Dreams & Nightmares:
[rough/unedited]

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 I woke up a guest in group of close friends--A photographer I had just met and I was helping with a shoot. Camped in a sandstone canyon and crammed comfortably between two (girls, and cute ones mind you), the photographer was packing up. Somewhere he had to be? I disagreed and said with an arm around each girl, "theres no where you need to be" with the smuggest look i could muster. 
Must've worked. In no time I was catching drones out of the sky and the girls were glowing in the golden light, it was like a sunset, but all day. Only snippets of memory, but enough to tell it was a perfect day and by night we were shooting the Milky Way's glow over night sky. from where I was standing, I could see the exposure of the photographer's shot. Each moment that passed, ten new stars shined through dark as the old ones crystalized there place in the sky. 
Pulsing in and out and rolling over head, blue and white and greens and golds and streaks of shooting stars-- a time lapse in real time-- and all I could think was how the hell does he not get star streaks with these exposures. 
Just like that, the shoot was done. We were already back in town, back at the studio. It was the kind of late and quiet that only full day can grant, and I was no longer in the company of strangers. Photography equipment found it's way back into boxes and each of us, silently smiling upon the day we just had, were slowly getting on our own way. 
The studio was an old warehouse of some sort, perhaps a garage from the late 40s or 50s; rich brown and blackening wood inset in dark steel, patina'ed thick with time. Only a few desk lamps lit the place--most un-lit--shining in bright, white contrast to the orange glow seeping through the cracks around the door that led to the room adjacent.
the door rattled with a quiet wind and the sound of sand on a glass window. The quiet of thhe familiar gave way to quiet of emptiness--Emptiness and wind and sand.
The old door rattled and curiosity overcame anxiety we found room adjacent unsurprisingly empty. inconceivably empty, like the wasn't even air. Someone is here. 
did we leave the garage door open when we came in? How did we come in? i don't rememebr... --so empty you could feel the nothingness on your skin. light from the street lamp pored in like the footprints of an intruder. someone is here...
The quiet of emptiness gave way to the silence of wind and sand--If I could see it in this darkness it would be black.
 I turn and see the photographer walking through the barn door that leads deeper into the garage. The wind is getting stronger--I feel the sand on my face now-- the silence louder-- "It doesn't look like anyone took anything-- " There is someone here, I can bearly hear my friend now " ahh, my ladder is on the ground... ... my tools... ..strange..." The sand is getting louder, it's like its falling from the ceiling-- through the ceiling-- --ting tinging on metal, the tttssstttssss on the walls---The wind blows through the walls-- "what is that..?" "it's not he ceiling, is it..?"
I take a step in the door way, following the photographer, and it hits me and feels like a hole chest:

"Everything is falling apart---

The empty in me is filled with with cold, crippling panic and before it can even register, it's got its arms around me--reaching thorugh me--from behind me--reaching under my arms, i feel it's fingers and palms and arms around my ribcage like being plunged in ice cold water--desperate breath--IN OUT--[ wake up wake up by now i'd've woken up]--colder than ice water--it pulls me up and i feeling like I'm falling [i shouldve woken up] --it pulls me up and out and feel weightless-- arms holing em in space--chills roll violent thorugh my body--I cant see i cant move--its all black--Desperate breath IN OUT-- [wake up wake up wake up WAKE UP}-- I can feel the shape of the garage--of the room around me--muffeled voices of the photrgrapher and girls--but i'm not there--lost in black--somewhere between-- like a bag over my head--dim shapes of orange light fading--these arms holding my limp body--denying my even the pretense of fighting back--almost kindly holing me--let me go and I'd fall right back into the garage--WHATS HAPENING--IN OUT [WAKE UP WAKE UP OH MY GOD WAKE UP]--i cant move--Chills ravage me--[LET ME GO]--IN OUT-- I feel everything draining from me-- PHyically hope is leaving me-- It's leaving me--I cant--icant--I'm being emptied out--I can feel it happening-- [WAKE UP WAKE] IN OUT-- IN-- OUT-- IN--------------
___________

I was sleeping face down and turned and sat up so fast it scared me. I close my eyes and open them. close and open.
Closed, I'm back there--I can feel the arms around my ribs. Open, I'm in my room--It's so windy outside. I'm empty. What the fuck just happened?


Hell is Loneliness. And there is nothing more lonely than a suffering one cannot describe. 
I've been staring at the wall trying to figure out what happened (--what is happening). I've told the story many times now and each time I try and describe what it was like in the dark between-space, it feels like i'm translating it from a language i don't even speak. Every time I fail, I reminds me of the wall around my head and my heart.

"it was as lonely as dying" is what I always say (--keep saying).

I caught a glimpse (--keep catching glimpses) of what that was like.

Every time I try to sit down and write, I come up short or blank or stupid (--and thus the wall; and thus the loneliness; and thus the hell).
This was supposed to be about dreams too, but I fell asleep after starting this and woke up to this..

~M

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Previously unpublished Draft:

Hide & Seek:

You've gotten pretty good at hiding behind your words,

but you've always been good at this game

and now it'm getting tired.  

I've found a new game.
One that will lie with me all day and...
and i can talk to and tell her how i really feel and shit like that that......

~M

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Previously unpublished Draft:

My heart does not have a door, nor any other convenient port of entry or exit.
For this I'm sorry. 

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Previously unpublished Draft:

Strip me down and see me naked and good.

Previously unpublished Draft:

“You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else’s strength and greatness. He’s proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.”

Previously unpublished Draft:

It's so hard to wait for the love I want so bad, but for now I will work on myself. So i can be the best person I can be when I finally meet that person.


I am not yet half enough to make us a whole.

~M

Previously unpublished Draft:

Exhaustion:



The poetry of longing was all I had
and now it's just fading into pathetic. I'm so tired of missing you. 
And I mean TIRED;
Physically and mentally drained.

I see and feel and hear and taste and smell you in everything.

Clip after clip after clip after clip after clip of memories,
Playing over and over and over and over and over again.


~M