so we're out of milk.

guess i'll go paint instead.

i need some new colours.

i woke up scared, but not screaming.

that is what he called me.

i remember writing this. it felt good.

.....distorted dreams and distorted time. we stood like giants. you said, "we'll meet beyond the sea, november went by softly." i found a way not to remember, i found a way not to forget. i could still taste you. you were forever, my foundation. metaphorically speaking, you are like home to me. the closest i have ever felt. i remember the day my grandfather left and my heart started absorbing all the grey parts. i remember i let myself go that day, and when my lips first found you, i let that girl go. i had finally escaped. i let her go. the girl i managed to become for the two years he's been silent. and now, i sit here in illuminated light, writing and thinking things that don't even make sense to me. i remember the day i cut the tethers, the day i let this world have everything i had to give. weighing less or more, in exact comparison. i remember how fast all the faces started spitting everything back at me, "what a hypocrisy! what a hypocrisy!" they shouted, they screamed, they all stared so stiff. we were like world travelers, we were home bound and hungry. filled with such an unquenchable thirst, our mouths were dry, but our skin, it was saturated. this world has so much to give, so much beauty, and here i am. a fair believer, that the epitome of beauty can not be measured by any one man, we all have our own eyes, and not another pair, as green or as clear as yours. i remember. i'll never forget. my hands found their way to your face and it was perfect. just like the movies. they scream "JUST LIKE THE MOVIES" and i'll reply "i love you, i love you, i love you, you're so good to me, don't you ever leave." and you won't, like you promised you wouldn't.

therapeutic techniques.

Photographs by Micheal Rogers, January 2006.

When I woke up this morning, this was the girl that I remembered. This was the girl who walked, chin up, faithless and fearless and still so quiet. So patient. Calm. Fists open, fingers stretched out, completely saturated in nothing but love. Not an ounce of hate, not a single drop. She was for the most part pleasing. Her skin was clear and young. Her hair was made of hollow gold. Free-like, but heavy. Her eyes were so blue, so goddamn blue. They were tiny carriers of only the morning skies rather than those deceiving oceans. She knew the brass tracks, the chapter and verse of everything. She was not afraid. She was so strong. She was intangible, and now she's invisible and I've set out to find her, and bring her back, for good.

I will not falter.

believe, with out the lie.

so tiny and so small, standing on a world so big, with everything under her feet as usual. standing at the top. only this time, unlike the last, in pieces. not stable, and not okay, not alright. i can feel the sun at my back, placing freckles on my shoulders, and everyday the weather out side, it grows a degree warmer. it's coming and it's coming fast, and i can't do anything to stop it. not that i'm trying the least bit. i can feel it. creep up on me, and startle me like the rest of the world does. lies i've told and forgotten about, suppressed and released into a world built on nothing but hate. i'm leaving that world behind to be forgotten, to be suppressed. i'm going to be the beautiful girl you know. the girl you once knew. i'm going to do beauitful things, and there is nothing, no one that can stop me. not this time. not a word, not a heart, no one. nothing. not even my words. i fill in the blanks and i skip over the next question. i can do this. i'll make it. believe in me, you will all see.

you're all so hungry for the truth,

and i'm so thirsty just to wash it back down, but i don't and i can't, i'm stronger than that.

losing my mind, but not my bow tie.

i need more days like this. they make me feel alive.

it's 12:59 and i don't want another minute to pass.

in the morning, i sit up and i pull the sheet up over my head and i build a thin wall between what was and what still is. i leave my dreams on the other side and i bathe in the sun as it reaches in for me through the window, breathing the light back into my veins, pulling the blues back into the center of my eyes. i can see again. i can breathe again. my heart can beat, subtly again. calm and quiet like the ocean was, the last time i dug my feet into the sand underneath those gentle waves pulling and pushing the particles causing me to sink a little more every second. i could feel it pulling me in, like the sea of blankets do every night, when i dive in and release myself and study nothing but the back of my eye lids and hear nothing but the beat inside my chest. i want to be free again. i want to find myself again. not an obligation, but it's my prerogative. i want to feel again. whole, some what. i need to find what completes me, i need to find that key. i need this more than i need the air in my lungs and the water down my back as i sneak a shower in the middle of the night. i need this like i need caffeine and sleep all at once. i need something to live for, something to love for, something, someone, to learn for. i need to rebuild my back bone, i need buildings over my head, on both sides of the city streets. i need it's leaves back under my feet. i'm faithless, so praying won't help. i'm filthy and washing won't cleanse. not nearly enough. my hands are still dirty, but my sheets, yeah well, they are always clean and they still, they still save me.

