cracks

older now, i can see
cracks in reality
the hidden spaces around corners
under your feet, behind your head
squirming around your blindspot like an eclipse corona
i walk in sunshine
turn, quick,
gaps in the world
inside, dark figures, shadowed
whispered conversations in unknown language
levers pulled, buttons pushed
strings held, tangled, webbed
laughter
not the good kind
sometimes there are marionettes
not very good
jerky, frozen grins, see the strings
sometimes, worse, they come out in masks
talk to you
if you talk to them they invite you in
sometimes suddenly 
bits fall through and you see them scurry from the sun
chittering in short-lived panic of discovery
and we laugh
and sing
and dance
and be eaten

unfinished stories

we don't know where they go, or where they come from. they just are. today. now. that's their perfection, with no excuses and no apologies. they are complete because they do not try to be complete. everything is meaningful, everything is chaos, and everything is infinitely ephemeral. 

Think of the books you really loved, the stories, the b-grade movies you watched drunk, baked, on mute. The music videos that seemed to be trying to say something. The middle issues of a story arc in a moldy yellowing stack of comics you found under the stairs. The flower found still preserved lovingly inside a book in a second-hand store. Yellowing portraits of strangers on a wall. The pastiche of flickering images stitched together in the channels you flipped past at 1 am, too tired to sleep, too sleepy to be really aware of what you were doing. 
Dreams with no meaning. Emotion without reason. Images without plot. Music without words. 

They happen, and you stitch them together into a story that's all yours. It's a story born of your memories, your experiences, your interpretations of what you saw. It's may not be what happened, but because you don't know what did happen... it could even be true. It's a story that nobody else would have, and it's a story that depends on so many moving parts in time that it could never have been anytime before, or anytime since. 

I love these stories. I don't want the series to continue, the the hero to get his vengeance, the loose ends tied up, and the curtain to fall. 
I walk into the middle, and I make it mine. 

Why was this so important? What happened to you, that you should want this? Who is she? Why do you see that face in your nightmares? Are you really going to pull that trigger? Did he ever forgive you? Did he forget? Will he remember? 

Invent your own past, your own reasons for people to be who they are, for things to be what they are. Leap in. Surf. Leap off and make up the rest when you run out of pages. 

Every waking moment is a story you invent as you go along. Every moment past is mystery to be deciphered. Every moment coming is a world of possibility where anything may happen. 

What else is there to live for? 

on demons.

Just a quick brief little note
demons are terrible adversaries to have. you know, they're really quite small? tiny enough that you won't even notice them, take them seriously even as you see them around you, on you, you won't believe they're a genuine threat even as they work their way in under your skin... but it's only when you try to pull them off, out, that you see them for the grain of sand in the oyster, the moth in the circuit, the little linchpin that brings the whole machine crashing down, immovable...
but there's also a weakness they have that few use against them - as unbreakable, as stubborn, as unreasoning they may be, as completely able to subdue your will and read your mind, they're still trapped inside of your head.
their reality is the reality that you feed them.
they cannot be broken, cannot be fought, but they can be... deceived.
lied into little boxes, locked up in the dark cellars and a pleasant but heavy cabinet moved in front of the door, not used for much but scrupulously kept full and heavy. Once in a while it tries to move and you quickly push it back before anyone notices. sometimes when it's quiet, you can still hear the footsteps, the scratching, the growl... and you ignore it the way you ignore everything that can't be got rid of.
you ignore it like you turn a back on an enemy, but you can never forget he's there.
going to be forever a part of you.

the little lies are the tiny little silver keys that lock the door
the spoonful of sugar that lets the medicine go down

two hundred and fifty days now, and it still hasn't realized it's been caged