I can't get your eyes to look right
silver threads are winding in My head
and when you wake you'll find My eyes upon you
and you'll know you haven't got much time left
sometimes I forget that you're actually alive
something more than a cleverly carved block of stone
somewhere other than the winding paths I made up
I'll carve you into something better
inside My head
and release you from your reality
to close the case file
hide the evidence of My Crimes
the only you that will remain
here, in My head,
is the you I will recreate.
because you're not as realistic as
the vision of you I based so closely
on Myself.
you're not as good as the lines
that run and twist around the empty frame
of what you could have been.
So open your mouth
let out the spirit
into My hands
I'll take good care of it
until it's gone.
---
...it's all messed up. everything. I know it's because I'm tired and stressed, but it's bothering me anyway. Why am I still awake? I don't know. It probably wasn't a good idea. Oh well, it's too late now. I don't care. La la la. I just wish I could get my head to spin in only 1 direction for a bit.
My hands are vibrating, it’s cold and I’m having trouble making my paragraphs right. They keep coming out all slantwise and colored in coffee stain lighting. I’ve been going through my documents now for about two hours, searching fruitlessly for something worthwhile to use as a writing sample. Everything I have is either too old, too short, too bad, or too much poetry. It’s as if everything of any sort of quality that I’ve ever written is on my computers at home. Or maybe all of my good stories are hidden away in one of my forgotten notebooks, stacked on a shelf or under my bed. I don’t know, all I know is they’re not here. But I don’t even know that.
The way my brain is buzzing right now I could be passing over works of genius that I never knew I wrote. I very well might be deleting hundreds of pages of delightful narrative without noticing. My eyes keep trailing away from the computer screen and staring at a little square of space on my desk. If I look long enough everything begins to look like art and I start wondering why people don’t cover their houses in pictures of pieces of their houses. Then it occurs to me that then they’d just have a printed layer of reality over, well…reality. And the only point of that would be to keep reality from becoming dirty. But reality’s already dirty.
When I started college I started running out of time. Everything is always happening before it’s supposed to. Days sneak up on me and I keep getting the feeling that I might be dying of old age. That’s not the point, the point right now is that I can’t find anything except poems on my computer and I’m beginning to be very afraid that I might be a poet. What would that mean? Nothing good I’m sure. That would explain the sudden increase in my fascination with the sky, and the fact that small animals, like squirrels and crows, which I’ve seen all my life suddenly seem so much more vibrant and exciting. It might also explain the fact that everything weaves in and out nowadays. Linear thinking has become especially onerous.
It’s alright though, because I’m mostly lying, especially that bit about lying. I’m really not afraid that I’m becoming a poet because there are too many stories waiting underneath all of this strange new information about Greece, Rome, China, and fig trees. The real point is that they’re not coming to me now, probably because it’s almost five in the morning and the sun will be coming up soon. I didn’t sleep tonight because it didn’t seem worth my time and I was convinced that I’d get a lot of work done. I didn’t. Instead I wrote this.
p.s. "Zhang Yi was fond of showing respect. If he saw anyone approaching when he looked through his gate or from behind a drawn curtain, he would jump up respectfully. Slaves, his wife's relatives, even children were all treated by him with the strictest respect. He thought thereby to give himself security. Yet he did not live to an old age but developed an internal fever and died.
Shan Bao was fond of magical techniques. He avoided the vulgar crowd and detached himself from his age. He would not eat grains or fruit, or wear comfortable and warm clothes, but lived in a cave in the mountain forests. He did this for seventy years and still had the complexion of a small child. He used these means to keep intact the natural span of his life, but he did not use up all his allotted years, for he was eaten by tiger."
The Annals of Lu Buwei
and when you wake you'll find My eyes upon you
and you'll know you haven't got much time left
sometimes I forget that you're actually alive
something more than a cleverly carved block of stone
somewhere other than the winding paths I made up
I'll carve you into something better
inside My head
and release you from your reality
to close the case file
hide the evidence of My Crimes
the only you that will remain
here, in My head,
is the you I will recreate.
because you're not as realistic as
the vision of you I based so closely
on Myself.
you're not as good as the lines
that run and twist around the empty frame
of what you could have been.
So open your mouth
let out the spirit
into My hands
I'll take good care of it
until it's gone.
---
...it's all messed up. everything. I know it's because I'm tired and stressed, but it's bothering me anyway. Why am I still awake? I don't know. It probably wasn't a good idea. Oh well, it's too late now. I don't care. La la la. I just wish I could get my head to spin in only 1 direction for a bit.
My hands are vibrating, it’s cold and I’m having trouble making my paragraphs right. They keep coming out all slantwise and colored in coffee stain lighting. I’ve been going through my documents now for about two hours, searching fruitlessly for something worthwhile to use as a writing sample. Everything I have is either too old, too short, too bad, or too much poetry. It’s as if everything of any sort of quality that I’ve ever written is on my computers at home. Or maybe all of my good stories are hidden away in one of my forgotten notebooks, stacked on a shelf or under my bed. I don’t know, all I know is they’re not here. But I don’t even know that.
The way my brain is buzzing right now I could be passing over works of genius that I never knew I wrote. I very well might be deleting hundreds of pages of delightful narrative without noticing. My eyes keep trailing away from the computer screen and staring at a little square of space on my desk. If I look long enough everything begins to look like art and I start wondering why people don’t cover their houses in pictures of pieces of their houses. Then it occurs to me that then they’d just have a printed layer of reality over, well…reality. And the only point of that would be to keep reality from becoming dirty. But reality’s already dirty.
When I started college I started running out of time. Everything is always happening before it’s supposed to. Days sneak up on me and I keep getting the feeling that I might be dying of old age. That’s not the point, the point right now is that I can’t find anything except poems on my computer and I’m beginning to be very afraid that I might be a poet. What would that mean? Nothing good I’m sure. That would explain the sudden increase in my fascination with the sky, and the fact that small animals, like squirrels and crows, which I’ve seen all my life suddenly seem so much more vibrant and exciting. It might also explain the fact that everything weaves in and out nowadays. Linear thinking has become especially onerous.
It’s alright though, because I’m mostly lying, especially that bit about lying. I’m really not afraid that I’m becoming a poet because there are too many stories waiting underneath all of this strange new information about Greece, Rome, China, and fig trees. The real point is that they’re not coming to me now, probably because it’s almost five in the morning and the sun will be coming up soon. I didn’t sleep tonight because it didn’t seem worth my time and I was convinced that I’d get a lot of work done. I didn’t. Instead I wrote this.
p.s. "Zhang Yi was fond of showing respect. If he saw anyone approaching when he looked through his gate or from behind a drawn curtain, he would jump up respectfully. Slaves, his wife's relatives, even children were all treated by him with the strictest respect. He thought thereby to give himself security. Yet he did not live to an old age but developed an internal fever and died.
Shan Bao was fond of magical techniques. He avoided the vulgar crowd and detached himself from his age. He would not eat grains or fruit, or wear comfortable and warm clothes, but lived in a cave in the mountain forests. He did this for seventy years and still had the complexion of a small child. He used these means to keep intact the natural span of his life, but he did not use up all his allotted years, for he was eaten by tiger."
The Annals of Lu Buwei