Shiny

Slash. Drip. Slash. Drip.
You're right back where you started, but nowhere near at all. Start the cleanup now, little surgeon. Minimise the damage while you can. Skin stings and smells of antiseptic and I know you'd like to think it cleans your soul as well, but you're still in the gutter.
Trace a path through the crisscross mishmash mess. Back to the start; back to the root. There's too much inside. Like everything under your skin is clawing at the surface, desperate for air. Too much thought.
But then... Something fast and sharp; a moment of focus. Something fucking vibrant. Suddenly, you're there. You're actually fucking there, and you know you're there because you can feel it. Isn't this what you've been wanting?
Maybe I'll never stop, in the complete sense of the term. Never forever. Right now, though... I'm not trying to. The lake is calm.
You are right back where you belong. Nowhere near at all.

Dxm. Half a bottle of the vile, gag-inducing syrup and an hour of nauseous waiting, and I am dissociated. Sitting in the passenger seat, staring at the moon. I become the music. Nangs. He cracks two and I take them. Then he loads me another. Take it all, he says. Inhale. Stop. Inhale. Stop. For a second, everything goes still. Am I dying? Dead? Music loses its nuances. In a moment, it's nothing but noise. White. Black. Same thing. A lick of guitar, well placed, takes me back-back-back. Stopstart pictures run across my vision. The rear-view mirror anchors me, and the world pieces back together around it. He speaks; I look. Who is this strange man sitting beside me? Are we in the car? I could've sworn I was just dreaming about this.

Good Day.

I am peaking when my sister, home sick for the day, announces that I must buy her Mi Goreng. Distracted by the patterns in the road, I can barely walk straight. I spot a fellow pair of tortured bare feet and watch them cross the road; cracked at the edges like worn leather. It is only when I hit Coles that I realise my true dilemma - I have no idea where they keep the darned stuff. I dial home, get a wrong number, and try again.
"Hi"
"Muz?"
"Yaah?"
"Mon can't find the Mi Goreng."
She turns out to be no help. I try the aisles, each more confusing than the next. It's not with the two minute noodles. It's not with any of the noodles. Or the pasta. It is, in fact, with the taco shells.
To whomever decides where this shit goes: I'm on LSD. What the fuck is your excuse?

Outside, there are flowers on the walls, breathing blue like the sky without these dropbellied clouds. Vines multiply beneath the petals. Sinister fingers, they creep behind the loveliness, yearning for a throat to choke. Above is purbleblue and heavy-wet-trembling with anticipation. The Earth, full of a hunger I don't think I'll ever comprehend, is begging for God's cumshot to the face.
I am almost home when it starts to rain.

2pm. I'm sitting in the kitchen, chewing gum and rolling cigarettes. There are flies in the house and cracks in the walls. They shimmer and shift and breathe sickness into the afternoon; I am afflicted. I am free.

Use By

Best before: 4-4-09
Ha ha fucking ha.

I can see all the spaces where the light comes through. Everything seems transparent.
Every so often, I can feel my heart faltering; strange, erratic beats that only the deepest breath can hold in sync.
Are you leaving me, little heart? After everything, is this too much? But, somehow, it keeps going. I may be weak, but you've more living to do yet, it says.
The paper faces on my wall are mute, no words of warning today. I take them down; we speak no more.
Strange, terrifying dreams slip away from me when I wake, and I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong.
Calm down, kid. It will pass, or it won't. Patience.
I guess we'll see, huh?
Tomorrow, I eat acid for breakfast.

Surrounded by lights and echoes of lights, I hurtle through the dark. I don't know which is which anymore. I don't know where I am.
Shouldn't you know this landscape by now, kid?
But I don't, and so I tread coals and the tops of clouds like something out of a dream. Dissolve into the glittering dragon's scales on the highway. There are tentacles growing out of trees and my eyes are too big and too wide, and I am too much of a child to understand anything (but isn't that what keeps you safe?)
Maybe. But I'd like to think there's honesty in it somewhere.
And you'd like to think you matter.
Stop it.
Like there's anything you can do to stop you from being unimportant. Like there's anything anyone can do. Don't you get it? Nobody matters, no matter what they do. Whether you find the cure for cancer or you spend your life on the streets, talking shit. You are just another tiny little ant, crawling this planet day after day, hoping you'll find something worth living for.
Shut up.
Why? I'm right, and you know I am.
Yes, but that's the point. We have to keep making ourselves feel less unimportant because, no matter what anyone says, humans don't handle shit very well. We can't allow ourselves to believe that this is all there is.
Hey kid?
Uh-huh?
You just lost the game.
Damn. You two, whoreface.
Cunt.

To bring up children, use ipecac.

Trigger. Trigger. Trigger.
Today, I will be weak. Trembling and scared; catatonic on the bathroom floor. A familiar tapestry woven in new thread, but clarity is coming through. I argue with the voice of Fear.

This is nuts.
Yes.
I'm scared.
You're scaring yourself. It's all in your head.
Oh.