refraction

it's too cold outside, so i'm hiding out in here. the walls built around me keep them out, building boundaries just to keep me in. the colds coming in with the sun, creeping through the cracks and i can't stop it. we are all going to freeze.

none of this is true.

i start to miss you and then i realize, i never even knew you from the very beginning. i was in love with a stranger. another face in the crowd, just another mark on my list. eyes like the ocean, words like the waves. waves that broke every morning and sunk slowly back into the sea every night. taking everything i am along the way. indian giver. that's what they'll call you. it's hard to keep you out of my head. i curl up and let my thoughts scatter, i sit up and i pull them back real slow. i collect them and take them to the kitchen to get more coffee. i'm not okay, i'm not alright but i am awake. i'm awake and breathing. alive but still screaming. we clench up our fist and pull them to our chest. we breathe just to keep it beating.

i keep pounding just to keep it beating.

words

are made of letters.

my hands are dirty.

and i can't find the words for this one, i don't know why i feel the way i do, like no matter where i turn, where i try and run too, i'm stuck. completely surrounded by walls i have built myself, holes i have dug time after time, myself. getting my hands just as dirty as the day before. i'm a never ending cycle. a mess, if nothing else. things have got to change, and they've got to change now. i've got to get out. i've got to set myself free. got to find myself all over again, in every aspect and every way humanly possible.

this is so hard, and so easy at the same time. so contradicting. so confusing. i think i'll start tomorrow, "everyday is a new life."

zombie zombie zombie

i woke up alright this morning.
waking up scares me lately more than sleeping does.

i need more coffee.

different than vs. different from?

i don't know anything past what your eyes tell me, and the way you say my name when i call you just to feed my appetite. i don't know what you feel like, and i want to. i want to know what you feel like. i've forgotten what you feel like.

i can't quite place my finger on it, i can't quite pull myself to tear down my walls and let someone like you back in, but i'll have too, because right now, i know nothing else. but not yet, not just yet, not now anyways. you want to show me everything. you want to teach me what you know and i teach you the same. and when i think about myself being capable, i draw up about as blank as this paper was before i put ink on it. starting to flood it with these irrelevant words. becoming a routine, almost. i dive in, unafraid and i leave taking everything i have and have gained along. is it different than or different from? you are neither, you are both, carbon-copied, than and from alone, alike-almost. you are subtle but strong, and when in doubt your smile carries it all away. i can still remember. i can close my eyes and see you. i open them and you are gone, like the wind takes my worries how it tosses them aside and frees what bit of the mind i still somehow sustain. i have no idea, i don't know what i'm doing, not just yet anyways. you say " everything's going to be alright" and i say "keep moving along cause my past is filthy, trashed with impalpable lies and buried knee deep in dirt, clouded like the orange sky right before the sun hits the horizon, on a rainy day."

i'm losing sleep but i toss it aside and blame it "souly" on insomnia.

(this is about one person, compared to the same person,

vise versea. inaccurate judgements get you nowhere.)

love locked

we can change the locks, we can close all the doors, we can seal the windows and keep the sun out, but there's nothing i can do now, to change the structure of your hands, and how your fingers, how they fit so well with mine, like pieces missing from a puzzle of a picture no one knows.

i've been waking up screaming again.

waking up in a cold sweat, i can feel your hands on me, and it scares me.
i can almost smell you, i can almost taste you lingering about my lips, and it scares me.

it makes me cold, and it's hard to think now.

i sit up and i pull my knees to my chest, i escape my fingers to my toes and i hold on tightly, i clench them tighter and i'm breathing heavy trying my damnedest to get you out of my head.

verse

is breaking up, my life mind-as-well be over.


