took her downstairs a warning of a lightning storm was coming through on my phone we sat on the basement steps waiting for the noise to quiet when he got home he hadn't even known about the storm he looked at me as if I ought to be tied to a hospital bed from that day on I looked at that tree split down the middle remembering the red lightning how only me and her saw it some signs are meant for just one person other signs are meant for the whole world this has been the summer of signs a summer of lost hopes way more obvious then red lightning but still we are at war with reality pretending that this reality can be sustained |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
April 2023
Categories |