like a trashcan fire in a prison cell

like the search lights in the parking lots of hell

air is crisp and holidays drip past me. lack of significance in ancient miracles and fantastical figures, maybe a glossy compact mirror will make me care. but apathy is a gripping condition, it lives dormant and mute behind the breast-bone. silently awakening to let you know these things don't matter. it is not these things that matter.

let's live on coffee and supplemental neuro-transmitters. let's keep self medicating until our blood is no longer pure and the pressure that exists within us is ready to explode. let's keep writing and reading and walking and running until we have any clue as to what we are walking towards. what concept we are approaching. what dream sits at the ledge waiting for me to arrive. like a girl sitting at the edge of a cliff looking out at a landscape hugging her knees into her chest, glancing behind her, chin to shoulder blade to quietly acknowledge I am finally there.

does the dream wait for the dreamer or does the dreamer wait for the dream? who is it that is perched at the edge of this terrain? more unsolvable questions. kept in my back pocket. wrinkled paper warm and damp of ideas i will never follow to their potential. uncertainties that will be solved only in death. i try not to self destruct, in these moments of profound, omnipresent confusion. where the only thing i know for certain is that i know nothing at all. that the pursuit of truth is a trivial path. that answers will never come. only more moments to ruminate on lack of concrete atonement.

so i protest against pollution. against the ache in my lungs, contracting and gasping for air. fresher air. higher altitude. is this what matters. this is what matters. attempting to craft goals for the new year. to replace the old. shed a layer of skin and exfoliate until the dead cells drop off and a new coat is revealed. more toned, even texture, smoothed over and unified. if only i could push this weight off of my body and back into the atmosphere. no lingering shadows of darkness that follow behind me. it is what it is and i must allow myself to move independently from the burdens i have come to know all too well. to swim with strong and large strokes through whatever waters i travel and glide towards who i want to be, or rather who i know i am underneath the bitter coatings. to better myself with each breath, head turned sideways out of the water, preparing to propel forward. it is not in finally approaching land or arriving to any destination, time reveals that the glory is in the swim, or in the pursuit, and rarely in the achievement. i will believe in the process, in a rhythmic pattern used to exist more peacefully than this. to know this process is my own task, and whether or not the weight is shared, i will bear it. i must bear it on my own and find the reward in every corner turned. maybe then i will come to terms with this nightmare. maybe the nightmare will return to a dream.

i've made amends

in the general sense, but the devil's in the details.

The magic exists in early fall days. Where the sun sets quickly. Orange burnt sky dust. Where a shooting star is a visual reality. Two stationary locations. An arc of shinning, splintering silver light leaping from point A to point B. Fluid movement. Make a wish now or forever be luckless. Throw your change. Throw everything you have into making this life worth living. Into finding joy in unexpected corners and strength and progress in the crevices of your own eyelids. In the crease of your stomach folds. In your own wrong doings and shortcomings. In everything you wish you could be.

The glory in the juice of an orange. Dripping from my bottom lip onto my chin, onto my chest, down my clavicle, to my navel, to the spot adjacent to my right hip bone that sends electricity through my core. Hair standing up on its ends, shivering, make me weak. Yet I am not weak and will not let overbearing, calloused hands push me down to a manipulated position. Weak. Knees bend and head cocked looking upwards.

So I carry my days out alone. In the whirlwind speedway that is my own condition. Living just to figure out what in God's name it means to be living. Searching for salvation. Trying to save myself from all of the worms, the dirt, the earthly and unearthly corruption. Always present. Always a devil around the next corner, behind an ajar door. Waiting for me. To suck me in and rid me of all of my progress. How to learn to be stronger. To open the door look the devil in his black brown eyes that seem to lead nowhere and walk the other way. There need be no fight. No guns. No rise of arms. The only thing needed is my own will to turn my own heel. Worn down heel. Flat. So flat my feet practically glide across the cement. Dry skin. Another callous. I refuse to be callous.

The shooting star was a sight my eyes never saw before. A virgin experience. New witness to extraterrestrial pleasure. A real instance of the supernatural bleeding into the human sky. Glancing at it the burst of light looks like a diamond. Of infinite carat. Infinite worth. Glowing and glittering without delay or resistance. Like its only purpose is to shine. And to die. And in the magnificent streak of evanescence its emanating glory is more than I can fathom. It cannot be apart of my life time, the same system I exist in. unless that dying star also lies within me. Leaping light years away as a flashlight of hope in the dark polluted night sky. A lightning strike gallop that lit up my insignificant slice of. A message. A faint, flickering stream, fountain of majestic beauty. Untainted and pure, radiant and speckled, how it shined, how it shined.