Story Of A Free Man - Chapter One: The End Of Innocence

"A concrete bed, a weathered awning made of cardboard that keeps the morning sun from his eyes. He never knew much about why his life became so hard. Sleep one night under this bridge in this man's shoes, and you'll learn there is no god. Lets go back to the early days. When life read just like a blissful page, in a book with a happy ending, even if that means were just pretending. Before everything this kid knew as unbroken. Became nothing but a state of insecurity. In the early days he lived life with his eyes un-open, conditioned to always go quietly. One day his father went off to war. To fight a war for something that's not worth fighting for. A forceful pry at his eyes to see a beautiful world has been taken from you and me. "This is killing me," he said to his mother. "Is this the true face of humanity?" he said to his mother. "The weight of this has got me on my knees," he said with no response from his mother. The boy was scared now. He got the silent treatment from a person he confided in. No longer sure where to turn, he jumps right into a new life of uncontrolled rage and depression. He embraces addiction to numb his new affliction. I miss my father, He thought to himself. "

i started thinking

it baffles me completely, but something about you grabs a hold of me. i spend my sunlight sleeping and i wake up hungry for your voice.

i remember the first time i saw you, you stood on a back bone of confidence. you looked as if you had no idea, and every well-crafted intention all at the same time, and it intrigued me, sort of. i wanted to know you. i wanted to know all of you.

something about the way you looked down at me, something about the colour of your eyes, deep but with something other than bare desperation. i felt safe almost, i felt safe. almost.

half the mess.

i remember walking, and as i was taking in all the faces that flooded the streets under my feet, holding my fist clenched at my side, reminding me of all the hate i once held in between them. i had a moment of flawless glory that night, i was certain that i was here in this world because i couldn't tolerate any other place, i had finally hit rock bottom, lost everything solid i thought i had, i tried holding on, i tried to fix it all. i tried to save you, over and over again and i failed.

i had never believed in fate until i let all of my answers settle on your skin, and i let the warmth of your deceiving words wisp them away. i lost it all, and now standing just as strong, and more alone than i had ever been in my entire life but standing still nonetheless. i know that eventually i'll be okay.

I'm only half the mess everyone takes me for, i'm only half the mess i think i am.

hospital, encrypted.

This is a true story.

I Love you.


" I searched for the greatest glory this earth could give me, until I came across this beautiful rock. I climbed this mountain with my bare hands, from base to summit. Up and up I trekked until I became the tallest thing as far as the eye could see, i could feel the entire planet beneath my feet, beneath me. I stripped down until there was nothing left of me, but me. I stripped myself of the tools made by people I'll never meet, I cast aside all of the little commodities the common man takes for granted in the strides of modern life, insignificant to even the lowest members of society. I then removed my own insides; my feelings and emotions, the security I had found in others, my love and hate alike. I threw them into the unfaltering wind which so easily picked them up and carried them away from me, out of sight... as if watching the balloon, let go by the curious child who instantly regrets her own innocently thoughtless decision, crying for it to come back but daddy can't jump high enough, its too far gone. I was no innocent child, I hadn't been for many years. It was so sickeningly amusing how the wind could carry these things that we as humans, the only beings capable of truly understanding them, struggle with our entire lives. I remember looking down the sides of the mountain while the shadows of clouds drifting across them. They seemed just as inviting as any cloud, and I realized then that the sky was also beneath my feet. Eye level with clouds, I looked up to find nothing directly above me but blue space. I had found the pedestal which before that very instant I had never even realized I was looking for. There it was in the misty distance, just past the horizon where the ground merged into space, where the sky met the earth. I called for it, I demanded it to come and face me, and it did. I looking directly in front of me, and it appeared; a blurred concoction of air, shadows and wind with the solids beneath it. I was staring into the face of god, it was staring back. Eye to eye, we waited. Without so much as a whisper or even a thought we conversed about my existence, or lack there of. I stood my ground, I held my claim to my mountain. I let it collect my makings from the winds and siphon them before releasing them back into non-existence. It had nothing to say to me, as I knew it wouldn't. Only an ever-so-faint reflection of simultaneous disappointment and bewilderment upon its face was given to me. After passing its judgments, I said to this god, being unafraid: "I found you god. I stumbled upon you wondering out here amongst the mountains, I caught you with my bear hands and now I'm staring at you, straight into your indistinguishable eyes with nothing other than myself and still I have managed to become on your level. I have sat and listened to the lies that people spread in your name, and here you are aimlessly drifting with not a concern. But now I'm here, and now you will be concerned, with nothing other than me. You and I both have drifting long enough, oh great deceiver. The divide of good and evil does not exist, you are both. You are neither. So how is it that I managed to arrive here, omnipotent one? Tell me, how is it that I am here the same as you with all things and everything beneath me? Today is not your day, god. Today is my day, this place is my place. This world is our world, not yours. If it ever was, it is no longer. You do not exist because I say you do not exist, and now you will fade back into the same oblivion that the imaginations of a desperate humanity made you from." ...and on that day, I was god. It faded away back over the horizon. It reminded me of a small wave being sucked back and dispersing into the endless ocean, mixing and congealing with the waters and knowing that the exact same wave will never happen again while the sand feels like its being sucked from underneath my feet. I let it sink in, I let the sun begin to set. I gathered and reequipped my commodities and ascended this mountain. I changed that day, I had proven my point. I had found my paradise, where I could feel far away from society and its scum inhabitants but still know they are below me somewhere, somewhere far off from this mountain range. I let my love go to the wind, I let the mountains have it. Away from these hills I felt empty, meaningless. It was something I had to do, but at a cost. It took me several months to find and piece back together those insides I tossed off the side of this mountain, but I did, and I did just so I could give them back away. I gave them to someone more deserving than I. I gave them away to someone that can feel the way I feel, which is something I can truly believe in. The mountains may always be my citadel, but what does anything amount to if not all of me is present? She has a part of me. She has all of me. She has all of my love, without her I can't see or interpret beauty, she makes everything beautiful. She is beautiful, she is beauty. She is love, happiness, security, my only beacon of hope, my everything. She is my hospital, and I am never letting go."

- Elijah Ackerman.

tip of your tounge.

sometimes i come home and i sit here for hours and i stare at blank documents and i wish the words up on the screen. i put my head down and i cross my fingers and i wish i could find an easier way to do this.

sleeping vs. screaming?

i make my way up the stairs and i walk right in through the door, i place the rundown box of dishes i've been keeping since i bought them out of the bottom of a box in that thrift store jungle almost a year ago,i placed them on the counter that separated our bodies, like parting the red sea. i look up to you and i tell you, "honey, i can still smell you." you look a crossed the counter and up to my blank face and your facial expression ask me a thousand subtle questions all at once, of my where abouts? and why i'm standing in your kitchen with a box full of 50's painted mustard yellow dishes, and random pyrex tea cups spilling onto the counter?... why i'm still held together and empty at the same time? where my foundation has gone? where my heart has gone? how my hands are always so cold, and i drown myself in sweat when i sleep? how i have the master craft of picking myself apart every night just to put myself back together in the morning? how i've managed to make it with out my colourless painted security mask going on weeks now? how i'm still alive and dead and awake and walking? and how none of this makes any sense? so i answer you, with no words, and i pick up the box, turn around, i stop and i place it back down and take two steps in reverse.

"i still love you, and i can't breathe."

that's the dream i had this morning, and i woke up

holding my breathe like i was drowning.

i can either sleep or i can scream.

but i don't know which i enjoy more.

stale language.

i want to write about what i don't feel, rather than what i do.

because i know what i don't feel, rather than what i do.

my heart lately, has been weak. i'm not okay, and i can hardly breathe.
unwillingly but still just as strong, i've cut the tethers of everything holding me here.

i let everything go, and now i have nothing to hide behind, nothing to keep me from drifting away.

every day is a new day,
and it's either a good day or a bad day.
sometimes i'm okay.
other times, i'm not okay.
today, up until now, i was okay.
i was great.

i wasn't thinking, i wasn't wishing, i wasn't even feeling.
now, i'm feeling, and i'm missing and i've got that burn in my side
like maybe something is being ripped from me.
and i don't know what to do with it.

it scares me, my lack of notion, how i fail to decipher my hate from my love, and vise versa.
i still have to take deep breaths to make it through the day.
everywhere i look, i see you, everywhere i inhale, i breathe you.

this is beginning to kill me.
i can't even fathom the pain.

i've got to get out of here.